by Paul Vidich
Mueller didn’t get the opportunity to answer. The black-ops Agency sniper had stepped closer to the window, binoculars pressed to his eyes. “It’s him.” He handed Mueller the binoculars. “Look.”
28 CZECHOSLOVAK FRONTIER
HONKING CAME FROM THE FRONT of the line of cars at the Soviet checkpoint, and the sound was followed by the sharp clap of quickly moving boots on pavement, accompanied by grunted commands.
“Halt!”
Boris had pulled away from the second checkpoint, and he was driving through the empty stretch of frontier when the watchtower’s beam found the Mercedes. The cry went up in a frantic chorus. “Halt! Halt! Halt!”
“Keep driving,” Garin said from the back seat.
“And get shot?” Boris braked. “You want to run? Go ahead. Take your chances.”
Garin opened his pocketknife and put the blade across the smuggler’s throat. “Keep driving.”
“My chances are better with them.” Boris pushed away Garin’s hand contemptuously. “Not every crossing succeeds. That is how I stay in business.”
He opened the car door and emerged into the searchlight’s hot beam, blinking, his right hand at his eyes to block the brilliant illumination. Seeing gun muzzles pointed at him, he raised his hands in a show of surrender and waved peacefully at the two border guards approaching through the mist.
Boris had a meek, innocent smile and the contrite manner of the wrongly accused. He walked quickly, speaking Ukrainian, a language Garin understood well enough. Shithead.
Garin motioned for Olga to slide across the front seat and get behind the steering wheel. She was rigid with fear, her eyes wide, and her breath came in fits. Garin looked at her calmly, almost affectionately, and spoke in a gentle, coaxing voice. “Do what I say. The life of your child depends on it. Do you understand?” His expression hardened. “Drive toward the men standing ahead of us. Now!”
She nodded almost involuntarily.
“Don’t stop. If guns are fired, keep driving. Stop for nothing.”
She nodded again, then moved across the front seat, sliding over the center console and gear shift, and dropped into the driver’s seat. She clutched the wheel with nervous hands and gripped the gear shift, trembling.
“Good,” he said. “I am getting out. Drive when I close the door.”
Garin stepped into the searchlight, squinting against the glare. Border guards, who’d taken Boris into custody, added Garin to their coverage. They sent Boris back to the Soviet checkpoint and turned their weapons on Garin, who retreated one step, and then a second step, and he slapped the Mercedes once when he heard Olga fumbling with the ignition.
Without an active intention on his part, and not through any obvious mistake, Garin found himself vaulted into a future he’d always known awaited him, where things could go very wrong—but they could also go right. Now, suddenly, that future was upon him. His mind calibrated and recalibrated the risks.
The answer came to him as he retreated from the car. A vexed sky let go a lightning bolt that was immediately followed by shattering thunder. The frightening rumble passed, but it diverted the attention of the border guards, and as darkness fell again, Garin pounded twice on the Mercedes. His saw the two young border guards turn their heads at the sound of the Mercedes’ revving engine. Then its tires squealed in violent acceleration.
An urgent chorus of voices shouted, and an alarm went up. The confusion of the moment climaxed in a burst of automatic gunfire. One border guard had the presence of mind to lift his Kalashnikov and direct the weapon at the fleeing car, but he fired from his hip, so the hail of bullets hit the pavement in white puffs, other shots straying wildly toward the Czech customs hut, shattering a window. Czech guards ducked for cover. A second border guard carefully aimed his rifle, shattering the car’s rear window and taking out the rear tires. One hissed as it deflated and the other burst, so the rubber flapped against the pavement, bringing the car to a halt. It was stopped short of the Czech border’s raised barrier. All eyes settled on the car in no man’s land. A precarious silence lengthened as everyone waited for a sign of life.
“Over here,” Garin shouted. He had crossed the few yards to the car, waving at the Czech guards. He peered in the window and then quickly opened the doors, helping a stunned Olga from the driver’s seat. Petrov emerged, holding his frightened son. Garin faced the Soviet border guards, a human shield, giving the family time to retreat into the line of Czech guards, who opened their ranks.
