Assassin

TWENTY-FOUR

A few minutes before six Monday afternoon Leonid Chernov stepped out of an automobile in front of the Kremlin’s old Senate Building, and thanked the militia driver. He’d changed his appearance over the weekend. Now his hair was short cropped and dyed gray, his eyes made deep blue by contact lenses, and he held himself in a slouch. His civilian suit fit him reasonably well, but was obviously not expensive.

His documents identified him as Yuri V. Bykov, a former chief investigator with the KGB’s First Directorate Counterintelligence service. His rank had been lieutenant colonel. After twenty years of service he’d retired on a meager pension to Krasnoyarsk where he taught police science at a technical institute specializing in training private bodyguards and security service officers. The fiction would stand up to scrutiny because Tarankov’s people owned the institute. The news that Viktor Yemlin and his pro-reformers had hired an assassin to kill Tarankov sometime between now and the general elections in June, had come as a surprise only because Chernov didn’t think they had the courage of their convictions. If the assassin tried and failed, they would be executed as traitors. And even if the assassin were successful, Yemlin and the others would still stand trial as traitors because Tarankov’s name would soon be placed on the presidential ballot. However, the news that an independent commission was being formed to find and stop the assassin, with Chernov under the Bykov alias heading it, had been completely unexpected. What were they in Kabatov’s government, he wondered, complete fools? They wanted to save Tarankov’s life so that he could be arrested, tried and convicted for treason, and then executed. Why not stand back and let the assassin do their dirty work for them? The plot could be laid directly on the doorstep of the American government, and Kabatov would emerge the victor. The idiot was shooting himself in his own foot. Chernov showed his pass to the guards at the desk inside the main entry hall, was searched, and finally directed to a bank of elevators across from a statue of Lenin lit from above by a glass and chromium steel dome. The government headquarters was busy today. In a couple of weeks the Duma would be in session, and staffs were arriving in Moscow to get ready for the legislative sessions. Russians loved politics, a fact that Chernov had not been completely aware of until he’d joined Tarankov, and of necessity became something of an expert. Riding up in the elevator he got the distinct impression that the old Senate Building was like a beehive that was being disturbed by forces outside of the legislature’s control. Everyone in Kabatov’s government, and in the Communist Party, were buzzing around in all directions with little or no sense of purpose. No one was at the controls. The queen bee was dead or dormant. The workers and the drones were left in a blank frenzy.

In a sense, Chernov thought, his being here was a bit of poetic irony. Who better to catch an assassin, than another assassin? In his days with the KGB’s Department Viktor, he’d been among the best, because he was as brilliant as he was methodical, and his half-brother Arkady Kurshin had been his teacher. Besides being a weapons expert, he’d devoted much of his studies to human psychology. But unlike Tarankov’s wife whose specialty was crowds, his was the psychology of the individual, especially the individual under stress. Arkady, before his death, had told him that being a hunter of men was much the same as being a hunter of wild animals. In order to be a success, the assassin had to understand his prey and his prey’s habitat.

During the coal strikes in the eighties, Chernov had been assigned to kill three of the union’s leaders. Before he’d set out for the far east, he’d immersed himself in studies of the mines and the men who worked them. He’d also studied the trade labor movement in Russia as it compared to Communism and to the trade union movement around the world. By the time he was ready he knew that above everything else these men were proud of their physical strength, and ability to endure danger. They were men for whom any sort of a challenge was irresistible.,

Chernov got a job in the coal mines, where-he quickly came to the attention of the union because of his outspoken criticism of what they were trying to do. The union leaders were crooks. They were skimming the union fund, and didn’t care about the miners. They were only interested in politics to advance their own careers.

He didn’t have to assassinate them. One by one they confronted him face to face, and in three no holds barred fights, in which hundreds of miners watched, he killed them with his bare hands. He was a hero of sorts. Afterwards his death was faked in a mine accident, and he returned to Moscow, promoted to major for a job well done. Not only had the back of the strike been broken, but Moscow was able to blame the miners’ troubles on their own leadership. Chernov’s action set the union movement in Siberia back by ten years.

After his brother was killed in Portugal, and the Soviet Union under Gorbachev began to fall apart, Chernov quit the KGB, and dropped out of sight. For a few years he worked as a contract killer for a number of Mafia groups, until he began hearing about Yevgenni Tarankov. Within a year he was working for the Tarantula, and six months later he was Tarankov’s chief of staff, a job he was beginning to feel could only last a few months longer no matter the outcome of the assassination plot, or the election. Russia would continue to sink into chaos no matter what Tarankov did. The real fight, Chernov thought, was gaining momentum in the West.

He had to show his documents and submit to another search when he got off the elevator on the fourth floor. An aide brought him down the broad corridor and into an anteroom outside the president’s office, where General Yuryn was waiting with Militia Director Captain General Mazayev.

“Yuri Vasilevich, I’m glad you’re here at last. We were just talking about you,” Yuryn said. “Now we can get down to work.”

“I was surprised to get your call, Comrade General,” Chernov said, shaking hands. “I didn’t know if you had remembered me.”

“If half of what Nikolai says about you is true, you would be a man hard to forget,” General Mazayev broke in.

“I’m truly flattered, sir,” Chernov said, shaking hands with Mazayev. “But it has been a long time since I worked for the KGB.”

“Not so long that you’ve forgotten your duty to your country,” Mazayev said sharply. “But I’m not familiar with the Bykov name. Was your father in the military?”

“He was killed in Hungary, Comrade General. But you would not know his name because he was only a tank commander.”

“Credentials enough for me,” Mazayev said. “Let’s not keep the president waiting.” He turned on his heel and went into Kabatov’s office.

Yuryn held back. “You should have been in Moscow this morning. There is something that you need to know.”

“I was delayed, Comrade General. Nothing I could do about it.” Chernov tried to gauge Yuryn’s mood, but the FSK director’s pudgy face was devoid of anything but a slight irritation. “Is it important?”

“Very. But you’re going to have to watch yourself now. No matter what you learn in the next few minutes, you must maintain your Bykov identity. Do you understand?”

Chernov shrugged. “Nothing surprises me anymore, Comrade General. Not even you.”

Yuryn went into the office and Chernov followed him inside. President Kabatov was seated behind his desk, General Mazayev and another man Chernov immediately recognized as Yeltsin’s former chief of security, General Korzhakov, were seated across from him.

“Mr. President, this is Yuri Bykov, the investigator I told you about,” Yuryn said.

Chernov crossed to the desk and shook Kabatov’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. May I wish you good luck in the June elections?”

“Thank you,” Kabatov said, a little expression of pleasure crossing his features. “Do you know my chief of security, General Korzhakov?”

“No, sir,” Chernov said.

The general looked at him with barely disguised contempt. But he shook hands. “Do you know why you’ve been summoned here, Bykov?”

“To catch an assassin who is coming to kill Yevgenni Tarankov,” Chernov replied matter-of-factly. He and Yuryn sat down.

“Do you think you can do it?”

Chernov shrugged. “That depends on what we know about this assassin and his plot, who hired him, and what kind of support I’ll get, Comrade General. But there can be no guarantees, though I think killing the Tarantula might be more difficult than this assassin might believe.”

“Be that as it may, your job will be to catch him before he has the opportunity to try,” Korzhakov said, his grave voice harsh. “As for your support, you’ll have anything or anybody you need. An office has been set up for you at Lefortovo Prison. It’s out of the public’s eye, which for now will be one of your guiding principles.”

“The Militia will not conduct an all out manhunt,” General Mazayev put in. He glanced at Kabatov. “It is felt that by so openly going after this assassin, it would make it seem as if we are supporting Tarankov, when in fact the opposite is true.”

“Mr. President, may I be frank?” Chernov asked, turning to Kabatov.

“Of course.”

“General Tarankov is no friend of this government. In fact if what I read in the newspapers and see on television is true, he means to restore the Soviet Union to the old ways. Why not let this assassin slip through our fingers and do his best? Maybe we should help him.”

Kabatov started shaking his head even before Chernov finished. “If we’re to remain a nation of laws this sort of thing cannot be allowed to happen.”

Chernov almost laughed out loud. The man was a bigger fool than Yeltsin had been. Tarankov is a murderer.”

“For which he will be arrested, and tried in a court of law,” Kabatov said vehemently, his face red. “Presidents Lindsay and Chirac have both promised me their fullest support in finding the assassin. So if you agree to direct the investigation you’ll have the unprecedented cooperation of the CIA, the FBI and the SDECE.”

Chernov decided that he could be surprised after all. “The assassin is a westerner?”

“He’s an American living in France,” Kabatov said.

“In fact he’s a former CIA officer,” Yuryn added a little too quickly. Kabatov and the others shot him a dirty look.

“Before we get into all of that, will you take the job, Comrade Bykov?” the president asked. “Will you find and stop the assassin?”

“Da,” Chernov said, masking his momentary confusion. Yuryn had tried to warn him about something and now he was trying to send a signal. “Who is this American, Mr. President?”

Kabatov handed him Yuryn’s report. “His name is Kirk McGarvey, a name you may be familiar with from your days in the KGB. He’s done the Rodina a great deal of harm during his career.”

It was as if a ton of bricks had fallen on Chernov’s head, and it took everything within his power not to overreact, to hide his true feelings of absolute hatred. He opened the folder and began to read about Viktor Yemlin’s part in the plot, his trips to Tbilisi, then Paris and finally Helsinki where he met with the American. Through the reading Chernov tried to concentrate on the content of the report in an effort to block out his other thoughts, those of loathing and bitterness and even fear. His brother had been one of the best operatives that the KGB’s Executive Action Department had ever fielded. Under Baranov’s direction the department had run circles around the secret intelligence services of every country in the west. Murder, kidnappings, sabotage, his brother had been the best, until McGarvey killed him in an operation gone bad in Portugal.

Coming up in his brother’s footsteps, Chernov had often dreamed of revenge. But his brother had once told him that revenge was only for fools. The best operative was the man who could commit murder dispassionately, without remorse, without regret, and totally without emotion. Arkady had come up against McGarvey and lost on a number of other occasions, and Chemov had to wonder if in the end his brother hadn’t violated his own principle of dispassion in going against McGarvey one last time, and it had been his undoing.

Aware that Kabatov and the others in the room were watching him, Chernov looked up. “The name is vaguely familiar. Do we have a file on him?”

“Quite an extensive file,” Yuryn said. “Which will be made available to you this evening. I’ve also assigned you a communications assistant. If you want anyone else, you need only ask.”

“Is Yemlin being watched in case McGarvey tries to contact him again?”

“Yes,” Mazayev said. “Outside SVR Headquarters he can’t fart without my people knowing about it.”

“Why isn’t the SVR represented here this morning? Aren’t they in on this investigation?”

“Not for the moment,” Yurya said. “If Yemlin has help within the agency it would do us no good to share information with them. It might get back to McGarvey.”

“Has anyone contacted the CIA or the French?”

“Not directly,” Yuryn said. “If you haven’t finished reading my report I suggest you do so.”

Chernov did so, and in the next page he was struck another nearly physical blow. “McGarvey was here, in Moscow, and—” He stopped in mid-sentence. The bastard had been in the crowd at Nizhny Novgorod. The date matched, and there’d been that drunken soldier. Something about his eyes had bothered Chernov at the time. He hadn’t seen a photograph of McGarvey for several years, but he remembered the man’s eyes now. Penetrating, almost like cold laser beams shooting directly into a man’s skull.

Gathering his wits, he closed the report. “McGarvey was here in Moscow and nobody did anything to catch him?”

“A great many Muscovites went to Nizhny Novgorod last week to see Tarankov’s bloody spectacle, so it’s possible that Mr. McGarvey was there. But since nothing happened, we’re assuming he came here on a scouting trip, and has since left Russia — possibly back to France — where he is making his plans.”

“Has McGarvey’s photograph been distributed to train stations, airports, hotels, border crossings?

“Nyet,” Mazayev said heavily, and a look passed between him and Korzhakov.

“What is it, Comrade Generals?” Chernov asked.

“The fact of the matter is that Tarankov has many supporters in all walks of life,” Yuryn answered.

“All the more reason to make McGarvey’s photograph available. You would have an army of patriots willing to help save his life.”

“An odd word to use — patriot — Bykov,” Kabatov said.

“They believe that they are patriots, Comrade President,” Chernov replied.

“Are you one?”

“No, Mr. President,” Chernov said. “But if we are to catch McGarvey, extraordinary measures will have to be taken. As you said, he has caused the Rodina a great deal of harm. It must mean he is very good at what he does.” “The best,” Yuryn said.

“Then it won’t be easy. Who can I trust?”

“Us in this room,” Korzhakov said. “If you need something, you’ll have to get it from us.”

“To avoid any confusion, I think that I should work with only one of you.”

“I agree,” Kabatov said. “Since it was General Yuryn who suggested you, he will be your liaison to the rest of us.”

“Very well. Are the files. I need at Lefortovo?”

“Yes,” Yuryn said.

“Who is this assistant of mine?”

“Aleksi Paporov. He’s as good as they come. His English and French are flawless, he’s a computer whiz and he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“All that is good, Comrade General, but who does he report to?”

“Why, you, of course,” Yuryn said.

“Who else?”

“No one.”

Chernov turned to the others, his blood singing. “My methods tend to be unorthodox, comrades. But if I am allowed to do this my way, I will catch this assassin before he reaches Tarankov.”

“Then I suggest you get started,” Kabatov said.

“One final thing, Mr. President,” Chernov said. “I would like a letter signed by you, giving me complete authority in this investigation. My methods might seem more than unusual to some people. I don’t want any delays getting special authorizations.”

Kabatov looked to his chief of security, who was once again staring at Chernov.

“He has a point,” Korzhakov said.

“I’ll have the letter sent to you at Lefortovo in the morning,” Kabatov said. “Is there anything else?”

“No, Mr. President, other than catching this American.”

“Then good luck,” Kabatov said, rising.

Chernov shook hands with him. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Mazayev and Korzhakov also wished him luck, and shook his hand, and he left the president’s office with Yuryn.

“Do you have a car here?” Yuryn asked in the corridor.

“No.”

“Paporov will arrange one for you. In the meantime have you got someplace to stay?”

“I’ll stay at Lefortovo for now,” Chernov said.

“Good, I’ll drive you over,” Yuryn said and they went downstairs and climbed into the back of a Zil limousine.

The meeting had lasted less than a half-hour, and the sky was finally beginning to clear up, though the sun had set and it was dark. Yuryn’s car shot out the Nikolskaya Tower gate, swept across Red Square and raced northeast toward Lefortovo Prison in Bauman suburb.

“You handled yourself very well in there,” Yuryn said. “Do you really know how to catch this bastard? Or was that all talk?”

Chernov felt almost dreamy. His brother had been wrong about revenge. Arkady had to have been wrong, because at this moment nothing else seemed to matter. He would find and kill McGarvey not for Tarankov’s sake, and certainly not for that fool Kabatov’s sake, but for nothing more than a sweet revenge.

“I’ll kill him,” Chernov said softly, not caring if Yuryn heard him or not.

Traffic was heavy, but the Zil traveled in the official lane. Traffic cops waved them on, and Chernov watched, more in love with Moscow now than the first time he’d come here from the far east, because it was here that he would settle an old score, and afterward he would leave Russia forever. Right now it was as if he were seeing an old love for the last time. He was going to make the most of it.

TWENTY-FIVE

Viktor Yemlin left the SVR Headquarters building on Moscow’s ring road shortly after seven, finally ready to take action. The weekend had been horrible for him. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours. He hadn’t eaten much, he hadn’t looked at the newspapers or watched television. Most of the time he’d sat in his favorite chair in the living room of his apartment smoking Marlboros and drinking vodka, as he watched the sun rise and set twice.

He hadn’t forced himself to come to any immediate conclusions about what had happened to him because he did not have all the facts. Nor did he allow his guilt to completely consume him, although at first his shame was so overwhelming he’d been in danger of sinking into deep depression. Instead he’d gone over what he’d done at the Magesterium, what had been done to him, and the reasons behind the attack — because that’s how he viewed the experience. He’d been lured to the club by Cheremukhin which in retrospect was the first troubling aspect he struggled with. The entire affair had been planned and orchestrated, possibly on Yuryn’s orders. But Cheremukhin was one of the moderates who had just as much to gain by Tarankov’s death as Kabatov and the rest of them. It was hard to imagine Cheremukhin working for the FSK, but if he wasn’t then his appearance on the steps of the Senate at just that moment, and his insistence on taking Yemlin to his club had to have been a tremendous coincidence.

Yemlin had turned that thought over in his mind, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. Yuryn knew about his trips to Tbilisi, Paris and Helsinki, and he was suspicious. Part of that was driven by the intense interservice rivalry between the two divisions of the old KGB. And part of it was Yuryn’s surprise and discomfort in front of Kabatov when Yemlin had come up with the plan to hide the facts behind Yeltsin’s death. Still there was no logical connection between Yuryn’s suspicions and the setup at the Magesterium.

But the job of the FSK was internal security, which meant it not only watched the borders, the train stations and airports, but it also monitored places where high ranking Russians gathered to play. The Magesterium and all the other political clubs like it would naturally be watched. At the handful of clubs that catered to high ranking politicians, journalists and intelligence officers, security would be especially tight As soon as Yemlin had walked in the front door whoever was controlling the FSK surveillance operation would have reported the fact, and the honey trap had been set up.

It was cunning of them to use not only the young woman, but a young man as well. They might expect that Yemlin would have little compunction about bragging about screwing a girl, but he might keep to himself the fact that he’d had a homosexual experience. No doubt the entire affair was on videotape. And from what memories he could dredge up from his foggy recollections, he’d enjoyed the experience. At least he’d gotten pleasure from the sexual act, which was a cause of his sharp feelings of guilt.

The worst part of the experience however was his inability to remember the details. He remembered Renee and me bath, and Valeri, the doll, who’d brought him champagne. He also remembered the feeling of warmth, and then of drifting, as if he were dreaming. He even remembered the rubdown, and the sex, but then it was fuzzy. He’d been thinking about Kirk McGarvey when he entered the club, and he was worried that in his drug induced state he had spoken his thoughts out loud.

It wasn’t likely that he had given anything away, or else Yuryn would have ordered his arrest. By now he’d be in the basement interrogation rooms at Dzerzhinsky Square where the entire plot would have been extracted from him. But he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he had talked, and they tried to find McGarvey but failed. Now they were waiting for him to make contact. It was something that he had to know. Because if the FSK was aware of the plot to kill Tarankov, then McGarvey would have to be stopped because he would be walking into a trap.

“Home?” his driver asked, when Yemlin climbed into the back seat of his car.

“Not tonight, Anatoli. You can drop me off at the Magesterium and then you’ll be free for the remainder of the evening. But you can pick me up at home in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yeltsin’s funeral had gone off without a hitch on Friday. Although Yemlin hadn’t attended it, his people who monitored the foreign dignitaries reported mat there’d been no trouble, for which he’d been heartily congratulated today at lunch by SVR director General Aykazyan. The fiction was holding. And as the general wisely pointed out, it didn’t matter if no one believed it, what mattered was that the western powers were acting as if they did.

Nothing coming across his desk from North American operations gave so much as a hint that the exact manner of Yeltsin’s death was being questioned. Nor did any of the product coming from the half-dozen major networks they operated in the U.S. and Canada raise questions. Yet Yemlin felt that McGarvey was right. The western powers knew what had happened, but they were biding their time to see how events unfolded over the next ten weeks before the elections. Afterward a lot of things would be different in Russia, Yemlin thought, but he was no longer so confident about his predictions for the future.

As they came into the city, he reached in his pocket and fingered the two small silver cigarette boxes that his friend Andrei Galkin in the Scientific Directorate had given him this afternoon, and he shuddered involuntarily. He had done questionable things in his long career with the KGB, things that he’d never been able to tell his wife about, things that he kept carefully hidden in a secret compartment in his mind, things that only rarely came to him in his dreams, but when they did he would awaken, his heart pounding, his bedclothes soaked in sweat. When he had finally become resident in charge of the KGB’s Washington station, he thought that he’d finally put all that behind him. Then when he’d been recalled to Moscow and promoted he was certain that he would finish out his long career safely seated behind a desk.

But he’d been wrong.

Twenty minutes later his driver let him off at the Ma gesterium, and inside at the front desk he was effusively welcomed with a guest membership.

“We know that you will be happy here, Viktor,” the manager, a portly dark-haired Georgian, said confidently. “If there’s anything that I can personally do to be of service, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Only first names were used in the club. The manager’s name tag read Josef.

“Is Renee available this evening, Josef?”

“For you Viktor, naturally.” The manager picked up a telephone, spoke a few words, and then hung up, his smile widening. “One minute, Viktor. Sixty seconds, check your watch, and you’ll be in heaven.”

A young woman came by with a tray of champagne, and Yemlin took a bottle and two glasses. Less than a minute later Renee appeared, her face lit up in a bright smile.

“Viktor, you came back to us. Am I ever glad. You know that Vadim said you were an okay guy.” She took a glass of champagne from him, and they went down the corridor.

“I haven’t had such a relaxing evening for a long time, my dear. I thought I’d like to do it again.”

“Just the same, Viktor? Are you a rascal then?”

Yemlin forced a grin. “You don’t know the half of it.”

They went back to one of the luxury suites, though it looked the same as last week, he couldn’t tell if it was. Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty came softly from hidden speakers, and the lights in the apartment were set low.

Renee went into the bathroom to check the bath water, as Yemlin got undressed. He dropped his jacket on the floor beside the bed, as if by mistake, and when he bent over to fumble for it, he slipped the heavier of the two cigarette boxes out of his pocket, unlatched the clasp and slid it out of sight under the bed. The surveillance cameras and microphones within fifteen meters would no longer work.

He laid the jacket on the bed, poured them another glass of wine and went into the bathroom where he climbed into the pleasantly hot water.

Renee disrobed, got in with him, and began scrubbing his back. “We thought you might come back this weekend,” she said.

“I was too busy,” Yemlin said. He sighed with pleasure. “But I’m here now. Is Valeri in the club this evening?”

She giggled and slapped him on the back. “You are wicked. Do you want me to call him over here?”

“Da. A rubdown would be nice.”

Renee reached between his legs with a soapy hand, and give him a playful tug. “He doesn’t deserve the little doll.”

“What do you mean?” Yemlin asked innocently. His heart was starting to pound.

“Oh, nothing,” she said sweetly. She stepped out of the tub, her black body glistening with water, and skipped into the bedroom.

As soon as she was out of sight Yemlin got out of the tub and went to the door. Her back was to him, and she was searching his clothes as she talked on the phone, the handset cradled against her shoulder. She found the second silver box in one of his pockets, opened it, then said something into the phone and hung up.

“Shall I inform Josef that my little Renee is a thief?” Yemlin said.

Startled, the girl spun around so fast she nearly dropped the box. Her eyes were wide, her nipples hard. “You almost made me drop it!”

“Did you find anything of interest?” Yemlin asked. He sipped his wine. “Are you a little spy?”

“Just curious, Viktor,” she said, a mischievous look on her pixie face. “Can I have some, or don’t you share?”

“It’s good stuff. Maybe you can’t take it.”

“I’m no virgin.”

“I guess you’re not,” Yemlin said, forcing a smile. “Be my guest. But take it easy, Renee. I don’t want you passing out.”

“Why not? Valeri will be here in a little while.”

“Maybe I want both of you this time.”

She laughed, then set the open silver box on the nightstand. Using the tiny silver spoon nestled inside the top part of the box, she scooped out a portion of the doctored cocaine, and took it up her right nostril.

Yemlin put his glass down on the dresser, and reached her as she sighed deeply, and sank slowly to the carpet. Her eyes were open and glazed, a stupid, slack-jawed expression on her pretty mouth.

“Are you okay, Renee?” Yemlin asked softly.

“Sure, Viktor. That’s some good shit, you know.”

“I’m going to put you in the other room for a little while. I want you to be a good girl and take a nap. Can you do that for me?”

“Sure, Viktor. Whatever you say. Then can I have some more good shit, or are you going to fuck Valeri all night?”

“You can have some more good shit, I promise,” Yemlin said. He sat her up, then got her to her feet and walked her into the other room where he laid her on one of the sectional couches, propping her head on a cushion.

He was ambivalent about blacks, but he felt a tinge of sorrow for this little girl. She was going nowhere. If he’d had a daughter and she had come to this fate it would have broken his heart, and he’d had enough of that to last ten lifetimes.

Galkin had promised that the doctored cocaine taken in normal doses would not be fatal. Nevertheless Yemlin checked the girl’s breathing and her pulse. Both were fast, but not alarmingly so.

Closing the door, he went back to the bathroom where he hid her costume in the cabinet beneath the vanity.

Valeri was there as Yemlin came out of the bathroom. The young man was dressed in the same skimpy white swim trunks as before. He’d brought his towels and lotions, and a bottle of champagne.

“Is Renee in the tub?” he asked.

“I sent her away. She’ll be back later. Right now I want a rubdown.”

A momentary look of suspicion crossed Valeri’s face, but then he smiled openly. “Sure thing, Viktor,” he said. “You can have a glass of champagne while I get the table set up.”

“I’ll have some champagne later. And this time let’s use the bed, I think it’ll be more comfortable.”

Valeri chucked. “You’re a man after my own tastes.”

Yemlin closed the bathroom door, then went to the bed and lay down on his back, spreading his spindly legs. Vomit rose up in his throat gagging him, and his heart raced so rapidly that he was momentarily frightened he was going to have a heart attack.

Valeri took off his white trunks, and came over to the bed, as Yemlin reached over and took the silver box off the nightstand.

“Something new this time, Viktor?” Valeri asked.

“I think you’ll like it,” Yemlin said. Keeping eye contact with the younger man, he moistened two fingers with spit, dabbed them in the cocaine and’ spread the paste around the head of his penis. He set the box back on the nightstand and then forced a broad, wicked smile, the effort taking every ounce of his strength. “Suck my dick, you darling little pufta.”

Valeri threw back his head and laughed out loud. Then he joined Yemlin on the bed, taking the older man’s flaccid penis in his mouth, licking and sucking the cocaine, and smacking his lips. “You really should have some champagne, you know,” the young man said.

“Later,” Yemlin replied tersely.

Valeri went back to his ministrations, and despite himself Yemlin responded.

When it was over the young man kept sucking, and Yemlin had to push him off. Valeri fell back, a glazed look in his eyes, the same stupid grin on his face that Renee had exhibited.

“S’that good?” Valeri asked, his voice slurred.

“Very good,” Yemlin said, the gorge rising in his throat. “I want you to stay right there for a minute, can you do that?”

“Sure thing, Viktor. You bet.”

Yemlin just made it to the toilet when he threw up. The champagne was sickly sweet and nauseating, but when he was finished he felt a little better.

He checked on Valeri who was still on the bed, and then checked Renee who was curled up on the couch and snoring softly, then he went back into the bathroom and took a hot shower. Afterward he got dressed while trying to avoid looking at Valeri, who was languidly playing with himself.

The cigarette box with the cocaine went back in his pocket, and then he sat on the edge of the bed.

Valeri reached for him, but Yemlin batted his hand away. “Can you hear me, Valeri?” Yemlin asked.

“You bet, Viktor. You want to do it again?”

“Do you remember last week the first time I was here?”

“Sure. Georgi said you were a big wheel.”

“Was the champagne drugged?”

“You bet.”

“Did I talk to you, Valeri? Did I tell you things?”

Valeri laughed, and his eyes closed. Yemlin had to shake him awake.

“What did I tell you, Valeri?”

“You got big plans. You’re going to kill the Tarantula.” Valeri laughed. “I told them about McGarvey.” His eyes fluttered.

Yemlin’s heart sank. Until this moment he’d only had his guilt and his apprehensions to deal with. But now his worst fear had been confirmed by a drugged queer. The operation was over, and they had lost. He was going to have to get out of Russia immediately. Possibly to Georgia where Shevardnadze would give him asylum. Or possibly back to the United States. But McGarvey had to be called off.

“Go to sleep now, Valeri,” Yemlin said.

“Am I a good boy?”

“You bet,” Yemlin said. He got lip and went to the other side of the bed where he retrieved the second silver box. He slipped it into his pocket, then switched the electronic device off by re latching the clasp. “I’ll be back,” he told the already sleeping Valeri, and then let himself out.

Lefortovo Prison, on Moscow’s northeast side, was hidden behind a tall, yellow brick wall that surrounded the two-square-block compound. At the height of the Cold War, the maximum-security prison housed what the KGB considered its hardest cases. They were dissidents and foreign spies who had resisted the initial phases of their interrogations in the basement of the Dzerzhinsky Square KGB facility. They were sent out here to the quiet suburbs for the long haul, where psychological and scientific methods had been developed to extract every gram of useful information, without damaging the accused.

At the Lubyanka the interrogators used rubber truncheons, cold water enemas, and electrical shocks to the genitals, so that often the prisoner would tell his or her interrogators anything they wanted to know, even if they had to invent the information.

At Lefortovo it was different. Here some of the interrogators were kindly, grandfatherly men who had a great deal of sympathy for their subjects. Psychologists would listen with an understanding ear. Drugs that didn’t fry your brain were employed, as was a method called “Pavlov’s Rewards.” It was a procedure developed in the early eighties, where electric probes were inserted into the prisoner’s skull, lodging in the section of the brain that recognized and processed sexual pleasure. The same method had been used in the United States to control the behavior of laboratory mice. The interrogator could reward his subject by rotating a dial that sent varying amounts of electricity into the brain. The prisoner immediately felt the sensation of sex. If the electric current was strong enough it could induce an orgasm that could last anywhere from seconds, to indefinitely.

The prisoners soon learned that if they lied, nothing would happen to them. No beatings, no cold water enemas, no intimidation. But if they told the truth they would be rewarded with an orgasm. The more they cooperated, the longer the orgasms lasted.

In one early experiment with a Moscow prostitute, when the KGB doctors were learning to calibrate the device, they’d turned the dial to its maximum value and left it there. The woman lasted for nearly two hours before her heart finally gave out, giving rise to a lot of lewd jokes. But no one on the staff volunteered to try it out, even though the prostitute had smiled and moaned with pleasure right up to the moment of her death.

These days a section of Lefortovo was still used as a prison for hard cases, but most of the compound had been taken over by the Special Branch of the FSK. Particularly difficult and sensitive operations were planned and conducted here away from the prying eyes of the public, the Militia and especially the SVR.

Dzerzhinsky Square was often overrun by western journalists under the openness policy instituted by Gorbachev. But Lefortovo was secret from nearly everyone.

Yuryn’s limousine was admitted through the main gates, and pulled up in front of the administration building that faced the assembly yard. Yuryn and Chernov went immediately upstairs to the third floor where Lefortovo’s administrator, Colonel Anatoli Zuyev, was waiting for them.

“Your assistant Captain Paporov is on his way over,” the hawk-nosed director said. “He can provide you with anything you need.” “I expect no interference from anyone here, Colonel—” Chernov began, but Zuyev held up a hand.

“Believe me, Colonel Bykov, I don’t know what your special operation is about, and I have no desire to find out. If you want to perch on top of the flagpole at midnight, drink vodka and piss on us, be my guest. No one will even look up. But if you need something, anything, Paporov will get it for you. He is very good.”

“Very well,” Chernov said.

“Paporov will meet you downstairs. If there’s nothing else I can do for you, I have a dinner date.”

“Enjoy your dinner, Colonel.”

“I will,” Zuyev said brusquely.

Chernov and Yuryn went downstairs, to the darkened day room empty at this hour. Everything was institutional gray, nothing more than functional. There was no television, no pictures on the walls, no rugs on the bare tile floor, just a few steel tables and chairs.

“Kabatov will want progress reports,” Yuryn said.

“Tell him whatever you want to tell him, General.”

Yuryn eyed him coldly. “You and I both know the truth, so don’t screw around here. You have less than ten weeks.”

Chernov’s left eyebrow rose. “I don’t screw around, as you put it.”

Yuryn nodded. “I’m having dinner at my club tonight, would you care to join me?”

“No,” Chernov said.

“As you wish,” Yuryn said. He turned and left.

Chernov went to the window. The prison seemed all but deserted. The outer walls were not illuminated, so far as he could tell there were no guards in the four towers and only a few windows on the one and two story yellow brick buildings were lit from within.

After Yuryn’s limousine passed through the main gate, Zuyev came downstairs and passed Chernov without noticing him. Outside, his car drew up, he got in the back seat and left by the main gate, and the building fell silent.

Chernov lit a cigarette as he examined his thoughts.

He had been placed in a very dangerous position, caught between the forces inside the Kremlin, and forces outside that were allied with Tarankov. Under ordinary circumstances he wondered if he would have got out while such an act was relatively uncomplicated. But these were not ordinary circumstances. McGarvey was the assassin, and whatever dangers there were here in chaotic Moscow they were worth facing for a chance at finally killing the bastard.,

A dark figure came across the parade ground. Chernov stepped away from the window and stubbed out his cigarette. The figure passed through a strip of light that came through the steel gates, and Chernov caught a brief look at the man’s face which was framed by long hair, and covered by a beard. Unusual for a military officer, Chernov thought, even in these times.

The man came in and walked over to where Chernov stood next to the window. “Good evening, Colonel. I’m Captain Paporov, I’ve been assigned to be your assistant.” “How did you know I was standing here?” Chernov asked in English.

