Assassin

by David Hagberg

  It was as if a ton of bricks had fallen on Chernov’s head, and it took everything within his power not to overreact, to hide his true feelings of absolute hatred. He opened the folder and began to read about Viktor Yemlin’s part in the plot, his trips to Tbilisi, then Paris and finally Helsinki where he met with the American. Through the reading Chernov tried to concentrate on the content of the report in an effort to block out his other thoughts, those of loathing and bitterness and even fear. His brother had been one of the best operatives that the KGB’s Executive Action Department had ever fielded. Under Baranov’s direction the department had run circles around the secret intelligence services of every country in the west. Murder, kidnappings, sabotage, his brother had been the best, until McGarvey killed him in an operation gone bad in Portugal.

  Coming up in his brother’s footsteps, Chernov had often dreamed of revenge. But his brother had once told him that revenge was only for fools. The best operative was the man who could commit murder dispassionately, without remorse, without regret, and totally without emotion. Arkady had come up against McGarvey and lost on a number of other occasions, and Chernov had to wonder if in the end his brother hadn’t violated his own principle of dispassion in going against McGarvey one last time, and it had been his undoing.

  Aware that Kabatov and the others in the room were watching him, Chernov looked up. “The name is vaguely familiar. Do we have a file on him?”

  “Quite an extensive file,” Yuryn said. “Which will be made available to you this evening. I’ve also assigned you a communications assistant. If you want anyone else, you need only ask.”

  “Is Yemlin being watched in case McGarvey tries to contact him again?”

  “Yes,” Mazayev said. “Outside SVR Headquarters he can’t fart without my people knowing about it.”

  “Why isn’t the SVR represented here this morning? Aren’t they in on this investigation?”

  “Not for the moment,” Yuryn said. “If Yemlin has help within the agency it would do us no good to share information with them. It might get back to McGarvey.”

  “Has anyone contacted the CIA or the French?”

  “Not directly,” Yuryn said. “If you haven’t finished reading my report I suggest you do so.”

  Chernov did so, and in the next page he was struck another nearly physical blow. “McGarvey was here, in Moscow, and—” He stopped in mid-sentence. The bastard had been in the crowd at Nizhny Novgorod. The date matched, and there’d been that drunken soldier. Something about his eyes had bothered Chernov at the time. He hadn’t seen a photograph of McGarvey for several years, but he remembered the man’s eyes now. Penetrating, almost like cold laser beams shooting directly into a man’s skull.

  Gathering his wits, he closed the report. “McGarvey was here in Moscow and nobody did anything to catch him?”

  “A great many Muscovites went to Nizhny Novgorod last week to see Tarankov’s bloody spectacle, so it’s possible that Mr. McGarvey was there. But since nothing happened, we’re assuming he came here on a scouting trip, and has since left Russia—possibly back to France—where he is making his plans.”

  “Has McGarvey’s photograph been distributed to train stations, airports, hotels, border crossings?

  “Nyet,” Mazayev said heavily, and a look passed between him and Korzhakov.

  “What is it, Comrade Generals?” Chernov asked.

  “The fact of the matter is that Tarankov has many supporters in all walks of life,” Yuryn answered.

  “All the more reason to make McGarvey’s photograph available. You would have an army of patriots willing to help save his life.”

  “An odd word to use—patriot—Bykov,” Kabatov said.

  “They believe that they are patriots, Comrade President,” Chernov replied.

  “Are you one?”

  “No, Mr. President,” Chernov said. “But if we are to catch McGarvey, extraordinary measures will have to be taken. As you said, he has caused the Rodina a great deal of harm. It must mean he is very good at what he does.”

  “The best,” Yuryn said.

  “Then it won’t be easy. Who can I trust?”

  “Us in this room,” Korzhakov said. “If you need something, you’ll have to get it from us.”

  “To avoid any confusion, I think that I should work with only one of you.”

