Аннотация: New York, Paris, London, Moscow... The name of Nadezhda Smirnova, a socialite, is at the center of many international scandals. World tabloids are full of information about her. Who is she?.. An innocent victim or a dangerous criminal?
Watch my new video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fz2MW8D8eDw - Universal battle in the style of Wing Chun.
PART ONE
PARTY GOLD
NEW YORK. OUR DAYS...
Another hot June night was at its height... The canary yellow disk of the moon hanging in the inky sky was reflected in the greenish waters of the East River and fell on the fancifully curved arches of the George Washington Bridge. Twinkling lights of the billboards lit up the way for the belated passersby, who were hurrying from the stations of the already shut down subway to their apartments and townhouses. Luxurious limos were pulling over near the restaurants and night clubs of the upscale Fifth Avenue. New York was falling asleep after a hard day at work. Lights were going out in the windows, and only the 150-feet glowing crystal of the Statue of Liberty, towering above the great open spaces of the Ocean, was still peering into the hazy distance with billions of stars scattered all over it.
That summer night, the luxury apartment of one of the top managers of the investment bank Morgan Stanley was filled with a lively buzz of his chatting guests. Manhattan noises are almost never heard here on the thirty fifth floor of the sky-high Trump World Tower located in one of the most desirable neighborhoods of the city.
A carelessly dressed young man, utterly out of keeping with the place, was standing by the window overlooking the Upper Bay dazzling with the Brooklyn lights. His ruddy tie loosened, he kept his cell phone pressed tightly against his ear, repeating the same phrase anxiously, 'Come on... pick it up... come on!'
His impatient look would change into a mix of fear and irritation whenever any of the guests passed him by, casting an indifferent glance at him.
Finally, something clicked in his cell phone and a discontented voice came through, 'What the hell... at 2 a.m....'
Interrupting his interlocutor, the young man covered his mouth with his palm and whispered quietly,
'Shut up and listen, Jerry... she's here!'
'...Who she?' the voice asked with perplexity.
'What do you mean who? Smirnova, dammit!' the young man explained impatiently.
After a moment's silence, the voice let forth a stream of oaths mixed with ecstatic exclamations. The young man frowned. He was tapping the phone on his lap nonchalantly, waiting for the voice to calm down, and once it did, said,
'Are you done?'
'Well, then listen... I wasn't meant to be here. Our old grumbler needs information for this Sunday's issue of the magazine, so he sent me here to talk with Richard Grant. I didn't make it to Grant but half an hour ago I see... Smirnova herself come out of the elevator with that manager of hers... you know, good-looking man. My eyes popped out of my head! We've been looking to get hold of her at one of the VIP social events, but here she is! Now they're at Grant's office. Talking about something...'
Another stream of ecstatic exclamations came out of the phone.
Interrupting, the young man continued,
'I'm calling you why, get the cameraman here. I've captured her on my phone, but you know it's going to be of poor quality. Plus, what if I get to interview her, you never know...'
The voice responded with a hoarse laughter.
'Don't you laugh at me...' the young man objected in an injured voice. 'She's here with no bodyguards and I don't think Grant would want to force me out. He doesn't need a scandal right now. He has to be nice to the press...'
The voice fell into silence skeptically.
'All right... I have to go,' the young man hurried off. 'They're coming out. Come on, get the cameraman here. You can come over if you want to. Well, talk to you later...'
The young man hurried towards the center of the hall. While passing by a tall, elegantly dressed young woman, he slipped awkwardly and grabbed at her hand trying not to fall. The woman started and a small purse dropped out of her hands.
'My deepest apologies!' the young man exclaimed in confusion.
He picked up the purse off the parquet floor and, handing it over to the woman, smiled guiltily.
'Sorry again. That was embarrassing...' he said.
Her big blue eyes sweeping over the man, she smiled, too.
'Don't worry. That's okay.'
The woman turned to a broad-shouldered man in a tailcoat with a distinguished Roman profile and a touch of noble grey hair and, apparently continuing their interrupted conversation, asked,
'So you think I should accept his offer? I think it's risky.'
'Excuse me...' she heard someone say from behind her.
The woman turned around. The young man was still standing next to her.
'Excuse me,' he repeated. 'Would it be okay if I asked you for an autograph?'
The woman's eyebrows quirked up.
'An autograph?' she sounded confused.
