Conspiracy In Kiev Part 44

The nurse informed her that people from the American emba.s.sy had arranged for her care, including the private room. Nonetheless, the pain and discomfort persisted. She was too distracted mentally and zonked out on medication even to read. She left the television on 24/7, the remote control at her bedside. All she had the energy to do was flick stations back and forth, the usual French fare-NYPD Blue reruns dubbed in French and a cheesy Gallic clone of The Jerry Springer Show were her grudging favorites-plus odd channels from CNN to Al Jazeera.

Her third day in the hospital was the first day when visitors were allowed. Mark McKinnon, the CIA station chief from Rome, was the first to see her.

McKinnon pulled a chair toward her bed and sat down.

"How are you feeling, LaDuca?" he asked.

"Surprised to be here."

"You got very lucky," he said. "Somebody sure is watching over you."

"You could conclude that," she said. Her chest still hurt. There were small burns where the electrode paddles had been applied. "Sometimes I wonder."

She was also still groggy. The medication remained at its original strength.

"A bullet on a ricochet can kill someone," McKinnon said. "Apparently you had some sort of pendant there on your chest? That's what the doctors told me."

"A pendant that I got in South America," she said. "Very hard stone. It took the brunt of the impact. So they tell me."

McKinnon was shaking his head.

"Lucky," he said.

"Lucky," she answered.

"What are the odds of that happening?" he asked.

"You tell me. I don't have any answers anymore."

He smiled and gave her shoulder a pat.

"I understand you'll be here for a little while more," he said. "Just rest, get your strength back. Eventually, the police are going to want to ask you questions. But we're taking care of everything. Back channels."

"Back channels," she said. "Wonderful way to do things."

He didn't miss her irony.

"Banner year you're having, huh?"

"Yeah," she said.

He paused. "There's still some outstanding business," he said. "Yuri Federov may be dead. We don't know. We have to a.s.sume that he's still out there somewhere. You're not completely safe until he's completely out of business."

"Killed, you mean."

"That's another word for it."

"And that all ties into Kiev, doesn't it?"

"Absolutely," he said.

"Which in turn ties in how and why my fiance got killed."

He nodded.

"Someone betrayed me, didn't they?" she said. "That's why Maurice got killed. And Cerny. There's a traitor somewhere on our side, and he's got allegiances to the Ukrainian mob."

"That's a subject for future discussion," McKinnon said.

"So the answer is yes?" she said.

McKinnon nodded.

"We had a leak in Was.h.i.+ngton," McKinnon said. "Poor Mike Cerny. Cynical chap that he was, he hadn't vetted all his a.s.sistants as well as he should have. Everything was getting to Federov almost before it happened."

"Olga?" Alex asked.

"You said it. I didn't."

Alex shook her head in disgust.

"Anyway. Olga is someone you won't be seeing again."

"Arrested?"

"The opposition got to her first." McKinnon said. "But we'll discuss this later."

"When I'm healthy enough," she said, "we'll go back at Federov, a.s.suming he's alive. And we'll find any other traitor too. How's that?"

"Federov is out of business, at least," McKinnon said.

"How do you mean that?"

"He was deposed from his own businesses by his own peers," McKinnon said. "That's how it always works in the underworld. He drew too much attention to himself. If he's not dead, he's in deep cover. Like back into one of his priest outfits or something."

"I'm sure," she said, not really meaning it.

"One thing's certain. You'll never see him again."

"I'm grateful," she said.

"Federov's still on our lists, though. Retired or not, if he's alive we'll go after him. But as I said, it's no longer your problem, Alex."

There was a pause while she remained silent. McKinnon stood.

"The French have posted an extra pair of their police in the lobby," he explained. "Policiers en civil. Plainclothes. They look like a pair of bouncers. Then we've posted two of our own as guards on this floor also. Don't know whether you've seen them."

"I haven't been out of this room since they wheeled me in," she said.

"Of course."

She gave everything some thought.

"I have some unfinished business in Venezuela too," she said. "Barranco Lajoya. Those people. I'd like to do something."

"Tough to accomplish much in that part of the world, isn't it?" he commiserated.

She shook her head, the images of the carnage relentlessly replaying themselves in her mind's eye. "Before I die, I want to go back and do what I can for those people. They deserve better."

"You know what your boss, Mr. Collins, would say," McKinnon said out of nowhere. "He'd say that's where Jesus would be. Comforting the downtrodden and the desperate."

