‘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.
30
ZERIMSKI 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:
RETURN OF THE COLD WAR?
As he sipped his coffee, he mused for a moment on what the Post might lead with the following morning.
ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT FAILS
Former CIA Agent Gunned Down
in Embassy Grounds
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.
As each day passed, Connor had noticed that his minders had become more and more relaxed. At roughly the same time every morning he had jumped out of the BMW at the corner of Twenty-First Street and DuPont Circle, bought a copy of the Post from a newsvendor and returned to the
car. Yesterday the man in the back seat hadn’t even bothered to accompany him.
They crossed Twenty-Third Street, and Connor could see DuPont Circle in the distance. The cars were now bumper to bumper, and had almost ground to a halt. On the other side of the street the traffic heading west was moving far more smoothly. He would need to judge exactly when to make his move.
Connor knew that the lights on P Street approaching the Circle changed every thirty seconds, and on average twelve cars managed to get across during that time. The most he’d counted during the week was sixteen.
When the light turned red, Connor counted seventeen cars ahead of them. He didn’t move a muscle. The light switched to green and the driver changed into first gear, but the traffic was so heavy that it was some time before he was able to edge forward. Only eight cars crawled through the light.