The Eleventh Commandment (1998) (44 page)

Connor spent several hours that evening wondering if he could risk breaking the rule of a lifetime. He phoned Romanov a few minutes after midnight.

The Russian seemed delighted that they had both come to the same conclusion. ‘I’ll arrange for a driver to pick you up at three thirty so you can be at the Embassy by four.’

Connor put the phone down. If everything went to plan, the President would be dead by four.

Wake him up.’

‘But it’s four o’clock in the morning,’ said the First Secretary.

‘If you value your life, wake him up.’

The First Secretary threw on a dressing gown, ran out of his bedroom and down the corridor. He knocked on the door. There was no response, so he knocked again. A few moments later, a light appeared under the door.

‘Come in,’ said a sleepy voice. The First Secretary turned the handle and entered the Ambassador’s bedroom.

‘I am sorry to disturb you, Your Excellency, but there’s a Mr Stefan Ivanitsky on the line from St Petersburg. He insists that we wake the President. He says he has an urgent message for him.’

‘I’ll take the call in my study,’ said Pietrovski. He threw back the blanket, ignoring the groans of his wife, ran downstairs and told the night porter to transfer the call to his study.

The phone rang several times before it was eventually picked up by a slightly breathless Ambassador. ‘Pietrovski speaking.’

‘Good morning, Your Excellency,’ said Ivanitsky. ‘I asked to be put through to the President, not to you.’

‘But it’s four o’clock in the morning. Can’t it wait?’

‘Ambassador, I don’t pay you to tell me the time. The next voice I want to hear is the President’s. Do I make myself clear?’

The Ambassador put the receiver down on his desk and walked slowly back up the wide staircase to the first floor, trying to decide which of the two men he was more frightened of. He stood outside the door of the President’s suite for some time, but the sight of the First Secretary hovering at the top of the stairs stiffened his resolve. He tapped gently on the door, but there was no response. He knocked a little louder, and tentatively opened it.

In the light from the landing the Ambassador and the First Secretary could see Zerimski stirring in his bed. What they didn’t see was the President’s hand slipping under the pillow, where a pistol was concealed.

‘Mr President,’ whispered Pietrovski as Zerimski switched on the light by the side of his bed.

‘This had better be important,’ said Zerimski, ‘unless you want to spend the rest of your days as refrigerator inspectors in Siberia.’

‘We have a call for you from St Petersburg,’ said the Ambassador, almost in a whisper. ‘A Mr Stefan Ivanitsky. He says it’s urgent.’

‘Get out of my room,’ said Zerimski as he picked up the phone by his bed.

The two men stepped backwards into the corridor and the Ambassador quietly closed the door.

‘Stefan,’ said Zerimski. ‘Why are you calling at this hour? Has Borodin staged a coup in my absence?’

‘No, Mr President. The Czar is dead.’ Ivanitsky spoke without emotion.

‘When? Where? How?’

‘About an hour ago, at the Winter Palace. The colourless liquid finally got him.’ Ivanitsky paused. ‘The butler has been on my payroll for almost a year.’

The President was silent for a few moments before saying, ‘Good. It couldn’t have worked out better for us.’

‘I would agree, Mr President, were it not for the fact that his son is in Washington. There’s very little I can do from this end until he returns.’

‘That problem may resolve itself this evening,’ said Zerimski.

‘Why? Have they fallen into our little trap?’

‘Yes,’ said Zerimski. ‘By tonight I shall have disposed of both of them.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes,’ the President replied. ‘I have learned an appropriate new expression since I’ve been over here - “killing two birds with one stone”. After all, how many times does one have the chance to see the same man die twice?’

‘I wish I was there to witness it.’

‘I’m going to enjoy it even more than I did watching his friend dangling from a rope. All things considered, Stefan, this will have been a most successful trip, especially if …’

‘It’s all been taken care of, Mr President,’ said Ivanitsky. ‘I arranged yesterday for the income from the Yeltsin and Chernopov oil and uranium contracts to be diverted to your Zurich account. That is, unless Alexei countermands my orders when he returns.’

‘If he doesn’t return, he won’t be able to, will he?’ Zerimski put the phone down, switched off the light, and fell asleep again within moments.

