by Jon Land
Blaine knew his next step had to come now and threw himself forward without further thought.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
His scream pierced the night and froze the tour group in its tracks just as it was supposed to. In that same instant, he had his pistol out and was firing in the direction of the black cars, for distraction as much as anything. He had done the last thing the Russians would have expected, and the action allowed him to take control of the crowd’s movement. As his gunshots resounded, the tour patrons hit the ground screaming, taking them out of the line of fire from the street.
The suddenness of McCracken’s motion had stopped the men in the Mercedes from signalling and had forced the over-coated men to take cover. By the time the enemy had recovered their senses, Blaine had reached the side of the bus and fired four bullets up the hill at the charging figures who had stayed near the rear of the pack. Two of the men went down quickly, and then a third.
Just one bullet left, and no time to snap his last clip home… .
Automatic fire sliced into the side of the bus. Two over-coated men rushed across the street trying to better their angles as Blaine moved to the open door of the bus. McCracken climbed the steps with his frame low. He saw that the driver, slumped over the wheel, must have been hit by a stray bullet. Blaine pulled the man’s head back, and saw the protruding tongue and purplish features in time to realize he had been strangled. Suddenly a figure rose out of the darkness in the back of the bus.
Blaine fired his last bullet, but he was still in motion himself, and the shot went off target. It hit the bolt of the Russian’s machine gun and jammed it. More machine gun fire pounded the bus as McCracken yanked the dead driver away from the wheel and crouched low in his place. The keys were still in the ignition and he turned them. The bus engine coughed, then caught.
McCracken saw the Russian charging him from the rear, knife in hand now, and floored the accelerator pedal as he shifted into gear. The bus lurched forward suddenly and the attacking Russian toppled over backwards.
Enough bullets had found the tires to make for a bouncy, grinding ride. Blaine kept his head just above the dashboard as more automatic fire sliced through the few remaining windows. He concentrated on keeping the bus straight against its determined efforts to waver out of control. The big vehicle weaved one way and then the other, Blaine’s frantic spins of the wheel inevitably an instant late. What remained of his side mirror showed the Mercedes sedans in hot pursuit with gun-wielding men hanging out windows in both. Blaine raced the bus past the Roman Market and the Library of Hadrian, then screeched into a left toward the familiar surroundings of Monastiraki Square. He had a fleeting sad thought of shop-owner Stadipopolis’s children, who would now grow up orphans after all.
It was the sound of a boot grinding against the steel floor behind him that made Blaine swing around, and the motion saved his life. The Russian’s knife missed him and tore into the fabric of the seat back. The bus careened wildly out of control through Monastiraki Square, smashing through the outdoor tables and sheds. McCracken struggled to control the wheel with one hand while the other reached back for the Russian.
Behind him the two sedans weaved an ever-changing course to avoid the wreckage in the bus’s wake. McCracken heard more than saw them as he fought the Russian behind him. The man was raising his knife once more and Blaine knew in that instant there was no way he could possibly deflect the blow. There was only one thing he could do.
He jammed on the brakes.
The Russian went flying toward the windshield, separated from the knife. Stomping on the accelerator again, Blaine grasped the man’s hair with his free hand while his other hand worked the wheel frantically one way and then the other, tearing the front of a shop out on one side of the street and then weaving into a second across the way.
The two Mercedes sedans spun into each other, looking like bumper cars at an amusement park as they spun out of control. The skilled drivers managed to right the ruined vehicles and get them back on the bus’s tail, but McCracken had widened the gap.
Blaine slammed the Russian’s face into the bus’s dashboard again and again until the man had gone limp. He watched the man slump to the floor, then turned his attention back to the road. He spun the wheel hard to the left onto one of many smaller side streets which cut through the Kerameikos district, looking for a place to dump the wounded Russian. He had lost sight of the Mercedes sedans and clung to the hope that they had given up the chase. Blaine turned the wheel just as hard to the right down yet another side street.
