Assassin (Kirk McGarvey 6), page 19
part #5 of Kirk McGarvey Series
Elizabeth wanted to hate her mother, but she could not. She couldn't even feel sorry for her, because from her mother's point she was correct. She decided not to say anything about Grandma and Grandpa.
"Until last year your father was involved with a woman here in Washington. She's a lobbyist for the airline industry. Her name is Dominique Kilbourne. She might know something."
"Was she involved with Daddy's last assignment?"
"I believe so."
"Will she know who I am?"
Kathleen smiled. "I can't imagine your father not talking about you."
"One more favor, Mother," Elizabeth said. "I'd like to borrow one of your credit cards for awhile. I want to get to Paris without leaving a track."
Kathleen hesitated.
"I'll pay you back, Mother, I promise."
"Of course I'll give you one of my credit cards. It's not that, darling. You're my only child and I want you to be safe."
"None of us are safe, Mother."
"Your father says that."
"I know," Elizabeth said.
Elizabeth called the reference desk at the public library from a pay phone and had the woman look up the address of Dominique Kilbourne's office in the list of 116
registered lobbyists. It turned out to be an entire floor of a solid five story building off Thomas Circle, a few blocks from the Russian Embassy.
It was past 11:30 A.M." by the time she presented herself to the receptionist.
"Do you have an appointment?" the woman asked.
"No. But I just need a few minutes of her time. It's important."
"I'm sorry, but Ms. Kilbourne's schedule is completely full today and for the remainder of the week." The secretary touched a few keys on her computer. "I can fit you in next week. Wednesday at two in the afternoon."
"Tell Ms. Kilbourne that Elizabeth McGarvey is here."
Something crossed the secretary's expression. "Just a moment, please," she said, and she got up and went inside.
Elizabeth stepped around the desk so that she could read the computer screen.
Dominique Kilbourne's schedule was tight. She was scheduled to be at lunch with a congressional group at the Senate dining room in twenty-five minutes.
The receptionist returned a minute later. "She'll see you now. It's the last door at the end of the hall."
Elizabeth didn't know what to expect, but she wasn't disappointed. Dominique Kilbourne was pretty, with a pleasantly narrow face, short dark hair, coal-black eyes and a slight figure. She looked like a decisive, take charge woman.
"Thank you for agreeing to see me, Ms. Kilbourne," Elizabeth said.
Dominique motioned her to a seat in front of a starkly modern brass and glass desk. The office was of moderate size, "but extremely well furnished, with a couple of Picasso prints on the walls, a large luxurious oriental rug on a marble tiled floor, and large windows with a good view toward the White House. "You come as something of a surprise."
"I'm trying to locate my father. My mother thought you might know where he is."
Dominique stiffened. "The last I heard your father was going to Paris. That was more than a year ago. Beyond that I can't help you, or your mother."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to have it come out like that. This has nothing to do with my mother. I simply want to find my father, and I was hoping that you might know something."
"I'm sorry, Ms. McGarvey, I don't," Dominique said. She picked up her telephone.
"Sandy, get me a cab, please. I'll be leaving in a minute or two." "Ms. Kilbourne, I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I think I could get an FBI Counterespionage unit down here to bring you in for questioning about a national security matter."
"Go ahead," Dominique said, unperturbed, hanging up.
"I work for Mr. Ryan, and I think he could pull a few strings."
"Howard Ryan is an ungrateful son of a bitch whose life your father saved,"
Dominique blurted angrily. "I was there, I saw it. So you can go back to Langley and tell him that if he wants to find Kirk McGarvey he can do it on his own. I certainly won't help him. Or you."
Elizabeth was a little embarrassed, but she didn't let it show. "I don't know why I 117
should be surprised by your reaction, Ms. Kilbourne. My father has terrible luck with women, but the ones he's attracted to are as strong willed as they are beautiful."
I "Thank you for the compliment, if that's what it is, but I still can't help you,"
Dominique said coolly. "Now if you'll excuse me I have a luncheon appointment."
