Assassin

by David Hagberg

“Sonofabitch, but even our soldiers are starving in the streets,” one of the workmen shouted. “Just like this sorry bastard.”

  McGarvey looked up. The men around the table stared at him with a mixture of pity and anger.

  “Where the hell did you serve, Corporal?” one of the men asked.

  “Yeb vas, Afghanistan,” McGarvey mumbled, and he went back to his food.

  “He’s goddamned right. Fuck your mother,” the man said.

  Someone slammed a not-so-clean glass down in front of McGarvey, filled it with vodka, and they went back to their discussion, this time about the drunkenness in what was once the greatest military in the world. Officers lived in tarpaper shacks, and enlisted men were billeted in tents or simply allowed to roam the streets between duty assignments. The situation wasn’t quite that bad, but Russians loved to wallow in self-pity, and loved even more to exaggerate their problems.

  After his breakfast and a second glass of vodka from the factory workers at his table, McGarvey wandered outside where he bought a half-liter of vodka from one of the street kiosks that were springing up around the railway station, and down the broad Ploshchad Lenina that led past the Tsentralnaya Hotel and across the river into the city proper. More people streamed into the area, so that for several blocks in every direction around the railway station, and along the boulevard across the river, crowds were amassing, their collective shouts and laughter rising like the low hum of a billion cicadas.

  He stood to one side of the square where he had a good view of the switching yard and passenger platforms a hundred yards to the west, and the boulevard into the city. A few stragglers crossed the street, but for the most part the thoroughfare was kept perfectly clear, although there were no traffic cops or Militia officers to restrain the crowd.

  The effect was strange, and unsettling to McGarvey. It was as if Tarankov’s presence were strong enough that his people automatically cleared a path for his triumphal entry to the city. Parishioners did not block the aisle out of respect not only for the ceremony, but for the priest. The same deference had been accorded Stalin in the late forties and fifties. He had saved the country from the Nazis. Now Tarankov promised to save the nation from oblivion. The people loved him for it.

  A huge roar went up from the crowds lining the bridge a half-mile to the south. People streamed out of the railway station and cafes and hotels as the commotion approached like a monster wave.

  An open army truck appeared on the crest of the bridge, and for the first minute or so McGarvey thought the Militia might be on its way after all. But there was only one truck, moving slowly, the people along the route reacting as it passed.

  A buzz of excitement suddenly swept through the tens of thousands of people around the railway station, rising in pitch as the truck came closer, and they could see the half-dozen men and two women dressed in civilian clothes in the back. They were obviously prisoners. Four men dressed in blue factory coveralls and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, stood in the back of the truck with the eight unarmed passengers.

  Somebody beside McGarvey suddenly began jumping up and waving his fist in the air. “Death to the traitors!” he shouted. “Death to Lensky! Death to the traitors!” Viktor Lensky was the mayor.

  Others in the mass of people took up the chant that soon rose to a deafening roar, as the truck pulled up in the square across from the railway depot.

  The guards jumped down from the back of the truck, and made their prisoners climb down and line up in a row beneath one of the tarantula banners flapping in the breeze. None of the civilians wore overcoats or hats despite the cold. They looked frightened.

  The mood of the crowd was turning ugly, but although people shouted curses and taunts at the prisoners, they made no move to go after them. But the air of expectation was even greater now than before. More people streamed in from the city, choking the main boulevard, as if they no longer expected Tarankov to need the route into the city. Whatever was going to happen, they expected it would happen down here by the railway station.

  According to what Rencke had pieced together, Tarankov’s usual method was to charge up to a city’s train depot, send several of his commando units ahead into the city to arrest the mayor and other city and federal administrators, and rob the banks. While that was going on, Tarankov and his personal guards and inner cadre made their way slowly into the main square, while he harangued the crowds, inciting them into a fever pitch of bloodlust. At the right time the prisoners were gunned down, the money stolen from the banks was distributed to the people, and in the confusion Tarankov and his commandoes made their way back aboard their train and roared off. So far they’d met no resistance from the Militia or from the military.

  But this time something was different. For whatever reason the people knew that Tarankov wouldn’t be going into the city center, so they’d rounded up as many apparatchiks as they could—McGarvey figured that the smart ones had already fled the city or hidden themselves—and brought them down here to be executed.

