Conspiracy in Kiev (10 page)
A
week passed. Busy days for Alex, not happy days. The weekend became inseparable from the week. Robert drew Sunday duty as well, this time at the Secret Service Training Center at Beltsville, Maryland.
The Beltsville complex was officially known as the James J. Rowley Training Center. It had a fake town, driving courses, helipad with a helicopter, bunkers, an obstacle course, twelve miles of roads, caves, a simulated airport apron, an “instinctive” firing range, a protective driver training course, a K-9 training area, and outdoor training and tactical response areas. Best of all, the center had six miles of paved roadways where the Secret Service Mountain Bike Patrol could drill. Once during a previous administration a president had been off on a seventy-five minute bike ride while Homeland Security had been on Red alert. No one bothered to tell the president. So here was where Robert got to wear what Alex jokingly always called “his sexiest outfit.” The helmet, the colorful red, white, and blue USA bike shirt, the black bike shorts, the SIDI shoes, and a nifty little Beretta 9000S on his hip.
For Alex, more prosaic stuff: language lessons on top of language lessons, then back to the firing range, where at least she could blow off some steam.
Then back to language lessons. Robert went on an overnight trip with the president to Boston. Nasty hecklers intruded on the motorcade. Lots of street scuffling and placard waving. Irritating but innocuous. “Typical Boston,” Robert said.
No big deal. No significant incidents. Fifteen arrests, including a drunk with a carton of eggs he wanted to hurl. The new American president had then continued on to Kansas to do some political fundraising with the party faithful. Corn country was more receptive and respectful. Or maybe the president hadn’t worn out the newly elected welcome just yet.
For Alex on day eight, Olga droned on far into each afternoon of instruction, her grasp on Ukrainian strong as a bull, her grip of English somewhere short of perfect, even after all these decades in the West. Privately, Alex and Robert had nicknamed Olga, “the baroness of the Black Sea.”
“Another terminology point,” Olga said, as Alex stifled a yawn. “You so will have noticed and perhaps been mystificated by the fact the name of the capital city on the embassy website is spelled K-y-i-v,”she said. “Why is it this?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Alex answered.
Mystificated
, indeed.
“Of course, you do not. But we are about to discuss and you will learn,” Olga said. “Ukrainian, like Russian, has two
i
sounds. A short
i
sound like in ‘prick’ and a long
i
sound like the French
I
or like the English
ee
in ‘needy.’ ”
Alex’s mind was drifting. She was maxed on this stuff. “Uh huh,”she said.
Olga, bless her, must have realized this because, just to be mean, she started to amp up the small killer details about the Cyrillic alphabet.
A soft knock and then the door opened. Michael Cerny came into the room with a nod and a smile. He seated himself at the table, saying nothing. He was carrying a green interoffice folder that was tied shut.
“Olga, my dear,” Cerny interrupted gently, “I need to talk to Alex for a moment. Why don’t you take a break?”
Without speaking, Olga stood and marched out the door. She looked angry. The door closed with a high profile.
Cerny rolled his eyes when she was gone. “Having fun?” he asked.
“She’s brutal,” Alex said. “Who’s side is that woman on anyway? Is she trying to get me there in one piece or kill me first?”
“Now, now,” he said with a smirk.
“Thanks for rescuing me. I needed a break.”
Alex leaned back in her chair.
“Thought you might,” Cerny said. He opened the green folder. Alex waited.
“Alex,” he said, reaching into it, “let me show you some things. We’ve set you up quite nicely.”
“Set me up?”
From the folder, Cerny pulled a variety of IDs in the name of Anna Marie Tavares, all with photographs of Alex. The most impressive was the US passport. It looked just like standard government-issue because it was. But it had been backdated to reflect an issue in 2007. Entry stamps had been impressed into it from Ireland, France, and Mexico.
“Please memorize your new date of birth,” he said, “as well as your location. I know there’s a lot on your plate right now, so we took your normal birthday, October 20, and cut it in half. Ten twenty becomes five ten. May 10. Get it?”
