Snow Wolf (14 page)

Nadia stood there wearing a pale blue
dressing gown. Her head of red hair was down around her shoulders. He saw the
slight rise in her belly and smiled.

"Did I wake you?"

She smiled back sleepily. "You
always wake me. Are you coming to bed?"

"Soon."

Even that early she looked very pretty.
Far too pretty for him, Lukin always thought. She was nineteen and he thirty
when they first met at the summer wedding of a friend. As the wedding band
played, she had smiled across the table at him and said impishly, "What's
the matter?

Don't KGB officers dance?"

He smiled back. "Only if somebody
shoots at them."

She had laughed, and something in her
girlish laugh and the way she had looked at him with her soft green eyes made
him know he was going to love her. Within six months they had married. And now,
three years later, she was four months pregnant and Lukin felt happier than he
ever imagined.

She came over to sit on his knee and
began to massage his neck. He could feel her small, girlish breasts brush
against his chest.

"How was your night shift?"

"You don't want to know, my
love."

"Tell me anyhow."

He told her about his morning's work.

:"You think it's true about the
doctors?"

"It's probably Beria up to his
tricks again. He enjoys killing."

He felt the hands stop massaging his neck
and saw the shock on his wife's face.

."Yuri, you shouldn't say such
things. You never know who might be listening."

"But it's true. You know how the
head of State Security gets his kicks?

Marakov, his driver, told me. He's
driving along and Beria sees a pretty young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen
years old. He has her arrested on trumped-up charges and rapes her. If she
dares to protest, he has her shot. Sometimes he has her shot anyway. And
nothing is done to stop him."

"Yuri, please. Skokov might he
listening."

Every apartment block, every house, had
its KGB informer. Skokov, the block janitor who lived on the ground floor, was
theirs. It wasn't beyond the man to crease his ear against someone's door.
Lukin saw the fear in his wife's eyes and stood and cupped her face in his
hands and kissed her forehead.

"Let me get us some coffee."

Nadia shook her head. "Look at you.
You're tense. You need something better than coffee."

"And what would you suggest?"

Nadia smiled. "Me, of course."

Lukin saw her pull back her dressing gown
to reveal her flimsy pink underwear. Even though she was petite, she had
perfect legs and full hips, and there was something faintly erotic about the
gentle rise of her stomach which embarrassed him.

She smiled. "A surprise for you,
Yuri Andreovitch. I bought them on the black market."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Where else in Moscow can a woman
buy underwear like this? You don't think Comrade Stalin would have me sent to
Siberia for a pair of panties?"

As she laughed she brushed herself
against his body. Lukin smiled despite himself. "Do you know what the
French say?"

"No, but I think you're going to
tell me."

"When a woman opens her legs for a
man, her secrets fly away like butterflies."

He looked into her face. "But with
you, somehow the secrets multiply."

He kissed her forehead and her arms went
around him. "I love you, Nadia."

"Then come to bed."

He gently caressed her belly. "You
don't think making love would be bad for the baby?"

"No, silly, it would be good for the
baby." She giggled. "Make the most of it while you can. In another
few months you'll have to keep your fly closed."

She took his hand and led him into the
bedroom. The bed was still warm as Lukin and his wife made love, and beyond the
glass the early morning traffic hummed as Moscow came awake.

Washington, D.C. January 22nd The
collection of wooden buildings on the bank of the Potomac River looked to the
passerby like a dismal, run-down barracks.

The walls inside were pockmarked with
holes, the plaster ceilings were smudged with damp stains, and the rain leaked
through the fragile roof. The view from the two-story building was equally
dismal: a decayed red-brick brewery and a distant roller-skating rink. Only a
handful of the shabby buildings had the distinction of overlooking the famous
reflecting pool further along the river.

Originally a First World War army
barracks, the ramshackle collection of wooden huts had later housed the offices
of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the organization responsible for
America's wartime foreign intelligence. Transformed only in name and function
four years after the Second World War, the buildings now housed America's
Central Intelligence Agency.

Fresh CIA recruits, expecting their role
in intelligence work to be glamorous, soon found their expectations rapidly
diminished when they got their first glimpse of their dingy offices. It was
difficult to believe that these same buildings had been home to one of the most
intrepid wartime agencies, one that had taken on the collective intelligence
might of Germany and Japan.

The CIA barracks complex was divided into
sections with alphabetic titles. The "Q" building, overlooking the
river, housed the section known simply as the Soviet Operations Division.
Living up to its title, it was here that highly sensitive and secret operations
were planned and executed against the Soviet Union, clandestine work known only
to a handful of highly trusted and trained senior intelligence and government
personnel.

The office at the end of a long corridor
on the second floor of the building had no title on the door, just a four-digit
number.

It was pretty much like all the other
offices, with the same green desk and filing cabinet and standard-issue
calendar, but on the desk alongside the photograph of his wife and two grown
children, Karl Branigan had placed a Japanese officer's ceremonial dagger.on a
brass mounting.

At fifty-six, Branigan was a blubbery but
muscular man with a tightly cropped GI haircut and a fleshy ruddy face. Despite
his name he was neither Irish nor German in background but third-generation
Polish, the surname arrived at by having a Brooklyn-Irish cop for a stepfather.
And despite the closecropped army haircut and the ceremonial dagger, Branigan
had never seen front-line action but had been a desk-bound intelligence officer
most of his working life. But the presence of the keepsake gave some indication
of Branigan's character. He was certainly a tough man, a man who made decisions
quickly and decisively, who was almost savage in his dedication to duty, and as
a senior CIA officer those virtues were valued by his superiors.

