Assassin

by David Hagberg

“Thank you for your report,” Korzhakov said abruptly. “We’ll expect to be updated should anything significant occur.”

  “Very well,” Yemlin said. He rose and went to the door.

  “Viktor Pavlovich,” President Kabatov said. “We are not the enemy. Nor do we believe you are. But you have an enemy in General Yuryn. A powerful enemy. Take care of yourself.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. I will.”

  Yemlin paused at the head of the broad granite stairs in front of the Senate Building, letting the sharp wind and harsh snow beating against his body clear his head. He was so mentally and physically tired that he felt detached, as if his skin didn’t fit, and his feet weren’t his own.

  Russians loved intrigue. It was in the national spirit, as chess and poetry were, and he was just as guilty as the rest of them for deriving pleasure from playing the game. But in this instance they weren’t talking about a mere intelligence coup. This time the future of Russia was at stake, and for one frightening moment he wished that he could recall McGarvey, or more accurately he wished that he could justify such a move to himself. But he could not.

  Someone touched his elbow and he looked up, startled, into the sharply defined features of Moscow Mayor Vadim Cheremukhin.

  “Viktor Pavlovich, you look like a man who could use some cheering up,” Cheremukhin said. His face was flushed and even in the wind Yemlin could smell vodka on the man’s breath.

  “A good night’s sleep.”

  “Time enough for that for both of us soon, hey?” Cheremukhin said. He was of the old school like Yemlin, but less of a moderate, although behind Kabatov he was among the most important men in Russia today. “Come on, we’ll dismiss your driver and take my car over to the club. What you need is a steam bath, a rubdown, some good champagne and caviar, and then maybe a girl. You can sleep afterward.”

  Cheremukhin’s private club, the Magesterium, had been constructed for his predecessor Yuri Luzhkov who’d complained that he had no place to go after hours. The Mafia had built it, along with a lot of other clubs throughout the country, for the new elite after the Soviet Union had disintegrated. Gangsters, movie stars, businessmen and politicians all had their own private sanctuaries that stressed physical security along with booze, women, casinos, and rat-races through neon-lit mazes. Anything went at the clubs; from drugs to little boys and from S&M to any other kind of kinky sex imaginable, and some that wasn’t imaginable. The Magesterium provided all of that, plus good food, quiet rooms, subservient service, mostly from black African students recruited from Patrice Lumumba University, an excellent library and oak-lined conference rooms, reading nooks, a movie theater and a computer learning center.

  “I think not,” Yemlin protested. He’d been to some of the clubs, the Magesterium included. He found them to be too frantic for his own tastes. A symbol of some of what was wrong with Russia.

  “Nonsense,” Cheremukhin said. He waved Yemlin’s driver off, and his Zil limousine slid in behind it. He took Yemlin by the arm and guided him down the stairs and into the back seat for the short ride over to the club.

  Yemlin was too weary to fight him. A glass of champagne, a steam bath and a rubdown would be nice. Afterward he would make his own way home. He knew a number of men who’d succumbed to the club scene, their lives centered around their evenings like a drug addict’s around his needle. He wasn’t one of them.

  “The center holds,” Cheremukhin said, as they passed through Spassky gate into red square, and turned right down toward the river past St. Basil’s.

  Yemlin wasn’t sure he’d heard Cheremukhin correctly, and was about to ask what he said, when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a familiar figure, and his blood froze. It was McGarvey crossing Red Square. He fought the overwhelming urge to turn around and look back, or let slip an outward sign that he’d just been shaken to the core. McGarvey here in Moscow. Already. It didn’t seem possible.

  “It’s guys like you who’re keeping everything together,” Cheremukhin said. “Kabatov doesn’t have a clue, and Korzhakov is almost as bad a prospect as Tarankov. But at least we’ve gotten rid of Yeltsin.”

  Yemlin focused on the Mayor. “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  Yemlin shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I thought that’s why you were in the Kremlin. Didn’t Kabatov send for you to ask your opinion? He’s worried about the Americans, he doesn’t know how they’re going to take it.”

  “Take what?”

