Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (88 page)

 
          
“Just
what it says, Musi. I’ve been ordered to steal the damn thing again and fly it
to a secret base in
Costa Rica
.” As he said it he took the opportunity to
take a half-step toward her. “They figured I did such a good job the first
time, they wanted to see if I could do it again.”

 
          
“If
that was meant to be humorous, Andrei, you failed,” Zaykov said.
“My
last orders from General Tret’yak
were to see to it that you are confined to the base until morning.”

           
“Well, I have orders too, Musi.
Given to me by Vladimir Kalinin. I’m sure you have ways of confirming that. I
don’t have much time to waste.”

           
“I must check this with General
Tret’yak. If what you say is true, this contradicts previous orders. Orders must
be verified—”

 
          
“There’s
no damn time to verify anything. DreamStar will be gone in ten hours, maybe
less.”

 
          
“And
you had to come here to get your flight suit and helmet,” Zaykov said. “Then
you had to do one more thing—kill me. You could not make it appear that we had
gone to
Managua
as scheduled unless I was out of your way.”

 
          
“I
wasn’t going to kill you. I could never do that. I’m much too fond of you . . .
you know that...” He searched her face, found little softening in it. “You can
help me, Musi. You can get a helicopter to take me to Puerto Cabezas—”

 
          
“I
can’t do that. Even if these orders were fully authorized I would not do it.”

 
          
Something
else was wrong “Musi, what is it?”

 
          
She
let the first letter drop to the floor, then drew another one from her jacket.
“Some research I did when you left Sebaco for Puerto Cabezas ... The morning
after your attempt to fly to
Cuba
you were delirious from dehydration. You
called out a woman’s name—Janet.”

 
          
“Janet?
You mentioned that name moments ago. I don’t know a Janet.”

 
          
“You
did know a Janet, Andrei—or should I say, Kenneth James. I knew a Janet too.
Janet Larson. We were good friends . . . back at the
Connecticut
Academy
.”

 
          
Now
the words hit Maraklov like a baseball bat against his skull. He had forgotten
the name the minute he left the
Soviet Union
for
Hawaii
all those years ago. The delirium caused by
the ANTARES interface somehow had unearthed it—unfortunately, in the presence
of another
Connecticut
Academy
graduate who knew her.

 
          
“Yes,
I knew Janet. . . Janet Larson. What has she got to do with my orders?”

 
          
“Perhaps
nothing—perhaps everything,” Zaykov said. “Janet Larson—Katrina Litkovka—was
found dead in a car crash. They say she had been drinking, that her car went
off the road. But Katrina was fond of having affairs with many of the students
at the Academy. You were one of them.” She paused, then said, “I was one of
them too.”

 
          
“You
and Larson were
lovers?”

 
          
“Those
of us in courtesan training at the Academy were taught to ... to please women as
well as men,” she said. “It was all part of the game at the Academy. But mostly
we were friends, damn
it, friends
...
She apparently had been drinking an expensive Scotch whiskey. Even though she
didn’t have much alcohol in her blood, drunk driving was blamed for the
accident. But the whiskey was very suspicious. Under questioning, a truck
driver that delivered supplies to the Academy admitted that he sold or traded
bottles of contraband foreign liquor to students and employees. One of the
students he sold the whiskey to was
you.
”

 
          
Zaykov
took a tighter grip on the weapon. “All of Katrina’s lovers were suspects in
the investigation. All of us were officially cleared—all but you. No
investigation was started on you because you had just been inserted into the
United States
Air
Force
Academy
training program. After a time interest in
the case disappeared. Katrina Litkovka’s murderer was never found.”

 
          
“I
still don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Maraklov said. “Are you
accusing
me
of her murder? Now, after
all these years, you’re on a manhunt for a murder that happened over a decade
ago and ten thousand miles away?”

 
          
“There
is no statute of limitations on murder.” She held up the paper. “I did some
more checking, Mr. Kenneth James. A report done by a KGB agent that assisted
you in killing the real Kenneth James in
Hawaii
during the substitution. He reported that
the dying American admitted to two murders in his presence—the murder of his
infant brother, and the murder of his high school girlfriend.”

           
Maraklov took a step forward. The
gun did not waver. “Musi, I still don’t understand. What does this have to do
with what’s going on here? Yes, the real Kenneth James killed his brother—he
admitted that. He was seconds away from death when he said he killed his
girlfriend. He was delirious—”

 
          
“Perhaps.
Perhaps not. My friend Katrina Litkovka used to tell me about you, about the
stories you supposedly made up, about how realistic they were. She told me
about how you told her about how James killed his girlfriend before he went to
Hawaii
. Katrina said you were close to killing
her
then. Strange, isn’t it—the real
Kenneth James confessed to the very crime that you described to Katrina.”

