The cab ground to a halt, its brakes stuttering and squealing, the vehicle an East German Trabant of early 1960s vintage that had found its way to Russia. Its grille was partially smashed and three of the four fenders were colors other than the car’s original robin’s egg blue. Every time the driver hit the gas, an ominous knocking sound came from under the hood and the car bucked and complained before eventually picking up speed.
Tracie wasted no time paying the man and exiting the vehicle. She included a generous tip for the driver, figuring if he was still piloting a car built sometime shortly after her birth and clearly coming apart at the seams, he could probably use the money.
He grinned, showing off a mouthful of mostly missing teeth, thanked her profusely in Russian and then pulled away, a small cloud of purple-black smoke billowing from the Trabant’s tailpipe.
Now it was her turn to smile. She lingered at the walkway, trying to decide whether any of the party’s other guests would arrive in a more decrepit vehicle.
It seemed highly unlikely.
The condition of the car had given her pause when it arrived six blocks from her CIA safe house to pick her up. Her preference would have been to show up in something a little less memorable. But walking to Gregorovich’s home was out of the question; it was just too far. And stealing a car just to drive across the city seemed unwise.
Typically, the agency provided case officers using of this particular Moscow safe house with a handful of legally registered vehicles for use during their assignments. But the current stable was seriously depleted, with only one car remaining, and Tracie thought it might be a good idea to save it for later, when she might need safe, legal transportation.
For now, at least, that car would remain on the sidelines.
Her other option would have been to take the bus, but a young woman dressed in a slinky, body-hugging maroon gown riding an ancient Moscow city bus at this time of the evening would probably be more noteworthy—and thus more memorable—than the same young woman stepping out of an ancient cab.
She glanced toward the massive home and decided she’d made the right decision. Undoubtedly Red Army soldiers were on the property acting in a security capacity, but none of them were currently in sight.
In fact, nobody was currently in sight. Presumably someone was checking tickets at the door, but if so that person was standing inside the house on what was turning out to be an unseasonably cold evening. The first floor of the mansion was brightly lit, and Tracie could see people mingling through many of the windows on the west side. Clearly, that was where the party was taking place, and just as clearly none of the guests were interested in leaving the warmth of the home and partying outside.
She hurried up the walkway—its brick pavers were immaculately maintained—and opened the front door without knocking. Standing just to the right was a young kid in a Soviet Army uniform. He looked bored but at the same time uneasy.
Tracie smiled at him and eased the door closed. She fished the forged ticket out of her coat pocket and handed it to him, saying in Russian, “Good evening. It is colder out tonight than I expected,” just trying to make conversation with the kid.
He glanced perfunctorily at the forgery, focusing on it for no more than three seconds before returning it to her.
“Yes, ma’am, it is,” he said. Then he stepped away from the door and put his back to the wall, dismissing her from his attention.
The source of his discomfort seemed plain to Tracie. He was an army private, maybe nineteen years old, and he’d been tasked with keeping uninvited guests out of the home of one of the highest-ranking generals in the entire Soviet Union. She guessed he was less concerned with keeping the wrong people away than with pissing off guests who weren’t interested in commingling with unimportant little soldiers like himself.
He probably assumed all it would take to face a court martial would be the wrong word to the wrong high-society Muscovite, so his version of “security” was to make sure the arriving guests were actually carrying tickets. Then he would will himself invisible, wait for them to go on their way, and hope the next person through the door didn’t bring about the end of his military career before it even really got started.
She couldn’t blame him, and guessed his instincts were probably spot-on. In any event, his hands-off approach to security worked just fine for her.
To the left of the door was an open closet approximately the size of the bedroom in her D.C. apartment. She shrugged out of her coat and hung it up, then passed the still-anxious-to-remain-invisible army private on her way to what looked like a large sitting room big enough to serve as a practice arena for the Harlem Globetrotters.
Disco/club music blasted out of speakers that were nowhere to be seen as people—mostly in their late teens or early twenties and more or less evenly split between men and women—talked in small groups, many holding glasses of champagne or vodka. Tracie had been briefed on the general’s family, of course, but a quick scan of the partygoers revealed none of them, not even the birthday girl, Irina.
Another Red Army private approached her holding a tray of champagne glasses. He offered her one and she took it with a smile, but this kid didn’t seem any more at ease than the one at the door.
He nodded uncomfortably and walked away.
I know how you feel, comrade, she thought. Tracie Tanner was nobody’s idea of a party girl, even on her own time and in her home country. She never had been, not even in high school and college when so many of her peers were experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
But the glass provided at least a small prop and a way to keep her hands occupied. She sensed some of the guests checking her out and hoped not everyone in the room knew each other. It seemed unlikely, but who the hell knew?
