Duel of Assassins

by Dan Pollock

  Taras could think of nothing but his great loss, and the emptiness of his life ahead. He recalled with new understanding the bitter words of a Lermontov poem he had memorized in school: “And life, when you look around you with cold attention, such an empty and stupid joke.” The last phrase especially he repeated to himself as a litany, over and over: takaya, pustaya i glupaya shutka!

  Yet—how strange!—Marcus, his former, detested rival, was now almost his only comfort, his one living link to Eva. And when Taras made preparations for his immediate return to Moscow, he was not displeased when Marcus asked to come along with him, forgoing stops in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk. In fact, thanks to partial compensation from Intourist for the stolen funds, the American insisted they travel together in soft class, and that he pay for Taras’ upgrade.

  On that marathon journey the two had forged a friendship. They gave each other nicknames; Marcus became “Cowboy,” Taras was “Cossack.” By sheer doggedness they found they could communicate almost anything—by gestures, by pictographs, and by endless resort to an English-Russian dictionary. And when these failed, they even found a few common words in French, words Taras recalled from his older sister Luiza’s school lessons and which Marcus had picked up in the South Seas.

  On the fifth day, as the Rossiya Express wound through the rocky Urals past Sverdlovsk and the trackside obelisk marking the boundary between Europe and Asia, they had pledged lifelong friendship over a shared half-liter of vodka. The second oath was for vengeance—on Eva’s killer.

  “But you go away, Cowboy,” Taras had said when the bottle was empty, reluctantly pointing out the obvious flaw in their plan.

  “Nyet!” Marcus had said, flipping through the dictionary for the Russian words he wanted. “I stay here. Be soldier like you, Cossack. In Soviet army. My new adventure.” He grinned, tilting back his cowboy hat, the only remnant of his old costume.

  Incredibly, the young American had followed through on what had seemed clearly an empty, alcohol-induced boast. In Moscow, with Taras’ help, Marcus had applied for and received political asylum. The decision, astonishing at the time in light of the American’s enviable free spirit, continued to perplex Taras for years. Had Marcus some ulterior motive in fleeing his homeland? Fully fifteen years were to pass before Taras would receive a satisfying answer to this puzzle.

  Neverthless, the two managed to remain fast friends while going their separate ways—Arensky pursuing his studies at the Supreme Soviet Military Academy, and Marcus not only entering the Red Army at the somewhat ripe age of twenty-one, but being selected for special forces, or Spetsnaz.

  And from that time to this, no trace had ever been found of Eva’s murderer.

  Ten

  Marcus Jolly burst into the small, dimly lit room, pivoting and firing the 9mm automatic as targets popped up around him, one after another, at extreme close range. There were eight friend-or-foe silhouettes—four terrorists, four hostages. The idea was to take out only the ones with weapons. He reacted instinctively, pointing and shooting, two head shots for each “bad guy,” until only good guys were left standing in the acrid aftermath. He had cleared the room in less than four seconds—actually 03.69 according to the digital readout over the door—with seven bullets still in the clip.

  A surprisingly schoolboyish-looking Green Beret instructor hurried in, hit the overhead fluorescents and whistled appreciatively as he checked the targets.

  “Holy shit, sir! You’ve got four kills, right between the eyes, one-inch groups. If this is your hobby, what the hell do you do for a living?”

  “Sank you, ja, it is good sport. I sell hardware, software, it is, ja?” Marcus tapped his golf cap, which bore the logo of the German electronics giant, Siemens A.G.

  “Well, if you ever get bored, the Bundeswehr could use you, maybe even GSG-9.” The reference was to Germany’s famed counter-terrorist warfare unit, Grenzschutzgruppe 9, or Border Marksmen Group 9.

  “No, only targets I shoot, not people, ha-ha. “Other three rooms not open today, ja?”

  “Sorry about that. I’d like to see what you could do in them myself.”

  Marcus smiled and took off the foam-rubber ear flaps as he exited into the Bavarian sunshine. Besides the Siemens golf cap, he was wearing trendy, Boris Becker-endorsed tennis shorts, shirt and shoes, and a bushy brown mustache attached with spirit gum, which matched his recently darkened hair. Outside, a stout man, whose resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt included steel spectacles, grizzled mustache and even a toothy grimace, handed Marcus a can of Coke. The man’s uniform identified him as a captain in the Bundeswehr’s 1st Mechanized Infantry Division.

