Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  McGarvey pulled out a fifty-franc note. “I want Arkady here by 4:30.”

  Artur grabbed the money. “Anything you say. But just watch your back with that one. He’s in the Mafia’s pocket.”

  His room had been searched, but nothing was missing, nor did it appear that his laptop computer had been tampered with. After a shower he went to bed, but sleep was a long time coming. He knew the approximate when of the kill, as well as the where. Thinking about the cab driver Arkady, the Mafia entrepreneur Vasha, and the bellman Artur he had a glimmering of the how not only of the kill, but most importantly of his escape. He slept, finally, dreaming that he was climbing through the scaffolding inside the main dome of St. Basil’s while Tarankov’s right hand man Leonid Chernov was in the crowd of a million people in Red Square looking up at him.

  CIA Headquarters

  It was past 9:00 p.m. in Washington when Elizabeth brought up a photograph of a good-looking woman on her computer screen. She had been assigned a cubicle in DO territory on the fourth floor, and a computer terminal with a designator that allowed her access to a broad range of files in the CIA’s vast database. She’d reported to a somewhat disinterested Tom Moore that she was making some progress, but that it might take longer than she thought to find her father. Background noise, her father called it. Like soft music to lull someone asleep while you did the real work.

  This afternoon she had the Company’s travel section book her an evening flight for the next day to Paris under her Elizabeth Swanson identity. It gave her another twenty-four hours plus to finish up here in Washington. Meanwhile, on the way back to her apartment, she stopped at a pay phone and telephoned a travel agency booking a late shuttle flight to New York’s Kennedy Airport, where she would stay at the Airport Hilton, and take the Air France Concorde to Paris under her own name, but using her mother’s credit card. The simple subterfuge would give her an evening and a full day in Paris before she was missed. Hopefully it would be enough time to find her father.

  She packed a bag which she locked in her trunk, and came back out to Langley. No one at the gate or upstairs in Operations thought anything of it. She was McGarvey’s kid on a special assignment for Ryan. She had a lot to prove so she was doing her homework after school.

  Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph and brief file, marked confidential, were in the French section of identified SDECE agents. She was forty, born in Nice, educated at the Sorbonne in languages and modern political history, and was recruited by the SDECE ten years ago. She’d started her career in the secret service just as Elizabeth had, as a translator. She’d spent two years working from the French delegation at the United Nations in New York. No mention was made of her specific assignment, but she was recalled to France after her lover, who worked for the Canadian delegation, committed suicide by flinging himself into the East River one early winter evening. The young man was a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister, who was pragmatic enough to understand that such things happen. Nevertheless everyone seemed to agree that it would be for the best if Mademoiselle Belleau returned to her side of the Atlantic without delay. Her continued presence was deemed too embarrassing for the Canadians.

  The photograph was an official one, possibly her UN identification picture, and she looked stern. Nevertheless in-Elizabeth’s estimation she was beautiful. Just the kind of woman her father was attracted to.

  Elizabeth smiled sadly. Her mother, Dominique Kilbourne, and this French woman could have been cut from the same cloth. Slender, narrow pretty faces, high cheekbones, expressive eyes. They all had a sensuousness to them that reminded Elizabeth of the photographs she’d seen of her grandmother, who’d been a beauty in her day. It gave Elizabeth another understanding of her father, and her heart ached a little for what could have been. Most of her life she’d dreamed that someday her mother and father would somehow get back together. Even now, she found she wished for such an impossible reunion. “Too much water under the bridge,” her father would say. She could hear his voice.

  The file gave Mademoiselle Belleau’s address on the Avenue Felix Faure in the 15th Arrondissement, on the opposite side of Paris from her father’s apartment off the Rue La Fayette in the 19th.

  Elizabeth thought about taking a printout with her, but decided against it. In the unlikely event that French customs searched her bags, it wouldn’t go for her to be carrying the dossier of a French secret intelligence officer. Too many questions would be asked, especially by Ryan and Moore. Specifically, why hadn’t she been traveling under her Elizabeth Swanson identity.

