Assassin

by David Hagberg

  “I want you to take a cab back to my apartment. There’s an errand I have to run.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you,” she said.

  “Don’t be so snoopy, or you’ll spoil my surprise.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want you to wait for me at home. I won’t be long, and when I get back you’ll know what I meant.”

  “Why can’t I wait here?”

  “Because I don’t want you to.”

  “Are you a macho pig?”

  He laughed. “Not so long ago someone else called me that same thing. But right now you can either wait for me at my apartment, or go back to your own place and stay there. I have something to do.”

  She was torn by indecision, he could see it in her eyes. But finally she nodded. “Don’t be long.”

  “Come on, I’ll get you a cab.”

  “I can manage,” she said, pulling away from him. She searched his face for a clue, then walked over to a cab, climbed in the back, and the taxi headed away. As it passed she looked straight ahead.

  McGarvey waited until the cab was out of sight, then went back to the tower, where he bought another ticket for the fourth floor.

  Upstairs, he leaned against the rail in front of the windows and lit a cigarette. The observation deck was busy. A few minutes later the man from the Citröen joined him.

  “She is a very pretty woman,” he said.

  McGarvey focused on the man’s reflection in the glass. “Hello, Viktor Pavlovich. Yes, she is.”

  “French secret service?” Yemlin asked.

  “Probably.”

  “I figured that was why you sent her away when you spotted me. She’ll wonder why.”

  “Will it matter if the French know that we’ve met?”

  Yemlin thought for a moment. “Yes, it will matter very much. It will be a question of your safety.”

  “Are the French after you for some reason?”

  “No, but they wouldn’t be so happy if they knew why I’d come to see you,” Yemlin said. He stared down at the street and the river.

  “I’m retired,” McGarvey said. “Anyway you’d be the last person I’d help. We go back too long on opposite sides of the fence for me to so easily forget.”

  “Eighteen months ago you came to me to ask a favor. And I did it for you, Kirk. Gladly. And as it turns out you did very well because of the information I provided you. All I’m asking now is that you hear me out.”

  McGarvey turned to look at the Russian. In eighteen months he’d aged ten years. He no longer seemed to be the dangerous adversary he’d once been when he’d headed the Illegals Directorate of the KGB, and later when he’d headed Department Viktor, the Russian assassination and terrorist division.

  He’d been fighting capitalism, he’d told McGarvey. Fighting to save the Rodina—the Motherland—as they’d all been in those days. But there had been hundreds, even thousands of deaths. Tens of millions of deaths counting the ones Stalin massacred.

  But who was innocent, McGarvey asked himself now as he had then. He had his share of blood on his hands. More than his share. Was fighting to save democracy any less noble for an American, than fighting to save socialism was for a Russian? He didn’t have the answer.

  “All right, Viktor, I’ll listen to you. But that’s all. I promise you that I’m out of the business.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “I’ll make my excuses. It’ll be okay.”

  Yemlin glanced out the windows. “Let’s walk in the park. Heights make me dizzy.”

  They took the elevator back down, then crossed Quai Branly and descended to the river walk where McGarvey and Jacqueline had been heading. An odd state of affairs, McGarvey thought. But then his entire life had been a series of odd affairs.

  Traffic on the river, as on the streets, was heavy. The weather was bringing everybody outdoors. The river walk too was crowded, which was better for their purposes. It gave them anonymity.

  “The situation is becoming very bad in Russia,” Yemlin said.

  “I know,” McGarvey replied. “Have you caught Yeltsin’s assassin yet, or did he get out of the city and return to Tarankov’s protection?”

  “President Yeltsin died of a heart attack—”

  “That’s not true. Nor do your security people carry any type of ordinance in their chase cars that would explode like that. The public may have bought it, but there isn’t a professional in the business in the West who believes the story. The question is, why did you people make it up? Are you that concerned about Tarankov?”

