by James Grady
"I think so, sir. The bureau men with me are fairly cooperative. They've officially told me they don't want to blow the case against Rose because of any procedural goofs, but unofficially they've indicated they -really don't care if he ever comes to trial. Their Washington office wants the headlines, but the field men are more interested in nailing Rose's ass but good. He's made them look awfully bad."
"Don't worry about the Washington end. I think I can take care of that. After all, we're giving them the truck driver and the New York woman. What more do they need? And by the way, Kevin, you know you have the Army teams-stationed at Malmstrom as a backup?"
"Yes, but if we find Rose first, I doubt I'll need them. I don't think Rose is prepared for war. You still have them on special security duty?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. And of course, I have Condor as a backup.’’
The old man laughed slightly.. "I'm afraid our Condor hasn't been as productive as I haA hoped. He's performed well, but nothing like his previous stellar accomplishments. Perhaps that's just as well. Breaking him in slowly should keep him from flying from us. If you get a chance, bring him in at the end somehow. Let him Watch, but don't let him get involved in any rough stuff. I'm not sure how he would handle it."
"I'll keep that in mind, sir. What's he doing anyway?"
"'Wrapping up that ridiculous survey. He gave Carl some more farmers to check out. Carl said Malcolm indicated they probably meant nothing. Carl's having a routine check done anyway. Condor is waiting by the phone for that and any other . word from us. I felt it was best to keep him out of the area until we know where Rose is. After all, we don't want Condor laying an egg and spoiling our show for us, do we?" The old man chuckled softly at his own joke.
Kevin wasn't in a humorous mood, but he tried to force some levity into his reply. He failed. "No, sir," he said grimly, "we don't"
….
Nurich headed west along two-lane U.S. 200 after dumping the old couple in the field. He had considered killing them to ensure their silence and extend his security, but he decided that executing them would put him in a harder bargaining position if he were caught. True, the old couple might die accidentally in the field, but the man looked tough enough to make it to help in a reasonable length of time. And if they died, they died.
Nurich drove as hard and as fast as he dared. He had no way of knowing how much time he had. He didn't even know for sure that he was indeed shaking pursuers. Despite Woodward's warnings and his own premonitions, it wasn't an established fact that the Americans were on to him. But Nurich didn't want to bet they weren7t. By midday he had cut back to the main interstate 94, crossed the border into southern Montana and was less than eight hours from his mission site. He drove on, despite the tension and the pressures. He knew he needed to switch cars, and the opportunity came shortly after he left the interstate at Glendive, Montana, to cut northwest on another two-lane highway.
She drove a Volkswagen largely because of the gas economy and partially because she thought it was cute. She was thirty-seven years old, wife to a considerate if mildly unnoticing husband, mother to three girls (aged ten, eight and five), and on her way to an overnight bridge tournament in Havre, 240 miles from her Glendive home. She also was raised in the protective womb of American womanhood and had no idea how to fix a flat tire. But, since she was only a few minutes from her home in friendly Montana, she had no fear that the minor problem would do more than delay her. Someone she knew or could trust was bound to come along sooner or later and fix her problem, so she sat in her car, pulled slightly off the side of the road, smiling and planning strategies for card games she would never play.
The nice middle-aged man was so helpful. He carefully listened to all her plans as he fixed her tire. She even joked with him about how she never checked in with her husband, just to keep him from thinking she couldn't do without him. It was a little game they played. By now the children were old enough that they didn't mind not hearing from Mommy every night, so that didn't matter. She really appreciated the way the nice salesman kept watching for traffic too. Not that there was much to watch for. No cars passed them during the time he fixed her flat. He carefully put the tools away in the little trunk (she never could get used to a trunk in the front of the car!) and turned to face her. She had just started to thank him when she saw the huge gun in his hand.
The wornan drove wretchedly, but Nurich wasn't too worried. He was just glad she wasn't a screamer. She had paled almost fainted at the sight of the gun, but she hadn't screamed. That had been a good sign. She also reacted quickly to his orders. He didn't have to tell her-twice as she transferred his bags from the old couple's car to the Volkswagen.
