The Hunted (6 page)

The English security firm that employed him, Malcolm Street Associates, paid him one hundred grand a year, plus housing, plus
car,
and
the chance for a twenty thousand annual bonus. Four for four in the bonus department, thus far. And the way this year was
going, next year’s was already in the bag and mentally spent. Supplemented by his NYPD pension, he was finally and faithfully
putting away a little nest egg.

But not
exactly
as he always dreamed it would be. Cancer had struck five years before, had stolen his beloved Ellie, and only after it wiped
out the paltry savings they had managed to scrimp from a meager cop’s salary. His medical insurance had handled the prescribed
treatments, but in the final months and weeks, as Ellie stubbornly wasted away, Bernie had thrown good money after bad, desperately
investing in a plethora of unorthodox treatments and quackery, from Mexican miracle pills to an oddball dentist who swore
that removing Elle’s silver and mercury fillings would incite a complete remission. To no avail, it turned out. In the end,
Elle had passed away, stuffed with all manner of phony cures and big holes in her teeth.

So now Bernie was rebuilding his life. No longer surviving one miserable day at a time, he was again viewing life as a promising
future rather than a sad past. Both kids were grown, out of college, out on their own; the first grandkid was in the oven,
and Bernie looked forward to many more.

Plus, he was living in Europe. Europe! He had acquired this dream in his late teens when Uncle Sam borrowed a few years of
his life, making him a military policeman in Heidelberg, a gorgeous city in a lovely country that captured his heart. Other
NYPD types had Florida fever; they dreamed of sweating out their idle years in tropical heat, blasting little white spheres
around manicured lawns. Bernie hated golf, hated heat, and desperately hated the idea of spending his sunset years reliving
the good old days—what was so good about them, anyway?—in a community saturated with retired cops. He had always yearned to
return to Europe: the slower pace, the opportunity to travel, sip exotic coffees, and of course, the money was fantastic.

He hunched forward in his seat and noted, once again, the same wrinkled old biddy lurching and waddling down the aisle toward
the lavatory. He had long ago learned not to ignore anything—not the innocuous, not the apparently innocent. The stakeout
king, the boys in the NYPD had nicknamed him, with good reason—he had put more than a few banditos in the slammer by paying
unusual attention to cars and pedestrians that appeared a little too often, often stickup artists and bank robbers reconning
their targets. Pattern observation, it was called in the trade. Bernie wrote the book on it.

This was her fifth potty trip, by his count. A little suspicious: she did look old, though, and faulty kidneys couldn’t be
ruled out; or doctor’s orders to keep her blood circulating; or just plain oldage restlessness.

In preparation for this job, the firm’s experts had produced a thick folder detailing all known and presumed threats to the
client. It was a wealthy firm with a big ego that could afford to be comprehensive and took it to the hilt.

Background checks were de rigueur for all prospective clients; unlike other firms, however, this was accomplished
before
a contract was signed. The client’s ability to pay the firm’s impressive bills was the principal topic of curiosity, of course.
Also the nature of the client’s business, types of threat, known enemies, special circumstances, and bothersome vulnerabilities.

British snobbery definitely weighed in. Unsavory clients were blackballed no matter how much they pleaded or offered.

But in a ferociously competitive business, reputation counted for everything. It all boiled down to two simple questions:
How many lived? How many died?

The firm had dodged more than a few bullets by politely and firmly snubbing clients whose chance of survival was deemed subpar;
in over thirty percent of those cases, the clients had been dead within a year, a striking piece of guesswork. A clutch of
actuarial wizards lured from top insurance firms were paid a small fortune to be finicky. A computer model was produced, a
maze of complex algorithms that ate gobs of information and spit out a dizzying spread of percentages and odds.

A client or two were lost every year, a better than average record for work of this nature, one the firm loudly advertised.

Regarding his current client, at the top of the threat chain were the usual suspects for a Russian tycoon: Mafiya thugs, hit
men, and various forms of independent crooks or assassins intent on blackmail, or fulfilling a contract from a third party.
They were effective and often lethal. They were also crude, obnoxiously brutal, notoriously indiscreet, and with their clownish
affectation for black jeans and black leather jackets, usually ridiculously easy to spot. Bernie had already swept the cabin
twice. No likely suspects of that ilk.

