Duel of Assassins (31 page)

Charlotte Walsh was helpless, on her back, naked, her mouth
sealed with wide duct tape, arms pulled painfully over her head, wrists and
ankles taped together and tied to the bedframe with sashcord from the windows.

But she was alive, and she could see. Across the little room
the monster sat with his back to her at the dressing table, stripped to his
shorts, experimenting in the mirror with her makeup kit.

After he had disconnected her call to the CIA, it had taken
Charlotte a couple of bewildered seconds to realize she wasn’t dealing with a
jealous and suddenly enraged lover, but something far more frightening. She had
sought his eyes in desperate appeal—and found herself confronting an alien
predator.

“Jack Sanderson,” the considerate and indefatigable lover,
was gone, discarded like a rubber mask by this other cruel man, who had been
there all along, hiding behind the easy grin, stalking and trapping her for
some terrifying purpose not yet revealed. What a vulnerable, pathetic fool she
had been—from that first instant in the bookstore in Le Lavandou!

And how easily he had reeled her in.

As the enormity of it had seized her, she had fought him
with all her strength. But he had countered with an offhand skill that rendered
her struggles childishly futile. One hand had moved swiftly from the telephone
to stifle her screams, while the other circled her neck, his thumb finding and
pressing the carotid artery.

She had blacked out.

And had come to on the bed like this—bound and gagged and
flooded with terror. The sky out the window was evening blue, the shabby room
illumined only by the tarnished brass lamp on the dresser, the cracked
parchment shade tilted to throw light on the mirror where her captor worked. As
Charlotte had moaned against the muzzling tape and thrashed against her
restraints, his voice had floated back to her, calm and tinged with mockery:

“You know, if you keep groaning and bouncing around like
that, the restaurant patrons downstairs will only think we’re doing another one
of our horizontal slam-dances. There, that’s better.

“Now, I suppose you’re beginning to suspect that I’ve lied
to you. Women are always so suspicious, aren’t they, especially newswomen?
Well, of course you’re right. I’m not really over here scouting European trade
fairs for American mail-order firms. I’m an old friend of your lover, actually.
My name is Marcus. Surely he’s mentioned me?”

The man who now called himself Marcus turned his head and
flashed his Jack Sanderson smile. He had toweled off most of the makeup, apparently
unsatisfied with the effect. Charlotte shook her head.

“He didn’t mention me? I’m shocked. Taras and I were so
close for so long. You know, Charlie, if only you hadn’t tried so persistently
to get in touch with the Cossack, as I call him, we’d be having a nice dinner
right now. Still, that would only have bought you an extra hour or two. I’m
afraid things were bound to end badly between us.”

Then he had told her—as though it were some ingenious
business coup he was plotting—of his plan to assassinate Alois Rybkin. The
brutal inference drawn by Charlotte was that she had been scouted and selected
by Marcus mainly for her journalistic credentials, which could give him access
to the Cecilienhof, and her stature, which would allow him to fit into some of
her clothing, including the wig she used when she didn’t have time to fix her
hair for impromptu TV appearances.

Marcus didn’t mention why he wanted to kill the Soviet head
of state. Not that Charlotte cared a damn about his motives, but after spending
nearly a week with the man and then discovering him to be a total and
terrifying stranger, she wanted desperately to find some clue as to what he
might do next. Obviously he was crazy, even if he didn’t act like a political
fanatic. But was this just another demented game he was playing with her, or
was he actually intending to go through with it? If so, surely he would be
caught or killed. But then what would happen to her?

Her frail hope—which she repeated ceaselessly like a rosary
in her mind—was that he would let her live. Why not? Why couldn’t he just take
her clothes and press pass, walk out the door, and leave her here, tied up, to
be discovered by the chambermaid next morning? By then, her knowing his
identity and plans wouldn’t matter. He’d have already made his attempt,
succeeded or failed. And surely, despite the cruel mockery he now displayed, he
must have some residue of feeling for her, or for the pleasures they had shared
together. If he meant to kill her, wouldn’t he already have done it?

