Assassin

FORTY

Chernov mounted the stairs to the reviewing stand atop Lenin’s Mausoleum as the bells inside the Kremlin finished tolling midnight.

Workmen were busy putting the final touches on the platform for President Kabatov and the several dozen dignitaries who were expected to show up. Lights, banners, and a sound system were being installed here, as well as across the vast square that had been blocked off from all normal pedestrian traffic.

Soldiers and Militia officers manned the barricades and checked the papers of everyone entering or leaving, in part because McGarvey still had not been flushed out of hiding, but also because such precautions were normal for these kinds of events. This May Day parade and celebration was supposed to be the biggest in twenty years because Kabatov had made his conciliatory gesture to the Communists by assuming the party chairmanship.

But the carnival would backfire on them when Tarankov swept into Red Square at the head of his column of commandoes and announced to his people that he was returning the Rodina to them, the same message he’d been repeating for nearly five years. This time everybody would believe it.

Unless McGarvey killed him.

Chernov stood at the parapet and let his eyes drift across the periphery of the square, which tomorrow afternoon would be crammed with a million people. Special riot police and anti-terrorism squads would be dispersed throughout the crowd, but even Chernov had to admit to himself that spotting one man in that mob would be next to impossible.

“Let’s see your identification,” a gruff voice demanded.

Chernov turned to face an older man dressed in the special Militia uniform worn by guards detailed to Lenin’s Mausoleum. He handed his identification book over, then glanced up at the Kremlin walls towering over the rear of the mausoleum.

“Pardon me, Colonel,” the guard said, handing the booklet back. “But we can’t be too careful.”

“Who are you looking for?” Chernov asked.

“Anyone who doesn’t belong up here,0 the guard said.

“Aren’t you aware that we’re looking for someone specific? Weren’t you briefed before you came on duty?”

“No, sir. When we closed up downstairs I was ordered to help check everyone who came up here.”

“You weren’t shown a photograph?”

“No, sir,”

Chernov took McGarvey’s photograph out of his jacket pocket and gave it to the guard.

“Ah, the Belgian gentleman. He was here, visiting Lenin, about three weeks ago, I think. Name is Allain, if my memory serves” The guard looked up. “What’s he done?”

Chernov fought to keep his temper in check.

“There must be a thousand people visiting here every day, many of them foreigners, and yet you can recall this one?”

The guard shifted his stance. “He wasn’t like most of them. He was respectful. He even brought flowers.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Just a few words,” the guard responded diffidently, suspecting that he was in trouble. “But he seemed genuinely interested.”

“So he came to visit the tomb, he dropped off some flowers, you and he had a little chat, and then he left. Is that correct?”

“No, sir. He wanted to come up here so that he could stand where so many … great men had stood.”

“You brought him here?” Chernov demanded harshly.

“Yes, sir,” the guard said miserably. “But he only stayed for a minute.”

“What did he do while he was up here?”

The guard shrugged. “Why, the same thing you did, sir. First he looked down at the square, and then he looked back up at the Kremlin wall.”

“Do you know how to use your gun?”

The guard looked down at the Makarov pistol in its holster at his side. “Yes, sir.”

“The next time you see your gentleman, I want you to shoot him. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t stop to chat, or admire the scenery, just shoot him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chernov raced back to his car, and got on the phone to the Kremlin locator to find Kabatov’s chief of security, General Korzhakov, in his car heading home.

“The son of a bitch was carrying a KGB general’s uniform. He’s going to try for a clear shot at Tarankov from inside the Kremlin, and make his escape in the confusion.”

“That’s inventive,” Korzhakov said. “But he’s not going to last until June in the sewers.”

“I want security in and around the Kremlin tightened up.”.

“After we get through today’s nonsense I’ll review our procedures with you—”

“Do it tonight, General.”

The line was dead for a moment.

“Tarankov wouldn’t dare show his face in Moscow now.”

“Just do it.”

“Where are you getting your information?” Korzhakov demanded angrily.

“It’s common knowledge on the street, General. I’m not saying that Tarankov will show up, but a lot of people believe he will. Maybe McGarvey does too.”

“You have a point, Bykov,” Korzhakov said. “I’m turning around now. I’ll be back in my office in a half hour.”

Aboard Tarankov’s Train

Sometime after midnight, by Elizabeth’s reckoning, she finally managed to work a corner of the window’s blackout shade loose so she could look outside. But it was pitch black and there was nothing to see except some woods across a narrow clearing.

In the thirty-six hours since Liesel had tried to molest her, she’d been left on her own. Except for the pleasant soldier bringing her meals at 8:00 a.m.” noon, and 8:00 p.m.” nothing had happened and she was half-crazy with fear and boredom.

She sat back disappointed, then got up and pulled down the tiny sink so that she could splash some water on her face. Her eyes in the mirror were bloodshot because she’d not been able to get any sleep since the incident with Liesel. Nor had she allowed herself to get undressed so that she could take a shower. She was worried that Liesel would return and catch her in a vulnerable position. During the day it had been easier for her, because there’d been a great deal of activity in and around the train. She’d heard machinery running, men talking and laughing, and a constant stream of footsteps past her door. Once she’d heard a woman’s voice raised either in laughter or in a shout, she’d not been able to tell which. But she thought it must have been Liesel, because she didn’t think there would be any other women aboard.

She’d thought that perhaps they were getting ready to move out, but by the time her evening meal was delivered the activity had all but ceased, and they’d gone nowhere.

Drying her face, she went to the door to listen, but there were no sounds. She knew that she was in the last car of the train, but other than this compartment she had no idea what was in the car or who shared it with her.

She tried the knob as she had several times before, this time it turned easily in her hand, and the door opened a crack. She froze, her stomach doing a slow roll. She reached over and flipped off the lights, plunging the compartment into darkness.

Guards would be posted outside, but they’d be watching for someone to come toward the train, not get away. If she could reach the woods she thought she might have a good chance of getting several miles before she was missed. By then she didn’t think they’d come after her.

Girding herself for the dash she opened the door. Tarankov was standing there, an intent look on his face. She knew why he had come, just as she knew that there was probably nothing she could do to prevent it. She was alone, and her luck had just run out.

“Were you going somewhere?” Tarankov asked. “Not such a good idea having you running around the countryside at this hour of the morning.”

Elizabeth stepped back and he entered the compartment, switched on the light, and closed the door.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice dry in her throat.

“I think you know.”,

“I’ll fight you, and you might even have to kill me. If that happened I wouldn’t be much use as bait.”

“Your father wouldn’t find out about that until it was too late for nun,” Tarankov said quietly. “They almost had him tonight in Moscow. He was wounded, and now he’s trying to hide in the sewers.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Leonid wanted me to send an impersonator to make my speech in Red Square, in case your father got through. But I don’t think that’s necessary any longer.” Tarankov smiled. “I don’t think you’ll be needed at my side on the reviewing stand either. So it makes no difference if you’re damaged tonight.”

“I’ll tell your wife—”

“She thinks I’m a god,” Tarankov cut in. “So will you after tonight.”

Elizabeth lunged at him, but he easily stepped aside and backhanded her in the side of her head with so much force she was knocked across the compartment onto the narrow cot, spots and pinwheels of lights flashing in front of her eyes.

He ripped open her fatigue shut, and pawed her breasts, the pain of the assault real but so distant she was Unable to defend herself for the moment.

He tore the front of her trousers open and pulled them down around her ankles, and off, then spread her legs and opened his trousers and pulled them down, his erect penis leaping out.

“No,” she cried, trying to fight him off as she regained consciousness. “Oh, God no. Please, no!”

The compartment door slammed open, and Tarankov reared back as his wife stormed in, a big semiautomatic pistol in her hand.

“I thought I’d find you here, you rotten prick,” she screeched, waving the gun around. *

Tarankov got to his feet, and calmly pulled his trousers up. “Well, Schatzle, you were right about one thing: Neither of us will get to fuck her.”

“Not until after you’re in the Kremlin, you mean,” said Liesel, who was not mollified.

Tarankov moved away from the cot as Liesel came closer, pointing the pistol first at him, and then at Elizabeth. The woman had been drinking, and her face was flushed and she was unsteady on her feet. But she was also crazy, a maniacal glint in her eyes, spittle flying from her mouth as she ranted. “If you and your little whore were dead, maybe the people would sing a different tune!”

“Over fucking her?” Tarankov asked mildly. “If you want her that badly, go ahead, I won’t stop you—”

Liesel pointed the pistol directly at her husband’s head and cocked the hammer. “First you, you cocksucker!”

Elizabeth had gathered her legs beneath her, and she sprang up suddenly, shoving Liesel aside. The gun fired, but the shot went wild. Liesel crashed against the door and Elizabeth snatched the gun from her hand, and tried to step back out of the way. But the German woman was wild with insane rage, and she charged, leaving Elizabeth no other choice except to fire.

The shot caught Liesel high in the chest between her sternum and esophagus, and she was driven backward, blood splattering the wall.

Without thinking Elizabeth spun on her heel, pointed the gun at Tarankov, who hadn’t moved, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The slide was back, in the locked open position.

Tarankov came forward and took the gun from her hand, just before the first of the commandoes appeared in the doorway.

“There are never more than two bullets in gun,” he told Elizabeth gently.

“There were shots, sir,” one of the men said.

“An unfortunate situation here, Lieutenant,” Tarankov said, staring at Elizabeth. He shook his head. “My wife tried to rape this girl, who was forced to defend herself.” Tarankov looked up. “Have the body removed, please, and get someone in here to clean up the mess.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Make sure everybody settles down, this will be a busy day. A busy day indeed.”

McGarvey, one hand pressed against the wound beneath his armpit, the other propping him up against the cold damp tunnel wall, held his breath for several moments to listen. It was after 2:00 a.m.” and there was nothing now, other than the distant rumble of fast-moving water, probably one of the underground streams.

For a time he’d thought that he would not escape. There were too many men searching for him, seemingly coming from all directions. Several times he’d nearly stumbled into a search party, each time ducking back into a side tunnel at the last possible moment to avoid being trapped in the beams of their flashlights.

But it had been at least twenty minutes since he last heard anything. He didn’t think they’d given up the search, they were probably concentrating their efforts in ever-widening circles around the Ploshchad Revolyutsi metro station. For the moment he was outside their search pattern, but it wouldn’t last.

Picking up the satchel, which was becoming heavier the farther he went, he made his way along the pitch black storm sewer tunnel toward a circle of very dim gray light about twenty-five yards away.

The news that Tarankov had Elizabeth was nearly impossible to bear, and

yet the bright spark of hate it produced kept him going. She was his flesh and blood, his only child, who had been placed in harm’s way because of what he was. It didn’t matter that the Howard Ryan’s of the world gave the actual orders, it was men like himself who made those orders possible, and from a certain point of view even necessary.

If it had ever been possible for him to walk away from this, it had become totally impossible for him with Elizabeth’s capture. The men responsible — all the men responsible-would pay.

The light on the tunnel floor came from a grate in the roof, that led two hundred feet straight up to a storm grate in the street. In a spring snow melt off, or during a strong rainstorm, the storm sewers would become raging maelstroms as the water was channeled into the underground torrents that eventually emptied into the Moscow River. Where the tunnels sloped down they led to the rivers, and where they sloped up they led to collection points.

He cocked an ear to listen again, but still the only sound he could hear was the distant roar of rushing water.

The rally in Red Square was set for four o’clock this afternoon, which gave him something under fourteen hours to get into place undetected. But first he was going to have to take one more chance. He had to warn Jacque line to stay in the French Embassy no matter what happened, because in the aftermath there was no telling which way the country would go, or what the crowds or the military would do.

