Parallax View

by Leverone, Allan

  Her rescuer guided the Bug into a spot directly under one of the light poles and Tracie said, “No, not here.”

  “What are you talking about? My apartment’s right in front of us.”

  “Not under the light,” she said. “Park in one of the dark spots.”

  He looked at her like she was crazy—he seemed to be doing that a lot—but didn’t argue. He simply shook his head, shifted the car into reverse, and backed directly into another spot, between two of the light poles lining the rear of the lot. “Better?” he asked.

  Tracie nodded. “Better.” She unsnapped her seat belt and opened her door, placing her right foot on the pavement.

  “Wait,” the young man said and she ignored him. She grabbed the roof for support and swung herself out of the car. Instantly a wave of dizziness and nausea rolled through her. “This might have been a mistake,” she said. Her savior said something in return but she couldn’t make it out. A buzzing sound started up in the distance, like maybe someone had chosen the middle of the night to fire up a chainsaw. The buzzing got louder and Tracie realized it was coming from inside her head. Black spots bloomed in her vision, making the weak light in the parking lot even less effective.

  She was vaguely aware of the driver rushing around the front of the Volkswagen. She let go of the car and took one shuffling step toward the apartment complex and then another, and then the pavement rushed up to meet her and the world went black.

  19

  May 31, 1987

  12:25 a.m.

  Bangor, Maine

  The woman collapsed into his arms and Shane shuffled backward, trying to keep his feet. She wasn’t very big, maybe five-foot two and all of a hundred pounds soaking wet, but her momentum had been moving forward as she staggered away from his car. It was like catching a hundred pound bag of potatoes someone had tossed at you. Although, he thought, a bag of potatoes probably never felt this good.

  He glanced around the lot. Empty. That made sense considering the time, but if a neighbor happened to glance out a window, couldn’t sleep or whatever, the Bangor Police would be all over this apartment complex within minutes. A man, half dragging, half carrying a woman, unconscious and covered in blood, into his apartment in the middle of the night. Christ, he’d look like Jack the Ripper.

  But then, maybe a visit from the cops wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Shane had never had a gun pointed at him before and decided he didn’t like it very much. This beautiful crash victim was obviously hip-deep in some serious shit, and who was to say she wasn’t one of the bad guys?

  Shane didn’t think so, though. He liked to think he possessed a pretty reliable bullshit detector—he’d seen right through the dying father yarn the injured woman had tried to spin—and his instincts told him the girl was trustworthy, at least to the extent she didn’t want to cause him harm.

  And in any event, she was completely helpless now; he couldn’t very well just dump her on the side of the road. So, resigned to risking possible arrest, he hoisted her onto his shoulder one more time and walked as quickly as he could to his apartment.

  He dug his key out of his pocket and stabbed for the lock. Then he staggered through the front door, kicked it closed behind him, and crossed the living room to his old couch. He lowered his guest onto it as gently as he could. She groaned and muttered but her eyes remained closed. Then he backtracked, locked and bolted the door, and sank to the floor, out of breath and exhausted.

  Shane looked at his watch. Twelve thirty a.m. Shit. He had to call work. He should have been there half an hour ago. Between climbing into burning wreckage, saving a pretty—if very strange—young woman from certain death, and staring down a gun barrel, he had completely forgotten about work.

  He trudged across the living room and checked on his new friend on the way to the telephone. She was right where he had left her, still out like a light, pale and unmoving. Again Shane thought about the hospital and wondered briefly about personal liability should the woman die on his couch. It didn’t seem likely, but still, she had been through a lot, had lost a lot of blood, and who really knew how badly she had been injured in that crash? He decided he’d make his call, then tend to her immediately.

  Shane dialed quickly. He knew the tower supervisor, who normally would have gone home at midnight, would still be in the facility making notifications and coordinating with rescue personnel about the aircraft accident, and he was right. The line rang seven times, eight, and then was answered on the ninth ring by supervisor Chuck McNally.

  “Bangor Tower,” McNally barked into the phone, gruff and intimidating. Shane realized the line had probably been ringing off the hook since the accident and felt a stab of sympathy for the supervisor, normally the most kind-hearted of men but right now probably at the end of his rope.

  “Chuck, this is Shane, I’m sorry about not calling sooner, but—”

  “Shane, where the hell are you? We’ve had a crash just off the airport! Things are fucking insane, man. Tonight was definitely not the night to blow off work without even a call.” Shane listened to McNally rant and broke in when the man slowed down to take a breath.

  “That’s why I’m calling, boss. I know about the accident. It happened right next to me as I was driving to work. The damn airplane fell out of the sky and almost landed on my car. I climbed inside the wreckage, man. I pulled a victim out alive.”

  The line was silent as McNally processed the information. “You saw the crash?”

  “I didn’t actually see it happen because of the trees, but I sure as hell heard it. I stopped the car and hiked out to the crash site to see if I could help anyone, and damned if there wasn’t a young woman trapped in the cabin. Anyway, I’m really sorry, but there’s no way I can come in to work tonight, I’m tired and banged up and even burned a little bit.”

  “You were inside the burning airplane?”

  “Yeah. It was a frigging nightmare.”