Dear Lord, please let him be merciful.

The prayer brought a moment’s respite from her surging
adrenaline panic. Still, she wished he hadn’t been so casual about giving her
his real name, if that’s what it was.

Heavy footsteps reverberated suddenly in the stairwell,
floorboards creaked in the corridor. An insistent knock rattled the door.

Charlotte saw the muscles tighten across Marcus’ bare back.
Without getting up, he called out:

“Wer ist dort?”

“Frank,” came the answer. “I got something special for
Charlie. Come on, dude, I want to give it to her!”

“Charlie is sick. Leave it outside. I’ll give it to her.”

“Hey, dude, like I got to say good-bye to a foxy lady.”

“I told you, Frank, she’s sick.
Krank, verstehe?
Charlie is in the bathroom,
die Toilette
. Now please, just go away.”

“No, I wait till she’s better. I be out here, dude.”

“Christ!” Marcus whirled around, his striking features
contorted by anger, obviously directed at her for having encouraged the young
Wittenberger. “Hold on, Frank.”

Marcus knelt beside the bed and whispered urgently: “Listen
to me carefully. If you want that lovesick little Nazi to live, tell him you’re
too sick to come to the door. Tell him to leave whatever the hell he’s brought
outside. Thank him and tell him
auf Wiedersehen
. But no endearments. And
if you try to cry out for help, or I even think you’re about to, I’ll strangle
you, then kill loverboy. Got that? You may nod your head.”

She nodded.

“I’m going to remove the tape, but I’m going to be right
next to you.” He turned to the door, called out: “Frank, here’s Charlie. She
wants to tell you something.”

He tore the tape off painfully. She spoke hoarsely, with
Marcus’ menacing face hovering inches above her, yet her fear displaced by
sudden tearfulness as she thought of the devoted young man just outside:
“Frank, I’m very sick... I... I can’t see you now... Thank you for coming...
You’re a dear.” Then she winced as Marcus’ hand vised around her upper arm. Oh
Christ, she’d forgotten; no endearments!
“Auf Wiedersehen
, Frank. Now
please go away.”

“Okay, sure, Charlie, but then I come here back again. I rev
up
Das Vampir
and get my sister husband Rolf, he is a real out-of-sight
Doktor.
He fix you real good, Charlie. You wait!”

“No...” But her voice faltered.

They heard his bootsteps retreating down the corridor.

Marcus slapped the tape back on her mouth, charged to
the     door, threw it open and shouted into the stairwell: “Frank, come back.
Charlie wants to see you now, right away!”

No, Frank!
Charlotte thought with all her might.
Don’t
come back!
But she heard the quick returning steps, leaping two stairs at a
time.

Marcus stepped quickly back from the door as Frank burst
into the room. A bouquet of yellow flowers dangled from his hand as he stood
slack-jawed, registering painful confusion at what he saw—the woman he
idolized, stripped naked, tied to the bed, mouth sealed with shiny gray tape.
Charlotte tried to warn him with her eyes, but the leather-jacketed youth was
far too slow in turning to confront Marcus.

Not that it would have made any difference, as Charlotte
realized in the brutal ensuing seconds. For all his macho trappings, the German
youth was no match for Marcus’ lethal expertise. Frank dropped his bouquet and
charged the older man. But Marcus simply stood there in his shorts, grinning.
Then, with the insouciance of a matador, Marcus doubled his knee to the young
man’s groin and danced aside as his opponent toppled to the floor. Even before
the youth had landed, Marcus’ edged hand flashed down like a machete above the
studded leather collar.

Charlotte heard the horrible sound of that blow and reacted
viscerally, but the worst was to come. Marcus sprang astride his facedown
victim, wrapped his right hand around the spike-haired skull, braced his left
forearm against the back of Frank’s neck, then wrenched violently. Charlotte
heard that sound as well—the horrid crepitation of Frank’s cervical vertebrae
being whipsnapped. She saw the young man’s body convulse on the threadbare
carpet, then lie still beside the scattered flowers.

