Assassin

by David Hagberg

  “I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  McGarvey shined the flashlight on what he’d taken to be a stone ledge, but which was in fact a long stone platform that looked like a riverside dock or quay.

  He boosted Jacqueline up, then climbed up himself with a great deal of difficulty because of the heavy satchel, his waterlogged clothing, and his weakened condition.

  Jacqueline helped him pull the satchel off his back, and together they unsteadily crossed the quay to a narrow set of stone stairs leading upward but blocked by a gate of iron bars secured by an ancient padlock.

  McGarvey cut the lock with three pumps of the big hydraulic bolt cutters, and pulled the gate open on rusted hinges, the squealing noise echoing harshly throughout the chamber.

  “If we’ve come out where I think we are, our river ride was a stroke of blind luck,” McGarvey said.

  He started up, but Jacqueline held him back.

  “Where?”

  “We’re either beneath the Kremlin or St. Basil’s,” McGarvey said. “The direction and distance are about right. If I had to bet, I’d say St. Basil’s, because I think the Kremlin would be secured better than this.”

  “You’re coming back to the embassy with me, Kirk.”

  “They’ve got Liz.”

  “I know. But assassinating Tarankov won’t do her any good.”

  “It may be the only thing that will save her,” McGarvey said.

  “I didn’t come this far for nothing,” Jacqueline cried.

  “Neither did I,” McGarvey replied grimly. “Once we get out of here, you’re going back to your own embassy and you’re going to stay there this time.”

  “If I had followed your instructions when you called, you’d still be up there in the storm sewers with Chernov’s men closing in on you.”

  “You’re probably right. But this time you’ll do as I say, because we’re not going to get so lucky a second time.”

  “Goddamn you, Kirk,” Jacqueline said in frustration.

  “It’s something I have to do,” he said gently. “You can either accept that or not. But that’s the way it is.”

  Jacqueline lowered her eyes after a moment.

  They headed up, taking it slowly and quietly, the stone stairs switching back and forth, their path blocked by two more iron gates. McGarvey cut the padlocks free with the bolt-cutters, and through the second gate they found themselves in a series of chambers which held huge stone sarcophagi.

  A stone passageway led to broad stone stairs that led in turn up to tall iron gates through which they could see the scaffolding beneath the main onion dome of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

  It was a few minutes before 4:30 A.M. The search for them would still be concentrated in the tunnels beneath Dzerzhinsky Square, and no one would be in the church at this hour of the morning. In fact all the buildings around Red Square would probably be closed until after the rally which was scheduled to take place in less than twelve hours.

  At the top of the stairs, McGarvey reached the bolt cutter through the bars and cut the padlock free. When they were through, he replaced the padlock, and smeared some grease from the hinges around the severed metal hasp. It would fool a casual observer.

  He led Jacqueline to one of the rear gardens and let her out.

  “One last time, Kirk. Don’t do this,” she pleaded, looking up into his eyes.

  “I have no other choice.”

  She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Will I ever see you again, my lovely man?”

  McGarvey managed a smile. “Count on it.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Aboard Tarankov’s Train

  At 5:00, the morning was still pitch black and chilly as Tarankov sat on the open rear platform of his car smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of brandy. He’d been brooding and watching the stars for the past three hours, thinking about how much he was going to miss Liesel. Her counsel as of late had become unsteady, as if the life they had led was finally beginning to unbalance her, but he missed her at his side now.

  Every ten or fifteen minutes he spotted a shooting star. At first he’d made a wish on each of them. But he had stopped, because of course wishes never came true. The only truth was the reality we made for ourselves. The truth was that before the day was over he’d either be the supreme ruler of a new Soviet Union or he would be dead. At times like these he wondered if he really cared which, because throughout his life he had done questionable things. Things to which some biographer would apply his or her own truth.

  He also thought about the young woman who’d infected them like a virus. She was an alien presence on the train and she was even starting to have an effect on his men. She’d not bothered to hide her nakedness as Liesel’s body was removed and her compartment cleaned, and Tarankov had seen the looks on the faces of his young commandoes. It was lust, the same emotion that had affected him, and the same emotion that had resulted in Liesel’s death, and very nearly his own.

  But he found that he couldn’t really hate the young woman who, after all, was here against her will. She’d defended herself the only way she knew how. And part of him could even admire her for her strength.

  After the rally there would no longer be any need for her, he decided. He would kill her before the disease she carried infected them all beyond a cure. In a way she was every bit as dangerous to them, as her father was. They would both have to be destroyed at all costs.

  Elizabeth McGarvey felt as if she had never slept in her life, or ever could. She had killed Liesel without hesitation, and had the gun contained more bullets she would have killed Tarankov as well. Afterward when the woman’s body was being taken away and two of the young soldiers were cleaning up the mess she’d found that she was unable to move so much as a muscle. She’d been in shock, she supposed, but even though she was aware that she was naked, she’d done nothing to turn away or cover herself.

