Countdown in Cairo

by Noel Hynd

  “Maybe so. But here’s where Putin had a problem. Yanukovich was not elected. His rival, Viktor Yushchenko, survived dioxin poisoning and emerged as the symbol against post-Soviet rule. And the next thing you knew, the ‘Orange Revolution’ was under way. Kuchma’s government falsified an election victory for Yanukovich. But this time the government couldn’t sell the big lie to the population. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets all over Ukraine. The demonstrators were out in all of the cities and towns demanding that their voices be heard. In response, seeing an impending civil war, the Ukrainian courts, newly open and anxious to show their independence, demanded a new vote. Putin was on the defensive again. What to do? How to keep his man Yanukovich in power? Send in tanks? The army? Ukraine was a big place compared with, say, Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the mood was explosive.”

  Federov nodded.

  “But you know the story better than I do, Yuri. Putin is nothing if not a brilliant strategist. What was his weapon in Ukraine?”

  “Gas,” Federov said, his eyes narrowed. “Gas, and the deadly cold of the Ukrainian winter.”

  “Exactly. And what did he do?”

  “Putin announced that the gas agreement with Ukraine was now void,” Federov recalled. “Ukraine would have to pay competitive market rates, now more than five times the previous offer.” He paused. “That meant Ukrainians could freeze to death because they couldn’t afford heat.”

  “That’s correct,” Alex said. “Gazprom, Russia’s state gas monopoly, set a deadline for late 2005. The threat’s timing was carefully chosen, and the many ironies were inescapable. Ukraine faced the prospect of gas shortages in winter. And Putin, the KGB man who had given a Soviet-style energy subsidy to a nation to buy its loyalty, was now lecturing Europe about the need for market rates.” She shook her head. “Brilliant, but unconscionable,” she said. “Ukraine had been the breadbasket of the Soviet Union in the 1930s but faced the Holodomar, the fake famine of the Stalin years when the Soviets exported all food and grain from Ukraine. And now Putin had raised a similar specter. Now there would be a shortage of natural gas, never mind that Ukraine had a surfeit of natural gas and should have been self-sufficient.”

  Federov nodded. A gangster understood another gangster.

  “The reformer, Yushchenko, resisted Putin’s deadline,” Federov remembered. “So Putin increased the crisis more, hey? The Russians cut the pressure in gas pipelines feeding Ukraine. Then the same pipelines that fed Europe started to fall in pressure too. Putin was squeezing everyone. It was early winter. No one in Berlin and Paris and Vienna wants to be cold.”

  “I’ve done my homework, Yuri,” she said. “Most gas that arrives in Europe travels through lines that pass through Ukraine. Every elected leader in Western Europe was furious with him. What was he thinking?”

  Federov laughed.

  “Ukraine had overturned Putin’s falsified election,” Alex said. “Putin was furious. So he cut off gas to Western Europeans so that Western Europe would pressure Ukraine and Yushchenko.” She paused. “And if my theory holds, Yuri,” Alex said, “that’s where you came in! You and your phantom company, the Caspian Group. You were the most powerful local man in the underworld. You controlled everything from black-market munitions, to sea-going merchant vessels, to stables of women. But energy, natural gas, was a big item in your stock, wasn’t it? You had your own huge supplies stashed away at depots in Odessa and Sebastopol. So Putin and his people came to you and so did Yushchenko. You brokered a deal. I have a CIA memo all about it, and I finally learned of the televised press conference that you attended but never mentioned to me. But the deal wasn’t known in the West until about six months ago, about the same time that Michael Cerny went underground.”

  “Yushchenko was trapped by Putin’s power play with the gas,” Federov confirmed.

