COPS SPIES & PI'S: The Four Novel Box Set
Page 36
As the headlights drew closer, Chapin saw that it was an old delivery truck. He stepped into the middle of the road and flagged the truck down. When the driver stopped, Chapin went to the cab, drew his KGB identity card, and flashed it at the driver.
“Out,” he ordered in Russian.
The driver obeyed immediately. When he was standing in the road, Chapin started into the truck.
“What are you doing? Where are you going with my truck?” the driver demanded with false bravado.
Chapin sucked in a sharp breath and turned to him. “Never question me! I have commandeered this vehicle. We have a criminal loose. Your truck will be returned to you.” The fear on the man’s face eased.
Chapin hit the accelerator. The truck chugged off, leaving the man standing in the road.
He drove past the road he had turned onto earlier, and urged the truck faster. A quarter of a mile later, he turned onto a smaller road, which he knew from studying maps before leaving Stockholm, went toward the border.
There was a chance—a slight chance. Ever since the breakup of the Soviet bloc, the Soviet’s powers had diminished. They no longer had the iron stranglehold on the border countries. If he made it to the Finnish border, he might be able to escape.
He pushed the truck as fast as it would go, watching the odometer and waiting for headlights to show in his mirror. As the distance between himself and Sortavala increased, so did his hope of making it.
Eleven minutes later, Chapin stopped the truck next to a signpost informing whoever was foolish enough to want to go there, that the border was a half mile away.
He debated with himself about using the truck, but decided against it. By now the KGB would know about the truck and would be looking for him.
The road was tree-lined. He pulled between two large firs, and drove twenty feet into the woods. He left the truck and started on foot.
When he returned to the road, he looked for any traces of the truck. The frozen ground seemed unmarked, and although he knew where the truck was, he could not see it in the distance.
He nodded to himself, finally feeling the easing of his adrenaline-saturated body, then looked at the signpost and decided not to use the regular crossing. He believed it would be better to go inland a mile. If his reckoning was correct, he would emerge in Finland, on the outskirts of one of the smaller villages near the border, Imatra, perhaps.
He reentered the woods and, moving parallel with the road, walked steadily toward the regular border crossing. A quarter of a mile from the border, he heard the hard roar of several vehicles.
Kneeling behind a tree, he watched a half-dozen black cars speed by. Again, he knew he had made the right decision. He started to rise, but stopped when he heard a familiar and terrifying rumbling. He identified the sound immediately. It was a Hind helicopter. A Soviet gunboat. No, he thought, listening more intensely—there were two or three of them.
He heard the pattern of the choppers’ engines change and knew they were moving into a search pattern. He closed his eyes for a moment. There would be infrared and other heat-sensitive seeking devices on-board. If he went with his original plan, they would spot him within minutes.
He hunkered down at the side of the road while another group of cars sped by. Then Chapin followed. He stopped two hundred feet farther along the road where the cars were lined along the side. Several KGB officers stood in the road, shouting orders to the soldiers and telling them to spread out.
Chapin started back, but had to stop and wait when more cars came up. The last car screeched to a halt ten feet from him. The driver got out and ran toward the men issuing orders.
Chapin watched the man and then looked back at the car. He slipped from cover and went to the car. It was still running and he got in.
His mind raced through every alternative for escape. There were only two: the woods or the road. The helicopters would prevent him from making it to the border on foot, which left him only the road.
He stared at the men on the road. He had to get across the border. He had to let his people know what was going to happen. There was a very slim chance, and only one. But the alternative was no better.
Taking a deep breath, he eased the car into gear. He backed up until he was clear of the car ahead. Then he jammed down the accelerator.
The car, a large Zil, moved forward sluggishly. When its speed increased, Chapin found himself gritting his teeth. Ahead, an unaware KGB officer was still giving orders to the men surrounding him.
He headed straight for them and, when he was inches away, he turned on the headlights. The half-blinded men dove out of the way. Before he could exhale in relief, his windshield fragmented in a hail of bullets.
A piece of glass tore across his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. He leaned forward, squinting against the wind, and kept driving.
The border was a hundred yards ahead. The Zil was going fifty. All he could do was aim for freedom and hope he’d make it.
Behind him came another volley of shots. Both rear tires exploded. The car swerved dangerously, but Chapin held control. The border was coming faster. The steel gate loomed large.
Could he make it? He had no choice. The steel wheels screamed on the pavement. The car shook like a plane in an inverted dive.
The bullets came faster. Suddenly one of the helicopters was overhead, its searchlight flaring across the car. Two border guards stood their posts, their rifles spitting at Chapin.
He bent low and prayed he could hold the Zil straight. The radiator exploded. Steam and boiling water sprayed outward, enveloping the car in man-made fog. Ten seconds later, he hit the gate and tore it from its hinges. Behind him, the ground exploded from eighty-millimeter cannon fire. The chopper had joined the fight.
Chapin lifted his head. A hundred and fifty feet ahead was the Finnish border. The gates were open. Three men in civilian clothing stood behind two Finnish uniformed guards. One of the men waving wildly and pointing skyward.
