Martin Smith - Three Stations

While Dima gave Arkady a pat-down, a Mercedes S550 limousine caught up. A side window slid down and Sasha Vaksberg begged a few more minutes of Arkady's time.

Arkady was flattered but now he wished he'd brought a gun.

Vaksberg and Anya shared the rear seat with a red-and-white Spartak athletic bag. Arkady and Dima took jump seats facing rear in a conference arrangement. As the car pulled away Arkady felt its extra weight and stiffness of armor, bulletproof glass and run-flat tires. The driver must have pushed a button because the doors had silently locked.

"Could we have some heat back here, Slava? Our friend is a little damp from the rain." Vaksberg turned to Arkady. "So, what did you think of our Club Nijinsky?"

"Unforgettable."

"And the women?" he asked. "Did you find them tall and beautiful enough?"

"Amazons," Arkady said.

Anya said, "It's not by chance. Girls flock to Moscow with romantic ambitions of being models or dancers and Moscow turns them into escorts and whores. We wax them and pluck them and inflate their breasts like balloons. In short, we turn them into freaks of beauty."

"Where are we going?" Arkady asked.

"An excellent question," Vaksberg said. "We could go to my casino on the Arbat. No, that's been closed. Or the casino at Three Stations. No, that's been closed too. In fact, all my casinos have been closed. I was taking in a million dollars a day. Now, thanks to our judo master in the Kremlin, I'm just paying rent."

Arkady appreciated how Vaksberg avoided saying Putin's name. "Are you down to your last five hundred million?"

"You don't have much sympathy."

"Not a great deal. So we're just going to drive?"

"And have a conversation. Am I correct, Anya?"

"I hope so."

Rain drummed on the roof. Sitting backward, looking through heavy rain and tinted glass, Arkady lost track of where he was.

Vaksberg said, "I may be many things but I am not a hypocrite. When the dear old Soviet Union broke up, I made a great deal of money. It was like creating a new jigsaw puzzle out of old pieces. Granted, we took advantage where we could. What great fortune did not at the start? The Medicis', the Rothschilds', the Rockefellers'? You don't think they all had bloody hands at the beginning?"

"So you're aspiring to the elite."

"The very best. But fortune is a bubble unless the state accepts the rights of private property. In an emerging nation-and Russia, believe me, is an emerging nation-that bubble can be easily popped. Who would want to do business in a land where rich men are poisoned or put in cages and shipped to Siberia? We thought we were the darlings of the Kremlin. Now we're all on a little list."

"Who is on the list?" Arkady was curious.

"Us, the so-called oligarchs. We were the idiots who put this lizard in power. Our lizard turned out to be Tyrannosaurus rex. I used to have more than twenty venues in Moscow. Now every single one is dark except the Club Nijinsky. I have chefs, floor managers, croupiers, better than a thousand people I pay every week simply to stand by. The Nijinsky is my last toehold. They will use any excuse to drive me out, and a scandal about a dead girl would do it."

"Too bad. I think she was killed."

"In that case, I want whoever did it."

"Wouldn't that create a scandal?"

"Not if it's done right, not if it's managed properly."

"I don't like where this is going," Anya said.

Vaksberg leaned forward. Close up, he looked tired, skin rough as parchment and beard and brows dyed inky black, an aging devil relying on his makeup. He asked Arkady, "What are you doing here? You're investigating by yourself? I don't see anyone else."

"I'm assisting a detective who's following other leads."

"As an investigator?"

"Yes."

Vaksberg put it gently. "I talked to Zurin."

"Prosecutor Zurin? At this hour?" Arkady had to admit that that possibility had not occurred to him.

"Yes. I apologized for calling him so late but I have never talked to a man more eager to unburden himself. He said that you had no reason to investigate anything because you were under suspension. In fact, he described you as a self-aggrandizing liar with a history of violence. Was Prosecutor Zurin correct? Are you under suspension?"

"Not yet."

"But soon. Zurin was full of information. Did you ever actually shoot a prosecutor?"

"That was a long time ago."

"Have you been shot yourself?"

"Years ago."

"In the brain?"

"In the head."

"Now, there's a fine distinction. Described by Prosecutor Zurin, you are an unstable, brain-damaged impostor. Practically a rabid dog."

"Is that what you are?" Anya asked Arkady.

"No."

Sometimes the sound of the rain was overwhelming, as if a flood bearing houses, trees, cars was at their heels. Dima followed the exchange with his finger on the trigger. Arkady sympathized. People thought that one of the advantages of being fabulously rich was that you could shoot up the soft interior of a bulletproof car-shred the upholstery and soak it in blood-but at close quarters, with the armor and all, ricochets could be fierce.

Arkady said, "Leave the country until it's safe to come back. You're the head of a worldwide organization. I'm sure you have moved enough money overseas to have a fresh croissant and orange juice every morning."

"They've confiscated my passport," Vaksberg said. "I'm trapped."

"Never a good sign," Arkady had to agree.

"I need my passport so that I travel freely and conduct business. Also I insist on being able to return and defend my interests. For that I need intelligent, trustworthy people around me."

"I'm sure you have candidates by the score."

"But they're not here and the ones who are here are intimidated. Why do you think we're meeting here and being half drowned? My office is bugged. My car and phones are compromised. I need someone who knows the law but isn't held back by it. In a sense, Zurin gave you the highest possible recommendation. An investigator who killed a prosecutor. My, my."

Slava steered around a barricade of orange tubs and let the car coast up an unfinished highway overpass, an elegant four-lane curve of concrete that terminated in midair. There were no cement mixers or generators or any other sign of recent activity. The car came to a halt ten meters short of the end of the ramp.

Slava unlocked the doors.

"You want us to get out?" Arkady asked.

Sasha Vaksberg said, "We have umbrellas. You're not afraid of a little rain, are you?"

Anya said, "I'm staying here."

"You will have to forgive me," Vaksberg told Arkady. "I'm paranoid, but when you've been betrayed as many times as I have, you will be paranoid too. It's a sixth sense."

Dima opened an umbrella for Vaksberg as he stepped out of the car. Arkady declined an umbrella and walked up the ramp to a 360-degree view of the city. The lights of the city were as subdued as banked coals. Lightning played in the clouds and it occurred to Arkady that an overpass bristling with steel rebars might not be the safest place to be when great electrical imbalances were being redressed. If he were crisped, he wondered what in life he had left undone. For one thing, he had the key to Victor's Lada. It would fall apart like a wagon in the desert.

Vaksberg tipped his umbrella back to see the rain. "There is no better place for a confidential conversation than outside in the rain."

"Conversation about what?"

"You. You're the man I've been looking for. Intelligent, resourceful and with absolutely nothing to lose."

"That's a harsh assessment."

"It means you're ready for a change of fortune."

"No," Arkady said.

"Wait, you haven't even heard the offer."

"I don't want to hear the offer. Until tomorrow at least, I'm an investigator."