“What about my car?”
“Leave it.”
Will climbed into the backseat of the Town Car. It was not the one that had been the setting for his inquisition.
“What's with you guys and Lincoln Town Cars?”
Yuri responded, “Nikolai likes the leg room. Not exactly my taste, but what can you do?”
“Town Car is a good ride,” Nikolai grunted over his shoulder. “So you can all shut the fuck up.”
They rode in silence up the 101 into San Francisco, past the anonymous airport hotels of Burlingame, past the working-class homes of South San Francisco crowding the hillsides. In the dusk, a stream of white-hot headlights and red-ember taillights poured over the hillside from the city like a lava flow.
“Can you tell me where we're going?” Will asked.
No response from the front seat.
“I'm going to have to go back to get my car. That's going to be a pain in the ass.” Will was hoping for a response that might provide some confirmation that he was going to return from the trip.
Nikolai and Yuri continued to ignore him as the car curled off the Civic Center exit into the city. Soon they were cruising through the Tenderloin, where the streets became an obstacle course of people who were either too drunk, high, mentally unstable, or generally belligerent to observe pedestrian etiquette.
Kaifu,
Will thought.
We all must be high.
The Town Car came to a stop in front of a small restaurant on Geary Street that was sandwiched between a Russian grocery and a Russian deli. A tiny, faded sign over the door read, “Dacha Restaurant.”
Inside, the place was poorly lit, cramped, and smoky (in blatant contravention of San Francisco's no-smoking law). Will imagined that this must be what a working-class Moscow dive looked like. There were only three customers in the place, each over seventy years old and indistinguishable from the others to Will's untrained eye. Observing the cloud of smoke pooled against the ceiling, Will could only conclude that the kitchen staff must be smoking like chimneys.
Nikolai and Yuri claimed a circular booth in the corner. They sat on either side of Will, blocking him in. No one seemed to take any notice of them.
A waitress with a pinched face emerged from the back room, tossed smudged, laminated menus on the table, and exchanged a few laconic words in Russian with Nikolai.
A few minutes later, three plates of pirozhki arrived at the table, along with three glasses of water and three shots of vodka. Although, on second thought, Will wasn't sure that the tall glasses didn't hold vodka and the short ones water.
“Is there something you want to talk about?” Will asked.
“Not now. I'm eating,” Nikolai said.
After picking at the greasy pirozhki, Will looked up at the sound of the front door slamming. A compact man in a glossy, black leather jacket approached their table. He wore his hair slicked back, and his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated by a bushy unibrow. He was trailed by a tall, dark-skinned Arab man who was dressed nondescriptly in khakis and a blue Ralph Lauren button-down shirt.
The man in the leather jacket, whom Nikolai and Yuri referred to as Valter, greeted them in Russian and gave each a curt, professional handshake.
“This is our new friend Aashif,” Valter said. “He and I will be doing some business later, so he is going to sit in on our meeting.”
Nikolai and Yuri nodded respectfully.
Aashif had the slightly unfocused, myopic gaze of a scholar, and it was difficult to tell whether his reserved demeanor signaled disdain or social awkwardness. Aashif barely looked at Nikolai and Yuri as he shook their hands. Instead, he kept staring at Will.
Valter and Aashif slid into the booth next to Nikolai.
“So, Nikolai, Yuri. What have you brought me today?” Valter asked. “Something better than last time, I hope.” He made a quick gesture with his hand, as if to dismiss their previous proposal. Everything about Valter moved a little too fast, from his speech to his darting eyes, like a mechanical toy that had been wound a few times too many.
“This is Will Connelly,” Nikolai said carefully, as if he were reciting from a script. “He's a partner at a law firm . . .” Nikolai glanced down at the business card in his hand. “Reynolds, Fincher and McComb.”
“So I am guessing that Will has fucked up in some way, yes?”
