Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9)

by Allan Leverone

  OBJEKT 825

  Allan Leverone

  © 2021 by Allan Leverone

  Cover design by Elderlemon Design

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, some of which may be based in part on actual names, characters, places and incidents, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is unintended and entirely coincidental.

  First eBook edition: 2021

  1

  June 13, 1988

  10:20 p.m.

  Marine Technix Corporation Research Facility

  Norfolk, Virginia

  Carson Limington rose from behind his desk and stretched. Checked his watch and then stretched again. It was Friday night and he was exhausted.

  He was always tired at the end of a long week supervising the swing shift in the lab, and tonight was no exception. He could barely keep his eyes open, and that surprised Carson, because he was so nervous he thought he might just puke. His hands were shaking, and catching his breath was turning out to be a more problematic exercise than he’d ever experienced. It felt almost as though he’d sprinted the length of the facility three or four times before entering the lab.

  It didn’t seem to Carson that he should be feeling exhausted and jittery at the same time, but what the hell. Maybe this was to be expected.

  He had no way of knowing.

  He’d never committed treason before.

  ***

  Two events had occurred within days of each other last month that had led to this moment. Those events had seemingly been unrelated, but perhaps not.

  As far as Carson was concerned, the first event was the last straw in his steadily deteriorating relationship with Marine Technix Corporation: he’d been bypassed—again—for promotion to lab manager. Not only had he not gotten the job, he’d been leapfrogged by goddamn Scott Pomerantz, who’d been with the company only seven years to Carson’s ten, and who would be rising not just one but two rungs on the corporate ladder from his current position as Assembly Manager.

  It wasn’t fair. In fact, it was more than just unfair. It was a slap in the face and a total repudiation of Carson’s decade of dedication to Marine Technix. Sure, he’d had some problems recently. Between Sherrie leaving him and all the credit card debt he’d built up over the last couple of years, Carson would be the first to admit he’d been somewhat less than attentive to his duties at work recently.

  But still, Scott Carson?

  It was total bullshit. It was indefensible.

  And then the second event had occurred, two or three days after Carson’s rocky meeting with Marine Technix General Manager Gordon Saunders regarding the promotion debacle. He couldn’t exactly pin down the timing, because those first few days immediately following the shock and disappointment of being passed over were mostly a blur of alcohol, tears and explosive anger.

  Carson had really been counting on the hefty pay raise that would have accompanied promotion as the means to escape his money problems, which had been building for months. The fact of the matter was he now had no idea how he would pay all the creditors at a time when they were becoming increasingly hostile and aggressive.

  The prospect of forking over alimony to Sherrie every month was looming on the horizon as well.

  Carson had responded to the stress by drinking. He would start out with a couple of nips during the second half of his shift at Marine Technix—fuck them, anyway—and then really kick it into high gear at The Crow’s Nest, a dingy dive bar favored by locals that offered perfect positioning by Carson’s way of thinking: it was located exactly halfway between the Marine Technix research lab and Carson’s apartment, thereby lowering the risk of a drunk driving arrest to a reasonable level.

  He’d been slouched over a corner table in the Nest, drinking Jack and Coke and scowling in the general direction of the tiny dance floor for no particular reason other than the goddamned dancers seemed way too happy, when an impeccably dressed older man had entered the bar and moved straight as an arrow to Carson’s table.

  Carson ignored him at first. Obviously either the man thought Carson was someone else or he was selling something, and in either circumstance Carson didn’t want to be bothered. He simply wanted to sit in the dark and get blackout drunk.

  But the man cleared his throat loudly enough to be heard above the din of George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ “One Bourbon, One Shot and One Beer,” no small feat in itself. Then he addressed Carson. By name.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Limington,” he said. “I do not mean to interrupt the good time you are clearly having, but I was wondering if I might have a word with you.” The words were understandable, but the man spoke with an obvious foreign accent that Carson recognized but could not place. It sounded vaguely cartoonish to him.

  “Go away,” Carson mumbled.

  The man pulled out a chair and sat, undeterred.

  Carson drew his gaze away from the dance floor and looked the guy up and down. He was dressed like an insurance salesman inside a bar where jeans and t-shirts were the order of the day. His impeccably combed silver hair was long, reaching nearly to his shoulders, making him look like the world’s oldest teenager. Still, he exuded authority. He struck Carson as someone accustomed to getting his way.

  In that sense, he reminded Carson of Gordon Saunders. That particular comparison did little to endear the man to Carson.

  “What do you want?” Carson said, aware that he was slurring his speech a little but doing his best to put plenty of “Fuck off and leave me alone” into his tone, if not his actual words.

  Again, the man didn’t seem the least bit bothered. “What I want is to solve all of your problems, or at least all of your money problems.”

