There was one final task at hand for the evening. She needed to read the final file she had been given, the FBI dossier on The Caspian Group.
She settled in and took the first step toward knowing Yuri Federov too well.
FIFTEEN.
FBI Doc.u.ment UK-2008-5AR-2a Subject: Ukraine> Organized Crime> Overview> Caspian Group> Federov, Yuri Initial report date: June 19, 2005 Amended: (7 times, most recently:) March 12, 2008 Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington DC Status: Highly Cla.s.sified; AA-2 Author: S.A. Diane Liu, FBI, New York, Southern District The Caspian Group (TCG) is a Ukrainian energy conglomerate doing business with Western Europe and the United States and presumably Asia. The latter market will warrant careful scrutiny in the future.
The unofficial head of operations of TCG is a Ukrainian of Russian extraction named Yuri Federov. Almost uniquely, TCG functions without actual incorporation within Ukraine.
Their a.s.sets exceed one billion dollars {See Chart 56-2008a-1}. They invest in all financial sectors common to ent.i.ties that do business with governments and the military. Additionally, they have positions in all criminal enterprises in Ukraine, including heroin and trafficking in women.
TCG"s young enforcers were trained by veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. They are infamous for their extreme brutality. Their victims are usually business people who have balked at extortion demands. Victims have been known to have been repeatedly stabbed and tortured, then mutilated before they are butchered. Others have been fitted with concrete cinderblocks and thrown live into the Desna River. The wave of terror has been so hideous that it has scared many of the competing crime groups away from doing business in Ukraine....
Since the collapse of Communism, , "ukrainka mafia," the Ukrainian Mafia, has become bigger, more brutal, and better armed. It is now as wealthy as any Russian crime cartel. It wields the same worldwide influence as its major counterparts in Colombia. The Ukrainian Mafia traffics narcotics, currency, human s.e.x slaves, handguns, carbines, submachine guns, antiaircraft missiles, helicopters, plutonium, and enriched uranium.
{Editor"s note: In 2006, Deputy a.s.sistant Director Kevin Fosterman, then the FBI"s supervisor in charge of organized crime, warned Congress that the Ukrainian mob, which had 37 crime syndicates operating in 24 North American cities, had "an outstanding chance" of becoming "the most dangerous crime group in the United States."...} In the United States, the activities of the Ukrainian mob alarm all law-enforcement agencies. By 1996, the Ukrainian Mafia had supplanted the Cubans as one of the top crime groups in South Florida and has supplanted many established African American and Sicilian interests in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New York...
Until recently, the most powerful Ukrainian crime figure in the United States was Yuri Federov. In November of 2004, undercover surveillance {Note: Court wiretap approved 10/29/04 by Hon. Ira J. Cohen, 2nd Circuit Court, Brooklyn, NY ...} Federov boasted of his brutish past, but he also mentioned his charitable activities and described numerous fund-raisers that he had held for Catholic charities at a restaurant and Brooklyn night club he owned called Old Odessa.
Federov is a nonpracticing Eastern Orthodox Christian but holds Israeli citizenship. He insists that he never stole from religious organizations. But according to statements he made to undercover agents for the New York City Police Department, the "overhead" for these events tended to reach eighty cents of every dollar.
Federov has always manifested the qualities of a mobster. He is greedy. He stole tip money from the strippers at his clubs. He is ruthless. He once forced a woman to drink bleach as punishment for an unknown transgression. He is ambitious. He brokered the complicated negotiation involving the transfer of a Russian military submarine to Cali-based Colombian narco-traffickers.
(Note: See www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/history/1999-2003.html-2006-03-07 ) The unwavering point here is that there is no transaction too large or too small {Italics mine-Diane Liu 092507} to escape his interests if a profit can be obtained. Special attention should be paid to his emerging business connections with a sh.e.l.l corporation named Park Enterprises, based in Taipei, believed to be a conduit for business with North Korea.... {Italics again mine-Diane Liu 092507} Federov was born in 1965 in Odessa, a Black Sea port that was once the Ma.r.s.eilles of the Soviet Union. When he was three, he moved with his mother and his father to Rivno, a small city in the western Ukraine. He sang in a boy"s choir and partic.i.p.ated in a boxing program set up by the Soviet military. His father was a professional thief and prosperous dealer in the Ukrainian black market. He"d trade stolen merchandise for choice cuts of meat, theatre tickets, and fresh vegetables. His father"s brother was a successful actor in Moscow.
