Duel of Assassins (20 page)

Starkov coughed, and Biryukov spoke: “I agree, Major. A
minor point, but the president is currently not in either of these places.”

“Where the hell is he?” Kelleher cut in. “I saw him last
night on
Vremya
, addressing the Congress of People’s Deputies.”

“He left this morning for his summerhouse in Oreanda.”

“He’s in the Crimea?”

“Yes, Oreanda is just west of Yalta. A lovely place, but a
fortress nonetheless, in some ways surpassing even the Kremlin. The compound
perimeter is double-walled on the land side, with elite troops, machine guns
and so forth. And on the other side there are sheer cliffs rising more than a
hundred meters from the Black Sea.”

Taras looked askance. “With all due respect, Mr. Chairman,
that’s an incredibly naive thing to say. Marcus and I were trained in the
Spetsnaz
to attack impregnable fortresses. In Afghanistan we got so we could run up
and down sheer cliffs in the dark, with full packs and no ropes. The
mujahideen
couldn’t believe it at first. The survivors learned better.”

“I am fully aware of the capabilities of
Spetsnaz
,
Major. The KGB academies have introduced much of the same curriculum. It is you
who are overestimating your old comrade. In the first place, he could have no
idea that Rybkin was not in Moscow. Even the CIA”—he gestured at Kelleher—“was
not aware of it until I told you. And in the second place, Marcus would never
get within twenty kilometers of Oreanda, by air, land or sea, without our
pinpointing him.”

“Really? You expect me to believe this, after the whole
world has seen a tiny Cessna land in Red Square with a German teenager at the
controls? Believe me, Marcus is a bit more skilled at penetrating defenses than
this boy. In any case, it wouldn’t hurt for your people to tighten their
security at Oreanda.”

Biryukov arched his Brezhnevian brows, assuming a clearly
patronizing tone: “Mathias Rust was a fluke, Major, as you well know. We could
have shot the hooligan down the moment he crossed the Finnish border; we simply
chose not to. We are always on maximum alert. That’s the way we operate.”

Taras shrugged. It was pointless to argue. He was
calculating elapsed time and distance. Marcus had mailed the severed finger
from Munich the day before around noon. If he did have some secret pipeline to
Rybkin’s movements and wanted to surprise the Soviet leader at his summer
house, how close could he be now? The numbers blurred in Taras’ brain, the
calculation collapsing under too many variables. But one thing was certain:
striking when and where least expected was Marcus’ preferred mode of operation.
The only thing to do was go and have a look. He turned back to Biryukov:

“You asked me what I wanted to do next. Okay. I want to go
to Oreanda. As soon as you can arrange it.”

“Of course.” Biryukov picked up the phone, spoke briefly,
put it down. “They will call back in a moment.”

“Taras, do you want me to go with you?” Kelleher said.

“No, thanks, Hank.”

When the phone double-shrilled, Biryukov grabbed it,
listened, grunted, hung up. “A car is being brought around to the courtyard in
back to take you to Vnukovo. The flight to Simferopol Airport in the Crimea
takes two hours. From there you can either drive to Yalta or take a
helicopter—”

“Get me a helicopter.”

“Of course. In that case, you might reach Oreanda in, oh, a
little more than three and a half hours from now. Is this fast enough, Major?”

“Let’s hope so.”

The madonna-faced, lightly mustached young woman working
passport control at Istanbul’s Yesilköy Airport looked from the photograph to
the tall Canadian leaning nonchalantly against her counter, and hesitated. It
was not because she was suspicious of the man. It was definitely he in the
picture—with his boyish-rugged features, light-blue eyes, sandy hair, shaggy
mustache. Byron Landy, journalist; born Vancouver, October 28, 1957.
Let the
bearer pass freely in the name of Her Majesty the Queen
...

No, she hesitated because this extremely attractive traveler
was grinning at her in a way that dispelled her afternoon lethargy and made her
feel suddenly and blushingly feminine. She held his gaze a long, teasing
moment, then slid off it toward the anxious, arriving swarm from Lufthansa 1582
behind him.