Garin was alone in the frontier. A tense standoff between opposing armed forces ensued. Garin stared at the nervous Soviet guards pointing their weapons, and then he felt a presence at his side. Mueller had crossed the short distance and joined him in the open.
Garin heard his name called. It was a vaguely familiar voice from deep inside the thickening fog, a voice without provenance that had spoken his real name.
Behind the two Americans, and protected by the dubious comfort of the invisible political divide, Czech guards stood with their commanding officer. Rositske took a position on the front line, joining the drama. All were alert, all were anxious, and all were eager to protect their success. Months of planning, long nights of worry, and two days of extraordinary suspense on two continents were over. This was to be the victorious moment when Mueller and Rositske pulled Garin back to the caravan that would drive everyone to the waiting G4 executive jet, which would fly them to London and then on to Washington, DC.
Mueller put his hand on Garin’s shoulder. “Let it go.”
Garin ignored the command and peered through the fog, alert for the woman’s voice. The purling blanket of mist diffused the light’s beam and made it hard to recognize who was on the other side. Garin heard his name called a second time, and he knew her voice.
He stepped forward to peer into the puzzling haze. And then his name again, louder, pleading, luring him with dangerous bewilderment.
Mueller put a restraining hand on Garin’s arm. “Forget it. Let’s go.”
Forty meters away the fog opened up and revealed a silver Chaika limousine that had stopped at an acute angle just inside no man’s land. The rear door was open, and Garin saw Natalya. She stood erect at the door in her KGB uniform.
Garin heard her call his name again—a loud, harassing voice that came with a plaintive plea.
“Don’t,” Mueller said.
Natalya wore the sullied uniform that she’d been in when he left her on the floor of the cell—her smart tunic and buttoned white shirt torn, and someone had tried to clean the bloodstains. Her cheek was swollen, her arm bent at a terrible angle, and her expression vacant. And then Garin heard pain in her voice. He wondered how long she’d held out before their brutality had gotten her to talk.
Her voice again. A melancholy pitch. There was a disembodied hollowness to her request that he help her. A warning? he wondered.
She was beaten but defiant. It was hard for him to look at her proud figure bent slightly from abuse and to see her pronounced limp when she stepped forward. She wore her pain bravely, and her clothes covered the bruises of her torture. She raised her hand to her eyes to look through the gauzy light.
Deputy Chairman Churgin stepped out of the silver Chaika and joined Natalya, gripping her elbow firmly. He held a nine-millimeter Makarov service pistol in his other hand.
Churgin’s presence was a startling surprise, but the value of Garin’s professional training was its preparation for the unforeseen. Churgin’s appearance caused Garin to rethink things. Vengeance laid its cold hand on his heart. He stared at Churgin through the fog, thinking about old wounds. Urgency stirred. Things were not playing out as he had expected. Ever since they’d arrived at Uzhgorod, he’d believed they would safely cross the Czech border and then he’d enjoy a glorious success.
“Let’s go,” Mueller repeated. “There is nothing we can do.”
Garin threw off Mueller’s hand and stepped forward. There were only four of them in view now on the Soviet side, or
five with the driver, hardly visible behind the windshield. The driver turned, and Garin saw Lieutenant Colonel Talinov behind the wheel. Deputy Chairman Churgin and Natalya were visible, as were the two nervous border guards, but he knew others were hidden in the eddying fog. Talinov remained in the car. The odds were terrible. That was Garin’s thought as he stepped forward.
“You had less gray hair in your photographs,” Churgin said. “I’m not the first one to make that observation. Posner said it, too. ‘He’s gone gray. You wouldn’t recognize him without his moustache.’
“But there’s still a likeness to your photograph among the graduating class at Dzerzhinsky Institute. How clever you have been, Aleksander Leontyevich, thinking you could enter your country, do this business, and be gone before we were able to recognize you. Fortunately, Posner had his people compare the likenesses. When he knew you’d betrayed him, he did not hesitate to tell us what he had discovered. Your scar made the connection. I can’t see it from here, but I’m sure I’ll have a closer look when we’re finished talking.”
Deputy Chairman Churgin pushed Natalya forward, squeezing her elbow. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Ten minutes earlier and we would have stopped you. The airport took too long to open, so we couldn’t land.” He shook his head.
