Authors: Brian Haig
Concern, not worry, was the prevailing mood among the big boys in the KGB. This was their game. After seventy years of undermining
democracy around the world, they knew exactly how to squeeze and strangle Yeltsin. An election takes money, lots of it; cash
for travel and aides and people to carry and spread the message across the bulging, diverse breadth of a nation nearly three
times the size of America.
Boris wasn’t getting a ruble. Not a single ruble. He would rail and flail to his heart’s content in empty halls and be roundly
ignored. After being thoroughly shellacked in the polls, he would crawl under a rock and drink himself into the grave. So
long, Boris, you idiot.
It was the inside boys who first raised the alarm. Hard cash was being ladled out by the fistful to campaign employees, to
travel agencies, to advertisers, to political organizers. The conclusion was disquieting and inescapable: somewhere in the
shadows a white knight was shoveling money at Yeltsin, gobs of it. Boris was spending a fortune flying across Russia in a
rented jet, staying in high-class hotels, and to be taken more seriously, he had even traveled overseas to America, to introduce
himself to the American president; Gorby was forced to call in a big favor, but he got Boris stiffed by a low-level White
House flunky before he got within sniffing distance of the Oval Office. Boris’s liquor bills alone were staggering.
Millions were being spent, tens of millions. Where was the mysterious cash coming from?
A task force was hastily formed, experts in finance and banking who peeked and prodded under all the usual rocks.
Nothing.
A team of computer forensics experts burgled Boris’s campaign offices and combed the deepest crevices of every hard drive.
Not a trace.
Long, raucous meetings were held about what to do, with the usual backbiting, finger-pointing, and evasion of responsibility.
This sneaky white knight, whoever he was, knew how to hide his fingerprints. Whatever he was doing to evade their most advanced
techniques of snooping and detection had to be enormously clever. That level of sophistication raised interesting questions
and dark misgivings. After much heated discussion, inevitably the preponderance of suspicion fell on foreign intelligence
agencies. Surveillance of selected foreign embassies and known intelligence operatives was kicked up a notch and the squad
of watchers increased threefold. Most of the foreign embassies were wired for sound anyway. And after seventy years of foreign
spies lurking and sneaking around its capital, the KGB had a tight grip on every drop site and clandestine meeting place in
Moscow.
More nada.
As Yeltsin’s poll numbers climbed, frustration grew. The KGB was averse to mysteries—unsolved too long they turned into career
problems. So the KGB chief of residency in Washington was ordered to kick the tires of his vast web of moles, leakers, and
traitors in the CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, and any other alphabet-soup agency he had his devious fingers in. Money, cash, lucre—that
was America’s preferred weapon. And even if America wasn’t the culprit, the CIA or NSA, with their massive, sophisticated
arsenals of electronic snoops, probably knew who was.
More nada, nada, nada. More wasted time, more wasted effort, more millions of dollars flooding out of nowhere, with more supporters
flocking to Yeltsin’s banner.
Yutskoi observed, “Actually, it’s a miracle we found out at all. Konevitch is very, very clever.”
“How clever?”
“In the private construction business, nearly everything’s done in cash. And nearly all of it under the table. Compounding
matters, right now, we’re a mix of two economies: communist and free-market. The free-market guys know we don’t have a good
handle on them. They’re inventing all kinds of fancy new games we don’t know how to play yet. It’s—”
“And what game did he play?” Golitsin interrupted in a nasty tone, tired of excuses.
“Everything was done offshore. It was smuggled out in cash, laundered under phony names at Caribbean banks, and from there
turned electronic. He moved it around through a lot of banks—Swiss, African, American—divided it up, brought it back together,
and just kept it moving until it became untraceable and impossible to follow.”
“And how did he hand it over to Yeltsin’s people?”
“That’s the beauty of it. Not a single ruble ever touched the Soviet banking system. That’s why we never saw it.” He smiled
and tried to appear confident. “What we now hypothesize was that he smuggled it back in as cash and handed it over in large
suitcases.” The truth was, they still had no idea, though he wasn’t about to confess to that.
