"My friend, this thing is no game." Novosty crumpled his cup. In his other hand, the cigarette remained unlit. "I was . . . involved. Of course, I didn't know then. But if Dzerzhinsky Square finds out I stupidly let myself be—" He flicked his black Italian lighter, then inhaled. "KGB will post me to Yakutsk piece by piece. In very small boxes."
Vance stared into his dark eyes, trying to gauge the truth. None of it added up. "Alex, you're one of the sharpest guys in the business. So, assuming this is straight, why in hell would you let yourself even get close to it? The thing had to be some internal play."
For a moment the bearded man said nothing, merely smoked quietly on his cigarette. The sun was beginning to illuminate the cloud bank in the east, harbinger of the midday Athens shower. "Perhaps I . . . yes, it was an unknown, but what is life without unknowns? The job looked simple, Michael. I just had to launder it. Easy enough. Of course, if I had realized . . ." Again his voice trailed into the morning haze.
"So what's the inside story?"
Novosty drew once more on his cigarette. Finally he spoke. "All right. The number of twenty million rubles? Of course it's 'disinformation.' Typical. The real amount, naturally, is classified. There is even a formal directive, signed by Chief, First Directorate Gribanov."
"Guess KGB still has enough clout to write the rules."
"The old ways die hard. They, and the military, are fighting a rearguard action to protect their turf—just as your CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense are doing now. Which is why they are so concerned about this. If they don't get to the bottom of it, they will once again be proved incompetent . . . as well as over-funded." He scratched at his beard. "More to the point, this operation went around them. That's a very bad precedent, if you understand what I'm saying. And the money, Michael, was almost three times what they admitted. In dollars it was over a hundred million."
"Nice chunk of change." Vance whistled quietly.
"Even now, though, I have to admit it was brilliant. Flawless. Viktor Fedorovich Volodin, first secretary of the State Committee for Sakhalin, Far Eastern District, got authority signed off, got his passport stamped vyezdnye, or suitable for travel, and then wired the sixty million rubles not to the district, but to the state bank of Poland, with instructions for conversion. A lot of money, yes, but it was not unprecedented. And he did it late Friday, around two in the afternoon, after all the nomenklatura had left for their weekend dachas. By Monday morning he was in Warsaw, to clarify the 'mistake.' Next the money was sent to my old bank connection in Sophia . . . by then, of course, it's zlotis . . . I just assumed it was something KGB wanted laundered." He paused. "They claim sometimes things have to be handled outside the nomenklatura, to avoid the paperwork bottleneck."
"So how much did you end up cleaning?"