Though he was only forty-eight, the “Black Bear,” as Khodoshevsky was sometimes known, was one of the most powerful people in the world, though his name would not be found on any list. In the kleptocracy that became the privatization spree in Russia of the 1990s, Khodoshevsky convinced a French investment bank to buy a rundown automotive-parts plant in Irkutsk, then leveraged it into a controlling seat on the board of Tazprost, Russia’s largest—and ailing—automobile manufacturer, which, upon the sudden demise of two of its more uncompliant board members, dropped in Khodoshevsky’s lap at the age of thirty-six. From there he obtained the rights to open Mercedes and Nissan dealerships in Estonia and Latvia, along with hundreds of Gaznost filling stations all over Russia to fill them up.
Under Yeltsin the Russian economy was carved up by a handful of eager kapitalisti. One big fucking candy store, Khodoshevsky always called it. In the free-for-all that became the public finance sector, he opened department stores modeled after Harrods that sold pricey Western brands. He bought liquor distributorships for expensive French champagnes and wines. Then banks, radio stations. Even a low-cost airline.
Today, through a holding company, Khodoshevksy was now the largest single private landlord on the Champs-Élysées!
In the course of growing his empire, he had done many questionable things. Public ministers on Putin’s economic trade councils were on his payroll. Many of his rivals were known to have been arrested and imprisoned. More than a few had been disposed of, suffering untimely falls from their office windows or unexplained car accidents on the way home. These days Khodoshevsky generated more free cash flow than a medium-size economy. In Russia today what he could not buy, he stole.
Fortunately, his was not a conscience that kept him troubled or awake at night. He was in touch daily through emissaries with a handful of powerful people—Europeans, Arabs, South Americans—whose capital had become so vast it basically ran the world. Wealth that had created the equivalent of a supereconomy, keeping real-estate prices booming, luxury brands flourishing, yacht makers busy, Wall Street indices high. They developed economies the way the International Monetary Fund once developed nations: buying up coal deposits in Smolensk, sugarcane fields for ethanol in Costa Rica, steel factories in Vietnam. However the coin fell, theirs always ended up on top. It was the ultimate arbitrage Khodoshevsky had crafted. The hedge fund of hedge funds! There was no way to lose.
Except maybe, as he relaxed a bit on the accelerator, today, to his son.
“C’mon, Pavel, let me see what you’re made of. Gun it now!”
Laughing, they sped into the final straightaway, then did a lap around the massive fountain in the courtyard in front of the house. The T-Rexes’ superheated engines spurted like souped-up go-carts. They bounced over the Belgian cobblestones in a father-son race to the finish.
“I’ve got you, Pavel!” Khodoshevsky called, pulling even.
“Believe it, old man!” His determined son gunned the engine and grinned.
In the final turn, they both went all out. Their wheels bumped together and scraped. Sparks flew, and Khodoshevsky lurched into the basin of the gigantic baroque fountain they had brought over from France. His T-Rex’s fiberglass chassis caved in like crepe paper. Pavel threw up his hands in victory as he raced by. “I win!”
Stiffly, Khodoshevsky squeezed himself out of the mangled machine. A total loss, he noted glumly. Seventy thousand dollars down the drain.
Pavel jumped out of his and ran over. “Father, are you all right?”
“Am I all right?” He took off his helmet and patted himself around to make sure. He had a scrape on his elbow. “Nothing broken. A good pass, boy! That was fun, eh? You’ll make a race driver yet. Now, help me drag this piece of junk into the garage before your mother sees what we’ve done.” He mussed his boy’s hair. “Who else has toys like this, eh?”
That was when his cell phone rang. The Russian reached in and pulled his BlackBerry out of his jeans. He recognized the number. “I’ll be with you in a second.” He waved to Pavel. “I’m afraid it’s business, boy.” He sat on the edge of the stone fountain and flipped open his phone. He ran a hand through his tousled black hair.
“Khodo here.”
“I just want you to know,” the caller, a private banker Khodoshevsky knew, began, “the assets we spoke of have been transferred. I’m bringing him the final shipment myself.”
“That’s good.” Khodoshevsky snorted. “He must have pictures of you, my friend, for you to trust him after that mess he made of things last year. You just be sure you explain to him the price of doing business with us. This time you see to it he fully understands.”
“You can be certain I will,” the German banker said. “I’ll remember to pass along your best regards.”
Khodoshevsky hung up. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, he had gotten his hands dirty. Surely not the last. The man was a good friend. Khodoshevsky had shared many meals with him, and a lot of good wine. Not that it mattered. Khodoshevsky clenched his jaw. No one loses that kind of money of theirs and doesn’t feel it.
No one.
“Come, boy.” He got up and went over to pat Pavel on the back. “Help me drag this piece of shit into the garage. I have a brand-new one in there. What do you say, maybe you’d like to give your old man another turn?”
“Mr. Raymond?”
Hauck knocked at the small white, shingle-roofed home with a cheap green awning over the door in a middle-class section of Pensacola. There was a small patch of dry lawn in front, a black GMC pickup with an EVEN JESUS LOVED A GOOD BEER bumper sticker parked in the one-car garage.
The door opened, and a dark, sun-flayed man peered back. “Who’re you?”
“My name’s Hauck. I’m a lieutenant with the police department up in Greenwich, Connecticut. I handled your son’s case.”
Raymond was strongly built, of medium height, with a rough gray stubble. Hauck figured him for around sixty. His gnarled, cedar-colored skin looked more like a hide of leather and offset his clear blue eyes. He had a faded blue and red military tattoo on his thick right arm.
“Everyone knows me as Pappy,” he grunted, throwing open the door. “Only people who want money call me Mr. Raymond. That’s why I wasn’t sure.”
Hauck stepped through the screen door into a cramped, sparely furnished living room. There was a couch that looked like it had been there for forty years, a wooden table with a couple of Budweiser cans on it. The TV was on—a CSI rerun. There were a couple of framed pictures arranged on the wall. Kids. In baseball and football uniforms.
Hauck recognized one.
“Take yourself a seat,” Pappy Raymond said. “I’d offer you something, but my wife’s at her sister over in Destin, so there’s nothing here but week-old casserole and warm beer. What brings you all the way down here, Lieutenant Hauck?”
“Your son.”
“My son?” Raymond reached for the remote and flicked off the TV. “My son’s been dead over a year now. Hit-and-run. Never solved. I understood the case was closed.”
“Some information’s come out,” Hauck said, stepping over a pile of newspapers, “that might shed some new light on it.”
“New light …” The old man bunched his lips together and mocked being impressed. “Just in fucking time.”
Hauck stared