Assassin

ONE

Yevgenni Anatolevich Tarankov was called the Tarantula because of the gargantuan web he’d spun over all of Russia in the past five years. From friends in the Kremlin and inside the old KGB, through the peoples of the central Russian plains and wheat fields still dotted with intercontinental ballistic missile silos, and beyond, to the independent-minded residents of the wild far eastern regions of Siberia, he was feared and loved. He was a force to be reckoned with. A Russian force, campaigning for the leadership of his country the Russian way, with bullets and bread. He was a man in his early fifties, whose most prominent features were his eyes, which were large, black and expressive. When he smiled his eyes lit up with a pleasant warmth like a crackling fire on a cold Siberian night. But when he was angry, the fire was replaced by a sharply bitter man-killing wind that, as a poet from St. Petersburg wrote, “chilled a man’s soul so completely that he forgot there ever could be such a season as summer.”

He was unremarkable in appearance, typically Russian of moderate height with a thick waist, a bull neck and a massive head that looked common beneath a fur hat. But if his eyes were windows into the soul of Russia, his intellect was the engine that drove his successes and earned a grudging respect from his enemies, and an adoration bordering on religious faith from his followers. With Tarankov you either felt safe, or you felt as if your life were teetering on the slippery edge of an ice-coated cliff that dropped five thousand meters into a black hole from which escape was impossible.

It was his vision for the future of Russia. The nation would either regain its greatness or it would fall into a bottomless pit of despair.

It was morning and sharply cold as he stood on the swaying platform on the last car of his twenty-car armored train headed west from Yekaterinburg. They’d passed through the industrial city of Perm a few hours ago, and soon they would enter Kirov, their next target city, where the killing would continue.

He leaned against the rail, smoking a German cigarette, enjoying the calm before the storm. The sky was overcast, which seemed to be appropriate this morning, the air bitter with sulphur oxides from what few factories were still in operation. The people here, he mused, were like the air and countryside — gray, dull, used up, without hope.

His East German wife, Liesel, came out with his morning brandy. Like him she was dressed in combat fatigues, without insignia. “Radar is clear so far,” she said. Her Russian was still heavily accented though she’d lived in Russia since she was a seventeen-year-old student at Moscow State University.

“Not a day for flying in any event.”

“They’ll wish they had,” she replied. She hunched up her coat collar and shivered, then sniffed the air and smiled slyly. “It’s come, Zhennia, can you smell it?”

He returned her smile. “I can smell air pollution. Is that what you mean?”

“Hope, Zhennia. That’s what you’re smelling, and nothing is sweeter than hope.”

“You sound like a recruiting poster now.”

“Maybe.” She pursed her full lips. “Already a lot of young boys believe it. Believe in you.”

“Better the factory workers and the farmers want to follow me.”

“Them too,” Liesel said. “But it’s the young men who’ll make it happen.” Her eyes flashed. “There’ll be a bronze statue in Dzerzhinsky Square of a young soldier, his rifle raised over his head, his face pointed up to the sky in hope.” She smiled again, this time coyly.” “Just like the Minuteman in Concord.”

“With a pool of blood at his feet,” Tarankov said. The brandy had made his stomach sour.

Liesel shot him a sharp look, her violet eyes flashing with passion, her angular face screwed up in a grimace. She was a direct woman who never took sarcasms well. \ She expected short, succinct answers. In school her double majors had been mathematical logic and analytical psychology. She understood what motivated people, though she most often didn’t like it.

“It’s better to lose a river of blood now, than the entire country later,” she said.

“Russian blood.”

“Da, Russian blood, but from traitors, Zhennia.” She swept her hand outward. “Look what they’ve done. Look what they’re doing. It’s time for a clean sweep, even in the darkest corners. The filth has to be cleaned away before we all choke on the dust. And you’re the only man in Russia capable of doing it.”

Tarankov looked at his wife with warmth and affection. For a brief moment he could see them alone, away from the struggle, in a dacha by a lake somewhere in the far east. A part of him desperately wanted the peace and quiet away from the struggle, back to a past, easier life.

In the early days after the war, his father had been on the team of rocket scientists who’d built the Russian launch center at Baikonur. Tarankov had fond memories of evenings spent listening to his father and fellow Russians and captured German scientists passionately talk about a science that would not only take them to the moon and beyond, but would also be capable of launching nuclear weapons inter continentally The Soviet Union would become the dominant force on the planet, and these men, his father included, would be the means to achieving that goal.

His mother who was a gifted mathematician in her own right, and his aunts and grandfather, who were poets and historians, educated him. Philosophy and psychology were equally important as mathematics and physics. Literature and poetry were on par with chemistry and astronomy. Those days were simple, and he missed them now.

He attended Moscow State University, joined the Young Pioneers, the Komsomol and the Communist Party, and when he graduated with masters degrees in mathematics, physics, philosophy and psychology, he enlisted in the newly formed Strategic Rocket Force as a captain.

But then disaster struck. His father and mother had become too moderate and too vocal in their views. They were friends with Andrei Sakharov, but they did not have the physicist’s importance so they were sentenced to a Siberian gulag for crimes against the State, where five years later they both died.

It was the beginning of Tarankov’s real education, he once admitted to a friend. At that moment he became a realist. He embraced the Soviet Union and the Communist Party as he never had before, working equally as earnestly with Gorbachev’s moderates as with Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalists. But when the Wall fell he shed no tears. Nor did he openly mourn the loss of the Baltic states and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Instead, he began to consolidate his power base in the military, the Militia, the old KGB, the Kremlin and the Communists.

They passed a shack in the morning mist, a curl of smoke rising from the chimney. Then another shack, and two more, as they entered the outer suburbs of Kirov which was an industrial city on the Vyatka River.

“Just eight hundred kilometers to Moscow,” Liesel said, straightening up. “Not so far. Maybe eight hours or less.”

“More like eight light-years,” Tarankov replied. He finished his brandy and handed the glass to his wife. “Have Leonid join me.”

“Here,” a dark figure said from within the shadows of the doorway behind them.

Liesel was startled, but Tarankov didn’t bother to turn. Leonid Chernov was like an extension of his own personality, a brother, a kindred spirit. They understood each other.

“I’ll see that Colonel Drankov is ready,” Liesel said, and she left.

“There could be resistance in Kirov,” Chernov said joining Tarankov. “It might be better if you remained aboard until we have Government Square secured.”

“Do you think that’s for the best, Leonid Ivanovich?”

“For your personal safety, yes.” Chernov shrugged. “For the cause … no.”

Tarankov turned to look at his second in command who was ten years younger than him and stood a full head taller. Like everyone else aboard the train, including Colonel Drankov and his two hundred highly-trained commandoes, Chernov wore Russian battle fatigues with no insignia. They were a well-oiled team. Everyone knew everyone else, and all of their duties were clearly defined and perfectly understood. Everyone from the lowliest APC driver to Tarankov himself was equal, only their jobs and responsibilities differed.

“That’s the whole point.”

Chernov smiled humorlessly, but said nothing.

“Maybe I’ll make you director of my KGB.”

“Maybe I won’t want it.”

“There aren’t many causes left worth your special talents,” Tarankov said.

“Now it’s you who are the idealist.”

They passed the railroad siding for the Kirov Lumber Works complex, which looked all but deserted this morning. Where the yards should have been teeming with workmen, only a half-dozen men stood atop piles _of lumber as the train roared by. A few of them waved, but most of them merely watched.

“They know we’re coming,” Tarankov said.

“It would seem that not everyone is thrilled by the prospect.”

Tarankov studied his number two’s eyes, but this morning he could discern nothing other than an amused indifference. They’d been together for more than five years, and in that time there’d been a few moments like these in which Chernov was unreadable. Stalin had once said the same thing about his secret service chief La vrenti Beria, a killer whose cause and loyalty wasn’t always so easy to determine. “What are you thinking?” Stalin asked. “You don’t want to know,” Beria replied. “Except that I’m yours.” So long as it suits me, Tarankov finished the thought as he was sure Stalin had.

They passed other factory complexes that like the lumber works were mostly deserted of workmen. The word had spread that Tarankov was coming. They would be gathering downtown to witness what a western journalist described as “… a revolution so typically Russian that no one in the West has a chance of understanding it. The distance from apathy to passion is nowhere shorter than it is at this time and place in history.”

They roared into the city at more than a hundred kilometers per hour, not slowing down until they’d passed through the central switching yards and entered the downtown section where the tracks made a huge loop to the north, passing over the river still choked with dirty ice floes. The main railway station was two blocks off the city square, and as they approached it Chernov ducked inside for a moment returning with Tarankov’s Makarov pistol and his fatigue cap with a red star on the crown.

Tarankov put on his hat, strapped on his pistol and checked the gun’s action. Carrying a sidearm was his only concession to his personal safety. But everyone from Liesel to his military commander insisted on it, and at the rallies the crowds seemed to expect it. This was war.

Thousands of people lined the tracks, many of them waving the hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union. Others raised banners with Tarankov’s name, and still others held posters with his picture. Most of them chanted his name, many of them held up their right fists in the sign of solidarity. There were no police or military in sight.

“It could be a trap,” Chernov said. “Then we die here,” Tarankov replied, not taking his eyes off the crowds. His chest was swelling and blood pounded in his ears. He was more alive now than he’d ever been. Russia was his.

The train rumbled to an abrupt stop a hundred meters east of the big, iron latticework central depot, its iron wheels screeching on the tracks, throwing up sparks. Loading doors on twelve of the cars crashed open, and a dozen troop-carrying armored vehicles roared into life, their half-tracks clattered down steel ramps, and they quickly formed into a unit of a hundred commandoes, and four smaller squadrons of twenty-five men each.

Liesel, also wearing a sidearm, joined Chernov and her husband on the rear platform. They climbed down and boarded the lead APC in the main group from which Colonel Vasili Drankov would direct his forces. This was their tenth campaign in the past eighteen months, but Kirov, which was a city of 300,000, would be by far their largest conquest. Any number of things could go wrong, and they all knew it. By sheer weight of numbers the citizens could stop them dead, just as Yeltsin’s supporters had protected the White House during the Kremlin coup.

Drankov saluted. “Radar is still clear. Air traffic has even been diverted from the civilian airport. And all the military channels are dead between Moscow and the air base as well as the army post.”

Thousands of people raced down to the train, but mindful that something was about to happen, kept clear of Gruzinskaya Boulevard that led from the station to the city square. The noise was deafening, a roar that began to coalesce into the single chant: “Tarankov! Tarankov! Tarankov!”

“The military would be stupid to interfere,” Tarankov shouted,

Liesel at his side was beaming. Chernov stood in the gunner’s turret surveying the crowds and watching the taller buildings for snipers.

“This won’t be another Chechnya,” Drankov said with assurance. “Not with all this support. These people don’t like the apparatchiks any better than anyone else we’ve seen. But the Party is still timid of Moscow.”

“Not for long,” Tarankov said harshly. “This time we’ll give them a message they won’t soon forget.”

“As you wish, Comrade,” Drankov said tightly, and he began issuing orders by radio. The main body of their forces would head directly into the city square which was at the heart of the government and financial district. Units One and Two were to head directly to the television and radio stations and the biggest newspaper, and summarily execute not only the corporate censors, but the left-wing intellectuals and democratic reformers who’d been identified by Tarankov’s people months ago.

Unit Three was to proceed to the Arbat Bank, which was a branch of the powerful government-directed Bank of Moscow, execute its president and chief officers and rob the vault. The money and gold, if any, was to be brought back to the square and distributed to the people after Tarankov’s speech. The confusion it would cause would help cover their retreat should the local militia decide in the end to retaliate. Anything was possible.

Unit Four was to round up the mayor, the entire city council, the chief prosecutor and his staff, the directors of public works, housing, transportation and all six of the regional court judges, and bring them to the central square.

The four smaller units roared off in a cloud of diesel fumes, and as Drankov’s main unit headed up Gruzinskaya Boulevard, Tarankov spoke into a lapel microphone that relayed his voice by radio to loudspeakers atop all their assault vehicles.

“COMRADES, MY NAME IS YEVGENNI TARANKOV, AND I HAVE COME TODAY TO OFFER MY HAND IN FRIENDSHIP AND HELP.”

The crowds lining the boulevard fell silent as Tarankov’s voice rolled over them like waves on a vast shoreline. As the column passed, the people pressed in behind and followed the armored vehicles up to the square.

“OUR COUNTRY IS FALLING INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DESPAIR. OUR FORESTS ARE DYING. OUR GREAT RIVERS AND LAKES HAVE BECOME CESSPOOLS OF WASTE. THE AIR IS UNFIT TO BREATHE. THE ONLY FOOD WORTH EATING FILLS THE BELLIES OF THE APPARATCHIKS AND FOREIGNERS. OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING AND OUR WOMEN ARE CRYING, BUT NO ONE IN MOSCOW CAN HEAR THEM. NO ONE IN MOSCOW WANTS TO HEAR THEM.”

The column moved at a steady four kilometers per hour, which made it easy for the crowds on foot to keep up with it, and which would give the four out riding assault units a chance to complete their assignments by the time the main force reached the square. The plans had been orchestrated by Chernov, and no one questioned his brilliance. Every town they’d entered had become theirs within thirty minutes, without exception. Kirov, though larger, more sophisticated and much closer to Moscow, was proving to be no different than the much smaller, rural towns.

“OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BANKRUPT. OUR MILITARY HAS BECOME LEADERLESS AND USELESS. HOOLIGANS AND PROFITEERS ERODE OUR LIVELIHOODS LIKE CANCER. THE MAFIA EATS BEEFSTEAKS AND CAVIAR, DRINKS SWEET CHAMPAGNE AND DRIVES CADILLAC AND MERCEDES CARS WHILE RAPING OUR DAUGHTERS, WHO HAVE NO HOPE FOR A FUTURE.”

Bankrupt, cancer, rape, were what Chernov called “buzzwords.” He’d spent three years working out of the Russian embassy in Washington.

“AIDS AND DRUGS AND MINDLESS MUSIC ARE ROTTING THE BRAINS OF OUR CHILDREN. THE WEST HAS IMPOSED ITS FILTH UPON US BECAUSE WE ARE THEIR ENEMY AND THEY WANT TO BURY US.”

Tarankov could look out the slit windows and see the people walking beside his lead APC. Many of them were crying, tears streaming down their weathered faces. Some of them smiled, while others walked with hands touching the side of his armored truck. Many of them were military men in shabby uniforms. They were his people. They were the soul of Russia, and by their tears and their smiles, by their touching his truck, they were crying out to him for salvation.

Still talking, Tarankov pushed open the side door, scrambled out of his seat and jumped down onto the street with the people before Drankov or anyone else could stop him. He was still connected by radio link to the loudspeakers on his units all across the city by now.

“MOSCOW… HOW MANY STRAINS ARE FUSING IN THAT ONE SOUND FOR RUSSIAN HEARTS!” he quoted Pushkin.

The crowd roared its approval. “what store of riches it imparts!” Women and men and old babushkas crowded around in an effort to touch him. His voice seemed to be everywhere, it seemed to be coming from heaven itself.

“I WILL RETURN YOUR PRIDE, YOUR HOPE, YOUR DIGNITY. I WILL RETURN THE UNION!”

Chernov climbed down from the APC, and he and Liesel joined Tarankov for the last half-block into the square. Unit Four had pulled up and was herding its prisoners from the city and federal buildings into a clear area in front of the frozen fountain. The square was jammed with people, tens of thousands of them, possibly more than one hundred thousand, one third of the entire population.

A broad path opened automatically for Tarankov and his column as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea.

“IT IS BETTER TO LOSE A RIVER OF BLOOD NOW, THAN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LATER, EVEN IF IT IS RUSSIAN BLOOD. BECAUSE WE WILL ONLY SPILL THE BLOOD OF TRAITORS.”

A lot of the people in Kirov knew what had happened in other cities that Tarankov had visited, and now that the prisoners were in plain view an odd, ugly mood began to sweep over the crowd. Liesel called it the “blood lust,” when a crowd suddenly began to act as a single entity. A wild animal that wanted to kill.

“LOOK AROUND AND YOU WILL SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE,” Tarankov’s voice boomed across the square, now ringed with his mobile units.

“Units One and Two are completing their mission,” Chernov said at his ear. “Radar is still clear.”

Without breaking his stride Tarankov led his column into the square down the long path to where the two dozen city and district officials were lined up. They hadn’t been allowed to get their hats and coats, and they stood shivering in the bitter northwest wind that gusted across the square. It would probably snow later today, but most of them understood that they wouldn’t be alive to see it.

“IT IS TIME FOR A CLEAN SWEEP. THE FILTH MUST BE RUTHLESSLY CLEANED AWAY BEFORE WE ALL CHOKE ON THE DUST.”

A low, guttural murmur spread across the square.

“WHEN OUR STRUGGLE IS COMPLETED, I WILL RAISE A BRONZE STATUE IN MOSCOW’S DZERZHINSKY SQUARE WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. IT WILL BE OF A YOUNG SOLDIER, HIS RIFLE RAISED OVER HIS HEAD, AND HIS FACE POINTED UP TO HEAVEN IN HOPE.”

“Unit Three has completed its mission,” Chernov said. “All units are on the way back. ETA under five minutes.”

Tarankov held a hand over his lapel mike. “Was Unit Three successful?”

Chernov spoke briefly into his lapel mike. He nodded. “No gold this time but they got millions in roubles, and a very large amount of hard currencies. Mostly Swiss francs.”

“Distribute the roubles, we’ll keep the francs for our expenses,” Liesel said, Chernov waited for Tarankov to respond.

“It’s expensive running a revolution, Zhennia,” Liesel prompted.

Tarankov looked at his wife, then nodded after a moment, and Chernov relayed the order. Reality was sometimes a bitter pill, something his countrymen for all their tribulations under Stalin had never learned. He would have to teach them.

The armored column stopped fifty meters from the fountain. Drankov’s commandoes piled out of the transports to take up defensive positions in case they had to retreat under the press of the crowds, or under fire by an organized force.

Tarankov continued up the broad path, his stride long and purposeful. Ten meters from the prisoners he unbuttoned the flap on his holster.

Kirov’s Mayor Eduard Bakursky, a democratic reformer who’d been trying unsuccessfully to jump start the city’s flagging economy, stepped to one side and pulled out a pistol that one of the commandoes had slipped him.

The prisoners nearest him reared back.

“You bastard!” Bakursky shouted. He raised the pistol and started shooting, the bullets apparently going wild. They were blanks. He’d been set up.

Tarankov stood his ground and calmly drew his pistol, switched off the safety and fired two shots, one hitting Bakursky in his chest, and the other catching the portly man in his thick neck just below his chin. He was driven backward into the frozen fountain, his blood splashing across the ice and snow.

“TRAITOR,” Tarankov shouted, his voice thundering across the square. “TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE, ALL OF YOU.” He shot the man who’d been standing next to the mayor, and as the prisoners tried desperately to get away, Tarankov followed them, emptying his pistol into the group. The Unit Four commandoes opened fire with their Kalashnikovs on full automatic, killing the remaining prisoners within seconds.

As the sounds of the final shots echoed off the buildings and faded, the huge crowd suddenly erupted in a frenzy of cheering and clapping and whistling. They began to sing the old Communist Party anthem. The Internationale, though probably not one in a thousand knew that the song originated in France in the last century. But it didn’t matter. The people were happy. Blood had been shed, but it was a just killing. The revolution had finally come to Kirov and the crowd was drunk with the thrill of it.

And Tarankov too was drunk on their passion, as he turned to address his people.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin, red faced and sweating, stumbled on the stairs into the old Soviet Presidium building, and one of his bodyguards had to reach out to stop him from falling. Lunch with Prime Minister Yuri Kabjatov and his staff of old women had been nothing short of grueling. Only with vodka could he keep his sanity, although on days like this he wondered why he bothered.

His chief of staff, Alexi Zhigalin, and his military liaison, Colonel Igor Lykov, were waiting for him upstairs in his outer office, and their faces fell when they saw what condition he was in.

Zhigalin handed him a glass of tea. “Generals Yuryn and Mazayev are on their way over, Mr. President. Are you up to seeing them?”

Yeltsin flung the glass across the room, and brushed the impertinent pissant aside. “Unless NATO’s tanks are knocking at our back door, the generals will have to wait. Two hours,” he thundered as he entered his office.

Zhigalin and Lykov exchanged a glance. “It’s the Tarantula. He’s struck again, this time in Kirov,” Zhigalin said, his long, narrow face even more pale than usual.

Yeltsin pulled up short and turned back, shooting the two men an ugly glance. “The madman’s name is Yevgenni Tarankov. You will not utter that other name in my presence again.”

“There was a massacre in the city square,” Lykov said, the heels of his highly polished boots firmly together.

Yeltsin thought he looked like a drugstore cowboy. A fairy. But what he was saying was finally beginning to penetrate the fog. “In Kirov?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Lykov said. “The mayor and his staff along with all the district judges, and some others were gunned down. Tarankov himself apparently shot Mayor Bakursky and a couple of others to death.”

“Where was the Militia, the army?”

“General Kirpichko was apparently on joint army-air force maneuvers a hundred kilometers north of the city. By the time he could return, Tarankov was gone.”

“But they didn’t chase after his train?”

Zhigalin shook his head. “It wouldn’t have done much good, Mr. President. The people of Kirov support him. Now that our officials are dead it would take a full military intervention to bring order—”

“Do it,” Yeltsin said.

“Sir?” Lykov asked.

“Find out where he’s going, get there before him, and either arrest him or kill him.”

“It wouldn’t be so easy as that, Mr. President,” Lykov said. “He has many supporters in the military and the Militia. Even in the Security Service. And his commandoes are better than the best of our troops.”

Yeltsin walked back to Lykov and looked him up and down as if he were a raw recruit at parade inspection. “He has two hundred men with him. The best troops in all of Russia. Each one better than any ten of ours.”

“Yes, sir.” “Then send ten thousand soldiers to arrest him. Send tanks, rocket launchers. Send helicopter gun ships. If he’s near water, send ballistic missile submarines. But arrest him!”

“The people are with him,” Zhigalin said.

Yeltsin turned his now steady gaze to his chief of staff.

“Then arrest them as well—”

“Quite impossible, Mr. President,” FSK Director General Nikolai Yuryn said coming in. “We would have the healthy beginnings of a full scale armed insurrection. It’s exactly what he wants.” The FSK, or Federal Service for Counterintelligence, with its headquarters at the Lubyanka, was the internal security arm of the old KGB.

Militia Director Captain-General Mikhail Mazayev came in behind him. Both men were in uniform.

“Nikolai is correct, of course, Mr. President,” Mazayev said. “By playing into his hands we’d be making matters worse.”

“What do you suggest?” Yeltsin asked. He was at a slow boil and his generals knew it. The tension in the room was electric.

“I suggest that we bide our time,” Yuryn answered. “He will make a mistake sooner or later. He will go to excess — all men of his ilk do at some point. It’s inevitable. When that happens the people he claims to champion will desert him. Probably his own people will kill him.”

“Are all of you agreed on this course of action?” Yeltsin asked reasonably.

“Da,” Yuryn said. He was a large man, even bigger than Yeltsin, and he towered over everyone else in the room, especially the diminutive Zhigalin.

The others nodded.

Yeltsin let his shoulders sag as if he were defeated, started to turn back to his office, but then stopped, his face even redder than before. “Find out where Tarankov is going. Get there before him with as many troops and as much equipment and ordnance as you think you’ll need … no, twice that much … and either arrest him or kill him. Have I made myself clear, Comrades?”

“Perfectly,” General Yuryn said indifferently. “I’ll have the order drawn up and on your desk for signature by morning.”

“Do you feel you need such a document?”

“Yes, Mr. President, respectfully I do.”

“Then have it here within the hour,” Yeltsin said, and he went into his office and slammed the door.

TWO

Yevgenni Tarankov replaced the telephone on its cradle, sat alone staring at a map for a full five minutes, then left the train. They were stopped on an unused siding about three hundred kilometers east of Moscow. Camouflage netting was draped over the entire train even though it was the middle of the night, they were still under a thick overcast and the sideboards had been lowered, making them appear to be a freight train with markings for Volgograd.

The nearer they got to their prime objective the more Chernov and Colonel Drankov insisted on such stringent security measures.

In four days they would hit Nizhny Novgorod, which would be their most ambitious, and therefore most difficult and dangerous target. After this morning’s success at Kirov he’d felt that they were gaining a momentum that soon would be unstoppable. But all that was changed. He lit a cigarette, then stepped away from the tracks out from under the netting suddenly feeling confined, claustrophobic.

Two of his commandoes appeared out of the darkness. “Comrade, may we be of assistance?” one of them asked in a respectful but firm voice. They were armed with Kalashnikovs.

“I’m going for a walk.”

“Yes, sir. Would you please extinguish your cigarette?”

Tarankov looked sharply at the trooper. He wasn’t over thirty, none of Drankov’s commandoes were. But he looked like he ate barbed wire for breakfast, and wrestled black bears for sport. In the dim light reflected from the snow cover the man’s face seemed as if it were carved from granite. He towered nearly two meters and easily weighed one hundred kilos, but standing nearly motionless it seemed as if he had the moves of a ballet dancer. He didn’t flinch under Tarankov’s hard gaze.

Tarankov dropped the cigarette into the snow, and when he looked up the second commando had disappeared without a sound.

“What is your name, soldier?”

“Lieutenant Ablakov, sir.”

“Gennadi?”

The man cracked a smile, pleased. “Yes, sir.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes, sir. My wife is living with her mother in Yakutsk.”

“It’s a hard life there, but she is out of harm’s way. Do you have any worries?”

“No, sir. But I miss her.”

“As you should, Gennadi,” Tarankov said gently. “Do you understand what we’re doing?”

Lieutenant Ablakov straightened slightly. “I wouldn’t be here ill didn’t.”

It was a good answer, Tarankov thought. Ablakov and the others were respectful of him, but not fearful. That, of course, would have to change in time. But for now it was a useful attitude. Stalin understood that the people around him in the beginning would develop a familiarity that.in time would become unacceptable. Diminishing his absolute authority. It was the reason for many of his early pogroms. Penicillin cured the infection, but too much penicillin killed the patient so it had to be flushed out.

Chernov came out and together they walked to the last car beneath the netting where Tarankov lit another cigarette. “They don’t like you wandering off alone,” Chernov said.

Tarankov looked into his chief of staff’s eyes. The man had been the best Department Viktor killer the KGB had ever fielded. Even better than the legendary Arkady Kurshin who’d worked under the old Baranov regime. Those had been hard times, which demanded hard men. But, Tarankov mused, these were even harder times.

“Without you there would be no movement. Drankov and his men would be gone within the hour.”

“What about you?”

Chernov shrugged. “There’s always work to be done. I might return to Moscow. I have friends.”

“You need an organization.”

“Such institutions exist”

Tarankov chuckled. “In Iran, perhaps?”

Chernov cocked his head. “They could use a steady hand,” he replied. “What’s troubling you tonight?”

Tarankov looked away. They were in a forest here, the shadows dark, and mysterious. Russian shadows, he thought. Hiding something. “No one in Russia would raise a hand to kill me.”

Chernov said nothing.

Tarankov turned back to his chief of staff. “Yeltsin has ordered my arrest because of Kirov.”

“That’s not unexpected.”

“They’ll be waiting for us in Nizhny Novgorod. Army, Militia, FSK helicopter gunships. A real coordinated effort.”

“It’ll take more than that.”

“Five thousand troops under arms.”

“Nizhny Novgorod is a city of over a million people. If they rise up, the entire Russian Army could do nothing but watch,” Chernov said. He studied Tarankov’s eyes. “Do you want to call it off?”

“This time they mean business, and they have four days to impose a curfew and make it stick. It takes a Russian a lot longer than that to rebel.”

“Then we’ll go first thing in the morning, before they’re fully prepared,” Chernov said. “If you avoid Nizhny Novgorod because of the army, they won’t have to arrest you. Yeltsin will have won his point. Even a Russian will be able to see that.” “If the army shows up,” Tarankov said.

Chernov was suddenly bemused. “You’ve already thought this out,” he said. “You know exactly what we’re going to do.” “Da.” “Do you have a timetable?”

Tarankov nodded, content for the moment to let Chernov work it out for himself.

“Am I to be told, or do you intend keeping all of us in the dark?” Chernov asked with some irritation in his voice. He was afraid of no one. It was his greatest strength as well as his greatest weakness.

“We’ll go to Nizhny Novgorod next week. But first we’ll hit Dzerzhinskiy in the morning, and then I’ll send you to remove our biggest obstacle.”

Chernov’s eyes narrowed. “If you mean to do what I think you mean to do, there could be dangerous repercussions. Not only in Moscow, but in the West as well. At the moment Washington sees you as an internal problem, vexing only to the Kremlin. If I do this thing, that perception will change.”

“True, but it takes Americans even longer than Russians to react. Look how long it took before they moved against Castro or Noriega or Saddam Hussein. By then it will be a fait accompli, because Russia will be mine.”

“This is different.”

“Yes, because we will once again become a definite threat to their security. But by the time Washington realizes the fact, our missiles will be fully reprogrammed and operational.”

“What missiles are left.”

“You only need to kill a man once to ensure his death, not ten times.”

“Very well,” Chemov said after a moment. “I’ll brief Drankov and his unit commanders. What are we targeting in Dzerzhinsky?”

“The Riga electric generating facility.”

A slow smile curled Chernov’s lips. “The nuclear power station.” “Da.”

The train slowed to a crawl in the chilly predawn darkness. Two commandoes leaped from the lead car and raced thirty meters ahead to the mechanical switch, shot the lock off, and moved the lever to the right which shunted them off the main line and onto the spur which served the power station.

They placed a small shaped charge on the switch, backed off ten or fifteen meters, and turned the firing plunger. The small explosion destroyed the switch making it impossible now for the tracks to be easily moved back, which could trap them on the spur.

As soon as the men were back aboard the train, it gathered speed past an abandoned brick works and a tumbled down foundry, slowing again to a crawl five hundred meters farther just before a tall chain-link gate guarding entry to the station.

The same two commandoes leaped off the train and placed charges on both sides of the gate. Moments later the much larger explosion ripped the gate off its hinges, sending metal parts and chain link fifty meters into the air, and just as effectively shattering the morning stillness.

Riga Nuclear Power Station Number One, which had opened eight months ago despite massive protests, was an engineering marvel by any standard. Constructed as only Russians know how, the huge containment dome and twin cooling towers rose above the shabby suburb of factories, houses and apartment complexes that were little more than hovels. The enormous amounts of water needed to cool the two reactors was drawn from the Moscow River and piped underground in concrete races ten meters in diameter; large enough so that during construction the largest earth movers were dwarfed.

By building the power station in Dzerzhinskiy the Kremlin sent three clear messages to the people and to the rest of the world. Russian engineering could solve any problem, even making it possible to build a nuclear power plant so far away from a water source. The Russian government was in charge of the nation and knew what was best for its people. And, since the facility was less than six kilometers as the crow flies from the Kremlin, the people were assured that Yeltsin believed the Riga station would not become another Chernobyl. Riga was safe.

So far unpublicized, but generally known in the suburb, was that in the first eight months of operation the complex had suffered four major accidents including one that SCRAMed the system less than ninety seconds before a total meltdown occurred.

The reactor was like a sword of Damocles hanging over the neighborhood.

No one who lived in Dzerzhinskiyworked in the complex, but everyone in the suburb had to live with the threat.

Because of the sensitive nature of the power station, and the demonstrations against it, the complex was heavily guarded by crack FSK troops, some of whom had served in Afghanistan, and others in the battle for Chechnya. It amused Tarankov, as the train again gathered speed for the last kilometer to the loading docks and Central Control, that although Chernov and the others did not want him wandering around alone in the dark countryside for fear of a sniper, they were willing to let him go with his troops into a hornet’s nest. He watched from his operations center on the observation deck in the rear car with Liesel, Chernov, a communications specialist and a weapons officer. His personal quarters on the lower deck were polished wood and brass, but up here the deck was equipped with state of the art communications and radar equipment, as well as firecontrol for 22mm automatic cannons fore and aft, and a smaller version of the navy’s close-in weapons system, capable of radar-tracking incoming targets, including incoming aircraft and missiles, and firing 12.5mm depicted-uranium slugs at a rate of six thousand rounds per minute. This one car presented a formidable force by itself.

“They know we’re here,” com ms specialist Junior Lieutenant Yuri Ignatov said. He entered the information he was picking up by radio into his battle planning computer, which was similar to the BSY-1 used on nuclear submarines. In this case the computer would spit out weapons and tactical options based on real time information it was being fed, and relay it to Colonel Drankov and his unit commanders.

Even as the information came up on the display screen, they could see the troops spilling out of the bunkers to the southeast of Central Control. A pair of rocket launchers came up from a tunnel and started to turn toward the train.

“Take them out,” Chemov ordered.

Their weapons officer, Lieutenant Nikolai Zabotin, entered the new targeting data into his console, and as they got within two hundred meters of the rocket launchers, cannons on the lead car ripped both trucks apart, shredding metal, rubber, plastic and human flesh indiscriminately. Both launchers went up in huge balls of flame, scattering burning debris and ordnance over the FSK ground troops pouring out of the bunkers.

“We’re a hundred fifty meters out, prepare to dismount,” Chernov radioed Drankov. He reached up and braced himself against the overhead.

The others did the same, as the train’s coordinated braking system, which operated much like anti lock brakes on a luxury car, slowed them almost as quickly as a truck could be slowed in an emergency, and ten times faster than any ordinary train could slow down.

As soon as their speed dropped below twenty kilometers per hour, the battle doors on each car slid open, hinged ramps dropped down, and Drankov’s commandoes aboard their armored assault vehicles shot from the train like wild dogs suddenly released from confinement, firing as they made sharp turns into what remained of the FSK’s first response force.

Tarankov keyed his microphone. “This is Tarankov. Send Units Three and Four to blow the main gates.”

“The alert has been called to the main Militia barracks,” Ignatov said.

“The people will fill the streets before they can get here.”

“The Militia might run them over,” Ignatov said.

“Three and Four en route,” Drankov cut in.

They could see the two units peel off toward the west, while One and Two headed toward the main electrical distribution yard on the opposite side of the complex.

By the time the train came to a complete halt across from the Central Control building, Drankov’s main force had taken out the last of the FSK troops, and his men were racing through the building, blasting their way through doors leading into each level, then leapfrogging ahead. Within eight minutes from the start of the assault the main gates were down, and the first of thousands of people from the suburb were pouring into the compound, the main electrical distribution yards which covered more than fifty hectares were destroyed, the two reactors were shut down, the four water races were collapsed with heavy explosives, the control room with its complex control panel and its computer equipment was completely demolished, and every on duty guard, engineer or staff member was dead or dying.

“Five minutes and we’ve got to be out of here,” Chernov said. He’d donned a headset and was listening to the military radio traffic between the Dzerzhinskiy Militia and the main barracks downtown.

“Sound the recall,” Tarankov said.

Liesel was beside herself with excitement. “This’ll teach the bastards a lesson,” she said.

“One they won’t soon forget,” Chernov shot back.

Tarankov opened the hatch and climbed out onto the catwalk as the crowds swarmed across the vast parking lot toward the train.

“Five minutes,” Chernov shouted.

“COMRADES, MY NAME IS YEVGENNI TARANKOV, AND I HAVE COME TODAY TO OFFER YOU MY HAND IN FRIENDSHIP AND HELP.”

THREE

Have you had any sleep?” Tarankov asked. Chernov shook his head as he placed the last of three cases of Marlboros into the trunk of the Mercedes 520S parked beside the tracks. The top two layers of cartons actually contained cigarettes. He closed the trunk, leaned back against the car and accepted a cigarette from Tarankov, though he hated the things.

“It went well this morning,” Tarankov said. “Moscow is going to have to deal with power outages for a long time. It’ll make things worse for them.”

“Yeltsin and his cronies have access to emergency generators. And if things get too bad they can always escape to the dachas.”

“You don’t approve,” Tarankov said crossly. He was tired too.

“On the contrary, Comrade. I neither approve nor disapprove. But I’m a realist enough to understand that it’s the ordinary people on the street who make revolutions possible. Once the leader is in power, he can do anything he wants, because he’ll control the guns, and the butter. But if he loses the people in the beginning he will have lost the revolution.”

“A good speech, Leonid. But you failed to take into account the fact I was cheered.”

“By the people of Dzerzhinskiy who were afraid of the power station. By next winter when the snow flies again, and still there is not enough power in Moscow, the rest of the city will remember who to blame.”

Tarankov smiled family. “By then the power will be restored.” An event, he thought, that Chernov would not be alive to witness.

“That’s as optimistic as it is naive, I think,” Chernov said.

They were parked in a birch woods two hundred fifty kilometers north of Moscow. Tarankov gazed across a big lake, still frozen, his eyes narrowing against the glare from the setting sun, as he tried to keep his temper in check.

“Throughout the summer I will divert military construction battalions from as many divisions as it will take to get the job done in ninety days,” he said.

“You do have a timetable,” Chernov said, flipping the cigarette away. “If you’re right, Dzerzhinskiy can be turned into an advantage. And Nizhny Novgorod can be important if the situation doesn’t become untenable after tomorrow. But you still need Moscow and St. Petersburg. We can’t kill them all.”

“Only those necessary.”

“They’re not stupid. They’ll figure out your plans, and try to block you somehow.”

“It’s already too late for them,” Tarankov said. “You’re close to me, have you figured it out?”

Chernov smiled. “It’s not my job. I’m nothing more than a means to your end.”

“What about when we come into power?”

“I’ll leave, Comrade Tarantula, because I will no longer be needed. And we know what happens to people in Russia who are not needed.”

“Maybe I’ll kill you now,” Tarankov said with a dangerous edge in his voice.

Chernov’s gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t think that would be quite as easy as you might think,” he said in a reasonable tone. He pushed away from the car, and Tarankov backed up a half-pace despite himself. “I have work to do, unless you have second thoughts.”

“You’re confident you can do it?” Chernov nodded seriously. “Yeltsin could have been eliminated anytime over the past couple of years, but nobody wanted to take responsibility for it. He’s not been worth killing until now.” “Am I worth killing, Leonid?” Tarankov asked.

“Oh, yes. Especially after tomorrow,” Chernov replied. “And believe me they will try. Someone will almost certainly try.”

“You will see that they fail.”

“That, Comrade Tarankov, is my job.” Chernov pointed to the cigarette in Tarankov’s meaty paw. “But they won’t have to send an assassin if you keep that up.”

Tarankov grunted. “You sound like Liesel.” He smiled. “One nag is enough.”

“She’s right.”

“Good of you to say so,” Tarankov said. “We’ll wait for you at Kostroma. But if you get into trouble you will have to rely on the usual contacts in Moscow, we won’t be able to come for you. Not until after Nizhny Novgorod.”

“I’ll be there,” Chernov said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get a few things before I leave. I want to be in Moscow before midnight.” He abruptly went back to the train and boarded the second car from the rear, not seeing the intense look of anger and hatred that flashed across Tarankov’s heavy features.

Chernov’s car contained the officers’ wardroom and kitchen, as well as quarters for him, Colonel Drankov and the four unit commanders. The colonel and two of his officers were smoking and drinking tea in the wardroom when Chernov passed. They did not look up, nor did he acknowledge them. Their relationship was exactly as he wished it to be: one of business, not friendship.

In his compartment, which consisted of a wide bunk, a built-in desk and two chairs, a closet and a well equipped bathroom, Chernov laid out the uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the Kremlin Presidential Security Service, then pulled off his boots and combat fatigues.

Someone knocked at his door. He quickly looked around to make sure nothing of importance was lying in plain view, then flipped a blanket over the uniform. “Come,” he said.

Liesel Tarankov, wearing a UCLA Sailing Squadron warmup suit, came in. She looked Chernov up and down, then glanced at the turned down blanket. “I thought you were getting ready to leave us, not go to bed.” “I was changing clothes. Is there something I can do for you, Madam?”

“I want to discuss your assignment.”

“Very well. If you’ll allow me to finish dressing, I’ll join you and your husband in the Operations Center and we can go over the detail.”

“No. I want to talk about it here and now.” A little color had come to Liesel’s cheeks, and a strand of blonde hair was loose over her left temple. She was fifteen years younger than Tarankov and not unattractive.

“Then I’ll call him, he can join us here.” Chernov stepped over to the desk and reached for the telephone, but Liesel intercepted him, pushing him away.

“Just you and me.”

Chernov smiled. “Did you come here expecting me to make love to you, madam?” he asked in a reasonable tone. “Is that how you meant to control me?”

“I’m not ugly. I have a nice body, and I know things.”

“What if I told you that I’m a homosexual.”

She laughed. “I wouldn’t believe it.” “I think you’d rather believe that than the truth,” he said.

It took a moment for the meaning of what she’d just heard to penetrate, and when it did a flush came to her face. “Schweinhund!” She lunged at him, her long fingernails up like claws.

Chernov easily sidestepped her. He grabbed her arms, pinned them behind her back, and shoved her up against the bulkhead, his body against hers.

She struggled for a moment, but then looked up into his eyes and parted her lips.

He stepped back, opened the door, and spun her out into the passageway. “Go away before I tell your husband that you tried to seduce me.”

“He wouldn’t believe you,” she shot back, a catch in her voice.

“I think he would,” Chernov said disparagingly, and he closed and locked the door.

For a few moments he thought the woman was going to make a scene, but when nothing happened he got dressed. Before it was all over, he thought, he would fuck her, and then kill her. It would be the best thing he’d ever done for Tarankov.

The Kremlin

Chernov arrived at the Borovitsky Tower Gate, on the opposite side of the Kremlin from Red Square, at 11:45 p.m. One guard examined his papers, which identified him as Lieutenant Colonel Boris Sazanov, while the other stoned a light in the back seat, and then requested that the trunk be opened.

He popped the lid then stuck his head out the window as the guard spotted the cases of cigarettes. “Take a couple of cartons. They won’t be missed.” His hat was pulled low, most of his features in shadow.

“Who are they for?” the guard asked.

“Korzhakov,” Chernov said. Lieutenant-General Alexander Korzhakov was chief of presidential security, a drinking buddy of Yeltsin’s and the number two most powerful man in the Kremlin.

“I don’t think so,” the guard said respectfully. “I think I’ll call operations.”

“This car was left unlocked for an hour on Arbat Street. The cigarettes will not be missed if you’re not greedy, and you keep your mouth shut.”

The first guard handed Chernov’s papers back. “What are you doing here this evening, Colonel?” “Delivering cigarettes.”

