Parallax View

by Leverone, Allan

  “I asked if you were going start driving or whether you planned to sit there the rest of the day replaying your mental movie of us together in the sack.”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Don’t even try to deny it. I’m a trained interrogator, remember?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice. “Okay, okay, I admit it. Just don’t come at me with an iron.”

  She laughed, the sound light and girlish, light-years removed from the ice-pick chill she had displayed when dealing with the Russians. Shane shook his head and dropped the car into gear, turning left, right and then left again, climbing the ramp onto I-95 south, thoroughly confused by this young woman sitting to his right.

  Thoroughly enchanted by her as well, although he knew he could not afford to be.

  She ate delicately as Shane drove, picking tiny pieces off the muffin with her fingers and placing them on her tongue before chewing soundlessly and swallowing, brow furrowed in concentration. Shane had to be careful not to get so caught up watching Tracie out of the corner of his eye that he drove off the highway and into the guardrail.

  He let her think for a while and when it became clear she had no intention of starting a conversation, said, “So what did those guys tell you back there?”

  “I know where the assassin is going to be stationed.”

  “How can you be sure they told you the truth?”

  “They both gave the same location. There’s no way they would have done that if one of them had been lying.”

  “Unless they agreed on a story beforehand, in case they were caught.”

  Tracie shrugged, conceding the point. “True enough,” she said, “but I don’t think so. Those guys were one hundred percent certain they were going to walk in on us in our sleep, put a bullet in each of our heads, and walk away with the letter. That’s why they were so sloppy. They had no reason to suspect we were on to them, and thus no reason to make up a story. Plus, they wouldn’t have expected us to know about the assassination.” She paused. “I’m confident I got the truth out of them.”

  “Okay,” Shane said. “So what’s the plan from here?”

  “The plan? I wish I knew.” She sighed heavily. “First stop is New York. We’ll pick up my supplies, then head straight to D.C. I’ll find a safe place to stash you, and then I’ll have to pay a visit to my traitorous boss, Winston Andrews. From there, I stop an assassination. I’m not exactly sure how yet.”

  “Stash me? I don’t think so. You said yourself I’m neck deep in…whatever is going on, and I’ve nearly been killed twice now in less than twenty-four hours. I have a stake in this thing, too, Tracie, in case you’ve forgotten. Plus, you can’t do everything yourself. You need help, and I’m going to help you. Period. End of story.”

  35

  June 1, 1987

  5:45 a.m.

  Interstate 95, just outside Newark, NJ

  “I don’t understand,” Shane said. They had pulled off the highway at a random exit, bought fresh coffee, and then hit the road again. Steam curled out of the plastic lids, dissipating in the air. “It doesn’t make sense. What possible advantage could there be for the KGB to launch World War Three?”

  “It does make sense,” Tracie said. “It actually makes perfect sense if you consider it in context. Think about it. Exercising tyranny is dependent upon maintaining control, but the world is opening up. Citizens who have been under the thumb of the communists for decades are beginning to get a glimpse of the freedoms they have long been denied, and they’re starting to realize those freedoms are within reach. They want them.

  “The Soviet Union is crumbling, Shane. I know because I’ve seen the evidence firsthand. They have arguably the finest, most modern military in the world, next to ours, and yet the rest of the Soviet infrastructure is in a shambles, as is their economy. It’s getting harder and harder for the Soviets to keep their satellite countries in line, and more and more expensive to do so at a time when resources are shrinking.

  “This makes perfect sense,” she concluded, a reluctant sense of wonder in her voice.

  Shane shrugged, frustrated. “I still don’t get it. Okay, Czechoslovakia wants to break away from the Russians. So what? How does that tie in with the KGB assassinating the president of the United States?”

  Tracie sat for a moment, thinking. Shane could see her working through it. “Okay,” she said at last. “It’s obvious from this letter,” she tapped the grimy envelope, “that Gorbachev can see the changes coming, and that he knows he is helpless to stop them. He admits that much. Whatever the future holds for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in ten years’ time it is going to look very different than it does right now.”

  “So?” Shane said. “Things change all the time. I still don’t understand why they have to kill Reagan.”

  “Because,” Tracie said, rubbing her eyes. She suddenly looked very tired. “The Soviet Union is no different than any other government, at least as far as the inner workings are concerned. Politicians disagree philosophically, squabble, grab power, consolidate that power, whatever. Obviously there’s a faction—in this case, a group of high-ranking KGB officials—who will stop at nothing to prevent the destruction of their power base and their personal empires. This faction wants to start a war, and the bigger, the better. You think Czechoslovakia is still going to want to step out from under their protector’s umbrella once the world’s two great superpowers start lobbing nuclear warheads at each other?”

  “But all wars end eventually. What happens then?”

  “Whoever is behind this mess doesn’t care what happens then. Assassinating Reagan and starting World War Three will give those people inside the Kremlin plenty of time to consolidate their power and stockpile resources so that no matter who wins—and even if everyone loses, which seems likely—they are provided for. Plus, their precious Soviet empire remains intact that much longer, or at least has not fallen completely apart, which seems to be the most likely outcome the way things are going right now.”

