The time dragged, the crossing interminable, and while she was grateful they hadn’t encountered any Soviet patrols—yet—Tracie found herself worrying whether she would have sufficient opportunity to prepare for Speransky’s arrival in Leningrad. There was a lot to do and he wouldn’t be sneaking into Russia at ten miles per hour aboard an ancient, stinking fishing boat, and Tracie could feel the time slipping away.
She took solace in the knowledge that as time-consuming as it was for her to get into Russia, it should be equally so for Speransky to get out of the United States. And while she had no way of knowing how far behind her the KGB assassin was, she assumed she would have at least twenty-four hours to herself once she finally entered Leningrad. Hopefully that would be enough.
Sea spray soaked Tracie’s hair and her clothing, and it occurred to her that no matter the weather, she was probably going to be waterlogged by the time she could take shelter in a stolen car. She tried to sit lower in the boat and silently cursed Piotr Speransky for roughly the thousandth time.
At last the Russian shoreline came into view, still without Gorton’s little boat encountering any patrols. It felt like a minor miracle. Ten minutes later, Gorton had maneuvered as close to the rocky beach as he dared. After shaking his hand, a solemn ritual she repeated every time they successfully completed a crossing, Tracie leapt over the side, splashing up to her knees and wading to the shore.
The beach was deserted, as she had known it would be. Vistino was located more than five miles from here and it was miniscule, with a population of well under a thousand. Had Tracie seen anyone while sweeping the area with her binoculars during their approach, she would have waved off the landing and instructed Gorton to find another drop-off location.
She had taken maybe a dozen steps toward the narrow road running along the beach when she turned around. Gorton was already at least fifty feet out into the Baltic, headed for wherever he kept his boat moored. She wondered how much money he’d just made, and whether his boat would receive another new name and paint job, even though they hadn’t encountered any Soviets during the trip.
Then she put Gorton and his boat out of her mind. The rain had thus far held off, although the sky continued to darken. Tracie slipped her backpack over her shoulder and began hiking. With any luck she could acquire a car sooner rather than later.
And if that were the case, she would be in Leningrad by tonight.
31
May 22, 1988
11:50 p.m.
Leningrad, Russia, USSR
Vasily Labochev’s arm was trapped under a sleeping hooker. Nikita, she called herself, or Natasha. In his drunken haze, he couldn’t quite remember which. Or maybe it was something else.
It didn’t matter for a number of reasons, one of which was that he was certain the girl’s real name was neither Nikita nor Natasha. Call girls were a lot like covert intelligence operatives, he thought with an intoxicated grin: they never wanted you to know their true identities.
Vasily’s personal life included many rendezvous with girls just like Nikita/Natasha. At least twice a month for as long as he could remember, Vasily had shared his bed with prostitutes. It was a habit he took great pains to conceal from his KGB superiors, because it was exactly the sort of thing they would worry might prompt extortion by an enterprising Russian criminal type, or much worse, by the American CIA should they become aware of it.
This latest call girl, Nikita or Natasha, had practically set up shop inside Vasily’s palatial home. She’d spent every night here over the past week, and Vasily expected she would continue to sleep in his bed until this nasty business with Piotr Speransky was over. He was paying her handsomely, and he knew she would be more than happy to continue earning triple or even quadruple her normal nightly pay until the income stream dried up.
And he needed her. He hadn’t been sleeping well since beginning his unofficial business transaction with Speransky. It was a natural by-product, he thought, of committing extortion against one of the most lethal assassins in his country’s long and storied history of lethal assassins.
At least with Nikita/Natasha here, Vasily could drink himself numb and then tire his body to the point of exhaustion through bedroom gymnastics, at which his current paid partner was exceptional. He would then fall into a troubled slumber. He would still awaken multiple times overnight, sometimes to pee and others to fret.
Often both.
But at least he was able to manage a few hours rest each night.
He felt his arm going numb and tried to slip it out from under Nikita/Natasha without waking her. He didn’t care about the quality of her rest; she was a contract employee, nothing more, and normally he would have poked her in the ribs or shoved her off his arm, and the hell with her if she didn’t like it. But if he woke her, she would think he was ready for another round, and he was too prideful to turn her down if she awakened and expected sex.
The problem was all he wanted right now was to get out from under her damned body so he could roll over and get back to sleep.
He worked his arm out slowly and carefully and had almost freed it when he heard a loud THUMP from downstairs. Every once in a while his cats would knock a candlestick off a table while roughhousing; it was a sound he’d heard more than once in the middle of the night.
This was something else entirely.
It was heavier than a candlestick, and muffled, and less metallic.
It was more like a dead or unconscious body hitting the floor; another sound he’d heard plenty of times over the course of his KGB career.
One thought flashed through his alcohol-addled and sleep-deprived brain: It is Speransky.
Speransky is here.
He finished his revenge job in the United States and he got here before those amateurs at the CIA could eliminate him, and now he has come to kill me and take back his money.
