Black Knight in Red Square by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page B

quickly, but the KGB, which had been watching the building, moved even faster. The death of Vukovo blew the operation. Drozhkin had no choice. He cursed the terrorists; he cursed his wife; he cursed Rostnikov, but he did so silently. On the surface he remained composed. He moved instantly to recover what he might from this failure. He told his assistant to bring in the terrorists immediately, and he made it clear that if they resisted, they were to be destroyed.
    Shortly after one on that Friday afternoon, Robert, the Frenchman, stepped into the street carrying his belongings in a small sack. The first stutter of shots came before he was across the sidewalk, stitching a line across his chest.
    Seven shut the door as Robert went down. She shouted into the street, “Death to the East and West!” but no one heard her over the roar of guns.
    Fouad and Ali headed for the rear of the apartment where a small window opened on a side street. Neither expected it to be unguarded, but it was their only choice.
    When the first burst of gunfire came from the apartment, Dmitri Kolomensk, a sergeant who had been on seven similar missions in his almost forty years, ordered his men to launch three grenades through the windows of the apartment.
    Kolomensk thought he heard a woman scream something the instant before the first explosion. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care. This meant that he would have to prepare a tedious report and answer a series of questions put to him by Colonel Drozhkin. The hell with it, he thought, and ordered the men to launch more grenades through the apartment’s back windows. The entire operation took no more than four minutes.
    â€œAt least the building’s not burning,” Kolomensk said. “Go in and see what there is.”
    The KGB agents found the bodies of four members of World Liberation, a variety of rubble, and the remnants of furniture. However, the sack that the Frenchman had dropped in the street proved to be a far more interesting discovery.
    Kolomensk dropped the papers back into the sack, hurried to the waiting car, and told the driver to get back to Lubyanka as fast as he could.
    The papers consisted of a series of black and white maps of Moscow with red circles penciled in at various locations. Kolomensk didn’t stop to consider what they might mean. He saw them only as a potential buffer between himself and the wrath of Colonel Drozhkin.
    In spite of the noise, no curious onlookers appeared for perhaps ten minutes. It was best in Moscow not to be too near trouble. One so easily became a part of it. But curiosity is a marvelously strong motivator, and they eventually began to trickle past, kept in control by gray-uniformed policemen.
    â€œA homemade bomb,” one man confided to a young woman who nodded as they moved slowly down the street.
    â€œGas explosion,” said a well-dressed man carrying a briefcase.
    â€œGas explosions are not accompanied by gunfire,” said a woman behind him, who was taking in as much as she could.
    Behind this small group of gawkers came a woman with short, straight brown hair and very dark eyes behind black-framed glasses. She did not gawk with the others. In fact, she seemed to be a secretary or clerk who wanted nothing but to get past this road impediment and go to work. She did not need to look. The smell was familiar.
    Now she would have to activate the alternative plan, and she would have to do it far more quickly than she had planned and with far less reliable people, but there was no longer any choice. She did not consider abandoning the project. There were too many reasons to go ahead. First, she had to maintain her reputation. Second, she wanted to do it. This was what she lived for, and she did it better, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. She knew how to destroy, and destroy she would.
    A taxi would have taken her to the Rossyia Hotel faster than the metro, but she preferred the crowds. Instead of heading