Protasov offered his hand formally, bowing slightly. “Yuri Protasov.”
“Juliana Brody.”
“So you just show up here uninvited?” He gave a little smile. A flash of white. “And apparently breeze right through my security?”
“If you can’t get in the back door, try the front.” Another Roz Brody pearl of wisdom.
“Well played. Very clever of you, coming at a time when there are a lot of people around. Protection in numbers, right?”
They understood each other. “Something like that.”
“So what do you want?”
“Actually, I’m here to offer you something.”
“Well, that’s a change. I’m all ears.”
“A decision in a case of interest to you. A motion for summary judgment.”
“Oh?”
“Your people have made it clear what you want. You want all documents sealed that might reveal that you’re the owner of Wheelz. So you want to shut down a sexual discrimination lawsuit against a company you own. I get it.”
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.” A tight smile. “This sounds like fake news to me.”
“You want this whole Wheelz sexual discrimination case thrown out. Well, let me make it clear to you: I think the plaintiff’s case is quite strong.”
He tipped his head skeptically. “And?”
She said, “And for me to put my beliefs and my morals up for sale, well — that’s going to cost something. It’s not something I do lightly. That’s going to weigh on me for a long time. I’m going to require some serious consideration.”
He said nothing, waiting.
“So you will wire ten million dollars to my account. Which I think is cheap, frankly, for a woman’s honor.”
She opened her purse and located the card that Venkovsky had given her. The business card of an assistant general manager at a Cayman Islands bank. On the other side of the card she’d written out the nine digits of a bank account. She handed it to him.
He looked at it for a few seconds, and then he slipped the card into his front shirt pocket. Did that mean he agreed? She couldn’t tell. She was confident that Protasov’s people — or maybe the FSB? — had monitored the conversation she and Duncan had had in her lobby.
“After what you put me through — put my family through — I call this compensatory damages.”
He blinked a few times, his expression stoic.
“If it comes out that your fund was illegally underwritten by a banned, sanctioned entity, I think it could be ruinous to you. All those fancy board members out there will flee.” She waited. Saw his cold hard stare.
Finally he smiled grimly. “Your justice is expensive.”
Protasov was no longer pretending to be unaware of what she was talking about. They were past that. And he had just surrendered.
“Well, I hope you’re right. I also want it made explicit — and I want to hear you say it, right here — that my family will always be protected. That nothing will ever happen to them.”
Protasov lifted his chin. “You have nothing to worry about,” he said. But his eyes said something different. They were cold and gray and steely. Her stomach turned over.
“You’re going to have to be more explicit,” she said.
“Your family, your husband and your two lovely children, nothing will ever happen to them; you have my word on that.” He spoke gently. “I would never do that.”
“Okay, then,” she said softly. “So tell me something. Why didn’t you try the carrot first, before the stick?”
“You mean why didn’t my people offer you a bribe?”
She nodded.
“We didn’t attempt a bribe, because your reputation preceded you.”
“My reputation?”
“For fierce probity,” Protasov said with a tart smile. “But as it turns out, you are full of surprises. So we will do business, you and I. Ten million dollars into your Caymans account. We have an understanding.”
She smiled, maybe a little too broadly. She didn’t want him to see what she was feeling.
“I think maybe people, maybe they underestimate you, is that right?”
“Occasionally,” she said, and shrugged.
She thought of the lipstick in her purse that wasn’t really a lipstick, and the belt buckle, and the soles of her shoes. No one had taken anything away from her, patted her down. She was recording him, and if any single device malfunctioned, there were plenty of backups.
Had he been explicit enough? Should she press him harder, try to get him to say more?
She couldn’t risk it, she decided. She had enough.
He said, “You know, Catherine the Great was far more ruthless than her husband. First she forced him to abdicate the throne; then she arranged to have one of his guards strangle him to death one night. So then she took over as czarina. She had tens of thousands of her people put to death for daring to rebel against her. Maybe hundreds of thousands. She even executed noblemen. But you know, it’s like they say — you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few Fabergé eggs.”
“Very clever,” she said drily.
“I’m actually in negotiations with the Kremlin to buy her crown, the Great Imperial Crown, the crown of all the Romanovs. But a lot of people don’t want it leaving the Kremlin. Whereas I say, everything has a price. So we have a deal?”
She nodded.
“Good. Now, have you tried the caviar canapés? They’re to die for.”
79
She steered the Tesla over to the side of the road about a half mile outside Protasov’s estate. A black Suburban pulled in right behind her. The front passenger’s-side door opened, and Alex Venkovsky got in. He sat down and opened a Dell laptop.
“How’d it go?” he said.
“No problem.” She unbuckled the skinny black belt and handed it to him. “They didn’t detect a thing.”
“Because we’re good,” he said with a grin.
“As long as this one worked right, we’re all set.”
Venkovsky took the belt and began to work the silver buckle, finally taking out a pin from his pocket and using it to pop out what looked like a SIM card. He seated it into a port on the side of the laptop with a click.
A minute later, he’d opened an audio program on his laptop and clicked a green play button.
The sound came through clear and loud. A woman saying, “Welcome. The board members are gathering in the sitting room for some coffee before the meeting.”
Then, much louder, her own voice: “Thank you.”
“Great,” Venkovsky said.
“We got it?”
“Good quality too,” he said. “I mean, you can’t tell with these tinny laptop speakers, but the sound gradient is excellent.”
He clicked some buttons on his laptop, forwarding and clicked play again.
“Please stand with arms at side.” The voice of the young guard who had wanded her. The device seemed to have recorded just fine.
“Mr. Protasov will be with—”
All of a sudden the sound became a loud white-noise static roar, like an airplane taking off. She saw the oscillating green sound-wave icon on Venkovsky’s laptop twitch and dance on the screen.
And all they could hear was that white-noise roar.
“Shit,” Venkovsky said. “When they wanded you, they disabled the recording devices.”
“What about the — the key fob?” She pulled the Tesla key fob from her purse. Venkovsky extracted a small black chip-like thing from the back of the Tesla logo and inserted it into his laptop.
He clicked a Play button on his laptop, and a male voice came out. “Mr. Protasov will be with—”
A staticky roar broke in.
“Shit,” Venkovsky said again.
“Is it even worth trying the shoes?” she asked.
“Why not.”
She took off her left shoe and handed it to him. He located the slot on the side of the wedge heel and pressed a little button, and the black chip popped out. He inserted it into the computer and played, fast-forwarding until they heard “Mr. Protasov will be with you shortly.”