“Mutually assured destruction,” was the term. It signified each country’s knowledge that the other could retaliate for any aggressive act, nuclear or otherwise, by wiping their enemy off the face of the earth. It sounded like a terrifying prospect because it was a terrifying prospect, and as an academic, Winston knew nothing could diminish the likelihood of mutually assured destruction as effectively as information.
So he did what he had to do, year after year, decade after decade, through Republican administration and Democrat, and regretted none of it. Winston liked to believe the fact that both countries were still standing forty years after his first tentative information exchange was proof positive his theory had been right.
He pushed himself up from his leather recliner, wobbling unsteadily, and tottered out of his office for another drink.
He had no regrets about anything he had done over the past four decades, but what was happening now was different. This was a situation unlike anything he had ever experienced. Lives were directly at stake. In fact, lives had already been lost, and that loss of life could be traced straight back to Winston Andrews.
Winston could accept the notion of sacrificing a few in the interest of saving many. He had built a career on that concept. But in the past, that loss of life had been largely theoretical, at least to Winston. He had no doubt Soviet citizens had died thanks to intelligence information he had generated. Probably Americans had lost their lives, too, due at least in part to information he had passed to Moscow.
But as far as he was aware, there had never been a direct connection.
Until yesterday.
Until he had learned of a plan set in motion by the KGB to prevent a secret communique, from Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev to President Reagan, from reaching the White House. Despite his best efforts, Winston had been unable to ascertain what was contained in the letter and, in fact, strongly suspected the KGB didn’t even know.
But their plan had backfired. The plane crash ordered by the KGB had occurred not in the middle of the Atlantic as planned, but on U.S. soil, just a few hundred miles away, in Bangor, Maine. Now, news organizations were reporting that an unidentified female passenger, whose whereabouts were currently unknown, had survived the crash.
The passenger wasn’t unidentified to Winston, though. The passenger was his agent, Tracie Tanner, a young operative he had discovered and helped train, talented and smart. And things got even worse from there. A brutal massacre had taken place at Bangor International Airport: seven people slaughtered in cold blood, one a law enforcement officer. He shuddered at the thought of the carnage, a chill running down his spine that was unrelated to the temperature in his office.
Winston had no way of knowing whether Tracie was still alive. It was possible the KGB, whom he was certain had engineered the attack at the airport, had killed or captured Tracie and taken possession of the letter. He didn’t think that was the case, though. Tracie Tanner was perhaps the finest operative he had ever supervised over forty years in charge of CIA’s Soviet Intelligence Division. He doubted a small group of Russian operatives working on U.S. soil would have had the ability to eliminate her, unless she was badly injured or they simply got lucky.
He was in the process of mixing another gin and tonic when the shrill ringing of a telephone caused him to slop gin onto the bar in surprise. It wasn’t his house phone ringing, it was one of his special telephones, the one that received incoming calls only rarely, and only from a select few Russian intelligence officers. Even the majority of his contacts in the USSR were not privy to this number.
This was the call Winston had been dreading. He could predict, almost word for word, how the conversation was going to go, and it would not be good.
He sighed deeply, and reluctantly climbed the stairs to his second floor office. There was no need to hurry, the caller wasn’t going anywhere. And he wouldn’t give up. Winston walked to the phone, which he had placed squarely on the middle of his desk in anticipation of this call. “Hello?”
“Are you secure?” the caller asked, not bothering to identify himself. No introduction was necessary. Winston recognized the distinct baritone immediately, the voice raspy from a lifetime of abusing strong Russian vodka and unfiltered American cigarettes. It was Vasily Kopalev, the highest-ranking KGB member Winston had ever dealt with.
“Of course,” he answered, hoping he sounded stronger and more confident than he felt.
“Good. I am certain you are aware of the events of today?”
“I know what I’ve seen on the news.”
“Then you know our operation has, thus far, been an abject failure.”
“It would seem so.”
“We need to know where your agent is, Mr. Andrews. We need to know right now.”
“I understand, but she has not yet contacted me. She has been quite busy, though, as I’m sure you are well aware. If she is able, she will be in touch soon.”
“Are you being truthful with me, Mr. Andrews? The critical nature of this mission cannot be overstated.”
Winston’s heart sank. There was no way out of this. Kopalev’s presence on the other end of the line was indication the KGB intended to play their cards right to the end. He hesitated long enough for Kopalev to bark, “Mr. Andrews!” and then answered. “Yes, yes, of course I’m being honest with you, Vasily. The moment I hear from my operative, you will know it.”
“Sooner is better than later. We must gain possession of that letter.”
“I understand. As I said, when I hear from my agent, you will hear from me.” The line went dead and Winston returned the handset to its cradle, lifting the telephone off the desk and placing it into a drawer, which he then locked.
Tracie Tanner. His protégée, the daughter he never had. To be delivered up to the KGB, after which she would most certainly disappear forever. His stomach roiled, the gin sitting in his gut like an unexploded bomb.
He sat at his desk, head in his hands, for a very long time. Then he stood and walked downstairs to the bar to finish making that drink.
