She breezed around the open end of the bar, where three bartenders struggled to keep pace with their drink orders. As she barged through, the one closest to her raised his eyebrows.
“Hey! You’re not allowed back here.” His voice was gruff and insistent.
Tracie smiled brightly and blew him a kiss and continued on. She pushed through the swinging wooden doors as if she owned the place and moved straight toward the service entrance in back. To her right, dozens of beer kegs gleamed dully in the washed-out lighting. To her left, far off in the distance at the end of a narrow corridor, she could see people hard at work in a small kitchen. The smell of stale beer and spoiled meat hung in the air, heavy and thick.
Aside from those kitchen workers, Tracie was alone in the storage area, at least for the moment. She had thought the bartenders would be too busy to follow her and she was right. She breathed a sigh of relief, wondering how in the hell it had failed to occur to the KGB to cover this potential escape route. Apparently they considered the possibility of a switch remote, given that they were dealing with a frightened Russian bureaucrat.
She kicked it into high gear now and broke into a trot. As she neared the rear exit, a stern voice from behind her growled, “Stop right there.”
Tracie cursed under her breath as she gauged the distance to the door, calculating the odds of surviving a headlong dash for freedom. It was just too far. The Russian secret police were not accustomed to being ignored, and neither were the Stasi, and Tracie knew the operative behind her would be expecting full and immediate compliance, regardless of which organization he represented.
No choice. She stopped and turned slowly, holding her arms out at her sides and away from her body, spreading her fingers to show she was unarmed. She hoped her blouse hid the envelope resting against the sweat-soaked skin of her belly. If not, she would probably not survive beyond the next few seconds.
The man who had stopped her wore the forest-green camouflage summer field uniform of the NVA, East Germany’s National People’s Army. Tracie took in the uniform and breathed a sigh of relief. The KGB had indeed thought to cover the back entrance, but had used a People’s Army lieutenant to do so, rather than a KGB or Stasi operative.
She might still get out of this.
“What’s your hurry?” the man said, his weapon trained on Tracie. She said nothing and he took a couple of aggressive steps toward her. She willed him to take a couple more.
A loopy grin spread across her face and Tracie wobbled forward a step, then back. She allowed her eyes to glaze over.
“What’rr you doing in the ladies room?” she said, intentionally slurring her words. “You shou’nt be in here.” Then she giggled, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it.
The tension in the lieutenant’s posture relaxed slightly and the look of suspicion creasing his face eased a bit. Tracie thought she saw him stifle a grin. The gun, however, remained pointed at her midsection. If he fired now, the slug would probably punch a hole right through the envelope.
The soldier took another couple of steps forward, this time moving with more swagger and less aggression, lowering his gun and sealing his fate. He was almost close enough.
As he took another step, Tracie stumbled to one knee. He was eighteen inches in front of her. Any closer and he might conceivably be too close. It was time to act.
She shot to her feet, propelling her body forward, grabbing her captor’s gun with her right hand. The man took a step back in surprise and Tracie yanked hard, jerking his body toward hers as he squeezed the trigger reflexively. The sound of the gunfire was loud and Tracie hoped the thumping bass beat out in the club had covered most of it. The people working in the kitchen down the hall would have heard, but she wasn’t worried about them.
The soldier clubbed her on the side with his left hand as she used his momentum against him, flicking her head forward, the movement tight and compact. Her forehead impacted the man’s nose and she could hear the bones shatter even above the damned disco music and the ringing in her ears from the gunshot.
He crumpled immediately, blood streaming over his mouth, which he had opened in a scream of pain. It gushed out, spilled down his face, and splattered onto the dirty floor. It looked like a miniature Niagara Falls. Tracie grabbed the soldier’s weapon and yanked it away from him. His finger jammed in the trigger guard and Tracie felt it break.
The man staggered, splattering blood onto her leather pants and boots. He was practically out on his feet. She pivoted her hand to the side, like a hitchhiker trolling for a ride, and then reversed direction and slammed the butt of the pistol against his temple.
His eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped straight down. She flashed back to her encounter with the security guard in the Ukraine less than ten days ago. All my dates end badly.
She hoped she hadn’t killed the man but couldn’t afford to take the time to find out. By now the KGB agents monitoring the front of the club would have discovered the man they followed was empty-handed, and it wouldn’t take long before they realized they had been victimized by the oldest trick in the book, the bait and switch. Within minutes, maybe less, this place would be blanketed, locked down, and if Tracie were still here when that happened she would never get out alive.
A chorus of screams and pounding footfalls told her the soldier’s gunshot had been heard. She dropped to one knee and turned, raising the man’s bloody gun. An elderly man and woman—they each had to be seventy years old if they were a day—burst out of the hallway and into the storage area. They were undoubtedly the pair she had seen working in the kitchen, although they had been too far away to identify for sure.
“One more step and you die,” she said in German, pointing the gun in their direction, hoping her voice hadn’t carried into the bar.
The pair skidded to a stop, the old woman banging into the old man in front, sending him careening helplessly toward Tracie. He fell to the floor and scrabbled backward, almost knocking the old woman over in the process. It looked like a Three Stooges routine, and under other circumstances might have been funny.
