The Hunted

22

The guard rattled his keys and called for Prisoner Konevitch to step forward. Alex pushed through the crowd of disconsolate men and appeared at the door. He had not showered in three days. He had barely slept, quick catnaps frequently interrupted by another prisoner stumbling over him, or a fresh internee being jammed into the overcrowded cell. He looked tired and unshaven, his hair greasy and limp. He smelled of stale sweat and urine.

He stepped through the door and two guards shackled his hands and feet before he was led in a series of awkward shuffles to the visitor area.

MP Jones was seated at a table, briefcase in lap, frowning and clutching his hands together. "Alex, I'm sorry this took so long."

"Elena called you Friday night, MP. Don't tell me you're sorry, tell me what happened."

"Games. I called every number I know at INS. Nobody would tell me where they took you. You should be in a D.C. cell. That's where you're domiciled and where you were arrested. Instead, they moved you here, to Alexandria, to throw me off the scent. Was it bad?"

"It hasn't been pleasant. I don't care about me. Get Elena out of this."

MP wouldn't look him in the eyes. "That's going to be difficult."

"Why? Arrange bail. Murderers get out on bail. Our apartment is paid for. Use it as collateral and get her out."

"Don't think I haven't already tried, Alex. Remember all those reporters outside the Watergate? The Feds are turning you into a showcase. You were big news over the weekend, all those crime and legal channels on cable had a field day. You got creamed in the papers and TV." He held up a picture cut from a newspaper. It showed Alex and Elena being led from the Watergate, cuffed and looking guilty as hell. "Apparently, they want the Russian government to know they're playing hardball."

"They want me, MP. Elena has done nothing wrong."

"The answer's no, Alex. They claim you're a flight risk."

"They can let her go. They'll still have me in jail."

"Alex, you're not listening. They want her in jail, too."

Understanding what MP was saying came slowly, but it finally struck with full force. He tried to swallow the huge knot in his throat. It wouldn't go away. The U.S. government was using Elena as a hostage, as leverage to force him back to Russia. He prayed her conditions were better than his. He hoped she was in a private cell. His cell was filthy and so thoroughly overcrowded that the men took turns sleeping on the hard floor. They fought with one another for a turn at the toilet, trading insults in an array of languages that only contributed to the frustration. The room was cold and noisy: between the sounds of a toilet constantly flushing and the constant drone of fearful men sharing loud complaints, sleep was nearly impossible. The food was awful, microwaved garbage mixed together on a tin tray.

MP pushed on. "By law, they can hold you four days before a release can be applied for. I've demanded a hearing tomorrow. They can't say no."

"What am I charged with?"

"An expired visa."

"But you can easily prove that's false?"

"Of course. As long as everybody sticks to the truth, it should be easy."

"Get Elena out, MP. I don't care about me, I don't care what it takes, get her out."

"I'll do my best." Yuri Khodorin's first hint of trouble was anything but subtle; five of his corporate executives ended up splayed out on tables in various morgues around the city. In less than three hours, five dead. An array of methods had been used, from shootings to stabbings to poisonings. The swath of killings spread from Moscow to St. Petersburg; it made it impossible to determine where the next strike might land, or, indeed, if there would be another.

On day two, this question was answered with an unmistakable bang. Six more dead. For sure, it was no longer an unlikely coincidence, or a sated spike of revenge, or spent anger: the killings weren't incidental. They were deliberate, and they weren't about to stop.

At thirty-three, already Russia's second richest man, Yuri Khodorin was perched within one good, profitable year of landing at number one. Like Alex, he had started young and early, even before the crash of communism opened the door to huge money. He sprinted out of the starting block and cobbled together an aggressive empire as wildly diversified as it was vast, profitable, and hungry. Central Enterprises, it was named, an innocuous title for a holding company that had a grip on everything from oil fields to TV stations, including myriad smaller businesses, from fast food through hotels, and almost too many other things to count. It created or swallowed new companies monthly and spewed out an almost ridiculous array of products and services.