  Shane stared out the windshield at the cars on I-95, metal boxes hurrying to unknown destinations. “But if Gorbachev is so opposed to this plan, why not just stop it from inside his government? He’s the man in charge, after all.”

  “Gorbachev’s skating on thin ice over there. He has instituted reforms that have outraged the hard-liners in the political structure, people who would like nothing better than to go back to the days of Khrushchev, or even Stalin. Gorbachev recognizes that he doesn’t have the muscle politically to take on these hard-liners directly, so instead he’s going through the back door. He couldn’t trust anyone within his government to deliver his message intact—he certainly couldn’t ask the KGB to do it—so he tried to do it clandestinely.”

  “Why not just go public with what he knows? That would stop the whole thing in its tracks.”

  “If he tried to do that, he’d be gone by the next day. He would either be arrested or killed. He would likely disappear in the middle of the night and never be heard from again. The Soviet political system is not like ours—there isn’t even the illusion of openness. The truth is considered an asset only when it advances the Communist cause. If Gorbachev went to the press with the details of this plan, even his supporters would consider him a traitor to his country. No,” she said slowly, thinking out loud, “this is really the only way he could have handled it, and he’s taking one hell of a big chance as it is.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” Shane said. “We’re hours away from the assassination of the president and the start of a war maybe no one will survive.” He eased down on the accelerator and the car surged forward. “We’ve got to get you to a phone. You have to call your superiors at CIA and tell them about this. Never mind Winston Andrews—call the CIA Director himself, if you have to.”

  “I can’t,” Tracie said simply, shaking her head.

  Shane pulled his foot off the gas and stared at Tracie in amazement. He ignored the honking of a car behind him. A middle-aged wom
an flipped him off as she pulled around the Granada, and he barely noticed. “What do you mean, you can’t? You have to!”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t. Nothing’s changed, Shane. I don’t know who can be trusted. I trusted Winston Andrews with my life, put it in his hands dozens of times, and it turns out he’s involved with the Soviets, apparently has been for years. I have no way of knowing who else in the power structure is compromised, and that includes Director Stallings. If I alert the wrong people, or even if I alert the right people but the wrong people get wind of it, the letter gets destroyed, you and I get neutralized, and the president of the United States gets assassinated.”

  “Everyone can’t be involved.”

  “Of course not. I’m sure only a small percentage are involved. But I can’t take the chance of the one person who is involved finding out. The stakes are just too high.”

  “Call the cops then. The Secret Service. Alert the media. We have to do something.”

  Tracie sighed. “I’d like nothing better. But do you have any idea how many ‘tips’ the authorities get every day about assassination plots against the president? Dozens, especially when he travels or makes public appearances. We won’t be taken seriously, Shane, trust me on this. We’ll be detained and the speech will go on as planned.”

  He stared at her, his stomach turning over slowly. The blueberry muffin he had eaten earlier felt like a ticking time bomb and his mouth tasted sour and acidic, like he might be about to puke. “What are we going to do, then?”

  “We continue to D.C. as planned. I have to interrogate Andrews, force him to give up the names of everyone involved in this thing. Once I have those names, I’ll know who’s clean. Then we pass along this damned letter.”

  Shane punched the gas and the Granada leapt forward again. They were still hours away from Washington and time was ticking. Something was still bothering him, though. “What if Andrews refuses to give up the information you need?”

  Tracie stared straight ahead, steely-eyed and determined. “He’ll talk.”

  36

  June 1, 1987

  4:20 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Winston Andrews’ two-story townhouse was located in Georgetown, a couple of blocks northeast of the Potomac River and Virginia, a couple of blocks west of the D.C. political sprawl. Built of weathered red brick and covered in climbing ivy, the house looked lush and full and green in the summer.

  Tracie and Shane had been forced to pass the time in the New York City area waiting for the bank containing Tracie’s safe deposit box to open for business. At nine o’clock sharp, they had parked outside a squat concrete bank building, and the moment the manager had unlocked the front door, Tracie entered.

  Shane stayed with the car while Tracie carried in a cheap canvas backpack they had picked up at a roadside Five and Dime store. She returned fifteen minutes later with the pack bulging, then tossed it into the backseat where it landed with a metallic clank.

  “Don’t ask,” she said, and Shane didn’t ask.

  After that they had taken turns driving, following the interstate, pushing the speed limit as much as they dared. Getting stopped for speeding would be a problem, but arriving in Washington too late to prevent the assassination of the President of the United States would be a bigger problem. They stopped at a highway gas station just after noon, where they filled up the tank and bought a couple of cold burgers, then got right back on the road and ate in the car.

  Conversation was sporadic. Shane could see plainly that Tracie had been shaken to the core by her betrayal at the hands of Winston Andrews. It was eating at her, seemingly bothering her even more than the idea that the two of them were all that stood between the Soviet Union and the likely outbreak of World War Three. She chewed her lip and muttered to herself, shaking her head when she thought he wasn’t looking. “Can’t talk about it,” was all she would commit to when he tried to get her to open up.

