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  “Assuming this is in fact true, how do we proceed?” Kabatov asked.

  “Besides plugging the leaks so that Tarankov does not learn of our plans, we have to deal with two problems,” the FSK director said. “The first is the western media. They want to know what happened this morning on Red Square.”

  “That’s already being taken care of,” Viktor Yemlin interjected from the end of the conference table. He was chief of the North American Division of the S VR, which was the foreign intelligence branch of the old KGB. Previously he’d worked as rezident for the KGB’s operations in Washington and New York.

  Kabatov had no love for the old KGB or its successors the FSK and SVR. He’d come under investigation by the intelligence service when he served as ambassador to the United Nations eight years ago. Despite his position, and the fact that the charges against him were proven to be groundless, he’d been treated roughly. But Yemlin was an important moderate, despite his position and background.

  “Well?” he said, his dislike obvious.

  “Explosive ordnance used for the protection of President Yeltsin that is normally carried in one of the escort limousines was defective and detonated by accident, killing three presidential security service officers and the driver. President Yeltsin’s limousine was not touched.”

  “Why hasn’t the President made a statement?”

  “He died of a stress-induced heart attack this morning at 11:38 a.m. A body will be produced to lie in state, and his funeral will be scheduled for one week from today.”

  Kabatov grudgingly admired the tremendous lie. “Can the SVR pull it off?”

  “I’m told we can, Mr. Prime Minister,” Yemlin said. He was a distinguished looking man who reminded everybody of Eduard Shevardnadze with his kindly eyes and thick white hair. “But it will require the cooperation of everyone in this room.”

  “How long can such a lie be sustained?” Zhigalin asked.

  Yemlin shrugged. “Historians opening records a hundred years from now might find out. It was only recently that the truth behind the executions of Tsar Nicholas and his family came out.”

  Kabatov nodded. “Very well, do it.”

  Yemlin smiled faintly. “It’s already being done.”

  Kabatov held back a sharp retort. Instead he turned to Yuryn, who was staring thoughtfully at Yemlin. “What is the second problem we have to deal with?”

  “Tarankov’s next moves. If indeed he did order President Yeltsin’s assassination it may have signaled the start of his end game. Though how he’ll react to the SVR’s coverup is anyone’s guess, we need hard intelligence on his intentions. Without such knowledge trying to arrest the man will, in the very least, result in a blood bath. If we’d known ahead of time about his raid on the Riga facility and had tried to stop him, the people up there would have gotten in the way. There would have been a lot of deaths. Killing him would be easier than arresting him. But if you mean to go ahead, give me time to put a man on the train.”

  “Do you have someone in mind?” Kabatov asked.

  “I have any number of capable officers.”

  “The reason I ask is because by your own admission Tarankov has his support in every government agency, at every level.”

  “I have people who will do it,” Yuryn said.

  “When can you start?”

  “If it’s what you want, immediately,” Yuryn said.

  “It is,” Kabatov said. “Arresting Yevgenni Tarankov is Russia’s only hope, and our most urgent priority.”

  FIVE

  Moscow

  Viktor Pavlovich Yemlin returned home to his spacious apartment on Kalinin Prospekt shortly after 7:00 p.m.” and poured a stiff measure of Polish vodka. He sat in his favorite chair, put his feet up and stared out the window at the lights of the city and the gently falling snow.

  He was a deeply troubled man. In the old days, before his wife died of cancer, he would have enjoyed company at times like these.

  Someone with whom to discuss his misgivings, his feelings of doom and gloom. But he had been a widower for so long that he had come to make peace with his solitude. In fact he rather enjoyed being alone, though he bitterly missed his only son, who’d been killed in Afghanistan.

  He turned on the stereo with the remote control, and set the volume for the disc of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, his favorite piece of music, and laid his head back.

