“—clandestine operations,” she interrupted.
“What?”
“I don’t do ‘black ops,’ I do clandestine operations, missions that by necessity must remain deniable by those in positions of authority all the way up the political and military food chains.”
“Whatever,” Shane said. “And thank you for making my point for me. As I started to say, I understand you’ve been doing these types of things for years and I’ve only been exposed to this shit for a day, but it’s pretty obvious to me you’re just stumbling around in the dark unless you know what you’re up against. If your fears about your handler are anywhere close to being accurate, reading that letter might make the difference between living and dying. More to the point, only one person in the world knows what it contains, and it seems to me becoming the second person to know might be the best way to figure out how to proceed. Hell, it’s probably the only way.”
Shane took a breath, amazed he had not been interrupted, amazed she had not yet shot him down. “I know,” she said quietly. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Opening this little letter”—she patted her pocket lightly—“could get me executed for treason, but I don’t see any way around it. I’ve been sitting here trying to work up the courage to do it.”
She took a deep breath. “I guess now’s the time.” She held up Mikhail Gorbachev’s letter. The envelope was soiled and wrinkled from its travels but even from across the room Shane could see it remained sealed. Tracie ran her fingers over the surface as if trying to divine its contents via osmosis. Finally she tore off one end of the envelope, careful not to damage the contents, then removed two handwritten sheets of paper, which she held up for Shane’s inspection.
He took one look and felt like an idiot. The letter was written in Russian. Of course it was. Mikhail Gorbachev was General Secretary of the Soviet Union; why would Shane have assumed the damned thing would be written in English?
He shook his head. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. What do we do now?”
“I can read it,” Tracie said. “You can’t be in my business and work in and around the Soviet Union without demonstrating some proficiency with common Russian dialects.”
She pulled the letter back and squinted down at it, concentrating. “To President Ronald Reagan,” she began, then continued haltingly. “Dear Mr. President. Please accept my apologies for this most unusual method of communication. The contents of this letter are of the utmost importance, critical to the security of both of our countries and, in fact, the entire world. The information I am about to impart to you is so explosive, I am afraid I cannot trust the usual diplomatic channels for delivery. You will soon understand why.”
Tracie lifted her head and looked at Shane. Her face was troubled, her beautiful eyes haunted. She looked back down at the letter and continued reading. “As you know, Mr. President, changes are sweeping the globe. Many inside the Kremlin insist on resisting these changes and are intent on preserving the Soviet Union in its current incarnation at all costs.
“I do not agree with the assessment of these people, but they constitute much of my government, and their plan for assuring the survival of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is one that has a direct impact on you personally.
“Mr. President, a plan to assassinate you has been set in motion by a small but powerful minority at the highest levels of the KGB. Your travel itinerary for June 2 has been acquired and your outdoor speech celebrating the District of Columbia urban renewal has been targeted. An operative placed on the roof of a nearby building and armed with a high-powered sniper rifle has been assigned to assassinate you as you deliver your remarks at ten o’clock.
“Please treat this information with the gravity it deserves, Mr. President. Relations between the world’s two great superpowers have improved steadily during the term of your presidency, and I cannot allow the progress we have made to be nullified by the single-minded fanaticism of those inside my government who refuse to recognize the future, even as it approaches.
“Understand this assassination is being undertaken without my approval, but understand also that my administration does not currently possess the means to put a stop to it. I hope you see now, Mr. President, why I am being forced to contact you via these drastic and unusual measures. I am subject to constant surveillance. There is no other alternative.
“Good luck, Mr. President. Cancel that appearance and avoid a catastrophe that will launch a third World War.
“Sincerely, Mikhail Gorbachev.”
Tracie looked again at Shane. Her face had gone white. “June Second. That’s the day after tomorrow,” she said.
***
Shane had to remind himself to breathe. He gazed at Tracie, still seated on the bed staring at the letter. The Top Secret document she had risked her career, her freedom, maybe even her life to open. “You have to alert someone,” he said.
“I can’t,” she answered simply. “Not until I know whether Winston Andrews has been compromised. If I’m right about him, I can’t trust him with this information, and if that’s the case, I have no idea who above him in the chain of command I can trust. If he’s been compromised, anyone could be compromised. If I’m wrong, and the night passes quietly, no Russians show up to kill us and gain possession of this”—she held up the letter—“then first thing tomorrow, I’ll tell Winston everything.”
Shane whistled quietly. “Holy shit,” he said. “So what do we do now?”
“Now we wait. Try to get some sleep and see if we get any visitors in the night.” Tracie stood slowly from the bed, wincing as she placed her weight on her injured leg.
Shane said, “I don’t think there’s any way I can sleep right now, not after this. If you’re pretty sure we have some time, why don’t we clean and re-bandage that leg wound of yours? If those guys show up like you think they might—”
“—they will,” she said dejectedly.
“Okay, well, if they do, you already said we’re going to have to move fast. Right now you look like you’re eighty years old.”
“Thanks for the sweet-talk.”
Shane laughed, relieved the black mood permeating the room had been lifted, even if only slightly. “Okay, let me rephrase that. You look fantastic, but you’re moving like you’re eighty years old.”
