by Greg Cox
For an endless moment, Khan stood as silent and immobile as a statue, the point of his knife remaining at his captive’s throat. Komananov held her breath as the youth sullenly mulled over Number Seven’s words, too proud to admit any error, yet too intelligent not to recognize the rationality of the older man’s suggestion. Komananov’s heart pounded; she was afraid that the militant young [365] Sikh would sooner cut her to ribbons than lose face in front of Number Seven.
Instead, he withdrew his blade and returned it to his belt. Then he sulkily unwound his turban and used the durable strip of saffron-colored fabric to bind the KGB officer’s hands behind her back. “So be it,” he stated sourly, his thick black hair tied in a ponytail at the back of his neck. Leaving Komananov against the fungus-covered wall, he turned and nodded at Number Seven. “Let us see what you have then.”
Komananov was tempted to make a break for it while Khan’s attention was momentarily elsewhere. Realistically, however, she knew that she stood little chance of outrunning the incredibly athletic youth, especially once she got beyond the indispensable radiance of the flashlight. The prospect of racing blindly through total blackness, her hands tied behind her back, perhaps stumbling without any way to break her fall or even to get back up again, was not an appealing one. Better, perhaps, to wait for another, more promising opportunity. Besides, she reminded herself, I cannot leave without the case and its papers.
Number Seven laid the slender attaché case down upon the sealed stump of the abandoned well, wisely refraining from provoking Khan further. “I had a glimpse of the contents earlier,” he informed his teenage ally. “What I saw was most disturbing. I believe Colonel Komananov and her colleagues intend to do far more than merely derail the negotiations in Reykjavik.”
He fumbled briefly with the clasp on the case, which Komananov had carefully relocked after recovering it from Number Seven the first time. “This might take a moment or two,” he commented to Khan, “unless you’d care to give me back my servo now.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Khan replied darkly. Snatching up the case before the older man could protest, he ripped the lid off the case with his bare hands. “There,” he announced, throwing the severed lid onto the moldering stones at his feet. He smugly placed the bottom of the case back onto the top of the well. “I trust that was not too violent a solution.”
“No,” Number Seven conceded, a trifle wryly. “Sometimes the [366] direct approach can be very effective.” He lifted a folder from inside the ruptured case and started leafing through several pages of classified documents. “Just remember, Khan, some Gordian knots take more effort to untangle.”
Khan grunted dubiously, choosing to ignore the American’s unsolicited advice. “Let me see those,” he said simply, reaching out for more of Komananov’s private papers. The KGB officer winced to see her carefully guarded secrets handled so cavalierly. If only I hadn’t stopped at Lenin’s Tomb, she agonized, instead of going straight to the Presidium!
Number Seven handed over the folder to Khan, while picking up another sheaf of documents from the case. “Do you read Russian?” he asked the teenage assassin.
“Do not insult my intelligence,” Khan answered indignantly
Apparently undaunted by the Cyrillic alphabet, both men rapidly skimmed through the notes, memos, and timelines that Komananov had once thought safe enough to transport in person. Trading the papers between them, their simmering rivalry momentarily placed on hold by the enormity of what they found in the illicitly acquired papers, Khan and Number Seven nodded in unison as they grasped the true dimensions of the operation.
“Do you see what I mean, Khan?” the American said finally, raising his eyes from a confidential fax. “We are talking here about nothing less than the deliberate assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev—sometime tonight, followed by an immediate military coup, imposing martial law upon the nation in response to the general secretary’s death.” He cast a censorious glance at Komananov. “According to the plan, the colonel here was to take control of the executive offices of the Supreme Soviet, before the civilian government had a chance to rally against the coup.”
Khan put down a fistful of papers, then clapped his hands together softly. “A most ambitious project, madam,” he applauded her, a tinge of admiration in his voice. “I commend you for your daring, if not your reckless disregard for world peace.” He tipped his head in an ironic bow. “But unless, I am missing something, which I sincerely [367] doubt, there is one crucial detail missing from your meticulous files and reports. How, exactly, is Gorbachev to be killed tonight? What is the means of assassination?”
