The Gatekeeper, page 25
The guards pat Dez down, then escort him closer to the great house. They stay well outside his reach, one guard slinging Dez’s bag over his own shoulder.
They open the gate to the property and walk closer to the house on stilts.
The three of them mount the stairs up to the deck that dominates the entire western side of the first floor of the house. It’s the same deck where Dez and Petra shared drinks.
Now that he’s closer, those inside can see he’s holding a piece of eleven-by-seventeen standard printer paper. They can see a second piece of paper in his hand, but this one’s folded.
Dez speaks to one of the armed guards—those within can hear nothing through the well-soundproofed glass. The guard nods.
Dez winks at Petra, on the far side of the glass.
He takes the piece of paper and, incongruously, licks it.
He turns it around and smacks it up against the great window. His saliva makes it stick.
Written on it in black Sharpie is
MY 1ST BOAT TOOK OUT YOUR LAUNCH.
Dez unfolds the second sheet, licks it, and smacks it up against the glass.
2ND BOAT IS AIMED AT YOUR YACHT.
Dmytro Rudko sighs theatrically. He turns to Guerrero.
“I take it this is your Mr. Limerick?”
Petra answers, “Oh, yes it is.”
Rudko sighed again.
“By all means. Please invite Mr. Limerick to join us.”
* * *
Dez learned early on, during his time as a ’keeper, that there are four primary methods for getting through a door: You can bash your way through, shoot your way through, explode your way through, or burn your way through.
And every now and then, you get invited in.
CHAPTER 76
Interior guards pat Dez down, even though exterior guards already had done so. One of the guards drops Dez’s messenger bag upside down on the living room wet bar and two men sort through everything. They find his tablet computer, but not much else.
Dez spots General William Tancredi. He can’t believe how bad the man looks. He has, for certain, cracked under the pressure.
Dmytro Rudko and Constantine Alexandris are about to speak when Dez blows past them to Brittany Kinney. Dez’s hand is extended and, out of sheer habit, she puts her hand forward, too. He pumps it.
“That was you, yeah? The enhanced online security?”
She nods, uncertain. Two men keep guns turned on Dez and now, by proximity, on Brittany.
“Brilliant. I’m good. No question. But not in your league. You’re pro, you.”
She’s flustered. “I, ah, thank you. The denial-of-service attack?”
Dez rolls his eyes. “Best I could think of. Rubbish, I know. Embarrassing. Show you something?”
He draws his mobile—slowly, making sure the guards are okay with it. He brings up a web page and hands his mobile to Brittany.
Her face morphs from unsure to surprised to pissed off. She uses her thumb to swipe through several images.
“Oh, Vincent.” Her voice fairly drips with disdain. “Did you recently add external surveillance to this house?”
Guerrero steps up. “Absolutely. When this whole thing started. Nobody gets near here without my people knowing.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
He stiffens. “I don’t need IT’s permission to do my job.”
“Yeah,” Brittany Kinney says, and tosses Dez’s phone to him in a high, lazy arc. “You do.”
Guerrero catches the phone. He shoots Dez a look, then turns to the screen. The web page cascades from shot to shot to shot, all black-and-white video images, in real time, showing this house.
“I upgraded the house security after Dez hacked you,” Brittany snaps. “You didn’t tell me you’d added external cameras.”
She turns to Constantine and points to the westward-facing window, the one with two sheets of paper still adhered outside, thanks to saliva. “Some of the cameras show windows. Including this one. He’s been watching us all day.”
Guerrero tries to think of something to say but nothing comes. He’s fuming. Dez turns to Brittany, rolls his eyes, jabs a thumb at the major. “Wanker.”
“If that word means what I think it does,” Brittany deadpans. “Yes.”
Dez turns and, in turning, gives Petra the quickest of winks. He’s ignored her so far since being escorted in. He wants her to know he’s got a plan.
Dez and Brittany almost sound like they’re bonding—she even called him Dez—and it all adds to Constantine’s raging anger. “Why are we even talking to this fool! He is nobody!”
Dmytro laughs. He eyes Dez shrewdly. “I think perhaps that is not true, Constantine.”
