by Greg Cox
“Aleksey Shchusev, the architect of the Tomb, included this concealed back door at Stalin's request,” Khan explained rapidly. He directed his comments at Komananov as well, apparently quite aware that she understood English. “All the relevant blueprints and documents were supposed to have been destroyed, but I deciphered a coded memorandum hidden in the private diary of one of the construction workers, who later defected to the West during the purges of the 1930s.”
“Excellent work,” Number Seven commented, sincerely so it seemed. He took Komananov's arm and led her toward the waiting steps, where Khan lingered to make certain they were coming. “The existence of this escape route had escaped even my data files.” Pensive gray eyes regarded the young Sikh with what struck Komananov as a genuine mixture of pride and regret. “I always knew you had enormous potential, Khan.”
“Yes,” the youth agreed bluntly. He thrust his silver dagger back into his belt. “And, more importantly, the will to use it.”
Komananov felt like she had wandered into the middle of an old argument between the two men, who clearly shared an uneasy history of some sort. A teacher-student relationship gone wrong? That appears the most likely scenario, she surmised, attentively scrutinizing her captors for further evidence of any rift that she might be able to turn to her advantage. Khan has the attitude of a former apprentice determined to outshine his one-time mentor.
Unless, of course, this was all just an elaborate good-cop/ bad-cop routine designed to soften her up for interrogation. Komananov had played such games herself, often to great effect, so she resolved to take nothing for granted, and to zealously guard her secrets no matter what nefarious tactics Seven and Khan employed.
Her suspicions were interrupted by the jarring sound of several kilograms of iron crashing to earth. The front door, she realized, even as she was dragged reluctantly down the underground stairway. Colonel Rublev had broken into the Tomb at last, but was he already too late?
“In here! Hurry!” she shouted, digging in her heels upon the concrete steps, in a possibly hopeless attempt to buy enough time for Rublev's soldiers to catch up with them. “Help! Pomogite!”
Snarling, Khan grabbed on to her arm and handily hurled her down the stairs, amazing her once more with his sheer physical strength. He then leaped to the bottom of the steps in a single bound and hastily pulled on a rusty metal lever mounted on the wall. The manual switch looked as though it hadn't been touched in decades, but Khan's formidable grip easily liberated the lever from its corroded housing, throwing ancient gears into reverse. Komananov watched despairingly as the ponderous catafalque slid back into place, cutting them off from the crypt above. A single lightbulb, naked and coated with dust, flickered above the lever on the wall, providing only a bare minimum of illumination to replace the light from the Tomb.
By the time Rublev and his men reached the inner chamber, she realized, there would be no hint at all of where the deadly terrorists and their hostage had disappeared to, except perhaps a discarded ushanka hat upon the cold stone floor. She could just imagine the consternation on Rublev's jowly face when he discovered that the murderous fugitives, who had littered Red Square with the bodies of dead Russian soldiers, had escaped immediate capture and retribution. Despite her own precarious situation, she did not envy Rublev the position he had been placed in. Someone would have to take the blame for this tragic lapse in security.
“Are you all right, Colonel?” Number Seven asked, reaching out to help her back onto her feet. He spoke Russian, presumably as a courtesy. Ah yes, she thought disdainfully, the good cop. Pointedly rejecting his offer of assistance, she raised herself from the floor. Her body was sore and bruised from the fall, but, to her relief, nothing appeared to be broken. Thank providence for small favors, she thought, brushing dust and grit from her hands and knees.
The sputtering lightbulb upon the wall revealed little of their new surroundings, but Komananov had the impression of a moldy underground vault or catacomb, little used and long forgotten. The air was dank and smelled of mildew and rat droppings. Vermin scuttled outside the meager swatch of light cast by the single bulb, while water dripped like a metronome somewhere in the darkness. Cobwebs shrouded the crumbling stone walls, and she flinched as a spider scurried across the toe of her boot.
