Shakedown Page 2

  As the sole owner of Russoil, the sixth largest oil company in Russia, Zharkov was a billionaire several times over. As with other Russian oligarchs, gossip about his close ties to Kremlin kleptocrats and his alleged connection to organized crime raised eyebrows, but didn’t stop anyone from gleefully accepting his money. He’d paid more than £50 million for Fallbrook Manor. His onetime secretary—now his fourth wife—spent another £30 million decorating it, making Zharkov’s residence the most expensive in London other than the British royal palaces. The magazine Haut Monde published a ten-page spread complete with a flattering profile of its new owners—without any mention of his questionable connections. His home’s high ceiling entrance hall was lined with Art Deco mirrors, and the floor was marble, Bianco Perlino and Silver Emperador. The ceiling was covered in fourteen-carat gold. The master suite occupied the entire third floor, with sweeping views toward Claridge’s, London’s famous five-star hotel, dating back to 1854. The kitchen featured blackened bronze Bulthaup cabinetry and Gaggenau appliances with Taj Mahal marble backsplash and worktops for the four full-time chefs, part of a staff of twenty, not counting Zharkov’s private security team, whose exact number was secret, although it was believed they were former Spetsnaz soldiers.

  Given the Russian’s notoriety, few onlookers thought it odd when a black stretch limousine arrived late one afternoon. What was odd was the fifty-something man who stepped from it. More the sort who would be a driver than passenger in a luxury vehicle. He wore a snug black T-shirt that displayed his ripped biceps inked with the sort of tattoos that sailors bought during drunken shore leaves or convicts applied with contraband tattoo guns. He was mostly bald and had a boxer’s broken nose. Commander Boris Petrov, a former Russian submariner, had once been imprisoned for stealing military hardware—but now he was Zharkov’s “fixer,” and one of his closest confidants.

  Zharkov’s London assistant escorted Petrov to a massive office on the second floor, protected by cutting-edge antisurveillance devices.

  “Welcome, Commander!” Zharkov called out cheerfully from behind an ornate desk. “Come, come, sit.” The short and hefty Russian billionaire nodded toward a carved armchair directly across from him. “Your flight to London, it was comfortable?”

  “It was all right,” Petrov replied without emotion as he glanced around the office. It was his first visit since Zharkov had bought and renovated Fallbrook Manor.

  “Only all right? Come now, my friend.” Clearly Zharkov expected more appreciation for dispatching one of his finest private jets to collect Petrov. “The women I put on your flight,” he continued, “did you not enjoy them? They were former Olympic gymnasts.”

  Petrov dropped his right leg over his left and rested his clasped walnut-shaped knuckles on his lap. “That explains their flexibility,” he replied, breaking into a smirk.

  Zharkov guffawed and slapped the desktop. “You must tell me the details.”

  “Now, that wouldn’t be gentlemanly, would it? Sharing such details with a man of your high position.”

  “A man of my position? My friend, you have known me long enough to realize the only position I care about hearing is which positions you were in with those two gymnasts!” Zharkov announced, laughing even louder.

  A knock on the door interrupted them. One of the chefs from the manor’s kitchen entered.

  “Sir,” he said, “the mistress of the house has arranged a proper English tea for your guest and you. She instructed me to present it to you now. May we proceed?”

  “Trying to civilize me,” Zharkov said. “Yes, yes, bring it in.”

  Two women carrying silver trays joined them. One poured tea from a monogrammed porcelain pot into matching monogrammed porcelain cups while the other spread out finger sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and curd tarts.

  “Will that be all?” the chef asked.

  “Yes, yes, you may go.”

  As soon as they were alone, Zharkov put aside his teacup.

  “Don’t bother,” he said as he stepped from his desk toward a nearby liquor cabinet, where he withdrew a bottle.

  “Iordanov exclusively for me,” he boasted. “What Russian wouldn’t prefer a good vodka to Earl Grey tea?”

  “Certainly not me,” Petrov replied.

  Zharkov moved to the front of his desk and handed Petrov a crystal glass. He poured a generous portion into it and his own.

  Lifting his glass, Zharkov offered a crude, illustrated toast. “May you always have a stiff drink in your hand.” He thrust his hips upward as if he were having sex. “Stiff in bed too.” He laughed. “And more money than you can possibly spend before you die.”