Another fifty yards and he came to one of the maintenance openings set every quarter mile or so into the tunnel just like the one he’d used to get down here from the metro track level. The steel door at the top would be locked, but on the way down he’d spotted steel rungs set in the wall that led back up to a drainage opening in the floor of the metro tunnel.

The stairs were damp and slippery with algae so he had to watch his step. By the time he reached the top he was winded and claustrophobic, the narrow walls pressing against him in the absolute darkness.

It took him several minutes fumbling around until he found the steel rungs a half-dozen steps from the landing. He slung the satchel over his shoulder and climbed the last ten feet or so until he detected a very faint light filtering down through a grate about three feet in diameter.

Bracing himself as best he could he put his shoulder to the grate and pushed. At first nothing happened, except that he could feel a fresh gush of warm blood trickling down his side.

He tried again, this time using his powerful leg muscles to push upward with every ounce of strength he had. The grate gave way with a tremendous screech that echoed off the metro tunnel walls, then fell away with a clang.

McGarvey waited for a full minute, spots dancing in front of his face, as he tried to catch his breath while at the same time listen for the sounds of someone coming down the tunnel to investigate the racket.

But no one came, and he climbed out of the access tunnel, looked both ways down the metro line, and headed the hundred yards toward the nearest lights.

The metro wouldn’t be running again until 6:00 a.m., so the only people in the stations or on the platforms would be maintenance workers, and Militia watching for him to try to make his escape.

An empty train was parked at the platform, its rear lights shining red, and its interior lights on. Ducking around the train, McGarvey looked up over the edge of the platform floor. The chandeliers had been turned low, but even so the light glinted off the tiled walls and ornately friezed arches. The long hall was empty.

Climbing up from the tracks, McGarvey crossed the platform, passed through one of the arches and found a bank of pay phones next to the restrooms near the foot of the stationary escalators. A steel accordion gate blocked the escalators for the night.

He went into the men’s room where he peeled off his jacket and opened his shirt. The wound was deep, and oozed blood, but fortunately the bullet had not hit a bone or cut a major blood vessel. He pulled a wad of paper towels from the dispenser, wetted them in the sink and washed the blood away. Then he pulled another wad of paper towels from the dispenser and stuffed them under his armpit. It wouldn’t stop the blood flow, but it would help.

He splashed some cold water on his face, put his jacket back on and went out to the pay phones where he dialed the French Embassy number from memory. “Eon soir. You have reached the Embassy of the Republic of France,” a woman’s voice said. It was an answering machine, but a night duty officer would be manning the switchboard. “Our normal office hours are—” “This is an emergency. My name is Kirk McGarvey, and I need to speak to Jacqueline Belleau immediately.”

A man came on. “This line is probably being monitored.”

“I know,” McGarvey said.

“Stand by, monsieur.”

McGarvey glanced up at the station name. He’d come up at the Lubyanka, directly across from the headquarters of the FSK. The irony just now was rich.

Jacqueline came on a minute later, out of breath. “Oh, Kirk, where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” McGarvey said. “I’ve only got a minute before I need to leave here. I’m calling off the hit, do you understand?”

“Thank God—”

“But I know about Liz, and I’m going after her. In the meantime you have to stay inside the embassy. No matter what happens, stay there.”

“I can come pick you up.”

“Just stay there, Jacqueline,” McGarvey said, and he hung up.

Chernov was just pulling up in front of FSK headquarters after a frustrating hour spent with General Korzhakov when Petrovsky called his cell phone. McGarvey had just now telephoned the woman at the French embassy. He was calling off the kill, and he said he knew about his daughter.

“Did you trace the call?”.” Chernov asked.

“He called from a pay phone in the Lubyanka metro station. So you were right, he’s using the storm sewers to get around.”

Chernov made a tight U-turn and shot across the broad Dzerzhinsky Square, no traffic for the moment. “I’m right across the square from the station,” he shouted.

“My people are less than three minutes away.”

“Do you have a map of the subway system in front of you?”

“Da. Right here.”

“He’s using the sewers, but he has to come up through a metro station. I want your people covering every station he can get to from here in case I don’t intercept him.”

Chernov screeched to a halt in front of the metro station, and pulled out his gun, as he ran across the sidewalk and took the stairs two at a time.

“There’re four of them—” Petrovsky was saying when his signal faded and cut off.

Halfway down, Chernov heard the first sirens at the same moment he heard a gunshot from below, and he thumbed his gun’s safety to the off position.

The shattered lock gave way, and McGarvey opened the accordion gate, stepped through, then stopped. He was hearing sirens, faintly in the distance, but getting closer. And another sound.

He stepped back around the corner, and held his breath. He had heard footsteps.

“McGarvey,” someone called from above.

McGarvey held his silence. “There’s no way out for you.”

It was Chernov, McGarvey had very little doubt. His call to Jacqueline had probably been monitored and traced here. By now the Militia would be scrambling to cover every metro station and storm sewer tunnel within a radius of a mile. Every second he remained here the tighter the net would become, and Chernov knew it.

McGarvey turned and silently headed back to the platform. “If you turn yourself in your daughter will be turned over to her embassy. Unharmed.”

“Bullshit,” McGarvey said to himself, not missing a step.

“McGarvey, you have my word on it,” Chernov’s voice echoed down the platform. “My word as an officer and gentleman.”

FORTY-ONE

Director of Central Intelligence Roland Murphy showed up at Howard Ryan’s third floor office a few minutes before 6:30 p.m.” his bodyguard in tow, after first confirming that his DDO was still at his desk.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this, Howard, but the President wants to see us,” he said.

Ryan looked up in surprise and pleasure. “Both of us? Right now?”

“Yes,” Murphy said, masking his contempt. “We’ll take my car, and I’ll brief you on the way over.”

Ryan put on his coat. “I don’t have the day’s summary ready, but I can bring my notes, and a few documents.”

“That won’t be necessary. All the President wants from us is the … truth.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What do you mean, Roland?”

Since Rencke’s disturbing telephone call, and the files he’d sent over, Murphy had done some checking on his own, first with Ryan’s assistant, Tom Moore, who had defended his boss’s action.

“The idea was merely to send her over to help the French find her father. We wanted to get a message to him, nothing more. At least that was the initial parameters we gave her.”

“But it didn’t happen that way.”

“No, Mr. Director, unfortunately. it did not. Apparently she’s more like her father than we first suspected. I’m recommending that her services be terminated, once she returns.”

“I see,” Murphy said coolly.

Next he called Elizabeth’s old boss, Bratislav Toivich in the DI’s Russian Division.

“Pardon me, Mr. Director, but you wouldn’t be asking me about the girl unless she was in trouble.”

“What do you know about her assignment?” Murphy asked directly.

“More than I should,” Toivich replied, in just as direct a manner.

“She’s in Moscow, and we think Tarankov’s people may have kidnapped her.”

“What are we doing about it?”

“I’m taking this to the President once I have all the facts. He can take it up with Kabatov. I need to know if Ms. McGarvey contacted you at any time.”

“She called from Paris worried that she and a young French woman working for the SDECE were being pressured into going to Moscow. I told her not to do it.”

“Did she have any contact with a man by the name Rencke?”

“She was looking for him there in Paris, and I gave her a couple of hints,” Toivich said. “Did she find him, General? Is that how you found out about this? Has Otto called you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Listen to him,” Toivich said. “He’s the only one I know who has the combination of brains and honesty. If Otto tells you something, you can take it to the bank.”

“We’ll get her back.”

“See that you do, General. She’s quite a young woman, and I’d hate to be in your shoes if something happens to her, and somehow her father makes it back to Washington.”

Finally he telephoned SDECE Director General Jean Baillot, who confirmed that Jacqueline Belleau had been sent to Moscow in an effort to misdirect the efforts of Bykov’s special police commission long enough to find out where Mademoiselle McGarvey was being held, and possibly get a message to the girl’s father. “Pardon, General, but it was not a good decision to set the young woman to find her father,” Baillot said quietly.

“You’re right, Jean. And now it’s up to me to get her back. Keep me informed night or day if you hear anything further.”

“Mais oui. Good luck.”

“The truth, Howard,” Murphy said to Ryan. “About why we sent Elizabeth McGarvey to Paris to find her father.”

Ryan’s lower lip curled. “She’s joined him in Moscow, you know. Like father like daughter.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s self-evident, Roland. She met him in Riga, and together they entered Russia where she’s probably going to help him kill Tarankov.” Ryan shook his head in amazement. “You have to admit that the bastard is smooth. He’s even enlisted the aid of his French girlfriend to spy for him on the Russian special police commission.”

Murphy wondered how he could have been so blind for so long about Ryan, except that the man knew his way around the Hill. Relations between Congress and the CIA had never been better. They had half the Senate practically eating out of their hands. All of it attributable to Ryan’s skills. But at what price, Murphy asked himself. At what terrible price?

“You shouldn’t have used her.”

“You’re right, Roland,” Ryan admitted. “I know that now. But at the time it was the only way I could see we had even a remote chance of finding him.” Ryan spread his hands. “Mea culpa, Roland. Mea culpa, what else can I say?”

Murphy wanted to take a poke at the smug bastard, but knowing the New York lawyer, he’d probably sue.

“Well, the President is going to ask you some tough questions, and I suggest that you answer him directly, and with the truth. No artifice this time.”

“What?”

“Jacqueline Belleau did not go to Moscow on her own to help McGarvey kill Tarankov, as you suggest, you sleazy bastard. The SDECE sent her to help find him. And as for Elizabeth, she was kidnapped by Tarankov’s people, who are probably going to use her as a human shield if they can’t use her to draw Kirk out of hiding. And as DCI it’s my fault as much as it is yours. So I’m going to have to answer some tough questions as well.”

Ryan’s face turned ashen.

“Get your ass in gear, the President is waiting for us.”

Lubyanka Metro Station

Jacqueline’s Russian driver got her to Dzerzhinsky Square at 2:45 a.m. They’d encountered a great deal of military and Militia activity downtown but they weren’t stopped until they reached the barricades across from the metro station.

She jumped out of the car and gave her passport to one of the Militia officers, her knees shaking so badly she was afraid she was going to trip over her own feet. What she was going to try to do could very well end up getting her and Kirk killed.

“Get word to Colonel Bykov that I’m here, and I can help him,” she said in French. Her driver translated for her.

“I’m sorry, madam, but you’ll have to stay here—” the guard said.

“Merde. If you value your stripes, just get word to him. I’m trying to save lives here!”

The cop looked nervously from her to the translator, then studied her passport. Making a decision, he walked over to a squad car, its blue lights flashing, and spoke to the Militia officer there. The officer looked at Jacque line’s passport, glanced over at her, then got on the radio. A minute later he came over, and handed back her passport.

“Do you speak English, madam?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Come with me, but your driver must remain here.”

“Return to the embassy,” she told her driver, then followed the Militia officer across the square and into the metro station where Chernov met her on the platform, Militia and military everywhere.

“How did you know to come here?” Chernov asked.

“We monitor your police frequencies,” Jacqueline said. “Have you found him yet?”

“No, but it won’t be long now. He’s in the storm sewer system, but we’ve blocked every tunnel within a kilometer.”

“How many people has he killed so far?”

“None. But he is wounded.”

“He’ll fight back, and believe me some of your people are going to come out of there in body bags unless you let me help out.”

“I’m listening.”

“Tell your people to hold their positions for the moment. I’ll go down there and find him for you. When he hears my voice he’ll give himself up. But you need to promise me something.”

Chernov looked amused. “What is that?”

“If I find him, you’ll allow him to come out unharmed.”

“He’ll be placed under arrest.”

“I understand. But I don’t want any trigger-happy cop shooting at shadows. I want to bring him out alive.”

“Why?” Chernov asked.

Jacqueline looked into his flat, gray eyes. “Because I happen to be in love with the man.”

“Ah, charming,” Chernov said. “But then you haven’t been completely honest with me.”

