Command Authority

47

Clark, Chavez, and Caruso had returned from the action in the Crimea to a capital city rife with protest marches and riots. Political infighting dominated the news, and criminal gangs shot it out with local police in the streets of Kiev.

After reuniting with the rest of their team at the safe-house flat, Igor Kryvov drove Clark to the Fairmont Grand Hotel, where he expected to slip right back into his cover as a disaffected journalist who had decided to put the deluxe room at a five-star hotel on his expense account.

But as soon as he arrived at the front door of the hotel, Clark realized there had been some changes made during his two-day absence.

His first indication that all was not as before came when he was stopped outside the door to the lobby by a uniformed officer from Kiev’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and asked for his passport. Clark handed over his cover credos, and while the stern-faced officer looked at them Clark helpfully mentioned that he was a guest at the Fairmont.

The officer passed back the passport and said, “Not anymore. The hotel is closed.”

Before Clark could respond, a hotel employee appeared, took Clark’s name and room number, and with profuse, embarrassed apologies explained that his luggage would be brought down, but Clark would have to find other arrangements in the city.

Clark responded with confusion and insolence, but only because it fit his cover to do so. In truth, he’d had a look inside the lobby when the employee came out, and he could tell exactly what was going on now. The Seven Strong Men had taken over the entire hotel, and local police and even Ministry of Internal Affairs men were now protecting the building, keeping out anyone who did not belong.

This was an interesting development. To Clark it meant that some portion of the Ukrainian government, at both the local and the state level, was blatantly supporting the actions of Gleb the Scar and the Seven Strong Men.

Clark wondered if an actual coup would be the next step, or if all the supporters of the Russian criminals here in the city planned on just sitting tight and waiting for the Russians to invade and take over the country.

Clark retrieved his luggage from the hotel and then returned to the safe house. He knew he would need to find a new safe house closer to the hotel so they could monitor the comings and goings. It was beginning to look like the Fairmont was ground zero for some sort of an insurrection here in Ukraine, and Clark wanted to be close enough to the action to understand the players and the game.

They spent the evening tracking down potential places to move in the city center. While checking into this, the men dug into a dinner of steaks and salads picked up by Igor at a nearby restaurant. As always, the TV was on Ukraine’s ICTV channel and the volume was up disturbingly high to render any listening devices useless. The six men in the flat had spent the evening tuning out the sounds, but a news story at the top of the eleven p.m. news turned the head of Igor Kryvov first, and then, seconds later, John and Ding, because they understood Russian well enough to decipher the Ukrainian on TV.

Igor translated for the others: “There’s going to be a speech in an hour in front of the Verkhovna Rada building, that’s the parliament building in Constitution Square. The press is going to cover it live. Oksana Zueva will be there.”

“Who’s that?” Driscoll asked.

“She’s the head of the pro-Russian bloc in our parliament. If the nationalists get thrown out of power, she is a lock to become the next prime minister.”

Chavez asked, “She’s that popular?”

Igor shrugged. “Valeri Volodin supports her, so her party gets money and backing in secret from the Russians.”

While they were talking, Gavin, who had been sitting at his desk tracking the GPS transmitters throughout the city, looked up. “Did you say something about Constitution Square?”

Igor said, “Yeah. I was saying that’s where the speech is about to take place.”

Gavin grabbed a notepad off the table and jotted something down, then passed it to Driscoll. He read it, then passed it on to the next man in the room.

When it came to Ding, he read it. “The first vehicle we tagged the other day — designated Target Vehicle Number One — is in Constitution Square right now and stationary. Appears to be parked.”

Ding looked at Dom. Aloud, and for the benefit of any mikes that could pick up his voice over the television, he said, “You know, we really ought to take a camera down to that speech and get some footage.”

Dom quickly cut off a huge bite of his steak. Before he stuck it in his mouth, he said, “Let’s do it. I’ll grab the gear.”

Forty-five minutes later, Chavez and Caruso pulled up to the Verkhovna Rada building, where the national parliament of Ukraine met. It took a while to find a place to park on Constitution Square; the space was by no means packed, but several hundred people were milling about near a riser and a dais in front of the huge neoclassical building, listening to speeches and waiting for the main event.

Dozens of media groups were represented in the crowd, pressed together in a gaggle directly in front of the riser. Ding and Dom took their video camera, checked to make sure their press credentials were hanging around their necks, and headed toward the pack.

They had their Bluetooth earpieces in so they could stay in constant communication with Gavin Biery back in the safe house. Gavin spoke softly when he spoke at all; usually, he did his best to obfuscate his comments in case anyone was able to hear him through the FSB listening devices that were certainly in the safe house.

