“Two rooms?” Shane asked.
“Security,” she said, the answer puzzling him. Was she afraid of him? If he was going to hurt her, he could have done it last night when she was passed out on his couch. Besides, he thought, remembering the pistol she had waved in his face. She’s the one with the gun.
Tracie laughed. She seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. “Not security from you, silly.” She started the car and drove slowly to the back of the lot, then nosed into the parking space directly in front of the last room on the right.
“Then from who?” Shane asked. “You don’t think those guys from the airport can find us, do you? I mean, how could they possibly know where we would be?”
“How, indeed,” she said thoughtfully.
Shane shrugged, exasperated. This was one strange young woman: beautiful and alluring and sexy, with a girl-next-door innocence about her, but also tough as nails and somehow world-weary, as if being chased by cold-blooded killers represented just another day at the office. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I give up. Which room do you want me to take?”
She flicked her thumb in the direction of the room across the parking lot, directly behind the Ford. Shane held his hand out for the key and Tracie looked at the room numbers stamped on the plastic fobs, then handed him one. He took it without a word, annoyed, then opened the door and stalked off across the lot.
When he reached the other side, he stuck the key in the door, surprised by the motel’s poor lighting. The doorway was bathed in shadows despite the fact the moon was full. He opened the door and realized Tracie was right behind him. “I thought you wanted me to take this one,” he said.
“I do. I also want me to take this one.”
“Then why the hell did we rent two rooms when you said you’re almost out of money?”
“I told you,” she said. “Security.”
Shane stared at her. “You really are worried about those guys.”
“I wouldn’t say worried, exactly, but let’s just say I like to maintain a healthy awareness of possibilities at all times. It’s what keeps me alive.”
30
May 31, 1987
9:55 p.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
The room was more or less what Tracie had expected—small and cramped, with outdated furnishings and a bed with a mattress that was probably as old as she was, covered by an off-white set of threadbare blankets and a fading blue bedspread. She had stayed in a hundred similar rooms all over the world—and many that were much, much worse. This one was clean at least, more or less.
Shane bounced on the bed like a little kid, grinning. “Wanna take it for a spin?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, and she burst out laughing.
“As tempting as you make it sound,” she said, “I have work to do. I really need to call my handler. In fact, this phone call is way overdue. I should have gotten in touch with him last night, but I was down and out, and then today we’ve been too busy trying not to get killed. Before we do that, though, we need to set up the room across the way.”
Shane looked at her quizzically. “Set it up?”
She nodded. “Yep. You can put all that excess energy to good use, although maybe not the way you intended. We’re going to haul all the pillows over there, and any extra blankets you can find, too.”
“What for?”
“Bait.”
Shane picked the two lumpy pillows up off the bed while Tracie investigated the tiny closet. Inside was a small ironing board, an ancient iron, and an extra set of bedding: two sheets and two blankets. She grabbed the blankets and sheets, wondering if anyone frequenting this run-down piece-of-shit motel had ever had occasion to iron an article of clothing, or if the iron even still worked.
“Take the blankets and bedspread off this bed,” she told Shane. “We can use those across the way as well. We’ll leave the sheets, though. I don’t think I’d want to even sit on this bed without something covering it.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Take this bedding? What about you? What are you going to sleep on? I figured I could sleep on the floor in my clothes and you could have the bed, but without blankets it won’t be very comfy.”
Tracie smiled. He was being a perfect gentleman, despite his half-joking proposition of a moment ago. “We’re going to trade off sleeping,” she said. “Nobody will have to sleep on the floor, because one of us is going to stay awake all night, watching the room across the way. Even when you’re sleeping you’ll have to stay in your clothes, anyway, because if we have to move we’ll need to be able to do it quickly.”
“What will we be watching for?”
Tracie chewed on her lower lip, a reaction to stress she had been trying unsuccessfully to break for as long as she could remember. “Hopefully nothing,” she said in a tone that didn’t even convince herself.
Shane stared at her for a long moment. She thought he was going to reply but he didn’t. Then he stripped the covers off the bed, rolled them up into a ball, and hugged the pillows and bedding to his chest. He opened the door and they trooped across the parking lot to their second room. Tracie examined the lot as they crossed, pleased with her choice of motels. The sight line between the two rooms was perfect, the lighting in the parking lot was abysmal, and only a couple of the other rooms appeared occupied, both far off in the distance, close to the road and next to the office.
They entered the second room and found a mirror image of the one they had just left, right down to the faded coloring in the decades-old bedspread. She pulled the spread to the foot of the bed and then did the same thing with the blankets and top sheet. She placed her blankets on the right side of the bed and then told Shane, “Hand me yours.” When he passed them over, she placed them lengthwise on top of hers, folded the whole pile back on top of itself, and then scrunched everything up into the rough approximation of a sleeping body.
She stepped back and examined her handiwork with a critical eye. “Hmph. Guess it’ll have to do,” she muttered. “Good thing it’s dark out there.”