He saw the horse-drawn carriage much too late to do anything but slam on the brakes and work the wheel madly. But riding on two rims and two bad tires, the bus could do nothing but lock up and roll over onto its side, missing the carriage as it slid down the street into a row of parked cars and then a building. McCracken felt his consciousness wavering and realized the initial roll had slammed him against the door. The bus had come to a halt with the door on the bottom, so he pushed his aching body upward. Blood poured down his face from a nasty gash on his forehead. He used the steel first-aid kit to knock out the remnants of a window so he could pull himself out. He smelled gasoline and heard a hissing from the engine.
Blaine managed to get his torso through the shattered window and, with considerably more effort, his legs as well. But his balance was gone and he tumbled hard to the sidewalk with the world blurring in and out of blackness.
The sound of screeching tires had him moving again and the sight of the two approaching sedans had him trying for yet another escape. He stumbled and staggered, his body a mass of pain. His gun was gone, and it was empty in any case. Blaine limped toward a shop with its light still on.
Bullets hit the ground near his feet. Car doors opened and men poured out to give chase.
Damn! He shouldn’t have tried running. He should have known they would spot him instantly.
Still staggering, he reached a sidewalk and nearly tripped on the curb. He pulled himself along the buildings now, refusing to give up. There had to be a way to survive. A weapon he could make use of, something …
A flood of automatic fire sent him diving to the sidewalk and crawling desperately for cover that didn’t exist. It seemed over. By all rights it should have been.
The small car coming toward him with high beams blazing surprised him as much as it did the Russians. They swung suddenly, awash in the light, and darted aside when it seemed certain the small car was intent on running them over. At the last instant the car, a Volkswagen Beetle, swung away from them for the curb, and slowed down between the downed McCracken and his pursuers. In the next second, an Ingram machine gun poked out the driver’s window and commenced firing at the shocked Russians. They returned the fire.
McCracken watched in a daze. If he was being rescued, this had to be a dream and soon he would wake up dead. But then the passenger door was thrown open and through the darkness he made out the coldest pair of eyes he had ever seen in a woman’s face.
“Get in!” the woman shouted. She never stopped firing.
Chapter 13
THE CAR BUCKED AS the woman jammed down on the accelerator. McCracken managed to get the door closed as the Beetle lurched toward the gun-wielding Russians.
“Who the he—”
The rest of Blaine’s words were lost in a hail of gunfire and glass as the windshield shattered. He ducked low, head near the gearshift, and felt the shards spray him. The woman swung the wheel hard, still firing out the driver’s side window with her Ingram.
“Shift into second!” she ordered Blaine.
He did as he was told, frozen by the fiercely resolved glare on the woman’s face. He had seen enough professionals before to know he was looking at one now.
More gunshots sounded behind them, one shattering the rear window. The Volkswagen stayed straight, the Russians thus forced to rush back for their heavily damaged Mercedes sedans.
“Third,” the woman started, hesitating as a corner
came up. “Now!”
Again Blaine obliged and sat up in his seat. The woman pulled the Ingram back inside and handed it over to him, eyes alternating between the side and rearview mirrors.
“I want you to know I don’t kiss on the first date,” Blaine told her.
The woman seemed not to hear him. Her eyes maintained their intensity, narrowing suddenly.
“Damn,” she uttered, “they’re on us.”
And the Beetle picked up speed. The woman swung right off Sari Street onto a narrow side road lacking a sign. The glare of headlights shimmered off the rearview mirror as the sedans screeched round in pursuit. The woman took another right and headed straight toward an alleyway connecting this street with another. When they were almost upon it, Blaine realized its narrowness, realized even the small Volkswagen would have no chance of negotiating through it.
“Hey,” he started. “Hey!”
Again the woman ignored him, gritting her teeth and downshifting to lower the Beetle’s speed as it sped into the alley with barely four inches to spare on either side. Sparks flew as the driver’s door grazed the cement building on its side. The woman overcompensated a bit too much and Blaine’s door smashed inward.