  In his late sixties, Yemlin was not the man he should have been. Born in 1930 in Kiev, his parents had moved to Moscow at the start of the Great Patriotic War, and at twelve he ran away with his brothers to help defend Stalingrad against Hitler’s army. After the war his parents died of heartbreak, because of seven boys Viktor was the only one to survive, and he’d survived flawed because his youth had been so dramatically cut short.

  He was arrested and sent to count the birches in Siberia because he’d lied on his officer’s candidate school and Moscow State University applications. He claimed he was older than he was so that he could count his military service for bonus points.

  Four years later the NKVD, which was the forerunner of the KGB, discovered his name and his heroism in military records, and immediately recruited him. He was sent first to Moscow State University where he was educated in political science and international law and politics, to the prestigious Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations, then to Officers Candidate School and the War College, and finally to the NKVD’s School One.

  He worked on a number of projects for the NKVD and then the KGB in eastern Europe, until General Valentin Baranov recruited him for the real work of a spy: That of the grand schemes of the seventies and eighties in which the Soviet Union would take over the world with the strong right arm of its KGB.

  In a series of brilliant missions from Mexico City (the Soviet Union’s largest and most active embassy and KGB station), to the United Nations in New York, and finally as resident of KGB operations for all of North America out of the Soviet embassy in Washington, Yemlin proved himself to be one of the most capable and effective intelligence officers the Komityet had ever fielded.

  He’d never been considered for promotion to head the agency, because he didn’t have the right background or the correct political patronage for such advancement. But he was well respected by every KGB director he’d ever served under.

  Now that the Soviet Union was no longer intact he should have been one of the bitter old guard for whom Tarankov’s message was a siren’s call to the old ways. Many of the men in the FSK and SVR were admirers of the Tarantula, hoping that a new Soviet Union would somehow rise out of the ashes of the old.

  Instead, he had become a moderate. Years of living in the West’s openness with its cornucopia of ideas and consumer goods had changed him. So subtly at first that even he wasn’t aware of the differences in his outlook. But finally he understood to the depth of his soul that the great communist experiment of a world socialist movement had failed not because of corrupt, cruel leadership, but had disintegrated of its own ponderous, unrealistic weight. Tarankov was trying to bring it all back again, and a lot of people were listening to him. Russians were tired of being second class citizens, they wanted super power status returned to them. They were tired of being hungry, they wanted to be fed. And they were tired of an aimless existence that seemed to be going nowhere, they wanted to be led. Socialism didn’t work, but Russians hadn’t learned yet how to make a go of democracy. They were tired of trying.

  After the meeting in the White House, Yemlin had returned to his office at SVR headquarters on the Ring Road and written his report. He was careful to draw no conclusions or make any substantive recommendations. But in his heart of hearts he agreed with General Yuryn: Trying to arrest Tarankov would likely end in a blood bath in which dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent people would get killed. And placing Tarankov on public trial would tear Russia apart. It would be just like the Red Army versus the White Army after the October Revolution. The nation would sink into a civil war th
at this time would drag on forever, and that no one could possibly win.

  But if Tarankov were allowed to continue “on his course he would probably win the next election in June three months from now. Either that or he would take the Kremlin by force.

  Yemlin thought about that possibility. The raid on the power station in Dzerzhinskiy was within a half-dozen kilometers of the Kremlin. The bold attack had shaken the government to its core. Yeltsin’s assassination twenty-four hours later had come as a worse shock. Perhaps they were witnessing the start of Tarankov’s end game, as Yuryn suggested. If that were the case his next move would be even bolder, more daring, and certainly more destructive. Yemlin could think of a number of plausible scenarios in which Tarankov could simply swoop into Red Square, arrest or assassinate the moderates who opposed him in the Kremlin, and de facto take over the government. A Red Square filled with a million Tarankov supporters — Yemlin believed he had that many in Moscow alone — would block a military retaliation.

