Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  “How did you find out he was here?”

  “He tried to make a telephone call to a friend last night and we traced it.”

  “If he’s here, we’ll find him,” Ulmanis said.

  “Don’t make a mistake about this one,” Chernov cautioned. “Six months ago we thought we had him cornered. When it was all over, he’d killed two policemen, wounded three others and got away clean.”

  Ulmanis nodded.

  “If you or your people come face-to-face with him, don’t hesitate to shoot him like a dog,” Chernov said.

  “A Russian dog,” Sergeant Zarins” muttered, and Ulmanis shot him a dirty look but did not reprimand him.

  Twenty minutes later they pulled up at the end of the block from the apartment building. The intersections at both ends of the street had been barricaded. Police cars, blue lights flashing, completely surrounded the block. Officers in riot gear were stationed on the roof tops and in the doorways of every building within sight. Some of the cops were dispersing the crowds of curious onlookers, while other cops milled around apparently waiting for something to happen.

  Chernov and the others got out of the van. He glanced at Petrovsky. “He’s gone.”

  Lieutenant Ulmanis came over. “Not unless he was tipped off.”

  “Nothing against your capable police procedures, Lieutenant, but when the first of your people showed up, he would have spotted them and slipped away before the area could be secured. He’s gone.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Chernov took out his pistol, checked the load, then reholstered the gun. “Well, I’m going to walk over there and search the building. Would you care to come with me?”

  “I’ll go with you, but we’ll take a few of my people with us just in case you’re wrong.”

  Chernov shrugged and marched down the street to the apartment building and went inside The Latvian cops were hoping that they might get to see a Russian blown away this morning. Ambulances were standing by.

  The landlady, a taciturn old woman, came out of her ground floor apartment, and Ulmanis asked her a number of questions about her tenants, and about her rent control permits, a subject on which she was vague.

  Chernov walked over to the foot of the stairs and cocked an ear. The building was quiet.

  “That’s him,” the old woman said.

  Chernov turned back. Ulmanis had shown McGarvey’s photograph that had been faxed down here this morning.

  “What is his name?” Chernov asked.

  “Pierre something,” the old woman said resentfully. “He paid for a month in cash a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t care what his name was.”

  Ulmanis came over. “I thought you said he killed some kids in Moscow last week?” he asked in a low voice.

  “He must have returned here to hide out,” Chernov said.

  He took out his gun and went up to the top floor, taking the stairs two at a time. Ulmanis and the other Latvian cops came up behind him, their weapons drawn.

  At the top Chernov flattened himself against the wall next to the apartment door and listened for a full two minutes, but there were no sounds from within.

  On signal, one of Ulmanis’s people kicked the door in, and they all rushed into the empty apartment.

  “He’s gone,” Ulranis said, unnecessarily. There was no place to hide in the tiny apartment.

  The Latvian cops searched the apartment anyway.

  “Maybe not for long, Lieutenant,” one of the cops called from the bathroom. He appeared in the doorway. “His toothbrush and razor are still here.”

  One of the other cops opened the wardrobe. “His clothes are here, and a suitcase.”

  “There’s food in the cupboards and the refrigerator,” the cop in the tiny kitchen reported.

  “Maybe he’s coming back,” Ulmanis said.

  “Not with all those policemen outside,” Chernov said. He took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair. “Place a couple of your men downstairs in the landlady’s apartment, and a couple of sharpshooters in an apartment across the street. But tell them to keep out of sight. Get rid of everybody else. In the meantime I’ll wait here for awhile.”

  “What about your people?” Ulmanis asked.

  “Send them back to the airport to wait for me.”

  Ulmanis relayed the orders. “I’ll wait here with you.”

  “As you wish,” Chernov said. “But if he shows up he’s mine.”

  “Believe me, Colonel Bykov, the sooner you and he are off Latvian soil the happier we’ll be.”

