Noel Hynd - Countdown in Cairo

“No.”

“So Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of fraud. A bit later, Putin took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse in the share price and eventual bankruptcy. Khodorkovsky was sentenced to eight years in prison. The sentence was seen as a warning, wasn’t it, as to what happens if an individual other than Putin gets too powerful? In fact, an aide to President Putin once admitted that the Khodorkovsky prosecution was a warning to the Russian business community. And all of that, Yuri, brings us back to you. You too were too powerful. All by yourself you were able to broker an agreement between the established and the reform factions in Kiev. You worked both sides of the Orange Revolution. Who knows exactly whose side you were on when those RPGs started to fall near the American president, but I am sure you had a lot to do with it, much that you’ve never even confessed to me.”

“We all have our dirty secrets, hey?” he said. “Maybe someday you forgive me for mine.”

“Some of us have more secrets than others,” she said. “You more than me, for example.”

Alex knew she had him just where she wanted him. She had marched him through unpleasant recent history for almost an hour, feinting in her line of questioning, darting one way and then the next, revealing casually what she knew that he didn’t know she knew, interspersing it with an accurate recap of what had gone on in Kiev.

Federov’s eyes were riveted on hers now, but he was like an abused dog. He didn’t know whether he was about to get a treat or a kick in the ribs.

“I’m going to tell you the end of my theory now, Yuri,” Alex said. “In response, I want the truth. I’m only going to do this once. Our relationship depends on your being more forthright than you’ve ever been. Understand?”

“Maybe,” he said with a quick, nervous smile.

“After you solved a problem for Putin, you also created one for him. You were just a little too big in Ukraine. Maybe too popular, maybe even too powerful. After all, you were another hand on the gas lines, and Putin wanted to control those himself.”

Federov didn’t flinch.

“He could have had you arrested in Ukraine. For what? Who knows? He could have done away with you the way he did away with Khodorkovsky. But for you he would have wanted to make the exit more complete. So, through one of the back channels between Moscow and Washington, he started feeding information on you to the Americans. To the CIA and the FBI. Putin was brilliant at such things. In the same way he pawned off on the Americans his problem with the Islamic freedom fighters in Chechnya, he decided to pawn you off as well. The CIA became involved, and Michael Cerny became the point man for the operations. They tried to assassinate you two or three times but it didn’t work. Then the US president was going to Ukraine, and I was sent to keep tabs on you and see where and when you might be vulnerable. I’m sure there was a plan to take you out in Kiev, but with the presidential visit going on, there was too much activity, so it wasn’t possible to do anything at the time.”

She paused.

“I noticed that you went underground after Kiev,” she said. “You pulled out of your businesses in Russia and Kiev completely and rarely set foot in either place. In fear of your life?”

“I live in Switzerland and never go back to Ukraine,” he said. “I’m forty-nine years old and do you know what my goal is? I’d like to celebrate my fiftieth birthday.”

“And I can’t imagine why.”

“Can’t you?”

“That’s irony, Yuri. You say one thing to mean the opposite.”

“Like when Putin says uvidimsia. The word means, ‘I’ll see you.’ But when he says it this actually means he wants to cut your throat.”

She paused again.

“Who called in the rocket attack on the presidential visit?”

“Filoruski,” he said again. “Pro-Russian dissidents in Ukraine who feared an alliance with the West.”

“Your answer hasn’t changed from last time. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” he said.

“Then answer two more things for me,” she said.

“Sure.”

“History as I related it from 1999 to present, vis-a-vis you and Putin and the gas crisis in Ukraine. Do I have it correctly?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And your relationship with Putin,” she said. “You did business, you knew each other well, you both profited from the gas crisis in your own way. But then you were too big for Putin’s liking. So you needed to be taken down. I’m correct?”

“It’s a good theory,” he said.

“So I can take that as a ‘yes’?” she asked.

He made an expansive gesture with his hands.

“It’s a ‘yes,’ ” Federov said.

She leaned back. “Excellent, Yuri,” she said. “Our business is concluded for the day. Now we can relax and have dinner.”

Federov seemed relieved that the inquisition was over.

“Oh! And, sorry, there is one more thing,” she said as an afterthought.

She extended a hand to help Federov to his feet. In the doorway, Nick loomed. She reasoned he had been listening the entire time. But it didn’t matter.

“This propensity for poisoning people with radioactive material,” she said. “That seems particular to Putin.”

“It is,” he said. “Very!”

Steadied, he used his cane to take a first step toward the dining area. Nick appeared close by, offered an arm and shielded him from a potential fall.

“So it would only be done on Putin’s orders?” she asked.

“You would need access to the materials,” Federov said. “Even in Russia that would be difficult without the help of officials. But you see, look at the bigger picture. Nothing like that happens without the say-so from the top man,” he said. “So if you have some radioactive poison, you follow it back. It all leads to the same place.”

“So if poison were planted against someone, the order would have come straight from the top,” she said, not as a question but as a statement. “And whoever was doing it would be linked to Putin.”

“That’s how it works,” he said. “Hey?”

“Hey,” she said softly.

The aroma of a roasted chicken filled the downstairs. Obviously, Marie-Louise earned her keep in more ways than one.

“Thank you, Yuri,” she said. “You’ve been more than helpful. That really is all.”

“Then I have one question for you,” he said.

“What’s that?”

He paused. Fatigue was all over him. “What is your favorite color?” he asked.

“My favorite color?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

A moment. Then, “Blue,” she said. “Why?”

“I’m like you,” he said. “There are things I have always wanted to ask.”

Alex awoke early the next morning to the vibration of her cell phone. She answered it while still in bed and found herself talking to “Fitzgerald,” who was still in Egypt. He gave her a moment while she sought to clear the early morning mist from her brain.

Then, “How did your visit go?” he asked.

“I got what I needed,” she said.

“I hope you didn’t bother to unpack,” he said.

“I’m traveling today,” she said.

“You’re not the only one, we think,” he said.

“Uh-oh,” she said, sitting up in bed. “Do tell.”

She looked at her watch. It was 7:36 a.m. in Geneva, an hour later in Cairo. Across her bedroom her overnight bag hadn’t been touched, and beyond the window was another cold, gray Swiss morning.

“One of the license plates we discussed the other day,” Fitzgerald said. “The car is apparently out of the shop. It’s moving again.”

By license plates, he meant passport numbers. One of the five. And by car, he meant Michael Cerny.