Yemlin said.
By 3:40 one million people were jammed into Red Square — and still more poured in from around the city. Bleachers east and west of Lenin’s Mausoleum were filled with visiting dignitaries and the press. Dozens of television vans were lined up end-to-end along the Kremlin walls, their satellite dishes pointed up to the sky.
Soldiers and police manned barricades that held the people back from a broad boulevard that ran up from the river, past the Cathedral, crossed in front of the reviewing stand and opened into Okhotny Ryad at the north end of the square. It was the traditional parade route taken by the troops and their military hardware.
McGarvey had managed to get a little sleep, and afterward he’d used his pocket knife to remove the lead holding a roughly triangular piece of stained glass about twelve inches wide at its base from the round window. He crouched well back from the narrow opening through which he would shoot and studied the reviewing platform through the Dragunov’s powerful scope. No one had shown up yet. No ceremonial guards, no officers, nor any of the sound technicians. Aimed soldiers were still stationed on the Kremlin walls above and behind the mausoleum, but the reviewing platform was empty, the flags and banners snapping in the stiff breeze that had developed since noon.
Traditional Russian folk music thundered across the square from loudspeakers sprinkled here and there. Some people danced to it, and around the edges of the vast crowd vendors sold everything from ice cream to beer. It was a carnival atmosphere, except it was obvious that the people were waiting expectantly for something.
With Kabatov dead no one had stepped in to fill his place or else they would have come to the reviewing stand by now. The city, and the entire country was waiting for Tarankov’s triumphal entrance to Red Square where he would mount the platform and tell his people that he had come to restore the Soviet Union, to give them back their dignity and their pride, to feed and clothe and house them, to give them back their jobs, their hospitals and their peace of mind.
But at what cost, almost no one seemed to be asking.
Most of the frequencies the scanner was picking up had been oddly quiet. Very little had come from the Kremlin’s security detail after the search of the tunnels by divers had ended in disaster. Only the frequencies used by the Militia and army crowd control units remained busy. A dozen arrests had been made, a few fights broken up, and a number of handguns confiscated.
Jacqueline had positioned herself beneath one of the arches on the opposite side of the central dome from where she could watch the main entrance below. So far the church remained empty. McGarvey glanced over at her at the same moment something coming over the radio caught his attention.
“Azarov Brigade, say again your ETA at Leningrad Station.”
“We’re three minutes out,” an excited voice responded. It sounded as if he were radioing from a moving vehicle.
“Pull back to point B. I repeat, pull back to point B, he’s already there.”
“Copy. I don’t want to get into a firefight with his people up here. We won’t have a chance without reinforcements.”
“You’ll be coming in behind him, so watch yourself,” the first speaker warned. “Gamov and Sokol brigades, are you in position yet?”
“Gamov, roger.”
“Sokol, roger.”
“Keep your eyes open, this is a go,” the first speaker said.
Apparently the government was finally doing something, but McGarvey was almost certain that they were making a very big mistake. If they meant to stop Tarankov, yet keep the civilian casualties to a minimum, the job should have been done out in the countryside by a direct attack on his train. Or else Leningrad Station could have been evacuated and as Tarankov’s troops dismounted they could have been cut down. But by avoiding a firefight up there, they were taking the battle to a Red Square jammed with innocent people. No matter how many troops they had at their command, a crowd of a million people was an unstoppable force.
McGarvey carefully laid the rifle down, climbed out of the arched cupola and waved at Jacqueline until he caught her eye.
She started around the scaffolding, and he met her halfway.
“Has it started?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“His train just pulled into Leningrad Station so he could be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. But the government is going to try to ambush him.”
“Good, then we can get out of here right now,” said Jacqueline, relieved.
“They’ve missed him at the station, so they’re coming down here.”
Jacqueline glanced over toward the window. “It’ll be a massacre with all those people waiting for him. Merde, are they stupid?”
“They’re desperate,” McGarvey said. “And they won’t succeed, so I’m staying here.”
Jacqueline looked into his eyes. “Then I too shall stay.”
“I want you to go down to the garden entrance, the one you used to get in here, and make sure it’s clear. As soon as I take my shot, we’ll get out. We can lose ourselves in the crowd.”
She wanted to argue with him, but after a moment she kissed him on the cheek, and then made her way down to the gallery level that provided access to the other parts of the Cathedral.
McGarvey was glad she hadn’t asked him about Liz. Listening to the radio had given him an idea for a contingency plan in case everything fell apart here.
Leningrad Station
Elizabeth McGarvey was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life, yet she was still determined to somehow kill Tarankov with her bare hands, if need be because she had no weapon. They’d not fed her breakfast or lunch, so she’d not been able to steal a table knife or a fork. Nor had she found anything in her compartment that could be used as a weapon.
Two minutes ago they’d screamed to a halt a hundred yards from the big railroad station, the doors on most of the armored cars crashed open, steel ramps were extended with a tremendous din, and a dozen armored personnel carriers roared into life, forming up along the tracks next to the train.
Thousands of people up on the street waved banners and cheered, the noise they made so overwhelming that even over the roar of the APCs, Elizabeth could hear them. The door of her compartment opened, and she spun around, ready to attack like a wild animal, but Tarankov was not with the two stern-faced commandoes.
“You will come with us now,” one of them ordered.
“Fuck you,” Elizabeth shouted in Russian, and she lunged at them, swinging both fists.
The commando grabbed her by the arms and sent her crashing into the compartment wall, bending her elbows behind her back so hard she thought her shoulders would be dislocated.
When she settled down they pulled her out into the corridor, where one of them pawed her crotch and grinned.
“We’ll have some fun with you tonight, you little bitch,” he promised.
Outside, she was hustled across the tracks and shoved into the lead APC with eight commandoes. Tarankov stood on top in the gunner’s turret, and the moment the hatch slammed shut he gave the order to move out.
Elizabeth was pushed into a bucket seat near the back of the vehicle, and had to brace herself in order not to be tossed around.
It was happening as she feared it might, leaving her no chance of fighting back. But the opportunity would come, she kept telling herself. It was her only hope, her only connection with sanity.
Chemov put down the telephone as one of the city engineers came rushing down the corridor into the deserted Security Center with Captain Petrovsky. The SVR helicopter he’d ordered would touch down inside the Kremlin walls on the opposite side from Red Square between the Borovitskaya and Water Drawing towers in ten minutes. The pilot, a Tarankov supporter, agreed to stand by until Chernov showed up.
“St. Basil’s,” Petrovsky shouted.
The engineer spread a large scale yellowed plan drawing of a part of the river and storm sewer system downtown. Over this he laid a clear plastic sheet upon which had been drawn the locations of the metro stations and tunnels, and the’ major buildings from Dzerzhinsky Square all the way down to the Moscow River.
