The Hunted

27

After an hour of wailing and gnashing, of fruitless attempts at denial accompanied by turbulent rantings and sulfurous threats directed at the messengers, the long procession of accountants finally packed up their books and spreadsheets and fled from his office. The door closed quietly, at last. Sergei Golitsin hunched down in his chair and stared at the blank white walls. He was angry and felt depressed. The number crunchers had been merciless. No punches pulled, no quarter given.

The export-import bank, the flagship of Golitsin Enterprises-and one of its last surviving companies-was careening off a financial cliff. The priceless monopoly on the exchanging of foreign currencies had long since expired. The competition had swooped in and undercut his rates with a vengeance. For a few months, the five percent fee he charged had pumped up the profits and hid the bad news: customers were fleeing in droves.

Then, almost overnight, as if a switch had been flipped, the customers melted away. One day small trickles were still coming through the door; then, without warning, severe business anorexia settled in. Golitsin had moved decisively and ordered an aggressive retreat on his inflated rates, four percent, then three, then two; as of a week ago, it was set at a paltry one percent. At that price it would take thousands of new customers pushing large fortunes through his vaults to keep the doors open. No respite. No flood of new clients, or even return business. The doors to his bank had grown cobwebs.

He now doubted he could lure any customers if he offered to pay them five percent.

Amazing, the damage caused by one unfortunate hiccup. One of his handpicked VPs, a magician in his former life in KGB counterintelligence, had gotten overconfident. Freewheeling with the bank's money, and reeling under unrelenting pressure from Golitsin to show a profit, he had made the bizarre decision to dabble in the speculation game. He made a brazen one billion bet on the unstable English pound. After a few short hours, it was nearly all swallowed in quicksand. A vindictive American currency speculator named Soros detected the move and whacked it with a thousand-pound sledgehammer. Seven hundred million was lost, according to the squinty-eyed accountants who had just spent an hour cruelly detailing the urgent case for bankruptcy. Seven hundred million!

Golitsin could not squeeze even an ounce of solace from the fact that the idiot speculator would spend the remainder of his sorry life in a wheelchair, sucking fluid through a straw. Two kneecaps shattered into bony pulp. A face now unrecognizable to his own children. Big deal! It hardly compensated for the carnage-seven hundred million down the drain. What a mess.

After a year of horrible news, followed by worse news, Golitsin had at last reached a decision. A painful decision, and certainly humiliating. But it was also necessary, practical, and long overdue. Shove vanity aside. Managing businesses was not his forte. There was so little left to manage anyway. A few emaciated skeletons in a swarming sea of wreckage. The construction business had cratered into bankruptcy months ago. The arbitrage firm sank under the weight of ten thousand tons of North Korean "garbage" iron ore of a quality so poor nobody would touch it, at any price. The car import business had sputtered out of existence. The hotels and restaurants had been put on the block months before to pay off the ruinous debts accumulated by other struggling branches.

In fact, the feverish struggle to keep Konevitch's companies afloat had distracted and dislodged him from his God-given gift. What a waste! All those interminable hours exhausted in useless business meetings, listening to his sorry underlings concoct lies and excuses for their utter stupidity. The unending stream of crises brought about by the hapless dolts below him. From now on, he would focus his brilliance where it belonged: stealing other people's fortunes and businesses.

He left his office, walked downstairs, and climbed purposefully into the rear of his big black limousine. He barked at his driver to get it in gear and drive around until he was told otherwise. The motion would help him clear the cobwebs. A little medicinal relief wouldn't hurt, either. He yanked a bottle of imported scotch from the bar against the front seat and jerked the cap off. He positioned a tumbler carefully in front of him. A hearty tilt of the bottle and it was filled to the lip.

Feeling a new sense of purpose, he lifted the carphone, dialed a number in the Kremlin, drained the first long burning sip of scotch, and waited. Tatyana picked up on the third ring.

They wasted a few minutes on mock pleasantries and obligatory political gossip. The prime minister was about to be sacked. He was an idiotic little pencil pusher, bereft of ideas to bail out the crippled economy, and by general consensus a jerk. The old prime minister who had been fired before him-an even bigger jerk-had the inside track for a return engagement.

Golitsin drummed his fingers and waited. Tatyana obviously enjoyed recounting the tawdry gossip, and he let her ramble awhile before he got down to business. "Don't you find it curious how Yuri Khodorin has resisted our overtures?"

"He is a tough nut to crack," Tatyana agreed. "Nicky's taking a terrible beating."

"He's not the only one. I finally placed two of my agents inside his companies. Both discovered, somehow."

