The Mercenary

by Paul Vidich

  He gazed at her. “I’m authorized.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve been an odd duck since you arrived.”

  Garin saw her eyes, alert, her mind working. A fragrant scent came to him in bright purples and pale lavender. He experienced the colors like a hallucination and under the elevator’s fluorescent light, he saw a phosphorescent glow on his hands. Purple tint like a faint inkblot. Dizziness, the smell. His mild case of synesthesia was accompanied by a pulsating headache.

  He stared at his glowing palms. METKA. What did I touch? The doorknob? The light in the elevator became intense, and he fumbled for a stick of chewing gum, popping the peppermint stick in his mouth.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, watching her stare. “Elevators make me nauseous.”

  Blue latex gloves poked from her handbag, and seeing him spot them, she tucked them out of sight. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “No. Gum equalizes pressure in my ears.”

  The elevator made a slow, rattling descent, and they stood side by side against the elevator’s back wall, watching the floor-indicator light mark their descent. Garin was taller by three inches, and he had the advantage of strength, but weight and height weren’t of use to him in a situation that called for him to think clearly. He rubbed his temple to focus his blurring eyes.

  He heard her question and saw her hand reach for his jacket, and he reacted badly, brusquely pushing her away. Then an apology. “Let’s talk tomorrow. I’ll explain when I’m feeling better.”

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Garin was walking along Tchaikovsky Street when a car pulled up alongside. Through the lowered window, he saw Helen Walsh.

  “Get in,” she said. “I would have offered you a ride if I had known you were walking.” When he hesitated, she added, “You’ll freeze.”

  He sat in the front seat.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Kutuzovsky Prospekt.”

  “It’s on my way.”

  She sped up for a block and suddenly braked into a U-turn, confirming that the KGB surveillance car following them was lost. “You’ll get the hang of things in another month or so,” she said. “Some day when there’s world peace, we’ll sit down with our KGB counterparts and have a good laugh about the games we play.” She glanced at him nervously. “How long is your posting?”

  “Two years.”

  “That long?” She raised an eyebrow. “I heard less. Special assignment. Where are you from?”

  “Nowhere, really. Moved around a lot.” Garin looked over his shoulder.

  “I lost them two turns back. The car behind us is a civilian Lada. No antenna.”

  They arrived at Garin’s apartment block, empty of traffic at that hour, but there was no parking, so Helen let him out on the street. He had the uncomfortable sensation that she was staring at him when he opened the door.

  “Feel better.”

  Metallic light from the full moon came through skeletal trees and cast shadows on Garin as he walked toward the lobby. He saw that the twenty-four-hour security guard was gone, but the local prostitute smoked a cigarette by a parked car, blowing kisses. The lobby’s bright light was a beacon ahead, and then he heard a car door open.

  “You forgot this.”

  Helen Walsh walked quickly toward him, gripping an object. At first, he thought it was a pen, and he reached into his pocket to confirm his Montblanc was missing. Then he saw her raised arm. He had been momentarily distracted, but when his eyes came off his jacket pocket, he saw that she had closed the distance in a sprint. Moonlight reflected off the syringe in her raised fist. She was upon him when he saw her fierce eyes and determined intent—and the glinting needle coming at his neck.

  He had raised his hand to block her attack, but a figure emerged from the shadows and tackled Walsh. There was a violent scuffle and muffled grunts that became a deep-throated scream. The person had blunted the force of Helen’s attack and reversed it. The needle had plunged into Helen’s neck, sending a squirt of blood onto Garin’s cheek.

  Helen was momentarily stunned. The syringe hung limply from her neck as she stumbled backward, pulling at it. The drug was weakening her as her eyes dilated and her body struggled to resist the poison. She collapsed on the sidewalk, gasping repeatedly. Her effort to breathe ended, and she lay on the ground, her legs bent at a terrible angle, her hands still clutching her throat. Her eyes were wide and fixed.

