Federov: Maybe. They are involved in this visit by your president."

Alex: "Part of the delegation?"

Her favorite gangster: "No. They're a pair of American spies. They were recently retired."

So the tale that followed made sense. Edythe and Peter established a procedure for a hit on Federov in Paris. They quickly wired Washington and Langley for approval. No one ever asked them if they were sure their target was who they thought it was. Accuracy of that sort was the least of the details attended to. Like much CIA intelligence over the last decade, it wasn't just faulty, it had so many holes in it that a truck could have driven through it with its doors open.

Peter and Edythe were known in security circles in Europe and known by the underworld also. They were recognized to be Western operatives, most likely American.

After the mistaken killing in Paris, they were ripe for a setup.

Alex continued to read.

The setup came when Federov wanted to strike back. First, he had set up his old friend Katzman possibly to be whacked in his place. Then he took it as a personal insult that Katzman had been so victimized.

From his own experiences in European nightlife, Federov knew a young woman for the job. One night in Rome, Peter and Edythe met a young woman named Lana Ba.s.soni who lived in Rome. She was very pretty, a sometime model and sometime artist's model. But she was married to a musician who wasn't going anywhere. There was also another detail about Lana that Peter and Edythe would never had guessed until it was too late. She had once worked for Federov at one of the after-hours mob joints he ran in New York. She had been a hostess-plus-a-bit-more, depending how much a client had to spend and what a client wanted. It all made sense.

The meeting at the club in Rome-Lana, Peter, and Edythe-was made to look like a coincidence. But it was anything but. About an hour after meeting, Peter and Edythe disappeared for a while. The next morning, Lana did too.

Alex looked up from the Palm Pilot. "I a.s.sume there's more," she said to Cerny.

"Of course," he said. "Short and sweet. Do you want to read it in English or Italian?"

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Give me both in case I sense something wrong with the translations."

"Smart girl," he said. "That's why you're here."

She took back the Palm Pilot. "If I were really smart, I wouldn't be here."

She opened the final files. There were a pair of homicide reports from the Roman newspapers from January, including that of a musician and his girlfriend found dead in their flat in Rome. Then some follow-ups from several weeks later. The final entry had to do with a pair of bodies found in the sandy bogs near Villa di Plinio. Two bodies had been found, not yet identified.

The file ended, as did the information Cerny accessed in his Pilot. He took the device back and tucked it away.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what?"

"Show me that lightning intellect," he said. "What do you make of all that?"

"Tie it together, you mean?"

"If you can."

"But you know the correct answers already?" she said.

"I know answers that I believe to be correct," he said. "There's a difference. So put your thesis to me, and I'll let you know if you're in the right line of work or not."

"I'll give you a scenario that works," she said. "Just as it came to me as I was reading."

"Please do," Cerny answered above the drone of the aircraft's engines.

"First off, someone in Washington was dumb enough to order a hit on Federov. Someone wanted him killed, for whatever reason."

"I could argue that by saying we don't do things like that."

"And I'd argue back that I know that you do, same as we never used to employ torture until we got caught doing it."

"Keep going."

"Peter and Edythe had the a.s.signment to hit Federov. But they blew it and whacked his double, his imposter, instead. Since his double was his pal, Federov was pretty angry. He hit back. He had his moll Lena set up Peter and Edythe in Rome. My guess is they got hit by some Ukrainian gunmen that night on the via Trafficante. Do I know the princ.i.p.als?" Alex asked. "I'm guessing I do."

"Twitchy Eye, that's Anatoli," Cerny said. "Then there's Nontwitchy Eye, which is Kaspar."

"And they killed Lana, why?" Alex asked. "To eradicate any links back to them? Keep her from ever talking?"

"It appears that way," Cerny said.

"Federov ordered it?"

"The Ukrainians are not always so well disciplined. Anatoli and Kaspar could have been acting on their own when they took Lena out.

"Lena's boyfriend? Collateral damage?" she asked.

"Apparently. Tough for him," Cerny said. "But that completed the cycle of four deaths in twelve hours."

Alex hit the end of her files. She looked up. Cerny was looking at her.

"So," she said. "If I mentioned something called 'Operation Chuck and Susan' to you, presumably you'd know what I was talking about."

"What do you want to know?"

"I already know," she said. "Operation Chuck and Susan. My computer crashed when I tried to access that file. And it was related to Kiev. My guess is that Chuck and Susan were Peter and Edythe. And you were trying to keep it from me for as long as possible that you wanted to kill Federov. Who knows? Maybe he didn't lift a finger to stop the attack on the president because he felt the United States kept trying to kill him."

"We need to take him out," Cerny said. "For all the reasons you know, plus the ones that I know, plus probably several more that neither of us know. Is that sufficient?"

"If we know all this, why are we going to Europe?"

"To put the final pieces in place," he said, "and to finally eliminate Federov. As long as he's alive, he's a threat to you and to the United States."

