"In it up to his hips," Golitsin confirmed, finishing off his scotch.
Her gin arrived. She took a long, careful sip. "I know you hate him, but it would be bad luck for us and our plans if Yeltsin was toppled right now."
Barely paying attention, he now was looking over her shoulder at a man who had just swaggered through the entrance. Six leggy women of identical height and approximate weight and anorexic build were hanging off his arms, all with their hair died bright red, all dressed in identical red evening gowns. He thought at first he was seeing double, or triple, and it was time to cut back on the hooch. What a glorious time to be ridiculously rich and Russian.
"Maybe there's an opportunity in this for us," she suggested.
That got his attention. He shifted his rear and bent forward. "Like what?"
"Your old KGB friends now run the Ministry of Security and the security services. If there's bloodshed, they'll be Yeltsin's only hope."
"Yes, they will. What do we get in return?"
She was about to throw out an unconsidered answer when what had been a loud argument at the next table turned dangerously louder. Two millionaires were enjoying a heated argument over a business deal gone sour, both in full throttle about who had outcheated whom. One leaped from his chair and drew a gun. The two lovely blonde bimbos who were their evening entertainment screeched and hit the floor. The gunman was red-faced and howling curses, aiming the pistol in the face of the man across from him. It was such an everyday mess in Moscow business circles that the other patrons mostly ignored the fracas. They went about their meals, the girls laughed, the champagne flowed. Fortunately, like nearly every business in this raucous, crooked town, the restaurant had a protection contract with a crime syndicate. Two burly men hustled over, blackjacked the gun wielder into unconsciousness, kicked and pummeled him a few times out of habit, and dragged him out by the legs. Tatyana exploited the brief entertainment to ponder Golitsin's question more deeply.
The moment things settled down, she suggested, "How about this? In return we name the new attorney general."
It was a brilliant idea, of course. Golitsin saw the possibilities immediately. If they owned the attorney general, any potential Alex problems would go away. Nor, as they gobbled up other companies, would they have to look over their shoulders; they wouldn't worry about the legal authorities because they owned the head honcho. He bent farther forward and asked, "You think Yeltsin will bite?"
"If we time it just right, what choice will he have?"
He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back into his seat. "Wait till the blood is running, till the standoff reaches full pitch. Till he's absolutely desperate and has no choice. Great idea."
"Exactly. Can you deliver the Ministry of Security?"
He chuckled. Stupid question. "I'll appeal to their patriotism and I'll spread money around like there's no tomorrow. They may have demands of their own. I'll tell them to make a list."
The waiter arrived. It was nearly midnight, so they both went for the special, boar au gratin, which materialized almost instantly. Large slabs of it, buried under a ton of gooey white cheese and thick gravy. She drank measured sips of champagne with her meal, he stuck with scotch and drank without letup. She nibbled carefully and economically from the feast on her plate, he stuffed everything into his mouth and chewed with noisy vigor.
She stayed on small talk, but had another topic to discuss. A delicate one, and she wanted his stomach full and his incredible intelligence watered down with liquor before she made her move.
After desserts were delivered, she asked, "How do you like your new house?"
"It's wonderful." He tried to keep the nasty smile off his face, but couldn't help it. "I love sleeping in Konevitch's bed, knowing I took it from him. I hope he and his lovely brat are sleeping on a hard, bug-ridden bunk in a flophouse, surrounded by smelly winos and hacking dopers, and thinking about me."
"And how is business these days?" she asked, though she already knew the answer. She was sure he would lie.
As she guessed he would, he said, "Fine. Money's pouring through the doors."
She looked down and played with the silverware beside her plate. "I heard three of the subsidiaries are already bankrupt."
"Small setbacks," he replied smugly, waving for the waiter to haul over another glass of hooch. "We didn't want to be in hotels or restaurants, anyway. Lousy businesses. I'm getting rid of the bloat Konevitch left behind."
"Two more banks were just granted state licenses to exchange foreign currencies. You now have serious competition."
"They'll have to catch up to me. I won't make it easy."
"You kicked your price up to five percent for every ruble exchanged. They're offering two percent."
"Well, I give better service."
Better service, my ass, she wanted to say. Golitsin's posse of former KGB morons were ripping the guts out of Konevitch's business empire. The speed and efficiency was frightening. One of the twits had made the deplorable decision to shift the tourist company to a lower-fare airline. The first load of paying customers died horribly in a fiery plane crash. Worse, the passengers thought they were traveling to a sex vacation in Thailand; the plane was headed for a run-down health clinic in Poland.
The construction business was an unfolding disaster. Without Alex's name on the letterhead, no new contracts had come in. Nor, after the latest stumble, were they likely to. A huge high-rise under construction on the outer ring had collapsed in a spectacular heap. Ten workers crushed to death, twenty more in the hospital. The cause was an incredible decision by another of the twits to use less expensive wood beams in place of the thick metal ones clearly stipulated by the now enraged architects. Tatyana managed to pull a few strings and have the investigation squelched. The damage was done, though. Half the construction workforce quit on the spot; the other half were making ugly sounds about a strike.
Another twit, this one in charge of the bank, ignored the growing spread between government bonds and interest rates. A small, momentary blip on a computer screen and, like that, a hundred million, gone. Amazing.
The list of problems was endless, horrible, and growing. The car importing company shipped five hundred Mercedes sedans to the wrong cities, then hiked up the prices so high that the inventory was rusting on the lots. The hundred Mercedes convertibles that ended up in Yakutsk, a frigid penal colony near the Arctic Circle, were going to be a bitch to move at any price. The complicated computer program confused him, that twit whined afterward. And another idiot, this one in the arbitrage business, had purchased two thousand tons of the most expensive iron ore in history. He misread the code, thought it was silver at a great price, he insisted after he annihilated any possibility of the arbitrage business having a profitable year.
Another few months at this hideous pace and there'd be nothing left.
As per the original deal, Tatyana was a partner in Golitsin Enterprises-a hidden partner, of course-and she was quietly seething. From the beginning Golitsin had demanded Konevitch's cash for himself. His idea, his brilliant plan, his inspirational leadership; the instant gratification was rightfully his, every bit of it, he insisted. She had neither objected nor debated that point-she hadn't seen a reason to-and now she sorely regretted it. Looking back, it seemed so naive. Stupid. But by any reasonable measure, at the time her take was around fifty million in stock in companies that were wildly flourishing and threatening to double or triple in a few brief years. At the time, that struck her as ample restitution for her part in the heist.
She doubted she could unload her shares now at any price. The smart money had already sprinted out of the banks; even the dumb money was pawing the exits. Lawsuits were piling up over shoddy workmanship, false promises, missed deliveries, slipped deadlines, and of course the furiously grieving families of the people slaughtered by that fly-by-night excuse for an airline booked by Golitsin's twits. Who knew what awful disaster would happen next? She had no legal friends, but plenty of attorney acquaintances, all of whom were eyeing Golitsin Enterprises with considerable intensity. They were salivating to get a piece of the action.