“Gravilov has taken her hostage,” Ninchenko said.
Gage watched as they half carried Alla down the stairs. From the jerky movement of her head Gage guessed she was searching the street for the protection he promised.
“Get your people over here,” Gage said, glancing at Ninchenko. “There’s no way we can follow them in this van without being spotted.”
Ninchenko yelled in Ukrainian into his cell phone.
Razor slid into the car first. Hammer pushed Alla inside and followed her in. The driver then sped off into the half-lit streets of Dnepropetrovsk.
“One car will be here in thirty seconds,” Ninchenko told Gage. “What do you want them to do?”
Gage let the pieces reorganize themselves in his mind. “Not start a war, not in Gravilov’s town. We’ll lose. Just stay with them.”
Ninchenko gave the order, then said, “Do you think she told them about us?”
“If she had,” Gage said, shaking his head, “they would’ve snuck out a back door.”
Ninchenko turned off the video camera.
Gage thought back on his conversation with Alla. Matson and Gravilov as drinking buddies. He looked back at Ninchenko.
“Gravilov didn’t take her hostage,” Gage said. “The little runt gave her to Gravilov as security for the low- noise software.”
“Will he deliver?”
“I’m sure he’s telling himself that he will, but I don’t know.”
Gage paused, trying to anticipate Matson’s next move, thinking that under this kind of pressure, Matson’s actions would depend more on character and instinct than tactical ability.
“He didn’t give a second thought to the people who got killed until his own life was in danger,” Gage said. “He’s the kind of guy with the rare capacity not to think.” He pointed at Ninchenko. “I want to hear from your people every time they make a turn until they arrive at their destination.”
Ninchenko issued the order, then hung up.
“What do you mean, the rare capacity not to think?”
“He’s not like a sociopath who enjoys hurting people or like a murderer gets off on reliving the crime. Matson’s a guy who just doesn’t think about what he’s really doing.”
Ninchenko’s phone rang, he listened for a moment, then reported to Gage. “They’re heading south, paralleling the river toward farm country. Gravilov has a dacha out there. Near Taromskoe.”
Gage handed Ninchenko a water bottle and opened one for himself.
“You think she’ll tell Gravilov who her father is?” Ninchenko asked.
“Only as a last resort. She knows that her father would turn the thing to his advantage, try to get a cut of the deal. He’s a respected guy. Nobody’ll take Gravilov’s side once they find out he took Petrov Tarasov’s daughter hostage, and Gravilov would have to make up for disrespecting him by giving him a piece.”
“I may quote Yiddish,” Ninchenko said, “but you think like maffiya.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Gage stared at the dark monitor and took a sip of water. “Is there somebody who can keep an eye on Matson? He’ll stay put until Gravilov comes back for him.”
“Sure, I’ll take care of it.”
Moments after a blue Lada containing two of Ninchenko’s men pulled to the curb twenty-five yards away, Kolya turned the ignition and headed back to the Astoria Hotel.
“I wonder if Gravilov will let her go,” Ninchenko said as they neared the yellow-lit columns and blue-lit towers of the train station.
“It depends on whether they think they have leverage to make her keep her mouth shut after the deal is done. They figure they can use the U.S. government to control Matson-if he talks he’ll go to jail. On her, they’ve got nothing.”
“Which means?”
“That they’ll treat her well until they get the software, then just get rid of her.”
CHAPTER 71
T he sun broke through the previous day’s cloudy remnants as Ninchenko drove them just after dawn through the southwestern outskirts of Dnepropetrovsk on their way to Taromskoe, where Alla had been delivered. The green and gold cupolas of the Byzantine Holy Trinity Cathedral struggled against the remaining haze as the industrial stacks, newly liberated from the low clouds, thrust their smoke toward the blue sky. The sun revealed that the buildings and factories that merely appeared a dismal gray on the preceding day, were, in fact, a dismal gray, brooding and unrepentant.
Gage could see on Ninchenko’s face that his night had been as restless as Gage’s, even with the reassurance from their surveillance people that Alla had arrived safely at Gravilov’s dacha.
Within minutes of leaving the city limits, Gage found himself looking out over vast expanses of collective farms. Ninchenko was soon winding through miles of unfenced land and rolling hills. Gage lowered the passenger window of the four-door white Lada. He smelled the acrid odor of industrial-sized cattle breeding operations mixed into the diesel exhaust exploding from ancient commercial trucks lumbering along on the ill-maintained two-lane highway.
“Is that winter wheat?” Gage asked, pointing out toward thousands of acres of green shafts just emerged from the soil.
“So they hope. Last year the February freeze killed ninety percent of the crop.”
“Tough way to make a living.”
“That’s all they know.”
Ninchenko tuned to the excited chatter of the Kiev Vedomosti news station as they rode west. They listened for a moment to the announcer’s excited voice.
“What are they saying?” Gage asked.
“The Supreme Court ordered a new election for next week, but without their own army they can’t force the president to let it happen.”
They drove without speaking until Ninchenko cocked his head at the radio, then burst into bitter laughter. “The Foreign Ministry has admitted that it issued three hundred diplomatic passports in the last week, all to members of the presidential administration. They’re probably getting ready to escape to Switzerland to join their stolen money.”
Thirty minutes after leaving the city, Ninchenko turned north, back toward the Dnepr River, and passed through two villages that served as the urban centers of a thirty-square-mile collective farm. Just before they crested a hill, he pulled over and parked next to a thick stand of fir trees.
“His dacha is down the other side, along the river.”
Gage climbed out of the car, then followed Ninchenko thirty yards through the evergreens, stopping in the shadows on the far side.
Ninchenko handed binoculars to Gage, then pointed toward a museumlike dacha formed by three-story, white stucco wings extending at forty-degree angles from a domed atrium. The driveway encircled a Romanesque fountain populated with Cossacks at play. No other dachas were in sight.
“What’s in there?” Gage asked, pointing at a dozen thirty-foot-square cages nestled at the bottom of a hill to the west of the house.
“That’s his menagerie. Wolves, bears, even a Bengal tiger. Most were smuggled in. Many are ones that evolution planned for climates other than Ukraine’s. But there are a few locals, too.”
“Does he take care of them?”
Ninchenko tilted his jaw toward trails of smoke rising in the distance. “They live better than any of the villagers we passed on the way.”
Gage surveyed the countryside, looking for observation points. “Where are your people?”
