The Hunted (48 page)

There was one question left for her to ask, one dark mystery to solve. “But Konevitch could be guilty, couldn’t he, Petri?”

“You know the golden rule of my old KGB section?”

She forced herself to stare into his dark, sad eyes, to hear the wisdom of a soul soiled and ruined long before they ever
met.

“Never frame a guilty man.”

The first run at Alex Konevitch came shortly after sunrise. It came three weeks to the day after he stepped out of the dark
prison van in Yuma. It came in a large sweltering room filled with sweaty men, less than a minute after Alex loaded his tray
with his usual selection of soggy French toast and watery scrambled eggs, only seconds after he sat in his usual seat, at
his usual table.

The offer had been smuggled in to the Russians a week before by a balding, nervous-looking guard named Tim. A double divorcé
drowning under a serious gambling addiction, Tim owed his bookie, Marty, five thousand bucks after a sure-thing pony did the
big choke on the backstretch. Before he placed the bet, Tim had vaguely wondered if his bookie had mob connections. Good guess.
Turned out Anthony “the Crusher” Cardozzi was Marty’s second cousin, a lifelong business associate, and quite serious about
men honoring their debts. A month overdue on his vig, Tim now was seriously wondering if his state medical insurance would
cover the destruction. Thus, when Marty relayed the offer—a favor for a friend, Marty intimated—Tim almost suffocated with
relief.

Five thousand bucks forgiven, and two perfectly functional kneecaps—incredible generosity, just for delivering a simple message.
Sure, no problem, Tim replied, vowing to give up gambling, and knowing he wouldn’t.

The offer ignited a bitter quarrel among the Russians. Day to day a loose-knit group, they were bound by two common traits—they
all spoke Russian, and all had ties of one sort or another to the Russian underworld. The big question—indeed, the only question—was,
who would get first crack at Alex Konevitch?

After two days of passing increasingly malicious notes back and forth, the Russians gathered in a tight swarthy huddle in
a remote corner of the yard to discuss the offer—a cool half million to whomever killed him within thirty days, declining
in value with each passing month. They spoke in Russian, and they sparred loudly and heatedly, with no concern at all about
being overheard.

The sooner the better—this point seemed elemental and was quickly agreed among the ten men. Why wait and waste a hundred grand?
Point two was almost as easily settled—the first crack would be their best shot. Catch Konevitch before he knew of their intention
to kill him. Catch him before he had his guard up. Catch him at his most vulnerable.

If that flopped, future efforts would become increasingly difficult.

The experienced hit men raucously laid claim to the honor. The killing game wasn’t as easy as it seemed, one explained, and
the other killers nodded with great gravity and solemn agreement. An amateur making his first plunge was likely to do something
unfathomably stupid. Two of the veterans confessed how they had choked on their first jobs. Seemingly insignificant details
that suddenly ballooned into big problems. A wrong glance here, a careless stutter there, that alerted the target. A case
of last-minute jitters that turned paralytic. A lot could go wrong, and often did.

The thieves and pushers and kidnappers weren’t buying it. What was so hard? Bring something sharp, pick a vital organ, and
poke it. No problem, as easy as cutting steak. The bickering intensified and verged on violence, before Igor, a clever accountant
with a talent for money laundering, came to the rescue with a way to buy peace. One hundred grand from the bounty would be
carved off and split among the nine Russians who didn’t get to stab a hole in Alex.

Everybody wanted to argue about this for a while, but the compromise was irresistible, and inevitably accepted.

Now everybody benefited. And now everybody had a stake in doing it right.

Thus the lottery rapidly whittled down to four. Three had made a handsome living on the outside, killing people. Number four
was a blowhard who loudly proclaimed two murders and launched into vulgar, descriptive bragging about his handiwork. They
suspected he was lying, and they were right. Nobody could prove it, though; thus he had a tenuous, shaky seat at the table.
But having settled on this logic, it was a short bounce to the next argument.