  “That could have been you.” Garin turned to his defender—Natalya—who stood a short distance away. Her hair was unkempt from the struggle, her hat thrown to the ground, her jacket torn, and she had a scratch on her cheek. She removed the syringe from Helen’s neck and wiped away blood from the puncture wound, erasing evidence of the needle’s entry. She arranged the fallen woman so her hands were at her side, not at her throat, and she faced Garin.

  “We have to leave. KGB are on their way. I heard the radio transmissions.” Natalya searched Helen’s pockets and tossed the car keys at Garin. “Take these.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “She has to be moved.”

  He stood over the dead woman. Think. “You’re crazy.”

  She took the legs and motioned for him to take the shoulders. “It stopped her heart. When she’s found, it will appear to be a heart attack. A new KGB tool.” She looked at him. “She is Second Chief Directorate.”

  Garin finished getting the body in Helen’s car, and he sat behind the wheel, working the unfamiliar ignition. He heard a hissed pop, like a soda can being opened, followed by a startled cry. The prostitute stood in shadow just beyond the apartment lobby’s light. Her arms were extended, her feet planted, and she sighted along the barrel of a silenced pistol. A second pop went off, accompanied by a dim muzzle flash. Garin saw Natalya on her knees, keeping behind the cover of a parked car. He was suddenly alert. It crossed his mind to leave the scene of the murder, but he knew that was a bad choice. He took his Colt from his belt and quietly slipped out of the car, dropping to one knee in a crouch by the front wheel. His first shot dropped the girl. He had aimed at the chest, and the bullet entered the pale skin above her low-cut blouse, sending her violently backward.

  He went to the fallen girl. So young. Dead. He didn’t linger on the sight. He knew that even a brief glance would haunt him. He found it hard to expunge the faces of his dead.

  “She is KGB,” Natalya said breathlessly. Her eyes darted, looking for more danger.

  “She was going to kill you,” he said.

  “Was it easy for you?”

  “It’s never easy,” he said.

  Apartment lights above them had gone on one by one, and one curious resident had thrown open her window and stared at the dark street.

  “We have no time,” Natalya said. “Get in her car. Follow me. Police will arrive soon.”

  Garin drove behind Natalya through the narrow, twisting streets of central Moscow for fifteen minutes and pulled up behind her when she suddenly stopped in front of an apartment block. He opened his window for Natalya when she approached.

  “Put her behind the steering wheel.”

  Garin did as instructed. They lifted the corpse into the driver’s seat, placing the head so it slumped forward. Garin managed to jam Helen’s booted foot on the accelerator, and they watched as the car lurched forward, jumping the curb and hitting a tree. The hood popped, the engine continued to run, and steam drifted up from a burst radiator.

  Garin joined Natalya in her car. “She lives nearby,” Natalya said. “She will be found shortly. It is in everyone’s interest to keep this quiet.” She turned to him. “The prostitute saw everything. They know who you are. You will be linked to the prostitute’s death, sought for questioning, interrogated, and expelled. Or shot.”

  She pumped the gas pedal twice, struggling to start the Lada, and then, on the third try, the engine turned over. She looked behind and around and confirmed there was no witness. She saw Garin staring. “What?”

  “Why are you doing th
is?”

  “You are no help to me dead or expelled.” She glared. “I want to defect.”

  They drove in silence for several minutes, but then she pulled to the side of the street, breathing hard. She looked straight ahead in a great effort to avoid meeting his eyes. A great gulf opened between them. He could feel it, and he knew she did, too. A line crossed. “Surprise” was not a big enough word to describe his understanding of what they’d done. He would do anything, give up anything, to be free of the consequences that had begun to settle in like an approaching storm.

  Natalya started laughing, horrible, nervous laughter, full of fear. When she quieted, she turned to Garin, her eyes defiant and contemptuous. “You don’t know me. You only know what I’ve allowed you to see.” She took a deep breath and said, “This is something that I’ve planned for a long time.”