 
          
That
made Maraklov stop in hopeless confusion. The parallels between the real Ken
James and what he
thought
was James’
life were indeed startling, but he had never thought of it as
his
thoughts versus James’
real
life. At the very instant that he
realized he had been left alone in that hotel room in Honolulu, he became the
ultimate extreme of his training ... he
became
Kenneth Francis James. He evaded the security checks, the encounters with
James’ friends and lovers, even related intimate details about James’ childhood
because he had ceased to be Andrei Ivanschichin Maraklov and had become Ken
James. Which was more than they wanted at the Academy.

 
          
Zaykov
let the report fall to the floor and took out still another piece of paper from
her jacket. “I am detaining you so we can speak with General Tret’yak, but I am
also reopening the investigation of Katrina Litkovka’s murder.

 
          
“Motive:
She told me you threatened to kill her if she exposed your behavior to
Headmaster Roberts. That would have destroyed your chances to go to
America
, something you had spent half your life and
every part of your peculiar mind training for. I recall the talk that your
mission was to be canceled because you were unprepared emotionally for the
role.
Opportunity
: The whiskey you bought two days before the
accident. The security guards testified that Litkovka was not drunk before
leaving the Academy. You arranged the accident, made it look like Katrina had
been drinking, then killed her, Kenneth James ...”

 
          
“I
am not Kenneth James,” Maraklov said. “I am Colonel

 
          
Andrei
Maraklov, an officer in the
Komitet
Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti,
a trained deep-cover agent just like
yourself. And I am not a murderer . .

 
          
Zaykov
held up the last piece of paper in her hand. It was a photograph. She tossed it
across to him. Maraklov stepped forward to pick it up, she moved backward to
stay out of his reach. “Look at it.”

 
          
Sweat
popped off his forehead as he studied the picture. It was an old photocopy of a
picture of Kenneth James, the real Kenneth James, taken in
Hawaii
, obviously by a KGB hidden camera. It appeared
to have been taken not long before he had arrived in
Hawaii
to make the switch—possibly it was the
photo used by the plastic surgeons to give him his new face before replacing
James.

 
          
Even
though the photo was much enlarged and grainy, Maraklov could still make out
the drawn features, the thinning hair, the sickly appearance. The guy had been
tearing himself apart from the inside out for ten years over the murder of his
infant brother. He had destroyed not only his own life but the life of his natural
father as well. No wonder he had expressed such relief when he realized he was
dying and had confessed the truth to Maraklov that evening.

 
          
“What
about this, Musi? We’re wasting time . . .”

 
          
She
motioned to a mirror on the living room wall. “Take a look.”

 
          
Maraklov
dropped the photograph and moved over to the mirror. He stared at the face in
the mirror. It was Kenneth Francis James—at least the face of James in the
photograph. The plastic surgery Maraklov had undergone before coming to America
kept most of his face looking like it was still seventeen years old, but it
couldn’t hide the thinning hair, the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, the thin
neck and protruding Adam’s apple ... in his case, the strain of the ANTARES
interface and the other attritions in the theft of DreamStar had chewed away at
Maraklov’s body, much as the murders of his brother and girlfriend had eaten
away at James.

 
          
“I’m
arresting you for the murder of Katrina Litkovka,” Musi Zaykov said. “You come
with—”

 
          
Ignoring
the weapon pointed at his chest, he reared back and hurled the scotch bottle at
the mirror. The bottle hit the glass and exploded. Instinctively Zaykov turned
at the sound, the gun still pointed at Maraklov, but her head turned toward the
shattered mirror. It was the opening Maraklov needed. Forgetting the pistol she
still held, he covered the few steps between him and Zaykov, and with the skill
and precision developed from years of training, turned the pistol away from his
left hand and delivered a solid roundhouse kick with his right foot. Zaykov
collapsed to the floor, but Maraklov could not take control of the gun. As she
doubled over and fell, she swung the gun back up and squeezed the trigger.

 
          
The
gun exploded, he felt his left shoulder yanked backward, there was a loud
buzzing in his ears and the blood drained from his head. His knees buckled and
he dropped backward, clutching his shoulder. There was no pain—yet— only a
steady rivulet of blood leaking from between his fingers, and the disorienting
feeling of confusion mixed with fear. The room began to spin. He felt
lightheaded, almost intoxicated.

 
          
Gasping,
Musi crawled up to her hands and knees, reaching for the pistol. Maraklov
caught it first. Musi dug her nails into the back of his left hand, raked the
nails of her right hand across his face. He let go of the gun. She tried to
grab the gun but the hot silencer-barrel burned her fingers, and before she
could grab the stock he had tumbled on top of her. He rolled her over onto her
back and sat on top of her, trying to pin her arms down.

 
          
“Musi,
don’t . . .”

 
          
Blood
ran down from his shoulder over her T-shirt, covering her chest, her face and
hands. He put one hand over her mouth, ignoring the pain as she bit into it.
With his other hand he pulled the hunting knife out of his boot. “Musi, all I
want is the flight suit ...”

 
          
Zaykov
freed her right arm, punched Maraklov in the left shoulder, then on the jaw. He
toppled off her and she rolled to her right away from him, reached out and
grabbed the pistol. She swung it up and fired.