Lord of the Swallows

by Gérard de Villiers

  If he had followed Lissenko into the elevator, the Moscow man would have shot him in the back of the head.

  By now, Khrenkov had forgotten Zhanna and Lynn; he was thinking only of himself. He dropped the pistol on the dead man’s chest and stood up, listening hard. Their struggle had made a lot of racket. Irina was in the kitchen in the back of the large apartment, but Lissenko might have heard.

  Khrenkov went to look out the peephole and was surprised to see that Lissenko was gone along with the elevator.

  Grabbing his attaché case, he ran to the landing and buzzed the elevator. You couldn’t park a car for more than a few moments on Grosvenor Place, so Lissenko would be forced to wait on Chester Street, which meant he wouldn’t see Khrenkov when he came out.

  His heart in his throat, he emerged from the building. There was no one in sight.

  He ran to the curb and flagged a passing taxi.

  “Saint Pancras station, and hurry.”

  Khrenkov looked at his watch. It would take twenty minutes to reach the Eurostar station. With a little luck he could catch a train for the Continent. At the train station, exit formalities were much more relaxed than at an airport. Besides, he wasn’t a wanted man, at least not yet. His most ferocious enemies were still a few thousand miles away, in the Kremlin.

  Absentmindedly, Khrenkov studied the traffic around him, counting the minutes. He was feeling a kind of dull anxiety, and it took him a few moments to realize why: he was thinking about Zhanna.

  He would never see her again, never talk with her again. That hurt, the way an amputation might hurt. And he knew it would hurt for a long time—if he lived.

  The taxi slowed down. They had reached St. Pancras. Khrenkov tossed the driver a twenty-pound note and dove into the crowd.

  —

  Richard Spicer and Malko Linge reached the Dorchester just as two nurses were loading Zhanna’s body into a St. Mary’s Hospital ambulance. A Special Branch sergeant greeted them.

  “We’re waiting for Mr. Khrenkov,” he said. “He should be here soon.”

  “You spoke to him?” asked Malko in surprise.

  “Certainly, sir. I think he was at home. I gave him the bad news with as much delicacy as I could.”

  Malko could feel the earth shifting beneath his feet.

  “Did you tell him his wife had just been killed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Malko gave Spicer a despairing look.

  “We better get over to his place right away,” he said. “We might still be in time. This gentleman can come with us.”

  Followed by the police car, they raced toward Grosvenor Place.

  “We’ll be very lucky if we find him alive,” said Malko. “They’re obviously wiping out the network.”

  When the two vehicles stopped at number 18, everything seemed calm. They went up to the top floor and rang on the only door. After a long silence they were considering leaving when they heard a woman’s piercing scream from the other side.

  The officer in the GK bulletproof vest who had accompanied them started pounding on the door.

  “Open up! Police!”

  —

  On Track 11, the Eurostar for Brussels and Amsterdam gently pulled out of the station. Khrenkov watched the shabby buildings near the station pass as the train picked up speed, knowing he would never see England again. The immigration officer had barely glanced at his passport. In a few hours he would be far away, somewhere in Europe.

  Khrenkov knew how to arrange his life in a material sense, but from now on he would be on the run around the world, a fugitive with the Kremlin’s most deadly assassins on his trail.

  —

  Irina, the Moldovan maid, stood gaping in horror at the corpse in the entry hall, her hands on her mouth. The Scotland Yard sergeant was on his cell, calling his superiors.

  “Khrenkov seems to have won the first round,” remarked Malko. The Kremlin assassin lay on the blue Chinese carpet, eyes bulging.

  Picking it up by the barrel, an MI5 officer took the silenced pistol from the man’s chest and carefully examined it.

  “No manufacturer’s marks,” he said. “Made in-house, courtesy of our siloviki friends.”

  “Alexei Khrenkov was damned lucky,” said Spicer.

  Looking at the dead man’s frozen face, Malko said:

  “If we’re going to have any chance of shutting down the network, we better find him before the others do.”

