The First Billion (46 page)

Jumping to the ground, he jogged around the nose of the aircraft to help Cate out of the cockpit. “Never again,” she said. “And you did that for a living?”

“It’s not so bad once you get the hang of it.”

A major in neatly pressed blues approached. “Captain Gavallan? I’m Calvin Tompkins, executive officer in charge of field security. Welcome to Ramstein.”

Gavallan accepted the outstretched hand. “This is Miss Magnus.”

“Evening, ma’am,” Tompkins said, offering a crisp nod of the head. “I understand you two are headed stateside.”

“We need some transportation. The Mig’s got a lousy range—fifteen hundred miles max.”

“If you’ll follow me, I’m sure we can accommodate you. We’ve got a Lear fueling up as we speak, courtesy of Mr. Howell Dodson of the FBI. I’m afraid it doesn’t have such wonderful range either. You’ll have to stop in Shannon, Ireland, to refuel, but it’ll have you to New York by morning. We had you scheduled for ten forty-five, but I’m afraid we’ve hit a bit of a glitch.”

“A glitch?” asked Cate, her voice taut.

“Just a solenoid that needs replacing,” said Tompkins. “Should have it changed out any sec.”

Gavallan knew his luck had been too good. “So what’s the new departure time?”

“Right now, we’re looking at a midnight ETD.”

“Midnight?”

“And you shouldn’t have to dally in Shannon long. An hour tops.”

Gavallan scratched the back of his neck, rejiggering his math. Takeoff at midnight. Hit Shannon by two-thirty. Takeoff from Ireland at three-thirty. Setting the whole operation to New York time, they’d land at JFK around six o’clock. Enough time should everything go according to schedule.

“Just one question, Captain Gavallan.”

“Yeah?”

Tompkins pointed to the Mig behind them. “What exactly do you want us to do with your plane?”

63

It was past midnight, and in room 818 of the Peninsula Hotel in New York City, Konstantin Kirov was sleeping. The telephone rang. Instantly, he was awake, knocking back the sheets, fumbling for the handset. “
Da?
Kirov.”

“Wake up, younger brother. Trouble.”

“What do you mean? I thought you were in Siberia.”

“I am. But I had a few of my men keep tabs on the dacha. Gavallan has escaped. He took Katya and the other American with him.”

“Impossible,” said Kirov, sitting up, grabbing at his wristwatch, squinting to read the time. “I assigned my best man to look after them. There were four guards with him.”

“All dead,” said Leonid. “We found five bodies including Tatiana and, I imagine, your ‘best man.’ From what we pieced together, Gavallan had a dagger of sorts and used it to kill one of the guards and take his weapon. From there it’s anybody’s guess.”

Kirov tried to imagine Boris and Tatiana and the others dead. A quick rage ignited inside him. He knew why Leonid was watching the dacha. He had posted his men there to make sure Kirov did not spare his daughter’s life. “If you were watching, why the hell did you let them drive away?”

“An oversight on our part.” There was a pause. “We were able to track Gavallan to Moscow,” said Leonid finally. “I’m sorry to say we were unable to keep in contact with him afterward.”

“You lost him?”

“Regrettably,” said Leonid. “Have you heard anything from your contact at Black Jet?”

“Not a word. I finished dinner with them an hour ago. The deal is going ahead as planned. As far as they are concerned Gavallan is missing in action. Some think he may be involved with the murders in Miami. Others don’t dare to think anything. The deal is simply too important for their company.”

“Most probably he is still in Moscow with your daughter. Nonetheless, you may see fit to take precautions.”

“Precautions?”

“To eliminate any threats should they become localized. After all, Gavallan holds no concrete proof to stop the deal, does he?”

“Concrete? No. But from what I understand he doesn’t need any. A call to the right parties will suffice.”

“Perhaps we can assume Mr. Gavallan has decided to join with our side in this matter. From everything you’ve told me, he needs the deal as much as you.”

“And if does not?”

“There is no going back, Konstantin Romanovich,” came Leonid’s icy response. “Neither for you nor I. We will not embarrass the president. We will not disappoint the state. We will have our money.”

Leonid hung up.

Rubbing a hand over his face, Kirov wondered what else could go wrong. He knew he should be worried, but his sheer lack of options left him emboldened instead. He told himself that if Gavallan had wanted to cancel the deal he would have done it already. There had to be a reason he hadn’t contacted his partners, and that reason was that he wanted the deal to go through. He wanted his seventy million in fees. He wanted to keep control of his company. Kirov had always pegged him as a greedy one. Smooth, yes, silky smooth, but greedy, too. He was, after all, a banker.

There was no going back.

