Killing Speransky ensured he would never murder anyone again. His execution made the world a safer place and in a small way, helped improve relations between the world’s two superpowers. Fewer dead CIA officers meant a lower likelihood of American military retaliation.
Both of those outcomes could only be considered net gains.
But taking Speransky off the board did nothing to bring Jake Tanner back. Tracie’s role model, her hero, the man after whom she’d patterned her career, her personality, her entire being was still dead. He was gone and he wasn’t coming back, and the notion of living another half-century or so—assuming she survived her work as the CIA’s most secret covert ops specialist—without the benefit of his wisdom and his stabilizing presence in her life was…almost unbearable.
Her father’s death was all she could think about the past two weeks, as she persecuted herself endlessly for her personal failings, failings that had led directly to his murder. And her funk seemed to be worsening as time dragged on.
So when she entered Aaron Stallings’ office on the second floor of his McLean home and saw the CIA director seated behind his mammoth desk, with the chair placed in front of it that always made her feel like a second-grader sent to the principal’s office, she briefly considered ignoring the damned seat entirely. Considered crossing the room and standing behind the little metal folding chair, facing Stallings of course but giving herself the opportunity to pace, to walk around the rear of the office and burn off excess energy, exactly as she’d been doing inside her tiny apartment.
Ultimately, though, her innate sense of professionalism trumped her own self-destructive tendencies. The last thing she wanted was to give the acerbic Stallings any more ammunition than was absolutely necessary when it came to criticizing her, which occurred with such metronomic regularity that it seemed almost to be his hobby.
Typically upon her arrival Stallings would play little mind-games with her, ignoring her when she entered and continuing to devote his attention to the mountain of paperwork that seemed always on the verge of overtaking his desktop. He would fuss with whatever he was doing until good and ready to stop, and only then would he acknowledge her arrival.
Not today.
Today he raised his eyes the moment she came through the door, offering a warm smile and even—am I really seeing this or did I just suffer a massive stroke and my brain is playing one last trick on me before the curtain falls?—rising from his chair. A man getting to his feet as a woman entered the room was an anachronism, a show of respect that had largely disappeared from modern society, and for a moment Tracie thought maybe she’d arrived just as he was getting up to leave.
But after standing, Stallings extended his arm like Vanna White revealing puzzle letters. He indicated the chair he’d placed in front of the desk and said, “Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat.”
It was a little disorienting and almost enough to make Tracie wish for the return of the old Stallings, but she answered his smile with one of her own—as best she could, anyway—and dropped into the chair.
“Well,” she answered, “it is literally the basis of my job description to come when you call.”
He eased back into his leather desk chair, its steel frame groaning in complaint. Aaron Stallings was a legendary figure in the world of espionage and in D.C. political circles, but he wasn’t a small man, and Tracie felt a moment of sympathy for the chair, whose structural integrity was being pushed to its limit day after day.
“So,” he said after a moment, pushing his paperwork aside and clasping his hands on his desk.
“So,” she agreed.
“How are you doing, Tanner?”
“Compared to what?”
“You know what I mean. I’m well aware how close you were to your father, how much he meant to you. And the way you lost him was…difficult.”
“The way I lost him?” Tracie felt the tide of anger rising. She knew her boss was doing his best to empathize with her situation, and thought there was a decent chance he was actually being sincere. But that unreasoning fury always seemed to be lurking close by.
She was unsurprised to discover it had returned.
She blinked hard, determined not to let Stallings see the tears forming in her eyes. “You mean the fact that I was directly responsible for his murder? The fact that he died alone and only after hours of brutal torture solely because of me? Is that ‘the way’ you mean?”
“It takes time to grieve,” he said gently. “In this case, it will likely take a lot of time. Years, not weeks or months. And even though I knew Jake only in the most superficial of ways, I feel confident in saying he wouldn’t have wanted you tormenting yourself emotionally for something you could not possibly have known was coming, and could not possibly have stopped from happening even if you had known.”
She sat quietly because she had not the slightest notion what to say. Every word Stallings had spoken was true, and Tracie was self-aware enough to have thought exactly the same thing, over and over, a thousand times over the last two weeks. Hell, a million, probably.
But knowing something in your head was an entirely separate issue from feeling it in your heart, and in her heart all she could feel were the tendrils of blame encircling it and squeezing for all they were worth.
Stallings seemed comfortable with the silence, and with the notion of allowing her to consider his words.
When she spoke, she did so quietly and without raising her eyes from the floor. “Why did you call me here today, boss?”
He answered without hesitation. “I wanted to learn whether you’re ready to go back to work.”
“Oh, hell yes,” she said instantly. “If I have to spend another day pacing inside my apartment and staring at those goddamned beige walls, I think I’ll go stark, raving mad. That’s assuming it hasn’t already happened, of course. What do you have for me?”