29
May 31, 1987
9:40 p.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
They made it as far as New Haven before stopping for the night. Shane felt almost as tired upon waking from his nap as he had before falling asleep. He offered to switch places and take a turn behind the wheel, but Tracie declined, saying, “I do some of my best thinking when I drive, and right now I have a lot to think about. Besides, we’ve gone about as far as we need to today.”
She steered the car off I-95 and then seemed to drive aimlessly around the fringes of New Haven looking for a suitable motel. She checked out three run-down establishments, all equally unappealing to Shane, eliminating all three from consideration for reasons he could not discern.
Finally she selected one. The winner in the overnight housing sweepstakes featured a central parking lot separating two rows of attached wood-frame rooms that looked like mirror images of each other, right down to the peeling paint and crumbling cement foundations.
The motel appeared identical to the other three as far as Shane could tell, and he looked at her quizzically. “This is the best we can do, huh?”
She smiled. “I’m getting a little low on cash, so we’re going to have to slum it for tonight. Once we hit the bank tomorrow, money won’t be as much of an issue, but for now I’m afraid we’ll have to pass on the Four Seasons.”
“Not to worry,” he said. “I’m a cheap date. But just out of curiosity, if we were only going to stay at a roach motel, what was wrong with the first three places you scoped out?”
“They didn’t have the features I was looking for.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.”
“You’ve already used that answer once today.”
“I know,” she said brightly, looking like the cat that ate the canary.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re one frustrating person to
deal with?”
“All the time.”
Tracie parked the car in front of an office that looked like it had been designed by the architect who built the Bates Motel. An old-fashioned MOTEL sign hung in the front window, the glass tube letters filled with red neon gas. The “L” had burned out, leaving MOTE flickering weakly in the darkness. Above it, unlit, another sign said NEW HAVEN ARMS.
Shane looked at the “MOTE” with distaste. “I hope that’s not a warning of what’s waiting for us in the rooms.”
“Ah, come on, how bad could it be? Where’s your sense of adventure?” she said, stepping out of the car and stretching her legs. Shane reached for the door handle to join her and then stopped, admiring the view through the windshield as she reached for the sky. The night was mild and she hadn’t bothered to pull on her jacket, and her blouse lifted as she stretched, revealing a taut belly. Shane had already gotten an up-close and personal look at her legs last night while cleaning her injury, and he decided this young woman was the complete package.
She bent down suddenly and looked in the driver’s side window, catching him staring, and laughed. She waggled her index finger back and forth. “Naughty boy,” she said through the closed window. It looked to Shane like her face colored a little, but maybe that was his imagination.
He clambered out of the car after her. “Sorry about that,” he said, although he really wasn’t, and he knew she knew he wasn’t. “So, what now?”
“What do you mean, ‘what now?’ Come on, Romeo, haven’t you ever shacked up with a girl of questionable repute in a run-down motel before?”
“Sure,” he said. “But when you say it like that it sounds so cheap.”
They shared a laugh and she turned toward the door. “Just follow my lead,” she said, and entered the office.
The décor was Spartan and had gone out of date sometime before John Glenn orbited the earth. A potted plant stood in one corner covered in dust. It looked like it was dying despite the fact it was made of plastic. A small couch, the leather ripped and torn, lined the wall next to it. To the left of the entrance was a single rickety wooden chair.
They moved to the front desk and Tracie dinged a small bell. Through an open door behind the desk came a rustling sound and then the scraping of a chair, and a moment later a rumpled-looking scarecrow of a man appeared. He was dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a stained Rolling Stones T-shirt, and he gazed at them suspiciously through red-rimmed eyes, as if not quite able to believe a customer had actually entered his establishment.
“Help you?” he asked, making clear through the inflection in his voice it was the last thing in the world he really wanted to do.
Tracie flashed a smile and Shane thought she could have been a beauty queen if she wanted to. Or an actress. “We’d like to rent two rooms,” she said, and the clerk actually took a step back, blinking in surprise. Shane knew how he felt.
“Two rooms?” he said, and then paused, like he was waiting for the punch line.
“That’s right, and I know exactly which ones I want.”
“Oh-kayyyy,” the clerk said, now clearly convinced the world as he knew it had been thrown off its axis.
“We would like to rent the rooms at the far end of the parking lot, one on each side, facing each other,” Tracie said, still smiling, enjoying the clerk’s confusion.
Scarecrow-man shook his head, not even attempting to hide his skepticism. “Sign here,” he mumbled, picking a worn log book up from under the desk and sliding it across at Tracie. “That’ll be fifty bucks total.”
She dug the money out of her pocket, signed the log book—Shane watched as she wrote “Sally Field,” next to one room and “Kathleen Turner” next to the other, and the clerk shook his head again—and then received two keys, each attached to a red plastic fob with the words “New Haven Arms,” as well as the room numbers, stamped in faded gold lettering on both sides.
“Thanks,” she said, flashing another dazzling smile at the clerk, although she had to have known by now charming this guy was impossible.
