The Hunted, page 44
Throughout the night, the car never budged from the curb. At four in the morning, four men stepped out. They stretched and looked around. All were dressed in nice suits, wildly out of character for this game.
A moment later, a fifth man embarked from the car and stepped out onto the curb. Short and fat, he wore a double-breasted blazer with a hundred gold buttons that sparkled in the moonlit night. He stretched his cramped legs, looked around very briefly, then waddled off in the direction of the coffee shop. The four men followed at a discreet distance, an obvious deference to their boss that marked him like a whale swimming among minnows.
Golitsin ran in the wrong circles. He had no clue that photos of him with a million and a half bucks painted on his backside were circulating throughout the city’s heavily populated underworld. Later, the city coroner would find it impossible to discern exactly which of nearly a hundred bullets fired in the willy-nilly hailstorm was the precise cause of death. The five through the heart were certainly candidates, though the ten in the brain had the odds in their favor.
Six of those ten, however, were fired from different guns, different ranges, and different angles. Unfortunately the shattered brain gave up no clues as to which bullet struck first, or indeed, which produced the most lethal damage. Frankly there was too little brain left to consider. So much of it was scattered on the concrete, bits and pieces too small to scrape up.
The logjam was settled after an intense three-day bombardment of whispered threats and intense pleadings, when one of the shooters secretly offered to split the reward fifty-fifty—of the many other offers that poured in, nothing was over a third.
Three-quarters of a million dollars!
The coroner’s last troubling doubt instantly vanished in a cloud of certainty.
* * *
The third day in his self-imposed bunker was the one that got to Nicky. Three days and two nights of sitting in the same pitch-dark room, cradling his gun in his lap, counting down the hours and wondering when it would end. Three days of waiting for the inevitable. His own bodyguards made an occasional foray. Day and night, Nicky could hear them out there, exhorting one another, loading up on booze and dope, trying to stoke up the nerve.
Early on the second day there had been a chaotic rush at the door—a stupid, clumsy attempt with bodies bashing against the reinforced wood. Nicky emptied his pistol and smiled blissfully at all the satisfying howls and screams.
Later that same night, a second attempt. Smarter this time. Well, slightly more sneaky, anyway. One of the idiots crawled up to the door, planted a hand grenade against the wood, pulled the pin, then scuttled away for his life. Nicky became dismayed and depressed by the stupidity of his own handpicked bodyguards. It was a miracle he had survived this long. Anticipating them was child’s play. Everything in the room—the furniture, the mattress—everything was piled up against the door. The pile of junk absorbed the blast and shrapnel nicely. When the boys showed up, Nicky emptied his pistol again. Another lovely chorus of screams and howls, and Nicky laughed long after they had retreated back to their refuge.
They were through being careless and stupid. No more suicidal rushes, no more dragging bullet-riddled corpses down the hall and trying to figure out how to dispose of them. Now they were trying to wait him out: if he snoozed, he was dead. They took shifts and listened for his snores. There was no food in his room. The bathroom was across the hall so water was a problem, too. But there was heroin and cocaine in abundance. Nicky pulled a fresh snort every hour. Every fourth hour, the needle slid back into a vein. He sat on the floor, pumped up on dope, erupting with delirious chuckles that echoed down the hall.
His best friend’s corpse was three feet away, bloated like an overinflated balloon. The smell was intolerable, but Nicky’s nostrils were so crusted and blocked up with white powder he had no idea.
Late on the third day the idea took root in his exhausted, drug-addled brain. He thought about it more, and liked it more. No, he loved it. In a lifetime of great ideas, it would be such a grand finishing touch. Long after he was gone, they would still be admiring his final masterstroke. His last finger at all of them.
He reached over to his friend’s dead hand and pried the flash-light out of the rigor-mortised fist. He found a piece of paper and pencil and scribbled a brief, perfunctory note.
Holding the note in one hand, he put the pistol in his mouth and without a moment of hesitation blew out the back of his head.