'Yes, an autograph!' the young man exclaimed. 'I know you. You're Nadezhda Smirnova! I've read an article about you in Cosmopolitan...'
The woman frowned discontentedly.
'Sir, you must be taking me for someone else.'
'No way! It's you... I saw your photographs, too.'
The woman exchanged glances with the man she was talking to and, upon receiving a nod of approval from him, uttered in a tired voice,
'Okay, you're right. Where do you want me to sign an autograph for you?'
The young man pulled a business card out of his pocket swiftly.
'Here you are...'
While signing it, the woman shook her head and looked at the young man satirically.
'You're a reporter with the New York Post... and all this show was to just obtain an interview from me?'
A shy smile appeared on the young man's face again.
'Seriously, I feel bad asking you...'
The woman glanced at the man again.
'Well...' she sighed. 'You've chosen the right time. I'm actually ready to give one...'
THE CRIMEA. TWENTY YEARS AGO...
Four people were standing on a small square surrounded by a metal fence. Despite the exhausting, hot summer weather, three of them wore black coveralls and bulletproof vests trimmed with greenish cloth. The forth one, a broad-shouldered middle-aged man with a face tanned to a deep brown, had a combat uniform of the Soviet Army with no badges of rank on.
'I want to say it again!' the man said in a hoarse low bass. 'It's a fight and whatever happens we...' he made a short but, judging by his intonation, very meaningful pause, 'are not going to interfere. All you can count on while down there in the bunker is you yourself.'
He fell silent, took his service cap off his clean-shaven head and wiped his heavily sweating forehead with the back of his hand. His face expression betrayed that it was difficult for him to say those words. He pondered for a moment and said,
'You will go to the bunker separately... each following his way. Three 'puppets' will oppose you. All unarmed. Given that one of you is a woman, we've selected physically weak convicts. It's the first time they take part in a fight like this. So they shouldn't be a problem for you. Questions?'
The people in the coveralls looked at each other and one of them, who was probably in charge, a stout man of about thirty years of age, replied loudly and confidently, 'The task's clear, Colonel!'
A woman in her late twenties, good-looking and heavily built, with a mass of thick chestnut-colored hair, and a tall broad-shouldered young man with a face as focused and sullen as that of the colonel, kept silent. The colonel shrugged his shoulders, shook hands with all three of them and, wishing them good luck, headed briskly to a nearby building. About to go inside, he stopped and turned around, his eyes fixed on the woman. Then he gave a deep sigh and, putting the cap on, disappeared behind an iron-clad door.
'Let's go...' the brunet commanded after the colonel vanished from view. He tried to remain calm but the tone of his voice betrayed his unease. He pulled a black woolen mask over his face and headed towards the bunker's entrance, trying not to step on pieces of broken glass scattered all over the asphalt.
'I go first, you follow me,' he passed a remark, switched his torch on and dived into a narrow well manhole, chill and dunk creeping from within. The threesome came down the rusty spiral staircase to find themselves in a scantily lit underground passage. They saw three black tunnel entrances at the end of the passage. Pointing his torch at them, the brunet frowned in disgust.
'The smell's horrible!' he grumbled taking a sniff and noticing a stream of dark fluid flowing out of the right tunnel. It resembled liquid dung. 'Not only do we have to risk our lives... but we also have to get all dirty.'
He pulled a wry face and looked at the woman.
'Which way's yours, Captain?'
Looking over the damp moldy walls of the tunnel, the woman shrugged her shoulders indifferently.
'Does it matter which way to go? All tunnels lead to the same end. If you say, I'll take the right one. Unlike you, I'm not afraid of dirt.'
Upon hearing the woman's reply, the brunet curled his lips.
'May I interrupt, Major?' the young man who was standing next to the woman said. 'Let me take the right tunnel. You will take the left one... and the captain... she can take the one in the middle, it's safer that way.'
'Let the seniors choose first, Lieutenant. I can take care of myself,' the woman said discontentedly and cast a glance at the young man which clearly revealed that the two were close and had known each other for a long time.
'Sure you can...' he replied in confusion. 'The thing is when I was there last time, it was dry, while the others were flooded up to the elbows. If you want to take a swim, let's switch.'
The woman opened her mouth and was about to say something - judging by her face, she wanted to say something sharp and offensive - when the major cut in.
