Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  A man came on. “This line is probably being monitored.”

  “I know,” McGarvey said.

  “Stand by, monsieur.”

  McGarvey glanced up at the station name. He’d come up at the Lubyanka, directly across from the headquarters of the FSK. The irony just now was rich.

  Jacqueline came on a minute later, out of breath. “Oh, Kirk, where are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” McGarvey said. “I’ve only got a minute before I need to leave here. I’m calling off the hit, do you understand?”

  “Thank God—”

  “But I know about Liz, and I’m going after her. In the meantime you have to stay inside the embassy. No matter what happens, stay there.”

  “I can come pick you up.”

  “Just stay there, Jacqueline,” McGarvey said, and he hung up.

  Dzerzhinsky Square

  Chernov was just pulling up in front of FSK headquarters after a frustrating hour spent with General Korzhakov when Petrovsky called his cell phone. McGarvey had just now telephoned the woman at the French embassy. He was calling off the kill, and he said he knew about his daughter.

  “Did you trace the call?”.” Chernov asked.

  “He called from a pay phone in the Lubyanka metro station. So you were right, he’s using the storm sewers to get around.”

  Chernov made a tight U-turn and shot across the broad Dzerzhinsky Square, no traffic for the moment. “I’m right across the square from the station,” he shouted.

  “My people are less than three minutes away.”

  “Do you have a map of the subway system in front of you?”

  “Da. Right here.”

  “He’s using the sewers, but he has to come up through a metro station. I want your people covering every station he can get to from here in case I don’t intercept him.”

  Chernov screeched to a halt in front of the metro station, and pulled out his gun, as he ran across the sidewalk and took the stairs two at a time.

  “There’re four of them—” Petrovsky was saying when his signal faded and cut off.

  Halfway down, Chernov heard the first sirens at the same moment he heard a gunshot from below, and he thumbed his gun’s safety to the off position.

  The shattered lock gave way, and McGarvey opened the accordion gate, stepped through, then stopped. He was hearing sirens, faintly in the distance, but getting closer. And another sound.

  He stepped back around the corner, and held his breath. He had heard footsteps.

  “McGarvey,” someone called from above.

  McGarvey held his silence. “There’s no way out for you.”

  It was Chernov, McGarvey had very little doubt. His call to Jacqueline had probably been monitored and traced here. By now the Militia would be scrambling to cover every metro station and storm sewer tunnel within a radius of a mile. Every second he remained here the tighter the net would become, and Chernov knew it.

  McGarvey turned and silently headed back to the platform. “If you turn yourself in your daughter will be turned over to her embassy. Unharmed.”

  “Bullshit,” McGarvey said to himself, not missing a step.

  “McGarvey, you have my word on it,” Chernov’s voice echoed down the platform. “My word as an officer and gentleman.”

  FORTY-ONE

  CIA Headquarters

  Director of Central Intelligence Roland Murphy showed up at Howard Ryan’s third floor office a few minutes before 6:30 p.m.” his bodyguard in tow, after first confirming that his DDO was still at his desk.

  “Sorry to barge in on you like this, Howard, but the President wants to see us,” he said.

  Ryan looked up in surprise and pleasure. “Both of us? Right now?”

  “Yes,” Murphy said, masking his contempt. “We’ll take my car, and I’ll brief you on the way over.”

  Ryan put on his coat. “I don’t have the day’s summary ready, but I can bring my notes, and a few documents.”

  “That won’t be necessary. All the President wants from us is the … truth.”

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What do you mean, Roland?”

  Since Rencke’s disturbing telephone call, and the files he’d sent over, Murphy had done some checking on his own, first with Ryan’s assistant, Tom Moore, who had defended his boss’s action.

  “The idea was merely to send her over to help the French find her father. We wanted to get a message to him, nothing more. At least that was the initial parameters we gave her.”

  “But it didn’t happen that way.”

  “No, Mr. Director, unfortunately. it did not. Apparently she’s more like her father than we first suspected. I’m recommending that her services be terminated, once she returns.”

  “I see,” Murphy said coolly.

  Next he called Elizabeth’s old boss, Bratislav Toivich in the DI’s Russian Division.

  “Pardon me, Mr. Director, but you wouldn’t be asking me about the girl unless she was in trouble.”

  “What do you know about her assignment?” Murphy asked directly.

  “More than I should,” Toivich replied, in just as direct a manner.

  “She’s in Moscow, and we think Tarankov’s people may have kidnapped her.”

  “What are we doing about it?”

  “I’m taking this to the President once I have all the facts. He can take it up with Kabatov. I need to know if Ms. McGarvey contacted you at any time.”

  “She called from Paris worried that she and a young French woman working for the SDECE were being pressured into going to Moscow. I told her not to do it.”

  “Did she have any contact with a man by the name Rencke?”

  “She was looking for him there in Paris, and I gave her a couple of hints,” Toivich said. “Did she find him, General? Is that how you found out about this? Has Otto called you?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Listen to him,” Toivich said. “He’s the only one I know who has the combination of brains and honesty. If Otto tells you something, you can take it to the bank.”

