Moscow X E-Book

David McCloskey

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Damascus Station
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 693

Beschreibung

'Thrilling, propulsive and terrifying' Simon Sebag Montefiore THE SECOND NOVEL FROM FORMER CIA OFFICER AND THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ***THE TIMES THRILLER OF THE YEAR***DAMASCUS STATION ('One of the best spy thrillers in years' THE TIMES) A daring CIA operation threatens chaos in the Kremlin. But can Langley trust the Russian at its center? CIA operatives Sia and Max enter Russia to recruit Vladimir Putin's moneyman. Sia works for a London firm that conceals the wealth of the super-rich. Max's family business in Mexico – a CIA front since the 1960s – is a farm that breeds high-end racehorses. They pose as a couple, and their targets are Vadim, Putin's private banker, and his wife Anna, who is both a banker and an intelligence officer herself… PRAISE FOR Moscow X: 'The most authentic depiction of CIA deep cover operations you'll find in print' - John Sipher, Former CIA Senior Operations Officer 'A terrific read, cementing McCloskey in my mind as the best spy fiction writer since le Carré' - Nicholas Kristof, New York Times 'Spellbinding ... An electrifying read. I could not put it down' - Clarissa Ward, CNN Chief International Correspondent RAVE READER REVIEWS: 'Moves at a ripping pace. A terrific, unputdownable page-turner' 'A page-turner, the pace is frantic ... Superb fun' 'A barnstorming tour de force. I loved it!'

Leseprobe

MOSCOW X

Also by David McCloskey

Damascus Station

SWIFT PRESS

First published in Great Britain by Swift Press 2024

First published in the United States of America by W.W. Norton & Company 2023

Copyright © David McCloskey 2023

The right of David McCloskey to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Book design by Daniel Lagin

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781800752894

eISBN: 9781800752900

For Abby, yet again co-conspirator and muse

She loves, loves bloodThis Russian earth.

—Anna Akhmatova, from Anno Domini MCMXXI

Part I

ZAGOVOR / CONSPIRACY

– 1 –

Dushanbe, Tajikistan, present day

THAT DAY ARTEMIS APHRODITE PROCTER WOUND UP IN THE PENALTY Box.

She awoke to darkness and the air clouded with a strange musk, teeth chattering like a clockwork toy. Her eyelids were heavy, reluctant to open. Hardwood chilled her skin. Procter blinked through a spray of her curly black hair across the floor of a room she did not know.

Then footfalls and a hairy-knuckled hand gently lifted forelocks of hair from her face. A man knelt and waved.

“Good morning, Artemis,” he said in cheerful Russian.

Her mind swam and churned, thoughts lost in the murk. She took in the room. A table. Two chairs by a window. Her pineapple-print panties rumpled on the floor. A drained bottle of vodka tipped on its side, halo of someone else’s purple lipstick along the rim.

She sat up against a couch, stark-naked and cold. The Russian went to an armchair by the window. He lit a cigarette. She bent her knees into her chest and shut her eyes because the room was spinning.

“Quite the night,” said the Russian. “I have seen things no man should ever see.” Click of the tongue. “You monstrous little woman.”

“Who are you?” Procter said, also in Russian. Her eyes were still shut—light brought rotation, tilting.

“Anton,” he said.

After a minute she hobbled to her feet and looked around for her clothes. Other than the panties, she saw only her leather jacket and muddy Reeboks. And it struck her that there was a hole blown clean through her memory, pure black since ordering drinks last night. She’d been with a Russian developmental, a Moscow party boy with access to heavier hitters: the Kremlin, the security services. And he was either dead or in on this. Probably both.

As her vision steadied, Procter could make out the morning bustle on Rudaki through the window. A light rain pattered on the glass. The table in front of Anton was spread with platters of food, cups, and glasses for the morning hundred grams, the sto gramm, of vodka.

Procter struggled into the Reeboks and panties, twice nearly losing her balance, and then paused for a breath before starting on the jacket. She felt along the front and discovered the pockets emptied of her phone, keys, and switchblade. Then she flopped into the chair across from the Russian.

Anton chuckled. “Artemis Aphrodite Procter. CIA Chief of Station. Underpaid civil servant. And, according to my sources, yet again bypassed for promotion to the Senior Intelligence Service. Quite the fall from Amman to a backwater like Dushanbe. And all due to unspecified discretions.”

“My discretions,” Procter said, “were quite specific.”

Anton clapped his hairy hands and laughed with the cigarette pinned in his teeth. “Yes, the good Procter. Sexual wanderlust. A deviant with certain . . .” He fixed her with a grave stare. “Appetites.”

“And hands wet with Russian blood,” she said.

A shadow fell over his eyes. He stubbed his cigarette into a brass ashtray and began to pick at his plate of selyodka, pickled herring with potatoes and onions.

A liter of yeasty horse milk sweated in a glass bottle. Russkies had done their research. Though more of a Kazakh or Kyrgyz delicacy, when granted the rare privilege in Tajik Dushanbe, Procter partook of the horse milk. But when Anton poured her a cup, she dumped it on the floor.

The Russian snickered and stepped over the slithering white stream to collect a buff-colored folder from the sofa. He handed it to Procter and returned to his food. “We have many more photos, of course. This is merely a teaser. There were a few of you facedown, for example, but I don’t think you’ll see them in there. I must say, though, I am curious about the tattoos. And why nine of them? I am sure the stories are riveting. Anyhow, go on, have a look.” He took a bite of fish.

Procter flipped through a stack of nude photos snapped while she’d been drugged. Some were quite imaginative. Artistic, even. Two or three were nearly perfect: the lighting, the energy, the intimate angles, these appropriately captured what Procter considered to be the animal spirits of her sexual id. Others were banal and garish: unworthy of trade in even the seediest flesh market. Procter, stranger to shame, found not a one embarrassing. Her tits, she thought, looked pretty good across the board. She tossed the folder into the puddle of horse milk. “Go fuck yourself.”

Anton lit another cigarette. “Artemis, please. If you don’t cooperate, well, then these unfortunate pictures will be posted online. And we will out you as CIA.”

“You’re going to do that anyway, Anton. Aren’t you? Now, where are my damn pants?” The world had stopped gyrating. Slowly, she got up and began wandering around the room.

“You’ll be sent home, Artemis. Another black stain on your career.”

“Your pitch sucks. Whole point of this is to send me home. You’re after me because I like working Russians. You want me gone. In any case, you should invest in a better photographer, because some of those”—she jabbed a finger at the milk-sopped folder— “are terrible. My answer is this: Fuck you. I’m leaving now to report this to Langley and the ambassador. Say, better idea. How about instead of writing up a cable that makes you look like a dumbass, why don’t you spy for me? What do you say to that?”

