The Hunted (8 page)

T
he old lady was merely daft, Bernie Lutcher concluded, at first.

She had jumped in front of him, repeating something loudly in Russian. At least it sounded like Russian. He understood not
a word and shrugged his shoulders, and she switched to a different tongue, more quick bursts of incomprehensible gibberish—possibly
Hungarian now—while he continued to shrug and tried to brush past her. To his rising impatience, she clutched his arm harder
and ratcheted up the incoherent babble.

He recalled her from the plane, the old lady with apparent incontinence issues who made trip after trip to the potty. Maybe
she was seeking directions to the air terminal ladies’ room, he guessed. Or maybe she was a certified loony, a lonely human
nuisance of the type found in every city in the world.

He tried to tug his arm away again and noticed how surprisingly strong she was. Ahead, he watched Alex and Elena pass through
the electronic doors, and felt a sudden clutch of alarm. Depending on the length of the line outside, it might take only a
few seconds for them to climb into a taxi and disappear into the vast, winding labyrinth of Budapest streets.

He knew their schedule and the name of their hotel: he could always catch up with them there. Unfortunately, he was pathologically
honest and duty-bound to enter any coverage lapses in the report he assiduously completed and turned in after each job. In
his mind he had already spent his annual bonus on a nice holiday in Greece, on a luxurious slow cruise through the sunbaked
islands, sipping ouzo and ogling Scandanavian tourist girls in their Lilliputian bikinis; he now was watching it all go up
in smoke.

He tried to recall any fragment of every language he knew and quickly blurted at the old lady, “Excuse me…
entschuldigen
…
excusez-moi
…
por favor
…” Nothing, no relief.

A large crowd began catching up to him, impatient travelers who had just cleared customs and now were plowing ahead and jostling
for choice spots in the taxi line. He could hear their voices, but kept one eye on the old lady—who clutched his arm harder
and acted increasingly distressed—and the other on the glass door Alex and Elena had just exited. He never turned around,
never observed the old man who quickly approached his back.

The old lady continued prattling about something, more loudly frantic now, more mysteriously insistent, still stubbornly clasping
his arm. Firm procedures were unequivocal about such situations: public scenes and embarrassments, indeed public attention
in any form, were to be avoided at all costs. He reached down and gently tried to pry his arm loose from the old hag’s grip,
even as an old man approached from his rear aggressively swinging his arms with each step. Gripped tightly in the old man’s
right hand, and mostly obscured by an overly long coat sleeve, was a razor-thin, specially made thirteen-inch dagger.

One step back from the bodyguard’s rear, it swung up. The blade entered Bernie Lutcher’s back nearly six inches below his
left shoulder blade, grazed off one rib, then immediately penetrated his heart.

The old man gave it a hard grind and twist, a signature technique honed decades before, one he was quite proud of, tearing
open at least two heart chambers, ensuring an almost immediate death. In any event, the blade was coated with a dissolvable
poison primed to instantly decrystallize and rush straight into Bernie’s bloodstream. One way or another, he’d be dead.

Bernie’s eyes widened and his lips flew open. At the same instant, the old lady gave him a hard punch—an expertly aimed blow
to the solar plexus to knock the wind out of his lungs—and he landed heavily on his back, gasping for air and grasping his
chest, as though he was suffering a heart attack, which he surely was.

The two assassins immediately scattered, moving swiftly to the departure area for a flight to Zurich that left thirty minutes
later.

The first assassinations happened in the last three days of August 1992. The Summer Massacres, they were called afterward
by the thoroughly cowed employees of Konevitch Associates.

Andri Kelinichetski, bachelor, bon vivant, and very popular vice president for investor relations, ended up first in the queue.
A lifelong insomniac, he left his cramped apartment at two in the morning for a brisk walk in the cool Moscow air to clear
the demons from his head. He had made it three blocks from his apartment when three bullets, fired from thirty feet behind
his skull, cleared his head, literally. Andri stopped breathing before he hit the cement.