Right now, though, the only thing on Tracie’s mind was escape. She had already been inside the building far too long.
She rose to her feet and said, “Go back to the kitchen and stay there for at least ten minutes. If you move before ten minutes has passed, I’ll come back and kill you both. Do you understand?”
The pair nodded at the same time, then turned and hurried back down the narrow hallway. They moved quickly but did not scream or yell into the front of the club for help, as Tracie had been afraid they might. She waited until they had reentered the kitchen and then sprinted for the door.
She burst into the night, the oppressive heat of the club vanishing in an instant. The service entrance opened into a narrow, trash-littered alley. A row of frost-covered garbage cans had been lined up next to the doorway and the rank stench of spoiled food hung in the air like smog over L.A. The alley was deserted.
She slowed to a fast walk along the crumbling pavement, moving south, knowing their East German collaborator had been instructed to turn north after leaving the club—not that he would have gotten far before being intercepted by the KGB or the Stasi. The alley opened onto a quiet street one block south of the bar. A pedestrian glanced at her suspiciously but kept walking. If he noticed the blood staining her leather pants he kept it to himself.
Your lucky night, pal, Tracie thought grimly.
She turned a corner and walked a hundred yards. Parked at the curb was a battered Volkswagen, twenty years old if it was a day. Tracie pulled the door open and eased into the driver’s seat. She sank into the worn fabric and rested her head against the steering wheel, breathing deeply, adrenaline still coursing through her body.
After a moment she started the car. She flicked on the headlights and drove slowly away.
7
May 29, 1987
11:25 p.m.
Berlin, GDR
Aleksander savored the reli
ef he felt following the departure of his contact. He took a deep pull on his vodka and smiled. It wasn’t up to Russian standards, but it was better than he had expected to find in Germany.
He wondered how long he should wait before departing. His contact had said “a few minutes,” and Aleksander wanted nothing more than to leave this club behind and get on with his life.
He tried not to think about the envelope but couldn’t help doing so. General Secretary Gorbachev had indicated it would eventually be delivered to the Americans, of all people, which was strange, but Aleksander didn’t claim to know anything about international diplomacy. Didn’t want to, either. If Comrade Gorbachev wanted the Americans to have the envelope, and was willing to go to such great lengths to conceal its contents from the KGB, who was Aleksander to question the decision?
He shrugged. It was no longer his problem to deal with. The damned envelope was out of his possession and good riddance to it. He had done what was asked of him, had performed admirably, he hoped, in service to his country and the Communist Party, and could finally relax.
He looked at his watch and decided enough time had passed for his contact to disappear into the night.
Aleksander finished his vodka—was that his third or fourth glass? Fifth?—and slammed it down on the tiny table before struggling to his feet, swaying unsteadily. The German vodka may have been a mediocre substitute for the real thing, but it still packed a satisfying wallop. He placed some of that phony-looking GDR money under his glass and staggered through the crowd, unnoticed and unimpeded, just another Friday night drinker on his way home to face the wrath of his frau.
Aleksander pushed through the door into the cool German night. The stars glittered overhead and a light breeze caressed his flushed face. He felt light-headed, more than he should after just a few glasses of vodka, but decided it was due to lack of sleep and the tremendous strain he had been operating under.
But none of that mattered now. He had done his duty and was in the clear.
He turned right and staggered unsteadily along the dimly lit sidewalk, occasionally sidestepping an onrushing pedestrian or couple walking arm-in-arm. Tomorrow he would take a cab to the airport and fly home to Moscow and the reassuring monotony of his invisible bureaucratic life.
Tonight, though, he walked unhurriedly, enjoying the fantasy he had constructed in his alcohol-fuzzed mind. He was a superspy, a man counted on by all of Mother Russia and indeed, all of the USSR, to keep the empire safe. He felled all enemies of the state and was treated like royalty by the Supreme Soviet. He was James Bond, only on the proper side of the equation.
It was an enjoyable fantasy, and Aleksander was lost in it when two men overtook him from behind. They were on him before he knew what was happening, and when they reached him, each one grabbed an elbow in a vice-like grip and propelled him forward.
“Do not say a word,” the man on his right side whispered fiercely into his ear in Russian, and Aleksander did not say a word.
He risked a quick glance to his right and then his left. The two men were dressed identically—black overcoats, black slacks, black shoes, even black Homburgs covering their heads. They escorted him directly past the entrance to his hotel, walking him roughly half a kilometer along the main road, still busy with pedestrians at this relatively early hour.
None of them paid any attention to him or to the men dressed in black. Aleksander’s heart was racing but he tried not to panic. One call to Secretary Gorbachev’s office and this misunderstanding would be cleared up.
The strange threesome continued, moving so far down the sidewalk that they left the flickering World War Two-era streetlights behind. They turned a corner into a secluded alleyway, walking Aleksander to an East German-made Trabant automobile parked in the shadows. The car was ancient, tiny.