  Yemlin also suspected that Prime Minister Kabatov’s worst fears were true; that Tarankov’s base of support went far beyond a bunch of starving kulaks who wanted to go back to the old ways. It involved more than just a handful of old hard liners in the government and the military and the old KGB, it cut across the board into every segment of the nation’s population. He’d even heard noises from the Baltics, and from Ukraine and some of the other breakaway republics, that after all what Tarankov was trying to do was give the nation back its dignity.

  He went to the sideboard, poured another vodka and took his drink back to the window where he lit a cigarette.

  Yeltsin’s chief of staff Zhigalin’s suggestion that the Army and Air Force hunt down Tarankov’s train and destroy it would not work either. The people would certainly rise up against the government, and what little remained of Russia’s shaky democracy would disintegrate into anarchy. That’s if the military would undertake such an operation without tearing itself apart first. There certainly would be desertions, and possibly an outright revolution amongst the troops, and much of the officer’s corps. It might even happen that the army would move against the Kremlin, and when the government was secured invite Tarankov to take over.

  Which once again brought him back to the conclusions he’d drawn several months ago. Tarankov had to be assassinated, but no one in Russia could be trusted to do it. The job would have to be done by an outsider. By someone who in the end could be blamed for the killing, because even if a Russian could be found to kill Tarankov, the people would believe the government had ordered it, and the revolution would explode.

  If an outsider did it the killing could be laid on the doorstep of a foreign country, or at the very least it could be portrayed as the act of a lone gunman. A nut. Another Lee Harvey Oswald, who the Warren Commission determined had worked alone, not as a conspirator hired by the Soviet Union.

  He’d shied away from that concept as well as he could through the summer and fall. But each time news of Tarankov’s exploits came to him, he was drawn back to the inevitability of the idea.

  In October he’d cautiously broached the subject with his old friend Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, the director of the Russian Human Rights Commission that Gorbachev had founded after the Kremlin Coup. Sukhoruchkin had agreed wholeheartedly without a trace of hesitation. Like Yemlin, though, his only reservation was that the assassin would only get one chance so he would have to be very good. He’d also suggested that between them they attempt to build a power base of support for die idea among the people who had the most to lose by a Tarankov dictatorship.

  By the first of the year it became painfully clear to both men that task they’d set themselves to was not only dangerous — they had no idea who to trust or learn who they were — but it was foolish. No one in Russia could be trusted with such a secret. So Yemlin did the next best thing by contacting his old mentor Eduard Shevardnadze, president of Georgia, who would have as much to lose under Tarankov as they would.

  Shevardnadze had agreed only to discuss the issue, and only when Yemlin felt that there were no other options left to them, and that time was running out.

  Yemlin put out his cigarette, finished his drink and rinsed the glass in the kitchen sink. He pulled on his greatcoat and went down to a pay phone in the metro station a block away. He never used his home telephone for important calls, nor did he bother having it swept. All the old checks and balances were in place in the SVR, which meant all but the most senior officers were spot checked from time to time. The easiest and most cost effective way to do that was by monitoring telephone calls and opening mail. But Yemlin had been around for a long time, and he had a few tricks up his own sleeve.

  Sukhoruchkin answered the telephone at his home on the second ring. “Da?”

  “Meet me at the airport.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes,” Yemlin said. “It’s time.”

  Yemlin called his contact at Vnukovo domestic airport. “We would like to go flying this evening, Valeri.”

  “It’s a lovely night for it,” his pilot replied. “The tops are low, so once we get above all this shit you’ll be able to see the full moon.”

  “We’ll be returning in the morning.”

  “As you wish.”

  Yemlin’s final call was to a special number in the SVR’s communications complex. After one ring he got a dial tone for an international line that could not, by design, be monitored. In two minutes he was connected with the residential quarters of the president of Georgia.

  “This is Viktor Pavlovich.”

  “I expected you would call this evening,” Eduard Shevardnadze said.

  “Konstantin and I would like to see you tonight. Will you be free?”

  “Are you calling from Moscow?”

