Tromble was seated behind his large desk, ruffling papers, pretending to read, a trivial excuse to keep Hanrahan and his team leaders waiting along the far wall, a spiteful way of showing his deep displeasure at their failure to bag Alex Konevitch.
After five minutes of this, Hanrahan thought seriously about rushing across the room and pistol-whipping him.
Eventually the director glanced up at Hanrahan. "It's been two weeks. Why hasn't Konevitch called us yet?" he asked in a tone suggesting this was all Hanrahan's fault.
"I don't know." It was five o'clock, Friday. The end of two long frustrating weeks, and Hanrahan was sure there was a happy hour somewhere with his name on it. He pushed himself off the wall and moved closer to the big desk. "They haven't left the building since our little chat. They're ordering in food, tiptoeing around their home, hunkering down. They're scared to death. They'd be idiots not to be."
"Where are they getting the money? I thought we took care of that."
"My guess would be they had a little cash laying around. Not everybody lives off charge cards."
"How much money?"
Hanrahan said, "I have no idea. Probably not a lot. They're living off pizza and Chinese food. We've questioned a few of the delivery boys. They're using coupons, very spare with the tips. Indications are the kitty jar ain't all that full. They're trying to stretch it out."
"But you could be wrong?"
"Yes, I could be wrong."
"And this could drag out for months?"
"That's possible. Unlikely as hell, but I won't rule it out." Tatyana from Yeltsin's office had been calling Tromble every other day. She was polite and courteous, but beneath that veneer, she was needling and nagging. She never missed a chance to remind him of his boast that Konevitch would be in Russia inside a week. He was tired of it. Twenty talented agents with hundreds of years of experience in battling organized crime had been identified and told to prepare for quick reassignments to Russia. Everything was ready to go, everything except this Konevitch guy.
"What are our Russian friends up to?" Tromble asked, leaning back and folding his hands behind his head.
"The white van's still here. Our guys snuck over and attached a very sensitive listening device on its side. The three boys inside are seriously unhappy campers. Starting to act a little strange. Get this. Yesterday they actually played a few rounds of Russian roulette." He shrugged. "I guess it's their national sport."
"What else?"
"The Mafiya's got a small presence. Last Tuesday, one of their people made a few fast laps around the area. She and two of their people are living inside a car about a block away. They sleep in it, eat in it, and wait."
The impatience on Tromble's face was palpable. Hanrahan, an old hand, was a veteran of countless stakeouts and several hostage situations. Patience is key. They take time. It's a psychological face-off, both sides playing mind games with the other. It's just a matter of who'll snap first. You can't rush it.
Almost predictably, Tromble said, "We need to do something different." After a pause that was meant to appear thoughtful, he pushed on. "Why don't you just arrest them?"
"On what grounds?" Hanrahan asked.
"I don't care. You tell me."
Hanrahan scratched his head. "Maybe some sort of immigration violation. Something simple. Overstaying their visas, maybe. From what the Russkis are saying, he lied to get his asylum. Maybe toss on a charge for fraud."
"Go with the overstayed visa."
"That's INS's territory," Hanrahan observed, quite rightfully.
"Good point. They have to get involved eventually. Why not now?"
Hanrahan slowly nodded. There was obviously more going on here than he was being told. The director was playing this close to the vest, but that wasn't unusual. In an effort to learn more, he asked dubiously, "So we pick him up on a simple immigration violation?"
"We'll throw on all the additional charges we want later. And we'll bring the press into this thing, maybe put out a statement that throws all kinds of dirt at Konevitch. I just want them in the judicial system for now."
"Them?" A brief pause and a look of disbelief. "Both of them?"
"Isn't that what I said?"
"What crime did she commit?"
"She married him."
Hanrahan cleared his throat and stood his ground. "So you want us to use her to pressure him? I wanna be sure I heard this right."
Tromble played with a paperweight on his desk. "Did I say that?"
Hanrahan didn't dare answer.
Tromble lifted up a document and pretended to read it.
Hanrahan wouldn't budge-they were skirting on the thin edge of the law already. Now Tromble was trying to shove him across it. He was two years from retirement. He had it all mapped out: a small home on a golf course in Florida, as little private consulting as he could get away with, divorce the hag he married, and find a new hottie who looked good in a skimpy bathing suit or wearing nothing at all. He wasn't about to put it all at risk. He wanted an unequivocal order in the presence of the two witnesses against the wall.
When it became clear they would stand against that wall all night, Tromble finally relented. Without looking up, he said, "He entered our borders under false pretenses. She accompanied him, and she participated in his falsified testimony for asylum. That makes her party to the conspiracy, and her role merits similar treatment."