  “If Yushchenko stayed in power,” Alex continued, “millions of Ukrainians would have frozen to death. A new Ukrainian genocide. They would have been begging the Russians to send tanks in to remove Yushchenko and reopen the pipelines. But if Yushchenko resigned, Ukraine would be back in the old Soviet sphere of influence, Gazprom would have controlled the energy, and eventually the country would have been doubly at the mercy of Russia again, first on energy production and second in terms of political domination. There’s no secret that the old band of crooks and criminals from the Kuchmar regime would have been back. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So you offered both sides a way out: the new reform government could buy gas through the Caspian Group at a compromise price. It was just enough to override the Russian shortages. But as a deal, it was a stinker. Insiders were greatly profiting. Such as you, such as the Putin regime, such as Yushchenko’s people. But most of all, the deal that you engineered was to Putin’s advantage in two significant ways. He had compelled Ukraine to accept his terms. And he had dirtied Yushchenko with a gas contract that sullied his government and image as a reformer.”

  “There was a third too, hey?” Federov said.

  “What was that?”

  “Putin had shown Europe that he could stand up to Western pressure and spit in their eyes,” he said. “His predecessor, Yeltsin, the white-haired old capon, never did that. Putin made Europe fear Russia again. Fifty years ago, East Germany, Czecho, Poland, Hungary: the Russians ruled with tanks. Now, not necessary. Putin rules with energy pipelines and petrodollars.”

  “There’s an expression in English attributed to the artist Andy Warhol,” Alex said. “Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. You got yours out of the gas deal, didn’t you?”

  His brow furrowed. “In what way?” he asked.

  “You got to sit in that fake conference room on television with Putin and his minister of the interior and the head of the oil company,” she said. “By making you visible it was clear you had brokered the deal. That made you a very powerful man in Ukraine, didn’t it?”

  “I already was.”

  “But it made you more powerful, particularly in Ukraine. All hail the great Federov, right, if you don’t mind me giving you a variation of the old saying.”

  “Sure,” he said with half a laugh. “If you want.” He licked his lips and smiled.

  “Which brings us back to Mikhail Khodorkovsky,” she said. “The one-time oil baron of the old post-Soviet years. Where is Khodorkovsky today?”

  A dark expression overtook Federov. “You know as well as I do. He is in a labor camp near the town of Krasnokamensk. It is a hellhole out near the Chinese border.”

  “Seriously,” Alex said. “And the labor camp is attached to a uranium mine and processing plant, isn’t it? During the Soviet era, it was the type of place from which no one ever returned. A gulag, like Solzhenitsyn wrote about.”

  “There are such horrible places,” Federov replied with another shudder. “If your benevolent God is real, you and I should be spared from ever going to such places.”

  “And so should anyone else,” she said. “Khodorkovsky was a young man similar to you. Modest background, but highly ambitious. He used family, Communist party, and overtly criminal connections to grow very wealthy very quickly. He moved aggressively into what had previously been the state oil company, and founded a Russian petroleum company named Yukos. With deregulation, in the Yeltsin era, Khodorkovsky became so powerful that as of 2004, Khodorkovsky was the single wealthiest man in Russia, as well as one of the most powerful. And that didn’t sit well with Vladimir Putin, did it?”

  “No.”

  “So Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of fraud. A bit later, Putin took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse in the share price and eventual bankruptcy. Khodorkovsky was sentenced to eight years in prison. The sentence was seen as a warning, wasn’t it, as to what happens if an individual other than Putin gets too powerful? In fact, an aide to President Putin once admitted that the Khodorkovsky prosecution was a warning to the Russian business community. And all of
that, Yuri, brings us back to you. You too were too powerful. All by yourself you were able to broker an agreement between the established and the reform factions in Kiev. You worked both sides of the Orange Revolution. Who knows exactly whose side you were on when those RPGs started to fall near the American president, but I am sure you had a lot to do with it, much that you’ve never even confessed to me.”

  “We all have our dirty secrets, hey?” he said. “Maybe someday you forgive me for mine.”

  “Some of us have more secrets than others,” she said. “You more than me, for example.”

