Assassin

by David Hagberg

  Despite the inter-service rivalry, General Aykazyan would not hesitate to throw him to the wolves if for no other reason than to hedge his bets against Tarankov’s victory.

  The FSK would probably not interfere with his movements for the time being. They might believe that he was going to Paris to meet with McGarvey. In the meantime, he was going to have to warn Sukhoruchkin. He owed his old friend at least that much.

  He stubbed out his cigarette, finished his drink, then threw on a coat and left the apartment. Two blocks away he caught a taxi to the Hotel National. The driver dropped him off in front, and Yemlin stared at the Kremlin walls across Manezhnaya Ploshchad for a few moments before he went inside the ornately refurbished hotel.

  It was just past 9:30 P.M. when he walked back to a bank of pay phones, and called Sukhoruchkin at home. His old friend answered on the second ring. Yemlin could hear music in the background.

  “Da.”

  “I’m at the National, how about dinner tonight, Konstantin?”

  “I’ve already had my dinner,” Sukhoruchkin said. “But I’ll join you for drinks at the Moskovy.”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “Da.”

  Of the National’s four restaurants, the Moskovy was the most traditionally Russian. Since its reopening after a four-year renovation of the hotel, it had become one of Yemlin’s favorites. He and Sukhoruchkin often came here for late dinners, drinks and private conversations. They were always given good service, and if they wanted to be left alone, they were.

  A woman was strumming a guitar and singing a folk song on the small stage when Yemlin walked in. The place was three-quarters full and most of the diners were paying close attention to the singer because she was very good, and the song was very old and very sad, something most Russians loved, especially these days.

  “Good evening, Mr. Yemlin,” the maitre d’ greeted him. “Will you be dining alone this evening?”

  “No, Konstantin will be joining me. We would like a table away from the stage. A quiet table.”

  “Of course,” the man said. “But you’ll still be able to hear Larissa.”

  Konstantin Sukhoruchkin sat on the edge of the chair in his bedroom lacing his shoes as he waited for his call to Tbilisi to go through. His old friend was in trouble. He’d picked up that much from the few words they’d spoken on the telephone, and from a rumor that had been circulating around the Human Rights Commission the last few days. The rivalry between the two divisions of the old KGB was apparently coming to a head, and Yemlin was being targeted as a scapegoat for some purely internal problem. He’d heard nothing other than that, but he was astute enough to understand that something else might be happening. Something concerning McGarvey’s assignment. Just the thought of anything going wrong made his blood run cold.

  Shevardnadze’s special number finally rolled over, rang once with a different sound, and then was answered by the man himself.

  “This is Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, Mr. President. I’m telephoning from Moscow.”

  “What is it?”

  “Has Viktor contacted you in the last two or three days?”

  “No,” Shevardnadze said.

  “He just telephoned me to have dinner with him tonight. I have been friends with him long enough to know when he’s in trouble. Big trouble.”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “The FSK is raising hell again. There’s a rumor that Viktor might be under investigation for an internal problem.”

  “Nothing about the … project?”

  “Nyet. But I am having these feelings.”

  “I know what you mean, Konstantin. I’m also having those feelings. Do you want to call it off?”

  “I don’t know. But I intend asking Viktor that very question,” Sukhoruchkin said. “I wanted to talk to you first. To find out how you feel.”

  “Nothing has changed, has it?” Shevardnadze asked.

  “If anything the situation gets worse every day, Mr. President. I doubt if we’ll even last until the June elections.”

  “So the need is still there,” Shevardnadze said. “Viktor may be getting cold feet. If that’s it, if the project hasn’t been compromised beyond salvaging, then you have to convince him to press on. Don’t you agree?”

  “No. Not unless I consider the alternative,” Sukhoruchkin said. “I’ll see what the matter is, and we’ll go from there.”

  “It’s all you can do, Konstantin. It’s all any of us can do now.”

