Conspiracy in Kiev (13 page)
T
he Air France Airbus gave a violent shudder. Alex blinked and was awake, her heart jumping suddenly. She glanced around. They were on their descent into Kiev and had hit a pocket of extreme turbulence.
The bumpiness continued and Alex drew a breath. The plane was banking now, moving through a layer of clouds, its left wing tipped toward earth, the right wing toward heaven. She peered out the window into an infinity of cottony white.
The aircraft descended below the cloud cover. The landscape below came into view. And there was Kiev, the ancient city of Kievan Rus, the early medieval monarchy that represented the glory of Ukrainian history until it was sacked by the Mongols, giving the Russians, who stole the name, their chance to shine. The city stretched out before her, a bluish silvery gray vision in deep, deep winter as the afternoon died. For a fleeting moment, even as a light snow fell, everything was very clear, the colors of the city stark and intense. It looked like a Vermeer landscape.
They flew just below a thick layer of angry low clouds above the city of two and a half million people. Below, the River Dnipro was impacted with ice. Bridges laced the river. She could see traffic moving among the old buildings. Bare trees stood like skeletons along the boulevards, the naked dark branches extended like grasping arms and hands. The gilded domes of the old Ukrainian churches reached for the sky and glimmered with the final flickers of afternoon light. From her seat on the Airbus, Alex could make out Independence Square—formerly Lenin Square—and the huge statue of the Archangel Michael, the city’s patron saint, golden wings extended a halo behind his head. Michael dominated the square, much as a statue of Lenin once had.
To Alex’s right, in the distance, she could also see the huge statue of Rodina Mat, the Soviet vision of the motherland, celebrating the victory and sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War. The statue of a woman reminiscent of the Stature of Liberty, except Lady Liberty held a torch and Rodina Mat held a sword and a shield.
Alex had done her homework. She knew the statue was eight stories high and stood above a museum to the Great Patriotic War, known in the West as World War II. Alex also knew that Rodina was done in titanium. The rumor was that she wasn’t too steady on her pins these days. Like much of what the Soviets had built over seventy-five years, Rodina too might take a hard fall sometime soon.
Eight stories high, a sample of Soviet subtlety.
A sword and a shield, a sample of Stalinist philosophy.
An even bigger statue had once been planned, one of Stalin, who was to stand over the new Metro where it entered a tunnel after crossing the river on a bridge, just like the Colossus of Rhodes. But underground water had delayed completion of the tunnel, and happily for almost everyone, Uncle Joe had kicked the bucket before the statue could be built.
The plane leveled out and finished its descent, passing over the outskirts of the city. In twenty minutes, the Air France jet was at the gate. Alex was on her feet, reminding herself of the details to her new identity and ready to disembark after seventeen hours from Washington.
A
lex’s arrival in Kiev was not at an airport gate but down steps to an ordinary bus. An icy blast of cold met her. It wasn’t much warmer inside the bus as the door remained open for several minutes.
Welcome to Kiev—just like Chicago, except even colder and even more corrupt.
Alex passed through Ukrainian customs. Then she moved to immigration.
She stood quietly and watched the Ukrainian officer scan her passport. He waited for something on a computer screen.
What? Was this whole thing going to blow up right at the start? The reality of her situation hit home; she was entering Ukraine illegally. Sometimes there were long prison sentences for people who did such things, just so others wouldn’t.
She had been undercover before but had never passed from one country to another with a fraudulent identity. She had planned for this moment and prepared for it. But still, her palms moistened. Her blouse stuck to her ribs. She felt as if a monarch butterfly was fluttering around in her stomach.
Oh, Lord! The officer was looking at the screen too long. Much too long.
It went through her head: something had glitched with the passport. Some chunk of old Soviet style computer science had pegged her fake documents.
She turned and scanned the room. No one she knew. Nowhere to run.
The immigration officer frowned. The sweat poured off her. Now it felt as if a dozen butterflies were doing a bizarre mating dance in her stomach.
He was a nice-looking man in his mid twenties. Clean cut, fair-skinned, and blond. Looked a little like a cop or a guy she’d gone to college with, which made it all the more weird. He refused to smile.