“We always knew you could be a risk. We trained you too well. We knew the mother’s loyalty might not transfer to the son. You were an experiment. An American boy with Russian roots. Our Manchurian Candidate inside the CIA. But not all experiments work out.”
The deputy chairman continued to move forward, but even as he talked, his serpent eyes fixed on Garin and the Mercedes that was stopped short of the Czech border.
“A trade,” Churgin said. “Her for him.” He nodded at Petrov, who stood among the Czech guards, holding his wife and son.
“That’s not going to happen,” Mueller said. “We’ve won, understand? This operation is over.”
“It’s over!” Garin shouted at Churgin.
“For you,” he said. “Not for her.”
Garin felt his anger stir. “Me for her,” he said. “A good trade. You’ll have your pound of flesh.”
“No!” Natalya shouted. “You’re an idiot.”
“A good trade,” Garin repeated. “A big prize to take back to Moscow. Show how this was a clever ploy to snare me. You’ll become Hero of the Soviet Union.”
Deputy Chairman Churgin contemplated the offer, and he evaluated the ten meters that separated the two small groups. Garin was a step ahead of Mueller, facing Churgin, and behind each side, security forces moved in the fog. The sounds of hustling boots filled the silence that fell over the small patch of earth. There was the feeling of truce in the air. An offer had been made, terms of the trade set, and with it came an unstable peace.
Mueller had taken a step forward and, unseen, lodged his .45-caliber Colt pistol in the small of Garin’s back, under his belt. “She’s not worth it,” he whispered. “You’ve lost your mind.”
Garin stepped forward with his hands raised over his head in surrender, but he kept his eyes on Churgin’s face, and he also observed the vague forms moving through the fog on the Soviet side. Garin had no idea what he was going to do, but he embraced the uncertainty like an old friend who’d come to pay an unannounced visit. This was his life. He’d sworn he’d never do it again, but here he was with a taste for revenge, and it wasn’t in his nature to give up a chance to balance the scales of old wrongs. But none of this was in his conscious mind; none of it a conscious choice. He was a wolf advancing on its prey.
Garin didn’t see Natalya’s left hand move until it had already struck Churgin in the windpipe, stunning him. Her other hand grabbed his pistol, and there was a violent scuffle. The stronger but stunned Churgin fought the weaker but fiercer Natalya for possession of the Makarov. In the brief moment of intense struggle, a shot rang out.
Churgin stepped away from Natalya with his pistol dangling from his hand, stunned. His free hand had gone to his throat, and he struggled with quick, sucking breaths. He stumbled backward, dazed, and in doing so, Natalya was left standing alone.
Her palms were crimson, and she looked at the wetness covering her hands. They had come off her side, where a widening stain darkened her gray tunic. Her startled eyes stared at the blood, and for a moment she seemed disbelieving—almost peaceful in shock. A protest fell from her lips. No. She raised her eyes.
Garin looked for encouragement in her face but saw only trauma and disbelief. She raised herself, trying to stand tall and carry her wound stoically.
Churgin pushed her forward, causing her to stumble, but she recovered a weak stride. “This is what you want,” he cursed. “Your little red sparrow with her broken wing. Take her. Perhaps she’ll live.”
Garin stood absolutely still, watching for danger, looking for an opportunity to present itself. Time slowed. He considered a way through the terrible choices. Nothing he had ever done prepared him for this outcome. His eyes shifted to the Soviet border guards, who moved in the obscuring fog with weapons raised, and he felt vulnerable standing in the open beyond the searchlight. He looked at the two Americans, who held back, horrified but unwilling to help. Garin felt the cold steel of the Colt lodged against his back.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Churgin said. “Make this easy.” He raised the pistol and pointed it at the nape of Natalya’s neck. “She’s weak. She won’t live unless she gets to a hospital. She is all yours. Dolboyob.” Fuckhead.
Garin slowly rose to his full height and marched toward Churgin with his hands over his head.
“Leave her!” Mueller shouted.
