Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  Tracie followed, gun still in her hand but now pointed at the floor, and Shane brought up the rear. He could feel sensation of pressure building at the base of his skull and thought, not now, dammit, not now.

  About a third of the way up the stairs, Tracie said, “You don’t seem all that surprised to see us still breathing.”

  “That’s because I’m not particularly surprised,” Andrews said. “I helped train you, remember? I was never convinced the Russians would be able to take you out of the picture, and even when their team checked in and reported that they had completed the mission, I didn’t completely buy it.”

  Tracie stopped dead on the stairs, Shane bumping into her from behind. Andrews seemed to feel the movement stop behind him and then he stopped, too. In a puzzled voice, Tracie asked, “If you suspected I might have gotten the jump on the Russians, why was it so easy to get in here? Why weren’t you better prepared? You had to know if I survived the ambush in New Haven, I would come straight to you—nobody else knew we were there.”

  Andrews glanced at Tracie with a paternal half-smile that Shane instantly wanted to knock off his face. “Because it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “Things have progressed to the point now that they cannot be stopped. The slaughter by the KGB of law enforcement and military personnel in Maine will prompt an investigation so thorough I could never survive it. My cover will be blown and I’ll end up in prison, if not in front of a firing squad. This is the end for me, my dear, one way or the other.”

  Andrews continued trudging up the stairs and Tracie followed. At the top of the stairs a short hallway led to a bedroom which had been converted into a home office. In one corner stood an antique redwood desk, roughly the size of a small aircraft landing strip. The top was bare, and in the center stood an empty glass, two ice cubes melting inside. A ring of condensation had formed around the base. A bank of telephones covered a rack next to the desk, and alongside that, against one wall, was an array of electronic equipment, none of which looked familiar to Shane.

  There was no sign of any work in progress in the room; no correspondence on the desk, no paperwork anywhere. The office felt antiseptic, tidied-up. The low hum of cooling fans, presumably protecting the electronic equipment, was barely perceptible in the background.

  Andrews stood in the doorway, bushy white eyebrows raised, hands in his pockets, awaiting instructions, and Tracie asked Shane to pull Andrews’ chair out from behind his desk and drag it to the center of the room. When he had done so, she bent down, ran her hand quickly along the underside of the seat, and, satisfied there was no weapon hidden there, told her mentor to take a seat.

  “For what it’s worth, which is clearly not much,” Andrews said, settling into the chair and folding his hands in his lap, “I have no idea specifically what information is contained in that letter. When you were dispatched to East Germany to act as courier for an emergency communique from Mikhail Gorbachev, I was as much in the dark about its contents as you were. As anyone was.”

  “Bullshit,” Tracie said simply. “This is the biggest operation the KGB has ever attempted. You’ve been working with them for years, therefore you knew about it. It’s that simple.”

  “You give me far too much credit,” Andrews said. “I’ve been aware the assassination of a high-ranking American is in the works—that much is true. But I’ve not been privy to the specifics of the operation.” He gazed at Tracie appraisingly. “But you have, haven’t you? The fact that we’re even having this conversation means you’ve opened the letter. What does it say? My KGB contacts have their suspicions, but no one seems to know for sure.”

  “What it says,” Tracie began, her voice cold and her face hard, “is none of your business. You’re a traitor and an embarrassment to the agency. An embarrassment to your country. You’re still alive for one reason and one reason only—I need to find out how deep inside the government this conspiracy reaches.”

  “The letter is a warning to President Reagan, isn’t it? Gorbachev wants to stop the assassination attempt,” Andrews continued, ignoring Tracie’s statement.

  Her face boiled red, and Shane could see how close she was to losing control. “How can you sit there, calmly discussing a presidential assassination?” she asked. “An event which, if successful, will in all probability launch World War Three? How?”

  “So the president is the target,” Andrews answered, still seemingly unruffled, a note of wonder in his voice.