Number Seven continued to sort through the documents, mounting concern deepening the lines of his craggy face. “I can’t find any specifics regarding the killing either,” he confessed. “Just repeated references to something code-named Pobeditel Velikanov. Roughly, ‘Giant-Killer,’ ” he translated. “Perhaps that designation holds some clue to what is planned for tonight.”
“We have no time for riddles!” Khan declared, sneering at the American. He fingered the knife at his side, and glared balefully at Komananov, who, shuddering, saw her brief reprieve slipping away. “Fortunately, I know an easier way to uncover the truth.”
“Wait, Khan!” Number Seven exclaimed. His hand rested on the stock of the assault rifle slung over his shoulder, but he refrained from actually drawing the weapon. “Don’t do anything rash.”
“Rash?” Khan laughed out loud. “Are you mad, Seven? The future of the world hangs in the balance and you counsel restraint?” With lightning speed, he yanked his last chakram off his arm and set it spinning briskly upon a raised index finger. With his other hand, he drew his curved dagger once more. A look of deadly seriousness came over his adolescent face. “Do not try your luck, old man,” he challenged the American, who had yet to unshoulder the AK-74. “I am younger, faster, and genetically superior ... as you well know.” Twirling faster and faster, primed for flight, Khan’s chakram was a mesmerizing, silver blur. “Put down that rifle, slowly.”
The colonel’s heart sank as Number Seven carefully discarded his weapon as requested. “Listen to me, Khan,” he exhorted his presumed protégé urgently, sounding determined to reason with the rebellious youth. “I know your ultimate intentions are good, that you have the best interests of the planet at heart, but, believe me, such barbaric means inevitably corrupt their ends. You cannot build utopia on a foundation of bloodshed and torture.”
Sadly, Komananov knew that the American was wasting his breath. In Khan she recognized a pragmatic ruthlessness not unlike her own, [368] and she knew that the strong-willed teen would not refrain from torturing the truth out of her because that was exactly what she would do were their positions reversed. A shame we could not have recruited him first, she mused.
“That’s where you are wrong, Seven,” Khan stated confidently, confirming the colonel’s cold-blooded appraisal of his character. “Lectures on morality will not rescue Gorbachev in time, nor bring an end to the senseless chaos plaguing mankind.” His unsheathed dagger furiously slashed the air. “Only action, swift and sure!”
There is no stopping him, Komananov understood at last, realizing that she was running out of time and options. Having supervised many a stringent interrogation in the soundproof cells beneath KGB headquarters, she had no illusions about the human animal’s ability to resist torture—or Khan’s willingness to do whatever was required to extract the truth from her. Sooner or later, he would obtain the answers he sought, even if he had to eliminate Number Seven first.
“Nyet,” she whispered, steeling herself for what was to come. There was only one course left to her, if the operation—and the State—were to survive. “Counterrevolutionary filth!” she suddenly screamed. “Foreign adventurists!” Shrieking like rampaging Cossack horseman, she threw herself at Khan, who instinctively thrust out his dagger to defend himself. The colonel ran right into the waiting knife, deliberately impaling herself upon the cold
steel blade.
“No!” Khan cried out in anger, pulling back his encrimsoned knife too late. Da! Anastasia Komananov thought triumphantly, feeling her lifeblood gush from her sundered heart. As her legs collapsed beneath her, and eternal darkness overcame the glare from Number Seven’s shaky flashlight, she had only one last request of fate. Please, she pleaded with her last dying breath, let me be remembered in the pantheon of historic Soviet heroes, and not just as a slinky femme fatale in that tawdry spy thriller ... !
Grim-faced, Khan rose from the lifeless body of the dedicated KGB officer. “She had great courage,” he granted, giving the dead woman her due. Unlike Evergreen, that scientist in Antarctica, she did not [369] rise again after breathing her last. Nor did Khan expect her to; in the last two years, he had become much more familiar with violent death and its consequences. “A pity such a superior woman had to throw away her life for such an ignoble cause.”
