Long Shot

by Sgt. Jack Coughlin

  She had told him Moscow would have no interest in him if he became a lowly goose farmer or beekeeper, but now the general was assuming an even more important post. There was no plan behind that; it was an unexpected bonus. Of course she would meet him in London, and just as surely, she would be carrying new orders.

  A little kindness, a lot of flattery and an energetic roll in the bed were invisible hooks that had sunk deeply into the man. She owned him now more than ever before. The same formula that had left him befuddled so many years ago with the agent known as Lorette had been duplicated, and he did not even realize it was happening. Some men, whether government officials, prelates, money men, athletes … or generals … never learn.

  TALLINN, ESTONIA

  Colonel Thomas Markey, for one of the few times in his exceptionally organized life, was totally at a loss for what to do by the time Kyle Swanson arrived at his home. Several other people were already there, including a woman who was stacking fresh groceries in the cupboard. The somber look and awkward silence reminded Swanson of a funeral. There was coffee on a side table, alongside a stack of gooey pastries. He expected a green bean casserole might soon be brought over by a sympathetic neighbor.

  That would not be the case, because this was no ordinary mourning. The report that Jan Hollings Markey had vanished without a trace was a tightly held matter. Everyone in the neat house was either NATO or CIA, and agents were posted around the neighborhood to keep watch beneath the overcast sky. Swanson had been admitted by a guard just inside the front door only after showing his credentials. The house was cold.

  Markey nervously toyed with a rubber band wrapped around his fingers. His face was lined with worry and his eyes were damp. He looked pale and listless, but got up when Kyle came into the room. “Anything yet?”

  “No, Tom. I’m sure these guys will keep you up to date as soon as they hear. You probably know more than I do at this point.”

  The colonel wore old jeans and a tattered gray sweatshirt with WEST POINT across the chest. He absently picked at the rubber band. Swanson took him by the elbow and guided him to a corner so they could speak quietly.

  “Let me cut to the chase, Tom. The Agency has assigned me to find her. Gloves are off. Do whatever is necessary to bring her back. Do you know anything that might help me?”

  Markey shook his head, staring into the dark fireplace where only a few charred sticks remained. “No, dammit. I have gone over and over this thing in my head. We were going to meet here last night, after she finished in Narva and before I had to get back to Brussels. There was no earlier indication that anything was wrong. Did you hear that the asshole Strakov wants to undefect?”

  “Fuck him,” Swanson said in a low voice. “He’s somebody else’s problem now. You concentrate on Jan.”

  “I’ve got to finish my report on the interview.” The man was jittery, perhaps just looking for something to keep his mind busy and to make him think about anything other than his missing bride. That was impossible, and awful scenarios marched through his mind.

  “Get hold of yourself, Tom. Stay strong, and if you think of, or hear, anything that might help me, tell these people to contact me immediately. The official investigation is going to kick in soon and you will be swamped with investigators. I want to stay ahead of all of that. Do not tell anyone what I am up to. Should they ask, just say we’re old friends and I came by to see how you were doing.”

  A smile crept across the colonel’s haggard face. “Kyle, you work for the CIA. They know what you’re up to, what you are capable of doing.”

  “Not really,” Swanson said with a return grin.

  NARVA, ESTONIA

  The new mayor of Narva was a pudgy, well-mannered man with a full head of silver hair and a Hero of the Soviet Union medal pinned to the pocket of his neat blue suit. He had spent his teenage years fighting the fascists in the Great Patriotic War, and became a superior communist in the process. During his middle years, he continued the struggle against the imperialists of the West, and as he entered the second half of his life, watched in dismay as the Soviet Union fell apart. He understood economics and how the combined Western nations had crippled the socialist countries with ruinous sanctions. They accumulated wealth while making certain that the poorer East, ravaged by war like no other region, remained that way.

  So it was with a satisfying sense of revenge that Konstantin Pran stepped up to take his oath of office at one o’clock in the afternoon on Monday, April 18. He was a common workingman who had earned success in business, unpolished but smart, and considered himself totally unlike that elitist lawyer Brokk Mihailovich, who wanted to turn Estonia into California. Pran was not sad that Mihailovich had vanished, for he always thought the man to be weak and untested on the battlefield, and a quitter. Pran had a different dream.

  The citizens had turned out for his speech, and he made it short. He announced that Narva would adhere to the traditions that had made Estonia great, and that this victory would lead to new success for the Workers’ Party across the country—in Tartu, Viljandi, Pärnu and even in the capital, Tallinn. Estonia would remain beneath the protective wing of Mother Russia while meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.

  NATO, he promised, would eventually be forced to leave the country on the path chosen by its residents. NATO had to go! He offered as proof that the organization of Western nations was duplicitous and dangerous as shown by the fact that the United States Central Intelligence Agency had attempted to interfere with the city’s free and open elections. He let that charge linger for a moment. The mayor slowly announced this was not just political bombast: A CIA spy named Janice Hollings had been arrested by Narva police while she was trying to escape, as per an instruction from Russian intelligence officers. She was in custody at this very moment at the Town Hall and would be turned over to appropriate authorities, but not to the Americans or the nationalist Estonians. No, he said, the spy would be surrendered only to representatives who would arrive from Moscow tomorrow.