Elizabeth glanced at the wall clock. "You have fifteen minutes to get to the Senate dining room, so you should have Sandy call over there and tell them you'll be late for lunch because something else has come up. It's a family emergency."
"Get out of here."
"You're going to help me find my father for the same reasons I have to find him before Ryan does. You're in love with him, or at least you were."
Elizabeth had been guessing, but Dominique reacted as if she'd been shot, some of the light fading from her eyes. "My father has a habit of walking out on the people he loves most, not because he wants to be mean, but because he wants to protect us.
"Being around him can be dangerous."
"You're telling me."
"This time his life is on the line. I have some information that he has to have.
Without it he could be walking into a trap."
"Your father is an amazing man," Dominique said.
"Yes, he is, Ms. Kilbourne," Elizabeth said. "But he's just that. Only a man. Will you help me?"
Dominique thought a moment, then picked up the
phone again. "Sandy, cancel that cab. Then call Senator Dobson and give him my apologies, but I won't be able to have lunch with him today. See if we can reschedule for later in the week." Dominique looked at Elizabeth. "Everything is fine.
But cancel my appointments for the remainder of the afternoon as well."
"All that isn't necessary," Elizabeth said when Dominique hung up. "I don't need your entire afternoon."
"I do," Dominique said bitterly. She went to a sideboard where she opened a bottle of white wine from a small refrigerator, poured two glasses, and brought them back.
"Thank you, Ms. Kilbourne," Elizabeth said, taking one of the glasses.
"We better start using first names, otherwise it's going to become awkward,"
Dominique said. She gave Elizabeth a bleak look. "I can see a lot of your father in your face, and in your voice. But I thought you were working for the United Nations."
"I just started with the Company about six months ago. My father doesn't know yet."
Dominique managed a faint smile. "I have a feeling he'll go through the roof when he does find out."
Elizabeth couldn't help but laugh. "I think you're right. But first I have to find him."
Dominique's face had sagged, but she picked herself up. "Your father hurt me very much."
"I'm sorry."
118
Dominique waved her off. "It has nothing to do with you, except that he said the same thing to me last year that you just said. Being around him is dangerous. There are a lot of people from his past who could be gunning for him. There are a lot of old grudges on both sides of the Atlantic. Now you."
"Have you heard from him in the past year?"
"No."
"That's not like him."
"When we parted we had some angry words. I told him that I would either have all of him, or I wanted nothing."
"With my father that was a mistake, if you loved him."
"I don't need some twenty-year-old giving advice to the lovelorn, even if she is a McGarvey," Dominique flared. "You've apparently inherited his manipulative trait as well."
"I didn't come here to be your friend," Elizabeth said harshly. "Although that would have been nice. How can I reach my father?"
"What has he done?"
"I can't tell you that, except to say that it's vitally important that I see him."
"Is it the Russians?" Dominique demanded. "Has Viktor Yemlin popped up looking for his quid pro quo?"
"What are you talking about?" Elizabeth asked sharply, trying to hide her surprise. "If you're going to play in your father's league, you'd better do your homework first. Yemlin is an old adversary who helped your father out last year. One thing I learned about the business is that nobody does anything for nothing. Your father expected he would show up sooner or later."
"I can't answer that," Elizabeth said.
Dominique started to say something, but Elizabeth overrode her.
"It may sound melodramatic, but the less you know the better off you'll be. Now I'll ask you once again, how can I reach my father."
Dominique turned away. "I don't know," she said. "At least not directly. But he did mention the names of two men he trusted with his life. One of them was Phil Carrara, who was killed. And the other was Otto Rencke, apparently some computer expert who's a black sheep. There was something about Twinkies, but I don't remember all the details."
"Is he here in Washington?"
"He was. But he's in France now. Not in Paris but somewhere nearby."
"Did my father give you his phone number, or email address? Anything like that?"
