Duel of Assassins

by Dan Pollock

  Sure, Taras thought. And maybe Eva Sorokina would put in an appearance, too. The Cowboy had a way with women.

  Taras rode upstairs on an alcohol-fumed elevator with a former network anchorman recently put out to pasture for on-the-job intoxication. Taras had met the affable lout on several occasions, but was gratified that the famous face now couldn’t recognize his, as the newsman leaned for support on a local Fraülein—indubitably, considering her catch, of mercenary bent herself.

  Taras’ floor came first, and he lost no time in stepping off. He had been ready to punch the ex-anchorman in the pink jowls, just out of frustration and the desperate need to have someone to punish.

  Inside his room he went to the window, drew the drapes and tugged back the outer lace curtains, stared out at the floodlit copper dome of the church whose name he did not know. Then, after a blank moment, he began hammering his fist against the window frame.

  Thirty-Three

  In her condominium in Rockville, Maryland, Rhonda Hartnell switched on her bedside lamp. It was only eleven. She had gone to bed early, but had been awakened by a circuit firing on and off in her brain. Charlotte Walsh, the circuit said. Okay. Why should the name of a columnist stick in her synapses? Rhonda shook her groggy head, unable to piece the thought together.

  Then all at once she had it. She grabbed for the phone. Jesus Mary and Joseph, of course! Her boss and Taras Arensky and Bob Strotkamp in Berlin were all looking for Charlotte, had been for days. And that had been Charlotte—the voice on the phone from Germany—wanting to talk to the DDI, her boss! Rhonda had heard Charlotte often enough, in person at parties, and on Washington talking-heads TV—CNN, C-Span, Sunday morning punditry. How could she have failed to recognize even that hello? Dear Lord, let it not be too late!

  She got hold of someone in the Office of Communications of the Deputy Directorate, Support, at Langley, told him who she was and what she wanted done and how urgently she wanted it. She had to check her temper as the man repeated her request nearly word for word:

  “Now, let me be clear about this. You want me to go to your office, find this time you jotted on your deskpad and cross-check the phone logs for any incoming calls at that exact time on the DDI’s general line, and try and get a location?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s going to take awhile.”

  “Why? Don’t you have access to our phone system computer?”

  “No, I can do that. If there was a call, then the information’s in our daily ASCII logfiles. But I’m just telling you, Ms. Hartnell, they’re humongous files, and I’ll have to search it backward chronologically, or print it out...”

  “No, don’t print it! There’s no time! Can’t you narrow your search to a specific range of minutes?”

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Then do it! A life may depend on it. Make it fast and get right back to me. I’m calling the DDI at home right now.”

  The DDI’s reaction was predictably vesuvian.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rhonda said, “I should have followed up immediately and racked my brain until—”

  “For God’s sake, Ron, I’m not mad at you. You can’t think of everything, though you come closer than anybody I know. Let’s just pray she’s still there. I want somebody else to back up that tekkie down there on that phonelog check. And let me know the instant you hear from him.”

  Five minutes later she had her answer and relayed it to the DDI: “The call originated in Wittenberg, Germany, from a hotel called the Goldener Adler.”

  “The Golden Eagle. Okay, great work, Ron. I’ll take it from here. You get back to sleep, if you can. Maybe say a prayer for Charlie first.”

  *

  The call from Washington shrilled in Taras’ room at five-thirty in the morning, rescuing him from an exhausting dream in which he had been trudging across frozen tundra and sinking to his hips in snowbanks, on some obscure quest.

  It took several seconds to recall where he was, and the real urgency he confronted. Then the DDI’s words exploded in his brain. Charlotte was in Wittenberg. Why hadn’t Taras thought of it? It was within a seventy-five-kilometer radius of Potsdam and exactly the sort of quaint hideaway she would have chosen, over some toxic slum like Dessau.

  “Taras, I’ll leave you to contact Strotkamp and link up with GSG-9 or whoever’s available. Godspeed. Our prayers are with you.”

  “No! Don’t hang up. You call Bob yourself now, tell him I’m on my way to Wittenberg. If he can round up any GSG-9 guys, great, send ’em along. But tell him not to alert the local cops. Not against Marcus. They’d just walk in and get blown away. If they hit anybody, it’d be Charlie. I can’t wait.”

