by David Wind
<><><>
Sokova smiled. “You are certain?”
“Absolutely. Chapin is no longer a factor. He and his car went over the mountain. There were witnesses.”
“Excellent,” Sokova said. “We will continue in accordance with the original plan.”
“Yes, that is called for.”
“I will see you in two days in Washington,” Sokova said, hanging up the phone.
He stood, walked to the window, and looked out over the nation’s capital. A time for renewed patience had come, he told himself. He must wait. He must go on as if there was nothing out of the ordinary happening. Four and a half decades of waiting and planning was at an end.
In three months or so, when the winter ended, he would make the final move of the convention. Checkmate!
<><><>
Brannigan looked at the Grand Teton Mountains through the motel window. Chapin sat on the bed behind her. They had bypassed motels in Lander and Riverton, going instead to Dubois, which was nestled in the foothills of the Tetons and off the beaten path.
For Chapin, it was a trip shrouded in fog as he’d wavered between semi-consciousness and sleep. Brannigan had roused him to get into the motel, explaining that they had reached Dubois. After undressing him and settling him on the bed, she’d gone for medical supplies. He had passed out as soon as she left.
When he’d woken, much later, he’d found that she had redressed his wounded shoulder, and cleansed the glass cuts on his face.
On the bed next to Chapin sat an unopened bag of food. But his stomach was still queasy, and the thought of food was enough to make him nauseous. He knew the feeling would pass as the effects of the concussion lessened.
“What’s going to happen now?” Brannigan asked.
He gazed at her back—all three of them. He concentrated on the middle one, and the three became one again. He closed his eyes and began to talk.
“I don’t know, yet,” he said, opening his eyes. “I saw Mathews.”
Brannigan came over to the bed and sat next to him. “And?”
“I was too late. Sokova replaced Robert Mathews with his twin brother.”
“You’re sure?” Brannigan asked. “How long were you with him?”
“Fifteen minutes, but I didn’t need any more time. I’m sure.”
Brannigan put her hand on his. “Tell me what makes you so certain.”
Chapin laughed dryly. “The queen,” he whispered. “The son of a bitch took the queen from the set in Russia, and put it on Mathews’ board. Then he told me about the wager between he and Blair, and how, because the queen was missing from his belongings, he had ordered a new queen from the same place at which Hirshorne had bought the set originally.”
Brannigan’s brow furrowed, creating a triple vee-shaped groove in the center of her forehead. “How did that prove he wasn’t Robert?”
“Blair’s tapes. Mathews had told Blair that the chess set was custom made and hand crafted. He couldn’t just call a store twenty years later and get another queen out of stock.”
“That’s pretty thin,” Brannigan said, interrupting him.
“By itself, yes. But when I spoke to Robert Mathews in Chicago, I told him Ed Kline was holding the queen for him. But this time, when Mathews told me about the wager with Blair, he had acted as though I was unaware of it.”
Brannigan’s eyes widened. “Then it’s hopeless. Everything we’ve done was wasted. Sokova wins.”
“Not quite,” he replied, his voice hard.
Brannigan’s eyes glimmered with hope. “Of course, we have to find Robert Mathews. That would take care of Sokova.”
He looked at her, feeling a strange sadness at her naiveté. “He’s dead.”
Brannigan shook her head. “You can’t be certain.” Chapin spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “Leslie, Sokova has been orchestrating this moment for over forty years. He’s a master strategist. He lives for his planning and manipulation, and leaves nothing to chance. No, once the twin was inserted into Robert Mathews’ place, we can be absolutely certain that Robert Mathews was terminated.”
“If what you say is true—”
“It is.”
“—then, what do we do? Or should I ask if there is anything we can do?”
Chapin closed his eyes for a moment as a wave of vertigo caught him in its grip. When it passed, he opened his eyes. “First, let’s think about why he wanted to replace Mathews.”
“That’s the easy part,” Brannigan said. “So that he can have a Soviet become president in four or eight years.”
