Assault on the Empress

by Jerry Ahern

  “What sort of gun?”

  “I don’t know. It was an automatic of some kind.”

  “Right. What’s his escape plan?”

  “He told me to wait it out for a while until the heat died down, then get out of the country.” Vols didn’t push and ask how, just let David Stakowski keep talking. “He didn’t get specific, but I bet he’s got somebody to smuggle him across the Adriatic.”

  “Likely correct, David. He didn’t mention any names? Anything more specific?”

  “No. There wasn’t any reason for me to need to know.”

  “Well, there you go. Good to see this Alyard chap evidently knows what he’s about. Make it easier to talk sense with him. Now. You wait here until the train stops. Won’t be all that long, now, and I’ll make certain you walk out of the station with me. Then you get to that boat we talked about and your end of this whole affair is done with.”

  Stakowski audibly sighed. Vols felt sorry for him. There was no way that Stakowski wouldn’t wind up in the hands of the Albanians, but he would try to do what he could to get him as quickly as possible back to Moscow. The treatment would be considerably more humane. He told Stakowski sincerely, “Thank you for your help, David,” then stood up.

  He caught Anna’s eye and she nodded that she understood and he walked out the door, shivering as he crossed from one car to another, hurrying into the warmth. A half-hour remained until they pulled in at Durazzo station.

  As he passed the compartment where Ivan was listening he knocked and entered, Ivan wheeling toward him with a gun in his hand. “Relax.” He closed the door behind him for an instant, leaning against it.

  “Yes, Comrade Major?”

  “Meet me in the corridor in sixty seconds.”

  “Yes, Comrade Major.”

  “You’re too formal, Ivan.” He let himself out, passed Alyard’s compartment and let himself in to see Piotr. “Come with me.”

  Piotr nodded.

  As Ivan came into the corridor, Vols could see Anna coming down the corridor.

  Vols gestured with his thumb toward the door, Piotr taking the right side, Ivan the left. Anna held back, a Walther like his own coming out of her purse. Piotr and Ivan had their guns drawn as well.

  Vols knocked on the compartment door. “Mr. Alyard? My name is Ephraim Vols. I’m a friend of David Stakowski.”

  There was no answer.

  “I’m coming in, if I may. I’m not here to harm you.”

  He glanced to Anna, then Ivan and Piotr.

  Vols licked his dry lips and turned the door handle.

  “Shit!” He started under his sweater for the P-5 automatic, crossing the compartment in two strides, the compartment window cut out neatly just inside the frame, his breath making steam as he exhaled. He leaned out into the slipstream, gun in hand. He heard the excited voices of Ivan and Piotr. He thought he heard Anna laugh.

  He saw nothing but darkness, drew his head inside. “Up on the roof. Be careful. If he’s up there, comer him and one of you come back. Quickly!”

  He looked at Anna. She showed no evidence of laughter, except in her eyes. “This American or Swiss—”

  “He’s American. CIA.”

  “He’s very good.”

  “Probably got off the damn train when I got on.” He closed his eyes, shook his head. He opened his eyes. “Heavy breathing when he was sleeping!” And he looked again at the cut-through window and cursed his own stupidity. He folded his arms around Anna and he embraced her.

  “I still think you’re a marvelous secret agent,” Anna cooed.

  And Ephraim Vols started to laugh….

  Thomas Alyard, the PPK in his fist, moved through the windward edge of the woods just a hundred yards or so from where the tree line broke into the open snowswept pastures beyond. He had used the fourth diamond, the one given him just in case, locking it into his nail clipper when the train had slowed for no apparent reason back some miles ago. It had been cheap glass, thank goodness. He doubted the improvised cutter would have done nearly so well on good old American safety glass. He had cut out a handhold that he had knocked out with the butt of the PPK, scarring the plastic grips and nearly breaking them, then kept one gloved hand through the handhold while he’d cut out the rest, then juggled the glass adroitly enough to get it inside rather than letting it fall out and crash. But by that time, the train had picked up speed again and he had doubted whether he would be able to jump from the train. Without killing himself.

