CHAPTER 74
G age and Alla returned to the hospital in early afternoon. Ninchenko was in a third floor, private, two-room suite, the best in the hospital, but looking to Gage like a skid-row hotel room. He was propped up in bed and being fed clear broth as they entered. The nurse wiped Ninchenko’s chin, then stepped back. Ninchenko’s guard escorted her from the room.
“How do you feel, amigo?” Gage asked, leaning close. Alla stood next to him. Both looking down at the pale, hollow-eyed face.
Ninchenko worked up a little smile. “Like an elephant is standing on my chest,” he answered in a hoarse whisper, his throat still raw from the anesthetic used during surgery.
“What happened?”
“He came running into the kitchen just as I kicked the door.” Ninchenko’s voice strengthened. “He got off three shots before I caught my balance. He knew he hit me so he stopped firing.”
“Big mistake.”
“He picked the wrong line of work. He didn’t finish me off.”
Gage thought back on the dead man curled up in the kitchen. The man’s heart had stopped before Ninchenko fired his last shot.
Ninchenko licked his lips. Alla poured water from a pitcher into a clear plastic glass and brought it to his lips. He took two sips, then shook his head.
“What about you?” Ninchenko asked.
“Let’s just say Razor lived by the sword.”
Ninchenko offered up another weak smile. “Aristotle was right.”
Alla’s mouth gaped open at Ninchenko. “What? Aristotle? You’re lying in a hospital with two fucking bullet holes and you’re talking Greek philosophy?”
“What he means is that things tend toward their natural end,” Gage said.
Alla shook her head. “It’s still weird.” She set down the glass and looked fondly at Ninchenko. “I thought you were just some ex-State Security thug out to make a buck. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad your natural end wasn’t to die last night saving me. I’ll never forget what you did.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
“We were both wrong,” Ninchenko answered. “I hope you’ll come back one day.”
Alla shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Three hours into their drive back to Kiev, Gage heard the name Gravilov spoken on the car radio. He poked at Alla, waking her up.
“What are they saying?”
Alla rubbed her eyes. The announcer spoke the name again. She listened for a minute, then smiled.
“It sounds like Ninchenko’s people tricked the government into believing that nationalist terrorists attacked Gravilov’s mansion. There was a note stuck to the front door that the police think was left by the paramilitary arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, demanding that all Russians leave Ukraine, starting with him.”
Alla listened for another few moments, then laughed. “They’re demanding a ransom for my return. Apparently I’m Gravilov’s girlfriend.”
She looked hard at the radio, then gasped. “The police found Razor in the hyena pen, chewed into pieces.”
Gage now understood what Maks had been doing while Yasha helped Ninchenko to the car.
“What about the woman upstairs?” Gage asked.
“They claim she was raped.”
“That couldn’t be.”
“But it’s the kind of thing the government wants people to think OUN terrorists would do.” Alla pointed ahead toward Kiev. “That way they’ll believe that the president is all that stands between Ukraine and chaos if Bread and Freedom succeeds.”
“Will Gravilov really believe that’s what happened?”
“Maybe for a few days…nobody believes anything in Ukraine for longer than that.”
CHAPTER 75
M r. Green? This is Mr. Black.”
Gage swung his legs down from his bed at the Carlton Tower in London as he answered his cell phone, wincing from the pain from the twisting stitches in his back.
“Hey, Professor. What’s up?”
“Merry Christmas.”
Gage blinked. The words restarted the clock that seemed to have stopped on the day he flew into Kiev. “Likewise.”
“Your friend Mr. Matson called. Very upset. Whimpering like a puppy.”
“I can only imagine.”
“His banker told him the KTMG Limited account has been frozen and he can’t find out whether the Swiss did it or the…what do you call people in Nauru? Nauruites? Nauruans? Nauruians?”
“I don’t know. It’s never come up before.”
“Okay, Nauruians…or even why it was frozen.”
“A shame.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him I’m out of the country but I’ll call him in a couple of days.”
“Anything else?”
Gage paused, imagining Matson flailing around as he drifted out to sea.
“I don’t want him doing something stupid. Tell him my client wants to close the deal on the technology right away, and in cash, just like we first agreed.”
“Okay. But one more thing, just for my edification. How’d his money get frozen?”
“It isn’t.”
“It isn’t?”
“It isn’t.” Gage looked at his watch, smiling to himself, enjoying the professor’s puzzlement. “Got to go. I’ll call you when I get back to the States.”
Gage knocked on the door to Alla’s adjoining room.
“Time to get up and get your hand stamped.”
Gage and Alla arrived just on time for their meeting with the U.S. consul general in London. Gage had learned from his friend in the Justice Department that John Clyde was a careerist near the end of his service who’d topped out just one step short of his goal of becoming an ambassador. The story was that he’d even have taken a posting in Sudan just to wear the title.
An aging Ivy Leaguer with indoor skin and puffy jowls, Clyde met them at the visa section, then escorted them to his office. He sat down behind a large desk framed by U.S. and State Department flags and directed them to sit across from him.
“You must have some kind of pull in Washington,” Clyde said, opening a folder and withdrawing Alla’s Panamanian passport. “I received a call from the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.” He thumbed through the passport until he found the pasted-in visa. “And the ambassador instructed me not to notify the legal attache or the FBI that I issued this.”
Clyde made a show of examining the page. “S visas are quite rare, you know,” he said, inviting an explanation from Gage.
“This is a special occasion,” Gage said, his voice flat.
“Does it concern London?”
“Does it make a difference?”
Clyde fixed on Gage’s impenetrable face for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t.”
Alla leaned forward in anticipation of receiving the passport, but Clyde remained immobile. She sat back, reddening, as if she had tried to shake his hand and he’d refused.
Clyde flipped to the identification and photo page and grinned. “Somehow the name Alla Petrovna Tarasova doesn’t sound Panamanian.”
“Look,” Gage said. “If you’ve got a problem, spill it. If not, let us have the passport.”
“I don’t have a problem, it’s just unusual.” Clyde closed the passport, tapped its edge against his blotter, then looked over at Alla. “I need to advise you of certain conditions: You must arrive at a U.S. port of entry within ten days. You may stay in the U.S. for no longer than forty-five days. If you fail to leave within that period, you’ll be subject to arrest.”
He waited until Alla nodded her understanding, then retrieved a sealed envelope from the folder. “You will present this letter to the immigration and customs agent at passport control at your point of entry.” Clyde handed Alla the envelope, then retrieved a second one, unsealed. “This is your copy of the same letter.”
Clyde slid the second envelope into the passport, then stood and passed it to her. He stepped around his desk and walked toward the office door, as if expecting Gage and Alla to follow like imprinted ducklings. Alla stuck her tongue out at his back, then smiled at Gage as she rose to her feet. She glanced toward Clyde, then snagged a State Department paperweight off his desk and slipped it into her coat pocket.