  Alex knew she had him just where she wanted him. She had marched him through unpleasant recent history for almost an hour, feinting in her line of questioning, darting one way and then the next, revealing casually what she knew that he didn’t know she knew, interspersing it with an accurate recap of what had gone on in Kiev.

  Federov’s eyes were riveted on hers now, but he was like an abused dog. He didn’t know whether he was about to get a treat or a kick in the ribs.

  “I’m going to tell you the end of my theory now, Yuri,” Alex said. “In response, I want the truth. I’m only going to do this once. Our relationship depends on your being more forthright than you’ve ever been. Understand?”

  “Maybe,” he said with a quick, nervous smile.

  “After you solved a problem for Putin, you also created one for him. You were just a little too big in Ukraine. Maybe too popular, maybe even too powerful. After all, you were another hand on the gas lines, and Putin wanted to control those himself.”

  Federov didn’t flinch.

  “He could have had you arrested in Ukraine. For what? Who knows? He could have done away with you the way he did away with Khodorkovsky. But for you he would have wanted to make the exit more complete. So, through one of the back channels between Moscow and Washington, he started feeding information on you to the Americans. To the CIA and the FBI. Putin was brilliant at such things. In the same way he pawned off on the Americans his problem with the Islamic freedom fighters in Chechnya, he decided to pawn you off as well. The CIA became involved, and Michael Cerny became the point man for the operations. They tried to assassinate you two or three times but it didn’t work. Then the US president was going to Ukraine, and I was sent to keep tabs on you and see where and when you might be vulnerable. I’m sure there was a plan to take you out in Kiev, but with the presidential visit going on, there was too much activity, so it wasn’t possible to do anything at the time.”

  She paused.

  “I noticed that you went underground after Kiev,” she said. “You pulled out of your businesses in Russia and Kiev completely and rarely set foot in either place. In fear of your life?”

  “I live in Switzerland and never go back to Ukraine,” he said. “I’m forty-nine years old and do you know what my goal is? I’d like to celebrate my fiftieth birthday.”

  “And I can’t imagine why.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “That’s irony, Yuri. You say one thing to mean the opposite.”

  “Like when Putin says uvidimsia. The word means, ‘I’ll see you.’ But when he says it this actually means he wants to cut your throat.”

  She paused again.

  “Who called in the rocket attack on the presidential visit?”

  “Filoruski,” he said again. “Pro-Russian dissidents in Ukraine who feared an alliance with the West.”

  “Your answer hasn’t changed from last time. Is that it?”

  “That’s it,” he said.

  “Then answer two more things for me,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “History as I related it from 1999 to present, vis-à-vis you and Putin and the gas crisis in Ukraine. Do I have it correctly?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And your relationship with Putin,” she said. “You did business, you knew each other well, you both profited from the gas crisis in your own way. But then you were too big for Putin’s liking. So you needed to be taken down. I’m correct?”

  “It’s a good theory,” he said.

  “So I can take that as a ‘yes’?” she asked.

  He made an expansive gesture with his hands.

  “It’s a ‘yes,’ ” Federov said.

  She leaned back. “Excellent, Yuri,” she said. “Our business is concluded for the day. Now we can relax and have dinner.”

  Federov seemed relieved that the inquisition was over.

  “Oh! And, sorry, there is one more thing,” she said as an afterthought.

  She extended a hand to help Federov to his feet. In the doorway, Nick loomed. She reasoned he had been listening the entire time. But it didn’t matter.

  “This propensity for poisoning people with radioactive material,” she said. “That seems particular to Putin.”

  “It is,” he said. “Very!”

  Steadied, he used his cane to take a first step toward the dining area. Nick appeared close by, offered an arm and shielded him from a potential fall.

  “So it would only be done on Putin’s orders?” she asked.

  “You would need access to the materials,” Federov said. “Even in Russia that would be difficult without the help of officials. But you see, look at the bigger picture. Nothing like that happens without the say-so from the top man,” he said. “So if you have some radioactive poison, you follow it back. It all leads to the same place.”