The second guard pulled two cartons of cigarettes out of one of the boxes and stuffed them inside his greatcoat. He slammed the trunk lid, and went back into the guardhouse.

“I don’t smoke,” the first guard said.

“Neither do I, but they’re sometimes better than gold, if you know what I mean.”

The guard stepped back, saluted and waved Chernov through.

Chernov returned the salute and drove up the hill past the Poteshny Palace and around the corner to the modernistic glass and aluminum Palace of Congresses. It was a Wednesday night, the Duma was not in session, nor was any state function or dinner being held, so the Kremlin was all but deserted.

The guard at the entrance, to the underground parking garage checked his papers, and waved him through.

Chernov took the ramp four levels to the most secured floor where Yeltsin’s limousines were kept and serviced. He parked in the shadows at the end of a long row of Mercedes, Cadillacs and Zil limousines. The entrance to Yeltsin’s parking area and private elevators fifty meters away was guarded by a lone man seated in a glass enclosure. Chernov checked his watch. He was exactly on time.

Two minutes later, the guard got up, stretched his back, left the guard box and took the service elevator up one level.

Chernov took a block of eight cigarette cartons from the bottom of one of the cases, and walked to the end of the parking row, ducked under the steel barrier and went back to the Zil limousine with the SSP 7 license plate. It was the car that would be used to pick up Yeltsin in the morning and bring him here to his office.

It was a piece of information that Tarankov got. Chernov trusted its reliability.

The freight elevator was still on sub level three, and would remain there for three minutes. No more.

Chernov climbed into the back compartment of the limo and popped the two orange tabs dial released the seat bottom. Next he peeled the back from a corner of the bottom of the brick of cigarettes and stuck a radio controlled detonator into the soft gray mass of Semtex plastic explosive. This he stuffed under the seat, molding it against a box beam member. The bottom of the car was armored to protect from explosions from outside. The steel plates would focus most of the force of the blast upward through the leather upholstered seat. No one in the rear compartment could possibly survive, nor was it likely that anyone in the car would escape critical burns and injuries. The amount of Semtex was five times more than necessary for the job.

Chernov relatched the seat bottom in position, softly closed the door, and as the freight elevator began to descend, ducked under the barrier, hurried back to his car and drove away.

“That was quick,” the guard at the ground level said.

“I just had to deliver something,” Chernov said.

“Well, have a good evening, sir,” the guard said. He raised the barrier.

Chernov headed past the Presidium to the Spassky Tower where the guard languidly raised the gate and waved him through. Threats came from outside, and besides no one of any importance was inside the Kremlin tonight. Anyway, all colonels were damned fools.

After clearing Red Square, Chernov drove out to Krasnaya Presnya past the dumpy American Embassy on Tchaikovsky Street to a block of old, but well maintained apartments near the zoo and planetarium.

Traffic downtown was heavy, but out here the shops were all closed and the neighborhood streets were quiet, though lights shone in many windows. Russians loved to stay up late talking. In the old days they fitted blackout curtains on their windows. These days they weren’t worried.

All that would change, Chernov thought as he drove around back and parked the Mercedes in a garage. Tarankov truly believed he had the answers for Russia. Likely as not, his revolution would bring them to war. But by then, Chernov intended on being long gone.

He waited for a couple of minutes in the darkness to make sure that he hadn’t been followed, then climbed the stairs to the third floor, his tread noiseless. He produced a key and opened the door of the front apartment, and let himself in.

The apartment was dark, only a dim light came from outside. It smelled faintly of expensive western perfumes and soap. Feminine smells. Music came softly from the bedroom.

Chernov took off his uniform blouse, loosened his tie and went into the kitchen where he poured a glass of white wine. Removing his shoes, he walked back to the bedroom, and pushed open the door.

“Can you stay long this time, Ivan,” Raya Dubanova asked softly in the darkness. She’d been a ballet dancer with the Bolshoi. Now she was an assistant choreographer of the corps de ballet. Her body was still compact and well muscled. She knew him only as Ivan.

“No,” Chernov said sitting beside her on the bed. He put the wine glass aside and took her in his arms. She was naked.

“Can you stay at least until morning?” she whispered in his ear.

“I can stay with you tonight if you promise to wake me at six sharp,” he teased. “But if you snore I’ll have to go to a hotel.”

“I don’t know if you’ll be capable of getting out of bed when I’m finished with you,” she said wickedly. “Now take off your clothes, and come to me.”

She’d been forced to be the escort of a Strategic Rocket Force general who Chernov was contracted to kill three years ago. He’d shot the man in his bed while Raya hid in the bathroom. When it was over she came out, looked at the general’s body, took the gun from Chernov and pumped three bullets into it, then spit in the general’s face.

She wouldn’t stay in the apartment so Chernov brought her to this one. He came to her as often as possible, sometimes able to stay for only an hour or two, other times staying an entire evening.

She knew what he was, but she never asked who he worked for, or if he’d killed again. She was simply grateful that he’d saved her from the old man. And each time he came to her bed she showed her appreciation.

Tarankov didn’t know about then-relationship. No one did.

He undressed and joined her in bed. “I need a couple of hours of sleep,” he said.

“We’ll see,” she said, straddling him. She raked her fingernails across his chest almost, but not quite with enough force to draw blood, and he immediately responded.

Maybe he wouldn’t need so much sleep as all that, he thought, a soft groan escaping from his lips as Raya began to bite the tender skin on the insides of his thighs.

At 8:00 a.m. the line in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum was already long even though visitors were not allowed inside until 10:00. Chernov, wearing a worn overcoat, black fur hat and shabby boots, stood near the end of the line, his hands stuffed deeply in his pockets. The morning was bitterly cold, made worse by a sharp wind blowing from the Moscow River. Most of the people in line were old women, but there were a few foreign tourists and several men not ashamed to show remorse for the father of Russian socialism. Rain or snow it was a rare day that there wasn’t a line in front of the mausoleum. It was the most anonymous spot in Red Square.

Two police cars, their blue lights flashing, came around the corner past the History Museum at a high rate of speed. They were immediately followed by four Zil limousines, and two final police cars.

Chernov waited for them to pass then slow down as they turned toward the Spassky gate. The first two police cars entered the Kremlin, and he pressed the button on the tiny transmitter in his pocket.

The third limousine erupted in a huge geyser of flame and debris. A second later the sound of the blast hammered off the Kremlin walls and boomed across Red Square.

Everybody in line instinctively fell back, raising their arms to shield themselves from falling debris. Even before the first siren began to sound, everyone scattered as fast as their legs could carry them.

Chernov allowed himself to be swept away, until he ducked around the corner on October 25th Street where he entered the metro station. He did not look back. He didn’t have to, because he knew for certain that if Boris Yeltsin had been in that limousine, he was now dead.

FOUR

Russian Prime Minister Yuri Kabatov entered the Crisis Management Center deep beneath the White House. The chamber and its communications center had been hacked out of the bedrock shortly after the Kremlin Coup in which Gorbachev had been ousted, but nobody this afternoon felt comforted knowing sixty meters of granite separated them from the real world above because all the security in Russia hadn’t been able to save the life of Boris Yeltsin. “I don’t think there can be any doubt who was behind this latest act of violence or why,” Kabatov said, taking his seat at the head of the long conference table. He was satisfied to see that nobody disagreed with him.

In addition to his own staff those around the table who had responded to his summons included Moscow Mayor Vadim Cheremukhin and St. Petersburg Mayor Dmitri Didyatev, both democratic reform moderates like himself. The meeting had been delayed so that both men, whom Kabatov considered crucial to Russia’s future, could be notified and make their way into the city; Cheremukhin from his dacha on the Istra River, and Didyatev from St. Petersburg.

Farther down the table were Militia Director General Mazayev and FSK Director General Yuryn. Yuryn sat erect, his thick hands folded in front of him on the table, a scowl on his gross features.

Some of Yeltsin’s shaken staff had also arrived, among them the President’s Chief of Staff Zhigalin, and his Chief Military Liaison Colonel Lykov.

Seventeen men in all, most of them moderates, had gathered to make what, Kabatov felt, would be the most important decision that had been made since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“Without proof, Mr. Prime Minister, there’s very little we can do if we are to continue as you wish under rule of law,” General Mazayev said thickly. He had dark circles under his red eyes. He looked like he’d just sobered up.

“We’re not going to have to worry about proof because the bastard won’t deny it,” Kabatov shot back. He was a terrier of a man, with a sharp, abrasive personality that matched his looks. “He’ll say that his actions are for the best of the nation. He destroyed Riga Power Station so effectively that my engineers tell me it will be at least a year before it’s back on line, maybe longer if there’s other damage beyond what we already know. And the stupid kulaks up there. cheered him. They actually cheered him. But this winter when they begin to freeze their asses off they won’t blame him, they’ll blame us.

“I’m also told that Yeltsin ordered his arrest in Nizhny Novgorod, and that Tarankov was tipped off. So he retaliated by having the president assassinated. This time if there are any leaks they will have to come from this room.”

Kabatov was ranting, he could hear himself but he couldn’t stop because he was deeply frightened. Yeltsin had been a drunken buffoon, but his security detail was simply the best in the entire world. They figured the explosive device had been placed’ beneath the back seat of the limousine. Supposedly no one outside the security detail, not even Yeltsin himself, knew which car that would be. And there were no early reports of any suspicious activity in or around the secured parking level beneath the Kremlin. Yet they were still cleaning his blood off the streets outside Spassky Tower with toothbrushes. “The monster has to be arrested and brought to trial. It’s as simple and as necessary as that if we’re going to survive as a democracy. Now, I want your ideas on how to do it.”

Alexi Zhigalin looked up defiantly. “Just kill him. We can find his train and send the Air Force in to blow it off the tracks, destroying him, that East German whore he’s married to, and all of his fanatical followers. They’re traitors.”

“It could be done,” Yeltsin’s military liaison, Colonel Lykov, said. “I’ve already spoken with General Ablakin. If the FSK could help us with intelligence gathering, it could be pulled off within twenty-four hours. It would send a clear message—”

“To whom?” Kabatov interrupted. “If this were the United States and its president were assassinated, the government wouldn’t kill the assassin.”

“Jack Ruby probably worked for the CIA,” Yuryn said.

“That’s not been proven.”

“We’re not the United States,” the FSK director said.

“No, nor are we England, or France or Germany or any other civilized nation if we kill Tarankov. Such an action would play directly into the hands of his supporters. Don’t you think with a cause like that to follow, that popular support for whatever other lunatic decided to stand up to us would grow?”

“President Yeltsin maintained much the same view,”

General Mazayev said. “Look what happened to him.”

“Are you saying that one man and a handful of thugs can hold an entire country for ransom?” Kabatov shouted.

“In Tarankov’s view he is campaigning,” Yuryn said.

“Campaigning for what? Yeltsin’s vacant seat?” “Da. And yours, Mr. Prime Minister, and that of the General Secretary of the Communist Party. And that as supreme leader of a new Soviet Union, the Baltics included. As you know, he has a lot of popular support.”

“Gained by robbing people of their own money out of our banks and giving it back to them,” Kabatov said with disgust. “Apparently he handed out something less than he robbed in Kirov. Something considerably less.” He shot Yuryn a bleak look. “Campaign funds?”

“Probably,” Yuryn replied indifferently. He worked for the federal government, not for the Prime Minister, though it was unclear at the moment who, other than Kabatov, was nominally in charge of the government.

“Your suggestion then, General Yuryn, is to kill him? Do you agree with Alexi Ivanovich?”

“On the contrary, I strongly recommend that we wait. As you say, when winter comes around and there is not enough power for Moscow the mood in the city will definitely change for the worse. But the blame can be shifted away from you, and back to Tarankov.”

“How considerate of you,” Kabatov said sarcastically.

“It is the same advice I gave President Yeltsin,” Yuryn said. “General Mazayev and I happen to agree on this point. But the President insisted that Tarankov be arrested at whatever costs. I believe that order cost him his life.”

“There was a security leak somewhere,” Kabatov said.

“Presumably. Nor should you believe that there won’t be a leak from this gathering. Such things happen despite our best precautions.”

“Then it will have to come from one of you men,” Kabatov said coldly, his eyes shifting from man to man. “This room was electronically sealed once I entered. Nothing of a mechanical or an electronic nature can get out of here. The only thing that will leave here this afternoon is what’s in your heads.”

Again Yuryn shrugged indifferently. “If you mean to actually arrest Tarankov and not simply eliminate him and his followers, then our staffs will have to become involved. The leak will come from there.” The bulky intelligence service chief leaned forward in his chair and tapped the table top with a blunt finger. “If you go after him he will find out, and he will come after you.” Yuryn looked at the others around the table. “He’ll come after all of us.”

“Are we to be held hostage?” Kabatov shouted, thumping his fist on the table. “Should we shut out the lights, crawl under our beds and hand the madman the keys to the Kremlin? Stalin assassinated Lenin in order to gain power. Has that happened again? Are we going to allow our nation to sink to those levels of barbarism? Pogroms. Gulags. Wars?

“What do you think the West’s reaction will be when we pack up our tents and abandon the field? Without trade how long will Tarankov or any of us survive? Russian winters have killed more than foreigners. Russian winters have claimed plenty of Russian lives too. He must be taken alive and placed on public trial for all the world to see.”

“It will tear the nation apart,” Yuryn warned.

“We will lose the nation if we don’t do it,” Kabatov said wearily. “I didn’t call you here today to argue the point. I called because I wanted you to tell me how to proceed.” He glanced down the long table at Zhigalin. “Where is General Korzhakov?”

“He sends his apologies, Mr. Prime Minister, but he is busy with the investigation.”

Kabatov shook his head in disgust. “Has any progress been made since this morning?”

“Some,” Zhigalin said. He opened a report he’d brought with him. “I was given this just before I left. the Kremlin. Apparently a man who identified himself as Lieutenant Colonel Boris Sazanov, assigned to the presidential security detail, entered the Kremlin last night a few minutes before midnight. He said he was delivering gifts. One of the guards checked the trunk of the man’s car and found several cases of American cigarettes. He got inside the parking garage beneath the Palace of Congresses where he remained for around five minutes. He then left by a different gate.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Kabatov said. “Has this Lieutenant Colonel Sazanov been found?”

“No such officer exists. Nor do we have much of a description. It was evening, the lighting was imperfect, and the guards said the man parked in such a way that the front seat of the car was mostly in shadow. Their impression was that he was large, under fifty, possibly under forty years, old, and he spoke in a cultured, well educated voice. He was probably a professional.”

“A professional what?”

“Assassin, Mr. Prime Minister,” Zhigalin said. “He drove a new Mercedes sedan, so it’s possible he worked for the mafia.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Tarankov’s people,” Mazayev said sharply.

“Tarankov has friends among the mafia,” Zhigalin shot back. “The bastard has friends everywhere.”

“What else?” Kabatov asked.

“The guard at the Palace of Congresses got a partial license plate number, and the city is being searched for the car, as of noon without success.”

“Why wasn’t I told of this?” Militia General Mazayev demanded. The Militia were the police.

“The alert was issued routinely for a stolen vehicle,” Zhigalin replied. “General Korzhakov felt that the initial stages of the investigation should be as low key as possible so as to lull the assassin into a false sense of security.”

“Spare me,” the Militia director said. He turned to Kabatov. “I’ll put my people on it. All my people. We’ll find this car and this colonel.”

“How was the bomb detonated?” Kabatov asked. “If it was set on a timer, it would mean that the assassin knew President Yeltsin’s schedule. That in itself might give us a clue.”

“The bomb was probably fired from a radio controlled detonator,” Zhigalin said. “At least that’s the preliminary finding. It means that the assassin stationed himself someplace so that he could see the presidential motorcade show up at the Kremlin. He pushed the button, the President’s automobile exploded, and he calmly walked off.”

“Someone in Red Square?”

“There was the usual line in front of Lenin’s Tomb, some early tourists at St. Basil’s and a few people just exiting the Rossyia Hotel, plus normal pedestrian traffic. Witnesses are being rounded up and questioned.” Zhigalin glanced at Mazayev. “Again simply a routine investigation for the moment.”

“If the man was a professional, as you suggest, then he is long gone by now,” Mazayev said bitterly. “The city should have been shut up tight immediately after the bombing. We would have found the assassin.”

“He’s back aboard Tarankov’s train,” Zhigalin said. “If you want to find him you needn’t look anywhere else.”

“Whoever this assassin is, there is little doubt that his action was directed by TarankOv,” Kabatov said. “On that there can be no argument. Which brings us back to arresting the sonofabitch. Are there any more suggestions as to how we should proceed?”

“President Yeltsin wanted him arrested when he showed up in Nizhny Novgorod,” Zhigalin said. “We can go ahead with that plan.”

“He won’t show up there,” Yuryn said.

“Why not?” Kabatov asked.

“Tarankov found out that preparations were being made in Nizhny Novgorod for his arrest, so he retaliated by staging the raid on the Riga facility, and then assassinating President Yeltsin.”

“Do you know this for a fact?” Zhigalin demanded.

Yuryn shook his head. “If, as the Prime Minister suggests, Tarankov did order President Yeltsin’s assassination, that would be the reason. He knew about Nizhny Novgorod.”

“Assuming this is in fact true, how do we proceed?” Kabatov asked.

“Besides plugging the leaks so that Tarankov does not learn of our plans, we have to deal with two problems,” the FSK director said. “The first is the western media. They want to know what happened this morning on Red Square.”

“That’s already being taken care of,” Viktor Yemlin interjected from the end of the conference table. He was chief of the North American Division of the S VR, which was the foreign intelligence branch of the old KGB. Previously he’d worked as rezident for the KGB’s operations in Washington and New York.

Kabatov had no love for the old KGB or its successors the FSK and SVR. He’d come under investigation by the intelligence service when he served as ambassador to the United Nations eight years ago. Despite his position, and the fact that the charges against him were proven to be groundless, he’d been treated roughly. But Yemlin was an important moderate, despite his position and background.

“Well?” he said, his dislike obvious.

“Explosive ordnance used for the protection of President Yeltsin that is normally carried in one of the escort limousines was defective and detonated by accident, killing three presidential security service officers and the driver. President Yeltsin’s limousine was not touched.”

“Why hasn’t the President made a statement?”

“He died of a stress-induced heart attack this morning at 11:38 a.m. A body will be produced to lie in state, and his funeral will be scheduled for one week from today.”

Kabatov grudgingly admired the tremendous lie. “Can the SVR pull it off?”

“I’m told we can, Mr. Prime Minister,” Yemlin said. He was a distinguished looking man who reminded everybody of Eduard Shevardnadze with his kindly eyes and thick white hair. “But it will require the cooperation of everyone in this room.”

“How long can such a lie be sustained?” Zhigalin asked.

Yemlin shrugged. “Historians opening records a hundred years from now might find out. It was only recently that the truth behind the executions of Tsar Nicholas and his family came out.”

Kabatov nodded. “Very well, do it.”

Yemlin smiled faintly. “It’s already being done.”

Kabatov held back a sharp retort. Instead he turned to Yuryn, who was staring thoughtfully at Yemlin. “What is the second problem we have to deal with?”

“Tarankov’s next moves. If indeed he did order President Yeltsin’s assassination it may have signaled the start of his end game. Though how he’ll react to the SVR’s coverup is anyone’s guess, we need hard intelligence on his intentions. Without such knowledge trying to arrest the man will, in the very least, result in a blood bath. If we’d known ahead of time about his raid on the Riga facility and had tried to stop him, the people up there would have gotten in the way. There would have been a lot of deaths. Killing him would be easier than arresting him. But if you mean to go ahead, give me time to put a man on the train.”

“Do you have someone in mind?” Kabatov asked.

“I have any number of capable officers.”

“The reason I ask is because by your own admission Tarankov has his support in every government agency, at every level.”

“I have people who will do it,” Yuryn said.

“When can you start?”

“If it’s what you want, immediately,” Yuryn said.

“It is,” Kabatov said. “Arresting Yevgenni Tarankov is Russia’s only hope, and our most urgent priority.”

FIVE

Viktor Pavlovich Yemlin returned home to his spacious apartment on Kalinin Prospekt shortly after 7:00 p.m.” and poured a stiff measure of Polish vodka. He sat in his favorite chair, put his feet up and stared out the window at the lights of the city and the gently falling snow.

He was a deeply troubled man. In the old days, before his wife died of cancer, he would have enjoyed company at times like these.

Someone with whom to discuss his misgivings, his feelings of doom and gloom. But he had been a widower for so long that he had come to make peace with his solitude. In fact he rather enjoyed being alone, though he bitterly missed his only son, who’d been killed in Afghanistan.

He turned on the stereo with the remote control, and set the volume for the disc of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, his favorite piece of music, and laid his head back.

In his late sixties, Yemlin was not the man he should have been. Born in 1930 in Kiev, his parents had moved to Moscow at the start of the Great Patriotic War, and at twelve he ran away with his brothers to help defend Stalingrad against Hitler’s army. After the war his parents died of heartbreak, because of seven boys Viktor was the only one to survive, and he’d survived flawed because his youth had been so dramatically cut short.

He was arrested and sent to count the birches in Siberia because he’d lied on his officer’s candidate school and Moscow State University applications. He claimed he was older than he was so that he could count his military service for bonus points.

Four years later the NKVD, which was the forerunner of the KGB, discovered his name and his heroism in military records, and immediately recruited him. He was sent first to Moscow State University where he was educated in political science and international law and politics, to the prestigious Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations, then to Officers Candidate School and the War College, and finally to the NKVD’s School One.

He worked on a number of projects for the NKVD and then the KGB in eastern Europe, until General Valentin Baranov recruited him for the real work of a spy: That of the grand schemes of the seventies and eighties in which the Soviet Union would take over the world with the strong right arm of its KGB.

In a series of brilliant missions from Mexico City (the Soviet Union’s largest and most active embassy and KGB station), to the United Nations in New York, and finally as resident of KGB operations for all of North America out of the Soviet embassy in Washington, Yemlin proved himself to be one of the most capable and effective intelligence officers the Komityet had ever fielded.

He’d never been considered for promotion to head the agency, because he didn’t have the right background or the correct political patronage for such advancement. But he was well respected by every KGB director he’d ever served under.

Now that the Soviet Union was no longer intact he should have been one of the bitter old guard for whom Tarankov’s message was a siren’s call to the old ways. Many of the men in the FSK and SVR were admirers of the Tarantula, hoping that a new Soviet Union would somehow rise out of the ashes of the old.

Instead, he had become a moderate. Years of living in the West’s openness with its cornucopia of ideas and consumer goods had changed him. So subtly at first that even he wasn’t aware of the differences in his outlook. But finally he understood to the depth of his soul that the great communist experiment of a world socialist movement had failed not because of corrupt, cruel leadership, but had disintegrated of its own ponderous, unrealistic weight. Tarankov was trying to bring it all back again, and a lot of people were listening to him. Russians were tired of being second class citizens, they wanted super power status returned to them. They were tired of being hungry, they wanted to be fed. And they were tired of an aimless existence that seemed to be going nowhere, they wanted to be led. Socialism didn’t work, but Russians hadn’t learned yet how to make a go of democracy. They were tired of trying.

After the meeting in the White House, Yemlin had returned to his office at SVR headquarters on the Ring Road and written his report. He was careful to draw no conclusions or make any substantive recommendations. But in his heart of hearts he agreed with General Yuryn: Trying to arrest Tarankov would likely end in a blood bath in which dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent people would get killed. And placing Tarankov on public trial would tear Russia apart. It would be just like the Red Army versus the White Army after the October Revolution. The nation would sink into a civil war that this time would drag on forever, and that no one could possibly win.

But if Tarankov were allowed to continue “on his course he would probably win the next election in June three months from now. Either that or he would take the Kremlin by force.

Yemlin thought about that possibility. The raid on the power station in Dzerzhinskiy was within a half-dozen kilometers of the Kremlin. The bold attack had shaken the government to its core. Yeltsin’s assassination twenty-four hours later had come as a worse shock. Perhaps they were witnessing the start of Tarankov’s end game, as Yuryn suggested. If that were the case his next move would be even bolder, more daring, and certainly more destructive. Yemlin could think of a number of plausible scenarios in which Tarankov could simply swoop into Red Square, arrest or assassinate the moderates who opposed him in the Kremlin, and de facto take over the government. A Red Square filled with a million Tarankov supporters — Yemlin believed he had that many in Moscow alone — would block a military retaliation.

Yemlin also suspected that Prime Minister Kabatov’s worst fears were true; that Tarankov’s base of support went far beyond a bunch of starving kulaks who wanted to go back to the old ways. It involved more than just a handful of old hard liners in the government and the military and the old KGB, it cut across the board into every segment of the nation’s population. He’d even heard noises from the Baltics, and from Ukraine and some of the other breakaway republics, that after all what Tarankov was trying to do was give the nation back its dignity.

He went to the sideboard, poured another vodka and took his drink back to the window where he lit a cigarette.

Yeltsin’s chief of staff Zhigalin’s suggestion that the Army and Air Force hunt down Tarankov’s train and destroy it would not work either. The people would certainly rise up against the government, and what little remained of Russia’s shaky democracy would disintegrate into anarchy. That’s if the military would undertake such an operation without tearing itself apart first. There certainly would be desertions, and possibly an outright revolution amongst the troops, and much of the officer’s corps. It might even happen that the army would move against the Kremlin, and when the government was secured invite Tarankov to take over.

Which once again brought him back to the conclusions he’d drawn several months ago. Tarankov had to be assassinated, but no one in Russia could be trusted to do it. The job would have to be done by an outsider. By someone who in the end could be blamed for the killing, because even if a Russian could be found to kill Tarankov, the people would believe the government had ordered it, and the revolution would explode.

If an outsider did it the killing could be laid on the doorstep of a foreign country, or at the very least it could be portrayed as the act of a lone gunman. A nut. Another Lee Harvey Oswald, who the Warren Commission determined had worked alone, not as a conspirator hired by the Soviet Union.

He’d shied away from that concept as well as he could through the summer and fall. But each time news of Tarankov’s exploits came to him, he was drawn back to the inevitability of the idea.

In October he’d cautiously broached the subject with his old friend Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, the director of the Russian Human Rights Commission that Gorbachev had founded after the Kremlin Coup. Sukhoruchkin had agreed wholeheartedly without a trace of hesitation. Like Yemlin, though, his only reservation was that the assassin would only get one chance so he would have to be very good. He’d also suggested that between them they attempt to build a power base of support for die idea among the people who had the most to lose by a Tarankov dictatorship.

By the first of the year it became painfully clear to both men that task they’d set themselves to was not only dangerous — they had no idea who to trust or learn who they were — but it was foolish. No one in Russia could be trusted with such a secret. So Yemlin did the next best thing by contacting his old mentor Eduard Shevardnadze, president of Georgia, who would have as much to lose under Tarankov as they would.

Shevardnadze had agreed only to discuss the issue, and only when Yemlin felt that there were no other options left to them, and that time was running out.

Yemlin put out his cigarette, finished his drink and rinsed the glass in the kitchen sink. He pulled on his greatcoat and went down to a pay phone in the metro station a block away. He never used his home telephone for important calls, nor did he bother having it swept. All the old checks and balances were in place in the SVR, which meant all but the most senior officers were spot checked from time to time. The easiest and most cost effective way to do that was by monitoring telephone calls and opening mail. But Yemlin had been around for a long time, and he had a few tricks up his own sleeve.

Sukhoruchkin answered the telephone at his home on the second ring. “Da?”

“Meet me at the airport.”

“Now?”

“Yes,” Yemlin said. “It’s time.”

Yemlin called his contact at Vnukovo domestic airport. “We would like to go flying this evening, Valeri.”

“It’s a lovely night for it,” his pilot replied. “The tops are low, so once we get above all this shit you’ll be able to see the full moon.”

“We’ll be returning in the morning.”

“As you wish.”

Yemlin’s final call was to a special number in the SVR’s communications complex. After one ring he got a dial tone for an international line that could not, by design, be monitored. In two minutes he was connected with the residential quarters of the president of Georgia.

“This is Viktor Pavlovich.”

“I expected you would call this evening,” Eduard Shevardnadze said.

“Konstantin and I would like to see you tonight. Will you be free?”

“Are you calling from Moscow?”

“Da. But we can get down there by midnight unofficially if you will have a car and driver to meet us.”

“What’s the tail number of your airplane?”

Yemlin told him.

“Take care, my old friend. Once a word is out of your mouth you can’t swallow it again.”

It was an old Russian proverb which Yemlin understood well. He hung up and headed for a cab stand.

The aging Learjet, which Yemlin occasionally leased from a private enterprise he’d set up ten years ago for a KGB-sponsored project, touched down at Tbilisi’s international airport a few minutes before midnight.” As promised the 1500-kilometer flight above the clouds had been smooth, the full moon dramatically illuminating the thick clouds below them until they broke out in the clear at the rising wall of the Caucasus Mountains.

They were directed along a taxiway to the opposite side of the airport from the main terminal, where they were met by a Zil limousine and driver, who took them directly into the bustling city of more than a million people.

Although Tbilisi was on a high plain in the mountains it was much warmer than Moscow. And it seemed more prosperous than the Russian capital, with cleaner, brighter streets and shops, though closed at this hour, displaying a wide variety of consumer goods. Georgia was not without its problems, but they were being ad dressed and slowly solved under Shevardnadze’s capable leadership. All that would change for the worse, Yemlin thought, if Tarankov was successful.

They were brought to the rear courtyard of the presidential palace off Rustavelli Boulevard and were immediately escorted inside to a small private study on the second floor. Heavy drapes covered the windows, and a fire burned on the grate. The book-lined room seemed like a pleasant refuge.

Shevardnadze joined them a few moments later. He wore a warmup suit, and carried a book, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked serious. “Gentlemen, this is a meeting I’d hoped would never come about,” he said, and they shook hands.

“I agree, Mr. President. This is not our finest hour,” Sukhoruchkin replied. Unlike Yemlin and Shevardnadze, he was tall and very thin, with large round eyes under thick black eyebrows. Although he was of the same age his long hair, always in disarray, was startlingly black. He looked like the brilliant academic he was. Before he’d become director of the Human Rights Commission he’d been one of Russia’s finest writers and philosophers. He and Yemlin had known each other since boyhood, and had married sisters. Sukhoruchkin’s wife had died last year.

“You’re in accord with Viktor Pavlovich?” “I’m a man of peace, a philosophy I’ve espoused and taught all of my life. I believe to the depth of my soul in nonviolence. But now I regret to have to say that I believe just as deeply that there may be no other solution to the problem at hand.”

“A problem we all share,” Yemlin said.

Shevardnadze nodded. He put his book down, took off his glasses and motioned for them to have a seat in armchairs in front of the fire. He sat on the leather couch.

“I’m assuming that Yeltsin didn’t die of a heart attack, though my intelligence service cannot tell me anything different.”

“He was assassinated by one of Tarankov’s men who posed as a presidential security service lieutenant colonel,” Yemlin said. “He planted a radio-controlled bomb last night, and waited in Red Square this morning until Yeltsin showed up for work, and pushed the button.

“You wouldn’t be here now if he were in custody.” Yemlin shrugged. “It’s a moot point, Mr. President. Whether we had him or not — and you’re correct, we don’t — the attack on our Riga power station, and Yeltsin’s assassination are Tarankov’s doing, and we would have to go after him anyway. But now I believe he may have a plan to grab the presidency before the June elections.”

“Which Yeltsin would have lost,” Shevardnadze said. “Why is Tarankov taking such a risk?”

“Because Yeltsin ordered his arrest by whatever means of force necessary. He meant to put him on trial.”

Shevardnadze shook his head. “Tarankov would probably have been acquitted, and it would have destroyed Yeltsin’s government.”

“The Prime Minister has ordered the same thing,” Sukhoruchkin said. “He means to arrest Tarankov and place the man on public trial, which in itself should be the correct action to take.”

“If Moscow were London or Washington,” Shevardnadze said.

“It will tear the country apart,” Yemlin said.

“If he were killed by the army it would tear Russia apart as well,” Shevardnadze said. “But if he’s allowed to continue unchecked on his present course he will succeed. Is this what you believe?”

Both men nodded.

Shevardnadze looked into the fire for several long seconds as he gathered his thoughts. A weight seemed to settle on his shoulders, and he sighed as if to rid himself of an impossible burden. When he turned back his face was sad.

“I too am a man of peace, Konstantin Nikolaevich, as I know you are. I’ve long admired your writing.”

Sukhoruchkin nodded in acknowledgement. “If Tarankov comes to power he means to restore the old Soviet Union by whatever means are necessary,” Yemlin said.

“We would give him trouble, but if he had the backing of the generals we couldn’t win,” Shevardnadze admitted. “The Baltics would cause him more problems.” “As would regaining Eastern Europe, but the bastard will do it, and no one will dare to stand up to him.”

“Does he have the military behind him?”

“He will,” Yemlin said. “There’s no doubt of it.”

“What about the SVR?”

“By whatever name it’s called, it’s still the KGB.”

Again a silence fell over them as they each pondered what they were on the verge of agreeing to. It was an impossibly large step, a quantum leap, from the rule of democratic law in which they all believed, to an act of terrorism.

“Tarankov must be assassinated,” Yemlin voiced their thought.

“I agree,” Sukhoruchkin said with surprising firmness.

“As do I,” Shevardnadze said. “But I know of no one in Georgia who is capable of such a thing. Nor do I suspect you’ll find anyone in Russia whom you could trust.”

Yemlin nodded.

“You have such a man in mind? A foreigner?”

“Da.”

“Who is he?”

“An American, Mr. President. His name is Kirk McGarvey. And if he agrees to take on the job, he’ll do so for the same reasons that we want to hire him.”

SIX

Spring had come early to France. Although it wasn’t the end of March, the last two weeks had been glorious. The sky was pale blue, and each morning dawned crystal clear, as if the air above the great city had been washed and hung out to dry under a warm sun. Along the river the plane trees were budding. In sunny corners of the Tuileries some flowers had already began to bloom. And parks and boulevards and sidewalk cafes were filled with Parisians who’d been cooped up all winter, and with tourists who could scarcely believe their good luck.

Kirk Cullough McGarvey sat with Jacqueline Belleau at a window table in the Restaurant Jules Verne on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower sharing an expensive bottle of Chardonnay while they waited for their lunches to be served. Jacqueline had insisted they come here today because this was where they’d met three months ago, and she was “romantic and French.” He’d indulged her because it amused him, and he wanted to see what her next move would be. The French secret service, which was called the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage, or SDECE for short, was usually sophisticated in its business. But sometimes, like now, they were blatantly obvious. Jacqueline had been sent by the SDECE to seduce McGarvey to find out why he was back in Paris. The French were paranoid about former CIA agents taking up residence in their country, though not so paranoid that they would deny such men a visa. “Bein, I’argent est I’argent, nest-ce pas?”

“That’s a lascivious grin, if ever I’ve seen one,” she said, catching him in his thoughts. “How do you say it, a penny for your thoughts?”

“I was thinking that Paris isn’t like any other city. It keeps getting better.”

She smiled, her oval, pretty features lighting up as if she were a kid at Christmas. “And that from a crusty old bastard like you.”

He nodded. “That from a crusty old bastard like me.” He admired her, not only for her stunning good looks-she could easily have been a runway mannequin, though not as thin as most of them were — but for her sharp intelligence and even sharper wit. She was unlike either of his ex-wives, or any other woman he’d ever been involved with. The number wasn’t a legion, but they’d all been memorable because they’d all ended in failed relationships.

McGarvey, nearing fifty, was tall and muscularly built but with the coordination of a ballet dancer. He had thick brown hair that was turning gray at the temples, a wide, honest face, and penetrating eyes, sometimes green, at other times gray. He ran ten miles every day, rain or shine, from his apartment off the Rue La Fayette in the tenth arrondissement out the Avenue Jean Jaures along the Canal de 1”Ourcq. He swam five miles every afternoon at the Club American downtown, and as often as possible worked out at the Ecole Militaire Annexe with the French national fencing team.

Although he’d known plenty of women, he’d been a loner most of his life, partly out of choice, but mostly out of circumstance. In the parlance of the secret service, he’d been a shooter. A killer. An assassin. And every night he saw the faces of every person he’d ever killed. He saw the light fading from their eyes, the animation draining from their faces as they realized that they were dying. Each of them, even the very bad ones, had died the same way: surprised. That sort of a profession tended to be hard on a relationship, any relationship.

After graduating from Kansas State University with masters degrees in literature (his specialty had been Voltaire) and languages, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency as a translator and analyst. But the Cold War was in high gear and the Company needed talent because a lot of its agents were getting burned. They saw something in McGarvey that even he didn’t know existed. His instinct for survival and self-preservation was a hundred times stronger than in the very best field agents. Combined with his physique, his facility for languages, his intelligence, and the results of a battery of psychological tests which showed him to be extremely pragmatic and under the correct circumstances even cold, he’d been offered the job as a field agent. But a very special agent. His training and purpose so black that only a handful of men in the agency and on the Hill knew anything about him.

Bad times, he thought now, studying Jacqueline’s pretty face. She was forty, and from Nice, and was aging as only the Mediterraneans did. Like Sophia Loren she would become even more beautiful as she got older.

“Such deep, dramatic thoughts for such a lovely Saturday,” she said, reaching across the table for his hand.

He raised hers and kissed it, tenderly and with a little sadness, because when this one was gone he knew he would miss her. “It’s my day to feel a little lugubrious. Sometimes spring in this city does that.”

“Hemingway,” Jacqueline said. “I thought you were a fan of Voltaire.”

He managed a slight smile. He’d never told her that, which meant her SDECE briefing had been very complete. It was one of the little inconsistencies he’d spotted from the beginning.

In the end the Company had sent him to Santiago to kill a general who’d massacred hundreds of people in and around the capital. But the orders had been changed in mid-stream without his knowledge, and after the kill McGarvey was out.

He’d run to Switzerland where for a few years he’d made a life for himself, operating a rare-book store in Lausanne. There, like here, the secret service worried about his presence and had sent a woman to his bed to keep tabs on him, though how they’d found out he once worked for the CIA was a mystery. When the CIA called him out of retirement for a particularly bad assignment they couldn’t handle, he’d left her. The call to arms had been stronger than his love for her.

Greece, Paris, even back to the States for awhile, the CIA kept coming for him, and he kept losing the women in his life, and kept running from his demons. And now he was getting the odd, twitchy feeling between his shoulder blades that it was about to happen again. Lately he’d been thinking about returning to New York to see the only woman he’d ever loved unreservedly, and the only one who’d loved him back the same way. His daughter Elizabeth, now twenty-three and working as a translator and analyst for the United Nations. He smiled, thinking about her.

“That’s better,” Jacqueline said.

“I’ll try to smile more often if it has that effect on you,” McGarvey said.

“That too,” she said. “But I meant here comes our lunch and I’m starved.”

“You’re not a cheap date.”

She laughed. “You can afford it. Besides, there’s something I haven’t told you about myself.”

He waited, an indulgent smile on his lips.

The waiter served their filet of sole and tournedos of beef plat du your expertly, then refilled their wine glasses.

“What’s that?” McGarvey asked.

“Whenever I have a good meal like this I get homey as hell. I’ll show you when we get home.”

The waiter nearly dropped the wine bottle. “Excusez moi,” he muttered, and he left.

“That wasn’t very fair,” McGarvey said.

“Paris waiters are all shits. Nobody dislikes them worse than a Parisian. Maybe next time he won’t eavesdrop.” “I think you ‘re becoming a crusty bastard from being around me so much.”

“Anatomically impossible,” she said airily as she broke off a piece of bread and buttered it. “Crusty bitch, not bastard.”

McGarvey raised his wine glass to her. “Salut,” he said.

She raised her glass. “Salut, man cher.”

After lunch they took the elevator to the observation deck a thousand feet above the Seine, and looked out across the city. From here they could see people strolling through the park, and along the river. It was the most famous view of Paris from the city’s most famous monument, and McGarvey felt at home here as he always had.

“When are you going to let me read your book?” she asked. McGarvey was a hundred pages into a personal look into the life of the writer, philosopher Francois — Marie Arouet, whose pen name was Voltaire. His working title was The Voltaire I Knew, but the SDECE almost certainly believed that he was writing his memoirs, a book that no one wanted written. He wrote longhand, and kept the manuscript and most of his notes under lock and key. So far his failsafes had not been tampered with.

“When I’m finished with it,” he said. “How about an after lunch drink at Lipps?”

“You are a Hemingway fan,” she laughed. “Let’s walk along the river first. Then afterward we’re going home.”

“Sounds good,” McGarvey said, and she turned to go, but he stopped her. “Are you happy, Jacqueline?” A startled look crossed her face. “That’s an odd question.”

“Are you?” McGarvey studied her eyes.

It took her a moment to answer, but she nodded. “Yes, I am.”

She was telling the truth, he decided.

They took the elevator back to street level, and headed past the sidewalk vendors and jugglers to the busy Quai Branly where they could cross to the river. Out of habit he scanned the quay; the pedestrians, the traffic, the taxis lines up at the cab ranks and the cars parked at the curb. His gaze slipped past a dark blue Citroen parked behind a yellow Renault, a man seated behind the wheel, and then came back. His stomach tightened, but he did not vary his pace, nor change his expression in the slightest. Jacqueline, holding his arm, detected nothing.

He turned left toward the taxis, and Jacqueline looked up at him.

“Aren’t we crossing here?” she asked.

“I want you to take a cab back to my apartment. There’s an errand I have to run.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she said.

“Don‘1 be so snoopy, or you’ll spoil my surprise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want you to wait for me at home. I won’t be long, and when I get back you’ll know what I meant.”

“Why can’t I wait here?”

“Because I don’t want you to.”

“Are you a macho pig?”

He laughed. “Not so long ago someone else called me that same thing. But right now you can either wait for me at my apartment, or go back to your own place and stay there. I have something to do.”

She was torn by indecision, he could see it in her eyes. But finally she nodded. “Don’t be long.”

“Come on, I’ll get you a cab.”

“I can manage,” she said, pulling away from him. She searched his face for a clue, then walked over to a cab, climbed in the back, and the taxi headed away. As it passed she looked straight ahead.

McGarvey waited until the cab was out of sight, then went back to the tower, where he bought another ticket for the fourth floor.

Upstairs, he leaned against the rail in front of the windows and lit a cigarette. The observation deck was busy. A few minutes later the man from the Citroen joined him.

“She is a very pretty woman,” he said.

McGarvey focused on the man’s reflection in. the glass. “Hello, Viktor Pavlovich. Yes, she is.”

“French secret service?” Yemlin asked.

