It was past 3:15 a.m. The streets that were busy by day were deserted now. On the wet asphalt of the via Piemonte, the driver suddenly took a sharp turn down a narrow dark side street. Chuck saw that there was a larger car a quarter of the way down the street, blocking passage. The cabbie pulled up hard and brought the taxi to an unsteady jolting halt.
Then in the fraction of a second before anything happened, Chuck knew that he was a dead man and Susan wouldn’t fare much better. Another car screeched up behind them. Chuck heard car doors open and slam shut. At the same time, his lateral vision caught the movement of a fourth man emerging from between two parked cars to the side.
Chuck started yelling. Loud, accusatory, and profane.
Chuck and Susan felt the weight of their own cab change as both the driver and the woman, knowing what was happening, bolted and fled, leaving their doors open.
Susan’s voice, high and anguished, “What the-?”
Chuck’s voice followed close, frenzied. “It’s a trap!” he screamed.
With one hand, Chuck worked his door handle. It was locked.
His other hand groped for a gun, the one that he had chosen not to carry that night because so many of the clubs did searches. In his peripheral vision, he saw two men swiftly approaching the car. Dressed in black, they pulled down their ski masks, stealthy and efficient as a pair of urban panthers.
In his last moments, Chuck noticed that one of the men had an obvious nervous tic under the ski mask. And he recognized their weapons, Sig Sauer P226s. But he didn’t have time to think about any of it. All he could think about was how the enemy had known that somehow he was unarmed that night. Then, in a final realization, that came together in his mind also. The woman they had met in the club. She had fixed their execution via her cell phone.
The gunmen lifted their weapons. Silencers.
In a final reflex for life, Chuck smashed his huge body against the car door to his side. It didn’t budge. He swung an elbow and shattered the window. The glass tore into his sleeve and slashed his arm as the rest of the window poured to the asphalt. He groped wildly for the outer door handle and worked it.
No luck. The cab was a high tech roach motel. The door wasn’t going anywhere and neither was Chuck.
The gunmen raised their weapons. Chuck and Susan raised their arms to protect themselves. They heard little past the first shots as their bodies exploded in searing pain.
The first volley of bullets tore into their arms.
Their screams and their blood filled the night. The next volley of shots ripped into their heads and necks. The rear door lock finally gave way when bullets tore apart the locking mechanism.
Chuck’s body fell face down onto the street, his legs remaining in the taxi. Susan’s body remained huddled against Chuck’s but convulsed with each of a half dozen hits from the assassins’ weapons. Their bodies were still moving slightly when one of the gunmen stepped forward and pumped two final bullets into each of their heads.
Then, working swiftly, the assassins dragged their bodies from the taxi to the van behind them. They loaded the corpses into the truck. As the gunmen disappeared into the night, one of the follow-up crew threw a gallon of gasoline on the stolen taxi. Then he threw a match. A mini-inferno followed; lights started to go on around the block and the team of killers fled the scene of the executions.
TWELVE
A few hours after the sun rose in Washington, Alex sat in her office at Treasury and received the official word from her boss, Mike Gamburian. She was to reassign every other case on her docket and immerse herself in Ukrainian language and background immediately. She would have two days to wrap up current operations and complete their reassignment to others. Half the cases she was happy to be rid of. And strangely enough, she was quickly coming around on the idea of getting back out into the field.
“As a precaution, you should visit the firing range again,” Michael Cerny had also said, walking Alex to her car earlier in the day. “Colosimo’s. You know the place, right?”
“I know it.”
“Do you still have a weapon in good working order, or should we requisition a new one for you?”She had grown up around long weapons and had trained meticulously with handguns during her years with the FBI. But since she had come over to FinCen, target practice had been an extracurricular that she hadn’t had much time for. Frankly, she had always enjoyed it and had missed not doing it. She was good at it.
“I have a Glock 9,” she said. “It’s only two years old.”
“Excellent. I suppose you use it to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder in your off hours.”
“How did you know?”
“We know everything. Federal permit still valid?”
“If you know everything, you should know that.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.
“Good idea.”
“Then you’re in business. I doubt that you’ll see anything other than a few ceremonial cannons going off in Kiev,” Cerny said, “but one can never be too cautious. Keep in mind, you won’t be able to travel with your Glock. So if you need one in Ukraine, your control officer will need to deliver it to you.”
“I understand,” Alex answered.
“I do admire your attitude,” he said.
And in truth, with recurring images of the chainsawed auto in Lagos still in her mind, the opportunity to hit the firing range again could do no harm. Might as well pack some heat if she was going to a dangerous place. And during a presidential visit, the more friendly weapons in the area, the safer the president would be. At least, that was the theory.
To end the same day, Michael Cerny took Alex to another room in the State Department. There he introduced Alex to the woman who was to be her Ukrainian language instructor over the next two weeks.
Her name was Olga Liashko, and she was built like one of those Soviet tractors from the mid-1950s. She was a large thick woman, taller than Alex by half a head, wider by the same amount. She was somewhere in her sixties and had grown up during the Soviet era. It stood to reason that she hadn’t led the easiest or happiest of lives. She had been raised in a military family from Odessa and spoke Ukrainian natively.
A mass of gray hair framed Olga’s bulky face. The whites of her eyes were more pinkish than white, and she had heavy bags beneath both. She wore a work shirt like a blazer and had on a pair of men’s painter’s pants. Her stomach was low and chunky like an old man’s. An idle but amusing thought shot back to Alex. A girlfriend in college used to call the condition Dunlap’s disease. Her belly “done lapped”over her belt.
“Olga has been with us since emigrating in 1982,” Cerny said helpfully. “She’s FSI’s top Ukrainian gal,” he said, referring to the Foreign Service Institute. “None better. Knows the language forward and back. Her dad was in the military in the big war. Olga will be your tutor. You start tomorrow afternoon.”
Olga said nothing. Instead, she stared disapprovingly at the younger woman, running her gaze up and down. Alex was six inches shorter, and half her weight.
“Very nice to meet you,” Alex said.
“Be prepared yourself to work hard, study hard, and including nights I advise you,” Olga said. It was clear which language Olga would be teaching and which one she wouldn’t.
The teacher handed Alex a Ukrainian language textbook. More homework. Cerny had arranged a special room in the State Department for the lessons so that they wouldn’t have to go out to FSI in Virginia. He gave the room location.
Alex flicked through the book. It looked even more tedious than she had reckoned. Olga must have read her mind, because she snorted.
Alex looked up. She could tell: Olga didn’t just have a chip on her big round shoulder, she had a couple of chips on each with plenty of room to spare.
Where does the government find these people? Alex wondered.
