The Hunted (46 page)

“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.

W
arden Byron James leaned back in his seat and contemplated the glistening toes of his spitshined wingtips. He peered into
the reflected face of Special Agent Terrence Hanrahan and informed him, “Won’t take long.”

“You’re sure?”

“Damn sure. Ask around. This here prison’s the rottenest sewer in America,” he said very loudly, smacking his lips and looking
quite proud about that boast.

“What have you done with him?”

A slow smile. “A week in solitary for starters. Moved him to D Wing today.”

“What’s that? High-security?”

The warden’s feet hit the floor and he leaned forward. “Just say he’s not in the best of company.”

“Tell me more.”

“D Wing’s for the undesirables. Big-time dealers, gangbangers, Mafia hoods, Black Power brotherhood, and recalcitrants who
can’t seem to behave. Plus, he’s got a special new cellmate, Bitchy Beatty.”

“That supposed to mean something to me?”

“If you were an inmate… then yeah, damned sure it would.” Hanrahan was pretty certain it was best not to know. In the event
he was subpoenaed later, total ignorance was his best defense. Curiosity got the better of him, though, and reluctantly he
asked, “Tell me about Bitchy…?”

“Beatty. Bitchy Beatty. Guess you might know him better as Benny Beatty.”

“Oh…
that
Beatty?”

“Same guy. You know, before that awful assault thing happened.” Hanrahan vaguely recalled the case, about three years back.

Beatty, formerly of one of those big Kansas college football factories, and in his second year as an All-Pro tackle for Arizona,
had rushed into the New York Jets locker room with a baseball bat after getting creamed in a championship game. Like a whirling
dervish, he spun and bounced around the room and brutally assaulted fifteen of the Jets’ top stars. By the time he was wrestled
down, the locker room was filled with busted teeth and broken bones, three shattered kneecaps, and more gallons of blood than
anybody cared to measure.

Beatty got more than the max, ten to twenty: turned out the judge was a rabid Jets season ticketholder; turned out it would
be five to ten before the Jets could rebuild and field a reasonable team. The furious judge threw away the sentencing guidelines
and gave Beatty double what he gave the Jets. An appeal was pending. The grounds were solid, but it would be heard in a New
York appellate court, of all places. His lawyers weren’t optimistic.

Hanrahan asked, “How’d he get that nickname?”

“Short for ‘bitchmaker.’ Ol’ Beatty misses all those groupie sluts something awful.” A broad smile at the faces in the room.
“Guess you’d say his cellmates are his surrogates.”

Two special agents leaned against the wall and joined in the laughter, halfheartedly, little more than forced chuckles. They
stopped as soon as it seemed polite.

This was the third prison inside a year. And the third cocksure warden who swore he would break Konevitch like a swaybacked
pony. Konevitch had adapted to each new facility quickly, with surprising ease. Go figure.

As a prisoner in the federal system, though, he enjoyed one protected right they badly wished they could withhold: monthly
visits from that pretty little wife, who appeared like clockwork. No matter where they moved him, no matter how closely the
secret was kept, she somehow learned where he was. The Feds monitored his mail, an easy task, as there had been no mail—none
coming in, none going out. That nosy lawyer of theirs peppered the system with requests for his location, but none had been
answered. Somehow, though, she always knew where he was.

He attacked the library with curious regularity. The FBI accessed the records and followed his literary pursuits with their
own deep interest. The law stacks were a common destination. Little surprise there. All prisoners fashioned themselves Clarence
Darrows, able to outdo all those esquired incompetents who screwed up and got them in here. Every other day, it was books
on computers, computer languages, FORTRAN and COBOL, and that new thing called the Internet all their kids were raving about.
A few times a week, he hopped onto the library computer and typed away at blazing speed, nearly burning up the keyboard. Why,
they had no idea.

Hanrahan turned away from the warden and, talking maybe at the wall, maybe at nobody, emphasized, “You know how important
this is to us.”

