Snow Wolf (9 page)

Kraskin looked at Enger but left the
question unanswered. "You're a Party member and a valuable scientist. You
have nothing to fear."

"I'm Jewish, Grenady. It concerns
me.". Enger's face darkened. "Something's in the air. I can sense it.
Please tell me what's happening." Kraskin said sharply, "I think
you're too long down in that bunker of yours talking to rumor-mongers. You'd do
better to concentrate on your work. Pay no heed to malicious gossip coming from
Moscow."

There was a hard edge of menace in
Kraskin's voice, all reasonableness gone. He stubbed out his cigarette and
ended the discussion.

"Come, it's getting late, we'd
better finish the inspection. I want to be out of this godforsaken place and
get back to Berlin."

The blond-haired man stood at the window
of the apartment on the Kaiserdamm. It was cold outside, a bitter wind sweeping
the street. He heard the rumble of British Army trucks as they passed below the
window, but he didn't look down.

He turned as the woman came in. She
carried a brownwrapped parcel tied with string and a doctor's black leather
bag. She placed them on the table and went to join him at the window.

She looked at him.

He had an air of stillness and of
isolation. Alex Stanski was tall, in his middle thirties, and wore a dark
double-breasted suit, shirt and tie. His short blond hair was brushed off his
forehead and his face was clean-shaven and handsome.

There was a trace of a smile on his lips,
as if fixed there permanently. But it was the eyes which she always noticed.
Intense pale blue and infinitely dangerous.

"Kraskin should finish the
Luckenwalde inspection by midafternoon. After that he's holding a briefing at
KGB Headquarters at Karlshorst. At seven-thirty tomorrow morning he's due to
meet with the Soviet Zone Commander, so our guess is he'll go to bed early. He
never stays in any of the army barracks, but always uses the private apartment
at his disposal. It's by the Tierpark. Number twenty-four, a blue door.
Kraskin's apartment is on the second floor, number thirteen." The woman
half smiled. "Sometimes not such a lucky number. But for you, Alex, I hope
so."

Alex Stanski nodded. The faint smile
didn't leave his lips. "Tell me about the crossing."

"You'll use one of our tunnels that
exits near Friedrichstrasse. A Red Army jeep will be left parked and waiting
there." The woman went over the details for several minutes, and when
Stanski was satisfied she handed him an envelope. "Those are your papers.
You're a Red Army doctor from the Karishorst Military Hospital making a call to
one of your military patients. Kraskin is a wily old snake, so be careful.
Especially if there's someone else in the apartment."

"Should there be?"

"He likes little boys."

"How little?"

"Ten-year-olds seem to be his
preference. He also has a boyfriend. A major at Karlshorst named Pitrov. If
he's in the apartment, you know what to do."

Stanski heard the hard edge of bitterness
in the woman's voice. She nodded at the brown-wrapped parcel. "Everything
you need is in there. Make sure you don't fail, Alex. Because if you do,
Kraskin will kill you."

He opened the parcel in the bedroom once
she had left.

He tried on the uniform and it fitted him
well. He felt a shudder go through him as he looked in the mirror. The major's
olive-brown wasted uniform with the wide silver shoulderboards and the polished
boots gave him a threatening look. The brown leather holster and belt lay still
in the wrapper. He took them out and slid out the pistol. It was a Tokarev
automatic, 7.62 millimeter, the standard-issue Russian Army officer's sidearm,
but the tip of the barrel had been grooved. He screwed on the Carswell
silencer, then removed it again. There were two loaded magazines and he took
each in turn and pried out the bullets with his thumb.

He checked the action of the magazines
and weapon again and again, until he was satisfied neither might jam, then stripped
the gun down and cleaned it with an oily rag left in the parcel. When he had
finished, he replaced the bullets in the magazines, slammed home a magazine
into the butt of the gun, and slipped it into the holster.

