Shadow Wars, page 27
Malik is a time bomb. He’s going to ruin everything—if Ellyson doesn’t go off half-cocked first! Smith could sense his blood pressure rising as he returned to his car. It was the same pressure that he knew Halder was feeling. Damn, he had to see Halder. He should have set a time and place during the last phone call, but Halder had mentioned nothing about leaving so soon. That goddamn Malik! It was so important for him and Halder to talk right away. What is wrong with that Malik? At least Halder had left word where to find him. But what the hell was Halder running off to do when the two of them should be together?
The farmer studied the little man perched in the driver’s seat like a bantam rooster. His hands maintained a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, his head rocking back and forth, bright eyes seeing nothing. When he did lean forward to turn the key, his features were darker than Halder’s had been. The car fishtailed down the dirt road raising another cloud of dust to coat the dirty snow.
All Smith would be able to do was wait for Halder at the Teupitz cottage southeast of Berlin. It was a short drive, ninety minutes over the autobahn, but the wait could be aggravatingly long. And time was so short. Thank God it wasn’t much farther to the Fürstenwalde base from Teupitz. They would coordinate the final hours from Fürstenwalde, but first they should work out problems, like Malik, at Teupitz.
Carl Halder managed to calm himself as he drove up into the mountains. He wondered if Arkady Malik realized, after all the trouble he’d caused, how close Katherine Ellyson was to the Dresden farmhouse or to Prague. It was about equidistant.
Halder reflected on how they’d become involved with Malik. Had he functioned like this in the past? Was it the loss of General Raskova? Or had Malik always been crazy? No, no one becomes head of the Strategic Rocket Forces unless they show a great deal of stability. Malik must be just like Ellyson. He sees himself emerging as a great leader, and he can’t adjust when things don’t go his way. Any threat to his future makes him combative. Well, Arkady Malik’s just going to have to take care of himself this time. But first things first—he had to get Katherine Ellyson out of Decin. The only person who was going to control her was Carl Halder.
The sun was well into the sky when he left the car a mile down the road and began walking. No need to alert anyone in the house. Nor would there be a car or license plate for any prying neighbors to tell the authorities about. Tall mountain trees cast long shadows over the steep roof of the house as Halder wandered casually up to the door and knocked.
The older woman answered. She did not know Halder. “What is it?”
“I have come to see Maria,” he said in his heavily accented English.
The woman looked at him curiously. Her English was limited but she understood one word clearly. No one was supposed to know there was a Maria in the place. “No Maria.” She started to push the door shut.
He casually placed his foot against it. No need to attract attention in a small town. “Maria Martinu. I know she’s here. I talked with her. Please step back.” He spoke very slowly, placing his left hand against the door while he kept his right on the gun in his coat pocket. He continued to smile and nod as if they were continuing a pleasant conversation. At the same time, he pushed the door back and stepped inside with a genial smile.
“No. No Maria,” the old lady repeated. Her face was showing the first signs of fear as his body seemed to rise over her. She’d worked for the StB when she was younger and knew how to handle herself, yet there was something terrifying about this one. Her eyes darted to the stranger’s right hand pocket, then back to his face. Her expression indicated that she knew there was a gun. She stepped back, fear overspreading her features.
“You must speak some English,” Halder said as he pushed the door shut. They were in the kitchen.
She shook her head.
“German?”
She inclined her head in acknowledgment. She continued to inch backward away from him.
“Better,” he said in German. “Where is Maria Martinu?”
“She’s not here.” The woman had now backed up to the kitchen sink.
“I have no time.” He pointed toward a door to the left. “In there?”
She shook her head.
He glanced toward another door to the right. “That one?”
She remained silent. His eyes darted from one door to the other but he caught a rapid movement out of the corner of his eye. Looking back toward her, he found the woman with her arm back. A heavy carving knife gleamed in her hand. Halder dove to his right as her arm came forward with surprising speed. The knife, point first, flew chest high. Halder felt the slight impact as it hit his left arm high, slicing through his jacket and through the soft flesh below his shoulder.