A pause as she shook the remnants of the day’s Ukrainian lesson out of the forefront of her mind. “Got it,” she said.
She examined the passport.
“We made you a year younger and set the birthplace as Los Angeles,” Cerny continued. “You look young and LA would fit with the ‘Tavares’ name.”
Alex looked at one of the photographs that she had sat for a day previously. She had gone undercover with the FBI, but the thoroughness of this was impressive even by law enforcement standards.
“If you have monograms on anything,” Cerny said, “be sure not to bring it. Same with magazines with labels or books with your name in it. If you want an address book, create a new one. Better, don’t even bring one.”
“Uh huh,” she said.
“Notice those travel stamps,” he said. “Ireland, France, and Mexico. You’ve been to all three places. Have cover stories for your trips. Note the days of entry and exit. Just in case you’re ever quizzed.”
“Why would I be?” she asked.
“Ukraine is an old Soviet republic,” he said. “Paranoia is still the
plat du jour
. Nice mixed metaphor, right?”
She didn’t answer.
Cerny began opening envelopes and pulled out supporting material.
There was a Maryland driver’s license, valid, he claimed, which employed the second picture that had been taken the day before. Then there were a trio of credit cards: Discover, Visa, and American Express, plus a bank ATM card.
“All of these are live credit cards,” he said. “We have a special relationship with a bank in northern Virginia, which issues these. However, you’re only to use the Visa if you see fit. You can expense up to five thousand dollars on it, no questions asked, so buy yourself a nice fake Cartier watch in Kiev if you have the chance. They do great work on counterfeit brand names in Eastern Europe, so might as well take advantage.”
“That’s perfectly illegal, you know,” she said.
“Of course it is, but who cares?” he answered blithely. “You can score some nice stuff before some rival gangsters put them out of business.”
She tried to ignore the point. She examined the credit cards individually.
“The other cards are ‘fly traps,’ ” he said, continuing. “If used, they will function up to two hundred dollars but will issue an immediate alert that something has happened to you. They will only work in an ATM that takes photographs. If primed, they will send a picture immediately to the State Department as to the location plus the photo of the user. If they’re used anywhere else, they’re a distress signal and a squad of marines in civilian clothes will probably come looking for you and want to kill someone just to make their trip worthwhile. Understand?”
“Clever,” she said.
“It
is
clever, isn’t it? The latest thing,” Cerny said with some pride.
He gave her a trio of pens, three different shades of ink.
“You might want to sign everything, the passport and the cards. Don’t use the same pen on any two cards. Use a ballpoint on the passport, and be sure when you sign to sign ‘Anna Tavares.’ Do it now right in front of me so I can see it, then give me one more Anna Tavares signature for your passport application so we have a record.”
She did what was asked. She looked up.
“So, what’s your name?” he asked.
“Anna Tavares.”
“When were you born, Anna?”
“May 10, 1979.”
“Really? Where?”
“In Los Angeles.”
“
En español
,” he pressed. “
Ahora mismo.
”
“
El diez de mayo
,
mil novecientos setenta y nueve a Los Angeles.
”
“
Muy bien
,” he said. “Now in Ukrainian.”
She threw it back to him. He was pleased.
“I have your plane tickets too, Anna,” he said. “They’re e-tickets, but you need the invoices. You’re flying Air France to Paris, connecting to Kiev. You will depart on February sixth and arrive in Kiev on the seventh. That’s ten days in advance of the president’s arrival. Excited?”
“Completely overwhelmed.”
“Don’t be,” he said.
“I assume I’m in all the proper computers as Anna,” she said. “If anyone checks these?” Alex asked.
“Absolutely,” Cerny answered. “Which reminds me.” He opened a final envelope. “Commerce Department ID. It’s your cover. Plus some supporting nonsense. Library cards, health club membership. BS stuff, but the type of things a lady would have in her purse. Which reminds me again. Do you have an old purse you can use?”
She opened her mouth to answer. He answered his own question before she could.
“Well, you do now,” he said. He had a worn Couch purse, complete with attached change purse. A nice leather Couch billfold actually, but with the proper wear on it.
