The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  The Russian had been in the business for a long time, and that he had survived for so many years meant that he was a careful man. He would have to know that McGarvey was coming sometime this morning, and he would have made preparations.

  McGarvey stepped out into the light and crossed the street as a red double-decker bus rumbled past. One of the cabbies said something and they all looked up as McGarvey approached.

  “Does anyone speak English?”

  “No trains yet,” one of the drivers replied.

  “I need a cab,” McGarvey said.

  The cabbie said something to the other drivers, and they all started to turn away, until McGarvey pulled out a hundred dollar bill.

  “I want to go to Uneo.”

  “Hai, you have directions?”

  “The Ueno station.”

  The driver shrugged and nodded toward the entry to the subway station behind him “Take the train.”

  “I want to go now.”

  The driver said something to the others, who laughed. But then he took McGarvey’s money. “We go now,” he said.

  FIFTY–THREE

  Turov was lying in his bed, fully awake, listening to the gentle sounds of water flowing over the rocks in his garden and thinking about his later days in the KGB after the breakup when he’d been recalled to Moscow to help reorganize the service, especially Department Viktor.

  Nobody knew what was going to happen next. Germany had collapsed and like a row of dominoes the first piece tipped by Gorbachev’s hand started the chain reaction. All of Eastern Europe collapsed, and no Soviet soldiers were sent. The Balkans became independent, and nothing happened. Finally the entire Soviet Union disintegrated, and except for Chechnya there was no fighting.

  By then Bokyo, as he was known in those days, was a colonel, and was considered too dangerous a man to have around, especially if that fool Yeltsin actually instituted the rule of law, as he promised to do. The colonel had assassinated people by his own hand, and had arranged the murders of others. But worst of all he’d collected information from the deathbed confessions of his victims who had tried to bargain for their lives. Troubling information about high-ranking men in the Kremlin. Information that could not be allowed to reside in the possession of one man.

  Two Department Viktor men, Nikolai Tsumayev and Yevgenni Lakomsky, both of whom Boyko had trained, were sent to his apartment under the guise of a friendly visit, but with orders to kill him. They brought vodka, good dark bread, and pickles, but Boyko wasn’t home, so they went downstairs to wait for him. Tsumayev went to the back of the apartment building, while Lakomsky stayed out front.

  By three in the morning when Boyko still hadn’t shown up, Lakomsky went around back to have a smoke with his friend, but Tsumayev’s throat had been cut. His body had been propped up in a sitting position against the wall, his severed penis stuffed into his mouth.

  Boyko’s message couldn’t have been clearer.

  Lakomsky brought the department Lada around back, stuffed his partner’s body in the trunk, and drove away to report to his boss, General Igor Mokretskov, who had ordered the hit but with the warning that it had to look like Boyko had been killed by a burglar. The general had been stealing money from KGB funds for years. It was something that Boyko had learned nearly a year earlier.

  Later that day when an aide came out to the dacha, three badly charred bodies were discovered. The Moscow city prosecutor’s office quickly determined that Lakomsky and Tsumayev had tried to rob the general, who killed them both by slashing their throats, and then stuffed their penises into their mouths. When for some unknown reason the general tried to burn their bodies, the gas can he’d used to douse the corpses had caught fire, burning him to death.

  But it had been a senseless crime, because the general had little or nothing except for his dacha in the country and an apartment in the city and the furnishings. He had almost nothing in his bank accounts and very little cash in either residence. He’d not been a rich man.

  Boyko resigned his commission a month later and went into business for himself, using as his start-up money the five million U.S. he had convinced the general to transfer before he burned the man alive.

  A dark figure came to the open shoji screen, and knocked lightly on the frame.

  “Yes?” Turov asked, raising his modified Steyr GB 9 mm pistol, the tiny laser sighting dot centered on the figure’s chest.

  “McGarvey has left the hotel,” Minoru said. “He walked to Tawasamachi Station where he got a cab.”

  “Was there time to put someone in place to follow him?” Turov asked, lowering the pistol.

  “No. But he must be on his way here.”

  Turov sat up. “I agree. Have Tanaka and Hatoyama assume their positions. If the opportunity arises to capture him alive and relatively undamaged, do it, otherwise allow him to come here and we shall deal with him inside the walls.”

  “Is that wise, Colonel?”

  “You asked that once before,” Turov said sharply, but without raising his voice. “Do not repeat yourself to me. Do you understand?”

  “Hai,” Minoru replied. “Where will you be?”

  “Around,” Turov replied.

  Minoru nodded, and turned to leave, but Turov called after him.

  “Hirobumi-san. You may inform the men that I will remain inside the perimeter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You and I will leave for Australia when we have finished here.”

  “What about the staff?”

  “Tell them nothing,” Turov said.

  When Minoru was gone, Turov went out onto the veranda where he smoked another cigarette. He would miss this place, its serenity, but he’d known for the past year that the time was coming when he would have to leave. It would not be for Australia, as he had told Minoru but somewhere with amenities, somewhere he could put his fortune to best advantage, somewhere he could continue to put his talents to good use.