  “We’ll get her back.”

  “See that you do, General. She’s quite a young woman, and I’d hate to be in your shoes if something happens to her, and somehow her father makes it back to Washington.”

  Finally he telephoned SDECE Director General Jean Baillot, who confirmed that Jacqueline Belleau had been sent to Moscow in an effort to misdirect the efforts of Bykov’s special police commission long enough to find out where Mademoiselle McGarvey was being held, and possibly get a message to the girl’s father. “Pardon, General, but it was not a good decision to set the young woman to find her father,” Baillot said quietly.

  “You’re right, Jean. And now it’s up to me to get her back. Keep me informed night or day if you hear anything further.”

  “Mais oui. Good luck.”

  “The truth, Howard,” Murphy said to Ryan. “About why we sent Elizabeth McGarvey to Paris to find her father.”

  Ryan’s lower lip curled. “She’s joined him in Moscow, you know. Like father like daughter.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s self-evident, Roland. She met him in Riga, and together they entered Russia where she’s probably going to help him kill Tarankov.” Ryan shook his head in amazement. “You have to admit that the bastard is smooth. He’s even enlisted the aid of his French girlfriend to spy for him on the Russian special police commission.”

  Murphy wondered how he could have been so blind for so long about Ryan, except that the man knew his way around the Hill. Relations between Congress and the CIA had never been better. They had half the Senate practically eating out of their hands. All of it attributable to Ryan’s skills. But at what price, Murphy asked himself. At what terrible price?

  “You shouldn’t have used her.”

  “You’re right, Roland,” Ryan admitted. “I know that now. But at the time it was the only way I could see we had even a remote chance of finding him.” Ryan spread hi
s hands. “Mea culpa, Roland. Mea culpa, what else can I say?”

  Murphy wanted to take a poke at the smug bastard, but knowing the New York lawyer, he’d probably sue.

  “Well, the President is going to ask you some tough questions, and I suggest that you answer him directly, and with the truth. No artifice this time.”

  “What?”

  “Jacqueline Belleau did not go to Moscow on her own to help McGarvey kill Tarankov, as you suggest, you sleazy bastard. The SDECE sent her to help find him. And as for Elizabeth, she was kidnapped by Tarankov’s people, who are probably going to use her as a human shield if they can’t use her to draw Kirk out of hiding. And as DCI it’s my fault as much as it is yours. So I’m going to have to answer some tough questions as well.”

  Ryan’s face turned ashen.

  “Get your ass in gear, the President is waiting for us.”

  Lubyanka Metro Station

  Jacqueline’s Russian driver got her to Dzerzhinsky Square at 2:45 a.m. They’d encountered a great deal of military and Militia activity downtown but they weren’t stopped until they reached the barricades across from the metro station.

  She jumped out of the car and gave her passport to one of the Militia officers, her knees shaking so badly she was afraid she was going to trip over her own feet. What she was going to try to do could very well end up getting her and Kirk killed.

  “Get word to Colonel Bykov that I’m here, and I can help him,” she said in French. Her driver translated for her.

  “I’m sorry, madam, but you’ll have to stay here—” the guard said.

  “Merde. If you value your stripes, just get word to him. I’m trying to save lives here!”

  The cop looked nervously from her to the translator, then studied her passport. Making a decision, he walked over to a squad car, its blue lights flashing, and spoke to the Militia officer there. The officer looked at Jacque line’s passport, glanced over at her, then got on the radio. A minute later he came over, and handed back her passport.

  “Do you speak English, madam?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me, but your driver must remain here.”

  “Return to the embassy,” she told her driver, then followed the Militia officer across the square and into the metro station where Chernov met her on the platform, Militia and military everywhere.

  “How did you know to come here?” Chernov asked.

  “We monitor your police frequencies,” Jacqueline said. “Have you found him yet?”

  “No, but it won’t be long now. He’s in the storm sewer system, but we’ve blocked every tunnel within a kilometer.”

  “How many people has he killed so far?”

  “None. But he is wounded.”

  “He’ll fight back, and believe me some of your people are going to come out of there in body bags unless you let me help out.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Tell your people to hold their positions for the moment. I’ll go down there and find him for you. When he hears my voice he’ll give himself up. But you need to promise me something.”

  Chernov looked amused. “What is that?”

  “If I find him, you’ll allow him to come out unharmed.”

  “He’ll be placed under arrest.”

  “I understand. But I don’t want any trigger-happy cop shooting at shadows. I want to bring him out alive.”

  “Why?” Chernov asked.

  Jacqueline looked into his flat, gray eyes. “Because I happen to be in love with the man.”

  “Ah, charming,” Chernov said. “But then you haven’t been completely honest with me.”

  “None of us ever are, Colonel,” Jacqueline said. “How about it?”

  Chernov nodded. “Very well,” he said. “It’ll take several minutes to get word to our people in the tunnels. It’s a problem of radio communication. When we’re ready I’ll have you escorted below.” He gave her an appraising look. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  “Not especially,” Jacqueline said.

  “Do you want a weapon?”

  She shook her head. “We’re wasting time.”

