Black Knight in Red Square ir-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

He did not want to tell them about Comrade Timofeyeva, but he had to. Neither commented, and so he returned to business.

  “Now we turn-” he began, but there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” he said, and Zelach stuck his head in. His face was pale.

  He’s going to tell us that Anna is dead, thought Rostnikov.

  “Inspector,” said Zelach. “I don’t understand. I have found Mrs. Aubrey.”

  “That does not sound difficult to understand,” Rostnikov said impatiently. “Send a car for her. I want to talk to her here.”

  “We can’t,” said Zelach, looking for help from the impassive Karpo and curious Tkach. “She’s in Australia.”

  “How did she get to Australia?” Rostnikov asked, bewildered.

  “She has been there for five years,” explained Zelach. “They have been separated for five years. She is a photographer for a newspaper in Sydney.”

  “I see,” said Rostnikov, and a wry smile came over his face.

  The woman who had audaciously introduced herself as Aubrey’s widow was an imposter. Things were a little clearer. He would have to find that dark-eyed woman and ask her some very important questions.

  SEVEN

  “So,” said Rostnikov, fingering the scratch on his desk, “where is she?”

  Zelach had quietly departed, closing the door behind him.

  “Who is she?” answered Tkach.

  “What is she?” added Karpo.

  “We have no lack of questions,” Rostnikov sighed. “We will begin with the usual routine-checking the hotels, circulating a description. Tkach, you get Zelach and someone else on it. Check Intourist for names of tourists of the right age and general description. We don’t even know her nationality. I’m sure she was not Russian. She’ll have changed her appearance. Hair may be short, blond or red, possibly curly. She may be wearing glasses. Most likely someone is harboring her. She took a chance posing as Mrs. Aubrey. Why?”

  Tkach had no idea.

  “She wanted to find out what Aubrey had discovered and what we knew about World Liberation,” said Karpo. “To find out if we were a threat to her plans.”

  Rostnikov nodded. There was no smile now.

  “Whatever she is planning, it has to be soon,” Tkach added. “She can’t hide here indefinitely. The longer she waits, the more likely she is to be caught.”

  “So,” said Rostnikov, looking in his top drawer for something to put in his mouth, a throat lozenge or piece of hard candy. There was nothing there. “While normal channels are being pursued, we continue our investigation. I will talk to the German. You, Tkach, talk to the Englishman. Call his hotel first and find out if he speaks Russian or French. Emil Karpo, you direct the search for the woman who posed as Myra Aubrey.”

  It was a dismissal, and the two men left Rostnikov looking glumly at his telephone. He finally picked it up, mumbled a curse, and dialed the number of the KGB. He had to pass on to Drozhkin the news about the imposter. It was several minutes before Drozhkin took the call. Rostnikov could tell that the conversation was being recorded. He heard no click and had no prior knowledge, but he assumed that all calls to the KGB would be recorded, and the tone of the conversation made him certain of it.

  “Colonel Drozhkin,” Rostnikov said, “I wish to report to you that the woman who claimed to be Mrs. Aubrey, the wife of the dead American, has been shown to be an imposter.”

  “I see,” said Drozhkin slowly. “You actually talked to her, questioned her?”

  “I did.”

  “And where is she now?” Drozhkin went on.

  “We do not know,” said Rostnikov.

  “She, then, is your murderer,” Drozhkin said.

  “And very likely the key to whatever World Liberation plans to do in Moscow.”

  Drozhkin’s pause was brief. There should have been no hesitation at all. Perhaps age was working against him.

  “There is as yet no evidence to link our knowledge of that group with the murder of your American.”

  Yes, thought Rostnikov, my American. My murder. My problem. But one cannot save one’s neck that easily. This conversation would do Drozhkin no good, but Rostnikov sensed that there might be something in it for him.

  “I thought you should know, Comrade Colonel,” he said.

  “Yes. You are correct. Remember our discussion. I will do what needs to be done here.”

