August 1993 The first team picked him up the moment he and his wife raced out the metal gate of their housing compound and stepped on the gas toward Sheremetyevo Airport. As usual, whenever the couple traveled around Moscow, a car with flashing blue lights rode in front, the shiny black armored Mercedes sedan was tucked securely in the middle, and a third car filled with heavily armed guards brought up the rear.
They followed at a discreet distance in a beaten-up rusted Lada sedan that blended in wonderfully, since it looked like all the other wretched junkheaps roaring around the streets of Moscow.
A totally excessive precaution, really. The plane tickets for the couple had been booked electronically; they knew the flight number, the departure time, his and her seat numbers, where they were going, and how long they planned to stay.
Why he was going wasn't in their briefing; nor did it matter, nor did they care. They knew why they were following him.
That's what mattered; all that mattered.
He and the Mrs. were booked in first-class side-by-side seats, and were picked up by a fresh team the instant they cleared customs and stepped onto the plane. Within moments after falling into their plush reclining seats, they ordered two flutes of bubbly and held hands as they sipped and chatted. A lovely couple, the second trail team agreed.
This new team, one male, one female, was positioned ten rows back, squished into cramped economy seats selected for the excellent view it gave them of their target. Nobody in first class ever glanced back at the deprived unfortunates in cattle class. Detection really wasn't an issue, but they worried about it anyway, and took every precaution possible. They munched on dried-out prunes, sipped bottled water, stayed quiet, and watched.
Another precaution that was totally useless, really. Wasn't like their targets could escape, flying twenty thousand feet above the earth, racing along at five hundred miles per hour.
Besides, a third team, much larger, about eight or ten people, would be in position an hour before landing at Ferihegy Airport outside Budapest.
Tedious work, but the watchers were professionals and never relaxed. They patiently spent their time hoarding mental notes that might come in handy later. Despite all the careful planning, rehearsals, and precautions, you never knew.
He, Alex Konevitch, was dressed in a superbly cut two-piece blue wool suit, obviously imported, probably from England, and just as obviously expensive. She, his wife, Elena, wore a lovely black wool pantsuit, also superbly tailored and definitely more expensive than his. From one of those faggy, la-di-da European design houses, they guessed, but the his-and-hers fancy rags were a big tactical mistake on their part. Russians and East Europeans in general are notoriously awful dressers and it set the couple apart.
After studying countless photographs of him, they agreed his likeness was a perfect match; he would be impossible to lose or misplace. His unusual height also worked heavily in their favor; even in the densest crowd, he would stick out.
No pictures of her were included in their file-a sloppy oversight in their professional judgment. What if the couple split up? What if they took separate cabs, he to his business meeting, and she maybe to a local plaza for a little noodling through stores?
They therefore focused mostly on her, collecting useful mental notes of her appearance, her distinguishing features. About his age, they estimated-possibly twenty-two, more likely twenty-four-though vastly shorter than him. Shoulder-length blonde hair, casually brushed, light on the makeup, and she really didn't need any, they both agreed. Delicious blue eyes, large, innocently doe-like, with a slightly upturned nose, and nice figure, but a little on the skinny side, in their view. All in all, though, a sweet number, very pretty, very sexy-and best of all, very difficult to miss.
They had been told little about her. Perhaps because little was known or maybe because her background was irrelevant. Why did they care?
She was with him.
That was the key.
Thirty minutes into the flight, he extended his lounger chair, unbuttoned his collar, loosened his tie, then dozed off. She handed the stewardess a few American dollars, plugged in her earphones, and intently watched a subtitled American action movie about an airplane hijacking, of all things.
He awoke from the siesta an hour later, refreshed, ready to dig in. He turned down an offer for a meal, withdrew a thick ream of papers from his briefcase, and got down to work. The file said he was a workaholic, driven, focused, and greedy. Looked about right.