“Your cigarette.”.

“That sort of a mistake could cost us our lives,” Chernov said, switching to French.

“Mats oui, man colonel.”

“Then we’d better not make any more mistakes.”

Paporov managed a slight smile. “I think we will, Colonel. But I’ll try to keep mine to a minimum.”

Chernov grunted. “You’re an arrogant bastard.”

“Yes, sir, that I am.” “Is that why they let you get away with all that hair?”

“It’s either that, or fire me. Something General Yuryn won’t allow, because I’m good at what I do. And from what I was told, so are you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have taken this assignment. Kirk McGarvey is a tough son of a bitch, and frankly I don’t give a shit whether Tarankov lives or dies. But trying to stop a man like McGarvey might prove to be interesting.” “For the duration, then, you’re mine. That means you will discuss no aspect of this operation with anyone, including General Yuryn, without telling me. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From now on we have no military rank between us. Call me Yuri, and I’ll call you Aleksi. It’ll save time. Do you have a wife, girlfriend, parents, or anyone else who will demand your attention, or need protection when things become difficult?”

“No.”

“Has anyone given you any special instructions either about this assignment or about me, personally?”

“Only that you’re a demanding, cold-hearted, ruthless bastard, and that you have a habit of destroying anyone who gets in your way.”

Chernov had to laugh. “Did that come from General Yuryn?”

“Personally.”

“Okay. I’m a ruthless bastard, you’re an arrogant bastard, and McGarvey is a tough son of a bitch who I mean to find and kill. Nothing else matters, just that one thing. Are you clear on that as well?”

“Perfectly.”

They walked back to a small, one-story brick building that, Paporov said, had originally been used as the prison dispensary. Most recently it had been fitted out as a communications and operations headquarters for special FSK projects. The largest of the three rooms was equipped with several desks each with a computer terminal. A bank of sophisticated radio gear, tall grey file cabinets and map cases, a light table and a big conference desk filled the room. Another of the rooms was set up as sleeping quarters, and the third as a kitchen with a small fridge, a hot plate, a sink and several cabinets filled with food. The bathroom was at the rear. All the windows were sealed and alarmed, the glass painted black and covered with a heavy steel mesh. The front and back doors were made of thick steel with coded, eight-digit locks.

“We have ten phone lines, all of them encrypted, in addition to satellite up-and downlinks with everything we have in orbit,” Paporov said. “We have communications links with the Militia, FSK and SVR as well as every command in every branch of our military. All the computer equipment is state of the art IBM which gives us good access to nearly every computer system in the world.”

“I’m a computer illiterate,” Chernov admitted.

“I’m not,” Paporov said. “I got one of my degrees at Caltech when I worked for the KGB in California ten years ago. That’s one of the reasons for this,” he said, flipping his long, sand-colored hair. “Where do we start?”

“We’ll need transportation.” ‘

‘ “There’s a BMW and a Mercedes parked in back. The plates are government. Do you want a driver?”

“No,” Chernov said. “For now I want McGarvey’s file, your file, a very good map of Moscow, above and below ground, and a complete schedule of every single. event for the next ten weeks, until the general elections, in which more than a handful of people are expected to be present.”

“No problem,” Paporov said.

“Why aren’t you writing this down?” “I have a photographic memory.”

“Very well,” Chernov said. “I want you to find the best police artist in the country and get him or her here as soon as possible. Then I want you to schedule a meeting here at noon tomorrow, providing the artist shows up first, for the division chiefs, of the Special Investigations units of the Militia and the FSK.”

“What shall I tell them?”

“To come.”

“What else?”

“That’s it for now,” Chernov said.

“Okay. I’ll start with the files.” Paporov took off his jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair and went over to the file cabinets.

Chernov walked into the kitchen where he got a bottle of beer, some sausage and a piece of dark bread, happy to be away from Tarankov and the man’s insane plans for the moment.

TWENTY-SIX

Letting himself into his apartment, Yemlin resisted the urge to go to the window and see if anyone was down in the street. So far as he could tell he wasn’t being followed, but that didn’t mean a thing. The FSK had a lot of good men working for it, and some of the best field officers of any secret service in the world.

They could be there, and he’d never see them.

He went into the kitchen, poured a vodka, and lighting a cigarette, went back to his chair. He turned the television to CNN, and let the words and images flow around him while he tried to work out his position.

The FSK had not arrested him because they hoped that he would lead them to McGarvey. But they couldn’t be aware yet that he knew that they knew, so for the moment he would do nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to raise their suspicions. He was an old man caught up in the allure of the Magesterium, and the novel experience of being sexually ministered to by a young man.

The same-question kept running through his mind, though, threatening to blot out his sanity. If the act were so abhorrent to him, why had his body responded? The first time he’d been drugged, but tonight he’d done it of his own free will. He’d forced himself to do the act in order to gain the one vital piece of information. Did it make him a homosexual?

He’d prided himself on being a man of experience. But faced with this situation he felt like a complete fool. Even thinking about tonight, gave him an unsettled feeling in his loins. He closed his eyes and tried to blot out the images of what he’d done.

He was going to have to get out of Russia permanently, and he was going to have to warn McGarvey off. He took the two problems as a single unit, because he felt that the solution to both would lie initially in Paris. If he could get to Paris, even if the FSK followed him, he could manage to hide himself. Once there contacting McGarvey would be easier than doing it from Moscow, even though here he had the resources of the SVR, because in Paris he would be free.

He would have to be careful about his own service, because if questions were to be-raised about his behavior it might lead his own people over to the FSK, and his participation in hiring McGarvey would come out.

Despite the interservice rivalry, General Aykazyan would not hesitate to throw him to the wolves if for no other reason than to hedge his bets against Tarankov’s victory.

The FSK would probably not interfere with his movements for the time being. They might believe that he was going to Paris to meet with McGarvey. In the meantime, he was going to have to warn Sukhoruchkin. He owed his old friend at least that much.

He stubbed out his cigarette, finished his drink, then threw on a coat and left the apartment. Two blocks away he caught a taxi to the Hotel National. The driver dropped him off in front, and Yemlin stared at the Kremlin walls across Manezhnaya Ploshchad for a few moments before he went inside the ornately refurbished hotel.

It was just past 9:30 p.m. when he walked back to a bank of pay phones, and called Sukhoruchkin at home. His old friend answered on the second ring. Yemlin could hear music in the background.

“Da.”

“I’m at the National, how about dinner tonight, Konstantin?” “I’ve already had my dinner,” Sukhoruchkin said. “But I’ll join you for drinks at the Moskovy.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Da.”

Of the National’s four restaurants, the Moskovy was the most traditionally Russian. Since its reopening after a four-year renovation of the hotel, it had become one of Yemlin’s favorites. He and Sukhoruchkin often came here for late dinners, drinks and private conversations. They were always given good service, and if they wanted to be left alone, they were.

A woman was strumming a guitar and singing a folk song on the small stage when Yemlin walked in. The place was three-quarters full and most of the diners were paying close attention to the singer because she was very good, and the song was very old and very sad, something most Russians loved, especially these days.

“Good evening, Mr. Yemlin,” the maitre d’ greeted him. “Will you be dining alone this evening?”

“No, Konstantin will be joining me. We would like a table away from the stage. A quiet table.”

“Of course,” the man said. “But you’ll still be able to hear Larissa.”

Konstantin Sukhoruchkin sat on the edge of the chair in his bedroom lacing his shoes as he waited for his call to Tbilisi to go through. His old friend was in trouble. He’d picked up that much from the few words they’d spoken on the telephone, and from a rumor that had been circulating around the Human Rights Commission the last few days. The rivalry between the two divisions of the old KGB was apparently coming to a head, and Yemlin was being targeted as a scapegoat for some purely internal problem. He’d heard nothing other than that, but he was astute enough to understand that something else might be happening. Something concerning McGarvey’s assignment. Just the thought of anything going wrong made his blood run cold.

Shevardnadze’s special number finally rolled over, rang once with a different sound, and then was answered by the man himself.

“This is Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, Mr. President. I’m telephoning from Moscow.”

“What is it?”

“Has Viktor contacted you in the last two or three days?” *

“No,” Shevardnadze said.

“He just telephoned me to have dinner with him tonight. I have been friends with him long enough to know when he’s in trouble. Big trouble.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“The FSK is raising hell again. There’s a rumor that Viktor might be under investigation for an internal problem.”

“Nothing about the..: project?”

“Nyet. But I am having these feelings.”

“I know what you mean, Konstantin. I’m also having those feelings. Do you want to call it off?”

“I don’t know. But I intend asking Viktor that very question,” Sukhoruchkin said. “I wanted to talk to you first. To find out how you feel.”

“Nothing has changed, has it?” Shevardnadze asked.

“If anything the situation gets worse every day, Mr. President. I doubt if we’ll even last until the June elections.”

“So the need is still there,” Shevardnadze said. “Viktor may be getting cold feet. If that’s it, if the project hasn’t been compromised beyond salvaging, then you have to convince him to press on. Don’t you agree?”

“No. Not unless I consider the alternative,” Sukhoruchkin said. “I’ll see what the matter is, and we’ll go from there.”

“It’s all you can do, Konstantin. It’s all any of us can do now.”

Yemlin put down his glass of iced Polish vodka, opened the latch of the heavier cigarette box and laid it on the table as he spotted Sukhoruchkin coming across the room toward him. The woman was still singing, and in the past fifteen minutes no one suspicious had entered the restaurant, but this hotel was owned by the city of Moscow, which meant the restaurant was probably bugged.

His friend looked troubled, as Yemlin rose to greet him. “Has something happened, Korstya?”

“That’s my question for you,” Sukhoruchkin said, shaking hands. They sat down.

“I’m going to Paris to call McGarvey off,” Yemlin said. “I won’t be coming back.” He poured a vodka for Sukhoruchkin, who glanced nervously at the door.

“I knew something was wrong.”

“They know about McGarvey and it’s my fault, I’m afraid.”

The color drained from Sukhoruchkin’s narrow face. “Is it safe to speak here?”

“Yes. But listen, you have to call Shevardnadze and tell him what’s happened. There could be a backlash. They might try to assassinate him.”

Sukhoruchkin was shaking his head. “I just talked to him. He told me to tell you that unless the project is beyond saving we must continue, because nothing else has changed. If Tarankov succeeds we’ll lose the Rodina.” Yemlin passed a hand across his eyes. “They know about McGarvey, didn’t you hear me?” “They can’t know about McGarvey’s actual plans, because none of us do.”

“He has to be warned!”

“Why?” Sukhoruchkin demanded. “We owe this man nothing other than the money you’ve already paid him. If he’s as good as you say he is, then he’ll go ahead with it. If he succeeds we’ll be in the clear.”

“What if he fails?”

Sukhoruchkin raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Then nothing will matter. We’ll be dead and the nation lost.”

Yemlin motioned the waiter over, and ordered another carafe of vodka and another plate of blinis, and caviar.

“Would you give your life to save Russia?” Yemlin said quietly.

“If it came to that, yes, of course.”

“What about your dignity, Korstya? Your pride? Your — manhood? Would you as easily give those up for Mother Russia? Would you, for instance, give up the use of your limbs to save the nation? Would you become a quadriplegic for the sake of your countrymen? Because that’s what I’m being asked to do.”

Sukhoruchkin was studying his face. “My God, Viktor, what’s happened? What have you done?”

Yemlin looked away for a few moments. It took courage to be a Russian. That was something they’d never understood in the West. Russia had been at war with most of her neighbors at one point or another in her history. But there’d never been a time when Russians hadn’t been at war with each other. The tsars had killed peasants by the millions, as had Stalin and as Tarankov was threatening to do. Food was plentiful in the fields, but the harvests often didn’t get to the population centers, so lack of food had taken uncounted millions of lives. The weather killed people. Vodka and cigarettes killed people. Even the very air and water had become deadly in many parts of the country. Nuclear fallout and poorly processed chemical wastes were killers. Infant mortality rates were up, as were abortions. More than ten percent of all Russian babies were being born with life-threatening defects. Over half of all children in school were sick. The average life span for a man in Russia was now fifty-seven years, by far the lowest of any industrialized nation. Murder was a way of doing business, and suicide rates continued to rise every year. And Tarankov would make all of that worse.

The question Yemlin asked himself was not whether he had the courage to help McGarvey succeed against all odds by whatever means he could, but whether he had the courage to continue being a Russian.

“I went to the Magesterium on Friday where I was given drugged champagne and was seduced. I told them about hiring McGarvey to kill Tarankov.”

“Who does the girl work for?”

“It wasn’t a girl,” Yemlin said, lowering his eyes. “It was a young man. And he probably works for the.

FSK.”

Sukhoruchkin’s mouth hung open. “You were drugged, Viktor. It wasn’t your fault.”

Yemlin said nothing. “But if you were drugged how do you know if you spoke McGarvey’s name? Maybe you dreamed it.”

“I went back tonight, to the same young man. This time I seduced him, and drugged him. He told me what I’d said.”

Sukhoruchkin sat back and closed his eyes for a moment. “I see what you mean,” he said softly. “But the first time wasn’t your fault, and the second time you had to find out what they knew.”

“If I stay, there’ll have to be a third time, Korstya. The only way I can help McGarvey how, short of calling him off, will be to feed the FSK disinformation.”

“We can’t call him off.”

Yemlin nodded.

“If it’s any consolation, my old friend — and I expect that it’s not — if I were in your shoes I would probably do the same thing. But you’re right, it is easier to give your life for your country. Infinitely easier.”

Yemlin’s eyes met Sukhoruchkin’s. “Do you think badly of me, Korstya?”

“On the contrary, my old friend. I think that at this moment you are the bravest man in Russia.”

McGarvey watched the dawn come up over the suburb of Courbevoie, finally ready to leave. His two soft leather suitcases and laptop computer were packed, he’d bought his air ticket for Leipzig yesterday, and in addition to his Allain credit cards, he carried nearly twenty thousand francs in cash, and five thousand in British pounds. On Friday he’d arranged a letter of credit in the amount of $150,000 to be deposited in the name of Pierre Allain at the Deutches Creditbank, and had been assured that it would be in place no later than this afternoon.

Rencke, who would drive him to Charles de Gaulle, was downstairs in the kitchen, but they hadn’t spoken yet this morning.

The last few days had been intense, made all the more so by the stunning revelation that Tarankov’s chief of staff, Leonid Cheraov, was Arkady Kurshin’s half brother. When the information had come up on Rencke’s computer monitor McGarvey had been physically staggered, and he stepped back.

“What’s wrong, Mac?” Rencke asked, alarmed.

“I killed his brother in Portugal a few years ago.” McGarvey touched his side where he still carried the scar where the doctors had removed one of his kidneys that had been destroyed when Kurshin shot him. “I didn’t know he had a brother.”

Rencke looked at the picture on the monitor. “Did you ever come face-to-face with Chernov? Does he know you?”

“He has to know about me.”

“Would he have recognized you in Nizhny Novgorod?”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey said. He was back in the tunnels beneath the ruined castle where their final confrontation had come. It was dark, and water was pouring in on them. He’d been lucky. He got out and Kurshin had been trapped. And it was luck, he told himself now as he had then, because Kurshin was every bit as good as he was. In some ways even better, because he’d been more ruthless, less in love with his own life, so he’d been willing to take their fight to extremes.

“Call it off, Mac,” Rencke had said” Because if he finds out that you’re coming after Tarankov he won’t stop until he kills you. I’ve read Kurshin’s file. If this one is as good, he might succeed.”

“We don’t know that.”

“There’s almost nothing in the SVR’s own files about him, except that he was the best. It’s why he’s with Tarankov. Think it out, Mac. Tarankov just isn’t worth it-“

“Nothing has changed.”

Rencke jumped up. “Everything has changed, you silly bastard. If they get so much as a hint that you’re after Tarankov you won’t be able to do it. You can’t fight the entire country.”

“If he finds out, Otto. In the meantime I still have the advantage, because I know about him.”

“You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” ‘

“No.”

“Bring up the probability program you worked out on Tarankov, goddammit. Nothing has changed. If he wins we could all be in trouble.”

“Just probabilities, Mac. I could be wrong!”

“Have you ever been wrong?”

Rencke hung his head like schoolboy. “No,” he said softly.

“Then I leave Monday morning.”

“What’s in Leipzig anyway?”, - “An old friend,” McGarvey had said.

He glanced at his watch. It was a little after 7:00 a.m. He stubbed out his cigarette, put on his jacket and went downstairs. Rencke was seated on the kitchen table, drinking from a liter bottle of milk and eating Twinkies. He looked up, his eyes round.

“Is it time?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you want a Twinkie, Mac?”

McGarvey had to laugh. “Have you ever had your cholesterol checked?”

“Yeah, but I don’t eat so many of these as I used to, and I switched to milk a few years ago.”

“What’ did you drink before?”

Rencke shrugged. “A half-dozen quarts of heavy cream a day. Tastes a hell of a lot better than milk, you know.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Aleksi Paporov left the office at Lefortovo a little before nine in the morning, and returned an hour later with a distinguished looking older man in a gray fedora and western cut blue pinstriped suit, who carried an artist’s portfolio.

“This is Dr. Ivan Denisov, professor of reconstructive surgery at Moscow State University and possibly the very best facial sketch artist in all of Russia,” Paporov introduced him to Chernov.

“Doctor, we need your help this morning,” Chernov said.

Dr. Denisov was confused. His eyes blinked rapidly behind thin wire rimmed glasses. “I don’t understand, am I under arrest?”

Chernov smiled. “On the contrary, Doctor, I would simply like you to draw a face for us from a description which I’ll give you. Will you do this?”

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Denisov said, relief obvious on his features. “Who is this person you wish me to sketch? Is it an accident victim … a corpse?”

“Nothing like that. Just a man we would very much like to find,” Chernov said soothingly. “But first I must inform you of something that unfortunately the law requires of me. What you see and hear this morning must remain secret. Even the fact that you were brought here must remain a secret.”

“Major Lyalin told me that much already,” the older man said, blinking again, and Paporov smiled.

“Well, the major is correct. Because the man whose face you’ll draw for us is a mass murderer who specializes in young children. But he may be an important man with connections so we don’t want to frighten him off before we have enough evidence to arrest him. Can you understand this?” “Da,” the professor said seriously. He took off his coat and Paporov hung it up for him.

He sat at one of the desks, where he took out a large sketch pad and charcoal pencils from his portfolio. He looked up expectantly.

“This is a man of about fifty, husky, a rather square face, thick hair—” Chernov begun, but the professor interrupted him.

“First things first. Is this man a Russian? A Georgian? A Ukrainian?”

“Does it matter?” Chernov asked.

“Yes, indeed. Think of the difference, for instance, between a Siberian and a Muscovite who both are possessed of a husky frame, with a rather square face and thick hair.”

“He’s an American.”

Dr. Denisov hesitated for only a moment. “Has he lived in Russia for long?” he asked, and before Chernov could speak, he went on. “That too makes a difference. Because if he lives in Russia he will get his hair cut here. There is a distinction.”

“He has lived in Paris for some years. He’s come to Russia recently, but I don’t think he got a haircut while he was here.”

“Very well,” the professor said, and he began to sketch the outlines of a head, Chernov standing above and behind him.

“His cheekbones are a little wider and higher,” Chernov said.

The professor made the changes. And gradually, under instructions from Chernov, a face began to emerge from the sketch pad that fifteen minutes later was the face of the soldier Chernov had seen in Nizhny Novgorod.

“Is this him?” Dr. Denisov asked, looking up.

Chernov was mesmerized by the sketch. Especially the eyes. The professor had gotten the face exactly right. Even down to the nuAnces of the expression Chernov had witnessed on the soldier’s face.

“Major, show the good doctor the latest photograph we have,” Chernov said.

Paporov went back-to the desk Chernov had used, broke the seal on McGarvey’s photo file, and brought one of the 20X25 em color glossies over to Dr. Denisov.

“This was taken three years ago,” Paporov said.

“Is that the same man?” Chernov asked.

“Of course. There’s absolutely no question about it. He’s aged some, though not badly. And the man you described for me was obviously trying to disguise his features by not shaving, by changing the expression on his mouth, and to some extent in his eyes. But there’s no doubt.” Dr. Denisov looked up at Chernov. “But this is no mass murderer.”

“Oh, but he is, Professor,” Chernov said. “You cannot imagine the blood he’s spilled, and the blood he will continue to spill if he’s not stopped.”

Dr. Denisov looked again at the sketch. “Then he is a very dangerous man, perhaps even more dangerous than you suspect.”

“What makes you say that?” Paporov asked.

“Because the man in the photograph and in my drawing must be a master of deception. The man I’m seeing is determined, and probably hard, but he gives the appearance of a kind person. With perhaps a sense of humor.”

“He’s probably schizophrenic in that case, Doctor, because he is a killer.”

“Then I wish you luck in catching him,” Dr. Denisov said.

Chernov tore off the sketch and the next four blank pages. “Don’t speak to anyone about this.”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

While Paporov was taking the professor back to the university, Chernov compared the sketch to the dozen photographs in McGarvey’s file. Whatever lingering doubts he might have had about the validity of Yuryn’s report were dispelled. McGarvey had come to Russia to stalk his prey. There was no doubt that he meant to kill Tarankov. The only questions now were the where and the when. With a man such as McGarvey the assassination could come at any time and at any place, especially when it was least expected. But he wasn’t a martyr, which meant he not only knew how and where he was going to kill Tarankov, but he also knew how he was going to escape afterward.

It was nearly 11:30 by the time Paporov returned. He tossed his coat aside and went to the desk where the sketch and McGarvey’s photographs were laid out.

“Where did you see him?” he asked.

Chernov sat perched on the edge of one of the desks smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of tea. He looked languidly at his aide. “What makes you think I did?”

“McGarvey’s photo file was sealed. You never looked at his pictures before you described him to Dr. Denisov.”

“I remembered his file from the old days. He has a face that’s not easily forgotten.”

“But this doesn’t look like any of the photographs,” Paporov said, glancing at the sketch. “I was told that he was here in Moscow, and I thought how he must have aged, and the probability that he was here in disguise.” Chernov shrugged.

Paporov gave him an odd look, then chuckled. “You’re even better than I thought you were, Yuri.”

Chernov forced a smile. “If you’re going to run around masquerading as a major, I’d better become a general.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Chernov glanced at his watch. “I want you to make several copies of the sketch, and one of the photographs. We’ll give them to the Militia and FSK and let them hunt for the mass murderer.”

“That’ll get it out in public okay without tipping our hand. But where do we look besides here in Moscow?”

“Wherever Tarankov is expected to show up.”

“How do we find that out?”

“Leave that to me, Major. I have a few sources of my own.”

“I’ll bet you do, General,” Paporov said.

It was precisely noon when FSK Major Porfiri Gresko and Militia Captain Illen Petrovsky showed up at Lefortovo Prison and were directed back to the special operations office, where Chernov let them read the letter that President Kabatov had sent over this morning.

“I wondered what this was all about,” Major Gresko said, impressed. He was division chief of the intelligence service’s Special Investigations Unit, the same position Captain Petrovsky held in the Militia.

When Petrovsky looked up, his dark eyes narrowed. “If you ask me we ought to let the American kill him. Save us all a pain in the ass.”

“You’re not being asked,” Chernov said coldly. “You can refuse this assignment if you wish, in which case a replacement will be found.”

“Right,” the Militia captain said. “How can we help?”

Paporov handed them copies of McGarvey’s photograph and the sketch.

“His name is Kirk McGarvey. He’s a former CIA field officer, who for a number of years has worked freelance,” Chernov said. “Believe me, gentlemen, when I tell you that he is very good at what he does.”

“Was he a shooter?” Gresko asked.

“One of the best.” “I think I heard of him. Something or other with General Baranov and that crowd a while back,” Gresko said. “Who’s hired him to kill the Tarantula? The CIA?”

“No, it’s our own people,” Paporov said. He gave them copies of Yuryn’s report. “Needless to say this entire affair is to be considered most secret.”

“You’ll have no problem from me,” Petrovsky said. “I’m just a cop, and I’d rather Tarankov never know my name.”

Both men read the report, which with transcripts ran to about forty pages. When they were finished they sat in silence for a few moments.

“I was told that I would receive special instructions from General Yuryn when I got back from this meeting,” Gresko said. “I didn’t know about this operation, except that Colonel Yemlin has been under investigation for something. Those pricks out on the ring highway think they’re almighty gods.” He laughed and shook his head. “And here all the time they were nothing but a bunch of cocksuckers and traitors.”

“From this point both your services are to conduct the surveillance operation on Yemlin and on all of his contacts. Wherever the man goes, whatever he does, I want to know about it. But he mustn’t suspect anything. Nothing is to get back to the SVR. Not even a hint.”

“Why not just arrest the bastard?” Gresko asked. “Because there’s a possibility that he’ll make contact with McGarvey at some point,” Chernov said.

“How about McGarvey?” Petrovsky said. “How far can we take this?”

“For the moment he’s to be considered a mass murder suspect. Initially you’ll start your investigation here in Moscow. Hotels, the railway stations, airports, restaurants.”

“The Mafia?”

“If you have the solid contacts,” Chernov said. “I don’t want some Mafia boss finding McGarvey first, and then selling us out. He’s a wealthy man. If he offered enough money to the right people we’d lose him-“

“Is he still here in Moscow?” Petrovsky asked.

“I don’t know, but I suspect not. He probably came here for information, and he may have gone back to France where he’s making his preparations. But we’ll have help. The CIA and French SDECE have agreed to find and detain McGarvey for us.”

“On what charge?” the Militia cop asked. “The Americans are especially touchy on that issue. So long as McGarvey breaks no laws in his own country, or in France, there’s not much they could do.”

“If they find him, they’ll hold him long enough for us to send someone over to interview him. Afterwards we watch him.”

“But he’s good, the best, you said,” Gresko pointed out. “Which presents us with a number of unique problems. We don’t know where he is, nor do we know his plan or his timetable. We can’t use the services of our own SVR, nor apparently can we make public the real reason we’re hunting for him, although I don’t understand that all.”

“It’s political,” Chernov said. “President Kabatov does not want Tarankov assassinated. He wants the man arrested and brought here for trial.”

Petrovsky laughed out loud. “Not likely to happen,” he said. “But we do know our timetable. It’s ten weeks before the elections. Kabatov’s people must either arrest Tarankov before then, or McGarvey has to kill him, or else all this becomes a moot point. Tarankov will win the election.”

“Why not concentrate our efforts on-arresting Tarankov?” Gresko asked.

“The military is working on it.”

Gresko smirked. “Then they’d better pull their heads out of their asses, because from what I heard some good boys lost their lives outside Nizhny Novgorod.”

“That’s not our job,” Chernov said.

“What do we do if we find him?” Petrovsky asked.

“Kill him,” Chernov said.

“Then I think we should distribute his photograph to all of our border crossings. If the man is as good as you say he is, we can’t leave anything to chance.”

“If you have the manpower to do it, go ahead,” Chernov said.

CIA Headquarters

Howard Ryan was an early riser and he habitually got to his office before 8:00 a.m. This morning a message was waiting for him in his e-mail to come to the director’s office the moment he arrived. It wasn’t unusual. The general often held early morning meetings before the workday began. Ryan hung up his coat and took the elevator to the seventh floor where Murphy sat behind his desk staring out the window. He was alone. His secretary wasn’t due for another hour.

“Good morning, General,” Ryan said, walking in.

“Close the door, Howard,” Murphy said, without turning around.

Ryan did so then took a chair in front of the desk. Normally at this hour Murphy would be watching CNN and the three network news broadcasts on the bank of television monitors beside his desk. This morning the screens were blank.

“How is the McGarvey thing coming?” Murphy asked. “Any luck finding him yet?”

“No. But we’re working with the French on it. Seems as if he might have been tipped off, because a lead we thought we had turned up empty. Apparently we missed him by a few hours or less.”

“Would McGarvey have known that Tarankov once worked for us?”

The question was startling. “There was nothing in the files,” Ryan said. “I can’t think of any reason for him to have known. But with a man like McGarvey anything is possible.”

“Let’s hope not,” Murphy said and he turned around. “We’re in enough trouble as it is. And the hell of it, Howard, is that for the first time in my career I don’t know what to do.” He waved the comment off. “I don’t mean that. I know what to do. It’s just that I’m not sure what’s right or wrong.” He focused on Ryan. “Am I making any sense, Howard?”

“No, sir. What the hell has McGarvey done this time?”

“Apparently he’s been hired by a group of Russian reformers, among them Eduard Shevardnadze, to assassinate Tarankov sometime between now and the June elections.”

“Let him. If he’s successful it would eliminate a potentially very large problem for us.”

“It’s not that simple.”

It never was, Ryan thought, not at all surprised by the news. Killing Tarankov was right down McGarvey’s alley. He and that computer freak friend of his had probably already hatched some bizarre scheme to put a bullet in the Russian’s brain. Whatever the plan, it would be good.

“I don’t mean to suggest that we help him,” Ryan said.

“We have to find him before he does it, by whatever means we can.

Russian President Kabatov called President Lindsay and asked for our help. The President agreed.” Murphy handed a leather-bound report to Ryan. “This came over the weekend from Kabatov’s office. They’ve formed an independent investigatory commission to find McGarvey. A former KGB special investigations officer by the name of Bykov has been named to head it, and he sounds like a good^ man

“Mr. Director, are you suggesting that we open our Moscow station to these people?”

“No,” Murphy replied heavily. “We’re not going to compromise any of our ongoing operations over there. But we can send someone from here, or from one of our stations outside Russia. I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

“Well, we can’t do anything here in the States.”

“The FBI has agreed to a nationwide manhunt for McGarvey. A very quiet manhunt.”

“We can certainly step up our operation in France.”

“The Russians have asked the French for help, and Chirac agreed.”

“The son of a bitch,” Ryan said under his breath.

“Do whatever it takes, Howard, but find McGarvey before it’s too late and he gets himself killed, or even worse, starts a civil war over there.”

SDECE Headquarters

Colonel Galan came to attention in front of General Baillot’s desk, and saluted.

“Have you any progress to report in your search for McGarvey?” the general demanded brusquely.

“He and a computer expert friend of his — also a former CIA officer — have disappeared, mon general. It is possible that they are no longer in France.”

“Our customs police have been informed?”

“Out. But if he was disguised, and. carried false papers, he could have gotten through.”

“Yet you continue to use Mademoiselle Belleau, and McGarvey’s young daughter in an effort to lure him back to his apartment. Is that not correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

The general snorted in irritation. “A bad business using the child against its father.”

“The Americans offered her the assignment and she agreed. She hopes to intercept her father before he takes the assignment and places himself in danger.”

“He was in Moscow last week, but it is believed he has left, probably back here to France.”

“Sir?” Galan muttered to cover his surprise.

“We have a report from President Kabatov who has set up a special police commission to find and stop McGarvey, who has been hired to assassinate Yevgenni Tarankov for a group of Russian moderates.”

“Then it is no longer our problem, man general,” Galan said, relieved.

“On the contrary, Colonel Galan. President Kabatov telephoned President Chirac and personally asked for his help. Our president agreed. So it is our problem. It is your problem.” General Baillot handed a leather folder across the desk to Galan. “This is the Russian report. Find Monsieur McGarvey. For now it is your only assignment, and will receive the utmost priority. Do I make myself clear?” “Mats out, mon general.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

McGarvey landed at Berlin’s Templehof Airport a little before ten, cleared customs, and took the shuttle bus to the imposing Japanese-owned Hotel Intercontinental on Gerberstrasse in Liepzig seventy-five miles south, arriving at the front desk at 12:30 p.m.

He booked a very expensive suite for three days, paying for it with his Allain credit card. The obsequious day manager personally escorted him upstairs, and showed him around the luxurious accommodations, which included a palatial marble bathroom with gold fixtures. “This will have to do, I suppose,” McGarvey said in passable German. He tipped the man five hundred francs, and handed him another five thousand. “Change this into German currency, would you, I didn’t have time at the airport.”

“Yes, sir,” the impressed manager said with a slight bow and he left.

McGarvey locked his laptop in the room safe then made two telephone calls. The first was to the Credit bank where he made an appointment for 2:00 p.m. with the business accounts manager Herman Dunkel. The second was to Leipzig’s largest Mercedes dealer, whose number he got from the telephone book, and made an appointment with a salesman for 3:00 p.m.

The hotel day manager returned with an envelope filled with deutchmarks while McGarvey was changing into a dove-gray business suit.

“It comes to one thousand six hundred and—”

“Just lay it on the desk,” McGarvey said indifferently, as he knotted his silk Hermes tie.

“If there’s anything else I can do for you, Herr Allain, please inform me.”

McGarvey turned and gave him a hard stare. “Not now.”

“Yes, sir,” the manager said, again with a slight bow and he left.

When McGarvey was finished dressing, he went downstairs to the atrium bar where he had a half-bottle of good Riesling and a Wienerschnitzel with spaetzle and dark bread. Afterward he had coffee and a cognac and signed for the bill, and by 1:40 p.m. he climbed into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to the Credit bank’s main branch on Ritterstrasse near the opera house.

The city was being renovated from the ground up after forty-five years of communist rule in which the place had deteriorated badly. Traffic was heavy, and every second car it seemed was a Mercedes or a BMW. Shop windows displayed goods from all over the world, and the stinking pall of coal smoke that had hung like a cloud over the city for so long was finally beginning to clear away.