“Probably.”

“I figured that was why you sent her away when you spotted me. She’ll wonder why.”

“Will it matter if the French know that we’ve met?”

Yemlin thought for a moment. “Yes, it will matter very much. It will be a question of your safety.”

“Are the French after you for some reason?” “No, but they wouldn’t be so happy if they knew why I’d come to see you,” Yemlin said. He stared down at the street and the river.

“I’m retired,” McGarvey said. “Anyway you’d be the last person I’d help. We go back too long on opposite sides of the fence for me to so easily forget.”

“Eighteen months ago you came to me to ask a favor. And I did it for you, Kirk. Gladly. And as it turns out you did very well because of the information I provided you. All I’m asking now is that you hear me out.”

McGarvey turned to look at the Russian. In eighteen months he’d aged ten years. He no longer seemed to be the dangerous adversary he’d once been when he’d headed the Illegals Directorate of the KGB, and later when he’d headed Department Viktor, the Russian assassination and terrorist division.

He’d been fighting capitalism, he’d told McGarvey. Fighting to save the Rodina — the Motherland — as they’d all been in those days. But there had been hundreds, even thousands of deaths. Tens of millions of deaths counting the ones Stalin massacred.

But who was innocent, McGarvey asked himself now as he had then. He had his share of blood on his hands. More than his share. Was fighting to save democracy any less noble for an American, than fighting to save socialism was for a Russian? He didn’t have the answer.

“All right, Viktor, I’ll listen to you. But that’s all. I promise you that I’m out of the business.”

“What about the woman?”

“I’ll make my excuses. It’ll be okay.”

Yemlin glanced out the windows. “Let’s walk in the park. Heights make me dizzy.”

They took the elevator back down, then crossed Quai Branly and descended to the river walk where McGarvey and Jacqueline had been heading. An odd state of affairs, McGarvey thought. But then his entire life had been a series of odd affairs.

Traffic on the river, as on the streets, was heavy. The weather was bringing everybody outdoors. The river walk too was crowded, which was better for their purposes. It gave them anonymity.

“The situation is becoming very bad in Russia,” Yemlin said.

“I know,” McGarvey replied. “Have you caught Yeltsin’s assassin yet, or did he get out of the city and return to Tarankov’s protection?”

“President Yeltsin died of a heart attack—”

“That’s not true. Nor do your security people carry any type of ordnance in their chase cars that would explode like that. The public may have bought it, but there isn’t a professional in the business in the West who believes the story. The question is, why did you people make it up? Are you that concerned about Tarankov?”

“I don’t agree with you, Kirk,” Yemlin said. “The signals we’re getting back from the CIA and SIS indicate they believe what we’re telling them.”

“What else can they do? Nobody wants to hammer you guys into the ground anymore. Fact is most of the world feels sorry for you. Your people are going hungry, you’ve polluted the entire country, your factories are falling apart, and nobody in their right mind wants to travel around Moscow or St. Petersburg without bodyguards. So Langley is saying, okay we’ll go along with whatever they want to tell us for the moment. Let’s see what shakes out. Let’s see how they handle it. Armed revolution, anarchy, or a Warren Commission that nobody will believe, but that everybody will respect.”

“You have no proof of that.”

“Come on, Viktor, don’t shit the troops,” McGarvey said sharply. “You want to talk to me, go ahead and talk. But don’t lie. Tell it like it is, or go back to Moscow. Who knows, it might get better.”

Yemlin’s shoulders sagged. He shook his head. “It won’t get better. It can only get worse.”

“Is Kabatov really in charge like the wire services are reporting?”

“Nobody else wants the job, and for the moment at least his is the most decisive voice in Moscow. But nobody thinks that the situation will remain stable until the June elections. At the very least what little order is left will totally break down, and the anarchy that the west has been predicting for us all these years will finally come to pass.”

“What about the military? How are they handling Yeltsin’s death?”

“Wait and see.”

“No threat of a coup?” “That depends on what happens between now and the elections. But it’s certainly another very real possibility, Kirk. Our situation is desperate.”

“Will the Duma elect an interim president?

“They’re in session now. Kabatov has the majority support, again only because he’s the lesser of any number of evils.”

“Like Nikolai Yuryn?”

Yemlin looked at McGarvey with wry amusement. “You would make a good Russian politician.”

They walked for awhile in silence, the traffic on the avenue above seemingly more distant than before. McGarvey knew why Yemlin had come to see him. The trouble was he didn’t know what to do.

“What really happened, Viktor?”

“It was one of Tarankov’s men, as you suspected, though we don’t have much of a description yet, or a name. He got into the Kremlin by posing as a Presidential Security Service lieutenant colonel, planted a radio controlled bomb in the limo scheduled to pick up Yeltsin in the morning, and pushed the button when the president’s motorcade came across Red Square.”

“He must have a good intelligence source. He probably was out of Moscow within an hour after the hit, long before the Militia could get its act together.”

“He had a seven-hour head start.”

McGarvey looked sharply at the Russian. “It’s that bad?”

“You can’t imagine.”

McGarvey lit a cigarette. “There’s a very good chance that Tarankov would have won the election. Why’d he take the risk?”

“Yeltsin ordered his arrest. It was going to be an ambush next week in Nizhny Novgorod. A few thousand troops and helicopters against his armored train and two hundred commandoes. There was a leak, the information got to Tarankov and he had Yeltsin killed.”

“Now Kabatov is stuck in the same position. He has to go ahead with Yeltsin’s order to arrest Tarankov and then do what? Try to bring him to trial in Moscow?”

Yemlin nodded glumly. “It’d tear Russia apart.”

“You’ll lose the country if you don’t. He’s another Stalin.”

“We came to the same conclusions. If we arrest him the people will revolt. If we leave him alone he’ll win the election easily, or take over the Kremlin by force and kill everyone who opposes him.”

“Who is the we?” McGarvey asked.

“Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, who’s chairman of the Russian Human Rights Commission—”

“I know him.”

“And Eduard Shevardnadze.”

“Anyone else?”

“I’ve talked to no one else about it.”

“Did you see Shevardnadze in person?”

“We flew down there the night before last. No one knows about the real reason for our trip. But we’re all agreed on the correct course of action. The only course of action to save the Democratic movement in Russia. Yevgenni Tarankov must be assassinated by a foreigner. By someone not connected to Russia. By a professional, someone who is capable of doing the job and getting away. By you, Kirk.”

“No.”

The directness of McGarvey’s answer knocked the wind out of Yemlin’s sails, and he missed a step, almost stumbling. “Then all is lost,” he mumbled.

McGarvey helped him to a park bench. Yemlin took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his glistening forehead.

“I promised only to listen, Viktor Pavlovich. I’m retired, but even if I wasn’t the job is all but impossible. Tarankov surrounds himself with a crack commando unit, his access to intelligence is very good, and he has the support of a large percentage of the population in addition to the military, the Militia, the FSK and even your own branch. Whereas the assassin would have no organization or backing because he would have to distance himself completely from you and the other two men. He would be operating in a country in which simply walking down the street could get him killed. And to top it all off, if Kabatov’s government got wind that an assassin was coming they might try to stop him. After all, if Russia wants to model itself after a nation of laws then it must abide by those laws. They would have to come after the assassin, who even if he was successful would find it quite impossible to get out of the country alive.”

Yemlin looked bleakly at him, but said nothing.

“Even if he did get away, then what?” McGarvey asked. “Nobody condones assassination. Even with a lot of money the places where the assassin could hide would be limited. Iran, Iraq, maybe a few countries in Africa, an island in the South Pacific. Not places I’d care to spend the rest of my days.”

- “That’s assuming your true identity became known,” Yemlin suggested weakly.

“That’d be the trick. But I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“What would you offer me? Whatever, it wouldn’t matter because I don’t need it. I’m not rich, but I have enough for my needs. Or maybe you’re offering me the thrill of the hunt.” McGarvey smiled sadly. “I’ve had my share of thrills. The thought of another does little or nothing for me. Or maybe what you’re really offering me is a chance to settle old scores. And there are a lot of those. But not so long ago I was told that I was an anachronism. I was no longer needed because the Soviet Union was no more. The bad guys had packed up and quit. It was time, I was told, for the professional administrators and negotiators to take over and straighten out the mess. At the time I thought he was full of shit. But maybe he was right after all.” McGarvey shook his head. “I have a lot of bitterness, Viktor Pavlovich, but no stirrings for revenge. You’re just not worth the effort.”

McGarvey walked over to the low stone barrier that was part of the levee that sloped down to the water. A bateau Mouche glided past and some of the tourists waved. McGarvey waved back.

Yemlin joined him, and took a cigarette. “Did you know that Marlboros cost less money in Moscow than they do in New York? You need hard currency, but that’s progress.”

“I’ve heard.” “The contrasts between Moscow and Washington are stark. But here the lines of division seem softer.”

“I didn’t know you’d spent time in Paris.”

“A couple of years in the embassy,” Yemlin said. “In a way I envy you. If I had the money I might retire here. Or perhaps somewhere around Lyon, perhaps on a small farm. Perhaps a few acres of grapes. I’m not a stupid man. I could learn how to make wine.”

It was such an obvious appeal that McGarvey couldn’t resist it. “You were a bad man in the old days, Viktor, for whatever reasons. But you’ve changed.”

“We’ve all changed.” “I can’t help you—” “What if I offered you something more than money,” Yemlin said. He spoke so softly that McGarvey barely heard him.

“What?”

“I have something that you’ve always wanted.”

The afternoon was no longer as warm as it had been. “What’s that?”

“It is something I only recently learned. In this you must believe me.”

“Will you give it to me if I still refuse to kill Tarankov?”

“You must agree to consider the job. That much.

Think about it, Kirk. If you give me your word that you will think about it, I’ll give you what I brought.”

McGarvey felt as if he were looking at himself through the wrong end of a telescope. He felt distant, detached, out of proportion. “I’ll think about it, Viktor Pavlovich,” he said. His voice sounded unreal, down the end of a tunnel.

Yemlin took an envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to McGarvey. “This is your honor, Kirk. It’s not much, but I think that in the end it is all that we have.”

“What—”

“Your parents were not spies, Kirk. They did not work for us as you’ve believed all these years. They were set up.”

SEVEN

Jacqueline Belleau arrived at the office of her control officer Alexandra Levy on the top floor of the department store Printemps after lunch on Monday. She’d spent an oddly disconnected weekend with McGarvey after the strange scene between them on Saturday. He’d returned to his apartment a couple hours after he’d sent her away, with a beautiful Hermes scarf. A present, he said, he could not buy with her tagging along.

She was touched by the gift. It meant that their relationship was progressing faster than she’d hoped for. Yet she was disquieted by his behavior, which was more like something a spy would do than a lover. She supposedly worked for an attorney who maintained an office a block away, so he could have simply waited until today when she was gone to buy her the present. And for the remainder of the weekend he’d been quieter than normal, even a little moody, as if something were bothering him.

“Don’t ever press him, Jacqueline,” Levy had cautioned her in the beginning. “He is a professional, and men like him can spot a plant a kilometer away. Just be yourself. Natural—”

“Without appearing that I’m trying to be natural, c’est vrai, grand pere

At sixty-three Levy was by far the oldest case officer in the Service. With his thinning white hair, weathered face and kindly features, everyone called him grand pere grandfather, but he didn’t seem to mind. “And don’t take your assignment lightly, it could get you killed.”

“I understand,” she’d replied.

Levy took her hands. “Most importantly, ma cherie, don’t fall in love with him. That too has happened before, and it will cloud your judgement.”

LeVy and another man she recognized as Division Chief Colonel Guy de Galan were hunched over some papers and photographs spread on the conference table.

“Ah, here she is now,” Levy said, looking up. “We’ve been waiting for you. Do you know Colonel Galan?”

“Of course,” Jacqueline said. They shook hands.

“We had a tail on you this weekend, did you notice?” Galan asked. He was an administrator, but with his dark, dangerous air he looked more like a Corsican underworld thug than the head of the American and Western Hemisphere Division of the SDECE’s Intelligence Service.

“No, but I make it a point not to look for my own people,” she answered.

Galan nodded. “That’s a safe thing to do.” He handed her a 20X25 em photograph of an older man, with thick white hair and a serious face, passing through passport control at what appeared to be Orly Airport. “Do you know this man?”

She shrugged. “He is Viktor Yemlin, chief of the North American Division of Russia’s SVR. In effect his job is much the same as mine. He arrived in France Saturday morning, where he went immediately to his embassy. An hour later he left behind the wheel of a Citroen with civilian plates, no driver.”

He studied Jacqueline’s reaction closely.

“Did he come here to see Kirk?” Jacqueline asked.

“He followed your cab to the Eiffel Tower, then waited in front until you’d finished lunch,” Galan said. “Did you notice anything?”

“No.”

“Well, McGarvey spotted him. After he sent you away, he and Yemlin met at the top of the tower briefly, then descended to the river. It took us a few minutes to get a team with a parabolic mike across the river, but by then it was too late.”

“They’re both professionals,” LeVy said. “They make it a point not to have long conversations in public.”

“Did you get any of it?” Jacqueline asked. She had a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach, but she didn’t know why.

“Not much,” Galan said. He “handed her a single sheet of typewritten transcript.

Jacqueline looked up into Galan’s eyes. He wasn’t smiling.

“Considering who and what Monsieur McGarvey is, we think that the Russians have asked him to assassinate someone.”

“He turned it down.”

“He agreed to think about it, Mademoiselle. We’ll query Washington on this business about his parents being spies, but if the information Yemlin handed over to him is valid — Or if McGarvey believes it is — it may be the incentive he needs to take him from thinking about such an act, to doing it.”

“There’s no mention who the subject might be,” Jacqueline said.

Galan shook his head. “No. Nor do we know if the subject is here in France, but we must consider that possibility.”

Jacqueline’s head was spinning. “Expel him. Kick him out of France, now, before he can change his mind.”

“We won’t do that, and I’ll tell you why,” Galan said. “If McGarvey decides to assassinate someone here in France, kicking him out of the country would do nothing but drive him underground. If we keep him here, we can watch him.”

“That is your job, Jacqueline,” Levy put in. “You must find out for us.”

“It may have something to do with this book he’s writing,” Galan said. “I want you to get it for us.”

“He has safeguards. I’ve inspected them myself. If I open that cabinet he’ll know.” “Photograph the safeguards and get the film to us.

We’ll take it from there. Believe me, as good as Monsieur McGarvey is, we’re better.”

Jacqueline nodded. She felt very small at that moment, her feelings confused, and contradictory. A part of her was excited by the new challenge. She’d been well-trained for exactly this sort of operation. Still another part of her felt somehow dirty. She was very mixed up.

“When he finally came home Saturday afternoon, did he tell you why he sent you ahead?” Levy asked gently. He’d picked up something of her distress.

“He wanted to buy me a present in secret. A surprise.”

Levy and Galan exchanged a look. “Did you believe him, Jacqueline?” Levy asked. “Or did it seem odd to you?”

She lowered her eyes. “It seemed odd.” She looked up defiantly. “But there have been any number of little oddities. Nothing significant, except that I think he may suspect what I really am.”

“I would be surprised if he didn’t suspect,” Galan said.. “Why didn’t you contact your control officer if you had a suspicion that something wasn’t completely correct?”

“Because I wanted to find out as much as I could. I wasn’t sure.”

“Are you sure now,” Galan said. “I meant before you walked into this office and heard what we had to say, were you sure?”

“No.”

“Then you should have called, ma cherie,” Levy said.

“Perhaps she should be pulled off the assignment—” Galan said.

“No,” Jacqueline interrupted sharply. “There’s no time to get somebody new. He’d know that we were on to him.”

“Probably. But by the same token we don’t want you to get hurt. Do you understand what I mean?”

She nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure she completely understood. But she had a job to do. “I’ll get you the photographs of his failsafes.”

“It’s very important that we know if he is taking this job for the Russians, and if the subject is in France. Could even be a Frenchman,” Galan said. “Or a visiting dignitary. We must know.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jacqueline said.

“Bon. I know you will,” LeVy said. He opened a small medicine bottle and gave her a capsule. “Before you leave, take this with some water. You’re going home for the remainder of the week with a light fever and a runny nose. This will induce the symptoms.”

“Maybe he won’t want me near him if I’m sick.”

Galan chuckled. “I don’t think Monsieur McGarvey is frightened of a few germs. Besides you won’t really be ill.”

She nodded and turned to go.

“Jacqueline, how do you feel about your American?” Galan asked, his tone surprisingly avuncular.

She looked at him, but could read nothing from his bland expression. “I like him,” she admitted. “I think he is a good man who has worked too long in a very bad profession. He’s retired now, and he wants to remain so.”

Galan nodded his understanding. “I sincerely hope that you are correct.”

SDECE Headquarters

Colonel Galan came to attention in front of the desk of the Director of the SDECET General Jean Baillot, and saluted smartly. The general, a taciturn old veteran of the French-Algerian troubles, was working on some paperwork. He motioned Galan to have a seat.

Looking past the general out the leaded glass windows, Galan had a nice view of the Eiffel Tower. The office was palatial, furnished with genuine antiques, and was extremely comfortable. But he didn’t think Baillot ever noticed. He was a man, his subordinates noted, of very little amusement. He would have been just as content working in a tent.

The general put down his pen and looked up. “Oui?”

Galan handed him the report he’d typed himself, summarizing everything they’d learned to date, as well as Jacqueline Belleau’s orders to help them steal McGarvey’s manuscript.

When he was finished, Baillot laid the report down, and once again looked up. “Why have you brought this to me, Colonel?”

“I need your authorization to ask the American Central Intelligence Agency for help.”

“You wish to ask them about Kirk McGarvey’s parents in order to see if the Russians are able to provide a motivation for McGarvey to do this job for them?”

“Oui, Monsieur le General. I would also like to have their latest information on McGarvey and Viktor Year lin.”

“Why?”

“The CIA’s operation in Moscow is better than ours, and McGarvey was one of theirs. I want to know if they have any ideas who Yemlin wants McGarvey to assassinate.”

General Baillot thought about the request for a moment, his penetrating eyes never leaving Galan’s. “Is there any person presently in France whose death would benefit the Russians?” “No one of any real importance, sir. Of course there may be upcoming state visits of a secret nature that my department knows nothing about.”

“There are none,” the general said flatly. “You have my authorization to ask the CIA for help. But you will do so through their Chief of Station Thomas Lynch here in Paris.”

“Yes, sir,” Galan said, and the general dismissed him.

At the door the general recalled him. “Kirk Mcgarvey is a dangerous man. But he is not an enemy of France. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Perfectly, man General.”

EIGHT

Deputy Director of Operations Howard Ryan was a man who believed in isometrics. Walking into his third floor conference room at 7:30 a.m. sharp and taking his place at the head of the long table he knew that every man seated there hated him because he pushed. It was exactly as it should be, he thought with smug satisfaction. Hate generated energy. And energy was exactly what the Company had been lacking for many years.

Besides his assistant, Thomas Moore, the others he’d called to the briefing included the assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Chris Vizanko, whom Ryan considered to be little more than a street thug who didn’t belong here, and the heavyset Director of Technical Services, Jared Kraus, who was a steady if sometimes ponderous presence.

Each man had brought his own “experts,” something Ryan always insisted on. He told his people repeatedly that if they were not willing to bet

their lives on the facts then they’d better surround themselves with experts. His staff called it “Ryan’s insulation factor.” If something went wrong, the more underlings around you to absorb the blame the better you’d come out.

But Ryan had pressures from above, as he was fond of reminding them. His came from the big leagues; the Director of Central Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the President’s National Security Adviser and the President himself.

“Gentlemen, the Director is scheduled to brief the President at ten, and in turn he expects me to brief him at nine. It gives us less than a half-hour to come up with a consensus on the facts so that I’ll have time to prepare my recommendations,” Ryan began.

“If Boris Yeltsin died of a heart attack, he did so in mid-air,” Vizanko said.

Ryan, who’d started out as an attorney for a prestigious New York law firm, did not like levity of any kind, and he shot the assistant DDI a sharp look of disapproval. “What do you have for me?”

“Jim Rayn’s people managed to come up with blood and tissue samples from Red Square. The DNA in several of” them was definitely Yeltsin’s.” Rayn was the Chief of Moscow Station.

“It’s been more than forty-eight hours, what took so long?” Ryan demanded. He always wore three-piece suits. He took his ornate pocket watch out and looked at the time as if to make his point. It was a “Ryan” gesture, pretentious as hell.

“That’s normally a two-week procedure, Mr. Ryan,” Kraus said from his end of the table. “Rayn must have lit a fire under somebody to get it that fast.”

“He got it from the Russians themselves. And those guys are definitely motivated right now,” Vizanko said. “He also came up with a rumor that a body will be ready for display later today. The operative word is ‘a’ body, not Yeltsin’s.”

There was more deadwood yet to be cleared ut of the Agency, Ryan thought. “Russian science and shaky rumors. This is what the world’s best intelligence agency has managed to come up with?”

“With no reliable eyewitnesses who actually saw Yeltsin in the back seat of the limo that took the hit, I think it’s the best we can do under the circumstances,” Vizanko said. “It’s Mr. Doyle’s opinion that if Yeltsin had actually died of a heart attack, his body would have been placed on display within twenty-four hours. They just wouldn’t have waited so long.” Tom Doyle was Deputy Director of Intelligence. “His bodyguards don’t carry that kind of explosives in any event,” Kraus said. “We think the device was Semtex. Rayn’s people found evidence supporting that.”

“What evidence?” Ryan shot back. He didn’t like this at all. It was way too loose.

“Certain chemical compounds consistent with the plastic explosive were detected in the human tissue samples.”

“Just what compounds? Specifically.”

Kraus shrugged, and opened a file folder. He passed a report down the table to Ryan. “As you can see, Mr. Ryan, page three and four outline the results of mass spectrograph tests on the material. The third and fifth sets of complex hydrocarbons, which you can see, do not match human blood or tissue, and in fact can be identified as—”

“I can read,” Ryan said harshly. The graphs, columns and rows of numbers, and diagrams of what appeared to be a complex series of spikes and sawtooth patterns made no sense to him. He did not have a science background. But the material looked impressive as hell. It would make for a damn good presentation.

He ran his finger down several rows of figures, flipped to page four, and studied the graphs.

“I concur,” he said, looking up. “Do we have any sense of how much

Semtex was used?” He liked to toss in an unanswerable question now and then. It kept his people on their toes.

“That’s on the bottom of page five, sir,” Kraus said. “It was a radio-controlled package weighing in the neighborhood of six kilos. Probably placed inside the car, beneath the rear seat. The body armor would have effectively focused the blast upward.”

Ryan looked at Kraus and the others to make sure they weren’t having a laugh at his expense, then flipped to the next page. “I see it here,” he-said. “Good work.”

“I don’t think there’s any question who pulled it off or why,” Vizanko said. He passed down a thick folder. “Yevgenni Tarankov. They call him the Tarantula, and for good reason it looks like.”

“Save me from wading through this, Chris. Do we have hard intelligence to support that speculation?”

Vizanko sat back, insolently. “Tarankov hit their Riga Nuclear Power Station in the Moscow suburb of Dzerzhinskiy the day before. You’ve already seen that report, and damage estimates. We think that Yeltsin finally got off his duff and ordered Tarankov’s arrest.” Vizanko spread his hands. “The Tarantula retaliated. Sure as hell sent the Kremlin a clear message.”

“What’s that?” Ryan asked coldly.

“Tarankov is going to take over in the June elections, if not sooner.”

“By force?”

“It’s a possibility that should be considered’.”

“I see,” Ryan said. He turned to his assistant, Tom Moore. “Do you concur?”

Moore, “Sir Thomas” behind his back, even more staid and pedantic than his boss, took his pipe out of his mouth and studied the contents of the bowl. “I’d have to study the reports at length, Howard. But on the surface of it the possibility has enough merit to be kicked upstairs.”

“Very well—”

“But of course I would advise caution. Meddling in Russia’s internal affairs at this moment is fraught with danger, the least of which is our considerable dollar investment over there.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Ryan said.

“Won’t matter much if Tarankov takes power,” Vizanko said. “That bastard will nationalize everything, and there’ll be very little that we could do to stop him. Half the Russian Strategic Rocket Force officers are on his side. We’ve already seen the analysis of those numbers. It’d take no leap of imagination to envision him scrapping SALT, and reprogramming his ICBMs.”

“He doesn’t have the money.”

“I think he could get it, Mr. Ryan,” Vizanko said. He shrugged again. “Anyway, it’s a thought.”

“Any other comments?” Ryan asked after a few moments. There were none. “Thank you for your help this morning,” he said.

Ryan was in the DCI’s office a minute before nine with two copies of his lengthy report, one of them in a leather folder for the President. He’d scanned the Directorate of Intelligence report and the Technical Services Division findings directly into his computer under the Directorate of Operations seal, heavily edited the material, added his own conclusions and included full color graphs, charts and maps, along with photographs of Yeltsin and his staff, Prime Minister Kabatov and his staff, Russia’s key generals, and a selection of the few photographs they had of Tarankov. Ryan’s second principle of insulation, was when a report was requested throw as much material into it as possible, then double that amount. The government, he was fond of saying, likes to see something impressive for the trillions it spends.

General Roland Murphy (retired) had been director of the Central Intelligence Agency for an unprecedented ten and a half years because he was very good, he had no party affiliation, and each president he’d served under found him to be indispensable, whatever his politics.

He and Ryan went back a number of years together. The general knew the family very well, and he’d hired Ryan away from the law firm to act as general counsel for the CIA, a job which Ryan had loved.

During his tenure, Ryan had developed an appreciation for, and a real expertise in, the hardball politics of liaison between the Agency and the Hill, an ability Murphy lacked. When the previous DDO had been killed eighteen months ago, and Ryan wounded in the same operation, Murphy had rewarded his friend with the directorate.

Murphy quickly scanned the report, which ran to nearly eighty pages, as Ryan poured a cup of coffee, and went to the big corner windows. The sky was gray, but all the snow was gone and spring was not far away. Ryan was indifferent.

“Very professional, as usual, Howard,” Murphy said after a few minutes.

“Thank you, General,” Ryan said, turning back.

“This’ll impress the hell out of them, but the President likes straight answers. He doesn’t want to be caught flat-footed like he was over the Japanese thing.”

Ryan’s jaw tightened, and he reflexively touched his face where he’d been shot by a former East German Stasi hit man. By all rights he should have been killed. But for the grace of God he would have been, and he carried the scar not only of his wound, but of the memory of the man who had put him in harm’s way.

“I understand, Mr. Director,” Ryan said. “I’ve included a summary on the last two pages which should make it clear.”

“You can tell him that yourself. He pushed the briefing forward to nine-thirty, which doesn’t give me time to wade through this.”

“I’d be happy to brief the President,” Ryan said, genuinely pleased. One of the keys to acquiring power, he’d always told himself, was to surround yourself with power. Another was knowing how to handle yourself when the time came.

The President’s appointments secretary, Dale Nichols, showed them into the Oval Office at precisely 9:30. Ryan had answered tough questions nonstop on the way over from Langley in the DQ’s limousine; as a result he felt much better prepared than he had a half-hour ago. The general might not have been a politician, but he was as astute as he was expedient.

President Lindsay, a tall, Lincolnesque figure, was seated in his rocking chair across from his National Security Adviser, Harold Secor, Secretary of State Jonathan Carter and Secretary of Defense Paul Landry. Two extra chairs had been pulled up around the broad coffee table.

“Good morning, Roland,” the President said. “I’d say from the cut of your jib that the news is less than good.”

“Good morning, Mr. President. There’ve been better days,” Murphy responded. “I think you know Howard Ryan, my Deputy Director of Operations.”

“Good to see you, Ryan,” the President said.

“It’s good to be here, Mr. President,” Ryan replied evenly.

No introductions were needed with Secor, Carter or Landry. They knew Ryan well from briefings before various committees and subcommittees on the Hill.

“Howard’s more in touch with the nuts and bolts of the situation than I am, so I brought him along to conduct the briefing,” Murphy said.

“Fine.”

Ryan handed the President the leather folder. “The last two pages summarize what we know, but I can go over the high points with you, Mr. President.”

The President motioned for him to take a seat, and he flipped through the bulky report. He didn’t bother with the summary at the back. When he was finished he looked up. “I’ll read this later.” He handed the report to Secor. “In the meantime we have a problem for which I’m going to need some hard information. Prime Minister Kabatov telephoned me this morning, and asked for my help. He means to arrest Yevgenni Tarankov for murder and for destruction of one of their nuclear power plants. He’s asked for my backing, and that of NATO to forestall what might develop into a military coup d’etat. I promised that I would get back to him this morning.”

“He wants us to use our satellites to help track Tarankov’s train,” Secor said.

“Mr. President, may I ask what the Prime Minister said to you about President Yeltsin’s death?” Ryan asked. He was on dangerous ground here. Ever since the debacle with the Japanese the President had become a tough bastard. He treated failure harshly.

“I assume you’ll make a point,” the President said.

“Yes, sir.”

“The funeral has been postponed until next week. He hoped I’d understand, but they have their hands full over there at the moment.”

“Mr. President, are you saying that Prime Minister Kabatov continues to maintain that President Yeltsin died of a heart attack induced by the car bomb in Red Square?”

“That’s exactly what he’s saying,” the President said. “Do you know something different?”

“President Yeltsin was in the limousine that blew up. He was assassinated under Yevgenni Tarankov’s orders because Yeltsin had ordered his ‘arrest in response to the destruction of the Riga Nuclear Power plant.”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Secretary of Defense Landry said. “Does the bastard really think he can take over by force?”

“It’s a possibility that we’re monitoring very closely, Mr. Secretary,” Ryan said.

President Lindsay ran a hand over his forehead. “What a mess. They’re in over their heads, and they’re finally beginning to realize the sad facts of life.” He glanced at Murphy, then brought his attention back to Ryan. “How reliable is this information?” “Unfortunately there were no eyewitnesses, Mr. President. But my people managed to come up with samples of blood and human tissue from the square, minutes after the explosion. A laboratory was set up, and they did in two days what would normally take three or four weeks to do. They came up with an accurate DNA analysis of the blood, and a mass spectrographic study of the tissues. The blood was Yeltsin’s, there’s no doubt about that. And imbedded in the human tissues we found conclusive evidence of Semtex, which is a powerful plastic explosive. The data are on pages seventeen through twenty-one. We’re estimating that the bomb weighed around six kilos, and was placed inside the’ cabin of President Yeltsin’s limousine — probably beneath the rear seat. The limo’s external armor plating would have effectively contained the primary force of the explosion inside the cabin, tripling its effectiveness. It was radio controlled. Most likely the assassin was in Red Square within sight of the presidential motorcade. He pushed the button and escaped in the confusion.”

Murphy gave Ryan an odd look, but Ryan shrugged it off. He was in his element now.

“Tarankov may try to take the government by force before the June elections, Mr. President,” Ryan continued. “He has the support of much of the military, as well as at least half the officers in the Russian missile force. If he is successful it’s likely he’ll reprogram what missiles remain back to their old targets — cities in the United States. He’ll almost certainly have no trouble finding the money to do so.”

“That sounds a little far fetched, Howard,” Secretary of State Carter said.

“I’d like to agree, Mr. Secretary, but the facts seem to indicate otherwise,” Ryan replied heavily.

“What’s the CIA recommending?” the President asked.

Murphy started to reply, but Ryan beat him to the punch.

“First, we need to proceed with caution, Mr. President. Meddling in Russia’s internal affairs right now will be dangerous, considering our considerable dollar investment over there.”

“Now, that I agree with,” Carter said.

“We cannot ignore the situation,” the President said.

“No, sir,” Ryan responded. “What we need is a major intelligence investigation into Tarankov’s chances for success, and exactly how deep his power base runs not only in the military and old KGB and Militia, but in the rank and file population as well. The people of Dzerzhinskiy cheered him when he destroyed the power station.

“I think we need to give Prime Minister Kabatov as much help as possible, but only in the form of assurances until we have more information. The Prime Minister is ordering the very same thing that resulted in President Yeltsin’s death.”

“What happens if we find out that Tarankov will be successful?” Secor asked evenly. “Do we step in with force?”

“In that case it would be a political decision. But if the man has popular backing he’ll become president of Russia, and we’ll end up having to deal with him. Perhaps it would be better to start hedging our bets now.”

The President eyed Ryan coolly. “As you say, Mr. Ryan, the decision would be a political one. But I’m curious. What do you mean by hedging our bets?”

“We should send out feelers to him. Might kill two birds with one stone.”

“How so?”

“Whoever we send as an unofficial envoy from this government would in reality be one of my people. He’d be instructed to explore possible future relations, while keeping his eyes and ears open to learn what he could.”

“In effect we’d be stabbing Prime Minister Kabatov’s democratic reform government in the back,” the President said, his voice dangerously soft.

Ryan didn’t miss the warning signals, but he was in too deeply now to back out. He chose his next words with care. “Not exactly, Mr. President. But we would be protecting our own interests, because short of sending direct military help to Prime Minister Kabatov there is very little of a substantive nature that we can do. If Kabatov’s government falls, not because of anything we’ve done or not done, and Tarankov takes over, we should be prepared for him.”

The President sat back in his rocking chair. “I want to disagree with you, Mr. Ryan. But the hell of it is, I can’t.” He looked at Secor for help, but his National Security Adviser shook his head. “Do you have someone in mind for this … diplomatic mission?”

“Not at the moment, Mr. President.”

“How soon could you work up a proposal?”

“Within twenty-four hours, sir.”

“Very well, do it, Mr. Ryan,” the President said. “In the meantime I’ll telephone Prime Minister Kabatov and tell him that he has my complete support. If there’s anything we can do for him outside of Russia’s borders, we’ll do it. If possible Tarankov should be arrested and placed on trial.”

“Yes, sir,” Ryan said.

On the way out of the White House Murphy chuckled wryly. “I hope you know that you were had back there.”

“What?” Ryan asked.

“The President set you up, Howard. He has a habit of doing that. But you’ll learn.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’ve named your own poison, man. If the President goes for your proposal you’d better pack your long underwear, because you’ll be the envoy.”

Ryan’s blood ran cold. “I’m a desk officer.”

“You just graduated.”

NINE

Traffic along the Boulevard Haussmann was intense as it was on every weekday except in summer.

McGarvey sat in the shade beneath an umbrella at a sidewalk cafe across the street from the huge department store Printemps, waiting for Jacqueline to come out. The law offices where she worked were in the next block. He’d expected her to return to work after lunch, but instead she’d come here. To do some shopping, he hoped, though he doubted it.

She’d been jumpy all weekend no doubt because of his own strange mood. Yemlin’s information about his parents had deeply disturbed him, and he’d been unable to hide it from her. Each time she’d asked what was wrong he told her that he always got this way in the spring in Paris.

“Then let’s leave the city,” she said.

“What about your job?”

“I’ll cut my summer vacation short. We could go to Cannes, or St. Tropez. It would be nice, I promise you.”

“No.”

“Pourquoi pas?” she cried.

“I have something to take care of, that’s why. I don’t ran away from my obligations.”

She’d shaken her head. “You’re a strange American.”

He’d laughed. “We all are.”

Jacqueline emerged from the department store, and McGarvey was about to get up and pay his bill, when something struck him as wrong. She turned in the opposite direction from her office, and headed off in a rush. McGarvey sat down. She’d been inside for nearly an hour but she’d bought nothing. She carried no shopping bags.

Ten minutes later he spotted another person he knew emerging with the crowds from the store, Colonel Guy de Galan, chief of the SDECE’s Division R7, in charge of gathering intelligence from and about America and the Western Hemisphere. McGarvey had had a brief run in with the man a couple of years ago.

Galan stepped to the side, and pretended to look at the displays in one of the windows while he lit a cigarette.

It was a standard tradecraft procedure, but it would be impossible for him to spot McGarvey here. The point was, however, that he was taking precautions. He expected someone might be watching him.

After a few moments, Galan turned, scanned the traffic in the street and looked over in McGarvey’s direction. But then he tossed his cigarette aside, and headed in the same direction Jacqueline had gone.

“How about that,” McGarvey said, even more depressed than before. He’d been ninety-nine percent sure that Jacqueline worked for the SDECE. But there’d been that tiny one percent that he’d been able to delude himself with. Gone now, and it saddened him.

Time to get out, finally, like he’d been trying to do for any number of years. Each time he thought he had it made, though, someone came for him. Each time they came he jumped through the hoops.

“Maybe it’s what you are, Gompar,” an old friend had told him once. They’d been drinking, and saying anything that came into their heads. “Maybe the leopard doesn’t like its spots, but tough shit. They’re his and he’s got to live with them.”

“Gee, thanks, Phil, that helps a lot,” McGarvey said. They’d just been bullshitting each other. But sometimes the truth came out like that. And sometimes it wasn’t so pleasant to face.

McGarvey paid for his coffee and went in search of an imported food shop and then a car rental agency, not yet certain what he was going to do, but at least sure what his next move would be.

The thirty-five-mile drive out of Paris on the N13, which for short stretches followed the banks of the Seine, was quite pleasant in the afternoon sun. He’d taken a direct route not bothering to watch for a tail until he was clear of the heaviest traffic. Twice he’d turned off the main highway, and once he stopped at a service station to check his oil, so by the time he reached the small town on the Seine he was sure that he was clean.

On the other side of the town he got off the main highway again, and followed a series of increasingly narrower roads that wound their way through the farmlands along the river, until he came to an old farm cottage in a valley at the edge of a woods overlooking the Seine. He parked in the protection of the trees five hundred yards from the house, and went to the edge of the field on foot.

The farm seemed to be deserted except that he could make out the faint sounds of machinery running, and the area immediately to the south of the house contained a compact array of solar electric panels that looked new.

McGarvey had been thinking about Otto Rencke a lot over the past few weeks, a sort of summing up, he supposed. It was something he’d been doing lately, dredging up old memories, old places and friends as well as enemies. Put them all in perspective. Writing the Voltaire book had got him started on that line of thinking, as history always did.

The last time McGarvey had used him, Rencke had been living in an ancient brick house that had been the caretaker’s quarters for Holy Rood Cemetery in Georgetown. Rencke was working on a freelance basis as a computer systems consultant for the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. He had the almost superhuman ability to visualize entire complex networks of systems — supercomputers, satellite links, data encryption devices and all the peripheral equipment that tied them together.

Trained as a Jesuit priest, he’d been at twenty-one one of the youngest professors of mathematics ever to teach at Georgetown University. But he’d been defrocked and fired on the day they’d caught him in the computer lab having sex with the dean’s secretary.

He’d enlisted in the army as a computer specialist but was kicked out nine months later for having sex with a young staff sergeant — a male. It didn’t make any difference to Otto, he was satisfied with whatever came his way.

A year later he’d shown up on the CIA’s payroll, his past record wiped completely clean.

McGarvey had first run into him when Rencke was revamping the Company’s archival section, bringing it into the computer age. They’d worked together from time to time after that in Germany, South America and a few other places where Rencke had been sent to straighten out computer systems, sometimes for the Company, at other times for a friendly government.

McGarvey and he had formed a loose friendship, each admiring the other man for his intelligence, dedication and sometimes easy humor.

During his tenure at Langley Rencke had updated the CIA’s entire communications system, standardized their spy satellite input and analysis systems so that Agency machines could crosstalk, thus share information with the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office on a realtime basis. He’d also devised a field officer’s briefing system whereby up to date information could be funneled directly to the officer on assignment by satellite when and as he needed it.

But his past had finally caught up with him, and like McGarvey he’d been dumped. He’d moved to France a couple of years ago, and McGarvey came out from time to time to have lunch and a few drinks.

McGarvey went back to the car and drove the rest of the way down to the farmhouse, parking in the shade of a big tree in the front yard. He took the package from the imported food shop and went around back where Rencke was sitting cross-legged on a table in the courtyard.

“Hi ya, Mac,” Rencke said brightly. He still looked like a twenty-year-old kid, with long out-of-control frizzy red hair, wild eyebrows and a gaunt frame, though at forty-one he’d finally begun to develop a potbelly.

McGarvey tossed bin the package. “I thought you might be getting hungry out here all by yourself.”

“I’m always hungry, you know that,” Rencke said. He tore open the bundle, which contained a half-dozen packets of Twinkies, which in the States were cheap, but in Paris cost six dollars each. Rencke was a self-admitted Twinkie freak, and McGarvey had never seen him eat anything else. “Oh boy, but you’ve got the look on you again,” he said, opening one of the packets and stuffing his mouth. “Good. Bad for me, but good.”

McGarvey pulled a chair over and sat down. “Are you staying out of trouble?”

Rencke shrugged and spread his hands out, scattering crumbs. He was dressed in filthy cutoffs and a tattered, gray T-shirt. “I try, honest I do. But this is a land of farmers’ daughters. What can I say? But you’re in trouble. It’s a mile wide on your sour mug. Bad guys coming out of the woodwork again. That it? Thinking about tossing your hat back in the ring. Oiling your peashooter? Going hunting, Mac?”

“Those farmers’ daughters have fathers.” McGarvey smiled. “And one of these days you’re going to get your ass shot off.”

“The big question would be answered.”

“What question is that, Otto?”

Rencke’s face lit up. “The God thing, you know Jesu Cristo, Mohammed, and Harry Krishnakov. All that stuff. Aren’t you just dying to know?” Rencke laughed out loud.

“You’re nuts,” McGarvey said laughing.

“Exactamundo, Mac. But I’m the best friggin’ genius in town. Like a willing virgin, I’m ready and able.”

“Troubles…” ‘

“The Russian thing, isn’t it,” Rencke bubbled, and when McGarvey tried to speak, Rencke held him off. “Don’t tell me yet. The Russians are up and at it. The Tarantula knocks out a nuke plant. Did them all a favor, if you ask me. Next thing you know old Boris gets himself popped off. His guys don’t carry bombs in their cars. Maybe a shock grenade or two, but not the muscle to blow a car apart. So Tarankov did it because Boris wanted to take him down. Am I right, or what?”

McGarvey nodded.

“Oh, boy, I still have the magic!” Rencke opened another packet of Twinkies and stuffed them in his mouth. “So Tarankov means to take over, probably before the June elections. He’s got the balls. From what I read, half the country is behind him. Sorta like a cross between Willie Sutton and Marie Antoinette. If they don’t have bread let ‘em cut cake they can buy with money heisted from the banks! But Kabatov’s people think the way to go is arresting the bugger and putting him on trial. Right? Right?”

“That’s what I was told.”

