Simon lowered the pistol to his side. Nikki opened the passenger door. “Unlocked.”
She slid in, leaned over, and unlocked Simon’s door. He climbed in and found the seat adjusted perfectly for his height. He reached below the wheel and yanked out the ignition cables. It had been years since he’d hot-wired a car, but it was like riding a bicycle or kissing a girl. He found the correct wires, peeled off the plastic coatings with his thumbnail, and crossed them.
The engine rattled to life. He touched the gas, and the car shook as if racked by a tubercular fit. “There’s still time to get the Porsche.”
“Drive,” said Nikki.
Five minutes later, they joined the highway. Their train would arrive in Marseille in twenty minutes’ time.
He wondered who would be waiting to greet them.
Chapter 51
It was the moment of truth.
In every operation, there comes a time when one must decide whether to pull the trigger, in metaphorical, and often real, terms. It is the moment after which there is no retreat and the only direction is forward.
Ending the call with the rascal Coluzzi, Vassily Borodin surveyed the bound dossiers arrayed across his desk. Each represented a documented instance of high treason.
The first sheaf bore the title “Kremlin Decree No. 1, 12/31/99.” He opened the cover to read the text as set forth the day the traitor took office. “No corruption charges shall be allowed against outgoing presidents,” it began, before listing in detail all such acts that might qualify as “corruption.”
The decree was also known as the “grand bargain,” the brilliant piece of political chicanery that secured the president his job by granting his predecessor immunity, and then protected himself against all financial misdeeds he might undertake during his own tenure.
For perhaps the thousandth time, Borodin marveled at the man’s audacity. Was there ever a more telling way to begin a regime?
The second dossier, dated 2002, was titled “Nord-Ost.”
The third, dated 2007, discussed the Ivanchuk affair.
The fourth, the invasion of Crimea.
There was nothing damning about the events taken alone. In fact, it was possible to argue that the president’s decisions in each case were made for the benefit of the country. It was impossible, however, to ignore payments to a series of shell corporations—set up in the name of the president’s closest friends and housed in places like Liechtenstein, Panama, and the Cayman Islands—that corresponded precisely to the dates of these events.
The largest of the payments dated to October 2014, one week after the invasion of Crimea, totaled two billion dollars. The recipient was one Platinum Holdings of Curaçao, a shell company set up in favor of one Oleg Kharkov, aged eighty-seven, retired judo instructor and, by odd coincidence, the man who had taught the president during his youth.
Good luck explaining that, mused Borodin, to a group of generals living on a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year.
“But why would anyone pay me to invade Crimea?” the president would surely demand. “Or Ukraine?”
To which Borodin would pass out the documents his men had obtained detailing secret NATO meetings in which top U.S. generals had argued for a substantial increase in military spending to counter the “rising threat in the East.”
“Because,” Borodin planned to explain, “without a threat, the West has no excuse to re-arm itself.”
Some traitors came cheap. Some even betrayed their country for free, so eager were they to do their homeland harm. Not this one. For him, every action was for sale. Every decision carried a price tag. The man viewed the country as his own candy store, which he could sell off piecemeal. Timber for two billion. Aluminum for six. Oil for ten. The highest price was for the store itself, the Rodina, Mother Russia.
Borodin slammed a fist onto his desk. His Russia.
The sum total of these payments came to sixty-one billion dollars. Not bad for a lieutenant colonel passed over three times for promotion and stationed in Dresden of the former German Democratic Republic, a backwater so unimportant its offices had been equipped with computers nearly twenty years old. No wonder the man hated his country.
One day soon he, Vassily Borodin, would present all this information to a group of senior government ministers and high-ranking members of the military. It was imperative his case was airtight. For that, he needed the letter. It was the detonator that would ignite the explosives he’d labored years to gather. With a sweep of his arm, he gathered the folders and replaced them in his private safe.
The moment of truth had arrived.
First a call. “Kurtz. Bring the car around in five minutes.”
“Where are we—”
“Just bring it.”
