Conspiracy in Kiev rt-1

by Noel Hynd

  “Where was the picture taken?” she asked.

  “Paris. A night club somewhere near the Place Pigalle where he had interests.”

  “When?”

  “Late last year. December.”

  “Who are the others in the picture?” Alex asked. “Are they important too?”

  “Since you inquired,” Cerny said, “the one on the left is Marko Marchenko. The one on the right, a man named Michael Kozlov. A couple of gangsters. You don’t have to worry about either of them.” He paused. “Former business partners of Federov. They disappeared, and now he owns full interest in the club. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “Thanks. I will. But I’m sure you have more details.”

  “Kozlov’s remains were found in an industrial furnace in Toulon, in the south of France. Marchenko was found in the River Seine outside of Paris. He was in sixteen feet of water, but his feet had been wired to a diesel engine block. According to the autopsy, he had been alive when he was dumped from a bridge. Then again, apparently Marchenko had been alive when he was shoved into the furnace.”

  She handed the pictures back. Cerny placed them in the files he was giving her.

  “Federov,” Alex asked. “Is he Russian mob or Ukrainian?”

  “He’s a blend of both. Worst aspects of each. Ethnically he’s Russian, socially he’s a Uke. Maybe if you can get close enough you can ask him that question. We wouldn’t mind knowing what he considers himself.”

  “How close am I going to get?”

  “As close as you can,” Cerny said. “And I should warn you. This guy knows how to turn on the charm. For whatever reason, a lot of women find Federov irresistible.”

  She laughed. “An over-steroided gangster isn’t exactly my dream date.”

  If Cerny was amused or encouraged, he wasn’t showing either.

  “Yuri Federov owes the United States government about ten million dollars in personal taxes,” Cerny said, “and that’s just the beginning of it. Then there are the corporate taxes and a long list of criminal activities just since we last deported him.”

  “And?” she asked.

  “He has agreed to meet with a representative of our government to discuss the issues,” Cerny said. “That’s where you come in. One of the most dangerous men in the world. Federov is your assignment.”

  ELEVEN

  I n Rome, an American couple known as Chuck and Susan were looking for a taxi. They had stumbled out of a late-night watering hole in the medieval neighborhood of Trastevere shortly after 3:00 a.m. on January 8.

  It had been quite an evening, starting with “ladies night” at Sloppy Sam’s, a popular pub on Campo dei Fiori. In front of the commemorative statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was condemned to death by the Catholic Church for heresy in 1600, beefy shirtless male bartenders had served up discounted shots of Sambucco. Susan loved to sit at the bar, knock back the Sambucco, and ogle the guys, while Chuck worked the room for single women. Then Susan and Chuck had moved on to the Zeta Lounge around the corner. There a reveler could have all one could drink for one low price, and usually did. The Zeta was also well known as a pick-up joint for couples looking for a special sort of excitement.

  Giordano Bruno, the philosopher, would have had much to ponder if he could have seen his old neighborhood and the debauchery that took place there nightly. But there wasn’t much old Giordano could do about it, other than roll in his grave for another few hundred years.

  There was a taxi sitting down the block from the Zeta Lounge when Susan and Chuck emerged. The cab’s meter was off, the driver with a mobile phone to his ear, talking furtively.

  Secrets. Chuck and Susan had plenty of secrets.

  First off, it was the secretive nature of their work and the European nightlife Susan and Chuck loved most. That and the risque thrills. The thump of the clubs late at night, the dancing, the drinking, living for the moment. The lasting friendships among those who worked in the clubs in London, Paris, and Rome. The casual assignations when couples would pair off, including each of them without each other.

  Then there was their professional life.

  Their current assignments would soon have them in one of the old Soviet republics again where it was even colder and nastier. Oh, well, they were making a good career out of their involvement in this international cloak-and-dagger stuff.

  They had money stashed in Switzerland, New York, and the Bahamas. If they weren’t doing it, they reasoned, someone else would be, just not as well. So they continued on. Across the street an American tourist was barking through a souvenir-shop megaphone asking a woman to hike up her skirt, eliciting laughs from his friends and, surprisingly, the woman herself, who was equally soused. Chuck was amused.

  The sidewalk was terrible. Ice everywhere. Chuck checked the shadows in the doorways nearby. He was always on his guard. He never knew when someone would step out of such shadows and, from some grievance in a complex past, raise a weapon. He always had an eye out for anyone who might recognize them and know them by their real names. There would be no end to the inconvenience that would cause.

