Steven Gore - Final Target

“ Da. International Earth Day.”

“What’s Britva mean?”

“Razor. He like cutting people. Maybe revenge for disgusting appearance. Face all twisted.”

Gage pointed at the photos. “What would bring Gravilov and Velichko together?”

“Big money. Maybe even your stock fraud. Velichko is launderer. Offshore. Otherwise I not know. I ask my people. More Russians or Ukrainians in this?”

“A stockbroker named Kovalenko in California. He handled the domestic sale of SatTek stock.”

Slava squinted into the distance for a moment. “I knew a Kovalenko once. In Belarus. Old, old man. No sons.”

The waiter approached with Gage’s meal. Slava covered the photos.

“How this scam work?” Slava asked. “Maybe I learn something.”

While they ate Gage described the SatTek false invoices, the offshore companies, the bank accounts, and the pump and dump. He also described the shooting of Burch and the murders of the Fitzhughs.

“I think Matson is trying to cut a deal with the U.S. Attorney to lay the whole thing off on Burch,” Gage concluded. “And somebody is trying to contain the case by killing off the potential defendants.”

“Strange,” Slava said, expressionless as a shark. “Usually we just kill witness.”

“I didn’t need to hear that.”

“You heard worse.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard worse.” Gage thought for a moment. “There’s one more. A woman Matson is involved with in London. Alla Tarasova.”

Slava drew back. “Tarasova?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her patronymic?”

“Petrovna. Alla Petrovna Tarasova.”

Slava looked at Ivan Ivanovich, then clucked.

“Petrov Tarasov. Got to be father. Budapest. Business there. Sell Ukraine steel. But real money in protection racket and money laundering.” Slava raised his eyebrows. “Maybe even SatTek money. You know skhodka?”

“Sure, the vory-v-zakone internal court.”

“One in Budapest last year. Tarasov was head. I sat. Maybe he use daughter to stay close to guy in scam.” Slava propped his forearms on the table and cupped his hands together. “Maybe Tarasov even make syndicate to do deal. How much money?”

“At least fifty million shares were sold, maybe more. It started at two dollars but topped out at over six.”

“So maybe two-fifty, three hundred million dollars?”

“At least.”

Slava shook his head. “Matson better watch back. When Alla Petrovna tell Poppa time for Matson to go, he go. And that happen right after Gravilov and Tarasov grab Matson money.” He grinned. “Matson think they launder for him, but they take him to cleaners.”

After leaving Slava to finish the menu, Gage walked along Lake Geneva. He needed to get himself oriented in a new SatTek world, one that now contained two gangsters nearly at Slava’s level and linked to Matson, either of whom could’ve reached across the Atlantic and ordered the hit on Jack Burch.

He called Faith. She was driving to UC Berkeley to teach an early morning anthro class.

“Jack opened his eyes,” Faith told him, her voice giddy. “He’s out of the coma. I just got the call.” Gage’s legs wobbled as if a weight was lifted from his shoulders and he wasn’t ready. He stopped, then leaned against a tree. “Graham?”

“I’m still here. I just…”

“I know. He still needs the breathing tube. But he’s responding, so they hope there’s no brain damage. Where are you?”

“Geneva.”

“I can’t wait until you get home.”

“Me too. Tell Jack…”

“I will.”

Gage started walking toward Rue du Leman to find a taxi, wishing he was flying back to San Francisco, then called Spike Pacheco at SFPD Homicide.

“Sorry, man,” Spike said. “I’m no closer to finding the shooter.”

“I don’t think it was road rage. It has to be SatTek and it somehow involves Russians and Ukrainians. I don’t know how it all fits together but they’re everywhere I turn.”

“I’ll throw it in the mix and see if it fizzes,” Spike said. “Anything else new?”

“Yeah. Jack’s back.”

T hey only had eyes for each other,” Mickey told Gage when he slid into the Volvo outside Heathrow Airport after his Swiss Air flight from Geneva. “Two could’ve followed them right into their Guernsey hotel room and they wouldn’t have seen her.”

“How’d they spend the day?”

“They got themselves a room at the Old Government House Hotel in St. Peter Port,” Mickey said, “then met with a lawyer at LaFleur amp; Sedgwick. They finished the day with a late dinner on the waterfront. Two said the owner greeted Matson like a regular and kissed the lovely Alla like she was his own daughter.”

“Trust me. He doesn’t want a daughter like her.”

“Oh no.” Mickey’s head swung toward Gage. “Don’t ruin an old man’s fantasy.”

“Her pop is a crime boss working out of Budapest. She may have fingered my friend and the Fitzhughs.”

Mickey sighed. “So the beauty is a beast.”

“That’s all the more reason Two has to stick with them.”

“She’s gotten the best training the British Army can provide. She’s like a chameleon. If she can’t, no one can.”

Gage spent the next morning in his hotel room reading and responding to e-mail updates from investigators in his office, all the while grateful that he’d been able to recruit men and women with the judgment both to manage their own investigations and to understand how much Gage needed to know in order to manage the firm.

When Mickey arrived for lunch, he reported that Two had followed Matson and Alla from Guernsey to Lugano.

“And get this,” Mickey said, as he held up his forkful of Mediterranean chicken in the Park Lane Brasserie. “Alla was using a Panamanian passport. Two saw it, but couldn’t see the name.”

“Which means she could evaporate any time.”

Mickey nodded, then washed the chicken down with a sip of beer. “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“Research two UK companies. Why don’t you finish up here and I’ll get the information my office sent.”

Mickey grinned. “And the papers you stole from Fitzhugh’s house?”

Gage looked over and winked. “Those, too.”

By 4:40 P. M. the Companies House clerk was alternately glancing at the clock and at Gage. A few more minutes and she wouldn’t have to accept any more file requests, and could gather up her coat and purse in preparation for her escape from the fortresslike repository of the histories of the two million companies registered in the UK.

Preoccupied with the clock, she didn’t see Mickey sliding in just under the wire. “Thanks, darling,” he said, after she accepted the file request. He could see in her smile that she found him too cute to get annoyed at.

Mickey’s cell phone rang. He answered it, then walked over to where Gage sat before a monitor examining scanned corporate filings and financial statements. “Two has an update.”

Gage took the phone and stepped outside the building.

“I think I better break it off,” Two said. “I’ve been around them too long.”

“Where’d they go today?”

“They spent about a half hour at Banca Rober and about an hour at Barclays. Now it looks like they’re on the way to the airport. I’ll probably get burned if I follow them in. They had ‘good job, well done’ looks on their faces when they left the last meeting so they may be on their way back to London.”

At 8:30 P. M., Gage received a call from Hixon One at Gatwick. “The lovebirds have landed.”

F aith was waiting curbside when Gage walked out of the international terminal at San Francisco Airport the next afternoon, a few hours after Matson’s flight had landed. Gage gave her a kiss, then climbed in.