  Shane thought he understood. The relationship between a field operative—Tracie refused to use the term “spy,” but to Shane it seemed appropriate—and her handler was of necessity extremely close, especially when clandestine operations were involved. She had told him back at the New Haven Arms while they relaxed in bed that often the handler was the only person alive besides the operative herself who possessed all the details of an operation, making the handler the only lifeline if the operative ran into problems in the field.

  So Tracie had placed an inordinate amount of trust—faith, really—in Winston Andrews. And he had turned out to be a traitor both to Tracie and to his country, accepting without question what he thought had been her execution in a dive motel by two KGB agents as the cost of doing business. Shane wondered what was going to happen when they arrived at Andrews’ townhouse. After having seen the results of her interaction with the two Russian spies back in New Haven, he guessed life would suddenly become exceedingly unpleasant for Andrews.

  The sun had lost its day-long battle with an overcast layer, and the slate-grey sky hung dour and menacing over the mid-Atlantic as they entered the D.C. metro area. Tracie was behind the wheel for this leg, and after exiting the highway, navigated the streets with practiced ease. Fifteen minutes later, she pulled to the curb in a quiet, leafy neighborhood, letting the Ford idle while she sat taking in the activity, of which there was little.

  “Which one is it?” Shane asked, and she pointed out Andrews’ home.

  “He lives alone?”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “He won’t be expecting you, so you should have the advantage of surprise,” he said.

  “That may or may not be true,” Tracie answered, the first time she had spoken more than a couple of words at a time in several hours. “It all depends upon the communication schedule he had set up with the Russians. If he expected them to check in between New Haven and here, say at the halfway point or something, he’ll obviously be aware by now that something’s gone wrong.”

  “How likely is that?”

  She shrugged. “No way of knowing. He wouldn’t have had that kind of arrangement with me, but then again, he and I worked together for a long time.” Her voice was hard-edged and bitter. “But with these guys, he may have wanted a more hands-on relationship.”

  She shrugged again. “Doesn’t really matter. Nothing we can do about it either way.”

  They sat for another moment. “What’s the plan?” Shane asked.

  “The plan? Reintroduce myself to my old friend and have a little heart to heart.”

  37

  June 1, 1987

  4:50 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tracie knew she needed to move now, but couldn’t shake her depression. She had been brooding for hours in the car, the weight of Andrews’ betrayal throbbing in her gut like a physical ailment. She liked to think of herself as a keen judge of character—staying alive often meant sniffing out the difference between sincerity and bullshit—and she had never viewed Andrews as anything but a patriot.

  It was like losing a parent. Hell, in some ways it was worse than losing a parent, because Winston Andrews’ deception had been so willful, so heartless so…complete. Death happened, it came for everyone eventually, and although the death of a loved one could bring pain, the actions of Winston Andrews had brought that and much more: the hurt of personal betrayal, and anger, and a confusion Tracie simply could not work past.

  She had signed on at CIA not out of any desire to put her life on the line. Not because she had an addiction to danger. Certainly not because she wanted to fly around the world nonstop for years on end, working in the biggest hellholes, putting out the biggest fires, always knowing that if things went sideways there would be no one to come to the rescue, always knowing if she were captured or killed she would be cast aside by her government, sacrificed on the altar of political expedience.

  No, she had signed on at CIA out of an abiding love for her country, a knowledge that despite our weaknesses and faults as American
s—we had them, of course we did, we would not be human if it were otherwise—we possessed the best system of government in the world, enjoyed freedoms unprecedented in human history.

  She had wanted to give something back, and fighting in the most significant philosophical conflict of the twentieth century—Democracy versus Communism, freedom versus repression—had seemed the best way to do that. She thought of herself as an “All-American girl” in the truest sense of the word.

  She had been a fool, she now realized.

  She had looked up to Winston Andrews as a mentor and a friend, had considered him a fighter for the cause of freedom, just as she was. And all the time she was traipsing around the world, crawling through mud puddles, freezing her toes and fingers inside substandard equipment, getting shot at and knifed, coaxing information out of unwilling subjects, taking lives, working nonstop with never a moment to enjoy life like a normal twenty-seven-year-old single woman, in all that time, Winston Andrews had been sitting here in Washington, playing both sides against the middle, sipping cognac and committing treason, making deals with Communists and traitors.

  And laughing at her.

  That was the worst part. He had to have been laughing his wrinkled old ass off at her. Little Miss Idealist, taking orders without question, doing as she was told, all in the cause of freedom and the advancement of American ideals. What a joke. He had played her for a fool and she had followed along blindly. Willingly.

  Tracie felt her eyes filling with tears and blinked them back. There was nothing she could do about her monumental stupidity now, and this wasn’t the time to worry about it, anyway. Winston Andrews had made a fool of her, but that had been his choice, not hers. She still believed in her country even if he didn’t, and the clock was still ticking down to the assassination of President Reagan, and it had fallen to her to stop it, not out of choice but necessity.

  How many others were involved? That was the question. If Winston Andrews had been co-opted, anyone could be. It was time to find out what Andrews knew, and Tracie had been watching the neighborhood long enough. Activity was minimal. No one had come or gone at Andrews’ townhouse, so he must have been working from home today, something he often did, and was probably alone.