beside the black sedan. The van’s side door slid open and Alex Banich jumped down onto the grass, his face carefully blank. Hennessy and another CIA agent named Phil Teppler appeared over his shoulder.
Banich stepped forward, addressing the man who held her in slurred, uneducated, working-class Russian. “Is there a problem here, friend? Don’t you think you should let go of that poor lady’s arms?”
Duroc watched the three men climb down out of the van with increasing irritation. First that ridiculous, comic-opera chase through the park, and now this interference by a few grubby Russian passersby — workmen by the look of their filthy coveralls. He scowled. What should have been a smooth, professional snatch was rapidly deteriorating into a bloody farce.
The first one out of the van, a short, brown-haired man about his own height, said something in Russian — something that sounded hard-edged and menacing despite his soft tone.
“He wants you to let the lady go, Major,” rat-faced Foret translated.
“Does he now?” Duroc sneered. Then he shook his head angrily. They didn’t have time for this chivalrous nonsense. By now, even Moscow’s sleepy militia must be on their way here.
The DGSE agent transferred his grip to the woman’s neck, reached inside his jacket, and pulled the 9mm Makarov automatic out of his shoulder holster. Then he pointed the pistol at the man, sighting on his midriff. “Tell this goddamned peasant to back off, Foret. Tell him this is official business.”
Incredibly, despite the warning and the pistol pointing in his direction, the man took another step forward. His hands hovered near his side.
Exasperated, Duroc flipped the Makarov’s safety catch off and raised his aim. Maybe the sight of death staring him right in the face would knock some sense into this pig-ignorant Russian’s thick skull. “He’s got three seconds to live, Foret. One… two…”
Suddenly the red-haired woman writhed out of his grasp, trying desperately to grab his gun hand.
“Bitch!” Furious, Duroc yanked her back by the hair and then cuffed her out of the way with a single backhanded blow.
“Look out, Major!” big Michel Woerner shouted suddenly.
Alarmed, Duroc whirled around.
Too late. He felt something cold and sharp lancing into his own stomach, ripping up under his ribs. Then the pain hit — a tearing, flaming wall of agony that darkened the whole world around him. His lungs were on fire. Major Paul Duroc stared down in appalled astonishment as the brown-haired man stepped back a pace, still holding a wide-bladed workman’s knife stained red to the hilt.
Knife held ready to strike again if the Frenchman tried to use his pistol, Alex Banich watched the man he’d stabbed sag, slump to his knees, and then pitch over onto his side. The DGSE agent twitched a few times, coughed wetly, and died. Rich, red, arterial blood pooled on the grass beneath his gaping, slack-jawed mouth. The pistol fell out of his unclenched hand and lay at Banich’s feet.
Without thinking further, he knelt down and scooped the Makarov up. Just in time.
The tallest of the four surviving Frenchmen snarled something guttural and ugly, clawing for his own holstered weapon. Banich saw the pistol come clear and turn toward him.
“Alex!” Erin screamed.
Damn it. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, firing at point-blank range. The first 9mm round caught the Frenchman in the chest and threw him backward. The second blew the top of the man’s head off. The third missed.
Banich swiveled rapidly, bringing the rest of the DGSE operatives into his sights. Stunned by the sudden carnage and their leaders’ deaths, they paled and carefully raised empty hands.
“Watch ‘em!” At his command, Hennessy and Teppler moved closer to frisk the captive Frenchmen, holding their own unsheathed knives at the ready. Their choice of weapons made sense for agents working under cover. If they were stopped and searched by the Moscow militia or security services, carrying firearms would sign their death warrants, but many Russian workers carried knives.
The French, all fight beaten out of them by the unexpected turn of events, willingly submitted to being searched. One by one, three more pistols were found and confiscated.
“That’s it, they’re clean,” Hennessy said over his shoulder.
Banich nodded. “Good. Okay, here’s what we’ll do…”
“Hold it! Hands up! Get your hands up!” The shout came from higher up the slope, near the edge of the woods.
Banich turned slowly and saw a group of very young-looking Russian militiamen cautiously advancing toward them — emerging from the trees with their weapons out and aimed. Red and blue lights flashed in the distance. Militia squad cars were closing in from both sides of the quay, sealing off any hope of escape.
“Do as they say,” Banich said quietly. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands in surrender. He saw the horrified look on Erin McKenna’s face and felt sick. He’d killed two men to save her from captivity and he’d still failed. Now he couldn’t save any of them.
CHAPTER 33
Preemptive Strike
Moscow’s militia, the city’s police force, had its main headquarters in a large yellow-brick building on Petrovka Street, several blocks north of the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Theater. The six floors aboveground contained offices for the militia’s investigators and administrators, forensic labs, an armory, and evidence storage rooms. Drunks and other petty criminals were dealt with by the district stations scattered across the capital and its outlying suburbs, but dangerous or politically important prisoners awaiting interrogation or trial were held in small cells buried deep in the building’s subbasement, below an underground parking garage.
Bone-weary after a sleepless night, Alex Banich sat hunched over on his cell’s only piece of furniture — an iron-frame cot inadequately cushioned by a single, folded wool blanket. He closed his eyes against the painful glare coming from the single, unshielded light bulb above his head. The light had been left on all night.
All night… Banich straightened up slightly. Since the guards had stripped him of his watch before they’d thrown him inside this cell, he couldn’t be sure of the exact time. But the exact time didn’t especially matter. What mattered was that it had to be close to dawn outside. That meant he and the others had been in militia custody for at least ten hours. So where were the FIS interrogators? He, Hennessy, and Teppler were all operating with false identification papers, but Erin and those French bastards certainly weren’t. Any case involving foreigners was clearly the province of the FIS — not the Moscow militia. Then why this delay in handing them over to the counterintelligence agency? Bureaucratic infighting? Some kind of clerical glitch or other administrative foul-up? Or something else, something more significant?
And what about the three DGSE agents who had survived that bloody encounter in the park? Had they already been released? He’d heard cell doors clanging open and muffled voices down the corridor some time ago. He nodded grimly to himself. For all practical purposes, France and Russia were already allies. Kaminov’s security chiefs might have some pointed questions about what the French had been up to, but they weren’t likely to jeopardize their leader’s hard-won ties with Paris just to have them answered. Not when they had four other captives to quiz.
Banich found himself running through different scenarios and options using his knowledge of the Russian agencies and personalities in play. Realistically he knew the effort was probably a meaningless mental exercise — akin to asking a blindfolded man to find one particular person in a crowded football stadium. Still, it helped him fend off his fears for Erin, his men, and himself for a little while longer.
Not that he had many illusions about his likely fate. Murder convictions under martial law carried one sentence — death. If the FIS broke his Ushenko cover story and identified him as a CIA agent, the sentence would be the same. Only the method of carrying it out would change — a secret death after prolonged interrogation and torture instead of swift public execution. The French were bound to insist on at least that much as compensation for their two dead spies.
Faced with the evidence against him, he doubted Langley would want to make much of a fuss over his
