Shadow of the Condor

by James Grady

  By now Sheila was shouting, her words ' screaming across the prairie to no one but Malcolm's ears. "Why am I here? Obviously an 'enemy,' a threat to 'your' country? An enemy of 'democracy'? Because your democracy didn't feed my people, didn't help my people. Your freedom-loving country did and does what it can to keep us enslaved. Beyond the opium wars, through the changes of the early days, well into your support of your own Chinese puppet, until today, we are where we are in spite of you.

  "What next? A lecture from you about freedom of choice? The sterility of our country, our enforced uniformity? Who decided all males in the West should wear bell bottoms this year and straight legs four years ago? Whether cars have big fins? What candidates 'run' for office? Chinese-enforced uniformity?

  "Beyond all that, you ask me why I am doing what I am doing. I am Chinese. I feel that.) I live that, I am that. I have my reasons.

  "But you, what are you? A petty government clerk, bored, somewhat snobbish, conceited, lazy. Someone who stumbled onto a path and keeps going down it. Why should you ask me anything?"

  Sheila paused for breath, her eyes flashing, her hair messed, her shoulders heaving, her breasts rapidly rising and falling under the sweat shirt. Malcolm, pale and shaken, stared at her for several minutes while her fury passed. Even after she had calmed down, he could think of nothing to say. Just as Sheila turned once more to walk toward the house, he reached out his hand and touched her arm. It was the first time he had ever consciously touched -her. She jerked back, slipping into what he recognized as a defensive combat stance. He kept his arm extended. She relaxed in her stance only slightly, although she realized he neither posed nor intended any threat. He slowly licked his lips, hesitating just before he said, "I didn't rape your mother."

  Chou found them in separate rooms when he returned two hours later. Sheila stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing diligently at stains on the copper pots. Malcolm sat in the living room, half concentrating on a game of his own version of Las Vegas solitaire, a diversion he had used since childhood. Chou noticed their glum, anger-ravaged mood when he entered the house, but he deliberately chose to ignore it. He thought he knew its source, and his assumptions bothered him not at all. For one thing, he knew the girl would tell, him the whole story on command. He let his enthusiasm bubble through his words. "Ah, Comrades, success! The director has approved my plan!"

  "Fine," sighed Malcolm as he turned up an eight of spades-no play. "So what do we do now?"

  Sheila had come into the living room to join the two men. Chou motioned her to sit on the couch across from Malcolm while he took the chair at the head of the coffee table. He glanced at his companions seated on each side of him and said, "Do? We go ahead with the plan. You two must now make it work."

  "You forget," Malcolm said slowly as he turned over his next card, a three of diamonds-no play. "I don't know anything about 'the plan."

  "There's not much to know," soothed Chou. "Essentially you continue with the mission your superiors sent you on in just the same manner. You continue the farcical survey, trying to find out something, anything. In the meantime, we wait to see what your colleagues turn up. My director has also agreed to do his best to find a place to apply some pressure that might find its way to Krumin, although we agree such efforts will probably fail. With all that activity, something is bound to break. Among the three of us we should be able to come down on top of it just before everyone else. When that happens, when we find Krumin-as we must assume we will-all that Sheila and I need is a few minutes with him and her marvelous drug collection to get everything on his China operations. Then he's yours, yours and that old man's in Washington."

  "I still don't understand," Malcolm said. "I continue with the survey, right? What makes you sure that I'll bring you in on whatever happens?"

  "Because," Chou continued, "you won't be alone. Hardly even alone enough to go to the bathroom. Sheila is going with you from now on."

  "What?"

  "Yes," Chou assured him, "from now on. It seems you have found a need for your assistant, 'so she flew out to Montana and is helping you with your survey."

  Malcolm stared at Chou for several minutes. He also avoided looking directly at Sheila. He felt her avoiding looking at him too. Finally Malcolm said, "That's a crock of shit. Even if my superiors don't find out, nobody in Shelby would believe it. We could never pull it off. The people down there already think the survey is a stupid waste of time and money. If they see two of us working on it, they'll raise holy hell-complain to the Defense Mapping Agency, letters to Congressmen, the papers, the whole bit. My cover wouldn't last twenty-four hours. Neither would hers."

