Never Look Back

by Ridley Pearson

  He steered the vehicle into a self-serve gas station, parked by the pumps, and began filling the tank. As he stood by the car, hand squeezing the cold metal bar, he glanced over to a coin-operated newspaper dispenser, which was chained to a steel post by the station’s door: Although a fine wire mesh partially obscured the front page, there was no mistaking the headline:

  BULGARIAN AGENT SOUGHT IN INTERNATIONAL MANHUNT!

  He released the handle, stopping the gas, and ducked behind the Buick, so that the station attendant could not see him clearly. He returned to the front seat. His face was an angry red.

  Lydia, still trying to think of a way to convince him to keep her on the assignment, was just then adding some pale red lipstick to her lips.

  “Finish filling the tank,” he demanded, slamming his door. He groped for his wallet, fished it from his back pocket, and handed her a twenty. “Pay the man, and buy one of those newspapers.” He cocked his head. “In the stand over there.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Do as I say! Hurry!”

  Lydia felt perspiration break out under her arms. What is it? she wondered. He’s scared to death!

  In a few minutes, she returned with the newspaper, frowning as she scanned the article. She opened the passenger door, her face the color of ash.

  “No! You drive!” he commanded, and snatched the paper from her.

  UPI—Memphis—The United States intelligence agencies are searching for Leonid Borikowski—the so-called man of a hundred faces—in connection with the alleged murder of a Canadian agent Thursday night at Dorval International Airport, this according to CWN correspondent, Karen Kwang.

  Borikowski, a Durzhauna Sigurnost field operative, is a known assassin and advisor to terrorist organizations such as the Italian Red Brigade and the Middle East’s Z, and is said to have close ties with international assassin Carlos.

  Borikowski is believed to be in the Great Lakes region, and traveling alone. He is reportedly an expert in disguise and language. Kwang revealed three photos, allegedly all of Borikowski. All photos show different men. Border patrols between the United States and Canada have been increased, and State Police in sixteen northern states have been put on alert.

  The public is advised the man is armed and…

  “Bitch!”

  “I can’t believe it!” But Lydia was secretly pleased. Perfect! She knew what this meant.

  “Bitch!” he shouted again.

  “What do we do?”

  He looked over at her. The car was still parked in the station. Incredulous, he hollered, “Drive! Get me out of here, you idiot! They’re staring at us! Drive!”

  She looked over her shoulder, her face red, and saw the attendant staring through the dirty glass of the window. She steered the car out of the station.

  “Slow down! Don’t draw attention to us.” Then he added, still reading, “It’s terrible! How could this woman know this? I’m ruined. This operation’s been foul from the beginning. Why is it our superiors can never organize a workable operation? Fools!” Then, quickly correcting himself, “Forget I said that. I did not mean it that way.” He knew that such words repeated could bring him undue complications at home.

  “How does it affect—”

  “Shhh!” He continued reading.

  He read the article through twice.

  “Okay,” he finally said, “we think this out. First, I must travel alone for the next thirty-six hours. These are my orders. However, I may need another face—something I had hoped to avoid—later on. We will, therefore, arrange a possible rendezvous, as I was instructed to do in the event my cover was blown.”

  “But with your cover blown, aren’t you taking a risk?”

  “You’re damn right I am! But my orders are clear. Damn! Stupid American press! Stupid operation. I’m a walking target now… a walking target!” He read the paper yet again.

  Then he said, “We need to kill a few hours. Get back on the highway and find a rest area. We have to make new plans….”

  11:07 P.M.

  Columbus Grove, Ohio

  Ellen Bauer rounded the corner, looking up at the moon as it struggled to be seen through spotty gray-black clouds. Winking.

  Are you laughing at me, Mr. Moon? Are you? Laughing at my accent like everyone in school? Damn you. Damn them all!

  She walked down her long gravel driveway, which her uncle referred to as an “alley”—words that annoyed her. It led to a small brown-shingled one-car garage, which her landlords had remodeled and now rented. Cute. Quaint.

