Authors: Brian Haig
Alex walked over to the same waiter he had spoken with earlier, politely explained what he needed, handed him the keys to
the rented orange Trabant, and stuffed a hundred-dollar bill into his palm with the promise of another hundred the second
the job was done.
Vladimir raced down the long alleyway and fought to suppress his exploding anxiety. He should have caught up with them by
now, he realized. By his calculation, after they fled the hotel, this was the only route Konevitch and his wife and their
plump friend could’ve taken.
Even if Konevitch
had
faked the severity of his injuries, Vladimir was damn sure he was at least partially lame. He had personally slammed that
chair across his leg. Had smashed it down with such pulverizing force that it splintered into pieces against Konevitch’s muscle,
tissue, and bone. It was a miracle Konevitch could walk; running was out of the question, he was sure of it.
Also that short wife and flabby American banker were accompanying him. Vladimir was a fitness fanatic, a former Spetsnaz soldier
who spent long hours in the gym buffing his superb condition. He had been sprinting, nearly full-speed, for four, possibly
five minutes now.
He slowed to a hesitant trot, then an angry stomp for a few yards before he came to a dead halt in his tracks. He was breathing
heavily. No, this definitely did not add up. He stole a quick glance at his watch: six minutes.
Six minutes.
A gimp, a fatty, and a small woman—a woman!—no way were they a match for his speed. It simply wasn’t possible, he concluded
with excruciating insight.
He quickly reviewed the possibilities. It was a simple process of elimination; exactly the arithmetic he should’ve use six
minutes before, he now knew. One, had they leaped out the window and run away in the other direction, the team posted outside
the entrance would’ve seen them and blasted away. Two, had they instead exited through the lobby and out the hotel’s front
entrance, either of the two teams by the entrance would’ve bagged them. Open and shut.
There was, however, a third possibility. The least physically demanding possibility for a wounded man, as he thought about
it—the most likely possibility, he realized with an ugly curse.
If only Katya hadn’t barked at him to rush out the window. Stupid bitch. Like a snot-nosed rookie, she panicked. Rule number
one: be sure what you
think
you see is what you’re actually seeing. They should’ve yanked back all the curtains and peeked under all the tables.
Oh look, it’s Alex and his friends playing peekaboo; ha, ha, ha—bang, bang, bang.
How simple that would’ve been. How deeply satisfying.
But no, they fell for Konevitch’s cat-and-mouse game, and the mouse won. It was terribly stupid. But this blunder was definitely
her fault, not his.
No, on second thought, the real blame fell on Golitsin’s stooped shoulders. He approved the plan in the first place to drag
Konevitch to the hotel. Okay, yes, Vladimir had claimed it would be easy. But of course there were risks. The greedy bastard
knew that, but he wanted more money, money, money.
Konevitch baited the trap and the old geezer bit with every tooth in his mouth. He had nobody to blame but himself.
The satellite phone suddenly rattled at his waist. After a long hesitation, he pulled it off his belt and stared at it, consumed
with dread, a new and surprisingly unwelcome emotion for Vladimir. Probably it was Golitsin. He would not answer it, not under
any condition. He would just let it bleep and bleep until the old geezer got frustrated and gave up.
The thought of trying to explain this muddle, of trying to justify and excuse his stupidity, of confessing that he had allowed
Konevitch to escape, was sickening.
On the other hand, maybe it was Katya. Maybe she was calling to say she had caught up with them; maybe Konevitch and his short
wife and fat friend were already decomposing in a dark alley and out of their hair. Maybe their troubles were over. Oh, how
he longed to hear those words.
So which was it? The devil or salvation? The bastard or the bitch?
He pushed the receive button and placed the phone firmly against his ear.
Golitsin said without a breath of emotion, “Your twenty-five minutes are long over. I’m assuming you lost him.”
Vladimir felt a rush of fear bordering on panic. The voice was cold, so totally flat. For a moment he said nothing. He just
stood there, tempted to throw the phone and flee as far and as fast as his feet could carry him. Find a new life in India
or Zanzibar, for all he cared.
What could he say?
Golitsin snapped, “Your silence confirms it, you cretin. You were outsmarted by a complete dilettante.”
