The Windchime Legacy Read online

  THE WINDCHIME LEGACY

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 1980, 2015 A.W. Mykel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 194129880X

  ISBN 13: 9781941298800

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  To three lives which, in ending, started it all.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  The rain had stopped, and the heavy night air hung chilling and damp around the solitary figure hidden in the shadows. His keen, unfeeling eyes swept the empty street, looking for signs of the courier he knew would be coming. The old street lamps bounced their gentle reflections off the wet buildings and sidewalks; the weather was typical for England in March.

  Directly across the street from his concealed position was an alleyway, which ran alongside the old Maynard Pub. Well back, in the darkest shadows, was a car. It had not been there long. Its hood was still warm, and the engine made faint clicking sounds as it cooled. It was the one he was looking for. It meant that the contact was already inside, waiting for the courier. Both men had come for the information he carried—one to buy it, the other to kill for it.

  Through the light fog, his eyes picked up movement in the distance. Within moments it became clearer. The courier was nervously making his way up the street toward the pub. He walked steadily, clutching a worn attaché case to his chest. His eyes played anxiously back and forth for assurance that he was unobserved, but he failed to see the stranger in the shadows or to sense the murderous intent of the eyes concentrated on him.

  After one last look around, the courier entered the pub.

  The large room was dimly lit, smoke filled, with the typical smell of ale, sweat, and old tobacco. There was the usual mix of noisy customers, moth-eaten prostitutes, and oblivious, dozing drunks.

  The courier tugged at his muffler and unbuttoned his heavy coat as he walked to the bar. His eyes flashed quickly around the room, checking every face. He ordered a dark ale, raised the mug, and downed its contents in several long swallows, the attaché case still held tightly against his chest.

  He put the mug down and looked at the big, burly bar keep, as he wiped the foam from his lip. The barkeep gave a nod and motioned with his eyes to the door at the back of the room.

  The courier walked to the rear of the room and passed through the door, closing it behind him. The sounds of the pub became muffled and distant, as he walked down the long, dimly lit hallway. At the end of the hallway were two doors directly opposite one another. He opened the one on his left.

  It was dark inside; the poor lighting from the hallway did little to help him see. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

  A light clicked on.

  Sitting at a small table next to the lamp was the man he had come to meet. The two men stared at one another in silent assessment.

  The man seated was smallish, slightly built, with graying hair well into balding. His narrow, pointy features were set into a stern mask, his intense eyes burning into the courier.

  “Do you have the money?” the courier asked finally, nervously licking his lips.

  “I want to see the information first,” the man said coolly.

  “First the money, then the information,” the courier insisted.

  The contact stared at him for a moment, then slid a thick envelope across the table. The courier picked it up and opened it. His fingers skipped nervously across the edges of the bills. A short smile came to his lips. He unbound the strap to the attaché case and took out a thin file folder, then tossed it onto the table. The contact opened the folder, removed the coded papers, and began thumbing through them slowly, looking at each one carefully. It was in a code he knew they had broken. He finished scanning the sheets and laid them down on the table, then produced an incredibly small camera, raised it to his eye, and aimed it at the first sheet.

  Outside the pub, the tall figure emerged from the shadows and walked purposefully across the street. His stride was long and smooth, catlike in its grace. He entered the pub, quickly scanned the room, and walked directly to the door that the courier had used.

  The barkeep watched him carefully and began to remove his apron. By the time he had lifted the foldaway bartop to follow, the stranger had disappeared through the door.

  With silent strides, he moved quickly down the hall and stopped in front of the door to the room the courier had entered. He produced a Mauser HSc automatic and snapped back the slide. Then he kicked the door in.

  The contact had heard the metallic snap of the Mauser and reached for the light just as the door splintered open. The light was out at almost the same instant.

  Instinctively, the courier spun to face the tall silhouette in the doorway and threw the attaché case at it.

  The figure darted to the side out of the light behind him. The Mauser cracked twice. The courier was knocked backward, crashing over the table.

  The contact had swung immediately away from the table. He threw his chair at the flashes, catching the intruder squarely with its force, knocking him back against the wall.

  A door at the back of the room opened and slammed closed quickly, as the Mauser cracked twice more at it. The intruder began moving toward the back door, when he was pulled sharply by the collar and struck on the side of the head by a hard object. He fell to the floor and quickly rolled to the side. The Mauser spoke once again, at the figure outlined in the doorway. The barkeep was hit squarely and was driven back through the opposite door in the hallway.

