Assassin

by David Hagberg

  “How may this bank be of service to you?” Dunkel asked, cautious now, but extremely interested.

  McGarvey had purposely brought too small a letter of credit so that the banker he dealt with would have to verify the much larger amount. It was less flashy that way. Germans instinctively mistrusted flash.

  “You can act as my banker, of course. Transferring funds, establishing my credit. And I expect you may be of value in expediting the necessary licenses.”

  “Yes, we can do all of that,” Dunkel said. “But one final question. Why did you chose Leipzig to do your business? Why not Stuttgart where the home office of Mercedes is located?”

  “This is a delicate subject, Herr Dunkel, may I be frank?” McGarvey asked.

  “By all means.”

  “Businessmen in Stuttgart, and Munich, and Frankfurt-am-Main have a reputation for being rigid, sometimes overly so. While here, in what was once the GDR, that unbending, unimaginative attitude has not yet developed.”

  Dunkel smiled knowingly. “Sadly it is happening here too, Herr Allain. Perhaps it’s unavoidable.”

  “Perhaps,” McGarvey said.

  “Now, who do you plan on doing business with?” Dunkel asked, straightening up.

  “Mercedes Rossplatz.”

  “Very good.” Dunkel wrote a brief note of introduction on his letterhead, put it in an envelope and handed it to McGarvey. “Ask to speak with Bernard Legler. He is the president of the company, and a very honorable man. The western sickness hasn’t affected him yet.”

  The banker had called ahead, because Bernard Legler was waiting on the main showroom floor when McGarvey showed up, and he didn’t bother reading Dunkel’s note. He was a very tall, rawboned man with craggy features who looked more like an ex-rodeo cowboy than a German businessman. But his broad smile seemed genuine.

  “You want to buy cars and I want to sell them to you, but I don’t know a lot of folks in Latvia who can afford to buy one.”

  “I do,” McGarvey said.

  “Well then, let’s do some business. What do you have in mind?”

  Legler spoke German as if he were translating an American western movie. It was old hat in the west, but here it was the fad.

  “The sport utility four-by-four.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Two for now. But I expect to eventually handle a dozen or more each month.”

  “Equipment?”

  “Load them up.”

  “Cell phones, leather, the Bose stereo systems?”

  “Everything,” McGarvey said.

  Legler sat back, and gave McGarvey an appraising look. “I’ve got one coming in this afternoon that we can ship tomorrow. It’ll take me about two weeks to round up another. What kind of price did you have in mind?”

  “Ten percent over invoice,” McGarvey said.

  “Twenty.”

  “Twelve,” McGarvey countered.

  “Eighteen, and I handle all the export licenses, prepping and shipping to Riga. We’ll truck them up there.”

  “Fifteen, and you can handle the shipping but I’ll pay for it separately.”

  “Throw in an extra five hundred marks per unit, and we have a deal,” Legler said.

  “All right. How soon can you have the paperwork ready?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Intercontinental,” McGarvey said.

  “I can be there first thing in the morning.”

  “I’m going to drive the first car to Riga myself. So I want it equipped with an extra spare tire, a couple of cans of gasoline, and the papers I need to cross the borders. The second car should be exactly the same.”

  “Make it noon,” Legler said. “I’ll need a shipping address in Riga. We’ll truck it up there.”

  “I’ll send it to you when I get there,” McGarvey said.

  “On the way out, let my secretary make copies of your passport and driving license. We’ll need it for the documents.”

  McGarvey gave the man a hard look. “This business we have together will remain confidential.”

  “As long as you break no German laws, that’s fine with me.”

  “Good.”

  Paris

  Tom Lynch met Guy de Galan at a sidewalk cafe within sight of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées, a few minutes before 5:00 P.M., rush-hour traffic in full swing.

  “I assume that you’ve received your instructions from Washington,” Galan said.

  Lynch nodded. “Did General Baillot brief you?”

