The Domino Game (32 page)

“There was a lot of American money around. The Balkans were turning to shit and the place was full of soldiers and peacekeepers on leave.” He paused, looking up from a dropped brow. “You want to pass a moral judgment, Niko? Okay… judge. We took their money. We sold them liquor and we organized their girls and you know what?” Vari s eyes lifted defiantly. “We made a fucking
fortune.”
He cast a hand in the air, sweeping aside any concern of his own. “So pass judgment, I don’t care. Bulgaria made me rich, Niko, and you know what else,” he leaned forward, his voice lowered. “It made me safe. And it could have made Natalia safe if she had just listened.

“Sofia is a small city, Niko. Anyone arrives you hear about it before they’re out of the airport.” He lined up a cup, a spoon, sugar. “And they don’t like Russians, I can tell you, because for forty-five years we fucked them senseless. I only survived down there because I was connected. In fact, you want to see something?” He raised a hand and slipped the first three buttons of his black shirt. Ran his fingers down across a six inch welted scar that followed a fine from the base of his neck to the top of his shoulder. He laughed. “That one wasn’t so bad. I saw it coming. If you’re interested I’ve got another one in my gut and a bullet hole in my side.” He ran the shirt back up his arm; left the buttons undone. The light above the bench caught the crucifix that hung against his chest. “After a year the locals settled down and left me alone. Labor’s cheap down there, Niko, protection is cheap. Cheaper than here and better quality. Four bucks an hour buys you the best. Seven hundred a week and you’ve got round the clock cover from people who are just waiting to slit Russian throats. If any of Ivankov’s people had ever turned up they would have been diced and served up on skewers in the Zezavisimost market inside an hour.” The coffee was percolating but he ignored it. “She should have come with me, Niko.” He looked aside and turned his head. “If Natalia had only listened, imagine how different things might have been.”

Nikolai rolled to his side, blinking at the light that seeped past the edge of the curtain, trying to imagine how it might have been if Natalia had only listened. If she had taken Larisa and gone with Vari then she would have been safe and then she could have… could have what? Waited? And for how long? How long could someone wait? Three years? Five? Ten? Forever? And for what?

He rolled to his back again, staring at the ceiling, his hands straining into fists at his side. Straining to escape the reality.

But she hadn’t listened. Hadn’t gone because she wouldn’t give up and in the end because of that…

‘She wouldn’t let go, Niko. Even after I got to Sofia I kept trying to persuade her but it was useless. When the lawyers did nothing she went to the newspapers, then when they wouldn’t listen she started on the politicians, one after another, driving them crazy.

“I warned her, Niko, time and again I warned her. Told her she was playing with fire, but she couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Then she had to leave the apartment and find another and the money began to run out so they had to find somewhere cheaper and move again and that was when I lost track. It was three years before I even set foot back in Moscow. Only then that I found out what had happened. It was Aleshkin who told me. He was a soft old bastard. His wife was dead and he had no family. He’d taken a shine to Natalia and the little one so all that time he’d stayed in touch and tried to help where he could.” Vari’s eyes fell shut and his voice dropped to a whisper.

“It was an overdose.” His lids lifted slowly, his eyes finding Nikolai’s.

“It happened in the winter of “97. She was so desperate for information she’d found some private investigator and he was milking her. Aleshkin warned her as well but she was so stubborn, Niko.” His lips sealed and he looked away, slowly shaking his head. “She needed money to live; money for Larisa; money for this investigator guy…” His voice fell soft. “She took a job in a club, Niko.”

The words ground into Nikolai’s gut.

Vari turned his head away. “I was on my feet by then. If I had known… But I didn’t, and so…”

Images tumbled through Nikolai’s brain. Jagged images too awful to bear. He had done this to her. He had caused it all. Then Vari was talking again and he looked up, his brow twisted with pain and despair as he listened.

“She told Aleshkin it was the only way she could make the kind of money she needed, but she wasn’t using, Niko. She wasn’t on drugs. Aleshkin would have known.” Vari stopped, taking a breath. “She picked the wrong place, Niko. Or maybe it was the right place. Maybe that’s why she chose it. Maybe she was trying to get close to them, I don’t know, but they owned it, Niko. They owned it and that made it easy for them.

“There was a woman. A woman she paid to look after Larisa while…” Vari stopped short. Looked away. “One morning she came in and found Natalia and…” He grimaced and chewed his lip. “You don’t want to know the details, Niko. Even if you do, I’m not telling you.”

A cold silence settled over the room. Outside the city was stumbling awake beneath a dirty gray canopy of cloud. The worst time to see anything, Nikolai thought. The blanket of night, with all its dreams and possibilities, drawn back to show the ugliness of truth.