Anton cast a jet of smoke across the food. “Screw off, Artemis.”

Procter was smiling. “I guess we understand each other. Now, where are my pants?”

She tossed a few couch cushions to the floor in a vain search. Pretty worked up about the missing jeans. A breach of the rules, she thought. Unprofessional. Nasty. She turned the place upside down for a few minutes while Anton smoked. Had they actually tossed out her pants?

“Come on, Anton. It’s cold and I’m a decent woman. Can’t roll out of here in pineapple panties and a leather jacket.” She stood over him, arms akimbo, while he burned down his cigarette. His chuckle at the word decent sent dark fantasies cartwheeling through her mind.

“Artemis, think of your Station. If you go home, they will have no Chief. And I hear a colleague of yours recently departed. Unfortunate medical situation.”

Two months earlier, Procter’s Deputy Chief of Station and his family had awoken in their apartment with vertigo and headaches. Wife went blind in one eye. Russian directed-energy attack, Procter suspected. Microwaves that fried your fucking brain.

Anton was smiling and examining her bare legs.

Procter was scowling and examining Anton’s pants. A siren was ringing through her skull.

Then Procter had her hand down on the drained vodka bottle and she’d shattered it against the table for a nice length of jagged neck, and before Anton could duck she’d slashed him across the cheek and packed the glass into the meat of his left shoulder and it just stuck there, purple- glossed rim pointing square at the ceiling.

Anton howled, tried to stand and pull out the glass, but she kicked him in the chest and he fell back into the chair. A run of blood washed down his cheek. She punched his nose, again, a third time, until she heard a sweet wet crunch and a ragged moan escaped his lips. Then she snatched the milk bottle from the table and broke it over his skull. His head slumped, the milk and blood mingling into pink braids.

Procter overturned the table and smashed it into the wall and harvested a splintered leg to churn Anton’s left kneecap into mush. After a batch of strikes, light filtered through her rage blackout and she tossed the table leg aside and smacked his cheek to wake him up. He did not.

“Anton,” she said, “wake up. I got a skosh carried away. Anton, can you hear me?” A few finger-snaps in front of his face. “Anton?”

Two fingers to his neck. She felt a pulse.

Never thought she’d be happy for a live Russian intel officer, but praise god.

Then she looked around the wrecked room and out the window and wondered if he had partners or a team watching on cameras. She shimmied off his pants and slipped them on herself and told the unconscious Russian, “Serves you right for ditching my jeans.”

He was much taller and wider, so she rolled up the pant legs about a foot and cinched the belt tight as it would go. The folder of nude photos disappeared into her jacket. Then she pulled it back out, rifling through until she found the one: A nice shot showcasing her flexibility and rugged femininity. Her quiet fucking strength. Crumpling the photo into a ball, she shoved it into Anton’s underpants. Then she was out the door.

THE DAY CONTINUED ITS UNRAVELING. AT THE EMBASSY THERE WAS A struggle session with the prick ambassador. She sent a cable recounting the ordeal and received a nasty gram response from the Director and the Langley mandarins. Then a clipped conversation with Deputy Director Bradley, words and tone evoking the reassurances whispered to a beloved dog moments before it is euthanized.

Dinnertime: The pictures appeared on several burner websites, the links amplified by Russian bot accounts across social media platforms. They also outed Procter as COS Dushanbe.

The formal cable recalling her to Langley arrived later that evening. End of tour: Get on the first flight out in the morning. Support officers would shutter her apartment and ship her belongings to Virginia. The assault had violated a bevy of Tajik laws and, more importantly, raised the specter of Russian kinetic retaliation for hospitalizing what CIA had since learned was a senior intelligence officer dispatched from Moscow. Doctors expected the Russian to recover, said a memo from a Tajik liaison officer who overshared with CIA for cash. But Anton would have residuals: namely a patchwork of scars, a permanent limp from Procter’s knee work, and, courtesy of a bottle of horse milk, the ever-present specter of diminished mental capacity. A few intrepid Station officers organized a hasty send-off for the Chief, complete with an improperly stenciled cake. (We will miss you, Chef.)

When the Station had cleared out for the evening, Procter shut down her computer and put the hard drive in the safe. There was little to pack: her sterile office boasted no family photos, no Me Wall of gifts and trinkets, no art. No decorations of any kind. Her one indulgence was a baseball bat autographed by every member of the 1997 Cleveland Indians World Series team: Procter’s secret managerial recipe for boosting Station productivity. In Damascus she’d kept a shotgun in her office, but in Amman there’d been complaints, and now she had the bat. She carried it around; she glanced longingly in its direction during morning ops meetings; it leaned against the wall in a corner, visible during video calls with headquarters.

Procter swung the bat in a lazy arc through her office’s recycled air. She couldn’t stay in Dushanbe, she knew that, but she despised the headquarters hive, humming with crawlies hungrier for doughnuts than the fruits of espionage. What a pig of a day.

She brought the bat down on the particle board table in her office. A seam appeared. Then again, and it cracked, and she kept at it until the table was kindling and she was good and sweaty. She flicked off her office lights. Bat on her shoulder, she began locking up the Station.

Headquarters, lord almighty. But what else could be done with Procter, an impulsive reprobate and also a well-respected Chief and operator with years of experience in the foreign field?

She was in the Penalty Box. A two-year headquarters stint under close supervision. Once that was completed to satisfaction, she might one day run a Station again. Because she was competent, not a fuckup who couldn’t run ops, Deputy Director Bradley had hinted he would find something important for her. Procter checked to be sure there was no paper on the desks. She confirmed the safes were shut. Then she spun the lock on Dushanbe Station’s thick metal door for the last time.

– 2 –

Langley

JET-LAGGED THE MORNING AFTER HER ARRIVAL STATESIDE, EARS ringing with exhaustion, Procter waited to meet with Ed Bradley, the CIA Deputy Director. Procter sat on one of the couches outside his office on the Seventh Floor. The waiting room had been decorated by a government procurement catalogue: all the furniture in dark fauxwood, slightly chipped or peeling or torn. A lightly stained coffee table was littered with magazines. As in all waiting rooms everywhere, for all time, the reading material, like the furniture, had long expired.

