“Hello, Mr. Casper,” says Alexander Kutuzov in that rich, textured accent. Up close and personal, he is rougher around the edges than I would have expected. He’s dressed in casual billionaire attire—a tailored yellow silk shirt with the cuffs rolled up, trousers, and a thousand-dollar haircut. But his skin is pockmarked and leathery; his nose looks like it’s taken a few hits; his forearms are scarred. He has amassed a fortune of more than twenty billion dollars, but he fought some battles getting there.
“You’re right on time,” I say. “You’re a very reliable fellow.”
A couple walks up to the monument and looks beyond us, wearing disappointed expressions. The National Mall has all sorts of great things to see, but surely one of their top choices was the statue of Honest Abe, now hidden behind a blue tarp.
“You have chosen a wise location,” he says. “Public enough to give you a feeling of safety. And yet private enough, what with the rehabilitation work on Mr. Lincoln, so that nobody is present to overhear our conversation.”
Actually, I just wanted a spot where there wouldn’t be innocent bystanders.
That and it’s close to my next appointment, if I ever make it out of here alive.
“Or perhaps not,” he says.
A jolt passes through me. “I don’t get your meaning.”
He turns and looks at me.
“Are you recording this conversation, Mr. Casper?” he asks.
I try to manage a chuckle, as though I’m amused. It comes out more like I’m clearing my throat. “Why would I record this? I’m breaking the law by making this deal with you. I could go to prison.”
“True,” he says. “Still, indulge me and let me check you for a recording device.”
“A sign of good faith?” I ask. “Cooperation?”
“You could think of it that way.”
“Maybe I’m not feeling cooperative,” I say.
Kutuzov gives me an icy smile. “Victor,” he says.
Before I can ask him what he means, or who the hell Victor is, I hear a
thwip
pierce the air and the stair immediately below where I’m sitting explodes. I jump up and tumble over to my side. Kutuzov enjoys a good laugh at my expense.
I look back at the place the bullet landed. An inch or two to either side and one of my feet would have been blown off. An inch or two higher and I’d be singing with the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
I look around the Mall. I have no idea where that bullet came from. But the sharpshooter’s marksmanship is unquestionable. Kutuzov has made his point.
Kutuzov, who has remained as still as a statue this entire time, turns and winks at me. “Perhaps now you are feeling cooperative?”
I nod my head and get to my feet, the adrenaline dump now catching up with me. My heart is pounding, and I’m standing here wondering if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. To which the answer is,
Absolutely
.
“You win,” I say, raising my trembling hands. “Check me for a wire.”
He nods in the direction of the reflecting pool, where a large gentleman suddenly moves toward us.
“My associate will check you,” Kutuzov says as he gets up and walks away.
My pulse rockets in my throat. “Where are
you
going?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. He just winks at me and bounds down the stairs.
And his “associate” walks up the steps toward me.
I love you, Mother,
I whisper, in case they are the last words I ever speak. But he’s not going to kill me, right? Kutuzov wouldn’t have come here personally if they were just going to kill me. Right?
He would’ve just had his sharpshooter, Victor, kill me.
Right?
The man walks up to me and reaches inside his jacket. I hold my breath and savor it. I’ve come to enjoy breathing. I’d like to keep doing it.
He removes a long wand from his jacket. “Please raise your arms,” he says in a thick accent. He reminds me of Drago from
Rocky IV
,
only he’s not as handsome. But he has a similar sense of humor. I’m waiting for him to say,
I must break you.
I stand up. He runs the wand over me, with no sound coming back. No hits. No signal coming off me. Then he pats me down for a microphone. I feel like I’m going through airport security in Leningrad. He leaves no corner of my body unchecked. He even checks my prepaid cell phone, which I have turned off. He can search and probe all he wants. He’s not going to find anything.
Because I’m not recording this.
He walks past me up the stairs. I turn and watch him as he pulls back the blue tarp covering the monument and checks behind it.
Once he’s finished back there, he walks back down the stairs, passing me without comment, and gives a curt nod to Alex Kutuzov. Kutuzov then comes back up the stairs and rejoins me.
“Thank you,” he says. “You are quite right. You’d have no sound reason for recording this. But you can understand my concern. I must…exercise discretion.”
I say, “Of course,” like I’m cool. But I’m not. I shouldn’t have come here.
