Assassin

by David Hagberg

  “Kirk?” she called a little louder.

  McGarvey moved away from the edge of the arch. “Here,” he whispered back.

  Jacqueline came into view below, her face raised up to the interior of the dome. She was carrying a blue shopping bag. When she spotted him outlined against the morning light coming through the cupola’s window, she threaded her left arm through the shopping bag’s handles, and climbed up the scaffolding.

  When she reached the cupola, McGarvey helped her across.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded in frustration. “You were supposed to stay at your embassy. Goddammit!”

  “That’s what my boss told me. But there’s not a chance you’ll last up here all day without food and water, and without that wound bandaged up.”

  She opened the shopping bag, but McGarvey grabbed her arm.

  “We almost died in the river this morning, and there’s a good chance I won’t get out alive! You have to get out of here right now.”

  Jacqueline nodded toward the round window. “It’s crawling with soldiers and police down there. I’ve been hiding in the garden for the past forty-five minutes waiting to make sure it was safe to come to you. I got past them in the dark, but I’d never make it out of here without being spotted.”

  She pulled a small radio receiver from the shopping bag. “This scans all their police and military frequencies, and you’re going to need it, because in the last few hours everything has changed. President Kabatov supposedly committed suicide this morning, which means no one is going to even try to stop Tarankov.”

  “It could be some kind of trick,” McGarvey said.

  “It came over one of the frequencies that the Kremlin security detail uses, and ever since then that channel has been silent. But military traffic is almost continuous, and just about every transmission contradicts a previous one. It’s crazy out there, Kirk. They’re just waiting now for someone to take over. And Tarankov is the man who’ll do it.”

  “Unless he’s stopped,” McGarvey said.

  Jacqueline looked into his eyes, her lips tightly compressed. She nodded.

  “Like it or not, mon cher, you have me for the duration,” she said. “Now let me bandage you up, and give you something to eat. Afterwards I’ll take the first watch and you can get some rest.”

  FORTY-THREE

  The Kremlin

  It was after 3:00 P.M., and with Captain Petrovsky’s help, under Chernov’s direct supervision, every square meter of the Kremlin, above and below ground, had been searched with a fine-toothed comb to no avail by Kremlin security forces, the Militia and the Army.

  A red dye had been dumped down the outflow tunnel beneath the Lubyanka Metro Station. It had shown up in the swiftly moving water beneath the Corner Arsenal Tower a few minutes later, but in a limited amount which an engineer suggested might mean that there was more than one branch of the river.

  Three volunteer divers had been sent down the tunnel. The battered body of one of them, minus his scuba tank, his wet suit ripped to shreds, showed up under the tower eight minutes later.

  That was around ten this morning. The other two divers had not shown up yet. There’d been no other volunteers.

  Petrovsky came over to where Chernov leaned against the hood of his car parked in front of the Senate Building listening to reports on a hand-held radio, and debating with himself if now was the time to get out. Everything suggested that McGarvey and Jacqueline Belleau had escaped down the tunnel in a desperate attempt to save themselves, and were drowned. Their bodies might stay down there until the next series of heavy rains completely flooded the tunnels. Or they might never come out. It was a reasonable assumption to believe that McGarvey was no longer a threat to Tarankov’s safety. Yet something within Chernov, some instinct, told him otherwise.

  “One of my people has come up with an idea,” Petrovsky said. “He thinks that we should pump a couple thousand gallons of diesel fuel down the tunnel, and set it on fire. It might work. At least it’d be better than using gasoline, which would probably blow everything from here to there off the map.

  Chernov studied the Militia investigator for a moment to make sure the man wasn’t joking.

  “If they’re still down there, they’re already dead. So trying to cook them out wouldn’t accomplish a thing.”

  “Do you think they got out?”

  “I want to say no, but I’m not sure,” Chernov said. “With a man like him you can never be sure.”

  “He has the woman with him. She might have slowed him down.”

  “What are the French saying about her?”

  “Nothing. In fact they won’t even talk to me. Word’s out about President Kabatov, and it’s got everybody scared shitless,” Petrovsky said. He gave Chernov an appraising look. “That includes me, Colonel, because I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You have a job to do and I suggest you get on with it.”

  “We’re done.”

  “Then have your men start over again,” Chernov said. “Because if McGarvey is still alive he’ll be here within the hour, and we’d better be ready for him.”

  “What about you, Colonel?” Petrovsky said, choosing his words with care. “Your letter from President Kabatov authorizing you to do whatever it takes to catch McGarvey is no longer valid. Who are you reporting to now?”

  Chernov was tired but still in control of himself. “General Yuryn.”

  “What about him?” Petrovsky asked. “Who is he reporting to? Who’s in charge?”

  “General Korzhakov,” Chernov said. “For the moment.”

  Petrovsky nodded. “I think I’ll get back to my men, now.”

  Chernov watched him walk away, basically a competent man who probably would not survive the next few days. There would be a lot of good and competent men who wouldn’t make it. In every revolution they were among the first to die.