  “I don’t agree with you, Kirk,” Yemlin said. “The signals we’re getting back from the CIA and SIS indicate they believe what we’re telling them.”

  “What else can they do? Nobody wants to hammer you guys into the ground anymore. Fact is most of the world feels sorry for you. Your people are going hungry, you’ve polluted the entire country, your factories are falling apart, and nobody in their right mind wants to travel around Moscow or St. Petersburg without bodyguards. So Langley is saying, okay we’ll go along with whatever they want to tell us for the moment. Let’s see what shakes out. Let’s see how they handle it. Armed revolution, anarchy, or a Warren Commission that nobody will believe, but that everybody will respect.”

  “You have no proof of that.”

  “Come on, Viktor, don’t shit the troops,” McGarvey said sharply. “You want to talk to me, go ahead and talk. But don’t lie. Tell it like it is, or go back to Moscow. Who knows, it might get better.”

  Yemlin’s shoulders sagged. He shook his head. “It won’t get better. It can only get worse.”

  “Is Kabatov really in charge like the wire services are reporting?”

  “Nobody else wants the job, and for the moment at least his is the most decisive voice in Moscow. But nobody thinks that the situation will remain stable until the June elections. At the very least what little order is left will totally break down, and the anarchy that the west has been predicting for us all these years will finally come to pass.”

  “What about the military? How are they handling Yeltsin’s death?”

  “Wait and see.”

  “No threat of a coup?”

  “That depends on what happens between now and the elections. But it’s certainly another very real possibility, Kirk. Our situation is desperate.”

  “Will the Duma elect an interim president?

  “They’re in session now. Kabatov has the majority support, again only because he’s the lesser of any number of evils.”

  “Like Nikolai Yuryn?”

  Yemlin looked at McGarvey with wry amusement. “You would make a good Russian politician.”

  They walked for awhile in silence, the traffic on the avenue above seemingly more distant than before. McGarvey knew why Yemlin had come to see him. The trouble was he didn’t know what to do.

  “What really happened, Viktor?”

  “It was one of Tarankov’s men, as you suspected, though we don’t have much of a description yet, or a name. He got into the Kremlin by posing as a Presidential Security Service lieutenant colonel, planted a radio-controlled bomb in the limo scheduled to pick up Yeltsin in the morning, and pushed the button when the president’s motorcade came across Red Square.”

  “He must have a good intelligence source. He probably was out of Moscow within an hour after the hit, long before the Militia could get its act together.”

  “He had a seven-hour head start.”

  McGarvey looked sharply at the Russian. “It’s that bad?”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  McGarvey lit a cigarette. “There’s a very good chance that Tarankov would have won the election. Why’d he take the risk?”

  “Yeltsin ordered his arrest. It was going to be an ambush next week in Nizhny Novgorod. A few thousand troops and helicopters against his armored train and two hundred commandoes. There was a leak, the information got to Tarankov and he had Yeltsin killed.”
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br />   “Now Kabatov is stuck in the same position. He has to go ahead with Yeltsin’s order to arrest Tarankov and then do what? Try to bring him to trial in Moscow?”

  Yemlin nodded glumly. “It’d tear Russia apart.”

  “You’ll lose the country if you don’t. He’s another Stalin.”

  “We came to the same conclusions. If we arrest him the people will revolt. If we leave him alone he’ll win the election easily, or take over the Kremlin by force and kill everyone who opposes him.”

  “Who is the we?” McGarvey asked.

  “Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, who’s chairman of the Russian Human Rights Commission—”

  “I know him.”

  “And Eduard Shevardnadze.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I’ve talked to no one else about it.”

  “Did you see Shevardnadze in person?”

  “We flew down there the night before last. No one knows about the real reason for our trip. But we’re all agreed on the correct course of action. The only course of action to save the Democratic movement in Russia. Yevgenni Tarankov must be assassinated by a foreigner. By someone not connected to Russia. By a professional, someone who is capable of doing the job and getting away. By you, Kirk.”

