The Hunted, page 16
This was the same ex who hired a PI to track her husband, then showed up at Eugene’s suite at the Plaza, catching him red-handed with his newest mistress. The door burst open and Dallaszilla screamed and bellowed and howled with the unadulterated fury only a native Texan lady can manufacture. Her arms whipped around so hard, the mistress thought she was witnessing an epileptic fit and promptly dialed 911 for an ambulance. Eugene never spoke to the mistress again. He was furious with her. Forgiveness would never come. In court, he adhered to his lawyer’s standard legal dictum—he denied, denied, denied—until three paramedics showed up to corroborate the affair. The judge happened to be a she, herself an aggrieved veteran of two nasty divorces with husbands who had philandered and then lied their way out of what she considered fair settlements.
His lawyer swore afterward that that gaffe cost him an additional five million dollars.
Elena found the stories hilarious. She laughed until it ached. For one brief, shining moment she almost forgot people were out there chasing, trying to murder them. Alex managed an occasional stiff smile, but had either heard the tales before or was preoccupied, or exhausted.
They were back on the road at two o’clock. An hour later, after twice getting lost, they turned off a highway and entered the airport complex. Elena pumped the brakes and said, “You two get down. I’ll cruise the terminal. See how it looks.”
Alex reminded Elena, for the fourth time, “Be sure to check the cars in the lot,” then both men tried their best to melt into the seats.
Crawling at fifteen kilometers per hour, Elena made a slow pass, quietly tapping the brakes and searching with quick shifts of her head. The airport turned out to be the aeronautic equivalent of a one-horse town, small, sleepy, with only one main building, and definitely shut down for the night. Few lights were on. A solitary janitor in loose gray coveralls was shoving a mop around the floor. That was it. She saw nobody else inside the terminal or loitering suspiciously in front of it.
Another twenty yards and a quick glance to her left. The parking lot contained only a few cars; all appeared dark and thankfully empty. Then, in one of them—yes!—in an otherwise dark car she could swear she saw the flicker of two burning cigarettes.
She slowed almost to a stop. She stared hard at the car, then came to her senses, sped up, and retreated back the way they came, toward the capital. Alex and Eugene straightened up. “It’s closed,” she informed them, obviously surprised, obviously disappointed. “But in one of the cars in the parking lot, somebody was inside, smoking. I saw at least two cigarettes.”
“You think it’s them?” Eugene asked, bending forward with the help of Alex’s seatback.
Elena replied. “I think they’re just lovers too cheap to buy a hotel room. What do you think?”
“Yeah, I think it’s them, too,” Eugene answered.
Alex asked her, “What kind of car?”
“You know I’m not good with that kind of thing.”
“All right, what color? This is important, honey.”
“White.”
“Not tan?”
“No, white. I’m positive.”
“Big car, small car, medium, what?”
“A sedan. Fairly large. Four doors. I thought I saw an ornament of some sort on the end of a long hood. But it was dark, and by then I was scared, so I’m not sure. The car looked expensive, too, but how would I know? Are we through playing thirty questions?”
“Almost. Could it have been a Jaguar?”
“No, it was definitely a car.”
Obviously they were through.
They drove for about five minutes in silence. A light rain began falling, and the wipers flopped wildly back and forth, never close to touching the windshield.
Apropos of nothing, Alex observed, “If you’re interested, the doors to the terminal open at seven. A flight for New York leaves at eight every morning.”
Eugene asked, “You knew the airport would be closed?”
“I thought it would, yes.”
“And you knew about the New York flight?”
“Would it make a difference if I’d told you?”
“I don’t guess it would, nope.”
“But New York?” Elena asked.
“Yes, well, for one thing, the only open visas that match in both our passports are for America. Second, it’s the one destination in the world where we’ll be safe from these people. It’s only temporary, anyway, until I get this cleared up.”
Eugene remarked, “I’d offer you my place, but Maria will be there, and it’s going to be a war zone.”