He crossed to the bed and unfastened the
buckles on his suitcase and removed the knife from the doctor's black bag he
took from inside the case. The silver blade gleamed in the light as he
unsheathed it. He stood there running his thumb gently along the razor edge for
several moments, feeling the sharpness of the cold steel. He replaced the knife
in the sheath, slipped it into the doctor's bag, and snapped the metal catch
shut.

Before he removed the uniform he took the
photograph from his suitcase and slipped it into the tunic pocket. He wrapped
the uniform neatly back in the brown paper. He did not dress again but went to
lie naked on the bed. The alarm clock on the bedside locker said three o'clock.

He would try and sleep until six and then
it would be time to go.

It was almost seven when Kraskin's car
pulled up outside the apartment block facing the Tierpark. There was a crack of
thunder and it started to rain as Kraskin climbed out. The black Zil pulled
away and the colonel went up the stairs to the second floor and inserted the
key. When he stepped inside and closed the door he took in the smell
immediately.

He had been too long a military man not
to recognize the stench of cordite after a weapon had been fired, and at once
his suspicions were aroused.

The door to the bedroom was open and Kraskin
saw the body of Pitrov, dressed in a blue silk dressing gown, sprawled across
the bed. Even from a distance his eyes didn't deceive him. He saw the bullet
wound to the head and the dark crimson patch spread on the white cotton sheets.

"Oh my God," Kraskin breathed.

"Strange words for a communist,
Colonel Kraskin."

There was a faint click behind him.
Kraskin turned at once and saw the man. He was seated in the shadows by the
curtained window. His face was barely visible. But there was no mistaking the
silenced Tokarev in his hand.

Kraskin made a move for his holstered
pistol, managed to get the flap undone, but the man stood up smartly and came
out of the shadows. He pointed the Tokarev at Kraskin's head.

"I really wouldn't, comrade. Unless
you want to lose an eye. Sit down, at the table. Keep your hands on top."

Kraskin did as he was told. The man
stepped toward him.

"Who are you?" Kraskin
demanded, his face chalk-white.

"My name is Alex Stanski. I'm here
to send you to Hell."

Kraskin's face flushed white.
"You'll never get away with this." He nodded toward the bedroom door
where the body lay. "And for the crime that's just been committed you'll
be hunted down like the vermin that you are."

"You're hardly one to talk about
crimes, Kraskin. By the laws of any land you ought to be put down like a mad
dog. You were responsible for the shooting of at least fifty schoolchildren
during the kulak wars. I believe your specialty was to sexually assault them
before you dispatched them with a bullet in the head. When they find Pitrov's
body and yours they'll put it down to a lovers' tiff that turned tragically
violent. The gun I'm holding is Pitrov's. You killed him and then
yourself."

"Yes, very convenient,"said
Kraskin dryly. "So who sent you?" He shifted again in his chair, felt
the flap of his holster lift against the tablecloth.

"That really doesn't matter. But
this does." Stanski removed a photograph from his tunic pocket and tossed
it on the table.

"Pick it up."

Kraskin did as he was told.

"Look at the photograph. Do you
recognize the girl?"

Kraskin saw a young dark-haired girl
standing on a deserted beach. She was smiling for the camera, and held a child
in her arms.

"No, why should I?"

"Her name was Ave Perlov. And this
is where it gets personal, Comrade Kraskin. You interrogated her in Riga a year
ago. If I'm not mistaken, you had quite a time with her before you sent her to
the firing squad. Torture is too mild a word. She had to be taken to the wall
on a stretcher."

Kraskin smiled. "I remember now. One
of the partisan bitches."

"She was only nineteen, you
bastard."

Kraskin saw the flash of uncontrolled
anger and knew it was time to make his move. As he tossed the photograph away
he saw Stanski's eyes flick to it and Kraskin's right hand reached into his
holster and the Tokarev came out smartly.

Kraskin managed to get off a quick shot
and it chipped Stanski's left arm below the elbow.

