"So how's this work?"

"Easier than you might think. There are probably fifteen or twenty contraband cell phones in the block, am I right?"

Bitchy nodded. Fifty was more like it. The guards were always hunting for them, but as they grew smaller they became so much easier to conceal. Bitchy knew of at least four tucked away in the prison laundry, another six in the kitchen. Twist a few arms, and he'd have all he wanted. No was not a word Bitchy heard very often.

"Get me three of those phones, Benny. The batteries wear down quickly and can't be recharged inside our cell. You'll handle the expenses. Believe me, you'll be able to afford it. I use the phones to manage your money and whoever else I decide to call."

"And what if you mess up and lose my money?"

"I'll be on the bottom bunk. If I fail to keep my end of the bargain, you're not obligated to keep yours."

Bitchy crossed his arms and stared off at the far wall. Of the vast multitude of "investment advisors" at the pro draft who pounced hungrily on the newest batch of twenty-two-year-old, undereducated millionaires, not one of those greedy blabbermouths had offered a deal remotely resembling this. And if they lost it all through their own utter ineptitude, it was tough luck, pal, sayonara.

Really, how many investment advisors promised outright that if they failed in their promises, they'd bend over and take it, like they just gave it? "All right," Bitchy said, hands back in his pockets.

"Another thing. I'm going to teach you how to do this. If I make you all that money, I don't want you to turn around and lose it afterward."

"Will it hurt?"

"Only a little, Benny."

Benny laughed.

"One last thing," Alex said, returning to his book.

"Name it."

"Spread the word. The last two prisons, we pooled our money and increased our buying positions enormously. The more the better for you." The day that marked the anniversary of eleven months since the Konevitch trial, Kim Parrish threw her long-overdue fit.

The team of state prosecutors had arrived from Russia six months before, four of them in all, all men, all wearing blockish suits made of a cheap, indescribable fabric. Only one spoke any semblance of English-just please, thank you, yes, but mostly no, and a dismaying variety of filthy curses.

The FBI paid for the works and put them up in the downtown Hilton. They immediately raised hell about the lousy accommodations. To shut them up, they were bounced a few blocks over to the Madison, a decidedly more upscale lodging. The complaints did not abate until the Madison succumbed and switched them each to thousand-dollar suites.

They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the most expensive Georgetown restaurants, rented two Mercedes sedans, a snazzy black Corvette, and a shiny red Maserati. They spent their five-day weekends raising hell in California and Florida, before they fell deeply in love with Las Vegas and the legalized brothels nearby. They billed it all to the FBI-the first-class airfares, the whores, the gambling losses that quickly turned mountainous. Everything was billed directly to the Feds. They drank from dawn till dusk, got in fistfights in bars, picked up four DUIs, smashed up the Maserati, trashed one Mercedes sedan, and billed all that, too, to the FBI.

They arrived with two dozen large crates stuffed to the lids with documents. Everything in Russian. Everything, every word and comma, had to be meticulously and painfully translated into English.

Two more weeks were lost while Kim scoured the city for a competent translator. As the documents proved to be a thick maze of Russian legalese, not any translator would do. Kim interviewed a dozen candidates. Several American college graduates whose levels of fluency weren't nearly as impressive as their resumes. Five Russian emigres who utterly failed the English test. A retired book editor who had translated two complete Tolstoy novels had seemed like her best bet. That one took a brief glance at the two dozen crates and bolted.

Eventually, Kim drove across to the river to the leafy, sprawling CIA headquarters at Langley. She had called ahead and was met by man from the Russian analysis section. Downstairs, in the large marble lobby, she briefly described her problem. Mr. Spook smiled reassuringly and claimed he knew the perfect guy. On a sheet of paper he wrote the name and number of a Russian expat, a man named Petri Arbatov, a major in the KGB before he defected to the U.S. Petri had a law degree from Moscow University and in the fifteen years since his defection, he had also picked up an American JD from Catholic University. Petri demanded $600 an hour, a price that would've impressed the most expensive firm in New York. He insisted he wouldn't translate "da" to "yes" for a penny less. The price was outrageous, far beyond what she had intended to pay. She promptly agreed.

What the hell: Petri, too, could send his rather impressive bills to the FBI. If the Fibbies could blow through all that dough on a bunch of Russian cowboys whooping it up like rich Arab playboys, they better not even blink about all-too-legitimate legal expenses.

Kim rented a small, furnished fourth-floor apartment on Connecticut Avenue, they hauled up the boxes, rolled up their sleeves, and dug in. Petri proved to be a rare combination, an unemotional perfectionist-a short, thin, sad-faced man of few words who concentrated deeply and absolutely on his work. He consumed only one meal a day, always a thin broth he brought from home that he carefully spooned into his mouth. On such little nourishment, it was a miracle he stayed alive, much less endured the backbreaking load of work. He surrounded himself with both Russian and English dictionaries and waded through each document, word for word. He dictated. Kim typed. At six hundred an hour, he and Kim avoided expensive banter. They made it through three-quarters of the crates at a furious pace because they wasted nothing: neither time nor words. After four months and twenty days of eighteen hours each, she had no idea whether Petri was married, had cancer, children, was rich or poor, or even whether he lived on the street.

Thus she was hugely surprised when he slammed down one of the documents and turned to her. "You and I need to talk."

"About what?"

"Do you know what I did for the KGB, Kim? You've never asked."

"You were a lawyer?"

"More or less. I was the KGB's idea of a lawyer."

"Okay. What does that mean?"

"I worked in a legal section that specialized in what were termed special cases."

"So what? Specialization is the name of the game. I specialize in immigration law."

"Ask my specialty."

She decided to humor him. She smiled. "What was your specialty, Petri?"

"Framing. I framed people, Kim." He let that nauseating confession sit for a moment, then pushed on. "Only high-value targets. And I was the best, Kim, a remarkably talented lawyer. I could build a seamless case against anybody. A general secretary, a highly decorated marshal of the Soviet Union, a poet with a Nobel Prize, it didn't matter. Literally anybody, Kim. They gave me a name and I went to work. When I was done, any jury or judge would believe the accused was a capitalist pig with ten million in a Swiss account who had sex with his own children and lived only to destroy the motherland."

"Is this why you defected, Petri? Conscience."

He looked away. "Oh, I wish I could say yes." He seemed to sink in his chair. "I'm not so noble, I'm afraid."

"What happened?"

"One day, I went to visit another man in my section, a good friend of twenty years, who worked only three doors down from my office. He had slipped out to go to the latrine. He did something incredibly stupid, he left his door unlocked. This was totally against procedure, you must understand. Inexcusably sloppy. So I walked in. Documents were strewn everywhere. On his desk, his floor, everywhere. He was obviously well along."