  "Exactly," Chou explained, "exactly. That's why we'll give everyone another secret to discover besides your covers. Something they will at the worst mildly disapprove of but will probably not mention. You will let them know your 'assistant' is combining her vacation with assisting you. You might even want to confide your secret to a few people, like the county extension agent and his family. Discreetly, obliquely, of course, but still letting it out."

  "Letting what out?"

  "That your 'assistant' unofficially came to be with you, not as a working associate, but as your lover. They would accept that."

  Malcolm leaned back in his chair, his solitaire game forgotten. He saw Sheila register no surprise, no emotion at all. Finally Malcolm said, "You've got to be kidding."

  "On the contrary," replied Chou, "it is a brilliant plan. One known 'secret' hiding the real thing. Am old technique. If you two work at it, you should have no trouble carrying it off. We have several hours to build you cover stories. Plenty of time, since you don't have to divulge a good deal of information about yourselves in order to make your story stick."

  "What if it doesn't work?" Malcolm asked, hoping his skepticism would dissuade Chou.,

  Chou ignored Malcolm's pessimism. "It will work. Of course," he continued, "if you don't think the plan is workable and you won't make the all-out concerted effort, then we are forced to revert to the original plan." Chou slowly, deliberately unbuttoned the bottom button on his jean jacket. The jacket fell open.

  Malcolm wasted no time replying. "Well, anything is better than that old original plan."

  Chou smiled. "I thought you would find the situation so. Now, let us begin building your lives. Sheila, since you are familiar with San Francisco, and Americans associate Orientals with that city anyway, let's make you a native of there, although you traveled a good deal. You are approximately Malcolm's age and you met. . . . When? Briefly in college? I think so, and then a year ago when you also came to work for the DMA. Now, how did you meet, where, when, your first date, your mutual likes and dislikes, places you've seen together, a few juicy and humorous experiences? Malcolm, suggestions?"

  They spent four hours building a cover story. Then, after Sheila packed, they set off in two vehicles, Malcolm's jeep and Chou's car, retracing their illegal border crossing. They saw no one. It was almost dark when Chou stopped alongside a deserted country gravel road several miles from the main highway leading to Shelby. The three mountainous buttes known as the Sweetgrass hills rose behind them to the north, their blue hues fading to black as the sun sank lower. Chou walked back from his car to the jeep, motioning for Malcolm to roll down the window. Chou glanced briefly at Sheila, who sat in the jeep's passenger seat.

  "And now, my new friend and comrade," Chou said to Malcolm, "the hours of truth begin. You know Shiela has a radio check schedule with me at various erratic times. You know if anything goes wrong, I'll be there to cause you as much grief as possible. You also know you have nothing to lose working with us and everything to gain. Because'of all that, and because you are under my comrade's delicate and competent care, I trust you out of my sight. Please don't disappoint me, I beg you. I find you quite amusing alive, and it would be so discouraging for me to meet your next gaze with a bullet."

  Chou paused for effect, then looked at Sheila. "Take care of everything, Comrade." He gently slapped
the jeep and walked to his car.

  Malcolm sat still several minutes after Chou had driven back toward Canada. Finally he looked at Sheila. She stared straight ahead, her eyes impassively looking out the windshield into the darkness. Malcolm sighed, started the motor, and drove down the road to the main highway. He turned on the radio. The powerful radio station played rock music from Oklahoma City. As they headed toward Shelby, he kept Sheila informed about the songs to add to her $$cultural-background cover." She listened, but said nothing.

  Their first test came when they checked Sheila into the motel. Malcolm thought his genuine nervousness did more to build the cover than the story's inherent, deliberate flaws. The proprietress listened intently to his whole talk, then gave Sheila the room next to his. Their landlady leered at them as they headed up the stairs. Sheila managed to conjure a blush from somewhere, and Malcolm's confidence grew with each step.

