Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  “Why?” McGarvey asked matter of factly. “By the time I get to Riga I’ll know if I was cheated, and there will be no further business between us.”

  McGarvey signed the paperwork, including the bank draft for almost DM 93.000, which was about $60,000.

  Legler handed him the factory invoice which showed that he paid for the car, including transportation and prep charges. McGarvey did the rough calculation in his head, then handed the invoice back.

  “Good news about the other unit. I’ve been guaranteed an early delivery, so I can have it to you in Riga no later than ten days from now, possibly sooner.” “That is good news,” McGarvey said.

  Legler gathered up the papers, leaving McGarvey’s copies on the table, and stuffed his in his attache case. “I’m curious about something, Herr Allain. You’re Belgian, so what’s your connection with Latvia? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I do mind,” McGarvey said, rising.

  Legler got up, and handed McGarvey a valet parking slip. “The extra spare tire and gas cans are in the cargo area. And I put the same route map that our truck driver will use in the glove compartment.”

  “Thank you,” McGarvey said and they shook hands.

  “Have a good trip, Herr Allain. And I wish you luck in your business venture.”

  Downstairs at the front desk McGarvey informed them that he would be leaving in the morning, a day earlier than planned, and to have his bill ready, along with a picnic lunch.

  He retrieved the gunmetal-gray Mercedes from the parking valet, and drove the heavy machine over to an automobile parts store on the north side of the city he’d looked up in the telephone book. He purchased a pair of tire irons, and an electric tire inflator that connected to the car’s cigarette lighter.

  By 1:30 p.m. he was on the highway to the small town of GrObers, located in a small forest that had somehow escaped the industrial devastation of so much of the area between Leipzig and Halle. The car was massive, the knobby tires huge, but it drove like a luxury sedan, not a truck. The upholstery was leather, the stereo system magnificent and the attention to detail precise.

  The day was pleasantly warm, and when he pulled up in front of an isolated house at the edge of town, he spotted a burly man stripped to the waist working in the extensive garden on the south side of the house.

  The man straightened up, brushed the gray hair off his forehead as McGarvey got out of the car and came around to the front.

  “Dobry dyen, Dmitri Pavlovich,” McGarvey said.

  Former KGB General Dmitri Voronin looked as if he was seeing a ghost, but then his broad Slavic face broke out into a grin. He dropped the weeding fork he’d been using, and shambled out of the garden. “Kirk,” he shouted. He grabbed McGarvey in a bear hug and kissed him. “Yeb was, but it’s good to see you!”

  “It’s good to see you too,” McGarvey said. “You’re looking fit.” He glanced up at the house. “Where’s Nadia

  Voronin’s face fell. “You could not have known, Kirk. But she died last year of cancer.”

  “I’m sorry, Dmitri. She was a good woman.”

  “We would have been married forty-five years this summer.” Voronin shrugged. “But then we wouldn’t have had these last years of peace without you. We often talked about you.”

  After Baranov had fallen, taking much of the KGB’s Executive Action Service with him, the Komityet and all of the Soviet Union had gone through a period of internal turmoil largely unknown in the West. Voronin, who’d been number two in the KGB’s First Directorate, had tried to make the first peace overtures to the United States, and for his effort he was branded a traitor. McGarvey was hired to pull him and his wife out of Moscow to safety, first in West Germany near Munich for months of debriefings, and when the Wall came down they’d moved here for a simpler life.

  “How about a beer, Kirk?” Voronin said.

  “Sure. Then I have to ask you for a favor,” McGarvey said.

  Voronin gave him an amused glance. “You have the look on you. You’re back in the field. Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “Nyet.”

  “Good, because I no longer want the burden—” Vo ronin stopped short, an odd expression on his face as if something disturbing had just occurred to him. “There’s a picnic table in back. I’ll get the beers.”

