Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9)

by Allan Leverone

  The door remained closed but she knew it wouldn’t for much longer, as a half-inch wide gap had opened up between its edge and the rotting frame.

  She tried again, and this time the ensuing crack was more muffled, but the door swung violently open, smashing into the interior wall before rebounding toward Tracie. She had managed to remain upright this time, and caught it with her hand. Then she eased it closed behind her as she entered. The latch was demolished, so she jammed the edge of the door into the broken frame as best she could.

  Clearing the house took less than a minute. No one was here, as Tracie had by now become certain would be the case.

  A rotary-style telephone sat at the edge of a scarred Formica countertop in the kitchen, and she hurried toward it. The home’s resident had very thoughtfully placed a sticker on the wall behind the phone featuring the numbers of the Sevastopol Militsiya and fire service, so she didn’t even need to take the time to find a phone book and look up the number she needed.

  She dialed and waited as the ancient phone line clicked and whirred, seemingly trying to decide whether to connect Tracie to the police or not. Eventually it relented and began buzzing angrily in her ear as the telephone rang at—she assumed—whatever police station was closest to this location.

  A moment later a bored male voice answered, “Sevastopol Militsiya. How can I help you?”

  You sure don’t sound like you want to help me, Tracie thought.

  But she didn’t say that. Instead, she tried to put the appropriate amount of fear and panic into her voice as she said, in Russian, “Yes, I am at the old factory in North Sevastopol, the place where they used to make industrial fishing equipment many years ago. Are you familiar with it?”

  She thought that was what Lukashenko had said the manufacturing plant had been used for and prayed she was remembering correctly. Her whole plan depended upon the police finding the location quickly.

  “We know where it is, yes. What are you calling about?” Now the dispatcher sounded annoyed rather than bored.

  “I have to report a murder!” She feigned breathlessness and said, “I was walking past the building and heard a scream. When I looked inside I saw an army officer firing a gun into the head of another man who was lying on the floor. I think the second man is dead!”

  “Who are you? Are you at the scene now?” The voice no longer sounded bored and annoyed. Now it sounded clipped and insistent.

  “Please send someone as quickly as you can,” she continued, ignoring the dispatcher’s question.

  “I am sending officers even as we speak,” came the reply. “You must listen to me. Stay on the line and tell me who you are and where you are calling from. I need to know because it is very important that we get as much information as—”

  Tracie hung up the line and bolted out of the house. She jammed the door closed again as best she could and set off at a dead run in the direction of the old factory.

  46

  June 25, 1988

  3:45 p.m.

  KGB interrogation facility, Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

  Ivan Gregorovich was fighting to keep his cool by the time he arrived at the KGB facility to meet with Andrei Lukashenko. He should have been here at least twenty minutes ago, but a two-car auto accident had brought traffic to a standstill. By the time Ivan realized what was happening, his car had become hopelessly snarled in the traffic jam.

  Reversing course and continuing via a different route had been impossible.

  Ivan had been left with no option besides pounding the steering wheel in frustration and swearing under his breath. Eventually, the line of traffic had crept past the accident scene—it looked bad, with automobile parts all over the road, and ambulances and militsiya vehicles clogging the travel lanes—and then Ivan had been able to accelerate once again to a normal speed.

  He’d lost time, though, and all of his previous excitement about confronting the young woman who had so humiliated him inside his home had evaporated. He was angry and impatient and itching to inflict damage on human flesh.

  Ivan was familiar with the location of the KGB facility, as he was more or less familiar with the locations of all similar facilities around western Russia. But he’d never actually visited it, and was navigating via a map book that he suspected was seriously outdated. As he drove, he passed more than one turnoff for more than one road that was not shown on the map, and he felt his blood pressure rising a little each time.

  If he got lost and had to stop and ask directions, he thought he just might shoot somebody.

  Relax, he told himself. You can take all your frustrations out on the young redheaded spy very soon. Just hang in there a few more minutes.

  And then he was there. He knew he was getting close simply by the condition of the access road. It was narrower than a public road by half, and featured a gauntlet of washed-out pavement and potholes that threatened to snap an axle or tear the bottom of the car out.

  He passed a tiny house set back from the road that looked like it was about to collapse in on itself, then rounded a corner and saw the old manufacturing plant on the right, a couple hundred meters ahead. The tattered remains of a sign that said MARKOV INDUSTRIAL NETTING hung crookedly on the front of the concrete-block building, and a lone car had been angled nose-in to the front entrance.

  Ivan smiled, a little bit of his pent-up fury and tension beginning to melt away. Obviously, Lukashenko was waiting inside with the girl.

  Ivan didn’t know whether The Weasel was hoping to take part in the upcoming interrogation festivities, but if so he was going to be sorely disappointed. Ivan had made it clear to Lukashenko that he was not to harm the prisoner prior to Ivan’s arrival, and he guessed the KGB man was chomping at the bit by now to assist in doing exactly that.

  Too bad. Ivan wasn’t about to let a KGB man witness the brutalities he was going to inflict on his prisoner, any more than he would have allowed his security team to do so.

