“Will it matter if the French know that we’ve met?”
Yemlin thought for a moment. “Yes, it will matter very much. It will be a question of your safety.”
“Are the French after you for some reason?” “No, but they wouldn’t be so happy if they knew why I’d come to see you,” Yemlin said. He stared down at the street and the river.
“I’m retired,” McGarvey said. “Anyway you’d be the last person I’d help. We go back too long on opposite sides of the fence for me to so easily forget.”
“Eighteen months ago you came to me to ask a favor. And I did it for you, Kirk. Gladly. And as it turns out you did very well because of the information I provided you. All I’m asking now is that you hear me out.”
McGarvey turned to look at the Russian. In eighteen months he’d aged ten years. He no longer seemed to be the dangerous adversary he’d once been when he’d headed the Illegals Directorate of the KGB, and later when he’d headed Department Viktor, the Russian assassination and terrorist division.
He’d been fighting capitalism, he’d told McGarvey. Fighting to save the Rodina — the Motherland — as they’d all been in those days. But there had been hundreds, even thousands of deaths. Tens of millions of deaths counting the ones Stalin massacred.
But who was innocent, McGarvey asked himself now as he had then. He had his share of blood on his hands. More than his share. Was fighting to save democracy any less noble for an American, than fighting to save socialism was for a Russian? He didn’t have the answer.
“All right, Viktor, I’ll listen to you. But that’s all. I promise you that I’m out of the business.”
“What about the woman?”
“I’ll make my excuses. It’ll be okay.”
Yemlin glanced out the windows. “Let’s walk in the park. Heights make me dizzy.”
They took the elevator back down, then crossed Quai Branly and descended to the river walk where McGarvey and Jacqueline had been heading. An odd state of affairs, McGarvey thought. But then his entire life had been a series of odd affairs.
Traffic on the river, as on the streets, was heavy. The weather was bringing everybody outdoors. The river walk too was crowded, which was better for their purposes. It gave them anonymity.
“The situation is becoming very bad in Russia,” Yemlin said.
“I know,” McGarvey replied. “Have you caught Yeltsin’s assassin yet, or did he get out of the city and return to Tarankov’s protection?”
“President Yeltsin died of a heart attack—”
“That’s not true. Nor do your security people carry any type of ordnance in their chase cars that would explode like that. The public may have bought it, but there isn’t a professional in the business in the West who believes the story. The question is, why did you people make it up? Are you that concerned about Tarankov?”
“I don’t agree with you, Kirk,” Yemlin said. “The signals we’re getting back from the CIA and SIS indicate they believe what we’re telling them.”
“What else can they do? Nobody wants to hammer you guys into the ground anymore. Fact is most of the world feels sorry for you. Your people are going hungry, you’ve polluted the entire country, your factories are falling apart, and nobody in their right mind wants to travel around Moscow or St. Petersburg without bodyguards. So Langley is saying, okay we’ll go along with whatever they want to tell us for the moment. Let’s see what shakes out. Let’s see how they handle it. Armed revolution, anarchy, or a Warren Commission that nobody will believe, but that everybody will respect.”
“You have no proof of that.”
“Come on, Viktor, don’t shit the troops,” McGarvey said sharply. “You want to talk to me, go ahead and talk. But don’t lie. Tell it like it is, or go back to Moscow. Who knows, it might get better.”
Yemlin’s shoulders sagged. He shook his head. “It won’t get better. It can only get worse.”
“Is Kabatov really in charge like the wire services are reporting?”
“Nobody else wants the job, and for the moment at least his is the most decisive voice in Moscow. But nobody thinks that the situation will remain stable until the June elections. At the very least what little order is left will totally break down, and the anarchy that the west has been predicting for us all these years will finally come to pass.”
“What about the military? How are they handling Yeltsin’s death?”
“Wait and see.”
“No threat of a coup?” “That depends on what happens between now and the elections. But it’s certainly another very real possibility, Kirk. Our situation is desperate.”
“Will the Duma elect an interim president?
“They’re in session now. Kabatov has the majority support, again only because he’s the lesser of any number of evils.”
“Like Nikolai Yuryn?”
Yemlin looked at McGarvey with wry amusement. “You would make a good Russian politician.”
They walked for awhile in silence, the traffic on the avenue above seemingly more distant than before. McGarvey knew why Yemlin had come to see him. The trouble was he didn’t know what to do.
“What really happened, Viktor?”
“It was one of Tarankov’s men, as you suspected, though we don’t have much of a description yet, or a name. He got into the Kremlin by posing as a Presidential Security Service lieutenant colonel, planted a radio controlled bomb in the limo scheduled to pick up Yeltsin in the morning, and pushed the button when the president’s motorcade came across Red Square.”
“He must have a good intelligence source. He probably was out of Moscow within an hour after the hit, long before the Militia could get its act together.”
“He had a seven-hour head start.”
McGarvey looked sharply at the Russian. “It’s that bad?”
“You can’t imagine.”
McGarvey lit a cigarette. “There’s a very good chance that Tarankov would have won the election. Why’d he take the risk?”
“Yeltsin ordered his arrest. It was going to be an ambush next week in Nizhny Novgorod. A few thousand troops and helicopters against his armored train and two hundred commandoes. There was a leak, the information got to Tarankov and he had Yeltsin killed.”
“Now Kabatov is stuck in the same position. He has to go ahead with Yeltsin’s order to arrest Tarankov and then do what? Try to bring him to trial in Moscow?”
Yemlin nodded glumly. “It’d tear Russia apart.”
“You’ll lose the country if you don’t. He’s another Stalin.”
“We came to the same conclusions. If we arrest him the people will revolt. If we leave him alone he’ll win the election easily, or take over the Kremlin by force and kill everyone who opposes him.”
“Who is the we?” McGarvey asked.
“Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, who’s chairman of the Russian Human Rights Commission—”
“I know him.”
“And Eduard Shevardnadze.”
“Anyone else?”
“I’ve talked to no one else about it.”
“Did you see Shevardnadze in person?”
“We flew down there the night before last. No one knows about the real reason for our trip. But we’re all agreed on the correct course of action. The only course of action to save the Democratic movement in Russia. Yevgenni Tarankov must be assassinated by a foreigner. By someone not connected to Russia. By a professional, someone who is capable of doing the job and getting away. By you, Kirk.”
“No.”
The directness of McGarvey’s answer knocked the wind out of Yemlin’s sails, and he missed a step, almost stumbling. “Then all is lost,” he mumbled.
McGarvey helped him to a park bench. Yemlin took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his glistening forehead.
“I promised only to listen, Viktor Pavlovich. I’m retired, but even if I wasn’t the job is all but impossible.
