The Hunted

4

The old lady was merely daft, Bernie Lutcher concluded, at first.

She had jumped in front of him, repeating something loudly in Russian. At least it sounded like Russian. He understood not a word and shrugged his shoulders, and she switched to a different tongue, more quick bursts of incomprehensible gibberish-possibly Hungarian now-while he continued to shrug and tried to brush past her. To his rising impatience, she clutched his arm harder and ratcheted up the incoherent babble.

He recalled her from the plane, the old lady with apparent incontinence issues who made trip after trip to the potty. Maybe she was seeking directions to the air terminal ladies' room, he guessed. Or maybe she was a certified loony, a lonely human nuisance of the type found in every city in the world.

He tried to tug his arm away again and noticed how surprisingly strong she was. Ahead, he watched Alex and Elena pass through the electronic doors, and felt a sudden clutch of alarm. Depending on the length of the line outside, it might take only a few seconds for them to climb into a taxi and disappear into the vast, winding labyrinth of Budapest streets.

He knew their schedule and the name of their hotel: he could always catch up with them there. Unfortunately, he was pathologically honest and duty-bound to enter any coverage lapses in the report he assiduously completed and turned in after each job. In his mind he had already spent his annual bonus on a nice holiday in Greece, on a luxurious slow cruise through the sunbaked islands, sipping ouzo and ogling Scandanavian tourist girls in their Lilliputian bikinis; he now was watching it all go up in smoke.

He tried to recall any fragment of every language he knew and quickly blurted at the old lady, "Excuse me… entschuldigen… excusez-moi… por favor…" Nothing, no relief.

A large crowd began catching up to him, impatient travelers who had just cleared customs and now were plowing ahead and jostling for choice spots in the taxi line. He could hear their voices, but kept one eye on the old lady-who clutched his arm harder and acted increasingly distressed-and the other on the glass door Alex and Elena had just exited. He never turned around, never observed the old man who quickly approached his back.

The old lady continued prattling about something, more loudly frantic now, more mysteriously insistent, still stubbornly clasping his arm. Firm procedures were unequivocal about such situations: public scenes and embarrassments, indeed public attention in any form, were to be avoided at all costs. He reached down and gently tried to pry his arm loose from the old hag's grip, even as an old man approached from his rear aggressively swinging his arms with each step. Gripped tightly in the old man's right hand, and mostly obscured by an overly long coat sleeve, was a razor-thin, specially made thirteen-inch dagger.

One step back from the bodyguard's rear, it swung up. The blade entered Bernie Lutcher's back nearly six inches below his left shoulder blade, grazed off one rib, then immediately penetrated his heart.

The old man gave it a hard grind and twist, a signature technique honed decades before, one he was quite proud of, tearing open at least two heart chambers, ensuring an almost immediate death. In any event, the blade was coated with a dissolvable poison primed to instantly decrystallize and rush straight into Bernie's bloodstream. One way or another, he'd be dead.

Bernie's eyes widened and his lips flew open. At the same instant, the old lady gave him a hard punch-an expertly aimed blow to the solar plexus to knock the wind out of his lungs-and he landed heavily on his back, gasping for air and grasping his chest, as though he was suffering a heart attack, which he surely was.

The two assassins immediately scattered, moving swiftly to the departure area for a flight to Zurich that left thirty minutes later. The first assassinations happened in the last three days of August 1992. The Summer Massacres, they were called afterward by the thoroughly cowed employees of Konevitch Associates.

Andri Kelinichetski, bachelor, bon vivant, and very popular vice president for investor relations, ended up first in the queue. A lifelong insomniac, he left his cramped apartment at two in the morning for a brisk walk in the cool Moscow air to clear the demons from his head. He had made it three blocks from his apartment when three bullets, fired from thirty feet behind his skull, cleared his head, literally. Andri stopped breathing before he hit the cement.

Five hours later, Tanya Nadysheva, divorced mother of two and a specialist in distressed companies, started up her newly purchased red Volkswagen sedan for the drive to work, triggering a powerful bomb. Her head landed half a block away; she had been operating her fancy new sunroof at the precise instant of detonation.

By ten o'clock that morning, six employees of Konevitch Associates lay in the morgue-one long-distance shooting, one short-distance, a hand grenade attack, one car bombing, one very grisly slit throat, and a notably devout employee who was literally fed a poisoned wafer as he stopped off at his local church for his habitual morning Communion.