  His no witnesses rule was iron-clad and non-negotiable.

  He pulled to a stop, parking next to Lukashenko’s car, and killed the engine. A flutter of excitement had joined the sensations of anger and impatience rattling around inside his body. The anticipation of what he was about to do had caused his headache to return with a vengeance.

  It had been a long time since Ivan had indulged his darker side. One of the exceedingly few drawbacks to holding a position virtually at the pinnacle of the military chain of command was the knowledge that everyone was watching him, and more than a few of those watching were ready to pounce should he show any sign of weakness or lack of fitness for command.

  He realized his hands were shaking as he climbed out of the car, and Ivan forced himself to pause and breathe deeply before slamming the door and continuing toward the building. The shakiness was being caused by excitement, not nervousness or fear, but it wouldn’t do for him to exhibit any sign of weakness to Lukashenko, and especially not to the girl.

  A second deep breath as he approached the front entrance, and Ivan decided he was ready. He stood tall, head held high, adopting the imperious bearing he had established over the years that instantly told everyone he was the most important person in the room when he entered.

  By the time he’d taken three steps into the facility, Ivan knew something was wrong. The place was still and silent, and felt empty for a building inside which two other people should have been standing. Not only that, he thought he could smell the sharp tang of gunpowder.

  By the time he’d taken three more steps the problem had become clear.

  And it was a big one.

  A large man with long silver hair lay prone on the floor in front of a long manufacturing table, blood splattering the floor around his skull.

  The prisoner was nowhere to be seen.

  Ivan cursed and hurried across the room, cognizant of the fact that the woman—who’d already proven herself to be extremely dangerous—could be lurking somewhere inside this facility, waiting to blow his brains out.
He knew it as a theoretical concept, but the room was massive and open, with nowhere for her to hide. And he needed to see what the hell had happened.

  He slowed his approach as he neared Lukashenko. Squinted and examined the body without touching it. The Weasel was almost certainly dead. Even through the blood and the mass of hair, Ivan could see that one side of the man’s skull currently featured two holes more than it should have, and the other side had been partially caved in, as if the girl had bludgeoned him with some unknown heavy object.

  Lying on the floor perhaps a meter from Lukashenko’s body was a gun. A Makarov. It was The Weasel’s own weapon, in all probability.

  Ivan stepped to it and then bent and picked it up. He didn’t know where the young woman who’d done all this damage had gone, but he wasn’t taking the chance that she might step out from behind a pillar or somehow materialize from under the long table, pick up the gun and use it on him.

  He stood unmoving, trying to decide how to proceed. This development was confusing and, needless to say, more than a little unsettling, but one thing that had become crystal clear the last few seconds was that there would be no “interrogation” of the redheaded spy today.

  There would be no transporting of the woman to Lubyanka.

  There would be no satisfaction in his obsessive quest to extract vengeance from the woman who had caused him such personal humiliation.

  He turned in a full circle, fuming. He hadn’t realized until just now how badly he needed to unleash his inner demons, to give in to the long-dormant compulsion to lash out, to strike and slash and damage human flesh.

  To make another person cringe and cower before him and beg for mercy that would not come.

  Ivan sighed deeply and tried to tamp down on his bitter disappointment. If there was one positive to take out of this experience, it was that the woman had clearly not been removed from the Soviet Union. He had thought her CIA handlers would be smarter than to allow her to remain within his reach, but her presence indicated otherwise.

  If she’s been apprehended once, she can be apprehended again. Today’s utter—and deadly—failure by Lukashenko to control one prisoner did not mean Ivan’s quest for revenge would not be successful, it meant only that it must be delayed. He did not like waiting, but Ivan Gregorovich could be a patient man when necessary.

  He would wait her out.

  Obviously the flyers he had distributed to Lubyanka and other KGB facilities had served their purpose. He would redouble his efforts, produce even more flyers and distribute them even farther afield. He would include military bases and militsiya stations in his distribution.

  Eventually, he would find her again.

  Eventually, he would have his vengeance.

  Ivan looked down at Lukashenko and shook his head. “You should have been more careful, Comrade,” he muttered, before spinning on his heel to exit the facility and return to Moscow.

  There was no reason to call the authorities because it was clear the redheaded CIA agent was long gone. Had she still been here, she would almost certainly have assaulted Ivan again. She was his only concern. The fact that Andrei Lukashenko had gone and gotten himself killed was of no concern to Ivan, and contacting the militsiya at this point would result only in Ivan having to answer a lot of pointless questions about what he was doing here and why he’d shown up unexpectedly hundreds of kilometers from Moscow at the scene of a brutal murder.

  Better just to fly home and wait. Eventually Lukashenko’s body would be discovered, and the authorities could conduct their investigation without Ivan’s involvement.

  He stepped through the door and into the overcast, humid air and found himself staring into the drawn handguns of at least a half-dozen militsiya officers, all taking cover behind the open doors of their patrol cars. He realized too late that he was still holding Lukashenko’s gun and almost cursed out loud.

  “Drop your weapon and get on the ground, face down,” one of the officers called.