She nodded. It suddenly hurt too much to speak.

"We've had discussions with Mr. Collins about Barranco Lajoya, by the way. Something may already be in the works. He's willing to chip in heavily on an international relief effort."

"G.o.d bless him," she said.

"I know he's going to phone you in the next few days."

"That's good," she said. "We can talk."

A nurse appeared. She looked at McKinnon, shook her head and tapped her wrist.w.a.tch.

"I guess that's my five minutes," McKinnon said.

"And I guess I have a lot of work to do when I get out of here," she said.

McKinnon left a calling card, a nondescript CIA thing with a fake name, a fake t.i.tle, and a real phone number. The card cited him as a cultural attache to the emba.s.sy in Paris, with an office in Rome. His cover job was overseeing the exchange of French and Italian filmmakers and American filmmakers.

She was left with a lot of time to think. Too much time, really, but no one ever remarked that time went quickly in a hospital. Federov played over and over in her mind, as did Barranco Lajoya.

Here she was alive again. Why?

What was she to do with the extra years she had been given?

EIGHTY-FOUR.

In a private search chamber at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, Sammy Newman-better known to the world as the singer Billy-O-stood with his hands in his inside-out emptied pockets and wondered how things could have gone so terribly wrong.

In front of him, two US customs agents, with their mulish dedication to their job, went through every bit of his luggage, examining the linings, his dirty socks, and underwear. One was a no-nonsense guy with a trim moustache and gla.s.ses. The other was an even-less-nonsense female with a big midsection and pinned-back hair. They said nothing as they methodically disa.s.sembled his luggage. A Beatles tune, "Yellow Submarine," mutilated into Muzak, played softly over the sound system.

Meanwhile, Sammy could have used a yellow submarine to get out of there. The flight from Nice, premiere cla.s.se all the way on Air France, had been a sweetheart. Hardly a b.u.mp, great food, and there had been two flight attendants who had caught his eye, beautiful Gallic girls with dark eyes, slender builds, and sultry legs. They had pushed their phone numbers into his hands. Sammy had booked a week at the Carlyle in New York and was thinking of inviting both girls over and extending the stay to two weeks. He had some fun planned before having to return to Los Angeles and finding out what his agent had lined up as his next film.

But now, this!

He was breaking a major sweat.

The agents had gone through the lining of his leather suitcase and had found the extra twenty-thousand dollars that he always carried, a violation of currency transfer regulations. He met that with a shrug. He knew his lawyer could get him out of that one.

"Hey. It's dangerous to show a lot of cash these days," he said. "Know what I mean?"

"Currency transfer violation, sir," the male agent said. "Sorry."

"Aren't you from this area?" the woman asked. "New Jersey or something?"

"Westbury, Long Island."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Knew it was something."

She then returned to her business of putting Sammy in jail.

The money was just the small stuff. Now, as the perspiration moved from his brow to the side of his face, and as it flooded from his palms, these lousy agents were invading his medicine kit.

He watched. They opened his pill containers and examined the contents. They showed the contents to each other. They glanced at him and didn't say anything.

"I got a prescription somewhere for everything," Sammy said, "even if some of the pills got messed up. You know, wrong bottles."

The agents didn't say anything.

Sammy was already wondering which of his lawyers he would call, or maybe his manager Adam Winters in Santa Monica, when and if they gave him his phone back. Actually, he pondered, thinking it through further, he might need someone in New York. And fast.

Then Sammy's spirits. .h.i.t the floor and shattered. The female agent found what would be the grand prize for her today.

She opened a small vial that was within a larger prescription vial. In the smaller container, there were two little tightly folded packets of aluminum foil, thick and plump, and double wrapped.

"Hey. Gimme a break, could you?" Sammy asked. "Please?"

The agents unwrapped the foil. The contents of the first packet looked like oregano. Or catnip. The agents sniffed. It didn't appear to be catnip or oregano and it wasn't basil, either. Well, a pot bust was a pot bust. Worse things could happen.

Then a worst thing did. The second agent unwrapped a smaller packet that had escaped notice at first. The contents this time was a single small cube.

"I don't know how that got there," Sammy tried meekly.

"Right," the male agent said.

The female reached for a pair of handcuffs. All three of them knew what has.h.i.+sh looked like when they saw it. And they saw it right now.

"Sorry, Billy," she said. "And you know what? This is a real shame. I always liked your music."