Moscow was a city of nine million people spread over nearly six hundred square kilometers, the Moscow River meandering sometimes north and south, at other times east and west through it. Defined by four ring roads, the outermost of which was fifteen kilometers from the Kremlin, the city was a maze of broad boulevards, twisting side streets and narrow, dirty back alleys down which many Muscovites feared to travel. Underground, nine separate metro lines crisscrossed the city through more than two hundred kilometers of tunnels. In addition to an extensive storm sewer system, a half-dozen underground rivers all flowed eventually into the Moscow River. In winter, subterranean Moscow was a busy place, populated by a large percentage of the city’s poor and homeless.
Instinctively Chernov felt that McGarvey was no longer in the city. He had come to Moscow and to Nizhny Novgorod to stalk his prey, and to work out his plan for the kill. The fact that he’d been spotted in Red Square led Chernov to the conclusion that McGarvey had chosen the city for the assassination attempt. Putting himself in the American’s shoes, Chernov decided that he would do the same thing. Because once the kill was made there was an unlimited number of places where a man could hide until the dust settled.
Paporov put down the telephone. “The Militia is getting nowhere with the Mafia. They’re shitting in their pants out there on the streets.”
“Did you tell them to keep trying?”
“Da, for what it’s worth,” Paporov said.
“What about Viktor Yemlin, has he made any telephone calls?”
“None of any. significance from his apartment,” Paporov said. “But you were right about one thing. Apparently he has some sort of an electronic device that masks video and audio surveillance equipment, because they got nothing from the Magesteriu’m, and nothing from his dinner with Sukhoruchkin.”
“He’s gotten it from his own technical service, which means he knows that we’re on to him,” Chernov said.
“You don’t think he’s dragged the SVR into it, do you?”
“No,” Chernov said. He figured they would have heard something if that were the case.
“Well, if he’s making any important calls, they must be from public phones. I can arrange to tap every pay phone within a four block radius of his apartment.”
“Do it,” Chernov said.
“Still leaves us with the rest of it. I think Valeri Doyla is our best bet, but the stupid bastard gets himself cornered every time.”
“Put someone in the next room. Yemlin’s little electronic toy can’t blind a man, or stop his ears from working.”
“I’ll get on it right away,” Paporov said. He lit a cigarette and came over to Chernov’s desk. “You think it’s going to happen here, and not out in the countryside somewhere?”
“If I wanted to kill Tarankov I’d wait until he came to Moscow,” Chemov said. “There’d be a better chance of escape.”
“It’s a safe bet that the Tarantula will be here on election day. Probably at the reviewing stand in Red Square.”
Chernov looked up suddenly.
“Gives us nine weeks to catch him,” Paporov said. “Because if he makes it this far, and gets mixed up in the crowds, he’ll be impossible to spot. There’s going to be a lot of confusion that day. Some violence too. Maybe some shooting.”
“We don’t have nine weeks,” Chernov said, his eyes going back to the maps, specifically to Red Square.
“Not if we want to catch him before election day.”
“Not election day,” Chernov said. He was amazed by the simplicity of McGarvey’s plan. The brilliance of the man. His audacity.
“What do you mean?” Paporov asked.
“Tarankov is going to come to Moscow on election day. Everybody knows that. Everybody is counting on it. It’s the one day he could come to Moscow and be safe, because nobody would order his arrest. The people would rise up, claiming the election had been fixed.”
“That’s right,” Paporov said. “In the confusion McGarvey could take his shot, and get away with it.”
“All our efforts are being directed to that one day, that one place — Red Square. We have nine weeks, so time is still on our side.”
Paporov nodded uneasily, not yet quite sure where Chernov was taking this.
“But McGarvey has another plan, because he figured out something that the rest of us have overlooked.”
Sudden understanding dawned on Paporov’s face. “Yeb vas. May Day,”
“Very good, Aleksi.”
“Surely Tarankov won’t risk coming in to Moscow so soon.”
Chernov smiled distantly. “You can count on it,” he said. “And that’s the day on which Mr. McGarvey will try to kill him. The day that he himself will die.”
“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Yemlin told Valeri Doyla at the Magesterium. “But I have the resources to rectify my error before it goes too far.”.
He and Doyla lay naked next to each other in the wide bed, soft music playing from the hidden speakers. This time he’d refused vodka and the cocaine, because, as he explained, he wanted to enjoy himself. He wanted his head to be clear. And he was not using the anti surveillance device, because he wanted to be overheard.
“What are you talking about, Viktor? Being here like this?” Doyla asked cautiously.
Yemlin chuckled, and caressed the young man’s flanks. “Heavens no. You’re an old man’s comfort.”
“You’re not so old.”
“What would you say if I told you that I hired someone to kill the Tarantula? What would you think about that?”
“I don’t get involved in politics,” Doyla said. He giggled. “It makes my head hurt thinking about it.”
“Mine too,” Yemlin said. “But the bastard has to be arrested, not killed by some hired gun who doesn’t care about the Rodina. I’m going to call him off. He can keep the money — it wasn’t mine in the first place — and he can get out of Moscow, or wherever he is.”
“Can you do this?”
“I’ll figure a way,” Yemlin said. He slapped Doyla’s rump hard enough to leave a red mark, bile once again rising sharply in his throat. “In the meantime let’s talk about something much more pleasurable, shall we?”
McGarvey rose at 8:00 a.m.” after a solid twelve hours of sleep, and after he showered and shaved he got a copy of the International Herald-Tribune from the newsstand in the lobby, and had breakfast on the terrace overlooking the river and the old city.
In an article on the op-ed page, the writer gave a reasonably accurate, if superficial, summary of the political upheaval going on in Russia as the country headed toward the general elections. Kabatov was the front runner in every poll in which Yevgenni Tarankov’s name was omitted. The general opinion across the country however, was that although the Tarantula could easily win in any election, why bother? Any time he wanted the country it was his for the taking. The military was corrupt and would not stop him, nor would either division of the old KGB which was itself in a fierce internecine battle. The nation was in disarray, and like it or not, Tarankov was likely the one man to bring it together.
An hour later he walked down to the car park, where he retrieved the Jetta, and headed to the train station where he cruised the neighborhoods for a few blocks in a rough triangle bounded by it, the post office and telephone exchange, and the central market. After stopping to ask at several cafes and markets he finally found a black market apartment for rent not registered with the Federal Rent Control Association.
Decent housing, especially in Riga, was scarce, and between discrimination against Russians, and price gouging which had created a lot of tensions, the government had stepped in. First choice went to registered Latvian voters, which made up only thirty percent of the population. Second choice went to well-heeled western businessmen, and the dregs went to Russians. The problem was, that the federal government levied a heavy tax on all registered apartments, so the black market thrived.