But somewhere on this flight, they were almost certain, lurked a bodyguard. Possibly two, but no more than two: of this they were nearly certain. Alex Konevitch's life was in perpetual danger in Moscow, where it was open season on bankers, entrepreneurs, and rich businessmen. Nearly seven hundred had been whacked, bombed, or kidnapped that year alone, and there were still four months to go.
But the Wild East was behind him now; or so he believed. He would relax his precautions, as he always did when he left Mother Russia in the dust. And besides, Alex Konevitch, they had been confidently informed by their employer, regarded large bodyguard detachments as distasteful, ostentatious, and worse-bad for business. A large flock of elephant-necked thugs tended to upset the Western investors and corporate types he dealt with.
But somewhere on this flight, they were quite sure, a bodyguard or bodyguards were seated, like them, calm and unobtrusive, waiting and watching. They held out little hope of detecting them, at least during the flight; these boys came from a well-heeled foreign private outfit with a first-class reputation, mostly former intelligence and police types who got paid big bucks not to make stupid mistakes. But the dismal odds aside, they were ordered to give it their best shot anyway; maybe they'd catch a lucky break. They agreed beforehand to look for anybody staring a little too possessively at Alex and his pretty little Mrs.
So the couple traded turns making idle passes through the cabin, trolling back and forth, mostly to the toilets. There were a few young men with tough faces and thick, muscular builds, but that seemed abnormally conspicuous for an elite security firm that loudly advertised its discreetness and invisibility.
At least the bodyguards wouldn't be armed; they were sure of this. Smuggling a weapon through a Russian airport was absurdly difficult. And detection would cause a public mess, the last thing a prestigious, supposedly ethical firm needed or wanted. No, they wouldn't be that stupid.
Besides, why risk getting caught when a better alternative was available?
Far easier to have somebody meet them in Budapest and discreetly hand over the heavy artillery. On August 19, 1991, the old boys had their last desperate fling at preserving an empire hanging by its fingernails. Gorby, who had wrought so much damage with his flailing attempts at reform, was vacationing at his Black Sea resort when a clutch of rough-looking KGB officers stormed the building and took him hostage. In Moscow, a cabal including his chief of staff, vice president, prime minister, minister of defense, and KGB chairman promptly seized the organs of government.
A few thousand troops were rushed to the capital, the state television stations were seized, and water reservoirs secured; heavily armed guards were posted in front of food distribution centers to ensure a stranglehold on the city population. Tanks were littered at strategic intersections around the government section of the city-the usual signs of a beerhall putsch in progress.
Next, the cabal convened a hasty televised press conference to introduce themselves as the saviors of communism and the union. It was a disaster. They were wrinkled, sclerotic old men, unpleasant, nasty, and afraid. And it showed. Their hands trembled, their voices quivered and shook, no facial expression registered above a fierce scowl.
Never before had they smiled at their people: why start now?
Worst of all, they appeared disorganized, feeble, nervous, and ancient-as impressions go, at that precarious, decisive moment, the wrong one to convey to a fractious, anxious nation.
To say it was a glorious gift to Boris Yeltsin, a born opportunist and addicted rabble-rouser, would be an understatement. He rallied a band of fellow flamethrowers and issued a call for all Russians to join together and battle for their freedom. A large, unruly mob flocked to the Russian Congress building, heckling and chanting and daring the men who led the coup to do something about them. The cabal had been supremely confident their good citizens would respond in the best Soviet tradition-like scared, obedient sheep. The combative show of opposition caught the old boys totally by surprise.
Half argued strenuously to slaughter the whole bunch and hang their bodies from lampposts. A fine example, a paternal warning and long overdue, too. That wet noodle Gorby had been a sorry mollycoddler. The nation had grown soft and spoiled, they insisted; a good massacre was exactly the paternal medicine needed to whip it back in shape. The more dead wimps the better.
