The Hunted, page 9
Eugene answered on the second ring. Struggling to sound apologetic rather than terrified, Alex told him, “It’s me, Alex. Sorry I’m late, Eugene. It was unexpected and, believe me, absolutely couldn’t be helped.”
Eugene replied in a simmering tone, “Check your damn watch, Alex. I’ve got a briefcase packed with contracts for your signature. In thirty minutes this deal goes through or I’m screwed.”
“I understand, Eugene.”
“Do you? Then what are you doing about it?”
“There’s nothing I can do,” Alex replied. “I’m tied up right now,” he explained, speaking the unvarnished truth.
“In Budapest?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll come to you.”
“No. Even if it were possible, it’s not advisable.”
“Make it possible, Alex. If this deal collapses I have to pay the partners a penalty of ten million. It was the only way I could get them to pony up. You know this.”
“This isn’t my call, Eugene. Believe me, I would help if I could.”
“My last wife took me for fifty mil, Alex, and my mansion and even my dog. And Maria’s upstairs right now scheming and counting how much she can make. I’m desperate here. I can’t afford to lose one million right now. Ten will ruin me.”
There was a long pause while both men considered their options. Eugene was brilliant and talented, and, like many of his ilk, his skill at business was matched only by his incredible ineptitude at romance. Three ex-wives, with now possibly a fourth in the making. But three already: three hefty alimony payments and seven needy children, four in obscenely expensive private colleges and three in equally rapacious private schools. And there was his own luxurious lifestyle to be considered. Not to mention Maria’s, who thought designer clothes grew on trees. Eugene was burning through the cash faster than he could make it—almost faster than the U.S. Treasury could print it. This deal was make or break for him.
Alex glanced at Elena with the knife at her neck; she stared back, wide-eyed, plainly terrified. He felt a stab of gut-wrenching guilt that he had gotten her into this mess, and he tried with limited success to push that aside and figure out what was going on here. When he hadn’t shown up for the scheduled meeting, Eugene had obviously called his office in Moscow, probably tossed around a threat or two, and gotten a concerned response. And then—somehow—somebody in Konevitch Associates had passed this news to Vladimir, who was now brandishing a knife at Elena’s throat. With a blinding flash of the obvious he understood what this meant: an inside job. Somebody in his employ was a traitor.
No wonder they knew what flight he was on, that he was traveling with Elena, and how to bypass his security.
It dawned on him for the first time that definitely they intended to kill him and Elena. He could sign over his businesses and every last penny of his millions, the deeds to his homes, the titles to his cars, even the clothes off his back. Or he could refuse and tell them to go pound sand, they weren’t getting a single penny.
It would make no difference. Absolutely none. He and Elena were dead either way.
Alex drew a long, deep breath. “All right, here’s the deal,” he blurted into the phone. “You remember the special clause? If Elena and I aren’t in the restaurant in thirty minutes, invoke it. Both of us, or—”
A moment too late, Katya jerked the phone from his ear and with an angry forefinger punched the disconnect button.
“What was that about?” she hissed with a stare meant to kill.
Alex ignored her and looked at Vladimir and the knife at Elena’s throat. He yelled, “Oh God… wait!” to Vladimir, then yelled at anyone who would listen, “Kill her, spill one drop of her blood, and you’ll get nothing. I swear. Not a penny.”
Vladimir played with carving a deep gash across her throat, but Katya barked, “Don’t. Not yet.” Obviously the smarter of the two—at least the less instinctively sociopathic—she awarded Alex a hard look and demanded, “What was that you told him?”
“It’s very simple. Eugene is an American investor with three or four very wealthy backers in New York. It’s called a joint venture. They are pooling hundreds of millions for this deal. They put up the cash, and I invest it for them, keeping a fair share of the profits for my trouble. In return I had to put up collateral.”
Vladimir and Katya were in the wrong line of work to comprehend the meaning of this word, “collateral,” and Vladimir snapped, “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a common business term. In return for their trust and capital risk, I put my companies on the line. It’s all stipulated in the contracts inside Eugene’s briefcase. Every one of my businesses, right down to the final nail. If I fail to do my part, title to every business I own reverts to them.”
