Conspiracy in Kiev rt-1

by Noel Hynd

  “Did any just give up and leave?” Alex asked

  “No way. An invitation to the Residence is always the hottest ticket in town. Everyone wants to say, ‘As I told the American ambassador…,’ even if in reality the exchange was one sentence each. In Bonn, not to be invited to the Fourth of July and be seen there was a major humiliation for anyone who thought he was someone. The pathetic cases were noninvitees whose secretaries would call to ask about the invitation that had apparently been lost in the mail.”

  Alex laughed. “How are the guests selected?”

  “That’s the job of the section chiefs. Each section is tasked with providing suggestions for the guest list. These are the people they regularly come into contact with. The guest list is weighted toward the interests of the visiting Americans. For instance, if the guest of honor is a high-ranking Treasury official, the guest list will be heavy with people from the Economic Ministry and so on.”

  At this point, Ambassador Drake appeared and moved around, shaking the hands of the embassy personnel present. Eventually, he came back to Alex, whom he remembered from that morning. He took her hand and held it.

  “Beautiful dress,” he said, eyeing her head to toe. “Lovely color.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Most of the women around here are built like beer trucks,” he said. “You’re closer to a Ferrari. A breath of fresh air. Don’t quote me.”

  In her peripheral view, Friedman rolled his eyes.

  “You flatter me unnecessarily,” Alex said.

  “It’s my pleasure to do so,” Drake said. Politically incorrect as he was, Drake got away with his flirtations through a natural charm. His manner was engaging and amiable. After extending a few extra words of welcome, he released Alex and moved on.

  “Well, you’re fitting right in,” Friedman said with a smirk.

  “Is he always such a flirt?”

  “He’s got an eye for the ladies. Wait till he has a few drinks. He’s like a nice old dog who still chases cars. I don’t know what he’d do if he caught one.”

  “I know the type,” she said.

  “Hey, I’ve got to go to action stations soon so let me wrap up,”Friedman said. “In addition to the officer on the receiving line, other JOs are supposed to look out for guests who don’t mingle but just stay with their wives looking on, and engage them in conversation. Then there are officers who go to the most important guests and lead them up to the guests of honor and introduce them. And finally, officers are supposed to use the opportunity to chat up their contacts, asking how things are in their areas and so on.”

  “And the ambassador?” Alex asked.

  “After the line shuts down, when the flow of guests has trickled off, he can turn things over to the DCM, who’ll be in the line next to him, along with relevant section chiefs, including me, unfortunately. The ambassador stands in the crowd and talks with the people brought up to him or who come to him of their own accord. Again, if an unimportant guest has glommed onto the ambassador, our officer will engage said guest in conversation while the ambassador smiles to that guest and says, ‘Delighted to talk with you,’ and wanders off.”

  “So this is a ‘ party ’?” she laughed.

  “It’s a ‘reception,’ ” he answered, “with all the stuffy implications that go with it.”

  “You like these things?”

  “It’s one of the things we’re paid to do. Does a dentist mind looking into people’s mouths? And as you ‘mix and mingle’ you can meet some interesting people outside your usual circle of contacts. It’s the receiving line I hate.”

  Friedman glanced over to where the ambassador was already in place with the DCM and some other officers.

  “Action stations!” Friedman said. “Have fun.” He turned and took up his place in line. Not a moment too soon, for an early guest was walking through the door.

  The event was a cocktail buffet. The food was very good. It was set forth on a table while white-jacketed waiters hired for the occasion took plates of it around the room. Heavy trays laden with drinks followed. There were three open bars, but by late in the evening they were barely necessary.

  The party took on a Ukrainian flavor, much encouraged by the popular American ambassador. The Ukrainians, like the ancient Romans, liked to drink in toasts, two sides taking turns. Someone silenced the room toward ten in the evening and proposed the first toast of Ukrainian vodka. Friedman pushed a drink into Alex’s hand.

  When in Rome, Alex decided quickly, do as the Romans do.

  “Guests are expected to shoot their shot,” Friedman advised with a smile. “Sipping is wimpy. You okay with this?”

  “Someone else is driving me back to the hotel, right?”

  “Yes, and it won’t be me.”

  Three toasts went back and fourth. Alex bailed after that. Two more followed. Ambassador Drake set the tone by conspicuously leading the consumption of shots. It was no surprise that he was popular among the locals and his staff, as well as whoever sold the vodka to the embassy.

  Toward 11:30, the party was still going strong. Richard Friedman, somehow still sober, guided Alex over to Ambassador Drake. By this time, in addition to the shots, Drake had found too many of the heavy trays laden with drinks. Small talk followed. He addressed her as “Anna” and asked her when she would be meeting with Yuri Federov. She said the next afternoon. He nodded and soon began to mumble about how beautiful Alex was. He followed that by mentioning that his wife was out of town. Some of his aides exchanged glances.

  Nearing midnight, Drake, wobbly, noisily drained a gin and tonic and looked around for another. An aide quickly found him one. His assistants seemed to enjoy getting him toasted. As he sipped his ninth drink of the evening, Drake surveyed the sea of young people who were still partying, the advance team, for whom the party was given. Here were all the young folks who had been making his life impossible for the last five weeks.