  “I understand you view me as a traitor to my country,” he continued, “but what you don’t realize is that my work as a buffer has saved tens of thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands probably, and prevented outright war between the United States and the USSR many times. My role has been to prevent the destruction of the country I have spent my life serving, and to my way of thinking, I’ve done exactly that.”

  “Your work as a buffer?” Tracie asked, nonplussed. “You mean your unsanctioned, illegal, treasonous work? Is that the work you’re referring to?”

  Andrews shrugged. “Most of the work you do is unsanctioned and technically illegal, too.”

  “There’s no comparison. I’m serving my country. I’m certainly no traitor.”

  Andrews said nothing and she continued. “You claim to have prevented war between the two countries, but you’re assuming the people in the highest positions of responsibility would have responded to situations in a certain way had you not acted, when you have no justification for those assumptions. And if you’ve contributed to the beginning of a Third World War now, what the hell has been the point?”

  Andrews started to answer and Tracie held up a hand. “This is not a debate,” she said. “You don’t get equal time. This discussion is over. I told you once, you’re still breathing only because I need information. And you’re going to give me that information. Right now.”

  Andrews smiled sadly and said nothing.

  Tracie shrugged her backpack off her shoulder and it dropped heavily to the floor. She knelt and unzipped it, all the while holding her weapon on Andrews, who sat quietly, making no move to interfere.

  Shane ran a hand over his face and sighed shakily. The pressure at the base of his skull had increased steadily until it was now a dull throb, radiating waves of pain outward into his neck and shoulders as well as through his head. He had been here before. The pain would get much worse before it got better. He cursed the timing, wished he had the pain medication back home in his medicine cabinet.

  Tracie paused, gun hand leveled against Andrews, her other hand buried in the backpack. She could sense that Shane was in pain and watched him closely, her eyes flicking back and forth between Andrews and Shane. “Are you all right?” she finally ventured.

  Shane nodded, closing his eyes against the discomfort. “More or less. I could use a glass of water, though.”

  “You look like you need to lie down. You’re white as a ghost.”

  “I’ll be okay.” He wondered if his words sounded as unconvincing to Tracie as they did to him. Judging by the look on her face, they probably did.

  “Go get yourself some water,” she said quietly. “I can handle this from here.”

  “No.” Shane shook his head. It felt like someone had let loose a baseball inside his skull. Soon it would feel like a bowling ball. “I’m okay. I’ll stay.”

  She returned reluctantly to the search of her backpack, her hand emerging a few seconds later with a red-handled pair of pliers and a set of handcuffs, both of which she tossed onto Andrews’ desk. They landed with a clunk on the polished surface and spun to a stop. “Careful with the desk,” Andrews said mildly. “It’s an antique.”

  She smiled at him acidly. “So are you, and wait ’til you see what I’m going to do to you.”

  Andrews grimaced, looking at the pliers. “A bit barbaric, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You didn’t leave me a lot of time to prepare for this. I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive. Besides,” she said, making a show of looking at her watch,
“the hours are slipping away. The time for subtlety is long past, not that I particularly care what happens to you, anyway.” Her lie was blatantly obvious to Shane, he could see through it even with the black waves pounding through his head. It had to have been even clearer to Andrews after more than half a decade spent working with Tracie.

  She wrapped her hand around the back of the chair and yanked it across the Persian rug with Andrews still sitting in it, bringing it closer to the desk. He nearly tumbled onto the floor but regained his balance and for the first time looked angry. Or maybe what Shane could see on his face was the beginning of real fear. Tracie held his left hand in her right and thumped it down on the surface of the desk, snapping the pliers with her left for emphasis.

  “Why don’t you try asking me what you want to know before beginning to pull out my fingernails?” Andrews said.