“No,” Chapin said. “I’d say it’s more likely for Mathews to become president within the first year.”
“But—” Brannigan cut off whatever she was going to say as the understanding grew on her face. “An assassination.”
“Exactly.”
“How do we stop it?”
“I don’t know if we can. We have no proof. We have nothing to back us up.”
“Kline will believe us.”
“Yes, he will,” Chapin agreed, “but he won’t print it. He can’t. No, the people we need to believe us are the ones who think I’m a rogue agent. And, the only thing they want from me is my life.”
“Then we have to get them the proof,” Brannigan stated. “But how?”
Chapin nodded, careful not to set his head spinning. “We sit tight and wait for Mathews and company to leave. Once they’ve gone, we go in and see if we can find some evidence of Mathews’ death.”
“Won’t there be Secret Service people guarding Mathews’ residence?”
“Probably just security people at this point. I’m not concerned about them.”
“Then what?” she asked, leaning forward, her eyes locked intently on his.
“Two things. First, we find something to back us up. Perhaps Mathews’ body—although I don’t think it will be found…but something. The we have to figure out when they’re going to assassinate the president.”
<><><>
“What you’ve told us is exactly what you saw in the Pamir installation?” Ann Tanaka asked Blacky.
Blacky nodded. “Yes. I saw the White House. A school building and a few other houses.”
“Whose houses?” Tanaka asked, hoping to jog something in Blacky’s memory—something that Chapin might have said.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know that Chapin worked for the KGB?”
Blacky tossed his head back and laughed. “Chapin worked for the KGB? Never!”
“We have proof.”
“Then, your proof is wrong,” he said, staring into her eyes. “If he is KGB, why would he bring myself and Titania to America?”
“Several reasons,” Tanaka said.
“No! If Chapin is KGB, then I would have to be KGB, too, and Titania Basilova as well. Do you think that is so?”
“No,” Tanaka said, “but he could have brought the two of you back to prove to us that he was not KGB.”
“Tamho.”
“Yeah, Blacky, it is shit,” Tanaka, said, shutting off the tape machine. Her back and Blacky’s face disappeared when the television went black and ended the replay of her original interview with Blacky. Timing, she looked at the map on her wall. Chapin wasn’t KGB, nor were Blacky or Titania. She closed her eyes and thought about what Blacky had said.
The White House in the Pamirs was a duplicate of the White House in America. Blacky said that Chapin had told him so.
He also said that Chapin had seemed startled and upset when he’d gone into the schoolhouse, and then into the “other house.”
“What?” she asked herself, pacing the confines of her office. She looked at the map on the wall, and traced the red trail she had marked. The path showed Chapin’s myriad travels since the death of the Soviet in New York City.
He had been in France, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Chicago, Washington, Moscow, Tashkent, and Los Angeles. Where was he now?
Then the connection snapped into place. Ann
Tanaka knew where Chapin was—she just knew. She went to the map, and followed a line from California to Wyoming.
Going to her desk, she opened the bottom file drawer and removed a file with the title, Sokova. Opening it, she removed Robert Mathews’ bio. When she found what she wanted, she picked up the phone and dialed a number.
As the phone line’s electronic switching clicked in her ears, she pictured the place where the phone would be ringing. It was a tall and stately white clapboard colonial in Princeton, New Jersey. A very special CIA safe house, for very special VIPs.
When a voice answered, Tanaka identified herself and asked for Blacky. A moment later, he was on the phone.
“Blacky, what was the name of the school building in the Pamirs?”
There was silence on the other end, and then Blacky said, “Dimas... no, it was—”
“The Ditman Academy?” Tanaka asked.
“Yes,” Blacky said. “Does that help?”
“Oh, yes, Blacky, it helps. Thank you!” she hung up abruptly.
She turned to look at the map again. Was it possible? She looked at the file, and at the lab report on the pen Chapin had asked her to have fingerprinted.