Nurich played with her terror as they drove, first soothing it, then fanning it. It took an hour before her conversation moved beyond rapidly affirmative monosyllables. He realized she had an equal fear of rape and death, possibly fearing rape even more than death. That amused him, and he thought he could use it to his advantage. The terror of being soiled for her husband and children would motivate her more than mortal danger.
Nurich looked at her carefully as she drove. She was rather plain and trifle bony for his likes. Something about her made Nurich think of the woman who lived in the flat below him in Moscow. She had recently been widowed and had entertained Nurich several times. He had given some thought to marrying her, but his profession was not conducive to or compatible with such institutions. The thought of his Russian neighbor warmed Nurich and he sighed. The American housewife would have been considerably relieved if she had known Nurich considered rape outside the line of duty, a sport of pigs, not of men. As long as she did what she was told, her chastity was safe with him.
Nurich had her drive to Kremlin, a small cluster of buildings along U.S. 2, the major east-west highway -running parallel to the Canadian border. In many places U.S. 2 is less than thirty-five miles from the border. Nurich chose Kremlin for no particularly strategic reason. The name amused him. Kremlin is off the highway and had one very decrepit motel with all the units vacant. Nurich correctly guessed that most of the few people who use the motel do so for illicit and often illegal love affairs of one kind or another. Few tourists stay in this whistle-stop when the small city of Havre is less than an hour's drive to the east and Shelby, Malcolm's base community, is thirty minutes to the west.
Nurich ordered the woman to pull off the main road after they had driven through and scouted-Kremlin. Her hands tightly grasped the wheel; she stared straight ahead.
The old couple carried a bottle of fine brandy wrapped in the cushioning protective gauze of their first-aid kit. The brandy had been a present from their daughter. Nurich gave the brandy little thought when he took the first-aid kit with him in the woman's car. He had been interested' primarily in the tape to bind the housewife. But as they neared the motel, he realized the brandy could help build his cover. Now he handed her the open bottle.
"Drink some."
The trembling woman almost dropped the bottle. The first tentative swallow, made her choke.
"More," Nurich commanded, "only this time slosh it around mi your mouth before you swallow it."
The woman obeyed. Nurich made her drink almost half the bottle in quick, burning swallows.
"Now take some of it in your hand. Rub it on your face and let it dry."
The woman looked at him questioningly, but obeyed. Nurich took the bottle from her. He rinsed his mouth out with the fiery liquid, then spit the liquor out the window. He rubbed some into his clothing and on his face. The car reeked of brandy. Nurich was pleased with the drunken image the sweet odor gave, but he wished the old couple had carried a different liquor: He hated brandy. He looked outside the car windows and into the rearview mirror. They were off the main highway, pulled into a country-road intersection. It was dark, and he saw no lights from approaching traffic. Kremlin's few lights were a good half mile away.
Nurich studied his captive carefully. The eerie half-light glow fro
m the instrument panel seemed to magnify her fear. She wore a simple brown suede suit with a white blouse under the jacket.
"Take off your jacket," he commanded, "and the blouse and bra too. Then put the blouse back on."
The woman cringed away from him. She pressed her body against the door. She slowly turned to look toward him, not at him. "Please," she begged, "I ... please don't
‘’I can pay you-"
Nurich cut her pleas short. "Listen to me. We are going to check into that motel. I want him to think we are adulterers. The more we look the part, the better. The desk clerk will smell the brandy. If it's a man, he'll pay attention to you. I want him to notice you as a woman, nothing else. If you -don't do exactly as I say, or if you try something stupid when we confront the motel clerk, I will kill whoever is in there. And then I will do things to you so unspeakable no man could want you for anything ever again. You remain safe and unharmed only as long as you completely o6ey my orders. You have no chances except those I give you. Do you understand?"
Slowly the woman nodded yes. By now the brandy was combining with her fear, drawing her into a totally submissive stupor. She quickly took off her clothes. She held her naked upper torso with her arms for a brief second, then dressed again as Nurich had commanded. When she finished she looked back at him.
He moved quickly so she wouldn't have time to react. He pulled her close to him, roughly pressing his mouth against hers. She froze and he felt the revulsion pass through her body. Good, he thought. When he drew away from her, her lipstick was on his face and what remained on her Ups was smeared. He had also violently mussed her hair. He reached in front of her and switched on the dome light.