  “I already told you what I want to know, and you insisted on playing games with me,” Tracie answered. “I don’t have time for games. And, by the way, when I’m done with your fingernails I’ll be taking your teeth. I don’t want to hurt you, Winston, but time is running out, and the only thing that matters is stopping this madness. So I’ll do what I have to do, and by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to tell me everything.” Her face was grim but determined, the sight chilling Shane, who flashed back to the faces of the two Russians after her interrogation twelve hours ago.

  “You want to know who else is involved with the Soviets, is that correct?”

  “See? I told my new friend,” she nodded at Shane, “that you were relatively sharp for a dinosaur. Start talking and maybe you can save a few of those choppers, so when they serve dinner at Leavenworth while you’re serving your life sentence, you won’t have to eat through a straw.”

  “There aren’t many KGB collaborators in positions of power above mine,” Andrews said softly, “but there are a few. Listen to me. No one’s going to believe you when you claim there’s a Russian hit man out to kill President Reagan. A better strategy for you to follow right now would be to prepare for the new reality. Things are going to change in the world, and quickly. Position yourself to benefit from the upcoming war. I can help you with that.”

  “You make me sick,” Tracie said, her voice dripping with venom. “Stop dragging your feet and just give me the fucking names. Last chance.”

  “Okay, you win,” Andrews said. He bent his head in defeat, running his hand over his face like he was exhausted. Finally he dropped his hand to his lap and he looked up at Tracie, mouth closed. Shane could see the muscles in his jaw tense as he ground his teeth together. He looked almost expectant, like he was waiting for her to answer a question, which didn’t make sense because Tracie was the one who had been asking questions of him.

  “Well,” she said, “who are you working with? Goddammit, Winston, I need to know…” Her words began to fade as she realized something was wrong. Andrews’ eyes bulged out and his face had reddened. His body stiffened in the chair and he began to struggle to breathe, almost panting, unable to fill his lungs.

  “Winston, no!” Tracie cried as he began convulsing. His body pitched sideways off the chair and he cracked his head on the edge of the heavy wooden desk. He hit the floor and flopped around like a fish out of water. Tracie knelt next to him and Shane stood frozen, helpless, unable to comprehend even what was happening.

  A thin line of drool, whitish and foaming, trickled out of the corner of Andrews’s mouth and sprayed into the air as the convulsions caused his head to snap back and forth. “What’s wrong with him?” Shane asked anxiously, his headache momentarily forgotten.

  “Cyanide,” Tracie said. “He must have had a capsule in his pocket. He’s poisoned himself.”

  Shane recalled him keeping his hand in a fist. He had assumed it was a reaction to the stress of being unmasked as a traitor. Obviously it was something else.

  Tracie reached under his head with one hand and supported him at the neck, trying to force his mouth open, presumably to clear his breathing passage, unable to do so. Andrews’ mouth was clamped shut in what must have been a muscular reaction, as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Tracie said. “I should have seen this coming.” She felt for a pulse in his neck, then shook her head. She rose and turned to Shane. “There’s nothing we can do for him. He’s going to be gone in seconds.”

  Shane said nothing, stunned at the ugliness and brutality of the scene, at the speed at which the poison had done its job. Finally he shook his head and asked, “What do we do now?”

  Tracie rose slowly to her feet. Her eyes were twin pools of shocked hopelessness. She shrugged. “I have no idea. It was imperative I find out who else is involved in this conspiracy. Without knowing that, I won’t be able to get within fifty feet of the president. I’ll be intercepted, the letter will disappear. Without that proof, my story is nothing more than a wild fiction.”

  She stared at Shane. “We’re screwed.”

  39

  June 1, 1987

  6:40 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tracie picked up her intended instruments of torture and tossed them into the backpack. She pulled out a rag and ran it over the surface of the desk, then looked around the room pensively before asking Shane, “Have you touched anything in here?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, trying to comprehend what had just happened. She zipped the backpack closed, still clutching the rag in one hand, and said, “There’s nothing more we can do. Let’s get out of here. I need to get somewhere where I can sit and think.” She peered up at Shane. “And you really look like you need to lie down.”