  She canceled the file, backed out of the program, then shut down her terminal, and sat back in her chair. Her eyes burned from a lack of sleep and from staring at computer screens. Although she went out on dates she’d avoided becoming involved with anyone specific. A mistake? she wondered. Speaking to Dominique Kilbourne and seeing Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph brought her a sharp image of her father being caressed by them. She wished she had someone to caress. Someone she could share her inner fears with. Someone to love. Someone in her bed.

  Elizabeth shut off the lights and went downstairs to the nearly deserted cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a smoke. Toivich was seated alone in a corner reading a newspaper. Elizabeth brought her coffee over to him.

  “Mind some company, Mr. B?” she asked.

  Toivich looked up. “My little devochka, it’s late.”

  Elizabeth sat down across the table from him. “I wanted to apologize for not taking the time to let you know that I was transferred to Operations.”

  “I was told. But I don’t think Mr. Ryan would approve of you sneaking back down to your old console for a little night work.”

  “I have my own terminal in DO now.”

  Toivich clucked. “I’m not talking about tonight. You know what I mean. But I can’t blame you. A daughter has the right to know about her father, especially when she’s been assigned to find him.”

  Elizabeth looked sharply at him. “What have you heard?”

  “Enough to know that you should take great care that you don’t try to be a wild west cowboy like your father.”

  Elizabeth started to protest, but Toivich held her off. “Your father was the very best. Still is, I suspect. If he’s gone to ground for some reason there will be a great many people interested in him, and therefore you. Some of them very bad people you’ve not been trained to deal with.” Toivich looked into her eyes. “Genetics is important, but so is education and experience. And luck.”

  “Why does Howard Ryan hate my father so badly?”

  “Mr. Ryan is the quintessential corporate man. Your father on the other hand is a maverick. Each time he pulls off one of his coups, it makes Mr. Ryan look like the fool he is.”

  “He’s jealous of my father, is that it?”

  Toivich shrugged. “That and a little fear, perhaps. Ryan wants to become DCI, and he has an excellent chance of taking over when the general steps down. And maybe Ryan would be the right man for the job. It would keep Congress off our backs because Ryan is also the consummate politician. But so long as your father continues to do what he does best, he’s a thorn in Ryan’s side. He’s become Mr. Ryan’s cause celebre.”

  “I see.”

  “By sending you he means to flush your father out of hiding, which will happen because your father will drop everything to protect you from harm’s way.”

  “But I’m not in any danger. My father is.”

  “That’s just the point, Elizabeth, you probably are in grave danger. Especially if you start playing by your own rules. If you cut your support system before you reach your father, nobody might get to you in time if you get into trouble.”

  Elizabeth said nothing. She’d not lost her determination to find her father and warn him, but she was frightened now.

  “Think about it.”

  “Am I being followed, Mr. B?”

  Toivich shrugged again. “Probably.”

  “What if I don’t want to be followed?”

/>   “If you don’t do anything that you’re not supposed to do, it won’t matter.”

  “I need to get to Dulles by eleven, and I don’t want anybody to know about it.”

  “You just told me.”

  Elizabeth flashed him a smile.

  Toivich shook his head. “Where are you parked?”

  “Out back in D.”

  “They’ll be waiting at that door. I was just about to leave. We’ll go out the front and I’ll drive you around to your car. But it won’t take them long to figure that out, so you won’t have much of a head start.”

  “It’s all I need. Thanks, Mr. B.”

  Moscow

  “How did it go?” Arkady Astimovich asked on the way over to the Leningrad Station.

  “I think I’m going to be a rich man,” McGarvey replied. He sat in the front seat with the cabby. “But I’m going to need some help.”

  “I told you that I’ve got some goddamned good connections in this city.”

  “The Mafia?”

