He now doubted he could lure any customers if he offered to pay them five percent.
Amazing, the damage caused by one unfortunate hiccup. One of his handpicked VPs, a magician in his former life in KGB counterintelligence, had gotten overconfident. Freewheeling with the bank's money, and reeling under unrelenting pressure from Golitsin to show a profit, he had made the bizarre decision to dabble in the speculation game. He made a brazen one billion bet on the unstable English pound. After a few short hours, it was nearly all swallowed in quicksand. A vindictive American currency speculator named Soros detected the move and whacked it with a thousand-pound sledgehammer. Seven hundred million was lost, according to the squinty-eyed accountants who had just spent an hour cruelly detailing the urgent case for bankruptcy. Seven hundred million!
Golitsin could not squeeze even an ounce of solace from the fact that the idiot speculator would spend the remainder of his sorry life in a wheelchair, sucking fluid through a straw. Two kneecaps shattered into bony pulp. A face now unrecognizable to his own children. Big deal! It hardly compensated for the carnage-seven hundred million down the drain. What a mess.
After a year of horrible news, followed by worse news, Golitsin had at last reached a decision. A painful decision, and certainly humiliating. But it was also necessary, practical, and long overdue. Shove vanity aside. Managing businesses was not his forte. There was so little left to manage anyway. A few emaciated skeletons in a swarming sea of wreckage. The construction business had cratered into bankruptcy months ago. The arbitrage firm sank under the weight of ten thousand tons of North Korean "garbage" iron ore of a quality so poor nobody would touch it, at any price. The car import business had sputtered out of existence. The hotels and restaurants had been put on the block months before to pay off the ruinous debts accumulated by other struggling branches.
In fact, the feverish struggle to keep Konevitch's companies afloat had distracted and dislodged him from his God-given gift. What a waste! All those interminable hours exhausted in useless business meetings, listening to his sorry underlings concoct lies and excuses for their utter stupidity. The unending stream of crises brought about by the hapless dolts below him. From now on, he would focus his brilliance where it belonged: stealing other people's fortunes and businesses.
He left his office, walked downstairs, and climbed purposefully into the rear of his big black limousine. He barked at his driver to get it in gear and drive around until he was told otherwise. The motion would help him clear the cobwebs. A little medicinal relief wouldn't hurt, either. He yanked a bottle of imported scotch from the bar against the front seat and jerked the cap off. He positioned a tumbler carefully in front of him. A hearty tilt of the bottle and it was filled to the lip.
Feeling a new sense of purpose, he lifted the carphone, dialed a number in the Kremlin, drained the first long burning sip of scotch, and waited. Tatyana picked up on the third ring.
They wasted a few minutes on mock pleasantries and obligatory political gossip. The prime minister was about to be sacked. He was an idiotic little pencil pusher, bereft of ideas to bail out the crippled economy, and by general consensus a jerk. The old prime minister who had been fired before him-an even bigger jerk-had the inside track for a return engagement.
Golitsin drummed his fingers and waited. Tatyana obviously enjoyed recounting the tawdry gossip, and he let her ramble awhile before he got down to business. "Don't you find it curious how Yuri Khodorin has resisted our overtures?"
"He is a tough nut to crack," Tatyana agreed. "Nicky's taking a terrible beating."
"He's not the only one. I finally placed two of my agents inside his companies. Both discovered, somehow."
"How do you know this?"
"I was meant to. The message was quite clear. One found in his car with his throat slashed, the other disappeared. Went to work one day and hasn't been heard from in three weeks."
"They must've gotten sloppy," she said very coldly.
"They were handpicked. Veteran agents, both of them, and they went in with perfect covers. I don't think so."
"Then what do you think?"
After a brief pause, fueled by another noisy sip, Golitsin told her, "Khodorin has been tipped off. It's the only explanation."
"It's a good explanation. Not the only one, though. But assuming it's right, who would be behind it?"
"Alex Konevitch."
"Impossible."
"Is it really? They were friends before Konevitch fled. Business competitors, but they sometimes chummed around."
Tatyana considered this theory before launching into her usual nit-picking. "How could he get word out? He's rotting in prison, Sergei."
"So what? Solzhenitsyn smuggled out full-length novels, and that was from our most remote Siberian gulag."
"I do remember reading about that. He wrote them on toilet paper or something."
"Anything's possible."
"But how did Konevitch learn we were going after Khodorin?"
"Maybe Khodorin contacted our boy. Maybe Konevitch was watching. I don't know. It doesn't really matter."
"That's two maybes," Tatyana, ever the lawyer, observed, but without conviction.
"Then let's dispense with the doubts. We've tried the same tricks on Khodorin. The computer hacking, the murders, the bombings, the police visit, the in-house spies, all of which succeeded spectacularly with Konevitch. Khodorin's been ready for every single one. He's clobbering us at our own game. It's not beginner's luck, and it's not coincidental."
Tatyana kicked off her shoes and planted her lovely feet on the desk. "So what do you suggest?"
"It's not a difficult problem."
"Then there must be an easy solution."
"There is. Konevitch, he has to die," Golitsin informed her. "And the sooner the better." His glass was empty and he refilled it with a flourish. It felt great to be back in the game, outthinking his opponents. He privately relished the vision of an OUT OF BUSINESS sign hanging on the bank in the morning. How nice it would be to wake up and have those worries behind him. He would hang the sign himself, he decided. Good riddance. "So where is our boy wonder now?" he asked, trying to suppress any hint of giddiness.
"A federal prison in Illinois. After seven months in Atlanta, it was felt he became too acclimated. Too comfortable."
"Too comfortable?"
"According to Tromble, Konevitch fit right into the life. Some band of Cuban heavyweights took him under their wing. He was living like a king. A security detail followed him everywhere. A Barcalounger in his cell. Special meals prepared in the prison mess hall. Can you believe it?"
Yes, he did. He was long past being surprised by Alex Konevitch. And, too, he was long past underestimating him. Probably, he decided, this explained how Konevitch blew the whistle on them to his old chum Khodorin-with help on the inside, there were a million ways Konevitch could communicate with the outside. "So you've failed to turn up the heat on him," Golitsin stated, but without his characteristic nastiness.
He had his own bad news to impart-bad news for her, anyway. No use getting her all worked up.
"Technically, Tromble failed. Not me," she insisted. "I've done everything I could. Our prosecution team arrived months ago. Konevitch should've been back in an American court a long time ago. The case is perfect."
"All right," he conceded very agreeably. "Then it's all Tromble's fault."