Shadow of the Condor

by James Grady

  Nurich briefly glanced at the maps he had already memorized while he again reviewed his plan with all its possibilities. He glanced at his watch when he was finished. Nine o'clock. He put on, the camouflage clothes, then his normal clothes. The blackening of his face would have to wait until he was close to the mission site. He carefully laid out thd two candy bars he would eat with his final cup of coffee before he left at midnight. Then he lay back on the other bed, set the alarm clock just to be sure, closed his eyes, forced his mind to blank itself of all details and tried to relax.

  Chou gave Sheila and Malcolm only five minutes warning that he was coming to their motel room that afternoon. If he noticed any difference in their behavior, he gave no sign. His only expressed concern was that the presence of two Orientals in the small town might cause suspicion. Malcolm tried unobtrusively to reinforce Chou's fear, hoping the man would leave them alone.

  The news of Rose's escapades stimulated Chou to the point where he almost glowed. He paced the room, carefully outlining contingency plans. He also seemed fascinated by the Robinson and Kincaid information. Once Malcolm thought that perhaps that information excited him more than the news of Rose. But Chou was too carefully collected for Malcolm to decipher.

  Chou left them after two hours. He didn't tell them where he was going, but he let them know he wasn't returning to Canada and he wouldn't be far away. He ordered them to call him by radio the moment they heard anything. Anything, he stressed.

  'What do we do?" Sheila asked Malcolm after Chou left.

  "What can we do?" replied Malcolm. "We sit and wait."

  ….

  Captain Teddy Roe and his men had spent several long twelve-hour shifts waiting. They waited through the cool and warm days, through the wind, through Thursday's rain, and through the long nights. Captain Roe didn't care how long they had to wait. He would follow orders and remain there until the trap sprung or they were called back. He would keep his men alert too, for this mission was very important to him.

  Captain Roe spent the first two years of his tour with the 5th Special Forces stationed at Nha Trang, Vietnam. He had loved that duty. In those days the Special Forces in particular and the Southeast Asian war in general were run by the CIA, or, as Captain Roe and his fellow CIA employees called it, "the Company." Captain Roe loved the freewheeling days under the Company when he had organized native mercenaries, sweeping through villages in active counterterrorist response missions" the euphemism employed at that time to cover raids identical to Vietcong terrorist forays' but with an official purpose directly opposite to the VC efforts. The "ACTR's" (pronounced "actors") served as the precursors for the much more famous and widely run Operation Phoenix programs later directed by the Company.

  But the good old days ended for Captain Roe and the Company when President Johnson widened their little operation and landed the Marines in 1965. From then on the Company had to share the game with the other boys at the Pentagon. Although Captain Roe was officially on the five-sided figure's team all the fun went out of the war for him when that conglomerate took over. Captain Roe jumped at the opportunity to stay on "detached" duty with the Company and in all the years since then he had never regretted his choice. Since 1966 the captain had merrily, effectively carried out Company policy all through Latin America, Asia, Africa and even the Middle East. Until his last mission.

  It had been a relatively routine one. A very low-profile, minuscule Palestinian terrorist group was slowly gaining prominence. In addition to jeopardizing the Israeli-Arabian, truce of the moment, the new Palestinian group threatened to upset the delicately balanced wheelbarrow of a brother Palestinian organization with which the CIA was used to dealing. The old-time Palestinian organizations themselves didn't knowhow to deal with the situation, and the Israelis were in no position to take care of the problem, so it became Company policy.

  Roe's mission was simple. The new group revolved around the leader, who controlled only a few dozen armed men, but his influence was rapidly growing in the camps. Roe was to solve the problem by bombing the leader's home and making the explosion seem like, an accident caused by sloppy handling of weapons. That kind of thing happened all the time and would be an easy story to sell.

  Roe and a team of demolition experts overran the leader's scantily guarded house one night, set the bombs and -withdrew without any major incident. The explosion went off as planned, but as luck would have it, one of the'leader's bodyguards lingered for four days before he died in a refugee hospital. Fortunately, he never regained consciousness to tell the truth, but for those four days, Roe and his superiors lived in mortal dread that he would.

  It has been a close call. This time Roe wanted no mistakes. His squads were all Vietnam combat veterans, all .had worked for the Company on similar missions. Roe scattered his twenty-four three-man teams on strategic hillsides so they covered the nineteen missile sites Kevin and the old man considered Rose's probable potential targets. Captain Roe established his command post and kept a backup unit by the missile site where Parkins had died. The moon was waning. His men could barely be seen at six feet in the darkness. They watched silently in their tiger suits and camouflage paint. Each team had one man who monitored special sensory devices strategically placed through the area. Developed for use in the Southeast Asian jungle war, the small machines utilized heat-and sound-detection mechanisms to discover the presence of living animal bodies. Unfortunately, the devices cannot distinguish between animals and people or friends and foe. A number of B52 missions were flown against jungle animals and harmless peasants who registered on the detection devices monitored at distant base camps. The captain had a minimal faith in the machines used by themselves. He found them exceptionally valuable when they were backed up by observation teams.