The other half wondered if a bloody spectacle might incite a larger rebellion. They weren't morally opposed by any means. In Lenin's hallowed words, as one of them kept repeating, as if anybody needed to hear it, omelets required broken eggs. But the nation had grown a little moody toward tyrants, they cautioned. The wrong move at this brittle time and they, too, might end up swinging on lampposts. Ignore the mob, they argued; in a day or two, at the outside, the crowd would grow bored and hungry and melt into the night.
Agreement proved impossible. Kill them or ignore them? Stomp them like rodents or wait them out? The old men were cleanly divided in their opinions, so they sat and squabbled in their gilded Kremlin offices, brawling and cursing one another, drinking heavily, collectively overwhelmed by the power they had stolen.
For two sleepless days the world held its breath and watched. Boris's protestors turned rowdier and more daring by the hour. They constructed signs. They howled protest chants and hurled nasty taunts at the security guards sent to control them. They erected camps, stockpiled food, heckled and sang, and prepared to stay for the duration; the coup leaders argued more tumultuously and drank more heavily.
Despite serious attempts to scare away the press, a small pesky army of reporters had infiltrated the mob and was broadcasting the whole infuriating standoff via satellite, smuggling out photographs and earning Pulitzers by the carton. The whole mess was on display, in living color for the entire globe to see.
Yeltsin adored the spotlight, and was almost giddy at having all the world as his stage. Televisions were kept on in the Kremlin offices 24/7. The old boys were forced to sit and watch as Boris-miraculously sober for once-pranced repeatedly in front of the cameras, calling them all has-beens and wannabe tyrants, threatening to run them out of town. That clown was thumbing his nose and shooting the bird at them.
For an empire in which terror was oxygen, it was humiliating; worse, it was dangerous.
On the third day the old men had had enough. They ordered the tanks to move, scatter the rabble, and crush ol' Boris. But after three hapless protestors were mowed down, the army lost its stomach. As miscalculations go, it was a horrible one. Should've sent in the ruffians from the KGB, they realized, a little sad, a little late. Need a few bones snapped, a little blood spilled, the boys from the Lubyanka were only too happy to oblige. Soldiers, on the other hand, had no appetite for flattening their own defenseless citizens. A handful of disgusted generals threw their support behind Yeltsin. A full stampede ensued.
The coup leaders were marched off in handcuffs, tired, defeated, disgruntled old men who had bungled their last chance. And Yeltsin, caught in the flush of victory, sprinted to the cameras and declared a ban on the Communist Party: a bold gesture, the last rite for a rotten old system that had run its course. The crowd roared its approval. It was also insane, and shortly thereafter was followed by an equally shortsighted act: the complete dissolution of the Soviet Union.
With a few swipes of ink the immense empire fractured into more than a dozen different nations.
For seventy years, communism had been the ingrained order-the legal system, the governing system, the economic apparatus of the world's largest nation. Lazy, wonderfully corrupt, and spitefully inefficient as they were, its millions of servants and functionaries were the veins and arteries that braided the country together. They kept it functioning. They doled out the food and miserly paychecks, assigned housing, mismanaged the factories and farms, maintained public order, distributed goods and services, kept the trains running. A terrible, horribly flawed system, for sure. Nonetheless, it was, at least, a system.
Yeltsin had given little serious thought to what would replace it, or them. A few vague notions about democracy and a thriving free market rattled around his brain, nothing more. Apparently he assumed they would sprout helter-skelter from the fertile vacuum he created.
Worse, it quickly became apparent that Yeltsin, so brilliant at blasting the system to pieces, was clueless about gluing the wreckage back together. He was a revolutionary, a radical, a demolitionist extraordinaire. Like most of the breed, he had no talent for what came after the big bang.
But Alex Konevitch definitely did. By this point, Alex already had built a massive construction business, a sprawling network of brokerage houses to administer an arbitrage business that began with construction materials and swelled to the whole range of national commodities, and a Russian exchange bank to manage the exploding finances of his hungry businesses. Amazingly, every bit of it was accomplished under the repressive nose of the communist apparatus. Dodging the KGB and working in the shadows, somehow he had self-mastered the alchemy of finance and banking, of international business.