  Her uncle didn’t approve because of the resulting isolation. He didn’t want his niece living tucked away off the beaten path, forty yards from the nearest house—a house that was now vacant, although she had avoided telling him that. Her landlords had won a sweepstakes, and were off in Florida. Or was it Mexico? Somewhere.

  Unlocking the door to her little apartment, she opened it and entered. She switched on the light and reached to push the door shut, but her hand hit fabric. Spinning on her heels, her arms flailed instinctively, attempting to defend herself. Her mouth fell open to scream but no sound came out. Her knees rattled. There was more than just the one man—a man whose face was as bland and pale and lifeless as a cheap Halloween mask—for another gloved hand slapped around her head with such force that it split her lip, filling her with so much fear that her head swam in a fuzzy haze, passing quickly into utter darkness.

  11:30 P.M.

  Columbus Grove, Ohio

  Lydia and Borikowski had spent three hours parked in the car in a highway rest stop. They bought dinner from the drive-in window of a McDonald’s. Then she dropped him off at the Dunkin Donuts at 11:30, exactly as planned. Her nine-millimeter semi-automatic lay inside its holster, under his left arm. Some locals were watching a high school football game on the television.

  On the way in he passed a coin-operated newsstand and considered putting a quarter into the machine, removing all the copies, and dumping them into a trash can not five feet away. But he resisted. A mistake now could cost him dearly.

  Moments after ordering a jelly-filled and a cup of black coffee, another man entered and sat on the pink stool to Borikowski’s right. His face was as bland and pale as a cheap Halloween mask. He ordered a jelly-filled and a cup of black coffee and set some car keys on the counter. These keys fit the rented Dodge parked just outside. The eight dollars the man set down clearly in Borikowski’s view had another meaning entirely: a total of eight special agents had made it onto the continent, eight of Spetsnaz’s Kolyma squad.

  Borikowski slipped his hand over the keys and whisked them away with the deftness of a magician, tucking them into his coat pocket.

  The jelly-filled wasn’t too bad, although certainly beneath comparison to a fresh French pastry.

  Four Polaroids depicting a nude and bound woman had been left for Borikowski in the glove compartment of the Dodge. He slipped them into his sports coat pocket, along with the ammunition clip they had left him as well. The clip held seven very expensive, miniaturized drug-dart bullets.

  It was time to follow the memorized map in his head—time to locate the Pine Ridge Motel, pick up a room key, and wait out the night in a much-needed sleep.

  His patience was beginning to fray. The actor was nervous. Curtain call in a matter of hours.

  11:32 P.M.

  Detroit, Michigan

  A bouquet of flowers had been delivered to the front desk.

  It was from Parker Lyell.

  The envelope was sealed. The note inside was taped shut on three sides, insuring it had not been tampered with.

  It read:

  1) You are rated HOT.

  2) JACKPOT.

  3) NT yes. Pit Stop, twelve midnight.

  Contact Dominique.

  PW = Taylor’s handle

  PL

  HOT meant that Andy’s security could not be assured, and so he was either to return to Washington or continue undercover, but under no circumst
ances was he to phone the SIA until Lyell provided him with a new rating. Instead Lyell would be his contact. Dialogue was now restricted to handwritten messages such as these, and/or Chris Daniels’ Crossword Codes, which, if used, would appear in the morning papers for several days to Come.

  This did not alarm Andy. It was standard operating procedure to rate an agent HOT following an abduction attempt. Andy laughed inside at the fact that the new rating had taken nearly a day to be put into effect. It proved that in some ways the SIA was no different than other government offices. He assumed Stone would have experts sweep the SIA offices and phone lines for listening devices and would try and make certain the SIA was not the site of compromised information. Within twenty-four hours Andy’s rating would change to WARM, and then soft codes would be reinstated and communications reestablished.

  JACKPOT meant that the Montreal informant wanted another meeting, and Andy thought it strange this would not be handled by another agent. Why me? he wondered. Why do I have to go all the way back there? Someone fouled up the arrangements. What a pain in the ass.