  McGarvey had been here once after Voronin and his wife were settled in. Nothing seemed to have changed, it was still a pleasant spot. He sat down and lit a cigarette. His connection with General Voronin was unknown to all but a handful of people in Langley. It had somehow slipped past the traitor Rick Ames. So far as they knew no one in Russia was aware that the CIA had helped Voronin out of the country, although they might have guessed. The manhunt for him and his wife had been brief, because the Komityet was in disarray, and its officers had other, bigger problems facing them than a defecting general. So McGarvey felt reasonably safe coming here.

  Voronin brought the beers out, took a cigarette from McGarvey and they sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the light breeze in the trees, the singing birds, and the distant hum of tires on the highway half a kilometer away.

  “Five years ago we were about the same size, Dmitri,” McGarvey said.

  Voronin chuckled. “Old age is the ultimate diet.”

  “I’d like to borrow one of your dress uniforms.”

  Voronin cradled his beer bottle in both hands, and stared out toward the woods. “There’s a lot of trouble brewing in the Rodina. I understand this, Kirk. But you must understand that she is still Mother Russia to me. I’ll do nothing to harm my country.”

  “Neither will I,” McGarvey said. “In fact I’m trying to help save it.”

  “Are you working for the CIA again?”

  “No.”

  “Assassination has almost never had the expected results,” Voronin said quietly. “The situation almost always got worse.”

  “It might this time, too, but I don’t think so.”

  Voronin looked at him. “There is only one man in Russia whose death would benefit the people. If he were to be killed, I might be able to return.”

  “If I succeed, Dmitri, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be able to go home finally,” McGarvey said.

  “What if you fail?”

  “Then the situation will probably get worse,” McGarvey answered without hesitation. That thought had occupied his mind since Yemlin had come to see him in Paris.

  Voronin thought for a minute. “I must do this for you.” “I’m not calling in any old debts, because there aren’t—”

  Voronin interrupted. “I must help you help the Rodina, even if there’s a chance things will become worse. I’m getting old, and in the end maybe you’re my only real hope for going home.” Voronin got heavily to his feet. “I’ll get it now.”

  “Do you have a couple of large plastic garbage bags?”

  “Yes.”

  When Voronin went inside, McGarvey drove the Mercedes around back. He took the extra spare tire out of the cargo area, deflated it, and by the time Voronin returned he had pried one side of the tire away from the rim.

  “Ingenious,” Voronin said. McGarvey wrapped the KGB uniform blouse, trousers, shirt and tie in the plastic, forming the bundle into a long narrow tube which he stuffed inside the spare tire. He reinflated the tire with the electric pump, and put it back in the cargo area.

  Next he removed the cover from the spare tire attached to a bracket on the cargo door, and took the tire down. Voronin’s officer’s cap went into the hub of the wheel, which he reattached to the cargo lid bracket, and replaced the cover. The entire operation took about forty minutes, and when he was done, McGarvey was sweating lightly. Vo ronin brought another couple of beers, and they sat. again at the picnic table.

  “When do you leave?”

  “In the morning,” McGarvey said.

  “And when will you do … this thing?”

  “Sometime between now and the general elections.”

/>   “Less than ten weeks.”

  “Maybe sooner.”

  Voronin looked away, his eyes filling. “Do you ever miss your country, Kirk?”

  “Almost all the time, Dmitri.”

  “When this is done, maybe we can both go home,” Voronin said. He got up and without a backward glance went into the house. McGarvey finished his beer, backed the Mercedes out of the driveway and left.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Paris

  Elizabeth McGarvey awoke at her usual hour of 6:00 a.m.” got dressed in a bright pink jogging outfit and headed along the Avenue Jean Jaures, taking the same route her father did every morning. It was only a slight hope, but she thought by being so obviously open about her moves that if her father were to be anywhere in the vicinity of his apartment he would certainly spot her.

  As she ran she kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Cars, windowless vans, delivery trucks with too many antennae. A face in a window, a reflection off binocular lenses on a rooftop. But after nearly a week of the same routine, she’d come up with nothing. At times her hopes began to fade.

