Parallax View

by Leverone, Allan

  “Well,” she said, looking at her watch. “For the rest of today, we’ll have to maintain a holding pattern. I’ve got some cash and a few goodies stashed away inside a safe-deposit box in a bank just outside New York City. The first priority is to retrieve that, but since today is Sunday, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get at it. We’ll have to find an anonymous motel somewhere between here and New York and hole up for the night. I’ll call my boss and fill him in on what’s going on, and then tomorrow we get up bright and early, make a little bank withdrawal, and then continue toward D.C.”

  Shane stared hard at Tracie, who gazed straight out the windshield, pretending not to notice him watching her. “A little bank withdrawal,” he said.

  She glanced over, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. “That’s right,” she said.

  “What could you possibly have stored in a safe deposit box that will help us out of this jam?”

  “I told you, I have some cash.”

  “You told me. You also said, and I quote, ‘a few goodies.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.”

  “You’re talking about weapons.”

  “Well, maybe. You know, a girl has to be prepared for anything.”

  She returned her attention to the highway and Shane watched the scenery roll by as the Granada continued churning south. What sort of girl just happens to keep a cache of weapons and money handy? What else might she have stored in that safe-deposit box?

  He thought about the events of last night, about her insistence on avoiding the hospital despite being injured in a deadly plane crash. About her stoic toughness as he cleaned and dressed her deep thigh wound, dressed in his gym shorts and little else. About those long legs, slim and smooth and sexy. Then he started thinking about things that had nothing to do with secret communiques or spies or airplane crashes.

  He daydreamed about sexy secret agents for a while, and eventually he fell asleep.

  28

  May 31, 1987

  8:10 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Winston Andrews was well into his third gin and tonic when he realized he was gulping rather than sipping. He pondered that realization for a moment and eventually concluded he didn’t care. His Georgetown condominium felt cold, empty and lonely since Emily had died—was it really almost three years ago?—and he could no longer come up with a single reason to sip rather than gulp.

  The endgame was coming, Winston could sense it, and he was surprised to discover he didn’t mind all that much. He and Emily had never had children, so when she succumbed to lung cancer—the ultimate irony, Winston thought, given her status as a nonsmoker and lifelong health nut—the only thing left to occupy the long hours in the day was work.

  And that was fine, as far as it went. Winston had always been nearly fanatical about his work. But now, push was coming to shove, and Winston was no longer particularly interested in dealing with the shove. Approaching seventy, he had devoted his life to United States intelligence services since playing a critical role in the U.S.–Soviet collaboration to defeat the Nazis in World War II.

  Winston had spent virtually that entire war on the ground in Russia, making and cultivating contacts with the Soviets while they were suffering horrific losses of life, more than twenty million people dying before the defeat of Hitler had been accomplished. By 1945, when the Axis nations finally surrendered, Winston Andrews—genteel, Ivy League-educated Winston Andrews—had emerged as the most knowledgeable American alive regarding the affairs of the Soviet Union, both political and military.

  Winston had served in the CIA for the next four decades, keeping his contacts inside Moscow active and even, to the utter astonishment of his superiors at the agency, developing new contacts as the older ones died, retired, disappeared, or faded away.

  During the darkest days of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s, Winston was considered a star, funneling to the highest levels of the United States government classified intel regarding Soviet military buildups, aggression in foreign countries, KGB activity, and the Russian space program. You name it, Winston Andrews knew about it. His information helped shape the foreign policy decisions of an unbroken string of eight presidents from Truman to Reagan. He wasn’t a Democrat or a Republican—although if pushed, Winston might reluctantly admit toward a liberal bias—he was simply an intelligence gatherer.

  But Winston Andrews harbored a secret. While funneling all of that sensitive information regarding the Soviets to the U.S., he was simultaneously funneling information regarding the United States intelligence services to the Soviets.

  This was Winston’s secret. This was how he had developed the deep connections in Moscow that others had never been able to accomplish. This was how he was able to retrieve sensitive information regarding the Soviets almost in real time. He knew there had been the occasional whisper questioning his loyalty over the course of the last forty years, suspicions muttered, his work examined with narrowed eyes. But the intelligence he delivered was so consistently valuable, so up-to-the-minute, so sensitive, that the whispers and suspicions never developed into anything more. They invariably died away, often for years at a time.

  Winston supposed—hell, with the clarity provided by gulping three gin and tonics, he more than supposed, he knew—that most people would consider him a traitor to his country if they learned his secret, but he didn’t see it that way. Above all, Winston Andrews was a pragmatist. The more information the two countries with opposing political philosophies and mutual suspicion possessed about each other, the less likely they were to blow each other up.

  “Mutually assured destruction,” was the term. It signified each country’s knowledge that the other could retaliate for any aggressive act, nuclear or otherwise, by wiping their enemy off the face of the earth. It sounded like a terrifying prospect because it was a terrifying prospect, and as an academic, Winston knew nothing could diminish the likelihood of mutually assured destruction as effectively as information.

