by David Wind
There were no boats on the water. To his right, Roosevelt Island sat peacefully; the lights in the apartment buildings looking like stars set in a hazy sky.
Behind him came footsteps. He turned casually. Two uniformed policemen walked by. Each carried a nightstick. One nodded to him. When they were a dozen feet past, Chapin straightened and started south.
The policemen left the promenade in the center, descending to the park level and disappeared around two large evergreen trees.
Chapin continued toward the prearranged meeting sight. The tightness in his belly spread through him. His nerves jangled, and his senses heightened. He smelled the river, and the decay along the cement abutment beneath him.
He listened to the sounds of the nighttime city, from the rush of the wind over the water to the muffled noises of the cars in the tunnel beneath the promenade. He checked his mental clock and knew there was ten minutes left. His watch confirmed it.
Stopping a hundred feet shy of the meeting place, Chapin sat on a wooden bench. He waited for the ten minutes to pass, and then walked to the prearranged spot.
He stood, half in the light of a street lamp and half in its shadows, for another ten minutes before the letdown hit. Had Merchenko been watching? Had Merchenko seen him, recognized him, and thought that The Company was crossing him?
Merchenko was expecting Mitchell. Would he show himself if Mitchell did not come? He had no answers, but if Merchenko really wanted to defect, he would come to Chapin.
Where is he? The feeling of the plan gone wrong crawled along his skin. He would give the defector five more minutes.
Chapin turned in a slow three-sixty. The movement, casual to any watching eyes, hid his studied way of checking his surroundings.
He saw a man crossing the avenue near the beginning of the park. Several cars passed along East End Avenue. No one was on the promenade. Chapin exhaled slowly. He clenched and unclenched his hands. What was happening?
A half-second later came the slightly muffled explosion of a pistol. He whirled in the direction of the sound. The shot had come from one of the buildings lining the lower promenade and the river.
He went to the steps, a feeling of dread built inside him. He saw nothing. He raced downward, and started a half run forward. His eyes went from side to side, looking for anything that did not belong. When he reached the mouth of an alley formed by two high-rise apartment buildings, he stopped.
Glancing down, he realized the Browning was in his hand. He didn’t remember freeing it from its holster.
The location of the alley felt right. A gunshot from the alley would have a slightly muffled effect to anyone listening up on the promenade.
Going into a half crouch, he started forward. All he needed were half a dozen steps to spot the shape on the ground.
He looked around. The alley was empty. The exit at the far end was unblocked.
He inched toward the sprawled body. Enough light seeped from the windows above to let him see the man. When he reached him, Chapin knelt. Before he was close enough to identify the man, he knew it would be Merchenko.
There was a pooling of blood beneath Merchenko’s head. He pushed the head to the side and saw the bullet had hit just above the Russian’s left temple.
He checked the back of Merchenko’s head. The bullet had blown away most of the bone and brain. The job was professional. The weapon most likely a nine-millimeter with a hollow-point bullet.
Chapin looked at Merchenko’s outstretched arm. There was an attaché case near his hand. One end of a security chain was attached to the case, the other end cuffed to the Soviet agent’s wrist.
Chapin reached for the case, but stopped at the sound of pounding feet. He was halfway to his feet when he heard the shout to freeze. He eased his grip on the Browning, and shifted it so that he held the butt between thumb and forefinger.
“Put it down, slowly. Then put your hands behind your head and turn to me.” Chapin caught the nervousness in the policeman’s voice. He followed the orders to the letter.
When he turned, the policeman came forward. He raised his flash to Chapin’s face, and then lowered it. The cop lifted his walkie-talkie.
“Central. I have a shooting at the alley between eight-five and eight-four streets. I have subject in custody and request immediate backup and ambulance.”
He lowered the radio and listened to the response before motioning Chapin back. Then the cop played his light over the body. In the illumination, Chapin saw something in Merchenko’s left hand.
