Coercion (5 page)

Vasily
knew something was wrong the moment he popped into Podoltsev’s office on a surprise visit.  Podoltsev grew bug eyes on his paled face, jumped to his feet behind his big oak desk, and then tried to look calm.  “Good morning, General.”

Podoltsev
was the director of SibOil, which drilled one of Siberia’s largest oil reserves.  Since that oil reserve was the source of the Knyaz’s financing, Vasily checked in whenever it was convenient.  More often than not, he found work to do.  Podoltsev, like most communist bureaucrats, was more concerned with preserving his own privileged status than with promoting his business or protecting his people.  Vasily had that very characteristic in mind when he put Podoltsev in place: it maximized his control.

Walking across the office,
Vasily paid the director no attention.  Instead, he watched the woman Podoltsev was speaking with as she turned to look over her shoulder.  Her face flushed and she too scrambled to her feet.

Vasily
had been affecting people that way for several years now.  His progressive policies had turned around Siberian industry and made him the darling of the local press.  Still, he had not gotten used to the stares.

He extended his hand.  “Good morning.  I don’t believe we’ve met.  I’m
Vasily Karpov.”

“Orlova, Luda Orlova.  I’m a Senior Accountant here at SibOil.  It’s a privilege to meet you, General.”

“Please, call me Vasily.”  He flashed her a smile.  “And tell me, Luda, what have you done to put such a sour look on your director’s face?”

“It seems we have an accounting discrepancy,
Vasily,” Podoltsev hastened to say.

“Why don’t you tell me about it, Luda.”

Luda lowered her eyes and then gave a glance over at Podoltsev, who returned a single nod.  “Our customer in Libya, the Libyan Oil Company, paid us twice for our shipment this month, ten million dollars instead of five.  So I placed a call to LOCo accounting to find out if they wanted us to refund the money or credit it to next month.  When the operator asked who was calling, I said I was from SibOil and she put me straight through to their president.”  She paused and looked up nervously for a second before returning her eyes to the floor.  “Before I could say a word, LOCo’s president began apologizing for the mistake.  He said that his CFO had been in an automobile accident while he himself was out of town, and that the substitute accountant didn’t know that half the money for SibOil was supposed to go to Knyaz.”

Karpov canted his head and raised his eyebrows in query. 
No wonder Podoltsev looked pale, he thought.

“I asked the president of LOCo why he would send half our money to a company named Knyaz and he said ‘
What do you mean why?  That’s what we’ve always done.’  At that point, I didn’t know what to think and I didn’t want to risk offending him, so I said, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’  He said, ‘Yes.  Give Podoltsev my apologies and tell him it won’t happen again.’”

“And that’s when you came
to see Podoltsev?”  Vasily asked.

“Yes.  Well, it took me a while to get in to see
The Director, so I did some calculations while I was waiting.”

Vasily
watched from the corner of his eye as Podoltsev squirmed his way from pale to red.

“We’ve been working with LOCo since we first started pumping oil.  If they’ve been sending half our money to Knyaz all these years as their president said, then as of this month, Knyaz would have four hundred fifty five million dollars of our money.  I know that’s a ridiculous idea, especially since all our oil is accounted for, but I wanted to be thorough.”

Vasily flashed his eyes in admiration and gave Luda a little chuckle.  “So tell me, Luda, what do you think really happened?”

“I think LOCo has SibOil confused with another of its suppliers.  Knyaz is also a Russian name, although I’ve never heard of them.  Perhaps he thinks we’re all the same.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Vasily said.

Luda continued.  “But there is still the issue of the extra five million dollars.  The daily interest is more than I earn in a year.”

“Well, that will surely teach them not to make the same mistake twice.  Tell me, Luda, where was your boss during all this?”

“Mr. Ivanov is
at an accounting seminar in Moscow all week.”  She looked frightened.  “I would normally have left this for him, Mr. Ivanov always deals with LOCo personally, but the overpayment was so large that, well …”

“You did the right thing, Luda.  With LOCo informed, SibOil is
now in the clear.  Further activity by anyone but Ivanov can only make things worse.  I suggest we agree to table this until he returns, or LOCo calls back.  Agreed?”