"Got it. When is this supposed to happen?"
"Tonight. Late tonight. It's Friday and his lawyer won't be able to do anything until Monday." The knock came at three in the morning. Alex threw on his bathrobe, again, and again tiptoed to the door. A quick peep through the spyhole-Marty Brennan, the co-op maintenance man, peered back with a worried expression.
Alex opened the door. "What is it, Ma-"
Marty was suddenly shoved aside by a crowd of eight people who barged inside, seven men and a stout woman dressed like a man. The agents fanned out and raced into every room in the apartment, which did not take long as it was so small.
From the bedroom, Elena screamed. Alex made a move in that direction before he was restrained by two men with thick shoulders and rough hands. They yanked his arms behind his back and with well-practiced efficiency fitted flex-cuffs around his wrists. "Who are you?" Alex yelled.
"Immigration Service," replied a voice from the small kitchen.
"We've done nothing wrong. We have political asylum."
"Past tense. You had asylum," the man corrected in a snarling tone, moving back into the room and positioning himself before Alex. "That's now suspended, pending review."
"Fine. We also have visas. The passports are in my briefcase," Alex told him, using his chin, awkwardly, to indicate the case resting precariously on the now three-legged living room table.
The man walked to the briefcase, deftly snapped it open, and withdrew two booklets. He flipped through until he came to the pages with the American visas-a millisecond of study before he looked up and frowned. "These are obvious forgeries."
"So is the American Constitution, apparently."
"Search the place," the man directed his people. Everybody but one man in the corner snapped to and began rummaging through drawers and overturning furniture, again.
Alex informed them, "The FBI tossed our place over two weeks ago. What do you expect to find?"
No answer. Alex turned away from the destruction and studied the one man who leaned against the wall, not participating. He wore a cheap gray suit like the others, though he was clearly more observer than participant. Alex directed his voice at him and said, "You must be FBI."
The man looked a little uncertain, then replied very amiably, "Good guess."
"I want to call my lawyer. He has all the papers regarding my asylum and legal status. I'm sure you want to see those papers, right?"
"Nope. Not tonight."
"What about my rights, sir?"
"Illegal immigrants don't enjoy rights."
"I want to be clear on this, sir. You're denying me the right to counsel?"
In one of many conversations with MP, the lawyer had advised him that something like this might happen. Ignore the indignities and offensive behavior, stay cool, don't get confrontational, no matter how bad the goading gets, MP had advised quite insistently. It won't sound good at an immigration board hearing, or in a courtroom, that Alex, an immigrant, lacked respect for American authorities. Stay firm and polite. Gently remind them of your rights, and remember how many legal procedures they violate; later, we'll drag them through all that dirt in a courtroom.
But at that moment, Elena was tugged out of the bedroom and into the small living room by the female agent who looked like a drag queen in reverse. Elena wore only her nightie, a skimpy, nearly transparent garment that left little to the imagination. A few of the male agents were openly leering at her. Elena didn't care. She stared back with a ferocity that would make an armored tank wilt with shame.
The FBI agent also was sneaking quick lurid peeks at her, at least he was before Alex snapped, "Even the KGB didn't employ so many perverts."
The agent, who was named Wilson, shifted his eyes to his shoes and turned slightly pink.
"Are you married?" Alex asked him. No answer, so Alex again prodded, "Do you have a wife?"
"Yes." Still staring down at his laces like a shamed child.
"Would you enjoy seeing your wife treated this way?"
"How were we to know what she was wearing?"
"But you know it now, sir. And like sick perverts you're all leering at my wife. If you had any decency you'd allow her to go into the bathroom and get dressed."
Agent Wilson could not stop staring at his shoes, the tips, the laces, the stitching along the sides. His orders were clear and brutal. Humiliate Konevitch. Goad and provoke him into doing something stupid-any pitiful attempt at resistance, disrespectful behavior toward the agents, or, better yet, some mild act of violence. The charges against him were precariously flimsy, trumped-up bullshit that was dangerously toothless, if truth be told. His boss, Hanrahan, had demanded something a real judge could sink his teeth into.
But that "pervert" word really stung. Now looking at anything but the nearly naked, gorgeous blonde in the room, he said to the female agent, "Let her get some clothes and change in the bathroom."
Elena was led off, stomping angrily down the hall.
Alex leaned against a wall and resigned himself to watching the INS agents tear his apartment apart. The few pieces that weren't already broken-and those he and Elena had carefully and lovingly repaired-were now destroyed beyond repair. It was hard, grim work and, to their credit, nobody smiled or laughed this time.
