Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

“Then I only hope for your sake that you don’t exactly follow in his footsteps, Elizabeth. But I’m sure that you will do very well at whatever it is they want you to do.” It was a brave speech, but Kathleen had to turn away, her eyes glistening.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. But it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

  “I would have thought that after Greece you would have changed your mind.”

  Four years ago Elizabeth and her mother had been kidnapped by an organization of former East German intelligence officers who wanted to force McGarvey into a trap and kill him. But her father had beat them all. The experience had nearly destroyed her mother.

  “Greece made me want it even more.”

  “I see,” Kathleen said, once again facing her daughter. “So you came this morning to break the news to me, is that it? Or is there more?”

  “I came to ask for your help. I’m trying to find Daddy.”

  “He’s in Paris at his old apartment.”

  “He’s gone. We think he’s in hiding.”

  Kathleen’s face turned white. It wasn’t the reaction Elizabeth had expected. “Howard Ryan wants to find him, and that miserable, fucking son of a bitch is using you to do it.”

  Elizabeth was shocked to the bottom of her soul. Never in her life had she heard her mother utter a swearword, let alone a combination like that. Her mouth dropped open for the second time in the past twelve hours.

  “Close your mouth, dear,” Kathleen said, and she picked up the telephone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Roland Murphy. And if I don’t get satisfaction from him, I’ll call Jim Lindsay.”

  “Mother, you can’t call the DCI and you can’t call the President. I volunteered for this assignment, and I’ll do it with or without you. But Daddy needs my help and I’m going to give it to him. His life could depend on it.”

  Kathleen put the telephone down. “Listen to me, darling. I know Howard Ryan. He’s a pompous ass, but he’s a powerful pompous ass who is an expert at manipulating people. He has a grudge against your father, and he means to use you to get back at him.”

  “I didn’t think you knew that much about Daddy’s career.”

  “I’m not stupid, Elizabeth. I hear things and I see things. But just because I cannot live with your father, doesn’t mean I stopped loving him.”

  Elizabeth’s throat was tight, and her stomach hollow. “Why,” she asked softly.

  “I cannot live with an … assassin.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you still loved Daddy.”

  “You weren’t ready,” Kathleen said. She studied her daughter’s face. “I’m not certain you’re ready yet. But Howard Ryan is a dangerous man, darling.”

  “All the more reason for me to find my father as soon as I can. I have to warn him.”

  Again Kathleen studied her daughter’s face. “You are your father’s daughter. Stubborn.”

  “You dig your heels in too, Mother.”

  Kathleen smiled wanly. “If he’s gone into hiding he won’t be out of touch. He always arranges for a contact who can keep him informed with what’s happening on the outside. He told me that one of his worst fears was dying alone and being buried in an unmarked grave somewhere.”

  “What did you say to him, Mother?”

  “I told him to get out of the service, of course.”

  “What would you tell him now?”

  “The same thing, Elizabeth. The same thing I’m telling you. The Cold War is over. We won it. There’s no compelling reason any longer to maintain such a large intelligence service.”

  Elizabeth wanted to hate her mother, but she could not. She couldn’t even feel sorry for her, because from her mother’s point she was correct. She decided not to say anything about Grandma and Grandpa.

  “Until last year your father was involved with a woman here in Washington. She’s a lobbyist for the airline industry. Her name is Dominique Kilbourne. She might know something.”

  “Was she involved with Daddy’s last assignment?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Will she know who I am?”

  Kathleen smiled. “I can’t imagine your father not talking about you.”

  “One more favor, Mother,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like to borrow one of your credit cards for awhile. I want to get to Paris without leaving a track.”

  Kathleen hesitated.

  “I’ll pay you back, Mother, I promise.”

  “Of course I’ll give you one of my credit cards. It’s not that, darling. You’re my only child and I want you to be safe.”

  “None of us are safe, Mother.”

  “Your father says that.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth said.

  Elizabeth called the reference desk at the public library from a pay phone and had the woman look up the address of Dominique Kilbourne’s office in the list of registered lobbyists. It turned out to be an entire floor of a solid five story building off Thomas Circle, a few blocks from the Russian Embassy.

  It was past 11:30 A.M.” by the time she presented herself to the receptionist.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.

  “No. But I just need a few minutes of her time. It’s important.”

  “I’m sorry, but Ms. Kilbourne’s schedule is completely full today and for the remainder of the week.” The secretary touched a few keys on her computer. “I can fit you in next week. Wednesday at two in the afternoon.”

  “Tell Ms. Kilbourne that Elizabeth McGarvey is here.”

  Something crossed the secretary’s expression. “Just a moment, please,” she said, and she got up and went inside.

  Elizabeth stepped around the desk so that she could read the computer screen. Dominique Kilbourne’s schedule was tight. She was scheduled to be at lunch with a congressional group at the Senate dining room in twenty-five minutes.

  The receptionist returned a minute later. “She’ll see you now. It’s the last door at the end of the hall.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know what to expect, but she wasn’t disappointed. Dominique Kilbourne was pretty, with a pleasantly narrow face, short dark hair, coal-black eyes and a slight figure. She looked like a decisive, take charge woman.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Ms. Kilbourne,” Elizabeth said.

