by Noel Hynd
“I’ll do my best,” she said again.
A few minutes later, she was out of his apartment and back down on Fifth Avenue, walking home slowly, enjoying the anonymity that a crowded New York sidewalk always afforded her.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
T he next morning, Alex and Michael Cerny were on an Air France flight from New York to Paris. Two hours into the flight, sitting side by side in business class, Cerny took out his Palm Pilot. He applied his fingerprint to the security section and powered it up.
“I want you to read some files,” Cerny said. “CIA and NSA stuff. They’ll tell you more about why we’re going to Paris.”
“Full disclosure?” she asked with an edge.
“Call it what you want,” Cerny said. “You need to know some backstory.”
He handed the Palm Pilot to Alex. She began with a CIA file that was, as much as anything, a continuation of what she had read on Yuri Federov back in January. But it added to her knowledge.
Federov had been on a CIA list for several months as a foreign national in whom the Agency had taken a “special interest.” At the same time, Federov had developed a long list of enemies in the underworlds of North America, South America, and Europe. So many, that fear of his enemies had impeded his movements for years. Thus from time to time, Federov had been in the habit of traveling through Europe in the guise of a priest.
But within the last eighteen months, Federov had taken the guise one step further. He had hired a double, a retired actor from the National Theater of Hungary. The double was a friend named Daniel Katzman. Katzman bore a resemblance to him. Hence Katzman traveled as Father Daniel, a Federov decoy-within-a-decoy so that Federov himself could move about the world more freely.
Daniel turned out to be in the role of a lifetime, or, more accurately, the last role of his lifetime. A pair of assassins shot him to death in a French cafe named L’etincelle during the first days of the new year. Alex noted the date. January 2. The French police were still working on the case, the file said, the one of the man in priestly garb shot dead over a cognac and a cigar at a cafe in the Marais.
From the shooting, a triple riddle posed itself:
Q1: When is a dead priest not really a dead priest?
A1: When the dead Russian mobster is not a Russian mobster either.
Q2: Then when is a dead Russian mobster not really a dead Russian mobster?
A2: When he wasn’t even a priest either. He was an actor and a friend of the man who was supposed to be shot.
And then the biggest question of all:
Q3: When is an underworld “hit” not an underworld “hit”?
A3: When neither the victim nor the perps are members of the underworld.
The electronic file ended abruptly. Cerny guided Alex to a second one that discussed a pair of agents who worked for the CIA, and not with great efficiency. Their names were Peter Glick and Edythe Osuna. They were married to each other, or seemed to be, but didn’t work at it very hard. They had picked up a trail that they felt belonged to Federov by monitoring flights from Kiev to the capitals of Western Europe, notably London, Paris, Madrid, and Geneva, places where Federov either had business interests, money stashed, or both.
They tracked their target to Paris and asked for permission from Langley to proceed with an “intervention.” The request went all the way up to cabinet level. Permission was granted. They acted. Next thing anyone knew, the secure faxes and phone lines were exploding between Langley and Paris and Langley and Rome.
Edythe and Peter fled to Madrid after Paris, then Rome. Yet for people who should have been disappearing into the background, they were reckless, physically incapable of keeping a low profile. Nor were they upstanding citizens. They moved in a shadowy world of illegal gun dealers, smugglers, swindlers, sexual merchants, and con artists. They frequented nightclubs in Paris and Rome where couples paired off with strangers. They lived on the social and political edge of the world.
They picked up a trail for Federov. But they picked up the wrong trail, one that was set out as a trap.
As soon as Alex saw those names, a bell rang within her. Her mind flashed back to the club in Kiev, her quasi-sober conversation with Federov, as well as the suggestive questions posed by her.
Federov, in Russian: “Have you ever heard of a pair of Americans named Peter Glick and Edythe Osuna?”
Alex: “New names on me. Should I know them?”
Federov: Maybe. They are involved in this visit by your president.”
Alex: “Part of the delegation?”
Her favorite gangster: “No. They’re a pair of American spies. They were recently retired.”
So the tale that followed made sense. Edythe and Peter established a procedure for a hit on Federov in Paris. They quickly wired Washington and Langley for approval. No one ever asked them if they were sure their target was who they thought it was. Accuracy of that sort was the least of the details attended to. Like much CIA intelligence over the last decade, it wasn’t just faulty, it had so many holes in it that a truck could have driven through it with its doors open.
Peter and Edythe were known in security circles in Europe and known by the underworld also. They were recognized to be Western operatives, most likely American.
After the mistaken killing in Paris, they were ripe for a setup.
Alex continued to read.
The setup came when Federov wanted to strike back. First, he had set up his old friend Katzman possibly to be whacked in his place. Then he took it as a personal insult that Katzman had been so victimized.
From his own experiences in European nightlife, Federov knew a young woman for the job. One night in Rome, Peter and Edythe met a young woman named Lana Bassoni who lived in Rome. She was very pretty, a sometime model and sometime artist’s model. But she was married to a musician who wasn’t going anywhere. There was also another detail about Lana that Peter and Edythe would never had guessed until it was too late. She had once worked for Federov at one of the after-hours mob joints he ran in New York. She had been a hostess-plus-a-bit-more, depending how much a client had to spend and what a client wanted. It all made sense.