“Hmph,” she said. “I’ll take what I can get, I suppose. But there’s one problem—we don’t have any bandages.”
“You underestimate me,” he answered. “I found a twenty-four-hour drugstore as well as a home-improvement place while I was out. Stuff stays open late around here. In Bangor everything would have been locked up tight by now. Anyway, I picked up some Ace Bandages and some first aid cream, in addition to the duct tape you wanted. Now, get out of those pants and let me check out—uh, I mean, fix—those legs of yours.”
Tracie smiled and limped to the bathroom while Shane reached into the paper bag, removing the first-aid supplies. A moment later the bathroom door creaked open and she returned, carrying her jeans. A motel towel that at one time had been white and was now the color of dirty dishwater was wrapped around her slim waist.
She eased onto the bed, primly covering herself, looking more like a shy young girl than the kick-ass CIA spook Shane now knew her to be. He wanted to crack a joke but decided she seemed uncomfortable enough without him making things worse, so he bit his tongue and began unwrapping the bandage covering her wound. Blood had seeped into the gauzy material before clotting, more or less, and the bandage felt stiff, stuck to the wound.
He stepped into the bathroom and returned a moment later with a washcloth soaked in warm soapy water. He dampened the soiled bandage, working carefully to remove it. Then he cleaned around the puncture wound in much the same way he had done last night, dabbing and probing, doing his best to ignore the lacy pink panties he could see under the insufficient cover of the towel. Tracie squeezed her eyes shut, teeth gritted against the pain, muscles tensed.
There was no sign of infection, and whe
n he had cleaned the injury to his satisfaction, Shane patted the area dry with a second hand towel. Then he began wrapping the fresh Ace Bandage around her thigh, trying to make it tight enough to provide support and prevent the wound from bleeding again, but loose enough for some semblance of comfort.
He concentrated on his work, and when he finished, he looked up to find Tracie’s eyes open, unblinking, staring into his. She eased up off the cheap headboard bolted to the wall and leaned forward, moving slowly, deliberately, and then they were kissing, and Shane thought about those pink panties and reached down and pulled off her towel, throwing it to the floor while she fumbled with his belt buckle and the snap on his jeans, and then they were together.
32
June 1, 1987
3:30 a.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
Tracie sat perched on a rickety chair, watching the mostly-empty parking lot through a slit in the drapes while Shane dozed. He had fallen asleep despite his protestations he wouldn’t be able to, and now he lay sprawled across the bed, covers tangled around his waist, snoring lightly.
Tracie wondered if she should feel guilty for sleeping with him in the middle of this insanity. After all, they had been thrown together by chance, and when this was all over—assuming they survived; assuming the president survived—Shane would go back to his air traffic control job in Maine and she would return to Langley for another assignment. She had no idea where that assignment might take her, but felt pretty certain it would not be Bangor, Maine.
So, yes, she thought, she probably should feel guilty. But she didn’t. Her life for the last seven years had consisted of training, work, and more work, most of it clandestine and dangerous, and over the course of those seven years, she could count her sexual relationships on the fingers of one hand. And she wouldn’t need most of her fingers.
Then along came what at first glance appeared to be a simple job, a piece of cake once she had escaped East Germany. All she needed to do was babysit an envelope, deliver it to Washington, and then move on to her next assignment. Somewhere along the line, though, things had become immeasurably more complicated, and in the middle of everything, here was this solid, earnest, well-meaning guy who was gorgeous to look at, self-deprecatingly modest, and who had, oh by the way, crawled into a burning airplane to save her life.
The attraction she felt to Shane Rowley was immediate and consuming, and she simply hadn’t been able to stop herself from coming on to him when he finished bandaging her leg. She hadn’t planned what happened between them, not exactly, but her injury was not exactly something she couldn’t have dealt with on her own, either. She had handled much more severe wounds by herself, out of necessity, and could easily have waved Shane off when he insisted on cleaning and bandaging her leg.
So maybe what happened hadn’t quite been spontaneous. Maybe somewhere deep in her subconscious, Tracie had intended to seduce him all along, but either way he didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, thinking about the frenzied lovemaking of their initial encounter, and then a slower, more sensual second round just a few minutes later.
She glanced across the room at Shane’s sleeping form, and when she looked back out at the parking lot, the smile froze on her face before turning into a frown of concentration. A late-model Chevrolet Impala was creeping past the motel office, lights off. From this distance and in the poor lighting, she couldn’t make out the color, but the vehicle looked black or dark blue, or maybe green. It wasn’t the car the Russians had used earlier—she had scanned all of the cars in the Bangor Tower lot by force of habit even as she had been rescuing Shane, and this Impala had not been among them—but that didn’t mean anything. They would undoubtedly have changed cars by now, just as Tracie and Shane had.
She glanced at her watch. It was 3:45 a.m.
The Impala eased into a parking space several slots away from their Granada. Its driver killed the engine. For several long minutes nothing happened. The car’s occupants were being cautious, eyeing the surrounding environment, alert for any movement or anything out of the ordinary.
Tracie knew they couldn’t see her in the darkened room. She waited, tense, her weapon held in her right hand, her body ready to move.
