The Soviet Assassin

by Allan Leverone

  “Sit down and I will tell you.”

  “If I sit, I won’t ever be getting up again, will I?”

  The Russian’s eyes narrowed. “We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way. It does not matter to me. In fact, I would almost prefer you resist.”

  The sick feeling Jake had gotten in the pit of his stomach the moment the crazy Russian bastard pulled a gun on him had never gone away, but now it solidified into a solid mass roughly the size of a basketball. The man’s refusal to respond to his question served as all the answer he needed, and the thought that he would never again see the wife and daughter he cherished more than life itself struck him like a sledgehammer to the face.

  He swallowed heavily and dropped into the wooden chair. Now he wished he’d taken a shot at escape as he exited the car. A bullet in the back would likely be far preferable to what this man had in store for him.

  The Russian stepped to his canvas bag and unzipped it, careful to keep his weapon trained squarely on Jake as he did so. He lifted out a roll of silver duct tape and held it up for Jake’s inspection. “Does this have any meaning for you?” he said.

  Jake shook his head, mystified. “No. Should it?”

  The Russian shrugged. “It seems to mean a lot to Tracie. I was just curious if she had inherited her affinity for duct tape from her father.” He smiled. “They say you can fix anything with it, and I have to admit, I have found that to be mostly true.”

  Jake stiffened. “How do you know her name? Is she all right? Where is she?”

  The Russian smiled coldly. He tore off two long strips of tape and slapped them over Jake’s wrists, moving more quickly than Jake would have predicted. The man was big and bulky but moved with the fluidity of an elite athlete. He added another strip to each arm, taking the time to pat them down firmly until their adhesive bonded securely with the wood on the underside of the chair’s arm.

  Then he spoke. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Please try to remove your arms from the chair.”

  “I’m not doing anything until you tell me where my daughter is.”

  The Russian laughed. With Jake secured, some of the affability he’d shown earlier seemed to have returned. “It is a little late to be making demands,” he said. “But do as I ask and I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know.”

  Jake’s concern for his own fate had vanished at the sound of Tracie’s name. He tugged hard at the tape, making the good-faith effort at escape his captor obviously wanted to see.

  He got nowhere. His arms would not budge.

  The Russian nodded. “Very good.” He bent and began repeating the taping procedure on Jake’s ankles, taking his time and doing it right. “Your precious little girl is fine. For now. As we speak she is searching for me in Paris.”

  “Paris?”

  “Da. She thinks I am there.”

  “Why would she…” Jake’s voice died away as he made the connection. “The dead ambassadors I heard about on the news. That was you?”

  “You are fairly intelligent. For an American.”

  Jake shook his head, certain he must be missing something. “You murdered three American diplomats just to lure my daughter to Paris? Why in God’s name would you do that?”

  “Do not forget about the three security guards I also put down. I worked hard to gain access to the embassy compound, the least you can do is give me credit for a job well done.”

  Jake felt his eyes widen in horror. “You’re…”

  The Russian smiled. “Brilliant?”

  “I was going to say insane.”

  The man shrugged, utterly unaffected by Jakes’ words.

  Jake tried again. “Why? Why would you kill all those people?”

  “To be certain your little girl was out of the way so I could do…this…without having to be concerned about the possibility of interruption.”

  “But you haven’t harmed her.”

  “Oh, no. I have not harmed her. Not yet. I want her to suffer as much as humanly possible before I kill her. And what better way to hurt a young woman than to torture and kill her daddy?”

  Jake heard the reference to torture but it barely registered. All he could think about was Tracie’s welfare. “I’m going to ask you again: how do you know her name? The CIA would never divulge that information.”

  This time the Russian actually laughed. It was a hearty guffaw, the sound of a man who thoroughly enjoyed the joke he’d just heard. “One can always access the information one needs as long as one knows where to look and whom to bribe.”

  “What did she ever do to deserve all this?”

  The Russian’s voice turned hard and cold again. “She destroyed my life. Took away my career and my dignity. She humiliated me. And she will pay for doing so.”

  “You’re afraid of her.” The realization came to Jake out of nowhere, and he was instantly certain he was right. Even in the midst of fear for his own welfare, he was filled with pride for his only child.

  The Russian scoffed. “Hardly.”

  “She’s going to kill you, you know.”

  Without warning the man snapped. He’d been holding the gun in his right hand and now he swung it at Jake’s head, pivoting his wrist at the last moment and clubbing him with its butt. Jake felt a gash open and blood begin to flow, warm and wet.

  Then the lights went out.

  When he awoke, it was to an intense pain, the likes of which he had never before experienced.

  He wished he could drop back into unconsciousness.

  He did not.

  18

  May 18, 1988

  6:00 a.m.

  Hôtel de Crillon, Paris

  Someone was shooting at Tracie. The darkness was impenetrable, making it impossible to tell from which direction the shots were coming, but the steady thump-thump-thump of semi-automatic weapons fire was impossible to mistake.

  And she had no idea where she was.