When she was finally permitted entry, Bradley was at his desk hunched over the MLP, a printer-sized secure phone linking the fourteen national security principals. A button for the Director, the National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, of Defense, and on and on. His office had large windows overlooking the trees shouldering the Potomac: now bright with gold, red, and orange. Bradley was six-foot-two, a former linebacker at the University of Texas and a legendary case officer who had retired after serving as Chief of the old Near East Division. A new Director had asked him to return as Deputy. He and Procter went back decades.

The Me Wall behind Bradley’s desk was mostly bare, just as she remembered. But on the credenza sat pictures of his wife and daughters, along with a few gifts from special friends. Procter recognized a twisted metal scrap from when she’d helped blow off the door of a Mitsubishi Pajero in downtown Damascus a hundred years ago. And affixed to the wall were Bradley’s favorites—a neutralized missile system gifted for leading the Stinger program against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and, more recently, a Javelin for covert action work in Ukraine against the Russians.

Procter shuffled toward a chair downrange of the launchers while Bradley reviewed the three-by-five index card that held his daily calendar. A disgusted gaze shifted between the card and the MLP, as if he could not stomach his next task. The card disappeared into his pocket when he looked up and saw her. He gave her a thin smile.

“Another century,” she said wistfully, staring at the launchers. “Another bailout for the Russian zinc coffin industry. That which is done shall be done, and all that. Amen.”

Bradley said amen and gave her a big hug. “Artemis, how are you holding up?”

“Peachy, Ed.”

He made a face. “I’m sorry. Goddamn Russians.”

“We should put that on a T-shirt around here.”

“Are you getting what you need? Docs and psychologists are saying— ”

She put up a hand. “I’m in the Penalty Box, I get it. But don’t bench me. I’m fine, I just need a job. Something to do.”

“You really should rest.”

“And do what, exactly?”

“I’d say make sure you’re actually fine. Get your head straight.”

“Ed, come on. We’ve known each other for more than twenty years. That ship has sailed.”

“I’m concerned about you, Artemis.”

A flicker of sadness traced Bradley’s stoic mask, but it washed away when Procter made a wet noise.

“You’re getting mushy in your golden years, Ed. Good grief. I told you, I’m fine. If you want me to not be fine, then go right ahead and put old Artemis on four months of administrative leave so I can drink myself to death in the Reston Town Center. That what you want? Cops calling you at home because I’m ripping tequila shots and screaming about CIA in the parking lot?”

“The Director wanted to fire you. Said he would have if this were a normal organization.”

“A normal organization would never employ me. Now, have the Russkies lodged a protest?”

“Not a peep yet.”

“And what are we thinking on the response?”

Bradley looked away. Pumped his fist into a ball.

“Jeez, Ed. Really? Nothing? Russians drugged me. Took a bunch of nudie pictures. They hit my Deputy with a directed-energy attack.”

“That investigation is still ongoing, Artemis.”

“We did an analysis proving wet-work teams arrived in Dushanbe three days before it happened.”

“And I agree with that analysis. I am merely saying that the investigation is ongoing. And that the White House has so far been reluctant to back aggressive retaliatory options.”

Procter groaned. “If we do nothing, Russians keep poking. They are barbarians without limits or morals, Ed. It’s how they operate. And this is not about me. For the past ten years or so we’ve all watched Putin poke and prod and generally fuck with CIA and the United States with complete impunity. He crosses lines, we do nothing. He invades Georgia. He carves up Ukraine, stirs up a low-grade insurgency, then properly invades and commits a fuck-ton of war crimes. He shuts down power grids. He’s noodling around inside our grid, planning for god knows what . . .”

Bradley put up a gentle hand, which Procter barreled through. “He’s lit us up by waves of cyber and ransomware attacks. His ghouls have poisoned and murdered people all over the world: in the UK, Bulgaria, hell, even here in Washington. They tried to orchestrate a coup in Montenegro. Fucking Montenegro, Ed! The Russians physically attacked our officers in Moscow. The fucking Director of the FSB punched one of them in the head! In the head, Ed, after his arrest! Their militias shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Russkies paid bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers. They have fucked with our heads on social media here at home. They have scrambled the brains of dozens of CIA officers with directed-energy weapons. And, yes, they drugged me and took pictures of my knobs. And none of it”—she cleared her throat— “has resulted in more than a hand-slap. We’ve got to start drawing bright fucking lines that the cockroach in the Kremlin will not cross.”

“I agree with you, Artemis, one hundred percent,” Bradley said. “I’m on your team.”

“I want to be in the game,” Procter said. “And I hear there is a vacancy, the new backroom shop running all the spooky Russia ops. Moscow X.”

“The Moscow X job? Artemis, the Director is not a fan of yours, not after— ”

“The unpleasantness in Amman. And now Dushanbe.”

“Right. The unpleasantness makes you a hard sell.”

“Where else do you want to put me, then?”

Bradley looked up at the launchers. “I do want you working Russia.”

“Well, then sell it.”

THE FALL MORNING WAS UNUSUALLY HOT AND WET WHEN PROCTER crossed the parking lot of the Original Headquarters Building. The Langley clock-punching crowd coursed around her like water. A two-year sentence in this prison camp, she thought, unbelievable. The upside was that if Bradley could convince the Director to give her the Moscow X job, she’d have a better shot at wrecking Russkies from Langley than just about anywhere. And she had so many beautiful ideas for how to fuck the Russians. She motored her Prius out of the compound toward the Vienna Inn, the dive bar that had hosted countless happy hours, ops celebrations, promotions, and even an Irish wake or two following funerals for Agency comrades. Procter planned to bed down there for a two-, maybe three-day bender.

Procter sped through northern Virginia, titillated by a lurid vision of chaos in Moscow set to the rich melody of Swan Lake. Had she been a religious woman, Procter might have believed the hand of God had painted it on her mind. She didn’t really know what to think about God, but she figured that by this point any reasonable deity would have a bone to pick with the Kremlin. After all they’d done, God wasn’t going to stop her from running a solid op sticking it to the Russkies.

– 3 –

Saint Petersburg

IN THE FIRST HOURS OF A WET SAINT PETERSBURG EVENING, A MAN in a well-cut suit exited a black government Mercedes and entered the lobby of a bank. Though his business that evening was robbery, he carried neither knife nor gun. His weapon was instead a stack of official documents, which permitted him to move a large quantity of gold bullion from the bank’s reserves, held in a vault four stories below the street and minded at that hour by a well-armed team of guards and several clerks, only a few of whom were presently asleep.

The papers authorized the suited man, Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Konstantinovich Chernov of the Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti, the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, to transfer two hundred and twenty-one bars of gold from the bank to a strategic reserve in the east.