  Astimovich glanced over at him, and nodded warily. “You gotta deal with them if you want to survive in this town. It’ll be expensive, but damned well worth it.”

  “How much are you paying?”

  “Plenty,” the cabby said. He laughed. “Everybody pays. My brother-in-law is a big deal son of a bitch at the Grand Dinamo, and still I pay.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that. But when the time comes I don’t want to deal with some kulak.”

  “My brother-in-law knows what he’s doing,” Astimovich said. “What kind of business are we going into, boss?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get back.”

  “When’s that?”

  “A few weeks. Maybe a little longer, maybe a little sooner.”

  “What do you want me to do in the meantime?”

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  They pulled up in front of the busy Leningrad Station, traffic heavy as usual. The snow had finally stopped but the temperature had plunged. Everything looked dirty.

  “Three weeks is a long time,” Astimovich said sullenly. “How do I know you’re coming back?”

  “Because we’re going to make some money,” McGarvey said. He peeled a thousand francs from a thick bundle of bills and handed it to the cabby. “Let’s call this a down payment, shall we?” “Spasiba,” the cabby said, pocketing the money.

  “Do as I say and you’ll be a rich man. Cross me and I’ll kill you. I’ve got connections now in this town too.”

  “Okay, boss. You’ll see everything will be hunky dory.”

  McGarvey got his bag from the back seat of the cab and disappeared with the crowds inside the railway station. He waited by the front doors-for a few minutes to make sure that Astimovich wouldn’t try to follow him, then went to the stand-up restaurant and had a glass of beer and a meat pie. In three days he had learned what he needed to know about Tarankov and conditions in Russia. He felt that his odds had greatly improved from the thousand-to-one he’d told Yemlin. But there was still a long way to go, because he wouldn’t go through with the assassination unless he could improve his chances to at least fifty-fifty.

  His overnight train for Helsinki was scheduled to arrive in the Finnish capital shortly before 9:30 a.m., giving him ninety minutes to make his Finnair flight to Brussels where he would pick up his Avis Renault and drive back to Paris.

  He was leaving Russia several thousand francs poorer, but if the million dollars had been deposited in his Channel Islands account as Yemlin promised it would be, then money would not be a problem. Nor would it have been in any event. The investments he’d made over the past twenty-five years, starting with the proceeds from the sale of his parents’ ranch in Kansas, had done well. He was not a wealthy man, but he was independent. His demand for money from Yemlin had only been done to insure that the Russian was serious. Money was something they understood almost better than any other concept.

  Gathering his bag, he left the restaurant and walked through the terminal to the trackside gates where he had to show his ticket and passport. Outgoing Russian customs wouldn’t occur until Vyborg, but his gun was tucked safely away in his laptop computer, and Russians these days were more interested in what was being brought into the country than what was being taken out.

  TWENTY

  Paris

  A few minutes past 5:30 p.m.” the Air France Concorde SST from New York, touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport with a tremendous roar, its needle nose drooping like some gigantic insect. Of the 143 passengers, Elizabeth McGarvey was one of the last off, letting her seat partner, an extremely boring attorney from New Jersey, precede her. During the four-hour flight across the Atlantic the man had done everything within his power to convince her to meet him at his hotel for drinks tonight. At first his attentions had been flattering because he was reasonably good looking. But then he’d become funny and finally annoying. But she didn’t want to attract any attention so she’d quietly gone along with him, even taking down his hotel number. But she refused to ride into the city with him or even get off the plane together because her father, who was insanely protective of his daughter, would be meeting her, and she didn’t want to cause a scene, to which the lawyer agreed wholeheartedly. By the time she got off the plane she was in an extremely bitchy mood.

  She taped the Elizabeth Swanson passport and identification papers to her midriff between the bottom of her bra and the top of her panties. She didn’t think that even a Frenchman would dare pat her down. And unless authorities were expecting her, there’d be no reason for the customs officers to become suspicious.

  “The purpose of your visit to France, Mademoiselle?” the young passport control officer asked from his booth.