After about five more minutes of frantic homewrecking, the sounds of somebody pounding hard on a door at the rear of the apartment brought a sudden halt to the action. A deep woman's voice was frantically yelling, "What are you doing in there? Open up. I said, open this damned door! I mean it, I'm not fooling around."
The FBI agent, Wilson, suddenly lost his polished cool and dashed back to the rear bathroom. After a few moments of loud confusion accompanied by more ignored demands to open the door, Alex heard a loud crash. A moment later, Elena was dragged back into the living room, fully dressed now, in jeans, a loose sweatshirt, and a petulant expression.
"What were you doing in there?" the FBI agent demanded two inches from her face.
"I changed clothes."
"What else?"
Elena could not resist a big smirk. "Isn't that a rude question to ask a lady who was in the bathroom?"
Mr. FBI rolled his eyes and barked at the INS agents, "Search the bathroom."
Two minutes later, one of the agents reappeared, sheepishly gripping a wet cell phone in his hand. "This was hidden inside the toilet."
It was senseless to ask Elena if she had made a call. And equally a total waste to ask whom she had called. At that moment, their lawyer probably had his foot glued to the metal as he raced to the apartment.
"Slap her in cuffs," the FBI agent ordered. "Time to get out of here." As they were led out the doors on the ground floor, somebody had obviously alerted the press. They were there in force, it was 3:15 in the morning, and they were swapping jokes about the infamous Watergate, sipping coffee, playing with the klieg lights, waiting for the fun to begin.
It had been a slow, dry week for the news cycle-the Hollywood brats were behaving surprisingly well; plenty of murders, but none gruesome or weird enough to break the threshold of public monotony with such things; and of course Washington hosted its usual political scandals involving graft and sex, but nobody cared about that anymore. The boys from the Bureau publicity machine had gone into overdrive and kicked up huge interest in this fast-breaking story. The Runaway Millionaire, they had called Konevitch. The number one most wanted man in Russia. A beautiful celebrity couple, and better yet, the news bureaus were promised all kinds of inside leaks and dirt to fan the public interest and give the story long legs.
A blonde woman lingered at the rear of the crowd, gripping a big pistol under her jacket, silently cursing that there were so many witnesses. The hell with them all, Katya swore to herself. Her orders from Golitsin were clear and unequivocal: make their deaths look like an accident, or a robbery gone wrong, or a joint suicide pact by the obviously distressed couple. But in her long, fruitful career of killing and assassinating, no target had ever pushed her buttons this way. The humiliation of the escape from Budapest was bad enough. But the full year of misery in Chicago, and to learn now that it was all because Mr. Smartass inside that big building had outsmarted her, again. Oh, she was long past caring what Moscow wanted. If she saw any chance for a clean shot, she would take it-just blast away with her forefinger glued to the trigger. Just keep firing until the Konevitches had more holes than a doughnut shop, then flee into the night and hop the fastest transport headed to Mexico. She rather enjoyed the idea that it would all be caught on camera.
She would somehow acquire a copy of that tape. She intended to spend the rest of her life watching herself blow them both to hell.
Suddenly, the doors flew open. Tightly surrounded by the clutch of agents, Alex and Elena were led outside, then halted for a brief cameo. Cameras flashed, film rolled, and dozens of unanswered questions were flung at the INS and FBI people. Katya tried pushing herself through the mob, but the reporters were veterans at this game; with the brutal skill of NFL linemen they shoved and pummeled her backward till she landed on her ass.
Alex and Elena were pushed through the crowd then shoved into the backseat of a large blue sedan. An FBI spokesman stepped forward and began issuing a statement as terse as it was obviously rehearsed: "Mr. Alex Konevitch is wanted for serious crimes back in Russia. He and his wife embezzled hundreds of millions from innocent investors and fled here. They've been living like jet-setters in America, hiding in one of the most luxurious buildings in the city, hiding from the Russian authorities and pretending-"
The door slammed shut and Alex could hear no more.
Next, a fast trip to the INS building, where the suddenly notorious couple were swiftly photographed, fingerprinted, and processed into the INS system for deportation.
Alex was handed a pair of orange coveralls and allowed to step into the men's room for a quick change. When he emerged, Elena was gone. He was led back outside and stuffed into a van, shackled to a floor bolt, then sped quickly to the Alexandria jail, where he was shoved into a holding cell filled with other miserable men, a mixture of Hispanics, Chinese, Albanians, and sundry other violators of the apparently whimsical immigration system.