Parallax View

by Leverone, Allan

  Unlike the floor refinishing equipment, these were items with which he was intimately familiar, items he had used—or identical to items he had used—on dozens of successful missions. They were hidden under the diversionary floor tools beneath a canvas separator which would be unfolded and used for camouflage once Nikolai was in place on the roof. The cart would stand up to casual inspection, which was sufficient for Nikolai’s requirements. He would not permit a more thorough inspection by anyone, under any circumstances.

  Nikolai wrapped his arms around the cart, straining under its weight, and lowered it to the sidewalk. He stumbled to his knees and the cart landed hard, clattering but remaining upright. He breathed a sigh of relief. Scattering the tools of his trade on the sidewalk just a few hundred feet from where the president of the United States was scheduled to make an appearance tomorrow morning would not be conducive to a successful mission or, in all probability, continued personal freedom.

  A casual look around confirmed for Nikolai that there were still no police in the area. He locked up the van and began pushing his cart along the sidewalk. He crossed Columbia in front of an empty Plexiglas-enclosed bus stop and continued halfway down the block, eventually arriving in front of the Minuteman Insurance building just before midnight. His timing was perfect. Three men stood in front of the entrance, dressed in the identical charcoal-colored slacks of Cote Cleaning, the company contracted to provide janitorial service for the building. They wore button-down shirts similar to his, except with Cote’s logo sewn onto the pocket instead of Capitol Floor Refinishing’s.

  He dragged the cart up the stairs one at a time. The cart was big and bulky and Nikolai had begun to sweat lightly despite the cool temperatures. As he approached the top of the stairs, the last janitor was being ushered through the front door by a uniformed security guard. The guard closed and locked the door. He was large and blocky, with greying brown hair trimmed in a military-style buzz cut. He wore a white uniform shirt and dark blue pressed trousers, a handgun displayed prominently in the leather holster at his hip.

  Nikolai knocked and the guard reluctantly opened the door, squinting as he gave Nikolai the once-over. “Who’re you?” he asked with an aggrieved air, as if Nikolai’s sudden appearance represented some kind of personal affront. He was standing half-in and half-out of the doorway, blocking access with his bulk.

  “Nick Kristoff,” Nikolai answered with an easy smile. “I am here for floor refinishing project.” There was no way to hide his thick Russian accent, so Nikolai didn’t even bother trying. His English was passable, but would never be anything more. He had neither the time nor the inclination to master the language, especially since he figured one day soon the Americans would be learning to speak Russian. It was inevitable.

  “Floor refinishing, huh?” the guard said skeptically. He frowned. “Nothing like that on my board for tonight.” He held up a clipboard for Nikolai’s inspection as though it might mean something to him. Idiot.

  “Capitol Floor Refinishing,” Nikolai said, pointing to the logo on the side of his cart. “We were contracted to service floors in entire building. You would like to see work order?”

  “Yeah, I would like to see work order,” the guard answered in a tone which was just mocking enough to be clear to Nikolai, but not so obvious the guy couldn’t make a plausible denial if he were called on it.

  Nikolai didn’t care about mocking tones, obvious or otherwise. He unzipped his windbreaker, making a show of shivering. “Cold,” he observed, and the guard said nothing. He pulled a folded document out of his breast pocket, making sure the Capitol Floor Refinishing logo on his shirt flashed at the guard. Positive reinforcement. He handed the paperwork to the guard and re-zipped, then stood rubbing his hands together while the man peered at the “work order.”

  The forgery would stand up to the guard’s—or anyone’s—inspection. It had been created by top forgers inside the KGB, men who did nothing all day but reproduce important items for the Soviet Union. Currency, licenses, permits, work orders—you name it, the KGB forgers could reproduce it. The work order looked real, right down to the signature of Minuteman Mutual’s office manager. There was absolutely no chance this drone would identify the work order as being forged.