Five hours later, Tanya Nadysheva, divorced mother of two and a specialist in distressed companies, started up her newly purchased
red Volkswagen sedan for the drive to work, triggering a powerful bomb. Her head landed half a block away; she had been operating
her fancy new sunroof at the precise instant of detonation.

By ten o’clock that morning, six employees of Konevitch Associates lay in the morgue—one long-distance shooting, one short-distance,
a hand grenade attack, one car bombing, one very grisly slit throat, and a notably devout employee who was literally fed a
poisoned wafer as he stopped off at his local church for his habitual morning Communion.

Six victims. Six different types of murder. No failed attempts, no survivors, no witnesses. With the exception of the sliced
throat and the fatal Communion wafer, the killers—obviously more than one—had struck from a distance, safely and anonymously.
No forensic traces were found beyond spent bullets and bomb residue. The particles from the explosive devices were analyzed
on the spot by a veteran field technician. In his opinion, the devices were so coarse and simple, virtually any criminal idiot
could’ve built them.

A few hours later, a pair of special police investigators showed up, unannounced, at the headquarters of Konevitch Associates.
They flashed badges, announced their purpose with a show of grim expressions, and were ushered hurriedly upstairs. They marched
into Alex’s office, where they found him and several of his more senior executives assembled, making hasty arrangements for
the families of their dead friends and employees, plainly in shock over what had just happened. One executive, Nadia Pleshinko,
was blowing snot into a white tissue, unable to stop weeping.

One officer was fat, mustachioed, and late-middle-aged, the other surprisingly young, runway skinny, with a face that looked
glum even when he smiled. Laurel and Hardy, they were inevitably nicknamed by the boys at the precinct, a resemblance so glaring
that even they celebrated the epithet.

They were both lieutenants with the municipal police, they informed the gathering, here to discuss what had been learned or
not about the morning butchery.

“The Mafiya,” the fat senior one opened his briefing. “That’s who’s behind this. It’s not just you, it’s happening all over
Moscow. There have been over sixty murders in the city just this past month. Sixty!” he said, rolling his bloodshot eyes with
wearied disgust. “Nearly all were businesspeople, bankers, and one or two news reporters who were getting too close to one
of the mobs or to a corrupt politician on their payroll.”

Skinny picked up where his partner left off. “Under the old system, the city averaged maybe three murders a month. And that
was a bad month. Nearly always angry wives or husbands getting even for an affair or some marital slight or squabble.”

“And the Mafiya is behind all these murders?” Alex asked, totally uninterested in a prolonged recounting of Moscow murderography.
All that mattered was what happened to
his
people
that
morning. And what might happen tomorrow. Were the killers finished, or just warming up? Were these six the final toll? Or
should Alex buy bulletproof vests and begin building thick bunkers for his employees?

A serious nod from both officers and Skinny said, “In the old days they were into drugs, prostitution, the black market, that
kind of funny stuff. Capitalism has given them a whole new lease. The big money these days is companies like yours. It’s—”

“What do they want?” Alex interrupted.

“Hard to say,” Fatty replied with a sad frown. “Usually it’s a shakedown. Some variation of a protection or extortion racket.
‘Pay us a few million, or give us a cut of the monthly profit, and we’ll stop killing your people.’ I’m afraid that’s the
optimistic scenario.”

Alex paused for a moment, then reluctantly asked, “And what’s the pessimistic one?”

Skinny took over and said, “It could also be that somebody—a competitor perhaps—is paying them to wipe you out. Or maybe to
soften you up for an attempted takeover. Either way, they’ll keep killing until you’re out of business, or until they believe
you’re ready to meet their terms. These people are ambitious, creative, and vicious.” He looked over at Fatty, who offered
an approving nod. “For instance,” he continued, “they hit a banking company two months ago. Before you could say turnip soup,
twelve executives were dead.”

“The Mafiya,” Alex said, rolling that ugly sound off his lips. “Aren’t they organized into families or groups? It’s not just
one big mob, is it?”

“No, you’re right,” Skinny told him, warming to the subject. “Only two years ago we could’ve told you which syndicate was
behind this, who headed the group, with an accurate, up-to-date, well-detailed manning and organization chart. These days
there are so many mobs…” He trailed off.