“Would you like a gun when you’re in Ukraine?”
“Why would someone from Commerce be carrying a gun?” she asked.
“Because it’s Ukraine,” he answered. “Don’t ask logical questions about an illogical place.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Have it your way,” he said. “If you want one when you get there, talk to Richard Friedman. He’s with the State Department there. He’ll also be meeting you at the airplane. He’ll know you as Anna, by the way. Don’t confuse anyone with the truth. The truth never does anyone any good for trips like this. Truth is confusing.”
“I know.”
He paused. “I’m told that you’ve been putting in your time at the firing range. Good scores too, from what I’ve seen.”
“Are you watching everything I do?”
“Just enough. You should be happy that we keep an eye on you. Think of us as guardian angels, all right? Anyway, congratulations on the good shooting. It’s a shame to have a fine skill and not use it. Are you sure you don’t want a gun in Ukraine? We can get you a Glock.”
“I said I’d think about it.”
“Okay. Any more questions for now?”
She looked at everything that had been given to her.
“No,” she said.
“Good.”
“Why? You got something more for me?” she asked.
“Don’t I always?”
“Then let’s have it,” she said.
“Ever heard of a man named Georgiy Gongadze?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Someone else I’m going to meet?”
“Not if you’re lucky,” he said. “Gongadze was a Ukrainian journalist. In April 2000, he founded a news website,
Ukrayinska Pravda
. Ukrainian Truth, it meant, but unlike the old Soviet-style Pravda it really was the truth. The website specialized in political news and commentary, focusing particularly on President Kuchma, the country’s wealthy ‘oligarchs,’ and the official media.”
“Sounds like he went looking for trouble,” she said.
“He did. And in a place like Ukraine, trouble isn’t hard to find.”
In June 2000, Cerny continued, Gongadze complained that he had been forced into hiding because of harassment from the secret police. He said he and his family were being followed, that his staff were being harassed, and that the SBU, the successor of the KGB, was spreading a rumor that he was wanted on a murder charge.
“Gongadze disappeared in September of 2000,” Cerny said. “Opposition politicians reported that the disappearance had coincided with Gongadze receiving documents on corruption within the president’s own entourage. The Ukrainian parliament set up an inquiry run by a special commission. Neither investigation produced any results.
“Two months later,” Cerny continued, “a body was found in a forest in the Taraschanskyi Raion district, forty miles outside Kiev. The corpse had been decapitated and doused in acid to make identification more difficult.”
Alex cringed. She could never get over man’s limitless cruelty. “The corpse was Gongadze, I assume,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” Cerny said. “A group of journalists identified the remains. His wife confirmed the same a few weeks later. But the government didn’t officially acknowledge that the body was that of Gon-gadze until the following February and did not definitively confirm it until as late as March 2003.
“The affair became an international crisis for the Ukrainian government during 2001. There were rumors of Ukrainian suspension from the Council of Europe. Mass demonstrations erupted in Kiev. The protests were forcibly broken up by the police.
“In May 2001, Interior Minister Yuri Smirnov announced that the murder had been solved. Conveniently, both of the alleged killers were now dead. The claim was so outrageous that it was dismissed by the government’s own prosecutor-general. Mass protests again broke out in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities in September 2002 to mark the second anniversary of Gongadze’s death. The demonstrators again called for Kuchma’s resignation, but the protests again failed to achieve their goal, with police breaking up the protesters’ camp.
“The prosecutor of the Tarascha district, where Gongadze’s body was found, was convicted in May 2003 for abuse of office and falsification of evidence,” Cerny said. “He was found guilty of forging documents and negligence in the investigation and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. However, he was immediately released due to a provision of Ukraine’s amnesty laws.
“In June 2004, the government claimed that a gangster identified only as ‘K’ had confessed to Gongadze’s murder, although there was no independent confirmation of the claim. Then a key witness died of spinal injuries sustained while in police custody.
“Gongadze’s death became a major issue in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election,” said Cerny. “The opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, pledged to solve the case if he became president. Yushchenko did become president following the subsequent Orange Revolution and immediately launched a new investigation.”