  The White House Washington, D.C.

  Murphy and Ryan were ushered into the Oval Office at 7:10 p.m. Besides the President, also present were his National Security Adviser Harold Secor, and the Secretaries of State, Jonathan Carter, and Defense, Paul Landry. No one looked happy. “If what you suggested to me on the phone this afternoon is true, Roland, we don’t have much time,” the President said.

  “Yes, sir. President Kabatov will have to be informed immediately. He’s the only one who can stop this now.”

  “Spell it out.”

  “We believe that Yevgenni Tarankov will not wait until the elections to make his move,” Murphy said. “It’s probable that he’ll attempt a military coup later today during the May Day rally in Red Square, with a very good chance of succeeding. If Kabatov has surrounded himself with enough moderates and government loyalists he still has a chance of preventing it, but only if he acts now, and only if he has all the facts.”

  “That’s not a course of action I could recommend,” Ryan broke in.

  “When I want your advice, you chickenshit, I’ll ask for it,” said the President, his voice hard. “In the meantime keep your mouth shut.”

  Ryan was stunned speechless.

  “Kirk McGarvey has made it to Moscow, and there’s still a better than even chance that if Tarankov shows up in Red Square McGarvey will assassinate him. Or try to do it, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him because now he has a personal stake. His daughter Elizabeth, who works for us, was kidnapped by Tarankov’s people, and he’ll do everything in his power to rescue her.”

  “Did you send her over there?” the President asked Ryan.

  “I sent her to Paris, not Moscow, Mr. President,” said Ryan, subdued.

  “Go on,” the President told Murphy. The others in the room glared at Ryan, who sank down in his chair.

  “The former KGB officer who heads the police commission trying to find McGarvey, is in fact a man by the name of Leonid Chernov. He’s actually Tarankov’s chief of staff, and from what we can piece together is a former KGB assassin whose brother McGarvey killed a few years ago.”

  “Jesus,” President Lindsay said softly. “That’s quite a bombshell you’re asking me to hand Kabatov.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more, Mr. President,” Murphy said. “We also learned that as a young missile service officer Tarankov worked for us.”

  The President and his advisers were caught completely off guard.

  “His code name was Hammer, and his contact was our chief of Moscow station. It didn’t last long, but what he gave us was so good that we paid him a great deal of money for it. So much money, in fact, that when he quit he was able to buy and equip the train he’s been using for the past five years.”

  “Do we have proof?”

  “Yes, sir,” Murphy said. He withdrew four thick file folders from his briefcase and laid them on the President’s desk. “These came to light recently, but it was my decision to sit on the information because it was so potentially damaging to us. If we were to let it become public knowledge Tarankov could accuse the United States of trying to manipulate Russian politics by inventing something which, on the surface, seems so patently ridiculous that it must be a lie.”

  “Why weren’t we given this information earlier?” Secor asked. “It would seem to be a bad decision.”

  “Let’s not become Monday morning quarterbacks. We’ve all made bad decisions,” the President said. “What specifically are you suggesting I tell Kabatov?” he asked Murphy.

  “Just the truth, Mr. President, something he’s probably short of at the moment. After that it’ll be up to him, but at least he’ll know what he’s actually facing.”

  The President glanced up at the clock. “It’s three in the morning over there, they’ll have to get him out of bed.” He turned to Ryan. “If you’ll be
good enough to leave now, we have work to do.”

  Ryan got to his feet. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. He looked at Murphy. “I’ll get back to my office and finish the daily summary.”

  “You and Tom Moore are relieved of duty as of this moment, Howard,”

  Murphy said. “I’ve instructed security not to allow you back in. I’ll have your personal items sent to you within the next day or two.”

  “You can’t do this,” Ryan said indignantly. “I’ll fight you in Congress—”

  “That would be the worst mistake of your life, Ryan,” the President said coldly. “Everything that has taken place here this evening is top secret. Discuss the situation with anybody, and I’ll have you prosecuted under the National Secrets Act.”

  Ryan backed up a step.

  The President picked up the phone to his secretary. “Mr. Ryan is leaving, would you have a taxi pick him up?”

  Ryan’s color was bad.

  “Not at the West Portico,” the President said. “Mr. Ryan will meet the cab at the front gate.”

  Subterranean Moscow

  McGarvey hunched in the absolute darkness of a side tunnel that sloped sharply downward as he tried to catch his breath. The sounds of running water thundered in the narrow confines of the outflow tube, and a sharply cold wind came up from below. The floor here was greasy with mud and algae, making footing treacherous. If he fell he would slide into the underground river, and be swept away and probably drowned.

  It was a mistake calling Jacqueline from the metro station. But he’d thought he would have enough time to make the call, reach the street level and get away before Chernov’s people closed in. But they were closer than he thought. It was just rotten luck that Chernov himself had been nearby. He only hoped that Jacqueline had heeded his warning to remain at her embassy.

  Even over the roar of the water he’d been able to pick out the noise that his pursuers made and see the beams of their flashlights on the walls. They’d been coming at him from all directions, finally driving him down here, when suddenly about five minutes ago they’d stopped for some reason.