  He pocketed the hand-held transceiver, checked the load in the Colt 10mm automatic he’d drawn from Kremlin security stores and took the elevator up to the presidential floor.

  Security was tight. Even he had to pass through four separate body searches, and explain who he was and why he was carrying a weapon, before he was allowed to approach what had become General Korzhakov’s temporary base of operations.

  Civilians and soldiers scurried along corridors, telephones rang, computer printers whined, and heated discussions took place in every third office. Yet there seemed to be no order to what was going on. Half the people seemed to be in a daze, simply standing by, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for Tarankov to show up, though nobody was saying so aloud. The other half tried to look busy.

  The president’s anteroom and office were jammed with people. Korzhakov, facing the windows, was speaking to someone on the phone, while three of his advisers hovered around, passing him notes.

  General Yuryn, his uniform disheveled, looking more corpulent and disgusting than ever, hurried out to Chernov.

  “Have you found him?” he demanded.

  “He and the French woman are probably dead, but we’re still looking.”

  “Tarankov’s train is on the move. The rally has been cancelled, but that won’t stop the crowds of course, so when he arrives the platform will be his alone. The rest of us will wait up here.”

  “When’s he due?”

  “His ETA at Leningrad Station is 3:40, which gives him twenty minutes to get down here if he means to make it by four.”

  “How about the military?”

  “So far they’re remaining neutral.”

  “Including General Vashleyev?”

  Captain-General Viktor Vashleyev was commander of the Moscow Defense Forces, and a former drinking buddy of President Yeltsin and Korzhakov. But he was something of a moderate, no friend of Tarankov.

  “He promises to do whatever it takes to maintain order,” Yuryn said. “Tarankov’s arrest warrant is on his desk, but I don’t think he’ll act on it.”

 
“Then everything is set—”

  “Except for McGarvey,” Yuryn cut in. “Is there any chance, even a slight chance, that he’ll get out of the sewers in time to make the assassination attempt?”

  “If it was anyone else I’d say no.”

  “Is there a chance that if he does somehow make it out, that you won’t be able to stop him in time?” Yuryn asked sharply.

  “I don’t know,” Chernov said after a moment. “So far he’s eluded everything we’ve thrown at him, even the threat that we’ll use his daughter as a hostage. But he’s not a fanatic, which means he knows how he’s going to kill Tarankov and he has a plan for getting away.”

  “Tarankov will have to send a double to make his speech,” said Yuryn, after first making certain that no one was listening to them.

  “He won’t do it.”

  Yuryn threw up his hands in despair. “Then it’s up to you,” he said. “For the next hour and a half until Tarankov is safely off the reviewing stand you must operate on the assumption that McGarvey managed to get out of the sewers and will take the shot.”

  Krasnaya Prensya

  Viktor Yemlin had a bad three days. It was a few minutes after 3:00, and he was parked in his car down the block from an eighteen-story apartment building near the zoo, not sure if he knew what he was doing.

  Ever since the untraceable but potentially disastrous call from the man who had identified himself as a friend of McGarvey’s, he’d been waiting for the axe to fall. But nothing had happened, and after a couple of discreet telephone calls he was pretty sure that he was no longer being followed. His home telephone was still bugged, but the pay phones around his apartment were not.

  The development was ominous, all the more so because his normal channels of communication between the FSK and the Militia had been blocked. Every cop and soldier in Moscow was looking for McGarvey, and he had no access to any information about the search except that it was going on.

  Nor, despite his sensitive position in the SVR, was he able to find out anything about President Kabatov’s apparent suicide this morning although he was being asked to predict Washington’s likely response.

  It was like working in a vacuum. Nothing was getting through.

  His guest membership at the Magesterium had been cancelled, and his friend Konstantin Sukoruchkin was not answering his telephone.

  One by one his contacts in Moscow were drying up. It was as if everyone he’d known was suddenly distancing themselves from him.

  Earlier this afternoon he’d tried to use the SVR’s secured telephone system to place a call to Shevardnadze in Tbilisi, but his access had been denied, thus completing his isolation.

  Yemlin looked at his watch. If Tarankov was on schedule he would be arriving in Red Square in less than an hour. Whether or not McGarvey assassinated him, the next few hours would be extremely critical for the nation, all the more now that there was no elected leader in charge.

  Yemlin looked at his watch again, then got out of the car and strode down the block to the apartment building, where he presented his credentials to the front desk security people, who were expecting him.

  He was escorted upstairs where he was met in the penthouse foyer by a secretary who led him back to a corner study with panoramic views of the city.

  Five minutes later, Mikhail Gorbachev, wearing a button-up sweater over an open-neck shirt, corduroy trousers and house slippers, entered the study.

  “Mr. President, Russia is heading toward certain disaster and you’re the only man I know who can help,” Yemlin said.

  St. Basil’s Cathedral

  By 3:40 one million people were jammed into Red Square and still more poured in from around the city. Bleachers east and west of Lenin’s Mausoleum were filled with visiting dignitaries and the press. Dozens of television vans were lined up end-to-end along the Kremlin walls, their satellite dishes pointed up to the sky.

