Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9)

by Allan Leverone

  Especially if you were an employee.

  He didn’t think that were the case, though. He’d completed each of his last six assignments flawlessly and could think of nothing he’d done during any of them that would have drawn the negative attention of his superiors.

  He dropped into the driver’s seat, still studying the little device. It was clearly a radio transmitter; its antennae proved that.

  Andrei sat in the motel’s parking lot for a long time, thinking.

  Then he started the car and drove slowly away.

  30

  June 25, 1988

  8:50 a.m.

  Access road north of Objekt 825

  Tracie removed the loose brush she’d used to conceal her Lada from view of the access road on her way into Objekt 825 yesterday morning. Then she tossed her backpack onto the front passenger seat and slid behind the wheel. She’d done a thorough job of obscuring the car, and that fact, combined with the lack of vehicular traffic in this area, had made her confident it would still be here when she needed it.

  She was relieved to see that it was. If it had been found and removed during the roughly twenty-four hour period she was operating inside Objekt 825, she would have been forced to drag Commander Morozov out of his vehicle, leave him trussed up in the woods, and then try to drive the car she’d just hidden in the woods back onto the road.

  It might not even have been possible, as the terrain was rough and sandy. She’d had the benefit of momentum while backing into the trees; moving forward from a standing start might have been more than the two-wheel-drive car could handle.

  And even if she managed it, she would be forced to steal another car as soon as possible. Once Morozov was discovered missing, his car would become radioactive.

  This side of the road, while every bit as rough, bumpy and rugged as the side into which she’d driven Morozov’s car, had the advantage of slightly less sandy terrain. It was more compacted, with beach grass, moss and small vegetation serving to make the ground more solid, easier to achieve enough traction to move.

  At least that was Tracie’s hope.

  Walking back to Sevastopol was doable, the distance was less than ten miles and even on her injured ankle Tracie knew she could travel triple that distance on foot with no problem. But doing so would take time she didn’t think she had. Morozov was the commanding officer of a secret Soviet military base; in other words, he was a Big Deal. Tracie guessed that it wouldn’t take long before he missed a meeting, or wasn’t around to take an important phone call, or any one of a hundred other things happened that would raise suspicions as to his whereabouts.

  Once that happened, it would be just as unhealthy for Tracie to be spotted walking along the road leading away from Objekt 825 as it would be to be caught driving the commander’s car. And she would be spotted. The drawback of such isolated access roads leading into and out of the secret facility was that she would stand out like a sore thumb walking along it.

  She turned the key and gave a brief mental pep talk to the Russian-made car. Then she pressed down on the gas and hoped for the best.

  The car lurched forward a foot or two before the drive wheels began spinning, digging a hole in the ground and spraying dirt and forest detritus everywhere.

  Dammit.

  She pulled her foot off the accelerator and then tried again, this time easing it down gently. The Lada inched forward and then the wheels slipped again, the car dropping back into the steadily deepening hole.

  She had one last shot. She recalled a hiking trip she’d taken with her dad when she was a little girl, maybe eight years old. It had been wintertime, and while suburban Washington, D.C. wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland, snowstorms weren’t unusual. They’d returned from their hike to find themselves stuck in a situation very similar to this one: the car refused to move forward, digging itself into the snow the way the Lada was digging itself into the loose terrain.

  She’d been worried they were going to run out of gas and freeze to death, but her father had just smiled at her. “There’s more than one way out of every situation,” he’d said. “If what you’re doing doesn’t work, try something else.”

  He had done exactly that, shifting the car rapidly between Drive and Reverse, rocking it back and forth in the snow until building enough forward momentum to break the tires free of the hole. Then he had maintained a light but steady pressure on the accelerator, moving the car continually forward until coaxing it onto more solid ground where he could drive it normally.

  She couldn’t think of any reason why the same technique wouldn’t work in loose terrain. She took a deep breath and shifted into Reverse. Gave the car a little gas before shifting quickly into Drive and doing the same thing.

  Back and forth she went, the car moving a little further each time.

  Then it was free, out of the hole it had dug into the ground and creeping toward the Objekt 825 access road. Momentum started to slow so she eased slightly farther down on the gas, not wanting to get stuck a second time and have to start over.

  After what was probably no more than thirty seconds but felt much longer, Tracie found herself on solid pavement.

  She stopped the car and unzipped her backpack.

  Removed the GPS receiver and turned it on.

  And was stunned to see a red light blinking on the screen.

  31

  June 25, 1988

  9:05 a.m.

  Access road north of Objekt 825

  She almost hadn’t bothered taking the time to check the receiver.

  After seeing Andrei Lukashenko drive away from the Objekt 825 administration building yesterday, Tracie had been certain The Weasel would immediately return to KGB Headquarters in Moscow, or at least drive far enough from her receiver that the tracking device she’d placed on the underside of his car would be taken out of what she assumed was a very limited range.

