The Hunted

"With Alex in prison, I find I have lots of time on my hands. Start from the beginning."

27

After an hour of wailing and gnashing, of fruitless attempts at denial accompanied by turbulent rantings and sulfurous threats directed at the messengers, the long procession of accountants finally packed up their books and spreadsheets and fled from his office. The door closed quietly, at last. Sergei Golitsin hunched down in his chair and stared at the blank white walls. He was angry and felt depressed. The number crunchers had been merciless. No punches pulled, no quarter given.

The export-import bank, the flagship of Golitsin Enterprises-and one of its last surviving companies-was careening off a financial cliff. The priceless monopoly on the exchanging of foreign currencies had long since expired. The competition had swooped in and undercut his rates with a vengeance. For a few months, the five percent fee he charged had pumped up the profits and hid the bad news: customers were fleeing in droves.

Then, almost overnight, as if a switch had been flipped, the customers melted away. One day small trickles were still coming through the door; then, without warning, severe business anorexia settled in. Golitsin had moved decisively and ordered an aggressive retreat on his inflated rates, four percent, then three, then two; as of a week ago, it was set at a paltry one percent. At that price it would take thousands of new customers pushing large fortunes through his vaults to keep the doors open. No respite. No flood of new clients, or even return business. The doors to his bank had grown cobwebs.

He now doubted he could lure any customers if he offered to pay them five percent.

Amazing, the damage caused by one unfortunate hiccup. One of his handpicked VPs, a magician in his former life in KGB counterintelligence, had gotten overconfident. Freewheeling with the bank's money, and reeling under unrelenting pressure from Golitsin to show a profit, he had made the bizarre decision to dabble in the speculation game. He made a brazen one billion bet on the unstable English pound. After a few short hours, it was nearly all swallowed in quicksand. A vindictive American currency speculator named Soros detected the move and whacked it with a thousand-pound sledgehammer. Seven hundred million was lost, according to the squinty-eyed accountants who had just spent an hour cruelly detailing the urgent case for bankruptcy. Seven hundred million!

Golitsin could not squeeze even an ounce of solace from the fact that the idiot speculator would spend the remainder of his sorry life in a wheelchair, sucking fluid through a straw. Two kneecaps shattered into bony pulp. A face now unrecognizable to his own children. Big deal! It hardly compensated for the carnage-seven hundred million down the drain. What a mess.

After a year of horrible news, followed by worse news, Golitsin had at last reached a decision. A painful decision, and certainly humiliating. But it was also necessary, practical, and long overdue. Shove vanity aside. Managing businesses was not his forte. There was so little left to manage anyway. A few emaciated skeletons in a swarming sea of wreckage. The construction business had cratered into bankruptcy months ago. The arbitrage firm sank under the weight of ten thousand tons of North Korean "garbage" iron ore of a quality so poor nobody would touch it, at any price. The car import business had sputtered out of existence. The hotels and restaurants had been put on the block months before to pay off the ruinous debts accumulated by other struggling branches.

In fact, the feverish struggle to keep Konevitch's companies afloat had distracted and dislodged him from his God-given gift. What a waste! All those interminable hours exhausted in useless business meetings, listening to his sorry underlings concoct lies and excuses for their utter stupidity. The unending stream of crises brought about by the hapless dolts below him. From now on, he would focus his brilliance where it belonged: stealing other people's fortunes and businesses.

He left his office, walked downstairs, and climbed purposefully into the rear of his big black limousine. He barked at his driver to get it in gear and drive around until he was told otherwise. The motion would help him clear the cobwebs. A little medicinal relief wouldn't hurt, either. He yanked a bottle of imported scotch from the bar against the front seat and jerked the cap off. He positioned a tumbler carefully in front of him. A hearty tilt of the bottle and it was filled to the lip.

Feeling a new sense of purpose, he lifted the carphone, dialed a number in the Kremlin, drained the first long burning sip of scotch, and waited. Tatyana picked up on the third ring.