SEVENTEEN.

Alex LaDuca and Michael Cerny sat at a round table in the office at the State Department office he had reserved for such meetings.

They had been together for two hours. It was already past 11:00 a.m. His background briefing on Yuri Federov and The Caspian Group neared conclusion. The forefront of Alex's mind was teeming with new information and ideas as Cerny moved his discussion of Federov in a final direction.

"He has one soft spot," Cerny said. "One Achilles heel."

"I can hardly wait to hear what that is."

"He has a pa.s.sion for highly educated Western women."

"I was up till 2:00 a.m. reading the FBI file," Alex answered. "He's a pig, a murderer, and a gangster."

"That would be accurate."

"I don't know why any educated Western woman would want anything to do with him. And if you don't mind a little vengeful Old Testament s.p.u.n.kiness," she continued, "his soul should burn in h.e.l.l someday."

"Look," Cerny said, "I like your take-no-prisoners spirit, but let's be constructive. Your a.s.signment will be to discuss issues pertaining to The Caspian Group and US Taxation. As mentioned, Federov owes the US millions in unpaid taxes. Just getting him to file the proper forms would be a victory."

She felt a wave of indignation building. "And what's my real a.s.signment?"

"Stay with him every moment you can. Barely let him out of your sight for the duration of your trip, particularly while the president is there. Find out everything you possibly can."

He fell silent. She felt there was more on the way. She waited.

"It wouldn't bother us if you got to know him as well as a woman could," he said.

Then he smirked. There was a nasty pause.

"Are you asking me to seduce him?"

"If you choose to do that," he said, "even if it were only an occasional relationship. At your rank you're eligible for performance pay. Bonuses."

Alex steamed. She glared at Cerny. He raised his eyebrows. "Why don't I just walk out of here right now?" she asked.

"I was expecting that question by the end of this briefing," he said, "but it's my job to put this proposition before you. It's not coming from me; it's coming from your government. Sometimes dirty work has to be done for the greater good."

"You people are disgusting. Why don't you hire a hooker?"

"Not to put too keen an edge on it, Alex, but if we could find one who was a security specialist, spoke five languages, could master a crash course in Ukrainian in a month, and could take care of herself and possibly come back in one piece, which, since you like honesty, the last part wouldn't be essential, we probably would. But we can't. So there. We're asking you."

There was a moment that pa.s.sed between them in tense silence.

"Have someone else do your dirty work. And have me fired if you wish," she said.

"Not at all. And once again, you've just demonstrated why you're perfect for this a.s.signment. Alex, really! We need you to do it. You don't have to get physical with him, but we do want you to be with him. Constantly."

She seethed. "Why?" she pressed.

"I can't answer that. I don't even know, myself. We want you to watch him every moment," he said. "Every inch of the way. We want to know exactly where he is. Just shadow him. Promise him anything. Find out whatever you can about him, his business, his a.s.sociates. Anything from how he used to beat up his bimbos in Brooklyn to whether he's selling Pepsi-Cola and Playboy to the North Koreans. You're our one person who will keep him interested. Your country is counting on you."

She found herself fingering the gold cross again. Her thoughts went far away as she disappeared into herself. A long silence pa.s.sed between them.

He waited.

"I'll take the a.s.signment. I'll make the trip," she said, "but I'll do things on my own terms. And if your sleazebag Bolshevik narco-gangster puts his hands on me I'll break both his filthy wrists."

"See? That's what we like about you. Righteous indignation. You're perfect for this."

"Those are my conditions."

"All right," he said. "It's a deal."

EIGHTEEN.

Later in the day, Alex went to Human Resources where she sat for a series of photographs, changing her blouse for each new photo. She rearranged her hair slightly with each picture so that no two shots were too much alike or appeared to have been taken at the same time. New IDs were being made and new photos were in order. It was yet another indication that this was no ordinary trip.

In the early afternoon, back in her office at FinCen, Alex completed the rea.s.signment of her current caseload to other investigators at FinCen. After lunch she returned to a newly a.s.signed room in the State Department.

Her language instructor, Olga, arrived at a few minutes past four. Olga led Alex through some preliminary ground rules for the study of Ukrainian. The teacher seemed pleased that Alex had a solid grasp of Russian. That gave her entry into Ukrainian. Alex felt like a graduate student getting tutored for a final.

The trouble was, her heart wasn't completely in it.

She found herself thinking about her a.s.signment that night when she worked out at the gym. There was no basketball that evening, but she did spot a few of the players: Jack, who was an accountant for the IRS; Laura, her old buddy who worked at the White House; and Ben, who was running laps on his prosthesis.

From the locker room afterward she phoned Robert on her cell phone. He wasn't home yet either.

"Want to grab a pizza?" she asked.

"I'd like to grab you, instead," he answered. "Or maybe the pizza and then you."

"I've got cold beer in the fridge," she said. It was the first time all day Alex felt relaxed. Robert had that effect on her.

"It's a deal," he said.

There was a Chicago-style pizza place called Jean & Luca's not far from Dupont Circle where he lived. He said he'd swing by there, get a thick pie, and drive it over to her place.

He did.

She had an ulterior motive this evening, however, and elaborated when they broke open the pie and the beer.

"How would you feel about running a couple of names across your files?" she asked.

"What files?"

"The Secret Service ones that will tell you where someone in the government works."

"Where are you going with this?"

"Michael Cerny, who recruited me for this Ukrainian a.s.signment,"she said. "And this three-hundred-pound woman named Olga Liashko. I want to know if they have any CIA links."

"Come on," he said.

"No. Really. Something about them doesn't smell quite right."

He considered it.

"Michael Cerny's been with the State Department for several years. I've known him for six years. I've never heard of any CIA affiliation."