Repeating Leonid’s words, Kirov felt a steely resolve firm up inside him. Rising, he crossed to the desk and retrieved his electronic address book from his briefcase. He found the name he needed quickly. He dialed a Manhattan number and a Russian voice answered.

“This is Kirov,” he said. “Get your boss on the line. Now.”

Gavallan might be in Russia, but Kirov was not going to take any chances. If he could get away from Boris, he might be capable of any number of things. The American was more resourceful than he had anticipated.

A familiar Russian voice came on the telephone and Kirov explained what he wanted. After haggling a few minutes they settled on a price. Satisfied, Kirov hung up, then punched the console for a new line. The hotel operator answered immediately.

“Room 544,” he said.

The phone rang three times, four. Finally, a groggy voice answered. “Yes?”

“Some news concerning Mr. Gavallan. It seems he is no longer with my people in Moscow. Are you sure you haven’t had any word from him?”

“Lord no. Not a whisper. You’re certain he’s gone?”

“Still in Russia, no doubt, but out of my control.”

“Damn it, Konstantin . . .”

“Shut up. I’m calling to tell you to be prepared, that’s all. The offering will go through. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Hanging up the phone, Kirov turned off the lights and went back to bed. It wouldn’t do to look haggard on the most important day of his life. Sleep came easier than expected. It helped immensely to know that when he visited the New York Stock Exchange in the morning, he would have plenty of friends with him.

Gavallan paced the tarmac at Shannon International Airport, tired, frustrated, and impatient. Salt and brine from the ocean laced the air, giving the predawn sky a welcome bite. He told himself he should be asleep in the plane like Cate, gathering his energy for the coming day. Lord knew, he was tired. But he was too keyed up to sleep.

Delays. Delays.

They had landed at two o’clock local time to top off their tanks before crossing the Atlantic. Three hours later, they were still there. A bulb in the starboard fuel gauge had burned out and the pilot had refused to take off until it had been replaced. Gavallan had tried to bribe him, but such was military operating procedure that the pilot would not consider the proposal for all the money in the world. The future tottered on the availability of a lousy ten-cent part. Gavallan wanted to scream.

A mist was building over the grass that bordered the runways. Soon it would turn to fog and the airport would be socked in. He looked up briefly, catching the blinking lights of another plane flying high overhead. He couldn’t know it, but inside the plane a short, wiry man slept, a blanket pulled to his neck. He was traveling to America for the first time. In fact, it was the first time he had ever traveled anywhere outside of his country. A matter of some importance had forced a hasty and unplanned departure. A business arrangement that needed squaring.

In his sleep, he was dreaming of the old country. Of the rough mountains where he had grown up. Of the rocky soil and rushing streams. Of the impoverished villages and the indomitable people who inhabited them. Some called it the “bandit country,” and in truth it was a land that robbed its people of much. But out of nature’s cruelty, they had learned to rely on themselves. To count on one another. In these mountains, a man’s word was his most valuable asset. He gave it sparingly and with his fullest commitment. While nature was capricious, man had an obligation to be steadfast. To break one’s word, then, was to break with his fellow man. Nature could not be punished for its whimsy, but a man could. And the punishment would be awful.

The man dreamt of such punishment.

In his sleep, he smiled.

Gavallan lowered his eyes from the sky. The twin beams of an airport jeep cut through the light fog, advancing rapidly on him. It was the pilot, and as he passed he held up a small cardboard box for his passenger’s inspection. “Five minutes and we’re out of here.”

Finally, thought Gavallan, jogging toward the plane.

64

Grafton Byrnes passed through the revolving doors of the Banque Privé de Genève et Lausanne on the Quai Guisan in Geneva at precisely 10 A.M. Tuesday morning. Announcing himself to the receptionist, he was shown to a conference room on the fourth floor. The picture window offered a splendid view of Lake Geneva. Byrnes ticked off the sights, running left to right. The Wilson House, where the League of Nations had first met in 1919; the enormous gray stone monuments that housed the European seat of the United Nations; and farther on, past copses of oak trees and manicured lawns, the building where GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was overseen.

There was a soft knock on the door, and a hunched, portly figure clutching a pad of paper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other hurried into the room. “Hello, Mr. Byrnes. I am Pierre Pillonel. Welcome to our bank.” He stared at his visitor through thick, owlish spectacles. His hair was mussed and his cheeks flushed and red-veined. If his demeanor was timid, his voice was anything but—a rolling, confident baritone that a politician would kill for. Setting down the paper and coffee, he extended a hand, pulling it back at the last moment. “Excuse me, I see you are injured.”

“It’s nothing,” said Byrnes, turning his hand this way and that to show he was in no way hindered. “A mishap with my car. I find I’m getting clumsier with age. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“A friend of my brother’s is a friend of mine. Excuse me if I’m not quite myself. I’m still reeling from the news.”