  “Holy shit. I can imagine. Anyway, under the circumstances, sick leave is approved, obviously. I’ll be in the tower until morning anyway. But listen, an NTSB accident investigation team is on the way. They’ll be here tomorrow along with representatives from the Air Force, since it was their airplane. Under the circumstances, they’re going to want to interview you, so call the facility first thing in the morning and plan on coming in here sometime during the day to talk to the investigators.”

  “Will do, Chuck, and thanks.”

  “No problem. What kind of condition is the victim in? Have the doctors told you anything?”

  “There are no doctors. She’s passed out on my couch even as we speak.”

  “Your couch? What are you talking about? She’s at your apartment?”

  “Yeah, she refused to go to the hospital.” Shane said nothing about the young woman waving a gun around.

  “But you said she’s passed out. How do you know she didn’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “She was conscious in my car and she told me. She didn’t pass out until we got back to my place.”

  “Christ, Shane, don’t be an idiot. Get that girl to the hospital, like, right now.”

  “Yeah, I guess I should,” Shane answered, knowing it was the smart thing to do but knowing also he was not about to do it. “Anyway, thanks again, Chuck, and good luck. I know you’re busy.”

  “It’s just paperwork bullshit at this point. I’ll be fine. Get that girl to the hospital.”

  “See ya.” Shane hung up the phone and glanced around the kitchen’s open entryway into the living room and saw Tracie watching him from the couch. She looked even paler than before, but Shane figured regaining consciousness had to be a good sign.

  He flashed a smile. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Never mind that,” she said shortly. “Who the hell were you talking to just now?”

  “My supervisor, if it’s any of your business,” he said, angered by her tone and, he had to admit, a little hurt by her attitude. After all he had done for her, who
was she to snap at him for no reason?

  “Your supervisor? Who do you work for? Why do you need to talk to your supervisor in the middle of the night?”

  “Again,” he said, “not that it’s any of your business, but I’m an air traffic controller at Bangor Airport and I’m supposed to be at work right now. I thought my supervisor might consider it rude of me not to let him know why I didn’t show up, especially tonight. They’re kind of busy. It seems there was an airplane crash. I’m lucky I still have a job.”

  She was silent. Shane could see her thinking. “Did you tell him about me?” she asked.

  “Of course. You’re the whole reason I’m here and not there. It wouldn’t have made much sense for me to say I stopped and watched the burning wreckage of a crashed military jet before blowing off work and returning home.”

  She blew out an angry breath and shook her head. “You could have said you checked inside the wreckage and didn’t find anyone alive. Dammit!”

  Shane spread his hands in exasperation. “Why would I do that? What would be the point?” He turned toward his kitchen, anger building, and then spun back around to face the injured woman. “Who the hell are you? Why were you on that plane? Where were you coming from? What were you doing that’s so freaking top-secret that you can’t even go to the hospital after a goddamned plane crash?”

  Again she was silent and Shane could see her weighing her options for a response. Finally she sighed. “Never mind,” she said. “Forget it. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful after everything you’ve done for me, but I simply can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned back on Shane’s two Syracuse University throw pillows his proud mother had knitted when he was accepted into their journalism program after high school. He’d graduated with a degree he had never used, opting instead to apply for a job with the FAA after the disastrous PATCO strike in 1981, when President Reagan fired the illegally striking air traffic controllers en masse. His mother, angry and hurt, had never asked for the pillows back.

  Shane walked across the room and perched on the arm of the couch at her feet, unsure of what to say. Tracie’s face was still bone-white, shiny from a thin coating of sweat. Her eyes looked glassy. “Sorry I’m dripping blood onto your couch,” she said, her voice weak, and suddenly she looked very young and vulnerable.

  Shane waved a hand airily. “This old thing? Don’t worry about it. I picked it up for twenty bucks at the Salvation Army. In fact, I should apologize to you for subjecting you to all those potential germs.”

  She attempted a smile.

  “Speaking of germs…” he continued.

  “I know. I need to clean this wound.”

  “I’ll help you. I have a decent first-aid kit in the bathroom.”

  She narrowed her eyes and Shane raised his hands in surrender. “My intentions are honorable, I swear,” he said. “Come on, I’ll help you to the bathroom. I think I still have a pair of gym shorts from high school that are too small for me. You might be able to wear them without them sliding right off. I’ll toss them in and you can put them on, then we’ll clean your leg in the bathtub.”

  Tracie nodded and rose to a half-sitting position, gritting her teeth against the pain. Shane pulled her arm around his neck, then stood slowly and the pair began stumbling awkwardly across the living room. When they reached the bathroom, he kicked the toilet seat cover down and eased her into a sitting position on it.

  “If you want to get those bloody pants off, I’ll be right back with the shorts.”

  She nodded tiredly. He pulled the door closed as he was leaving and heard her say “Thank you” as he was walking away.

  The wound was deep, but to Shane’s eye looked clean. He went to work on it, washing it as gently as he could with warm, soapy water and then disinfecting it with hydrogen peroxide. Her burns appeared minimal, and Shane knew she had been extremely lucky. Tracie was mostly silent, stoic, occasionally grunting or gasping through gritted teeth, but she never complained and even helped steady her leg with both hands.