In 1980, when Federov was fifteen, his father had the word "Jew" stamped in the family"s pa.s.sports even though they weren"t Jewish. Then he managed to move the family to Israel and gain Israeli citizenship. Before leaving Ukraine, the Federovs converted their money into diamonds. They stashed some in shoes with hollow heels and hid the rest in secret compartments in a specially built piano, which they shipped to Israel.
In the late 1970s, the Soviet government was under diplomatic pressure to let Jews freely emigrate. In response, the Brehznev government searched their Gulag for Jewish criminals and allowed them to leave for America. Many were "recent converts." More than forty thousand Russian Jews settled in Brighton Beach, a section of Brooklyn, New York. Most were sound citizens. But the criminals among them resumed their careers. By the time Federov arrived in 1992, Brighton Beach had already become the seat of the Organizatsiya, the Russian Jewish mob. Using his Russian ties, Yuri Federov fit in immediately and flourished....
In addition to his "normal" criminal activities, Federov has a habit of brutalizing women.
"This is cultural," he once explained to an undercover FBI agent, following an arrest in 1996. "In Russia, it is manly to beat women. In the stories of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Gorky, to beat a woman is normal. Then you do something like that in America, something that you grew up with, and you"re arrested for domestic violence!It makes no sense."
In an incident taped by the FBI and the DEA from a surveillance apartment across the street from Old Odessa, Federov once chased a girlfriend out of the club and hit her repeatedly with a hammer. On another occasion, he allegedly pounded a female dancer"s head against the door of his black Cadillac Escalade until the window broke and the vehicle was covered with blood. No charges were filed in either case.
Federov regularly abused his two daughters and his common-law wife, Tanya, an Estonian Jew whom he met in Israel. When the police arrived at their home in response to 911 calls, the wife was sometimes found huddled inside a locked car with her daughters or hiding in a closet. Tanya later vanished and is presumed dead. His daughters have changed their last name and live with a second cousin in Toronto...
Following one instance of domestic violence in Brooklyn, Federov was arrested. The arresting officer, who knew who he was, referred to him as "a filthy (expletives deleted) Russian Jew gangster." Federov, though handcuffed, bit off the upper half of the officer"s ear. He beat the domestic abuse charge when his wife disappeared. But for a.s.saulting a police officer, he drew four years in a New York State prison. {See NY Criminal Docket #98-CD-456-2} It was the first time Federov had been convicted of a felony....
Criminals with Israeli pa.s.sports have a sanctuary that other criminals don"t. It is extremely difficult to extradite Israeli nationals, Israel being the self-proclaimed "land of opportunity," at least in theory. It is not difficult, however, to deport Israeli citizens (e.g., USA vs. Meyer Lansky, usdj 020472).
Thus in 1999, the United States government confiscated Federov"s traceable a.s.sets in the United States (estimated at two million dollars) and deported him to Israel.
But as he departed, his enthusiasm for the land he was leaving was undiminished. "I love America!" Federov said to a federal marshal who escorted him to his departing flight. "The people are stupid, the government protects rich people and the police are corrupt. It is so easy to steal here! Even your big elections are stolen!"
Federov stayed in Tel Aviv for one month, then moved back to Ukraine. {Note: Surveillance conducted by French and Israeli intelligence partnerships. See CIA File No. 2006-SF-345-c.} He quickly became the guiding force behind The Caspian Group. He has survived several attempts on his life since 2003 from various compet.i.tors and other parties who might have a positive interest in his death. He has also always been known to strike back forcibly at those who have struck at him....
Through his normal tactics of terror, extortion, and intimidation, he has become wealthy again. The company (TCG) keeps no official records. Reputedly, Federov has a highly disciplined mind and a photographic memory. He keeps all financial records in his head....
The extent and degree of Yuri Federov"s influence in Ukraine, particularly in government circles, is unknown at this time but is also considered to be almost without limit....
Federov should be considered dangerous at all times. Under no circ.u.mstances should he be underestimated....
Attention should be paid to the fact that Federov, while on top of the Ukrainian underworld, has many compet.i.tors who would benefit with his demise and who might have an interest in his premature death....
SIXTEEN.
