The Bear and the Dragon

“What do you wish to know?”

“His address, for starters.”

“He lives outside Moscow.”

“Under what name?”

“He does not know that I know, but I saw his papers once. Ivan Yurievich Koniev.”

“How do you know this?” Provalov asked.

“He was asleep, of course, and I went through his clothes,” she replied, as matter-of-factly as if she’d told the militia lieutenant where she shopped for bread.

So, he fucked you, and you, in turn, fucked him, Provalov didn’t say. “Do you remember his address?”

She shook her head. “No, but it’s one of the new communities off the outer ring road.”

“When did you last see him?”

“It was a week before Gregoriy Filipovich died,” she answered at once.

It was then that Provalov had a flash: “Tanya, the night before Gregoriy died, whom did you see?”

“He was a former soldier or something, let me think … Pyotr Alekseyevich … something …”

“Amalrik?” Provalov asked, almost coming off his seat.

“Yes, something like that. He had a tattoo on his arm, the Spetsnaz tattoo a lot of them got in Afghanistan. He thought very highly of himself, but he wasn’t a very good lover,” Tanya added dismissively.

And he never will be, Provalov could have said then, but didn’t. “Who set up that, ah, appointment?”

“Oh, that was Klementi Ivan’ch. He had an arrangement with Gregoriy. They knew each other, evidently for a long time. Gregoriy often made special appointments for Klementi’s friends.”

Suvorov had one or both of his killers fuck the whores belonging to the man they would kill the next day …? Whoever Suvorov was, he had an active sense of humor … or the real target actually had been Sergey Nikolay’ch. Provalov had just turned up an important piece of information, but it didn’t seem to illuminate his criminal case at all. Another fact which only made his job harder, not easier. He was back to the same two possibilities: This Suvorov had contracted the two Spetsnaz soldiers to kill Rasputin, and then had them killed as “insurance” to avoid repercussions. Or he’d contracted them to eliminate Golovko, and then killed them for making a serious error. Which? He’d have to find this Suvorov to find out. But now he had a name and a probable location. And that was something he could work on.

CHAPTER 19 Manhunting

Things had quieted down at Rainbow headquarters in Hereford, England, to the point that both John Clark and Ding Chavez were starting to show the symptoms of restlessness. The training regimen was as demanding as ever, but nobody had ever drowned in sweat, and the targets, paper and electronic were-well, if not as satisfying as a real human miscreant wasn’t the best way to put it, then maybe not as exciting was the right phrase. But the Rainbow team members didn’t say that, even among themselves, for fear of appearing bloodthirsty and unprofessional. To them the studied mental posture was that it was all the same. Practice was bloodless battle, and battle was bloody drill. And certainly by taking their training so seriously, they were still holding a very fine edge. Fine enough to shave the fuzz off a baby’s face.

The team had never gone public, at least not per se. But the word had leaked out somehow. Not in Washington, and not in London, but somewhere on the continent, the word had gotten out that NATO now had a very special and very capable counterterrorist team that had raped and pillaged its way through several high-profile missions, and only once taken any lumps, at the hands of Irish terrorists who had, however, paid a bitter price for their misjudgment. The European papers called them the “Men of Black” for their assault uniforms, and in their relative ignorance the European newsies had somehow made Rainbow even more fierce than reality justified. Enough so that the team had deployed to the Netherlands for a mission seven months before, a few weeks after the first news coverage had broken, and when the bad guys at the grammar school had found there were new folks in the neighborhood, they’d stumbled through a negotiating session with Dr. Paul Bellow and cut a deal before hostilities had to be initiated, which was pleasing for everyone. The idea of a shoot-out in a school full of kids hadn’t even appealed to the Men of Black.

Over the last several months, some members had been hurt or rotated back to their parent services, and new members had replaced them. One of these was Ettore Falcone, a former member of the Carabinieri sent to Hereford as much for his own protection as to assist the NATO team. Falcone had been walking the streets of Palermo in Sicily with his wife and infant son one pleasant spring evening when a shoot-out had erupted right before his eyes. Three criminals were hosing a pedestrian, his wife, and their police bodyguard with submachine guns, and in an instant Falcone had pulled out his Beretta and dropped all three with head shots from ten meters away. His action had been too late to save the victims, but not too late to incur the wrath of a capo mafioso, two of whose sons had been involved in the hit. Falcone had publicly spat upon the threat, but cooler heads had prevailed in Rome-the Italian government did not want a blood feud to erupt between the Mafia and its own federal police agency-and Falcone had been dispatched to Hereford to be the first Italian member of Rainbow. He had quickly proven himself to be the best pistol shot anyone had ever seen.

“Damn,” John Clark breathed, after finishing his fifth string of ten shots. This guy had beaten him again! They called him Big Bird. Ettore-Hector-was about six-three and lean like a basketball player, the wrong size and shape for a counterterror trooper, but, Jesus, could this son of a bitch shoot!

“Grazie, General,” the Italian said, collecting the five-pound note that had accompanied this blood feud.

And John couldn’t even bitch that he’d done it for real, whereas Big Bird had only done it with paper. This spaghetti-eater had dropped three guys armed with SMGs, and done it with his wife and kid next to him. Not just a talented shooter, this guy had two big brass ones dangling between his legs. And his wife, Anna-Maria, was reputed to be a dazzling cook. In any case, Falcone had bested him by one point in a fifty-round shootoff. And John had practiced for a week before this grudge match.

“Ettore, where the hell did you learn to shoot?” RAINBOW Six demanded.

“At the police academy, General Clark. I never fired a gun before that, but I had a good instructor, and I learned well,” the sergeant said, with a friendly smile. He wasn’t the least bit arrogant about his talent, and somehow that just made it worse.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Clark zippered his pistol into the carrying case and walked away from the firing line.

“You, too, sir?” Dave Woods, the rangemaster, said, as Clark made for the door.

“So I’m not the only one?” RAINBOW Six asked.

Woods looked up from his sandwich. “Bloody hell, that lad’s got a fookin’ letter of credit at the Green Dragon from besting me!” he announced. And Sergeant-Major Woods really had taught Wyatt Earp everything he knew. And at the SAS/Rainbow pub he’d probably taught the new boy how to drink English bitter. Beating Falcone would not be easy. There just wasn’t much room to take a guy who often as not shot a “possible,” or perfect score.

“Well, Sergeant-Major, then I guess I’m in good company.” Clark punched him on the shoulder as he headed out the door, shaking his head. Behind him, Falcone was firing another string. He evidently liked being Number One, and practiced hard to stay there. It had been a long time since anyone had bested him on a shooting range. John didn’t like it, but fair was fair, and Falcone had won within the rules.

Was it just one more sign that he was slowing down? He wasn’t running as fast as the younger troops at Rainbow, of course, and that bothered him, too. John Clark wasn’t ready to be old yet. He wasn’t ready to be a grandfather either, but he had little choice in that. His daughter and Ding had presented him with a grandson, and he couldn’t exactly ask that they take him back. He was keeping his weight down, though that often required, as it had today, skipping lunch in favor of losing five paper-pounds at the pistol range.

“Well, how did it go, John?” Alistair Stanley asked, as Clark entered the office building.