Countdown in Cairo (6 page)

“Is he traveling alone?” she asked. “Or is there an entourage?”

“Federov came into the country alone,” Gamburian said. “Take it from there.”

She thought about it for at least three seconds, plus another two to consider the tedium on her desk. “Okay. I never mind a trip to New York,” Alex answered.

“Good!” he said with finality. “And it’s funny you should answer that way. That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about—New York.”

“What about it? I like New York.”

“FinCEN is going to open offices there,” Gamburian said. “We’re going to move some of our experienced people from here in Washington up to the big city.” He paused. “Interested?”

“In being transferred to New York?”

“Exactly,” he said.

A swarm of emotional reactions were upon her, not the least of which was a lingering disquietude over life in Washington. Yes, it was tranquil. Yes, it was comfortable. But day to day, there were still too many memories of the way things had been a year earlier before her fiancé, Robert, had died in Kiev. She was, she knew, fighting a daily round of small avoidances, dodging associations of how things had been and how things could have been.

She even knew that she had stayed on in Madrid and taken the Pietà of Malta case to avoid coming home. And since coming home, she had already started to entertain the wanderlust that was in her, a desire to be part of the action, to keep shaking things up.

Then, “I still have a brief trip to Venezuela coming up,” she said.

“Any dates on that yet?”

“None yet. I’m thinking within the next few weeks.”

“What’s the guy’s name, the philanthropist, who sends you?”

“Joseph Collins.”

“That could be worked into the equation,” Gamburian said. “When might you know the dates on that?”

She shrugged. “I could go see Mr. Collins when I’m in New York and see what his thinking is.”

“Well, as I said, considering your service and sacrifice this year, I’m sure the powers that be can let you work Venezuela into the schedule,” Gamburian said.

“Then, yes,” she said, “I might be interested.”

“The big bosses here see you as the third in command in New York, maybe even the second,” he said. “The top job will go to someone more administrative and, frankly, older, who’s been in Treasury longer. But the number two and three positions? They would be ones of senior investigators. Those positions presume youth and energy, someone willing to go out and shake the world up where it needs shaking up. The type of thing you showed you’re adept at in Kiev, Geneva, Paris, and Madrid, and wherever else you’ve been dumping bodies.” He paused. “The age thing is tricky. They look for a balance in these offices. Gray hair and wisdom combined with youth and diligence. A dash of treachery and savoir faire with both. How old are you again? Seventeen?”

“I’ll be thirty on December twenty-fourth.”

“Oh. Thirty. Ancient,” he said.

“So this would be a major promotion also?” she asked.

“Unquestionably,” Gamburian said. “Bigger title, heavier pay-check, increased oversight and responsibility. More physical risk perhaps. The assignment would start after the first of the year, and the offices will be in the Wall Street area. What better place to watch out for financial crime, right? You can just look out your window if things get slow. Oh, and I’m also told that much of the work will have to do with Central and South America, so the job presupposes fluent Spanish. Not just fluent, but so good that it could pass for an educated native speaker. What the State Department grades a 5 out of 5. Again, that’s you.”

“That’s me,” she said.

He leaned forward and wrote out a phone number. “Here’s the number to call for an interview. Think about it,” he said.

She took the paper and folded it away. “Thanks, Mike,” she said. “I already have.”

SEVEN

The car carrying Nagib was in New York City within five hours. The car traveled not to Manhattan, the city of skyscrapers, the upscale, and tourists, but rather to Brooklyn and a neighborhood known as Prospect Heights.

Prospect Heights lies adjacent to Prospect Park, between Park Slope and Crown Heights. It is surrounded by the finest cultural and recreational institutions in Brooklyn—the Brooklyn Museum, the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It is a polyglot area, with a typically New York mix of everything, notably people from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. The tenor of neighborhoods change from block to block; boarded up, burned-out structures defaced with graffiti stand next to newly renovated apartment complexes with glass elevators and rooftop gardens.

