by Noel Hynd
Alex liked Ben, though she knew him only from the gym. He’d been a marine gunnery sergeant in Iraq where a remote control roadside bomb in Anwar Province had taken off his leg below the knee.
Now he had a prosthesis for a right leg. He was in the process of getting his life back together.
Ben was the slowest guy on the court, but at six four was also the tallest in more ways than one. He played center for Alex’s team and played it with a huge heart. From her guard position, Alex loved to feed him quick high passes that he’d pick off with his huge hands and slam into the hoop. The half-court helped him.
On this night, Alex’s team won 29-25. Ben had a dozen. Alex had five, including a swished trey from the corner.
After the game, she toweled off, went to the weight room, worked out, ran laps, and was finished. She grabbed her stuff, headed back to the lockers and showered quickly. She changed into casual clothes and joined Robert for dinner, arriving a few minutes after ten at the Athenian in Georgetown.
The Athenian was a small, dimly lit Greek seafood place, red and white checkered tablecloths with a small candle on each table. The place was owned by a hulking mustached guy named Gus.
Gus was an emigre from Cyprus, a moody quick-tempered sort but an admirable host. Gus liked to pour free glasses of ouzo for his favored guests, which included anyone who displayed a reverence for Maria Callas, the Aegean, or a knowledge of soccer.
Gus was a fervent DC United man, but also followed, for reasons known only to himself, Barcelona FC and Chelsea via Gol TV. There were team photos and other colorful regalia around the place to bear witness.
Gus liked straight-arrow law-enforcement people. When Robert or Alex called ahead for a reservation, Gus always had a quiet table waiting and made sure the wine was chilled and the fish was cooked perfectly with the right herbs and a generous plate of rice and vegetables on the side. And so it went on this particular evening.
Robert had remembered the flowers, which Alex received with a kiss and a smile. Still, however, the idea of another high-anxiety trip abroad was something about which she was less than enthusiastic. The discussion went there quickly.
“And more language lessons?” she asked. “What’s this? My penalty for already speaking five fluently?”
“I hear Ukrainian is similar to Russian.”
“Similar but different. Like a tiger to a mountain lion.”
“Look, tomorrow morning you’ll get a briefing. If you want to say no, you’ll get the chance.”
Alex and Robert split a sea bass that Gus had grilled to perfection. Midway through the meal, Alexandra looked up and saw a man at the end of the bar whom she thought she recognized.
She caught him watching her. Rather than smile or acknowledge her, he looked away.
She was always noticing details: where someone stood, what they wore, who was present, who wasn’t. She knew the man at the bar hadn’t been there when she came in. She remembered that the far end of the bar had been empty.
So he had come in after her. Or had followed her.
Her hand went to Robert’s. She was about to give him a signal, to ask him to check the guy out. But Gus wandered to their table to chat.
Gus embarked on one of his tamer political rants, something to do with a Michael Moore film. Alex nodded and refrained from joining in. Robert listened patiently. Alex watched the man at the bar while Gus was speaking, using the mirror above the bottles. The man kept watching her.
It wasn’t her imagination, she decided. He was watching her and she had seen him before. But where? When their eyes hit head-on a third time, he finished his drink and hurried out.
Gus talked them into the baklava for dessert. Alex was glad she had spent the time in the gym. Gus’s baklava was delicious but portions were huge. Gus left their table. Alex turned to her fiance. “There was a man at the bar watching me,” she said.
“Can’t say I blame him.”
“This isn’t funny, Black Dog.”
Robert looked to the bar. “Where is he?”
“He just left.”
“Okay, if he comes back in, I’ll pull the jealous boyfriend thing and shoot him. We might have to delay the wedding for twelve years while I serve the manslaughter charge.”
“That’s not where I’m going with this.”
“Okay, you shoot him.”
“Not funny,” she said. “He was watching me as if he had a reason. He just left. Fifteen seconds ago.”
His eyes slid to the doorway. “Okay,” he said. He got to his feet, went quickly to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the cold.
He was back in a minute. He sat down.
“Sorry. No one,” he said. “Just the usual muggers, junkies, and car thieves.”
“Not in this neighborhood,” she said.
“Okay. I didn’t see anyone.”
She settled slightly. “Thanks for looking.”
Being with Robert relaxed Alex, but through the whole evening there was only one thing she could think about.
Ukraine. She began to ask more questions.
“Look, normally they’d leave you alone after the Lagos trip,” he said. “But you know how the government works. Turn down the mission they want you to do and you don’t get the next one that you want to do.”
There was another quiet moment as she simmered. “Next you’ll tell me it’s not dangerous.”
“It’s very dangerous.”
“So why don’t they get one of those big six-foot-six guys in your department, the ones who block the view of the president when the prez is dumb enough to go shaking hands in hostile-action places like New York and Philadelphia?”
“They need a woman for this and all of the six-six ones are currently playing pro basketball.”
“Very funny,” she said. “Look, what do they want me to do? Go undercover at a night club in Odessa, swing around a pole, and listen in on gangsters?”
