“Good thinking,” Rizzo said sullenly. “What would I do without you?”
Rizzo, however, was already thinking ahead. He had a plan.
He was going to make a return trip to the obitorio municipale and this time not with this fool at his side.
THIRTY-ONE
The air of the hotel room chilled Alex’s face and shoulders. Her eyes opened and her sleepy gaze went to the window.
Morning. February 8.
Outdoors, across Kiev, a heavy snow was falling.
Alex gradually remembered where she was. She rose and went to the window. She watched the flakes, dark and silvery, falling obliquely against the city. Traffic moved, but slowly, leaving tire tracks on the streets and boulevards. The morning was bright gray. The snow was everywhere, across the rooftops, upon the bare trees, on the sidewalks, on the monuments, and upon the crosses that topped the many churches.
She looked at a clock and felt the overwhelming need to talk to Robert, even though it was midnight in Washington.
She phoned and got lucky. She reached him on his cell phone, waking him. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” There was a pause. “You okay?” he asked. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Fine. Just wanted to hear your voice.”Her own voice cracked slightly.
She was thrilled to hear his voice, and yet it made her homesick at the same time. He mentioned that he was still assigned to his new partner for the trip but that things were working out better than expected.
“That’s good,” she said. “Yeah. Good. Real good.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong.” There was a pause. “I’m just missing you,” she said. “A lot.”
“I’ll be there when?” he asked sleepily. “Three days?”
“Yeah. Three days.”
Three days projected into the future had never seemed so long a prospect. But she felt strengthened by hearing his voice.
“I love you and miss you,” she said. She stood at her window and looked out on the snowy square, which was busy with people. There was also a trio of policemen with automatic weapons. She scanned for the man who had confronted her the previous night, but she saw no one who might be him.
“Same,” he answered. “I love you and miss you. You sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“I’m sure,” she said. And now, hearing him, nothing was wrong. “Travel safe, okay?”
“It’s Air Force One,” he said. “Government of the United States of America. Greatest nation on earth. You know what that means, right? Every inch of the aircraft, construction, maintenance, fuel, hey… it’s all done by the lowest bidder or a political pal.”
He managed to get her to laugh. She told him she loved him again and how much she missed him. He was her mentor, her love, and often her inspiration. Sometimes the miles, the distance, the separation were too much to bear.
She told him she looked forward to his arrival. He said the same. When the conversation ended, she put down the phone and sat quietly for several minutes, a bittersweet feeling in her chest.
Then she rallied her spirits. The man in the square had spooked her even more than she had realized. But now he seemed like nothing more than a bad dream.
She ordered coffee and a light breakfast sent to her room. She ate as she dressed. She was downstairs in front of the hotel to meet her driver punctually at 8:00 a.m., even with jetlag. The snow felt surprisingly good on her face. She had a minute to enjoy it, then her car and driver arrived.
Friedman again, with Stosh, the everyday designated driver.
As the snow continued, they drove to the US Embassy which was on the outskirts of downtown Kiev. They passed through a front gate with guards and heavy fortifications. The building was in gray brick, with ornamental pilasters on the front, a mongrel of a building.
“Not exactly our first choice of a structure,” Friedman said as they arrived and stepped out of the car. He added with a smile, “It was once the headquarters of the Communist Party organization for this district of Kiev. When independence came, the old-line Reds went into the real estate business and sold us the lousy building. Then they went out the day after the money was transferred, imported a planeload of blondes from Estonia and Lithuania, and had Stolichnaya orgies with the profits. Some Marxists, huh?”
Alex laughed. “Did they want to be paid in rubles or dollars?” she asked.
Friedman laughed in turn. “What do you think, Anna? Dollars. No one ever said they were stupid. And most of those blondes were pretty great looking, I must admit.”
“Typical,” she said with a smile.
Alex was surprised how compact the building was. “Got to admit, I’ve seen larger embassies,” she said.
“We’re enormously overcrowded,” he answered. “There’s a new complex being constructed, but it won’t be finished for a few years. Meanwhile, we’re cramped. No one foresaw how important Ukraine could be if glasnost happened. So now we’re stuck with our usual bad foreign policy planning. It’s depressing if you think about it, so I don’t think about it.”
They walked in the front entrance. Two marine guards stood by. Friedman had a fresh ID for Alex. She brushed snow off her shoulders in the front entrance hall.
When word had come to the embassy in Kiev six weeks earlier of an impending presidential visit, the embassy faced three challenges. One, making sure that the president regarded the visit as a success, both substantively and organizationally. Two, making sure the organizational details were flawless. And three, ensuring that the visit actually met what the ambassador regarded as American objectives in the country.
Ambassador Jerome Drake had announced that he would be the control officer for the visit. He was a political appointee in his final posting before retirement. But Drake had also spent a career in the Foreign Service. He was unusual in that regard, in that he was wealthy, a crony of the president, and had had experience in the diplomatic field. His family had amassed a fortune in aluminum siding in the 1960s, and Drake had used the fortune wisely.
“In some ways, Ambassador Drake is ‘bulletproof’ because of his relationship with the president,” Friedman explained to Alex in private shortly after their arrival that morning. “And he was bulletproof for congressional approval because he had been a generous donor to both political parties.”
“Money talks,” Alex said.
“It doesn’t just talk, it’s multilingual,” Friedman answered. “Same as you.”
Friedman then introduced Alex to his own boss, Charles Krimm, the chief political officer at the embassy.
“Oh yes, of course,” Krimm said. “You’re the lucky party in charge of keeping tabs on our favorite local hoodlum, Yuri Federov.”
“Apparently so,” Alex answered.
“Don’t spend much time with him alone. We’ll never see you again.”
“Thanks.”
“Good luck, Anna,” he said. “You’ll need it.” He rushed off. Within minutes of arrival, Alex had the impression of the embassy in Kiev as a place in constant motion, the impending presidential visit being the cause.
Then, briefly in a hallway, Friedman introduced Alex to the ambassador himself, Jerome Drake. Drake was a tall, thick, lumbering bear of a man, about sixty with a moonish face-Grizzly Adams in a three-piece suit. He was known as a man of dry humor and a quick tongue.
Like Krimm, Drake seemed preoccupied. Yet Alex also immediately picked up the notion that he was more interested in her as a new female on the premises than in what she was doing there.
“We’re having one of the countdown meetings in fifteen minutes,”Friedman said. “That’s why everyone seems slammed. You should sit in on it.”