Herr Dunkel, who’d been mildly cool on the telephone, practically fell over himself as he escorted McGarvey into his office. “Let me tell you how pleased I am to meet you, Herr Allain,” he said. “Your letter of credit arrived just an hour ago.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” McGarvey said. “I’d like to begin conducting my business as soon as possible.”

“What is your business, sir?”

“Exporting automobiles.”

“To what country or countries?”

“Latvia.” “I see. And what type of automobiles would you be interested in, Herr Allain?”

“Mercedes, of course,” McGarvey said. “At low volumes, at first. I think an initial order of two units might be profitable.”

The bank manager opened a folder, and looked at the single piece of paper it contained. “Would this be your total capital for this venture?”

“No.”

“Forgive me, Herr Allain, for belaboring this point. But two Mercedes automobiles, plus shipping and export fees, could, depending on the models of course, exceed this amount.”

McGarvey got a pen and slip of notepaper from the manager, and wrote down a nine digit number. “This is an account at Barclay’s on Guernsey. The code phrase is variable. You will not use my name, but you may verify an amount not to exceed one million pounds sterling, an addition to this letter of credit.”

“May I see your passport?”

McGarvey handed it over. The manager studied it for a moment, comparing the photograph to McGarvey’s face, then handed it back.

He picked up his telephone and asked his secretary to ring up Barclay’s Bank. The call went through immediately, and within ninety seconds McGarvey’s account was verified.

“How may this bank be of service to you?” Dunkel asked, cautious now, but extremely interested.

McGarvey had purposely brought too small a letter of credit so that the banker he dealt with would have to verify the much larger amount. It was less flashy that way. Germans instinctively mistrusted flash.

“You can act as my banker, of course. Transferring funds, establishing my credit. And I expect you may be of value in expediting the necessary licenses.”

“Yes, we can do all of that,” Dunkel said. “But one final question. Why did you chose Leipzig to do your business? Why not Stuttgart where the home office of Mercedes is located?”

“This is a delicate subject, Herr Dunkel, may I be frank?” McGarvey asked.

“By all means.”

“Businessmen in Stuttgart, and Munich, and Frankfurt-am-Main have a reputation for being rigid, sometimes overly so. While here, in what was once the GDR, that unbending, unimaginative attitude has not yet developed.”

Dunkel smiled knowingly. “Sadly it is happening here too, Herr Allain. Perhaps it’s unavoidable.”

“Perhaps,” McGarvey said.

“Now, who do you plan on doing business with?” Dunkel asked, straightening up. “Mercedes Rossplatz.”

“Very good.” Dunkel wrote a brief note of introduction on his letterhead, put it in an envelope and handed it to McGarvey. “Ask to speak with Bernard Legler. He is the president of the company, and a very honorable man. The western sickness hasn’t affected him yet.”

The banker had called ahead, because Bernard Legler was waiting on the main showroom floor when McGarvey showed up, and he didn’t bother reading Dunkel’s note. He was a very tall, rawboned man with craggy features who looked more like an ex-rodeo cowboy than a German businessman. But his broad smile seemed genuine. “You want to buy cars and I want to sell them to you, but I don’t know a lot of folks in Latvia who can afford to buy one.”

“I do,” McGarvey said.

“Well then, let’s do some business. What do you have in mind?”

Legler spoke German as if he were translating an American western movie. It was old hat in the west, but here it was the fad.

“The sport utility four-by-four.”

“How many of them?”

“Two for now. But I expect to eventually handle a dozen or more each month.”

“Equipment?”

“Load them up.”

“Cell phones, leather, the Bose stereo systems?”

“Everything,” McGarvey said.

Legler sat back, and gave McGarvey an appraising look. “I’ve got one coming in this afternoon that we can ship tomorrow. It’ll take me about two weeks to round up another. What kind of price did you have in mind?”

“Ten percent over invoice,” McGarvey said.

“Twenty.”

“Twelve,” McGarvey countered.

“Eighteen, and I handle all the export licenses, prepping and shipping to Riga. We’ll truck them up there.”

“Fifteen, and you can handle the-shipping but I’ll pay for it separately.”

“Throw in an extra five hundred marks per unit, and we have a deal,” Legler said.

“All right. How soon can you have the paperwork ready?”

“Where are you staying?”

“The Intercontinental,” McGarvey said.

“I can be there first thing in the morning.”

“I’m going to drive the first car to Riga myself. So I want it equipped with an extra spare tire, a couple of cans of gasoline, and the papers I need to cross the borders. The second car should be exactly the same.”

“Make it noon,” Legler said. “I’ll need a shipping address in Riga. We’ll truck it up there.”

“I’ll send it to you when I get there,” McGarvey said.

“On the way out, let my secretary make copies of your passport and driving license. We’ll need it for the documents.”

McGarvey gave the man a hard look. “This business we have together will remain confidential.”

“As long as you break no German laws, that’s fine with me.”

“Good.”

Tom Lynch met Guy de Galan at a sidewalk cafe within sight of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elyse’es, a few minutes before 5:00 p.m.” rush-hour traffic in full swing.

“I assume that you’ve received your instructions from Washington,” Galan said.

Lynch nodded. “Did General Baillot brief you?”

“Oui,” Galan replied heavily. “So now what do we do? He’s^broken no French laws that I know of, unless he’s crossed our borders under false papers.”

“He’s done at least that much,” Lynch said. “And if he’s actually accepted this assignment, he’s broken our anti-terrorism laws.”

“Do you think there’s any doubt of it?”

Lynch shook his head. “He may still be in Moscow for all we know, in which case it’s up to Bykov and their special commission.”

“We have nothing on Bykov in our files,” Galan said.

“Neither do we, which makes me wonder. But it’s something else t can’t do a damn thing about. Fact is McGarvey is too good for us to find him, unless he makes a mistake. And if that happens he’s a dead man.”

“My general wants us to stop him before he comes to harm.”

“That’s the signal I’m getting from Washington. We’d rather see him in a French or American jail, than a marble slab in Moscow.” Lynch gave Galan a bleak look. “Hell of it is he might pull it off. He’s done some amazing things in his career, and it doesn’t look like he’s slowing down.”

Galan shrugged.

“Let’s assume he does kill Tarankov, and comes back here,” Lynch said. “What will your government do about it?” “That depends on whether the Russians can prove he did it. But you and I both know that if ever there was a political figure who needed assassinating, it’s Tarankov. If he comes to power, God help us all. McGarvey might be doing us a favor.”

Lynch nodded. “That’s the hell of it. But I have my orders and I intend doing everything I can to carry them out.”

“As will I,” Galan said. “One idea comes immediately to mind, but I don’t know if I’m enough of a bastard to try it.”

“Are you talking about his daughter?”

“Oui. And Jacqueline. McGarvey cares more about them than anything in the world if half of their conversations we’ve monitored are true. If they were to be’ placed in the middle of this investigation in such a way that McGarvey could find out, he would back off for their sakes.”

“Are you thinking about sending them to Moscow to work for Bykov?”

“It’s a thought. McGarvey will find out about the commission from Yemlin, there’s no doubt about it. If he also finds out that Jacqueline and his daughter are there as well, it might cause him to pull out.”

Lynch shook his head. “I’ve got to sleep on that one,” he said. “In the meantime we keep looking for him.” “Out. Like finding a needle in the haystack, when we don’t even know which farmyard it’s in.”

McGarvey spent a pleasant evening at the hotel, which featured an excellent Japanese restaurant. After dinner, he watched CNN for an hour or so, and went to sleep early. In the morning he had a vigorous workout in the hotel’s health spa, swam two hundred laps in the pool, and had a gargantuan breakfast of ham, eggs, potatoes, spinach, and very good German Brotchen.

He took a cab to the Thomaskirche where Bach had been the choirmaster and organist. A young woman was practicing the “Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor” for an upcoming concert. He sat at the back of the church to listen until it was time to return to the hotel, and walking to the end of the block where he caught a cab, he could still hear the music on the corner. He’d never cared much for Germans, but they had written some good music. Bach was technical, and the Toccatas appealed to him.

Legler was waiting in the lobby, and they went up to McGarvey’s suite where the automobile dealer laid out the contract, bank draft, registration and export paperwork on the big coffee table.

“Would you like to see what you’re buying before you sign these?” Legler asked.

“Why?” McGarvey asked matter of factly. “By the time I get to Riga I’ll know if I was cheated, and there will be no further business between us.”

McGarvey signed the paperwork, including the bank draft for almost DM 93.000, which was about $60,000.

Legler handed him the factory invoice which showed that he paid for the car, including transportation and prep charges. McGarvey did the rough calculation in his head, then handed the invoice back.

“Good news about the other unit. I’ve been guaranteed an early delivery, so I can have it to you in Riga no later than ten days from now, possibly sooner.” “That is good news,” McGarvey said.

Legler gathered up the papers, leaving McGarvey’s copies on the table, and stuffed his in his attache case. “I’m curious about something, Herr Allain. You’re Belgian, so what’s your connection with Latvia? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I do mind,” McGarvey said, rising.

Legler got up, and handed McGarvey a valet parking slip. “The extra spare tire and gas cans are in the cargo area. And I put the same route map that our truck driver will use in the glove compartment.”

“Thank you,” McGarvey said and they shook hands.

“Have a good trip, Herr Allain. And I wish you luck in your business venture.”

Downstairs at the front desk McGarvey informed them that he would be leaving in the morning, a day earlier than planned, and to have his bill ready, along with a picnic lunch.

He retrieved the gunmetal-gray Mercedes from the parking valet, and drove the heavy machine over to an automobile parts store on the north side of the city he’d looked up in the telephone book. He purchased a pair of tire irons, and an electric tire inflator that connected to the car’s cigarette lighter.

By 1:30 p.m. he was on the highway to the small town of GrObers, located in a small forest that had somehow escaped the industrial devastation of so much of the area between Leipzig and Halle. The car was massive, the knobby tires huge, but it drove like a luxury sedan, not a truck. The upholstery was leather, the stereo system magnificent and the attention to detail precise.

The day was pleasantly warm, and when he pulled up in front of an isolated house at the edge of town, he spotted a burly man stripped to the waist working in the extensive garden on the south side of the house.

The man straightened up, brushed the gray hair off his forehead as McGarvey got out of the car and came around to the front.

“Dobry dyen, Dmitri Pavlovich,” McGarvey said.

Former KGB General Dmitri Voronin looked as if he was seeing a ghost, but then his broad Slavic face broke out into a grin. He dropped the weeding fork he’d been using, and shambled out of the garden. “Kirk,” he shouted. He grabbed McGarvey in a bear hug and kissed him. “Yeb was, but it’s good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you too,” McGarvey said. “You’re looking fit.” He glanced up at the house. “Where’s Nadia

Voronin’s face fell. “You could not have known, Kirk. But she died last year of cancer.”

“I’m sorry, Dmitri. She was a good woman.”

“We would have been married forty-five years this summer.” Voronin shrugged. “But then we wouldn’t have had these last years of peace without you. We often talked about you.”

After Baranov had fallen, taking much of the KGB’s Executive Action Service with him, the Komityet and all of the Soviet Union had gone through a period of internal turmoil largely unknown in the West. Voronin, who’d been number two in the KGB’s First Directorate, had tried to make the first peace overtures to the United States, and for his effort he was branded a traitor. McGarvey was hired to pull him and his wife out of Moscow to safety, first in West Germany near Munich for months of debriefings, and when the Wall came down they’d moved here for a simpler life.

“How about a beer, Kirk?” Voronin said.

“Sure. Then I have to ask you for a favor,” McGarvey said.

Voronin gave him an amused glance. “You have the look on you. You’re back in the field. Are you going to tell me about it?”

“Nyet.”

“Good, because I no longer want the burden—” Vo ronin stopped short, an odd expression on his face as if something disturbing had just occurred to him. “There’s a picnic table in back. I’ll get the beers.”

McGarvey had been here once after Voronin and his wife were settled in. Nothing seemed to have changed, it was still a pleasant spot. He sat down and lit a cigarette. His connection with General Voronin was unknown to all but a handful of people in Langley. It had somehow slipped past the traitor Rick Ames. So far as they knew no one in Russia was aware that the CIA had helped Voronin out of the country, although they might have guessed. The manhunt for him and his wife had been brief, because the Komityet was in disarray, and its officers had other, bigger problems facing them than a defecting general. So McGarvey felt reasonably safe coming here.

Voronin brought the beers out, took a cigarette from McGarvey and they sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the light breeze in the trees, the singing birds, and the distant hum of tires on the highway half a kilometer away.

“Five years ago we were about the same size, Dmitri,” McGarvey said.

Voronin chuckled. “Old age is the ultimate diet.”

“I’d like to borrow one of your dress uniforms.”

Voronin cradled his beer bottle in both hands, and stared out toward the woods. “There’s a lot of trouble brewing in the Rodina. I understand this, Kirk. But you must understand that she is still Mother Russia to me. I’ll do nothing to harm my country.”

“Neither will I,” McGarvey said. “In fact I’m trying to help save it.”

“Are you working for the CIA again?”

“No.”

“Assassination has almost never had the expected results,” Voronin said quietly. “The situation almost always got worse.”

“It might this time, too, but I don’t think so.”

Voronin looked at him. “There is only one man in Russia whose death would benefit the people. If he were to be killed, I might be able to return.”

“If I succeed, Dmitri, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be able to go home finally,” McGarvey said.

“What if you fail?”

“Then the situation will probably get worse,” McGarvey answered without hesitation. That thought had occupied his mind since Yemlin had come to see him in Paris.

Voronin thought for a minute. “I must do this for you.” “I’m not calling in any old debts, because there aren’t—”

Voronin interrupted. “I must help you help the Rodina, even if there’s a chance things will become worse. I’m getting old, and in the end maybe you’re my only real hope for going home.” Voronin got heavily to his feet. “I’ll get it now.”

“Do you have a couple of large plastic garbage bags?”

“Yes.”

When Voronin went inside, McGarvey drove the Mercedes around back. He took the extra spare tire out of the cargo area, deflated it, and by the time Voronin returned he had pried one side of the tire away from the rim.

“Ingenious,” Voronin said. McGarvey wrapped the KGB uniform blouse, trousers, shirt and tie in the plastic, forming the bundle into a long narrow tube which he stuffed inside the spare tire. He reinflated the tire with the electric pump, and put it back in the cargo area.

Next he removed the cover from the spare tire attached to a bracket on the cargo door, and took the tire down. Voronin’s officer’s cap went into the hub of the wheel, which he reattached to the cargo lid bracket, and replaced the cover. The entire operation took about forty minutes, and when he was done, McGarvey was sweating lightly. Vo ronin brought another couple of beers, and they sat. again at the picnic table.

“When do you leave?”

“In the morning,” McGarvey said.

“And when will you do … this thing?”

“Sometime between now and the general elections.”

“Less than ten weeks.”

“Maybe sooner.”

Voronin looked away, his eyes filling. “Do you ever miss your country, Kirk?”

“Almost all the time, Dmitri.”

“When this is done, maybe we can both go home,” Voronin said. He got up and without a backward glance went into the house. McGarvey finished his beer, backed the Mercedes out of the driveway and left.

TWENTY-NINE

Elizabeth McGarvey awoke at her usual hour of 6:00 a.m.” got dressed in a bright pink jogging outfit and headed along the Avenue Jean Jaures, taking the same route her father did every morning. It was only a slight hope, but she thought by being so obviously open about her moves that if her father were to be anywhere in the vicinity of his apartment he would certainly spot her.

As she ran she kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Cars, windowless vans, delivery trucks with too many antennae. A face in a window, a reflection off binocular lenses on a rooftop. But after nearly a week of the same routine, she’d come up with nothing. At times her hopes began to fade.

She and Jacqueline had taken up residence in her father’s apartment, and she’d gotten to know the French woman who in some respects was like her mother. Mysterious and reserved sometimes, while at other times open and vivacious. She was very bright, very sympathetic to Elizabeth’s despair, and completely in love with Kirk’.

On their first full day together at the apartment, after Tom Lynch reported that he and the SDECE had apparently just missed Rencke and McGarvey at the house outside Bonnieres, she and Jacqueline went through the apartment with a fine-toothed comb. The Service had already taken the place apart, finding nothing. But Elizabeth felt that the instincts of two women might turn up something the Service might have missed.

But they’d found nothing. That evening they went to an art film, had a light supper and a couple of glasses of wine afterwards and then had returned to the apartment where they’d talked until nearly dawn.

Elizabeth doubled back through the park a half-block from her father’s apartment, and pulled up short in a line of trees across the street from the sidewalk cafe. A few people were seated outside, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. One man in particular looked familiar and her heart began to pound. It was her father, she was certain of it, because she wanted to be certain of it.

She moved silently from tree to tree in order to get a better look, but the man’s face was blocked by the newspaper he was reading.

So far as she could determine no one was watching him. But she knew enough not to rush across the street, because if the French were following her she would tip her hand. But she had to warn him.

Moving to a position directly across the street she tried to figure out the best way of approaching the cafe. The man put his newspaper down and reached for his coffee. She got a good look at his face, and her heart sank. It wasn’t her father after all. The man was far too young, his hair black, his eyebrows too thick. She leaned against the tree and lowered her head, tears coming to her eyes.

She and Jacqueline had tried everything, even placing a want ad in the personals section of Le Figaro: Liz loves you, daddy. I’m waiting at the apartment. So far there’d been no response.

They’d gone to a number of his old haunts, sidewalk cafes, parks, bistros, the Eiffel Tower, that he’d mentioned.:

They’d even driven out to the farmhouse Otto Rencke had rented outside Bonnieres. But workmen were renovating the house, and none of them had ever heard of Rencke or McGarvey.

They’d tried at a half-dozen private computer schools in Paris on the off chance that Rencke might have shown up there, again without avail.

And they’d tried the private gun clubs and the French National fencing team’s practice gymnasium where McGarvey had often worked out.

She looked up. The man at the cafe had raised the newspaper in front of his face again. Elizabeth couldn’t see how she’d mistaken the man for her father. It wasn’t even close, except that she was a stupid kid working way out of her league. Jacqueline wouldn’t have made the mistake, and she’d only known Kirk for a few months.

She headed back to the apartment disconsolately. Her father had gone to ground, and she was kidding herself thinking that — she could find him when Langley’s best people couldn’t do the job. Come home, get married and have babies, her mother would tell her. She could almost hear the words. But it just wasn’t fair.

A dark blue Citroen was parked down the block from her father’s apartment put she didn’t spot it until she mounted the steps to die building and one of Colonel Galan’s people opened the door for her. She stepped back and looked over her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Mademoiselle. Mr. Lynch is waiting upstairs for you with Colonel Galan and Jacqueline.” “Have you found my father?”

“Please, Mademoiselle, they will explain everything,” the older man said gently.

Elizabeth studied his face for a hint, but she saw nothing except friendly concern. Jacqueline, dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, her feet bare, her hair a mess, sat perched on the edge of trie couch in the living room, smoking a cigarette. Tom Lynch sat opposite her and Galan stood next to the window. They looked up when Elizabeth came in.

Jacqueline’s face was white. Elizabeth went immediately to her.

“Have they found him? Has he been hurt?”

Jacqueline took her hand. “He’s been to Moscow, but we don’t know anything beyond that. He may have come back.”

“Did you spot anything out there this morning?” Lynch asked. He seemed almost embarrassed.

“No,” Elizabeth said. “What’s going on?”

Lynch and Galan exchanged a glance.

“The Russians know that your father has been hired to assassinate Yevgenni Tarankov, and a special police commission has been formed to stop him,” Galan said.

“How did they find out?” Elizabeth demanded sharply.

“Apparently Viktor Yemlin talked.”

“Oh, God.” Elizabeth turned to Jacqueline, who looked as frightened as she felt.

“The Russians have asked for our help,” Lynch said. “And that of the French. No one wants to see your father killed. But now that they know he’s coming and what he plans to do, that’s exactly what will happen unless we find him first.”

“How do you know that he was in Russia?”

“He was spotted in Moscow.”

“But they didn’t catch him,” Elizabeth said triumphantly. “Because he’s too good. If he’s set out to kill Tarankov, then that’s what he’ll do, and there’s nothing that we or the Russians can do about it.”

“He can’t fight the entire Russian police and intelligence forces,” Lynch shot back.

“Then why aren’t we helping my father instead of the fucking Russians?” Elizabeth screeched..

“Getting hysterical isn’t going to help,” Galan tried to calm her.

“Don’t patronize me you son of a bitch! Your service is supposed to be one of the best intelligence agencies in the world, and all you can think to do is send his daughter and his whore to find—”

Elizabeth stopped short. She and Jacqueline still held hands. Slowly she turned and looked into the older woman’s glistening eyes.

“It’s all right, map’ tite Jacqueline said. “The truth isn’t supposed to be bad.”

“I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth said softly. “It’s my big mouth. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Jacqueline drew Elizabeth close and held her for a long time. “Listen, what you said was true in the beginning,” she whispered. “But not now. You must believe me.”

Elizabeth clung more tightly. “I’m sorry, Jacqueline,” she cried. She wished her mother and father were here and together now, like the old days. Like they still were sometimes in her fantasies. “I believe you.”

“Okay. All right, I’m sending you back to Washington on the first flight,” Lynch said. “I’m not going to have this on my conscience.”

Elizabeth pulled away from Jacqueline. “This has nothing to do with your conscience,” she said, back in control of herself. She felt like a little fool. “And you’re going to need every bit of help you can get. Jacqueline and I are still your best bets.”

“You haven’t found him.”

“Neither have you,” Elizabeth countered. “Who’s running this Russian police commission? And what are their chances?”

“His name is Yuri Bykov, ex-KGB,” Galan said. “We’re told he’s very good, but we don’t have anything on him.”

“Neither do we,” Lynch said.

“As for the commission’s chances, I’d say they were quite good, because they know what your father is trying to do, but your father doesn’t know that his mission has been compromised,” Galan said. “We thought about sending you and Jacqueline to Moscow to help out. It’s possible that your father mightT5nd out and back off.”

“You bastard,” Jacqueline said.

Galan spread his hands. “It was just a thought. But it’s up to you. I won’t order you to do it. If McGarvey is going to kill Tarankov it’ll happen by the June elections. Gives us nine weeks and a few days.”

“At least we have a timetable,” Elizabeth said. “Is there anything else we have to know this morning?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Lynch said, but Elizabeth cut him off with a look.

“Don’t be a fool.”

The Polish Border

By the time Galan and Lynch had left the apartment, McGarvey was already northeast of Berlin, the heaviest traffic behind him. The Mercedes’s tank was filled with gasoline, as were the spare gas cans in the back, and the morning was bright, making driving conditions on the new autobahn from Berlin to Szczecin very good. Once the Wall had come down the first order of business for the German government was reconstructing the entire infrastructure of the old GDR. New roads, factories and apartment buildings were coming into existence at breakneck speed. McGarvey took advantage of the excellent road, pushing the Mercedes to one hundred miles per hour, the big engine barely straining.

It was less than seventy miles to the Polish border at Kolbaskowo, and although he was slowed by heavier traffic, mostly trucks, funneling into the checkpoint, he made it before 11:00 a.m.

He had to stop briefly on the German side of the border so that his export papers could be checked and stamped. Before he took such a car out of Germany the authorities had to make certain that the proper taxes had been paid. Beyond that they didn’t care who he was or what else he was bringing across. Reconstructing an entire country was an expensive business.

On the Polish side, his passport and the in-transit papers for the car were briefly examined, and within a few minutes he was on his way, again pushing the car to nearly one hundred miles per hour. Although the highways in Poland were not nearly so good as those in Germany, the traffic was much lighter, so that as the afternoon wore on he made better time than he thought he would.

From Szczecin it was nearly five hundred miles along the Baltic coast to the border with a seventy-five mile wide strip of territory that still belonged to Russia. Sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, the region’s only major city was Kaliningrad. The Russians had held onto it because it was a major seaport.

The Intercontinental in Leipzig had made him an excellent picnic lunch of bread, sausages, cheese, potato salad, and several bottles of beer, plus a couple of bottles of mineral water, so he did not have to stop to eat. But he pulled into an Esso station on the outskirts of Gdansk where he filled the gas tank around five in the evening, and took a break in the wayside to relieve his cramped muscles.

It was a mistake, because by the time he got on the road again he was caught in the middle of rush-hour traffic as factory and shipyard workers clogged the highways on their way home.

He’d hoped to have reached the border with Russia at Braniewo around seven in the evening, and when traffic might still be reasonably heavy, and the customs officers too busy to check him thoroughly. Instead he arrived at the frontier a few minutes before 10:00 p.m., his the only car within sight in either direction.

On the Polish side the customs officials stamped his in-transit papers, and waved him through. On the Russian side, however, the armed FSK security officer motioned him to a parking area a few yards from the roadway. A customs officer in the dark blue uniform of a Militia cop, came out of the customs shed, and took his papers.

“Good evening,” the official said indifferently, as he studied McGarvey’s passport.

“Good evening,” McGarvey replied in fractured Russian.

“Did you drive this automobile all the way from Brussels?”

“I bought it in Leipzig.”

A second FSK security officer came out of the customs shed, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He * walked over to the car, touched the hood, examined the knobby tires, and ran his fingers along the passenger side door. He stopped in back.

McGarvey glanced in the rearview mirror as the soldier studied the spare tire on the rack, and then shined a flashlight inside at the second spare tire and the gas cans.

“Why are you coming to Russia?” the customs official asked.

“I’m in transit to Riga.”

“Will you-be staying in Kaliningrad tonight?”

“No. I’d like to reach Latvia by morning if the roads are okay and the weather continues to cooperate.”

“There is nothing wrong with Russian roads,” the official said sharply. He examined the car’s papers, lingering over the German export and Latvian import licenses. “Do you have a buyer for this pussy wagon in Riga?”

“I hope so.”

The official laughed. “No one up there has any money these days, except for a certain class of… businessmen.”

McGarvey shrugged but said nothing.

The customs officer gave him a hard, bleak stare, then handed back his passport. He wrote something on the Russian transit permit. “There is an additional transit fee of five hundred deutsch marks Do you have this money with you? It says here you didn’t pay it in Leipzig.” It was a bribe, of course.

“It was an oversight,” McGarvey said. He counted out the money and handed it over without protest. He was being perceived as one of “those businessmen,” which meant Latvian Mafia, which was giving the Russians still living in the country a horrible time. It was exactly the image he wanted to portray.

“Don’t stay long in Russia,” the official ordered. He stepped back, and Waved the FSK security guard to raise the barricade.

An hour and a half later McGarvey was crossing the much friendlier border into Lithuania where the customs officials joked and smiled, and waved at him as he left.

“He’s disappeared and nobody can find him,” Chernov told General Yuryn at breakfast in the Dzerzhinsky Square headquarters of the FSK shortly after eight in the morning. “We’ll have to wait until he contacts Yemlin, or makes a mistake.”

“Maybe he’s given up.”.

“That’s not likely.”

“President Kabatov has to be told something.”

Chernov looked at him coldly. He despised weakness of any kind, and he took Yuryn’s obesity to be a sign of a lack of self control. But

Tarankov needed the general, at least until after the elections. Then many things would change in Moscow.

“Sorry, General, but we’ve been working around the clock, and I’m getting tired.”

Yuryn laughed because the remark was so obviously disingenuous. “I’ll pass your complaint along to him.”

“Tell him that we’re working on it. McGarvey will not succeed. I guarantee it.”

Elizabeth had slept poorly, and as a result she had a difficult time getting started. She didn’t leave the apartment until nearly 7:00 a.m.” and her heart wasn’t in her jogging. She’d come to enjoy the mornings, as she was sure her father had, in part because by doing the same things he did she felt closer to him. But not this morning because she was frightened and confused. For the first time she was beginning to doubt that even a man such as her father could succeed with the deck so stacked against him.

A half-dozen blocks from the apartment, she stopped at a telephone kiosk, and using her credit card called a number in Alexandria, across the river from Washington. It was one in the morning over there, but she didn’t care. She’d wake up the dead if she thought that it would help.

Her old boss Bratislav Toivich answered his home phone on the first ring as if he’d been expecting the call. “Hullo.”

“Mr. B, it’s Liz. I’m in Paris.”

“You’re up early.”

“I’m jogging the same route my father takes. But we haven’t found a thing. And I don’t know what to do next.”

“I haven’t heard much here either, little devochka. Maybe it’s time for you to come home.”

“They want to send me and Jacqueline to Moscow to act as bait. But I’m afraid of what my father might do if he finds out.”

“That bastard,” Toivich said with much feeling. “Don’t you do it, Elizabeth. Don’t you let them bully you into going over there. You know the situation in Moscow. Anything can happen. You and Ms. Belleau could be swallowed up and no one would ever hear from you again.”

“The Russians know what my father is planning to do, and they’re waiting for him. He doesn’t have a chance, Mr. B. He’s walking into a trap, unless we can warn him first. But I don’t know what to do anymore. We’ve tried just about everything.”

“Have you tried reaching him through his friend, Otto Rencke?”

“He’s disappeared too.”

“He’s a computer genius. The machines are his entire life.”

“We’ve tried the computer schools here in Paris but no one has heard from him.”

“You’re young, Elizabeth. You were raised in the computer age, so think like a computer genius.” “I don’t understand.”

“Rencke is probably helping your father. But that wouldn’t take him twenty-four hours a day. He has to amuse himself somehow in the off hours. So what would a man like that do with himself?”

THIRTY

McGarvey crossed the Daugava River that ran through the heart of the Latvian capital around eight o’clock in the morning, his eyes gritty and his stomach rumbling. The traffic clogged streets were in terrible repair, the drivers even more reckless than in France, so he had to watch his own driving.

Using the Latvian guide book and maps he’d picked up at a truck stop this morning, he found his way to the main Telephone and Telegraph office on Brivlbas Boulevard. The Mercedes attracted some attention, but nobody bothered him.

Inside, he gave one of the clerks at the counter a Paris number and she directed him to one of the booths. By the time he closed the door the number was ringing.

“Hiya,” Rencke answered.

“Have you heard from my daughter?” McGarvey asked.

“She called and everything is fine,” Rencke replied breathlessly. “Oh boy, Mac, it’s a good thing you called because the heat’s been turned up a notch. I can’t get a trace on you because of my backscatter encryption program. So where are you calling from?”

“I’m in Riga. What’s happening?”

“You’re not calling from a hotel phone are you? Because if you are you’d better get out of there. My stuff can’t protect past a hotel switchboard, and there might be bugs.”

“I’m at the main telephone office. What’s going on, Otto?”

“Ryan is being cagey as hell, but I picked up a reference to a special commission in Moscow that the Russians have put together to find you. It’s in the SVR’s system now, so there’s no doubt that they know who you are and why you’re coming. Ever hear the name Yuri BykoV? Ex-KGB?”

McGarvey searched his memory. “No. What’d you find out about him?”

“Not much more than Chernov. He’s supposed to be one of the best cops in Russia though. But they know you’re coming, Mac, so you’re going to have to call it off.”

“What else do they know?”

“Didn’t you hear me? They know your name, and they know that you’ve been hired to kill Tarankov. They’re waiting for you. The second they spot you, they’ll kill you. But that’s not all, Mac. The Russians asked for help from us and the French, and we’ve agreed. That stupid bastard Ryan agreed. He’s sent someone here to Paris to work with the French to find you. They’re going to share information with Bykov.”

McGarvey weighed what he was being told. “Who’d Ryan send?”

“I don’t know. But didn’t you hear me? By now every cop in Europe is looking for you. Which means that if you get busted for so much as spitting on a sidewalk they’ll nail your ass to the cross.”

“Did they get my name from Yemlin?”

“If they did, Ryan hasn’t put it on the wire. He probably sent whatever he had by courier to Tom Lynch. Which means they might suspect you’ve got some help.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to get out.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you do,” Rencke said, his voice pitched even higher than normal. “Do you think you can still pull it off?”

“I’m going to try.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Watch yourself, Otto.” — “>

“You too, Mac.”

McGarvey paid for the phone charge, then drove over to the Radisson International that had opened less than a year ago overlooking the river near the Van u bridge. He surrendered the car to an admiring valet, and checked in, booking a room for a week. Latvia was beginning to have a tourist season, but it didn’t start until June, so the hotel was half-empty, and the staff was appreciative and attentive.

Upstairs, he ordered a pot of black coffee, an omelet and toast from room service. While he waited for it to come, he unpacked his bags, and took a quick shower. Afterward he sat by the window overlooking the city, and smoked.

Almost everyone he’d known from the old days at the CIA was gone. It was a safe bet that Ryan would not have come over to Paris himself, nor would the Assistant DCI, Larry Danielle. Which left no one of any importance, or at least no trained field officer. Ryan had probably sent one of his section heads with a stack of files and orders to find McGarvey or else.

McGarvey reasoned it out. The Russians knew his name, and knew that he was coming. But it was a big country, and they could not know his timetable. Nor could they know where he was planning to kill Tarankov. Since the government wanted Tarankov arrested and tried for treason and murder, it was a safe bet that no one in the Kremlin or on the special commission would send a warning to Tarankov. Although on reflection he decided that he could not be certain of that. It just seemed to make sense that there wouldn’t be any lines of communications between the opposing forces.