Alex wasn’t really in a listening mode and added, “We’re not going together, anyway. It’s time to split up.”
“What’s that mean?” Eugene asked, afraid he knew exactly what it meant.
“They’re hunting three people, Eugene. They believe we’re amateurs and they believe we’re afraid and insecure.”
Believe? Well, they were certainly amateurs. And if insecure meant scared out of their wits, the bad people had it right on both counts.
Alex continued, “The point is, frightened amateurs stay in packs. They’ll be looking for three of us, together, so it’s time for us to divorce Eugene.”
“You couldn’t have picked a different word?” Eugene complained. Elena laughed, and Eugene joined her. Both were becoming giddy with exhaustion and the unrelenting tension.
Alex turned around and faced him, his face rigid with concern. “Eugene, you’re a target because you’re with us. They blew the chance to get your money. Nothing can bring it back, and they know that. Whoever they are, they’re professionals. They don’t care about you anymore.”
“Hey, I’m having a ball being shot at, chased, and hunted by Mafiya goons,” Eugene felt like saying. “This is the best idea I’ve heard all night, so fine, dump me off right here.” But his conscience bothered him. Instead he said, “Look, what the hell, I’m in this up to my neck already. You’re my friends and I’d like to make sure you’re safe. Are you sure this is a good idea, Alex?”
“I’m not sure about anything at the moment.”
“Except this, right?”
“Yes, and I won’t change my mind. The very least I owe you is to get you out of this alive.”
An unspoken thought lingered in that statement. Alex obviously wasn’t optimistic about his own chances. Eugene looked at Alex and thought about arguing. It would be useless, though; Alex’s mind was clearly made up. “What do I do?”
“Drop Elena and me off at the nearest big hotel in Bratislava. Find another hotel, check in for the day, catch up on sleep, find a nice restaurant with pretty waitresses, have a long leisurely meal, then drive back to Budapest and catch the first flight home. By that time, I assure you, the people hunting us will believe you’re long gone.” It was obvious he had thought this through.
“What about you?”
“We’ll catch taxis from the hotel. Don’t worry, I think I know what I’m doing.”
Twenty minutes later, Alex and Elena stood beneath the overhang of a run-down hotel in downtown Bratislava. The streets were empty, the doorman was inside, napping. They watched Eugene putter off in the junkheap, spitting and spewing smoke out the noisy tailpipe.
Alex turned to Elena and said, “Now we can discuss our plan.”
“We couldn’t discuss it in Eugene’s presence?”
“He’s better off not knowing. If the people chasing us get their hands on him, it’s his best defense. Ours, too.”
For the next few minutes, they stood under the awning and Alex told Elena what he hoped would happen.
11
The two taxis arrived at the terminal thirty minutes apart.
Alex was dropped off first, at 6:45.
Elena stepped out onto the curb at 7:14, a minute earlier than she’d been instructed, though it turned out not to be relevant.
Her instructions were clear and precise: Drive by the front of the terminal. If Alex wasn’t standing and waving, alone, then howl at her driver to keep going and don’t look back. Once they had Alex, they wouldn’t care about her anymore. They wanted her only to get to him; if they had him, she was old baggage they could care less about. What was left of Eugene’s 2,000 American dollars was wadded up and folded inside her bra. Use it, he told her, to find her own way to America, then contact her parents for help. Start a new life and don’t look back.
But Alex was there, about twenty feet from the doors, waving, not directly at her, it seemed, but at some invisible person off in the distance. She tried hard not to stare at Alex as she walked right past him, then through the glass door and straight to the Continental Air counter. Yes, she had a reservation, she assured the smiling lady behind the counter. She held her breath and handed her passport across the counter. She was reaching into her bra for the money when the woman politely announced that the ticket was already reserved and prepaid, first class—and did she care for an aisle seat or window? Boarding started in fifteen minutes; she was welcome to use the VIP lounge until then. She had no idea how Alex arranged this, it wasn’t part of the plan, but she smiled with relief and pleasure as the lady behind the counter ruffled papers and prepared her boarding pass.
