A second pair of employees, both pretty young women, took her in tow. Speaking politely in hushed tones, they briskly ushered her through the busy semi-chaos of a large outer office full of desks, computers, and people entering data or issuing buy and sell orders for stock markets across Europe. One of the women took her coat and vanished. The other escorted her into a slightly smaller, immaculately decorated room—Konstantin Malkovic’s private office.
Along one wall, three tall windows offered a spectacular view of the Kremlin’s floodlit walls, turrets, and golden domes. Centuries-old Russian Orthodox religious icons, priceless originals, stood in niches built around the rest of the room, carefully lit by recessed lights shining down from the high, intricately painted ceiling. A thick Persian rug covered the floor in muted splendor. Malkovic’s elegant eighteenth-century desk faced away from the windows. A flat-screen computer and a set of slim, ultra-modern phones seemed to be the room’s only concession to the twenty-first century.
The billionaire himself rose to his feet from behind his desk and came around it to greet her with an outstretched hand. “Welcome, Ms. Devin! Welcome!” he said, smiling broadly, revealing a full set of perfect white teeth. “I’m a great admirer of your work. That last article in The Economist—the one on the competitive advantages of Russia’s flat tax system—was particularly good.”
“You’re far too kind, Mr. Malkovic,” she said calmly, taking the offered hand and smiling back. She recognized this effusiveness as one of the routine tactics he employed on those whom he hoped to influence. “After all, I only wrote a few thousand words of analysis about its likely effects. But I’ve been told that you had a hand in crafting the new tax code itself?”
He shrugged. “A hand? Nothing so direct.” His eyes twinkled. “Oh, perhaps I spoke a word here. And perhaps another small word there. Nothing excessive, though. As a mere man of business, I never interfere too deeply in any nation’s domestic politics.”
Fiona let the polite fiction pass unchallenged. According to her sources, this man could no more resist meddling in political affairs than could a starving lion lie down quietly beside a nice fat lamb.
Malkovic was taller than she had expected, with a mane of thick white hair left long on top but cropped short at the sides and neck. High cheekbones and pale blue eyes marked his Slavic ancestry. The clipped tones and slightly flattened vowels of his English reflected the years he had spent in Britain and America, first as a student at Oxford and Harvard and later as a wildly successful businessman, investor, and commodities speculator.
“Please, do sit down,” he told her, indicating one of the two embroidered armchairs set at angles in front of his desk.
When Fiona took one, Malkovic sat down casually in the other. “Some tea first, perhaps?” he asked. “It’s still quite cold outside, or so I understand. I came in very early this morning myself—several hours ago, actually. The world financial markets, alas, follow an unholy schedule in our day and age.”
“Thank you, yes. Tea would be lovely,” she said, hiding her amusement at hearing his scarcely veiled boast about the long hours that he worked.
Almost immediately, another of Malkovic’s secretaries brought in a tray with a sterling silver samovar, two tall clear glasses, and two small crystal bowls, one containing slices of fresh lemon, the other a dollop of jam to sweeten the strong tea. The woman poured for them and then left quietly and quickly.
“And now to business, Ms. Devin,” he said amiably, after they had both taken a few cautious sips of steaming tea. “My staff tells me that you are especially interested in the role I see for myself and my companies here in the new Russia.”
Fiona nodded again. “That’s quite right, Mr. Malkovic,” she replied, settling down into a familiar role, that of a journalist in search of a good story. It was not difficult. Over the past several years, she had built a well-deserved reputation as a talented, hard-hitting reporter. She specialized in following and explaining the often-complicated interaction of Russian politics and economics. Her work appeared regularly in leading newspapers and business journals around the globe. Conducting this interview—with the largest and most influential private investor in Russian industry—would have been a natural for her, even without her ultimate interest in using the billionaire as one more means of prying open the secrets of the state medical bureaucracy for Covert-One.
And, on the surface at least, Malkovic himself was an easy man to interview. Ever-charming and apparently perfectly relaxed, he answered her questions about his plans and business dealings readily and without evident evasion, choosing only to dodge a few probes that even she realized were too personally intrusive or that might reveal closely held proprietary information useful to his competitors.
Nevertheless, Fiona sensed that the billionaire was always in full control of himself. He chose his words with precision, plainly determined to influence the way she saw him and the way he would appear to her readers whenever this interview was published. She shrugged inwardly. This was the great game, the eternal dance for any journalist—especially a freelancer working without the clout provided by a major newspaper, magazine, or television network. Ask too many tough questions and your subjects refused to speak to you again. Ask too few and you wound up writing puff pieces that could have been churned out by any second-rate public relations firm.
Slowly and carefully she brought the conversation around toward politics, focusing delicately on the growing authoritarianism of the Dudarev government. “Surely you see the risks of arbitrary rule to any investor, especially a foreign investor?” Fiona said at last. “I mean, you’ve seen what happened to the owners of the Yukos oil cartel—prison for some, disgrace for the rest, and the forced sale of all their holdings. Every dollar or euro you invest here could be snatched away by Kremlin decree in the blink of an eye. If laws or regulations can be made and unmade at the whim of a few, how can you plan rationally for the future?”
