Conspiracy in Kiev (29 page)
T
he meeting at the Justice Ministry in Rome had not gone exactly the way Rizzo had planned. He had excluded his assistant DiPetri, the worthless one, because why should the worthless one be allowed to show up when the laurels were being awarded? The worthless one hadn’t done anything helpful, for example, except possibly just keeping his foolish hands out of the way. So why should he get any credit?
But twenty minutes into the meeting with the minister, Rizzo wished he had brought DiPetri along to take some of the heat. In response to the minister’s questions, Rizzo found himself giving a step-by-step recapitulation of his two investigations, from the commission of the crime, through their linkage, through trips to the
obitorio
, through the official meddling by the Americans in the custody of the bodies, through his Sailor Moon linkage of the crimes to Ukrainian Mafia.
Unimpressed, the minister sat at a wide desk with his eyes downcast, a secretary recording Rizzo’s explanation.
After several minutes, despite his years of professionalism, Rizzo got as jittery as a dozen scared cats. There had been much in the press recently about CIA agents embedded within the Roman police. The minister had no reason to suspect Rizzo of such collusion, of serving two masters like that, but Rizzo didn’t know whether he might come under accusation, anyway. Things like that happened sometimes.
Rizzo finally came to his conclusion. “And that is where we are today,” he finally said.
The minister looked up.
“Do you feel that any arrests are imminent?”
“Arrests,
Signore
?”
“Arrests,” the minister said in a tired voice. “Surely you know what arrests are because I’m certain you’ve made a few in your long career.”
“Arrests in Rome are unlikely,” Rizzo said, “as I strongly suspect that the gunmen have fled the country by now. As to identifying them and asking one of the other police agencies in Europe to effect the arrests, well, that—”
“Let’s save the wishful thinking for later, shall we?” the minister said, cutting him off. “Are there any Ukrainian or Russian gangsters in Rome now whom you feel that we could pin this upon?”
Rizzo’s eyes widened, clearly ill at ease with the notion.
“Pin?” he asked. “As in ‘frame’?”
He became conscious of a slow tapping on the table by the minister’s right hand.
“I believe that’s what you would call it.”
Rizzo stared at the political appointee in front of him. His eyes were fixed and steady. In a flash, he put much of the reasoning together and didn’t like this one bit. After spending twenty-two years with the homicide brigades in Rome, he was going to be asked to fudge evidence, to squander the case, to perjure himself before a magistrate, just to ease a politician out of some sort of squeeze. And if the whole thing backfired, well, his own career would crash down, he could go to prison, there would go his pension, and Sophie would end up in bed with some young musician punk like the ones he was in the habit of arresting.
He thought quickly. “No,
signore
,” he answered. “I know of no such criminal who would fit our needs so conveniently,” he said.
The minister looked at him with thinly veiled dismay. “Very well,” he finally said. “We will take another approach. How many detectives do you have working with you on this case?”
“Four of the best in Rome,” he said.
“And I assume each of them has an assistant?”
“That would be true,
signore
.”
“So that makes nine of you. What is your individual caseload?”
Rizzo did some quick math. “I would guess, each of us might have twenty, give or take. So somewhere between one hundred fifty and two hundred among all the detectives involved.”
“
Bene
,” said the minister. “Put them all back to work on their other cases.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you heard me, Rizzo. And I think you understood me. Reassign everyone and make no further efforts on this case yourself.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I’m afraid you don’t either, Gian Antonio. This case will most likely conclude itself. Remain available. You will need to liaison with an American agent sometime within the very near future.”
The minister motioned to the newspaper. There was a copy of
Il Messaggero
on the table, the headlines blaring about Kiev.
“Do you speak English?” the minister asked. “Well enough to liaise with an American?”
“Not very well, sir. I understand a little, but—”
“Strange,” the minister said. “Your file says that your father was in an American POW camp after the war. Your father spoke it quite well.”
“The memory of spoken English was not pleasant to my father,” Rizzo said. “We spoke Italian in our home.”
“Yes. Of course. What else would Italians speak, correct?”
“Latin, maybe,” Rizzo answered.
“Your sense of humor is not appreciated right now,” the minister said.
“I do have someone in my department, an intern, who could be of service with English,” Rizzo said.