First class? After all they’d been through, the idea of making a grand escape sipping champagne and munching on caviar seemed too good to be true. She felt like crying.
She sensed him before she saw him. A middle-aged man in a nice gray wool suit was staring at her. A quick glance in his direction, and he looked away. She took the ticket envelope from the smiling Continental representative and walked briskly in the direction of the VIP room. She kept her back turned to him for a few moments, then performed a pirouette that would earn a standing ovation. She looked him dead in the eye. The man almost jumped, before, suddenly, he discovered something on the magazine rack more interesting than her.
Her first thought was to scream. Just aim her arm at the man in the suit and scream full blast until her lungs hurt, until airport security rushed over to see what the fuss was about.
She kept walking instead. There was a knot in her throat and she tried hard to ignore it. She was an attractive woman, after all. Men stared at her: so what? She usually just ignored them. She was just on edge, she told herself. Paranoid people see big toothy monsters with lethal claws where others see squirrels. Maybe that’s all it was, a sad, lonely little squirrel checking out the talent and dreaming of what would never be. She arrived at the door to the VIP room, looked back over her shoulder again, and there he was again, brazenly walking toward her! A little smarter, because his face was covered with a magazine. But the gray suit was a dead giveaway.
She was just raising her arm and preparing an earthshaking scream, when a firm hand grabbed her from behind. Panic enveloped her chest. She spun around, ready to kick and slap and howl like hell—it was Alex. “Don’t worry about him, honey. Come on, step inside.”
She stepped through the doorway and followed Alex to a table by the near wall, far away from the windows. Another man, this one in a blue wool suit, was seated, with his back against the wall, looping peanuts into his mouth. “Good morning, Mrs. Konevitch,” he said, grinning between hard crunches. “I’m Eric. That fella outside’s Jacob. I don’t want to imagine what you’ve been through the past eighteen hours, but your worries are over.” Another peanut in the mouth. “Jacob’s watching the door and inside this VIP lounge is my territory. No bragging, but we can handle whatever comes up.” A gentle slap on his forehead for effect. “Oh yeah, we’re your Malcolm Street boys.” The accent and demeanor were obscenely American—a thick twang ruthlessly tortured the vowels, broad, confident smile, black hair, tall and well built. Eric was leaning back on the chair, trying to appear relaxed and carefree. But Elena, the dancer, missed nothing about the human form. The body was coiled, ready to leap the length of the room and snap necks if the situation required. Ruthless blue eyes that never stopped wandering even as he spoke to her.
“Come on, Mrs. Konevitch, relax. You’re safe. Take a load off your feet, please.” He shoved a chair back with one hand, while the other hand plopped another peanut into the air; it sailed a full six feet before it fell and landed effortlessly in his mouth. His eyes never stopped darting around the room.
Elena nearly fell on her knees and kissed him. Eric in the nicely tailored blue suit could probably shoot with both hands simultaneously, hurl knives with his feet, and work an impossibly difficult crossword puzzle without missing a vowel. Let the bad guys try anything now. Eric would stack their bodies like cordwood.
The peanut fling was Eric’s favorite trick, one that never failed to put the client at ease. That big lapdog smile again. “Fix yourself a cup of coffee. Don’t skip them pastries, either,” he suggested. Another peanut in the air—whoosh, it landed and was instantly compacted between two fierce incisors.
Alex took her arm. “Let’s get a cup of coffee and talk.”
They moved hand in hand to another wall where a wooden table sagged under the weight of coffee and tea urns, an enormous stack of pastries, and large containers loaded with eggs, bacon, flatcakes, and a few mushy concoctions unidentifiable to anybody but a Slovakian native. The smell of fresh-ground coffee was impossible to ignore. The only thing keeping her on her feet was the five cups she had swallowed at the café.
That half-life had expired an hour before.