  Chapter 19

  Even with all its sugar, Rem Tolkachev’s tea tasted bitter. Two days had passed since he’d given the order to liquidate the Khrenkovs. Zhanna, whose fit of jealousy had caused the whole crisis, was dead, but her husband was nowhere to be found.

  He had vanished after leaving the Grosvenor Place apartment, along with the lastochkas network operational workings, a secret that could be devastating for the Kremlin.

  For the first time in his career, Tolkachev didn’t know which tack to take. Should he try to lure Khrenkov home, or have him killed?

  He hadn’t done anything wrong, he knew. Thanks to Malko Linge’s “confession,” Tolkachev understood how the situation had developed. He had chosen to eliminate the Khrenkovs because the CIA was sure to keep the network leader under constant surveillance.

  The swallows were leaderless, and the dead-letter boxes weren’t being serviced.

  Khrenkov must be wondering why the Kremlin had suddenly turned on him. He almost certainly didn’t know about his wife’s fit of madness.

  Tolkachev gazed at the thick folder on his desk. It contained everything the Kremlin knew about Alexei Khrenkov: how the former vice minister had worked his swindles, his various residences, and above all, where his main bank accounts were. Khrenkov would need that money eventually, Tolkachev reflected; that might be a way to pick up his trail.

  The man certainly wouldn’t return to Britain, so that left New York and Cologny, a Geneva suburb where Khrenkov owned a luxurious villa.

  The night before, Tolkachev had ordered discreet surveillance of the brownstone and the villa. In both places, he had to tread lightly, however. The Americans and the Swiss wouldn’t take kindly to this kind of foreign activity.

  Fortunately, the situation wasn’t urgent. For the time being, Khrenkov had no reason to hand his network over to the Americans. He had plenty of money and might be hoping he could escape the Kremlin’s killers. Which gave Tolkachev time to decide how to get rid of him.

  The old spymaster reread the British newspaper clippings describing the body found in the Russian millionaire’s apartment. The dead man had a gun equipped with a silencer, and the papers naturally linked the killing to the shooting of the millionaire’s wife the same day, which also involved a silencer. The tabloids portrayed the two events as a shoot-out between Russian oligarchs, noting that welcoming such people to Britain had its drawbacks.

  Having thought it over, Tolkachev decided he would first try playing a wild card. He wrote a brief note to one of his people in Cyprus. The instruction was simple: send Khrenkov a text asking him to return to Russia to explain himself. Khrenkov had just barely avoided being murdered, and the chances of his accepting were minuscule, but it was worth a try.

  If he came home, the problem was solved. If not, Tolkachev would move to the next stage, which would require some planning. The members of the kill team he had sent to England had already left the country—except the one Khrenkov strangled, of course.

  —

  Tea and biscuits were arrayed on the maple table, as they were at all MI5 meetings. After pouring tea for his guests, Sir William Wolseley got down to business. Turning to Malko and Spicer, he said:

  “We haven’t been able to identify the man found in Alexei Khrenkov’s flat. He had a false Cypriot passport and had taken a room in a small Kensington hotel.”

  “Hmm. That’s not far from Dr. Marsh’s office,” remarked Malko. “I’m sure it’s no coincidence. Maybe he’d been assigned to kill her as well.”

  “I’m afraid
we will never know,” said Wolseley with a sigh. “He will be buried under his false name, and I doubt he will be claimed.”

  The killer probably had a family, thought Malko. They would never know what happened to him, or where he was buried.

  A spy without a name.

  “What about Alexei Khrenkov?” he asked aloud.

  “Vanished, I’m afraid. We have no evidence that he crossed any borders, but I doubt he’s in the country. He probably left by train, paying for his ticket in cash and breezing through immigration.”

  “Is he on a wanted list?”

  “No, he isn’t. We’re positive he strangled the Moscow killer, but right now he’s only listed as a person of interest.”

  “So he could be anywhere. Do you know where he’s likely to show up?”

  “The FBI is watching his Eighty-Third Street house,” said Spicer.