“What about French, Rizzo? Do you speak French?”
“French?”
“Yes. It’s what they speak in France.”
“
Si
,
signore
,” Rizzo answered.
“Good. That’s all. Remain ready.”
Rizzo opened his mouth to ask for more details, more of an explanation. But the minister cut him off.
“Do you like art, Gian Antonio?” the minister asked, changing the subject.
Rizzo was perplexed. “Art?”
“Italian art! The works of Bernardo Cavallino, for example. Guido Reni. Seventeenth century. Ever heard of them?”
Rizzo had never heard of either. Nor did he care to. “Of course I have,” he said.
“If so, you’re the first policeman I’ve ever met who has. Do you think the works should be in Italy?”
“If they’re Italian, of course.”
“I agree. That is all, Rizzo.
Grazie mille.
”
The double doors opened. The minister’s guards barged in to escort Rizzo out. He left without a protest.
A
lex had not been to the Venezuelan capital for six years. She found it much as she had remembered it, hemmed in by green forested hills that rose to each side of the city. Caracas squeezed the tremendously wealthy and the desperately poor into a single chaotic metropolis. The fascinating disorder was reflected in the gravity-defying skyscrapers at the center of the city, which were a short walk from the teetering shantytowns that covered the surrounding hills.
In the evening, a Señor Calderón presented himself at the hotel. He was a lanky Venezuelan in his twenties. He was an emissary of Mr. Collins and worked for Collins’s foundations in South America.
They spoke Spanish. He asked her to call him by his first name, Manuel.
Manuel Calderón would be her guide to the village of Barranco Lajoya. He would pick her up the next morning at 9:00 a.m. and take her to a small private airport east of Caracas. A private helicopter would take her and Calderón to Santa Yniez, which was a small clearing in the jungle. Calderón explained that the airfield had been built by smugglers who brought cocaine into Venezuela from Colombia and Brazil. But it had then been seized by the government in the 1980s following the collapse of Pablo Escobar’s empire and had been sold to pro-Western business interests. President Chávez kept threatening to nationalize it, but so far, he hadn’t.
“Pack your jungle gear in the backpack and have your weapon accessible just in case,” Manuel said. “Dress accordingly. Temperatures will probably be a hundred, at least.”
“Will the gun be a problem at the airfield?” she asked.
Calderón laughed. “You’re in Venezuela,” he said. “Everyone has a gun.”
The next morning, Calderón led her to the airfield, which was on the edge of the city. They found their way to a rickety old helicopter, a thirty-year old Soviet SU-456. They buckled in for a flight to Canaimo. Two members of the national police joined them, needing a lift to Santa Yniez. One of them was in his forties, the younger one in his twenties.
The early morning heat was already stifling. Alex needed only a tan T-shirt and cargo shorts. She wore new hiking shoes and heavy socks. Before leaving the hotel, she had applied DEET to her neck, arms, and legs and packed her digital camera in a convenient pocket.
The two national police officers seemed perplexed, even amused, that a good-looking woman was to be on the flight. She could tell they were trying to figure her out. She engaged them in a conversation in Spanish and kept deflecting their questions about her nationality, as they waited to take off.
“As police, we could ask to see your passport,” one of them said, quite amiably.
“
Mi madre fue mexicana
,” she said, trying to deflect it further. “
En realidad
,
chilanga.
”
“
Así
, ¿
usted es mexicana?
” one asked.
She took a chance and showed them her American passport. She told them that she was on her way to visit friends who were among the missionaries at Barranco Lajoya. This, plus her excellent command of Spanish, seemed to appease them. They didn’t bat an eyelash when she pulled her Beretta out of her bag and strapped the holster to her waist. If anything, they were amused.
Then they began to ask more questions. They asked her why she was carrying a gun. She answered, why not carry a gun? They laughed and accepted the answer.
“The last time we were in this aircraft, we took seven bullets from rebels,” the younger one said, making conversation. “But we were flying over near Colombia that day. Today we go southeast toward Brazil.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
The older cop added that once they had sufficient altitude, small arms fire couldn’t touch them. And if it did, it wouldn’t penetrate. And if it did penetrate, it would be spent. And if it were spent, they could pick it up and throw it out the door.