Chernov’s black Ferragamos clacked over the lobby marble, their spotless heels trailed by a large crew of regular policemen pulling carts and crates. The police had been unhappily conscripted by the FSB for an evening of manual labor. The bullion, after all, was heavy: each bar weighed just over twelve kilos. Bank Rossiya’s head of security greeted Chernov in the lobby. The man had been a colonel in the army; he knew the game. The FSB had dozens of spies inside the bank. The FSB made the rules. Chernov would do whatever he wanted.

They exchanged icy greetings. Chernov was dead-eyed and firm but polite, the paperwork was drearily official, and though the mood was tense there was neither argument nor bickering, not a voice raised in anger. Chernov had once been soldier and priest, so he knew there was no law but God’s and that God spoke this law through Russia alone. His orders that night would have been considered arbitrary, even illegal, in many societies, but to Chernov they might well have been God- breathed, no different from Holy Scripture or a Kremlin decree.

Chernov’s features were unremarkable except for his considerable height. He was pale, bald, and rosy-cheeked. His eyes were still and contemplative. The black suit was Savile Row via the dip pouch and well-tailored to his massive frame. His words were often the first hints of madness, and that evening few had yet crossed his lips.

From the lobby Chernov trailed the head of security to a spacious office overlooking the square. There they rolled through the evening’s first protest: whether Andrei Agapov, the bank’s principal shareholder, should be phoned at that hour to learn of the state’s requisition of a pile of gold bullion valued at nearly two hundred million dollars. “He should at least know what is happening,” the head of security said to Chernov, desk phone clenched in his white hands. He was set to dial Agapov but hung there, awaiting permission. Chernov nodded.

The head of security spoke to Agapov for a few minutes. He read high points from the papers. He gave Chernov’s name and rank and department. He asked Agapov for instructions. Then he hung up.

“Are you to refuse us?” Chernov asked, eyes lit with curiosity.

“No,” the head of security said, “but I’m to make it a challenge.”

“Do you feel that is wise?” Chernov asked.

They agreed that it was not. That the head of security would do exactly nothing to delay or complicate the transfer, but if pressed Chernov would insist resistance had been irritating, even formidable. Then they descended into the vault, where Chernov walked the rows, fingers gliding along the cages holding the gold bars, one of the police officers trailing behind to check the serial numbers against the papers they carried to make this robbery legal. Once Chernov was satisfied, his men began packing.

They filled the bottom of each crate, spreading a thick cloth over the gold. They added two more layers until they feared that the gold might buckle the crates. Then they sealed on the tops with wood screws, affixing premade labels to note the run of serial numbers each crate contained. The bank’s security men did not draw their guns; no one touched radios or phones. They stood dumbly at attention. What is to be done when the police are robbing you?

The head of security watched the crates scud by with the forlorn expression of a man watching the burglary of his own home.

And then, unable to help himself, he muttered about Chernov stealing Andrei Agapov’s gold.

Chernov turned to him. “You say this is Agapov’s gold?” His voice was measured, though he could now feel his blood twisting and sloshing through him like mercury. A hint of salt and metal flickered on the tip of his tongue.

The head of security examined his reflection in his shoes, his hands on his hips in anger, but he held his tongue.

“I asked,” Chernov said, “if it is your position that this gold belongs to Andrei Agapov.”

The man raised his head but did not meet Chernov’s eyes. “The paperwork admits as much.”

“Then I ask you this,” Chernov said. “Who owns Andrei Agapov?”

The head of security fiddled with his tie. He was sniffling, Adam’s apple bobbing away.

Chernov sighed. Few understood. “The lawless power of Russia redeems God,” Chernov said. “A failed God becomes one with Russia through this redemptive work. So it is God, ultimately, who owns this gold. Do you see?”

The man was swallowing harder now, fingers tugging at his tie knot. He did not reply. He did not meet Chernov’s gaze.

Crates slid past.

Chernov led the man by the shoulder toward an empty crate. A policeman was stapling a label onto the wood. Chernov told him to stop, give us a moment. The taste was thick now—had he bitten his tongue? He swabbed his mouth with a finger, but it glistened clean and clear.

“Ideas,” Chernov said, “are the only weapons capable of obliterating history, fact, and truth. As good Russians, you and I understand their power. In the last century millions of our compatriots nobly suffered under the banner of once-obscure ideas. I pray that many more will follow in the one to come.”

Still clutching the man’s shoulder, Chernov motioned to the empty crate. “Get inside.”

“What?”

Chernov’s grip tightened. He peered into the crate and down through the bottom into the dark hole in the Syrian countryside where they’d stuffed him for months. And he knew that the black vine stretching through his body was what this banker must feel now.

Chernov emerged from Syria to watch another crate slide toward the vault’s freight elevators. “Get in.”

A thin line of sweat dappled the man’s hairline. Chernov’s massive hand softly brushed the man’s earlobe and slid gently onto his neck.

“Please,” the man said. “Please.”

“Get in.”

Chernov’s thumb moved just inside the man’s ear. They looked at each other for a moment.

The man stepped inside the crate.

“Sit down.”

He folded up his quivering legs and sat.

Chernov stooped over him. “My idea of Russia is that of a body. A perfect, God-born, virginal body. Made of cells, just like our own. And these cells have roles. Each its proper function. If a cell does not function, then it must be cut from the body.”

“Please,” the man said. “Don’t.”

“Lie down,” Chernov said, “so you are snug.”

The man did. Then he shut his eyes.

Chernov picked up the top and stood casting a shadow over the crate. He chewed on his cheek until blood at last spurted into his mouth. “I have a message for Agapov from my master: We are worried that your cell no longer functions. That it seeks sinful freedom. That the stubborn former KGB general, the scrappy industrialist, the proud landholder, has become convinced that his own person, family, and money are separable from the Russian state. That Agapov, as an individual with rights and protections under the law . . . well, the old fool imagines now that he can do what he likes. But the loss of this gold tonight should demonstrate that the law is nothing but ritual, it is a glorious gesture of subjugation to our leader. Power and violence trump the law, and violence is what will come if Agapov continues to put his interests above those of Russia. Evil begins where the person begins. There is only the Russian nation, there are no people. There is no Agapov.”

Then Chernov slid on the top. He took a drill and brought it to full rev and drove the first screw into the wood.

“Oh God,” the man screamed, “oh God.”