  It was the last look in Liesel’s eyes when the bullet had crashed into her chest, that troubled Elizabeth. She’d been surprised. Her rage had evaporated instantly, leaving a look on her face as if she were saying, “I’ll be damned.”

  After that they’d left her alone, and it took a long time before she could rouse herself enough to step into the shower, turn on the water, and pick up the bar of soap. She had to carefully think out each of her movements, some of which made no sense to her, but seemed by habit to be the right thing to do. Like turning around in the shower so that she could wash her back. She could not figure out why it was necessary to do it.

  When she was dressed she went back to work on the blackout screen covering her window, finally prying it completely free after a couple of hours’ work, and several broken and bloody fingernails.

  A soldier came out of the darkness outside and looked up at her. She stared back at him frankly, and after a minute he walked away.

  The thing of it, in her mind, was that the killing wasn’t finished. She was going to have to kill Tarankov before he destroyed her father. If she couldn’t snatch a gun from one of the soldiers, perhaps she could take a knife from her breakfast tray. And if that was impossible, and she had to kill him with her bare hands, she would tear out his throat, or chew it open like an animal.

  Thinking about what she had to do gave her a violent case of the shakes. Even though she hadn’t eaten anything since eight last night, she just made it into the tiny bathroom and pulled down the sink in time to throw up.

  When she finished she looked at her reflection in the mirror. She had become an animal. Tarankov and his wife had done it to her.

  “Daddy,” she whimpered, closing her eyes and lowering her head.

  Even in the old days, when he was always gone, he’d protected her. Sometimes it was only his spirit rising within her, giving her courage. But he was always there for her.

  She opened her eyes and looked up. It was her turn now to protect him.

  The Kremlin

  At 7:00, Chernov was called to a meeting at the President’s offi
ce. His command center had been shifted to General Korzhakov’s security headquarters at the rear of the Senate Building where he’d summoned the city engineer to go over the plans for the sewers and rivers beneath the city, so he only had to take an elevator upstairs.

  General Yuryn, looking somewhat disheveled, was waiting for him in the anteroom.

  “Any luck?” Yuryn asked.

  “No, General, not yet. They probably drowned and their bodies may never be found unless they wash out into the Moscow River. I have men checking both banks as far downstream as the Krasnokholmsky Bridge but until it’s completely light out, the task is nearly impossible.”

  “Where does that particular tunnel lead? Is it possible that they could find their way up somewhere else in the city?”

  “The maps are unclear and sometimes contradictory. But that waterway may flow right beneath our feet.”

  Yuryn was startled.

  “But no one is sure,” Chernov said tiredly. He’d almost had McGarvey three times, but each time the bastard had somehow managed to wriggle free from the net. Chernov sincerely hoped that McGarvey and the French woman had not drowned, he wanted another shot at them.

  “The President is waiting for us,” Yuryn said.

  “What does he want this time, another progress report? Well, there isn’t any.”

  “I don’t know.”

  They went inside where General Korzhakov was seated across the desk from an angry looking President Kabatov.

  “I’m glad you’re here, because I wanted to tell you this to your face. Your services are no longer needed, Colonel,” Kabatov said harshly. “In fact you are under arrest as of this moment.”

  Chernov noticed that Korzhakov was holding a pistol in his lap, a curiously distant expression in his eyes.

  “I’m also relieving you of duty, General,” Kabatov told Yuryn. “You may consider yourself under house arrest until this business has been straightened out.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Yuryn demanded.

  “I think you and Colonel Chernov—not Bykov as we were led to believe—know very well what I mean. You recommended him to me, just as you insisted that we keep the SVR out of this affair.”

  “I don’t know where you are receiving your information, Mr. President, but you are sadly mistaken about—”

  “Enough of your lies,” Kabatov thundered. “President Lindsay and I spoke at length a few hours ago. Not only about your Colonel Chernov but about the true nature of the man you so obviously support over the legitimate government. As it turns out Tarankov is not quite the Russian patriot he makes himself out to be. In point of fact he was a spy for the United States while he was an officer in the Strategic Rocket Force.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Why isn’t it possible?” Kabatov demanded. “Because you knew nothing about his past? His code name was Hammer, which is rather appropriate given the symbol on the flag he betrayed. Is still betraying!”

  “Then you have already lost, Mr. President,” Chernov said quietly. “Because short of completely barricading Red Square and canceling this afternoon’s rally the Tarantula will come here to take over.”

  “If you’re talking about a military coup, we’re ready for him.”

  “I don’t think you have the support in the military that you believe you do. Or else why hasn’t his little train already been destroyed? He has only two hundred men with him, while you have the entire might of the Russian military.”

  Kabatov didn’t rise to the bait, he maintained his temper. “It will be different this time.”

  Chernov shrugged indifferently. “Then you will still lose. No court of law in Russia will convict him.”

  Kabatov smiled. “You are correct, Colonel, no Russian court would convict him. That’s why the instant he is arrested he will be flown to the World Court in The Hague where he will be tried as a war criminal.”

  “The American government would never admit in open court that it suborned a Soviet officer because the CIA would have to reveal its methods,” Yuryn said.

