Conspiracy in Kiev Read Online Free PDF Page A

refrained from joining in. Robert listened patiently. Alex watched the man at the bar while Gus was speaking, using the mirror above the bottles. The man kept watching her.
    It wasn’t her imagination, she decided. He was watching her and she had seen him before. But where? When their eyes hit head-on a third time, he finished his drink and hurried out.
    Gus talked them into the baklava for dessert. Alex was glad she had spent the time in the gym. Gus’s baklava was delicious but portions were huge. Gus left their table. Alex turned to her fiancé. “There was a man at the bar watching me,” she said.
    “Can’t say I blame him.”
    “This isn’t funny, Black Dog.”
    Robert looked to the bar. “Where is he?”
    “He just left.”
    “Okay, if he comes back in, I’ll pull the jealous boyfriend thing and shoot him. We might have to delay the wedding for twelve years while I serve the manslaughter charge.”
    “That’s not where I’m going with this.”
    “Okay, you shoot him.”
    “Not funny,” she said. “He was watching me as if he had a reason. He just left. Fifteen seconds ago.”
    His eyes slid to the doorway. “Okay,” he said. He got to his feet, went quickly to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the cold.
    He was back in a minute. He sat down.
    “Sorry. No one,” he said. “Just the usual muggers, junkies, and car thieves.”
    “Not in this neighborhood,” she said.
    “Okay. I didn’t see anyone.”
    She settled slightly. “Thanks for looking.”
    Being with Robert relaxed Alex, but through the whole evening there was only one thing she could think about.
    Ukraine. She began to ask more questions.
    “Look, normally they’d leave you alone after the Lagos trip,” he said. “But you know how the government works. Turn down the mission they want you to do and you don’t get the next one that you want to do.”
    There was another quiet moment as she simmered. “Next you’ll tell me it’s not dangerous.”
    “It’s very dangerous.”
    “So why don’t they get one of those big six-foot-six guys in your department, the ones who block the view of the president when the prez is dumb enough to go shaking hands in hostile-action places like New York and Philadelphia?”
    “They need a woman for this and all of the six-six ones are currently playing pro basketball.”
    “Very funny,” she said. “Look, what do they want me to do? Go undercover at a night club in Odessa, swing around a pole, and listen in on gangsters?”
    “I’d love to see that,” he said.
    “Well, you won’t. And neither will anyone else.”
    “Presidential visit,” he said. “That makes it top priority. The personnel computer spit out your name as someone who spoke Russian as well as the other major European languages. I saw your name because the list went by the Secret Service. They’re probably going to want you to learn some Ukrainian too.”
    She groaned. “I was planning to spend the next few weeks planning a wedding, sitting around with my husband-to-be, going to movies, and maybe reading a trashy novel or two.”
    He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.
    The more she thought about it this evening, the more the concept bothered her. She made a mini-decision. She would listen politely at State the next morning and then give them a firm but polite, “No way!”
    There. That settled that.
    Who was in charge of her life, anyway?
    Her or them?

SIX
     
    A lex returned home, picking up her mail in the lobby, giving a friendly nod to the concierge. She fumbled with two bags, flowers, and mail as she walked past.
    Alex lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a modern building called Calvert Arms Apartments on Calvert Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, in the Cleveland Park neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of the city. It was a comfortable quiet building built in the mid-sixties, filled with young single people—students, interns, people just starting their first job out of college, and government