– 4 –

RusFarm, outside Saint Petersburg

ANNA ANDREEVNA AGAPOVA HEARD THE WHINE OF THE BRAKES AND felt the mansion pressing down from above. She looked out the car window: Nearly every room was dark. They were always dark. Four of the staff shuffled cautiously down the wet marble steps under the glow of the lanterns and the brutal horsehead gargoyles. It always cheered her to see the consequences of her husband’s awful design sensibilities, but unfortunately none of the staff slipped on the slick stone. A squat woman opened the door and Anna put her blood-red Louboutin boots onto the gravel and stuffed her hands in her pockets.

She looked up at the house again, but now the sight of it made her angry, so she turned to squint at the lights illuminating the racecourse and the roofs of the stables beyond. How many horses out there now? Probably more than one hundred. Sleet was picking up, slivers in the quickening wind. And it was only October. God, she detested the Saint Petersburg winter. Wet and frigid and gunmetal-gray. The inspiration for a litany of suicidal Russian literature. Anna, like everyone else, simply called the city Piter. Eyes still on the stables, she asked the woman, “Where is he?”

“The office,” the woman said, “but he’s— ”

“My dear,” her father’s voice broke in. She turned to see Andrei Agapov emerge from the foyer. The staff stood silent and stock-still in his presence. His white hair was neatly combed. He was well dressed in trim slacks and a cashmere sweater. But his eyes looked exhausted. His face had the pallor of an ashtray. Anna did not have details, but the urgency of this meeting and his relocation to RusFarm hinted at a man in the crosshairs of conspiracy.

“How was the trip?” he asked.

“Fine. Easy.” She stopped at the top of the steps, just before the threshold.

“I’d like to speak with you now,” he said. He motioned for the staff to collect Anna’s bags. The squat woman opened the trunk and stared. It was empty.

“I’m not spending the night here,” Anna said.

He waved Anna into the foyer with a scowl. She shook her head.

He tilted his to the side. “Just for a moment,” he said. “It’s cold. Come in, I’ll get my coat. Then we can talk outside in this snow”—he waved up at the sleet— “otherwise we might end up cleaning the damn stuff in endless Siberia.” Again he waved, and it said: Come on inside, little girl.

Anna smiled and blew frosty breath into the sky at the euphemism for jail time. She jerked her head away from the house. “I’ll wait out here while you get your coat. Maybe we talk at the racecourse or in the stable?”

Then Anna heard a faint buzz. She turned to listen and it grew louder. Blades beating the air. She knew this one’s sound. “The CIA?” she asked.

He laughed, shook his head, and went inside for his coat.

PAPA’S FAVORITE HELICOPTER HAD ONCE BEEN OWNED BY THE CIA. IT was a Soviet-made, twin-engine Mil Mi-17 that Langley had flown in the opening days of the war against the Taliban in 2001. When the mullahs retook Kabul, they had captured this one and sent it to Moscow as a gift. Her father said he’d won it in a bet with the Minister of Defense. She’d never asked what he’d wagered.

In the helo they shared a flask of Papa’s favorite Dagestani cognac. There were several gun cases and sheaths—some quite large. A crate groaning with ammunition. What looked to be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher spread on the floor. Two silent pilots. The two Agapovs, father and daughter.

This cargo hovered upward, bound for the shooting range on Rus-Farm’s southern edge. A tattered moon peeked through the clouds. They did not even try to speak over the rotors. The helicopter paused for a moment before it swung into a descent. Anna steadied herself on a handle.

They stepped down through the wash of rotors and onto a gravel drive that led to the shooting range. The pilots unloaded the weapons. Her father sipped at his cognac while he watched. The sleet had grown into swollen snowflakes. “It’s been a while since we did some shooting together, Anya,” he said, hand on her shoulder. “I thought it might be nice.”

Papa clicked a switch and floodlights drenched the range. The pilots left the weapons on a wooden table behind the firing line and went to warm themselves in the helicopter.

Anna examined the armory. There was an MP-443 semiautomatic pistol, known as the PYa, or pistolet yarygina, the Russian military’s standard sidearm. Too boring for Papa’s collection—what was it doing here? There was an RPK-74 machine gun with the bipod and a Kalashnikov grenade launcher. Where was her favorite? Had he forgotten? She saw an ADS amphibious assault rifle. Then an ancient AK-47 fabricated for the initial Soviet military trials in 1947. It still worked.

Finally she found it: a velvety black case the length of a pen. She clicked it open and smiled at the tube. A lipstick gun. The Kiss of Death. The original design dated to the KGB days: single-shot, 4.5-millimeter, wildly inaccurate, not once used in the field. The techs had updated Papa’s model in the nineties. The sole operational purpose had been his amusement. The tube now fired a single nine-millimeter round. To make the guns easier to smuggle, the firing device had been designed so actual lipstick could snuggle over its top, underneath the cap. But Papa’s dusty model had long since lost its waxy pink hat.

He watched her turn it over in her hands. “You and that damn thing,” he said.

She clicked it shut and returned the case to the box.

Papa chose the AK-47. Steel targets hung downrange in front of an earthen berm the height of a two-story building. He fired, adjusting his aim until there came the sustained and satisfying clink of rounds meeting steel. Then the click of an empty magazine.

“Why are you at the farm?” she asked.

“I’ve got men doing a sweep up in Repino,” he said. “I’m worried it’s all wired up. Needed a place to work in the meantime. Here.” He handed her the AK-47.

Anna clicked in a fresh magazine. Flicked the safety off. She pinned the stock into her shoulder and reached under the gun with her left hand, fingers outstretched so she wouldn’t scrape her knuckles on the receiver. She quickly slid back the charger with her thumb. Anna looked downrange. She bent her knees, squared her shoulders, and leaned in a bit. She rolled her shoulder into the stock until it was snuggled near her collarbone. Gripped the magazine. Looked down the sight at the dangling steel plate. Squeezed the trigger. Her small frame swallowed the jarring recoil. Clink.

Twenty more rounds, eighteen clinks. Not bad, though Papa wouldn’t say a kind word about it. They went shooting when they were getting along well. And it had been a while. She flicked on the safety and set down the gun. He joined her at the table, handed her the flask, and produced a folder from the pocket inside his sheepskin greatcoat. He set it on her lap.

“You brought your Repino office in your coat, I see,” she said between sips. “What is this?”

“Something I should not have. But first I will tell you why I have it.” He took the cognac. “Yesterday evening, an FSB officer from Internal Security, a Lieutenant Colonel called Chernov, arrived at the bank with papers authorizing him to transfer my gold to a strategic reserve, supposedly a military bunker out east. Lies, of course. It was a robbery, pure and simple. They made off with over two hundred bars of my gold. Packed my head of security into a damn crate and shipped him to me with a psychotic message that I’m to bend the fucking knee. Poor bastard worked his fingers down to bloody nubs clawing at the walls of the box. Took almost three hours to get his wits about him so he could pass the message.”