'I find the lieutenant's suggestion quite reasonable,' he said. 'When we get into the bunker, we won't have time to switch places, and you'd better be in between, Captain. Anything can happen in that bunker...' the brunet licked his dry lips nervously. 'To be honest, I don't like this whole idea with the drill. Nobody notified us about it. And they changed the location and placed as many as three 'puppets' in there... Isn't it weird? Well, all right... they know better how to make us a Rambo.'
He made sure his bulletproof vest was okay, set the mask straight, waved goodbye and, bending down, stepped into the left tunnel.
'Hold on...' the lieutenant whispered and put his hand on the woman's shoulder. She gave him a surprised look and, apparently misinterpreting his gesture, turned away to the wall and replied in a restrained tone,
'It's not a good time, Dima. We should meet after the drill and talk everything through.'
They were standing side by side, almost touching each other. The lieutenant gently hugged the woman around her shoulders and looked in her face. Hatchet, with wide slightly protruding cheekbones and a pointed, cut off chin, it was hardly pretty, and the only engaging feature was its big eyes with tints of metallic blue and grey. There was some enigmatic magic in them. They were shining from within. The eyes were calling, attracting, luring... He could see wisdom, kindness and that fortitude in them which only very strong and persistent people have.
The lieutenant gazed intently in her face. Then, clenching his teeth, he said as if with an effort,
'We may not meet...'
'Why?' the woman raised her eyebrows.
'You both will be killed down there...' he replied very quietly. 'I've been told the 'puppets' would have the arms.'
'What're you talking about? Who you?..' the woman didn't understand.
'You and the major.'
'And you?' the woman asked in confusion. 'You can handle 'puppets' easily, don't you? With or without arms.'
The lieutenant's face darkened.
'I was ordered not to interfere...' he responded, his voice dull with excitement. 'And then I have to liquidate the condemned so they don't know where the shanks come from.' He read a mute question in the woman's eyes. 'They don't trust you anymore. There's no proof of your betrayal other than that video recording. Yet they decided to do away with you without any fuss.'
The woman looked aside and was silent for a few long minutes. Then she shook her head, gave a sad laugh and whispered,
'Maybe, it's better this way... I'm so tired of all these inspections, questions... I wish it was over soon.'
Exhausted, she leaned her back against the wall.
The lieutenant started, as if her words hit him hard.
'Natasha, how can you say that?' he said with pain in his voice. 'They've set you up. They use you so the real 'sleeper' in Moscow won't be traced.'
The woman sighed deeply.
'Unfortunately, I can't prove it...' she said sadly and after a moment's delay asked, 'Okay... I understand why me, but the major?'
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.
'Hard to say... He's just returned from the States. He brought money there...'
'All right, Dima,' the woman waved her hand hopelessly. 'If that's what they want, we're powerless. We both know that.'
She took a mask from the lieutenant's hands, pulled it over her head and, readjusting the straps of her bulletproof vest, slipped into the darkness of the tunnel. Following her with his eyes, the lieutenant sank slowly on the floor, his back pressed against the ice-cold wall. His shoulders and hands were trembling. He was sitting there motionless for a minute or two. Then, pulling himself together, he got up to his knees and crawled to the right tunnel.
As he lifted the floor slab and cautiously looked in, he realized everything was over... Standing on their knees, two young men with necks as strong as an ox, were searching the major's bloody body. The third one, an aging, balding man who was apparently older than his fellow convicts, holding a short awl-like knife at the woman's throat, was trying to take the torn, bloodstained coverall off her. His hands were shaking and he had trouble unfastening the small buttons on her waist. The woman was wheezing and barely resisted him, perhaps drained of strength by her lacerated wound.
The lieutenant forced the slab aside, jumped into the bunker and froze, his eyes fixed on the woman's face. Unlike the two other tunnels, the tunnel he was crawling in had an exit not in the bunker's side wall, but on its bottom, so his emergence was sudden.
'Ha! Look, we've got another visitor,' one of the convicts exclaimed in amazement, seeing the lieutenant. He picked up a bloody shank off the floor and, playing with it, walked towards him. 'You go on, I can take care of him myself...' he said to the man who had jumped up to follow him. 'You know all good things come in threes!'
Shuffling up to the lieutenant, the man wiped the blade on a greasy sleeve of his tarpaulin jacket. It was reddish black with blood. Then, screwing up his eyes, he glanced over him with contempt.
