Cauldron

certain way to break Soloviev’s clandestine link and obtain the necessary proof before it was too late. Direct action. Violent action.

GORKY PARK

Moscow’s citizens were out in full force — enjoying the last few hours of a warm summer day. Couples strolled through the park hand in hand or sat on benches soaking up the welcome sunshine. Stripped to their shirt sleeves in the heat, bureaucrats and businessmen paused on their way home to play chess, to skim the afternoon editions of the government-controlled newspapers, or to down vodka or beer with friends and colleagues at one of Gorky’s cafes. Others stood in groups shouting encouragement to the schoolchildren booting soccer balls up and down the park’s sports grounds. A few madcap youths wearing in-line roller skates imported from the West raced each other down the winding paths, narrowly dodging slower-moving pedestrians. Halfhearted curses and shaken fists trailed after the grinning teens.

Erin McKenna stepped lithely aside from one howling, laughing pack, and paused in the shade of one of Gorky Park’s two giant Ferris wheels. She swore a few times herself, but not at the skaters. Her curses were directed at Kaminov, the French, the Germans, and all the other idiots who were leading the world into another general war.

She’d just come from another hastily arranged meeting with Valentin Soloviev, and none of the news she was carrying back to Alex Banich and the others was good. According to the Russian colonel, his masters were within inches of reaching agreement with the French envoys. Kaminov had already issued preliminary war orders to the army and air force units poised on the Polish border, and even Russia’s remaining ICBMs were on a higher state of alert.

Erin closed her eyes briefly, feeling the beginning of a tension headache knotting her temples. War and the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Russia, for God’s sake! It was like reliving her worst childhood nightmares all over again. So much for the shortsighted, protectionist politicians who had bought votes by appealing to isolationism, raising barriers to foreign trade, and slashing defense and foreign aid, she thought angrily. They and the other opportunists like them around the globe had sown a bitter harvest — one that millions of innocents caught in the fighting were reaping now.

After the last of the long-haired roller skaters swooped past, she stepped back out onto the walking path and headed for the gray delivery van parked near the tall, towered Museum of Paleontology at the park’s southern end. She knew that Banich, Hennessy, and the other CIA field agents covering her would want to report back to the embassy as soon as possible.

The footpath joined the sidewalk paralleling Kaluga Road a hundred meters short of Banich’s van. There were even more people there, flowing into Gorky Park from the offices and high-rise apartments lining the other side of the busy street. Erin brushed past the small crowd watching a street performer juggling three balls and a kitchen knife and lengthened her stride. She was almost safe.

Two plain black sedans veered out of traffic and pulled up right beside her, brakes squealing sharply. Their rear doors popped open before they even stopped moving. Two men jumped out and rushed toward her — hard- faced, expressionless men wearing dark, look-alike suits.

Erin froze, horrified.

Before she could recover, they grabbed her, shoving her toward one of the waiting sedans.

A big, brutal-looking man standing near the second car motioned impatiently.

“Vite! Vite!”

They were French! The realization shook Erin awake. Her diplomatic immunity might offer some small measure of protection against the Russians, but it offered none against kidnapping by French intelligence agents. Instincts honed by years of life in a big city and by the self-defense courses she’d taken came fully alive.

Now! She tore her arms loose from their grip, slammed an elbow into one man’s stomach, then pivoted and drove her heel down hard on the other Frenchman’s instep. They fell away. Momentarily free, she whirled and ran, angling away from the street — heading deeper into the wooded park.

“Merde!”

Major Paul Duroc swore violently. He leaned out the window of the first car, motioning toward the fleeing woman. “Woerner! Foret! Verdier! Chase her down!”

Humiliated by their first failure, the three men nodded abruptly and ran in pursuit.

Duroc pulled his head back inside the sedan, still seething. He’d counted on surprise and their semiofficial appearance to cow the woman long enough to get her inside and out of public view. It should have been both quick and reasonably discreet. Now everything was about to get a whole lot messier. He leaned forward and rapped on the clear partition separating him from the driver in the front seat. “Head south and turn right past the museum. Then take the Pushkin Quay north. She can’t stay in the goddamned trees forever.”

“Yes, Major.” The sedan pulled out into traffic and accelerated.

Intent on their prey, neither man noticed the delivery van pulling out right behind them.

Erin ran blindly onward, dodging people coming the other way or moving too slowly in the direction she was going. She could hear feet pounding after her and startled shouts as the people who’d stopped to stare were shoved out of the way. The French weren’t giving up, but she couldn’t risk glancing behind to see how close they were.

Beneath her mounting terror, she realized she’d made a fundamental mistake by running away from Banich’s security team. Damn it, she thought, I’m supposed to be smarter than that. She’d let panic lead her down the path of least resistance. Now it was too late to try doubling back. She had to keep heading for the Moscow River — looking for a chance to shake her pursuers and reach one of the Agency’s safe houses or find some other kind of help.

She flashed past a group of laughing children skipping rocks across the still waters of a weed-choked pond, hurtled through a cluster of their wide-eyed, astonished mothers, and plunged into the stand of trees beyond them. She heard a splash and shriek as a child went into the water. But nobody made a move to intervene.

Maybe that wasn’t really very surprising. Decades of life under dictatorship had taught Muscovites when to look the other way. Especially when they saw a foreign-looking woman being chased by men who were obviously Chekists, secret policemen of some kind.

Erin lengthened her stride again, running faster now as she neared the river. Should she turn north or south once she reached the quay? South would take her closer to where she’d last seen Banich and the others. But north would take her back toward the bulk of Gorky Park, the Crimea Bridge, the giant Hotel Warsaw, and, most important of all, a Metro stop. That cinched it. She would go north. Moscow’s intricate subway system offered her the best chance to evade pursuit and make her way to safety.

Still sprinting at top speed, she broke out of the woods and saw the sunlight sparkling on the river. Tall apartment buildings, the Frunze Quay housing complex, lined the opposite shore. She slanted north, flying down a gentle grassy slope to the edge of the road. An angry shout, more a bull roar than a human cry, told her that the three Frenchmen, breathing hard now, were falling behind.

She was outrunning them!

Her own labored breathing steadied as new energy surged through her body — the same burst of strength and endurance she’d always relied on to win distance races. As she opened the gap, pulling away from her pursuers, Erin felt the exhilaration she always experienced in victory.

And then her euphoria turned to despair.

A black sedan zoomed past her, braked wildly, and skidded sideways to a stop right in her path.

Erin tried to twist away, but she was running too fast and the car was just too close. Her ankle gave way when she tried to turn. She stumbled, lost her balance, and slammed into the side of the sedan while still moving flat out.

Pain flared red and the world went away for several seconds.

When the pain receded slightly, she found herself firmly held, her arms pinioned behind her back. Her captor, a short, narrow-faced man with pale blue eyes and a reptilian gaze, wasn’t taking any chances. From the sound of the short-tempered orders he snapped out to the three sheepish men who’d been chasing her on foot, he was in charge of this whole operation.

Operation, Erin thought numbly. Now, there was a ridiculously neutral term to describe her own kidnapping. Her escape attempt had failed. She was a French prisoner.

The sound of another engine snapped her head back up in time to see a battered gray delivery van pull up