The woman remained expressionless. The end of the alley was just thirty yards ahead. Again headlights flashed in the rearview mirror, this time dimly. Blaine turned behind him, smiling.
“Come on, you fuckers,” he urged the oncoming Russians. “Try it.”
They did, but the driver of the lead Mercedes realized the narrow width of the alley too late to pull back. He managed to brake just before the Mercedes crashed into a pair of buildings. The second sedan smacked into it solidly from behind, compressing the back end to match the crushed front, so that the lead Mercedes resembled an accordion.
The woman swung right onto Evripidou Street and eased the Beetle’s speed back with the appearance of more traffic.
“Next time I think I’ll leave the driving to Greyhound,” Blaine told her, wiping the blood and sweat from his eyes with a swipe of his sleeve.
“We have little time,” she told him flatly and Blaine noticed her accent was foreign. He felt a chill.
“You’re Russian, aren’t you?” he managed.
“Since birth,” the woman replied without looking at him.
“We have much to discuss,” the woman said as she locked the door of the hotel room behind them.
“Like to know your name,” Blaine said. “Might help avoid confusion during the course of our conversation.”
The hotel was located three blocks from his but was not listed in any brochure or travel guide. It catered mostly to patrons who booked by the hour, perhaps night, and never in advance. There were no sheets on the bed, and there was barely any furniture besides a single chair and small dresser. The window was dirt-stained, with parts of its lower rim painted over.
“Natalya Illyevich Tomachenko,” the woman said by way of belated introduction.
Blaine’s eyes wandered. “KGB. I’ve heard of you.”
“And I have heard of you, Mr. McCracken.”
“My friends call me Blaine.”
“We are not friends, just allies thrust together out of necessity.”
“I’ve slept with women out of far less.” McCracken winked.
“Your sense of humor is well known to us and not appropriate at this time.”
“‘Us’?” Blaine raised. “I thought you were speaking for yourself.”
“In the Soviet Union, the singular does not exist,” she said, without bothering to hide a note of bitterness.
“An uncharacteristic tone for a top KGB agent. Yup, it’s all coming back to me now. You retired. Then came out again.”
“I had my reasons.”
Blaine looked at her. “What have they got on you, Natalya?”
The remark stung her. She seemed about to speak, but then changed her mind.
“Relax,” McCracken told her. “My government isn’t exactly my biggest fan either.”
“You would perhaps choose to blame them for your own foolish mistakes?” she shot back.
“Such as?”
“A hotel clerk with a big mouth and an empty wallet. My Russian friends bought your room number from him for twenty American dollars.”
“Damn, I thought I was worth more than that… .”
“I paid forty for a key to your room two hours earlier,” Natalya Tomachenko said, opening the single closet door to reveal Blaine’s suitcases. “I knew you would be in no position to return to your room after tonight, so I took the liberty of removing your possessions.”
“How considerate.” Blaine found Natalya more than a little attractive. There was no denying her beauty. The dark Slavic features and wide, deep brown eyes made that impossible well before the shoulder-length black hair was even taken into consideration. Still, the implacable set of her jaw and her ice-cold stare kept her from being as ravishing as she might have been. Blaine wanted to call this nameless feature something almost masculine, but even that didn’t suffice. Her coldness, an almost mechanical resolve, transcended gender. She was like a machine awaiting orders. But this machine was hiding something as well. Blaine was as certain of that as he was of her beauty.
“Your head and shoulder are still bleeding,” she said in her most tender voice yet, as if reading his mind. “I have bandages and antiseptic.”
“Did you anticipate my wounds as well?”
“Obtaining a few seemed unavoidable. You were vastly outnumbered.”
“Only until you came along. You timed your entrance to perfection.”
“That too was necessary. I couldn’t enter the cemetery or follow you up to the Acropolis. My face was too well known to your would-be killers.”