  The most urgent information was the news of Testler. Contact made. Twelve midnight. Andy flipped through the Yellow Pages and found the Pit Stop listed under nightclubs. He wrote down the address and turned to a page in the front of the directory that showed a map of the city and located the street. Taylor had been Duncan’s middle name. Duncan’s handle, or code name, had been Hummingbird, and Testler wanted to use that for the password.

  It was going to be a busy night. The romance, which had not yet begun, was over. He finally asked her loudly, “Do you still keep a wad tucked away?”

  “How much is a wad these days?” she asked, peering around the corner and into the living room.

  “Two thousand.”

  “That is a wad!” She forced cheer onto her face and left the ice cream melting on the kitchen table. “Come on. I’ll show you lesson one in outsmarting the common criminal.” Her hand begged him to take hold, waving in the air at the end of a rigid arm. They headed toward her bedroom, as she explained, “I’ve been robbed four-times in this apartment. They’ve never found the cash. They end up with appliances and an occasional piece of jewelry.”

  “Four times?” Amazed.

  “Yes. But they never look inside my dresses.” She swung open a bifold louvered door and revealed a perfectly ordered and well-organized display of the latest fashions. She reached across him to take hold of a canary yellow evening gown. It was white-cuffed and, Andy thought, very smart. She unfastened a safety pin and withdrew a small speared stack of twenties and hundreds from within the dress.

  A purple skirt yielded five hundred dollars. An evening gown, three hundred.

  Andy had never fully understood her fascination with cash. She never had less than a thousand dollars available at any given time, and always had it stashed in trick hiding places: everything from tennis ball cans to fake toothpaste tubes. She called it “escape money,” but it was more than a reserve fund. It was a toy. He supposed the attitude was due in part, if not in full, to the security of a generous trust fund, and that the trust made this sum look like so much spare change.

  She was counting.

  “You do this, even with the Irishm—?”

  “Billy came after the robberies. Haven’t had one since.” She thumbed the last bill. “Seventeen hundred and fifty dollars.” She waved the stack.

  “You’ve gone insane!”

  She smiled wisely. “No. I’ve gone sober. There’s a big difference.” She held the stack high in the air. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “No deals,” he replied.

  “No cash,” she told him bluntly, pulling a string that turned off an overhead light, and closing the bifold doors.

  “What’s the deal?”

  “I’ll give you this, if you’ll return here after the meeting. I keep your suitcase as collateral.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “Business.”

  “I can’t make a guarantee, Mari. If there’s a flight available later tonight, I’ll have to take it.”

  “I didn’t ask you for a guarantee.” She leaned slightly against the bifold doors and they moved. Her arms, and the money, were held behind her in a warm and intentional pose. “I asked to keep your suitcase.”

  He wanted to make love with her. Right now. Standing up.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “I promise to try.”

  She stuck out her hand. “Deal.” And she offered him the money.

  11:50 P.M.

  The door to the Pit Stop was painted a black-and-white checkerboard, like the winner’s flag, and was down an alley. Chunks of wood burned in a trash can, but no one stood by it. Andy walked up to the fire, and that was when a voice said “Bonjour.”

  Andy, his face lit by the yellow fire, peered into the blackness and patted the bulge at his side. A short, stringy man stepped out from a darkened doorway. “You stand in the doorways, the wind doesn’t bite,” he said with a French accent.

  The man stepped forward and Andy could see him better: French cheekbones and eyes, a dirty, colorless beret cocked over half an ear—the other half rumored to have been lost to a German in the North African campaign—bloodshot eyes, and a mouth with only a few brown and pitted teeth. He spoke with such a strong accent that he was difficult to understand. “What do you wish?”

  “You are Dominique?”

  “What is the word?”

  “Hummingbird.”

  “He’s upstairs. That door over there. Room three hundreds and twenty-six.” Dominique pulled a cigarette from behind his whole ear and lit it with the stroke of a wooden match. The sulfur cloud partially hid his thin face. “Three flights up. Room three hundreds and twenty-six.”

