The Russian Read online

  The result was a candidate who could not only hold the Democratic base, but who could outflank President Dellenbaugh on the sort of red-meat domestic security issues that Republicans traditionally owned. He was, at least according to some, tougher on crime than the president. In a general election, it meant Blake would strip Dellenbaugh of millions of votes from blue-collar Republicans and conservative independents.

  Even more dangerous for the White House, Blake was young and charismatic. And while no one could ever rival J. P. Dellenbaugh’s populist political skills, Blake was a blazing character who was setting the political world on fire.

  The din in the ballroom was at a crescendo as the clapping and cheers continued.

  “On in three, two, one,” said the voice in her ear from a studio back in New York City. “You’re live.”

  “This is Bianca de la Garza with CBS Evening News. We are live in Des Moines, Iowa, where in just five short months the people of this state will hold the first-in-the-nation caucuses that will play a big part in determining who the Democratic Party will nominate to face a very popular J. P. Dellenbaugh. What you’re watching is the arrival of Florida governor Nick Blake, a forty-four-year-old graduate of Ohio State, University of Chicago Law School, a former U.S. Army Ranger, and federal prosecutor. You are watching the arrival live, in Iowa tonight, of the man who some say could be the dark horse candidate to beat President Dellenbaugh. This standing-room-only crowd of Iowans has been waiting nearly three hours to get a glimpse of a man credited with decimating the Russian mafia in Florida, a tough-on-crime chief executive with a fiery speaking style.”

  Away from the TV riser, across the now excited crowd, bright spotlights suddenly lit up the stage. A short, roundish man in an ill-fitting brown suit moved behind the dais and took the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Mark Helmke and I’m the Polk County chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. Thank you all for being so gosh darn patient tonight. I know you all have jobs to get up for in the morning, so let me get tonight’s main event up here, how’s that? Without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce tonight’s guest speaker.”

  Helmke, short, bald, glistening in sweat, looked up at the crowd, trying to pinpoint his guest, who was still pushing his way through the crowd toward the stage.

  “Our guest tonight is a graduate of Ohio State University, where he was a wide receiver for the Buckeyes. After graduation, he joined the army and served as a U.S. Ranger. He did four tours of duty in Afghanistan and earned a Purple Heart when an IED blew up next to the vehicle he was traveling in. He nearly lost his life. After his recovery, he went to law school at the University of Chicago, then went to work as a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida, becoming U.S. attorney when he was thirty-six.”

  Blake made his way to the front of the crowd, then ascended the stairs to the stage, waving to the crowd. A huge roar came from the crowd as he walked across the stage to the dais, where Bolduc continued to speak.

  “Three years ago, our guest was elected governor of the state of Florida, where he’s built a reputation as a problem solver, an independent thinker, but mostly, as a tough son of a bitch on crime.”

  The crowd let out another crescendo of cheers.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming an American patriot, a good Democrat, a friend of Iowa, Governor Nick Blake!”

  Blake shook Helmke’s hand as cheering and clapping continued to drown out everything else. He stood behind the dais, smiling and waving to the crowd. He didn’t wait for the crowd to stop.

  “Thank you, Mark,” said Blake, his voice gravelly and confident. “And thank you, Iowa.”

  At the word Iowa, the cheering started again.

  “Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight. I know you all waited almost three hours. I’m not sure I would’ve.”

  Laughter burst from the crowd.

  Blake paused. He lifted the microphone and moved out from behind the dais.

  “I’m going to tell you something you should probably know about me,” said Blake, combing his free hand back through his thick brown hair. “I voted for J. P. Dellenbaugh.”

  The crowd grew silent. There were even a few low groans of disapproval.

  “I’m not a politician,” said Blake. “I’m a leader, and if I agree with you, if I think you’re doing a good job, I’ll praise you, vote for you, ask you for advice. Leaders don’t find solutions based on which political party came up with the idea. Yeah, I voted for J. P. Dellenbaugh because I thought he was doing a good job, plain and simple. But somewhere along the line, J. P. Dellenbaugh went soft on crime, soft on urban violence, soft on organized crime!”

  Wild cheers and applause spontaneously erupted. It exploded across the room and lasted for more than half a minute.

  “Drugs. Murder. Violence. Brought to you by the Russian mafia. I’ve seen it firsthand and I fight it every day. Russian organized crime is the plague of our American cities. You know why I worry less about the Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia? Because the Russians are taking care of them for us. Heroin, fentanyl, human trafficking, murder, and mayhem. It’s the greatest threat America faces, because it’s here. It’s right down the street, in Miami, in Des Moines, or it’s coming. Without peace in our cities, there can never be opportunity for our children, for our future, for the pursuit of happiness that is the birthright of every American!”

  From the front of the room, a pair of high schoolers suddenly began a low, steady chant.

  “Nick Blake! Nick Blake! Nick Blake!”

  Cheering grew louder, the chant reached a rowdy crescendo, and Blake acknowledged it by pausing and moving across the stage, waving to each part of the room.

