The Eleventh Commandment (1998)

by Jeffrey Archer

  The Members of Congress, the Supreme Court and the Diplomatic Corps resumed their seats, unaware of the bombshell that was about to be dropped.

  ‘Mr Speaker, Mr Vice-President and Mr Chief Justice,’ Zerimski began. ‘Let me begin by thanking you and your countrymen for the kind welcome and generous hospitality I have received on this, my first, visit to the United States. Let me assure you that I look forward to returning again and again.’ At this point Titov had written ‘PAUSE’ in the margin - rightly, because there followed a round of applause.

  Zerimski then delivered several flattering homilies concerning America’s historic achievements, reminding his listeners that three times in the past century their two nations had fought together against a common enemy. He went on to describe ‘the excellent relationship currently enjoyed by our two countries’. Tom Lawrence, who was watching the speech with Andy Lloyd on C-SPAN in the Oval Office, began to relax a little. After another few minutes, he even allowed a flicker of a smile to cross his lips.

  That smile was wiped off his face as Zerimski delivered the next seventy-one words of his speech.

  ‘I am the last person on earth who would want our two great nations to become embroiled in another pointless war.’ Zerimski paused. ‘Especially if we were not on the same side.’ He looked up and beamed at the assembled gathering, although nobody present appeared to find his comment particularly funny. ‘To be sure that such a calamity can never befall us again, it will be necessary for Russia to remain as powerful as the United States on the battlefield if it is to carry the same weight at the conference table.’

  In the Oval Office, Lawrence watched as the television cameras scanned the sullen faces of the members of both Houses, and knew that it had taken Zerimski about forty seconds to destroy any chance of his Arms Reduction Bill becoming law.

  The rest of Zerimski’s speech was received in silence. When he stepped down from the podium there were no outstretched hands, and the applause was distinctly cool.

  As the white BMW drove up Wisconsin Avenue, Connor switched off the radio. When they reached the gates of the Russian Embassy, one of Romanov’s henchmen checked them through security.

  Connor was escorted into the white marble reception area for the second time in three days. He could immediately see what Romanov had meant when he said the Embassy’s internal security was lax. After all, who would want to murder Russia’s beloved President in his own Embassy?’ he had remarked with a smile.

  As they walked down a long corridor, Connor said to Romanov, ‘You seem to have the run of the building.’

  ‘So would you have, if you’d paid enough into the Ambassador’s Swiss bank account to ensure that he never had to return to the motherland again.’

  Romanov continued to treat the Embassy as if it were his own home, even unlocking the door to the Ambassador’s study and letting himself in. As they entered the ornately furnished room, Connor was surprised to see a customised Remington 700 resting on the Ambassador’s desk. He picked it up and studied it closely. He would have asked Romanov how he’d got his hands on it, if he thought there was any chance of being told the truth.

  Connor gripped the stock and broke the breech. There was a single boat-tailed bullet in the chamber. He raised an eyebrow and glanced at Romanov.

  ‘I assume that from that range you will only need one bullet,’ said the Russian. He led Connor to the far corner of the room, and drew back a curtain to reveal the Ambassador’s private lift. They stepped inside, pulled the gate shut and travelled slowly up to the gallery above the ballroom on the second floor.

  Connor checked every inch of the gallery several times, then squeezed in behind the vast statue of Lenin. He looked through its cocked arm to check the sightline to the spot from which Zerimski would deliver his farewell speech, making sure that he would be able to see without being seen. He was thinking how easy it all seemed when Romanov touched him on the arm and ushered him back towards the lift.

  ‘You will have to arrive several hours early, and work with the catering staff before the banquet begins,’ Romanov said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We don’t want anyone to become suspicious when you disappear just before Zerimski begins his speech.’

  Romanov checked his watch. ‘We should go. Zerimski is due back in a few minutes.’

  Connor nodded, and they walked towards the rear entrance. As he climbed back into the BMW, he said, ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve decided which venue I’ve chosen.’