She walked around the bed, darting past Shane with the grace of a dancer. “Toss me the pillows,” she said, and when he did, she arranged them lengthwise along that side of the bed, creating a second sleeping body. Then she pulled the original blankets back over her creation, covering the two lumps.
She took one more look and shrugged. “What do you think? Does it look like two sleeping people?”
“Maybe to Ray Charles,” Shane said and she punched his arm.
“Wise ass,” she said. “It only has to fool them for a couple of seconds.”
“Then what happens?” he asked.
“Then they get interrogated.”
“By you?”
“That’s right.”
“But this is all for nothing, because nobody’s coming.”
“Hope so.”
“You and me both,” Shane said, concern in his voice.
She winked at him and walked to the bathroom, flipping on the light. Then she pulled the door almost all the way closed. A thin shaft of dirty yellow light slashed across the main room, illuminating just enough of the bed, she hoped, to convince any interested observers that two people were actually sleeping in it.
“That’s going to have to do,” she said.
“Now what?” Shane asked.
She pulled her dwindling supply of cash out of her pocket and studied it. “You said you had a little money, right?” she asked hopefully.
Shane said, “Yeah, I’ve got about twenty bucks.”
“Good,” she answered, tossing him the car keys. “Take the Granada and find a hardware store that’s still open. We need duct tape.”
“Duct tape. What do we need duct tape for?”
Tracie grinned and waggled her eyebrows as he had done when they entered the first motel room. “Use your imagination.”
***
Back in the original room, Tracie picked up the phone and dialed a complex series of number
s from memory, waited for an accompanying series of beeps, then dialed more numbers. After a thirty-second silence the earpiece buzzed, indicating the line was ringing.
The call was answered almost immediately. “Green twenty-seven,” a voice said.
“Red eighteen,” Tracie answered.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Winston Andrews said. “When I didn’t hear from you last night I started to think maybe you had crawled off into the woods somewhere and gotten yourself eaten by a bear.” He seemed to be enunciating carefully, like he was trying not to slur his words.
“Nope, I’m still kicking. So far.”
“Do you have the cargo?”
“I have it.”
“Any damage?”
“No, it’s like me: a little beat-up but otherwise okay.”
“How close are you?”
“Still a few hours out. We’re going to hole up in a cheap motel for the night and come into D.C. tomorrow.”
“We?”
“I have a civilian with me. It’s the guy who rescued me from the burning B-52. The media got wind of his name and plastered it all over the news. He’s got a target on his back now and will until this thing is over. I thought it best to keep him close.”
“That’s a serious breach of mission protocol.”
“I know that. I’ll deal with the consequences later.”
Andrews sighed heavily. Through the phone’s earpiece the sound was like a strong wind. Tracie had worked with her handler a long time, and she was convinced he had been drinking.
Like he had a lot on his mind.
Like he was worried.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In the New Haven area, somewhere safe,” Tracie said, hoping against hope he would let the issue drop.
“Tell me where, and I’ll pull some strings,” Andrews said. “You know, keep you safe. You left one hell of a mess up there in Bangor. Every cop along the Eastern Seaboard is looking for the dirtbag that shot one of their brethren point blank in the chest and drove off. They’re out for blood, and it seems they don’t much care whether they shoot one of the Russian guys or you.”
Her heart sank—and not because of the police that could be after them. Her worst fears had just been confirmed. Andrews was involved with the Soviets. She had always wondered about that, had heard whispered rumors over the years. The fact he wanted to know exactly where she was verified her worst fears.
Tracie hesitated, trying to put just the right amount of indecision in her response. “Me revealing my location is against mission protocol, too.”
“I understand that, but I’m trying to keep you alive. I have some connections in the New Haven area. Tell me where you are and I can call in a few favors, divert the attention of the law from your area until you’re safely out of there tomorrow.”
Tracie sighed loudly and gave in. “Okay. We’re holed up in Room Twenty-One at the New Haven Arms, just south of I-95. It’s a cheap little dive, well off the beaten path. There’s no way anyone could track us here. We’ll be fine.”
“I hope so,” Andrews said. “Just the same, I’ll call my people in the area and make sure the authorities stay away from there overnight.”
“Thanks. We should see you by late afternoon tomorrow.”
“Roger that,” Andrews said. “Stay safe.” He broke the connection and Tracie sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the dirty picture window at the dark parking lot. She couldn’t decide whether to be angry or sad. She settled on both.
31
May 31, 1987
10:50 p.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
Shane pulled the Granada into the spot it had previously occupied in front of the dummy hotel room, then shut the engine down and trotted across the pavement to Room Twenty. The door swung open and he knew immediately something was wrong. Tracie barely acknowledged him; her face was troubled and she was obviously deep in thought. “What is it?” he said. “What’s the matter?”
She smiled forlornly. “You mean aside from this whole mess?”
