Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  It was less than seventy miles to the Polish border at Kolbaskowo, and although he was slowed by heavier traffic, mostly trucks, funneling into the checkpoint, he made it before 11:00 a.m.

  He had to stop briefly on the German side of the border so that his export papers could be checked and stamped. Before he took such a car out of Germany the authorities had to make certain that the proper taxes had been paid. Beyond that they didn’t care who he was or what else he was bringing across. Reconstructing an entire country was an expensive business.

  On the Polish side, his passport and the in-transit papers for the car were briefly examined, and within a few minutes he was on his way, again pushing the car to nearly one hundred miles per hour. Although the highways in Poland were not nearly so good as those in Germany, the traffic was much lighter, so that as the afternoon wore on he made better time than he thought he would.

  From Szczecin it was nearly five hundred miles along the Baltic coast to the border with a seventy-five mile wide strip of territory that still belonged to Russia. Sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, the region’s only major city was Kaliningrad. The Russians had held onto it because it was a major seaport.

  The Intercontinental in Leipzig had made him an excellent picnic lunch of bread, sausages, cheese, potato salad, and several bottles of beer, plus a couple of bottles of mineral water, so he did not have to stop to eat. But he pulled into an Esso station on the outskirts of Gdansk where he filled the gas tank around five in the evening, and took a break in the wayside to relieve his cramped muscles.

  It was a mistake, because by the time he got on the road again he was caught in the middle of rush-hour traffic as factory and shipyard workers clogged the highways on their way home.

  He’d hoped to have reached the border with Russia at Braniewo around seven in the evening, and when traffic might still be reasonably heavy, and the customs officers too busy to check him thoroughly. Instead he arrived at the frontier a few minutes before 10:00 p.m., his the only car within sight in either direction.

  On the Polish side the customs officials stamped his in-transit papers, and waved him through. On the Russian side, however, the armed FSK security officer motioned him to a parking area a few yards from the roadway. A customs officer in the dark blue uniform of a Militia cop, came out of the customs shed, and took his papers.

  “Good evening,” the official said indifferently, as he studied McGarvey’s passport.

  “Good evening,” McGarvey replied in fractured Russian.

  “Did you drive this automobile all the way from Brussels?”

  “I bought it in Leipzig.”

  A second FSK security officer came out of the customs shed, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He * walked over to the car, touched the hood, examined the knobby tires, and ran his fingers along the passenger side door. He stopped in back.

  McGarvey glanced in the rearview mirror as the soldier studied the spare tire on the rack, and then shined a flashlight inside at the second spare tire and the gas cans.

  “Why are you coming to Russia?” the customs official asked.

  “I’m in transit to Riga.”

  “Will you-be staying in Kaliningrad tonight?”

  “No. I’d like to reach Latvia by morning if the roads are okay and the weather continues to cooperate.”

  “There is nothing wrong with Russian roads,” the official said sharply. He examined the car’s papers, lingering over the German export and Latvian import licenses. “Do you have a buyer for this pussy wagon in Riga?”

  “I hope so.”

  The official laughed. “No one up there has any money these days, except for a certain class of… businessmen.”

  McGarvey shrugged but said nothing.

  The customs officer gave him a hard, bleak stare, then handed back his passport. He wrote something on the Russian transit permit. “There is an additional transit fee of five hundred deutsch marks Do you have this money with you? It says here you didn’t pay it in Leipzig.” It was a bribe, of course.

  “It was an oversight,” McGarvey said. He counted out the money and handed it over without protest. He was being perceived as one of “those businessmen,” which meant Latvian Mafia, which was giving the Russians still living in the country a horrible time. It was exactly the image he wanted to portray.

  “Don’t stay long in Russia,” the official ordered. He stepped back, and Waved the FSK security guard to raise the barricade.

  An hour and a half later McGarvey was crossing the much friendlier border into Lithuania where the customs officials joked and smiled, and waved at him as he left.