  “If this screwball plan of yours actually works, I will have all three.”

  Both emptied their drinks. Zharkov poured another round and returned to his desk, where he reached for a cucumber sandwich. “We have come a long way from when we first met,” he reminisced. “It was fortune that brought us together that day in the gulag.”

  “And your father’s fortune that kept you alive and freed us.”

  “Yes.” Zharkov grunted. “I hired you to protect me from some rather unsavory characters intent on doing me harm, and I quickly saw a way to profit from your skills. Remind me, Petrov, how many fights did you win before we were released?”

  “You mean, before your father bribed three judges to erase our crimes? Thirty-seven. Twenty knockouts.”

  “And when we returned to Moscow and moved over to the boxing game, before I got into the oil business, what was the record of our best pugilist—Yuri something, right?”

  “Yuri got himself twenty-one knockouts. One more than me, but mine were bare-knuckle.”

  “No rules. Broken bones. Gouged eyes. You were good at it.”

  “Still am.”

  “I imagine so. Our pompous president asked me several times to arrange a bare-knuckle between you and Yuri for him and his Kremlin comrades. I explained that you worked only for me, but added you could be persuaded for the right price.”

  “Anything for the right price,” Petrov said. He lifted his now-empty glass and looked at Zharkov, who nodded approval. Leaning forward from his chair, Petrov took the vodka bottle from the desk and poured himself another glass.

  “It was Yuri who always refused,” Zharkov said.

  “With good reason. I would have ruined his pretty face.” Petrov raised his now-full glass. “A toast to President Vyachesian Leninovich Kalugin, a self-declared martial arts expert.” He chuckled. “Even I would have taken a dive if he challenged me.”

  “Do not mock our illustrious leader,” Zharkov replied. “He was the one who secured my spot in Russoil.”

  “For which you have been paying him handsomely,” Petrov said. “And I was the one who helped you persuade the other shareholders to sell their interests.”

  “For which I have paid you as well.”

  Zharkov emptied his glass and set it on his desk. “Enough from the past. When will you be ready to depart?”

  “No later than three weeks, two if we’re lucky. But I have no control over the Iranians.”

  “The Iranians,” Zharkov said. “What Iranians? Each time I have a conversation with them, they play a silly game.” In a mocking voice, he continued, “‘Why, Mr. Zharkov, Tehran is in full compliance with its promises to the West. Iran is a peace-loving nation. Iran is not an aggressor. We do not have nuclear capabilities.’” Zharkov laughed. “I must listen to this nonsense each time we speak. But, to answer your question, I’ve been told by the ‘sellers’ that they are on schedule.”

  “Good,” Petrov said.

  Zharkov waved his hand dismissively, as if shooing off a pesky fly. “The Iranians are mongrels. Dogs. If I could have obtained what I required from anyone else, I would have. Sadly, they are the only ones reckless and arrogant enough to help me.”

  He plucked a second cucumber sandwich from the silver platter and stuffed it into his mouth. While chewing it, he said, “Petrov, eat a sandwich.
Do not disappoint my wife.”

  Petrov removed one from the tray. “Finger sandwiches,” he said. “The English are so delicate.”

  Zharkov tapped the screen on an iPad, summoning his personal assistant, who entered, carrying two metal cases, each the size of an airplane carry-on bag. He nodded toward his assistant to open both.

  “I love money,” Zharkov said. “I have no use for cryptocurrencies. Money should be held between your fingers. It should be smelled.”

  Petrov glanced at the stacks of cash lined up in the cases.

  “A million American dollars,” Zharkov said, “consists of ten thousand $100 bills. Weighing nine kilograms, or twenty pounds. Three million in US dollars would weigh just over twenty-seven kilos, or sixty pounds. Even someone as strong as you would find carrying sixty pounds tiresome.”

  “Not when it is money.”

  “True, but why bother with dollars when euros weigh about twelve pounds per million? That reduces the weight of each of these cases to eight-point-six kilograms, or eighteen pounds.”

