ONE
Blaine McCracken had a feeling something was wrong, even before he spotted the white-haired man sitting on the opposite side of the bar. His first thought was to back his way out before the situation deteriorated. It could be the white-haired man hadn't seen him, but McCracken knew better. The two men had crossed paths only once before, on an occasion when each had been given the task of killing the other.
But leaving the bar now could mean jeopardizing the mission he had come to Cardenas, Cuba, to complete. He had been contacted only the previous night by a former KGB Wet Affairs operative who claimed to have extensive information about the North Korean missile network. His instructions were to wait in the Buena Vista Hotel bar for a phone call advising him of the rendezvous point, and there was no contingency to fall back on if he deviated from the plan.
In the end that fact determined McCracken's decision. Nine-millimeter SIG-Sauer within easy reach beneath his white linen jacket, he glided around the long sweep of the bar, keeping his hands in plain view.
Years ago the Buena Vista had been one of the most fashionable establishments in the coastal resort community of Cardenas, before time and politics had stolen most of the region's luster. The shapes of other seaside hotels were marred by boarded-up windows and crumbling foundations, leaving the Buena Vista the lone reminder of Cuba's prosperouspast, when people flocked to its casinos and nightclubs. Those casinos and nightclubs were gone, but more than just the polished mahogany of the Buena Vista's bar reaffirmed a stubborn attachment to the traditions of the past. The hotel's stucco exterior had been given a fresh coat of paint and the family of palm trees fronting it breathed green instead of the dying brown most of the country seemed to be afflicted with. The floor in the lobby was a checkerboard of Italian marble and the walls were paneled in glowing mahogany, the theme of polished wood picked up inside the bar.
When McCracken's path took him past the mirrored wall lined with shelves holding various bottles of liquor, he couldn't help comparing the glance he caught of himself with his glimpse of the white-haired man. Andre Marokov's shoulders were hunched and stiff, suggesting he could no longer make the lightning-fast moves required to survive in his chosen profession. His eyes were clouded and the hand clutching his drink was covered with liver spots.
The look McCracken had stolen of himself in the mirror, on the other hand, showed a man pretty much unchanged by the years. His black wavy hair had been shorter at the time of their first encounter and his coarse, close-trimmed beard had been all pepper and no salt. The emptiness in his eyes then had been replaced with maturity and cunning now. He was bigger in the chest and arms, smaller in the waist from daily three-hour workouts that had become ritual. And the scar that ran through his left eyebrow hadn't even existed until the day of his only previous meeting with Marokov.
The Russian sat at the bar twirling a straw through a drink that was largely ice, looking for the bartender who had vanished. Marokov had the entire far side of the bar to himself until McCracken straddled the stool two down from the Russian, ready to move if it came to that.
"Greetings, Comrade," Marokov said, sliding over to take the stool between them.
McCracken half expected him to have a gun in his hand, but all Marokov held was his dwindling drink. "I'd like to say it's been a long time, but ..."
"Since we were never formally introduced, of course."
"We shared the same jungle and a burning village once. That's close enough."
Marokov smiled faintly and nodded. "A drink to old times, then, eh?"
He drew the glass upward and drained whatever liquid remained amidst the ice. The cubes collected against his lips, and only then did Blaine feel totally safe; no way would the Russian have left himself in so vulnerable a position for that long if he had any hostile intentions. Marokov brought the glass back down and the ice cubes sloshed together, jangling.
"I'd offer you one, Comrade, but it is common knowledge the great McCracken does not drink."
"I did over there."
"We both did many things over there that I suppose are better left in the past. On that subject, congratulations are in order. After all, you won."
Marokov raised his glass in the manner of a toast but returned it to the hardwood bar without touching it to his lips. Once again he looked around for the bartender, seemed disgruntled when the man remained nowhere to be seen.
"I mean, Comrade, that's what our years in the jungle were all about: determining which way of life would prevail. There could be only one. There always can be only one."
Blaine studied him. He had not seen a file on Marokov in nearly five years and the Russian had aged even worse than his first glimpse had indicated. His eyes said it all, bloodshot and slow, bled of life and feeling, as if they had stopped seeing anything other than what lay directly before them.
"Not necessarily," McCracken corrected.
"Referring to the two of us, of course. You with your Operation Phoenix, me with my Spetsnatz squads. Opposite numbers, eh, Comrade?"
"Close enough."
"If your commanders only realized the hell your assassination teams caused us. Pity you hadn't started a few years earlier. Would have saved me the time I spent with those wretched savages."
"The savages were on both sides."
"And yet we fought with them."
"We were younger."
"And the times, Comrade ..."
"Different."
"Simpler, clearer. Often I miss them. Especially now. I'm down here because I can't go home. Well, I could but there's nothing to go home to. Consider yourself lucky you still have a cause to fight for."
Marokov impatiently eyed the bartender, who had returned to his post behind the bar, and pointed to his glass. The bartender poured fresh Scotch over the remnants of the ice cubes. Blaine waved the man off when he looked his way.
"To simpler times," Marokov said, raising his glass in the semblance of a toast again.
In point of fact, Blaine recalled, they hadn't been so simple at all. What the Russian had not admitted was that it had been McCracken's presence in Vietnam that had led to Marokov's assignment there. Operation Phoenix's assassination teams were causing so much disruption in the Vietcong's chain of command that the Cong's Soviet advisers had no choice but to send for equally proficient teams of Soviet Spetsnatz commandos. Atthe same time McCracken was being briefed on Marokov's presence, the Russian was being handed Blaine's intelligence file along with a termination order. Neither man knew of the other's sanction instructions and both set out, in typically expert fashion, to kill the other.
They weren't alone. Each was accompanied by a team, McCracken's in this case being composed of Vietnamese nationals who escorted him to the area off Highway 9 near Khe Sanh. Marokov's team members spoke perfect English and had been dressed and outfitted in the guise of American soldiers. Apparently the disguises worked too...