  Soldiers and police manned barricades that held the people back from a broad boulevard that ran up from the river, past the Cathedral, crossed in front of the reviewing stand and opened into Okhotny Ryad at the north end of the square. It was the traditional parade route taken by the troops and their military hardware.

  McGarvey had managed to get a little sleep, and afterward he’d used his pocket knife to remove the lead holding a roughly triangular piece of stained glass about twelve inches wide at its base from the round window. He crouched well back from the narrow opening through which he would shoot and studied the reviewing platform through the Dragunov’s powerful scope. No one had shown up yet. No ceremonial guards, no officers, nor any of the sound technicians. Armed soldiers were still stationed on the Kremlin walls above and behind the mausoleum, but the reviewing platform was empty, the flags and banners snapping in the stiff breeze that had developed since noon.

  Traditional Russian folk music thundered across the square from loudspeakers sprinkled here and there. Some people danced to it, and around the edges of the vast crowd vendors sold everything from ice cream to beer. It was a carnival atmosphere, except it was obvious that the people were waiting expectantly for something.

  With Kabatov dead no one had stepped in to fill his place or else they would have come to the reviewing stand by now. The city, and the entire country was waiting for Tarankov’s triumphal entrance to Red Square where he would mount the platform and tell his people that he had come to restore the Soviet Union, to give them back their dignity and their pride, to feed and clothe and house them, to give them back their jobs, their hospitals and their peace of mind.

  But at what cost, almost no one seemed to be asking.

  Most of the frequencies the scanner was picking up had been oddly quiet. Very little had come from the Kremlin’s security detail after the search of the tunnels by divers had ended in disaster. Only the frequencies used by the Militia and army crowd control units remained busy. A dozen arrests had been made, a few fights broken up, and a number of handguns confiscated.

  Jacqueline had positioned herself beneath one of the arches on the opposite side of the central dome from where she could watch the main entrance below. So far the church remained empty. McGarvey glanced over at her at the same moment something coming over the radio caught his attention.

  “Azarov Brigade, say again your ETA at Leningrad Station.”

  “We’re three minutes out,” an excited voice responded. It sounded as if he were radioing from a moving vehicle.

  “Pull back to point B. I repeat, pull back to point B, he’s already there.”

  “Copy. I don’t want to get into a firefight with his people up here. We won’t have a chance without reinforcements.”

  “You’ll be coming in behind him, so watch yourself,” the first speaker warned. “Gamov and Sokol brigades, are you in position yet?”

  “Gamov, roger.”

  “Sokol, roger.”

  “Keep your eyes open, this is a go,” the first speaker said.

  Apparently the government was finally doing something, but McGarvey was almost certain that they were making a very big mistake. If they meant to stop Tarankov, yet keep the civilian casualties to a minimum, the job should have been done out in the countryside by a direct attack on his train. Or else Leningrad Station could have been evacuated and as Tarankov’s troops dismounted they could have been cut down. But by avoiding a firefight up there, they were taking the battle to a Red Square jammed with innocent people. No matter how many troops they had at their command, a crowd of a million people was an unstoppable force.

  McGarvey carefully laid the rifle down, climbed out of the arched cupola and waved at Jacqueline until he caught her eye.

  She started around the scaffolding, and he met her halfway.

  “Has it started?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “His train just pulled into Leningrad Station so he could be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. But the government is going to try to ambush him.”

  “Good, then we can get out of here right now,” said Jacqueline
, relieved.

  “They’ve missed him at the station, so they’re coming down here.”

  Jacqueline glanced over toward the window. “It’ll be a massacre with all those people waiting for him. Merde, are they stupid?”

  “They’re desperate,” McGarvey said. “And they won’t succeed, so I’m staying here.”

  Jacqueline looked into his eyes. “Then I too shall stay.”

  “I want you to go down to the garden entrance, the one you used to get in here, and make sure it’s clear. As soon as I take my shot, we’ll get out. We can lose ourselves in the crowd.”

  She wanted to argue with him, but after a moment she kissed him on the cheek, and then made her way down to the gallery level that provided access to the other parts of the Cathedral.

  McGarvey was glad she hadn’t asked him about Liz. Listening to the radio had given him an idea for a contingency plan in case everything fell apart here.

  Leningrad Station

  Elizabeth McGarvey was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life, yet she was still determined to somehow kill Tarankov with her bare hands, if need be because she had no weapon. They’d not fed her breakfast or lunch, so she’d not been able to steal a table knife or a fork. Nor had she found anything in her compartment that could be used as a weapon.

  Two minutes ago they’d screamed to a halt a hundred yards from the big railroad station, the doors on most of the armored cars crashed open, steel ramps were extended with a tremendous din, and a dozen armored personnel carriers roared into life, forming up along the tracks next to the train.

  Thousands of people up on the street waved banners and cheered, the noise they made so overwhelming that even over the roar of the APCs, Elizabeth could hear them.

  The door of her compartment opened, and she spun around, ready to attack like a wild animal, but Tarankov was not with the two stern-faced commandoes.

  “You will come with us now,” one of them ordered.