“I’d love to see that,” he said.
“Well, you won’t. And neither will anyone else.”
“Presidential visit,” he said. “That makes it top priority. The personnel computer spit out your name as someone who spoke Russian as well as the other major European languages. I saw your name because the list went by the Secret Service. They’re probably going to want you to learn some Ukrainian too.”
She groaned. “I was planning to spend the next few weeks planning a wedding, sitting around with my husband-to-be, going to movies, and maybe reading a trashy novel or two.”
He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.
The more she thought about it this evening, the more the concept bothered her. She made a mini-decision. She would listen politely at State the next morning and then give them a firm but polite, “No way!”
There. That settled that.
Who was in charge of her life, anyway?
Her or them?
SIX
A lex returned home, picking up her mail in the lobby, giving a friendly nod to the concierge. She fumbled with two bags, flowers, and mail as she walked past.
Alex lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a modern building called Calvert Arms Apartments on Calvert Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, in the Cleveland Park neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of the city. It was a comfortable quiet building built in the mid-sixties, filled with young single people-students, interns, people just starting their first job out of college, and government retirees.
She waited at the elevator. It was stopped on the fifth floor. It seemed to be permanently stopped, as if someone was saying a longwinded good-bye.
She grew impatient. The elevator began to descend slowly.
Five, four, three…
She knew everyone on her floor, at least by sight. Who was making her day longer than it had to be?
Two, one…
The twin doors of the elevator opened. Out stepped a young woman who could hardly have been older than her early twenties, very pretty in a heavy parka and tight jeans. A studen
t at one of Washington’s numerous colleges, Alex figured.
Students, along with career-beginners, were the Calvert Arms’ bread and butter. They coexisted with the old women in their seventies, eighties, or even nineties who had moved into the place when it opened forty years ago. At that time they had been middle-aged empty-nesters. Time had passed. They were still empty-nesters, just twice as old. Their ex- or late husbands had been pushing up daisies for decades.
The younger girl hurried to the front door. Alex stepped into the elevator and rode to the fifth floor.
Her neighbor across the hall had started out as a friendly nodding acquaintance and ended up becoming a good friend in a fatherly kind of way. He was a scholarly sixty-year-old who had worked for the State Department for twenty-eight years. Now he was a retired diplomat who played catchy pop music from Latin America each morning as she was on her way to work. The Calvert Arms was pretty well insulated, but you could hear music in the hallway through the doors.
Alex had on occasion met him going into or coming out of his apartment and had struck up a conversation in the laundry room, commenting on his choices. She too liked Lucero and the late Rocio Durcal. One day she couldn’t help asking, “Do you only listen to women singers?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “My virtual harem.”
That conversation and similar exchanges had let to a curious kind of friendship with a man who could be friendly but was self-contained, seemingly content with his virtual harem. He had few visitors. They spoke only Spanish with each other and his was easily a match for hers. She called him Don Tomas, though he was no Latin. He had invited her and Robert in for brunch one Sunday. They had been fascinated by his collection of art deco prints from the 1920s and 1930s, notably some beautifully preserved works of the French artist Tamara de Lempicka. They were all stylized pictures of beautiful women.
“Another part of your virtual harem?” she had asked.
Don Tomas had replied in the most relaxed manner imaginable, “Absolutely.”
This evening no sound from the vocal part of the virtual harem was coming through the door as she passed. She hoped nothing had happened to him.
She glanced at her mail and dumped it on the dining table. Then she stood perfectly still. Was everything exactly as she had left it? Was there something that she sensed, but could not quite put a finger on? Alex was unsure. Coupled with the appearance of the man at the bar in the Athenian, the evening had taken on a strange spin. Or was she just overanxious about a Ukraine trip that she didn’t want to make?
She sighed. She dismissed it. She placed the flowers in a vase.
She was in bed by midnight. She set the alarm for 6:00 a.m. Then, as she settled in to sleep, her eyes shot open. A realization hit her.
The man she had seen at the bar in the Athenian?
He was Fred, one of the two newcomers at the gym. Away from the gym, in a Burberry raincoat instead of basketball togs, she hadn’t recognized him. Chances were that he couldn’t figure out why he thought he knew her. Well, now she could relax. At least she knew why she recognized him and from where.
She closed her eyes. Minutes after her head hit the pillow, she was sleeping soundly.
SEVEN
T he next morning at 7:54 a.m., Alexandra walked through the entrance to Room 6776 B at the main building of the United States State Department, a vast complex covering two city blocks. To come in out of the cold she used the Twenty-first Street entrance, which had been built in the 1930s as the War Department for the US Army.
The handsome marble-clad art deco lobby had a curious mural featuring peaceful Americans at work and prayer. They were surrounded by protective soldiers in gas masks, cannons, and then-new-fangled four engine bombers. Out of embarrassment at the martial theme, the State Department had long hidden the picture behind a curtain, but later more tolerant minds had prevailed.
