Authors: Brian Haig
Three syndicate chiefs had been contacted by a Chechen mob that had been hired as underwriters by the source of this generous
venture. For good and obvious cause, the benefactor preferred to remain anonymous. A select group of witnesses were invited
to a small apartment in the city center, five suitcases of cash were hauled out of a closet and opened for display, though
it was far too much to count. But for sure it looked like more than enough. This is it, they were told—this is what five million
dollars looks like, up close and personal. Not an empty promise, no bluff, the real deal. Now get out and spread the word.
In a city where five thousand bucks will buy you all the corpses you wish, five million was going to kick-start a gold rush
of assassins.
A few bookies put their heads together and gave thought to creating a betting pool. Nope, why bother? There were no competing
odds. Open and shut. At five million bucks, Nicky was dead.
At three that morning, Nicky’s chief bodyguard—his most trusted lieutenant, a lifelong friend from the same impoverished back
alley of Novgorod—gently eased open Nicky’s bedroom door and peeked inside. They had raped and killed and pushed dope together
for three long, enjoyable decades. They had dodged the cops and KGB, swindled, murdered, and beaten too many to remember.
Oh, the warm memories they shared. He snuck quietly inside. He hugged the wall, crept ever so slowly, never setting foot off
the carpet. Nicky liked dark rooms. Nicky wouldn’t sleep anywhere with windows, and this one was like a coffin. Nicky’s loud
snores bounced off the walls. The whore sprawled across his legs was shot so full of heroin she wouldn’t have heard a T-80
tank pass three inches from her ear.
A pistol was in the bodyguard’s right hand with a round chambered and the silencer screwed on tight. A pencil flashlight was
in his left hand, with a finger poised to turn it on at the last second. He was ten feet away. Then five and the pistol came
up. At two feet away, he suddenly felt something kick him in the chest. He flew backward, smashed against the wall, and crumpled
in a bleeding heap on the floor. It was funny, he thought; he never heard the blast until a millisecond after his left lung
blew out his back.
A moment later, Nicky was over him, peering down through the darkness into his eyes.
“It hurt?”
“Yeah, like a bitch.”
“Why?” Nicky asked.
“Five million,” his best friend managed to grunt.
“From who?”
“Who knows? Who cares?”
“For real?”
“Oh, it’s real, Nicky.”
“Why you?”
“Stupid question.”
“Five mil. Yeah, you’re right.”
“Yeah, and you’re dead.”
Nicky pumped two more bullets into his best friend’s mouth, straightened up, then tossed the semicomatose whore out of his
room.
He locked the door behind her and moved a large dresser in front of it. He stopped and thought for a moment. Who put the price
on his head? Five million was a very big level of enthusiasm. Who hated him that much? Who had the motive? Who had that much
money?
After a split second, a name popped into his brain. Golitsin. It made perfect sense; in fact, no other name made any sense.
He lifted his cell phone and dialed a number from memory. A voice answered, and Nicky said, “Georgi, it’s me.”
“Hey, I heard you got a big friggin’ problem.” Georgi laughed.
“Word’s gotten around, I guess.”
“It’s five million, Nicky. You’re the talk of the town.”
“Good point. Here’s the deal, Georgi. You owe me two million for that dope deal, right?”
“Hey, I got it right here. Deal was you don’t get it till tomorrow night.”
“Scratch that.”
“Seriously?”
“As a heart attack. Put out the word, one and a half million to anybody who whacks Sergei Golitsin. Rest is yours to keep.”
“Maybe I’ll whack Golitsin and keep all of it.”
“Your option, Georgi. But Golitsin better be dead, or you’re next.” They rang off.
He returned to his bed, sat down, and cradled the pistol on his lap. Five million!
His best friend was right. Nicky was dead. It might take an hour, a day, maybe a week, but he was, without debate or uncertainty,
a dead man walking.
By eight in the morning, Tromble had assembled the full team in his office. The usual cast of characters: his pair of compliant
hey-boys, Agents Hanrahan and Wilson, Colonel Volevodz, and the head Russian prosecutor, and a fresh pool of INS legal jockeys,
now backed up by a pair of eager youthful hotshots from Justice. They sat, pens gripped, notepads poised, and awaited guidance
from the great man himself.
“Really, it was to be expected,” said one of the Justice boys, named Bill. Bill’s area of expertise happened to be anything
that happened five minutes before.