But it wasn't enough.

Stanski leaned in close and shot him
between the eyes.

As the gun exploded, Kraskin was flung
back in his chair, the close shot cracking open the back of his skull and
tearing out half his brain.

Stanski picked up the photograph from the
floor and replaced it in his tunic pocket. He looked down at the neat hole
drilled in his uniform sleeve, saw the patch of blood spread. There was no
pain, not yet, just a dull ache in his arm. He found a towel in the bathroom
and wrapped it around the wound before he pulled on the military overcoat.

When he came back into the room, he opened
the doctor's black bag and removed the knife. He knew he had very little time
before someone reacted to Kraskin's gunshot, but he worked calmly.

He moved back to Kraskin's body and
unbuttoned the man's trousers. He removed the flaccid penis. The knife flashed
and the organ was severed in a gorge of blood. The man stuffed the severed lump
of flesh deep into Kraskin's gaping mouth. He wiped the blade on Kraskin's
tunic and replaced the knife in the doctor's bag.

He could hear the noises in the hallway now,
fists starting to pound the door, but already he was moving toward the window
and the fire escape.

Helsinki. October 26th That evening two
men sat down to a late dinner at Helsinki's Savoy Restaurant, a favorite haunt
of embassy staff and foreign diplomats. The tables in the eighth-floor gourmet
restaurant overlooking the Esplanadi were spaced generously enough apart for
conversations to be conducted in private.

Doug Canning's title at the American
Embassy was Political Counselor but his real function was as a CIA senior
officer.

Canning had made the initial report on
Anna Khorev and the incident at the border crossing to the American Ambassador,
and once a joint decision had been made to call in more expert help to
interrogate and assess the woman, Jake Massey, a senior Soviet expert and the
head of the CIA's Soviet Operations office based in Munich, had been put on a
plane for Helsinki that same night. After Massey had delivered his assessment,
he got a phone call to join Canning for dinner to discuss the matter.

Doug Canning was a tall, lean Texan with
blond thinning hair and tanned good looks. He had Southern charm in abundance
and wielded considerable influence with the US Ambassador.

It was the Ambassador who would
ultimately decide Anna Khorev's suitability for political asylum. Relations
between the Soviets and Americans were at their lowest in years, and those who
escaped over the border were often considered more a headache than a help.
Massey knew Anna Khorev was a problem the American Embassy would rather not
have to deal with and that her worries were far from over.

Canning had ordered a bottle of Bordeaux
and the house specialty, Vorschmack, for both of them, and when he had sipped
his wine appreciatively he smiled across the table.

"it sounds from the report as though
the girl had a pretty rough time. But is she telling you anything we could find
useful, Jake?"

Massey had hardly touched his food, and
now he shook his head.

"There's nothing much she can tell
us. It's been eight years since she was discharged from the Red Army. So any
background information in that regard would be pretty much out of date by
now."

Canning looked out toward Helsinki's
massive illuminated Dome Cathedral in the distance, then back again. "So I
guess she's really no use to us?"

Massey knew it was a crucial question but
he replied honestly. "I guess not. But there are other circumstances to
consider here, Doug."

"Such as?"

"What the girl's been through. She's
taken a hell of a beating in the last six months."

"And you think she's telling you the
truth?"

"Yes, I do. I think her story's
genuine. Whether or not she can help us with intelligence information, on
humane grounds alone I think she has a case."

Canning hesitated, then wiped his mouth
with his napkin and sat forward. "Jake, let me give it to you straight.
Some pretty strong noises are being made at the highest levels. It seems Moscow
has got a bee up their ass on this one. Like it's a matter of principle they
get her returned. They say she's a common criminal and in order not to further
damage the already delicate relationship between our two countries, we ought to
send her back over the border." He smiled. "Now you and I know that's
a load of reindeer shit but I want you to be aware of the fact that they don't
like the idea of us helping the little lady one little bit."