  “I agree,” Kabatov said. “Since it was General Yuryn who suggested you, he will be your liaison to the rest of us.”

  “Very well. Are the files I need at Lefortovo?”

  “Yes,” Yuryn said.

  “Who is this assistant of mine?”

  “Aleksi Paporov. He’s as good as they come. His English and French are flawless, he’s a computer whiz and he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

  “All that is good, Comrade General, but who does he report to?”

  “Why, you, of course,” Yuryn said.

  “Who else?”

  “No one.”

  Chernov turned to the others, his blood singing. “My methods tend to be unorthodox, comrades. But if I am allowed to do this my way, I will catch this assassin before he reaches Tarankov.”

  “Then I suggest you get started,” Kabatov said.

  “One final thing, Mr. President,” Chernov said. “I would like a letter signed by you, giving me complete authority in this investigation. My methods might seem more than unusual to some people. I don’t want any delays getting special authorizations.”

  Kabatov looked to his chief of security, who was once again staring at Chernov.

  “He has a point,” Korzhakov said.

  “I’ll have the letter sent to you at Lefortovo in the morning,” Kabatov said. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, Mr. President, other than catching this American.”

  “Then good luck,” Kabatov said, rising.

  Chernov shook hands with him. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  Mazayev and Korzhakov also wished him luck, and shook his hand, and he left the president’s office with Yuryn.

  “Do you have a car here?” Yuryn asked in the corridor.

  “No.”

  “Paporov will arrange one for you. In the meantime have you got someplace to stay?”

  “I’ll stay at Lefortovo for now,” Chernov said.

  “Good, I’ll drive you over,” Yuryn said and they went downstairs and climbed into the back of a Zil limousine.

  The meeting had lasted less than a half-hour, and the sky was finally beginning to clear up, though the sun had set and it was dark. Yuryn’s car shot out the Nikolskaya Tower gate, swept across Red Square and raced northeast toward Lefortovo Prison in Bauman suburb.

  “You handled yourself very well in there,” Yuryn said. “Do you really know how to catch this bastard? Or was that all talk?”

  Chernov felt almost dreamy. His brother had been wrong about revenge. Arkady had to have been wrong, because at this moment nothing else seemed to matter. He would find and kill McGarvey not for Tarankov’s sake, and certainly not for that fool Kabatov’s sake, but for nothing more than a sweet revenge.

  “I’ll kill him,” Chernov said softly, not caring if Yuryn heard him or not.

  Traffic was heavy, but the Zil traveled in the official lane. Traffic cops waved them on, and Chernov watched, more in love with Moscow now than the first time he’d come here from the far east, because it was here that he would settle an old score, and afterward he would leave Russia forever. Right now it was as if he were seeing an old love for the last time. He was going to make the most of it.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Moscow

  Viktor Yemlin left the SVR Headquarters building on Moscow’s ring road shortly after seven, finally ready to take action. The weekend had been horrible for him. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours. He hadn’t eaten much, he hadn’t looked at the newspapers or watched television. Most of the time he’d sat in his favorite chair in the living room of his apartment smoking Marlboros and drinking vodka, as he watched th
e sun rise and set twice.

  He hadn’t forced himself to come to any immediate conclusions about what had happened to him because he did not have all the facts. Nor did he allow his guilt to completely consume him, although at first his shame was so overwhelming he’d been in danger of sinking into deep depression. Instead he’d gone over what he’d done at the Magesterium, what had been done to him, and the reasons behind the attack—because that’s how he viewed the experience. He’d been lured to the club by Cheremukhin which in retrospect was the first troubling aspect he struggled with. The entire affair had been planned and orchestrated, possibly on Yuryn’s orders. But Cheremukhin was one of the moderates who had just as much to gain by Tarankov’s death as Kabatov and the rest of them. It was hard to imagine Cheremukhin working for the FSK, but if he wasn’t then his appearance on the steps of the Senate at just that moment, and his insistence on taking Yemlin to his club had to have been a tremendous coincidence.