  After patting the wound dry with a clean towel, Shane pulled a new, sealed Ace bandage out of his medicine chest. He opened the package and began wrapping the stretchy gauze around her leg as tightly as he dared, closing the sides of the puncture wound together and sealing it. The bleeding had stopped, more or less, and when he had finished he examined his handiwork and said, “Well, you still should be in the emergency room for stitches, but it looks like you might survive another day.”

  “I was afraid of that,” she answered jokingly. “Now if this invisible guy will stop hitting me in the head with a baseball bat, I’ll be good to go.”

  “Concussion?” Shane asked.

  She nodded. “Probably. I know I’m supposed to get woken up every hour or something, but screw that. If I can get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, I’m sure I’ll be as good as new. If you don’t mind helping me back to your couch, I’ll sleep a while and then I’ll be out of your hair in the morning, I promise.”

  “No worries,” Shane said, helping her to her feet. “Except you’re not going to use the couch. You’re sleeping in my bed.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Assuming an awful lot there, cowboy, aren’t ya?”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll be alone. I’ll take the couch.”

  “I’m not going to take your bed and make you—”

  “I know, I know, you’re tough as nails. A real badass. We’ve already established that. You could sleep on a bed of hot coals if you had to. Just do this one little thing for me, okay? My mom would never forgive me if she found out I made an injured woman sleep on the couch. You’d actually be doing me a favor,” he said with a smile.

  She sputtered and shook her head, but allowed herself to be led into the apartment’s only bedroom. He helped her under the covers and turned out the light. “Goodnight,” he said, but she was already asleep.

  20

  May 31, 1987

  8:40 a.m. local time

  Moscow

  “We have a problem.” The man on the other end of the secure telephone line spoke in a hushed voice, but the concern was plainly evident in his tone.

  “Of course we do,” Vasily Kopalev said. “There is always a problem.” As head of the KGB’s American Operations Branch, Vasily spent most of his time dealing with one emergency or another from one of his small cadre of operatives stationed throughout the United States. He lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply, savoring the bite of the tar and the smooth flavor of the smuggled Lucky Strikes. The Americans may be a threat to Mother Russia, but they make a damned fine cigarette.

  “Maybe so,” the voice continued, “but this problem is bigger than most.”

  “Get on with it, then. Are you going to make me guess?”

  “The airplane carrying Gorbachev’s letter has crashed, and—”

  “That was the plan, remember?”

  “No, you don’t understand. The plane did not disappear over the ocean. It crash-landed near an airport here in the U.S. In Bangor, Maine.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not the worst of it.”

  “Of course not,” Kopalev muttered. Suddenly his Lucky Strike tasted bitter. He sucked down a deep drag anyway. He was going to need it. “Tell me,” he sighed, exhaling cigarette smoke.

  “All of the crew members are dead, except the woman.”

  “Except the woman.”

  “That’s right. The CIA operative has vanished. Virtually the entire B-52 was destroyed in a massive fire following the accident, so it is of course possible the letter burned up in the blaze, but given the fact the agent has disappeared, it would seem likely the letter survived and disappeared with her.”

  “Yes, it would seem likely,” Vasily agreed. He was silent for a moment, thinking. “We can’t be certain what is contained in that letter, but I have a pretty good idea.”

  The man on the other end of the line waited patiently. Vasily knew he didn’t ca
re what was in the letter, it was not his job to care what was in the letter. His job was to carry out Vasily’s instructions, thus his words were irrelevant until they contained those instructions. “You are stationed in Boston, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have two comrades also stationed in Boston, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what is the distance from Boston to Bangor, Maine?” Kopalev leaned back in his chair and consulted a map of the United States posted behind his desk. The map was enormous and took up one entire wall. Vasily did the calculations along with the agent. He knew the answer before the man spoke.

  “It is roughly a three-hour drive in normal traffic conditions.”

  “Very good. Take your two comrades and get up there immediately. Recover that letter. The agent was involved in a plane crash. Even if she escaped, she must have suffered injuries. She probably wandered away from the wreckage and is even now lying dead somewhere. If that is the case, find her body and relieve it of that letter before someone else does. It is not enough to keep the communique from President Reagan. It must be kept from anyone who would have the ability to publicize its contents.”

  “And if she somehow survived?”

  “Your mission remains unchanged. Get that letter. Whether the CIA operative lives or dies is of no concern.”

  21

  May 31, 1987

  7:30 a.m.

  Bangor, Maine

  The ringing of the telephone worked its way into Shane’s consciousness gradually, pulling him out of a deep sleep. He had been dreaming about a young red-haired woman, mysterious and sexy. In his dream they were sharing his bed, and he was doing things with her he had not done since the break-up of his marriage over a year ago.

  He burst into wakefulness like a swimmer surfacing, the dream already fading, Shane reluctant to let it go. He glanced at the clock on the living room wall as he crossed to the kitchen. Seven thirty. He had gotten barely five hours of sleep and still felt exhausted and weak. His entire body ached, leg muscles complaining, back stiff, joints popping. And he needed coffee.