“This has been a costly affair, Khan,” Gary Seven said, contemplating the fallen colonel with a look of profound regret. He looked older than Khan remembered, his face more haggard and etched with strain and worry. “Perhaps more so than necessary.”
“Spare me your pious recriminations, old man,” Khan growled impatiently If the meddlesome American had not delayed him with his constant carping and protestations, he might have already wrested the truth from the Russian witch! Nonetheless, he arrested the spin of his chakram and returned the steel ring to his arm. With Komananov beyond his power to interrogate further, there was no longer any reason to keep Seven at bay. He wiped off his dagger on the fabric of his trousers and tucked the blade back into his belt. “Gorbachev remains in mortal danger, and there is much to do before this night’s work is over.”
Searching through the pockets of his trousers, he found the servo he had taken from Komananov outside the Tomb. “Here,” he said brusquely, lobbing the ingenious device back to Seven. “Summon your unnatural mist. We must get to Iceland at once, and I can think of no faster way to do so.”
It galled him enormously to be dependent on Seven once more, but larger issues took priority over his wounded pride. The reckless arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union threatened the entire planet with apocalypse. Colonel Komananov’s co-conspirators could not be allowed to jeopardize Mikhail Gorbachev’s peace offensive. I have my own plans for this world, Khan brooded morosely, and they do not include ruling over a radioactive cinder.
If only he knew how Gorbachev’s nameless assassin intended to strike! “Well?” he prodded Seven, glaring across the dank underground crossroads at the man whose path kept crossing his own at the most inopportune times. Khan had not expected to find Seven on the trail of Komananov’s conspiracy any more than Seven had anticipated [370] Khan’s timely appearance in Moscow. “What are you waiting for? Death waits for Gorbachev in Reykjavik, and there is not a moment to lose!”
Seven managed a thin, infuriating smile. “You need not fret, Khan.” He activated the servo, which beeped as he lifted it before his lips like a microphone. “I already have agents on the scene. ...”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
HOFOI HOUSE
REYKJAVIK
REPUBLIC OF ICELAND
OCTOBER 10, 1986
“IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, Mr. President,” Mikhail Gorbachev said. “Permit me to introduce my translator, Ms. Radhinka Lenin.”
“Thank you, Mr. General Secretary,” the President said warmly. “And you, too, young lady.”
Standing beside Gorbachev, Roberta smiled politely at Ronald Reagan and recast the President’s reply into Russian, discreetly assisted by the automatic translator in her earrings. She still couldn’t believe that Gary Seven had actually managed to get her this gig. Boy, did he have to call in plenty of favors, she recalled, not to mention manufacture some pretty impressive phony credentials!
It would be worth the effort, though, if her close proximity to the general secretary allowed her to keep an eye out for the assassin Seven had warned her about less than twenty minutes ago, right before the beginning of this reception. According to Seven, who had contacted her via servo from Moscow (where he had also run into Noon Singh, of all people!), the unknown killer would strike tonight, perhaps even within minutes. All of which put Roberta in the unenviable position of being personally responsible for the safety of Mikhail Gorbachev and, quite possibly, peace in our time.
[372] Wonderful, she thought sarcastically. Trying not to be too obvious about it, while simultaneously keeping up with her duties as Gorby’s translator, she scoped out the tony, high-powered affair in which she was currently playing a key supporting role:
Hofoi House was a modest municipal reception hall with white clapboard walls and a picture window overlooking the harbor. Formerly home (at different times) to the French and British consulates, the venerable building was also said to be haunted, although by whom Roberta was not quite clear. A skylight in the gabled ceiling provided an eye-catching view of the Northern Lights shimmering brightly overhead, as well as a potential access point for, say, a crazed ninja assassin.