When Constanza d"Amico awoke in Rome the morning of January 9, her head was pounding. She was trying hard not to think about the direction her life was taking. But she couldn"t help it.
She lay in bed with her eyes open. The sun penetrated the drawn blinds in her bedroom, spilling little slashes of sunlight across the room. The clock at her bedside said 9:12 a.m.
Her stomach churned. Her nerves wouldn"t settle. Her mouth tasted like cigarettes. Then, next to her in her bed, she was aware of light snoring.
Oh, yeah. She was married.
Beside her, Rocco, her husband, slept fitfully. She had arrived home before he did in the early morning hours, and he had crawled into bed next to her.
Not unusual. Rocco was a musician, a guitarist for a techno-pop band that had a modest following around the city. He often came poling in shortly before dawn, usually smelling of sweat, booze, and cigarettes, sometimes smelling of cheap perfume, but never smelling of nothing. He would set the clock radio in their bedroom for 2:00 p.m. the following afternoon. He would set it LOUD with a heavy metal American CD. The intense volume of music was the only thing that could rouse him.
Whatever. Constanza had given up caring and always made plans to be out of the apartment when the music blasted on. She and Rocco had been married for four years and had started to go their separate ways. He was particularly repulsive, she had come to learn, when he crawled out of bed in the early afternoon after his usual night of debauchery. So she arranged each day to miss those golden moments.
She edged up in bed and looked at him. How could she ever have made such a mistake? She could only see half his head since he was facing away from her. But that was enough. Dark, dirty hair. No shirt. Unshaven for a week.
She sighed. Her head pounded. What a life. There was a time when she had been philosophical about it. No matter where you are, there you are. Recently, however, she had become more proactive about her fate.
Her future: she decided she wanted to have one.
Extra work. Specialty jobs. Some significant income on the side. Like the previous night. Stash some money, put together enough to take off. Make sure she had a pa.s.sport that was good to go on a moment"s notice-or more than one pa.s.sport if she could work it right. Make sure no one could ever find her. She could start again under a new name. After all, some bad people might come looking for her.
Maybe she could even get to America. She had heard that in the cities of the United States a woman could pay off certain priests and get a marriage annulled. Well, she decided, she would do that and find a way to stay in America.
It would be a new life, and it would be all hers.
But first, that horrible headache, the one that threatened to define the new day.
The buzz in her head graduated to a full firestorm. Time to go proactive on that too.
She had some Vicodin stashed in her purse, thanks to an amateur pharmacist she knew from some of the clubs. The Vike and a Red Bull would get the day off to a good start.
Got to get up. Got to get moving.
A few more weeks and she"d be out of this nightmare.
She rose. Above her bed, a halfwit movie poster in Swedish, not even framed, just tacked to the wall to cover some cracks and peeling paint.
Cheech and Chong-de korsikanska brderna.
She eyed the poster in anger. Stuff like that had destroyed her life. Set her on the wrong path. Well, not much longer. Not much longer.
She stepped over her dress and shoes from the night before. She lurched uncomfortably into the bathroom, stared at herself in the mirror and winced. She looked awful and felt worse. But her life was a mess. She took her clothes off and turned on the shower.
She walked to the next room. She was in the habit of stashing her purse somewhere so that her husband wouldn"t filch money. Her head was hurting badly. Where had she hidden the purse this time? It took a moment to remember.
Then she found it. It had been under a pile of shoes in the front closet.
She found the Vicodin. She went to the refrigerator and found the Red Bull.
So far, so good.
On the kitchen counter, she found some bread. It was yesterday"s, half a loaf of good stuff from the corner panetteria. But it was unwrapped and half stale. Her pig of a husband must have come in late with the post-gig munchies. You"d think he could at least rewrap the food. But no.
She had given up complaining. On the walls of the apartment were several pictures of her a few years earlier when her career as a model had been taking off. Print ads in glossy magazines. Her on the runways of Rome. For two years, everything had been crackling with excitement. Then it all crashed, about the time she met Rocco and started spending too much time out late. She started to look too tired and dissipated for morning shoots. The business went away to younger, thinner, fresher girls. It never came back. Now, as she stood in her apartment surrounded by the glossy ghosts of the recent past, all she wanted was to get out, which was what the income on the side was all about.
There was a soft knock on the apartment door. The sound startled her. Everything startled her these days. She kept still. Then the soft knocking came again, followed by a familiar voice in accented Italian.
