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State George Smirniotakis was also there, tugging out his large white handkerchief every now and then to blow his nose, and Warren Truby, director of the FBI, who Marian Perry had once described as “Herbert Hoover’s less cheerful brother.”
    As the butler brought coffee and cakes and tollhouse cookies, Doug Latterby leaned close to the president’s left shoulder and murmured, “Petrovsky is slightly more to your right. That’s it. And keep your eyes a little lower.”
    Eventually the doors of the Oval Office were closed, and President Perry said, “Gyorgy, I think we can cut to the chase. You’ve had all the briefing papers, but just for the record, the reason I’ve asked you here today is to ask for your active assistance. At least three highly organized gangs ofRussian criminals are bringing fear and corruption and a great deal of human misery to every major city throughout the United States.
    “Once it was the Sicilians and the Mafia. Now it’s Russians and Ukrainians, and they’re into everything—drugs, prostitution, gambling, fraud, and theft on a scale such as we’ve never encountered before.”
    Gyorgy Petrovsky listened to the translation. Then he said, “America has always advertised itself as the land of opportunity, where anybody can make good, no matter what their place of birth.”
    “Oh, for sure,” said President Perry. “But there’s a heck of a lot of difference between making good and making off with somebody else’s goods. There’s a heck of a lot of difference between opportunity and extortion.”
    Gyorgy Petrovsky shrugged. “Every orchard produces one or two bad plums. I cannot see how you can hold me personally responsible for the misdeeds of a few people who happen to have been born in Russia. You admitted them to your country, after all. It is up to your own law enforcement agencies to curtail their activities, and your courts to punish them. All I can say is that if you wish to impose on these people the severest of penalties, I will give you nothing but my blessing.”
    “I’m afraid I need more than your good wishes, Gyorgy.” President Perry was finding it difficult to judge whether Gyorgy Petrovsky was being deadly serious or mildly sarcastic. “I need your active cooperation.”
    Normally at this point, he would have stood up and walked behind Gyorgy Petrovsky’s chair, so that the Russian would have had to turn his head awkwardly around in order to reply to him. But now that he was blind, it was out of the question. He couldn’t afford to stumble or to lose his sense of direction.
    “In particular,” he said, “we need to nail down a character called Lev Khlebnikov, who runs a highly sophisticated drugs-and-prostitution racket in New York City. So far wehaven’t been able to bring any charges against him, because nobody will give evidence against him. The most humane way that he deals with anybody who crosses him is to tie them over a mailbox, douse them with gasoline, and set fire to them.”
    “I know of this man.” Gyorgy Petrovsky nodded.
    “Then there’s Viktor Zamyatin, who operates out of Cincinnati. He’s not as powerful as Khlebnikov, but his activities are spreading all across the Midwest—labor rackets, protection, arson, prostitution, drugs. You name it, Zamyatin’s got his finger in it.”
    “I know also of this man,” said President Petrovsky. “He is what you call ‘a piece of work,’ yes?”
    “That just about sums him up.”
    “So, what do you expect me to do? You want my security people maybe to kidnap these two men and spirit them back to Russia? I don’t want them any more than you do.”
    “Of course not,” said President Perry. “But almost all of the money that Khlebnikov and Zamyatin make out of their illegal operations is being laundered through banks in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We’re talking billions of dollars everyyear. I need you to clamp down on those banks and freeze any and all of their assets. Also, I need