  She thrashed in the dark, reaching for her weapon to return fire, but the back of her hand struck something heavy and metallic, and she flashed awake just as the antique alarm clock supplied by the Hôtel de Crillon dropped to the floor with a teeth-rattling crash. It smashed into dozens of pieces.

  She was instantly wide-awake.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  The Hôtel de Crillon.

  She was in Paris thanks to her failed mission to flush out Piotr Speransky, but would be leaving for Rome in…she looked for the clock before remembering she’d just smashed it. Then she checked her watch. It was six a.m. Paris time.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Someone was pounding on her door, likely awakening the guests inside every room along this section of corridor. And whoever was doing the pounding was insistent. He or she continued to rap on the door with the steady insistence of a metronome.

  Tracie threw her covers to the side and slipped out of bed, shrugging on a robe and grabbing her weapon, which was on the bedside table exactly where she’d left it. If her hand had thrashed a few inches to the left, she would have knocked it to the floor and not the clock.

  She hurried to the door and pressed her eye to the peephole. She half expected to see Piotr Speransky on the other side, armed and angry and bent on vengeance, although why he would ignore her for three days while she paraded around in front of the American Embassy like an idiot, only to confront her inside a hotel filled with potential witnesses she couldn’t imagine.

  But it wasn’t Piotr Speransky.

  It was the young Marine Corps Embassy Security Group guard who had accompanied Deputy Chief of Mission Henry Gatlin to her room yesterday. He had entered the room briefly and then stood sentry in the hallway during her meeting with Gatlin.

  Now he was just on the other side of the door, banging incessantly, showing no interest in giving up and going away.

  Tracie slipped her gun hand behind her back and reached for the doorknob. There was no reason to believe the young man was anything other than what he appeared to be—an American
soldier carrying out an order to the best of his abilities—but there was no reason to take unnecessary chances, either.

  She eased the door open an inch or two, bracing it with her bare foot in the event the man attempted to bull his way inside. It wouldn’t prevent him from entering, but should give her time to remove her gun hand from behind her back and make him regret his decision.

  “What is it?” she said quietly. There was no reason to ask if he had any idea what time it was, or if he knew he might be waking up other guests. He was here because Gatlin, or someone else at the embassy, had sent him.

  “I have a message from Director Stallings, ma’am.”

  Tracie blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Chief Gatlin asked me to pass along a message from Director Stallings. He said it was of the utmost importance, and that I was not to return to the embassy until I had relayed it.”

  Tracie stepped back and opened the door fully. “Please, come in.” she said. She had turned off and stored her secure satellite phone after speaking with Stallings last night, so he would have been unable to reach her directly. If he’d found it necessary to use Gatlin as a go-between, whatever message was about to be passed should probably not be passed in a public hallway.

  The soldier stepped inside and eased the door closed behind him. If he felt awkward in the presence of a beautiful, half-dressed young woman he didn’t show it. He looked her straight in the eyes and started speaking. “Director Stallings has instructed me to drive you to the airport immediately. The agency jet is waiting, and he wants you on it as soon as possible.”

  Tracie blinked in surprise. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I talked to Stallings last night and he told me to buy a ticket for this morning on a commercial flight to Rome. Why would he tell me that and then send the Gulfstream for me? For that matter, why would he fly me on the company plane, anyway?”

  The soldier shook his head. It was an abbreviated little movement and he never took his eyes off hers. “I can’t answer that, ma’am. I’m just following orders. I do know the call came just a few hours ago, and Chief Gatlin conveyed to me that this was a matter of the utmost importance.”

  A few hours ago? There was a six-hour time difference between D.C. and Paris, so a few hours ago for Stallings would have been shortly after they spoke via secure satellite phone. Tracie’s mind was whirring as she tried to consider the possibilities. What the hell had changed in the short time since she had talked to Stallings herself?

  One thing was certain. If this Marine had been tasked with taking her to the airport, he wasn’t about to stop until he accomplished his mission. The only way she could change his mind would be by force, and without additional information she couldn’t justify disabling an American soldier who was just trying to do his job.

  “I’ll need a few minutes to get dressed and get my things together,” she said.

  “I understand, ma’am. I’ll be in the hallway when you’re ready.” He opened the door and stepped through it, and she waited until he had closed it completely before moving toward her dresser.

  ***

  She had exaggerated the time she would need to prepare. A career in covert ops had taught her to be ready to move anywhere, at any time, at a moment’s notice.

  But she wanted a few minutes to think, to consider what this new development might mean. Why would Stallings have changed the plan so dramatically, and so soon after speaking with Tracie?

  She threw on jeans and a sweatshirt and tossed the rest of her things into her go bag, acting almost completely by rote. Her mind was elsewhere.

  The obvious next step would be to haul out her secure satellite phone and call Stallings herself before ever leaving her hotel room. Let the embassy security guard cool his heels in the hallway while verifying the information he’d passed along.