“He’s lying,” Vladimir hissed at Katya.
“Am I?” Alex asked, definitely lying. He turned to the legal shyster who was hiding in the corner, watching this scene with nervous fascination. Alex asked him, “Have you ever heard of a business deal that did not involve collateral?”
The man frowned, stroked his chin, and tried to look thoughtful. He had small, crowded features and they pinched together; like a pug with hemorrhoids. And he was totally, irrevocably lost. He had been a criminal lawyer under the old Soviet system where the extent of his legal expertise was not lifting a finger or raising a squawk as his clients were ramrodded through the politically corrupt courts and crushed by the state. These days the big money was in corporate law, so he had hung out a new shingle and was avidly trying to cash in. Everything was crooked and rigged in Moscow anyway and the shyster knew as well as anybody who needed to be bribed and/or threatened for a deal to go through.
In short, the man on the gurney had just tossed a pebble down an empty well. The thoughtful pause dragged on.
Well, he might not know squat about contracts, but he had a firm grasp on survival, he told himself. If he said no, this man is clearly a liar, and it turned out the shyster guessed wrong, everything would be lost—all those hundreds of millions of dollars. Naturally, they would hold him responsible. For well over an hour he had stood out in the warehouse, hearing Alex’s anguished howls and shrieks echoing through the walls. He felt a sudden shiver as he considered how they might punish him.
But if he said Alex was telling the truth, well, whatever happened afterward—good, bad, or worse—they couldn’t blame him.
Feeling quite Solomonic, and with a tone of utter conviction, he offered his best professional opinion. “No, never. As he says, it is typical to arrange collateral in these matters.”
“And this is the special clause you referred to?” Katya asked Alex.
“That’s right. In forty minutes, everything I own will revert to Eugene and his group of New York investors.”
The lawyer walked over to the gurney and leaned in toward Alex. “But there is a way to void this clause, am I right?”
“I’d be an idiot if there weren’t.”
“Good. Tell me about it,” the lawyer demanded, enjoying his sudden moment of importance.
“Put me through to whoever you work for. I’ll tell him about it.”
“Not a chance,” Vladimir answered for all of them, sneering and sliding the knife back and forth against Elena’s throat.
“Fine, your call,” Alex replied, trying his best to look confident rather than terrified. He had done hundreds of high-pressure business negotiations, tense parleys upon which many millions of dollars hinged. They always involved a fair amount of posturing and bluffing, and Alex had become a master at it. This time, though, he was bargaining for Elena’s life, and his own. He took a hard swallow, then forced a smile and said to Vladimir, “In forty minutes, everything will be gone. These are New Yorkers. Greedy bastards, every one of them. If they get their fingers on my properties, you can beat and torture me all you want. You’ll never pry them back.”
“Maybe we’ll just go to the hotel and kill this Eugene man,” Vladimir suggested, his preferred course for solving problems.
“That would be stupid. It won’t make a difference,” Alex told him. “Copies of all the contracts are with his partners in New York. In fact, they’ll appreciate it. One less partner means more for them.”
Vladimir nodded. Made sense.
“Also,” Alex confided, sounding like an afterthought, a small, insignificant detail that meant nothing, “once I sign Eugene’s contracts another three hundred million dollars will be electronically transferred to my investment bank.”
“What?” Katya asked, suddenly hanging on every word.
“You heard me. When I sign the contract, Eugene and his investors will immediately wire-transfer their funds into my investment bank. Three hundred million American dollars. Cold cash.”
Vladimir licked his lips and looked at Katya. Both were struggling to maintain the pretense that they were still in control. And both were clearly rattled and looking for a way out. When Golitsin learned about this, he would throw a tantrum of monumental proportions. But if they didn’t call him and Konevitch’s companies and properties slipped out of their fingers—much less losing the possibility of three hundred million more, in cash—well, neither of them wanted to think about what he would do to them. It would be horrible and slow, they both knew.