Rencke jumped down from the table, and hopped from one foot to the other, his face lit up like a kid’s at Christmas. “They do that… If they could pull it off, the whole country would go down the dumper. Be a two flusher at least. But if they keep their mitts off he’ll take over anyway, and maybe the whole world will take a crap.” Rencke stopped, his face suddenly serious. “He’s a bad man, Mac. The worse. If he gets into power he’ll make Stalin and old Adolph look like pikers. Amateurs, know what I mean?”

“It’s their problem, Otto. I’m not shedding any tears. They did everything in their power over the past seventy-five years to get to this point.”

“Bzzz. Wrong answer recruit. He gets in and it becomes our problem,” Rencke said. A sad, wistful expression came over his face, and he smiled. “The only solution is for someone to assassinate the bastard before it’s too late. Someone has come to ask you to do it. Friend or foe?”

“Former foe.”

“Yemlin. As in Viktor Pavlovich. He did you a favor with his Tokyo Abunai network, and now he’s calling in the chips. He’s a born again democratic reformer, is that it?”

“I’m out of the business,” McGarvey said for his own benefit as well as Rencke’s.

“How’d you manage to sidestep your little Spock?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You called me that once before, Mac. Just not true. My mother was a good woman. But I am a real shit, and I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But the question is valid.”

“I managed.”

“Does she suspect?”

“Probably.”

“Not so good to have the French on your back,” Rencke said, looking away momentarily. “What’d you tell him, Mac?” he asked dreamily.

“I told him no.”

Rencke turned his wild eyes back to McGarvey. “Then what’re you doing out here? Looking for a conscience, because if, that all it is, forget it. Tarankov is a bad, bad dog. I could show you things, Mac. Real things that’d curl even your gray hair.”

“That’s what I came out here for,” McGarvey said.

“Research or justification?”

“Just research …”

Rencke wagged his finger at McGarvey. “As you’re fond of saying, Mac, don’t shit the troops. If you want my help you’ll have to level with me. Because if you’re going to do it I’ll have to backstop you, which’ll put my ass on the line. I’ve got a right to know.”

“Just research for now, Otto. Because I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to stay retired.”

Rencke shook his head, the sad expression back on his face. “We both wish that were true, my friend. But the fact is you’re getting bored again. I saw it the last time you came out here. And listen — to me, without you there would have been a lot more bad guys killing a lot of really good people. You have made a difference, Mac. In a lot of people’s lives. Don’t ever doubt it.”

“I do every day,” McGarvey said.

“Comes with the territory,” Rencke said. He turned abruptly and went into the house.

McGarvey waited outside for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon. His ex wife Kathleen had once called him the “last boy scout.” Now Rencke had called him the same thing.

One thing was certain, he thought as he rose and went into the house, whoever agreed to kill Tarankov would have less than a one-in-a-thousand chance of pulling it off and escaping. It was an interesting problem.

The windows in the main room were boarded up and the fireplace blocked. Fluorescent lights had been installed in the ceiling, and air-conditioning kept the house cool, almost cold. Computer equipment was scattered everywhere. A dozen monitors, one of them a forty-inch screen, were set up next to printers and CPUs around the room. In a corner what looked like a smaller version of a Cray supercomputer was processing something. The lights on its front panel flashed at a bewildering speed.

“I built that one myself,” Rencke called from where he was seated at the big monitor, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “The lights are useless, but they impress the hell out of people.”

“Who’s seen it?” McGarvey asked, walking over.

“Nobody,” Rencke said. “Take a look at this.”

A map of Russia came up on the screen with all the major cities pinpointed in yellow. Starting with Yakutsk in Siberia and working its way west toward Moscow, the cities flashed red, and a number between ten and a hundred appeared beside each one.

“I won’t bore you with details, but those are the cities Tarankov’s commandoes have hit in the past couple of years. The figures are the number of people he’s killed in each place.”

Rencke erased the screen, and this time brought up a map of the entire old Soviet Union. “I designed a probability program from the basic premise that Tarankov succeeds in taking the Kremlin by force or by the ballot box. Either scenario made no difference.” He looked up. “Ready for this, Mac?”

“Go ahead,” McGarvey said.

Rencke hit a key. For a few moments nothing seemed to happen, until one after another, spreading outward from Moscow like some malignant growth, cities large and small began to glow red, numbers, some in the thousands, began to appear beside them. The figures next to Moscow and St. Petersburg showed the most growth, rising into the tens of thousands, but then Kiev and Nizhny Novgorod and Volgograd blossomed. The cancer spread next to Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in the Baltics. Finally into Romania, and Bulgaria and Poland. The numbers were staggering, in the millions.

“The people will have jobs, they’ll eat regularly, they’ll have free medical care and free education all the way up to the doctorate level,” Rencke said.

“How accurate is this?” McGarvey asked.

“Based on my primary premise, very,” Rencke said. “How about nuclear accident projections, because they’ll be reactivating their nuclear missile force, including their subs? Or, if you want to see something pitiful, how about projected NATO responses? Almost nil. How about the biggest one of all, Mac?” Rencke looked up, a maniacal glint in his eyes. “Thermonuclear war. Because if Tarankov takes power the nuclear countdown clock will start ticking again, a few seconds before midnight.”

Images and numbers and bright white lights blossomed over a map of the entire world, faster and faster, until it was impossible to follow.

Suddenly the screen went blank, and turned a rich hue of lavender.

Rencke sat back in his chair. “My telephone here is secure. I’ve set up a backscatter encryption device that’ll work both ways. Whatever telephone you use will be encrypted as well.”

It was starting again as McGarvey knew it would. There were always alternatives to war, to acts of terrorism, to assassinations. Problem was nobody thought of them until afterwards.

“I haven’t played fair with you, Mac,” Rencke said. “I knew that you’d met with, and I knew that you would be coming out here to see me.”

“How?” McGarvey asked.

Rencke brought up another program. “You’re my friend, so I keep track of you. When your name pops up somewhere, my snoopy systems take note.”

The CIA’s logo appeared on the screen, followed by the Directorate of Operations designator, and then Paris Station.

The text of a message sent to Langley from Tom Lynch came up.

“They know that you met with Yemlin,” Rencke said, as McGarvey stared with disbelief at the name of the addressee. “The SDECE managed to pick up a portion of your conversation, and they handed it over to Lynch. They knew that you were asked to assassinate someone for the Russians. They don’t know who. Their only concern is that it doesn’t happen on French soil.” “Is this a fucking joke?” McGarvey demanded.

“What?” Rencke asked confused.

McGarvey stabbed a blunt finger at the screen. “Howard Ryan is the deputy director of operations?”

“I thought you knew.”

McGarvey stepped back a pace. It was like the old Santiago days all over again. Everything changed, yet nothing changed.

“I’ll keep in touch,” he said at last.

“I’ll be here, Mac,” Rencke said. “Just watch yourself, will ya. But it’s really good news about your parents.”

TEN

McGarvey returned his rental car to the agency downtown, and walked a few blocks over to the Gare St-Lazare where he got a cab. The early evening was still pleasantly warm and the parks and sidewalk cafes were jammed with people. Under normal circumstances he and Jacqueline would have gone out to dinner this evening. Thinking about it deepened his already dark mood.

Howard Ryan was a pompous ass, who nevertheless had done a good job for the CIA as its general counsel. He knew his way around political Washington, and during his tenure the Agency maintained the best relationship it’d ever had with the Congress.

But as a spy he was a meddling fool who didn’t know what he was doing. Eighteen months ago he’d nearly gotten himself killed by an East German gunman because he’d barged into a situation he knew nothing about. McGarvey had even saved his life after Ryan had shot him in the side.

Afterward Roland Murphy had actually apologized for the man, but McGarvey never dreamed that Ryan would be promoted to deputy director of operations. It was insanity, and he felt sorry for the poor bastards who had to work for him.” Their lives were in danger. He wondered how many of them would have to be killed before someone finally saw the light and sent the lawyer back to New York. It was a chilling thought.

Another part of McGarvey was already beginning to work out the logistics of assassinating Tarankov, however. The odds “against success were not very good. Maybe even worse than a thousand-to-one.

Killing someone was very easy, even someone as heavily guarded as a political figure. Rabin’s assassin had simply walked up to the Israeli leader and pumped three bullets into his back, and one of the best security services in the world had been unable to prevent it.

The hard part was getting away afterward.

He paid off his cabby a block from his apartment and went the rest of the way on foot as he usually did. Out of long habit he scrutinized the traffic, studied the parked cars and scanned the roof lines for a sign that someone was interested in him. But there was nothing out of the ordinary tonight.

tights were burning in his apartment windows. He stopped in the shadow of ‘a doorway across the street and watched to see if he could detect any movements. Jacqueline had not officially moved in with him yet, but often she spent nights at his apartment. A few of her things were hanging in the armoire, and in the bathroom. Had their relationship continued to develop it would only have been a matter of time before she gave up her apartment. She’d been hinting about it for the last week or so.

He figured that she’d be worried about him now, and would be watching the street. But she didn’t come to the window, and after five minutes McGarvey went up.

Only one light was on in the living room, and the bedroom door was ajar, the television playing inside. The air smelled of mentholated spirits.

“Jacqueline?” McGarvey called softly, as he moved across the room taking care to stay out of a sight line through the window.

“In here,” she answered, her voice husky.

McGarvey pushed open the door and went in. Jacqueline was propped up in bed, a bottle of mineral water and some medicine bottles on the nightstand. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said. “I feel like merde. I’ve got a fever, my head is about to explode and every bone in my body aches. Anyway, where have you been all day, I’ve been worried about you.”

McGarvey went to her side and felt her forehead. Her skin felt clammy. “You are sick,” he said. He picked up the medicine bottles, which contained French over the-counter cold and flu drugs. “Have you been here all day?”

“Yes,” she said. “And I wanted some sympathy. Where were you?”

“Shopping,” he said, giving her a wistful smile.

“Oh? What’d you buy?”

“Nothing much. Too many people, and I wasn’t much in the mood.”

“Are you still in your black ass from the weekend?” she asked. “If you are, I wish you’d get out of it. You’re not very much fun to be around when you’re like this.”

McGarvey went to the writing desk, and inspected his failsafes on the cabinet beside it. They’d not been tampered with. He could feel Jacqueline’s eyes on his back. “Printemps was very busy today,” he said. He unlocked the cabinet and took out his Voltaire manuscript.

“What time were you there?” she asked.

“About two-thirty.” McGarvey brought the manuscript back to the bed and handed it to her. “Unless you’re a Voltaire fan this may be a little dry.”

She was watching him, trying to gauge his mood.

“I saw a couple of people I knew.”

“Who’s that?” she asked calmly.

“You, of course. And Colonel Galan. I didn’t know that he was an agent runner, I thought he was a desk jockey running R-Seven.”

She set the manuscript aside. “How long have you known?”

“I suspected something from the beginning,” he said.

“Yet you let me make a fool of myself,” she flared. She tossed the covers back and got out of bed. She was wearing nothing but one of his shirts.

“At first it didn’t matter, but then I started to care for you and I didn’t want you to go.”

She’d started toward the bathroom, but she stopped. “Is that why you followed me today?”

“Something’s come up…”

“You met with the Russians on Saturday and they want you to kill someone for them,” she blurted. She’d expected him to react, but when he didn’t her eyes narrowed. “You know about that too?”

He nodded.

“How?”

“It’s what I do, Jacqueline. It’s my business.”

She nodded warily. “Don’t fool around, Kirk. Colonel Galan is a tough man. The Service doesn’t care what you do outside France as long as it doesn’t involve one of our citizens. But we take a very harsh stand on criminal acts inside the country.”

She was a pretty woman, and bright. He was going to miss her even more than he first thought he would.

“You could be brought in for questioning,” she said.

“Yes, I could,” he replied evenly.

“I don’t think Langley would interfere.”

“Probably not.”

“You’d be kicked out of France. Permanently.”

“I’ve done. nothing wrong.”

“Man cut!” Jacqueline swore. She ripped off his shirt, tossed it at him, and making no effort to hide her nakedness, strode across the bedroom to where she’d laid her clothes and got dressed.

“Don’t forget your things in the bathroom,” McGarvey said.

“Are you kicking me out?” she demanded.

“No, but you’re leaving.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes glistening, then went into the bathroom, tossed her perfumes and lotions into a cosmetics bag, and came out. “What shall I tell Colonel Galan?”

“Whatever you’d like. But tell him the truth because he’s heard everything.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“There are three bugs. One in the living room, one in the bathroom and one in the wall over the bed.”

Some color came to her cheeks. “Take care of yourself, Kirk.”

McGarvey nodded. “You too, Jacqueline. Je t’embrasse.”

“Je te J’aussi.”

After she was gone, McGarvey sat by the window in the living room while he smoked a cigarette and looked down at the busy street. For the most part he’d managed to put thoughts about his parents in the compartment of his mind that he rarely visited. The pain was very great; at times so great he couldn’t stand it. If what Yemlin had told him was true, he would be relieved of a burden he’d carried with him all of his adult life”. After his parents had died in an automobile accident he’d discovered what he thought was proof that they’d spied for the Russians. It had nearly killed him. But now he was being given a reprieve.

A bus lumbered by on the street below, trailing a cloud of blue exhaust. He’d wanted to talk about this with Jacqueline, but of course that was impossible, considering what she was. A relationship, any sort of a relationship, was the bane of a spy’s existence. A woman was excess baggage, and he’d always thought of them in that vein, which he supposed was one of the main reasons he’d never been able to sustain a relationship. It was an either/or situation, and he seemed incapable of giving up his profession. At least for now.

When he finished the cigarette” he turned off the television and switched on the stereo to Radio Luxembourg which beamed popular music all over Europe. He turned the volume up so that he could hear it in the kitchen while he fixed a three-egg cheese omelet and made some toast in the oven. He took his time, setting’ a place at the small table and opening a bottle of white wine. He hadn’t eaten much all day, and the food tasted good. When he was finished he read the morning’s Le Figaro, then washed up and put away the clean dishes.

Jacqueline’s case officer would have notified Colonel Galan as soon as McGarvey returned to the apartment. He would also have notified the colonel when Jacqueline left.

McGarvey glanced at his watch. If they were going to bring him in fpr questioning tonight they’d be showing up within the next hour or so.

Starting in the living room he cleaned the apartment from top to bottom, making no effort to mask the noises of what he was doing. In effect he was cleansing the place of Jacqueline’s presence. He’d found out she was a SDECE spy sent to watch him, and he was ridding himself of her.

In the bedroom he tossed out the few remaining traces of her, including the mineral water and medicines on the nightstand. He did the same in the bathroom, scrubbing out the shower and the toilet, and cleaning the sink and mirrors.

When he was finished he took the garbage downstairs and stuffed it in one of the cans in the back alley.

Back in the apartment he sat by the window again and had another cigarette and glass of wine, cleansing his mind, as he had his apartment, of her. In effect she was a prostitute. Her pimp was the French Secret Service, and her John was McGarvey. He’d known that from the start. But as with Marta Fredricks, his watchdog in Switzerland a few years ago, he’d come to have a genuine feeling for Jacqueline despite himself. A feeling, he told himself firmly, that could go nowhere.

Marta had lost her life chasing after him. He was glad now to be rid of Jacqueline, at least in mat respect. She would be a lot safer away from him.

Nobody was coming tonight, he decided finally. They weren’t going to arrest him, they were simply going to watch him.

He went in the bathroom and urinated. When he was done he got up on the edge of the tub and carefully lifted the mechanism and false bottom out of the overhead gravity tank, causing the toilet to flush. He pulled out a flat, plastic-wrapped package from inside, and as the last of the water ran out of the tank, replaced the mechanism so that the tank would refill normally.

He opened the package on the bed and took out his Walther PPK, two spare magazines of ammunition, a silencer disguised to look like a small flashlight, ten thousand dollars cash in American dollars, British pounds and Swiss francs, a spare set of identity papers, a small plastic squeeze bottle containing hair coloring, and a set of light blue-contact lenses.

These last he took back into the bathroom, where he cut his hair short with his electric razor, careful to rinse all the hair down the sink, then colored it a light gray. He put in the contact lenses, and when he was finished he looked like a somewhat older man, which matched the photographs in his false papers.

He took a long, hot shower, made certain that the bathroom was clean, then got dressed in a nondescript pair of slacks, turtleneck and leather jacket. He stuffed the plastic package and half-full hair coloring bottle, his laptop computer and a few extra items of clothing into an overnight bag which he set by the front door. He quickly checked the apartment one last time to make sure everything was shut off, then let himself out, silently closing and locking the door behind him.

He took the stairs two at a time to the top floor, where from a window at the end of the corridor he studied the shadows in the alley.

Five minutes later, certain that no one was down there, he climbed out onto the fire escape, and scrambled down to the alley and headed away, not at all sure when or if he’d ever be back.

The Hotel Trois Freres was a half-block off the Rue Vaugirad near the Gare Montparnasse. It was small, but clean, and catered mostly to European travelers on a budget who wanted peace and quiet in the middle of Paris for a reasonable price. The back rooms looked down on a pleasant terrace with a small fountain that ran all night. In the morning the hotel served a continental breakfast next door at a patisserie. It served wine in the evening from six until seven. Everyone, staff and guests, was polite but reserved. Europeans were not as a rule as snoopy as Americans.

McGarvey checked in under the name Pierre Allain, a political writer from Spa, Belgium, with the spare passport and credit cards he kept in reserve.

A lot depended on Jacqueline, her control officer and Colonel Galan. Galan had asked for help from the CIA. But when Ryan started to push there was no telling how the French would react. They wanted information, but they might resent interference. The French were sometimes touchy on the subject. Officially the CIA did not maintain a presence in France. It was a fiction that every body could live with. Unless somebody started to get too aggressive.

The SVR, which was the foreign intelligence gathering arm of the new Russian secret service, also maintained a station here. McGarvey was not a hundred percent convinced that Yemlin had been able to mask his true purpose for coming to France. So it was possible that the Russians would be looking for him as well.

Before he went to bed for a troubled night of sleep, he disassembled his gun, wiped it down, then reassembled and loaded it.

For better or worse, he was back in the field, no longer a civilian. Anyone could be gunning for him.

In the morning over breakfast he scoured Le Figaro for any mention that the police were looking for him, then walked a dozen blocks over to the Boulevard St. Michel on the east side of the Jardin du Luxembourg where he called his apartment from a pay phone. When his answering machine kicked in, he entered the code to retrieve any messages. There were none. Next he entered a three digit code which monitored noises in the apartment for thirty seconds. The place was silent. They weren’t coming after him yet. But they would be if for no other reason than to ask him some questions.

He spent the next few hours before lunch shopping at the big department store, BHV, across from the Hotel de Ville, where he bought a sport coat, a couple of shirts, a couple of pairs of slacks, and a few other items.

Dropping his purchases back at his hotel, he had a light lunch at a sidewalk cafe, then went over to the Bon Marche, the left bank’s only department store, where he’ picked up a sturdy leather suitcase. He paid for his clothing with the Allain credit card, but paid cash for the suitcase. A visitor from Belgium might buy a sport coat and slacks in Paris, but it was less likely that he would buy a suitcase. It would be presumed he came with one.

Before he went back to his hotel, he called his apartment again. Jacqueline was on his answering machine.

“Don’t hang up, Kirk. I want to talk to you. Hit five six and your call will be rolled over to me—”

McGarvey hung up. He’d made the opening move, and they were countering. The next few days would see how serious they were.

He went back to the hotel, where the desk clerk, a pleasant looking woman in her early forties, flashed him a smile.

“Monsieur Allain, it is rare to see a man who enjoys shopping as much as you do.”

The woman was fluting with him, he decided. “Not really, Madame, it is necessary. For the children, you know. And for my wife. They expect me to send them something from Paris.”

She lowered her eyes. “Do you travel much, then?”

“Too much. I miss them.”

The woman’s eyes went to his left hand, and she smiled. He wore no ring. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”

“And you, Madame,” McGarvey said, and he went up to his room on the third floor where he laid the package containing the suitcase on the bed.

It was unlikely that the SDECE would get onto his Allain identity very quickly. Though every hotel registration card was collected by the police each night, there simply were too many visitors to Paris for all the cards to be thoroughly checked. As a safeguard, however, he could seduce the desk clerk, and have her include a registration card in the next bundle that showed he’d checked out.

Something to be considered, he thought. But it wasn’t necessary just yet.

He unwrapped the suitcase, took all the tags off the new clothes, men packed them in the suitcase, which he rewrapped and addressed to Madame Suzanne Allain in Spa. He took the package downstairs and laid it on the desk so the woman could see the address.

“Could you tell me where the nearest post office is,” McGarvey asked.

“We could take care of it for you.”

“It’s better if I do it myself. It has to be insured.”

“Of course,” the woman said, and she gave him directions to a post office a half-dozen blocks away.

McGarvey walked a few blocks from the hotel, unwrapped the suitcase and discarded the packing paper in a trash container, after first marking out the address. Then he took a cab to an Avis agency near the Gare de Lyon where he rented a mid-sized Renault for two weeks, paying extra for international insurance. He placed the suitcase in the trunk, and drove back to a car park that was attended twenty-four hours per day a few blocks from his hotel. He paid Avis with the Allain credit card, and paid cash for the car park.

Before he returned to his hotel he telephoned his apartment again, and got the same message from Jacque line, but the place was still quiet.

He got back in time to have a couple of glasses of wine with a few of the guests in the lobby. The desk clerk, whose name was Martine, served them.

“Did you mail your package?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Have you made dinner plans for this evening?” She smiled. There are several good restaurants nearby that I could recommend.”

“Unfortunately I have to meet with some editors this evening, and then make an early evening of it.”

“Too bad,” she said, flashing him another seductive smile.

“Yes,” he said. “Too bad.”

McGarvey got his laptop computer from his room, and walked a few blocks to a pay phone near a metro station where he telephoned Otto Rencke.

“Hi ya, Mac,” Rencke said.

“How’d you know it was me?” McGarvey said. His voice was scrambled in the handset. Rencke was using his back scatter encryption device.

“Somebody calls me from a pay phone in the middle of the Left Bank on this number it’s gotta be you. Did you move out?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re taking the job, then?”

“I’m thinking about it,” McGarvey said. “Has Langley responded to the SDECE’s query on me?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure Ryan is working on it. You got your laptop with you? I’ve got everything you’re going to need ready to download to you.”

“How long will it take?”

“Ninety seconds.”

“Okay, let me set it up.”

“Mac?” Rencke said. “Remember what I said. Watch your ass, ‘cause I think this is going to be a humdinger.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be here when you need me.”

McGarvey opened the computer and laid the telephone’s handset beside it. A moment later, the computer screen lit up, and data began to flow from Rencke’s computer into his.

ELEVEN

In his hotel room McGarvey spent the next two days studying the material that Rencke had downloaded from his computer files. Besides the probability program which he’d developed to predict the outcome of a coup by Tarankov, Rencke had sent a complete dossier on the Tarantula, the people he surrounded himself with, and the armored train he used to make his strikes.

A number of things became very clear almost from the start of his studies, the first of which was Tarankov’s intelligence. Although he had the brute strength and the unshakable determination of a Stalin or a Hitler, he was not a stupid man. In fact he was brilliant, something even his enemies begrudgingly admitted. Which meant he wasn’t running around the countryside hoping that by some miracle the people would rise up and put him in power. He had a plan. A definite timetable.

If he wasn’t stopped he would manage to take over the entire country with two hundred commandoes, his East German wife and Leonid Chernov, a former KGB Department Viktor assassin whose name McGarvey had never heard.

On Thursday night he called Rencke from a pay phone several blocks from the hotel,

“Have you tried calling your answering machine in the past thirty-six hours?” Rencke asked as soon as he picked up the phone.

“No.” ‘ “Don’t. Langley sent the SDECE the information on you they wanted, and it’s got them shook up. In their view you’re a very dangerous man whom they would like very much to talk to right now. They put an automatic trace on your phone line. At this point they don’t know if you’re in Paris or not, but if you call from the Left Bank they’ll be down there in minutes.”

“Are they watching the airports?”

“Yup. And the train stations. But the border crossings haven’t been alerted yet. You could get out that way. Either that or use a disguise.”

“Have they issued a warrant for my arrest?”

“The street cops haven’t got a warrant, I don’t know about the Service,” Rencke said. “You gotta understand, Mac, that to this point all my knowledge about the French is second hand. I can tap into the CIA’s computers, and I can play with the French phone system, but I can’t do much about the SDECE. They’ve got computers, don’t get me wrong. But they’re smart enough to know that they have to treat the really important stuff manually. The old fashioned way. If you want to know what they’re doing you have to break into one of their offices and steal their paper files. It’s almost un American.”

“Is anybody making any guesses who Yemlin wants me to kill?”

“Not yet. Leastways they’ve put nothing in their computers that I can find. But this morning Lynch sent a second query about you to Ryan. The French can’t find you and they’d like the CIA to help.”

“Have they ordered my expulsion from France?”

“It doesn’t sound like it. They just want to talk to you, that’s all.”

“How about you? Has your name come up?” “Knock on^ wood but not yet,” Rencke said laughing. “I still have my super virus in pi ace and the silly bastards don’t suspect a thing. But if they push me the CIA’s entire computer system will crash, and crash good. Maybe for good.”

“You’d do it, too.”

“Why not? I’ve had to start over. It’s good for the soul. Maybe they wouldn’t be so arrogant, because good old Rick Ames didn’t teach them a damn thing.”

“I need some more information,” McGarvey said. “Leonid Chernov,” Rencke said matter-of-factly. It was as if he could read minds. “You’ve got the whole enchilada, which worries me too. You’re going to have to go head-to-head with him, but nobody knows anything about him. Not the CIA, nobody.”

“How about the old KGB computer files?”

“Ha,” Rencke said. “You ever try running through maple syrup on a cold day, Mac? It’d be easier than trying to wade through the mess they’ve created for themselves.”

“It’s a big organization, Otto. Some of their systems must be up and running.”

“Without a central director, or a specific CPU for me to start from, I’d have to initiate a program search for every possible telephone number combination in Moscow. I could do it, but it might take a while. Maybe fifty years, give or take a decade.”

“What if I get you a number?”

“Then we’re in. Leastways through the first portal. Do you think Yemlin will hand over the keys to the castle just like that?”

“Won’t hurt to ask,” McGarvey said. “Keep your ears open, Otto, I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days.”

“Will do, Mac. Good luck.”

The desk clerk Martine was waiting for him in his room when he got back. She’d brought a bottle of wine and two glasses, and was propped up in bed, her shoes off, her silk blouse unbuttoned.

“You come as something of a surprise,” McGarvey said, masking his irritation.

“You’ve been working entirely too hard, Monsieur,” she said, and she giggled. She was tipsy.

McGarvey put his laptop on the writing table and glanced at his overnight bag. It had been tampered with, but he didn’t think that the woman was a spy. She simply found him attractive and wanted to seduce him. And she was nosy.

“I am married.”

“You don’t wear a ring. And when you opened your wallet to withdraw your credit card I saw no photos of your wife or children.” She smiled coyly at him over the rim of her wine glass, and shifted on the bed, parting her shapely legs. “You don’t carry much clothing for a man who travels so much.”

If she’d been in his overnight bag, she’d seen the spare magazines of ammunition. She wouldn’t have recognized the silencer for what it was, because it was disguised as a working flashlight. But she knew that he wasn’t a writer.

“What do you expect me to do?”

She set her wine glass aside. “Make love to me,” she said huskily. “Dangerous men excite me. And from the moment I saw you I knew you were such a creature. Maybe you are a policeman here on a secret investigation. Or perhaps a private detective. Maybe even a spy.”

McGarvey took off his jacket, then poured a glass of wine for himself. He sat on the edge of the bed and brushed his fingertips across her lips. She shivered.

“What will the management do if they find out that you’re snooping around and trying to seduce the guests?”

“They’d certainly fire me. That wouldn’t be so good. I’m not a wealthy woman.”

McGarvey smiled. “Then we both have a secret to keep.” He took a drink of his wine, and then opened her blouse and kissed the tops of her breasts.

She arched into him, a soft moan escaping her lips. “Don’t hurt me,” she cooed. “Not too much.”

En Route To Helsinki

McGarvey checked out of his hotel around eight in the morning after securing his gun and two spare magazines of ammunition in a special compartment of his fake laptop computer that Rencke had designed and constructed for him. The compartment was shielded with sections of lead foil that appeared to airport security scanners as electronic circuitry. The computer would have to be completely stripped down to reveal what it contained. If it was turned on, the screen would light up with a convincing display. But that’s all it would do. Instead of innards, the device only contained his weapon and spare ammunition.

He walked over to the car park, retrieved his Avis Renault, and was on the busy N2, heading north, past Le Bourget Airport by 9:00 a.m.” the morning extremely pleasant.

Sometime over the past two days he had made his final decision to go ahead with the assassination of, though he’d known that he would probably do it after Rencke had shown him his probability program. He no longer maintained any self-doubts, nor was he going to beat himself up over the decision. Second thoughts would come much later; in the night when he would see the faces of every person he’d ever killed, Tarankov’s would be included.

He only had the vaguest idea how he was going to do it, and get away. But he knew from long experience that the solution would come to him in due time, and that he would recognize it when it arrived. He also knew that before such a solution became evident he was going to have to do more research. A lot more.

The truck stop on the outskirts of Maubeuge, where he stopped to have a quick lunch, was smoky and noisy, but the food was very good as it was at most French way sides

By noon he was across the border into Belgium, the customs officer waving him through when McGarvey held up his Belgian passport, and seventy minutes later he was parking his car in the long term ramp at Brussels’ Zaventem National Airport on the northeast outskirts of the city.

His bags were passed through airport security without a problem, and he got lucky with a Finnair flight departing at 3:00 p.m. He wanted to avoid, as much as possible, using his Allain papers in Belgium, because under any kind of questioning by the local authorities it would be obvious that he was not a Belgian. But the clerks at Finnair had no reason to question his nationality.

Because of the time difference it wasn’t until 8:00 p.m. when he landed at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport, the weather here overcast, blustery and sharply colder than in Paris. He was passed through customs with no delay, though the officer did take an interest in his computer. By 9:30 p.m.” he’d checked into the Strand InterContinental Hotel next to the old city downtown on the waterfront, and was dining on an excellent grilled salmon, with a very good bottle of French white wine.

Afterward he went down to one of the pay phones in the soaring atrium lobby, and direct-dialed Viktor Yemlin’s apartment in Moscow. A noisy group of Russian businessmen were drinking and laughing around the fireplace across from McGarvey. The women with them were all young and expensively dressed. Even from a distance it was easy to determine that they were probably very high-priced call girls. The men were Russia’s new millionaires; the women its entrepreneurs.

Yemlin answered his telephone on the third ring. “Da.”

“Hello.” Yemlin didn’t reply for several seconds. Music played in the background. “I think you have the wrong number. You want 228-0712.” He broke the connection.

McGarvey hung up, and walked across the lobby to the bar where he ordered a cognac and lit a cigarette. Yemlin’s line wasn’t secure. The number he wanted to use was probably located some distance from his apartment. Possibly a pay phone. The FSK couldn’t monitor every pay phone in the city, but given a little time, say a half-hour, they could isolate a specific number and tap it, which meant Yemlin would be standing by no later than fifteen minutes from now.

The cocktail waitress serving the group by the fireplace came back to the bar to order another round of drinks. She glanced at McGarvey, who smiled.

“Sounds like they’re having fun,” he said in English.

“They’re Russians,” she replied disdainfully. “I’m trying to get them to move their party up to the pool.”

“Aren’t they tipping very well?”

“Just fine,” she said, smiling a little. “I’m just hoping they’ll all drown up there.”

“Good luck.”

The bartender came to fill her order, and fifteen minutes later McGarvey went back to the pay phone and called the Moscow number.

Yemlin answered on the first ring. He sounded out of breath. “This is 228-0712,” he said.

“Who is monitoring your home phone?” McGarvey asked. “Possibly no one, this is just a precaution. Are you here in Moscow?”

“I’m in Helsinki. How soon can you get here? We need to talk.”

“Are you taking the … package?”

“How soon can you be here?” McGarvey repeated evenly. He could hear the strain in Yemlin’s voice.

“I’ll take the morning flight. I can be there by noon.”

“Will you be missed?”

Yemlin’s laugh was short and sharp. “No one misses anything here anymore. Where do you want to meet?”

“Kaivopuisto. Enter from the southwest.” McGarvey hung up, then went back to the bar where he had another cognac before going up to his room for the night. As he passed the Russian group one of them said something to the cocktail waitress, who dropped her tray, then spun around and rushed away. McGarvey didn’t break stride, though he wanted to go over and punch the boorish, loud-mouthed bastard in the mouth.

Kaivopuisto

Helsinki’s most elegant district on the waterfront was home to a number of foreign diplomats, and was maintained like a well-manicured park. On a pleasant day half of Helsinki took their walks here because it was so pretty. In the early days McGarvey had spent a month recuperating in Helsinki after an assignment that had gone bad in Leningrad. He’d often come down to the waterfront and he still remembered the area pretty well.

The day was raw. A chill wind drove spits of snow almost horizontally under a leaden sky. Still there were a number of people bundled up and walking through the district.

McGarvey had purchased a down-filled nylon jacket from a department store near the hotel, and by one o’clock, when Yemlin finally showed up, he wished he’d bought a warm hat and gloves as well. He tailed the Russian for ten minutes to make sure he’d come in clean, and then caught up with him halfway across the park.

“Did you know my parents?” McGarvey asked, falling in beside Yemlin.

“They were before my time, Kirk,” Yemlin said. He was professional enough not to have reacted in an obvious manner when McGarvey suddenly showed up in disguise. “But I’d heard about them from General Baranov. He told me that it was a supreme irony that in some respects he had created you by planting false information about your parents being spies for us.”

“You didn’t give me much proof,” McGarvey said. He’d destroyed the documents on Saturday before he went back to the apartment, and he had tried to put the news out of his mind.

“There is no more. Everything else died when you killed Baranov. Nobody’s around from those days who remembers anything. I’m sure there isn’t much more in your own records beyond what Baranov planted. It was John Trotter’s doing. But you knew that.”

Trotter was an old friend who’d worked as Deputy Director of Operations. In the end he’d betrayed them all, and his last act had been an attempt to kill McGarvey.

“Then you could be jerking me around here too, Viktor Pavlovich. You bastards invented the game.”

“No,” Yemlin said sadly, studying McGarvey’s face. “But we were masters at it. We really didn’t have much else. You know yourself that most of the West’s estimates of our military and nuclear capabilities were inflated so that the Pentagon could justify its own budget.”

It was true, McGarvey thought. And Tarankov, if he came to power, would start the cycle all over again.

“I believe in my heart, Kirk, that your parents were not the spies that you were led to believe they were. I don’t know enough of the details to understand why Baranov ran that kind of an operation. I just know what he did. And if you’d thought about it then, you would have seen Baranov’s touch. It was his style. A lot of us admired him.”

They walked for a couple of minutes in silence. Deeper in the park they were somewhat sheltered from the wind, and there were even more Finns out walking on their lunch hours.

“This will be the last time we meet,” McGarvey said. “I want you to make no attempt to try to communicate with me, or find me no matter what happens.” McGarvey looked into Yemlin’s eyes. “No matter what, Viktor Pavlovich, do you understand?”

“You’re going to do it? You’re going to assassinate Tarankov?”

“Yes.”

“When?” Yemlin asked, his face alive with expression.

“Sometime before the June elections. Sooner if it looks as if he’ll try a coup d’etat.”

“You’ll need help. I can pull enough strings in the SVR to supply you with information on Tarankov’s movements.”

“No,” McGarvey said. “You’re going back to Moscow as if nothing ever happened. You’ve never seen me, you’ve never discussed anything like this with me, and you will discuss this with no one.”

“Impossible,” Yemlin said, shaking his head. “Sukhoruchkin and Shevardnadze know everything.”

“Then I’ll call it off—”

“Please listen to me, Kirk. These men have just as much stake in this as I do. We’ve already laid our lives on the line. It was us three who discussed and approved hiring you to kill Tarankov. If you fall so do we. They have to be told. But I swear to you no one else in Russia, or anywhere else for that matter, knows what we’ve asked you to do. They haven’t breathed a word, even hinted about it, to anyone. I swear it.”, McGarvey thought about it for a moment. “You may tell them that I’ve accepted the job, but nothing else.

Not that we met here, not my timetable, nothing. I won’t go any further than that, because as you say, lives are on the line. And mine is more precious to me than yours. You’ll either agree to this, or you’ll have to find someone else.”

“There is no one else,” Yemlin said heavily. “I agree. What about money?”

“One million dollars,” McGarvey said. He handed Yemlin a slip of paper with a seven-digit number written on it. “This is my account at Barclay’s on Guernsey. British pounds, Swiss francs or American dollars.”

“I’ll have it there before I leave Helsinki today,” Yemlin said. “What else?”

“The SVR must have a central data processing center that shares information with the FSK and the Militia.”

“Of course.”

“I want the telephone number.”

Yemlin pulled up short, and his eyes narrowed. “Even if I knew that number it wouldn’t do you any good without the proper access codes. Those I can’t get.”

“Nonetheless I want it.” “Assuming I can come up with the number, how do I get it to you?”

“Place an ad in the personals column of Le Figaro starting in three days. Say: Julius loves you, please call at once. Invert the telephone number and include it.”

“I can’t guarantee anything, Mac, but I’ll do my best,” Yemlin said. They started to walk again. “What about identity papers and travel documents? I can help with that.”

“I’ll get my own.”

“Weapons?”

McGarvey shook his head.

“A safehouse in Moscow in case you have to go underground?”

They stopped again. “You’ve been in the business long enough to know that the bigger the organization, the greater are the chances for a leak. And right now the SVR and every other department in Russia is riddled with Tarankov’s spies and informers. I’ll work alone.”

“I caught you once.”

McGarvey smiled. “Yes, you did, Viktor Pavlovich. But things were different then. I was a lot younger, and the KGB was a lot better.”

Yemlin agreed glumly. “In Paris you told me that the odds of success were a thousand to one against an assassin. What’s changed your mind?”

“Nothing,” McGarvey said. “If anything I think the odds are worse, and will get worse the longer we wait. If Tarankov takes over the government either by elections or by force, he’ll be even harder to kill.”

Yemlin looked down the broad boulevard the way they’d come. “As it is the aftermath will be terrible. I don’t know if Russia will survive.” His resolve seemed to stiffen and he turned back to McGarvey. “I do know that unless Tarankov is killed we will certainly not survive as a democracy.”

“You’re sure this is what you want?” McGarvey asked. “Because once we part here it will be too late to change your mind.” Yemlin nodded after a moment, and he shook McGarvey’s hand. “Goodbye, Kirk. God go with you.”

TWELVE

The National Press Club’s main ballroom was all aglitter for the annual Person of the Year banquet, although the several hundred journalists and diplomats paid scant attention to the fine linen, silver and porcelain, they’d seen it before, often.

Word was out that President Lindsay would be given the honor this year (eighteen months late) for his international policies including the handling of the Japanese trade issues. For the first time since World War II the U.S. balance of trade with Japan was heading in the right direction. No one expected parity in the near future but Lindsay was taking the country in that direction.

It was a little before nine in the evening, and although the President and Mrs. Lindsay weren’t scheduled to arrive until 9:45 p.m.” dinner was winding down and dancing had begun.

Howard Ryan and his stunningly dressed wife, Evangeline, had just finished a dance and were heading back to the table they shared with Senate Majority Leader Chilton Wood and his wife, J3 Admiral Stewart Phipps and his wife and Bob Castle, political columnist for the New York Times, when Ryan’s assistant DDO, Tom Moore, and his dowdy wife Doris intercepted them.

“You two cut a fine figure out there,” Moore said.

“We’re defined by our social graces,” Ryan said pompously. He kissed Doris on the cheek. “If your dance card isn’t filled, put my name on it.”

“Thanks for asking, Howard, but I have a feeling that Evangeline and I are going to be deserted tonight,” Doris said. She seemed resigned.

Ryan shot Moore a questioning look. His assistant was worried. “Why don’t you and Doris go back to our table and have another glass of wine,” Ryan told his wife. “Tom and I will join you ladies in a couple of minutes.”

“Don’t strand us here, Howard,” Evangeline warned, and she and Doris headed back to the table. She did not share her husband’s love for intrigue.

“This better be good,” Ryan told his assistant.

“It’s much worse than that, Howard. Believe me,” Moore said. “My car is in front. I suggest we go for a ride.”

Ryan was annoyed. He wanted to see the President again, but Moore’s obvious agitation was worrisome. They walked outside, got into the assistant DDO’s car, and pulled away, merging with traffic on 14th Street.

“I just came from Langley,” Moore said. “Parley Smith caught me as Doris and I were leaving the house. He must have missed you by only a couple of minutes.”

Smith was chief of the CIA’s archives section where the agency’s most highly classified records and historical documents were stored. He was working on deep background for Ryan’s follow-up report to the President on sending an envoy to Tarankov.

“What has he come up with?” Ryan asked.

“We’ve got trouble, Howard,” Moore replied. “Not just the DO, but the entire agency. If this breaks, the remainder of our careers will be spent on the Hill answering some tough questions that’ll make the Iran Contra fiasco look like a tempest in a teacup.”

He stopped for a red light and looked over at Ryan. “What’s the worst thing you can think of that could happen to us in this operation? The absolute worst piece of information.”

“Don’t play games, Tom. Lay it out for me.”

“Tarankov is ours. Or was.”

Ryan was stunned. “What are you talking about?”

“In the seventies his code name was CKHAMMER,” Moore said. The CK digraph was an old CIA indicator that the code named person was a particularly sensitive Soviet or Eastern bloc intelligence source.

“He spied for us?” Ryan asked, thunderstruck. “While he was in the missile service. His parents ran into trouble with the KGB, and were sentenced to ten years in a Siberian gulag. They were friends of the Sakharovs. Our Moscow COS at the time, Bob Burns, assigned a case officer to see if Major Tarankov could be turned. He was, and until he was transferred out of the service he apparently provided us with some pretty good information.”

“Then we have the bastard,” Ryan said triumphantly. “We’ll get a message to him to back off, or we expose what he was to the Russian people. It’ll ruin him.” Ryan had another thought. “Do we have proof? Photographs? Documents? Signatures?”

“Presumably, but it’s all worthless, because there’s more.”

“What more can there be?” Ryan demanded. “The son of a bitch was a spy. His people can’t trust him. Hell, we’ll even offer him political asylum. We can dump him in Haiti, or maybe Panama where he’d be out of everyone’s hair.”

