The Hunted

9

The orange Trabant came to a screeching halt under the hotel's grand entryway, less than an inch from the steep curb. Alex, Elena, and Eugene scrambled through the rotating glass doors, looked both ways, then made a mad bolt for the car. Alex stuffed another hundred in the waiter's outstretched hand, mumbled quick words of thanks, and they squeezed and fought their way inside the car. The keys were in the ignition, the engine running. Elena climbed behind the wheel and punched the gas with gusto.

With an angry sputter the car lurched and coughed away from the curb, every bit as unsightly and underpowered as advertised. Only two years off the production line, it didn't look a day over a hundred. From bumper to bumper, nothing but peeling paint, dents, and vast patches of oxidation.

Alex couldn't have cared less. The car was perfect. Every rattle, every belch and spit from the perforated muffler was just perfect. Nobody would expect a man of his means to be seen in such a creaky monstrosity.

For five minutes they drove without anybody saying a word. The rain battered the roof. Alex hunched down in his seat to disguise his height; Elena inched up in hers, straining to disguise her lack of it.

Thirty minutes of sitting under the watchful gaze of wicked people who intended to kill them left them moody and edgy. They peeked through the rear window incessantly. They thought they saw cars on their tail and breathed with relief when the cars turned off. Elena zigzagged through narrow streets, going nowhere in particular. Just away from the hotel. Just as far as they could get from Katya and Vladimir and the other killers. At a red light at a large intersection, she finally asked Alex, "Where to?"

Without hesitation, he said, "Out of Hungary."

"Not so fast," Eugene offered in a newly concerned tone from the backseat. "Alex, you need to see a doctor before we go anywhere." Now that they were out of danger, his good manners were kicking back in. "You should see how you look. A concussion, broken bones, internal bleeding, who knows how serious the damage is."

"Not a good idea, Eugene. I told you, these people are connected everywhere. They're former KGB, for godsakes. You're American, you don't understand what that means."

"So tell me what it means."

"They used to rule these countries. They can pull strings you can't imagine. The moment they recover their senses, they might even put out an alert to the Hungarian border police. Our names, our descriptions, and probably some trumped-up charges to warrant our arrests. Getting out will be impossible."

Eugene and Elena sat quietly and stewed on Alex's warning. "In fact," Alex said after thinking about his own words, "it's safe to assume the alert's already out."

Another moment of silence, longer than the last one. A nationwide manhunt suddenly seemed like a possibility. Only a few years earlier this was a police state; they didn't have a prayer.

"Then the train station and airport are out of the question," Elena observed sensibly. "They'll alert those places first."

Alex nodded. "But I think they'll check hospitals and doctor's offices before they do anything else." He squeezed Elena's leg. "The nearest land border is our best chance." He twisted around in the seat and peered at Eugene. "You still have your cell phone?"

Eugene patted himself down. "It's gone. It was still sitting on the table when you pulled me down. I'll bet it's still there."

"Of course."

"Our passports, Alex, they have them," Elena remembered with a jolt. "Maybe it would be better just to stay here. Find a safe place and hide."

"I don't think so." Alex held up a clutch of small red booklets and waved them in front of her. "These were packed in a hidden compartment of my overnight bag."

Elena shook her head. Her husband's cleverness had long since ceased to surprise her, but to insist on bringing the overnight bags for the restaurant meeting with Eugene was an amazing stroke of clear thinking. She didn't need to ask about the fistful of little booklets.

But Eugene did. "Are those legal?"

Elena caught his eye in the rearview mirror. "Whenever Alex accompanied Yeltsin on overseas trips he submitted his passport for the required visa. Now that Russians are free to travel overseas, seventy years of curiosity about the outside world demands to be instantly vented. The visa office of the Foreign Ministry is choked with requests. Mountains of paper everywhere. And more often than not, requests with the accompanying passports get lost or misplaced in the logjam. These are former Soviet bureaucrats we're talking about. It's a miracle they find their way home at night."

Alex continued, "Two or three days out, my office would call to complain, and liberally mention Yeltsin's name. Rather than hunt for a pin in a haystack, a clerk would just issue a new passport with the appropriate visa and send it by courier. That's the right expression, right? Pin in a haystack? Anyway, a month or two later, when the original turned up, it was returned by mail."

"Exactly how many do you have?" Eugene asked, enjoying his little peek into Russian inefficiency. A died-in-the-wool capitalist, he loved hearing about the sins of former commies.

"I honestly don't know."

"Guess."

"Ten. A dozen. Perhaps more."

Elena had twice gone along on Yeltsin's trips; she had three passports, one, of course, now inconveniently tucked in the back pocket of Vladimir's corpse. But Alex always shoved a few extras in his baggage, in the event the ones he or she were using got lost or stolen.

"There are two borders we can head for," Alex was saying, sharing the possibilities as he tried to think this through. "Austria to the south. Or due east, to Czechoslovakia."

"Okay, which?"

"I think Austria makes the most sense. It's closer. Also, I have part ownership of an advertising company in the capital. Illya Mechoukov is the president. A good man. I trust him. Better yet, the KGB had little influence there." He opened the window and took a deep breath. The night had turned cold. A frigid blast of air hit him in the face, but he felt dizzy. He briefly pondered the possibility that the exhaust was spewing carbon monoxide into the cabin. "Unfortunately, that border takes a visa. The Czechs and Slovaks, though, as former Bloc members, still have open borders for Russian passports."

"Where do you want to cross?" Elena asked, now that Austria was ruled out. She searched the rearview mirror. Nothing.

"Avoid the major arteries. Our best chance is a secondary or backcountry road. The guards at the smaller checkpoints will be the last ones alerted."

