Assassin

by David Hagberg

  She gave Jacqueline her overnight bag, then crossed the street over the tracks. The morning wanted to warm up, but a chilly breeze blew across the river, bringing with it a combination of industrial and seaport smells that were subtly different from any other city she’d ever visited.

  It took her ten minutes to walk up Gogala Street to within a half a block from the apartment building her father had called from. She stopped and looked in the window of a women’s sportswear shop, as she tried to calm down.

  Everything seemed normal. Traffic was heavy, the shops were open and busy, and most of the tables at a sidewalk cafe at the corner were occupied. There were no police anywhere, and no one seemed to be watching the apartment building.

  After a minute she crossed the street, walked the rest of the way to the apartment building and went inside. A narrow hallway ran to the rear of the building. From where she stood by the mailboxes she could see the pay phone in the back, and it gave her a little thrill that her father had used it less than twenty-four hours ago.

  She didn’t understand Latvian, but the word manager, in Russian, was written on a card attached to the mailbox for the ground floor apartment. She hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door.

  An old woman opened it, looked Elizabeth up and down, and motioned her away. “I have no apartments here, so go away. I don’t want any trouble.”

  The old woman was frightened.

  “I don’t want an apartment,” Elizabeth said in Russian. “But I’m looking for someone who may have rented an apartment from you recently.”

  The door suddenly opened all the way, the old woman was pulled aside, and a couple of large, stern-faced men were there. Before Elizabeth could react, one of them grabbed her by the arm.

  “Who is it that you’re looking for?” he asked.

  “I think I’ve made a mistake,” Elizabeth said, her heart in her throat.

  “Let me see your passport.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “The police. Your passport, please.” The cop was stern, but not unpleasant.

  Elizabeth hesitated a second longer, than awkwardly dug her passport out of her purse.

  The cop’s eyebrows rose when he saw that it was an American passport. “Stay here, I’ll take her upstairs,” he told the other cop.

  Elizabeth tried to pull away, but he was too strong for her. “I’m an American. I want to speak to someone at my embassy.”

  “You speak pretty good Russian for an American,” the cop said.

  “Not as good as you Latvians do,” Elizabeth shot back, and she instantly regretted the remark.

  His grip tightened on her arm, and he dragged her up three flights of stairs to the top floor where two men waited in a small apartment. One of them was heavyset, the other tall, and muscularly built, with short-cropped gray hair. He looked dangerous. His eyes seemed dead.

  The cop handed Elizabeth’s passport to the heavy man, who examined it.

  “She says she’s looking for someone who may have rented an apartment here not so long ago, Lieutenant,” the cop said. “She claims to be an American, but I never heard an American speak such good Russian.”

  Ulmanis handed the passport to Chernov. “It doesn’t look fake. Do you know who she is?”

  Chernov studied Elizabeth’s passport, a grim look of satisfaction crossing his lips. “Her name is Raya Kisnelkov. I don’t know where she got this passport, but it probably came from the same source her father uses. I just didn’t think she was involved with his sick games.”

  Ulmanis stared at her, and shook his head. “She doesn’t look the type,” he said. “Do you know what your father has done? Are you helping him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said in English. “I want to call my embassy.”

  “Her English is pretty good, too,” Ulmanis said. “A lot better than mine.”

  Chernov stared at Elizabeth. “We’ll leave now,” he said. “I don’t think Kisnelkov will be coming back.”

  Ulmanis hesitated. “Perhaps we should get someone from the American embassy up here to take a look.”

  “As you wish,” Chernov said, unperturbed. “I would very much like to listen to your explanation how this woman got into Latvia on a fake passport.” He forced a grim smile. “I trust that in the meantime you’ll arrange accommodations for me and my people.”

  Ulmanis nodded. “I’ll have the van brought around front,” he said.

  “Wait a minute, goddammit,” Elizabeth shouted. “I’m an American!” She switched to Russian. “Yeb vas, you stupid bastard, don’t you recognize a legitimate passport when you see one?”

  Ulmanis just shook his head, and he and the cop left.

  “Thank you,” Chernov told Elizabeth, politely, and her blood ran cold.

  From where she sat having a coffee at the sidewalk cafe on the corner, Jacqueline watched as a gray Chevrolet van pulled up in front of the apartment building. She’d been unable to simply wait at the train station, so she’d followed Elizabeth up here.

  Two minutes later, a tall man, came out of the building with Elizabeth, and hustled her into the van.

  Jacqueline jumped up, but before she could reach the street, the van took off and disappeared down the block. She stopped, absolutely stunned. Her worst nightmare seemed to be coming true.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Riga

  Jacqueline was beside herself with fear and guilt because despite her professionalism she had managed to lead Elizabeth into a trap. Although she had serious doubts, she thought that there was a possibility Liz had been arrested by the Riga Police, and not by the Russians who had traced McGarvey’s call here. All the way back to the railroad station she tried to convince herself of that likelihood without success. She and Elizabeth had entered Latvia legally. There was no reason for the local authorities to detain her.

  She found a pay phone in the train station’s main arrivals hall and called Rencke’s blind number in Courbevoie.

