Red Ink - Tapa dura

Greg Dinallo's previous novel, Final Answers, earned him accolades as a "suspense pro" from the Chicago Tribune; The New York Times heralded his "sharp insight into character," proclaiming, "Mr. Dinallo makes us believe." Now, in a breathtaking novel of suspense and intrigue, Dinallo introduces his most memorable characters yet: an unlikely Russian-American pair of investigators pitted against the world's newest axis of international organized crime. Their chase will lead them from Moscow to Washington; from small-time scams to greed of unparalleled magnitude....
When onetime dissident jounalist Nikolai Katkov is tipped off to the murder of a highly placed government official, he doesn't count on the trail twisting into the lurid world of Moscow mafiya casino-owner Arkady Barkhin. After Katkov's relentless digging almost gets him gunned down, he receives an unexpected appeal for help from the striking Gabby Scotto, a U.S. Treasury Special Agent. She's been tracking laudered money flowing out of the U.S. - an investigation that has led to Barkhin's casino, and a similar dead end. But then Katkov obtains a sensitive government document that could shatter Russia's fragile and newly free economy - and joins Scotto in Washington to pick up the trail.
Katkov's tenaciousness in pursuit of a story has been honed by decades of KGB harassment, and his survival instincts - notwithstanding a penchant for vodka and American cigarettes - by a few hard years in the Gulag. He senses a kindred spirit in the vivacious Brooklynite whose bravado is matched by her investigative savvy - and who leaps at the chance to lead some down-and-dirty field work. Scotto has doubts about sharing privileged information with a journalist, but they are squelched when Katkov makes a critical discovery about a shipping container heading south on I-95 - one that they suspect is filled with $2 billion badly in need of laundering.
As Katkov and Scotto's pursuit races from freeways to freight cars, from Baltimore to Miami, they are shadowed by American entrepreneur Michael Rubineau, a man intent upon seeing the container safely to its ultimate destination. A frequent VIP guest at Arkady Barkhin's Moscow nightclub, Rubineau has devised a scheme of stunning brilliance and unprecedented greed and venality. But as Scotto prepares to take him down, and Katkov composes his front-page headlines, they're forced into a gambit of extreme peril. Heading into the last oupost of communism, Katkov is about to discover that love of country and lust for money can crumble even the fiercest loyalties....