Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

I approached the table and took a seat next to Orlov. Sweat glistened on his forehead; his face, up close, looked ashen. Glacial and imperious, yes — but deeply frightened at the same time and trying desperately not to show it.

I was sitting a few feet from him, too close for his comfort, and he turned his head away as he spoke. A disgusted expression crossed his face.

“Why are you here?” he croaked out hoarsely.

“Because of an agreement you reached with my father-in-law,” I said. There was a long pause, during which I concentrated, trying to hear that distinct voice, but getting nothing.

“You have been no doubt followed. You endanger both of us.”

Not answering, I compressed my lips in deep concentration, and suddenly heard a noise, a nonsense phrase, something I didn’t understand. A wisp of a thought, surely, but nothing that registered.

“You’re not Russian, are you?” I said.

“Why are you here?” Orlov said, twisting in his chair. His elbow caught a serving plate and shoved it, clatteringly, against other dishes. His voice gradually gathered strength, grew louder. “You fool!”

I heard another floating phrase as he spoke, something I didn’t understand, something in a foreign language. What was it? It wasn’t Russian, it couldn’t be, it sounded unfamiliar. I grimaced, closed my eyes, listened, heard a stream of vowels, words I couldn’t decode.

“What is it?” he asked. “Why are you here? What are you doing?” He moved his high-backed carved oak chair back. It squealed loudly against the terra-cotta floor.

“You were born in Kiev,” I said. “Is that right?”

“Leave!”

“You’re not Russian-born, are you? You’re Ukrainian.”

He got up and started backing out of the room slowly.

I got to my feet, too, and pulled the Sig out again, reluctant to threaten him again. “Stay there, please.”

He froze.

“Your Russian has a slight Ukrainian accent. Your Gs give you away.”

“What are you here for?”

“Your native language is Ukrainian. You think in Ukrainian, don’t you?”

“You know that,” he snapped. “You didn’t need to come here, to endanger me, to learn something that Harrison Sinclair must have told you.” He took a step toward me, as if to menace, a clumsy attempt to regain the psychological advantage. His old Stalinist suit hung on his frame like a scarecrow’s. “If you have something to say to me, or to give to me, it had better be of earthshaking consequence.”

Another step. He resumed: “I will assume it is, and I will give you five minutes to explain yourself, and then you had better be gone.”

“Sit, please,” I said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun to his chair. “This will not take long. My name is Benjamin Ellison. As I said, I am married to Martha Sinclair, the daughter of Harrison Sinclair. Martha inherited the entirety of her father’s estate. Your contacts — I am sure you have extensive contacts — can confirm I am who I say I am.”

He seemed to relax — and then he lunged, seeming to lose his footing as he vaulted toward me, hands outstretched. With a loud, almost subhuman, guttural sound — a choked, twisted aaaghgh ! — he threw himself at me, grabbing my knees, trying to throw me off balance. I twisted, then grabbed his shoulder and forced him to the ground.

He sprawled on the floor at the base of the oak table, gasping, his face crimson. “No,” he gasped. His eyeglasses clattered to the ground a foot or so from his head.

Keeping the gun trained on him, I reached to retrieve his glasses, and with my free arm I somewhat awkwardly helped him up. “Please,” I said, “please don’t try that again.”

Orlov sagged into the nearest dining chair like a marionette, exhausted yet wary. It has always fascinated me that world leaders, once out of power, are so palpably diminished in an almost physical sense. I remember once meeting Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kennedy School in Boston, shaking his hand after a lecture he gave a few years after he was so unceremoniously booted out of the Kremlin by Boris Yeltsin. And Gorbachev struck me as a small, very mortal, very ordinary person. I felt a pang of sympathy for the man.

A Russian phrase.

I heard it, heard his thoughts: a recognizable phrase, in Russian, amid a stream of Ukrainian, like a slug of uranium embedded in graphite.

Yes; he was born in Kiev. At the age of five his family moved to Moscow. Like the physician in Rome, he, too, was bilingual, though he thought mainly in Ukrainian, with the occasional bit of Russian interspersed.

The phrase he thought translated as wise men.

“You know very little,” I said, feigning great assurance, “about the Wise Men.”

Orlov laughed. His teeth were bad, gapped and uneven and stained. “I know everything, Mr... Ellison.”

I watched his face closely, concentrating, seeing what I could pick up. Again, most of it seemed to be in Ukrainian. Here and there I could pick up cognates, words that sounded similar to those in Russian, or English, or German. I heard Tsyurikh , which had to be Zurich. I heard Sinclair , and something that sounded like bank , although I couldn’t be sure.

“We must talk,” I said. “About Harrison Sinclair. About the deal you struck with him.”

Again I leaned close to him, as if thinking deeply. A stream of strange words came at me now, low and fuzzy and indistinct, but of them one word screamed out at me. It was, again, Zurich , or something that sounded like it.

“Deal!” he scoffed. The old spymaster gave a loud, dry laugh. “He stole billions of dollars from me and from my country — billions of dollars! — and you dare to call this a deal!”

So it was true. Alex Truslow was right.

But... billions of dollars?

Was this all about money? Was that it? Money, throughout history, has motivated most of the great acts of evil, when you come right down to it. Was money why Sinclair and the others were killed, why the Agency was, as Edmund Moore warned me, being torn apart?

Billions of dollars.

He regarded me arrogantly, almost superciliously, and attempted to straighten his glasses.

“And now,” he said with a sigh, switching to English, “it is only a matter of time before my own people find me. Of that I have no doubt. I’m not entirely surprised that you people tracked me down. There is no place on earth — no place on earth one would bear to live — where one can’t eventually be found. But what I don’t know is why — why you decided to endanger my life by coming here, whatever your reasons. That was enormously foolish.” His English was excellent, apparently fluent, and British-accented.

Inhaling sharply, I said: “I was extremely cautious in getting here. You have little to worry about.” His expression did not waver. His nostrils flared slightly; his eyes, steady, betrayed nothing.

“I am here,” I continued, “to put things right. To rectify the wrong my father-in-law did to you. I am prepared to offer you a great deal of money for your assistance in locating the money.”

He pursed his lips. “At the risk of being vulgar, Mr. Ellison, I would be extremely interested to know your definition of ‘a great deal.’”

I nodded and got up. Replacing the gun in my pocket, and backing up just beyond his range, I reached down and raised the legs of my overalls, easing the canvas up to expose the banded wads of American dollars strapped to my calves. I released the Velcro restraints that I had purchased at a sporting goods store in Siena, and the money came off each leg in two segments.

Those I placed on the table.