“Money. A lot of it. Moscow station had an open checkbook for a few years back then, because of the SDI thing. Word was that the Russians were way ahead of us on research. Parley is still digging, but he thinks that rumor may have gotten started on the basis of false information Tarankov sent us.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Over a nine year period we gave Tarankov, and a supposed network of spies under his direction, more than seventy million dollars. All of it black, none of it authorized by, or even known about on the Hill or the White House.”

“He used the money to buy that goddamned train.”

“It would appear so.”

“Nothing has changed—”

“We can’t send an envoy to Tarankov. He’d just laugh in our faces. Imperialist bastards who tried to buy Russia for seventy million. It would backfire on us. It would set our foreign policy back a hundred years.”

They came around the corner on K Street a block from the National Press Club.

“We have to move very carefully, Howard,” Moore said. “Tarankov must be arrested and put on trial as soon as possible. Before the June elections.”

“Our involvement will come out in any trial.”

“It won’t matter,” Moore interjected. “As long as we’re not involved with him now we can deny everything. Tarankov will come out sounding like a desperate man clutching at straws.”

“The President wants to send me as the envoy.”

“You’ll have to convince him differently. We cannot be seen interfering in Russian internal affairs. It would do us a great deal of damage.”

Ryan had another thought. “Who else knows about this?” “Nobody. And Parley had the good grace not to mention sending this upstairs to the director’s office.”

“Murphy has to be told.”

“That’s your job, Howard.”

Damned right, Ryan thought. “And your job is to keep a lid on this thing. I want you to convince Parley that I mean business. If so much as a hint of this comes out of his office I’ll nail his ass to the barn door.”

“Of course.”

“Where’s the file at this moment?”

“In my safe.”

“I want it on my desk at eight sharp. I’ll see the general at nine. He’s due back from New York sometime tonight.”

CIA Headquarters

It was a few minutes before nine when the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Lawrence Danielle called Ryan’s office. “We’re here, are you ready?”

“I’m on my way,” Ryan said. “Has Technical Services scanned his office?”

“They just left.”

He checked his pocket watch, buttoned up his coat and took the Tarankov file recovered in a d.d.o. eyes only gray folder with a blue border on each page up to the seventh floor. He’d had a sleepless night worrying about what he would to have to face this morning. And reading the material Moore had brought over, he decided that his assistant had not exaggerated.

Ryan’s specialty, among others, was turning negatives into pluses. This time, however, he was out of ideas except one, and that was when the play got too hot you always handed the ball over to someone else. It was one of his axioms for survival.

Roland Murphy was having coffee at his desk while he watched the 9:00 a.m. news reports from CNN and the three major news networks on a multi-screen TV monitor, as he did every morning. He was a large man with prize-fighter’s arms and dark eyebrows over deep set eyes. He was one of the toughest men ever to sit behind that desk, and no one who’d ever come up against him thought any differently.

With him were the aging, but still effective, Danielle who’d been in the business for more than thirty years; the dapper dresser Tommy Doyle, who was Deputy Director of Intelligence; and Carleton Patterson, the patrician New York lawyer whom Ryan had recommended to take over as general counsel.

Murphy’s eyes strayed to the file folder. “Has something happened overnight, Howard?”

“In a manner of speaking, General,” Ryan said, closing the door. “I suggest that you ask not to be disturbed, and that you shut off the tape recorder.”

Murphy’s eyebrows rose, but he called his secretary and told her to hold everything until further notice, then opened a desk drawer and flipped a switch. “We’re clean and isolated,” he said. “You have our attention.”

Ryan sat down in the empty chair and laid the file folder on the edge of Murphy’s desk. Nobody made a move to reach for it. “The President must be convinced not to send an envoy as I originally suggested to speak with Yevgenni Tarankov.”

Murphy studied Ryan’s eyes. “If you feel that strongly about it, we’ll send someone else. I don’t think that will be a major stumbling block.”

“No, Mr. Director, we can’t send anybody to see him, unless or until he becomes President of Russia by whatever means. To do so would irreparably harm the United States, and this agency specifically. Something has come up.”

“Who knows about this?” Patterson asked softly.

“Tom Moore and Parley Smith.”

“Archives?”

Ryan nodded.

“No one else on your staff, or Smith’s staff knows anything?” Patterson asked.

“That’s correct.”

“What is it, Howard? What dark secret have you stumbled upon?” Danielle asked.

“I’ve come up with incontrovertible proof that in the seventies and early eighties Tarankov spied on his own government for the United States. Specifically for a case officer working out of Moscow Station under Bob Burns.”

“I’ll be damned,” Doyle said.

Murphy and Danielle exchanged glances. “It was before my time, Lawrence,” Murphy said. “Did you know anything about it?”

“No. It must have been a soft operation.”

“His code name was CKHAMMER,” Ryan said. “Someone thought he was important.”

“I didn’t know anything about it, Howard,” Danielle said mildly, but there was a dangerous edge to his voice. He’d played this game so often that he was a master at it. “What’s your point?”

“His operation was called LOOKUP, and over nine years we paid him nearly seventy million dollars for SDI information. All of it black. Money he used to buy the armored train he’s terrorizing the countryside with. It makes for some disturbing possibilities.”

“That puts a hell of a spin on the situation over there,” Murphy said. “How do you see it?”

“We certainly can’t open a dialogue with him now,” Ryan said. “It could backfire in our faces. He’d accuse us of trying to bring down Kabatov’s government.” — “He’s one of us,” Doyle said.

“Not any longer,” Ryan shot back. “But if Kabatov is successful in arresting him and bringing him to trial we’ll be out of the woods.”

“He wouldn’t use his relationship with us as a defense, that’s for damned sure,” Murphy said. “But he could end up asking us for asylum.”

“Which we’d deny him,” Ryan said.

“Doesn’t say much for how we treat the people who’ve worked for us,” Danielle suggested.

“Tarankov is no friend of ours,” Ryan replied sharply. “He never was. In those days we were helping a lot of questionable people. Batista

then Castro, No riega, Marcos. It’s a big number, and most of the decisions were poorly thought out. It gave us a bad reputation which we’re just beginning to live down. If the truth came out about our involvement with Tarankov it would push back the clock, and no one would come out smelling like a rose.”

“I’ll have to brief the President—”

“No, sir,” Ryan interrupted. “I think that would unnecessarily complicate matters. Let me work up a new proposal showing why sending an envoy to Tarankov isn’t such a good idea after all. He wasn’t all that keen on it in the first place.”

“You’ll come out with egg on your face for waffling,” Murphy warned.

“Better me than the agency.”

Danielle gave him an amused look of barely concealed contempt. “I’d like to see that proposal before we kick it over to the White House.”

“We’ll all take a look,” Murphy said, before Ryan could respond. “The President will have to be convinced that we must support Prime Minister Kabatov’s government.”

“At all costs,” Ryan said. “It’s our only course.”

“Is any of that file in the computer?” Danielle asked.

“No,” Ryan said. “Smith got this from the warehouse. It’s the only copy.”

“How about cross-references?”

“He’s pulling them now.”

“When he’s dug everything out, we’ll put a fifty-year seal on the material,” Danielle said.

“We’ll destroy the files,” Ryan said.

Danielle shook his head. “We’ve done questionable things, Mr. Ryan. But we don’t destroy records, because in the end we’re accountable to the public.”

“No—” Ryan said.

“I have to overrule you on this one, Howard,” Murphy said. “Lawrence is right. We’ll let the historians struggle with it fifty years from now, but we won’t alter the record.”

“As you wish, Mr. Director,” Ryan said darkly.

“Then we all have work to do. I suggest we get to it.”

Tom Moore came over when Ryan got back to his office. “Did they go for it?” he asked.

“They didn’t have any choice,” Ryan replied harshly. “As soon as Smith is finished with his search, I want everything hand-delivered to me.”

“Are we going to destroy it?”

“No. It’s going under a fifty-year seal.”

“Just as well,” Moore said.

“In the meantime I’ll put something together for Murphy to take over to the White House. I’ll need comprehensive reports on Kabatov’s government, on Yeltsin’s assassination, and a sanitized version of Tarankov’s background.”

“Will do.”

“I’ll need it yesterday, Tom.”

“I’ll get on it right away,” Moore assured him. He turned to go, but stopped at the door. “This business with the French and McGarvey doesn’t want to go away. How far do we want to take it?”

Ryan’s stomach knotted up, and he absently touched the scar on his chin. “Maybe it was McGarvey who killed Yeltsin. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard.”

“The timing is wrong. But the French are worried that the Russians have hired McGarvey to kill someone in France.”

“Arrest him, and put him on a plane back here. We’ll pick him up at the airport.”

Moore shook his head. “That’s just the problem. They can’t find him. Seems as if he’s gone to ground.”

Ryan looked up at his assistant deputy director with renewed interest. Hate for McGarvey still burned very hotly in his gut. “Has he broken any French laws?”

“Presumably not. They merely want to talk to him. He was living with a French intelligence officer who was keeping tabs on him, but he kicked her out and disappeared.”

Ryan could sense trouble. It was McGarvey’s pattern. When he was given an assignment the first thing he did was drop out of sight. The son of a bitch was back in the field. He still hadn’t learned his lesson.

“We need to give them all the help we can. Have Tom Lynch do what he can for them. But it’s a safe bet that some Russian has hired him to kill someone. Probably a mafia thing. Or, maybe he’s even decided to work for Tarankov, and is stalking Prime Minister Kabatov. With a man like McGarvey anything is possible.”

“I’ll call Lynch and talk to him personally,” Moore said.

“Wait,” Ryan said. He’d had another thought. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we hire Elizabeth McGarvey as a translator over my objections a few months ago?”

Moore shrugged. “Is she some relation?”

“His daughter,” Ryan said. “Find out if she’s on the payroll. Maybe we’ll borrow her for this one.” Ryan smiled. “Who better to find a father, than his daughter?”

“Isn’t that a little extreme, Howard? She’s done nothing to harm the Agency has she?”

“We’re not going to harm her,” Ryan replied, holding his anger in check. “I’ll simply explain to her that we’d like to speak to her father, but that he’s gone to ground. We’d like her help getting a message to him. Nothing more than that, Tom.”

THIRTEEN

McGarvey’s train pulled into the old Leningrad Station at precisely 8:55 in the morning, and he took his two bags inside where he had a glass of beer, some black bread and caviar at the stand-up counter.

Customs, crossing the border from Finland, was much less stringent by rail than by air. Russian officers had come aboard outside Vyborg in the early evening just after supper to check tickets, passports and luggage. The train was full and they wanted to get back to their own meals, so they didn’t spend much time opening baggage, though they admired McGarvey’s computer, and even switched on his silencer disguised as a flashlight. It was bulky, but it worked.

He’d booked a private sleeping car, and after they’d passed through St. Petersburg he went to bed and had a reasonably restful sleep, though being back in Russia again put him on edge. It was tradecraft. In the old days this was called being in “,” where even a small mistake could cost you your freedom or your life.

There was nothing pretty about the station. It had been built during the Stalin era, and although it was very large and always busy, it was drab and gray. Lenin’s railway car was on permanent display track side, and in the vaulted arrivals hall a huge area had been set aside for booksellers to display their wares. They had a lot of traffic this morning. The last time McGarvey had been here there’d been more KGB officers than customers, but now everything was different. If anything, the people looked even more drab and depressed than they had under the old Communist regime, but they didn’t have to constantly look over their shoulders.

Even the food had been better, McGarvey thought, finishing his watery beer, though not by much.

He picked up his bags, bought a Moscow guidebook in French from one of the foreign currency shops, and made his way through the crowds to the taxi stands out front.

The weather was horrible, twenty degrees colder than Helsinki and snowing, though it wasn’t as windy. Big piles of filthy snow were everywhere, and the people on the streets were sullen. Traffic was monumental. No one paid any attention to stop lights or speed limits. Pedestrians surged across the broad Komsomol Prospekt at irregular intervals forcing the traffic to a standstill by the sheer press of bodies. Soldiers seemed to be everywhere, many of them in shabby uniforms, and many of them drunk despite the early hour.

Reading about conditions here and seeing television reports on the situation did not convey the true nature of what Moscow, and presumably the rest of Russia, had become. Even the most casual observer couldn’t help but see that the country was ripe for revolution. The problem was no one had any idea which way it would go when it came.

McGarvey took a cab to the newly refurbished Metropol Hotel on Marx Prospekt downtown. The Strand InterContinental in Helsinki had called ahead’ and reserved a room for him for three days. The brawny, mean-looking cabby was in a foul mood and cursed everybody and everything in his path, cutting off drivers, nearly running over pedestrians, and even pulling up on the sidewalk at one point to get around a traffic snarl.

When they pulled up at the hotel he demanded a hundred dollars from McGarvey who told him in French that he didn’t understand. The driver switched to guttural French and demanded 500 francs.

“Ce nest pas possible,” McGarvey said and he handed the driver a hundred-franc note.

For a second the man didn’t seem to comprehend what was happening, but then his face turned red. “Fuck your mother,” he swore in Russian, and he snatched a machete off the seat beside him.

Before he could swing it around, McGarvey smashed the side of his hand into the cabby’s collar bone at the base of his neck, then clapped the palms of his hands over the man’s ears.

The cabby reared back, screaming in pain. He dropped the machete and clutched at his head.

“Merci,” McGarvey said pleasantly. “Au revoir.” He climbed out of the taxi, got his bags and walked into the hotel lobby leaving the cabby screaming obscenities in the driveway, and the doorman completely indifferent.

The turn-of-the-century hotel had been completely redone a few years ago and was good even by western standards, though the service was somewhat indifferent. It took the pock-faced clerk fifteen minutes to find McGarvey’s reservations under the name Pierre Alfain, and another twenty minutes to run his credit card through the terminal. There was no bellman, so McGarvey took his own bags up to his old-fashioned but very well furnished room on the ninth floor. It had a spectacular view of the city looking toward the Kremlin’s walls and towers. A couple of minutes later a bellman in uniform showed up. He closed the curtains that McGarvey had opened, then opened them again, turned on all the lights in the room and the bathroom, flushed the toilet and checked the water flow in the sink and tub, then turned on the television full blast, and held out his hand for a tip.

McGarvey gave the man a few francs.

“Thanks,” he said in English. “You speak English?”

“A. little.”

“That’s good. Anything you need, anything whatever, you just call me. Name’s Artur. Women, coke, maybe you Belgians like little boys? Call me, you’ll see.”

“I’ll keep you in mind, Artur.”

The bellman gave him a long, appraising look, then left the room.

McGarvey locked the door, then searched the room for bugs, but he didn’t find any. Either they weren’t there because the successor to the KGB didn’t care, something he doubted, or they’d been buried in the walls when the hotel was refurbished. The main thing was there were no hidden closed-circuit television cameras.

He opened his laptop, and removed the bottom panel, revealing his pistol and spare magazines. He pocketed one of the magazines, then tested the Walther’s action, stuffed it in his belt at the small of his back, and reassembled the computer.

McGarvey had purchased a pair of gloves, a Russian fur hat and a pair of warm hiking shoes from the department store around the corner from his hotel in Helsinki. He changed into the heavier shoes, stuffed the Moscow guidebook in his coat pocket and left the hotel.

Killing Tarankov and getting away presented a number of challenging problems, not the least of which was the when and the where. The man and his entourage were constantly on the move. And whenever he roared^ into a city he was immediately surrounded by thousands, sometimes even tens of thousands of adoring people. He was worshiped like a god, and his people took full advantage of this fact, in effect using the crowds as a buffer against any would-be assassin. It was the reverse of how other security services operated. But it worked.

On the way from Helsinki, McGarvey had figured out the second half of that problem. The where would be here in Moscow, because if Tarankov meant to take over the government, it was here he’d have to come. Terrorizing every other city in Russia would and already had taken him a long way. But Moscow had always been the center of Russia. Even when the governments before the revolution were housed in St. Petersburg, Moscow was still the heart and soul of Russia. Holy Moscow. With the breakup of the Soviet Union nothing had changed in that respect.

And Moscow had its center, Red Square.

McGarvey stood in front of the big department store GUM. and stared across the broad square at Lenin’s Tomb at the base of the Kremlin. He’d been here during his tenure at Moscow Station early in his career, and on several occasions since. He’d last been here eighteen months ago. And in that short time the city had gone sharply downhill, though traffic was worse. The entire nation was starving to death, but cars were everywhere, Russian built Ladas and Zhigulis, plus a surprisingly high number of Mercedes and BMWs. What little middle class there’d been before the breakup of the Soviet Union was almost completely gone now, leaving Russians stratified into the very poor or the very rich. There was no in between.

The system had failed, completely and miserably, and yet this morning despite the horrible weather the line in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum was as long as it had ever been. Young people looking for something to believe in, and old people who knew what they believed in and desperately wanted to regain the old ways.

Lenin’s Mausoleum and Red Square, free of anything but pedestrian traffic or official vehicles, seemed to be the only constants left in Moscow. The only bits of the old days that had remained, by outward appearances, the same.

He walked across the square where he bought a bouquet of wilted flowers from an old babushka at a kiosk, and joined the line for Lenin’s tomb in front of the red brick History Museum opposite the entrance to the Alexandrovsky Garden. It took about twenty minutes until he got to the doors. Since he was obviously a foreigner, he had to show his passport. The people in line behind him stopped a respectful distance away as he approached Lenin’s embalmed body in its glass-topped coffin, studied the corpse’s surprisingly intact features, then laid his flowers with the others on the marble floor. As he turned to leave, one of the uniformed guards came over, smiled sadly, and shook his hand.

“Merci, monsieur,” he said gently.

“He was a great man. Many of us in Belgium admire what he stood for,” McGarvey said humbly. He glanced toward the broad marble stairs at the back. “It would be an honor to be allowed to stand on the balcony where so many great men have watched the May Day parades. Is it permitted?”

“For you we will make an exception,” the guard replied. He led McGarvey up to the wind-swept balcony.

When Tarankov made his triumphal entry to Moscow it would be to this place. McGarvey looked out across the square, apparently lost in a vision of what it would be like to stand in front of the soldiers and tanks and rockets parading through the square while a million people watched. Overcome with emotion, he turned away and raised his eyes to the heavens. The Kremlin’s brick walls rose above the mausoleum. McGarvey measured the firing angles and distances for a shooter placed somewhere on the wall above, and decided-the shot would be an easy one. The problem would be getting away afterward. It would be difficult, perhaps even impossible.

“Thank you,” he said turning back to the guard.

“Perhaps someday you will have greatness returned to you.”

The guard bridled, but then nodded. “We will, and sooner than those fools inside realize.”

Back outside, McGarvey turned left and walked up the hill to the Sobakina Tower pedestrian gate at the northern corner of the Kremlin, bought a ticket for the grounds and, taking out his guide book, went in. The walls beneath the one-hundred-eighty-foot tower were twelve feet thick to were a secret well and a passageway out of the fortress into the Neglinnaya River which flowed underground. He’d considered that a possible escape route. But access to the passageway was through a series of heavy steel gates in the tower, that on the day Tarankov made his triumphal entrance into Moscowwould likely be heavily guarded. It would be possible to take out the guards and blow the gates. In the noise and confusion of Tarankov’s appearance such activities might go unnoticed. But if he became trapped in the river passage it would be a simple matter for the authorities to wait at the Moscow River outlet for him to appear, and he would be captured. It would be impossible to take the underground river upstream.

But the Kremlin still intrigued him, because no one would expect Tarankov to be shot from behind. The problems here were threefold; getting past the heavy security, making the shot unobserved, possibly from the top of the Kremlin wall directly above and behind the speaker’s balcony atop Lenin’s mausoleum, easy if the only consideration were sight lines, and making good his escape for which he wanted several options. He didn’t think he could rely on one escape route no matter how foolproof it seemed.

The few people wandering around the Kremlin paid him little attention as he sauntered past the Arsenal to the Senate Building, which backed the wall directly behind Lenin’s tomb, to his left. From time to time he stopped, read from his tour book then looked up, as if he were trying to orient himself, while he studied the top floors of the building. The Senate was one of the few buildings in the Kremlin that were closed to the public. But with the proper credentials it would be possible to gain entrance to the building. He might be able to make his way to the roof from where a shot at Tarankov’s back would be possible. Assuming that guards would not be placed on the roof against just such a possibility, he would still be faced with his escape after the kill.

Once Tarankov was down and the direction of the shot established, which might only take seconds, the Kremlin would be sealed. His only hope at that point would be blending in until the confusion subsided and the gates were once again open. It would mean he’d have to come up with foolproof documents and a rock solid disguise — a shaky proposition at best. It left him no options, unless he had a set of papers and a disguise other than the one he used to gain entrance, or an alternate route over or beneath the walls.

There was something about this place that struck him more like a prison than the seat of government. It was a fortress which protected itself not only from without, but from within.

He looked at the problem from another direction as he continued past the Supreme Soviet building and headed toward the Spassky Tower gate which opened onto Red Square. If his objective was to get inside the Kremlin to assassinate someone, he would face the same problem: that of breaching the heavily guarded walls. He would have to come up with several alternatives to get inside, and then more options for getting out.

Stopping a moment to consult his guide book again, he studied the area between the Supreme Soviet and Senate buildings and the wall from which the Senate Tower rose. Lenin’s Tomb was just on the other side. He made his decision. The Kremlin’s walls, since they’d seen the last of Napoleon in 1812, had withstood every assault except those of a political nature. As intriguing as the possibility was taking Tarankov by surprise from behind, he dismissed it. He would kill Tarankov while the man made his speech atop Lenin’s Mausoleum, but it would have to be done from outside, somewhere around Red Square, somewhere within a range that would give him a reasonable shot. Say two to three hundred yards.

McGarvey walked through Spassky Tower Gate back out to Red Square, snow now falling in earnest. The wind had picked up so that visibility was restricted. But rising out of the swirling snowstorm less than three hundred meters away were the fantastical shapes and colors of me domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. The building was to Russia what the Eiffel Tower was to France, a symbol of the nation’s ties with the past. Turning, he studied the line in front of Lenin’s Tomb and the speaker’s balcony above. Tarankov would come here not only to face the million people who would crowd into Red Square, but also to face Russia’s past. St. Basil’s..

Pocketing his guidebook, McGarvey made his way across the square to the main entrance of the church where he bought a ticket and went inside the antechamber which housed a museum. A dozen people, some of them foreigners, studied the displays which depicted the history of the cathedral and the story of its construction. A cutaway model showed the layout of the entire structure which consisted of nine main chapels — the tall slope-roofed one in the middle, four big onion domes on the four corners and four smaller ones in between. All of the chapels were linked by an elevated gallery, and all of the chapels had exits that led either out onto Red Square or into the rest of the cathedral complex and a small garden.

The church was built on bedrock at the south end of Red Square, its foundations driven deep underground in an area honeycombed with subterranean rivers all flowing down to the Moscow River. The lower levels held crypts which in the late seventeenth century were used to house Russia’s state treasury. Like the Kremlin, St. Basil’s had also been a fortress of sorts, with its own dark secrets and underground passageways and escape routes.

McGarvey left the museum and walked into the main tower which was a forest of scaffolding rising one hundred and seven feet into the darkness. Directly above were the covered galleries connecting the other eight chapels, and at the rear were iron gates which led below to the crypts. Two old women stood near the front of the main chapel, their heads bowed in prayer.

On the day Tarankov arrived in Moscow, St. Basil’s would be closed. The church had become too great a symbol of Russia’s deeply religious past for it to remain open when he was giving his message for the future. There could only be one god in Holy Russia, and the Tarantula meant to be that god.

McGarvey climbed the stairs to the gallery on his left, and followed it around in a large circle to each of the other eight chapels, descending into each where he searched for and found the various ways outside.

Two hours later he was back in the main tower where he studied the locks leading into the crypts. They were massive, but made out of soft iron and could easily be blown by a very small amount of plastic explosive, or cut with bolt-cutters.

He looked up through the scaffolding. There would be no problem climbing to the top, where from one of the openings he would have a clear shot at Tarankov standing on the balcony above Lenin’s Mausoleum.

From that point he would have a couple of minutes to make his way down out of the tower, where, depending on how organized the authorities were, he could descend into the crypts and make his escape through one of the underground passages, or make his way through one of the chapels and outside where he could lose himself in the confusion.

He had the where. Next he needed the when.

FOURTEEN

Viktor Yemlin sat across the broad conference table from Yuri Kabatov, who’d been appointed interim president, and Yeltsin’s former chief of security Lieutenant-General Alexander Korzhakov, watching both men read copies of his overnight report He’d been summoned to the office of the director of the SVR late last night where he’d been ordered to prepare a briefing for the president on the West’s reaction to their concocted story about Yeltsin’s death.

McGarvey was right, of course. The Americans did not believe the story. But to this point they continued to maintain the position that they did. President Lindsay was scheduled to attend the state funeral on Friday, and the western news media continued to report on Yeltsin’s life, all but ignoring any references to Tarankov and the incident at the Riga Nuclear Power Station in Dzerzhinskiy. Yemlin used to admire the honest relationship the CIA apparently had with the President and Congress, until he’d come to learn that truth was highly subjective and depended on the political mood of the government body being reported to. Presidents of the United States and of Russia were alike in that they were mere men in difficult positions who wanted to hear what they wanted to hear.

He’d spent all night gathering the latest information from the analysts and translators in the various departments of the North American Division. By one in the morning it was 5:00 p.m. in Washington, and the first of the dailies from the Russian Embassy on 16th Street were coming in, along with the first late afternoon reports from the Russian delegation to the United Nations. As he’d learned to do, Yemlin refrained from any speculation. He merely presented the facts as they came to him, placing them in an outline that supported what Kabatov’s new government wanted to believe.

By 6:00 a.m.” he’d finished his first rough draft report, which ran to sixty-eight pages, with another three hundred pages of translations, mostly of articles that had appeared in the early editions of the New York Times and Washington Post.

By 8:00 a.m.” the translations of ABC’s, NEC’s, CBS’s and CNN’s 11:00 p.m. news reports came across his desk, and he included them in his final report which was finally ready at 10:00 a.m.” exactly one hour before he was scheduled to arrive at the Kremlin.

General Korzhakov finished first, and closed the report. He stared at Yemlin, his dark eyes burning, his thick lips pursed until President Kabatov also finished and looked up.

“The fiction seems to be holding,” Kabatov said.

“It would appear so, Mr. President,” Yemlin said tiredly. He was too old for all-night sessions. His eyes burned, his throat was sore and he felt as if he couldn’t go on much longer before he had to get some rest.

“In any event it’s in their best interest to go along with us so long as our problems remain internal,” Korzhakov said, his voice flat and unemotional. “Has the SVR given thought to that? Because I’m sure that the CIA is watching us closer than ever.”

“My division’s efforts are directed toward North America, General,” Yemlin said, after a careful moment. “We have detected no outward indications that the CIA or FBI have begun to take a more active role against our diplomats in Washington or New York.” He shrugged. “As for internally, that is a matter for the FSK. General Yuryn could best address the issue.”

“You’re both still the KGB,” Korzhakov burst out, angrily. “You communicate with each other.”

“To this point, on this issue, my division has been given nothing. I assume that the service has managed to place an agent aboard Tarankov’s train. But no one has said anything to us.”

Korzhakov and Kabatov exchanged a glance, and the Russian president sat back, content to let his chief of security continue.

“Apparently there have been difficulties. The man they sent was. found last night — what was left of him-in a taxi parked in front of the Lubyanka.” Korzhakov ran his fingers through his thick black hair. There is a leak at high levels.”

“It was expected.”

“General Yuryn suspects that you may know something about it.”

“My division—?”

“You personally,” Korzhakov said bluntly. He opened a file folder. “On the evening of 23 March you and Konstantin Sukhoruchkin took off aboard an Air Federation passenger jet on a flight plan to Volgograd. In fact it is believed that you flew to Tbilisi.” Korzhakov looked up. “Can you tell us the nature of your trip?”

Yemlin was stunned, but he was professional enough not to let it show. In this business you always planned for the worst for which a partial truth was sometimes more effective than a well-crafted lie. “We went to see Eduard Shevardnadze.”

“You admit it?” President Kabatov demanded, rousing himself. “Da. President Shevardnadze is an old friend, whose opinion I value highly. I was troubled after President Yeltsin’s assassination, as was Konstantin. We wanted some advice.”

“In regards to what?” Korzhakov asked.

“Tarankov’s chances for becoming President of Russia and starting us back to the old ways,” Yemlin said. “It would destroy us.”

“I agree with that much at least,” President Kabatov said. “But Shevardnadze is no friend of Russia’s.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but he is not our enemy. Georgia has just as much to fear from Tarankov as we do.”

“What was his advice?” Korzhakov asked coolly.

“He gave none,” Yemlin said heavily, letting his eyes slide to the damnable file folder.

“Did you tell him the truth about Yeltsin’s murder?”

“Yes,” Yemlin said looking up defiantly.

“Traitor—”

“Nyet,” Yemlin interrupted sharply. “I love Russia no less than you, Comrade General.”

“What were you doing in Helsinki yesterday?”

Yemlin was glad that he was seated. He didn’t think his legs would support his weight. “Shopping,” he replied. “I’m no traitor, but I’m no idealist either.”

“Were you shopping in Paris last week as well?” Korzhakov asked after a moment.

Yemlin forced himself to remain calm. If they knew anything substantive they would have arrested him by now. This was General Yuryn’s doing. He was caught in the middle of a factional fight that had been brewing since the KGB had been split into the internal intelligence service and the external service. Yeltsin’s murder was a catalyst that the SVR had planned using against General Yuryn. The wily old fox was simply fighting back.

“Among other things,” he said.

“What things?”

“As you probably know I own a small apartment in Paris.” “Do you have a mistress there as well, whom you’re supporting?”

Yemlin refused to answer.

“A bank account, perhaps?” Korzhakov suggested. “You crafty old bastard, have you been salting away money in foreign banks all along?”

“No. Nor is that why you called me here today,” Yemlin said looking into President Kabatov’s eyes. Sudden understanding dawned on him. They were frightened, and they were clutching at straws. “I will not accept blame for the failures of the FSK or the Militia not only to protect President Yeltsin, but to arrest Tarankov.”

Korzhakov flared but said nothing.

“Mr. President, if our government is divided, if we fight amongst ourselves, Tarankov will win,” Yemlin said trying one last time to convince them that nothing less than the nation was at stake. “We’re trying to become a nation of laws. That means laws for everyone, from kulaks to presidents.”

“You’ve spent a lot of time in the West, Viktor Pavlovich. Is that what you learned?” Korzhakov asked. “Because if it is, then you are a naive man.”

“I’m an old man who has given his life in service to his country. I would like peace now.”

“Thank you for your report,” Korzhakov said abruptly. “We’ll expect to be updated should anything significant occur.”

“Very well,” Yemlin said. He rose and went to the door.

“Viktor Pavlovich,” President Kabatov said. “We are not the enemy. Nor do we believe you are. But you have an enemy in General Yuryn. A powerful enemy. Take care of yourself.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I will.”

Yemlin paused at the head of the broad granite stairs in front of the Senate Building, letting the sharp wind and harsh snow beating against his body clear his head. He was so mentally and physically tired that he felt detached, as if his skin didn’t fit, and his feet weren’t his own.

Russians loved intrigue. It was in the national spirit, as chess and poetry were, and he was just as guilty as the rest of them for deriving pleasure from playing the game. But in this instance they weren’t talking about a mere intelligence coup. This time the future of Russia was at stake, and for one frightening moment he wished that he could recall McGarvey, or more accurately he wished that he could justify such a move to himself. But he could not.

Someone touched his elbow and he looked up, startled, into the sharply defined features of Moscow Mayor Vadim Cheremukhin.

“Viktor Pavlovich, you look like a man who could use some cheering up,” Cheremukhin said. His face was flushed and even in the wind Yemlin could smell vodka on the man’s breath.

“A good night’s sleep.” “Time enough for that for both’ of us soon, hey?” Cheremukhin said. He was of the old school like Yemlin, but less of a moderate, although behind Kabatov he was among the most important men in Russia today. “Come on, we’ll dismiss your driver and take my car over to the club. What you need is a steam bath, a rubdown, some good champagne and caviar, and then maybe a girl. You can sleep afterward.”

Cheremukhin’s private club, the Magesterium, had been constructed for his predecessor Yuri Luzhkov who’d complained that he had no place to go after hours. The Mafia had built it, along with a lot of other clubs throughout the country, for the new elite after the Soviet Union had disintegrated. Gangsters, movie stars, businessmen and politicians all had their own private sanctuaries that stressed physical security along with booze, women, casinos, and rat-races through neon-lit mazes. Anything went at the clubs; from drugs to little boys and from S&M to any other kind of kinky sex imaginable, and some that wasn’t imaginable. The Magesterium provided all of that, plus good food, quiet rooms, subservient service, mostly from black African students recruited from Patrice Lumumba University, an excellent library and oak-lined conference rooms, reading nooks, a movie theater and a computer learning center.

“I think not,” Yemlin protested. He’d been to some of the clubs, the Magesterium included. He found them to be too frantic for his own tastes. A symbol of some of what was wrong with Russia.

“Nonsense,” Cheremukhin said. He waved Yemlin’s driver off, and his Zil limousine slid in behind it. He took Yemlin by the arm and guided him down the stairs and into the back seat for the short ride over to the club.

Yemlin was too weary to fight him. A glass of champagne, a steam bath and a rubdown would be nice. Afterward he would make his own way home. He knew a number of men who’d succumbed to the club scene, their lives centered around their evenings like a drug addict’s around his needle. He wasn’t one of them.

“The center holds,” Cheremukhin said, as they passed through Spassky gate into red square, and turned right down toward the river past St. Basil’s.

Yemlin wasn’t sure he’d heard Cheremukhin correctly, and was about to ask what he said, when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a familiar figure, and his blood froze. It was McGarvey crossing Red Square. He fought the overwhelming urge to turn around and look back, or let slip an outward sign that he’d just been shaken to the core. McGarvey here in Moscow. Already. It didn’t seem possible.

“It’s guys like you who’ve keeping everything together,” Cheremukhin said. “Kabatov doesn’t have a clue, and Korzhakov is almost as bad a prospect as Tar ankov. But at least we’ve gotten rid of Yeltsin.”

Yemlin focused on the Mayor. “What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

Yemlin shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I thought that’s why you were in the Kremlin. Didn’t Kabatov send for you to ask your opinion? He’s worried about the Americans, he doesn’t know how they’re going ta take it.”

“Take what?”

“Kabatov has been appointed chairman of the Communist Party. The center holds. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but this time I think he’s stumbled onto something. If we take over the Communist Party, Tar ankov will have nowhere to go. It’s what the Americans call an end run.”

Yemlin’s head was spinning. If McGarvey killed Tar ankov the problem wouldn’t be so acute. In the confusion and panic that would follow no one would take notice of Kabatov’s stupid move. But he did not have the luxury of that assurance, nor could he let on even if he did. “Kabatov is a fool,” he stammered.

“Agreed, but he can be controlled.”

“By whom?” Yemlin responded angrily. “Tarankov will use it as further proof that democracy has failed. It might even force him to make his move sooner than the June elections.”

Cheremukhin eyed Yemlin critically. “I see what you mean, but I don’t agree with you. The Party is” winning elections again because it’s what the people want. But it’s not the old Party.”

“Kabatov is now President and Prime Minister of Russia as well as Party Chairman. Tarankov only has to topple one man to control everything. We’ve done his ground work for him. I’m sure he’s quite pleased.”

“He’ll be arrested.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Yemlin shot back before he could stop himself.

Cheremukhin’s eyebrow rose. “Do you know something that we don’t, Viktor Pavlovich?”

“No,” Yemlin said. “But trying to arrest the Tarantula cost Yeltsin his life, and I don’t think that Kabatov fully understands what he’s up against.”

“Some of us do, believe me,” Cheremukhin said darkly.

“I hope so,” Yemlin replied, distantly.

It was before noon, and the snowstorm had intensified, snarling traffic in the ordinary lanes. Cheremukhin’s limousine sped across the river on the Great Stone Bridge in front of the Rossiya Hotel, the official lane empty in both directions. Yemlin had to fight the urge to turn and look over his shoulder at Red Square which in any event had already disappeared. It had begun. McGarvey was in the field. In the heart of Moscow staking out his killing field. Yemlin had & fair idea what McGarvey might be planning. But if Tarankov managed to get this far they might have already lost.

“We would like your help with this,” Cheremukhin said. “You know a lot of people. I’m sure that you even know some of Tarankov’s supporters in the SVR and FSK. There has to be a way.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“If you prefer not to work with Kabatov I’ll do whatever I can to help. I have connections too. Just say the word and I’ll pull strings.”

“For now you can keep an eye on Korzhakov. I want to be informed when they plan on making their move against Tarankov.”

“It won’t be in Nizhny Novgorod, I can tell you that much,” Cheremukhin said. “But I’ll see what I can come up with. Kabatov trusts me.”

The limousine pulled through the gates onto the private grounds of what once was a sewing machine factory. The parking lot was half-filled with Zils and Mercedes SELs. Guards dressed in American Marine, combat fatigues and armed with M16 assault rifles were everywhere. The driver pulled up to the front doors, and they were escorted inside to a large reception area that looked like the lobby of a luxury resort hotel. Cheremukhin handed him over to a beautiful young black woman wearing a skimpy bikini beneath a transparent gauze jacket.

“Renee, I would like you to meet my friend Viktor. He is to be given anything he wants, and you’ll put it on my tab,” Cheremukhin said.

The young woman lit up in a smile as ‘she took Yemlin’s arm. She smelled of cinnamon and some other spice, her accent very charming. “My pleasure to meet you, Viktor.”

“Start with some champagne, a bath, then a rubdown,” Cheremukhin grinned. “After that, who knows? But he’s tired, so he needs some peace and quiet.”

Yemlin felt as if he were on the verge of collapse. So much had happened in the past week that he was in sensory overload. He wanted to sleep.

“Enjoy,” Cheremukhin said, and he left.

“That Vadim is a good guy,” Renee said innocently. “Whatever he says around here goes. So you just leave it to me, Viktor, okay?”

“Okay,” Yemlin mumbled, too tired to do anything but go with the flow.

She led him down one of the thickly carpeted corridors, the lighting subdued. Soft music played from hidden speakers and she chatted like a magpie about everything from Paris fashions to the wonderful people she’d met since coming to the university. At one point he stumbled and she pulled him up, and put his arm around her thin shoulders, his fingertips brushing her breasts.

“Silly me going on like this while you, poor man, are nearly dead on your feet,” she cooed. “But I have just the thing for your tired bones. You’ll see. Just what the doctor ordered.”

Although the club was busy there wasn’t a hint of noise or activity back here. Renee brought him into a three-room suite luxuriously furnished, and led him immediately into a palatial bathroom with a huge sunken tub filled with steaming, scented water.

A moment later a young man dressed only in a white swimming suit came in behind them with a bottle of champagne and one flute.

Yemlin stepped back.

“Here’s Valeri to help us,” Renee beamed. “Isn’t he just beautiful? We call him the little doll.”

Yemlin had never seen a more handsome man, not even among the American movie stars. In his mid twenties, his athletic body was slightly tanned, his facial features perfectly proportioned, his eyes startlingly blue, and his teeth gleaming white.

“Renee exaggerates,” Valeri said, smiling. His voice was deep, his Russian cultured. “But she’s cute. Would you care for a glass of wine while you’re in your bath, Mr. Yemlin?”

Yemlin said nothing. The girl tittered. “Valeri is just a masseur. He doesn’t bite.”

Yemlin smiled despite himself. For a moment he’d been star-struck like a silly old lady. “Sure. And after”’ my bath and rubdown, I want to get a few hours sleep.” He looked at the girl. “Alone.”

“Oh pooh,” Renee said, and she helped him undress as Valeri poured a glass of champagne.

The bath water was a perfect temperature. The heat seeped into Yemlin’s bones, and he sighed in contentment. Renee got undressed, her breasts high and firm and she got into the tub with him, and started on his broad back with a Finnish scrub sponge. Valeri handed him the champagne then went into the bedroom where he laid out his oils and lotions beside a low, towel draped massage table.

The champagne was Russian, sweet and cold, just as he liked it, the bath soothing, and Renee’s ministrations wonderful. After a few minutes Valeri refilled his glass, and Yemlin began to feel like he was drifting, the sensation wonderfully comforting. He was in a safe haven where for the first time since he could remember he felt warm, and secure.

When he was finished, Renee and Valeri helped him out of the bath, dried his body with warm towels, and led him to the massage table, where he lay down on his back.

Renee left, and Valeri began massaging Yemlin’s neck and shoulder muscles with an incredibly strong, but gentle touch, his hands slippery with warm oils.

Yemlin watched the young man for several minutes before realizing he was naked. Muscles corded down his back, and rippled his firm buttocks. When he straightened up, Yemlin saw that his penis was large and semierect. He knew that he should be embarrassed, but the boy was so handsome that watching him was like watching an erotic movie, and Yemlin began to respond despite himself. “That’s better, Viktor,” the young man said, gently massaging Yemlin’s inner thighs, his finger tips flicking around Yemlin’s anus. ” The effect was galvanizing. Yemlin had not felt anything like it since he’d had a prostitute in Tokyo. A groan of pleasure escaped from his throat.

Valeri’s lips closed around Yemlin’s penis, the sensation incredible. He could do nothing but lie back as the young man took him deep into his mouth. It was like nothing he’d ever felt, pleasure building and rising in waves. He’d been a thirty-five-year-old man before that Tokyo prostitute had done such a thing for him, and right now the pleasure was every bit as good, even though he felt a pang of guilt at the back of his mind for having it done to him by a man.

And then he was coming, as he’d not come for many years, the intense feeling of relief coursing through his body like nothing else could. His lotion-filled hand was on Valeri’s rigid penis now, the young man’s lips next to his head, cooing, and whispering softly.

“Paris was wonderful, Viktor. Just like now. Was it with your mistress?”

“McGarvey,” Yemlin murmured.

“Her name is McGarvey?”

“No, Kirk,” Yemlin mumbled. He wanted to return the pleasure the young man had given him. “Kirk has agreed. He’s here.”

“In Moscow?”

“Yes, he’s here.”

“Why, Viktor? Why is Kirk McGarvey in Moscow?” Valeri whispered.

“To help us. To save the Rodina.”

“How?”

“To kill the Tarantula. Kill Tarankov. It’s the only way.”

“That’s very good, Viktor,” Valeri cooed. “Very good. Now tell me about Kirk McGarvey. Tell me everything.”

FIFTEEN

McGarvey spent the afternoon in the lobby of the Metropol Hotel sipping mineral water and scouring a dozen of the newspapers and news magazines published in Moscow for anything pertaining to Tarankov.

