Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  She had the cabby cruise around the neighborhood, explaining that she wasn’t quite certain of the correct address, while she looked for signs that her father’s place was under surveillance: someone loitering across the street, a van with too many antennas parked on the street, the chance reflection of binocular lenses in a second story window. But if they were there, she couldn’t spot them, and she had the cabby drop her off in front of the cafe”.

  Although the evening was starting to get cool, Elizabeth sat at an outside table where she had a coffee while she watched the neighborhood. Her father’s apartment was on the third floor front, and the windows were dark. She hadn’t expected to simply take a cab out to his apartment” knock on his door and find him at home. But seeing his darkened windows gave her a chill. She felt not so much on her own now, as she did alone, abandoned again like she’d been when she was a child.

  She’d become spoiled over the past few years, having him a car-ride away when he lived outside Washington, or a telephone call away when he lived here. And she’d forgotten what it had been like without him for most of her childhood. She’d bounced from missing him so badly that she ached, to hating him so deeply that she dreamed once of shooting him in the head with a gun, then cutting off his arms and legs with a machete and using his parts to feed the sharks. The next morning she’d been so ashamed of her dream that she’d thrown up and managed to produce a fever so that her mother kept her home from school. She just couldn’t face her classmates, almost all of whom had both parents at home.

  Later when she’d come to learn at least in general terms what her father did for a living, she’d become so proud that she couldn’t stop talking about him. Finally the school principal had called her mother in to ask her to stop Elizabeth’s fantastical stories. They frightened the other students, and some of the teachers and parents. At any rate if her father really was a spy, Elizabeth shouldn’t be so open about it. Her mother had been deeply embarrassed and for several months afterward Elizabeth was not allowed to speak her father’s name.

  A half-block away the Rue La Fayette was busy, but on this side street only a few cars and few pedestrians moved. It was a week night and most French families were at home eating dinner and watching television. Some new plane trees had been planted along both sides of the street, ‘and although they were small, and their branches mostly bare, there were a few green buds on some of them. In ten or fifteen years this would be an extremely pleasant, and therefore expensive neighborhood.

  Certain now that no one was watching her father’s apartment building, Elizabeth paid for her coffee, and made the first pass on foot, looking through the windows into the empty ground floor vestibule. She crossed the street at the corner, and returned. She had to wait for a taxi to pass before she could Cross back and she ducked inside the apartment building.

  Her father’s name was listed on a white card on the mailbox for 3A, and for a few seconds she hoped that she was on a wild goose chase. A radio or television was playing somewhere within the building, and she heard a woman’s voice raised in what sounded like anger. A man barked a sharp reply, and the woman fell silent. She took the stairs at the back of the hall two at a time to the third floor where she held up for a full minute. This floor was quiet. No light shone from under either the front or rear apartment doors. Even the air smelled neutral, only a faint mustiness indicated the building was old. Again she hoped she was on a wild goose chase, and her father would come up the stairs behind her and be flabbergasted when he saw her standing in the darkness. But no one came up. She stepped out of the stairway to her father’s apartment, hesitated a second longer, then rang the bell.

  The door to the opposite apartment behind her opened, and she turned, catching the impression of a bulky man in shirtsleeves standing there with a gun in his hand.

  The thought that she’d made a dreadful mistake coming here flashed through her head like a bolt of lightning. Moving on instinct she charged into the stairway and raced downstairs without a sound. If she could make it outside she had a fair chance of losing herself in the night. Among her talents were the 220and 440yard dashes for which she’d won trophies in high school and college. One of her coaches had even suggested training for the Olympics, but she hadn’t been interested.

  She reached the ground floor as the front door slammed open and several men in dark windbreakers barged into the narrow vestibule.

  Turning, she started back up the stairs when the man from the third floor suddenly appeared, blocking the way.

  Elizabeth turned again, this time into the muzzles of two very large pistols. She stopped and her entire body sagged.

  “Shit,” she said.