She reread the report, and then closed the file. If Chapin was right, there was big trouble ahead: Everything she had learned so far supported Chapin’s theory about Sokova. It was a roadmap of how the Soviets were going to take over as Ruby Red’s Davidov had told Chapin.
My God, she thought, it was almost perfect.
She stood, turning around in her office in a panicked daze. There had to be something, somewhere with enough proof to expose Sokova, and bring Chapin in.
“What?” she asked aloud, knowing that time was running out, and if she didn’t find something solid to show the general, Sokova would successfully finish his mission.
<><><>
The sun was still a half hour away. The early morning air was cold, a half degree above freezing. The inside of the car was warm.
Chapin sat in the passenger seat while Brannigan drove. They were nearing the triple-peak mountain on the road to the Mathews’ ranch. Three days had passed since Brannigan had pulled Chapin from the ledge. His head was better, the concussion very mild as the doctor Brannigan had finally forced Chapin to see had told him.
They’d spent their time in Dubois profitably. After Brannigan had called Kline, she had gone to the local Radio Shack and purchased a laptop computer, a small printer, and a modern. Then she’d called up the newspaper via the computer, and she and Chapin had looked into a variety of things, including all the information on file about identical twins, as well as the entire Robert Mathews biography, and all the notes that Joel Blair had sent in to the Courier.
They’d spent the next two nights and the single day rereading everything. But it was the information about identical twins that truly scared the hell out of Chapin.
Identical twins were exactly what they were called, identical: Identical fingerprints; identical footprints; and even 99 percent of their body parts. The only possible difference was in retina patterns. Retina patterns, scars, and tattoos were the only positive means of identifying identical twins.
Retina identification was fairly new. At the time Sokova had developed his plan, there was no way of telling an identical twin apart. Chapin was positive that Sokova had corrected any scar, any physical difference between Robert and his brother. A scar created or removed—a pimple that pocked a cheek, added or taken away.
Mathews had been a jet jockey in Nam. Chapin would bet his Soviet twin could pilot anything Mathews ever flew.
But retina patterns? Would that help? Were Mathews’ patterns already on file?
Chapin snorted. It didn’t matter. Whoever Sokova was, he would be able to get to the top-secret files and change them. He’d done it in Abby Sloan’s case. God knew who else he’d duplicated.
Or could he? Abby Sloan was a State Department employee, not the vice president elect of the United States.
“What?” Brannigan asked as she turned the wheel into the wide curve at the top of the triple-peak mountain.
“Just thinking about Mathews,” Chapin said. “You’re sure you can find the stream?”
“Joel was pretty specific about it,” Brannigan said. “You read his story. Mathews fishes at only one spot on his property.”
A fact, which, he thought, had probably made it easier for Sokova.
Chapin shut off his thoughts, and watched the black and purple eastern sky expose the first hazy bands of dawn. By the time they were off the mountain and passed the entrance to Mathews’ ranch, the sky over the eastern mountains had turned a reddish yellow. When they finally parked the car, hidden off the road, the first strong band of blue sky greeted them.
“When we finish here, I need to call Ed Kline, I have to ask him to do some things,” he told Brannigan as he led the way toward where they’d estimated the stream would be.
Twenty minutes later, they crested a hill and found the stream, along with the exact spot where Robert Mathews used to fish.
The water was a quick running mountain stream, and as the sun broke into the sky, Chapin saw the silver flashes of trout. The fishing spot was secluded, ringed by short hills. The earth, where there were no clumps of grass, was reddish brown.
Going down the hill. Brannigan tripped on a rock and pitched forward. Chapin grabbed her. A foot away from Brannigan came the sound of an irritated rattlesnake.
“Hold still,” Chapin warned as he drew the Browning.
He cocked the pistol; the snake’s rattle grew louder. They didn’t move for several more moments, until the small snake—perhaps two feet long—got tired of warning them away and slithered down the hill.