The nation was not at all prepared for its overnight lunge into capitalism. But Alex was not only ready he was hungry.
With killer instinct, he rushed in and applied for a license to exchange foreign currency. The existing licenses had been granted by the government of the Soviet Union; whatever permissions or licenses had been endowed by that bad memory were insolvent, not worth spit. Anyway, the spirit of the day was to privatize everything, to disassemble the suffocating state bureaucracy, to mimic the West.
After a swift investigation, it turned out Alex's banks were the only functioning institutions with adequate experience and trained executives, and with ample security to safeguard what promised to be billions in transactions. Not only was the license granted, Alex ended up with a monopoly-every dollar, every yen, every franc that came or left Russia moved through his exchange bank. Cash flooded through his vaults. Trainloads from every direction, from Western companies scrambling to set up businesses in the newly capitalist country, and from wealthy Russians pushing cash out, trying to dodge the tax collector and hide their illicit fortunes overseas.
Millions of fearful Russians lined up at the doors to park their savings in Alex's bank, which happily exchanged their shrinking rubles for stable dollars or yen or deutsche marks, whatever currency their heart desired, and let them ride out the storm.
Overnight, Alex and his senior executives were setting the national exchange rates for all foreign currencies. Heady power for a young man, not yet twenty-five years old. Also, quite happily, a gold mine.
Alex took a slice of every ruble shuttled one way or the other, only two percent, but as the mountain of cash approached billions, he scraped off millions. Then tens of millions.
He saw another rich possibility and promised twenty percent interest to any Russian willing to park their savings at his bank for one year. Reams of advertisements flooded every TV station in Russia. A striking female model was used for certain pitches. She wiggled her pliant shoulders and gyrated her sinewy hips, and in a seductive whisper purred that her boyfriend was a sexy genius: his money was earning interest. Who knew it only took a little interest to get laid? To appeal to a different segment, a handsomely aged couple stood against the backdrop of a decrepit wooden cottage and in tearful voices thanked Alex's bank for ensuring their retirement funds were not only safe but actually growing by the day. Then, flash a year forward in time, and the same old couple were shown climbing sprightly into their gleaming Mercedes sedan parked in front of a charming seaside dacha.
It was unheard of. No Soviet bank ever advertised. None offered interest, not a single kopeck. Wasn't it enough that they protected their customers' money? Why should any bank dish out the bucks for its own generosity?
The commercials were vulgar and the promise of interest bordered on criminal negligence, the Soviet-era bankers growled among themselves and to whatever reporter would listen to their gripes. But twenty percent? Okay, one or two percent, maybe; but twenty? Konevitch would pay dearly for his bluster-he'd be bankrupt before a month was out.
Millions more investors lined up at the door. Billions more rubles flooded in. Alex took the deluge and hedged and bet it all against the unstable ruble, then watched as inflation soared above a thousand percent. At the end of a year, the investors took their twenty percent cut and considered themselves lucky indeed; at least their life savings hadn't melted into half a kopeck as happened to millions of miserable others. The remainder of the spread went to Alex. Nearly ninety percent of every ruble in his savings bank was his to keep. He cleaned up.
And as the economy limped from one catastrophe to another, as the disasters piled up, Boris reached out desperately for help. At the president's insistence, a telephonic hotline was installed between Boris and his trusted whiz kid, who seemed to have this whole capitalism thing figured out. Late-night calls became routine. A single push of the red button and the president would rail about this problem or that, long, whiny diatribes fueled by staggering amounts of liquor. Alex was a cool, sober listener; also a quick study with a mathematician's lust for numbers.
Yeltsin had little background and even less appetite for financial matters; all the economic prattle bored him to tears. Alex would talk him through the latest disaster-boil it all down to simple language-propose a reasonable solution, and Boris would pounce on his cabinet the next morning, issue a few brusque instructions, and a total meltdown would be avoided, or at least postponed for another day. One night after a long rambling conversation about the evaporating foreign currency reserves, Yeltsin paused to catch his breath, then, seemingly out of the blue, asked Alex, "By the way, how's your house?"