  RI AIR flight 57 from Paris touched down at Riga’s Li dosta International Airport at 9:00 a.m. Elizabeth and Jacqueline paid for one-time visas from passport control and had their single carryon bags checked through customs. They changed a couple of hundred francs into la tis, purchased a visitors’ guide and Riga street map in English from a newsstand and forty-five minutes later were in a cab heading downtown to the central railway station, which was a few blocks from the address Rencke had given them.

  They traveled on their legitimate passports because at this point they thought there was no longer any need to mask their movements. Galan and Lynch were no longer interested in them. Traffic at that hour of the morning in Paris had been thin so if someone-had tried to follow them out to Orly Airport Jacqueline was sure she would have spotted them. But there’d been no one behind them.

  “If we run into a problem in Riga we’ll be on our own,” Jacqueline had cautioned. “No one except Otto knows where we are, and he won’t tell anyone. At least not for twenty-four hours. Maybe longer.”

  “A lot can happen in that time,” Elizabeth said, suddenly seeing the precariousness of their situation.

  “We’ll split up, so that if something goes wrong at least one of us will have a chance of getting out,” Jacqueline said. “I’ll leave you at the train station, and I’ll walk the rest of the way over to the apartment.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “He’s my father, so if something should happen I’ll at least have an excuse for being there that might hold up.”

  “It didn’t work in Paris.”

  “It might here,” Elizabeth insisted.

  Jacqueline smiled wryly. “You’re stubborn like your father.”

  “Used to drive my mother nuts.”

  Jacqueline’s smile was set. “Is that why there was the divorce?”

  “My mother was afraid of losing him so she pushed him away before the hurt got too’ terrible for her to bear.”

  Jacqueline looked out the window. “The trouble with what you say is that I understand your mother.” She turned back. “Do you, ma cherie?”

  Elizabeth shook her head after a moment. “No,” she said. She’d never understood that convoluted logic. If you loved someone you did everything in your power to keep them near you.

  Jacqueline squeezed her hand. “I think that you have been mad at your mother for a very long time. But there’s no reason for it, you know. They both still love you.”

  It was Elizabeth’s turn to look away.

  “The divorce wasn’t your fault, Elizabeth,” Jacqueline said gently. “Did you think it was?”

  “I probably did as a kid.” Elizabeth looked at Jacqueline. “But not so much anymore.” She shrugged. “It’s just life. But I don’t want to lose him again.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Traffic around the train station was busy. The cabby dropped them off in front, immediately picked up another fare and was gone.

  They had studied the Riga map on the way in from the airport. The address Rencke had given them was less than three blocks away. They agreed that Elizabeth would walk over to the apartment building, and if everything looked clear try to find out which apartment her father had rented. If anything seemed out of place, even slightly odd, she was to immediately come back to the railroad station where Jacqueline would be waiting in the coffee shop.

  “Don’t fool around,” Jacqueline said unnecessarily because she was nervo
us. “If the Russians got here before us they won’t react kindly to you barging in.”

  “If they ran into my father, there’ll be some dead people over there, and a lot of cops,” Elizabeth said. “It’ll be pretty obvious.”

  “In which case I’ll blow the whistle,” Jacqueline said seriously. In the past couple of weeks she’d picked up a lot of American slang from Elizabeth.

  “You and I both,” Elizabeth said.

  She gave Jacqueline her overnight bag, then crossed the street over the tracks. The morning wanted to warm up, but a chilly breeze blew across the river, bringing with it a combination of industrial and seaport smells that were subtly different from any other city she’d ever visited.

  It took her ten minutes to walk up Gogala Street to within a half a block from the apartment building her father had called from. She stopped and looked in the window of a women’s sportswear shop, as she tried to calm down.

  Everything seemed normal. Traffic was heavy, the shops were open and busy, and most of the tables at a sidewalk cafe at the corner were occupied. There were no police anywhere, and no one seemed to be watching the apartment building.

