Harry's Rules

by Michael R. Davidson

  Finally, precisely at 11:30 Drozhdov’s patience was rewarded. A short man, heavily muffled against the cold and wearing a Russian shapka appeared at the American Express office and began pacing nervously in small circles. This must be the traitor, Stankov. A few moments later, a tall man wearing a trenchcoat emerged from a doorway up the street, startling Drozhdov who had not seen the man arrive.

  How long have you been waiting there, my friend?

  The tall man crossed the street and walked past Stankov, who then turned and followed him at a discreet distance. Despite the cliché trenchcoat, Drozhdov thought it was decent tradecraft.

  Now for the chase. He gripped the pistol in his pocket and followed them. Ten minutes later, the tall man stopped on a deserted side street and waited for Stankov to catch up. The little Russian scuttled up to him and they began speaking. How convenient, he thought. Now just stay together for a few more seconds, my dears. It will all be over for you in a moment.

  The assassin crept silently to a corner position across the street from his targets and took careful aim, bracing his pistol against the side of the building. At this distance, even with the silencer, he knew he couldn’t miss.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  CHAPTER 19 – Bloody Valentine

  The weather was perfect for skullduggery. A nearly freezing light rain, little more than a mist, had been falling all evening, making the cobbled streets slippery and limiting visibility. There were few people out at this time of night, and that made counter-surveillance easier. I stood in a shadowed doorway watching as Sasha made her way slowly down Kaerntner Strasse past the American Express office. My watch read precisely 11:20 PM.

  I remained where I was until a small man muffled in a heavy coat and wearing a Russian style fur shapka pulled far down over his head moved from north to south on the street and took up position in front of the American Express office where he shifted nervously from foot to foot. It was Stankov without a doubt. I said a silent prayer of thanks.

  The crystallized moisture softened the outlines of the buildings in the haloed glare of the streetlamps as I crossed the street diagonally toward Stankov. He looked ready to bolt at the slightest hint of danger, but his fear dissolved when he recognized me. It was always this way: momentary fear erased by relief. How many times had I seen it happen?

  I led the little Russian into a side street off of the normally busy Kaerntner Strasse and then north in the general direction of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We trudged slowly in the misty rain, one following the other, for several minutes until I stopped and waited for Stankov to catch up.

  *****

  In the shadows Sasha had re-joined the bulky man and together they observed the initial contact. The American walked past the Russian who followed him away from the lights of the tourist area. The dark figure of a third man clad in a heavy topcoat and fedora detached itself from the shadows on the other side of the street and hurried after, maintaining his distance and hugging the buildings that lined the sidewalk so he would not be seen should either the American or the Russian look back.

  Sasha and her companion looked at one another in astonishment and quickly fell in behind the procession.

  *****

  Stankov rushed to catch up.

  “Privyet, Sergey,” I said, extending a hand. Stankov fervently grasped it.

  ”Harry, ya ochen’ rad tebya videt’. I’m very happy to see you.”

  He was breathing heavily, and the familiar stench of cheap cognac hit me in the face as he embraced me in the Russian fashion.

  “You have come to take me to the United States, yes?”

  I wished I had a back-up location where we could have a long sit-down, but I was on my own with no local support, and safehouses don’t grow on trees.

  “You met a colleague of mine not long ago, Sergey. Tell me what happened at that meeting.”

  Stankov’s eyes flooded with uncertainty.

  “You do not know what information I provided? That is not why you are here? I was sure you would recognize the value of this information immediately.”

  He shuffled a step back, eyes wide with incomprehension.

  “Let’s go over it again, Sergey. What did you pass to my colleague?”

  Stankov gulped. When he spoke it was as if he had no air in his lungs. “The disk ... It contained the complete list ...” His voice faltered. “You did not receive the disk?”

  “I did not.”

  So Stankov had passed information to Thackery on a computer disk – information worth a man’s life.

  “Do you have a duplicate? Are you aware that your Embassy has put out a missing persons report on you?”