  Out of nowhere, Carson recognized the man’s accent. He sounded exactly like Boris Badenov, the evil villain of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons Carson had loved watching on Saturday mornings when he was a kid. Given the fact Carson was well on his way to drinking himself to oblivion, he was proud of himself for making the connection.

  “Perhaps you did not hear me,” the man repeated, apparently annoyed by Carson’s lack of an immediate response. “I said—”

  “I know what you said,” Carson snapped. “What the hell makes you think I have money problems?”

  “My friend, I am here to help you. To offer you a solution to financial issues that may otherwise take years to resolve, assuming it is even possible to do so. If you would kindly drop the hostility and speak to me man to man, there is a very good possibility you will appreciate what I have to say.”

  Carson sighed deeply. Drained his drink. Signaled the waitress for another. All he wanted was to get drunk. Was that too goddamned much to ask?

  The man showed no inclination to leave, so Carson said, “Fine. Who are you and what’s this big business opportunity? But before you launch into your spiel, you should know that I don’t have two nickels to rub together, so if you’re looking for someone to invest in your get-rich-quick scheme, you should probably stand back up and march your suit-wearing ass right on out of here.”

  The man grinned and let Carson vent. Then he said, “No, I am in the right place, and I
am talking to the right person. But just to ensure I have your full attention, let me ask you this: how would you like to earn twenty thousand dollars, payable in cash and untraceable by the IRS or anyone else, for what would amount to no more than a couple of hours of real work?”

  Carson blinked. Blinked again. He knew he was drunk, but he wasn’t so drunk he might have misheard the man. “I’m not running drugs or guns for you or anyone else,” he said. “I have my problems, I’ll admit that since you already seem to know it. But I’m not going to—”

  “I am not asking you to run drugs, and my business proposition has nothing to do with guns, either.”

  “Then what?”

  “Perhaps we could talk elsewhere. Somewhere a little less…exposed.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like my car.”

  “Forget it,” Carson said. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  The man chuckled. “I am not a sex fiend,” he said, “and you plainly do not have anything worth stealing, or even kidnapping you for. All I want to do is talk.”

  Carson knew he should tell Boris Badenov to get lost, to drag his used-car-salesman-snake-oil-vibe right out the fucking door. Besides, all this talking was taking precious time away from his main objective: getting shit-faced.

  He had every intention of doing so, too, right up until the moment he said, “Ah, what the hell.”

  ***

  The man’s car was quiet and clean. Nice, too, a Lincoln Town Car that was not quite brand-new, but definitely no more than a year or two old. Its interior was spotless.

  True to his word, the man tried neither to grope Carson nor steal his wallet. All he did was start the engine and pull around the corner to a quiet side street. Then he left the vehicle idling and turned to Carson to continue his sales pitch.

  The stranger brushed his long silver mane of hair back with his hand and as he did, Carson caught a half-second glimpse of the man’s right ear. It was hideously misshapen and had obviously been damaged in some kind of accident. The lobe was split in two and reminded Carson exactly of a serpent’s tongue.

  He tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed the deformity as Boris Badenov resumed speaking.

  “I know most of the work you folks do at Marine Technix is defense department related, highly sensitive research involving submarines and warships.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “I also know you have been treated quite unfairly by the Marine Technix corporate office.”

  “How do you know—”

  The silver-haired man waved a hand as if shooing away a fly. “It is my business to know,” he said. “But the point is this: would it not feel good to stick it to the company who has mistreated you, while at the same time earning yourself a large sum of untraceable cash?”

  Carson swallowed heavily. He had to admit it would feel damned good. And twenty grand would go a long way toward cleaning up his personal balance sheet.

  But even half smashed, Carson Limington wasn’t an idiot. Without coming right out and saying it—yet—his new friend was leaving little doubt that to earn his windfall, Carson would have to do something illegal at the very least, and possibly even treasonous.

  For a guy that sounded a lot like he was Russian.

  He knew what he had to do. Tell the silver-haired Russian snake oil salesman to pound sand, climb out of the car and get the hell away. Then go to Marine Technix management and call the police, the FBI, or whoever the hell was in charge of investigating this kind of corporate spying shit.

  It was the only reasonable response.

  But for the second time in less than twenty minutes, Carson Limington found himself saying, “Ah, what the hell.”

  2

  June 13, 1988

  10:45 p.m.

  Marine Technix Corporation Research Facility

  Norfolk, Virginia

  Carson hung around his tiny office following the two-to-ten shift, sipping whiskey from a flask he kept in his top desk drawer and listening to the sounds of the Marine Technix lab facility emptying out. During busy times, when Marine Technix was facing a deadline or dealing with multiple contracts, the facility ran three shifts, operating continuously, twenty-four hours a day.