  * * *

  KYLE SWANSON WAS BY now familiar with the road to Narva and he charged over it aboard a matte-black Kawasaki KX450F, a mean little rice-burner of a dirt bike. Not much to look at, but with its 449cc four-stroke engine, the damned thing could climb a wall. He had paid $8,700 cash at a dealer in Tallinn and drove it off the showroom floor and onto the highway, and not long thereafter, rolled into Narva with a backpack full of tricks and the deadeyed look of someone who is beyond caring about what he does, as if life itself was a fuzzy and meaningless mirage. By the time he reached the traffic circle, a plan had formed.

  The last time he was in the city, he had the luxury of Anneli as a guide and translator. Since he still had no idea of what the people were saying, he needed language help but did not want to be obvious about getting it. With the Kawasaki parked and locked, he drifted into St. Peter’s Square, where a big political rally was under way. He looked around, saw the TV cameras, and made his way to the press area. Flashing his false press pass as freelancer Simon Brown from Toronto, he was allowed into the cordoned-off media section.

  Four cameras were on tripods and pointing at a fat little old man with white hair up on a stage.

  “Excuse me,” he said to a woman writing in a notebook. “I’m Simon Brown, Canada, and I just got here. Who’s that?” He smiled at her, but she was concentrating. The credentials around her neck stated in bold letters that she was with Sky News. Obviously an English-speaker.

  “That’s the mayor,” she said, somewhat waspishly, not really wanting to share information with a competitor. “Konstantin Pran.”

  Then she looked up and saw a rugged, handsome guy with gray-green eyes smiling at her. Obviously a print guy, so no real competition. “I’m Marian Mansfield, Sky.”

  “Mind if I hang out with you guys for a little while? This guy saying anything interesting?”

  “Damned if I know. Who understands this language?” She pointed to a young man nearby. “That’s our translato
r. He feeds me tidbits while making a transcript that I can review later.”

  “Maybe you can do your review over a drink at the German Pub?”

  Marian unconsciously brushed at her dark hair. She was interested. “Sure.” The press liked to huddle together in foreign lands, particularly when they flew in for a single story like this border town voting in a bunch of antiquated hard-line old commies. Simon Brown looked more interesting than the mayor.

  “Oh, shit!” The translator burst out, “Marian! He says they caught a CIA spy who was messing with the elections! She’s being held in a cell at the Town Hall.”

  The reporter’s eyes lit up as if jolted by a burst of electricity, and she drew her telephone from her pocket like a six-shooter. “Well, that changed things in a hurry,” she said. “I’ll go on the air with this as soon as they can set it up. Raincheck on that beer? Simon, is it?”

  “Yeah, you gotta work. The pub is on Malmi Street if you get a chance later on. Good luck.” Around them, the other camera crews had also sprung to alert. Kyle backed away and was immediately dismissed from the thoughts of Marian Mansfield. He went back to his motorcycle and threaded carefully to a new vantage point. He had gotten what he needed.

  29

  NARVA

  JAN HOLLINGS SQUINTED UP at the single bare bulb that had burned all night long. It was annoying. Putting her palm across her eyes did little to ease the glare, for when she took her hand away, the bright light was still there, staring at her. During her training to become a CIA agent, she had gone through a program of what to do in the unlikely event that she was ever captured, so this was not startling. Bright lights were a painless torture, for it robbed a prisoner of sleep and left them weary and with lowered defenses and ruined the sense of time. Soon, they could not remember if it was day or night.

  Her capture had happened so quickly that she barely remembered it. She had been ready to leave Narva, and was walking to her car, her mind not tuned to her surroundings while she mentally composed her report. Then there was a sudden large shadow and a small popping sound, followed by a pinprick on her left arm and a paralyzing electrical shock. Taser, she eventually decided. Little prongs had delivered a charge that knocked her on her butt. Calico was thankful that she did not remember the severe neuro-muscular contractions that would have left her writhing on the dirt like a broken puppet.

  She had awakened in captivity. Searching her memory, she was positive that she had not made some grievous tradecraft error on Sunday, for she was an established professional with an iron-clad cover; a well-known fashion dealer throughout Estonia. But Calico, well, Calico was a very different person, and her captors had known exactly who she was. They took her because she was an agent, for capturing a rag merchant made absolutely no sense. She rolled to her side to avoid some of the light, remembering Swanson’s suspicion that there was a mole, a leak, somewhere in the system. He was right, but he was still a bastard. Poor Anneli.

  She counted it a small blessing that she was not in the Middle East, where fanatics cut off heads and/or inflicted other medieval tortures. Here, wherever here was, meant at worst that she faced spending the rest of her life in some rotten prison. That was unlikely. There was more of a purpose in play.

  Jan got off the cot and walked the room, measuring it. About twelve feet by twelve, and maybe ten high, with rough and unfinished concrete walls. That one damned bare bulb, a hundred watts at least, hung in the middle, caged to protect the bulb and too high to reach. A small utilitarian bathroom to one side contained a metal toilet and a sink. No windows. She tried the door. Metal. Locked. She pounded. No response. It was a basement, chill and damp. On a little table was a pitcher of water and fruit, bread and cheese. A small kindness that indicated she was in a special category of imprisonment. Her captors had something specific in mind. The “something” she did not know. It would all be revealed in time.