To nobody’s surprise, this proposal came from the lips of Lev Titov, hands down the most productive killer in the group, if
not the entire prison. It was plain common sense, Lev argued—the one with the most scalps on his belt should have the first
shot. Having jumped off to an early start, at age fourteen, fulfilling every schoolboy’s dream by strangling his math teacher,
Lev went on to compile an impressive pedigree of homicides. He was legendary among certain circles, a remorseless assassin
who killed without flair or even a telltale method. He had slain for himself, for the Russian army, for the Mafiya, and occasionally,
when his short fuse got the better of him, for the hell of it. He was fussy and painstaking, and able to murder with a bewildering
variety of weapons, from a deck of cards to sophisticated bombs. He once killed a man he suspected of cheating at chess by
stuffing the checkmated king down his throat. Unpredictability and a certain amount of messiness were his only signatures.

A quick show of hands. Eight for. One puzzling abstention. Only the blowhard against.

Lev was the man.

One hundred grand would be split nine ways; the other four hundred would go into an account of Lev’s choosing. A man who smiled
rarely, Lev could not wipe the grin off his face. With seven years left on his sentence, he could at least look forward to
a little gold at the end of the rainbow.

And so it was that at the moment Alex placed his tray on the table and casually fell onto the hard metal bench, Lev never
even turned around. Why bother? After watching and studying his target for four days, he could write a book on Alex’s culinary
habits. He knew Alex would quietly sip his lukewarm coffee and wait for his big cellmate. Alex liked eggs, his cellmate adored
French toast. It was a routine they shared, like an old married couple. The roommate would pour and scrape his runny eggs
onto Alex’s tray, and the French toast would land on the big guy’s before they launched into their breakfasts.

The other nine Russians were strategically situated in a rough concentric pattern, precisely in accordance with the neat diagram
Lev had meticulously sketched and handed out. Lev raised a clenched fist to signal the start. Immediately the other nine launched
their trays in the air, then began indiscriminately pummeling every prisoner within reach. In a claustrophobic chamber filled
with sweaty, grumpy men with a strong penchant toward violence, the spark was volcanic, the result horrific. It opened with
an artillery duel of hundreds of hurled trays. Then four hundred men commenced an orgy of punching, kicking, tackling, biting,
hollering, shoving, and general havoc.

Lev, seated almost directly to Alex’s rear, watched with quiet amusement. He wouldn’t budge until the riot approached full
pitch. The sudden shift from order to madness overwhelmed the guards, who shuffled their feet and watched helplessly from
the sidelines. From past riots, Lev knew he had three minutes before reinforcements equipped with batons and riot gear arrived
to break up the fun.

Lev slowly stood and stretched. He drew a deep breath and steeled his nerves. From his right pant pocket he withdrew a ten-inch
shaft, a masterpiece of lethal perfection he had lovingly honed in the prison shop. The tip was pointy as a pin. Edges that
could shave a baby’s ass. The hilt was attractively bound in a coarse, fingerprint-resistant cotton fabric, a throwaway tool,
a stab-and-leave-it special. And because of the commotion, a fast, quiet stabbing would be lost in the sea of violence. The
odds of witnesses were about nil; the odds anyone would snitch on Lev even less.

Lev eased away from his table and through a series of short, stealthy steps quickly closed the seven feet to Alex. His target
was standing now, back turned to Lev, thoroughly fixated on the raucous festivities, totally oblivious that this little party
was all about him. Lev gripped the knife low. An upward thrust would be best, he promptly decided—up though the rib cage,
then straight for the heart, or lungs.

But just as the blade was swinging up, something hard and powerful banged Lev’s forearm. A nasty cracking sound, and the arm
snapped. The shiv popped out of his fist and was instantly lost in the wild scuffle of feet. The county coroner would later
note that Lev’s radius and ulna bones had both snapped and shattered. Simultaneous breaks with lots of splinters. A blow from
a sledgehammer might account for it. A one-in-a-million kick from one of those big-time karate guys was another possibility.

One thing was sure—the force had been a ten on the Richter scale.

Lev yelped with pain and barely had to time to look to his left. A defense of any kind was out of the question anyway. A giant
with frightening speed and gargantuan hands lifted him off the floor by his head. A quick jerk to the right, another snapping
noise, Lev’s neck this time, and he dropped to the floor like a discarded sack of disconnected bones.

His body was jerking involuntarily but Lev didn’t feel a thing. No pain, no tingling, not even a mild sense of relief as his
bowels and bladder emptied.

