by Noel Hynd
“What’s that?”
“Back in 1992 after the CIA was hit with major budget cuts, they started contracting out a lot of special assignments. A CIA officer could turn in retirement papers and his blue ID badge one day and go to work for a military contractor the next day. He or she would come back into the same Langley building with a green ID the next morning at a higher salary but with no government oversight. After September of 2001, the outsourcing went completely nuts. Green-badge bosses were recruiting blue-badge employees right in the CIA cafeteria.”
“And no one stopped it?”
“Who would stop it during that era? Figure that the federal budget includes about five hundred million for intelligence gathering, but now the CIA only gets one percent of that. The Pentagon gets the rest and pays the military contractors. The taxpayers get three times as high a bill, but if there’s a screwup, the Pentagon ‘classifies’ it so no one can investigate. So even if Cerny has a State Department ID, who knows who’s really running his operation?”
“Got it.”
“Take it from there.”
“Got it,” she said again, nodding, and not reassured in the least.
She arrived home past 1:00 a.m. She organized her apartment, wrote out checks to pay bills, and dropped them in the mail chute in the hallway.
She walked back into her own apartment, closed the door, stopped, and listened.
There was something about her own place that was giving her the creeps these days. She couldn’t place it, but it was there.
She stood perfectly still and cocked her head.
Man, this was driving her nuts.
There was something! There absolutely was!
She put her ear to the wall, then the floor. She opened the window and listened. She couldn’t find it. She went out to the hall and then she picked up on it.
She looked at her watch. Okay. It was late. So to be safe, she went back into her apartment and found her Glock. She loaded it and put it in a holster. She pulled on her UCLA sweatshirt so the gun wouldn’t be visible and went for a walk.
Out the door. Down the hall. Past the utility closet that the phone and cable people used to repair things when the service was screwed up.
Down the stairs. Onto the floor below her. Then down to the third floor.
Then she had it.
Two apartments under her.
Music. Voices. Whoever lived there was jamming late. She sighed. It was bad manners to be making such a racket at a late hour.
Okay. She was turning into a nut case. Her nerves were shot for this undercover assignment and this proved it. Worse, she realized that there was something else unsettled in her spirit too.
She went back upstairs and crashed into bed, leaving the Glock on the bedside table and the final packing to the next morning. There would be one unscheduled stop tomorrow morning and no one she worked with would know about it.
TWENTY-THREE
O n the morning of her departure for Kiev, Alex drove to her parish, St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square. St. John’s was a tall building from the early 1800s, with a handsome white steeple and light yellow exterior. There were white columns at the entrance and stone steps leading upwards. The church was on a busy urban corner, two blocks from the White House. Many presidents had worshiped here.
She was lucky with parking, finding a place less than two blocks away. The morning was cold, but there was no precipitation. The sun, in fact, was breaking through clouds for the first time in several days.
Alex had joined St. John’s when she came back to Washington after accepting her job at Treasury. She felt comfortable here. The atmosphere mixed just the right amount of Protestant tradition and reverence with inclusiveness.
She found her way to a pew halfway down the center aisle.
She knew most of her friends would smirk at her habit, her belief, her “superstition,” as they might call it. She knew what people sometimes said about “faith” behind her back, but it was a free country and she felt comfortable with her beliefs.
She felt better being here. There were a handful of other people in the church, including an assistant pastor who recognized her, nodded, and gave her a warm smile. There were a few tourists at the front.
She prayed for Robert. She prayed that God would watch over her. She could hear her own words echo in the old church, and she didn’t care who else could hear her if the Almighty could.
She prayed so hard that her eyes almost hurt and began to tear. She prayed as if the act of supplication was something new, or something renewed or reborn. She prayed to Jesus and to God. And then she realized something about herself and about the present.
She was deeply frightened for one of the first times in her adult life. She deeply feared something about this trip, and there was no way now to back out.
She prayed out loud and she listened and she didn’t hear anything in return except the distant drone of DC traffic in the distance.
Then she sat up. She felt better. She drew a deep breath and composed herself.
