The Hunted

In preparation for this job, the firm's experts had produced a thick folder detailing all known and presumed threats to the client. It was a wealthy firm with a big ego that could afford to be comprehensive and took it to the hilt.

Background checks were de rigueur for all prospective clients; unlike other firms, however, this was accomplished before a contract was signed. The client's ability to pay the firm's impressive bills was the principal topic of curiosity, of course. Also the nature of the client's business, types of threat, known enemies, special circumstances, and bothersome vulnerabilities.

British snobbery definitely weighed in. Unsavory clients were blackballed no matter how much they pleaded or offered.

But in a ferociously competitive business, reputation counted for everything. It all boiled down to two simple questions: How many lived? How many died?

The firm had dodged more than a few bullets by politely and firmly snubbing clients whose chance of survival was deemed subpar; in over thirty percent of those cases, the clients had been dead within a year, a striking piece of guesswork. A clutch of actuarial wizards lured from top insurance firms were paid a small fortune to be finicky. A computer model was produced, a maze of complex algorithms that ate gobs of information and spit out a dizzying spread of percentages and odds.

A client or two were lost every year, a better than average record for work of this nature, one the firm loudly advertised.

Regarding his current client, at the top of the threat chain were the usual suspects for a Russian tycoon: Mafiya thugs, hit men, and various forms of independent crooks or assassins intent on blackmail, or fulfilling a contract from a third party. They were effective and often lethal. They were also crude, obnoxiously brutal, notoriously indiscreet, and with their clownish affectation for black jeans and black leather jackets, usually ridiculously easy to spot. Bernie had already swept the cabin twice. No likely suspects of that ilk.

Next came business competitors who stood to benefit by eliminating an entrepreneurial juggernaut like Konevitch, followed closely by investors disgruntled for any number of reasons. His business was privately owned. Two limited partners, that was it. He owned eighty percent of the shares and neither partner was dissatisfied, as best the firm could tell. Really, how could they be? Konevitch had made them both millionaires many times over.

His estimated worth-a combination of cash and stock-now hovered around 350 million dollars-in all likelihood a lowball estimate-and growing by the hour, despite generous and frequent contributions to local charities and political causes. He had his fingers deeply into four or five mammoth businesses, was contemplating a move into two or three more, and his personal fortune was multiplying by the day. The construction firm he began had given birth to an arbitrage business-initially for construction materials only, then for all sorts of things-that bred a prosperous bank, then a sizable investment firm, part ownership in several oil firms, a car importing company, a real estate empire, ownership of two national newspaper chains, several restaurant chains, and myriad smaller enterprises that were expected to balloon exponentially as Russia fully morphed into a full-blown consumer society.

As fast as Alex made money, he poured it into the next project, the next acquisition, the next promising idea. Whatever he touched spewed profit, it seemed. In the estimation of the firm, that remarkable growth rested firmly on his own deft brilliance, his own impeccable instincts, his golden touch.

Take him out and Konevitch Associates would fold. Maybe not immediately, maybe it would limp along for a few anguished years. But with the brain dead, the body would atrophy. Eventually the pieces would shrivel and be sold off for a fraction of a pittance. Alex was a money-printing machine; surely his partners knew this.

Next came possible political enemies, and last, though not insignificantly, the obligatory threat for anyone with heaps of money-family members who might hunger for an inheritance and/or an insurance windfall.

Nearly all rich people dabbled in politics to a greater or lesser degree; this client was in it up to his neck. According to the dossier, Konevitch was very close to Yeltsin, had apparently backed his rise to the presidency, and he continued to throw cash by the boatload at Yeltsin's hungry political machine and a few of the reformist parties ambling in his wake.