David Duffy - In for a Ruble

“Power trip?”

“Control. Power. And in this particular instance, revenge.” I called Foos on the cell phone that came with Warren Brandeis. “How’s the kid?”

“Just woke up. We’re starting to talk. How’s his old man?”

“Not so good. He admitted killing Coryell.”

Foos was silent, something else he does when he doesn’t have anything constructive to contribute.

I said, “I’ll tell you the rest when I see you. Right now, I need to know if Irina still has her phone offline.”

“Hang on, I’ll check.… Still offline.”

“Keep an eye on it. I have a feeling it’ll be back on shortly.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“What are you thinking?” Victoria asked.

“Business first. You want the ConnectPay servers?”

“You serious?”

“It’s either you or Nosferatu. You’re a lot prettier. Nicer too, most of the time.”

That got me a whack across the back of the head, but it was playful—I think.

“I suppose there’s a price,” she said.

“Of course. This is a capitalist country, as you keep reminding me.”

“Why is it now you’ve decided to listen? What do you want?”

“Couple weeks at the Gage Hotel?”

That got me another hug and kiss. “When can we leave?”

“You’ve got your case, remember?”

“All too well. That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I’m guessin’ your mouth will be involved before too long.”

I smiled and kept silent to show I was trying. The Brandeis cell phone buzzed.

Foos said, “You hung up too fast. Someone’s trying to reach the Russian chick. Six calls since four o’clock yesterday. Just a number, no name, must be a disposable.”

He read off the number. Didn’t mean anything to me.

I broke the connection and dialed the number. A man answered, speaking Russian. “Who the hell is this?”

I recognized the voice from the night on Tverskaya and ended the call. Konychev had Brandeis’s number now but that didn’t change anything.

“Konychev’s been trying to reach Irina since yesterday afternoon,” I said to Victoria. “They’re playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game, those two, although mongoose-cobra might be a better description.”

“Dammit. Remember the question about why Homeland Security let Konychev into the country after DoJ and State were keeping him out?”

“Sure.”

“I’m gonna break the rules. This could cost me my job so bear that in mind when you go off to do whatever you decide to go off to do.”

“Okay.”

“It wasn’t DHS, it was us, DoJ, my office. We got DHS to front it so we wouldn’t be seen suddenly reversing ourselves”

“Very tricky. Foos will be impressed.”

“You’re not telling Foos, remember? You’re not telling anyone.”

“Right.”

“Konychev came to us, last month, through umpteen lawyers and intermediaries. He offered a deal. Everything he knew about the Baltic Enterprise Commission and its U.S. affiliates, including everything he knew about one Taras Batkin, in return for immunity, freedom of entry, and cessation of our investigation into his affairs.”

She had my full attention.

“When last month, the first approach?”

“December fifth.”

“Right after the Tverskaya attack. He was asking a steep price.”

“It was a tough call. I wasn’t remotely happy about it. But we were nowhere on the case, we needed a kick-start, and it’s not my job to prosecute Russian hoods unless they’re carrying out their hoodlumming here. Which we believe Batkin is. I made sure we weren’t prohibited from turning what we knew about Konychev over to the Russian authorities. We went to the CPS, by the way. They’re the only ones over there I even partly trust.”

“I’ll tell Aleksei next time I talk to him.”

“I already did.”

I could hear her.

“So?”

“So, we had Konychev, secluded, while we debriefed him. He’s evasive to say the least.”

“Surprised?”

“Don’t start. It’s been difficult, a real pain in the ass, not to tell tales out of school. Then he starts wandering off the reservation. That visit to Leitz was the first. The lunch on Madison Avenue that your pal Ivanhoe latched on to was the second.”

“Now he’s flown the coop?”

“ How the hell do you know that? ”

“Lucky guess. Rooted in the assumption that it’s the reason you’re telling me all this. And it’s Ivanov, not Ivanhoe.”

“It’s a good thing you were a spy, because you’d make a lousy diplomat.”

“At the risk of making another diplomatic faux pas, you’re not the first with that observation. Where were you keeping Konychev?”

“Don’t ask too many details. Hotel suite in Midtown.”

“Security?”

“Couple of FBI. But their orders were to keep others out, not necessarily hold him in. We relied on his own sense of self-protection.”

“Self-interest might have been a better premise. When’d he blow?”

“Yesterday, not long before I called you.”

“He’s been playing you.”

“Tell me something I don’t goddamned know.”

The temper was in countdown mode.

“How about some coffee?”

She went to the kitchen to get it.

“There’s something else. We had the suite wired, in case he got talkative.”

“He would have checked for that.”

“No doubt. But the FBI does what the FBI is trained to do.”

Like the Cheka.

“He didn’t talk much, mostly football and crude jokes—almost as bad as yours—and mostly in Russian. But there was one thing. He got a call, Sunday morning. His cell phone, we could only hear his side, but whoever it was had clearly called about Batkin. Konychev said something like, ‘Shit, we won’t get another shot at him now. Not like that.’”

I drank my coffee. “Doesn’t add up.”

“Why not?”

“Batkin told me he made a deal with Konychev. Not voluntarily, they had guns to their heads—Kremlin guns. You don’t renege on that—at least not overtly—unless you want to spend twenty years in Siberia. Konychev was playing a more subtle game. He was going to give you enough to hang Batkin in a U.S. court—ice him in a way that couldn’t be traced.”

“You Russians play too much chess. I’m a simple country girl. Konychev tried to kill Batkin and missed. He said he wouldn’t get another shot. I’ve got the tape.”

“Hang on. He was speaking Russian.”

“Sure. His English stinks.”

“So what you have is a translation?”

“Of course. My Russian’s no better than his English.”

“Where’s the recording?”

“At the office. Why?”

“Can I listen to it? Your translator might have got it wrong.”

“I don’t know, shug… I’m already out on a pretty long limb.”

“I wouldn’t ask unless I thought I could help. It might make a big difference.”

She eyed me long and straight.

“What the hell? It’s only another couple years in the hoosegow.”

She dialed a number and spoke briefly before she handed me the receiver.

“They’re teeing it up. That section.”

A faint but angry voice came over the line, speaking rapid-fire Russian full of slang and expletives. Hardly surprising the translation got screwed up. I handed back the phone.

“Well?” she said.

“Konychev used an expression— pizda lasaya . Means ‘cocky cunt,’ more or less. ‘ We won’t get another shot at that cocky cunt. ’ Your translator assumed he was referring to Batkin. He got it wrong. Irina was the target.”

Foos called again.

“New data in the Dick. That cell phone called Leitz an hour ago.”