  “No.”

  The directness of McGarvey’s answer knocked the wind out of Yemlin’s sails, and he missed a step, almost stumbling. “Then all is lost,” he mumbled.

  McGarvey helped him to a park bench. Yemlin took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his glistening forehead.

  “I promised only to listen, Viktor Pavlovich. I’m retired, but even if I wasn’t the job is all but impossible. Tarankov surrounds himself with a crack commando unit, his access to intelligence is very good, and he has the support of a large percentage of the population in addition to the military, the Militia, the FSK and even your own branch. Whereas the assassin would have no organization or backing because he would have to distance himself completely from you and the other two men. He would be operating in a country in which simply walking down the street could get him killed. And to top it all off, if Kabatov’s government got wind that an assassin was coming they might try to stop him. After all, if Russia wants to model itself after a nation of laws then it must abide by those laws. They would have to come after the assassin, who even if he was successful would find it quite impossible to get out of the country alive.”

  Yemlin looked bleakly at him, but said nothing.

  “Even if he did get away, then what?” McGarvey asked. “Nobody condones assassination. Even with a lot of money the places where the assassin could hide would be limited. Iran, Iraq, maybe a few countries in Africa, an island in the South Pacific. Not places I’d care to spend the rest of my days.”

  “That’s assuming your true identity became known,” Yemlin suggested weakly.

  “That’d be the trick. But I’m not hungry.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “What would you offer me? Whatever, it wouldn’t matter because I don’t need it. I’m not rich, but I have enough for my needs. Or maybe you’re offering me the thrill of the hunt.” McGarvey smiled sadly. “I’ve had my share of thrills. The thought of another does little or nothing for me. Or maybe what you’re really offering me is a chance to settle old scores. And there are a lot of those. But not so long ago I was told that I was an anachronism. I was no longer needed because the Soviet Union was no more. The bad guys had packed up and quit. It was time, I was told, for the professional administrators and negotiators to take over and straighten out the mess. At the time I thought he was full of shit. But maybe he was right after all.” McGarvey shook his head. “I have a lot of bitterness, Viktor Pavlovich, but no stirrings for revenge. You’re just not worth the effort.”

  McGarvey walked over to the low stone barrier that was part of the levee that sloped down to the water. A bateau Mouche glided past and some of the tourists waved. McGarvey waved back.

  Yemlin joined him, and took a cigarette. “Did you know that Marlboros cost less money in Moscow than they do in New York? You need hard currency, but that’s progress.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “The contrasts between Moscow and Washington are stark. But here the lines of division seem softer.”

  “I didn’t know you’d spent time in Paris.”

  “A couple of years in the embassy,” Yemlin said. “In a way I envy you. If I had the money I might retire here. Or perhaps somewhere around Lyon, perhaps on a small farm. Perhaps a few acres of grapes. I’m not a stupid man. I could learn how to make wine.”

  It was such an obvious appeal that McGarvey couldn’t resist it. “You were a bad man in the old days, Viktor, for whatever reasons. But you’ve changed.”

  “We’ve all changed.”

  “I can’t help you—”

  “What if I offered you something more than money,” Yemlin said. He spoke so softly that McGarvey barely heard him.

  “What?”

  “I have something that you’ve always wanted.”

  The afternoon was no longer as warm as it had been. “What’s that?”

  “It is something I only recently learned. In this you must believe me.”

  “Will you give it to me if I still refuse to kill Tarankov?”

  “You must agree to consider the job. That much. Think about it, Kirk. If you give me your word that you will think about it, I’ll give you what I brought.”

  McGarvey felt as if he were looking at himself through the wrong end of a telescope. He felt distant, detached, out of proportion. “I’ll think about it, Viktor Pavlovich,” he said. His voice sounded unreal, down the end of a tunnel.

  Yemlin took an envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to McGarvey. “This is your honor, Kirk. It’s not much, but I think that in the end it is all that we have.”