“Now,” says Kutuzov, “we talk business.”
“You are nervous,” says Alexander Kutuzov. “You are shaking.”
I wish I had a good comeback. That’s what Bruce Willis would do. He’d squint and arch his eyebrows and say something icy smooth. “Icy smooth” would be a good slogan for mint gum. I wish I had some gum right now, because it calms me down. You always seem more at ease when you’re chewing gum.
“I understand the local police are pursuing you with great urgency,” Kutuzov says.
“Yeah, I’m pretty much out of friends,” I say.
“Well, you have one now.” Kutuzov turns to me. “Miss Diana, she warned me that she had stowed away the video for her reporter friend as a measure of insurance. We looked ourselves and could not find it. We knew you were looking for it, too. And so, Benjamin, you were my adversary. And I took measures to…prevent you from obtaining it.”
“‘Measures,’” I say, mimicking him. “You mean like firing machine guns at me? Are those the ‘measures’ you mean, Alex? The ones that killed my friend Ellis Burk and six other law enforcement officers?”
He pats my leg. “You are upset. I understand. And if it helps, I apologize. But we must put such matters in the past. You have won, Benjamin. You have found the video despite my efforts to stop you. For this, I congratulate you.”
Somehow, the praise doesn’t seem so sincere coming from this guy.
“So now, Benjamin, we move on to better times. I want you to be happy, my friend. Happy and wealthy. I trust you have confirmed the wire transfer to the account you specified? Twenty million dollars?”
“Yes,” I say. “It will certainly help my quest for happiness.”
“Indeed it will. You are being rewarded handsomely to keep this video confidential.”
I rub my hands together and try to sound authoritative. When I get nervous, my voice tends to go up an octave, which is pretty much the opposite of cool. “You understand what I said before, Alex. If anything happens to me, if a bullet accidentally finds its way into my skull, that video goes viral. It gets released to every media outlet in North America.”
“I do understand that,” he says. “You were very clear on the phone this morning. You are very clear now. If I kill you, the video becomes public.”
Yeah, but I wanted to say it again. It’s what will keep me alive.
“But
you
understand,” says Kutuzov, “that if you have second thoughts about our agreement and decide to release this video, you will die a painful death.”
I shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not.” If I were chewing gum, I’d blow a bubble right now. That would look cool.
I turn toward Kutuzov, who grabs my shirt with one hand and tugs me close to him. I’ve hit a nerve with him, obviously.
“Listen to me, my little friend. Do not mistake what has happened in the past for the future. You were in hiding, and we lacked adequate time to prepare, and still you only narrowly escaped us. Those bullets that killed your friend the detective were within inches of you, yes? And never again will you have a barricade of police and Secret Service agents saving you. Had they not arrived yesterday, you would have been dead within seconds. Do not mistake what I can do.”
Kutuzov releases my shirt with a push. This, and no other reason, is why we are meeting face-to-face. Kutuzov could have wired my money with the tap of a keystroke and flown back to Russia. But he wanted to deliver this message personally. He wants me to live in mortal fear of him.
“That’s a helluva way to talk to a friend,” I manage.
Kutuzov looks me up and down. “Do you require another reminder from Victor?”
I show my palms, like
stop
. “No, no. You made your point.”
After a moment, Kutuzov shows me another cold smile. “Very well, then, Benjamin. If I kill you, you release the video. If you release the tape, I kill you. Mutually assured destruction, yes?”
A term from the Cold War. How appropriate.
Kutuzov claps his hands. “You have heard my warning and I trust you understand its sincerity. So now we are done. Yes?”
Kutuzov offers his hand to me. I don’t care what Victor does with his next bullet, I’m not shaking this asshole’s hand.
“No,” I say.
I just have one thing left to say to him. It’s what Robert De Niro said to Dennis Farina at the end of
Midnight Run
. If these are the last words I ever utter—and they might be—I might as well go out quoting one of my all-time favorites.
“There’s something I’ve always wanted to say to you,” I tell Kutuzov. “You’re under arrest.”
Alex Kutuzov’s smile evaporates. He jumps to his feet. His mind is racing. He can’t reconcile his disbelief with my confidence.
“It’s real,” I say. “You should say something.”
Jay Mohr’s line to Tom Cruise in
Jerry Maguire
when he fired him at lunch. Now I’m feeling better.
