Duel of Assassins Read Free

the old man spat. “What kept you? I’ve been
expecting you vermin for months now.”
    “Traitors have reason to expect us. Unless you confess your
crimes at once, Rodion Igorovich, and tell us everything, you will be shot here
and now.” As an added insult to the senior officer, Starkov had employed the
familiar form of address.
    “Confess what? What’s my treason?”
    “Conspiracy to assassinate President Rybkin.”
    Marchenko tilted the vodka bottle to his lips. Starkov—along
with his men—couldn’t help noticing the military honors arrayed on the wall
behind the colonel general—Hero of the Soviet Union, orders of Suvorov,
Kutuzov, Aleksandr Nevsky and the Red Star, decorations and flashes for battle
wounds in Egypt, Vietnam, Afghanistan.
    “If it’s treason to want to stop Alois Maksimovich from
destroying our homeland, I’m guilty, and so is most of the Red Army—and so
should you be, Comrade Chekist. I am a patriot. Rybkin is the traitor. Which
is, of course, why he sends thugs in the middle of the night to execute me.
He’s afraid to put me on trial. He knows he’d have a full-scale Army revolt on
his hands.”
    “Is that your whole confession, Rodion Igorovich?”
    “All you’re going to get, shitface. So why don’t you give
the order? Come on, you bastards, shoot me!” All eyes were on Starkov, who did
not react. The old man snorted. “What are you waiting for? Did Rybkin hand you
a list of questions to ask before you can pull the trigger? Like why I’ve been
such a docile fellow, making no protest when he stripped me of my rocket
command and exiled me to this shithole? The answer is simple. I like teaching kolkhoz boys how to dig latrines in the spring mud.” Marchenko
chuckled, took another pull of vodka, banged the bottle down, wiped his lips.
“Either that, or I’ve got one last ace up my asshole.”
    “If you’ve got an ace hidden anywhere, old man, you’ve
waited too long to play it against Rybkin.”
    “I was waiting for just the right moment. And now it’s here.
I will stop this madman, Comrade Chekist, and you and your stormtroopers
cannot stop me.”
    “We already have, Comrade General. We’ve been watching you
for months, you know, tracing your treasonous little network. We’re shutting it
down completely tonight. Removing your conspirators in a dozen military
districts. And we know from our interrogations that your plans for overthrowing
the President are a very long way from complete.”
    “For overthrowing, yes. Not for killing the bastard. For
that I just have to give the word.”
    “Go ahead. I’d like to see this, Comrade, since we’ve severed
every means of communication from this place.”
    Marchenko finished the bottle, set it down gently this time.
“Alas for your ass-licking career, Comrade Chekist, you haveoverlooked one
means of communication.”
    “What?”
    “Pigeon.”
    Starkov stared at the old rocketry general without comprehension.
Marchenko acted tipsy; was he delusional as well? Yet, despite himself, the KGB
officer raked his glance once more over the small office—past books, encased
medals and orders, dusty regalia that included a cavalry saber and saddle,
photos of rocket launchings, family gatherings, officer academy gradu-ations.
There were no carrier pigeons, no birds of any kind.
    “Pigeon?” Starkov said, at a loss.
    Marchenko smiled for the first time, revealing several
stainless-steel teeth. He tapped the rocket tube and repeated the word: Golub ,
“dove” or “pigeon.” Then he pressed the wireless ignition switch concealed in
his palm.
    From the base of the Golub there came an explosive
whoosh, and the projectile, in a compressed-gas cold launch, shot out of its
silo tube toward the roof—and a skylight that flew open before it, framing a
square of night.
    Startled, Starkov and several others swung their AKRs,
firing upward bursts at the vanishing missile. It seemed they had hit their
target when a gout of flame exploded