"Something romantic would be nice." She sipped carefully from her sherry, trying not to vomit. Poor, poor Sasha. She stared out at the city lights and tried hard not to imagine how her boytoy looked with a blown-up nose and only one ear. She failed miserably. The image just wouldn't disappear.
Her boss moved to the entertainment console, gritted his teeth, punched play on the tape machine, and waited for the sound of romance to start.
A moment later came the sounds of Tatyana and her freshly disfigured Sasha thrashing in the sheets and prattling away about what a disgusting, nauseating dork her boss was.
Tatyana spun around. She and her boss looked at each other for a moment, he with his eyes narrowed into betrayed slits, she unable to close her mouth. The damning tape droned on.
Tatyana screamed, "What in the hell is that?" She knew damn well what it was. Disaster. Her apartment was bugged. Some nosy-body had been listening and, worse, recording. But for how long? Who? How sloppy had she been, how much dirt was on those dreadful tapes?
She quickly ended up with the one question all lawyers ask at a moment like this: how screwed am I?
"That?" he answered, jerking down the volume. "Oh, just the sound of you being fired."
"What? You can't."
He smiled. "Yes, I definitely can. Listen, it's fun. I'll do it again-you're fired." He pushed stop, and they stared at each other. Then, once more, because he loved the sound of it, "You're fired."
The snifter of sherry tumbled out of her hand, landed on the marble floor, and crashed into a thousand tiny shards. An apt metaphor to what was happening to her life. She bounced out of her chair, stamped a foot, and said, "Don't be a fool. Without me, you won't last two minutes. I've been carrying you for three years."
"I won't deny it."
"While you and your pal Yeltsin have been keeping the vodka industry afloat, who do you think's been keeping the office running?"
"Won't deny that, either. You worked like a dog."
She tried a smile. "Look, darling, we can get past this."
"I already have. I hired your replacement this afternoon. A real clever young fellow with endless energy and an incredible knack for organization. He'll be happily seated behind your desk in the morning."
"You bastard."
"You bitch."
She grabbed her coat and began stomping for the door. She threw it open with a loud crash and immediately three men in blue uniforms lunged at her. They spun Tatyana around and slapped cuffs on her wrists. She tried screaming and thrashing, but it had no effect, and she soon stopped.
Her boss watched with fierce satisfaction, then mentioned to his former lover, "Ooops, did I fail to mention there's a second tape?"
A second tape? She was suddenly sure she was going to become sick.
"I turned it over to our new attorney general. It's you talking with your crooked friends about all your illegal schemes." He mocked her with a loud laugh. "Hey, you know what else? Maybe I failed to mention that your stooge Fyodorev was also fired and arrested this afternoon."
"You lousy bastard."
"A postcard from prison would be nice. Be sure to let me know where you land." So many of them were gathered in such a tight two-block circumference, it resembled a convention of killers. There were strutting pros with big-league experience, an all-star team of deadly assassins. A clutch of third-rate mobsters ambling for their first kill. And a sprinkling of ambitious young amateurs hoping to get lucky. It was every man to himself, or herself-a few women's suffrage types were lurking in the shadows as well.
They hung out in parked cars and vans, smoking and sipping coffee, eyeing Nicky's hideout, waiting for a break. Going inside was ill-fated stupidity. This had been tried rather unsuccessfully by one bold idiot before he was driven off by a furious hail of bullets. About twenty of Nicky's bodyguards were in there, armed to the teeth, guarding their turf. Poachers weren't welcome. A few snipers were perched on rooftops, fighting off the cold. The apartment building across the street from Nicky's holdout, a real dump, had suddenly experienced an unaccustomed flood of subleases. Responding to loud knocks on the doors, the inhabitants found themselves confronted by tough-looking men shoving thousands into their fists for what was promised would be a brief dislocation. The far side of the hall, the one that did not face Nicky's safehouse, couldn't draw any interest at any price.
The street had only one coffee shop, a cramped, neglected little place run by a chubby old babushka with a million wrinkles and a toothless smile. She was suddenly rolling in customers, nasty-looking sorts who demanded coffee day and night. She struck a deal with a sandwich and soup joint six blocks down. She imported their goods, tripled the price, and made a killing. To date, she was the only one making a killing, literally or figuratively. She quietly rooted for Nicky to last another few weeks.
Late on Tuesday evening, a new car joined the party, a big, shiny black Mercedes that slid to a curb and idled for hours. Instantly, a dozen hungry sharks took note of this latest entrant in the Nicky sweepstakes.
Throughout the night, the car never budged from the curb. At four in the morning, four men stepped out. They stretched and looked around. All were dressed in nice suits, wildly out of character for this game.
A moment later, a fifth man embarked from the car and stepped out onto the curb. Short and fat, he wore a double-breasted blazer with a hundred gold buttons that sparkled in the moonlit night. He stretched his cramped legs, looked around very briefly, then waddled off in the direction of the coffee shop. The four men followed at a discreet distance, an obvious deference to their boss that marked him like a whale swimming among minnows.
Golitsin ran in the wrong circles. He had no clue that photos of him with a million and a half bucks painted on his backside were circulating throughout the city's heavily populated underworld. Later, the city coroner would find it impossible to discern exactly which of nearly a hundred bullets fired in the willy-nilly hailstorm was the precise cause of death. The five through the heart were certainly candidates, though the ten in the brain had the odds in their favor.
Six of those ten, however, were fired from different guns, different ranges, and different angles. Unfortunately the shattered brain gave up no clues as to which bullet struck first, or indeed, which produced the most lethal damage. Frankly there was too little brain left to consider. So much of it was scattered on the concrete, bits and pieces too small to scrape up.
The logjam was settled after an intense three-day bombardment of whispered threats and intense pleadings, when one of the shooters secretly offered to split the reward fifty-fifty-of the many other offers that poured in, nothing was over a third.
Three-quarters of a million dollars!
The coroner's last troubling doubt instantly vanished in a cloud of certainty.
The third day in his self-imposed bunker was the one that got to Nicky. Three days and two nights of sitting in the same pitch-dark room, cradling his gun in his lap, counting down the hours and wondering when it would end. Three days of waiting for the inevitable. His own bodyguards made an occasional foray. Day and night, Nicky could hear them out there, exhorting one another, loading up on booze and dope, trying to stoke up the nerve.
Early on the second day there had been a chaotic rush at the door-a stupid, clumsy attempt with bodies bashing against the reinforced wood. Nicky emptied his pistol and smiled blissfully at all the satisfying howls and screams.
Later that same night, a second attempt. Smarter this time. Well, slightly more sneaky, anyway. One of the idiots crawled up to the door, planted a hand grenade against the wood, pulled the pin, then scuttled away for his life. Nicky became dismayed and depressed by the stupidity of his own handpicked bodyguards. It was a miracle he had survived this long. Anticipating them was child's play. Everything in the room-the furniture, the mattress-everything was piled up against the door. The pile of junk absorbed the blast and shrapnel nicely. When the boys showed up, Nicky emptied his pistol again. Another lovely chorus of screams and howls, and Nicky laughed long after they had retreated back to their refuge.