  What there was a chance of—and the one way this mission could fall apart before it even got started—was the guard smelling a rat and deciding to phone the manager at home to question the legitimacy of the project. Given the time of night, and the relative stations in life of the guard and the office manager, Nikolai didn’t think there was much of chance of that happening.

  If it did, Nikolai would be forced to take out the guard, something he absolutely could not afford to do here on the front steps of the Minuteman Mutual building, not fifty feet from Columbia Road. He had already decided that if the guard made any mention of double-checking with his superiors, Nikolai would slip his NR-40 combat knife—identical to the one currently hidden inside his cart, right down to the curved blade and lethal, razor-sharp cutting edge—out of its sheath strapped above his ankle and force his way inside the building. He would then bring the man to the interior stairwell, where he would kill him and hide the body.

  He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  It didn’t. The guard glanced at the paperwork, sweeping his eyes over it for maybe five seconds, not bothering to hide his utter disinterest. Then he handed it back to Nikolai and said, “Come on in, then,” in a tired voice. He stepped back, and just like that, Nikolai was inside.

  Nikolai smiled again and nodded. One of the reasons he had been so successful in his current line of work—in addition to his proficiency with dozens of weapons and his total lack of compunction when it came to taking human life—was his physical appearance. Nikolai Primakov was utterly unremarkable, from his thinning sandy hair to his gold-rimmed everyman glasses, to his wiry frame, to his average height, to his lack of identifying scars or blemishes.

  He was easy to underestimate.

  He blinked owlishly at the guard and said, “I would like to start on top floor. Where is elevator, please?”

  The guard shook his head slightly. “The elevators are right over there, on the far side of the lobby.” He gestured vaguely at the far wall.

  Nikolai pretended not to notice the guard’s derisive correction of his phrasing and peered across the lobby. He nodded, as if he hadn’t known for weeks where the elevators were located. He suspected he was more familiar with the interior of this building than the guard had ever been. “Thank you,” he said, bowing his head submissively and trundling his cart across the shiny marble floor.

  He was completely alone when he reached the elevators. Thanks to the length of his exchange with the guard at the front door, all three janitorial workers who had entered in front of him were by now dispersed throughout the building. He pressed the button with the up arrow and turned to look in the direction of the front entrance while waiting for the elevator car. The guard hadn’t moved. He stood staring at Nikolai through narrowed eyes, his forehead wrinkled like a Shar-Pei puppy’s.

  Nikolai hoped the man wouldn’t be a problem.

  41

  June 2, 1987

  12:05 a.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tracie rolled over and checked the bedside clock. Its iridescent numerals bathed the room in an eerie green glow, giving the unfamiliar surroundings an alien, almost lunar cast. She slipped out of bed, barely rippling the mattress, moving with a feline grace and economy of motion that belied her tension. Shane continued to sleep, breathing heavily, smoothly.

  She padded to the bathroom, peed without flicking on the light, padded back to bed, knowing she likely wouldn’t sleep any more tonight. She had not lied to Shane, not exactly, when she told him taking down the Russian assassin would be just another operation. But what she hadn’t told Shane, what she suspected he knew anyway—he was a lot of things, including one amazing lover, but he wasn’t stupid—was that a typical CIA op would have taken place after
dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of preparation, and would only have been green-lighted after briefings, surveillance, and meticulous planning. And it would have involved a hell of a lot more people than one lone agent.

  Her mission later today would be the exact opposite of that: a rushed intervention based on the uncorroborated words of a Soviet politician sitting thousands of miles away, and potentially unreliable information offered up under duress by a pair of Russian spies. There had been no preparation. Tracie had never even set foot inside the building she would enter to stop the assassination.

  And she would be alone. Utterly and completely alone.

  Tracie slipped under the covers. Next to her, Shane snored softly, the rhythm of his breathing steady, almost hypnotic. She supposed it stood to reason she would find herself going solo on the most important mission she would ever undertake. She had always been alone. Career-wise, personal-wise, every kind of wise. She had steadfastly refused to allow herself to get close to anyone, preferring to rely on her own devices, always.

