Page 94 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)
“Are you here to kill me?”
“I’m here to give you options.”
“Oh? Let me hear them.”
“You can work for us.”
“A recruitment? I’m flattered.”
“Become an asset and we can get you out when the time is right. The Agency would set you up in Paris.”
“Unfortunately for your Agency, I am not a traitor like Penkovsky.”
“You can come back with me.”
“To the West? Tonight? Cross into West Berlin? I am tempted, just to see how you got here with that pistol, but no Thomas, I can’t do that.
As much as I love Paris, I still love my country more.
I also gave someone my word that I would not betray the motherland.
I could never defect. So, with recruitment and defection out, what is the third option? ”
Tom looked at the pistol in his hand.
“I see,” the Russian said, taking another long draw on his cigarette. “If you kill me, you will never know the fate of your men in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, even China.”
“You already told the CIA interrogators all about it.”
“True. I doubt your country will ever get their POWs back, not the ones in Siberia anyway.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
“I think I know your country better than you do. Don’t you find it odd that the CIA sent you here to kill me? I’m the connection to American POWs and the Soviet Union. Why do you think they want me dead?”
“As I said, it is only one of your options.”
“The one you prefer I take? Maybe that is why they sent you.”
Tom did not answer.
“Don’t take offense but you seem an odd choice for this assignment,” Dvornikov said.
“We have history, and I speak German. Someone thought I would have the best chance of recruiting or extracting you. I neglected to tell them that I did not plan on selling you very hard on either of those options.” Tom paused.
He thought of the U.S. servicemen languishing in North Vietnamese prison camps.
He thought of American POWs in the Soviet Union. He thought of Ella and Quinn.
Dvornikov closed his eyes, took a draw of his cigarette, and inhaled deeply. He held it for what seemed an eternity before exhaling, the pungent smoke rising toward the yellow light above.
He opened his eyes.
“Want to tell me why you are really here?”
“I told you.”
“Could it be Ella? Such a pity. She was beautiful, that one. And quite a mystery.”
“Yes, she was.”
“You might not believe this, but I do miss her. I loved her, you know, in my own fashion,” Dvornikov said.
“Interesting way of showing it.”
“Says the man who was fucking her at the behest of the CIA. Did you love her? Is that really why you are here? Is this about your dead friend or the dead woman?”
Tom considered the man across from him, remembering the last time he saw Ella—on the floor of a Bangkok hotel with two bullets in her chest—and Quinn, tied to a tree, disemboweled and decapitated.
While the ASP was still pointed at the Russian, his left hand reached into his coat and wrapped around the grip of a small derringer, a Soviet-designed MSP—Malogabaritnyj Spetsialnyy Pistolet.
He pulled a two-piece lever at the base of the trigger guard down and back, cocking the internal hammers of the integrally suppressed double-barreled pistol that had been used to kill Ella.
He felt for the safety, ensured it was ready, and slipped it from his pocket.
“You’ll never know.”
Tom raised the MSP and shot Dvornikov between the eyes.
The Russian’s head snapped back, brain matter and skull fragments exploding behind him. His chin dropped forward as his body became an empty vessel. His left hand remained in his lap and his right fell over the arm of the chair, the lit cigarette dropping to the precast reinforced concrete floor.
After a moment, Tom set the silenced derringer on the table, still pointed at the dead man.
Should he have felt something? He thought of all those he had killed in Vietnam and Laos.
That was a theater of war, fighting combatants who were trying to kill him.
This was a different game with different rules.
I know what I’m good at.
Tom left the weapon where it lay. Though neither it nor its ammunition bore any markings, he knew the GRU would be able to connect it to a GRU Spetsnaz operative who had been killed in Bangkok. He wanted there to be no question as to what had transpired.
Tom stepped on the smoldering cigarette as he walked past the body. He used Dvornikov’s keys to lock the door to the flat and then took the stairs down five flights and exited the building onto the icy sidewalk. The sleet had turned to rain. Did that signal a thaw? A warming?
Was Dvornikov right? Had the CIA sent him to Berlin because they knew he would kill the one known link to American POWs in the Soviet Union?
He pulled up the collar on his overcoat and drew his hat down low, just above his eyes.
He thought about what Serrano had told him in Saigon: I’m starting up something new, a program for which I think you’d be perfect. We call it Phoenix.
Maybe Vietnam was lost, maybe it was really lost before it had begun, or perhaps it was lost along the way.
No matter the trajectory, there was still work to be done in the jungles, deltas, and highlands of Southeast Asia.
If incursions into denied areas were to remain the mission of MACV-SOG, then while his teammates were doing the job, Tom would be there too, protecting them through Phoenix.
There were still targets to eliminate. He also had a Montagnard boy to find in a village outside Khe Sanh.
He had a rosary and a tiger claw to return.
The gray Trabi that had driven Tom into the city slowed to a stop. A woman was in the back seat. It was the woman from the apartment. Tom opened the passenger door and got in next to the driver. Without a word, the vehicle pulled back onto the street and continued on into the night.