  “Harry, I do not understand. Nie ponimayu. I expected you to be prepared to extract me when you saw the contents of the disk. I finally got the information you wanted me to get all those years ago in Berlin!”

  He smiled ingratiatingly, extending a hand to grasp my elbow.

  “The young man who met me before said something about ending our arrangement, but I told him it is too dangerous now for me ever to return to Moscow and that he must get the information to you personally. I told him you had promised I could go to the United States."

  His next words came out in a tumble. “By now they must have discovered what I have done. They probably knew even before I arrived in Vienna. You promised you would take me to the United States. I have risked everything to get this information to you, and you tell me you do not realize the importance of what I have given you?”

  Was this just a pretext for Stankov to defect to the good life in the US he had always desired? If so, he had certainly waited a long time to make his move, and he had developed impressive acting skills. Or had he waited until he actually possessed information he thought would justify the action?

  Stankov’s voice squeaked as tension constricted his throat, “I have to disappear. They must be after me. You must help!”

  “Sergey, as I said: I don’t have the foggiest idea what you are talking about.”

  “But what about Voskreseniye? I told your courier to hand the disk personally only to you.”

  Stankov had a loftier vision of my position and influence than was justified by reality.

  “Sergey, the ‘courier’ was killed before he could get your information to me.”

  This was brutal, but I needed to stop Stankov’s babbling and get him to the point. “Do you have another copy?”

  The Russian started violently, and he swiveled his head peering into the misty shadows that surrounded us.

  “Of course, I have a copy. I’ve not been without a copy since I left Moscow. But you’ve got to get me out of here. How was your courier compromised? If Voskreseniye knew of him they knew of me! They will try to kill me now!”

  I couldn’t argue with the logic, especially in light of what Jake had told me about a mole. But I had seen this sort of panic in agents before. The accepted practice is to stall for time while reassuring them of their security and the case officer’s ability to protect them no matter what. On most occasions such reassurances are nothing but bullshit.

  *****

  Sasha and her companion had taken opposite sides of the street, always keeping Connolly’s furtive pursuer in sight. Forced to hold back or risk discovery, they watched as the man moved stealthily towards the corner where the American and the Russian had turned into a side street a few moments earlier. The man leaned forward to see around the corner and then reached beneath his coat and withdrew something that glinted in the gauzy light as he braced his arm against the side of the building.

  Sasha’s companion charged forward at a dead run with no doubt in his mind as to what was about to happen. As he neared the corner he heard a sound – the muted report of a silenced pistol.

  CHAPTER 20 – Wet Night

  Stankov’s panicked calf’s eyes glinted in the half-light, his fingers still clutching my arm. I was considering how best to put him at ease when his face disintegrated showering me with bl
oody fragments of bone and brain.

  Startled and half blinded by the spray of gore, I froze for a split second as Stankov’s hand fell from my arm and his body crumpled in slow motion like a deflated balloon to the wet pavement.

  *****

  As he surged from the shadows to charge across the narrow street Yevgeniy Drozhdov noted with satisfaction the results of his perfectly placed shot. The 147 grain sub-sonic round had performed exactly as expected, and Drozhdov now brought the silenced 9-mm Walther P99QA to bear on the American intelligence officer whom he assumed to be paralyzed by shock and surprise. He would be an easy target.

  *****

  When confronted by a life or death situation the flight or fight reflex usually has a happier result when flight takes precedence, but having the time to make such a decision is a rare luxury. Pilots are trained to ignore their natural reactions when confronted by an emergency in the cockpit just as soldiers are conditioned to ignore the instinct for self-preservation in battle. At times like these the mind locks fear away and pre-conditioning takes over. Thought is not involved because by the time you think about it, you’re dead.