“And if it
did
wound someone, the wound wouldn’t be too bad,
sí
?” Alex asked, picking up their facetious tone. “And if the wound
was
bad, we’d fly to a hospital.”
They laughed again. “
¡Claro
,
claro!
” they said.
She swatted at a pair of mosquitoes that had somehow followed them into the aircraft. The policemen watched her as she reapplied some DEET lotion to her legs, even though she was already breaking a sweat. She caught them looking at her and gave them a smile. She felt she had won them over.
The helicopter lifted off into the low mist that covered the city, then broke through the clouds and hovered near the mountains, the aircraft listing to its port side dramatically. She held tightly to her seatbelt with one hand and her seat with the other. At one point, she reckoned, they were no more than two hundred feet above the treetops, and her heart gave a huge surge when a downdraft brought them half that distance lower.
The pilot righted the craft with a sudden jerky motion. They listed starboard violently, as if swinging in a gondola on a cable. Then the mountaintops became distant and they were well above them. The chopper banked and headed south. Alex kept track of directions by their relation to the sun.
The interior of the helicopter was stuffy and hot. Twenty minutes into the flight, Manuel pushed open the side door to the helicopter. “You’ll get a better view this way,” he said. “Plus, we’ll get more air.”
He was right. The open door cooled the helicopter. She and Manuel sat strapped into seats at the open door. There was a gun turret there also, but no weapon. The policemen retreated to a corner, broke out a deck of cards and started to play, having no interest in what lay below. Alex guessed they had seen it a thousand times. That, or they didn’t want their uniforms to serve as airborne target practice.
They flew low between gaps in the mountains over breathlessly rugged undisturbed scenery. They crossed a long, wide savanna and then a blue river; then the jungle below thickened, though it was crisscrossed with rivers and lakes. The journey was hot, and the motor of the helicopter was thunderous.
Below, green stretched in every direction beneath a low haze. At one point they came to a clearing where there were modern houses and communities. Alex scanned carefully. She saw few vehicles and no people.
“Who lives out here?” she said.
She took out the digital camera and began taking random pictures.
Manuel answered. “
Nadie
. No one any more. There were merchants here. Rubber merchants. But it’s no longer safe.”
“Rebels?” she asked.
“
Bandidos.
”
Alex nodded.
After ninety minutes, the chopper flew over one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the Canaima lagoon and its surroundings. The lagoon was fed by several small waterfalls. Mist hung above the falls. She was surprised by the changing color of the water and sand. In several places, both took on a reddish hue. In some paces the sand was a light pink because of the presence of quartz. She took out the digital camera and recorded what she saw.
Beyond that, they passed over several flattop mountains. Several mining settlements had dug in. She could see machinery and movement on the ground, plus big gouges in the forests and earth. She took more photographs.
They arrived in La Paragua after a two-hour flight. A Jeep was there for them, along with a driver named José. He was a young man, maybe eighteen, with a handsome smile and an Argentine accent. A lunch of chicken, beans, and rice waited in the car, along with chilled bottled water in a crate with ice. Alex quickly won José’s approval by talking about the ins and outs of Argentine soccer.
The police departed in their own direction, giving Alex a final glance as they departed, admiration mixed with approval and a hint of subdued lechery.
Manuel, Alex, and José then began a three-hour trek over bumpy roads as they drew closer to Barranco Lajoya. The men rode in the front. Alex preferred to have more room to herself by sitting in the rear, but she continued to chat up both her driver and guide.
In some areas, mud on the road was so deep that it sucked at the tires of the vehicle. In one area, one entire lane of the road had been washed away by a mudslide. The road hadn’t been repaired, but the line in the middle had been redrawn. At another area, there was a one-lane “bridge” that was nothing more than a sheet of metal dragged across a fifteen-foot crater. Manuel and Alex got out of the Jeep and crossed the bridge on foot in advance of the Jeep in case the vehicle tumbled.
The roads weren’t bad, they were hideous. To make it worse, Manuel kept looking at the side rearview mirror. Alex asked twice if for any reason he thought they were being followed. Both times, Manuel answered only with a shrug.
“These days in Venezuela,” Manuel finally grumbled, “anything is possible.”