He was rolling, bringing the gun out of his pocket and up as he moved. She was reaching frantically into the sink for another knife when the first bullet hit her in the chest. Her body flew backward from the impact. Dishes on the counter crashed as her arm whipped across the counter. A second bullet hit her in the throat. She flailed wildly, blood spattering across the counter and down the cupboards. Then she slid to the floor dragging the remainder of the dishes with a resounding crash.
Katherine Ellyson had been washing her face in the windowless bathroom when Halder knocked on the door. Maria Martinu, who’d showered quickly moments before while the old lady watched Kat, was just getting dressed when the older woman went out to answer the door.
At the sound of the first shot, Maria snatched up her revolver and dashed into the kitchen. Kat, terrified but reacting instinctively to an opportunity, darted out of the bathroom, picked up a wooden chair, and threw it through the back window.
She dove through the window into the snow. The shooting had stopped. Kat glanced frantically around. There were houses fifty yards on either side and thick woods the same distance to the rear. As she rose to her feet, she was wondering whether to hope someone would be in a house or try to escape into the woods. The snow was over her knees as she struggled to run toward the trees, changed her mind, and turned to her right. There has to be someone in that house …
Halder was on his knees, Beretta still fixed on the corpse, when he sensed someone else in the room. Instinctively, he hurled himself to one side, hearing the crash of a gun at the same time the cabinet door splintered just in front of him. He fired blindly. A second slug dug into the floor inches from his face. Terror assumed full control of his actions. He rolled frantically in the opposite direction, looking in the direction of the shots.
Maria Martinu stood in the doorway clad only in a pair of brief panties. Both hands were wrapped around the handle of a revolver that shook as she tried to follow his movements.
He fired blindly again as he continued rolling, anything to ruin her aim.
“You lousy shit,” she screamed. A third bullet slammed into the refrigerator just above his shoulder. Her face was contorted in rage. “You were planning the same thing for me.”
Halder rolled in the other direction, coming to his knees. The Beretta was swinging in her direction. “Maria, listen to—”
Another slug ripped through the sleeve of his jacket near where the knife had cut him.
“Bastard,” she screamed. “Bastard, bastard, bast—”
Her last word died in a gurgling bellow as two bullets from the Beretta ripped into her belly. A third passed through her jaw and tore away one side of her skull. Her body was lifted off the floor and hurled through the doorway.
Carl Halder lay on the floor, his breath coming in loud gasps. The pain in his left arm was agonizing. He bit his lower lip and rose to his knees. There was no time to be a silent sufferer. He let his jacket slide to the floor and ripped the torn sleeve away from his arm. The bullet had passed through the flesh a few inches below the deep gash from the knife. Blood covered his arm. He climbed to his feet, deciding the throbbing pain was something that could be lived with, and began to wrap a dish towel around it to soak up the blood. He’d make the Ellyson girl bandage it for him before they left. The Ellyson girl!
Halder raced to the doorway of the room Maria had emerged from. Holding the Beretta in front of him, he stepped over the old lady’s corpse and peered into the room. It was illuminated by a single light by the bed and the faint glow from the shattered window at the end of the room. He ran the few steps to the window and peered outside. There she was, struggling through the snow toward the house at the right.
Halder dove through the window, ignoring the pain in his left shoulder as he came to his feet. He leaped through the deep snow awkwardly, quickly closing the gap with his own great strides. Kat fell forward, screamed when she saw Halder, climbed back to her feet, and continued her struggle toward the other house.
He dove at her legs when he was a few feet away. They rolled over in the snow. As she opened her mouth to scream again, he hit her solidly in the jaw, stunning her. Then he was on his feet, hauling her over his shoulder. He carried her back to the house, pushing her roughly through the same broken window before falling through, exhausted, on top of her.
Halder dragged her into the kitchen and left her lying on the floor. If anyone had heard the sound of the shots, they’d either be coming out their doors, or at least looking out the windows by now. He saw no one. It was likely, Halder assumed, those shots sounded much louder to him. But there was still no reason to take chances. It was just as likely someone saw them struggling in the snow.
