Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  He went down with a piercing scream. The second man shoved him aside with one hand while fumbling in his ragged coat pocket with his other.

  Before he could pull out a weapon, McGarvey smashed him in the face with a roundhouse right, his head bouncing off the door frame. McGarvey pulled him forward, off balance, and as he doubled over, drove a knee in the man’s face.

  McGarvey pulled out his gun, and brought it up as he swiveled around in one smooth motion to face the other two men charging up the car toward him. “Nyet,” he warned.

  The two men pulled up short, angry and confused and a little bit fearful. In a matter of seconds the man they’d targeted to rob had taken out two of their friends, and now held a gun on them as if he knew what he was doing.

  The train came to a halt, the doors slid open, and McGarvey stepped off, pocketing his gun before anyone on the crowded platform could see what was going on. He headed directly for the escalators to the street level.

  There was a commotion on the platform behind him, but he didn’t think the other two men would be coming after him. They’d be getting their two injured friends out of there before someone else moved in and took advantage of them.

  Yaroslavl and Leningrad Stations were directly behind the metro entrance, separated from each other by a large brown brick building where advanced reservation train tickets were sold to Russians. Only tickets that were to be used within twenty-four hours were sold from the train stations in a complicated system that separated foreigners from Russians, and Russian civilians from veterans and active duty soldiers. Even most Russians didn’t understand the system, and sometimes the lines were endless.

  McGarvey ducked around the corner and crossed the street where, in the darkness behind the advanced ticket building, he changed into the army uniform, stuffing his civilian clothes into the carryall. The uniform stank of sweat and mildew and dirt, and the greatcoat with corporal’s chevrons was stiff with grease and mud. The boots were cheap, worn down at the heels and extremely uncomfortable. He pocketed his gun, and the identity and leave papers, and pulling his filthy fur hat down over his eyes, made his way back to the Yaroslavl station.

  Tickets for veterans were sold from two windows upstairs, and although the station was extremely busy this evening, he got lucky and only had to wait in line for an hour and a half. No one paid him the slightest attention. He could have been invisible.

  He paid for a round trip fourth class, or hard class, ticket to Nizhny Novgorod, which on the timetables was. still listed as Gorki, from a surly old woman, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She barely looked up at him, but she didn’t start working on the tickets until McGarvey had passed his money thorough the narrow opening.

  Downstairs in the cavernous arrivals and departures hall, McGarvey bought a couple bottles of cheap vodka, a few packages of Polish cigarettes, and a package of greasy kielbasa sausages, a loaf of dark bread, some pickles, a couple of onions, a large tomato and one bottle of mineral water. All of these he stuffed into his carryall, then headed down to wait for his train. He cracked the seal on a bottle of vodka, took a deep drink, and sat on his carryall in the middle of the huge crowd waiting for the train.

  It took him a few minutes, listening and watching, before he began to pick up an undercurrent of excitement. Something rare for Russians. All these people were going to Nizhny Novgorod for the same reason. To see Tarankov. The Tarantula. Their savior. And they were excited about it.

  SIXTEEN

  CIA Headquarters

  Elizabeth McGarvey looked up from her computer screen, the Cyrillic letters of the Russian language blurring in her vision. It wasn’t 5:00 p.m. yet which meant she had another half-hour of this crap before she could get out of here. She got up and walked past the rows of the translator’s stations to the women’s room, where she dampened a paper towel, daubed her face, and looked into the mirror at her bloodshot eyes, and pale complexion. She was only twenty three, and already she was taking on what her coworkers called the archival pallor. The only light that ever shined on them fifty hours a week came from fluorescent tubes in the ceilings, and monitors they sat in front of. She was in love with the idea of working for the Central Intelligence Agency, but bored out of her skull with translating foreign broadcasts — mostly Russian these days — for the analyst gee ks up on the fourth floor. But she was still too new to ask for a transfer to the Directorate of Operations, and she was already getting the impression that being her father’s daughter put her at a distinct disadvantage so long as Howard Ryan was DDO. She brushed her long blonde hair, touched up her lipstick and went back to her console.

  Over the past three or four days the analysts had demanded information about the ultra-nationalist General Yevgenni Tarankov. Though nothing official had filtered down to them in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was happening. Tarankov had probably hit the Riga nuclear power station in Dzerzhinskiy — she’d seen a brief mention about him in Novy Mir — and it was also possible that he’d been involved with the incident in Red Square the next morning in which Yeltsin had died. But his death didn’t make any sense to her. If Tarankov was behind the explosion in Red Square Yeltsin would have been the direct target. There was no other reason for such an attack. If that was the case, and Yeltsin had died in the blast, and not of a heart attack as the Russian media was reporting, it meant the Kremlin was lying for some reason.

  Elizabeth brought up the transcripts for the past seventy-two hours of on air broadcasts of the official Russian news agency, transferred the entire block of material into the RAM section of a recognition program she’d been working on for the past couple of weeks, and asked the computer to search for three pieces of information. Yeltsin’s movements, Tarankov’s appearances, and the routine informational news releases issued by the offices of the President, Minister of Defense and the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg over that period. They were the most powerful men in Russia. And they had the most to lose if Tarankov won in the June elections.