“Agreed,” both Luda and
Podoltsev answered. 

Vasily
watched Podoltsev’s complexion fade back to normal.  Then he took another look at the accountant.  Luda appeared to have a slim figure concealed beneath her baggy clothes.  Her makeup was sparse, her nails unpolished, and her hair sensibly short.  She wore simple earrings and her hands were bare.  At first glance, Luda appeared to be in her early forties, but Vasily guessed that her age was really thirty-two or -three.  He could fill in the blanks on the rest of her life story from there.

“Would you excuse us for a minute,”
Vasily said to Podoltsev.

Both
Podoltsev and Luda registered shock on their faces, but all Podoltsev said was, “Of course.”

Once
Podoltsev closed the door behind him, Vasily leaned back casually against the desk.  “You’ve made quite an impression on me today, Luda.  Even though I’m sure this Libyan fiasco will just turn out to be a case of mistaken identity, it’s given me a chance to see how you think, and I like what I see.”

Despite his own relaxed pose, Luda was standing so rigid he suspected she would shatter with the flick of his finger.

“You know, believe it or not, with my schedule keeping me so busy, it’s actually quite lonely on those evenings when I wind up with a night to myself.  Nights like tonight…  I wonder if you might consider having dinner with me this evening?”

Luda wiggled her face like she was laying an egg.  “I’m sorry?  I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“I’m asking you to dinner tonight.”

Tears began to roll down
Luda’s cheeks, but she did not seem to notice.  “I’d love to have dinner with you, Vasily.”

“Wonderful.  You’ve made me a happy man.  If you would be so kind as to write down your address for me, I’ll pi
ck you up at say, seven o’clock?”

“Yes, of course.  Seven would be perfect.”

Vasily smiled and straightened up.  “I trust you can understand that given my position I need to keep the details of my personal life confidential.”

She nodded.

“It’s important to me that nobody know we’re going out this evening.  Nobody.  Do you think you can keep our rendezvous in the same vault as the LOCo secret?”

“Of course,
Vasily.  And I do understand.”

“Well then, we have a date.”

Bang … bang … bang. The UE-2000 had sucked something into its monstrous turbine, and now it rotated with a bang … bang … bang...  Alex didn’t know how to stop it, and Frank wasn’t there to help.  Frank had always been there to help...

Frank Ferris was only three minutes older, but he was a big brother in every sense of the word.  He was intellectually big; his degrees, awards, patents and position testified to that.  He was morally big; he forgave their father his transgressions.  And he was physically—
bang … bang … bang …
There it was again
.  Alex hoped the problem wasn’t dangerous.  It sure was annoying.

Alex opened his eyes to the sight of blue upholstery and a sense of confusion.  The disorientation lasted but an instant, then the orientation hit him like a slap in the face.  It wasn’t going to be a good morning.

He looked at his watch.  It wasn’t going to be much of a morning at all, it was nearly noon.  He had labored through the night dissecting the “suicide note” and The Puzzler.  Regarding the former, Alex had reluctantly admitted that Vogel was right.  The sixteen pages of technospeak yielded an inescapable conclusion: Frank had failed miserably.  He had not delivered the UE-2000 on schedule, and the cost of his shortcomings was estimated at a million dollars a day.

With the technical backdrop in place,
Alex turned his attention back to The Puzzler.  After rereading the “Elaine” entry and absorbing the obvious conclusion, Alex worked through the proceeding eleven months of Frank’s diary to improve his perspective.  By its very nature The Puzzler was a list of problems and solutions, so Alex didn’t pick up on the deeper pattern at first.  It took months, but by the time he got to August 11, the date Frank himself had figured it out, Alex knew that Vogel’s conclusion was wrong.

The
enlightening observation was this: the problems with the UE-2000 were serial.  One would appear and consume Frank and his team until they solved it.  Then the UE-2000 would work for an hour or two, perhaps a day, and then the next problem would crop up.  Such had been Frank’s life for ten months.  It was a pattern but not a natural one.