  “The ‘advance team,’ ” muttered the ambassador. “I’ve never cared for those little clowns. Anna? Know what my first run-in was with those people?”

  Alex sipped her drink and waited. “What?” she finally asked.

  “I was in Bonn twenty-two years ago, as chief of the Political/Internal Unit,” the ambassador said. “I was the event officer to a boat trip on the Rhine that President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl of West Germany were taking. The ‘romantic’ part of the Rhine, the part with the mountains covered with vineyards with ruined castles on top, starts upriver, south of Bonn. The idea was for the president to fly down to Oberwesel-that’s this picturesque little town where the romantic crap starts-and board the boat there, along with Kohl. They’d sail north and then get off.”

  Oberwesel, he explained, had no Nazi baggage from World War II and made for a great photo-op. Alex sipped and listened. Other members of the embassy staff gathered, carefully keeping away any members of the advance team.

  “Now, every lousy little German town has a so-called Golden Book,”the ambassador continued, “where honorary citizens are inscribed. Naturally, the mayor of Oberwesel wanted his filthy fifteen minutes of fame with a book signing next to the gangplank. So this clown from the Reagan advance team sneered, ‘Out of the question,’ except he used an extra word before ‘question.’ He cited security considerations and the need not to waste the president’s time on what he called ‘a bush-league event.’ Well, I tried to advise this jerk of the symbolic importance of the Golden Book in Germany and the fact that the mayor belonged to Kohl’s party, and I was told to ‘keep it zipped.’ ”

  The ambassador stirred his drink with a swizzle stick as he nursed along his story.

  “Well, Helmut Kohl’s whole career was based on networking and an incredible memory of people,” Drake continued. “The man was like an elephant. He’d remember folks he’d met ten years earlier while soused at some podunk wine festival. So when the disappointed mayor called Kohl, the head of his party, Kohl apparently called Reagan personally. Of course, Mr. R
eagan approved it. He loved stuff like that. The Golden Book was on. You can imagine how I relished this.”

  The ambassador grinned and lurched slightly. Alex, with a sweet and friendly smile, sidestepped his advance and escaped from under his thick arm.

  “Anyway, when the event finally happened, there was press aboard the boat, but their access to Reagan and Kohl was supposed to be limited. Naturally, no good reporter abides by this kind of fence, and soon Mr. Reagan was chatting with them. A member of the advance, the same bozo who’d been giving me all the trouble, was fuming about this. So I went over to him. I said, ‘President Reagan looks happy. Why aren’t you happy?’ The advance guy looked at me as if I’d punched him in the nuts. That the president could be content with something that hadn’t been planned to the minute by his staff was incomprehensible.” He paused. “Those advance people are mostly a bunch of weenies,” he concluded. “They couldn’t organize a cat fight in a bag.”

  As Alex and the embassy staff laughed, the ambassador finished his drink and found a final one on one of the last passing trays of the evening. Apparently, a wave of nostalgia hit him at the same time also.

  “Ronald Reagan,” he said. “I miss the man. Reagan looked the part, he acted the part. Hell, he was the part! Now there was a president!” he said.

  And he drained the rest of his glass.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  L t. Gian Antonio Rizzo stood in his office in Rome the next morning, the ninth of February. Around him at a rectangular table, he had grouped four of the best homicide detectives in his bureau. Rizzo was now attacking the two linked double-murder cases with a vengeance, while at the same time trying to keep a lid on the inquiries from his superiors, official and unofficial.

  One of the four men around him had been recalled from a climbing vacation in Switzerland. A second detective, a woman, came back two weeks early from her maternity leave. Another man was taken off a juicy assignment involving a local radio personality whose drunken semiclad wife had recently “fallen off” a yacht-or was it jumped or pushed?-that belonged to a Marxist member of the Italian parliament. And the fourth had been on a winning streak at a high-rolling chemin de fer table at Monte Carlo when the call had come from Rome to report back to Bureau headquarters immediately.

  Rizzo briefed them all. He asked them to not mention the linkage of these cases to anyone else in the department. In Rizzo’s experience, if he felt that he had an advantage in an investigation, if he knew something that was not yet known by the public, he was one step ahead of the people he was looking for. He never wanted to tip his hand.

  He showed the computer mockups of the bullet fragments and presented all of the photographs taken at the two crime scenes. He asked if any of the people at the table had any initial notions as to where this might lead, how these slayings might be linked.

  No one volunteered anything.

  “ Allora, bene,” he continued. “The Mafia guys like their small caliber. 22s. They like to use a silencer from close range. Two behind the ear, am I not right? The South American drug scum, Colombians for example, like machine pistols and they blow away the victims with a hundred shots.”

  His eyes roved the room. Not one of his detectives was willing to make contact.

  “Our colonial friends the Ethiopians have no subtlety at all,” he continued. “They drag you to a warehouse, put a tire around you while you scream for mercy, ignite you with gasoline, then stand there and gape. But what was this all about? Who is doing this? What type of criminals are we looking for? Could I see some life, per favore, some reaction from this table, or should I find four better detectives?”