It was almost two o'clock that cold
January afternoon when his secretary rang to say that Jake Massey had arrived.

Branigan told her to organize a car to
take them to the morgue.

A small elevator led down to the morgue.
There was just enough room for the three passengers-Massey, Branigan, and the
attendant.

When the elevator halted and the
attendant opened the door, they were in a cold, large, white-tiled room with
four metal tables at the far end. Two of the tables had forms under the white
sheets. The attendant pulled back the sheet on the first table.

Shock and a terrible anger registered on
Massey's face when he looked at the body underneath.

The man's face was frozen and white as
marble, distorted in death, but he at once recognized the features. There was a
hole drilled through Max Simon's forehead, a purple swelling surrounding the
wounded flesh. Massey noticed the traces of a powder burn around the skull
wound, then the tattoo of a white dove above his wrist. He grimaced and nodded
and the attendant drew back the sheet and moved to the second table.

When the sheet was pulled back this time,
Massey wanted to be sick.

He saw the perfect white face of the
child, the eyelids closed, the same neat hole in the flesh of the forehead.
Nina lay on the metal table as though asleep. Her long dark hair had been
combed and for a moment Massey thought that if he touched her she might come
awake. Then he noticed the dark purple bruises on the body, around the arms and
neck, and the marks where the forest rodents had gnawed at her flesh.

The attendant pulled the white sheet over
the girl's body and the two men turned and left the room.

Jake Massey and Karl Branigan had known
each other for almost twelve years and their relationship had not improved with
time.

There was often an air like crackling
electricity between the two men which some claimed was the result of
professional rivalry. Both were capable and hardened men and both were
dangerous to cross. Today, however, Branigan seemed civilized and courteous.
"Tell me how it happened."

Branigan hesitated. "I guess you and
Max Simon were friends a long time?"

"Thirty years. I was Nina's godfather.
Max was one of the best people we had." Massey's face suddenly flushed
angrily. "Goddamn it, Branigan, why were they killed? Who did it?"

"We'll come to that later."
Branigan's hand stretched to a cigarette box on the table, popped a cigarette
in his mouth and lit it. He didn't offer Massey one.

"But I'm sure you realize that what
happened to Max and his daughter was an execution pure and simple. They were
both shot in the head at close range. I assume the girl was killed because she
saw whoever shot her father, or they meant her death as a further
warning."

"They?"

"Moscow, of course."

"What do you mean, a warning?"

"Max was gathering some pretty
sensitive information for us before he was killed. We didn't know about the
deaths until a routine Interpol report reached our office in Paris. We had the
bodies identified and shipped back." Branigan hesitated. "Max arrived
in Lucerne from Paris on the eighth of last month, after traveling from
Washington. He took his daughter with him for the trip. She'd been ill
recently, and he wanted her to see a Swiss doctor."

"Is that the reason he was in
Switzerland?"

"No, it wasn't. He was there to
arrange a meeting with a highly placed contact from the Soviet Embassy in
Berne. They were to meet in Lucerne, but Max never made the meeting, nor did
his contact. We think Max and his girl were abducted from their hotel, or maybe
outside in the street. The police checked but no one saw anything. You know the
Swiss, they're upright citizens. They see you parking a car on the wrong
fucking side of the street and they scream for the cops. It would have been
reported if anyone had seen an abduction. But one thing the Swiss police do
know is that the hunter, Kass, stumbled on the executions, tried to stop them,
and was killed for his trouble."

A flood of anger registered again on
Massey's face and he stood and crossed to the window. "Why did they have
to murder the girl, Karl? She was only ten years old."

"Because we both know the people who
did it are ruthless bastards. Simple as that."

"Have you any idea who murdered
them?"

"Why'? You got revenge on your
mind?"

"A year ago Max Simon moved out of
my operation in Munich to work for Washington. Now he's dead and I'd like to
know why."

"Who did it I can tell you pretty
much with certainty. A man named Borovik. Gregori Borovik. We think he followed
Max from this country and was ordered to kill him in Switzerland. Borovik's not
his real name. He uses a whole lot of aliases. Kurt Braun is one. Kurt Linhoff
is another. I could go on but you get the picture."

"Who is he?"

"A hired killer the Soviets use. He
belongs to one of their hit squads. The guys Moscow take from prisons and put
on the payroll to do their dirty work in return for their freedom. He is a
German national, speaks English and Russian fluently. Operates all over the
goddamned place. Europe and Stateside, and a mean son-of-a-bitch if ever there
was one. We've got at least three murders put down to him. But I'd get revenge
out of your mind. Besides, we've got other plans for you."

"What plans?"

Branigan smiled. "All in good time.
And it's revenge of E kind if you care to look at it that way."

Massey sat down. "Then tell me what
it was Max was doing for you that cost the lives of him and his daughter."

Branigan shrugged. "I guess I can
tell you that. He'd been buying information from the Soviet embassy official I
told YOU about, information important to Washington. Only someone in Moscow got
to hear about it and didn't like it one little bit. That official was called
back home. What happened to him you can guess."

"What sort of information?"

"Pretty high-grade stuff out of the
Kremlin. Some of it pretty hot."

"How hot?"