  Without a good-bye, Drozhkin hung up. Rostnikov felt the stirrings of an idea as he switched off the tape recorder and unplugged the microphone he had attached to the phone. He was in a very vulnerable position, but so was Drozhkin. Perhaps there was something to be gained from this. Time and ingenuity would tell. Now he would go feed Anna’s cat.

  Following Rostnikov’s call to Colonel Drozhkin, a series of misunderstandings transpired that led to five deaths and a week of cleanup work for a party sent out by Central Repair Committee. The members of that party were never told what they were cleaning up after and none of them, considering the nature of the debris, really wanted to know.

  It began when Drozhkin told his assistant to order the operatives watching an Arab named Fouad to be particularly alert for any contact he might have with a woman in her thirties, a woman with dark eyes. The same message relating to the other members of World Liberation was passed on to three other operatives. The operatives following the Frenchman named Robert, the woman named Seven, and the Arab named Ali continued their normal routine, simply adding the dark-eyed woman to their surveillance. Alexi Vukovo, the operative following Fouad, decided that he would need to stay much closer to his quarry if he was to determine whether or not a woman had dark eyes.

  Vukovo was quite eager, quite intelligent, and ambitious to the point that it now caused him trouble. He wasn’t incautious as he boarded a bus going down Lenin Avenue. He was simply not quite as careful as he should have been, and he did not take into account Fouad’s animal-like sense of danger. A man who survives to the age of forty-four, having alienated the PLO, Black September, and the Israeli secret police, is someone to be reckoned with. Also among Fouad’s enemies were the intelligence services of every major country of both East and West. The only nations that didn’t seek him were the small ones that didn’t know of his existence. He was a survivor. So, when the young man with the good clothes appeared both in the park and on the bus, Fouad decided to kill him. He did not put great thought into the decision. The man might simply have the misfortune born of coincidence. The bus was crowded and the traffic thick. Fouad looked out the window and jotted down on his hand the license number of a passing taxi: 53–65. It meant nothing, but Fouad was sure that he had aroused the attention of the well-dressed young man.

  It was a bright, shiny day. Fouad wandered to the door, got off at the next stop, and crossed to a grassy ridge under a tree. A red flag a few feet away was flapping in the slight breeze, and a small boy began to cry as his mother dragged him toward the tall apartment buildings beyond the parkway. The boy wanted something, but Fouad’s Russian was not good enough for him to determine what it was.

  The well-dressed young man did not get off at the stop with Fouad. That was no surprise. The Arab leaned back against the tree, squinting into the sun as he watched the bus move down toward Lenin Hills Avenue. Then it stopped, and several people got off. One, Fouad was sure, was the young man. A group of six people scuttled between the traffic, which was moving slowly as always, and Fouad walked in the opposite direction, crossing to the grassy median strip behind a white-helmeted motorcyclist.

  There was no doubt now. The young man was heading his way. One more check. Fouad crossed the road and paused near another tree, glancing back. Yes, the young man had seen him and was now crossing. Fouad was not worried, but thoughts were coming quickly. If he is following me, he thought, why is he not more concerned about our distance at this point? One answer, the most reasonable and disturbing one, was that the man did not need close contact because he or someone else could pick Fouad up somewhere else. Which
meant that they might well know about Kalinin Street.

  Fouad passed through the line of trees to the pedestrian walkway and began a steady but unhurried walk toward Kalinin Street. The walk was long, and with every step he was more sure of the danger. There was no phone in the apartment, and even if there were, it would be madness to use it. So when he got to Vorovsky Street, instead of continuing, Fouad turned into Malaya Molchanovka Street and paused in front of the old house where the poet Mikhail Lermontov once lived. Fouad had no idea of the cultural importance of the place; he chose it because he remembered that the side of the building was hidden from the street. He paused, pretended to be looking for someone, checked his watch, and moved to the side of the building. Alexi Vukovo appeared a few minutes later, and he, too, moved around the building. Twenty seconds later, Fouad reappeared on the street.