A pair of Moscow police lieutenants appeared unannounced at Yuri's Moscow office the morning after the second set of killings-an odd pair, one an oversized butterball, the other thin as a rail. They unloaded the bad news that the Mafiya was kicking sand in his face. And no, sorry about that, no way could the city cops protect him; they were stretched so thin they could barely protect their own stationhouses. But in an effort to be helpful they generously left behind the business card of somebody who surely could.

Day four opened with three of Yuri's corporate offices fire-bombed; suspiciously, the local firefighters were dispatched to the wrong addresses, and all three buildings burned to the ground. Insurance would cover the losses, but droves of his terrified employees were threatening to stop showing up for work. At the sad end of day four-having once more been refused municipal protection-Yuri bounced his problems up to the next rung. He placed a desperate call to the attorney general, Anatoli Fyodorev, and pleaded loudly and desperately for help. Fyodorev made lots of sympathetic noises, and promised an abundance of assistance of all sorts. He was just disturbingly vague about what that meant.

The best Yuri could tell, it meant nothing. Not when day five opened with a car bomb in his headquarters parking lot that slaughtered three more employees.

Late that evening, reeling from the brutally rolling shocks, Yuri sat in his office alone, brooding and speculating about the future. At this rate, there would be no future. He had been shuttling around to funerals all day, trying his best to console sobbing widows and their crying little children. His mood was ugly. He wanted to be left alone, to stew with self-pity.

His secretary interrupted this bout of dark depression and informed him that a man was waiting in the lobby. "Doesn't he have a name?" Yuri barked. He refused to give one, she replied. "Send him away," Yuri said. Think twice, she insisted; he claimed he might know a few things about the murders plaguing their firm.

"Nobody else seems to," Yuri muttered. "All right, show him in."

The man entered and fell into the seat across from Yuri's desk. There were no handshakes, no empty attempts at pleasantries.

Mikhail studied Yuri for a moment. Dark cropped hair, rimless glasses, an efficient-looking type with a mass of excess energy he couldn't control. Constantly shifting in his seat, intermittently twisting the wedding band on a long, skinny finger.

This was Yuri's office, and he'd be damned if he was going to be outstared by anybody. He stared right back at Mikhail with a show of great intensity. The harder he stared, the less he learned-just a normal-sized, nameless male of about forty-eight years, with a hard, weathered face, dressed casually and nondescriptly.

After they stared at each other long enough, Mikhail broke the ice. "Alex Konevitch informed me that you and he were old buddies."

"We did a lot of business together, Alex and I. I miss him. Trying to keep up with him was a ball. He a friend of yours?"

"A good friend."

Yuri relaxed a little. "Where is Alex now?"

"America. Washington, D.C."

Yuri clapped his hands together in delight. "I knew it. All those theories about Brazil, or detox clinics, I always said they were bunk." Yuri's face turned grim. "Too bad he stole that money. Like I said, I miss him."

"That what you think happened, he ran with the money?" A year before this had been the most popular game in town-the Alex quiz. Where was the money? Where was Alex? How much did he steal?

"Sure, of course." A furious nod. "That's what the news said happened."

"Great tale, isn't it? What's your theory about it?"

"I'm a big fan of the 'he snapped' camp."

"Just freaked out, grabbed as much he could haul, and fled, huh?"

"Yeah, something like that. It probably makes more sense to me than it might to you. Tell the truth, I sometimes dream of doing the same thing."

"Having all that money isn't fun, huh?"

"Twenty-hour days, thousands of people who depend on you, constant crises where everything's on the verge of crashing down on your head. Oh sure, it's a blast." A brief pause, accompanied by a few more hard twists on the wedding band. "Now, who are you, and what do you want?"

"Mikhail Borosky. I did a lot of private investigation work for Alex. Still do."

"And what? Alex asked you to drop by?"

"Yes." Mikhail stretched his legs out and leaned back in the chair. "Alex asked me to keep my eye on the news. See who's next. Apparently, you're the guy."

A slight flinch. "Next? What does that mean?"

"It means you're at stage one of the same treatment Alex got. For some reason, you're getting it a bit rougher than he got. And they're a lot sloppier. I'm not sure why. Guess they're a little over-confident this time."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Did you receive a visit from two of Moscow's finest?" From his tone, Mikhail already seemed to know the answer.

"Yes."