  “Tourism,” Elizabeth replied curtly.

  The officer stamped her passport indifferently, and she walked back to customs. She’d flown Air France, not a foreign carrier, so she’d arrived at Aerogare Two which was only for Air France and therefore uncomplicated. This evening the terminal was practically deserted.

  There was no sign of her seat-mate when she picked up her bag and headed for the rien a declarer line. The customs official smiled at her and passed her through with a wave, and she was in France. It had been easy.

  Upstairs in the main terminal she got a couple of thousand francs from the ATM using her mother’s credit card, then went back downstairs again and outside to the cab ranks.

  “Good evening, Mademoiselle,” the cabby said.

  “L’Hotel Marronniers sur la Rue Jacob clans la Rive Gauche, s’il vous plait,” she said, sitting back. “Out, Mademoiselle,” the driver replied respectfully.

  As they pulled away from the curb, Elizabeth took a cigarette! out of her purse, lit it, then cracked the window by a couple of inches.

  “Pas de fumer Mademoiselle,” the driver said sternly over his shoulder.

  Elizabeth ignored him.

  “Mademoiselle, please no smoking,” he said, looking at her reflection in the rearview mirror.

  She stared out the window, totally ignoring him, as she slowly uncrossed her legs giving him a good view up her short skirt, and then sat back even farther so that her skirt hiked almost up to her panty line. The driver stopped complaining, but from time to time he glanced in the rearview mirror, and she rewarded him with a couple more looks up her skirt, which seemed to make him happy.

  She and her mother had spent a few days at the small, but pleasant Hotel Marronniers on the Left Bank a few years ago after she’d finished school in’ Bern. She thought it unlikely that anyone on the staff would remember her, but even if they did it wouldn’t matter, because she wasn’t here illegally, nor had she committed any crime on French soil.

  Her father was here someplace, she thought as they crossed the river and got off the ring highway at the Quai Marcel Boyer above the Pont National. Paris was his home of choice, he’d explained to her, because for the most part the people were civilized, they minded their own business, and their food an
d wine were the best in the world. Besides, where else would a Voltaire scholar feel more at home than in France?

  Rush-hour traffic was thinning out by the time the cabby dropped her off in front of the hotel that was hidden behind a courtyard. She went inside, showed her passport and booked a room for a week, and paid for it with her own credit card. It would take twenty-four to thirty-six hours for her presence to be known in Paris from her hotel registration. By then she would have either found her father or she would have checked in with Tom Lynch, so hiding her trail was no longer as important as it had been on the shuttle from Dulles to Kennedy, and the Concorde flight over.

  She thought she recognized the old concierge behind his desk, but if he remembered her he gave no hint of it. The bellman helped her upstairs with her bag, and after she tipped him and he was gone, she flung open the windows and breathed the Paris air. No other city in the world smelled quite like this one, she thought. And especially this time, because she was in Paris on a secret mission. It was better than the movies, because it was real.

  She took a quick shower, dried her hair, then dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a pretty white V-neck light sweater and a pair of black flats that matched her shoulder bag. She hid her Elizabeth Swanson papers under the bed, then went out.

  It was dinner time, and she was famished. She sat down at a sidewalk cafe a couple of blocks from her hotel, where she had a half-bottle of Chardonnay, a small salad, a cheese omelette with pommes frittes and a cafe” express afterwards.

  She’d been on her own since college, first in New York, and for the past few months in Washington. But being here in Paris like this, was different. Vastly different.

  The address of her father’s apartment was across the river near the ga res du Nord and de 1”Est, in what until recently had been a rough workingman’s neighborhood. But Paris was undergoing a renovation, and cruising past his building in a taxi Elizabeth could see why he liked this part of town. It was anonymous, with an easy egress from the city on the main Avenue Jean Jaures, plus the two railway stations. There was a small park across the. street from a pleasant looking cafe a half-block from his apartment.