by Dan Pollock
*
In the White Salon, prolonged anticipation gave way to sudden, surging excitement as the first spirited notes of a military brass band filtered down the corridor from the courtyard. A moment later came the rippling applause and crowd murmurs generated by an approaching entourage. Marcus found himself pressed suddenly forward, and actually had to brace himself to keep from being shoved over the restraining ropes. An angry glance over his shoulder showed him the futility of protest; the throng behind had nearly doubled, jamming in from the garden through the open French doors. Marcus faced forward again, planting his feet as firmly as possible on the polished parquet and craning his neck along the packed gallery toward the corridor entrance.
According to the agenda printed on the media handout, the hosting German delegation would enter first, followed by the Soviet and American leaders side by side, then the other Euro-pean statesmen, also paired off as diplomatically as possible.
An Adidas-shod, blue-jeaned technician passed by Marcus’ position, mumbling into his headset; an instant later the long white-on-white salon was bathed by several 10K lights on tall stands and a quartz-halogen lamp mounted on the TV camera being used for pool coverage. Around Marcus many people now raised their own cameras. And in the throng behind him, more cameras were brandished aloft and angled hopefully downward over the sea of heads.
Outside the doorway the tumult crescendoed. The first person through was another cameraman, backing in and quickly out of the way. Then the first of several dark-suited bodyguards appeared, and immediately after came the German chancellor, president and foreign minister, all beaming broadly and directly into the video camera.
Marcus took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then finally raised his own customized camera. Rybkin and Ackerman would be next.
*
On the other side of the courtyard from the White Salon, in the palace wing normally used as the lobby and offices of the Hotel Schloss Cecilienhof, Taras had lost precious seconds trying to get past three large, stone-faced members of the Bundesgrenzschutz, all infuriatingly unknown to him despite the many introductions made by Bob Strotkamp in the last few days. When the plainclothesmen were finally persuaded, however, that this wild-eyed, out-of-breath and gesticulating man with the Slavic accent was who he said he was, and that there was a real possibility of a renegade GRU assassin on hand disguised as a reporter, an assassin whom Taras alone could recognize on sight, they agreed to escort him posthaste to the conference hall.
And they moved very fast indeed and provided invaluable interference. Someone thought of a shortcut, and all stormed up the lobby stairs to the next floor, then raced down a long corridor whose windows overlooked the red-starred courtyard. At the end of the corridor they halted before an unmarked door, pounding on it and shouting till it was thrown open. Rapid-fire German ensued between them and a uniformed policeman inside. Then they all swarmed into this small sitting room, past the penetrating gaze of Sir Winston Churchill from an oil portrait, through a connecting door—and found themselves suddenly in the small gallery overlooking the Cecilienhof’s conference hall.
More than a dozen red-plush chairs were drawn up around the large baize table, on which microphones, carafes of mineral water and neatly typed agendas had been carefully set out. But the large two-storied room was currently occupied only by five men on folding chairs watching a small video monitor—two technicians and three uniformed federal policemen. These latter now sprang from their chairs to point their weapons up at the gallery.
Fortunately there was immediate shouted recognition from above and below.
Taras led the charge down the carpeted stairs, ignoring the technicians who tried to hiss everybody to silence. Once down, Taras understood why they were upset at the clatter. The small color monitor showed the German delegation just now entering the adjoining White Salon. The ceremonies were under way, and doubtless being fed live around the world via satellite. Their view into the salon, however, was massively blocked by a wide-bodied TV cameraman wedged into the wainscoted doorway, his thick legs straddling a coiled nest of cables.
The German security men now gave Taras dubious glances, obviously hesitant to shove this indispensable giant aside and interrupt the historic proceedings—and quite possibly get themselves shot in the process by some lightning-reflexed bodyguard—all because of Taras’ farfetched story.
But Taras did not intend to be trapped in here, staring stupidly at a monitor as Marcus made his kill next door and vanished in the ensuing melee. He dashed up to the big three-sided bay window facing the garden. It was really a large latticework of many small rectangular panes—one of which, on the bottom row, as Taras had seen from across the room, was now opened out on its hinges. It would be a close fit, but Taras saw no alternative. He dropped to his knees and began squirming through.
There were shouts behind, but at least nobody was shooting at him. A few frantic seconds later, with only minor abrasions, he was safely through and spilling headfirst nearly three meters onto a garden path below.
When he scrambled up, he saw he was one level below the long stone terrace that ran outside the White Salon. He also found himself conspicuously the center of vast attention, having landed unceremoniously in a no-man’s land between a mob of roped-off media onlookers that stretched across the back lawn, and those more fortunate invitees whose massed backsides could be seen along the elevated terrace, many now jumping up and down in hopes of a glimpse inside.
In two steps Taras had vaulted onto the stone-flagged terrace—then turned around, attracted by the shouts of a stocky man who was sprinting forward from the cordoned crowd and pulling a gun from his suit jacket.