"What sort of threat to me?" she asked.

"For starters, he wants you dead."

She thought about it. "I'm not sure I believe that," she said.

"What are you saying? You didn't see what happened in Venezuela?"

"I saw what happened," she answered angrily. "For G.o.d's sake, I was there, remember? I'm just not sure I'm buying that Federov was behind it."

Cerny rolled his eyes. "You're telling me that you know more than we do?"

"Maybe I do."

"Don't count on it."

"I know how to judge a man. One of those first RPGs in Kiev hit right where I had been standing. Federov moved me away from that place."

"Proof that he knew there was going to be an attack."

"Everyone in the city knew of the possibility of an attack!" she snapped back. "If anyone in authority had had any common sense, the president would have skipped the memorial, citing security considerations. And then the president would have gotten out of the country as fast as possible. But I'm just an underling. I don't plan these things. I had no opinion worth hearing at the time, right?"

"Sounds like I'm hearing one now," he said.

"Yeah. You are."

She handed the Palm Pilot back to him. He pressed his finger to its security patch, let it read his fingerprint, and shut it down.

"When we get to Paris," he said an hour later, "we'll deal with this. We have a meeting the day after arrival. One of our local people who's familiar with the case."

"What sort of 'local people'?" she asked, fatigue in her voice. "Who is he?"

"You'll like him," Cerny answered, without giving a name. "He's embedded with one of the European police agencies."

"CIA?" she asked.

"Naturally."

"French?"

"No," Cerny said. "As a matter of fact, he's Italian."

SEVENTY-EIGHT.

Lt. Rizzo was the first to arrive, dressed sharply in a new suit, his hardcopy files under his arm.

The meeting was in the United States emba.s.sy in Paris just off the Place de la Concorde, in a secure room on the third floor. Cerny arrived with Alex. They took seats at a small conference table. A third man there was Mark McKinnon, who was the CIA station chief in Rome. He had made the trip separately from Rizzo so they would not be seen together. They had, in fact, not seen each other in person since talking over a gla.s.s of wine at the dark San Christoforo bar in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome.

Cerny handled the introductions. An emba.s.sy observer was present also, a young man fluent in English, French, and Italian.

"Signor Rizzo has been with the Roman police for twenty-two years," Michael Cerny said to Alex. They spoke English. "Seventeen on the brigata omicidia."

"Rough work," Alex allowed.

"Gian Antonio has been a CIA a.s.set for at last the last fifteen of those years," McKinnon added. "High quality material, almost always accurate."

"Thank you, Michael," Rizzo said in perfect English. "Almost?" he laughed.

"No one's perfect," Mark McKinnon said. "Not in our line of work."

Cerny looked to Alex. "I brought Ms. LaDuca up to speed on the flight over, vis--vis the two murder investigations in Rome," Cerny said. "In terms of Federov and his bodyguards, where are we now?"

McKinnon opened a file and slid a photograph across the table to Alex. "Recognize this guy?" he asked.

She glanced at it. "That's one of the men who came to the emba.s.sy in Ukraine with Federov," she said.

"He's one of Federov's bodyguards," McKinnon said. "He's actually the remaining one."

"Remaining?" she asked.

"The other one is currently deceased," McKinnon said. "He had an accident in his home in London. Fell and hit his head."

She shuddered.

"Yeah, right," she said. "Careless of him." She returned the photo. "That's definitely the man, right? In the photo?" McKinnon asked. "From Kiev."

"That's him."

McKinnon placed the photograph back in the file. "He's in Paris right now," he said. "His name is Kaspar Rodzienko. Ukrainian-born Russian. It's our feeling that he and his boss were instrumental in the attacks on the president in Kiev. We'd like to wrap him up as quickly as possible. For that, we need bait for him to come forward."

"And that would be me," she a.s.sumed evenly. "The target for Comrade Kaspar."

"That would be you," McKinnon said.

"We'd rather get him here in Europe than have him find his way into the US and come after you there," Cerny said.

Alex looked at the three men at the table, plus the observer, and gave them an ironic shake of the head. "What are you asking me to do now?" she asked.

McKinnon looked to Rizzo.

"We have some informers among the Ukrainians in the local underworld," he said. "We have the ability to let Kaspar know you're in Paris. We've already done that. The information he received indicated that you're on a trade mission for the Treasury Department. We have a safe apartment for you to stay in. Near rue Mazarine. Fine neighborhood, about a two-minute walk to the river. We'd set a security ring around you. When he comes looking for you, we hit him."

"So you've made me a target," she said. "Again."

Silence around the room. "Not much we can do about it at this point, LaDuca," McKinnon said. "You'll be compensated well for this."

"Well or posthumously?" she asked, her displeasure growing.

"Better to get him on our terms rather than his own," Cerny said. "We think he's here for maybe two more days. If he knows you're here and where you might be found, he'll come into our view. Then we strike."

"What about Federov?" she asked.