  “I have President Lindsay’s support, and that of the governments of England, France, and Germany. I’m assured that the other major western powers will do the same. Tarankov has no chance.”

  “That might work,” Chernov said. “Except that you’re forgetting something.”

  “What’s that?” Kabatov asked, outwardly unconcerned.

  “For all your talk about rule of law, you have been reduced in this instance to trusting the loyalty of your officers and advisers. You cannot trust General Yuryn, of course. Nor me. But you know that now. What about General Korzhakov, who was after all the chief of security for a man who despised you?”

  “That needn’t concern you,” Kabatov replied. He reached for his telephone.

  “What about Kirk McGarvey?” Chernov asked.

  Kabatov’s hand hesitated. “Once Tarankov is under arrest there will be no need to detain him. We’ll let him go.”

  “That’s your second mistake.”

  “What was my first?”

  “Trusting anyone,” Chernov said. He advanced closer to the desk, took out his pistol and before Kabatov could do much of anything except rear back in terror, shot the President in the forehead at nearly point blank range.

  Korzhakov made no move to raise his gun.

  Chernov took out his handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints off the gun. He stepped around the desk and placed the gun in the President’s hand just as the door burst open and Kabatov’s bodyguards pushed in, their weapons drawn.

  Korzhakov had pocketed his gun. He got to his feet. “The President has shot himself, get a doctor in here now!” he ordered.

  St. Basil’s Cathedral

  The onion domes were spotlighted from outside, which had given McGarvey all the light he needed to clean, assemble and load the Dragunov sniper rifle, and to clean and oil his Walther. With dawn finally beginning to brighten the eastern horizon he sat back against the brick wall in the arched cupola high above Red Square and allowed himself to relax.

  Through the early morning hours the Square had been alive with activity in preparation for this afternoon’s rally, and showed no signs of tapering off with the rising sun. In addition to the barricades, truckloads of soldiers had begun arriving an hour ago, the officers positioning their troops not only on the periphery of the square, but around Lenin’s Mausoleum, and along the Kremlin’s walls. More soldiers were stationed atop the walls at intervals of five or ten feet, and on the roofs of the old Senate and Supreme Soviet buildings facing the square.

  It came to him that the majority of the defensive measures they were putting in place were designed to protect the Kremlin itself, possibly against an assault by Tarankov and his forces. But from his vantage point, which allowed him to see down inside the Kremlin’s walls, he spotted other soldiers ringing all the buildings, and gates, and still more groups of soldiers going from building to building as if they were searching for something, or someone.

  They were looking for him.

  From his hiding place, McGarvey could also see the Moskvoretsky Bridge already busy with traffic. Soldiers were stationed on the bridge and on both sides of the river, and they too seemed to be searching for something.

  Chernov’s people would have lowered a man into the outflow tunnel down which they’d lost McGarvey and Jacqueline, until their way was blocked by the swiftly moving underground river. They would have reasoned that if anyone could survive the wild ride they might end up in the Moscow River.

  There would have to be engineering diagrams of the city’s storm sewer system, as well as maps of the underground rivers. Old maps because the rivers were here first and had only been gradually covered up over the years.

  He looked again at the activity inside the Kremlin walls. If the old maps were inaccurate might Chernov’s people believe the river was the one which ran beneath the Kremlin? Specifically the Neglinnaya River, or one of its branches that flowed under the
Corner Arsenal Tower?

  It would explain why no one had come here to search for him.

  He lay his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, his hand pressed against the wound in his side. His shoulder and arm had stiffened up, and his mouth was so dry it was as if he’d never had a drink. But his vision was okay, and his head was still clear. He’d been in tougher spots and survived. This time would be no different, except that Liz was in danger.

  He’d tried to avoid thinking about her, but sitting alone, wounded, tired, thirsty and hungry with Russian army and Militia troops earnestly searching for him, he could see her in his mind’s eye, at her high school graduation, which Kathleen had tried to make a pleasant occasion, despite their bitter divorce. But in those days Liz was going through her rebellious stage in which any authority—all authority—was de facto bad. It was the only time he’d ever taken his daughter to task, and the graduation party had ended with Liz running off in tears and his ex-wife kicking him out of the house.

  Good times and bad, he remembered them all, some with happiness, some with regrets.

  A scraping noise somewhere directly below him on the elevated gallery which connected all the domes, woke him with a start. For a moment he thought he might have dreamed the sound, but then he heard it again. Someone was walking, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  He screwed the silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel, and eased the safety catch to the off position, as he looked down through the scaffolding and tried to pick out a movement.

  Whoever it was, stopped in the deeper shadows seventy-five feet below him. He could hear them breathing, almost panting, nervous, frightened.

  Other than that noise, the church was utterly still. Even the technicians adjusting the sound system down in the square had finished, and traffic sounds from the bridge did not reach this far.

  “Kirk?” Jacqueline’s whispered voice drifted up to him.

  He lowered his head and closed his eyes. “Christ,” he said to himself. He switched the safety catch on.