  Romanov looked surprised, but said nothing.

  Connor was driven out through the Embassy gates minutes before Zerimski was due to return from the Capitol. He switched the radio on in time to catch the early-evening news: ‘Senators and Congressmen were falling over each other to grab the microphones and assure their constituents that after hearing President Zerimski’s speech, they would not be voting for the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Conventional Arms Reduction Bill.’

  In the Oval Office, Tom Lawrence was watching CNN’s reporter speaking from the Senate press gallery: ‘No statement has yet come from the White House,’ he was saying, ‘and the President …’

  ‘And don’t hang around waiting for one,’ Lawrence said angrily as he switched off the television. He turned to his Chief of Staff. ‘Andy, I’m not even sure I can face sitting next to that man for four hours tomorrow afternoon, let alone respond to his farewell speech in the evening.’

  Lloyd didn’t comment.

  ‘I am looking forward to sitting next to my dear friend Tom and watching him have to squirm in front of an audience of millions,’ said Zerimski as his limousine entered the grounds of the Russian Embassy. Dmitri Titov remained impassive.

  ‘I think I shall cheer for the Redskins. It would be an added bonus if Lawrence’s team lost,’ Zerimski smirked. ‘A fitting prelude to the humiliation I have planned for him in the evening. Make sure you prepare a speech so flattering that it will appear all the more tragic in retrospect.’ He smiled again. ‘I have ordered the beef to be served cold. And even you will be surprised by what I have in mind for dessert.’

  Connor spent several hours that evening wondering if he could risk breaking the rule of a lifetime. He phoned Romanov a few minutes after midnight.

  The Russian seemed delighted that they had both come to the same conclusion. ‘I’ll arrange for a driver to pick you up at three thirty so you can be at the Embassy by four.’

  Connor put the phone down. If everything went to plan, the President would be dead by four.

  Wake him up.’

  ‘But it’s four o’clock in the morning,’ said the First Secretary.

  ‘If you value your life, wake him up.’

  The First Secretary threw on a dressing gown, ran out of his bedroom and down the corridor. He knocked on the door. There was no response, so he knocked again. A few moments later, a light appeared under the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said a sleepy voice. The First Secretary turned the handle and entered the Ambassador’s bedroom.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you, Your Excellency, but there’s a Mr Stefan Ivanitsky on the line from St Petersburg. He insists that we wake the President. He says he has an urgent message for him.’

  ‘I’ll take the call in my study,’ said Pietrovski. He threw back the blanket, ignoring the groans of his wife, ran downstairs and told the night porter to transfer the call to his study.

  The phone rang several times before it was eventually picked up by a slightly breathless Ambassador. ‘Pietrovski speaking.’

  ‘Good morning, Your Excellency,’ said Ivanitsky. ‘I asked to be put through to the President, not to you.’

  ‘But it’s four o’clock in the morning. Can’t it wait?’

  ‘Ambassador, I don’t pay you to tell me the time. The next voice I want to hear is the President’s. Do I make myself clear?’

  The Ambassador put the receiver down on his desk and walked slowly back up the wide staircase to the first floor, trying to dec
ide which of the two men he was more frightened of. He stood outside the door of the President’s suite for some time, but the sight of the First Secretary hovering at the top of the stairs stiffened his resolve. He tapped gently on the door, but there was no response. He knocked a little louder, and tentatively opened it.

  In the light from the landing the Ambassador and the First Secretary could see Zerimski stirring in his bed. What they didn’t see was the President’s hand slipping under the pillow, where a pistol was concealed.

  ‘Mr President,’ whispered Pietrovski as Zerimski switched on the light by the side of his bed.

  ‘This had better be important,’ said Zerimski, ‘unless you want to spend the rest of your days as refrigerator inspectors in Siberia.’

  ‘We have a call for you from St Petersburg,’ said the Ambassador, almost in a whisper. ‘A Mr Stefan Ivanitsky. He says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Get out of my room,’ said Zerimski as he picked up the phone by his bed.