  Moscow

  “He’s disappeared and nobody can find him,” Chernov told General Yuryn at breakfast in the Dzerzhinsky Square headquarters of the FSK shortly after eight in the morning. “We’ll have to wait until he contacts Yemlin, or makes a mistake.”

  “Maybe he’s given up.”.

  “That’s not likely.”

  “President Kabatov has to be told something.”

  Chernov looked at him coldly. He despised weakness of any kind, and he took Yuryn’s obesity to be a sign of a lack of self control. But

  Tarankov needed the general, at least until after the elections. Then many things would change in Moscow.

  “Sorry, General, but we’ve been working around the clock, and I’m getting tired.”

  Yuryn laughed because the remark was so obviously disingenuous. “I’ll pass your complaint along to him.”

  “Tell him that we’re working on it. McGarvey will not succeed. I guarantee it.”

  Paris

  Elizabeth had slept poorly, and as a result she had a difficult time getting started. She didn’t leave the apartment until nearly 7:00 a.m.” and her heart wasn’t in her jogging. She’d come to enjoy the mornings, as she was sure her father had, in part because by doing the same things he did she felt closer to him. But not this morning because she was frightened and confused. For the first time she was beginning to doubt that even a man such as her father could succeed with the deck so stacked against him.

  A half-dozen blocks from the apartment, she stopped at a telephone kiosk, and using her credit card called a number in Alexandria, across the river from Washington. It was one in the morning over there, but she didn’t care. She’d wake up the dead if she thought that it would help.

  Her old boss Bratislav Toivich answered his home phone on the first ring as if he’d been expecting the call. “Hullo.”

  “Mr. B, it’s Liz. I’m in Paris.”

  “You’re up early.”

  “I’m jogging the same route my father takes. But we haven’t found a thing. And I don’t know what to do next.”

  “I haven’t heard much here either, little devochka. Maybe it’s time for you to come home.”

  “They want to send me and Jacqueline to Moscow to act as bait. But I’m afraid of what my father might do if he finds out.”

  “That bastard,” Toivich said with much feeling. “Don’t you do it, Elizabeth. Don’t you let them bully you into going over there. You know the situation in Moscow. Anything can happen. You and Ms. Belleau could be swallowed up and no one would ever hear from you again.”

  “The Russians know what my father is planning to do, and they’re waiting for him. He doesn’t have a chance, Mr. B. He’s walking into a trap, unless we can warn him first. But I don’t know what to do anymore. We’ve tried just about everything.”

  “Have you tried reaching him through his friend, Otto Rencke?”

  “He’s disappeared too.”

  “He’s a computer genius. The machines are his entire life.”

  “We’ve tried the computer schools here in Paris but no one has heard from him.”

  “You’re young, Elizabeth. You were raised in the computer age, so think like a computer genius.” “I don’t understand.”

  “Rencke is probably helping your father. But that wouldn’t take him twenty-four hours a day. He has to amuse himself
somehow in the off hours. So what would a man like that do with himself?”

  THIRTY

  Riga

  McGarvey crossed the Daugava River that ran through the heart of the Latvian capital around eight o’clock in the morning, his eyes gritty and his stomach rumbling. The traffic clogged streets were in terrible repair, the drivers even more reckless than in France, so he had to watch his own driving.

  Using the Latvian guide book and maps he’d picked up at a truck stop this morning, he found his way to the main Telephone and Telegraph office on Brivlbas Boulevard. The Mercedes attracted some attention, but nobody bothered him.

  Inside, he gave one of the clerks at the counter a Paris number and she directed him to one of the booths. By the time he closed the door the number was ringing.

  “Hiya,” Rencke answered.

  “Have you heard from my daughter?” McGarvey asked.

  “She called and everything is fine,” Rencke replied breathlessly. “Oh boy, Mac, it’s a good thing you called because the heat’s been turned up a notch. I can’t get a trace on you because of my backscatter encryption program. So where are you calling from?”