  I heard the “crick” of a slug chipping concrete from the building behind me as I hit the pavement, and my peripheral vision caught the glint of a pistol barrel, elongated by a silencer, being lowered in my direction. I cocked my leg and launched a vicious straight legged kick at the assailant’s knee, striking it with my heel and was rewarded by the satisfying crunch of foot connecting with bone. There was a sharp grunt of pain and the pistol clattered to the sidewalk as the owner of the cracked knee went down hard. I rolled in the direction the pistol had fallen stretching out a hand toward it.

  A heavy weight landed on top of me, driving the breath from my lungs. There was a knee in the small of my back, and my head was jerked sharply backward by a strong arm curled around my neck. I strained against the agonizing pressure. No fragmentary scenes from my life flashed before my eyes – only a tiny, whiny voice somewhere in the back of my mind whimpering that I was about to die.

  I gave up groping for the fallen weapon and clawed at the arm locked around my neck, but the guy was too strong. I noticed with peculiar detachment that I was beginning to experience tunnel vision as my brain was deprived of oxygen-giving blood. The whiny voice went silent as my vision shrank to a point of light.

  CRACK!

  It should have been the sound of my own neck snapping, but my vision inexplicably began to clear, and I could breathe again. The weight on my back now felt more dead than alive.

  I looked up to see Sasha looking on anxiously while someone else hauled the inert killer off my back.

  Rising unsteadily to my knees on the wet sidewalk I looked to the side and saw the attacker stretched full length with blood spilling from the side of his head. A very large man wearing a satisfied expression stood over the unconscious form. The street remained otherwise silent and deserted in the chill rain.

  I heaved myself to my feet with Sasha’s help and staggered over to Stankov’s body. In the movies when someone is shot in the head a neat red hole appears in the forehead. That’s not what a bullet really does. One side of Stankov’s head had been all but obliterated.

  CHAPTER 21 – New Friends

  The assailant groaned and tried to push himself up from the pavement, but Sasha’s large and as yet mute companion calmly and precisely whacked the side of his head with the barrel of an automatic pistol.

  While the big man was thus productively occupied, I knelt and rolled Stankov over onto his back, causing more brain matter and blood to spill onto the wet sidewalk. Stifling a gag, I methodically searched the corpse’s pockets. I retrieved every item I found, including a small, flat packet from the inside pocket of the Russian’s suit jacket. There was something tiny and hard inside, and I pocketed it before Sasha or her friend could see it.

  Over my shoulder I saw Sasha remove what looked like a Smith & Wesson Model 642, a compact but deadly weapon, from the pocket of her long Loden coat. She made a visual sweep of the area to make sure no one was in sight. She was no innocent amateur.

  Her companion barked something at her in whatever language they shared, and she replaced the gun in her pocket. The assailant’s pistol still lay where it had fallen, and since everyone in my immediate vicinity was armed to the teeth, I picked it up. Sasha’s companion observed me balefully but made no move to stop me as I shoved the pistol into my waistband.

  As more cylinders began to fire in my brain, an idea eddied lazily to the surface. I grabbed Sasha by the elbow.

  “Wait. Help me with this first.”

  I began removing the clothing from the corpse.

  She asked with a hint of distaste, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m buying us some time,” I croaked. My throat hurt, and my voice was barely audible over the rain. “His clothes are Russian. Without them and without a head, it'll be hard to identify the body, at least for a while. The authorities won’t turn to the Russians for a fingerprint trace if they have no reason to think that he was Russian. This will confuse the trail and hold up the investigation. With luck, we may be able to hold whoever the hell our new buddy here works for at bay, at least until they miss him.”

  Sasha gave me a look that might have been surprise or admiration and knelt to help. Soon we had all of poor Stankov’s sweaty and gory clothes rolled into a bundle that she carried as she rushed away to be swallowed by the mist.

  She returned in a relatively new Skoda automobile that she left with its motor running near the Capuchin Church. Her large friend effortlessly wrestled the limp assailant from the sidewalk and dragged him to the waiting car. He and Sasha bound him and staunched the flow of blood from his head. The guy had likely been concussed, possibly seriously.

