The Hunted

"It's bad isn't it?" Alex asked.

"I'll be frank. Yes."

"How bad, MP?"

"The director of the FBI and the attorney general want you gone." He let this sink in, then continued, "I'm wondering why. Any ideas?"

"Yes, a few. My enemies in Moscow have powerful allies inside the Kremlin. They've obviously pulled strings with your government."

"But they can't ship us back, can they, MP?" Elena rocked forward in her chair, her hands tightly clenched beneath her knees. "They gave us political asylum. And there's no extradition treaty. If they send Alex back to Russia, they'll kill him."

"Those are the obstacles in their path. Ordinarily they're very powerful," he said, nodding thoughtfully, trying to balance optimism with his growing awareness of how serious this might be. He battled a temptation to jump out of his seat and scream, "Pack your bags and race for Canada. You haven't got a prayer."

"But…?" Alex said.

"But they'll look for ways around them."

"What are these ways?"

"Every case is different, Alex. I can't predict. But I advise you to get your affairs in order. This can get ugly." The first blow arrived Monday morning. Elena went to the bank to cash a check. They wanted to stay and fight, but they were realists. Flight might become their only option. To exercise that option they would need money, a hoard of cash, enough to get across the border and get settled. A withdrawal of ten thousand or more would trigger an immediate report to the IRS, and Alex was losing faith in all American authorities; so $9,999 it was. The teller, a plump young girl with a polite smile, punched the account number into her computer. The smile disappeared. She looked up with a puzzled expression. "Sorry, I can't cash this."

"You… What do you mean?"

"Your account's frozen." She was pointing at the screen Elena couldn't see.

"Frozen? How is it frozen?" Elena thought maybe her English was failing her, that maybe "frozen" was some enigmatic banking term like "overdrawn." A minor inconvenience that could easily be cleared up. "We have hundreds of thousands in that account," she insisted.

"Yes, I know. But the police or somebody has ordered the bank not to disburse any money from your account. I'm very sorry."

She felt like crying. Not here, though-not in front of all these strangers. She rushed outside and called Alex on her cell. She explained what had happened. He told her not to get upset, this had to be a misunderstanding. He would call MP, who would work a little legal magic and fix it.

They hung up and Alex immediately placed a call to his bank in Bermuda where the vast bulk of their money was parked. He was thanking God he had kept the account offshore, deeply relieved that he had not moved all that cash to an American bank where the interest rates were impressively higher. His business brain told him it was costing him thousands of dollars a year in lost income. A reckless waste. He had been sorely tempted a dozen times to just do it. Now he was pleased he had followed some darker instinct.

An assistant manager answered and quickly placed Alex on hold. A senior manager came on the line. "I'm sorry, Mr. Konevitch."

"What do you have to be sorry about?"

"There was nothing we could do."

"About what?"

"Well…" A lame cough. "Your account, sir, it's frozen."

The discussion lasted five minutes. Only an hour before, the governor of Bermuda had called in the head of the bank and read him the riot act. He himself had just gotten off the phone with a senior American Justice Department official who kicked him around like a third world tin can. Though Bermudan banking laws were notoriously loose, he was told that, in this case, the rules would tighten up. Ugly threats were traded back and forth, but in the end the outcome was preordained. Neither the governor nor the Bermudan banks wanted to be listed as havens for criminal money. It mattered not that they were-being accurately labeled was what they deathly feared. Tourism would dry up. Bermudan exports would sit on American docks, rotting. Bermuda, so dependent on rich Americans, would shrivel to a wasteland of empty beaches and foreclosed hotels, massive numbers of angry, unemployed people, etcetera. The governor remained steadfast for about three seconds before he crumbled under the onslaught of threats.

The FBI now had a death grip on both of Alex's accounts.

Not thirty minutes later, Illya called from Austria. "Alex, what's going on?" he yelled, clearly at the outer edge of reason.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"No idea? The roof's falling in here."

"Settle down, Illya. Take a deep breath and tell me what's happening."

A long moment passed while his excitable protege tried to order his harried thoughts. "This morning I was informed that our license to do business in Russia has been revoked. All day, we've been getting calls from clients canceling their contracts."

"On what basis?"

"The American clients were advised by the American FBI that we're a front for criminal operations."

"And the Russian clients?"