Nausea erupted from deep within her.

Marcus heard the glottal warning, leaped across the room and
ripped her gag free barely in time to save her from strangulation. Racked and
writhing, yet unable to rise up because of her restraints, Charlotte vomited
all over the bedclothes and herself, again and again, till she fell back in
wretched exhaustion. With her head hammering, she shut her eyes tight against
the foulness that now slimed her face—and against the sight of the broken body
of the boy who had come to give her flowers, and given his life instead.

*

The cafe bar of the Hotel Potsdam was awash in journalists,
print and electronic, from all over the globe. Their faces were flushed, their
voices commingled in a polyglot roar as glasses were refilled and
Gemütlichkeit
reigned supreme. They were warriors before the battle, mercenaries who had
fought in many campaigns in many unlikely places, and now gathered five deep
behind the long bar and around the little tables to compare wounds and swap war
stories.

Taras only glanced in, then moved on toward the lobby,
having recognized from a distance several Washington newsfolk he knew fairly
well. He avoided the scene for a couple of reasons.

First, and mostly painfully, because it reminded him of
Charlie. She belonged in that milieu, or in one of the more select collegial
gatherings that would doubtless be taking place tonight along Berlin’s
Kurfürstendamm
.
Also, Taras didn’t know how to respond to inevitable questions from any of
Charlie’s friends or colleagues who didn’t know they’d broken up, and who might
now be wondering where in hell she was.

But as he walked away, it also occurred to him that he felt
like getting drunk himself. Not just pleasantly or raucously inebriated like
this beer-bourbon-and-scotch crowd, but White Dynamite,
falling-down-in-the-snowbank, Slavic drunk, like that night in Khabarovsk.

Taras was swamped with despair, or maybe just self-pity. It
was hard to tell anymore. In the sick welter of his emotions, only his
cherished hatred for the Cowboy and thirst for revenge stood out with any
clarity.

There was still no break in the search for Marcus and
Charlie. Only dead-ends, as Taras had feared. He had just come back from dinner
with Bob Strotkamp, who was increasingly preoccupied with his security
preparations for the next day’s conference. In fact, as they had parted outside
a Berlin rathskeller, Taras had come away with the definite impression that the
CIA man was only persevering with  the search in order to locate the GRU
assassin, not out of any concern for Charlie’s safety. Once during dinner
Strotkamp had even commented that, despite everything, Charlotte might still be
enjoying her little fling, in no particular danger from Marcus, and would
probably show up for work tomorrow at Potsdam.

Sure, Taras thought. And maybe Eva Sorokina would put in an
appearance, too. The Cowboy had a way with women.

Taras rode upstairs on an alcohol-fumed elevator with a
former network anchorman recently put out to pasture for on-the-job
intoxication. Taras had met the affable lout on several occasions, but was
gratified that the famous face now couldn’t recognize his, as the newsman
leaned for support on a local
Fraülein
—indubitably, considering her
catch, of mercenary bent herself.

Taras’ floor came first, and he lost no time in stepping
off. He had been ready to punch the ex-anchorman in the pink jowls, just out of
frustration and the desperate need to have someone to punish.

Inside his room he went to the window, drew the drapes and
tugged back the outer lace curtains, stared out at the floodlit copper dome of
the church whose name he did not know. Then, after a blank moment, he began
hammering his fist against the window frame.

In her condominium in Rockville, Maryland, Rhonda Hartnell
switched on her bedside lamp. It was only eleven. She had gone to bed early,
but had been awakened by a circuit firing on and off in her brain. Charlotte
Walsh, the circuit said. Okay. Why should the name of a columnist stick in her
synapses? Rhonda shook her groggy head, unable to piece the thought together.