An unspoken signal passed, Vladimir removed the knife from Elena’s throat, stepped out of the room, flipped open his clunky satphone, and dialed Golitsin.
“Why are you calling?” Golitsin asked with a ring of hope in his voice. “Is it done? Did he sign over the properties?”
“No. And now there is a new glitch,” Vladimir replied, then quickly recounted the problem.
The moment he finished, Golitsin asked, “Is he telling the truth?”
“How would I know? The lawyer says it makes sense. Capitalists don’t trust each other. What’s new?”
Vladimir stopped talking and allowed this to sink in. He had done the smart thing, he decided; he had booted the problem upstairs. They would get only one chance at this, one shot at becoming unimaginably rich; just one shot at the biggest heist in Russian history. And Golitsin had done excruciating planning for every eventuality, had plotted and surmised and second-guessed every conceivable scenario—except this.
Golitsin knew what Vladimir was doing. But he wasn’t at all sure what Konevitch was up to. Was this a trick? Did Konevitch have something up his sleeve?
On the other hand, another cool three hundred million in cash was there for the taking. Three hundred million!
Golitsin rolled that delicious number around his head. He spent a long moment relishing the new possibilities. In one swift swoop the overall take would nearly double. Better yet, this was cold cash, fluid money available for spending on fast cars, big homes, a sumptuous yacht, even a private jet—whatever his heart desired.
And the idea of ripping off a horde of greedy New Yorkers appealed to him mightily. He could hear their anguished howls when they learned their money was gone, stolen. Suddenly he could think of little else.
Eventually Golitsin said what needed to be said. “Take him to the hotel. And make sure he signs the contract.” He thought about the extra three hundred million, and with palpable excitement added, “This is better. Much better. I can badly use that much cash.”
“Yes, couldn’t we all.”
Golitsin didn’t like the message but he absorbed it. “Pull this off, it will also mean another two hundred thousand for you. How many people do you and Katya have available?”
“Eight here, more than enough.”
“He’s a financial genius,” Golitsin reasoned, as much to his listener as himself. “But he can’t spell escape and evasion. A complete amateur.”
“He doesn’t worry me,” Vladimir replied, bubbling with confidence. “Nabbing him was child’s play. Besides, after his beating, he can barely walk.”
“Still, if he does one thing wrong… if he even looks suspicious, kill the wife.”
The doctor was rushed back into the room to hastily clean up Alex and make him presentable for the rich boy from New York. A relative term, of course—though Vladimir’s blows had mostly been spent on Alex’s body, there was a nasty open gash on his forehead, a broken nose, various welts, and some ugly swelling on his face. Six swiftly applied butterfly sutures took care of the nasty gash and a bandage was slapped on to hide it. The other wounds were wiped with medicinal alcohol and, where necessary, also bandaged. “Tell him you were in a car accident,” Katya ordered Alex, again proving she was the smart one, the one to be watched. “You’ve been in the hospital getting checked out.”
“All right.”
Vladimir leaned in close and warned, “We’ll be in the restaurant watching, close and personal. One false move… if I just become slightly bothered by the look in your eyes, your pretty wife dies.”
“But if I sign the contract and everything goes fine, Elena and I will live. We’re free to go. Right?”
“Yes, that’s the deal,” Vladimir said, dripping phony sincerity.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” asked Alex. Of course, they were lying. They would take his money, his companies, his homes and cars, then kill the both of them.
“What choice do you have?”
The doctor was slathering a gooey yellow ointment on Alex’s chest, a light analgesic. The burn went deep and covered nearly his whole upper left chest. It was raw, already blistering. It would be days before the wound scabbed over and the open nerve tissue was protected. Once they put a shirt on Alex, the material would rub and the pain would be serious. The doctor ordered Alex, “Stand up. Let’s see if your leg works.”