  But the train had slowed again for a grade and he had decided it was then or never and clambored through, held on, thrown himself outward, prayed. His suitcoat had tom, but he had thrown his overcoat out ahead of him and pulled it on over the torn jacket. His suitcase had gone with the overcoat, and once he had made it deep enough into the tree cover, he had changed into the heavy sweater and pulled a second pair of trousers on over the ones he already wore. The neck scarf had gone up over his head and ears to guard against frostbite. But he had still felt silly tying it under his chin. An extra pair of socks on his feet and then another pair over his shoes, the trouser bottoms bloused inside this outer pair to keep the snow at bay. And then he had started on. There was no need for a compass with the tracks and power lines to guide him. He knew where he was going, coming at it from the opposite direction. A once privately held farm with an abandoned barn, a car inside it. If he could get the damned thing started with the cold.

  The barn with the car had been for a British operation that had been scrubbed—how the CIA had found out about it from SIS was something he hadn’t been told. But the car was his only way out now, his only way to the boat waiting for him in Valona that he hoped would still be able to get him across the Adriatic. And he had to be there by dawn when the fishing fleet went out or else he’d never get out at all.

  Something had gone wrong. He had sensed it in more than David Stakowski’s manner, more than Stakowski’s words.

  As he forced his way partially over and partially through a snowdrift that rose to his waist, he patted the little maroon box with its deadly cargo.

  If there had been KGB on the train, then when the train had slowed it had slowed to pick up someone who was responsible, in charge. That was the only thing that fit. And Alyard couldn’t risk a battle with the ampule on him. A bullet could punch through the little protective box and rupture the ampule. And then the horror would be unleashed.

  Alyard kept going, despite the numbing cold.

  Chapter Three

  He let his bags drop to the floor. His left foot kicked back slightly and contacted the door and he slammed it shut. His eyes moved across the cabin. It wasn’t as spacious as the apartment he’d leased month-to-month in the overpriced foreigners’ ghetto a few blocks from the Vatican, but it was furnished better.

  Abe Cross lit a cigarette and walked toward the window, reminding himself consciously that it was a porthole and to think of it as that. It faced the dockside and he saw virtually no movement as he looked out. But at this time of the morning he hadn’t expected any. After all the years in the Navy, he still felt very little at home aboard a ship. In the SEALs, he had spent most of his time running, swimming, lifting weights and shooting, then teaching the men under him how to do the same.

  The Empress Britannia was owned by the same company that owned the hotel. The Empress Britannia’s lounge pianist, it had been explained to him by the hotel manager, had a personal problem.

  “Drinking?”

  “Yes. I suppose it doesn’t matter to tell you.”

  “It’s an easy problem to get when you spend your nights in a bar from sundown until closing.”

  “I’ve seen you drink maybe twice, Mr. Cross.” She had smiled, pushing a lock of blonde hair up from her forehead with the back of her left hand, the nails bright pink and immaculately manicured.

  “I’m a secret drinker.” He’d grinned.

  “No you’re not.”

  “Let’s say I had the problem once and some friends helped me
out of it.”

  “You’re lucky you can still drink. I mean, if you don’t mind my saying that?”

  “I agree. So, what’s my unfortunate fellow pianist’s dilemma have to do with me?” He’d lit a cigarette. He kept himself to less than a pack a day these days.

  “I’ve been watching you.” She smiled and her cheeks flushed a little. “I mean, that sounds, well … anyway. You’re good. Very good. You could be playing concert halls instead of lounges.”

  “I like the people in lounges better.” He’d smiled.

  “The Empress Britannia sails tomorrow evening on the tide.”

  “Better than under it, I guess.”

  “Look. I’m trying to offer you something.”