  Yemlin put down his glass of iced Polish vodka, opened the latch of the heavier cigarette box and laid it on the table as he spotted Sukhoruchkin coming across the room toward him. The woman was still singing, and in the past fifteen minutes no one suspicious had entered the restaurant, but this hotel was owned by the city of Moscow, which meant the restaurant was probably bugged.

  His friend looked troubled, as Yemlin rose to greet him. “Has something happened, Korstya?”

  “That’s my question for you,” Sukhoruchkin said, shaking hands. They sat down.

  “I’m going to Paris to call McGarvey off,” Yemlin said. “I won’t be coming back.” He poured a vodka for Sukhoruchkin, who glanced nervously at the door.

  “I knew something was wrong.”

  “They know about McGarvey and it’s my fault, I’m afraid.”

  The color drained from Sukhoruchkin’s narrow face. “Is it safe to speak here?”

  “Yes. But listen, you have to call Shevardnadze and tell him what’s happened. There could be a backlash. They might try to assassinate him.”

  Sukhoruchkin was shaking his head. “I just talked to him. He told me to tell you that unless the project is beyond saving we must continue, because nothing else has changed. If Tarankov succeeds we’ll lose the Rodina.”

  Yemlin passed a hand across his eyes. “They know about McGarvey, didn’t you hear me?”

  “They can’t know about McGarvey’s actual plans, because none of us do.”

  “He has to be warned!”

  “Why?” Sukhoruchkin demanded. “We owe this man nothing other than the money you’ve already paid him. If he’s as good as you say he is, then he’ll go ahead with it. If he succeeds we’ll be in the clear.”

  “What if he fails?”

  Sukhoruchkin raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Then nothing will matter. We’ll be dead and the nation lost.”

  Yemlin motioned the waiter over, and ordered another carafe of vodka and another plate of blinis, and caviar.

  “Would you give your life to save Russia?” Yemlin said quietly.

  “If it came to that, yes, of course.”

  “What about your dignity, Korstya? Your pride? Your—manhood? Would you as easily give those up for Mother Russia? Would you, for instance, give up the use of your limbs to save the nation? Would you become a quadriplegic for the sake of your countrymen? Because that’s what I’m being asked to do.”

  Sukhoruchkin was studying his face. “My God, Viktor, what’s happened? What have you done?”

  Yemlin looked away for a few moments. It took courage to be a Russian. That was something they’d never understood in the West. Russia had been at war with most of her neighbors at one point or another in her history. But there’d never been a time when Russians hadn’t been at war with each other. The tsars had killed peasants by the millions, as had Stalin and as Tarankov was threatening to do. Food was plentiful in the fields, but the harvests often didn’t get to the population centers, so lack of food had taken uncounted millions of lives. The weather killed people. Vodka and cigarettes killed people. Even the very air and water had become deadly in many parts of the country. Nuclear fallout and poorly processed chemical wastes were killers. Infant mortality rates were up, as were abortions. More than ten percent of all Russian babies were being born with life-threatening defects. Over half of all children in school were sick. The average life span for a man in Russia was now fifty-seven years, by far the lowest of any industrialized nation. Murder was a way of d
oing business, and suicide rates continued to rise every year. And Tarankov would make all of that worse.

  The question Yemlin asked himself was not whether he had the courage to help McGarvey succeed against all odds by whatever means he could, but whether he had the courage to continue being a Russian.

  “I went to the Magesterium on Friday where I was given drugged champagne and was seduced. I told them about hiring McGarvey to kill Tarankov.”

  “Who does the girl work for?”

  “It wasn’t a girl,” Yemlin said, lowering his eyes. “It was a young man. And he probably works for the FSK.”

  Sukhoruchkin’s mouth hung open. “You were drugged, Viktor. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Yemlin said nothing.

  “But if you were drugged how do you know if you spoke McGarvey’s name? Maybe you dreamed it.”

  “I went back tonight, to the same young man. This time I seduced him, and drugged him. He told me what I’d said.”