Alex handed her a cup and saucer. “When I called the headquarters of Malcolm Street last night, they were in the midst of a meeting about our situation. A witness claimed I murdered my own security escort back at the Budapest Airport. It’s—”
“What? That’s ridiculous, Alex. Who claimed that?”
“A woman. A Russian woman. Her story was corroborated by her Russian boyfriend.”
“Ridiculous. They murdered your bodyguard and now they’re blaming it on you?”
“Yes, with a poisoned dagger, probably at the same moment as the kidnap. The security firm is dispatching a team to clear this up with the Hungarian authorities. There are big holes in the story. The woman’s passport is a phony. The hit was professional and I’m an amateur. They’re confident they can make this disappear.”
Elena filled a cup with coffee. She snatched a Danish off the tray, stole a tentative nibble, and followed it with a deep sip. She couldn’t remember anything tasting better in her life. “And they sent Eric and his friend to watch over us?”
“Eric and Jacob were covering a client in Prague; they were ordered to drop everything and rush here. That was them in the white Jaguar sedan last night.”
The careful nibbling was over. She took a powerful bite from the Danish, neatly amputating half of it. “That was them? Smoking inside the car?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then who?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“If you ever expect to sleep with me again, you’ll tell me.” The other half of the Danish disappeared into her mouth and she chewed it with vigor.
“Okay. Eric and his partner arrived about an hour before us. They drove by, just like we did. Two men were loitering outside the terminal. At nearly two o’clock, in front of a closed building, the killers couldn’t have been more conspicuous or sloppy. Whoever’s behind this apparently doesn’t hold a high opinion of us. So Eric snuck back on foot, surprised the two men, and forced them at gunpoint into their car. The cigarettes belonged to the pair of thugs he captured. Eric was interrogating them.”
“And what did they say?”
“They claimed they had no idea why. Just had orders from their boss to kill us.”
“Who was this boss?”
“A name neither of us would recognize. It’s irrelevant. They’re part of a crime syndicate, gunmen at the bottom of a long chain doing what they were told.”
“Where are they now?” At the bottom of a deep river, she hoped. After murdering one man, brutally torturing her husband, and trying their best to add three more kills to the tally, she hoped the weasels died slowly and horribly.
“I didn’t ask,” Alex replied. “I don’t think either of us want to know.”
“Don’t be so civilized. I’d love to know.”
“I doubt we would hear the truth, anyway.”
Eric was suddenly standing at their side, as if he had materialized out of thin air. Tell me, did you kill them, she wanted to demand, and don’t go light on the details. “Time to board,” he said with that reassuring grin. “Jacob and I are on the flight, too. We don’t get first-class freight, but we’ll be tucked in the back in seats where we can observe you. So don’t you worry. Kick back, drink all the champagne you can stand, eat till your stomachs are sore, then nap till that pilot says you’re in New York.”
The plane lifted off ten minutes after they boarded, at which point Alex and Elena were downing their second champagne, with plans to keep sipping until New York or they passed out, whichever came first.
Elena eased back into her seat and asked, “Will the bodyguards stay with us in New York?”
“No,” Alex said, waving at the stewardess for a refill. “My company paid the bills. Somebody in the security division last night faxed a termination order to Malcolm Street, effective upon delivery. The people after us are thinking of everything.”
Elena paused to think about that. “That’s not a good sign, is it?”
“It’s a terrible sign. Whoever’s behind this obviously has control over my companies, for the moment anyway. But Eric and Jacob will stay with us until we’re safely checked into a hotel. After that, we’re on our own.”
“And the crooks have all our money, right?”
Alex pushed back his seat, extending it fully to the reclined position; the champagne was working its medicinal magic and taking the edge off his physical pain. He closed his eyes. “Not without my account numbers and security codes, they don’t. They’re locked in my office safe. Until we get this cleared up, though, I can’t access that money,” he said. “Except for $2 million tucked in a Bermudan bank. A rainy-day fund I never imagined I would have to use. The account numbers for that fund are in my head, so no matter what, they can’t touch it.”