  After a minute she crossed the street, walked the rest of the way to the apartment building and went inside. A narrow hallway ran to the rear of the building. From where she stood by the mailboxes she could see the pay phone in the back, and it gave her a little thrill that her father had used it less than twenty-four hours ago.

  She didn’t understand Latvian, but the word manager, in Russian, was written on a card attached to the mailbox for the ground floor apartment. She hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door.

  An old woman opened it, looked Elizabeth up and down, and motioned her away. “I have no apartments here, so go away. I don’t want any trouble.”

  The old woman was frightened.

  “I don’t want an apartment,” Elizabeth said in Russian. “But I’m looking for someone who may have rented an apartment from you recently.”

  The door suddenly opened all the way, the old woman was pulled aside, and a couple of large, stern-faced men were there. Before Elizabeth could react, one of them grabbed her by the arm.

  “Who is it that you’re looking for?” he asked.

  “I think I’ve made a mistake,” Elizabeth said, her heart in her throat.

  “Let me see your passport.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “The police. Your passport, please,” The cop was stern, but not unpleasant.

  Elizabeth hesitated a second longer, than awkwardly dug her passport out of her purse.

  The cop’s eyebrows rose when he saw that it was an American passport.

  “Stay here, I’ll take her upstairs,” he told the other cop.

  Elizabeth tried to pull away, but he was too strong for her. “I’m an American. I want to speak to someone at my embassy.”

  “You speak pretty good Russian for an American,” the cop said.

  “Not as good as you Latvians do,” Elizabeth shot back, and she instantly regretted the remark.

  His grip tightened on her arm, and he dragged her up three flights of stairs to the top floor where two men waited in a small apartment. One of them was heavyset, the other tall, and muscularly built, with short-cropped gray hair. He looked dangerous. His eyes seemed dead.

  The cop handed Elizabeth’s passport to the heavy man, who examined it.

  “She says she’s looking for someone who may have rented an apartment here not so long ago, Lieutenant,” the cop said. “She claims to be an’ American but I never heard an American speak such good Russian.”

  Ulmanis handed the passport to Chernov. “It doesn’t look fake. Do you know who she is?”

  Chernov studied Elizabeth’s passport, a grim look of satisfaction crossing his lips. “Her name is Raya Kisnelkov. I don’t know where she got this passport, but it probably came from the same source her father uses. I just didn’t think she was involved with his sick games.”

  Ulmanis stared at her, and shook his head. “She doesn’t look the type,” he said. “Do you know what your father has done? Are you helping him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said in English. “I want to call my embassy.”

  “Her English is pretty good, too,” Ulmanis said. “A lot better than mine.”

  Chernov stared at Elizabeth. “We’ll leave now,” he said. “I don’t think Kisnelkov will be coming back.”

  Ulmanis hesitated. “Perhaps we should get someone from the American embassy up here to take a look.”

  “As you wish,” Chernov said, unperturbed. “I would very much like to listen to your explanation how this woman got into Latvia on a fake passport.” He forced a grim smile. “I trust that in the meantime you’ll arrange accommodations for me and my people.”

  Ulmanis nodded. “I’ll have the van brought around front,” he said.

  “Wait a minute, goddammit,” Elizabeth shouted. “I’m an American!” She switched to Russian. “Yeb was, you stupid bastard, don’t you recognize a legitimate passport when you see one?”

  Ulmanis just shook his head, and he and the cop left.

  “Thank you,” Chernov told Elizabeth, politely, and her blood ran cold.

  From where she sat having a coffee at the sidewalk cafe on the corner, Jacqueline watched as a gray Chevrolet van pulled up in front of the apartment building. She’d been unable to simply wait at the train station, so she’d followed Elizabeth up here.

  Two minutes later, a tall man, came out of the building with Elizabeth, and hustled her into the van.