Malkovic shrugged expansively. “There are always risks in any venture, Ms. Devin,” he said genially. “Believe me, I know that very well. But I am a man who looks to the long-term, beyond the shallow day-to-day twists and turns of fortune. For all its many faults, Russia remains a land of great opportunity. When Communism collapsed, this country gave itself over to capitalist excess—to its own Gilded Age of greedy tycoons and business oligarchs. So now, quite naturally, the pendulum has swung back a bit in reaction, toward tighter state control over life and politics. But that same pendulum will eventually swing back toward the moderate middle. And those of us who were wise enough to stand by Russia through the difficult times will reap enormous rewards when that day comes.”
“You seem very confident of that,” she said quietly.
“I am confident,” the billionaire agreed. “Remember, I know President Dudarev personally. He is no saint, but I believe that he is a man determined to give this country the law and order it craves. To restore a sense of discipline and decency. To break the power of the Mafiya and make the streets of Moscow and other cities safe again.”
He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I would have thought that you, of all people, would appreciate the vital importance of that, Ms. Devin. Your husband’s untimely death was a great tragedy. It would not have occurred in a society better able to safeguard the lives and property of its citizens—the kind of society I believe Russia’s new leaders honestly hope to build here.”
For a moment, Fiona stared back at Malkovic without speaking, aware of a wave of cold anger rising behind her tightly controlled features. Even after two years, the memories of Sergei’s murder were still very much a raw wound in her psyche. To hear the subject raised so casually, especially as a rhetorical prop for Dudarev’s growing tyranny, seemed a kind of grotesque sacrilege.
“I helped bring my husband’s killers to justice myself,” she said at last, speaking with a calm, even voice that masked her true feelings. For months, she had hunted those who ordered her husband’s death, piecing together evi
dence of their crimes at considerable risk to her own life. In the end, the public outcry she raised by her articles had forced the authorities to take action. The men most responsible were now serving long prison sentences.
“So you did,” Malkovic agreed. “And I followed your courageous crusade against the Mafiya with great admiration. But even you must admit that your task would have been easier if the police here were less corrupt, more efficient, and better disciplined.”
Fiona hid a frown. Why was the billionaire suddenly throwing her husband’s murder back in her face? This man never said anything without a purpose, so what was his goal in trying to force her off-balance now? Was this his way of warning her off the uncomfortable subject of Russia’s gradual slide back to a police state? Was he trying to distract her from asking any more inconvenient or embarrassing questions about his business connections to the Dudarev regime?
If so, she would have to move quickly, before he decided to cut this interview short on one pretense or another. “There may be worse things than police corruption and incompetence,” she told him. “This growing cult of official secrecy, for example—secrecy I consider to be obsessive, unnecessary, and even dangerous. Especially when it concerns a serious matter of public health and safety.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not quite following you, Ms. Devin. To what ‘cult of secrecy’ are you referring?”
Fiona shrugged. “What else would you call trying to hide the news of a deadly new disease, not only from the Russian people themselves, but also from the world’s public health agencies?”
“A new disease?” Malklovic leaned forward, suddenly wholly intent. His eyes were troubled. “Go on,” he said quietly.
He listened carefully while she ran through the gist of what she and Smith had learned separately from Kiryanov and Petrenko, though she concealed her knowledge that the two doctors had been murdered. Or that this mysterious ailment was now spreading outside Russia itself. When she finished, he pursed his lips in dismay. “Do you have any evidence to confirm these rumors of a strange new illness?”
“Evidence? Not yet. None of the other doctors involved will talk to me and all of the important records are under lock and key,” Fiona said, shaking her head. She frowned again. “But you see the danger, I hope. One way or another the word is bound to leak out. If the Kremlin—or even just an official in the Ministry of Health—is covering up the beginning of a new epidemic in a foolish attempt to avoid public panic or international embarrassment, the consequences could be catastrophic.”
Malkovic grimaced. “Indeed. The economic and political costs could be horrendous. The world community and the financial markets would not easily forgive a nation caught hiding something that might turn out to be another epidemic as bad as AIDS—or worse.”
“I was thinking more of the possible cost in human lives,” Fiona said softly.
A wintry smile touched his lips. “Touché, Ms. Devin,” he said. “I stand, or rather, sit rebuked.” He looked at her with a new measure of respect. “So what is it that you really want of me? I assume all of your questions earlier were simply window dressing, a means of maneuvering our conversation onto the question of this apparent medical cover-up.”
“Not entirely,” she said, blushing very slightly. “But yes, I am hoping that you’ll exert your influence with the appropriate ministries to shed some light on this mystery disease.”
“So you expect me to help you break open this story, this news scoop of yours?” Malkovic asked drily. “Out of the pure goodness of my own heart?”
Fiona smiled back at him, intentionally matching the billionaire’s wry expression. “You are famous for your philanthropy, Mr. Malkovic,” she said. “But even if you were not, I suspect that you are quite adept at measuring the value of good publicity.”
“And the cost of bad publicity, too,” he said with a brief, sardonic laugh. Then he shook his large head slowly in a gesture of surrender. “Very well, Ms. Devin, I will do what I can to pry open a few official doors for you, even if only in my own best interests.”
