by Rebecca York
“You’ve given me more than you can ever know.” He looked down, unable to meet her gaze. The impulse to lie to her, to tell her that there was some chance they might meet again, was overwhelming. Yet he understood that false hope was more cruel than no hope at all. There was one more thing, however, to leave her with—something that might bring her some measure of peace.
He turned his hand up to grasp her fingers. “You were drawn into danger by your loyalty to your friend Dan Eisenberg. Julie, the trust in Dan wasn’t misplaced. He was an honorable man, not a traitor to his country.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t tell you, but it’s true nevertheless.” Leaning over, he brushed his lips against her forehead, knowing that if he dared to kiss her mouth he wouldn’t be able to leave her at all. “Goodbye, dushenka. I leave part of my soul with you.”
“And mine with you,” she whispered.
He stood up, turned away, and walked rapidly out of the room.
She strained her ears, listening for the sound of the door closing. It was very faint. But when she heard it, the tears she’d held back through the night began trickling down her face one by one.
* * *
AMHERST GORDON put down the Teletype printouts and slapped his hand on the leather arm of his desk chair. “The crafty son of a bitch did it,” he chortled.
“I take it the Madrid crisis has finally broken?” Constance McGuire inquired evenly, swiveling from her computer screen to face her employer.
She might look calm, the Falcon thought, but he knew she was just as eager as he was for any news of their beleaguered operative.
“According to my information sources, all hell broke loose at the Russian embassy early yesterday morning.”
“Has the Raven made his move?”
“Yes, he flew the coop and he left a mess of chicken feathers flying.”
“Oh?”
“Well, we can start with Yuri Hramov. He was admitted to a Madrid hospital with a bullet in his ankle. The official reason was ‘an accident cleaning his gun,’ but if you believe that, you’ll believe the Soviets have just dismantled their nuclear arsenal.”
“So he was in on this.” Connie grimaced. “The comrade general likes rough company.”
“Well, he’s not going to enjoy the company he’s keeping now quite so much. Our sources report he was called back to Moscow to explain how the diplomatic pouch that was in the Madrid embassy safe for fourteen hours was tampered with.”
“Do we have any further word on the others who were supposed to be closing in on the Raven?” Connie questioned.
“Yes.” He permitted himself a grin as he held up a Kremlin report U.S. intelligence had just intercepted and decoded. “Aleksei Rozonov is also officially listed as being detailed back to headquarters. The agricultural attaché, Feliks Gorlov, is another one who’s in trouble,” he continued, his voice tinged with something that was close to glee. “It seems that besides dealing in wheat, he was also turning quite a personal profit in the Iberian drug market. Our sources now believe he was the real target for the San Jeronimo bombing. One of the local distributors wanted to get even for the Russian’s muscling in on the action. Eisenberg’s being there was nothing more than a tragic coincidence after all.”
Connie’s face registered a mixture of regret and relief. “It’s a damn shame they got Dan in his place. But at least the news on Gorlov clears up the drug connection.”
“Thank God, yes. That’s another one we owe the Raven.”
“I still can’t believe Gorlov was the ringer in this. The man was really taking chances.”
“Yes. The Raven must have ferreted out his underworld involvement and used it as a diversion to cover his escape. I think he also raised some questions about Georgi Krasin having had an affair with a British agent. But I’m not sure what that’s all about yet.”
Connie studied her employer’s face, knowing he was keeping back a critical piece of information. “Do we know the Raven is safely away or are they secretly holding him somewhere for interrogation?” she finally ventured.
Gordon’s expression became serious. For a few minutes he’d allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the Russians’ embarrassment. Now he could no longer ignore his own problems. He sighed. “Dammit, Connie, there’s no way to know for certain yet. There was no escape tunnel in Madrid. If he makes it out of Europe, it’s going to have to be by a circuitous route. We’ll have to keep the contacts open and pray that he surfaces soon—and with the Topaz documents.”
* * *
HE WAS ON THE RUN and he knew how a lone wolf must feel hunted across the tundra. Of course, he wasn’t in the frozen north, but still, at night, there was simply no way to keep himself warm.
The first thing the hunters would have done was lay traps at all the obvious routes out of Spain. That was why he had headed cross-country for the mountains.
The Raven had been prepared to disappear almost since the moment he’d put the Topaz material back in the embassy safe. But he hadn’t expected to find Yuri Hramov tiptoeing across the main room of his apartment quite so early in the morning. On the other hand, Bogolubov’s thug didn’t know his target had taken the precaution of installing a silent alarm at the front door. The sixty-second warning had determined who ended up on the floor writhing in pain.
After tying up the intruder, he’d even had time for a little question-and-answer session. Hramov had gasped out a very interesting piece of information about one of the Raven’s fellow embassy employees that fitted in perfectly with his plans to leave in a cloud of thick Madrid smog. Even though every second counted now, he’d stopped to put in a call back to KGB headquarters that would give them another quarry to chase besides himself.