"Nice. Very nice."
"Is it big?"
"Fairly large, yes. Why do you ask?"
"I heard it's huge."
"Okay, it is. Very, very big."
"How many bedrooms?"
"Six, I think. Maybe seven. Why?"
"Which is it, six or seven?"
"I honestly don't know. Could be ten for all I know. I've wandered through most of it, but there are rooms I've never seen. It was a wreck when I bought it, an old brick mansion constructed before 1917. According to local lore, it was built for a baron or maybe a wealthy factory owner to house his ten children. Poor guy. He was dragged out and executed by a Bolshevik firing squad three days after the last stud went in."
"Are you pulling my leg?"
"The bullet scars are still visible on the west side of the house. That adds a certain charm."
"And after that?"
"Well, I don't know about the early years. But the Ministry of Education owned it for decades. Occasionally it was used as a school for children of the elite, sometimes as a training center for school principals. Of course they neglected it disgracefully. The electrical wiring, even the plumbing had not been updated since it was built. The pipes were made of cast iron. Turn the spigot and chunky brown slush poured out."
"But you like it?"
Alex chuckled. "What's not to like?"
"You tell me," Boris replied.
"Not a thing. I used my own construction company to gut and rebuild with the best of everything. Voice-activated lighting, saunas in every bathroom, two mahogany-paneled elevators, the works. I even had an indoor pool installed, and a well-equipped gym. The attic is now a movie theater, twenty seats, with real popcorn machines and a ten-foot screen. A French chef and three servants live in the basement and take care of everything."
After a long moment, Yeltsin asked, in a suspiciously knowing tone, "And your wife, does she like it?"
"There are a few things she might like to change," Alex admitted, a loud understatement. Elena detested the house. He had bought and refurbished it before they met, a gift to himself after he made his first hundred million and regarded it as a neat way to pat himself on the back. A gay Paris decorator had been flown in and instructed to spare no expense. He did his best. He chartered a plane, flew around the world, slept in five-star hotels, loaded up on antiques from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He had drapes hand-sewn in Egypt, and furniture hand-manufactured by the best craftsmen in Korea.
As the bills piled up, Alex convinced himself that he wasn't being wasteful; it was a business expense, an unavoidable cost he couldn't do without. The big moneymen from Wall Street and Fleet Street and Frankfurt did not talk business with anybody not like themselves, prosperous enough to show it off.
The house was cavernous and every nook and cranny was saturated with grandeur. But Elena liked things simple and small enough that you didn't have to shout across the room at each other. She didn't care for servants, either; she was reared to do things herself, and that's how she preferred it. If she even thought about a cup of coffee, a silver urn appeared out of nowhere. The flock of hired help violated their privacy. They made her feel guilty and spoiled.
The mansion sat on the corner of two furiously busy Moscow streets, for another thing. Traffic and pedestrians were always pausing to gawk at the impressive old home, and occasionally littered the property with letters strewn with vile curses and filthy threats. In a city populated largely with impoverished former communists-their families and few belongings suffocating in six-hundred-square-foot apartments-the newly rich and their expansive indulgences were not viewed fondly.
Any day, Elena expected a flotilla of Molotov cocktails to sail through her window.
After enough hateful letters, Alex built a small guard shack out front and posted guards around the clock to chase away disgruntled tourists. But it was, quite spectacularly, a mansion and thus a magnet for the growing breed of Moscow criminals. After two attempted break-ins, another guard shack was erected, more guards were added to the rear of the house, one was posted on the roof, and enough state-of-the-art surveillance systems were sprinkled around to give a porn studio fits of envy.
Elena began calling their home "The Fortress," without affection. Still, there was no doubt the house continued to pose serious security issues and little could be done about it.
