Sparring Vladimir Putin

At the beginning of President Clinton's second term, I was waking up in a different European hotel room almost every morning. Ohio, the state of which I'd been governor for eight years, had just elected my handpicked successor in a landslide. I was one of those New Democrats; we all believed we were going to change the world with our progressive policies and union-friendly wink and nods, with our sly JFK-wannabe charm. Kicking off my damp sheets, shaken awake by my own nightmares about shadowy figures outside my window dumping poison into the ventilation system, I'd stare beyond my tangled legs, over the neat piles of luggage, and into the adjacent room where stacks of classified documents and dark brown folders lay on the dining room table. I blinked and remembered the cities I had just seen: Oslo, Tallinn, Riga, Minsk. Squeezing the bridge of my nose, the fear of a hangover sending me in search of vitamins and tomato juice, I vaguely remembered I was flying to Ukraine.

Climbing the stairs to a government-issue Boeing, ready to fly from Vilnius to Kiev, I clutched my attaché case to my chest. Inside was a day-old copy of The New York Times. I hurried to the tiny cabin in the back of the plane, closed the door, and poured a hair of the dog drink. Buried on page seventeen next to a half page ad for a Neiman Marcus sale was the news I was looking for: Tony Erpenbeck, perhaps the sole reason I had become mayor of Cincinnati twenty years ago, had just been charged with federal bank fraud, tax evasion, and regulatory violations of building and safety codes in three states. Erpenbeck was the guy who swung the union votes in west Cincinnati to get me elected mayor and, in return, I looked the other way when he violated building and safety codes for his regional development empire. Now, Erpenbeck told the press that he had acted on the orders of Matt Bowman—my handpicked successor as governor who had won in a landslide, a friend from high school, a political ally for thirty years, and the go-between I had used to secure the deal with Erpenbeck all those years ago. Bowman wasn't talking yet, but I knew that if he did, he would be talking about me.

"You aren't supposed to be reading that," a voice said.

I looked up. Alain Hellmuth stood in the cabin doorway. He was the point man on this trip, my liaison whose job was to report back to the White House that I was cooperating and waving the Stars and Stripes. He was a thin man with a paunch, wispy hair, and frameless glasses, and in every nation I visited he remained stuck to my elbow, a navy blue White House planner tucked under his arm. He loved using words like "feedback" and "monetize." I hadn't heard him come in. To test my ears, I rattled the ice cubes in my glass of scotch.

"Too late now," I said. "Am I in any additional shit, or is this goodwill trip the end of it?" I was supposed to be assigned the ambassadorship to Ireland. I was supposed to be living in Dublin, with a small cottage in County Kilkenny my wife and I could escape to on the weekend, invite our children to take a break from college and visit the Emerald Isle, raise sheep and goats, go dance a few jigs at local pubs. Instead, someone's Big Idea shuttled me out of the country on a contrived five-week swing through Eastern Europe to shake hands with mid-level politicians, assess the fundamentals of each nation's precarious economy, and solemnly tour an endless array of World War II memorials, while the whole budding scandal in Ohio would, in theory, be handled by the Clinton administration. So far, they appeared to have slippery fingers.

"These things are under control," Hellmuth said. "You don't need to worry about it. You need to focus on this trip. You can relax and...