The Executioners

by Philip McCutchan

  This report taken, Shard left HQ with Eve Brett and took the Metro to Saint-Placide. Emerging, they mingled once again with the crowds and sauntered towards the Tour Montparnasse, a skyscraper block that dominated Paris, almost putting the loftier Eiffel Tower in the shade of lean, skeletal tracery. Shard’s mind was busy: he was thinking about the commune hippies. Just cover for Tex, as he’d thought — or more than that? They could just conceivably have some part to play in their drugged innocence, but what? In any case they were all dispersed now … Tex wouldn’t go back to the commune for obvious reasons, and if the hippies had drifted back — the police in Bourg St Andeal had reported that some in fact had — they would presumably be lost to Tex.

  And the method of assassination — Mikhail’s method? That was, if Tex didn’t get him first, which would be the best way out for all concerned, perhaps. Rifles, with telescopic sights? There was going to be a motorcade through the Paris streets and the spectators would be legion, but the Paris police and security men would be taking every possible precaution. Danger in the French Foreign Ministry where the meetings were to take place? That would be equally well taken care of. Not very propitious for a non-person or persons to choose as a killing ground. There had to be something else, some occasion when the VIPs themselves would be relaxing, perhaps, though they probably wouldn’t get much chance of that, the schedule was pretty tight, a lot of business to be got through in a short time. International conferences, mini summits — and this looked like more than a mini summit — were not the times for fun and games …

  A dinner?

  There was going to be a dinner, naturally, given by the President of France in the Presidential palace, the Elysée, a posh affair — and of course very elaborately screened and guarded with plain clothes GIGN men among the flunkeys. Hardly a hope there, Shard would have thought.

  They reached the skyscraper block. It began to look like a wild goose chase. Little fat Annie and her escort, who could be Mikhail, had gone well and truly to ground again.

  “So what do we do?” Eve Brett asked.

  “Hang around. It’s all we’ve got. Care for a café au lait?”

  “Yes,” she said. They sat at a table in an establishment beneath the many storeys of the Tour Montparnasse and Shard ordered, sitting back and keeping a close eye on the crowds that drifted past along the street or in and out of a big store whose doors were immediately opposite the café. Taking into account the delay occasioned by the British Prime Minister he now had two days before the brass assembled — time nagged as it always did on jobs where there was a kind of deadline, an uncertain deadline which made it worse, and leads and facts remained obstinately concealed. The coffee finished, they got up and crossed the road and walked towards the Rue de Vaugirard and along it in the direction once again of Saint-Placide.

  No little fat Annie — but Hedge, entering the Hotel Aviatic, having disembarked from a taxi that this time had managed to find the proper entry to the one-way street. Glancing to his right, Hedge spotted them, dithered, scowled, vanished, and then came out again and waited for Shard to come up.

  He said, “I told you to stand by, Shard. Not show yourself. Are you mad?”

  “No, Hedge. Little fat Annie has no fear of me, you know. She’s not facing any charges — not so far as either she or we know so far.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “And she’s a simple soul. If she happens to see us, she’ll come running.”

  “The man won’t, if he’s Mikhail Asipov.”

  “Agreed, if she tells him who we are.”

  “Well, then!”

  Shard said equably, “Nothing’s lost, Hedge. The fact that I’m around could force them into the open. Flush them out. Once they’re on the move, that’s when we have our best chance. Check?”

  Hedge scowled again but didn’t answer. Shard, grinning, said, “You don’t want to get tainted with our brush, do you, Hedge? Being seen talking to us — you know?”

  Suddenly, Hedge vanished back into the hotel foyer, his face red. Shard and WDC Brett moved on, not hurrying. A couple of hundred yards or so past the Hotel Aviatic they took a right-hand turn, came out into the road running from the Tour Montparnasse to Saint-Placide, the one they’d taken on emerging from the Metro. Just as they had turned down towards Saint-Placide there was a traffic accident, a car hit broadside by another emerging from a garage. It wasn’t serious but there was a lot of shouting and fists were shaken. French fists — the hit car bore a British registration and its occupants were more phlegmatic. A crowd gathered, displaying interest, offering advice, shouting abuse at the British car. Shard reflected upon a facet of the Paris traffic scene that he had noted on previous visits as well as this current one: you never, or hardly ever, saw a British registered car except one that had been immobilised due to having been hit by a French one. But this was minor; he and Eve were already moving on when something more important happened: a girl recognisable immediately as little fat Annie appeared in the entry to a tatty building at the end of an alley that ran alongside the garage from which the French car had emerged. Just a brief glimpse before she disappeared again, but it had been enough.