  “What—”

  “Your parents were not spies, Kirk. They did not work for us as you’ve believed all these years. They were set up.”

  SEVEN

  Paris

  Jacqueline Belleau arrived at the office of her control officer Alexandre Lévy on the top floor of the department store Printemps after lunch on Monday. She’d spent an oddly disconnected weekend with McGarvey after the strange scene between them on Saturday. He’d returned to his apartment a couple hours after he’d sent her away, with a beautiful Hermes scarf. A present, he said, he could not buy with her tagging along.

  She was touched by the gift. It meant that their relationship was progressing faster than she’d hoped for. Yet she was disquieted by his behavior, which was more like something a spy would do than a lover. She supposedly worked for an attorney who maintained an office a block away, so he could have simply waited until today when she was gone to buy her the present. And for the remainder of the weekend he’d been quieter than normal, even a little moody, as if something were bothering him.

  “Don’t ever press him, Jacqueline,” Levy had cautioned her in the beginning. “He is a professional, and men like him can spot a plant a kilometer away. Just be yourself. Natural—”

  “Without appearing that I’m trying to be natural, c’est vrai, grandpère?”

  At sixty-three Levy was by far the oldest case officer in the Service. With his thinning white hair, weathered face and kindly features, everyone called him grandpère, grandfather, but he didn’t seem to mind. “And don’t take your assignment lightly, it could get you killed.”

  “I understand,” she’d replied.

  Levy took her hands. “Most importantly, ma cherie, don’t fall in love with him. That too has happened before, and it will cloud your judgement.”

  Levy and another man she recognized as Division Chief Colonel Guy de Galan, were hunched over some papers and photographs spread on the conference table.

  “Ah, here she is now,” Levy said, looking up. “We’ve been waiting for you. Do you know Colonel Galan?”

  “Of course,” Jacqueline said. They shook hands
.

  “We had a tail on you this weekend, did you notice?” Galan asked. He was an administrator, but with his dark, dangerous air he looked more like a Corsican underworld thug than the head of the American and Western Hemisphere Division of the SDECE’s Intelligence Service.

  “No, but I make it a point not to look for my own people,” she answered.

  Galan nodded. “That’s a safe thing to do.” He handed her a 20×25 cm photograph of an older man, with thick white hair and a serious face, passing through passport control at what appeared to be Orly Airport. “Do you know this man?”

  She shrugged. “Non.”

  “He is Viktor Yemlin, chief of the North American Division of Russia’s SVR. In effect his job is much the same as mine. He arrived in France Saturday morning, where he went immediately to his embassy. An hour later he left behind the wheel of a Citröen with civilian plates, no driver.”

  He studied Jacqueline’s reaction closely.

  “Did he come here to see Kirk?” Jacqueline asked.

  “He followed your cab to the Eiffel Tower, then waited in front until you’d finished lunch,” Galan said. “Did you notice anything?”

  “No.”

  “Well, McGarvey spotted him. After he sent you away, he and Yemlin met at the top of the tower briefly, then descended to the river. It took us a few minutes to get a team with a parabolic mike across the river, but by then it was too late.”

  “They’re both professionals,” Levy said. “They make it a point not to have long conversations in public.”

  “Did you get any of it?” Jacqueline asked. She had a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach, but she didn’t know why.

  “Not much,” Galan said. He handed her a single sheet of typewritten transcript.

  “ … must agree to consider the job. That much. Think about it Kirk. If you will give me your word that you will think about it, I’ll give you what I brought.” SPEAKER IDENTIFIED AS YEMLIN. (See attachment A101.)

  THERE WAS A PAUSE.

  “I’ll think about it Viktor Pavlovich.” SPEAKER IDENTIFIED AS MCGARVEY (See attachment A102.)

  YEMLIN HANDS MCGARVEY A SMALL WHITE ENVELOPE, NO MARKINGS SEEN.