  Sukhoruchkin sat back and closed his eyes for a moment. “I see what you mean,” he said softly. “But the first time wasn’t your fault, and the second time you had to find out what they knew.”

  “If I stay, there’ll have to be a third time, Korstya. The only way I can help McGarvey now, short of calling him off, will be to feed the FSK disinformation.”

  “We can’t call him off.”

  Yemlin nodded.

  “If it’s any consolation, my old friend—and I expect that it’s not—if I were in your shoes I would probably do the same thing. But you’re right, it is easier to give your life for your country. Infinitely easier.”

  Yemlin’s eyes met Sukhoruchkin’s. “Do you think badly of me, Korstya?”

  “On the contrary, my old friend. I think that at this moment you are the bravest man in Russia.”

  Paris

  McGarvey watched the dawn come up over the suburb of Courbevoie, finally ready to leave. His two soft leather suitcases and laptop computer were packed, he’d bought his air ticket for Leipzig yesterday, and in addition to his Allain credit cards, he carried nearly twenty thousand francs in cash, and five thousand in British pounds. On Friday he’d arranged a letter of credit in the amount of $150,000 to be deposited in the name of Pierre Allain at the Deutches Creditbank, and had been assured that it would be in place no later than this afternoon.

  Rencke, who would drive him to Charles de Gaulle, was downstairs in the kitchen, but they hadn’t spoken yet this morning.

  The last few days had been intense, made all the more so by the stunning revelation that Tarankov’s chief of staff, Leonid Chernov, was Arkady Kurshin’s half-brother. When the information had come up on Rencke’s computer monitor McGarvey had been physically staggered, and he stepped back.

  “What’s wrong, Mac?” Rencke asked, alarmed.

  “I killed his brother in Portugal a few years ago.” McGarvey touched his side where he still carried the scar where the doctors had removed one of his kidneys that had been destroyed when Kurshin shot him. “I didn’t know he had a brother.”

  Rencke looked at the picture on the monitor. “Did you ever come face-to-face with Chernov? Does he know you?”

  “He has to know about me.”

  “Would he have recognized you in Nizhny Novgorod?”

  “I don’t know,” McGarvey said. He was back in the tunnels beneath the ruined castle where their final confrontation had come. It was dark, and water was pouring in on them. He’d been lucky. He got out and Kurshin had been trapped. And it was luck, he told himself now as he had then, because Kurshin was every bit as good as he was. In some ways even better, because he’d been more ruthless, less in love with his own life, so he’d been willing to take their fight to extremes.

  “Call it off, Mac,” Rencke had said. “Because if he finds out that you’re coming after Tarankov he won’t stop until he kills you. I’ve read Kurshin’s file. If this one is as good, he might succeed.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “There’s almost nothing in the SVR’s own files about him, except that he was the best. It’s why he’s with Tarankov. Think it out, Mac. Tarankov just isn’t worth it.”

  “Nothing has changed.”

  Rencke jumped up. “Everything has changed, you silly bastard. If they get so much as a hint that you’re after Tarankov you won’t be able to do it. You can’t fight the entire country.”

  “If he finds out, Otto. In the meantime I still have the advantage, because I know about him.”

  “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No.”

  “Bring up the probability program you worked out on Tarankov, goddammit. Nothing has changed. If he wins we could all be in trouble.”

  “Just probabilities, Mac. I could be wrong!”

  “Have you ever been wrong?”

  Rencke hung his head like schoolboy. “No,” he said softly.

  “Then I leave Monday morning.”

  “What’s in Leipzig anyway?”

  “An old friend,” McGarvey had said.

  He glanced at his watch. It was a little after 7:00 A.M. He stubbed out his cigarette, put on his jacket and went downstairs. Rencke was seated on the kitchen table, drinking from a liter bottle of milk and eating Twinkies. He looked up, his eyes round.

  “Is it time?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Do you want a Twinkie, Mac?”

  McGarvey had to laugh. “Have you ever had your cholesterol checked?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t eat so many of these as I used to, and I switched to milk a few years ago.”