Next came business competitors who stood to benefit by eliminating an entrepreneurial juggernaut like Konevitch, followed
closely by investors disgruntled for any number of reasons. His business was privately owned. Two limited partners, that was
it. He owned eighty percent of the shares and neither partner was dissatisfied, as best the firm could tell. Really, how could
they be? Konevitch had made them both millionaires many times over.

His estimated worth—a combination of cash and stock—now hovered around 350 million dollars—in all likelihood a lowball estimate—and
growing by the hour, despite generous and frequent contributions to local charities and political causes. He had his fingers
deeply into four or five mammoth businesses, was contemplating a move into two or three more, and his personal fortune was
multiplying by the day. The construction firm he began had given birth to an arbitrage business—initially for construction
materials only, then for all sorts of things—that bred a prosperous bank, then a sizable investment firm, part ownership in
several oil firms, a car importing company, a real estate empire, ownership of two national newspaper chains, several restaurant
chains, and myriad smaller enterprises that were expected to balloon exponentially as Russia fully morphed into a full-blown
consumer society.

As fast as Alex made money, he poured it into the next project, the next acquisition, the next promising idea. Whatever he
touched spewed profit, it seemed. In the estimation of the firm, that remarkable growth rested firmly on his own deft brilliance,
his own impeccable instincts, his golden touch.

Take him out and Konevitch Associates would fold. Maybe not immediately, maybe it would limp along for a few anguished years.
But with the brain dead, the body would atrophy. Eventually the pieces would shrivel and be sold off for a fraction of a pittance.
Alex was a money-printing machine; surely his partners knew this.

Next came possible political enemies, and last, though not insignificantly, the obligatory threat for anyone with heaps of
money—family members who might hunger for an inheritance and/or an insurance windfall.

Nearly all rich people dabbled in politics to a greater or lesser degree; this client was in it up to his neck. According
to the dossier, Konevitch was very close to Yeltsin, had apparently backed his rise to the presidency, and he continued to
throw cash by the boatload at Yeltsin’s hungry political machine and a few of the reformist parties ambling in his wake.

The old commie holdovers were resentful, angry, and plentiful. Konevitch had played it smart and hid in the background—the
mint behind the throne, an underground well of money—going to great lengths to keep his contributions invisible, or at the
very least anonymous. But there were those who knew. And among them, it was assumed, were some powerful people who might wish
to settle a historical score. A nasty political grudge couldn’t be ruled out.

He had a serious ten million dollar term life policy with Carroy-thers & Smythe, a financially plump, highly regarded insurance
company. That firm shared Malcolm Street Associates’ intense concern for Alex’s health and secretly informed its partner agency
that his wife was the sole beneficiary. No brothers, no sisters, and his few cousins were distant, angry, avid communists,
and unfriendly. His mother was long dead, leaving just a father, a former educator with few apparent wants and needs, who
was wiling away his retirement from academia reading books that were formerly banned to Soviet readers.

Using his vast riches, the son set the old man up in a nice dacha in a resort town on the Black Sea with a tidy trust fund
that would allow him to comfortably live out his life in pleasant surroundings. A bribe to the local hospital revealed the
old man had incurable pancreatic cancer that was expected, shortly, to kill him. He was being treated with the best medicines
imported from the States, but few had ever survived pancreatic cancer and time was not on his side. So what would the old
man want with his son’s fortune? Wasn’t like he could take it with him.

Alex dutifully visited every few months. He and the old man spent hours in the garage, tinkering on old jalopies and knocking
back imported beers. An odd relationship, given the wild differences between father and son. But they were close.

So it all boiled down to one intimate threat—his wife, Elena.