  Jacqueline jumped up, but before she could reach the street, the van took off and disappeared down the block. She stopped, absolutely stunned. Her worst nightmare seemed to be coming true.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Riga

  Jacqueline was beside herself with fear and guilt because despite her professionalism she had managed to lead Elizabeth into a trap. Although she had serious doubts, she thought that there was a possibility Liz had been arrested by the Riga Police, and not by the Russians who had traced McGarvey’s call here. All the way back to the railroad station she tried to convince herself of that likelihood without success. She and Elizabeth had entered Latvia legally. There was no reason for the local authorities to detain her.

  She found a pay phone in the train station’s main arrivals hall and called Rencke’s blind number in Courbevoie. “They’ve taken her,” she blurted when Rencke answered.

  “Calm down, Who took her?”

  “I don’t know for sure. It could have been the Riga police, but I can’t be certain. I hope so.”

  “Just a minute,” Rencke said. “Okay, you’re calling from the main railway station. Is anybody watching you? Anybody paying unusual attention?”

  The station was busy. Jacqueline scanned the crowds, but she was picking up nothing unusual. “Not that I can see.”

  “Have you called your boss yet?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, now calm down and tell me everything that happened,” Otto said.

  Jacqueline quickly went through the story from the moment they’d got off the plane. “Can you get into the police computer?”

  “If she was arrested it wouldn’t be on their machines yet, unless they asked Interpol for help. Did you get the license number of the van?”

  “It was too far away to read,” Jacqueline said.

  “Okay, hang on for a minute, I’ll see if anything is showing up.”

  “Mon dieu, please hurry,” Jacqueline said.

  “I just had another thought. Did you get a decent look at the man with Liz? Could you describe him?”

  “Tall, husky. It’s impossible to say more than that.”

  “Standby,” Rencke said.

  Announcements for arriving and departing trains were made first in a language that Jacqueline took to be Latvian, and then in Russian, and finally in Polish. A train had rumbled into the station while she was dialing
Rencke’s number, and now people began coming into the main hall from trackside. A lot of them were well dressed, and talked on cellular phones as they hurried outside to catch a taxi.

  Rencke came back a couple of minutes later. “Nothing has showed up on the Riga police wire yet. But an unscheduled flight originating in Moscow landed at 6:48 this morning. It’s still on the ground, but I’m betting that the man you saw with Liz was Chernov. He traced Mac’s call, and somehow convinced the Latvian police to help him. I’ll watch to see when it takes off back to Moscow, but it’ll probably be within the next half hour. I think Liz walked into a hornet’s nest, and Chernov will take her back to Moscow.”

  “For bait,” Jacqueline said, utterly devastated. It was her fault. She should have known better.

  “I’d like to disagree with you, but I can’t,” Rencke said, dejectedly.

  “I’ve got to tell my boss what happened,” she said. “I’ll keep your name out of it. I’ll say that Liz had a hunch that her father would be here, so we came to look for him, and she was taken.”

  “They won’t believe it.”

  “I’ll make them believe it,” Jacqueline said urgently. “I don’t know what else to do, but I just can’t walk away from them.”

  “Mac must have figured it out,” Rencke said distantly.

  “What did you say?”

  “They got Liz, but he wasn’t there. It means he figured it out and he’s probably on his way to Moscow now. Three days early, but he was forced into it. Which means we’ve still got two chances. Two options. With all that extra time it’s possible he’ll call me for an update. When he does I’ll get him out of there.”

  “If you tell him that Chernov has his daughter he won’t leave.”

  “If we can find out where she’s been taken, I can convince somebody in Washington to get involved.”

  “How can we do that?”

  “Simple, you’re going to convince Galan to send you to Moscow in an official capacity. You’re an SDECE field officer who has the inside scoop on Mac, and your expertise is going to be offered to the special commission which is headed by Yuri Bykov, a.k.a.” Leonid Chernov.”

  “Merde,” Jacqueline said softly.