I made myself lean toward him, trying to pretend I wasn’t scared. “A billion dollars is a lot of money. If Roger’s been dead since he lost it, then he hasn’t been around to spend any. It will be substantially more than it was when last you saw it. You lost it once. I can get it back for you, but I want to know that if I do, our deal will be finished. I want my partner and me to be released from all obligations to you.” I was careful not to include Rachel. He would wonder about that.
I sat back and waited and hoped again that I had gambled right and he wanted the money more than he wanted revenge. Of course, there was nothing to say he wouldn’t decide he was entitled to both. But he did have that whole thing about honoring commitments. I wanted to hear him say it.
He didn’t say it. He didn’t do anything. Maybe he was calculating. Maybe he was trying to restrain himself. It was hard to know with him. All I could do was wait and see if I had gone one demand too far.
He pushed the empty chili cup aside. “Let me tell you a sad story. When my brother and I lived in the Ukraine, we were successful businessmen. We had many people working for us all over the country. We had money. Our mother lived in a big house on a hill overlooking our town. We ate and drank and lived like kings. We had women, we had drugs, we had cars. Whatever we wanted. Then, one day, a man came to my door with seven other men, all with guns. Do you know what he wanted?”
“No.”
“He wanted to take my life.”
“To kill you?”
“No, to steal my life. He said he would kill my mother if I did not leave the country and let him move into my house. He wanted me to give him my cars and my businesses and all my money.”
“Just like that?”
“It was wild times in the Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. Worse than that happened. Much worse. This man thought that with a gun, he could take away everything I spent my life building. I have no doubt he would have killed my mother if I had not.”
“If you had not killed him?”
He crossed his arms, which served to highlight the lovely tattoo that stretched the length of his right forearm. It was a feral-looking cat, wrapped in barbed wire and still on the prowl. He tipped his head and stared at me as if to say, “Try again.”
I fought hard against the next, most logical conclusion, but I knew it was the truth. “You killed your mother.”
“And then I killed him, but first I took him to his house, and I killed his wife and his mother in front of him.” He leaned in. I could smell the chili on his breath. “No one takes my money.”
I had to think that one through, but eventually I got to what I thought was the parable’s message. He didn’t give a shit about who killed Vladi. Someone had taken his money.
“All right, Sashen’ka. I will play your game. You bring me Vladi’s computer with the files on it, and it will be done.”
I felt the tiniest bit of tension bleed off.
“But there is another part. If you do not find it or you find it and do not bring it to me, we will have a settling of accounts, you and I, and I will kill your partner while you watch. Then I will kill you, too.”
28
AFTER I LEFT WENDY’S, I COULDN’T GET TO FELIX’S FAST enough. I would have called him, but I was busy beeping Kraft. I did it three times before I pulled into the parking lot of Felix’s complex. On the last try, I punched in my call-back number and followed it with 911. Surely he couldn’t ignore the universal code for near hysteria.
When the elevator at Felix’s building proved too slow, I took the stairs, climbing all seven stories without a pause. By the time I hit five, my legs were jelly. By the time I made it to his apartment and found Felix draped across the lime-green beanbag chair, I could barely stand.
“Hey, Miss Shanahan.” As soon as he saw me, he set aside his laptop and popped to his feet. “Guess what? Guess what I found out? I was looking into that stuff you asked me about, the vory, and you know what? Do you know what I found out? It’s kind of hard to believe. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. It could be true, I guess.”
“Felix…” I held up my hand-breathing was an issue. I knew from experience that I had to stop him, or at least slow him down, or he would just roll on and leave me in the dust. Besides, I needed a moment to collect myself. “Give me a second, okay?” I poured myself into his only other seating option, a canvas chair, and closed my eyes. I’d raced over from Wendy’s and Drazen so fast, I hadn’t had a chance to think about what had just happened. When I started to think about it, to feel the enormity of what I was involved in, I decided I’d rather talk. I opened my eyes, and Felix was right there looking at me. Whatever he had to say, he was excited about it, but I had to get my piece said first.
“I just had a meeting with Tishchenko. He’s not looking for Roger. He’s looking for-”
“The lost fortune. I know. That’s what I was trying to tell you about. The lost fortune of Drazen Tishchenko. Pretty cool, huh? Sounds like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, or one of those really old Indiana Jones movies.”
“Are you talking about the billion dollars that was supposedly on Vladi’s laptop?”
“Hey! Miss Shanahan, you heard about this?”
“I did. How did you?”
“I found it in Russian chat rooms. They have them over there, too. You have to put all the pieces together, and a lot of it was in archived threads, and I had to use translation software, so I’m not sure I got all of it. Translation software is, like, so bogus. Half the time, it’s completely wrong, and the other-”
“Felix, get to the good part.”
“You asked me to check into the vory, and I did, and I thought they were really interesting with the tattoos and everything, and then you said you’d met one, and I was really curious about him, and so I checked him out. There’s a lot out there on Drazen Tishchenko. He is one intense dude.”
“It was on the laptop, right? A list of files…a map to the fortune…two copies…one for Drazen and one for his brother…” I trailed off so he could pick up the thread.
“Exactly. It was, like, a treasure map, because if you had the computer, it would lead you to the money, only Vladi’s copy got lost when he disappeared.”
Treasure map. I had used that phrase with Kraft, and he had laughed at me. “What do they say about Drazen’s? What happened to his copy?”
“Eaten by a computer virus.”
I had to smile. He had given me the first true moment of satisfaction I’d had in a long time. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. After Vladi disappeared, Drazen went to find his list, and the file was corrupted. According to the story, Drazen loves porn, and you know what happens when you go to those porn sites. You’re bound to catch something. He got some kind of virus that crashed his hard drive.” He shook his head. “Should have used protection.”
I looked over at him. He was trying to hide his grin, but his ears had turned red, which was his way of blushing. Dan was definitely rubbing off on this kid.
“I guess Drazen was a little hasty when he whacked his computer guy.”
He went from blushing to stricken. “He whacked his computer guy?”
“More like his money guy. What does Russian urban legend say about how Vladi disappeared?”
“One night, he was visiting America and just vanished off the face of the earth. His billion dollars vanished with him.”
“Not necessarily.” I pulled out my Wendy’s napkin with the model and serial number Drazen had given me. “This is the computer where the files resided four years ago. Tishchenko is confident they will still be there. He says they can’t be moved. That’s what I came to ask you about. What would make it so files can’t be moved?”
He took the fast-food document and nodded as sagely as a twenty-something kid could. “That’s how hardware-based encryption works.”