“Then who helped him?” Golitsin immediately barked, with a sizzling stare. Another good, unanswerable question. Soviet citizens
knew zilch about international banking, money laundering, electronic transactions, or how to elude detection. The Soviet banking
system was backward and shockingly unsophisticated. Besides, nobody had enough money to dream of getting fancy.
Or almost nobody—the Mafiya had money by the boatload. And they were masterminds at financial shenanigans; they had tried
and perfected all kinds of underhanded tricks and scams. In the most oppressive state on earth, their survival depended on
keeping their cash invisible. Golitsin waved a finger at his aide’s folder. “Any evidence of that?”
“None. Not yet, anyway. It doesn’t mean their crooked fingers aren’t in it, just that we haven’t found it.”
“Keep looking. It has to be there.”
After a moment, and totally out of the blue, Yutskoi mentioned, “I read a term paper he wrote as a freshman, something to
do with Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
His boss had moved back to the window, restlessly watching the loud, angry crowd down on the street. Only a few years before
the whole lot would already be in windowless wagons, trembling with fear on their way to Dzerzhinsky Square. They’d be worked
over for a while, then shipped off to a uranium mine in the Urals where their hair and teeth would fall out.
The old days: he missed them already.
Yutskoi interrupted the pleasant reverie. “At least I
tried
to read his paper, I should say. I barely understood a word,” he mumbled. “And all those complicated equations…” He trailed
off, sounding a little stunned.
“What about it?” Golitsin asked absently. The crowd below was now dancing and chanting and growing larger by the minute. He
felt weary.
“I sent it off to the director of the thermonuclear laboratory at the Kurchatov Institute. He said it was one of the most
brilliant treatises he had read in years. Wanted to get it published in a few very prestigious international journals. You
know, show the international community Soviet science still has what it takes. When I told him an eighteen-year-old college
sophomore wrote it, he called me a liar.”
His boss glanced back over his shoulder. “You already told me he’s smart.”
“I know I did. Now I’m saying he’s more than smart.”
They stared at each other a moment. Golitsin said, “He’s only twenty-two.”
“Yes, and that’s the whole point. He’s not hamstrung by old ideas. Nor has he lived long enough to have his brains and ambitions
squeezed into radish pulp like everybody over thirty in this country.”
Lost on neither of them was the ugly irony that they and their thuggish organ had done that squeezing. The average Russian
could barely haul himself out of bed in the morning. The only social superlatives their nation boasted were the world’s highest
rate of alcoholism and the shortest life span of any developed nation. What a fitting tribute.
Yutskoi cleared his throat and asked, “So what will you advise Gorbachev?” He began stuffing documents and photos back into
his expandable file.
Golitsin acted preoccupied and pretended he didn’t hear that question. Yutskoi was an inveterate snoop and world-class gossip;
if he let the cat out of the bag now, the news would be roaring around Moscow by midnight. Then again, Golitsin thought, so
what? This news was too big to contain anyway. One way or another, it would be on the tip of every tongue in the world by
morning. What difference would a few hours make?
He moved away from the window and ambled back in the direction of his aide. “On Gorbachev’s desk is a document abolishing
the Soviet Union. That jerk Yeltsin had the Congress vote on it this afternoon.”
“And it passed?”
“By a landslide. If Gorbachev signs it, the Soviet Union is toast. History. Kaput.”
“And if he doesn’t?” asked Yutskoi, fully enlightened now about the cause of Yeltsin’s drunken celebration that night: this
was bound to be a bender of historic proportions. His tenders would have to pour Boris into bed. “What then?” he asked.
“What do you think will happen, idiot? We’ll disband the mutinous Congress and crack down.” He pointed a crooked, veiny finger
through the window in the direction of the unruly crowd below. “We’ll collect a few million malcontents and dissidents. Throw
a million or so into the gulags. Shoot or hang a hundred or two hundred thousand to get everybody’s attention.”
“Won’t that be fun,” the aide blurted.
Golitsin shrugged. “Leave that file on Konevitch. I’ll want to study him further.”