He recognized it immediately. Shock coursed through him. Merchenko was holding Chapin’s stolen wallet. Suddenly, everything fell into place. The mugging in his building hadn’t been a random crime. The two men had been after his wallet. That was the reason for discarding Abby’s purse. They hadn’t been interested in her, just in him. Why did Merchenko have it?
“Officer,” Chapin said, reaching into his jacket pocket, “I’m with the CIA.”
Whirling, the cop leveled, leveled his thirty-eight on Chapin’s chest. “Don’t fucking move!”
From the distance came the sounds of sirens. Chapin knew it was a set up, and knew as well, he had to get away. What had happened tonight was a perfectly orchestrated trap. “Officer,” Chapin said as he opened his wallet with one flip. “My federal identification is in here.”
He saw doubt on the man’s face, and a slight relaxing of his facial muscles. “Here,” Chapin said, tossing the wallet to the cop.
When the cop grabbed for it, Chapin unleashed his right foot. It arched high, catching the policeman under his armpit with the toe of his shoe. The man’s fingers opened reflexively. He dropped his weapon. Just as the thirty-eight hit the ground, Chapin whirled, releasing a roundhouse kick that sent the cop flying backward.
The man fell, unconscious. He heard the sounds of cars stopping and doors slamming.
Chapin picked up his pistol, grabbed his wallet from where it lay next to the fallen cop, and raced to the mouth of the alley.
He sprinted down two blocks, turned on Eighty-Second Street and slowed to a walk. By the time he reached East End Avenue, he’d holstered his Browning and eased his breathing.
He didn’t think; rather, he reacted by concentrating on what happened. He walked north toward the flashing police lights. People were coming out of the buildings to see what was happening. Chapin mingled among them.
When they reached the scene, Chapin stayed within the group. There were half a dozen blue-and-white police cars, along with several unmarked cars. The men coming out of the unmarked cars wore suits, ties, and had FBI written all over them.
What the hell is going on? he asked himself. There was no way that the FBI could know about Merchenko’s death this soon. Unless he was right, that it had been a setup from the very beginning.
He edged forward, aware that he was putting himself in danger, but the need to know more pushed him. When he was close enough, he heard the FBI agent in charge tell the sergeant that the Bureau had received a tip about an assassination
That was enough. He turned and maneuvered through the crowd, crossed the street, and walked toward his car, and the freedom it promised.
“Don’t move, Chapin.”
Turning slowly, he came face to face with Jack Backman, the CIA backup for the defection. The agent stood in the dark mouth of a store doorway.
“It was a setup, Jack,” Chapin said. “Merchenko was taken out.”
“Yeah, I know,” the CIA man said. “Let’s do this quietly. We don’t need any more publicity.”
Chapin’s eyes flicked from Backman’s face to his weapon. The pistol was a thirty-eight. Chapin glanced over his shoulder. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the scene. Chapin nodded and stepped close to Backman.
He jammed his left hand on the pistol, letting the skin between his thumb and forefinger block the hammers action. At the same time, he caught Backman’s neck in his other hand and applied pressure to the carotid artery. The suddenness of the move took the agent unprep
ared. Backman couldn’t move or speak. When the agent’s eyes rolled up into his head, Chapin released his grip, caught the agent and set him on the cement floor in the doorway.
The action took a quarter of a minute. When he glanced back, nothing had changed. He bent, took Backman’s weapon, slid it into his waist, and started toward his car.
He reached his car without any further interruptions. Looking around as he opened the door, he realized the cop he had kicked unconscious was on the opposite corner. The man was leaning against a car while another policeman checked his face.
An ambulance turned the corner, its headlights washing across Chapin and the car. The policeman half stood, staring across at Chapin.
Wasting no more time, Chapin scooted into the car at the same instant the policeman reached his feet. The dome light came on, and the cop stared at him.
Chapin started the car.
The cop shouted a warning and drew his weapon.
Chapin slammed the car into gear and roared out of the parking spot. He clipped the car in front of him, but made it out. Twenty feet later, his back window exploded.
