The Hunted

24

The destroyed remnants of a long working lunch were strewn around the table. The mess would be picked up by the secretaries shortly after the meeting ended. Laura Tingleman presided from the end of the long shiny table.

The chief lieutenants of the Justice Department were gathered on this Friday morning, as they were every Friday morning, for what had come to be known as the "Weekly Roundup," named in honor of her background as a Montanan. A city girl through and through, Laura Tingleman could barely tell the back end of a cow from the front.

The chief of the Civil Rights Division was just winding up a long, complicated report about the status of a suit brought by an Indian tribe nobody in the room had ever heard of. The tribe demanded the right to sue the shorts off anybody who used the name "Indian," or any variation thereof, or any reference thereto, or any image thereabout, in their product, team, school, or institution, or whatever.

The case had bounced around various lower courts for over a decade. A victory here. A successful appeal there and now it was on the verge of ascending to consideration by the Supreme Court. No fewer than ten civil rights lawyers had been involved full-time, dodging around the country every time the case changed jurisdiction. The tribe in question was quite small, comprising a husband and wife, a weird migratory couple who claimed they were pursuing the nomadic tradition of their forebears and could not be pinned down for any length of time. They claimed to be following buffalo herds, or locusts, or even slight changes in wind direction. Every move incited a new excuse. Coincidentally, their geographic shifts occurred every time they lost an appeal and needed to bounce the case to a different, more radically liberal venue; they staunchly insisted that their ancient native rights took precedence over the newly created White Man Rule, and some harebrained judge somewhere had ruled in their favor. They won legal permission for unlimited changes of venue along with infinite reasons for appeal.

The couple had once been named Antonelli, before they had it legally changed to Chief and Mrs. Stare at My Moon. They happened to be graduates of Yale Law.

The head of the Civil Rights Division and the solicitor general squabbled back and forth. Civil Rights wanted to hand this hot potato to the solicitor general on the grounds that it was within spitting distance of the Supreme Court. The Court had yet to determine whether this case belonged on their docket, the solicitor general shot back, with his loquacious lips pursed. Yes, but the head of Civil Rights wanted his ten lawyers sprung. Also if the couple won, they would go on a legal rampage, suing for billions from schools and companies that apparently were brutally insensitive to the terrible slights they were inflicting on Indians. The costs would be huge, the backlash staggering.

Unfortunately, the White House was putting unbearable pressure on the department to roll over. The president felt the pain of what had happened to American Indians and he wanted to make amends for three hundred years of atrocities, for white men sharing their awful diseases, for stealing Indian land, for decimating the proud tribes. More succinctly, he wanted their votes.

It was a definite no-win situation.

As usual, Laura Tingleman deferred the decision for later-later being when it somehow resolved itself without her fingerprints. Time to bounce to the next issue, and Laura's chief of staff held up an article clipped, a few days earlier, from the New York Times. Said article concerned a Russian couple being prosecuted for immigration violations. Predictably for the Times, the article was slanted and not overly complimentary to the government's case. The word "railroad" was thrown around a few times by the defense attorney, who had been given suspiciously generous play by the Times reporter.

"Does anybody know what this is about?" Laura asked, searching the faces around the table.

Tromble bent forward. "I do, and so should you."

"I should?"

"Sure. From our Moscow trip, remember? This couple ripped off hundreds of millions and are hiding here. We specifically agreed we would return them to Russia for trial."

"I might have a vague recollection about it," Laura allowed. So much business passed through her office, she could barely keep it all straight.

"You were a little tired," Tromble allowed back. "You gave your word to the Russian attorney general. I'm just following through."

"How did it make the papers?" she asked.

Fortunately, Tromble had the answer. "The usual games, nothing to become concerned over. The defense attorney has no case. He knows it, too. He's trying to spin up the media and build sympathy. He and the Times reporter went to college together. She did him a big favor."

Nobody asked how he knew this. He wouldn't have told them if they had. If the Russians could tap and wire the lawyer's office, it was clearly a national security imperative for Tromble to have a few taps of his own. It was only fair to know what the Russians knew.

"Do we have a solid case?" Laura's chief of staff asked.

"It's in the hands of INS," he fibbed, smoothly and persuasively. "We're providing assistance from the side; only when they ask, though. Believe me, it's waterproof."

"How can you be so sure?" the aide countered. Every eye in the room swiveled to Tromble. How indeed?

Though the Justice Department was purportedly above the fray of politics, this was a liberal administration, and the White House had packed the senior appointed ranks with legions of die-hard, woolly-headed lefties. Tromble was the exception, the lone, fierce duck out of water. The others in the room detested him, and secretly, on a more ambivalent note, nearly all were convinced he was the right man for the right job-a tireless, efficient, ruthless hatchetman who ran his besuited stormtroopers hard. Behind his cover they could spout all the tree-hugging, abortion-loving, big government nonsense they wanted. In the first two years of his incumbency, national crime rates had plummeted a historic nine percent.

A Nazi he might be, but at least he was their Nazi.

"This guy Konevitch," Tromble explained with an air of authority, "was worth hundreds of millions before he fled. Nobody with clean hands makes that kind of money over there. Nobody. He's definitely a crook."

Heads nodding all around. Though few of them had ever set foot in Russia, the roomful of news junkies was well aware of Russia's sad descent into crooked madness. The rampant shootings in Moscow streets. The swift rise of the Mafiya. Vast fortunes being made by a handful of conniving thieves-a kleptocracy, Russia was now being called, and with good reason. Naturally this Konevitch man had to be crooked.

"He's the number one most wanted criminal in Russia. It's Russia, so that's saying something," he continued to the nodding heads. "There is no chance he is innocent. And from what we've learned from our Russian friends, he's already got a foothold here."