  Four minutes later, barely buttoned, zippered and shoelaced, with his .45 auto holstered under his windbreaker, Taras was gunning his rental Escort out of the hotel parking lot and swinging right onto the bridge over the Havel—and wishing to hell he’d rented a BMW or a Porsche.

  Dawn was still an hour off, and gray fogbanks shrouded the river. Taras switched on foglights and wipers, and barreled straight down the Heinrich Mann Allee, slowing only at stoplights like an ambulance driver to scan quickly for cross traffic, before accelerating through. In moments he had put the immense dark tract of the Potsdam Forest behind him and was flashing through the night-forsaken suburbs of Waldstadt and Bergholz-Rehbrücke. Just beyond lay the southbound onramp to the E6 Autobahn, where he could push the little Ford flat-out, thanks to reunification, which had brought the Federal Republic’s unlimited speed limits to the East.

  It was the same route he’d taken the day before on the wild-goose chase to Dessau. But this time something told him the game was for real—the duel was on, sabers unblunted, masks off.

  Keeping the speedometer hovering around 150 kph, Taras figured to reach Coswig in just over twenty minutes, maybe five or ten more to Wittenberg.

  He prayed it would be quick enough.

  *

  Marcus sat on the edge of the bed, watching Charlie sleep. Earlier he had unpeeled the strip of duct tape from her mouth, tipped her head back and forced her to swallow four 100 milligram secobarbital capsules. When she had finally ceased her struggles and gone under, he went into the bathroom—his eyes avoiding the leather-jacketed corpse that now sprawled in the tub—for a basin of water and washcloth. With these he cleaned off all traces of the vomit from her face. Next he had tenderly bathed her long elegant body, that lush and undulant countryside on which he had passed so many delightful hours. From time to time, as his cloth-mittened hand slowly traced the pale curves and hollows, she would moan or stir, like a child in troubled sleep.

  Perhaps, he had thought, the prolonged overhead stretching of her arms was hurtful, impairing her circulation. He cut the tethering sashcords, then removed the tape from her wrists, chafing them in his palms briefly to restore blood flow before lowering her arms beside her torso. As long as her ankles were taped and secured to the footboard, Charlotte could not escape.

  He had put off killing her for several hours then, while he continued to experiment with her makeup and wardrobe.

  He selected a long black polyester skirt with elasticized waist, the only one he’d been able to fit into—and as it was, the pleats were drawn taut over his hips. The white angora tunic sweater was also considerably more form-fitting than intended. Marcus had ripped out the shoulder pads; his own deltoids provided a sufficiently mannish effect. A tissue-stuffed bra beneath falsified a modest bustline. He had not been able to squeeze into any of Charlotte’s coats, but it should be warm enough to go without, yet not call attention to himself. The Adidases he had purchased the previous night completed the ensemble. More and more women wore athletic shoes, he knew, especially for occasions like today’s, where there would be a good deal of walking and standing around.

  The makeup was just passable, he thought, but the best he could do, based on trial and error and what he recalled from his kibitzing of Charlotte’s toilette over the past week. He’d shaved car
efully, smoothed on foundation and dusted each cheek with blusher.

  He had labored nearly thirty minutes doing his eyes, twice having to wash everything off and start over. Christ, he thought, what a wretched nuisance! How did women suffer it daily? He had used an eyeliner pencil, brushed on eyeshadow, tipped and darkened his own lashes with mascara. The objective was not to make himself look feminine, but to mask his features as much as possible from Taras, if he was there, and the KGB bodyguards, who would have studied his photograph. Sunglasses would aid in that disguise.

  Finally he was ready. It was essential that he make his exit from the hotel and the town before darkness bled off to dawn. And on the bed Charlotte was now beginning to stir more persistently. He wanted to do it while she slept. He took a pillow and stood over her a long moment, staring down at her delicate and well-remembered features, saying a silent and sentimental good-bye. Then he lowered the pillow, softly at first, then more and more firmly, and finally viciously, with all his strength, as she struggled up from unconsciousness to wage a brief, convulsive fight for her life. Then it was over, and she lay still.