  Her body began to tremble. Garin touched her cheek. It was burning.

  “I am fine,” she muttered. “We will be safe. You can stay in my flat a few days. A week. We’ll make a plan.”

  14 ARBAT DISTRICT

  HE WOKE UP THE NEXT morning in Natalya’s apartment. His headache had passed, as it always did, but the disorientation of a chemical hangover lingered. He had suffered these episodes before, mostly when he came in contact with a certain type of scented shampoo or cleaning product, and he had recognized METKA’s staining phosphorescence in the elevator’s fluorescent light.

  “You slept for fourteen hours,” she said when he emerged from the bedroom. “You look terrible. There is a towel in the bathroom if you want to shower. I will make coffee. Then we can talk.”

  He lingered under the shower’s meager stream of cold water. He soaped up and found a way to ignore the cold. The chill helped clear his grogginess. Moscow hadn’t changed. Intermittent electricity made hot water a game of chance. He toweled quickly. He used the safety razor she had put out on the sink, and he also found neatly folded socks and men’s boxer underwear.

  “So,” she said, sitting opposite him at the dining table. She had prepared toast with peach jam, which she pushed toward him. He added four sugars to the intense dark Turkish coffee she’d served, and he stirred slowly counterclockwise, giving himself time to consider his circumstance. He sipped and then took the drink all at once.

  “I ate hours ago,” she said, watching him.

  He took several bites of toast while she refilled his cup, and he repeated his routine, stirring the sugars slowly in one direction, thinking. He kept his eyes on her but said nothing.

  “You’re lucky,” she said.

  “That you were there.”

  “That wasn’t luck. I was doing my job. Lucky that she was an amateur. A trained assassin would have killed you. She must have thought you were a danger. You suspected her?”

  He lifted his palms. “METKA.”

  “That explains her attack.” Natalya looked at Garin as he stirred his coffee. “My father was like that, a patient stirrer. I always wondered why he stirred his coffee so slowly. He liked his coffee sweet as well.”

  “I stir, and I think.”

  She slid a photograph of General Zyuganov across the table toward Garin. “You knew my father. That is why you were in Vvedenskoye Cemetery.”

  He looked at the black-and-white photograph of a middle-aged man on a London street, posing by Big Ben. There was a smile on his face, a man in front of a tourist attraction, but the photograph didn’t open up, and it gave no hint of who took it or what was on Zyuganov’s mind.

  Garin saw a likeness between father and daughter. She wore a long-sleeve blouse, open at the neck, and her hair was pulled back in a bun. It surprised him how many different appearances she was able to assume. He recognized her concerned expression. It was similar to Zyuganov’s—intense, but almost sad. All hint of her capacity for violence was gone.

  “Yes, I knew him.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “What he allowed me to see. A decent man. A good officer. You’re a little like him.”

  She leaned back and folded her arms on her chest. “He never mentioned your name. I knew he was planning to take us out of the Soviet Union, and he said not to worry, which of course made me worry. He said he trusted someone, and if things went as planned, I would meet him.” She looked at Garin. “You must be that man. He said you were a Russian, and I assumed he meant a real Russian.”

  Garin smiled at the thought that there was something false about his birth.

  “He’s been gone six years,” she said, “but I still remember that week. You must remember it, too.”

  “I do.”

  She waited for him to say more, but when he did not, she leaned forward in her chair and gazed at the photograph. “A young girl doesn’t know her father. Only later, when you’re grown, do you begin to appreciate your parents. You see them as people.” She paused. “He was a typical father. Kind. Distant. Funny. A stubborn man, yes, but with a big heart and firm principles. He hated what Russia had become.”

