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