“None of us ever are, Colonel,” Jacqueline said. “How about it?”

Chernov nodded. “Very well,” he said. “It’ll take several minutes to get word to our people in the tunnels. It’s a problem of radio communication. When we’re ready I’ll have you escorted below.” He gave her an appraising look. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

“Not especially,” Jacqueline said.

“Do you want a weapon?”

She shook her head. “We’re wasting time.”

Murphy and Ryan were ushered into the Oval Office at 7:10 p.m. Besides the President, also present were his National Security Adviser Harold Secor, and the Secretaries of State, Jonathan Carter, and Defense, Paul Landry. No one looked happy. “If what you suggested to me on the phone this afternoon is true, Roland, we don’t have much time,” the President said.

“Yes, sir. President Kabatov will have to be informed immediately. He’s the only one who can stop this now.”

“Spell it out.”

“We believe that Yevgenni Tarankov will not wait until the elections to make his move,” Murphy said. “It’s probable that he’ll attempt a military coup later today during the May Day rally in Red Square, with a very good chance of succeeding. If Kabatov has surrounded himself with enough moderates and government loyalists he still has a chance of preventing it, but only if he acts now, and only if he has all the facts.”

“That’s not a course of action I could recommend,” Ryan broke in.

“When I want your advice, you chickenshit, I’ll ask for it,” said the President, his voice hard. “In the meantime keep your mouth shut.”

Ryan was stunned speechless.

“Kirk McGarvey has made it to Moscow, and there’s still a better than even chance that if Tarankov shows up in Red Square McGarvey will assassinate him. Or try to do it, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him because now he has a personal stake. His daughter Elizabeth, who works for us, was kidnapped by Tarankov’s people, and he’ll do everything in his power to rescue her.”

“Did you send her over there?” the President asked Ryan.

“I sent her to Paris, not Moscow, Mr. President,” said Ryan, subdued.

“Go on,” the President told Murphy. The others in the room glared at Ryan, who sank down in his chair.

“The former KGB officer who heads the police commission trying to find McGarvey, is in fact a man by the name of Leonid Chernov. He’s actually Tarankov’s chief of staff, and from what we can piece together is a former KGB assassin whose brother McGarvey killed a few years ago.”

“Jesus,” President Lindsay said softly. “That’s quite a bombshell you’re asking me to hand Kabatov.”

“I’m afraid there’s more, Mr. President,” Murphy said. “We also learned that as a young missile service officer Tarankov worked for us.”

The President and his advisers were caught completely off guard.

“His code name was Hammer, and his contact was our chief of Moscow station. It didn’t last long, but what he gave us was so good that we paid him a great deal of money for it. So much money, in fact, that when he quit he was able to buy and equip the train he’s been using for the past five years.”

“Do we have proof?”

“Yes, sir,” Murphy said. He withdrew four thick file folders from his briefcase and laid them on the President’s desk. “These came to light recently, but it was my decision to sit on the information because it was so potentially damaging to us. If we were to let it become public knowledge Tarankov could accuse the United States of trying to manipulate Russian politics by inventing something which, on the surface, seems so patently ridiculous that it must be a lie.”

“Why weren’t we given this information earlier?” Secor asked. “It would seem to be a bad decision.”

“Let’s not become Monday morning quarterbacks. We’ve all made bad decisions,” the President said. “What specifically are you suggesting I tell Kabatov?” he asked Murphy.

“Just the truth, Mr. President, something he’s probably short of at the moment. After that it’ll be up to him, but at least he’ll know what he’s actually facing.”

The President glanced up at the clock. “It’s three in the morning over there, they’ll have to get him out of bed.” He turned to Ryan. “If you’ll be good enough to leave now, we have work to do.”

Ryan got to his feet. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. He looked at Murphy. “I’ll get back to my office and finish the daily summary.”

“You and Tom Moore are relieved of duty as of this moment, Howard,”

Murphy said. “I’ve instructed security not to allow you back in. I’ll have your personal items sent to you within the next day or two.”

“You can’t do this,” Ryan said indignantly. “I’ll fight you in Congress—”

“That would be the worst mistake of your life, Ryan,” the President said coldly. “Everything that has taken place here this evening is top secret. Discuss the situation with anybody, and I’ll have you prosecuted under the National Secrets Act.”

Ryan backed up a step.

The President picked up the phone to his secretary. “Mr. Ryan is leaving, would you have a taxi pick him up?”

Ryan’s color was bad.

“Not at the West Portico,” the President said. “Mr. Ryan will meet the cab at the front gate.”

McGarvey hunched in the absolute darkness of a side tunnel that sloped sharply downward as he tried to catch his breath. The sounds of running water thundered in the narrow confines of the outflow tube, and a sharply cold wind came up from below. The floor here was greasy with mud and algae, making footing treacherous. If he fell he would slide into the underground river, and be swept away and probably drowned.

It was a mistake calling Jacqueline from the metro station. But he’d thought he would have enough time to make the call, reach the street level and get away before Chernov’s people closed in. But they were closer than he thought. It was just rotten luck that Chernov himself had been nearby. He only hoped that Jacqueline had heeded his warning to remain at her embassy.

Even over the roar of the water he’d been able to pick out the noise that his pursuers made and see the beams of their flashlights on the walls. They’d been coming at him from all directions, finally driving him down here, when suddenly about five minutes ago they’d stopped for some reason.

That worried him, because he could think of a number of methods Chernov could use to literally flush him out, such as opening a series of fire hydrants to flood this section of storm sewer tunnels, or even using chlorine gas.

Slinging the leather satchel over his shoulder, he cautiously made his way back up to the main sewer tunnel, where he stopped again to listen. He was about a hundred yards from where he’d re-entered the storm sewers beneath the Lubyanka metro station, and about fifty yards from one of the main tunnel intersections where he’d been driven back by the soldiers.

If the search parties had either pulled back, or were holding their positions in the darkness, he thought it might be possible to sneak past them. Once clear he could make his way through one of the metro stations back up to the streets.

Short of that, he would either spend the rest of his life being herded aimlessly down one dark tunnel after another, or he would finally be corned.

He spotted the reflection of a flashlight beam on the wet tunnel walls at the same instant he heard Jacqueline calling his name, and he pulled back hardly believing his own senses.

“Kirk, it’s me,” her voice echoed down the tunnel.

What was she doing here? What could she hope to accomplish? It was beyond reason.

“Colonel Bykov has pulled back his men,” Jacqueline called, much closer now. “If you come out with me you won’t be harmed. They’ll arrest you, but it can be worked out.”

She was a trained French intelligence officer, not some giddy girl. Which meant she had a plan, and somehow she’d convinced Chernov to go along with it. There was no way they were going to let him out of here alive, no matter what she’d been promised, and she knew that.

“Kirk, thank God,” she said.

McGarvey looked up half expecting to see the beam of her flashlight shining down the side tunnel, but she was at least ten yards away.

“I’m here to help you,” she called. “Someone tell Colonel Bykov we’re coming out as soon as he pulls his people back,” she shouted loudly.

McGarvey knew exactly what she was trying to.do. She meant to lead the search party away, giving him a chance of escaping. She was taking the chance that he was somewhere close, which meant she knew that all of his escape routes were blocked. But it wouldn’t work, because Chernov wouldn’t let either of them out of here alive.

“Mademoiselle, stay where you are,” Chernov called in French.

“Don’t come any closer,” Jacqueline shouted.

McGarvey could hear her up in the tunnel heading toward him. She had done exactly the wrong thing but for the right reason. Instead of leading the search parties away, she had inadvertently led them to him.

“Don’t move, or we will be forced to open fire,” Chernov warned.

“Merde, you dumb bastard, he’ll come out with me as soon as you pull back and nobody will get hurt!”

“McGarvey!” Chernov shouted. “Say something so that we know you’re there. You have my word we will hot open fire!”

Jacqueline reached the side tunnel as powerful spotlights suddenly flashed on, fixing her in their bright glare.

McGarvey reached out, grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and pulled her bodily into the tunnel at the same moment Chernov’s people opened fire. Her flashlight clattered down the tunnel and disappeared below.

She struggled wildly for a few seconds until in the lights reflecting from the main tunnel she realized who it was, and the color drained from her face.

“Oh, my God—”

McGarvey clamped a hand over her mouth, until she understood that their lives depended on her silence.

The firing stopped and for several seconds nothing moved in the tunnel. But then more lights flashed on, and soldiers pounded toward them from both directions.

“I hope you can swim,” McGarvey whispered urgently.

She nodded, her eyes wide.

He grabbed her hand, and together they raced down the outflow tunnel that almost immediately steepened. Jacqueline lost her footing on the slippery floor and she pulled McGarvey off balance with her. They slid in the muck, faster and faster, until suddenly the tunnel ended and they plunged ten feet down into the swiftly moving underground river.

McGarvey was pulled under water by the weight of the satchel on his back, losing his grip on Jacqueline’s hand, the extremely strong current tumbling him end over end.

His knee struck the river bottom, sending a sharp pain shooting up to his hip, and he pushed upward with everything he had. His head broke the surface of the water just long enough for him to take a deep breath before he was sucked under again as the river raced down a completely submerged narrow tunnel.

He could do nothing but protect his head with his arms, as his body was tumbled end over end slamming into the tunnel walls, floor and ceiling.

Almost as quickly as he had been sucked into the underwater tunnel, he was spit out the other end, plunging another eight or ten feet into a big pool of water. His right shoulder slammed into the concrete bottom and he managed to rear up, his head once again breaking the surface long enough for him to take a breath before the waterfall from the tunnel shoved him aside.

But the water was shallow here, less than waist deep, and he struggled to his feet again, stumbling away from the outflow until his hand brushed up against a rough stone block wall.

“Jacqueline,” he shouted. His voice echoed back at him. He was apparently in a large chamber. In the distance he could hear another waterfall, probably where this collection pool flowed farther down toward the Moscow River:

Jacqueline had been in front of him in the first tunnel, but it was possible that she’d never made it through the underwater tunnel. Her clothing could have snagged on a rough outcropping.

“Kirk,” Jacqueline’s voice came weakly from the right. “Kirk.”

“I’m here,” McGarvey called. ‘Keep talking.” He started along the wall toward the sound of her voice, when he spotted a glow under the water ahead of him.

“I’m here,” Jacqueline said, her voice regaining strength. “I lost you.”

“Wait,” McGarvey called to her. He dove into the water to the glow, and came up with Jacqueline’s still working flashlight.

“Kirk,” Jacqueline screamed in panic as he surfaced.

McGarvey spotted her with the beam of the flashlight where she clung to a large iron ring hanging from a stone shelf or platform. He hurriedly slogged over to her, where she threw her arms around his neck.

“Oh, God, oh, God, I thought you were dead!” she cried. “I thought I’d never see you! I thought you were gone! I didn’t know what to do! I almost didn’t, make it! And then you were gone, and I was alone! Oh, God, Kirk!”

He held her closely for a long time, until her cries subsided and she stopped shivering. Then he kissed her.

“I guess I was right about you in Paris,” he said gently. “You have become a crusty old bastard from being around me.”

She laughed, half-hysterically, although she was nearly back in control of herself. “Anatomically impossible, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You can swim.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

McGarvey shined the flashlight on what he’d taken to be a stone ledge, but which was in fact a long stone platform that looked like a riverside dock or quay.

He boosted Jacqueline up, then climbed up himself with a great deal of difficulty because of the heavy satchel, his waterlogged clothing, and his weakened condition.

Jacqueline helped him pull the satchel off his back, and together they unsteadily crossed the quay to a narrow set of stone stairs leading upward but blocked by a gate of iron bars secured by an ancient padlock.

McGarvey cut the lock with three pumps of the big hydraulic bolt cutters, and pulled the gate open on rusted hinges, the squealing noise echoing harshly throughout the chamber.

