by Chris Goff
Looking back, she could see the clues suggesting her father was more than he seemed. There was the large number of soldiers in attendance at his funeral. There were the dour men in suits who came to offer their condolences, men like Ilya Brodsky. And then there was the speed with which her mother had whisked them back to the States. Within months, Frances had changed their last name and begun the slow process of excising their father from their lives. Until six months ago, when she’d met Alena Petrenko, and he’d once more become the specter in the room.
That meeting with Alena had turned her world upside down. Jordan would never forget escorting the Americans under her protection to that appointment and meeting the tall, ethereal person who called herself a doctor. A Russian Jew, she claimed she knew Rae’s father and insisted he was more than just a talented hockey player. According to Alena, he was a gifted teacher of alternative medicine and worse—a spy.
When Jordan’s mother refused to discuss it, Jordan was left with no option but to launch her own covert investigation. So far, she didn’t like what she’d turned up.
A honk pulled her out of her reverie. Jumping back to the curb, she raised a hand in apology to the driver and chastised herself for her lapse of attentiveness. She’d reached an intersection where the street narrowed, with Shevchenko Park closing in on one side and the bright red buildings of Taras Shevchenko National University pressing close on the other. Not only were there more cars and bicycles, but the pedestrian traffic had also changed from business types to hordes of hurrying students.
Waiting at the corner for the light to change, she caught sight of a tall man with unruly dark hair who looked vaguely familiar. When she turned, he ducked into a doorway.
A student, or was he following her?
Paying closer attention to the people around her, Jordan crossed with the light. Within a few moments, the same man exited the doorway and started traveling a route behind her. He looked to be about her age, wearing a dark T-shirt and blue jeans. Then catching a glimpse of his face in a window reflection, she realized where she’d seen him before. He was the journalist who’d taken her picture at the site of the ambush.
But why was he following her now? There was nothing newsworthy in what she was doing.
Maybe someone had put him up to it.
Her heart raced. There was only one person she could think of who might care where she went and who she talked to in Ukraine—Ilya Brodsky. She might not be able to expose him as a former KGB agent without exposing her father and thus jeopardizing her job, but she might find proof he’d had something to do with her father’s murder. Other than herself and her immediate family members, he was the only one who might be harmed by the information she uncovered about her father. Did Brodsky intend to stop her from digging? Or maybe he just wanted to know what she discovered.
Jordan forced herself to think rationally. There were any number of other reasons the journalist might be following her. He might be connected to the Russians, acting as their eyes and ears here and in Hoholeve. Or he might have seen her lifting the fragment or concealing the envelope. Hell, maybe he just fancied himself the next Anderson Cooper.
So what’s the play, Rae? she asked herself. At this point, she needed either to shake this man, confront him, or abort her mission.
She’d been trained to know that if you spot someone once, it’s likely an accident. If you spot someone twice, it’s apt to be a coincidence. If you spot someone three times, it’s an enemy action. At this point, she had to consider her tracker an adversary. The next step was to figure out if he was operating on his own or as part of a team.
A quick scan of the area pulled up some potential accomplices—the young mother with a stroller sitting on a bench near the park entrance or the man standing idle near the open gate. If he had a team, and they were any good, she would likely never pick out any others.
Keeping the reporter in her peripheral vision, Jordan moved toward the park entrance. While she was well-trained to ID people following her, shaking them was a different matter. At the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLECT, they’d been taught a variety of surveillance techniques. The preferred method for dealing with someone following you was to bore him to death. The basic concept was to let the person, or persons, follow you around while you lead them nowhere in hopes they’ll eventually move on. Other tactics included the “pause and turn,” where you let your tracker know you’ve spotted him, and “the acknowledgment,” where you actually confront your tail.
Right now, the latter seemed the most plausible option, provided she could lure him into a trap of her own.
Cutting toward the park, Jordan kept tabs on her tail out of the corner of her eye. Stopping at the park entrance, she made a show of photographing the ornate gate before flipping the camera to selfie mode. After snapping a few photographs of her tail as he crossed the street, she uploaded it through a secure link into the DSS facial recognition software. With luck, she would get back a name.
Putting away her phone, she cut into the park, quickening her pace to put a little distance between herself and the journalist. The young mother rose as she passed, only to be greeted by another woman with two small children in tow. They headed off toward the playground. The man standing near the gate ground his cigarette out and turned away from the park. Her man appeared to be working alone.
According to the map she’d consulted before striking out for UAFM, a shortcut through the park was the quickest route to her destination. Now with all the path choices and outlets, the park seemed tailor-made for a game of cat and mouse.
Jordan slowed her pace and assessed her surroundings. Like everything else in the Ukraine, what once showed signs of grandeur had crumbled under the strain of the economy. Grass grew deep on either side of the cracked asphalt pathways and encroached on the small garden areas already choked with weeds. Paint peeled off brightly colored benches, streetlamps were devoid of bulbs, and yet people were everywhere.