  Zharkov looked lovingly at the euros. He enjoyed putting his wealth on display. “This should cover the cost of your crew before departure.” Looking up at his personal assistant, he said, “Take the cases to Commander Petrov’s car. He has a plane to catch. . . .” He turned back to Petrov. “Unless you would like to spend the night?”

  Before Petrov could respond, Zharkov opened a desk drawer and pulled out a Greek fashion magazine whose cover featured a young starlet wearing only a man’s white button-down shirt.

  “This lovely goddess will be coming for drinks after my wife retires. She believes I am interested in financing a movie for her.” Zharkov smiled. “You could have her after I am finished.”

  Petrov inspected the cover. “A generous offer, but if we want to stay on schedule, I need to return to the Black Sea to prepare for the delivery from your ‘sellers.’” He stood and turned to leave.

  “Ah, now that you are on the verge of a better life, you have no interest in my hand-me-downs,” Zharkov said. “Tell me, what do you know about fine furniture?”

  “Furniture?” Petrov paused at the doorway, looking puzzled. “Do I look like a man who knows or cares about furniture?”

  “One of the pieces in my office is a fraud and the other a masterpiece. Can you tell me which is which?”

  “A guessing game? I will play along. Which furniture?”

  “The chair you were sitting in and my desk.”

  Petrov studied both. “I’m guessing the desk is not a real antique.”

  Zharkov showed a smug grin. “This desk is original. It is from the Alexander Palace. The favorite palace of Nicholas the Second, our last Russian emperor. During the war, the Nazis commandeered his palace and used it for their high command. They sat behind this very desk, obeying Hitler’s orders, just as the czar sat here before the revolution. The Romanovs. Hitler’s generals. Think of the history that has been made behind this desk. The power wielded by those who sat at it. Russian curators were mystified when it disappeared from the royal palace. Without a trace.” Zharkov smiled. “Now it is my desk, and I sit behind it, and it brings me much pleasure.”

  “It must have cost you a fortune.”

  “What joy is there in money if you can’t buy what others can never obtain?”

  “And the chair?”

  “It is a fake even though I trusted the man who sold that chair to me when he insisted it was original.” Zharkov paused for a bit of unnecessary drama before adding, “That lie cost him his life.”

  Now it was Petrov who smiled.

  “You think his death humorous?” Zharkov asked.

  “You paid a fortune for your desk but the man who sold you the fake paid an even higher price.”

  Zharkov grunted. “The two of us are cut from the same cloth, Petrov. If anyone attempts to deceive either of us, they will pay a heavy price. Isn’t that true?”

  “Enjoy your evening,” Petrov said.

  Four

  Swollen eyes. A young woman’s hands shaking.

  General Firouz Kardar glanced at her with contempt. She’d been dragged into an empty office that he’d commandeered inside the underground bunker, and forced to her knees before his highly spit-shined boots.

  “Her confession,” the captain said, standing next to her. He offered Kardar a paper.

  Kardar didn’t bother to accept it. Instead, the sixty-five-year-old general kept his eyes focused on the woman. Bruised cheeks. Bloody lips. Dressed in a hijab and manteau. Correctly covered. What tortures had been inflicted underneath her modest dress did not concern him. She smelled of sweat. Urine.

  “What is your first name?” he demanded.

  “Yasmin,” she whispered, casting her eyes down onto the green speckled tile floor.

  “Yasmin,” he repeated. “You’re one of the monafeqin,” he said, using the disparaging term for Iranians fighting to overthrow their own government—in the Qur’an, people of “two minds” who “say with their mouths what is not in their hearts” and “in their hearts is a disease.”

  “It’s a mistake,” she said, not daring to look up at him.

  “But you have signed a confession,” he replied.

  She didn’t respond.

  “General,” the captain said, “we found her outside the compound with this.” He handed him a cell phone clad in a bright pink protective cover. A kitty emblem on it.

  The woman began to gently sway on her knees. She tried unsuccessfully to shut her swollen eyes. Praying.

  General Kardar scrolled through the images. White-topped guard towers. Fortified antiaircraft guns. Photos from outside the chain link fence that encircled the Iranian fuel enrichment plant where they now were standing. A nearly 400,000-foot military compound buried beneath layers of reinforced concrete on the outskirts of Natanz, Iran.

