“That would have been a fair return on investment.”
“The thing about Russians is, they love money, they’re scared of absolutely nothing, and they will sell anything. If you need it and you’re willing to pay for it, Drazen Tishchenko will get it for you, and being who he is, he’s plugged in. He knows party officials who know things. You know, like where the stocks of weaponized smallpox are kept. Where all the tactical nuclear weapons happen to be. They know where the weapons-grade fissionable material is, and they know how to get all that stuff out and into the hands of the people willing to pay for it and willing to use it. Any idea who those people might be?”
“People who don’t like us?”
“That’s correct. The submarine deal never happened, but only because the local mafiya back home blocked it. Drazen forgot to cut them in. Otherwise, the U.S. Navy would be chasing drug-running subs up and down the Pacific Coast. Are you starting to get my drift?”
We were still chatting amiably, but an undercurrent had crept in, something in his usually imperturbable tone that carried more weight than the words he was saying. That, by itself, felt like a pretty good case for helping him out.
He went on. “When Tishchenko decides to put a few tactical nukes out there, there’s nothing to say we’ll catch him then, either. Wouldn’t it be better to just nip it in the bud?”
“I still don’t know how I’m supposed to help you do that.”
“I think you know where the fortune is.”
“The what?”
“The lost fortune.”
“His money has a name?”
“That’s what people say when they talk about it.” Having finished his own coffee, he reached down for the cup he’d brought for me and started peeling back the plastic flap. “According to legend, it’s a billion dollars.”
This was getting interesting, enough so that I couldn’t hide it. “How does anyone misplace a billion dollars?”
“The better story is how he got it in the first place. Drazen owned a bank in Russia.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the banker type.”
“I didn’t say he was a banker. He’s a gangster who owned a bank. That’s all the rage in Russia these days. There’s no real regulation of banks over there, so they buy them and use them as mattresses.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mattresses. Places to keep their cash. Then they use the U.S. banking system to turn all that dirty money into clean U.S. currency. It’s a beautiful thing. No one can accuse these gangsters of being stupid.”
“I have to believe he didn’t earn a billion dollars from ATM charges.”
“He stole it from KGB agents.”
“He stole it from the KGB? First of all, that sounds like a bad strategy. Second, where does the KGB get a billion dollars?”
“They stole it.”
“From whom?”
“The Russian treasury.” He glanced over, maybe to gauge my interest. This was probably the sort of thing that made most people’s eyes glaze over. But I had a personal stake.
“I’m listening.”
“The people who were most pissed off by the unraveling of the Soviet Union were KGB and party officials.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “The ones who benefited most from a corrupt system would be the ones with the most to lose. What did they do?”
“They stole the country.”
“Stole the country?”
“Starting in 1992, for about eleven years, the KGB and other party officials pulled off the greatest looting of a country that the world has ever seen. It’s hard to say how much money they took, but estimates run around six hundred billion.”
“Jesus. How do you steal that much money?”
“The same way most people steal from their employers. They set up shell companies and false-flag bank accounts all over the world and sneak money into them. But there was so much money the KGB ran out of places to put it. They turned to the mafiya. But at that time, the mafiya wasn’t sophisticated enough to handle it, so the KGB bought them what they needed to keep up.”
“New BlackBerrys?”
“Computers and communications equipment. They gave them the most sophisticated and cutting-edge technical equipment available. It was a transforming moment for the bad guys.”
“Bad guys? I don’t hear any good guys in this tale.”
“The worse guys. One of the worst is Drazen Tishchenko. The KGB gave him their money, and he took it.”
“These KGB agents just sat around and let him take their hard-earned dough?”
“There was so much money moving so fast through so many accounts and countries and currencies that it was hard for anyone to keep up. By the time they figured it out, it was too late.”
“Drazen was smart enough to do all that?”
“He had a guy.”
Didn’t they always? “Even if it was too late to get the money back, it wouldn’t necessarily keep the KGB out of the complaint department, would it?”
“Anyone who came to the complaint department had to deal with his brother.”
“Vladi?”
“In the Ukraine, Vladi was known as the man who couldn’t be killed. He was shot seven times in four different incidents. Twice he took bullets for his brother. No one ever managed to kill him.”
That was only because he had yet to run into Rachel. “Okay, but still, it’s the KGB.”
“When it got too hot, Drazen got his guy to give him a couple of maps-one for him and one for Vladi, so he could find the money.”
“What kind of maps?”
“They’re criminals, so he didn’t put anything anywhere in their real names. It was in numbered accounts in places like Turks and Caicos, Liberia, the Seychelles, Nauru. Wherever he stashed it, he used fake names or numbered accounts. If he did have to stash some cash, he put it in safety deposit boxes, again under fake names. The map wasn’t really a map but a list of files with the locations of accounts, names on the accounts, account numbers, passwords…things like that. After he got that, Drazen no longer needed his guy, so he killed him. Drazen and Vladi popped up in Israel next, where they offered to help Mossad track down former KGB agents.”
“So, they got Mossad to take out their enemies.” Crafty though not surprising that Drazen would be of the one-stone-two-birds school of criminal behavior. “And the computer that was stolen from Vladi had one of these financial maps on it?”
“According to legend.”
It was a good legend, but there was a hole in the plot. “If you had a billion bucks stashed and someone found out where it was, wouldn’t you move it? If the list was compromised, why wouldn’t Drazen just move the money to new accounts?”
“That’s never been explained, and it’s one reason some people don’t buy the story. Drazen had his own list, so it’s possible he did exactly what you’re suggesting.”
“In which case the computer would be worthless.”
“And yet Drazen is here, and here he stays. I have to think he’s waiting for something. Or someone?” He braced his arm against the sill of his door, leaned his head into the palm of his hand, and just stared at me.
“Tell me exactly what it is you need, Ling.”
“I need information. I want to know what he’s doing, why he’s here. Anything you can tell me.”
“He’s here for his billion dollars. That’s why he took Harvey. That’s why he’s done everything he’s done while he’s been here. He says he’s looking for Roger, but I think it’s the money.”
He took off his shades. “Are you saying you really did find it?”
“I might know where it is, but I’m trying to make him go away happy, so I’m not sure we have the same objective. Besides that, I seem to have run into a hitch.”
“What is it?”
“Blackthorne. Do you know them?”
“Yeah. They’ve done a lot of work for the military.” He angled in my direction, as focused as a hunting dog on the scent. “Why? Have they approached you?”