Garin moved through the ellipsis of light from the watchtower’s beam, which had shifted and dimly illuminated Churgin and Natalya on the empty stage. Misting rain had strengthened to a cold drizzle that came in a steady stream, wetting Garin’s hair. Rivulets rolled down his face. Garin entered the beam’s perimeter, joining the two Russians, and in approaching, he looked at Natalya for a sign that she would live. Her mouth had formed a protest, but the words were prisoners of her terror, and her eyes were wide with fear. She stared at him indignantly. Rain streaming down her pale face washed away her tears. In passing, their eyes met, and he nodded his instruction to proceed to safety on the Czech side.
Garin had gone several yards past Churgin on his way to the Soviet checkpoint, his eyes taking in the relaxed vigilance of the border guards. They had lowered their weapons to receive the surrendering man. Garin took it all in like a sentry scanning a battlefield, collecting intelligence. Then he appeared to stumble. He dropped to his knee, and his right hand reached behind for the Colt, releasing the safety. He was certain that he had to kill Churgin for the suffering he had inflicted.
Garin gathered the courage that was companion to his fear. This was how it would end, he thought. In his dreams, he had always tried to kill Churgin, but the man eluded his efforts. He wasn’t dreaming a dream now—he was steps away from the monster.
He spun around with the pistol gripped in both hands, his arms extended, sighting the weapon on the back of Churgin’s head. He walked forward, his eyes fixed on the man he’d sworn to kill, bringing human justice to a lawless place. He cursed his life, that it was for him to make things right.
On his third stride, he fired once. The bullet struck Churgin as he turned, and it entered his right ear and exited through his cheek. The KGB deputy chairman collapsed without protest and fell to the pavement, where he lay in a heap, unmoving. Garin saw dark blood pooling from the obscene head wound and confirmed that Churgin was dead. He saw the startled border guards raise their weapons and he fired twice, hitting one in the arm. The other fell to his knees, clutching his thigh, where he’d been shot. Garin’s fourth and fifth bullets shattered the windshield and struck Talinov in the shoulder.
A brief, eerie quiet settled on the patch of earth. One dead, three wounded. The suddenness of the assault and its consequences were frozen in a moment of time. Then the entire world se
emed to rise up in mad confusion. The desolate border crossing came alive with the hysterical wail of sirens, frantically shouted orders, and the loud clip of boots and grunted commands. Two more arc lamps converged on the small area, helping to illuminate what had happened in the cocooning fog and obscuring rain.
Garin was at Natalya’s side. She had slumped to one knee and held her side with a limp hand. Her face had lost color, her eyes were dim, and the pleasant sleep of death hung over her weakened body. He saw confusion in her eyes and a cold, leaden pallor on her cheeks. All around them was chaos, urgent voices in the suffocating fog. She struggled to speak through choking breaths.
“Quiet,” he said. He looked calmly into her eyes. “You’ll get us both killed.”
Natalya bled into her hands, and she went to lie down.
“Stand up,” he said, and then shouted, “Get up!”
Garin lifted her into his arms, grunting at the weight. Their eyes met. She tried to speak again, but her voice was soft, and he didn’t understand what she was trying to say.
“Don’t give up,” he said encouragingly. “You’ll make it.”
She was heavy in his arms, but he found a way to manage, and he walked toward the safety of the Czech border. He glanced back, mumbling the prayer that always came to him in moments of danger. He moved at a steady pace, drawing in short breaths. His eyes blinked to clear the blurring rain from his vision, and he focused on the short distance to safety.
Garin shouted for help over the growing clamor provoked by the carnage; his body trembled against his will. He saw her eyes begin to close and snapped, “Stay awake.”
At that moment, Garin seemed to sense a change in the danger, and he glanced over his shoulder at the mist-shrouded watchtower, but even as he did, he had begun to quicken his pace toward the waiting Americans. Garin shut out the siren’s piercing wail and the chorus of hostile voices. He shaped his mind to the smallness of his world—the woman in his arms and the several steps to safety.
The Soviet sniper’s first shot caught Garin in the thigh and seemed to thrust him forward; the second struck him in the shoulder, snapping his head back. He stumbled, somehow managing to take two more steps, but then he collapsed, dropping to the pavement and releasing Natalya from his arms. One more bullet in the rapid sequence tore into his skull, shattering it and covering Natalya in brain matter. She saw the grievous wound and struggled to crawl away from his body.