They had had discussions, Alex and Elena. Not arguments, but mild disputes that were never settled. Elena was increasingly distressed about Alex's safety. He was famous now-more truthfully, infamous-a poster child of the gold-digging opportunists who were raking it in while most Russians slapped extra locks on their doors to keep the bill collectors at bay.
And their house was right there, on the street! A bazooka fired from a passing car could blast them all to pieces.
But the place was perfect for Alex. His office was only five minutes away, on foot. He was working twenty-hour days, seven days a week. Seconds were precious, minutes priceless. And everything he needed was right here, a floor or two above, or a floor or two below: a gourmet feast at the snap of a finger, that superb gym for his morning conditioning, the heated pool to unwind in after a long day of shoving millions around.
Elena had been raised in the country. She loathed the city and all its appendages-senseless crime, roaring traffic, the ever-present noise, the reeking smell and pollution. Most of all, she hated that disgruntled people walked by and spat angry hawkers on her property. She longed for clean air, lush forests, long, private walks around her property.
Long walks without a squadron of beefy guards shepherding her every step.
"Why do you ask?" Alex finally said.
"I want you closer," Boris replied. "No, I need you closer."
"I'm only forty minutes away. Call and I'll drop everything."
"Nope, that won't work. One minute I worry about foreign currency reserves, the next I'm dreaming of ways to get my nuclear missiles back from Kazakhstan. I'm a very spontaneous person, Alex. I have the attention span of a horny Cossack. I think you know that."
"Yes, I know that. So send a fast helicopter for me, Mr. President. The army's not doing anything these days. I think they have enough of them, and their pilots need a workout. I'll even foot the gas bill. Twenty minutes flat from my doorstep to yours."
"Not fast enough."
"Then describe fast enough."
"I want to reach out and touch you. Besides, you've been very good to me. I owe you more than I can express. Do me a favor, let me pay some of it back."
"Just fix this damned country. Finish what you started. Believe me, I'll be more than delighted."
Yeltsin chuckled. "You'll be old and senile before anything works in this land. I'll be dead and buried, with throngs of people lining up to pee on my grave for causing all this chaos. I'm giving you a house, Alex."
"I have a house already. Didn't we just go over that?"
Yeltsin ignored him. "Not quite as garish as yours. But big, and believe me, you'll love this place. It's out here, in the country, inside the presidential compound. A mere two-minute walk from my quarters-one minute if you sprint, which I expect you to do if I call. A gym and indoor pool. Six servants, a chef, and-hey, you'll love this part-they have separate quarters outside the house."
The president paused to let his sales pitch sink in, then threw out a little more ammunition. "Here's the kicker, Alex. My presidential security detail guards the entire compound. Even with your money, you couldn't touch the kind of security these goons provide."
Alex chuckled. "Is that a challenge?" He could not say it, but he abhorred the idea of living in walking, or even sprinting, distance of Boris. The man drank and partied until four every morning, frothy bacchanalias that consumed enormous amounts of liquor. He was notoriously social by nature and regarded it as sinful to get tanked alone. The idea of being dragged into those late-night orgies was appalling.
Yeltsin chuckled as well, then a loud belly laugh. What was he saying? With all that wealth, Alex could probably buy half the Russian army; maybe all of it. After a moment the laughing stopped. "I'm serious, Alex. My economic advisors are all boring idiots. Even that bunch of Harvard professors who've camped out here to tell me how to build a capitalist paradise-just stuffier idiots."
"All right, replace them."
"You're not listening. I'm trying to."
But Alex was listening, very closely. A week before he and Elena had attended a dull state dinner to honor the visiting potentate of some country where, apparently, everybody was short and squat, with bad teeth, horrible breath, and nauseating table manners. After the usual tedious speeches about eternal brotherhood and blah, blah, blah-along with a seriously overcooked meal-the party shifted to the ballroom, where Yeltsin promptly invited Elena to dance.