  They stayed in her room * long enough to deposit one of her two main bags. Sheila also brought a smaller third bag containing her toiletries, her equipment and her radio. She, followed Malcolm to his room.

  The first thing she did was to take his gun from the briefcase, unload it, then lock both the gun and his ammunition in her very special combination-lock overnight case. She did not turn her back on Malcolm until the gun was safely stored. Then, almost as if she were challenging him to try something, she deliberately ignored him while she familiarized herself with the room. Finally she faced him again.

  "I'll live out of the big bag we brought here," Sheila told him, "just as though we were trying to hide my sleeping here. We'll keep it -and my kit bag in the closet behind your luggage. The maid is sure to find it when she looks. She will correctly figure we left the other-bag in my room as a dodge."

  "All right," replied Malcolm. He stood looking at her as she laid out the clothes she would wear in the morning. He knew she was conscious of his stare. Coldly, without a perceptible pause in her rhythm, she pulled the sweat shirt off. She -wore a bra and, beneath it, strapped around her back, a small holster carrying an automatic pistol no bigger than her hand. The holster was not noticeable under a loose-fitting garment pushed out by the thrust of her medium-sized breasts. She picked her bras to give her the most forward thrust. She stepped out of her tennis shoes, then calmly took off her -jeans.

  Clad in her panties, holster and bra, Sheila turned to face Malcolm in three-quarter profile. He stood staring, numb. Her face was expressionless as she unfastened her bra and laid it neatly on top of her clothes. Her broad, brown breasts jiggled as she leaned forward. She had large, centrally placed, very dark nipples. Impassively she picked up a soft denim shirt and slipped it on. She didn't button it. Finally she looked directly at Malcolm and said, "Let us get some things very clear. We are here professionally, partners. I do not particularly relish the situation, nor, I imagine, do you. I am your guard as much as I am your companion. I do not have Chou's killing abilities or his inclinations for quick action in that area. But given the slightest provocation, the slightest hint that you are betraying the agreement we made, I will kill you without a moment's hesitation. I am highly trained in that area. You would pose no problem.

  "We are also a man and a woman, playing a role as sexual partners. That is precisely what we shall do: play the role. We could have been assigned numerous other roles in other situations. The, fact of our sexes is immaterial. In public I shall appear as your doting lover, not too doting, but convincingly so. You shall adopt a similar stance. In private we will-maintain our professional status.

  "I shall sleep in the chair, using the extra bedding. I warn you, I am an extremely light sleeper. As you can see, I carry my gun at all times. Please do not make me use it. To the degree that it is necessary and unavoidable, I trust you. I would not suggest you make me venture beyond that. Now I suggest you take out your contacts and prepare for bed in whatever other ways you find necessary. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

  11

  "In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."

  "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

  "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

  "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

  "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

  He's crazy, thought Nurich, he's stark raving mad. 1`he realization did little to comfort him. Sweat formed on Nurich's forehead despite the chill in the room. He nodded to reassure his furiously whispering companion.

  "For years I've been waiting for this, for some sign, some small ray of hope that the revisionists and Trotskyites were being defeated, that once again the great man's work would go on," hissed the man sitting across from Nurich. "You don't know, you can't realize how horrifying these last few years have been. And now, all this talk of d6tentel What are, we coming to? Tell me, what?"

  Nurich interrupted the man on the pretense of answering his question. He actually wanted to calm the man down and get him to lower his voice so that they could accomplish the necessary business as quickly as possible. "Yes, yes, I can understand your worries. But everything is all right now. That's why I'm here. As you can see, your faith was justified."

  The small man leaned back against the booth. His fit of excitement seemed to have passed.