Men and women walked with purpose, dressed for business, but with no jobs to go to. Screaming children ran circles around their mothers. Couples strolled hand in hand. Students lay in the weedy grass in the shade of the trees, more interested in their study partners than in the books cracked open beside them.
After a few minutes of walking, Jordan pivoted and doubled back. The plan was to confront the man following her, but he was nowhere in sight. Had she lost him, or had he realized what she was up to and hidden himself? Maybe spotting him on the road had just been a coincidence, or maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe.
Chapter 10
She spent the next few minutes zigzagging through the park until she was sure she had lost him, then headed for the Lva Tolstoho Street exit, the one nearest the Kyiv Medical Institute-UAFM. Housed in a single-story building kitty-cornered from the main university, UAFM was painted baby blue instead of red like the primary institution. It occupied the entire block but had only one entrance, an oversized double oak door.
Jordan scanned the crowds one more time, then jaywalked the street. Entering the foyer of UAFM, she was struck by a blast of cool air that stunned her into thinking maybe she’d been wrong to come here. The last words Alena Petrenko had said to her whispered through her mind: Sometimes it is better to let the dead sleep.
“May I help you?” a receptionist called out in English from behind a circular desk opposite the entrance.
It didn’t surprise Jordan to be identified as a Westerner. To blend in here, she would need to have worn stockings and high heels and be dressed to the nth degree. Instead, she’d opted for her casual uniform—comfortable leather shoes, cotton socks, khakis, and a short-sleeved, dark-blue knit shirt. Her 9-mil was locked up tight in the Intercontinental’s hotel room safe.
“Come, come.” The receptionist impatiently waved her closer. A stout woman in her fifties, her hair was dyed a uniform shade of brown, her makeup artfully applied. A worn black jacket strained to button over a white polka-dot shirt. Her name badge read, “
Zlatta.”
“Are you interested in the school?” she asked.
Jordan made sure the door was closed and then crossed the white-tiled entryway. “Actually, I’m looking for some information.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m looking for some information on my father. I was told he taught classes here back in the late ’70s or early ’80s.”
Zlatta knit her eyebrows. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. That was before this school even existed.”
Jordan mirrored Zlatta’s frown. “Are you saying the Ukrainian Association of Folk Medicine didn’t exist?”
“Not as a university. We now offer fully accredited doctor of medicine degrees in a number of alternative specialties.” She reached for a brochure.
“Then this is a recognized school?” Jordan immediately wanted to snatch back the words or at the least strain the incredulity out of her voice.
Zlatta straightened her carriage. “Of course! UAFM holds level one through level four accreditation.”
After witnessing Alena’s alternative healing methods, Jordan found it hard to believe. “Does that equate to a Western PhD?”
“Better! Our graduates are all certified MDs. They take a mixture of traditional and alternative medicine classes for over six years.”
“When did the first class graduate?” Jordan hoped her rapid-fire questions didn’t stop Zlatta’s rapid-fire answers.
“1998.”
Jordan ran the math in her head. Seventeen years. “Have you ever heard of a Dr. Alena Petrenko?”
Zlatta’s face looked blank. “That name is not familiar.”
“She practices medicine in Tel Aviv, has for over thirty years. She claims to be a graduate of this university.” It was those claims that had led Jordan here. When Zlatta shook her head, Jordan added, “What about a man named Ilya Brodsky?”
Even saying his name was distasteful to Jordan. But if Alena was telling the truth, he’d been the one who’d brokered her father’s connection to the Russian program designed to study the use of psychic discovery in warfare and spying known as PSI.
Zlatta nodded her head. “The name seems familiar. I can’t place where I’ve heard it.”
Jordan was treading on thin ice. Any connection between her father and the KGB put her job in jeopardy. The DSS wasn’t likely to allow her to work for them if it turned out she was the daughter of a KGB spy. At the very least, she’d be considered a security risk. So she decided to switch tacks.
“Do you know if there was instruction offered here before this became an actual school?” she asked.
“Not that I’m aware. The only person who might have known that was our founder and former CEO, Pokenevich Valeriy. Unfortunately, he’s dead.”
“What about his colleagues? There must be someone here who goes back before this school was accredited.” Jordan didn’t want to sound desperate, but this was her only real lead for information on her father’s past. She needed to know the truth.
The woman scrunched her eyes in thought, pressing her fingertips against her lips. Then as if consulting her conscience and receiving an answer, she reached for a business card.
“Dr. Pokenevich did have one associate who might know something. They were close friends from childhood.” Zlatta wrote down a name and number, then handed the card to Jordan. “The man’s name is Professor Fedorov.”
Jordan thanked the woman and tucked the card into her jacket pocket.
Realizing she wouldn’t get more, Jordan said her good-byes and made her exit. This time, instead of cutting across traffic, she headed to the crosswalk. Pushed along by an eddy of pedestrians and swirling emotions, her mind flitted back through all the things she’d learned about her dad over the years. Each revelation had left an impact. His death—caught in the crossfire between an assassin and a guard detail—had led Jordan to her current job, which had led her to Alena. But not only had the doctor insisted her father’s death was intentional; she’d alluded to his nefarious past. If what she had told her was true, chasing ghosts might very well cost Jordan the job she loved.
