The Hunted

"No, you're brilliant. You're the most talented man I ever met, and the most decent. You just don't think like they do." He was gripping the bottle tightly, and she took it away from him. He was the least self-pitying man she'd ever met, but he was utterly miserable. Then again, everything he had built had been stolen, his life turned upside down. The frustration was boiling his soul. She went to work on the cork. She squinted and grunted and twisted with all her might.

Alex seized it back. A single hard wrench and-POP-gold liquid gushed over and dribbled onto the carpet. The bottle cost two hundred bucks. Every drop was precious. She bounced off the bed and made a hasty scramble for the flutes.

Alex said, "The story spent five days on the front page of every paper in Moscow. I'm accused of stealing from my own banks and running off with the money. Can you believe it? They stole my money and they're blaming it on me. The prosecutor's office in Moscow is conducting an investigation. I'm being framed, and I'm not there to defend myself. I'm sure they'll issue an indictment."

She handed him a pair of tall crystal flutes she had borrowed from the dining room downstairs. He slowly filled them, one for her, one for him. She grabbed her flute and inched a little closer. Little of what he was now telling her was news. Over the past few days she had sneaked downstairs to the privacy of Amber's office and made her own calls back to Russia. She had her own sources, and if her husband kept her in the dark, she would use them.

Her family and a few close friends had fully apprised her about what had happened, the whole ugly story. For a few terrible days, Alex had been the talk of Moscow, with considerable interest throughout the rest of Russia. The story was irresistible and the press lunged into a predictable frenzy-on TV, in newspapers, and in magazines, Alex was loudly tried and all but convicted. The millionaire genius was on the lam. He had stolen the money and fled. Behind the glitz and glamour, behind that mysterious facade of quiet brilliance, he was nothing but a two-bit crook, a highway robber with a swollen IQ in a nice suit.

The day the news broke there was a frenzied stampede on Alex's bank: after two frightening days, though, it quickly stagnated to a mild panic. Only fifty million was supposedly stolen-a small drop from a massive bucket. And twenty percent interest, after all, was still the sweetest deal in town. The commercials with the lovely girl who adored men with interest and the treacly old couple fondly eyeing their shiny Mercedes flooded back onto the airwaves. Much of the money that had raced out limped back in.

As usual, the initial spate of news stories was brief and shallow and disgracefully inaccurate. Few details were known beyond the basic fact: Alex Konevitch was a lying, conniving thief who took off with a fortune. But somebody kept dropping more and more tips, inflaming interest in a bonfire that required no fuel. The stories turned longer, the lies more sensational and deceitfully toxic. Alex stole fifty million, a hundred million, a billion! He was holding out in a jungle palace in Brazil, guarded by snarling bandistas, flipping the bird and daring anybody to come after him. Using a false identity, he had checked into one of those California detox clinics, and now was doing cumbaya with the doped-out, besotted dregs of Hollywood. He was hiding here, in Moscow, in a plush safehouse protected by fierce syndicate killers in exchange for a cut of the loot.

The theories about Alex's wheres and whys changed daily. Alex had snapped under the pressure and flew out the door, laughing deliriously, hauling grocery bags leaking cash. Alex had plotted this theft from the start. Everything he built and accomplished was only to create the edifice for a massive heist; the only mystery was why he waited so long. Alex was bipolar and Jekyll finally smothered Hyde. A war was waged on the front pages as each paper tried to outdo the newest disclosures, the wildest suspicions. The same paper that dubbed him "The Kid with the Midas Touch" rechristened him "The Kid with the Sticky Touch."

Fortunately for Alex, Russians are bred to be jaded and skeptical. After seventy years of communist manipulation and distortions, any news fit enough to print was bound to be twisted enough to disbelieve. Besides, fabricating conspiracies is part of the Russian national character, and this story hit the street pregnant with lush possibilities. Golitsin's long career in the KGB did not work to his favor. This sounded like something the bad boys from the Lubyanka would cook up; and as everybody knows, old toads don't change their warts. Rumors and theories flew around Moscow, and ran heavily in Alex's favor.

Foul play was suspected, though nobody could put a finger on exactly how Golitsin pulled it off.