“If we’ve come out where I think we are, our river ride was a stroke of blind luck,” McGarvey said.

He started up, but Jacqueline held him back.

“Where?”

“We’re either beneath the Kremlin or St. Basil’s,” McGarvey said. “The direction and distance are about right. If I had to bet, I’d say St. Basil’s, because I think the Kremlin would be secured better than this.”

“You’re coming back to the embassy with me, Kirk.”

“They’ve got Liz.”

“I know. But assassinating Tarankov won’t do her any good.”

“It may be the only thing that will save her,” McGarvey said.

“I didn’t come this far for nothing,” Jacqueline cried.

“Neither did I,” McGarvey replied grimly. “Once we get out of here, you’re going back to your own embassy and you’re going to stay there this time.”

“If I had followed your instructions when you called, you’d still be up there in the storm sewers with Chernov’s men closing in on you.”

“You’re probably right. But this time you’ll do as I say, because we’re not going to get so lucky a second time.”

“Goddamn you, Kirk,” Jacqueline said in frustration.

“It’s something I have to do,” he said gently. “You can either accept that or not. But that’s the way it is.”

Jacqueline lowered her eyes after a moment.

They headed up, taking it slowly and quietly, the stone stairs switching back and forth, their path blocked by two more iron gates. McGarvey cut the padlocks free with the bolt-cutters, and through the second gate they found themselves in a series of chambers which held huge stone sarcophagi.

A stone passageway led to broad stone stairs that led in turn up to tall iron gates through which they could see the scaffolding beneath the main onion dome of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

It was a few minutes before 4:30 a.m. The search for them would still be concentrated in the tunnels beneath Dzerzhinsky Square, and no one would be in the church at this hour of the morning. In fact all the buildings around Red Square would probably be closed until after the rally which was scheduled to take place in less than twelve hours.

At the top of the stairs, McGarvey reached the bolt cutter through the bars and cut the padlock free. When they were through, he replaced the padlock, and smeared some grease from the hinges around the severed metal hasp. It would fool a casual observer.

He led Jacqueline to one of the rear gardens and let her out.

“One last time, Kirk. Don’t do this,” she pleaded, looking up into his eyes.

“I have no other choice.”

She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Will I ever see you again, my lovely man?”

McGarvey managed a smile. “Count on it.”

FORTY-TWO

At 5:00, the morning was still pitch black and chilly as Tarankov sat on the open rear platform of his car smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of brandy. He’d been brooding and watching the stars for the past three hours, thinking about how much he was going to miss Liesel. Her counsel as of late had become unsteady, as if the life they had led was finally beginning to unbalance her, but he missed her at his side now.

Every ten or fifteen minutes he spotted a shooting star. At first he’d made a wish on each of them. But he had stopped, because of course wishes never came true. The only truth was the reality we made for ourselves. The truth was that before the day was over he’d either be the supreme ruler of a new Soviet Union or he would be dead. At times like these he wondered if he really cared which, because throughout his life he had done questionable things. Things to which some biographer would apply his or her own truth.

He also thought about the young woman who’d infected them like a virus. She was an alien presence on the train and she was even starting to have an effect on his men. She’d not bothered to hide her nakedness as Liesel’s body was removed and her compartment cleaned, and Tarankov had seen the looks on the faces of his young commandoes. It was lust, the same emotion that had affected him, and the same emotion that had resulted in Liesel’s death, and very nearly his own.

But he found that he couldn’t really hate the young woman who, after all, was here against her will. She’d defended herself the only way she knew how. And part of him could even admire her for her strength.

After the rally there would no longer be any need for her, he decided. He would kill her before the disease she carried infected them all beyond a cure. In a way she was every bit as dangerous to them, as her father was. They would both have to be destroyed at all costs.

Elizabeth McGarvey felt as if she had never slept in her life, or ever could. She had killed Liesel without hesitation, and had the gun contained more bullets she would have killed Tarankov as well. Afterward when the woman’s body was being taken away and two of the young soldiers were cleaning up the mess she’d found that she was unable to move so much as a muscle. She’d been in shock, she supposed, but even though she was aware that she was naked, she’d done nothing to turn away or cover herself.

It was the last look in Liesel’s eyes when the bullet had crashed into her chest, that troubled Elizabeth. She’d been surprised. Her rage had evaporated instantly, leaving a look on her face as if she were saying, “I’ll be damned.”

After that they’d left her alone, and it took a long time before she could rouse herself enough to step into the shower, turn on the water, and pick up the bar of soap. She had to carefully think out each of her movements some of which made no sense to her, but seemed by habit to be the right thing to do. Like turning around in the shower so that she could wash her back. She could not figure out why it was necessary to do it.

When she was dressed she went back to work on the blackout screen covering her window, finally prying it completely free after a couple of hours’ work, and several broken and bloody fingernails.

A soldier came out of the darkness outside and looked up at her. She stared back at him frankly, and after a minute he walked away.

The thing of it, in her mind, was that the killing wasn’t finished. She was going to have to kill Tarankov before he destroyed her father. If she couldn’t snatch a gun from one of the soldiers, perhaps she could take a knife from her breakfast tray. And if that was impossible, and she had to kill him with her bare hands, she would tear out his throat, or chew it open like an animal.

Thinking about what she had to do gave her a violent case of the shakes. Even though she hadn’t eaten anything since eight last night, she just made it into the tiny bathroom and pulled down the sink in time to throw up.

When she finished she looked at her reflection in the mirror. She had become an animal. Tarankov and his wife had done it to her.

“Daddy,” she whimpered, closing her eyes and lowering her head.

Even in the old days, when he was always gone, he’d protected her. Sometimes it was only his spirit rising within her, giving her courage. But he was always there for her.

She opened her eyes and looked up. It was her turn now to protect him.

At 7:00, Chernov was called to a meeting at the President’s office. His command center had been shifted to General Korzhakov’s security headquarters at the rear of the Senate Building where he’d summoned the city engineer to go over the plans for the sewers and rivers beneath the city, so he only had to take an elevator upstairs.

General Yuryn, looking somewhat disheveled, was waiting for him in the anteroom.

“Any luck?” Yuryn asked.

“No, General, not yet. They probably drowned and their bodies may never be found unless they wash out into the Moscow River. I have men checking both banks as far downstream as the Krasnokholmsky Bridge but until it’s completely light out, the task is nearly impossible.”

“Where does that particular runnel lead? Is it possible that they could find their way up somewhere else in the city?”

“The maps are unclear and sometimes contradictory. But that waterway may flow right beneath our feet.”

Yuryn was startled.

“But no one is sure,” Chernov said tiredly. He’d almost had McGarvey three times, but each time the bastard had somehow managed to wriggle free from the net. Chernov sincerely hoped that McGarvey and the French woman had not drowned, he wanted another shot at them.

“The President is waiting for us,” Yuryn said.

“What does he want this time, another progress report? Well, there isn’t any.”

“I don’t know.”

They went inside where General Korzhakov was seated across the desk from an angry looking President Kabatov.

“I’m glad you’re here, because I wanted to tell you this to your face. Your services are no longer needed, Colonel,” Kabatov said harshly. “In fact you are under arrest as of this moment.”

Chernov noticed that Korzhakov was holding a pistol in his lap, a curiously distant expression in his eyes.

“I’m also relieving you of duty, General,” Kabatov told Yuryn. “You may consider yourself under house arrest until this business has been straightened out.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Yuryn demanded.

“I think you and Colonel Chernov — not Bykov as we were led to believe — know very well what I mean. You recommended him to me, just as you insisted that we keep the SVR out of this affair.”

“I don’t know where you are receiving your information, Mr. President, but you are sadly mistaken about—”

“Enough of your lies,” Kabatov thundered. “President Lindsay and I spoke at length a few hours ago. Not only about your Colonel Chernov but about the true nature of the man you so obviously support over the legitimate government. As it turns out Tarankov is not quite the Russian patriot he makes himself out to be. In point of fact he was a spy for the United States while he was an officer in the Strategic Rocket Force.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why isn’t it possible?” Kabatov demanded. “Because you knew nothing about his past? His code name was Hammer, which is rather appropriate given the symbol on the flag he betrayed. Is still betraying!”

“Then you have already lost, Mr. President,” Chernov said quietly. “Because short of completely barricading Red Square and canceling this afternoon’s rally the Tarantula will come here to take over.”

“If you’re talking about a military coup, we’re ready for him.”

“I don’t think you have the support in the military that you believe you do. Or else why hasn’t his little train already been destroyed? He has only two hundred men with him, while you have the entire might of the Russian military.”

Kabatov didn’t rise to the bait, he maintained his temper. “It will be different this time.”

Chernov shrugged indifferently. “Then you will still lose. No court of law in Russia will convict him.”

Kabatov smiled. “You are correct, Colonel, no Russian court would convict him. That’s why the instant he is arrested he will be flown to the World Court in The Hague where he will be tried as a war criminal.”

“The American government would never admit in open court that it suborned a Soviet officer because the CIA would have to reveal its methods,” Yuryn said.

“I have President Lindsay’s support, and that of the governments of England, France, and Germany. I’m assured that the other major western powers will do the same. Tarankov has no chance.”

“That might work,” Chernov said. “Except that you’re forgetting something.”

“What’s that?” Kabatov asked, outwardly unconcerned.

“For all your talk about rule of law, you have been reduced in this instance to trusting the loyalty of your officers and advisers. You cannot trust General Yuryn, of course. Nor me. But you know that now. What about General Korzhakov, who was after all the chief of security for a man who despised you?”

“That needn’t concern you,” Kabatov replied. He reached for his telephone.

“What about Kirk McGarvey?” Chernov asked.

Kabatov’s hand hesitated. “Once Tarankov is under arrest there will be no need to detain him. We’ll let him go.”

“That’s your second mistake.”

“What was my first?”

“Trusting anyone,” Chernov said. He advanced closer to the desk, took out his pistol and before Kabatov could do much of anything except rear back in terror, shot the President in the forehead at nearly point blank range.

Korzhakov made no move to raise his gun.

Chernov took out his handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints off the gun. He stepped around the desk and placed the gun in the President’s hand just as the door burst open and Kabatov’s bodyguards pushed in, their weapons drawn.

Korzhakov had pocketed his gun. He got to his feet. “The President has shot himself, get a doctor in here now!” he ordered.

The onion domes were spotlighted from outside, which had given McGarvey all the light he needed to clean, assemble and load the Dragunov sniper rifle, and to clean and oil his Walther. With dawn finally beginning to brighten the eastern horizon he sat back against the brick wall in the arched cupola high above Red Square and allowed himself to relax.

Through the early morning hours the Square had been alive with activity in preparation for this afternoon’s rally, and showed no signs of tapering off with the rising sun. In addition to the barricades, truckloads of soldiers had begun arriving an hour ago, the officers positioning their troops not only on the periphery of the square, but around Lenin’s Mausoleum, and along the Kremlin’s walls. More soldiers were stationed atop the walls at intervals of five or ten feet, and on the roofs of the old Senate and Supreme Soviet buildings facing the square.

It came to him that the majority of the defensive measures they were putting in place were designed to protect the Kremlin itself, possibly against an assault by Tarankov and his forces. But from his vantage point, which allowed him to see down inside the Kremlin’s walls, he spotted other soldiers ringing all the buildings, and gates, and still more groups of soldiers going from building to building as if they were searching for something, or someone.

They were looking for him.

From his hiding place, McGarvey could also see the Moskvoretsky Bridge already busy with traffic. Soldiers were stationed on the bridge and on both sides of the river, and they too seemed to be searching for something.

Chernov’s people would have lowered a man into the outflow tunnel down which they’d lost McGarvey and Jacqueline, until their way was blocked by the swiftly moving underground river. They would have reasoned that if anyone could survive the wild ride they might end up in the Moscow River.