'Well, boy...' he croaked, grinning. 'You've shitted yourself already! Don't be scared... You'll be dead with one stroke. You won't suffer long.'
To the approving jeers of his friends, he took a step forward, crouched and, turning his body sharply round, jerked his hand with the shank up archwise.
He did not kill anybody with one strike. Nor did he with two... His opponent bent down and, when the hand with the shank swept over his head like a storm, caught it by the elbow swiftly, swung his arm, and hit him on his lower jaw. The convict's head twitched, opening up his Adam's apple and chin covered with red bristles. He staggered and started falling backwards, but his opponent did not let him fall... He brought his right hand to his hip, breathed out sharply, and pierced the convict's belly with his stretched fingertips, almost the whole palm plunged inside. Red blood started spouting like a fountain from the wound, staining the walls and the floor of the bunker. The 'puppet' turned white, his mouth was open. He staggered and, pressing his ripped up stomach with his bloody fingers, began sinking slowly on the floor. The death agony lasted a few seconds. Then his body stretched in a convulsion, splashing the pool of blood on the walls, as if saying its farewells to the life which was abandoning it, and quietened down for ever.
'What the hell...' a disturbed voice broke the silence. 'Hey, Bugor, that bitch's knocked Valet off,' the convict, who was sitting near the major's dead body, sprung to his feet.
'I see...' the balding convict cast a long glance at the lieutenant and ordered in an unassured voice, 'Buben, take the iceman. But be careful, you see, the bastard's kicking.'
The second convict approached the lieutenant with less confidence. Throwing the shank from one hand to the other nervously, he stopped about two steps away from him. His opponent was standing still. Smiling contemptuously, he was staring in his face. Finally, Bugor lost his patience.
'What the f*ck, Buben!' he said lisping and swallowing his words. 'If you haven't shitted yourself yet, go relieve yourself. You embarrass me! What was I teaching you...'
Bugor spitted in the corner angrily.
Upon hearing those words, Buben began flaring up, until he got up enough nerve and threw himself forward. With a loud cry, he made a maneuver and, drawing a wide arch in the air with his shank, he stabbed the lieutenant in the stomach as hard as he could. His enemy's shadow flashed just a few inches from the deadly blade and he even felt it penetrating something soft and shapeless. He barked cheerfully, 'Yes!' but had to cut his exclamation short, as he saw the shank piercing only a bit of the soiled coverall. Suddenly, his hand hang in midair helplessly. He tottered on the floor which was sticky and slippery with blood. Losing his balance, he almost fell down. A hard slap across his face stopped his body from falling. For a moment, he saw a bright light flash and then, with his arms spread out, he collapsed on the wall.
The convict was unconscious for a second or two. He got up, even though he was weak in the knees. When his dizziness passed and the lieutenant's face stopped being blurred, he rushed forward again. This time he managed to come up to his enemy. The lieutenant crouched abruptly and knocked the convict down with his foot.
'Watch out, bitch! I'm coming for you!' the convict croaked, getting up from the floor, his heart overflown with rage.
Waving his shank, he rushed towards the lieutenant again. His hand slipped up. The same moment the lieutenant grabbed it and the convict fell down like a ninepin. His elbow joint cracked, tearing the tendons.
'A-a-ah!..' the heart-ending scream rent the air in the bunker.
The lieutenant picked up the shank off the floor and in a jerk pierced the convict's hip. Twisted by an intolerable pain, he screamed so loud that Bugor felt like his ears were stuffed up.
'Why're you torturing people, bitch?' he shouted loudly and flattened his sweaty back against the bunker wall.
Sitting next to the unconscious woman, he held a knife at her throat, feverishly trying to understand what was going on...
All their agreements were being broken! That morning, a local 'boss' offered them to stab two suckers during a fight in the bunker. This is why they were given two shanks and a knife. They were promised a six-month prolongation to their confinement. Everything was going as planned... However, one of them turned to be a young and rather good-looking girl, which by the way was their jackpot. Convicts rarely get to have anything like that. And suddenly comes a third one... and the chaos begins!
The lieutenant threw the shank aside and came up to Bugor.
'Your stooge is a dead man anyway,' he said quietly. 'But we can talk face-to-face, without witnesses.'
'Witnesses, seriously?' Bugor glanced over the bunker like a haunted beast at bay.