  The woman glanced up. Tears in her eyes. “General, you must believe me. I found the phone. It is not mine. I was forced to say it was mine.”

  Kardar rested his right palm on his sidearm—an American-made M1911 semiauto, .45-caliber. Until 1986, standard issue of US Armed Forces. He’d taken it from a dead Iraqi soldier in 1980 after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, setting off an eight-year war that ended with both sides claiming victory.

  Kardar unholstered his pistol, leaned forward. The woman immediately lowered her face again. He placed the barrel tip against the top of her skull. Pushed it against her scalp. She began trembling again. The two guards on either side of her and the captain stepped away, anticipating blood splatter.

  “Are you accusing my men of forcing you to lie?” he asked, taunting her.

  She began to quietly sob.

  The general chuckled and holstered his weapon.

  Yasmin looked up at him. Confused. He reached under her chin with his left hand and gently raised her face. He appeared sympathetic.

  “Should I send you to Tehran to face trial?” he asked softly. “Give you an opportunity to defend yourself? Prove your innocence? Renounce your confession?”

  She dared to smile, revealing broken front teeth from being tortured. Blood.

  In a lightning-fast move, he slashed her throat with a knife that seemed to appear from nowhere. He let go of her chin and she collapsed on the tile, making a gurgling sound under the buzzing neon ceiling lights. She raised her fingers to cover the deep wound. A final look of shock before dying.

  Leaning down, Kardar wiped his blade across the dead woman’s cloak. “Get rid of this filth,” he ordered.

  He watched her body being dragged away, leaving a bloody red smear. Satisfied, he turned his attention to another matter. Strolling behind a gunmetal-gray desk, he sat before a computer. Opening a program used to send encrypted messages, he typed quickly.

  Final payment under way for ridding us of the traitor Nasya Radi. Bitcoins as you requested being transferred now.

  A few seconds later, a reply:

  Payment received.

  Seconds afte
r that response, the conversation, and all the metadata of its existence, was destroyed.

  Kardar summoned the underground facility’s director, a thin, scholarly-looking nuclear scientist wearing a white lab coat, and the head of security, an overweight bearded man wearing a drab green military uniform. Both noticed the blood smears on the floor when they entered. Stepped around them.

  “How long before it is ready?” General Kardar demanded.

  “Ten days,” the scientist replied.

  “The woman was monafeqin,” Kardar said to the security chief. “Have you found her accomplices helping her from inside?”

  “Everyone has been interrogated,” the security chief replied. “She was from outside. We have files about all the workers’ families. They would not dare speak about our mission. Dare help her.”

  “Then why did a monafeqin in America named Nasya Radi learn about our plans?”

  The security chief stared straight ahead. He began perspiring. He licked his dry lips.

  Kardar seemed to be staring through him.

  The general was known for his violent temper. Everyone who knew him was aware of it, just as they were aware of his past, especially his childhood. It helped explain the permanent joyless look etched on his bearded face.

  The general was conceived in a brutal rape. Abandoned at the hospital hours after his birth. Reared in an orphanage with other discards. Cruelty had marked his earliest years. He’d learned quickly the feel of a lash. While a teen he’d been recruited into SAVAK, the most despised and feared secret police force during the shah of Iran’s reign. His skills—beatings, intimidation, mutilations, and murder—had been perfected there. When the shah had been driven from Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard had started executing SAVAK officers. But the pious ayatollahs had quickly realized that a sadist such as Kardar could be useful in identifying and eliminating their enemies. His life had been spared. In an ironic twist, Kardar had embraced the revolutionary guard’s fundamentalist interpretation of Shi’ism. By age twenty-three, he’d become a religious zealot, adhering to the strictest religious rules without abandoning his fondness for inflicting pain on his perceived enemies. He’d moved up the ranks to his current position—a general in the Quds Force, Iran’s secret military unit, in charge of waging unconventional warfare against its three most hated enemies: the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. It was the Quds Force that had trained the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemeni Houthis, and Shi’a militants. It was the Quds Force that had taught terrorists in Iraq how to make IEDs to kill Americans. It was the Quds Force that had plotted unsuccessfully to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, and bomb both the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, DC, back in 2001.