‘They took Larisa, Niko.”

Vari’s voice startled him. He had walked to the window again and he was talking to the glass, his hands flexing at his side. “With Natalia dead and no other relatives she was made a ward of the state. Aleshkin tried to fight them – applied to adopt her himself – but he had no hope.” Nikolai watched the older man’s expression reflected in the glass. Read the grim bitterness of resignation.

“It was all worked out in advance. She was put into a state home for a month and then she was allocated to a court-appointed guardian.” He swung around, facing Nikolai, the massive, ugly sprawl of the city reaching behind him forever into the distance.

“Does the name Vitaly Kolbasov bring back any memories, Niko?”

He walked back across the room, standing above Nikolai, letting the question hang.

“He called me, Niko. Somehow he found out I was back here and that I had been asking questions and he tracked me down and called me to let me know how things stood. He told me he was Larisa’s formal guardian now. That if I wanted to check it out I should feel free to search the court records. He said he wanted me to understand that just in case I had any ideas about picking up where we had left off. I shouldn’t worry about her, he told me. She would be well looked after. She would receive a good education and be well cared for and then when she grew up…” his lips twisted again, “when she grew up there would be all manner of
career opportunities
for her.” He stopped, looking down.

“You remember the other man in the tapes, little brother? Ivankov’s lieutenant, the man who was always at his side? Vitaly Kolbasov. They worked together until Ivankov decided it was time to clean up his image, then when he did he handed the rackets to Kolbasov. But Ivankov is still there, in the background. Still controls it all and pulls the strings… The black market, the protection rackets, the weapons deals, the gambling, the drugs and the clubs. So now you see, little brother,” he stared down at Nikolai, his jaw set hard. “Now you see it all. Natalia flew too close to the flame. And now, maybe you begin to understand.”

24

NEW YORK

“I don’t believe
this.”

Kelly Hartman carried her wine glass with her as she stepped her way along the basement wall, following the charts and the photographs and news cuttings and the colored string lines that traced between them. Her father glanced up, running his glasses down the bridge of his nose, and looking at her across the top of the computer monitor.

“Yeah, I know,” he grimaced. “It’s pretty untidy. I should try and work out a better way of doing it.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Kelly tipped her head to the side, studying a diagram linking two photographs. Her voice was distant. Disconnected. She stepped in closer to read the fine print of a press clipping, stepped back and moved on again. “What I mean is I don’t believe
this…
” She swept a hand through the air. “These people. The connections.” She shook her head again. “
This is amazing
,” she murmured.

Her father took it in his stride. Slid the glasses back up his nose, propped an elbow on the desk and dropped his chin into his hand, switching his attention back to the glowing screen. “Yeah. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Interesting?” Kelly’s brow bunched. “
Explosive
is probably a better word.”

Hartman chuckled. “Now you’re sounding like a journalist.” He tapped the keyboard and scanned the screen, speaking without looking up. “The problem is, Kel, believe it or not there aren’t many people who really give a damn.”

Kelly turned, looking back across the room.

The clam linguine had taken half an hour to make. When it was ready she’d set the table in the dining room, opened another bottle of wine, walked to the top of the stairs and called him. Waited alone for five minutes then walked back and called him again. After five minutes more she’d given up. Stacked everything onto a tray instead and carried it all downstairs to her father’s bunker in the basement. By then the linguine was cold and the salad was wilted and warm but the wine was still okay and she knew her dad, so there was no point in bitching.

“Oh, thanks, sweetie.” He’d looked up apologetically as she set his dinner down to the left of his keyboard, squeezed her hand a second then immediately slipped his attention back to the screen.

“But why?”

He looked up again. “Why what?”

“Why doesn’t anyone give a damn?”

Hartman exhaled. Pushed the keyboard aside and picked up a fork. “Good question. Maybe it’s because they’re conditioned to accepting it all. You know… corrupt business, corrupt politicians, corrupt government. Or maybe everyone’s given up. Or maybe we’re all just too busy trying to cut out our own share of the dream to be too concerned about what anyone else is doing.” He ran the fork into the pasta, twisted it and scooped a pile into his mouth. He chewed a few seconds before the taste kicked in. When it did his features arranged into a look of surprised approval. “This is really good. Even if it is cold.”

“Thanks.” Kelly tried for severe but it didn’t quite work.

Her father chewed. Studied her. Shrugged his brows. “Sorry, hon.” Chewed some more, watching her.

What the hell. Anyway, she was more interested in what she had been looking at. She turned around again, her eyes sweeping across the room.