Papa’s eyes were wolfish, fists balled so tightly that when he uncoiled them a spot of blood blossomed on his palm where he’d sunk in a fingernail. He sucked at the cut.

Anna sipped cognac until Papa could speak again.

Then he whispered, “This Chernov works for Goose, Anya. The message is from Goose.”

The name seemed to open her coat to the looming Piter winter. Vassily Platonovich Gusev. Goose. Former Director of the FSB, current Secretary of the Security Council, one of Putin’s closest advisers. Across three decades, her father and Goose had waged a proper Russian power struggle—long on blood, short on victory. The captains still stood, though, warily eyeing each other across the field.

“They said they would stop after they took my shipyard,” her father continued. “But now this? A bank robbery? There is less of everything, and yet they tax us this way. Do they want a war?”

“Can you talk to the khozyain?” Anna asked. The Master. President Putin.

“The khozyain did nothing after the shipyard shakedown. I will try again. But in the meantime, we have a lead. We fight them.” Her father smacked his palm on the folder.

Anna opened it, scanning the first pages for official seals or the blue stripes of an operational report. She saw nothing, and shut the folder.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“Just read it,” her father said. He took the flask and a slug of cognac. “We have someone listening for us and he’s heard something quite interesting. Neofitsialnye mery.”

Non-official measures. No paper warrant authorizing the wiretap. No assurances that this originated even in the realm of telephone law, the shadowy calls from the Kremlin bearing hushed directives. This came from her father alone. A quiet voice inside told her to stand up and leave, but he had never summoned her in this way. Come to the farm, he had said. Come right now, Anya. She had not visited RusFarm in more than a year. And she was curious about the intelligence, a child feathering fingers over a gift-wrapped box. What could be inside?

She opened the folder and leafed through the papers. Transcripts. A thick stack.

“Here are the highlights,” her father said. “We’ve been paying attention to a few of Goose’s moneymen in Europe. London. Greece. Switzerland. And in one of the London transcripts there is a gem of a slipup, because two of them are talking about the shares and how they should have the lawyers organize things so everyone is square on their cut. They go through the usual names, and they say the khozyain isn’t in on this one. This is for a separate, strategic fund.”

“Shit,” Anna muttered.

Her father put a hand on her shoulder. “Goose stole my money and he is hiding it from the President.”

Anna took the flask. She watched it curiously, as if she didn’t own the fingers attached. She listened to her heartbeat, mind sewing together the strands. Maybe Papa made it all up. She told him that.

“You are serious, Anya? My God.” He laughed.

“Do you have the audio?”

“Yes.”

She held out her hand, palm upturned to the sky.

“Not with me.”

A snowflake fluttered into her open palm.

He rolled his eyes and fished a USB stick from his pocket and slapped it into her hand. “Don’t plug that into a computer that’s connected to the internet.”

Anna slipped it into her coat pocket and stood to collect the lipstick gun from the box. She smiled as she clicked it open to load a round into the tube. Walking downrange, Anna was careful to keep the tube pointed away from her. A lipstick gun did not have a safety. She wanted to think, so she strolled until she came to a plywood target near the berm. You had to get in close with these guns. They were accurate only to a few meters—if that.

She stopped two or so meters from the target. She aimed, and thought it a bit far. One big step closer. She pointed the tube at the target and twisted until it clicked and fired. A miss. This damn thing. Anna returned to the wooden table and slid the tube in its case.

“How does Vadim feel about the race in Dubai?” she asked. “Is the horse ready?”

“Ask him yourself. He’s your husband.”

“Which one is running?”

“Judo Master.”

Anna made a face. “Hopeless.”

“Maybe,” her father said, wiping a dribble of cognac from his chin. “We should discuss the bombshell report I just handed you, instead of the horse business you gracelessly abandoned. Or some other distraction.”

She turned from him, chastened. Last thing she needed was a summons to this awful farm.

He spoke more softly now. “Anya, do you know what Goose might do to us?”

She had ideas. She’d watched powerful men squabble all her life. When she was a little girl there had been a bloody struggle in Piter in the shadow of the Soviet collapse. Amid the gangland violence, Papa had packed her and her mother away to this farm, then a run-down Soviet collective. She could still picture her father’s men scanning the car undercarriages with mirrors tied to long poles, searching for bombs underneath.

When she’d been a teenager her father left the Service to rise through the ranks of former security men who snatched Russia back from the chaos. He was now chairman of Rossiya Industrial, a conglomerate swollen with some of the state’s most strategic assets: weapons manufacture and export, one of the oil champions, the country’s second-largest pension fund, a chain of bakeries, of all things.

The price for her father’s rise had been steep, though. He’d purchased loyalty through an alliance with the Kovalchuk family: bankers, they managed much of Putin’s money.

He’d paid with Anna.

Anna touched her bare ring finger. “I know what will happen, Papa.”

“Goose will squeeze us to sell off more assets,” her father said, “maybe try to exile us with all the damn artists and ballerinas and professors who packed up when the war got rough. Maybe chop up a few of these horses, for god’s sake.”

He spoke calmly into the darkness, prophesying with the certainty of a man who had done all of it to others.

“You,” she corrected. “He comes to gut you, not me.”

“There is no me,” he said. “There is only us. And if you don’t see that, Anya, well, then god help us all.”

She shivered and pulled tight on her coat, not certain who was correct. “What do you want, Papa?”

“We need more evidence before we go to the khozyain. I want you to find where they’ve hidden the damn money.” He tapped the folder. “There are clues in here. A London law firm, Hynes Dawson, is involved. I’d start there— they will be the ones establishing the accounts. The lawyers will understand the full structure. They will probably have power of attorney on some accounts. Could help us steal the money right back. You’ll dig through this, come up with an ops proposal. Time for us to fight back. Show him we won’t fucking grovel.”

“I see,” Anna said, her lips curling into a sardonic smile.

His cheeks reddened. “What is so funny?”

“For six years you’ve complained about my work. Told me I should quit and have babies.”

“And?”

“And now you want me to put it to use. That’s why I’m smiling, Papa.”

“Well, stop it, Anya.”

“I am running other cases. One in Geneva, for instance. What should I do about those?”

He did not acknowledge this. “Are you going to help me, or are you going to sit by and watch?”

She knocked her knee into his and he handed her the flask. She drank. “You have someone who can help with resources?”

“You can speak with Maximov in Moscow.”

The silent birch forest prickled suddenly with the whump of rotors in the distance.