  The two men stepped backwards into the corridor and the Ambassador quietly closed the door.

  ‘Stefan,’ said Zerimski. ‘Why are you calling at this hour? Has Borodin staged a coup in my absence?’

  ‘No, Mr President. The Czar is dead.’ Ivanitsky spoke without emotion.

  ‘When? Where? How?’

  ‘About an hour ago, at the Winter Palace. The colourless liquid finally got him.’ Ivanitsky paused. ‘The butler has been on my payroll for almost a year.’

  The President was silent for a few moments before saying, ‘Good. It couldn’t have worked out better for us.’

  ‘I would agree, Mr President, were it not for the fact that his son is in Washington. There’s very little I can do from this end until he returns.’

  ‘That problem may resolve itself this evening,’ said Zerimski.

  ‘Why? Have they fallen into our little trap?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Zerimski. ‘By tonight I shall have disposed of both of them.’

  ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Yes,’ the President replied. ‘I have learned an appropriate new expression since I’ve been over here - “killing two birds with one stone”. After all, how many times does one have the chance to see the same man die twice?’

  ‘I wish I was there to witness it.’

  ‘I’m going to enjoy it even more than I did watching his friend dangling from a rope. All things considered, Stefan, this will have been a most successful trip, especially if …’

  ‘It’s all been taken care of, Mr President,’ said Ivanitsky. ‘I arranged yesterday for the income from the Yeltsin and Chernopov oil and uranium contracts to be diverted to your Zurich account. That is, unless Alexei countermands my orders when he returns.’

  ‘If he doesn’t return, he won’t be able to, will he?’ Zerimski put the phone down, switched off the light, and fell asleep again within moments.

  At five o’clock that morning Connor was lying motionless on his bed, fully dressed. He was going over his escape route when the wake-up call came through at six. He rose, pulled back a corner of the curtain and checked that they were still there. They were: two white BMWs parked on the far side of the street, as they had been since midnight the previous evening. By now their occupants would be drowsy. He knew they changed shifts at eight, so he planned to leave ten minutes before the hour. He spent the next thirty minutes carrying out some light stretching exercises to get rid of his stiffness, then stripped off his clothes. He allowed the cold jets of the shower to needle his body for some time before he turned it off and grabbed a towel. Then he dressed in a blue shirt, a pair of jeans, a thick sweater, a blue tie, black socks and a pair of black Nikes with the logo painted out.

  He went into the small kitchenette, poured himself a glass of grapefruit juice and filled a bowl with cornflakes and milk. He always ate the same meal on the day of an operation. He liked routine. It helped him believe everything else would run smoothly. As he ate, he read over the seven pages of notes he had made following his meeting with Pug, and once again minutely studied an architect’s plan of the stadium. He measured the girder with a ruler, and estimated that it was forty-two feet to the trapdoor. He mustn’t look down. He felt the calm come over him that a finely-tuned athlete experiences when called to the starting line.

  He checked his watch and returned to the bedroom. They had to be at the intersection of Twenty-First Street and DuPont Circle just as the traffic was building up. He waited a few more minutes, then put three hundred-dollar bills, a quarter and a thirty-minute audiocassette in the back pocket of his jeans. He then left the anonymous apartment for the last time. His account had already been settled.

  30

  ZERIMSKI SAT ALONE in the Embassy dining room reading the Washington Post as a butler served him breakfast. He smiled when he saw the banner headline:

  RETURN OF THE COLD WAR?

  As he sipped his coffee, he mused for a moment on what the Post might lead with the following morning.

  ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE

  RUSSIAN PRESIDENT FAILS

  Former CIA Agent Gunned Down

  in Embassy Grounds

  He smiled again, and turned to the editorial, which confirmed that Lawrence’s Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Conventional Arms Reduction Bill was now considered by all the leading commentators to be ‘dead in the water’. Another useful expression he had picked up on this trip.

