Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  “Then you have already lost, Mr. President,” Chernov said quietly. “Because short of completely barricading Red Square and canceling this afternoon’s rally the Tarantula will come here to take over.”

  “If you’re talking about a military coup, we’re ready for him.”

  “I don’t think you have the support in the military that you believe you do. Or else why hasn’t his little train already been destroyed? He has only two hundred men with him, while you have the entire might of the Russian military.”

  Kabatov didn’t rise to the bait, he maintained his temper. “It will be different this time.”

  Chernov shrugged indifferently. “Then you will still lose. No court of law in Russia will convict him.”

  Kabatov smiled. “You are correct, Colonel, no Russian court would convict him. That’s why the instant he is arrested he will be flown to the World Court in The Hague where he will be tried as a war criminal.”

  “The American government would never admit in open court that it suborned a Soviet officer because the CIA would have to reveal its methods,” Yuryn said.

  “I have President Lindsay’s support, and that of the governments of England, France, and Germany. I’m assured that the other major western powers will do the same. Tarankov has no chance.”

  “That might work,” Chernov said. “Except that you’re forgetting something.”

  “What’s that?” Kabatov asked, outwardly unconcerned.

  “For all your talk about rule of law, you have been reduced in this instance to trusting the loyalty of your officers and advisers. You cannot trust General Yuryn, of course. Nor me. But you know that now. What about General Korzhakov, who was after all the chief of security for a man who despised you?”

  “That needn’t concern you,” Kabatov replied. He reached for his telephone.

  “What about Kirk McGarvey?” Chernov asked.

  Kabatov’s hand hesitated. “Once Tarankov is under arrest there will be no need to detain him. We’ll let him go.”

  “That’s your second mistake.”

  “What was my first?”

  “Trusting anyone,” Chernov said. He advanced closer to the desk, took out his pistol and before Kabatov could do much of anything except rear back in terror, shot the President in the forehead at nearly point blank range.

  Korzhakov made no move to raise his gun.

  Chernov took out his handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints off the gun. He stepped around the desk and placed the gun in the President’s hand just as the door burst open and Kabatov’s bodyguards pushed in, their weapons drawn.

  Korzhakov had pocketed his gun. He got to his feet. “The President has shot himself, get a doctor in here now!” he ordered.

  St. Basil’s Cathedral

  The onion domes were spotlighted from outside, which had given McGarvey all the light he needed to clean, assemble and load the Dragunov sniper rifle, and to clean and oil his Walther. With dawn finally beginning to brighten the eastern horizon he sat back against the brick wall in the arched cupola high above Red Square and allowed himself to relax.

  Through the early morning hours the Square had been alive with activity in preparation for this afternoon’s rally, and showed no signs of tapering off with the rising sun. In addition to the barricades, truckloads of soldiers had begun arriving an hour ago, the officers positioning their troops not only on the periphery of the square, but around Lenin’s Mausoleum, and along the Kremlin’s walls. More soldiers were stationed atop the walls at intervals of five or ten feet, and on the roofs of the old Senate and Supreme Soviet buildings facing the square.

  It came to him that the majority of the defensive measures they were putting in place were designed to protect the Kremlin itself, possibly against an assault by Tarankov and his forces. But from his vantage point, which allowed him to see down inside the Kremlin’s walls, he spotted other soldiers ringing all the buildings, and gates, and still more groups of soldiers going from building to building as if they were searching for something, or someone.

  They were looking for him.

  From his hiding place, McGarvey could also see the Moskvoretsky Bridge already busy with traffic. Soldiers were stationed on the bridge and on both sides of the river, and they too seemed to be searching for something.

  Chernov’s people would have lowered a man into the outflow tunnel down which they’d lost McGarvey and Jacqueline, until their way was blocked by the swiftly moving underground river. They would have reasoned that if anyone could survive the wild ride they might end up in the Moscow River.

  There would have to be engineering diagrams of the city’s storm sewer system, as well as maps of the underground rivers. Old maps because the rivers were here first and had only been gradually covered up over the years.

  He looked again at the activity inside the Kremlin walls. If the old maps were inaccurate might Chernov’s people believe the river was the one which ran beneath the Kremlin? Specifically the Neglinnaya River, or one of its branches that flowed under the Corner Arsenal Tower?

  It would explain why no one had come here to search for him.

  He lay his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, his hand pressed against the wound in his side. His shoulder and arm had stiffened up, and his mouth was so dry it was as if he’d never had a drink. But his vision was okay, and his head was still clear. He’d been in tougher spots and survived. This time would be no different, except that Liz was in danger.

  He’d tried to avoid thinking about her, but sitting alone, wounded, tired, thirsty and hungry with Russian army and Militia troops earnestly searching for him, he could see her in his mind’s eye, at her high school graduation, which Kathleen had tried to make a pleasant occasion, despite their bitter divorce. But in those days Liz was going through her rebellious stage in which any authority — all authority — was de facto bad. It was the only time he’d ever taken his daughter to task, and the graduation party had ended with Liz running off in tears and his ex-wife kicking him out of the house.