Vasily bolted upright in bed, yanking the rest of his arm out from under Nikita or Natasha or whatever the hell her name was, waking her but now not caring. He slipped out of bed and lifted the edge of the mattress, removing a Makarov 9mm semi-auto pistol. He knew the magazine was full but he ejected it anyway to be sure, then slammed it back home.
The hooker blinked rapidly and yawned. “What is happening, baby?” She was halfway through a languid stretch when she caught sight of the weapon and yelped. “What-what-what is—”
“Shut up,” Vasily growled, accomplishing nothing. She continued to stutter nonsensically.
He lifted the weapon and pointed it squarely at Nikita/Natasha and said, “Shut your damn mouth right now,” and she shut her damn mouth.
He flicked the gun in the direction of the door and said, “Get out of bed and come to me.”
The hooker had lifted the bedcovers in a pathetic—and pointless—attempt to shield herself from Vasily’s gun, and now she lay half-upright in bed, whimpering.
“Now,” he whispered fiercely. “Do it or I’ll shoot you where you lie.”
She gave him a wounded look, like she actually thought she was the lady of the house and the big, strong man should be protecting her from whatever threat they were facing, not menacing her with a loaded gun.
Vasily was shaking badly and losing patience. Speransky was coming, he would be here any moment, and if the assassin entered the bedroom now, he could simply shoot Vasily in the back.
But Vasily could not turn and face the door just yet. He needed the hooker if he was to have any chance of escaping Speransky’s wrath.
“Now,” he whispered one more time, and the word seemed to shake Nikita/Natasha out of the terror that had frozen her to the bed. She was still clearly afraid, but seemed to recognize she had no reasonable alternative than to obey. She pushed the covers down and reluctantly began crawling toward Vasily.
“Please, do not shoot me,” she begged. “I will just leave, you do not even need to pay me for tonight. Consider it a freebie, a gift to remember me by. I will simply leave and we can forget this ever—”
> She sucked in a breath in surprise and renewed fear as Vasily grabbed her by the hair and yanked her the rest of the way out of his bed. She crumpled to the floor at his feet and he reached under her armpits and lifted her to a standing position, placing her directly in front of him.
“Now,” he said, speaking softly into her ear, “we are going to walk into the hallway. You are to stand in front of me at all times. If you scream, I will shoot you in the back. If you try to run, I will shoot you in the back. If you do anything other than exactly what I tell you to do, I will shoot you in the back. Do you understand?”
“Why are you doing this?” she said, sobbing and sniffling.
“Do you understand?” he whispered.
“Yes. Yes, I-I understand.”
“Good. Do not forget, or you will never feel the bullet that kills you.”
Nikita or Natasha moaned miserably.
“Now,” Vasily said, making the plan up as he went along. “Open the bedroom door and move slowly into the hallway.”
32
May 22, 1988
11:55 p.m.
Leningrad, Russia, USSR
Tracie cursed inwardly as the third member of Vasily Labochev’s three-man personal security team hit the floor.
She’d been dragging his unconscious body across the kitchen with the intention of placing him next to the other two men she’d disabled, when she lost her grip and the heavy security guard thunked onto the ceramic tile. The back of his skull bounced noticeably and she decided he would probably be the last of the three to regain consciousness.
She hauled him the rest of the way and shoved him up against the other two men. All had been secured by duct-tape around the ankles and wrists, with their arms behind their backs and gags taped into their mouths. They would be exceedingly uncomfortable when they regained consciousness, but they would all survive.
Tracie had known Labochev would employ private security. She’d come to the home prepared to kill them, but it hadn’t been necessary. Less than an hour of surveillance had been enough to convince her the men were not KGB professionals, or professionals of any kind. They were nothing more than local thugs that Labochev must have recruited on the side.
Hunting them down and disabling them had been a simple matter, one that had taken less than thirty minutes to do, and all without firing a single shot.
She shoved the final security guard against the other two, then turned and hurried through the kitchen. She crossed the large dining room and beautifully furnished living room, moving carefully but swiftly to the stairway located at the rear of the room. The third security guard had been more than willing to give up the location of Labochev’s bedroom when presented with the alternative: a gunshot to the back of the skull.
Interrogating a prisoner was all about providing the proper motivation.
She crept up the stairs, weapon held chest-high in both hands. The plan had been to approach Labochev while the man was sleeping, and Tracie still hoped to do so. But the third security guard had hit the floor hard when she dropped him, and it was entirely possible the noise had been sufficient to awaken the KGB man, even all the way up on the second floor.
The security team had left lamps burning in each of the downstairs rooms, so there was enough ambient light in the stairway that Tracie was able to avoid using her flashlight. The stairway itself was constructed of highly polished redwood with a sweeping ninety-degree turn in the middle and what appeared to be an ornate, hand-carved banister. It looked like something out an old American South slave owner’s mansion. “Gone With the Wind,” Soviet style.
She reached the top of the stairway and flattened against the edge of the hallway wall. Then she peeked around the corner, leading with her gun.
And cursed inwardly.
She had awakened Labochev when she dropped the unconscious security guard. The KGB station chief stood at the far end of the hallway outside his open bedroom door. He was using a terrified woman as a human shield. The woman was dressed only in a sheer nightgown, gun held to her head.
