Shadow of the Condor

by James Grady

  "Unit W Four to Central and all W units. He's making for the phone. Alert the tap team and take up positions."

  Woodward walked past the phone booth next to the McDonald's. That was the phone Kevin had tapped. The commanding agent held up his crossed fingers for his partner to see. Half a block from the tapped phone Woodward entered a bar. Two agents followed him in. Ten minutes later one came out and ran to the command car. "He's taking a call at the bar's pay phone!"

  "Unit W Four to Central. Subject received call at pay phone in Club Bar and Grill. Standing by."

  "Looks like somebody guessed wrong," muttered the driver. The commanding agent said nothing.

  Woodward emerged from the bar less than two minutes later. He appeared shaken and darted up the street. He stopped next to the tapped pay phone, pressing his back against the door, his eyes constantly shifting to take in the scene around him.

  "Unit W Four to Central. Looks like he's waiting for a call on the tapped phone after all. Alert the tap team. All units stand by."

  The phone rang only once before Woodward stepped inside and picked up the receiver. The tap team patched the conversation into the radio so all the W team surveillance units heard the conversation..

  "Yes?" Woodward's nervousness came clearly through the radio.

  "This is Steel." The callers voice was faint. The call was long distance.

  "This is Iron. Is that you, Comrade? Please, is that--?'

  "Of course. Calm down. Do you have a message for me?'

  "Yes, and they told me--'

  "The message!" interrupted the caller. "Give me the message!"

  "They said to say, here, I wrote it down-and I'll bum my notes, you don't have to tell me, I will especially now that- "

  "The message first, then tell me what's wrong."

  "Here it is: 'Striker. Seven. Five.' That's all. Striker seven five, that's all the message. But they told me…’’

  "What? Quickly, what did they tell you?"

  "They told me I might be blown! That the~ FBI might know I'm ... that you might be too! Is that what the code said? What will we do? What-"

  "Shut up. Calm down. Do you have anything relating to me or this mission, anything at all?"

  "Just ... just my notes that I read from."

  "Burn them, crash them, then scatter the ashes. Do that now! Then . . . then take care of yourself. Keep away from them if they come after you."

  "Yes, Comrade!" Woodward shouted into the phone. "Don't worry! They'll never stop us! Never! They'll never get. . . ." He-raved for several more seconds before he realized his comrade had hung up.

  Woodward slowly replaced the receiver and stepped out of the phone booth. So at last it had come. The revolution; that time was here! He walked to the comer, turned south down Clark Street. He wouldn't go back to work. He'd go underground. Dodge them. Fight them. They would never get him, never! He quickened his pace, sweat glistening on his face.

  They were probably closing in on him, but they didn’t know he was ready for them. They didn't know! He unbuttoned his blazer, quickly glancing from side to side. Several people seemed to regard him strangely. That woman with the briefcase. The man carrying groceries. Woodward's pace increased until he was almost running. He jostled an old lady waiting for the bus.

  You can't tell who they are, he knew that. Besides the FBI, there were the Trotskyites. They were probably after him too. And the Chinese revisionists. And the Cubans. And the CIA. He almost tripped over a baby carriage. The child screamed and burst into tears.

  "Unit W Four to all units and Central. I think Woodward is panicking. Surveillance teams, be ready."

  Half a block behind Woodward the two agents trailing him on foot unbuttoned their suit coats. The agent dressed as a laborer who walked parallel to Woodward on the opposite side of Clark Street unzipped his stained Army fatigue jacket.

  The black man loomed from out of nowhere. He collided with Woodward; both of them momentarily lost their balance and they staggered apart. Woodward was three paces away when the black man, an attorney on the way to meet his mistress, yelled, "Hey, man! Why don't you watch where you're going? You crazy or something?"

  Woodward looked over his shoulder. The big man stood watching him. When their eyes met, the black man-whose wife later said his temper always had been too quick jerked his right fist toward Woodward, shooting one long dark finger into the air with the emphatic American sign of defiance and, contempt. Woodward, not watching where he was going, walked into a light pole. He bounced off the pole, the recoil turning him full face to the attorney. Woodward stopped, his hands trembling.