Damn! Why were they all in such a ridiculous rush?

Her playful mood was broken. She closed the navy-blue
passport with the gold-stamped Canadian coat of arms and handed it back with
her own best smile of the day: “Welcome to Istanbul, Mr. Landy. I hope you
enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks to you, it’s off to a lovely start.”

Marcus Jolly shouldered his single carryon and let his smile
fade as he passed beyond the counter. He scolded himself for deliberately
making an impression on the Turkish girl. It was    spectacularly stupid
behavior for an international fugitive, one down to his last two sets of false
identity papers. But her eyes were languorous, dammit, like his image of a
properly sub-missive harem girl, and he had wanted to bask in them a moment. If
he was to be denied everything, then he might as well shoot himself—and spare
his enemies the trouble.

The fact was, of course, Marcus enjoyed danger. It
heightened the excitement of the game. Why else would he have gone to the
extreme of taunting his pursuers—severing and sending the digital message with
attached fire-ring to Biryukov, whom he assessed to be the leading hound in the
pack now baying at his heels? Well, let them catch him, if they could.

Marcus pushed through the crowded concourse with his usual
swagger and passed out into the humid late afternoon, angling for the taxi
stand. He was still chuckling as he thought of Rybkin, Biryukov, all the rest
of them. Those Politburo prag-matists would never be able to fathom what
motivated a daredevil like himself. For there was no self-serving reason for
him to be carrying out the assassination order of a commander who himself was
dead, whose network was compromised, whose cause was lost. Even if Marcus
succeeded in killing Rybkin, what then? All his bridges back were in flames. At
this moment he was no longer
Spetsnaz
, no longer an adopted Soviet,
could never again be American.

Riddle: Who or what am I?

I am Marchenko’s weapon, fired into the night by a dying
man. I am his samurai, his kamikaze.

Marcus recalled his last encounter with the old general. It
had been three winters before in Moscow at the Yaroslav Station, Platform Two.
Marchenko was departing for virtual exile as commandant of some shithole camp
outside of Novosibirsk, thirty-three hundred kilometers to the east. Instead of
the four-hour flight on Aeroflot, the old man had opted for the Trans-Siberian
Railway and a marathon journey of three days.

“What’s the fucking hurry?” he said to Marcus as they
loitered alongside a bright-red carriage bearing the plaque MOSCOW-VLADIVOSTOK.
“The tsars used to make poor bastards like me walk all the way to Siberia.”

The old man waved the porter ahead with his baggage, then
reached into his greatcoat, producing a half-liter of Ukrainian pepper vodka
and his triumphant, steely smile.

“In the words of the great Shakespeare,” Marchenko said,
offering the first slug to Marcus, “‘Let a soldier drink!’”

They took turns infusing themselves with warmth against the
bleak afternoon and a bleaker future. There wasn’t much left to say between
them in those last moments. Marcus had his two sets of orders—his official
reassignment to Novosibirsk as aide-de-camp for Marchenko, and the old man’s
contradictory ultimatum for Marcus to get the hell out of the country and
permanently after his identity.

“Do your old trick, lad. You’ve got the documents. Fold your
wings, crawl into a cocoon somewhere and turn back into a little caterpillar.
At least for a while.”

But how, in such case, was Marcus to contact the general
again?

“Well, you can’t,” he had been told. “Anyway, I forbid it,
so don’t even try.” Marchenko had left only one tenuous linkage—verbal
instructdions on how Marcus might check for messages along a secret
Spetznaz
network the general was in process of setting up. “But if you ask my real
advice, you’ll forget about me. And if you’re ever summoned, you won’t
respond.”

“Rodion Igorovich,” Marcus had shot back, “don’t give me
this bullshit! If you don’t want me to respond, make sure you never call me!”

“I am just warning you, Marcus. Have it your way. If you
wish always to be a glorious, suicidal idiot… well, then, I will take this
under advisement.”

