Magical girls, indeed.
“Yes, Mimi?” he asked.
She looked at the detectives at the table, two of which had been on the force longer than she had been alive, as had Lt. Rizzo. Ten professional eyes stared back at her in silence. Eight of them were hostile. Rizzo’s were adoring.
“May I mention something?” she asked.
“Of course you may, Mimi,” Rizzo said. “These officers are under my command. Anything you say to me I would relate to them immediately, and as you can probably tell, they are in dire need of all the help they can get. So please tell us what you have.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” she said, “but maybe it’s something.”
Mimi sat down at the table and Rizzo closed the door.
Mimi had been doing some research and some digging, she explained, trying to relate the ballistics tests that Rizzo had shown her to anything else going on in Europe. So, helpful young chick that Mimi was, she hacked into some English-language military sites just to check out some pictures of real sailors and see what else was there.
Penetrating fifty million dollars of US Defense Department software took Mimi six and a half minutes. The United States Naval Station at Rota, Spain, she discovered, had recently finished its part of an annual weapon and ammunition moving and tracking exercise called CAWDS.
Under the CAWDS, or Containerized Ammunition Weapons & Distribution System, several boatloads of small arms and ammunition had been moved in standard shipping containers by air and sea.
The exercise had started in September 2007 and had run through June 2008. Under the system, computerized, numerical micro-imprints had been placed on all equipment to further facilitate their tracking.
“It’s a very complex process,” Mimi said. “But as we all know,” she said, “firearms examiners use a comparison microscope to determine whether or not a bullet was fired from a particular firearm. The comparison is based on the individual marking left on fired ammunition components that are unique to a particular firearm. That’s how we have the linkage of the weapons used in these two cases that Lieutenant Rizzo is discussing.”
“Good so far,” Rizzo said. His instincts told him to trust her.
“But the CAWDS system suggests something further,” she said. “Apparently one of the boxes of containerized ammunition disappeared from a United States Navy warehouse in Sardinia. Stolen, in other words. It was, or so it was believed, hijacked by members of the Sicilian Mafia who sold the contents on the black market.”
Rizzo blinked rapidly several times. This was all taking on a bizarre geometry.
“The pistols involved had been inventoried at Rota, Spain,” she said. “The guns were unique among their manufacture because the others of the same series have never been removed from their shipping containers. I ran an Internet check. They are all in the hands of the US Navy except this one crate that was stolen. One of these pistols was used in these two crimes.”
Mimi pushed a printout in front of the detectives at the table. They leaned forward to see it.
“So?” Rizzo pressed. “Anything else?”
“Si, Tenente,” Mimi said. “The rest of the pistols turned up in southeastern Europe,” Mimi said, “in the hands of underworld people there. We know this from recent arrests. The stolen naval cargo seems to have been trafficked by an agency called The Caspian Group.”
“Caspian?” Rizzo asked. “As in, the ‘Caspian Sea’?”
“Mafia ucraina,” Mimi said. “It’s a supposition and I might be wrong. But you could link all four of these assassinations to gangsters from Kiev.”
FORTY-TWO
At 11:00 a.m. on the dot, the gates of the US Embassy in Kiev swung open. The police escort emerged first, Ukrainian vehicles first, sirens blaring. A phalanx of police poured onto Kotsyubynskoho. Ukrainian flags flew on the front and rear of the cars. A few moments later, the president’s limousine pulled out of the gates of the embassy compound. It moved onto Kotsyubynskoho, then followed the streets of Kiev, closely guarded by American vehicles.
Alex rode in the eighth car, an armour-enforced van. She had a window. Federov, who had arrived punctually at the embassy at 10:00, sat beside her in a middle seat.
“Still expecting trouble?” she asked him in Russian.
He didn’t directly address the question. “I’ve told you everything I can,” he said.
She turned away and watched history unfurl before her through bulletproof glass.
The streets again were lined with spectators. Again snow flurries swept across the city. Most spectators were cheering, craning their necks for a view of the lead car of the motorcade. There were many old people who had lived through the very hard times. They remembered Stalin and the war and never thought they would lay eyes on the leader of America, much less live in a more open society. There were younger people who remembered the Orange Revolution and still held dearly to its principles. There were middle-aged people who had lived through Ukrainian Communism and had accepted it as their fate or even believed in it. They mostly just remembered, all of them, huddled together against the frigid weather.
The motorcade crept through the city streets, an armada of Mercedes limousines, including empty backups in case of a disaster. They moved as quickly as safety would permit. At each crossroad there were heavily armed police and soldiers, Ukrainian and American, who secured the intersections and kept wary eyes peeled for trouble.
The trip to Kiev’s Cathedral of St. Sophia was only a few blocks away. But more than twenty thousand people lined the way. Many were part of religious groups, pilgrims, Eastern Christians who had travelled to the city for the event, many just to see the American president. Many had camped out on the streets overnight and huddled together for warmth. Some raised crosses. Some waved the flags of their church. Others waved American flags, others Ukrainian. Some held Christian signs in English for the president to view.
John 12:24.
Matthew 19:34.
Long live America.
One bearded man in his early thirties stood out from the rest. He was wrapped in blankets and carried a placard in English. Jesus is the answer!
Federov, the sceptic, snorted slightly.
He spoke English now. “If Jesus is the answer,” he said, “what was the question?”
“Does it matter?” she volleyed back. “Any question.”
“Of course,” he said.
For some reason, this man in blankets caught the attention of the president, who rolled down the window and waved, breath visible against the rush of cold air into the car. The crowd was delighted. Not too far away stood a delegation of Pentecostal churches from all over Ukraine. They stood not far from their devout brethren from evangelical churches all over the new nation. The Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations in Ukraine. Thousands of people took up a chant in English. “Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the answer.”
Then the motorcade came to a sudden stop. A radio crackled in the front of Alex’s van. Two of the security people in the van stepped out. The president must have been looking for the groups of Christians because, to the horror of the Secret Service, the limo stopped and the president stepped out.
From the angle of her own vehicle, Alex could press her head against the window and see what was happening. Security people flooded the streets to mark a cordon for the president. The American leader moved toward the delirious crowd of Christians, making sure photographers could capture the moment, pushing to the first row and extending both hands. Clearly, the moment was important to the president. The crowd surged forward but was well controlled, euphoric. For a quarter of a minute, the president moved from right to left and touched as many hands as possible, then retreated to the limousine, waving and smiling, basking in the cheers.