Conspiracy in Kiev

This evening, as always, Daniel folded his overcoat and placed it neatly on an extra chair at their table. He sat down. Irene brought him a cognac, gave him a cute smile, and quickly left to attend other tables.

“You’re sure my cigar doesn’t bother you?” Daniel asked his table companion.

“Not at all.”

They fell into a conversation easily. He noticed that she was watching his hands.

She was drinking a Coca-Cola with a twist of lemon. There was music playing again tonight, so loud that one had to raise one’s voice just to be heard. A friendly din. Lots of conversation in several languages, lots of glasses clinking and plates clattering. L’etincelle was a cheerful upbeat joint.

A few minutes into their conversation, she raised a hand and waved to a man who came in the door and surveyed the place.

“Oh! There’s a friend of mine!” she said. “He’s going to join us.”

Daniel didn’t like that. For no reason, or for every reason, he didn’t like it at all. He had an acute antenna, and he sensed something was wrong. He looked at the stranger with a stare that could bore a hole in a cinderblock wall.

But before Daniel could object, the newcomer slid into the extra chair, the one closest to the door. Daniel took him to be American before he even opened his mouth. He looked like a businessman of some sort. Another sign of trouble.

There was an awkward moment. The man looked at Daniel with intent dark eyes. Rosa offered no introduction. That in and of itself was enough of a further clue.

Three strikes and-

“What?” Daniel asked, looking back and forth, hoping he might be wrong.

“You’re not an old man, Father Daniel,” she said.

“You’re not my friends,” he answered.

“And you’re not a priest,” the man said. “You’re not even Catholic.”

Daniel moved his hand quickly under his jacket, reaching for the gun that he carried for just such moments. But Rosa thrust her hand roughly after his, momentarily deflecting his grasp and minimizing any possibility that he might defend himself.

At the same time, the newcomer, quickly and professionally, reached across the table with a small snub-nosed handgun. He pressed it right to Daniel’s chest and he pulled the trigger.

The gun erupted with an ear-splitting bang. It was barely audible above the noise of the restaurant, though diners at some tables started to look around.

Daniel’s face showed shock, then outrage. Then all that dissolved with accelerating pain. The bullet had smashed the sternum at the midpoint of his chest. The gunman followed his advantage with a second shot. Another powerful bang. He squeezed that one off so quickly and accurately that it passed directly through Daniel’s heart.

The woman braced his body and steadied it so that Daniel didn’t tumble. Instead, with a helpful little push, Daniel slid forward, his body slumping onto the table as if he were drunk.

The gunman pocketed his weapon and rose to his feet. Rosa did the same. They used their hands to shield their faces and moved quickly to the door. Only as they were going through it did they start to hear a commotion behind them. Loud agitated conversation built into shouting.

Several seconds later young Irene came to the table to see what was wrong.

She saw the shattered brandy glass under Daniel’s lifeless head. She saw his unfocused eyes and his blood mixing with the cognac on the table.

Her hands flew to her face and she started to scream. The evening manager, a fit young man named Gerard, rushed over. But by this time, Daniel’s two acquaintances had disappeared into the dark side streets and alleys.

They were gone into the icy night, leaving their victim behind.

TWO

As the same cold midwinter gripped the eastern United States, Alexandra LaDuca sat at her desk in Washington DC, at a few minutes past nine in the morning. Her desk, and her job, was at the main building of the United States Department of the Treasury on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street.

She pondered the fraudulent document before her, received via the US mail by a citizen who had brought a complaint to the Treasury Department. It was not that Alex hadn’t seen thousands of similar pitches, and it was not that she hadn’t heard sob stories from people who had been similarly swindled. And it wasn’t that such chicanery so violated her sense of decency and fair play.

No, what bothered her most was that anyone would be so venal as to make a living through such outright crookery… and that any victim would be gullible enough to fall for it. The correspondence was on a fancy letterhead:

FOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT

CENTRAL CREDIT BANK OF NIGERIA

TINUBU SQUARE, VICTORIA ISLAND

LAGOS, NIGERIA

There was the first duet of lies. There existed nowhere on the planet, Alex knew, any such department or any such bank. She sometimes wondered if Lagos existed, other than in her own bad dreams. But she knew Lagos did exist because she had spent a couple of weeks there a year earlier investigating a similar fraud. The only success of the previous trip had been in what hadn’t happened. She had successfully avoided getting killed.

The scam continued:

Dear Sir/Madam,

IMMEDIATE CONTRACT PAYMENT CONTRACT #: MAV/NNPC/FGN/ MIN/009 / NEXT OF KIN FUND/ US $16.3M

From the records of outstanding Next of Kin Fund due for payment with the Federal Government of Nigeria, your name was discovered on the list of the outstanding payments who have not yet received their funds.

We wish to inform you that your payment is being processed. We will release said funds to you immediately as soon as you respond to this letter. Also note that from records in my file your outstanding payment is US$16,300,000. Kindly reconfirm to me the followings:

Your full name.

Phone, fax and mobile number…

Yeah, sure. Sixteen million bucks in an offer as phony as a unicorn with a three dollar bill on its nose. She simmered. She had seen enough of these to last a lifetime.

Alex LaDuca, at age twenty-nine, worked as a senior investigator with a little-publicized agency of the US Treasury: the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen. The agency enforced laws against domestic and international financial crimes that targeted US citizens and corporations. She was actually a special agent of the FBI but on loan to FinCen to combat international financial fraud.

Her boss was a stocky little man named Mike Gamburian from Boston. His office featured a mural of a triumphant Fenway Park in October of 2004, a moment when the Red Sox finally won something. The New York employees who worked for him, in grudging good humor, claimed the mural created “a hostile work environment.” Aside from that, Gamburian was a genial fellow and not unpleasant to work for.

Alex was one of FinCen’s shrewdest investigators, as well as one of the toughest. She was also the youngest to have “senior” status. And she didn’t lack for assignments. With the proliferation of the Internet, fraud had gone global and high tech. Financial fraud was a growth industry.