“Polizei!” Taras shouted back, then burrowed his way into the press of bodies. He continued to batter and shove a passage through the crush of humanity, ignoring all protests and beating off those outraged few who physically attempted to stop him.
By the time he had breached the French windows he was able to see into the room over the massed heads. The German dele-gation was now positioned against the opposite wall, and all heads swung left as William Ackerman and Alois Rybkin appeared in the far doorway.
As the two moved forward into a barrage of strobe lights, Taras picked out several familiar faces around them—Buck Jones, the bulky Secret Service man, Mike Usher, Volodya Biryukov, Ivo Kuzin, a swarthy Armenian translator whose name he couldn’t place. And a blond, vulpine countenance, eyes shifting side to side—Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Starkov, KGB.
Then suddenly, a little way to Taras’ left as the procession moved closer, Taras found himself focusing on a dark helmet of luxuriant curls—Charlie’s!—and beneath it a white-sweatered, broad-shouldered man-shape leaning well out over the ropes to take a picture.
Marcus!
Taras manhandled the next three people ahead of him, removing one obstinate fellow with a knee in the groin. In the general commotion, the small disturbance Taras was causing seemed not to have caught the eyes of the security people. In any case, Taras had his gun out, as Alois Rybkin moved a little ahead of Ackerman and his own agitated bodyguards, smiling and waving at the crowd, his squat body an unmissable target.
Taras fixed on the glossy wig and began to push toward it, intending to yank Marcus around, stick the gun in his cocky face, wait for the instant of recognition, then smile and blow the bastard away.
But a crowd surge from behind blocked his way, then pushed him sideways. Meanwhile Rybkin and Ackerman had both halted halfway down the gallery to chat with someone, and now were walking forward again. Taras suddenly realized it was too late to force his way through the crowd to Marcus. There was only one way he could possibly get the bastard—and, he realized, it would probably cost him his own life.
He decided to pay the price.
He leaped forward onto the back of a kneeling photographer and then dove up and over the ropes, landing heavily and awkwardly on the red carpet in front of the crowd, right between the TV camera and the oncoming Soviet
and U.S. leaders.
The next instants tumbled at him in a series of frozen, horrific tableaus:
The astonished faces of Ackerman and Rybkin, their hands flying up like Oswald’s had when he’d tried to ward off the bullets from Jack Ruby’s revolver...
Then Taras’ own gun sweeping past the two leaders to target the assassin leaning and pointing the little camera at the Soviet President...
“Cowboy!” Taras’ voice, bellowing...
Marcus spinning around, his eyes suddenly agleam like a cornered animal as he saw Taras—and the leveled .45 automatic that would finally settle all scores between them.
Then someone stepped in front of Marcus, saving his life.
It was Pavel Starkov, his little Makarov pistol looming like a cannon, spitting fire. Taras was punched back and flung sideways like a puppet, hitting the carpet in a sliding heap.
He’d been shot in the neck, he knew, and somewhere high in the chest. He would surely die—but despair engulfed him now for another reason entirely. He’d been stopped, thwarted on the threshold of his vengeance.
Now he stared up at a swimming white ceiling, at silly stucco filigree-work encircling a crystal chandelier. There was a roaring cacophony all around him, echoing high off the white walls, men and women screaming in a babel of languages, stampeding and trampling one another.
“Gott in Himmel!”
“Rybkin is shot! My God, he’s been shot!”
“Slava Bogu!”
Taras fought against a surging tide of pain, clung to consciousness, struggled to comprehend. Rybkin? Who had shot Rybkin? But, of course, Marcus had fired some damn projectile from his camera, probably some variation of the old Bulgarian umbrella poison. Except nobody had seen that. Rybkin must have felt the sting and faltered, and everyone assumed Taras had been the assassin. He’d not only failed to kill the Cowboy; he provided a perfect diversion for his escape.
Marcus would slip away. Game over.
Taras felt hands on him, not helping, but holding him down, making sure he didn’t escape. Then his suit jacket was pulled back.
“Shoulder and neck. The bastard may live. Don’t let him move. Hey, we need a doctor over here too. The bastard’s alive.”
The bedlam went on. But Taras tuned it out, closed his eyes, forgot even his hammering pain in the swamping bitterness of having failed.
Then he opened his eyes and saw Marcus.
The Cowboy was smiling down, his masculine features blatantly obvious under the grotesque makeup and elaborate hairpiece. Christ, what was he doing? Then Taras realized his old comrade must have just stopped by to gloat, before making his escape.
Taras tried to shout Marcus’ name, but could produce no sound. Of course. He’d been shot in the throat. It must be gorily obvious, or the Cowboy wouldn’t be standing there.
Marcus’ victory, then, was complete. The assassin smiling behind his mask—a comic-opera travesty of Taras’ last beloved, whom Marcus had slain as he had slain Taras’ first beloved. And any second now, having glutted himself on his triumph, Marcus would turn and walk away, leaving Taras bleeding to death and Eva and Charlie unavenged.