  “I’m fine,” he said automatically, his thoughts still focused on Winston Andrews and the shocking abruptness of his suicide. Tracie trudged out of her CIA handler’s home office and Shane followed her down the stairs. “What are we going to do about him?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’? We’re just going to leave him in his office?”

  “Unless you want to invite the police over and answer lots of invasive and time-consuming questions about what you’re doing here, and why the owner of the house is dead on the floor with a lethal poison clogging his system. Maybe you’ll be able to convince them you didn’t kill Andrews, but I guarantee you won’t do it before spending a full day—if not more—in custody. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time to spare.”

  “I suppose, but still…”

  “Don’t worry about him; he’s beyond caring about his present situation. If it makes you feel better, I’ll let someone at the agency know about this as soon as I can. But everything comes back to the same logjam: I don’t know who I can trust. If I alert CIA before figuring out what to do about this letter,” she patted her pocket protectively, “and the wrong person takes the call or hears the message, we get eliminated and the president gets killed. I just can’t afford to take that chance.”

  “Can’t you at least leave an anonymous call or something?”

  Tracie stopped and shook her head in frustration. “Everything we do leaves a trail. An ‘anonymous call’ would add one more unnecessary link to the chain. A determined KGB or CIA entity with the proper tools can track us much more easily than you realize. I can’t make that call, Shane. I just can’t do it yet.”

  Shane nodded, forgetting Tracie was in front of him and couldn’t see him. “Besides,” she continued. “When he doesn’t show up for work, they’ll call over here and when Andrews doesn’t answer, they’ll send someone to check on him. He’ll be found, probably by tomorrow, even if we do nothing.”

  Tracie walked to the picture window in the townhouse’s elegantly appointed living room. She peered out into the Georgetown neighborhood. A couple of houses away, a young boy rode a tricycle up and down the length of his driveway, otherwise the street appeared empty. “Let’s go,” she said, and they stepped out the front door. He watched as she wiped d
own the inside and outside of the doorknob, then used the rag to pull the door closed behind them. Thirty seconds later, they were accelerating away from the well-maintained home with the dead body of Winston Andrews inside.

  ***

  “Pull over,” Shane said suddenly. They had been driving for no more than ten minutes, working their way through Georgetown toward a motel on the outskirts of D.C. He had known the nausea would strike suddenly and it had.

  “What are you talking about?” Tracie asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just pull over, right here, right at this corner.” Shane clamped a hand over his mouth like that might make a difference as Tracie swerved to the curb. He pushed the door open before the car had even stopped rolling, vomiting mostly stomach acid into the dirt and trash littering the gutter.

  He leaned out the door, retching, waiting for the nausea to pass, embarrassed and humiliated. At last it did and he eased back into the seat. He pulled the door closed and accepted a tissue from Tracie without a word. He wiped his mouth. His head felt like someone was attacking it with a jackhammer. While he knew from recent experience the feeling wasn’t going to go away any time soon, he suspected he would begin to feel marginally more human shortly. For a little while.

  “I’m all set,” he said quietly, looking straight out the windshield, refusing to meet Tracie’s gaze. He could feel her watching him, holding him in her intense stare with those captivatingly beautiful eyes. Somehow that made things much worse.

  The car didn’t move. “You can start driving again any time now,” he said, then gave up and turned to look at her, waiting for the question he knew was coming.

  “What’s going on?” she asked quietly. “Something is wrong. What is it?”

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  ***

  June 1, 1987

  7:30 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  “It’s a brain tumor. Inoperable and growing like a weed.” They had checked into a motel on the outskirts of D.C., close to the city but cheap and anonymous. It was maybe a half-step up on the quality scale from the New Haven Arms. The minute they checked in, Tracie pulled the bedcovers down, plumped up the pillows, and helped Shane into bed. He hadn’t needed the help, not really, but her touch was so comforting he wasn’t about to try to dissuade her, even feeling as poorly as he was.