His blue eyes slid from the computer screen to her. He spoke Ukrainian.
“
Dyplomat?
” he asked.
“
Tak
,” she said. Yes.
She fumbled slightly but pressed on. “Diplomat, sort of. United States Department of Commerce,” she said.
“You are Anna Tavares?”
A beat. “I am Anna Tavares.”
Still in Ukrainian: “You are
sure
you are Miss Anna Tavares?”
She couldn’t tell if he was flirting or trying to catch a spy. She stayed with it.
“Who else would I be?” she asked, trying to make a joke of it.
He closed her passport and placed it on the desk in front of her, out of her reach. He switched to English. “You will now please wait,” he said. “I call superior officers.”
“What!? Why!?”
“Because for you, this passport, I must.”
He looked to his left. Two security people approached, black uniforms, blue and yellow trim. Guns. Police clubs. A dog the size of a Volkswagen. A large man and a larger matron who looked like Olga’s steroidal big sister. Their eyes were on her; they hulked in her direction and they didn’t look happy. Her head snapped back to the immigration officer.
“What’s the problem?” she said. “What have I done wrong?”
Her nerves were in open revolt against her common sense now. She wanted to be anywhere else in the world than here. In the back of Alex’s mind, a prayer had kicked in.
The young man turned back to her. “There is no problem,” the officer said. “Our country’s courtesy to you. You are an American diplomat. We will escort you past the long lines.”
“Oh …”
Her insides completely unraveled.
“Have a good stay, Anna Tavares,” he said, returning to English and giving her a smile. He opened her passport, stamped her entry, and pushed it back in her direction. Then he winked at her. “American women are always so beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you,” she answered.
Her jaw closed tight. She took back her passport. The two security people then, with the utmost politeness, bypassed a hundred other travelers, led her through an official portal, and guided her into the reception area.
There she found herself face-to-face with a young man holding a piece of paper with
US Commerce
on it. She approached him and smiled.
“Anna Tavares?” he said.
“That’s me. A bit frazzled. But me.”
“I’m Richard Friedman. I’m with the commercial attaché’s office. I’m also your control officer while you’re here. Welcome to Kiev.”
“Thank you.”
They shook hands. He grabbed her bags.
Friedman was about her age, maybe a shade older, likeable, with a round face, glasses, and a smart look through the eyes. He wore a suit and tie beneath an open overcoat.
He carried her luggage and guided her to a waiting car and driver.
The car was French, a Peugeot, perky, deep green, and brand new. In contrast, the driver, Stosh, was a brooding Ukrainian in his fifties with a short gray beard and a three-inch scar across his left temple.
“Everything go well at immigration?” Friedman asked.
“Perfectly.”
“Glad to hear it, Anna. It doesn’t always. They’re usually a pretty sour bunch. Still paranoid from the Soviet era. Always looking for spies.”
“Imagine that,” she said. “Well, if I see any I’ll let them know.”
They both laughed.
S
oon they were rolling toward Kiev. Alex was in the back seat with Friedman, a pair of attaché cases on the seat between them.
She peered out the window, missing nothing, taking in a city she had never seen before today. The road was straight as an arrow and flat as an ironing board, with pine trees interspersed with surprisingly large houses and entrances to gated developments.
“The new rich,” Friedman said, noticing her interest in what was beyond the car windows. “The FSNs tell me this all used to be forest up until independence. Now a lot of locals have gotten rich and foreign money has moved in.”
“FSNs?” she asked.
“Foreign Service Nationals,” he said. “Local people employed by the embassy.”
She nodded. “How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Me?” Friedman answered, “Two years. The department just extended me, so I’ll be here three more. I don’t mind. My last posting was Yemen. At least this is in Europe.”
Her nerves were still returning to earth from the immigration incident. And she was worn out by two long back-to-back flights.
The road led to a long bridge that it shared with a metro line and then climbed up onto a bluff. There sat most of Kiev, largely separate from its river.
They were in a surprisingly picturesque city, the city she had glimpsed from her airplane, with intricately styled old buildings from before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The ancient was mixed with a smattering of small stores and new structures.