In a last ebb of rage, Taras tried to feel for his gun, realized the hand was now empty. Of course they’d taken it away. But in his vain attempt, his thumb had brushed against another and forgotten weapon—the thick steel ring on his forefinger that had once been Marcus’.
One shot. A last chance.
Holding off the advancing tide of numbness, Taras moved his hand slightly, hoping no one would notice, trying to rotate his forefinger so the side of the ring would point upward. He’d have one shot, right into that grinning face. Then someone blocked him. Christ, no! Pavel Starkov again. He’d kill that bastard, too. But he had only one shot. Then Starkov stepped back. Taras shut his eyes, hit by a sharp wave of pain, opened them, praying Marcus would still be there. And he was. Looking down now with an odd expression—almost one of compassion. But Taras didn’t care about that. He asked God for guidance and depressed the firing button.
The tiny capsule shot upward.
It missed. Taras saw only that, and, ready now for blackness, closed his eyes.
But an explosive whoosh opened them.
The flame gel had shot high, missing the Cowboy’s face but striking and igniting the hairspray-lacquered wig, which promptly erupted into flames.
Marcus let out a high, piercing scream, both hands tearing at his flaming hair, finally ripping the wig off and hurling it away—revealing himself.
“Marcus Jolly!” It was Bob Strotkamp’s voice. “Jesus, stop him, somebody!”
Taras saw Marcus writhe out of his field of vision, heard him running, still screaming from his burns. Then he heard the thudding sound of bodies falling, chairs toppling. And still the screams went on.
Again Taras lost consciousness. Came around seconds later to find Pavel Starkov and Bob Strotkamp kneeling over him. Starkov was apologizing in Russian, or at least coming very near to an apology.
“I had to shoot, you understand? I could not hesitate. But you did it, Major. We got the Spetsnaz bastard. I think you burned half his forehead off. Good work.”
“Taras?” Strotkamp was looking at him with a kind of fierce tenderness. “Listen to me. You’re going to be all right. I’m not bullshitting you, man, you’re going to make it. Now just hang in there.”
Taras blinked in acknowledgment. Maybe he would live, since Strotkamp seemed so damn sure about it. But it didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t think of anything particular left to live for.
Still, he thought, as he finally yielded himself up to insensibility, he hadn’t done too badly there at the end.
He wondered if the Cowboy had appreciated it.
*
Only a little ways from Taras, the security personnel clearing the room herded people around a second body sprawled on the carpet. Marcus Jolly lay back, his chest heaving, his arms pinioned. He had just stopped screaming, clamping his teeth against the agony of his burns and shutting his eyes on the hovering faces of his enemies.
He realized now that he had been vanquished by his old rival, the Cossack. And yet, despite his fierce helmet of pain and the humiliation of that defeat, and the long ignominy to come, the Cowboy felt a strange relief. And after a moment he realized why.
The duel was over.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Pollock was born in New York City to a family of writers and grew up in Laguna Beach, California. A former syndicate editor with the Los Angeles Times, Pollock is the author of three thriller novels in addition to Duel of Assassins—Lair of the Fox, Orinoco and The Running Boy—and a specially commissioned “logistics” thriller, Precipice.
With his wife, Constance, he has edited and published three literary, inspirational volumes: The Book of Uncommon Prayer; Gospel: The Life of Jesus as Told by the World’s Great Writers; and Visions of the Afterlife: Heaven, Hell and Revelation as Viewed by the World’s Great Writers.
The Pollocks live in Southern California with their two children.
ALSO AVAILABLE ON KINDLE
THE RUNNING BOY — $3.95
http://smarturl.it/5yofpj
“A non-stop, full-throttle chase thriller...”
A hideaway lake in the mountains above Los Angeles. A reclusive bachelor. A woman journalist on the run with a mystery boy… just a step ahead of a pair of hired killers. These are the initial ingredients of this full-throttle, nonstop chase thriller, which accelerates from the opening pages to its breathtaking finale.
“A wild ride — and read.” — Los Angeles Times Syndicate
*
LAIR OF THE FOX — $4.99
http://smarturl.it/616
“A classic, can't-put-it-down thriller.” — Publisher's Weekly
“An exciting journey to Istanbul and beyond in the company of some most intriguing characters.The suspense is unrelenting, the plot absorbing and, for an added bonus, the background is excep
tionally well observed.” — Ross Thomas.
“As exciting tale telling as you’ll want to read.” — Clive Cussler
*
ORINOCO — $4.99
http://smarturl.it/bt4edb
“Classic escaoe reading.” — Nelson DeMille
From the board room of a New Orleans multinational to the jungles of Venezuela; from a high-stakes takeover battle waged with stock proxies to a primitive duel with machetes and blowguns in the thunderous shadow of Angel Falls…
“A riveting read!” — Len Deighton