  The captain was glad he was in charge of the less arduous night duty. The commander of the day shifts had to worry about making his highly visible teams look as though they were playing soldiers. Besides, Captain Roe knew any action would probably come at night. His orders read he was to stop a saboteur, and by God, that's what he intended to do. There would be no slipups this time.

  All of Captain Roe's men carried the small walkie-talkie radios equipped with earplugs pioneered for Secret Service use. The captain's men needed to stay in radio contact, but they couldn't afford to have a radio message suddenly boom through the still night air and betray their position. The senior team leaders each had a small, plug-in mike.

  The call came at 3:00 A.M.

  "Fox Four to Fox, Fox Four to Fox." The earphone hummed in the captain's ear. His second lightly touched his shoulder in case the captain hadn't heard. The captain squeezed his assistant's hand in affirmation as he whispered into his mike.

  "This is Fox. Transmit."

  "We have a reading from south of Prime missile. No visual confirmation yet. Over."

  "Understood. Keep me informed. Fox to all units, stand by.

  Captain Roe's technician nudged him and whispered, "We're picking it up too, sir. It's over the rise from Fox Four's position, so they can't get a visual."

  "Hand me the glasses," ordered Roe.

  The infrared binoculars were one of the Captain Roe's prized possessions. He slowly scanned the area south of the missile where Parkins had died. The glow from the missile's security lights interfered with his vision, but he didn't worry too much. He had that blind spot covered by Fox.

  Captain Roe might not have picked it out among the lumps of dirt, the tumbleweeds and the rocks if it hadn't moved just as he skimmed the glasses over its location. He turned the focus adjustment and concentrated on the image. He made out a hand, then a boxlike device. When the figure moved again, Roe saw the outline of a man. The color distortions of the infrared lenses did not prevent Roe from noticing the man's camouflage clothing. He watched the man briefly, then handed the glasses to his assistant. He smiled as he whispered into the mike.

  "This is Fox to all units. We have a confirmed -hostile one hundred yards south of the
Prime site. He's just on the east side of the ridge, about twenty yards from the gully. Fox Seven, Eight and Nine, cut off his retreat. Fox Three and Ten, block his west flank; Fox Eleven and Four, block his east side. Fox Fourteen cut down and take up position on the north side of the missile. Stay out of the glow so he can't see you. You'll block his access that way. I'm moving in with Fox Five. My team will go on the east side of the missile, Fox Five will cut along the west side. Fox Two will stay at command and coordinate. ETA is two minutes. We will apprehend on my signal. Go."

  Nurich had hidden the car behind a highway-maintenance gravel pile at a country-road intersection with Highway 2. He reasoned no one would bother it there at 2:30 in the morning. He shed his outer clothes, greased his face, donned dark protective camouflage gloves, checked his gear one final time and crossed two miles of fields to the missile site. He crawled much of the last three-quarters of a mile, carefully using natural cover whenever possible. Soviet intelligence experts disagreed on how much closed circuit TV security the missile sites used. Nurich didn't want to show up on -any Air Force monitoring machines.

  His superiors told him he needed only to get within a quarter mile of the site for. optimum readings, but they stressed that the closer he got, the better the results would be. He crawled one hundred yards before activating the machine. Five minutes later the small red light blinked, signifying the end of recording. Nurich slipped into the cumbersome pack and began crawling back the way he had come.

  He had gone less than twenty feet when they hit him with the portable spotlight. The bright glow momentarily blinded him. But before they had finished their command to "Halt! Stand and raise your hands above your head!" Nurich had drawn his. 45, loosened the straps on the machine and rolled to his left. He squeezed off two quick rounds. The Russians train their agents well. His second bullet shattered the glass and killed the spotlight. The heavy bullet continued through the metal flash-pan and smacked into the arm of the soldier who carelessly forgot to stand away from the light he held.

  Captain Roe's orders were to do all he could to capture the saboteur. He held his fire even after the man had wounded one of his men. Just maybe he could bring the agent back alive. He yelled for him to surrender once more.

  Nurich still did not know he had been ambushed. He assumed routine security guards had stumbled-onto him. He knew he had wounded one, and he doubted there could be more than a total of three guards. He knew he had to kill the other two before they could radio for reinforcements. He flicked the last strap holding him to the machine. He also punched the delayed self-destruct switch, rolling away from the machine just as Captain Roe yelled his second warning.