  "You slimy son of a bitch, you drunk enough to think you can go running into people on the street and just stumble away? I ought to beat your ass and teach you a lesson." The attorney's hand closed into a menacing fist. Woodward reached under his coat just as the attorney realized what a ridiculous scene he was creating. Woodward's hand returned cradling the Russian Tokarev. Recognition and fear flashed across the attorney's face as Woodward pulled the trigger. Two of the three shots Woodward fired tore through the expensive suit and into what the eulogy called one of Chicago's finest rising young legal talents. The third bullet splattered itself harmlessly against -a storefront. The attorney died two hours after his body hit the concrete amid screams from the shocked onlookers.

  The agent across the street reacted first. "Woodward!" he yelled as be drew his gun. "Drop it! Drop it!"

  Woodward turned and blindly fired twice in the general direction of the voice. The bullets shattered a Japanese restaurant's plate-glass window, but harmed no one. The agent fired once as he ducked behind a parked car. The agent's bullet passed through two car windows, a store window and a mannequin before burying itself in a box of winter furs waiting to be shipped to storage. By the time the agent peered around the edge of his cover Woodward had run up a side street angling away from Clark.

  "W Four to all units! Woodward's flipped! He's shot a civilian! Neutralize him, get him! Alive if you can, but don't let him hurt anyone else!" The commanding agent's car tore down Clark Street and squealed around the corner after Woodward. One of the two men who had been following Woodward on foot was already chasing down that street. His companion had stayed with the wounded attorney. The agent who had fired first followed his colleague closely.

  Woodward cut down an alley. He had been right! They were after him! All of them. His breaths came harder, his side hurt from running. He fled, directionless, frightened, but somehow happy, justified. He was right!

  A car screeched to a halt ahead of him, blocking the mouth of the alley. The driver huddled down on the seat seeking cover behind his door. The front-seat passenger leaped from the vehicle, crouched low and aimed over the car's hood. A man in the backseat jumped out and dodged behind some garbage cans.

  "Drop it, Woodward! FBII"'

  Woodward fired twice, both bullets harmlessly hitting the car. He snapped a fresh clip into his weapon while the agents watched, uncertain of what to do. The FBI does not fire warning shots. The agents knew Woodward was important to their mission, and they were leery of jeopardizing their mission by shooting him. Woodward rapidly snapped back the gun's slide to load the weapon. The agents fired as he raised his arm.

  The coroner's report noted that any of four of the seven bullets that hit Woodward might have been the one that killed him. The incident report noted that, in all, the three agents expended eleven rounds.

  The commanding agent felt a little ill as he walked toward the crumpled form oozing blood on the pavement. He stopped ten feet away. He was close enough to identify the body. He turned and walked back to his car. In the background he heard sirens closing in on the alley. A few of Chicago's braver and more curious citizens were already peeking out of windows, peering around the corners of buildings, He picked up the microphone.

  "W Four to Central. Woodward is dead. No agents hurt. One civilian critical. We'll hold everything until the Chicago police come, then we'll handle it wit
h them. I assume no publicity except through you."

  "Central to W Four. Proceed."

  "W Four clear."

  The commanding agent tossed the microphone back into the car. It bounced off the front seat and fell to the floor. He looked up. the alley. A leather-clad, heavily zippered, equipment-encumbered form walked toward him. The cornmanding agent slowly moved to meet the cop.

  All on my day off, he thought.

  ….

  Nurich slowly hung up the pay phone in the Minot, North Dakota, caf6. He then finished his coffee, paid his check and drove northwest on U.S. 52. Eventually interstate U.S. 52 meets U.S. 2, and old two-lane highway running parallel to the Canadian, border across the northern sections of North Dakota and Montana. Nurich had planned to take U.S. 2 to his destination. He revised that plan after Woodward's message had corroborated his vague but persistent fears.