Dez grins at the perpetually angry tycoon. “Dunno all the players here, but I’m betting you’ve been thinking of yourself as the boss man. Imagine my surprise, watching the video, seeing our lad Vincent here pull a gun on you. Shocking, that.”
Constantine sputters. “Shut the fuck up! What are you? You have no idea…!”
Dez waves him off. “Suck me.” He turns to the Russian. “Don’t know you, sir. You’d be the Russian gent whose boat I sank?”
“I would. Dmytro Rudko. And you’re the young man who made such a mess of things up north. I believe you broke Oliver Lantree’s jaw, took his radio station off the air, destroyed our uplink to the Pentagon. Yes?”
Dez offers his hand and the Russian shakes.
“You impress me, Mr. Limerick. And the nuclear power plant?”
“Aye, that was me.”
“That is … not unimpressive,” the Russian says, and sounds like he means it.
General William Tancredi rises from the couch, eyes feverish, skin clammy and pale. “You…”
Dez thinks the time is right to push the general as far as he can. “Billy! That you? Didn’t see ye there. Been a day. Get us a drink, will ye? Beer for me.” He turns to Petra. “Whiskey?”
Tancredi rocks back as if facing a headwind.
Petra follows Dez’s lead. “A little early, but why not. The Tullamore, not the Jameson, I think. Lots of ice.”
Constantine looks like he’s within a hair’s width of a stroke. “Stop this fucking insanity!”
Dez nods. “Ice in good Irish whiskey? I’m with your da there. Fecking insanity.”
Constantine’s face is the color of a ripe tomato. He advances on Rudko, fists cocked. “This is my house! I want that bastard dead! Now! This entire thing, this was my plan! And you!” He jabs Rudko in the shoulder with a stubby, yellowed finger. “No mincing little comrade treats me like this! I want you out! Now!”
He spins on Guerrero. “You’re fired! Take your men with you. I built my company from nothing! I drove the first truck our company ever owned! I cleaned the toilets in the first office! I tell Russia what to do and how to act! Not the other way around! Out! Now!”
Colin Frye gulps down a drink nobody saw him pour; his hands are shaking, his eyes red-rimmed.
Dmytro Rudko laughs.
Brittany Kinney runs a hand through her crimson hair, turns to Petra, mouths, I’m sorry!
General William Tancredi draws a holstered SIG from one of Guerrero’s men, thumbs off the safety, puts the muzzle under his chin, and pulls the trigger.
The explosion is deafening within the living room.
People shriek, people duck. Tancredi falls straight back onto the see-through glass floor, the one that shows the tide when it’s in. Part of his skull detaches with the bullet’s exit. Blood and brain matter splatter across the furniture, across the floor, across Constantine Alexandris’s trousers and shoes.
Brittany falls to her knees and pukes into the terra-cotta bowl of a rubber tree plant.
Colin faints.
Dez turns to Dmytro Rudko and finds the Russian already looking at him. Rudko nods a little.
“Master plan’s falling a bit off the rails there, mate.”
“It is.” Rudko sighs. “A bit.”
Petra studies the carnage around her. She turns to Rudko.
“We should talk. In my office,” she says. “I have a counterproposal for you.”
CHAPTER 77
Petra’s comment catches most everyone by surprise. Not Dez.
He’s dead brilliant at stuff like getting the door to the Alexandris house open, emotionally separating Brittany Kinney from Guerrero, irritating Constantine, and identifying General Tancredi as the weakest link.
Or like manipulating Brittany into handing Dez’s own phone to Guerrero. Yes, he’d brought up the pirated, black-and-white feeds from Guerrero’s exterior surveillance cameras, but a subroutine in the phone also has been transmitting audio to LAPD units parked three blocks away, a massive SWAT presence ready to drop like an anvil on Captain Cardona’s signal.
But that’s all battlefield tactics. Not campaign strategy.
You want to win a brawl, Dez is your man.
You want to defeat an army, he thinks, you call in Petra.
Dmytro Rudko studies the carnage around him: the dead body on the floor, the blood and viscera splattered about. And he says to Petra, “I am open to suggestions.”