The big man was leaning over him, looking down into his eyes. “Hey, Alex,” the man asked over his shoulder, “know this guy?”

“I’ve never seen him before.”

“He knows you, for damn sure. He was about to shiv you.”

In Russian, Lev managed to croak, “Call a doctor.”

The big man looked bewildered. “What?”

Alex eased the big man aside and bent down until his face was two inches from Lev’s. “Who are you?” he asked, also in Russian.

“Call a doctor. Please. My body’s not working.”

“Give me your name.”

“Can’t breathe,” he managed to gasp, and he was right. His spinal cord was severed; his face was turning bluer by the second
as spinal shock settled in. “Hurry.”

“Why me?” Alex asked.

“Money,” Lev confessed.

“From who?” Alex asked, not budging, not making the slightest move to save him.

“I…” Lev tried to force a breath, but his lungs no longer functioned. “No idea.”

The big man tugged at Alex’s arm. “Let’s go. Don’t be standing here when the guards come.”

“One last question,” Alex promised the big man, then, staring into Lev’s dying eyes, asked, “Are there more of you?”

Lev did not answer. The final act of his miserable life would not include snitching on his colleagues. He would not give Konevitch
the satisfaction.

It was in his eyes, though.

Oh yes, there were definitely more killers out there.

They waited until they were back in the privacy of their small cell before either said a word. They sat on the lower bunk,
kicked off their shoes, and pretended for a moment that it had never happened. Benny had not just killed a man. Nobody was
trying to execute Alex. Life was every bit as good as it was yesterday, and tomorrow would be the same.

Eventually, Alex started it off. “Benny, I owe you my life.”

“Just protecting my investment,” Bitchy grunted as though it was nothing. His face betrayed him; he was obviously quite pleased.

“How did you know?”

“Oh, that. Well, the riot. There’s usually one before a killing in here.”

“I meant how did you know I was his target?”

“Didn’t, necessarily. Protecting my quarterback in large mobs is how I make my living. You get an eye, or you don’t get a
contract. Who was that guy?”

“A Russian. I never met him.”

“Why’d he want to shiv you?”

“Money, Benny—somebody put a bounty on me.”

“A big one?”

“Quite large, probably.”

“That’s not good.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Any idea who’s fronting the cash?”

“A very good idea, yes.”

“Can you make them back off?”

“Sure, after I’m dead.”

“Anyone else know?”

“I have that impression. The boys who started the riot, for sure.”

They pondered the walls for a moment. Benny obviously was wondering what he had gotten himself into, hooked up with a Russian
with a sumptuous bounty on his head. And Alex, just as obviously, was analyzing the same issue. How had the Russians found
him? After a moment, that question answered itself. Somebody in the U.S. government had tipped them off; no other possibility
made sense. But why now? And why here, in this miserable excuse for a prison? He was incarcerated, awaiting trial. In all
likelihood, his next date with a judge would be followed by a quick trip to Russia. He posed absolutely no threat—or none
they should know about, anyway.

Wait a few more months, and they could kill him at their leisure, in Moscow, in a small cell, in the prison of their choice.
Kill him however they wanted, slow or fast, where nobody would ask questions later. So why now?

Benny broke the prolonged silence. “Will they try again?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I should find another cellmate.”

“Good idea. I won’t hold it against you.”

Another moment of quiet passed. Alex studied his bare toes. Bitchy stood up, stretched, and produced a loud yawn.

“Thing is, Alex, you’re trapped in here with these guys,” Benny said, stretching his immense arms over his big head. “You
can hide for 364 days, and on the 365th they catch you alone, in the shower, on the john, walking out of a meeting with your
lawyer. That’s it, game over.” Then, as if Alex wasn’t listening, “It’s too easy.”

“I’m already scared out of my wits, Benny. Thanks for making me hopeless.”

“Just thought you should know.”

“Now I know.”

By 9:00 p.m. that same night, when Kim and Petri finally were allowed into the power chamber, the inquisitors were already
settled comfortably in their chairs. After spending thirty minutes crashing in quiet huddles about how to manhandle an unruly
INS attorney who was threatening mutiny, they had reached a decision.