“Sit in on what? The slamming?” she joked.
“No,” Friedman said with a grin. “The countdown meeting.”
During the weeks that had preceded Alex’s arrival, there had been back-and-forth between Washington and the embassy on the details of the program for the president, but the White House had remained in the driver’s seat. It took advice but the trip was the president’s visit and his staff’s call. As the schedule had begun to take shape, appointments were made of two officers for each “event.” Since this all-hands-on-deck event was draining embassy personnel resources, these were junior officers.
Everyone got sucked in. An “event officer” was responsible for organizing each event, working with a Ukrainian counterpart assigned to the visit. The event officer knew everything about the event. There was also an embassy “site officer” for each event whose job was to know everything about the locale where the event would take place, including but not limited to the location of the toilets.
Then there was the presidential “advance” team. They were mostly young White House staffers, sons and daughters of heavy political contributors, who descended on the embassy with the mission of ensuring a perfect experience for the president.
“Some of the advance people are okay; most are a pain in the butt,” Friedman said sotto voce as he and Alex entered a large conference room on the third floor. “They arrived weeks ago and insisted on running through every event time after time. They were accompanied by a ‘site officer’ and an ‘event officer,’ both based in Washington.”
“Do they know what they’re doing?” Alex asked.
“Let’s just say Ambassador Drake can’t stand them.”
“What do you think of them?”
“No comment.”
“Thought so,” she said.
The meeting began when Ambassador Drake finally rambled into the conference room. The ambassador mostly listened over the course of the next ninety minutes. Charles Krimm, the political officer, ran the meeting. There were forty staffers present, plus the entire advance team from the White House, who hogged all the seats at the large table in the center of the room. Other attendees sat in chairs scattered around the room. As the newcomer, Alex selected one of the more remote seats against a wall. Friedman sat with her and looked as if he was trying to stay clear of the meeting entirely.
Yet among the assembled staff, Alex found a genuine nonpartisan feeling, even though the president was from the extreme wing of the reigning political party. It was, after all, the boss who was coming and the boss represented the United States of America. But then again, Alex found the diplomatic enclave on high anxiety and high alert. As Michael Cerny had suggested back in Washington, there was plenty of opposition to the president’s impending appearance.
“We’re still picking up a lot of rumors of trouble,” Krimm said.
He expanded.
The most persistent rumor, the same one that Cerny had mentioned in Washington: A group of pro-Russian Ukrainians, the filorusski, were determined to stop the proposed NATO alliance by any means possible. Even worse, according to intelligence that local CIA people had picked up, within this group there was one fanatical subgroup that had now decided to assassinate the new president of the US during the state visit. Their goaclass="underline" to torpedo US-Ukraine relations and thus Ukraine’s membership application for NATO.
The ambassador then interjected one of his few remarks of the morning.
“I should stress,” Drake said, “that this is not part of the official Russian program these days. Putin may be a bastard, but these days, he’s our bastard. So the Russians are looking at the big picture of future Russia-US relations. The feelings of Vladimir Putin, no matter what you think of him as a clone of Uncle Joe, echo the alliances of World War II when America, the arsenal of democracy, allied itself with Soviet Bolshevism to battle Hitler. All of you, please keep that in mind.”
“We won that one, didn’t we?” Krimm asked, trying to lighten the mood. “The big set-to with our Russian friends.”
“Yes,” Drake answered without missing a beat. “First in 1945 and then in 1986. I suppose the next one will be in 2027, but I don’t expect to be around for it.”
To Alex, political alliances never ceased to have an Alice in Wonderland aspect. They adjourned for lunch.
At 2:00 that afternoon, an associated meeting convened, planning out the itinerary for the president while in Kiev. This time, the ambassador was absent.
On any occasion, a visit by an American president to a counterpart in a foreign country was largely a media show. The purpose was always to demonstrate the “close ties” between the United States and the host country. This was accomplished by symbolic acts, all staged with the media in mind.
“To review,” Krimm said, “while in Kiev the president will have three events, all of which will occupy the day after arrival. By evening the president will depart.”
Alex then learned the full details of the three events for the first time. There would be a meeting with the Ukrainian president in the morning. Attendance at a Christian church service would follow. Then there would be the laying of a wreath at the memorial for the victims of the Holodomor, the enforced famine of the 1930s.
“Then, we have no scheduled fourth event,” Krimm said to mild laughter. “The president will get the executive butt out of the country as fast as possible.”
From what was said, Alex saw quickly that the trip from the cathedral to the memorial was the problem. It was no more than several hundred yards, and there was no way to make sure the area was completely secure. The Ukrainian security services would have no qualms about occupying apartments and roofs.
“But are these guys dependable?” asked one of the more belligerent members of the advance team. “Come on. How can we count on them?”
“We can’t count on them,” Krimm said. “We just hope they do their job and our security people will assume they won’t. No protection is infallible. There’s always risk.”
Back in Washington, Krimm explained further, the US president had been warned of the problems but refused to cancel the visit or change the program. The Secret Service was apoplectic, as was the CIA bureau chief in the Ukraine. Alex felt herself cringe slightly at the mention of the Secret Service and the potential dangers that lurked in Kiev.
But the president wouldn’t budge. The ambassador was an old pal as well as a political crony. Ambassador Drake had assured safety. The president further insisted that it would be an affront not to visit the monument. The president was not one to shy away from a high profile political date, laden with political positives-the least of which was the defender-of-liberty-around-the-world role-particularly in a new administration. So both venues remained in the official program.
Alex leaned to Friedman and whispered. “If there’s no way to secure the appearance at the monument,” she asked, “the president shouldn’t do it. Or am I missing something?”
Friedman winced.
“The advance team and the president’s spin doctors are still fighting with the Secret Service about that one,” he said. “The spin doctors love the image of a head-bowed president walking across a large square with the Ukrainian counterpart. Yet that’s the most vulnerable moment. What the heck can we do?”
“Then they should avoid it,” she said, thinking of the safety of both Robert and the president.
“Try telling them that,” Friedman said. “The security people know that it’s impossible to completely secure the public square. Somewhere there’s going to have to be a compromise of some sort. And we’ve only got three days to find the compromise.”