It was possible that Ryan had sent the Russian commission the CIA’s files on McGarvey. Combined with the files of the SVR, it would make a formidable record of not only his accomplishments, but of his methods of operation, his tradecraft. In the right hands that would give them a decided advantage. But Bykov was just an unknown investigator. Probably very good, but just an investigator for all that.

The only man in Russia who he had any cause to be concerned about, McGarvey decided, was Leonid Chernov. If somehow he became involved the danger would be a quantum leap greater.

On balance, then, he decided, he would go ahead with his plans made more difficult because they knew his name and face, but still not impossible.

His breakfast came, he signed for it, and the waiter left. He ate the food, drank one cup of coffee, and then went to bed for a few hours sleep. There was much to be done in the coming days, and he wanted to make a good start as soon as possible.

Elizabeth McGarvey sat on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens in sight of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde studying the display on her laptop computer. She’d become tired of being cooped up at the apartment, so she had come down here to continue working because the day was beautiful. Jacqueline was in a cramped office at the main telephone exchange a few blocks away, sitting in front of a much larger computer that could instantly trace virtually any telephone number in Paris and its environs. She and Elizabeth were in contact via one of the two cellular telephones Elizabeth carried. The second cell phone connected her laptop to the Internet.

At the moment she was logged in under the Globalnet name of LIZMAC in a Usenet newsgroup called talk.politics.misc, in which participants posted messages in a sort of dialogue on what was wrong with politics these days.

At the top of each message was the name of the writer, the subject, the date and time the message was posted, and the location of the originating computer system. Following each message was a signature, which as often as not was the participant’s nickname. And the nicknames were just as colorful as the messages.

If Otto Rencke had too much time on his hands he would almost certainly be taking part in a number of these news groups His ego would make it impossible for him not to make comments, and Elizabeth hoped to be able to spot him by what he was saying, and by his nickname. It was a sure bet that he would not use his real name, nor would he use his real telephone number.

Elizabeth also hoped that if she did stumble upon a newsgroup which he posted he might recognize her own signature, and out of curiosity, if nothing else, he would have to open a dialogue with her.

His CIA file had been sent over, and combined with what she remembered her father saying about him, she thought she had a good idea what kinds of news groups he’d be browsing, and what kinds of messages he would be posting.

Each time she came up with a likely candidate, she passed the computer location telephone number to Jacqueline to check out. So far every possibility had turned out to be legitimate. But worldwide there were more than 60,000 Usenet news groups nearly 95 million computer sites, and hundreds of anonymous re mailer sites, through which messages could be retransmitted without valid IDs.

Elizabeth speed-dialed the telephone exchange.

“Paris exchange. Four-two, seven-four, two-one, three-one,” she told Jacqueline. “He calls himself ‘big daddy.” “

“Un moment,” Jacqueline said.

Elizabeth continued to watch the messages continually scrolling up the screen. This went on twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week across the world. Finding Rencke would be next to impossible, but they had nothing else to go on for the moment.

“Thomas LeBrun. A street number in the twentieth arrondissement,” Jacqueline said. “He’s legitima ted

Elizabeth ran a hand tiredly across her eyes. “Okay, Jacqueline, I’m going to a different newsgroup. I’ll try talk.politicstheory, maybe we’ll have better luck.”

“How about some lunch, cherie?”

“Let’s work till noon. That gives us another half hour. I just can’t stop.”

“I know,” Jacqueline said soothingly. “We’ll find him.”

“We have to.”

McGarvey got up around two in the afternoon after only a few hours of sleep. He showered, shaved, and got dressed then went downstairs and had a late lunch at the hotel’s coffee shop. He was still logy from lack of sleep, but by the time he’d walked two blocks from the hotel he was beginning to feel better. He caught a taxi at Krastmala Boulevard, and ordered the driver to take him out to the airport where he rented a Volkswagen Jetta for one month from Hertz. He explained that he wanted to explore the entire Baltic region, something he’d wanted to do for years. Now that they were independent from the Russians he was finally able to get his wish.

Even though only a small percentage of the population spoke Latvian, all the street signs were in that language, which sometimes caused confusion. In actuality the lingua franca was Russian, a fact that everyone despised, but that everyone lived with.

While at the airport he changed the remainder of his deutchmarks to Latvian la tis then headed back into the city. The weather continued to hold, but if anything traffic, was worse than it had been this morning. Riga and its companion city Jurmala, where the international ferries docked, were major Baltic seaports. It was one of the reasons the Soviet Union had fought so hard to keep Latvia. But the nation continued to struggle with its independence from communist rule. Still, nearly half the population was Russian, which created strong ethnic tensions. The new businessmen millionaires were Latvian Mafia, while the Russians, who were constantly being discriminated against, ran their own rackets. Just about anything went here, which was one of the reasons McGarvey had picked this place.

By four o’clock he was in the waterfront district of warehouses and dreary offices above chandeliers and other dingy shops. He found what he was looking for almost immediately, an import/export company under the obviously Latvian name of Karlis Zalite, situated above a small machine parts warehouse. Pallets marked in English, made in germany, were being unloaded from a big truck.

McGarvey parked across the street, and went upstairs to a cramped, grimy office in which stacks of files and paperwork were piled on the floor, on chairs, on two small tables, and atop several large filing cabinets. A young pimply-faced man with thick, greasy hair worked at a tiny desk next to the one window, while the proprietor worked in the back from a much larger, cluttered desk. The place smelled like a combination of stale sweat, cigarette smoke and grease from the warehouse below.

“I wish to hire your firm to import Mercedes automobiles from Leipzig. Can you handle this for me?” McGarvey asked.

“Da, of course,” Zalite, a skinny ferret-faced little man said, rising from his chair. He stuck out his dirty hand. “Mr…?”

“Pierre Allain. I am Belgian,” McGarvey said, shaking hands.

“Your Russian is very good.”

“My father worked in Moscow.”

“Is he still there?”

“He was sent to Siberia to count the birches, and never came back.” McGarvey lowered his eyes for a moment, his jaw tightening. “But that was many years ago. Now I wish to do some business with you.”

“Do you have buyers here in Riga for your cars? Because if we can come to reasonable terms, I would certainly take one of them off your hands.”

“These will be for sale in Moscow. Very cheap.”

“I see,” Zalite said, sitting back, and eyeing McGarvey with a sudden wariness. “Perhaps you have come to the wrong man.”

“I wouldn’t sell one of my cars to you, at any price,” McGarvey continued. “Nor would I sell them to anyone in Latvia, or anywhere else other than Moscow. People could… get hurt in my cars. They will get hurt.” Zalite’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a dangerous game you are playing, Mr. Allain.”

McGarvey sat forward so suddenly that Zalite reared back. He slammed his fist on the desk. “I’m going to stick it to the bastards for what they did to me, with or without your help!” McGarvey shook with rage. “Goddamn stinking sons of bitches!” He glanced at the young man, who watched with round eyes. “My father went there to help, and they killed him. They killed my mother too. I’m all that’s left.” “How many units are coming?” Zalite asked respectfully.

“One to begin with, by truck. But there’ll be many more later.”

“Do you have buyers for them in Moscow?”

“Mafia,” McGarvey said through clenched teeth.

“And how will you get these cars there?”

“I’ll drive them, one at a time. I want to see the looks on their faces.”

Zalite hesitated.

“I’ll pay you one thousand deutsch marks above your usual fees,” McGarvey said. “Your name will never be mentioned by me to the Russians. I’ll instruct the car dealer in Leipzig where he may ship the cars, which you’ll store in a secure place until I call for them one at a time.” McGarvey took a Creditbank draft in the amount of DM 1.000 out of his attache” case and laid it on the man’s desk. “This is for the first car, I’ll have another bank draft ready for your fees.”

Zalite eyed the bank draft. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

“That’s my prob leto In the meantime you’ll make a profit. Do we have a deal?”

“Where can I reach you if there’s a problem?”

“If there’s a problem, you handle it. The first car will be here in less than ten days. Will you do it?”

Zalite looked at the bank draft again, then picked it up and put it in his desk drawer. He stood up and extended his hand. “We have a deal, Mr. Allain, if for no other reason than I too would very much like to stick it to the bastards, as you say.”

McGarvey shook his hand. “I’ll call when I’m ready for the first car. In the meantime I’ll count on your discretion.”

“Oh, you have my word on that,” Zalite said earnestly.

From there McGarvey drove back to the Telephone and Telegraph office where he placed a call to Bernard Legler at Mercedes Rossplatz in Leipzig. He gave the German Zalite’s address, and then rang off before Legler could ask any questions.

It was late afternoon by the time he found a parking garage a few blocks from the hotel where he dropped off the Volkswagen and went the rest of the way on foot. He stopped at the bar for a martini, then went back up to his room where he intended changing clothes and coming back down for dinner around eight. He turned on the television to CNN, lay down on the bed and fell asleep in his clothes.

THIRTY-ONE

Chernov sat at his desk staring at the detailed maps of Moscow, feeling that he was missing something that was vitally important. Paporov was talking on the telephone to Captain Petrovsky at the Militia, and from the tone of his voice Chernov got the impression that there was no news. The FSK was coming up empty-handed as well. As Chernov suspected, the service did not have enough manpower to do its normal work, let alone mount a nationwide search for McGarvey. For instance McGarvey’s photograph hadn’t been distributed to all the border crossings yet, though Gresko promised the job would be completed within the next three or four days.

Moscow was a city of nine million people spread over nearly six hundred square kilometers, the Moscow River meandering sometimes north and south, at other times east and west through it. Defined by four ring roads, the outermost of which was fifteen kilometers from the Kremlin, the city was a maze of broad boulevards, twisting side streets and narrow, dirty back alleys down which many Muscovites feared to travel. Underground, nine separate metro lines crisscrossed the city through more than two hundred kilometers of tunnels. In addition to an extensive storm sewer system, a half-dozen underground rivers all flowed eventually into the Moscow River. In winter, subterranean Moscow was a busy place, populated by a large percentage of the city’s poor and homeless.

Instinctively Chernov felt that McGarvey was no longer in the city. He had come to Moscow and to Nizhny Novgorod to stalk his prey, and to work out his plan for the kill. The fact that he’d been spotted in Red Square led Chernov to the conclusion that McGarvey had chosen the city for the assassination attempt. Putting himself in the American’s shoes, Chernov decided that he would do the same thing. Because once the kill was made there was an unlimited number of places where a man could hide until the dust settled.

Paporov put down the telephone. “The Militia is getting nowhere with the Mafia. They’re shitting in their pants out there on the streets.”

“Did you tell them to keep trying?”

“Da, for what it’s worth,” Paporov said.

“What about Viktor Yemlin, has he made any telephone calls?”

“None of any. significance from his apartment,” Paporov said. “But you were right about one thing. Apparently he has some sort of an electronic device that masks video and audio surveillance equipment, because they got nothing from the Magesteriu’m, and nothing from his dinner with Sukhoruchkin.”

“He’s gotten it from his own technical service, which means he knows that we’re on to him,” Chernov said.

“You don’t think he’s dragged the SVR into it, do you?”

“No,” Chernov said. He figured they would have heard something if that were the case.

“Well, if he’s making any important calls, they must be from public phones. I can arrange to tap every pay phone within a four block radius of his apartment.”

“Do it,” Chernov said.

“Still leaves us with the rest of it. I think Valeri Doyla is our best bet, but the stupid bastard gets himself cornered every time.”

“Put someone in the next room. Yemlin’s little electronic toy can’t blind a man, or stop his ears from working.”

“I’ll get on it right away,” Paporov said. He lit a cigarette and came over to Chernov’s desk. “You think it’s going to happen here, and not out in the countryside somewhere?”

“If I wanted to kill Tarankov I’d wait until he came to Moscow,” Chemov said. “There’d be a better chance of escape.”

“It’s a safe bet that the Tarantula will be here on election day. Probably at the reviewing stand in Red Square.”

Chernov looked up suddenly.

“Gives us nine weeks to catch him,” Paporov said. “Because if he makes it this far, and gets mixed up in the crowds, he’ll be impossible to spot. There’s going to be a lot of confusion that day. Some violence too. Maybe some shooting.”

“We don’t have nine weeks,” Chernov said, his eyes going back to the maps, specifically to Red Square.

“Not if we want to catch him before election day.”

“Not election day,” Chernov said. He was amazed by the simplicity of McGarvey’s plan. The brilliance of the man. His audacity.

“What do you mean?” Paporov asked.

“Tarankov is going to come to Moscow on election day. Everybody knows that. Everybody is counting on it. It’s the one day he could come to Moscow and be safe, because nobody would order his arrest. The people would rise up, claiming the election had been fixed.”

“That’s right,” Paporov said. “In the confusion McGarvey could take his shot, and get away with it.”

“All our efforts are being directed to that one day, that one place — Red Square. We have nine weeks, so time is still on our side.”

Paporov nodded uneasily, not yet quite sure where Chernov was taking this.

“But McGarvey has another plan, because he figured out something that the rest of us have overlooked.”

Sudden understanding dawned on Paporov’s face. “Yeb vas. May Day,”

“Very good, Aleksi.”

“Surely Tarankov won’t risk coming in to Moscow so soon.”

Chernov smiled distantly. “You can count on it,” he said. “And that’s the day on which Mr. McGarvey will try to kill him. The day that he himself will die.”

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Yemlin told Valeri Doyla at the Magesterium. “But I have the resources to rectify my error before it goes too far.”.

He and Doyla lay naked next to each other in the wide bed, soft music playing from the hidden speakers. This time he’d refused vodka and the cocaine, because, as he explained, he wanted to enjoy himself. He wanted his head to be clear. And he was not using the anti surveillance device, because he wanted to be overheard.

“What are you talking about, Viktor? Being here like this?” Doyla asked cautiously.

Yemlin chuckled, and caressed the young man’s flanks. “Heavens no. You’re an old man’s comfort.”

“You’re not so old.”

“What would you say if I told you that I hired someone to kill the Tarantula? What would you think about that?”

“I don’t get involved in politics,” Doyla said. He giggled. “It makes my head hurt thinking about it.”

“Mine too,” Yemlin said. “But the bastard has to be arrested, not killed by some hired gun who doesn’t care about the Rodina. I’m going to call him off. He can keep the money — it wasn’t mine in the first place — and he can get out of Moscow, or wherever he is.”

“Can you do this?”

“I’ll figure a way,” Yemlin said. He slapped Doyla’s rump hard enough to leave a red mark, bile once again rising sharply in his throat. “In the meantime let’s talk about something much more pleasurable, shall we?”

McGarvey rose at 8:00 a.m.” after a solid twelve hours of sleep, and after he showered and shaved he got a copy of the International Herald-Tribune from the newsstand in the lobby, and had breakfast on the terrace overlooking the river and the old city.

In an article on the op-ed page, the writer gave a reasonably accurate, if superficial, summary of the political upheaval going on in Russia as the country headed toward the general elections. Kabatov was the front runner in every poll in which Yevgenni Tarankov’s name was omitted. The general opinion across the country however, was that although the Tarantula could easily win in any election, why bother? Any time he wanted the country it was his for the taking. The military was corrupt and would not stop him, nor would either division of the old KGB which was itself in a fierce internecine battle. The nation was in disarray, and like it or not, Tarankov was likely the one man to bring it together.

An hour later he walked down to the car park, where he retrieved the Jetta, and headed to the train station where he cruised the neighborhoods for a few blocks in a rough triangle bounded by it, the post office and telephone exchange, and the central market. After stopping to ask at several cafes and markets he finally found a black market apartment for rent not registered with the Federal Rent Control Association.

Decent housing, especially in Riga, was scarce, and between discrimination against Russians, and price gouging which had created a lot of tensions, the government had stepped in. First choice went to registered Latvian voters, which made up only thirty percent of the population. Second choice went to well-heeled western businessmen, and the dregs went to Russians. The problem was, that the federal government levied a heavy tax on all registered apartments, so the black market thrived.

The old woman who rented McGarvey the efficiency apartment three blocks from the train station didn’t even ask to see his passport once she was satisfied that he wasn’t a Russian. The rent was 125 la tis or $250, a week. He paid for a month in cash, which included an old plastic radio, a small black and white television, and postage-stamp-sized private bathroom. A pay phone was located in the downstairs hall. The apartment was surprisingly clean, and looked down on Gogala Street, busy with truck traffic.

By the same process, but asking at a different set of cafe’s and markets, McGarvey found a secured parking stall in what once had been a warehouse near the train station, and only three blocks from the apartment, paying the rental fee of fifty la tis per week a month in advance.

On the way back to the hotel he bought a heavy duty combination lock from a variety store, then parked the Jetta in the lot near the hotel, and was back for a late lunch a little before two o’clock.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon touring the old city on foot, partially to kill some time, but mostly because he’d been cooped up, for so long that he needed fresh air and exercise.

There was a subtle air of sullenness among the Latvians he saw. Although the cafes and shops were filled, the streets were busy with traffic, the beer gardens humming, and every third person seemed to be speaking on a cellular phone, a sharpness of attitude was prevalent. All of Riga seemed to be pissed off. In part, McGarvey supposed, because they were finding that independence and freedom were not easy. Latvia and the other Baltic republics were still dependent on Russia for their day-to-day financial stability. The Russian economy was coming apart at the seams, yet Latvia’s future remained wedded to Russia’s, and nobody liked it.

Back at the hotel by six, he stopped at the front desk and told them that he would be checking out in the morning after breakfast, and would need his car out front by 8:00 a.m.

He had room service send dinner up to his room, and watched CNN with a detached interest. The real world didn’t seem to exist other than as a fantasy on television. It was a strange feeling, one that always came over him at this point in a mission. It was as if he had removed himself from the human race for the duration.

In the morning he would park the Mercedes in the garage he’d rented, come back for the Volkswagen, pick up a few groceries at the market, and settle in the apartment to wait for the other Mercedes to arrive from Leipzig. He was being hunted for. It was time to lay low to see if anyone was coming after him before he made the next move.

By 10:00 p.m.” Chernov was on the M1 motorway out of Moscow heading toward Smolensk a little more than three hundred kilometers to the southwest. The BMW seven hundred series was in excellent condition, and the evening sky, though moonless, was clear and star studded. The highway which ran nearly straight through the lake country was all but deserted, and he was able to push the car well over 130 kilometers per hour. The windows were up, and the tape deck played Mozart, so that he felt very little sensation of hurtling through the night.

He’d called a blind number in Moscow, identified himself by the code name Standard Bearer, and received the cryptic message Alpha-one-three-one-stop. It was a grid reference for Tarankov’s train stopped on a siding fifty kilometers east of Smolensk.

“I’ll arrive before midnight,” Chernov said.

There’d been-no answer, nor had he expected any. But his message would have gotten through to Tarankov that his chief of staff was on the way.

Since Chernov had been dispatched to Moscow, Tarankov had conducted no further raids. The first was scheduled for the day after tomorrow on the former Lithuanian trade capital on the Dnieper River, which was why the train had been moved to within fifty kilometers of the city.

The highway was totally deserted when he stopped a few kilometers west of the small city of Safonovo around 11:45 p.m. He entered Tarankov’s coordinates into a handheld GPS satellite navigator, which showed that the train was another five kilometers due west.

A couple of kilometers farther, a narrow dirt road led west away from the M1, and Chernov followed it, turning off his headlights as he came over the crest of a hill. Below, nearly invisible in the dark night, the train was parked on a siding, camouflage netting completely covering it from satellite or air reconnaissance.

Chernov waited patiently for a full five minutes until he was certain that he’d spotted the six commandoes who’d established a perimeter a hundred meters out.

They would know that he was up here because he’d made no effort to mask his approach. Standard operating procedure was for him to remain here until Tarankov was informed, and someone was sent up to escort him down. The delay was only slightly irritating, but Chernov approved of the routine.

He got out of the car, and leaned against the fender when headlights flashed in the trees from the direction he’d come. He pulled out the bulky Glock-17 automatic from his shoulder holster, glanced down toward the train to make sure no one was coming up toward him, then got off the road and sprinted through the trees to the crest of the hill, keeping low so that he was not silhouetted against the starry sky.

A car, its headlights off now, bumped slowly along the dirt track. When it topped the crest, it suddenly stopped and backed down. Chernov could see that it was a dark blue Mercedes. Paporov’s car from Lefortovo. The bastard had followed him.

Paporov turned the car around, then, leaving the engine running, got out, entered the woods and noiselessly hurried back to the top of the rise, passing within a few meters of where Chernov stood behind the hole of a tree.

At the top he dropped to one knee and studied the train through a pair of binoculars. Chernov, careful to make no noise himself, came up behind him.

“What are you doing here, Aleksi?”

Paporov, startled, looked up over his shoulder, his eyes wide, his face white in the starlight. “That’s Tarankov’s train.” “Yes it is, but what are you doing here?”

Paporov’s eyes went to the gun in Chernov’s hand. “You’re working for him, aren’t you?”

A pair of Tarankov’s commandoes wearing night vision goggles appeared out of the darkness to the left.

“Who is this, Colonel Chernov?” one of them asked.

“An unfortunate mistake on my part,” Chernov said, not taking his eyes off Paporov, who’d lowered his binoculars and let them hang by their strap from his neck. “I didn’t see anyone on the highway. How’d you follow me?”

Paporov glanced at the commandoes. “So it’s Chernov, not Bykov. Is General Yuryn in on this operation?”

“How did you follow me?”

Paporov shrugged. “I wondered about you from the start. You know too much for an ex-KGB officer living in Siberia. There’s a beacon transmitter in the trunk of your car.”

“We picked up the signal while you were a couple of kilometers out,” one of the commandoes said.

“So now what?!” Paporov asked. He was resigned. “I don’t suppose it would help if I said I’d be willing to keep my mouth shut and continue helping you find McGarvey?”

“No,” Chernov said. “The pity of it is that I was beginning to like you.”

“What can I say to make a difference?”-‘

“Nothing,” Chernov said. He raised the pistol and shot Paporov in the head.

The captain’s body flopped on its side.

“Take the car and the body back to Moscow tonight, and leave it a few blocks from Lefortovo. Take his watch, academy ring, wallet, money and anything else of value.”

“Yes, sir,” one of the commandoes said.

Chernov bolstered his gun, and drove his car down to the train. Tarankov and Liesel were drinking champagne and watching CNN in their private car.

“We heard a shot,” Tarankov said. “It was Captain Paporov,” Chernov said, helping himself to a glass of champagne. “His body will be returned to Moscow tonight, and made to look like a robbery.”

“Will this cause you any trouble?” Liesel asked.

“No,” Chernov replied indifferently. “You don’t mean to wait until the elections, do you,” he told Tarankov.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you won’t pass up the opportunity of the May Day celebration in Red Square. If you get that far, the people will be behind you and there’ll be no need for the election. But McGarvey will be there as well.”

“What do you suggest, Colonel?” Liesel demanded. “That we hide like rabbits because of some foreigner that you’re unable to catch?”

“Send a double. The effect will be the same. And if McGarvey should succeed, it won’t matter, because he won’t escape, and afterward you’ll miraculously rise from death like a new messiah.”

Liesel was livid, but a smile spread across Tarankov’s face. “That’s quite good, Leonid. But are you telling me that you cannot guarantee my safety from McGarvey?”

“He was the one who killed General Baranov, and Arkady.”

“Your half-brother. Yes, I know this,” Tarankov said, his gaze not wavering. “It’s why you were selected to stop him. It was thought that you would have the proper motivation. Instead, you seem to be admitting that he’s better than you. Your thinking has been colored by … what, Leonid? Fear? Has your judgment slipped so badly that you allowed a FSK captain to follow you?”

“I didn’t come here to play semantic games with you, Comrade,” Chernov answered coldly. “I am respectful of Mr. McGarvey. In fact I am very respectful of his determination and abilities, as you should be. I came here to confirm that you plan on being in Red Square on May Day, and to warn you that if McGarvey somehow manages to slip past me, you should send a double to make your speech. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.” ” Liesel’s face had turned red. She jumped up, snatched a pistol from the table beside her and pointed it at Chernov with shaking hands.

Chernov didn’t bother looking at her. “With all due respect, Comrade Tarantula, keep your wife away from me, and out of sight until afterwards. Just now Russians have no love for foreigners. Any foreigners.”

Tarankov nodded but said nothing.

Chernov turned, and left the train, Liesel’s enraged screeching clearly audible all the way over to where he parked his car.

THIRTY-TWO

For ten days Chernov went about his work alone at Lefortovo, briefing General Yuryn at irregular intervals. But he was operating under a handicap now. Everyone believed that if McGarvey struck here in Moscow, it would be on election day when Tarankov was expected to make his triumphal entry into the city. If the assassination attempt came sooner, it would take place outside of Moscow. In some other city.

Kabatov and the fools he surrounded himself with hadn’t put it together yet, that Tarankov had no intention of waiting for the general elections. His was to be a socialist victory. And May First was the day for the international socialist movement.

But McGarvey had figured it out. Chernov didn’t know how he knew this, but he was just as certain that McGarvey would be in Red Square on May Day, as he was that Tarankov would not send a double.

With little more than a week to go, Chernov was beginning to admit to himself that McGarvey wasn’t going to make a mistake. On May First he was going to be within shooting range when Tarankov took to the reviewing platform atop Lenin’s tomb to speak to his people.

Even after all this time Gresko conceded that McGarvey’s photograph had been distributed to less than twenty percent of Russia’s border crossings, and there was even some doubt how widely the information had been spread in Moscow. At this rate it would take several more weeks to get the job done. But the FSK task force did not seem to be overly concerned, because the general elections were still more than seven weeks away.

The CIA and SDECE seemed to be having the same sort of luck as well. They’d lost McGarvey’s trail somewhere in Paris, which was actually a moot point, because in Chernov’s estimation they’d never had his trail in the first place. No one knew if he was still in Paris, or even in France. No one knew how he’d gotten to Moscow, or how he’d gotten back out of Russia, if in fact he’d even been here. The whole story could have been Yemlin’s invention to somehow misdirect their investigation.

Nor had stationing a man at the Magesterium to eavesdrop on Yemlin’s homosexual love nest produced any results other than the story Yemlin was telling his queer that he was calling McGarvey off. That story for certain was a fiction, because Yemlin’s every move was being watched, now even inside the SVR. He’d never contacted McGarvey or made any effort to do so.

Paporov’s body had been found about the same time Chernov had reported him missing. The autopsy took five days after which the Militia came to the conclusion that he’d been shot to death during a robbery. They refused to speculate why the Mercedes the captain had been driving had not been stolen as well.

Chernov refused another assistant, though secretly he wished Paporov were still around. It had been a stupid mistake on his part allowing the captain to follow him to the train. He’d underestimated the man, something he would have to be careful not to do with McGarvey.

Tarankov’s raid on Smolensk got very little official attention inside Russia, and only a brief mention in the western media. It seemed as if the entire world was holding its breath until the June elections.

As the clock in Chernov’s office slipped past midnight, he flipped his desk calendar over to the 23rd of April, eight days until May First, then got his jacket and went out. He’d been thinking about his mistress Raya Dubanova all afternoon, and he decided to spend a few hours with her tonight, because his nerves were on edge. The grinding stupidity and inefficiency of the FSK and Militia threatened to drive him crazy.

Outside, he hesitated for a moment in the darkness. The prison compound was utterly still. If the assassin were anyone other than McGarvey, he would leave now, get out of Russia, perhaps to Switzerland. There was still plenty of work for men such as him. The problem was that he would not be able to ask the Militia for much help covering Red Square until the last minute. Otherwise Kabatov would order a trap to be laid not only for McGarvey but for Tarankov too.

But he was going to have to stay, to play this little drama out to its end. For revenge, if nothing else.

By ten o’clock McGarvey left Riga behind, the morning overcast and cool, eastbound traffic fairly light. The Mercedes was running well, but he kept his speed within the posted limit of ninety kilometers per hour, which was less than sixty miles per hour. Their main highway that ran directly from Riga to Moscow followed the railroad. It was one hundred and fifty miles to the border at Zilupe, and another 395 miles to the Russian capital, most of the distance over indifferent roads. But traffic would be light most of the way.

The second Mercedes had arrived late yesterday afternoon, and it took Zalite the rest of the day and into the evening to prepare the Russian transit and import documents.

McGarvey had picked up the car before eight this morning, and handed the Latvian a bank draft for the remainder of the import taxes and handling fees.

The car had been washed, polished and gassed, the two spare gas cans filled, and sat his the middle of the warehouse floor surrounded by a half-dozen admiring men. Zalite was practically licking his chops.

He took McGarvey aside. “It’s nine hundred kilometers to Moscow, so naturally I had my mechanic check your car for defects. I’ll tell you something, that Mercedes is in perfect condition. Nothing wrong. Nothing!”

“Did your man take the engine apart?” McGarvey asked.

Zalite’s eyes narrowed. “Nyet.”

“It’s a good thing, because he would have gotten a very nasty surprise. He might not have lived through it.” Zalite glanced over at the car. “But you will drive it all that way without a problem?”

McGarvey nodded. “My little secret. And since there’ll already be a thousand kilometers on the car before I turn it over, no one will be able to blame me when something goes wrong.”

“It’s a beautiful machine,” Zalite said. “Such a shame.”

“Maybe when this is all over, I’ll get you a good one.”

“Maybe I’ve changed my mind about Mercedes,” Zalite said sadly. “When does the next one come?”

“Depends on how this trip goes. A couple weeks.”

Twenty transport trucks, empty, were lined up on the Latvian side of the border waiting to have their papers checked. Only a few trucks, all of them heavily loaded, were waiting to get into Latvia with their Russian-made products. By evening the numbers would be reversed with more loaded trucks arriving and fewer empty trucks leaving.

McGarvey had to wait nearly forty-five minutes before it was his turn. The Latvian customs official glanced briefly at his papers, stamped the exit section of his passport and waved him through. On the Russian side of the border, however, the policeman motioned him over to the parking area in front of the customs shed, where a pair of officials waited.

McGarvey handed out his passport to one of the stern faced officers, who studied the photograph carefully, comparing it to McGarvey’s face.

“What is the purpose of your visit to Russia?” the official asked in Russian.

“Business,” McGarvey replied. He handed over the papers for the car. “I’m importing this car for sale in Moscow. And if I get a good price, I’ll be bringing in more of them.”

One of the armed Militia officers drifted over, and looked longingly at the Mercedes. It was something that he could not afford to buy with a lifetime of earnings. A certain amount of resentment showed on his face because like the customs officials, he knew that the only people in Moscow who could afford it were either corrupt politicians, the new businessmen, or the Mafia.

The customs official opened the car door. “Release the hood, then step out of the car and open the rear compartment.”

McGarvey did as he was told. A third customs official came out with a long-handled mirror, which he used to inspect the undercarriage of the Mercedes, while the other two officials searched every square inch of the car, as well as McGarvey’s single overnight bag and laptop computer.

As they worked, McGarvey took a picnic basket from the passenger side, and sat on the open cargo lid. The officials kept eyeing him as he opened a bottle of good Polish vodka, took a deep drink, then started on the bread, cheese, sausage and pickles.

On the way out of Riga this morning, he’d stopped at the Radisson and had them make up the gourmet picnic lunch, which also included a good Iranian caviar and blinis, some imported foie gras, smoked oysters, Norwegian salmon, and Swedish pickled herring. ‘

The customs officers opened the gas cans stored in the cargo area and shined a flashlight inside, then bounced the spare tire several times to learn if anything might be hidden inside. Working around McGarvey, they also removed the primary spare tire from its bracket on the cargo lid, and did the same thing with it.

McGarvey finished his lunch an hour later, about the same time the customs officials were done. The one with the paperwork stamped the documents and handed them back to McGarvey.

“Take care that you violate no Russian laws,” he cautioned harshly.

McGarvey nodded. “I’ve eaten all that I want. May I leave the rest of this here, with you and your men?” He held out the picnic basket.

The customs official hesitated for only a moment, then took the basket. The others watched the exchange.

McGarvey glanced at the paperwork, then started to raise the cargo lid, when he turned back. “You’ve made a mistake,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” the customs officer demanded sharply.

“The import duty is supposed to be five hundred marks more than what I paid in Riga,” McGarvey shrugged. “I noticed the mistake after I’d left. I thought you people might catch it.” McGarvey shrugged. “But if you say it’s okay—”

The officer handed the picnic basket to one of his men, took the import duty form from McGarvey and studied the document for a few moments. When he looked up he was wary. “It looks as if you’re correct.”

“I thought so,” McGarvey said. He pulled out five hundred marks, and handed it to the official. “As I said, if my business goes well in Moscow, I’ll be bringing in more of these cars. Maybe as many as a dozen or more a month, so I want to make absolutely sure that everything is as it should be. Do you understand?”

“Yes, thank you,” the officer said, hardly able to believe his luck. “I’ll look for you next time.”

“In a week or two,” McGarvey said.

Elizabeth sat hugging her knees to her chest in the window seat of her father’s apartment, staring dejectedly down at the street, all but deserted at this hour of the morning. Her father was gone. It was as if the earth had swallowed him whole. For all any of them knew he could be buried in some unmarked grave somewhere. Her mother said it had been his greatest fear.

“Here it is again,” Jacqueline said from across the room where she sat in front of the laptop computer. “That makes three references tonight.”