  Eve had seen the girl as well. Shard said, “I’m going in.”

  “On your own?”

  He said, reaching for his transceiver, “I’ll ask for plain clothes assistance, Eve. Get back to the Aviatic and warn Hedge.”

  She turned away for the Rue de Vaugirard. Shard made brief use of his pocket radio, shoved it back, and entered the alley cautiously. A cat overtook him, its tail high in the air. Nothing else moved and soon even the sounds from the street seemed muted. The buildings were high, a block of flats on one side, the garage and its workshops on the other. There was a smell of garbage, largely stale fish. The cat was bound for its source, a heap of rubbish near the dereliction of the building where Shard had spotted the girl — it was an abandoned warehouse, he saw. As he approached, a big door was drawn aside, running on rusty metal tracks. It had been opened from inside; Shard didn’t see who was doing it, but he heard a car’s engine start up. A moment later a door slammed and the car came out. It was a small one, a Fiat. It accelerated; as it came for him Shard saw little fat Annie in the front beside a dark, cadaverous man and after that he had to move fast for his life, very fast. Overhead there was a sort of gantry, a bar between two uprights. Shard jumped, got a grip, and heaved himself up as the car went fast beneath him. He heard a subdued phut-phut and bullets spattered the wall beside him, dislodging plaster. He remained intact; there were no more shots. The Fiat had gone out fast into the roadway, turning towards the Tour Montparnasse.

  Shard dropped to the ground and ran for the road. The Fiat was already in the traffic stream having barged its way out, but it wasn’t making much progress in the jam and he reckoned he could catch it up.

  He ran. Something was snarling up the traffic ahead. A man who had been in the back of the Fiat got out, went round behind the car and just as Shard came up at speed he stepped forward, a hand raised in greeting, a smile of welcome on his face for the benefit of the passers by, and a foot outstretched. Shard went headlong. As the man bent over him in propagandic concern, he felt the hypodermic go into his arm.

  *

  The French had been fast, but not fast enough. They had sent in agents of the GIGN, which proved they were taking things seriously, but by the time they’d got there all was peace and quiet, the warehouse was deserted and no clues had, as yet anyway, been found. Impasse: and the British police officer had vanished. That was the only sure and certain thing about it. It was true — and very possibly relevant — that a knot of people in the street not far away from the alley had witnessed an unusual occurrence, a man falling head over heels and then being lifted inert into a small car, but that had been explained: he was a friend of the occupants and had been trying to catch up the car, and had unfortunately fallen and knocked himself out. He had not looked well; and the man, his friend who had lifted him to his feet, ha
d been very concerned and had said they would take him straight to the hospital. The small car was a Fiat, and with the snarl-up cleared it had been driven away as fast as the traffic would allow, which of course in Paris was very fast, and no-one had thought of taking the number.

  Hedge was livid. The hospitals had been checked and no-one had been admitted following a fall near the Tour Montparnasse. All Hedge’s prophecies concerning French inefficiency had once again come true. It was obvious the man was Shard. Hedge was back in the Embassy now, having been contacted by Roberts-White not long after WDC Brett had reported Shard’s intentions. WDC Brett was with him and was taking the brunt of his despair. Without Shard he was lost and in no mood not to complain about it.

  “Too blasted impetuous!”

  Eve said nothing but her face showed her concern for Shard and her dislike of hearing him criticised. Hedge raved on, pacing the floor, cheeks wobbling. The whole of France must be alerted, Shard must be found. Tactfully, Roberts-White agreed. All possible would be done. It would not, he also agreed, be long now before the VIPs swarmed in from points east and west. Yes, it was all very worrying. No, the French hadn’t been as fast as they might have been, but now they were pulling out all the stops.

  “Looking for a Fiat, number unknown, which’ll almost certainly be changed for some other vehicle if they’re going far. Really, it’s too bad!”