His bodyguards waited an hour before they drew straws. They dispatched the losers first, frightened scouts who scuttled past the door and prayed Nicky didn’t blast them to pieces. Everybody had heard that last shot an hour before. The debates and quarrels were noisy and fierce, but they just weren’t sure.
Nicky was so clever, so diabolical. It wouldn’t be beneath him to fake his own suicide just to lure a few more of them into his sights.
Finally, they tiptoed down the hall, broke the door down, and crashed inside. Somebody flipped on the lights. Between the rotting corpse and the fact that Nicky had used the floor as a toilet, the stench was like a dropkick in the nostrils. They pinched their noses and eased over to Nicky’s body against the wall.
The note was gripped tightly in his dead hand: “I, Nicky Kozyrev, claim the five million dollars for my own death. You pricks figure out which of my many bastard kids are first in line. Send it to him. Or her. I don’t care.”
33
The trial opened on time. By 9:15, John Tromble was seated in the witness chair, duly sworn to honesty, waiting impatiently for this snotty, pretty-boy, headline-robbing prosecutor to kick it in gear.
The moment was historic, unprecedented, actually. No FBI director had ever sat in a witness chair—or, more accurately, none not accused of crimes themselves. One more groundbreaking achievement to tack on to the growing legend.
The evening news the night before had been an Alex fest. Every morning paper on the East Coast led off with the story about the Russian runaway millionaire who had been dragged out of the Watergate—a national landmark of sorts, after all—and was fighting deportation and a long-overdue appointment with justice in his own land. Legal experts held sway on the evening and late-night talk shows, and were still there, sipping coffee and yammering away, for the morning shows as well. Maybe they slept at the networks.
The general consensus was that Alex’s legal team was getting its tail kicked and the result appeared inevitable. The only objection came from a big-time radical, highly esteemed member of the Harvard Law faculty, who posed the perverse theory that if Alex Konevitch was a foreign citizen, American courts had no purview over him. After getting laughed off two shows he disappeared back to his classroom.
Alex himself was back at the defense table, looking, if anything, more tragically decrepit and miserably ill-kempt than the day before. His beard was thicker, darker, more pronounced. Heavy circles under his eyes betrayed another long, sleepless night.
From the stand, Tromble stole a quick look at him, then quietly suppressed another smile. A few of the morning articles had mentioned his instinctive reaction as he entered the court the day before and first saw Alex; the mentions weren’t overly flattering.
The pretty boy ambled up to the witness stand. “Could you please tell the court your name and title?”
It was a stupid, fatuous question, but Tromble played along. “Judge John Tromble, director of the FBI.”
“And that would make you the nation’s top law enforcement officer?”
“Technically, that honor belongs to the attorney general,” he said with a condescending smile as if everybody should know this.
“Do you believe Alex Konevitch committed crimes in Russia that merit deportation?”
“I wouldn’t know about the crimes. Russia’s courts will decide that.”
“But you reviewed the evidence against him?”
“My people reviewed it. I’ve seen summaries.” Another fatuous question—Tromble obviously had more important things on his hands than sifting through piles of evidence.
“Is this evidence compelling?”
“Overwhelming.”
“What would happen if Mr. Konevitch were to escape?” A slight frown. “I mean, escape again.”
Tromble appeared thoughtful, as though he had never considered this possibility. “Well, it would be a flat-out disaster.”
“Why?”
“Because a great deal of modern crime is international these days. Just as our corporations and businesses have expanded across borders, so have criminal syndicates. International police forces have to rely on each other.”
“And you believe Mr. Konevitch’s escape would hinder this cooperation?”
“He is what we would call a high-profile criminal back home. If we let him slip away, we would hear about it from the Russians in a million unfortunate ways. It would probably cripple our efforts against the new wave of Russian criminals.”
“This is called reciprocity, is it not?”