Laura was only too happy it was something so simple and straightforward for a change. She asked, "What help can I provide?"

One of her many legal advisors-a she, it happened-scraped forward in her chair, gazing suspiciously down the long table at Tromble. After carefully reading the article, she wasn't sure this was such a slam dunk. "We lack an extradition treaty with the Russians," she announced.

"So what's the best way to proceed?" her boss asked.

"Essentially, we have to prove the merits of Russia's case before an American judge," the aide answered.

"How hard is that?"

"It's been done before. Not with Russia inside this country, but we often use this strategy ourselves. In Colombia, for example, when we want a drug lord renditioned to our courts. We dispatch a legal team there, do a little show-and-tell before a Colombian judge, then they transfer custody to us."

"So we need a team of Russian prosecutors?"

"Pretty much. Assuming they have a good case, they display their evidence to our INS attorneys, and our people handle the heavy lifting in the courts. This takes time, though."

"How much time?"

"Sometimes years. Varies by case."

Tromble stared down the table at this busybody pushing her nose into his business. "The case will be heard again in one week. Konevitch doesn't have a leg to stand on."

"What if you're wrong?" his boss's legal aide asked, not backing down.

"No reasonable judge will decide against us."

"All right, consider an unreasonable one."

"Fine. If you insist, I'll call Russia and get a team over here right away," he conceded. The concession was of course entirely meaningless. He had not the slightest doubt that the Konevitches would land in Moscow long before a Russian team landed in D.C.

The meeting broke up with the solicitor general and head of Civil Rights in a corner, trading insults, and nearly fists, over Chief and Mrs. Stare at My Moon. Tatyana was heavily preoccupied when her phone started ringing off the hook. She tried to ignore it, but eventually stopped what she was doing, rolled over, and put it to her ear. "What? Who is this," she snapped in Russian.

"Please hold for the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," a female voice stiffly instructed her in English.

The voice of John Tromble popped on a moment later. "Hello, Tatyana. Heard the news about your boy Konevitch? Made a big splash in the news on this side of the water."

"How did you get my home number?" she asked, unable to disguise her irritation.

"When I couldn't get you at the office, my boys in the embassy tracked it down."

"All right. Yes, I see that you've got him in jail. Why haven't you just shipped him here?"

"It's complicated. Not as easy as I thought. Listen, I need a big favor."

He explained what he needed, a team of Russian prosecutors, and Tatyana listened. Eventually, she replied, "Is this absolutely necessary?"

"Probably not. He goes back to court in a week. No way in hell he won't be deported. But the judge might act crazily. Call it a precaution, insurance."

"It will take time to get the case together."

"How much time?"

"A month or two, probably. Maybe a little longer."

"I thought you folks were already prepared to fry him in your courts. What's the problem?"

"John, please. The case is ready for Russian courts, not yours. Your rules of evidence are different, and we'll have to tailor it accordingly. There are also certain pieces of evidence we would find it embarrassing or troublesome to show foreigners. Dirty laundry we really don't want to showcase at a time when we're trying to attract foreign investment. Those problems will have to be cleaned up."

"Okay, yeah. I understand that."

"You can keep him in jail, can't you? A lot of powerful people here are opposed to letting you keep the FBI outpost in your embassy. I'm doing my best, but, John, it's a real uphill battle. Such a clear lack of mutual cooperation won't go over well."

Tromble started to say something, but she cut him off. "President Yeltsin asked me about this case just yesterday," she lied. "He keeps asking if he needs to discuss it with your president."

"Hey, we'll find a way. I don't care if I have to bribe the judge or kill his wife. I'll find a way."

"Whatever it takes, John, whatever it takes. I'll put together a team of prosecutors and get them over there as soon as possible."

They rung off. Tatyana stretched, then rolled over, back into the muscular arms of Sasha Komenov, her boytoy soccer star. He drew away. "Who was it?" he asked in a petulant mood. He didn't speak English and understood not a word.

"Just some idiot law enforcement administrator from America."

"Oh, you're screwing him, too?" Sasha snapped. Lately, he was turning a little sulky about Tatyana and her extracurricular sleeping habits. It had never bothered him before, but after discovering a gray hair a few weeks before, he found himself suddenly torn with possessive urges.

"You're cute when you're mad. Come on and screw me now." She laughed.

Sasha crossed his arms and pouted. "Don't joke. I'm tired of sharing you."

"You're a fool. You've seen my boss. He's bald and fat and not the least bit interesting. He's so terrible in bed I have to pinch myself just to stay awake. He's so disgusting, I become nauseated afterward. I'm only doing this for us, Sasha."

"You've been saying that for years."

"And it's true. Listen, we're moving in on a huge fortune right now. Billions, Sasha, billions. My cut will be hundreds of millions, and as soon as I have it, I'll dump that old moron and quit my job. You and I will buy a big yacht and sail around the world. We'll never be able to spend it all. We'll die rich and happy."

The recorder in the basement whirred and caught every word. The limo had been cruising around Moscow for an hour. It wandered aimlessly, in no particular direction, eating up pavement until the meeting in the back was finished. After picking up Sergei Golitsin at his big brick mansion, it had sped crosstown, straight to the comparatively smaller home of Anatoli Fyodorev, Russia's attorney general. He climbed inside and off it sped.

The tracking device on the undercarriage made it too easy to trail. After an hour it pulled back up to the curb in front of Fyodorev's home. Out stepped the attorney general, stretching and straightening his suit. And then Golitsin's big head peeked out. The old man said something, they both laughed. He handed Fyodorev a thick envelope. Right there, on the curb, the idiot actually opened it so he could count the cash.

Click, click, went Mikhail's trusty camera.