Her thirtieth birthday was rapidly approaching, and given the fact that nearly everyone in the room seemed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a decade younger, she thanked her lucky stars for her genetic makeup, or whatever it was that made her look much closer to twenty than thirty.
Growing up she’d always hated appearing younger than her actual age. She recalled her sixteenth birthday, when she’d complained about still looking twelve. Her father had grinned and told her, “Just give it ten or fifteen years. You’ll love it then.”
Damned if he wasn’t right, she thought. She doubted it had occurred to him that she might use that genetic benefit to her advantage at a birthday party for a Soviet general’s daughter. But then again, she’d always felt as a child that her dad knew everything. Maybe her current situation wouldn’t have surprised him too much, after all.
Out of nowhere the memory of her father caused her to be overcome with an almost physical sense of pain and loss. She realized she’d stopped walking and was standing motionless in one corner of the big room, staring off into the distance, utterly unaware of the bustle of activity taking place around her.
She forced the thoughts of her father from her mind and instead focused on Aaron Stallings’ reluctance to allow her to return to work.
This sort of thing is exactly what he was talking about.
It was a good way to get herself caught or even killed.
She took a deep breath and resumed her slow stroll around the room. At the far end was a set of French doors that were standing open, and from this angle she could see more partygoers mingling on the other side. Maybe Irina Gregorovich—and much more importantly, her father—were somewhere in that room.
Her plan was to wait at least a couple of hours to access General Gregorovich’s study. By then, there was a much greater likelihood people would be drunk, or at least somewhat impaired, and thus presumably less likely to notice her absence. But before she could even think about accomplishing her mission, she wanted to pin down the general’s whereabouts. It certainly wouldn’t do to break into his study with him inside it.
She had taken three steps in the direction of the French doors when a hand dropped onto her shoulder from behind.
A male voice said, “Hold it right there. Don’t I know you?”
She froze.
She’d had to leave her Beretta at the safe house because there was quite simply nowhere to place a weapon that wouldn’t have been obvious under her nearly sheer dress. She had managed to strap a lock-picking kit and tiny camera high on her right inner thigh, and to sheath a combat knife onto her left, but things would get messy in a hurry if she had to pull it out here.
The Red Army soldiers roaming the house might be uncomfortable with their duty as security guards and waiters, but they were still armed.
She took a deep breath and waited to see what would happen next.
4
June 11, 1988
9:30 p.m.
Moscow, Russia, USSR
Nothing happened next.
She waited for a further challenge as she slipped her champagne glass into her left hand and then eased her right hand down to mid-thigh, prepared to yank up her dress and unsheathe her knife. She wanted to avoid accessing it in the middle of this party filled with civilians if at all possible, but she would fight her way out of Gregorovich’s house if she had to, or die trying.
Her heart was pounding, adrenaline racing, but still the man who’d stopped her made no move to challenge her further. As far as she could tell, nobody besides him was paying the least bit of attention to her.
So she spun to face her assailant.
And saw not with an armed Soviet soldier but with a teenaged Russian partygoer.
The kid was perhaps twenty—maybe younger—and Tracie was immediately one hundred percent certain she’d never seen him before. Why would she have? He was obviously a Russian high school or college student, probably friends with Irina Gregorovich.
Or his father was a Soviet general.
Or his mother played bridge with Gregorovich’s wife.
Or something else just as benign.
But now that the kid had worked up the courage to stop the object of his affection in mid-stride, he had no idea what to do with her. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes when Tracie turned to face him, but he never lowered his hand, either. It just slipped from her right shoulder as she spun around and came to rest on her left.
I don’t have time for this.
She made a point of lowering her gaze to stare at his shoes, and then she raised it slowly, making it obvious she was sizing him up. The kid was at least ten years younger than Tracie, but he was a good deal taller, and she had to crane her neck to look into his face. By the time she did, she’d put cold steel into her eyes.
The kid’s own eyes widened and he took a step back.
“Excuse me?” she said in Russian, speaking slowly and enunciating her words.
“Uh, I um. I mean, I said I thought I knew you.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I didn’t say that?” He swallowed heavily.
“Oh, you said it, but you didn’t really think you knew me.”
“Um, I uh, I guess not, no. But I thought I might like to.”
She crooked her finger and the kid moved forward slightly. She motioned him further and he finally understood.
He leaned down and she spoke softly into his ear. With the music blasting and the steady buzz of a dozen high-volume conversations taking place at the same time, there was little chance of anyone else hearing her words, but she didn’t want to shout what she was about to say.
“If you ever put so much as a finger on my body again, do you know what’s going to happen to you?”
He swallowed again. Shook his head wordlessly.
“I’m going to reach between your legs and grab your balls with my fist. And when I do, I won’t stop squeezing until they splatter like grapes and you’re left singing soprano for the rest of your life. Am I making myself clear?”
He nodded enthusiastically, jaw hanging open.