  “I’d be surprised if he went to the States,” said Malko. “He has enough money to start a new life with a new identity, and he’ll steer clear of any risky business. If the Russians don’t catch him, that is. They’ll recruit a new person to run the swallows network, someone we know nothing about.”

  “And we’ll be screwed,” said the CIA station chief gloomily. “Just the idea that this guy knows all about that network makes me crazy.”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Khrenkov has no reason to want to please you,” said Wolseley with a hint of sarcasm.

  A hush descended on the three men, gingerly.

  The silence lasted for a moment.

  “I have an idea that might get him to work with us,” said Malko thoughtfully. He turned to the MI5 chief of staff.

  “Tell me something, Sir William. Can Khrenkov be charged with murder, even if he might later claim self-defense?”

  “I suppose so,” said Wolseley with a frown. “Why?”

  “It might be a way to slow him down, make it harder for him to travel.”

  “I can look into it. I’ll take it up with a colleague at the Ministry of Justice, but he may take some persuading.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asked Spicer. “With money and good lawyers, Khrenkov can beat that kind of charge.”

  “That’s true, but I also have a second idea.”

  Malko told them what it was, and they listened raptly.

  When he finished, Spicer said:

  “The plan has a lot of ifs, but I think it’s worth trying.”

  “I’m also going to need your cooperation, Sir William,” said Malko.

  “You have it.”

  “In that case, wish me luck.”

  —

  Khrenkov had the taxi drop him off across from the Cologny villa and rang the bell. He had deliberately not phoned ahead. His butler, Boris, a Moldovan he’d recruited in town, was in his shirtsleeves when he opened the front door.

  “I didn’t have time to warn you,” said Khrenkov simply. “Incidentally, nobody must know that I’m here. If anyone calls, I’m traveling.”

  He hardly used the villa, which had been bought in the name of a Cayman Islands company. Few people even knew about it. Khrenkov paid Boris five thousand Swiss francs a month, and the butler would have swallowed his tongue if his boss asked him to.

  “Make me some tea, please,” said Khrenkov before disappearing into his office, whose bay windows looked out on Lake Geneva and the Alps.

  Khrenkov had crossed Europe by train, and he was exhausted. He’d first taken the Eurostar to Amsterdam, then made connections to Dusseldorf and Basel. By staying within the twenty-six-country Schengen Area, he hadn’t had to show his passport. Even the Swiss had dropped their land border controls, and people came and went freely.

  As a result, nobody knew he was in Switzerland, the Russians least of all—though they could probably find out with a little effort.

  Having finished his tea, Khrenkov opened the left-hand drawer of his desk, revealing a Sig automatic lying on a Hermès agenda. Under the somewhat flexible Swiss laws, individuals were allowed to own firearms. The pistol had been a gift from one of his bankers.

  It was a life insurance policy.

  But maybe a limited policy, because the Kremlin assassins had other ways of killing him.

  Hefting the Sig, Khrenkov found its weight reassuring. He decided that he would carry it all the time from now on.

  First thing in the morning, he would start building his new life.

  He was about to fall asleep when his cell beeped: a text message, in Russian, origin not specified. It was a long text from one Vitaly Patashov saying that the oblast was prepared to reconsider the charges against him if he came to Moscow to explain himself. He would then be free to leave the country again.

  Khrenkov couldn’t help but smile. Siloviki never hesitated to use the most obvious ploys. Once in Russia, at best he would be shipped off to Siberia to play chess with Mikhail Khodorkovsky; at worst he would be immediately shot.

  The Kremlin was clearly counting on the fact that he felt he hadn’t done anything wrong. In a normal country, it would be in Khrenkov’s interest to go home and work out a deal. But Russia wasn’t a normal country. It was a totalitarian state where the Kremlin was all-powerful.

  And the Kremlin was his enemy.

  He switched off the light, leaving the Sig on his night table. The text message gave him some breathing room. It meant they probably wouldn’t try to kill him right away.