“That’s one word for it. If we want them to hand over our crooks, we have to hand over theirs. If we want their help to combat crime in our streets, we need to help them.”
“That seems like common sense,” Caldwell remarked, as if anybody would argue otherwise. “Now, why was Mr. Konevitch placed in federal detention?” Avoiding the “prison” word was a nice touch. Detention sounded so much more pleasant: little more than a mild inconvenience for Alex while things were sorted out.
“My understanding is that the immigration judge ordered this step. You should ask him why.”
“Would you care to guess?”
Another thoughtful pause. “All right. The escape rate from federal facilities is demonstrably lower than county facilities. Our Russian friends tell us that Konevitch has hundreds of millions stashed away. Sad to say, he could probably buy his way out of almost any county jail in the country. And if he disappears again, he won’t make the same mistake of living out in the open next time. I expect he would flee the country, change his name, maybe get a face-job, and find haven in a more criminal-friendly country, say Brazil, or a Pacific island. He’s got plenty of money to spread around and buy favors and protection. It might be impossible to find and bring him to justice.”
“Should he remain in prison? As a former federal judge, you’re certainly qualified to answer.”
Judge Willis’s head snapped up and jerked hard to his left. The question was rude and an impertinent breach of protocol. True, this was Caldwell’s first performance in a federal court. But he should still know better. And Tromble definitely knew better. If he answered, either way, it was an unforgivable violation of legal courtesy. This was, after all, what Willis was here to decide. Judges, even former ones, do not prejudge or inhibit or attempt to preempt other judges. Certainly never in public. And above all, not in their own courtrooms.
Tromble pretended he didn’t see Willis or understand the slight, though he betrayed himself with a slight smile. “It would be an unimaginable blunder to let him out before his immigration status is decided. Only a fool would even consider it.”
Willis’s eyes shifted from Tromble to MP Jones. He exerted every pound of silent pressure he could muster to encourage the attorney to rise from that chair and unleash a loud, heated objection. Come on, boy, for godsakes, let him have it. The question and answer begged for an objection. Willis needed that objection. He so badly wanted a chance to slap down Tromble right here, in the presence of the entire court, that he nearly screamed objection himself.
Jones just sat, wide-eyed, listening attentively with a flat expression. At least for a change he wasn’t idiotically scrawling doodles on that stupid legal pad. But not a word. Not so much as a raised eyebrow or parted lips.
“Your witness,” Caldwell said, and nearly strutted back to his table.
Judge Willis continued to stare at MP. In a clenched tone that managed to convey both disapproval and regret, he commented, “I imagine Mr. Jones, in the interest of saving our time, has no desire to cross-examine.”
Very slowly, MP pushed himself out of his seat. “Maybe a few questions, Your Honor.”
“Well”—for a moment the judge was almost too stunned to reply—“proceed then.”
MP didn’t budge from his table. He glanced down at Alex, who seemed to shrug as if to say: Okay, why not?
“Mr. Tromble,” he began, openly ignoring the official title, “your presence today suggests this is a very important case to you.”
“More important than some, less than others,” Tromble said, grinning and choosing a nice middle ground.
“As FBI director, at how many other trials have you appeared as a witness?”
Tromble wasted a moment rubbing a forefinger across his lower lip, as though this question required considerable thought. “I guess none.”
“You guess?”
“All right, none.”
“How’d this case come to your attention?”
“I don’t exactly recall.”
“You don’t? Being the director of the FBI and all, I thought you were a smart guy. You recall nothing?”
“It might surprise you, but the FBI handles tons of cases a year. Nobody expects me to remember every detail.”
“Do you recall any conversations with any Russian government officials about Alex Konevitch?”
He scratched his head. “Not exactly.”
“Inexactly would be fine.”
“I don’t recall any.”
“Then may we assume you did have such conversations, but just can’t recall them?”
“No, you may not.”
“Again, Mr. Tromble, did you or did you not discuss the Konevitch issue with the Russian government? Yes or no.”