The two men stood close together on the frozen platform,
sharing a last bottle as grim-faced travelers flowed past—Tatars, Kazakhs,
Buryats, even here and there a Russian. And it suddenly occurred to Marcus that
he was looking—for the last time—at the only person on earth who really knew
him and who, amazingly enough, accepted him whole. Thought just what he was to
this magnificent old dinosaur had never been quite clear in Marcus’ mind. A
formidable weapon, often enough, and a protégé certainly. But was he a friend as
well, or perhaps something even more? Marchenko had no sons, Marcus knew, only
a daughter, long estranged and married to some
apparatchik
.

The general put out his big bony hand. “Good-bye, Marcus. Do
what I tell you now and get the fuck out of here. Fool the damn bastards on the
Stavka
and the KGB and find your sunshine again. And sometimes, when you
are fucking some darling little cunt—Italian I hear is the best—you give her a
good one just for me, okay? You do it right, and all the way to Siberia I will
hear her scr aeming.”

Marcus laughed and promised dutifully. Then Colonel General
Rodion Marchenko turned and walked purposefully away, lifting his hand in a
last wave before disappearing into the shiny red car. With a sudden hollowness
in his chest and thickness in his throat, Marcus let himself be carried along
with the crowd, down the platform and into the vast echoing gloom of the
station.

The old man was gone. But his deadly legacy was far from
over.

Marcus had never been to Istanbul, and, during the twenty-minute
taxi ride, through the Topkapi Gate in the old Byzantine Walls and along Millet
Caddesi into the Old City, he gawked at the passing picture-postcard views like
any tourist—or like the world wanderer he had been in his carefree youth. But
his was not a pleasure trip, and his current itinerary was extremely tight,
with no margin for distractions or detours. Already Stamboul’s fabled light was
fading, its domes and minarets veiling for evening as the muezzins’
tape-recorded calls went forth for sundown prayers; on the Asian shore across
the Bosphorus a scattered mosaic mirror of westward windows flashed the fires
of sunset. Marcus had a great deal of deadly work to do in the hours of this
coming darkness, and had managed to snatch less than an hour of sleep during
the three-hour forty-minute flight from Munich.

He had the taxi let him off on Kennedy Caddesi at the foot
of the Second and Third Hills, by the entrance to the little fishing harbor of
Kumkapi. Off to his left, a kilometer eastward along the ramparts facing the
Sea of Marmara, was the cluster-domed magnificence of Sultan Ahmet, the Blue
Mosque. Nearer to hand along the low seawall, brightly painted caïques and
skiffs and smacks began to settle into their own dark liquid reflections, while
quayside fishmongers iced their unsold wares and packed up their tables.

But Marcus’ gaze was directed offshore, into the sunset haze
of the Marmara roadstead, where perhaps twenty ships were   anchored. They were
mostly larger fishing craft and smaller merchant vessels, judging by their hull
forms and upperworks. But moored farthest out, right where Marcus was told it
would be, was a solitary military ship—a Soviet Polnocny class LST. With
binoculars from his shoulder bag, he scanned the elongated tank deck, picked
out the white numbers painted on her gray bow—671. She was the
Gorodovikov
,
all right. And he’d cut it damn close—less than a half-hour to spare.

After his betrayal in Bavaria, Marcus had been left with
only two links to Marchenko’s old European network. One was an electronic
message drop in Helsinki. Accessing that required only basic hardware—a laptop
with built-in modem, easily obtained in Munich—but Marcus had never really
trusted email security. The other contact was an emergency phone number in
Budapest, again a relay point for coded instructions and information. Marcus
had decided to risk it. He’d dialed the number from a pay phone in the Munich
Hauptbahnhof, given his request, been called back two hours later with some
startling information, directions for this rendezvous—and barely enough time to
catch the Lufthansa flight to get here.

Would this turn out to be a setup, too?

He didn’t have a long wait to find out. Catching the pungent
odor of Turkish tobacco behind him, Marcus turned around. A dozen paces down
the quay a compact figure in jeans, windbreaker and deck shoes was smoking and
watching him. The man approached, gave him a level, dark-eyed stare and a flat
cigarette, then proceeded to light it. They exchanged the correct sequence of trivialities.
The man was Andrian Ivannenko, captain of the
Gorodovikov
. He was also
naval
Spetsnaz
, Marcus knew, and once upon a time had worked closely
with Marchenko.