  Back inside he got dressed all in black. He fitted the pistol with a suppressor. Noise outside of the compound needed to be kept at a minimum, and he was willing to trade the slight loss of accuracy because of the silencer for it.

  Before he went out he placed a phone call to Captain Hirashi Sekigawa, who was in charge of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Keishicho, Division of Uneo. He was a longtime friend of the special residents here, who saw to it that his meager salary was regularly supplemented.

  “Sorry to telephone so early in the morning, Hirashi-san.”

  “It’s of no concern,” the cop replied. “How may I be of assistance?”

  “I think that I may be the target of a burglar sometime this morning,” Turov said. “It’s tedious I know, because crimes of this nature hardly ever occur in Japan, and especially not here.”

  “I will immediately send a detail out to you.”

  “No, please don’t disturb your men. Now that we’ve been alerted we’ll handle it here ourselves. I merely wanted to inform you that there might be a slight disturbance here, but it will be nothing you need concern yourself with.”

  “I understand,” the cop said. “Thank you for the call.”

  “A messenger will arrive at your home within twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re most kind.”

  “Not at all,” Turov said. He broke the connection, then left his bedroom, slipped out the rear entrance of the compound, and disappeared into the night.

  FIFTY –FOUR

  The Ueno train station, its front façade brilliantly lit, was quiet at this hour, but by six this would be a madhouse of workers streaming in from the country. Across the street the soaring Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall was also lit up, and above, rising into the hills, were the Keneiji Temple Pagoda, the Toshogu Shrine, and Turov’s compound.

  “No trains for two hours now,” the cabbie said, pulling up.

  “Thanks for the lift,” McGarvey said, getting out. “Maybe you want to stay here, I might need a ride back.”

  The driver sa
id something in Japanese that didn’t sound complimentary, powered the rear door shut, and took off.

  When the cab had disappeared around the corner, McGarvey walked across the street, his hands in his pockets. He went around the west side of the Festival Hall and headed along narrow tree-shaded streets in the general direction of the pagoda and shrine, coming a few minutes later to one end of the Koenguchi Park with its long esplanade and reflecting pool.

  This entire area was a district of museums and parks that could have come directly out of central casting for a Japanese travelogue; footpaths that meandered through stands of cherry trees, arched wooden bridges crossing ponds and narrow streams, traditional old buildings mixed with the modern built after the war, and broad avenues surrounding warrens of narrow streets that hadn’t changed much in a century.

  Otto’s directions placed Turov’s compound on a long street that ran roughly parallel to the slope of the hill just below the zoo but above the pagoda and shrine and connected with the main road back down to the train station. If they were expecting him tonight, they would be waiting somewhere below the compound in the trees that ran along the street, thinking that it would be natural for him to come up the hill from the station.

  Instead he headed across the connecting street toward the Metropolitan Art Museum until he came to a spot where a path went into the zoo well away from the main entrance and just above the upper end of Turov’s street. He would be coming at them from an unexpected direction courtesy of the real-time satellite images Otto had sent over.

  It took nearly ten minutes for him to make his way beneath the monorail, to the front entrance where he headed down the street moving from one shadow to the next. The lower side of the street was tree-lined park and museum land, while the large houses on the length of the upper side were all hidden behind a tall, ugly unpainted concrete block wall, broken here and there only by thick wooden gates.

  McGarvey pulled up at a spot about thirty meters from the gate to Turov’s compound when he spotted a movement in the trees farther down the road. A man stepped out of the woods for just a moment then stepped back. It was a setup.

  He reached for his pistol at the small of his back when someone stepped up from the trees behind him.

  “If you pull out your gun we will be forced to kill you, Mr. McGarvey,” a man said. His English was heavily accented but good.

  McGarvey withdrew his hand and turned around. Two men had come out of the woods where they had been waiting for him to come down from the zoo. One of them held a silenced pistol, the other an aluminum baseball bat. Both of them were Japanese and looked streetwise and hard.

  He’d probably been spotted leaving the hotel, and it was possible that someone had watched him come up from the train station.

  They hadn’t shot first and asked questions later, which told him that Turov wanted to talk. The Russian had to be nervous that someone was coming at him. It was something McGarvey had counted on. But this was their territory and Turov had years to perfect his defenses. All Mac wanted was this sort of a response. Only he was going to play the next part by his rules, not by the Russian’s.

  “I’m not surprised he sent a couple of street hoods like you to do his dirty work,” McGarvey said easily. “I suppose he’s hiding inside like the coward he is until you soften me up.”

  “The colonel said not to kill you if possible, just to wait for you to show up and then bring you in,” the one with the bat said. “He didn’t care if we had to carry you.”

  McGarvey shrugged. “That’s if you can actually hit me with your little toy. But if you try, I just might stick it up your ass.”

  The man said something in Japanese and he suddenly brought the bat up. He started to swing as he stepped forward, but McGarvey moved out of the way at the last instant. He grabbed the man’s arm just above the elbow and propelled him sprawling on his face.

  The second man had raised his pistol but McGarvey was too close, and he easily batted the muzzle away with one hand, while pulling his own weapon with the other and firing one silenced round into the man’s knee.