There would have to be engineering diagrams of the city’s storm sewer system, as well as maps of the underground rivers. Old maps because the rivers were here first and had only been gradually covered up over the years.

He looked again at the activity inside the Kremlin walls. If the old maps were inaccurate might Chernov’s people believe the river was the one which ran beneath the Kremlin? Specifically the Neglinnaya River, or one of its branches that flowed under the Corner Arsenal Tower?

It would explain why no one had come here to search for him.

He lay his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, his hand pressed against the wound in his side. His shoulder and arm had stiffened up, and his mouth was so dry it was as if he’d never had a drink. But his vision was okay, and his head was still clear. He’d been in tougher spots and survived. This time would be no different, except that Liz was in danger.

He’d tried to avoid thinking about her, but sitting alone, wounded, tired, thirsty and hungry with Russian army and Militia troops earnestly searching for him, he could see her in his mind’s eye, at her high school graduation, which Kathleen had tried to make a pleasant occasion, despite their bitter divorce. But in those days Liz was going through her rebellious stage in which any authority — all authority — was de facto bad. It was the only time he’d ever taken his daughter to task, and the graduation party had ended with Liz running off in tears and his ex-wife kicking him out of the house.

Good times and bad, he remembered them all, some with happiness, some with regrets.

A scraping noise somewhere directly below him on the elevated gallery which connected all the domes, woke him with a start. For a moment he thought he might have dreamed the sound, but then he heard it again. Someone was walking, trying to make as little noise as possible.

He screwed the silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel, and eased the safety catch to the off position, as he looked down through the scaffolding and tried to pick out a movement.

Whoever it was, stopped in the deeper shadows seventy-five feet below him. He could hear them breathing, almost panting, nervous, frightened.

Other than that noise, the church was utterly still. Even the technicians adjusting the sound system down in the square had finished, and traffic sounds from the bridge did not reach this far.

“Kirk?” Jacqueline’s whispered voice drifted up to him.

He lowered his head and closed his eyes. “Christ,” he said to himself. He switched the safety catch on.

“Kirk?” she called a little louder.

McGarvey moved away from the edge of the arch. “Here,” he whispered back.

Jacqueline came into view below, her face raised up to the interior of the dome. She was carrying a blue shopping bag. When she spotted him outlined against the morning light coming through the cupola’s window, she threaded her left arm through the shopping bag’s handles, and climbed up the scaffolding.

When she reached the cupola, McGarvey helped her across.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded in frustration. “You were supposed to stay at your embassy. Goddammit!”

“That’s what my boss told me. But there’s not a chance you’ll last up here all day without food and water, and without that wound bandaged up.”

She opened the shopping bag, but McGarvey grabbed her arm.

“We almost died in the river this morning, and there’s a good chance I won’t get out alive! You have to get out of here right now.”

Jacqueline nodded toward the round window. “It’s crawling with soldiers and police down there. I’ve been hiding in the garden for the past forty-five minutes waiting to make sure it was safe to come to you. I got past them in the dark, but I’d never make it out of here without being spotted.”

She pulled a small radio receiver from the shopping bag. “This scans all their police and military frequencies, and you’re going to need it, because in the last few hours everything has changed. President Kabatov supposedly committed suicide this morning, which means no one is going to even try to stop Tarankov.”

“It could be some kind of trick,” McGarvey said.

“It came over one of the frequencies that the Kremlin security detail uses, and ever since then that channel has been silent. But military traffic is almost continuous, and just about every transmission contradicts a previous one. It’s crazy out there, Kirk. They’re just waiting now for someone to take over. And Tarankov is the man who’ll do it.”

“Unless he’s stopped,” McGarvey said.

Jacqueline looked into his eyes, her lips tightly compressed. She nodded.

“Like it or not, man cher, you have me for the duration,” she said. “Now let me bandage you up, and give you something to eat. Afterwards I’ll take the first watch and you can get some rest.”

FORTY-THREE

It was after 3:00 P.M.” and with Captain Petrovsky’s help, under Chernov’s direct supervision, every square meter of the Kremlin, above and below ground, had been searched with a fine-toothed comb to no avail by Kremlin security forces, the Militia and the Army.

A red dye had been dumped down the outflow tunnel beneath the Lubyanka Metro Station. It had shown up in the swiftly moving water beneath the Corner Arsenal Tower a few minutes later, but in a limited amount which an engineer suggested might mean that there was more than one branch of the river.

Three volunteer divers had been sent down the tunnel. The battered body of one of them, minus his scuba tank, his wet suit ripped to shreds, showed up under the tower eight minutes later.

That was around ten this morning. The other two divers had not shown up yet. There’d been no other volunteers.

Petrovsky came over to where Chernov leaned against the hood of his car parked in front of the Senate Building listening to reports on a handheld radio, and debating with himself if now was the time to get out. Everything suggested that McGarvey and Jacqueline Belleau had escaped down the tunnel in a desperate attempt to save themselves, and were drowned. Their bodies might stay down there until the next series of heavy rains completely flooded the tunnels. Or they might never come out. It was a reasonable assumption to believe that McGarvey was no longer a threat to Tarankov’s safety. Yet something within Chernov, some instinct, told him otherwise.

“One of my people has come up with an idea,” Petrovsky said. “He thinks that we should pump a couple thousand gallons of diesel fuel down the tunnel, and set it on fire. It might work. At least it’d be better than using gasoline, which would probably blow everything from here to there off the map.”

Chernov studied the Militia investigator for a moment to make sure the man wasn’t joking.

“If they’re still down there, they’re already dead. So trying to cook them out wouldn’t accomplish a thing.”

“Do you think they got out?”

“I want to say no, but I’m not sure,” Chernov said. “With a man like him you can never be sure.”

“He has the woman with him. She might have slowed him down.”

“What are the French saying about her?”

“Nothing. In fact they won’t even talk to me. Word’s out about President Kabatov, and it’s got everybody scared shitless,” Petrovsky said. He gave Chernov an appraising look. “That includes me, Colonel, because I don’t know what’s going on.”

“That doesn’t matter. You have a job to do and I suggest you get on with it.”

“We’re done.”

“Then have your men start over again,” Chernov said. “Because if McGarvey is still alive he’ll be here within the hour, and we’d better be ready for him.”

“What about you, Colonel?” Petrovsky said, choosing his words with care. “Your letter from President Kabatov authorizing you to do whatever it takes to catch McGarvey is no longer valid. Who are you reporting to now?”

Chernov was tired but still in control of himself. “General Yuryn.”

“What about him?” Petrovsky asked. “Who is he reporting to? Who’s in charge?”

“General Korzhakov,” Chernov said. “For the moment.”

Petrovsky nodded. “I think I’ll get back to my men, now.”

Chernov watched him walk away, basically a competent man who probably would not survive the next few days. There would be a lot of good and competent men who wouldn’t make it. In every revolution they were among the first to die.

He pocketed the handheld transceiver, checked the load in the Colt 10mm automatic he’d drawn from Kremlin security stores and took the elevator up to the presidential floor.

Security was tight. Even he had to pass through four separate body searches, and explain who he was and why he was carrying a weapon, before he was allowed to approach what had become General Korzhakov’s temporary base of operations.

Civilians and soldiers scurried along corridors, telephones rang, computer printers whined, and heated discussions took place in every third office. Yet there seemed to be no order to what was going on. Half the people seemed to be in a daze, simply standing by, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for Tarankov to show up, though nobody was saying so aloud. The other half tried to look busy.

The president’s anteroom and office were jammed with people. Korzhakov, facing the windows, was speaking to someone on the phone, while three of his advisers hovered around, passing him notes.

General Yuryn, his uniform disheveled, looking more corpulent and disgusting than ever, hurried out to Chernov. “Have you found him?” he demanded.

“He and the French woman are probably dead, but we’re still looking.”

“Tarankov’s train is on the move. The rally has been cancelled, but that won’t stop the crowds of course, so when he arrives the platform will be his alone. The rest of us will wait up here.”

“When’s he due?”

“His ETA at Leningrad Station is 3-40, which gives him twenty minutes to get down here if he means to make it by four.”

“How about the military?”

“So far they’re remaining neutral.”

“Including General Vashleyev?”

Captain-General Viktor Vashleyev was commander of the Moscow Defense Forces, and a former drinking buddy of President Yeltsin and Korzhakov. But he was something of a moderate, no friend of Tarankov.

“He promises to do whatever it takes to maintain order,” Yuryn said. “Tarankov’s arrest warrant is on his desk, but I don’t think he’ll act on it.”

“Then everything is set—”

“Except for McGarvey,” Yuryn cut in. “Is there any chance, even a slight chance, that he’ll get out of the sewers in time to make the assassination attempt?”

“If it was anyone else I’d say no.”

“Is there a chance that if he does somehow make it out, that you won’t be able to stop him in time?” Yuryn asked sharply.

“I don’t know,” Chernov said after a moment. “So far he’s eluded everything we’ve thrown at him, even the threat that we’ll use his daughter as a hostage. But he’s not a fanatic, which means he knows how he’s going to kill Tarankov and he has a plan for getting away.”

“Tarankov will have to send a double to make his speech,” said Yuryn, after first making certain that no one was listening to them.

“He won’t do it.”

Yuryn threw up his hands in despair. “Then it’s up to you,” he said. “For the next hour and a half until Tarankov is safely off the reviewing stand you must operate on the assumption that McGarvey managed to get out of the sewers and will take the shot.”

Viktor Yemlin had a bad three days. It was a few minutes after 3:00, and he was parked in his car down the block from an eighteen-story apartment building near the zoo, not sure if he knew what he was doing.

Ever since the untraceable but potentially disastrous call from the man who had identified himself as a friend of McGarvey’s, he’d been waiting for the axe to fall. But nothing had happened, and after a couple of discreet telephone calls he was pretty sure that he was no longer being followed. His home telephone was still bugged, but the pay phones around his apartment were not.

The development was ominous, all the more so because his normal channels of communication between the FSK and the Militia had been blocked. Every cop and soldier in Moscow was looking for McGarvey, and he had no access to any information about the search except that it was going on.

Nor, despite his sensitive position in the SVR, was he able to find out anything about President Kabatov’s apparent suicide this morning although he was being asked to predict Washington’s likely response.

It was like working in a vacuum. Nothing was getting through.

His guest membership at the Magesterium had been cancelled, and his friend Konstantin Sukoruchkin was not answering his telephone.

One by one his contacts in Moscow were drying up. It was as if everyone he’d known was suddenly distancing themselves from “him.

Earlier this afternoon he’d tried to use the SVR’s secured telephone system to place a call to Shevardnadze in Tbilisi, but his access had been denied, thus completing his isolation.

Yemlin looked at his watch. If Tarankov was on schedule he would be arriving in Red Square in less than an hour. Whether or not McGarvey assassinated him, the next few hours would be extremely critical for the nation, all the more now that there was no elected leader in charge.

Yemlin looked at his watch again, then got out of the car and strode down the block to the apartment building, where he presented his credentials to the front desk security people, who were expecting him.

He was escorted upstairs where he was met in the penthouse foyer by a secretary who led him back to a corner study with panoramic views of the city.

Five minutes later, Mikhail Gorbachev, wearing a button-up sweater over an open-neck shirt, corduroy trousers and house slippers, entered the study.

“Mr. President, Russia is heading toward certain disaster and you’re the only man I know who can help,” Yemlin said.

By 3:40 one million people were jammed into Red Square — and still more poured in from around the city. Bleachers east and west of Lenin’s Mausoleum were filled with visiting dignitaries and the press. Dozens of television vans were lined up end-to-end along the Kremlin walls, their satellite dishes pointed up to the sky.