  The flashing blue lights of several police cars were gathered on the street, along with a growing number of onlookers.

  “Give me your purse, Mademoiselle,” one of the gunmen said. “Je suis la fine de Monsieur Kirk McGarvey,” Elizabeth said, carefully handing her purse to the surprised plain clothes officer.

  “What are you doing here, Mademoiselle McGarvey?” one of the other plain clothes officers asked. He was heavyset and very dark and dangerous looking.

  “I came to see my father, naturally,” Elizabeth replied. “Is this how you treat all your visitors to France?”

  The heavyset man searched her purse, and examined her passport. “Your father is not at home.”

  “Evidently not.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I thought he was here.”

  “Was he expecting you?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said. “Now if that’s all, I’d like my purse and I’ll go.”

  “I would like to ask you a few questions, if you’ll come downtown with us. With no trouble, please.”

  “First I’d like to call my embassy.”

  “In due time, Mademoiselle,” the heavyset man said. “If you cooperate we will not handcuff you.”

  Elizabeth stepped up to him. He towered a full head over her, and he looked dangerous, more like a street thug than a cop. “What am I being charged with, and who the hell are you?”

  “You’re being charged with nothing, yet As for my name, I am Colonel Guy de Galan.” He stepped aside for her. “Now, if you please, Mademoiselle?”

  Elizabeth hesitated a moment longer. She still had twenty-four hours before Tom Lynch was expecting her. The French were looking for her father, but with luck they might buy her story and let her go, providing they did not find out what hotel she was staying at and search her room.

  Out in the street several dozen people had gathered to watch what was going on. She searched the crowd for a familiar face, either her father’s or Tom Lynch’s whom she was sure she would recognize from the photographs she’d seen. But they were all strangers hoping to catch some interesting action. Getting in the back of Colonel Galan’s car she glanced up at her father’s apartment, a bitter taste in her mouth. In less than forty-eight hours working for Ryan she’d managed to get herself arrested. It wouldn’t look so good in her personnel file, but she didn’t think that the Deputy Director of Operations would be very surprised.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Bonnieres

  McGarvey flipped off the Renault’s headlights shortly before 10:00 p.m. as he approached Rencke’s house, and stopped in the woods to make sure there was no danger.

  It was good to be back in France, even if his stay was only temporary. The evening was cool, but it was sharply warmer than Russia or Finland and he was sweating lightly by the time he reached the edge of the trees overlooking the farmhouse.

  He’d spent a reasonably restful evening aboard the train from Moscow to Helsinki, and even managed to get another two hours of sleep on the Finnair flight. By the — time he reached Brussels he was well rested and made the 235-mile drive to Bonnieres in under five hours, which included a leisurely dinner in an excellent bistro in Compiegne.

  A thin curl of smoke rose from the chimney of the farmhouse, and a light shone from one of the windows. Nothing seemed out of th
e ordinary, nevertheless McGarvey settled down to wait for a full thirty minutes to see if anything developed. Even the most disciplined surveillance officers would do something in that time span to reveal themselves to a careful observer. Light a cigarette, cough, move a branch or a bush, key a walkie talkie.

  During the drive across France he had worked out more of the details of the first glimmerings of a plan that had come to him in Moscow. Getting into Russia would provide no real difficulty. But once Tarankov was down, getting back out again could be difficult unless his cover was airtight. When the authorities looked at him, he wanted them to see what they expected to see, and not an assassin. In fact, if all went well the Russian Mafia would actually help him get out and never know what they’d unknowingly done.

  Something moved at the edge of the woods fifty yards to the left. McGarvey stood stock still behind the hole of a large oak tree, all of his senses alert.

  The bushes rattled, the sound almost inaudible. Moments later a small white-tailed deer stepped into the clearing. It was a doe, and she was cautious, her nose up testing the air. She looked toward McGarvey then meandered the rest of the way down the hill, daintily skirted Rencke’s solar panel arrays, and followed the far edge of the woods, finally disappearing toward the river.

