The Soviet Assassin

by Allan Leverone

  So the act of taking in her surroundings was real, it was just focused on determining where a KGB operative with vengeance on his mind might be staked out, rather than appreciating the statues and the history and the late spring sunshine.

  Tracie had arrived at Orly in late-morning, the CIA G4 touching down just after eleven a.m. Unfortunately for her, between the nearly eight hours flight time and the six-hour difference between D.C. and Paris, she lost three precious hours out of what was available to her before tomorrow’s seven a.m. meeting with French law enforcement and intelligence officials.

  On the bright side, if this situation could be said to have a bright side, her depression and exhaustion had been so great last night that she’d slept soundly for a solid six hours as the agency jet rocketed over the Atlantic to Europe. She’d made this trip with the CIA flight crew multiple times now, but after greeting the pilots warmly at Washington National, there had been none of the previous flights’ light-hearted conversation.

  Tracie doubted she would ever feel light-hearted again.

  The crew had apparently sensed her mood, and while they were as friendly and professional as ever, the two-man flight crew left her alone with her thoughts following their brief greeting on the tarmac.

  The weather upon arrival in France was unseasonably warm, a fact Tracie appreciated only as it would apply to her ability to conduct surveillance. The airport was located about twelve miles from the heart of Paris, and after taking a bus to her hotel and checking in, she had begun her walking tour of the embassy area just after noon. There was no time to waste.

  Staying in the immediate vicinity of the embassy—the area Piotr Speransky would be waiting to end her life—was not the smartest move, strategically. But Tracie was willing to risk it for two reasons.

  One, if Speranksy had established any connections inside French or American intelligence services, the assassin would have been notified by now of Tracie’s planned arrival tomorrow morning. He would not be expecting to see her today and thus his operational awareness would be down. It was only human nature.

  Two, Tracie had disguised herself. Speransky referenced her flame-red hair in three separate notes at three separate murder scenes, so it was obvious hair color was the one physical trait he associated with her above all others. She had piled her hair atop her head on the Gulfstream prior to landing at Orly, and then covered it fully with a black kerchief.

  Her hair color would be invisible to anyone looking for it.

  She’d also chosen clothing that she hoped would make her appear older than her twenty-nine years. Between her dark slacks and floral-print blouse, combined with large sunglasses in a very traditional style, Tracie hoped to present the illusion of a middle-aged female tourist, say in her forties or even fifties.

  Up close, of course, it would be much more difficult to maintain the illusion, but if Speransky happened to be scanning the area, even with binoculars, Tracie felt confident in her ability to escape detection.

  At least for one day.

  And one day was all she had. If she weren’t able to flush out and kill Speransky today, tomorrow’s plan would be the exact opposite: she would show off her hair fully in an effort to draw the KGB killer out of hiding and finish this thing. One way or the other.

  Tracie continued to stroll at a leisurely pace, approaching the Place de la Concorde and its magnificent fountains. She passed the Obelisk of Luxor and then turned left, keeping the American Embassy off her left side. The temptation to focus on the embassy complex was strong, but doing so would be counterproductive to her current mission. Piotr Speransky would be camped out somewhere on the periphery of the embassy, likely atop one of the surrounding buildings, planning to shoot downward and toward the compound.

  Tracie needed to devote her full attention to the embassy’s surroundings if she was to have any chance of kicking the rock Speransky would be hiding under.

  She crossed Avenue Gabriel and started down Rue Royale. It was narrow, not a main drag but a side street, almost an alleyway, with buildings looming virtually to the pavement on both sides.

  She maintained her tourist cover but moved a little more quickly. It was highly unlikely Speransky would have chosen Rue Royale for his sniper’s nest for the simple reason that it offered virtually no sight lines into the embassy complex thanks to the densely packed construction.

  A left onto the Rue Saint Honoré took Tracie past the British Embassy. She continued to the Avenue de Marigny, and a left turn there took her back to Avenue Gabriel and her starting point.

  The entire circuit took barely thirty minutes to complete, and that was with Tracie moving slowly, examining her surroundings for likely hidey-holes a KGB assassin might utilize if he wanted to fill a petite American operative with Russian lead.

  The results were discouraging. Despite nearly nine years as an American covert operative working outside the United States, Tracie had only been to Paris once or twice, and never in the vicinity of the American Embassy. She’d pictured something a little more open, not the congested—albeit breathtakingly beautiful—cityscape she discovered.

  The number of potential hiding places Piotr Speransky could utilize was practically limitless. Even with French law enforcement and intelligence personnel blanketing the area tomorrow, catching the assassin before he opened fire would almost be a matter of sheer luck. They might be able to capture or kill him once the bullets started flying, but that outcome would provide little comfort to Tracie if she were bleeding out on the front steps of the embassy.

  And if the odds of a team finding him were slim, the chance that Tracie could sniff him out, particularly while disguised as a middle-aged American tourist, seemed about as close to nil as it was possible to get. She figured the odds of getting struck by lightning were greater, and the weather was crystal clear and beautiful.

