Conspiracy in Kiev rt-1 Read online

  There was nothing special about the bugging. It was a routine job as long as the victim was at work. Tuesdays were good for this sort of thing.

  Carlos arrived first, at about ten in the morning. He had the proper paperwork-routine maintenance on the cable system-and got a free pass from the building’s superintendent. He went to work in the basement, checking the cable lines, the phone lines, the power. He located the setups for the targeted apartment on the fifth floor.

  Duck soup. This was easy.

  On a previous visit Carlos had stolen a passkey that worked for all apartments. The black-bag keepers back at his agency congratulated him on his good work and made a copy. Carlos returned the original before anyone knew it was out of the building.

  They had files back at the agency’s headquarters for hundreds of buildings and hotels in DC, completely legal under the classified sections of the Homeland Security Act of 2005. So this would be a snap as long as no one who really did work for the cable people turned up. But that didn’t happen this morning.

  Carlos’s specialty was rigging radio frequencies to go through the main electrical wiring of the building. Then, from a car within two blocks, a tuner could hone in on the specific apartment and the “easy listening” was officially “on the air.” Carlos was never a listener. That was done by higher-ups.

  Carlos moved quickly from the electric grid to the junction box for the telephones in Calvert Arms Apartments. He could see from the electronic blowback on the phone lines that most people used cordless phones, including his target. So Carlos dropped a chip on the fifth floor apartment he wanted.

  Job done. He flipped open his cell phone and called Janet.

  “I’m just about finished,” he said. “Got ten minutes?”

  Two blocks away, she was sitting in a car cheerfully working Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2 on her PSP. “Sure,” she said. “See you on the flip side.”

  Here was today’s happy coincidence: Janet’s uncle lived in the building. He was an overeducated but charming old coot who had worked for the State Department for the better part of three decades as a foreign service officer. He had served in numerous embassies in Europe and Latin America, as well as in the department’s building in Washington’s “Foggy Bottom” district, again alternating between European and Latin American affairs.

  Janet was used to coming by unannounced, sometimes to drop off DVDs or groceries. Her uncle never minded and rather liked the young skirt rustling by, even if it was look-don’t-touch.

  Janet moved fast. Her whole job was about working fast.

  She was in the lobby seven minutes later, carrying a small bag with two new DVDs for her uncle. She blew past the doorman with a big smile and a crack of Juicy Fruit. She zipped up to the fifth floor. She found Carlos in the utility closet near the elevator, studying the cable wires.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Let’s go,” he said. He handed her a pair of mini-transmitters. She tossed off her parka and stashed it with him in the closet.

  The baby transmitters were the size of old-style soda bottle caps. They were stick-ons, marvelous little instruments, imported from Singapore by the US government at a cost of five bucks each. They could monitor conversations in the apartment in one file. At the same time, in another file they could eavesdrop on the data from even a perfectly configured-and supposedly secure-wireless computer network. They could also pick off the radio emissions of a computer monitor. Their operational life was one year. They had an ultrahigh-pitched whine, which only a few people could hear. Otherwise, they were fine. Unless discovered. Unless someone’s dog went nuts-o.

  In addition to the work Carlos had done in the basement, he reckoned he might as well drop these babies on the victim. They were a safety net. If one system of electronic ears failed, the other would likely be up.

  Now Carlos and Janet set to work. They slipped latex gloves onto their hands. Carlos killed the elevators and stood lookout. Janet used the passkey to enter the target apartment.

  No one home. No pets. No alarms. The break-in trifecta!

  She took stock quickly. It was a woman’s apartment. Normal kitchen and dining area. Living room filled with bookcases. This victim read a lot; maybe that was part of her problem and why she was getting a wire dropped on her. People who read a lot were always suspicious.