"That doesn't mean he's not connected to the CIA," she said. "You know that as well as I do. Look, there's an awful lot of this that doesn't make sense."

She was angry. Indignant. She kept going. "Listen, Robert, what are they asking me to really accomplish? They're practically asking me to share a shower and a bedroom with this repulsive East Bloc hoodlum. I don't know what they think I can find out that all their intelligence hasn't already given them."

"I don't know the answers," he said. "I agree with you, but I don't have any answers."

"I don't like Cerny and I don't like this Ukrainian steamroller he works with," Alex said. "So why don't you just be the man I know and love and run a check?"

He finished one square slice of pie and started another. He nodded thoughtfully.

"I can't do it myself," he said. "I don't have the authorization. But I can call in a favor. I won't have an answer right away, but I'll see what I can do. How's that?"

She leaned across the table and kissed him.

"That would be perfect," she said.

NINETEEN.

The Lt. de polizia Gian Antonio Rizzo stood with his arms folded across his chest in the small cluttered apartment on the via Donorfio. A tall lean man with dark hair and sharp features, Lt. Rizzo of the Roman city police felt a deep disgust, an outrage, that fed upon the deeply cynical outlook on life that he had developed over the decades.

Lt. Rizzo had had more than enough of the type of scene that lay before him. At age fifty-five, he was contemplating retirement toward the middle of the summer. His final day at this underpaid unappreciated job could not come soon enough. Of course, he still had an enterprise or two on the side, but who knew about that?

Downstairs at the doorway to the street, a crowd gathered. Here, upstairs, police had strung crime scene tape in the hallway. Police techies vacuumed everything for fibers. Forensic photographers took digital shots of everything while busily trampling the rest of the crime scene.

Rizzo's brown eyes slid uneasily over the death chamber. The cara-binieri who busily a.s.sisted him, as well as his own detectives from Rome's homicide squad, had no question about the emotions sizzling within him.

"Pervert.i.tidi! Degenerati!" Rizzo said. "Sc.u.m! You know what makes me mad? Having to spend time investigating what these people do to each other. Maybe we should let them kill one another, hey? Then these foreign parasites-questi scrocconi stranieri-would stop coming to Roma. Wouldn't that be better for everyone?"

In the lieutenant's opinion, there was a struggle under way for the soul of Rome. On one side were the forces of restraint, lawfulness, etiquette, and cultural preservation. On the other, the unswerving desire to use the ancient city for permissiveness, debauchery, and the commission of international crime.

Lt. Rizzo saw it every night on off-duty strolls through the Campo dei Fiori and the Piazza Navona. Why, just two evenings earlier witnesses in overlooking apartments had reported seeing two people shot and killed around the corner from where Julius Caesar used to address the forum, their bodies whisked away afterwards.

The case had landed on his desk and it was most unwelcome.

Well, the city had changed a bit since Caesar's day, and not necessarily for the better. So Rizzo, who felt himself a guardian of public decency, looked around this room and felt his blood pressure rising.

More murder. More crime. More drugs.

"Incredibile!" Rizzo growled as those under his command went about their business. "This is a country that can't form a government to last longer than the soccer season and can't do anything about all these foreign degenerates either!"

With retirement beckoning, Rizzo was increasingly free with his opinions. The forensic technicians busied themselves with the details of the double homicide. Why take issue? They agreed with him, anyway. Even his a.s.sistant, Stephano DiPetri, knew enough to ignore him.

The dead woman was on the floor of the living room, her arms and legs a tangle, a robe half on, half off, the upper part of it caked with blood. Her face was blue from strangulation, her eyes frozen wide in the pain of her death. Her throat looked as if it had been perforated with a butcher's knife.

Lt. Rizzo walked to the next room. There, a man, who appeared to have been a musician, had been shot to death while sleeping. He had a couple of guitars by the bed, a collection of sheet music, and the inevitable marijuana paraphernalia, none of which was going to be much use to him now.

The first and second bullets had pa.s.sed through him. The third had blown apart his skull. Nasty splatter. A crime scene pick-four: Skin, hair, tissues, bone in every direction.

It wasn't pretty.

The pillow and the worn mattress had caught most of the blood, which was good for the cleanup squad. But his left eye was ruptured and half out of his head, which would make their task messier. And at least the remains of the bullets had already been recovered. That was another good part.

The really grisly detail, aside from the homicides themselves, had been the discovery. For a solid day, starting at two in the afternoon, the dead man's clock radio had blasted some vile American music.

The downstairs neighbors, after a sleepless night and much pounding on the ceiling, indignantly phoned the proprietario over the excessive noise. The landlord had raised the portiera, the deaf-as-a-haddock old Signora Ma.s.siella.

Signora Ma.s.siella had used her pa.s.skey to enter the apartment. She had pushed the door open. The door had stopped against the dead woman on the floor.

Then she screamed and fled, crossing herself several times as she ran. She called the police. The carabinieri arrived and then summoned the homicide people, which included Lt. Rizzo. Rizzo brought in his att.i.tude, of which he had plenty.

Rizzo stood at the foot of the bed, surveying the death scene and not feeling much compa.s.sion. He glanced at the disgraceful film poster above the body, one that turned immorality drug addiction into a joke.

Cheech and Chong. The Corsican Brothers. Who was kidding whom? If one of these potheads wanted to meet some real Corsican brothers, Rizzo could arrange it. And as for this dead guy being a singer-musician, well, Sinatra and Pavarotti had been singers. Gino Paoli was a singer. The current pop star Zucherro was a singer. This guy was just a dead guy.

Nearby, detectives went through drawers. They found enough illicit pharmaceuticals and "head" equipment to equip a small store.