  Good times and bad, he remembered them all, some with happiness, some with regrets.

  A scraping noise somewhere directly below him on the elevated gallery which connected all the domes, woke him with a start. For a moment he thought he might have dreamed the sound, but then he heard it again. Someone was walking, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  He screwed the silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel, and eased the safety catch to the off position, as he looked down through the scaffolding and tried to pick out a movement.

  Whoever it was, stopped in the deeper shadows seventy-five feet below him. He could hear them breathing, almost panting, nervous, frightened.

  Other than that noise, the church was utterly still. Even the technicians adjusting the sound system down in the square had finished, and traffic sounds from the bridge did not reach this far.

  “Kirk?” Jacqueline’s whispered voice drifted up to him.

  He lowered his head and closed his eyes. “Christ,” he said to himself. He switched the safety catch on.

  “Kirk?” she called a little louder.

  McGarvey moved away from the edge of the arch. “Here,” he whispered back.

  Jacqueline came into view below, her face raised up to the interior of the dome. She was carrying a blue shopping bag. When she spotted him outlined against the morning light coming through the cupola’s window, she threaded her left arm through the shopping bag’s handles, and climbed up the scaffolding.

  When she reached the cupola, McGarvey helped her across.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded in frustration. “You were supposed to stay at your embassy. Goddammit!”

  “That’s what my boss told me. But there’s not a chance you’ll last up here all day without food and water, and without that wound bandaged up.”

  She opened the shopping bag, but McGarvey grabbed her arm.

  “We almost died in the river this morning, and there’s a good cha
nce I won’t get out alive! You have to get out of here right now.”

  Jacqueline nodded toward the round window. “It’s crawling with soldiers and police down there. I’ve been hiding in the garden for the past forty-five minutes waiting to make sure it was safe to come to you. I got past them in the dark, but I’d never make it out of here without being spotted.”

  She pulled a small radio receiver from the shopping bag. “This scans all their police and military frequencies, and you’re going to need it, because in the last few hours everything has changed. President Kabatov supposedly committed suicide this morning, which means no one is going to even try to stop Tarankov.”

  “It could be some kind of trick,” McGarvey said.

  “It came over one of the frequencies that the Kremlin security detail uses, and ever since then that channel has been silent. But military traffic is almost continuous, and just about every transmission contradicts a previous one. It’s crazy out there, Kirk. They’re just waiting now for someone to take over. And Tarankov is the man who’ll do it.”

  “Unless he’s stopped,” McGarvey said.

  Jacqueline looked into his eyes, her lips tightly compressed. She nodded.

  “Like it or not, man cher, you have me for the duration,” she said. “Now let me bandage you up, and give you something to eat. Afterwards I’ll take the first watch and you can get some rest.”

  FORTY-THREE

  The Kremlin

  It was after 3:00 P.M.” and with Captain Petrovsky’s help, under Chernov’s direct supervision, every square meter of the Kremlin, above and below ground, had been searched with a fine-toothed comb to no avail by Kremlin security forces, the Militia and the Army.

  A red dye had been dumped down the outflow tunnel beneath the Lubyanka Metro Station. It had shown up in the swiftly moving water beneath the Corner Arsenal Tower a few minutes later, but in a limited amount which an engineer suggested might mean that there was more than one branch of the river.

  Three volunteer divers had been sent down the tunnel. The battered body of one of them, minus his scuba tank, his wet suit ripped to shreds, showed up under the tower eight minutes later.

  That was around ten this morning. The other two divers had not shown up yet. There’d been no other volunteers.

  Petrovsky came over to where Chernov leaned against the hood of his car parked in front of the Senate Building listening to reports on a handheld radio, and debating with himself if now was the time to get out. Everything suggested that McGarvey and Jacqueline Belleau had escaped down the tunnel in a desperate attempt to save themselves, and were drowned. Their bodies might stay down there until the next series of heavy rains completely flooded the tunnels. Or they might never come out. It was a reasonable assumption to believe that McGarvey was no longer a threat to Tarankov’s safety. Yet something within Chernov, some instinct, told him otherwise.

  “One of my people has come up with an idea,” Petrovsky said. “He thinks that we should pump a couple thousand gallons of diesel fuel down the tunnel, and set it on fire. It might work. At least it’d be better than using gasoline, which would probably blow everything from here to there off the map.”

  Chernov studied the Militia investigator for a moment to make sure the man wasn’t joking.

  “If they’re still down there, they’re already dead. So trying to cook them out wouldn’t accomplish a thing.”

  “Do you think they got out?”

  “I want to say no, but I’m not sure,” Chernov said. “With a man like him you can never be sure.”

  “He has the woman with him. She might have slowed him down.”

  “What are the French saying about her?”

  “Nothing. In fact they won’t even talk to me. Word’s out about President Kabatov, and it’s got everybody scared shitless,” Petrovsky said. He gave Chernov an appraising look. “That includes me, Colonel, because I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You have a job to do and I suggest you get on with it.”

  “We’re done.”

  “Then have your men start over again,” Chernov said. “Because if McGarvey is still alive he’ll be here within the hour, and we’d better be ready for him.”