“Well, I didn’t anticipate it,” remarked Jason Caldwell, wiping a remnant of his morning shave from behind his left ear. After
the harsh dismissal of Kim Parrish, Caldwell had been handpicked personally by the INS director, a hotshot gunslinger flown
in from the San Diego office, where he was legendary for booting Mexican ass back across the border. Caldwell was a loudmouthed
blowhard pretty boy without an ounce of pity for anybody accused of anything. He did deliver, though. He took the toughest,
most ambiguous, most troubling cases and never once thought twice about the truth or consequences.
He made his ambitions well-known among his peers, among whom he was not now, nor had he ever been, overly popular. The INS
job was a stepping stone, a temporary government job from which he intended to run for Congress, and he intended to eventually
head the immigration panel, and they would all have to line up to kiss his ass. He was, by every stretch of the imagination,
perfect for this job.
He had spent one month reviewing the vast hoard of evidence compiled, translated, and organized so strenuously by Kim and
Petri. The hard work had been done for him, a perfect slam dunk; all he had to do was show up in court and smile brilliantly
for the cameras. The past month he had mainly strutted in front of full-length mirrors, rehearsing and polishing his lines,
admiring his courtly prose, and gearing up to kick a little Russian ass.
The motion for habeas corpus and switch to a federal court came like a bolt out of the dark. No warning. No threats, no hints
preceded it. But MP’s sneak attack bothered him not in the least. He looked forward to it, actually. Glad Alex and his hired
gun did it. The chance to escape from the largely ignored immigration courts into the federal big leagues, and with such a
high-visibility case, appealed to him immensely. He had no doubts he would do great. He was Jason Caldwell—if Konevitch had
any clue he was up against the scourge of Mexico he’d book his own flight to Russia.
Tromble brought the meeting to order briskly. A few comments about the importance of the case. A blistering reminder about
the need for victory at all costs. A hard stare around the table as he dwelled on the somber imperative of sending Konevitch
home to pay for his many sins.
The Russians listened without comment. Volevodz detested America—he wanted desperately to get back to Russia, where he expected
to pin on a general’s star in recognition for bringing home the bacon. The head Russian prosecutor hoped Caldwell would blow
it. Just choke and fumble and get his ass kicked. He prayed the case would drag on forever. He and his three comrades all
had lady friends out in Vegas, a bunch of big-breasted showgirls who partied without stop and weren’t overly picky about their
men. And after losing nearly a hundred grand in FBI dough at the tables, he and his pals were finally starting to win a little
back.
“You. Who’s the judge?” Tromble asked, squinting at the two Justice boys whose names he couldn’t remember because frankly
he didn’t care to.
“Elton Willis,” replied Bill, only too proud to be here in the office of the FBI director.
Tromble looked like a lemon had been stuffed in his throat. “Oh, not Willis.”
“He has a fairly good reputation,” Bill argued, obviously not getting it.
During his brief tenure as a judge, Tromble and Willis had attended a few legal conferences together and, on one sour occasion,
had even shared a podium for a spirited debate on civil liberties, one of many legal topics about which they held diametrically
different views. The audience were other judges and the results were predictable. Willis was intelligent, methodical, measured,
with a former Jesuit’s grasp and approach to law. To put it mildly, the scholars and justices in the audience didn’t seem
to grasp the subtlety of Tromble’s theories. It wasn’t the first or last time he’d been pelted with boos, but it was probably
the loudest.
“He’s a lefty wimp,” Tromble growled, daring anybody to contest this conclusion. He leaned back in his chair and cracked his
knuckles. “You ready for the show?” he asked Caldwell.
“It’s a knockdown case. In and out inside one or two days.”
Tromble traded glances with Hanrahan. “What’s the one thing we’ve overlooked?”
No clue.
“Publicity. Press. We need to bang Konevitch on every front page,” he said, almost predictably.
Caldwell loved this brainchild. “Great idea,” he announced quite loudly. “If we don’t, the defense will. Better to preempt
them.”
“Our Russian friends need to see we’re serious. All this time, but we haven’t forgotten them.”
“I could hold a few press conferences,” Caldwell agreeably offered.
Tromble cleared his throat. “Well, we’ll see if we need you.” He paused briefly. “Hanrahan, tell the boys downstairs to kick
it in gear. See if
Nightline
or
Good Morning America
has an opening for me. And call that blonde lawyer over at Fox News, you know the one. She always has an opening for me.”