Soldiers and police manned barricades that held the people back from a broad boulevard that ran up from the river, past the Cathedral, crossed in front of the reviewing stand and opened into Okhotny Ryad at the north end of the square. It was the traditional parade route taken by the troops and their military hardware.

McGarvey had managed to get a little sleep, and afterward he’d used his pocket knife to remove the lead holding a roughly triangular piece of stained glass about twelve inches wide at its base from the round window. He crouched well back from the narrow opening through which he would shoot and studied the reviewing platform through the Dragunov’s powerful scope. No one had shown up yet. No ceremonial guards, no officers, nor any of the sound technicians. Aimed soldiers were still stationed on the Kremlin walls above and behind the mausoleum, but the reviewing platform was empty, the flags and banners snapping in the stiff breeze that had developed since noon.

Traditional Russian folk music thundered across the square from loudspeakers sprinkled here and there. Some people danced to it, and around the edges of the vast crowd vendors sold everything from ice cream to beer. It was a carnival atmosphere, except it was obvious that the people were waiting expectantly for something.

With Kabatov dead no one had stepped in to fill his place or else they would have come to the reviewing stand by now. The city, and the entire country was waiting for Tarankov’s triumphal entrance to Red Square where he would mount the platform and tell his people that he had come to restore the Soviet Union, to give them back their dignity and their pride, to feed and clothe and house them, to give them back their jobs, their hospitals and their peace of mind.

But at what cost, almost no one seemed to be asking.

Most of the frequencies the scanner was picking up had been oddly quiet. Very little had come from the Kremlin’s security detail after the search of the tunnels by divers had ended in disaster. Only the frequencies used by the Militia and army crowd control units remained busy. A dozen arrests had been made, a few fights broken up, and a number of handguns confiscated.

Jacqueline had positioned herself beneath one of the arches on the opposite side of the central dome from where she could watch the main entrance below. So far the church remained empty. McGarvey glanced over at her at the same moment something coming over the radio caught his attention.

“Azarov Brigade, say again your ETA at Leningrad Station.”

“We’re three minutes out,” an excited voice responded. It sounded as if he were radioing from a moving vehicle.

“Pull back to point B. I repeat, pull back to point B, he’s already there.”

“Copy. I don’t want to get into a firefight with his people up here. We won’t have a chance without reinforcements.”

“You’ll be coming in behind him, so watch yourself,” the first speaker warned. “Gamov and Sokol brigades, are you in position yet?”

“Gamov, roger.”

“Sokol, roger.”

“Keep your eyes open, this is a go,” the first speaker said.

Apparently the government was finally doing something, but McGarvey was almost certain that they were making a very big mistake. If they meant to stop Tarankov, yet keep the civilian casualties to a minimum, the job should have been done out in the countryside by a direct attack on his train. Or else Leningrad Station could have been evacuated and as Tarankov’s troops dismounted they could have been cut down. But by avoiding a firefight up there, they were taking the battle to a Red Square jammed with innocent people. No matter how many troops they had at their command, a crowd of a million people was an unstoppable force.

McGarvey carefully laid the rifle down, climbed out of the arched cupola and waved at Jacqueline until he caught her eye.

She started around the scaffolding, and he met her halfway.

“Has it started?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“His train just pulled into Leningrad Station so he could be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. But the government is going to try to ambush him.”

“Good, then we can get out of here right now,” said Jacqueline, relieved.

“They’ve missed him at the station, so they’re coming down here.”

Jacqueline glanced over toward the window. “It’ll be a massacre with all those people waiting for him. Merde, are they stupid?”

“They’re desperate,” McGarvey said. “And they won’t succeed, so I’m staying here.”

Jacqueline looked into his eyes. “Then I too shall stay.”

“I want you to go down to the garden entrance, the one you used to get in here, and make sure it’s clear. As soon as I take my shot, we’ll get out. We can lose ourselves in the crowd.”

She wanted to argue with him, but after a moment she kissed him on the cheek, and then made her way down to the gallery level that provided access to the other parts of the Cathedral.

McGarvey was glad she hadn’t asked him about Liz. Listening to the radio had given him an idea for a contingency plan in case everything fell apart here.

Leningrad Station

Elizabeth McGarvey was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life, yet she was still determined to somehow kill Tarankov with her bare hands, if need be because she had no weapon. They’d not fed her breakfast or lunch, so she’d not been able to steal a table knife or a fork. Nor had she found anything in her compartment that could be used as a weapon.

Two minutes ago they’d screamed to a halt a hundred yards from the big railroad station, the doors on most of the armored cars crashed open, steel ramps were extended with a tremendous din, and a dozen armored personnel carriers roared into life, forming up along the tracks next to the train.

Thousands of people up on the street waved banners and cheered, the noise they made so overwhelming that even over the roar of the APCs, Elizabeth could hear them. The door of her compartment opened, and she spun around, ready to attack like a wild animal, but Tarankov was not with the two stern-faced commandoes.

“You will come with us now,” one of them ordered.

“Fuck you,” Elizabeth shouted in Russian, and she lunged at them, swinging both fists.

The commando grabbed her by the arms and sent her crashing into the compartment wall, bending her elbows behind her back so hard she thought her shoulders would be dislocated.

When she settled down they pulled her out into the corridor, where one of them pawed her crotch and grinned.

“We’ll have some fun with you tonight, you little bitch,” he promised.

Outside, she was hustled across the tracks and shoved into the lead APC with eight commandoes. Tarankov stood on top in the gunner’s turret, and the moment the hatch slammed shut he gave the order to move out.

Elizabeth was pushed into a bucket seat near the back of the vehicle, and had to brace herself in order not to be tossed around.

It was happening as she feared it might, leaving her no chance of fighting back. But the opportunity would come, she kept telling herself. It was her only hope, her only connection with sanity.

Chemov put down the telephone as one of the city engineers came rushing down the corridor into the deserted Security Center with Captain Petrovsky. The SVR helicopter he’d ordered would touch down inside the Kremlin walls on the opposite side from Red Square between the Borovitskaya and Water Drawing towers in ten minutes. The pilot, a Tarankov supporter, agreed to stand by until Chernov showed up.

“St. Basil’s,” Petrovsky shouted.

The engineer spread a large scale yellowed plan drawing of a part of the river and storm sewer system downtown. Over this he laid a clear plastic sheet upon which had been drawn the locations of the metro stations and tunnels, and the’ major buildings from Dzerzhinsky Square all the way down to the Moscow River.

The outflow they entered drops into what is part of the Neglinnaya River System. But it branches into three tunnels so that during the spring melt off the system won’t overload and flood. It’s why only a portion of the dye showed up here. A third of it went directly beneath Red Square, and the last third here.” The engineer stabbed a blunt finger on St. Basil’s outlined on the plastic overlay.

“Is there access from the river into the church?” Chemov asked.

“Yes, sir. Through the crypts,” the engineer said. “They didn’t come up here, and they didn’t show up in the Moscow River. So unless their bodies are still down there, they came up inside St. Basil’s.”

“Within shooting distance of the reviewing stand,” Petrovsky said.

“That’s it,” Chernov shouted, and he bolted for the door, shouting for Petrovsky to follow him.

Outside, they piled into Chernov’s car and shot across the Kremlin toward the Trinity Gate, figuring they could circle around the crowds in Red Square and approach the Cathedral from Varvarka Street.

“Radio your people and have them cover every exit,” Chernov ordered.

“They’re gone,” Petrovsky said.

Chernov glanced at him. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Just that, Colonel, and I can’t say that I blame them. But we have another problem. General Vashleyev’s people are going to try to arrest Tarankov.”

“I heard,” Chernov said. “They missed him at Leningrad Station, but if they try anything down here there’s going to be a blood bath.”

“Mostly civilian,” Petrovsky said dourly.

“I thought you didn’t support Tarankov.”

“Let’s just say that I’m hedging my bets, Colonel,” Petrovsky said.

Tarankov’s column roared into Red Square from the north, raced down the broad boulevard in front of the masses of people who were joyously screaming his name, and pulled up in a semicircle in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum. The soldiers and police manning the barricades were overwhelmed by the press of people trying to get closer, aided only by the intimidating presence of the twelve heavily armed APCs now facing outward, their big diesel engines idling as if they were a pack of rabid dogs making ready to attack. The crowd surged only so far then stopped, their front ranks making an undulating line back up the square to the north.

Even the international media kept its respectful distance, though dozens of television cameras were trained on the column, and a few of the bolder photographers closed in on the lead APC from both sides hoping to catch a shot of the Tarantula. “Target is in place, are you in position Gamov Brigade?” the radio beside McGarvey stopped at the active frequency.

“Roger, we’re in place at the south end of the square.”

“Sokol, any trouble at your position?

“Nyet, we’re clear.”

“Okay, Azarov Brigade, we’re set down here, what’s your ETA to bottle the northern route?”

“Five minutes.”

McGarvey studied the lead APC through the Dragunov’s telescopic sights. The top hatch of the gun turret was open but no one was manning the position as they were on the other eleven vehicles. The wind had increased in the past half hour, and whipped the exhaust from the diesel engines from McGarvey’s left to right, making any attempted shot in the cross wind difficult at best.

The music suddenly stopped, and the crowd began to quiet down.

“COMRADES, MY NAME IS YEVGENNI TARANKOV, AND I HAVE COME TODAY TO OFFER MY HAND IN FRIENDSHIP AND HELP,” a voice boomed from the loudspeakers.

Now the vast crowd fell totally silent, and even the soldiers at the barricades looked over their shoulders at the lead APC.

The APC’s personnel hatch opened, and McGarvey switched aim, moving the sniper rifle’s safety to the off position with his thumb.

Chernov and Petrovsky were stopped from entering Red Square from the east by a skirmish line of five hundred heavily armed troops backed by three T-80-T tanks, with Moscow Defense Division markings on their sides, so they had to double back to Ilyinka Street that ran along the south side of the department store GUM.

Tarankov’s amplified voice boomed across the otherwise silent square, as Chernov and Petrovsky left the car and hurried down the street on foot.

They had to show their IDs before they were allowed through the barricades into the square itself, which took more precious time. By now Tarankov would be climbing out of his APC, exposing himself to McGarvey’s shot.

When they were through, they raced along the edge of the crowd, shoving people out of their way as they ran, Tarankov’s speech continuing to roll across the vast open space.

“OUR COUNTRY IS FALLING INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DESPAIR,” Tarankov said.

A figure appeared at the open hatch, paused a moment then stepped out. It was one of Tarankov’s young commandoes. McGarvey held the scope’s cross hairs steady on the hatch.

“OUR FORESTS ARE DYING. OUR GREAT RIVERS AND LAKES HAVE BECOME CESSPOOLS OF WASTE. THE AIR IS UNFIT TO BREATHE. THE ONLY FOOD WORTH EATING FILLS THE BELLIES OF APPARATCHIKS AND FOREIGNERS.”

Seven more armed commandoes dressed in plain battle fatigues climbed out of the APC, and formed a tight knot in front of the hatch.

“OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING AND OUR WOMEN ARE CRYING, BUT NO ONE IN MOSCOW CAN HEAR THEM. NO ONE IN MOSCOW WANTS TO HEAR THEM.”

McGarvey caught a glimpse of a smaller, much slighter figure emerging from the APC, and his stomach fluttered when he recognized his daughter. Directly behind her Tarankov climbed out, and taking Liz’s arm immediately moved behind the protective screen of his much taller, much larger commandoes, making any shot impossible.

“OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BANKRUPT,” Tarankov said, as he and his men moved toward Lenin’s Mausoleum.

“All units, sixty seconds to first air strike, “the scanner radio beside McGarvey stopped at the active frequency.

A ninth commando emerged from the APC, and went immediately over to Tarankov, who was still speaking.