  Marcus turned and heaved a great sigh, but the straitjacketing tension did not lift from him. He looked down at his hands, usually rock steady, now fluttering with nerves. Christ, don’t tell me the bitch got to you that bad? Pull yourself together. Yet he sensed within himself the sudden collapse of some inner structure. It was not just another death, a voice insisted. This one did not have to die.

  “Yes, she did!” Marcus cried out. She had been Taras’ woman. And he must find her like this, after the death or Rybkin, used and discarded by his once-loved, now-hated rival. That was to be the final exquisite point in their duel—Cowboy over Cossack.

  Oddly, the adrenaline surge seemed to steady his nerves. He must move quickly and methodically. Gray light was already beginning to filter through the lace curtains overlooking the square. He must forget the thing on the bed, ignore its grotesque reflection in the mirror as he sat down at the dresser for the final touches.

  Marcus placed the brunette wig carefully over his own hair, pulling and tugging, then using Charlotte’s teasing brush to flounce it. But on the left side a clump of curls stuck out at an odd angle, as if it had been slept on. He patted the curls down; they sprang right back. He rummaged through her travel vanity case, found a small hairspray canister, sprayed the entire wig, then combed and teased the offending curls into a semblance of order.

  He gave himself a final inspection in the mirror. Dark-lashed, blue eyes; long, equine face; strong cheekbones; slightly cleft chin; full, lightly glossed lips. Marcus made a mouth, blinked his lashes in what he thought was a feminine way. Christ, he looked exactly like a goddamn transvestite, one of those desperate-eyed TVs who take out ads in the kinky contact magazines. Let’s see, his could go:

  International assassin, looking for a good time and a victim to share it with. No limits respected. Contact: The Cowboy. Box 9E.

  No, not really.

  He stood up, smoothed the skirt over his hips. There was sufficient resemblance to the photo on Charlie’s press pass to get him through perimeter security. That’s all that mattered. After that, no one who knew her and saw him would make the connection. They’d just see another mannish newswoman, a fairly common species, he imagined.

  Next item. The little camera he’d picked up from a GRU contact in Munich, and which had already passed successfully through several airport metal detectors. Japanese logo, plastic case and interior mechanism. It could even take pictures—but not in its present configuration. It was fitted out so that, with a touch of the shutter release, it would go snickety-click like any SLR—except the lens would snap aside and a mousetrap fuse would fire a tiny dart through the lens opening. Marcus opened the back and made sure a dart was in place. Three millimeters long and a millimeter and a half in diameter, of platinum and irridium, the projectile was needle-pointed and, when fired from a range of five meters or less, could pierce several layers of clothing and skin, and release on impact its deadly poison—ricin, twice as toxic as cobra venom. Marcus would aim for groin, thigh or buttock, depending on opportunity. Rybkin would feel a sharp sting and probably die within the hour, despite medical intervention. And Marcus would have a decent chance at escape.

  Time to go. He found himself standing beside the bed, then, unable to stop himself, lifted the pillow for a last look.

  Suddenly she sat up, eyes staring. “Taras!” she cried.

  Marcus cried out, too—a womanish scream—and slammed the pillow down, mashing her face as her arms and legs thrashed. Fucking Christ, it was like crazy Kostya again!—the way the unconscious trapper had suddenly revived in the freezing water of the Ussuri when Marcus had shoved him through the ice hole. Again and again Kostya had risen to the surface, a wild-eyed ghost in the moonlight, bellowing for help while Marcus kicked his face into bloody ruin. Still he wouldn’t stay under—like Rasputin, whom he so resembled with his febrile gaze and scraggly locks. Finally, with Marcus screaming at him to die, the feeble-minded trapper sank and rose no more.

  Now, as the body beneath him subsided into the quiescence, Marcus slumped back. It was his own fault. Careless or squeamish, he had stopped too soon before, before she was really gone. He ought to have made damn sure. He lifted the pillow, saw the vacant, terror-glazed eyes. No carotid pulse. He pushed the jaw closed, but left the eyes open, not wanting to touch her again.

  He had to get out of there. He was breathing too rapidly, not thinking clearly. He made a tour of the room several times, afraid he was forgetting something. Credentials in the handbag, carry-all and camera over the shoulder, wig on straight. Body in the bathtub and on the bed. Okay, Christ, just get out! Pearl-gray light was quickly filching the shadows. He switched off the lamp, slipped into the corridor, eased the door closed, went down the dark stairs, his steps cushioned in the Adidases, a tall woman with a mannish build and a tricked-out hairdo.