She looked up. “Vadim’s helicopter?”

Her father nodded. “Your husband probably wants to check with the trainers before they put the horse on the plane to Dubai.”

And then she was moving, saying she would return to Moscow tonight.

“Why not just stay the night, Anya?” Papa bellowed, still seated. “Fly back first thing tomorrow. I’ll arrange another helicopter.”

The whump-whump grew louder. She looked to the sky, fresh sleet stinging her face. Vadim’s chopper crossed over them toward the helipad near the mansion. She nudged her head at Papa’s helicopter in the clearing ahead. “I’m going to have them take me back to Moscow now. Is that a problem?”

“Anya, just stay the night.”

“Do you want my help or not?”

Papa smiled, sighed to the ground, and waved her along.

– 5 –

London

AS WITH ALL THE BEST STORIES, SIA FOX FIRST HEARD THE ONE about Goose’s gold from a drunk with a fabulous accent. The drunk was Mickey Lyadov, the accent a charming blend of the English of Eton mixed with the Russian of a Siberian concrete plant. They were in the wood-paneled private room at the Berkeley, where her law firm, Hynes Dawson, entertained top-shelf Russians. Mickey was deep into his champagne, asking Sia about her own accent.

“Well, love, what is it?” Mickey was saying. “Been meaning to ask since we started working together. The roll of the r’s. Fabulous. A bit delicious, if you can take a compliment.”

“Afrikaans,” Sia said. “Cape Town.”

“Perfect,” Mickey said. “It’s perfection.”

The evening was winding down and Sia had long since shut off her own champagne spigot. But she’d sidled up to Mickey, pretending to drink with him to poke around about the money. The Hynes Dawson partners had been fed the usual lines during the exhausting formal dinner: about Mickey’s clients having decided, spur of the moment—naturally—to move a vast sum of money—provenance unknown—into a new matryoshka-doll-like structure of accounts controlled by shell companies nested inside yet more shells. In the British Virgin Islands. Nevis. Switzerland. The Isle of Man. Locales with upstanding reputations for secrecy and discretion.

Sia knew Mickey moved money for Goose. All the Hynes Dawson senior partners knew this, though no one spoke of it. What Sia wanted to know was where this tranche had come from. And Mickey, she thought, wanted to tell her. There was a story, and his eyes said it was a good one. She refilled his champagne.

“It’s quite a lot, Micks,” she said, “even for you and your clients. One hundred fifty million dollars on short notice? Quite substantial. Any juicy bits, or is it all terribly secretive and Russian?”

“Well, it is terribly important to my people,” Mickey said. “Terribly, terribly important.” Then he said, “Zayebeese.” Sia’s brow crinkled, and Mickey laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m saying my work is so bloody important the boss will fuck me if I screw it up.” He laughed again, then drank more champagne and beckoned her closer when, perhaps too excited or too drunk, Mikhail Lyadov said that the money had once been gold.

“Gold?” Sia asked, face brightening. “Wow, Micks, that’s damn incredible. And I say you’re full of it.”

He laughed, then became serious. “No, I swear,” he said. “Gold. From a Russian bank.” He’d heard rumors some of it was stolen, but that was probably too good to be true. Too bloody sexy. The truth is probably boring, he offered glumly. It’s gold my clients need out of the country, smuggled through Europe, turned to clean cash by a few friendly Swiss dealers, and stashed properly on humid isles by Hynes Dawson and the bankers. The usual business, the grind for hard currency and all that. He took a swig of champagne. But it began as gold, he insisted, hand to his heart, from a bank vault in Saint Petersburg.

“Micks, how in the hell did they get all the bars out?” Sia asked. They were hunched over the long table, whispering conspiratorially.

“Heard that they packed them into crates from the Hermitage,” he said with a wink. “Sent them to Florence, a museum partnership, naturally, and then by lorry to God knows where. Probably Switzerland.” His smile buckled in disappointment. “Though I fear that bit is also too bloody good to be true.”

She wanted to ask what the hell Goose planned to do with the money, but Micks wouldn’t know. The question would make him fidget and ramble in that posh accent.

“New subject,” she said, leaning into the table, intending nothing of the sort. “I hear that your friends in Russia are having trouble with one of the businessmen. Is oligarch the right word? He doesn’t own football clubs or yachts, I’m told, but he’s positively glittering with cash. What’s his name? Ago-something . . .”

“Agapov,” Mickey said, “General Andrei Borisovich Agapov. Though he’s retired, love.” He was sliding his champagne flute around by the stem.

“Agapov recently sold his shipyard at a savage discount,” Mickey continued. “And now this business with the bank.” Knowing shake of the head, more champagne.

“The bank is Agapov’s, too?” Sia asked.

“Agapov is the bank’s principal shareholder,” Mickey said. “The man, of course, has certain enemies. Rather clever ones, in fact. The sort that spin webs deep inside the Kremlin’s keep.”

Grinning, he twirled the empty flute. They (Mickey) had drained the champagne. Sia snatched a bottle of brandy from the serving cart to top him off.

“No snifter? My god, Sia, you are a barbarian,” he said. “Visigoths pour brandy in champagne flutes, dear. Visigoths and Vandals.”

“On to the gates of Rome, Micks.” She poured herself a flute and snatched an insignificant sip. A waiter entered the room; she waved him off, folded her hands on the table, leaned in for another whisper: “You were talking about enemies, Micks. Andrei Agapov’s enemies.”

“Indeed, indeed. Well, we’ve all got them, don’t we, Sia?” Mickey said. “Look at your old Micks. At present: deep in his cups with a Visigoth. Totally surrounded.” He chuckled and then examined his watch as if he had places to be.

He needs a nudge, Sia thought. A little help.

“I only pick up the rumors that make it from Moscow to dreary London,” she offered, “but I’ve heard that Goose is putting the hurt on Agapov. In the bad old days Goose was head honcho at FSB, I think. Now he has an office down the hall from Putin. Hell, Micks, I read an article saying Goose was behind the shakedown of Agapov’s shipyard. What gives? Something nasty slithering under the Kremlin sheets?”

Mickey zippered his mouth, threw the imaginary key into the cognac, and downed his flute.

Sia refilled it. “Well, now, Micks, the key’s back in your glass. You drink it, we might just unlock those lips.”

He shrugged and gave a thin smile after a long, slow sip. Drummed the tablecloth. Then, as had become Mickey’s preferred method of sharing secrets, he spoke in a selective, passive tense. The active would have required him to assign Goose responsibility for things he should not.