Then all at once she had it. She grabbed for the phone.
Jesus
Mary and Joseph, of course!
Her boss and Taras Arensky and Bob Strotkamp in
Berlin were all looking for Charlotte, had been for days. And that had been
Charlotte—the voice on the phone from Germany—wanting to talk to the DDI, her
boss! Rhonda had heard Charlotte often enough, in person at parties, and on
Washington talking-heads TV—CNN, C-Span, Sunday morning punditry. How could she
have failed to recognize even that hello?
Dear Lord, let it not be too late!

She got hold of someone in the Office of Communications of
the Deputy Directorate, Support, at Langley, told him who she was and what she
wanted done and how urgently she wanted it. She had to check her temper as the
man repeated her request nearly word for word:

“Now, let me be clear about this. You want me to go to your
office, find this time you jotted on your deskpad and cross-check the phone
logs for any incoming calls at that exact time on the DDI’s general line, and
try and get a location?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s going to take awhile.”

“Why? Don’t you have access to our phone system computer?”

“No, I can do that. If there was a call, then the
information’s in our daily ASCII logfiles. But I’m just telling you, Ms.
Hartnell, they’re humongous files, and I’ll have to search it backward
chronologically, or print it out...”

“No, don’t print it! There’s no time! Can’t you narrow your
search to a specific range of minutes?”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Then do it! A life may depend on it. Make it fast and get
right back to me. I’m calling the DDI at home right now.”

The DDI’s reaction was predictably vesuvian.

“I’m so sorry,” Rhonda said, “I should have followed up
immediately and racked my brain until—”

“For God’s sake, Ron, I’m not mad at you. You can’t think of
everything, though you come closer than anybody I know. Let’s just pray she’s
still there. I want somebody else to back up that tekkie down there on that
phonelog check. And let me know the instant you hear from him.”

Five minutes later she had her answer and relayed it to the
DDI: “The call originated in Wittenberg, Germany, from a hotel called the
Goldener Adler.”

“The Golden Eagle. Okay, great work, Ron. I’ll take it from
here. You get back to sleep, if you can. Maybe say a prayer for Charlie first.”

*

The call from Washington shrilled in Taras’ room at
five-thirty in the morning, rescuing him from an exhausting dream in which he
had been trudging across frozen tundra and sinking to his hips in snowbanks, on
some obscure quest.

It took several seconds to recall where he was, and the real
urgency he confronted. Then the DDI’s words exploded in his brain.
Charlotte
was in Wittenberg
. Why hadn’t Taras thought of it? It was within a
seventy-five-kilometer radius of Potsdam and exactly the sort of quaint
hideaway she would have chosen, over some toxic slum like Dessau.

“Taras, I’ll leave you to contact Strotkamp and link up with
GSG-9 or whoever’s available. Godspeed. Our prayers are with you.”

“No! Don’t hang up. You call Bob yourself now, tell him I’m
on my way to Wittenberg. If he can round up any GSG-9 guys, great, send ’em
along. But tell him not to alert the local cops. Not against Marcus. They’d
just walk in and get blown away. If they hit anybody, it’d be Charlie. I can’t
wait.”

Four minutes later, barely buttoned, zippered and shoelaced,
with his .45 auto holstered under his windbreaker, Taras was gunning his rental
Escort out of the hotel parking lot and swinging right onto the bridge over the
Havel—and wishing to hell he’d rented a BMW or a Porsche.

Dawn was still an hour off, and gray fogbanks shrouded the
river. Taras switched on foglights and wipers, and barreled straight down the
Heinrich Mann Allee, slowing only at stoplights like an ambulance driver to
scan quickly for cross traffic, before accelerating through. In moments he had
put the immense dark tract of the Potsdam Forest behind him and was flashing
through the night-forsaken suburbs of Waldstadt and Bergholz-Rehbrücke. Just
beyond lay the southbound onramp to the E6 Autobahn, where he could push the
little Ford flat-out, thanks to reunification, which had brought the Federal
Republic’s unlimited speed limits to the East.

It was the same route he’d taken the day before on the
wild-goose chase to Dessau. But this time something told him the game was for
real—the duel was on, sabers unblunted, masks off.