“I’m afraid I don’t . . .” It was then that Byrnes noted the beleaguered cast to Pillonel’s eyes. They were red and puffy. His nose was runny, his cheeks not flushed, but inflamed.

“You have not heard? Jean-Jacques is dead. He was in Zurich on his way to a short vacation. A robber surprised him and Claire in their hotel. They were both killed. It’s terrible. I shudder.” The baritone cracked and a tear rolled down Pillonel’s cheek. He tried to keep a brave front, but a moment later a sob racked his chest, his stern mouth quivered, and he began to cry in earnest. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “I don’t know why I came to work. My wife told me to stay home. She said I was a fool to come.”

“My condolences,” said Byrnes, without sympathy. He wasn’t surprised Pillonel was dead. The news hadn’t hurried his pulse a beat. If anything, he experienced a brief and satisfying surge of justice done, even if it was cruel on his part. Jean-Jacques Pillonel was as responsible for his ruined thumbs as Boris. He deserved partial credit for the deaths in Florida, and if things didn’t turn around quickly, they could stick him with the dismantling of Black Jet Securities, too.

Cautiously returning his gaze to his host, Byrnes caught a passing glimpse of his own reflection in the window. Dressed in a charcoal Brooks Brothers suit, hair neatly combed, thumbs discreetly bandaged, he actually looked presentable. A short discussion with the embassy’s legal attaché, a man Byrnes pegged as the local CIA resident, had produced a diplomatic passport, an interest-free loan in the amount of a thousand dollars, and a ticket to Geneva the next morning with an onward connection to New York (including an armed escort onto the plane). A hot meal, a soft bed, and ten hours’ sleep had done the rest. Moscow, Boris, and the dacha were quickly fading into a corner of his memory he hoped to rarely visit.

“There, I am better,” Pierre Pillonel said after a minute, taking a last swipe at his nose. “Please excuse me.”

The two men sat at a lacquered maple conference table, taking their time to unbutton their jackets and nap their slacks, uncap their pens, and take a sip of the mineral water that had been poured for them prior to their arrival.

“So?” said Pillonel, a false, professional smile pulling at his cheeks. “How may I be of assistance to you?”

“As you may know, Black Jet Securities is set to take Mercury Broadband public later today on the New York Stock Exchange,” Byrnes began. “It’s a large deal. A two-billion-dollar equity offering.”

“I’ve read about it. Should I be asking to buy some shares?”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

“
Non?
Why not?”

“Sadly, we’ve come into possession of evidence showing that Mercury is not exactly the company we sold our investors. Konstantin Kirov, Mercury’s chairman, has been siphoning large sums of money from another of his investments, Novastar Airlines, and using the funds to inflate Mercury’s balance sheet.”

“When you say a large sum, you mean how much exactly?”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“Dieu,”
Pillonel said under his breath.

Byrnes nodded in agreement. At least they were talking the same language. “Naturally we’re canceling the offering. This morning before the opening bell, we’ll announce that the IPO has been shelved indefinitely. It will be an embarrassment to Black Jet and a setback to Mercury Broadband, which we feel is still a vibrant, attractive company. We’re quite upset at the development. As Mercury’s bankers, we feel we should have spotted the problem earlier. If we’d chosen our partners more wisely this wouldn’t have happened.”

Byrnes let the words hang there, checking for a response from Pillonel—a sympathetic shrug, a world-weary sigh, an admission that “Yes, this could happen to any of us”—but the Swiss banker remained unmoved, his gaze not giving away a thing.

“Black Jet Securities has an obligation to shelter Mercury from Kirov’s misdeeds,” Byrnes continued. “We want to do everything possible to insure that Mercury’s future as a viable enterprise does not suffer because of its chairman’s bad behavior. I like to think the Russian government has a right to the money stolen from Novastar.”

The mention of money lit a fire behind Pillonel’s eyes. Abruptly, he sat straighter, lifting his chin from his neck. “But of course you are right. One cannot condone such behavior. These oligarchs are too much. They think the entire country is their own private fief. They steal a little from here, a little from there. Their conduct is deplorable.” He took a sip of water and shrugged fatalistically. “But how do you hope to convince Mr. Kirov to give back the money?”

“I don’t. He’s a crook and a murderer. He’d never give it back. But I can convince you.”

“Me?”

Byrnes delved into his jacket pocket for a translucent envelope and flipped the minidisc onto the table. “Jean-Jacques was working in cahoots with Mr. Kirov to help Mercury defraud Black Jet and the investing public. They cooked the books together and Kirov paid Jean-Jacques to falsify the due diligence Silber, Goldi, and Grimm performed on Mercury. When Mr. Gavallan presented Jean-Jacques with the evidence this past Saturday, your brother broke down and revealed what he’d done. Somehow Konstantin Kirov got word of his duplicity. Your brother wasn’t going on vacation. He was getting the hell out of the country. You don’t really think Jean-Jacques was killed by a thief, do you?”