Nagib’s car stopped at a three-story tenement on Lincoln Place. His driver guided him inside to the second-floor home of a man named Hassan, who tearfully embraced Nagib. Hassan was Nagib’s uncle, and he too had come to America illegally seven years ago.

The uncle now had a new ID and a social security card. He had married an American woman of Lebanese descent and was legal to stay. Now he ran a small store and a small cell of conspirators. The uncle’s home was a halfway stop to Nagib’s destination. Hassan served Nagib lunch and provided him with some changes of clothing to take with him. From a safe concealed under the floorboards of a closet, he also provided him with a Chinese-made pistol and a silencer. They went to the basement of the building where there were sandbags and concrete walls. Hassan had built a makeshift shooting gallery there. The man who had guided Nagib this far through his journey gave Nagib a nod, and the traveler took several minutes to practice with his new weapon.

Then a new driver appeared with a different car, a battered 1990 Taurus with a New York license. Nagib climbed in with his new driver, who wanted to be known simply as Rashaad. He was dark-skinned and seemed more American than the previous one. He spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent, and for that reason Nagib didn’t like him.

A few minutes later they were on an expressway, going through a long tunnel. Then they were in an area of oil refineries in northern New Jersey, continuing south. They passed Philadelphia by 2:30 in the afternoon and Baltimore two hours after that. Nagib said little on this leg of the journey. Rashaad said even less. Halfway there, Nagib reached into his pocket. Folded up with some American money was a crinkled photograph of his wife, a pretty woman of twenty-four in a green prayer shawl.

The driver glanced over and spoke in Arabic.

“Put that away,” Rashaad said. “You shouldn’t even have that. I should take it from you and burn it.”

“You try to take it and I’ll break your wrist,” Nagib said. “Then I’ll break your neck.”

Rashaad swore bitterly at him but didn’t do anything. Nagib then thought better of things and put the picture away. There was an old Arab proverb: Me and my brother against my cousin, but me and my cousin against a Christian.

He spoke the proverb aloud, but the Saudi only glowered. Nagib might not have liked his partner, but there was no need to make an extra enemy either.

They continued on in silence.

There was little to talk about and little to joke about. But there was much to think about and much to plan.

EIGHT

Later the same day, as Alex tidied up some final points on the Medina securities case, she phoned one of her favorite New York hotels, the Gotham, on West 55
^th
Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. She booked herself a room for the next evening.

She followed this with a call to her FinCEN contact in New York and arranged for an interview in two days. The FinCEN offices had an address in the financial district, not too far from Ground Zero. They had a time slot open for her in the morning at 10:00 and she took it.

Then she called Joseph Collins, a philanthropist and her mentor—as much as anyone had been one. She set a meeting with him for the next afternoon at 2:00. He would meet her in his home office at Fifth Avenue and 84
^th
Street, he told her.

Her trip, though on short notice, was taking shape.

On the computer in her office, she went to the internet and booked an Amtrak ticket for the next morning. The train was easier than the airlines from Washington, she always figured, and faster too.

She glanced at her watch. If she left work on time today, which Mike had suggested, she could catch a solid workout at the gym in the evening and still have time to pack.

Tonight was her night to join in the pickup basketball with her friends at the YMCA. She had nicely worked the games back into her Wednesday schedule. She enjoyed seeing and competing against a good group of friends, and she could more than use it this evening. The tedium of being bound to a desk was slam-dunking her. And yet at the same time, she had been putting off placing the call to Federov. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe there was too much that could go wrong.

“What the heck,” she finally mused to herself, pumped a bit at getting away from the office again for a few days. “I’ll make the call and then I’m out of here.”

So her final call of the day was to the switchboard at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria, where she asked for a guest named Yuri Federov. She waited to see if he had registered there under his real name and was partially surprised to learn from the operator that indeed he had.

“Could you put me through to his suite?” she asked.