  “Oui,” Galan replied heavily. “So now what do we do? He’s broken no French laws that I know of, unless he’s crossed our borders under false papers.”

  “He’s done at least that much,” Lynch said. “And if he’s actually accepted this assignment, he’s broken our anti-terrorism laws.”

  “Do you think there’s any doubt of it?”

  Lynch shook his head. “He may still be in Moscow for all we know, in which case it’s up to Bykov and their special commission.”

  “We have nothing on Bykov in our files,” Galan said.

  “Neither do we, which makes me wonder. But it’s something else I can’t do a damn thing about. Fact is McGarvey is too good for us to find him, unless he makes a mistake. And if that happens he’s a dead man.”

  “My general wants us to stop him before he comes to harm.”

  “That’s the signal I’m getting from Washington. We’d rather see him in a French or American jail, than a marble slab in Moscow.” Lynch gave Galan a bleak look. “Hell of it is he might pull it off. He’s done some amazing things in his career, and it doesn’t look like he’s slowing down.”

  Galan shrugged.

  “Let’s assume he does kill Tarankov, and comes back here,” Lynch said. “What will your government do about it?”

  “That depends on whether the Russians can prove he did it. But you and I both know that if ever there was a political figure who needed assassinating, it’s Tarankov. If he comes to power, God help us all. McGarvey might be doing us a favor.”

  Lynch nodded. “That’s the hell of it. But I have my orders and I intend doing everything I can to carry them out.”

  “As will I,” Galan said. “One idea comes immediately to mind, but I don’t know if I’m enough of a bastard to try it.”

  “Are you talking about his daughter?”

  “Oui. And Jacqueline. McGarvey cares more about them than anything in the world if half of their conversations we’ve monitored are true. If they were to be placed in the middle of this investigation in such a way that McGarvey could find out, he would back off for their sakes.”

  “Are you thinking about sending them to Moscow to work for Bykov?”

  “It’s a thought. McGarvey will find out about the commission from Yemlin, there’s no doubt about it. If he also finds out that Jacqueline and his daughter are there as well, it might cause him to pull out.”

  Lynch shook his head. “I’ve got to sleep on that one,” he said. “In the meantime we keep looking for him.”

  “Oui. Like finding a needle in the haystack, when we don’t even know which farmyard it’s in.”

  Leipzig

  McGarvey spent a pleasant evening at the hotel, which featured an excellent Japanese restaurant. After dinner, he watched CNN for an hour or so, and went to sleep early. In the morning he had a vigorous workout in the hotel’s health spa, swam two hundred laps in the pool, and had a gargantuan breakfast of ham, eggs, potatoes, spinach, and very good German Brötchen.

  He took a cab to the Thomaskirche where Bach had been the choirmaster and organist. A young woman was practicing the “Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor” for an upcoming concert. He sat at the back of the church to listen until it was time to return to the hotel, and walking to the end of the block where he caught a cab, he could still hear the music on the corner. He’d never cared much for Germans, but they had written some good music. Bach was technical, and the Toccatas appealed to him.

  L
egler was waiting in the lobby, and they went up to McGarvey’s suite where the automobile dealer laid out the contract, bank draft, registration and export paperwork on the big coffee table.

  “Would you like to see what you’re buying before you sign these?” Legler asked.

  “Why?” McGarvey asked matter of factly. “By the time I get to Riga I’ll know if I was cheated, and there will be no further business between us.”

  McGarvey signed the paperwork, including the bank draft for almost DM 93.000, which was about $60,000.

  Legler handed him the factory invoice which showed that he paid for the car, including transportation and prep charges. McGarvey did the rough calculation in his head, then handed the invoice back.

  “Good news about the other unit. I’ve been guaranteed an early delivery, so I can have it to you in Riga no later than ten days from now, possibly sooner.”

  “That is good news,” McGarvey said.