Eugene decided to join the discussion and leaned forward from the backseat. "Then what?"

"Then… directly to the nearest international airport. That would be Slovakia," Alex answered.

"Then Russia, right?"

"Maybe."

"I don't see that you have a choice, pal. You better get back there fast," Eugene advised.

"Do you think?"

"You better rescind those letters before anybody can act on them."

"I have other worries right now," Alex replied almost absently. He reached up and switched on the overhead light, which thankfully seemed to be the one thing in the car that functioned properly. He began flipping through passports and thumbing the pages.

"You know what?" Eugene announced, lurching forward in his seat.

"I think you're about to tell me what."

"Damn right I am. I think you got conked on the head harder than you realize. You're not thinking clearly. They could empty out your bank accounts in hours and, in a day or so, swipe all the investors' money in your banks."

"Don't you think that's a lot of cash to haul away?" Alex replied, curiously indifferent.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about. Come on, pal. They'll wire it all to a bank in the Azores or Switzerland. Then it'll shuttle around to a hundred banks and fall off the radar."

With no small amount of pleasure, Alex said, "I don't think so."

"Think harder."

"The people who forced me to sign those letters know nothing about banking. To move even a dollar they need my account numbers and the security codes."

"Oh."

"And those are all locked away in a safe in my office, guarded around the clock. They didn't know enough to ask about the numbers and I wasn't in the mood to educate them."

Elena reached over and patted her husband on the leg. "You're a genius."

His nose was stuffed back inside the passports. Sergei Golitsin sat behind Alex Konevitch's massive hand-carved desk and stared across it at the ten hungry faces around the long conference table. The irony of using Alex's own office as a command post to track him down and kill him was too delicious.

A phone was positioned directly in front of each man. A yellow notepad and a slew of satphones were poised within arm's reach. Empty coffee mugs littered the table. Ashtrays overflowed with snuffed-out butts. A large, 10,000-to-1 map of Hungary was taped to a wall, with dozens of little yellow and red pins stuck here and there. Another map, even larger, displaying the entire European continent and punctured with a similar mixture of multicolored pins, was fastened to the adjoining wall.

The men inside the room knew the address of Konevitch's unpretentious but nicely located Parisian apartment. They knew what hotels he preferred when he traveled, as well as the address of each and every office and subsidiary of Konevitch Associates outside the Russian border. A pin for each one, with a man or two now lurking at each destination. A mushroom of cigarette smoke rose from the table and swirled in cancerous eddies just below the ceiling.

Below them, the six floors of Konevitch Associates were nearly deserted. A handpicked crew of security guards ambled around the building; otherwise, the employees were home, cleaning up after dinner, mixing it up with their lovers, or snoring loudly in their beds. A few hyperambitious souls had tried to work late, but the guards had chased them out and shut down their phones and computers.

A sign was posted on the front door downstairs announcing a two-day holiday. A squad of burly guards would be placed there in the morning to make sure everybody got the message.

At that second, for the first time in two frantic hours, only one noise interrupted the sound of breathing-a buzzing that emanated from a specialist and his assistant employing a noisy instrument of some sort to crack a wall safe. The specialist had twice reassured everybody it was going "super splendidly." No hitches. No surprises, and Golitsin had good reason not to doubt him.

Six months before, when Alex Konevitch had ordered a personal safe to be installed in his office, the job naturally landed on the desk of his corporate security chief. Golitsin promptly handed it off to a black job specialist who once worked under him at the KGB, a master thief with an encyclopedic knowledge of safes and locks. Golitsin's instructions were precise and contradictory.

Nothing but the best brand on the market for the boss. Something sturdy, something imposing in appearance, something with a tidy reputation for quality, he'd emphasized; in other words, something that would duly impress its owner.

Just be damn sure the model was one he was sure he could crack; within two hours or less would do the trick nicely.

Golitsin's top deputy, Felix Glebov, eventually broke the awkward silence. "It's been three hours. Where is he?"

"Still running," Golitsin said, eyes blazing down the table with a look that could curdle bowels. "A scared rabbit, fleeing for his life." He paused briefly to scratch his chin. "Successfully, apparently, because he's up against a bunch of incompetent twits."

One of the twits, large, with a neck that moved like a tank turret, spoke up, a nervous attempt to deflect blame from his overgrown shoulders. "I have ten good people at the Budapest train station. Twenty more at the airport, a man at each ticket counter. All former KGB or Hungarian secret police. Another squad is hanging out at the arrival gate at Sheremetyevo Airport in the event they make it this far." Eager to impress everybody with his efficiency, he added, "They all have color pictures."

"Good for you," replied the next twit in line, a man with a skinny, pockmarked face and puffy eyes who lost no time launching his own accomplishments. "Only two minutes ago I got off the phone with the deputy minister of Hungarian Security. He has two children in private school and is cracking heads to collect the hundred thousand bounty I promised if he catches them. An hour ago, a red alert went out to all customs offices. They and the police have been notified a murderer and his accomplices are trying to flee."

He paused to be sure everybody heard the next point. "Katya and one her people gave statements to the police. Said they witnessed Konevitch stick a knife in a man's back at the airport. Said they thought they recognized his face from photos in a Russian magazine, but couldn't remember if he was a movie star or what. Took them a while to figure it out, so now they're reporting it."

That last clever move was Katya's brainchild. Of course he felt no obligation to mention it now.

The next man, introduced by Golitsin to the others earlier that evening as Nicky-no last name, no formal introduction, just plain Nicky-sat for a moment, sucking deeply from a black che-root, bored out of his mind, trying to entertain himself watching the safecrackers at work. Dressed head to toe in shiny black leather, down to his dapper biker boots, he was the only man present who did not get the executive-suite dress code. He was also the only non-employee of Konevitch Associates, the only one not hired by Golitsin over the past year for what they brought to this table.