They turned toward the door and the clerk mumbled, “Check-out time’s ten a.m.” Tracie waggled her fingers in response and then they were back in the parking lot, the smell of the nearby Atlantic Ocean floating across the night air as they walked to the Granada.
“Two rooms?” Shane asked.
“Security,” she said, the answer puzzling him. Was she afraid of him? If he was going to hurt her, he could have done it last night when she was passed out on his couch. Besides, he thought, remembering the pistol she had waved in his face. She’s the one with the gun.
Tracie laughed. She seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. “Not security from you, silly.” She started the car and drove slowly to the back of the lot, then nosed into the parking space directly in front of the last room on the right.
“Then from who?” Shane asked. “You don’t think those guys from the airport can find us, do you? I mean, how could they possibly know where we would be?”
“How, indeed,” she said thoughtfully.
Shane shrugged, exasperated. This was one strange young woman: beautiful and alluring and sexy, with a girl-next-door innocence about her, but also tough as nails and somehow world-weary, as if being chased by cold-blooded killers represented just another day at the office. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I give up. Which room do you want me to take?”
She flicked her thumb in the direction of the room across the parking lot, directly behind the Ford. Shane held his hand out for the key and Tracie looked at the room numbers stamped on the plastic fobs, then handed him one. He took it without a word, annoyed, then opened the door and stalked off across the lot.
When he reached the other side, he stuck the key in the door, surprised by the motel’s poor lighting. The doorway was bathed in shadows despite the fact the moon was full. He opened the door and realized Tracie was right behind him. “I thought you wanted me to take this one,” he said.
“I do. I also want me to take this one.”
“Then why the hell did we rent two rooms when you said you’re almost out of money?”
“I told you,” she said. “Security.”
Shane stared at her. “You really are worried about those guys.”
“I wouldn’t say worried, exactly, but let’s just say I like to maintain a healthy awareness of possibilities at all times. It’s what keeps me alive.”
30
May 31, 1987
9:55 p.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
The room was more or less what Tracie had expected—small and cramped, with outdated furnishings and a bed with a mattress that was probably as old as she was, covered by an off-white set of threadbare blankets and a fading blue bedspread. She had stayed in a hundred similar rooms all over the world—and many that were much, much worse. This one was clean at least, more or less.
Shane bounced on the bed like a little kid, grinning. “Wanna take it for a spin?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, and she burst out laughing.
“As tempting as you make it sound,” she said, “I have work to do. I really need to call my handler. In fact, this phone call is way overdue. I should have gotten in touch with him last night, but I was down and out, and then today we’ve been too busy trying not to get killed. Before we do that, though, we need to set up the room across the way.”
Shane looked at her quizzically. “Set it up?”
She nodded. “Yep. You can put all that excess energy to good use, although maybe not the way you intended. We’re going to haul all the pillows over there, and any extra blankets you can find, too.”
“What for?”
“Bait.”
Shane picked the two lumpy pillows up off the bed while Tracie investigated the tiny closet. Inside was a small ironing board, an ancient iron, and an extra set of bedding: two sheets and two blankets. She grabbed the blankets and sheets, wondering if anyone frequenting this run-down piece-of-shit
motel had ever had occasion to iron an article of clothing, or if the iron even still worked.
“Take the blankets and bedspread off this bed,” she told Shane. “We can use those across the way as well. We’ll leave the sheets, though. I don’t think I’d want to even sit on this bed without something covering it.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Take this bedding? What about you? What are you going to sleep on? I figured I could sleep on the floor in my clothes and you could have the bed, but without blankets it won’t be very comfy.”
Tracie smiled. He was being a perfect gentleman, despite his half-joking proposition of a moment ago. “We’re going to trade off sleeping,” she said. “Nobody will have to sleep on the floor, because one of us is going to stay awake all night, watching the room across the way. Even when you’re sleeping you’ll have to stay in your clothes, anyway, because if we have to move we’ll need to be able to do it quickly.”
“What will we be watching for?”
Tracie chewed on her lower lip, a reaction to stress she had been trying unsuccessfully to break for as long as she could remember. “Hopefully nothing,” she said in a tone that didn’t even convince herself.
Shane stared at her for a long moment. She thought he was going to reply but he didn’t. Then he stripped the covers off the bed, rolled them up into a ball, and hugged the pillows and bedding to his chest. He opened the door and they trooped across the parking lot to their second room. Tracie examined the lot as they crossed, pleased with her choice of motels. The sight line between the two rooms was perfect, the lighting in the parking lot was abysmal, and only a couple of the other rooms appeared occupied, both far off in the distance, close to the road and next to the office.
They entered the second room and found a mirror image of the one they had just left, right down to the faded coloring in the decades-old bedspread. She pulled the spread to the foot of the bed and then did the same thing with the blankets and top sheet. She placed her blankets on the right side of the bed and then told Shane, “Hand me yours.” When he passed them over, she placed them lengthwise on top of hers, folded the whole pile back on top of itself, and then scrunched everything up into the rough approximation of a sleeping body.
Black Ops Bundle: Volume One Page 60