The shape of the basement followed the rectangle of the living area above, fifty feet long, probably, and thirty wide. The utilities were bunched in a separate screened off area at one end, leaving a space thirty by thirty in which her father had established his “workshop” as he liked to refer to it. The house itself was late nineteenth century. The old brick walls down here in the basement were original but that was about the only part that was. Kelly remembered how there had once been a coal chute and a series of narrow high windows running around the top of the walls but they’d gone after the attempted break-in and that was when the other alterations had begun. The fireproof ceiling, the double steel doors, the dedicated power and communication lines and the secure air handling plant that had its intake hidden somewhere out in the fields. Yet despite all this new, clinical security, her father had still managed to make the place feel cozy in an eclectic, disorganized way with antiques and high technology gadgets bundled together in a manner that shouldn’t have worked, but did. The ceiling lights were turn of the century, frosted-glass saloon hall originals. She knew their heritage since she’d picked them up herself from a demolition sale in lower Manhattan and made a gift of them to her father when the renovations began. Their warm glow splashed gold across the old brickwork and lit the colors in the Persian rugs scattered across the clay tile floor and the polished dark green of the leather chesterfield and its matching chairs.

One of the four walls was lined with bookcases, another crammed with cabinets and shelves. The third, behind her father’s desk, was a complete counterpoint. Technology Central. An entire wall of gleaming steel racks filled with video monitors and control panels and television screens and a whole raft of other gizmos Kelly assumed were the current adult equivalent to the latest version of PlayStation or whatever else a kid just had to have. She smiled. Ex-spook heaven. Let her eyes trail on across all the gadgetry back to the fourth wall.

The space to the left of the door was what her father called his
thinking wall.
The place where he played out his ideas.

Six feet of it covered with a huge shiny whiteboard where he scrawled his thoughts and notes, the rest covered with thick cork tiles that formed the backdrop for his evolving research. Her eyes swept past the whiteboard with its unintelligible multicolored notes and hieroglyphics, on to the plotted maze of pictures and diagrams and strings. She shook her head.

“I still don’t understand. I mean, if all of this is true…” Her brow furrowed.

Hartman glanced up over his glasses. “Think I’m paranoid, huh? Now you’re sounding even more like a journalist.” He traded the fork for the garlic bread. Took a bite.

“Christ, Dad!” Kelly groaned.” I didn’t mean that.” She carried her glass back to the antique mahogany partners’ desk that stood at the center front of Technology Central, fell into one of the worn green leather armchairs and trailed one long tanned leg across the other. The way she looked took Jack Hartman back twenty years. He set what was left of the bread down on the side of the plate and looked at his daughter.

“Let me try and explain something, Kel. They creep up on people, that’s what happens. They’re experts at it. They find a weakness – in the system or in someone’s character – and then work out how to exploit it.” Hartman looked across his daughter’s shoulder, nodding towards the photographs and press cuttings taped to the fourth wall.

“The guys you see up there – politicians, bureaucrats, company presidents – they were all probably suckered one way or another. Choose your poison. Beautiful girls,” he shrugged, “beautiful boys maybe. Or money for gambling, or those extra luxuries they always wanted but could never afford. Sometimes drugs or even just power. They wanted it, they got it and then they found out they were on a hook and their careers or their marriages – maybe both – would end up ruined if anyone found out.” A wry smile played Hartman’s lips. “And then along comes a nice, easy way out. Whatever it is they want they can just keep on having and no one need ever find out. All they have to do is play along.

Think of it, Kel. Think of how seductive a proposition that would be for most of us. How many guys who’ve taken the first bait and are caught already are going to fight the line?”

A minute passed and Kelly shook her head. “I must have missed something.” She frowned. “The books and all the articles. I thought this was all about hoodlums and thugs and extortion and rackets, stuff like that. You know…
crime!

Hartman toyed with his glass, his face creased with frustration. “That’s where it begins, Kel, but it’s just the beginning. When I was writing my books I worked through it all from the start because you have to go back there to understand it. The history of Russian crime, how it developed and evolved in the old Soviet bloc, then how it evolved again after the communists were tossed out. But all along the message I’ve been trying to send is that what we’ve seen up to now is just the pointed end. There’s worse coming. Much worse.”

Kelly frowned. He watched her. Sighed and leaned forward. “Okay. The quick version. There are three levels to this thing. First you’ve got the hoodlums and the thugs, okay? Street crime, cheap rackets, enforcement, that sort of thing. They’re usually poorly educated but tough as all hell and they’ll do whatever they have to in order to survive.” He counted out on his fingers. “Level two is where it starts to get more sophisticated. These guys are either educated or street smart, usually both. They organize the level one muscle to work more sophisticated schemes like auto theft rackets and trucking heists, but this is the intellectual crime zone as well. Now we’re talking credit card fraud, insurance scams, cloning of mobile phones, ATM scams, stock and tax frauds, money laundering. This is serious stuff, Kel. Real serious.”