  “Marcus, I told you to try and miss a few, not cause a damn sensation,” the captain said in Bavarian-accented German as they moved off a little ways.

  Marcus answered with a fluency that would have astonished his erstwhile Austrian girlfriend: “I did try, Walter. I was shooting weak-handed.” He transferred the Coke to his left hand and the matte-black Czech CZ75 pistol to his right. “Want to see me do it faster?”

  “Wonderful idea, blow both our covers. Let’s get out of here.”

  The two men walked away from the shooting house, which, the captain had informed Marcus, was modeled after the Delta Force “House of Horrors” in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Which, in turn, had been inspired by the SAS “Killing House” in England. This one was located in Bad Tölz, forty-five kilometers south of Munich just north of the Austrian border, headquarters of the USAEUR 10th Special Forces Group, 1st Battalion (the balance of the 10th having relocated in 1968 to Fort Devens, Massachusetts). The shooting house had been hastily assembled in 1980, the captain explained, to train a thirteen-man Special Forces unit that had accompanied Delta to Iran as part of the abortive Eagle Claw hostage-rescue mission.

  “The Green Beret kid back there mentioned GSG-9,” Marcus said. “They’re located around here, aren’t they?”

  “Just across the Rhine from Bonn. In St. Augustin. Why?”

  “I heard they’ve got a fantastic underground shooting range. Maybe you could get me in there. How’s your pull with the Bundesgrenzschutz?” This was the German Border Police, the parent outfit of GSG-9.

  “Marcus, just behave yourself.” They were approaching the camp’s main gate, where the Bundeswehr captain’s Opel Kadett was parked. “My connections aren’t that good. And I’m afraid your German is only good enough to fool Americans.”

  The two men lunched at an outdoor cafe in Bad Tölz’ picturesque Old Town, on the steep and winding Marktstrasse. It was exceedingly pleasant—weisswurst with sweet mustard, sauerkraut and schooners of beer under a vine-trellised, overhanging Bavarian roof—until a tiny East German Trabant 601 sidled up to the adjacent curb and began spewing lethal hydrocarbons at their table. Walter, though now out of uniform, rushed over and screamed in full military voice, forcing car and driver into flatulent retreat.

  “Damn stinkpots,” Walter muttered, resuming his chair. “Worst thing about reunification and opening the Wall was all those Trabis and Wartburgs that came farting in from the East with their shitty two-stroke engines. But we must tolerate them, out of a spirit of freedom and unity—Freiheit und Einheit. I say shit! Scheissdreck!”

  “They’re real trendy, Walter. Museums buy them. Rich Austrian kids buy them and put Porsche engines in them.”

  “Degenerates!”

  “Now you sound like old man Marchenko, complaining about Soviet youth and their sickening addiction to Western corruption.”

  “Well, he was right.” Walter motioned to a sheet of paper Marcus had been studying. “So, tell me what you think.”

  Marcus shrugged. The paper purported to list all of President Rybkin’s movements for the next three weeks—up until the Potsdam Conference. “This is nothing. I read all this shit in the newspapers already.” Marcus crumpled the paper and dropped it on the table.

  “That’s all we have now. If the man’s doing any other traveling between now and Potsdam, he hasn’t adv
ertised it—even in the Politburo, believe me, or we’d know about it. In any case, Potsdam is the only place that makes sense, Marcus.”

  “You’re supposed to help me, Walter, not tell me how to do my job.”

  “I’m just saying you’ll never get close to him in Moscow, or anywhere over there. That’s like trying to attack your opponent’s king when he’s castled. You have to draw him out.”

  “I don’t play chess, Walter. I’m not a real Russki, remember? And I like to sneak up on people. It gives me a hard-on.”

  “Ah, really? Then here’s what you should do, Marcus. Go to the library—I suggest the Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Ask for detailed floor plans of all the buildings in the Kremlin Palace. Make a big X on Rybkin’s office, or better his bathroom, and sneak up on him with your hard-on while he’s on the shitter. I wish you good hunting. Now, what else can I do for you? Do you like the Czech pistol?”