  Perhaps the military had set up an ambush downtown, meaning to trap Tarankov and his forces from returning to the safety of their heavily armed train. But if that were the case they would have to shoot into the people, because Tarankov would certainly not hesitate to use the crowd as a shield. A massacre of innocent civilians would severely damage Moscow’s already tenuous hold on the nation. They would be playing directly into Tarankov’s hand.

  The railroad line came from Moscow in the west, and Kazan in the east. McGarvey shaded his eyes and searched the sky in both directions finally picking out a half-dozen tiny specks in the air to the southwest. They were flying low and in formation. Too slow to be jets, McGarvey figured they were probably helicopter gunships. If they were hunting Tarankov, trying to prevent him from even getting close to Nizhny Novgorod, they would concentrate on the locomotive. Once it was destroyed or derailed, Tarankov and his commandoes could be surrounded and wiped out in the countryside where civilian casualties would be limited.

  It was a good tactic, but Tarankov had survived long enough to anticipate something like this happening. The intelligence reports Rencke had pirated warned that Tarankov’s people were not only highly trained and motivated special forces officers, they were equipped with state-of-the-art radar and radar tracking weapons, including close-in weapons systems, rapid-fire cannons, and probably magazine-launched surface-to-air missiles, that Rencke thought might be based on the Russian Navy’s SA-N-6 system, which was good out to a range of seventy-five nautical miles, accurate enough to shoot down helicopter-launched missiles or even cruise missiles, yet compact enough to easily be carried aboard a train.

  For the next five minutes nothing happened, although the helicopter formation seemed to be getting closer. If they were Mi-24 Hinds, which McGarvey figured they probably were, he estimated their distance at three or four miles.

  A man in blue coveralls standing nearby, noticed McGarvey watching the sky and the shaded his eyes and looked up. When he spotted the gunships he pointed. “It’s the army!” he shouted.

  At that moment the helicopters suddenly broke formation. An instant later three contrails rose up from the ground, and in seconds three of the helicopters exploded in mid-air. The other three turned away from the action.

  The man in the blue coveralls got the attention of the people around him, and excited shouts began to spread outward like ripples in a pond as others spotted the battle in the sky to the southwest.

  For a minute or two it looked like the three remaining helicopters had broken off for good, but then they swung around in a large arc and headed back.

  Now Tarankov’s train came into view between the low hills that swept down to the river. It was moving very fast, and the crowds on the south side of the station who could see the action shouted back what was happening. Tens of thousands of people tried to push their way to the back of the terminal building so that they could see what was unfolding, but they were blocked by the press of bodies.

&n
bsp; One of the helicopters fired a pair of missiles that streaked directly toward the locomotive, but at the last second they exploded in mid-air short of their target.

  An instant later another of the helicopters went up in a ball of flame on the tail of a rocket launched from the train.

  A cheer rose up from the crowd.

  This time the remaining two Hinds turned tail and headed off. For a full ten seconds it seemed as if they would make good their escape, when a pair of rockets were launched from the train, and blew them out of the sky.

  Another huge cheer spread across the vast mob, people hooting and shouting and whistling and clapping. The Tarantula had been tested and he’d proved himself. He was invincible. He had power and justice on his side. He was not only for the people, he was of the people. He was father to the Rodina—to Mother Russia—and the crowd was delirious with excitement.

  People were everywhere. On the streets, along the tracks, on the roofs of every building for as far as McGarvey could see. And still more people streamed out of the city to catch a glimpse of the first hero Russia had known since Papa Stalin. But the Tarantula was even better than Stalin, because he was coming from adversity with Moscow and the entire world against him.

  McGarvey continued searching the sky to the west and southwest, but nothing else was up and flying, and within minutes Tarankov’s train would roar into the outskirts of the city. If the military wanted to stop Tarankov they’d either badly underestimated the firepower aboard his train, or overestimated the skill of their helicopter pilots and the effectiveness of the Hind’s weapons. It seemed more likely to him that whoever had ordered and engineered the attack had done so only for show, which placed them on Tarankov’s side. It would have been relatively easy for a pair of MiG-29 Fulcrums to stand well off, illuminate the train with their look-down-shoot-down radar systems, and accurately place a half-dozen or more air-to-surface anti-armor missiles on the target before the train’s radar systems had a chance to react to the attack. But the Tarantula had spun his web very well. He had friends in high places.

