The Hunted (11 page)

Alex was a rich, seriously important man, a celebrity back home, a big-time FOB—Friend of Boris. For sure, the Hungarians
would not welcome the diplomatic noise and ugly publicity his disappearance would almost certainly ignite. A citywide manhunt
would undoubtedly be initiated. The police would scour the airport for any witnesses who might have noticed anything. The
Konevitches were an attractive couple and quite noticeable. Who knew what the cops might turn up?

His last report from that sicko freak Vladimir indicated he would need another hour to close the deal. Then another hour or
two after that to tie up the nasty details like disposing of Alex’s and Elena’s corpses somewhere they would never be found.
They would simply disappear and Golitsin would fuel rumors around Moscow that Konevitch had embezzled money from his own bank
and eloped with it into nowhere. A brilliant plan, really, since Golitsin would embezzle the money himself, many, many millions,
with dead Alex as his foolproof cover.

His bluff been called, though. Americans! The greediest, pushiest bastards on earth. No, the one on the other end wasn’t going
to let him off the hook. And too much was at stake for this to be mishandled at this stage.

“Do not call me a liar,” Golitsin pushed back in his most threatening voice. “I am merely telling you what Alex told me. I’ll
call him again if you insist.”

Eugene thought to himself: This guy is trying to jerk me off. He suggested, “Don’t bother. Give me the number, I’ll call and
I’ll speak with him.”

“He told me he was not to be disturbed. He was very firm on this. No matter what.”

“Fine. Why don’t I just call the cops?”

“Don’t. It would cause a public mess, an embarrassment. Alex would be most upset.”

“Then have him call me. Five minutes or I’m on the phone to the locals.” Without waiting for a reply, Eugene punched off,
checked his watch, and ordered another beer from the buxom young waitress with the comely smile.

Maria was upstairs in the hotel suite, pouting and packing. Sometime during the middle of his sixth beer, Eugene had lost
his temper and poured out his resentment on her. She had gotten fired up, replied in kind, and stormed off in a huff, threatening
a divorce that would make the last three look like pleasant skirmishes.

Vladimir was just getting ready to hand Mrs. Konevitch over to the boys in the back when the clunky satellite phone on his
waist began bleating. Every step that would lead to Konevitch’s capitulation had been plotted well in advance by Vladimir,
personally. He was quite proud of his plan. He intended to let the boys have her as a plaything for an hour, and had encouraged
them to do whatever they liked, as long as it produced plenty of screams and was not fatal. Konevitch would be forced to suffer
the anguish of blindly listening to her shrieks and howls, knowing his own stubbornness was the cause; then she would be brought
back in and tortured before his own eyes.

Vladimir hated to have his work interrupted, but the obnoxious satphone on his waist wouldn’t quit. He uttered a loud curse,
answered, listened for a moment, then stepped out of the room, away from prying ears, for this conversation.

“No,” he told Golitsin in a reproachful tone, “not yet. Just say we’re at the critical stage. You’re interrupting progress.”

“How long?” Golitsin hissed.

“Hard to say. He was really shaken when I told him we wanted everything. He thought it was only money. What a shock. You would’ve
loved the look in his eyes when I told him what this was really about.”

Golitsin was indeed very sorry he missed it. “Are we talking hours or minutes?”

Vladimir paused to consider this delicate question. Alex Konevitch had been horribly beaten, branded, and put under mind-crushing
stress. With his considerable experience in these matters Vladimir prided himself on knowing his victims and their breaking
points. Konevitch was tougher than most—probably too stubborn for his own good. Given five hours Vladimir could break anybody—make
them plead and beg and roll over like dogs. That now was out of the question.

Then so be it; time to skip a few steps and accelerate the action. The boys in the back would have to wait their turn; his
pretty little wife was about to get her leading role in the drama. Vladimir relished that thought, but her treatment would
have to be paced just right. Too fast, and Alex would become enraged and dig in his heels. The emotional line between fury
and surrender was brittle, and Vladimir had to calibrate, nudge, and terrorize Konevitch in just the right direction, at just
the right speed. Of course he would be angry, initially. He would put up his best front, would threaten and spit and yell
profanities. But this was his wife’s pain and degradation; ultimately, he would end up desperate, utterly helpless, and would
cave in to every demand Vladimir imposed on him.

Yes, it had to be slow and quite horrible.

Then Alex would confront his only real choice: what was left of his wife, or his fortune and companies. “Three hours,” Vladimir
replied, very firmly. “With luck, two.”

Golitsin exploded into the phone, calling Vladimir everything from incompetent to a moron. Vladimir pushed the phone away
from his ear and let him vent and fume and spew whatever filthy invective he wanted. For a year now he had had to put up with
the old man’s abuse and derision. He was sorely tired of it and tried his best to ignore this latest diatribe. How tempted
he was to just tell the old man to screw off. He eventually placed the phone back to his ear, smiled to himself, and said,
“Maybe you want to come here and do it yourself.”

“I don’t like your impertinence,” Golitsin barked back.

“Nobody ever does.” He paused for a moment, then insisted, “Two, maybe three hours.”

“That won’t do.”

“Fine. What will do?”

Golitsin explained the problem in rapid-fire fashion and Vladimir listened. Golitsin eventually asked, “Can you have him call
this Eugene man and make up an excuse? He’s a dangerous pest. Get rid of him.”

“Give me the number,” Vladimir confidently replied, then wrote it down. “If Konevitch says one wrong word, his wife dies.
You understand the risks, though.”

“No, tell me.”

“If I have to kill her, we lose an irreplaceable leverage.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way without her.”

“Right now his mind is on one thing, and one thing only. His own misery. Relieve him of that thought, even for a brief moment,
and I might have to start over.”

“You mean… beat and torture him again?”

“Almost from the beginning.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

The straps and belts were quickly unfastened, Alex was helped to sit up, and Katya positioned the cell phone by his ear; her
forefinger hovered tensely over the disconnect button. His instructions and options had been explicitly and cruelly explained.
“Make this man go away, or else,” Vladimir had informed him. To help him comprehend the “or else,” Vladimir placed a big knife
against Elena’s throat, poised on her jugular for a lethal slice.

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.”