  Natalya sat back abruptly, her arms again folded tightly over her chest, and looked directly at Garin. Her voice was matter-of-fact. “He was taken to Lefortovo Prison. I later read the report, which I had Comrade Posner request. They interrogated him for two days but got nothing. Then he was taken to a basement cell. He was executed this way.” Her finger pointed to the back of her neck. “It’s a technique the Cheka developed called Genickschuss. A shot to the nape of the neck that causes minimal blood loss and instant death. That is how he died. His head was bent forward, and Talinov fired slightly downward at point-blank range. I don’t dream of that horrible moment anymore, but for a long time, I was sorry I had read the report. Some images stay with you.” She exhaled to expunge the thought. “He never gave up the name of the man who betrayed him. That is who my father was.”

  Natalya’s face was a cocktail of emotion—sad, fierce, angry, and forgiving. The living daughter remembering her dead father. She wiped a tear with her finger.

  She stood abruptly and went to the window, where she looked onto the empty street, lost in thought. She turned back and faced him. “What happened to him?”

  “We were in Vyborg. He had come by airplane with false documents. He was to meet us at the dock when the fog was thick. Border guards and KGB knew he would be there.”

  “Who betrayed him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Posner thinks it was you.”

  “He is mistaken. I was working for the Americans.”

  “And the KGB.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Posner says it was you.”

  “But you don’t believe him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If you believed him, you wouldn’t have saved my life.”

  She scoffed. “I have my reasons.” She gazed at him across the table. “You visited his grave with a flower. That isn’t the act of an enemy, even an enemy with remorse. That is what I believe. And there is one more thing—I will find that man with your help. And then you will take me out of the Soviet Union.”

  Natalya collected cups and plates from the table. “How will you get me out?”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Staying is dangerous. By now, two bodies have been found. No one will admit she was KGB inside the embassy, but suspicions will lead to you. In time, that will lead to me. The Americans will demand her body; the KGB will keep it until the autopsy is complete. You will need to move quickly.”

  The room was quiet except for the tyrannical ticking of the wall clock. Garin spoke at last. “A dozen things need to happen,” he said. “You need travel documents. Tickets. We will leave by train to the Finland Station. It will look better if you are traveling as a party of two. I will buy trains tickets to Uzhgorod as well.”

  “What day?”

  “I will know tomorrow.”

  She disappeared into a bedroom. After a moment, she returned with a men’s two-piece suit. “Wear this. You are my brother’s s
ize. They will be looking for a foreigner. This will make you look Russian.”

  Garin accepted that chance occasionally worked in his favor and sometimes did not. He had fought against the tyranny of chance when he was a new intelligence officer working his case load, but after several failures and a few successes, he understood that it was easier—and safer—to accept the unpredictable outcomes of chance and turn them to his advantage. He put on the suit and became a Russian again.

  15 SOKOLNIKI AMUSEMENT PARK

  GARIN ENTERED YUGO-ZAPADNAYA METRO STATION. He pushed through the afternoon crowd of commuters and came to a group of Komsomol youth in uniform holding basketballs. He got on the first train that arrived and took a seat at one end of the car, lowering his hat and absorbing himself in a newspaper.

  Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Kropotkinskaya Station. The doors opened, and a few people got off. Garin looked up from his newspaper at the sound of the car’s pneumatic doors closing, startled to see where he was, and jumped up, mumbling, “Damn it. Kropotkinskaya,” and he squeezed through the closing doors. On the platform he confirmed no one had come off the train after him.

  Garin boarded the next train. He got off several stops later, stepped onto the crowded platform, and headed for the stairs. When he got to the mezzanine, he slipped behind one of the fluted columns. He waited half a minute while the flow of riders went through the arched space, and then he continued to walk in the same direction. He emerged on the street and set out on foot for his rendezvous.

  * * *

  GENERAL ZYUGANOV. DEPUTY Chairman Churgin. Lieutenant Colonel Talinov. Comrade Posner. Garin felt the world around him shape and reshape as men played out their roles, but he’d found enough connecting threads to bridge the gaps in his understanding. His suspicions began to settle inside the dark labyrinth. Garin didn’t share any of his worries with Petrov when they met. It was a short and uncomfortable meeting.