“What is it?” Elizabeth asked, looking up. She was dead tired, her back ached and her eyes burned from staring at computer screens for the past couple of weeks.

Jacqueline, an expression of barely controlled excitement on her face, brushed her hair back. “He’s coming on the net now.” She sounded breathless. “What was that special food you told me that Rencke was fond of?”

“Twinkies,” Elizabeth said. She got up and padded over to Jacqueline.

“Well, take a look at this, ma cherie.”

“That’s him,” Elizabeth cried excitedly. “My God, you’ve found him!”

“Not yet, but we’ve made a start,” Jacqueline said. “The address is an anonymous re mailer in Poland, I think. But I can check on it.”

“It means he could be anywhere.”

“That’s right, Liz. Could even be in the apartment across the hall. But I have a friend who’ll know about this re mailer If it’s legitimate, we’ll have a shot at finding out Twinkle’s real location.”

She reached for the telephone, but Elizabeth grabbed her arm.

“If this gets back to Lynch or Galan, they’ll screw it up.”

Jacqueline grinned. “Don’t worry, this is our little secret for now.”

Elizabeth’s eyes strayed to the hole in the wall where they’d disabled the first of the bugs they’d found. For the moment, they were secure in this apartment. She was frightened. But she was no longer tired.

McGarvey arrived back at the Metropol Hotel around noon. He gave the car keys along with a good tip to Artur the bellman, who promised that the Mercedes would be parked in a secured spot, absolutely safe from interference. After he checked in, he used a pay phone in the lobby to call Martex Taxi Company, and left a message for Arkady Astimovich to telephone him, giving the number of the pay phone.

He bought a copy of the Paris International Herald Tribune from the gift shop, then sat drinking coffee and reading the newspaper a few feet away. Astimovich called twenty minutes later.

“You’re back,” the cabby said excitedly.

“That’s right. What’s your brother-in-law’s name?”

“Yakov Ostrovsky.”

“I want you to set up a meeting for eleven o’clock tonight at the club. Tell him I’m bringing a proposition that he won’t be able to refuse. One that will make all of us some money. Then I want you to meet me in front of the Kazan Station with your cab twenty minutes early.”

“What if there’s a problem, can I call you again at this number?”

“No ” McGarvey said. “If you’re not there I’ll take this deal to somebody else.”

“I’ll be there,” Astimovich promised.

McGarvey had a surprisingly good corned beef on rye sandwich and an American Budweiser beer at the expensive lounge in the lobby. The service was excellent but if any of the hotel staff, other than Artur, remembered him from his previous visit, they gave no sign of it.

Afterward he went up to his room’ took a shower and slept lightly until 7:30 p.m.” when he awoke with a start. For a brief moment he was slightly disoriented, but the sensation passed immediately. He got up and went over to the window, which looked down on the Bolshoi Theater. People were crowding into the theater, as cabs drew up, dropped off their passengers and went away. The big banner on the facade said giselle, which was one of the more famous ballets performed by the company.

He stood smoking by the window, until the crowds thinned out around 8:00 p.m.” when the performance was scheduled to begin, then took another long shower, shaved, and got dressed in dark slacks, a turtleneck, and black leather jacket.

He switched the television to CNN, turned the volume up, and removed his gun and a spare magazine of ammunition from his laptop computer. The pistol went into a speed draw holster at the small of his back. He pocketed the silencer, and magazine.

At half-past eight he presented himself at the hotel’s main dining room where he had alight buffet supper, and a bottle of reasonably good white wine. He took his time over his coffee and brandy afterwards. The restaurant was barely a third full, but preparations were being made for the after theater crowd, when the dining room would fill up.

McGarvey paid his bill, then retrieved his car from one of the bellmen, who turned out to be Artur’s cousin. He tipped the man well, and was heading through heavy traffic up to the Kazan Station by 10:15 p.m.

It took nearly a half hour to get across town, and Astimovich was leaning against his cab as he watched the people emerging from the railway station. McGarvey powered down the passenger side window and pulled up next to the cabby, who turned around in-surprise, the expression on his face changing from mild irritation to incredulity.

“I’ll follow you to the club,” McGarvey shouted out of the window.

Astimovich looked the Mercedes over with round eyes, like a kid in the candy store. “Is this the deal?”

“Do you think he’ll go for it?”

“Him and every other big deal hot shot in town. I hope you’ve got more of them.”

“A lot more,” McGarvey said.

Astimovich jumped in his cab, and took off, McGarvey right behind him.

The Grand Dinamo club occupied an out-of-the-way corner of the Dinamo Soccer stadium on the way to Frunze Central Airfield. McGarvey had picked up the Russian corporal’s uniform at the flea market set up on the opposite side of the sprawling sports complex. But here the front entrance was brightly lit and security was very tight with armed guards and closed circuit television cameras.

Astimovich pulled his cab off to the side, but McGarvey parked the big Mercedes under-the overhang at the main entrance.

One of the guards saluted, then opened the car door. “Good evening, sir. Are you a member?”

Astimovich ran over. “Not yet. But he’s here to see Yakov. We have an appointment.”

A ferret-faced man came out of the club with a clipboard, as McGarvey got out of the Mercedes. “Are you Pierre Allain?” he asked. He was wearing a tiny lapel mike and an earpiece. “Da,” McGarvey said.

“You’re late. Mr. Ostrovsky is a busy man—”

“Fine, I’ll take my deal elsewhere, you little prick,” McGarvey said, and he started to get back in the car.

“Wait a minute,” Astimovich cried.

McGarvey turned back.

“You’d better tell Yakov that we’re here,” Astimovich told the man with the clipboard. “We’re importing cars. A lot of them.”

The ferret glanced indifferently at the big Mercedes. “Moscow is full of car salesmen, who if they want to make a deal, show up on time.”.

“Fifty thousand deutsch marks McGarvey said.

The ferret chucked. “You’ve come to the wrong place. No one here buys used cars.”

“It was new when I picked it up in Leipzig last week. And I can bring a dozen a month.”

A corpulent man with heavy jowls came out of the club. He wore a silk shirt open at the collar, several heavy gold chains around his thick neck, a gold Rolex on his wrist, and a huge diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand. He looked amused, as if someone had just told him an off-color joke. He sauntered over.

“Yakov,” Astimovich said.

“Good evening, Arkasha,” the heavyset man said. He turned his intelligent eyes to McGarvey. “I’m Yakov Ostrovsky. Did I hear the price correctly? Fifty thousand deutsch marks

“That’s right,” McGarvey said.

Ostrovsky glanced inside the car, then slowly walked around it. “What’s the catch, Monsieur Allain? With import duties, even if you could get this machine at wholesale, you’d have to sell it to me for ninety, perhaps a hundred thousand marks.”

“I don’t buy them at wholesale.”

McGarvey get the car’s paperwork and gave it to the Mafia boss, who handed it to the ferret. “Do you have partners?”

“None who you’ll have to deal with.”

“Where would you deliver these cars?”

“Anywhere in Moscow.”

“For fifty thousand marks, my cost?”

“Fifty-one thousand,” McGarvey said. “I think your brother-in-law deserves a finder’s fee. He’s already been of some assistance to me.”

‘ The documents are legitimate,” the ferret said.” “But it says that you paid nearly ninety thousand including fees.”

“That’s about what you’d expect to pay,” McGarvey said with a faint smirk.

Ostrovsky pursed his lips after a moment, then shrugged. “How would you like to be paid?”

“American hundred-dollar bills.”

“Ah,” Ostrovsky said, smiling broadly now. “Not so easy to counterfeit yet.” He put out his hand. “I think we can do business, Monsieur Allain.”

McGarvey shook hands. “I thought you might say that.”

THIRTY-THREE

McGarvey decided that although his Pierce Allain work name had held up to this point he would leave Russia from St. Petersburg. The search would be concentrated for him in Moscow, and security at the three airports would be too tight for him to take the risk. He had an excited Astimovich drive him up to St. Petersburg in the morning, a distance of 350 miles, where he explained that he had further business. Astimovich was so bedazzled by his good fortune that he, didn ask any questions, though during the seven-hour drive he kept up a running commentary about what he was going to do with twelve thousand marks every month once McGarvey’s business fully developed.

“Goddamn, it’s good to be a businessman just like in the West,” he said.

McGarvey felt a touch of sorrow for the man, because even if the deal had been legitimate he would probably have been cheated out of his finder’s fee by his brother in-law. It wasn’t western business, but it was the new Russian business.

He was passed through passport control at St. Petersburg’s PuIkovo-2 International Airport without trouble, and his Finnair flight touched down at Lidosta International’s too-short main runway, the pilot standing on the brakes all the way to the end, around 10:00 P.M.

He’d repacked his gun inside his laptop, so he encountered no problem with Latvian customs either, though passengers arriving from Russia were given a closer scrutiny than those from the West. His passport and visas were in order, and he was admitted without a search of his single canyon bag.

Taking a cab downtown to the main railway station, McGarvey walked over to his apartment three blocks away, making two passes before he went in. With less than a week to May Day he was starting to get a’little jumpy. So far his plan had gone according to schedule. In a few days the Russian border guards would let him cross with the Mercedes without a search, and once in Moscow he would be welcomed back by the Mafia as Pierre Allain, a well connected Belgian businessman. No one would connect him to McGarvey, the American assassin. Yet he was beginning to have a very faint premonition of disaster, and he’d been in the business too long not to heed such feelings. Long ago he trained himself to distinguish legitimate sixth-sense concerns from paranoia.

After he unpacked and took a quick shower he stood by the window looking down at the street while he had a cigarette and a bottle of beer. In another few days or so Russia would be plunged into another major turmoil, possibly even a bigger one than the 1917 revolution. This time Tarankov would die, so that he could not take the country back. However it turned out was anyone’s guess. But McGarvey was already beyond the philosophical debate within himself. Now it was simply a matter of tradecraft. Of doing the job and getting away. His thoughts had become super-focused.

But something nagged at him. Some disconnected thought, some distant rationalization in a back compartment of his brain, that instinctively he thought was important.

He stubbed out his cigarette, and went downstairs to the pay phone in the back hallway. Nobody was around, and the building was quiet.

Using his Allain credit card, he telephoned Rencke in Paris. It was answered on the second ring. “Hiya,” Otto said. It sounded as if he were out of breath and anxious.

“Have you heard from my daughter?”

“Sure did, and everything’s fine,” Rencke responded with the proper code phrase. “You’re going to have to, call it off now for sure.”

“Have the CIA and French picked up my trail?”

“They’re using Jacqueline and somebody that Ryan sent over. I can’t find out who it is, but they’re serious,” Rencke said. “But that’s not the real problem, Mac. It’s Bykov, the Russian special investigator who’s looking for you. I tried to dig up some more of his background, but I kept running into a blank wall, because Yuri Bykov does not exist. There is no such man who ever worked for the KGB. But the security firm he supposedly works for in Krasnoyarsk is owned by Tarankov.”

McGarvey’s jaw tightened.

“I wouldn’t bet my gonads on it, Mac, but I’d wager even money that Yuri Bykov is in reality Leonid Chernov. So you gotta call it off, Mac. You just gotta.”

“Do they have my Allain identity?”

“I don’t think so—”

“Then nothing has changed,” McGarvey broke in. “They don’t know who I’m posing as, they don’t know when I’m coming across, nor do they know how I’m going to do it.”

Tarankov’s raid on Smolensk, after several days of lying low, had completely convinced McGarvey that the Tarantula would be showing up in Red Square on May Day, and would not wait until the general elections. The brief mention of the raid in the Herald-Tribune and on CNN warned that if the reaction of the people of Smolensk was any indicator, the country would not hold together until the elections. Which meant Tarankov would make his move in Red Square on May Day, declaring himself the leader of the new Soviet Union, just as McGarvey had suspected that he would.

“You’ll have to kill Chernov,” Rencke said.

“If our paths cross I will.”

“They will,” Rencke said, after a brief strained silence.

“I need you to do one more thing for me, Otto,” McGarvey said. “What is it?” Rencke asked dejectedly.

“Do you think that the SVR knows that someone is roaming around inside their computer system?”

“No.”

“Can you get a direct line to Yemlin’s apartment, through an SVR secured line?”

“I think so,” Rencke said with renewed interest because he was being handed another challenge. “Call him right now, and warn him off. Tell him who Bykov is, and tell him that I’ll call him one hour from now at the number I called him from Helsinki. He’ll know what you’re talking about.”

“What if he’s not there?”

“He’ll have a rollover number, or he’ll be carrying a secured beeper in case of emergencies. Just get the message to him, okay?”

“Mac, I’m scared big time,” Rencke said. “I’ve got this bad feeling, you know?”

“Just hold together a little longer, Otto.”

“Yeah. We’re family after all. We’ve gotta stick together, or else there’s nothing left.”

Rencke stared at the display on his computer screen, his shaking hands hovering over the keyboard. In the past week he’d discovered a way by which he could defeat his own backscatter encryption program to the extent that he’d gained the ability to trace a call even though both sides of the line were encrypted.

McGarvey was in the Latvian capital city of Riga, or at least within the city code 2.

He glanced at the open package of Twinkies, his last, lying on the table beside him, and tears suddenly came to his eyes. Mac was the only friend he’d ever had. Ever. The only human being who’d ever treated him fairly, who’d ever understood him, and who’d ever accepted him. Even his parents had rejected him when he was fifteen in Indianapolis. His father in a drunken rage had kicked him out of the house. His mother had pressed some money into his hand outside in the darkness, and kissed him. “You’re too smart for your own good,” she’d said. They were the last words she’d ever spoken to him.

The only other people who tolerated him were the gee ks on the Internet. Most of them were idiots, but sometimes they provided a diversion. If they didn’t always agree with his views, at least he was respected on most of the Web sites.

He flicked the Twinkies into the overflowing wastepaper basket, and with a dozen keystrokes was inside the Latvian telephone exchange system. He fed in McGarvey’s telephone number, which pulled up a locator code. Within ten seconds he had an address, with a designator that the unit was a pay phone, and his heart sank. McGarvey had probably called from an anonymous booth on the street somewhere. Nevertheless, he entered the maintenance database within the Riga tele phone exchange which displayed a street-by-street city map. McGarvey’s number came up as a street address. A building on Gogala Street a few blocks from the train station, which the telephone company listed as a multiunit private dwelling. An apartment building. Mac had rented an apartment in Riga.

Rencke entered the information on a tamperproof section of a hard disk, then backed out of the program, and quickly got into the SVR’s system on the Ring Road in Yasenevo on the outskirts of Moscow.

Scrolling through the personnel files, he came up with Viktor Yemlin’s locator file and instituted a call to the secure line to his apartment. The telephone was answered on the first ring.

“Da.”

“Is this Viktor Pavlovich?” Rencke asked in Russian.

“Yes. Who is calling, please?” Yemlin replied. He sounded harried.

“An old friend wishes to speak with you fifty-five minutes from now at the same number he used when he telephoned from Helsinki.”

“Is this a joke? How’d you get this number? Who is this?”

“Julius loves you,” Rencke blurted. “Please call at once.” It was the ad that Yemlin had placed in Le Figaro with the SVR’s data number.

“Yeb vas,” Yemlin said, shocked. “Who is this?”

“A friend who wants to warn you that the head of the special police commission, Yuri Bykov, is in reality Leonid Chernov, Tarankov’s chief of staff. Can you take this call in fifty-four minutes?”

The line was dead silent for several seconds. “Nyet,” Yemlin said in a strangled voice. “That phone has been bugged. They’re listening with tracing equipment. He must not call that number. Do you understand me? He must not call.”

The connection was broken.

Rencke stared at the screen briefly, wondering if he should reinstitute the call.

He brought back the pay phone number in McGarvey’s Riga apartment, and had his computer speed dial it. After one ring a recorded announcement in Russian said the number was a simplex instrument, and the connection was broken. The phone could be used only for outgoing calls. It could not receive incoming calls.

Rencke got into the Riga telephone exchange back directory in an effort to find out if there were other telephones in the building. But there were none. Even if there had been a telephone he could have reached, he couldn’t imagine what he would have said to whoever answered.

He backed out of that program, and pulled up the worldwide travel agent reservation system, and searched for flights between Paris and Riga with empty seats on any airline leaving as soon as possible.

The information came up on his screen, but he could only stare at it in frustration. What was he supposed to do? Jump on an airplane, fly to Riga and take a cab out to Mac’s apartment? Then what?

He looked up at the clock. Mac would be making his call in fifty minutes, and there was nothing Rencke could do about it.

He fished the Twinkies out of the wastepaper basket and dejectedly started to eat as he moved over to a computer hooked into the Internet.

Mac wanted to be back stopped so here he would have to remain.

“Nothing,” Jacqueline said, hanging up the phone.

Elizabeth sat with a glass of white wine in front of the laptop computer, staring at the messages scrolling up the screen. It was late and she was very tired.

They’d been trying without luck for the past thirty six hours to find out about the anonymous re mailer address that Twinkie had used on the net.

“Samat doesn’t exist,” Jacqueline continued. “There is no such remailing service anywhere, which means it’s a ghost service.”

Elizabeth looked up.

“If it’s Otto Rencke, then he created the address to hide his real location. But the fact is, that anonymous re mailer address exists only in cyberspace. And only he knows how to access it from behind.” Jacqueline threw up her hands. “The man’s a genius. We’ll never get close to him unless he wants us there.”

“Screw the bastard,” Elizabeth said. She turned back to the computer, and entered Twinkie’s anonymous re mailer address.

Several unrelated messages scrolled up her screen, until Twinkie’s anonymous re mailer address appeared.

“Don’t lose him,” Jacqueline cautioned.

“He has this number now, and if it’s Rencke, and if he traces it he’ll know that this computer is located in my father’s apartment. ““He think it’s a trap.”

The telephone rang, as the computer screen came alive with messages dating from last week scrolling at ten times normal speed.

“It might be him,” Jacqueline said, looking at the telephone. “You answer it.”

The telephone rang a second time before Elizabeth picked it up.

“Hello?”

The line was silent for a few moments, then there was a subtle shift in the tonal quality of the hollowness.

“Lizmac?” a man asked. His voice sounded high pitched, and strained.

“Yes. Is this Twinkie?”

“Tell me something.”

“This is an open line—”

“It’s being monitored, but I’ve taken care of it.”

Elizabeth held the phone so that Jacqueline could hear as well.

“My name is Elizabeth McGarvey. Are you Otto?”

“Do you still have the diamond necklace your father gave you in Greece?” It was something only her father knew about.

“Actually he gave it to me when I was in school in Switzerland. But I lost it in Greece, when he found it he gave it back to me.” It had happened during the operation her father had been involved with a few years ago.

“What are you doing here, Liz?” Rencke asked.

“Trying to find my father. I know that you and he are working together, and I know that Viktor Yemlin has hired him to kill Tarankov. But the Russians know about it, and they’ve asked the CIA and the SDECE to help out. Ryan’s agreed. So my father’s walking into a trap. Where is he, Otto?” It all came out in a rush.

“How do you know all this—”

“I’m working for the CIA now!” Elizabeth cut in. “Where is my father? I have to talk to him.”

The line was silent.

“Otto, goddammit, don’t hang up on me! Ryan’s an asshole, and I don’t have any intention of turning my father over to him or to the French. But I have to try to warn him.” Elizabeth was sick with fear. If she lost Rencke now she’d never get him back. “Jacqueline Belleau has agreed to help me.”

The connection had not been broken, but the line remained silent.

“We’ve got less than seven weeks to stop him. You have to help us, Otto. You’re our only hope.”

“You don’t have seven weeks,” Otto said, his voice very strained, even higher pitched than before. “I think Mac’s taking him out on May First. Four days from now.”

A vise closed on Elizabeth’s heart, but she immediately saw the logic in it. Tarankov wasn’t going to wait for the general elections in June. He’d be in Red Square on May Day and her father would be there waiting for him.

“There’s something else you don’t know. The Russian police commission supposedly headed by Yuri Bykov. Well, that’s not his real name. He’s really Leonid Chernov, who is Tarankov’s chief of staff.”

“Dear God,” Elizabeth said. “Is my father already in Moscow?”

“No, he’s in Riga. But in a few minutes he’s going to make the biggest mistake in his life when he tries to call Yemlin. Yemlin’s line is bugged. When Mac calls, the Russians will know where he’s calling from and Chernov will come after him.”

“The Latvians will never allow it.”

“Chernov might convince them somehow.”

“But that’ll take time,” Elizabeth cried. “You can warn him first.”

“There’s no way to get through by phone and I’ve got to stay here in case he tries to call me.”

“Jacqueline and I will fly up there.”

“The French are watching you.”

“Not now. They think we’re at a dead end. They’ve written us off, Otto. Give me his address, we’ll get there in time, I promise you.”

“Put Mademoiselle Belleau on the line.”

“I’m here,” Jacqueline said.

“If I give you Mac’s address will you turn it over to your people?”

“Only if I think that there is no other way in which to save Kirk’s life.”

“If you betray him, I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t worry, Monsieur Rencke, I love him just as much as you do.”

“Liz, are you there?” Rencke said, hesitating.

“Yes. Where is he?”

“He has an apartment in Riga,” Rencke said. He gave her the address. “I don’t know which unit he’s in, but he called me from a pay phone in the building.”

Elizabeth’s heart sank. Her father could just as well have called from a building across the city from wherever he was holed up. But she didn’t say anything. For the moment it was their only lead.

“Are you sure that you guys aren’t being followed?” Otto asked.

“They want to send us to Moscow,” Jacqueline said. “Until we agree to go — and they don’t think we will-they’re leaving us to our own devices.”

“Standby,” Rencke said.

Elizabeth had been holding everything in. She sat back and looked into Jacqueline’s eyes. “You weren’t lying to Otto … or to me, were you?”

“Won, ma cherie. In this you must believe me.”

“I do,” Elizabeth said. She could see how he was going to do it. Tarankov would be standing on the reviewing balcony on Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square, and her father would be somewhere within a hundred yards or so with a sniper rifle. At the right moment Tarankov would fall, and her father would melt away into the crowds in a very clever disguise. She’d read his file. She knew what he was capable of.

Rencke came back. “Can you be at Orly by five this morning?”

“Orly by five?” Elizabeth said. Jacqueline nodded. “Yes.” “You’re both booked on RI AIR flight 57 to Riga, first class. It wasn’t cheap, but I figured that Ryan could afford it, so I put the tickets on his Mastercard.”

Elizabeth laughed despite herself. “He’ll hang you.”

“It’d be the biggest blunder of his life,” Rencke replied viciously. “By the time I got done with his computer track, he’d never again qualify for a driver’s license, he wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a stick of gum, and the IRS would probably want to put him away for life.” He calmed down. “You guys be careful out there.” He gave Elizabeth his telephone number. “Let me know what’s going on, will ya?”

“We will,” Elizabeth said.

“I’ll keep a two-way dialogue going between us on the net. If it’s being watched they’ll think you guys are still in the apartment.”

Elizabeth hung up and looked at Jacqueline.

“We’ll go out the back way,” the older woman said. “Just in case.”

Chernov finally got the break he’d been waiting for a few minutes before three when Major Gresko called from FSK headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square. He was sitting in the darkness sipping a glass of white wine wondering what else he could have done when the phone rang. Every cop in Russia was looking for McGarvey, as were the forces of the CIA and SDECE. But it was as if McGarvey had simply dropped off the face of the earth. He’d gone to ground, and there was nothing they could do until he surfaced again, or made a mistake.

The FSK team assigned to watch had learned from their source inside the SVR that he’d received an encrypted call from somewhere outside Russia an hour earlier. Fifty-five minutes after that call, a pay phone in a kiosk near the Metro station a couple of blocks from Yemlin’s apartment rang. It was one of the telephones that the FSK monitored at Colonel Bykov’s request. Yemlin was nowhere in the vicinity, so after two rings an FSK operator answered.

“Da?”

“Viktor?” a man said.

So as not to make the caller suspicious the FSK operator told a half-truth. “Nyet. This is Nikolai, and there’s no one else around. The metro station across the street is empty.”

“Yeb was,” the man said, and he hung up. “If it was McGarvey he called from a simplex instrument in Riga,” Gresko said. “But I can’t imagine anyone else calling a phone booth so near to Yemlin’s apartment, and so soon after the call to his office.”

“I agree,” Chernov said.

“It’s a safe bet those bastards won’t cooperate with us. They’ll give us the runaround if we leVel with them. No love lost up there, in fact if they knew the whole truth they’d probably do everything they could to help McGarvey.”

Chernov thought for a moment.

“But we’re not chasing an assassin. The man we’re after is a mass murderer, whose specialty is little boys. Who knows, maybe it’s become too hot for him here in Russia, and he may take his grim pleasures somewhere else. Like Latvia.”

“That might work,” Gresko said.

“Do you have an address on the trace?”

“It’s an apartment building near the main railway station,” Gresko said. “Could be that he’s not living there. Maybe he just used the phone.”

“If he called from there once, maybe he’ll call from there again,” Chernov said. “Get the file over to the Militia, and have Petrovsky make contact with the Riga police. Have him send a copy of McGarvey’s photograph under the name Kisnelkov. In the meantime I’ll arrange for an airplane to take us up there. I want to catch him just before dawn when people, even men like him, tend to be the slowest and most fuddle-headed.”

THIRTY-FOUR

McGarvey awoke shortly after 5 a.m. in a cold sweat, his heart racing, his muscles bunched up. It was the same dream he often had in which he saw the light fading from the eyes of his victims. Only this time he’d been unable to focus on the face, except that whoever it was they were laughing at him. Mocking his life’s work, everything he’d fought for, everything he’d stood for.

He got up and went to the window. A delivery van passed below, and at the corner a truck rumbled through the intersection. The city was coming alive with the morning. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

A persistent voice at the back of head gave warning like the blare of a distant fire alarm, but he wasn’t at all sure it was for him. Sometimes in his dreams a part of his subconscious tried to warn his victims to get out, to get away before he came to kill them. A psychologist friend at Langley said the dreams were — nothing more than his conscience.

“Proves you’re just as sane as the rest of us,” the company shrink said. “Only a true sociopath can kill without remorse.”

He’d debated calling Rencke last night after he’d failed to reach Yemlin. But Rencke would be unable to tell him anything he didn’t already know. Yemlin’s position had been discovered, and by now he was either dead or under arrest.

There was an outside chance that Chernov knew about the calls to the phone booth near Yemlin’s apartment, in which case McGarvey’s call had not been answered by a chance passerby, but had been picked up by an FSK technical unit. It was even possible that they’d traced the call to this apartment building.

But the Latvians actively hated Russians. All Russians. So not only wouldn’t they cooperate with a commission trying to stop the man who was planning to assassinate Tarankov, they’d probably throw up road blocks.

It was on this thought that McGarvey had finally gone to sleep last night. And it was this thought now that nagged at him. Someone was coming, with or without the cooperation of the Latvian authorities. If he got involved in some kind of a confrontation with Chernov, whatever the outcome, the Latvians would try to arrest them all, and someone would get hurt.

He turned away from the window and got dressed in a dark turtleneck sweater and slacks. The bolstered gun went in the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back, and the silencer and spare magazine went in the pockets of his leather jacket. He left everything else, including his clothes, his shaving gear and other toiletries, and the overnight bag. If anyone came up here they might believe that he’d just stepped out and was planning on returning. It might give him a few extra hours.

Checking the street again to make sure no one had shown up, he took his laptop computer down to the Volkswagen, and drove over to the secured garage near the train station, where he switched cars for the Mercedes. Before the VW was reported missing by the rental agency, the operation would be long finished, and McGarvey would drop the keys and a note where the car could be found in a mailbox somewhere.

By 6:30 a.m.” he was having breakfast on the outskirts of the city, with several hours to kill. He did not want to’ cross the border at Zilupe until late this afternoon, when the customs officers he’d dealt with before would be at the end of their shift, and therefore impatient to take his bribe and get home.

It was past 8:00 a.m. when the Tupolev jet transport carrying Chernov, Petrovsky, Gresko and a couple of Militia detectives was finally cleared to taxi from the holding ramp over to a customs and immigration hangar. Latvian officials had held them for over an hour and Chernov was beside himself with rage.

Riga Police Lieutenant Andrejs Ulmanis, and his dour faced sergeant Jurin ZarinS were waiting for them. Chernov forced himself to remain calm as they all shook hands, but the tension and animosity were very thick.

“We surrounded the building forty-five minutes ago, as you requested, but so far there’s been no sign of the man you are looking for,” Lieutenant Ulmanis said, leading them over to a police van for the ride into the city. He was a heavyset man with thinning sand-colored hair and a double chin.

“Considering the political conditions between our countries, we thank you for your help,” Chernov said, carefully.

Ulmanis eyed him distastefully. “Murder is a terrible crime, and we’re all police officers, ja?”

“This one is very bad. He specializes in little boys.”

The Latvian policeman’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t clear on his nationality. His name is Kisnelkov. Is he Russian or Ukrainian?”

“He’s a Russian,” Chernov said. “But he may be traveling on an American or a French passport under another name. The son of a bitch is good, he always manages to keep one step ahead of us.”

“What’s he doing in Latvia?”

“Trying to get away. Last week he raped and killed three young boys in Moscow. When he was finished he mutilated their bodies in ways that even you as a police officer would not believe.”

“How did you find out he was here?”

“He tried to make a telephone call to a friend last night and we traced it.”

“If he’s here, we’ll find him,” Ulmanis said.

“Don’t make a mistake about this one,” Chernov cautioned. “Six months ago we thought we had him cornered. When it was all over, he’d killed two policemen, wounded three others and got away clean.”

Ulmanis nodded.

“If you or your people come face-to-face with him, don’t hesitate to shoot him like a dog,” Chernov said.

“A Russian dog,” Sergeant Zarins” muttered, and Ulmanis shot him a dirty look but did not reprimand him.

Twenty minutes later they pulled up at the end of the block from the apartment building. The intersections at both ends of the street had been barricaded. Police cars, blue lights flashing, completely surrounded the block. Officers in riot gear were stationed on the roof tops and in the doorways of every building within sight. Some of the cops were dispersing the crowds of curious onlookers, while other cops milled around apparently waiting for something to happen.

Chernov and the others got out of the van. He glanced at Petrovsky. “He’s gone.”

Lieutenant Ulmanis came over. “Not unless he was tipped off.”

“Nothing against your capable police procedures, Lieutenant, but when the first of your people showed up, he would have spotted them and slipped away before the area could be secured. He’s gone.”

“I don’t think so.”

Chernov took out his pistol, checked the load, then reholstered the gun. “Well, I’m going to walk over there and search the building. Would you care to come with me?”

“I’ll go with you, but we’ll take a few of my people with us just in case you’re wrong.”

Chernov shrugged and marched down the street to the apartment building and went inside The Latvian cops were hoping that they might get to see a Russian blown away this morning. Ambulances were standing by.

The landlady, a taciturn old woman, came out of her ground floor apartment, and Ulmanis asked her a number of questions about her tenants, and about her rent control permits, a subject on which she was vague.

Chernov walked over to the foot of the stairs and cocked an ear. The building was quiet.

“That’s him,” the old woman said.

Chernov turned back. Ulmanis had shown McGarvey’s photograph that had been faxed down here this morning.

“What is his name?” Chernov asked.

“Pierre something,” the old woman said resentfully. “He paid for a month in cash a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t care what his name was.”

Ulmanis came over. “I thought you said he killed some kids in Moscow last week?” he asked in a low voice.

“He must have returned here to hide out,” Chernov said.

He took out his gun and went up to the top floor, taking the stairs two at a time. Ulmanis and the other Latvian cops came up behind him, their weapons drawn.

At the top Chernov flattened himself against the wall next to the apartment door and listened for a full two minutes, but there were no sounds from within.

On signal, one of Ulmanis’s people kicked the door in, and they all rushed into the empty apartment.

“He’s gone,” Ulranis said, unnecessarily. There was no place to hide in the tiny apartment.

The Latvian cops searched the apartment anyway.

“Maybe not for long, Lieutenant,” one of the cops called from the bathroom. He appeared in the doorway. “His toothbrush and razor are still here.”

One of the other cops opened the wardrobe. “His clothes are here, and a suitcase.”

“There’s food in the cupboards and the refrigerator,” the cop in the tiny kitchen reported.

“Maybe he’s coming back,” Ulmanis said.

“Not with all those policemen outside,” Chernov said. He took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair. “Place a couple of your men downstairs in the landlady’s apartment, and a couple of sharpshooters in an apartment across the street. But tell them to keep out of sight. Get rid of everybody else. In the meantime I’ll wait here for awhile.”

“What about your people?” Ulmanis asked.

“Send them back to the airport to wait for me.”

Ulmanis relayed the orders. “I’ll wait here with you.”

“As you wish,” Chernov said. “But if he shows up he’s mine.”

“Believe me, Colonel Bykov, the sooner you and he are off Latvian soil the happier we’ll be.”

RI AIR flight 57 from Paris touched down at Riga’s Li dosta International Airport at 9:00 a.m. Elizabeth and Jacqueline paid for one-time visas from passport control and had their single carryon bags checked through customs. They changed a couple of hundred francs into la tis, purchased a visitors’ guide and Riga street map in English from a newsstand and forty-five minutes later were in a cab heading downtown to the central railway station, which was a few blocks from the address Rencke had given them.