Then Chapin heard the chopper.
Acting without thinking, Chapin opened the door of the Zil and dove out. The car went ahead another twenty feet before the chopper’s cannon tore it apart.
Rolling on the ground, his adrenaline-fed body ignored the pain as he scrambled up. He gained his feet as the chopper swung around again. Behind him, a dozen Soviet soldiers charged forward. Chapin glanced over his shoulder. He had to get past the burning car.
He started to run. Once again, the bullets came.
He stared straight ahead, thinking of Ruby Red, thinking of his country.
<><><>
Chapter Three
Lander, Wyoming, Sunday
“Excuse me,” Robert H. Mathews said as he picked up the phone.
The interview had been going ten minutes when the phone rang. Mathews had warned him he was expecting an important call. Joel Blair nodded his understanding, stood, and went to the far wall of the large den where he studied the photographs hanging on it. The rows of photos, in black-and-white and in color, formed an almost chronological biography of Robert Mathews’ life from boyhood to manhood.
While Mathews talked in a low voice, Blair took advantage of his unrestricted view of Mathews’ life.
He thought it interesting how Mathews’ face had changed so little as he grew to adulthood. Mathews had been a handsome teen with a strong oval face, a wide and generous mouth and high cheekbones. In manhood, his face remained oval, handsome, and strong, his cheekbones prominent.
His eyes, an unusual color of dark green ringed by hazel, were open and frank. The teenage Mathews’ hair had been straight and jet as the night. Today, it was still straight and black, but a few random strands of silver-gray peeked through at the temples.
Blair walked along the wall to where the photos began, showing Mathews as a young boy riding a horse in one photo, playing football in another. There were pictures of Mathews in college, and in the Air Force. But, while Mathews had served as a lieutenant in the Air Force, there were only two pictu
res of him in uniform. One was from his graduation from Officers’ school; the other was set in an air base in Viet Nam.
Blair stepped back to view the wall as one unit. When he did, he realized the pictures told another story. It showed Robert Mathews’ life had gaping holes in it. There were no pictures of his wife or son.
Why?
He glanced at the man on the phone, hoping he would get some of those answers today. His thought made him again wonder why, with barely two weeks left in the campaign, Mathews had finally given Blair a private interview.
For his part, Blair had been pushing the interview for a month. He had sent request after request to Mathews’ press secretary, and it was always put off. He’d watched and read the sugarcoated interviews of other journalists, but only two days ago, was his request granted.
While Blair was pondering his question, Mathews hung up “Sorry about the interruption. I’ll shut the phone off now.”
Blair waved his hand in the air. “You’re in a campaign. You need to be available.”
Mathews pressed a button on the phone. “I can be unavailable for a little while.”
Returning the open smile, Blair returned to his seat on the leather chair and reached to the recorder on the oak coffee table. He pressed the red button.
Mathews’ eyes followed Blair’s hand. When the tape started moving, Mathews said, “I believe your last question was, what do I think I can do, that my opponent can’t, yes?”
Blair met Mathews’ somewhat amused gaze and chuckled. “Another ground-breaker question, as I call them. Things to loosen you up.”
“For the hard ones?”
“Yes,” Blair agreed, no longer smiling.
“Tell you what,” Mathews said, leaning back in his club chair. “You’ve been with me for what...six weeks? You know the answers to all the ‘routine’ questions, why not just go ahead with the ones you really want to ask?”
Blair watched Mathews for several seconds. Was he serious? “Alright, Congressman. Why now?”
Mathews frowned. “I said hard, not enigmatic. Why am I running? Why am I taking the stand I am? Why am I defending certain issues? Why what, Mr. Blair?”
“Why did you grant me this interview now?”
“Why not? You’re entitled to interview me as have all the other journalists.”
Not bad, he thought. Mathews hadn’t even blinked. “I’ve been asking for this since I started covering your campaign. You’ve put me off for six weeks; you could have done the same for two more. So, why now?”
Mathews nodded. “You think there’s an ulterior motive in the timing of the interview?”
“Yes, As a matter of fact.”
“You’re right,” Mathews said. “Coffee?”
The answer took Blair off guard and cost him his momentum. He nodded to Mathews.
He studied Mathews while the man poured the coffee from a glass carafe sitting above a heating candle on a metal wire frame.
“Just black,” he said when Mathews gestured toward the cream and sugar.
Mathews handed him the cup and then took one for himself, black and plain.
Blair took a sip of the coffee. “What is the reason?”
“You came in late. The other reporters covering my campaign had been there from the beginning, but you joined the fracas a month later. You’re not a political reporter; you’re an investigator. You’re not following my campaign to do little ‘he-said, they-said, and they-said-that-he-said’ pieces. You’re here to do the story that will either rip me apart, or prove I’m what I hold myself up to be. You see,” Mathews went on quickly, stopping Blair from cutting in, “I followed several of your more investigative stories during my two terms in the House, so I know how you report the news.