“Guess I do. I got a call from Fielder at headquarters. Said your guy, Tromble, wants this real bad.”

Still looking away, like this wasn’t a conversation. “Find a way to scale back his liberties. Turn up the heat as fast and
hard as you like.”

The warden, also now talking, not at Hanrahan but at some invisible spot on the ceiling, hypothesized, “Yeah, well, he could,
I dunno, maybe misbehave or somethin’. I’d have to come down hard with a few necessary disciplinary measures.”

“Yeah, but like what?”

“A few more weeks in solitary will get his attention.”

“Don’t. Believe me, don’t. That was tried at both previous prisons. He folds himself into some kind of yoga posture and goes
into a trance. Actually, he seems to enjoy the solitude.”

“Two…? Hey, I thought this guy was a cherry.”

“Sorry, no, you’re the third. The other two prisons he’s shown a talent for building coalitions and finding people to protect
him. He’s clever. We have no idea how he does it.”

The warden leaned back in his chair and threw his hands behind his head. “Well, your boy ain’t met me yet,” he boasted. “Ask
around, fellas. The state always sends me the biggest hardasses. I got my ways of making ’em crack.”

The two agents on the wall shared quiet smiles. It was the same speech, almost word for word, they had heard from both previous
wardens. And in each prison, inside a few weeks, Konevitch was hanging out with the biggest badasses in the yard, getting
extra food helpings in the mess hall, the recipient of all kinds of special largesse and favors, even from the guards.

As much as they hoped and plotted otherwise, somehow, some way, they feared Alex Konevitch would find a way to upstage this
wingtipped, overconfident ass as well.

Bitchy missed football like crazy. All in all, though, prison wasn’t all that bad, or even all that different. He more or
less spent his time just as he did back in his cherished NFL days, eating voraciously, hoisting enormous weights out in the
yard, and bashing heads whenever the impulse seized him. He had packed on another forty pounds of bad mood to the 350 he arrived
with, all hard muscle.

Bitchy had scraped by with terrible grades in college, not because he was stupid, because he was smart. A full ride, with
all the cute little cheerleaders he wanted, and bright little volunteers to stand in and take his tests. What dork would hide
his nose inside books with all that fun to be had? Like many football hotshots, off the field Bitchy had always been spoiled
rotten; it shouldn’t surprise anybody that he now had a few serious impulse control issues. Anyway, the college was determined
to graduate him phi beta pigskin, no matter what, even if he never went near class, which he seldom did.

The new boy was lying on the lower bunk with his nose stuffed inside a book, something about Web site construction. He was
cute, real cute. A bit tall for Bitchy’s usual taste maybe, but what the hell, variety was supposed to be spicy. So why not?
He shifted his vast weight to the side of his bunk and peered down.

“Hey, I heard you’re a transfer.”

“Third prison this year.”

“How come they moved you to this shithole?”

“Mutilation.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“I mutilated a man. I didn’t kill him. Afterward, though, I suppose he wished I had.” Alex absently flipped a page and continued
reading.

Bitchy scratched his head. “That’s a new one on me.”

“In the statutes it sits between first- and second-degree assault. You see, in your American laws, it boils down to intent.
I didn’t want to kill him.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” Bitchy hated lawyers. He’d been screwed royally by the five-hundred-buck-an-hour suit he’d hired
to defend him, a pompous prick who barely protested when the judge doubled his sentence. He would dearly love to screw one
back.

“Hardly.”

Bitchy bounced off the top bunk. With incredible agility, both feet hit the floor at once, almost catlike. He was so damned
big and blockish, his opponents habitually underestimated his speed, balance, and dexterity. But not after Bitchy got his
huge paws on you—suddenly, everything about him came into terrifying focus.

He placed a hand on his zipper and was about to introduce his new cellmate to Mr. Johnson.

