John Lescroart - The First Law

He'd wanted the Ark now for a couple of years, and since he'd learned of John Holiday's interference with his business in the past four months, he was more motivated than ever to take control of the place. Put the son of a bitch back on the street where he belonged. Because of its central downtown location, with any kind of attractive atmosphere it would draw heavily from the police, legal and financial communities, so it was a natural fit for his operation. But this lawsuit didn't look like it was going away anytime soon-Dick Kroll wasn't having any luck with Freeman and Hardy-and anything Wade could do to cut into their enthusiasm was to the good.

Not incidentally, if he could get his hands on the Ark, it might also finally provide a safe and comfortable living for the son of his little sister Rosie. Nick Sephia had become a trial for all of them. He'd proven his loyalty to Wade on several occasions, true, but his judgment often got him into trouble, as it had with the LaBonte girl. Wade was hoping that with seasoning, age and experience, Nick could become an asset as a bar manager, instead of a liability as muscle- he didn't have the self-discipline that muscle called for.

Also, truth be told, Wade felt guilty about Nick, who'd grown up without a father because of him. Twenty-some-odd years ago, when Wade had realized that Sol was hitting Rosie, he had beaten his brother-in-law to within an inch of his life, then given him the option of leaving town or dying. Nick's father had made the smart choice.

Now, near eight o'clock on this Friday night, Wade was in a tuxedo, waiting for Claire to finish dressing and come downstairs. He sat in a folding chair hunched over a large jigsaw puzzle that he was working on at a card table in the enclosed porch at the back of his house. A light rain still fell just outside the windows.

He usually worked on his puzzles for the half hour before dinner after he got home. It took about two weeks to finish one of these big ones, after which Claire would transfer the completed puzzle to a plywood backing and glue it down. She told him she donated the things to shelters or schools or something, but Wade couldn't really imagine anyone really wanting one of them. He thought it possible that Claire simply threw most of them away and told him the story about giving them to charity to spare his feelings.

Wade didn't really care.

The joy was in the doing of them, and this one was particularly challenging. Twelve hundred pieces. The picture on the front showed nothing but the water in a swimming pool-blues and shadows. He had most of the border now, and was about a third done. Suddenly, a five-piece segment fell into place and he sat back, pleased.

"Claire!"

"Two minutes," she chimed from upstairs.

He frowned. Two meant ten. Standing up, he pulled at his bow tie and walked back to the kitchen, where on one of the stools by the counter the paper lay open to the Metro section. And as so much did-except for his jigsaw puzzles-the story brought him back to business. And again, to Nick.

The article was about the new Russian Kamov Ka-32 helicopter that one of Wade's relatively recently acquired clients, Georgia AAA Diamond, had purchased as a gift for the San Francisco Police Department. The deal was that, in return, the jewelers could use the chopper to transport their gem imports, with police guard, directly to and from the corporate jet at the airport in south San Francisco to the city.

Here was a nice picture of Dmitri Solon, the company's thirty-four-year-old CEO. He was posing by the helicopter with Mayor Washington, Police Chief Dan Rigby, some city supervisors, and members of the California legislature. It was amazing, Wade thought with some pride, that he and Solon had been able to create such a substantial krysha- Russian for "roof"-as protection for Georgia AAA in such a short time.

Wade knew Solon well by now. He was a smooth operator who spoke nearly perfect English. The protege of Severain Grotny, head of the Ministry of Precious Metals and Gems in Russia, Solon had ostensibly come to San Francisco with a twofold mission-to open a state-of-the-art diamond cutting and distribution center and, not incidentally, to make inroads into the international monopoly of the De Beers diamond cartel.

Wade couldn't help smiling as he scanned the platitudes in the article, for he knew the truth about Georgia AAA, and this was that Solon and Grotny were using the business as a front to systematically loot nothing less than the national treasury of Russia. He knew this because about eighteen months ago, before Solon had even opened his doors, Wade had signed him up as a client in another of his beats. It hadn't taken him three months to become suspicious of some of the activity he witnessed, some of the questionable personnel on the periphery of things.

So he set up special surveillance teams and about two months later, he and his nephew Nick found a pretext to stop one of Solon's imported Russian employees as he left the building one evening. He was carrying a bag of uncut diamonds worth, Wade later discovered, approximately fourteen million dollars. Rather than report the incident to San Francisco police, Wade brought him first back to Solon.

The ensuing discussion was more than enlightening. It was breathtaking.

Once it became clear that Wade's agenda was cooperation rather than interference, Solon seemed almost relieved to be able to explain. The financing for Georgia AAA, about $170 million, had come directly from the Russian treasury in the form of diamonds, jewelry and silver, but mostly from gold, five tons of gold-and most of that investment grade commemorative coins from the 1980 Olympics. This had all come under diplomatic pouch, Grotny's pouch, on Lufthansa Airlines. After it had arrived in this country, Solon arranged for its delivery to Premier Metals, the top gold distributor on the West Coast. Premier then melted down the coins and established the Georgia AAA account, based on ounces of gold on deposit with them.

With his $170 million line of credit, Solon had gone a little wild. Although it was on the market for a mere five million dollars, he paid eleven million for the four-story building that would house his new Diamond Center. At about the same time, he spent three million dollars for his rambling mansion in the hills of Kensington; $800,000 for two cigarette boats; more than a million for a Rolls-Royce and two Aston Martins; and around eighteen million for a Gulfstream twin-engine corporate jet. There were other acquisitions as well-condos at Lake Tahoe, a small Napa winery, a chain of Bay Area gas stations. All were intended to bolster the image Solon wanted to convey-he had unlimited money and extraordinary connections.

Wade looked down at the newspaper photograph again. The young Russian entrepreneur had certainly done himself proud.

But he couldn't have done it without Wade Panos, who'd helped him build his krysha, extended Solon's connections through Wade's own to the political elite of the city and even the state. And it had all begun the night that he and Nick had busted the messenger with the bag of diamonds. Wade had asked Solon this simple question: If Georgia AAA was in the business of cutting and selling diamonds, why was he sending fourteen million dollars' worth of them away? The answer was that only a fraction of the diamonds imported from Russia ever made it to the floor of Georgia AAA's high-tech cutting room showcase. Most were sent to a sister Georgia AAA office in Antwerp, where disguised with false invoices from Angola and Zaire, they were then, ironically, sold to De Beers for cash, which was then wired either back to San Francisco or to Grotny in Moscow.

Essentially, it was a money-laundering scheme through which diamonds from the Russian National Treasury could be dumped into the world market and converted to cash. The San Francisco Georgia AAA Diamond Center, for all of its grandeur and visibility, was in fact merely a front to legitimize an immense traffic in unregulated diamonds. And, established in the center of one of his beats, it had fallen into the lap of Wade Panos.