In a few hours her taxi would arrive.
She had done everything she could to prepare for this trip.
Whatever God’s plan was for her, she told herself, she would have to go down that road.
She was finally ready to travel.
TWENTY-FOUR
L t. Rizzo parked his car in the entrance area to Le Grand Hotel on the via Vittorio Emanuelle. He brushed away the doorman, flashing his police credentials. For a moment, the career cop stood in front of the hotel and took in the grandeur of the place.
Le Grand Hotel was more luxurious than any other in Rome. Not even the Excelsior or the Eden could match its excesses. Its only drawback was the gritty Stazione Termini nearby, the Roman railway station, a bustling intersection of business people, excited travelers, pickpockets, creeps, hookers, and weirdoes. But once inside Le Grand Hotel, all thoughts of trains and of the people at the station vanished.
The lobby was resplendent with sparkling Murano glass chandeliers, white columns, marble busts, and grinning cherubs, a lavish but tasteful explosion of French and Italian styles in muted gold and pastels. Rizzo had been in a few of the bedrooms over the years, on official business and otherwise, and remembered them being recently restored in what the hotel called the “Barocco” style, a mongrel blend of baroque and rococo.
Everywhere one stepped there were plush carpeted floors. Everywhere one glanced, antiques and artwork. Everywhere one turned, a different hand-painted fresco showing a Roman scene. The place had come a long way since 1890 when it first opened, and its luxurious pitch had included a private bath and two electric lights in every room.
Rizzo sighed as he waited for his contact, Signor Virgil Bruni, in the lobby. To stay in a place like this for more than an hour, Rizzo reflected, a man had to be really rich. No, not really rich, filthy rich. Royalty rich. American movie star rich. Internet rich. Russian gangster rich. Even the local mafia guys would gasp at the prices here. What was it? Five hundred Euros a night for a room by the elevator? Eight hundred American dollars. Ouch!
Rizzo’s connection was the hotel’s day manager, an old friend. As he continued to wait, Rizzo surveyed the clientele, the men in designer suits, the jeweled, bronzed women in their two-thousand-Euro suits with their daring miniskirts, their beautiful skin and perfect figures, and their long sleek legs. Outside, the sports cars and Benzes of Rome’s international set glided past Rizzo’s dented Fiat.
Wealth, privilege, beauty, sin, and sex came so easily to these people, Rizzo mused. And what had they ever done to deserve it? Many of the men had been born into it. Others had stolen it. A few had been fortunate and earned it. Then the women had latched onto it. What was it that some French writer had written a century ago? Behind every great fortune there is a crime?
Rizzo’s old man had been in an America POW camp in Sicily, then been a worker in a Fiat brake plant in the north. It had always been Lt. Rizzo’s plan to rise above his
police job and join these people who frequented this hotel, to live a life of expensive meals, good clothes, and beautiful women.
He had done his job diligently over the years, but his final goals had been elusive. The system had shut him out. Lieutenants in the homicide brigades of Europe were not welcome in these social climes. They were, in fact, often a nuisance. Rizzo felt as if these people had intentionally excluded him from their cozy well-heeled little clubs. So he hated these people who surrounded him this morning. He hated them with a passion. He would have loved nothing more than to bring a few more of them back down to earth before he retired.
Rizzo settled in at one of the small tables in the lobby. He eyed the whole scene before him, but mostly he eyed a trio of women who were sitting at a nearby table having morning tea. Wealthy Arabs in expensive suits, he guessed. Or maybe Iranians. Who could tell the difference these days?
Rizzo listened to them. They were speaking English. On the table in front of him was a ceramic ashtray with the hotel’s logo. He picked it up and examined it. Clean, sturdy, and new.
No one was looking. He slipped it into his coat pocket. It would be perfect for a cigar at home. At least he would have a souvenir of this trip to the hotel. In fact, he now owned a piece of the joint.
A well-modulated voice came from over his shoulder. “ Gian Antonio? ” it asked.
