Moving targets, p.40
Moving Targets, page 40
“You will not make the kill until I give the word,” Lydia Lubiako had told him. She was frightened. “This is absolutely essential.”
“What is it you are not telling me?” he asked. She’d been holding something back from him. They all had.
“Nothing that you need know … yet. When the time comes.”
But if he waited, he felt his chances of successfully making his escape would be sharply reduced, so he had decided to do it now. He didn’t intend on becoming a martyr for a cause, and a government, that were all but dead and buried.
He spotted the television camera trained on Tyson’s home across the street in the park, and a second on a light pole. He figured there would be others, hopefully none of them indoors. It was another risk.
Leaving the park, and knowing that everything he would do from this point on would be monitored either visually or aurally, Privet crossed the street, hurried up the walk to Tyson’s home, mounted the front steps, and rang the doorbell.
A half minute later Kit Tyson, wearing a smart gray wool skirt and matching cashmere sweater, answered the door. “May I help you?”
“Yes, ma‘am,” Privet said in a broad Texas accent. He held up his CIA identification card. “Wonderin’ if I could come in and have a word or two with you.”
Kit’s eyes widened slightly, and then a look of sadness crossed her features. She stepped back. “Won’t you come in, please?”
The direct line from the President’s office buzzed, and Tyson snatched up the telephone. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“They’re here, Al. Would you join us?”
Tyson had been taking Turns all day, but it still felt as if he’d swallowed a gallon of hydrochloric acid. “Be right in.” He hung up the phone, got his jacket, and hurried out. -
In the corridor he hesitated for a long second or two, his heart thumping wildly. Most of the nonessential staff had not shown up for work. The White House seemed almost deserted.
Instead of turning right, toward the Oval Office, Tyson turned left and hurried down the corridor to the stairs, emerging from the White House and rushing across to where he’d parked his car.
“He’s disappeared,” Lydia Lubiako shouted. She sounded on the verge of collapse.
Truskin held the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Where are you calling from?”
“The safe house, you fool. He’s not here. I think he means to kill Tyson sometime today, or tonight.”
“It’s too soon. The … package hasn’t been passed to Tyson. The meeting hasn’t been set up.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it now. Everything has changed. Of course you’ve heard what happened at the houseboat.”
Truskin tried to think it out. Somehow they were going to have to salvage this operation. If not they’d all be arrested and shot for treason.
“Stop him,” he said.
“What?” the woman shouted.
“It’s the only way.”
She started to protest, but he held her off.
“We might still be able to salvage the operation. But we’re going to have to work together.”
“You idiot, do you realize what will happen to us if that document falls into the wrong hands?”
“Yes,” Truskin said. He was just as frightened as she sounded. “But do you realize what will happen if we don’t succeed?”
25
KAPLIN GOT OFF THE METRO TRAIN AT THE OKTYABRSKAYA Station and took the escalator up to street level near the Warsaw Hotel. At this point he was less than two blocks from Gor’kiy Park. On the street he pulled up his coat collar and headed over to the safe-house apartment building that Sweeney had brought him to what seemed like years ago.
The KGB pizdas were following him, he was sure of it, even though he hadn’t spotted them. Then again he hadn’t looked for them. No reason for it. They were back there as certainly as the sun would rise in the morning, even over Moscow.
Which was good. He wanted them to follow him this far. He wanted them to see what he was doing so openly. He was hiding nothing for the moment, except for the phone calls.
But soon, he thought smiling, they would understand what sort of man Anatoli Stepanovich was. And they would be eternally sorry they’d ever fucked with him.
The pricks at Lefortovo had not taken his keys, so he let himself into the building and trudged up to the second floor where a dull yellow light shone beneath the door to Larissa Dolya’s apartment. He stood for a long time listening to the ordinary night sounds of the building. No one had moved into the cold apartment above, so it was silent. But from below he could hear a radio or television playing, and from within Larissa’s apartment he thought he might be hearing her sobs.
She was a crier. From the day he’d met her on the stairs she’d cried. It made him want to wrap her in his big arms and hold her so tightly that no one or nothing could ever harm her.
But he was too late for that now. The sonsabitches had hurt her badly. She’d been wounded so horribly that she would never recover. She would never be the young woman of promise he’d met that day. That was all gone out of her. The bastards had tortured it out of her, and what remnants there were they had cut out with the surgeon’s scalpel.
At length he knocked softly at her door, and the crying stopped. After a moment he could hear her shuffling slowly to the door and then it was opened and she stood there in a floppy sweater, dirty jeans, and thick wool socks on her feet. Nothing registered in her eyes when she realized who it was.
“Hello,” Kaplin said, and she stepped aside so that he could come in.
Without a word he got her boots, and sitting her down on the shabby couch, put them on her feet and laced them. Next he got her coat and hat and scarf and dressed her for the outside.
“We’ll go to my apartment in the city. It’s very warm there, you’ll see,” he said for the benefit of the microphones that the KGB had surely installed.