“OUR MILITARY HAS BECOME LEADERLESS AND USELESS.”

“Azarov Brigade, what is your ETA?”

“Two minutes,” an excited voice radioed.

“Sokol and Gamov will back you up if he heads your way, but you’re going to have to hold him.”

“HOOLIGANS AND PROFITEERS ERODE OUR LIVELIHOODS LIKE CANCER. THE MAFIA EATS BEEFSTEAKS AND CAVIAR, DRINKS SWEET CHAMPAGNE AND DRIVES CADILLACS AND—”

Tarankov’s amplified voice cut off in mid-sentence.

McGarvey caught glimpses of Tarankov, and the ninth commando to come out of the APC. They seemed to be arguing. The commando pointed back at the APC, and then up to the sky to the southwest.

“Forty seconds, all units keep your heads down in case he doesn’t move,” the excited voice on the scanner radioed.

Liz suddenly tried to break away, but Tarankov pulled her back, slapped her face, rocking her head back, and the commandoes surrounding him closed ranks even tighter.

No shot. Even without the wind there would have been no guarantee that if he fired he might hit Elizabeth, and McGarvey was beside himself with frustration and rage.

The ninth commando said something else to Tarankov and then the knot of commandoes headed back en masse to the lead APC.

McGarvey waited for an opening, any opening, but Tarankov ducked into the safety of the APC first, followed by Elizabeth and then his commandoes, and the hatch was shut.

“He’s on the move! He’s on the move! Azarov Brigade, he’s coming your way right now!”

Two of the APCs moved out, leaving Tarankov’s vehicle to take up the third position, the others falling in behind, and they roared off to the north, the crowds stunned into inaction, hardly able to believe what they were witnessing. Their savior was deserting them for some unknown reason.

Pocketing the scanner radio, but leaving the now useless sniper rifle behind, McGarvey climbed out of the arched cupola, and scrambled down the scaffolding to the gallery level seventy-five feet below and started for the rear of the church where Jacqueline was waiting at the garden door. He was sick at heart for his daughter, because he didn’t know how he would make it in time to save her.

He reached the rear of the main onion dome, when the church doors crashed open below him.

“McGarvey,” a man shouted, the same man from the storm sewers. Chernov!

McGarvey slipped back into the shadows as he took out his Walther and removed the silencer. There was no longer any need for stealth, and the silencer seriously degraded the accuracy of the gun. From where he stood he could see the arch leading to the outer vestibule.

“It’s all over, McGarvey,” Chernov shouted. “There’s no way out for you now, but if you give yourself up you’ll live to stand trial, and your daughter will be released unharmed. You have my word.”

McGarvey eased a little closer to the rail so that when Chernov came out of the vestibule he would have a clear shot. At this point the Russian had to believe that McGarvey was still somewhere up inside the onion dome.

“I have him! I have him! But there’s too many civilians up here!” McGarvey’s radio blared.

He reached in his pocket to shut it off as a man in uniform darted out from the vestibule and fired four shots up at the gallery, two of them ricochetting off the rail inches from where McGarvey stood.

McGarvey returned fire, one of his shots catching the man in the torso, driving him backward, at the same moment Jacqueline opened fire from the rear of the church.

McGarvey sprinted the rest of the way along the gallery to one of the corner domes and rushed downstairs to the main floor.

Jacqueline was crouched just inside the corridor leading back to the garden exit thirty feet across the open floor from where McGarvey pulled up.

She spotted him and started to rise, but he held up a hand for her to stay put, and she dropped back.

The man in uniform was down, his body half in and half out of the vestibule. McGarvey didn’t think it was Chernov, but the church was silent, nothing moved.

McGarvey took a few kopeck coins out of his pocket and tossed them toward the opposite side of the church, sending them clattering across the stone floor.

Two shots were fired from the vestibule.

Jacqueline returned fire, and McGarvey sprinted across to the corridor, firing over his shoulder back toward the vestibule as he ran.

Several shots ricochetted off the floor just behind him, but then he was around the corner. He grabbed Jacqueline’s arm and together they raced to the garden exit at the rear of the Cathedral.

“As soon as we get outside, lose yourself in the crowds, you’ll be safe,” McGarvey told her urgently.

They heard Chernov’s footfalls as he crossed the length of the nave behind them.

McGarvey fired the last couple of shots in the Walther’s magazine down the corridor, and then he and Jacqueline emerged into the garden.

“Now go,” he ordered.

“There’s a van waiting for us,” she said, out of breath. “It’s from my embassy.”

McGarvey hesitated for just a second.

“I brought a cellular phone. I called them,” she explained. “They’re here. They got through.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” McGarvey said, and he followed her across the garden. He ejected the spent magazine from his gun, and put another one in, releasing the ejector slide, as the sounds of heavy weapons fire and screams came from the north end of Red Square.

FORTY-FOUR

Something slammed into the APC with a loud clang, nearly knocking them over, propelling Elizabeth out of her bucket seat and slamming her painfully into the bulkhead next to the hatch.

They were in the middle of a fierce fire fight, the noise utterly deafening, hot shell casings falling all around her from the heavy-caliber machine guns above.

Tarankov was strapped into the command position above and behind the driver and the two weapons officers, calmly issuing orders over his headset.

Elizabeth clawed her way up to her knees so that she could see out the thick glass of the narrow port in the hatch as the lead APCs suddenly turned to the right, directly into the wall of human beings lining the Square and Okhotny Ryad.

The people tried to fall back out of the way, but it was impossible because of the confusion and press of bodies behind them.

Horrified, Elizabeth watched as the first of the people were bowled over or pushed aside, but then the lead APC gave a mighty lurch and climbed up on top of the bodies, blood and gore flying everywhere, spitting out from under the huge tracks. The second APC climbed atop the carnage directly behind the first one, plowing and smashing its way across the broad street toward Ploshchad Revolyutsi.

Elizabeth fell back, unable to do anything else but brace herself from being tossed around as the APC she was in followed the first two, climbing and bucking and heaving over the bodies. She could imagine that she was hearing the screams, hearing the bones crunch, seeing the blood oozing up through the steel plating of the floor. And still it went on.

She looked up at the same moment Tarankov glanced down at her, and she almost screamed in horror, because the look on his face and in his eyes was absolutely devoid of any human emotion. What they were doing, what he had ordered, the people they killed and whose bodies they were driving over, none of it had any effect on him. She had never seen that lack of feeling on any human being’s face, not even Chernov’s. And until this moment she had not even imagined that such a monster could possibly exist in the real world.

The shooting stopped and then Elizabeth could hear the people screaming, and she screwed her eyes shut as if she could block out the inhuman shrieks.

They lurched sharply to the right, came back onto the pavement and accelerated, but still Elizabeth could hear the screaming.

The shooting had stopped, but pandemonium had broken out as panicked people tried to get away, climbing over each other, pushing, screaming, shoving the Militia and military barricades and soldiers out of the way.

Chernov emerged from the garden gate and flattened himself against the wall at the corner. There was no sign of McGarvey or the French woman, but he knew that he was just seconds behind them, and they could not have gotten very far in this mob. Something had gone wrong with Tarankov’s triumphal entrance. He didn’t think that McGarvey had taken his shot, because Tarankov’s commandoes would not have fought back if their leader was dead. For some reason General Vashleyev had ordered his troops to surround Red Square and box Tarankov in. But they had not counted on Tarankov fighting back in the middle of the mob. They had made the same mistake sending helicopter gunships to stop the train outside Nizhny Novgorod.

Chernov stepped away from the wall. North or south, they could have gone either way, and once they reached the French or American embassy they would be out of his reach.

On instinct he headed north, pushing people out of his path until he came to an abandoned Militia radio car, its lights flashing. He leaped up on the hood of the car and just caught a glimpse of McGarvey, the woman and a third person as they reached Ilynka Street and disappeared around the corner.

He jumped down and yanked the driver’s door open when a dozen men rushed up, pushed him aside and started rocking the squad car on its springs to tip it over.

McGarvey was getting away. It was all Chernov could think of as he fought his way up to Ilynka Street where his own car was parked. Getting across Red Square and inside the Kremlin where the SVR helicopter was waiting for him made the most sense. Once airborne he could direct the pilot to take him out of the city, and head up to St. Petersburg. From there he could catch the train to Helsinki where he could access his Swiss bank account and disappear. But McGarvey had made a fool of him, had made fools of them all. And he had killed Arkady.

Ilynka Street was jammed with people heading away from the Square as fast as they could. The T-80 tanks were gone and the barricades had been removed or simply shoved aside.

Chernov reached his car in time to see McGarvey and the woman climb into a blue Chrysler van. He got in his car, and swung it around, gently easing his way through the crowd and then moving with it.

He was thirty yards behind the van, and he could see the top of it above the heads of the people, not moving any faster than he was, so for the moment there was little danger that he would lose them. Once they were in the clear he would speed up and run them off the road before they could reach either embassy, and kill McGarvey and the two with him.

Only then would he leave Russia, because his brother was wrong, revenge was everything.

McGarvey looked out the back window, but if Chernov had followed them there was no sign of him. In any event he would be on foot.

“Are you okay?” he asked Jacqueline.

She nodded. “I think so, but what happened to Tarankov? Did you get a shot?”

“No, Liz was with him. I saw her.” He leaned forward to the driver. “As soon as we get clear head out to the Garden Ring Road. I want you to take me up to Leningrad Station as quickly as possible.”

“What?” Jacqueline screeched.

“He’s got Liz—”

“The authorities will stop him! His coup didn’t work!”

“I’m not willing to take that chance,” McGarvey said harshly.

“Merde,” Jacqueline said. She turned to the driver. “Take us back to the embassy, Nikolai. Right now!”

McGarvey switched to Russian. “Yeb vas, but if you don’t take me to Leningradski Station you’re going to get your nine grams.” It was a Russian euphemism for a 9mm bullet in the base of the skull.

The driver glanced at McGarvey’s stern-faced reflection in the rearview mirror, hesitated a moment, but then nodded.

“You can’t do this,” Jacqueline cried.

“I missed him, and now he doesn’t need her.” “I know how you feel, my darling. I promise I do—”

“No you don’t,” McGarvey cut her off savagely. “You were sent to spy on me in Paris. You’ve done your job, now leave.”

“I love you—”

“Not now!” McGarvey shouted her down.

The van shot across the normally busy broad boulevard Staraya Ploshchad in Kitay-Gorod, the bulk of the crowds now behind them. What traffic there was all seemed to be heading away from Red Square, but Moscow suddenly seemed deserted, as if everyone had either left or was hiding behind locked doors waiting to see what was going to happen. It lent a strange war-zone feel to the city.

Liz had fought back. She had tried to get away, even in the middle of Tarankov’s commandoes, even in the face of the hundreds of thousands of people and soldiers crammed into Red Square. And Tarankov had swatted her aside like he might swat an irritating insect.

McGarvey’s jaw tightened, and his muscles bunched up, his face tightening in pain. He forced himself to calm down. To act rationally. To think out his options.

Five minutes later the van turned north on the Garden Ring Road just past the Ural Hotel, and traffic picked up though most of it was going in the opposite direction. In the distance they could see the twenty-six-story Hotel Leningradskaya west of Komsomolskaya Square which contained the Yaroslavl, Kazan and Leningrad Stations.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Kirk,” Jacqueline said. “I want to save her life as badly as you do.”

“As soon as you get back to your embassy have your people try to find out who’s in charge of the government. Call my embassy and tell them that I’m not going to kill Tarankov. I’m just going to get my daughter out of there. Whoever is in charge in the Kremlin will have to understand that I want nothing more.”

“You magnificent fool,” Jacqueline said quietly. “You’re going to get yourself killed, aren’t you?”

“I can’t leave her. She’s all I’ve got. All I’ve ever really had.”