  “They’ve taken her,” she blurted when Rencke answered.

  “Calm down. Who took her?”

  “I don’t know for sure. It could have been the Riga police, but I can’t be certain. I hope so.”

  “Just a minute,” Rencke said. “Okay, you’re calling from the main railway station. Is anybody watching you? Anybody paying unusual attention?”

  The station was busy. Jacqueline scanned the crowds, but she was picking up nothing unusual. “Not that I can see.”

  “Have you called your boss yet?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, now calm down and tell me everything that happened,” Otto said.

  Jacqueline quickly went through the story from the moment they’d got off the plane. “Can you get into the police computer?”

  “If she was arrested it wouldn’t be on their machines yet, unless they asked Interpol for help. Did you get the license number of the van?”

  “It was too far away to read,” Jacqueline said.

  “Okay, hang on for a minute, I’ll see if anything is showing up.”

  “Mon dieu, please hurry,” Jacqueline said.

  “I just had another thought. Did you get a decent look at the man with Liz? Could you describe him?”

  “Tall, husky. It’s impossible to say more than that.”

  “Standby,” Rencke said.

  Announcements for arriving and departing trains were made first in a language that Jacqueline took to be Latvian, and then in Russian, and finally in Polish. A train had rumbled into the station while she was dialing Rencke’s number, and now people began coming into the main hall from trackside. A lot of them were well dressed, and talked on cellular phones as they hurried outside to catch a taxi.

  Rencke came back a couple of minutes later. “Nothing has showed up on the Riga police wire yet. But an unscheduled flight originating in Moscow landed at 6:48 this morning. It’s still on the ground, but I’m betting that the man you saw with Liz was Chernov. He traced Mac’s c
all, and somehow convinced the Latvian police to help him. I’ll watch to see when it takes off back to Moscow, but it’ll probably be within the next half hour. I think Liz walked into a hornet’s nest, and Chernov will take her back to Moscow.”

  “For bait,” Jacqueline said, utterly devastated. It was her fault. She should have known better.

  “I’d like to disagree with you, but I can’t,” Rencke said, dejectedly.

  “I’ve got to tell my boss what happened,” she said. “I’ll keep your name out of it. I’ll say that Liz had a hunch that her father would be here, so we came to look for him, and she was taken.”

  “They won’t believe it.”

  “I’ll make them believe it,” Jacqueline said urgently. “I don’t know what else to do, but I just can’t walk away from them.”

  “Mac must have figured it out,” Rencke said distantly.

  “What did you say?”

  “They got Liz, but he wasn’t there. It means he figured it out and he’s probably on his way to Moscow now. Three days early, but he was forced into it. Which means we’ve still got two chances. Two options. With all that extra time it’s possible he’ll call me for an update. When he does I’ll get him out of there.”

  “If you tell him that Chernov has his daughter he won’t leave.”

  “If we can find out where she’s been taken, I can convince somebody in Washington to get involved.”

  “How can we do that?”

  “Simple, you’re going to convince Galan to send you to Moscow in an official capacity. You’re an SDECE field officer who has the inside scoop on Mac, and your expertise is going to be offered to the special commission which is headed by Yuri Bykov, a.k.a., Leonid Chernov.”

  “Merde,” Jacqueline said softly.

  “Double dip merde,” Rencke agreed. “But right now it’s our only shot.”

  Enroute to Moscow

  Even over the roar of the jet engines spooling up Elizabeth imagined that she could hear the thump of her heart in her chest. Any doubts she might have had about who’d taken her had been dispelled the moment they’d arrived at the airport and she got a look at the Tupolev jet waiting on the apron. It carried Russian military markings, with the Russian flag painted on the tail.

  Of the eight or ten others aboard, she figured four were crew, while the rest looked like cops or possibly military. All of them were surprised by her presence, but they offered no objections. The one who’d taken her was the boss, and it struck her from the moment she came aboard that he was Leonid Chernov, Tarankov’s chief of staff, and the one who was posing as Yuri Bykov, chief of the police commission hunting for her father.

  The aircraft had been fitted out executive-style with wide leather seats facing each other in groups of four, a pair of couches with a low table between them in the rear of the main cabin, and a complete galley and bar. She caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a conference room equipped with what looked like radio gear through an open door in the back of the plane. Forward she could see into the cockpit where the pilot and co-pilot were dressed in military uniforms.

  Chernov put her in one of the seats in the forward part of the cabin, and went back to the others gathered in the conference room, and closed the door.

  Elizabeth considered making a dash for the door, when one of the crewmen closed and latched it. He said something to the pilots, then came back to her.

  “We’ll be taking off now, so put on your seatbelt,” he said pleasantly. He was young, probably not much older than Elizabeth.

  “I’m an American. You have no right to take me anywhere,” she said, and it sounded foolish even to her.

  “If you refuse to cooperate, I’ve been instructed to drug you,” the crewman warned. “When it wears off tomorrow you’ll have a hell of a headache and cottonmouth. Sometimes it even scrambles the brain for a few days. I’m told that the effect is extremely unpleasant.”

