Hainny grew very still. He said very slowly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Agent Savich.” He held out his hand. “Give it to me and I will look at the contents in my own time. Now I want you to get off my property.”
“Mr. Hainny, you are a good liar, you have to be, given your position, but you know as well as I that the contents of this box were being used to blackmail you. The Russians call it kompromat—compromising material they use on each other and, of course, on foreigners, to control them. With you, Petrov succeeded, and he would have continued to, if he still had control of the box. And if he were still alive, of course.
“I’m here at your home, Mr. Hainny, out of courtesy to you. I did not want to have to march into the White House to arrest you. It’s time to end this, sir. It is time for you to speak to me honestly, either here or at the Hoover Building.”
Hainny turned and walked down the wide entrance hall, his slippers slapping on the floor, to the last door on the right. He disappeared inside, flipped on the light switch. Savich followed him into a long narrow room, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves reaching up into shadows. A dark brown sofa sat in front of a dark stone fireplace, and a large mahogany desk dominated the other end of the room. The window behind the desk was covered with heavy, closed draperies. It was a dark room, a room with no color, perfectly suited to Hainny. Savich could picture him hunkering down in this silent, brooding room, weaving his plans in the shadows, deciding how and when to use secrets he had no right to know without compunction to get what he wanted.
Hainny walked to the sideboard, poured himself a glass of whiskey, drank it down, and slowly turned to stare, not at Savich, but at the small, gun-metal steel box he held. “Well, what’s in the box?”
“Saxon’s bloody shirt and T-shirt, several letters from Mia Prevost to Cortina Alvarez, a supposed friend of hers, detailing how Saxon’s behavior had changed, how he was becoming violent, ranting at her, trying to cut her off from her friends, that she was afraid of him, and didn’t know what to do. And of course the pièce de résistance—the knife used to kill her, her dried blood still on the blade, Saxon’s fingerprints no doubt on the handle. In short, more evidence than a prosecutor would need to convict Saxon of murder and send him to prison for life. And naturally, destroy your career as well.”
“There is no such person as Cortina Alvarez!” Finally, a spark of rage.
Savich nodded. “Of course there isn’t. It’s a near-perfect legend created for Sergei Petrov’s bodyguard and longtime lover, Elena Orlov. Are you ready to tell me your side of it now, Mr. Hainny? Ready to tell me the truth?”
Hainny poured himself more whiskey, then walked slowly, like an old man, to the dark brown sofa. He sat down, motioned Savich to sit beside him. He said nothing for a very long time. He sipped at his whiskey, raised the glass to study it. “This is Glenfiddich, not the most expensive, but it’s my favorite. My father introduced me to it on my eighteenth birthday, as I did Saxon.” He laughed. “Saxon hates it.” He paused, rolled the glass around between his palms. “Petrov called me the day after Mia Prevost was murdered, told me he’d done me a favor and taken away all the evidence that Saxon had murdered Mia Prevost from her apartment, as you said, more than enough to send Saxon to prison for life. He sent me photographs of the bloody shirt and T-shirt, the letters, and the knife. He said he’d hide them from the police if I cooperated with him—that was the word he used, cooperated. I asked him what he wanted and he told me what he wanted wasn’t beyond someone in my position, someone with my abilities and reach. He even assured me it was nothing treasonous. He was going to ask me to do only what was necessary to keep my beloved son from prison. And now he was sure I had the motivation I needed.” Hainny fell silent.
Savich waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, merely rolled the glass of whiskey in his palms. “Mr. Hainny, we know his father, Boris Petrov, and his Transvolga investment firm were sanctioned by presidential executive order and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and that most of what was left was frozen. That’s what he wanted of you, wasn’t it? To arrange to overturn that order, and, in return, he would give you the evidence against Saxon, the evidence in this box.”
Hainny drew a deep breath. “I don’t know how you found out about it, and so quickly, but yes, that’s what he wanted. As you know, these sanctions were retaliation for the Russian invasion of Crimea and the Ukraine. They worked admirably. Not only did they cause great damage to the Russian economy, they drained billions of dollars, bringing capital investment to a standstill. Of course, the sanctions levied against specific individuals, their banks and financial assets, were designed to hit Putin directly in his pocketbook, to pressure him to withdraw from Crimea and the Ukraine. Will Putin withdraw? Or at least keep a lid on the hostilities?” Hainny shrugged. “Things are very bad in Russia but only time will tell.
“When Petrov told me he wanted the sanctions removed from his father and the Transvolga Group, that he wanted billions of dollars unfrozen, I told him I didn’t have that power, he should have picked a ranking official in the Treasury Department. They were the ones who set the sanctions, they would be the ones to remove them. And technically, that’s true. But he laughed at me. He said my talents are well-known and that I had one week to make progress on lifting the sanctions or my son would find himself on trial for murder.”
He fell silent again, then said in surprise, “Petrov is Russian, but do you know, he’s perfectly fluent, speaks with a British accent? And now he’s dead.” He raised his whiskey and toasted Savich. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“When FBI agents went to his home to arrest him, he and another man opened fire. They were both killed. Mr. Hainny, you said Petrov gave you a week. You could have called us then, but you didn’t. Did you arrange anything on Petrov’s behalf?”
“No, I didn’t consider that an option at first. Actually he called me a couple of days later for a progress report and I lied to him, told him I’d spoken to the undersecretary for financial intelligence, that a review was under way, but it would take more time. I believed I could handle the—situation—myself and I almost succeeded, until everything went sideways.” He drew a deep breath. “But of course you already know what happened.”
Savich said, “You acted, you hired Manta Ray to steal the safe-deposit box from the Second National Bank of Alexandria. How did you know the evidence against Saxon was there?”
“Petrov would have preferred to stay anonymous, but of course he couldn’t, he had to give me his father’s name and the name of his firm if I was going to act on the sanctions. It was easy for me to find out that Petrov’s son was in the United States. The father couldn’t be, naturally, since the sanctions banned him from traveling here or to Europe.”
Hainny rolled the whiskey glass around between his palms out of habit. “I realized Mia Prevost had been working for Petrov, that it had all been a setup. I decided I wouldn’t tell Saxon. I’m a man with considerable power, Agent Savich, and I used some of it to neutralize this man. I knew he wouldn’t have the items at his house, he’d have to know I could locate that quickly enough, and of course I did. He has no ties to the Russian Embassy, so he couldn’t use their premises to hide the blackmail items.