Byrnes stared at Pierre Pillonel. It was hard to believe he and Jean-Jacques were twins. One was the model of continental sophistication, the other its opposite. “If you look at the disc, you’ll find that Kirov transferred the money he stole from Novastar to your bank.”

“To the Banque Privé?” Pillonel slid the disc back to Byrnes. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know. I am not his account manager. Many of our clients hold numbered accounts. I don’t have to tell you of our secrecy requirements.”

Lies. Lies. Everywhere lies, rued Byrnes. Since when had dishonesty become the currency of discretion? He waited a moment, taking a deep breath. He felt depressed. Deeply and achingly depressed. Leaning across the table, he whispered, “Cut the bullshit, Pierre. You know Konstantin Kirov is a client of yours. Your brother sent him to you nine months ago to open an account and I wouldn’t doubt it if the three of you went out and broke bread together and told each other how you were going to screw the world.”

Pillonel shook his head and lifted a finger. His mouth even moved, but he couldn’t bring himself to protest.

“You are a partner at the bank, correct?”

“Yes,” said Pillonel. “Managing partner, in fact.”

“And as such you are liable for the firm’s debts and grievances,
non
?”

“It is a private bank,” said Pillonel. “I am a partner. Therefore I am liable. It is the law.”

“Then let me make this clear,” Byrnes went on, his voice as cold and hard as a diamond. “If you don’t wire every cent of the money Konstantin Kirov stole from Novastar Airlines back to the airline itself, I will make sure that you are shown to have been involved in Kirov’s scheme from the very beginning. Whether you really were or not, I don’t know and I don’t care. But if you don’t cooperate, I will do my best to link your brother’s fraudulent behavior with your own and tie all three of you together into one great big daisy chain. Family being family, and twins being especially close . . .” Byrnes shook his head, letting the threat of a public trial, the front-page articles, the two-minute reports on the evening news finish the sentence for him. “Don’t answer now. Check the disc. It’s all there.”

Without another word, Pillonel left the conference room. Byrnes stood and looked out at the lake, calm and glassy, promising a hundred summer idylls. He was wondering where Gavallan was, if he’d made it to New York, and if even then, he could pull off his plan. Or more precisely, if Cate would allow him to.

And after that? Byrnes asked himself. What are you going to do? Go back to work? Sit back down at your desk as if the last seven days hadn’t happened? He wasn’t sure. He knew he wanted to see his kids. He thought about making amends with his wife and chucked the idea posthaste. That part of his life, at least, was over. He decided Pierre Pillonel hadn’t been so wrong to venture to his office while in mourning for his brother. There comes a point in life when your work and your self—your own idea of who you really are—grow so intertwined as to be inseparable. Byrnes realized he’d reached that point a long time ago. When you spend twelve hours a day, day in and day out for seven years, you pretty much become the job.
And so, where to?
Home, thought Byrnes. To San Francisco. To Black Jet. If Jett could succeed in saving the company, he wanted to be there at his side to help.

Five minutes later, Pillonel returned, accompanied by a dour, rail-thin man whom he introduced as Monsieur Buffet, the bank’s in-house counsel. The attorney shook Byrnes’s hand once, as if sealing a bargain. He had dark, depthless eyes, and as he spoke they remained drilled on Byrnes. “You realize that the bank abhors criminal behavior in every shape and form. That we do not as a matter of highest principle deal with persons of anything but the most sterling character. And that we knew nothing—
I repeat, nothing
—about Mr. Kirov’s activities vis-à-vis Novastar Airlines.”

“Yes, I realize all that,” said Byrnes. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

“And should the bank agree to your request, that should in no way be construed as demonstrating either our knowledge of or our complicity in Mr. Kirov’s affairs.”

Again, Byrnes nodded.

“A terrible business,” said Pierre Pillonel, waving his attorney into a far chair. “Black days. So hard to know who to trust, who not to.”

“I can imagine.”

“Naturally, we are prepared at this instant to wire the funds to the account you mention . . . or to
any other account
you may wish for us to help you set up.” Pillonel paused, but only for the shortest of moments. “A numbered account with our affiliate in the Bahamas, perhaps?”

Byrnes kept a mirthless smile to himself. What did the French say?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
“No thank you. Novastar’s account at the Moscow Narodny Bank will be fine.” He handed Pillonel a piece of stationery bearing the account numbers. “By three-thirty today, gentlemen.”