“Pretty short notice. We’ve only got two more days, boss.”
“Tell them it’s the biggest trial of the year.”
Hanrahan looked away and pondered the tabletop. “Maybe that will work, maybe not.” Truth was the newspaper and TV people were
tired of his boss and his unrelenting attempts to steal ink and camera time. He was a preening spotlight hog, a master at
shoving himself before every camera in sight. The boys downstairs in the public affairs office were working eighty-hour weeks,
but had flat run out of angles, lies, and lures to get him press time.
“All right,” Tromble said, thinking up a fresh angle quickly. “Tell them I intend to be a witness at this trial. A historic
occasion. First time an FBI director has ever been on the stand.”
“Good idea,” Hanrahan said.
Caldwell offered no objections. Go ahead, give it your best shot, he was tempted to shout. Bill this as the biggest trial
of the century, if not forever. You’ll be a witness, but I’m the prosecutor, it’s my show, and I’ll damn sure find a way to
make you second fiddle.
The meeting broke among frothy promises to make sure Konevitch would at last have his long-overdue appointment with justice.
T
he front steps of the Federal Courthouse looked like a convention for something. A few dozen TV crews were gathered, klieg
lights in place, cameras loaded and ready to roll. Another dozen print reporters milled around aimlessly, drawn and stoked
by the buzz fed by the FBI’s impressive publicity machine.
Inside the court another dozen journalists were already seated at the rear benches, pool reporters who would rush out and
share the dirt and drama with their less privileged brethren.
At one table sat a clutch of five lawyers, led by Jason Caldwell, looking rather resplendent in his fine new five-hundred-buck
Brooks Brothers suit, bought in honor of his breakout debut. It matched his blue eyes. It would look great on camera. A pair
of INS colleagues sat to his left, and on the floor beside them rested a large stack of evidence. The two boys from Justice
were banished to a shallow space on the far side, though their exact purpose in the trial was an open question, especially
between themselves.
At the defense table, MP huddled importantly with a pair of well-dressed guns from Pacevitch, Knowlton and Rivers, one of
many monster firms in a city where lawyers outnumbered ordinary citizens three to one. Directly to his right sat Matt Rivers,
a law school classmate who had served as best man in the hastily arranged wedding between MP and his by then noticeably pregnant
bride.
Top of his class, in his third year, Matt had been wined and dined by big firms from New York and Chicago. But he chose PKR,
as it was commonly known. He was drawn by its no-holds-barred reputation, a feared powerhouse, a collection of divisions that
did many things from corporate through criminal, with branch offices in six American cities, and ten more spread around the
globe. Notice that PKR was involved in a case often had the terrifying effect of getting even the most recalcitrant opponents
to promptly initiate settlement talks. PKR’s unwritten motto was “pile it on,” in honor of the firm’s willingness to throw
a hundred lawyers at a troubled case. However many lawyers were committed against it, PKR doubled it and wrenched up the hours,
drowning the competition in useless motions and watching it sink in exhaustion. To put it mildly, PKR did not like to lose.
Matt’s competitive streak—aka his killer instinct—had been identified early and carefully nurtured and cultivated. The cultivation
included partnership within five years: three hundred thousand a year, plus bonus, plus car.
Though their lives and fortunes diverged, Matt and MP still lunched together every few months and shared tales from the opposite
ends of the legal profession. There was one condition that was strictly followed; Matt picked the eating hole and paid the
check. This law was laid down in the early years after MP took Matt to Taco Bell; no longer accustomed to such fare, Matt’s
stomach rebelled with horrible violence.
At Alex’s behest, MP had approached his old pal a few months before for a favor. MP was seriously outgunned, and Alex pressured
him to find some reinforcements, but since funds were short, to find somebody willing to do the work for the promise of the
publicity it might generate. Tromble seemed to be doing a masterful job at stoking that publicity, and Matt took MP’s appeal
to the firm’s management committee. It was a simple and quite common request; assign one or two lawyers on a pro bono basis.
The bulk of the work would be handled by MP: all he really wanted was the firm there, in the background, throwing its weight
around, striking fear in the opposition. A simple immigration matter failed to fuel the committee’s enthusiasm until Matt
launched into Alex Konevitch’s fascinating background and the strange nature of his supposed crimes. Interest swelled, then
the partners on the committee became curiously fired up about the whole idea.