international businessman. Lives mainly in London and France.”
“Those
are
the basics. May I give you a more thorough version of the story?”
Gabriel nodded his head. Olga braced herself on her elbows and held the wineglass near her face
with both hands. Between them, a candle flickered in a red bowl. It added blush to her pale cheeks.
“He was a child of Soviet privilege, our Ivan. His father was high-ranking KGB.
Very
high-ranking.
In fact, when he retired, he was the chief of the First Main Directorate, the foreign espionage division.
Ivan spent a good part of his childhood abroad. He was permitted to travel, while ordinary Soviet citizens
were kept prisoner in their own country. He had blue jeans and Rolling Stones records, while ordinary
Soviet teenagers had Communist propaganda and Komsomol weekends in the country. In the days of
shortages, when the workers were forced to eat seaweed and whale meat, he and his family had fresh veal
and caviar.”
She drank some of the wine. At the front entrance, Stalin was negotiating with two male customers
over a table. One of them had been at the cemetery. Olga seemed not to notice.
“Like all the children of Party elite, he was automatically granted a place at an elite university. In
Ivan’s case, it was Moscow State. After graduation, he was admitted directly into the ranks of the KGB.
Despitehis fluency in English and German, he was not deemed suitable material for a life as a foreign spy,
so he was assigned to the Fifth Main Directorate. Do you know about the Fifth Main Directorate, Mr.
Golani?”
“It was responsible for internal security functions: border control, dissidents, artists and writers.”
“Don’t forget the
refuseniks
, Mr. Golani. The Fifth Directorate was also responsible for persecuting
Jews. Rumor has it Ivan was very diligent in that regard.”
Stalin was now seating the two men at a table near the center of the restaurant, well out of earshot.
“Ivan benefited from the magic hand of his famous father and was promoted rapidly through the ranks
of the directorate. Then came Gorbachev and glasnost and perestroika, and overnight everything in our
country changed. The Party loosened the reins on central planning and allowed young entrepreneurs-in
some cases the very dissidents whom Ivan and the Fifth Directorate were monitoring-to start cooperatives
and private banks. Against all odds, many of these young entrepreneurs actually started to make money.
This didn’t sit well with our secret overlords at Lubyanka. They were used to picking society’s winners
and losers. A free marketplace threatened to upset the old order. And, of course, if there was money to be
made, they wanted what was rightly theirs. They decided they had no option but to go into business for
themselves. They needed an energetic young man of their own, a young man who knew the ways of
Western capitalism. A young man who had been permitted to read the forbidden books.”
“Ivan Kharkov.”
She raised her glass in salutation to his correct answer. “With the blessing of his masters at
Lubyanka, Ivan was allowed to leave the KGB and start a bank. He was given a single dank room in an
old Moscow office building, a telephone, and an American-made personal computer,something most of us
had never seen. Once again, the magic hand was laid upon Ivan’s shoulder and within months his new
bank was raking in millions of dollars in profit, almost all of it due to State business. Then the Soviet
Union crumbled, and we entered the roaring nineties period of gangster capitalism, shock therapy, and
instant privatization. When the State-owned enterprises of the Soviet Union were auctioned off to the
highest bidder, Ivan gobbled up some of the most lucrative assets and factories. When Moscow real estate
could be purchased for a song and a promise, Ivan snatched up some of the gems. During the period of
hyperinflation, Ivan and his patrons at Lubyanka Square made fortunes in currency speculation-fortunes
that inevitably found their way into secret bank accounts in Zurich and Geneva. Ivan never had any
illusions about the reason for his astonishing success. He had been helped by the magic hand of the KGB,
and he was very good at keeping the magic hand filled with money.”
A waiter appeared and began laying small dishes of Georgian appetizers on the table. Olga
explained the contents of each; then, when the waiter was gone, she resumed her lecture.
“One of the State assets Ivan scooped up in the early nineties was a fleet of cargo planes and
container vessels. They didn’t cost him much, since at the time most of the planes were sinking into the
ground at airfields around the country and the ships were turning to rust in dry dock. Ivan bought the
facilities and the personnel necessary to get the fleet up and running again, and within a few months he had
one of the most valuable properties in Russia: a company capable of moving goods in and out of the
country, no questions asked. Before long, Ivan’s ships and planes were filled with lucrative cargo bound
for troubled foreign lands.”
“Russian weapons,” said Gabriel.
Olga nodded. “And not just AK-47s and RPG-7s, though they are a substantial part of his operation.
Ivan deals in the big-ticket items, too: tanks, antiaircraft batteries, attack helicopters, even the occasional
frigate or out-of-date MiG. He hides now behind a respectable veneer as one of Moscow ’s most
prominent real estate developers and investors. He owns a palace in Knightsbridge, a villa in the South of
France, and the chalet in Courchevel. He buys paintings, antique furniture, and even a share of an English
football team. He’s a regular at Kremlin functions and is very close to the president and the
siloviki
. But
beneath it all, he’s nothing but a gunrunner and a thug. As our American friends like to say, he’s a full-
service operation. He has inventory and the cargo ships and transport planes to deliver it. If necessary, he
can even provide financing through his banking operations. He’s renowned for his ability to get weapons
to their destination quickly, sometimes overnight, just like DHL and Federal Express.”
“If we’re going to find out whether Ivan has really made a deal with al-Qaeda, we have to get inside
his network. And to get inside Ivan’s network, we need the name of your original source.”
“You can’t have it, Mr. Golani. Two people are already dead. I’m afraid the matter is closed.” She
looked down at her menu. “We should eat something, Mr. Golani. It’s better if the FSB thinks we’re
actually hungry.”
