Джозеф Файндер - The Moscow Club

An edge of desperation had crept into the chairman’s voice, despite the gentle, confident tone he was now assuming. “I can offer you amnesty. I will allow the CIA to arrange your removal from the Soviet Union. That is a very generous offer.”

“Please don’t force me to kill you,” Stone said. “I’ve been forced to kill before, and I’m quite willing to do so once more.”

Stefan began to say something, but was silenced by Stone’s glare. Not a word, Stone had instructed him. Neither Stefan nor Svetlov was to speak. This was to be Stone’s operation entirely.

“There is an old Russian saying,” the chairman said. “ ‘A man who is buried before his time will live longer.’ ” As he talked, he slowly, slowly, turned the gun directly at the American and got the man’s head within his sights.

“All right,” Stone said. “Place your gun down on the seat in front of you. Carefully. Know that if you make any sudden moves you can only hit one of us, and then you will immediately be killed. At the same time, we will place our weapons down on the hood of the car. Agreed?”

Pavlichenko nodded. “What do you want?”

“We want to take you into Red Square,” Stone said. “As simple as that. You will issue the proper instructions, and then we will release you.”

“Fair enough.” He extended his gun on the flat of his hand, moving it slowly toward the front seat, leaning forward as he did so.

“Carefully,” Stone said. “Remember, there are two guns trained on you. You have one. We want to be fair about this.” He, too, placed his pistol on his palm and moved it toward the ambulance’s hood.

“Drop both of them,” Pavlichenko ordered. The men were not murderers, he realized with relief. They had assessed the odds, knowing that they would never escape. They were being foolish, of course, but they could not know how foolish.

“Now,” Stone said. Stefan let his revolver fall to the ground. Stone dropped the gun on to the car, and at the moment it clunked onto the metal, bouncing once, Pavlichenko dropped his on the front seat, and leaned back.

“Well, then,” the chairman said. He smiled, knowing what would soon happen to these three men, and he glanced at the American. For a moment, he thought he saw a pinpoint of red light.

He looked again: yes, a red pinpoint of light.

And then he saw what the American was holding aloft: a remote transmitter, the sort of thing one used to detonate a car bomb.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Pavlichenko asked. His composure was shot through with fear; his voice had actually begun to tremble. The American was edging his thumb over to the white button on the side of the device. “Who gave you that?” he asked. “Was it someone within my organization? That’s a KGB-issue device, isn’t it?”

“We’re all chess pieces to you, aren’t we?” Stone asked, his thumb millimeters away from the detonator. He watched Pavlichenko sitting on the edge of his stretcher in the ambulance, saw the chairman’s powerful body, his unnaturally dark hair, his pasty, coarse complexion and sturdy features. So this was the man. What did it take to claw your way to the top of Moscow’s slipperiest pole? And then to plot to bring it all down around you? “The Kramers, me, my father – we’re all part of your plan, isn’t that right? You never knew my father, did you?”

“Whoever gave you that must surely be the person who wishes to bomb Lenin’s mausoleum,” Pavlichenko said. “Do you know who he is? We can find him. I’m a sick man, but you can help me. Get me to a phone and I can call some people. We can stop this thing together.” He smiled. “No, my friend, I have no idea who your father was.”

Yes. Pavlichenko knew Alfred Stone was dead. Pavlichenko had ordered Alfred Stone s death.

Everything came together. The anger was almost kaleidoscopic, the flash of emotions hypnotic. Stone felt a sudden calm, remembering his father’s murder, remembering Paula. He remembered Lehman, feeling a newfound compassion. This man, this very ordinary man in the back of the ambulance, this madman …

Pavlichenko was now speaking directly to Stefan. “You can help your Motherland in a time of need,” he said to the Russian. He suddenly leaped forward and snatched his gun, firing at the Russian behind him, but the shots shattered the side and rear windows of the ambulance and cut through the air, harmlessly. He whirled around and grabbed the handle of the ambulance’s back door.

Locked.

“How did you know we meant a bomb in the mausoleum?” Stone said, his voice calmly inquisitive. “We said nothing about a bomb.”

Pavlichenko aimed his pistol at the American and listened for a moment, overtaken by curiosity.

Stone clutched the live transmitter and moved his thumb over toward the white button. His voice was choked with emotion. “This is for my father,” he said, and pressed the button, detonating the bundle of dynamite affixed to the underside of the ambulance’s gas tank, setting off a colossal, thundering explosion, leaving a roaring ball of fire where the car had been a moment before.

It was 9:55.

9:56 a.m.

Sonya Kunetskaya, half mad with apprehension, returned to her apartment building. She had gone out to make a call from a pay phone, a call to her father. To tell him what she’d just learned from Charlie. But there was no answer at his hotel room, and she wondered whether he had left to go to Red Square for the Revolution Day ceremony. He had said he was not going to go. Where was he?

She had to talk to her father once more; and she had to talk to Charlie, to tell him face to face what she had been afraid to tell him.

A green van was parked in front of the building, its license plates unmistakably belonging to the KGB.

Sonya knew. They had come for Yakov, Stefan – and her. No, please. Her knees felt weak; she could barely walk; but somehow she got herself to the entryway, and then stopped.

She heard voices from the stairwell. Men’s voices, echoing.

She turned and walked out of the stairwell and across the courtyard, concealed herself behind a column, and watched.

A cluster of figures emerged. A KGB soldier, and another one, and – and Yakov. Handcuffed. And another KGB soldier.

She wanted to scream. All she wanted to do was to run to him, to save them, but even in her crazed grief she knew that was impossible.

They will arrest me, she thought, and then it will all be over.

If I want to help Yakov, I must run. I must not let them get me, too.

Did they get Stefan?

No , she thought, as she edged her way along the apartment building. No, please. Protect us all.

On the two occasions a year when the Soviet Politburo reviews parades in Red Square from atop Lenin’s tomb, they normally emerge from the Kremlin through a door just behind the mausoleum and mount the porphyry steps outside. There have been times, however, when, for reasons of inclement weather or the ill health of a leader, the members have instead chosen to take the underground passageway from the basement of the Council of Ministers building. In his later years, Leonid Brezhnev favored approaching the tomb this way, because the several underground passages that lead to the mausoleum are heated, and one of them even contains a toilet, a grave necessity when one is standing in the cold for four or five hours.

This day, for reasons not of poor weather or poor health but of security, the members of the Politburo, joined by the American President and Secretary of State and their wives, assembled in the Council of Ministers building and descended to the underground passage.

There had been too many incidents of terrorism in Moscow, and the Politburo was determined to see that nothing whatsoever happened today. The summit had officially begun, and the meetings would begin in earnest tomorrow. The Politburo wanted everything to go off without a hitch.