Assassin

by David Hagberg

  “That, Mr. President, might prove to be more difficult than capturing or killing Tarankov, who after all is nothing more than a soldier. But Kirk McGarvey is a very special man who has already done our country a great deal of harm.”

  “I’m not familiar with the name. He’s an American. What, mafia?”

  “He’s a former CIA officer who killed General Baranov some years ago, which subsequently threw the entire KGB into a disarray that took us years to overcome.”

  “We can arrest Yemlin, and force him to tell us how to find McGarvey. Or, Yemlin can call him off.”

  “That won’t work either, Mr. President. If you read the summary on the Helsinki meeting you’ll see that McGarvey has not only agreed to do the job for one million dollars—money that has apparently already been transferred to an account in the British Channel Islands—but he’ll make no further contact.”

  “Paris is not that big a city—”

  “McGarvey is already here in Moscow,” Yuryn cut in impatiently. “It’s even possible that he was in Nizhny Novgorod to witness the latest spectacle.”

  “Then he’s tried and failed?”

  “He probably came here to work out his plans. I think he’s waiting for something, for the right moment.”

  “Do we have a photograph of him?”

  “Da.”

  “Then with the help of the Militia, you will find him.”

  “We can try that. But if we don’t succeed, and McGarvey finds out, then he’ll be all the more difficult to kill. In any event he’s probably here under an assumed identity, and very likely in disguise. He knows what he’s doing, and his Russian is said to be nearly perfect.”

  “Is he working for the CIA? You said he was a former officer, but have they rehired him to do this thing?”

  “I don’t think so,” Yuryn said. “Which does give us an advantage, if you want to take it.”

  “I’m listening,” Kabatov said, his insides seething.

  “We’ll form a special task force to find and destroy this American before he gets a chance to assassinate Tarankov. The Americans want our reform movement to succeed as much as we do. So you might think about asking President Lindsay for help. Between us, the CIA, and possibly the French on whose soil McGarvey apparently now resides, we will catch him. Even a man such as McGarvey cannot outwit the combined forces of the police and intelligence services of three countries. In the meantime we’ll keep this from the public to avoid any panic or possible backlash.”

  “We’ll also maintain our efforts to capture Tarankov. Once we have him in custody, McGarvey will become a moot point.”

  “Agreed, Mr. President. For the moment it will be a race against us and him.”

  “Will you head this special commission?”

  “No,” Yuryn said.

  “Who then?”

  “When I was head of the old KGB’s First Directorate a man named Yuri Bykov worked for me. When the Komityet was split apart he left Moscow.”

  “Is he good?”

  “He’s the best.”

  “Where is he now?” Kabatov asked.

  “In the East. Krasnoyarsk, I think. I’ll get word to him to come immediately.”

  “Will you arrest Yemlin?”

  “Not yet, Mr. President. There is an outside chance that McGarvey might contact him. If that should happen we’ll be ready.”

  “As you wish. Get Bykov here as quickly as possible. This situation must be resolved.”

  At 5:00 P.M. that afternoon, Kabatov placed a call to President Lindsay who was just about to receive his 9:00 A.M. CIA briefing from Roland Murphy, a fact of which he was not aware. Nor was he aware that Lindsay immediately switched the call to his speaker phone. So far as Kabatov knew he was seated alone in his office in the Kremlin, speaking to the American President who was alone in his Oval Office.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” Kabatov said. “I trust your day is beginning well?” Kabatov’s English was passable, so translators were not necessary.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. President,” Lindsay said. “My morning is busy. We’ll be leaving for Moscow in a few hours. Is this why you called?”

  “No, the State funeral will be conducted on schedule tomorrow, and were our meeting to be under any other circumstances I would welcome the opportunity to finally meet you.”

  “May I again offer my condolences, and those of the United States.”