Keeping the speedometer hovering around 150 kph, Taras
figured to reach Coswig in just over twenty minutes, maybe five or ten more to
Wittenberg.

He prayed it would be quick enough.

*

Marcus sat on the edge of the bed, watching Charlie sleep.
Earlier he had unpeeled the strip of duct tape from her mouth, tipped her head
back and forced her to swallow four 100 milligram secobarbital capsules. When
she had finally ceased her struggles and gone under, he went into the
bathroom—his eyes avoiding the leather-jacketed corpse that now sprawled in the
tub—for a basin of water and washcloth. With these he cleaned off all traces of
the vomit from her face. Next he had tenderly bathed her long elegant body,
that lush and undulant countryside on which he had passed so many delightful
hours. From time to time, as his cloth-mittened hand slowly traced the pale
curves and hollows, she would moan or stir, like a child in troubled sleep.

Perhaps, he had thought, the prolonged overhead stretching
of her arms was hurtful, impairing her circulation. He cut the tethering
sashcords, then removed the tape from her wrists, chafing them in his palms
briefly to restore blood flow before lowering her arms beside her torso. As
long as her ankles were taped and secured to the footboard, Charlotte could not
escape.

He had put off killing her for several hours then, while he
continued to experiment with her makeup and wardrobe.

He selected a long black polyester skirt with elasticized
waist, the only one he’d been able to fit into—and as it was, the pleats were
drawn taut over his hips. The white angora tunic sweater was also considerably
more form-fitting than intended. Marcus had ripped out the shoulder pads; his
own deltoids provided a sufficiently mannish effect. A tissue-stuffed bra
beneath falsified a modest bustline. He had not been able to squeeze into any
of Charlotte’s coats, but it should be warm enough to go without, yet not call
attention to himself. The Adidases he had purchased the previous night
completed the ensemble. More and more women wore athletic shoes, he knew,
especially for occasions like today’s, where there would be a good deal of
walking and standing around.

The makeup was just passable, he thought, but the best he
could do, based on trial and error and what he recalled from his kibitzing of
Charlotte’s toilette over the past week. He’d shaved carefully, smoothed on
foundation and dusted each cheek with blusher.

He had labored nearly thirty minutes doing his eyes, twice
having to wash everything off and start over. Christ, he thought, what a
wretched nuisance! How did women suffer it daily? He had used an eyeliner
pencil, brushed on eyeshadow, tipped and darkened his own lashes with mascara.
The objective was not to make himself look feminine, but to mask his features
as much as possible from Taras, if he was there, and the KGB bodyguards, who
would have studied his photograph. Sunglasses would aid in that disguise.

Finally he was ready. It was essential that he make his exit
from the hotel and the town before darkness bled off to dawn. And on the bed
Charlotte was now beginning to stir more persistently. He wanted to do it while
she slept. He took a pillow and stood over her a long moment, staring down at
her delicate and well-remembered features, saying a silent and sentimental
good-bye. Then he lowered the pillow, softly at first, then more and more
firmly, and finally viciously, with all his strength, as she struggled up from
unconsciousness to wage a brief, convulsive fight for her life. Then it was
over, and she lay still.

Marcus turned and heaved a great sigh, but the
straitjacketing tension did not lift from him. He looked down at his hands,
usually rock steady, now fluttering with nerves.
Christ, don’t tell me the
bitch got to you that bad? Pull yourself together
. Yet he sensed within
himself the sudden collapse of some inner structure.
It was not just another
death
, a voice insisted.
This one did not have to die.

“Yes, she did!” Marcus cried out. She had been Taras’ woman.
And he must find her like this, after the death or Rybkin, used and discarded
by his once-loved, now-hated rival. That was to be the final exquisite point in
their duel—Cowboy over Cossack.