  “What about you, Colonel?” Petrovsky said, choosing his words with care. “Your letter from President Kabatov authorizing you to do whatever it takes to catch McGarvey is no longer valid. Who are you reporting to now?”

  Chernov was tired but still in control of himself. “General Yuryn.”

  “What about him?” Petrovsky asked. “Who is he reporting to? Who’s in charge?”

  “General Korzhakov,” Chernov said. “For the moment.”

  Petrovsky nodded. “I think I’ll get back to my men, now.”

  Chernov watched him walk away, basically a competent man who probably would not survive the next few days. There would be a lot of good and competent men who wouldn’t make it. In every revolution they were among the first to die.

  He pocketed the handheld transceiver, checked the load in the Colt 10mm automatic he’d drawn from Kremlin security stores and took the elevator up to the presidential floor.

  Security was tight. Even he had to pass through four separate body searches, and explain who he was and why he was carrying a weapon, before he was allowed to approach what had become General Korzhakov’s temporary base of operations.

  Civilians and soldiers scurried along corridors, telephones rang, computer printers whined, and heated discussions took place in every third office. Yet there seemed to be no order to what was going on. Half the people seemed to be in a daze, simply standing by, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for Tarankov to show up, though nobody was saying so aloud. The other half tried to look busy.

  The president’s anteroom and office were jammed with people. Korzhakov, facing the windows, was speaking to someone on the phone, while three of his advisers hovered around, passing him notes.

  General Yuryn, his uniform disheveled, looking more corpulent and disgusting than ever, hurried out to Chernov. “Have you found him?” he demanded.

  “He and the French woman are probably dead, but we’re still looking.”

  “Tarankov’s train is on the move. The rally has been cancelled, but that won’t stop the crowds of course, so when he arrives the platform will be his alone. The rest of us will wait up here.”

  “When’s he due?”

  “His ETA at Leningrad Station is 3-40, which gives him twenty minutes to get down here if he means to make it by four.”

  “How about the military?”

  “So far they’re remaining neutral.”

  “Including General Vashleyev?”

  Captain-General Viktor Vashleyev was commander of the Moscow Defense Forces, and a former drinking buddy of President Yeltsin and Korzhakov. But he was something of a moderate, no friend of Tarankov.

  “He promises to do whatever it takes to maintain order,” Yuryn said. “Tarankov’s arrest warrant is on his desk, but I don’t think he’ll act on it.”

  “Then everything is set—”

  “Except for McGarvey,” Yuryn cut in. “Is there any chance, even a slight chance, that he’ll get out of the sewers in time to make the assassination attempt?”

  “If it was anyone else I’d say no.”

  “Is there a chance that if he does somehow make it out, that you won’t be able to stop him in time?” Yuryn asked sharply.

  “I don’t know,” Chernov said after a moment. “So far he’s eluded everything we’ve thrown at him, even the threat that we’ll use his daughter as a hostage. But he’s not a fanatic, which means he knows how he’s going to kill Tarankov and he has a plan for getting away.”

  “Tarankov will have to send a double to make his speech,” said Yuryn, after first making certain that no one was listening to them.

  “He won’t do it.”

  Yuryn threw up his hands in despair. “Then it’s up to you,” he said. “For the next hour and a
half until Tarankov is safely off the reviewing stand you must operate on the assumption that McGarvey managed to get out of the sewers and will take the shot.”

  Krasnaya Prensya

  Viktor Yemlin had a bad three days. It was a few minutes after 3:00, and he was parked in his car down the block from an eighteen-story apartment building near the zoo, not sure if he knew what he was doing.

  Ever since the untraceable but potentially disastrous call from the man who had identified himself as a friend of McGarvey’s, he’d been waiting for the axe to fall. But nothing had happened, and after a couple of discreet telephone calls he was pretty sure that he was no longer being followed. His home telephone was still bugged, but the pay phones around his apartment were not.

  The development was ominous, all the more so because his normal channels of communication between the FSK and the Militia had been blocked. Every cop and soldier in Moscow was looking for McGarvey, and he had no access to any information about the search except that it was going on.

  Nor, despite his sensitive position in the SVR, was he able to find out anything about President Kabatov’s apparent suicide this morning although he was being asked to predict Washington’s likely response.

  It was like working in a vacuum. Nothing was getting through.

  His guest membership at the Magesterium had been cancelled, and his friend Konstantin Sukoruchkin was not answering his telephone.

  One by one his contacts in Moscow were drying up. It was as if everyone he’d known was suddenly distancing themselves from “him.

  Earlier this afternoon he’d tried to use the SVR’s secured telephone system to place a call to Shevardnadze in Tbilisi, but his access had been denied, thus completing his isolation.

  Yemlin looked at his watch. If Tarankov was on schedule he would be arriving in Red Square in less than an hour. Whether or not McGarvey assassinated him, the next few hours would be extremely critical for the nation, all the more now that there was no elected leader in charge.

  Yemlin looked at his watch again, then got out of the car and strode down the block to the apartment building, where he presented his credentials to the front desk security people, who were expecting him.