Ulmanis relayed the orders. “I’ll wait here with you.”
“As you wish,” Chernov said. “But if he shows up he’s mine.”
“Believe me, Colonel Bykov, the sooner you and he are off Latvian soil the happier we’ll be.”
RI AIR flight 57 from Paris touched down at Riga’s Li dosta International Airport at 9:00 a.m. Elizabeth and Jacqueline paid for one-time visas from passport control and had their single carryon bags checked through customs. They changed a couple of hundred francs into la tis, purchased a visitors’ guide and Riga street map in English from a newsstand and forty-five minutes later were in a cab heading downtown to the central railway station, which was a few blocks from the address Rencke had given them.
They traveled on their legitimate passports because at this point they thought there was no longer any need to mask their movements. Galan and Lynch were no longer interested in them. Traffic at that hour of the morning in Paris had been thin so if someone-had tried to follow them out to Orly Airport Jacqueline was sure she would have spotted them. But there’d been no one behind them.
“If we run into a problem in Riga we’ll be on our own,” Jacqueline had cautioned. “No one except Otto knows where we are, and he won’t tell anyone. At least not for twenty-four hours. Maybe longer.”
“A lot can happen in that time,” Elizabeth said, suddenly seeing the precariousness of their situation.
“We’ll split up, so that if something goes wrong at least one of us will have a chance of getting out,” Jacqueline said. “I’ll leave you at the train station, and I’ll walk the rest of the way over to the apartment.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “He’s my father, so if something should happen I’ll at least have an excuse for being there that might hold up.”
“It didn’t work in Paris.”
“It might here,” Elizabeth insisted.
Jacqueline smiled wryly. “You’re stubborn like your father.”
“Used to drive my mother nuts.”
Jacqueline’s smile was set. “Is that why there was the divorce?”
“My mother was afraid of losing him so she pushed him away before the hurt got too’ terrible for her to bear.”
Jacqueline looked out the window. “The trouble with what you say is that I understand your mother.” She turned back. “Do you, ma cherie?”
Elizabeth shook her head after a moment. “No,” she said. She’d never understood that convoluted logic. If you loved someone you did everything in your power to keep them near you.
Jacqueline squeezed her hand. “I think that you have been mad at your mother for a very long time. But there’s no reason for it, you know. They both still love you.”
It was Elizabeth’s turn to look away.
“The divorce wasn’t your fault, Elizabeth,” Jacqueline said gently. “Did you think it was?”
“I probably did as a kid.” Elizabeth looked at Jacqueline. “But not so much anymore.” She shrugged. “It’s just life. But I don’t want to lose him again.”
“Neither do I.”
Traffic around the train station was busy. The cabby dropped them off in front, immediately picked up another fare and was gone.
They had studied the Riga map on the way in from the airport. The address Rencke had given them was less than three blocks away. They agreed that Elizabeth would walk over to the apartment building, and if everything looked clear try to find out which apartment her father had rented. If anything seemed out of place, even slightly odd, she was to immediately come back to the railroad station where Jacqueline would be waiting in the coffee shop.
“Don’t fool around,” Jacqueline said unnecessarily because she was nervous. “If the Russians got here before us they won’t react kindly to you barging in.”
“If they ran into my father, there’ll be some dead people over there, and a lot of cops,” Elizabeth said. “It’ll be pretty obvious.”
“In which case I’ll blow the whistle,” Jacqueline said seriously. In the past couple of weeks she’d picked up a lot of American slang from Elizabeth.
“You and I both,” Elizabeth said.
She gave Jacqueline her overnight bag, then crossed the street over the tracks. The morning wanted to warm up, but a chilly breeze blew across the river, bringing with it a combination of industrial and seaport smells that were subtly different from any other city she’d ever visited.
It took her ten minutes to walk up Gogala Street to within a half a block from the apartment building her father had called from. She stopped and looked in the window of a women’s sportswear shop, as she tried to calm down.
Everything seemed normal. Traffic was heavy, the shops were open and busy, and most of the tables at a sidewalk cafe at the corner were occupied. There were no police anywhere, and no one seemed to be watching the apartment building.
After a minute she crossed the street, walked the rest of the way to the apartment building and went inside. A narrow hallway ran to the rear of the building. From where she stood by the mailboxes she could see the pay phone in the back, and it gave her a little thrill that her father had used it less than twenty-four hours ago.
She didn’t understand Latvian, but the word manager, in Russian, was written on a card attached to the mailbox for the ground floor apartment. She hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door.
An old woman opened it, looked Elizabeth up and down, and motioned her away. “I have no apartments here, so go away. I don’t want any trouble.”
The old woman was frightened.
“I don’t want an apartment,” Elizabeth said in Russian. “But I’m looking for someone who may have rented an apartment from you recently.”
The door suddenly opened all the way, the old woman was pulled aside, and a couple of large, stern-faced men were there. Before Elizabeth could react, one of them grabbed her by the arm.
“Who is it that you’re looking for?” he asked.
“I think I’ve made a mistake,” Elizabeth said, her heart in her throat.
“Let me see your passport.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“The police. Your passport, please,” The cop was stern, but not unpleasant.
Elizabeth hesitated a second longer, than awkwardly dug her passport out of her purse.
The cop’s eyebrows rose when he saw that it was an American passport.
“Stay here, I’ll take her upstairs,” he told the other cop.
Elizabeth tried to pull away, but he was too strong for her. “I’m an American. I want to speak to someone at my embassy.”
“You speak pretty good Russian for an American,” the cop said.
“Not as good as you Latvians do,” Elizabeth shot back, and she instantly regretted the remark.
His grip tightened on her arm, and he dragged her up three flights of stairs to the top floor where two men waited in a small apartment. One of them was heavyset, the other tall, and muscularly built, with short-cropped gray hair. He looked dangerous. His eyes seemed dead.
The cop handed Elizabeth’s passport to the heavy man, who examined it.
“She says she’s looking for someone who may have rented an apartment here not so long ago, Lieutenant,” the cop said. “She claims to be an’ American but I never heard an American speak such good Russian.”
Ulmanis handed the passport to Chernov. “It doesn’t look fake. Do you know who she is?”
Chernov studied Elizabeth’s passport, a grim look of satisfaction crossing his lips. “Her name is Raya Kisnelkov. I don’t know where she got this passport, but it probably came from the same source her father uses. I just didn’t think she was involved with his sick games.”
Ulmanis stared at her, and shook his head. “She doesn’t look the type,” he said. “Do you know what your father has done? Are you helping him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said in English. “I want to call my embassy.”
“Her English is pretty good, too,” Ulmanis said. “A lot better than mine.”
Chernov stared at Elizabeth. “We’ll leave now,” he said. “I don’t think Kisnelkov will be coming back.”