As he suspected there was plenty of coverage about President Yeltsin’s heart attack, but none of the articles offered any speculation on the real cause of his death. No one was making a connection between the attack on the Riga nuclear power station in the Moscow suburb of Dzerzhinskiy and the bomb blast in Red Square. Nor did any of the articles on the power plant explosion mention Tarankov’s name. In fact most of the articles reported that the attack had been staged by so far unknown terrorists or dissidents, who possibly were disgruntled workers at the plant.

Russia’s capacity for self-inflicted delusions was almost as great as the nation’s capacity for suffering. If you’re hungry read a cookbook.

But read it alone, be cause your neighbors might see it and want to come to your house for a meal.

Novy Mir, the magazine that had serialized Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, however, reported, in a two paragraph piece buried in the middle under a column headed “Upheavals,” that General Yevgenni Tarankov gave a speech recently in Dzerzhinskiy, and was scheduled to speak again tomorrow in Nizhny Novgorod, a city about three hundred miles east of Moscow that under the Soviet rule had been renamed Gorki.

It was Russian doublespeak. Anyone in the know reading the article would immediately understand that the magazine suspected the attack on the Riga power plant had been staged by Tarankov. By reporting his next speaking engagement, the magazine was practically daring the government to do something about it.

Considering the liberties that Russian journalists had been taking for nearly ten years, the lack of coverage Tarankov was getting bespoke the seriousness with which his campaign was being taken. Everyone in Moscow was frightened to death that if and when Tarankov took over he would purge every newspaper or magazine that had given him bad press.

McGarvey’s guide book provided the information that the most convenient train to Nizhny Novgorad left at 11:10 p.m. from the Yaroslavl Station arriving overnight just before 7:30 a.m. But taking the train presented two immediate problems. The first was that going there just now as a foreigner would be dangerous. If Tarankov’s people were as well organized as McGarvey thought they must be, the airport and train stations would probably be monitored for any suspicious people. He did not want to blow his Belgian cover yet. It would provide a solid track that would mysteriously disappear should the need arise.

The second problem was his hotel room. In Russia if you checked out of your hotel you had only two choices. You either checked into another hotel or you left the city.

In one of the newspapers he’d read an article about the prostitution rings that operated out of several of the hotels in Moscow, using women from the former East Germany and Poland. The Metropol was not one of them, but McGarvey circled several of the hotel names in the article, underlining one of them several times as if for emphasis. His bellman Artur had gone through his things. Nothing was missing yet, but he would be sure to see the newspaper with the circled articles and believe that McGarvey hadn’t simply abandoned his room.

Leaving everything behind except for his money, his gun and the clothes on his back, he emerged from the hotel a few minutes before 5:00 p.m.” the afternoon dusk already deepening in the still falling and blowing snow. Two blocks away he found a cab to take him out to the flea market at the Dinamo Stadium beyond the outer ring road near the Frunze Central Airfield. The going was difficult but the driver didn’t seem to mind. He kept slyly looking at McGarvey’s image in the rearview mirror.

The stadium’s parking lot was huge. Despite the horrible weather hundreds of entrepreneurs sold everything from Kalashnikov rifles to western currencies from stalls, or from the backs of their cars or trucks. Barrels filled with burning trash or oily rags lent a surreal air to the place. Perhaps a thousand people wandered from stall to stall. Some huddled around the wind-whipped flames. Still others, many of them well dressed and accompanied by armed men, lugged their purchases back to Mercedes and BMWs parked at the fringes, and guarded by other armed men.

“This is not such an easy place,” his driver said pulling up. “Maybe you could use some help,”

McGarvey held up a British hundred-pound note. “I collect military uniforms. Identity cards. Leave orders, pay books. That sort of thing.”

“I know a guy who has that stuff,” the cabby said, reaching for the money. But McGarvey pulled it back.

“I don’t want any trouble. I want to buy a few things, and then I want you to bring me back downtown to the same place you picked me up.”

“You need some muscle. Five hundred pounds.”

“A hundred now and another hundred when we get back to the city.”

“I don’t want any bullshit,” the driver protested as he reached for something in his jacket.

McGarvey pulled out his pistol, jammed the barrel into the man’s thick neck, and pulled the hammer back. “Don’t fuck with me, I’m not in the mood,” he said in guttural Russian.

The driver froze, his eyes on McGarvey’s in the rearview mirror.

“You can either make an easy two hundred pounds, or you can try to take everything I have.”

The cabby shrugged and laughed nervously. “Your Russian is pretty good, you know. Where’d you pick it up?”

“School One,” McGarvey said. It was the KGB’s old spy training school. One of the best in the world.

“Okay,” the cabby said, blanching. “No trouble.”

McGarvey uncocked his gun, stuffed it in his pocket and gave the cabby the hundred pounds.

They drove around to the west side of the vast parking lot where the cabby led McGarvey to a ring of a half dozen army supply trucks and troop transports. Within a half-hour McGarvey bought a canvas carryall and an army corporal’s uniform, including greatcoat, olive drab hat, gloves and cheap leather boots. He also bought the identity papers and leave orders for Dimitri Shostokovich stationed at Zakamensk in the far southeast along the Chinese border. The burly entrepreneur who sold him the lot for a hundred pounds stamped the current dates on the orders, and flashed McGarvey a gold-toothed grin.

“The photographs don’t match, but no one will look very closely,” he said. His breath smelled like onions and beer. “You’ve got eleven days until you’re A.W.O.L.. But nobody gives a fuck about that either.” He stuffed everything into the carryall.

Several men came into the circle of trucks and stood around one of the barrels of burning rags.

“Time to go,” McGarvey’s driver warned.

McGarvey reached his hand into his coat pocket and partially withdrew his gun. He looked directly into the salesman’s eyes. “I don’t think those gentlemen mean us any harm.”

“No,” the salesman said after a moment. “But if there is nothing else you wish to buy, perhaps it is time to go. Unless you would like some help with your… project.”

“What project would that be?” McGarvey asked easily.

The salesman motioned toward the carryall. “Maybe you yourself are a businessman. I have certain connections.”

McGarvey seemed to think about it for a moment. “How do I find you?”

“I’m here every night. Just ask for Vasha.”

“The … project could be big. Maybe you couldn’t handle it.”

Vasha licked his lips. “You might be surprised.”

McGarvey picked up the carryall. “I’ll keep you in mind.”

“Okay, you do that.”

On the way back into the city the cabby once again kept looking at McGarvey’s image in the rearview mirror. He sensed that some kind of a deal was going down and he was hungry. He wanted to be a part of it.

“I know this city. I could take you anywhere you want to go,” he said hopefully. “Nobody can watch their own back one hundred percent. I’ve got good eyes and plenty of guts. And I’ve got some pretty goddamned good connections. I brought you to Vasha with no trouble.”

“What’s your name?” McGarvey asked.

“Arkady.”

“How can I reach you? Day or night?”

Arkady snatched a business card from a holder on the dash and passed it back. “How do I reach you?”

“You don’t,” McGarvey said. The cabby’s name was Arkady Astimovich and he worked for Martex, one of the private cab companies in the city. “We’ll see how you do this time, Arkasha. Keep your mouth shut like you promised, and I might have something for you.”

“What about tonight?”

“No. And don’t try to follow me. A little bit rich is better than very much dead. Do you understand?”

They pulled up at the curb a couple ‘of blocks from the Metropol near the Moscow Arts Theater. Traffic was heavy tonight. The driver stared at McGarvey’s reflection for a few moments. “I understand,” he said.

McGarvey handed him the second hundred pounds, got out of the cab and disappeared into the blowing snow and crowds with his canvas carryall.

He ducked into the shadows of a shop doorway just around the corner, and waited for five minutes, but the cab never showed up. Astimovich was hungry, but apparently he was also smart.

Hefting his carryall, McGarvey walked down to the metro station on Gorki Street and bought a token for a few kopecks. Just inside he studied the system map which showed the stop for the Leningrad, Kazan and Stations was Leningradskaya. He put his token in the gate, and when the light turned green he descended to the busy platforms. It took him several minutes to figure out which train was his, and he got aboard moments before the doors closed. There were less than a dozen people aboard the car, among them four roughly dressed young men, whom McGarvey took to be in their twenties. They eyed him as he took a seat by the door, the carryall between him and the window.

He had no illusions about what Russia had become, but since his arrival in Moscow this morning the only cop he’d seen was the one directing traffic near the hotel. In the past the Militia seemed to be everywhere, including the metro stations. But Moscow, and presumably the entire country, had sunk into an anarchy of the street. The only faction with any real power was the Mafia and the armies of private bodyguards. Street crime was not completely out of hand yet because businessmen and shopkeepers paid protection money called krysha, which literally meant roof. Without it you were either a nobody or you were dead. And the Militia might come if they were called.

At the next stop a couple of old women got aboard, spotted the four young men, and immediately stepped off. A couple of the other passengers also got out, and the remainder kept their eyes downcast.

Three stops later all the other passengers got off the car, leaving only McGarvey and the four men, who got up and languidly took up positions at the front and rear doors. They didn’t speak nor did they make any effort to approach McGarvey, but they watched him.

The public address system announced the next stop was Leningrad Station, and as the train slowed down McGarvey got up and went to the back door. One of the young men grinned, showing his bad teeth. He started to say something when McGarvey smashed the heel of his heavy boot into the man’s right kneecap, the leg snapping with an audible pop.

He went down with a piercing scream. The second man shoved him aside with one hand while fumbling in his ragged coat pocket with his other.

Before he could pull out a weapon, McGarvey smashed him in the face with a roundhouse right, his head bouncing off the door frame. McGarvey pulled him forward, off balance, and as he doubled over, drove a knee in the man’s face.

McGarvey pulled out his gun, and brought it up as he swiveled around in one smooth motion to face the other two men charging up the car toward him. “Nyet,” he warned.

The two men pulled up short, angry and confused and a little bit fearful. In a matter of seconds the man they’d targeted to rob had taken out two of their friends, and now held a gun on them as if he knew what he was doing.

The train came to a halt, the doors slid open, and McGarvey stepped off, pocketing his gun before anyone on the crowded platform could see what was going on. He headed directly for the escalators to the street level.

There was a commotion on the platform behind him, but he didn’t think the other two men would be coming after him. They’d be getting their two injured friends out of there before someone else moved in and took advantage of them.

Yaroslavl and Leningrad Stations were directly behind the metro entrance, separated from each other by a large brown brick building where advanced reservation train tickets were sold to Russians. Only tickets that were to be used within twenty-four hours were sold from the train stations in a complicated system that separated foreigners from Russians, and Russian civilians from veterans and active duty soldiers. Even most Russians didn’t understand the system, and sometimes the lines were endless.

McGarvey ducked around the corner and crossed the street where, in the darkness behind the advanced ticket building, he changed into the army uniform, stuffing his civilian clothes into the carryall. The uniform stank of sweat and mildew and dirt, and the greatcoat with corporal’s chevrons was stiff with grease and mud. The boots were cheap, worn down at the heels and extremely uncomfortable. He pocketed his gun, and the identity and leave papers, and pulling his filthy fur hat down over his eyes, made his way back to the Yaroslavl station.

Tickets for veterans were sold from two windows upstairs, and although the station was extremely busy this evening, he got lucky and only had to wait in line for an hour and a half. No one paid him the slightest attention. He could have been invisible.

He paid for a round trip fourth class, or hard class, ticket to Nizhny Novgorod, which on the timetables was. still listed as Gorki, from a surly old woman, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She barely looked up at him, but she didn’t start working on the tickets until McGarvey had passed his money thorough the narrow opening.

Downstairs in the cavernous arrivals and departures hall, McGarvey bought a couple bottles of cheap vodka, a few packages of Polish cigarettes, and a package of greasy kielbasa sausages, a loaf of dark bread, some pickles, a couple of onions, a large tomato and one bottle of mineral water. All of these he stuffed into his carryall, then headed down to wait for his train. He cracked the seal on a bottle of vodka, took a deep drink, and sat on his carryall in the middle of the huge crowd waiting for the train.

It took him a few minutes, listening and watching, before he began to pick up an undercurrent of excitement. Something rare for Russians. All these people were going to Nizhny Novgorod for the same reason. To see Tarankov. The Tarantula. Their savior. And they were excited about it.

SIXTEEN

Elizabeth McGarvey looked up from her computer screen, the Cyrillic letters of the Russian language blurring in her vision. It wasn’t 5:00 p.m. yet which meant she had another half-hour of this crap before she could get out of here. She got up and walked past the rows of the translator’s stations to the women’s room, where she dampened a paper towel, daubed her face, and looked into the mirror at her bloodshot eyes, and pale complexion. She was only twenty three, and already she was taking on what her coworkers called the archival pallor. The only light that ever shined on them fifty hours a week came from fluorescent tubes in the ceilings, and monitors they sat in front of. She was in love with the idea of working for the Central Intelligence Agency, but bored out of her skull with translating foreign broadcasts — mostly Russian these days — for the analyst gee ks up on the fourth floor. But she was still too new to ask for a transfer to the Directorate of Operations, and she was already getting the impression that being her father’s daughter put her at a distinct disadvantage so long as Howard Ryan was DDO. She brushed her long blonde hair, touched up her lipstick and went back to her console.

Over the past three or four days the analysts had demanded information about the ultra-nationalist General Yevgenni Tarankov. Though nothing official had filtered down to them in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was happening. Tarankov had probably hit the Riga nuclear power station in Dzerzhinskiy — she’d seen a brief mention about him in Novy Mir — and it was also possible that he’d been involved with the incident in Red Square the next morning in which Yeltsin had died. But his death didn’t make any sense to her. If Tarankov was behind the explosion in Red Square Yeltsin would have been the direct target. There was no other reason for such an attack. If that was the case, and Yeltsin had died in the blast, and not of a heart attack as the Russian media was reporting, it meant the Kremlin was lying for some reason.

Elizabeth brought up the transcripts for the past seventy-two hours of on air broadcasts of the official Russian news agency, transferred the entire block of material into the RAM section of a recognition program she’d been working on for the past couple of weeks, and asked the computer to search for three pieces of information. Yeltsin’s movements, Tarankov’s appearances, and the routine informational news releases issued by the offices of the President, Minister of Defense and the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg over that period. They were the most powerful men in Russia. And they had the most to lose if Tarankov won in the June elections.

Her boss, Bratislav Toivich, came over as the program began to run. He was a Lithuanian who’d immigrated to this country in the late fifties as a young man, but he’d still not lost his accent, or his rigid hatred for the Russians. He was a thick-wasted man who smoked constantly, and always had a hangdog look as if he’d just received some terrible news. No one had ever seen him smile. But he was brilliant, he was fair, and he was kind. Everyone loved him.

“Are you writing love letters now?” Toivich asked pulling up a chair beside her.

“The Company doesn’t give me the time for a love life.”

“Aren’t there any good men in Washington these days?”

“None that I’ve met.”

Toivich studied the blocks of text rapidly shifting across the screen. “What are we looking for here? This is your new program?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. She turned to him. “Yeltsin’s heart attack doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Dzerzhinskiy could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. He’s had health problems for years.”

“Agreed. But no one is making a big deal out of the car bombing in Red Square. That in itself is kinda weird. You’d think they’d be all over it, Mr. B. The Communists should be screaming bloody murder. They’ve been predicting this sort of thing all along. It’s the moderate reformers’ fault.”

“Maybe it is,” Toivich suggested.

Elizabeth was shocked. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“As far as I’m concerned the dirty bastards can wallow in their own filth, they deserve it. But what’s happening in Russia now was expected. In any change, especially such a big change, anarchy always follows. How they come out of it will be a measure of then strength.”

“You think Tarankov has a chance?”

“Let’s put it this way, my little devochka. He hasn’t one chance in a million of failure. The military is behind him, and so is the FSK.”

Elizabeth looked at her computer screen. “It’ll be worse than before.”

Toivich shrugged. “In that case we’ll deal with the situation just like we’ve dealt with every other crisis. We’ll play catch up.”

“Was it all a wasted effort?” she asked sincerely. There were so many things that she did not understand yet. She wished her father were here at her side to talk to. But he’d go ballistic when he found out his only daughter was working for the Company. She wanted to get into operations training at the Farm first, before she broke the news to him. She wanted him to be proud of her, something her mother never could be.

Toivich’s face darkened. “Don’t ever say that again,” he said harshly. “A lot of good people gave their lives to fight the bastards. And if you don’t understand that, you of all people, then you don’t belong here.”

Elizabeth was instantly contrite, though in a hidden compartment at the back of her head, she wanted to lash back. If we’d done such a hot job defending the faith, then why were there more troops under arms worldwide than at anytime since the Second World War? Why was everything going to hell in Russia? Why had the world become such a dangerous place? Who was kidding whom?

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

“Your daddy would take you over his knee if he heard you talking nonsense like that,” Toivich said. “Have you talked to anybody about this program?”

“Nobody other than you.”

“Well, shut it down for tonight. They want to talk to you upstairs right now.”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, her stomach fluttered. “Who wants to see me, and about what?”

“Mr. Ryan’s secretary called, but she didn’t say why,” Toivich said.

Elizabeth’s temper flared, but Toivich held her off before she could blurt out anything.

“Ryan’s problem is with your father, not you. And that’s a subject you’re supposed to know nothing about, so keep your temper in check,” Toivich said. “If he tries to pull anything with you he will be stepped on, I promise you. Nonetheless he’s still Deputy Director of Operations. And if you ever want to get over there you’d better learn something your father never learned. Politics.”

“Bullshit,” Elizabeth said sharply.

“I’m from the old school, Elizabeth, which means I’m not very politically correct. Where I come from young ladies don’t use words like that. Maybe next time I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” He looked indulgently at her. “Would you like me to come up there with you?”

“No thanks, Mr. B. You might be from the old school, but I’m from the new. My dad taught me to fight my own battles.”

“I’ll be here when you’re finished if you want to talk.”

“Thanks,” Elizabeth said. She shut down her program, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor where she was directed by a civilian guard through the glass doors at the end of the corridor.

The Deputy Director of Operations’ secretary, a dowdy old woman, her silver gray hair up in a bun, looked up when Elizabeth came in.

“I’m Elizabeth McGarvey, Mr. Ryan sent for me?” “Yes, dear, just a moment please,” the older woman said, pleasantly. She got up and went into Ryan’s office. A moment later she came back. “You may go in now.”

Elizabeth nodded and as she passed, Ryan’s secretary whispered something to her that sounded like, “His bark is worse than his bite,” and then she was inside.

Howard Ryan and another older, more serious looking man got to ‘their feet, and Ryan came around his desk, a phony smile on his face.

“Ms. McGarvey, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Howard Ryan, Deputy Director of Operations.” They shook hands. “I’d like you to meet my assistant DDO, Tom Moore.”

“Sir,” Elizabeth said, shaking Moore’s hand. His grasp was like Ryan’s, limp and damp. Just like her father had told her.

Ryan motioned for them to have a seat, and he went back behind his desk. “I was absolutely delighted when I learned that we had a second generation McGarvey working for us,” he said. “What made you decide on the Agency as a career? It was your father’s doing I’ll bet. He must be very proud of you.”

“I’ve admired my father for as long as I can remember,” she said, careful to keep her tongue in check.

“Then you and he must have had long talks about his work for us.”

“Only in the most general of terms, Mr. Ryan. He believed very strongly in what he was doing. So do I.”

Ryan chuckled. “I guess we can skip the brainwashing sessions on this one, Tom,” he said to Moore. “She’s already been well indoctrinated.”

“How is your father these days?” Moore asked. “We understand that he’s back in Paris.”

“He’s doing fine,” Elizabeth said. She hadn’t talked to him in more than six months, in part because she didn’t want to let slip about her new job. But in part because she’d all but begged him to stay in the States eighteen months ago after all the air crashes. He’d had something to do with the investigation, she was certain of it, though he’d told her nothing about it. At the time she’d felt vulnerable, and wanted him nearby. When he left she’d been angry.

“Have you talked to him recently?” Ryan asked. “Has he come here to Washington to see you and your mother?”

“No.”

Again Ryan exchanged a look with Moore. “Good heavens, you haven’t had a falling out with your father, have you? That would be terrible. He isn’t upset that you’re working for us is he?” Ryan spread his hands. “I don’t mind telling you, since you’re one of us now, that your father and I have had differences of opinion. Some of that unfortunately came to an ugly head about a year and a half ago. But that in no way negates my sincerest admiration for the man and what he’s done for this agency. For his country. Even the President speaks of him fondly.”

“No, sir, there’s been nothing like that,” Elizabeth said, wondering where he was taking this. “We’re still pals.”

“Still pals,” Ryan said to Moore, who chuckled and looked approvingly at her.

She wanted to ask them if their parents had any children who’d lived, but she bit her tongue. Politics, Mr. B.,called it. Bullshit, she thought.

“Well, we’d like to talk to him, and we thought that you might help us.”

“Call him at his apartment in Paris.”

“We tried,” Moore said. “He’s gone. We thought maybe he’d contacted you in the past few days.”

Elizabeth’s stomach was hollow. Something was going on that had driven her father to ground, and it was important enough for the CIA to resort to this tactic.

“Mr. Ryan, my father did mention your name once or twice over the past few years, but like I said only in the most general of terms. But I know my father well enough, and I’ve worked for the CIA long enough, to understand that something is going on that you need this help for.” Elizabeth tried to read something from their expressions, but she couldn’t. Moore seemed vapid, and Ryan seemed calculating.

“That’s not quite the truth….”

“He’s gone to ground, you want to talk to him, but you can’t find him,” Elizabeth said. “And I suspect even if you did get a message to him there’s a good chance he’d ignore it. Especially if he’s working on something that he considers important.”

“You’re a very astute young woman,” Ryan said after a few moments of silence. “Actually it’s the French SDECE who would like to speak with your father.”

“About what, Mr. Ryan?”

“That’s not relevant to your purposes at the moment.”

“Bullshit,” Elizabeth said, unable to contain herself any longer. “You didn’t call me up here to chat about my health. You want me to find my father for you.”

Ryan closed his eyes. “Christ,” he said half under his breath. When he opened his eyes again his expression and body language were flatly neutral, as if he’d pulled on a new skin. “We want you to tell him that the French intelligence service wish to speak with him. He can meet them at our embassy. But he’s broken no French laws, nor is he a fugitive from French justice. No warrant has been issued. They just want some information from him. Nothing mote.”

“About what?” Elizabeth shot back.

“Don’t play hardball with us, young lady,” Moore said. “You’ll find yourself on the outside looking in.”

“If you want to fire me, go ahead and do it. But if you want my help, don’t tell me lies. It’s the thing my father hates the most. And I inherited the trait.”

“Tom spoke out of turn, Ms. McGarvey. We don’t want to fire you. As a matter of fact I called you up here this afternoon to offer you a job in Operations. We’ve got a class starting at the Farm the first of June. If you’re interested.”

“First I bring you my father.”

“Good heavens, I don’t know what you think we are. Fools, perhaps. Opportunists, maybe. But we’re not the enemy, Elizabeth. I’m offering you a job in Operations. You can take it or leave it. Frankly I think you’ll turn out to be a bigger pain in the ass than your father, but I think you have the potential of being almost as good as he was.”

“Don’t try to tell me—”

“Please hear me out,” Ryan cut her off. “I can show you your personnel file, if you want to see it. When you were evaluated for employment all three of your interviewers recommended Operations. In part because of your abilities, and in part, I have to admit, because of what your father has done for us.” Ryan studied her for a moment. “Now that is a fact, believe it or not. In the meantime we want to get a message to your father for the French. Nobody can find him, and I think you’re well aware that when your father wants to hide himself he’s very good. Possibly the best there ever was. At this moment we and the French have exhausted every means at our disposal short of an all out manhunt. Now that’s something very dangerous. People could get hurt. So we turned to you because you know your father probably better than anyone else, and if you should happen to show up on his doorstep his first reaction won’t be to escape out the back door, or shoot. We want your help.”

“What do the French want to speak to him about?” Elizabeth asked.

“Will you help us?” Moore asked. “Not until you tell me why the French are interested in my father.”

“Under the circumstances her request is reasonable, Howard,” Moore said.

Ryan seemed to consider it for a moment, and Elizabeth had the feeling she was being set up.

“Will you accept an immediate transfer to Operations?” Ryan asked. “Independent of whether you help us out with this assignment?”

“What would my job be?”

“Special field officer in training,” Ryan answered, Vexed. “But if you work for me it won’t be so easy as translating. I’m not an easy man to work for.”

She wanted to tell him that sudden flash of truth was refreshing, but she held her tongue. “Okay.”

“Welcome aboard,” Moore said.

“My boss will have to be told.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Moore promised.

Ryan selected a file folder from a pile on his desk. “You’re to consider this matter highly confidential. You’ll speak about it with no one outside of this room without prior permission, or face prosecution under the National Secrets Act. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Elizabeth said. Don’t sell your soul for expediency, her father had cautioned her once. But don’t turn your back on whatever works. She was in!

“Does the name Viktor Yemlin mean anything to you?”

“He’s head of the Russian SVR’s North American Directorate.”

Ryan’s eyes lit up. “How do you know this?”

“We’re running programs for the DIon the current situation in Russia, his name came up. Until a few years ago he was the KGB’s resident here in Washington.”

“Your father never mentioned his name?”

Elizabeth searched her memory. She shook her head. “Not that I can remember.”

“They know each other,” Ryan said.

“Considering the work my father did, I’m not surprised. “

“What work is that?” Ryan asked, a flinty look in his eyes.

“He never discussed assignments, Mr. Ryan, if that’s what you mean. But my father was employed by the Company for a number of years. He would have been of great interest to Yemlin. I’m just saying that the connection between them wouldn’t be unusual.”

“Comrade Yemlin showed up in France last week. He was followed to a meeting with your father at the Eiffel Tower. The French managed to overhear a part of their conversation and it worried them sufficiently to contact our Paris Chief of Station for help. Specifically they wanted to know if your father was currently on assignment for us. We told them no.”

Ryan was in his formal mode, speaking like a New York attorney. It bugged Elizabeth. She wanted him to quit beating around the bush and tell it straight. But again she held her tongue. “Were you aware that your father is seeing a woman in Paris?” Moore asked.

Elizabeth smiled despite herself. “I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.”

“Her name is Jacqueline Belleau and she works for the French secret service.” *

“To spy on him,” Elizabeth flared.

“Frankly, yes,” Ryan admitted. “Your father met with Yemlin on Saturday. On Monday he kicked Ms. Belleau out of his apartment and disappeared.”

“Maybe he found out what she was, and he just got rid of her. I would have in his shoes.”

“It’s the timing that has the French most worried,” Ryan said. He slid the file folder across to Elizabeth. “That’s a transcript of what the French were able to monitor.”

Elizabeth reached for the file folder.

“Before you read that, I have to ask you something, Ms. McGarvey,” Ryan said, his tone suddenly gentle. “Did you know your grandparents, on your father’s side.”

The question took her by surprise. “No. They were killed in a car accident in Kansas before I was bora. But I saw photographs, and my father used to, talk about them. He was very close to them.”

“I don’t know of any other way to put this, except to tell you the way it was. Until recently this agency believed that your grandparents were spies for the Soviet Union.”

“Crap,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, indeed, it was crap, as you put it,” Ryan said.

“An internal audit team is working to clear their names, but it’s something your father might not know yet.”

Elizabeth’s throat was tight, and her eyes smarted. “My father believed that grandma and grandpa were spies? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Moore said. “It was apparently some kind of a Soviet disinformation plot to discredit him.”

Sudden understanding dawned on Elizabeth. “Around the time of Santiago?”

Ryan stiffened, but said nothing.

“It would seem so,” Moore said. “Amends will be made, believe me. But it’s a burden that your father has carried for a long time. Too long a time.”

Elizabeth was confused. She didn’t know how she felt, or even how she should feel, except that she was so terribly sorry for her father that she wanted to cry.

“It’s made your father, shall we say, vulnerable in certain situations,” Moore continued in his patronizing tone.

“Angry would be closer to the truth,” Elizabeth shot back.

“Yes, angry.”

Elizabeth opened the file folder and read the single page of transcript. She could hear her father’s voice, almost feel his presence in the few lines, and the ache in her heart deepened. She looked up finally, squaring her shoulders, stiffening her resolve. She was a McGarvey. Strong. Resolute. “Sometimes it’s all we have, Liz,” her father told her a few years ago in Greece. They were in trouble, and he wanted to comfort her, and yet make her aware of the truth.

“We have no idea what Yemlin wants your father to do for the SVR,” Moore said. “But the French are worried that—”

Ryan interrupted. “The French are concerned that whatever Yemlin wants will involve a French citizen, or possibly someone on French soil.”

Elizabeth’s head was spinning again. She’d seen her father in action, and she’d heard enough dropped hints downstairs over the past few months, to figure out what his job had been. Or at least a part of it. Her father killed people. Bad people. Horrible people. But he had been a shooter for the CIA in the days when the Company denied such hired guns existed. Her mother would be aghast if she knew, although Elizabeth thought her mother probably had an idea at the back of her head. But they never talked about it. Never. A thought flashed in her head like a bright flare, and she had all she could do to keep it from showing on her face. Yemlin had come to ask her father to assassinate someone. Someone not in France, but in Russia. Someone who was tearing the country apart. Someone who could conceivably embroil all of eastern Europe in a war. Someone who had the complete attention of the CIA.

Yemlin had asked her father to assassinate Yevgenni Tarankov, and her father had probably accepted the assignment otherwise he would not have gone to ground.

“All right,” she said.

“Ms. McGarvey?” Ryan asked.

“I’ll find my father and get the message to him, but I’ll do it completely on my own. If my father gets the slightest hint that the agency is following me, or that he’s being set up, nobody will find him. And if I find out that I’m being followed I’ll tell my father everything, which will make him mad.” She flashed Ryan and Moore a sweet look. “You probably already know that when my father is angry you don’t want to be around him. He sometimes tends to take things to the extreme.”

“We’ll stay out of your way, Ms. McGarvey, you have my word on it,” Ryan said. “As of this moment you are operational. Tom will set you up with a code name, contact procedures, travel documents and money, everything you’ll need.” He sat forward. “Time is of the essence. Because if your father takes the Russians up on their offer, he’ll either be arrested and jailed, or killed. Something I most sincerely assure you, young lady, that no one in the Agency wants to happen.”

McGarvey’s.train arrived at the main railway station on the west bank of the Volga River a few minutes after seven in the morning, and he walked across the street to a small workmen’s cafe crowded with roughly dressed factory workers and a few shabbily attired soldiers. The snowstorm had ended sometime in the middle of the night, and the sun shone brightly. A blanket of snow made the city of 1.5 million seem almost pretty. The upbeat mood of passengers aboard the train was matched by the festival atmosphere of the town. No one seemed to be working today, everybody seemed exuberant, expectant. Banners with Tarankov’s name and likeness, or plain banners with a stylized design of a tarantula spider, hung from the front of the railway station, and from utility poles on the broad avenue leading across the river toward the Kremlin whose walls rose from the hill overlooking the city center. They fluttered and snapped in the fresh breeze that carried with it odors of river sewage and factory smoke.

Like most Russian cities, Nizhny Novgorod stank, but it was better than some places.

His hard class car had been so packed with bodies last night that there’d been no room to sit down, not even on the drafty connecting platform. What little sleep he’d managed to get had been done standing up. Combined with the effects of stale air, too many cigarettes, and too much vodka — everybody on the train was drunk even before they’d left Moscow — McGarvey felt like he’d been on a seven-day hinge. Catching a glance at his reflection in the dirty window of the cafe, he looked as if he hadn’t bathed or slept in a week. It was exactly the effect he wanted to achieve, because now he fit in. Now he was part of the scenery. No one to give a second notice to. No one threatening. Just another corporal too old for his rank, with obviously nowhere to go, and no hope, except for Tarankov.

He bought a plate of goulash and black bread for a few roubles, and found a place in the corner at the end of a long table, where he sank down gratefully on the hard bench. Keeping his eyes downcast he ate the surprisingly good food, while he listened to what the men around the table were talking about. They all worked the night shift at the MiG factory on the eastern outskirts of the city, and they’d come down here after work to catch what they were calling “the Tarantula’s act.” They were all cynical, as only Russians could be, nonetheless their oftentimes, heated discussion about Tarankov was tinged with a little awe, and even hope. It was about time somebody came along to get them out of the mess that Gorbachev started, and that the drunken buffoon Yeltsin had worsened. They’d lost the southern republics and the Baltics, and they’d also lost their dignity as a nation. Russians were taking handouts from foreigners just so they could have a hamburger at the McDonald’s in Moscow. AIDS, crack cocaine and the Mafia were direct imports from the west.

“Sonofabitch, but even our soldiers are starving in the streets,” one of the workmen shouted. “Just like this sorry bastard.”

McGarvey looked up. The men around the table stared at him with a mixture of pity and anger.

“Where the hell did you serve, Corporal?” one of the men asked.

“Yeb was, Afghanistan,” McGarvey mumbled, and he went back to his food.

“He’s goddamned right. Fuck your mother,” the man said.

Someone slammed a not-so-clean glass down in front of McGarvey, filled it with vodka, and they went back to their discussion, this time about the drunkenness in what was once the greatest military in the world. Officers lived in tarpaper shacks, and enlisted men were billeted in tents or simply allowed to roam the streets between duty assignments. The situation wasn’t quite that bad, but Russians loved to wallow in self-pity, and loved even more to exaggerate their problems.

After his breakfast and a second glass of vodka from the factory workers at his table, McGarvey wandered outside where he bought a half-liter of vodka from one of the street kiosks that were springing up around the railway station, and down the broad Ploshchad Lenina that led past the Tsentralnaya Hotel and across the river into the city proper. More people streamed into the area, so that for several blocks in every direction around the railway station, and along the boulevard across the river, crowds were amassing, their collective shouts and laughter rising like the low hum of a billion cicadas.

He stood to one side of the square where he had a good view of the switching yard and passenger platforms a hundred yards to the west, and the boulevard into the city. A few stragglers crossed the street, but for the most part the thoroughfare was kept perfectly clear, although there were no traffic cops or Militia officers to restrain the crowd.

The effect was strange, and unsettling to McGarvey.

It was as if Tarankov’s presence were strong enough that his people automatically cleared a path for his triumphal entry to the city. Parishioners kept the aisles clear out of respect not only for the ceremony, but for the priest. The same deference had been accorded Stalin in the late forties and fifties. He had saved the country from the Nazis. Now Tarankov promised to save the nation from oblivion. The people loved him for it.

A huge roar went up from the crowds lining the bridge a half-mile to the south. People streamed out of the railway station and Gate’s and hotels as the commotion approached like a monster wave.

An open army truck appeared on the crest of the bridge, and for the first minute or so McGarvey thought the Militia might be on its way after all. But there was only one truck, moving slowly, the people along the route reacting as it passed.

A buzz of excitement suddenly swept through the tens of thousands of people around the railway station, rising in pitch as the truck came closer, and they could see the half-dozen men and two women dressed in civilian clothes in the back. They were obviously prisoners. Four men dressed in blue factory coveralls and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, stood in the back of the truck with the eight unarmed passengers.

Somebody beside McGarvey suddenly began jumping up and waving his fist in the air. “Death to the traitors!” he shouted. “Death to Lensky! Death to the traitors!” Viktor Lensky was the mayor.

Others in the mass of people took up the chant that soon rose to a deafening roar, as the truck pulled up in the square across from the railway depot. The guards jumped down from the back of the truck, and made their prisoners climb down and line up in a row beneath one of the tarantula banners flapping in the breeze. None of the civilians wore overcoats or hats despite the cold. They looked frightened.

The mood of the crowd was turning ugly, but al though people shouted curses and taunts at the prisoners, they made no move to go after them. But the air of expectation was even greater now than before. More people streamed in from the city, choking the main boulevard, as if they no longer expected Tarankov to need the route into the city. Whatever was going to happen, they expected it would happen down here by the railway station.

According to what Rencke had pieced together, Tarankov’s usual method was to charge up to a city’s train depot, send several of his commando units ahead into the city to arrest the mayor and other city and federal administrators, and rob the banks. While that was going on, Tarankov and his personal guards and inner cadre made their way slowly into the main square, while he harangued the crowds, inciting them into a fever pitch of bloodlust. At the right time the prisoners were gunned down, the money stolen from the banks was distributed to the people, and in the confusion Tarankov and his commandoes made their way back aboard their train and roared off. So far they’d met no resistance from the Militia or from the military.

But this time something was different. For whatever reason the people knew that Tarankov wouldn’t be going into the city center, so they’d rounded up as many apparatchiks as they could — McGarvey figured that the smart ones had already fled the city or hidden themselves — and brought them down here to be executed.

Perhaps the military had set up an ambush downtown, meaning to trap Tarankov and his forces from returning to the safety of their heavily armed train. But if that were the case they would have to shoot into the people, because Tarankov would certainly not hesitate to use the crowd as a shield. A massacre of innocent civilians would severely damage Moscow’s already tenuous hold on the nation. They would be playing directly into Tarankov’s hand.

The railroad line came from Moscow in the west, and Kazan in the east. McGarvey shaded his eyes and searched the sky in both directions finally picking out a half-dozen tiny specks in the air to the southwest. They were flying low and in formation. Too slow. to be jets, McGarvey figured they were probably helicopter gunships. If they were hunting Tarankov, trying to prevent him from even getting close to Nizhny Novgorod, they would concentrate on the locomotive. Once it was destroyed or derailed, Tarankov and his commandoes could be surrounded and wiped out in the countryside where civilian casualties would be limited.

It was a good tactic, but Tarankov had survived long enough to anticipate something like this happening. The intelligence reports Rencke had pirated warned that Tarankov’s people were not only highly trained and motivated special forces officers, they were equipped with state-of-the-art radar and radar tracking weapons, including close-in weapons systems, rapid-fire cannons, and probably magazine-launched surface-to-air missiles, that Rencke thought might be based on the Russian Navy’s SA-N-6 system, which was good out to a range of seventy-five nautical miles, accurate enough to shoot down helicopter-launched missiles or even cruise missiles, yet compact enough to easily be carried aboard a train.

For the next five minutes nothing happened, although the helicopter formation seemed to be getting closer. If they were Mi-24 Hinds, which McGarvey figured they probably were, he estimated Their distance at three or four miles.

A man in blue coveralls standing nearby, noticed McGarvey watching the sky and the shaded his eyes and looked up. When he spotted the gunships he pointed. “It’s the army!” he shouted.

At that moment the helicopters suddenly broke formation. An instant later three contrails rose up from the ground, and in seconds three of the helicopters exploded in mid-air. The other three turned away from the action.

The man in the blue coveralls got the attention of the people around him, and excited shouts began to spread outward like ripples in a pond as others spotted the battle in the sky to the southwest.

For a minute or two it looked like the three remaining helicopters had broken off for good, but then they swung around in a large arc and headed back.

Now Tarankov’s train came into view between the low hills that swept down to the river. It was moving very fast, and the crowds on the south side of the station who could see the action shouted back what was happening. Tens of thousands of people tried to push their way to the back of the terminal building so that they could see what was unfolding, but they were blocked by the press of bodies.

One of the helicopters fired a pair of missiles that streaked directly toward the locomotive, but at the-last second they exploded in mid-air short of then-target.

An instant later another of the helicopters went up in a ball of flame on the tail of a rocket launched from the train.

A cheer rose up from the crowd.

This time the remaining two Hinds turned tail and headed off. For a full ten seconds it seemed as if they would make good their escape, when a pair of rockets were launched from the train, and blew them out of the sky.

Another huge cheer spread across the vast mob, people hooting and shouting and whistling and clapping. The Tarantula had been tested and he’d proved himself. He was invincible. He had power and justice on his side. He was not only for the people, he was of the people. He was father to the Rodina — to Mother Russia — and the crowd was delirious with excitement.

People were everywhere. On the streets, along the tracks, on the roofs of every building for as far as McGarvey could see. And still more people streamed out of the city to catch a glimpse of the first hero Russia had known since Papa Stalin. But the Tarantula was even better than Stalin, because he was coming from adversity: Moscow and the entire world were against him.

McGarvey continued searching the sky to the west and southwest, but nothing else was up and flying, and within minutes Tarankov’s train would roar into the outskirts of the city. If the military wanted to stop Tarankov they’d either badly underestimated the firepower aboard his train, or overestimated the skill of their helicopter pilots and the effectiveness of the Hind’s weapons. It seemed more likely to him that whoever had ordered and engineered the attack had done so only for show, which placed them on Tarankov’s side. It would have been relatively easy for a pair of MiG-29 Fulcrums to stand well off, illuminate the train with their look-down-shoot down radar systems, and accurately place a half-dozen or more air-to-surface anti-armor missiles on the target before the train’s radar systems had a chance to react to the attack. But the Tarantula had spun his web very well. He had friends in high places.

The people began to fall silent, until in the distance they could hear the distinctive roar of Tarankov’s incoming train, its whistle hooting in triumph.

McGarvey slowly edged his way through the crowd along the south side of the square until he was in position about thirty yards from where the eight prisoners stood shivering in the frigid wind that funneled down the hills and across the broad river. They looked resigned. All the fight had gone out of them. Tarankov was coming, and they were being held captive not only by their armed guards, but by the tens of thousands of people surrounding them, and by their own fear. Nizhny Novgorod had become a model for free enterprise over the past half-dozen years, and within the next half hour or less they were going to pay the price for their successes with their lives, and they knew it.

A broad section of the loading platform about fifty yards west of the terminal had been cleared of people, and McGarvey realized what he’d suspected all along. Tarankov had his front men here. The demonstration was too well organized, the boulevard had been kept clear for too long, and now the loading platform free of people, bespoke good planning. Yet if Tarankov’s people were here they were well blended with the crowd, because McGarvey was unable to spot them, or any unified or directed effort.

The armored train came around the last curve before the depot, and sparks began to shoot off its wheels as it slowed down, its rate of deceleration nothing short of phenomenal, the roaring, squealing noise awesome.

Even before it came to a complete halt, big doors in the sides of some of the armored cars swung open, hinged ramps dropped down in unison with a mind numbing crash and a dozen armored personal carriers shot off the train, their half-tracks squealing in protest as their treads bit into the brick surface of the loading platform.

Within ten seconds the APCs had taken up defensive positions around the depot and the square, leaving a path from the rear car of the train to the prisoners who stood frozen to their places by the sheer spectacle of Tarankov’s arrival. Two hundred well-armed troops, dressed in plain battle fatigues, scrambled out of the troop carriers, and moments later a collective sigh spread across the crowd.