He hunched down. The corner was coming fast. He turned sharply, his tires squealing. Three more rounds thudded into the rear quarter panel. He smelled gas and knew the tank was hit. He turned onto York Avenue.
Barreling forward, he ignored the traffic lights, blowing the horn in warning. Behind him came the flashing lights of a police car.
He turned off Eighty-Ninth Street, onto First Avenue. He went up to Ninety-Sixth Street and made a left.
As he crossed Second Avenue, he spotted the police cars racing away from the precinct two blocks away. They were heading uptown in the wrong direction—toward him.
He gritted his teeth. He had to move; he had to get away. If they caught him, he would be finished.
Think! He reached Park Avenue and turned. His tires protesting as he gunned the engine and fought the wheel. The smell of gas was stronger.
He raced down the steep hill next to where the elevated train tracks began. There was no traffic ahead as he headed into Harlem with a trail of police cars and flashing lights behind him. At a Hundred-and-Sixteenth Street, he turned downtown, on Lexington. He went one more block, pulled in at the southeast corner next to a fire hydrant, and got out of the car.
He ran east, to Third Avenue and leaned his face in against the metal security wall of a store. He waited there for two minutes as the police cars kept coming.
A Cadillac slowed and pulled into a parking space. A large black man got out, gave Chapin a disdainful glance, and went into the entrance of a run-down building.
Chapin relaxed as best he could as he listened to the night sounds. He had to get a new vehicle, but he had to wait until it was safe. He stepped away from the wall and looked back down the street.
A block away, Lexington Avenue was ablaze with flashing lights. They’d found his car. Two patrol cars broke away from the group and start toward him. He backed up and turned when something hard pushed against his back. “You’re a dead mother-fucker… Unless you give me what you’re carrying.”
Chapin slouched his shoulders and said, “Sure.”
The pressure in his back eased. Whirling, he knocked the pistol sideways with his forearm and followed with a chopping strike to the bridge of the man’s nose.
The cartilage shattered against the calloused edge of his hand. The mugger fell to his knees. Chapin finished him with another slicing chop to his neck. The man pitched forward, unconscious.
Without looking back, Chapin headed to the Cadillac.
The door was open, and the keys were in it. He got behind the wheel as the first police car turned the corner and scanned with its searchlight.
The light centered on the man on the sidewalk. Both cars stopped, and the drivers raced to the body.
Chapin waited until they were next to him before he hit the gas. The Cadillac responded powerfully. With the rear tires burning, he shot out into the avenue. Behind him, one cop fired while another shouted into his radio. The two cops from the second car raced back to their vehicle and started after Chapin.
Chapin glanced at the rearview. The police car was coming and another appeared ahead, its lights flashing as it headed toward him.
Chapter Fifteen
Chapin watched the Tuesday morning rush hour from his fifth-floor window. The traffic along Routes Four and Eighty was jammed to a standstill. The George Washington Bridge was always a nightmare, but he knew that in another hour or so the bridge would be passable.
Thank God, he thought, the defection had been set for night and not the morning. If it had taken place in the morning, he would never have been able to get away.
As it was, he’d barely made it. The police cars had almost trapped him, but he’d been lucky. The old Cadillac had had a big engine and strong body.
The cops had tried to force him into a narrow street blocked off by other cars. Rather than go down the street, Chapin had jammed on his brakes, put the car in reverse, and smashed into the front of the lead police car. Ignoring the bullets, he’d raced off into the heart of Harlem.
Before the cops had been able to find him again, he’d stolen a Japanese import and gotten across the bridge to Jersey. Twenty minutes later, he’d registered in a motel in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
His first instinct had been to go to an unobtrusive and out of the way motel. His second was to go to a mainstream motel filled with businessmen and get lost among them. He’d chosen the high-rise Holiday Inn.
There was a knock on the door. He left the window and answered with “Yes?”