Shane nodded.
“I just got off the phone with my handler, a man named Winston Andrews, an intelligence specialist who’s been the company’s foremost expert on Soviet covert activities since well before I was born.”
He placed the bag onto the ancient dresser next to the bed. “Okay. And?”
“And I’m almost certain he’s involved with the guys who are trying to kill us.”
Shane froze. “Why do you say that?”
“He asked where we were staying, claimed he could use his influence to divert the attention of the police away from this area. They’re looking for us and are pretty pissed off about the dead cop back in Bangor. Anyway, Andrews said he would help keep the police from shooting our asses off.”
“So what’s the problem? I’m pretty fond of my ass and I’d hate to see anything happen to yours. We could certainly use all the help we can get.”
“This is the problem.” Tracie picked the telephone’s black plastic handset off its cradle and brandished it front of him, dropping it back onto the receiver with a thud. “The telephone connection in his home office is secure. It’s a dedicated CIA line, encrypted, almost impossible to hack into. But this—” she pointed again at the offending motel phone— “is anything but secure. Anyone could have been listening in. Andrews violated Rule Number One of covert operations. He should never have asked me to reveal our location on an unsecured connection when there’s a Russian hit team chasing us all over the East Coast.”
“Maybe…” Shane’s voice trailed off as he struggled to come up with a reasonable explanation, knowing he was wasting his time, that Tracie would already have found one if it existed.
“No,” she said grimly, shaking her head. “He’s involved. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Obviously the KGB is up to something big, something potentially game-changing, or else they would never have risked exposing so many of their U.S. people in such a desperate manner for one simple op.”
Her eyebrows knitted together in concentration. “This letter I’m tasked with bringing to Washington—no one besides Gorbachev himself knows what’s in it. I think Gorbie knows the KGB is up to something drastic and he doesn’t like it. I think he’s trying to send a warning directly to the president.”
Shane was skeptical. “I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds pretty farfetched, like something out of a Hollywood movie. The Manchurian Candidate or something.”
“It sounds farfetched, I’ll give you that, but I can’t imagine what else could have the KGB this spooked.”
“But they’ve only thrown three guys at us. I mean, it’s pretty daunting from our point of view, but what are three guys to the KGB in the grand scheme of things?”
“Three guys is a lot,” Tracie said, her face burning with intensity. Shane was amazed. She barely resembled the All-American-looking girl he had gotten used to riding with.
She paused, thinking something over, and Shane wondered if he had just been dismissed. Then she said, “How much of your American History do you remember from high school?”
“I don’t know, enough, I guess. I mean, it was interesting, so I mostly paid attention.”
“You’ve heard of the McCarthy hearings?”
“Of course. Joe McCarthy was a U.S. Senator back in the 1950s. He started a big Communist scare, claiming the Commies had gained influence in all levels of U.S. society, governmental and otherwise.”
“Exactly,” Tracie said, nodding, still intense. “McCarthy had a lot of people running scared, but eventually it was determined there was no way the Soviets could possibly have infiltrated our government to the extent McCarthy was claiming. He was discredited.” Her laser stare bored in on him as if willing him to understand. He didn’t.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “There weren’t a huge number of Soviet Communists in the United States, at least not such a large number they could do any real damage. But that doesn’t mean there were
n’t any. The Soviets probably have an agent or two in many of our major cities, enough operatives to pass along whatever intel they can gather, but not the numbers to really accomplish much. Maybe a few dozen people total, similar to the number of assets we have in Russia. The numbers just aren’t that great.
“So when they expose three of those few dozen people in such an obvious way, it’s significant. It means something if you’re paying attention. And like I told you before, attention to detail is what keeps me alive.”
“So what are we going to do?” Shane asked.
“Well, if what I believe is true, we’ve probably got a minimum of, say, two hours before anything happens. The goons chasing us will have expected us to head toward D.C., but they have no way of knowing how far we would have gotten. They’re probably ahead of us because they’ll assume we wouldn’t stop—”
“—which we wouldn’t have,” Shane interrupted, “if you didn’t need to get at your cash.”
“Exactly,” Tracie said. “So they’ll have to double-back once Andrews relays our location to the Russians. That’s why I say we should split the night into two-hour shifts. One of us keeps watch while the other sleeps. If it’s all right with you, you can start with the first watch, since I really don’t think anything will happen for a while.”
“Of course I’ll take the first watch. I’ll do whatever you need me to do. But in the meantime, there’s something we need to talk about.”
“And that is?”
He cut a look at Tracie. “You need to open that letter. I mean, like, right now.”
“That letter is classified.”
“I understand that.”
“It’s Top Secret.”
“I understand that.”
“It’s for the president’s eyes only.”
“I understand that.”
“I’m expressly forbidden to open it, Shane.”
“I understand that, too, and under normal circumstances I would never suggest you disregard protocol. And I’m well aware that you’ve been doing this black ops stuff—”
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