  Nurich made his Chicago contact the same day Sheila and Malcolm moved to Shelby. As in the other cities, the Russian did not know who his contact would be until the rendezvous. He had known the circumstances explaining why the trucker Pulaski was willing to help him, but his English and New York associates had been faceless names until he met them. He expected as much, for he was working for a new apparatus. Until he came to Chicago he had been neither impressed nor disappointed with the agent he had met. Their time together had been too brief to allow him to form a professional opinion. But his Chicago contact.

  The Chicago contact was Charles Woodward, a self-recruited agent who had never worked on any previous Soviet missions. Woodward was thirty-four but he looked twice that. Short, emaciated, and constantly fidgeting, he fit both the physical and psychiatric stereotype of a neurotic paranoid.

  Woodward had forced his way into Soviet intelligence after forming a fanatical attachment to Stalin and Stalin's concepts while growing up in Chicago. Because he was not a resourceful or vocal man, it had taken him until 1961 to find a way to serve his idol. Of course, by then Stalin was long dead so -that Woodward was, even in his own mind, serving the legend.

  In 1961 he spent three weeks of his sick leave and vacation watching a visiting Soviet trade show., During that time, after uncovering the FBI's surveillance of the show members, he decided which Soviet official he would go to for recruitment. He picked on a minor secretary who received only cursory scrutiny. One day Woodward accosted his choice in Marshall Field, searing the poor Russian half to death as he stood examining a rack of shirts. The Russian was so startled he accepted the packet Woodward thrust on him. The acceptance of the packet was an incredible breach of security: It could have been damaging material designed to trap the secretary. Woodward's fanatical insistence forestalled the Russian's long-range concerns by making him fearful of the consequences of refusing the crazy-acting American.

  The secretary's superiors were not pleased by his actions, but they only mildly reprimanded him. They did note in his dossier that he was very slow to react correctly under pressure. After pouring over Woodward's material-mostly long, rambling philosophical discussions of Stalin's greatness-the Midwestern ranking resident KGB officer decided to send the material up the chain of command for further evaluation. His Moscow superiors decided that a bird in the hand, even an erratic bird, might be more useful than wishing for two in the bush. They used what resources they had to investigate Woodward for possible counterintelligence links, then decided to give him a try with some test t
asks which could not compromise any of their real operations. Woodward responded successfully, although his fanatical zeal worried his control. The KGB correctly reasoned that Woodward -could prove very dangerous. At the same time, they hated to waste such an eager possibility. The KGB put Woodward in a very carefully constructed limbo designed to protect both him and them until and if they ever found substantial use for him. KGB Division Commander Ryzhov allowed his underling Serov to resurrect Woodward from that limbo in the saving of Gamayun.

  And now Woodward sat across from Nurich, his first real contact with a true agent of the Soviets. They met in Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo at the lion house, then strolled to the concession building. They ordered chili dogs and sat in a booth. Recalcitrant winter had snapped back the Midwest's early spring, and except for the small area near the stove, the drafty restaurant was barely above freezing. Nurich and Woodward had to sit in the booth farthest away from the stove in order to be as far as possible from the concession stand's few other customers, Nurich did not appear awkward when he did not remove his gloves.

  For over half an hour Nurich listened to Woodward's increasingly staccato ramblings on Stalin, revisionists and the horrible trend of the Revolution. At first Nurich was only impatient, but now he was angry, angry and nervously frightened. He wanted to end the interview as quickly as possible.

  "Do you have the supplies and the machine?" he asked.

  "Of course, of course! Well, almost all of them. I pick up the car tomorrow at a drop zone my control will tell me about in the morning. He calls me at different phone booths. I've never met him. You're the first comrade they've let me meet."

  Nurich did not need to think twice about the reasons for Woodward's isolation. He pressed his query. "Are you sure you have everything?"

  "Yes, I told you, except for the car, everything. I've given you the duplicate keys they mailed me. The machine is stored at my employer's warehouse. He knows nothing. I'll lock it in the trunk of the car. I got the other equipment and the cash the day before yesterday. The maps and all the other directions will be in the car when you pick it up. Since you have the keys, we won't have to meet again. That is unfortunate."