  Near the back of the ballroom, a man with short gray hair turned and pushed his way slowly and politely through the crowd. No one noticed him. When he reached the back of the ballroom, he went to one of the large double doors that were now closed. He pushed the door slowly and quietly until it was open, then, with his foot, put the doorstop down so that it would remain open. He looked through the lobby of the hotel and out one of the large windows near the entrance. A white Chevy Suburban was parked across the street, its windows tinted black.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sparks Steak House

  New York City

  There were fancier steak houses in Manhattan, and certainly trendier ones, but few could match Sparks’s storied ambience. Behind the large glass windows, through the wide, lightly creaking mahogany entrance, the restaurant was alive with movement. Red-and-white-checkered wallpaper looked as if it had been there for a century. A coffered ceiling dangled with crystal chandeliers. Semicircular booths of high-backed green leather were packed with people around tables covered in steaks, wineglasses, plates of au gratin potatoes, wedges of iceberg lettuce the size of footballs, drizzled in bleu cheese dressing and bacon, and half-empty wine bottles, each booth meticulously serviced by an all-male waitstaff dressed in white uniforms, men in their fifties, all of whom had been at Sparks for decades.

  Sparks Steak House was crowded. Sparks was always crowded.

  Between the walls of booths were dozens of tables in the center of the brightly lit main room. Every table, like every booth, was filled with customers.

  It was raucous, with hearty conversation, bursts of laughter, the occasional shout, the clinking of glasses, and the scraping of knives against plates, all churning in a medley of noise and celebration.

  In the farthest corner of the restaurant, a man sat alone in one of the booths, the so-called chef’s table, within eyesight of the dozen chefs and sous chefs scrambling to prepare the meals. By design, the table was always reserved and kept vacant by the restaurant’s manager, available when certain people called or walked in at the last minute. The list of people who had the ability to make that call and garner the table was short. Several celebrities were on the list, actors such as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Tom Hardy, and Russell Crowe. There were a few athletes, including Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins, and Rafael Nadal, the tennis player. There were even a few superstars. Mick Jagger usually came in once or twice a year. There were prominent businesspeople on the list, such as Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, Martha Stewart, and Rupert Murdoch. Several politicians also enjoyed the privilege. The mayor of New York City liked to eat at Sparks every few months. The governor of New York State came more often than that, always taking the time to go into the kitchen and talk with the chefs and waiters.

  Tonight, a tall, older, silver-haired man in a gray, pin-striped, three-piece suit sat in the booth. He had a prominent, sharp nose and cheeks that were bright pink, due mainly to his nightly ritual of three or four gin and tonics followed by a bottle of red wine. The man wore thick, square glasses. His hair was parted on the right side, combed back and slightly messy. He appeared a little disheveled but in a professorial sort of way. His only company, beyond a bottle of Chianti, was a book on the table in front of him. It was a hardcover edition of Anna Karenina by the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, its blue leather cover worn and cracked from use.

  John Patrick O’Flaherty, the senior United States senator from the state of New York, read Anna Karenina every decade or so. O’Flaherty, a former professor at Columbia University School of Law, found the book to be like a compass, not only providing lessons and moral truths that helped remind him of his place on earth, but also enabling him to look back at himself in relation to where he was, as an individual, only ten years before. Had he remained true to his purpose? Had he made the right choices and not simply the popular ones? Had he above all else remained humble in the face of the great gifts and opportunities he’d been given? Had he fought against those dark forces that less powerful people—his constituents
especially—were powerless in the face of? Had he done enough as, at age seventy-six, he began to contemplate retiring from the U.S. Senate?

  Only O’Flaherty understood that this was why he read the book.

  A decade ago, the answer to the question, have you done enough, was no.

  He read quickly, holding a wineglass in his left hand and sipping as he read and flipped pages. When he reached the end of a chapter, he leaned back. He didn’t smile. Instead, he realized that the answer to the question this time around was maybe, or quite possibly even yes. For Senator John Patrick O’Flaherty had spent the decade risking every ounce of political and intellectual capital he had fighting for what was right. Fighting against a dark force that had been born and raised in his own state, even while he was a junior senator.

  The Russian mob.

  When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, a system of oppressive government was abruptly gone. For all the rhetoric about how terrible the Soviet Union had been, the fact is, the very oppression and brutality that the government was criticized for also served a vital purpose: it kept the animals at bay.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  That was the lesson O’Flaherty now understood about the breakup of the Soviet Union, for once the system of government control was gone in the Soviet Union, the criminals and thugs were unleashed. The most aggressive, greedy, and talented of the animals went immediately to the place where the rewards for brutality and hard work were highest: the United States.

  To Brighton Beach, not far from where O’Flaherty had grown up. Ten years ago, O’Flaherty realized that he bore some culpability in the rise of the largest and most dangerous criminal enterprise in the U.S. He’d done little to stop it. That was what he realized a decade ago.

  Now, most Americans understood that O’Flaherty was the charismatic, brilliant, charming, and eloquent face of the fight against the Russian mafia.

  O’Flaherty had authored two landmark pieces of legislation, using his deep understanding of the law, to expand RICO and effectively target the Russian mafia. He’d pushed them past two presidents—Rob Allaire and J. P Dellenbaugh—to ramp up Justice Department efforts to go after the Russians. O’Flaherty had been a vocal critic of the FBI, arguing publicly and privately that the Russians posed a darker and deeper threat to America than La Cosa Nostra ever had.

  He was one of a handful of U.S. senators at the forefront of the fight against Russian organized crime. When Yuri Malnikov, one of the godfathers of the Russian mafia, was arrested by the FBI off the coast of Florida, O’Flaherty had gone to Administrative Maximum Facility Colorado, aka Supermax, or ADX, the most secure prison in the world. Senator O’Flaherty—whose laws had taken Yuri Malnikov down—had flown to Colorado to visit him, bringing with him a bottle of raspberry liqueur and, for hours on end, had asked Malnikov questions, though Malnikov didn’t answer any of them. O’Flaherty wanted to understand how it worked, how it grew, how the young animals of the Russian mob were able to so quickly and so effectively take over a town or city and destroy it. O’Flaherty knew that drugs would always exist. He believed an accommodation could be made on some level with those who brought the drugs in and sold them. Not leniency, but rather, understanding. The lesser of many evils. But the Russians were not the lesser. Their tactics were without moral consideration. Their brutality was unrivaled, disproportionate, and random. La Cosa Nostra, for all of its killing and violence, was more humane than the Russians. El Chapo and the Mexican cartels could be almost as brutal as the Russians, yet in every city controlled by the cartels that the Russian mafia entered, they destroyed their competition, leaving piles of corpses in their wake. Yuri Malnikov did not speak for the entire visit, choosing instead to stare at O’Flaherty.

  Malnikov was released a year later under a secret arrangement between his son, Alexei, and the U.S government—quid pro quo for helping America avert the detonation of a nuclear bomb in New York City. O’Flaherty had flown to Denver again to see Yuri Malnikov before he got on the plane. Malnikov had shaken O’Flaherty’s hand, but even then he didn’t say a word to his nemesis.

  O’Flaherty was an American institution, popular across the country, a gentleman who still had a head of hair and a charismatic way about him.

  Across the restaurant, a dark-haired woman was seated at the bar, enjoying a glass of white wine. Without looking directly at him, she was tracking O’Flaherty out of the side of her field of vision.

  She wore stylish, light navy-blue slacks that came down in a slight flare, like bell bottoms: Saint Laurent. She had on a pair of Prada leather high-heeled sandals that showed off her pretty feet, and toenails painted a shiny white. A white, sheer blouse was opened up enough to display her chest. A necklace of gold with a sapphire shamrock was around her neck. Her hair was cut in a sixties-like bangs—sharp, mysterious, and utterly mesmerizing.

  She sat with her right leg over her left, casually sipping her wine and staring off into oblivion, not a care in the world, unapproachable. She felt her cell phone vibrate and looked around, preparing to move, her time at the restaurant now operational in nature.

  The bar was crowded. Most were men, there for a business dinner and waiting for their table. Four different males had come to her side and attempted to engage her in conversation. With each one, the look was the same, total detachment, as if she wasn’t listening, not a smile or an attempt to get to know them.

  She knew the rhythm of the waitstaff by now. There were three men covering the table. The waiter, who spoke to the senator like an old friend, and two others who rushed wine, or bread, or swept up bread crumbs, right behind. She saw one of the men emerge from the kitchen with a plate. She picked up her wineglass and took a sip, put it down, then put her hand in her clutch. Her fingers found a small object, the girth of a ballpoint pen, but short, the length of a child’s pinky. She removed it from the clutch and pulled a small silver cap, being careful not to touch what was beneath it, a tiny needle that jutted out less than a quarter inch. She clasped it in her hand—between her ring and middle fingers—as she watched the senator’s table. She knew the rhythm now. The first server would bring out the plate and the headwaiter would follow him and be the one to lay it down on the table.

  She stood and cut through the small enclave of people at the bar. She walked down the aisle between the booths on the left and the tables in the middle of the restaurant. She felt the small vial in her hand as she moved calmly toward the back of the restaurant.

  As she came toward the waiter, who was now placing the plate in front of Senator O’Flaherty, the woman slipped. The heel on her sandal turned awkwardly over. She went tumbling, helpless, toward the back of the waiter now serving O’Flaherty. The weight and velocity of her forward motion caused her to slam into his back. The waiter was pushed forward, out of control. The plate turned over—the food was suddenly thrown—as the waiter tried in that split second to not land on O’Flaherty, who attempted to duck to his right. The woman cried out in pain as she fell forward, into the booth, holding the back of the waiter so as not to go crashing to the floor. The waiter was partially successful; the food went sprawling across the table, the book, and O’Flaherty’s lap, though the waiter tumbled awkwardly—with the woman behind him—into the booth just next to O’Flaherty.