'Audibility's good here,' the lieutenant explained and nodded towards the tunnels.
He glowered at the convict for a while, then readjusted his mask and said,
'I have an offer...'
'I'm not going to have anything to do with you, bitches, anymore!' Bugor's face became all red. 'You finished off all my buddies.'
The lieutenant smiled ruefully.
'I can't help it. Rules are rules. Who knows a lot, doesn't live long...'
'What do we have to do with this?' Bugor was perplexed.
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.
'It means you know something you shouldn't.'
Bugor gave him a look full of hatred.
'Go to hell with your secrets...'
'Calm down!' the lieutenant interrupted him. 'I guess you've already understood that after you kill those two I will kill you, so nobody finds out where the shanks came from. But I don't want her to die...' the lieutenant nodded towards the unconscious woman.
Bugor grinned scornfully.
'Your chick?'
'It's not about it...' the lieutenant frowned. 'I owe her. She saved my life once and I always pay my debts.'
He glanced at the convict who was lying by the wall. His cries were not as loud and he started to faint.
'We don't have much time...' the lieutenant warned. 'So, here's my offer... I want to exchange a life for a life. You don't touch her and I don't touch you. Agreed?'
Bugor scratched his unshaven chin.
'Aren't you afraid that your bosses won't be happy about it?' he asked with a grin after a long pause.
The lieutenant winced.
'No, I'm not. It's my problem. It's up to you. If you agree, you'll live another half a year. If you don't...' he cast at Bugor a look which boded nothing good, 'you won't get out of here alive and will be dying slowly, longer than them...' the lieutenant pointed at the wall pre-mortal moans were coming from.
A long silence fell upon the room.
'Why would I want to live such a live?' Bugor said, spitting on the bloody floor with disdain. 'If not today, in half a year your buddies will finish me off. And maybe use torture... And this woman of yours must be guilty of something if they want her dead.'
The lieutenant became gloomy.
'She's not guilty of anything...' he said with sorrow in his voice. 'She's been set up by someone more powerful. And you don't know what your future will be. The country's a mess right now and as far as I know you've got death penalty for an economic crime. Maybe, you'll avoid brilliant green on your forehead.'
The lieutenant looked intently in the convict's eyes again and once the latter lowered his knife, hit him on his temple with the side of his hand, making sure the blow was hard, but not fatal...
NEW YORK. OUR DAYS...
They settled in a winter garden in the shadows of two emerald-green magnolias twined round with Jamaican fern sprouts.
'Let me introduce you to my friend,' the woman pointed at a man who was sitting next to her. 'This is Michel Noirey. He manages my assets.'
The man bowed his greying head with dignity.
'That's it?' the young man asked, looking intently at him.
A barely noticeable smile flitted across her face.
'That's it...' smoothing her hair, she responded with a tinge of sadness in her voice.
The young man took a portable player out of his pocket, turned it on and asked his first question,
'To begin with, Miss Smirnova, I have to ask you some standard questions. How...' he became confused not knowing how to put it.
Seeing his confusion, the woman decided to help him out.
'You must want to know how old I am. So, I don't keep it a secret. I'm turning thirty shortly. So, you can still call me by my name... Nadezhda.'
'Nadjezhda...' the young man repeated. 'Are you married?'
'Since magazines call me one of the richest single women in the word, this question seems unnecessary.'
The young man nodded.
'Good answer! As far as I know, you have a French citizenship and reside in the French Riviera, although you are often spotted in London and here in New York...'
'I like travelling.'
'Plus you have all means for that.'
'Yes...' the woman confirmed. 'I can afford it. I inherited my fortune from my ex-husband Vakhtang Gongadze six years ago. He was a very successful businessman in Russia.'
Hearing the last name 'Gongadze,' the young man got excited.
'They say you're friends with his children, especially the elder one, Alexander?'
After a moment's thinking, the woman responded,
'Yes... we're good friends.'
'They also say he has feelings for you. Is that true?'
The woman became confused.
'Ask him.'
'Did he propose to you?' the young man persisted.
The woman lowered her eyes.
'Okay, let's skip it.'
The young man looked at her meaningfully.
'Alexander Gongadze is a very powerful man. He is a personal adviser of the President of Georgia. He is highly valued by the international financial community.'