  “So if poison were planted against someone, the order would have come straight from the top,” she said, not as a question but as a statement. “And whoever was doing it would be linked to Putin.”

  “That’s how it works,” he said. “Hey?”

  “Hey,” she said softly.

  The aroma of a roasted chicken filled the downstairs. Obviously, Marie-Louise earned her keep in more ways than one.

  “Thank you, Yuri,” she said. “You’ve been more than helpful. That really is all.”

  “Then I have one question for you,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  He paused. Fatigue was all over him. “What is your favorite color?” he asked.

  “My favorite color?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  A moment. Then, “Blue,” she said. “Why?”

  “I’m like you,” he said. “There are things I have always wanted to ask.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Alex awoke early the next morning to the vibration of her cell phone. She answered it while still in bed and found herself talking to “Fitzgerald,” who was still in Egypt. He gave her a moment while she sought to clear the early morning mist from her brain.

  Then, “How did your visit go?” he asked.

  “I got what I needed,” she said.

  “I hope you didn’t bother to unpack,” he said.

  “I’m traveling today,” she said.

  “You’re not the only one, we think,” he said.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, sitting up in bed. “Do tell.”

  She looked at her watch. It was 7:36 a.m. in Geneva, an hour later in Cairo. Across her bedroom her overnight bag hadn’t been touched, and beyond the window was another cold, gray Swiss morning.

  “One of the license plates we discussed the other day,” Fitzgerald said. “The car is apparently out of the shop. It’s moving again.”

  By license plates, he meant passport numbers. One of the five. And by car, he meant Michael Cerny.

  “I believe it’s one of those old Zil limousines belonging to a Mr. Constantine,” he said. “That would be one stop before delivery here.”

  The Zil meant that the voyager, Cerny, was flying on a Russian passport. Constantine was code for Constantinople, meaning he was most likely on Aeroflot, stopping in Istanbul before continuing on to Cairo.

  “Do you happen to know the color of the vehicle?” she asked.

  “Blue and white,” he said.

  Blue and white meant El Al.

  “Was he unable to find a buyer on his trip?” Alex asked.


  “It appears unlikely. Not sure here that he had any actual buyers for a blue and white vehicle,” Bissinger said. “It’s like the art market in New York. Russian buyers all the way.”

  “Understood,” she said.

  All of that meant that Cerny had most likely taken the bait from Boris and Colonel Amjad. The timing suggested it. The Israelis were out of the picture and probably had never been in it. It had been a feint to entice his Russian buyers, or so it looked.

  “Moving as part of a larger shipment?” she asked.

  “It would appear so,” he said. “We checked all the manifests. No other items connecting, but there’s always the chance of acquiring more merchandise along the way. Constantine is like that.”

  “Constantine is, indeed,” she agreed.

  She had the context. Cerny was on an Aeroflot flight out of Tel Aviv to Istanbul. Fitzgerald explained further that the old car would then be shipped to Cairo via Kuwaiti Air.

  “Very good,” Alex said

  “I’ll see if some of our inspectors can give it a look in transit,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s always the chance that more merchandise will be gathered. But I know you’ll wish to be here for delivery.”

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “Do you think you can make it?” he asked.

  “If I take an earlier train,” she said. “Yes.”

  Train, of course, meant plane. And merchandise suggested that Cerny could pick up a bodyguard or two as he connected in Istanbul. The passenger manifests would be closely watched for any indication of that.

  “That would be good,” Bissinger said. “You are, after all, the only one among us who can tell the real item from a counterfeit. So we’re relying on you to be here.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

  “You need to identify the item,” Fitzgerald concluded. “Then we’ll purchase it.”

  “Got it,” she said. And from there, Alex was in motion. She rose from bed, washed quickly, dressed, and was downstairs.

  Nick was sitting in the living room in jeans, a T-shirt, and a powerhouse of a Russian pistol nestled into a shoulder holster. He was hooked up to some music on an MP3. He grinned slightly when he saw her.