They traveled on their legitimate passports because at this point they thought there was no longer any need to mask their movements. Galan and Lynch were no longer interested in them. Traffic at that hour of the morning in Paris had been thin so if someone-had tried to follow them out to Orly Airport Jacqueline was sure she would have spotted them. But there’d been no one behind them.

“If we run into a problem in Riga we’ll be on our own,” Jacqueline had cautioned. “No one except Otto knows where we are, and he won’t tell anyone. At least not for twenty-four hours. Maybe longer.”

“A lot can happen in that time,” Elizabeth said, suddenly seeing the precariousness of their situation.

“We’ll split up, so that if something goes wrong at least one of us will have a chance of getting out,” Jacqueline said. “I’ll leave you at the train station, and I’ll walk the rest of the way over to the apartment.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “He’s my father, so if something should happen I’ll at least have an excuse for being there that might hold up.”

“It didn’t work in Paris.”

“It might here,” Elizabeth insisted.

Jacqueline smiled wryly. “You’re stubborn like your father.”

“Used to drive my mother nuts.”

Jacqueline’s smile was set. “Is that why there was the divorce?”

“My mother was afraid of losing him so she pushed him away before the hurt got too’ terrible for her to bear.”

Jacqueline looked out the window. “The trouble with what you say is that I understand your mother.” She turned back. “Do you, ma cherie?”

Elizabeth shook her head after a moment. “No,” she said. She’d never understood that convoluted logic. If you loved someone you did everything in your power to keep them near you.

Jacqueline squeezed her hand. “I think that you have been mad at your mother for a very long time. But there’s no reason for it, you know. They both still love you.”

It was Elizabeth’s turn to look away.

“The divorce wasn’t your fault, Elizabeth,” Jacqueline said gently. “Did you think it was?”

“I probably did as a kid.” Elizabeth looked at Jacqueline. “But not so much anymore.” She shrugged. “It’s just life. But I don’t want to lose him again.”

“Neither do I.”

Traffic around the train station was busy. The cabby dropped them off in front, immediately picked up another fare and was gone.

They had studied the Riga map on the way in from the airport. The address Rencke had given them was less than three blocks away. They agreed that Elizabeth would walk over to the apartment building, and if everything looked clear try to find out which apartment her father had rented. If anything seemed out of place, even slightly odd, she was to immediately come back to the railroad station where Jacqueline would be waiting in the coffee shop.

“Don’t fool around,” Jacqueline said unnecessarily because she was nervous. “If the Russians got here before us they won’t react kindly to you barging in.”

“If they ran into my father, there’ll be some dead people over there, and a lot of cops,” Elizabeth said. “It’ll be pretty obvious.”

“In which case I’ll blow the whistle,” Jacqueline said seriously. In the past couple of weeks she’d picked up a lot of American slang from Elizabeth.

“You and I both,” Elizabeth said.

She gave Jacqueline her overnight bag, then crossed the street over the tracks. The morning wanted to warm up, but a chilly breeze blew across the river, bringing with it a combination of industrial and seaport smells that were subtly different from any other city she’d ever visited.

It took her ten minutes to walk up Gogala Street to within a half a block from the apartment building her father had called from. She stopped and looked in the window of a women’s sportswear shop, as she tried to calm down.

Everything seemed normal. Traffic was heavy, the shops were open and busy, and most of the tables at a sidewalk cafe at the corner were occupied. There were no police anywhere, and no one seemed to be watching the apartment building.

After a minute she crossed the street, walked the rest of the way to the apartment building and went inside. A narrow hallway ran to the rear of the building. From where she stood by the mailboxes she could see the pay phone in the back, and it gave her a little thrill that her father had used it less than twenty-four hours ago.

She didn’t understand Latvian, but the word manager, in Russian, was written on a card attached to the mailbox for the ground floor apartment. She hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door.

An old woman opened it, looked Elizabeth up and down, and motioned her away. “I have no apartments here, so go away. I don’t want any trouble.”

The old woman was frightened.

“I don’t want an apartment,” Elizabeth said in Russian. “But I’m looking for someone who may have rented an apartment from you recently.”

The door suddenly opened all the way, the old woman was pulled aside, and a couple of large, stern-faced men were there. Before Elizabeth could react, one of them grabbed her by the arm.

“Who is it that you’re looking for?” he asked.

“I think I’ve made a mistake,” Elizabeth said, her heart in her throat.

“Let me see your passport.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“The police. Your passport, please,” The cop was stern, but not unpleasant.

Elizabeth hesitated a second longer, than awkwardly dug her passport out of her purse.

The cop’s eyebrows rose when he saw that it was an American passport.

“Stay here, I’ll take her upstairs,” he told the other cop.

Elizabeth tried to pull away, but he was too strong for her. “I’m an American. I want to speak to someone at my embassy.”

“You speak pretty good Russian for an American,” the cop said.

“Not as good as you Latvians do,” Elizabeth shot back, and she instantly regretted the remark.

His grip tightened on her arm, and he dragged her up three flights of stairs to the top floor where two men waited in a small apartment. One of them was heavyset, the other tall, and muscularly built, with short-cropped gray hair. He looked dangerous. His eyes seemed dead.

The cop handed Elizabeth’s passport to the heavy man, who examined it.

“She says she’s looking for someone who may have rented an apartment here not so long ago, Lieutenant,” the cop said. “She claims to be an’ American but I never heard an American speak such good Russian.”

Ulmanis handed the passport to Chernov. “It doesn’t look fake. Do you know who she is?”

Chernov studied Elizabeth’s passport, a grim look of satisfaction crossing his lips. “Her name is Raya Kisnelkov. I don’t know where she got this passport, but it probably came from the same source her father uses. I just didn’t think she was involved with his sick games.”

Ulmanis stared at her, and shook his head. “She doesn’t look the type,” he said. “Do you know what your father has done? Are you helping him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said in English. “I want to call my embassy.”

“Her English is pretty good, too,” Ulmanis said. “A lot better than mine.”

Chernov stared at Elizabeth. “We’ll leave now,” he said. “I don’t think Kisnelkov will be coming back.”

Ulmanis hesitated. “Perhaps we should get someone from the American embassy up here to take a look.”

“As you wish,” Chernov said, unperturbed. “I would very much like to listen to your explanation how this woman got into Latvia on a fake passport.” He forced a grim smile. “I trust that in the meantime you’ll arrange accommodations for me and my people.”

Ulmanis nodded. “I’ll have the van brought around front,” he said.

“Wait a minute, goddammit,” Elizabeth shouted. “I’m an American!” She switched to Russian. “Yeb was, you stupid bastard, don’t you recognize a legitimate passport when you see one?”

Ulmanis just shook his head, and he and the cop left.

“Thank you,” Chernov told Elizabeth, politely, and her blood ran cold.

From where she sat having a coffee at the sidewalk cafe on the corner, Jacqueline watched as a gray Chevrolet van pulled up in front of the apartment building. She’d been unable to simply wait at the train station, so she’d followed Elizabeth up here.

Two minutes later, a tall man, came out of the building with Elizabeth, and hustled her into the van.

Jacqueline jumped up, but before she could reach the street, the van took off and disappeared down the block. She stopped, absolutely stunned. Her worst nightmare seemed to be coming true.

THIRTY-FIVE

Jacqueline was beside herself with fear and guilt because despite her professionalism she had managed to lead Elizabeth into a trap. Although she had serious doubts, she thought that there was a possibility Liz had been arrested by the Riga Police, and not by the Russians who had traced McGarvey’s call here. All the way back to the railroad station she tried to convince herself of that likelihood without success. She and Elizabeth had entered Latvia legally. There was no reason for the local authorities to detain her.

She found a pay phone in the train station’s main arrivals hall and called Rencke’s blind number in Courbevoie. “They’ve taken her,” she blurted when Rencke answered.

“Calm down, Who took her?”

“I don’t know for sure. It could have been the Riga police, but I can’t be certain. I hope so.”

“Just a minute,” Rencke said. “Okay, you’re calling from the main railway station. Is anybody watching you? Anybody paying unusual attention?”

The station was busy. Jacqueline scanned the crowds, but she was picking up nothing unusual. “Not that I can see.”

“Have you called your boss yet?”

“No.”

“Okay, now calm down and tell me everything that happened,” Otto said.

Jacqueline quickly went through the story from the moment they’d got off the plane. “Can you get into the police computer?”

“If she was arrested it wouldn’t be on their machines yet, unless they asked Interpol for help. Did you get the license number of the van?”

“It was too far away to read,” Jacqueline said.

“Okay, hang on for a minute, I’ll see if anything is showing up.”

“Mon dieu, please hurry,” Jacqueline said.

“I just had another thought. Did you get a decent look at the man with Liz? Could you describe him?”

“Tall, husky. It’s impossible to say more than that.”

“Standby,” Rencke said.

Announcements for arriving and departing trains were made first in a language that Jacqueline took to be Latvian, and then in Russian, and finally in Polish. A train had rumbled into the station while she was dialing Rencke’s number, and now people began coming into the main hall from trackside. A lot of them were well dressed, and talked on cellular phones as they hurried outside to catch a taxi.

Rencke came back a couple of minutes later. “Nothing has showed up on the Riga police wire yet. But an unscheduled flight originating in Moscow landed at 6:48 this morning. It’s still on the ground, but I’m betting that the man you saw with Liz was Chernov. He traced Mac’s call, and somehow convinced the Latvian police to help him. I’ll watch to see when it takes off back to Moscow, but it’ll probably be within the next half hour. I think Liz walked into a hornet’s nest, and Chernov will take her back to Moscow.”

“For bait,” Jacqueline said, utterly devastated. It was her fault. She should have known better.

“I’d like to disagree with you, but I can’t,” Rencke said, dejectedly.

“I’ve got to tell my boss what happened,” she said. “I’ll keep your name out of it. I’ll say that Liz had a hunch that her father would be here, so we came to look for him, and she was taken.”

“They won’t believe it.”

“I’ll make them believe it,” Jacqueline said urgently. “I don’t know what else to do, but I just can’t walk away from them.”

“Mac must have figured it out,” Rencke said distantly.

“What did you say?”

“They got Liz, but he wasn’t there. It means he figured it out and he’s probably on his way to Moscow now. Three days early, but he was forced into it. Which means we’ve still got two chances. Two options. With all that extra time it’s possible he’ll call me for an update. When he does I’ll get him out of there.”

“If you tell him that Chernov has his daughter he won’t leave.”

“If we can find out where she’s been taken, I can convince somebody in Washington to get involved.”

“How can we do that?”

“Simple, you’re going to convince Galan to send you to Moscow in an official capacity. You’re an SDECE field officer who has the inside scoop on Mac, and your expertise is going to be offered to the special commission which is headed by Yuri Bykov, a.k.a.” Leonid Chernov.”

“Merde,” Jacqueline said softly.

“Double dip merde,” Rencke agreed. “But right now it’s our only shot.”

Even over the roar of the jet engines spooling up Elizabeth imagined that she could hear the thump of her heart in her chest. Any doubts she might have had about who’d taken her had been dispelled the moment they’d arrived at the airport and she got a look at the Tupolev jet waiting on the apron. It carried Russian military markings, with the Russian flag painted on the tail.

Of the eight or ten others aboard, she figured four were crew, while the rest looked like cops or possibly military. All of them were surprised by her presence, but they offered no objections. The one who’d taken her was the boss, and it struck her from the moment she came aboard that he was Leonid Chernov, Tarankov’s chief of staff, and the one who was posing as Yuri Bykov, chief of the police commission hunting for her father.

The aircraft had been fitted out executive-style with wide leather seats, facing each other in groups of four, a pair of couches with a low table between them in the rear of the main cabin, and a complete galley and bar. She caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a conference room equipped with what looked like radio gear through an open door in the back of the plane. Forward she could see into the cockpit where the pilot and copilot were dressed in military uniforms.

Chernov put her in one of the seats in the forward part of the cabin, and went back to the others gathered in the conference room, and closed the door.

Elizabeth considered making a dash for the door, when one of the crewmen closed and latched it. He said something to the pilots, then came back to her.

“We’ll be taking off now, so put on your seatbelt,” he said pleasantly. He was young, probably not much older than Elizabeth.

“I’m an American. You have no right to take me anywhere,” she said, and it sounded foolish eve to her.

“If you refuse to cooperate, I’ve been instructed to drug you,” the crewman warned. “When it wears off tomorrow you’ll have a hell of a headache and cottonmouth. Sometimes it even scrambles the brain for a few days. I’m told that the effect is extremely unpleasant.”

The airplane started to move, gathering speed as it trundled down the taxiway.

“I thought things had changed for the better in Russia. I guess I was wrong,” Elizabeth said. She buckled her seat belt.

The crewman sat down across from her and fastened his seat belt. “As soon as we’re airborne and out of the pattern I’ll get you something to drink. It’s not a very long flight to Moscow, less than two hours, but if you’re hungry I can get you something to eat.”

Elizabeth looked out the window, willing herself to calm down. She wasn’t going to give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing the intense fear she felt. She’d walked into a trap in Paris, and she’d done the same damned thing here in Riga. The first had turned out okay, but this time she was in big trouble. When she didn’t show up at the train station Jacqueline might guess what had happened, but there would be no proof. Riga had swallowed her, and there wasn’t much that anybody could do to get her back.

Except, she thought, God help the bastards if and when her father found out she’d been kidnapped. The last people who’d tried that had paid with their lives.

But they’d been nothing more than a group of ex-East German Stasi thugs, not an entire government. She laid her forehead against the cool window glass as the airplane reached the end of the taxiway and turned onto the runway. Her father was only a man, and sooner or later all of his skills would be no match for an overwhelming force. When it came she would have been the one to lead him to his destruction.

The airplane took off, and as it circled the city and headed east, she searched for and found the railroad station. She touched the window with her fingers. Jacque line would be getting worried now.

Five minutes later the countryside below was a puzzle of farmsteads, lakes and rivers, and stands of forests that stretched to the horizon for as far as she could see.

“Now, can I get you something to drink,” the crewman asked. “A glass of tea, or perhaps some champagne?”

Elizabeth looked up at him.

“Champagne is permitted,” he said.

She turned away without a word, and after a moment the crewman left. She heard voices at the rear of the airplane, but she didn’t look up again until someone sat down across from her.

“I don’t want champagne,” she said.

“Neither do I,” Chernov replied reasonably and Elizabeth’s stomach fluttered. “You’re too young to be his wife, so you’re probably his daughter. The question is, what were you doing in Riga? How did you find out where your father was staying?”

His eyes were flat, lifeless. Studying his face, Elizabeth decided that he was younger than his gray hair made him look. It struck her that if he was posing as Yuri Bykov on the police commission, he would have to be in disguise. Certainly enough people had seen him at Tarankov’s side and would have recognized him if he hadn’t changed his appearance.

“Your father is a brilliant man. But he is dangerous. Do you know what he means to do? And do you understand why we cannot allow that to happen? Your own government does.”

Chernov had something to hide, which meant he was vulnerable. But she would have to be careful what she said or did. If he suspected that she knew his true identity, she had no doubt that he would kill her.

“Your father is an assassin. But I think you know this.”

“He telephoned me in Paris last night,” Elizabeth said. “At my apartment. He wanted me to return to our house in Milford. He said he was flying over tomorrow.”

“Did he tell you where he was calling from?”

“I traced his call.”

“How?”

“With my computer. It’s easy. Once I found out that he was in Riga, I got into the local phone system, and brought up the line, it’s a pay phone in the building.”

“That’s very inventive,” Chernov said. “Why did you come to Riga? What did you hope to accomplish?”

Elizabeth looked away for a moment, as if she were gathering her thoughts, as if she were making a decision, which in effect she was. Damage control, her father called what she was trying to do. If damage has been done, try to control the effects by telling half-truths to direct the inquiries elsewhere.

She looked into Chernov’s eyes. “I wanted to make sure that my father was telling me the truth and was calling off the mission. Tarankov isn’t worth a bullet. Nobody in Russia is. For all we give a damn, you people deserve whatever happens to you. For a thousand years you’ve been killing each other by the millions. Good riddance.”

Chernov was impressed, she could see it on his face. “For all we give a damn? Who is the we?”

“If you had done your homework, Colonel Bykov, you would know that I work for the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. We’ve agreed to help you stop my father not because we think killing Tarankov is such a bad idea, but because my father’s life is worth too much to risk killing such scum.”

A flicker of surprise showed in his eyes, but was gone as fast as it appeared. “Then the CIA knows that you came to Riga?”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said with a straight face.

Chernov thought about it a moment, then got up. “Do you think your father went back to this Milford?” “It’s in Delaware,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, I do.” He nodded after a moment. “We’ll see,” he said, and then he went back into the conference room and closed the door, leaving Elizabeth to wonder if she’d done the right thing, or if she’d made another terrible mistake.

It was 12:10 p.m. when Jacqueline made it to the French Embassy. The young receptionist at the front desk registered no surprise when Jacqueline flashed her passport, and asked to speak with Marc Edis, assistant to the ambassador for economic affairs. In reality he was chief of SDECE operations for all the Baltics. She’d looked up his name before she and Elizabeth had left Paris. The woman put through the call, and a minute later a tall, slope-shouldered man with drooping mustaches came down the stairs, his expression frankly admiring when he spotted her.

“I’m Marc Edis,” he said, extending his hand. “How may I be of service, Mademoiselle?”

Jacqueline shook hands. “I need to speak to you in private.”

“May I enquire as to the nature of your business with me?”

The receptionist was paying them no attention, nevertheless Jacqueline lowered her voice. “My name is Jacqueline Belleau. I work for Colonel Guy de Galan in Paris.” The vapid smile left his face. “We’ll go lip to my office,” he said, all business now. “Hold any calls for me, I’ll be in conference,” he told the receptionist.

Five minutes later Jacqueline was speaking by secured telephone to an angry Galan.

“Alexandre returned from the apartment an hour ago to report that you and Elizabeth were gone. Possibly shopping, he told me, although there was evidence that some clothing and personal articles were missing. I was getting ready to tear the city apart looking for you. But instead of that, you telephone from Latvia!”

“Elizabeth had a hunch that her father might be here. But it was just a hunch, man colonel. Since we’d gotten nowhere with our other hunches I thought we would simply fly here, check it out, and immediately return to Paris if we did not find him.”

“That was stupid and dangerous, Jacqueline. You — should have at least warned Alexandre, in case something went wrong. As it stands we would not have had so much as a starting point to look for you.”

Edis had tactfully retreated to another office, leaving her alone. She ran a hand across her eyes. She was as tired as she was stupid.

“Something has gone wrong,” she said. “Did you find McGarvey?” Galan asked.

“No.”

“Is Elizabeth with you there at the embassy? Please tell me she is.”

“She is not,” Jacqueline said. “We went to the apartment that she thought her father had used on a previous assignment. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, so she went in while I waited at the end of the block. Ten minutes later an unmarked van pulled up to the curb, and a man came out of the building with Elizabeth, put her into the van and drove off.”

“Maybe Riga police,” Galan suggested. “Were your travel documents legitimate?”

“Out. But I have a hunch they were Russian.”

“Hunch? What hunch is this now?” Galan demanded.

“The man looked Russian*”

“Everybody in Latvia looks Russian, Jacqueline!”

“If it had been the Riga police there would have been squad cars around. Men in uniform. But there was just the van, the driver, and the man with Elizabeth. No sirens, no lights, no radio antennas.”

“I’ll have to turn this over to the Americans. They can make inquiries with the Riga police. It’s out of our hands now.” “Maybe the Russians tracked McGarvey here. Maybe they were waiting for him at the apartment when Elizabeth showed up.”

“It’s possible, but it’s no longer our problem. McGarvey is out of France, if what you say is—” “I can’t abandon them,” Jacqueline cut in.

“What can you do?” Galan asked. “Nothing, that’s what! I want you back here on the first available flight.”

“Won.” “Pourqoui pas?”

“Because I’m convinced that McGarvey is in Moscow, and so is Elizabeth. I want you to send me there, in an official capacity.”

“To do what, Jacqueline?” Galan demanded.

“To work with the Russian Police commission. Maybe I can find out something about Elizabeth, or her father. Maybe I can help stop this insanity.”

‘“Where did you learn about this commission?” “From Elizabeth. She said she was briefed before she left Washington.”

Galan was silent for several long seconds.

“I think that you are not telling me everything,” Galan said.

“At least let me try, man colonel. I have done questionable things for France. Allow France to do something for me.”

There was another long silence.

“First we’ll make sure that Elizabeth wasn’t arrested by the Riga police. In the meantime you can continue to watch the apartment building. Perhaps McGarvey will return there.”

“Please hurry,” Jacqueline said.

“Rest assured, ma petite, I will.”

Touching down at what appeared to be an air force base, the afternoon was clear except to the north where a thick haze defined the city limits of the Russian capital. When they were on the taxiway, a pair of MiGs took off side by side with a mind-numbing roar on tails of black smoke. In the distance several helicopters seemed to be hovering over a stand of white birch. And in some of the hangars they passed, crews were working on partially disassembled fighter interceptors

Elizabeth had been allowed to use the bathroom, but she’d not been offered anything to eat or drink a second time. She got the feeling that they didn’t care what she did. None of the crew paid any attention to her, and during the remainder of the two-hour flight Chernov had remained in the conference room with the other men.

Chernov, a smug look of satisfaction on his face, came out of the conference room with the others as the airplane stopped in front of an empty hangar. Several cars were waiting on the tarmac.

“You should have followed your orders, and not tried to interfere,” one of the men said to her as he passed. ‘ “The CIA should not have involved the man’s daughter, Illen,” another of the men countered angrily. “It’s a bad business that will not have a happy ending for anyone.”

The crewman opened the forward door as boarding stairs were pushed into place. Everyone got off the plane, climbed into all but one of the waiting cars and drove off, leaving Elizabeth alone with Chernov.

“Major Gresko is right, you should not have come to Riga, Ms. McGarvey. You’ve accomplished nothing. In fact you’ve jeopardized your father’s safety.” “Will I be allowed to call my embassy?”

“That won’t be possible.”

“The Chief of Station here will start making noises pretty soon. President Kabatov is a reasonable—”

Chernov dismissed her with a gesture. “While it’s true that you work for the CIA, you’re supposed to be in Paris at this moment staking out your father’s apartment with the French intelligence service in case he returns. No one knows that you came to Riga. That, you did on your own. Inventive, I’ll give you that much. But stupid.”

“My father is on his way to the States.”

“No he’s not. He’s on his way here to Moscow. Probably in some clever disguise, almost certainly traveling under false papers. The last time I saw him was in Nizhny Novgorod where he was dressed as a soldier. I didn’t know that he was coming then, but I know it now. And I know that he is coming here from Riga. There are only so many trains, airplanes, boat ferries and highways between here and there, and I assure you that all of them are being watched.”

“Then what do you need me for?” Elizabeth asked defiantly, although she was sick at heart.

Chernov thought a moment.

“Because quite frankly, your father is very good at what he does, and I have the utmost respect for him, and maybe a little fear. He might somehow make it to Moscow. He might even be in Red Square on May Day when Tarankov makes his speech atop Lenin’s Mausoleum.”

“That’s the day Tarankov will die.”

“I think not,” Chernov said. “Because you will be standing next to him on the reviewing stand. In plain sight for everyone, including your father, to see.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say.

Chernov had perched on the arm of one of the seats. He got up. “Now it’s time for you to meet him. I think he’ll enjoy talking to you, as I’m sure his wife Liesel will. They’re very persuasive people.”

THIRTY-SIX

At first appearances the banker Herman Dunkel and the car dealer Bernard Legler were cut of different cloth. Dunkel was an arch conservative who habitually dressed in dark three-piece suits, and was concerned only with the bottom line. Legler, on the other hand, affected American western dress, spoke garishly, and was only concerned with hiding the bottom line from his accountant, and pocketing the money thus diverted. They had several things in common, however. Both had worked for the East German intelligence service Stasi until the Wall had come down. Both were shrewd businessmen who were profiting from Germany’s reunification. And neither man trusted anybody.

They met for lunch at the Thuringer Hof, a centuries old restaurant tavern downtown, something they hadn’t done in several weeks. They liked to get together occasionally to talk over some of the interesting cases they’d worked on in the Stasi. The darkly paneled bar was quiet and anonymous. Voices did not carry, something of interest to both men who had carefully hidden their true pasts. Legler suspected that this meeting was different, however, because of Dunkel’s abrupt manner this morning on the telephone.

Their drinks came and Dunkel raised his glass. “Prost.” “Prost,” Legler responded.

When the waitress was gone, Dunkel gave his old friend a quizzical look. “How is your business with Herr Allain proceeding? Have you received any further orders?”

“Just the two units,” Legler said. “But his money is good.”

“He has plenty of money, there is no doubt about that. In fact I made further inquiries into his Barclay’s account — or I should say accounts.” Dunkel glanced toward the door. “I have an old friend over there who has worked for the bank since the mid-eighties. In the past his information was reliable.”

“It’s wise to have such contacts.”

Dunkel nodded sagely. “In part because of what I learned, I’ve asked Karl Franken to join us, I hope you don’t mind.”

Franken was chief investigating officer for the Federal Criminal Bureau for Saxony, also an ex-Stasi officer whose past was buried even deeper than theirs. It was rare that they had any contact with each other.

Legler held his reply for a moment, but he too glanced toward the door. “What are you worried about, Herman?”

“We have built comfortable lives for ourselves in the aftermath.”

Legler acknowledged the obvious. “The future seems bright.”

“I would not like to jeopardize what we have, for the sake of a minor profit.”

“You’re still speaking of Herr Allain,” Legler said, careful to keep his voice neutral. “Admittedly the profit I made on the two units was not excessive. But if his business develops, it could turn into something worthwhile.” He’d dropped his pseudo western mannerisms. “Unless of course his business is something other than he says it is.”

“My thoughts precisely,” Dunkel said.

A heavyset, round-faced man with curly gray hair appeared in the doorway, spotted them seated near the rear of the bar, and came back.

“Gentlemen,” he said, taking a seat.

“Good of you to join us, Karl,” Dunkel said. “In point of fact we were just discussing you. We need your help with a somewhat… delicate matter.”

The waitress came, and Franken ordered a dark beer.

“Would this have anything to do with, shall we say, past entanglements?”

“Good heavens, no,” Dunkel said. “The past remains the past. All Germans are looking to the future. In that we are steadfast.” Dunkel pursed his lips. “It’s another matter, one possibly of an international criminal nature that Bernard and I may have been unwittingly caught up in.”

“If you’ve gotten yourselves into trouble I don’t know if I can help,” Franken said quietly.

“I’m not talking about that kind of help, Karl. We’ve broken no German laws, nor do we intend doing so.” Dunkels voice was just as low as Franken’s. What was being discussed here was nobody’s business. “With the changing situation in the East, a businessman has to operate with care. Sometimes even forgoing an immediate profit if his business would possibly be in jeopardy.”

Legler shot him a dark look, but Dunkel ignored it.

“Go on.”

Dunkel explained the unexpected business deal that had fallen into their laps.

“His explanation to me why he was bringing his business to Leipzig, and not to Stuttgart, didn’t ring true.

Nor did his dealings with Bernard. Operating his business as he was, it would be impossible for him to make a profit. It made me wonder that either the man was a fool or he was working to another more, shall I say, mysterious purpose.”

“Es machts nichts,” Franken said, indifferently.

“But it does matter,” Dunkel disagreed. “We have reputations to maintain that might run into difficulties should certain inquiries be made arising from a criminal proceeding.” Dunkel looked frankly at the cop. “I’ll do whatever it takes to maintain my good name. I have too much to lose otherwise. We all do.”

“What can you fear from a Belgian?”

“He’s not a Belgian. The passport he used was a fake. In fact the man is an American.”

“How do you know?”

“His letter of credit arrived in the name of Pierre Allain, drawn on a foreign bank. When I did some checking I discovered, by accident, that Pierre Allain was apparently the name of his business, and was not in fact the name of an actual person. But the Belgian passport he showed me identified him as Allain. In fact the man’s real name is Kirk McGarvey. An American, as I said.”

Franken stiffened slightly, but then he shrugged and took a drink of his beer.

“Did you happen to make a copy of his passport?”

“I did,” Legler said. “We needed it for the licensing and export documents”

“Fax it to my office this afternoon, would you?” Franken said. “Along with copies of all the paperwork on the cars.”

“Okay.”

“Is this name familiar to you, Karl?” Dunkel asked.

Franken shook his head. “Nein, but I’ll check it out. At the very least he’s broken several of our laws by using a false passport.”

Dunkel hesitated a moment. “This won’t affect us, will it?”

“Not to worry, Herman. You and Bernard have done nothing wrong. In fact you’ve done exactly tile correct thing by bringing this to me.”

“Then this is out of our hands now?”

Franken pushed his beer glass aside and got to his feet.

“Completely,” he said to Dunkel. “But if he tries to make contact with you again, call me immediately.”

“We’ll certainly do that,” Dunkel said.

Franken gave them an odd look, then turned and left the bar.

“Gott im Himmel, what the hell was that all about?” Legler demanded. “Who gives a damn what passport the man was using? I have a safe filled with them, as I imagine you do.”

Dunkel smiled benignly. “Herr McGarvey’s account with Barclay’s bank, a secret account that can only be accessed by a number and a code word, is worth in the neighborhood of three and a half million British pounds.”

Legler’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your point, Herman?” “I am in possession of the account number as well as the code word,” Dunkel said. “If Herr McGarvey were to find himself languishing in a German prison, he would not be in a position to challenge anyone who was to take over his financial holdings.”

This time Legler smiled. “Hot damn,” he said in English.

Lynch received the telephone call from Colonel Galan at his office in the U.S. Embassy at 2:15 p.m. He’d been working on his daily summary report for transmission to

Langley and he was in a foul mood. McGarvey continued to elude them, and Ryan’s star pupil, Elizabeth, had been of no help except for giving them Otto Rencke’s name, which had resulted in a dead end. Galan sounded distant, almost resigned, as if he was at wit’s end and was calling to explain why he could not go on, or even if he should have embarked on this mission in the first place.

“She’s gone,” he said when Lynch answered.

“Who’s gone?” Lynch asked.

“Elizabeth McGarvey. And there’s a good chance that the Russians have her.”

“What are you talking about?” Lynch demanded angrily. If it was true he had no idea how he would explain this to Ryan, who’d taken a personal interest in the case.

“She and Jacqueline came up with the idea that McGarvey might be hiding out in an apartment he’s used before in Riga. They flew up there early this morning without telling anybody and Elizabeth went in. Jacqueline was supposed to be backing her up, but before she could do anything Elizabeth came out of the apartment with a man, and they drove off together in a van.”

“Was it McGarvey?”

“Jacqueline didn’t get a very close look, but she didn’t think it was him,” Galan said. “My first thought was that the Riga police might have arrested her for some reason, but now I don’t think so. I made a few inquiries up there, but one wants to say anything, beyond the fact that no young American woman was arrested anytime within the past month.”

“Then it was McGarvey,” Lynch said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I don’t think so, and neither does Jacqueline. She was his lover long enough to recognize him even from a distance,” Galan said. “In any event, the Riga police did admit that a Russian woman by the name of Raya Kisnelkov was arrested and turned over to the Russian Militia.”

Lynch thought for a second.

“It’s a long shot, but it could be a coincidence,” he said, even though he didn’t believe it himself. “At any rate how could the Russians have found out where McGarvey was hiding when we haven’t been able to do it?”

“That’s their back yard, Tom,” Galan said. “I don’t think there’s any question that the Russians probably have her. And I don’t think there can be any doubt what they intend using her for.”

“Goddammit, we’re helping the bastards. Is this how they repay us?”

“If they find out that she’s working for the CIA they might ask what we were doing up there without telling about it.”

“I’ll call Colonel Bykov and ask him if he has her.”

“Just like that?” Galan asked. “She’s the daughter of a man who’s gunning for Tarankov. What are you going to say when he accuses the CIA of secretly helping McGarvey? I hope you have a good answer, because if I were Bykov and you tried to tell me that you either didn’t know Elizabeth was McGarvey’s daughter, or that you didn’t send her to Riga, I’d call you a liar.”

“I see what you mean.”

“What are you going to do?” Galan asked.

“I’ll have to call Langley, because I don’t know what the hell to do. How about you?”

“I’m sending Jacqueline to Moscow as an official liaison between the service and Colonel Bykov’s commission,” Galan said.

“Jesus.”

“I know it sounds crazy. But maybe she can find out something before it’s too late,” Galan said.

“Keep me posted,” Lynch said.

“Oui,” Galan promised. “That bastard McGarvey has caused us a lot of trouble.”

“He’s an expert at it,” Lynch agreed. “But the hell of it is that I almost hope he succeeds.”

“So do I,” Galan said quietly.

It took the Embassy’s communications center ten minutes to find Howard Ryan at home, and establish an encrypted phone line to the DO. Lynch quickly explained what he’d just learned from Galan.

“Sending the Belleau woman to Moscow might not be the brightest move the French ever made,” Ryan said.

“Sir?”

“Obviously she’s under McGarvey’s spell, which makes her less than worthless in this operation,” Ryan said. He sounded smug.

“I’m afraid I don’t completely understand, Mr. Ryan.”