  She and Jacqueline had taken up residence in her father’s apartment, and she’d gotten to know the French woman who in some respects was like her mother. Mysterious and reserved sometimes, while at other times open and vivacious. She was very bright, very sympathetic to Elizabeth’s despair, and completely in love with Kirk’.

  On their first full day together at the apartment, after Tom Lynch reported that he and the SDECE had apparently just missed Rencke and McGarvey at the house outside Bonnieres, she and Jacqueline went through the apartment with a fine-toothed comb. The Service had already taken the place apart, finding nothing. But Elizabeth felt that the instincts of two women might turn up something the Service might have missed.

  But they’d found nothing. That evening they went to an art film, had a light supper and a couple of glasses of wine afterwards and then had returned to the apartment where they’d talked until nearly dawn.

  Elizabeth doubled back through the park a half-block from her father’s apartment, and pulled up short in a line of trees across the street from the sidewalk cafe. A few people were seated outside, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. One man in particular looked familiar and her heart began to pound. It was her father, she was certain of it, because she wanted to be certain of it.

  She moved silently from tree to tree in order to get a better look, but the man’s face was blocked by the newspaper he was reading.

  So far as she could determine no one was watching him. But she knew enough not to rush across the street, because if the French were following her she would tip her hand. But she had to warn him.

  Moving to a position directly across the street she tried to figure out the best way of approaching the cafe. The man put his newspaper down and reached for his coffee. She got a good look at his face, and her heart sank. It wasn’t her father after all. The man was far too young, his hair black, his eyebrows too thick. She leaned against the tree and lowered her head, tears coming to her eyes.

  She and Jacqueline had tried everything, even placing a want ad in the personals section of Le Figaro: Liz loves you, daddy. I’m waiting at the apartment. So far there’d been no response.

  They’d gone to a number of his old haunts, sidewalk cafes, parks, bistros, the Eiffel Tower, that he’d mentioned.:

  They’d even driven out to the farmhouse Otto Rencke had rented outside Bonnieres. But workmen were renovating the house, and none of them had ever heard of Rencke or McGarvey.

  They’d tried at a half-dozen private computer schools in Paris on the off chance that Rencke might have shown up there, again without avail.

  And they’d tried the private gun clubs and the French National fencing team’s practice gymnasium where McGarvey had often worked out.

  She looked up. The man at the cafe had raised the newspaper in front of his face again. Elizabeth couldn’t see how she’d mistaken the man for her father. It wasn’t even close, except that she was a stupid kid working way out of her league. Jacqueline wouldn’t have made the mistake, and she’d only known Kirk for a few months.

  She headed back to the apartment disconsolately. Her father had gone to ground, and she was kidding herself thinking that — she could find him when Langley’s best people couldn’t do the job. Come home, get married and have babies, her mother would tell her. She could almost hear the words. But it just wasn’t fair.

  A dark blue Citroen was parked down the block from her father’s apartment put she didn’t spot it until she mounted the steps to die building and one of Colonel Galan’s people opened the door for her. She stepped back and looked over her shoulder.

  “It’s okay, Mademoiselle. Mr. Lynch is waiting upstairs for you with Colonel Galan and Jacqueline.” “Have you found my father?”

  “Please, Mademoiselle, they will explain everything,” the older man said gently.

  Elizabeth studied his face for a hint, but she saw nothing except friendly concern. Jacqueline, dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, her feet bare, her hair a mess, sat perched on the edge of trie couch in the living room, smoking a cigarette. Tom Lynch sat opposite her and Galan stood next to the window. They looked up when Elizabeth came in.

  Jacqueline’s face was white. Elizabeth went immediately to her.

  “Have they found him? Has he been hurt?”

  Jacqueline took her hand. “He’s been to Moscow, but we don’t know anything beyond that. He may have come back.”