'I know,' the woman replied. 'Back in the day, I was a co-founder of the bank which he now owns and today I'm one of its shareholders.'
The young man became thoughtful.
'Miss Smirnova, here's my last question...' he readjusted the player on his lap. 'You've always been far from the world of politics and business and you, a famous socialite, were a favorite of fashion magazines. What brought you here?'
The woman and the man exchanged glances and the woman, trying to find the right words, said.
'Although I've been living in France for many years and I'm a citizen of this country, I've always cared about my motherland that is Russia. Now it's undergoing great changes and I really want to help it. I owe Russia a lot!'
WASHINGTON. SIX MONTHS AGO...
FBI special agent Michael Douglas has never been a dreamer. Young as he was, only twenty eight years old, he learned to take a sober view of things and, making an important decision, always rely on common sense rather than intuition or luck. Born in a family of modest means, he always solved his problems himself, without seeking help or advice from anybody. To enter Columbia University, he had to serve in the US Marine Corps for two years and roast himself in Iraq and Afghanistan. He graduated from the faculty of law three years ago and was going to become a lawyer. However when he had a chance to work for the FBI, he decided to go for it. Although working with the FBI was less rewarding financially and had fewer prospects than working for some private company, it was secure and predictable above all, while unfortunately he had to deal with all kinds of unexpected contingencies too many times in his life; secondly, he always associated becoming an FBI agent with joining some inner circle of the government.
He passed both a psychological test and a lie detector test, but when it came to his university study, the selection committee had doubts. Michael still could not understand why, among two dozen candidates, the committee chose him. Perhaps, it was because of his college boxing championship title and service in the Marine Corps, but nevertheless a week after he passed his entrance exams, the entered the FBI building in Quantico. He had to work hard there, too. He was a good shooter and physically fit, but had problems with criminalistics. That is why his placement in the FBI main office after graduation was a big surprise for him.
Douglas parked his car on one of the streets adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue and, passing by the former Ministry of Press building, headed to the FBI headquarters. He walked through a metal detector and showed his pass to a guard, crossed a well-deep inside yard with dozens of pictures of the FBI founding father J. Edgar Hoover and walked up to the third floor. Hardly had he sat down in the chair when an in-house telephone rang.
'Hello, Douglas speaking...' he picked up the phone.
'Hello, Michael!' responded Douglas's department manager, a forty-year-old sturdy fellow and tireless womanizer Robert Hoffman. 'How're you doing?'
'I'm good, sir... Thank you...'
'I'm glad I found you, Michael...' Hoffman was speaking with someone on another phone. 'There's work for you, so I'm waiting for you in my office. And bring two coffees from McDonald's, will you? I didn't have breakfast today.'
Douglas slipped on his blazer, locked the office door, grabbed two coffees, and walked up to the fifth floor the managers' offices were located on. Several agents from the same department as Douglas were waiting by Hoffman's door with papers to sign.
'Oh, Michael, come on in...' Hoffman's rosy-cheeked, tanned and somewhat equine face showed up in the doorway.
He took Douglas by the hand and brought him to a table heaped up with newspapers and computer disks.
'Have a seat...' Hoffman opened up his coffee and took a few quick sips.
Douglas sat down in the chair with a notebook on his laps to listen to what Hoffman had to say. Hoffman came to their department just a few months ago. He replaced the FBI veteran Eddie Stone who had run the department for nearly fifteen years and enjoyed indisputable authority with his employees. Stone was in his late fifties, so he was pensioned off his cushy job when the FBI leadership were asked to find a good job for a certain person. Douglas knew that Hoffman got the job thanks to his wife who was friends with some bigwig from the Obama administration.
'Listen, Michael, here's the thing... Yesterday, the director asked me to figure out something.'
Hoffman opened his safe and took out a heavy folder with some documents. He pulled out a few prints and handed them over to Douglas.
'Our guys in Langley discovered another laundry of the Columbian drug cartel and the names of a few well-known New York financiers popped up. The file has their names,' Hoffman tapped on one of the prints with his finger. 'Our boss asked us to look into one of them...' Hoffman paused trying to recall the name, but then read it out, 'Alexander Gon-gad-ze... Do we have anything on him? Study who he spends time with. Maybe, you'll find something interesting, although...' Hoffman waved his hand hopelessly, 'I think it's a waste of time. The CIA's been investigating him for half a year now but they've got nothing. Almost all New York financial heavyweights are mixed up in such criminal conspiracies, so don't waste too much time on him. Make up our conclusion. I'll read it and give it to the director. We've got other things to do. If you have no questions, you can go.'