  There were books in different languages and a travel poster in Russian with a picture of Gorbachev or Yeltsin. Janet could never tell those two eighties Russian guys apart. One had a weird bald head and looked like someone had smashed a strawberry on it; the other dude had too much white hair, like a polar bear. One stood on top of a tank to put down a coup and the other one did a Pizza Hut commercial. Who cared who was who? Why not a poster of Lenin saying, Workers of the World, Shop Till You Drop!?

  Near the music system, under the Russian poster, there were scattered a ton of CDs. Many of them foreign. How much more subversive could it get?

  There was a coffee table in the living room. Janet stuck her hand under its lower shelf, six inches above the floor. She positioned one of the bugs on the underside of the shelf and stuck it in place.

  There! Done!

  She went to the bedroom. She looked around quickly. She saw a few photos of the resident with a guy. She was wrapped up in his arms at some beach somewhere. Whoa! The lady looked good in a Speedo two-piece and the guy was six-pack hunky; she looked like a real estate agent and he looked like a lifeguard. Didn’t really look like subversives, but troublemakers frequently don’t. Keep it moving. These two must have done something or they wouldn’t be on the bug list.

  Janet got to her knees in the bedroom.

  The second transmitter fit perfectly under the headboard of the bed. Janet smirked as she fixed it in nicely. Bedroom bugs were endlessly entertaining.

  She jumped back to her feet. Test time. Using her cell phone, Janet accessed both transmitters and primed them. They worked perfectly.

  Great. Keep moving.

  Another thirty-six seconds and she was out of the apartment and into the hall. Less than three minutes had passed. She gave a thumbs-up to Carlos, who was still standing guard.

  No words were spoken.

  Carlos went back to the elevators and turned them on. Janet popped into her uncle’s place and dropped off the DVDs. She’d get her feedback this evening as, again by coincidence, she was planning to come over for dinner and some tutoring on a graduate history course she was taking.

  She retrieved her parka from the utility closet.

  In another five minutes, she was crossing the lobby to leave. The doorman winked at her. She smiled and winked back. Secretly she was grossed out. He was probably three times her age.

  A rich older man, well, that would be something else! But a doorman…? No way!

  Carlos was already back out to the street via the service entrance.

  They rendezvoused in the car shortly thereafter. Their day was going well. They just had one other job that day. Considering they were funded by the taxpayers, they were an outstanding example of governmental efficiency.

  FOUR

  O utside, another unusually cold winter evening chilled the city of Washington. In her office, Alex shut down her primary desktop. She checked the email on her secondary computer, the one that carried classified material, and spotted a message that had come in minutes earlier. The sender wasn’t anyone she recognized. She grimaced. “I’m never going to get out of here today,” she whispered to herself. She clicked her mouse to open the email. Hopefully it was something she could dispatch easily.

  The correspondence opened. Might have known.

  For her eyes only: THIS IS A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND IS INTENDED FOR THE ADDRESSEE ONLY. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS EMAIL IN ERROR PLEASE IMMEDIATELY DELETE THE EMAIL AND ANY ATTACHMENTS WITHOUT READING OR OPENING THEM.

  “Yeah, sure,” she muttered, slightly louder. She had lately developed the habit of speaking to the compu
ter, usually insultingly, when she was not happy with what was on the screen. The final hours of a long day often brought forth the habit.

  But there was no changing the message. She had been summoned to a specially arranged meeting at the State Department the next morning. Main Building on C Street NW, only about a twenty minute walk from Treasury along Pennsylvania Avenue and then down Twenty-first Street. Room 6776 B. No further details. She was to be there at 8:00 a.m.

  She stared at the text for a moment. Was this email official or some sort of late hours after work prank? The State Department?

  Streamlined and reorganized in 2007, FinCen was a division of Treasury, which interfaced with other American intelligence agencies: the FBI, the National Intelligence Service, the CIA, the recently overhauled Immigration and Naturalization Service. It was through this connection that Alex knew a man named Robert Timmons. Timmons was an agent of the United States Secret Service, assigned to the Presidential Protection Detail at the White House. He was also her fiance, the wedding scheduled for the following July. On Alex’s left hand, she wore the diamond that Robert had given her.

