“When we parted we had some angry words. I told him that I would either have all of him, or I wanted nothing.”
“With my father that was a mistake, if you loved him.”
“I don’t need some twenty-year-old giving advice to the lovelorn, even if she is a McGarvey,” Dominique flared. “You’ve apparently inherited his manipulative trait as well.”
“I didn’t come here to be your friend,” Elizabeth said harshly. “Although that would have been nice. How can I reach my father?”
“What has he done?”
“I can’t tell you that, except to say that it’s vitally important that I see him.”
“Is it the Russians?” Dominique demanded. “Has Viktor Yemlin popped up looking for his quid pro quo?”
“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth asked sharply, trying to hide her surprise. “If you’re going to play in your father’s league, you’d better do your homework first. Yemlin is an old adversary who helped your father out last year. One thing I learned about the business is that nobody does anything for nothing. Your father expected he would show up sooner or later.”
“I can’t answer that,” Elizabeth said.
Dominique started to say something, but Elizabeth overrode her.
“It may sound melodramatic, but the less you know the better off you’ll be. Now I’ll ask you once again, how can I reach my father.”
Dominique turned away. “I don’t know,” she said. “At least not directly. But he did mention the names of two men he trusted with his life. One of them was Phil Carrara, who was killed. And the other was Otto Rencke, apparently some computer expert who’s a black sheep. There was something about Twinkies, but I don’t remember all the details.”
“Is he here in Washington?”
“He was. But he’s in France now. Not in Paris but somewhere nearby.”
“Did my father give you his phone number, or email address? Anything like that?”
“No,” Dominique said. “But apparently Rencke worked for the CIA once upon a time. He’s supposed to be a genius whom everybody is afraid of. But if anybody would know how to get in touch with your father it would either be Rencke, or Yemlin. Beyond that I don’t know anything, because if one of them had come to me trying to find your father I would have given them your name. Your father told me that there was only one woman in his life who he loved unreservedly, and who loved him the same way. It was you.”
“A father-daughter prerogative,” Elizabeth mumbled, masking her sudden emotion.
“He’s a more complicated man than I thought, isn’t he,” Dominique said desolately.
“You can’t imagine,” Elizabeth replied.
NINETEEN
The overnight train back to Moscow was just as crowded as the train out, but if anything the passengers were in even higher spirits than before. They’d seen Tarankov’s magic with their own eyes. The blood of the revolution had been spilled in Nizhny Novgorod just as it had in other cities. Their only disappointment was that they’d come away without-the money they’d expected. Tarankov’s troops never left the vicinity of the railway station, and had not robbed any banks for the people.
“Ah well, maybe it was just a lie,” an old man said philosophically. “But killing those bastards was real.” “Wait until he returns’ to Moscow, then those bastards in the Kremlin will see what a real man is like,” another one voiced the generally held opinion. “Then the trains will run on time again, and we’ll have food that we can afford back in the shops.”
McGarvey had gotten aboard early enough to find a spot in the corner where he curled up, a half-empty got tie of vodka between his knees, as he pretended to sleep, the conversations swirling around him. At one point someone eased the vodka bottle from his loose grip, and then he dozed until they pulled into Yaroslavl Station around 6:30 of a dark gray morning.
After the grueling night the passengers who got off the train were still drunk or hung over, their excitement dissipated, and they wandered away heads hung low, quietly as if they’d just returned from a funeral and not a revolution.
McGarvey found a toilet stall in the nearly deserted arrivals and departures hall, where he changed back into his civilian clothes, stuffing the filthy uniform into the carryall with the last of the greasy sausage and bread.
Someone came into the restroom and used the urinal trough.
McGarvey waited until he was gone, then emerged from the stall leaving the carryall behind as if he’d forgotten it, and out front caught a cab for the Metropol.
The trip to Nizhny Novgorod had made a number of things clear to McGarvey, among them that Tarankov’s security was extremely effective. His armored train was a well armed fortress that even a half-dozen attack helicopters had been unable to stop. And once he arrived in the city, his commandoes had set up a defensive perimeter that would have taken a considerable force to penetrate. A lot of civilians, which were Tarankov’s major line of defense, would have been killed in the battle, something at this point that the Kremlin could not afford to do.
Whatever lingering doubts McGarvey might have had about Tarankov’s time table had also gone out the window in Nizhny Novgorod. On May Day Tarankov’s train would roar into Moscow, and he would swoop into Red Square at the head of his column of commandoes with more than a million people screaming his name. It was the one day of the year that no Russian could resist celebrating. Whatever forces the Kremlin would be able to muster, if any, by that late date, would not be sufficient to stop him.
In May Tarankov would ascend to the same throne that Stalin had held unless he were killed.
Despite yesterday’s events, which nearly everyone in Moscow must have heard about in news reports or by word of mouth, nothing outwardly had changed. Although seeing the city through new eyes, McGarvey felt an underlying tension even in the traffic and in the way the cabby drove. Moscow was holding its collective breath for the elections in less than three months. It was as if Russians were resigned to another great upheaval.
The cabby dropped him off at his hotel around 8:00 a.m.” and he went straight upstairs to his room where Artur the bellman intercepted him as he got off the elevator.
“You look like hell. You must have had a good time.”
“Not bad,” McGarvey mumbled pulling out his key.
Artur snatched it from him, preceded him down the corridor and unlocked his door with a flourish. “The floor maid was worried. She wanted to report you downstairs, but I told her to mind her own fucking business. You want a hair of the dog. I got some good Belgian brandy for you.”
“No thanks,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to Helsinki tonight. My train leaves from Leningrad station a little after six. But right now I want some sleep, and I don’t want to be disturbed until three. Then I’ll want a bottle of white wine, and something to eat. At 4:30 I want a cab driver by the” name of Arkady Astimovich to pick me up. He works for Martex. Do you know him?”
“He’s a shit asshole, but I know him.”
McGarvey pulled out a fifty-franc note. “I want Arkady here by 4:30.”
Artur grabbed the money. “Anything you say. But just watch your back with that one. He’s in the Mafia’s pocket.”
His room had been searched, but nothing was missing, nor did it appear that his laptop computer had been tampered with. After a shower he went to bed, but sleep was a long time coming. He knew the approximate when of the kill, as well as the where. Thinking about the cab driver Arkady, the Mafia entrepreneur Vasha, and the bellman Artur he had a glimmering of the how not only of the kill, but most importantly of his escape. He slept, finally, dreaming that he was climbing through the scaffolding inside the main dome of St. Basil’s while Tarankov’s right hand man Leonid Chernov was in the crowd of a million people in Red Square looking up at him.
It was past 9:00 p.m. in Washington when Elizabeth brought up a photograph of a good-looking woman on