  Yemlin had turned that thought over in his mind, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. Yuryn knew about his trips to Tbilisi, Paris and Helsinki, and he was suspicious. Part of that was driven by the intense inter-service rivalry between the two divisions of the old KGB. And part of it was Yuryn’s surprise and discomfort in front of Kabatov when Yemlin had come up with the plan to hide the facts behind Yeltsin’s death. Still there was no logical connection between Yuryn’s suspicions and the setup at the Magesterium.

  But the job of the FSK was internal security, which meant it not only watched the borders, the train stations and airports, but it also monitored places where high ranking Russians gathered to play. The Magesterium and all the other political clubs like it would naturally be watched. At the handful of clubs that catered to high ranking politicians, journalists and intelligence officers, security would be especially tight. As soon as Yemlin had walked in the front door whoever was controlling the FSK surveillance operation would have reported the fact, and the honey trap had been set up.

  It was cunning of them to use not only the young woman, but a young man as well. They might expect that Yemlin would have little compunction about bragging about screwing a girl, but he might keep to himself the fact that he’d had a homosexual experience. No doubt the entire affair was on videotape. And from what memories he could dredge up from his foggy recollections, he’d enjoyed the experience. At least he’d gotten pleasure from the sexual act, which was a cause of his sharp feelings of guilt.

  The worst part of the experience however was his inability to remember the details. He remembered Renee and the bath, and Valeri, the doll, who’d brought him champagne. He also remembered the feeling of warmth, and then of drifting, as if he were dreaming. He even remembered the rubdown, and the sex, but then it was fuzzy. He’d been thinking about Kirk McGarvey when he entered the club, and he was worried that in his drug-induced state he had spoken his thoughts out loud.

  It wasn’t likely that he had given anything away, or else Yuryn would have ordered his arrest. By now he’d be in the basement interrogation rooms at Dzerzhinsky Square where the entire plot would have been extracted from him. But he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he had talked, and they tried to find McGarvey but failed. Now they were waiting for him to make contact. It was something that he had to know. Because if the FSK was aware of the plot to kill Tarankov, then McGarvey would have to be stopped because he would be walking into a trap.

  “Home?” his driver asked, when Yemlin climbed into the back seat of his car.

  “Not tonight, Anatoli. You can drop me off at the Magesterium and then you’ll be free for the remainder of the evening. But you can pick me up at home in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Yeltsin’s funeral had gone off without a hitch on Friday. Although Yemlin hadn’t attended it, his people who monitored the foreign dignitaries reported that there’d been no trouble, for which he’d been heartily congratulated today at lunch by SVR director General Aykazyan. The fiction was holding. And as the general wisely pointed out, it didn’t matter if no one believed it, what mattered was that the western powers were acting as if they did.

  Nothing coming across his desk from North American operations gave so much as a hint that the exact manner of Yeltsin’s death was being questioned. Nor did any of the product coming from the half-dozen major networks they operated in the U.S. and Canada raise questions. Yet Yemlin felt that McGarvey was right. The western powers knew what had happened, but they were biding their time to see how events unfolded over the next ten weeks before the elections. Afterward a lot of things would be different in Russia, Yemlin thought, but he was no longer so confident about his predictions for the future.

  As they came into the city, he reached in his pocket and fingered the two small silver cigarette boxes that his friend Andrei Galkin in the Scientific Directorate had given him this afternoon, and he shuddered involuntarily. He had done questionable things in his long career with the KGB, things that he’d never been able to tell his wife about, things that he kept carefully hidden in a secret compartment in his mind, things that only rarely came to him in his dreams, but when they did he would awaken, his heart pounding, his bedclothes soaked in sweat. When he had finally become rezident in charge of the KGB’s Washington station, he thought that he’d finally put all that behind him. Then when he’d been recalled to Moscow and promoted he was certain that he would finish out his long career safely seated behind a desk.

  But he’d been wrong.