Douglas returned to his office, put the folder in his safe and, rubbing the face with his hands, sat down at his computer. The work promised to be long and boring.
His eyes kept on the ceiling, he tried to remember the password to access the FBI database. When he realized he could not do it, he started opening his desk drawers. When he finally found a travel brochure on Macao, which he happened to visit last year, and leafed through it, he found the required number and letter combination. It was written with a pen on the last page of the brochure.
Douglas entered the database and looked through the files it had. To his request for Alexander Gongadze's immediate environment, several color photographs appeared on the screen. Douglas looked at them with interest. He saw a beautiful young woman.
'Dammit, she's gorgeous!' he shook his head. 'Where do they meet them?' Douglas thought, recalling the face and body of his wife who got obese on fast food and Coke.
He read the captions under the photograph.
'So... Nadezhda Smirnova,' the words sounded weird to Douglas. 'Born, studied, lived...' he looked through her biography quickly trying to remember as much of it as he could.
As Douglas was winding up studying the files and was about to go have lunch, the telephone rang again. He picked it up and heard Hoffman's voice.
'Michal, it's good you answered my call. I've got guys from Langley in my office. I'm sending them over to you...' short beeps followed.
'Damn!' Douglas cursed involuntary. 'Why now?'
He glanced at his watch... it was 2.30 p.m. 'If the meeting doesn't end quickly, I'll be left with no lunch,' he thought and, taking off his blazer, sat back in his chair. A minute later, they knocked on the door.
'Come in!' Michael shouted unhappily.
Two men entered the room. He knew one of them - Richard Broddy from the European CIA. As for the other one, an elderly man whose face was all covered with scars, he saw him for the first time in his life.
'Albert Lisovsky!' he introduced himself politely with a strong Slavic accent.
When the agents sat down in chairs, Douglas switched on the air conditioner, put Hoffman's folder on the table and looked at them intently, as if inviting them to engage in a conversation.
His legs crossed, Richard Broddy was relaxed. Staring at the ceiling, he was pinching his reddish musketeer beard melancholically with his fingertips. The other one sat by the window. Frozen in a position of high tension, he readjusted his large sunglasses.
'Well, gentlemen, what can I do for you?'
Douglas tried to sound confident, the way all detectives who have been with the FBI for a long time always do.
'Here's the thing, Michael...' Richard Broddy began calmly, shifting his eyes from the ceiling to Douglas and making himself comfortable in his chair. Exercising his rights as an old acquaintance of Douglas, he called Michael by his name. 'Last year our investigation led us to an arms dealer, one of the 'latinos,' who was contacted by a well-known local financier. You must have come across his name in the file already. He's of Russian origin. Now lives in France but once in a while shows up here in New York...'
Broddy paused, taking advantage of which Douglas asked,
'Contacted how?'
'Well...' Broddy waved his hand vaguely, 'it doesn't matter.'
The bank he owned would give him loans on very favorable terms. It made us think something was off about it. So we contacted the French counterintelligence organization to have them check the guy and they found out a very interesting fact. Three years ago, his girlfriend Smirnova, also a Russian, was caught having a conspiracy meeting with a Russian Embassy in France official. They've been keeping him under surveillance and thus her name came up. They had a secret mail drop in the Bois de Boulogne. They deported the diplomat but didn't touch her. They pretended to believe the tales she told about some Russians who were trying to win her over to their side. She made a written statement in the police commissariat claiming that the Embassy officials would pass her lists with some questions through the drop and demanded that she collected secret information through her friends. They threatened her that if she refused to cooperate, her relatives in Russia would have serious problems.
'Did her friends have that information?' Douglas wondered.
Broddy raised his eyebrows.
'Of course!.. They were well-informed. Two generals from the Ministry of Defense and one high-ranking official from the Chirac administration. Smirnova attended all social events in Paris and was always in the limelight. Such people were buzzing round her like bees round a honey pot. When those gentlemen learned who she was, they got scared and put pressure on the Surte, so they hushed the thing up. Besides, the newspapers found out about it somehow and made a big fuss. They wrote that a poor widow, who was still mourning, was being dragged by some cunning Russians who murdered her husband into some dirty business... and so on and so forth. So they didn't touch her. Besides, they wanted to wait until the scandal abates, she gets active and they could find more members of the network through her. But she's been acting carefully since then, didn't contact anybody and even moved to the US, got a green card. Although she still has her French citizenship. So, that's what Monsieur Lisovsky told us in detail...' Broddy nodded towards the man by the window. Douglas was listening to him with growing interest.