  “All right. You want me to take over for the guy who has the problem. ”

  “Right. The Empress is continuing on to New York, then through Panama to California and up to Alaska and across to Japan. It should be quite a voyage. First class all the way. I can offer you five hundred more a month, and of course all of your expenses will be paid, so except for cigarettes and incidentals, you’d make out quite well.” And she had laughed. “And with your eye for the ladies, those last words of mine you could take literally. Lots of pretty girls with nothing but money to spend on a handsome lounge pianist.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Do you want to do it? You’d have to get on board right this evening. Or morning, I should say. You’d have rehearsals starting at noon.”

  “Rehearsals?”

  “You’d also accompany Doris Knight.”

  “Any relation to Doris Day?”

  She’d laughed, her eyes sparkling. “No. It’s a stage name. Kind of silly, I suppose. But she’s a good singer, I’m told. Does a lot of forties and fifties songs already in your repertoire.”

  “The arrangements would be different.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Nice cabin. The whole lot. The company needs you,” she told him. “You’d make big points with the management. Maybe enough to get you out from behind that piano if that’s what you’re after.”

  “I don’t know what I’m after. I’ll do it on one other conditions.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What are you doing after closing tonight?”

  “Mr. Cross!” And then she had smiled again. “Nothing. What do you have in mind?”

  He’d explained that to her at some length afterward, which had been part of the reason he’d gotten in so late. It was five in the morning now and he looked at his watch. His now erstwhile employer had let him off early from the piano bar to help him get packed. Or, he reflected, stubbing out his cigarette, that was one way of putting it, however crudely.

  In seven hours, a rehearsal with a singer he’d never heard with arrangements he’d never played, and this Doris Knight would probably resent him anyway, taking over for her cashiered accompanist.

  Cross shrugged out of his windbreaker and started to undress, trying to remember in which bag he’d packed his alarm clock. He could cop six hours if he was quick.

  Chapter Four

  “So. What is it you want, General Argus?”

  Argus was a thin-faced man, lantern jawed, brown eyes that alternated between looking wicked and looking bored, but always penetrating. In his mid-fifties or so, a high forehead under immaculately tonsored hair washed at the temples with grey, Argus struck Darwin Hughes as the sort of man who still bad the proverbial hex on the dames, as they used to call it.

  “Mr. Hughes. Let’s put our cards on the table, shall we? You wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t already suspected what I wanted. ”

  “Put your cards on the table then,” and Hughes thumped his open palm against the little round table between them. They were two among perhaps a dozen patrons in Whiskey Hollow, Hughes insisting on the nighttime meeting in a public place, Argus acquiescing with not a great deal of reluctance. It was here that Feinberg’s arm had been slashed. Hughes wondered if what had happened here during a barroom brawl had sealed Feinberg’s doom in that plane over the desert? Or was there any sort of thing as fate at all?

  The country music group was between sets, the late crowd not yet in and no rush to continue. It wasn’t the Neal James Band tonight as it had been that night, but instead a group he had never heard of and doubted he would like as much. But he hadn’t come for the music anyway.

  “The mission you and your associates carried out. The surgical strike. I’m not going to apologize, Mr. Hughes, for the rather shabby treatment you and your men got. But, if you accept my proposal, I can promise you it will never happen again. Colonel Leadbetter’s superior is out of the picture now. Entirely. I have the full authorization of the President and both the House and Senate leadership. I needn’t caution you that what is said between us tonight should go no further.”

  “No, you needn’t.”

  “All right. Let’s be blunt, then, Hughes. You and your people did a great job. We fucked up. Maybe cost that Feinberg fellow his life because of it. What I need to know is this: Can you get together with Cross and Babcock and reassemble your team? Can you work with us again?”

  “Nothing personal, General, but you’re full of shit. That’s the rather distinct advantage of being a civilian, one of many if I may say so. But when a general is full of it, you can tell him so. No. I’m not setting up Cross or Babcock or anybody else for what happened to happen again.”