She felt her heart race. She was under no illusions about Federov’s amorous feelings for her. He was an assignment, she reminded herself. He was potentially dangerous and had to be played carefully. She often wondered if there was a shred of decency in him and had come to the conclusion that, yes, if she looked hard enough, she could find some.

Maybe not much. But some.

Then she reminded herself that the last time she had seen him was a dark night in northern Italy, and he had just executed a man who had betrayed him. Sometimes she needed to do an urgent reality check on some of the people with whom she dealt.

There was light classical music as she waited for the connection. Lord, the money that people paid for these hotels, she thought to herself, and not for the first time. How much did it cost Federov to stay in a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria? Fifteen hundred bucks a night? Two thousand? A hundred bucks an hour? Two bucks a minute?

Well, if you had stolen obscene boatloads of money you could afford to spend obscene boatloads, just as long as you didn’t blow all of it. She remembered how her mother had busted a gut just to earn five hundred dollars a week in the 1980s and thought she was doing well. Even though Alex worked in financial crime deterrence, sometimes the fiduciary realties of the modern world were surreal.

The phone in Federov’s suite rang twice. Then he picked up. His response was sharp and gruff. “Hello?”

Alex felt a final surge of nerves. Then she spoke into her phone.

“Hello, Yuri,” she said.

A slight pause. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“This is your favorite American woman, or one of them, at least.”

His mood changed. “Alex?”

“Alex,” she confirmed.

“My goodness! How wonderful!” he said. “And your spies are so efficient! I’ve hardly been here long enough to unpack.”

In the background, there was electronic conversation in Russian, most likely an internet television link playing in his suite. It scrambled her thoughts slightly to be speaking one language while hearing another one acting as a counterpoint.

“Consider yourself lucky to be here long enough to unpack,” she said, playing along.

He laughed. “I have you to thank for that.”

“Not me, my bosses,” she said.

“You’re in New York, I hope?”

“No, not yet. But I’m going to be in New York tomorrow night. Interested in having some drinks and some conversation?” To her abiding shame, she added a flirtatious tone. Oh, well, she reasoned. They both knew it was a game, and they both knew how to play.

He switched into Russian. “For you? I’ll order iced champagne in my suite. Or vodka and beluga caviar!”

She laughed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Let’s not waste time, either,” he answered. “I’m so very pleased to hear from you and would be delighted to see you.” He paused. “Even though I know you phone for business probably, not pleasure or romance, right?”

“Right,” she said.

“Then the vodka and seduction can come later,” he said. “Maybe the next day. What do you think of that?”

“I’d say it’s evidence that you’re still a dreamer,” she said.

“Hey,” he said with a laugh. “Listen, Alex LaDucova. I’m already having dinner with a friend tomorrow. We’re going down to the New York Italian Mafia neighborhood in Manhattan. What does he call it?”

“Little Italy?” she asked.

“That’s it. You come here to the Waldorf, we have a few drinks, and then you would be welcome to come along.”

“Who’s your friend? A woman or a gangster or both?”

“Neither,” he said. “Business contact in New York. He’d like to meet you, I’m sure. Very good that you called.”

She was fiddling with a pen at her desk. “All right,” she said. “How about this? Six thirty at the bar in the hotel lobby. Peacock Alley.”

“Wear something sexy,” he said. “I want to show you off.”

“And you wear a suit,” she said. “I don’t go out with men who don’t know how to dress.”

“Ouch,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, half amused, half revolted, fully intrigued. She clicked off, sighed, and wondered where life was leading her this time.

Ninety minutes later, she was at the Y, playing point guard in a pickup basketball game. Her friend Ben centered for her side. They played two twelve-minute halves and prevailed 37–32.

After a light workout with weights, she drove home. She noticed two people sitting in a battered Taurus in front of her building but thought little of it. Things like that were part of the urban landscape. No point to let paranoia get the best of her.

She parked her car beneath her building and then, wanting a little more night air, took the long way to her apartment by coming up out of the garage on the side street and walking toward her building’s front entrance.