  But having the director of the Central Intelligence Agency as a handler complicated matters immensely. Mission briefings and debriefings were conducted not at Langley in a meeting room filled with analysts and agency experts, but rather they took place after hours, inside Stallings’ own home. With very rare exceptions, their meetings consisted of just two people: Tracie and Stallings.

  The arrangement afforded the CIA director the plausible deniability he required should things go sideways on a mission, but the opposite was the case for Tracie: even more so than other covert ops specialists, she was often truly on her own. It was a high-wire act that that worked for her, because she’d always been a loner, had always preferred working solo to having to worry about one or more partners.

  But it also meant that the backup and support typically available to covert specialists working in a more traditional role was not always there for her. Six a.m. in Paris translated to noon in Washington, meaning Aaron Stallings was in the middle of his workday. He might be eating lunch, or he might be glad-handing U.S. senators in an effort to secure funding for a secret project, or meeting with senior advisors, or performing any one of dozens of other responsibilities of which Tracie was unaware.

  Regardless, it wasn’t like Tracie could just ring him up on an unsecured outside line. They spoke only one of two ways: face to face or via secure satellite telephone communication. Stallings wouldn’t have his sat phone with him in the middle of the day inside Langley, so he would remain effectively unreachable for the next several hours.

  Tracie finished packing her bag. She secured her shoulder holster and strapped her backup weapon to her ankle. One advantage of flying in the CIA jet was that Tracie didn’t have to bother disassembling her guns and traveling unarmed. She always felt naked when doing so, uncomfortable to the point of worry until she could once again feel the soothing presence of the Beretta strapped firmly against her ribs.

  She stood and took one last look around the room. She was ready to go. The more she considered this new development, the more it occurred to her that she didn’t really want to verify anything with Stallings. Because if he actually had relayed instructions through the embassy for her take the agency jet to Rome, she would find out why immediately upon landing, or perhaps even once she boarded the Gulfstream at Orly. The most likely explanation would be that the CIA director had somehow gotten a line on Speransky, that the killer was even now stalking another diplomat, and it was essential she waste no time getting to her destination.

  That was if Aaron Stallings actually had contacted the embassy in the middle of the night to change their agreed-upon plan. If he hadn’t, then there was only one other rational explanation for this morning’s events—the Soviets had co-opted the young man standing guard outside her door, and the “change in plans” was nothing more than a ruse designed to lure her away from the embassy.

  And straight to Speransky.

  But if that were the case, what the Soviets didn’t realize was that was exactly what Tracie wanted. The man had executed at least six innocent Americans—hell, maybe more by now, she had no way of knowing—since that fateful moment in the shabby little CIA safe house in Moscow when she’d decided to spare Speransky’s life, and she had every intention of rectifying her costly error in judgment.

  There was nothing she could do to erase the blood of those innocents from her hands; it stained them now and would stain them until the day she died. But she sure as hell could make sure he never harmed anyone else, and she would accomplish that goal or die trying.

  So if this was a trap, and Speransky was waiting for her in the hallway, or in the car waiting outside the hotel, or along the route to the airport, or any other goddamned place, she would be ready.

  And she would take him down.

  19

  By the time they’d gotten halfway to Orly, Tracie decided the early-morning knock on her door had not been a trap. The Marine Embassy Security Group guard was exactly what he appeared to be: a young soldier carrying out an order.

  The realization did not cause Tracie to let her guard down, of course. She’d been wrong before and nearly gotten killed because of it. She would con
tinue to remain alert for any sign of Speransky or any other KGB attack dog right up until the moment the CIA jet lifted into the air, but she knew in her heart the extra vigilance would be unnecessary.

  The ride across the streets of Paris was uneventful. Traffic was light and in the early morning hours the city seemed peaceful, a slumbering giant, a beautiful throwback to a simpler age. During her relatively infrequent down time, Tracie tended to stay close to home—her career required enough travel as it was—but she decided this city might be worth a return trip if she were ever able to take a vacation.

  She smiled to herself, imagining sharing a room at the Hôtel de Crillon with Marshall, then snapped back to the present, becoming instantly alert when the young soldier behind the wheel bypassed Orly’s main entrance. She snaked her hand under her jacket and rested it on the butt of her weapon while showing no outward sign of concern.

  A moment later she removed her hand, satisfied nothing was amiss. The CIA had apparently struck an agreement with France’s intelligence services to utilize their airports much in the same way they utilized Washington National, and the soldier was searching for a little-used secondary entrance to the airport that would allow them to bypass the busy main terminal area.

  It was a time-consuming maneuver, given the size of Paris’ main international airport, and more than a little irritating. Tracie was anxious to leave France behind and get to Speransky’s location, wherever that might be. Eventually the driver hooked a sharp left onto a virtually invisible access road. The car passed through a screen of shrubs camouflaging a chain link fence with a security gate that had already been opened. A series of three large hangars stood off by themselves in the distance, far removed from the bustle of Orly’s runways, and Tracie could see the agency Gulfstream parked in front of the hangar closest to them.