Then the older buildings ended. Alex, Friedman, and their driver were in the middle of Stalinist “wedding cake” architecture, a style characterized by massive buildings as expressions of Communist state power, intimidation of the masses via steel, concrete, and glass. The combination of overwhelming size, patriotic decoration as mural decoration, and traditional motifs had always been the most vivid examples of Soviet architecture.
“This is Khreshchatyk,” Friedman said. “Just Khreschatyk, not Khreschatyk Avenue or Street or Boulevard. It’s like Broadway in New York.”
“It’s unreal,” Alex said. She felt as if she were seeing a city from another era, another world. In a way, she was.
“Most of Kiev was spared in the big war because the Germans crossed the river elsewhere,” Friedman said. “But the Russian NKVD, the KGB’s predecessor, booby-trapped the buildings on Khreshchatyk with dynamite. They figured the Germans would use them. Then they blew them all up with the German soldiers in them. Wicked, huh? After the war the street was rebuilt to Stalin’s taste.” He pointed to a massive, ornate building with terra cotta tiles. “See how high the portal is, the square columns, the windows suggesting twenty-five foot ceilings? Architecture designed to intimidate.”
Strangely enough, the buildings today looked harmless to Alex, with people strolling peacefully beside them. Time had exorcised some of the political demons.
Stalin was gone. So was Lenin, so were Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. The curtain had been pulled away, and the Soviet wizards of yore were no longer objects of fear. The current day people, she knew, were a different story.
Friedman lifted his eyes to the driver. “No one misses the Russians, right, Stosh?”
The comment elicited an amused sneer out of Stosh, the driver, who didn’t answer further, but studied the rearview mirror as he listened in.
“Oh, by the way,” Friedman said, reaching, into his overcoat pocket. He found a new cell phone and gave it to her. “This will work here. It’s programmed with all the numbers you need, and there’s a Ukrainian SIM card in it. Keep it with you.”
She took it and riffled through the numbers index. She dropped it in her own overcoat pocket. “Thanks,” she said.
Their car pulled up in front of one of the old Stalinist buildings. They were on a plaza at the very end of the street before the street disappeared down a steep hill. The rectangular building had an active revolving front door and a galaxy of foreign flags above the door.
“Your hotel, the Dnipro,” Friedman said, stressing the final syllable, saying Dni
pro
. “Same name as the river, which in Russian is the Dnieper.”
Dusk was settling in and the hotel had lit its blue and red neon sign. Stosh jumped out. So did Friedman. The driver’s eyes were still checking out something back on the road.
“The place used to be a typical Communist ‘prestige hotel,’ which is to say it used to be a total dump,” Friedman said. “Foreign money has fixed it up though, from what I hear. If you don’t like it, we can move you. Let me know.”
“I will.”
The driver picked Alex’s two pieces of luggage out of the trunk and waited while Friedman’s conversation ensued with Alex. The cold was biting. Alex pulled on a pair of gloves from her pocket.
“You’re right next to a park with a very interesting monument,” Friedman said to her. “Take a look.”
She glanced. More gross Soviet Commie artwork. Two muscular bare-chested men, oversized, sixteen feet high each, crossing a hammer and a sickle, one holding each. Compared to this, the Rocky statue in Philadelphia was an exercise in delicacy and subtlety. In a perverse kind of way, the bad sculpture in front of her made her think of Robert and his liking for the sensitive bronzes of Rodin and the canvases of Renoir.
“Monstrous, huh?” Friedman mused. “It was put there by Khrushchev on the four hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav. The Ukrainians thought they were allying themselves to Russia, and Russia thought the Ukrainians were giving themselves over to the Russians. I don’t have to tell you who got the dirty end of the stick. That’s how it goes in this part of the world. Even when you’re not screwed, you are.”
“I’m surprised the sculpture hasn’t been removed, now that Ukraine is independent,” Alex said, giving it a final glance and turning away.
“This is a complicated country,” Friedman replied.
“I understand there could be trouble when the president visits,”she said.
He snorted slightly. “If it happens, it happens. We take every safeguard we can, but you can’t be on Red Alert twenty-four hours every day of your life. Know what I mean?”
