The Hunted, page 6
Her partner turned around. Coldly and in Russian he said to Alex, “It’s a simple choice. Get into the car or die right here and right now.”
Alex looked into his eyes. He had not the slightest doubt he meant every word. After a moment, he said, “Fine, I’ll go. This young lady, however, you will leave alone. I don’t know her. She’s not with me.”
“Don’t be stupid, Konevitch. Katya will kill you, or your wife, or both of you. Doesn’t matter to us.”
Alex’s face froze. His name. The man had used his name, and he knew Elena was his wife. For three years he had prepared himself for a moment like this. Dreamed about it. Dreaded it. Now it was actually happening, and he couldn’t think or react.
Vladimir’s thick hands shot out and grabbed Elena by the neck. He spun her around like a puppet; one hand slipped under her chin, the other against the back of her head. Elena squirmed and fought at first, but Vladimir was too large and strong. He tightened his grip, and she yelped with pain.
Vladimir said to Alex, “You have a black belt, I hear. Surely you recognize this stance. A quick shift of my weight and her neck will snap like a rotten twig. Now, will you please get into the cab?”
As they were sure he would, without hesitation or another word, Alex climbed inside. A moment later, Elena was shoved in beside him and landed awkwardly against his side. The man knew what he was doing; he was using her as a buffer from Alex’s hands, and he squeezed into the backseat to her right. The woman in the nun’s outfit, obviously anything but one of God’s saintly servants, slipped into the front passenger seat with her pistol in Alex’s face.
The driver, a trusted cohort and a skilled getaway man, gunned the engine, popped the clutch, and off they sped with a noisy screech. Nobody said a word. As if on cue, the lady in the front shifted her gun at Elena’s face. The man in priest’s garb said to Alex, “Hold up your hands, together.”
Alex did as he was told. The man bent across Elena and efficiently slapped thick plastic cuffs on Alex’s wrists, then with a show of equal dexterity, Elena’s.
After a moment, Alex asked, “What do you want?”
“Be quiet,” came the reply from Vladimir. He withdrew two black hoods and clumsily covered their heads.
In March 1992, two months after the press frenzy over Alex Konevitch began, the initial attacks on his companies were detected.
Somebody was making repeated highly sophisticated attempts to break into Konevitch Associates’ computer networks. Quite successfully, or so it appeared. The Russian Internet backbone, like everything inherited from communism, was shockingly backward and inefficient. Alex had therefore hired an American company that specialized in these things and plowed millions into creating his own corporate network, a closed maze of servers, switches, and privately owned fiber-optic cable that connected his companies. The only vulnerabilities were in the interfaces between his private network and the Russian phone companies, interfaces that were, regrettably, unavoidable. Naturally this was precisely where the attacks occurred.
That discovery was made minutes after a new American anti-virus software program was installed, a magical sifter that sorted gold from fool’s gold. Tens of thousands of spyware programs were detected—like small tracking devices—that had penetrated and riddled the entire network. The programs were sophisticated little things, impossible to detect with homegrown software. They not only tracked the flow of Internet traffic, they caused each message to replicate and then forwarded copies to an outside Internet address.
Private investigators easily tracked the Internet address to a small apartment on the outer ring of Moscow and burgled their way into the flat. It was completely empty and wiped clean. Nothing, except a small table and dusty computer. The plug was pulled out. The hard disk had been removed.
What was going on? Alex had anxiously queried his technical specialists. Somebody is mapping your businesses and transactions, came the answer. For how long? he asked. Maybe weeks, more probably months, and it seemed fair to conclude that whoever launched this attack now had an avalanche of information regarding how his rapidly expanding empire came together, how one piece interfaced with the next, how and where the money flowed, even the identities of the key people who pushed the buttons. The computers in the human resources department, particularly, were riddled with enough spyware to feed a software convention.
The programs were wiped clean, gobs of money were thrown at more protective software—all imported from America, all state of the art, all breathtakingly expensive—and nothing was heard from the originator of the attack. Corporate extortion or any of several forms of embezzlement had been anticipated—pay us off, the intercepted traffic will be destroyed, the attacks will stop. But after long weeks during which Alex’s hired computer wizards held their breath and nobody approached the firm, a new, more hopeful scenario was reached. It was probably one of the expanding army of nettlesome computer nerds, his technical people speculated—nothing to be overly concerned with. This was an everyday problem in the United States, Alex was told, where hackers sat up all night and thought up ways to be bothersome for no greater reason than the idiotic satisfaction of imagining it made them something more than the insignificant little twits they were.
In fact, Alex was warned, it could have been much worse; the sneaks could’ve hacked in, crashed the entire system, and demolished mounds of irreplaceable information. A helpful and timely warning, actually—take better precautions, spend whatever it takes, and then some. Stay alert. Be thankful we detected the problem early and eliminated it, Alex was told by his head technician, an American imported and paid a small fortune for his erudition in these matters.
4
The 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.
