Conspiracy in Kiev

She found herself fingering the gold cross again. Her thoughts went far away as she disappeared into herself. A long silence passed between them.

He waited.

“I’ll take the assignment. I’ll make the trip,” she said, “but I’ll do things on my own terms. And if your sleazebag Bolshevik narco-gangster puts his hands on me I’ll break both his filthy wrists.”

“See? That’s what we like about you. Righteous indignation. You’re perfect for this.”

“Those are my conditions.”

“All right,” he said. “It’s a deal.”

EIGHTEEN

Later in the day, Alex went to Human Resources where she sat for a series of photographs, changing her blouse for each new photo. She rearranged her hair slightly with each picture so that no two shots were too much alike or appeared to have been taken at the same time. New IDs were being made and new photos were in order. It was yet another indication that this was no ordinary trip.

In the early afternoon, back in her office at FinCen, Alex completed the reassignment of her current caseload to other investigators at FinCen. After lunch she returned to a newly assigned room in the State Department.

Her language instructor, Olga, arrived at a few minutes past four. Olga led Alex through some preliminary ground rules for the study of Ukrainian. The teacher seemed pleased that Alex had a solid grasp of Russian. That gave her entry into Ukrainian. Alex felt like a graduate student getting tutored for a final.

The trouble was, her heart wasn’t completely in it.

She found herself thinking about her assignment that night when she worked out at the gym. There was no basketball that evening, but she did spot a few of the players: Jack, who was an accountant for the IRS; Laura, her old buddy who worked at the White House; and Ben, who was running laps on his prosthesis.

From the locker room afterward she phoned Robert on her cell phone. He wasn’t home yet either.

“Want to grab a pizza?” she asked.

“I’d like to grab you, instead,” he answered. “Or maybe the pizza and then you.”

“I’ve got cold beer in the fridge,” she said. It was the first time all day Alex felt relaxed. Robert had that effect on her.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

There was a Chicago-style pizza place called Jean & Luca’s not far from Dupont Circle where he lived. He said he’d swing by there, get a thick pie, and drive it over to her place.

He did.

She had an ulterior motive this evening, however, and elaborated when they broke open the pie and the beer.

“How would you feel about running a couple of names across your files?” she asked.

“What files?”

“The Secret Service ones that will tell you where someone in the government works.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Michael Cerny, who recruited me for this Ukrainian assignment,”she said. “And this three-hundred-pound woman named Olga Liashko. I want to know if they have any CIA links.”

“Come on,” he said.

“No. Really. Something about them doesn’t smell quite right.”

He considered it.

“Michael Cerny’s been with the State Department for several years. I’ve known him for six years. I’ve never heard of any CIA affiliation.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not connected to the CIA,” she said. “You know that as well as I do. Look, there’s an awful lot of this that doesn’t make sense.”

She was angry. Indignant. She kept going. “Listen, Robert, what are they asking me to really accomplish? They’re practically asking me to share a shower and a bedroom with this repulsive East Bloc hoodlum. I don’t know what they think I can find out that all their intelligence hasn’t already given them.”

“I don’t know the answers,” he said. “I agree with you, but I don’t have any answers.”

“I don’t like Cerny and I don’t like this Ukrainian steamroller he works with,” Alex said. “So why don’t you just be the man I know and love and run a check?”

He finished one square slice of pie and started another. He nodded thoughtfully.

“I can’t do it myself,” he said. “I don’t have the authorization. But I can call in a favor. I won’t have an answer right away, but I’ll see what I can do. How’s that?”

She leaned across the table and kissed him.

“That would be perfect,” she said.

NINETEEN

The Lt. de polizia Gian Antonio Rizzo stood with his arms folded across his chest in the small cluttered apartment on the via Donorfio. A tall lean man with dark hair and sharp features, Lt. Rizzo of the Roman city police felt a deep disgust, an outrage, that fed upon the deeply cynical outlook on life that he had developed over the decades.

Lt. Rizzo had had more than enough of the type of scene that lay before him. At age fifty-five, he was contemplating retirement toward the middle of the summer. His final day at this underpaid unappreciated job could not come soon enough. Of course, he still had an enterprise or two on the side, but who knew about that?

Downstairs at the doorway to the street, a crowd gathered. Here, upstairs, police had strung crime scene tape in the hallway. Police techies vacuumed everything for fibers. Forensic photographers took digital shots of everything while busily trampling the rest of the crime scene.

Rizzo’s brown eyes slid uneasily over the death chamber. The cara-binieri who busily assisted him, as well as his own detectives from Rome’s homicide squad, had no question about the emotions sizzling within him.

“Pervertitidi! Degenerati!” Rizzo said. “Scum! You know what makes me mad? Having to spend time investigating what these people do to each other. Maybe we should let them kill one another, hey? Then these foreign parasites-questi scrocconi stranieri-would stop coming to Roma. Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?”

In the lieutenant’s opinion, there was a struggle under way for the soul of Rome. On one side were the forces of restraint, lawfulness, etiquette, and cultural preservation. On the other, the unswerving desire to use the ancient city for permissiveness, debauchery, and the commission of international crime.

Lt. Rizzo saw it every night on off-duty strolls through the Campo dei Fiori and the Piazza Navona. Why, just two evenings earlier witnesses in overlooking apartments had reported seeing two people shot and killed around the corner from where Julius Caesar used to address the forum, their bodies whisked away afterwards.

The case had landed on his desk and it was most unwelcome.

Well, the city had changed a bit since Caesar’s day, and not necessarily for the better. So Rizzo, who felt himself a guardian of public decency, looked around this room and felt his blood pressure rising.

More murder. More crime. More drugs.

“Incredibile!” Rizzo growled as those under his command went about their business. “This is a country that can’t form a government to last longer than the soccer season and can’t do anything about all these foreign degenerates either!”

With retirement beckoning, Rizzo was increasingly free with his opinions. The forensic technicians busied themselves with the details of the double homicide. Why take issue? They agreed with him, anyway. Even his