  The message was simple. Before he left on his mission, Nurich had spent two days memorizing the code sequences and his contact information. Striker meant danger. His mission had been partially blown. The Americans at least knew of his existence. They might not know where he was, and they probably didn't know his exact mission, but he was blown. Seven was the priority number, the value of his mission to the KGB. Seven wasn't the highest priority by any means, but it was high enough to warrant considerable risk. Five was the ordered procedure. His control wanted him to continue the mission, but to do so as quickly as possible within the limits of safety. Should he run into trouble, he was to abort the mission, destroying as much incriminating material as possible, and then do his best to avoid capture. Procedure five carried the tacit suggestion that protective suicide was an acceptable choice.

  Nurich briefly considered phoning his. GRU contact, then discarded the notion. If he was blown, there was no sense dragging down other operations. He would save the link to safety until he had no other alternatives. He also considered and discarded the idea of abandoning the mission. He had been in difficult situations before. Even though this was a KGB mission, it was a mission for Russia. He couldn't let Russia down because of the bungling of a few idiot bureaucrats. He was sure his jeopardy came from KGB ineptness, and he comforted himself with the thought of the trouble he would create for his KGB superiors when, not if, he returned to Moscow.

  But first is the mission, he thought. And to do that, I must be sure the Americans are not on top of me.

  "We have a problem." The old man's voice crackled with static as it came over the radio. The words were intelligible, but Kevin worried the transmission would deteriorate.

  "It could be the radar, sir," interrupted the eager-to-please patrolman, hoping he interpreted the sullen frown on Kevin's face correctly. "Sometimes it can do funny things to radios. Especially if the transmission covers a long distance and the radio isn't so good to begin with."

  "Hold for a minute, sir," Kevin said into the mike. He looked at the patrolman. They were now the tail radar car, keeping the radar on as a precaution in case the other units failed or their operators goofed. The radar showed Rose driving just over five miles ahead of them. Kevin thought for a second, then decided to sacrifice the backup system for what might be an important message. He nodded to the patrolman, who in turn shut off the-set. Kevin spoke into the mike again. "Go ahead."

  The transmission improved considerably. "Woodward blew up in Chicago. He killed one civilian before our boys killed him. Some minor property damage, but that's really nothing."

  ‘’Why?"

  "Your hunch about the phone booth paid off. Unfortunately, Woodward used two phones, one as a contact with his control and one for Rose to call in to. He told Rose that the FBI might be onto both of them and gave him some code signals. No chance of breaking them. Evidently Woodward's paranoia got the best of him and he just started blasting."

  "What do we do now?"

  "I'm not sure. A lot depends on Rose, it's his move. What and how is he doing?"

  "He made the call from a caf6 in Minot, finished his breakfast, then went north on fifty-two, following the MO he has been using the last couple days: changing speeds, stopping at every rest stop for varying lengths of time. He cut east on a country road and picked up eighty-three going south. Doubling back again. If he's planning something different, he certainly doesn't show it."

  "He may be assuming that we could be watching him, but unless you're wrong, he can't know that for sure. The Woodward warning was too indefinite. I hope the code contained nothing more certain.

  "I'm assuming he'll continue with the mission, but he'll be twice as cautious and twice as careful."

  "Do you think he'll go for outside help? Call up any agents they might have in the area?"

  The old man had considered this ' point at great length. "No.. Something tells me he's pretty much on his own. I doubt he will try to contact Woodward again. Not only is the man erratic, he is by his own admission possibly contaminated. No, I think Rose will go his merry way. Watch him, Kevin, watch him closely."

  "Yes, sir. Are you taking any other precautions?"

  "Well, since Woodward is down, there is no sense leaving the rest of Rose's chain complete. Besides, we may be able to sweat something out of them. I hate to do it, but we're having all his contacts picked up.