The firm had quietly observed their marriage: happy, healthy, and loving, or so it appeared. No indications of affairs or
dalliances or even one-night regrets. Not for her, not for him. They had met a year and a half earlier. And from the best
they could tell, from the opening instant, the couple could barely keep their hands off each other. A surface background check
revealed that she had been a dancer, Bolshoi-trained. And though marvelously talented, with a technique that was deemed technically
flawless, at only five foot and one inch she lacked the long limbs and extended torso demanded by audiences. She was offered
a position as a full-time instructor, teaching giraffes with half her talent to prance and pirouette; she opted, instead,
to retire her tutu. She put dance in the rearview mirror and majored in economics at Moscow University, graduating five down
from the top of her class. Bright girl.

A month after they met he had asked and she agreed, he suggesting a quick and efficient civil rite, she arguing vehemently
for a traditional church wedding. She won and they were joined together, till death do they part, in a quiet ceremony by a
hairy, bearded patriarch at a small, lovely Orthodox chapel in the pastoral countryside.

The firm regarded her fierce insistence on a church wedding as a hopeful sign—she had apparently been raised a closet Christian
during the long years of godless communism; presumably, the sixth commandment meant something to her.

Her tastes were neither extravagant nor excessive. Some expensive clothing and a few costly baubles, though not by choice
and definitely not by inclination: an outwardly prosperous image was necessary for business, he insisted, and he encouraged
her to buy half of Paris. Day to day, she preferred tight American Levi’s and baggy sweatshirts, limiting herself to a few
elegant outfits that were mothballed except for social and business occasions. The couple never bickered, never fought. They
enjoyed sex, with each other, nothing kinky, nothing weird, and it was frequent. The firm knew this for a fact.

The Konevitch apartment had been wired and loaded with enough bugs to fill an opera house, surreptitiously, of course, the
day after Alex first contacted Malcolm Street Associates. All married applicants were electronically surveilled, at least
during the opening weeks or months of a contract—this was never divulged to the clients, and the firm’s prurience had never
been discovered. Since part of its service was to sweep for listening and electronic devices, it would never be caught.

Statistically, the firm knew, a high number of rich men were murdered by their own wives, concubines, and mistresses. The
reasons were mostly obvious: marital neglect, sexual jealousy, and, more often, outright greed. Nothing was harder to protect
against, and the actuarial boys demanded a thorough investigation. The firm’s gumshoes enthusiastically obliged; snooping
in the bedrooms of the rich and famous, after all, was definitely more entertaining work than the normal tedium of tailing
and watching.

But all evidence indicated that the marriage was strong. And Elena Konevitch, for now and for the foreseeable future, was
rated low risk.

In January 1992, the first of what soon became a flood of newspaper stories about the amazing and mysterious Alex Konevitch
appeared in the
Moscow Times
. Though other newly minted Moscow tycoons begged to be noticed, pleaded for publicity, actually, Alex had prodigiously tried
his best to remain a complete nobody. Other fat cats blustered and bribed their way into every hot nightspot in town, rolling
up in their flashy, newly acquired Mercedes and BMW sedans, a stunning model or two hanging on their arm—typically rented
for the occasion—only too hungrily enthusiastic to strut the fruits of their newfound success, to show off their sudden importance.

Publicity management firms sprang up all over Moscow. Moguls and wannabe moguls lined up outside their doors, throwing cash
and favors at anybody who could get them noticed, a few seconds of limelight, the briefest mention in the local rags. Under
the old system everybody was impoverished, with little to brag about, and even less to show off; in any event, sticking one’s
head up was an invitation to have it lopped off. Now a whole new world was emerging from the ashes; old desires that had been
cruelly repressed were suddenly unchained, flagrantly indulged. A thousand egos swelled and flourished, giddy with the impulse
to show off. Donald Trump was their icon; they longed to live his life, to emulate his oversized image, to become famous simply
for being obnoxiously famous.

Alex lived like a hermit, a man few knew and nobody knew well. He avoided parties and nightclubs, was rarely observed in public,
and adamantly refused any and all requests for interviews. In his quest to remain anonymous, every employee of Konevitch Associates
and its sprawling web of companies was required to sign a serious legal vow never to whisper a word about their reclusive
employer. This only made the search for his story all the more irresistible. One of the richest men in the country, the kid
millionaire they naturally called him. And he wanted to remain anonymous?