He had the fleeting impression of a pale white face, an open mouth, a dark gun.
Thorn fired three times in rapid succession, holding the Makarov down and on target as it bucked upward.
Hit at least twice, the gunman slumped over the fitting. His pistol clattered to the deck. Blood pooled beneath the dead man, blending with the rust, grease, and dirt coating the steel surface.
Silence fell over the corpse-strewn freighter. Nothing moved.
Nothing at all.
Thorn breathed out and looked at Helen. She smiled wanly back. Her hands were shaking now as reaction set in and the adrenaline wore off.
He looked down. So were his.
He set his jaw and rose to his feet. It was time to get off this damned ship. Time to start finding out why they’d been ambushed.
To find out why Alexei Koniev had been murdered.
It seemed to take an eternity to reach the gangplank and dash across.
Nobody fired at them. They stepped onto land just as they heard the sirens screaming — drawing ever closer to the docks. Pechenga’s militia force had apparently woken up.
Peter Thorn and Helen Gray waited until they saw the patrol cars skid around the corner of the harbormaster’s office, then very carefully laid their weapons down on the ground. With their hands out and empty, they went to meet the approaching militia.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TERMINATIONS
The muffled pop brought Colonel General Feodor Mikhailovich Serov fully awake. What the devil was that?
He opened his eyes and started to reach for the bedside lamp.
He froze — suddenly aware of the cold metal cylinder pressed hard against his mouth.
“Very good, General,” a dry voice commented. “You show sense.”
A gloved hand reached past him and flicked the lamp on — flooding the bedroom with light.
Serov blinked rapidly, staring down the enormous muzzle of a silenced 9mm Makarov pistol. Sergeant Kurgin — his orderly and Reichardt’s watchdog — looked back at him, stony indifference written across his narrow face. He was dimly aware of another man, blondhaired and broken-nosed, standing close by the side of the bed.
“Do not move, General,” Kurgin ordered calmly. “This won’t take long.”
Dazed by the sudden reversal of his fortunes, Serov obeyed, lying rigid while Kurgin’s companion quickly and efficiently strapped his wrists and ankles together with tape. Leaving him trussed like a hog readied for slaughter, the broken-nosed man stepped back.
Kurgin pulled the pistol away and stood waiting, still staring down at him.
Something wet and warm trickled off the headboard and dripped onto Serov’s forehead — something that smelled oddly like heated copper.
He flinched, remembering the muffled sound that had first wrenched him into this waking nightmare. Elena!
He turned his head sideways and moaned aloud.
His wife lay dead in bed beside him. Her eyes seemed closed in peaceful sleep, but the neat, puckered hole in her forehead told him they would never open again. Powder burns etched her fair skin black around the wound. The exit wound was messier. Bright red blood and gray brain matter had sprayed across her pillow and onto the headboard.
He retched suddenly, desperately turning his own head away as his stomach heaved.
When the shivering fit passed, Serov looked up at Kurgin. His mouth felt as though it were filled with sand and ashes. “Why?” he croaked.
“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand. Reichardt promised me I would be safe once Koniev and the two Americans were dead.”
Kurgin shrugged his shoulders. “It seems someone else made a small mistake this time. The Americans are still alive.” His lips twitched into the ghastly parody of a smile. “And so Herr Reichardt must sacrifice another pawn to fend them off for a while longer.”
Serov swallowed hard, staring death and utter disaster squarely in the face. Kurgin’s bad news spelled out his own death sentence.
Reichardt had used him to bait the hook for Koniev and the Americans.
But by pointing them toward the trap waiting for them in Pechenga, he had left himself vulnerable to further interrogation if they lived. So now that Reichardt’s ambush had failed, he was of no further use and of considerable potential danger to the German and his mysterious employer.
“And my wife? Why kill her? She knew nothing of all this,” he said bitterly.
His onetime orderly shook his head and smiled in mock amusement. “Now how could we be sure of that, General?” He stroked the silenced pistol in his hand gently. “In any event, you should be grateful that Herr Reichardt ordered me to kill her quickly. He is not ordinarily so gracious and forgiving.”
Serov winced. He tried to moisten his dry lips and failed. “And what of my daughters?”
“Them?” Kurgin shrugged again. “I have no orders concerning them.”
For the first time since opening his eyes, Serov felt a small measure of hope — though none for himself. Perhaps Reichardt would leave his children unmolested at their schools in France and Germany. They might be left penniless and alone, but at least they would be alive.
He nerved himself one last time to stare up at Kurgin, fighting hard not to show the panic bubbling up inside. As a younger man, he had flown high-performance Migs to the edge of the envelope and beyond — cheating Death to win praise and promotion.
Now Death had come in a different guise. He had lost his final gamble.
Well, so be it, he thought wearily. At least a bullet in the brain would be quick. Perhaps it would even be painless.
Serov hawked, turned his head, and spat toward the floor in one last, futile gesture of defiance. “All right then, damn you!
Get on with it!” He nodded toward the silenced pistol in Kurgin’s hand. “You have your weapon. Use it.”
“This?” Reichardt’s agent glanced down at the pistol in surprise.
He laughed softly. “No, no, General! This is not for you.
After all, we do have appearances to maintain.”
Before Serov could move, Kurgin’s companion gripped his right arm in a vise grip and tore the pajama sleeve up above his elbow.
Gasping now, Serov rolled his eyes toward Kurgin.
The sergeant had set his pistol aside. Moving with deadly precision, he reached into his tunic and took out a hypodermic needle and a length of surgical tubing. He held the needle up to the light, tapped it gently, and then smiled cruelly. “No bullet for you, Colonel General.
Nothing so easy, no. I’m afraid you will be taking a long and painful trip to hell.”
Serov started screaming even before the needle touched his skin.
Grateful for the air conditioning that kept the blast furnace heat of the Saudi summer at bay, Anson P. Carleton, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arab Affairs, strode forward to a podium inside the King Khalid Airport’s official reception area. His aides, U.S. Secret Service agents, and Saudi security personnel trailed after him and then filed off to either side.
Outside, the honor guard and band that had greeted him on his arrival began dispersing. Heat waves
