McGarvey was no longer a threat to Tarankov’s safety. Yet something within Chernov, some instinct, told him otherwise.
“One of my people has come up with an idea,” Petrovsky said. “He thinks that we should pump a couple thousand gallons of diesel fuel down the tunnel, and set it on fire. It might work. At least it’d be better than using gasoline, which would probably blow everything from here to there off the map.”
Chernov studied the Militia investigator for a moment to make sure the man wasn’t joking.
“If they’re still down there, they’re already dead. So trying to cook them out wouldn’t accomplish a thing.”
“Do you think they got out?”
“I want to say no, but I’m not sure,” Chernov said. “With a man like him you can never be sure.”
“He has the woman with him. She might have slowed him down.”
“What are the French saying about her?”
“Nothing. In fact they won’t even talk to me. Word’s out about President Kabatov, and it’s got everybody scared shitless,” Petrovsky said. He gave Chernov an appraising look. “That includes me, Colonel, because I don’t know what’s going on.”
“That doesn’t matter. You have a job to do and I suggest you get on with it.”
“We’re done.”
“Then have your men start over again,” Chernov said. “Because if McGarvey is still alive he’ll be here within the hour, and we’d better be ready for him.”
“What about you, Colonel?” Petrovsky said, choosing his words with care. “Your letter from President Kabatov authorizing you to do whatever it takes to catch McGarvey is no longer valid. Who are you reporting to now?”
Chernov was tired but still in control of himself. “General Yuryn.”
“What about him?” Petrovsky asked. “Who is he reporting to? Who’s in charge?”
“General Korzhakov,” Chernov said. “For the moment.”
Petrovsky nodded. “I think I’ll get back to my men, now.”
Chernov watched him walk away, basically a competent man who probably would not survive the next few days. There would be a lot of good and competent men who wouldn’t make it. In every revolution they were among the first to die.
He pocketed the handheld transceiver, checked the load in the Colt 10mm automatic he’d drawn from Kremlin security stores and took the elevator up to the presidential floor.
Security was tight. Even he had to pass through four separate body searches, and explain who he was and why he was carrying a weapon, before he was allowed to approach what had become General Korzhakov’s temporary base of operations.
Civilians and soldiers scurried along corridors, telephones rang, computer printers whined, and heated discussions took place in every third office. Yet there seemed to be no order to what was going on. Half the people seemed to be in a daze, simply standing by, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for Tarankov to show up, though nobody was saying so aloud. The other half tried to look busy.
The president’s anteroom and office were jammed with people. Korzhakov, facing the windows, was speaking to someone on the phone, while three of his advisers hovered around, passing him notes.
General Yuryn, his uniform disheveled, looking more corpulent and disgusting than ever, hurried out to Chernov. “Have you found him?” he demanded.
“He and the French woman are probably dead, but we’re still looking.”
“Tarankov’s train is on the move. The rally has been cancelled, but that won’t stop the crowds of course, so when he arrives the platform will be his alone. The rest of us will wait up here.”
“When’s he due?”
“His ETA at Leningrad Station is 3-40, which gives him twenty minutes to get down here if he means to make it by four.”
“How about the military?”
“So far they’re remaining neutral.”
“Including General Vashleyev?”
Captain-General Viktor Vashleyev was commander of the Moscow Defense Forces, and a former drinking buddy of President Yeltsin and Korzhakov. But he was something of a moderate, no friend of Tarankov.
“He promises to do whatever it takes to maintain order,” Yuryn said. “Tarankov’s arrest warrant is on his desk, but I don’t think he’ll act on it.”
“Then everything is set—”
“Except for McGarvey,” Yuryn cut in. “Is there any chance, even a slight chance, that he’ll get out of the sewers in time to make the assassination attempt?”
“If it was anyone else I’d say no.”
“Is there a chance that if he does somehow make it out, that you won’t be able to stop him in time?” Yuryn asked sharply.
“I don’t know,” Chernov said after a moment. “So far he’s eluded everything we’ve thrown at him, even the threat that we’ll use his daughter as a hostage. But he’s not a fanatic, which means he knows how he’s going to kill Tarankov and he has a plan for getting away.”
“Tarankov will have to send a double to make his speech,” said Yuryn, after first making certain that no one was listening to them.
“He won’t do it.”
Yuryn threw up his hands in despair. “Then it’s up to you,” he said. “For the next hour and a half until Tarankov is safely off the reviewing stand you must operate on the assumption that McGarvey managed to get out of the sewers and will take the shot.”
Viktor Yemlin had a bad three days. It was a few minutes after 3:00, and he was parked in his car down the block from an eighteen-story apartment building near the zoo, not sure if he knew what he was doing.
Ever since the untraceable but potentially disastrous call from the man who had identified himself as a friend of McGarvey’s, he’d been waiting for the axe to fall. But nothing had happened, and after a couple of discreet telephone calls he was pretty sure that he was no longer being followed. His home telephone was still bugged, but the pay phones around his apartment were not.
The development was ominous, all the more so because his normal channels of communication between the FSK and the Militia had been blocked. Every cop and soldier in Moscow was looking for McGarvey, and he had no access to any information about the search except that it was going on.
Nor, despite his sensitive position in the SVR, was he able to find out anything about President Kabatov’s apparent suicide this morning although he was being asked to predict Washington’s likely response.
It was like working in a vacuum. Nothing was getting through.
His guest membership at the Magesterium had been cancelled, and his friend Konstantin Sukoruchkin was not answering his telephone.
One by one his contacts in Moscow were drying up. It was as if everyone he’d known was suddenly distancing themselves from “him.
Earlier this afternoon he’d tried to use the SVR’s secured telephone system to place a call to Shevardnadze in Tbilisi, but his access had been denied, thus completing his isolation.
Yemlin looked at his watch. If Tarankov was on schedule he would be arriving in Red Square in less than an hour. Whether or not McGarvey assassinated him, the next few hours would be extremely critical for the nation, all the more now that there was no elected leader in charge.
Yemlin looked at his watch again, then got out of the car and strode down the block to the apartment building, where he presented his credentials to the front desk security people, who were expecting him.
He was escorted upstairs where he was met in the penthouse foyer by a secretary who led him back to a corner study with panoramic views of the city.
Five minutes later, Mikhail Gorbachev, wearing a button-up sweater over an open-neck shirt, corduroy trousers and house slippers, entered the study.
“Mr. President, Russia is heading toward certain disaster and you’re the only man I know who can help,”