  The two interlocking questions were barely out of Rizzo’s mouth when he realized that there would be no answer coming this morning. Business like this drove him crazy. Why had he even come in to work this morning? Sophie was off work today and they could have been spending the day together. Instead, he was chasing down the scum that brought crime to Italy while having to light a fire under those who should have been best equipped to help him.

  “All right then,” he said in conclusion. “Foolish me, who thought that we might have some angle on these cases this morning from the four of you. I will be in this office working sixteen-hour days on these cases. I will also be monitoring the four of you closely.” Without consulting anyone’s files, he added, “It is not by coincidence, that I’ve assembled the four of you. I notice that each of you has recently put in for a major promotion. I will be watching your progress very closely. Be assured that the cases I’ve put before you this morning will directly impact both promotions and demotions. We will have success or failure here, I don’t know which. But as for your careers, I can promise you repercussions!”

  He eyed them. “I want thorough reports from all of you by Friday of next week,” he said. “I want potential leads and connections for these two cases. I don’t care if you’re up all night every night and have to work all weekend to get this done. I want progress.”

  Rizzo turned on his heel, left the conference room for the hallway outside, glowering in his usual bad humor.

  Where were all the kids this morning, he wondered.

  The interns. Maybe one of those bright kids would have something. They’d make great spies one day, those little imps, he thought.

  But none did. Not today.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  A lex walked into a conference room at the embassy, followed by the two attaches who had been assigned to her. The first was Ellen Higgins, a dowdy middle-aged woman with thick glasses in a brown suit. The second was Phillip Ralston, whom Alex had met the previous day.

  Ellen was the keener intellect of the two. She was a University of Chicago graduate and a skilled interpreter in Russian and Ukrainian. Ellen was also the official note taker. At every embassy meeting there was a note taker to draft the report on meetings, except in the case of the very rare “under four eyes” meetings that the bureaucracy dreaded. Recording devices were almost never allowed, since principals wanted to be able to deny any misspeaking.

  Ralston was a wealthy man in his thirties who played at being a diplomat and had already spent much of his time talking about his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, as if anyone else was interested. Half an hour earlier, he had been laughing and showing pictures of the house back in the United States. Now, going into the meeting with Federov, he looked taut enough to explode.

  They arrived in the conference room at the same time as the opposition.

  The Ukrainians wore overcoats on top of suits. They seemed to have been carved from the same block of solid Russian stone. They smelled of tobacco and cologne.

  Federov was the tall one in the middle, a thick jaw, very short hair, stubble across the chin much the same length. He was handsome the way a retired boxer is handsome, the wear and toughness suggesting survival and the survival suggesting a certain intense masculinity. His nose looked as if it had been broken once and bent out of shape, then broken a second time and pushed back in the right direction, probably without anesthetic either time.

  Federov was six four. Imposing. Powerfully built. In American terms, the body of a tight end. He was a head taller than Alex was, with huge hands and a weightlifter’s body, definitely more of a presence in person than he had been in the photographs. His teeth-the teeth that had bitten the ear off a Brooklyn cop-were yellowed but straight.

  The stories came back to her: him abusing women in his night clubs, two wives “disappearing,” and having people murdered almost for sport.

  He was physically intimidating to her, but there was no way she was going to tip him off to that fact. He moved close to Alex, offering a hand, his dark eyes midway between a glare and a smile. She got the idea that he was mentally undressing her as he eyed her and she stifled a cringe-she tried to tell herself that she had dealt with more vile human beings than this and survived, but on second thought, she wasn’t sure that she had.

  Alex accepted his hand. It was firm, strong, and dry.

&
nbsp; “I’m Yuri Federov,” he said in Russian.

  “I’m Anna Tavares. US Department of Commerce,” she said, also in Russian.

  He switched into Ukrainian, testing her already. “Aren’t you going to say you’re pleased to meet me?” he asked. “That would be the polite thing, Anna Tavares.”

  “It would also be a lie,” she said in Ukrainian. “Let’s be seated. We have a lot of business to discuss, so I appreciate your coming in.”

  Silently, she said a big thank-you- velykyy diakuyu tobi- to Olga. She had kept pace in Ukrainian, but was anxious to get out of it before betraying any weakness.

  A smile crept across Federov’s face with the slowness and deliberateness of sun breaking through the clouds on a mostly cloudy day. He introduced his two backups, Kaspar and Anatoli, no last names given. They looked like bookends or, more appropriately, the twin doors on the rear of a truck. They were husky and stocky. Alex assumed they were bodyguards of some sort. She further assumed that the metal detectors around the embassy’s entrance had done their jobs and any artillery hauled over by Kaspar and Anatoli had been left outside.

  Back to Russian. “Charmed,” Federov said.

  “Let’s get to work,” she said.

  “I don’t know what this meeting is about,” he said.

  “Well, as soon as it starts, I’ll tell you,” she said, gaining some traction.

  He switched to English. “Then let’s begin. I can express myself well in English, so we will speak your language.”