  Her boss, Bratislav Toivich, came over as the program began to run. He was a Lithuanian who’d immigrated to this country in the late fifties as a young man, but he’d still not lost his accent, or his rigid hatred for the Russians. He was a thick-wasted man who smoked constantly, and always had a hangdog look as if he’d just received some terrible news. No one had ever seen him smile. But he was brilliant, he was fair, and he was kind. Everyone loved him.

  “Are you writing love letters now?” Toivich asked pulling up a chair beside her.

  “The Company doesn’t give me the time for a love life.”

  “Aren’t there any good men in Washington these days?”

  “None that I’ve met.”

  Toivich studied the blocks of text rapidly shifting across the screen. “What are we looking for here? This is your new program?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. She turned to him. “Yeltsin’s heart attack doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Dzerzhinskiy could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. He’s had health problems for years.”

  “Agreed. But no one is making a big deal out of the car bombing in Red Square. That in itself is kinda weird. You’d think they’d be all over it, Mr. B. The Communists should be screaming bloody murder. They’ve been predicting this sort of thing all along. It’s the moderate reformers’ fault.”

  “Maybe it is,” Toivich suggested.

  Elizabeth was shocked. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “As far as I’m concerned the dirty bastards can wallow in their own filth, they deserve it. But what’s happening in Russia now was expected. In any change, especially such a big change, anarchy always follows. How they come out of it will be a measure of then strength.”

  “You think Tarankov has a chance?”

  “Let’s put it this way, my little devochka. He hasn’t one chance in a million of failure. The military is behind him, and so is the FSK.”
<
br />   Elizabeth looked at her computer screen. “It’ll be worse than before.”

  Toivich shrugged. “In that case we’ll deal with the situation just like we’ve dealt with every other crisis. We’ll play catch up.”

  “Was it all a wasted effort?” she asked sincerely. There were so many things that she did not understand yet. She wished her father were here at her side to talk to. But he’d go ballistic when he found out his only daughter was working for the Company. She wanted to get into operations training at the Farm first, before she broke the news to him. She wanted him to be proud of her, something her mother never could be.

  Toivich’s face darkened. “Don’t ever say that again,” he said harshly. “A lot of good people gave their lives to fight the bastards. And if you don’t understand that, you of all people, then you don’t belong here.”

  Elizabeth was instantly contrite, though in a hidden compartment at the back of her head, she wanted to lash back. If we’d done such a hot job defending the faith, then why were there more troops under arms worldwide than at anytime since the Second World War? Why was everything going to hell in Russia? Why had the world become such a dangerous place? Who was kidding whom?

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

  “Your daddy would take you over his knee if he heard you talking nonsense like that,” Toivich said. “Have you talked to anybody about this program?”

  “Nobody other than you.”

  “Well, shut it down for tonight. They want to talk to you upstairs right now.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, her stomach fluttered. “Who wants to see me, and about what?”

  “Mr. Ryan’s secretary called, but she didn’t say why,” Toivich said.

  Elizabeth’s temper flared, but Toivich held her off before she could blurt out anything.

  “Ryan’s problem is with your father, not you. And that’s a subject you’re supposed to know nothing about, so keep your temper in check,” Toivich said. “If he tries to pull anything with you he will be stepped on, I promise you. Nonetheless he’s still Deputy Director of Operations. And if you ever want to get over there you’d better learn something your father never learned. Politics.”

  “Bullshit,” Elizabeth said sharply.

  “I’m from the old school, Elizabeth, which means I’m not very politically correct. Where I come from young ladies don’t use words like that. Maybe next time I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” He looked indulgently at her. “Would you like me to come up there with you?”

  “No thanks, Mr. B. You might be from the old school, but I’m from the new. My dad taught me to fight my own battles.”

  “I’ll be here when you’re finished if you want to talk.”

  “Thanks,” Elizabeth said. She shut down her program, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor where she was directed by a civilian guard through the glass doors at the end of the corridor.

  The Deputy Director of Operations’ secretary, a dowdy old woman, her silver gray hair up in a bun, looked up when Elizabeth came in.

  “I’m Elizabeth McGarvey, Mr. Ryan sent for me?” “Yes, dear, just a moment please,” the older woman said, pleasantly. She got up and went into Ryan’s office. A moment later she came back. “You may go in now.”

  Elizabeth nodded and as she passed, Ryan’s secretary whispered something to her that sounded like, “His bark is worse than his bite,” and then she was inside.

  Howard Ryan and another older, more serious looking man got to ‘their feet, and Ryan came around his desk, a phony smile on his face.

  “Ms. McGarvey, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Howard Ryan, Deputy Director of Operations.” They shook hands. “I’d like you to meet my assistant DDO, Tom Moore.”

  “Sir,” Elizabeth said, shaking Moore’s hand. His grasp was like Ryan’s, limp and damp. Just like her father had told her.

  Ryan motioned for them to have a seat, and he went back behind his desk. “I was absolutely delighted when I learned that we had a second generation McGarvey working for us,” he said. “What made you decide on the Agency as a career? It was your father’s doing I’ll bet. He must be very proud of you.”

