"I can't imagine."

"Don't even try." She laughed and he joined her.

Back to business, Konevitch: "Okay, now why should I want you?"

A long and interesting pause. Stupid question-open your eyes, Alex, and use a little imagination.

Olga, sounding perfectly earnest: "I type eighty words a minute, take dictation, have good phone manners, and am very, very loyal to my boss."

Another interesting pause.

Then, as if Konevitch missed the point: "I have a very capable secretary already."

"Not like me, you don't."

"Meaning what?"

"I will make you very happy."

Apparently not, because Konevitch asked quite seriously, "What do you know about finance?"

"Not much. But I'm a fast study."

"Do you have a university degree?"

"No, and neither do you."

Another pause, this one long and unfortunate.

Konevitch, in a suddenly wary voice: "How do you know that?"

"I… your receptionist…" Long pause, then with uncharacteristic hesitance, "Yes, I believe she mentioned it."

"He. His name is Dmetri."

"All right… he. I misspoke. Who cares who told me?"

Konevitch, sounding surprisingly blase: "What gave you the idea I'm looking to hire?"

"Maybe you're not. I'm fishing. My mother is desperately ill. Throat and lung cancer. Soviet medicine will kill her, and I need money for private treatments. Her life depends on it."

Nice touch, Yutskoi thought, admiring Olga's spontaneous shift of tack. Among the few details they had gleaned about Alex Konevitch was that his mother had passed away, at the young age of thirty-two, of bone cancer in a state sanitarium. Like everything in this country, Soviet medicine was dreadful. Yutskoi pictured Mrs. Konevitch in a lumpy bed with filthy sheets, writhing and screaming as her bone sores oozed and burned and her young son looked on in helpless agony.

Surely that pathetic memory rushed into Alex's head as he considered this poor girl and her ailing mother. Have a heart, Alex; you have the power to save her mama from an excruciating, all but certain death. She'll twitch and suffer and cough her lungs out, and it will be all your fault.

"I'm sorry, I don't think you'll fit in."

She had been instructed to get the job, whatever it took, and she had given it her best shot and then some. Olga's perfect record was in ruins.

Yutskoi slid forward in his seat and flipped off the recorder. A low grunt escaped Golitsin's lips, part disappointment, part awe. They leaned forward together and studied with greater intensity the top photograph of Alex Konevitch taken by Olga. The face in the photo was lean, dark-haired and dark-eyed, handsome but slightly babyfaced, and he was smiling, though it seemed distant and distinctly forced.

Nobody had to coerce a smile when Olga was in the room. Nobody. Golitsin growled, "Maybe you should've sent in a cute boy instead."

"No evidence of that," his aide countered. "We interviewed some of his former college classmates. He likes the ladies. Nothing against one-night stands, either."

"Maybe he subsequently experienced an industrial accident. Maybe he was castrated," Golitsin suggested, which really was the one explanation that made the most sense.

Or maybe he suspected Olga.

"Look at him, dressed like an American yuppie," Golitsin snorted, thumping a derisive finger on a picture. It was true, Konevitch looked anything but Russian in his tan slacks and light blue, obviously imported cotton button-down dress shirt, without tie, and with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The picture was grainy and slightly off-center. He looked, though, like he just stepped out of one of those American catalogues: a young spoiled prototypical capitalist in the making. Golitsin instantly hated him.

He had been followed around the clock for the past three days. The observers were thoroughly impressed. A working animal, the trackers characterized him, plainly exhausted from trying to keep up with his pace. The man put in hundred-hour workweeks without pause. He seemed to sprint through every minute of it.

Broad-shouldered, with a flat stomach, he obviously worked hard to stay in tip-top shape. Olga had learned from the receptionist that he had a black belt, third degree, in some obscure Asian killing art. He did an hour of heavy conditioning in the gym every day. Before work, too. Since he arrived in the office at six sharp and usually kicked off after midnight, sleep was not a priority. Olga had also remarked on his height, about six and a half feet, that she found him ridiculously sexy, and for once, the target was one she would enjoy boinking.

Yutskoi quickly handed his boss a brief fact sheet that summarized everything known to date about Alex Konevitch. Not much.

"So he's smart," Golitsin said with a scowl after a cursory glance. That was all the paucity of information seemed to show.

"Very smart. Moscow University, physics major. Second highest score in the country his year on the university entrance exam."

Alex had been uncovered only three days before, and so far only a sketchy bureaucratic background check had been possible. They would dig deeper and learn more later. A lot more.

But Moscow University was for the elite of the elite, and the best of those were bunched and prodded into the hard sciences, mathematics, chemistry, or physics. In the worker's paradise, books, poetry, and art were useless tripe and frowned upon, barely worth wasting an ounce of IQ over. The real eggheads were drafted for more socially progressive purposes, like designing bigger atomic warheads and longer-range, more accurate missiles.

Golitsin backed away from the photo and moved to the window. He was rotund with short squatty legs and a massive bulge under a recessed chin that looked like he'd swallowed a million flies. He had a bald, glistening head and dark eyes that bulged whenever he was angry, which happened to be most of the time. "And where has Konevitch been getting all this money from?" he asked.

"Would you care to guess?"

"Okay, the CIA? The Americans always use money."

Yutskoi shook his head.

Another knuckle cracked. "Stop wasting my time."

"Right, well, it's his. All of it."

Golitsin's thick eyebrows shot up. "Tell me about that."

"Turned out he was already in our files. In 1986, Konevitch was caught running a private construction company out of his university dorm room. Quite remarkable. He employed six architects and over a hundred workers of assorted skills."

"That would be impossible to hide, a criminal operation of such size and scale," the general noted, accurately it turned out.

"You're right," his aide confirmed. "As usual, somebody snitched. A jealous classmate."

"So this Konevitch was always a greedy criminal deviant."

"So it seems. We reported this to the dean at Moscow University, with the usual directive that the capitalist thief Konevitch be marched across a stage in front of his fellow students, disgraced, and immediately booted out."

"Of course."

"Turns out we did him a big favor. Konevitch dove full-time into construction work, expanded his workforce, and spread his projects all over Moscow. People are willing to pay under the table for quality, and Konevitch established a reputation for reliability and value. Word spread, and customers lined up at his door. When perestroika and free-market reforms were put in place, he cleaned up."

"From construction work?"

"That was only the start. Do you know what arbitrage is?"

"No, tell me."

"Well… it's a tool capitalists employ. When there are price differences for similar goods, an arbitrager can buy low, sell it all off at a higher price, and pocket the difference. Like gambling, he more or less bets on the margins in between. Konevitch's work gave him intimate familiarity with the market for construction materials, so this was the sector he first concentrated in."