A sense of being watched, the hairs rising on the back of her neck, made Jordan look up. She caught sight of a tall thin man with dark ruffled hair and tensed. The man ducked into the corner coffee shop, but she knew it was him.
Damn. It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d found her. Which meant he must have watched her enter the school and been waiting for her to exit.
Jordan weighed her options. She could confront him inside the café or choose a quieter, more secluded spot for a conversation. She went with the latter.
Crossing the street, she turned toward the park. From the corner of her eye, she watched him exit the café and thread his way toward the light. At the entrance to the park, she stopped to give him a chance to catch up and pulled out her phone. Maybe there’d been a hit on the facial recognition software. It would be nice to know who she was dealing with.
Sure enough! The system had come back with five possibilities. Scrolling through the photos, she stopped when she landed on a picture of Nye Davis. The database information was sparse: 6ʹ2ʺ, brown eyes and hair, age thirty-four. He traveled on a United States passport, had served four years in the Army, and was purported to be a stringer for Reuters, an international news agency headquartered in London. She waited for the light to change and for Davis to step off the curb. Once he reached her side of the street, she moved quickly into the park. If it was a cat-and-mouse game he wanted, she’d play.
Jordan picked up her pace, forcing him to give chase. The quicker he had to move, the more he’d have to think on his feet and the more mistakes he was apt to make.
Rounding a corner near the playground, she moved out of his line of sight. Here, the path split in three directions, but she ducked behind a food wagon and kept watch for her quarry in the mirrored facade of the light post. Within several seconds, he appeared and faced the separate paths with a look of frustration that caused Jordan to smile. Then after what seemed like a short game of “eeny meeny miny moe,” he selected the most direct route toward Volodymyrska Street.
Jordan fell in behind him. He had to be headed back to the Intercontinental. But the questions remained: Who did he work for, and why had he been following her?
Jordan glanced at her watch. The clock was ticking. She had little over one hour before she had to report for duty. Ahead of her, Nye Davis moved slowly along the wide bricked sidewalk that abutted an even older bricked street. He’d soon reach the opera house, where the sidewalk melded with a wider stepped terrace. Cover would be hard to maintain. She weighed her options. Her best hope of surprising him was to take a parallel route and intercept him near the Golden Gate. He was texting as he walked, so it shouldn’t be hard to beat him into position.
Turning left, she jogged down the cross street and then turned right at the next intersection. The street cut through an upscale neighborhood of trendy apartments fronted by flower planters painted in the national colors. In this area, the buildings were devoid of the usual graffiti. Uniformed guards stood at the doorways, and a few storefronts were marked with subtle and tasteful signs.
At the end of the block, Patrons crowded the outside tables of a stylish café across from the Golden Gate’s monument park. Often called “the sky gate” because of the way the sun passed through it every morning, the Golden Gate, Kyivans believed, saved the city from darkness and death. Jordan found it ironic that in 1648, Russian ambassadors solemnly passed through announcing the reunion of Russia and Ukraine. It stood like so many of Kyiv and Ukraine’s famous monuments as a symbol of Russia’s power. No wonder the citizens were so conflicted.
Jordan cut through the park and stopped at the top of a small set of stairs that led down to the sidewalk on Volodymyrska Street. The park grounds were elevated, ringed by a low stone wall.
Spotting Davis in the distance, his head still buried in his texts, she crossed the sidewalk to stand behind a soda machine next to a small s
treet kiosk and waited. When Davis pulled even, she stepped in front of him. “Nye Davis?”
The man looked up from his phone. Surprise then resignation marked his features. Busted.
“That’s me.”
“Why are you following me?”
“You have the wrong guy.” He tried to walk around her, but she blocked his path.
“I don’t have time for games. I want to know why you’ve been tailing me.”
He smiled and gestured to a corner of the wall. “Want to sit down?”
He was taller and better looking than she’d realized, and his smile was disarming. Jordan reminded herself he was a journalist. “No, I want you to answer my question.”
He shrugged and boosted himself up on the wall. “I find you interesting.”
It wasn’t what she expected.
“Why?”
Again the smile. He took a beat too long looking at her, and she felt her face heat.
“I saw you at the crash site,” he said. “You seemed to have a different agenda than everyone else. It makes me curious.”
He set his phone down beside him.
“Are you recording our conversation?” she asked. “Turn it off.”
Davis thumbed open the phone and clicked off the recording device. “You can’t blame me for trying.”
“What is it you want?” She felt off-kilter, hating the fact she was standing while he perched comfortably on the wall looking down at her.
“I’d like to know why a U.S. Diplomatic Security Service agent was out at the crash site in Hoholeve, and why the ambulance she was escorting to the morgue was ambushed en route.”
“That’s classified information.”
“But you admit you work for DSS?”
Jordan drew a deep breath, then dragged her fingers through her hair and twisted it into a knot at the nape of her neck. She was good at interrogation. He might be better. “That isn’t a secret. I see you’ve done your homework.”