“Room service.”
Opening the door, Chapin admitted the red-jacketed room service waiter. He stepped aside to let him wheel in the cart and set it by the window. He signed the check, and added a fifteen-percent tip.
The waiter took the empty coffee carafe from an earlier room service call. When he was gone, Chapin went to the cart and picked up the New York Times.
He scanned the headlines, and read the first few pages. There was no story about a murder or about a Soviet official’s death. He put the paper down and poured a cup of coffee. Then he lifted the stainless steel plate cover and stared at the bacon and eggs.
He wasn’t hungry, but he knew he had to eat. Keeping himself fed, alert, and wary were his top priorities. That and finding out who had set him up.
He ate and thought. He’d spent the night concentrating on the why of the trap, and by the time the sun appeared, he’d had no other alternative but to accept it was Sokova behind the setup.
But how had he been setup? This was supposed to be Mitchell’s assignment, not his. Had they planned to use Merchenko to name him as the mole, when Jason Mitchell brought Merchenko in? Why did the Soviet agent have his stolen wallet? What was in the man’s attaché case?
Why kill him? Had they changed the plan at the last minute, when they’d seen Chapin instead of Mitchell? Did the wallet tie in with that?
On the surface, if his thinking was right, Sokova had set a plan in motion to discredit him, which would have made him helpless in his quest for the Sokova plan.
Sokova was good—almost too good. He had arranged the mugging in Chapin’s building the same day that Chapin had come home. Sokova’s tap within The Company was high-level.
Chapin snorted derisively. With the atmosphere of peace and hope surrounding the new Soviet-American relationship, killing Merchenko and pinning the murder on him was a perfect way of getting him out of the picture. He grew certain that the wallet was planted as evidence of a struggle between the Soviet and the renegade American secret agent.
Chapin looked at his watch. It was seven-fifty-five. He had put things off long enough. He had to find out what was happening. He couldn’t call Jason yet, because he was sure his friend was still at Langley. The Company monitored all incoming calls.
What had happened last night would have put everyone on alert, every call checked. Langley would be on a priority alert with
all relevant personnel called in.
Whom could he call?
He wrestled with his question while he ate. When his plate was clean, he poured a fresh cup of coffee and found the answer.
Five years ago, on a South American assignment with another agent, a woman, and Cuban double agent, compromised his partner. Chapin had bailed him out, saved his life, and had not reported the incident.
When they’d completed the mission, the agent had requested a transfer out of field duty. He’d accepted a position in the CIA information services.
He dredged through his memory for the phone number, and then dialed it, billing it to his credit card number. Knowing that by the time they’d traced credit card number he would be long gone.
The phone rang four times. “You’ve got balls, Kevin,” answered the former agent. “Goodbye.”
Chapin’s grip tightened on the receiver as he listened to the empty line. He took a deep breath and went through the process again. When the phone was answered, he said, “Don’t hang up. Just listen.”
There was silence, but the line stayed open. “You owe me. I never intended on calling in your marker—I don’t work like that—but I need to know what’s going on.”
“You can go to hell, Chapin,” the agent snapped. “I don’t owe anything to a double who gave up his people. Did you really think you could get away with killing Merchenko? What were you planning to do? Say he’d been hit before you got there? Hey, it might just have worked. But they caught you before you could clean him. Jesus, Chapin, they found the entire list of the Ruby One apparatus in his attaché case.”
The agent paused for a breath. “I just hope they take you down quick.”
Accenting the man’s last word came the emptiness of a dead line. He stared at the phone, stunned. How could Merchenko have gotten the Ruby One apparatus list?
Chapin worked to calm himself. A moment later, he had his answer. Sokova had a double in the agency.
Chapin stood. He looked around the room. His jacket hung in the open closet. He went to the dresser and took out his shoulder harness. He slipped it on, adjusted the Browning nine-millimeter, and laughed to himself. He was sure that when they found the bullet, ballistics would match it to his Browning.