  When she had used the tracker last month, its range had been greater than she’d expected, but she still didn’t believe it could possibly be more than ten miles or so. The transmitter’s antenna was short and stubby, and it was hard to imagine the battery-powered device putting out a strong enough signal to travel any greater distance than that.

  Yet here was the tiny dot on the receiver’s screen, blinking away, indicating that Lukashenko—or at least Lukashenko’s car—was somewhere north-northeast of Tracie’s position, likely in or around Sevastopol. The city was located so close to Objekt 825 that it was hard for Tracie to believe Lukashenko would have stopped there for the night after leaving the secret base yesterday.

  But electronics didn’t lie.

  She gazed at the screen, thinking. The dead soldier lying in the road complicated matters immeasurably. She could move the body and his Jeep, but she’d already hidden one vehicle in the sparse foliage. Concealing a second effectively—at least within the immediate area—would be next to impossible.

  And doing so would take time, even more than she’d already expended in her determination to avoid executing Commander Morozov. The appearance of the patrolling soldier in the first place indicated the seriousness with which the Soviets viewed the matter of protecting Objekt 825’s security, her “lax security” comment to the young soldier last night outside the base’s housing complex notwithstanding.

  No, her best bet was to get the hell away from this location ASAP. Sevastopol’s population was big enough that she was confident she could elude any pursuit in its metropolitan sprawl, provided she could make it that far in the first place.

  And if her guess about Lukashenko holing up in the city just a few miles away was correct, she could also—if her luck held—complete the second half of her mission and rid the world of The Weasel forever.

  32

  June 25, 1988

  9:40 a.m.

  KGB interrogation facility, Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

  Andrei Lukashenko had no way of knowing exactly when the tracking device had been placed on his car, but he did know it had been do
ne recently. He’d last checked his vehicle for bugs/trackers just before leaving Lubyanka to drive the submersible communication decoder to Objekt 825.

  It wasn’t that Andrei had a great memory for such things. Rather, years ago he’d begun searching himself and his car after every contact he made with KGB representatives; it was simply a matter of self-preservation. You could never be sure when officials inside Lubyanka might decide an operative required closer-than-usual supervision, and Andrei wanted to be certain he was aware as soon as possible if they decided that of him.

  He was sure the car had been clean when he left Moscow, meaning, obviously, that the tracker had been attached to the underside of the wheel well either during a stop for gas along the way—possible but unlikely, since the car had been out of his sight for no more than a minute at a time, when he’d needed to pee—or while he’d been parked outside Objekt 825’s administration building, or last night at the Sonnoye Utro Motel.

  If the KGB had been planning on tracking his movements, Andrei felt certain they would have tagged his vehicle while he was busy inside Lubyanka. Why wait to do it on the long drive to Objekt 825, when there would be a much great chance of being detected?

  But if the KGB was not following him, then who was?

  The only reasonable answer to that question was either the United States’ CIA or Great Britain’s MI6. Those two countries were where Andrei had undertaken the vast majority of his missions, including each of the last four. It had been several years since he’d worked anywhere else, and while it was always possible another country’s intelligence service had begun hunting him, simple mathematics suggested otherwise.

  The real question was what to do about it. Tossing the tracker into a garbage can or placing it on the underside of another vehicle driven by an innocent party would be easy enough. It would get the CIA or MI6 operatives off his ass, and he could then easily disappear.

  It was the obvious solution. Andrei was an experienced operative, but his specialty was in researching and then blackmailing or otherwise coercing civilians or military personnel into selling or (preferably) giving him classified information. He had killed and committed other violent acts in the process of completing assignments—had done so plenty of times—but his victims had never been well-trained, highly skilled professional intelligence operatives like the person presumably stalking him now.

  On the other hand, Andrei was on his home turf. Not only that, he owned a tremendous advantage over his pursuer: he now knew he was being followed, and unless the operative chasing him had been watching outside the Sonnoye Utro Motel when he’d discovered the tracker—a possibility Andrei considered highly unlikely—his pursuer did not know that he knew.

  So what Andrei lacked in operational experience, he felt he more than made up for with the element of surprise.

  And it would be one hell of a career-maker if he could show up at Lubyanka tomorrow or the next day with an American or British spy trussed up in his back seat.

  The potential gains were well worth the risk of trying to lure his pursuer into the open, where he could capture or—not quite as beneficial, career-wise, but still highly satisfactory—kill him.

  Ultimately, the decision was an easy one. He would not throw the tracker away or place it on an innocent vehicle. He would return it to the underside of his car and use it to his benefit.

  ***

  The KGB maintained properties in almost every major Soviet city, safe houses of a sort, used only when necessary to interrogate and/or intimidate citizens whose support for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was deemed insufficiently enthusiastic. Typically the buildings were abandoned factories, warehouses, or similar industrial-type structures, and most of the time they stood empty.