  The Presidential Protective Detail, these days known as “Einstein Duty.” All the presidents had their nicknames among the men and women of the Secret Service who guarded them. Clinton had been “Elvis.” Clinton’s successor, Bush 43, had been the “Shrub.” This president, newly elected the previous November, was Einstein, a tribute to not how smart the president was, but how smart the president thought the president was. That, and a certain distracted way with clothing.

  A slight smile crossed her lips as she reconsidered this email.

  Maybe…

  She picked up the phone. She called Robert at the White House.

  In addition to being one of the new president’s bodyguards, Tim-mons was also a liaison officer between the United States Secret Service and foreign protective services. He wasn’t above sending her an amusing personal message disguised as a work document. He came on the line. His tone said all business.

  “Hey,” she said. “Is this the Black Dog?”

  His tone softened and changed as he recognized her voice.

  “Hey,” he answered. “That’s what some people call me.”

  “Know anything about this meeting I’ve been summoned to tomorrow morning?”

  A pause, then, “I know all about it,” he said.

  “Why do you know all about it and I don’t?” she asked. “Or is this a trick to get me to call you so we can have a late dinner?”

  “I’ll accept the late dinner,” he said, “but the State Department thing is legit.” A pause, then, “Think Orange Revolution.”

  A beat, then she had it. “Ukraine? The old Soviet Republic?”

  “Bingo. Presidential visit to Kiev in one month. I hope your passport is current.”

  “The passport is current, but I’m not. Can’t you scratch my name off the list?”

  “I suppose I could have, but I didn’t.”

  “After nearly getting blown apart in Lagos, the only place I wish to travel to is the gym. Right now.” She glanced at her watch. Almost 7:00 p.m.

  He was silent on the line.

  “Then, Greek food later?” he asked.

  “Why not?” Her tone was one of resignation. “Maybe I can impale myself on one of the skewers. Or better, I’ll impale you for not knocking my name out of contention.”

  “Perfect,” he answered. “I’ll see you at the Athenian at ten.”

  “Bring flowers,” she said. “I’m furious with you.”

  “I wouldn’t dare arrive without them,” he said.

  Alexandra and Robert had first met four years earlier in Washington.

  Their respective employers required that they continue their “second language” studies. So both had signed up for advanced Spanish literature at Georgetown University.

  They read bizarre but intriguing South American novels in the original Spanish, which they both spoke fluently. Characters could talk directly to angels, demons, and sometimes even God. They sprouted wings and flew. They wore magic rings, mated with wild animals, and slipped in and out of various universes.

  Alex and Robert hit it off right away, bonding over shared experiences: rural blue-collar work-Alex had worked on a cattle ranch as a teenager, Robert put himself through college working on a dairy farm during summers in Michigan, feeding the livestock, hauling hay, shoveling manure, and taking the occasional dead calf out for burial. A few weeks after the course ended, the Secret Service assigned Robert to Seattle, then to San Francisco, while Alex worked out of FBI bureaus in Philadelphia and New York. They did not see each other for three years. Later, in 2006, when Robert was assigned to the White House and she had taken a job at Treasury, he tracked her down.

  He was a Secret Service agent, but he was also a guy with a golden Labrador retriever named Terminator, whom he referred to as “my kid from a previous relationship.” He was Alex’s chess partner, a guy who wore a Detroit Tigers cap at home while he watched sports on TV, often reading a new book at the same time. He was a four-handicap golfer and an amateur guitarist. Unlike anyone else she knew in law enforcement, he could play the opening riffs from Led Zep’s “Black Dog.” This had given him a great nickname in his class at the Secret Service Academy in Turco, Georgia.

  Black Dog.

  Many of his peers still continued the nickname. It was often his code name on assignments. Alex though it was funny. In many ways, Robert was as white bread as it got. And he sure wasn’t any dog. Hence the nickname, perfect in its imperfection.