  The intruder picked himself up and went for the back door. It was locked. He spun and raced out of the room, down the hallway, and through the pub, where the patrons were frozen with fear from the sounds of the shots.

  The intruder flashed past them to the door, just as the car screeched out of the alleyway and turned to pass in front of him. He raised the Mauser and fired into the driver’s side of the windshield. He squeezed ag
ain, but the Mauser had jammed.

  The car screeched past him, weaving wildly down the street. Then it straightened out and sped off.

  The intruder raced back through the pub, as the panicked patrons piled frantically out into the street. He went again to the back room, found the lamp on the floor, and flicked it on.

  The courier was lying flat on his back with two holes in his face, one above the upper lip just below the nose, the other in the forehead just above the left eye. His eyes stared up blankly, as blood ran from his nose and mouth and down the side of his face into his ear. His head was in a puddle of blood and oozing brain matter.

  The intruder searched the floor and found the folder and the papers it had contained. Then he found the camera and the money.

  He counted the pages. Fifteen. He had them all.

  He kicked at the back door. It splintered open. There were no traces of blood. The shots had missed. He was sure that the shot through the windshield had scored. It had to; the angle was a dead hit. It was a pity the Mauser had jammed. The contact should have been dead meat, too. Perhaps he would be yet, if the shot had done its job. It bothered him that it wasn’t clean, completed.

  He walked back through the room and checked the body of the barkeep, lying partially in the opposite room, his legs out in the hallway.

  For the first time he felt the pain from the blow to the head. He touched it, and his hand came away bloody.

  He bent forward and looked into the lifeless face, an expression of shock across it. The barkeep had been hit in the chest.

  The intruder went back into the room, and left through the splintered back door the contact had used to escape to the alley way. He would not chance going through the bar another time.

  As he walked out onto the street, he could hear the ascending wail of the police sirens approaching. There was still time. He could see lights in windows that had been black before. A few faces cautiously peeked out, careful not to become the next target.

  He walked swiftly across the street and mounted the powerful BSA that waited for him in the same shadows from which he had emerged earlier.

  “SENTINEL Control, this is Pilgrim,” he said and waited for acknowledgment.

  BEEP!

  The tone sounding in his communications implant told him that SENTINEL Control was listening.

  “I’ve got the information. The courier is dead, the contact got away. I’m certain that he’s wounded.”

  “Understood, Pilgrim,” the soft voice said. “How many sheets did you retrieve?”

  “Fifteen…and a camera,” Pilgrim replied. There was no need to mention the money. It would be his.

  “Very good, Pilgrim. You can come home now. Division Two will follow up on the car from this point. Job well done.”

  Job well done, he thought to himself. A job half done is never well done. That contact should have a few holes in his face, too. It wasn’t enough to just win. He had wanted the shutout.

  The big motorcycle roared to life, revved loudly several times, then sped away from the approaching sirens. Bike and rider once again became a part of the darkness to which they belonged.

  ONE

  Nothing happened by chance. Everything was very carefully planned. All that we lacked was patience. In our mad rush we overlooked certain fundamental weaknesses, which ultimately spelled out our defeat. It had been, we thought, a good idea poorly executed.

  Opening remarks from the partially

  recovered Wolf Journal

  One year later: It was a gray, brutally cold March day in Moscow. Dmitri Chakhovsky stood before the window of his small, plainly furnished office inside KGB headquarters. He stared down to a deserted Dzerzhinsky Square, his thoughts on the approaching spring.

  Moscow seemed lifeless to him in winter. His mind played with thoughts of the spring that would soon be returning and the harsh cold that would grudgingly yield to the sun’s warmth, followed by the sudden bloom of nature. The people would walk the streets again, the birds would sing, and the trees would turn green. Life would return.

  But Dmitri Chakhovsky would miss the Russian spring this year. He would be in Paris, as the second secretary of the Soviet delegation to France. He preferred the Parisian spring, anyway.

  Chakhovsky spent about eight months out of each year serving on various Soviet delegations to Western European nations. To the world, he was just another member of the huge Soviet diplomatic corps. But to the CIA and NATO intelligence agencies, he was much more—a highly ranked KGB official in the Operational Division of the First Directorate of Counterespionage. He was the brain behind the Western European section.

  The Operational Division was responsible for coordinating the activities of KGB intelligence networks, appointing resident directors, and choosing agents to be sent abroad. It also managed communications for those networks.

