Red Ink

When onetime dissident journalist Nikolai Katkov is tipped off to the murder of a highly placed government official, he doesn't count on the trail twisting into the lurid world of Moscow mafia casino-owner Arkady Barkhin. After Katkov's relentless digging almost gets him gunned down, he receives an unexpected appeal for help from the striking Gabby Scotto, a US Treasury special agent. She has been tracking laundered money flowing out of the US—an investigation that has led to Barkhin's casino and a similar dead end. But then Katkov obtains a sensitive government document that could shatter Russia's fragile and newly free economy—and join Scotto in Washington to pick up the trail.Katkov's tenaciousness in pursuit of a story has been honed by decades of KGB harassment, and his survival instincts—notwithstanding a penchant for vodka and American cigarettes—by a few hard years in the Gulag. He senses a kindred spirit in the vivacious Broolynite whose bravado...