Alex’s meeting was not in that part of the building but in the much larger part built onto the original structure under Eisenhower. The two components had different floor plans that Alex always found disorienting when she paid a visit.
She arrived in a small conference chamber with a circular table and six chairs.
The room tone was flat. Soundproofing. It was like being in a clinic for hearing aids. One window with double glass overlooked an inner courtyard with a statue of Atlas holding up the globe.
At the desk, a small, trim man adjusted his spectacles but did not look up. He had a mop of gray hair and a reddish face. He wore a crimson tie and a cream-colored shirt. He was flanked by a half-finished container of Starbucks, the tall one with the full day’s caffeine punch. He had a look to him that she thought she recognized, one of those surly old State Department retirees who get called back for special assignments.
“Alexandra LaDuca,” he said, finally glancing up.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she said. “Yes. I’m Alex.”
He stood. He was a smaller man than she had initially thought, not much more than five foot four. Over the years, she had learned to be wary of tiny people who might harbor king-sized complexes.
“I’m Michael Cerny. State Department. Please sit,” he said. He indicated that she could take any seat at the table.
“I’m afraid I don’t even know what this is about,” she said. She sat, choosing a seat that allowed several empty chairs between them.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “This is the government. We’re soldiers, aren’t we? We march forward. Orders.”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“Sometimes,” he agreed.
“I suppose you better bring me up to date,” she said. “Explain where I’ll be marching. You talk and I’ll listen.”
“Quite,” he said. “Excellent. Tell me. Water? Coffee? Tea?” he asked. There was a service on a side table, which held all three.
“Just some water,” she said.
He fetched it. She glanced around the room. One reading chair. Reading lamps. Prints from second-rate paintings. Landscapes meant to offend no one. Bookcases without a single book. Michael Cerny sat down again.
He related that he was actually retired from the State Department after thirty-five years but had returned for a special ten-week assignment. She was off to a good start, assuming he could be believed. She had called that one perfectly.
“Well,” he said at length. “You have an overseas mission coming up. The president is going to Ukraine,” he said. “Official state visit. Arriving February fifteenth.”
She glanced at a calendar. It was January seventh. The trip was five weeks and two days away.
Cerny kept talking. He was, he explained immodestly, an expert on Ukraine, having done two tours in the capital, Kiev, and one in Washington on the Kiev desk, the office that handled Ukraine.
“I’m not an expert on that part of the world,” she said. “The Ukraine.”
“I suppose then, that’s where we should start,” he said, “with terminology. They don’t call it that with the definite article any more,” he said, his tone almost professorial. “Let’s backtrack a little. In English, the country was formerly usually referred to with the definite article. The Ukraine, as in the Netherlands or the Congo or the Sudan. However, usage without the article is more frequent since the country’s independence.”
“Thanks for the tip,” she said.
“Don’t mention it. The modern name of the country is derived from the term ukraina in the sense of ‘borderland, frontier region, or marches,’ ” he said. “Not that you care, but these meanings can be derived from the Proto-Slavic root kraj -, meaning ‘edge, border.’ In Russian, a modern parallel for this might be-”
“The Russian word okraina,” she said. “Meaning ‘outskirts’ and kraj meaning ‘border district.’ I speak Russian fluently.”
“Your language skills are the major reason you’re here,” he said.
She sipped some water.
“But why do I make the point?” he
asked. “Because Ukraine has always been exactly that. A border district. A frontier. A dangerous unruly place. Europe ends there and Asia begins. Asia begins there and Europe ends. One could put forth the theory that civilization sometimes ends there and chaos begins.”
Alex smiled. Cerny was coming across as a windbag, but at least he was an entertaining and knowledgeable windbag.
“Now,” he continued, “I’m not so dumb as to think that you don’t pick up rumors within the government, same as everyone else,” he said. “Particularly with a fiance who is employed by the Secret Service. So you probably knew already about the visit.”
“I’d heard a few rumors,” she admitted.
“Of course you have,” he said. “In any event, the intent of the trip is to bolster the pro-Western regime elected in the pomaranchevya revolutsia, the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004 and 2005. A secondary intent is for the president to look good here at home. We should get a good reception there.” He switched gears again. “I also note in your c.v. that you’re a member of a Christian church.”
“That’s a private matter, but yes, I am.”
“Then this should appeal to you. The Orange Revolution was widely supported by the Christian churches of the region.”
“Fine, but it’s not just a Christian thing,” she said. “Anything that threw off the old-style Soviet way of doing things would have its appeal to any fair-minded people, wouldn’t it? Religious freedom is for everyone, or did I misread the Constitution?”
“Point well taken,” he allowed. “You’re rather a live wire, aren’t you?”
“I like to believe in what I’m doing, particularly if I’m doing it for my country. I might be a little strange in that respect.”
“I can respect that,” he said. “So let me refresh your memory on events from southeastern Europe from the past few years. The Orange Revolution.”
Cerny spoke without notes. Alex listened intently, matching Cerny’s official account of events with what she remembered from the news.