Duel of Assassins (11 page)

Hank Kelleher stepped in: “This is very genial of you,
Volodya, but let us not pretend that Taras is here on a sentimental journey to
the Motherland. He has come to cooperate with you, as you know, at the request
of President Ackerman, and as quid pro quo for the issuance of long-delayed
exit visas for his sister and her family.”

“Of course,” the chairman continued in an slightly subdued
vein, “we are aware of these details. And we are not here to discuss the past.
The problems which face us now are common problems, far too critical to permit
divisiveness. Let me say, Taras, we all of us here appreciate your cooperation,
and the alacrity with which you have offered it. And I very much include in
these appreciative words the sentiments of our President.”

The others nodded in solemn accord.
Now I’m supposed to
feel all warm and fuzzy
, Taras thought, as a female KGB sergeant carried in
a samovar and a tray of torts. Since he had breakfasted at the Metropole, Taras
restricted himself to a glass of tea.

“Mr. Chairman,” Taras said, avoiding the term “comrade,”
which, in any case, nobody seemed to use anymore, “regardless of
why
I
am here, here I am, and I intend to do my best. You know my record. But I must
tell you, I seriously doubt that I can do anything to increase the physical
safety of Alois Rybkin.”

“You’re saying we really don’t need you to protect the
President, or to stop Major Jolly?”

“That is my opinion.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I share your view, and so, I
believe, does everyone else in this room. Are you shocked? It is true. And I’ve
told Alois Maksimovich as much. We can and will protect our
vozhd.
That
is our duty. But the stakes at Potsdam are high, and the President can be
forgiven for wanting to have an extra card up his sleeve, and that extra card
seems to be you.”

“If nothing else,” Rogovoy said, “bringing Major Arenskyhere
keeps him from performing his normal CIA espionage duties.”

“If you’re going to make jokes, General,” Kelleher said to
Rogovoy, “I suggest you learn to smile first.”

“Touché
, Genrikh,” Biryukov said. “The fact is,
despite the reservations we have both just expressed, we are not so foolish as
to think we are invulnerable, or that we cannot learn from a man of your
caliber, Taras Olegovich. The President was more impressed by your dossier than
the assassin’s, Jolly’s, and remarked that you were certainly worthy of bearing
the name of Gogol’s old Cossack hero, Taras Bulba...”

Arensky had, in fact, been named for the nineteenth-century
Ukrainian poet and patriot, Taras Shevchenko, but he let Biryukov continue
without interruption: “We have trained you well. And it is only natural that we
would prefer that you use that training on behalf of your homeland. You see, I
have come full circle. For this is precisely the opportunity before us. The
question is, how can we best use you?”

Taras smiled. “I await your answer.”

“And we await yours. The question was not rhetorical. We are
granting you a free hand, Taras. Tell us your thinking.”

“Well, if I’m supposed to track Marcus down, I obviously
want to know where you think he is, or where you last saw him.”

“We don’t know where he is. No one does. As the English say,
we’re just beating the bushes and following the hounds. Major Jolly was
assigned to Novosibirsk with Marchenko, but never arrived there. Instead he
disappeared. All we can get from GRU is that there was a confusion in orders
and he was dispatched to Vienna on a deep-cover assignment—deliberately out of
touch. So, no matter our demands, they say they cannot bring him in until he
contacts them. Do we believe that? No, we don’t. We have been uprooting
Marchenko’s network, link by link, much of it
Spetsnaz
-connected. If the
assassin tries to contact it anywhere along the line, we will probably have
him.”

“Good luck.” Taras squeezed more lemon into his tea.

“So, Volodya, you are telling us that you have no specific
assignment for Taras?” Kelleher asked, sounding incredulous.

“Don’t misunderstand. There are many things I can suggest.
For instance, Colonel Starkov is ready to detail our security arrangements for
Potsdam, since that is where President Rybkin will be most vulnerable. Or—”

“Or,” Starkov addressed Taras, “you might also wish to
review the interrogations of some of Major Jolly’s
Spetsnaz
collaborators, whom we are detaining in Lefortovo, or conduct your own
interrogations.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kelleher said. “I think
we can rely on your skill in that area.”

Starkov shrugged. “It was just a suggestion.”

“To reiterate,” Biryukov picked up, “Taras Olegovich, you
can have anything you want. Name it, and Colonel Starkov will see that you get
it.”

“Absolutely,” Starkov said. He looked very competent, Taras
thought.

 “Well,” Kelleher said to Taras, “looks like the ball’s in
your court. What do you want to do?”

“How about going home?”

“Try again.”