Alex calmly closed the book and looked at him. “I castrated a man,” he informed Beatty simply, coldly. “He attempted to rape
me in the shower. That night, after he fell asleep, I chopped it off. While he howled in pain, I cut it into small pieces.
You know why, Benny?” He paused long enough to allow Benny time to consider this intriguing question. “It made it impossible
to sew back on.”

Bitchy’s hand left his zipper and entered a deep pocket.

Alex said, “I hear you were a professional footballer.”

A strange way to put it, but Bitchy answered, “Yeah. So what?”

“Did it pay well?”

This was getting weird. “Not well. It paid great.”

“How great?”

“A five million signing bonus. Three million a year in salary. Why you askin’?”

“Where is all that money now?”

“None of your business.”

Alex put the book down and leaned his back against the wall. “I suppose your legal costs consumed most of it.”

Bitchy also leaned back against the wall. He was in the mood for a little man-love, but this guy seemed to want to chitchat
a bit before they got down to action. At least he wasn’t hollering and bouncing around the cell like his last cellmate. The
Russian accent sure sounded cool.

“I got millions left. When it hits three mil, the lawyers can go screw themselves. The appeals stop.”

“Smart. So how is it invested?”

“In the bank. Where else would it be?”

“Did nobody advise you that’s stupid?”

Bitchy bounced off the wall. The hand came out of the pocket and suddenly balled into a beefy fist. “Watch your mouth. You’re
stupid if you call me stupid.”

“Relax, Benny. I never said you were stupid. I said leaving the money in the bank is stupid.”

“It’ll still be there when I get out. How stupid is that?”

“A lot more of it could be there. Is that smart, my friend?”

“All right, Mr. I-know-so-much, what’s smarter?”

“In the right stocks, it will multiply enormously. Real estate is a fairly good and safe investment also.”

“That’s not my thing.”

“Have you ever heard of Qualcomm, Benny?”

Bitchy laughed. “Sure. I get it from the pharmacy whenever I get jock itch.” He laughed harder.

“We’ll look into jock-itch providers if you’d like. It’s certainly a market you know well. That’s more of a slow growth, long-term
investment, though,” Alex replied, very seriously. “It’s a company that invented a brilliant new way to send sound and information
down a wire, or even fiber-optic cable. The stock is set to quadruple. Do you understand time-division versus code-division
encoding?”

Not a chance.

“Well, let me explain the deal. If you want me as a lover, I probably can’t stop you. Of course you’ll have to sleep with
one eye open. When will that crazy Russian guy cut my dingee off?” Alex waved his hand up and down in the air. “He will, most
definitely, he will… but when?”

It was said so matter-of-factly, Bitchy took no offense. Shifting to the third person helped; it took a little personal edge
off the threat.

“Or,” Alex pushed on, “I can be your investment advisor. I’ll double or triple your money. That’s a lowball estimate, incidentally.
I know a great deal about the Russian market also. A little cash in the right ADRs would be very smart. Derivatives are doing
quite well these days also.”

Alex patted the mattress. Bitchy’s broad rear landed on the bunk beside him and he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”

“That’s why you need me, Benny.”

“Just for not raping you?”

“There are many attractive men in this prison. Do whatever you like, just not with me, okay?”

“Do I have to protect you?”

“That’s not part of the deal, no.”

“Make me that kind of dough and I’ll slaughter whoever comes near you.”

An indifferent shrug. “Probably a wise move on your part.”

“So how’s this work?”

“Easier than you might think. There are probably fifteen or twenty contraband cell phones in the block, am I right?”

Bitchy nodded. Fifty was more like it. The guards were always hunting for them, but as they grew smaller they became so much
easier to conceal. Bitchy knew of at least four tucked away in the prison laundry, another six in the kitchen. Twist a few
arms, and he’d have all he wanted. No was not a word Bitchy heard very often.

“Get me three of those phones, Benny. The batteries wear down quickly and can’t be recharged inside our cell. You’ll handle
the expenses. Believe me, you’ll be able to afford it. I use the phones to manage your money and whoever else I decide to
call.”