"How do you know this?"

"I was meant to. The message was quite clear. One found in his car with his throat slashed, the other disappeared. Went to work one day and hasn't been heard from in three weeks."

"They must've gotten sloppy," she said very coldly.

"They were handpicked. Veteran agents, both of them, and they went in with perfect covers. I don't think so."

"Then what do you think?"

After a brief pause, fueled by another noisy sip, Golitsin told her, "Khodorin has been tipped off. It's the only explanation."

"It's a good explanation. Not the only one, though. But assuming it's right, who would be behind it?"

"Alex Konevitch."

"Impossible."

"Is it really? They were friends before Konevitch fled. Business competitors, but they sometimes chummed around."

Tatyana considered this theory before launching into her usual nit-picking. "How could he get word out? He's rotting in prison, Sergei."

"So what? Solzhenitsyn smuggled out full-length novels, and that was from our most remote Siberian gulag."

"I do remember reading about that. He wrote them on toilet paper or something."

"Anything's possible."

"But how did Konevitch learn we were going after Khodorin?"

"Maybe Khodorin contacted our boy. Maybe Konevitch was watching. I don't know. It doesn't really matter."

"That's two maybes," Tatyana, ever the lawyer, observed, but without conviction.

"Then let's dispense with the doubts. We've tried the same tricks on Khodorin. The computer hacking, the murders, the bombings, the police visit, the in-house spies, all of which succeeded spectacularly with Konevitch. Khodorin's been ready for every single one. He's clobbering us at our own game. It's not beginner's luck, and it's not coincidental."

Tatyana kicked off her shoes and planted her lovely feet on the desk. "So what do you suggest?"

"It's not a difficult problem."

"Then there must be an easy solution."

"There is. Konevitch, he has to die," Golitsin informed her. "And the sooner the better." His glass was empty and he refilled it with a flourish. It felt great to be back in the game, outthinking his opponents. He privately relished the vision of an OUT OF BUSINESS sign hanging on the bank in the morning. How nice it would be to wake up and have those worries behind him. He would hang the sign himself, he decided. Good riddance. "So where is our boy wonder now?" he asked, trying to suppress any hint of giddiness.

"A federal prison in Illinois. After seven months in Atlanta, it was felt he became too acclimated. Too comfortable."

"Too comfortable?"

"According to Tromble, Konevitch fit right into the life. Some band of Cuban heavyweights took him under their wing. He was living like a king. A security detail followed him everywhere. A Barcalounger in his cell. Special meals prepared in the prison mess hall. Can you believe it?"

Yes, he did. He was long past being surprised by Alex Konevitch. And, too, he was long past underestimating him. Probably, he decided, this explained how Konevitch blew the whistle on them to his old chum Khodorin-with help on the inside, there were a million ways Konevitch could communicate with the outside. "So you've failed to turn up the heat on him," Golitsin stated, but without his characteristic nastiness.

He had his own bad news to impart-bad news for her, anyway. No use getting her all worked up.

"Technically, Tromble failed. Not me," she insisted. "I've done everything I could. Our prosecution team arrived months ago. Konevitch should've been back in an American court a long time ago. The case is perfect."

"All right," he conceded very agreeably. "Then it's all Tromble's fault."

Suspicious from this burst of benevolence, Tatyana snapped, "What are you hiding, Sergei?"

Golitsin sank in his plush leather seat and cracked a small smile. She was so quick. He quickly recounted the sad tale about the rogue trader who shoved the export-import bank into insolvency. By nine the next morning, the bank would be shuttered. By ten, word would race around Moscow: Konevitch's once mighty empire had finally bled to death.

Tatyana's feet flew off the desk and landed on the floor. "Oh, that's just great," she moaned. "Your idiots ruined me. My stock is now worthless."

"Mine, too."

"Oh, spare me. You have Konevitch's money, his mansion, his cars, his luxury apartment in Paris. What do I have?"

He was tempted to answer truthfully: A hundred thousand shares of nothing; you're broke and desperate, living on a mangy government paycheck. I'm your only hope-you need me more than ever.

Instead, he tapped his fingers on the car seat and sipped patiently from his scotch as she swore and vented for a few more minutes.

Eventually, he uncorked the cure to her troubles. "All the more reason to take care of this Khodorin business quickly. We'll divide the cash this time. I promise. Five hundred million, perfectly even, a three-way split. Same with his shares. And this time, we'll sell everything as fast as we can. We'll easily bag another billion or more."