For the remainder of dinner, Olga did not mention Ivan Kharkov and his missiles. Instead, she spoke
of books recently read, films recently viewed, and the coming election. When the check came, they
engaged in a playful tussle, male chivalry versus Russian hospitality, and chivalry prevailed. It was still
light out; they walked directly to her car, arm in arm for the benefit of any spectators. The old Lada
wouldn’t turn over at first, but it finally rattled into life with a puff of silver-blue smoke. “Built by the
finest Soviet craftsmen during the last years of developed socialism,” she said. “At least we don’t have to
remove our wipers anymore.”
She turned up the radio very loud and embraced him without passion. “Would you be so kind as to
see me to my door, Mr. Golani? I’m afraid my building isn’t as safe as it once was.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
“It’s not far from here. Ten minutes at most. There’s a Metro stop nearby. You can-”
Gabriel placed a finger to her lips and told her to drive.
16 MOSCOW
It is said that Moscow is not truly a city but a collection of villages. This was one of them, thought
Gabriel, as he walked at Olga’s side. And it was a village with serious problems. Here a band of
alcoholics swilling beer and tots of vodka. Here a pack of drug addicts sharing a pipe and a tube of glue.
Here a squadron of skateboard punks terrorizing a trio of old babushkas out for an evening stroll.
Presiding over it all was an immense portrait of the Russian president with his arm raised in the fashion
of Lenin. Across the top, in red lettering, was the Party’s ubiquitous slogan: FORWARD AS ONE!
Her building was known as K-9, but the local English-speaking wits called it the House of Dogs.
Built in the footprint of an H, it had thirty-two floors, six entrances, and a large transmission tower on the
roof with blinking red warning lights. An identical twin stood on one side, an ugly stepsister on the other.
It was not a home, thought Gabriel, but a storage facility for people.
“Which doorway is yours?”
"Entrance C.”
“Pick another.”
"But I always go through C.”
“That’s why I want you to pick another.”
They entered through a doorway marked B and struck out down a long corridor with a cracked
linoleum floor. Every other light was out, and from behind the closed doors came the sounds and odors of
too many people living too closely together. Arriving at the elevators, Olga stabbed at the call button and
gazed at the ceiling. A minute elapsed. Then another.
“It’s not working.”
“How often does it break down?”
“Once a week. Sometimes twice.”
“What floor do you live on?”
“The
eleventh
.”
“Where are the stairs?”
With a glance, she indicated around the corner. Gabriel led her into a dimly lit stairwell that smelled
of stale beer, urine, and vaguely of disinfectant. “I’m afraid progress has come slowly to Russian stair-
wells, ” she said. “Believe it or not, it used to be much worse.”
Gabriel mounted the first step and started upward, with Olga at his heels. For the first four floors,
they were alone, but on the fifth they encountered two girls sharing a cigarette and on the seventh two boys
sharing a syringe. On the eighth-floor landing, Gabriel had to slow for a moment to scrape a condom from
the bottom of his shoe, and on the tenth he walked through shards of broken glass.
By the time they reached the eleventh-floor landing, Olga was breathing heavily. Gabriel reached out
for the latch, but before he could touch it, the door flew away from him as though it had been hurled open
by a blast wave. He pushed Olga into the corner and managed to step clear of the threshold as the first
rounds tore the dank air. Olga began to scream but Gabriel scarcely noticed. He was now pressed against
the wall of the stairwell. He felt no fear, only a sense of profound disappointment. Someone was about to
die. And it wasn’t going to be him.
The gun was a P-9 Gurza with a suppressor screwed into the barrel. It was a professional’s weapon,
though the same could not be said for the dolt who was wielding it.
Perhaps it was overconfidence on the part of the assassin, Gabriel would think later, or perhaps the
men who had hired him had neglected to point out that one of the targets was a professional himself.
Whatever the case, the gunman blundered through the doorway with the weapon exposed in his
outstretched hands. Gabriel seized hold of it and pointed it safely toward the ceiling as he drove the man
against the wall. The gun discharged harmlessly twice before Gabriel was able to deliver two vicious
knees to the gunman’s groin, followed by a crushing elbow to the temple. Though the final blow was
almost certainly lethal, Gabriel left nothing to chance. After prying the Gurza from the gunman’s now-limp
hand, he fired two shots into his skull, the ultimate professional insult.
Amateurs, he knew from experience, tended to kill in pairs, which explained his rather calm reaction
to the sound of crackling glass rising up the stairwell. He pulled Olga out of the line of fire and was
standing at the top of the stairs as the second man came round the corner. Gabriel put him down as if he
were a target on a training range: three tightly grouped shots to the center of the body, one to the head for
style points.
He stood motionless for a few seconds, until he was certain there were no more assassins, then
turned around. Olga was cowering on the floor, next to the first man Gabriel had killed. Like the one at the
bottom of the stairs, his head was covered by a black balaclava. Gabriel tore it off, revealing a lifeless
face with a dark beard.
“He’s Chechen,” Olga said.
“You’re sure?”
Before Olga could answer, she leaned over the edge of the stairs and was violently sick. Gabriel
held her hand as she convulsed. In the distance, he could hear the first sirens of the police.
“They’ll be here any minute, Olga. We’re never going to see each other again. You must give me the
name. Tell me your source before it’s too late.”
17 MOSCOW
The first officers to arrive were members of a Moscow City Militia public security unit, the
proletariat of the city’s vast police and intelligence apparatus. The ranking officer was a stubblechinned
sergeant who spoke only Russian. He took a brief statement from Olga, whom he appeared to know by
reputation, then turned his attention to the dead gunmen. “Chechen gangsters,” he declared with disgust.