Nothing but the best brand on the market for the boss. Something sturdy, something imposing in appearance, something with a tidy reputation for quality, he'd emphasized; in other words, something that would duly impress its owner.
Just be damn sure the model was one he was sure he could crack; within two hours or less would do the trick nicely.
Golitsin's top deputy, Felix Glebov, eventually broke the awkward silence. "It's been three hours. Where is he?"
"Still running," Golitsin said, eyes blazing down the table with a look that could curdle bowels. "A scared rabbit, fleeing for his life." He paused briefly to scratch his chin. "Successfully, apparently, because he's up against a bunch of incompetent twits."
One of the twits, large, with a neck that moved like a tank turret, spoke up, a nervous attempt to deflect blame from his overgrown shoulders. "I have ten good people at the Budapest train station. Twenty more at the airport, a man at each ticket counter. All former KGB or Hungarian secret police. Another squad is hanging out at the arrival gate at Sheremetyevo Airport in the event they make it this far." Eager to impress everybody with his efficiency, he added, "They all have color pictures."
"Good for you," replied the next twit in line, a man with a skinny, pockmarked face and puffy eyes who lost no time launching his own accomplishments. "Only two minutes ago I got off the phone with the deputy minister of Hungarian Security. He has two children in private school and is cracking heads to collect the hundred thousand bounty I promised if he catches them. An hour ago, a red alert went out to all customs offices. They and the police have been notified a murderer and his accomplices are trying to flee."
He paused to be sure everybody heard the next point. "Katya and one her people gave statements to the police. Said they witnessed Konevitch stick a knife in a man's back at the airport. Said they thought they recognized his face from photos in a Russian magazine, but couldn't remember if he was a movie star or what. Took them a while to figure it out, so now they're reporting it."
That last clever move was Katya's brainchild. Of course he felt no obligation to mention it now.
The next man, introduced by Golitsin to the others earlier that evening as Nicky-no last name, no formal introduction, just plain Nicky-sat for a moment, sucking deeply from a black che-root, bored out of his mind, trying to entertain himself watching the safecrackers at work. Dressed head to toe in shiny black leather, down to his dapper biker boots, he was the only man present who did not get the executive-suite dress code. He was also the only non-employee of Konevitch Associates, the only one not hired by Golitsin over the past year for what they brought to this table.
Lacking a KGB background, he was also happily clueless about the reporting procedures.
Eventually the silence grabbed his attention and he noticed everybody staring at him. He crushed his cigarette on the tabletop, flashed an amused sneer, then held it long enough for everybody to get the message. Nicky came from a different world, one without silly protocols, a world with but one simple rule: rules are meant to be broken.
But even without the last name-despite never having seen him face-to-face-half the men around the table were sure they knew who he was. A photo of his face had hung in a place of honor on KGB walls long enough to grow mold. A much younger face, certainly. A little thinner, maybe, without the cute ponytail laced with gray that bounced when he strutted. One with considerably less scars, absent the gallery of tattoos on the neck, and certainly before the huge nose had been rearranged into a bent banana.
Nicky, aka Igor, aka Leon, or a half dozen other transient aliases he had used and thrown away in his illustrious career, was in fact one Nickolas Kozyrev, head of the largest crime syndicate in Russia.
How ironic that they were all now sharing the same table, smoking and sipping coffee like old pals. In their previous lives, they had spent countless hours chasing Nicky around the shadows. Typical gruntwork for the police ordinarily, except Nicky's kingdom had tentacles in every Russian city, webs that stretched across Europe and Asia, and bustling branch offices in Brighton Beach and Miami. Nicky was known and wanted by police forces from New York to Timbuktu. Three different American presidents and an army of other world leaders had bombarded two different general secretaries with strong requests to get Nicky off the street.
Among assorted other enterprises, Nicky wholesaled kidnapped girls to whorehouses, owned a string of porn studios, blackmarketed, smuggled arms, traded in stolen cars, gems, artwork, pushed heroin and an assortment of other illegal pharmaceuticals, and most recently, was making a loud splash in Russia's burgeoning executive kidnapping market. Wherever there was illicit profit to be made, Nicky pushed his sticky fingers in. Contract murder had long been a mainstay of his repertoire. The sheer breadth, expanse, and outright violence of his operation proved too considerable for the police to handle; not to mention wildly exaggerated suspicions that Nicky owned half the senior police officers in the country.
A quarter was more like it.
Thus the KBG was brought into the hunt and encouraged to use every filthy trick in its arsenal.
And despite every effort, despite years of exhausting work, they had never come close. Not even close.
"Tell me again," Nicky opened, his eyes dancing playfully around the table, "exactly how this guy got away."
He knew damn well how Konevitch escaped. They had already been over it, in detail. Twice. But he despised these former KGB boys. He would keep asking again and again, because it amused him to rub their faces in it.
Making no effort to disguise his irritation, Golitsin said, "Why does it matter? He got away. Now we'll find him."
"It matters because I say it does."
"Is that right?"
"Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how all your morons got made asses of." His lips curled and he watched Golitsin. "Remind me, how old is this Konevitch guy? Who trained him to be such a Houdini? The KGB? The army?"
"Vladimir was the moron who let this happen. He was your man, last time I checked."
"Yeah, on loan to you for the past year, last time I checked. When I sent you Vladimir, he was a real killing machine. Your cretins polluted him, turned him stupid and clumsy."
Golitsin held his breath and counted to ten. An hour before, they had sniped back and forth like this for a full fifteen minutes. He gathered as much patience as he could muster and said, "Tell me what your people are doing."
Nicky had broken his spell of boredom and gotten his blood; he could wait until the next opportunity rolled around. He fought back a smile and said, "All right. Word's been passed to all my guys in East Europe. Since we got their passports, they'll need new ones, right? So what are they gonna do? Try and buy phonies, right? Every counterfeiter and half-assed fabricator in Hungary's been warned to pass word the second they make contact."
Golitsin nodded. Sounded good.
Nicky pulled out another black cheroot and lit up. "I got pick-pocket teams working every train and plane station in Europe. They been told to keep a good eye out for a gimpy giant, a blonde runt, and a rich American fatty."
The twit who had just detailed his own efforts at corralling Alex at transportation terminals leaned forward and advised Nicky, "Consider giving them photographs instead. Our experience shows that visual representations always work better than verbal descriptions." He produced a crooked smile. "If you have fax machines, I'll provide copies."
He instantly regretted that he had opened his mouth. "Fax machines?" Nicky roared. He looked ready to bounce out of his seat and strangle the twit. "Oh, sure, moron. Hell, every pickpocket's got one. You know, stuffed in his back pocket." The other former agents at the table instantly hated the thick-necked dolt for his stupid remark. Little wonder they never caught Nicky.