  But this was not one of those times, and was a Friday evening to boot. He knew if he maintained a low profile and stayed squirreled away in his cubicle, no one would notice he hadn’t left and inside of a half hour or so he would have the entire damned place to himself. It wasn’t like he had friends that would be waiting for him to go out on the town with them.

  He was right, although it had taken slightly longer than his original thirty-minute estimate. It was now quarter to eleven, and despite listening intently, Carson had heard absolutely nothing from inside the lab over the last few minutes. He assumed the rest of the facility had long-since emptied out, as even the most dedicated of the administrative personnel—and layabout bigshots like Gordon Saunders—would have departed more than five hours ago.

  The drawback to sitting at his desk for forty-five minutes on his own time was that his body took full advantage of the three quarters of an hour with nothing to do by becoming steadily more tense and jittery, until by now he felt as though an electric current was surging through his veins. His nerves could probably power the entire facility for an hour.

  On the other hand, there was an advantage to sitting around after his shift with nothing else to do: unlike during the workday, he could sip from his flask uninterrupted by any of the annoying tasks required of his gainful employment. After nearly an hour doing nothing but listening and sipping he had achieved quite a pleasant little buzz.

  Carson hadn’t known specifically how he would be expected to earn his twenty grand from the silver-haired man during their meeting last week, but he had a general idea, even half drunk. A guy with a faint but noticeable Russian accent offers another guy working in a defense-related industry a large amount of untraceable cash to do what he claimed would amount to two hours of work.

  So when the man, who would only identify himself to Carson as “Andrei,” sketched out what Carson would be expected to do, it didn’t come as any great shock.

  It also didn’t strike him as any kind of big deal. He was to retrieve the prototype of an item the Marine Technix R and D department had been working on for years, deliver it to Andrei so the man could take a few photos of it, and then return it to its place inside the lab’s safe.

  All in one night.

  No one would be the wiser.

  And Carson would be twenty thousand untaxable bucks richer.

  He coughed nervously and stepped out from behind his desk. Moved across the lab fingering the copy he’d had made of the key to the massive R&D safe, where the Research Department stored those experimental items small enough to fit inside it.

  The key to the safe was theoretically kept locked up inside the security department’s office. But during the week, when research technicians typically entered and exited the safe multiple times per shift, it had become standard practice over the years simply to leave the key lying on the desk inside the security office. It had been almost too easy for Carson to filch the damned thing at the beginning of his lunch break, drive into Norfolk to have a copy made, and then return it to its original position without anyone noticing.

  Once he’d taken that small risk, the rest of the plan should be a piece of cake. He wouldn’t get to bed until the wee hours of the morning, but how long would it take Boris Badenov to snap a few photos? Carson should be able to return the shoebox-sized item to the safe well before sunup, and it would all be over.

  The plan wasn’t quite foolproof, but close enough.

  Carson slipped the key into the safe’s handle and turned it, then pulled the heavy door open. The safe was similar in size and dimension to a large restaurant’s walk-in freezer. Its interior was lined with shelves upon which rested dozens of items currently in production at Marine Technix. Carson had been heavily involved in development of the item the
silver-haired Russian wanted to photograph—how the man would get that kind of information he had no idea and didn’t really want to think about—so he knew exactly what he was looking for.

  In seconds he had plucked it from its shelf, exited and relocked the safe, and then moved to the lab’s rear entrance. He paused at the door, partly to scan the empty parking lot to ensure he wouldn’t step outside and walk directly into the arms of the patrolling security guard, but also to take a deep breath and calm his nerves.

  He was shaking like a fucking leaf in a hurricane.

  He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself.

  Opened them up and took a good long look outside.

  The lot was empty, both of vehicles and security personnel. Carson had known that to park his car behind the building would invite unwanted scrutiny should the guard see it sitting there after hours, so for today he’d used one of the visitor lots at the edge of the Marine Technix campus. It would require a ten-minute walk at a brisk pace while cradling the item in his arms, but that was a small price to pay to avoid answering uncomfortable questions about why he was still at work at eleven o’clock on a Friday night.

  “Here goes nothing,” he muttered to himself as he pushed through the door and began crossing the lot. He’d made it most of the way toward a walking path encircling a small wooded area, when a voice came out of the darkness behind him.

  “Hey! You there!”

  Carson froze. The absurd notion of falling to the ground in a hail of gunfire flashed through his overstressed brain. Then he turned, slowly, to see the overnight security guard approaching. He’d apparently come around the rear corner of the lab at almost the same time Carson exited.

  Christ. If it weren’t for shit luck you’d have no luck at all.

  Over the course of his ten years at Marine Technix, Carson had gotten to know all the guards, at least well enough to say hello to, and some were friendlier than others. This was Tim Cripe, one of the more pleasant members of the security crew.