Boris had an eye for the ladies and Elena in a baggy sweatsuit could snap necks. But attired as she was, in a gold-embossed scarlet gown, she nearly sucked the male air out of the ballroom. And of course, three-quarters of a lifetime of ballet training had made her a splendid dancer who knew how to make her partner look graceful and better than he was. Yeltsin and Elena laughed and chatted and whirled gaily around the floor. All eyes were on them-Fred and Ginger, cutting the rug. One dance turned into two, then three.
Alex was sure he was listening to the echo of that third dance. Clearly Elena had whispered into Yeltsin's ear her growing concerns about Alex's safety. If her husband wouldn't heed her warnings, she would take matters over his head. He admired the effort and adored her for trying. He had absolutely no intention of humoring her.
He would just litter a few more guards around the property and hope it settled her nerves.
"Oh, one other thing," Yeltsin added, an afterthought, an insignificant little note to round out the pitch. "It happens to be Gorbachev's old house. The official quarters of the general secretary himself. I had him booted out the day after I took over. Didn't even give him time to clear the clothes from the closets. Ha, ha, ha. Had those shipped to him, later, with a nice personal note. 'I got the country, you keep the rags.'"
Alex suddenly went speechless. Had he heard that right? Yes! Gorbachev's home! Sure, his own mansion was grand, perhaps larger and more loaded with extravagances than the general secretary's residence-money, after all, was the great leveler. But some things money can't buy. Yeltsin was offering him the most storied home in Russia.
The thought of living in that home-How may bedrooms did Yeltsin mention? Who cared?-the thought of him and Elena basking in the general secretary's hot tub, making love in that bedroom, taking long, leisurely strolls around a property where legions of presidents and world leaders had stepped and stumbled, was simply exhilarating. Flushing the toilets would be a thrill.
It wouldn't hurt business, either. Alex could picture the amazed expressions of the Western investors he invited over for a light business dinner. Please don't chip the general secretary's china, he would tell them and watch their faces.
And so what if it was forty-five minutes from the office? The big Mercedes 600 was equipped with an office in the rear, a pull-down desk made of mahogany, a satellite carphone, enough gadgets that not one of the forty-five minutes would be idle or wasted. It might even be better, he thought: forty-five minutes of solitude, each way. Organize his thoughts on the way in; unwind from the daily turmoil on the way out.
And it was safe. Plus, it was in the country; Elena would love it.
Mistaking Alex's prolonged silence for indecision, Yeltsin prattled on. Like the politician he was, he couldn't stop selling. "Let me tell you, my boy, hell, I'd dearly love to live in it myself. Sometimes, at night, Naina and I wander around that house and dream of moving in. The chandeliers alone cost more than I make in a year. Of course, word would inevitably leak out to all these poor folk scraping by on a hundred rubles a month. There'd be another revolution. You know what, though? I don't think I'd enjoy this one as much as the last."
"My moving van will be there first thing in the morning," Alex blurted. He was too stunned to say "thanks."
Matching his speed, Yeltsin snapped, "Good, glad that's settled."
"It's definitely settled. Don't you dare make this offer to anyone else before nine o'clock tomorrow. By then, Elena and I will be seated on the front porch with shotguns to drive off the interlopers."
"Oh, one other thing. From now on, I want you along when I travel overseas. Russia needs as much money and foreign investors as we can get. I'm miserable at making that happen. You don't seem to have any problems in that department."
"Sure, whatever," Alex mumbled, dreaming of who to invite over first. Would they need furniture? Where would they get groceries? In his mind he was already moved in.
The instant they signed off, he rushed upstairs, awoke Elena, and broke the news about their incredible new home.
"Oh, isn't that wonderful," she replied, even managing to make the pretense of making her surprise look sincere. At one o'clock, Bernie Lutcher crunched hard on his third NoDoz tablet and quickly washed it down with the bottled water he had carried onto the plane.
After twenty-five years as a successful cop in the NYPD intelligence bureau, retiring as a highly regarded lieutenant, he was now five years into his second life, five years that were nearly everything he hoped they would be.
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?
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."