  “I’m in Riga. What’s happening?”

  “You’re not calling from a hotel phone are you? Because if you are you’d better get out of there. My stuff can’t protect past a hotel switchboard, and there might be bugs.”

  “I’m at the main telephone office. What’s going on, Otto?”

  “Ryan is being cagey as hell, but I picked up a reference to a special commission in Moscow that the Russians have put together to find you. It’s in the SVR’s system now, so there’s no doubt that they know who you are and why you’re coming. Ever hear the name Yuri BykoV? Ex-KGB?”

  McGarvey searched his memory. “No. What’d you find out about him?”

  “Not much more than Chernov. He’s supposed to be one of the best cops in Russia though. But they know you’re coming, Mac, so you’re going to have to call it off.”

  “What else do they know?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? They know your name, and they know that you’ve been hired to kill Tarankov. They’re waiting for you. The second they spot you, they’ll kill you. But that’s not all, Mac. The Russians asked for help from us and the French, and we’ve agreed. That stupid bastard Ryan agreed. He’s sent someone here to Paris to work with the French to find you. They’re going to share information with Bykov.”

  McGarvey weighed what he was being told. “Who’d Ryan send?”

  “I don’t know. But didn’t you hear me? By now every cop in Europe is looking for you. Which means that if you get busted for so much as spitting on a sidewalk they’ll nail your ass to the cross.”

  “Did they get my name from Yemlin?”

  “If they did, Ryan hasn’t put it on the wire. He probably sent whatever he had by courier to Tom Lynch. Which means they might suspect you’ve got some help.”

  “Maybe it’s time for you to get out.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you do,” Rencke said, his voice pitched even higher than normal. “Do you think you can still pull it off?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Watch yourself, Otto.” — “>

  “You too, Mac.”

  McGarvey paid for the phone charge, then drove over to the Radisson International that had opened less than a year ago overlooking the river near the Van u bridge. He surrendered the car to an admiring valet, and checked in, booking a room for a week. Latvia was beginning to have a tourist season, but it didn’t start until June, so the hotel was half-empty, and the staff was appreciative and attentive.

  Upstairs, he ordered a pot of black coffee, an omelet and toast from room service. While he waited for it to come, he unpacked his bags, and took a quick shower. Afterward he sat by the window overlooking the city, and smoked.

  Almost everyone he’d known from the old days at the CIA was gone. It was a safe bet that Ryan would not have come over to Paris himself, nor would the Assistant DCI, Larry Danielle. Which left no one of any importance, or at least no trained field officer. Ryan had probably sent one of his section heads with a stack of files and orders to find McGarvey or else.

  McGarvey reasoned it out. The Russians knew his name, and knew that he was coming. But it was a big country, and they could not know his timetable. Nor could they know where he was planning to kill Tarankov. Since the government wanted Tarankov arrested and tried for treason and murder, it was a safe bet that no one in the Kremlin or on the special commission would send a warning to Tarankov. Although on reflection he decided that he could not be certain of that. It just seemed to make sense that there wouldn’t be any lines of communications between the opposing forces.

  It was possible that Ryan had sent the Russian commission the CIA’s files on McGarvey. Combined with the files of the SVR, it would make a formidable record of not only his accomplishments, but of his methods of operation, his tradecraft. In the right hands that would give them a decided advantage. But Bykov was just an unknown investigator. Probably very good, but just an investigator for all that.

  The only man in Russia who he had any cause to be concerned about, McGarvey decided, was Leonid Chernov. If somehow he became involved the danger would be a quantum leap greater.

  On balance, then, he decided, he would go ahead with his plans made more difficult because they knew his name and face, but still not impossible.

  His breakfast came, he signed for it, and the waiter left. He ate the food, drank one cup of coffee, and then went to bed for a few hours sleep. There was much to be done in the coming days, and he wanted to make a good start as soon as possible.

