Conspiracy In Kiev Part 12

Everywhere one stepped there were plush carpeted floors. Everywhere one glanced, antiques and artwork. Everywhere one turned, a different hand-painted fresco showing a Roman scene. The place had come a long way since 1890 when it first opened, and its luxurious pitch had included a private bath and two electric lights in every room.

Rizzo sighed as he waited for his contact, Signor Virgil Bruni, in the lobby. To stay in a place like this for more than an hour, Rizzo reflected, a man had to be really rich. No, not really rich, filthy rich. Royalty rich. American movie star rich. Internet rich. Russian gangster rich. Even the local mafia guys would gasp at the prices here. What was it? Five hundred Euros a night for a room by the elevator? Eight hundred American dollars. Ouch!

Rizzo's connection was the hotel's day manager, an old friend. As he continued to wait, Rizzo surveyed the clientele, the men in designer suits, the jeweled, bronzed women in their two-thousand-Euro suits with their daring miniskirts, their beautiful skin and perfect figures, and their long sleek legs. Outside, the sports cars and Benzes of Rome's international set glided past Rizzo's dented Fiat.

Wealth, privilege, beauty, sin, and s.e.x came so easily to these people, Rizzo mused. And what had they ever done to deserve it? Many of the men had been born into it. Others had stolen it. A few had been fortunate and earned it. Then the women had latched onto it. What was it that some French writer had written a century ago? Behind every great fortune there is a crime?

Rizzo's old man had been in an America POW camp in Sicily, then been a worker in a Fiat brake plant in the north. It had always been Lt. Rizzo's plan to rise above his police job and join these people who frequented this hotel, to live a life of expensive meals, good clothes, and beautiful women.

He had done his job diligently over the years, but his final goals had been elusive. The system had shut him out. Lieutenants in the homicide brigades of Europe were not welcome in these social climes. They were, in fact, often a nuisance. Rizzo felt as if these people had intentionally excluded him from their cozy well-heeled little clubs. So he hated these people who surrounded him this morning. He hated them with a pa.s.sion. He would have loved nothing more than to bring a few more of them back down to earth before he retired.

Rizzo settled in at one of the small tables in the lobby. He eyed the whole scene before him, but mostly he eyed a trio of women who were sitting at a nearby table having morning tea. Wealthy Arabs in expensive suits, he guessed. Or maybe Iranians. Who could tell the difference these days?

Rizzo listened to them. They were speaking English. On the table in front of him was a ceramic ashtray with the hotel's logo. He picked it up and examined it. Clean, st.u.r.dy, and new.

No one was looking. He slipped it into his coat pocket. It would be perfect for a cigar at home. At least he would have a souvenir of this trip to the hotel. In fact, he now owned a piece of the joint.

A well-modulated voice came from over his shoulder. "Gian Antonio?" it asked.

Rizzo turned and looked. It was Virgil Bruni, his contact, and no, Rizzo hadn't been caught palming the ashtray. Or if he had been, his friend was going to let it slide.

Bruni was a small man, modest and una.s.suming, with a ring of close-cropped dark hair around the s.h.i.+ny dome of his bald head. Bruni's eyes gleamed with pleasure upon seeing his old chum. It had been two years, maybe three. He approached graciously and extended a hand.

"h.e.l.lo, Virgil," Rizzo said softly. He stood.

Virgil. Named for a cla.s.sic Roman poet and contemporary of Christ, Bruni had become a manager of breakfasts, banquets, bidets, and bathtubs. And he had done quite well at it, judging by his Armani suit.

Bruni slid into the other seat at the small table. Rizzo sat again.

"I wanted to alert you to something," Bruni said after the opening pleasantries and summoning coffee for both of them. He spoke in subdued tones below the other conversations in the lobby. "About ten days ago, we had two guests here. Americans, I believe. They checked in, went out one night, and no one has seen them since."

"They skipped out on the bill?" Rizzo asked.

"No, no. They deposited cash when they checked in. Ten thousand dollars American, seven thousand Euros. Not unusual for our clients. But the amount suggests that they planned a longer stay. They did in fact have a reservation for twelve days."

"Did they cause trouble of some sort?"

"Not for us. Maybe for themselves."

"It's wonderful to see you, Virgil," Rizzo said, "but would you mind coming to the point?"

Two demita.s.ses arrived.

"Sometimes guests register and only use the hotel during the day,"Bruni continued, "as you know. They find more interesting accommodations at night. This couple just went out and disappeared. I have the details."

The couple had arrived the fourth of January, Bruni explained, a Sunday. The security cameras in the hotel had images of them until the seventh, a Wednesday.

"Their room was undisturbed between Thursday the eighth and Wednesday the fourteenth," Bruni recalled. "Our cleaning staff is instructed to keep track of such things."

Rizzo was thinking furiously, trying to leap ahead of Bruni to see where this was going. Until he made that leap, however, the coffee was excellent and up to the hotel's high standards. Bruni sipped with his pinky aloft.

"We naturally keep pa.s.sport records," Bruni said. "Records and numbers. We photocopy the personal pages of the pa.s.sports. We don't tell guests. But we do it for our security."

"Of course," said Rizzo, who felt the world would be a safer place if more people spied on each other.

Bruni reached to a business-sized envelope from his inside suit pocket.

"Take a look. You may keep this. See if it means anything to you," Bruni suggested. Bruni then presented copies of the pa.s.sport pages, including photographs.

Names: Peter Glick and Edythe Osuna. They had checked in as man and wife, despite the different names on the pa.s.sports. It was not the hotel's policy to question such matters.

Rizzo looked at the information carefully. "The names are unfamiliar to me," Rizzo said.

"I see," Bruni said.

"Should they be familiar?" Rizzo asked.

"When the couple had been gone for six days," Bruni said, "we alerted the American emba.s.sy. At first there was no interest. A young a.s.sistant counsel said to call back in a week. But just to be sure, I left the names of the people and the pa.s.sport numbers. In case some other report came in, an accident or something."

Rizzo finished his coffee.

"Then, about an hour later," Bruni continued, "some very unpleasant security people from the American emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sies 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 emba.s.sies, 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 c.r.a.p 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 demita.s.se 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 pa.s.sed. 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 a.s.sist.

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 b.u.mpiness 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 s.h.i.+ne. 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 s.h.i.+eld.

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 t.i.tanium. 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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, pa.s.sing 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 ident.i.ty and ready to disembark after seventeen hours from Was.h.i.+ngton.

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 pa.s.sed through Ukrainian customs. Then she moved to immigration.

She stood quietly and watched the Ukrainian officer scan her pa.s.sport. 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 pa.s.sed from one country to another with a fraudulent ident.i.ty. 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 pa.s.sport. Some chunk of old Soviet style computer science had pegged her fake doc.u.ments.

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 b.u.t.terflies 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 pa.s.sport 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 pa.s.sport, 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."