jumpy. So far his plan had gone according to schedule. In a few days the Russian border guards would let him cross with the Mercedes without a search, and once in Moscow he would be welcomed back by the Mafia as Pierre Allain, a well connected Belgian businessman. No one would connect him to McGarvey, the American assassin. Yet he was beginning to have a very faint premonition of disaster, and he’d been in the business too long not to heed such feelings. Long ago he trained himself to distinguish legitimate sixth-sense concerns from paranoia.
After he unpacked and took a quick shower he stood by the window looking down at the street while he had a cigarette and a bottle of beer. In another few days or so Russia would be plunged into another major turmoil, possibly even a bigger one than the 1917 revolution. This time Tarankov would die, so that he could not take the country back. However it turned out was anyone’s guess. But McGarvey was already beyond the philosophical debate within himself. Now it was simply a matter of tradecraft. Of doing the job and getting away. His thoughts had become super-focused.
But something nagged at him. Some disconnected thought, some distant rationalization in a back compartment of his brain, that instinctively he thought was important.
He stubbed out his cigarette, and went downstairs to the pay phone in the back hallway. Nobody was around, and the building was quiet.
Using his Allain credit card, he telephoned Rencke in Paris. It was answered on the second ring. “Hiya,” Otto said. It sounded as if he were out of breath and anxious.
“Have you heard from my daughter?”
“Sure did, and everything’s fine,” Rencke responded with the proper code phrase. “You’re going to have to, call it off now for sure.”
“Have the CIA and French picked up my trail?”
“They’re using Jacqueline and somebody that Ryan sent over. I can’t find out who it is, but they’re serious,” Rencke said. “But that’s not the real problem, Mac. It’s Bykov, the Russian special investigator who’s looking for you. I tried to dig up some more of his background, but I kept running into a blank wall, because Yuri Bykov does not exist. There is no such man who ever worked for the KGB. But the security firm he supposedly works for in Krasnoyarsk is owned by Tarankov.”
McGarvey’s jaw tightened.
“I wouldn’t bet my gonads on it, Mac, but I’d wager even money that Yuri Bykov is in reality Leonid Chernov. So you gotta call it off, Mac. You just gotta.”
“Do they have my Allain identity?”
“I don’t think so—”
“Then nothing has changed,” McGarvey broke in. “They don’t know who I’m posing as, they don’t know when I’m coming across, nor do they know how I’m going to do it.”
Tarankov’s raid on Smolensk, after several days of lying low, had completely convinced McGarvey that the Tarantula would be showing up in Red Square on May Day, and would not wait until the general elections. The brief mention of the raid in the Herald-Tribune and on CNN warned that if the reaction of the people of Smolensk was any indicator, the country would not hold together until the elections. Which meant Tarankov would make his move in Red Square on May Day, declaring himself the leader of the new Soviet Union, just as McGarvey had suspected that he would.
“You’ll have to kill Chernov,” Rencke said.
“If our paths cross I will.”
“They will,” Rencke said, after a brief strained silence.
“I need you to do one more thing for me, Otto,” McGarvey said. “What is it?” Rencke asked dejectedly.
“Do you think that the SVR knows that someone is roaming around inside their computer system?”
“No.”
“Can you get a direct line to Yemlin’s apartment, through an SVR secured line?”
“I think so,” Rencke said with renewed interest because he was being handed another challenge. “Call him right now, and warn him off. Tell him who Bykov is, and tell him that I’ll call him one hour from now at the number I called him from Helsinki. He’ll know what you’re talking about.”
“What if he’s not there?”
“He’ll have a rollover number, or he’ll be carrying a secured beeper in case of emergencies. Just get the message to him, okay?”
“Mac, I’m scared big time,” Rencke said. “I’ve got this bad feeling, you know?”
“Just hold together a little longer, Otto.”
“Yeah. We’re family after all. We’ve gotta stick together, or else there’s nothing left.”
Rencke stared at the display on his computer screen, his shaking hands hovering over the keyboard. In the past week he’d discovered a way by which he could defeat his own backscatter encryption program to the extent that he’d gained the ability to trace a call even though both sides of the line were encrypted.
McGarvey was in the Latvian capital city of Riga, or at least within the city code 2.
He glanced at the open package of Twinkies, his last, lying on the table beside him, and tears suddenly came to his eyes. Mac was the only friend he’d ever had. Ever. The only human being who’d ever treated him fairly, who’d ever understood him, and who’d ever accepted him. Even his parents had rejected him when he was fifteen in Indianapolis. His father in a drunken rage had kicked him out of the house. His mother had pressed some money into his hand outside in the darkness, and kissed him. “You’re too smart for your own good,” she’d said. They were the last words she’d ever spoken to him.
The only other people who tolerated him were the gee ks on the Internet. Most of them were idiots, but sometimes they provided a diversion. If they didn’t always agree with his views, at least he was respected on most of the Web sites.
He flicked the Twinkies into the overflowing wastepaper basket, and with a dozen keystrokes was inside the Latvian telephone exchange system. He fed in McGarvey’s telephone number, which pulled up a locator code. Within ten seconds he had an address, with a designator that the unit was a pay phone, and his heart sank. McGarvey had probably called from an anonymous booth on the street somewhere. Nevertheless, he entered the maintenance database within the Riga tele phone exchange which displayed a street-by-street city map. McGarvey’s number came up as a street address. A building on Gogala Street a few blocks from the train station, which the telephone company listed as a multiunit private dwelling. An apartment building. Mac had rented an apartment in Riga.
Rencke entered the information on a tamperproof section of a hard disk, then backed out of the program, and quickly got into the SVR’s system on the Ring Road in Yasenevo on the outskirts of Moscow.
Scrolling through the personnel files, he came up with Viktor Yemlin’s locator file and instituted a call to the secure line to his apartment. The telephone was answered on the first ring.
“Da.”
“Is this Viktor Pavlovich?” Rencke asked in Russian.
“Yes. Who is calling, please?” Yemlin replied. He sounded harried.
“An old friend wishes to speak with you fifty-five minutes from now at the same number he used when he telephoned from Helsinki.”
“Is this a joke? How’d you get this number? Who is this?”
“Julius loves you,” Rencke blurted. “Please call at once.” It was the ad that Yemlin had placed in Le Figaro with the SVR’s data number.
“Yeb vas,” Yemlin said, shocked. “Who is this?”
“A friend who wants to warn you that the head of the special police commission, Yuri Bykov, is in reality Leonid Chernov, Tarankov’s chief of staff. Can you take this call in fifty-four minutes?”
The line was dead silent for several seconds. “Nyet,” Yemlin said in a strangled voice. “That phone has been bugged. They’re listening with tracing equipment. He must not call that number. Do you understand me? He must not call.”
The connection was broken.
Rencke stared at the screen briefly, wondering if he should reinstitute the call.
He brought back the pay phone number in McGarvey’s Riga apartment, and had his computer speed dial it. After one ring a recorded announcement in Russian said the number was a simplex instrument, and the connection was broken. The phone could be used only for outgoing calls. It could not receive incoming calls.