No, Roberta reconsidered, letting her gaze waft downward from the ceiling, I have to assume that the Secret Service, as well as its Soviet counterpart, have a tight watch on every exit and entrance. The attack on Gorbachev, if and when it arrived, would not come from such an obvious direction. I have to be on guard for something much trickier.
Although formal negotiations were not scheduled to commence until tomorrow morning, tonight’s cocktail reception was intended to provide the U.S. and Soviet delegations with a chance to socialize briefly, and for Reagan and Gorbachev to give each other some personal face time, before everyone got down to the serious business of nuclear arms reductions. At the moment, the spacious hall, whose wooden walls were decorated with paintings and tapestries illustrating Iceland’s proud Viking past, was crammed with a mixture of American, Russian, and Icelandic dignitaries, plus a small army of aides and translators. A buffet table, draped in white chiffon, offered samples of various local delicacies, including shark, haddock, puffin, and creamy yogurt pudding. Two other Icelandic staples, freshly killed whale and seal, were conspicuously absent, no doubt in deference to international sensitivities, whaling and seal-bashing being touchy issues these days.
Near the end of the buffet, Iceland’s own president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, was entertaining both Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev. That can’t be fun, Roberta thought sympathetically; rumor had it that [373] the two First Ladies actively loathed each other, unlike their respective spouses, who had managed to hit it off, and form a good working relationship, when they first met in Geneva a year ago. Hopes were high for this second summit, which was probably what had put the hard-liners at the Kremlin in such a tizzy.
Operation: Giant-Killer, Roberta mused, recalling the assassination plot’s inconveniently cryptic code name. What on Earth could that be a reference to? David and Goliath? Her eyes nervously turned toward the picture window facing the harbor, where moonlight glistened upon the crests of rolling waves. Surely the bad guys weren’t planning to kill Gorbachev with a rock hurled by a sling? But what else could “Giant-Killer” mean?
“I’m glad we have another opportunity to talk like this, face-to-face,” Reagan said to Gorbachev. Roberta had to interrupt her worried speculations to translate the elderly president’s remarks. A head taller, and a quarter of a century older, than his fellow world leader, the President addressed Gorbachev in a characteristically genial manner, rather like an uncle advising a favorite nephew. “I enjoyed our fireside chat in Geneva last fall, and think that we have a real opportunity here to further improve relations between our two countries.”
“Yes, exactly!” Gorbachev agreed enthusiastically. Unlike his phlegmatic predecessors in the Kremlin, Russia’s new General Secretary was an energetic and charismatic individual. He did not wait for Reagan’s own translator, an attractive blond woman named Sommers, whom Roberta believed had once been a champion
tennis player, to convey his assent to Reagan before continuing in the same vein. “It is our duty to rid the world of the terrible menace of nuclear weapons. As you yourself once wisely said, ‘a nuclear war could never be won and must never be fought.’ ” He slapped his leg loudly for emphasis. “That is why we are here!”
Obviously, Gorbachev had no intention of waiting until tomorrow to make his agenda known. Roberta knew that more than idealism motivated the Russian leader’s determination to achieve serious arms reductions; the Soviet economy was on life-support and could not afford to keep up with America in an escalating arms race, especially [374] with Reagan talking about expanding that race into space with his controversial Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as “Star Wars.”
“Whoa there, Mikhail,” the President said, leading Roberta to hope that the handy-dandy translator in her ear could come up with the Russian equivalent of “whoa.” Reagan held up his hands, as if to ward off Gorbachev’s aggressive lobbying tactics. “I want to eliminate the nuclear threat as much as anyone on this planet, but we have to proceed carefully. There are still some important issues to be worked out here.”
“Like your so-called missile defense system?” Gorbachev shot back, apparently intent on pressing the issue. “Let us not mince words. I am prepared to offer you significant reductions in our nuclear arsenal in exchange for your promise not to test or deploy any space-based military weapon systems. Such an agreement is crucial if we are to achieve a lasting peace between our two nations.”
