“Did you know my parents?” McGarvey asked, falling in beside Yemlin.
“They were before my time, Kirk,” Yemlin said. He was professional enough not to have reacted in an obvious manner when McGarvey suddenly showed up in disguise. “But I’d heard about them from General Baranov. He told me that it was a supreme irony that in some respects he had created you by planting false information about your parents being spies for us.”
“You didn’t give me much proof,” McGarvey said. He’d destroyed the documents on Saturday before he went back to the apartment, and he had tried to put the news out of his mind.
“There is no more. Everything else died when you killed Baranov. Nobody’s around from those days who remembers anything. I’m sure there isn’t much more in your own records beyond what Baranov planted. It was John Trotter’s doing. But you knew that.”
Trotter was an old friend who’d worked as Deputy Director of Operations. In the end he’d betrayed them all, and his last act had been an attempt to kill McGarvey.
“Then you could be jerking me around here too, Viktor Pavlovich. You bastards invented the game.”
“No,” Yemlin said sadly, studying McGarvey’s face. “But we were masters at it. We really didn’t have much else. You know yourself that most of the West’s estimates of our military and nuclear capabilities were inflated so that the Pentagon could justify its own budget.”
It was true, McGarvey thought. And Tarankov, if he came to power, would start the cycle all over again.
“I believe in my heart, Kirk, that your parents were not the spies that you were led to believe they were. I don’t know enough of the details to understand why Baranov ran that kind of an operation. I just know what he did. And if you’d thought about it then, you would have seen Baranov’s touch. It was his style. A lot of us admired him.”
They walked for a couple of minutes in silence. Deeper in the park they were somewhat sheltered from the wind, and there were even more Finns out walking on their lunch hours.
“This will be the last time we meet,” McGarvey said. “I want you to make no attempt to try to communicate with me, or find me no matter what happens.” McGarvey looked into Yemlin’s eyes. “No matter what, Viktor Pavlovich, do you understand?”
“You’re going to do it? You’re going to assassinate Tarankov?”
“Yes.”
“When?” Yemlin asked, his face alive with expression.
“Sometime before the June elections. Sooner if it looks as if he’ll try a coup d’etat.”
“You’ll need help. I can pull enough strings in the SVR to supply you with information on Tarankov’s movements.”
“No,” McGarvey said. “You’re going back to Moscow as if nothing ever happened. You’ve never seen me, you’ve never discussed anything like this with me, and you will discuss this with no one.”
“Impossible,” Yemlin said, shaking his head. “Sukhoruchkin and Shevardnadze know everything.”
“Then I’ll call it off—”
“Please listen to me, Kirk. These men have just as much stake in this as I do. We’ve already laid our lives on the line. It was us three who discussed and approved hiring you to kill Tarankov. If you fall so do we. They have to be told. But I swear to you no one else in Russia, or anywhere else for that matter, knows what we’ve asked you to do. They haven’t breathed a word, even hinted about it, to anyone. I swear it.”, McGarvey thought about it for a moment. “You may tell them that I’ve accepted the job, but nothing else.
Not that we met here, not my timetable, nothing. I won’t go any further than that, because as you say, lives are on the line. And mine is more precious to me than yours. You’ll either agree to this, or you’ll have to find someone else.”
“There is no one else,” Yemlin said heavily. “I agree. What about money?”
“One million dollars,” McGarvey said. He handed Yemlin a slip of paper with a seven-digit number written on it. “This is my account at Barclay’s on Guernsey. British pounds, Swiss francs or American dollars.”
“I’ll have it there before I leave Helsinki today,” Yemlin said. “What else?”
“The SVR must have a central data processing center that shares information with the FSK and the Militia.”
“Of course.”
“I want the telephone number.”
Yemlin pulled up short, and his eyes narrowed. “Even if I knew that number it wouldn’t do you any good without the proper access codes. Those I can’t get.”
“Nonetheless I want it.” “Assuming I can come up with the number, how do I get it to you?”
“Place an ad in the personals column of Le Figaro starting in three days. Say: Julius loves you, please call at once. Invert the telephone number and include it.”
“I can’t guarantee anything, Mac, but I’ll do my best,” Yemlin said. They started to walk again. “What about identity papers and travel documents? I can help with that.”
“I’ll get my own.”
“Weapons?”
McGarvey shook his head.
“A safehouse in Moscow in case you have to go underground?”
They stopped again. “You’ve been in the business long enough to know that the bigger the organization, the greater are the chances for a leak. And right now the SVR and every other department in Russia is riddled with Tarankov’s spies and informers. I’ll work alone.”
“I caught you once.”
McGarvey smiled. “Yes, you did, Viktor Pavlovich. But things were different then. I was a lot younger, and the KGB was a lot better.”
Yemlin agreed glumly. “In Paris you told me that the odds of success were a thousand to one against an assassin. What’s changed your mind?”
“Nothing,” McGarvey said. “If anything I think the odds are worse, and will get worse the longer we wait. If Tarankov takes over the government either by elections or by force, he’ll be even harder to kill.”
Yemlin looked down the broad boulevard the way they’d come. “As it is the aftermath will be terrible. I don’t know if Russia will survive.” His resolve seemed to stiffen and he turned back to McGarvey. “I do know that unless Tarankov is killed we will certainly not survive as a democracy.”
“You’re sure this is what you want?” McGarvey asked. “Because once we part here it will be too late to change your mind.” Yemlin nodded after a moment, and he shook McGarvey’s hand. “Goodbye, Kirk. God go with you.”
TWELVE
The National Press Club’s main ballroom was all aglitter for the annual Person of the Year banquet, although the several hundred journalists and diplomats paid scant attention to the fine linen, silver and porcelain, they’d seen it before, often.
Word was out that President Lindsay would be given the honor this year (eighteen months late) for his international policies including the handling of the Japanese trade issues. For the first time since World War II the U.S. balance of trade with Japan was heading in the right direction. No one expected parity in the near future but Lindsay was taking the country in that direction.
It was a little before nine in the evening, and although the President and Mrs. Lindsay weren’t scheduled to arrive until 9:45 p.m.” dinner was winding down and dancing had begun.
Howard Ryan and his stunningly dressed wife, Evangeline, had just finished a dance and were heading back to the table they shared with Senate Majority Leader Chilton Wood and his wife, J3 Admiral Stewart Phipps and his wife and Bob Castle, political columnist for the New York Times, when Ryan’s assistant DDO, Tom Moore, and his dowdy wife Doris intercepted them.
