The Hunted

He saw another rich possibility and promised twenty percent interest to any Russian willing to park their savings at his bank for one year. Reams of advertisements flooded every TV station in Russia. A striking female model was used for certain pitches. She wiggled her pliant shoulders and gyrated her sinewy hips, and in a seductive whisper purred that her boyfriend was a sexy genius: his money was earning interest. Who knew it only took a little interest to get laid? To appeal to a different segment, a handsomely aged couple stood against the backdrop of a decrepit wooden cottage and in tearful voices thanked Alex's bank for ensuring their retirement funds were not only safe but actually growing by the day. Then, flash a year forward in time, and the same old couple were shown climbing sprightly into their gleaming Mercedes sedan parked in front of a charming seaside dacha.

It was unheard of. No Soviet bank ever advertised. None offered interest, not a single kopeck. Wasn't it enough that they protected their customers' money? Why should any bank dish out the bucks for its own generosity?

The commercials were vulgar and the promise of interest bordered on criminal negligence, the Soviet-era bankers growled among themselves and to whatever reporter would listen to their gripes. But twenty percent? Okay, one or two percent, maybe; but twenty? Konevitch would pay dearly for his bluster-he'd be bankrupt before a month was out.

Millions more investors lined up at the door. Billions more rubles flooded in. Alex took the deluge and hedged and bet it all against the unstable ruble, then watched as inflation soared above a thousand percent. At the end of a year, the investors took their twenty percent cut and considered themselves lucky indeed; at least their life savings hadn't melted into half a kopeck as happened to millions of miserable others. The remainder of the spread went to Alex. Nearly ninety percent of every ruble in his savings bank was his to keep. He cleaned up.

And as the economy limped from one catastrophe to another, as the disasters piled up, Boris reached out desperately for help. At the president's insistence, a telephonic hotline was installed between Boris and his trusted whiz kid, who seemed to have this whole capitalism thing figured out. Late-night calls became routine. A single push of the red button and the president would rail about this problem or that, long, whiny diatribes fueled by staggering amounts of liquor. Alex was a cool, sober listener; also a quick study with a mathematician's lust for numbers.

Yeltsin had little background and even less appetite for financial matters; all the economic prattle bored him to tears. Alex would talk him through the latest disaster-boil it all down to simple language-propose a reasonable solution, and Boris would pounce on his cabinet the next morning, issue a few brusque instructions, and a total meltdown would be avoided, or at least postponed for another day. One night after a long rambling conversation about the evaporating foreign currency reserves, Yeltsin paused to catch his breath, then, seemingly out of the blue, asked Alex, "By the way, how's your house?"

"Nice. Very nice."

"Is it big?"

"Fairly large, yes. Why do you ask?"

"I heard it's huge."

"Okay, it is. Very, very big."

"How many bedrooms?"

"Six, I think. Maybe seven. Why?"

"Which is it, six or seven?"

"I honestly don't know. Could be ten for all I know. I've wandered through most of it, but there are rooms I've never seen. It was a wreck when I bought it, an old brick mansion constructed before 1917. According to local lore, it was built for a baron or maybe a wealthy factory owner to house his ten children. Poor guy. He was dragged out and executed by a Bolshevik firing squad three days after the last stud went in."

"Are you pulling my leg?"

"The bullet scars are still visible on the west side of the house. That adds a certain charm."

"And after that?"

"Well, I don't know about the early years. But the Ministry of Education owned it for decades. Occasionally it was used as a school for children of the elite, sometimes as a training center for school principals. Of course they neglected it disgracefully. The electrical wiring, even the plumbing had not been updated since it was built. The pipes were made of cast iron. Turn the spigot and chunky brown slush poured out."

"But you like it?"

Alex chuckled. "What's not to like?"

"You tell me," Boris replied.

"Not a thing. I used my own construction company to gut and rebuild with the best of everything. Voice-activated lighting, saunas in every bathroom, two mahogany-paneled elevators, the works. I even had an indoor pool installed, and a well-equipped gym. The attic is now a movie theater, twenty seats, with real popcorn machines and a ten-foot screen. A French chef and three servants live in the basement and take care of everything."

After a long moment, Yeltsin asked, in a suspiciously knowing tone, "And your wife, does she like it?"