  “You do not know who I am,” Ivan answered, doing his best to sound haughty and imperious. “I most certainly will not—”

  “Drop the gun and get on the ground right now,” the same officer interrupted, his tone sharp and strident. “Or we will put you down. This is your last warning.”

  Ivan hesitated for just a moment and then tossed Lukashenko’s Makarov to the side. As he sank to his knees on the crumbling pavement, one thought repeated itself as if on a continuous loop through his racing brain: You are in big trouble.

  47

  June 25, 1988

  3:55 p.m.

  Abandoned manufacturing plant north of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

  Tracie watched the takedown of General Gregorovich from the cover of the trees. Four Sevastopol Militsiya cruisers had raced up the access road just minutes after Gregorovich’s arrival, warning lights flashing but without the use of sirens.

  They had come to a stop in a ragged semicircle approximately twenty feet from the entrance to the old factory building, and a total of six officers had emerged: a pair of Russian cops from two of the cruisers and single officers from the other two. Their guns were drawn and the tension in their posture as they took cover behind their open doors told Tracie the militsiya dispatcher had treated her report of a shooting in progress with the seriousness it deserved.

  He came waltzing out of the factory, clearly planning to flee the scene, and walked straight into the thicket of guns being held by the half-dozen anxious cops.

  And he was holding Lukashenko’s Makarov—the apparent murder weapon—in his hands. It was everything Tracie could have hoped for.

  Eventually an autopsy would be performed on the dead KGB operative and it would become clear he’d died before the pair of 9mm slugs had been fired into his skull, but for now she felt certain the police activity accompanying the murder arrest of a prominent Soviet general would be more than sufficient to permit her to slip quietly away.

  If she could put fifty to one hundred kilometers between herself and Objekt 825 before Gregorovich explained the scenario to the investigators’ satisfaction—and she suspected it was going to take a lot longer than that—she knew she would be able to evade capture and escape Russia with the submersible communication device.

  She smiled grimly as Gregorovich tossed Lukashenko’s gun aside and dropped to the pavement. The officers broke cover and approached him slowly. One cop stepped to the gun and kicked it farther away from Gregorovich, as though he thought the general—now face down on the hot pavement—might somehow slither to it and open fire, all while being covered by five other cops.

  It occurred to Tracie that she should be using this time to make her way to her Lada and get the hell out of Dodge. But this assignment had been so difficult, with none of it going the way she’d planned and every step of the way being filled with figurative landmines, that she thought she’d earned the satisfaction of taking a few minutes to watch Gregorovich suffer.

  Besides, these cops weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. A pair of them would load Gregovoich in the back of their cruiser and take him away, and boatloads more cops and investigators would begin arriving any time now, but all of their attention would be devoted to the crime scene.

  Eventually, they would fan out and search a wider area for evidence, particularly if Gregorovich were able to convince them an American spy had, up until three-thirty or so, been held at the facility.

  That would take time, though, and by then Tracie would be long gone.

  Across the parking lot, an officer knelt with his knee centered on Gregorovich’s back as he slapped a pair of handcuffs onto the general’s wrists. Even from a distance, Tracie could see two things quite clearly: the cuffs were nearly identical to the ones Lukashenko had used to secure her to the iron equipment arm, and the militsiya officer was being much rougher with Gregorovich than he necessarily needed to be.

  The officer pulled the general to his feet and marched him across the lot to one of the cruisers. The distance was too f
ar for Tracie to hear what was being said, but she could see Gregorovich speaking urgently to the cop, a stream of narrative that she didn’t need to hear to interpret: “I am General Ivan Gregorovich, and you are making a big mistake. Let me explain what happened right now, or I will have your job.”

  Whatever he was saying, the general’s soliloquy was having little effect on the cop. The man remained stone-faced and silent as he loaded Gregorovich into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door.

  Tracie almost felt a stab of sympathy for the handcuffed general. The day was overcast, but the air remained warm and laden with moisture. With all of the cruiser’s windows tightly closed, the interior of the car would become unbearably hot in a matter of minutes. It probably already had.

  Then she thought about what she’d had to endure with Lukashenko, and imagined some of the things Gregorovich had had in store for her. Any grain of sympathy that had been trying to sprout dried up and disappeared.

  After securing the general in the car, the officer returned to the others, who had clustered together and begun approaching the factory entrance. The man who’d slapped the cuffs on Gregorovich was clearly in charge, pointing to the building and instructing two of the officers to enter, while the others fanned out to secure the exterior.

  And Tracie decided it was time to leave.

  All of the cops’ attention would be on the building, particularly when they observed the gruesome scene inside. Lukashenko’s demise had not been pretty, and even the cops, who witnessed ugliness and death on a routine basis, would feel their stomachs turn a bit when they saw The Weasel’s partially crushed skull.

  She melted back into the trees and began making her way to her car. Accessing it would take a little time, since she was forced to give the factory building a wide berth. Her whole body ached, including her ankle. Running on it might not have been her smartest move, but if she hadn’t done so, her plan to entrap General Gregorovich might not have succeeded.