  The people began to fall silent, until in the distance they could hear the distinctive roar of Tarankov’s incoming train, its whistle hooting in triumph.

  McGarvey slowly edged his way through the crowd along the south side of the square until he was in position about thirty yards from where the eight prisoners stood shivering in the frigid wind that funneled down the hills and across the broad river. They looked resigned. All the fight had gone out of them. Tarankov was coming, and they were being held captive not only by their armed guards, but by the tens of thousands of people surrounding them, and by their own fear. Nizhny Novgorod had become a model for free enterprise over the past half-dozen years, and within the next half hour or less they were going to pay the price for their successes with their lives, and they knew it.

  A broad section of the loading platform about fifty yards west of the terminal had been cleared of people, and McGarvey realized that he’d suspected all along. Tarankov had his front men here. The demonstration was too well organized, the boulevard had been kept clear for too long, and now the loading platform free of people, bespoke good planning. Yet if Tarankov’s people were here they were well blended with the crowd, because McGarvey was unable to spot them, or any unified or directed effort.

  The armored train came around the last curve before the depot, and sparks began to shoot off its wheels as it slowed down, its rate of deceleration nothing short of phenomenal, the roaring, squealing noise awesome.

  Even before it came to a complete halt, big doors in the sides of some of the armored cars swung open, hinged ramps dropped down in unison with a mind numbing crash and a dozen armored personal carriers shot off the train, their half-tracks squealing in protest as their treads bit into the brick surface of the loading platform.

  Within ten seconds the APCs had taken up defensive positions around the depot and the square, leaving a path from the rear car of the train to the prisoners who stood frozen to their places by the sheer spectacle of Tarankov’s arrival. Two hundred well-armed troops, dressed in plain battle fatigues, scrambled out of the troop carriers, and moments later a collective sigh spread across the crowd.

  A man of moderate height and build, also dressed in battle fatigues, appeared on the rear platform of the last car. He paused a moment, then raised his right fist in the air.

  “COMRADES, MY NAME IS YEVGENNI TARANKOV, AND I HAVE COME TODAY TO OFFER MY HAND IN FRIENDSHIP AND HELP.” His amplified voice boomed across the crowds from powerful speakers mounted on the train, and on each of the APCs.

  The people went wild, screaming his name, raising their right fists in salute, waving banners and posters with his picture. Old women and men, tears streaming down their cheeks, pressed forward, calling his name, begging for him to see them, to hear their pleas. It reminded McGarvey of a revival tent meeting his sister had taken him to when he was a boy in Kansas. He half expected to see people on crutches and in wheelchairs making their way to Tarankov’s side so that he could heal them with his touch. In effect that’s what they were asking him to do here today. Heal the nation with his touch. Right the wrongs they’d endured for so many difficult years.

  Tarankov was joined by a dark haired woman and a tall man, both dressed in plain battle fatigues. The three of them stepped down from the train, and headed through the ranks of APCs and commandoes into the square.

  “OUR COUNTRY IS FALLING INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DESPAIR. OUR FORESTS ARE DYING. OUR GREAT VOLGA AND LAKES HAVE BECOME CESSPOOLS OF WASTE. THE AIR OVER THIS GREAT CITY OF GORKI IS UNFIT TO BREATHE. THE ONLY FOOD WORTH EATING FILLS THE BELLIES OF THE AP-PRARATCHIKS AND FOREIGNERS HERE AND IN MOSCOW. OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING AND OUR WOMEN ARE CRYING OUT FOR HELP, BUT NO ONE IN MOSCOW CAN HEAR THEM. NO ONE IN MOSCOW WANTS TO HEAR THEM.”

  A silence descended over the people, as Tarankov strode into the square, his amplified voice continuing to roll over them.

  “OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BANKRUPT. OUR MILITARY HAS BECOME LEADERLESS AND USELESS. HOOLIGANS AND PROFITEERS EAT INTO US LIKE A CANCER GONE WILD. AIDS AND DRUGS AND MINDLESS MUSIC ROT THE BRAINS OF OUR CHILDREN.”