Stallings smiled briefly. “I didn’t ask whether you wanted to go back to work. I know what the answer would be to that question. It’s the same thing you would have said if I’d asked you the day after your return from Leningrad, isn’t it? Be honest with me.”
She opened her mouth to object, to raise her voice in indignation, to tell the director he was full of shit. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
“Probably,” she admitted sheepishly, almost but not quite matching his smile with one of her own. “But if you already know the answer, why bother asking the question?”
“It wasn’t a question, Tanner. It was a statement. I called you here because I wanted to gauge with my own eyes whether I can trust you in the field. I wanted to discern whether the sense of blame with which you’re flogging yourself is so great it might interfere with your ability to reason through complex decision-making processes you must make with split-second accuracy when you’re on an assignment.”
He took a deep breath and then continued. “I wanted to decide whether you might end up dead in some lonely Russian field because of me.”
“Well, it is coming up on summer in Russia, so the field wouldn’t be frozen. They could at least bury me.” It was meant as a joke, something to lighten the mood, but the words came out stilted and wooden, and Tracie thought they only served to emphasize Stallings’ point. He can be a self-important bastard, she thought, but he really knows his job.
He ignored her ill-chosen—and unfunny—joke and gazed at her thoughtfully. Placed an elbow on his desk and dropped his chin onto his palm.
She tried to act cool and indifferent, giving him time. But when she could stand the suspense no longer, she said, “Well? What’s your decision?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t know.”
2
“I’ve been doing this job a long time,” she said. “Longer than most operatives typically stay in the field. Longer than some survive. And for the majority of that time, I’ve worked alone, with little or no backup, in dangerous locations. I know my job.”
“Yes, you do,” Stallings answered. “In fact, I don’t disagree with anything you just said.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is you’ve never tried to do that job while convinced you were responsible for your father’s murder.”
“I am responsible,” she said. She sensed this was a make-or-break moment and wanted to attack the CIA director’s line of reasoning head-on. “And I’ll never get over that fact. The best I can hope for is eventually coming to grips with it.”
“Thank you for making my point.”
“I’m not finished yet.”
“Shocker.”
“Would you agree that over the last year-plus that we’ve been working together so closely, you’ve gotten to know me pretty well?”
Stallings leaned back in his chair and regarded her with mild curiosity. It was obvious he hadn’t quite deciphered where she was going with this argument, and that was a scenario Tracie doubted the longtime espionage pro often encountered. She considered that a win.
Maybe not enough to get her job back, but a win nonetheless.
“Yes,” he finally offered. “I’ll concede that. I believe I’ve gotten to know you pretty well.”
“And as a man who’s gotten to know me so well, what do you feel is the one thing that means more to me than anything else in the world? The one thing that gives me purpose? The one reason I believe I was put on this earth?”
He smiled. “Touché.”
“Answer the question,” she said. “Please. Humor me.”
“Okay. The answer is obvious. Your career in covert operations.”
“Yes. My career as a CIA officer. When I said the best I could hope for is learning to live with being the reason my father is dead, I was giving you honesty because I feel that’s what you deserve. But that honesty goes the other way, too. You also need to know that my job defines me, for better or for worse. And if I’m ever going to reach the kind of acceptance I need about my culpability in my father’s murder, I’m going to do it through work. Without my work I have no purpose. Without my work I have nothing. Without my work I am nothing.”
Aaron Stallings continued to eyeball her, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest.
Admitting she had nothing in her life besides her work as a covert operative was humiliating. It was something she’d never said out loud to anyone and in fact had only ever acknowledged herself in the wee hours of many sleepless nights.
But she knew deep down in her core that raw, naked honesty with the man who held her future in his hands was the only way she stood a chance at resuming her career. Certainly right now, maybe ever. If she tried to con him, whistling past the graveyard with a smile on her face and insincerity in her voice, he would see right through her.
And he would never let her back in the field.
“You understand,” he said, “my point is not that your career isn’t important to you. I’ve always known it was. It’s what makes you the case officer you are. My point is that you happen to have a career where you could be killed were you to be paralyzed by indecision at the wrong moment. Even more importantly, others could be killed. Innocents.”
“Of course I understand that. But when I’m working I’m totally focused. I block out distractions in order to get the job done. I’ve always worked that way.”
“You’ve never had to block out this kind of distraction.”
“I’m not disputing that. But I can do it. Nothing’s going to change in that regard just because I was responsible for my father’s death. Give me the chance and you’ll see. Please.”
More silence. Tracie feared the longer the silence dragged on, the less likely it was that Stallings would give her the answer she wanted. When he finally spoke, his words were not even close to anything she’d been expecting to hear.
