tomorrow you’ll have a hell of a headache and cottonmouth. Sometimes it even scrambles the brain for a few days. I’m told that the effect is extremely unpleasant.”
The airplane started to move, gathering speed as it trundled down the taxiway.
“I thought things had changed for the better in Russia. I guess I was wrong,” Elizabeth said. She buckled her seat belt.
The crewman sat down across from her and fastened his seat belt. “As soon as we’re airborne and out of the pattern I’ll get you something to drink. It’s not a very long flight to Moscow, less than two hours, but if you’re hungry I can get you something to eat.”
Elizabeth looked out the window, willing herself to calm down. She wasn’t going to give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing the intense fear she felt. She’d walked into a trap in Paris, and she’d done the same damned thing here in Riga. The first had turned out okay, but this time she was in big trouble. When she didn’t show up at the train station Jacqueline might guess what had happened, but there would be no proof. Riga had swallowed her, and there wasn’t much that anybody could do to get her back.
Except, she thought, God help the bastards if and when her father found out she’d been kidnapped. The last people who’d tried that had paid with their lives.
But they’d been nothing more than a group of ex-East German Stasi thugs, not an entire government. She laid her forehead against the cool window glass as the airplane reached the end of the taxiway and turned onto the runway. Her father was only a man, and sooner or later all of his skills would be no match for an overwhelming force. When it came she would have been the one to lead him to his destruction.
The airplane took off, and as it circled the city and headed east, she searched for and found the railroad station. She touched the window with her fingers. Jacque line would be getting worried now.
Five minutes later the countryside below was a puzzle of farmsteads, lakes and rivers, and stands of forests that stretched to the horizon for as far as she could see.
“Now, can I get you something to drink,” the crewman asked. “A glass of tea, or perhaps some champagne?”
Elizabeth looked up at him.
“Champagne is permitted,” he said.
She turned away without a word, and after a moment the crewman left. She heard voices at the rear of the airplane, but she didn’t look up again until someone sat down across from her.
“I don’t want champagne,” she said.
“Neither do I,” Chernov replied reasonably and Elizabeth’s stomach fluttered. “You’re too young to be his wife, so you’re probably his daughter. The question is, what were you doing in Riga? How did you find out where your father was staying?”
His eyes were flat, lifeless. Studying his face, Elizabeth decided that he was younger than his gray hair made him look. It struck her that if he was posing as Yuri Bykov on the police commission, he would have to be in disguise. Certainly enough people had seen him at Tarankov’s side and would have recognized him if he hadn’t changed his appearance.
“Your father is a brilliant man. But he is dangerous. Do you know what he means to do? And do you understand why we cannot allow that to happen? Your own government does.”
Chernov had something to hide, which meant he was vulnerable. But she would have to be careful what she said or did. If he suspected that she knew his true identity, she had no doubt that he would kill her.
“Your father is an assassin. But I think you know this.”
“He telephoned me in Paris last night,” Elizabeth said. “At my apartment. He wanted me to return to our house in Milford. He said he was flying over tomorrow.”
“Did he tell you where he was calling from?”
“I traced his call.”
“How?”
“With my computer. It’s easy. Once I found out that he was in Riga, I got into the local phone system, and brought up the line, it’s a pay phone in the building.”
“That’s very inventive,” Chernov said. “Why did you come to Riga? What did you hope to accomplish?”
Elizabeth looked away for a moment, as if she were gathering her thoughts, as if she were making a decision, which in effect she was. Damage control, her father called what she was trying to do. If damage has been done, try to control the effects by telling half-truths to direct the inquiries elsewhere.
She looked into Chernov’s eyes. “I wanted to make sure that my father was telling me the truth and was calling off the mission. Tarankov isn’t worth a bullet. Nobody in Russia is. For all we give a damn, you people deserve whatever happens to you. For a thousand years you’ve been killing each other by the millions. Good riddance.”
Chernov was impressed, she could see it on his face. “For all we give a damn? Who is the we?”
“If you had done your homework, Colonel Bykov, you would know that I work for the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. We’ve agreed to help you stop my father not because we think killing Tarankov is such a bad idea, but because my father’s life is worth too much to risk killing such scum.”
A flicker of surprise showed in his eyes, but was gone as fast as it appeared. “Then the CIA knows that you came to Riga?”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said with a straight face.
Chernov thought about it a moment, then got up. “Do you think your father went back to this Milford?” “It’s in Delaware,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, I do.” He nodded after a moment. “We’ll see,” he said, and then he went back into the conference room and closed the door, leaving Elizabeth to wonder if she’d done the right thing, or if she’d made another terrible mistake.
It was 12:10 p.m. when Jacqueline made it to the French Embassy. The young receptionist at the front desk registered no surprise when Jacqueline flashed her passport, and asked to speak with Marc Edis, assistant to the ambassador for economic affairs. In reality he was chief of SDECE operations for all the Baltics. She’d looked up his name before she and Elizabeth had left Paris. The woman put through the call, and a minute later a tall, slope- shouldered man with drooping mustaches came down the stairs, his expression frankly admiring when he spotted her.
“I’m Marc Edis,” he said, extending his hand. “How may I be of service, Mademoiselle?”
Jacqueline shook hands. “I need to speak to you in private.”
“May I enquire as to the nature of your business with me?”
The receptionist was paying them no attention, nevertheless Jacqueline lowered her voice. “My name is Jacqueline Belleau. I work for Colonel Guy de Galan in Paris.” The vapid smile left his face. “We’ll go lip to my office,” he said, all business now. “Hold any calls for me, I’ll be in conference,” he told the receptionist.
Five minutes later Jacqueline was speaking by secured telephone to an angry Galan.
“Alexandre returned from the apartment an hour ago to report that you and Elizabeth were gone. Possibly shopping, he told me, although there was evidence that some clothing and personal articles were missing. I was getting ready to tear the city apart looking for you. But instead of that, you telephone from Latvia!”
“Elizabeth had a hunch that her father might be here. But it was just a hunch, man colonel. Since we’d gotten nowhere with our other hunches I thought we would simply fly here, check it out, and immediately return to Paris if we did not find him.”
“That was stupid and dangerous, Jacqueline. You — should have at least warned Alexandre, in case something went wrong. As it stands we would not have had so much as a starting point to look for you.”
Edis had tactfully retreated to another office, leaving her alone. She ran a hand across her eyes. She was as tired as she was stupid.
“Something has gone wrong,” she said. “Did you find McGarvey?” Galan asked.
“No.”
“Is Elizabeth with you there at the embassy? Please tell me she is.”
“She is not,” Jacqueline said. “We went to the apartment that she thought her father had used on a previous assignment. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, so she went in while I waited at the end of the block. Ten minutes later an unmarked van pulled up to the curb, and a man came out of the building with Elizabeth, put her into the van and drove off.”