“Then you were following me.”
“No. Them. I knew you were in Athens, yes, but not where exactly, and your security precautions worked for a while.”
“Okay, how did you know that much?”
Natalya started toward the doorless bathroom which consisted of a single sink and toilet. “First your wounds must be taken care of. Detail them for me.”
“It would take all night.”
“Just the worst ones.”
“My shoulder’s felt better,” he said, grimacing as he pulled off his jacket to reveal the bloody tear caused by the bullet that grazed him. “And my head, of course.”
“Anything else?”
“Give me a few hours and I’m sure a few other spots will turn up.”
Ten minutes later, Blaine’s shoulder was swabbed and wrapped tightly with gauze stripping. The head wound, more bloody than serious, was handled with a simple strip bandage. It was already starting to clot. He sat down uneasily on the bed, with Natalya Tomachenko seated stiffly across from him on a wooden chair.
“When we left off,” Blaine started, “you were about to explain how you knew I was in Athens.”
“When word reached us—”
“Who’s us?”
“One question at a time. When we learned you had been retained by—”
“Not retained by anyone. I’m operating on my own here.”
“A poor choice of words. I’m sorry. When we learned of your involvement, agents were dispatched to various airports.”
“Plural?”
“Your sense of security is well known to us. The one stationed at Kennedy learned you were flying to Paris.”
“But the ticket I bought was for London.”
“He, too, was made aware of your methods. We had agents stationed all over Europe; virtually every major international terminal was covered.”
“Quite an operation. I didn’t realize I was being tailed because technically I wasn’t. I must be very important to you.”
“More than you realize,” Natalya told him. “Your importance to us began in New York. The men in the diamond district were Soviets.”
“Yours?” Blaine was confused.
“Not at all. The force controlling them was
behind the attack tonight as well, along with the murders of those government men in New York. And the woman.”
Blaine fought to control his feelings. “A Soviet force?”
Natalya nodded reluctantly. “The force knew where Earnst had obtained the crystals and thus where you would be going next. Stadipopolis was allowed to live this long only to trap you.”
“I sense a polarity here… .”
“I’m coming to the explanation now.” She rose and moved to the dirt-encased window, gazing half out it and half at McCracken as she spoke. “Five days ago, a town in your state of Oregon was obliterated by what your scientists have accurately termed a carbon-decimating death ray. It was developed in the Soviet Union several years ago but abandoned when General Secretary Chernopolov realized the mad track it would place us on. The operation was known as the Alpha project.”
“Alpha as in the Greek letter?”
Natalya nodded. “Because the research was to mark the beginning of a new kind of weapon.”
“Well, I guess the world won’t be safe until the Greek alphabet’s been expended… .”
“Even as the project neared its successful completion, General Secretary Chernopolov determined the only conceivable upshot of such a weapon would be war. He knew there was a strong faction in Moscow that would have insisted on the weapon’s utilization had it been allowed to become operational. His only way of averting war, then, was to cancel the Alpha project before its completion. The decision was tremendously unpopular, causing a rift through the Kremlin.”
“And thanks to this rift the Alpha project managed to continue.”
“Through General Secretary Chernopolov’s greatest rival and the man who headed up Alpha: General Vladimir Raskowski.”
“I’ve heard of him,” McCracken said. “Sees himself as the second coming of Alexander the Great.”
“Worse now that he is in possession of the means to fulfil that destiny. Raskowski was—is—an outcast, a madman. He pushed forth the ethic that it was Soviet destiny to overrun Europe and crush whatever meager resistance NATO forces could muster. There was a time when his ideas had considerable support in the Kremlin. But the new leadership under Chernopolov shunned Raskowski and his insane schemes that would have certainly landed us in the midst of global nuclear war. The Alpha project was canceled. Raskowski’s career was ended. He was exiled, all his KGB titles and military rank officially stripped.”