He paused to allow her a moment to accept the inevitability of her situation. She was broke, for the moment; but not hopeless. With the right moves, in no time at all she could light her cigarettes with thousand-dollar bills. "The best way to get inside Khodorin's head is to kill Konevitch," he suggested.

"It will be quite difficult. He's out of reach, behind bars."

"But not impossible. And if Khodorin wants to play games with us, he needs to be taught a lesson. There's no way for him to win."

"You're right," she mumbled. The brilliance of the suggestion finally dawned on her. "Meet our demands when the time comes, or we'll hunt you down. If the U.S. government can't protect Konevitch, there's no hope for you. Khodorin will collapse."

After a brief call on her cell phone to Nicky, and a long meeting with a few American specialists in the Foreign Ministry, Tatyana barked at the Kremlin switch to do whatever it took to connect her to the director of the American FBI. It took three operators thirty minutes to track him down. He happened to be in an FBI field office in northern Jersey, clustered with a team of agents who had just broken up a large counterfeiting ring. An inside informant had been turned a year before. Unlike so many other operations during Tromble's tenure, the investigation had been a model of law enforcement skill and restraint. Every nuance of legal limit had been adhered to, no shortcuts. The evidence was overwhelming and, in the view of the Justice Department's sharpest experts, virtually unchallengeable in court.

The three counterfeiters had been slapped in cuffs an hour before. Tromble had arrived just in time for the press conference where he would make the announcement and bask in the glory. The podium was already set up, the large flock of reporters and cameras waiting with growing impatience.

An aide entered the room where Tromble was being fed enough information to fool the press into believing he had personally doted on every detail of the case, had personally overseen this masterstroke of crimefighting at its best. The aide cupped a hand to his ear and signaled his boss. Tromble cursed, then stepped out of the room and accepted the proffered cell phone.

Without preamble, Tatyana launched right in. "What's going on with Konevitch?"

"Sorry, no change," he told her, eyeing his watch, impatient to begin his briefing. All the big networks were there, all the big East Coast papers. "He's still up in Chicago. Believe me, it's a nasty place. One of our two worst."

"He's been there two months now, John."

"Almost three, actually."

"And it's been almost a year since you promised to deliver him to me."

"I know, and I'm sorry. He's tougher than expected."

"And how are the reports from Chicago?"

"Not promising. It's very curious. Somehow, he's wormed his way inside the Black Power brotherhood."

"But he's white. Don't they discriminate?"

"Typically, yes. He's amazingly adaptable."

"All right, you've had your turn," she barked, suddenly turning aggressive. "Now I'd like to take my best shot."

"What are you talking about?"

"I consulted with a few of my experts about your prisons. I want someplace tougher. Much tougher, much more terrifying."

This greatly annoyed him and he made no effort to hide it. "I believe I know our prisons better than your so-called experts. Atlanta and Chicago are our worst."

"The worst federal prisons, you mean. Not your worst prisons, not by a long shot."

"That might be true, but the federal prisons are the ones I can influence."

She went on, unfazed. "It's my understanding that your Bureau of Prisons occasionally subcontracts with state prisons."

"Occasionally, yes. To alleviate overcrowding. Sometimes as a temporary measure until a prisoner can be moved. So what?"

"I further understand that the state prison in Yuma is unimaginably horrible. A nightmare of violence, killings, and rapes."

"Well… it's pretty bad. But Parchman down in Mississippi's probably a little worse."

"You don't seem to be listening, John. Like it or not, it's my turn to pick Konevitch's hellhole."

Tromble swallowed his anger. "So what do you want?"

"Switch him to Yuma. Do it immediately."

"He's barely been in Chicago three months."

"It's almost summertime, and the prison lacks air-conditioning. I want him sweltering in 120-degree heat, locked into a small cell he has to share with a complete sociopath. I want him mixed in with the general population, eating horrible food, and worried every minute of every day for his life. I want him more miserable than he's ever been."

"I think that can be arranged."

"If you want your agents in Moscow, you'll make damned sure it is. You've embarrassed me with my bosses, John. You owe me for a year of humiliation and lame excuses."

Before Tromble could say another word, Tatyana punched off. She leaned back into her chair and placed her feet back on her desk. The prison had been Nicky's choice. He knew of ten Russians inside Yuma, three of them hit men with impressive credentials. He swore that any one of them could do the job.

Courtesy of Golitsin's fat wallet, a bonus would be offered to sweeten the pot-$500K to whoever killed Konevitch. A way would be found to get this word inside. Quick results were expected.

The next idea was Tatyana's. To encourage speedy action, the price would decrease by $100K a month, until the job was done.