"Now fix yourself," he ordered, "not too well, just enough to show you made the attempt." As she complied, he crumpled the front of her blouse, matting it into a mass of wrinkles. He felt her shudder each time he touched her breasts.
The motel manager had seen it all before. The nervous couple, the strained looks, the rumpled clothing, the smell of booze. "Yeah?" he said, as if he didn't know what they wanted.
"We, ah, we'd like a room. Wouldn't we, dear?"
The woman nervously nodded yes and feigned a smile. She kept staring at her escort. Eager, thought the manager.
"For how long?" He hoped in their nervousness he could get a little more than the usual out of them. Business was horrible, simply horrible.
"Oh ... ah" stuttered the man. A real nervous character, thought the clerk. Probably his boss' wife. "We, ah, we're traveling across the state, see. But we got tired. My wife and I. You know. The Mrs. wants to rest a spell. We might stay" the man glanced quickly at his woman, ---- "two days? Maybe three? Okay?"
The clerk closed his eyes slowly, coolly. "Fine. You want one with a kitchen unit?"
"That will be fine, just fine."
"Right," said the clerk. He smiled slightly. Time for a little fun. Nothing serious, just a little clean fun. "You want twin beds or double?"
The man looked at him with surprise. "You mean you mean we have a choice?"
"Sure. Twin or double. Take your pick."
"Oh, ah, well . . . we'll, we'll take the twin beds, of course. I mean, well, we don't have to ... to sleep together, no, we don't have to do that at all, do we, dear?"
The woman nodded eagerly. The clerk rolled his eyes, not caring if they saw. Who did they think he was, trying to fool him with that old separate-beds routine? He let them register: Mr. and Mrs. John Morris, Glendive. No street address on the card. What a laugh, he thought as he handed them their key.
"Number nine, on the end."
"Thank you, thank you. Oh, there's one other thing. Do you suppose . . . ? We worry about the car, you know, getting hit by a truck or something, do you ... T'
The clerk didn't wait to hear the rest. He had heard it all before. "You can park behind the unit. Your car will be safe there. Why, you can't even see it from the road."
The man flashed that idiotic grin the clerk had seen before, scooped up the key and led his woman off to bed. The clerk snorted, trying to banish a tiny, tiny seed of envy behind disgust.
Nurich made the woman finish most of the brandy. When she was so drunk she could barely stand, he stripped her completely. The terror fought its way through the haze in her eyes, but she was too drunk to protest. He taped her to the four comers of the bed farther from the door. Her nakedness and that position both reinforced her fears and destroyed her confidence. She passed out before he was finished securing her. He didn't know If it was from the brandy or her terror, and he was so tired he didn't care.
The twin beds had been a stroke of luck. Nurich had understood the sadism in the clerk's joke. A piece of luck, he thought. I have her secure, fairly comfortable so she won't get too desperate and I still have a bed to myself. He wearily undressed, checked the door and went to bed, his gun tied to his wrist with a shoelace.
Tomorrow, he thought as he drifted off, tomorrow.
16
‘’Of course you agree to have a battle?" Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.
'’I suppose so," the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella: "only she must help us to dress up, you know."
Kevin arrived in Havre late Thursday night. After only a few hours' sleep he took over supervision from his assistant who had set up their headquarters in a rented office building. The Montana highway patrol found Rose's stolen car abandoned in the southeastern comer of the state, but no other trace of Rose had turned up. Dr. Lofts was at the air base, waiting. Condor was at his base, waiting. The old man was in Washington, waiting. Waiting for me, thought Kevin. And here I am, in Havre, Montana, waiting. Waiting for a person whose location I don't know. Kevin grumbled to his assistants, fused with meaningless chores and tried to keep from thinking of bad possibilities.
Unlike Kevin, Nurich slept in Friday morning. He woke with a start at ten. His prisoner was also wide awake, staring at him through bloodshot eyes. He thought her appearance came partly from crying and partly from the brandy's aftereffects. He still saw terror in her eyes. He let her up to go -to the bathroom, deliberately keeping her from dressing. When he secured her to the bed again, he taped her mouth shut and hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door when he left. The manager seemed to understand his "wife" being under the weather and almost lackadaisically accepted Nurich's offer to remake the beds himself.