  One of the many lies Nurich's KGB superiors told him involved the self-destruct mechanism. They said it had a two-minute delay, enough time to set the switch, check it and get clear before the explosion. The switch actually was set for ten seconds, just enough time for Nurich to rectify a mistake if he accidentally tripped the self-destruct switch. When the switch was thrown, the machine emitted an easily identifiable buzz, and the technicians told Nurich that if he acted within twenty seconds, he could shut off the self-destruct mechanism. It was true that any operator faced with the accidental destruction of the machine could turn off the mechanism within seven seconds after the buzz began. All this suited Ryzhov's purposes admirably. If Nurich was to destroy the machine, there was no reason why the operator couldn't be found dead too. Such "accidents" happened, and a body would help draw the American's attention to the possibility of espionage.

  But Nurich didn't linger even ten seconds. He was almost twelve feet away when the explosion tore through the small machine, shredding it just enough to make complete reconstruction impossible for American intelligence technicians.

  The blast blew Nurich even farther from the machine. A few pieces of stray machine-turned-shrapnel cut his leg, but he escaped serious injury.

  The blast surprised Captain Roe who had no idea why it occurred. But he operated on the asumption that their enemy had exploded some type of grenade. That meant he was heavily armed, determined and very dangerous. It also meant Captain Roe was relieved. of the responsibility of exercising restraint in dealing with the saboteur. Not without some pleasure, he gave his squad the order to fire.

  The tumbling action of an M16 bullet shreds a metal ammunition can in a manner described as obscene. The blasts from the three M16's carried by Captain Roe's squad mangled Nurich Beyond that. The Soviet agent patriot died before he realized his predicament.

  Captain Roe studied the form lying before him on the ground. It looked unreal in the flashlight's glow. His assistant, thinking that perhaps his commander felt regret for having lost the chance to capture the saboteur, consoled his leader with, "You had no choice, sir. You had to fire."

  Captain Roe looked at his executive officer puzzledly. The captain-motioned for the sergeant carrying the radio connecting him to Malmstrorn to hand him the mike. Just before he-transmitted the news to the base, Captain Roe told his executive officer, "But of course, Lieutenant, I know that."

  Captain Roe never understood his executive officer's concern that night: After all, the game plan worked.

  17

  "I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!" Alice said at last. "There ought to be some men moving about somewhere-and so there are!" she added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's being played all over the world-if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join -though of course I should like to be a Queen, best!"

  The phone jarred Malcolm awake at 7:14 Saturday morning. The shrill ring startled him and he knocked his glasses off the bed table as he grabbed for the receiver. He cursed, picked the glasses up and lifted the receiver on the fourth ring.

  "Condor?" the voice asked coolly.

  "Yes?" replied Malcolm. He looked over his shoulder. Sheila lay on the bed, staring numbly at the ceiling. He moved his hand back toward her. Without looking at him, she slid her arm over the sheets, groping until she covered his hand with her own. He held the receiver away from his ear so she could hear.

  "This is Carl. We stopped a Soviet mission against the missile site early this morning. Rose is dead. The only loose end left is your little survey. Wrap that up Monday, say your good-byes to the town and return the vehicle to Malmstrom Air Base. Travel orders await you there."

  "I see," said Malcolm after Carl paused.

  "I have been instructed to inform you that we are pleased with your performance. While nothing concrete or usable came from all your efforts, you were an important part of the team."

  Malcolm angered Carl by not responding.

  "By the way," Carl continued, a snide note blatantly running through his tone, "the report on those people came through about an hour ago. You evidently gave us the wrong information because the authorities in what you said were their home areas have no records of them at all."

  Malcolm carefully controlled his reply. "I'm sorry if I made a mistake," he said flatly.

  "Hmmph. You needn't bother checking in again until you reach Malmstrom. The mission is operationally complete."

  Malcolm slowly replaced the receiver. He turned to look at Sheila. She avoided his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

  "You heard?" he asked.

  She slowly nodded her head.

  "I think Carl's wrong. There's something there, but before we do anything, you better, call Chou. Hell want to know, and I need him to help me with my ideas."

  Sheila slowly turned to him. She shook her head back and forth.

  Malcolm frowned. "What do you mean, no?" He slid across the bed and gently touched her cheek with his free hand. "We have to call him sooner or later, you know that."

  Malcolm felt a tear roll across his hand. Sheila put her arms around him and pulled him down. "Later," she whispered painfully, "call him lat
er. It doesn't make any difference for a while, but it will be too late for everything else if we call him now. Call him later. Hold me now. Hold me now."

  "And they gave you no other information?" Chou asked as he paced the room. "Nothing else about this man?" Chou tapped the candid picture of Rose the old man had sent four days before.

  "Nothing more, except what they found out or rather didn't find out about the Robinsons and the Kincaids."

  They had called Chou shortly before eleven. He arrived at their motel ten minutes after noon. Given that time interval, Malcolm still had no idea where he was staying. Chou could have been as close as a motel across town and deliberately delayed coming for an hour, or he could be staying in a town as far away as twenty miles.