  Time out: Washington insiders knew Secret Service personnel to be very arrogant. Touchy. Showy. Difficult to deal with because they always put agency agenda in front of everything, even personal relationships.

  Time back in: “People ask me what it’s like to date a Secret Service agent,” Alex would tell people. “I always say, ‘I’m not dating a Secret Service agent, I’m dating Robert Timmons.’ ”

  Time out again: Secret Service people were also known to be the best shots in the federal service. According to folklore, they could knock a cigarette out of a chickadee’s beak at fifty feet and still leave their little feathered pal chirping. The bird shouldn’t have been puffing on a butt anyway.

  Time back in: On the pistol range, Alex was better than Robert, something he grudgingly admitted and admired.

  So the relationship worked. He was everything to her and vice versa. He was also something that no one else had ever been, the one person who was always there for her and accepted her exactly the way she was. He was also the guy she went to church with on the Sunday mornings when he wasn’t on duty, which was something very special to her.

  They were completely compatible.

  He set up a chessboard at her apartment. He liked the figures from the Civil War and they always had a game in progress. Sometimes when he would stop by they would do two moves each or four or six, the game ongoing day-to-day.

  He loved leaving affectionate or funny notes for her to find, nestled into towels, under a piece on the chess board, in the medicine cabinet, in the freezer, on a window.

  Anywhere.

  Then, while away, he would send her emails suggesting where to look for the notes. “Look inside the Rice Chex box,” said one. “You might want to look behind the television,” said another.

  He could not travel without calling her. If they could, and they always managed some way, they always had a last kiss before he went out of town on an assignment.

  They both shared a soft spot for country music, to the horror of many of their eastern friends. Heartfelt white soul music by people whose names could be reversed and they’d still work just fine-and-perfect, good buddy: Travis Randy, Tritt Travis, Black Clint, Paisley Brad, Gill Vince.

  Even Chicks Dixie.

  “Waffle House music,” Robert called it. But he admitted that he liked it too, with particular attention to early Cash Johnny.

  Waffle House music. Robert always made
her laugh, but they had had their serious talks, too, both before and after deciding to get married. Robert had talked with her once about dying young.

  “If I’m going to go to my grave early, ‘in the line of fire’ isn’t a bad way,” he said. He told her that if something should happen to him after they married, she should allow a new husband to find her. It was all hypothetical, of course. Neither of them ever thought disaster would really strike. Horrible things like that only happened to other people.

  FIVE

  A lex drove to the gym on Eighteenth Street and Avenue M.

  In the women’s locker room, she changed from her office attire-“the monkey suit,” she called it-into trim dark shorts with a Treasury Department insignia, a sports bra, and a loose-fitting white T-shirt with the likeness of U2-the Irish band, not the Ike-era spy plane-across the front.

  She went to the second floor and spotted some friends shooting hoops, including a close friend, Laura Chapman, who worked at the White House as a liaison between Secret Service and other protective agencies. Laura, a former Secret Service agent herself, now had her own agency and department.

  Alex and Laura worked their way into a co-ed game, along with two other women. The gym was warm, noisy but not deafening. Two other games were in process on nearby courts. Runners thundered around the track overheard, and somewhere in one of the side rooms a martial arts class was in session. A local George Washington University kid carried the whistle, wore a striped shirt, and reffed the pickup hoops. He called a good game.

  Recently, two new guys had worked into the rotation. She didn’t know much about them. A wiry guy named Fred, who looked like a banker: all arms and elbows and jerky movements. The other players called him, “Head and Shoulders.” Another new guy was Juan, a muscular Latino who was a law student at GW. At five foot six, he was a tall dwarf in basketball terms-shorter than both female players. But he made it up in speed and court savvy. The star of the game this night, however, was another regular gym rat, a strapping big guy from North Carolina named Benjamin.