“disappearance.” Senior Agency field operatives were not supposed to kill rival intelligence agents — especially in broad daylight in an ostensibly neutral capital. They certainly weren’t supposed to get caught.
And what about Erin and the others? Despite the close, confined, muggy air in his cell, Banich felt suddenly cold. He knew how Kaminov and those who toadied to him thought. Four “disappearances” were as easy to explain as one. Maybe even easier, since there would be no one left alive to dispute whatever story the marshal’s military junta concocted.
Boots rang on the bare concrete floor of the corridor beyond his cell, coming closer. They stopped right outside the cell door. A key grated in the lock, and he barely had time to stand up before the door slammed open. Four militiamen waited outside, a flabby, middle-aged sergeant and three leaner, fitter privates. All had their pistols drawn. Through the rising tide of his despair, Banich found a moment’s pale amusement in that. Clearly these Russians at least regarded him as a very dangerous fellow indeed.
“You! Come out of there.” The sergeant jerked his head back down the corridor. “You’re wanted upstairs for a little chat.”
Banich sighed. This was it, then. The Russian counterintelligence agency had finally shaken off its curious bureaucratic lethargy and come to inspect its prizes. He thought about squaring his shoulders, but then decided that a stoop-shouldered, dejected look would be more in character for a bewildered, hard working Ukrainian merchant caught up in events through no fault of his own. Although he doubted his cover identity would hold up for very long under determined investigation, he planned to play it out for as long as possible. Every hour that passed gave Len Kutner that much more time to find out what had happened to the four of them. If nothing else, he might be able to buy enough time for the rest of his field team to get clear.
He stepped warily out into the corridor. The militiamen closed in around him, with the sergeant and one private in back, and two more ahead.
“Move!” Banich felt a pistol barrel grind painfully into his back, just above his left kidney, prodding him onward. He stumbled into motion, trying to mask a sudden flash of anger beneath a properly submissive, frightened expression. Nikolai Ushenko was a man of money, not a man of action.
They marched him down the narrow basement corridor at a brisk pace, past rows of other locked cell doors. The clipboards hanging beside each bore only a number — never any names. Russia’s new military rulers hadn’t abandoned their old and ugly penchant for dehumanizing those who crossed them, he thought scornfully.
Banich’s guards led him up two flights of stairs and out into an empty hallway toward the rear of the militia headquarters. The marble floor, faded photographs and paintings of senior officials, and crowded notice boards told him they were somewhere in the more public areas of the building. This early in the morning there were very few militia officers or civilian clerical workers in evidence. Occupied offices were indicated only by a light under the door, and occasionally by the soft rattle of keys on a word processor or the low, whooshing hum of a photocopier in operation. The Petrovka Street headquarters, like the rest of Moscow, was just starting to come to life.
Despite his fatigue, Banich noticed that all of his senses were fully alert and finely tuned. Sights, sounds, and smells were all magnified as the animal side of his brain sensed danger ahead and began reacting — preparing to fight or flee. The world, even this small, sterile portion of it, seemed clearer and sharper than ever before.
The sergeant stopped outside a solid-looking, wood-paneled door and pushed it open. “Inside.”
Still in character, Banich turned toward the NCO with a pleading whine on his face and in his voice. “Please, Sergeant, I swear that I am an honest man, not a criminal…”
The sergeant snorted, “Of course.” He shoved Banich through the doorway. “Inside, pig!”
They pulled the door shut behind him.
The room was not what he’d expected. Instead of a drab interrogation chamber, he was alone in a handsomely appointed conference room — complete with dark wood paneling, carpet, a long, polished table, and upholstered armchairs. He sniffed the air, caught the scent of fresh, hot tea, and turned.
Tall glasses in metal holders stood on a sideboard next to a samovar. A nearby tray held slices of lemon, spoons, and a dish of fruit jelly. Banich arched an eyebrow in surprise. What the hell was all of this? A ploy to soften him up before the gloves came off? Was the tea drugged? he wondered.
He stood uncertainly for a few moments, then shrugged and moved toward the sideboard. He had to react as Nikolai Ushenko, not as a professionally suspicious American intelligence officer. The Ukrainian commodities trader he’d created would never pass up the chance for a free cup of tea. Even if it was drugged, at least pouring his own would give him some control over the dosage.
“I’ve always thought that you led a very interesting life for a simple merchant, Mr. Ushenko. Now I see I was right.”
Banich replaced the glass he’d selected and turned toward the familiar voice. Colonel Valentin Soloviev stood poised in the doorway, holding a dossier in one hand. As always, the Russian soldier’s dress uniform looked freshly pressed. He was suddenly conscious of his own bedraggled, unshaven appearance.
Soloviev came in and closed the door.
“I don’t see why I’m being held prisoner like this, Colonel,” Banich protested automatically, thinking fast. What was Soloviev doing here? “All I did was help a poor woman who was being mugged.”
“Killing two French security agents in the process.” The Russian seemed amused. “And the woman turns out to be an American diplomat who is also suspected of being a spy. A curious coincidence, indeed. Almost impossible to believe, in fact.” His voice turned harsher. “But not so hard when one realizes exactly how you came to be in that particular place at that particular time.
“Let’s be honest with each other. There was no good reason for a man named Nikolai Ushenko to be in Gorky Park yesterday afternoon, or for such a man to interfere in what must have looked very much like an official arrest — not a ‘mugging.’” Soloviev smiled thinly. “But we
Shit. He tried to brazen it out. “Who?”
“Don’t play games with me. Neither of us has any time to waste.” Soloviev opened the dossier he was carrying and tossed two black-and-white surveillance photos onto the table.
Banich looked down at them. Both showed him in a suit and tie, holding a drink in one hand. They must have been taken at one of the innumerable trade conferences he’d attended shortly after arriving in Moscow. Damn it.
Soloviev nodded. “Unless you just happen to have an exact double stationed at the American embassy, those pictures identify you as Alexander Banich — ostensibly a somewhat simpleminded deputy assistant economic attache.”
The colonel shook his head in mock disappointment. “It seems that my secret-police colleagues at the FIS have been rather sloppy, Mr. Banich. Their file describes you as ‘a nonentity, an Ivy League drone, and a borderline alcoholic.’” He shrugged. “I must admit that your work has been brilliant. I suspected that the man I knew as Ushenko might be feeding confidential information back to Ukraine. But I never dreamed you were an American espionage agent.”
Banich felt dizzy. He looked up sharply, suddenly tired of Soloviev’s cat-and-mouse game. “If you’re so goddamned sure of that, Colonel, where’s the FIS? Why aren’t they here to haul me away?”
The other man eyed him grimly. “For two very good reasons, Mr. Banich. First, they don’t know what I know about your identity. And second, they don’t yet know anything about what happened in Gorky Park yesterday afternoon.”
“What?” Banich couldn’t conceal his surprise. “Why not?”
“Because I am not the only Russian of rank opposed to this illegal regime and its insane policies, Mr. Banich. General Pikhoia is another.”
The American whistled silently. Major General Konstantin Pikhoia commanded the whole Moscow militia force. No wonder the word about Gorky Park hadn’t leaked yet. He found himself reappraising Soloviev. Allies that highly placed put the colonel in a very different context. Not as a lone wolf, after all, but instead as the point man for an opposition movement operating covertly inside Kaminov’s martial law government itself. Was such a thing possible?
Yes, he judged. The marshal’s purges had been directed primarily at the most outspoken supporters of democratic ideals in the military and the ministries. Officers and officials who were more discreet or more farsighted could easily have clung to their posts with an outward show of loyalty to Russia’s new rulers. Men like Soloviev.