Barefoot, sans her usual Armani armor, Petra circles the splotches of Tancredi’s blood and pads toward the living room entrance. She walks deliberately, in no hurry. A few of the others start to move as well.
“Desmond.” She gestures to the wet bar. “Bring the whiskey. And the ice bucket. Elitist.”
Dez grins. “Aye, ma’am.”
“Father,” Petra says en passant. “You’re not invited.”
He starts to bawl her out.
She gives him a look that brings him up short.
And she sweeps out.
Dmytro murmurs to Vincent Guerrero, then follows her.
Dez grabs the bottle of Tullamore, glasses, and ice on a lacquered tray and follows.
He doesn’t ask Guerrero for his phone back. Whatever Petra is planning, this part probably shouldn’t be transmitted to the police.
* * *
In the office—Petra’s office, in case anyone was ever in doubt—she pours whiskey and ice for herself, and straight whiskey for the men. Dez says, “Cheers.”
Rudko pulls up a chair near Petra’s desk and eases himself into it.
Dez stands off to the side. This isn’t his show anymore.
Petra sits atop her desk, spine straight, legs folded into the lotus position. She swirls her drink, admires the viscosity and color, and sips.
Dez suppresses a grin. She’s the caterpillar sitting atop its psychedelic mushroom, about to show Alice how shit gets done.
She addresses Dez first. “Are you planning to destroy Dmytro’s yacht?”
“No. Bluff, that. Had only the one boat and it was shite. Sorry.”
Dmytro removes a handkerchief from a jacket pocket, bunches it, and bends to wipe a spot on his Italian loafer. The spot used to be a bit of General Tancredi’s brain. “I am fond of that yacht. Thank you. Ah, the crew of my motor launch?”
Dez shrugs. “Dunno. Drowned, like as not.”
Dmytro takes in his lack of caring and nods.
Petra says, “Sun Tzu tells us it’s okay to burn your enemy’s bridges, but always to leave one bridge intact for the enemy to retreat. Your yacht is that bridge.”
“Is that what you imagine I’ll do next, Petra? Retreat?”
“Yes.”
Dmytro ponders that, fiddling with the onyx cuff of his dress shirt. The way they are sitting—he in a comfortable, low-slung chair, she atop her desk—creates an elevation differentiation for their eyes. It’s a subtle power move by Petra. Dmytro has to look up to her. Figuratively and actually.
“We flirt, you and I,” Dmytro says, smiling slyly. “I hope it is all right to say that in front of the help.”
Meaning Dez. Petra studies her drink.
“I’ve always wondered what would happen if that intensity of yours—your drive—were matched with my skills, dear Petra. Together, we would be … formidable.”
“Your interests in me have always been crystal clear, Dmytro. About that retreat…?”
“I’m the one person coming out of all this unscathed, dear. I have diplomatic immunity. Your government won’t want me here. My government needs me back because I know so much about this plan. And so many, many other plans. Also, because they’ve already tried to nationalize my oil company and failed. Triton Expediters is the bank for much of the world’s military. My company is the bank for what you would call the KGB.”
“FSB. Yes, I know.”
He lifts his glass an inch toward her in a salute. “I’ll be departing. Not retreating. There’s all the difference in the world.”
“Let me tell you what you did,” she says. She speaks without any hint of anger, or judgment, or malice, or surprise. She’s laying out a legal brief. “Russia used the 2016 elections to sow discord in America. You did the same thing in Britain and Germany and elsewhere. You’ve mastered the art of mining social media to salt your enemy’s earth. You’ve weakened NATO and the European Union, and you’ve manipulated the destruction of several international trade agreements. But in my father, you found a fulcrum for an even greater political disruption to America. I don’t yet know who first mentioned the concept of a New Alexandria; of a financial and technical city-state with Constantine Alexandris on the throne.”
Dmytro savors his drink. “Constantine did. Although, to be fair, we were exquisitely drunk at the time.”
Petra smiles from her perch. “You weren’t so drunk you couldn’t see the potential. My father’s boundless egotism, Triton’s money and influence. You could manipulate him into the kind of minor coup d’etat that would have America reeling.”