  As the guard grunted in pain and collapsed to the ground McGarvey reached down, yanked the pistol from his hand and turned as the first guard was scrambling to his feet, the aluminum bat still in his hand.

  “Let’s not try that again,” McGarvey said. “If I have to kill you, who’ll help your partner back to the house? I just came here to talk to your boss, nothing more.”

  The guard dropped the bat. “I don’t think you’re going to like what the colonel has to say to you. He’s waiting across the street.”

  “Right,” McGarvey said. He holstered his own gun, ejected the magazine from the guard’s weapon, which was a lightweight Austrian-made 9 mm Glock 17 pistol, thumbed the seventeen rounds onto the ground, dropped the magazine, and quickly fieldstripped the gun, letting the parts lay where they fell.

  Both men watched him warily, neither making a move against him.

  “I’m going to walk back down to the train station now, where I’m sure there’ll be a snack bar or café, someplace to get a cup of coffee or tea,” McGarvey said. “Ask the colonel to join me. Just him, no one else. We’ll talk.”

  “You’ll never get away from here alive,” the man with the shattered kneecap said.

  McGarvey suddenly pulled out his pistol, and jammed the muzzle into the man’s forehead. “Maybe I’ll just kill you both and let your boss man figure it out on his own.”

  “Go.”

  McGarvey nodded down the block. “If you try to follow me make sure you kill me, because if you don’t I’ll make it my mission to put a bullet in your brain. Wakarimasuka?” Do you understand?

  “Hai,” the man on the ground said.

  He looked at the other man, who nodded tightly after a moment.

  “Sensible,” McGarvey said, and he walked back up the hill toward the entrance to the zoo, ready for Turov’s man to take up the chase. But it never happened, and ten minutes later he was heading down to the station.

  FIFTY–FIVE

  McGarvey picked an all-night tearoom on the train station’s upper level from where he had a good bird’s-eye view of the nearly deserted main arrivals hall and the front doors. He’d bought the early edition of The Japan Times, Tokyo’s main English-language newspaper, and brought it and a pot of green tea to a table near the railing.

  Except for an old man standing at a tall table, and the counterman, he was the only person in the shop. When neither of them was looking, McGarvey laid his pistol on the table and covered it with the newspaper

  Turov, wearing jeans and an open-collar white shirt, came into the station, glanced up to where McGarvey was seated and then headed directly across to the escalators, which hadn’t been switched on yet. He made his way up to the second level, moving easily as if he were a man without a care in the world.

  He hesitated for just a moment at the broad entrance to the tearoom, taking in the old man and the employee behind the counter, then came directly across to McGarvey and sat down.

  “Glad you could join me,” McGarvey said. This close he could see the irritation in Turov’s eyes. “Though my reception earlier wasn’t friendly.”

  The Russian shrugged. “You pushed and I pushed back. No harm.”

  “Your man with the shattered kneecap might not agree.”

  “He’s expendable.”

  “We all are,” McGarvey said.

  Turov nodded. “What are you doing here, Mr. McGarvey? What am I to you?”

  “I had your shooter cornered in Seoul, until you interfered,” McGarvey said. “But the NIS officer you shot will recover and I’ll find your shooter and a direct link back to you.”

  “I suppose it would do no good to say that I haven’t been to Seoul, or anywhere in Korea for that matter, in years. But here you are, looking for something. What answers do you think I have for you?”

  “We know your Department Viktor background, and we have some pretty good evidence that you�
�ve become an expediter, a middleman for assassinations. What we don’t understand are the last three hits you arranged, including General Ho up in Pyongyang, unless you thought that you could start a war out here.”

  “It would seem that the situation is heading in that direction,” Turov said. “I too read the newspapers, but it doesn’t mean I had anything to do with the general’s assassination. As for the other two I’m not sure who you mean, though I can guess.”

  “It’s not you who wants a war, of course,” McGarvey said. “I suspect that you’re indifferent to what’s about to happen, so long as you can get yourself far enough away until the shooting stops. What we’re interested in is who hired you and why?”

  “Even if I had been involved you’d be correct in believing that I wouldn’t care. The motives of my paymasters would mean nothing to me.”

  Turov started to reach in his pocket, but McGarvey moved the paper aside for a moment, revealing the pistol.

  Turov smiled. “Are you going to shoot me simply because I attempted to take a handkerchief out of my pocket?”

  “Russians don’t use handkerchiefs. Keep your hands on the table.”

  Again a look of irritation crossed Turov’s eyes. “As you wish,” he said. He glanced down at the arrivals hall. “It will get quite busy here in a couple of hours. Do you mean to hold me until then? Is someone else coming?”

  “Only until I find out who hired you.”

  “If you do shoot here in public you’ll never leave Japan alive, you do understand that, don’t you, Mr. McGarvey? Doesn’t matter that you once ran the CIA, I’m sure that the PSIA isn’t overjoyed you came here. And even if you told them that you believed I was a killer, they wouldn’t do anything without proof. I have friends here, and at this moment Japan blames the current trouble on your government.”

  McGarvey held his silence.

  “It’s all about money,” Turov said to fill the silence. “Without proof you can’t fight its power.”