  “Did you spot anything out there this morning?” Lynch asked. He seemed almost embarrassed.

  “No,” Elizabeth said. “What’s going on?”

  Lynch and Galan exchanged a glance.

  “The Russians know that your father has been hired to assassinate Yevgenni Tarankov, and a special police commission has been formed to stop him,” Galan said.

  “How did they find out?” Elizabeth demanded sharply.

  “Apparently Viktor Yemlin talked.”

  “Oh, God.” Elizabeth turned to Jacqueline, who looked as frightened as she felt.

  “The Russians have asked for our help,” Lynch said. “And that of the French. No one wants to see your father killed. But now that they know he’s coming and what he plans to do, that’s exactly what will happen unless we find him first.”

  “How do you know that he was in Russia?”

  “He was spotted in Moscow.”

  “But they didn’t catch him,” Elizabeth said triumphantly. “Because he’s too good. If he’s set out to kill Tarankov, then that’s what he’ll do, and there’s nothing that we or the Russians can do about it.”

  “He can’t fight the entire Russian police and intelligence forces,” Lynch shot back.

  “Then why aren’t we helping my father instead of the fucking Russians?” Elizabeth screeched..

  “Getting hysterical isn’t going to help,” Galan tried to calm her.

  “Don’t patronize me you son of a bitch! Your service is supposed to be one of the best intelligence agencies in the world, and all you can think to do is send his daughter and his whore to find—”

  Elizabeth stopped short. She and Jacqueline still held hands. Slowly she turned and looked into the older woman’s glistening eyes.

  “It’s all right, map’ tite Jacqueline said. “The truth isn’t supposed to be bad.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth said softly. “It’s my big mouth. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  Jacqueline drew Elizabeth close and held her for a long time. “Listen, what you said was true in the beginning,” she whispered. “But not now. You must believe me.”

  Elizabeth clung more tightly. “I’m sorry, Jacqueline,” she cried. She wished her mother and father were here and together now, like the old days. Like they still were sometimes in her fantasies. “I believe you.”

  “Okay. All right, I’m sending you back to Washington on the first flight,” Lynch said. “I’m not going to
have this on my conscience.”

  Elizabeth pulled away from Jacqueline. “This has nothing to do with your conscience,” she said, back in control of herself. She felt like a little fool. “And you’re going to need every bit of help you can get. Jacqueline and I are still your best bets.”

  “You haven’t found him.”

  “Neither have you,” Elizabeth countered. “Who’s running this Russian police commission? And what are their chances?”

  “His name is Yuri Bykov, ex-KGB,” Galan said. “We’re told he’s very good, but we don’t have anything on him.”

  “Neither do we,” Lynch said.

  “As for the commission’s chances, I’d say they were quite good, because they know what your father is trying to do, but your father doesn’t know that his mission has been compromised,” Galan said. “We thought about sending you and Jacqueline to Moscow to help out. It’s possible that your father mightT5nd out and back off.”

  “You bastard,” Jacqueline said.

  Galan spread his hands. “It was just a thought. But it’s up to you. I won’t order you to do it. If McGarvey is going to kill Tarankov it’ll happen by the June elections. Gives us nine weeks and a few days.”

  “At least we have a timetable,” Elizabeth said. “Is there anything else we have to know this morning?”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Lynch said, but Elizabeth cut him off with a look.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  The Polish Border

  By the time Galan and Lynch had left the apartment, McGarvey was already northeast of Berlin, the heaviest traffic behind him. The Mercedes’s tank was filled with gasoline, as were the spare gas cans in the back, and the morning was bright, making driving conditions on the new autobahn from Berlin to Szczecin very good. Once the Wall had come down the first order of business for the German government was reconstructing the entire infrastructure of the old GDR. New roads, factories and apartment buildings were coming into existence at breakneck speed. McGarvey took advantage of the excellent road, pushing the Mercedes to one hundred miles per hour, the big engine barely straining.