  *

  Hedge had been right: the Fiat was ditched within an hour of leaving Paris. Mikhail Asipov, or Kolnisenko, had his contacts and his safe houses and there was always the chance that someone had noted the number of the Fiat. Shard was out for some while; he didn’t come round until they had reached that first safe house near the Seine, some thirty miles north-west of Paris. It was a farm — that much he could smell when he returned to awareness on a sofa.

  First he saw little fat Annie, who clasped her hands and said, “He is better, Mikhail.” She said this in Russian. The next person Shard saw was Mikhail, dark, corpse-like, intense and dangerous.

  In bad English Mikhail asked, “You know who I am?”

  “I can guess. Mikhail Kolnisenko.”

  “Is right, yes.”

  “Or is Asipov more correct?”

  “Is so, yes.”

  “Then you know? You know that —”

  “Yes, I know. Do not move. Here is a man gunned.”

  “Really.” There was; the man, with gun, moved into Shard’s field of vision. He was unknown to Shard but he had a Russian look, an old-fashioned look, rather like Shard’s idea of a Cossack of pre-revolutionary days. He was elderly, and there was a flowing moustache, white stained yellow with nicotine, and he had an aristocratic cast of countenance. Shard, who was feeling no after-effects from the drug, took the wind from the man’s sails with a shrewd guess.

  He said, “Avengers of St Petersburg, I presume?”

  The man gave a start. Mikhail’s face tightened up. The man said, “You know?”

  “Yes. Vernodsky, now dead. Why did he shoot at Hedge?”

  “To stop him,” the man said.

  “Quite. But why?”

  “You are all the enemy, that is why.”

  “I thought your enemy was the Soviet leadership.”

  “So. This is true. But also those who try to stop our plans. Hedge we wished to question before he died. The shot was in fact not to kill at that moment. To wound only, and catch. Now, soon, we shall question you.”

  Shard stared at the Russian’s face, and into the mouth of the gun he carried. It was much more than just a revolver; it was a Kalashnikov sub-machine-gun, with a rate of fire of something like six hundred rounds a minute. It wouldn’t, of course, be silenced, but no doubt they were in a lonely spot. He said, “Just a moment. The Avengers of St Petersburg … does this explain how Mikhail’s been able to build a set-up in France — which I assume he has?”

  “Yes,” the man answered. “Mikhail has all he needs. Men, weapons, radio, explosives. Co-operation from many French also, French who do not like the communist element in their own country and do not wish to see the extension of Soviet influence, which will come about if the summit meeting is successful.”

  “Why not leave it up to the British delegation to have it stopped?”

  “No. This is the best way.”

  “It’s the fool’s way. Only the Soviet will benefit from an assassination. What about world opinion, French opinion too? Never mind your French anti-coms, they’ll —”

  “We know what we are doing.” Steel had come into the voice and the eyes were blazing, like those of Tex back in the hippie commune. Shard shrugged; as ever, fanatics were impossible to penetrate. If this thing was to be settled by the gun, then he had to get the first shot in and that was all. He was about to speak again when a door opened and another man came in and announced, in French, that the van was ready and they all went out, with Shard ahead of the Kalashnikov. And less free than before: his wrists were tied behind his back. Outside the front door was a Dormobile, French number plates, big and comfortable. Shard had a brief glimpse of fields and, below a slope of the land, the water of the Seine. He didn’t get a chance to study the terrain from the Dormobile’s windows; he was put into the lavatory compartment and the door was locked on him. The window was a blank sheet of steel.

  As soon as they were all in, the vehicle started off.

  9

  Later, things began to emerge and to some extent come full circle. The Dormobile was driven fast for some while — Shard, unable to look at his wrist-watch, was unable to estimate the time with any accuracy — and then stopped after slowing for some distance over very rough ground which caused the effluent in the Elsan beneath him to slop and gurgle — at least he’d had a seat for the journey. When he was brought out he was in an integral garage; he was taken through a door into a passage, and from there into what looked like a study — big desk, bookcases, telephone, filing cabinet. It could be the office of a self-employed professional man but there were no clues as to precisely what profession it might be. With his hands still tied, Shard was pushed into a chair and the Kalashnikov was placed on the desk, with the elderly Cossack, if such he was, not far from it. Shard looked through the room’s one window: there wasn’t much to be seen. In fact, just a blank wall, a garden wall with some kind of creeper growing over it.

