The Hunted

Alex Konevitch, they were sure, would be petrified. A rich boy from Russia who had pampered and spoiled himself silly with unimaginable luxuries. Nothing in his background had prepared him for this. They were sure he would panic and end up begging for a seat on the next plane to Russia. Or maybe he would run afoul of one of the inhabitants and be shipped home in a casket. Who cared? The Russians never stipulated dead or alive.

The tipping point, though, was the large concentration of Cuban criminals. The facility contained the usual toxic mix of Crips and Bloods, a large, swaggering White Power brotherhood, and an assortment of lesser bands that huddled together under a hodgepodge of quirky banners and social distinctions. But the Cubans ruled. They terrorized the other groups, ran roughshod over the guards, got a piece of all the prison drug traffic and black-market action, and generally did as they pleased.

The ringleaders were a long-term institution, a troupe of thirty cutthroats shipped over on a special boat by Castro at the tail end of the Mariel Boatlift. The Immigration Service had been tipped off about their impending arrival by a Cuban convict who hoped his little favor would be met by a bigger favor. This was Castro's biggest flip of the bird, he warned without the slightest exaggeration; a group of handpicked incorrigibles, men who had been killing and raping and stealing since they were in diapers. The dregs of the dregs-once loose on America's streets, the havoc would be unimaginable.

They were picked up the second they climbed off the boat onto a lovely beach just south of Miami, and sent straight to Atlanta's prison. It was unfortunate, but since they had been denied the opportunity to commit crimes on American soil, no legal justification existed to place them in a high-security lockup, where they clearly belonged.

On the second day of Alex's incarceration, a guard, acting on orders from the warden, tipped the Cubans that the new boy in cell D83 was worth a boatload of money. By Alex's third week in the new facility, the Choir Boys of Mariel, as they were known, decided it was time for the new arrival to make their acquaintance. Alex was one minute into his shower when three men surrounded him. "What can I do for you boys?" he asked, trying to pretend polite indifference, when every cell in his body screamed run. Just run. Don't look back, don't even breathe, just run.

The jefe of the trio, a small, wiry man with greasy black hair laced with gray, and long ridges of knife scars on his forehead and left cheek, stepped closer to Alex. "What you in for?" he asked with a strong Cuban brogue.

"Nothing."

"Nothing. Just visiting, huh?"

"All right, I was framed."

A light chuckle sounding like chalk scratched on a blackboard. "You and all the rest of us."

"It's true. I haven't even been to trial yet."

"You're Russian," the man observed, shooting past the normal prisoner baggage and getting to the point.

"I was. Now I'm American."

The man took another step toward Alex, ending up about a foot away. "I'm Cubano," he announced with a nasty smile and his chest puffed up. "I hate Russians. Biggest pricks in the world. You kept that bastard Castro in power."

The prisoners around Alex suddenly began shutting down their showerheads and bolting for the towel room. A fire alarm at full blast could not have emptied the place faster. The three men surrounding Alex were fully clothed in prison coveralls, hands stuffed deep inside their pockets. They stank of old sweat and a thousand cigarettes. Apparently, they didn't visit the showers very often.

Alex swallowed his fear and kept rubbing soap in his armpits. "No, you mean the communists kept him in power," he said and glanced around. Act indifferent, he kept reminding himself. Don't look scared, don't crack a smile, control your breathing. Pretend that standing naked in front of these three goons is no more threatening than a lap around the prison track. The guard who had been loitering at the entrance had mysteriously disappeared, Alex suddenly noticed.

"And what? You weren't a commie?"

Alex shook his head. "Definitely not."

"Yeah, well, what's that?" He wagged a finger at the hammer and sickle on Alex's chest.

"A present from some angry former commies," Alex informed him, eyeing the other two men, who had fanned out a bit and now blocked his exit in any direction.

"For what?"

"Because I bankrolled Yeltsin's election to the presidency."

"You, by yourself?" A quick, derisive snicker directed at his friends. "Just you, eh?"

"That's right, just me. I gave him the money to defeat Gorbachev."

This revelation was intended to defuse the confrontation, but instead produced a nasty sneer. "And you know who I am?"

Alex soaped his arms and decided not to answer.

"Napoleon Bonaparte. You ended communism in Russia, and me… well, I'm the short little prick what conquered Europe."