The meeting at the club in Rome-Lana, Peter, and Edythe-was made to look like a coincidence. But it was anything but. About an hour after meeting, Peter and Edythe disappeared for a while. The next morning, Lana did too.
Alex looked up from the Palm Pilot. “I assume there’s more,” she said to Cerny.
“Of course,” he said. “Short and sweet. Do you want to read it in English or Italian?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Give me both in case I sense something wrong with the translations.”
“Smart girl,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.”
She took back the Palm Pilot. “If I were really smart, I wouldn’t be here.”
She opened the final files. There were a pair of homicide reports from the Roman newspapers from January, including that of a musician and his girlfriend found dead in their flat in Rome. Then some follow-ups from several weeks later. The final entry had to do with a pair of bodies found in the sandy bogs near Villa di Plinio. Two bodies had been found, not yet identified.
The file ended, as did the information Cerny accessed in his Pilot. He took the device back and tucked it away.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?”
“Show me that lightning intellect,” he said. “What do you make of all that?”
“Tie it together, you mean?”
“If you can.”
“But you know the correct answers already?” she said.
“I know answers that I believe to be correct,” he said. “There’s a difference. So put your thesis to me, and I’ll let you know if you’re in the right line of work or not.”
“I’ll give you a scenario that works,” she said. “Just as it came to me as I was reading.”
“Please do,” Cerny answered above the drone of the aircraft’s engines.
“First off, someone in Washington was dumb enough to order a hit on Federov. Someone wanted him killed, for whatever reason.”
“I could argue that by saying we don’t do things like that.”
“And I’d argue back that I know that you do, same as we never used to employ torture until we got caught doing it.”
“Keep going.”
“Peter and Edythe had the assignment to hit Federov. But they blew it and whacked his double, his imposter, instead. Since his double was his pal, Federov was pretty angry. He hit back. He had his moll Lena set up Peter and Edythe in Rome. My guess is they got hit by some Ukrainian gunmen that night on the via Trafficante. Do I know the principals?” Alex asked. “I’m guessing I do.”
“Twitchy Eye, that’s Anatoli,” Cerny said. “Then there’s Nontwitchy Eye, which is Kaspar.”
“And they killed Lana, why?” Alex asked. “To eradicate any links back to them? Keep her from ever talking?”
“It appears that way,” Cerny said.
“Federov ordered it?”
“The Ukrainians are not always so well disciplined. Anatoli and Kaspar could have been acting on their own when they took Lena out.
“Lena’s boyfriend? Collateral damage?” she asked.
“Apparently. Tough for him,” Cerny said. “But that completed the cycle of four deaths in twelve hours.”
Alex hit the end of her files. She looked up. Cerny was looking at her.
“So,” she said. “If I mentioned something called ‘Operation Chuck and Susan’ to you, presumably you’d know what I was talking about.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I already know,” she said. “Operation Chuck and Susan. My computer crashed when I tried to access that file. And it was related to Kiev. My guess is that Chuck and Susan were Peter and Edythe. And you were trying to keep it from me for as long as possible that you wanted to kill Federov. Who knows? Maybe he didn’t lift a finger to stop the attack on the president because he felt the United States kept trying to kill him.”
“We need to take him out,” Cerny said. “For all the reasons you know, plus the ones that I know, plus probably several more that neither of us know. Is that sufficient?”
“If we know all this, why are we going to Europe?”
“To put the final pieces in place,” he said, “and to finally eliminate Federov. As long as he’s alive, he’s a threat to you and to the United States.”
“What sort of threat to me?” she asked.
“For starters, he wants you dead.”
She thought about it. “I’m not sure I believe that,” she said.
“What are you saying? You didn’t see what happened in Venezuela?”
“I saw what happened,” she answered angrily. “For God’s sake, I was there, remember? I’m just not sure I’m buying that Federov was behind it.”
Cerny rolled his eyes. “You’re telling me that you know more than we do?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“I know how to judge a man. One of those first RPGs in Kiev hit right where I had been standing. Federov moved me away from that place.”
“Proof that he knew there was going to be an attack.”
“Everyone in the city knew of the possibility of an attack!” she snapped back. “If anyone in authority had had any common sense, the president would have skipped the memorial, citing security considerations. And then the president would have gotten out of the country as fast as possible. But I’m just an underling. I don’t plan these things. I had no opinion worth hearing at the time, right?”
“Sounds like I’m hearing one now,” he said.
“Yeah. You are.”
She handed the Palm Pilot back to him. He pressed his finger to its security patch, let it read his fingerprint, and shut it down.
“When we get to Paris,” he said an hour later, “we’ll deal with this. We have a meeting the day after arrival. One of our local people who’s familiar with the case.”
“What sort of ‘local people’?” she asked, fatigue in her voice. “Who is he?”
“You’ll like him,” Cerny answered, without giving a name. “He’s embedded with one of the European police agencies.”
