Alex seized it back. A single hard wrench and-POP-gold liquid gushed over and dribbled onto the carpet. The bottle cost two hundred bucks. Every drop was precious. She bounced off the bed and made a hasty scramble for the flutes.
Alex said, "The story spent five days on the front page of every paper in Moscow. I'm accused of stealing from my own banks and running off with the money. Can you believe it? They stole my money and they're blaming it on me. The prosecutor's office in Moscow is conducting an investigation. I'm being framed, and I'm not there to defend myself. I'm sure they'll issue an indictment."
She handed him a pair of tall crystal flutes she had borrowed from the dining room downstairs. He slowly filled them, one for her, one for him. She grabbed her flute and inched a little closer. Little of what he was now telling her was news. Over the past few days she had sneaked downstairs to the privacy of Amber's office and made her own calls back to Russia. She had her own sources, and if her husband kept her in the dark, she would use them.
Her family and a few close friends had fully apprised her about what had happened, the whole ugly story. For a few terrible days, Alex had been the talk of Moscow, with considerable interest throughout the rest of Russia. The story was irresistible and the press lunged into a predictable frenzy-on TV, in newspapers, and in magazines, Alex was loudly tried and all but convicted. The millionaire genius was on the lam. He had stolen the money and fled. Behind the glitz and glamour, behind that mysterious facade of quiet brilliance, he was nothing but a two-bit crook, a highway robber with a swollen IQ in a nice suit.
The day the news broke there was a frenzied stampede on Alex's bank: after two frightening days, though, it quickly stagnated to a mild panic. Only fifty million was supposedly stolen-a small drop from a massive bucket. And twenty percent interest, after all, was still the sweetest deal in town. The commercials with the lovely girl who adored men with interest and the treacly old couple fondly eyeing their shiny Mercedes flooded back onto the airwaves. Much of the money that had raced out limped back in.
As usual, the initial spate of news stories was brief and shallow and disgracefully inaccurate. Few details were known beyond the basic fact: Alex Konevitch was a lying, conniving thief who took off with a fortune. But somebody kept dropping more and more tips, inflaming interest in a bonfire that required no fuel. The stories turned longer, the lies more sensational and deceitfully toxic. Alex stole fifty million, a hundred million, a billion! He was holding out in a jungle palace in Brazil, guarded by snarling bandistas, flipping the bird and daring anybody to come after him. Using a false identity, he had checked into one of those California detox clinics, and now was doing cumbaya with the doped-out, besotted dregs of Hollywood. He was hiding here, in Moscow, in a plush safehouse protected by fierce syndicate killers in exchange for a cut of the loot.
The theories about Alex's wheres and whys changed daily. Alex had snapped under the pressure and flew out the door, laughing deliriously, hauling grocery bags leaking cash. Alex had plotted this theft from the start. Everything he built and accomplished was only to create the edifice for a massive heist; the only mystery was why he waited so long. Alex was bipolar and Jekyll finally smothered Hyde. A war was waged on the front pages as each paper tried to outdo the newest disclosures, the wildest suspicions. The same paper that dubbed him "The Kid with the Midas Touch" rechristened him "The Kid with the Sticky Touch."
Fortunately for Alex, Russians are bred to be jaded and skeptical. After seventy years of communist manipulation and distortions, any news fit enough to print was bound to be twisted enough to disbelieve. Besides, fabricating conspiracies is part of the Russian national character, and this story hit the street pregnant with lush possibilities. Golitsin's long career in the KGB did not work to his favor. This sounded like something the bad boys from the Lubyanka would cook up; and as everybody knows, old toads don't change their warts. Rumors and theories flew around Moscow, and ran heavily in Alex's favor.
Foul play was suspected, though nobody could put a finger on exactly how Golitsin pulled it off.
But the incredible idea that Alex would plunder his own bank and, before racing out the door, take the trouble to legally transfer everything he owned-not to his partners, not to his businesspeople, but to his chief of security, of all people-smelled rotten. What sense did that make? Besides, why would he care who snatched up the crumbs he left behind? And only fifty million from his bank customers? For a man rumored to have billions? Why squander his reputation and name for pocket change? And if he was willing to snatch fifty million, why leave behind billions more?
Even among those skeptics, however, very few pitied Alex. A rich man brought down, big deal. It was funny, actually. Live by the dollar, die by the dollar, seemed to be the general sentiment among a nation of former communists. Besides, nothing satisfies the average Ivan more than the spectacle of a high-and-mighty chopped down to his knees. Alex's downfall was weighed and deliberated around dinner tables with no small measure of delight.
"So what's next?" Elena took a long sip from the flute.
"I honestly don't know. I've tried everything I can think of."
She was now pressed firmly up against him, and between sips and explanations, he was stealing furtive glances at her thread-bare teddy. She lowered her left shoulder and encouraged a strap to slip off. "What's the worst that can happen to us, Alex?"
"This is the worst."
"No it's not. Not by a long shot. We could be back in Budapest, dead."
"True enough. But if we return to Moscow, that could still happen."
"But they can't drag us back to Russia, can they? Without an extradition treaty, they can't touch us. They can add a library of charges but you're here. If they try, we'll just stay here."
"You wouldn't miss Russia?"
"A little, sure. But alive anywhere with you is better than dead there. But one thing's going to change."
He turned and looked at her.
"We're in this together. I wasn't involved in your business back in Moscow, I didn't need to be, and frankly I never cared to be. But our lives are different now. Our marriage changes with it."
"What does that mean?"
"From now on, no matter how depressing, keep me informed of everything. I'm scared, but I'm not some breakable china doll, and I won't be treated like one."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. I love you, and I want to help."
He put his arm around her. Elena slid back and dragged him down onto the bed. The champagne flutes tumbled to the floor. Three weeks of pent-up energy and the frustration of three hundred and fifty million in stolen dollars and stocks were compacted into the first long, smoldering kiss.
The expensive little teddy was quickly ripped off-it sailed through the air and landed on the lampshade. Alex paused only long enough to ask, "What time did you tell Homeless Harry to be here?"
13
The black limo idled in an otherwise empty parking lot that overlooked the ice-cold Moskva River. Mid-October. The sky was gray, overcast, and dreary; another winter that threatened to be long and harsh had produced its first cold snap. The driver had been ordered out of the car. He stood some twenty feet away in the bone-aching darkness, smoking, shivering, stamping his feet, and eyeing the heated car with considerable bitterness.
Three people sat in the rear.
They had agreed to meet like this, one or two days each week. They were bound together by the money and the single enduring emotion that thieves hold for one another: poisonous distrust. For obvious reasons, the three could not be seen together in public under any circumstances, so Golitsin took the initiative and arranged the inconspicuous rendezvous.