A man of moderate height and build, also dressed in battle fatigues, appeared on the rear platform of the last car. He paused a moment, then raised his right fist in the air. “COMRADES, MY NAME IS YEVGENNI TARANKOV, AND I HAVE COME TODAY TO OFFER MY HAND IN FRIENDSHIP AND HELP.” His amplified voice boomed across the crowds from powerful speakers mounted on the train, and on each of the APCs.

The people went wild, screaming his name, raising their right fists in salute, waving banners and posters with his picture. Old women and men, tears streaming down their cheeks, pressed forward, calling his name, begging for him to see them, to hear then-pleas. It reminded McGarvey of a revival tent meeting his sister had taken him to when he was a boy in Kansas. He half expected to see people on crutches and in wheelchairs making their way to Tarankov’s side so that he could heal them with his touch. In effect that’s what they were asking him to do here today. Heal the nation with his touch. Right the wrongs they’d endured for so many difficult years.

Tarankov was joined by a dark haired woman and a tall man, both dressed in plain battle fatigues. The three of them stepped down from the train, and headed through the ranks of APCs and commandoes into the square.

“OUR COUNTRY IS FALLING INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DESPAIR. OUR FORESTS ARE DYING. OUR GREAT VOLGA AND LAKES HAVE BECOME CESSPOOLS OF WASTE. THE AIR OVER THIS GREAT CITY OF GORKI IS UNFIT TO BREATHE. THE ONLY FOOD WORTH EATING FILLS THE BELLIES OF THE APPARATCHIKS AND FOREIGNERS HERE AND IN MOSCOW. OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING AND OUR WOMEN ARE CRYING OUT FOR HELP, BUT NO ONE IN MOSCOW CAN HEAR THEM. NO ONE DM MOSCOW WANTS TO HEAR THEM.”

A silence descended over the people, as Tarankov strode into the square, his amplified voice continuing to roll over them.

“OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BANKRUPT. OUR MILITARY HAS BECOME LEADERLESS AND USELESS. HOOLIGANS AND PROFITEERS EAT INTO US LIKE A CANCER GONE WILD. AIDS AND DRUGS AND MINDLESS MUSIC ROT THE BRAINS OF OUR CHILDREN.”

As Tarankov and his group approached the prisoners, McGarvey worked his way closer to the edge of the crowd so he could get a better look. The Tarantula was not a very imposing figure. He could have passed as any ordinary Russian on the street, or in a factory, except that his fatigues were well pressed, his boots well shined, and his face alive with intelligence and emotion. It was obvious, even at a distance, that Tarankov was no charlatan revival preacher. He was a man who truly believed that he had the answers for his people, and that he was the one to lead them out of what he was calling a cesspool of hopelessness imposed on them by the western powers.

“MOSCOW… HOW MANY STRAINS “ARE FUSING IN THAT ONE SOUND, FOR RUSSIAN HEARTS?”

A cheer went up from the crowd.

“WHAT STORE OF RICHES IT IMPARTS! I WILL GIVE YOU MOSCOW! I WILL GIVE YOU RUSSIA!”

The crowd roared its approval, chanting his name over and over.

“I WILL RETURN YOUR PRIDE, YOUR HOPE, YOUR DIGNITY. I WILL RETURN THE SOVIET UNION TO YOU!”

Again the crowd cheered wildly. They held up his picture and posters with his name or the tarantula symbol, and chanted his name.

The attractive woman beside him was his East German wife Liesel. Rencke had come up with one photograph of her taken while she was at Moscow University. She had held her good looks, and her figure was still slight. She was beaming at her husband with such a look of open admiration and adoration that whoever loved Tarankov, had to love her.

“IT IS BETTER TO LOSE A RIVER OF BLOOD NOW THAN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LATER, EVEN IF IT IS RUSSIAN BLOOD,” Tarankov shouted. He stopped a few yards in front of the prisoners, unbuttoned the flap of his holster and pulled out his Makarov pistol. “WE WILL ONLY SPILL THE BLOOD OF TRAITORS.” His voice boomed across the square.

He was wearing a lapel mike, which broadcast his voice back to a central amplifier probably aboard the train, which in turn sent it out to the loudspeakers. It was a clever bit of stagecraft.

“LOOK AROUND AND YOU WILL SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO YOU. IT IS TIME FOR A CLEAN SWEEP BEFORE WE ALL CHOKE ON THE FILTH.”

The man beside Tarankov stood a full head taller than his boss, and unlike Liesel he wasn’t looking at Tarankov with adoration. Instead his eyes continually swept the crowd. It was obvious that he was a professional who had no illusions about Tarankov’s safety. No one was immune from assassination, and he knew it.

His gaze landed on McGarvey and remained for a moment. McGarvey raised his right fist in salute, and shouted Tarankov’s name with the chanting crowd, and the man’s eyes moved away.

McGarvey had no doubt that he was Leonid Chernov. And in the brief moment that Tarankov’s right hand man had looked at him, McGarvey had the uneasy sensation that an old enemy of his had come back from the pauper’s grave in Portugal. His name was Arkady Kurshin, and he’d been General Baranov’s right hand man a number of years ago. Because of Kurshin” McGarvey had lost a kidney, and had nearly lost his life. No man before or since had been as dangerous an enemy. But at this moment, McGarvey thought he’d just looked into the eyes of Kurshin’s equal, and a slight shiver played up his spine, a little tingle reached up from his gut chilling him like a fetid breeze coming from an open grave.

“WHEN OUR STRUGGLE IS OVER, I PROMISE THAT I WILL RAISE A BRONZE STATUE WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS IN DZERZHINSKY SQUARE OF A YOUNG RUSSIAN SOLDIER, HIS RIFLE RAISED OVER HIS HEAD, AND HIS FACE TURNED UP TO HEAVEN IN HOPE.”

McGarvey moved a few yards away, and a little deeper into the mob. When he caught a glimpse of Chernov again the man was looking directly at the spot where McGarvey had been standing. Chernov suspected something. But he didn’t know yet, he couldn’t know.

“TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE,” Tarankov shouted. “ALL OF YOU.” He raised his pistol and shot one of the prisoners in the forehead, driving the older man dressed in a business suit backward, his head bouncing off the pavement, blood splashing behind him.

One of the women screamed, and Tarankov shot her twice in the chest, knocking her off her feet.

In the next seconds a half-dozen of Tarankov’s commandoes opened fire on the remaining prisoners who madly tried to scramble out of the way, cutting them down before they could get more than a step or two.

When the firing stopped, the crowd went totally wild, cheering and hooting in a frenzy of bloodlust, that seemed as if it had the power to continue unabated for hours if not days.

Tarankov bolstered his pistol, then turned to his people and raised his hands. Almost immediately the crowd fell silent.

“I HAVE A VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE RODINA WHICH I WILL SHARE WITH YOU TODAY, COMRADES,” he began.

McGarvey glanced over at Chernov who was staring at him, and he let all expression drain from his face except for one of love and admiration. Tarankov was his hope too.

But one thing was certain. Tarankov was not going to wait until the general elections in June to take over the government. He would almost certainly make his move much sooner than that, and McGarvey had a good idea exactly when that would be..

EIGHTEEN

Pulling into the driveway of her mother’s two story colonial across from the country club at 9:00 a.m.” Elizabeth felt like death warmed over, yet she was more alive than she’d ever been. She was working for Operations, and if everything went right she’d soon be working with her father. It couldn’t have been better, though she had to find him first, and keep Ryan’s goons away from him until they figured out what their next moves would be.

It had been after midnight by the time she was able to go home and then she hadn’t got much sleep. They’d set her up with a false passport and a complete legend under the name Elizabeth Swanson, from New York City. Her contact procedures were direct to Tom Moore on a blind number. When she went to France she was supposed to report to the COS Tom Lynch.

Between photo sessions and briefings, Elizabeth had managed to get back down to her own computer console. Toivich was gone for the evening, and no one else in the section had been told yet that she no longer worked for the DI. With her new operational designation it only took fifteen minutes to get into the archival section for former personnel where she called up her father’s extensive file. Within the first five minutes of reading, her mouth had dropped open and stayed there until she was called back upstairs around ten.

Her father was James Bond personified. He’d been everywhere, done everything, and had accomplished in spades every single assignment he’d ever been given. Four presidents had given him secret citations, and every DCI and DDO, except for Ryan, gave him glowing marks. If she’d read correctly between the lines, her father had literally saved the country from war in the Pacific eighteen months ago. Before that he’d saved Los Angeles and San Francisco from a nuclear attack by a Japanese terrorist. Although he’d not been on the Company’s payroll for years, it seemed that each time the CIA got itself into a jam, they called on her father to help them out.

He’d been wounded numerous times, had lost a kidney in one operation, and Phil Carrara, a former boss who had himself been killed in the line of duty, had written that more than any other person in the CIA, McGarvey had done the most to help win the Cold War, a sentiment even President Lindsay wholeheartedly endorsed.

Several times during her reading, she had to choke back tears. Her father had given his entire life to his country, but in public he was a nothing, and in private Howard Ryan, the third most powerful man in America’s intelligence community, despised him. On top of that he thought that his parents had been spies. A shame that he’d carried with him for all of his adult life.

There was so much that she wanted to say to him, so many things she wanted to tell him, so much she wanted to know, but none of it mattered one whit to her. The only thing that mattered was that she loved him with all of her soul. More now than when she was a little girl and fantasized about him and her mother getting back together. So much that she could hardly “contain herself from bubbling over.

Her mother, wearing a white bathrobe, her hair bundled up in a towel, opened the front door of the house and beckoned to her.

Elizabeth got out of her car and hurried up the walk to her mother, and pecked her on the cheek. “Hi, Mother.”.

“What are you doing here in Washington, and why didn’t you come right in? Why were you sitting there like a lump on a log?” Kathleen McGarvey demanded. She was almost as tall as her daughter, and even more beautiful in a classic sense. Her neck was long, her features sharply denned, her lips full, her high cheekbones delicately arched, and her eyes brilliantly green. Although she was nearly fifty, she could have passed for a haute couture fashion model anywhere in the world. Her beauty was timeless, like Audrey Hepburn’s and Jackie Kennedy’s had been.

“I was trying to figure out the best way of telling you what I have to tell you. There’s so much of it, I don’t know where to start.”

They went inside, and Kathleen gave her daughter a sharply appraising look. “Good heavens you’re not pregnant, are you, dear?”

“No, Mother, I’m not pregnant. But if I were I’d be at an abortion clinic, not here. I’m not ready to have kids.”

Kathleen patted down a strand of her daughter’s hair. “No, I don’t expect you are ready,” she said wistfully. “Nor am I quite ready to become a grandmother. Now, when did you get into Washington?” she asked as they went into the kitchen.

The coffee was ready, and Elizabeth got them a couple of cups. “About six months ago.”

“Oh?” Kathleen said, pouring the coffee.

Elizabeth perched on one of the stools at the counter across from her mother, and sipped her coffee. She could have used a cigarette, but that was something she definitely wasn’t ready to tell her mother. “I got a job here in town, but I wanted to wait until I was sure it was going to work out before I told you about it.”

Kathleen sipped delicately at her coffee. “Would you care for something to eat, Elizabeth? I could warm up some cinnamon rolls, you like those.”

“Just coffee, Mom.”

“Mother,” Kathleen corrected automatically. She didn’t like abbreviations or diminutives. Elizabeth, not Liz. And Kathleen, not Katy. It was a habit she’d never been able to break her husband of.

“Sorry,” Elizabeth mumbled, lowering her eyes.

“I see,” Kathleen said. “Look at me please.”

Elizabeth looked up.

“I’m not going to like what you’re going to tell me very much, am I?”

“Probably not. I’m working for the Central Intelligence Agency. In the Directorate of Operations, just like Daddy.”.

Kathleen’s composure slipped a little, but she brought it back. “Your father has done very good, even great things for his country. I’m sure you know that. But do you know exactly what his job was?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I only hope for your sake that you don’t exactly follow in his footsteps, Elizabeth. But I’m sure that you will do very well at whatever it is they want you to do.” It was a brave speech, but Kathleen had to turn away, her eyes glistening.

“I’m sorry, Mother. But it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

“I would have thought that after Greece you would have changed your mind.”

Four years ago Elizabeth and her mother had been kidnapped by an organization of former East German intelligence officers who wanted to force McGarvey into a trap and kill him. But her father had beat them all. The experience had nearly destroyed her mother.

“Greece made me want it even more.”

“I see,” Kathleen said, once again facing her daughter. “So you came this morning to break the news to me, is that it? Or is there more?”

“I came to ask for your help. I’m trying to find Daddy.”

“He’s in Paris at his old apartment.”

“He’s gone. We think he’s in hiding.”

Kathleen’s face turned white. It wasn’t the reaction Elizabeth had expected. “Howard Ryan wants to find him, and that miserable, fucking son of a bitch is using you to do it.”

Elizabeth was shocked to the bottom of her soul. Never in her life had she heard her mother utter a swearword, let alone a combination like that. Her mouth dropped open for the second time in the past twelve hours.

“Close your mouth, dear,” Kathleen said, and she picked up the telephone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Roland Murphy. And if I don’t get satisfaction from him, I’ll call Jim Lindsay.”

“Mother, you can’t call the DCI and you can’t call the President. I volunteered for this assignment, and I’ll do it with or without you. But Daddy needs my help and I’m going to give it to him. His life could depend on it.”

Kathleen put the telephone down. “Listen to me, darling. I know Howard Ryan. He’s a pompous ass, but he’s a powerful pompous ass who is an expert at manipulating people. He has a grudge against your father, and he means to use you to get back at him.”

“I didn’t think you knew that much about Daddy’s career.”

“I’m not stupid, Elizabeth. I hear things and I see things. But just because I cannot live with your father, doesn’t mean I stopped loving him.”

Elizabeth’s throat was tight, and her stomach hollow. “Why,” she asked softly.

“I cannot live with an … assassin.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you still loved Daddy.”

“You weren’t ready,” Kathleen said. She studied her daughter’s face. “I’m not certain you’re ready yet. But Howard Ryan is a dangerous man, darling.”

“All the more reason for me to find my father as soon as I can. I have to warn him.”

Again Kathleen studied her daughter’s face. “You are your father’s daughter. Stubborn.”

“You dig your heels in too, Mother.”

Kathleen smiled wanly. “If he’s gone into hiding he won’t be out of touch. He always arranges for a contact who can keep him informed with what’s happening on the outside. He told me that one of his worst fears was dying alone and being buried in an unmarked grave somewhere.”

“What did you say to him, Mother?”

“I told him to get out of the service, of course.”

“What would you tell him now?”

“The same thing, Elizabeth. The same thing I’m telling you. The Cold War is over. We won it. There’s no compelling reason any longer to maintain such a large intelligence service.”

Elizabeth wanted to hate her mother, but she could not. She couldn’t even feel sorry for her, because from her mother’s point she was correct. She decided not to say anything about Grandma and Grandpa.

“Until last year your father was involved with a woman here in Washington. She’s a lobbyist for the airline industry. Her name is Dominique Kilbourne. She might know something.”

“Was she involved with Daddy’s last assignment?”

“I believe so.”

“Will she know who I am?”

Kathleen smiled. “I can’t imagine your father not talking about you.”

“One more favor, Mother,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like to borrow one of your credit cards for awhile. I want to get to Paris without leaving a track.”

Kathleen hesitated.

“I’ll pay you back, Mother, I promise.”

“Of course I’ll give you one of my credit cards. It’s not that, darling. You’re my only child and I want you to be safe.”

“None of us are safe, Mother.”

“Your father says that.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said.

Elizabeth called the reference desk at the public library from a pay phone and had the woman look up the address of Dominique Kilbourne’s office in the list of registered lobbyists. It turned out to be an entire floor of a solid five story building off Thomas Circle, a few blocks from the Russian Embassy.

It was past 11:30 A.M.” by the time she presented herself to the receptionist.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.

“No. But I just need a few minutes of her time. It’s important.”

“I’m sorry, but Ms. Kilbourne’s schedule is completely full today and for the remainder of the week.” The secretary touched a few keys on her computer. “I can fit you in next week. Wednesday at two in the afternoon.”

“Tell Ms. Kilbourne that Elizabeth McGarvey is here.”

Something crossed the secretary’s expression. “Just a moment, please,” she said, and she got up and went inside.

Elizabeth stepped around the desk so that she could read the computer screen. Dominique Kilbourne’s schedule was tight. She was scheduled to be at lunch with a congressional group at the Senate dining room in twenty-five minutes.

The receptionist returned a minute later. “She’ll see you now. It’s the last door at the end of the hall.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to expect, but she wasn’t disappointed. Dominique Kilbourne was pretty, with a pleasantly narrow face, short dark hair, coal-black eyes and a slight figure. She looked like a decisive, take charge woman.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Ms. Kilbourne,” Elizabeth said.

Dominique motioned her to a seat in front of a starkly modern brass and glass desk. The office was of moderate size, “but extremely well furnished, with a couple of Picasso prints on the walls, a large luxurious oriental rug on a marble tiled floor, and large windows with a good view toward the White House. “You come as something of a surprise.”

“I’m trying to locate my father. My mother thought you might know where he is.”

Dominique stiffened. “The last I heard your father was going to Paris. That was more than a year ago. Beyond that I can’t help you, or your mother.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to have it come out like that. This has nothing to do with my mother. I simply want to find my father, and I was hoping that you might know something.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. McGarvey, I don’t,” Dominique said. She picked up her telephone. “Sandy, get me a cab, please. I’ll be leaving in a minute or two.” “Ms. Kilbourne, I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I think I could get an FBI Counterespionage unit down here to bring you in for questioning about a national security matter.”

“Go ahead,” Dominique said, unperturbed, hanging up.

“I work for Mr. Ryan, and I think he could pull a few strings.”

“Howard Ryan is an ungrateful son of a bitch whose life your father saved,” Dominique blurted angrily. “I was there, I saw it. So you can go back to Langley and tell him that if he wants to find Kirk McGarvey he can do it on his own. I certainly won’t help him. Or you.”

Elizabeth was a little embarrassed, but she didn’t let it show. “I don’t know why I should be surprised by your reaction, Ms. Kilbourne. My father has terrible luck with women, but the ones he’s attracted to are as strong willed as they are beautiful.”

I “Thank you for the compliment, if that’s what it is, but I still can’t help you,” Dominique said coolly. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have a luncheon appointment.”

Elizabeth glanced at the wall clock. “You have fifteen minutes to get to the Senate dining room, so you should have Sandy call over there and tell them you’ll be late for lunch because something else has come up. It’s a family emergency.”

“Get out of here.”

“You’re going to help me find my father for the same reasons I have to find him before Ryan does. You’re in love with him, or at least you were.”

Elizabeth had been guessing, but Dominique reacted as if she’d been shot, some of the light fading from her eyes. “My father has a habit of walking out on the people he loves most, not because he wants to be mean, but because he wants to protect us. “Being around him can be dangerous.”

“You’re telling me.”

“This time his life is on the line. I have some information that he has to have. Without it he could be walking into a trap.”

“Your father is an amazing man,” Dominique said.

“Yes, he is, Ms. Kilbourne,” Elizabeth said. “But he’s just that. Only a man. Will you help me?”

Dominique thought a moment, then picked up the phone again. “Sandy, cancel that cab. Then call Senator Dobson and give him my apologies, but I won’t be able to have lunch with him today. See if we can reschedule for later in the week.” Dominique looked at Elizabeth. “Everything is fine. But cancel my appointments for the remainder of the afternoon as well.”

“All that isn’t necessary,” Elizabeth said when Dominique hung up. “I don’t need your entire afternoon.”

“I do,” Dominique said bitterly. She went to a sideboard where she opened a bottle of white wine from a small refrigerator, poured two glasses, and brought them back.

“Thank you, Ms. Kilbourne,” Elizabeth said, taking one of the glasses.

“We better start using first names, otherwise it’s going to become awkward,” Dominique said. She gave Elizabeth a bleak look. “I can see a lot of your father in your face, and in your voice. But I thought you were working for the United Nations.”

“I just started with the Company about six months ago. My father doesn’t know yet.”

Dominique managed a faint smile. “I have a feeling he’ll go through the roof when he does find out.”

Elizabeth couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you’re right. But first I have to find him.”

Dominique’s face had sagged, but she picked herself up. “Your father hurt me very much.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dominique waved her off. “It has nothing to do with you, except that he said the same thing to me last year that you just said. Being around him is dangerous. There are a lot of people from his past who could be gunning for him. There are a lot of old grudges on both sides of the Atlantic. Now you.”

“Have you heard from him in the past year?”

“No.”

“That’s not like him.”

“When we parted we had some angry words. I told him that I would either have all of him, or I wanted nothing.”

“With my father that was a mistake, if you loved him.”

“I don’t need some twenty-year-old giving advice to the lovelorn, even if she is a McGarvey,” Dominique flared. “You’ve apparently inherited his manipulative trait as well.”

“I didn’t come here to be your friend,” Elizabeth said harshly. “Although that would have been nice. How can I reach my father?”

“What has he done?”

“I can’t tell you that, except to say that it’s vitally important that I see him.”

“Is it the Russians?” Dominique demanded. “Has Viktor Yemlin popped up looking for his quid pro quo?”

“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth asked sharply, trying to hide her surprise. “If you’re going to play in your father’s league, you’d better do your homework first. Yemlin is an old adversary who helped your father out last year. One thing I learned about the business is that nobody does anything for nothing. Your father expected he would show up sooner or later.”

“I can’t answer that,” Elizabeth said.

Dominique started to say something, but Elizabeth overrode her.

“It may sound melodramatic, but the less you know the better off you’ll be. Now I’ll ask you once again, how can I reach my father.”

Dominique turned away. “I don’t know,” she said. “At least not directly. But he did mention the names of two men he trusted with his life. One of them was Phil Carrara, who was killed. And the other was Otto Rencke, apparently some computer expert who’s a black sheep. There was something about Twinkies, but I don’t remember all the details.”

“Is he here in Washington?”

“He was. But he’s in France now. Not in Paris but somewhere nearby.”

“Did my father give you his phone number, or email address? Anything like that?”

“No,” Dominique said. “But apparently Rencke worked for the CIA once upon a time. He’s supposed to be a genius whom everybody is afraid of. But if anybody would know how to get in touch with your father it would either be Rencke, or Yemlin. Beyond that I don’t know anything, because if one of them had come to me trying to find your father I would have given them your name. Your father told me that there was only one woman in his life who he loved unreservedly, and who loved him the same way. It was you.”

“A father-daughter prerogative,” Elizabeth mumbled, masking her sudden emotion.

“He’s a more complicated man than I thought, isn’t he,” Dominique said desolately.

“You can’t imagine,” Elizabeth replied.

NINETEEN

The overnight train back to Moscow was just as crowded as the train out, but if anything the passengers were in even higher spirits than before. They’d seen Tarankov’s magic with their own eyes. The blood of the revolution had been spilled in Nizhny Novgorod just as it had in other cities. Their only disappointment was that they’d come away without-the money they’d expected. Tarankov’s troops never left the vicinity of the railway station, and had not robbed any banks for the people.

“Ah well, maybe it was just a lie,” an old man said philosophically. “But killing those bastards was real.” “Wait until he returns’ to Moscow, then those bastards in the Kremlin will see what a real man is like,” another one voiced the generally held opinion. “Then the trains will run on time again, and we’ll have food that we can afford back in the shops.”

McGarvey had gotten aboard early enough to find a spot in the corner where he curled up, a half-empty got tie of vodka between his knees, as he pretended to sleep, the conversations swirling around him. At one point someone eased the vodka bottle from his loose grip, and then he dozed until they pulled into Yaroslavl Station around 6:30 of a dark gray morning.

After the grueling night the passengers who got off the train were still drunk or hung over, their excitement dissipated, and they wandered away heads hung low, quietly as if they’d just returned from a funeral and not a revolution.

McGarvey found a toilet stall in the nearly deserted arrivals and departures hall, where he changed back into his civilian clothes, stuffing the filthy uniform into the carryall with the last of the greasy sausage and bread.

Someone came into the restroom and used the urinal trough.

McGarvey waited until he was gone, then emerged from the stall leaving the carryall behind as if he’d forgotten it, and out front caught a cab for the Metropol.

The trip to Nizhny Novgorod had made a number of things clear to McGarvey, among them that Tarankov’s security was extremely effective. His armored train was a well armed fortress that even a half-dozen attack helicopters had been unable to stop. And once he arrived in the city, his commandoes had set up a defensive perimeter that would have taken a considerable force to penetrate. A lot of civilians, which were Tarankov’s major line of defense, would have been killed in the battle, something at this point that the Kremlin could not afford to do.

Whatever lingering doubts McGarvey might have had about Tarankov’s time table had also gone out the window in Nizhny Novgorod. On May Day Tarankov’s train would roar into Moscow, and he would swoop into Red Square at the head of his column of commandoes with more than a million people screaming his name. It was the one day of the year that no Russian could resist celebrating. Whatever forces the Kremlin would be able to muster, if any, by that late date, would not be sufficient to stop him.

In May Tarankov would ascend to the same throne that Stalin had held unless he were killed.

Despite yesterday’s events, which nearly everyone in Moscow must have heard about in news reports or by word of mouth, nothing outwardly had changed. Although seeing the city through new eyes, McGarvey felt an underlying tension even in the traffic and in the way the cabby drove. Moscow was holding its collective breath for the elections in less than three months. It was as if Russians were resigned to another great upheaval.

The cabby dropped him off at his hotel around 8:00 a.m.” and he went straight upstairs to his room where Artur the bellman intercepted him as he got off the elevator.

“You look like hell. You must have had a good time.”

“Not bad,” McGarvey mumbled pulling out his key.

Artur snatched it from him, preceded him down the corridor and unlocked his door with a flourish. “The floor maid was worried. She wanted to report you downstairs, but I told her to mind her own fucking business. You want a hair of the dog. I got some good Belgian brandy for you.”

“No thanks,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to Helsinki tonight. My train leaves from Leningrad station a little after six. But right now I want some sleep, and I don’t want to be disturbed until three. Then I’ll want a bottle of white wine, and something to eat. At 4:30 I want a cab driver by the” name of Arkady Astimovich to pick me up. He works for Martex. Do you know him?”

“He’s a shit asshole, but I know him.”

McGarvey pulled out a fifty-franc note. “I want Arkady here by 4:30.”

Artur grabbed the money. “Anything you say. But just watch your back with that one. He’s in the Mafia’s pocket.”

His room had been searched, but nothing was missing, nor did it appear that his laptop computer had been tampered with. After a shower he went to bed, but sleep was a long time coming. He knew the approximate when of the kill, as well as the where. Thinking about the cab driver Arkady, the Mafia entrepreneur Vasha, and the bellman Artur he had a glimmering of the how not only of the kill, but most importantly of his escape. He slept, finally, dreaming that he was climbing through the scaffolding inside the main dome of St. Basil’s while Tarankov’s right hand man Leonid Chernov was in the crowd of a million people in Red Square looking up at him.

It was past 9:00 p.m. in Washington when Elizabeth brought up a photograph of a good-looking woman on her computer screen. She had been assigned a cubicle in DO territory on the fourth floor, and a computer terminal with a designator that allowed her access to a broad range of files in the CIA’s vast database. She’d reported to a somewhat disinterested Tom Moore that she was making some progress, but that it might take longer than she thought to find her father. Background noise, her father called it. Like soft music to lull someone asleep while you did the real work.

This afternoon she had the Company’s travel section book her an evening flight for the next day to Paris under her Elizabeth Swanson identity. It gave her another twenty-four hours plus to finish up here in Washington. Meanwhile, on the way back to her apartment, she stopped at a pay phone and telephoned a travel agency booking a late shuttle flight to New York’s Kennedy Airport, where she would stay at the Airport Hilton, and take the Air France Concorde to Paris under her own name, but using her mother’s credit card. The simple subterfuge would give her an evening and a full day in Paris before she was missed. Hopefully it would be enough time to find her father.

She packed a bag which she locked in her trunk, and came back out to Langley. No one at the gate or upstairs in Operations thought anything of it. She was McGarvey’s kid on a special assignment for Ryan. She had a lot to prove so she was doing her homework after school.

Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph and brief file, marked confidential, were in the French section of identified SDECE agents. She was forty, born in Nice, educated at the Sorbonne in languages and modern political history, and was recruited by the SDECE ten years ago. She’d started her career in the secret service just as Elizabeth had, as a translator. She’d spent two years working from the French delegation at the United Nations in New York. No mention was made of her specific assignment, but she was recalled to France after her lover, who worked for the Canadian delegation, committed suicide by flinging himself into the East River one early winter evening. The young man was a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister, who was pragmatic enough to understand that such things happen. Nevertheless everyone seemed to agree that it would be for the best if Mademoiselle Belleau returned to her side of the Atlantic without delay. Her continued presence was deemed too embarrassing for the Canadians.

The photograph was an official one, possibly her UN identification picture, and she looked stern. Nevertheless in-Elizabeth’s estimation she was beautiful. Just the kind of woman her father was attracted to.

Elizabeth smiled sadly. Her mother, Dominique Kilbourne, and this French woman could have been cut from the same cloth. Slender, narrow pretty faces, high cheekbones, expressive eyes. They all had a sensuousness to them that reminded Elizabeth of the photographs she’d seen of her grandmother, who’d been a beauty in her day. It gave Elizabeth another understanding of her father, and her heart ached a little for what could have been. Most of her life she’d dreamed that someday her mother and father would somehow get back together. Even now, she found she wished for such an impossible reunion. “Too much water under the bridge,” her father would say. She could hear his voice.

The file gave Mademoiselle Belleau’s address on the Avenue Felix Faure in the 15th Arrondissement, on the opposite side of Paris from her father’s apartment off the Rue La Fayette in the 19th.

Elizabeth thought about taking a printout with her, but decided against it. In the unlikely event that French customs searched her bags, it wouldn’t go for her to be carrying the dossier of a French secret intelligence officer. Too many questions would be asked, especially by Ryan and Moore. Specifically, why hadn’t she been traveling under her Elizabeth Swanson identity.

She canceled the file, backed out of the program, then shut down her terminal, and sat back in her chair. Her eyes burned from a lack of sleep and from staring at computer screens. Although she went out on dates she’d avoided becoming involved with anyone specific. A mistake? she wondered. Speaking to Dominique Kilbourne and seeing Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph brought her a sharp image of her father being caressed by them. She wished she had someone to caress. Someone she could share her inner fears with. Someone to love. Someone in her bed.

Elizabeth shut off the lights and went downstairs to the nearly deserted cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a smoke. Toivich was seated alone in a corner reading a newspaper. Elizabeth brought her coffee over to him.

“Mind some company, Mr. B?” she asked.

Toivich looked up. “My little devochka, it’s late.”

Elizabeth sat down across the table from him. “I wanted to apologize for not taking the time to let you know that I was transferred to Operations.”

“I was told. But I don’t think Mr. Ryan would approve of you sneaking back down to your old console for a little night work.”

“I have my own terminal in DO now.”

Toivich clucked. “I’m not talking about tonight. You know what I mean. But I can’t blame you. A daughter has the right to know about her father, especially when she’s been assigned to find him.”

Elizabeth looked sharply at him. “What have you heard?”

“Enough to know that you should take great care that you don’t try to be a wild west cowboy like your father.”

Elizabeth started to protest, but Toivich held her off. “Your father was the very best. Still is, I suspect. If he’s gone to ground for some reason there will be a great many people interested in him, and therefore you. Some of them very bad people you’ve not been trained to deal with.” Toivich looked into her eyes. “Genetics is important, but so is education and experience. And luck.”

“Why does Howard Ryan hate my father so badly?”

“Mr. Ryan is the quintessential corporate man. Your father on the other hand is a maverick. Each time he pulls off one of his coups, it makes Mr. Ryan look like the fool he is.”

“He’s jealous of my father, is that it?”

Toivich shrugged. “That and a little fear, perhaps. Ryan wants to become DCI, and he has an excellent chance of taking over when the general steps down. And maybe Ryan would be the right man for the job. It would keep Congress off our backs because Ryan is also the consummate politician. But so long as your father continues to do what he does best, he’s a thorn in Ryan’s side. He’s become Mr. Ryan’s cause celebre.”

“I see.”

“By sending you he means to flush your father out of hiding, which will happen because your father will drop everything to protect you from harm’s way.”

“But I’m not in any danger. My father is.”

“That’s just the point, Elizabeth, you probably are in grave danger. Especially if you start playing by your own rules. If you cut your support system before you reach your father, nobody might get to you in time if you get into trouble.”

Elizabeth said nothing. She’d not lost her determination to find her father and warn him, but she was frightened now.

“Think about it.”

“Am I being followed, Mr. B?”

Toivich shrugged again. “Probably.”

“What if I don’t want to be followed?”

“If you don’t do anything that you’re not supposed to do, it won’t matter.”

“I need to get to Dulles by eleven, and I don’t want anybody to know about it.”

“You just told me.”

Elizabeth flashed him a smile.

Toivich shook his head. “Where are you parked?”

“Out back in D.”

“They’ll be waiting at that door. I was just about to leave. We’ll go out the front and I’ll drive you around to your car. But it won’t take them long to figure that out, so you won’t have much of a head start.”

“It’s all I need. Thanks, Mr. B.”

Moscow

“How did it go?” Arkady Astimovich asked on the way over to the Leningrad Station.

“I think I’m going to be a rich man,” McGarvey replied. He sat in the front seat with the cabby. “But I’m going to need some help.”

“I told you that I’ve got some goddamned good connections in this city.”

“The Mafia?”

Astimovich glanced over at him, and nodded warily. “You gotta deal with them if you want to survive in this town. It’ll be expensive, but damned well worth it.”

“How much are you paying?”

“Plenty,” the cabby said. He laughed. “Everybody pays. My brother-in-law is a big deal son of a bitch at the Grand Dinamo, and still I pay.”

“I don’t have a problem with that. But when the time comes I don’t want to deal with some kulak.”

“My brother-in-law knows what he’s doing,” Astimovich said. “What kind of business are we going into, boss?”

“I’ll let you know when I get back.”

“When’s that?”

“A few weeks. Maybe a little longer, maybe a little sooner.”

“What do you want me to do in the meantime?”

“Keep your mouth shut.”

They pulled up in front of the busy Leningrad Station, traffic heavy as usual. The snow had finally stopped but the temperature had plunged. Everything looked dirty.

“Three weeks is a long time,” Astimovich said sullenly. “How do I know you’re coming back?”

“Because we’re going to make some money,” McGarvey said. He peeled a thousand francs from a thick bundle of bills and handed it to the cabby. “Let’s call this a down payment, shall we?” “Spasiba,” the cabby said, pocketing the money.

“Do as I say and you’ll be a rich man. Cross me and I’ll kill you. I’ve got connections now in this town too.”

“Okay, boss. You’ll see everything will be hunky dory.”

McGarvey got his bag from the back seat of the cab and disappeared with the crowds inside the railway station. He waited by the front doors-for a few minutes to make sure that Astimovich wouldn’t try to follow him, then went to the stand-up restaurant and had a glass of beer and a meat pie. In three days he had learned what he needed to know about Tarankov and conditions in Russia. He felt that his odds had greatly improved from the thousand-to-one he’d told Yemlin. But there was still a long way to go, because he wouldn’t go through with the assassination unless he could improve his chances to at least fifty-fifty.

His overnight train for Helsinki was scheduled to arrive in the Finnish capital shortly before 9:30 a.m., giving him ninety minutes to make his Finnair flight to Brussels where he would pick up his Avis Renault and drive back to Paris.

He was leaving Russia several thousand francs poorer, but if the million dollars had been deposited in his Channel Islands account as Yemlin promised it would be, then money would not be a problem. Nor would it have been in any event. The investments he’d made over the past twenty-five years, starting with the proceeds from the sale of his parents’ ranch in Kansas, had done well. He was not a wealthy man, but he was independent. His demand for money from Yemlin had only been done to insure that the Russian was serious. Money was something they understood almost better than any other concept.

Gathering his bag, he left the restaurant and walked through the terminal to the trackside gates where he had to show his ticket and passport. Outgoing Russian customs wouldn’t occur until Vyborg, but his gun was tucked safely away in his laptop computer, and Russians these days were more interested in what was being brought into the country than what was being taken out.

TWENTY

A few minutes past 5:30 p.m.” the Air France Concorde SST from New York, touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport with a tremendous roar, its needle nose drooping like some gigantic insect. Of the 143 passengers, Elizabeth McGarvey was one of the last off, letting her seat partner, an extremely boring attorney from New Jersey, precede her. During the four-hour flight across the Atlantic the man had done everything within his power to convince her to meet him at his hotel for drinks tonight. At first his attentions had been flattering because he was reasonably good looking. But then he’d become funny and finally annoying. But she didn’t want to attract any attention so she’d quietly gone along with him, even taking down his hotel number. But she refused to ride into the city with him or even get off the plane together because her father, who was insanely protective of his daughter, would be meeting her, and she didn’t want to cause a scene, to which the lawyer agreed wholeheartedly. By the time she got off the plane she was in an extremely bitchy mood.

She taped the Elizabeth Swanson passport and identification papers to her midriff between the bottom of her bra and the top of her panties. She didn’t think that even a Frenchman would dare pat her down. And unless authorities were expecting her, there’d be no reason for the customs officers to become suspicious.

“The purpose of your visit to France, Mademoiselle?” the young passport control officer asked from his booth.

“Tourism,” Elizabeth replied curtly.

The officer stamped her passport indifferently, and she walked back to customs. She’d flown Air France, not a foreign carrier, so she’d arrived at Aerogare Two which was only for Air France and therefore uncomplicated. This evening the terminal was practically deserted.

There was no sign of her seat-mate when she picked up her bag and headed for the rien a declarer line. The customs official smiled at her and passed her through with a wave, and she was in France. It had been easy.

Upstairs in the main terminal she got a couple of thousand francs from the ATM using her mother’s credit card, then went back downstairs again and outside to the cab ranks.

“Good evening, Mademoiselle,” the cabby said.

“L’Hotel Marronniers sur la Rue Jacob clans la Rive Gauche, s’il vous plait,” she said, sitting back. “Out, Mademoiselle,” the driver replied respectfully.

As they pulled away from the curb, Elizabeth took a cigarette! out of her purse, lit it, then cracked the window by a couple of inches.

“Pas de fumer Mademoiselle,” the driver said sternly over his shoulder.

Elizabeth ignored him.

“Mademoiselle, please no smoking,” he said, looking at her reflection in the rearview mirror.

She stared out the window, totally ignoring him, as she slowly uncrossed her legs giving him a good view up her short skirt, and then sat back even farther so that her skirt hiked almost up to her panty line. The driver stopped complaining, but from time to time he glanced in the rearview mirror, and she rewarded him with a couple more looks up her skirt, which seemed to make him happy.

She and her mother had spent a few days at the small, but pleasant Hotel Marronniers on the Left Bank a few years ago after she’d finished school in’ Bern. She thought it unlikely that anyone on the staff would remember her, but even if they did it wouldn’t matter, because she wasn’t here illegally, nor had she committed any crime on French soil.

Her father was here someplace, she thought as they crossed the river and got off the ring highway at the Quai Marcel Boyer above the Pont National. Paris was his home of choice, he’d explained to her, because for the most part the people were civilized, they minded their own business, and their food and wine were the best in the world. Besides, where else would a Voltaire scholar feel more at home than in France?

Rush-hour traffic was thinning out by the time the cabby dropped her off in front of the hotel that was hidden behind a courtyard. She went inside, showed her passport and booked a room for a week, and paid for it with her own credit card. It would take twenty-four to thirty-six hours for her presence to be known in Paris from her hotel registration. By then she would have either found her father or she would have checked in with Tom Lynch, so hiding her trail was no longer as important as it had been on the shuttle from Dulles to Kennedy, and the Concorde flight over.

She thought she recognized the old concierge behind his desk, but if he remembered her he gave no hint of it. The bellman helped her upstairs with her bag, and after she tipped him and he was gone, she flung open the windows and breathed the Paris air. No other city in the world smelled quite like this one, she thought. And especially this time, because she was in Paris on a secret mission. It was better than the movies, because it was real.

She took a quick shower, dried her hair, then dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a pretty white V-neck light sweater and a pair of black flats that matched her shoulder bag. She hid her Elizabeth Swanson papers under the bed, then went out.

It was dinner time, and she was famished. She sat down at a sidewalk cafe a couple of blocks from her hotel, where she had a half-bottle of Chardonnay, a small salad, a cheese omelette with pommes frittes and a cafe” express afterwards.

She’d been on her own since college, first in New York, and for the past few months in Washington. But being here in Paris like this, was different. Vastly different.

The address of her father’s apartment was across the river near the ga res du Nord and de 1”Est, in what until recently had been a rough workingman’s neighborhood. But Paris was undergoing a renovation, and cruising past his building in a taxi Elizabeth could see why he liked this part of town. It was anonymous, with an easy egress from the city on the main Avenue Jean Jaures, plus the two railway stations. There was a small park across the. street from a pleasant looking cafe a half-block from his apartment.

She had the cabby cruise around the neighborhood, explaining that she wasn’t quite certain of the correct address, while she looked for signs that her father’s place was under surveillance: someone loitering across the street, a van with too many antennas parked on the street, the chance reflection of binocular lenses in a second story window. But if they were there, she couldn’t spot them, and she had the cabby drop her off in front of the cafe”.

Although the evening was starting to get cool, Elizabeth sat at an outside table where she had a coffee while she watched the neighborhood. Her father’s apartment was on the third floor front, and the windows were dark. She hadn’t expected to simply take a cab out to his apartment” knock on his door and find him at home. But seeing his darkened windows gave her a chill. She felt not so much on her own now, as she did alone, abandoned again like she’d been when she was a child.

She’d become spoiled over the past few years, having him a car-ride away when he lived outside Washington, or a telephone call away when he lived here. And she’d forgotten what it had been like without him for most of her childhood. She’d bounced from missing him so badly that she ached, to hating him so deeply that she dreamed once of shooting him in the head with a gun, then cutting off his arms and legs with a machete and using his parts to feed the sharks. The next morning she’d been so ashamed of her dream that she’d thrown up and managed to produce a fever so that her mother kept her home from school. She just couldn’t face her classmates, almost all of whom had both parents at home.

Later when she’d come to learn at least in general terms what her father did for a living, she’d become so proud that she couldn’t stop talking about him. Finally the school principal had called her mother in to ask her to stop Elizabeth’s fantastical stories. They frightened the other students, and some of the teachers and parents. At any rate if her father really was a spy, Elizabeth shouldn’t be so open about it. Her mother had been deeply embarrassed and for several months afterward Elizabeth was not allowed to speak her father’s name.