Khan waited until the arachnid dropped back onto the floor, then crushed it beneath his heel. “There is an entire network of tunnels here,” he explained in a condescending tone, “dating back to the days of the tsars. Successive generations of Russian leaders have added yet more hidden entrances and exits, including a celebrated one beneath the so-called Secret Tower on the Kremlin's southern wall.” Komananov nodded grimly; she knew about that clandestine passageway, at least, along with every tour guide in Moscow. “I have a swift boat waiting by the river, not far from here,” Khan added.
He knelt by the bottom steps, where the colonel now noticed a bulging canvas sack resting against the wall. The young Sikh rooted through the bag, coming away with a portable flashlight, which Komananov assumed that Khan had stowed here earlier. Of course, she realized. This explains the way he suddenly appeared up above. He must have used the underground stairway to enter the Tomb while she and the guards were occupied with Seven. She grimaced at the thought of the boyish assassin coming and going as he pleased in the very shadow of the Kremlin itself. If I survive this, she vowed, I will see to it that every centimeter of these cursed tunnels is mapped and placed under the tightest guard!
Khan had a more immediate agenda. He tossed the flashlight at Number Seven, who switched it on obligingly. A brilliant white beam, stronger and more steady than the faltering bulb, swept across the stony floor of the vault, surprising a plump, black rat who screeched and scurried from view. “Come,” Khan instructed the others, pointing into the Stygian darkness ahead. He glanced briefly upward. “I doubt that our pursuers will uncover the means of our escape right away, but it might be wise to put a little more distance between us and our foes . . . before attending to the business at hand.” A fierce look at Komananov made it clear that she was the “business” to which he referred.
“I agree,” Number Seven said, shining the flashlight in the direction Khan had indicated. The incandescent beam exposed the arched entrance of a decaying, subterranean corridor stretching away into the shadows lying beyond the reach of the light. Stagnant puddles of filmy water created iridescent reflections of the radiance emanating from the American's flashlight.
“I was not asking,” Khan asserted. Raising the hilt of his dagger, he shattered the dingy lightbulb at the foot of the stairs. “To inconvenience any who follow.” Fragments of broken glass crunched beneath the tread of his boots as he led the party into the gloomy, timeworn tunnel. His shining blade slashed at the cobwebs across their path like a machete cutting through dense underbrush, yet shredded wisps of webbing still clung to Komananov's face and hair as she trudged grimly down the tunnel, a few meters ahead of Number Seven and his electric torch.
After they had marched for several minutes, a tense and uneasy silence hanging over the group, they came to an intersection where two deserted tunnels met at right angles, beneath an unadorned groin vault whose upper reaches were cloaked in shadows. A thin trickle of water ran down the nearest brick wall, irrigating slimy layers of mold and algae. Mice and insects burrowed in the niches between the decrepit bricks, where all or part of the mortar had crumbled away over time. In the middle of the crossing, a squat stone well, covered by a rusty metal lid, fed corroded lead pipes running along the bottom of the tunnel walls. Sludge leaked from the pipes, pooling in the cracks between the floor stones.
“This will do,” Khan declared, raising his hand to halt the mute procession. The chakram upon his upper arm caught the light of Number Seven's torch, as did the engraved steel band upon his right wrist. He turned on Komananov and advanced toward her, knife in hand, backing her up against a damp, ooze-encrusted wall, whose inhospitable chill seeped into her bones even through the heav
y wool layers of her greatcoat. Khan kept on coming, until his chiseled, sparsely bearded face was only a finger's length away from hers. “Now then, Colonel Anastasia Natalya Komananov, of the Committee for State Security, Third Chief Directorate, I want you to tell me everything you know about the plot to disrupt the summit conference now being held in Reykjavik.” He pressed the tip of the blade against the hollow of her throat. “Refusal is not an option.”
