The Hunted

When the call came from Moscow that the Konevitches had been found, living in Washington-and in a luxury co-op, of all places-she nearly cried. At four that morning, she and the rest of her team eased out of the bullet-pocked rowhouse, hauling their bags, and dodging a few farewell bullets.

The first day in Washington, she made six furtive passes around the Watergate and the busy streets surrounding the huge complex. To her trained eyes, the competition stood out like sore thumbs. The unmarked white van with too many antennas. The dark FBI cars splayed around like a drive-in movie theater, everybody watching, everybody waiting for the Konevitches to make a move.

They were all going to be sorely disappointed. They couldn't have them, not even a piece of them: the Konevitches were hers.

She sat, gazing hatefully through the binos, dreaming up unpleasant ways to kill them. Mrs. Edna Clarke was ninety-two and still sprightly. She had lived in the Watergate from the day it was built. Her husband, Arthur, had been a managing partner of a large, prestigious law firm, before he passed, God bless him, at the youthful age of eighty-two. The past decade, she had stayed in her apartment, alone but for the kindred company of her three precious cats. She read and knitted and waited patiently for the good Lord to call her. Her children had pleaded with her to consider a nursing home. She wouldn't hear of it. This was her home, a place filled with wonderful memories of Arthur and the family they had bred and raised, through good times and bad, but mostly good. She would leave in a hearse, she vowed.

She just adored that lovely young Russian couple across the hall. The day they moved in, she had promptly rapped on their door, gripping a bottle of good red wine wrapped in a bright red bow. A housewarming gift. Not that young people practiced such things these days: they knew nothing about good manners. The Konevitches, though, were certainly different. They uncorked the bottle on the spot and insisted she come in and share a glass. And afterward, on weekends, they frequently invited her over for quiet dinners.

She and Arthur had led interesting lives. They had met in Europe during the war, where Arthur had been a legal star at the Nuremberg trials. They had dined with presidents and senators, as Arthur went on to work in civil rights and dozens of other things that were important and fascinating. At least fascinating at that time. Now they were just rotten old memories to most people. A pathetic old attic nobody cared to peek into. Not that Alex, though. He was so bright, so curious, such an accommodating listener. He sat on the edge of his chair and peppered her with questions until her brain grew tired and she creaked back across the hall to her bed.

On Edna's ninety-second birthday, they sprang for a ballet at the Kennedy Center-the Bolshoi on tour, no less! Edna had pushed and squeezed herself into a gown she hadn't worn since Arthur's death. Elena was friendly with a number of the dancers, and afterward she had escorted Edna backstage and introduced her around. What a lovely, lovely birthday. Her own children hadn't even sent gifts. Hadn't called, either.

So she did not think twice when Alex knocked and asked to borrow her cell phone. He promised to pay her back for any expenses incurred. Edna wouldn't hear of it, of course. Arthur had left her a bigger fortune than she could ever hope to spend. She had a perfectly good house phone, anyway. What did she need with that shrunken little excuse for a squawk box? She only bought it to see what all the fuss was about: a lot of hype and ado about nothing, she quickly decided. She could barely hear through it. Had to scream into it just to hear her own voice.

But Alex certainly seemed to be attached to that thing. She felt nosy, and guilty, but couldn't keep her eye away from that spyhole on her door. All day, day after day, it seemed, Alex was out there in the hallway, pacing back and forth, chattering like mad into that silly little device. Occasionally, he popped back into his apartment, only to reappear after a few minutes with that stupid thing nudged up against his ear again.

Odd behavior. A little suspicious, maybe; the way a man might behave were he, say, maybe having a secret affair. She drove that thought straight out of her mind. Such a nice, loving couple. He had to be talking business, she concluded; he was enough of a gentleman not to do it in front of his wife. Lord knew she hated when Arthur spent hours on the phone talking all that legal mumbo-jumbo with his partners and clients like she wasn't even there. Shortly after midnight, the apartment door was opened with a skillful thrust of the pick, and gently pushed open.