Ivannenko gestured along the harbor wall. “The launch will
be along in a few minutes. Let’s walk. You can leave your bag. Kuzma will watch
it.”

A second man, also out of uniform—young-looking to be an
officer, likely a seaman—was approaching. Marcus eased his shoulder bag to the
cobblestones, moved off alongside the captain.

“Marcus, look out there, not far from the
Gorodovikov
.
You know what happened there?”

“A lot, I’d guess. All kinds of naval battles—Greeks,
Persians, Byzantines, Ottomans.”

“I’m talking more recently. Like a couple of years ago.”

“You mean that movie ship?”

“Yeah. Some Kurds jumped an old square-rigger, held about
forty people hostage. Burned the ship to the waterline. It washed ashore not
far from where we’re standing. I saw it, ugly fucking sight. Here’s my
question. What did those poor bastards get for their trouble?”

“They got dead?”

“That’s right, Marcus. They got dead, and the Kurds still
don’t have a fucking country.”

“What’s your point, Andrian? Or is this just sort of
interesting local color?”

“I’ll tell you the point, Marcus, as if you didn’t know.
Number one. I’m going to help you, if you insist on it. I owe the Old Man that
much. But I’m going to tell you something else. I don’t like it. And the truth
of it is, I resent being called on. No matter what happens, you’re endangering
me, what’s left of my career, maybe some of my men. And you’re doing it all for
nothing.”

“You’re telling me to call it off, Andrian?”

“I’m saying think real hard about it, that’s all. Rybkin’s
nothing. Just the latest asshole trying to ride the avalanche of history,
trying to keep from being buried alive. The world’s changed, Marcus.
Marchenko’s world is gone. The Old Russia is gone. Maybe that’s bad, maybe it’s
good, but it sure is inevitable. They’re carving us up into pieces, and what’s
left will probably end up reporting to Brussels or Berlin, just like the Brits,
who lost their whole fucking empire. And you’re not going to stop it all by
yourself.” Ivannenko halted and faced him. “So go home, why don’t you, and take
it easy?”

“I haven’t got one.”

“That could be arranged. That much we could do, before we
break up the Old Man’s gang forever.”

Nearby an old fisherman levered himself up from the 
cobblestones, started gathering the nets he had been mending. Even in the
gloom, the red-dyed netting stood out. Marcus met Ivannenko’s penetrating gaze
with an easy smile.

“I’m sorry, Andrian. You’re lecturing the wrong guy. I’m not
a political animal. I’m not even a patriot, like Marchenko. You know why I
defected to your country? For the fun of it. And I’m probably attempting this
for the same dumb reason. The truth is, I don’t know for sure, because I don’t
always think things through. I’m an impulse guy.”

“This is all bullshit, Marcus. You’re doing it because the
Old Man asked you to. At least admit this, or I swear I’ll do nothing for you.”

“Okay. I owe him, dead or alive, like you do. And also I
want to see if I can pull it off, right under the twitching assholes of the
KGB. And somewhere down there, in my adopted Russian soul, let’s say, maybe I
do think Rybkin’s an evil bastard who’d sell his mother, let alone his
Motherland, for whatever he can get on the open market. But don’t worry,
Captain. Nobody will know you guys were involved. Just get me out to the
Medtner
.”

The
Nikolai Medtner
was a Soviet Lentra-class
converted trawler, or “survey ship,” now patrolling somewhere in the Black Sea.
According to the information Budapest had relayed back to Marcus, Black Sea
Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol in the Crimea had been alerted that President
Rybkin would be in their area for the next several days. Which meant he had
gone to Kichkine, his clifftop estate in the Yalta suburb of Oreanda that had
once belonged to Brezhnev. The “plan”—though nobody but Marcus gave it a
chance—was to surprise Rybkin there, as Marcus had so often ambushed
mujahideen
in their strongholds. Getting out to the
Medtner
was the next critical
phase of the operation, and that would require the considerable connivance of
Ivannenko.