“Say it,” she demanded.
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I won’t bother you anymore, I promise.”
“Good,” Tracie said. “Now run along and play with somebody your own age.”
The kid backed away, still nodding. He reminded Tracie of one of the bobble head animals that people used to put in the rear windows of their cars when she was a little girl. When he decided he’d put enough distance between them that it might be safe to turn his back on her, he did so and hurried away.
She glanced around the big room. A couple of people were looking her way, but no one seemed overly interested in the exchange that had just taken place. Nobody appeared alarmed. The entire interaction between the young Russian lothario and Tracie had probably taken no more than twenty seconds, although it had felt much longer to her. To anyone watching it had probably looked exactly like what it was—a boy approached a girl at the party and she shot him down.
The absurdity of the situation hit her like a freight train, and she had to work to keep from laughing out loud. Her response to being hit on by a Russian teenager had probably been a little over the top—okay, a lot over the top, she thought—but at the moment she’d turned to face what she’d interpreted as a threat she’d been seconds away from drawing her combat knife and filleting the kid.
And likely getting gunned down in the aftermath.
She had long ago learned stress could cause people to do all sorts of out-of-character things, and she supposed she could consider what she’d said to the kid to be Exhibit A of that theorem.
But the situation did complicate matters in terms of accomplishing her mission. Without knowing the kid’s identity she had no way of guessing who he might tell about the crazy chick in the slinky maroon dress and what she had said to him.
Probably he wouldn’t say a word to anyone; after all, what high school or college boy is going to advertise the fact he’s just gone down in flames with a girl?
On the other hand, a consideration of the possible worst-case scenario was enough to give Tracie pause. What if he happened to be good friends with Irina Gregorovich? Or even worse, what if he was related to the girl, say her cousin? And what if he made a beeline for Irina and told either her or her father a version of what had happened that made him look like an innocent victim?
Which he sort of was, Tracie had to admit.
In that scenario, it was possible the general himself might search out the wayward female partygoer and either confront her, which would put far too great a spotlight on her, or even worse, eject her from the party, which would obviously make completing her assignment impossible.
Was the worst-case scenario likely to occur? Probably not. There were already a lot of people at Irina Gregorovich’s party, and more continued to arrive every few minutes. The kid would probably have a hard time even finding Gregorovich, must less spilling his guts to the man.
But it was possible, and Tracie decided on the spot that she needed to adjust her timeline. She could no longer afford to wait two or three hours for people to begin getting comfortably numb before trying to access General Gregorovich’s home office.
She needed to move now.
The staircase leading to the mansion’s second floor was a wide, sweeping affair that looked like something Scarlett O’Hara might use. It was also located directly across the foyer from the front door.
Where the Soviet soldier was stationed checking invitations.
She began strolling in the direction the kid had gone after she scolded him. By now he was nowhere to be seen. She paused in front of one of the windows facing the front yard, leaning against the wall and pretending to sip champagne as she peered out into the night.
A group of three young women were moving up the walkway toward the front door, all wearing dresses that made Tracie’s look matronly. She pushed away from the window and waited for the girls to enter the home.
The front door opened and after a short delay, presumably caused by the soldier glancing at their invitations, the trio entered the sitting room and immediately signaled for champagne. The same soldier who had served Tracie hurried over to them and th
ey emptied his tray.
He turned toward the kitchen and Tracie again checked the area in front of the house.
For the moment it was empty: no partygoers approaching, and no cars motoring up the driveway.
It was time to move.
She crossed the room, moving quickly, and in seconds had entered the foyer. The soldier glanced up at her in surprise; she was probably the first person tonight he’d seen moving away from the party rather than toward it.
He looked away disinterestedly but raised his eyebrows when it became clear she was focusing on him.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said in Russian. She did her best to make her voice soft and feminine, innocent and unthreatening. The exact opposite of how she’d approached the teen boy a couple of minutes ago.
“Yes? What is it?”
“General Gregorovich asked me to tell you he needs you in the other room immediately.”
“The general? Asked you to get me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What does he want? I am not supposed to leave my post.”
She shrugged. “I do not know. He just asked me to get you. It seemed urgent.” It was as far as Tracie could go. The notion that a man as powerful as General Gregorovich had requested help from a young woman inside his own home was an unlikely one; it would be completely unbelievable to think he’d shared his reasoning with her.
She fell silent and waited as the young soldier considered his options. Any moment now he would realize he had none. Despite what he’d been told about not leaving his post he could not afford to ignore a summons from a general in the Soviet army.
Maybe three seconds later the young man huffed and said, “Where is the general?”
“In the room behind this one.” She gestured with her champagne glass toward the sitting room.
He huffed again.
Then he walked off in that direction, moving quickly, without another word.
The second he turned the corner she was across the foyer and climbing the stairs.
5
The Nuclear Option Page 3