“All right.” Taras turned to Biryukov and began ticking points
off on his fingers. “I’d like several things. Marcus’ file. An office. A
cubicle will do, so long as it’s private and has a good reading light and
ventilation. An electric fan, like that one, would be nice. And I’d like a pot
of coffee—the real stuff, if you have it.”

Biryukov’s considerable eyebrows arched, like twin
cater-pillars getting ready to march. “That is all?”

“For now. I imagine it will take me most of the day to work
through the file, so in a couple of hours, maybe somebody could bring me a cold
collation—ham, cheese, black bread. Maybe a bowl of
okroshka
and—what? A
Pepsi?”

“We have an excellent restaurant.”

“I’d rather not have the interruption.”

“As you wish. Anything else?”

“There’s something
I’d
like, Volodya,” the CIA
station chief said. “While Taras is studying, what about granting me afternoon
reading privileges in your archives?”

“Sorry, Henry, even
glasnost
has its limits. Unless
you’re offering reciprocal privileges at Langley.

The office was private, if not spacious, a floor below
Biryukov’s, with a view of the square. Some Chekist functionary had undoubtedly
been chased out of it. There was ersatz coffee—barely drinkable—and a fan—tiny,
shrill and, oddly, made in the PRC—with a jetlike airstream that scattered any
unanchored papers in its swath. Discovering no low-speed setting, Taras
switched it off and prepared to swelter it out.

On a low, fiddle-shaped table by a settee were the morning
Pravda,
Argumenty I Fakty
,
Literaturnaya Gazeta
,
Novaya Vremya
;
but also European
Newsweek
, the
International Herald Tribune
,
USA
Today
,
Bunte
and the magazine section from the previous Sunday’s
Die
Zeit
. Behind him was a large walnut-veneer cabinet with built-in minibar
and, behind a sliding panel, a Grundig shortwave radio—tuned, he noticed, to
the bandwidth of the daily BBC Russian-language broadcast. Within distracting
peripheral glance a wall calendar featured a bulky, bikinied blonde dipping a
toe into the fantail pool of a Soviet cruise ship off some unspecified
sun-splashed coast.

And on the green-baize-covered desk before him were several
voluminous folders laced together, which had been wheeled into the office
inside a lockable metal trolley. The brown pasteboard cover bore several grease
stains and the concise title: “Dossier on Markus Dzholly.”

Taras was near the beginning, working his way through the
thicket of MVD reports on the murder of Eva Sorokina, a case which, Taras well
knew, had never been solved. Kostya, the big trapper, whose full name was
listed as Konstantin Igorivich Yakushkin, had not been seen, alive or dead,
after disappearing from his cabin that snowy night in Khabarovsk more than
fifteen years before. Nor had any of the stolen money or clothing been
recovered.

Though all this was familiar to Taras, it was still painful,
summoning up the frozen horror of that morning and unburying old griefs. He
passed quickly to the next section, which consisted of background checks on
Marcus’ youth in the United States.

Here was reason to pause. The information now before Taras did
not square with what Marcus had told him—about being reared in Illinois by
grandparents and leaving home after a fire took their lives. According to the
dossier, assembled mainly, it would seem, from public records, Marcus Jolly was
born in 1957 in Wichita, Kansas, and left home after his mother’s death from a
barbiturate overdose in 1974. His father had been killed ten years earlier when
his gravel truck skidded off any icy road into a culvert; there was a microfilm
print of a news story on the accident from the
Wichita Eagle
. There was
no mention of Illinois grandparents.

And there was no documentation of Marcus’ activities between
1974 and his arrival in Khabarovsk in the winter of ’77; but this was entirely
consistent with Marcus’ story of becoming a drifter and working odd jobs as he
moved across the western states and the Pacific.

The only early photograph of Marcus in the file was an
enlargement from a sixth-grade class picture. Blazing sunlight and
high-contrast shadows made it impossible to recognize the boy’s features. In an
attached memorandum, the KGB case officer requested further corroborative
information and photographs, but the dossier yielded no response to this
request. Had the indefatigable KGB First Chief Directorate decided, uncharacteristically,
not to pursue the matter and to accept the defector’s American background as
given?

Taras stared at the hazy photo of a squinting, crew-cut
Kansas schoolboy and shook his head. What was going on here? Had the Cowboy
lied to Taras all these years, lied even during all-night, vodka-fueled truth
sessions? And if so, what possible motive could there have been? Taras might
well demand clarification from Biryukov, but decided instead to have Frank
Kelleher fax Langley for some quick answers.