Lacking a KGB background, he was also happily clueless about the reporting procedures.

Eventually the silence grabbed his attention and he noticed everybody staring at him. He crushed his cigarette on the tabletop, flashed an amused sneer, then held it long enough for everybody to get the message. Nicky came from a different world, one without silly protocols, a world with but one simple rule: rules are meant to be broken.

But even without the last name-despite never having seen him face-to-face-half the men around the table were sure they knew who he was. A photo of his face had hung in a place of honor on KGB walls long enough to grow mold. A much younger face, certainly. A little thinner, maybe, without the cute ponytail laced with gray that bounced when he strutted. One with considerably less scars, absent the gallery of tattoos on the neck, and certainly before the huge nose had been rearranged into a bent banana.

Nicky, aka Igor, aka Leon, or a half dozen other transient aliases he had used and thrown away in his illustrious career, was in fact one Nickolas Kozyrev, head of the largest crime syndicate in Russia.

How ironic that they were all now sharing the same table, smoking and sipping coffee like old pals. In their previous lives, they had spent countless hours chasing Nicky around the shadows. Typical gruntwork for the police ordinarily, except Nicky's kingdom had tentacles in every Russian city, webs that stretched across Europe and Asia, and bustling branch offices in Brighton Beach and Miami. Nicky was known and wanted by police forces from New York to Timbuktu. Three different American presidents and an army of other world leaders had bombarded two different general secretaries with strong requests to get Nicky off the street.

Among assorted other enterprises, Nicky wholesaled kidnapped girls to whorehouses, owned a string of porn studios, blackmarketed, smuggled arms, traded in stolen cars, gems, artwork, pushed heroin and an assortment of other illegal pharmaceuticals, and most recently, was making a loud splash in Russia's burgeoning executive kidnapping market. Wherever there was illicit profit to be made, Nicky pushed his sticky fingers in. Contract murder had long been a mainstay of his repertoire. The sheer breadth, expanse, and outright violence of his operation proved too considerable for the police to handle; not to mention wildly exaggerated suspicions that Nicky owned half the senior police officers in the country.

A quarter was more like it.

Thus the KBG was brought into the hunt and encouraged to use every filthy trick in its arsenal.

And despite every effort, despite years of exhausting work, they had never come close. Not even close.

"Tell me again," Nicky opened, his eyes dancing playfully around the table, "exactly how this guy got away."

He knew damn well how Konevitch escaped. They had already been over it, in detail. Twice. But he despised these former KGB boys. He would keep asking again and again, because it amused him to rub their faces in it.

Making no effort to disguise his irritation, Golitsin said, "Why does it matter? He got away. Now we'll find him."

"It matters because I say it does."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how all your morons got made asses of." His lips curled and he watched Golitsin. "Remind me, how old is this Konevitch guy? Who trained him to be such a Houdini? The KGB? The army?"

"Vladimir was the moron who let this happen. He was your man, last time I checked."

"Yeah, on loan to you for the past year, last time I checked. When I sent you Vladimir, he was a real killing machine. Your cretins polluted him, turned him stupid and clumsy."

Golitsin held his breath and counted to ten. An hour before, they had sniped back and forth like this for a full fifteen minutes. He gathered as much patience as he could muster and said, "Tell me what your people are doing."

Nicky had broken his spell of boredom and gotten his blood; he could wait until the next opportunity rolled around. He fought back a smile and said, "All right. Word's been passed to all my guys in East Europe. Since we got their passports, they'll need new ones, right? So what are they gonna do? Try and buy phonies, right? Every counterfeiter and half-assed fabricator in Hungary's been warned to pass word the second they make contact."

Golitsin nodded. Sounded good.

Nicky pulled out another black cheroot and lit up. "I got pick-pocket teams working every train and plane station in Europe. They been told to keep a good eye out for a gimpy giant, a blonde runt, and a rich American fatty."

The twit who had just detailed his own efforts at corralling Alex at transportation terminals leaned forward and advised Nicky, "Consider giving them photographs instead. Our experience shows that visual representations always work better than verbal descriptions." He produced a crooked smile. "If you have fax machines, I'll provide copies."

He instantly regretted that he had opened his mouth. "Fax machines?" Nicky roared. He looked ready to bounce out of his seat and strangle the twit. "Oh, sure, moron. Hell, every pickpocket's got one. You know, stuffed in his back pocket." The other former agents at the table instantly hated the thick-necked dolt for his stupid remark. Little wonder they never caught Nicky.

Nicky planted his leather elbows on the table. "Listen up, ass-hole. They don't need no pictures. Pickpockets are… what? Observant, right? It's what they do. All day, staring at people, sizing 'em up. They can tell in a blink if a mark's got ten bucks in their pocket and who's got a thousand."

Another withering glare at the fool and Nicky clammed up. Why cast pearls before swine? He lit another cigarette and collapsed back into his chair.

The next man in line, in an earlier life the Ministry of Interior's liaison to Interpol, squirmed for a moment, stared down at the table, picked at a scab on his nose, then as quietly as he could, mumbled, "I called my former colleagues and alerted them that a warrant for Alex's arrest would be coming their way within hours."

Time for the next man in line to speak up. Nobody did, and the silence quickly turned deafening.

The man stole a quick sideways peek at Golitsin, who was staring back with a mean scowl. "And what are they doing about it?" Golitsin snapped, his scowl deepening.

This was not the question the man wanted to hear. "And they… they listened."

"Listened?"