He had tried to telephone his KGB directorate chief this evening, but the man was gone and no one knew where to reach him. Kaplin had merely wanted to confirm something he already suspected: that he was a dead man, a nonperson. He did not exist.
Well, that would change, he thought.
He put Larissa’s mittens on and then looked deeply into her eyes before he kissed her. But there was nothing: no response, barely even life. They’d even succeeded in cutting most of that out of her body and mind.
Switching off the light, he guided her downstairs, and outside they walked the several blocks to Gor’kiy Park. It was a few minutes before eleven and the park would be closing soon, but there were still a few people around, and music still played at the skating pond.
The pavilions were closed, as were the Ferris wheel and nearly everything else in the park. Some of the lights had even been switched off, leaving much of the park in darkness.
Well away from the skating rink, Kaplin suddenly veered left, and he and Larissa plunged into the woods, lost to the darkness in five or ten meters.
It was extremely painful to move fast, yet Kaplin hurried as quickly as possible, dragging Larissa with him. Once from somewhere well behind them he thought he heard someone shouting, as if one pursuer to another, but then he lost the sound to his own labored breathing.
They came out of the park behind the City Clinical Hospital, and without the slightest resistance, Larissa let herself be led to a waiting ambulance.
The rear door swung open, and Kaplin helped her inside and climbed up after her. Two other men were aboard, the driver and a second person in the front seat.
“Were you followed?” one of them asked.
“Yes. Get the fuck out of here,” Kaplin said.
KGB Director Yuri Novikov’s long black Chaika limousine pulled up behind the Russian Federation Parliament Building a few minutes after ten. His two bodyguards immediately jumped out, surveyed their surroundings for a long moment or two—only a pair of Red Army guards were stationed at the entry—then opened the car door.
General Ryazanov got out first, his uniform crisp, and stepped respectfully aside as Novikov climbed out. Without a word the two men entered the building.
As early as a few months ago, the KGB director was the number two most powerful man in Russia behind Mikhail Gorbachev. AU that had changed, of course. Now Boris Yeltsin was at the apex of a new pyramid of power, and the KGB director had become, in many respects, nothing more than a lapdog … still very powerful, but not like the old days.
The Komitet’s strength had been cut from an all-time high of a half million people just before the coup, to less than a third of that—almost the entire internal security force either being eliminated altogether or being transferred to the Interior Ministry.
Even its overseas divisions had been sharply pared because of increasing shortages of hard Western currencies, which, since the ruble was worthless outside of Russia, were needed to finance extraterritorial operations.
“Lean and mean.” Novikov had preached a bit of Westernism to his staff.
Upstairs, he and Ryazanov left their coats, hats, and gloves in an anteroom and entered a small dining room. Boris Yeltsin and a half dozen of his closest aides were gathered around a sideboard on which was laid out champagne, iced vodkas, and platters heaped with pickles, fish, caviar, eggs, sour onions, blinis, and a dozen other delicacies. Meeting like this over a late-night supper and drinks to discuss policy had been common since the days of the czars.
What was uncommon this evening was the summons of the KGB director by the Russian president. But, then, power had shifted, and continued to shift, dramatically since the Kremlin coup.
“Yuri Vasilevich, just on time as usual,” Yeltsin said, turning.
“A half minute early,” Novikov said dryly, and some of the others laughed.
No one said a word to Ryazanov, nor did they even acknowledge his presence.
“If you will excuse me, I promise not to delay your supper too long,” Yeltsin told the others, and he led Novikov and Ryazanov across the long, narrow room and out a door at the rear, into a much smaller office that served on occasion as a private conference chamber.
“We have a problem, the three of us,” Yeltsin began directly. “One that will have to be addressed immediately.”
“I am sure that General Ryazanov will cooperate with us,” Novikov said.
Ryazanov had been called out from a dinner party at his apartment by the KGB director without a word of explanation. But none had been needed. He nodded.
“It is the matter of the budget. And Russia’s good name abroad.”
“We cannot afford further budget cuts, Mr. President,” Ryazanov said. At least he would defend himself and the Komitet, even if that fool Novikov would not. “The West has not stopped spying on us. On the contrary. If anything, the United States has stepped up its efforts against us because of the closely held belief that we have become dangerously unstable.”
Yeltsin showed no expression. “Your work is important. But we have become a nation of laws that no one is above. Isn’t that what August nineteenth proved?”
Ryazanov said nothing.
“I am speaking here of accountability.”
“To whom, Mr. President?”
“To the government.”
“And, respectfully, Mr. President, who is the government?”
Yeltsin stepped menacingly closer. “Do not toy with me, Comrade General. Suffice it to say, the Komitet is not in charge. Those days are finished. You may aid, you may advise, but you may not decide policy.”
“That is completely beyond the scope of my office,” Ryazanov said, understanding that he might be in even deeper trouble than he’d imagined.
“Until now,” Yeltsin contradicted bluntly, and he continued before Ryazanov could respond. “No need to deny this, I have gathered the proof. Nor need you worry that I will have you removed … yet. You serve the Rodina well.”