  He walked slowly and deliberately down the narrow street that would take him directly onto Kalinin. Five minutes later, he was at the door to the apartment. This was just about the time that Vukovo’s body was discovered by a hairdresser on his lunch hour. The members of World Liberation moved quickly, but the KGB, which had been watching the building, moved even faster. The death of Vukovo blew the operation. Drozhkin had no choice. He cursed the terrorists; he cursed his wife; he cursed Rostnikov, but he did so silently. On the surface he remained composed. He moved instantly to recover what he might from this failure. He told his assistant to bring in the terrorists immediately, and he made it clear that if they resisted, they were to be destroyed.

  Shortly after one on that Friday afternoon, Robert, the Frenchman, stepped into the street carrying his belongings in a small sack. The first stutter of shots came before he was across the sidewalk, stitching a line across his chest.

  Seven shut the door as Robert went down. She shouted into the street, “Death to the East and West!” but no one heard her over the roar of guns.

  Fouad and Ali headed for the rear of the apartment where a small window opened on a side street. Neither expected it to be unguarded, but it was their only choice.

  When the first burst of gunfire came from the apartment, Dmitri Kolomensk, a sergeant who had been on seven similar missions in his almost forty years, ordered his men to launch three grenades through the windows of the apartment.

  Kolomensk thought he heard a woman scream something the instant before the first explosion. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care. This meant that he would have to prepare a tedious report and answer a series of questions put to him by Colonel Drozhkin. The hell with it, he thought, and ordered the men to launch more grenades through the apartment’s back windows. The entire operation took no more than four minutes.

  “At least the building’s not burning,” Kolomensk said. “Go in and see what there is.”

  The KGB agents found the bodies of four members of World Liberation, a variety of rubble, and the remnants of furniture. However, the sack that the Frenchman had dropped in the street proved to be a far more interesting discovery.

  Kolomensk dropped the papers back into the sack, hurried to the waiting car, and told the driver to get back to Lubyanka as fast as he could.

  The papers consisted of a series of black and white maps of Moscow with red circles penciled in at various locations. Kolomensk didn’t stop to consider what they might mean. He saw them only as a potential buffer between himself and the wrath of Colonel Drozhkin.

  In spite of the noise, no curious onlookers appeared for perhaps ten minutes. It was best in Moscow not to be too near trouble. One so easily became a part of it. But curiosity is a marvelously strong motivator, and they eventually began to trickle past, kept in control by gray-uniformed policemen.

  “A homemade bomb,” one man confided to a young woman who nodded as they moved slowly down the street.

  “Gas explosion,” said a well-dressed man carrying a briefcase.

  “Gas explosions are not accompanied by gunfire,” said a woman behind him, who was taking in as much as she could.

  Behind this small group of gawkers came a woman with short, straight brown hair and very dark eyes behind black-framed glasses. She did not gawk with the others. In fact, she seemed to be a secretary or clerk who wanted nothing but to get past this road impediment and go to work. She did not need to look. The smell was familiar.

  Now she would have to activate the alternative plan, and she would have to do it far more quickly than she had planned and with far less reliable people, but there was no longer any choice. She did not consider abandoning the project. There were too many reasons to go ahead. First, she had to maintain her reputation. Second, she wanted to do it. This was what she lived for, and she did it better, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. She knew how to destroy, and destroy she would.

  A taxi would have taken her to the Rossyia Hotel faster than the metro, but she preferred the crowds. Instead of heading for the hotel, she crossed to the white-walled Church of Saint Anne and looked over at the glass monster. There was a risk, but risks had to be taken and controlled. She crossed Razin Street and headed for one of the doors to the hotel. The lobby looked safe enough, but she took no chances. She moved quickly to the lobby of the first tower though she knew the person she wanted was in the central tower.

  No one in the lobby paid any attention as she walked past a group of Americans talking about a movie they had just seen.

  “But,” said a thin, silver-haired man with a Yale accent, “must they make us pay by boring us?”

  The dark-eyed one found the house phone and called the proper room.

