The Hunted

Late on the third day the idea took root in his exhausted, drug-addled brain. He thought about it more, and liked it more. No, he loved it. In a lifetime of great ideas, it would be such a grand finishing touch. Long after he was gone, they would still be admiring his final masterstroke. His last finger at all of them.

He reached over to his friend's dead hand and pried the flash-light out of the rigor-mortised fist. He found a piece of paper and pencil and scribbled a brief, perfunctory note.

Holding the note in one hand, he put the pistol in his mouth and without a moment of hesitation blew out the back of his head.

His bodyguards waited an hour before they drew straws. They dispatched the losers first, frightened scouts who scuttled past the door and prayed Nicky didn't blast them to pieces. Everybody had heard that last shot an hour before. The debates and quarrels were noisy and fierce, but they just weren't sure.

Nicky was so clever, so diabolical. It wouldn't be beneath him to fake his own suicide just to lure a few more of them into his sights.

Finally, they tiptoed down the hall, broke the door down, and crashed inside. Somebody flipped on the lights. Between the rotting corpse and the fact that Nicky had used the floor as a toilet, the stench was like a dropkick in the nostrils. They pinched their noses and eased over to Nicky's body against the wall.

The note was gripped tightly in his dead hand: "I, Nicky Kozyrev, claim the five million dollars for my own death. You pricks figure out which of my many bastard kids are first in line. Send it to him. Or her. I don't care."

33

The trial opened on time. By 9:15, John Tromble was seated in the witness chair, duly sworn to honesty, waiting impatiently for this snotty, pretty-boy, headline-robbing prosecutor to kick it in gear.

The moment was historic, unprecedented, actually. No FBI director had ever sat in a witness chair-or, more accurately, none not accused of crimes themselves. One more groundbreaking achievement to tack on to the growing legend.

The evening news the night before had been an Alex fest. Every morning paper on the East Coast led off with the story about the Russian runaway millionaire who had been dragged out of the Watergate-a national landmark of sorts, after all-and was fighting deportation and a long-overdue appointment with justice in his own land. Legal experts held sway on the evening and late-night talk shows, and were still there, sipping coffee and yammering away, for the morning shows as well. Maybe they slept at the networks.

The general consensus was that Alex's legal team was getting its tail kicked and the result appeared inevitable. The only objection came from a big-time radical, highly esteemed member of the Harvard Law faculty, who posed the perverse theory that if Alex Konevitch was a foreign citizen, American courts had no purview over him. After getting laughed off two shows he disappeared back to his classroom.

Alex himself was back at the defense table, looking, if anything, more tragically decrepit and miserably ill-kempt than the day before. His beard was thicker, darker, more pronounced. Heavy circles under his eyes betrayed another long, sleepless night.

From the stand, Tromble stole a quick look at him, then quietly suppressed another smile. A few of the morning articles had mentioned his instinctive reaction as he entered the court the day before and first saw Alex; the mentions weren't overly flattering.

The pretty boy ambled up to the witness stand. "Could you please tell the court your name and title?"

It was a stupid, fatuous question, but Tromble played along. "Judge John Tromble, director of the FBI."

"And that would make you the nation's top law enforcement officer?"

"Technically, that honor belongs to the attorney general," he said with a condescending smile as if everybody should know this.

"Do you believe Alex Konevitch committed crimes in Russia that merit deportation?"

"I wouldn't know about the crimes. Russia's courts will decide that."

"But you reviewed the evidence against him?"

"My people reviewed it. I've seen summaries." Another fatuous question-Tromble obviously had more important things on his hands than sifting through piles of evidence.

"Is this evidence compelling?"

"Overwhelming."

"What would happen if Mr. Konevitch were to escape?" A slight frown. "I mean, escape again."

Tromble appeared thoughtful, as though he had never considered this possibility. "Well, it would be a flat-out disaster."

"Why?"

"Because a great deal of modern crime is international these days. Just as our corporations and businesses have expanded across borders, so have criminal syndicates. International police forces have to rely on each other."

"And you believe Mr. Konevitch's escape would hinder this cooperation?"