  Legler gathered up the papers, leaving McGarvey’s copies on the table, and stuffed his in his attache case. “I’m curious about something, Herr Allain. You’re Belgian, so what’s your connection with Latvia? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I do mind,” McGarvey said, rising.

  Legler got up, and handed McGarvey a valet parking slip. “The extra spare tire and gas cans are in the cargo area. And I put the same route map that our truck driver will use in the glove compartment.”

  “Thank you,” McGarvey said and they shook hands.

  “Have a good trip, Herr Allain. And I wish you luck in your business venture.”

  Downstairs at the front desk McGarvey informed them that he would be leaving in the morning, a day earlier than planned, and to have his bill ready, along with a picnic lunch.

  He retrieved the gunmetal-gray Mercedes from the parking valet, and drove the heavy machine over to an automobile parts store on the north side of the city he’d looked up in the telephone book. He purchased a pair of tire irons, and an electric tire inflator that connected to the car’s cigarette lighter.

  By 1:30 P.M. he was on the highway to the small town of Gröbers, located in a small forest that had somehow escaped the industrial devastation of so much of the area between Leipzig and Halle. The car was massive, the knobby tires huge, but it drove like a luxury sedan, not a truck. The upholstery was leather, the stereo system magnificent and the attention to detail precise.

  The day was pleasantly warm, and when he pulled up in front of an isolated house at the edge of town, he spotted a burly man stripped to the waist working in the extensive garden on the south side of the house.

  The man straightened up, brushed the gray hair off his forehead as McGarvey got out of the car and came around to the front.

  “Dobry dyen, Dmitri Pavlovich,” McGarvey said.

  Former KGB General Dmitri Voronin looked as if he was seeing a ghost, but then his broad Slavic face broke out into a grin. He dropped the weeding fork he’d been using, and shambled out of the garden. “Kirk,” he shouted. He grabbed McGarvey in a bear hug and kissed him. “Yeb vas, but it’s good to see you!”

  “It’s good to see you too,” McGarvey said. “You’re looking fit.” He glanced up at the house. “Where’s Nadia?”

  Voronin’s face fell. “You could not have known, Kirk. But she died last year of cancer.”

  “I’m sorry, Dmitri. She was a good woman.”

  “We would have been married forty-five years this summer.” Voronin shrugged. “But then we wouldn’t have had these last years of peace without you. We often talked about you.”

  After Baranov had fallen, taking much of the KGB’s Executive Action Service with him, the Komityet and all of the Soviet Union had gone through a period of internal turmoil largely unknown in the West. Voronin, who’d been number two in the KGB’s First Directorate, had tried to make the first peace overtures to the United States, and for his effort he was branded a traitor. McGarvey was hired to pull him and his wife out of Moscow to safety, first in West Germany near Munich for months of debriefings, and when the Wall came down they’d moved here for a simpler life.

  “How about a beer, Kirk?” Voronin said.

  “Sure. Then I have to ask you for a favor,” McGarvey said.

  Voronin gave him an amused glance. “You have the look on you. You’re back in the field. Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “Nyet.”

  “Good, because I no longer want the burden—” Voronin stopped short, an odd expression on his face as if something disturbing had just occurred to him. “There’s a picnic table in back. I’ll get the beers.”

  McGarvey had been here once after Voronin and his wife were settled in. Nothing seemed to have changed, it was still a pleasant spot. He sat down and lit a cigarette. His connection with General Voronin was unknown to all but a handful of people in Langley. It had somehow slipped past the traitor Rick Ames. So far as they knew no one in Russia was aware that the CIA had helped Voronin out of the country, although they might have guessed. The manhunt for him and his wife had been brief, because the Komityet was in disarray, and its officers had other, bigger problems facing them than a defecting general. So McGarvey felt reasonably safe coming here.

  Voronin brought the beers out, took a cigarette from McGarvey and they sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the light breeze in the trees, the singing birds, and the distant hum of tires on the highway half a kilometer away.

  “Five years ago we were about the same size, Dmitri,” McGarvey said.