"Well… umh, yes. Interpol won't do anything until a formal request is launched through appropriate legal channels. Can't really. The protocol is written in stone. It's a very bureaucratic and-"

"You're saying Interpol won't do anything?"

"No. I'm… I'm not saying that."

The other sharks around the table were edging forward in their seats, waiting for the fireworks to erupt. Oh yeah, pal, that's what you're saying, no question about it. "Then explain to me what you meant," Golitsin barked.

"We… that is, we, as executives of Konevitch Associates, we don't, well… we don't exactly have the legal authority to demand an arrest. Interpol wants to see a legitimate warrant before it will act."

The man reached under the table and with both hands gripped his knees together to keep them from shaking. His face was red. A jackhammer was going off in his chest. With pleading eyes he looked around the table for help, a meager sign of support, anything; a tepid nod of pity would be fine. Nine sets of eyes looked elsewhere. At the table, the ceiling, the white walls.

"Did you offer your contacts money?" Golitsin asked.

"Money, women, cars, drugs. Yes, anything their hearts desire."

Complete silence.

"And they swore at me and hung up."

"Then you didn't offer enough, idiot."

Nervous snickers around the table. They had all, every last man, heard the pistol shot reverberate through Golitsin's phone in that fatal final conversation with Vladimir. What a moment. Just the sound of Golitsin's throaty voice and that hardass Vladimir pumped a bullet into his own head. One for the record books, definitely.

More to the point, they had collectively witnessed the old man's response. He did not flinch or cringe or curse. Bang-not even a wrinkle of surprise. Actually, he smiled.

It looked, in fact, remarkably like the unpleasant little smirk he was offering Mr. Interpol at that moment. Wouldn't it be special if that smile ignited a heart attack?

Golitsin cracked a knuckle, then in a hectoring tone said, "Listen to me, idiot. All you idiots listen up. Konevitch doesn't have a game plan. He's improvising. If, somehow, they make it over the Hungarian border, they could jump on a late-night train or plane and end up anywhere in Europe. Only Interpol can issue orders broad enough to cover the entire continent. Only Interpol has instant access to charge card information. Only Interpol can forward warrants to police and border officials across Europe. Are you getting this?"

The man was scribbling notes furiously in a small notebook. Not a word had been said that he did not already know. If he shrank any deeper into his chair, he would disappear.

Golitsin stood up and walked in his direction. He bent over, got less than six inches from the man's ear, and muttered, "Get back on the phone and offer more money, moron."

Golitsin headed for the door, kicked it open, and slammed it loudly after he left. The room nearly collapsed in relief; everybody except Nicky. Watching these boys squirm and sweat was more fun than he could remember.

They all grabbed their phones and began making more calls, frantic now to find Alex Konevitch. Golitsin took the stairs one at a time, down one flight, then bounced along a short hallway that ended in a small, well-lit conference room. A young lady, shapely and wonderfully attractive in red business attire, tight jacket, and a provocatively short skirt was seated patiently at the end of the long table.

A stout bodyguard stood in the corner and kept his mouth shut.

She looked up as Golitsin entered and acknowledged his presence with a cold smile. "How's it going, Sergei?"

Not many people dared call him Sergei. General Golitsin was fine; plain General better yet. His own wife and children called him General to his face and The General behind his back; he liked that most of all, the singularity of it. That had been his rank, after all-a lifetime title, one that reeked of power, prestige, and authority. He particularly enjoyed the look in their eyes when people learned it was not army, but KGB rank.

The informality of Sergei, though, was reserved for his equals; in his mind, there weren't many. Tatyana Lukin certainly wasn't his equal; she was the special assistant to Yeltsin's chief of staff, the youngest one, his right hand and chief counsel.

Nothing about that impressed Golitsin.

The Kremlin had more special assistants than mice, clawing around and trying to look and act more important than the replaceable coatholders they definitely were. But Tatyana came with another qualification, a priceless one. She happened also to be the chief of staff's mistress, the person who planted the first whisper in his ear in the morning, with final say at night. The chief was a lazy bureaucrat, a man who adored the many perks of his position and detested the maddening grind of daily work. His major qualification for his lofty title was that he was a more than willing drinking buddy for this sorry lush of a president. The whole Kremlin staff knew it. Anything of importance was therefore passed through Tatyana, who more than compensated for her boss's steady indifference.

She held a law degree from Moscow University, where she had graduated top of her class. A background check performed by his people revealed that those professors she couldn't awe with her mastery of law she conquered with her body. That got her to number two. Number one was a young genius who ignored sleep and consumed libraries, with an elephantine memory and a talent for oratory that would make a southern preacher blanch with envy. Two weeks before graduation, the KGB received a late-night tip-a female caller, the records revealed, who naturally insisted on anonymity-to ransack his room. The contraband was discovered under the bed, a stack of kiddie-porn magazines and nauseating videos, all with American trademarks, making them doubly illegal-all of which he naturally protested he'd never laid eyes on in his life. The next day, he was forced to goose-step across a stage to a chorus of boos and hisses from the entire student body, then hauled straight to jail.

His fourth day in prison, he was beaten to death by a fellow prisoner with two young daughters and a hard-fisted aversion to perverts.

After that, three years as a state prosecutor. Tatyana never lost a case, not one. From the best his people could tell, she seduced at least two judges to acquire convictions of men who were flagrantly innocent. The rumors about her in Moscow's legal circles were rich and rife. She blackmailed and framed witnesses. She burned evidence contrary to her case, concocted false evidence, persuaded the police to force confessions, and so on. Golitsin believed every word of it. She was a scheming, conniving whore whose only scruple was to get ahead, whatever the cost. The old man admired her greatly.