“But I needed time before speaking to you, to learn if you were looking for a real story, or out to assassinate me with words. I needed to see the way you were covering not just me, but the election as well. I wanted to watch you and to learn about you before we sat down together. And I wanted you to learn about me, by watching me.”
“And have you learned about me?” Blair asked warily, wondering if his paranoid feelings of the past few weeks were because Mathews was having him followed. He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it formed. If the V. P. candidate were having him followed, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to say so, even indirectly.
“Enough to form an opinion. You’re a cautious man, Mr. Blair. You don’t let anything get by, and you don’t whitewash the issues. You report things as you see them, and as objectively as possible, it seems. But, in everything I’ve read, I get it that you harbor deep doubts about me.”
Blair was again surprised by Mathews. “You’re right.”
“What can I do to help ease those doubts?”
“Just what you’re doing now.”
“Good,” Mathews said. “Fire away.”
“Congressman, at yesterday’s press conference your anti-communistic stand was brought out again. Don’t you think you’re being extremely rigid about the Soviets?”
“It’s the way I believe. Mr. Blair, I’m not one of those hellfire and brimstone commie haters. I’m not a rabid hate monger. Quite simply, I don’t believe their form of government and ours can intermingle without detrimental future consequences. At the same time, I don’t advocate the destruction or the overturning of communist governments. Believe it or not, in certain instances and for certain countries, a socialistic form of government will work better than a purely democratic form. But I don’t want our country to be dictated to by other countries, whose ideology is diametrically opposed to ours.” Mathews paused to take a breath. “And I deeply believe that while the Soviets and the Chinese need to have economic treaties with us to help their survival, these treaties must be carefully regulated and monitored or they will become a terrible detriment to our future way of life.”
Listening to Mathews, and watching the man’s intense face, Blair was drawn along by the man’s words. As Mathews continued, Blair realized it wasn’t just the words he was speaking, but the way Mathews spoke them—from the heart.
After several more deep political questions, Blair sensed Mathews was still waiting for him to hit, and to hit hard.
Not yet, he cautioned himself.
Finally, after a series of particularly direct questions about controlling the intelligence communities and seeing Mathews’ guard drop slightly, Blair said, “Why aren’t there any pictures of your wife and your son on the wall?” Mathews held Blair’s stare, but Blair saw his eyes go distant. “Because they aren’t part of my public life. Because they are private to me.”
“You’ve become a public figure by choice. Your wife and your son were part of your life. The public feeds on the publicity and the personal history of their politicians. You know that as well as I do.”
“All right,” Mathews said, hunching forward. “Let me put it another way. My wife and my son died almost four years ago. I miss them terribly. I would give up everything I have to get them back; but I can’t, nor will I allow their memory to be used in a political race.”
Mathews paused to moisten his lips with his tongue. “I’m running on a platform of social and political reforms, not on a platform of sentimentality. If I’m elected, it will be because of what I stand for and not what the press makes me out to be.” Mathews stopped speaking and looked at his left hand, and the wedding band he still wore. When he looked back at Blair, his eyes were filled with passion. “You’re unmarried and you have no children yet, Mr. Blair, so you can’t possibly comprehend what I’ve gone through these last four years. But when you are, I think you’ll understand what I’m trying to explain. Until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
Blair liked the answer, but he liked the emotion behind it more. “Yet, you have to admit that the way your life has been down-played is interesting.”
Mathews rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and leaned slightly back in the chair. “In what way?”
“Your guardian, the man who raised you, is one of the most respected men in the country. You fought in Viet Nam, flew jets as a matter of fact, and you became the youngest governor of your state.”
Blair paused to slow down the shot gunning of his words. “You married your college sweetheart and you had a son. You ran for congress and won. Then your family was taken from you. Four years later, you are nominated for the vice presidency. Congressman Mathews, your life comes straight out of a television soap opera, yet it’s been downplayed all the way.”
Mathews stirred restlessly in his chair. “What exactly is the point you’re trying to make?”
“I’m just wondering why, with the kind of ammunition you have—to pull at heartstrings and patriotism—you continually avoid talking about your history in public.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Blair, it’s because I have other priorities.”
“Perhaps,” Blair agreed. “But by minimizing the past, you may be trying to hide something dirty in all that soapy cleanliness—”
“In your opinion,” Mathews interrupted.
Blair nodded. “It’s the only opinion I can voice, Congressman. Now, tell me,” Blair rushed on without giving Mathews another chance to react verbally, “how much a part of your decision to run did Walter Hirshorne play?”
Mathews shrugged. “A large part, I would imagine. How could he not influence me? I grew up in his house. For all intents and purpose, Uncle Walter was my parent. He wasn’t my biological father, but he became my father. I spent my life with him. I’ve traveled all over the world with him. He was ambassador to several countries. He was an advisor to presidents. How could he not influence me?”
“I meant on a one-to-one level.”
“Walter Hirshorne taught me what public service means. He taught me that to live in America, to be a citizen of America, meant you had an obligation to serve. I grew up under that philosophy.”