The Intercontinental Hotel occupied a small triangle of land on the corner of Rylskyi Lane and Volodymyrska Street. The lavish eleven-story guesthouse occupied a spot across the square from St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery. It boasted a five-star classification and luxury accommodations that—according to its literature—were “designed to satisfy the most pretentious guest.” Upon seeing her room, Jordan bought into the propaganda.
Mrs. Linwood had booked herself into the Royal Suite with a connecting executive room for Jordan. Hers was a third of the size with no free minibar, but the room came with a large king-sized bed, a soaker tub, full use of the Club Intercontinental, and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered stunning views of the city. The weather had cleared, and the sun reflected brightly off the golden domes of the cathedrals.
The first thing Jordan wanted was a shower. After doing her best to scrub the stink of the crash site off her skin, she drew a fresh tub of water and tried soaking away the memories. Images of the burning wreckage, the shattered bodies, and the car explosion had become rooted in her mind. She couldn’t shake the thought that in spite of all the devastation that had occurred, there was ultimately a bigger price to be exacted.
If only she could figure out the end game.
A half hour later, she toweled off and reverified the duty schedule. She had four hours before she needed to report. That gave her plenty of time to pay a visit to the Kyiv Medical University of UAFM. It was the school where Jordan’s father had allegedly studied and taught prior to playing goalie for the Russian National Hockey Team. It was also where he’d allegedly met Ilya Brodsky and been recruited as a KGB spy. Allegedly.
Just the thought of Brodsky caused her stomach to tighten and her insides to crawl. She had blocked all memories of the man until their paths had crossed in Israel. A former Russian soldier, he’d emigrated to Tel Aviv after her father’s death, where he’d reinvented himself as a Shin Bet colonel. Their meeting hadn’t been friendly.
Since then, she couldn’t shake the childhood memories where he played a role. The times at her home, out for dinners, at the hockey rink. She remembered her father encouraging her to call him dyadya, uncle, as one sometimes did with close family friends. She remembered Brodsky drank too much, his icy-blue eyes, and how her mother always seemed fearful when he was around. And then there was the endless loop of him threatening her father just two nights before he’d died.
Jordan exited the Intercontinental and headed south. UAFM was located twenty-five minutes away and a straight shot down Volodymyrska Street. As she walked along, she tried imagining what life had been like when her father had lived in this city. She imagined a more stark and monochromatic world. Long before his birth, the Soviets had banned all manifestations of Ukrainian patriotism, while today the colors of Ukraine festooned the buildings. Yellow-and-blue flags draped the balcony railings, colored the alcoves, and served as neckerchiefs on the statuary in defiance of the politics that divided them. The pro-Russians on one side and those who believed Ukraine’s future lay with the west on the other. One constant thread bound them together—nationalism.
Her father’s legacy had helped forge a different kind of unity among the Soviet people. Born in Ukraine, he had risen to fame as the star goalie of the Russian National Ice Hockey Team. His countrymen had loved him, and Jordan had never tired of hearing the stories of his glory days or of how he had captured the heart of the beautiful Frances Jordan. Theirs had been a fairytale romance, the Russian and the American. Defying all odds, they’d married, had two children, and then, when Rae was six, her father was murdered.
She recalled the sound of her mother keening at the news; the images of her father resting in his casket at center ice. The sadness and confusion that surrounded that day had never completely dissipated. It steered her life, driving her into her present job.
Looking back, she could see the clues suggesting her father was more than he seemed. There was the large number of soldiers in attendance at his funeral. There were the dour men in suits who came to offer their condolences, men like Ilya Brodsky. And then there was the speed with which her mother had whisked them back to the States. Within months, Frances had changed their last name and begun the slow process of excising their father from their lives. Until six months ago, when she’d met Alena Petrenko, and he’d once more become the specter in the room.
That meeting with Alena had turned her world upside down. Jordan would never forget escorting the Americans under her protection to that appointment and meeting the tall, ethereal person who called herself a doctor. A Russian Jew, she claimed she knew Rae’s father and insisted he was more than just a talented hockey player. According to Alena, he was a gifted teacher of alternative medicine and worse—a spy.
When Jordan’s mother refused to discuss it, Jordan was left with no option but to launch her own covert investigation. So far, she didn’t like what she’d turned up.