"No," Dominique said. "But apparently Rencke worked for the CIA once upon a time. He's supposed to be a genius whom everybody is afraid of. But if anybody would know how to get in touch with your father it would either be Rencke, or Yemlin. Beyond that I don't know anything, because if one of them had come to me trying to find your father I would have given them your name. Your father told me that there was only one woman in his life who he loved unreservedly, and who loved him the same way. It was 119
you."
"A father-daughter prerogative," Elizabeth mumbled, masking her sudden emotion.
"He's a more complicated man than I thought, isn't he," Dominique said desolately.
"You can't imagine," Elizabeth replied.
NINETEEN
Moscow
The overnight train back to Moscow was just as crowded as the train out, but if anything the passengers were in even higher spirits than before. They'd seen Tarankov's magic with their own eyes. The blood of the revolution had been spilled in Nizhny Novgorod just as it had in other cities. Their only disappointment was that they'd come away without- the money they'd expected. Tarankov's troops never left the vicinity of the railway station, and had not robbed any banks for the people.
"Ah well, maybe it was just a lie," an old man said philosophically. "But killing those bastards was real." "Wait until he returns' to Moscow, then those bastards in the Kremlin will see what a real man is like," another one voiced the generally held opinion.
"Then the trains will run on time again, and we'll have food that we can afford back in the shops."
McGarvey had gotten aboard early enough to find a spot in the corner where he curled up, a half-empty got tie of vodka between his knees, as he pretended to sleep, the conversations swirling around him. At one point someone eased the vodka bottle from his loose grip, and then he dozed until they pulled into Yaroslavl Station around 6:30 of a dark gray morning.
After the grueling night the passengers who got off the train were still drunk or hung over, their excitement dissipated, and they wandered away heads hung low, quietly as if they'd just returned from a funeral and not a revolution.
McGarvey found a toilet stall in the nearly deserted arrivals and departures hall, where he changed back into his civilian clothes, stuffing the filthy uniform into the carryall with the last of the greasy sausage and bread.
Someone came into the restroom and used the urinal trough.
McGarvey waited until he was gone, then emerged from the stall leaving the carryall behind as if he'd forgotten it, and out front caught a cab for the Metropol.
The trip to Nizhny Novgorod had made a number of things clear to McGarvey, among them that Tarankov's security was extremely effective. His armored train was a well armed fortress that even a half-dozen attack helicopters had been unable to stop.
And once he arrived in the city, his commandoes had set up a defensive perimeter that would have taken a considerable force to penetrate. A lot of civilians, which were Tarankov's major line of defense, would have been killed in the battle, something at this point that the Kremlin could not afford to do.
Whatever lingering doubts McGarvey might have had about Tarankov's time table had also gone out the window in Nizhny Novgorod. On May Day Tarankov's train would roar into Moscow, and he would swoop into Red Square at the head of his 120
column of commandoes with more than a million people screaming his name. It was the one day of the year that no Russian could resist celebrating. Whatever forces the Kremlin would be able to
210 DAVID HAG BERG
muster, if any, by that late date, would not be sufficient to stop him.
In May Tarankov would ascend to the same throne that Stalin had held unless he were killed.
Despite yesterday's events, which nearly everyone in Moscow must have heard about in news reports or by word of mouth, nothing outwardly had changed. Although seeing the city through new eyes, McGarvey felt an underlying tension even in the traffic and in the way the cabby drove. Moscow was holding its collective breath for the elections in less than three months. It was as if Russians were resigned to another great upheaval.
The cabby dropped him off at his hotel around 8:00 a.m." and he went straight upstairs to his room where Artur the bellman intercepted him as he got off the elevator.
"You look like hell. You must have had a good time."
"Not bad," McGarvey mumbled pulling out his key.
Artur snatched it from him, preceded him down the corridor and unlocked his door with a flourish. "The floor maid was worried. She wanted to report you downstairs, but I told her to mind her own fucking business. You want a hair of the dog. I got some good Belgian brandy for you."