  “What’d you drink before?”

  Rencke shrugged. “A half-dozen quarts of heavy cream a day. Tastes a hell of a lot better than milk, you know.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Moscow

  Aleksi Paporov left the office at Lefortovo a little before nine in the morning, and returned an hour later with a distinguished looking older man in a gray fedora and western cut blue pinstriped suit, who carried an artist’s portfolio.

  “This is Dr. Ivan Denisov, professor of reconstructive surgery at Moscow State University and possibly the very best facial sketch artist in all of Russia,” Paporov introduced him to Chernov.

  “Doctor, we need your help this morning,” Chernov said.

  Dr. Denisov was confused. His eyes blinked rapidly behind thin wire rimmed glasses. “I don’t understand, am I under arrest?”

  Chernov smiled. “On the contrary, Doctor, I would simply like you to draw a face for us from a description which I’ll give you. Will you do this?”

  “Yes, of course,” Dr. Denisov said, relief obvious on his features. “Who is this person you wish me to sketch? Is it an accident victim … a corpse?”

  “Nothing like that. Just a man we would very much like to find,” Chernov said soothingly. “But first I must inform you of something that unfortunately the law requires of me. What you see and hear this morning must remain secret. Even the fact that you were brought here must remain a secret.”

  “Major Lyalin told me that much already,” the older man said, blinking again, and Paporov smiled.

  “Well, the major is correct. Because the man whose face you’ll draw for us is a mass murderer who specializes in young children. But he may be an important man with connections so we don’t want to frighten him off before we have enough evidence to arrest him. Can you understand this?”

  “Da,” the professor said seriously. He took off his coat and Paporov hung it up for him.

  He sat at one of the desks, where he took out a large sketch pad and charcoal pencils from his portfolio. He looked up expectantly.

  “This is a man of about fifty, husky, a rather square face, thick hair—” Chernov begun, but the professor interrupted him.

  “First things first. Is this man a Russian? A Georgian? A Ukrainian?”

  “Does it matter?” Chernov asked.

  “Yes, indeed. Think of the difference, fo
r instance, between a Siberian and a Muscovite who both are possessed of a husky frame, with a rather square face and thick hair.”

  “He’s an American.”

  Dr. Denisov hesitated for only a moment. “Has he lived in Russia for long?” he asked, and before Chernov could speak, he went on. “That too makes a difference. Because if he lives in Russia he will get his hair cut here. There is a distinction.”

  “He has lived in Paris for some years. He’s come to Russia recently, but I don’t think he got a haircut while he was here.”

  “Very well,” the professor said, and he began to sketch the outlines of a head, Chernov standing above and behind him.

  “His cheekbones are a little wider and higher,” Chernov said.

  The professor made the changes. And gradually, under instructions from Chernov, a face began to emerge from the sketch pad that fifteen minutes later was the face of the soldier Chernov had seen in Nizhny Novgorod.

  “Is this him?” Dr. Denisov asked, looking up.

  Chernov was mesmerized by the sketch. Especially the eyes. The professor had gotten the face exactly right. Even down to the nuances of the expression Chernov had witnessed on the soldier’s face.

  “Major, show the good doctor the latest photograph we have,” Chernov said.

  Paporov went back to the desk Chernov had used, broke the seal on McGarvey’s photo file, and brought one of the 20×25 cm color glossies over to Dr. Denisov.

  “This was taken three years ago,” Paporov said.

  “Is that the same man?” Chernov asked.

  “Of course. There’s absolutely no question about it. He’s aged some, though not badly. And the man you described for me was obviously trying to disguise his features by not shaving, by changing the expression on his mouth, and to some extent in his eyes. But there’s no doubt.” Dr. Denisov looked up at Chernov. “But this is no mass murderer.”

  “Oh, but he is, Professor,” Chernov said. “You cannot imagine the blood he’s spilled, and the blood he will continue to spill if he’s not stopped.”