Ordinarily, she would have laughed at the notion that she, a highranking member of the world's most feared intelligence agency, could be intimidated by a teenage boy scarcely past puberty. But Khan, it was obvious, was no ordinary youth. His dark brown eyes held an intensity and firmness of purpose far beyond his years. Nor did she sense that he was bluffing; that icy determination left little room for mercy or squeamishness. “I do not know what you are talking about,” she said, swallowing hard, which caused the sharpened tip of the dagger to scrape minutely against the taut flesh of her throat. “I know of no such plan.”
Khan's expression darkened. “Do not toy with me, woman,” he hissed, baring flawless white teeth. “I know that you and your confederates have a scheme to derail the summit meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan, endangering the safety of the entire world merely to keep your precious Cold War alive.” His left hand clamped on to her wrist, squeezing it hard enough that she feared her bones might snap. “What I do not know are the exact particulars of your plot, but you will tell me those . . . now.”
Khan twisted her wrist and Komananov winced in pain. In desperation, she looked past Khan's shoulder at Number Seven, who stood a few paces away, his stolen AK-74 still slung over his shoulder. His knitted brow and disapproving frown gave her hope that he might call a stop to her brutal interrogation. “Khan,” he said sternly, taking a step toward Khan and the colonel.
The youth did not deign to look back at his American ally. “You may avert your eyes if you wish, old man. I know that doing what is necessary is sometimes too much for your humane and oh-so-civilized sensibilities.”
Biting down on her lower lip, to keep from giving voice to her pain, Komananov prayed that Number Seven would not be so easily rebuffed. She could use a good cop right now, no matter what the American's ultimate agenda was.
“I'm disappointed, Khan,” the older man said, shaking his head. His voice had the tone of an elder chiding an upstart child. “Your intellect is as impressive as ever, but you're still too quick to resort to violence, too easily caught up in the adolescent bloodlust of conflict and battle.” He patted the leather attaché case in his grip, calling Khan's attention to the crucial item. “This case, which you overlooked in your eagerness to wage a one-man war against the entire Soviet Army, may tell us everything we both want to know about the conspiracy against Gorbachev—and without descending to savagery.”
For an endless moment, Khan stood as silent and immobile as a statue, the point of his knife remaining at his captive's throat. Komananov held her breath as the youth sullenly mulled over Number Seven's words, too proud to admit any error, yet too intelligent not to recognize the rationality of the older man's suggestion. Komananov's heart pounded; she was afraid that the militant young Sikh would sooner cut her to ribbons than lose face in front of Number Seven.
Instead, he withdrew his blade and returned it to his belt. Then he sulkily unwound his turban and used the durable strip of saffroncolored fabric to bind the KGB officer's hands behind her back. “So be it,” he stated sourly, his thick black hair tied in ponytail at the back of his neck. Leaving Komananov against the fungus-covered wall, he turned and nodded at Number Seven. “Let us see what you have then.”
Komananov was tempted to make a break for it while Khan's attention was momentarily elsewhere. Realistically, however, she knew that she stood little chance of outrunning the incredibly athletic youth, especially once she got beyond the indispensable radiance of the flashlight. The prospect of racing blindly through total blackness, her hands tied behind her back, perhaps stumbling without any way to break her fall or even to get back up again, was not an appealing one. Better, perhaps, to wait for another, more promising opportunity. Besides, she reminded herself, I cannot leave without the case and its papers.
Number Seven laid the slender attaché case down upon the sealed stump of the abandoned well, wisely refraining from provoking Khan further. “I had a glimpse of the contents earlier,” he informed his teenage ally. “What I saw was most disturbing. I believe Colonel Komananov and her colleagues intend to do far more than merely derail the negotiations in Reykjavik.”
He fumbled briefly with the clasp on the case, which Komananov had carefully relocked after recovering it from Number Seven the first time. “This might take a moment or two,” he commented to Khan, “unless you'd care to give me back my servo now.”
“That won't be necessary,” Khan replied darkly. Snatching up the case before the older man could protest, he ripped the lid off the case with his bare hands. “There,” he announced, throwing the severed lid onto the moldering stones at his feet. He smugly placed the bottom of the case back onto the top of the well. “I trust that was not too violent a solution.”
