but he didn’t think that the woman was a spy. She simply found him attractive and wanted to seduce him. And she was nosy.
“I am married.”
“You don’t wear a ring. And when you opened your wallet to withdraw your credit card I saw no photos of your wife or children.” She smiled coyly at him over the rim of her wine glass, and shifted on the bed, parting her shapely legs. “You don’t carry much clothing for a man who travels so much.”
If she’d been in his overnight bag, she’d seen the spare magazines of ammunition. She wouldn’t have recognized the silencer for what it was, because it was disguised as a working flashlight. But she knew that he wasn’t a writer.
“What do you expect me to do?”
She set her wine glass aside. “Make love to me,” she said huskily. “Dangerous men excite me. And from the moment I saw you I knew you were such a creature. Maybe you are a policeman here on a secret investigation. Or perhaps a private detective. Maybe even a spy.”
McGarvey took off his jacket, then poured a glass of wine for himself. He sat on the edge of the bed and brushed his fingertips across her lips. She shivered.
“What will the management do if they find out that you’re snooping around and trying to seduce the guests?”
“They’d certainly fire me. That wouldn’t be so good. I’m not a wealthy woman.”
McGarvey smiled. “Then we both have a secret to keep.” He took a drink of his wine, and then opened her blouse and kissed the tops of her breasts.
She arched into him, a soft moan escaping her lips. “Don’t hurt me,” she cooed. “Not too much.”
En Route To Helsinki
McGarvey checked out of his hotel around eight in the morning after securing his gun and two spare magazines of ammunition in a special compartment of his fake laptop computer that Rencke had designed and constructed for him. The compartment was shielded with sections of lead foil that appeared to airport security scanners as electronic circuitry. The computer would have to be completely stripped down to reveal what it contained. If it was turned on, the screen would light up with a convincing display. But that’s all it would do. Instead of innards, the device only contained his weapon and spare ammunition.
He walked over to the car park, retrieved his Avis Renault, and was on the busy N2, heading north, past Le Bourget Airport by 9:00 a.m.” the morning extremely pleasant.
Sometime over the past two days he had made his final decision to go ahead with the assassination of, though he’d known that he would probably do it after Rencke had shown him his probability program. He no longer maintained any self-doubts, nor was he going to beat himself up over the decision. Second thoughts would come much later; in the night when he would see the faces of every person he’d ever killed, Tarankov’s would be included.
He only had the vaguest idea how he was going to do it, and get away. But he knew from long experience that the solution would come to him in due time, and that he would recognize it when it arrived. He also knew that before such a solution became evident he was going to have to do more research. A lot more.
The truck stop on the outskirts of Maubeuge, where he stopped to have a quick lunch, was smoky and noisy, but the food was very good as it was at most French way sides
By noon he was across the border into Belgium, the customs officer waving him through when McGarvey held up his Belgian passport, and seventy minutes later he was parking his car in the long term ramp at Brussels’ Zaventem National Airport on the northeast outskirts of the city.
His bags were passed through airport security without a problem, and he got lucky with a Finnair flight departing at 3:00 p.m. He wanted to avoid, as much as possible, using his Allain papers in Belgium, because under any kind of questioning by the local authorities it would be obvious that he was not a Belgian. But the clerks at Finnair had no reason to question his nationality.
Because of the time difference it wasn’t until 8:00 p.m. when he landed at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport, the weather here overcast, blustery and sharply colder than in Paris. He was passed through customs with no delay, though the officer did take an interest in his computer. By 9:30 p.m.” he’d checked into the Strand InterContinental Hotel next to the old city downtown on the waterfront, and was dining on an excellent grilled salmon, with a very good bottle of French white wine.
Afterward he went down to one of the pay phones in the soaring atrium lobby, and direct-dialed Viktor Yemlin’s apartment in Moscow. A noisy group of Russian businessmen were drinking and laughing around the fireplace across from McGarvey. The women with them were all young and expensively dressed. Even from a distance it was easy to determine that they were probably very high-priced call girls. The men were Russia’s new millionaires; the women its entrepreneurs.
Yemlin answered his telephone on the third ring. “Da.”
“Hello.” Yemlin didn’t reply for several seconds. Music played in the background. “I think you have the wrong number. You want 228-0712.” He broke the connection.
McGarvey hung up, and walked across the lobby to the bar where he ordered a cognac and lit a cigarette. Yemlin’s line wasn’t secure. The number he wanted to use was probably located some distance from his apartment. Possibly a pay phone. The FSK couldn’t monitor every pay phone in the city, but given a little time, say a half-hour, they could isolate a specific number and tap it, which meant Yemlin would be standing by no later than fifteen minutes from now.
The cocktail waitress serving the group by the fireplace came back to the bar to order another round of drinks. She glanced at McGarvey, who smiled.
“Sounds like they’re having fun,” he said in English.
“They’re Russians,” she replied disdainfully. “I’m trying to get them to move their party up to the pool.”
“Aren’t they tipping very well?”
“Just fine,” she said, smiling a little. “I’m just hoping they’ll all drown up there.”
“Good luck.”
The bartender came to fill her order, and fifteen minutes later McGarvey went back to the pay phone and called the Moscow number.
Yemlin answered on the first ring. He sounded out of breath. “This is 228-0712,” he said.
“Who is monitoring your home phone?” McGarvey asked. “Possibly no one, this is just a precaution. Are you here in Moscow?”
“I’m in Helsinki. How soon can you get here? We need to talk.”
“Are you taking the … package?”
“How soon can you be here?” McGarvey repeated evenly. He could hear the strain in Yemlin’s voice.
“I’ll take the morning flight. I can be there by noon.”
“Will you be missed?”
Yemlin’s laugh was short and sharp. “No one misses anything here anymore. Where do you want to meet?”
“Kaivopuisto. Enter from the southwest.” McGarvey hung up, then went back to the bar where he had another cognac before going up to his room for the night. As he passed the Russian group one of them said something to the cocktail waitress, who dropped her tray, then spun around and rushed away. McGarvey didn’t break stride, though he wanted to go over and punch the boorish, loud-mouthed bastard in the mouth.
Kaivopuisto
Helsinki’s most elegant district on the waterfront was home to a number of foreign diplomats, and was maintained like a well-manicured park. On a pleasant day half of Helsinki took their walks here because it was so pretty. In the early days McGarvey had spent a month recuperating in Helsinki after an assignment that had gone bad in Leningrad. He’d often come down to the waterfront and he still remembered the area pretty well.
The day was raw. A chill wind drove spits of snow almost horizontally under a leaden sky. Still there were a number of people bundled up and walking through the district.
McGarvey had purchased a down-filled nylon jacket from a department store near the hotel, and by one o’clock, when Yemlin finally showed up, he wished he’d bought a warm hat and gloves as well. He tailed the Russian for ten minutes to make sure he’d come in clean, and then caught up with him halfway across the park.