They shoved him wordlessly into the back seat. One of the men leaned over and lifted a foul-smelling cloth from a well-sealed plastic bag in his pocket and pressed it to Aleksander’s face.
Aleksander willed himself not to panic and tried not to breathe.
Eventually he did both, in that order, and everything went black.
8
May 30, 1987
Time Unknown
Location Unknown
Aleksander regained consciousness slowly. He was seated on a hard chair, probably in a basement or storage room of some sort. It was cold and dark and damp and smelled of rotting vegetables and something vaguely sinister. Copper, maybe? Aleksander wasn’t sure.
He could hear voices muttering somewhere nearby. Two people, it seemed. He was afraid to open his eyes to check.
His hands and arms ached. He tried moving them but they’d been secured tightly to the chair, arms pulled behind his back, wrists shackled together. Tried his feet next. Same result. Each ankle had been affixed to a chair leg with something heavy and solid, probably a length of chain.
Aleksander felt queasy and weak. He knew he had been drugged into unconsciousness inside the tiny East German automobile and wondered how long he’d been out. Was he even still in the German Democratic Republic? Was he back in Russia? Somewhere else?
He concentrated on the voices, trying to pick up enough of the conversation to determine what language they were speaking and how many people were inside the room with him.
No luck. The voices were too muffled.
He risked opening his eyes, just a sliver, and moved his head very slowly to look around. In the dirty yellow light of a single bulb he could see a pair of shadowy figures huddled together in a corner of the room. The image blurred and doubled, then cleared. The lingering effects of whatever drugs he had been given, Aleksander guessed.
The men were sitting around a rickety table drinking something hot out of mugs—Aleksander could see steam rising into the air even from here—and his stomach clenched and rumbled.
He wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten. He wondered whether he would ever eat again. The terror of his predicament struck him like a wrecking ball and Aleksander puked all over the floor, the vomit burning his gullet on the way out. Cheap German vodka.
Aleksander sobbed once before stopping himself. His eyes widened in mounting panic as the men pushed their chairs back and began walking across the room.
The men stopped directly in front of him. One was tall and thin, skeletal. The other was completely bald. Aleksander looked up in fear, feeling like he might be sick again. He hoped when the vomit erupted from him it wouldn’t splatter all over his captors.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Comrade,” the bald man said in Russian. It meant little, since his East German contact had spoken Russian, too. “Time is of the essence, so let us skip the preliminaries and get right down to business, shall we?”
Aleksander’s terror was nearly overwhelming. His stomach rolled and yawed. He was afraid to speak for fear of vomiting again.
But as terrifying as his situation was, he knew he still possessed the ultimate trump card—provided he had been kidnapped by Soviets. If these two weren’t citizens of the USSR, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
“Where is it?” the bald man said. So far skeleton-man had not spoken.
Aleksander had no choice but to speak now. He hoped he wouldn’t puke on the men, but they were standing perilously close.
He swallowed hard. “Where is what?” he croaked. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until just now.
“Do not play games with us. Doing so will only cause you needless pain,” the bald man said, and skeleton-man drew back his foot and kicked Aleksander in the shin, hard, with his steel-toed boot. The pain exploded, racing up and down Aleksander’s leg like an electrical current.
He screamed in agony and fell forward, desperate to cover up, to protect his injured shin, but could barely move with his wrists shackled to the chair behind his back. He hadn’t heard anything crack but couldn’t believe the bone hadn’t shattered.
“Where is it?” the bald man repeated, his voice slas
hing like a knife.
“I don’t know,” Aleksander gasped. “I passed it along just as I was instructed to do. Where the other man went with it after he left the club I have no idea.”
“You know him,” the man said. It was not a question. “You have done business with him in the past.”
“No. Never. I swear. I’ve never seen him before.”
“You were laughing and joking like old friends, Comrade Petrovka. Do not insult our intelligence.”
“I was just doing what I was told to do by my contact, to blend in, that is all. I haven’t been to East Germany since I was a teen, I swear. You can check my travel records if you don’t believe me.”
“Oh, we will, don’t worry about that. Next question, and this is important, so try to pay attention: what was the item you delivered?”
“I do not know.”
“I don’t believe you, traitor.”
“Traitor?” Aleksander looked up at his tormentors, sweat dripping into his eyes. His shin throbbed with every pounding beat of his heart. He knew now was the time to play his trump card. It might be his only chance.
“No,” he said. “I am not a traitor. I was doing exactly as ordered by General Secretary Gorbachev. I am a member of his staff and am here on official state business.”
“Official state business?” the man said, his voice mocking and cruel. He turned to his partner. “Did you hear that, Vasily? He is here on official state business, representing Secretary Gorbachev himself.”
The man turned his attention back to Aleksander. “Well, I have news for you, Comrade Aleksander Petrovka of Ivanteyevka. Mikhail Gorbachev is just as much a traitor to his homeland as you are. We care nothing for Mikhail Gorbachev’s orders. If Gorbachev’s reckless stupidity is not checked, he will be the downfall of the Soviet Empire, and Vasily and I are just two of many who refuse to allow that to happen.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 3