Dmytro smiles, serene.
“It’s unthinkable that anyone in America could split off from the union in the twenty-first century,” Petra continues. “But if it happens once, it would happen again. The neo-Nazis and white supremacists, they’d soon realize they’d been manipulated. They’d split off yet again. Other factions would as well. The American military would have to move in to stop it, and those images would run twenty-four seven online and on TV. You’d further erode people’s faith in America. It’s a great strategy. Honestly. A bold move. As much coup de théâtre as coup de main.”
“You are too kind.”
“But there is no nation of New Alexandria. There is no coup. Desmond, here, stopped you cold. My father will not be the cyberpope, ruling from on high and granting papal dispensations for those who act contrary to the canon law of the World Bank. It’s all…”
Petra purses the tips of five fingers together, puts them near her lips, and blows, spreading her fingers apart: a dandelion in the wind.
Dmytro finishes his drink. He makes eye contact with Dez, who says, “Oh! Aye, sure,” and splashes more whiskey in his glass. “Cheers.”
“Thank you. You’ll be surprised to hear this, Mr. Limerick, but I actually heard your band play once. I didn’t remember it was you on guitar until a few minutes ago. It was a little club in Hollywood. This was perhaps five weeks ago. A very lovely vocalist with an amazing, deep, and resonant voice. Quite a beauty. My driver gave her my card after the show. I thought, p’raps…”
He gives Dez a meaningful, man-to-man look. He’s talking about Raziah Swann, who’s all of twenty. Dez manages not to pinch his head off.
“She’s exquisite,” the oligarch says, his voice sounding the way velvet feels. “You were all quite good.”
“Hope you bought the CD and T-shirt. She’s half-starved, half the time.”
Dmytro chuckles, turns to their host. “Petra. The political disruption is accomplished. Did it go as far as I had hoped? No. But that is fine. There will be other days. I shall be leaving after I finish this drink. I truly—and I mean this—I truly wish you the best of luck. You are a most amazing woman.”
Petra smiles from atop her lotus-position perch. She raises her glass. “To endeavors.”
Dmytro raises his glass. “Endeavors.”
“In September, two years ago,” she says, squinting and peering out the window, as if dredging up a fond memory, “you fucked the daughter of the chief of police of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.”
Dez watches as the older man’s hand freezes, his glass a half inch from his lips. Dez has played a lot of poker over the years, and he knows when an ante has been upped.
“Her name was … ah … I want to say either Anastasia or … Oleksandra? I honestly can’t remember.” Petra laughs. “Funny. I had it a moment ago.”
“My dear, I have no—”
“Kharkiv,” she overrides the ambassador, speaking to Dez, “is very much a Russian mafia stronghold. The chief of police has been an enforcer there for years. He came out of the very KGB that Dmytro referenced moments ago. Today, he’s a mob enforcer. Now, here’s the interesting part.”
Dmytro makes to stand up. “What do you think—”
On instinct, Dez puts a meaty hand on his shoulder; no real force, just holding him in his chair.
“The interesting part,” Petra repeats to Dez. “My old friend here is sixty-three years old. And Anastasia…”
“Or Oleksandra?”
“Right, thank you. She was sixteen. She and some girlfriends were in Kiev to catch a hip-hop show. After her rape, she returned home. She told her father what happened. She, I’m told, attempted suicide. The father—the mob enforcer—has spent quite a lot of money in Kiev attempting to find the monster who raped his daughter.”
Dmytro is almost vibrating with fear now.
“A porter at the hotel in Kiev was paid handsomely to slip Rohypnol into her drink and provided Dmytro with a room, and he—the porter, I mean—got the transaction taped on his smartphone. He tried to sell it on the black market. He tried to sell it to the girl’s father. But guess what.”
She turns to Dmytro, keeps smiling, keeps her voice light.
“I bought it. I bought it, and I’ve kept it, because Dmytro?” Her smile bleeds away. “In all of our multibillion-dollar dealings, with all of your come-ons and affectations, I always kept in mind that you are an untrustworthy, uncultured little Cossack peasant with a two-inch dick and the cunning of a two-dollar whore.”