“You just confessed to being behind the deaths of those cops,” I say. “I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s a crime in America.”
Kutuzov’s eyes race over me. “You did not record this conversation,” he says, panicking. “We checked. We took every precaution.”
“That’s true,” I concede. “I didn’t record this.”
“Then it is simply your word against mine.”
“It’s really just
your
words, Alex.”
Kutuzov removes a small handgun from the pocket of his pants. I didn’t even know he had it. He points it at me and starts speaking furiously in Russian.
“Sorry, I don’t speak Russian,” I say, but he’s not talking to me.
“Explain this!” he shouts at me. “Or I’ll kill you now.”
“You shoot me,” I say, “and you’re liable to lose a lot of those humanitarian awards.” Chevy Chase to Joe Don Baker in
Fletch
. This is like a buffet for me.
“Nyet!”
he shouts, again not to me. But I know a little Russian. His name is Andrei Bogomolov.
“Explain what you say,” Kutuzov says to me, sweating now, his hand trembling as he approaches me with the gun aimed at my head.
“I didn’t record this,” I say again. “But
you
did, Alex.”
His eyes widen. He knows I’m right. He’s been wearing a wire so his entire team, including the sharpshooter, Victor, can listen in. That’s why he had to walk away when his goon checked me for a recording device. The detector would have gone off because of
Alex’s
wire, which is probably tucked under his shirt and taped to his chest.
“You’ve been sending an electronic signal to your people all around the National Mall,” I explain. “The Metropolitan Police Department intercepted that signal, Alex. Everything you’ve said to me is on tape now. Amazing, the technology law enforcement has.”
“You’re bluffing,” he spits, trying to show disdain but unable to hide his growing fear. “These are all lies!”
He’s talking to me, but he’s really talking to his team listening in. They aren’t loyal to him; they’re loyal to the Russian government. And Alexander Kutuzov needs to convince them that he hasn’t just become a very big liability—a man who is about to be arrested by the DC police, a desperate man who would confess to Operation Delano in order to save himself from the death penalty for killing DC cops.
And then I hear the sweetest sound, the melodious song I’ve been eagerly awaiting.
The sound of police sirens. Metropolitan Police squad cars racing to the National Mall.
“Here they come,” I say. “They recorded the entire thing and now they’re here to arrest you. You better start thinking about that deal you’re going to cut.” I raise my voice for that last comment to make sure his team hears it.
“Lies!” Kutuzov shouts. “The police are after
you
,
not me.”
“Okay, fine, Alex. Let’s both sit here and see which one of us they arrest.”
He stares at me. I stare at him. For a glorious moment, it seems that time has stood still.
But it hasn’t, and with each passing moment, those sirens get louder.
“Quite the pickle you’re in,” I note. “You think the cops will take the death penalty off the table if you tell them about Operation Delano?”
And then something happens. Kutuzov touches the earpiece in his left ear and shouts,
“Nyet!”
as the goon by the reflecting pool breaks into a full sprint to the south. A number of other people on the National Mall—the rest of the Russian team—scatter in various directions. Somebody, somewhere, is ordering the team to disperse.
Kutuzov, in full panic now, waves his pistol around and unleashes a flurry of appeals in Russian. I assume he’s telling his team that I’m lying, that I’m bluffing. And he would be correct. The DC cops aren’t working with me. They didn’t record anything. The only reason they’re speeding toward us is an anonymous call that Detective Liz Larkin just received from an untraceable phone used by a crusty Irishman and former Chicago cop informing her that wanted fugitive Benjamin Casper could be found at the Lincoln Memorial. They’re coming here to arrest me.
But Kutuzov doesn’t know that. And neither does his team. They have to make a decision and make it fast, because those sirens are getting louder.
“I will kill him!” Kutuzov shouts toward the Mall, and I assume he means me, but before he can turn in my direction, another crisp sound pierces the air, another
thwip
. The back of Kutuzov’s head explodes and his eye vomits blood. His knees buckle and his body rocks back and forth before he falls, face-first, down the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, bouncing two or three steps before coming to a rest.
The sirens are upon us now, the sounds of the police vehicles crunching over the grass. I squat down next to Alex Kutuzov’s lifeless body.
“That’s for Ellis Burk,” I say to him. Then I turn and run.