Kremlin's small grocery store provided Nurich with TV dinners, candy bars, milk, instant coffee and overly ripe fruit, all at outrageous prices. He paid for them with the woman's cash. He also bought the daily papers from Great Falls and Havre and three six-packs of beer.
Nurich cooked a large lunch for the two of them when he returned to the motel. He made the woman drink two beers with her meal. He drank only milk. He let her sit in the chair while he read the papers and sipped on a cup of coffee. He found nothing of interest in either paper, including the article in the Great Falls Tribune in which the Army assured area farmers that the maneuvers currently going on in the area would pose no damage to crops.
Nurich spent the day watching television. He made his captive roam the room, forcing her to walk back and forth. He kept her clothes from her. He made her finish one of the six-packs of beer. The alcohol kept her sluggish, but he didn't let her rest. He wanted her exhausted when he left her. He was sure the terror, the liquor, the physical exertion and the mental degradation would accomplish that purpose. The only time he allowed her to "rest was when he checked his equipment. Then he taped her hands behind her, put a pillowcase over her head and made her kneel in the comer. He heard her softly sobbing as he examined his gear.
His Moscow superiors had trained him well enough. The small box of glowing lights and dials seemed to function perfectly as far as Nurich could tell. He was glad the mechanism recorded all its important data on a small cartridge tape which he was to bring back with him. That spared him the burden of carting the machine back. He could ditch it in a junkyard after tripping the two-minute delayed
self-destruct switch. Bringing back the tape cartridge also meant he didn't have to be a technical genius and interpret what the machine said. He would take the tape to the experts.
Nurich slowly ran his hand over the meters smooth surface. The electrical impulses seemed to transmit excitement to him. His apprehension and misgivings about the worth and method of the mission remained, but he caught the fever, the excitement of the moment. Perhaps Mother Russia would benefit from these foolish efforts after all. And so far he was winning, he was beating the Americans on their own ground. Nurich smiled. Who knew what the mission meant?
The machine's traveling case was built to be used as either a backpack or hand luo, age. The minor alterations necessary to transform it from one to the other took Nurich only a few minutes. He slipped into the straps and lifted the machine onto his back. It weighed almost sixty pounds. The vital parts filled every available space. The technicians had to allow a large weight in comparison to the-relatively small size. Nurich was in excellent shape. He knew he couldn't run far with the machine, but he could maneuver. He checked the clothing, maps, reserve money, false identity papers and his gun carefully. Everything seemed in order. He hid all his equipment under a sheet before he unblindfolded his captive and made her resume her walk to nowhere.
Late in the afternoon Nurich ordered the woman to dress. She wordlessly obeyed his commands. He knew she was grateful for the chance to don protective clothing. When she was ready, he led her outside for an ostentatious, arms-linked stroll around the motel's courtyard. He saw the manager watch them. After Nurich was sure he had made the point that his companion was still safely with him, he led her back to the motel room, back to her destination less, naked journey.
Shortly after sunset Nurich cooked another meal. He ate several candy bars and the most nutritious of the TV dinner. He drank one cup of coffee with his meal, had no milk and kept the coffeepot warm on the stove so he could have another cup just before he left. He let his naked captive eat, then quickly forced her to drink the remaining ten bottles of beer. She barely finished her last three bottles, but each time she faltered or seemed about to pass out, he stood over her and ran his hands over her body. She cried soundlessly as she emptied the containers. Nurich carried her to the bed. He put cotton swabs 'over her eyes, then taped them in place, winding the sticky adhesive around her head in a blindfold. He again taped her spread-eagled to the bed and put a sheet over her. Nurich decided not to gag her. She might choke to death. At any rate, he doubted she would wake much before noon the next day. He also didn't think she would scream for help. Blindfolded, naked and trussed up, she would have no idea where he was. Even when she concluded he had deserted her, her fears and inhibitions would keep her silent. He was sure no one would find her until the manager's curiosity over. came him, and that might take two days. She could survive that. She would tell the police about a madman, not a spy. If the-American knew he was who he was, her story made no difference. If they didn't know, her story wouldn't tell them the truth. He lost no security by letting her live.