Six victims. Six different types of murder. No failed attempts, no survivors, no witnesses. With the exception of the sliced throat and the fatal Communion wafer, the killers-obviously more than one-had struck from a distance, safely and anonymously. No forensic traces were found beyond spent bullets and bomb residue. The particles from the explosive devices were analyzed on the spot by a veteran field technician. In his opinion, the devices were so coarse and simple, virtually any criminal idiot could've built them.

A few hours later, a pair of special police investigators showed up, unannounced, at the headquarters of Konevitch Associates. They flashed badges, announced their purpose with a show of grim expressions, and were ushered hurriedly upstairs. They marched into Alex's office, where they found him and several of his more senior executives assembled, making hasty arrangements for the families of their dead friends and employees, plainly in shock over what had just happened. One executive, Nadia Pleshinko, was blowing snot into a white tissue, unable to stop weeping.

One officer was fat, mustachioed, and late-middle-aged, the other surprisingly young, runway skinny, with a face that looked glum even when he smiled. Laurel and Hardy, they were inevitably nicknamed by the boys at the precinct, a resemblance so glaring that even they celebrated the epithet.

They were both lieutenants with the municipal police, they informed the gathering, here to discuss what had been learned or not about the morning butchery.

"The Mafiya," the fat senior one opened his briefing. "That's who's behind this. It's not just you, it's happening all over Moscow. There have been over sixty murders in the city just this past month. Sixty!" he said, rolling his bloodshot eyes with wearied disgust. "Nearly all were businesspeople, bankers, and one or two news reporters who were getting too close to one of the mobs or to a corrupt politician on their payroll."

Skinny picked up where his partner left off. "Under the old system, the city averaged maybe three murders a month. And that was a bad month. Nearly always angry wives or husbands getting even for an affair or some marital slight or squabble."

"And the Mafiya is behind all these murders?" Alex asked, totally uninterested in a prolonged recounting of Moscow murderography. All that mattered was what happened to his people that morning. And what might happen tomorrow. Were the killers finished, or just warming up? Were these six the final toll? Or should Alex buy bulletproof vests and begin building thick bunkers for his employees?

A serious nod from both officers and Skinny said, "In the old days they were into drugs, prostitution, the black market, that kind of funny stuff. Capitalism has given them a whole new lease. The big money these days is companies like yours. It's-"

"What do they want?" Alex interrupted.

"Hard to say," Fatty replied with a sad frown. "Usually it's a shakedown. Some variation of a protection or extortion racket. 'Pay us a few million, or give us a cut of the monthly profit, and we'll stop killing your people.' I'm afraid that's the optimistic scenario."

Alex paused for a moment, then reluctantly asked, "And what's the pessimistic one?"

Skinny took over and said, "It could also be that somebody-a competitor perhaps-is paying them to wipe you out. Or maybe to soften you up for an attempted takeover. Either way, they'll keep killing until you're out of business, or until they believe you're ready to meet their terms. These people are ambitious, creative, and vicious." He looked over at Fatty, who offered an approving nod. "For instance," he continued, "they hit a banking company two months ago. Before you could say turnip soup, twelve executives were dead."

"The Mafiya," Alex said, rolling that ugly sound off his lips. "Aren't they organized into families or groups? It's not just one big mob, is it?"

"No, you're right," Skinny told him, warming to the subject. "Only two years ago we could've told you which syndicate was behind this, who headed the group, with an accurate, up-to-date, well-detailed manning and organization chart. These days there are so many mobs…" He trailed off.

He paused for a quick look at their beleaguered faces. "Even the ones we do know about multiply, merge, and divide so fast, we've lost count. They outnumber us, outgun us, and, worse, frankly, they're now smarter than we are."

"Can you protect us?" one of Alex's executives nervously asked, clearly speaking for them all.

It was a good question and the two officers looked at each other. Eventually, and with matched, timid expressions they turned back to Alex and his people. Fatty cleared his throat once or twice. "We can certainly give it our best try. Add more people to the investigation, make inquiries to local stoolies, throw a few uniformed guards outside your headquarters, that sort of thing. We're not in the bodyguard business, though. And frankly, you have too many employees to protect. That bank I mentioned a moment ago, we were doing our best to protect it." He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Twelve dead."

