Assassin

by David Hagberg

  “No.”

  “That’s not like him.”

  “When we parted we had some angry words. I told him that I would either have all of him, or I wanted nothing.”

  “With my father that was a mistake, if you loved him.”

  “I don’t need some twenty-year-old giving advice to the lovelorn, even if she is a McGarvey,” Dominique flared. “You’ve apparently inherited his manipulative trait as well.”

  “I didn’t come here to be your friend,” Elizabeth said harshly. “Although that would have been nice. How can I reach my father?”

  “What has he done?”

  “I can’t tell you that, except to say that it’s vitally important that I see him.”

  “Is it the Russians?” Dominique demanded. “Has Viktor Yemlin popped up looking for his quid pro quo?”

  “What are you talking about?” Elizabeth asked sharply, trying to hide her surprise.

  “If you’re going to play in your father’s league, you’d better do your homework first. Yemlin is an old adversary who helped your father out last year. One thing I learned about the business is that nobody does anything for nothing. Your father expected he would show up sooner or later.”

  “I can’t answer that,” Elizabeth said.

  Dominique started to say something, but Elizabeth overrode her.

  “It may sound melodramatic, but the less you know the better off you’ll be. Now I’ll ask you once again, how can I reach my father.”

  Dominique turned away. “I don’t know,” she said. “At least not directly. But he did mention the names of two men he trusted with his life. One of them was Phil Carrara, who was killed. And the other was Otto Rencke, apparently some computer expert who’s a black sheep. There was something about Twinkies, but I don’t remember all the details.”

  “Is he here in Washington?”

  “He was. But he’s in France now. Not in Paris but somewhere nearby.”

  “Did my father give you his phone number, or e-mail address? Anything like that?”

  “No,” Dominique said. “But apparently Rencke worked for the CIA once upon a time. He’s supposed to be a genius whom everybody is afraid of. But if anybody would know how to get in touch with your father it would either be Rencke, or Yemlin. Beyond that I don’t know anything, because if one of them had come to me trying to find your father I would have given them your name. Your father told me that there was only one woman in his life who he loved unreservedly, and who loved him the same way. It was you.”

  “A father-daughter prerogative,” Elizabeth mumbled, masking her sudden emotion.

  “He’s a more complicated man than I thought, isn’t he,” Dominique said desolately.

  “You can’t imagine,” Elizabeth replied.

  NINETEEN

  Moscow

  The overnight train back to Moscow was just as crowded as the train out, but if anything the passengers were in even higher spirits than before. They’d seen Tarankov’s magic with their own eyes. The blood of the revolution had been spilled in Nizhny Novgorod just as it had in other cities. Their only disappointment was that they’d come away without the money they’d expected. Tarankov’s troops never left the vicinity of the railway station, and had not robbed any banks for the people.

  “Ah well, maybe it was just a lie,” an old man said philosophically. “But killing those bastards was real.”

  “Wait until he returns to Moscow, then those bastards in the Kremlin will see what a real man is like,” another one voiced the generally held opinion. “Then the trains will run on time again, and we’ll have food that we can afford back in the shops.”

  McGarvey had gotten aboard early enough to find a spot in the corner where he curled up, a half-empty bottle of vodka between his knees, as he pretended to sleep, the conversations swirling around him. At one point someone eased the vodka bottle from his loose grip, and then he dozed until they pulled into Yaroslavl Station around 6:30 of a dark gray morning.

  After the grueling night the passengers who got off the train were still drunk or hung over, their excitement dissipated, and they wandered away heads hung low, quietly as if they’d just returned from a funeral and not a revolution.

  McGarvey found a toilet stall in the nearly deserted arrivals and departures hall, where he changed back into his civilian clothes, stuffing the filthy uniform into the carryall with the last of the greasy sausage and bread.

  Someone came into the restroom and used the urinal trough.

  McGarvey waited until he was gone, then emerged from the stall leaving the carryall behind as if he’d forgotten it, and out front caught a cab for the Metropol.

