Ulmanis hesitated. “Perhaps we should get someone from the American embassy up here to take a look.”
“As you wish,” Chernov said, unperturbed. “I would very much like to listen to your explanation how this woman got into Latvia on a fake passport.” He forced a grim smile. “I trust that in the meantime you’ll arrange accommodations for me and my people.”
Ulmanis nodded. “I’ll have the van brought around front,” he said.
“Wait a minute, goddammit,” Elizabeth shouted. “I’m an American!” She switched to Russian. “Yeb was, you stupid bastard, don’t you recognize a legitimate passport when you see one?”
Ulmanis just shook his head, and he and the cop left.
“Thank you,” Chernov told Elizabeth, politely, and her blood ran cold.
From where she sat having a coffee at the sidewalk cafe on the corner, Jacqueline watched as a gray Chevrolet van pulled up in front of the apartment building. She’d been unable to simply wait at the train station, so she’d followed Elizabeth up here.
Two minutes later, a tall man, came out of the building with Elizabeth, and hustled her into the van.
Jacqueline jumped up, but before she could reach the street, the van took off and disappeared down the block. She stopped, absolutely stunned. Her worst nightmare seemed to be coming true.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jacqueline was beside herself with fear and guilt because despite her professionalism she had managed to lead Elizabeth into a trap. Although she had serious doubts, she thought that there was a possibility Liz had been arrested by the Riga Police, and not by the Russians who had traced McGarvey’s call here. All the way back to the railroad station she tried to convince herself of that likelihood without success. She and Elizabeth had entered Latvia legally. There was no reason for the local authorities to detain her.
She found a pay phone in the train station’s main arrivals hall and called Rencke’s blind number in Courbevoie. “They’ve taken her,” she blurted when Rencke answered.
“Calm down, Who took her?”
“I don’t know for sure. It could have been the Riga police, but I can’t be certain. I hope so.”
“Just a minute,” Rencke said. “Okay, you’re calling from the main railway station. Is anybody watching you? Anybody paying unusual attention?”
The station was busy. Jacqueline scanned the crowds, but she was picking up nothing unusual. “Not that I can see.”
“Have you called your boss yet?”
“No.”
“Okay, now calm down and tell me everything that happened,” Otto said.
Jacqueline quickly went through the story from the moment they’d got off the plane. “Can you get into the police computer?”
“If she was arrested it wouldn’t be on their machines yet, unless they asked Interpol for help. Did you get the license number of the van?”
“It was too far away to read,” Jacqueline said.
“Okay, hang on for a minute, I’ll see if anything is showing up.”
“Mon dieu, please hurry,” Jacqueline said.
“I just had another thought. Did you get a decent look at the man with Liz? Could you describe him?”
“Tall, husky. It’s impossible to say more than that.”
“Standby,” Rencke said.
Announcements for arriving and departing trains were made first in a language that Jacqueline took to be Latvian, and then in Russian, and finally in Polish. A train had rumbled into the station while she was dialing Rencke’s number, and now people began coming into the main hall from trackside. A lot of them were well dressed, and talked on cellular phones as they hurried outside to catch a taxi.
Rencke came back a couple of minutes later. “Nothing has showed up on the Riga police wire yet. But an unscheduled flight originating in Moscow landed at 6:48 this morning. It’s still on the ground, but I’m betting that the man you saw with Liz was Chernov. He traced Mac’s call, and somehow convinced the Latvian police to help him. I’ll watch to see when it takes off back to Moscow, but it’ll probably be within the next half hour. I think Liz walked into a hornet’s nest, and Chernov will take her back to Moscow.”
“For bait,” Jacqueline said, utterly devastated. It was her fault. She should have known better.
“I’d like to disagree with you, but I can’t,” Rencke said, dejectedly.
“I’ve got to tell my boss what happened,” she said. “I’ll keep your name out of it. I’ll say that Liz had a hunch that her father would be here, so we came to look for him, and she was taken.”
“They won’t believe it.”
“I’ll make them believe it,” Jacqueline said urgently. “I don’t know what else to do, but I just can’t walk away from them.”
“Mac must have figured it out,” Rencke said distantly.
“What did you say?”
“They got Liz, but he wasn’t there. It means he figured it out and he’s probably on his way to Moscow now. Three days early, but he was forced into it. Which means we’ve still got two chances. Two options. With all that extra time it’s possible he’ll call me for an update. When he does I’ll get him out of there.”
“If you tell him that Chernov has his daughter he won’t leave.”
“If we can find out where she’s been taken, I can convince somebody in Washington to get involved.”
“How can we do that?”
“Simple, you’re going to convince Galan to send you to Moscow in an official capacity. You’re an SDECE field officer who has the inside scoop on Mac, and your expertise is going to be offered to the special commission which is headed by Yuri Bykov, a.k.a.” Leonid Chernov.”
“Merde,” Jacqueline said softly.
“Double dip merde,” Rencke agreed. “But right now it’s our only shot.”
Even over the roar of the jet engines spooling up Elizabeth imagined that she could hear the thump of her heart in her chest. Any doubts she might have had about who’d taken her had been dispelled the moment they’d arrived at the airport and she got a look at the Tupolev jet waiting on the apron. It carried Russian military markings, with the Russian flag painted on the tail.
Of the eight or ten others aboard, she figured four were crew, while the rest looked like cops or possibly military. All of them were surprised by her presence, but they offered no objections. The one who’d taken her was the boss, and it struck her from the moment she came aboard that he was Leonid Chernov, Tarankov’s chief of staff, and the one who was posing as Yuri Bykov, chief of the police commission hunting for her father.
The aircraft had been fitted out executive-style with wide leather seats, facing each other in groups of four, a pair of couches with a low table between them in the rear of the main cabin, and a complete galley and bar. She caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a conference room equipped with what looked like radio gear through an open door in the back of the plane. Forward she could see into the cockpit where the pilot and copilot were dressed in military uniforms.
Chernov put her in one of the seats in the forward part of the cabin, and went back to the others gathered in the conference room, and closed the door.
Elizabeth considered making a dash for the door, when one of the crewmen closed and latched it. He said something to the pilots, then came back to her.
“We’ll be taking off now, so put on your seatbelt,” he said pleasantly. He was young, probably not much older than Elizabeth.
“I’m an American. You have no right to take me anywhere,” she said, and it sounded foolish eve to her.
“If you refuse to cooperate, I’ve been instructed to drug you,” the crewman warned. “When it wears off
