Rizzo finished his coffee.
“Then, about an hour later,” Bruni continued, “some very unpleasant security people from the American embassy showed up. Barged right through the revolving door, they did. Four of them. A bunch of gorillas. I dealt with them myself. They acted as if we’d made these people go missing ourselves. They sat me down, questioned me as if I had done something. They said they’d break down the door to the room if they weren’t admitted. Security people. Stood right over there by the front desk,” he said, indicating. “Highly confrontational. Raised an awful scene in the lobby until I took them into my office. Demanded to get into the room. Threatened me if I didn’t go along with everything.”
“Did you admit them? To the room?”
Bruni seemed ill at ease with his decision. “Yes. I did. I was within my rights, as the deposit had run out. As had the reservation.” He paused. “I watched them as they went through the room. They tried to get me to leave, but I said I couldn’t do that. I said I’d let them remove things from the suite, but if they threw me out I would call the local police. They didn’t want that. It was all very ‘unofficial’ while being very much ‘official,’ if you know what I mean.”
Rizzo’s eyes narrowed. He knew exactly what Bruni meant. Rizzo had locked horns in his police capacity with some embassies and foreign governments before when the foreigners had tried to keep their dirty laundry out of sight. It was always confrontational eventually and never a good experience. Rizzo, in fact, knew his way around embassies, foreign governments, and security people far better than any of his peers imagined, not that he was boasting about it.
“They went around the room with big trash bags,” Bruni continued. “Took everything. Clothes. Cameras. Books. DVDs. Came across a small cache of weapons. A pair of handguns, it looked like, maybe three, which they tried to keep me from seeing. Believe me, the more I saw, the more I felt they were taking care of a problem for me. In a way they did. By this time, I just wanted Glick and Osuna, or whoever they were, out of our hotel. We needed the room for incoming arrivals too, of course.”
“Of course. They’re a bunch of arrogant pigs, the Americans.”
“Here’s the strange part, though,” Virgil Bruni said, his own coffee now sitting ignored by his elbow. “When they were finished, they went around the room with cleaning material,” he said. “Scrubbed everything down. That pine scented crap that Americans love so much. Smells like snowcapped toilet seats. They were removing all fingerprints, any possible DNA. That’s when I knew not to ask any more questions. I should just be glad these people were out of the hotel.”
“True enough,” Rizzo said.
“But it caused me to think,” Bruni said. “And I haven’t stopped thinking. I went back and looked in the newspapers. You remember that story about two people who got shot one night on the via Donofrio?”
“Of course I do. It’s my case.”
“I knew it was your case,” Bruni said. “I saw your name in the papers. That’s why I phoned you. You see, the seventh, that was also the night when Signor and Signora Glick disappeared,” Bruni said. “Same night that couple got shot down and their bodies whisked away, according to rumor. What do you think of that?”
Bruni lifted his demitasse cup again and sipped.
“I find it quite remarkable,” Rizzo said after several seconds. “Grazie mille. But I’m not sure how it helps me with anything. And that was many days ago. Why do you bring it to my attention just now?”
Bruni shrugged. “It’s been bothering me,” he said. “They seemed like a nice couple. Somewhere, they might have family.”
A moment passed. Then one of the Persian women spilled some tea.
“Excuse me, Gian Antonio,” Bruni said abruptly.
Then Bruni, officious as always, grabbed a cloth napkin. He moved quickly to assist.
TWENTY-FIVE
The 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.
TWENTY-SIX
Alex’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.