The Hunted, page 5
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?
After several unfruitful attempts, a midlevel employee at his investment bank was secretly approached by a Moscow weekly and offered five thousand easy American dollars to chat a little about his employer. The employee confessed that he not only did not know Alex personally, he had actually seen him only twice in person—two fleeting glimpses of Alex speeding through the trading floor on his way to his office upstairs. Didn’t matter, they assured him. Surely Alex’s companies were rife with rumors, gossip, and anecdotes, concocted or otherwise. The price was kicked up to seven thousand and the employee was suddenly too eager to cough up a few confidences—as long as the check was good and, for sure, his name stayed out of it.
“Kid Midas” was the predictable headline that outed Alex, and it said it all and then some. It was rumored that Alex was Russia’s richest man, its first fat-cat billionaire; he owned an armada of towering yachts; two hundred rare and exotic sports cars housed in a temperature-controlled underground garage and spitshined daily; a fleet of sleek private jets to ferry him to his sprawling estates in Paris, London, Rome, New York, and Hong Kong. The chatty employee had recently finished a spicy, newly translated, unauthorized biography about the marvelously perverse life of Howard Hughes, and he plagiarized liberally and imaginatively from that intoxicating tale to earn his seven grand.
Alex was a total schizoid paranoid, he’d said; he sat around his office nude, counting his rubles and hatching new businesses in between watching old black-and-white Katharine Hepburn flicks. He collected beautiful women by the carton, renamed them all Katharine, and was so germophobic that he boiled them before he slept with them. He was anti-Semitic, antisocial, ate only raw vegetables, drank only boiled water, was left-handed, was rumored to go both ways sexually, and had to be chloroformed by a squad of brawny assistants to get haircuts and his fingernails trimmed.
The resulting article was ridiculous, packed with bizarre lies, and viciously fascinating.
Fictitious or not, it incited an all-out frenzy and induced scores of Moscow reporters to join in the hunt. Sensationalized stories about Alex quickly became daily fare, more often than not outrageously fabricated nonsense. One enterprising weekly magazine initiated a column dubbed “Kid Midas Sightings” so the whole city could join in the fun: a five hundred dollar reward was offered to anybody who could produce a photograph of Alex, five thousand if he was nude, purportedly his normal state.
Alex’s attorneys begged him to sue, promising to terrorize the publishing industry, as only lawyers can do. A flat, persistent refusal was his stubborn response. It would only generate more unwanted publicity, he insisted. And anyway, it was a novelty that would quickly wear off, he assured them, but he promptly hired his first security people. Six private bodyguards. All former Spetsnaz special forces warriors, who looked fierce and swore they would be loyal to the end.
Alex was still scribbling notes and poring over thick business files when, two hours later, the pilot’s nasal voice launched the usual preparatory steps for landing. Seat backs were jolted forward, eating trays shoved back into position, a few people got up and stretched. The pair of watchers exchanged knowing winks.
Time for the fun to begin.
They followed Mr. and Mrs. Konevitch as they deplaned, he hauling their leather overnight bags casually slung over his broad shoulders; both of them totally clueless. Light packing for what the couple obviously assumed would be a brief and enjoyable business trip, in and out, a single night at most. Guess again, Alex.
The carry-on luggage was a welcome relief, nonetheless. Their instructions were stern and clear: avoid loose ends, anything that might make the authorities suspicious. The Hungarian police weren’t known for nosiness or efficiency. Interference seemed unlikely. Still, unclaimed bags that were tagged with contact information might cause an unwanted problem or two.
At customs, Mr. and Mrs. Konevitch offered polite smiles to the green-uniformed customs guard, flashed their Russian passports, no problems there. Then they went directly through the sliding glass doors into the expansive lobby.
Midday. The foot traffic was sparse, which made the targets easy to track, but also made it harder for the reception team to blend in and hide.
Their briefing was unequivocal on this point—stay with the Konevitches every second of every minute. No respite until the arrival-and-reception team had matters firmly in hand. Same kind of job they had done hundreds or possibly thousands of times during the past fifty years, always successfully. Old age had slowed them down a few steps, but in their line of work the trade-off was more than equitable; nobody suspected a pair of doddering old geezers.
The customs agent barely gave them or their passports a glance as he waved them through. What possible threat could these wrinkled old wrecks pose to the Republic of Hungary? they were sure he was thinking. If only he knew. They had thirty confirmed kills to their credit, with six more they stubbornly claimed, though the corpses had been incinerated into ashes or fallen into deep rivers and washed away.
Mr. and Mrs. Konevitch were walking briskly through the lobby, straight for the taxi stand outside. The tail team followed at a safe distance, hobbling and creaking with every step.
At the taxi stand, three people were already lined up ahead of the Konevitches—a hatchet-faced lady struggling with her oversized luggage, and two faces the tails instantly recognized, Vladimir and Katya.
Vladimir was the boss of the arrival-and-reception team, a man they all thoroughly feared and deeply loathed. Katya, like the rest of them, was vicious, cold-blooded, and unemotional, a veteran killer with a long and enviable list of hits—but always just business. Vladimir was a sadistic bastard with freakish appetites. He would’ve done this work for free; paid to do it, probably. Even the toughest killers in the unit felt a wash of pity for his victims.
The tail team from the airplane backed off, ignoring the Konevitches and redirecting their attention to trying to spot the private bodyguards. They had memorized as many faces from their flight as they could. Now they separated from each other, about twenty yards apart, stopped, pretended to fumble with their luggage, and watched for familiar faces.
The call came in at 2:37 p.m. and the secretary put it right through.
Sergei Golitsin checked his watch, right on time. He lifted the phone and barked, “Well?”
“Good news, they’re here,” the voice informed him. “Everything’s under control.”
“So you have them?”
“No, not yet. They’re at the taxi stand two feet from Vladimir and Katya. Everything’s on schedule, everything’s in place. I’ll call you in a few minutes when we do.”
“Don’t mess this up.” Golitsin snorted.
“Relax. We won’t.”
There was a long pause. Golitsin, with barely suppressed excitement, asked, “Are the communications set up?”
“They are. The listening devices are state of the art. You’ll get a crystal-clear feed into the phone lines and through your speakerphone. I tested it with your secretary an hour ago. Everything’s fine.” After a pause, the voice added, “Vladimir’s going to handle this. It’s going to be loud and ugly.”
“It better be.” Golitsin closed his eyes and smiled. “I want to hear every sound.”
3
The old lady at the front of the line shoved two bags at a cabbie and crawled painfully into a blue BMW with TAXI splashed in bold letters across the side.
The couple directly in front of Alex and Elena stepped forward, and a black Mercedes sedan that had been idling by the far curb suddenly swerved in front of the other taxis and screeched to a noisy halt half a foot from the taxi stop. Vladimir, wearing the garb and collar of a Catholic priest, made a fast survey of the surroundings, then quickly threw open the rear door. The same instant, Katya, dressed as a nun, pushed out an ugly black pistol hidden inside the folds of her baggy sleeve and pointed it in Alex’s face.
