Tell Me No Lies by Annie Solomon Page B

put down his sandwich. "So how does a thug for the Russian secret police become the money behind Renaissance Oil?"
    She'd hoped he would have forgotten, but not Hank Bonner. "Come on, Detective, figure it out. This is right up your alley. How do most thugs get ahead?"
    "By stealing their way up the ladder."
    She shrugged: Give that man a cigar.
    "You're saying he stole his millions?"
    "Who else but the KGB would be in a position to grab what it could when the Soviet Union fell?"
    He tilted his bottle back and swallowed a mouthful of beer. "Yeah, but we're talking millions here."
    She shook her head. "You're thinking small, Detective. Believe me, there was much more for the taking."
    "How much more?"
    Careful. Tread softly. "The entire treasury of the Soviet Communist Party for one. Billions of dollars in gold and cash, all of which disappeared in 1991 and has never been found."
    He stared at her, his expression stunned. "You mean it just... vanished?"
    "Into thin air. Or into someone's pocket." In the far distance her father's voice echoed over the years. Thief. Betrayer.
    "And you think Petrov "
    "No one knows for sure, but only the KGB had the power and influence to get that money out of Russia and into foreign banks. And Miki Petrov was the KGB's golden boy in Moscow. Rumor has it he did anything he was asked. Anything. No qualms, no questions. Service like that gets rewarded. And no one knows where Miki got his initial stake."
    "You're serious."
    "It's as good a theory as any." And true, though she couldn't prove it. Yet. A pang went through her. She was so tired of tilting at windmills.
    "Then why are you working with him?"
    She pushed the plate away, her appetite gone. "Because, as Willy Sutton said about why he robbed banks, that's where the money is."
    He looked disappointed and shame pricked her. She didn't like being judged, especially when he didn't know the whole story.
    Then again, whose fault was that?
    She picked at a french fry, moving it around on her plate. "Look, the US wants to wean itself of its dependency on Middle Eastern oil. Russia has huge arctic tracts of multibillion-barrel oil and gas fields, all undeveloped because Russians lack the money and experience to tap them. Without Western resources and expertise, those fields will remain undeveloped. But despite that there's been huge resistance to foreign investment in Russian oil."
    "Why? If what you say is true, they need us as much as we need them."
    "It's a question of control. There's a faction that's afraid of giving foreigners control of a vital resource. Think about it. How would you feel if Russians owned a controlling stake in Ford or GM? Or in the Alaska pipeline?"
    "But Petrov doesn't care?"
    "No. All he cares about is the money he can make." She tried keeping the contempt out of her voice and wasn't sure she succeeded.
    "So Petrov's a traitor as well as a thief."
    "Not if you look at it from a global capital perspective. From that point of view, he's a hero. He's bringing investment and development to an industry and country that needs them."
    "With money he stole from the country itself."
    She gazed at the thick wooden table, at the dozens of names and dates carved into the surface, and it struck her how eager some people were to proclaim their identities.
    But she didn't have that luxury. It was time to pull back, muddy the waters, inject some doubt.
    "Who knows? It could all be Miki's myth-making machine working overtime. Moscow in the nineties was like Tombstone in the 1880s. Maybe Miki is a Russian Wyatt Earp a legend built from a speck of truth surrounded by a fistful of fairy tale."
    "Except Wyatt was on one side of the angels, and Petrov is on the other."
    "Don't think black and white, Detective. Think gray. Always shades of gray."
    He polished off his sandwich and sat back. "So what does your father have to do with any of this?"
    Panic surged into her throat. "My fa " Then she remembered. "Nothing. Luka has nothing to do with