  The trip to Nizhny Novgorod had made a number of things clear to McGarvey, among them that Tarankov’s security was extremely effective. His armored train was a well armed fortress that even a half-dozen attack helicopters had been unable to stop. And once he arrived in the city, his commandoes had set up a defensive perimeter that would have taken a considerable force to penetrate. A lot of civilians, which were Tarankov’s major line of defense, would have been killed in the battle, something at this point that the Kremlin could not afford to do.

  Whatever lingering doubts McGarvey might have had about Tarankov’s time table had also gone out the window in Nizhny Novgorod. On May Day Tarankov’s train would roar into Moscow, and he would swoop into Red Square at the head of his column of commandoes with more than a million people screaming his name. It was the one day of the year that no Russian could resist celebrating. Whatever forces the Kremlin would be able to muster, if any, by that late date, would not be sufficient to stop him.

  In May Tarankov would ascend to the same throne that Stalin had held unless he were killed.

  Despite yesterday’s events, which nearly everyone in Moscow must have heard about in news reports or by word of mouth, nothing outwardly had changed. Although seeing the city through new eyes, McGarvey felt an underlying tension even in the traffic and in the way the cabby drove. Moscow was holding its collective breath for the elections in less than three months. It was as if Russians were resigned to another great upheaval.

  The cabby dropped him off at his hotel around 8:00 A.M., and he went straight upstairs to his room where Artur the bellman intercepted him as he got off the elevator.

  “You look like hell. You must have had a good time.”

  “Not bad,” McGarvey mumbled pulling out his key.

  Artur snatched it from him, preceded him down the corridor and unlocked his door with a flourish. “The floor maid was worried. She wanted to report you downstairs, but I told her to mind her own fucking business. You want a hair of the dog. I got some good Belgian brandy for you.”

  “No thanks,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to Helsinki tonight. My train leaves from Leningrad station a little after six. But right now I want some sleep, and I don’t want to be disturbed until three. Then I’ll want a bottle of white wine, and something to eat. At 4:30 I want a cab driver by the name of Arkady Astimovich to pick me up. He works for Martex. Do you know him?”

  “He’s a shit asshole, but I know him.”

  McGarvey pulled out a fifty-franc note. “I want Arkady here by 4:30.”

  Artur grabbed the money. “Anything you say. But just watch your back with that one. He’s in the Mafia’s pocket.”

  His room had been searched, but nothing was missing, nor did it appear that his laptop computer had been tampered with. After a shower he went to bed, but sleep was a long time coming. He knew the approximate when of the kill, as well as the where. Thinking about the cab driver Arkady, the Mafia entrepreneur Vasha, and the bellman Artur he had a glimmering of the how not only of the kill, but most importantly of his escape. He slept, finally, dreaming that he was climbing through the scaffolding inside the main dome of St. Basil’s while Tarankov’s right hand man Leonid Chernov was in the crowd of a million people in Red Square looking up at him.

  CIA Headquarters

  It was past 9:00 P.M. in Wash
ington when Elizabeth brought up a photograph of a good-looking woman on her computer screen. She had been assigned a cubicle in DO territory on the fourth floor, and a computer terminal with a designator that allowed her access to a broad range of files in the CIA’s vast database. She’d reported to a somewhat disinterested Tom Moore that she was making some progress, but that it might take longer than she thought to find her father. Background noise, her father called it. Like soft music to lull someone asleep while you did the real work.

  This afternoon she had the Company’s travel section book her an evening flight for the next day to Paris under her Elizabeth Swanson identity. It gave her another twenty-four hours plus to finish up here in Washington. Meanwhile, on the way back to her apartment, she stopped at a pay phone and telephoned a travel agency booking a late shuttle flight to New York’s Kennedy Airport, where she would stay at the Airport Hilton, and take the Air France Concorde to Paris under her own name, but using her mother’s credit card. The simple subterfuge would give her an evening and a full day in Paris before she was missed. Hopefully it would be enough time to find her father.