  And she did not know who had taken her. She really did not know much at all.

  Jan returned to the cot and sat on it stiffly, as if her spine was iron, and pulled a threadbare white blanket around her shoulders. There had to be a camera and audio device recording her every move, although she could not see them. Pinholes. Then she closed her eyes because her thoughts turned to the unthinkable. If the Russians had her, then their security services this very minute were combing through her history, her client lists and eventually would find the people who comprised her intelligence network throughout Estonia. A few tears fell as she prayed silently for them to run for their lives.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The CIA brain trust did not panic upon receiving the news that the station chief in Estonia had vanished. Calico was not even the only crisis they would face today. Crisis was their game.

  “So this new puppet mayor of Narva has announced to the world that they captured her.” Marty Atkins was summing it all up during a meeting of section chiefs. “We have received nothing through official channels. Then, over in Brussels, this jerk Strakov suddenly decides that he does not want to defect after all. Am I the only one here that smells a Russian rat?”

  A general muttering of agreement rumbled around the room. Nobody in the meeting believed in coincidence.

  “I agree,” said National Security Adviser Dean Thomas, who had come over from the White House. “What have you done so far?”

  Atkins took off his reading glasses and studied his old friend. “Nothing much. We have to let it play out for a while. State Department is enlisting our embassy people in Tallinn to get the Estonian government to help. She is apparently being held in the Town Hall, probably a special cell. The Estonians will stomp all over the mayor to let him know that kidnapping Jan Hollings was a pretty dumb move that will backfire.”

  “Are the Russians really involved?” asked Royals.

  “Not a peep from them yet, Dean. You can bet they are somewhere in the woodwork, and the mayor says he will turn Calico over to them at some point.”

  “Okay. President Thompson wants her back safe, sound and soon. The State Department will make that very clear to both Tallinn and Moscow. Are you doing anything specific that I can tell him?”

  Marty Atkins leaned back and spun an ink pen around in his fingers. “On the clandestine side, yes. I sent one of our operatives, Kyle Swanson, into Estonia.”

  “Swanson. The sniper?”

  “Yep.”

  Royals thought about that for a moment. “He is a very dangerous man, Marty. Maybe you should have Swanson back off until we get a clearer picture.”

  “I’m afraid it is too late for that,” said Atkins. “He has dropped off the grid. No idea what the boy is up to. He likes to work alone.”

  “Boy?” snorted Dean Thomas. “Swanson’s a damned frothing Rottweiler with a gun.”

  “But he is our Rottweiler, Dean, and I did not let him off the leash just to do a half-assed job of locating our missing agent. We wait and see.”

  MOSCOW

  President Valdimir Pushkin and his western military district commander, Colonel General Valery Levchenko, walked side by side on a secluded gravel path in the Neskuchny Gardens. Security police fanned out in a distant circle around them, shooing away tourists and Muscovites alike. April was being kind to the gardens, which had braved another Russian winter and were springing to life earlier than usual, and both men were in good spirits. The heart of Moscow was turning green.

  “It is as if someone handed me a diamond of great value,” the president declared with a chuckle and a grim smile. “I confess that I had many doubts about these grandiose plans of Colonel Strakov. He seems to have accomplished the impossible.”

  Levchenko kept his hands behind his back and matched the president’s stride. He had flown over from St. Petersburg again, beginning to feel like a commuter, as soon as he heard about the CIA woman. The colors of the park were remarkable, and new leaves nosed out of healthy limbs. Flowers that had been frozen seeds for months were erupting into shades and varieties that had not yet made it up
to St. Petersburg. “He seems to have been damned near clairvoyant.”

  Pushkin looked up as a noisy pair of ducks lumbered overhead, aiming for the nearby Moscow River. “None of us counted on having the CIA’s Estonian chief of station in custody. Strakov just wanted us to snatch some prominent American like a businessman or a tourist or a reporter, and accuse them of spying. This is so much better.”

  “She fell into our laps, sir. But with her in our grasp, we also secure our hold on this weak-chinned General Ravensdale, who is forcing NATO to weaken its forces throughout the region. In addition, we dissolve the troublesome Calico intelligence network. Then we put Narva in our pocket as the springboard into Estonia. We also get Colonel Strakov back with a prisoner swap. It is a great coup. All I need right now is your final permission to wrap up Operation Hermitage when the moment comes. Phase One accomplished its mission of screwing up the NATO defenses, and our men and equipment are all back in place. Phase Two is ready to launch, and I will be in Narva tomorrow morning to personally command the movement. No weaklings will be allowed to back out at the last minute.”

  The ducks came to a splashy landing out on the river, joining a paddling of several dozen others floating about and discussing the warm weather.

  President Pushkin watched them while he considered the entire situation. “You have my authority. I will put that in writing. Keep me informed, Valery. Bring this all together and I will see that you replace Sergeyev as chief of the general staff.”