Tatyana had the looks, the brains, the ambitions, and, more importantly, the chief of staff's balls in her hand. She could call him Sergei, or idiot, or toad for all he cared. He looked upon her as the daughter he wished he'd had, rather than the ugly cow he ended up with.

"Get lost," Golitsin barked at the guard, who shot out the door.

"Everything's on track," he informed Tatyana with a confident scowl. He moved around the room and collapsed into the chair at the other end of the table. "Just one unexpected glitch."

"Oh, do tell."

"Konevitch and his pretty little wife, they got away."

"Okay." Cool as ice, no shock, no histrionics. "Please explain that."

Golitsin launched into a brief recap. He left out a few embarrassing details, such as his own miserable role in dispatching Konevitch to the hotel. Nor did he feel it at all necessary to bring up the extra three hundred million that nearly fell in his lap, which he fully intended to keep for himself. When the doctored tale was done, he concluded, "We've initiated a manhunt. We're turning over all the usual rocks. I'm sure he'll turn up."

She had gorgeously thick black hair and was playing with a long strand next to her left ear. "And if he doesn't?" she asked, revealing no shock or surprise at this turn.

"Well, then he doesn't."

"But he signed the letters?"

"After a little persuasion, yes."

"And you now have the originals?"

"Signed, sealed, and delivered to my office an hour ago."

"And properly notarized by an attorney, I'm sure."

"Good assumption."

The lawyer in her seemed satisfied. "Does he know you're behind it yet?"

"Not yet, no. The name of his successor was left blank."

"Whose idea was that?"

"Who do you think?"

She raised an admiring eyebrow at that touch. As long as Konevitch didn't know who put this together, he wouldn't know who or what he was fighting. Time counted for everything. Hours were worth half a fortune. A full day was worth everything Konevitch owned.

It was brilliant, really. Keep him guessing and punching in the dark until they chose to expose themselves.

"Where do you think he'll go next?"

"If he's stupid, here. Moscow."

"But he's not stupid, is he?" she asked. A rhetorical question, really. The man was brilliant and full of surprises. Why else were they in this room, at this hour, rehashing his escape?

Golitsin grinned. "He was stupid enough to hire me."

"Good point." She laughed.

"Right now," Golitsin hypothesized in his usual way, as if it were a fact, "he's probably gone to ground. I think he's hiding someplace in Hungary. Trying to wait us out."

"Interesting. What makes you think that?"

"Deductive logic. We took their wallets, and we have his and his wife's passports. He can't get out. I limited the kidnap team to only ten people, and to the best of our knowledge, that's all he's seen. He has no idea how many more people are involved. But we won't underestimate him again. The torture was administered by one of Nicky's people, so Konevitch might reasonably guess the Mafiya is behind this. That alone will scare the crap out of him. He'll try to keep his head down, perhaps by driving around all night, or checking into a cheap fleabag long enough to lick his wounds. As long as he stays in Hungary, we're fine. In another ten hours it won't matter where he turns up."

She seemed to consider this. "Have you traveled overseas lately?"

"No."

"But Konevitch has, right?"

"You know he has. Between Yeltsin's trips and his own business, he's on the road more than he's here."

"Then it's safe to presume he has more passports."

"How do you know this?"

"Trust me. You know, I also usually accompany Yeltsin. I have seven passports with open visas myself."

A bored shrug. "So what? It really doesn't matter if he has a thousand. If he makes it to Austria or Czechoslovakia, we'll find him. Like I said, the key is keeping him away from here."

Tatyana stood up and moved around the table. She lit a cigarette as she walked, and a long trail of smoke curdled behind her. She came to a stop less than two feet from Golitsin. A small hop and she was on the table, seated, legs swaying loosely from side to side. Long, lovely legs. She crossed one knee over the other and leaned in toward the old man.

He could smell her perfume, something wicked and musky-probably French, definitely expensive, a gift from one of her well-heeled lovers, he guessed. She had left the top three buttons of her jacket undone, he noticed, offering a quick peek at the chief of staff's playthings.

He spent a long moment taking it all in, the aroma, the pose, the alluring flare of her nostrils. She was just so perfect-a perfect blend of Asiatic and Caucasian, perfect teeth, perfect black, uninhibited eyes, perfect body. She leaned a little lower. "Who do you think he'll call first? What's your hunch?"

"I know who he'll call. Sonja."

"And who's she? The mistress?"

"No, the secretary. Been with him since the beginning. He relies on her for everything, an old lady he trusts completely. Treats her like the mother he barely knew." He pushed his chair back and stretched his short arms over his head. He was too old, too tired, and too callous to be seduced. He definitely admired the effort, though.

The message was received, and she produced an elegant little shrug; even the shrug was a turn-on. She took another pull off her cigarette. "So where's this Sonja? At home?"

"She was, yes, before we dragged her back here. She's seated at her desk at this moment, with a garrote dangling loosely around her neck. If he calls, she'll ask for his location or the new necklace will become unbearably uncomfortable."

"You don't miss much, do you?"

"No, I don't. But in the event we don't catch him tonight, tomorrow will be your turn."

She bounced off the table and with one hand began nimbly rebuttoning her jacket. "Relax, Sergei. Yeltsin's in China trying to mend a thousand years of bad relations. He'll be kissing Chinese ass for the next three days, bouncing around landmarks and ceremonies, drinking himself into a stupor at every opportunity. He'll be impossible to reach." She headed toward the door. "Everything on my end is taken care of." Malcolm Street Associates was an opulent firm with an operations room fashioned to impress. Only the rare visitor was ever allowed inside, but to a man, they walked out whistling and shaking their head. Large flashing screens overloaded the walls, lights blinked, faxes whirred, computers hummed, phones always jangling with agents reporting in. Day or night, it was a beehive of dizzying activity.