  At a few minutes past seven he rang the silver bell by his side and asked the butler to fetch the Ambassador and the First Secretary. The butler hurried away. Zerimski knew both men were already standing anxiously outside the door.

  The Ambassador and the First Secretary thought they should wait for a minute or two before joining the President. They were still uncertain if he was pleased to have been woken at four in the morning, but as neither of them had yet been fired, they assumed that they must have made the right decision.

  ‘Good morning, Mr President,’ said Pietrovski as he entered the dining room.

  Zerimski nodded, folded the paper and placed it on the table in front of him. ‘Has Romanov arrived yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Mr President,’ said the First Secretary. ‘He has been in the kitchen since six o’clock this morning, personally checking the food that’s being delivered for tonight’s banquet.’

  ‘Good. Ask him to join us in your study, Mr Ambassador. I will be along shortly.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Pietrovski, retreating backwards out of the room.

  Zerimski wiped his mouth with a napkin. He decided to keep the three of them waiting for a few more minutes. That would make them even more nervous.

  He returned to the Washington Post, smiling as he read the editorial’s conclusion for a second time: ‘Zerimski is the natural successor to Stalin and Brezhnev, rather than Gorbachev or Yeltsin.’ He had no quarrel with that; in fact he hoped that before the day was out he would have reinforced that image. He rose from his chair and strolled out of the room. As he walked down the corridor towards the Ambassador’s study, a young man coming from the opposite direction stopped in his tracks, rushed over to the door and opened it for him. A grandfather clock chimed as he entered the room. He instinctively checked his watch. It was exactly seven forty-five.

  At ten minutes to eight, Connor appeared at the entrance of the apartment building and walked slowly across the street to the first of the two BMWs. He climbed in beside a driver who looked a little surprised to see him so early - he’d been told that Fitzgerald wasn’t expected at the Embassy until four o’clock that afternoon.

  ‘I need to go downtown to pick up a couple of things,’ said Connor. The man in the back nodded, so the driver put the car into first and joined the traffic on Wisconsin Avenue. The second car followed closely behind them as they turned left into P Street, which was thickly congested as a result of the construction work that plagued Georgetown.

  As each day passed, Connor had noticed that his minders had become more and more relaxed. At roughly the same time
every morning he had jumped out of the BMW at the corner of Twenty-First Street and DuPont Circle, bought a copy of the Post from a newsvendor and returned to the car. Yesterday the man in the back seat hadn’t even bothered to accompany him.

  They crossed Twenty-Third Street, and Connor could see DuPont Circle in the distance. The cars were now bumper to bumper, and had almost ground to a halt. On the other side of the street the traffic heading west was moving far more smoothly. He would need to judge exactly when to make his move.

  Connor knew that the lights on P Street approaching the Circle changed every thirty seconds, and on average twelve cars managed to get across during that time. The most he’d counted during the week was sixteen.

  When the light turned red, Connor counted seventeen cars ahead of them. He didn’t move a muscle. The light switched to green and the driver changed into first gear, but the traffic was so heavy that it was some time before he was able to edge forward. Only eight cars crawled through the light.

  He had thirty seconds.

  He turned and smiled at his minder in the back, and pointed to the newsvendor. The man nodded. Connor stepped out onto the sidewalk and started walking slowly towards the old man wearing a fluorescent orange vest. He didn’t once look back, so he had no idea if anyone from the second car was following him. He concentrated on the traffic moving in the opposite direction on the other side of the street, trying to estimate how long the line of cars would be when the light turned red again. When he reached the newsvendor, he already had a quarter in his hand. He gave it to the old man, who handed him a copy of the Post. As he turned and began to walk back towards the first BMW, the light turned red and the traffic came to a halt.

  Connor spotted the vehicle he needed. He suddenly switched direction and started sprinting, darting in and out of the stationary traffic on the westbound side of the street until he reached an empty taxi, six cars away from the lights. The two men in the second BMW leaped out of the car and began running after him just as the light at DuPont Circle turned green.