  “It’s okay. I test-fired an Italian clone back in Austria, made by Fratelli Tanfoglio, you couldn’t tell the difference. You keep it, Walter. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else locally.”

  “So, Marcus, where are you going from here?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Just do your job for the Bundeswehr and wait to see if you’re contacted.”

  “You are trying to scare me now, Marcus, is that it?” Walter pointed to the crumpled paper. “Don’t leave that lying around, please. I don’t care what you think of it.”

  Marcus made a fist. The captain tensed, swallowed wurst, measuring Marcus’ icy squint.

  “Relax, Walter, and just watch.” Marcus thumbed a thick steel ring on his forefinger. From the side mounting of its black onyx stone a tiny barrel protruded, and a jet of fire shot forth; the paper flamed up, then shriveled into ash.

  “God in heaven! What is that, a laser?”

  “Miniature flamethrower. Burns nitric acid and kerosene, just like Marchenko’s old SS-9 rockets. Five shots, then you throw the damn thing away. From the KGB toy department. Ugliest hunk of jewelry I ever saw. They probably use it for lighting ladies’ cigarettes across crowded rooms.”

  “Seriously, if you don’t like it, give it to me.”

  Marcus eyed the captain a long moment, then slipped the heavy ring off and tossed it across the table. “You want it, Walter, it’s yours. It’s got four shots left. Wear it in health. And forgive me for being such a degenerate asshole. But hey, that’s the way I am.”

  As Walter screwed the ring onto his own stubby index finger, Marcus hoisted his schooner. “A toast, Walter.”

  The captain looked up from his new toy in ill-concealed delight. “Yes, yes?”

  “Confusion to the enemy!”

  “Confusion to the enemy!” Walter echoed.

  “Whoever the fuck he may be,” Marcus added.

  *

  In return for the gift, the Bundeswehr captain had offered to take Marcus on a discreet tour of some of Munich’s more interesting nocturnal habitats. There were certain private shows, for instance, which catered to a variety of esoteric tastes and which were said to rival anything available on the Continent. Among the specific enticements Walter offered were leather-clad Aryan goddesses with superb physiques and wonderfully sadistic temperaments.

  Marcus declined.

  “But you are not squeamish?”

  “Some other time, Walter.”

  Instead Marcus went early to bed—or early to camp. He had parked his Moto Guzzi and pitched his sleeping tent on the outskirts of Bad Tölz among holiday caravans on the banks of the Isar.

  After several weeks of the considerable pleasures of Silvie, Marcus wasn’t in need of sex, and certainly not any voyeuristic excursions into Teutonic kink. What he did need was to think clearly about his next step. And to do that, he had first to subdue his swirling thoughts and find his spiritual center, his source of power—his ki, to use the martial arts term—and unleash its transforming energy.

  He unrolled his down bag inside the little tent, knelt Japanese-fashion on his pillow and, positioning his flashlight, opened his Hagakure at random. He read: “Instead of victory, concentrate on dying.”

  Having found his samurai text, Marcus closed the slim book and meditated, shutting out the pulsing sound of the latest Euro-rock from a nearby caravan. His grandparents’ death had indeed sent him forth as a young man, and death had intersected his adventurous wanderings again and again. The death of Eva Sorokina had forged his friendship with Taras Arensky, and countless deaths in Afghanistan had severed that friendship—as it drew Marcus deeper into his Russian destiny.

  He could not desire death in the samurai way; he had inflicted and witnessed its careless handiwork too often. But neither did he fear or flee it, for death and danger had long been his intimate companions. The only life he craved was life lived on the flirtatious edge of death.

  Perhaps constant courting of danger was his way of seeking death, as the samurai code instructed. But Marcus now contemplated a further step. Marchenko—his samurai “lord,” his daimyo—had been slain. Marcus was charged with avenging that murder—killing Rybkin—the shogun—as the Forty-Seven Ronin (whose sacred graves Marcus had visited in the Sengaku-ji Temple outside Tokyo) had avenged their Lord Asano. According to Hagakure, Marcus’ own death must result from the successful completion of that task.