  So he did what he had to do, year after year, decade after decade, through Republican administration and Democrat, and regretted none of it. Winston liked to believe the fact that both countries were still standing forty years after his first tentative information exchange was proof positive his theory had been right.

  He pushed himself up from his leather recliner, wobbling unsteadily, and tottered out of his office for another drink.

  He had no regrets about anything he had done over the past four decades, but what was happening now was different. This was a situation unlike anything he had ever experienced. Lives were directly at stake. In fact, lives had already been lost, and that loss of life could be traced straight back to Winston Andrews.

  Winston could accept the notion of sacrificing a few in the interest of saving many. He had built a career on that concept. But in the past, that loss of life had been largely theoretical, at least to Winston. He had no doubt Soviet citizens had died thanks to intelligence information he had generated. Probably Americans had lost their lives, too, due at least in part to information he had passed to Moscow.

  But as far as he was aware, there had never been a direct connection.

  Until yesterday.

  Until he had learned of a plan set in motion by the KGB to prevent a secret communique, from Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev to President Reagan, from reaching the White House. Despite his best efforts, Winston had been unable to ascertain what was contained in the letter and, in fact, strongly suspected the KGB didn’t even know.

  But their plan had backfired. The plane crash ordered by the KGB had occurred not in the middle of the Atlantic as planned, but on U.S. soil, just a few hundred miles away, in Bangor, Maine. Now, news organizations were reporting that an unidentified female passenger, whose whereabouts were currently unknown, had survived the crash.

  The passenger wasn’t unidentified to Winston, though. The passenger was his agent, Tracie Tanner, a young operative h
e had discovered and helped train, talented and smart. And things got even worse from there. A brutal massacre had taken place at Bangor International Airport: seven people slaughtered in cold blood, one a law enforcement officer. He shuddered at the thought of the carnage, a chill running down his spine that was unrelated to the temperature in his office.

  Winston had no way of knowing whether Tracie was still alive. It was possible the KGB, whom he was certain had engineered the attack at the airport, had killed or captured Tracie and taken possession of the letter. He didn’t think that was the case, though. Tracie Tanner was perhaps the finest operative he had ever supervised over forty years in charge of CIA’s Soviet Intelligence Division. He doubted a small group of Russian operatives working on U.S. soil would have had the ability to eliminate her, unless she was badly injured or they simply got lucky.

  He was in the process of mixing another gin and tonic when the shrill ringing of a telephone caused him to slop gin onto the bar in surprise. It wasn’t his house phone ringing, it was one of his special telephones, the one that received incoming calls only rarely, and only from a select few Russian intelligence officers. Even the majority of his contacts in the USSR were not privy to this number.

  This was the call Winston had been dreading. He could predict, almost word for word, how the conversation was going to go, and it would not be good.

  He sighed deeply, and reluctantly climbed the stairs to his second floor office. There was no need to hurry, the caller wasn’t going anywhere. And he wouldn’t give up. Winston walked to the phone, which he had placed squarely on the middle of his desk in anticipation of this call. “Hello?”

  “Are you secure?” the caller asked, not bothering to identify himself. No introduction was necessary. Winston recognized the distinct baritone immediately, the voice raspy from a lifetime of abusing strong Russian vodka and unfiltered American cigarettes. It was Vasily Kopalev, the highest-ranking KGB member Winston had ever dealt with.

  “Of course,” he answered, hoping he sounded stronger and more confident than he felt.

  “Good. I am certain you are aware of the events of today?”

  “I know what I’ve seen on the news.”

  “Then you know our operation has, thus far, been an abject failure.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “We need to know where your agent is, Mr. Andrews. We need to know right now.”

  “I understand, but she has not yet contacted me. She has been quite busy, though, as I’m sure you are well aware. If she is able, she will be in touch soon.”

  “Are you being truthful with me, Mr. Andrews? The critical nature of this mission cannot be overstated.”

  Winston’s heart sank. There was no way out of this. Kopalev’s presence on the other end of the line was indication the KGB intended to play their cards right to the end. He hesitated long enough for Kopalev to bark, “Mr. Andrews!” and then answered. “Yes, yes, of course I’m being honest with you, Vasily. The moment I hear from my operative, you will know it.”

  “Sooner is better than later. We must gain possession of that letter.”

  “I understand. As I said, when I hear from my agent, you will hear from me.” The line went dead and Winston returned the handset to its cradle, lifting the telephone off the desk and placing it into a drawer, which he then locked.

  Tracie Tanner. His protégée, the daughter he never had. To be delivered up to the KGB, after which she would most certainly disappear forever. His stomach roiled, the gin sitting in his gut like an unexploded bomb.

  He sat at his desk, head in his hands, for a very long time. Then he stood and walked downstairs to the bar to finish making that drink.

  29

  May 31, 1987

  9:40 p.m.

  New Haven, Connecticut

  They made it as far as New Haven before stopping for the night. Shane felt almost as tired upon waking from his nap as he had before falling asleep. He offered to switch places and take a turn behind the wheel, but Tracie declined, saying, “I do some of my best thinking when I drive, and right now I have a lot to think about. Besides, we’ve gone about as far as we need to today.”