Rizzo turned and looked. It was Virgil Bruni, his contact, and no, Rizzo hadn’t been caught palming the ashtray. Or if he had been, his friend was going to let it slide.
Bruni was a small man, modest and unassuming, with a ring of close-cropped dark hair around the shiny dome of his bald head. Bruni’s eyes gleamed with pleasure upon seeing his old chum. It had been two years, maybe three. He approached graciously and extended a hand.
“Hello, Virgil,” Rizzo said softly. He stood.
Virgil. Named for a classic Roman poet and contemporary of Christ, Bruni had become a manager of breakfasts, banquets, bidets, and bathtubs. And he had done quite well at it, judging by his Armani suit.
Bruni slid into the other seat at the small table. Rizzo sat again.
“I wanted to alert you to something,” Bruni said after the opening pleasantries and summoning coffee for both of them. He spoke in subdued tones below the other conversations in the lobby. “About ten days ago, we had two guests here. Americans, I believe. They checked in, went out one night, and no one has seen them since.”
“They skipped out on the bill?” Rizzo asked.
“No, no. They deposited cash when they checked in. Ten thousand dollars American, seven thousand Euros. Not unusual for our clients. But the amount suggests that they planned a longer stay. They did in fact have a reservation for twelve days.”
“Did they cause trouble of some sort?”
“Not for us. Maybe for themselves.”
“It’s wonderful to see you, Virgil,” Rizzo said, “but would you mind coming to the point?”
Two demitasses arrived.
“Sometimes guests register and only use the hotel during the day,”Bruni continued, “as you know. They find more interesting accommodations at night. This couple just went out and disappeared. I have the details.”
The couple had arrived the fourth of January, Bruni explained, a Sunday. The security cameras in the hotel had images of them until the seventh, a Wednesday.
“Their room was undisturbed between Thursday the eighth and Wednesday the fourteenth,” Bruni recalled. “Our cleaning staff is instructed to keep track of such things.”
Rizzo was thinking furiously, trying to leap ahead of Bruni to see where this was going. Until he made that leap, however, the coffee was excellent and up to the hotel’s high standards. Bruni sipped with his pinky aloft.
“We naturally keep passport records,” Bruni said. “Records and numbers. We photocopy the personal pages of the passports. We don’t tell guests. But we do it for our security.”
“Of course,” said Rizzo, who felt the world would be a safer place if more people spied on each other.
Bruni reached to a business-sized envelope from his inside suit pocket.
“Take a look. You may keep this. See if it means anything to you,” Bruni suggested. Bruni then presented copies of the passport pages, including photographs.
Names: Peter Glick and Edythe Osuna. They had checked in as man and wife, despite the different names on the passports. It was not the hotel’s policy to question such matters.
Rizzo looked at the information carefully. “The names are unfamiliar to me,” Rizzo said.
“I see,” Bruni said.
“Should they be familiar?” Rizzo asked.
“When the couple had been gone for six days,” Bruni said, “we alerted the American embassy. At first there was no interest. A young assistant counsel said to call back in a week. But just to be sure, I left the names of the people and the passport numbers. In case some other report came in, an accident or something.”
Rizzo finished his coffee.
“Then, about an hour later,” Bruni continued, “some very unpleasant security people from the American embassy showed up. Barged right through the revolving door, they did. Four of them. A bunch of gorillas. I dealt with them myself. They acted as if we’d made these people go missing ourselves. They sat me down, questioned me as if I had done something. They said they’d break down the door to the room if they weren’t admitted. Security people. Stood right over there by the front desk,” he said, indicating. “Highly confrontational. Raised an awful scene in the lobby until I took them into my office. Demanded to get into the room. Threatened me if I didn’t go along with everything.”
“Did you admit them? To the room?”
Bruni seemed ill at ease with his decision. “Yes. I did. I was within my rights, as the deposit had run out. As had the reservation.” He paused. “I watched them as they went through the room. They tried to get me to leave, but I said I couldn’t do that. I said I’d let them remove things from the suite, but if they threw me out I would call the local police. They didn’t want that. It was all very ‘ unofficial ’ while being very much ‘ official,’ if you know what I mean.”