  “Are you aware, Mr. Hughes—well, certainly you must be. Terrorism is an on-going concern, and the problem will only get worse before it gets better. What you and your men did—”

  The waitress came over and Hughes smiled at her. “Another round of beer for y’all?”

  “The same as last time?” Argus asked Hughes.

  “Fine, although I might not be here long enough to finish it.”

  “Hmm,” Argus smiled evilly. Argus looked at the waitress. “Then two of the same please, thank you.”

  She smiled back and left.

  Hughes drained the last of his beer from his glass, Argus doing the same.

  “I’m not getting involved again.”

  “You already are involved, Hughes. Just like every free man and woman is involved. But you’re lucky. Unlike most people, you have the opportunity to do something rather than just sit and talk about—”

  She was back fast with the beers, took the empties, reassured them the band would be starting another set, then left. Argus held his beer in his right hand, but didn’t sip at it.

  “What you and your men did gave the enemy a severe shock. They haven’t recovered from it yet.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “You didn’t blanch at the word enemy, Hughes.”

  “I know who you mean, General.”

  “But they will recover. And sooner than anyone expects, terrorism will come home. And then we’ll really need a small, elite force like yours.”

  Hughes sipped at his beer, put it down. “I don’t have such a forced, General Argus.”

  “But you could get them back,” Argus said emphatically, leaning forward across the table. “What I’m offering, Hughes, is a chance to be your own man. You’d be able to reject any assignment you felt your people couldn’t or shouldn’t handle.”

  Hughes let himself smile. “You can’t offer me a free hand, General. You don’t have a free hand yourself. It would work out the same. We’d step on somebody’s toes or somebody’d get cold feet and we’d be left out in the cold again. Like last time. And besides, there’s another concern which may not have occurred to you, General. But it’s occurred to me. We got away with it last time, more or less, without anyone seeing our faces, knowing our identities. That’d grow old rather quickly, wouldn’t it? Let’s say we did go to work for you, even under the conditions you suggest. It would be just a matter of time until the enemy, as you put it, discovered our identities and went after us. Then what? A man can’t live on the edge twenty-four hours a day forever and call it living.
”

  “Hear me out, Hughes. I’ve thought of all that. Nobody except Leadbetter knows all three of your identities except the President and myself. What if it stayed that way. For all the gripes you may have against Leadbetter, he tried to take care of you. He wouldn’t betray you. And there’s nothing the outside could learn that would link him to you as the controller for the previous mission. And your secret would be safe with the President, certainly. The President asked me to consult Leadbetter concerning your identities. Leadbetter wouldn’t even tell me. The President drove to Leadbetter’s house and asked him, personally. That’s the only reason both the President and myself have your name and the other two, the only reason I have any of the details of the last mission. You see, Leadbetter got caught in a trap. He never had the authorization he thought he had, so when his superior pulled the plug, he had nowhere to go. I’ve got the authorization. And not just the President’s, as I told you, but congressional leadership from both parties. The rug can’t be pulled out from under you. And, if it is, it’ll be pulled out from under me as well. I’d be your coordinator, not your controller. I’d take the mission requests, run them by you, and if it’s a go, get you anything you needed for mission support. And we can take care of the identity situation.”

  “How?”

  “All three of you die.”

  Hughes knew better than to choke on his beer, but it was a touch-and-go thing for a split second. “And why would we be doing something like that, General Argus?”

  “Blind identities with no link to your expertise, your background, anything. Since you and your men would be on call at all times because of the very nature of the work, we make the entire operation blind.”

  Hughes put down his beer. “Spell it out.”

  “We have the Justice Department Witness Relocation Program work out new identities, tailored for each of your needs, nothing in them to suggest who you once were. We could do the same thing through the CIA, but they’d smell a rat and all we’d need was some interdepartmental memo going into the wrong hands and the whole thing could be blown. So, the Justice Department. Then all record of the establishment of the new identities is destroyed. The three of you would never see one another except when you were working a job for us.”