“No,” Number Seven conceded, a trifle wryly. “Sometimes the direct approach can be very effective.” He lifted a folder from inside the ruptured case and started leafing through several pages of classified documents. “Just remember, Khan, some Gordian knots take more effort to untangle.”
Khan grunted dubiously, choosing to ignore the American's unsolicited advice. “Let me see those,” he said simply, reaching out for more of Komananov's private papers. The KGB officer winced to see her carefully guarded secrets handled so cavalierly. If only I hadn't stopped at Lenin's Tomb, she agonized, instead of going straight to the Presidium!
Number Seven handed over the folder to Khan, while picking up another sheaf of documents from the case. “Do you read Russian?” he asked the teenage assassin.
“Do not insult my intelligence,” Khan answered indignantly. Apparently undaunted by the Cyrillic alphabet, both men rapidly skimmed through the notes, memos, and timelines that Komananov had once thought safe enough to transport in person. Trading the papers between them, their simmering rivalry momentarily placed on hold by the enormity of what they found in the illicitly acquired papers, Khan and Number Seven nodded in unison as they grasped the true dimensions of the operation.
“Do you see what I mean, Khan?” the American said finally, raising his eyes from a confidential fax. “We are talking here about nothing less than the deliberate assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev—sometime tonight, followed by an immediate military coup, imposing martial law upon the nation in response to the general secretary's death.” He cast a censorious glance at Komananov. “According to the plan, the colonel here was to take control of the executive offices of the Supreme Soviet, before the civilian government had a chance to rally against the coup.”
Khan put down a fistful of papers, then clapped his hands together softly. “A most ambitious project, madam,” he applauded her, a tinge of admiration in his voice. “I commend you for your daring, if not your reckless disregard for world peace.” He tipped his head in an ironic bow. “But unless, I am missing something, which I sincerely doubt, there is one crucial detail missing from your meticulous files and reports. How, exactly, is Gorbachev to be killed tonight? What is the means of assassination?”
Number Seven continued to sort through the documents, mounting concern deepening the lines of his craggy face. “I can't find any specifics regarding the killing either,” he confessed. “Just repeated references to something code-named Pobeditel Velikanov. Roughly, ‘Giant-Killer,’ ” he translated. “Perhaps that designation holds some clue to what is planned for tonight.”
“We have no time for riddles!” Khan declared, sneering at the American. He fingered the knife at his side, and glared balefully at Komananov, who, shuddering, saw her brief reprieve slipping away. “Fortunately, I know an easier way to uncover the truth.
”
“Wait, Khan!” Number Seven exclaimed. His hand rested on the stock of the assault rifle slung over his shoulder, but he refrained from actually drawing the weapon. “Don't do anything rash.”
“Rash?” Khan laughed out loud. “Are you mad, Seven? The future of the world hangs in the balance and you counsel restraint?” With lightning speed, he yanked his last chakram off his arm and set it spinning briskly upon a raised index finger. With his other hand, he drew his curved dagger once more. A look of deadly seriousness came over his adolescent face. “Do not try your luck, old man,” he challenged the American, who had yet to unshoulder the AK-74. “I am younger, faster, and genetically superior . . . as you well know.” Twirling faster and faster, primed for flight, Khan's chakram was a mesmerizing, silver blur. “Put down that rifle, slowly.”
The colonel's heart sank as Number Seven carefully discarded his weapon as requested. “Listen to me, Khan,” he exhorted his presumed protege urgently, sounding determined to reason with the rebellious youth. “I know your ultimate intentions are good, that you have the best interests of the planet at heart, but, believe me, such barbaric means inevitably corrupt their ends. You cannot build utopia on a foundation of bloodshed and torture.”
Sadly, Komananov knew that the American was wasting his breath. In Khan she recognized a pragmatic ruthlessness not unlike her own, and she knew that the strong-willed teen would not refrain from torturing the truth out of her because that was exactly what she would do were their positions reversed. A shame we could not have recruited him first, she mused.