He paused for a quick look at their beleaguered faces. “Even the ones we do know about multiply, merge, and divide so fast,
we’ve lost count. They outnumber us, outgun us, and, worse, frankly, they’re now smarter than we are.”

“Can you protect us?” one of Alex’s executives nervously asked, clearly speaking for them all.

It was a good question and the two officers looked at each other. Eventually, and with matched, timid expressions they turned
back to Alex and his people. Fatty cleared his throat once or twice. “We can certainly give it our best try. Add more people
to the investigation, make inquiries to local stoolies, throw a few uniformed guards outside your headquarters, that sort
of thing. We’re not in the bodyguard business, though. And frankly, you have too many employees to protect. That bank I mentioned
a moment ago, we were doing our best to protect it.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Twelve dead.”

Before they could dwell on that, Skinny looked at Alex and asked, “Have you received any threats? Direct communications in
any form from the killers?”

“No, not a word.”

This was apparently a bad omen, as both policemen seemed to frown at the same time. As if by hidden cue, Fatty eventually
shook his head and spoke up. “Not good. Typically they warn you beforehand. You do this, or we’ll do that.”

“Sometimes it’s Chinese water torture,” Skinny threw in, showing off his own mastery of the subject. “Other times it’s a sledgehammer,
and, to be perfectly frank, this has all the hallmarks of the latter. These people are professionals. They choose how and
when to make their approach.”

If they were trying to scare Alex and his employees, they were succeeding nicely. A few chairs were pushed back. One or two
executives uttered loud groans.

After another quiet pause, Fatty said, “Here’s the pattern we’re seeing. Number one, they knew the names of your employees,
their addresses, and their personal habits. I don’t need to tell you what this implies. Your company has been under their
eye for a long time, maybe even penetrated from the inside. Who knows how many of your people are on their payroll, or how
many of you are targeted for hits. Number two, the potpourri of killing methods is a carefully scripted message in itself—they
can kill you however and whenever they want, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.”

The two officers continued batting around theories and chilling speculations, oblivious to the sheer horror they were inciting.
Alex and his underlings exchanged piercing looks before Alex, with a discomfited shrug, looked away and contemplated a white
wall. Nobody needed to say it: resentment cut like a knife through the room. Alex had all those layers of personal protection—those
six beefy bodyguards, a private home with the best security systems money could buy, an armored Mercedes limousine, and a
lifestyle that kept him off the streets, out of harm’s way.

The four senior executives in the room, just like the rest of the employees of Konevitch Associates, were sitting ducks. Totally
defenseless. Morgue meat, all of them.

And the cops were right. It took less than a year after the disintegration of the Soviet Union for Moscow to descend into
chaos. Brutal murders were a daily event, soldiers were hawking their weapons and ammunition on street corners for a few measly
rubles, unemployment had shot through the ceiling. In the clumsy rush to privatize, prices had climbed to dizzying heights,
and public services, which had never been decent, deteriorated, then collapsed altogether. A long, fierce winter of misery
set in. Hundreds of thousands of Muscovites couldn’t afford oil to heat their homes, to buy decent food or clothing, and were
turning to crime to make ends meet.

The newspapers were loaded with stories about the self-ennobling extravagances of the newly rich and famous, while hundreds
starved or froze to death in Russia’s arctic winter. Nobody was going to feel sorry for Konevitch Associates. No matter how
many of its well-fed executives were shot, bombed, or chopped up, nobody would waste an ounce of pity. And the drumbeat of
news stories about the shining toys and refurbished palaces of the newly rich worked like a tantalizing announcement to the
criminals: “Here it is, boys! Come and get it.”

When the two officers finished batting around the possibilities, Alex said, in an accusatory tone, “So you can’t protect us?”

“To be honest, no,” Fatty replied with a sad shake of the head and an earthquake of chin wobbles. “These days, we barely have
enough manpower to haul the bodies to the morgue.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Alex asked, avoiding the eyes of his executives, who looked ready to dodge from the room and
flee for their lives.