'We got the analysts on the case and they determined a weird regularity. This banker is somehow connected with most cases related to financial fraud. Not directly... indirectly. He's a friend of one person involved in the crime, a business partner with another... But the analytics claim it can't be a coincidence!'
Broddy fell silent, opened a bottle which was standing on the table, and poured some mineral water into a glass.
'Do you think he has anything to do with it?' Douglas asked with suspicion.
Broddy was about to reply when the man in sunglasses who was sitting by the window spoke in a rasping voice,
'No, I know Alexander Gongadze. He's not capable of it.'
The man stood up from his chair and, slightly limping, came up to the table.
'Who do you think is behind all this then?' Broddy asked in confusion, taking a sip.
'Here she is!..'
The man pulled a few pictures out of the folder and threw them on the table. Douglas saw the young woman whose face he was admiring on his computer screen an hour ago.
PARIS. THREE YEARS AGO...
Nadezhda loved visiting Paris in fall. Yellow was her favorite color and, while wandering down the city streets and boulevards, strewn with fallen leaves, it seemed to her that the time had turned back and she was a little girl again, playing in the leaves with some childish joy. Among all the cities she has visited, Paris has been her favorite. She enjoyed its unhurried and measured rhythm. It was nothing like London's primness or the bustling haste of New York City. She felt at home in Paris. It seemed to her that she had been born here and Paris was her home town. Like to any Parisian, the austere lines of the elysian fields and fanciful patterns of the Eiffel Tower were close to her. Paris gave her strength, made her think, dream and make plans for the future.
Its streets and boulevards attracted her. She liked strolling around the city late at night, when she could take her time viewing any shop window or billboard in front of a store or a cabaret. Each time she was in Paris, she would visit the Louvre or Versailles to enjoy undying masterpieces created by world's best painters, and walked for hours among the vernisages and exhibitions of Rue de Verneuil learning modern art tendencies. Paris was her secret lifelong love. Admiring its majestic beauty, union of ancient antiquity and modernism, at heart she considered it the best city on earth, undeclared world capital, modern cultural Mecca.
She had a tight schedule that day. To break away from a whirlpool of obligations and take a stroll around the city at least for an hour, she had to cancel her lunch with the Givenchy creative director which they had been planning to have for quite a while. Having asked her assistant, a prompt eighteen-year-old Dutch girl with a lovelock of flaxen hair, to postpone the meeting till later, Nadezhda came out of Burgundy Hotel, caught a taxi and made herself comfortable in the back seat. The hotel was conveniently located close to both the elysian fields where Nadezhda rented an office and had to go to quite often, and metro stations which allowed her to leave Burgundy when needed without being seen.
She hopped off the taxi at Mayo Boulevard, passed through the gates of the Bois de Boulogne and went deep into its wide shady alleys. In spite of the warm sunny weather, it was gloomy and cool under the crowns of century-old oak trees. A few squirrels were playing among the twigs covered with withered leaves, their fluffy tails spread. Birds' continuous twitter could be heard in the air.
Nadezhda glanced at her watch, walked round a horse track and stopped by a small duckweed-covered lake. She noticed a bench twined round with ivy sprouts, came up to it, sat down on its side and pulled a Le Monde newspaper out of her purse.
Flowing off granite boulders, the waterfall's transparent streams were falling down into the water by her feet. Its noise was almost never heard from here and bothered only dragonflies and butterflies sitting on the grass.
Nadezhda unfolded the newspaper and with her left hand started feeling about the upper part of the bench stump carefully. She found a small rock in a hollow and, covering it with the newspaper, hid it inside the purse lying on her laps.
Nadezhda lingered for a short while, got up and quickly headed towards the exit. She came out to Boulevard Suchet, got into a taxi and in ten minutes entered the vestibule of her hotel. She found out from her assistant that nobody had called her, picked up her laptop off the table, locked herself up in the bathroom, and switched the laptop on.