“Agapov’s gold was purloined, one might say. For strategic purposes that are of course a mystery to your lowly old Micks. But his gold was snatched right up, his shipyard, too, and a few of my little birdies back in the Rodina are singing that old Andrei is being punished because he doesn’t play by the rules. He’s got to pay his tribute, see, and he is being bloody stubborn about it. You mentioned Goose. And I won’t comment on the articles. You know the papers here kick up all manner of slander and libel against patriotic Russians. But I do hear from my birds that Goose and Agapov despise each other. Both are legacy Leningrad KGB. Seed of their mutual hatred a timeless one: a girl. What bloody else? There’s Helen of Troy, there’s Galina of Saint Petersburg, God rest her soul. Galina was with Goose before she married Agapov. Now Goose is ascendant, he’s got his goslings to feed, and he’s doing what any reasonable man should, isn’t that right, Sia?”

“And what’s that, Micks? Rob an old rival blind?”

Mickey shook his head. “It’s that, but more. Agapov built a powerful alliance with the Kovalchuk family. Thick as thieves, Agapov and Kovalchuk were. Hell, it was Agapov who took the controlling stake in the bank when Kovalchuk senior passed a few years ago. Agapov has even married his daughter, Anna, off to the son, Vadim Kovalchuk. One might wonder if the game here is both sweet revenge and good politics. Shake down an old rival, smash a powerful political alliance. Two birds and all.”

“Fascinating stuff, Micks,” Sia said. “Your clients are positively brimming with Stalinist intrigue.”

“They have bloody hands,” he said, wiping his palms with a cheerful smile. “Just like yours.”

TWO PECKS ON THE CHEEKS FOR MICKS, A SHORT STROLL THROUGH moonlit Mayfair, and Sia was back at Hynes Dawson, where a pile of haggard associates careened into the seventeenth hour of their workday. She marched up the winding, creaky staircase and into her office, where she closed the door and stood staring out the dirty window onto the unkempt bushes lining the gravel courtyard below.

The fountain was dry; she had never seen it work. Benny Hynes, the firm’s sole surviving founder and its emeritus managing partner, had insisted on the office’s eclectic combination of premium real estate and tumbledown décor. Many of the big City firms boasted sleek, ultramodern offices awash in amenities to compensate staff for their corporate slavery.

Not Hynes Dawson. The Mayfair town house might well have been the home of an eccentric family. Bookshelves lined the hallways and offices. The walls were clotted with oil paintings unrelated to the partnership, the clients, or the practice of law: the Battle of Trafalgar, a Cornish pastoral, a duck painted by Benny Hynes himself. Space was at a premium: Sia’s office had once been a child’s bedroom.

The firm’s draw was simple: compensation was five times that of other London law firms. On a good year, the firm’s profit-sharing plan might make that seven. The money compensated for the shambolic workspace. It also sought to make amends for a client list running the spectrum from the reluctantly shady to the unrepentantly corrupt. Client hands were jammed in dirty money pots all around the globe. And many of those hands tilted a shade murderous: Assad, Putin, Al Saud, Khamenei. Their names did not appear on the documents, but it was understood by the firm’s Oxbridge senior partners that their representatives were Hynes Dawson’s most valuable clients.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Sia said.

Benny Hynes sauntered into her office. He was seventy-four, gaunt, with a shock of white hair and a three-piece charcoal suit. His pocket watch had once belonged to Churchill. He was awake and working at 1:03 a.m. They sat on the green leather sofa and for a moment watched a passerby through the window on the street below.

“You spent time with Mickey Lyadov?” he asked, still looking out the window.

“He likes to talk.”

“Kremlin gossip?”

“Isn’t it always? The money belonged to Andrei Agapov. Goose took it. Trouble brewing in Moscow, warring factions and all. Typical Russian business.”

He grunted, fussed with his tie. “That explains the bullshit they fed us at dinner. Any risk for us if we help them wash the money? Does Mickey think we’re in the crosshairs?”

“No more than usual.”

“What the bloody hell are they going to do with it?”

“Mickey doesn’t know.”

“He never knows the important things.”

“He’s a bagman.”

Benny stood and stretched. “They’ve just now sent the contract for us to start on the work. You get it set up for them, eh, Sia? Whatever they want, and they’ll want the usual: shells on shells on shells until it’s all vanished. Unless we think Agapov or some other Kremlin nasty is going to burn down this office, we help Goose stash his money. Because who cares? It’s our job. It’s why we exist, fuck all.” A kindly pat on her knee, and Benny was up and headed for the door.

And it’s why I’ve wriggled into your little mercenary outfit, she did not say. Instead, she beat Benny to the door and opened it to see him out, pat on the shoulder and a solemn promise that she’d assign a crack team first thing, have a tranche of Agapov’s stolen money squirreled into an innocuous Caribbean account by lunch, afternoon tea at the very latest.

MICKEY HAD IT MOSTLY RIGHT. THE CRATES ARRIVED IN FLORENCE IN the hold of a Russian military transport plane on loan to the Culture Ministry. Museum exchanges had continued apace, even with the war. Chernov, whose official documents described him as a conservator attached to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, accompanied a cluster of the boxes. The true conservators, traveling to oversee a loan of paintings and sculptures once owned by Catherine the Great, wisely kept their distance.

Chernov’s crates were royal blue and unmarked apart from a serial number and a yellow sign reading OPEN THIS SIDE stenciled in Italian, Russian, and English. Chernov, supervising the unloading on the apron in Florence, exchanged greetings with a man he knew only by his unimaginative FSB nickname: Michelangelo. The man owned and operated a trucking company that specialized in moving paintings, sculptures, and other valuables throughout Europe. Two daughters had studied economics in London thanks to payments from the Russian FSB.

From Florence, Michelangelo’s trucks ferried the crates overland to a gold-refining operation outside Dresden, where the bullion would be melted down and remolded with new insignias to disguise its provenance. Anti-money-laundering measures in the gold-refining business are thinly enforced— even more so when the owner and chief executive officer are on the FSB payroll.

The gold’s path forked from the refinery, where it was sold to Swiss branches of two German gold wholesalers, both of which claimed executives similarly indebted to Lubyanka paymasters. Greed doubtless encouraged conspirators to overlook the fog shrouding the gold’s birthplace, but those with lingering questions, or perhaps a fear of retribution—legal or otherwise— could also take comfort in the simple fact that Bank Rossiya had not reported the theft. For, as Chernov had insisted, it was not robbery because the gold was Russia’s and therefore God’s and all belonged to God. To any interested international organization or government, the bullion remained safely entombed inside the Rodina.