  Until the last couple of days.

  Until falling like a lovesick teenage girl for the handsome Maine air traffic controller who had appeared out of nowhere, like the hero in some ridiculous romance novel, a hero who had saved her life at the last possible moment, literally sweeping her off her feet. He was good-looking and self-deprecating and generous and kind. His smile took her breath away. When they were together, it was all she could do not to throw him to the ground and rip his clothes off and ravage him.

  And she knew he felt exactly the same about her.

  And he was dying.

  And when he was gone she would once again be alone.

  She ran her hand gently over his chest, twirling the wiry hairs in her finger. She wondered how long it would take before he ceased to have any semblance of a normal life, before the cancer took him and he had no life at all. She thought about what he’d said, how no one really knows how long they have, how we’re all dying, some quicker than others, and realized it was truer for her than for most. Covert CIA work was dangerous and the careers of operatives tended to be short. So did their life spans.

  Hell, there was the very real possibility that she wouldn’t survive beyond a few more hours. She was trying to put up a brave face—for herself as much as for Shane—but the fact of the matter was, trying to take down a KBG pro and his team, who had undoubtedly been planning this assassination for months, with no backup and no real plan of action, was likely a suicide mission.

  And wouldn’t that be ironic? Fall in love, find out the man who had stolen your heart had mere weeks to live, and then die before he did. It was almost humorous in a cynical, black-hearted way. It was a play Shakespeare might have written had he been born four hundred years later than he was. Romeo and Juliet for the twentieth century.

  Tracie smiled at the thought and was surprised to feel her eyelids getting heavy. She glanced at the clock with the ghostly green numerals. 12:15 a.m. She closed her eyes and slipped away.

  42

  June 2, 1987

  12:20 a.m.

  Minuteman Mutual Insurance Building, Washington, D.C.

  The seventh floor of the Minuteman Mutual Insurance building was used for storage—cleaning and maintenance supplies, reams of paper, cast-off typewriters, word processors, office furniture, boxes and boxes of pens. All of the tools and equipment necessary for the operation of an American insurance company in the late twentieth century.

  Nikolai assumed the janitors had already armed themselves with whatever materials they needed to begin their shift, so his only real concern was of the guard becoming suspicious and checking on the progress of the “floor refinishing” project. He pulled his cart quickly down the hallway, stopping in front of a door with a red-lettered sign that warned, ROOF — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  He had disabled the alarm on a previous visit, so there was no way anyone would realize the door had been breached. Picking the lock was easy. Within thirty seconds of removing his lock-picking tools from the cart, he was pulling open the metal door. He pulled a heavy electric belt sander out of the cart and set it on the floor, using it to prop the door open.

  Roof access was via a cement stairway slicing like an artery between reinforced cinderblock construction walls. The building had been erected close to a century ago, but the Victorian-era elegance of its interior did not extend to the portions the public would never see, and Nikolai knew it would take no small effort to muscle the cart up those narrow stairs.

  He stepped through the doorway, then turned and grabbed the cart by its reinforced-steel frame. He lifted the front and pulled. The angle was all wrong, it was hard to get any leverage, he was straining, but after a moment he was rewarded by the sound of the cart’s metal front wheels clattering onto the first step.

  He lifted and pulled again and gained the second step.

  Lifted and pulled. Third step. The rear wheels squeaked and complained and then slid onto the first step.

  Nikolai breathed deeply while maintaining a grip on the cart. As he began pulling again, a disembodied voice from somewhere down the seventh-floor hallway said, “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing up there?”

  Nikolai froze. Cursed softly in Russian.

  He released his grip on the cart, hoping it wouldn’t lurch back down the stairs and nullify his hard-earned gains. It didn’t.

  He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead and reached down to his ankle, pulling his combat knife smoothly out of its sheath under his pant leg. He positioned it in his right hand, blade resting against his inner forearm, handle nestled in his palm. He turned his arm so the knife would be invisible to whoever was in the hallway, then placed a look of innocent confusion on his face.