In the meantime Taras no longer knew what he was searching
for in the file before him—clues as to what his old comrade was up to these
days, or clues as to who Marcus really was, these days and those. Had there
always been a stranger’s eyes behind the familiar, grinning face? Taras could
not accept that, yet the discrepancy in Marcus’ background was puzzling. No, it
was worse than that. It left Taras feeling extremely queasy as he turned to the
section of the dossier which detailed the American’s arrival in Moscow in the
winter of 1977 and his application for political asylum...

*

The grief-and-vodka-soaked comradeship of Taras’ and Marcus’
westward rail journey from Khabarovsk extended to their first few days in
Moscow. They were given adjoining rooms in the Berlin Hotel, just off
Dzerzhinsky Square behind the Children’s World department store. From here,
Taras was able to show his Western friend some of the architectural wonders of
central Moscow. They braved the winter winds that scoured the cobblestoned
vastness of Red Square, queued with the bundled throngs for Lenin’s Mausoleum
and the Kremlin tours, tramped the icy sidewalks of the broad, radial avenues
and the embankments of the frozen Moskva. But their first foray each morning
was across Dzerzhinsky Square for several hours of questioning by KGB and MVD
investigators about Eva’s death, Kostya’s disappearance and Marcus’ reasons for
wanting to leave the United States.

Apparently after three days the internal affairs directorate
had run out of questions for Taras, and he was told to report back to his class
at the military academy. Marcus’ future was still uncertain. He was being
temporarily assigned to the Moscow flat of two American defectors—a middle-aged
dental surgeon and his wife from Cincinnati—while his application for Soviet 
citizenship was being considered.

The two comrades said their farewells outside the Berlin.
Taras then got into one of the Finnair vans that served hotel guests, to be
shuttled to the Byelorussian Railway Station and a train for Smolensk, where
his academy class was witnessing bridging maneuvers on the Dnieper. He had a
last glimpse of his friend through the van’s rear window. Marcus was standing
on the slushy sidewalk between two gray-coated militiamen, waving his old
cowboy hat in one hand and holding his new cardboard suitcase with the other.
Then the van turned off Zhdanov Street onto Pushechnaya, and the Cowboy was
gone.

Five months were to pass before the two friends saw each
other again—five months with only a few exchanges of notes to apprise one
another of current events and whereabouts. And even this was a feat, for each
essayed—courteously but clumsily—to write in the other’s language, and by then
both were caught up in training regimens that left them exhausted in their bunks
only moments before lights out.

But they arranged a meeting by the Ferris wheel in Gorky
Park on a May afternoon the following year, when Taras would be on leave and
Marcus was scheduled to be in Moscow briefly between trains. Taras arrived
early, searching the crowds that flowed by, even checking the gondolas lifting
into the warm, golden haze and the boats rowing slowly past on the pond. The
hour came, and still no Marcus. Perhaps plans had changed, too late to notify
Taras. It was an unthinkably huge country; he might never see or hear from
Marcus again. Then there was a tap on Taras’ shoulder.

He whirled, faced a tall, grinning young man in a special
forces light-blue beret and blue-and-white-striped jersey, holding two ice
cream cones. He thrust one toward Taras, kept the other for himself. It was, of
course, Marcus.

The two embraced, laughed, embraced again, talking at once
and in different languages. They settled quickly on Russian, at which Marcus
had made obvious and impressive progress.

“You are
Spetsnaz!
” Taras said. “I can’t believe it.
Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You know how it is, Cossack. Most of what I wrote you was
just
govno,
bullshit.”

“But how did this happen, so fast? I was afraid you’d be
working for the KGB forever.”

“I got real lucky,” Marcus said. “Apparently the KGB didn’t
know what to do with me. I’m not like some high-level defector they want to put
on TV. Like I told them, the only expertise I got is talking colloquial
American, sailing, martial arts—aikido, kendo. And I wanted to join the army.
Special forces, rangers, whatever they call ’em over here. So they let me talk
to this old hot-shit major general in the GRU Second Chief Directorate.
Marchenko. Ukrainian. Face like one of those old battle-axes they got in the
Kremlin Armory. Used to run the rocket program, helped bring it back after the
disgrace of the Cuban missile withdrawal. Had on every fucking medal you can
get. I heard he was well connected with the Central Committee. Spoke pretty
good English. Old guy took a liking to me. Told me I was a cocky bastard, just
the kind they like in
Spetsnaz
. They also like foreigners, for foreign
ops. Especially Americans, you can figure maybe why. Who knows? They’ll
probably send me back to America to assassinate the president.”