“Thank you,” she told him, closing her notebook and rising gracefully to her feet. “That would be most kind. Your staff knows how to contact me.”
“No thanks are necessary,” Malkovic said, politely standing up with her. A dour expression settled on his face. “If what you have told me this morning is true, we may both be acting in time to remedy a terrible, almost unforgivable mistake.”
Jon Smith followed a path heading deeper into the quiet, tree-lined square called Patriarch’s Pond. His shoes crunched softly on the icy snow still covering the walkway. There were very few other sounds. This far in among the trees the roar of traffic from the busy Sadovaya Ring road was muted, reduced to a faint hum. In the distance, children laughed and shouted, busy building forts and hurling clumps of snow at each other among the white-covered shapes of playground equipment. Strange sculptures, distorted images of creatures popular in nineteenth-century Russian fables, peered out at him from between tree trunks and bare, twisted branches.
He reached the edge of the large, shallow ice-covered pond at the center of the square and stopped for a moment, standing with his hands in his pockets as some protection against the below-zero temperatures. In the summer, this small, secluded patch of parkland was a favorite picnic spot for Muscovites, full of smiling crowds, sunlight, and singing. On this gray, overcast winter day, it showed a gloomier, more desolate face.
“The devil appeared here once, you know,” a woman’s voice said lightly from behind him.
Smith turned his head.
Fiona Devin stood not far away, framed between two leafless lime trees. Her cheeks were flushed in the cold and she wore a stylish fur hat atop her dark hair. She drew nearer.
“The devil?” Smith asked. “Literally or figuratively?”
Amusement glinted in her blue-green eyes. “Fictionally, only. Or so one hopes.” She nodded toward the pond. “The writer Mikhail Bulgakov set the first scene of his classic The Master and Margarita at this place. In it, Satan himself arrives right here, ready for a romp through the atheist Moscow of Stalin’s era.”
Smith shivered suddenly, from the cold seeping through the lining of his black wool coat, or so he hoped. “What a great place for a rendezvous, then,” he said with a quick grin. “Frozen, bleak, and cursed. We’ve hit the perfect Russian trifecta. Now all that’s missing is a sleigh and a pack of howling wolves hot on our trail.”
Fiona chuckled. “Soulful pessimism complete with gallows humor, Colonel? You may fit in here better than I thought.” She moved closer, coming right up to stand beside him at the edge of the snow-covered pavement. The top of her head came up to his shoulder. “My people have finished vetting that list of doctors and scientists you gave me,” she said abruptly, lowering her voice. “Now I’m ready to brief you.”
Surprised, Smith whistled tunelessly under his breath. “And?”
“Your safest and surest bet is Dr. Elena Vedenskaya,” she said firmly.
Smith nodded slowly. Just as with Petrenko, he had met Vedenskaya at different medical conferences over the past several years. He had a vague memory of a rather plain, prim woman somewhere in her early fifties—a woman whose skill, dedication, and competence had carried her right to the top of her male-dominated profession. Vedenskaya now headed the Cytology, Genetics, and Molecular Biology department at the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology. Since that was one of Russia’s top scientific institutions for the study of infectious disease, she was sure to have been involved in trying to identify the mystery illness whose origins they were now tracking.
“Is there any particular reason that you think I can trust her?” he asked.
“There is,” Fiona told him. “Dr. Vedenskaya has a good record as a friend of democracy and political reform,” she said quietly. “Going all the way back to her student days when Brezhnev and the other Communist Party bosses ruled the Kremlin roost.”
Smith looked at her
sharply. “Then she must have a KGB/FSB security dossier as long as my arm. With the Kremlin keeping tabs on suspect scientists, she’ll be right at the head of their surveillance list.”
“She would be,” Fiona agreed. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Fortunately, her file no longer reflects reality. As far as the FSB is now aware, Elena Vedenskaya is a thoroughly reliable and apolitical servant of the State.”
Smith raised an eyebrow. “Somebody cleaned out her dossier? Mind telling me how that little miracle of excision took place?”
“I’m afraid that’s on a strictly need-to-know basis, Colonel,” Fiona told him calmly. “And you do not need to know. For quite obvious reasons.”
He nodded, accepting the mild reproof. “Fair enough,” he said. “How do you suggest I contact her? Through the Institute?”
“Definitely not,” she said. “It’s highly likely that all land-line calls into Moscow hospitals and research facilities are being monitored.” She passed him a small slip of paper with a ten-digit number written in a neat, feminine hand. “Fortunately, Vedenskaya has an unlisted cell phone.”
“I’ll call her this afternoon,” Smith decided. “And try to set up a dinner meeting for tonight, at some restaurant well away from her lab. Making this look like a purely social call between old colleagues seems the safest way to approach her.”
“Sensible,” Fiona agreed. “But make the reservation for three.”
“You’re planning on coming?”
“I am,” she said. One side of her mouth tilted upward in an impish smile. “Unless, that is, you were hoping to woo the good doctor with your masculine charm.”
Smith reddened. “Not exactly.”