“Proof of what, Mr. President?”
“The diversion of funds. Of Western currencies, from Intourist and other Russian government agencies to the KGB. Specifically to finance unauthorized operations abroad.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ryazanov said, but it was as if someone had kicked him in the gut. How was it possible for Yeltsin, or anyone else outside of a very select few men Ryazanov had handpicked, to know the entire story?
“You do, and I will have your acknowledgment along with your promise to stop, this evening, or I will see to your dismissal, and your trial for high treason.”
“Then you must be more specific with your charges, Mr. President.”
“Very well. For the past three months a special investigative unit working under the direction of Konstantin Malakhov, at Director Novikov’s bidding, has been busy sifting through the financial records of a number of government agencies, including the Komitet.”
“I heard nothing of this,” Ryazanov said to Novikov.
“No,” the KGB chief replied, smiling faintly. “The work was done by computer from an office here in Moscow, but away from any other government agencies.”
Ryazanov could hardly believe what he was hearing. Kiselev had promised him that Tinker had been eliminated.
“Discrepancies were found in the budgets of Intourist, the Ministry of Agriculture, and at least seven heavy-equipment factories.”
“Such inefficiencies are common …”
“All such monies involved foreign trade, therefore foreign currencies. The same amounts in each case were traced to the KGB’s Finance Directorate, and from there to your First Directorate operations abroad.”
“Impossible.”
“For us to break into your computer system? The sign of the rose, I believe, was their first big hurdle. After that, however, the investigation is said to have proceeded smoothly.”
Ryazanov felt a deep sense of frustration and even shame that everything he had worked for—and it had all been for a Rodina that was disintegrating from within—was gone. He’d been outwitted by men he considered beneath him. Where was the justice?
“Homeward Bound, whatever it really is, will stop immediately,” Yeltsin said coldly.
“We mustn’t stop spying …”
“No, we mustn’t. You have Source KHAIRULLA. Develop other such sources. But the age of blackmail and assassination is over. In this instance, Comrade General, your life depends on it. Treason is punishable by death, as you well know.”
“It may not be possible to withdraw …”
“Then you will simply have to do the impossible,” Yeltsin said, smiling as he took Novikov’s arm, and they joined the others in the dining room.
A short, dark-complexioned man came for Sweeney in the lobby of the Hoover Building, introducing himself as Sandy Senarighi, special agent in charge of the Tyson investigation.
“I’ll be your contact here at the Bureau,” Senarighi said. He signed Sweeney in and they took the elevator down two floors,
“You’re the one who came to Langley last week to ask about Raya Nechiporenko,” Sweeney said.
“At least you’ve done your homework. Now, if you’ll cooperate like the nice man I’ve been told you are, everything will be fine.”
“I’m not the enemy,” Sweeney said.
“No. But you and your chums give honest cops a bad name.”
“Worse than Hoover?”
Senarighi’s jaw tightened. Not only had the Bureau lost two people in this investigation, it was dealing with the shame of having killed two friendlies. “Walk softly over there,” Drury had cautioned him.
“I was told to cooperate with you, Mr. Sweeney, and I will. I hope you will do likewise. Now, what is it you want here?”
“The truth,” Sweeney said. “And I don’t give a fuck who it hurts or helps, my bosses or yours.”
“Fair enough,” Senarighi said, and they went down the corridor to a small conference room in which a slide projector and screen had been set up.
“I’d like to speak with Marina Demin. You’re holding her and Raya Nechiporenko here or at a safe house?”
“Here,” Senarighi said. “But first tell me about Miss Demin, and about a KGB officer by the name of Ivan Kiselev. I understand you’re the expert.”
Sweeney took off his overcoat and dropped it over the back of a chair, then opened his attaché case and began removing files and photographs.
“Time is of the essence here, Mr. Senarighi, so I would like to finish as quickly as possible. The situation, as I see it, is definitely unstable.”
“You think that the shit is about to hit the fan, Mr. Sweeney?”
Sweeney looked at him and nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”
“So do I,” Senarighi said.
Tyson stood at a window in the Watergate apartment holding one of Toni Wagner’s scarves to his nose, her scent still strong. He’d found the scarf stuck by static electricity to the back of the closet door in the master bedroom. Everything else was gone. It meant she had help. A controller. A handler.
After all, it was difficult to move yourself out when you were being held in jail.
Marina Demin was Joseph’s daughter, and now the KGB was trying to use her against him. To embarrass him? Kit would understand, he would make her see, but the President apparently was having trouble understanding what had happened so many years ago.
The Marina Demin Tyson remembered had been about the same age, maybe a little younger, but she had known things at a level that was very much different from Kit, and even different from Toni. Kit was reserved, midwestern conservative, while Toni was professional, a prostitute in her sexual expertise. But Marina had been passionate and understanding, appreciative of the slightest thing you did for her, and patient, almost as if she were a teacher sent to instruct you on how to love, to relax, to let go without becoming crazy.