“I know, mon cher. I know.”

“There’s a roadblock up ahead,” the driver called back.

A T-80 tank and several army trucks were parked across the road a quarter-mile ahead. Barricades had been put up, and soldiers were turning cars away.

“Take a side street, I have to get closer than this,” McGarvey ordered.

The driver turned at the huge Agriculture Ministry Building, but the street was barricaded just behind the Kazan Station two hundred yards from the square, across which they could see Leningrad Station. Thousands of people were milling around in the square, but it was impossible to see if Tarankov’s train was still there. The driver made a left turn, then right again toward the Hotel Leningradskaya.

This time the barricades had been shoved aside by people streaming away. The street was littered with tarantula banners, and in front of the hotel something was going on in the middle of a huge crowd.

The driver was forced to stop fifty yards away.

“For God’s sake don’t go, Kirk,” Jacqueline pleaded one last time.

“Go back to your embassy and get the word out,” McGarvey said.

He jumped out of the van, and took off in a dead run.

Up on the square there was a broad path of bodies and blood, as if something had mowed its way through the crowd. Some people were helping the wounded, but for the most part everyone was trying to get away.

McGarvey entered the station, and raced across the vaulted arrivals hall filled with people who seemed to be in a daze. Trackside he pulled up short. There were three trains, none of which was Tarankov’s.

But in Nizhny Novgorod he’d not pulled into the station. The train had stopped outside where the APCs could be off-loaded and make their way up to the streets.

McGarvey rushed to the end of the loading platform, jumped down to the tracks and emerged from the station in time to see the last of the APCs being loaded into the train fifty yards away.

He could see where the APCs had come down from the street, across the tracks to the west. Only a few stragglers were up there now, but the trail of blood led directly across, pointing a damning finger at what had been done.

A skirmish line of a dozen commandoes had taken up a rear guard position, but their attention was directed back the way they had come.

Keeping his eye on the rear guard, he pulled out his pistol, and staying low, raced for the right side of the armored train.

An Army truck screeched to a halt up on the road, and Tarankov’s commandoes opened fire, cutting the troops down as they hit the street.

McGarvey reached the lee of the diesel-electric locomotive as its huge engines roared into life. Almost immediately it began moving backward.

Holstering his gun, he sprinted the last fifty feet to the first armored car, grabbed the access ladder and clambered to the roof.

Captain Anatoli Trofimo touched off his forward looking radar as he swung his MiG-29 Fulcrum around in a tight loop at the southern edge of Moscow’s inner defense ring. His wingman Captain Aleksandr Lopatin was ten meters off his port wing tip, and gave him the thumbs up sign.

Nothing was in view yet, but after the debacle up at Nizhny Novgorod nobody was taking any chances, though shooting down a few slow moving helicopters was a different proposition than shooting down a pair of high performance fighter interceptors Still, Tarankov was a wily old bastard, his troops were the best in all of Russia, and the defense systems aboard his sonofabitch train were state-of-the-art.

The original plan was to make a surgical strike against Tarankov as he stood on the reviewing platform atop Lenin’s Mausoleum. They’d been told that Lenin’s body had been removed to a safe place underground, but that didn’t matter as much to Trofimo as getting his shot right the first time. If they missed they’d be firing into a crowd estimated above one million people.

They’d turned inbound, armed their R85 air-to-surface missiles, and started their attack run when they were ordered to stand down less than forty seconds to target because Tarankov was on the move. Trofimo was damned glad for the reprieve. He and his wingman were ordered to keep station at the southern inner defense ring, where they had remained for the past fifteen minutes, mushing at ten thousand feet to conserve fuel.

His air controller’s voice came over his com ms

“Orlov units, prime time has reached his secondary objective. You are authorized to go hot, and take out the target. Repeat, you have weapons release authorization.”

“Roger, we’re inbound now,” Trofimo radioed. “Do you have vectors to target?”

“Roger. Relative bearing zero-four-seven, changing slowly to the north. The target is on the move and accelerating.”

Keeping low so that he wouldn’t be thrown off balance as the train continued to accelerate backward through the switching yards, McGarvey leapt from car to car. The APCs had been loaded aboard the lead twelve units, leaving the rear eight for personnel. At Nizhny Novgorod Tarankov had gotten off from the rear car, which McGarvey figured was his personal quarters, and possibly the unit’s operations center.

Several of the car tops contained long narrow hatches set flush into the roofs, probably concealing the missile launchers. Domes rose from the four corners of every fourth car, Phalanx Galling gun barrels protruding from the radar-guided deadly close-in weapons systems. Other domes probably contained combat radar systems.

He’d seen the train’s defensive measures in action at Nizhny Novgorod, and they’d been nothing short of awesome. It wouldn’t take long for Tarankov’s commandoes to realize that the government forces would be following them, and to get their act together after their hasty retreat from Red Square. That defeat had to sting, but their confusion wouldn’t last.

The roof on the rear half of the last car was raised about four feet, and bristled with radar dishes and antennae. Armored viewing ports were set in the thick steel plates.

McGarvey dropped flat on the roof of the next to the last car, screwed the silencer on his gun, then swung over the edge and climbed down the ladder to the connecting platform door. The train was moving at fifty miles per hour now and still accelerating as he pulled open the door and jumped inside.

The corridor in the forward car was deserted, but peering in the window of Tarankov’s car he was in time to see a commando disappear up the stairs to the upper level.

When the man was out of sight, McGarvey slipped inside, his heart pounding, the wound in his side throbbing from his exertions.

As he hesitated, a woman’s voice raised in anger screamed something from the rear of the car. The words were indistinct but he recognized Elizabeth’s voice, and he rushed down the corridor.

The last ten feet of the railroad car was fitted out as a comfortable sitting room, couches, easy chairs, bookcases, even a built-in entertainment center. McGarvey took all this in as Tarankov raised a fist to strike Elizabeth who was defiantly standing face-to-face with him.

Her eyes went wide as she spotted her father. “Daddy!” she cried triumphantly.,

McGarvey crossed the intervening space before Tarankov could fully react, and he bodily shoved the man aside, sending him sprawling onto the couch.

Tarankov fumbled for, the pistol at his hip, but McGarvey pointed his gun at the man’s face and he stopped.

“Are you okay, Liz*?” McGarvey asked, without taking his eyes off Tarankov.

“Now I am.” “Find the emergency stop cord or button, we need to slow down.”

“There is no such mechanism aboard this train,” Tarankov said calmly.

Someone rushed down the stairs from the command center. “General, I’m painting two incoming jets—” he shouted.

McGarvey turned and fired two shots, hitting the commando in the chest, driving him backwards.

Tarankov clawed his gun from its holster and he was raising it, a wicked gleam in his eyes, as McGarvey turned back and fired one shot at nearly point blank range into the Tarantula’s forehead just above the bridge of his nose, killing him instantly. His body, suddenly limp, slid off the couch and landed in a heap on his side.

McGarvey checked out one of the windows. They were accelerating through an industrial section of the city, and going far too fast for them to jump.

He snatched Tarankov’s gun from the dead man’s hand and gave it to Elizabeth. She was badly shaken, and an angry red welt had formed on her cheek, but she had a determined look in her eyes.

“What about the jets?” she asked.

“They’re going to attack, which means we have to get off. I’m going upstairs to see if I can get the engineer to slow down. In the meantime if anyone comes through the door, shoot.”

McGarvey checked the corridor, then stepped over the body of the dead commando, and cautiously took the stairs two at a time. At the top he swept the cramped nerve center left to right with his gun, but the compartment was empty.

The radar screen on one of the consoles showed the two incoming jets, but he ignored it as he desperately studied the electronic panels, finally finding the handset that connected with the locomotive.

He yanked it off its cradle. “This is the command center!” he shouted in Russian. “Stop the train now! Emergency stop! Emergency stop!” Several gunshots were fired from below.

McGarvey tossed down the phone as the train gave a huge lurch, sending him sprawling, the brakes on the locomotive and all twenty armored cars locking up simultaneously.

Before he could recover, a hatch in the ceiling clanged open and a figure dropped down on top of him, smashing his head against the bulkhead, knocking the wind out of him

“McGarvey,” Chernov snarled. He batted the gun out of McGarvey’s hand, and smashed a roundhouse blow into McGarvey’s jaw, snapping his head back again against the bulkhead, his vision momentarily dimming.

Chernov swung again, but McGarvey ducked the blow and Chernov’s fist smashed into the bulkhead.

With a mighty heave, McGarvey shoved the Russian away, and scrambled to his feet.

Chernov recovered almost instantly, and he stepped back as he snatched his pistol from the shoulder holster, a look of victory in his eyes. But McGarvey was on him before he could fire, smashing his shoulder into the man’s chest, sending him back against one of the electronic panels. He held Chernov’s gun hand off with his left, and smashed a fist into the man’s chest with every ounce of his strength. Chernov grunted in pain, and McGarvey hit him in the same spot again and again and a fourth time, until the Russian’s eyes fluttered, and his body went slack.

McGarvey snatched the gun from his hand, shoved him aside and bounded drunkenly down the stairs, the train still decelerating at a terrific rate.

“It’s me,” he shouted as he hit the bottom. He fired four shots down the corridor and then dove into the sitting room, answering fire tearing into the bulkheads and furniture.

The moment he was clear, Elizabeth raised her gun hand up over the back of the couch and emptied Tarankov’s pistol down the corridor.

McGarvey made it to where she was crouched, grabbed her arm, and together they crawled to the rear platform door.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

He popped back up and emptied Chernov’s gun down the corridor at the same moment Elizabeth hauled the door open, and they scrambled outside.

“Orlov leader, do you have visuals yet?” the controller said.

They had come in low directly over the top of Leningrad Station, the square still busy with people. The train was about three kilometers ahead, and was definitely coming to a stop.

Captain Trofimo dialed up two R85 air-to-ground missiles and armed them.

“We have the target in sight. We’re starting our attack run now.”

“We’re showing no enemy weapons radars,” said his controller circling high over the city in an AWAC Ilyushin Mainstay-B.

“We’re showing no response either,” Trofimo responded. “Do you wish us to abort?”

“Nyet,” the controller said. “You have final weapons release authorization.”

“Roger,” Trofimo said, and he glanced over at his wingman, nodded, then turned back to his look-down shoot-down system, fired both rockets, and peeled off to the right.

At the last moment he thought he’d seen two people jumping from the rear car, while a third person was climbing up on the roof, but he wasn’t sure.

By the time he made his turn and lined up with his wingman for a second attack run, it wasn’t necessary. The train had literally blown itself apart at the seams, probably from ammunition and ordnance stored aboard. Every single car was burning furiously, and the locomotive was lying on its side in an embankment below an abandoned factory, flames and greasy black smoke shooting two hundred feet into the sky.

“Mission complete,” Trofimo radioed. “We’re returning to base now.”

“Roger,” his controller responded tersely.

McGarvey and his daughter crouched in a ditch less than fifty yards from the furiously burning wreckage spread out on both sides of the railroad right of way, as the two jet fighters that had caused the destruction screamed off to the south. The heat was so intense it made their eyes water.

“Time to go home, Liz,” he said.

Elizabeth looked at her father, and smiled. “I bet Mom won’t believe a word I tell her.”

McGarvey had to smile back. “I don’t think she will. This one will be our little secret.”

“And Jacqueline’s too. She’s in love with you, and I have a feeling she’s not the type who’s going to let you simply walk away.”

“Maybe you’re right, Liz,” McGarvey said as he heard the first of the helicopters coming up from the south. Time to get out? he wondered. Maybe. But then he’d been asking himself that same question for the past few years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Hagberg is an ex-Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean and has spoken at CIA functions. He also writes as Sean Flannery, and has published more than a dozen novels of suspense, including High Flight and Kilo Option. He makes his home in Florida.