  “I understand.” Andy handed the man a twenty. “Merci, Dominique.”

  “Oui, m’sieu. And I remain right here, until your departure. This time of night that is the only exit, m’sieu. You will give our mutual friend no trouble.” The bill disappeared into a hand that pointed down the alley. He repeated, “Room three hundreds and twenty-six.”

  “Go back to your wind break, my friend. This won’t take long.”

  They both nodded.

  Andy walked away, leaving the Frenchman to his cigarette and the dark of the doorway.

  He turned the knob and pushed against the door and it opened freely. He stepped inside a confined entranceway, with the stairway to his right, and closed the door, shutting out all light. Allowing his eyes time to adjust, he experienced the familiar anxiety of an unfamiliar place. He couldn’t help but think of the two men in the park, and whether those same two—or even more—might be here, waiting to try again.

  The stairway climbed straight in front of him, a crippled banister on the left, an age-cracked wall of crumbling plaster on his right. The steps were warped and bowed by years of traffic. He eased his foot onto the first and listened for the inevitable squeak, and as it occurred, began to sing an old sailor’s song. His melody was off; his lyrics nearly unintelligible, but the drunken tongue quite convincing:

  “Ayee… Swallow me down me grog and me mate

  Her puddin’ is tastin’ as sweet as a date…”

  He continued to climb the creaking staircase, continued to sing:

  “T’ was the first time I’d sawn her

  To port I had come…”

  Up past the first landing, then the second with its stale beer odor and its broken window.

  His heart raced ahead of the tempo, eyes on a string, back and forth, back and forth. He climbed toward the light on the third landing:

  “Aaay, swallow me down me grog in the heat,

  When me bullion is heavy and me rum it is sweet…”

  As he reached the third floor he let his voice fade, then was silent, standing with gun ready, barrel pointing to the ceiling, staring at five well-spaced bare bulbs hanging on chains so covered with dust that they looked more like unsupported gray sticks nailed to the ceiling.
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br />   In the silence, the drumming of his heart thundered in his ears. His shadow changed from giant to midget, and appeared both before and behind him. To his right, number 322.

  Two doors to go…

  A cat screeched in the alley, its wail muffled by the roar of blood rushing past Andy’s ears. With his back against the time-worn wall, he inched down the colorless hallway, the grays and dirt-whites blended into an unforgiving drabness. Alert for any sign of trouble, he passed 324, and stood before 326.

  He wanted to trust Testler, but decided not to.

  Inhaling deeply, he cocked his leg back, hoping the door would yield to his first hard kick. Nervously he counted: three, two, one…

  He threw all his weight into it. The door tore open. He leaped into a somersault, smacking the floor, and then jumped to his feet, gun trained on Testler, who was sitting at a table, a game of solitaire spread before him, clutching a Swedish pistol that he had aimed at the doorway.

  “Don’t, Nicky!” Andy commanded from the end of the bed.

  With his gun and full attention still aimed at the door, Testler complained, “You’re early. You scared me half to death. You broke my friend’s door. What’s wrong with you?” Then, trying to sound as pleasant as a shoe salesman, he said, “Hello, Andy.”

  “Let’s put them down.”

  “Agreed.”

  Testler set the gun down on the table, well out of immediate reach; Andy returned his to his holster.

  “You’re angry. You think I arranged last night?”

  “What the hell should I think?”

  “I suggested you ride with me in the car,” Testler said. Andy noted the undue amount of black curly hair on the man’s neck, and the permanent suede color of his skin. And when the light caught Testler’s profile, despite his pointed face, he appeared even handsome.

  Testler explained, “I discovered the phone tap through a friend, fifteen minutes before I left to meet you. Then, you know, I was positive we had trouble. I tried to warn you.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled toward the lamp.

  Andy realized that Testler could have seemed casual with a soldering iron up his ass. He told him, “I won’t believe you, Nicky, no matter what you say. We had better just get on with it. I’m sure you understand.”