  McGarvey walked back to the car satisfied no one was watching the house, and drove the rest of the way down the hill. An excited Rencke was waiting for him at the front door, his hair a mess, his blue jeans dirty and his tennis shoes untied, the laces flapping as he hopped from foot to foot.

  “Hiya, Mac. Tell me you were in Nizhny Novgorod and you’ll make my day. I won’t even complain that you didn’t bring me any Twinkies this time. Tell me! Tell me!”

  “I was there, and it’s even worse than you thought,” McGarvey said, preceding Rencke inside. He stopped in his tracks.

  Most of the computer equipment was gone, or had been dismantled and packed in large boxes. Only one monitor still showed anything, and two partitioned suitcases were almost completely filled with super dense floppy disks. McGarvey felt a twinge of uneasiness.

  “What’s going on, Otto? Is somebody onto you?”

  “Maybe the Action Service, I’m not sure,” Rencke said brusquely. “But as of a few hours ago all the CIA circuits to Paris Station went blank except for routine housekeeping data after the French requested it.”

  “What was the last message sent?”

  “It was an FYI to Lynch from Tom Moore, Ryan’s assistant, that you would be in French custody within twenty-four hours.”

  McGarvey considered this news for a moment. “Did he say how?”

  “No. But it’s getting flaky out there all of a sudden, know what I mean? Somebody is taking this shit mucho seriously, and you’re at the middle of it.”

  “Has anyone made the connection between me and Tarankov yet?”

  “There’s been nothing on any of the circuits. But I think they might be making the leap. Kabatov has asked for U.S. help, and it looks like Lindsay is about to give it to him.” It wasn’t surprising. From what McGarvey had seen Kabatov’s government was in serious trouble. “What kind of help?”

  “NATO has been instructed to conduct exercises in Poland, and they’re moving I don’t know how many divisions up there now. All our air bases in Germany are on alert, and the Sixth Fleet has deployed from Naples. The sabres are rattling big time, Mac. Brings you back to the early sixties,” “Have you got someplace—?” McGarvey began.

  “That depends on you,” Rencke cut in. “But I found a house with a garage up in Courbevoie. It’s French yuppie ville and I don’t think anyone would expect to find me there. Anyway, there’s a telephone substation fifty meters from my backdoor, the N308 is a block away, and it’s less than twenty minutes to downtown Paris. I should have been a real estate agent, don’t you think?”

  “How long did you rent it for?”

  “A year, but more to the point, are you taking the job? Are you going to kill Tarankov?”

  “Yes, and I’m going to need your help,” McGarvey said.

  “That’s why I rented Courbevoie. Otherwise I was thinking that a winter in Rio wouldn’t be all that bad.”

  McGarvey had to laugh despite the situation. “I don’t think they sell Twinkies down there, Otto.”

  “They do, Mac, I checked. What do you think, I’m crazy or something?” Rencke’s eyes were alive with excitement. “You saw him blow away those apparatchiks in Nizhny Novgorod, Mac? You looked into his eyes and saw — what?”

  “I saw the killings, but it was Leonid Chernov who looked into my eyes.”

  Rencke was suddenly serious. “Bad shit, Mac, because he’s gotta be the baddest dog of all. No records on him. Nada, unless you brought me the SVR’s database number.”

  “Have you still got a secure outside line?” McGarvey asked.

  “For the moment.”

  “Okay. Pull up today’s Le Figaro. The personals column.”

  Rencke went to the one computer that was still running, and within a minute he was scrolling through Le Figaro’s want ads. “What are we looking for?”

  “There,” McGarvey said, stabbing, a finger on the screen. Julius loves you, please call at once. 277-8693.

  “The telephone number is inverted. Add five to each number, and start over again past zero.”

  “All right,” Rencke said. “It’s 722-3148. Did Year lin place the ad?”

  “Yes.”

  “It could be traced, Mac. Do we want to trust it?”