Before they could dwell on that, Skinny looked at Alex and asked, "Have you received any threats? Direct communications in any form from the killers?"

"No, not a word."

This was apparently a bad omen, as both policemen seemed to frown at the same time. As if by hidden cue, Fatty eventually shook his head and spoke up. "Not good. Typically they warn you beforehand. You do this, or we'll do that."

"Sometimes it's Chinese water torture," Skinny threw in, showing off his own mastery of the subject. "Other times it's a sledgehammer, and, to be perfectly frank, this has all the hallmarks of the latter. These people are professionals. They choose how and when to make their approach."

If they were trying to scare Alex and his employees, they were succeeding nicely. A few chairs were pushed back. One or two executives uttered loud groans.

After another quiet pause, Fatty said, "Here's the pattern we're seeing. Number one, they knew the names of your employees, their addresses, and their personal habits. I don't need to tell you what this implies. Your company has been under their eye for a long time, maybe even penetrated from the inside. Who knows how many of your people are on their payroll, or how many of you are targeted for hits. Number two, the potpourri of killing methods is a carefully scripted message in itself-they can kill you however and whenever they want, wherever you are, whatever you're doing."

The two officers continued batting around theories and chilling speculations, oblivious to the sheer horror they were inciting. Alex and his underlings exchanged piercing looks before Alex, with a discomfited shrug, looked away and contemplated a white wall. Nobody needed to say it: resentment cut like a knife through the room. Alex had all those layers of personal protection-those six beefy bodyguards, a private home with the best security systems money could buy, an armored Mercedes limousine, and a lifestyle that kept him off the streets, out of harm's way.

The four senior executives in the room, just like the rest of the employees of Konevitch Associates, were sitting ducks. Totally defenseless. Morgue meat, all of them.

And the cops were right. It took less than a year after the disintegration of the Soviet Union for Moscow to descend into chaos. Brutal murders were a daily event, soldiers were hawking their weapons and ammunition on street corners for a few measly rubles, unemployment had shot through the ceiling. In the clumsy rush to privatize, prices had climbed to dizzying heights, and public services, which had never been decent, deteriorated, then collapsed altogether. A long, fierce winter of misery set in. Hundreds of thousands of Muscovites couldn't afford oil to heat their homes, to buy decent food or clothing, and were turning to crime to make ends meet.

The newspapers were loaded with stories about the self-ennobling extravagances of the newly rich and famous, while hundreds starved or froze to death in Russia's arctic winter. Nobody was going to feel sorry for Konevitch Associates. No matter how many of its well-fed executives were shot, bombed, or chopped up, nobody would waste an ounce of pity. And the drumbeat of news stories about the shining toys and refurbished palaces of the newly rich worked like a tantalizing announcement to the criminals: "Here it is, boys! Come and get it."

When the two officers finished batting around the possibilities, Alex said, in an accusatory tone, "So you can't protect us?"

"To be honest, no," Fatty replied with a sad shake of the head and an earthquake of chin wobbles. "These days, we barely have enough manpower to haul the bodies to the morgue."

"What do you suggest, then?" Alex asked, avoiding the eyes of his executives, who looked ready to dodge from the room and flee for their lives.

"What we tell everybody who asks. Private security, Mr. Konevitch. You have a rich company. You can afford to hire the best."

Skinny looked like he wanted to say more and Alex glanced in his direction. "If you have something to add, we'd like to hear it."

"All right. Off the record. Between us. And just us, please. These are Mafiya people we're talking about. In case you haven't already gotten the message, they're tough, ruthless, and stubborn. But there is somebody who scares the shit out of these guys."

"Go on."

"KGB people. Former KGB people. They and the Mafiya have been at war for fifty years. Remember the old saying 'it takes one to know one'? A lot of highly trained former operatives are now out on the streets, unemployed, desperate for jobs and willing to work hard. Talented people, a lot of them. They have skills, experience, and attitude. To be blunt, the KGB people are even worse than the Mafiya types."

Alex spent a quiet, troubled moment thinking about the officer's suggestion. He had nothing but rotten memories of the KGB and was privately delighted that he had helped put them out of business. They had booted him out of college and nearly destroyed his life. They very nearly destroyed his country. Under communism, the Mafiya were nothing but a nasty irritant, twobit gangsters engaged in shadowy enterprises that barely made a dent. The real mob was the KGB. It turned itself into the world's greatest extortion racket, a mass of faceless thugs who abused their power endlessly, living like spoiled princes while their people suffered in an asylum of terrified poverty.