  Twenty minutes later his driver let him off at the Magesterium, and inside at the front desk he was effusively welcomed with a guest membership.

  “We know that you will be happy here, Viktor,” the manager, a portly dark-haired Georgian, said confidently. “If there’s anything that I can personally do to be of service, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Only first names were used in the club. The manager’s name tag read Josef.

  “Is Renee available this evening, Josef?”

  “For you Viktor, naturally.” The manager picked up a telephone, spoke a few words, and then hung up, his smile widening. “One minute, Viktor. Sixty seconds, check your watch, and you’ll be in heaven.”

  A young woman came by with a tray of champagne, and Yemlin took a bottle and two glasses. Less than a minute later Renee appeared, her face lit up in a bright smile.

  “Viktor, you came back to us. Am I ever glad. You know that Vadim said you were an okay guy.” She took a glass of champagne from him, and they went down the corridor.

  “I haven’t had such a relaxing evening for a long time, my dear. I thought I’d like to do it again.”

  “Just the same, Viktor? Are you a rascal then?”

  Yemlin forced a grin. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  They went back to one of the luxury suites, though it looked the same as last week, he couldn’t tell if it was. Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty came softly from hidden speakers, and the lights in the apartment were set low.

  Renee went into the bathroom to check the bath water, as Yemlin got undressed. He dropped his jacket on the floor beside the bed, as if by mistake, and when he bent over to fumble for it, he slipped the heavier of the two cigarette boxes out of his pocket, unlatched the clasp and slid it out of sight under the bed. The surveillance cameras and microphones within fifteen meters would no longer work.

  He laid the jacket on the bed, poured them another glass of wine and went into the bathroom where he climbed into the pleasantly hot water.

  Renee disrobed, got in with him, and began scrubbing his back. “We thought you might come back this weekend,” she said.

  “I was too busy,” Yemlin said. He sighed with pleasure. “But I’m here now. Is Valeri in the club this evening?”

  She giggled and slapped him on the back. “You are wicked. Do you want me to call him over here?”

  “Da. A rubdown would be nice.”

  Renee reached between his legs with a soapy hand, and give him a playful tug. “He doesn’t deserve the
little doll.”

  “What do you mean?” Yemlin asked innocently. His heart was starting to pound.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said sweetly. She stepped out of the tub, her black body glistening with water, and skipped into the bedroom.

  As soon as she was out of sight Yemlin got out of the tub and went to the door. Her back was to him, and she was searching his clothes as she talked on the phone, the handset cradled against her shoulder. She found the second silver box in one of his pockets, opened it, then said something into the phone and hung up.

  “Shall I inform Josef that my little Renee is a thief?” Yemlin said.

  Startled, the girl spun around so fast she nearly dropped the box. Her eyes were wide, her nipples hard. “You almost made me drop it!”

  “Did you find anything of interest?” Yemlin asked. He sipped his wine. “Are you a little spy?”

  “Just curious, Viktor,” she said, a mischievous look on her pixie face. “Can I have some, or don’t you share?”

  “It’s good stuff. Maybe you can’t take it.”

  “I’m no virgin.”

  “I guess you’re not,” Yemlin said, forcing a smile. “Be my guest. But take it easy, Renee. I don’t want you passing out.”

  “Why not? Valeri will be here in a little while.”

  “Maybe I want both of you this time.”

  She laughed, then set the open silver box on the nightstand. Using the tiny silver spoon nestled inside the top part of the box, she scooped out a portion of the doctored cocaine, and took it up her right nostril.

  Yemlin put his glass down on the dresser, and reached her as she sighed deeply, and sank slowly to the carpet. Her eyes were open and glazed, a stupid, slack-jawed expression on her pretty mouth.

  “Are you okay, Renee?” Yemlin asked softly.

  “Sure, Viktor. That’s some good shit, you know.”

  “I’m going to put you in the other room for a little while. I want you to be a good girl and take a nap. Can you do that for me?”