  Thirty-Four

  Fear hurtled at Taras in waves, like the onrushing Autobahn and the unrolling farmlands alongside. He pushed it away, concentrating on the wet ribbon of asphalt, the muted hiss of the tires, the speedometer needling at one-sixty. But the fear always came back, and it wore a face—Charlie’s, dark-eyed and gaunt, hovering just outside the windshield.

  As the road descended, silver mist swirled up from the emerald fields, veiling the road ahead. Taras cursed, lifting his foot from the gas and praying for a return of visibility. Of all the times to have to slow down! He clenched the wheel in impotent rage, squinting ahead, foot braced to floor the pedal the instant the vaporous curtain parted.

  Still at reduced speed, he passed the first sign for Coswig, then a second one, which announced it as the exit for Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Ten more kilometers to the turnoff. He peered ahead, watching oncoming cars materialize suddenly out of the mist. A miniature tractor-trailer. A big red coach emblazoned Moto-Viàggio, full of Italian tourists. A battered, green and white ex-Vopo van with a young woman at the wheel and a Happy Holstein decal on the side.

  Peeling off the Autobahn at Coswig, Marcus narrowly missed sideswiping a mustard-colored Trabant that ran a red light. Taras glanced angrily back at the woman driver—and, for a heartstopping second, saw Charlie. But it was only a trick of the hairdo; the profile was square-jawed and mannish.

  Christ, you’re losing it, Taras told himself. Get a grip on yourself. He was only five minutes from Wittenberg, as long as he stayed alert. The last thing he needed now was to dope off, miss a sign and drive down the wrong fucking road.

  *

  Marcus scolded himself for running the red light—and nearly colliding with that Ford—as he headed up the Autobahn ramp. He had hot-wired the Trabant out of a parking lot behind the Goldener Adler rather than risk Charlotte’s Opel Omega, in case it was being searched for. By the time the Trabi was reported missing, Marcus would have discarded it.

  Even with the midget vehicle’s twenty-six-horsepower, two-stroke engine maxed
out on the Autobahn, Marcus found he couldn’t average much more than eighty-five kilometers an hour, which kept him in the right-hand lane. But that was good enough. He was ahead of schedule.

  And now that he’d left Wittenberg and Charlotte in his wake, he felt his old confidence returning. When an overtaking businessman in a big BMW gave him a sidelong appraisal, Marcus smiled back and flounced his dark curls. All right, he thought. If he could fool that oaf, why couldn’t he waltz through the Potsdam security checks just as easily, get his shot and slip away in the bedlam? There was only one area of apprehension—or perhaps concern would be a more accurate word. And that was the Cossack. Would he be at the Cecilienhof, seeking the revenge with which Marcus had so carefully enticed him? And if he was, would he able to spot Marcus in disguise? But that was the game, after all. And Marcus had already given Taras all the hints he could.

  Wedged into the tiny car and tucked behind a poultry truck that was steadily molting feathers in his direction, Marcus schooled himself to relax, not to keep thinking ahead. He chuckled as he recalled a Trabi joke: Question: Why is the Trabant the quietest car to drive? Answer: Because your knees cover your ears. A little later, just past the turnoff to Niemegk, the morning mist finally boiled off and allowed slanting sunlight to gild the summer fields. A fine day, Marcus thought, and wished for his old vagabond harmonica.

  *

  On the outskirts to Wittenberg Taras slowed to ask a pigtailed girl on a bicycle the directions to the Goldener Adler. She smiled and pointed over her shoulder.

  “You see down there, the entrance to Lutherstadt, that is the Schlosskirche. You turn left just there, then you go one long block straight down Schloss-strasse and there is your hotel, right on the Marktplatz.”

  It was just past nine o’clock, but Lutherstadt’s cobblestone streets and sidewalks were surprisingly empty of traffic as Taras pulled to the curb by the market square. He jumped out and began loping along the sidewalk, looking for the Adler. Then he saw the small marquee ahead with HOTEL in black Gothic letters. A motorcycle was parked outside. Taras suppressed the urge to sprint, slowed to a walk.