Working from that observation, Alex deduced that
the solution to the UE-2000’s troubles was not a
How
or a
What
, but rather a
Who
.  According to The Puzzler, that meant he and Frank were now in sync.  August 11, Frank had switched his efforts from finding solutions, the
Hows
and
Whats
, to finding the root cause, the
Who
.  The morning of his death, Frank awoke with her name.

Now Alex had her name too.  L
ying there on his brother’s couch, Alex realized that he was almost exactly where his brother had been twenty-four hours earlier.  It was as though God were giving Frank a second chance to get it right. 
Or the Devil wanted a double feature
…

The
triple-bang came again and Alex remembered the noise that had woken him.  Someone was knocking on the front door.  He looked down to find himself still dressed and noted the irony; his underpreparedness had come full circle and left him prepared again. 
Slackers of the world rejoice
.  Alex sat up on the couch and ran his hands vigorously through his hair.  Then he crossed the living room to the front door.

“Jason Stormer.”  It was a statement, a question, and the answer to an unpleasant surprise.

“Hello Alex.  It’s been a while.”

Jason and Alex had gone through college together as unspoken enemies.  Alex didn’t know why
he felt that way; Jason just happened to be one of those rare people who set his blood aboil whenever he walked into the same room.  The feeling was mutual.

Jason and Frank, however,
had hit it off in college and then grown closer while going through the same graduate program.  Alex had not seen Jason since graduation, but Frank’s occasional mention of his name still raised his hackles.  At least the intervening years had given Alex the wisdom to understand his reaction.  It was a form of rivalry.  The truth of the matter was, he and Jason were too much alike.

“Yes, it has been a while.”  Alex wasn’t sure what to say next. 
He wasn’t the formal type, but
Frank’s not here, he’s dead
wasn’t quite right either.  He settled for “Come in.”

Alex sat
back down on the couch he’d just vacated while motioning Jason toward a matching armchair. Before they settled in he suggested “coffee?” just to have something to do other than look at Jason’s face.

“Please.”

In the kitchen, Alex was still looking for the right words when Jason began.  “I’m terribly sorry, Alex.  Your brother was a good man.”

“You know?  How did you hear?”  Alex asked, wondering if he had slept for a few hours or a few days.

It was Jason’s turn to look surprised.  “I thought you’d have figured that out by now, being a P.I. and all.  Frank and I were supposed to meet here last night, but by the time I arrived from the airport, the ambulance was already loading.”

Alex ignored the jibe.  “You were supposed to meet Frank
here last night?”

“That’s right.  I flew up
special yesterday.  At his request,” Jason added.

“Why?”

“He didn’t say, specifically.  Just sent me an e-mail requesting an urgent meeting.  You know I was consulting for him on the UE-2000, don’t you?”

“He didn’t mention it.  But then, we didn’t spend a lot of time on shop talk.”

Jason gave him a thin smile.  “Yes, I suppose the State Department frowns on that sort of thing.  Anyhow, I’m headed to the airport.  Just found myself drawn here on the way.  Felt I should pay my respects.  So what happened, Alex?”

“The police say Frank shot himself … that his failure at work was too much for him to bear.”

“And I gather by your tone that you have another idea?”

Alex nodded.  He did indeed.  “Would you forward me that e-mail?”

Jason returned a sideways glance.  “I doubt I still have it.  I usually delete as I read unless they’re technical.  It was a simple “I need to see you ASAP.  Can you come by the house tomorrow evening?”

“Was that unusual?”

“Not at all.  Frank loved Friday night brainstorming sessions: a couple guys, an old single malt, some fine cigars…”

“Tell me about the UE-2000, Jason.  What’s it worth?”

“Worth?  Billions.  Tens of billions.  If it works.”

And there it was: three comma’s worth of
motive
.  “What’s so special about this aircraft engine?”

“You two really didn’t talk shop, did you?  The UE-2000 uses forty percent less fuel than anything else out there.”