  In the years immediately prior to Stalin’s death, Russian Intelligence had fallen into widespread inefficiency and petty power struggles, which had all but ground it to a halt. After Stalin’s death, a major power struggle had ensued between Laurenti Beria and his chief adversary, Malenkoff. Beria had seriously underestimated his opponent’s influence with the Red Army and had been arrested and executed, along with many of the ranking officials responsible for the unhealthy state of affairs.

  The principal outcome had been that the Communist Party established control over the security services (Intelligence and the Secret Service), so that, in theory, it should no longer be possible for one man to control them against the party’s wishes. A lot of people had disappeared into obscurity, or from the face of the earth, during this time.

  It was during this overhaul and the return to normalcy that a young Dmitri Chakhovsky had been noticed and brought to Moscow. He had been a young and energetic Komsomol (Communist League of Youth) district leader. His observers were so impressed with his perception, bearing, and organizational talents that he had been invited to come to Moscow. It was there, at Soviet Intelligence headquarters, that his career with the KGB had started.

  He had undergone intensive training at the Karlshorst School of Espionage in East Germany, followed by further intensive study at the KGB main training establishment in Kochino.

  From there he had been assigned to the Western European Intelligence Division under the direction of one Konstantin Zhadanov, who was later to become the head of the KGB Science Division. Young Chakhovsky was an outstanding agent and had been immediately recommended by Zhadanov to his superiors. His ability to organize was almost unbelievable, for one so young and with such short experience. He was recalled to Moscow for advanced operations planning and communications training.

  From that point on he rose rapidly from position to position, each with greater responsibilities. He established an outstanding record, but also made some of his worst enemies during this time.

  In the late sixties, it became necessary to make another reorganization in the KGB. This was based on Chakhovsky’s recommendations and the approval of the Individual Division of the Second Directorate. Chakhovsky worked closely with the Individual Division, which had the responsibility of watching all Soviet citizens at home and abroad, especially those in government services. By their recommendations, a man could be promoted or liquidated. Together, they made the Western European section a much more efficient branch. He dared to touch areas thought untouchable, to dig into sacred places of power and position.

  Chakhovsky was ruthless in his recommendations. His only thoughts were for the good of the Soviet Union, not the individuals involved. This reorganization was less bloody than the one that followed Stalin’s death because the government had lost some of its teeth to reason. But blood did flow. Many of those who survived had friends who didn’t, and they remembered Chakhovsky as the cause.

  One of those survivors was Vasily Trushenko. He had been too valuable to “remove” completely and was reassigned to a position of lesser importance, but from which there was prospect of promotion. Seven years l
ater he had again advanced to a position of power in the same Individual Division that had brought him down. He had locked his sights on Chakhovsky and vowed to return the favor.

  On two separate occasions Trushenko had begun secret investigations of Chakhovsky, in the hope of finding something, anything, that might destroy him. Both had failed. Chakhovsky had proven to be untouchable, a virtual tower of strength, oblivious to attack, personal or otherwise. He was seemingly without a weak spot. But Trushenko was a patient and persistent man and maintained his gentle pressure until he found a fault deep within the great edifice, a fault that would bring Chakhovsky within his grasp. He had initiated a third secret investigation only days ago. It was progressing slowly, but with favorable results.

  Chakhovsky went home after one last meeting with Leonid Travkin, the KGB director, and Alexandr Stroyanin, the chief director of Western European Operations. After a solitary dinner, he finished his packing and went to bed. He lay awake, thinking of his wife Tamara, who had died twelve years earlier from cancer, and his only son Boris, who had been killed in a skirmish along the Sino-Soviet border just two years ago. His life was lonely without them. How he missed them both.

  He closed his eyes and fell into a peaceful sleep, unaware that, at that very moment, Trushenko was receiving vital information that would push him to the most desperate decision of his life.

  When Chakhovsky arrived at the Soviet embassy in Paris the following afternoon, there was a coded message waiting for him. Later, in the privacy of his apartment, he decoded it. It said simply, “Spring will not come.” It was signed, “Starling.”

  Chakhovsky knew this meant trouble. Starling was the code name used by a trusted friend in the Individual Division. That could only mean that Trushenko was after him again. He knew that, after two previously unsuccessful attempts, Trushenko would have to be a fool to start a third, unless he had something solid to go on. He knew that his service record was unblemished and would hold up to the closest scrutiny. But, deep within the self-constructed cobwebs of forgetfulness, there was something that caused him to shudder in apprehension. He wondered if it had really been such a crime, and if Trushenko knew about it. He reread the message, and wondered.