Alex slowly pushed himself off the gurney. He emitted a sharp yelp as he moved his dislocated left shoulder and stretched the tender skin around the burn. He put his left foot down on the hard floor, followed, more gingerly, by his right. A spike of pain from his right leg, where Vladimir had pounded it with a wooden chair, shot like a thousand-volt current instantly to his brain. A strangled gasp and he nearly collapsed. He would’ve collapsed except he focused on one overriding thought, one unyielding imperative: there would be no second chance, no do-overs. This was it. Get through it, whatever it took. Swallow the pain, don’t let this opportunity slip away, he repeated to himself, over and over.
A man hauled in Alex’s overnight bag, unzipped it, withdrew the spare fresh shirt and suit Alex had packed, and lazily tossed them on the gurney. “Get dressed,” Vladimir ordered. “Hurry.”
The doctor handed Alex a fistful of ibuprofen along with a bottled water, then instructed Alex to swallow them, all of them. Vladimir informed Alex, “Your wife will stay in the car in front of the hotel. She’s our insurance. If I give the word, the boys will give her a Bulgarian necktie. Know what that is?”
Alex shook his head. It didn’t sound pleasant.
Vladimir answered with a wicked laugh, “They’ll slice her throat open and pull her tongue through the hole.”
“That would be a big mistake,” Alex said, swallowing his anger and carefully slipping a white dress shirt over his damaged shoulder. “I mean separating us. She has to be with me.”
“Do you think we’re stupid?” Katya asked.
Yes, he most certainly did. Stupid, crude, and impossibly cruel. But also, as he had just learned, afraid to make a move without instructions from their boss, who presumably was back in Moscow. But instead of saying that, Alex replied, “No, you’re obviously quite smart. You’re overlooking something, though.”
“Are we?” Vladimir snarled.
“Think about it. Eugene’s expecting Elena to accompany me. If I walk in, looking like I look—without Elena—he’ll know something’s wrong.”
“So what?”
“A legally binding contract depends on both parties being of sound mind and operating of their own free will. People don’t get rich being sloppy or stupid. And Eugene is a very, very shrewd and rich man. A flawed contract is worthless. If he suspects I’m under duress, or that something’s not right, he’ll balk.” Alex looked pointedly at Katya, the good cop. “Three hundred million dollars will go out the door with him.”
“Just tell him she was also injured and still in the hospital,” said the lawyer, deciding to throw in his two cents. Suddenly, he was Mr. Big Shot, brimming with brilliance.
“What an idiotic suggestion,” Alex said with a withering stare in the direction of the shyster. “I’d leave Elena seriously injured, in a hospital, just to attend to a business deal?”
“Sure,” Vladimir replied, totally clueless. Why not? What husband wouldn’t neglect his wife for money? “I don’t see the problem.”
“Because he’ll know I’m lying. And he’ll naturally ask why I didn’t just invite him to join me at the hospital to sign these contracts.”
They were all looking at one another. Nobody liked this idea. Really, though, what difference did it make? On second thought, it might in fact be even better. Just as easy to grease her in the restaurant as carve her throat in a car idling outside: it simplified things, really. With only eight gunmen, far easier to keep an eye on the couple together than split up.
Besides, with his beloved wife beside him, Konevitch would remember exactly what was at stake in the event he was tempted to try any funny business. Reminders were always helpful.
“And we need to carry our bags with us,” Alex added, awkwardly knotting his tie with his one usable arm.
Vladimir kicked the base of the table. “Not happening,” he snorted.
“Think again. Eugene knows we haven’t checked into the hotel yet. I assume you want this to work. We need to look like we’ve just arrived.”
“Think you’re smart, don’t you?” Vladimir replied, with a mean grin as he held up two tiny red booklets. “Go ahead, bring the bags. I’ve got your passports and your wallets. You won’t escape, and you can’t get out of Hungary, no matter what. But even if you do, we’ll hunt you down and there won’t be a second chance.”
“I want this to work just as much as you. Probably more. I want to live,” Alex assured him. “And three hundred million is a lot of money,” he reminded him, as if anybody had forgotten, as if anybody could.