After ripping the phone out of the wall, he tied Kat’s hands and feet securely. Then he located some tape and used it to secure a towel around his upper arm. Slipping his jacket over his shoulders, he went outside and walked down the street to his car. He brought it back to the front of the house and left the engine running while he went inside to gather Kat. There was no time to be subtle. Picking her up in his arms, he carried her out to the car and dumped her in the back seat.
The car was already outside of Decin when the local police responded to neighbors’ calls.
Adolph Geyer and Bernie Ryng were driving north on the autobahn from Dresden to Berlin to investigate the old airfield outside the town of Fürstenwalde, hoping it just might be the unknown base they were desperately looking for. Geyer’s intelligence people had narrowed down probable paramilitary sites based on Raskova’s interrogation to three locations and this was one of them. Then a Berlin air traffic controller had reported unusual radar contacts, assumed to be helicopters, increasing the previous week east of Berlin in the vicinity of Fürstenwalde. This had begun even before they’d had Raskova’s information. Routine air traffic notices indicated that military exercises were being coordinated in that region. Yet the army denied involvement with these exercises when the controller also complained that electronic jamming was creating safety problems during heavy traffic periods. Within minutes of talking with the controller, Adolph Geyer had been contacted by the army. A half hour later, Geyer was on the phone to that air controller.
Soon after her confirmation of the type of jamming, Geyer arranged for Ryng to fly to Dresden from Prague. “We’ve got a break, Bernie, the big one, I think. It’s Fürstenwalde. I’d bet my life on it.” He explained the increase in air traffic, the jamming by electronic equipment that was carried only on Soviet Havoc helicopters—and he combined that with the final attempt by General Raskova to name the town for Voronov. “This has to be it, Bernie. I’ve already called your Munich control center and talked with Gannett. We agreed on preliminary jump zones. If we can confirm this as the target, I promised him we’d be there for ground liaison to guide them in.”
Ryng agreed. “Fürstenwalde probably makes all the sense in the world. But why Dresden? Why not meet you in Berlin?”
“I started to do that, Bernie. Then I decided that if Fürstenwalde really was the place, they’d have Berlin covered with their people. Dresden’s smaller and sort of out of the way, and it’s only a short drive, no more than an hour and a half. I’ve got a car waiting, Bernie. I’ll drive, you write up a simple op plan while we ease into Fürstenwalde. What could be easier?”
“Sounds too good to be true. But what else aren’t you saying?”
“Wouldn’t it make sense, Bernie, if Kat Ellyson was there, or at least nearby? She was being held by Drobner back in Frankfurt. Carl Halder appears to be involved with her. Fürstenwalde seems to be Stasi territory.”
Arkady Malik once again felt an indescribable pressure that was difficult even for him to define. The pain was gone for the time being, perhaps because he’d filled himself with nitroglycerin. His current situation was almost unbearable. What was expected of him was alien to his normal manner of operation. Without Raskova, Malik was operating in a wilderness. He was used to the political and military system he’d been a part of since the day he became a junior officer. Covert operations weren’t to his liking, and they certainly weren’t designed for a general officer. The Strategic Rocket Forces he commanded was larger than the total military forces of most countries. The firepower he could release was greater than any other nation’s. He’d accepted the overwhelming responsibility of the USSR’s nuclear forces with the clear intention of unleashing them within moments of receiving such orders. But the opportunity had vanished under the wand of political change.
Malik’s father, a tank commander, had been a soldier of the Great War, dying somewhere near Kursk in the greatest armored battle ever. On the only leave he enjoyed during the war, recovering from wounds, the man had imbued young Arkady with a love of Mother Russia and the belief that her enemies would never cease trying to destroy the homeland. Vigilance, duty, honor, if necessary a heroic death, were all a part of the boy’s makeup. He applied himself and studied hard, intending to honor his father by attending military school after the war. He patterned his life after the early lessons his father taught him and the example the man had set at Kursk. Admission to the Khar’kovskoye VVKU, a five-year school for Strategic Rocket Forces officer candidates, was the beginning of a career that justified everything his father taught him.
And now here he was preparing for a clandestine meeting with Sergei Markov’s whore. This was KGB work, but there was no Raskova to coordinate it. She hadn’t contacted him. It had been necessary for him to call her. She would say nothing over the phone. Reluctantly, it seemed, Tatyana Belov dictated the time and the place.
Malik hadn’t been to the Tretyakov Gallery in years and had to look it up on the city map in order to tell his driver where to let him off. Since even chauffeurs were suspect these days, Malik walked the final six blocks dressed in the civilian clothes he hated. He paid his admission, checked his heavy coat, and exchanged his shoes for the soft-bottomed slippers that protected the polished wooden floors. Following the directions in the brochure, he found Tatyana in the small room displaying the works of a little-known painter. Their voices echoed even though they spoke just above a whisper.
“Why is it so difficult for you to speak to me over the telephone?” Malik scolded.
“I don’t understand all this,” Tatyana answered. Her face was grim and she refused to look him in the eye. “I don’t know why—”
“You don’t need to. You were asked to do a job. You had no choice.” He grasped her arm but let go when she tried to push his hand away. “You don’t have to know why you’re asked to do something. Remember that. Now tell me what you learned from our esteemed president.”
“Why do you hate him so much?” Her eyes had become bright with tears and she turned away from him. “That man is the … the soul of Russia,” she stammered. “He’s given everything he has to save this nation.”
Malik stared at the back of her head, amazed she could believe such drivel. “I’ve run out of time.” It would be foolish to attempt to convince her otherwise. “You’re here to answer my questions. Do you want to force me to obtain the information from you in an unpleasant manner?”
She turned back, arms folded, and allowed a sigh of frustration to escape. These people would kill her without a second thought. Perhaps she would still have time to tell Sergei about Arkady Malik. “So, he knows something is going on behind his back. Sergei Markov is a frustrated man because he knows men he has worked with all his life, men he trusted, men like you, have turned against him. But he doesn’t understand why,” she added stamping her foot. “There is so much to be done if Russia is to survive and he is working so hard to … to make it work. Why … ?”
“I’m not here to answer questions either.” Malik was uncomfortable about going through with this discussion. It was KGB work, certainly not for the commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces. The pressure. He was growing more uncomfortable by the minute. His skin felt tight. His teeth ached. His toes curled until they cramped. “Talk,” he snapped.
“He knows there is a plot underway to unseat him. He doesn’t know what the objective is. He doesn’t know all the people involved—maybe only a couple of dozen names so far. He knows General Raskova is one of the ringleaders, although I think he said the general has apparently disappeared.” She bit her lower lip and looked up at Malik, who simply nodded and gestured for her to continue. But she’d noticed his color had changed to a deep crimson and there were drops of perspiration on his forehead. And then the realization struck her that Arkady Malik was probably the most dangerous of all.
She drew a deep breath, convinced she must get away from him, and continued. “There are a number of people loyal to him who have already promised to support him. He also believes that much of what is taking place in the bordering nations is related to what is happening here, perhaps even the initial step before anything grave happens to us. There is an intelligence source, a few I think, one apparently outside the country.” Tatyana continued to speak, unsure whether everything she said was real or part of a horrible dream, knowing she must remain vague. She must confuse Malik—act like she was providing solid information, but confuse him just the same. Buy enough time so that she could tell Sergei that Malik must be arrested. So far, she’d been able to avoid names—only Raskova, who had disappeared. Now she gave names, names of people never before mentioned by Markov, names of people she hated, names that meant nothing to her. She was doing this, she repeated silently to herself, because she loved Sergei Markov. There was no doubt it was an odd relationship, and they spent time with each other in an unusual fashion, but it didn’t matter to her. Sergei was in trouble. She couldn’t be one more in a line of trusted people to betray him. As she spoke, she didn’t care what she said to Malik as long as he would eventually go away so she might warn Sergei. Abruptly she stopped. Yes, I really do love Sergei! I would die … to let him live …