  Marcus shook his head, imagining what the old rocketry general would have made of this Eastern nonsense—equating Marchenko’s network of loyal Spetsnaz fighters with homeless samurai after their leader’s death. But how else could Marcus anchor his life against the hurricane winds of change shrieking once more across Russia? What was a defector to do when his adopted homeland betrayed him? When its leader was busily dismantling its borders and defenses, exiling or assassinating its greatest patriots, and only smiled enigmatically as civil protest boiled over into armed insurrection all across the Eurasian land mass? Marchenko’s simple solution—kill Rybkin!—seemed more and more the only way out of bloody chaos.

  But today’s meeting had posed a further problem. Walter had faithfully passed along Marchenko’s final command; beyond that, Marcus remained skeptical of the captain’s gemütlich manner. Marcus chuckled as he recalled how avidly the German had swallowed the preposterous story about the KGB flamethrower ring having five shots and being rocket-fueled. The truth was, its one-shot chamber had to be reloaded after each firing with a new gel-flame capsule. Since Marcus had no more of these, the ring was now useless—which Walter would discover if he ever tried to fire it.

  The man was not to be trusted, Marcus decided. Hereafter Marcus must seek help only from the inner core of old Spetsnaz comrades, and even there be wary.

  “Instead of victory, concentrate on dying.”

  The task ahead of Marcus was indeed formidable. Only by embracing his own death, Hagakure counseled, could Marcus achieve that impossible victory—Rybkin’s death.

  So be it.

  Marcus switched off the flashlight, but was denied darkness. Faint light from a neighboring caravan seeped through the red nylon tent fabric. That was all right. Marcus did not intend to sleep yet. He was energized, ready to conjure his own death—a daily samurai exercise. He began to visualize it—and imagine its mental, emotional and visceral impact—in different forms. Being torn apart by explosives. Dying by his own hand—slashing his own jugular; disemboweling himself samurai-style, with a sword-wielding second standing by. Being riddled with bullets. Having a hang-glider capsize in sudden, violent air, plummeting earthward with no chute. Drowning at sea. Being crushed in an earthquake, trapped in a burning building. All sudden, violent ends. Marcus did not bother imagining a slow, debilitating death.

  The exercise worked, separating his upwelling ki from his motionless body. He became for a second a nameless being, a hovering force field with eyes. Yet the old familiar Marcus remained below, kneeling on his pillow, occupied by pangs of hunger and incessant trivial thoughts, tethering him like a kite’s tail to the earth.

&
nbsp; Inevitably the free-floating spell was broken, and Marcus was plunged back into his familiar self. The body needed sleep. And Marcus was still not ready to embrace the samurai way of death.

  As he reached out to unzip the sleeping bag, he saw an approaching figure silhouetted against the backlit tent fabric. Someone from the next caravan, coming over to invite him to a party? For heavy-metal sounds continued to thud into the night from that direction.

  Then an arm separated from the man-shape, revealing the stark outline of a large knife.

  Electricity surged through Marcus, raising the hairs on his scalp, the back of his neck and forearms. This was no apparition of death. Somebody was out there, coming to kill him!

  He watched, barely breathing, as the thrown shadow loomed larger and blacker against the red fabric. The hard-rock din provided pounding syncopation to Marcus’ hammering heartbeat. The dark figure flowed onward, sliding like a black tide across the tent, stopping directly above him, the huge knife poised to strike.

  Marcus held his breath.

  The man grunted and the tent ripped open, the blade slicing down and burying itself in the sleeping bag and earth below—right where Marcus’ torso should have been. Then the tent collapsed as the figure fell into it.

  Now! Marcus sprang forward and grappled his assailant through the nylon fabric. The man grunted again, this time in shock, trying to writhe away. But Marcus was on him, with surprise and position, sliding behind the torso and pinning both arms, then cocooning the struggling body in tent fabric. There was an instant when the other could have cried out for help, and did not. Marcus exulted. A lone assassin, then, and surely doomed as Marcus tightened the nylon noose, constricting the head, throttling the neck.

  The body began to wrench violently under him, emitting the glottal stops of suffocation. Marcus held on fiercely, yanking the fabric tighter, then vising his own hands to crush the windpipe as they thrashed together across the ground.

  All at once his opponent’s struggles ceased, the muscles going slack. The body collapsed beneath him, vented an abrupt foulness of trapped gases.