  She steered the car off I-95 and then seemed to drive aimlessly around the fringes of New Haven looking for a suitable motel. She checked out three run-down establishments, all equally unappealing to Shane, eliminating all three from consideration for reasons he could not discern.

  Finally she selected one. The winner in the overnight housing sweepstakes featured a central parking lot separating two rows of attached wood-frame rooms that looked like mirror images of each other, right down to the peeling paint and crumbling cement foundations.

  The motel appeared identical to the other three as far as Shane could tell, and he looked at her quizzically. “This is the best we can do, huh?”

  She smiled. “I’m getting a little low on cash, so we’re going to have to slum it for tonight. Once we hit the bank tomorrow, money won’t be as much of an issue, but for now I’m afraid we’ll have to pass on the Four Seasons.”

  “Not to worry,” he said. “I’m a cheap date. But just out of curiosity, if we were only going to stay at a roach motel, what was wrong with the first three places you scoped out?”

  “They didn’t have the features I was looking for.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.”

  “You’ve already used that answer once today.”

  “I know,” she said brightly, looking like the cat that ate the canary.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re one frustrating person to deal with?”

  “All the time.”

  Tracie parked the car in front of an office that looked like it had been designed by the architect who built the Bates Motel. An old-fashioned MOTEL sign hung in the front window, the glass tube letters filled with red neon gas. The “L” had burned out, leaving MOTE flickering weakly in the darkness. Above it, unlit, another sign said NEW HAVEN ARMS.

  Shane looked at the “MOTE” with distaste. “I hope that’s not a warning of what’s waiting for us in the rooms.”

  “Ah, come on, how bad could it be? Where’s your sense of adventure?” she said, stepping out of the car and stretching her legs. Shane reached for the door handle to join her and then stopped, admiring the view through the windshield as she reached for the sky. The night was mild and she hadn’t bothered to pull on her jacket, and her blouse lifted as she stretched, revealing a taut belly. Shane had already gotten an up-close and personal look at her legs last night while cleaning her injury, and he decided this young woman was the complete package.

  She bent down suddenly and looked in the driver’s side window, catching him staring, and laughed. She waggled her index finger back and forth. “Naughty boy,” she said through the closed window. It looked to Shane like her face colored a little, but maybe that was his imagination.

  He clambered out of the car after her. “Sorry about that,” he said, although he really wasn’t, and he knew she knew he wasn’t. “So, what now?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what now?’ Come on, Romeo, haven’t you ever shacked up with a girl of questionable repute in a run-down motel before?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But when you say it like that it sounds so cheap.”

  They shared a laugh and she turned toward the door. “Just follow my lead,” she said, and entered the office.

  The décor was Spartan and had gone out of date sometime before John Glenn orbited the earth. A potted plant stood in one corner covered in dust. It looked like it was dying despite the fact it was made of plastic. A small couch, the leather ripped and torn, lined the wall next to it. To the left of the entrance was a single rickety wooden chair.

  They moved to the front desk and Tracie dinged a small bell. Through an open door behind the desk came a rustling sound and then the scraping of a chair, and a moment later a rumpled-looking scarecrow of a man appeared. He was dressed in loose-fit
ting jeans and a stained Rolling Stones T-shirt, and he gazed at them suspiciously through red-rimmed eyes, as if not quite able to believe a customer had actually entered his establishment.

  “Help you?” he asked, making clear through the inflection in his voice it was the last thing in the world he really wanted to do.

  Tracie flashed a smile and Shane thought she could have been a beauty queen if she wanted to. Or an actress. “We’d like to rent two rooms,” she said, and the clerk actually took a step back, blinking in surprise. Shane knew how he felt.

  “Two rooms?” he said, and then paused, like he was waiting for the punch line.

  “That’s right, and I know exactly which ones I want.”

  “Oh-kayyyy,” the clerk said, now clearly convinced the world as he knew it had been thrown off its axis.

  “We would like to rent the rooms at the far end of the parking lot, one on each side, facing each other,” Tracie said, still smiling, enjoying the clerk’s confusion.

  Scarecrow-man shook his head, not even attempting to hide his skepticism. “Sign here,” he mumbled, picking a worn log book up from under the desk and sliding it across at Tracie. “That’ll be fifty bucks total.”

  She dug the money out of her pocket, signed the log book—Shane watched as she wrote “Sally Field,” next to one room and “Kathleen Turner” next to the other, and the clerk shook his head again—and then received two keys, each attached to a red plastic fob with the words “New Haven Arms,” as well as the room numbers, stamped in faded gold lettering on both sides.

  “Thanks,” she said, flashing another dazzling smile at the clerk, although she had to have known by now charming this guy was impossible.

  They turned toward the door and the clerk mumbled, “Check-out time’s ten a.m.” Tracie waggled her fingers in response and then they were back in the parking lot, the smell of the nearby Atlantic Ocean floating across the night air as they walked to the Granada.