Yutskoi stood and started to leave when he felt the old man’s grip on his arm. “And keep me informed of what you learn about
Konevitch. Spare no resources. I want to know
everything
about this young wunderkind. Everything.”
August 1993
T
he first team picked him up the moment he and his wife raced out the metal gate of their housing compound and stepped on the
gas toward Sheremetyevo Airport. As usual, whenever the couple traveled around Moscow, a car with flashing blue lights rode
in front, the shiny black armored Mercedes sedan was tucked securely in the middle, and a third car filled with heavily armed
guards brought up the rear.
They followed at a discreet distance in a beaten-up rusted Lada sedan that blended in wonderfully, since it looked like all
the other wretched junkheaps roaring around the streets of Moscow.
A totally excessive precaution, really. The plane tickets for the couple had been booked electronically; they knew the flight
number, the departure time, his and her seat numbers, where they were going, and how long they planned to stay.
Why he was going wasn’t in their briefing; nor did it matter, nor did they care. They knew why they were following him.
That’s what mattered; all that mattered.
He and the Mrs. were booked in first-class side-by-side seats, and were picked up by a fresh team the instant they cleared
customs and stepped onto the plane. Within moments after falling into their plush reclining seats, they ordered two flutes
of bubbly and held hands as they sipped and chatted. A lovely couple, the second trail team agreed.
This new team, one male, one female, was positioned ten rows back, squished into cramped economy seats selected for the excellent
view it gave them of their target. Nobody in first class ever glanced back at the deprived unfortunates in cattle class. Detection
really wasn’t an issue, but they worried about it anyway, and took every precaution possible. They munched on dried-out prunes,
sipped bottled water, stayed quiet, and watched.
Another precaution that was totally useless, really. Wasn’t like their targets could escape, flying twenty thousand feet above
the earth, racing along at five hundred miles per hour.
Besides, a third team, much larger, about eight or ten people, would be in position an hour before landing at Ferihegy Airport
outside Budapest.
Tedious work, but the watchers were professionals and never relaxed. They patiently spent their time hoarding mental notes
that might come in handy later. Despite all the careful planning, rehearsals, and precautions, you never knew.
He, Alex Konevitch, was dressed in a superbly cut two-piece blue wool suit, obviously imported, probably from England, and
just as obviously expensive. She, his wife, Elena, wore a lovely black wool pantsuit, also superbly tailored and definitely
more expensive than his. From one of those faggy, la-di-da European design houses, they guessed, but the his-and-hers fancy
rags were a big tactical mistake on their part. Russians and East Europeans in general are notoriously awful dressers and
it set the couple apart.
After studying countless photographs of him, they agreed his likeness was a perfect match; he would be impossible to lose
or misplace. His unusual height also worked heavily in their favor; even in the densest crowd, he would stick out.
No pictures of her were included in their file—a sloppy oversight in their professional judgment. What if the couple split
up? What if they took separate cabs, he to his business meeting, and she maybe to a local plaza for a little noodling through
stores?
They therefore focused mostly on her, collecting useful mental notes of her appearance, her distinguishing features. About
his age, they estimated—possibly twenty-two, more likely twenty-four—though vastly shorter than him. Shoulder-length blonde
hair, casually brushed, light on the makeup, and she really didn’t need any, they both agreed. Delicious blue eyes, large,
innocently doe-like, with a slightly upturned nose, and nice figure, but a little on the skinny side, in their view. All in
all, though, a sweet number, very pretty, very sexy—and best of all, very difficult to miss.
They had been told little about her. Perhaps because little was known or maybe because her background was irrelevant. Why
did they care?
She was with him.
That was the key.
Thirty minutes into the flight, he extended his lounger chair, unbuttoned his collar, loosened his tie, then dozed off. She
handed the stewardess a few American dollars, plugged in her earphones, and intently watched a subtitled American action movie
about an airplane hijacking, of all things.
He awoke from the siesta an hour later, refreshed, ready to dig in. He turned down an offer for a meal, withdrew a thick ream
of papers from his briefcase, and got down to work. The file said he was a workaholic, driven, focused, and greedy. Looked
about right.