  Dominique motioned her to a seat in front of a starkly modern brass and glass desk. The office was of moderate size, “but extremely well furnished, with a couple of Picasso prints on the walls, a large luxurious oriental rug on a marble tiled floor, and large windows with a good view toward the White House. “You come as something of a surprise.”

  “I’m trying to locate my father. My mother thought you might know where he is.”

  Dominique stiffened. “The last I heard your father was going to Paris. That was more than a year ago. Beyond that I can’t help you, or your mother.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to have it come out like that. This has nothing to do with my mother. I simply want to find my father, and I was hoping that you might know something.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. McGarvey, I don’t,” Dominique said. She picked up her telephone. “Sandy, get me a cab, please. I’ll be leaving in a minute or two.” “Ms. Kilbourne, I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I think I could get an FBI Counterespionage unit down here to bring you in for questioning about a national security matter.”

  “Go ahead,” Dominique said, unperturbed, hanging up.

  “I work for Mr. Ryan, and I think he could pull a few strings.”

  “Howard Ryan is an ungrateful son of a bitch whose life your father saved,” Dominique blurted angrily. “I was there, I saw it. So you can go back to Langley and tell him that if he wants to find Kirk McGarvey he can do it on his own. I certainly won’t help him. Or you.”

  Elizabeth was a little embarrassed, but she didn’t let it show. “I don’t know why I should be surprised by your reaction, Ms. Kilbourne. My father has terrible luck with women,
but the ones he’s attracted to are as strong willed as they are beautiful.”

  I “Thank you for the compliment, if that’s what it is, but I still can’t help you,” Dominique said coolly. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have a luncheon appointment.”

  Elizabeth glanced at the wall clock. “You have fifteen minutes to get to the Senate dining room, so you should have Sandy call over there and tell them you’ll be late for lunch because something else has come up. It’s a family emergency.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “You’re going to help me find my father for the same reasons I have to find him before Ryan does. You’re in love with him, or at least you were.”

  Elizabeth had been guessing, but Dominique reacted as if she’d been shot, some of the light fading from her eyes. “My father has a habit of walking out on the people he loves most, not because he wants to be mean, but because he wants to protect us. “Being around him can be dangerous.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “This time his life is on the line. I have some information that he has to have. Without it he could be walking into a trap.”

  “Your father is an amazing man,” Dominique said.

  “Yes, he is, Ms. Kilbourne,” Elizabeth said. “But he’s just that. Only a man. Will you help me?”

  Dominique thought a moment, then picked up the phone again. “Sandy, cancel that cab. Then call Senator Dobson and give him my apologies, but I won’t be able to have lunch with him today. See if we can reschedule for later in the week.” Dominique looked at Elizabeth. “Everything is fine. But cancel my appointments for the remainder of the afternoon as well.”

  “All that isn’t necessary,” Elizabeth said when Dominique hung up. “I don’t need your entire afternoon.”

  “I do,” Dominique said bitterly. She went to a sideboard where she opened a bottle of white wine from a small refrigerator, poured two glasses, and brought them back.

  “Thank you, Ms. Kilbourne,” Elizabeth said, taking one of the glasses.

  “We better start using first names, otherwise it’s going to become awkward,” Dominique said. She gave Elizabeth a bleak look. “I can see a lot of your father in your face, and in your voice. But I thought you were working for the United Nations.”

  “I just started with the Company about six months ago. My father doesn’t know yet.”

  Dominique managed a faint smile. “I have a feeling he’ll go through the roof when he does find out.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you’re right. But first I have to find him.”

  Dominique’s face had sagged, but she picked herself up. “Your father hurt me very much.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dominique waved her off. “It has nothing to do with you, except that he said the same thing to me last year that you just said. Being around him is dangerous. There are a lot of people from his past who could be gunning for him. There are a lot of old grudges on both sides of the Atlantic. Now you.”

  “Have you heard from him in the past year?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not like him.”

  “When we parted we had some angry words. I told him that I would either have all of him, or I wanted nothing.”

  “With my father that was a mistake, if you loved him.”

  “I don’t need some twenty-year-old giving advice to the lovelorn, even if she is a McGarvey,” Dominique flared. “You’ve apparently inherited his manipulative trait as well.”

  “I didn’t come here to be your friend,” Elizabeth said harshly. “Although that would have been nice. How can I reach my father?”

  “What has he done?”

  “I can’t tell you that, except to say that it’s vitally important that I see him.”

  “Is it the Russians?” Dominique demanded. “Has Viktor Yemlin popped up looking for his quid pro quo?”

  “What are you talking about?” Elizabeth asked sharply, trying to hide her surprise. “If you’re going to play in your father’s league, you’d better do your homework first. Yemlin is an old adversary who helped your father out last year. One thing I learned about the business is that nobody does anything for nothing. Your father expected he would show up sooner or later.”

  “I can’t answer that,” Elizabeth said.