  She continued walking while considering her options. Making a second pass would be her top choice. Perhaps another look would reveal some of the more likely hiding spots a professional assassin would choose.

  But a second pass would also put Tracie at much greater risk of blowing her cover. The fact that Speransky had managed to access the American Embassy in the first place, much less execute three members of his personal security team as well as the ambassador himself, told her all she needed to know about his abilities as an operative, not to mention his dedication to his mission.

  He was out here somewhere, and while he wouldn’t be expecting Tracie to show up until tomorrow, he would be paying attention. Offering him a second glimpse of the middle-aged “tourist” might just be enough to bring the same hail of bullets Tracie was expecting tomorrow, only a day earlier and with no one to chase him down after he’d killed her.

  The heavy sense of depression she’d been feeling since learning last night that her actions had been directly responsible for the deaths of three innocent Americans deepened.

  She turned toward her hotel. Maybe she could regroup and come up with a new plan, one with a better chance of success.

  It seemed unlikely.

  6

  It didn’t take long for Tracie to return to her hotel. She’d chosen lodgings close to the U.S. embassy complex for one very practical reason: Paris was densely populated, particularly in touristy areas, and with less than twenty-four hours to smoke out Speransky, she hadn’t wanted to waste valuable time riding a bus or taxi.

  She walked briskly down the Avenue Gabriel, passing mere yards in front of the U.S. Embassy entrance. She continued to scan the area for any location a KGB assassin might select from which to murder an American CIA operative, but did so without any real conviction.

  The area wasn’t ideal, and a professional like Speransky would recognize that fact immediately. Any location along Avenue Gabriel would place the killer too close to his target area. He would want the benefit of some—but not too much—distance, and, again, in all probability he would choose an elevated location so he could fire down on his target.

&nbs
p; After passing the embassy, Tracie crossed the narrow Rue Boissy d’Anglas and found herself at the entrance to the Hôtel de Crillon. She entered the building and crossed the opulent lobby to the stairs. The hotel had originally been constructed, along with an identical building across the Rue Royale, for use as a palace in the mid-1700s.

  The Hôtel de Crillon and its sister structure, the Hôtel de la Marine, had rich histories and, in fact, the building that now served as Tracie’s lodging had been the site of the first treaty-signing between France and the fledgling United States of America on February 6, 1778.

  With a career military man for a father and a career diplomat for a mother, Tracie supposed it was inevitable she would have grown up an American history aficionado. Despite the bloodstained reason for her trip to France and the very real possibility her life would end tomorrow on the streets of Paris, she couldn’t help but appreciate the knowledge that Ben Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee may well have sat in the very lobby she’d just crossed, negotiating the terms of the French-American treaty officially recognizing the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

  In 1909 the Hôtel de Crillon opened its doors in the structure that had even then been around for more than a century and a half, following a nearly two year renovation. It had been lodging guests ever since. Given its opulence, its location and its historical significance, Tracie had known even before registering that the cost of a stay would be exorbitant, and she was right.

  Room charges were far in excess of what Aaron Stallings would approve for reimbursement, not to mention far above what she could afford to pay based on her salary. Despite the danger and the—very occasional—glamor of her job as a covert operative, when push came to shove Tracie was still nothing more than a civil service employee of the United States government, albeit an unofficial one whose affiliation with the CIA had been terminated last year.

  Tracie booked the room anyway. Over the course of her career, she’d done what virtually all spooks did: hidden money, weapons and numerous forged identification documents away in multiple locations around the United States and the areas in which she typically worked.

  Her lifestyle was frugal and she worked nearly non-stop, so her opportunities to spend significant sums of money were few and far between. Over the years she had socked away an impressive amount of cash, weapons and IDs. Given the fact her survival beyond the next twenty-four hours seemed tenuous at best, she’d decided this was as good a time as any to access a small portion of that cash and use it on this mission.

  She entered her room and eased the door closed behind her. She’d hoped for a room that looked out onto the American Embassyproperty, but none were available so she’d had to “settle” for a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower, the structure rising into the sky in the distance, proud and magnificent.

  She made a cup of tea and then sat at the room’s writing desk, sipping slowly and staring out the window. In retrospect, she decided that not being able to see the embassy complex was a good thing. She was already obsessing on the killings for which she bore direct responsibility, and on the man she had allowed to live who had then gone on to execute a half-dozen innocent people, including three American diplomats and three embassy security guards.

  Staring morosely at the building where the third murder had occurred, and where she would likely die tomorrow, would accomplish nothing positive and might even interfere with her ability to think clearly and logically.

  And it was hard enough to think clearly right now. It was one thing to accept the possibility of dying in the field on a mission—she’d come to grips with that prospect years ago—but it was another thing entirely to know that sometime after sunrise tomorrow morning she may well find herself bleeding out on the streets of Paris, the victim of a murder for which she’d been given advance notice.