  “Kabatov has been appointed chairman of the Communist Party. The center holds. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but this time I think he’s stumbled onto something. If we take over the Communist Party, Tarankov will have nowhere to go. It’s what the Americans call an end run.”

  Yemlin’s head was spinning. If McGarvey killed Tarankov the problem wouldn’t be so acute. In the confusion and panic that would follow no one would take notice of Kabatov’s stupid move. But he did not have the luxury of that assurance, nor could he let on even if he did. “Kabatov is a fool,” he stammered.

  “Agreed, but he can be controlled.”

  “By whom?” Yemlin responded angrily. “Tarankov will use it as further proof that democracy has failed. It might even force him to make his move sooner than the June elections.”

  Cheremukhin eyed Yemlin critically. “I see what you mean, but I don’t agree with you. The Party is winning elections again because it’s what the people want. But it’s not the old Party.”

  “Kabatov is now President and Prime Minister of Russia as well as Party Chairman. Tarankov only has to topple one man to control everything. We’ve done his ground work for him. I’m sure he’s quite pleased.”

  “He’ll be arrested.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Yemlin shot back before he could stop himself.

  Cheremukhin’s eyebrow rose. “Do you know something that we don’t, Viktor Pavlovich?”

  “No,” Yemlin said. “But trying to arrest the Tarantula cost Yeltsin his life, and I don’t think that Kabatov fully understands what he’s up against.”

  “Some of us do, believe me,” Cheremukhin said darkly.

  “I hope so,” Yemlin replied, distantly.

  It was before noon, and the snowstorm had intensified, snarling traffic in the ordinary lanes. Cheremukhin’s limousine sped across the river on the Great Stone Bridge in front of the Rossiya Hotel, the official lane empty in both directions. Yemlin had to fight the urge to turn and look over his shoulder at Red Square which in any event had already disappeared. It had begun. McGarvey was in the field. In the heart of Moscow staking out his killing field. Yemlin had a fair idea what McGarvey might be planning. But if Tarankov managed to get this far they might have already lost.

  “We would like your help with this,” Cheremukhin said. “You know a lot of people. I’m sure that you even know some of Tarankov’s supporters in the SVR and FSK. There has to be a way.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “If you prefer not to work with Kabatov I’ll do whatever I can to help. I have connections too. Just say the word and I’ll pull strings.”

  “For now you can keep an eye on Korzhakov. I want to be informed when they plan on making their move against Tarankov.”

  “It won’t be in Nizhny Novgorod, I can tell you that much,” Cheremukhin said. “But I’ll see what I can come up with. Kabatov trusts me.”

  The limousine pulled through the gates onto the private grounds of what once was a sewing machine factory. The parking lot was half-filled with Zils and Mercedes SELs. Guards dressed in American Marine combat fatigues and armed with M16 assault rifles were everywhere. The driver pulled up to the front doors, and they were escorted inside to a large reception area that looked like the lobby of a luxury resort hotel. Cheremukhin handed him over to a beautiful young black woman wearing a skimpy bikini beneath a transparent gauze jacket.

  “Renee, I would like you to meet my friend Vik
tor. He is to be given anything he wants, and you’ll put it on my tab,” Cheremukhin said.

  The young woman lit up in a smile as she took Yemlin’s arm. She smelled of cinnamon and some other spice, her accent very charming. “My pleasure to meet you, Viktor.”

  “Start with some champagne, a bath, then a rubdown,” Cheremukhin grinned. “After that, who knows? But he’s tired, so he needs some peace and quiet.”

  Yemlin felt as if he were on the verge of collapse. So much had happened in the past week that he was in sensory overload. He wanted to sleep.

  “Enjoy,” Cheremukhin said, and he left.

  “That Vadim is a good guy,” Renee said innocently. “Whatever he says around here goes. So you just leave it to me, Viktor, okay?”

  “Okay,” Yemlin mumbled, too tired to do anything but go with the flow.

  She led him down one of the thickly carpeted corridors, the lighting subdued. Soft music played from hidden speakers and she chatted like a magpie about everything from Paris fashions to the wonderful people she’d met since coming to the university. At one point he stumbled and she pulled him up, and put his arm around her thin shoulders, his fingertips brushing her breasts.