  As Tarankov and his group approached the prisoners, McGarvey worked his way closer to the edge of the crowd so he could get a better look. The Tarantula was not a very imposing figure. He could have passed as any ordinary Russian on the street, or in a factory, except that his fatigues were well pressed, his boots well shined, and his face alive with intelligence and emotion. It was obvious, even at a distance, that Tarankov was no charlatan revival preacher. He was a man who truly believed that he had the answers for his people, and that he was the one to lead them out of what he was calling a cesspool of hopelessness imposed on them by the western powers.

  “MOSCOW … HOW MANY STRAINS ARE FUSING IN THAT ONE SOUND, FOR RUSSIAN HEARTS?”

  A cheer went up from the crowd.

  “WHAT STORE OF RICHES IT IMPARTS! I WILL GIVE YOU MOSCOW! I WILL GIVE YOU RUSSIA!”

  The crowd roared its approval, chanting his name over and over.

  “I WILL RETURN YOUR PRIDE, YOUR HOPE, YOUR DIGNITY! I WILL RETURN THE SOVIET UNION TO YOU!”

  Again the crowd cheered wildly. They held up his picture and posters with his name or the tarantula symbol, and chanted his name.

  The attractive woman beside him was his East German wife Liesel. Rencke had come up with one photograph of her taken while she was at Moscow University. She had held her good looks, and her figure was still slight. She was beaming at her husband with such a look of open admiration and adoration that whoever loved Tarankov, had to love her.

  “IT IS BETTER TO LOSE A RIVER OF BLOOD NOW THAN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LATER, EVEN IF IT IS RUSSIAN BLOOD,” Tarankov shouted. He stopped a few yards in front of the prisoners, unbuttoned the flap of his holster and pulled out his Makarov pistol.

  “WE WILL ONLY SPILL THE BLOOD OF TRAITORS.” His voice boomed across the square.

  He was wearing a lapel mike, whi
ch broadcast his voice back to a central amplifier probably aboard the train, which in turn sent it out to the loudspeakers. It was a clever bit of stagecraft.

  “LOOK AROUND AND YOU WILL SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO YOU. IT IS TIME FOR A CLEAN SWEEP BEFORE WE ALL CHOKE ON THE FILTH.”

  The man beside Tarankov stood a full head taller than his boss, and unlike Liesel he wasn’t looking at Tarankov with adoration. Instead his eyes continually swept the crowd. It was obvious that he was a professional who had no illusions about Tarankov’s safety. No one was immune from assassination, and he knew it.

  His gaze landed on McGarvey and remained for a moment. McGarvey raised his right fist in salute, and shouted Tarankov’s name with the chanting crowd, and the man’s eyes moved away.

  McGarvey had no doubt that he was Leonid Chernov. And in the brief moment that Tarankov’s right hand man had looked at him, McGarvey had the uneasy sensation that an old enemy of his had come back from the pauper’s grave in Portugal. His name was Arkady Kurshin, and he’d been General Baranov’s right hand man a number of years ago. Because of Kurshin, McGarvey had lost a kidney, and had nearly lost his life. No man before or since had been as dangerous an enemy. But at this moment, McGarvey thought he’d just looked into the eyes of Kurshin’s equal, and a slight shiver played up his spine, a little tingle reached up from his gut chilling him like a fetid breeze coming from an open grave.

  “WHEN OUR STRUGGLE IS OVER, I PROMISE THAT I WILL RAISE A BRONZE STATUE WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS IN DZERZHINSKY SQUARE OF A YOUNG RUSSIAN SOLDIER, HIS RIFLE RAISED OVER HIS HEAD, AND HIS FACE TURNED UP TO HEAVEN IN HOPE.”

  McGarvey moved a few yards away, and a little deeper into the mob. When he caught a glimpse of Chernov again the man was looking directly at the spot where McGarvey had been standing. Chernov suspected something. But he didn’t know yet, he couldn’t know.

  “TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE,” Tarankov shouted. “ALL OF YOU.” He raised his pistol and shot one of the prisoners in the forehead, driving the older man dressed in a business suit backward, his head bouncing off the pavement, blood splashing behind him.