Thinking about all of this today in a room with Michael Cerny, Alex felt her indignation rising, three quarters of a century later. Anyone could say or think whatever they wanted about Christians, but true Christians sent missionaries all over the world to help feed people, not starve or murder them.

“Holodomor in Ukrainian means ‘death by hunger,’ ” said Cerny, bringing it back to the 1930s. “In central Kiev there is a monument to those who perished in the Holodomor. The president of the United States is going to lay a wreath at the base of that monument.”

“In my humble opinion, long overdue,” Alex said.

“It’s also a controversial gesture. The Russians still deny that the fake famine was official policy. Never mind the fact that there are documents in Moscow above Stalin’s signature ordering the Red Army to shoot anyone caught hiding food.”

It was hard to comprehend. The Soviet policy of that era was as mind numbing and satanic as the extermination camps of Nazi Germany or the attacks on the civilians at the World Trade Center on September 11.

Cerny leaned down to a briefcase beside him. “I’m glad you seem to be a sympathetic soul,” he said. “I’m going to give you some reading. For right here, right now,” he said. “The first thing you need to know is the current political situation vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia. Under Vladimir Putin, who’s basically a gangster, Russia is under its worst dictator since Stalin.”

“You think he’s that bad? Worse than Khrushchev?”

“ ‘Vlad the Impaler Lite,’ we call him. Look, you be the judge,” Cerny said. “Putin has allowed Gazprom, the state gas company, to raise its own army. He had the editor of Izvestia fired for publishing accurate accounts of the Beslan school hostage crisis. And now he’s founded these ideological youth groups called Nashi to do the pro-Putin brainwashing of the first generation to come of age in post-Soviet Russia. They look like all those sick little Aryans in the Hitler Youth of the 1930s. On top of that, he’s out of official power as president, but still runs the country. You decide.”

“You make a solid case,” Alex said.

“But how does that affect us? Today. With the president going to Ukraine?” Cerny asked. “The Russians have never accepted the idea of an independent Ukraine. But Ukraine is about to join NATO. There are groups of fanatically pro-Russian, pro-Putin young Ukrainians who are opposed to this. They’ve vowed to cause trouble, probably when our president visits the monument to the victims of the famine. The president is visiting to maintain a visibility in support of the pro-Western elements, not the least of which are the members of the many Christian churches in Ukraine.”

Alex was always smart enough to listen to an expert on anything.

“Why would ethnic Ukrainians support the Russians?” she asked.

“While there are Ukrainians who are strongly committed to Ukrainian independence from Russian influence, there are others who actually regarded Ukraine’s past as one of partnership with Russia in what was a superpower,” he answered.

“Despite the famine?”

“Despite the famine,” Cerny said. “The Russians hoped to eventually turn the Ukrainians into Russians, something not all that difficult given the relative similarity of the languages and cultures, including the common Orthodox faith prior to the Russian Revolution. The Russians ruthlessly repressed any stirrings of Ukrainian nationalism but offered ‘little brother’ status in return. An ambitious young Ukrainian who bought into the concept could wind up in the Politburo in Moscow. Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kuchma, was actually the boss of the factory that made the ICBM’s that were the Soviet Union’s nuclear deterrent.”

“But there is Ukrainian nationalism? Right?” Alex asked.

“Absolutely. It is centered in western Ukraine, where the Austro-Hungarian Empire let Ukrainians be Ukrainians as long as they were loyal to the emperor in Vienna. But the tension between Ukrainian nationalists and ‘Russophiles’ is a basic fault line that runs through the country. And it has implications for the US. The Ukrainian nationalists want a Western-oriented Ukraine, one that joins the European Union and NATO. The Russophiles don’t necessarily want to reestablish the Soviet Union, but they want a close ‘special relationship’ with Russia.”

Cerny had organized some hard-copy reading for her. He had a briefing booklet, a blue-jacketed document of several dozen pages folded into something with a blue cover that looked like an old-fashioned examination book. He placed it on the table. Then he gave her another half dozen books.

She knew the drill. It was a day of background preparation.

“Choose a comfortable place to read,” he said, motioning to the sofa and the chairs. He glanced at his watch. “Take the rest of the day with this stuff. Let’s meet back here at 4:30 this afternoon, and we’ll speak further. How’s that?”

“That would work,” she said.

Alexandra broke the official seal on the table. She scanned the stiff opening pages that warned of dire legal sanctions for blabbing what she was about to read.

Cerny slid a paper along the desktop in her direction. “The confidentiality agreement,” he said. “If you please…”

He slid a fountain pen along with the paper.

She picked up the pen and looked for the space for her signature.

“You might wish to read it first,” Cerny said. “Always a good idea, you know.”

She was midway through the form already. At the top was the usual “steam-rollered eagle,” the flattened bird that was the Great Seal of the United States.

Olive leaves in one talon and the arrows in the other. Then the content:

I, Alexandra LaDuca, have today read the declarations of USSD Intelligence dossier UK-3-122a-2008.

I resolve and warrant that I will not divulge any part of this report…

Blah, blah…

She scanned to the end. The normal crap that no one paid much attention to. Probably everything in the documents had already been in the New York Times anyway.

She signed.

Cerny left the room. Alexandra stayed at the conference table and began to read.

At first it was mostly issues of taxation, import fees and quotas and copyrights. Dull stuff, which she plowed through in the morning. Then she moved to the more incendiary stuff and started it during the afternoon.

A remorseless image of Ukraine came through: one of the most corrupt places on earth. Late in the day, one particular topic heading seized her, and the subsequent document seemed to sum up everything else she had read.

Partners in Extortion:

Criminals and Public Officials

The most pernicious element of organized crime in Ukraine is the alliance among former Communist Party elite, members of the law enforcement, security apparatuses, and gangs of professional criminals. Much crime in Ukraine combines government officials’ access to information or goods with the use or threat of force by organized criminals.

Crime and corruption had soared in Ukraine over the past decade. Since gaining independence during the Gorbachev era, the corruption of the Soviet years had been replaced by energetic gangs of organized criminals.

In the summer of 2004, several American corporations had considered investing a total of two billion dollars in Ukraine, mostly in the appliance field. After investigating carefully, each of the corporations decided that the business environment there was fraught with both financial and physical danger.

Drug traffickers, particularly those involved with heroin, laundered money through casinos, exchange bureaus, and state banks.

The banks provided criminal groups with information about businesses’ profitability and assets, which the gangsters used to extort money from them.