  “Silly me going on like this while you, poor man, are nearly dead on your feet,” she cooed. “But I have just the thing for your tired bones. You’ll see. Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Although the club was busy there wasn’t a hint of noise or activity back here. Renée brought him into a three-room suite luxuriously furnished, and led him immediately into a palatial bathroom with a huge sunken tub filled with steaming, scented water.

  A moment later a young man dressed only in a white swimming suit came in behind them with a bottle of champagne and one flute.

  Yemlin stepped back.

  “Here’s Valeri to help us,” Renée beamed. “Isn’t he just beautiful? We call him the little doll.”

  Yemlin had never seen a more handsome man, not even among the American movie stars. In his mid-twenties, his athletic body was slightly tanned, his facial features perfectly proportioned, his eyes startlingly blue, and his teeth gleaming white.

  “Renee exaggerates,” Valeri said, smiling. His voice was deep, his Russian cultured. “But she’s cute. Would you care for a glass of wine while you’re in your bath, Mr. Yemlin?”

  Yemlin said nothing.

  The girl tittered. “Valeri is just a masseur. He doesn’t bite.”

  Yemlin smiled despite himself. For a moment he’d been star-struck like a silly old lady. “Sure. And after my bath and rubdown, I want to get a few hours sleep.” He looked at the girl. “Alone.”

  “Oh pooh,” Renee said, and she helped him undress as Valeri poured a glass of champagne.

  The bath water was a perfect temperature. The heat seeped into Yemlin’s bones, and he sighed in contentment. Renee got undressed, her breasts high and firm and she got into the tub with him, and started on his broad back with a Finnish scrub sponge. Valeri handed him the champagne then went into the bedroom where he laid out his oils and lotions beside a low, towel-draped massage table.

  The champagne was Russian, sweet and cold, just as he liked it, the bath soothing, and Renee’s ministrations wonderful. After a few minutes Valeri refilled his glass, and Yemlin began to feel like he was drifting, the sensation wonderfully comforting. He was in a safe haven where for the first time since he could remember he felt warm, and secure.

  When he was finished, Renee and Valeri helped him out of the bath, dried his body with warm towels, and led him to the massage table, where he lay down on his back.

  Renee left, and Valeri began massaging Yemlin’s neck and shoulder muscles with an incredibly strong, but gentle touch, his hands slippery with warm oils.

  Yemlin watched the young man for several minutes before realizing he was naked. Muscles corded down his back, and rippled his firm buttocks. When he straightened up, Yemlin saw that his penis was large and semi-erect. He knew that he should be embarrassed, but the boy was so handsome that watching him was like watching an erotic movie, and Yemlin began to respond despite himself.

  “That’s better, Viktor,” the young man said, gently massaging Yemlin’s inner thighs, his finger tips flicking around Yemlin’s anus.

  The effect was galvanizing. Yemlin had not felt anything like it since he’d had a prostitute in Tokyo. A groan of pleasure escaped from his throat.

  Valeri’s lips closed around Yemlin’s penis, the sensation incredible. He could do nothing but lie back as the young man took him deep into his mouth. It was like nothing he’d ever felt, pleasure building and rising in waves. He’d been a thirty-five-year-old man before that Tokyo prostitute had done such a thing for him, and right now the pleasure was every bit as good, even though he felt a pang of guilt at the back of his mind for having it done to him by a man.

  And then he was coming, as he’d not come for many years, the intense feeling of relief coursing through his body like nothing else could.

  His lotion-filled hand was on Valeri’s rigid penis now, the young man’s lips next to his head, cooing, and whispering softly.

  “Paris was wonderful, Viktor. Just like now. Was it with your mistress?”

  “McGarvey,” Yemlin murmured.

  “Her name is McGarvey?”

  “No, Kirk,” Yemlin mumbled. He wanted to return the pleasure the young man had given him. “Kirk has agreed. He’s here.”

  “In Moscow?”

  “Yes, he’s here.”

