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the bastard will do it, and no one will dare to stand up to him.”
    â€œDoes he have the military behind him?”
    â€œHe will,” Yemlin said. “There’s no doubt of it.”
    â€œWhat about the SVR?”
    â€œBy whatever name it’s called, it’s still the KGB.”
    Again a silence fell over them as they each pondered what they were on the verge of agreeing to. It was an impossibly large step, a quantum leap, from the rule of democratic law in which they all believed, to an act of terrorism.
    â€œTarankov must be assassinated,” Yemlin voiced their thought.
    â€œI agree,” Sukhoruchkin said with surprising finnness.
    â€œAs do I,” Shevardnadze said. “But I know of no one in Georgia who is capable of such a thing. Nor do I suspect you’ll find anyone in Russia whom you could trust.”
    Yemlin nodded.
    â€œYou have such a man in mind? A foreigner?”
    â€œ Da .”
    â€œWho is he?”
    â€œAn American, Mr. President. His name is Kirk McGarvey. And if he agrees to take on the job, he’ll do so for the same reasons that we want to hire him.”

SIX
    Paris
    S pring had come early to France. Although it wasn’t the end of March, the last two weeks had been glorious. The sky was pale blue, and each morning dawned crystal clear, as if the air above the great city had been washed and hung out to dry under a warm sun. Along the river the plane trees were budding. In sunny corners of the Tuileries some flowers had already began to bloom. And parks and boulevards and sidewalk cafes were filled with Parisians who’d been cooped up all winter, and with tourists who could scarcely believe their good luck.
    Kirk Collough McGarvey sat with Jacqueline Belleau at a window table in the Restaurant Jules Verne on the third floor of the Eiffel Tower sharing an expensive bottle of Chardonnay while they waited for their lunches to be served. Jacqueline had insisted they come here today because this was where they’d met three months ago, and she was “romantic and French.” He’d
indulged her because it amused him, and he wanted to see what her next move would be. The French secret service, which was called the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionage , or SDECE for short, was usually sophisticated in its business. But sometimes, like now, they were blatantly obvious. Jacqueline had been sent by the SDECE to seduce McGarvey to find out why he was back in Paris. The French were paranoid about former CIA agents taking up residence in their country, though not so paranoid that they would deny such men a visa. “ Hein, l’argent est l’argent, n’est-ce pas? ”
    â€œThat’s a lascivious grin, if ever I’ve seen one,” she said, catching him in his thoughts. “How do you say it, a penny for your thoughts?”
    â€œI was thinking that Paris isn’t like any other city. It keeps getting better.”
    She smiled, her oval, pretty features lighting up as if she were a kid at Christmas. “And that from a crusty old bastard like you.”
    He nodded. “That from a crusty old bastard like me.” He admired her, not only for her stunning good looks—she could easily have been a runway mannequin, though not as thin as most of them were—but for her sharp intelligence and even sharper wit. She was unlike either of his ex-wives, or any other woman he’d ever been involved with. The number wasn’t a legion, but they’d all been memorable because they’d all ended in failed relationships.
    McGarvey, nearing fifty, was tall and muscularly built but with the coordination of a ballet dancer. He had thick brown hair that was turning gray at the temples, a wide, honest face, and penetrating eyes, sometimes green, at other times gray. He ran ten miles every day, rain or shine, from his apartment off the Rue La Fayette in the tenth arrondissement out the Avenue