“Who is he? Who is the arms dealer?”
She said a name, then picked up the wine list and opened the cover.
“Let’s have something to drink, shall we, Mr. Golani? Do you prefer red or white?”
Stalin brought the wine. It was Georgian, bloodred, and very rough. Gabriel’s thoughts were now elsewhere. He was thinking of the name Olga Sukhova had just spoken. It was familiar to him, of course. Everyone in the trade had heard the name Ivan Kharkov.
“How much do you know about him, Mr. Golani?”
“The basics. Former KGB turned Russian oligarch. Passes himself off as a legitimate investor and international businessman. Lives mainly in London and France.”
“Those are the basics. May I give you a more thorough version of the story?”
Gabriel nodded his head. Olga braced herself on her elbows and held the wineglass near her face with both hands. Between them, a candle flickered in a red bowl. It added blush to her pale cheeks.
“He was a child of Soviet privilege, our Ivan. His father was high-ranking KGB. Very high-ranking. In fact, when he retired, he was the chief of the First Main Directorate, the foreign espionage division. Ivan spent a good part of his childhood abroad. He was permitted to travel, while ordinary Soviet citizens were kept prisoner in their own country. He had blue jeans and Rolling Stones records, while ordinary Soviet teenagers had Communist propaganda and Komsomol weekends in the country. In the days of shortages, when the workers were forced to eat seaweed and whale meat, he and his family had fresh veal and caviar.”
She drank some of the wine. At the front entrance, Stalin was negotiating with two male customers over a table. One of them had been at the cemetery. Olga seemed not to notice.
“Like all the children of Party elite, he was automatically granted a place at an elite university. In Ivan’s case, it was Moscow State. After graduation, he was admitted directly into the ranks of the KGB. Despitehis fluency in English and German, he was not deemed suitable material for a life as a foreign spy, so he was assigned to the Fifth Main Directorate. Do you know about the Fifth Main Directorate, Mr. Golani?”
“It was responsible for internal security functions: border control, dissidents, artists and writers.”
“Don’t forget the refuseniks, Mr. Golani. The Fifth Directorate was also responsible for persecuting Jews. Rumor has it Ivan was very diligent in that regard.”
Stalin was now seating the two men at a table near the center of the restaurant, well out of earshot.
“Ivan benefited from the magic hand of his famous father and was promoted rapidly through the ranks of the directorate. Then came Gorbachev and glasnost and perestroika, and overnight everything in our country changed. The Party loosened the reins on central planning and allowed young entrepreneurs-in some cases the very dissidents whom Ivan and the Fifth Directorate were monitoring-to start cooperatives and private banks. Against all odds, many of these young entrepreneurs actually started to make money. This didn’t sit well with our secret overlords at Lubyanka. They were used to picking society’s winners and losers. A free marketplace threatened to upset the old order. And, of course, if there was money to be made, they wanted what was rightly theirs. They decided they had no option but to go into business for themselves. They needed an energetic young man of their own, a young man who knew the ways of Western capitalism. A young man who had been permitted to read the forbidden books.”
“Ivan Kharkov.”
She raised her glass in salutation to his correct answer. “With the blessing of his masters at Lubyanka, Ivan was allowed to leave the KGB and start a bank. He was given a single dank room in an old Moscow office building, a telephone, and an American-made personal computer,something most of us had never seen. Once again, the magic hand was laid upon Ivan’s shoulder and within months his new bank was raking in millions of dollars in profit, almost all of it due to State business. Then the Soviet Union crumbled, and we entered the roaring nineties period of gangster capitalism, shock therapy, and instant privatization. When the State-owned enterprises of the Soviet Union were auctioned off to the highest bidder, Ivan gobbled up some of the most lucrative assets and factories. When Moscow real estate could be purchased for a song and a promise, Ivan snatched up some of the gems. During the period of hyperinflation, Ivan and his patrons at Lubyanka Square made fortunes in currency speculation-fortunes that inevitably found their way into secret bank accounts in Zurich and Geneva. Ivan never had any illusions about the reason for his astonishing success. He had been helped by the magic hand of the KGB, and he was very good at keeping the magic hand filled with money.”
A waiter appeared and began laying small dishes of Georgian appetizers on the table. Olga explained the contents of each; then, when the waiter was gone, she resumed her lecture.
“One of the State assets Ivan scooped up in the early nineties was a fleet of cargo planes and container vessels. They didn’t cost him much, since at the time most of the planes were sinking into the ground at airfields around the country and the ships were turning to rust in dry dock. Ivan bought the facilities and the personnel necessary to get the fleet up and running again, and within a few months he had one of the most valuable properties in Russia: a company capable of moving goods in and out of the country, no questions asked. Before long, Ivan’s ships and planes were filled with lucrative cargo bound for troubled foreign lands.”
“Russian weapons,” said Gabriel.
Olga nodded. “And not just AK-47s and RPG-7s, though they are a substantial part of his operation. Ivan deals in the big-ticket items, too: tanks, antiaircraft batteries, attack helicopters, even the occasional frigate or out-of-date MiG. He hides now behind a respectable veneer as one of Moscow ’s most prominent real estate developers and investors. He owns a palace in Knightsbridge, a villa in the South of France, and the chalet in Courchevel. He buys paintings, antique furniture, and even a share of an English football team. He’s a regular at Kremlin functions and is very close to the president and the siloviki. But beneath it all, he’s nothing but a gunrunner and a thug. As our American friends like to say, he’s a full-service operation. He has inventory and the cargo ships and transport planes to deliver it. If necessary, he can even provide financing through his banking operations. He’s renowned for his ability to get weapons to their destination quickly, sometimes overnight, just like DHL and Federal Express.”
“If we’re going to find out whether Ivan has really made a deal with al-Qaeda, we have to get inside his network. And to get inside Ivan’s network, we need the name of your original source.”
“You can’t have it, Mr. Golani. Two people are already dead. I’m afraid the matter is closed.” She looked down at her menu. “We should eat something, Mr. Golani. It’s better if the FSB thinks we’re actually hungry.”
For the remainder of dinner, Olga did not mention Ivan Kharkov and his missiles. Instead, she spoke of books recently read, films recently viewed, and the coming election. When the check came, they engaged in a playful tussle, male chivalry versus Russian hospitality, and chivalry prevailed. It was still light out; they walked directly to her car, arm in arm for the benefit of any spectators. The old Lada wouldn’t turn over at first, but it finally rattled into life with a puff of silver-blue smoke. “Built by the finest Soviet craftsmen during the last years of developed socialism,” she said. “At least we don’t have to remove our wipers anymore.”
She turned up the radio very loud and embraced him without passion. “Would you be so kind as to see me to my door, Mr. Golani? I’m afraid my building isn’t as safe as it once was.”