carry out your nefarious plans.” Ostrovsky shook his head in amazement and glanced over at his accountant.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me either, Yakov,” the ferret face said, the hint of a smile at the corners of the thin mouth.
McGarvey coughed again, and had to prop himself up with his hands on his knees.
“Then there’s your own government, Mr. McGarvey, which has already spent hundreds of million of dollars trying to make sure that we Russians don’t slip back into our old ways. They certainly might be willing to pay a great deal of money to have you delivered alive and safe at the U.S. Embassy. It would save them from international censure if it were to come out that the CIA had plotted to assassinate a legitimate Russian presidential candidate.”
McGarvey stubbed out the cigarette and looked up at Ostrovsky. “What do you want me to say?” he asked groggily.
“I’m sure that given the choice you would much rather go home. Who in Washington would be willing to make a deal?”
“Howard Ryan,” McGarvey said after a moment. “He’s Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA.”
“What about the director himself?”
“You’ll have to start with Ryan, he’s the one looking for me. He’d have the most to gain.”
Ostrovsky tossed a cell phone over. “Call him.”
McGarvey looked at the phone and shook his head. “I need a shower first, I feel like shit.”
“You can have a shower later.”
“Now, goddammit. You’ve got me, so cut me a little slack before I puke all over your fancy carpet,” McGarvey said, letting a pleading note creep into his voice. He’d been listening for sounds from elsewhere in the club, but there was nothing. Either no one was around at this hour, or this room was located in an isolated area.
“Go with him,” Ostrovsky told the two bodyguards.
They came over as McGarvey started to rise. At the last moment he stumbled as if he had lost his balance, and one of the guards caught him. It was all the opening he needed. He snatched the Glock-17 out of the man’s shoulder holster and shouldered the man out of the way. The other guard reached for his gun when McGarvey shot him twice in the chest, knocking him backward off his feet. The first guard caught his balance and reached for McGarvey who switched aim and shot the man in the face at point blank range.
Ostrovsky was coming out of his chair, and the accountant was starting for the door. McGarvey shot the ferret in the side of the head, sending him crashing over the low coffee table, at the same moment a panicked Ostrovsky was dragging a pistol out of his pocket.
McGarvey pointed his gun at the Mafia boss. “Nyet!” he shouted.
Ostrovsky ignored the warning, as he got out the pistol, which McGarvey recognized as his own Walther, and raised it.
McGarvey dispassionately shot the man twice in the chest, knocking him off his feet, where he landed in a heap in front of the couch.
At the door McGarvey listened but there were no sounds in the corridor. No one had heard the shots, and no alarm had been raised.
He went into the bathroom where he showered off the blood that had splattered on him, then found his clothes in a heap on the floor. After he got dressed, he repacked the rifle components and the bolt-cutter in the leather satchel, then retrieved his own gun, spare magazine and silencer from Ostrovsky’s body.
It was 6:45 when he finished, and still mere were no sounds from the corridor, but by now the club would be busy with early arrivals. No one would expect trouble. In fact it was likely that no one else knew about Os trovsky’s guest.
Hefting the satchel in his left hand, McGarvey let himself out, and hurried noiselessly to the end of the corridor, which turned left through a pair of doors that led to the front of the club. Now he could hear music, and the sounds of laughter, and voices.
Without undue haste, he walked to the front of the club, through the entry foyer, past the front desk staff and doormen who paid him no attention, and outside as a valet was getting out of a BMW sedan. Several armed guards stood around, but they ignored him.
He walked around to the driver’s side, nodded pleasantly to the young parking attendant, tossed his bag inside, got behind the wheel and took off before anyone realized what was happening. McGarvey watched in the rearview mirror as the valet sprinted inside, but then he was turning down the driveway and toward the highway that led back into Moscow.
Jacqueline Belleau’s Russian driver that the French Embassy had provided her passed through the prison gates a few minutes before 7:00 p.m.” and she had to clutch her purse between her knees to keep them from knocking. As the SDECE’s Paris Chief of Station Claude Na vicet had told her this afternoon when the meeting with Bykov had been set up: “These people mean business, so watch yourself.” Which she thought was the same as saying be careful when you stick you head into the lion’s mouth. The request had been taken directly to General Yuryn, the director of the FSK. Jacqueline had listened in on the conversation, and although she spoke no Russian she detected a reluctance in his voice. Since the Russians had asked the French for help, however, he could not refuse.
A guard came out of the gatehouse, and Jacqueline powered down her window, and passed out her papers. “I have an appointment to meet with Colonel Bykov,” she said in French.
Her driver opened his window and translated.
The guard took her papers back into the gatehouse, and a couple of minutes later returned with another guard. He handed Jacqueline’s papers back to her, and said something in Russian.
“This man will escort us to Colonel Bykov’s office,” her driver translated.
The second guard climbed in the front, and they drove to the rear of the compound where they parked in front of a low yellow brick building whose barred windows had been painted black.
Chernov was alone in his office. Although he seemed impatient, he smiled pleasantly and shook her hand. “I’m Yuri Bykov,” he said in French.
“I’m Jacqueline Belleau, and my service has sent me from Paris to help out.” Chernov was tall, well built and in Jacqueline’s opinion, handsome. But his smile was fake.
“Frankly I don’t know what you can do that your government hasn’t already done,” Chernov said. “But I’ll take any help that I can get, because we’re clutching at straws. McGarvey is here in Moscow, we know that much. But this is a very big city, and we simply can’t find him.”
“Have you spoken with the CIA yet?”
“Not directly,” Chernov said. “But I don’t think they’d care to send one of their officers over here from the embassy.” He smiled again. “I know we certainly wouldn’t send one of our people from our embassy in Washington over to FBI headquarters if the situation were reversed.”
“Well it’s a good thing I came to see you tonight, because there’s something that you cannot be aware of,” Jacqueline said, conscious that she was taking a very large risk. But she didn’t know what else to do. “Like you, we and the Americans want to see Kirk McGarvey pulled back from the brink of this madness. Nobody condones assassination, and in the past McGarvey has been a friend to France. In fact he makes his home in Paris.”
“I know.”
“What you don’t know is that his daughter Elizabeth also works for the CIA. She was sent to work with me in Paris to find her father.”
“Extraordinary,” Chernov said. “I had no idea. Is she here with you?”
The bastard was lying. Jacqueline could see it in his cold eyes.
“I don’t know where she is, Colonel.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She and I traced her father to an apartment in Riga, but that’s as far as we got. She disappeared into thin air, and the Riga police swear that they know nothing about it.”
“What exactly do you mean, disappeared?” Chernov asked quietly.
“Just that,” Jacqueline said. “We staked out his apartment that-night, but when it was evident he was gone, I went over to my embassy to call for instructions. Elizabeth remained behind to continue watching the apartment.