  —

  Having checked with his colleagues, the Scotland Yard officer joined Malko in Richard Spicer’s car. The other policemen were in an unmarked car parked on the Queen’s Gate median, equipped with bulletproof vests and MP5 submachine guns.

  “The young lady is still inside,” said the officer.

  Malko grinned at Spicer and said:

  “Wish me luck!”

  The CIA station chief watched as Malko went up to the door at 82 Queen’s Gate. Lynn Marsh’s dental office was on the second floor. He rang the bell, and a female voice came on the intercom:

  “Doctors Marsh and Maple. Can I help you?”

  “I have an appointment with Doctor Marsh.”

  He was promptly buzzed in. The two dentists shared a secretary, and she probably didn’t keep track of all their appointments.

  Upstairs, Malko found three people in the waiting room, so he took a seat and started reading an old issue of Vogue.

  He was feeling tense. If he failed now, the Russian spy network would have a bright future ahead.

  Twenty minutes later, a door opened to reveal Lynn Marsh wearing glasses and a nicely cut white lab coat. When she saw Malko, she froze.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in an icy tone.

  “I came to see you.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you. Leave immediately.”

  She turned on her heel and walked back into her office. Malko followed and as she closed the door put his foot in the gap.

  “I have to talk to you,” he insisted. “It’s for your own safety.”

  Glaring at him, she said loudly:

  “Rose, call the police!”

  “You don’t have to,” he said. “They’re already downstairs.”

  Taking advantage of her surprise, Malko pushed his way into the office, closed the door, and turned to face her.

  “And now, you’re going to listen to me.”

  Chapter 20

  Her lips pinched, Lynn Marsh was pale with rage. Taking her by the elbow, Malko led her to the window.

  “Do you see the blue car down there on the median, with two men in it? Those are Special Branch officers. They’re here to keep you from being killed. The way Zhanna Khrenkov was killed this morning.”

  Malko felt the tension abruptly go out of Lynn’s body.

  “What are you talking about?” she stammered. “Who killed her? Not Alexei, I hope.”

  “We don’t know, but I’m pretty sure they were Russian secret agents. You shouldn’t be surprised. Gwyneth Robertson must have already told you about this business
.”

  “You know her?”

  “Of course. I work for the CIA, in cooperation with MI5.”

  Lynn made a weary gesture.

  “I don’t want to hear about that stuff anymore.”

  “Don’t you want to know why Alexei broke up with you? He was crazy about you.”

  A flash of interest lit up her eyes. He had touched a nerve.

  “Why did he do it?”

  “It’s a little complicated to explain. I’ll tell you over dinner.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lynn took off her lab coat and stepped into the next room. When she came out wearing a tailored white wool dress with black stockings, she looked quite beautiful again.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “The Grill at the Dorchester; it’s quiet. It’s also where Zhanna was shot this morning, in the basement outside the spa. Two bullets in the neck. Is your car here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s take it.”

  Lynn bid her secretary good-bye and followed Malko out. Her Mercedes was parked a little farther on. When Lynn started it up, Malko saw the Scotland Yard car fall in behind them and pointed that out to her. The young dentist made no comment.

  She began to relax only when they were seated at a table in the back of the restaurant and she had ordered a gin and tonic.

  “So tell me,” she said. “Why did Alexei break it off?”

  —

  Malko talked for such a long time that Lynn’s lobster bisque started to get cold. Anyway, she didn’t seem to be hungry. She was drinking in Malko’s words. He explained his theory, that Khrenkov had been forced to leave her so as not to attract the suspicions of his Kremlin masters.

  Though it was quite cold by now, Lynn finally started eating the bisque.

  Malko observed her.

  “Now do you understand why you’re in danger?”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t know Russian intelligence,” he said. “The people handling the Khrenkovs decided they were a security risk because of my presence in their entourage. Also, the fact that you and I met, twice. To them, I’m an enemy. So they decided to eliminate that echelon of the network, even if it hurts the organization. They shot Zhanna first, but Alexei somehow escaped being killed.