“No. If I did, it was only a passing reference.”
MP lifted up a piece of paper from the desk and pretended to read from it. Then, in an annoying tone suggesting he knew everything, he asked, “That Russian colonel and head prosecutor, how’d they get over here?”
It was an old lawyer trick meant to rattle the witness. Tromble, an observant judge in his day, had seen it a thousand times. He handled it coolly, leaning back into his seat and replying, “The Russians have a compelling interest in this case. They were sent to help us prepare his extradition.”
“Extradition? Do we have such a treaty with the Russians?”
“No. I… I misspoke.”
“You mean you spoke your mind.”
Caldwell showed none of MP’s inclination against objections. “Objection,” he yelled, launching from his chair.
“Sustained.”
MP turned back to the witness stand and shook his head. “All right, Mr. Tromble, describe your role in deciding which prisons Mr. Konevitch would be incarcerated in.”
“That was decided by the attorney general.”
“You had no input? None?”
“Believe it or not, I stay fairly busy running the FBI. Federal prisons aren’t my bailiwick.”
With a condescending roll of his eyes, MP said, “Oops. That was another of those troublesome yes-or-no questions, Mr. Tromble.”
“All right, no.” Strictly speaking, the truth, although he looked uncomfortable.
MP bounced back to the issue of Colonel Volevodz and the team of Russian prosecutors. “Who paid for their trip? Who handled their expenses?”
“How would I know?”
“That was going to be my next question,” MP answered skeptically.
Tromble lived by the motto “better to give than receive,” and the derisive tone from this pip-squeak immigration lawyer was starting to grate on him. He gripped the sides of his chair and snapped at MP, “Was that a question?”
“If it makes you uncomfortable, we’ll come back to it later.”
MP went on for another two hours, bouncing quickly from subject to subject, tossing in as many insinuations as he could get away with. Occasionally he returned to an old topic, forcing Tromble to plow and replow old ground. Same questions, repeated with minor variations, and saturated with a rising tone of disbelief.
Caldwell objected as often as he dared, most often simple harassment objections intended to disrupt the flow, but eventually the judge warned him to cool it.
After two hours, Tromble was tired of sitting in the same hard wooden chair. He was tired of this disrespectful lawyer, tired of this Russian crook fighting an overdue trip back to Russia, and tired of the rude questions. He was tired of the judge, tired of the entire routine. He regretted he had subjected himself to this. He squirmed in his chair but couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position.
MP suddenly left his position behind the defense table and moved to a place about two feet from Tromble. He paused very briefly, then leaned in. “Mr. Tromble, I’m a forgetful type. Did I hear you take an oath to tell the truth on this stand?” MP paused for effect. “The whole truth, absent equivocations, quibbles, or bald deceptions.”
That was it. Tromble shifted his bulk forward and nearly spit in Jones’s face. “Don’t you dare lecture me on integrity, you twobit mouthpiece. I’m a respected public servant. I will not be addressed this way by you. If you have another question you will call me Judge or Mr. Director. Those are my titles.”
MP smiled. “You may go, Mr. Tromble.”
Tromble leaned back into the chair. He planted his feet and didn’t budge, not about to let this third-rate legal loser boss him around.
After a moment, Judge Willis leaned over and said very loudly and very firmly, “Mr. Tromble, if you’re not out of my witness chair in three seconds, I’ll cite you for contempt.”
Lunch was a welcome reprieve. Alex and Elena were led into a small conference room and allowed to share a quiet meal in privacy. Outside, two deputies manned the door. Ham sandwiches, a fat deli pickle, chips, and ice-cold sodas, all bought and delivered by the court, were waiting in paper bags on the long conference table.
MP and his PKR pals lunched in a separate conference room three doors down. After fourteen months apart, Alex and Elena deserved a little time together, they figured. Left unsaid was that it might be the last time, and they should be allowed this last chance to be alone.