  “Da. But we can get down there by midnight unofficially if you will have a car and driver to meet us.”

  “What’s the tail number of your airplane?”

  Yemlin told him.

  “Take care, my old friend. Once a word is out of your mouth you can’t swallow it again.”

  It was an old Russian proverb which Yemlin understood well. He hung up and headed for a cab stand.

  Tbilisi, Georgia

  The aging Learjet, which Yemlin occasionally leased from a private enterprise he’d set up ten years ago for a KGB-sponsored project, touched down at Tbilisi’s international airport a few minutes before midnight.” As promised the 1500-kilometer flight above the clouds had been smooth, the full moon dramatically illuminating the thick clouds below them until they broke out in the clear at the rising wall of the Caucasus Mountains.

  They were directed along a taxiway to the opposite side of the airport from the main terminal, where they were met by a Zil limousine and driver, who took them directly into the bustling city of more than a million people.

  Although Tbilisi was on a high plain in the mountains it was much warmer than Moscow. And it seemed more prosperous than the Russian capital, with cleaner, brighter streets and shops, though closed at this hour, displaying a wide variety of consumer goods. Georgia was not without its problems, but they were being ad dressed and slowly solved under Shevardnadze’s capable leadership. All that would change for the worse, Yemlin thought, if Tarankov was successful.

  They were brought to the rear courtyard of the presidential palace off Rustavelli Boulevard and were immediately escorted inside to a small private study on the second floor. Heavy drapes covered the windows, and a fire burned on the grate. The book-lined room seemed like a pleasant refuge.

  Shevardnadze joined them a few moments later. He wore a warmup suit, and carried a book, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked serious. “Gentlemen, this is a meeting I’d hoped would never come about,” he said, and they shook hands.

  “I agree, Mr. President. This is not our finest hour,” Sukhoruchkin replied. Unlike Yemlin and Shevardnadze, he was tall and very thin, with large round eyes under thick black eyebrows. Although he was of the same
age his long hair, always in disarray, was startlingly black. He looked like the brilliant academic he was. Before he’d become director of the Human Rights Commission he’d been one of Russia’s finest writers and philosophers. He and Yemlin had known each other since boyhood, and had married sisters. Sukhoruchkin’s wife had died last year.

  “You’re in accord with Viktor Pavlovich?” “I’m a man of peace, a philosophy I’ve espoused and taught all of my life. I believe to the depth of my soul in nonviolence. But now I regret to have to say that I believe just as deeply that there may be no other solution to the problem at hand.”

  “A problem we all share,” Yemlin said.

  Shevardnadze nodded. He put his book down, took off his glasses and motioned for them to have a seat in armchairs in front of the fire. He sat on the leather couch.

  “I’m assuming that Yeltsin didn’t die of a heart attack, though my intelligence service cannot tell me anything different.”

  “He was assassinated by one of Tarankov’s men who posed as a presidential security service lieutenant colonel,” Yemlin said. “He planted a radio-controlled bomb last night, and waited in Red Square this morning until Yeltsin showed up for work, and pushed the button.

  “You wouldn’t be here now if he were in custody.” Yemlin shrugged. “It’s a moot point, Mr. President. Whether we had him or not — and you’re correct, we don’t — the attack on our Riga power station, and Yeltsin’s assassination are Tarankov’s doing, and we would have to go after him anyway. But now I believe he may have a plan to grab the presidency before the June elections.”

  “Which Yeltsin would have lost,” Shevardnadze said. “Why is Tarankov taking such a risk?”

  “Because Yeltsin ordered his arrest by whatever means of force necessary. He meant to put him on trial.”

  Shevardnadze shook his head. “Tarankov would probably have been acquitted, and it would have destroyed Yeltsin’s government.”

  “The Prime Minister has ordered the same thing,” Sukhoruchkin said. “He means to arrest Tarankov and place the man on public trial, which in itself should be the correct action to take.”