  I hoped so. I sincerely hoped so. I hoped he would die.

  Before I got into the car I took one last look back toward Stankov’s pitiful, naked corpse, now only dimly visible through the mist and rain, a pasty white splotch on the sidewalk leaking crimson streaks into the gutter.

  I had put him there as surely as I if I had put the bullet in his brain. He would no longer drink too much nor drive too recklessly, and he would never reach the golden shores of the United States. I wondered where his wife was and whether his son had been proud of him. Had he planned to take them with him, or had he dreamt of a fresh start, to re-make himself into a new Stankov?

  “We need to talk to this guy,” I rasped, nodding toward the prisoner. “Is there somewhere safe we can take him?”

  Control of the situation was quickly slipping away. Volodya’s contact in Vienna was proving to be unexpectedly resourceful.

  I sat in the front passenger seat with Sasha behind the wheel and my mysterious savior in the back with the unconscious assassin. The large man spoke rapidly into his cell phone in the same unknown language and then related something to Sasha. She navigated the Skoda onto the Shotten Ring and turned onto Wahringer Strasse, and finally into a quiet neighborhood in the Wahring District. After a few moments we passed through large iron gates that had swung open at our approach. A brass plaque was affixed to the wall: Botschaft des Staates Israel.

  We were in the Israeli Embassy compound.

  The wilderness of mirrors was rapidly morphing into Alice’s looking glass.

  CHAPTER 22 – The Basement

  Drozhdov awoke to discover he was naked and bound to a sturdy wooden chair, constrained by heavy leather straps around his chest; his forearms were secured to the wide, flat arms of the chair, and his legs were similarly rendered immobile. The chair itself was bolted to a bare concrete floor.

  He squeezed his eyes against the blinding light that shone directly into his face and was overcome momentarily by nausea. He suspected he was concussed as he struggled to concentrate.

  There was a scrape of shoes on concrete, but he could make out no more than the outline of a man in the gloom just beyond the light’s glare. The figure disappeared for a moment and then re-
appeared at his the right side.

  Something extended from the darkness glinting heavy and metallic as it entered the cone of bright light. It moved like some feral animal toward his right hand that lay flat, splayed against the broad wooden arm of the chair. He stared, mesmerized as his sight came into focus and he recognized the object as a large, curved pair of sharp pincers now positioned at the second knuckle of his trigger finger.

  In a single, sudden movement, the pincers closed over his finger completely severing it at the knuckle. The shock was great, and it did not take long for new pain to be added to that in already his head, and he screamed. Screaming was good. It released the pressure and emotion brought on by pain. He knew this. His training had taught him this. If he could just concentrate enough on his reaction to the torture, direct his anger, he could survive.

  A voice reached him then, close to his ear, speaking in accented German. He could feel the breath of the speaker.

  “That was just to get your attention, murderer.”

  Drozhdov passed out.

  A bucket of ice-cold water was thrown into his face, and the voice reached him again.

  “Wer bist du? Who are you?” The voice was guttural, heavy and menacing in his ear.

  Drozhdov said nothing. The language was German, which meant they did not know he was Russian. His Spetsnaz training had prepared him for torture, and he could resist, he told himself, he could resist until they killed him. He clinched his teeth against the pain and remained silent.

  His tormentor extended the pincers still dripping blood before his eyes.

  “Pay attention now to what I say. There is one rule and one rule only in this conversation: one question, one answer. No answer or the wrong answer and you lose something else. There will be no exceptions.”

  The pincers were placed swiftly over the middle finger of Drozhdov’s right hand next to the profusely bleeding stump of his trigger finger. Once again Drozhdov experienced the sound of metal rasping on metal as it sliced through flesh and bone. The severed finger fell to the floor beside the Russian’s bound feet. He screamed again as he watched the blood spurt from the two stumps. He looked up; his face contorted, but still he could see nothing through the blinding light. “Fuck you!”