The Hunted

The construction business was an unfolding disaster. Without Alex's name on the letterhead, no new contracts had come in. Nor, after the latest stumble, were they likely to. A huge high-rise under construction on the outer ring had collapsed in a spectacular heap. Ten workers crushed to death, twenty more in the hospital. The cause was an incredible decision by another of the twits to use less expensive wood beams in place of the thick metal ones clearly stipulated by the now enraged architects. Tatyana managed to pull a few strings and have the investigation squelched. The damage was done, though. Half the construction workforce quit on the spot; the other half were making ugly sounds about a strike.

Another twit, this one in charge of the bank, ignored the growing spread between government bonds and interest rates. A small, momentary blip on a computer screen and, like that, a hundred million, gone. Amazing.

The list of problems was endless, horrible, and growing. The car importing company shipped five hundred Mercedes sedans to the wrong cities, then hiked up the prices so high that the inventory was rusting on the lots. The hundred Mercedes convertibles that ended up in Yakutsk, a frigid penal colony near the Arctic Circle, were going to be a bitch to move at any price. The complicated computer program confused him, that twit whined afterward. And another idiot, this one in the arbitrage business, had purchased two thousand tons of the most expensive iron ore in history. He misread the code, thought it was silver at a great price, he insisted after he annihilated any possibility of the arbitrage business having a profitable year.

Another few months at this hideous pace and there'd be nothing left.

As per the original deal, Tatyana was a partner in Golitsin Enterprises-a hidden partner, of course-and she was quietly seething. From the beginning Golitsin had demanded Konevitch's cash for himself. His idea, his brilliant plan, his inspirational leadership; the instant gratification was rightfully his, every bit of it, he insisted. She had neither objected nor debated that point-she hadn't seen a reason to-and now she sorely regretted it. Looking back, it seemed so naive. Stupid. But by any reasonable measure, at the time her take was around fifty million in stock in companies that were wildly flourishing and threatening to double or triple in a few brief years. At the time, that struck her as ample restitution for her part in the heist.

She doubted she could unload her shares now at any price. The smart money had already sprinted out of the banks; even the dumb money was pawing the exits. Lawsuits were piling up over shoddy workmanship, false promises, missed deliveries, slipped deadlines, and of course the furiously grieving families of the people slaughtered by that fly-by-night excuse for an airline booked by Golitsin's twits. Who knew what awful disaster would happen next? She had no legal friends, but plenty of attorney acquaintances, all of whom were eyeing Golitsin Enterprises with considerable intensity. They were salivating to get a piece of the action.

But Tatyana was a realist. Nothing she could say would change things. Golitsin, for all his brilliance and canniness, had no interest or talent for commerce. And his thugs had as much business running a company as three-year-olds playing with nuclear warheads. Tugging fingernails out of helpless prisoners was one thing; squeezing profit out of finicky customers quite another.

"I contacted Konevitch," she said, almost in a whisper.

"You what?"

She bent forward. "You heard me, Sergei. Konevitch. I dispatched an officer of the Security Ministry to make him an offer."

"You must have a death wish. You have no business free-lancing."

"Well… then forgive me. I'm looking out for both our interests." Even she couldn't make that sound authentic. Golitsin's face reddened, his eyes narrowed into angry slits.

"Answer me this, Sergei. How much interest are you getting from the bank where the money is stashed?"

"None of your business."

"It won't hurt to tell me. How much?"

"It's a big pile of money. A mountain, really. A little interest goes a long way."

"If it's a Swiss bank, about one percent, am I right?"

"Around there," he snarled-not that one percent of 250 million was anything to be ashamed of. Besides, one didn't go to the Swiss for the interest.

"What if Konevitch could double it every few years? He's a genius. It will be easy to build in a few safeguards. He'll never actually touch the money. For a small share in the profits we'll be buying his golden touch."

"Not interested."

"Why aren't you? Because you're making a fortune from Golitsin Enterprises?" she asked with a constricted smile.