Brannigan’s breath exploded from her lungs. Chapin smiled, but kept the pistol out. “Just be a little more careful.”
Brannigan stared at the spot where the snake had been. “Count on it.”
They reached the bottom and walked to the edge of the stream, he watched Brannigan’s face as she stared into the crystal water.
“I’ve never seen water this clear before. It’s…almost invisible.”
Chapin laughed. “Water is supposed to be colorless.”
Brannigan made a mew of annoyance. “You know what I mean.”
Chapin did. The water was clear, and cold, and gave one a sense of purity that the confines of civilization lacked.
Shaking his head, he looked at the ground. “There hasn’t been any rain for several weeks. If there is any sign of a struggle, we should find it.”
They walked around in slow small circles, staring at the ground, looking for anything not a part of nature. It took them almost an hour before Chapin found the inevitable.
“Here.” He waved over Brannigan and knelt on the ground, pointing to a brownish stain on a gray rock.
“What is it?” Brannigan asked.
“Blood,” Chapin replied, looking around the area. There was no sign of a struggle. Nothing pointed to a death, except for the dried stain on the rock.
He stood, walked six feet from the rock, and looked up at the hill across from him, estimating the trajectory of a head shot.
Then he stared along the trajectory line. He walked forward, knowing now exactly what to look for. He went another dozen feet and found it.
On the rocky ground was the chip-like scratch of a bullet’s ricochet. Again, he followed the direction of the marking. Twenty feet later he found another ricochet mark, and had his answer.
“Sniper.” He returned to Brannigan. “From up there,” he added, pointing to the top of the hill.
“Did they bury the body?” Brannigan asked.
“If they did, it wasn’t here. The ground is too hard and rocky, and to leave the body nearby would be risky,” he said. It took a second before he realized what Brannigan was getting at.
“Let’s look for blood. We’ll do a search pattern using circles.”
He showed Brannigan what he meant, and they started to look.
Brannigan found the next bloodstained rock. From that spot it was easy to see where they’d gone. To the road, near where Brannigan had parked the car.
They found two more bloodstains before they reached the car. Seated inside the car, Brannigan started the engine, but did not put the transmission into gear.
“What now?” she asked.
Chapin, aware the question was coming, looked straight ahead. “I’ve finally gotten a small advantage over Sokova. Sokova’s hit team thinks they’ve terminated me. Which means, if I stay low, I can work without worrying about Sokova coming after me. We have at least until the inauguration, so,” he said, finally meeting her eyes, “you go back to Washington and to your job; and, I try to find out when they will assassinate the president.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Caesarea, Israel: February
The blue and calm Mediterranean Sea stretched for an eternity. The leading edge of the sun touched the horizon. The reflection of sunlight on the sea’s surface laid a rippling sheet of gold to dazzle all who beheld it, including Kevin Chapin.
“They are finally beginning to believe me, aren’t they?” Chapin said, looking from the sunset to the man sitting on the chair next to his.
The man was around Chapin’s age, with deeply tanned skin, a large proud nose, and sea green eyes. His name was Eli Ben-Moshe, and along with being Chapin’s friend, Ben-Moshe was also a former field agent. His current position was as the assistant director of the counsel of the Mossad le Aliyah Beth—the formidable and central unit of Israeli intelligence.
Eli Ben-Moshe rubbed his chin with his index finger. It was a characteristic gesture. One that made Chapin comfortable.
“Yes,” Ben-Moshe said, “they are finally starting to believe you.”
Chapin was very much aware the Mossad’s belief had to have come from Ben-Moshe, whom Chapin had come to after leaving America, three and a half months before. As soon as he’d stepped onto Israeli soil, he’d contacted Ben-Moshe, and told his compatriot the entire story. Chapin had left nothing out, and had allowed his future, and that of the world itself, to rest in Ben-Moshe’s hands.
It hadn’t been a mistake. The Mossad does not dismiss impossible; they check on it, learn everything concerning it, and then decide if there is validity to the claim.