As they walked toward the riser across the square, Gavin directed the two men to the parking lot where the target vehicle was parked. When they arrived, however, they found the lot was behind a locked gate inside the Verkhovna Rada building itself.

This was interesting, in that even though they couldn’t get close enough to the SUV to learn anything about its owners, it showed them that the guys who had met with Gleb the Scar the other day somehow had the juice to park their ride on Ukrainian government property.

They headed over to the riser and barged through the crowd toward the front as if they were members of an actual media outlet.

There were several politicians present at the made-for-TV rally; some had already spoken, but the headline act was just about to get under way.

The lone female on the riser was Oksana Zueva, and every reporter in attendance was here because of her. Zueva was the leader of the Ukrainian Regional Unity Party, the leading pro-Russian party in the country, and she had not been shy about her interest in running for prime minister in the next election.

Today’s speech was expected to be little more than a list of grievances against the pro-nationalist One Ukraine Party. This declaration against the party in power would bring Oksana even closer to pro-Russians in the east, it would endear her to Moscow, and it would put her well on the way to earning the complete backing of Moscow in the next election, a crucial component to victory.

Although Zueva and her husband had been accused of all sorts of corruption in her time as a powerful parliamentarian, the One Ukraine Party had failed in its attempts to marginalize her or pin any sort of corruption directly on her, and her intelligence as well as her ease in front of the cameras had gone a long way to softening her image, even though the votes she had cast in the building behind her were among the most hard-line in the Ukrainian parliament.

Regardless of one’s politics, though, one had to admit Oksana was a beautiful and striking woman. A fifty-year-old blonde, she usually kept her hair braided in a traditional Ukrainian style, and she wore chic designer clothes that had subtle but unmistakable influences of Ukrainian traditional dress.

While Ding and Dom watched and recorded the event, they had their eyes open for the two men they photographed at the Fairmont getting into the vehicle designated Target One. They scanned the crowd here in the square, but there were a lot of faces in poor light, so they knew that chances were slim they would get lucky and make a positive ID.

While they looked around, Zueva was introduced by one of her party leaders. She rose from her chair and, with a practiced wave and a smile that even managed to charm the two Americans firmly on the side of the opposition to her pro-Russian cause, she began walking to the microphone.

She never made it.

There was a loud crack; many press outlets in attendance would later report it sounded like a car’s backfire, but Dom and Ding knew instantly it was the sound of a high-powered rifle.

Oksana Zueva rocked back on her feet onto the heels of her stilettos, her smile disappeared and a look of confusion was caught in all the cameras, and then she crumpled softly to the carpeted riser, ending up on her back.

Blood appeared on her breasts.

The bouncing echoes of the gunshot across the neoclassical façade of the Verkhovna Rada building made determining the location of the gunshot all but impossible. Security men spun around with their weapons in the air while the dozens of journalists ducked to the ground. The crowd began screaming and shouting and running in all directions.

Ding and Dom dove down on the ground like all the journalists and spectators around them, but their eyes scanned the area, and they tried to determine the direction from which the gunshot had come by the location of the wound on the woman’s chest.

They focused on the park to the west on the other side of Grushevsky Street.

They leapt to their feet and ran toward their car across the square, but by the time they began driving in the direction of the park, traffic had ground to a halt as police began setting up roadblocks.

Chavez slammed his hand onto the steering wheel in frustration.

Caruso spoke into his headset: “Gavin. Target One. Is the vehicle moving?”

There was a pause. “Yes. It’s heading west through the park.”

Chavez looked at the roadblock ahead. The SUV with the slap-on was already on the other side, and it would be long gone by the time they got through.

“Shit. They are gone.”

Dom said, “I don’t get it. Gleb the Scar is here working on behalf of the Russians, right?”

“It sure as hell seems that way. He’s working as a proxy for the FSB.”

“But that woman who just got assassinated was Russia’s favorite politician in Ukraine. Why the hell would Russia be involved with her death?”

Ding would have answered the question, had Dom not answered it himself.

Dom said, “Of course, if the head of the pro-Russian party gets whacked, all the blame is going to go on the pro-nationalists.”

“Yep,” Chavez said. “It’s going to increase the fighting between the two sides. And who the fuck do you think is going to come in and restore order?”

Caruso whistled softly. “Shit, Ding. If the Kremlin killed their own politician in Kiev, that’s pretty cold-blooded.”

They peeled out of the line of cars and turned in the opposite direction. There was no point in trying to track the tagged vehicle now; they could pick up surveillance on it at any time.