"No thanks," McGarvey said. "I'm going to Helsinki tonight. My train leaves from Leningrad station a little after six. But right now I want some sleep, and I don't want to be disturbed until three. Then I'll want a bottle of white wine, and something to eat. At 4:30 I want a cab driver by the" name of Arkady Astimovich to pick me up. He works for Martex. Do you know him?"
"He's a shit asshole, but I know him."
McGarvey pulled out a fifty-franc note. "I want Arkady here by 4:30."
Artur grabbed the money. "Anything you say. But just watch your back with that one. He's in the Mafia's pocket."
His room had been searched, but nothing was missing, nor did it appear that his laptop computer had been tampered with. After a shower he went to bed, but sleep was a long time coming. He knew the approximate when of the kill, as well as the where. Thinking about the cab driver Arkady, the Mafia entrepreneur Vasha, and the bellman Artur he had a glimmering of the how not only of the kill, but most importantly of his escape. He slept, finally, dreaming that he was climbing through the scaffolding inside the main dome of St. Basil's while Tarankov's right hand man Leonid Chernov was in the crowd of a million people in Red Square looking up at him.
CIA Headquarters
It was past 9:00 p.m. in Washington when Elizabeth brought up a photograph of a good-looking woman on her computer screen. She had been assigned a cubicle in DO
territory on the fourth floor, and a computer terminal with a designator that allowed her access to a broad range of files in the CIA's vast database. She'd reported to a 121
somewhat disinterested Tom Moore that she was making some progress, but that it might take longer than she thought to find her father. Background noise, her father called it. Like soft music to lull someone asleep while you did the real work.
This afternoon she had the Company's travel section book her an evening flight for the next day to Paris under her Elizabeth Swanson identity. It gave her another twenty-four hours plus to finish up here in Washington. Meanwhile, on the way back to her apartment, she stopped at a pay phone and telephoned a travel agency booking a late shuttle flight to New York's Kennedy Airport, where she would stay at the Airport Hilton, and take the Air France Concorde to Paris under her own name, but using her mother's credit card. The simple
subterfuge would give her an evening and a full day in Paris before she was missed. Hopefully it would be enough time to find her father.
She packed a bag which she locked in her trunk, and came back out to Langley.
No one at the gate or upstairs in Operations thought anything of it. She was McGarvey's kid on a special assignment for Ryan. She had a lot to prove so she was doing her homework after school.
Jacqueline Belleau's photograph and brief file, marked confidential, were in the French section of identified SDECE agents. She was forty, born in Nice, educated at the Sorbonne in languages and modern political history, and was recruited by the SDECE
ten years ago. She'd started her career in the secret service just as Elizabeth had, as a translator. She'd spent two years working from the French delegation at the United Nations in New York. No mention was made of her specific assignment, but she was recalled to France after her lover, who worked for the Canadian delegation, committed suicide by flinging himself into the East River one early winter evening. The young man was a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister, who was pragmatic enough to understand that such things happen. Nevertheless everyone seemed to agree that it would be for the best if Mademoiselle Belleau returned to her side of the Atlantic without delay. Her continued presence was deemed too embarrassing for the Canadians.
The photograph was an official one, possibly her UN identification picture, and she looked stern. Nevertheless in-Elizabeth's estimation she was beautiful. Just the kind of woman her father was attracted to.
Elizabeth smiled sadly. Her mother, Dominique Kilbourne, and this French woman could have been cut from the same cloth. Slender, narrow pretty faces, high cheekbones, expressive eyes. They all had a sensuousness to them that reminded Elizabeth of the photographs she'd seen of her grandmother, who'd been a beauty in her day. It gave Elizabeth another understanding of her father, and her heart ached a little for what could have been. Most of her life she'd dreamed that someday her mother and father would somehow get back together. Even now, she found she wished for such an impossible reunion. "Too much water under the bridge," her father would say. She could hear his voice.