His daughter’s eyes narrowed. “And level three?”

Hartman threw a nod across her shoulder. “You’ve just been looking at it. Political and business compromise and corruption on a massive scale. Enough power and money to subvert an entire system.”

Kelly turned around slowly, staring at the maze of diagrams and charts.

“And so complex,” her father’s voice continued, “so unbelievable that it’s easier not to believe.” He paused. “You know your political history, Kel. Remember what Castro did during the Mariel boatlift back in 1980?”

She turned back. “Emptied out the prisons. Sent us all the dregs.”

Hartman sat back. “Exactly. Mixed in with the genuine refugees so we couldn’t tell who was who. And where do you think he got that idea?” He let the question hang a moment then answered it himself. “The Soviet Union is where he got it. Back in the ‘70s the Soviets loosened up their emigration laws and everyone thought that was terrific. So being the naive crazies that we are, what happens? Over the next fifteen years we take in around two hundred thousand people who are supposed to be mainly Russian-Jewish refugees. But the fact is, the Soviets sent us an exploding cigar then sat back and laughed. Even now we still have no idea how many of those people were genuine refugees and how many were just hardcore hoodlums the Soviets decided to dump on us.

“You know how it works. Immigrants from ethnic groups tend to congregate in particular areas until they become familiar with the language and culture and feel comfortable moving out into the broader community. New York had the strongest Russian community in the States – still does – so that’s where most of those Soviet immigrants chose to settle. Then within New York, Brighton Beach became the core of that community so it became the hub of Russian crime.

“It’s the same pattern with every immigrant ethnic group. Always has been. While the new imports are finding their feet most of their criminal activities are focused internally. Take Brighton Beach for example. The majority of the folk who live there are good, hard-working, honest people just trying to make a living and get along like the rest of us. The thing is, that actually makes them the softest targets. So to begin with ethnic criminals prey on their own. Extortion, loan-sharking, protection rackets, prostitution. All the usual stuff. But then these guys are in the Big Apple now, mixing it with the boys from LCN –
La Cosa Nostra
– and the triads and others, and they’re good at what they do and that doesn’t go unnoticed, so before long other opportunities begin to unfold. Enforcement, contract hits, providing manpower for other jobs.

“The cops didn’t pay them much attention to begin with. They had too much on their plates already and on top of that the language barrier meant it was just all too hard to handle, so for a couple of decades the Russians were left pretty much alone to find their own direction. Then suddenly the old Soviet Union disintegrates and anyone who can afford a passport and a visa can travel and overnight the opportunities become boundless.

“Think of living in Soviet Russia, Kel. Hell, you were there. You saw it. Think of all the tricks they had to learn. How tough they had to become, just to survive. Forging papers and ration books, getting oil for the heating when there wasn’t any, just putting food on the table for Christ’s sake. Now think of America and how naive and gullible we were when Russia opened up – still are for that matter – and then you get the idea. All these guys had to do was adapt what they’d already learned and haul it over here and they could start writing their own checks. And to make it even easier for them there’s already a switched on, fully functioning local network all set up and ready to go, just waiting to help them out.

“So come the late ‘80s and the early ‘90s the next wave starts linking up with the local assets and level two is operating overnight. It’s only when we start losing two and three
billion
a year,
every year,
in oil tax fraud alone, that we start waking up to it. But by then it’s already out of control and we haven’t got a damn clue what’s happening. And to make matters worse we can’t even speak the language or read the goddamned writing.”

Kelly looked at him. “But everyone knows about that.” Her brow furrowed and she turned again to the wall, shaking her head. “They don’t know about this. This is high-level corruption.”

Hartman paused to take a drink. Ran the wine around his mouth and held it a while before swallowing.

“And therein lies the problem. They don’t want to know. Hell! You rip off the federal or state government or maybe an insurance company or two and you’re almost a folk hero. And if the boys back in Brighton Beach maybe cut someone up once in a while… cut off some guy’s lips or maybe put a bullet through someone’s ear, then what the fuck? It’s probably someone who deserved it anyway.” He looked up, his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Unless it happens to be some old retired CIA guy trying to live out his retirement in peace up in Pocantico Hills. But then they’re the risks you take when you start sniffing around someone else’s doorstep and taking a piss on their shrubs.” He let out a long, tired sigh.