"A blimp and a beanpole, right?" It wasn't really a question. From a parking lot across the street, Mikhail had watched the pair enter the headquarters the day before yesterday.

A slow nod.

"They give you a business card recommending somebody who could put a stop to all this?"

Yuri tried to hide his surprise but found it impossible. This strange man knew so much. The card in question, in fact, sat on Yuri's blotter, in easy reach of his fingers. Only three minutes before, he had been within seconds of dialing the number and pleading for help.

Yuri shoved the card across the table. Mikhail bent forward and studied it a moment. The name on the card was unrecognizable and meant nothing. But the name didn't matter. If he bothered to check, which he had no intention of doing, the resume would reveal a long career in the KGB and some kind of deep attachment or connection to Sergei Golitsin.

"You know the old story about the Trojan horse?" Mikhail asked, pushing the card back in Yuri's direction.

A careful nod. "Sure, who doesn't?"

Mikhail directed a finger at the business card. "There's your Trojan horse. Those two cops are crooked to the core. They were sent in to kick open the door. Once you call that number, the worm will find a way to let the barbarians inside your company."

"This is what they did to Alex?"

A knowing nod, and for the next twenty minutes Mikhail revealed everything that happened to Alex, how the scheme worked, the kidnap, the torture, being framed for the theft of everything he owned. The whole ugly tale. To verify his story, he passed Yuri morgue forms that confirmed the death of Alex's employees, as well as one of the statements prepared a year before by Alex that he had faxed to all the senior officials around Yeltsin.

Mikhail sat back and allowed Yuri time to read the evidence, to see the similarities, and to realize that he was indeed the newest target.

Long before he finished, Yuri looked sad, confused, and scared out of his wits. He gripped his hands together and studied his blotter for a long moment. "So what do I do now?"

"I think you got two options. One, take as much money as you can, and run."

After everything this man had just told him, option one sounded impossibly irresistible. Screw option two. He had millions stored in a Swiss vault, a hoard of cash large enough to live happily ever after. A fraction of his current fortune of course, but he'd at least be alive to spend it. His private jet was tucked in a private hangar at the airport, fueled up and ready to go. He could have breakfast at his spacious London flat, or lunch at his favorite Azores resort. That indecision lasted seconds. The British have always been so very civil and accommodating to wealthy Russian exiles who drop by for breakfast, and asylum.

Mikhail allowed him a moment to bask in this hopeful reprieve before he warned, "Course, that option's not quite as clean as it sounds."

"Why's that?"

"They're still trying to murder Alex. They've got teams of killers hanging in his shadows. Also, they've somehow fooled the American FBI into shipping him back here. He's long past the point where he can do anything to them. They don't care. They still want him dead."

"What's option two?" Yuri asked very quickly, very solemnly.

"Fight them."

"Don't be silly. I'm a businessman. I don't know what I'm up against, or even who these people are."

Mikhail stood and began pacing in front of the desk. "That's why I'm here. I do know who they are. And every time they meet, wherever they go, I learn more. They're very powerful, very dangerous people. And they're very, very corrupt. It's a large conspiracy with lots of money that gets bigger by the month."

"Is this supposed to be encouraging?"

"If you're listening carefully, yes. That size now works against them. And, as I mentioned, after Alex, they've become overconfident and incredibly sloppy. Understand that this thing works only when they have complete surprise. They have to be in the shadows, totally anonymous."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"For starters, forget the name on that card. I'll leave you the number of a former police captain. He's competent, tough as nails, a born street fighter. Call him first thing in the morning, pay him whatever he asks, and don't anticipate overnight results. Expect a few more killings and bombings. Over time he'll find a way to protect you and your people. If he needs money, write the check without questions. It's not just a matter of a few more guards and extra precautions. Alex tried that, and look where it got him. He's going to have to bribe people, and he'll probably need to buy you a little help from a competing syndicate. He's going to fight fire with fire."

"What are you going to do?"

"Stay in the shadows. Keep my eye on them. Eventually, I might come to you for money. It might be expensive, but I promise it'll be the best money you ever spent."

"So you expect me to just stay tough."

"Way I see it, you can stay tough or get dead."