Noel Hynd - Countdown in Cairo

The man in black stood his ground. Alex walked toward him. It wasn’t Federov, she knew, but one of his entourage, one of the tough boys whom he kept employed around the clock. That was fine. She figured he was armed, and, for that matter, she felt better that he was.

He seemed larger as she approached. He stood maybe six-four, a block of granite, with beautiful facial features: a Slavic Adonis. And idly-not that it mattered currently-Alex wondered whether he was one of the men who had so unceremoniously abducted her from Federov’s hotel a few months earlier. If he was, he gave no such indication.

“Hello,” he said, managing half a smile as she drew within a few paces.

She answered in kind. “Dobry den’! Dobry den’! Ya govoryu po roosskie. Hello. I speak Russian,” she said.

He looked at her, grinned, and sniffed.

“I speak Russian too,” he said. “Follow me.”

He said his name was Nick but didn’t say much beyond that. Nor did Alex ask for more. Nick led her for a block and then turned down another side street. They followed a high brick wall until they came to a gate. There was no number outside, no name, no marking, but Alex recognized it from her previous visit. Beyond the iron gate stood Federov’s house, window shades drawn in every room, lights blazing almost everywhere. Sometimes she thought the whole world was unmarked to her, a series of ominous enigmas to be decoded as she went along.

The man in black pushed a buzzer and waited. A voice came on in Russian. Alex’s escort mumbled something into a speaker. The two doors of the gate came heavily apart. The mist was thickening to a light rain and flirting with becoming sleet. Welcome back to winter and the darkness of a European November. Thank heaven they were at Federov’s doorstep and on their way indoors.

She remembered quite well the first-floor landing of the house, the grand entrance hall, the study to one side, the living room to the other. Nick unwrapped the scarf around his neck and Alex unwrapped hers. He led her to the salon, a room she had been in before, and Alex was thinking how different her arrival was here this time as opposed to last.

Inside the room, Federov sat in a leather chair in a corner, a light blanket upon him. Logs were burning in a fireplace. Yuri smiled at the sight of her and got to his feet with an effort.

“Hello, Yuri,” she said.

“Ah, my angel,” he said. Raising himself to his feet, she realized suddenly, was more of a struggle than it should have been. He had a heavy steel cane nearby on his left side. For a moment she needed to stifle a gasp. He looked maybe ten or fifteen pounds lighter than when she had last seen him in New York.

When she was near to him, he took her arm. His grip was nowhere nearly as strong as when they had first met. In the nightclub in Kiev, his arm had been like a vice, the strongest and most ominous arm that had ever wrapped around her shoulders. Since then there had been others, but she would never forget his strength that first night in Kiev. Tonight, his grip was tentative.

He drew her closer. She allowed him to kiss her on both cheeks, gallantly in European style. Then she drew back and he released her. There was a thin line of sweat across his brow. The room was cool, even though the fire was going nicely in the fireplace.

“You’re not well,” she said in English. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

At best, he was a man in recovery; at worst, a man in steep decline.

“Ah,” he said, raising a hand dismissively. “I had some bad elements inside me. Not just my personal nature, my soul, but my body too,” he said, trying to make light of it. “I had some surgery and am having some treatments. The doctors. Russian. American. French. In the end, what do they know, what can they do? If they’re not treating you like a pincushion with their needles, they cut you up like a piece of meat.”

He slid back into the chair, landing heavily.

“Will you be all right?” she asked.

“I will be fine. No disease is stronger than Yuri Federov.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said.

“You’ve traveled far. Would I lie?”

“Yes, you would. May I ask you what’s wrong?”

“You may ask, but I will choose not to answer. We can talk today of many things, and I will answer honestly. But my physical condition is off limits, hey. Maybe at a later date. So now, what else?”

A woman appeared in modest uniform. Yuri introduced her. Her name was Marie-Louise. She looked very Swiss in a white blouse and a trim black pencil skirt that went to just above the knee. Not surprisingly, Marie-Louise was very pretty. She seemed to be Federov’s housekeeper and her obligations were probably limited to only that because these days he didn’t look fit enough to be keeping a live-in paramour.

In fact, Alex hated to admit, he looked like a shell of himself. She reckoned if it wasn’t from illness, it was from medications. Heavy ones. She had always thought of him primarily as an evil man, perhaps beyond forgiveness, but now she felt sympathy and sorrow. Sometimes she didn’t understand her own emotions, her own sense of decency, just as at other times she had trouble understanding people who lacked the same. But the vision of him today was like getting punched in the stomach.

“May we serve you some tea?” Federov asked.

“That would be wonderful,” Alex answered.

“And you’ll stay for dinner?”

“That would be excellent too.”

“I assume you have a hotel reservation?”

“I do.”

“Good. We will cancel it,” he said. “Your former room has been readied for you here-I insist. Unfortunately, this medication has left me very weak today, so I can barely even dream of pursuing you amorously. So you will sleep undisturbed.”

“That will be a change,” she said.

“My regret,” he said.

“I’m sure.”

“Then you’ll stay?”

She drew a breath. “I’ll stay.”

The tea arrived with biscuits. As Marie-Louise served them, Alex moved to the point of her visit.

“I want to talk to you about Vladimir Putin, Yuri,” Alex said.

Federov laughed cautiously. “Normally you want to talk to me about Chekhov or Dostoyevsky. Now you want to talk to me about Putin. How would you say it in English? Your interests have declined several notches.”

“Degenerated?” she suggested.

“That’s it.”

“But for professional purposes, I need to ask some questions,” Alex said. “There’s something so obvious, so apparent, it was in front of me the whole time, you with your company, the Caspian Group. You used to sell energy, right? And your power and influence in Kiev.”

Federov shook his head. “So what about all this?” he asked.

“I want to put a theory to you. About Kiev, what happened. And you. And Vladimir Putin.”

“All hail the great Putin,” he said sourly, an echo of the 1930s propaganda posters that hailed “The Great Stalin.”

“You can hail him all you want, Yuri,” she said, “although I’m not going to join you. Putin is taking the country in ominous directions, is he not? Much of what has happened recently is a great departure, isn’t it? Fifteen years after Boris Yeltsin’s standoff with the Soviet Union from a tank turret in Moscow, Russia isn’t just turning away from democracy, it’s sprinting full speed in the opposite direction and redeveloping its nuclear arsenal.”

“If you say so,” Federov said.

Then he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

“Things are much better than they used to be in Russia,” he allowed. “Now there is food in the supermarkets. There are many privileges. There were so many unsuccessful changes that what goes on now is justified. Putin’s priority is order, order, and more order. This comes as a relief to most Russians.” He paused. “But you are also right. Putin wishes to be the new czar. He rebuilds the Russian empire not on Western ideals but in his own image.”