A honk pulled her out of her reverie. Jumping back to the curb, she raised a hand in apology to the driver and chastised herself for her lapse of attentiveness. She’d reached an intersection where the street narrowed, with Shevchenko Park closing in on one side and the bright red buildings of Taras Shevchenko National University pressing close on the other. Not only were there more cars and bicycles, but the pedestrian traffic had also changed from business types to hordes of hurrying students.
Waiting at the corner for the light to change, she caught sight of a tall man with unruly dark hair who looked vaguely familiar. When she turned, he ducked into a doorway.
A student, or was he following her?
Paying closer attention to the people around her, Jordan crossed with the light. Within a few moments, the same man exited the doorway and started traveling a route behind her. He looked to be about her age, wearing a dark T-shirt and blue jeans. Then catching a glimpse of his face in a window reflection, she realized where she’d seen him before. He was the journalist who’d taken her picture at the site of the ambush.
But why was he following her now? There was nothing newsworthy in what she was doing.
Maybe someone had put him up to it.
Her heart raced. There was only one person she could think of who might care where she went and who she talked to in Ukraine—Ilya Brodsky. She might not be able to expose him as a former KGB agent without exposing her father and thus jeopardizing her job, but she might find proof he’d had something to do with her father’s murder. Other than herself and her immediate family members, he was the only one who might be harmed by the information she uncovered about her father. Did Brodsky intend to stop her from digging? Or maybe he just wanted to know what she discovered.
Jordan forced herself to think rationally. There were any number of other reasons the journalist might be following her. He might be connected to the Russians, acting as their eyes and ears here and in Hoholeve. Or he might have seen her lifting the fragment or concealing the envelope. Hell, maybe he just fancied himself the next Anderson Cooper.
So what’s the play, Rae? she asked herself. At this point, she needed either to shake this man, confront him, or abort her mission.
She’d been trained to know that if you spot someone once, it’s likely an accident. If you spot someone twice, it’s apt to be a coincidence. If you spot someone three times, it’s an enemy action. At this point, she had to consider her tracker an adversary. The next step was to figure out if he was operating on his own or as part of a team.
A quick scan of the area pulled up some potential accomplices—the young mother with a stroller sitting on a bench near the park entrance or the man standing idle near the open gate. If he had a team, and they were any good, she would likely never pick out any others.
Keeping the reporter in her peripheral vision, Jordan moved toward the park entrance. While she was well-trained to ID people following her, shaking them was a different matter. At the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLECT, they’d been taught a variety of surveillance techniques. The preferred method for dealing with someone following you was to bore him to death. The basic concept was to let the person, or persons, follow you around while you lead them nowhere in hopes they’ll eventually move on. Other tactics included the “pause and turn,” where you let your tracker know you’ve spotted him, and “the acknowledgment,” where you actually confront your tail.
Right now, the latter seemed the most plausible option, provided she could lure him into a trap of her own.
Cutting toward the park, Jordan kept tabs on her tail out of the corner of her eye. Stopping at the park entrance, she made a show of photographing the ornate gate before flipping the camera to selfie mode. After snapping a few photographs of her tail as he crossed the street, she uploaded it through a secure link into the DSS facial recognition software. With luck, she would get back a name.
Putting away her phone, she cut into the park, quickening her pace to put a little distance between herself and the journalist. The young mother rose as she passed, only to be greeted by another woman with two small children in tow. They headed off toward the playground. The man standing near the gate ground his cigarette out and turned away from the park. Her man appeared to be working alone.
According to the map she’d consulted before striking out for UAFM, a shortcut through the park was the quickest route to her destination. Now with all the path choices and outlets, the park seemed tailor-made for a game of cat and mouse.
Jordan slowed her pace and assessed her surroundings. Like everything else in the Ukraine, what once showed signs of grandeur had crumbled under the strain of the economy. Grass grew deep on either side of the cracked asphalt pathways and encroached on the small garden areas already choked with weeds. Paint peeled off brightly colored benches, streetlamps were devoid of bulbs, and yet people were everywhere.
Men and women walked with purpose, dressed for business, but with no jobs to go to. Screaming children ran circles around their mothers. Couples strolled hand in hand. Students lay in the weedy grass in the shade of the trees, more interested in their study partners than in the books cracked open beside them.
After a few minutes of walking, Jordan pivoted and doubled back. The plan was to confront the man following her, but he was nowhere in sight. Had she lost him, or had he realized what she was up to and hidden himself? Maybe spotting him on the road had just been a coincidence, or maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe.