The Hunted

Mikhail edged over to the table and began buying rounds for everybody. The fired staffer was drunk, and in no time became utterly drunker. The man had a bottomless bladder, but around midnight he ambled off to the men's room. Mikhail trailed two steps behind him. Over side-by-side urinals Mikhail offered him a cool thousand if the man could point out the backstabbing bitch the next morning as she made her way into the Kremlin.

One look, and he knew he had his girl. Everything fit, except the name. Then again, Tatyana to Anna had a certain ring to it. Alex had predicted she probably was attractive; she was that, and then some. Plus, she had a law degree. Over the next two weeks he tailed her everywhere, and it was fun, though not overly productive. Three to four nights a week she and her boss checked into a hotel. They drove into work together, holding hands and smooching like horny newlyweds. But she also took lots of extended lunch breaks in downtown hotels, not with her chubby middle-aged boss but a handsome, fit-looking young lad who apparently offered a little more in the sack. Click, click went Mikhail's camera. A little research and the young lad turned out to be Sasha Komenov, a star striker on the national soccer team. A little more digging revealed a little more dirt. Turned out pretty boy Sasha and lovely Tatyana were from the same town, had flirted and dated and wrestled together in backseats throughout high school. Her Moscow affairs came and went but Sasha was always there, lurking in her locker room after the game.

Late into the third week, he'd watched her disappear into the rear of a long black limo that took off at a gallop. Click, click. He hit the gas and followed. Next stop was a seedy, run-down nightclub on the city outskirts. More click, click, click. A short man with a large bent nose and graying ponytail dashed out of the club and clambered inside.

From his former days as a Mafiya crimebuster, Mikhail instantly put the name Nicky to the furtive figure wrapped in black leather. The limo's license plate told the rest of the story. It was registered as a company car by Golitsin Enterprises.

Usually the meetings by the Moskva lasted no longer than fifteen to twenty minutes. Today's meeting dragged on for over an hour. Big things were afoot, Mikhail guessed. At one point, Nicky climbed out, stumbled uncertainly for a few steps, then he whipped it out and peed in the open. More click, click with Mikhail's long, wide-angled lens. He chuckled to himself.

The most feared thug in Russia, Nicky Kozyrev, had a teenie weenie.

He made his weekly telephonic report to Alex that night. The pictures were bundled into a large envelope and sent off to the Watergate apartment.

17

Late 1994 The apartment bought by Alex and Elena Konevitch was riverside, on the sixth floor of the sprawling co-op building, gazing fitfully over the brown muddy waters of the broad Potomac and within yelling distance of the majestic Kennedy Center. Even after a year, Alex remained dismayed by how preposterously small it was. A two-bedroom, one for sleep, the other converted to a tiny, cluttered office shared by the two of them. At an amazing cost of almost a million, it had to be the most expensive eight hundred square feet in the city.

But it was safe. Lots of important and famous folks made their nests inside this famous building-they demanded privacy and good security, they paid out the nose for it, and they got it.

Elena adored its simplicity. The small space suited her fine-it was easy to clean. Alex felt cramped, squeezed, slightly claustrophobic. He loved big, open spaces and frequently cursed Golitsin for stealing his home, for exiling him to an apartment that would be swallowed by his old bedroom.

The contract for the co-op, their phones, their cars, their insurance-everything was registered under Elena's maiden name. The name Konevitch disappeared from sight. On Mikhail's expert advice, to be on the safe side, every two months Alex flew in and out of Chicago, brief trips where he liberally sprinkled the Konevitch name around Russian nightclubs and neighborhoods. On the first visit he even signed up for local cell phone services with unlisted numbers. Maybe the bad people were still hunting them, maybe not.

Safe beats sorry every time, Mikhail advised him.

Alex and Elena were one year into their new life, and their new careers were flourishing. The requests for political asylum had come through ten months before. Their lawyer, Martie P. Jones, MP to friends, or to anybody, really, had been as good as advertised. Better, in fact. MP had started his career laboring in the trenches as a lawyer in the stodgy legal office at the Immigration Service. He knew exactly what buttons to push, with a Rolodex that would put the New York phone book to shame.