  But when a potential enemy of the state was identified, they offered handy locations in which to determine the extent of the danger posed by the person or persons, and then to re-educate the offending citizen.

  Or, if necessary, to eliminate that person, as had been done millions of times since the People’s Revolution.

  Sevastopol’s KGB interrogation facility was located on the northern outskirts of the city, in an abandoned factory building that had once been used to manufacture supplies for Russia’s Black Sea fishing fleet. Andrei was familiar with its location; it was nearby, and it was secluded.

  And, he thought, it is well worth spending a few hours of my time there to see what will happen.

  It was always possible nothing would happen, that the operative following him would somehow sniff out the fact that Andrei had located the tracker. If that were the case he would never show up. All it would cost Andrei, though, were those few hours of his time. If it got to be late afternoon and Andrei found himself still alone at the safe house, he would then toss the tracker aside and continue his journey north to Moscow.

  But if his theory was accurate, Andrei could bag himself a tremendous prize.

  He circled the ancient factory building three times, examining it closely, trying to determine the best location in which to park his car. He would have liked to bring the tracker inside the building, using its exterior walls to provide cover and allow him to get the jump on his pursuer as the man entered, but that wouldn’t work. The tracker had to remain on his car in order to prevent the operative following him from being spooked. The minute his pursuer realized the tracker had been removed from Andrei’s car, he would know he’d been made and would disappear.

  He decided the best strategy would be to park the Volga nose-in to the front of the old factory building. It was how one would park if he had nothing to hide, and thus the least likely to arouse suspicion.

  Andrei did so and then entered the building to wait.

  33

  June 25, 1988

  10:25 a.m.

  Northern outskirts of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

  Following the blinking red dot was not an easy proposition. The screen on Tracie’s GPS receiver was small, and to make matters worse, the only guidance it provided as to the location of the transmitter was directional. The positioning of the dot on her screen—at the top right-hand corner—meant nothing more specific than that the target was somewhere northeast of her current location.

  There was no way of gauging distance. The Weasel could be a few hundred feet in front of her or he could be five miles or more. Or anything in-between.

  She knew he’d been moving, though, as she drove away from forest where she’d hidden Morozov. The dot meandered around the upper portion of the screen as Lukashenko drove, his position changing relative to the GPS receiver.

  Tracie had been tracking him for forty minutes, slowly circling Sevastopol to the east, when the dot became stationary. Lukashenko was no longer driving.

  Strange.

  She glanced at her watch. It was just before ten-thirty in the morning, an odd time for him to be stopping considering he couldn’t have been on the road for more than an hour. Probably less, assuming he’d overnighted in Sevastopol.

  Instantly alarm bells began ringing in her head. She’d thought she would be tailing the man for hours, that maybe he would stop around noon for lunch and then continue on until late afternoon or early evening.

  Could he be eating lunch already? It was possible but unlikely.

  Maybe he had a meeting set up with another KGB operative?

  Again, it was possible, but without any intel regarding Andrei Lukashenko and the kind of schedule he kept, there was no way for Tracie even to hazard a guess.

  Or it could be something entirely different, unrelated to his work for the KGB. Maybe he had a relative in Sevastopol, or a friend or lover. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well and had pulled his car over to rest.

  The possibilities were endless. The one thing Tracie wasn’t going to do was give up after deciding on a course of action, especially without a concrete reason for doing so. The Weasel had unexpectedly fallen into her lap after completing the first half of her mission. Whether she ended him in Sevastopol, or Mosco
w, or somewhere else entirely was irrelevant.

  She continued to drive, studying the dot closely, not sure whether she was hoping it would begin moving again or remain stationary. Traffic had been moderate as she skirted Sevastopol, but the area north of the city seemed relatively remote. As she continued to close on her target, the roads emptied out further, until Tracie found herself in a rural, heavily forested area. What few vehicles she encountered were almost all trucks, eighteen-wheel box carriers, tankers and the like.

  She had a strong suspicion The Weasel was near.

  She watched the screen closely and drove on.

  The multiple turns had left her uncertain of her exact position in relation to Sevastopol proper, although she knew the city was somewhere to the south. She wondered whether Morozov and the dead soldier had been discovered yet.

  Probably.

  If so, the furious base commander would even now be organizing an intensive search for the woman who’d humiliated him and stolen what he certainly viewed as Soviet property. She doubted he would advise his men to spare her life as she had spared his.

  She forced that thought from her mind and focused on her current situation. She was in an area that was mostly deserted but industrial, passing a series of concrete and metal buildings that at one time had seemingly been a sort of loosely interconnected manufacturing park, its facilities separated by the occasional private Russian home.

  The lack of vehicular traffic was cause for concern. If the Soviets weren’t looking for the woman who’d killed a Russian soldier and assaulted Objekt 825’s commanding officer yet, they would be very soon, and this area seemed to offer little in the way of concealment for someone who stood out the way Tracie knew she did.