  “I’ve admired my father for as long as I can remember,” she said, careful to keep her tongue in check.

  “Then you and he must have had long talks about his work for us.”

  “Only in the most general of terms, Mr. Ryan. He believed very strongly in what he was doing. So do I.”

  Ryan chuckled. “I guess we can skip the brainwashing sessions on this one, Tom,” he said to Moore. “She’s already been well indoctrinated.”

  “How is your father these days?” Moore asked. “We understand that he’s back in Paris.”

  “He’s doing fine,” Elizabeth said. She hadn’t talked to him in more than six months, in part because she didn’t want to let slip about her new job. But in part because she’d all but begged him to stay in the States eighteen months ago after all the air crashes. He’d had something to do with the investigation, she was certain of it, though he’d told her nothing about it. At the time she’d felt vulnerable, and wanted him nearby. When he left she’d been angry.

  “Have you talked to him recently?” Ryan asked. “Has he come here to Washington to see you and your mother?”

  “No.”

  Again Ryan exchanged a look with Moore. “Good heavens, you haven’t had a falling out with your father, have you? That would be terrible. He isn’t upset that you’re working for us is he?” Ryan spread his hands. “I don’t mind telling you, since you’re one of us now, that your father and I have had differences of opinion. Some of that unfortunately came to an ugly head about a year and a half ago. But that in no way negates my sincerest admiration for the man and what he’s done for this agency. For his country. Even the President speaks of him fondly.”

  “No, sir, there’s been nothing like that,” Elizabeth said, wondering where he was taking this. “We’re still pals.”

  “Still pals,” Ryan said to Moore, who chuckled and looked approvingly at her.

  She wanted to ask them if their parents had any children who’d lived, but she bit her tongue. Politics, Mr. B.,called it. Bullshit, she thought.

  “Well, we’d like to talk to him, and we thought that you might help us.”

  “Call him at his apartment in Paris.”

  “We tried,” Moore said. “He’s gone. We thought maybe he’d contacted you in the past few days.”

  Elizabeth’s stomach was hollow. Something was going on that had driven her father to ground, and it was important enough for the CIA to resort to this tactic.

  “Mr. Ryan, my father did mention your name once or twice over the past few years, but like I said only in the most general of terms. But I know my father well enough, and I’ve worked for the CIA long enough, to understand that something is going on that you need this help for.” Elizabeth tried to read something from their expressions, but she couldn’t. Moore seemed vapid, and Ryan seemed calculating.

  “That’s not quite the truth….”

  “He’s gone to ground, you want to talk to him, but you can’t find him,” Elizabeth said. “And I suspect even if you did get a message to him there’s a good chance he’d ignore it. Especially if he’s working on something that he considers important.”

  “You’re a very astute young woman,” Ryan said after a few moments of silence. “Actually it’s the French SDECE who would like to speak with your father.”

  “About what, Mr. Ryan?”

  “That’s not relevant to your purposes at the moment.”

  “Bullshit,” Elizabeth said, unable to contain herself any longer. “You didn’t call me up here to chat about my health. You want me to find my father for you.”

  Ryan closed his eyes. “Christ,” he said half under his breath. When he opened his eyes again his expression and body language were flatly neutral, as if he’d pulled on a new skin. “We want you to tell him
that the French intelligence service wish to speak with him. He can meet them at our embassy. But he’s broken no French laws, nor is he a fugitive from French justice. No warrant has been issued. They just want some information from him. Nothing mote.”

  “About what?” Elizabeth shot back.

  “Don’t play hardball with us, young lady,” Moore said. “You’ll find yourself on the outside looking in.”

  “If you want to fire me, go ahead and do it. But if you want my help, don’t tell me lies. It’s the thing my father hates the most. And I inherited the trait.”

  “Tom spoke out of turn, Ms. McGarvey. We don’t want to fire you. As a matter of fact I called you up here this afternoon to offer you a job in Operations. We’ve got a class starting at the Farm the first of June. If you’re interested.”

  “First I bring you my father.”

  “Good heavens, I don’t know what you think we are. Fools, perhaps. Opportunists, maybe. But we’re not the enemy, Elizabeth. I’m offering you a job in Operations. You can take it or leave it. Frankly I think you’ll turn out to be a bigger pain in the ass than your father, but I think you have the potential of being almost as good as he was.”

  “Don’t try to tell me—”

  “Please hear me out,” Ryan cut her off. “I can show you your personnel file, if you want to see it. When you were evaluated for employment all three of your interviewers recommended Operations. In part because of your abilities, and in part, I have to admit, because of what your father has done for us.” Ryan studied her for a moment. “Now that is a fact, believe it or not. In the meantime we want to get a message to your father for the French. Nobody can find him, and I think you’re well aware that when your father wants to hide himself he’s very good. Possibly the best there ever was. At this moment we and the French have exhausted every means at our disposal short of an all out manhunt. Now that’s something very dangerous. People could get hurt. So we turned to you because you know your father probably better than anyone else, and if you should happen to show up on his doorstep his first reaction won’t be to escape out the back door, or shoot. We want your help.”