“I remember,” Rizzo said.

“Two days ago in Langley, I was shown a file about an Egyptian spymaster who went to his death out a window in London. One of those ‘jumped-or-pushed?’ cases.”

“What was the man’s name?”

“Dr. Ishraf Kerwidi,” she said. “He had links to several intelligence agencies.”

“I know of him, and I know of the case,” Rizzo said.

“In the report that I read, the name of one of the investigators rang a bell with me,” she said, “Rolland Fitzgerald.”

Rizzo was nodding. “Yes. The young Englishman from Scotland Yard. Pleasant fellow. He didn’t contribute much in Madrid, but I rather liked him.”

“Would you be able to contact him?” she asked. “Pick his mind a little. I can forward to you by secure internet a copy of the report I’m working with. See if there’s anything further he can provide.”

“You don’t want to contact him directly?”

“No,” she said. “Mr. Fitzgerald might be more inclined to share an extra detail with another member of a European service, rather than an American. Additionally, if I’m on my way to Cairo, I don’t want to raise any extra flags.”

Rizzo stared down at his hands, not answering but thinking. Then his gaze shot back up to meet hers. “And you want me to pass along any extra details that I can discover without revealing that I’m passing it along to you.”

“Yes,” she said. “Any small detail might be useful. But I also do not want to call any additional attention to myself by inquiring about a high profile spy case that touches upon the Egyptians.”

“So Fitzgerald should not know where the inquiry is coming from. Or where his information is going?”

“That’s correct,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t trust Fitzgerald, but who knows where his own contacts are compromised? If you make the inquiries, he won’t think much of it. Dr. Kerwidi used to live in Rome. If there’s a further inquiry from an American, he’ll be more guarded.”

“I’ll contact him for you,” Rizzo said. “Send me the information you have and give me two or three days to run things around. Would that suffice?”

“Yes, it would. You’re an angel,” she said.

“Or a demon,” he answered, “to go along with a request like that! What else before Mimi arrives? Anything?”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re European, you were in law enforcement, and you’ve worked in the same type of fields as I have. Have you ever been to Russia?”

“Three times in the last five years. Twice on assignment. Once to attend a funeral of a friend who died mysteriously. That should suggest something right there.”

“How much do you know about Vladimir Putin? And Russia under Putin?”

“Aside from what we all know?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Rizzo’s expression went faraway and journeyed back after several seconds. His face grew serious. “I can tell you what Europeans in law enforcement know and are talking about,” he said. “A few cases that are discussed in private circles.”

“That would be a good start,” she said.

“Just recently I was speaking to one of my other contacts at Scotland Yard,” Rizzo began. “He tells me that the British are seeking the extradition of one Andrei Lugovoi from Russia. He is to face a homicide charge in the poisoning death of former Soviet agent Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko was a former KGB operative who became a prominent dissident opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The people trying to kill him used a radioactive substance called metalloid polonium 210. They broke into his home and hid it there, gradually poisoning him with radioactive contamination day-by-day. Ninety percent of the world’s polonium 210 comes from a single facility in Russia. Scotland Yard found traces of polonium 210 not only in Litvinenko’s home in Britain but also in Hamburg, at locations visited by Lugovoi’s associate Dmitri Kovtun, the day before Kovtun and Lugovoi attended a meeting with Litvinenko in London. It is theorized that Kovtun and Lugovoi shipped the chemical from Russia and infiltrated Litvenenko’s home. But this was particularly messy, this case, because maybe another two hundred people came into contact with the polonium 210. These Russian hoods are like that Colombian cocaine gangster who blew up an airplane with a hundred people on it to kill his own victim.”

“Pablo Escobar,” she said.

“Yes. Human life means nothing to beasts like them. Only terror and death and the ability to get their way mean anything.”

“Any chance of the case being resolved?” Alex asked.

“Very little. The Russians and the British have so far not agreed on much about the case. The Russians suggest that Litvenenko’s murderer is more probably to be found among London’s community of exiled Russian dissidents and expatriates. This is nonsense, of course. Nothing like this happens without Putin’s approval.”

Alex’s eyes drifted from the table she shared with Rizzo. At the next table a roast duck was being carved for what appeared to be a Chinese couple.

“There was a story out of France last year,” Rizzo continued somberly. “The well-known Russian human rights lawyer, Karina Moskalenko, found mercury in her car. Moskalenko had pursued the Russian government in international courts for human rights abuses. She works out of France now, Strasbourg, I think, since Russian prosecutors sought to disbar her and destroy her work in Moscow. Before authorities found the poison, Moskalenko had complained of deteriorating health. Does this sound familiar?”

“It sounds similar to the case you just mentioned,” she said.

“Exactly. And Litvinenko was once Moskalenko’s client. Interesting?”

“Very,” Alex said. “We’re not too far removed from the era when the Russians tried to smuggle a live body out of Rome in a trunk, are we? Or when they stabbed a Bulgarian dissident in London with an umbrella with a poison tip.”

“Not far at all,” Rizzo said, finding a perverse humor in it. “Same dog, new tricks. Where’s James Bond when we need him, right? From Russia with Love. One could do a modern sequel called From Russia with Lovely Polonium Tablets,” he said. “I dislike the new James Bond, by the way. Daniel Craig. Makes Bond look like a homicidal thug. He behaves like a bouncer in a Corsican mob joint. But what do I know? All I know about movies is that I don’t enjoy going to see them anymore.”

Still no Mimi, which was fine. A beautiful young waitress appeared wordlessly and refreshed their glasses of Prosecco. Rizzo gave her an adoring smile, then turned back to Alex to dwell further on politics, death, and assassination.

“Moskalenko was a very high-profile target,” Rizzo said. “She had won thirty cases of rights abuses against Russian authorities before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Her offices and her assistants have another hundred pending. Moskalenko represented the jailed former oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky whom Putin had imprisoned, as well as the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who now leads anti-Putin opposition in the old Soviet. Moskalenko also once represented a woman named Anna Politkovskaya. She was a journalist, but she was shot to death two years ago as she was entering her house in Moscow. Moskalenko was poisoned just as she was set to travel to Moscow to take part in pretrail hearings for the Politkovskaya murder. Flagrante, no? If the Putin people go after her like that, they’d go after you or me in half a heartbeat. And where does it come from? It comes from orders right at the top. Putin and his thug gangster friends who run the country.”

“How far is their reach?” Alex asked.

“Their reach is everywhere,” Rizzo said. “Their reach could be around your neck as you sleep. Even to America. In Europe, they operate with impunity. Rome, Paris. London. Who’s to stop them? Putin’s killers are quick and devious, and they retreat immediately into a criminal Russian underground and beat it back to Russia before Western European law can catch up with them. Frankly,” he said and then paused, “if I could, if I needed to, I’d use my own weapon to take one out before he could disappear with lawyers and diplomatic cover.”