Conspiracy in Kiev

“The hand of God?” she asked.

He smiled. “Nope. I cheated. I palmed the slip of paper with my own name. I wanted to make the trip.”

She laughed. “Good of you,” she said.

“Look at this,” he said, reaching into the bag.

He pulled out a miniature basketball hoop and a foam ball. The hoop was about six inches across, the ball about four inches in diameter. It was one of those $4.98 toys that one sees in offices or children’s rooms.

She laughed again when she saw it, and laughed harder when he stuck it up to the wall and flipped her the ball.

“Should I pass to you so you can dunk it or should I shoot?” she asked.

“Oh, by all means,” he said, “go for the three pointer.”

Her arm hurt too much to raise it. So she threw a random underhand shot up against the wall, about six feet away. It hit the front of the hoop, flew upward, then dropped straight down.

It swished.

“Whoa!” he said. “The hand of God?”

“I’m sure God is too busy to busy to worry about three-point shots in hospital rooms,” she said.

She looked across the room. “See that window over there?” she asked.

“I see it.”

“I’d like to get to it. Will you help me?”

“I’d be honored.”

She slid her legs around so she could slide off the side of the bed. Ben helped her stand, steadying her as she stood. She ached all over. She was again conscious of how she must have fallen because there were bad bruises on her legs and elbows. In a hospital gown she could still see the scratches on her legs from the brambles in the Venezuelan mountains, as well as the hard fall in the French subway.

She looked as if she had been beaten up.

“I don’t know how many individual injuries I have,” she said, “but you know all about stuff like that, right?”

“We’re all wounded in some way. We’re all mutilated. You know that old Paul Simon song, ‘An American Tune’? Goes something like, ‘Don’t know a soul who ain’t been battered, ain’t got a friend who feels at ease…’”

“I know it,” she said.

“One step at a time,” he said, helping her walk. “This is great. You’re doing fine.” He helped the IV-pole trail her.

She nodded and continued the faint tune as he acted as her support. “Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered,” she sang softly. “Or driven to its knees.”

They sang together. “But it’s all right, it’s all right.”

She hung on his arm, got stronger with each pace, and traveled the dozen steps to the window. She gazed out on the courtyard. Over the roof of the hospital, in the distance, she could see part of the Parisian skyline.

“Well, I’m alive,” she said.

“You’re alive,” he answered. “Against the odds, we both are.”

She nodded. He helped her back to the bed. She sat down, then lay down. Her energy was already gone.

He sat in the chair by the bed for the remaining minutes of his visit. She felt weak but inside she started to feel good. He looked at a small object in a dish by the bedside.

He reached to it. “May I?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He picked up the remains of the stone pendant that had saved her life. It was in three pieces. The center of it had been smashed into dust by the ricocheting bullet so that, if the pieces were pushed back together, one could see, right where the engraved cross came together, a deep gouge. Aside from that, the three pieces fit together perfectly, as if designed by a master carver.

“What’s this?” he asked.

She smiled.

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you,” she said.

He put the pendant back into the dish and then back onto the table. The pieces fit themselves back together. She admired the small cross that Paulina had carved in the stone, thousands of miles away-the small carving that had saved her life.

Distantly, she thought of Paulina.

“It’s a deal,” Ben said. “I’ll come back tomorrow. And you can tell me.”

A few minutes after Ben left, Alex’s strength again ebbed. She settled again into a comfortable sleep.

EIGHTY-SEVEN

The following morning, for the first time since her arrival at the hospital, Alex felt good enough to sit up and read. Her physician passed by at about 8:00 a.m. There were newspapers in French and a few books at her bedside. Ben’s bouquet sat at her bedside, and now a second one did too, from her former coworkers at Treasury in Washington. Word either traveled fast or not at all these days.

She reached for the papers and began to glance through them. A nurse came by shortly after ten.

“Il y a encore un visiteur,” the nurse announced. Another visitor.

“C’est qui?

” Alex asked.

“Un medecin etranger, je crois,” the nurse answered. A foreign doctor.

Alex shrugged. “Bien. Pourquoi pas?” she said. Well, why not? The more medical advice, the better. Or, she wondered, was the opposite true? Well, she would listen.

She set aside her newspapers and leaned back in her bed. She drew a deep breath as the nurse left the room.

She reached to the side table and pulled out a hand mirror. She glanced into it. To her mind, she looked tired. But, she now realized, she would survive.

Ben’s visit the previous day and the gifts he had brought from America had done more to rally her spirits than she could have imagined. For the first time since arriving there, she began to entertain a restless spirit. How long would she be in the hospital? How long before she could be discharged and go home? How long before she could resume a normal life?

She brushed at her hair with her fingers, instinctively sprucing up for her visitor, even if it was a doctor. Plus, Ben would come by later. The pain in her chest had subsided. Maybe, she wondered, if Ben were staying a few days, he could help her pack her things and return to Washington.

The door opened and a man in a white lab coat entered, his physician’s ID clipped to his lapel. Alex saw him first out of the corner of her eye.

The visitor was tall, strikingly tall, maybe six foot three. He was sturdy with a slight beard, about a week’s worth, and wore a tie. He almost looked like an old priest and he had a faint smell of cigarettes about him. And what type of doctor smells of cigarettes?

She put down the mirror, looked at him, and smiled.

He spoke softly in Russian. “Zdrastvuyeeti. Dobraye utro.” Hello. Good morning.

“Dobraye utro,” she answered instinctively. Good morning in return.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better today, doctor,” she began. “I-”

She looked into his eyes. With a surge of horror, she pegged the face.

“That’s very good, hey,” he said. “Glad to hear it.”

She sputtered in Russian. “What are you doing here? How did you-?”

She reached for the alarm button to call the nurse. “Please don’t make a sound,” Yuri Federov said. He reached under his lab coat and pulled a gun from his hip. She eyed it. It was a small compact piece, snub nosed