“Very much so, Valter. Will picked up Katya Belyshev in a club. Do you know Katya? She's the new receptionist at Equilon.”
Valter seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Oh, yeah, Katya. Sure. Good worker.”
“Will is a lawyer. He wanted to impress the girl and told her that he was working on the sale of a publicly traded company, Jupiter Software.”
Valter smiled sagely and shook his head. “A man should never tell his business to a woman.”
“I'll try to remember that,” Will said.
Nikolai continued: “Jupiter is going to be acquired by Pearl Systems. Will says everyone is expecting the stock price of Pearl to go up when the deal is announced.”
“I never said that about the price,” Will interrupted.
Valter disregarded Will's comment. “How do we know that Will is telling us the truth?”
“We cut him a few times . . . by the time we were done, he would have given up his mother.”
“But how do we know he will stay cooperative?”
“We're in a position to send him away for the murder of that other attorney, Ben Fisher. We could also turn the SEC on him for disclosing insider information. He's ours.”
Valter nodded. “You know that the SEC will spot unusual trading activity,” he said. “Their computers pick that shit up.”
“That's what I was telling them,” Will said.
Valter gazed at him with a blank, affectless stare usually reserved for lifeless objects. Will decided that he should not interrupt again.
“We could purchase the Jupiter stock through shell companies or through people we control who would turn over their profits.”
“And the SEC wouldn't see through that?” Nikolai asked.
“Not if it is handled correctly. We've done this type of deal before,” Valter said, working through the possibilities. “We'd need to muddy the waters a little, spread the tip around. If you have a few people trading, it is much harder for the SEC to find the connection.”
Nikolai leaned forward, looking to close the deal. “So do you think this is something that your people would be interested in?”
“Maybe,” Valter said. He reached across the table for Will's glass of vodka and tossed it down. “But it would take some real money to make it worthwhile. I recommend this to Boka, and it is my ass on the line. And I have not done business with you before. No offense.”
“None taken,” Nikolai said. “We want to work with you, so when we see opportunities, we bring them here. . . .”
“If you take a chance on this, you won't regret it. This is a sure thing,” Yuri said. Nikolai threw him a glance that, if they were not in Valter's presence, Will felt certain would have been accompanied by his patented
Shut the fuck up, Yuri
.
“I think I'm going to recommend that we put a little money in as a test,” Valter said. “If the
vory
like the idea, we'll see how it does. If it works out, maybe we'll go again.”
“Thank you, Valter. We appreciate this.”
“I hope that you do. If it turns out that your shit is fucked up, we all have a problem. But for you two, it would be much worse. Much worse.”
Nikolai and Yuri nodded solemnly.
“You said that if this goes well, you could do it again. I just want you to know that I don't get involved with mergers of publicly traded companies very often,” Will said. “I don't think I'd be of much use to you after this.”
“I think you'd be surprised how helpful you can be,” Valter said. “Your firm is big, isn't it?”
“Yeah.”
“They represent big companies, wealthy individuals, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you are not working on a deal, someone else is. You can find out what is going on with your other publicly traded clients. With the individuals, maybe you might know something that we could use against them.”
Maybe the pirozhki and the smoke-filled room had something to do with it, but Will suddenly felt queasy. He had an image of himself going from office to office at the firm late at night, digging through other attorneys' trash cans and client files.
“Stay close to this one for a while,” Valter said to Nikolai and Yuri. Will looked up to see Valter examining him. “It usually takes time for them to get used to what they have to do. It's like a fish when you set the hook. At first he struggles, does things that make his situation worse. After a while, struggling stops.”
“You think he might kill himself?” Yuri asked.
“Maybe. Or worse.”
Will considered what to them could be worse than killing himself. There were many things that probably fit into that category, he decided, such as talking to the FBI or the SEC.
“Will, I want you to know that we don't want something for nothing,” Valter said, adding a smile for his benefit. “If we make money, you'll make money. Who knows? Soon you might be making as much from your dealings with us as you do from your law firm job. Not a bad sideline, huh?”