"Constanza, ci sei?" Constanza, are you there?
She recognized the voice. She moved to the door. The last thing she wanted was for one of her butch male friends to wake her husband. There would be explaining that she didn"t wish to do, plus arguments and sour recriminations. Fortunately, Rocco slept through early mornings as if he were hibernating.
She leaned to the door.
She peeked through the eyehole. Two male figures shifting nervously, an empty hallway behind them. One with a twitchy left eye, one in wraparound shades. They must have slipped by the old woman, Masiella, who kept guard downstairs. Masiella was deaf as a doork.n.o.b and not much smarter.
"Eccomi," she answered. "I"m here."
Twitchy Eye switched to English. "Open us the door. We have you the money," he said. Twitchy was a good-looking guy, but he spoke no language perfectly.
"Let me get my robe," she said, her voice very low.
She quickstepped into the bathroom where the warm water continued to run in the shower. She found a robe and pulled it on, tying the sash around her waist.
She returned to the door, turned the bolts, undid a chain, and unlocked it.
Two men stepped in. She embraced the first one, Twitchy Eye. The second man shut the door. "Anyone else here?" the first man asked. "
My husband," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "He"s sleeping."
The nervous eye was on overdrive now, blinking, twitching, worse than she had ever seen it. He gave the second man a nod. "Okay," he said.
"So? Where"s my money?" Constanza asked.
"Don"t be so anxious," he said. And she saw him give a slight nod to the second man. Then he turned back to her. "It"s in my pocket," he said, indicating to a spot within his jacket. "Give me a kiss first."
She glanced as he beckoned to his jacket, open to show a black and white camo T-shirt that showed off the muscles of his chest. She also saw he was wearing a gun, not unusual. And he had an envelope, as promised, in his inside pocket.
She grinned slightly. She saw what she wanted. She saw, in fact, a great deal of what she wanted in comparison to the geeky husband who slumbered noisily in the next room. Well, today she would have to content herself with the denaro, the cinquecento dollari that she had been promised. Five hundred bucks of blood money.
She leaned to him and reached in, bringing her body close to his. The man leaned forward to savor the closeness and the scent of her body. She winked at him as she reached into his coat. Why not? They had been lovers once recently, though no one else knew that. Flirtatiously, he planted a gentle kiss on the lips, something she did not resist.
Then he did something rougher than usual and something that was highly unexpected.
He held her tightly at the left wrist, then used his other hand to hold her other wrist. He held her arms downward against her body, making the upper half of her body highly vulnerable. All this, while continuing to press his face to hers. Her robe loosened slightly, something she was okay with at first but then began to resist.
Then the first man withdrew his lips and the second man removed something from his pocket, something that Constanza soon realized was a silk cord. With incredible dexterity, and hardly allowing her a moment to struggle, the second man looped the cord over her head and around her throat. The cord went tight quickly, faster than she could utter a word. It was so tight that it cut into the flesh and almost disappeared.
She tried to kick but they overpowered her. Twitchy Eye let go of her wrists and stepped back impa.s.sively to watch her die.
She saw him mouth some words. "I"m sorry, Connie. I"m sorry."He shrugged. The young woman"s fingers dug into her own flesh to fight for her life.
As the cord went tight, her face darkened with compressed blood. Then the blood began to run from the wounds at her throat. Her wrists went free, her eyes bulged, and after a brief struggle, all the strength drained from her body. First there was pain. Horribly searing pain. Her legs folded, her body sagged, and an earthly darkness descended upon her. The pain went away.
The killers released her. Her body hit the floor.
The first man gave a nod to the second. It was Twitchy Eye"s turn now.
He drew his pistol. He disappeared into the bedroom where there were still sounds of sleep from Rocco. There were two large reports from a high-caliber pistol. Then a third to make sure the job was done.
Twitchy Eye reappeared.
No more snoring sounds. Just some gurgling.
"Finito?" asked the first man.
"Finito," Twitchy Eye answered.
"e certo?"
"His brains are against the wall if you want to go look."
Twitchy Eye went into the bathroom. Using a washcloth to preclude leaving any finger prints, he turned off the water. No point in presiding over a flood that would bring the carabinieri here days before they otherwise might be summoned.
Their business there concluded, the two men left the apartment. They were in separate cars leaving Italy before the sun rose to the midpoint of the sky.