The Vault, as it was called by its stressed-out inhabitants, occupied the entire top floor of the London headquarters, a five-story, stone-faced building located two blocks off Trafalgar Square. According to the brass plaque beside the front entry it had been established in 1830.

The tradition of maintaining eternally expanding profits fell on Lord Eldridge Pettlebone, an intimidating former police superintendent, number eight in the short line of managing partners, and at that moment a man who was annoyed almost to the point of bother. Twenty minutes before, a courier had fought his way past the doorman of his club and dragged him here.

A dead agent, and a missing client. One or the other, maybe. A twofer was unheard of, and the entire firm was reeling with distress. He paced around the long table where the firm's best and brightest were gathered, trying to catch up on a fiasco that had a long head start and took off at a gallop. He stifled a yawn, squared his shoulders, and tried to appear steady for the troops.

He had handled serious crises before, plenty of them. Nearly all came late at night. Each arrived with its own unique twists and turns. The first reports were always wrong, the second and third reports only more so.

"Who exactly confirmed Bernie Lutcher's death?" he asked, staring directly at one of the bloodshot-eyed assistants crowded around the table. This particular man, as a sad result of his previous time at a backwater desk in MI6, had the rare misfortune to be nearly fluent in Hungarian. That peculiar distinction earned him a turn on the hotseat, but he had worked himself into a lather and felt eager and ready for whatever Number Eight threw at him.

The young man straightened his tie, gathered his wits, and sat up. "The coroner of the Budapest police. The body was called in by airport security at one-fifteen, Budapest time. The police arrived a few minutes later. Bernie's corpse was transported to the city morgue, then placed in cold storage until six, when the night shift came on. The preliminary workup was done by a Dr. Laszlo"-he conferred with his notes-"Massouri."

Lord Pettlebone nodded, not at anything the man had said but a gesture to speed this up.

"We requested a full and immediate autopsy, of course. They begged off until tomorrow. That's our Hungarian friends for you. Even a ghastly murder in their capital airport doesn't put a hop in their step. But the preliminary cause of death," the man continued, browsing through his notes, "was a small knife puncture in the back."

He reached over and with a brash forefinger pointed like a dagger scraped an X slightly below the left shoulder blade of the man beside him. He plowed ahead. "A slight tearing around the incision suggests a twisting of the blade. The weapon was a stiletto, twelve or perhaps fifteen inches in length, only a few centimeters in width. Not a garden-variety weapon, I should say, more a specialist's tool, and it went directly for poor Bernie's heart." He waited a beat before he revealed this next revelation. "But his pupils were widely dilated, and his face also had a purplish discoloration, the visual by-products of oxygen deprivation. But no scarring or lesions from ligatures or bruises on his neck. As you know, this could be suggestive of poisoning."

"Assume both. He was poked with a coated blade," Pettlebone concluded swiftly, before the assistant could voice that rather evident opinion himself. "Let's further assume, hypothetically, the assassin was professional."

"Sorry, sir. Did I mention the dark bruise slightly below Bernie's breastbone?"

"Right you are. A pair of assassins." He examined the other faces. Knowing nods all around. "Witnesses?"

"Yes, and here's where it gets interesting," the man said with a relieved grin: this tidbit had fallen in his lap only ten minutes before. "The Budapest police were contacted about two hours ago by a Russian lady and man claiming to be her boyfriend. She swore she observed Konevitch stab his bodyguard in the back, then flee outside and jump into a cab."

"The client? The client stabbed his own security escort and fled?" Pettlebone sniffed and scowled. This firm did not hire out bodyguards, it provided security escorts.

"Quite right, sir. Alex Konevitch. Claimed she recognized him clear as a bell from the newsie magazines back in Russia. Seems he's quite the celebrity back home, being filthy rich and all."

Pettlebone removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "But it took her ten hours to recall who he was?"

"So she says."

"I don't suppose the lady has a name?"

Back to the notes. A few pages were flipped. "Ah, here-according to her passport, Alisa Petrova. It might be a phony, though. I had a nice chat with the detective who received her statement. Not much of a lady, in his words. A rough piece of work."

"So she saw Konevitch stab our man. Did she also see who punched him in the gut?"

"She didn't mention it, no. Though it might be prudent to consider the possibility that her angle of observation precluded it."

"Is that your considered opinion?"

"Well, if her view was from the rear, Konevitch is quite tall, and Bernie very wide. Fat, actually."

"But is that your opinion?"

It was as close as he was going to come to one. The man clammed up and stopped talking. He suddenly found the blinking lights on the far wall endlessly fascinating.

Pettlebone looked up and down the table again. "Can anybody here recall an instance where one of our clients murdered one of our employees? Anyone?"

A retired partner leaning on the far wall, an old man, who missed the excitement with apparently little better to do than hang around the headquarters, took the challenge. "Aye. Back in '59, if I recall properly, Clyde Witherspoon got offed by his man. Seemed Clyde was shagging the client's old lady. Got caught in flagrante and the client blew his pecker off." The old man shook his head and whistled in wonder. "Ten meters away, too. Quite a shot, that. Allowed poor Clyde a distressing moment or so to ponder the damage, then finished him with a shot between the eyes."

Pettlebone adjusted his glasses. "Yes… Well, thank you, Bertie."

After a quick survey of the young pups around the table Bertie smiled and replied, "My pleasure."

"Now, can anyone tell me why our client had only one bodyguard?"

"At his own insistence, I'm afraid," the head of scheduling replied with a disapproving frown. "We recommended four escorts in the strongest possible terms. The client wouldn't hear of it. Said it would be poor for business." He arched his thick eyebrows and looked up. "A record of that conversation is on tape, if you're interested."