“So it’s expected to be a bestseller, so to speak?”

“It’s expected to revolutionize the industry, Alex.  A forty percent reduction in fuel consumption will make air cargo cost competitive with truck, rail, and sea cargo.  Those industries will wither, aerospace will explode, and the shock waves will be felt everywhere.  Shipping times will cease to impact manufacturing practices. 
Carrying costs will plummet.  Shelf lives will be far less critical.  The UE-2000 represents far more than just an aircraft engine to those with the vision to see the future.”

“If it works.”

“If it works.”

“What’s the secret?”

Jason hesitated.

“Don’t for a second consider giving me a
need-to-know
line.”

Jason smiled. 
“The revolutionary design takes advantage of the extreme temperature differential between the outside air at high altitude and the inside of the engine.  It’s analogous to the way a turbocharger gets more thrust by recycling exhaust, although completely different technically.  And the efficiency is much greater.”

“So
, Alex, what do you think happened to Frank?”

“I’m not sure what happened to him.  The evidence supporting suicide is considerable.  Overwhelming
even.  But I know Frank wasn’t a quitter.”

“People change
, Alex.  Stress changes them.  As I’ve just explained, Frank had the future of the world riding on his shoulders.  When was the last time you saw your brother?”

“Christmas.”

“Eleven months ago.  That was just after he got the big promotion.  I bet he was high as a kite then.”

“He was. 
Thirty-two years old and the envy of the aviation industry.  A modern-day DaVinci.”

“Kind of makes you feel small by comparison, doesn’t it Alex?  Not that anyone is comparing, of course.  But you know, twins and all…”

“What’s your point, Jason?”

“
My point, Alex, is that if you invert the high Frank was feeling at Christmas, then you’ll have some idea of how low he’s been the last six months or so.  He was supposed to deliver the engine in July and premier it at the Paris Air Show.  Now it’s November and the project is in worse shape than when he took over in January.  Now we don’t even have a projected launch date.”

“What is it you do for United Electronics, Jason?”

“I’m an operations consultant.”  He pulled a business card from his breast pocket.  “Have my own company.”

Another similarity, damn it
.  “So you’re a technical troubleshooter?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes
we are.  There are sixteen of us.”

Alex prodded him on with his eyebrows.

“Frank brought me on board about three months into his tenure to troubleshoot a problem he was having with software.  I fixed it in less than twenty-four hours.  Then there was a structural integrity issue, followed by a friction issue.  It was one thing after another.  Kind of like working with Edison on the light bulb.”

“It doesn’t sound like you’re feeling suicidal, Jason.”

Jason’s face remained serene, but Alex knew he’d gotten to him when he caught Jason tugging the hair on the back of his fingers. 
Too much alike
... 

“The difference between my responsibilities and Frank’s was scope.  I answered for specific issues.  When I solved one, I got my reward, got my ego charged.  Frank answered for everything.  He was banking on
the supercharge he’d get when he eventually released the UE-2000 to production, but until that time every day was a drain.  Perhaps the latest progress report sucked the last of his reserves.”

Had Jason already talked to Vogel?
  “So, do you expect to stay with the project?”

Jason shook his head.  “The UE-2000 is only one of several projects I’ve got going.  I don’t need the work, so I’m not going to subject myself to the constant reminder of a lost friend.

“How about you, Alex?  How’s the inaugural year of
International Private Investigations
treating you?”

“No complaints.
”

“How many on your team?
”

“Just me.”

“Keep it simple.  Good for you.  So, you headed back to San Diego soon?”

“I think I’ll stick around a while.  Play a little game of cat and mouse.”

Jason drew in his breath as though preparing a witty knock-yourself-out response, but then paused with a contemplative look on his face.  After a moment he said, “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if it wasn’t suicide, then the murderer is very clever.  And this clever murderer undoubtedly knows who you are, Alex.”

“Agreed.”

“You, on the other hand, have no clue as to his identity.”

“So?”

“So, Alex, that makes you the mouse.”