The Hunted

And it was safe. Plus, it was in the country; Elena would love it.

Mistaking Alex's prolonged silence for indecision, Yeltsin prattled on. Like the politician he was, he couldn't stop selling. "Let me tell you, my boy, hell, I'd dearly love to live in it myself. Sometimes, at night, Naina and I wander around that house and dream of moving in. The chandeliers alone cost more than I make in a year. Of course, word would inevitably leak out to all these poor folk scraping by on a hundred rubles a month. There'd be another revolution. You know what, though? I don't think I'd enjoy this one as much as the last."

"My moving van will be there first thing in the morning," Alex blurted. He was too stunned to say "thanks."

Matching his speed, Yeltsin snapped, "Good, glad that's settled."

"It's definitely settled. Don't you dare make this offer to anyone else before nine o'clock tomorrow. By then, Elena and I will be seated on the front porch with shotguns to drive off the interlopers."

"Oh, one other thing. From now on, I want you along when I travel overseas. Russia needs as much money and foreign investors as we can get. I'm miserable at making that happen. You don't seem to have any problems in that department."

"Sure, whatever," Alex mumbled, dreaming of who to invite over first. Would they need furniture? Where would they get groceries? In his mind he was already moved in.

The instant they signed off, he rushed upstairs, awoke Elena, and broke the news about their incredible new home.

"Oh, isn't that wonderful," she replied, even managing to make the pretense of making her surprise look sincere. At one o'clock, Bernie Lutcher crunched hard on his third NoDoz tablet and quickly washed it down with the bottled water he had carried onto the plane.

After twenty-five years as a successful cop in the NYPD intelligence bureau, retiring as a highly regarded lieutenant, he was now five years into his second life, five years that were nearly everything he hoped they would be.

The English security firm that employed him, Malcolm Street Associates, paid him one hundred grand a year, plus housing, plus car, and the chance for a twenty thousand annual bonus. Four for four in the bonus department, thus far. And the way this year was going, next year's was already in the bag and mentally spent. Supplemented by his NYPD pension, he was finally and faithfully putting away a little nest egg.

But not exactly as he always dreamed it would be. Cancer had struck five years before, had stolen his beloved Ellie, and only after it wiped out the paltry savings they had managed to scrimp from a meager cop's salary. His medical insurance had handled the prescribed treatments, but in the final months and weeks, as Ellie stubbornly wasted away, Bernie had thrown good money after bad, desperately investing in a plethora of unorthodox treatments and quackery, from Mexican miracle pills to an oddball dentist who swore that removing Elle's silver and mercury fillings would incite a complete remission. To no avail, it turned out. In the end, Elle had passed away, stuffed with all manner of phony cures and big holes in her teeth.

So now Bernie was rebuilding his life. No longer surviving one miserable day at a time, he was again viewing life as a promising future rather than a sad past. Both kids were grown, out of college, out on their own; the first grandkid was in the oven, and Bernie looked forward to many more.

Plus, he was living in Europe. Europe! He had acquired this dream in his late teens when Uncle Sam borrowed a few years of his life, making him a military policeman in Heidelberg, a gorgeous city in a lovely country that captured his heart. Other NYPD types had Florida fever; they dreamed of sweating out their idle years in tropical heat, blasting little white spheres around manicured lawns. Bernie hated golf, hated heat, and desperately hated the idea of spending his sunset years reliving the good old days-what was so good about them, anyway?-in a community saturated with retired cops. He had always yearned to return to Europe: the slower pace, the opportunity to travel, sip exotic coffees, and of course, the money was fantastic.

He hunched forward in his seat and noted, once again, the same wrinkled old biddy lurching and waddling down the aisle toward the lavatory. He had long ago learned not to ignore anything-not the innocuous, not the apparently innocent. The stakeout king, the boys in the NYPD had nicknamed him, with good reason-he had put more than a few banditos in the slammer by paying unusual attention to cars and pedestrians that appeared a little too often, often stickup artists and bank robbers reconning their targets. Pattern observation, it was called in the trade. Bernie wrote the book on it.

This was her fifth potty trip, by his count. A little suspicious: she did look old, though, and faulty kidneys couldn't be ruled out; or doctor's orders to keep her blood circulating; or just plain oldage restlessness.