  She packed a bag which she locked in her trunk, and came back out to Langley. No one at the gate or upstairs in Operations thought anything of it. She was McGarvey’s kid on a special assignment for Ryan. She had a lot to prove so she was doing her homework after school.

  Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph and brief file, marked confidential, were in the French section of identified SDECE agents. She was forty, born in Nice, educated at the Sorbonne in languages and modern political history, and was recruited by the SDECE ten years ago. She’d started her career in the secret service just as Elizabeth had, as a translator. She’d spent two years working from the French delegation at the United Nations in New York. No mention was made of her specific assignment, but she was recalled to France after her lover, who worked for the Canadian delegation, committed suicide by flinging himself into the East River one early winter evening. The young man was a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister, who was pragmatic enough to understand that such things happen. Nevertheless everyone seemed to agree that it would be for the best if Mademoiselle Belleau returned to her side of the Atlantic without delay. Her continued presence was deemed too embarrassing for the Canadians.

  The photograph was an official one, possibly her UN identification picture, and she looked stern. Nevertheless in Elizabeth’s estimation she was beautiful. Just the kind of woman her father was attracted to.

  Elizabeth smiled sadly. Her mother, Dominique Kilbourne, and this French woman could have been cut from the same cloth. Slender, narrow pretty faces, high cheekbones, expressive eyes. They all had a sensuousness to them that reminded Elizabeth of the photographs she’d seen of her grandmother, who’d been a beauty in her day. It gave Elizabeth another understanding of her father, and her heart ached a little for what could have been. Most of her life she’d dreamed that someday her mother and father would somehow get back together. Even now, she found she wished for such an impossible reunion. “Too much water under the bridge,” her father would say. She could hear his voice.

  The file gave Mademoiselle Belleau’s address on the Avenue Felix Faure in the 15th Arrondissement, on the opposite side of Paris from her father’s apartment off the Rue La Fayette in the 19th.

  Elizabeth thought about taking a printout with her, but decided against it. In the unlikely event that French customs searched her bags, it wouldn’t go for her to be carrying the dossier of a French secret intelligence officer. Too many questions would be asked, especially by Ryan and Moore. Specifically, why hadn’t she been traveling under her Elizabeth Swanson identity.

  She canceled the file, backed out of the program, then shut down her terminal, and sat back in her chair. Her eyes burned from a lack of sleep and from staring at computer screens. Although she went out on dates she’d avoided becoming involved with anyone specific. A mistake? she wondered. Speaking to Dominique Kilbourne and seeing Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph brought her a sharp image of her father being caressed by them. She wished she had someone to caress. Someone she could share her inner fears with. Someone to love. Someone in her bed.

  Elizabeth shut off the lights and went downstairs to the nearly deserted cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a smoke. Toivich was seated alone in a corner reading a newspaper. Elizabeth brought her coffee over to him.

  “Mind some company, Mr. B?” she asked.

  Toivich looked up. “My little devochka, it’s late.”

  Elizabeth sat down across the table from him. “I wanted to apologize for not taking the time to let you know that I was transferred to Operations.”

  “I was told. But I don’t think Mr. Ryan would approve of you sneaking back down to your old console for a little night work.”

  “I have my own terminal in DO now.”

  Toivich clucked. “I’m not talking about tonight. You know what I mean. But I can’t blame you. A daughter has the right to know about her father, especially when she’s been assigned to find him.”

  Elizabeth looked sharply at him. “What have you heard?”

  “Enough to know that you should take great care that you don’t try to be a wild west cowboy like your father.”

  Elizabeth started to protest, but Toivich held her off.

  “Your father was the very best. Still is, I suspect. If he’s gone to ground for some reason there will be a great many people interested in him, and therefore you. Some of them very bad people you’ve not been trained to deal with.” Toivich looked into her eyes. “Genetics is important, but so is education and experience. And luck.”