  They were partners in a gray world, a world of the political underground, half-formed conspiracies, plots, and counterplots. They thought of themselves as warriors for a good cause. The truth was, they were closer to foot soldiers, and the validity of the cause was open to argument.

  Their last work project, the one in Paris, had ended in complete disaster. So they weren’t celebrating this evening. They were trying to forget.

  Chuck led Susan to the single waiting cab. He and Susan had a local woman in tow, someone they had met at the club. The woman had called her roommate and left a message, or so she said. She was staying over with “a friend” that night. So as she dropped her own cell phone into her purse, she was at liberty.

  Chuck approached the cab. The driver looked up. A face that could have belonged to one of Caesar’s centurions. Drawn, unshaven, and tired.

  “Le Grand Hotel,” Chuck said. He spoke good Italian but an American accent was noticeable.

  It made perfect sense. A hotel with a French name in the heart of Rome. Back in the 1890s when the hotel had been named, the French motif had suggested elegance, as if the Romans didn’t have enough on their own. Yet the hotel was still the most luxurious in Rome. “ Vittorio Orlando Strada, numero tre,” he continued.

  The driver replied with a grumble. He was still gabbing into his own cell phone. “ Non in servizio,” he answered, pointing to the roof of the cab. “Off duty.”

  “I’m never off duty, so why should you be?” Chuck said. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  The cabbie looked at him as if he didn’t understand. The Italians were good at that. Chuck dug around his pocket and came up with something the driver would understand.

  An American fifty-dollar bill. Nice and crisp. Ulysses S. Grant in one of his sober moments.

  “This is yours on top of whatever’s on the meter.”

  The cabbie hesitated. Then, “ Va bene,” he said.

  The cabbie put his hand on the fifty. Chuck eyed the vehicle from end to end, trying to assess any potential danger.

  Standard Roman cab. A white Mercedes with a fresh dent in the driver’s side front door. Brand new and it had already collided with the rest of the city.

  He dug deeply into the cabbie’s eyes. Standard sorehead Roman cabbie.

  “I’m getting cold,” the second woman said, stamping her feet briskly, holding her legs tightly together against a sharp breeze. “Are we going somewhere or not?”

  “Okay,” Chuck concluded. He released the fifty. They huddled into the taxi, the three of them in the back seat, Chuck on the far end, Susan in the middle, their new friend on the end. The cabbie pulled away from the curb.

  Chuck eyed the hack license that the driver displayed on the dashboard. More bad vibes: The name was Italian but the face was something more Eastern. Still, one saw just about everything these days in the capitals of Western E
urope.

  Maybe Chuck was growing too paranoid. Maybe he had spent too much time in the back alleys and out of the sunlight for his government. Maybe he was too old for this sort of thing. Sometimes he didn’t even recall what name or identity he was using.

  From that point, the ride was over in a few seconds.

  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.

  Wondered, but didn’t ask.

  “I’m looking forward to the lessons,” Alex said.

  It was that most unusual of statements for her: an outright lie.

  THIRTEEN

  A t 8:00 that evening, Alex presented herself to Colosimo’s. She checked in with her federal permit and waited for her turn on the firing range. She had not used her weapon for several months. She purchased a new box of nine-millimeter ammunition. She had a respectful relationship with firearms-she had drawn her weapon many times but had never had to fire one against another human being. She prayed that she never would.

  But she knew she could, if necessary. Her possession of a weapon in the line of duty for the FBI had been a professional necessity. She might have been dead without it. And tonight, she just plain felt like blasting away at some paper targets.

  At half past the hour, in a heavy white UCLA sweatshirt, her new basketball sneakers, and a pair of red Umbro soccer shorts, she took her place on a firing line. Trim, twenty-nine, and with long legs that seemed chiseled from all the workouts, she drew the usual set of approving and admiring glances from the predominantly male clientele.

  Though flattered, she ignored it. She also made sure she also had her goggles and an anti-noise headset. An agent she knew had once practiced on a range without the ear protection and been cursed with permanent ringing in the ears from then on. Heaven knew there was no apparel sexier than those two items.

  She opted for bull’s eye targets, the old-fashioned ones with concentric circles, rather than a man-shaped target. The target was twenty-five yards away. Before shooting, she fiddled with the two adjusting screws across the top sight until they appeared to be fixed just right.

  The range was warm. She ditched the sweatshirt and was down to a blue and gold UCLA T-shirt. Much more comfortable.