  “Thank you, that is very kind.” Kabatov hesitated. Lindsay was not a devious man. He seemed to have no hidden agenda as did so many American presidents before. But it was possible that McGarvey was working for the CIA after all, in which case Kabatov was about to make a fool of himself. Nonetheless there was no other choice. “Another matter has developed, Mr. President, for which I would like to ask your help.”

  “I’ll certainly do what I can, Mr. President. But if you’re speaking about the internal affair we discussed earlier, I don’t know if there is much of a substantive nature that I can do for you.”

  “This morning I was given a report by the director of our internal intelligence service that a plot to assassinate Yevgenni Tarankov seems to be developing. The assassin may be an American citizen—as a matter of fact a former Central Intelligence Agency officer by the name of Kirk McGarvey. And, Mr. President, I stress former CIA officer.”

  “I see,” President Lindsay said after a moment. “I assume that you would not have made this call if you believed this information was anything less than certain.”

  “That is correct. I am forming a special commission to hunt down this man and stop him. Tarankov will be arrested and brought to trial, it is the only option open to me that makes any democratic sense. I’m sure you can understand the difficulties we are facing.”

  “Yes, I do,” Lindsay said. “How may I help?”

  “It may be possible that McGarvey is already here in Moscow. On the chance that information is incorrect, or that he has returned to France, or the United States, I would like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to locate and detain him. I intend asking President Chirac for his help as well.”

  “That may present us with a problem,” Lindsay said, and Kabatov got the distinct impression that the man was holding something back.

  “Yes?”

  “If Mr. McGarvey has broken no U.S. law there’s actually very little that I can do. I’m sure that President Chirac will tell you the same thing.”

  “I’m simply asking for enough time that my police can take Tarankov into custody.”

  “How much time?”

  “Certainly before the June elections. Less than eleven weeks.”

  Again Lindsay didn’t respond immediately, and Kabatov got the impression that the President might have someone with him after all, an adviser.

  “Mr. President, I’ll do whatever is possible,” Lindsay said. “I sincerely understand the problems you’re faced with, and I give you my assurances that if Mr. McGarvey returns to the United States he will be detained and questioned.”

  “I can ask for nothing more, Mr. President,” Kabatov said.

  “Will you send me a report on what you have?”

  “Immediately,” Kabatov said.

  “Then, good luck, Mr. President,” Lindsay said.

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. President.”

  TWO

  APRIL

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Moscow

  A few minutes before six Monday afternoon Leonid Chernov stepped out of an automobile in front of the Kremlin’s old Senate Building, and thanked the militia driver. He’d changed his appearance over the weekend. Now his hair was short cropped and dyed gray, his eyes made deep blue by contact lenses, and he held himself in a slouch. His civilian suit fit him reasonably well, but was obviously not expensive.

  His documents identified him as Yuri V. Bykov, a former chief investigator with the KGB’s First Directorate Counterintelligence service. His rank had been lieutenant colonel. After twenty years
of service he’d retired on a meager pension to Krasnoyarsk where he taught police science at a technical institute specializing in training private bodyguards and security service officers. The fiction would stand up to scrutiny because Tarankov’s people owned the institute.

  The news that Viktor Yemlin and his pro-reformers had hired an assassin to kill Tarankov sometime between now and the general elections in June, had come as a surprise only because Chernov didn’t think they had the courage of their convictions. If the assassin tried and failed, they would be executed as traitors. And even if the assassin were successful, Yemlin and the others would still stand trial as traitors because Tarankov’s name would soon be placed on the presidential ballot. However, the news that an independent commission was being formed to find and stop the assassin, with Chernov under the Bykov alias heading it, had been completely unexpected. What were they in Kabatov’s government, he wondered, complete fools? They wanted to save Tarankov’s life so that he could be arrested, tried and convicted for treason, and then executed. Why not stand back and let the assassin do their dirty work for them? The plot could be laid directly on the doorstep of the American government, and Kabatov would emerge the victor. The idiot was shooting himself in his own foot.