  The airplane started to move, gathering speed as it trundled down the taxiway.

  “I thought things had changed for the better in Russia. I guess I was wrong,” Elizabeth said. She buckled her seatbelt.

  The crewman sat down across from her and fastened his seatbelt. “As soon as we’re airborne and out of the pattern I’ll get you something to drink. It’s not a very long flight to Moscow, less than two hours, but if you’re hungry I can get you something to eat.”

  Elizabeth looked out the window, willing herself to calm down. She wasn’t going to give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing the intense fear she felt. She’d walked into a trap in Paris, and she’d done the same damned thing here in Riga. The first had turned out okay, but this time she was in big trouble. When she didn’t show up at the train station Jacqueline might guess what had happened, but there would be no proof. Riga had swallowed her, and there wasn’t much that anybody could do to get her back.

  Except, she thought, God help the bastards if and when her father found out she’d been kidnapped. The last people who’d tried that had paid with their lives.

  But they’d been nothing more than a group of ex-East German Stasi thugs, not an entire government. She laid her forehead against the cool window glass as the airplane reached the end of the taxiway and turned onto the runway. Her father was only a man, and sooner or later all of his skills would be no match for an overwhelming force. When it came she would have been the one to lead him to his destruction.

  The airplane took off, and as it circled the city and headed east, she searched for and found the railroad station. She touched the window with her fingers. Jacqueline would be getting worried now.

  Five minutes later the countryside below was a puzzle of farmsteads, lakes and rivers, and stands of forests that stretched to the horizon for as far as she could see.

  “Now, can I get you something to drink,” the crewman asked. “A glass of tea, or perhaps some champagne?”

  Elizabeth looked up at him.

  “Champagne is permitted,” he said.

  She turned away without a word, and after a moment the crewman left. She heard voices at the rear of the airplane, but she didn’t look up again until someone sat down across from her.

  “I don’t want champagne,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” Chernov replied reasonably and Elizabeth’s stomach fluttered. “You’re too young to be his wife, so you’re probably his daughter. The question is, what were you doing in Riga? How did you find out where your father was staying?”

  His eyes were flat, lifeless. Studying his face, Elizabeth decided that he was younger than his gray hair made him look. It struck her that if he was posing as Yuri Bykov on the police commission, he would have to be in disguise. Certainly enough people had seen him at Tarankov’s side and would have recognized him if he hadn’t changed his appearance.

  “Your father is a brilliant man. But he is dangerous. Do you know what he means to do? And do you understand why we cannot allow that to happen? Your own government does.”

  Chernov had something to hide, which meant he was vulnerable. But she would have to be careful what she said or did. If he suspected that she knew his true identity, she had no doubt that he would kill her.

  “Your father is an assassin. But I think you know this.”

  “He telephoned me in Paris last night,” Elizabeth said. “At my apartment. He wanted me to return to our house in Milford. He said he was flying over tomorrow.”

  “Did he tell you where he was calling from?”

  “I traced his call.”

  “How?”

  “With my computer. It’s easy. Once I found out that he was in Riga, I got into the local phone system, and brought up the line. It’s a pay phone in the building.”

  “That’s very inventive,” Chernov said. “Why did you come to Riga? What did you hope to accomplish?”

  Elizabeth looked away for a moment, as if she were gathering her thoughts, as if she were making a decision, which in effect she was. Damage control, her father called what she was trying
to do. If damage has been done, try to control the effects by telling half-truths to direct the inquiries elsewhere.

  She looked into Chernov’s eyes. “I wanted to make sure that my father was telling me the truth and was calling off the mission. Tarankov isn’t worth a bullet. Nobody in Russia is. For all we give a damn, you people deserve whatever happens to you. For a thousand years you’ve been killing each other by the millions. Good riddance.”

  Chernov was impressed, she could see it on his face.

  “For all we give a damn? Who is the we?”

  “If you had done your homework, Colonel Bykov, you would know that I work for the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. We’ve agreed to help you stop my father not because we think killing Tarankov is such a bad idea, but because my father’s life is worth too much to risk killing such scum.”

  A flicker of surprise showed in his eyes, but was gone as fast as it appeared. “Then the CIA knows that you came to Riga?”

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said with a straight face.

  Chernov thought about it a moment, then got up. “Do you think your father went back to this Milford?”

  “It’s in Delaware,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, I do.”

  He nodded after a moment. “We’ll see,” he said, and then he went back into the conference room and closed the door, leaving Elizabeth to wonder if she’d done the right thing, or if she’d made another terrible mistake.

  Riga

  It was 12:10 P.M. when Jacqueline made it to the French Embassy. The young receptionist at the front desk registered no surprise when Jacqueline flashed her passport, and asked to speak with Marc Edis, assistant to the ambassador for economic affairs. In reality he was chief of SDECE operations for all the Baltics. She’d looked up his name before she and Elizabeth had left Paris. The woman put through the call, and a minute later a tall, slope-shouldered man with drooping mustaches came down the stairs, his expression frankly admiring when he spotted her.

  “I’m Marc Edis,” he said, extending his hand. “How may I be of service, Mademoiselle?”