  Dominique started to say something, but Elizabeth overrode her.

  “It may sound melodramatic, but the less you know the better off you’ll be. Now I’ll ask you once again, how can I reach my father.”

  Dominique turned away. “I don’t know,” she said. “At least not directly. But he did mention the names of two men he trusted with his life. One of them was Phil Carrara, who was killed. And the other was Otto Rencke, apparently some computer expert who’s a black sheep. There was something about Twinkies, but I don’t remember all the details.”

  “Is he here in Washington?”

  “He was. But he’s in France now. Not in Paris but somewhere nearby.”

  “Did my father give you his phone number, or email address? Anything like that?”

  “No,” Dominique said. “But apparently Rencke worked for the CIA once upon a time. He’s supposed to be a genius whom everybody is afraid of. But if anybody would know how to get in touch with your father it would either be Rencke, or Yemlin. Beyond that I don’t know anything, because if one of them had come to me trying to find your father I would have given them your name. Your father told me that there was only one woman in his life who he loved unreservedly, and who loved him the same way. It was you.”

  “A father-daughter prerogative,” Elizabeth mumbled, masking her sudden emotion.

  “He’s a more complicated man than I thought, isn’t he,” Dominique said desolately.

  “You can’t imagine,” Elizabeth replied.

  NINETEEN

  Moscow

  The overnight train back to Moscow was just as crowded as the train out, but if anything the passengers were in even higher spirits than before. They’d seen Tarankov’s magic with their own eyes. The blood of the revolution had been spilled in Nizhny Novgorod just as it had in other cities. Their only disappointment was that they’d come away without-the money they’d expected. Tarankov’s troops never left the vicinity of the railway station, and had not robbed any banks for the people.

  “Ah well, maybe it was just a lie,” an old man said philosophically. “But killing those bastards was real.” “Wait until he returns’ to Moscow, then those bastards in the Kremlin will see what a real man is like,” another one voiced the generally held opinion. “Then the trains will run on time again, and we’ll have food that we can afford back in the shops.”

  McGarvey had gotten aboard early enough to find a spot in the corner where he curled up, a half-empty got tie of vodka between his knees, as he pretended to sleep, the conversations swirling around him. At one point someone eased the vodka bottle from his loose grip, and then he dozed until they pulled into Yaroslavl Station around 6:30 of a dark gray morning.

  After the grueling night the passengers who got off the train were still drunk or hung over, their excitement dissipated, and they wandered away heads hung low, quietly as if they’d just returned from a funeral and not a revolution.

  McGarvey found a toilet stall in the nearly deserted arrivals and departures hall, where he changed back into his civilian clothes, stuffing the filthy uniform into the carryall with the last of the greasy sausage and bread.

  Someone came into the restroom and used the urinal trough.

  McGarvey waited until he was gone, then emerged from the stall leaving the carryall behind as if he’d forgotten it, and out front caught a cab for the Metropol.

  The trip to Nizhny Novgorod had made a number of things clear to McGarvey, among them that Tarankov’s security was extremely effective. His armored train was a well armed fortress that even a half-dozen attack helicopters had been unable to stop. And once he arrived in the city, his commandoes had set up a defensive perimeter that
would have taken a considerable force to penetrate. A lot of civilians, which were Tarankov’s major line of defense, would have been killed in the battle, something at this point that the Kremlin could not afford to do.

  Whatever lingering doubts McGarvey might have had about Tarankov’s time table had also gone out the window in Nizhny Novgorod. On May Day Tarankov’s train would roar into Moscow, and he would swoop into Red Square at the head of his column of commandoes with more than a million people screaming his name. It was the one day of the year that no Russian could resist celebrating. Whatever forces the Kremlin would be able to muster, if any, by that late date, would not be sufficient to stop him.

  In May Tarankov would ascend to the same throne that Stalin had held unless he were killed.

  Despite yesterday’s events, which nearly everyone in Moscow must have heard about in news reports or by word of mouth, nothing outwardly had changed. Although seeing the city through new eyes, McGarvey felt an underlying tension even in the traffic and in the way the cabby drove. Moscow was holding its collective breath for the elections in less than three months. It was as if Russians were resigned to another great upheaval.

  The cabby dropped him off at his hotel around 8:00 a.m.” and he went straight upstairs to his room where Artur the bellman intercepted him as he got off the elevator.

  “You look like hell. You must have had a good time.”

  “Not bad,” McGarvey mumbled pulling out his key.

  Artur snatched it from him, preceded him down the corridor and unlocked his door with a flourish. “The floor maid was worried. She wanted to report you downstairs, but I told her to mind her own fucking business. You want a hair of the dog. I got some good Belgian brandy for you.”

  “No thanks,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to Helsinki tonight. My train leaves from Leningrad station a little after six. But right now I want some sleep, and I don’t want to be disturbed until three. Then I’ll want a bottle of white wine, and something to eat. At 4:30 I want a cab driver by the” name of Arkady Astimovich to pick me up. He works for Martex. Do you know him?”

  “He’s a shit asshole, but I know him.”