Christopher Reich - The First Billion

The Church of Christ the Savior was Moscow’s latest miracle and the mayor’s crowning achievement. Four inferior onion domes crowned each of the cathedral’s transepts and surrounded a fifth and dominant dome whose enormous golden gilt swirls were visible across central Moscow—a candle’s flame unto the heavens indeed. The church was a larger replica of the original Church of Christ the Savior that had been built on the same site between 1833 and 1883, designed by the architect Konstantin Toms and inaugurated by Czar Alexander II. Stalin in his good graces had torn the church down, melting the gold leaf for the Communist Party’s coffers and using the land to erect one of his “Stalin Skyscrapers,” atop which he wished to mount a ten-story statue of Lenin. When the land proved sandy and unstable, Stalin shelved the skyscraper and built instead Europe’s largest outdoor swimming pool, which he personally christened “the Lido.”

“Konstantin Romanovich Kirov, please step forward.”

Awoken from his daydream, Kirov placed one foot in front of the other and advanced toward the ornate altar.

“In the name of the holy church, I commend your generosity of heart and spirit, and thank you for the wondrous gift to our diocese.” Archbishop Nikitin grasped Kirov’s shoulders and bestowed three kisses upon his cheeks, his long, grizzled beard scratching Kirov’s face. The mayor followed, placing a bronze medal around his neck. “The city of Moscow is grateful, Konstantin Romanovich,” he whispered. “You have done a great service.”

“It is my pleasure.” The mayor might reek of vodka, but at least he was clean-shaven.

The choir chanted. An organ played. The congregation was dismissed.

In front of the church, Kirov posed for photographs with the archbishop and mayor. It was a happy union of commerce, church, and state. Come morning, the beaming threesome would be on the front page of the city’s newspapers.

“Should you need anything, I insist you call me,” the mayor said as the crowd broke up. “We must lunch at the Café Pushkin soon. At my table in the library.”

Kirov smiled dutifully. “I look forward to it.”

The mayor went on talking about his favorite dishes at the tony restaurant, but Kirov only pretended to listen, for a voice in his earpiece had begun speaking. “Excuse me, sir. Rosen here. We have a small problem.”

“Yes?” mumbled Kirov, his chin pushed into his chest. The Russian flag decorating his lapel was, in fact, the microphone of his cellular phone.

“Some news on the Net regarding Mercury. This fellow the Private Eye-PO again. You will not be pleased.”

“I’ll be there at noon,” he said.

The mayor eyed him queerly. “I’m sorry, Konstantin Romanovich, but I am not free at noon. Perhaps next week. And if you can get another icon like that, we’d love to have it in the Novodevichy’s chapel. Name your price.”

We must find him,” Kirov declared. “I want no expense spared.”

“It isn’t a question of expense, I’m afraid,” replied Janusz Rosen. “He leaves us no name, no address.”

The two were standing in Kirov’s spacious office on the second floor of Mercury Broadband’s Moscow headquarters, located in a newly renovated building one block from the Arbat.

“What do you mean, ‘no name, no address.’ Look here”—Kirov brushed a hand against the monitor displaying the Private Eye-PO’s latest attack on Mercury Broadband—“someone is sending us this page, some server at some ISP. He has even given us his E-mail address. Surely we have contacts at Hotmail, if not at Microsoft.”

“I’ve done my best to track him down. He’s sharp. He knows how to make himself invisible. If he wishes to remain anonymous, it will be impossible to find him.”

“Nothing is impossible.” The admission of defeat crouched within the Pole’s words angered Kirov. Ten years ago he was lying on a bunk in Lefortovo Prison, Moscow’s main military jail, surviving on hardtack and water; today he was on the verge of a deal that would make him a billionaire. “If the mouse won’t come to you, offer him some cheese,” he said playfully, advancing on the gangly computer scientist. Then the eyes narrowed and the voice dropped a notch. “Find him, Janusz. Or I’ll find someone who can. Someone a little hungrier for shares in our nation’s most promising public offering. Remind me, will you… are there many U.S. dollar millionaires in Gdansk?”

“No, of course not—I mean yes, I’ll do my…” Rosen raised an acquiescent hand, his words drifting off as he scurried down the hallway.

Kirov shut the door quietly and walked in measured paces to his desk. “Anonymous!” he scoffed, shooting the monitor a killing glance. Who would wish himself such a terrible fate?

A hunched, dark man in a houndstooth jacket sat in a chair in the far corner, mumbling angrily into a cellular phone. Kirov ignored him. Picking up the phone, he dialed an internal number. “Boris,” he said when a male voice answered. “Bring round the cars. We’ve a meeting with the prosecutor general himself in half an hour, and a little bird whispered in my ear that it would be wise to be punctual.”

Hanging up the phone, he collected a sheaf of papers and shoved them into his briefcase. The papers were unimportant, just something to give the case a little heft.

“So?” asked the swarthy guest. He had mournful black eyes and a swirling salt-and-pepper mustache.

“Nothing more than a ‘chat,’” said Kirov, not looking up from his briefcase. “Still, one never knows these days.” It was an understatement. Political winds were swirling in violent, unfamiliar patterns; the government a clumsy Hydra, with each head acting independently of the other. One day the boys in the Kremlin were doing their best to promote the affairs of the country’s more prominent businessmen, the next they were accusing them of every violation in the penal code, littering included.

“Be careful,” ordered the man.

Kirov did his best to smile. “As always.”

Water, Konstantin Romanovich? You look a bit flushed. Something to eat?”

“A sherry would be nice. Perhaps some foie gras.”

“I can offer water and a cracker,” said Yuri Baranov.

“Thank you, but no.” Folding his hands in his lap, Kirov adjusted his immaculate posture and the smile of infinite goodwill that went with it.

For two hours, he had been seated in the same chair listening to Yuri Baranov, the nation’s prosecutor general, rant about the sum of one hundred twenty million dollars missing from the coffers of Novastar Airlines. Theft of government property. Illegal exportation of hard currency. Grand larceny. Fraud. Even treason. The accusations went on and on and Kirov was quickly growing tired of them. How many times could a man say he was sorry, but he had no idea what had happened to the money?

“Let us proceed on a new tack,” declared Baranov grimly, selecting a document from one of the bottomless stacks that littered his desk. “May I ask if the name Futura Holding conjures any memories?”

“Futura Holding, you say? I’m sorry, but it is not a name to me.”

“So I may take it that if you were listed as a director of the company, it would come as a surprise?”

“I am a businessman. I sit on the board of a great many companies. It’s difficult to keep track.”

Baranov leaned forward in his seat and offered him the document. He was seventy if a day, a gray, stiff man in an ill-fitting suit with yellowing teeth and a well-worn expression of permanent outrage. A poster boy for the old regime, thought Kirov, hating and fearing him in equal measure.

Baranov was known to every Russian over the age of fifty as the man who had tried the arch-spy Oleg Penkovsky, the GRU colonel and war hero who had fed his nation’s secrets to JFK and the Americans over an eighteen-month period in 1961 and 1962. Kirov could still remember the fuzzy black-and-white images of Baranov standing on the steps of the Lubyanka calling for Penkovsky to confess his crimes, name his co-conspirators, and publicly apologize to his countrymen if he wished to receive the Rodina’s mercy.