“You’re really full of it! But the beret looks good.” Taras
snatched it and placed it rakishly on his own head. “Even better on me.”

“Oh, shit! I wish you hadn’t done that, Cossack. According
to the
Spetsnaz
oath, I’ve got to kill you now.”

The two friends strolled south along the river embankment,
from the Krymsky Bridge to the Andreyevsky, and then slowly worked their way
back through the park grounds. They talked a great deal, at first profanely and
lustily, matching boast for boast. But their tones softened when they spoke of
their lost Eva, whose bounties and virtues had only multiplied after her death,
till she had assumed, in idealized recollection, the dual aspect of a martyred
and sensuous saint.

The two were full of themselves, their shared past, their
veiled but unquestionably heroic destinies. The people and tableaux they passed
seemed slightly out of focus, positioned like so many props or film extras
around the park to provide background for their traveling encounter. The spring
sunshine felt good on their shoulders, and the plane trees and linden and horse
chestnut were in full, refulgent foliage. But these things only floated by on
the periphery of consciousness, like the silent lovers holding hands on park
benches. Or the people drinking tea and eating sweets in an outdoor cafe; the
family groups picnicking on parceled cold cuts, black bread, pickled fish,
smoked herring; the children queuing for the rocket-sled ride or squealing
before an outdoor puppet theater; or the older boys playing soccer and hurling
Frisbees.

A rock concert at the big outdoor Zelyony Theater did engage
them awhile, while it obliterated their dialogue with the amplified shriek of
acid rock. But they stayed critically back, behind the swaying, arm-thrusting,
stage-circling throng of teenage faithful in their Western motley. The focus of
all the enthusiasm was two emaciated guitarists and a pudgy drummer, all in
regulation studded, skin-tight leathers, tattooed, mascaraed and spiky-haired.
But costume and makeup meant nothing to Taras and Marcus; could the group
really play? After a moment they both decided in the negative and ambled on,
into a pavilion where old men sat hunched over rows of chessboards. While they
paused again to kibitz, a foul-smelling drunk in grease-stained work shirt
lurched into them, offering a half-liter vodka
troika
. When the drunk
refused to step back, Marcus gave him a shove. The man went sprawling on his
ass, got up threatening to smash Marcus’ face, took a second look at the
smiling young man in the blue beret and wisely staggered off, with only an
obligatory fuck-your-mother.

Altogether a glorious day, Taras thought. His amazing friend
had done it again, diving recklessly into the vast sea of the Russian continent
exactly as he had into the Pacific, and coming up a winner—a member of the
elite
Spetsnaz
fighting forces! And he seemed taller and fitter in his
new trappings—his shoulders broader, his jaw more salient, his squinty blue
eyes more glittery. Only the flaxen hair had suffered; under his blue beret
Marcus was shorn to the scalp just like all the twice-yearly crop of baby-faced
prizyvniki
, army conscripts. But Marcus obviously didn’t care; he was,
as that old general had said, a cocky bastard.

And try though he might, Taras could not convince himself
that the many sidelong female glances he’d noticed in the last hour were
intended for him. No, it was exactly as it had been in Khabarovsk the winter
before, when the Cowboy had cast his spell upon Eva—and, eventually, on Taras
himself. Marcus always came out on top. Taras had ridden a crowded train across
Russia to reach Eva; but Marcus had sailed clear across the Pacific. Now Taras
tried to brag about the rigors of his second year at his military academy; but
Marcus was already in special forces.

You couldn’t hate him for it. The swagger went with the
grin, and the daredevil spirit, and the cowboy boots, or the shiny paratroop
boots he wore now. At twenty-one Marcus Jolly was a seasoned adventurer who
bore the stamp of the self-made man  and the indefinable aura of the heroic.
Taras not only admired and envied him. He wanted to
be
Marcus.

But they were rapidly running out of afternoon. They made
their way to the Oktyabrskaya Metro station and took the circular line to
Kievskaya Station, where Marcus collected his gear from a locker and rushed
aboard a train for Odessa to report to a
Spetsnaz
brigade at the Higher
Infantry School.

Taras remained on the platform for several minutes after the
train had pulled out. He was feeling somehow left behind as he replayed in his
mind Marcus’ last jaunty wave while leaning precariously out the carriage
window. Taras sensed himself at a crisis point in his life. When he finally
pivoted and headed back toward the station concourse, it was with a sudden and
grim resolve that he, too, would join the
Spetsnaz
. And by the time the
Metro had tunneled him all the way back to his father’s flat in the Nagatino
district in southeast Moscow, Taras Arensky felt his destiny thick about him.