“I still made you a fortune.”
“So what?”
“Hundreds of millions. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“No.” Just no.
“He hasn’t escaped yet,” Vladimir insisted, trying to sound convincing. The echo of his own bleating in the earphone, loud
and whiny, shocked him.
“Oh, I think we both know he is long gone,” Golitsin whispered, and he was right. “He and my three hundred million. All gone.
Vanished. And it’s your fault, you incompetent dimwit.”
Vladimir stared into the dark, overcast skies. The alley was narrow and empty: no pedestrians; no lost tourists wandering
in confusion; not even a smelly wino sleeping it off on a dark door-stoop. Just him, just a dead man sniveling into a clunky
satphone. A scatter of small shops lined both sides of the street, all of which were locked and shuttered. Rain was pouring
down in heavy sheets. A few lights burned in the apartments over the stores and the flickering glow from television sets refracted
off several windows. The gloom contributed to his quickly deepening misery. “I’m sorry,” he choked, mangling the words he
had never before uttered in his life. He tried again, more clearly, more unctuously repentant, anything to mollify the menacing
voice on the other end. “Truly, sir, I am very, very sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Yes sir. Sorry, sorry, sorry. ”
“Well, sorry won’t do, idiot. Sorry is for spilling coffee on my carpet. But losing three hundred million dollars? For letting
Konevitch escape from under your nose? Just sorry?” Golitsin paused for a moment, then laid down the verdict. “When I am done
with you, you’ll learn the real meaning of sorry.”
Vladimir reached into his waistband and withdrew his pistol. He took a deep swallow and said, “That’s where you’re wrong.
You’ll never get your hands on me, you ugly old bastard.”
“Listen closely, moron. Wherever you run, I’ll find you. You’ll last days, long, terrible days, I promise that.”
Vladimir laughed and the sound echoed down the alley and bounced off the walls, bitter and scornful. A few lights popped on.
Concerned faces appeared in the windows over the empty shops.
“You think this is funny?” Golitsin hissed.
“Yes, I do. Absolutely. I’m laughing because I lost you all that money. Now screw yourself.” Vladimir aimed the pistol at
his left temple, held the phone right next to it, screamed, “Good-bye, asshole!”—and blew his brains down the dark alleyway.
T
he orange Trabant came to a screeching halt under the hotel’s grand entryway, less than an inch from the steep curb. Alex,
Elena, and Eugene scrambled through the rotating glass doors, looked both ways, then made a mad bolt for the car. Alex stuffed
another hundred in the waiter’s outstretched hand, mumbled quick words of thanks, and they squeezed and fought their way inside
the car. The keys were in the ignition, the engine running. Elena climbed behind the wheel and punched the gas with gusto.
With an angry sputter the car lurched and coughed away from the curb, every bit as unsightly and underpowered as advertised.
Only two years off the production line, it didn’t look a day over a hundred. From bumper to bumper, nothing but peeling paint,
dents, and vast patches of oxidation.
Alex couldn’t have cared less. The car was perfect. Every rattle, every belch and spit from the perforated muffler was just
perfect. Nobody would expect a man of his means to be seen in such a creaky monstrosity.
For five minutes they drove without anybody saying a word. The rain battered the roof. Alex hunched down in his seat to disguise
his height; Elena inched up in hers, straining to disguise her lack of it.
Thirty minutes of sitting under the watchful gaze of wicked people who intended to kill them left them moody and edgy. They
peeked through the rear window incessantly. They thought they saw cars on their tail and breathed with relief when the cars
turned off. Elena zigzagged through narrow streets, going nowhere in particular. Just away from the hotel. Just as far as
they could get from Katya and Vladimir and the other killers. At a red light at a large intersection, she finally asked Alex,
“Where to?”
Without hesitation, he said, “Out of Hungary.”
“Not so fast,” Eugene offered in a newly concerned tone from the backseat. “Alex, you need to see a doctor before we go anywhere.”
Now that they were out of danger, his good manners were kicking back in. “You should see how you look. A concussion, broken
bones, internal bleeding, who knows how serious the damage is.”