  He squeezed past the cart and descended the stairs, then walked through the doorway. Moving briskly down the hallway was the guard who had examined his forged work order. Nikolai had known the man was suspicious of him but hadn’t really thought he would pursue him. He had been wrong. The guard’s face was dark, his eyes hooded, and this hand rested on the butt of his weapon as he challenged Nikolai again. “What are you doing, boy? What business does a floor refinisher have on the roof?”

  Nikolai walked forward slowly, non-threateningly, smiling and nodding to placate the guard even as the man moved along the hallway to intercept him. He was still at least eight meters away. Too far for Nikolai’s purposes.

  “I am sorry,” Nikolai said meekly.

  Six meters.

  He continued. “I do not know where…”

  Four meters. Still too far.

  The guard slowed, confused. “Do not know where…what?” He spread his hands in a show of frustration.

  Two meters, almost close enough.

  “I do not know where…” The man was now directly in front of Nikolai, and although his hand still rested on the butt of his gun, it was as useless to him as if Nikolai had taken it away and thrown it off the roof. He was a dead man. He just didn’t realize it yet.

  With a practiced flick of his wrist, Nikolai dropped the knife into his hand, spinning it effortlessly so the blade faced outward. The guard recognized the danger much too late and took one stumbling step backward just as Nikolai attacked, his arm a blur. He plunged the knife into the guard’s ample belly and slashed upward between the bones of the rib cage.

  The guard gasped. Drew in a shuddering breath as if to scream. Didn’t. Half-coughed and half-gasped. Started to scream again. Nikolai covered the man’s mouth with his left hand as he used his right to shove the guard’s hand away from his gun. He clubbed the guard behind the ear with the butt of his combat knife, and the man dropped straight to the floor.

  Nikolai swore again, angry and annoyed. The man would be dead within minutes, if he wasn’t already, but he was bleeding all over the place. There was suddenly a lot to do. If he didn’t get this mess cleaned up, it would be the first thing the employees noticed when they showed up for work in the morning.

&nb
sp; Nikolai reached under the guard’s armpits and dragged him down the hallway to the roof-access door. A trail of blood marked the journey. He dropped the guard onto the floor and grabbed the cart with both hands. The stairway was too narrow to haul the guard up it without first moving the cart, so Nikolai was forced to forfeit his progress. He yanked it angrily back down to the seventh floor hallway where it wobbled dangerously and nearly tipped over.

  Shit. Things were not going according to plan. Okay, take it easy. Relax. There was plenty of time to get everything back under control. Nikolai composed himself, slowing his breathing, clearing his mind. Finally, still muttering but now refocused, he hooked his arms once more under the guard’s armpits and dragged the man up the stairs to the roof.

  He emerged, breathing heavily, through a rusting steel bulkhead that had once been painted grey but was now pocked with rust and faded almost down to the bare metal. The roof was flat as a flood plain and covered with gravel. Various protuberances—vents and air-conditioning units and pipes whose purposes were unknown to Nikolai—jutted up out of the structure, combining with the gauzy moonlight to make the surface appear stark and menacing.

  Nikolai ignored it all. He had seen the roof in surveillance photos and even picked the lock and climbed up here himself during two of the three trips he had made into the building to familiarize himself with its layout in preparation for this mission. He pulled the guard through the entrance and turned toward the rear of the building. Once clear of the bulkhead, he placed the body alongside it as close as possible to the base, concealing the cooling corpse as best he could.

  He retraced his steps to the seventh floor, moving quickly. In the hallway he examined closed doors until finding one with a sign on the front that said, JANITORIAL SUPPLIES. He opened the door and found a wheeled plastic cart in one corner. It was shaped like an oversized bucket with a wringer built into the side. A mop had been placed in the wringer, its handle reaching almost all the way to the ceiling. The bucket was half filled with dirty water. Nikolai thanked his lucky stars for the innate laziness of American workers.