Rizzo’s eyes narrowed. He knew exactly what Bruni meant. Rizzo had locked horns in his police capacity with some embassies and foreign governments before when the foreigners had tried to keep their dirty laundry out of sight. It was always confrontational eventually and never a good experience. Rizzo, in fact, knew his way around embassies, foreign governments, and security people far better than any of his peers imagined, not that he was boasting about it.
“They went around the room with big trash bags,” Bruni continued. “Took everything. Clothes. Cameras. Books. DVDs. Came across a small cache of weapons. A pair of handguns, it looked like, maybe three, which they tried to keep me from seeing. Believe me, the more I saw, the more I felt they were taking care of a problem for me. In a way they did. By this time, I just wanted Glick and Osuna, or whoever they were, out of our hotel. We needed the room for incoming arrivals too, of course.”
“Of course. They’re a bunch of arrogant pigs, the Americans.”
“Here’s the strange part, though,” Virgil Bruni said, his own coffee now sitting ignored by his elbow. “When they were finished, they went around the room with cleaning material,” he said. “Scrubbed everything down. That pine scented crap that Americans love so much. Smells like snowcapped toilet seats. They were removing all fingerprints, any possible DNA. That’s when I knew not to ask any more questions. I should just be glad these people were out of the hotel.”
“True enough,” Rizzo said.
“But it caused me to think,” Bruni said. “And I haven’t stopped thinking. I went back and looked in the newspapers. You remember that story about two people who got shot one night on the via Donofrio?”
“Of course I do. It’s my case.”
“I knew it was your case,” Bruni said. “I saw your name in the papers. That’s why I phoned you. You see, the seventh, that
was also the night when Signor and Signora Glick disappeared,” Bruni said. “Same night that couple got shot down and their bodies whisked away, according to rumor. What do you think of that?”
Bruni lifted his demitasse cup again and sipped.
“I find it quite remarkable,” Rizzo said after several seconds. “ Grazie mille. But I’m not sure how it helps me with anything. And that was many days ago. Why do you bring it to my attention just now?”
Bruni shrugged. “It’s been bothering me,” he said. “They seemed like a nice couple. Somewhere, they might have family.”
A moment passed. Then one of the Persian women spilled some tea.
“Excuse me, Gian Antonio,” Bruni said abruptly.
Then Bruni, officious as always, grabbed a cloth napkin. He moved quickly to assist.
TWENTY-FIVE
T he Air France Airbus gave a violent shudder. Alex blinked and was awake, her heart jumping suddenly. She glanced around. They were on their descent into Kiev and had hit a pocket of extreme turbulence.
The bumpiness continued and Alex drew a breath. The plane was banking now, moving through a layer of clouds, its left wing tipped toward earth, the right wing toward heaven. She peered out the window into an infinity of cottony white.
The aircraft descended below the cloud cover. The landscape below came into view. And there was Kiev, the ancient city of Kievan Rus, the early medieval monarchy that represented the glory of Ukrainian history until it was sacked by the Mongols, giving the Russians, who stole the name, their chance to shine. The city stretched out before her, a bluish silvery gray vision in deep, deep winter as the afternoon died. For a fleeting moment, even as a light snow fell, everything was very clear, the colors of the city stark and intense. It looked like a Vermeer landscape.
They flew just below a thick layer of angry low clouds above the city of two and a half million people. Below, the River Dnipro was impacted with ice. Bridges laced the river. She could see traffic moving among the old buildings. Bare trees stood like skeletons along the boulevards, the naked dark branches extended like grasping arms and hands. The gilded domes of the old Ukrainian churches reached for the sky and glimmered with the final flickers of afternoon light. From her seat on the Airbus, Alex could make out Independence Square-formerly Lenin Square-and the huge statue of the Archangel Michael, the city’s patron saint, golden wings extended a halo behind his head. Michael dominated the square, much as a statue of Lenin once had.