“Not a good idea, Eugene. I told you, these people are connected everywhere. They’re former KGB, for godsakes. You’re American,
you don’t understand what that means.”
“So tell me what it means.”
“They used to rule these countries. They can pull strings you can’t imagine. The moment they recover their senses, they might
even put out an alert to the Hungarian border police. Our names, our descriptions, and probably some trumped-up charges to
warrant our arrests. Getting out will be impossible.”
Eugene and Elena sat quietly and stewed on Alex’s warning. “In fact,” Alex said after thinking about his own words, “it’s
safe to assume the alert’s already out.”
Another moment of silence, longer than the last one. A nationwide manhunt suddenly seemed like a possibility. Only a few years
earlier this was a police state; they didn’t have a prayer.
“Then the train station and airport are out of the question,” Elena observed sensibly. “They’ll alert those places first.”
Alex nodded. “But I think they’ll check hospitals and doctor’s offices before they do anything else.” He squeezed Elena’s
leg. “The nearest land border is our best chance.” He twisted around in the seat and peered at Eugene. “You still have your
cell phone?”
Eugene patted himself down. “It’s gone. It was still sitting on the table when you pulled me down. I’ll bet it’s still there.”
“Of course.”
“Our passports, Alex, they have them,” Elena remembered with a jolt. “Maybe it would be better just to stay here. Find a safe
place and hide.”
“I don’t think so.” Alex held up a clutch of small red booklets and waved them in front of her. “These were packed in a hidden
compartment of my overnight bag.”
Elena shook her head. Her husband’s cleverness had long since ceased to surprise her, but to insist on bringing the overnight
bags for the restaurant meeting with Eugene was an amazing stroke of clear thinking. She didn’t need to ask about the fistful
of little booklets.
But Eugene did. “Are those legal?”
Elena caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “Whenever Alex accompanied Yeltsin on overseas trips he submitted his passport
for the required visa. Now that Russians are free to travel overseas, seventy years of curiosity about the outside world demands
to be instantly vented. The visa office of the Foreign Ministry is choked with requests. Mountains of paper everywhere. And
more often than not, requests with the accompanying passports get lost or misplaced in the logjam. These are former Soviet
bureaucrats we’re talking about. It’s a miracle they find their way home at night.”
Alex continued, “Two or three days out, my office would call to complain, and liberally mention Yeltsin’s name. Rather than
hunt for a pin in a haystack, a clerk would just issue a new passport with the appropriate visa and send it by courier. That’s
the right expression, right? Pin in a haystack? Anyway, a month or two later, when the original turned up, it was returned
by mail.”
“Exactly how many do you have?” Eugene asked, enjoying his little peek into Russian inefficiency. A died-in-the-wool capitalist,
he loved hearing about the sins of former commies.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“Ten. A dozen. Perhaps more.”
Elena had twice gone along on Yeltsin’s trips; she had three passports, one, of course, now inconveniently tucked in the back
pocket of Vladimir’s corpse. But Alex always shoved a few extras in his baggage, in the event the ones he or she were using
got lost or stolen.
“There are two borders we can head for,” Alex was saying, sharing the possibilities as he tried to think this through. “Austria
to the south. Or due east, to Czechoslovakia.”
“Okay, which?”
“I think Austria makes the most sense. It’s closer. Also, I have part ownership of an advertising company in the capital.
Illya Mechoukov is the president. A good man. I trust him. Better yet, the KGB had little influence there.” He opened the
window and took a deep breath. The night had turned cold. A frigid blast of air hit him in the face, but he felt dizzy. He
briefly pondered the possibility that the exhaust was spewing carbon monoxide into the cabin. “Unfortunately, that border
takes a visa. The Czechs and Slovaks, though, as former Bloc members, still have open borders for Russian passports.”
“Where do you want to cross?” Elena asked, now that Austria was ruled out. She searched the rearview mirror. Nothing.
“Avoid the major arteries. Our best chance is a secondary or backcountry road. The guards at the smaller checkpoints will
be the last ones alerted.”
Eugene decided to join the discussion and leaned forward from the backseat. “Then what?”
“Then… directly to the nearest international airport. That would be Slovakia,” Alex answered.