“Your father would be very proud of you. In fact, I know without a shadow of a doubt he was very proud of you. You’re aware of that, correct?”
It took all the willpower she could muster not to shoot back, he would be proud I got him killed? But she doubted that particular response would accomplish much in the way of getting what she wanted, so she bit it back and instead said, “Thank you, sir. I hope so.”
“I know so. And yes, you can go back to work.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t make me regret this decision.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Good.”
“So what do you have for me?”
He smiled. Shook his head. Said, “You are something else, Tanner, you know that?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, sir.”
Without warning he switched gears, suddenly all business. “We’ve been hearing rumors over the last several months that the Soviets are making major improvements in their mobile radar systems. We believe they may be close to deploying highly efficient ground radars small and maneuverable enough to provide real value to tank operators and even individual troops on the battlefield. Have you heard anything in your travels in and out of the various Soviet states regarding this type of development?”
Tracie shook her head. “No, sir. I haven’t heard word one about that kind of equipment upgrade.”
Stallings nodded. “Perhaps it’s misinformation.”
“But you want me to see what I can find out.”
“Yes. And you’re going to do it in a very specific way.”
“I’m all ears.”
“What do you know about Ivan Gregorovich?”
Tracie raised her eyebrows. “If it’s the Ivan Gregorovich I’m thinking of, I know he’s in the very top tier of generals in the Red Army. He’s in charge of arms and hardware procurement for the entire Soviet military. Is that the guy we’re talking about?”
“The very same.”
She grinned for a half-second and said, “So you want me to beat the information out of him? Sounds fun.”
Stallings cleared his throat and grimaced. “No, Tanner. No one’s beating anyone. I had something a little more subtle in mind.”
“To each his own, I guess. You’re the boss, what do you want me to do?”
This time Stallings grinned. And it wasn’t a momentary smile, it was wide and delighted and reminded Tracie of the big, bad wolf.
“You’re going to love it,” he said.
“I suddenly doubt that.”
“Did you know General Gregorovich has a child?”
Tracie shrugged, mystified. “Well, no, but I’ll take your word for it. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Gregorovich’s daughter, Irina, is turning twenty-one, and this coming Saturday evening, the general is hosting a massive birthday party for his little princess.”
“Okayyyy.” She didn’t think she liked where this was going.
“As you know, Gregorovich is rumored to do much of his work from home. Which means, of course, it would stand to reason he keeps many of his records regarding procurements inside his home office. Duplicates, at least, if not the originals.”
“You want me to break in and see what I can find.”
“You’re on the right track, but not quite.”
“Then what?”
“We managed to get our hands on one of the invitations Gregorovich sent out for Irina’s birthday bash. Our forgers have produced one just for you. You will attend this little get-together, and sometime during the evening will slip out of the party and into his office. You will search for anything that might indicate whether this advanced ground radar is actually happening or not.
“In and out,” he concluded. “Nice and easy.”
Tracie sighed. “A party.”
“Sounds like an enjoyable evening, right?”
“I hate parties. I assume there will be dancing?”
“Wouldn’t be a party without dancing.”
“I hate dancing, too.”
Stallings’ smi
le had never left his face but now it widened even further. “Nobody ever said this job would be easy, Tanner.”
“Can’t I just go with Plan A and beat it out of Gregorovich instead?”
“I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time mingling in Soviet high society.”
She shook her head and sighed again. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes. Make sure you look pretty.”
“Ugh.”
3
June 11, 1988
9:20 p.m.
Moscow, Russia, USSR
Gregorovich’s home was stunning. To call it palatial, Tracie thought, would probably be doing a disservice to the word. Three-story granite construction made the place look more like a Hollywood celebrity’s digs than the living quarters of a Soviet military man, even if that man was one of the highest-ranking generals in the USSR.
The driveway was long and straight, terminating in a roundabout that allowed vehicles to drop off their passengers and continue on to the street without the necessity of backing up and then reversing course. The lengthy approach afforded Tracie an extended view of her target, and although she’d studied photographs and diagrams of the general’s home, none of the CIA’s intel had done the structure justice.
With its high, sweeping arches and airy porticoes, Gregorovich’s residence appeared strikingly out of place when contrasted with the more-traditional Russian architecture that was everywhere in Moscow. For a moment Tracie was transported back to her youth, to one of the very few vacations an American army general and high-ranking state department official had had the free time to take with their only child.
It was a trip up the east coast when she was twelve that included a stop in Newport, Rhode Island. While there, Tracie and her family had toured several of the nineteenth-century mansions constructed by wealthy American industrialists of the time. The homes were massive and gaudy, and Tracie thought that if Gregorovich’s house were to be plucked out of Moscow and dropped onto the Atlantic coast of Newport, it would look perfectly at home.
The Nuclear Option Page 2