“CIA?” she asked.
“Naturally.”
“French?”
“No,” Cerny said. “As a matter of fact, he’s Italian.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
L t. Rizzo was the first to arrive, dressed sharply in a new suit, his hardcopy files under his arm.
The meeting was in the United States embassy in Paris just off the Place de la Concorde, in a secure room on the third floor. Cerny arrived with Alex. They took seats at a small conference table. A third man there was Mark McKinnon, who was the CIA station chief in Rome. He had made the trip separately from Rizzo so they would not be seen together. They had, in fact, not seen each other in person since talking over a glass of wine at the dark San Christoforo bar in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome.
Cerny handled the introductions. An embassy observer was present also, a young man fluent in English, French, and Italian.
“Signor Rizzo has been with the Roman police for twenty-two years,” Michael Cerny said to Alex. They spoke English. “Seventeen on the brigata omicidia.”
“Rough work,” Alex allowed.
“Gian Antonio has been a CIA asset for at last the last fifteen of those years,” McKinnon added. “High quality material, almost always accurate.”
“Thank you, Michael,” Rizzo said in perfect English. “Almost?” he laughed.
“No one’s perfect,” Mark McKinnon said. “Not in our line of work.”
Cerny looked to Alex. “I brought Ms. LaDuca up to speed on the flight over, vis-a-vis the two murder investigations in Rome,” Cerny said. “In terms of Federov and his bodyguards, where are we now?”
McKinnon opened a file and slid a photograph across the table to Alex. “Recognize this guy?” he asked.
She glanced at it. “That’s one of the men who came to the embassy in Ukraine with Federov,” she said.
“He’s one of Federov’s bodyguards,” McKinnon said. “He’s actually the remaining one.”
“Remaining?” she asked.
“The other one is currently deceased,” McKinnon said. “He had an accident in his home in London. Fell and hit his head.”
She shuddered.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Careless of him.” She returned the photo. “That’s definitely the man, right? In the photo?” McKinnon asked. “From Kiev.”
“That’s him.”
McKinnon placed the photograph back in the file. “He’s in Paris right now,” he said. “His name is Kaspar Rodzienko. Ukrainian-born Russian. It’s our feeling that he and his boss were instrumental in the attacks on the president in Kiev. We’d like to wrap him up as quickly as possible. For that, we need bait for him to come forward.”
“And that would be me,” she assumed evenly. “The target for Comrade Kaspar.”
“That would be you,” McKinnon said.
“We’d rather get him here in Europe than have him find his way into the US and come after you there,” Cerny said.
Alex looked at the three men at the table, plus the observer, and gave them an ironic shake of the head. “What are you asking me to do now?” she asked.
McKinnon looked to Rizzo.
“We have some informers among the Ukrainians in the local underworld,” he said. “We have the ability to let Kaspar know you’re in Paris. We’ve already done that. The information he received indicated that you’re on a trade mission for the Treasury Department. We have a safe apartment for you to stay in. Near rue Mazarine. Fine neighborhood, about a two-minute walk to the river. We’d set a security ring around you. When he comes looking for you, we hit him.”
“So you’ve made me a target,” she said. “Again.”
Silence around the room. “Not much we can do about it at this p
oint, LaDuca,” McKinnon said. “You’ll be compensated well for this.”
“Well or posthumously?” she asked, her displeasure growing.
“Better to get him on our terms rather than his own,” Cerny said. “We think he’s here for maybe two more days. If he knows you’re here and where you might be found, he’ll come into our view. Then we strike.”
“What about Federov?” she asked.
“We have no idea where he is now. He’s kept a low profile since Kiev. We can’t account for how many passports he might have.”
“Or what names they’re under,” McKinnon added.
In her mind, she was putting it together. “The date of the ‘hit’ in Paris, when someone was killed by our people under a false identity. Wasn’t that January second?”
Cerny answered. “Yes, it was.”
“And the file came to me four days later in Washington,” she said. “So that was the start of your next attempt to get Federov?”
Cerny again. “You could call it that.”
“Then six weeks later, the president is in Kiev, I’m supposed to keep tabs on Federov, and we’re trying to look like we’re negotiating a peace with him. And you guys are looking for new ways to hit him, but he beats you and takes a shot at the president instead. Lucky for you he missed.”
“Well,” Cerny said, “you know what they say. If the shoe fits, wear it.”
Alex considered her part in the near endgame, that of the bait in a trap. “And my alternative is?” Alex asked.
“As we said, wait for months, years. You never know where he’ll turn up.”
Cerny, McKinnon, and Rizzo escorted Alex to her lodging, which was a small two-room apartment on the rue Guenegaud in the sixth arrondissement. The apartment was toward the middle of the block in an old building with two huge blue doors at street level. The River Seine was a hundred yards to the north and the intersection with the rue Mazarine a hundred feet to the south.
They went there in the late afternoon. Alex studied the logistics, not a bad idea since her life depended on them. Two flights to walk up, one key to open the door. The door was reinforced from the inside, steel slabs that would bolt all the way across, a steel frame reinforcing the security from within.