It had always struck him how quickly modern civilization vanished in Spanish countryside. The hilly terrain northeast of Madrid was crisscrossed with goat and sheep trails. Now, dressed in a well-worn peasant outfit, he was following a trail to Navarra and the Pyrenees. The rough clothing made him look like a local. In addition, he had used other tricks to change his appearance. He’d stopped shaving, and his heavy beard had already begun to conceal his strong jaw. The dark bangs he had combed downward almost met his thick eyebrows, making his forehead disappear.
His plans were flexible, but the first step was to get out of Spain. During his tour in Iberia he’d made some contacts in the ETA, the Basque separatist group, and cultivated them on a personal level. He wouldn’t turn his back on the Basques for a minute. But he knew the terrorist organization had ways of getting people across the border and even out of Europe entirely. They also needed funds. His passage could be bought with some of the money the Falcon had transferred to his secret Madrid bank account.
Of course, the transaction ate at his conscience. Giving money to terrorists was tantamount to buying them guns and ammunition so they could kill someone else. He wasn’t sure his hide was worth it. But the information he had was. Even though he’d left a copy of the Topaz report in a safe place, he couldn’t be sure it would make it out of the country. With his most reliable Peregrine links broken, his only way to alert the Falcon that something was coming had been to mail an encoded letter to a post office box in Virginia. But he had no way of knowing whether that route was still open.
Night turned into day, and the June weather was hot. Pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he took a drink from his canteen. He could have walked the whole two hundred miles in about eight days if he’d pushed. Luckily, he had the offer of an occasional ride on a hay wagon.
There was still plenty of time, however, to think about his predicament as he hiked the uneven terrain, his few possessions in a canvas rucksack slung over his shoulder. He’d told himself for years that he wouldn’t be leaving anything behind, but now that he’d actually made the break with everything he’d known, his heart was heavy. He didn’t really know what kind of life he was going to. Right now he wasn’t even sure how he was going to contact the Falcon. But that
would be of no importance if he failed to get out of Spain alive.
He avoided the towns, except for brief forays to replenish his food supply. Any contact with civilization made him jumpy. It was no paranoid delusion that the KGB had informers in the most unlikely places. The reward for turning him in was probably more than a peasant’s yearly income. So he slept in the open on the hard ground, not daring to allow himself the comfort of a campfire. His daily ablutions were made in the icy water of mountain streams.
The inhabitants of the ETA encampment he found on the eighth day might have dismissed him as a tramp to be robbed of any valuables and disposed of—except for his manner of arrival. Because he knew the clandestine community’s approximate location, he discovered the position of the southwestern sentry before the man discovered him. They came walking into camp together, the lookout moving carefully to avoid being shot by the automatic pressed firmly against the small of his back. The bravado entrance was a gesture calculated to win instant respect among men who lived as outlaws in the rugged mountains on Spain’s northern border. It had the desired effect.
Not long after demanding to see the leader of the group, he was sitting in a snug mountain cave eating his first bowl of hot stew in over a week. Between bites of goat meat and onion he explained what he needed. His major disappointment was that the head man he’d met with in the past had been killed by the Spanish civil guard during a raid on Pamplona just weeks earlier. His short, fair-haired replacement was a stranger who obviously viewed this new arrival with extreme mistrust.
At the mention of ample payment for services rendered, the expression in the blond man’s calculating gray eyes changed for the better. Yet he still failed to inspire any genuine trust. For a moment the Raven considered walking out of camp and trying to find another group of rebel Basques. But he suspected he might well be tracked and his throat quietly slit the moment fatigue forced him to close his eyes. These were men who dared not trust the location of their camp to a hostile stranger.
The Raven repressed a sigh. With his ties to the Peregrine Connection temporarily severed, coming here in the first place had been one of his very few escape options. He was a man hunted by his own people—and for all he knew, hunted by the other side as well.
Tipping his stool back against the wall of the cave he wiped up the last of the stew gravy with a piece of coarse bread and chewed it thoughtfully. He had been in worse situations and come out alive. His best strategy—probably his only strategy—was to play his cards as though he dealt from a position of strength, and hope that there was some honor among thieves.
* * *
SPECIAL AGENT Richard Borman took off his tortoiseshell glasses, set them on the desk beside him, and gave the woman across from him a level look. “Ms. McLean, you’ve been fairly cooperative in contributing to the State Department’s investigation of the Eisenberg murder.”
Fairly cooperative! Julie thought, looking curiously back at him. There was something about his close-cropped ash-blond hair, fair skin, and rigid posture that reminded her of Cal Dixon. The comparison did nothing to make her feel at ease. He wasn’t trying to help her relax either.
The tone of his voice implied that she had been anything but helpful. Yesterday she’d been led to believe that the questioning sessions were drawing to a close. But this morning Borman had taken the place of the two investigators she’d talked to for most of the week since her return to Washington and had started picking away at details she’d thought were already a matter of record. As she’d talked, his half-lidded gaze made her feel like a suspect rather than a trusted employee being debriefed at State Department headquarters. Was she going to have to go through the whole thing again for him? And why?