  Chernov showed his pass to the guards at the desk inside the main entry hall, was searched, and finally directed to a bank of elevators across from a statue of Lenin lit from above by a glass and chromium steel dome. The government headquarters was busy today. In a couple of weeks the Duma would be in session, and staffs were arriving in Moscow to get ready for the legislative sessions. Russians loved politics, a fact that Chernov had not been completely aware of until he’d joined Tarankov, and of necessity became something of an expert. Riding up in the elevator he got the distinct impression that the old Senate Building was like a beehive that was being disturbed by forces outside of the legislature’s control. Everyone in Kabatov’s government, and in the Communist Party, were buzzing around in all directions with little or no sense of purpose. No one was at the controls. The queen bee was dead or dormant. The workers and the drones were left in a blank frenzy.

  In a sense, Chernov thought, his being here was a bit of poetic irony. Who better to catch an assassin, than another assassin? In his days with the KGB’s Department Viktor, he’d been among the best, because he was as brilliant as he was methodical, and his half-brother Arkady Kurshin had been his teacher. Besides being a weapons expert, he’d devoted much of his studies to human psychology. But unlike Tarankov’s wife whose specialty was crowds, his was the psychology of the individual, especially the individual under stress. Arkady, before his death, had told him that being a hunter of men was much the same as being a hunter of wild animals. In order to be a success, the assassin had to understand his prey and his prey’s habitat.

  During the coal strikes in the eighties, Chernov had been assigned to kill three of the union’s leaders. Before he’d set out for the far east, he’d immersed himself in studies of the mines and the men who worked them. He’d also studied the trade labor movement in Russia as it compared to Communism and to the trade union movement around the world. By the time he was ready he knew that above everything else these men were proud of their physical strength, and ability to endure danger. They were men for whom any sort of a challenge was irresistible.

  Chernov got a job in the coal mines, where he quickly came to the attention of the union because of his outspoken criticism of what they were trying to do. The union leaders were crooks. They were skimming the union fund, and didn’t care about the miners. They were only interested in politics to advance their own careers.

  He didn’t have to assassinate them. One by one they confronted him face to face, and in three no holds barred fights, in which hundreds of miners watched, he killed them with his bare hands. He was a hero of sorts. Afterwards his death was faked in a mine accident, and he returned to Moscow, promoted to major for a job well done. Not only had the back of the strike been broken, but Moscow was able to blame the miners’ troubles on their own leadership. Chernov’s action set the union movement in Siberia back by ten years.

  After his brother was killed in Portugal, and the Soviet Union under Gorbachev began to fall apart, Chernov quit the KGB, and dropped out of sight. For a few years he worked as a contract killer for a number of Mafia groups, until he began hearing about Yevgenni Tarankov. Within a year he was working for the Tarantula, and six months later he was Tarankov’s chief of staff, a job he was beginning to feel could only last a few months longer no matter the outcome of the assassination plot, or the election. Russia would continue to sink into chaos no matter what Tarankov did. The real fight, Chernov thought, was gaining momentum in the West.

  He had to show his documents and submit to another search when he got off the elevator on the fourth floor. An aide brought him down the broad corridor and into an anteroom outside the president’s office, where General Yuryn was waiting with Militia Director Captain-General Mazayev.

  “Yuri Vasilevich, I’m glad you’re here at last. We were just talking about you,” Yuryn said. “Now we can get down to work.”

  “I was surprised to get your call, Comrade General,” Chernov said, shaking hands. “I didn’t know if you had remembered me.”

  “If half of what Nikolai says about you is true, you would be a man hard to forget,” General Mazayev broke in.

  “I’m truly flattered, sir,” Chernov said, shaking hands with Mazayev. “But it has been a long time since I worked for the KGB.”

  “Not so long that you’ve forgotten your duty to your country,” Mazayev said sharply. “But I’m not familiar with the Bykov name. Was your father in the military?”