“Figure it out, Lynch,” Ryan said irritably. “Neither we nor the French can find McGarvey. That’s with all the resources of two of the best intelligence services in the West. Yet Elizabeth disappears with her father, and Mademoiselle Belleau concocts a story about how she was arrested by the Russians.”

“Colonel Galan did say that the Riga police turned a woman over to the Russians—:”

“A Russian woman,” Ryan cut in. “The Latvians have no love for the Russians, and rightly so. I’m sure that such arrests happen all the time over there. But that’s not the point, Lynch. The point is that Elizabeth is helping her father, and Jacqueline Belleau is on her way to Moscow, with her government’s blessings, to work for Bykov’s commission. The Russians were smart, creating that commission. But McGarvey’s even smarter than they are. In one fell swoop he’s recruited his daughter and managed to get one of his people inside the commission. I haven’t any doubt that Jacqueline Belleau is McGarvey’s little spy, and will somehow report to him every move they make.”

Ryan was wrong, and Lynch was sure of it. But he also knew enough to keep his mouth shut. You might argue with some deputy directors of operations, but not with Ryan.

“It’s out of your hands now,” Ryan said. “I can’t say that you did an outstanding job for us, but don’t worry. Much better men than you have come up against McGarvey and lost. None of this will reflect badly on your record.”

“Yes, sir,” Lynch said, hardly believing his own ears. Not only was Ryan wrong, the man was an idiot.

BKA Chief Investigator Franken studied the dozen separate documents that Legler had faxed to his office, comparing the photograph in the Pierre Allain passport to that of the Kirk McGarvey photograph circulating on the Interpol wire.

“They don’t exactly match, but the height, weight and date of birth are close,” he told his deputy chief of special investigations.

“Passport photos never do, unless they’re recent ones,” Lieutenant Dieter Waltz said.

“According to the Belgians, the passport is legitimate.”

“True, but they can’t confirm Allain’s address. Nobody by that name lives there or ever has.”

“He has a proper driving license.”

“Same story on the address,” Waltz said. “But Allain has never been issued a voter registration card. Nor has he ever served in any unit of the Belgian military. Unusual for a man his age.”

“Then you think this man is in reality Kirk McGarvey?” Franken asked.

“I think it’s likely,” Waltz answered carefully. “Which brings up an interesting speculation about him.”

“What’s that?”

“According to the Belgians, this passport was first issued fourteen years ago. Means McGarvey is a professional.”

“How do you see that?” Franken asked, although he knew the answer. He liked to play devil’s advocate with his people. It kept them on their toes, free from sloppy thinking.

“Why else did he maintain a false identity for so long? In all those years there’s never been an inquiry about the passport. So up until now he’s been a very careful man. Never made a mistake.”

“Until now,” Franken said quietly.

“What about his bank accounts?” Waltz asked.

“That’s none of our business. For now the only law McGarvey has broken concerns his fake passport.”

“Interpol wants him for something.”

“Indeed,” Franken said. He gathered up the papers and handed them to Waltz. “Put this on the Interpol wire.”

“Shall I work up a cover report?”

Franken shook his head. “We’ll leave the speculation to others. Get this out right away, and then get back to work. We’ve already spent too much time on this business.”

“Do you want me to telephone the Latvian Federal Police?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary, Dieter,” Franken said. “Anyone who’s interested in Herr McGarvey will pick it off the wire.”

Red Square

Chernov was standing on the reviewing stand above Lenin’s Mausoleum when Militia Captain Petrovsky called his cellular telephone.

“Pierre Allain. He’s traveling on a Belgian passport. The photos are a pretty good match.”

“Where’d that come from?” Chernov asked, stepping back from the rail.

“The German Federal Police in Leipzig. But the best part is the Mercedes four-by-four automobiles. Allain is exporting them from Leipzig to Riga. Thing is the Latvian customs people show that two cars came in so far, but only in transit.”

“To where?”

“Russia. It means he is coming by highway. Probably across the border near Zilupe. I sent this over to Gresko who’ll alert the border crossing. We might still have a chance of stopping him.”

“I want every square meter covered. What do we have up there?”

“Not much except for an air force training squadron at Velikiye Luki. That’s near Toropets, about two hundred kilometers from the border. Shall I have them cover the highway?”

“Order them to send up everything they have.”

“He won’t get away this time, Colonel, I guarantee it,” Petrovsky promised.

Tarankov’s train was hidden near Klin less than fifty kilometers outside Moscow. Chernov had dropped McGarvey’s daughter out there and had raced back into the city. But unless McGarvey had delayed leaving Latvia for some reason, he’d already be across the border somewhere between there and Moscow. The thought was almost too interesting to bear.

“I’m in Red Square”. Have a helicopter pick me up in front of Lenin’s Tomb as soon as possible. We’ll follow the highway west.”

“It’ll be dark in a couple of hours.”

“Then you’d better hurry, Captain.”

Chernov broke the connection, pocketed his phone and looked out across Red Square again. In three days Russia would be Tarankov’s. Before that happened McGarvey would be dead, and it would be time to get out for good. He decided that he wouldn’t regret any of it. - ‘

THIRTY-SEVEN

About seventy-five miles east of the Latvian border, McGarvey followed*a narrow dirt track off the highway down to a thick stand of birch and willows that followed a creek. Although most of the trees had not budded yet, the growth was thick enough to obscure the outline of the Mercedes from the highway and from the air. Even if someone was looking for him, which he doubted, he would be safe here until dark.

With the engine off, he stood smoking a cigarette as he listened to the burble of the gently flowing creek, and the distant hum of an occasional truck above on the highway. Through a stand of trees on the opposite side of the creek he could see a farm field rising to the crest of the hill. But there were no farm buildings or animals in sight. Nor did it seem as if the field had been worked in recent years, because it was overgrown with a brown stubble.

Crossing the border had presented no problems. When it was his turn the same customs official as before came out to examine his papers.

“No lunch this afternoon, Comrade Allain?” the official joked.

“Not this time,” McGarvey said. “But I’ll be back next week, and maybe I’ll bring something good.” He handed the official an envelope with five hundred marks in cash.

One of the border guards came out of the shack with the long-handled mirror, but the officer waved him back.

“Sometimes he takes his job too seriously,” the officer said, pocketing the money. “A lot of them do.”

The meaning was clear.

“Do you take a day off each week?” McGarvey asked.

“Sundays.”

“I prefer to rest on Sundays myself.”

“It’s a good philosophy,” the officer said. He stepped back and motioned for the gate to be raised.

With dusk beginning to settle in, McGarvey removed his gun from the computer, loaded it, and pocketed the spare magazines and silencer. Then he started on the extra spare tire, deflating it, popping the seal with the tire irons, and removing the plastic bags containing Voronin’s KGB uniform. Next he unlatched the primary spare tire from its bracket on the cargo compartment lid, and removed the uniform cap. The cap and uniform went into a nylon zippered bag which he tossed in the back seat.

If he were to be stopped and searched before he got to Moscow he would have no explanation for the uniform. But since he would be driving at night, and’ planned on remaining well within the speed limit, there was no reason for him to be stopped.

He reattached the main spare tire to its bracket, then reinflated the extra spare tire using the electric pump plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter.

When that was done, he tossed the pump and tire irons into the thicker brush, cleaned his hands in the creek, then lit a cigarette as he waited for the deepening dusk to turn to darkness.

A faint sound came to him on the light breeze and he cocked an ear to listen. A helicopter, he thought. Maybe more than one. He tossed the cigarette aside, and stepped away from the overhanging trees.

The sun had already set but the western sky was still dimly aglow, making it easy for him to pick out a formation of four helicopters heading cross country toward the southwest. They were Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, their silhouettes easily distinguishable. So far as he knew the FSK did not use such aircraft, which meant there was probably a military base somewhere in the vicinity. The most likely explanation was that the formation was on a training maneuver.

McGarvey glanced up at the highway. The helicopters were heading in the general direction of the border. Such exercises were common because of the ongoing trouble between the Latvian government and Russians still living in Latvia. The maneuver could be one of intimidation.

But he doubted it. The timing was too coincidental. But if they knew or suspected that he would be coming across from Latvia, then a great deal of his preparations had somehow been blown. Possibly by Yemlin. Possibly his Allain passport had been compromised. The list wasn’t endless but it was long. He’d been on too many assignments where a number of little errors and coincidences added up to a major problem for him to ever believe that he was truly safe.

When the helicopters finally disappeared in the distance, he started the Mercedes. At the crest of the hill he paused a moment to make certain there was no traffic in either direction, then headed east on the M9 toward Moscow a little over three hundred miles away, as he considered his options should the helicopters return.

It was dark by the time the modified HormoneD search and rescue helicopter finally cleared Moscow’s airspace, the city of Volokolamsk directly ahead of them. Petrov sky had picked Chernov up on Red Square late because there’d been some delay in obtaining the necessary clearances from the Moscow District Military Command to overfly the city. Once they’d passed the outer ring highway the pilot found the M9 and followed it west, the throttles pushed their stops. The crew had not been told what the mission was about, but they were suitably impressed by Bykov’s credentials so that when they were told to hustle they asked no questions. They hustled.

Traffic on the motorway was heavy, but Chernov expected that it would thin out to next to nothing on the other side of Volokolamsk, which was one hundred kilometers from the center of Moscow, because there were no major cities between there and the Latvian border. The problem, of course, was picking out a specific automobile in the dark, when all that was distinguishable were headlights.

Petrovsky had been speaking or! the radio, and he came forward to where Chernov was braced behind the copilot, a concerned expression on his face.

“He crossed the border two hours ago.”

“Under the Pierre Allain passport?” Chernov demanded.

“Da. He’s driving a gunmetal-gray Mercedes sport utility vehicle, with the proper in-transit documents. There was no reason for the customs people to detain him because the warrant for McGarvey didn’t show up until fifteen minutes ago.”

“What about the air force up there?”

Petrovsky looked uncomfortable. “They sent up a squadron of Mi-24s, but their instructions were to remain within their training area. They’re not authorized to go any farther.”

“Exactly how far is that?” Chernov asked, holding his temper in check.

“Two hundred kilometers from the border.”

“They spotted nothing, of course. Because he had nearly a two-hour head start,” Chernov said. He turned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. The man cocked his head, but did not take his eyes off the windshield.

“Sir?”

“As soon as we get to the other side of Volokplamsk, I want you to fly right up the middle of the M9, but no higher than eight or ten meters. I want to be able to identify every vehicle down there. Can you do that?”

“Yes sir,” the pilot said. “What are we looking for, Colonel?”

“A gray Mercedes four-by-four.”

“Will do,” the pilot said.

Chernov turned back to Petrovsky. “Radio the base commander up there and tell him that I want his helicopters to start again at the border, and follow the M9 toward us, at an altitude of no more than eight or ten meters.”

“You mean to catch the bastard between us?” Petrovsky said.

“That’s the idea.” Chernov said, although he didn’t think it was going to be quite that easy.

Petrovsky started to turn away when Chernov called him back.

“When you’ve done that, I want every cop in Moscow to be on the lookout for that gray Mercedes. It was stolen.”

“He’ll never get that far, Colonel.”

“Just do it,” Chernov ordered sharply.

“What are they supposed to do if they spot him? My street cops wouldn’t be any match for him if he’s as good as you say he is.”

“Tell them to report directly to you, and follow him. Nothing more.”

It was nearly eight o’clock when the Mercedes pulled off the main highway near a tiny hamlet dark at this hour, followed a bumpy road up to the onion domes of an Orthodox church and parked under the shelter of a grape arbor at the entrance to a cemetery. McGarvey shut off the headlights, got the gas cans from the back and filled the tank.

He estimated that he was two hundred miles from the outskirts of Moscow, and with any luck he’d be in the city well before midnight with plenty of time to take care of one final preparation before he went to ground.

What little traffic he’d encountered were mostly trucks heading east, with an occasional passenger car, and one bus.

The only city of any size that he would have to pass through would be Volokolamsk. By then the traffic would pick up, but it was only another fifty or sixty miles into the outskirts of Moscow where he figured he might be safe unless they’d transmitted a description of his car to the police there. But he’d picked this color Mercedes because it was common in Moscow.

Finished with the gas cans, he put them back in the cargo section, and happened to glance down at the highway east of the village in time to see what at first appeared to be a truck. Its headlights were unusually bright and seemed very far off the ground.

McGarvey stepped around the back of the Mercedes to get a better look, when the lights rose up into the sky at the same moment he heard the distinct chop of a helicopter’s rotors.

As the machine slowly flew over the village, a spotlight searched the main road and the side streets.

McGarvey eased back a little farther under the grape arbor. This was no coincidence. The military helicopters at the border had been conducting a search. And now this machine was coming directly down the M9, obviously searching for someone.

The helicopter’s spotlight went out as it dropped down to twenty feet or so above the highway on (his side of the village, and headed west.

It was possible that the military helicopters he’d seen earlier were a part of a coordinated search, and would be heading east by now. When this helicopter met them without any sign of McGarvey they would turn around and retrace the highway, greatly expanding their search pattern to include hiding places such as the trees where he’d stopped by the creek, and this grape arbor.

While he waited for the helicopter’s lights to disappear into the distance he studied his road map. Three main highways entered Moscow from the west. The M9, which he was on, came from Riga. The M10 from St. Petersburg was well to his north, and the M1 from Smolensk and Minsk was about ninety miles to the south. Even the most recent Russian maps, however, showed very few of the secondary roads that connected the smaller towns and villages between the main motor routes, although he knew they were there.

The three highways funneled into Moscow, so the farther east he got before turning south, the closer he would be to the M1. If he got off the M9 now, he might get bogged down in the countryside and never reach the other highway. But if he remained on the M9 too long, the helicopter that had just passed might turn around and overtake him. One hour, he decided, as he watched the receding lights of the helicopter. Then, no matter how far he got, he would turn off the M9 and head across country to the south.

Abandoning the speed limit, McGarvey barreled down the highway at ninety to one hundred miles per hour, slowing only for. small towns and villages, and the occasional truck still on the highway. Each time he saw the oncoming lights of another vehicle, he slowed down and prepared to douse his own headlights and pull off the road until he made certain that what he was seeing wasn’t another helicopter.

It was a few minutes after nine when he came upon an unmarked paved road heading south. He’d been watching his rearview mirror, but so far there’d been no sign of the returning helicopter. Nonetheless he figured he’d pushed his luck far enough, and turned onto the secondary road. Within five miles he came to a collection of a half-dozen peasant houses, shuttered and dark, and on the other side of this village the road continued, but the pavement stopped.

The winter had been a harsh one, and the spring very late in coming so that the road, which at times was little more than a dirt track, was still reasonably firm. In a couple of weeks it would turn into a ribbon of deep sticky mud that even the big Mercedes might not be able to manage.

For stretches he was able to push the Mercedes to speeds in excess of sixty miles per hour, but for most of the way he had to keep below forty, and sometimes he was even slowed to a crawl as he had to detour around ruts that were five or six feet deep.

He was passing through mostly farmlands, he could tell that much but little else in the dark. Occasionally he passed through tiny villages of eight or ten crude hovels, and for twenty minutes he had a conglomeration of lights in sight, low down on the horizon to the west, which he took to be a factory, or possibly a power station.

But he never saw the helicopter again, so by 10:30 when he finally reached the M1 near the town of Gagarin with the outskirts of Moscow barely one hundred miles away, he dropped back to the posted speed limit of 90 kilometers per hour and lit his first cigarette in two and a half hours.

For nearly four hours there was no sign of the gray Mercedes anywhere on the highway between the Latvian border and the outskirts of Moscow. Given the time since McGarvey had crossed the border, he could have made it to Moscow by now. So far Petrovsky had received three radioed reports of Mercedes four-by-fours in Moscow, but in each sighting the cops, on the ground checked the license tags with the motor vehicle department and found them to be legitimate. In all three sightings the officers reported that the drivers were not alone, they carried passengers, something Chernov didn’t think McGarvey would do.

“Where the hell did he go?” Petrovsky asked a little before midnight. “He couldn’t have disappeared’ into thin air, unless he’s hiding somewhere.”

They’d touched down in a farm field just off the highway three hundred kilometers from Moscow to take on fuel from one of the air force Mi-24s, and stretch their ‘ legs. “He might have spotted the helicopters and done just that,” Chernov said, staring into the darkness. “He’s not a stupid man.”

“If that’s true than he knows that its all over for him. He’ll probably ditch the car and try to make it to the nearest border. He might be hiding somewhere in Volokolamsk, changing his identity and waiting for the morning train.”

“Do we have anyone watching the station?”

“No, but I’ll see to it. We’ll close that place up so tightly that even a mouse couldn’t get through,” Petrovsky said. “It’s his only option now. He’s not on the M9, which is the only route from Riga into Moscow, so he has to be in Volokolamsk.”

Petrovsky went back to the helicopter to radio his instructions, leaving Chernov standing by himself in the darkness.

He shook his head, tiredly. McGarvey was smart, but he wasn’t a fool. If he had seen the helicopters, and realized that they were searching for him, he would have to turn tail and run. But he had not run. Chernov was certain of it, because men like McGarvey never did.

Chernov thought about it, putting himself in McGarvey’s position. His mission was to assassinate Tarankov, for which he had a plan. He would understand that things could go wrong, they always did, and he would have planned for them. McGarvey would be able to think clearly on the run. Even backed into a corner, he’d find a way. His extensive file made that quite clear.

Chernov turned and looked at the helicopters. The fueling operation was complete, and the squadron commander, who was a young man barely out of his twenties, started over to where Chernov was waiting.

Petrovsky was wrong. It came to Chernov all of a sudden. The M9 was one way into Moscow, but not the only highway. To the north was the M10, and to the south the M1, either of which could be reached with the right vehicle. Such as a half-track or, now before the fields and dirt road had turned to mud, a Mercedes four-by-four.

The squadron commander saluted. “Your helicopter has been refueled, Colonel. Do you want us to make another sweep back to the border, or should we concentrate our efforts toward Moscow?”

Petrovsky jumped out of the HormoneD and came across the field in a dead run.

“Return to base, Lieutenant,” Chernov said. “Thank your people for me, but your work is finished for tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” the squadron commander said. He saluted and went back to his helicopter.

Petrovsky came up in a rash. “The bastard’s in Moscow. He must have been spooked because somehow he made it to the M1. They spotted him on the outer ring road.”

“They didn’t try to stop him, did they?” Chernov demanded.

“Nyet. They’re just following him for the moment. There’s enough traffic that they think they can pull it off without being spotted themselves, especially if he’s tired and he thinks he’s home free.”

He and Chernov hurried back to their helicopter. “Inform your people that I’ll have then” heads if they lose him. All we need is one hour to get up there.” ‘

“The sonofabitch has made a big mistake after all,” Petrovsky said triumphantly.

“Don’t count on it,” Chernov said.

McGarvey parked on the outer fringes of the bustling Dinamo flea market amongst several rows of big Mercedes and BMW sedans, each with one or two bodyguards who eyed him cautiously. He shut off the engine and lights and sat in the darkness smoking a cigarette, the window down. He was very tired. His eyes were gritty, his throat was raw from too many cigarettes and his stomach was sour from lack of food. Several times he thought he might have picked up a tail. But each time he doubled back it was only a Moscow police car on ordinary patrol.

With luck they were still searching for this car somewhere along the M9, figuring that he had pulled off the highway and was hiding under cover. In the morning they would flush him out. Unless Bykov or the people with him were smarter than that. For the next two days, he thought, he would have to lay low. They knew he was coming, and by morning they would know that he had reached Moscow. It made his task even more difficult, but still not impossible.

He tossed the cigarette away, checked the load on his gun, then locked up the car and walked around to the west side of the huge parking lot where the entrepreneur Vasha was leaning up against an American HumVee and talking to a couple of surly-looking men. When he spotted McGarvey he said something to them, and they left.

“Ah, Corporal Shostokovich returns,” the beefy man said. He stank of stale sweat and booze. He looked beyond McGarvey. “I just saw Arkady. Did he bring you out here tonight? He has a lot of money these days. Maybe an inheritance?”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said. “Maybe you’ll have an inheritance too.”

The salesman got a bottle of vodka from the HumVee, cracked the seal and gave it to McGarvey, who took a big drink, then handed it back. Vasha took a deep drink, and smacked his lips.

“Do you want to purchase another uniform?”

McGarvey shook his head. “This time my needs are more specific, and perhaps even difficult to fulfill.”

Vasha motioned toward his Russian army supply trucks. “I have a lot of good stuff here. Some of it pretty damned important, you know.” He shrugged. “Of course if you want a MiG it would take a little longer. But I can get one.”

“A Dragunov,” McGarvey said quietly. “Two magazines of ammunition, ten shots each, a good telescopic sight, and a bag big enough to carry it all when the rifle is partially disassembled.”

“An interesting choice,” Vasha said. The 7.62mm rifle was the Soviet sniper weapon, very simple, lightweight and extremely accurate. “Would there be anything else?”

“A pair of good bolt-cutters.”

“A small explosive device might be more effective, if you could tell me your exact need.”

“Too noisy.”

“What about the noise of the rifle? Given a few days a suitable silencer could be manufactured that would not seriously deteriorate the weapon’s accuracy.”

“It’s not necessary.”

The salesman took another drink and passed the bottle to McGarvey.

“What currency would you pay me for this … equipment?”

“American dollars.”

Vasha thought about it for a moment. “Five thousand.” “For that amount of money I could hire a shooter who would have his own weapon and there would be no need for me to come back to you for more equipment in the weeks to come.”

Vasha licked his lips. ““Then this is not the big project?”

“Only one of many to begin with.”

“How do I know that you will come back?”

“You don’t,” McGarvey said. “My top offer is one thousand.”

“I’d need three—”

“One thousand, and I need the equipment right now.”

Vasha hesitated only a moment, then grinned and nodded. “Trust is very important among businessmen,” he said. He started to turn, but McGarvey grabbed his arm in an iron grip.

“It would be unfortunate if the rifle you sold me was anything less than perfect. A misfire at the wrong moment could be fatal to you.”

“Trust is not only important, it is a two-way street,” Vasha said, evenly. “Now if you have the money with you let’s do our business.”

McGarvey followed him to one of the supply trucks where the salesman produced a pair of hydraulic bolt cutters that were nearly a meter long, and a soft leather carryall with shoulder straps and lots of zippered compartments.

From a second truck he pulled an aluminum case out of a large wooden crate, and opened it on the tailgate. Nested in foam rubber cutouts was a used but apparently well-maintained, oiled and disassembled Dragunov sniper rifle, and powerful scope.

“The factory new rifles can be temperamental and often need adjustments. But this gun is nearly perfect. It’s sighted in for a range of one hundred fifty to two hundred meters. If your range is outside those limits, the gun will have to be re sighted

McGarvey inspected the components as Vasha got two magazines of ammunition for the rifle, along with a gun cleaning kit and oil. “This is exactly what I wanted,” McGarvey said. He counted out the money as Vasha carefully placed the rifle, magazines and cleaning supplies in the leather bag. “Anything else?”

“No,” McGarvey said, handing the salesman the money. “If all goes well, I’ll see you in a few weeks for more equipment. Maybe something quite a bit larger.”

“I’ll be here,” Vasha said.

Slinging the heavy bag over his shoulder McGarvey walked away, taking a roundabout route back toward where he’d left the Mercedes.

A hundred yards from the car, the cabby Arkady As timovich pulled up beside him, at the same moment he heard the sound of a helicopter coming in low and fast from the west.

“Climb in and I’ll get you out of here,” Astimovich said urgently.

“It’s okay, I’ve got another Mercedes—”

“Yeb was, I know,” Astimovich cut in. “I saw you drive up. But the goddamn cops were right behind you. They’re all over the place now.”

The helicopter was getting closer.

He hated to leave the uniform, but he’d removed Voronin’s name from the lining, and there was nothing in the laptop computer that would lead back to Rencke. But Chernov was damned good, even better than his brother.

He clambered into the cab, and ducked below the level of the windows as Astimovich took off in the opposite direction from the Mercedes on the heels of dozens of police cars coming out from the city, their lights flashing, their sirens blaring.

It was 1:15 a.m. when the helicopter touched down at the edge of the vast Dinamo Stadium parking lot. Chernov and Petrovsky dismounted and hurried over to the knot of policemen standing around the Mercedes four-by-four.

“Who is in charge of this operation?” Chernov asked mildly, though he was seething with rage.

A Militia lieutenant was summoned from one of the patrol cars, where he’d been busy on the radio. He saluted crisply.

“You were told to follow this car, not mount World War Three,” Chernov said.

“We did follow the car, sir,” he said. He gestured toward the flea market. “But the driver disappeared in there someplace, so I ordered the entire parking lot surrounded. My people are letting them out one by one after a thorough search. We’ll find him.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied enthusiastically.

“Very well. But if you don’t find him here tonight, you will be placed under arrest and tried for failure to follow orders. Is that clear?”

The lieutenant’s face fell. “Yes, sir.”

“I suggest that you get on with it,” Chernov said, and the lieutenant scurried back to his radio car.

“Over here,” Petrovsky said, from the Mercedes.

Chernov walked over. A KGB general’s uniform was laid out in the backseat, along with a laptop computer. “Well, we know how he planned on getting close,” Petrovsky said. “Now that he doesn’t have this, maybe he’ll finally give up.”

“He won’t quit,” Chernov said. He glanced toward the flea market. “He came here to buy a weapon, and he means to use it.”

“Then maybe we’re lucky, maybe he’s still here.” Chernov shook his head. “He’s gone. As soon as he spotted the first police ear he got out. It’s just as much my fault as it is that lieutenant’s.”

“Were you serious about arresting him?” “Either that or just shoot him and get it over with, I really don’t care which,” Chernov said. “In the meantime McGarvey has made it to Moscow, and it’s up to us to find him in the next forty-eight hours, whatever it takes.” Chernov gave Petrovsky a hard stare. “And I do mean whatever it takes.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

McGarvey sat across the large desk from Yakov Ostrovsky, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette and sipping French champagne, while he maintained an outward calm. Astimovich waited with Ostrovsky’s bodyguards and ferret-faced accountant in an outer office, while the boss talked serious business with the Belgian who’d apparently gotten himself in some big trouble. No one else in the busy club knew what was going on, and Ostrovsky agreed to let it remain that way for the moment, although he was extremely suspicious and therefore wary, but curious. It was this curiosity that McGarvey planned on using to his advantage over the next forty-eight hours.

“I’m told that there was some excitement at the flea market this evening,” the Mafia boss said. “You had to leave the car you were bringing to me.”

McGarvey shrugged indifferently. “There are ten more coming by transport truck from Riga in a few days.”

“If you were stopped because of one car, what makes you think that you’ll be successful bringing in ten?”

“Because the next shipment won’t be traceable to me. They’re coming directly to you if we can make a deal. But I’ll have to lay low here until they arrive.”

“Then what?”

“I’ll be returning to Riga to arrange for further shipments,” McGarvey said. “That is if you want more cars.”

“Situations change,“I Ostrovsky said, a calculating expression in his eyes. “Maybe we’ll have to rework the conditions of our business arrangement. Maybe the risk has become too great for me. I have a serious position to maintain.”

“I’m listening,” McGarvey said.

“It strikes me that the Militia went to a lot of trouble to corner an ordinary smuggler tonight.”

“But that’s just the point, Yakov, I’m not an ordinary smuggler. In fact you’ve already verified that the papers for the car are valid. It’s the same for the car I had to abandon tonight. The Militia was after me because I killed two of their officers outside of Volokolamsk.”

“Now that’s a crime those boys do take seriously,” Ostrovsky said quietly. “Why did you do it?”

“I was speeding, and since I was driving such an obviously expensive automobile they suggested that I needed protection.”

“Why didn’t you pay it?”

“I would have been forced to pass on the extra cost to you.”

Ostrovsky shrugged.

“The fact is I don’t like to be pushed around,” McGarvey said, allowing a hard edge into his voice. “I was tired, they were being unreasonable, and when I told them to fuck themselves they ordered me to get out of the car. So I shot them dead, dragged their bodies into the ditch, and drove the rest of the way here. Somebody must have seen something, maybe a farmer, I don’t know. It was just rotten luck.”

“What were you doing at the flea market?”

“I bought a couple of souvenirs for a friend in Brussels,” McGarvey said. He allowed a faint smirk. “This business is a two-way street, you know.”

“Let me see the gun you used,” Ostrovsky said. McGarvey hesitated a moment, then leaned forward so that he could remove the Walther from its holster at the small of his back. He ejected the magazine, locked the empty breach block in the open position and handed it across the desk.

Ostrovsky examined the gun, then sniffed the barrel. “This weapon has not been fired recently.”

“I cleaned it.”

The Mafia boss nodded. “You are an efficient man.”

“Da,” McGarvey said. “There’s no problem importing cars to you. The only problem that exists at the moment is a place for me to stay for a few days. I would have thought that you would provide me the professional courtesy.” McGarvey inclined his head.

Ostrovsky sat back, a big grin on his face. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Monsieur Allain,” he said. “I will be happy to have you as a guest of the club until my cars safely arrive.” His smile disappeared. “Since it’s only for a few days, I’ll require you to remain here, out of sight within the club.” Ostrovsky smiled again. “Think of it as a well-deserved vacation.”

“That’s fine with me,” McGarvey said, returning the smile. “But you might warn your staff that I’m a light sleeper. A very light sleeper.”

Aboard Tarankov’s Train

Elizabeth McGarvey lay fully clothed on the narrow bed in the darkness of the tiny train compartment, trying without luck to catch at least a few hours sleep. Her heart refused to slow down, and her stomach ached from fear and worry.

By now Jacqueline would have reported her missing, and word would have been passed to Tom Lynch in Paris, who would have in turn informed Ryan at Langley. But there was nothing any of them could do to help her, simply because nobody knew where she’d been taken.

She had, for all intents and purposes, dropped off the face of the earth, because even if they somehow knew she’d been taken to Russia, even the Russians had no real idea where Tarankov’s. train was located at any given time, nor did they seem to want to know.

In a little more than forty-eight hours, Tarankov would sweep into Moscow, mount the reviewing stand atop Lenin’s tomb and tell his countrymen, and the world, that he was the new supreme leader of Russia, and would by whatever means necessary restore the old Soviet Union to all of its past glory. Sometime during the speech her father would try to kill him, but at that moment he would get the shock of his life. He would see his own daughter standing beside the madman, and there was no predicting what he would do about it. She was sick with dread.

Chernov had told her all of that on the way out to the isolated spot where the camouflaged train was parked as if he were merely telling her about the weather, or about some sports team that was campaigning for a championship. What bothered her most was his easy confidence, and the obvious competence of the rugged-looking commandoes guarding the train. Nobody had maltreated her, or had even raised their voices. She’d been politely escorted to this compartment the moment she’d arrived. They’d given her a bottle of wine, a platter of breads, cheeses, pickles, herring and even caviar. A polite soldier showed her how to use the compact shower, asking that she conserve water because their tankage was limited, and supplied her with clean battle fatigues in her size, wool slippers, and a small kit containing a hair brash and a few basic toiletries.

For the first couple of hours, expecting to be summoned by Tarankov, she refused to eat or drink anything, or take a shower and change into the clean clothes. It was an act of defiance on her part that finally seemed futile as time passed and her isolation deepened. She’d tried to open the window, but even the blackout curtains were locked in place. She’d listened at the door, but all she could make out were the sounds of machinery running softly somewhere, and the distant undertones of male voices, the words indistinct and impossible to make out.

Around 11:00 by her watch, her hunger finally overcame her stubbornness and she finished half the bottle of wine and ate most of the quite good food on the tray. Afterward she’d taken a shower, washed her bra and panties and hung them up to dry, then got dressed in the fatigues and wool slippers. Well fed and freshly bathed, she’d shut out the lights, lay down on the cot and tried to go to sleep. But as dead tired as she was her mind refused to shut down, and she replayed the events since Riga over and over.

Something brushed her lips and she woke with a start, her heart accelerating. The corridor door was ajar and in the dim light she made out the narrow, thin-lipped features of a woman standing over her.

“I mean you no harm,” the woman said quietly in heavily accented English.

Elizabeth fumbled for the bedside light switch, flipped it on, then sat up.

The woman stepped back. She was slightly built with deep-set, expressive eyes, and medium-length blonde hair; She was dressed in UCLA sweats. A little color had come to her high cheeks and forehead.

“Who are you?” Elizabeth asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

“I’m Liesel Tarankov,” the woman said. Her eyes lowered slightly. “You’re not what we expected.”

Elizabeth looked down at the front of her fatigue shirt. The top three buttons were undone, exposing her bare breasts, and her stomach did a slow roll. She clutched her shirt together. “Get out you bitch,” she tried to shout, but she swallowed her words.

Liesel laughed. “I don’t think that you’re in any position to give orders, my dear.”

“When my father shows up—”

“By then it will be too late for you,” Liesel said. She reached back and closed the door.

“Are you a lesbian?”

“I haven’t had that pleasure since my college days. But seeing you on that bed like Sleeping Beauty, some of the old memories came back,” Liesel cocked her head to listen for something.

“I won’t be so easy.”

“Oh, come on, Elizabeth, you can’t tell me that you didn’t fool around in the dark at that school of yours in Switzerland.”

Elizabeth looked around for a suitable weapon, her eyes lighting on the half-full wine bottle. She lunged for it, but Liesel was too quick for her, snatching the bottle off the tray before she could reach it.