  And that outcome was becoming increasingly likely. She’d flown to Paris with the vaguely formed notion she would smoke out a professional assassin in a matter of hours, and she would do so with no assistance. Speransky had to be close if he was going to execute the “redheaded American spook,” so she would use that knowledge to her benefit. She would ferret out his hiding place and then put two slugs in his skull, and that would be that.

  But she’d been kidding herself, obviously. A team of operatives might have managed it, given unlimited resources and the benefit of days or weeks with which to work, but for one woman, alone and unfamiliar with the city, it was nothing more than a pipe dream, and a silly one at that.

  She drank her tea and gazed at the Eiffel Tower and wracked her brain in an effort to develop an alternative to wandering the city aimlessly looking for a KGB agent she was clearly never going to find until he was ready to show himself.

  The tea was delicious.

  The view was spectacular.

  Her life was falling apart.

  7

  May 15, 1988

  12:30 a.m.

  Hôtel de Crillon, Paris, France

  Sleep came grudgingly for Tracie, and when it arrived it didn’t stay long.

  For more than two hours after crawling under the covers she tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling. Finally she dropped into a troubled slumber and then jerked awake, sweaty and shaking, after maybe twenty minutes. Calmed herself and tried again, eventually falling asleep only to have the same thing happen forty minutes later.

  She slipped out of bed and wandered to the window and spent nearly half an hour gazing across the city at the Eiffel Tower. The time was after three a.m. so the city was mostly—but not entirely—deserted. Occasional groups of tourists wandered the streets, undoubtedly sacrificing rest to get the most out of their Paris experience.

  After a while her eyes began to droop, so she gave sleep one more try. She wandered back to her bed and dropped off almost immediately, lasting almost a full hour before again awakening, this time shaking from the aftereffects of a nightmare, and with the strong suspicion she may have screamed herself awake.

  It was four-thirty a.m.

  Resigned to the fact that she would get no more sleep tonight—which meant possibly ever—Tracie rose one last time and padded to the bathroom. She stepped out of her pajamas and into the shower, adjusting the temperature until the water was as cold as she could stand it. The chilly water allowed for clarity of thought unlike anything else she’d ever experienced.

  The inability to sleep came as an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. Tracie had long since learned to recognize the sense of anticipation that accompanied the beginning of a new mission. Butterflies in her stomach, the slow build of adrenaline, the hyper-awareness resulting from extreme focus on a situation.

  That was all very familiar.

  But this was different.

  This was something akin to terror. She wasn’t afraid to die; she’d never feared losing her life in defense of her country. But she’d never considered the possibility she might be murdered while acting solely as a target, either, being gunned down by a disgruntled KGB agent extracting revenge on her for the sin of allowing him to live when she should have pulled the trigger on the murderous bastard the minute he’d surrendered the intel she needed.

  Tracie eased off the cold water, gradually warming her now-shivering body. She would face the day with courage and determination, just like she faced every other day, no matter her fate. It was what her father and mother would expect of her and, more importantly, what she expected of herself.

  If her fate was to die, she would do so with dignity.

  She stepped out of the shower and toweled off, dressing slowly and then making another cup of tea, which she brought to her now-familiar spot at the window. The Eiffel Tower still rose in the distance, immutable. It had been standing long before Tracie’s birth and would remain so long after she was gone, whether that day was today or in seventy years.

  ***

  The knock came at her hotel room door at precisely seven a.m.

  Tracie had been told to expe
ct a visit from Deputy Chief of Mission Henry Gatlin, now the ranking American diplomat in France with Ambassador Clayton Leavell lying on a slab in a French morgue. Gatlin would brief her on what to expect during her upcoming tour of the embassy.

  Tracie thought she already had a pretty good idea what to expect.

  She hurried across the hotel room and said, “Yes?” raising her voice to be heard through the closed door. There was no reason to believe her early-morning visitor was anyone but Henry Gatlin, because there was no reason to believe anyone else knew she was even in France yet, but bitter experience had taught her to take nothing for granted, ever.

  “Deputy Chief of Mission Henry Gatlin to see Ms. Fiona Quinn, ma’am.” It was a man’s voice, and it was muffled as the speaker in the hallway did his best not to disturb any sleeping guests.

  Tracie pressed her eye to the peephole in the door and saw two men standing on the other side. The man closest the door was armed and wore the uniform of a U.S. Marine. On his uniform was a patch bearing the logo of the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group, the Marine detachment charged with providing security at American embassies, consulates and other official U.S. government installations.

  Standing behind the armed marine was a tall, skeletal-looking middle-aged man dressed impeccably in a gray suit and blue tie under an unbuttoned black full-length overcoat. On his head was a fedora. He stood patiently, arms hanging in front of his body and clasped at the hands.

  It had to be Gatlin. Tracie had spent many hours face-to-face with Piotr Speransky, torturing and interrogating him back in Moscow, and neither one of these men remotely resembled the Russian assassin.

  She swung the door open and stood to the side, indicating the interior of the room. “Please come in, gentlemen.”