At five o’clock that morning Connor was lying motionless on his bed, fully dressed. He was going over his escape route when the wake-up call came through at six. He rose, pulled back a corner of the curtain and checked that they were still there. They were: two white BMWs parked on the far side of the street, as they had been since midnight the previous evening. By now their occupants would be drowsy. He knew they changed shifts at eight, so he planned to leave ten minutes before the hour. He spent the next thirty minutes carrying out some light stretching exercises to get rid of his stiffness, then stripped off his clothes. He allowed the cold jets of the shower to needle his body for some time before he turned it off and grabbed a towel. Then he dressed in a blue shirt, a pair of jeans, a thick sweater, a blue tie, black socks and a pair of black Nikes with the logo painted out.

He went into the small kitchenette, poured himself a glass of grapefruit juice and filled a bowl with cornflakes and milk. He always ate the same meal on the day of an operation. He liked routine. It helped him believe everything else would run smoothly. As he ate, he read over the seven pages of notes he had made following his meeting with Pug, and once again minutely studied an architect’s plan of the stadium. He measured the girder with a ruler, and estimated that it was forty-two feet to the trapdoor. He mustn’t look down. He felt the calm come over him that a finely-tuned athlete experiences when called to the starting line.

He checked his watch and returned to the bedroom. They had to be at the intersection of Twenty-First Street and DuPont Circle just as the traffic was building up. He waited a few more minutes, then put three hundred-dollar bills, a quarter and a thirty-minute audiocassette in the back pocket of his jeans. He then left the anonymous apartment for the last time. His account had already been settled.

Z
ERIMSKI SAT ALONE
in the Embassy dining room reading the
Washington Post
as a butler served him breakfast. He smiled when he saw the banner headline:

As he sipped his coffee, he mused for a moment on what the
Post
might lead with the following morning.

He smiled again, and turned to the editorial, which confirmed that Lawrence’s Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Conventional Arms Reduction Bill was now considered by all the leading commentators to be ‘dead in the water’. Another useful expression he had picked up on this trip.

At a few minutes past seven he rang the silver bell by his side and asked the butler to fetch the Ambassador and the First Secretary. The butler hurried away. Zerimski knew both men were already standing anxiously outside the door.

The Ambassador and the First Secretary thought they should wait for a minute or two before joining the President. They were still uncertain if he was pleased to have been woken at four in the morning, but as neither of them had yet been fired, they assumed that they must have made the right decision.

‘Good morning, Mr President,’ said Pietrovski as he entered the dining room.

Zerimski nodded, folded the paper and placed it on the table in front of him. ‘Has Romanov arrived yet?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Mr President,’ said the First Secretary. ‘He has been in the kitchen since six o’clock this morning, personally checking the food that’s being delivered for tonight’s banquet.’

‘Good. Ask him to join us in your study, Mr Ambassador. I will be along shortly.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pietrovski, retreating backwards out of the room.

Zerimski wiped his mouth with a napkin. He decided to keep the three of them waiting for a few more minutes. That would make them even more nervous.

He returned to the
Washington Post,
smiling as he read the editorial’s conclusion for a second time: ‘Zerimski is the natural successor to Stalin and Brezhnev, rather than Gorbachev or Yeltsin.’ He had no quarrel with that; in fact he hoped that before the day was out he would have reinforced that image. He rose from his chair and strolled out of the room. As he walked down the corridor towards the Ambassador’s study, a young man coming from the opposite direction stopped in his tracks, rushed over to the door and opened it for him. A grandfather clock chimed as he entered the room. He instinctively checked his watch. It was exactly seven forty-five.

At ten minutes to eight, Connor appeared at the entrance of the apartment building and walked slowly across the street to the first of the two BMWs. He climbed in beside a driver who looked a little surprised to see him so early - he’d been told that Fitzgerald wasn’t expected at the Embassy until four o’clock that afternoon.

‘I need to go downtown to pick up a couple of things,’ said Connor. The man in the back nodded, so the driver put the car into first and joined the traffic on Wisconsin Avenue. The second car followed closely behind them as they turned left into P Street, which was thickly congested as a result of the construction work that plagued Georgetown.