“I believe you’re going to be even more interesting than I imagined,” Liesel said, and she smiled with anticipation.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to scream.

“Please go ahead and cry out for help, you might learn something about the real world,”. Liesel said. “Washington and New York might be dangerous places for a young woman, but you can always call nine-one-one, yes? Help is just a telephone call away.” Liesel shook her head, her lips down-turned. “I’m so sorry little girl, but there is no nine-one-one for you here.”

“Then I’ll kill you.”

“You may try, but I’m older and more experienced. And before you tell me about the wonderful hand-to hand combat training you received at the CIA’s school, it is a lie. We have checked. You have received no training.”

“Maybe my father taught me,” Elizabeth shot back, for want of anything else to say. Nobody was coming to her rescue. She was going to have to work this out herself. One thing was certain in her mind, however, and that was if Liesel Tarankov touched her she was going to kill the woman.

“Your father was never home long enough to teach you anything. He couldn’t keep his wives, nor can he even manage to sustain a relationship with any of his whores.” Liesel chuckled. “Of course what can you expect of a man whose parents spied for us?”

The woman had picked the wrong topic. Although Elizabeth was still frightened, a calmness came over her.

“You’re nothing more than an ignorant slut, but then what can you expect from an East German,” Elizabeth said in Russian, and she was satisfied to see a slight reaction in Liesel’s eyes. “General Baranov had that story about my grandparents planted years ago, and by now everybody knows it for what it is, nothing more than a crude lie. I don’t even think Colonel Bykov, or should I say Leonid Chernov, believes it.”

Liesel gave her an appraising look. “Of course if you prefer, there are two hundred boys here who’ve been without a woman for months. They might not be so gentle.”

“What’s the trouble, are they tired of you already?”

Before Liesel could make a move, the door opened and Yevgenni Tarankov stuck his head in.

“Here you are,” he said.

It took a moment for Elizabeth to recognize him, because he was older looking than in the photographs she’d studied, and it took a second longer for her to realize that he seemed slightly vexed and realize that she could take advantage of the moment because Liesel looked guilty.

“If you mean to use me to lure my father here, I can understand that,” Elizabeth blurted.

Tarankov looked mildly at her.

“But if that includes your wife trying to rape me while I’m asleep, then your plan won’t work. Because she says that she’ll kill me if I resist.”

Liesel laughed out loud.

Elizabeth removed her hand from her fatigue shirt to show that it was unbuttoned, and then opened it to expose her breasts. “When I awoke she was kissing me and fondling my breasts. And believe me, I think I’m in big enough trouble as it is without imagining something like that.”

Tarankov’s forehead creased and his wide eyes narrowed.

Liesel looked from Elizabeth to her husband. “I don’t care what you believe, Zhennia, because now I don’t think either one of us will let the other fuck her.”

Liesel brushed past her husband and disappeared down the corridor, leaving him staring at Elizabeth.

Lefortovo

Chernov called a meeting in his office for 9:00 a.m., with Gresko and Petrovsky. It was dawn before every person and vehicle at the Dinamo Stadium flea market had been thoroughly checked out, and McGarvey had not turned up. The only news of any interest, at least to the Militia, was that twenty-seven arrests had been made for everything from illegal arms dealing to counterfeiting documents, and illegal financial transactions. Some of those who’d been picked up had been on the Militia’s most wanted list for two years or more. Before last night there’d never been the initiative to clean out the flea market. But if anyone had seen McGarvey, they weren’t talking.

“He was there, for maybe as long as an hour,” Chernov told them. “Which gave him plenty of time to buy anything he needed. A weapon. Papers.”

“But he left the KGB uniform behind, which means that part of his plan has been ruined,” Petrovsky pointed out.

“Maybe it was a ruse,” Gresko suggested. “To make us believe that’s how he was going to get close to Tarankov.”

“I don’t think so,” the Militia captain argued. “I agree with Colonel Bykov that he showed up at the flea market to pick up a weapon, but when he realized that he was cornered he ran.”

“To where?” Gresko asked.

“Maybe back to the border. Or, maybe the bastard has help.”

“It wasn’t Yemlin.”

“No, but there are others in Moscow who’d be willing to do it for a price. And McGarvey is a rich man. He could buy his way out of just about everything. Look at that pussy wagon he brought over. It has to be worth plenty.”

Gresko threw up his hands. “Then we’re back to square one. He’s in Moscow, and we’ve got two days to catch him. That is if Tarankov actually shows up for the May Day celebrations.”

“He will,” Chernov said absently, thinking of something else.

“What makes you so sure about that, Colonel?” Gresko asked.

Chernov dismissed the obvious question with a gesture. “Everybody in Moscow knows it by now. Everyone in the entire country knows it.”

“Then why not concentrate our efforts on arresting him when he gets here?” Gresko said. He glanced at Petrovsky. “The military is obviously incapable of doing the job, but we could pull it off. We don’t know where McGarvey is, but we do know where Tarankov will be and what he’ll be doing.”

“A fine idea, Major, except for two problems,” Chernov said. “In the first place our job is to find and stop McGarvey. Nothing more.” “If the situation was explained to General Yuryn, I think he’d see our point.”

“Maybe he’d see that we’ve failed so far,” Chernov pointed out. “But be that as it may, the second problem is Tarankov’s followers. There’ll probably be a million of them in Red Square the day after tomorrow. Now, if you want to march up to the speaker’s platform and clap handcuffs on the man in front of all those people, then be my guest.”

“I see what you mean,” Gresko said. “But I think that if the army doesn’t arrest him before May Day, and McGarvey fails to kill him, then we’re all lost.” “How do you mean that?” Chernov asked calmly.

“Tarankov will take over the government. I don’t think anybody doubts it.”

“That’s politics,” Chernov said. “In the meantime we have our orders, unless you want to quit.”

Again Gresko glanced at Petrovsky, but then he sighed. “No, Colonel, we won’t quit. But frankly McGarvey is a lot better than any of us ever expected.”

“He’s just a man. He makes mistakes. Already he’s lost his car, and the KGB uniform.”

“And he’s, lost money,” Petrovsky said. “The documents show that he was importing the car from Leipzig via Riga. Which means he had a buyer for it here in Moscow. Find the buyer and we might find McGarvey.” “Who in Moscow can afford such a vehicle?” Chernov asked.

“A few politicians, some businessmen,” Petrovsky said. “The Mafia. But they won’t talk to us—”

“Wait a minute,” Gresko broke in. “McGarvey was importing that car from Leipzig, right? Maybe it wasn’t the first. Maybe he brought others across, to establish himself as an importer. Somebody who paid out a lot of bribes, and was well liked by the people who could hide him.”

“Back to the Mafia,” Chernov said. “Check vehicle registration to see who bought a similar vehicle or vehicles over the past couple of weeks. It might provide us with a lead, if your people have the balls to ask the questions of the right people. Find his buyers and we might find McGarvey. He’s made at least one mistake so far, maybe he’ll make another.”

At the door on the way out, Petrovsky had another thought. “What did you do with his daughter?”

“We had a chat, but she’s just as much in the dark as the rest of us,” Chernov said matter of factly. “So I dropped her off at her embassy.”

“Just as well,” Petrovsky said. “We don’t need to get into it with the CIA right now.”

THIRTY-NINE

McGarvey woke very slowly from a profoundly deep, dreamless sleep. His mouth was dry, his muscles ached, he had a tremendous headache, and as he struggled back to complete consciousness he realized that he must have been drugged. Normally he awoke instantly. It was a habit of self-preservation that every field officer who survived for long developed.

He was naked under the covers, although after he had eaten he had flopped down fully clothed on the bed to catch a few hours rest. At the time he’d thought it was possible he’d been drugged, so that they could disarm him and check the contents of the leather satchel, but there’d been little he could have done to prevent it. He needed food and rest.

The lights were on, and when he opened his. eyes, Ostrovsky, who was seated astraddle a chair at the end of the bed, smiled wide with pleasure.

“Ah, you’re finally awake, Mr. McGarvey. We thought you might sleep another night through.”

“What time is it?” McGarvey mumbled, feigning more drowsiness than he felt. The son of a bitch knew his name already. He probably had a source within the SVR.

“Six in the evening,” Ostrovsky said. “You’ve been sleeping for more than fifteen hours.”

His ferret-faced accountant was perched on the arm of a couch across the room, and two very large men in shirtsleeves, large caliber handguns that looked like G lock-17s in their shoulder holsters, watched alertly from where they stood on either side of the door.

The leather satchel lay open on the floor next to a table on which the bolt-cutters and the component parts of the sniper rifle were laid out.

“Christ,” McGarvey said. He shoved the covers back and struggled to sit up, swinging his feet to the floor. He hunched over and held his head in his hands. “I feel like shit. What the hell did you put in my drink?”

“In your food actually, but it was just a sedative,” Ostrovsky said.

McGarvey looked up, bleary-eyed. “Can I have a cigarette?”

Ostrovsky tossed him a pack of Marlboros and a gold lighter. When McGarvey had a cigarette lit he looked over at the Mafia boss as if something had just occurred to him.

“What did you call me?”

“Your name is Kirk McGarvey, and-from what I was told you are certainly inventive and a very dangerous man,” Ostrovsky said. He nodded toward the gun parts on the table. “You’ve come here to assassinate someone with that rifle. My guess is the Tarantula. Given half a chance and a little better luck, you might have succeeded. Which brings up some very interesting possibilities.”

McGarvey smiled wanly in defeat.

“So you have me. Now what?”

“Now what indeed?” Ostrovsky said. “That depends in part on your cooperation, because I think you are a very valuable piece of property. The question is would you be just as valuable dead, or are we going to have to see that you remain alive? It’ll be a matter of propaganda.”

“I don’t follow you,” McGarvey said dully. He hung his head and coughed deeply as if he were having trouble catching his breath.

“Certainly the Tarantula would pay a fair sum of money if he knew that you were no longer capable of gunning for him. Contacting him, and convincing him of what and who you are, might be tricky but not impossible.”

“There are methods,” the accountant put in. “The Militia and FSK are looking for you with a great deal of passion, though not for the reasons you stated,” Ostrovsky said with amusement. “President Kabatov means to arrest the Tarantula and place him on trial for murder and treason. But in order to do that you mustn’t be allowed to carry out your nefarious plans.” Ostrovsky shook his head in amazement and glanced over at his accountant.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me either, Yakov,” the ferret face said, the hint of a smile at the corners of the thin mouth.

McGarvey coughed again, and had to prop himself up with his hands on his knees.

“Then there’s your own government, Mr. McGarvey, which has already spent hundreds of million of dollars trying to make sure that we Russians don’t slip back into our old ways. They certainly might be willing to pay a great deal of money to have you delivered alive and safe at the U.S. Embassy. It would save them from international censure if it were to come out that the CIA had plotted to assassinate a legitimate Russian presidential candidate.”

McGarvey stubbed out the cigarette and looked up at Ostrovsky. “What do you want me to say?” he asked groggily.

“I’m sure that given the choice you would much rather go home. Who in Washington would be willing to make a deal?”

“Howard Ryan,” McGarvey said after a moment. “He’s Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA.”

“What about the director himself?”

“You’ll have to start with Ryan, he’s the one looking for me. He’d have the most to gain.”

Ostrovsky tossed a cell phone over. “Call him.”

McGarvey looked at the phone and shook his head. “I need a shower first, I feel like shit.”

“You can have a shower later.”

“Now, goddammit. You’ve got me, so cut me a little slack before I puke all over your fancy carpet,” McGarvey said, letting a pleading note creep into his voice. He’d been listening for sounds from elsewhere in the club, but there was nothing. Either no one was around at this hour, or this room was located in an isolated area.

“Go with him,” Ostrovsky told the two bodyguards.

They came over as McGarvey started to rise. At the last moment he stumbled as if he had lost his balance, and one of the guards caught him. It was all the opening he needed. He snatched the Glock-17 out of the man’s shoulder holster and shouldered the man out of the way. The other guard reached for his gun when McGarvey shot him twice in the chest, knocking him backward off his feet. The first guard caught his balance and reached for McGarvey who switched aim and shot the man in the face at point blank range.

Ostrovsky was coming out of his chair, and the accountant was starting for the door. McGarvey shot the ferret in the side of the head, sending him crashing over the low coffee table, at the same moment a panicked Ostrovsky was dragging a pistol out of his pocket.

McGarvey pointed his gun at the Mafia boss. “Nyet!” he shouted.

Ostrovsky ignored the warning, as he got out the pistol, which McGarvey recognized as his own Walther, and raised it.

McGarvey dispassionately shot the man twice in the chest, knocking him off his feet, where he landed in a heap in front of the couch.

At the door McGarvey listened but there were no sounds in the corridor. No one had heard the shots, and no alarm had been raised.

He went into the bathroom where he showered off the blood that had splattered on him, then found his clothes in a heap on the floor. After he got dressed, he repacked the rifle components and the bolt-cutter in the leather satchel, then retrieved his own gun, spare magazine and silencer from Ostrovsky’s body.

It was 6:45 when he finished, and still mere were no sounds from the corridor, but by now the club would be busy with early arrivals. No one would expect trouble. In fact it was likely that no one else knew about Os trovsky’s guest.

Hefting the satchel in his left hand, McGarvey let himself out, and hurried noiselessly to the end of the corridor, which turned left through a pair of doors that led to the front of the club. Now he could hear music, and the sounds of laughter, and voices.

Without undue haste, he walked to the front of the club, through the entry foyer, past the front desk staff and doormen who paid him no attention, and outside as a valet was getting out of a BMW sedan. Several armed guards stood around, but they ignored him.

He walked around to the driver’s side, nodded pleasantly to the young parking attendant, tossed his bag inside, got behind the wheel and took off before anyone realized what was happening. McGarvey watched in the rearview mirror as the valet sprinted inside, but then he was turning down the driveway and toward the highway that led back into Moscow.

Jacqueline Belleau’s Russian driver that the French Embassy had provided her passed through the prison gates a few minutes before 7:00 p.m.” and she had to clutch her purse between her knees to keep them from knocking. As the SDECE’s Paris Chief of Station Claude Na vicet had told her this afternoon when the meeting with Bykov had been set up: “These people mean business, so watch yourself.” Which she thought was the same as saying be careful when you stick you head into the lion’s mouth. The request had been taken directly to General Yuryn, the director of the FSK. Jacqueline had listened in on the conversation, and although she spoke no Russian she detected a reluctance in his voice. Since the Russians had asked the French for help, however, he could not refuse.

A guard came out of the gatehouse, and Jacqueline powered down her window, and passed out her papers. “I have an appointment to meet with Colonel Bykov,” she said in French.

Her driver opened his window and translated.

The guard took her papers back into the gatehouse, and a couple of minutes later returned with another guard. He handed Jacqueline’s papers back to her, and said something in Russian.

“This man will escort us to Colonel Bykov’s office,” her driver translated.

The second guard climbed in the front, and they drove to the rear of the compound where they parked in front of a low yellow brick building whose barred windows had been painted black.

Chernov was alone in his office. Although he seemed impatient, he smiled pleasantly and shook her hand. “I’m Yuri Bykov,” he said in French.

“I’m Jacqueline Belleau, and my service has sent me from Paris to help out.” Chernov was tall, well built and in Jacqueline’s opinion, handsome. But his smile was fake.

“Frankly I don’t know what you can do that your government hasn’t already done,” Chernov said. “But I’ll take any help that I can get, because we’re clutching at straws. McGarvey is here in Moscow, we know that much. But this is a very big city, and we simply can’t find him.”

“Have you spoken with the CIA yet?”

“Not directly,” Chernov said. “But I don’t think they’d care to send one of their officers over here from the embassy.” He smiled again. “I know we certainly wouldn’t send one of our people from our embassy in Washington over to FBI headquarters if the situation were reversed.”

“Well it’s a good thing I came to see you tonight, because there’s something that you cannot be aware of,” Jacqueline said, conscious that she was taking a very large risk. But she didn’t know what else to do. “Like you, we and the Americans want to see Kirk McGarvey pulled back from the brink of this madness. Nobody condones assassination, and in the past McGarvey has been a friend to France. In fact he makes his home in Paris.”

“I know.”

“What you don’t know is that his daughter Elizabeth also works for the CIA. She was sent to work with me in Paris to find her father.”

“Extraordinary,” Chernov said. “I had no idea. Is she here with you?”

The bastard was lying. Jacqueline could see it in his cold eyes.

“I don’t know where she is, Colonel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She and I traced her father to an apartment in Riga, but that’s as far as we got. She disappeared into thin air, and the Riga police swear that they know nothing about it.”

“What exactly do you mean, disappeared?” Chernov asked quietly.

“Just that,” Jacqueline said. “We staked out his apartment that-night, but when it was evident he was gone, I went over to my embassy to call for instructions. Elizabeth remained behind to continue watching the apartment. When I came back a couple hours later she was gone. The landlady — knew nothing, nor, as I said, did the police. There was no sign of a struggle. She was just gone.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“She followed her father here to Moscow, I have no doubt about it. Neither does the CIA,” Jacqueline said. She brushed a strand of hair off her forehead.. “I hated to bring this news to you, Colonel, because I know how it will affect your investigation. But the Americans are very keen on getting Elizabeth home safe’. After all she was sent over to help stop her father, at your government’s request. And in the past few weeks working with the girl — she’s only twenty-three — I became very fond of — her. So it’s become personal with me.”

“Amazing,” Chernov said. “In any event we can all agree that Kirk McGarvey has come here to assassinate one of our presidential candidates.”

“That’s still a matter of speculation, actually,” Jacqueline said. “Elizabeth is traveling on her own passport. The name McGarvey is not very common, so I’m wondering if any of your people have heard anything. I assume that you’re watching the border crossings, trains, planes, buses, car rental agencies, hotels, things like that.”

“To my knowledge her name has not shown up on any of our surveillance reports. But if I hear anything I’ll contact you at your embassy, Mademoiselle Belleau,” he said. “I would ask that you let me know in turn if she shows up at her own embassy or yours.”

“I’ll inform the Americans, I’m sure they’ll be happy to help out.”

Ten minutes later Captain Petrovsky telephoned Chernov from Militia Headquarters in the old City Soviet Building.

“We may have something, Colonel.”

“What is it?” said Chernov, his mind still on the French woman. Her coming here had disturbed him. It was something outside his control, something unexpected. He didn’t like that.

“A Mafia boss, his money man and two of his bodyguards were gunned down about a half hour ago. The only reason we got it so fast was that one of General Mazayev’s people happened to be out there and called me direct.”

“Where did this happen?” Chernov demanded with his full attention now.

“That’s the thing, we should have known. At the Grand Dinamo. It’s inside the stadium, not two thousand meters from the flea market.”

“That’s it. Did anybody see anything?”

“Not the murders, but about the same time a man came out of the club, jumped into a blue BMW and took off. But it wasn’t his car. The general description the valet provided more or less fits McGarvey.”

“All right, put out an all-points bulletin for that car.”

“I sent the bulletin before I called you. If that car is still in Moscow we’ll find it.”

“Don’t screw it up this time, Illen,” Chernov warned quietly.

“No.”

McGarvey parked near a metro station around the corner from the Bolshoi Theater at 7:20. Taking the satchel with him lie found a public phone inside the station and despite the risk that the phone was being monitored for international calls, he used his Allain credit card to reach Otto Rencke. He figured that the staff at the Grand Dinamo would have been confused for the first few minutes by the theft of the car out from under their noses, and when they had gone looking for their boss, but instead found his body and those of his accountant and bodyguards, they might have panicked. It would take them time to get organized and even more time to decide what to do. The loss of a member’s car was nothing in comparison to the murders. But sooner or later they would realize that the two events were connected and they would do something. They’d either call the Militia, who might put two and two together in due time, or they’d put the word out on the street, which would be a lot faster.

“Hiya,” Rencke answered cautiously on the first ring.

“Have you heard from my daughter?” McGarvey asked.

“Oh boy, Mac, am I ever glad you called, because you’ve gotta get out of there right now. Whatever it takes, just run to the embassy and everything can be worked out.”

If the line was clear and Rencke could talk, he was supposed to respond that he’d heard from Elizabeth and everything was fine. But he hadn’t, and he sounded all strung out.

“I’ll come for you when I can.”

“Noo, Mac,” Otto cried. “You don’t understand. The line is clear, I’m okay, but it’s Elizabeth. Something’s happened. Something terrible.”

A cold fist clutched at McGarvey’s heart. “What’s happened?”

“Elizabeth is there in Moscow. Chernov picked her up in Riga, which means Tarankov’s probably got her, and is going to use her for bait.”

McGarvey closed his eyes. “Christ, Christ,” he said softly, as he tried to get ahold of himself. He opened his eyes. “I can’t talk very long, but from the beginning, Otto, what the hell is going on?”

“Call me from the embassy, please. Just get out of there.”

“Goddammit, Otto!”

“Oh shit, oh shit. The field officer Ryan sent over to look for you was Elizabeth. She’s working for the CIA now. She was with the DI, but Ryan recruited her to help find you. So she came to Paris but the SDECE picked her up, and she and Jacqueline Belleau were assigned to stake out your apartment.”

This wasn’t believable, and yet McGarvey knew goddamned well it was true. Ryan was capable of all of it. McGarvey held the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white, but if anyone passing in the busy station noticed anything they gave no sign of it.

“Mac, are you still there?” Otto asked fearfully.

“I’m here.”

“It took Elizabeth a couple of weeks, but she started surfing the net and she found me. She just put it together, Mac. I swear I was hammered right to my knees when she showed up.”

“How did she find out about Riga?”

“I told her,” Otto wailed. “I don’t know why, but you were walking into a trap by calling Yemlin. Chernov had his phone bugged and when you made the call it was traced~I had to stay here, so Elizabeth and Jacqueline took off for Riga. They were just supposed to warn you that Chernov was on his way. But Elizabeth got caught, and Jacqueline saw it all.”

“You shouldn’t have told her about Riga,” McGarvey said softly.

“I know that now, but there was no other way, Mac. Believe me, if I could rip my heart out I would.” Otto was practically in tears. “Just go to the embassy, Mac. Please, God, just do that for me. Once I know that you’re clear I’ll call Murphy and he can tell the President. Between the political pressure from Washington, and Jacqueline slowing Chernov down there’s a chance this’ll all turn out okay. But you’ve got to get out of there, Mac. Right now.”

“Now what are you talking about?” McGarvey demanded.

“Jacqueline convinced her people to send her to Moscow to work with the police commission—”

“Does she know who Bykov really is?”

“Yes. And so does the CIA, I think, but nobody’s going to do a thing until you get out of the way. Once you’re safely in the embassy Tarankov will have no reason to hold Elizabeth, and he’ll let her go.”

McGarvey’s head was spinning. “I don’t think so.”

“Yes, Mac. At this stage in the revolution the man would be a fool to alienate the West over a simple kidnapping.”

“He doesn’t give a damn about us. In less than two days he’s going to be running this country. It’ll be his finger on the nuclear triggers and all the Ryan’s of the world won’t give a damn. They’ll sacrifice my daughter’s life without batting an eye.”

“Dammit, Mac—”

“Get out of (here right now, Otto. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.”

“I’m sorry, Mac. I’m sorry—”

“It’s not your fault. Just get out of there while you can.”

McGarvey broke the connection, and for several minutes he was unable to do anything but sit there conscious of his beating heart, conscious of a tightness in his gut. He could see Elizabeth two Thanksgivings ago. He could feel her body, smell her scent as they hugged good-bye when she was leaving to go back to her job in New York, and his jaw tightened.

Tarankov would not harm her until after the May Day parade because he needed her until then. He was using her for bait, Otto said.

Well if you bait a hook, you should be prepared for what you catch.

He picked up the phone again.

Rencke caught Roland Murphy at his desk in Langley just as the CIA director was about to leave for lunch. “General, this is Otto Rencke. I think you know who I am, because I’m helping Kirk McGarvey and you and the French are looking for us.”

There was a silence on the line for several seconds.

“We don’t have time to screw around, Mr. Director. If you’re trying to trace this call, don’t bother, because you can’t do it.”

“Where are you calling from?” Murphy asked, his voice measured.

“I’m in Paris. But that’s not important. Kirk McGarvey has reached Moscow, but so has his daughter, Elizabeth. Your DDO, Howard Ryan, sent her over a couple of weeks ago to help the French find her father. They traced him to Riga, where Colonel Bykov, who heads the Russian police commission looking for him, picked her up. The thing is, Bykov is an alias. His real name is Leonid Chernov and he works as Tarankov’s chief of staff. That means Elizabeth is probably being held prisoner by Tarankov. Do you understand what I’m telling you, General?”

“I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t know who the hell you think you are, or what the hell you’re trying to do—”

“Mac always said you were even more stubborn than he was,” Rencke cut in. “But he said you were a smart and honorable man. Watch this.”

Before the call Rencke had entered the CIA’s computer system. He brought up the monitor on Murphy’s desk, and downloaded the

Bykov-Chernov file he’d generated, along with copies of the net chat he’d had with Elizabeth, and the records of the phone trace to the Riga apartment. “Your phone line and computer access codes are supposed to be super-secure,” Rencke said. “Remind me one of these days, and if I have the time I’ll show your people why they’re living in a dream world and how to fix it.”

There was another silence on the line, this time for nearly a minute.

“I see what you mean,” Murphy said. “I’m not going to ask right now how you-got this information, but it’s all new to me. I had no idea that Ryan was using Elizabeth McGarvey to find her father.”

“You picked him as your DDO, General,” Rencke said harshly. “The man is a dangerous fool, and because of him there’s a very good chance that Elizabeth will be killed unless you do something about it right now.”

“Even if Tarankov has her, he won’t do anything until after the elections, which gives us several weeks.”

“Wrong answer,” Rencke said. “Tarankov will make his move in Red Square tomorrow. And Mac will be there to try to kill him.”

“My people tell me differently.”

“Your people are wrong. We’re not talking about political correctness here, General. This isn’t what the White House wants to hear, this is the truth. Unless something is done immediately a lot of good people are going to get hurt, friends of mine. Not only that, Washington is going to end up with its trousers down around its ankles, as per usual. Use your friggin’ head, Murphy!”

“Listen here—”

“You listen,” Rencke shouted. “If you want to play games with me, I’ll crash your entire system. I’ll set a super virus loose in every intelligence and Department of Defense computer in the country! That’s something else your analysts tell you is impossible. But, Mr. Director, you can’t believe how simple it would be to do.”

“What do you want?” Murphy demanded.

“I’m not going to ask you to take my word, Mr. Director, I may be naive but I’m not stupid. Check with Ryan, and find out exactly what that bastard has been doing. In the meantime I’ll download everything in my files on Tarankov and what’s about to happen over there. When you’ve got all that, take it to President Lindsay. The Russians asked for his help, well he’s in a position now to do just that.”

“How?”

“Jumped up Jesus, do I have to explain everything?” Rencke said. “The Russians have to arrest Tarankov before the May Day rally in Red Square tomorrow. No matter what it takes. Because if Tarankov is sitting in a jail cell there’ll be no reason to hold Elizabeth.”

Murphy sighed. “I see what you mean. But I don’t know if the President will go along with such a suggestion.”

“Try, General,” Rencke said. “At least do that much. Mac has done a lot for his country, maybe it’s time that his country does something for him and his family.”

“We found the car,” Petrovsky shouted. “It’s parked on Marx Prospekt around the corner from the Bolshoi, about a hundred meters from the Ploshchad Revolyutsi metro station.”

“Is there any sign of McGarvey?” Chernov demanded.

“Not yet, but we’ve got plenty of men down there so that if he shows up he won’t have a chance.”

“What about the metro station itself, you fool? Have you got any men inside?”

“Yeb was, no.”

“If he spots your people that’s where he’ll go, if he hasn’t already simply walked away. I want you to shut down every metro in the city, and station men at every stop. We might still have a chance to catch him.”

“I’ll get on it right now,” Petrovsky said.

“If your people see nun, shoot him on the spot,” Chernov ordered. “I’m coming down there myself right now.”

The bellman Artur wasn’t expected back at the Metropol for another hour.

McGarvey hung up the telephone. He’d already been here too long. He had to put as much distance between himself and the BMW as possible, because by now the word might have gotten to the Militia. But it was hard to think straight for fear of what Elizabeth was going through at this moment. He wanted to lash out right now, strike back, but he was powerless.

A train had arrived at the metro station and a crowd of people came up the fast moving escalators and surged for the exit. McGarvey picked up the satchel and fell in behind them. Like Astimovich, Artur had connections in the city. But if he couldn’t or wouldn’t help with a place to stay, McGarvey would have to find an out-of-the-way workingman’s hotel where he could bribe the desk clerk into not requiring identity documents. It would be risky, but he had to get off the streets as soon as possible.

The crowd slowed down and stopped. There seemed to be some sort of a bottleneck at the exit, and a commotion started. McGarvey stepped to one side in time to catch a glimpse of at least three Militia officers in riot gear, pushing their way through.

They had found the damn car.

McGarvey turned and walked back to the turnstile leading to the down escalator, the babushka in the glass booth watching him.

“Halt! Halt!” someone shouted from behind.

In three steps McGarvey was at the barrier, and he leaped over the turnstile, nearly catching the satchel handle, and tumbling down the rapidly moving escalator. But he regained his balance and took the moving stairs two at a time.

He caught up with a knot of people halfway to the bottom and bowled his way through them. He didn’t think that the Militia would be desperate enough to fire in a crowded escalator or subway platform. But they wouldn’t let him get away either. All the stations on this line would be covered.

At the bottom he pushed his way through the packed corridor through the arch and onto the crammed platform with its vaulted ceilings from which hung huge ornate crystal chandeliers. A train, its doors open and crowded with passengers, was not moving. The public address system was announcing that because of technical difficulties the metro was temporarily shut down, but to have patience.

The platform was a hundred yards long, and by the time he reached the far end, a buzz of excitement was growing behind him, spreading like a tidal wave. The Militia were clearing a path down the middle by shoving the people to one side or the other, and it was obvious that it would take them only a minute or so to reach the end of the platform.

With nowhere else to go, McGarvey jumped down to the track level, and raced into the black maw of the tunnel. People on the platform shouted for him to come back, and before he got twenty yards the beams of several flashlights appeared behind him.

The next stop would be two or three hundred yards away, and by now the Militia would be heading down the tunnel from that end meaning to catch him in the middle.

His suspicions were confirmed in the next minute when he spotted the pinpoints of several flashlights in the distance ahead. But at that moment he also spotted his way out, a low steel door set in a recess in the tunnel wall, and secured by an old-fashioned iron padlock.

Standing to the side to protect himself from bullet fragments, he fired three shots into the padlock, the third finally springing it.

The Militia at either end of the tunnel, thinking they were being fired upon, opened fire with automatic weapons, bullets and sparks and stone chips flying off the tunnel walls, ceiling and tracks.

McGarvey pulled the ruined padlock away and forced the heavy steel door open on rusty hinges. In what little light there was he could see narrow concrete stairs leading down into the absolute darkness. A cold breeze wafted up from below, bringing with it the damp smells of water and sewage.

He” stepped through the door as something hot and very sharp slammed into his left armpit, shoving up against the open door, and nearly dropping him to his knees. But then he straightened up and raced headlong down the stairs.

Chernov shined the beam of his flashlight on the few drops of blood in the doorway off the metro tunnel. The trains were still being held, and the tunnel was busy with Militia cops searching the tracks centimeter by centimeter.

“At least one of your men got lucky,” Chernov said to Petrovsky. “Why didn’t anyone follow him?”

“Do you know what’s down there, Colonel?”

“Yes, I do.”

“With a man of his caliber I think we need reinforcements before I send any of my people into that maze. There are thousands of places where he could wait in ambush.”

“He only has so many bullets.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel, but I won’t give that order until the Army shows up. They’ll be here within a half-hour, and we’ll have a good chance of flushing him out.”

“In the meantime he could be anywhere.”

“He won’t get very far in the condition he’s in,” Petrovsky said. He shined his flashlight down the trail of blood droplets finally lost in the darkness. “If he keeps losing blood he’ll probably pass out or become too weak to-fight back.” Petrovsky looked into Chernov’s eyes. “The sewers aren’t such a healthy place to be for a wounded man.”

“Neither is Lefortovo for a healthy man,” Chernov said. “Keep me informed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chernov walked back out to the tunnel, and up on the street General Yuryn beckoned him over to the limousine. He climbed in back and they took off.

“Tarankov will be at the rally in Red Square tomorrow and yet with all the resources at your command you have failed to stop one man,” Yuryn said coolly. “Are you going to merely stand by and let him succeed?”

“He’s wandering around in the dark sewers, wounded and losing a lot of blood,” Chernov said indifferently, although he was seething inside, and he was beginning to have his doubts that they’d ever had a true measure of the man.

“But I’m told he still has that shoulder bag. And we all know what that might contain.”

“The Army will be here in a few minutes, and they’ll make a systematic search of every hiding place down there.”

“That would seem an impossible task given the time remaining.”

“It might flush him out if he’s not already dead.”

Yuryn laughed humorlessly. “Maybe Tarankov should postpone his appearance.”

“He won’t do that,” Chernov said. “Neither will he send a double.”

“I didn’t think so,” Yuryn said. “So tomorrow it’ll come down to you versus Mr. McGarvey. I wonder who the better man is?”