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By Root 1395 0

“What’s up?” Jack asked. Annika had said nothing to him after she’d queried him about their destination, not a thank-you for saving her life, nothing. Until the phone call, she had appeared sunk in contemplation without any sign of animation whatsoever, as if she were in the bombila by herself. Jack supposed her withdrawal was a reaction to the violence she had endured, the imminent threat to her life, the struggle to survive that required every ounce of energy. It wouldn’t be at all out of place for her to be in shock. Assuming so, he had preferred to give her a chance to calm down before he started querying her. Now a new, ominous element had been added to the mix.

“I’ll tell you what’s up,” she said. “We’re screwed, totally and indelibly screwed.”

“I don’t see why. Ivan was a low-echelon thug and you’re with the FSB.”

She turned her head so sharply he could hear the crack of the vertebrae in her neck. “Where did you hear that?”

“The same place I learned about the ambush. Ivan and Milan were in your room, looking for revenge. They found the cameo you’d hidden in the drain.”

“Fuck me!”

“Hiding your ID in a cameo was a mistake. A cameo is not your style at all.”

“That cameo was my mother’s.” She stared out the window for a moment, her expression opaque. When she turned back to him, she said, “The problem isn’t Ivan, it’s Milan. Ivan knew nothing, which is why I broke it off with him, but he, you know, didn’t want to let go.”

“You’re apparently very accomplished in bed.”

She stared at him for a moment with her lambent eyes. This close to her, even in the dim light, he could see silver flecks flare in their mineral color as the bombila passed streetlamp after streetlamp.

Apparently deciding not to comment, she said, “It’s Milan I was after, and once he discovered who I really was, he set the trap. Of course I took the bait, because it was he who called, because I knew he would be there, that with Ivan out of the way I could start on him.”

“They fucked you six ways from Sunday.”

She tilted her head. “I don’t know that curious idiom, but I’m sure I catch your meaning.”

They were on the final approach to the airport, and she bent down and retrieved her cell. “The real problem isn’t even Milan, though that’s bad enough. Milan was tied to a man named Batchuk. Oriel Jovovich Batchuk is a deputy prime minister, a close confidant of President Yukin’s, they go back all the way to St. Petersburg, where they served together in the municipal government. Even in those days, Batchuk did all of Yukin’s dirty work. The two developed a remarkably effective modus operandi. Yukin targeted successful businesses in the St. Petersburg area and sent Batchuk out, armed with paperwork that accused the company—its principal owner or its board—of malfeasance, of not being in compliance of arcane laws, whatever. Basically, it didn’t matter because the charges were all phony, but the resulting shit storm landed the company or the individuals themselves in court, where judges owned by Yukin handed down decisions favorable to him. Unlike in America, here you can’t lodge an appeal, or, more accurately, you can, but there isn’t a judge who pays it the slightest attention.”

The interior of the bombila was lit up in the sodium glare of Sheremetyevo’s arc lights. Jack, leaning forward, told the driver where to drop them off.

“Yukin and Batchuk got rich as very young men,” Annika continued. “Now both have risen to the ultimate level, and the same MO is being repeated, only on a national scale. Yukin is using Batchuk and the power of the federal courts to retrieve the largest, most lucrative privatized companies by finding arcane accounting discrepancies or fabricating multiple charges of fiduciary malfeasance against the officers and the oligarchs behind them, many of whom had skimmed off profits to pay him and his people. It started with the takeover of Gazprom and has only escalated from there.”

“But what is a deputy prime minister doing with a high-level member of the Izmaylovskaya grupperovka? He must have every government agency on his payroll.