“Do not move another…” Labochev commanded, his voice fading away as he stared the length of the hallway in obvious surprise.
“It…it is you,” he said a moment later, shock competing with wonder in his tone. “But you should be…” His voice trailed away again. Even in the dim light of the hallway, Vasily Labochev looked as though he’d seen a ghost.
“Dead?” Tracie offered helpfully, and Labochev nodded.
“Sorry to disappoint you. The assassin you sent is going to have to be a little better if he wants to pull off that particular trick.”
The human shield was sobbing and moaning and shaking visibly. Labochev had one hand wrapped around her hair, holding it in his meaty fist, and in the other he held his gun flush against her skull.
“Please,” the girl said in Russian. “Please…”
“Shut up,” Labochev barked in her ear. To Tracie he said, “I do not know what you are talking about. I sent no assassin to kill you. I do not even know who you are.”
Tracie laughed. “Drop the innocent act. The entire last conversation you had with Roger Thornton was captured on tape, and I’ve listened to it multiple times. You know exactly who I am, and exactly why I’m here.”
“I do not,” Labochev insisted, but his already pale complexion seemed to have whitened further.
“Oh, you do,” Tracie said. “And furthermore, my father is dead because of you.”
“I had nothing to do with—”
“Spare me,” she interrupted bitterly. “Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger, but you didn’t have to. If it weren’t for you, Piotr Speransky would never have known who my father was or where to find him. So as far as I’m concerned, you are every bit as guilty as Speransky, and thus every bit as deserving of the fate I’m here to deliver.”
Labochev had begun shaking his head, as if he wanted to continue arguing but knew doing so would be pointless. “How did you get in here?” he asked. “I have armed security patrolling my property.”
Tracie smiled. “I know what you’re doing. I’ve been in your situation, and when I was, I did exactly the same thing.”
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“Bullshit. You know you’re screwed, so you’re trying to keep me talking while you attempt to figure a way out of the mess you’ve found yourself in.”
Labochev started to speak but Tracie cut him off. “But that’s fine. I’ll humor you. Have you ever heard the expression, ‘you get what you pay for?’ Is there an equivalent cliché in Russia?”
“I do not—”
“I know,” Tracie said. “You don’t know what I’m talking about. I was able to get past your ‘armed security’ because you cheaped out when it came to protecting yourself. Instead of hiring professionals who know what they’re doing, you went for three idiots who are big and scary-looking but don’t know the first thing about defending property.”
Labochev had no answer for that.
Tracie continued. “Want to know a secret, Vasily?”
“I do not think so.”
“Probably not,” Tracie agreed. “But since you’re paying the Three Stooges down there, I feel it’s only fair to inform you of this: two of your men were fast asleep in the living room. All I had to do was disable the first guy outside and then I was in.”
Labochev swallowed heavily and Tracie said, “But don’t feel too badly about it. I would have gotten past your guys anyway, even if they were professionals. It might have taken me a little longer and I maybe would have broken a sweat, but the end result would have been the same: me taking you out.”
“You are not going to take me out. We are at a standoff. I have an entire staff of employees coming to this house first thing in the morning. Once that happens, you will have no chance at escape. Therefore, you will have no choice but to flee before their arrival. I do not mind waiting.”
“Hmmm,” Tracie said, pretending to consider Labochev’s wor
ds. “That’s only true if you assume I have any objection whatsoever to shooting your little girlfriend to get her out of the way, and then taking you down. What in the world would make you think that’s the case?”
Labochev smiled wickedly. He continued to train his weapon on the young woman’s head. “What would make me think that? I know a little bit about you, Miss Tracie Tanner of the American CIA. I did my research on you when I was acquiring the intel to pass along to Comrade Speransky. You are wired a little differently than the typical assassin. You possess…what is the word…oh yes. Ethics. You have a code of ethics. It does not serve you well, Miss Tracie Tanner of the American CIA. I am certain you will not shoot this young lady, because you possess that code of ethics.”
“Well, imagine that,” Tracie said sarcastically. “You’ve gone from knowing nothing about me, not even who I am, to being an expert on my entire life and career in a matter of seconds. That’s about as close to a miracle as I think I’ve ever seen.”
Labochev shrugged. He seemed to be losing some of his fear as the initial shock of his situation faded. He wasn’t comfortable, not by a long shot, but he no longer seemed to be bordering on panic, either.
“There is no point in denying the truth if you have listened to my conversation with your Comrade Thornton. How is my old friend doing, by the way?”
“He’s rotting in jail, which is better than he deserves. He’ll spend the rest of his life doing hard time, but that’s still a happier fate than the one you’re facing.”
“So,” Labochev said. “You killed Comrade Speransky. Congratulations, that would not be an easy feat to accomplish.”
“Speransky’s not dead,” Tracie said. “Not yet. But that’s on the agenda for tomorrow, or whenever he drags his sorry ass to Leningrad.”
“Ah, so you have not killed Piotr. Now this is beginning to make sense. You escaped death in the United States, only to come to Russia to die. I did not think you could defeat someone with Comrade Speransky’s skills.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 163