They had moved from yesterday’s conventional-looking office to a matchbox-size room that was already starting to give her claustrophobia. She had lost track of how many hours she had spent being grilled. Since security had made it clear that she wouldn’t be released from the State Department until they’d evaluated her part in the Madrid affair, she’d been desperately dredging up every piece of pertinent information she could think of.
She’d gone into detail about her relationship with Dan, her association with Cal, her conversations with Aleksei, and her narrow escape from death the night she’d received the note. The only thing she’d held back was her personal involvement with the Russian agent. In retrospect, that wasn’t so difficult to accomplish. The experience had been incredible, but so intensely private that she had wanted to lock it in a secret place in her heart like a finely cut, perfect white diamond nestled in a velvet-lined box. Only when she was alone did she dare take it out and admire its beauty.
She leaned back in the padded steel chair and straightened her shoulder. “I’ve been cooperating as best I can, Mr. Borman,” she said.
“But perhaps you haven’t told us everything.”
She stared back. His voice was mild enough. But something in the way his mud green eyes regarded her like a mutant cell under a microscope made her mouth go suddenly dry. “What do you mean?” she managed.
He paused and took out a government form. “Oh, yes, I’d better have your signature consenting to have this interview recorded and videotaped.”
That had been standard procedure throughout the week. Julie had read the form carefully the first few times. Now she scribbled her signature impatiently on the line indicated and pushed the paper back in Borman’s direction.
“Let’s continue.” His voice suddenly took on a hard edge. “Ms. McLean, we have reason to believe that you and Rozonov were involved in a sexual relationship.”
Julie’s heart stopped for a moment, then restarted in double time. Her first impulse was to grab back and tear up the consent form she had just signed.
“Is that correct?” Borman persisted.
“You have no right to ask me anything about that,” she shot back.
“Then you admit that there is something to discuss.”
“I admit nothing.” She started to stand up.
“Just a moment, Ms. McLean. I don’t have to remind you that collaborating with known enemy agents is a felony punishable by imprisonment.”
“Then I don’t have anything to worry about. I haven’t collaborated with an enemy agent.” Underneath the bravado, she could hear fear creeping into her voice.
“Maybe you had better let me be the judge of your involvement.”
Instead of continuing immediately, he rested his chin on his thumb and forefinger and regarded her speculatively. Under the scrutiny, Julie felt each breath become a pain in her chest. Why didn’t he go on? She forced herself not to ask.
Finally he cleared his throat. “Let’s try a slightly different tack. Did Rozonov ever touch you?”
Julie stared back. Under the table she clenched her hands together and tried to make herself think calmly before answering. God, was the hidden camera recording every play of emotion on her face? Touching someone was not a crime, she reminded herself.
“Ms. McLean, you’re taking a rather long time with your answer,” Borman observed, leaning toward her.
“Yes, he touched me.”
“When?”
“He pushed me away from the falling stone ornament. And—and—he put his arm around me to comfort me afterward.”
“Ah... And in the hotel room where he took you, did he touch you intimately?”
There was a roaring in her ears. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, while he was—um—comforting you, did he try to physically arouse you? Or for that matter, did he try at any time to gain your loyalty through sexual involvement?”
“My God. You have a filthy mind. The only contact I had with Rozonov, that would have any relevance to you, was when I was carrying out the orders of Calvin Dixon.” She’d phrased the statement so that it wasn’t a lie, but her eyes remained fixed on a picture of the President in back of Borman.
“Mr. Dixon thinks otherwise.”
Julie’s e
yes widened. So this was Cal’s parting present. “That bastard! he has no reason to think that, except for his own overactive imagination.”
Borman took a minute to look through the folder in front of him. “When was the last time you had sexual relations with anyone?”
“That’s entirely irrelevant. I don’t have to answer that.” What right did this stranger have to be probing into her sex life like a dentist drilling into a cavity without bothering to use Novocain?
“I’m afraid it is relevant. According to Dixon, your sexual contacts in Madrid were very limited.”
“You mean I’m damned if I did and damned if I didn’t?” Had the CIA been watching her bedroom door for three years?
“Ms. McLean, I have to assume from your psychological profile that you’re a normal woman with normal needs. If you were sexually inactive, that might have made you very vulnerable to the advances of a skilled foreign agent.”
Julie’s nails dug into the flesh of her palm. The idea that making love with Aleksei could be reduced to “the advances of a skilled foreign agent” was unthinkable. Or was it? Had that been what had happened, or was Borman intentionally tying her up in knots?
He pursed his lips. “Of course, there is this one fact that has me puzzled. If you weren’t sexually active, why did you have a standing order with the post pharmacy for birth control pills?”
Julie took a deep, steadying breath. “Mr. Borman, I’m surprised that you haven’t been over my medical record with as much care as you spent on my psychological profile. If you’d perused it, you would have discovered that I had monthly menstrual cramps that were interfering with my ability to do my job.” The very clinical explanation was issued between clenched teeth. “And now that I’ve satisfied your prurient interest, I think that’s all I’m going to say.”
“Then you’ll be willing to swear to all this under a lie detector test?”
“Yes,” Julie replied evenly. God, what if it came to that? She’d just have to pray that it didn’t.