No, he decided on the spot: not today, not tomorrow, not ever. No matter how bad it got, he would never employ a former KGB person to work in his company.

Fatty read his disapproving expression and withdrew a business card from his pocket that he smoothly slid across the table. "In the event you change your mind, Sergei Golitsin is the man to call. He was the number two in the KGB, a retired three-star general. Whatever you need, believe me, he can take care of."

The next morning, after four more dead employees of Konevitch Associates were scraped off the cement and hauled to the morgue, Alex called Sergei Golitsin. The door opened loudly and the room filled with noisy voices, a number of people, one or two women and several men, speaking crudely in Russian. Alex had no idea where he was-the car ride had lasted nearly half an hour-a fast trip filled with abrupt, jarring turns probably intended as much to disorient Alex and Elena as to elude any followers. He and Elena were pulled and shoved out of the backseat, then pushed and tugged through a doorway into a building that smelled cloyingly of oil and kerosene. The floor was hard concrete. By the loud echoes of their footsteps, the room was large, cavernous, and mostly empty.

A vacant warehouse, Alex guessed. Or possibly an abandoned garage.

From there, he and Elena were immediately split up and forced into separate rooms. Alex was rushed inside another, smaller room, laid out on what he guessed was a hard table or medical gurney, and the work began. A pair of strong hands untied his shoes, yanked them off his feet, and they landed with a noisy clumpf on the floor. A knife skillfully carved off his pants and shirt, leaving him naked except for his Jockeys.

A different pair of stronger hands efficiently clamped his arms and legs tightly with leather straps attached to the sides of the table. Because of the blindfold, he had not a clue what they had done with Elena, where they had taken her. The only thing Alex was sure of was this: it was no coincidence the kidnapping had taken place on one of the few occasions when they traveled together outside Russia, man and wife, on a business trip. This, more than anything, terrified him.

But he squeezed shut his eyes and somehow forced himself to think. Whoever these people were, they had somehow breached, then eliminated his security. Further, the simple yet elaborate kidnapping indicated they had advance knowledge, somehow, that he and Elena were traveling to Budapest. They were waiting for him. They knew his schedule and movements to a tee. And they were professionals-he was sure of this, for whatever it meant, for whatever it was worth.

What kind of professionals, though? Kidnappers out for a fat ransom? Or assassins? That was the urgent question.

They knew he was wondering and left him alone on the gurney to stew and suffer in isolation for nearly half an hour.

Then he heard two sets of footsteps approach, one pair moving lightly, the other heavy, making loud clumps. Probably hard-soled boots. Through the blindfold, he sensed somebody looking down on him, still not speaking, barely breathing. Alex's own breaths were pouring out heavily, his heart racing, his nightmares growing by the second. His mind told him they were allowing the terror to build and he should fight it. His heart would not allow it; he was utterly terrorized.

Without a word or warning, a fist struck him in the midsection; every bit of oxygen in his lungs exploded out of his mouth with a noisy ooompf. He sucked for air and tried to say, "What do-" when the fist struck again, this time in his groin. He couldn't even double over or writhe in agony. He screamed, and the beating continued, methodically, without pause, only the sounds of the fists striking against flesh and bone, and Alex howling and groaning in agony. Vladimir stepped out of the room and slipped off the leather gloves that now were nearly saturated with blood, Alex's blood. He lifted the phone, and Golitsin, sounding like he was next door and experiencing an orgasm, said, "That was wonderful. Just wonderful. Thank you."

"You heard it all?"

"Every punch, every groan. What a treat. How did he look?"

"In shock, at first. He had not a clue why he was being beaten. Now he is merely miserable and confused. You heard him."

"I certainly did. Any broken bones?" he asked, sounding hopeful.

"A few ribs, I would think. Possibly the leg I banged with a chair. And I tore his left shoulder out of the socket. You must've heard the pop. It was certainly loud enough."

"Ah… I wondered what that was." Golitsin laughed. "As long as you didn't damage his precious right hand."

"No, no, of course not," Vladimir assured him, then waited, knowing Golitsin was calling the shots. If it was another beating, fine, though Vladimir needed at least ten minutes to catch his wind and rest his muscles.

After a moment, Golitsin asked, "Is he still conscious?"