  Paris

  Elizabeth McGarvey sat on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens in sight of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde studying the display on her laptop computer. She’d become tired of being cooped up at the apartment, so she had come down here to continue working because the day was beautiful. Jacqueline was in a cramped office at the main telephone exchange a few blocks away, sitting in front of a much larger computer that could instantly trace virtually any telephone number in Paris and its environs. She and Elizabeth were in contact via one of the two cellular telephones Elizabeth carried. The second cell phone connected her laptop to the Internet.

  At the moment she was logged in under the Globalnet name of LIZMAC in a Usenet newsgroup called talk.politics.misc, in which participants posted messages in a sort of dialogue on what was wrong with politics these days.

  At the top of each message was the name of the writer, the subject, the date and time the message was posted, and the location of the originating computer system. Following each message was a signature, which as often as not was the participant’s nickname. And the nicknames were just as colorful as the messages.

  If Otto Rencke had too much time on his hands he would almost certainly be taking part in a number of these news groups His ego would make it impossible for him not to make comments, and Elizabeth hoped to be able to spot him by what he was saying, and by his nickname. It was a sure bet that he would not use his real name, nor would he use his real telephone number.

  Elizabeth also hoped that if she did stumble upon a newsgroup which he posted he might recognize her own signature, and out of curiosity, if nothing else, he would have to open a dialogue with her.

  His CIA file had been sent over, and combined with what she remembered her father saying about him, she thought she had a good idea what kinds of news groups he’d be browsing, and what kinds of messages he would be posting.

  Each time she came up with a likely candidate, she passed the computer location telephone number to Jacqueline to check out. So far every possibility had turned out to be legitimate. But worldwide there were more than 60,000 Usenet news groups nearly 95 million computer sites, and hundreds of anonymous re mailer sites, through which messages could be retransmitted without valid IDs.

  From: Thomas LeBrun 33.1.42-74-21-31 Subject
: Lindsay/Chirac trade debate 8/4/99 11.25

  Who does the Monk think he’s kidding? NAFTA and GATT had exactly the opposite effect he claims. Reducing trade barriers simply means a redistribution of jobs and capital. But it’s never a one-way street as he suggests. Foie Gras in France, Toyotas in Japan and commercial airlines in the U.S. (big daddy item?)

  Elizabeth speed-dialed the telephone exchange.

  “Paris exchange. Four-two, seven-four, two-one, three-one,” she told Jacqueline. “He calls himself ‘big daddy.” “

  “Un moment,” Jacqueline said.

  Elizabeth continued to watch the messages continually scrolling up the screen. This went on twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week across the world. Finding Rencke would be next to impossible, but they had nothing else to go on for the moment.

  “Thomas LeBrun. A street number in the twentieth arrondissement,” Jacqueline said. “He’s legitima ted

  Elizabeth ran a hand tiredly across her eyes. “Okay, Jacqueline, I’m going to a different newsgroup. I’ll try talk.politicstheory, maybe we’ll have better luck.”

  “How about some lunch, cherie?”

  “Let’s work till noon. That gives us another half hour. I just can’t stop.”

  “I know,” Jacqueline said soothingly. “We’ll find him.”

  “We have to.”

  Riga

  McGarvey got up around two in the afternoon after only a few hours of sleep. He showered, shaved, and got dressed then went downstairs and had a late lunch at the hotel’s coffee shop. He was still logy from lack of sleep, but by the time he’d walked two blocks from the hotel he was beginning to feel better. He caught a taxi at Krastmala Boulevard, and ordered the driver to take him out to the airport where he rented a Volkswagen Jetta for one month from Hertz. He explained that he wanted to explore the entire Baltic region, something he’d wanted to do for years. Now that they were independent from the Russians he was finally able to get his wish.

  Even though only a small percentage of the population spoke Latvian, all the street signs were in that language, which sometimes caused confusion. In actuality the lingua franca was Russian, a fact that everyone despised, but that everyone lived with.