  “He was killed in Hungary, Comrade General. But you would not know his name because he was only a tank commander.”

  “Credentials enough for me,” Mazayev said. “Let’s not keep the president waiting.” He turned on his heel and went into Kabatov’s office.

  Yuryn held back. “You should have been in Moscow this morning. There is something that you need to know.”

  “I was delayed, Comrade General. Nothing I could do about it.” Chernov tried to gauge Yuryn’s mood, but the FSK director’s pudgy face was devoid of anything but a slight irritation. “Is it important?”

  “Very. But you’re going to have to watch yourself now. No matter what you learn in the next few minutes, you must maintain your Bykov identity. Do you understand?”

  Chernov shrugged. “Nothing surprises me anymore, Comrade General. Not even you.”

  Yuryn went into the office and Chernov followed him inside. President Kabatov was seated behind his desk, General Mazayev and another man Chernov immediately recognized as Yeltsin’s former chief of security, General Korzhakov, were seated across from him.

  “Mr. President, this is Yuri Bykov, the investigator I told you about,” Yuryn said.

  Chernov crossed to the desk and shook Kabatov’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. May I wish you good luck in the June elections?”

  “Thank you,” Kabatov said, a little expression of pleasure crossing his features. “Do you know my chief of security, General Korzhakov?”

  “No, sir,” Chernov said.

  The general looked at him with barely disguised contempt. But he shook hands. “Do you know why you’ve been summoned here, Bykov?”

  “To catch an assassin who is coming to kill Yevgenni Tarankov,” Chernov replied matter-of-factly. He and Yuryn sat down.

  “Do you think you can do it?”

  Chernov shrugged. “That depends on what we know about this assassin and his plot, who hired him, and what kind of support I’ll get, Comrade General. But there can be no guarantees, though I think killing the Tarantula might be more difficult than this assassin might believe.”

  “Be that as it may, your job will be to catch him before he has the opportunity to try,” Korzhakov said, his grave voice harsh. “As for your support, you’ll have anything or anybody you ne
ed. An office has been set up for you at Lefortovo Prison. It’s out of the public’s eye, which for now will be one of your guiding principles.”

  “The Militia will not conduct an all out manhunt,” General Mazayev put in. He glanced at Kabatov. “It is felt that by so openly going after this assassin, it would make it seem as if we are supporting Tarankov, when in fact the opposite is true.”

  “Mr. President, may I be frank?” Chernov asked, turning to Kabatov.

  “Of course.”

  “General Tarankov is no friend of this government. In fact if what I read in the newspapers and see on television is true, he means to restore the Soviet Union to the old ways. Why not let this assassin slip through our fingers and do his best? Maybe we should help him.”

  Kabatov started shaking his head even before Chernov finished. “If we’re to remain a nation of laws this sort of thing cannot be allow to happen.”

  Chernov almost laughed out loud. The man was a bigger fool than Yeltsin had been. “Tarankov is a murderer.”

  “For which he will be arrested, and tried in a court of law,” Kabatov said vehemently, his face red. “Presidents Lindsay and Chirac have both promised me their fullest support in finding the assassin. So if you agree to direct the investigation you’ll have the unprecedented cooperation of the CIA, the FBI and the SDECE.”

  Chernov decided that he could be surprised after all. “The assassin is a westerner?”

  “He’s an American living in France,” Kabatov said.

  “In fact he’s a former CIA officer,” Yuryn added a little too quickly. Kabatov and the others shot him a dirty look.

  “Before we get into all of that, will you take the job, Comrade Bykov?” the president asked. “Will you find and stop the assassin?”

  “Da,” Chernov said, masking his momentary confusion. Yuryn had tried to warn him about something and now he was trying to send a signal. “Who is this American, Mr. President?”

  Kabatov handed him Yuryn’s report. “His name is Kirk McGarvey, a name you may be familiar with from your days in the KGB. He’s done the Rodina a great deal of harm during his career.”