"A little bit less than more. We had to revive him a few times. In twenty minutes or so the bruises will be swollen and his nerve endings will resensitize." He sounded like he'd done this many times.

"Good. Give him twenty minutes to recover, then mark him." There was a long pause before Golitsin stressed, "Slowly, stretch it out for all it's worth." They were not going to kill him, Alex, in his moments of groggy consciousness, kept telling himself. Between the sounds of his own beating, he heard a voice, a woman's, deep and scornful, issuing occasionally stern reminders to the man torturing him. Soften the blows, she warned. Avoid damaging important organs, she reminded him. Twice she had loudly snarled that he had better stop choking Alex before their precious hostage had to be hauled out in a box.

So they needed him alive. They wouldn't kill him. They wanted something from him, and they would keep him breathing until they had it; whatever it was.

Then they might kill him.

The door opened loudly again, and two sets of footsteps approached. Same two pairs of feet, Alex thought, one light, one heavy. Were they going to beat him again? He totally forgot his earlier reasoning and wondered, maybe they were going to kill him?

The blindfold was ripped from his head. He blinked a few times. "What do you want?" he croaked, throat parched. No answer, not a peep. He tried to focus his eyes, which were blurry and unfocused though he was positive the hazy shapes before him were the same man and woman from the taxi. And probably the same pair who had inflicted the brutal beating.

"Please. Just tell me what you want."

The man, Vladimir, he had heard him called, bent down over his face, smiled, squeezed open his lids, and studied his pupils a moment. Vladimir then took two thick leather straps and, one at a time, stretched them across Alex's chest, strung them underneath the table, fastened them as he would a belt, and tightened them enough that they bit painfully into Alex's skin. Next he held something before his face-a handheld device. A machine of some sort. Oddly enough, it looked like a compact traveling iron for pressing clothes. "See this?" he asked Alex.

"Yes… what is it?"

"You'll learn in a moment."

"Where's Elena?" Alex demanded.

Vladimir laughed.

"Please," Alex pleaded. "Leave her out of this. She's done nothing to you."

"But you have," Vladimir informed him with a mean smile.

"I don't even know you." Sensing it was the wrong thing to say, Alex suggested, a little hopefully, "If it's money, let's agree on a price. Let her go. Keep me. She'll make sure you get paid."

"Are you proud of what you did?" Vladimir asked, backing away. He spit on the iron and enjoyed the angry hiss.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The woman spoke up and said, "Most of us are former KGB. Career people, patriotic servants who protected Mother Russia. You ruined our lives."

"How?" Alex asked.

"You know how. You fed millions to Yeltsin and destroyed our homeland."

"How do you know about this?"

"We know all about you, Alex Konevitch. We've watched you for years. Watched you undermine our country. Watched you become rich off the spoils. Now it's time to return the favor."

Alex closed his eyes. Things had just gone from bad to worse. Not only did they know him, they knew about him. A simple kidnapping was bad enough. This was revenge on top of it, and both Vladimir and Katya allowed Alex a few moments to contemplate how bad this was going to get.

Vladimir held up the iron so they could jointly inspect it; the metal undertray was red-hot, glowing fiercely in the dimly lit room. He held it before Alex's face. "American cowboys branded their cattle. I hope you don't mind, but now we will brand you."

Without another word, Vladimir slipped a pair of industrial earphones over his head, thick black rubber gloves over his hands, then with a steady hand lowered the iron slowly toward Alex's chest. Watching it move closer, Alex squirmed and tried to evade it with all his might; the new belts totally immobilized him. The first hot prick of the iron seared the tender flesh above his left nipple-Vladimir used the recently sharpened edges of the iron and glided it slowly and skillfully around his skin.

Alex screamed and Vladimir pressed down firmly, though not too hard, etching a careful pattern: a long curve first, then another curve, meticulously connecting them into the shape of a sickle. The stench of burning flesh filled the room. Next, he began drawing a squarish shape-completing the hammer and sickle, the symbol of the once feared and mighty, now historically expired Soviet Union. Vladimir had done this before; this was obvious. Just as obviously, he was the kind of artisan who reveled in his work. The entire process lasted thirty minutes. Alex screamed until he went hoarse, piercing shrieks that echoed and bounced around the warehouse.

Katya stood and tried to watch, then, after two minutes, horrified, she gave up and fled.