A half-block away the Rue La Fayette was busy, but on this side street only a few cars and few pedestrians moved. It was a week night and most French families were at home eating dinner and watching television. Some new plane trees had been planted along both sides of the street, ‘and although they were small, and their branches mostly bare, there were a few green buds on some of them. In ten or fifteen years this would be an extremely pleasant, and therefore expensive neighborhood.

Certain now that no one was watching her father’s apartment building, Elizabeth paid for her coffee, and made the first pass on foot, looking through the windows into the empty ground floor vestibule. She crossed the street at the corner, and returned. She had to wait for a taxi to pass before she could Cross back and she ducked inside the apartment building.

Her father’s name was listed on a white card on the mailbox for 3A, and for a few seconds she hoped that she was on a wild goose chase. A radio or television was playing somewhere within the building, and she heard a woman’s voice raised in what sounded like anger. A man barked a sharp reply, and the woman fell silent. She took the stairs at the back of the hall two at a time to the third floor where she held up for a full minute. This floor was quiet. No light shone from under either the front or rear apartment doors. Even the air smelled neutral, only a faint mustiness indicated the building was old. Again she hoped she was on a wild goose chase, and her father would come up the stairs behind her and be flabbergasted when he saw her standing in the darkness. But no one came up. She stepped out of the stairway to her father’s apartment, hesitated a second longer, then rang the bell.

The door to the opposite apartment behind her opened, and she turned, catching the impression of a bulky man in shirtsleeves standing there with a gun in his hand.

The thought that she’d made a dreadful mistake coming here flashed through her head like a bolt of lightning. Moving on instinct she charged into the stairway and raced downstairs without a sound. If she could make it outside she had a fair chance of losing herself in the night. Among her talents were the 220and 440yard dashes for which she’d won trophies in high school and college. One of her coaches had even suggested training for the Olympics, but she hadn’t been interested.

She reached the ground floor as the front door slammed open and several men in dark windbreakers barged into the narrow vestibule.

Turning, she started back up the stairs when the man from the third floor suddenly appeared, blocking the way.

Elizabeth turned again, this time into the muzzles of two very large pistols. She stopped and her entire body sagged.

“Shit,” she said.

The flashing blue lights of several police cars were gathered on the street, along with a growing number of onlookers.

“Give me your purse, Mademoiselle,” one of the gunmen said. “Je suis la fine de Monsieur Kirk McGarvey,” Elizabeth said, carefully handing her purse to the surprised plain clothes officer.

“What are you doing here, Mademoiselle McGarvey?” one of the other plain clothes officers asked. He was heavyset and very dark and dangerous looking.

“I came to see my father, naturally,” Elizabeth replied. “Is this how you treat all your visitors to France?”

The heavyset man searched her purse, and examined her passport. “Your father is not at home.”

“Evidently not.”

“Where is he?”

“I thought he was here.”

“Was he expecting you?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “Now if that’s all, I’d like my purse and I’ll go.”

“I would like to ask you a few questions, if you’ll come downtown with us. With no trouble, please.”

“First I’d like to call my embassy.”

“In due time, Mademoiselle,” the heavyset man said. “If you cooperate we will not handcuff you.”

Elizabeth stepped up to him. He towered a full head over her, and he looked dangerous, more like a street thug than a cop. “What am I being charged with, and who the hell are you?”

“You’re being charged with nothing, yet As for my name, I am Colonel Guy de Galan.” He stepped aside for her. “Now, if you please, Mademoiselle?”

Elizabeth hesitated a moment longer. She still had twenty-four hours before Tom Lynch was expecting her. The French were looking for her father, but with luck they might buy her story and let her go, providing they did not find out what hotel she was staying at and search her room.

Out in the street several dozen people had gathered to watch what was going on. She searched the crowd for a familiar face, either her father’s or Tom Lynch’s whom she was sure she would recognize from the photographs she’d seen. But they were all strangers hoping to catch some interesting action. Getting in the back of Colonel Galan’s car she glanced up at her father’s apartment, a bitter taste in her mouth. In less than forty-eight hours working for Ryan she’d managed to get herself arrested. It wouldn’t look so good in her personnel file, but she didn’t think that the Deputy Director of Operations would be very surprised.

TWENTY-ONE

McGarvey flipped off the Renault’s headlights shortly before 10:00 p.m. as he approached Rencke’s house, and stopped in the woods to make sure there was no danger.

It was good to be back in France, even if his stay was only temporary. The evening was cool, but it was sharply warmer than Russia or Finland and he was sweating lightly by the time he reached the edge of the trees overlooking the farmhouse.

He’d spent a reasonably restful evening aboard the train from Moscow to Helsinki, and even managed to get another two hours of sleep on the Finnair flight. By the — time he reached Brussels he was well rested and made the 235-mile drive to Bonnieres in under five hours, which included a leisurely dinner in an excellent bistro in Compiegne.

A thin curl of smoke rose from the chimney of the farmhouse, and a light shone from one of the windows. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, nevertheless McGarvey settled down to wait for a full thirty minutes to see if anything developed. Even the most disciplined surveillance officers would do something in that time span to reveal themselves to a careful observer. Light a cigarette, cough, move a branch or a bush, key a walkie talkie.

During the drive across France he had worked out more of the details of the first glimmerings of a plan that had come to him in Moscow. Getting into Russia would provide no real difficulty. But once Tarankov was down, getting back out again could be difficult unless his cover was airtight. When the authorities looked at him, he wanted them to see what they expected to see, and not an assassin. In fact, if all went well the Russian Mafia would actually help him get out and never know what they’d unknowingly done.

Something moved at the edge of the woods fifty yards to the left. McGarvey stood stock still behind the hole of a large oak tree, all of his senses alert.

The bushes rattled, the sound almost inaudible. Moments later a small white-tailed deer stepped into the clearing. It was a doe, and she was cautious, her nose up testing the air. She looked toward McGarvey then meandered the rest of the way down the hill, daintily skirted Rencke’s solar panel arrays, and followed the far edge of the woods, finally disappearing toward the river.

McGarvey walked back to the car satisfied no one was watching the house, and drove the rest of the way down the hill. An excited Rencke was waiting for him at the front door, his hair a mess, his blue jeans dirty and his tennis shoes untied, the laces flapping as he hopped from foot to foot.

“Hiya, Mac. Tell me you were in Nizhny Novgorod and you’ll make my day. I won’t even complain that you didn’t bring me any Twinkies this time. Tell me! Tell me!”

“I was there, and it’s even worse than you thought,” McGarvey said, preceding Rencke inside. He stopped in his tracks.

Most of the computer equipment was gone, or had been dismantled and packed in large boxes. Only one monitor still showed anything, and two partitioned suitcases were almost completely filled with super dense floppy disks. McGarvey felt a twinge of uneasiness.

“What’s going on, Otto? Is somebody onto you?”

“Maybe the Action Service, I’m not sure,” Rencke said brusquely. “But as of a few hours ago all the CIA circuits to Paris Station went blank except for routine housekeeping data after the French requested it.”

“What was the last message sent?”

“It was an FYI to Lynch from Tom Moore, Ryan’s assistant, that you would be in French custody within twenty-four hours.”

McGarvey considered this news for a moment. “Did he say how?”

“No. But it’s getting flaky out there all of a sudden, know what I mean? Somebody is taking this shit mucho seriously, and you’re at the middle of it.”

“Has anyone made the connection between me and Tarankov yet?”

“There’s been nothing on any of the circuits. But I think they might be making the leap. Kabatov has asked for U.S. help, and it looks like Lindsay is about to give it to him.” It wasn’t surprising. From what McGarvey had seen Kabatov’s government was in serious trouble. “What kind of help?”

“NATO has been instructed to conduct exercises in Poland, and they’re moving I don’t know how many divisions up there now. All our air bases in Germany are on alert, and the Sixth Fleet has deployed from Naples. The sabres are rattling big time, Mac. Brings you back to the early sixties,” “Have you got someplace—?” McGarvey began.

“That depends on you,” Rencke cut in. “But I found a house with a garage up in Courbevoie. It’s French yuppie ville and I don’t think anyone would expect to find me there. Anyway, there’s a telephone substation fifty meters from my backdoor, the N308 is a block away, and it’s less than twenty minutes to downtown Paris. I should have been a real estate agent, don’t you think?”

“How long did you rent it for?”

“A year, but more to the point, are you taking the job? Are you going to kill Tarankov?”

“Yes, and I’m going to need your help,” McGarvey said.

“That’s why I rented Courbevoie. Otherwise I was thinking that a winter in Rio wouldn’t be all that bad.”

McGarvey had to laugh despite the situation. “I don’t think they sell Twinkies down there, Otto.”

“They do, Mac, I checked. What do you think, I’m crazy or something?” Rencke’s eyes were alive with excitement. “You saw him blow away those apparatchiks in Nizhny Novgorod, Mac? You looked into his eyes and saw — what?”

“I saw the killings, but it was Leonid Chernov who looked into my eyes.”

Rencke was suddenly serious. “Bad shit, Mac, because he’s gotta be the baddest dog of all. No records on him. Nada, unless you brought me the SVR’s database number.”

“Have you still got a secure outside line?” McGarvey asked.

“For the moment.”

“Okay. Pull up today’s Le Figaro. The personals column.”

Rencke went to the one computer that was still running, and within a minute he was scrolling through Le Figaro’s want ads. “What are we looking for?”

“There,” McGarvey said, stabbing, a finger on the screen. Julius loves you, please call at once. 277-8693.

“The telephone number is inverted. Add five to each number, and start over again past zero.”

“All right,” Rencke said. “It’s 722-3148. Did Year lin place the ad?”

“Yes.”

“It could be traced, Mac. Do we want to trust it?”

“We don’t have any other choice. I need more information on Chernov, because I think that I’ll come up against him sooner or later. If he’s what I think he is Tarankov has given him a free hand, and he’ll probably have his own connections among the old KGB’s Department Viktor people. It means he’s dangerous and I’ll probably have to kill him in order to get out.”

Rencke looked at McGarvey with wonder. “You’re really going to do it. You’re going to assassinate the bastard.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why?” Rencke asked.

“Because it’s what I do,” McGarvey replied. “And I’m getting paid one million dollars for the job. But Tarankov certainly won’t be the first politician whose assassination didn’t make any difference in the long run. But just now at this point in time Russia can go either way. Maybe I don’t like the thought of having to fight a cold war all over again. Or have nuclear missiles pointed at us. Maybe by killing this one man I can save some lives. They were apparatchiks in Nizhny Novgorod. Probably corrupt and arrogant as hell, but Tarankov and his men executed them without a second thought. You predicted that if he gains power tens of thousands, maybe millions of people would die. I might be able to prevent that.”

Rencke had become subdued, his face long. “It’s something else too, isn’t it Mac? It’s about your parents.”

“I guess,” McGarvey said.

The house was suddenly closing in. He went out to the courtyard, and lit a cigarette. He had the fleeting thought that if someone was out there in the trees the flare of his match and the glowing tip of the cigarette would make him a perfect target for assassination. It was a thought he’d had from time to time. It would answer the ultimate question, as Rencke had suggested, of finding out what came afterward. And it would be a release from his dreams in which he clearly saw the faces of every person he’d ever killed. His sister in Utah had stopped speaking to him years ago, so his nieces and nephews had grown up without knowing their uncle. It was at times like these he missed the sense of family. His wife couldn’t live with him, and he’d been frightened for the safety of every woman he’d ever known intimately. Lately he’d even tried to keep his daughter at arm’s length for fear that she would come to harm’s way. Yemlin showing up in Paris had shaken him more than he wanted to admit, because despite his expertise in the business he was just as vulnerable as any other man. This kill would be the ultimate for him, because although he knew in his heart of hearts that he would never be able to reduce the odds of success to fifty-fifty he was still going ahead with it. He wasn’t invincible, but he didn’t care because the prize was worth the risk.

“I never knew my parents, so I can only guess what you must be feeling,” Rencke said from the darkness behind McGarvey. “But at least you had them when you were growing up. You had family. A sister, and then a wife and a daughter. No matter how bad it gets, you had that much, Mac. Which was more than I ever had. I don’t even have my cats anymore. I’ve got nobody except for you.”

McGarvey turned around. Rencke had extinguished the house lights and he stood in the deeper shadows beneath the eaves. He looked like the silhouette of a comic figure, except that it was painfully obvious from his words that he was hurting.

It seemed to McGarvey that he had given of himself for most of his life. He’d given himself to his country, which since Santiago didn’t seem to care, or even want to know about him. He’d given everything he was capable of to women, but in the end they’d all rejected him for one reason or another. Because of his fears, of course, but because he was apparently incapable of giving them what they needed, on their terms. Elizabeth was the only exception, but she was young and she still idolized him. In time her eyes would be opened and though she might not reject-him, she would at least keep him at arm’s length.

He’d fared no better with men either. He’d looked up to his father, who he’d been told was a traitor. He’d looked up to John Lymann Trotter, a former DDO, who’d tried to kill him. He’d looked up to Phil Carrara, another DDO, who’d died trying to help him. And he’d looked up to CIA director Roland Murphy, who thought that at best McGarvey was a sometimes necessary evil. “We’re a couple of misfits, aren’t we, Mac?” Rencke said. “You’re an assassin and I’m a flake. But you know, it’s sometimes the misfits who get the job done.”

“If you’re a misfit, Otto, I wish the rest of the world were misfits too,” McGarvey said gently.

Rencke laughed. “That makes us family.”

“Sure does. But until the job is done we’re going to be a busy family and you’re going to have to do exactly as I say.”

“I’ll do it, Mac.”

“When can you take possession of your new house?”

“I signed the lease two days ago. It’s mine right now. I just wanted to wait until you came back.”

“We’re going up there tonight. What we can’t take with us, we’re going to destroy, as if you’d suddenly left here and vandals broke in.”

“It’s rare in France.”

“It’s rare, but it happens. Maybe the brothers of one of your conquests in the neighborhood decided to get even. We’ll let the local cops figure that out.

“If you’ll help me we can be out of here within the hour,” Rencke said.

“Okay. But I’m not going to tell you what I’m planning so that if something goes wrong you’ll be able to get out. No matter what happens, if something starts to go bad you’re going to run. To Rio if you want. If I come out okay, I’ll find you. Are you all right for money?”

“I have plenty. Most of it outside of France.”

“Once I start, you won’t be able to contact me, so you’ll have to set up a very secure number where I can reach you if I need information.”

“Can do.”

“We’ll arrange a code phrase so that when you answer I’ll know that everything is okay. Yemlin and his people might be the weak link. If he falls they won’t know what I’ve planned, but they’ll know that I’m coming. You’re going to have to do what you can to get back into the CIA’s computers. And hopefully the SVR’s number that Yemlin gave us is a valid one.”

“I’ll say your daughter called and she’s fine,” Rencke said.

McGarvey had a sudden odd feeling, like butterflies fluttering inside his head.

“The code phrase,” Rencke prompted. “I’ll use that one if everything is okay.”

McGarvey nodded. “That’ll work. She’d be pleased if she knew.”

“She’s a pretty girl.”

“When did you meet her?” McGarvey asked a little too sharply.

“It’s okay, Mac. I’ve kept up with you and your family. I wanted to make sure everything was going okay. Your ex-wife is doing fine, but I’m glad she didn’t marry that attorney puke. And Elizabeth’s marks finally came up, and she was doing fine for the UN last time I checked.” Rencke smiled. “Think of me as an uncle. When this is all over with, maybe you can ask her to write me a letter now and then. Maybe invite me to the wedding when she gets married.” Rencke’s face lit up. “I’d made a terrific godfather. I mean it’d be great, don’t you think?”

McGarvey laughed and shook his head. “You are a flake, Otto, but you’re my flake now.”

Rencke laughed out loud and hopped from one foot to another.

“But if you ever touch her, you’ll die,” McGarvey said, trying to keep the grin off his face, but it only made Rencke laugh all the harder.

Gallows humor, McGarvey thought as he went inside and helped Rencke dismantle the equipment he needed, and destroy the rest.

TWENTY-TWO

Elizabeth estimated that it was past one in the morning, and she was tired, hungry and just a little bit frightened. They’d taken her to what looked like an army post or police barracks somewhere on the outskirts of Paris, placed her in a small windowless room furnished with a steel table and three chairs, returned her cigarettes and matches, gave her a bottle of Evian and a plastic glass, and had left. But that had been hours ago, and now she was bored out of her skull and she had to pee.

She got up, smoothed her hair with her fingers, then lit another cigarette and perched on the edge of the table and stared pointedly at the small square of plastic imbedded in the wall. Behind it was either an observation port, or a closed circuit television camera. Either way, they were watching her, and they damned well knew that she knew it. It was irritating because they were treating her like a criminal, and when she finally showed up in Tom Lynch’s office she’d have some explaining to do.

At the very least she figured Ryan would fire her, and she didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. But she wasn’t going to give the French the satisfaction of watching her fall apart.

She stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, raised her middle finger at the plastic square and threw herself down on the chair. “Les salopards,” she swore softly.

The door opened and a kindly looking man with a wrinkled face and thinning white hair came in with a file folder, which he placed on the table. He pulled up a chair, and sat down across from Elizabeth.

“Good evening, ma petite. My name is Alexandre Levy, and I would like to ask you a few questions, after which you will be free to leave. Someone will take you back to your hotel. I’m sure that you would like to have a hot bath, perhaps have a bite to eat and then go to bed. You must be exhausted.”

“Why was I arrested?”

“Oh, good heavens, young lady, you’re not under arrest. We merely wish to ask you a few questions, as I said. Showing up on your father’s doorstep came as something of a surprise to us. We weren’t expecting you.”

“Isn’t it the custom in France for children to visit their parents?” Elizabeth shot back. She felt as if Levy was toying with her, and her eyes were drawn to the file folder.

“Indeed it is. Lamentably, however, my children don’t visit me or their mother as often as we would like. I sincerely hope you treat your filial duties with more respect.” Levy tapped a blunt finger on the file folder. “As you may guess, we take a sincere interest in your father and his current activities. So long as he remains retired he is welcome to reside in France. However a question of the exact nature of his most recent activities has arisen for which we would sincerely like to talk to him.”

Elizabeth tried to interrupt, but Levy held up a hand.

“Please, Mademoiselle. Your father is in no trouble. His arrest has not been ordered, nor do we wish to interfere with his quiet enjoyment of Paris, or of all of France for that matter. So I am asking for your help. Either tell us where your father might have gone, or short of that, simply take a message to him that we’d like to speak with him. We would even agree to a telephone interview. Nothing more than that. Totally harmless. Can you find fault with us?”

“Look, I told Colonel Galan that I was just as surprised as you guys that my father is gone. I’ve got a few days off and I wanted to surprise him. I suppose I should have called first.” Elizabeth shrugged. “But now you’re getting me worried. Maybe something has happened to him. Maybe I should file a missing persons report.”

A faint flicker of a smile crossed Levy’s face. “Your mother is a rich woman?”

The question caught Elizabeth by surprise. “She does okay.”

LeVy flipped open the file folder, and extracted a single sheet of paper which he passed to her. “You only have a few days off in which to see your father, so your mother generously allows you the use of her Visa card. The Concorde flight alone cost nearly six thousand dollars, not to mention the ATM cash withdrawal of two ‘thousand francs at Charles de Gaulle.”

The paper with a Chase Manhattan Bank logo was a brief computer reply to a query from Air France verifying the validity of the charge. “I assume you did not borrow the card without your mother’s knowledge.”

“My mother is a generous woman.”

“Indeed. Would she know where your father is at the moment? Would she speak to us?”

“Probably not,” Elizabeth said disconsolately. If they knew that much, they probably knew the rest. “May I telephone my embassy?”

“They won’t be awake over there at this hour,” LeVy said. He withdrew a plain manila envelope from the file folder, opened it, and dumped the contents, which included a U.S. passport, a Maryland driver’s license, insurance card, voter registration card, and two credit cards, on the table.

Elizabeth recognized them, and her spirits sank even lower.

LeVy opened the passport, studied the photograph, then looked up at Elizabeth. “This says that your name is Elizabeth Swanson. The picture matches.” He laid the passport down. “We found these where you hid them in your hotel room. Good stuff, not amateur. I’d say that the CIA supplied you with these documents. Is that so?”

“If that were the case you would know that I couldn’t talk about it.”

“On the other hand the papers could be first class forgeries, in which case you would be charged in France with conspiracy to conduct terrorism.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Elizabeth flared. LeVy was unimpressed. “It is not I who am the fool, Mademoiselle. Nor is it I who am sitting without rights in an interrogation cell. So let me ask you one last time. Do you know your father’s current whereabouts?”

“I wouldn’t have gone to his apartment if I did,” Elizabeth said.

Levy stared thoughtfully at her for several moments, then gathered up the papers and documents and stuffed them back into the file folder. “It is a good thing that you came into France under your real name. If you had used these we would have arrested you and deported you immediately.” He got up. “How did you know I arrived in France?” Elizabeth asked.

Levy smiled indulgently. “Your father is a famous man. The names of his family and friends-are all flagged.”

“May I go now?”

“In a few minutes, Mademoiselle,” Levy said and he left.

Tom Lynch, the Chief of Paris station, came in a moment later, a sharp look of disapproval on his narrow, delicate face.

“What the hell are you doing here thirty-six hours ahead of time?” he demanded, his voice as sharply pitched as his manner.

“They’re probably watching and listening to us—”

“I had them shut it off. I asked you a question. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Looking for my father. It’s my job,” Elizabeth answered defiantly.

“How exactly did you intend accomplishing that? Did you think that he left you a note on his door? Didn’t you think that since we and the French are looking for him that his apartment would be under surveillance?”

“I didn’t see anybody.”

“You didn’t look,” Lynch shouted. “We’ll have to apologize to the French government, of course, then I’ll talk to Mr. Ryan and arrange to send you back to Washington.”

“I don’t think so,” Elizabeth said.

“We’ll see,” Lynch shot back.

“Have you found my father yet?”

“As a matter of fact we have not,” Lynch said, eyeing her. “I don’t know how extensive your briefing was, but your father’s life may be in danger. We simply want to get word to him, nothing more. But your little trick hasn’t helped one bit. The French are going to be convinced that he’s working for us again, and they’ll probably try to arrest him, unless we can find him first.” Lynch shook his head. “I don’t even want to think what might happen.”

“Sending me back won’t make it any better,” Elizabeth said. Her father didn’t like Ryan, but he’d never mentioned Lynch.

“Do you have an idea where he is?”

“No, but I wanted to talk to two people who might know something.”

“Who are they?” Lynch asked with renewed interest.

“Jacqueline Belleau, the woman he was living with.”

“If she knew anything they’d have him by now.”

“Is she in love with him?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Has anyone asked?”

“Ms. Belleau is a trained French intelligence officer. She wouldn’t have fallen in love with your father. In any event she’s not subject to an interview by us. Who’s the second person?”

Elizabeth hesitated. Ryan was a jerk, but Lynch seemed to be genuinely concerned with helping her father. “I’ll tell you, but I want you to keep it confidential. At least until we can talk to him. I’ll need your help.”

“All right,” Lynch said. “That’s why you were sent here. Who have we missed?” “Otto Rencke. He’s supposed to be living somewhere near Paris.”

A look of amazement crossed Lynch’s features. “Jesus. We never thought of him.”

“He might not talk to you, but if you can find him I’ll go out there.”

“Damn right you will,” Lynch said. “He’s in Bonnieres, about thirty or forty miles away.”

“Can we go there now?”.

“It’s not going to be that easy. First of all I don’t know exactly where he’s living. But I can find that out. In the meantime it’s going to take a couple of hours to get you out of here. The French are almost as bad as the Germans when it comes to paperwork.”

“I’m warning you, Mr. Lynch, if you bring Rencke in he’ll clam up. He won’t talk to anybody.”

Lynch’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t worry about it. I have my homework to do. When you get out of here, someone will drive you back to your hotel. Get a couple hours of sleep, and then come over to the embassy, and we’ll do this together.”

Elizabeth hoped she hadn’t made a mistake by trusting Lynch, but it was too late now to do anything but go along with him. “Okay. But try to get me out of here as soon as possible.”

“Hang in there, kid,” Lynch said. “You did the right thing after all.”

Three hours later Lynch stood in the doorway of the farmhouse surveying the damage that had been done to the interior. The battered remains of what had been several pieces of computer equipment lay scattered around the floor. Lynch was a computer expert himself. It was obvious to him that the room had once held a great deal of equipment. Power cables snaked throughout the house and he could see a half-dozen spots on the floor and along the walls where desks or computer consoles had stood.

“He had a visitor,” Colonel Galan said, coming from the courtyard in back. He had picked up the butts of two Marlboro cigarettes. “There is no evidence that Rencke smokes, and according to McGarvey’s file, this is his brand.”

“The cigarette papers were crushed but not weathered. We must have just missed them.”

“His daughter didn’t warn them from anywhere in France,” Galan said. “Which might mean that he’s getting inside information from somewhere.”

“We didn’t know that we were coming out here until this morning. It would have taken them much longer to do this much,” Lynch said.

“How do you see it?”

“McGarvey is definitely taking Yemlin’s assignment, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it now. But he needs help, so he hired Rencke and got him out of here. By now they could be anywhere. Even out of France.”

Colonel Galan laughed humorlessly. “Don’t try to make me feel good, Tom. Once he leaves France he’s no longer my problem.”

“Might be a moot point in any case. France is where he wants to live out his retirement, if what he told Jacqueline is true. I don’t think he’d do anything to make that impossible. He’d know that the CIA would help you hunt for him if he screwed up here.” ‘ “Finding this computer expert will be just as difficult as finding McGarvey, now that they’re together,” Galan said glumly. “What about your station in Moscow? Is there any possibility of getting to Viktor Yemlin?”

“At this point I don’t think it’s been passed along to Moscow. So far as Langley is concerned, we’re merely helping you find McGarvey for questioning. Unless you want to take it a step farther.”

“Frankly I don’t know what to do,” Galan said. “I’ll have to take it up with my boss. But I have a gut feeling that this is not going to turn out so good for anybody. Why the mec didn’t remain in the States, or return to Switzerland is beyond me.”

Lynch had flown from Paris with Galan and a half dozen Action Service troops aboard a Dessault helicopter. He could hear the men searching the grounds, calling to each other and joking now that they understood their quarry was long gone. The French were efficient in some matters, Lynch thought, but they tended to operate with blinders on. If France or French citizens were involved they would go to great lengths. But they tended to turn a blind eye toward anything or anyone outside of their borders.

Another thought occurred to Lynch. “Maybe we should change our tactics, Guy.”

Galan looked up, interested. “Out?”

“Instead of us trying to find McGarvey, why don’t we arrange for him to come to us, voluntarily.”

“Are you planning on using his daughter?”

Lynch nodded. “I’m thinking about letting her stay in her father’s apartment. He might be keeping a watch on the place.”

Galan smiled. “Jacqueline can move in with her. Hein, two women might be more irresistible than one.”

“You told me that Jacqueline was in love with McGarvey^ Isn’t there a danger that she might end up helping him?”

“Jacqueline is a Frenchwoman. I will control her, and you can control his daughter.”

“That might be a handful.”

Again Galan laughed. “We’re not schoolboys,” he said. “In any event we have no other choice. But let’s first give them a few days to get to know each other.”

“Agreed,” Lynch said. He didn’t know who he disliked the most, the French collectively, or McGarvey.

Le Bourget

Elizabeth was allowed to freshen up in the bathroom under the watchful eye of a large-bosomed matron, after which she was moved to a larger, more comfortable, though plainly furnished office, where she was given a pot of tea and a plate of croissants and buns. A window looked down from the second story onto a small parade ground. When the sun came up, four soldiers marched to the flagpole in the center, raised the French tricolor, then stepped back, came to rigid attention, and crisply saluted as the national anthem blared from loudspeakers.

Twenty minutes later a helicopter came in low from the south and set down somewhere behind the building Elizabeth was in. Ten minutes after that the door opened and a slender woman dressed in a simple skirt and yellow sweater came in.

“Good morning Mademoiselle. I’m happy to see that they gave you breakfast.”

Elizabeth recognized her all at once, and it showed on her face, because the woman smiled brightly.

“I’m Jacqueline Belleau, but evidently you know this.” She held out her hand, and Elizabeth took it despite herself.

“I think I’m supposed to hate you,” Elizabeth said.

“Whatever for?” Jacqueline asked, surprised.

“You work for the French intelligence service, and you seduced my father.” “The first part is certainly true, but as for the rest of it your father did his part. He is a formidable man.”

Elizabeth knew the woman was forty, but she would never have guessed her age. She seemed self-assured” an intelligent, but amused, expression in her wide eyes.

“My father kicked you out of his apartment, then went to ground. Now you’ve been assigned to convince me to help you find him.”

“You’ve gotten nearly all that correct too,” Jacqueline said, her face falling a little. “I never lived with your father, although it’s something I wanted. He merely told me that he was leaving and then he was gone.”

Elizabeth said nothing, realizing that her remark had hurt the woman. It made her sad because she instinctively felt that her father had left because he wanted to protect Jacqueline. Keep her out of harm’s way, as he was fond of explaining himself. It was one of the very few faults she could find about her father, his inability to trust the women in his life.

“If you’re ready to go, I’ll take you back to your hotel,” Jacqueline said.

“I’m sorry.”

Jacqueline’s expression softened again. “That’s okay, I bark when I’m cornered too.”

Elizabeth had to sign a release statement downstairs when her purse was returned to her. They did not, however, return her Elizabeth Swanson passport and papers.

Rush-hour traffic was in full swing on the Autoroute du Nord as they headed back into the city. Elizabeth saw an airport that she did not recognize.

“Where are we?”

“Le Bourget,” Jacqueline said. “Charles Lindbergh landed just over there when the airport was nothing more than a wide grass field with a control tower and a few buildings. But all of Paris came out to welcome him.”

They drove for a few minutes in silence, Jacqueline concentrating on the traffic while Elizabeth tried to sort out her feelings. If Lynch could find out where Rencke was living, she would go out to see him. Maybe he knew something and would agree to help. It was a long shot, but for-the moment there wasn’t much else she could do. Or much else that she ought to do. Nobody had explained to her yet that whatever her father had been asked to do by Yemlin was wrong. If her dad were planning on killing Tarankov he’d be doing the world a favor. Certainly nobody in Washington — including the Russian diplomats — could find much fault in such an event. From what she’d read in the Russian media, Tarankov’s broad-based support among the people and the military was based on a pack of lies. He told the people that Russia’s problems were the fault of a western influenced government in Moscow. Hitler had blamed the Jews, Stalin had blamed the peasants, and Tarankov was blaming the West. Of the three, Tarankov’s message was the easiest to defend because in a way what he was saying had a grain of truth to it. Russia’s current problems were indeed being caused by the upheaval in changing from one form of economic system to another. The Russian economy was having growing pains. If the people stuck with the reformers long enough, there was a good chance they’d come out of their depression. Russia was finally joining the rest of the major nations of the world with ongoing financial defeats and triumphs. It was called a free market economy. Everyone took their chances.

But Tarankov was convincing the rank-and-file Russians that once he was leader of the nation he could solve all their problems by going back to the old ways. The people forgot what their lives had been like before Gorbachev. They had forgotten the repressions, the gulags, the shortages. They were being dazzled by the possibility of once again becoming a super power. It was a message that the people were taking to heart, and one that the industrial-military establishment embraced.

“Why do you want to talk to my father?” Elizabeth, asked.

Jacqueline glanced over at her. ” the personally or my government?”

“The government.” “Your father had a meeting with a “Russian intelligence officer who asked him to take an assignment. We’d like to know what that’s all about.”

“What if it has nothing to do with France?”

Jacqueline shrugged. “Then we have no problem.” She smiled wanly. “I don’t think your father knows that you work for the CIA. It’s going to come as a shock to him.”

“I’m sure it will,” Elizabeth said. “How about you? Do you want to talk to him?”

“Most certainly.”

“Why?” “I think for the same reason you do,” Jacqueline said. “Your father is probably going to assassinate someone for the Russians, which will place his life in grave danger. I don’t want that to happen. Or at the very least I want him to convince me that what he’s going to do is worthwhile. I don’t want him to throw his life away.”

“What if it was worthwhile?” Elizabeth asked.

Jacqueline didn’t answer at once, concentrating on her driving instead. She was having trouble keeping her emotions in check, and it showed on her face.

She turned finally and glanced at Elizabeth. “Then I would probably help him, for the same reason you came here to help him, and not merely find him for the CIA. I love him, and I’ll do whatever it takes to be at his side when he needs me.”

Elizabeth was touched to the bottom of her soul. “Even if it meant lying to your own government?”

Jacqueline smiled crookedly. “You’ve lied to protect him, and so have I.”

“How do I know that I can trust you?”

Jacqueline shook her head. “I can’t answer that for you Elizabeth, because I don’t even know if I can trust myself to do the right thing. Right now I don’t know what’s right or wrong. I only know that I love your father, and everything else is secondary. I’ll sell my soul for him, and if need be I’ll give my life. But I don’t want him to be destroyed. I want him to retire, so that I can have all of him all the time.” Elizabeth reached out and touched Jacqueline’s hand on the steering wheel. “My father will never retire.”

Jacqueline’s eyes began to fill. “That’s what I’m afraid of, my lovely man lying dead somewhere. I see it at night in my dreams and it frightens me so badly that sometimes I don’t know how I can go on.”

“I know what you mean,” Elizabeth said. “Believe me, I know.”

TWENTY-THREE

The interim president of Russia was a deeply troubled man. He turned away from his visitor across the desk and looked out the window at Spassky Tower rising into a leaden sky as he considered his options. Whatever action they took would seriously affect the nation’s future which was, at this moment in history, in more jeopardy than it had ever been. He was having a recurring dream in which he was flying over the charred, smoking remains of what had once been Moscow, a mammoth mushroom cloud roiling fifteen thousand meters above this very spot. Russia had fallen to Tarankov, who in his attempts to regain the old Soviet Union had brought on thermonuclear war. At the outskirts of the city the dead and dying lay in smoldering piles like cordwood that stretched for as far as the eye could see. The worst of the nightmare was the stench of scorched human flesh. Each morning he awoke with the horrible smell still in his nostrils, and the taste of it at the back of his throat.

“It was a mistake on my part, Mr. President,” the man behind him said.

Kabatov turned back to face Yuryn, whose normally florid complexion was even more red than normal this afternoon. “There were no survivors among the crews of those six helicopters?”

“None.”

“I hold you fully responsible—”

“I take the responsibility,” Yuryn interrupted. “I’d hoped to stop his train with the minimum use of force, and therefore the minimum loss of life before it reached Nizhny Novgorod. An estimated one million people showed up for his speech. Had we tried to arrest him, the carnage would have been beyond belief. The nation would never have survived such an attack. Neither would this government have emerged intact. I made a decision, and I was wrong.”

“Was he warned?”

“He may have been, but it would not have mattered had the attack come as a surprise, because his train is more heavily armed than we’d suspected. He has SS-N-6 missiles, and radar-guided rapid-fire cannons of some sort. I still don’t have all the details.”

“Next time use jet fighters with bigger missiles,” Kabatov said, keeping his voice in control.

“We’re working on several scenarios. But if your wish remains to take him alive so that he can be placed on trial, our options are severely restricted. Destroying the train poses no real problem. Stopping it without harming Tarankov will be difficult if not impossible.”

‘-“Nothing is impossible,” Kabatov shot back. “And yes I want him taken alive. It’s our only option. Anything else and we lose the nation.”

“In that case, Mr. President, we have another more serious, more immediate problem,” Yuryn said heavily.

“Well, what is it?”

“Viktor Yemlin has hired an assassin to kill Tarankov.”

It didn’t come as a complete surprise to Kabatov, still he found that he was shocked. “Is the SVR behind this?”

“No. Apparently Yemlin is working alone, but on the advice of Konstantin Sukhoruchkin and Eduard Shevardnadze.” “How do you know this?”

“I didn’t believe him when he said he went to Paris and Helsinki to do some shopping, so I arranged to place him in a position that he willingly told the truth.” Yuryn took a thin report from his briefcase and handed it to Kabatov. “If Yemlin does remember the encounter it’s not likely he’ll say anything to anybody.”

Kabatov opened the report and started to read, bile rising up in the back of his throat, making him almost physically ill. He looked up, unable to finish and unable to hide a look of disgust from his face. “Where is Yemlin at this moment?”

“At his office. He’s done nothing outwardly to indicate he remembers what happened to him, beyond the fact that he had a pleasant evening at the Magesterium.”

“We know the assassin’s name, and we know that he lives in Paris. I’ll instruct our people to grab him, or short of that, kill him.”

“That, Mr. President, might prove to be more difficult than capturing or killing Tarankov, who after all is nothing more than a soldier. But Kirk McGarvey is a very special man who has already done our country a great deal of harm.” “I’m not familiar with the name. He’s an American. What, mafia?”

“He’s a former CIA officer who killed General Baranov some years ago, which subsequently threw the entire KGB into a disarray that took us years to overcome.”

“We can arrest Yemlin, and force him to tell us how to find McGarvey. Or, Yemlin can call him off.”

“That won’t work either, Mr. President. If you read the summary on the Helsinki meeting you’ll see that McGarvey has not only agreed to do the job for one million dollars — money that has apparently already been transferred to an account in the British Channel Islands-but he’ll make no further contact.”

“Paris is not that big a city—”

“McGarvey is already here in Moscow,” Yuryn cut in impatiently. “It’s even possible that he was in Nizhny Novgorod to witness the latest spectacle.” “Then he’s tried and failed?”

“He probably came here to work out his plans. I think he’s waiting for something, for the right moment.”

“Do we have a photograph of him?”

“Da.”

“Then with the help of the Militia, you will find him.”

“We can try that. But if we don’t succeed, and McGarvey finds out, then he’ll be all the more difficult to kill. In any event he’s probably here under an assumed identity, and very likely in disguise. He knows what he’s doing, and his Russian is said to be nearly perfect.”

“Is he working for the CIA? You said he was a former officer, but have they rehired him to do this thing?”

“I don’t think so,” Yuryn said. “Which does give us an advantage, if you want to take it.”

“I’m listening,” Kabatov said, his insides seething.

“We’ll form a special task force to find and destroy this American before he gets a chance to assassinate Tarankov. The Americans want our reform movement to succeed as much as we do. So you might think about asking President Lindsay for help. Between us, the CIA, and possibly the French on whose soil McGarvey apparently now resides, we will catch him. Even a man such as McGarvey cannot outwit the combined forces of the police and intelligence services of three countries. In the meantime we’ll keep this from the public to avoid any panic or possible backlash.”

“We’ll also maintain our efforts to capture Tarankov. Once we have him in custody, McGarvey will become a moot point.”

“Agreed, Mr. President. For the moment it will be a race against us and him.”

“Will you head this special commission?”

“No,” Yuryn said.

“Who then?”

“When I was head of the old KGB’s First Directorate a man named Yuri Bykov worked for me. When the Komityet was split apart he left Moscow.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s the best.”

“Where is he now?” Kabatov asked.

“In the East. Krasnoyarsk, I think. I’ll get word to him to come immediately.”

“Will you arrest Yemlin?”

“Not yet, Mr. President. There is an outside chance that McGarvey might contact him. If that should happen we’ll be ready.”

“As you wish. Get Bykov here as quickly as possible. This situation must be resolved.”

At 5:00 p.m. that afternoon, Kabatov placed a call to President Lindsay who was just about to receive his 9:00 a.m. CIA briefing from Roland Murphy, a fact of which he was not aware. Nor was he aware that Lindsay immediately switched the call to his speaker phone. So far as Kabatov knew he was seated alone in his office in the Kremlin, speaking to the American President who was alone in his Oval Office.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” Kabatov said. “I trust your day is beginning well?” Kabatov’s English was passable, so translators were not necessary.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” Lindsay said. “My morning is busy. We’ll be leaving for Moscow in a few hours. Is this why you called?”

“No, the State funeral will be conducted on schedule tomorrow, and were our meeting to be under any other circumstances I would welcome the opportunity to finally meet you.”

“May I again offer my condolences, and those of the United States.”

“Thank you, that is very kind.” Kabatov hesitated. Lindsay was not a devious man. He seemed to have no hidden agenda as did so many American presidents before. But it was possible that McGarvey was working for the CIA after all, in which case Kabatov was about to make a fool of himself. Nonetheless there was no other choice. “Another matter has developed, Mr. President, for which I would like to ask your help.”

“I’ll certainly do what I can, Mr. President. But if you’re speaking about the internal affair we discussed earlier, I don’t know if there is much of a substantive nature that I can do for you.”

“This morning I was given a report by the director of our internal intelligence service that a plot to assassinate Yevgenni Tarankov seems to be developing. The assassin may be an American citizen — as a matter of fact a former Central Intelligence Agency officer by the name of Kirk McGarvey. And, Mr. President, I stress former CIA officer.”

“I see,” President Lindsay said after a moment. “I assume that you would not have made this call if you believed this information was anything less than certain.”

“That is correct. I am forming a special commission to hunt down this man and stop him. Tarankov will. be arrested and brought to trial, it is the only option open to me that makes any democratic sense. I’m sure you can understand the difficulties we are facing.” “Yes, I do,” Lindsay said. “How may I help?”

“It may be possible that McGarvey is already here in Moscow. On the chance that information is incorrect, or that he has returned to France, or the United States, I would like the Central Intelligence

Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to locate and detain him. I intend asking President Chirac for his help as well.”

“That may present us with a problem,” Lindsay said, and Kabatov got the distinct impression that the man was holding something back.

“Yes?”

“If Mr. McGarvey has broken no U.S. law there’s actually very little that I can do. I’m sure that President Chirac will tell you the same thing.”

“I’m simply asking for enough time that my police can take Tarankov into custody.”

“How much time?”

“Certainly before the June elections. Less than eleven weeks.”

Again Lindsay didn’t respond immediately, and Kabatov got the impression that the President might have someone with him after all, an adviser.

“Mr. President, I’ll do whatever is possible,” Lindsay said. “I sincerely understand the problems you’re faced with, and I give you my assurances that if Mr. McGarvey returns to the’ United States he will be detained and questioned.”

“I can ask for nothing more, Mr. President,” Kabatov said.

“Will you send me a report on what you have?”

“Immediately,” Kabatov said.

“Then, good luck, Mr. President,” Lindsay said.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. President.”