  Voronin chuckled. “Old age is the ultimate diet.”

  “I’d like to borrow one of your dress uniforms.”

  Voronin cradled his beer bottle in both hands, and stared out toward the woods. “There’s a lot of trouble brewing in the Rodina. I understand this, Kirk. But you must understand that she is still Mother Russia to me. I’ll do nothing to harm my country.”

  “Neither will I,” McGarvey said. “In fact I’m trying to help save it.”

  “Are you working for the CIA again?”

  “No.”

  “Assassination has almost never had the expected results,” Voronin said quietly. “The situation almost always got worse.”

  “It might this time, too, but I don’t think so.”

  Voronin looked at him. “There is only one man in Russia whose death would benefit the people. If he were to be killed, I might be able to return.”

  “If I succeed, Dmitri, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be able to go home finally,” McGarvey said.

  “What if you fail?”

  “Then the situation will probably get worse,” McGarvey answered without hesitation. That thought had occupied his mind since Yemlin had come to see him in Paris.

  Voronin thought for a minute. “I must do this for you.”

  “I’m not calling in any old debts, because there aren’t—”

  Voronin interrupted. “I must help you help the Rodina, even if there’s a chance things will become worse. I’m getting old, and in the end maybe you’re my only real hope for going home.” Voronin got heavily to his feet. “I’ll get it now.”

  “Do you have a couple of large plastic garbage bags?”

  “Yes.”

  When Voronin went inside, McGarvey drove the Mercedes around back. He took the extra spare tire out of the cargo area, deflated it, and by the time Voronin returned he had pried one side of the tire away from the rim.

  “Ingenious,” Voronin said.

  McGarvey wrapped the KGB uniform blouse, trousers, shirt and tie in the plastic, forming the bundle into a long narrow tube which he stuffed inside the spare tire. He reinflated the tire with the electric pump, and put it back in the cargo area.

  Next he removed the cover from the spare tire attached to a bracket on the cargo door, and took the tire down. Voronin’s officer’s cap went into the hub of the wheel, which he reattached to the cargo lid bracket, and replaced the cover.

  The entire operation took about forty minutes, and
when he was done, McGarvey was sweating lightly. Voronin brought another couple of beers, and they sat again at the picnic table.

  “When do you leave?”

  “In the morning,” McGarvey said.

  “And when will you do … this thing?”

  “Sometime between now and the general elections.”

  “Less than ten weeks.”

  “Maybe sooner.”

  Voronin looked away, his eyes filling. “Do you ever miss your country, Kirk?”

  “Almost all the time, Dmitri.”

  “When this is done, maybe we can both go home,” Voronin said. He got up and without a backward glance went into the house. McGarvey finished his beer, backed the Mercedes out of the driveway and left.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Paris

  Elizabeth McGarvey awoke at her usual hour of 6:00 A.M., got dressed in a bright pink jogging outfit and headed along the Avenue Jean Jaures, taking the same route her father did every morning. It was only a slight hope, but she thought by being so obviously open about her moves that if her father were to be anywhere in the vicinity of his apartment he would certainly spot her.

  As she ran she kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Cars, windowless vans, delivery trucks with too many antennae. A face in a window, a reflection off binocular lenses on a rooftop. But after nearly a week of the same routine, she’d come up with nothing. At times her hopes began to fade.

  She and Jacqueline had taken up residence in her father’s apartment, and she’d gotten to know the French woman who in some respects was like her mother. Mysterious and reserved sometimes, while at other times open and vivacious. She was very bright, very sympathetic to Elizabeth’s despair, and completely in love with Kirk.

  On their first full day together at the apartment, after Tom Lynch reported that he and the SDECE had apparently just missed Rencke and McGarvey at the house outside Bonnières, she and Jacqueline went through the apartment with a fine-toothed comb. The Service had already taken the place apart, finding nothing. But Elizabeth felt that the instincts of two women might turn up something the Service might have missed.