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.