  “Now the questions,” the Cossack said. He wanted to know how much had leaked to the British and French security people. It must have been obvious that quite a lot had; but Shard refused to answer any of the probing questions since even mendacious answers could well give away the fact that not enough had leaked. The Cossack lifted his Kalashnikov from the desk and said, “If you do not tell us, you will die.”

  “Maybe,” Shard said indifferently. “Maybe not.”

  “How is this?”

  “One always presumes the hostage is more use if kept alive.”

  The Russian laughed. “But you are not a hostage.”

  “Neither was Stanislav Asipov, presumably.”

  “What?” The man was puzzled. “I do not understand. Asipov had defected, he was in a British hospital, he was never in our hands —”

  “And he was more or less on your side, he was anti the Soviet system or he wouldn’t have defected. So why kill him, for God’s sake?” Shard paused, staring into the Russian’s eyes. “We know you did, you see. Vernodski’s prints were found after the shooting. It doesn’t quite add up — does it?”

  The Russian glanced to his left, met Mikhail’s eye. Something passed between them … and Mikhail had been the natural son of Stanislav Asipov. There would scarcely be any filial feeling for a man he had never, until the knowledge had come out, regarded as a father, a man he might hardly even have known, but Mikhail’s face had registered something all the same. The Russian said. “Yes, his death was arranged by our organisation.” He paused. “Perhaps you know of a telephone call made to your Foreign Office, to Hedge. A warning that Asipov would die if not handed back.”

 
“Yes,” Shard said.

  “That call was a lying one, none of it true — it was made by evil persons known as Communist Alliance Transatlantic —”

  “Tex!”

  There was a nod. “Him, yes — not himself but one of his organisation. We knew of this too late, and then, you see, because we feared the British would believe it and might hand Asipov back on humanitarian grounds, we —”

  “You got in first. Yes, I do see. But why were the Soviet authorities so keen to get him back?”

  The Cossack shrugged. “Always they wish to get back a defector. But it was special in the case of Asipov, because, you see, he knew of our plans —”

  “He was a member of the Avengers of St Petersburg?”

  “Yes, that is so. For a long time something like this has been planned, and we awaited the opportunity which has now at last come. From it there will be no deflection. We are confident also that we shall succeed.” He undoubtedly sounded it; and he, rather than Mikhail, seemed to be the boss. Shard wondered if he too was a non-person.

  Shard put the question direct.

  “No. I am not so unfortunate. For a long time I have lived in the political west, in France, where I was given asylum many years ago after the revolution — I was then a child, little more than a babe in my mother’s arms. Mikhail Asipov has suffered much, and his friends also.” The Russian used a phrase Shard had heard before, from Mikhail’s mother. “They are the undead, those who have not the peace of the truly dead but are forced to live on without identity, without hope, without anything. But now their time has come to strike back in the name of all suffering Russians who are at the mercy of the Soviet system. And you shall help them now by answering my questions.”

  *

  In official Paris there was a degree of the pandemonium that Hedge had expected from the French, a good deal of it sparked off by Hedge himself, his panic on hearing that Shard was missing having caused him to bypass both Roberts-White and His Excellency the Ambassador and project his panic down the telephone line to the French Foreign Ministry, the Police Judicaire and the Minister of State for Public Security, even though he much mistrusted the latter because his office sounded sinisterly like the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety presided over by the dreadful Citizen Robespierre who had instituted the Reign of Terror in 1793. As a result of his calls Paris seemed about to be obliterated under a snowstorm of initial letters, for all sorts of groups were now under suspicion, much greater suspicion than had up to now been the case. INLA, PLO, IRA, plus many others including Baader-Meinhof and Action-Directe and the Red Brigades, too short in full to warrant initials, jostled with NATO, EEC and GIGN. Everyone in Paris knew that the IRA plus INLA had been responsible for many past outrages in the capital, though they had masqueraded as something else, not caring whose banner they sullied, and that the PLO was inclined to support any faction with explosive aims. For their own reasons — to embarrass the west and France in particular — these groups might even connive at the killing of Russians and then blame the EEC. Terrorism had become a way of life. In a sense this was just one more threat and Paris was growing accustomed to such things; but this time it was big, and Hedge was stoking the fires.