"I'll do my best." Yuri Khodorin's first hint of trouble was anything but subtle; five of his corporate executives ended up splayed out on tables in various morgues around the city. In less than three hours, five dead. An array of methods had been used, from shootings to stabbings to poisonings. The swath of killings spread from Moscow to St. Petersburg; it made it impossible to determine where the next strike might land, or, indeed, if there would be another.
On day two, this question was answered with an unmistakable bang. Six more dead. For sure, it was no longer an unlikely coincidence, or a sated spike of revenge, or spent anger: the killings weren't incidental. They were deliberate, and they weren't about to stop.
At thirty-three, already Russia's second richest man, Yuri Khodorin was perched within one good, profitable year of landing at number one. Like Alex, he had started young and early, even before the crash of communism opened the door to huge money. He sprinted out of the starting block and cobbled together an aggressive empire as wildly diversified as it was vast, profitable, and hungry. Central Enterprises, it was named, an innocuous title for a holding company that had a grip on everything from oil fields to TV stations, including myriad smaller businesses, from fast food through hotels, and almost too many other things to count. It created or swallowed new companies monthly and spewed out an almost ridiculous array of products and services.
A pair of Moscow police lieutenants appeared unannounced at Yuri's Moscow office the morning after the second set of killings-an odd pair, one an oversized butterball, the other thin as a rail. They unloaded the bad news that the Mafiya was kicking sand in his face. And no, sorry about that, no way could the city cops protect him; they were stretched so thin they could barely protect their own stationhouses. But in an effort to be helpful they generously left behind the business card of somebody who surely could.
Day four opened with three of Yuri's corporate offices fire-bombed; suspiciously, the local firefighters were dispatched to the wrong addresses, and all three buildings burned to the ground. Insurance would cover the losses, but droves of his terrified employees were threatening to stop showing up for work. At the sad end of day four-having once more been refused municipal protection-Yuri bounced his problems up to the next rung. He placed a desperate call to the attorney general, Anatoli Fyodorev, and pleaded loudly and desperately for help. Fyodorev made lots of sympathetic noises, and promised an abundance of assistance of all sorts. He was just disturbingly vague about what that meant.
The best Yuri could tell, it meant nothing. Not when day five opened with a car bomb in his headquarters parking lot that slaughtered three more employees.
Late that evening, reeling from the brutally rolling shocks, Yuri sat in his office alone, brooding and speculating about the future. At this rate, there would be no future. He had been shuttling around to funerals all day, trying his best to console sobbing widows and their crying little children. His mood was ugly. He wanted to be left alone, to stew with self-pity.
His secretary interrupted this bout of dark depression and informed him that a man was waiting in the lobby. "Doesn't he have a name?" Yuri barked. He refused to give one, she replied. "Send him away," Yuri said. Think twice, she insisted; he claimed he might know a few things about the murders plaguing their firm.
"Nobody else seems to," Yuri muttered. "All right, show him in."
The man entered and fell into the seat across from Yuri's desk. There were no handshakes, no empty attempts at pleasantries.
Mikhail studied Yuri for a moment. Dark cropped hair, rimless glasses, an efficient-looking type with a mass of excess energy he couldn't control. Constantly shifting in his seat, intermittently twisting the wedding band on a long, skinny finger.
This was Yuri's office, and he'd be damned if he was going to be outstared by anybody. He stared right back at Mikhail with a show of great intensity. The harder he stared, the less he learned-just a normal-sized, nameless male of about forty-eight years, with a hard, weathered face, dressed casually and nondescriptly.
After they stared at each other long enough, Mikhail broke the ice. "Alex Konevitch informed me that you and he were old buddies."
"We did a lot of business together, Alex and I. I miss him. Trying to keep up with him was a ball. He a friend of yours?"
"A good friend."
Yuri relaxed a little. "Where is Alex now?"
"America. Washington, D.C."
Yuri clapped his hands together in delight. "I knew it. All those theories about Brazil, or detox clinics, I always said they were bunk." Yuri's face turned grim. "Too bad he stole that money. Like I said, I miss him."
"That what you think happened, he ran with the money?" A year before this had been the most popular game in town-the Alex quiz. Where was the money? Where was Alex? How much did he steal?
"Sure, of course." A furious nod. "That's what the news said happened."
"Great tale, isn't it? What's your theory about it?"
"I'm a big fan of the 'he snapped' camp."
"Just freaked out, grabbed as much he could haul, and fled, huh?"
"Yeah, something like that. It probably makes more sense to me than it might to you. Tell the truth, I sometimes dream of doing the same thing."
"Having all that money isn't fun, huh?"
"Twenty-hour days, thousands of people who depend on you, constant crises where everything's on the verge of crashing down on your head. Oh sure, it's a blast." A brief pause, accompanied by a few more hard twists on the wedding band. "Now, who are you, and what do you want?"
"Mikhail Borosky. I did a lot of private investigation work for Alex. Still do."
"And what? Alex asked you to drop by?"
"Yes." Mikhail stretched his legs out and leaned back in the chair. "Alex asked me to keep my eye on the news. See who's next. Apparently, you're the guy."
A slight flinch. "Next? What does that mean?"
"It means you're at stage one of the same treatment Alex got. For some reason, you're getting it a bit rougher than he got. And they're a lot sloppier. I'm not sure why. Guess they're a little over-confident this time."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Did you receive a visit from two of Moscow's finest?" From his tone, Mikhail already seemed to know the answer.
"Yes."
"A blimp and a beanpole, right?" It wasn't really a question. From a parking lot across the street, Mikhail had watched the pair enter the headquarters the day before yesterday.
A slow nod.
"They give you a business card recommending somebody who could put a stop to all this?"
Yuri tried to hide his surprise but found it impossible. This strange man knew so much. The card in question, in fact, sat on Yuri's blotter, in easy reach of his fingers. Only three minutes before, he had been within seconds of dialing the number and pleading for help.
Yuri shoved the card across the table. Mikhail bent forward and studied it a moment. The name on the card was unrecognizable and meant nothing. But the name didn't matter. If he bothered to check, which he had no intention of doing, the resume would reveal a long career in the KGB and some kind of deep attachment or connection to Sergei Golitsin.
"You know the old story about the Trojan horse?" Mikhail asked, pushing the card back in Yuri's direction.
A careful nod. "Sure, who doesn't?"
Mikhail directed a finger at the business card. "There's your Trojan horse. Those two cops are crooked to the core. They were sent in to kick open the door. Once you call that number, the worm will find a way to let the barbarians inside your company."
"This is what they did to Alex?"
A knowing nod, and for the next twenty minutes Mikhail revealed everything that happened to Alex, how the scheme worked, the kidnap, the torture, being framed for the theft of everything he owned. The whole ugly tale. To verify his story, he passed Yuri morgue forms that confirmed the death of Alex's employees, as well as one of the statements prepared a year before by Alex that he had faxed to all the senior officials around Yeltsin.