  “We don’t have any other choice. I need more information on Chernov, because I think that I’ll come up against him sooner or later. If he’s what I think he is Tarankov has given him a free hand, and he’ll probably have his own connections among the old KGB’s Department Viktor people. It means he’s dangerous and I’ll probably have to kill him in order to get out.”

  Rencke looked at McGarvey with wonder. “You’re really going to do it. You’re going to assassinate the bastard.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why?” Rencke asked.

  “Because it’s what I do,” McGarvey replied. “And I’m getting paid one million dollars for the job. But Tarankov certainly won’t be the first politician whose assassination didn’t make any difference in the long run. But just now at this point in time Russia can go either way. Maybe I don’t like the thought of having to fight a cold war all over again. Or have nuclear missiles pointed at us. Maybe by killing this one man I can save some lives. They were apparatchiks in Nizhny Novgorod. Probably corrupt and arrogant as hell, but Tarankov and his men executed them without a second thought. You predicted that if he gains power tens of thousands, maybe millions of people would die. I might be able to prevent that.”

  Rencke had become subdued, his face long. “It’s something else too, isn’t it Mac? It’s about your parents.”

  “I guess,” McGarvey said.

  The house was suddenly closing in. He went out to the courtyard, and lit a cigarette. He had the fleeting thought that if someone was out there in the trees the flare of his match and the glowing tip of the cigarette would make him a perfect target for assassination. It was a thought he’d had from time to time. It would answer the ultimate question, as Rencke had suggested, of finding out what came afterward. And it would be a release from his dreams in which he clearly saw the faces of every person he’d ever killed. His sister in Utah had stopped speaking to him years ago, so his nieces and nephews had grown up without knowing their uncle. It was at times like these he missed the sense of family. His wife couldn’t live with him, and he’d been frightened for the safety of every woman he’d ever known intimately. Lately he’d even tried to keep his daughter at arm’s length for fear that she would come to harm’s way. Yemlin showing up in Paris had shaken him more than he wanted to admit, because despite his expertise in the business he was just as vulnerable as any other man. This kill would be the ultimate for him, because although he knew in his heart of hearts that he would never b
e able to reduce the odds of success to fifty-fifty he was still going ahead with it. He wasn’t invincible, but he didn’t care because the prize was worth the risk.

  “I never knew my parents, so I can only guess what you must be feeling,” Rencke said from the darkness behind McGarvey. “But at least you had them when you were growing up. You had family. A sister, and then a wife and a daughter. No matter how bad it gets, you had that much, Mac. Which was more than I ever had. I don’t even have my cats anymore. I’ve got nobody except for you.”

  McGarvey turned around. Rencke had extinguished the house lights and he stood in the deeper shadows beneath the eaves. He looked like the silhouette of a comic figure, except that it was painfully obvious from his words that he was hurting.

  It seemed to McGarvey that he had given of himself for most of his life. He’d given himself to his country, which since Santiago didn’t seem to care, or even want to know about him. He’d given everything he was capable of to women, but in the end they’d all rejected him for one reason or another. Because of his fears, of course, but because he was apparently incapable of giving them what they needed, on their terms. Elizabeth was the only exception, but she was young and she still idolized him. In time her eyes would be opened and though she might not reject-him, she would at least keep him at arm’s length.

  He’d fared no better with men either. He’d looked up to his father, who he’d been told was a traitor. He’d looked up to John Lymann Trotter, a former DDO, who’d tried to kill him. He’d looked up to Phil Carrara, another DDO, who’d died trying to help him. And he’d looked up to CIA director Roland Murphy, who thought that at best McGarvey was a sometimes necessary evil. “We’re a couple of misfits, aren’t we, Mac?” Rencke said. “You’re an assassin and I’m a flake. But you know, it’s sometimes the misfits who get the job done.”

  “If you’re a misfit, Otto, I wish the rest of the world were misfits too,” McGarvey said gently.