“I know,” she said. “Is there anything on my schedule yet for tomorrow?”
“I
do
know the answer to that,” Friedman said. “The ambassador wishes to greet you himself. We’re enormously busy with the preparations for the presidential visit, but I know he has some time scheduled for you.”
“I look forward to meeting him.”
“We’ll pick you up at nine,” he said. “Same car. Stosh is my normal driver.”
“Perfect.”
Stosh gave her a low quiet bow.
“Tomorrow you’ll be in briefings all day,” Friedman said. “There’s a reception at the ambassador’s residence in the evening. You’ll find an invitation in your welcome kit here,” he said, handing over a folder he had brought with him.
She knew from her visit to Nigeria that every US embassy provided guests with such kits, including maps of the city and little phrase-books. “The day afterward, you’ll have more briefings in the morning. Then there’s a ‘Ukrainian businessman’ on your schedule for the afternoon and evening,” Friedman continued. “Yuri Federov.”
They started to move toward the front door of the hotel.
A doorman intercepted them to help with the bags.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the name,” Friedman said.
A hesitation, then she said. “I know who he is. Back in Washington, they enrolled me in a ‘Thug of the Month’ club. He’s my thug this month.”
Friedman laughed slightly and had a knowing look in his eye.
“Impossible not to know that name,” he said. “Well, an assignment’s an assignment. You’ve even got a number for him in your cell phone. Good luck.”
Stosh pulled on Friedman’s sleeve. Friedman stopped as the door man went ahead with the bags. In a low voice, Stosh spoke to Friedman in Ukrainian.
Alex listened. Friedman answered in Ukrainian, not terribly alarmed.
“What was that all about?” Alex asked after they had passed into the lobby.
“Stosh says we were followed over here. Two men in a Mercedes. I didn’t see them, but he was watching. He says they’re gangsters. Whoop-dee-do.” He paused. “Don’t worry, it happens all the time. I can’t go to the airport without a tail. No big deal. And don’t be put off by something like that. The Ukrainians like Americans. They want to do business with us, most of them. Of course, after the Russians, we’d look good to anyone.”
“Thanks,” Alex said.
“For what?”
“For telling me honestly what your driver said. I listened in. I understood.”
“Very good,” Friedman said with a raised eyebrow. “Smart. Don’t trust anyone. You’ll do well here.” He handed her the attaché case. “Open this when you have a chance,” he said.
She hefted it in her hand. It was heavy.
“Vodka,” he said.
“Vodka,” she repeated with a smile. “Or maybe something even better.”
Fifteen minutes later, having checked in, she opened the attaché case. Within it, was a box, the wrong shape for a vodka bottle, but wrapped in bright red paper, the color of blood.
She worked away the wrapping. The contents of the box were nothing she could drink; the box came unhinged and clicked open. There was a small pistol within.
Welcome to Ukraine. The piece was a Walther PPK 9 mm short. She checked it to make sure it wasn’t loaded. It wasn’t. She hefted it in her hand. It was slim and sleek and would carry well beneath a jacket or coat. And she knew it could pack a lethal wallop if necessary.
The PPK commonly chambered 7.65 mm auto rounds. It could carry seven in the magazine plus one chambered if one wanted to live—or die—with the notion of it accidentally going off. For security services, this version, the 9 mm short was a better choice. It could hit harder than the 7.65 mm. Because the cartridges were fatter, however, only six 9 mm short bullets could be carried in the magazine, plus one in the chamber if desired. Like its larger counterpart, the Walther P38, the PPK also had a double-action trigger to permit a fast first shot.
The gun was favored by many armed agencies, including the fictional ones of James Bond. But in the real world the weapon was known to suffer metal fatigue and malfunction. Thirty years earlier, this had nearly ended in disaster for Britain’s Princess Anne when her bodyguard’s PPK jammed during a hijack attempt in 1974. He took three bullets himself but lived to tell about it.
But at least it was compact. With it, a dozen bullets and a nylon holster, the type a woman can attach to a belt and wear under a jacket.
Someone somewhere was thinking of everything.
That, or someone somewhere expected some serious trouble.