  “Why does Howard Ryan hate my father so badly?”

  “Mr. Ryan is the quintessential corporate man. Your father on the other hand is a maverick. Each time he pulls off one of his coups, it makes Mr. Ryan look like the fool he is.”

  “He’s jealous of my father, is that it?”

  Toivich shrugged. “That and a little fear, perhaps. Ryan wants to become DCI, and he has an excellent chance of taking over when the general steps down. And maybe Ryan would be the right man for the job. It would keep Congress off our backs because Ryan is also the consummate politician. But so long as your father continues to do what he does best, he’s a thorn in Ryan’s side. He’s become Mr. Ryan’s cause célèbre.”

  “I see.”

  “By sending you he means to flush your father out of hiding, which will happen because your father will drop everything to protect you from harm’s way.”

  “But I’m not in any danger. My father is.”

  “That’s just the point, Elizabeth, you probably are in grave danger. Especially if you start playing by your own rules. If you cut your support system before you reach your father, nobody might get to you in time if you get into trouble.”

  Elizabeth said nothing. She’d not lost her determination to find her father and warn him, but she was frightened now.

  “Think about it.”

  “Am I being followed, Mr. B?”

  Toivich shrugged again. “Probably.”

  “What if I don’t want to be followed?”

  “If you don’t do anything that you’re not supposed to do, it won’t matter.”

  “I need to get to Dulles by eleven, and I don’t want anybody to know about it.”

  “You just told me.”

  Elizabeth flashed him a smile.

  Toivich shook his head. “Where are you parked?”

  “Out back in D.”

  “They’ll be waiting at that door. I was just about to leave. We’ll go out the front and I’ll drive you around to your car. But it won’t take them long to figure that out, so you won’t have much of a head start.”

  “It’s all I need. Thanks, Mr. B.”

  Moscow

  “How did it go?” Arkady Astimovich asked on the way over to the Leningrad Station.

  “I think I’m going to be a rich man,” McGarvey replied. He sat in the front seat with the cabby. “But I’
m going to need some help.”

  “I told you that I’ve got some goddamned good connections in this city.”

  “The Mafia?”

  Astimovich glanced over at him, and nodded warily. “You gotta deal with them if you want to survive in this town. It’ll be expensive, but damned well worth it.”

  “How much are you paying?”

  “Plenty,” the cabby said. He laughed. “Everybody pays. My brother-in-law is a big deal son of a bitch at the Grand Dinamo, and still I pay.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that. But when the time comes I don’t want to deal with some kulak.”

  “My brother-in-law knows what he’s doing,” Astimovich said. “What kind of business are we going into, boss?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get back.”

  “When’s that?”

  “A few weeks. Maybe a little longer, maybe a little sooner.”

  “What do you want me to do in the meantime?”

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  They pulled up in front of the busy Leningrad Station, traffic heavy as usual. The snow had finally stopped but the temperature had plunged. Everything looked dirty.

  “Three weeks is a long time,” Astimovich said sullenly. “How do I know you’re coming back?”

  “Because we’re going to make some money,” McGarvey said. He peeled a thousand francs from a thick bundle of bills and handed it to the cabby. “Let’s call this a down payment, shall we?”

  “Spasiba,” the cabby said, pocketing the money.

  “Do as I say and you’ll be a rich man. Cross me and I’ll kill you. I’ve got connections now in this town too.”

  “Okay, boss. You’ll see everything will be hunky-dory.”

  McGarvey got his bag from the back seat of the cab and disappeared with the crowds inside the railway station. He waited by the front doors for a few minutes to make sure that Astimovich wouldn’t try to follow him, then went to the stand-up restaurant and had a glass of beer and a meat pie. In three days he had learned what he needed to know about Tarankov and conditions in Russia. He felt that his odds had greatly improved from the thousand-to-one he’d told Yemlin. But there was still a long way to go, because he wouldn’t go through with the assassination unless he could improve his chances to at least fifty-fifty.