Finally, both front doors on the Impala opened at the same time and two men stepped out. The car’s interior lighting had been disabled. The doors they left ajar. The men were dressed entirely in dark clothing, identical watch caps covering their heads, grease paint tamping down any sheen from their white faces.
Tracie’s heart dropped, and the sadness she had felt earlier returned with a vengeance. Winston Andrews, her mentor and father figure, had betrayed her.
She forced herself to push her feelings aside. She needed to focus. She could come back and mourn her lost relationship with the traitor Winston Andrews later. If she survived.
The two men outside moved slowly, scanning the parking lot while moving steadily toward the dummy motel room with the Granada parked nose-in toward the door. Tracie backed silently away from the window and bent over the bed. She gently shook the slumbering Shane. “It’s going down,” she whispered. “Stay here and keep quiet. If things go bad, get to the car and get the hell out of here. Find a police station and turn yourself in.”
He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and nodded once. Tracie crossed the tiny room in a few steps and slipped into the bathroom. Built into the rear wall was a small window just large enough for Tracie to wriggle through. She had cut the screen away earlier and the window stood open for quick access, the cool early-June night air filling the room with the tang of ocean salt. Tracie stepped onto the closed toilet cover, braced an arm on either side of the window frame, and boosted herself through.
She dropped to the ground noiselessly, the long wooden motel building shielding her from sight of the parking lot. Three steps and she had arrived at the back end of the structure. Less than thirty seconds had elapsed since she had moved away from the picture window. She peeked around the corner. Sixty feet away, shrouded in shadow, the two Russians had arrived at the front of the dummy motel room. One of the men was bent over the doorknob working on the lock, while the other man stood facing outward, keeping watch.
The lock was cheap and Tracie knew if the Russian had any experience at lock-picking—and there was no doubt he did—the two men would be into the room in a matter of seconds. She had to hurry.
A string of ornamental shrubs, brownish-yellow and dying, lined the rear of the parking lot, forming a barrier between the motel property and the trash-strewn alley behind it. Tracie ducked down below the tops of the shrubs and raced behind them, using them for cover, limping only slightly. She disappeared into the darkness at the rear of the dummy room, then made her way back along the side until she reached the corner. She bent down, hands on her knees, and worked to quiet her breathing.
A couple of seconds later, she heard a muffled grunt of satisfaction and eased her head around the corner just in time to see the lock-picker begin easing the door open. He worked slowly, clearly concerned a squeaky hinge might awaken the occupants.
She waited patiently, just out of sight, as the two men stood in the doorway. The first man faced into the room, unmoving, door partly open, and she became concerned she had not done a good enough job of disguising the blankets on the bed to look like sleeping people. Then she realized the Russian was letting his eyes adjust to the darkness in the room before proceeding. It made sense. It was what she would have done.
At last the first man disappeared inside, while the second man maintained his position at the door, facing outward with his back to the room. He held his silenced weapon against the side of his leg. The gun would be invisible should a car happen to drive into the lot, but Tracie could see it clearly, its black matte finish muted by the dirty light.
Within seconds, the assassin inside the room would discover they had been duped. She had to make her move before that happened or she would lose the advantage of surprise. Still she waited. She would get an opportunit
y soon. The Russian hit team was being sloppy, careless because their intel had come directly from their high-ranking CIA connection. They were confident their targets would not suspect a thing, that the doomed man and woman would feel safe and secure inside their anonymous New Haven motel room.
Instead of maintaining an active scan, the Russian at the door stared impassively into space, bored, occasionally glancing left and then right. The third time he looked toward the motel office, Tracie acted.
She broke from the cover of the motel building, moving silently but quickly. Before the guard could react, Tracie grabbed his gun with one hand. She used her other to place her own gun against his head, nestling the barrel in the soft tissue between the skull and the jawbone. She pushed hard. “Don’t move,” she said softly.
The man didn’t move.
Tracie ripped the Russian’s weapon out of his hand. He would have a backup, probably in an ankle holster, but she didn’t have time to worry about that. “Move into the room as quietly as you can,” she whispered.
The man pivoted slowly and eased into the room, Tracie right on his heels. The first Russian had arrived at the bed and stood next to it, his back to the doorway. The lookout cleared his throat and the first Russian froze for just a second and then whirled, sensing a problem.
He wasn’t quick enough. Tracie trained the lookout’s gun on the assassin’s chest, her hand unwavering, her Beretta still pressed against the first man’s head.
“Drop your weapon,” she said quietly. “Do it now or you die, and so does your friend. I won’t say it again.”
For a long moment nothing happened, as if the Russian was calculating his odds of survival should he try to shoot his way out of the room. Tracie let him do it. He would inevitably come to the same conclusion she had—that he was out of options.
A moment later, the gun dropped with a muffled thud to the thinly carpeted floor. “Now kick it over to me,” she said, and he did, undisguised malice in his hooded eyes. The gun skidded to a stop a couple of feet to her left. For now she ignored it. She didn’t have a free hand to hold the third gun, and it was far enough away from either of her captives that they would not be able to make a play for it without catching a bullet in the head.
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