Malpractice suits were rare in the trade, since potential claimants were usually dead, one of the few upsides in a business loaded with downsides. But they happened. The firm had been dragged through a highly publicized courtroom brawl eighteen years before. That experience still smarted: business did not recover for five years. Pettlebone was satisfied that the firm's backside was covered, and moved on. "And does anybody have a clue where our client disappeared to? Anybody?"

Apparently not. The best and brightest shuffled papers, sipped tea, and adjusted their striped ties.

"Right you are," Pettlebone said, placing his hands on the table and leaning forward. "Then let me hazard a guess."

The best and brightest collectively thought: Have at it, old boy. You always like your own theories better than ours anyway.

He lifted three long, bony fingers. "He's either running away from murder, kidnapped, or dead." They stared at the fingers and said not a word.

The collective response: Oh, spare me; a brain-dead copper two days out of the academy could summarize the obvious.

"But the former looks a little shaky, I should think we all agree." One finger flopped down.

The collective wisdom: You're getting warmer, old boy. That possibility was discarded by the rest of us well over two hours ago while you and your pathetic old chums were chugging sherry in your snooty, prehistoric club.

Another finger folded. "And the latter we can do little about but send a bucket of roses after the dust settles."

The collective rejoinder: In which case you'll fall back on your standard response-dodge for cover, shove the blame downward, and send three or four of us packing. The first report of Bernie's death was called into your office six hours ago; you fled for sanctuary in your club so fast there are burn marks on your office carpet. And how very convenient of you to forget your pager and cell phone, which we found conveniently stuffed in the bottom drawer of your desk, you sly old bastard.

"So why haven't we heard from his kidnappers yet?"

The collective response: twenty sets of eyes suddenly shifted upward, in the general direction of the ceiling. Why not, indeed?

Statistically, they all knew, kidnappers nearly always make their demands a few short hours after the fact. Like card players holding a blackjack, why let the pot get cold?

More shuffling of papers, more sipped tea, more tightening of ties. A recorder in the attic was silently capturing every word. The lads around the table had sat through Pettlebone's inquisitions before and to a man weren't taken in by his Socratic bullshit. The first fool who guessed wrong, on the record and imprinted forever on the device in the attic, would end up first on the chopping block when this crisis ended, one way or the other, and they shifted into the usual blamestorm.

Bertie, the retired partner, with nothing to lose, took a stab. "I don't suppose we'd hear anything if it's an inside job. These Russki millionaires are all surrounded by nasty chaps. Sleep with the wolves, one shouldn't wonder when one wakes up main course on a dinner plate. If it's insider work, the culprits aren't likely to bring in outside help, are they? What do you think?"

"Have we contacted his company?" Pettlebone asked, deliberately sidestepping Bertie's theory. The recorder in the attic was his own clever idea; he had no intention of leaving a magnetic trace that might not withstand scrutiny later.

Another of the bright lads in the middle of the table said, "I've spoken with his head of corporate security. Three or four times, in fact. Sergei Golitsin, a former KGB general. Not a nice sort. The conversations weren't all that pleasant. Kept insisting that Alex's security outside Russia was our concern, not his."

"Had he heard anything from the kidnappers? A demand for ransom, a threat, that sort of thing?"

"Well… I did ask, sir."

"And?"

"He laughed, then cursed me and hung up." "We're not going back to Russia," Alex announced with a very firm frown. After ten minutes of staring intently out the window, interrupted by occasional searches through the stack of passports on his lap, tossing ideas back and forth, he had finally made up his mind. "Too obvious," he announced.

"What's that mean?" Eugene asked.

"They're expecting it. In fact, they're hoping we'll try. We got lucky. I don't want to depend on luck again."

"Who's they?" Elena asked. Good question but one Alex didn't have the answer to.

"Certainly more than just Katya and Vladimir and the other goons we saw," Alex answered grimly.

"Did you see more of them?" Eugene asked. After all, his ass was on the line as well; naturally he wanted to know what he was up against.

"No, but they were too ignorant to put this together. They're working for somebody. And there may be… no, there definitely are more where they came from." But who knew how many more were in on this? They could be Mafiya, or they could be independents partnered with the mob. For such a big score, there could be hundreds of them, possibly thousands.

And for sure, an employee, or a number of employees of Konevitch Associates, were in on it up to their larcenous necks. Somebody who knew Alex's travel plans. Somebody who knew the instant Eugene called his secretary to query about his whereabouts.

Alex knew exactly what this meant: somebody very high up in the corporate food chain was feeding the goons precious inside information and trying to put a noose around his neck.

He searched his mind, but quickly lost count of potential suspects. He now had several hundred former KGB people, more or less, on the payroll. Some were good people, smart, honest, and deeply relieved to be able to look themselves in a mirror without, for a change, wrinkling in self-disgust. Too many others were cutthroats in fancy suits. Nearly all were in security positions. Nearly all might have found a way to learn his travel plans. The security department was always notified in advance of his trips with a detailed agenda, a regrettable routine but one that was unequivocally necessary. Only a small handful, though, could've learned about Eugene's call to Sonja.

Where had it all gone wrong? Alex had once prided himself on personally hiring his chief lieutenants and a sizable number of his other employees as well. But the explosion of business happened so fast, Alex kept chasing more and more opportunities, and the need for more and more people became crushing. From one thousand to twenty thousand employees in less than two years. It was an old-fashioned gold rush: the lion's share went to the one who stampeded in with the most diggers and sifters. Supposedly qualified executives were being hired off their resumes, sans interviews, sans background checks, or even cursory calls to their former employers. Money beckoned. Each new opportunity begat others. Caution had long since been thrown out the window.