Oddly, the adrenaline surge seemed to steady his nerves. He
must move quickly and methodically. Gray light was already beginning to filter
through the lace curtains overlooking the square. He must forget the thing on
the bed, ignore its grotesque reflection in the mirror as he sat down at the
dresser for the final touches.

Marcus placed the brunette wig carefully over his own hair,
pulling and tugging, then using Charlotte’s teasing brush to flounce it. But on
the left side a clump of curls stuck out at an odd angle, as if it had been
slept on. He patted the curls down; they sprang right back. He rummaged through
her travel vanity case, found a small hairspray canister, sprayed the entire
wig, then combed and teased the offending curls into a semblance of order.

He gave himself a final inspection in the mirror.
Dark-lashed, blue eyes; long, equine face; strong cheekbones; slightly cleft
chin; full, lightly glossed lips. Marcus made a mouth, blinked his lashes in
what he thought was a feminine way. Christ, he looked exactly like a goddamn
transvestite, one of those desperate-eyed TVs who take out ads in the kinky
contact magazines. Let’s see, his could go:

International assassin, looking for a good time and a
victim to share it with. No limits respected. Contact: The Cowboy. Box 9E
.

No, not really.

He stood up, smoothed the skirt over his hips. There was
sufficient resemblance to the photo on Charlie’s press pass to get him through
perimeter security. That’s all that mattered. After that, no one who knew her
and saw him would make the connection. They’d just see another mannish
newswoman, a fairly common species, he imagined.

Next item. The little camera he’d picked up from a GRU
contact in Munich, and which had already passed successfully through several
airport metal detectors. Japanese logo, plastic case and interior mechanism. It
could even take pictures—but not in its present configuration. It was fitted
out so that, with a touch of the shutter release, it would go snickety-click
like any SLR—except the lens would snap aside and a mousetrap fuse would fire a
tiny dart through the lens opening. Marcus opened the back and made sure a dart
was in place. Three millimeters long and a millimeter and a half in diameter,
of platinum and irridium, the projectile was needle-pointed and, when fired
from a range of five meters or less, could pierce several layers of clothing
and skin, and release on impact its deadly poison—ricin, twice as toxic as
cobra venom. Marcus would aim for groin, thigh or buttock, depending on
opportunity. Rybkin would feel a sharp sting and probably die within the hour,
despite medical intervention. And Marcus would have a decent chance at escape.

Time to go. He found himself standing beside the bed, then,
unable to stop himself, lifted the pillow for a last look.

Suddenly she sat up, eyes staring. “Taras!” she cried.

Marcus cried out, too—a womanish scream—and slammed the
pillow down, mashing her face as her arms and legs thrashed.
Fucking Christ,
it was like crazy Kostya again!
—the way the unconscious trapper had
suddenly revived in the freezing water of the Ussuri when Marcus had shoved him
through the ice hole. Again and again Kostya had risen to the surface, a
wild-eyed ghost in the moonlight, bellowing for help while Marcus kicked his
face into bloody ruin. Still he wouldn’t stay under—like Rasputin, whom he so
resembled with his febrile gaze and scraggly locks. Finally, with Marcus
screaming at him to die, the feeble-minded trapper sank and rose no more.

Now, as the body beneath him subsided into the quiescence,
Marcus slumped back. It was his own fault. Careless or squeamish, he had
stopped too soon before, before she was really gone. He ought to have made damn
sure. He lifted the pillow, saw the vacant, terror-glazed eyes. No carotid
pulse. He pushed the jaw closed, but left the eyes open, not wanting to touch
her again.

He had to get out of there. He was breathing too rapidly,
not thinking clearly. He made a tour of the room several times, afraid he was
forgetting something. Credentials in the handbag, carry-all and camera over the
shoulder, wig on straight. Body in the bathtub and on the bed.
Okay, Christ,
just get out
! Pearl-gray light was quickly filching the shadows. He
switched off the lamp, slipped into the corridor, eased the door closed, went
down the dark stairs, his steps cushioned in the Adidases, a tall woman with a
mannish build and a tricked-out hairdo.