Assassin (46 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Assassin
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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. it. 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 not 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.”
A
t 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 tunnel 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,
mon 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.”

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