generator room. A keypad was built into the wall and Shulsky entered a seven-digit code. There was a buzz and the door opened. Alex walked through into an empty corridor with a closed-circuit television camera pointing down at him from above and another locked door at the end. It swung open as he approached.
There was a comfortable reception area on the other side, and, beyond that, open-plan offices filled with phones and computers. Two telephonists sat behind the main desk, and men and women in suits walked along the carpeted corridors. A black man with white hair and a moustache was waiting to greet him. Alex recognized him at once. His name was Joe Byrne. He was the deputy director for operations in the Covert Action section of the Central Intelligence Agency of America.
“Nice to see you again, Alex,” he said.
“I’m not so sure,” Alex replied. He remembered how his passport had briefly disappeared into Shulsky’s attache case. “You swapped my passport,” he said. “The one you showed Drevin was a fake.” Joe Byrne nodded. “Come this way. Let me show you to my office. I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”
THE BIGGEST CRIMINAL IN THE WORLD
« ^ »
yrne’s office was identical to the one that Alex had visited in Miami. It had the same ordinary furniture, the same blank walls, the same air-conditioning turned up one notch too high. Only the view was different.
Alex guessed he probably had something similar in just about every major city in America.
“You fancy a drink?” Byrne asked as he sat down behind his desk.
“Some water, thanks.” There were a couple of bottles on a sideboard. Alex helped himself.
“It’s good to see you again, Alex.” Byrne sounded tired. He looked as if he hadn’t been to bed for a week. “I was never able to thank you for the work you did for us on Skeleton Key.”
“I was sorry about your agents.”
“Tom Turner and Belinda Troy. Yeah, it was too bad. I was sorry to lose them. But that wasn’t your fault.
You did a great job.” Byrne ran his eyes over Alex. “You look in good shape,” he went on. “I was sorry to hear you got hurt in London. I told that boss of yours, Alan Blunt, that it wasn’t a good idea getting a kid involved in this sort of work. Of course, he didn’t listen to me. He never does. In a way, that’s why you’re here now.”
“Why am I here now?”
“We had to get you away from Drevin without alerting him to the fact that the CIA was involved,” Byrne explained. “Like you said, we swapped your passport, so now he thinks you’re tied up with customs and immigration. That gives us a chance to have a talk. As a matter of fact, I was rather hoping you might be able to help us.”
“Forget it, Mr Byrne.” Alex shook his head. “I’d already made up my mind before we landed. I don’t want anything more to do with Drevin. So if you don’t mind putting me on a plane to Washington, I’ll say goodbye.”
“Washington?” Byrne raised an eyebrow. “It’s funny you should mention that. But I’m afraid you can’t just walk out of here, Alex. Apart from anything else, you’re an illegal immigrant, remember?” He quickly raised a hand in a conciliatory gesture. “Just hear me out. What I’ve got to say may be of genuine interest to you. And when I’ve finished, then you can tell me what you think. The truth is, right now you’re in a unique situation. You could be very useful to us. And you have no idea how much is at stake.” Alex sighed. “Where have I heard that before?” He opened the bottle of water and sat down opposite the CIA man. “OK. Go ahead.”
“Well, as you’ve probably guessed, this is all about Drevin,” Byrne began. “Nikolei Vladimir Drevin. By our count, he’s the fourth or fifth richest man alive and, of course, the British just love him. He’s bought a soccer team; he’s a big businessman; he gives money to charity. And then there’s Ark Angel. Thanks to him, you British are going to corner the market in space tourism, and that’s a prize worth having. But I’m afraid it’s not as easy as that. You see, for the last eighteen months the CIA and the State Department have been investigating Drevin, and we’ve discovered that he isn’t quite what he seems. I’m talking about organized crime, Alex. And all roads lead straight to him. To put it in a nutshell, we think he’s just about the biggest criminal in the world.”
Byrne paused. Alex showed no reaction. After all he’d been through, he no longer had it in him to be surprised.
“It’s complicated,” Byrne went on. “And even though you flew over here on Drevin’s sky palace, I guess you’re probably jet-lagged. So I’ll give it to you in broad strokes.
“To understand Drevin, you have to go back to the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early nineties.
Communism was finished and the whole country was looking forward to a fresh start. But there was a problem. The new Russian government was broke. It needed money badly and it decided to sell off all its assets, which is to say, its car manufacturing centres, its hydroelectrical plants, its airline and—most crucial of all—its oilfields. They sold them cheap, often for a fraction of their real value. They had no choice, because they needed the money fast and they needed it up front. In the next few years a new group of businessmen appeared. They were in the right place at the right time and they saw that this was a fantastic opportunity. These people weren’t going to become millionaires overnight. As share prices rose, they were going to become billionaires—and that’s exactly what happened.
“Nikolei Drevin was one of these people, but he was very different to the rest. We don’t know a lot about his past. It’s hard to find out anything that’s happened in Russia in the last twenty years. We believe that Drevin started off in the army. He was certainly a senior figure in the KGB. Then we lose track of him until he re-emerges with a successful business selling—of all things—gardening equipment. He also dabbled in shares, particularly oil. He was doing well, but not that well, and when the sale of the century started he didn’t have enough money to cut himself a slice.
“And this was when he had his big idea. His work with the army and the KGB had brought him into contact with the Russian underworld—I’m talking about the mafiya. He knew all the big names and so he went to them for a loan. You see, he was a respectable businessman. He’d seen the future, and with their support he could buy into it big time. He needed about eighty million dollars, enough to buy a controlling interest in Novgerol, one of the big Russian oil companies. The mafiya met with him and decided they liked him, but they didn’t have enough money, so they turned to their friends in Japan. You’ve heard of the yakuza? Well, they were interested too, and just to round things off, the Chinese triads also decided to join the party. Between the three of them they raised the finance and Drevin was in. Suddenly he was a major player.
“So he bought into Novgerol. He got it for a song and the people who suffered in the end were the Russian people. It was their oil and it was more or less stolen from them. I doubt that Drevin lost any sleep over that. His shares doubled and trebled and multiplied by about a hundred, and he was able to pay back all his criminal friends