Will declined to respond, staring at the table.
“I mean it. Watch this one,” Valter said to Nikolai and Yuri. Then to Aashif, “So, Aashif, you are a good judge of character. What do you think of our friend Will? Do you think we can trust him to do what we ask?”
Aashif, who was still staring at Will, responded, “Trust him? No. But he doesn't seem like the sort to take his own life. And I suspect that he's capable, if properly motivated.” Aashif had what sounded like a North London accent. Given the company that he was keeping, Will wondered if the serious young man was connected to a terrorist organization.
Valter put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “One more question, Will. Is there anything else that you know about Jupiter that might be of value to us?”
“No, I don't think so.”
“No need to answer so fast. Jupiter is an encryption company. A copy of their encryption algorithm . . . wouldn't that be valuable?”
“I suppose so,” Will said, surprised that Valter knew enough to throw around a word like
algorithm
. “But it's kept under tight security. I don't have that level of access.”
“Why don't you think about how you might get access,” Valter said. “We will ask you again later.”
Valter and Aashif rose from the booth. Nikolai and Yuri stood quickly to join them, shaking hands with Aashif and exchanging embraces and slaps on the back with Valter. As Valter and Aashif left the restaurant, the three old men in the dining room studied their plates.
Instead of leaving by the front door, Valter entered a room at the rear of the restaurant. Before the door closed, Will saw lights filtered through a haze of cigarette smoke. Apparently, it wasn't the kitchen staff that was smoking up the place after all.
When the door swung shut behind Valter, Nikolai and Yuri beamed at each other. Yuri hollered for the waitress, “More vodka!”
When the waitress brought the vodkas, her pinched face was further contorted by a scowl. Their little celebration was disrupting the dour atmosphere that the restaurant seemed to cultivate.
“Who is Valter?” Will asked.
“A true criminal,” Nikolai said. “An associate of Boka, who is the top
vor
in the
mafiya
here in San Francisco.”
“Valter doesn't sound like a Russian name.”
“It is his
klichki
, his nickname. He is named after the Walther pistol.”
“It also comes from a character from an old Soviet TV movie,
Variant Omega
,” Yuri added. “Valter was this bad-ass Gestapo, a real killer.”
“I loved that movie,” Nikolai said warmly. “Must have come out around seventy-five. Takes me back to my childhood.”
“Yeah,” Yuri said. Nikolai and Yuri were silent for a moment, contemplating the innocent days of their youth.
Nikolai raised his glass and proposed a toast.
“Vorovskoi mir.”
Yuri followed.
“Vorovskoi mir.”
He nudged Will to down his vodka.
Will didn't need any encouragement. Maybe the shot would calm his nerves.
“What was the toast?” he asked.
“To the thieves' world,” Nikolai replied.
“Vorovskoi mir.”
FOURTEEN
The phone on Will's desk was ringing, and the number on the Caller ID screen told him that it was Clive Shusett of Pearl Systems. Clive had no doubt prepared his response to the demands that Will had made in their last negotiating session.
Will let the phone ring until voice mail picked up. He was still tired from his adventures the night before. After Nikolai and Yuri had finally allowed him to leave the restaurant, he had taken a cab back to Palo Alto to retrieve his car where he had been forced to leave it.
From her desk outside, Maggie craned her neck to confirm that Will was in. He usually picked up his phone immediately, but Maggie knew better than to answer the call herself, which would have violated their protocol.
Will listened to Clive's message. “Will, this is Clive Shusett.” He could hear car horns in the background. Clive was probably calling from his cell in a taxi. “We'd like to schedule another meeting with you and David to go over the points you raised. I think we have a bit of room for discussion. I'd like to schedule a meeting on April twenty-fourth, either in Palo Alto or at your offices. That's the one day that I can be in the Bay Area. I hope you appreciate that this is an accommodation.”