  “Oui?” came the voice of Monique Freneau.

  “It’s me.” Monique Freneau said nothing, so she continued, “It will be necessary to make the purchase we discussed in France.”

  The pause was long, and the dark-eyed woman looked around the lobby. She could not afford to stay long.

  “I cannot,” said Monique in French.

  “Tomorrow. Precisely at seven in the evening. There is nothing more to discuss.”

  “I’m sorry, but that will be impossible,” Monique said, her voice breaking.

  She had talked long enough. The phone might be tapped. The call could easily be traced to the lobby. The Frenchwoman’s refusal to cooperate had not come as a surprise. There were those who claimed commitment but who could not carry out that claim. In fact, this had been true of all but a handful of people she had encountered. Either the German or the Englishman might have said the same thing, but the lesson had to be taught somewhere.

  She hung up, and strode across the lobby toward the restaurant, pretending to look for something in her large cloth purse. In fact, she was watching the phone she had just left. If the police or the KGB appeared there, she would hurry into the dining room, join someone at dinner, and make up a story drawn from the thread of a dozen tales that had served her in similar situations in the past. But no one pounced on the phone.

  It took her ten minutes to make her way carefully to the central tower and up the stairway to the right floor. It took her another minute to assure herself that Monique was alone in her room. It took only a knock to get Monique to open the door, and it took only a pair of blows with the fist to kill her. The dark-eyed woman stepped back into the hall, closed the door, and hurried away.

  Word of the killing would have to reach the other two, and they would have to be, made to understand what it meant. But even if they did their part, one-third of the task would remain undone. She would have to do that herself.

  She would make two phone calls, and then she would simply hide, go back to the apartment of the student she had made it her business to meet. She would feign ecstasy at his touch and thus keep him busy for the remainder of that day and much of the next. He was relatively stupid, totally inept sexually, and probably harmless. If he did nothing to change her mind, she probably wouldn’t have to kill him before she left.

  Rostnikov left the room of the German, Wolfgang Bintz, at the Rossyia Hotel and went to the lobby, missing the dark-eyed wo
man by more than half an hour. A high-ranking assistant to the hotel manager stopped Rostnikov as he emerged from the elevator. He told the chief inspector that an urgent message had arrived at the desk: Rostnikov was to call his office at once.

  Karpo’s voice came as evenly and calmly as ever over the phone. “Inspector, there are several developments you should know about. A KGB inspector who was following one of the terrorists has been killed. Four members of World Liberation also have been killed in a KGB raid. And the Frenchwoman Tkach questioned yesterday has just been found dead there in the hotel.”

  Rostnikov sighed mightily. “Emil Karpo, even with all this killing, Moscow is one of the safest cities in the world. One of the safest. Can you imagine what it must be like to live in London or Tokyo or Rome…?” Then his voice trailed off, for he was indeed beginning to imagine what those places might be like.

  “Are you all right, Chief Inspector?” Karpo asked with something like concern.

  “I am all right,” Rostnikov replied, looking at the eavesdropping assistant manager, a porky man who hovered nearby pretending to read some mail. “Since I am here, I will go look at the body. Perhaps I will be lucky. Who knows? Perhaps I will make it all the way from the lobby to the room without discovering another body. How are you doing on finding the woman?”

  “I am following procedure,” said Karpo, relieved to get back to routine. “We checked the hotels and-”

  “Do you have any leads at all?” Rostnikov threw in, glaring at the hotel assistant.

  “Nothing yet,” admitted Karpo.

  Rostnikov grunted and hung up.

  “Please get someone to take me to the hotel room of Monique Freneau, who has been murdered in your hotel,” Rostnikov said maliciously. The man made a perfect target for Rostnikov’s frustration.

  “The hotel is not mine,” the red-faced man said with a trained smile. “It belongs to the state. It is as much yours as mine, Comrade.”

  “Very well,” said Rostnikov, letting out a long sigh. “Then let us proceed through our hotel while there are still guests alive to answer our questions.”