  “Why, Viktor? Why is Kirk McGarvey in Moscow?” Valeri whispered.

  “To help us. To save the Rodina.”

  “How?”

  “To kill the Tarantula. Kill Tarankov. It’s the only way.”

  “That’s very good, Viktor,” Valeri cooed. “Very good. Now tell me about Kirk McGarvey. Tell me everything.”

  FIFTEEN

  Moscow

  McGarvey spent the afternoon in the lobby of the Metropol Hotel sipping mineral water and scouring a dozen of the newspapers and news magazines published in Moscow for anything pertaining to Tarankov.

  As he suspected there was plenty of coverage about President Yeltsin’s heart attack, but none of the articles offered any speculation on the real cause of his death. No one was making a connection between the attack on the Riga nuclear power station in the Moscow suburb of Dzerzhinskiy and the bomb blast in Red Square. Nor did any of the articles on the power plant explosion mention Tarankov’s name. In fact most of the articles reported that the attack had been staged by so far unknown terrorists or dissidents, who possibly were disgruntled workers at the plant.

  Russia’s capacity for self-inflicted delusions was almost as great as the nation’s capacity for suffering. If you’re hungry read a cookbook. But read it alone, because your neighbors might see it and want to come to your house for a meal.

  Novy Mir, the magazine that had serialized Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, however, reported, in a two paragraph piece buried in the middle under a column headed “Upheavals,” that General Yevgenni Tarankov gave a speech recently in Dzerzhinskiy, and was scheduled to speak again tomorrow in Nizhny Novgorod, a city about three hundred miles east of Moscow that under the Soviet rule had been renamed Gorki.

  It was Russian doublespeak. Anyone in the know reading the article would immediately understand that the magazine suspected the attack on the Riga power plant had been staged by Tarankov. By reporting his next speaking engagement, the magazine was practically daring the government to do something about it.

  Considering the liberties that Russian journalists had been taking for nearly ten years, the lack of coverage Tarankov was getting bespoke the seriousness with which his campaign was being taken. Everyone in Moscow was frightened to death that if and when Tarankov took over he would purge every newspaper or magazine that had given him bad press.

  McGarvey’s guide book provided the information that the most convenient train to Nizhny Novgorad left at 11:10 P.M. from the Yaroslavl Station arrivi
ng overnight just before 7:30 A.M. But taking the train presented two immediate problems. The first was that going there just now as a foreigner would be dangerous. If Tarankov’s people were as well organized as McGarvey thought they must be, the airport and train stations would probably be monitored for any suspicious people. He did not want to blow his Belgian cover yet. It would provide a solid track that would mysteriously disappear should the need arise.

  The second problem was his hotel room. In Russia if you checked out of your hotel you had only two choices. You either checked into another hotel or you left the city.

  In one of the newspapers he’d read an article about the prostitution rings that operated out of several of the hotels in Moscow, using women from the former East Germany and Poland. The Metropol was not one of them, but McGarvey circled several of the hotel names in the article, underlining one of them several times as if for emphasis. His bellman Artur had gone through his things. Nothing was missing yet, but he would be sure to see the newspaper with the circled articles and believe that McGarvey hadn’t simply abandoned his room.

  Leaving everything behind except for his money, his gun and the clothes on his back, he emerged from the hotel a few minutes before 5:00 P.M., the afternoon dusk already deepening in the still falling and blowing snow. Two blocks away he found a cab to take him out to the flea market at the Dinamo Stadium beyond the outer ring road near the Frunze Central Airfield. The going was difficult but the driver didn’t seem to mind. He kept slyly looking at McGarvey’s image in the rearview mirror.

  The stadium’s parking lot was huge. Despite the horrible weather hundreds of entrepreneurs sold everything from Kalashnikov rifles to western currencies from stalls, or from the backs of their cars or trucks. Barrels filled with burning trash or oily rags lent a surreal air to the place. Perhaps a thousand people wandered from stall to stall. Some huddled around the wind-whipped flames. Still others, many of them well dressed and accompanied by armed men, lugged their purchases back to Mercedes and BMWs parked at the fringes, and guarded by other armed men.