Greed. Money. He was printing it almost faster than they grew trees. They all wanted a piece of the action and too many were hustlers on the make. He swore to himself he would conduct a fierce purge when he got back and this was behind him. He could count on two hands the number of executives he fully trusted.

"Checkpoint's straight ahead," Elena announced, breaking into his deepening thoughts about who to sack.

Alex plucked two passports out of the stack, then carefully shoved the rest under his leg. Elena pumped the brakes and the car bounced and wrenched to a squealing halt. They held their breath and prayed.

The road was a two-lane, sparsely trafficked one surrounded by countryside and a light sprawl of quaint villages. The checkpoint itself was little more than a yellow crossbar, lightly manned, with a wood shack and a few flickering lampposts-nothing more than a hastily erected shelter placed there in the aftermath of the abrupt Soviet withdrawal and the helter-skelter opening of the borders.

A skinny young man in an ill-fitting green customs uniform approached from the passenger side. The sound of an angry generator, spitting and sputtering, came from behind the shack. No words were exchanged. He stuck out a hand and Alex, trying to match his air of lethargy, yawned and casually handed him two passports. Eugene shoved his out from the backseat as well.

The guard studied Eugene's first, then in awful English prodded, "You are American?"

"No, I'm from Brooklyn," Eugene replied with a stupid grin. The guard eyed him suspiciously, obviously unable to match a citizen from Brooklyn to the American passport. Just cool it with the wisecracks, Alex and Elena wanted to scream at him.

Eugene stuck his face out the window and smiled broadly. "Of course I am. Why, do you like Americans?"

"Oh yes. Americans good. Ronald Reagan is big hero for me. Every Slovakian loves this Reagan. He tells the Russians to go kiss his ass. You know him?"

The young guard was now smiling pleasantly. Not many Americans used this backcountry crossing-in fact, none ever had, come to think of it. The heavy man in the backseat was the first American he'd ever encountered in person. He was obviously delighted and enthusiastic to try out his very limited English. Under improved lighting he looked barely old enough to be in high school, much less securing his nation's boundaries, with a lanky frame, pimply-faced, a pumpkin-sized head his features hadn't yet grown to fit. America was such a small land, of course everybody knew everybody.

"Oh… well, he's a dear old friend of mine. A dear, dear friend," Eugene rambled. "Ronnie and I… his pals call him Ronnie, by the way. Anyway, yeah, you could say we're big buddies."

"Ronnie. Yes, is better I think than Ronald. More friendly, yes?" The young guard was flipping through the back pages of Elena's passport, for no particular reason, since a Russian passport didn't require a visa. "He is really your friend?"

"I love him," Eugene declared loudly, anxious to like anything this kid liked. Stalin? — adore him. Liver? — my favorite meal. But it helped that it was true. He was a rich Wall Streeter and lifelong Republican without an ounce of guilt over the fortunes he'd made. He had no kind thoughts for those traitors from his tribe of millionaires who called themselves Democrats and did their best to get those tax-gobbling thieves back into the White House. Besides, it seemed like a great topic to keep this young guard's mind on other matters. Eugene told him truthfully, "I was one of his biggest contributors. Gave him lots of moolah. He had me down to the White House a few times. Nice place."

The guard was now measuring Alex's passport photo against his face. It was totally unnecessary. He was obviously dawdling to drag out the conversation. Why couldn't Eugene keep his mouth shut? Freedom was only ten yards ahead of them-if only Eugene would shut his yap.

The boy began thumbing through Alex's passport again, visibly more attentive to Eugene's ramblings about his hero than his work. He asked, not all that casually, "So you are big friend of Reagan's. Why then, you must tell me, you are traveling with these Russians?"

"Russians" spat out of his lips loaded with enough contempt to make it sound like he wanted to pull his pistol and blow Alex and Elena back to the gates of Moscow.

"They're old friends," Eugene replied, thinking fast.

A troubled look on the boy's face. He scratched his unwashed hair, shuffled his feet, and stared glumly at the passport. "This name, Konevitch, I think I have heard before."

"No surprise there," Eugene conceded in a quick rush of words. "Alex is… was… a dissident, a very famous one. He wrote brilliant essays about the rot of communism, they were smuggled out and published in the West." Eugene pushed his face closer and confided, "Guess how we met? Come on, guess."

Bunched shoulders. No idea.

"Ronnie introduced us. Get this-he told me personally that Alex's essays inspired him to tell the Russians to haul their asses out of East Europe."

The guard bent over and studied Alex's face more closely. His eyes narrowed and his lips scrunched with curiosity. Eugene's expansive lie suddenly did not appear all that clever. Alex tried to appear relaxed, humble, and proud, anything to look convincing. Would he become curious about Alex's injuries? Maybe he wasn't buying Eugene's bullshit. Or maybe he remembered exactly why the name Konevitch sounded familiar. Alex and Elena fought an overwhelming urge to hop out of the car and make a run for it. Just run as fast as their feet could go, flee into the nearest field, and hope the boy's marksmanship was as awful as his English. They squeezed each other's hands and prayed. The examination seemed to go on forever. "If he so famous," the guard eventually asked, fingering the passports, "why then you are traveling in this very awful car?"

Elena wagged a finger at that backseat. "In honor of our American friend." A knowing wink and she flashed her cutest smile. "We thought it would be fun for him to experience the full splendor of communist quality. He hasn't stopped complaining the entire trip."

The guard laughed, handed the passports to Alex, took a step back, and waved his arm. "Welcome to the independent Slovakian Republic. Drive carefully, if you please."