  "Naturally, I think we should put the whole chain out of operation and I hope we can learn something from them. But we have to use the FBI. For one thing, they've been clamoring for the chance to make some big arrests ever since this little mission got under way. The Forty Committee simply wouldn't allow me to jump over the bureau's prerogatives. Damn unfortunate too. Why, if we had those contacts for twenty-four hours without all the arrest formalities, there's no telling what we might come up with. I had to fight to get the bureau to keep, their arrest as quiet as possible. No sense letting our Rose pick up a newspaper and find out his worst suspicions are true."

  "How long do you think you can keep the lid on?"

  "Possibly a couple of days. I'm having them charged with mail fraud rather than espionage. Of course, there win never be any evidence to show mail fraud, but at least we can hold them for twenty-four hours without a lot of publicity. If they can't go bail, perhaps we can hold them longer. We may even be able to convince them to cooperate and not have to worry about when we file formal espionage charges. We've at least convinced the Chicago police to treat Woodward's death as a foiled holdup at tempt. That should keep it off the national news. Oh, it's a fine mess back here, Kevin. Carl and I are fairly hopping. I wish I were out in the field with you and Condor."

  "I'm sure you do, sir. But what you're doing back there is just as important."

  The sigh carried clearly over the airwaves. "I suppose so, Kevin, I suppose so. But whatever you do, don't lose sight of our Rose. Be careful, be very careful. If it comes to a choice of losing him or, bringing him in, bring him in. Unfortunately, he'll go to the bureau, but at least we stopped his mission. I hope it doesn't come to that. I doubt he would voluntarily tell us anything, and then we'd never know, we'd never know."

  Nurich continued south on U.S. 83, using the same erratic driving techniques. The surveillance teams were forced to stay well away from him, watching the tiny blip on the radar screen, catching actual sight of his car only on rare occasions.

  Three miles north of Underwood, a major highway intersection, 'the surveillance teams watched the blip take a slight detour, then stop. The surveillance teams pulled off the road, an uncomfortable position, given that U.S. 83 is only a two-lane highway.

  "It's another rest stop, sir," the patrolman said to Kevin. "Actually it's not even much of one. Just a picnic table and some trash cans."

  "It looks like there's another blip on the screen."

  "Probably another parked car," replied the patrolman. "Remember the ones we saw the other day? Look, it's pulling away. Our boy is still waiting, watching for us to come down on him."

  Kevin picked up the mike, "All units, maintain your position."

  Twenty minutes lat
er Rose still had not moved. Kevin picked up the mike-again and ordered one of the non-radar equipped units to cruise past the rest stop.

  Barely two minutes passed before an ~excited voice came over Kevin's radio. "Central! Centrall This is McClatchy. We cruised by the' area. His car is there, but it looks deserted. We can't see a soul around and there's no place he could be hiding!"

  "Central to all units, we're heading in. McClatchy, wait until one of us arrives, then hit it too. Units two and lead radar, stay in your position. You each block one end of the highway. Now gol"

  Four cars slid to a grinding halt on the gravel-covered ground at the rest stop. Kevin and his fellow agents jumped from, their cars with drawn guns. Rose's car was empty.

  "Okay," commanded Kevin tersely "you three spread out across the fields, check for any signs he went on foot. The rest of you stay put, and don't touch the car any more than necessary."

  Kevin ran back to his car. "This is Central to radar one, do you read me?"

  Five miles down the road the lead radar car commander picked up his mike and nervously replied, "I'm here, sir."

  "Rose has flown. By any chance, you didn't happen to see him pass you driving or as a passenger in any car, did you?’’

  "Negative, but then we were concentrating on the blip. Easily a dozen cars have passed us. We're parked by a gravel pile and dirt-road intersection. We didn't note any of the cars that passed us."

  Kevin limply cradled the mike in his hand while he stared at the ground and silently cursed. His head throbbed. Finally he raised the mike and began to transmit on the extended range frequency. "This is Central One to Base. Come in, Base, Alpha One." Kevin used the highest-priority message he could send.

  "This is Base, Central One, standing by for Alpha-One."

  "Well, you got it. Rose has gone underground and we've lost him."

  14

  One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This, of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger)for the rest of the day; and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate.