Parallax View

by Leverone, Allan

  Tracie rose slowly to her feet. Her eyes were twin pools of shocked hopelessness. She shrugged. “I have no idea. It was imperative I find out who else is involved in this conspiracy. Without knowing that, I won’t be able to get within fifty feet of the president. I’ll be intercepted, the letter will disappear. Without that proof, my story is nothing more than a wild fiction.”

  She stared at Shane. “We’re screwed.”

  39

  June 1, 1987

  6:40 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tracie picked up her intended instruments of torture and tossed them into the backpack. She pulled out a rag and ran it over the surface of the desk, then looked around the room pensively before asking Shane, “Have you touched anything in here?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, trying to comprehend what had just happened. She zipped the backpack closed, still clutching the rag in one hand, and said, “There’s nothing more we can do. Let’s get out of here. I need to get somewhere where I can sit and think.” She peered up at Shane. “And you really look like you need to lie down.”

  “I’m fine,” he said automatically, his thoughts still focused on Winston Andrews and the shocking abruptness of his suicide. Tracie trudged out of her CIA handler’s home office and Shane followed her down the stairs. “What are we going to do about him?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’? We’re just going to leave him in his office?”

  “Unless you want to invite the police over and answer lots of invasive and time-consuming questions about what you’re doing here, and why the owner of the house is dead on the floor with a lethal poison clogging his system. Maybe you’ll be able to convince them you didn’t kill Andrews, but I guarantee you won’t do it before spending a full day—if not more—in custody. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time to spare.”

  “I suppose, but still…”

  “Don’t worry about him; he’s beyond caring about his present situation. If it makes you feel better, I’ll let someone at the agency know about this as soon as I can. But everything comes back to the same logjam: I don’t know who I can trust. If I alert CIA before figuring out what to do about this letter,” she patted her pocket protectively, “and the wrong person takes the call or hears the message, we get eliminated and the president gets killed. I just can’t afford to take that chance.”

  “Can’t you at least leave an anonymous call or something?”

  Tracie stopped and shook her head in frustration. “Everything we do leaves a trail. An ‘anonymous call’ would add one more unnecessary link to the chain. A determined KGB or CIA entity with the proper tools can track us much more easily than you realize. I can’t make that call, Shane. I just can’t do it yet.”

  Shane nodded, forgetting Tracie was in front of him and couldn’t see him. “Besides,” she continued. “When he doesn’t show up for work, they’ll call over here and when Andrews doesn’t answer, they’ll send someone to check on him. He’ll be found, probably by tomorrow, even if we do nothing.”

  Tracie walked to the picture window in the townhouse’s elegantly appointed living room. She peered out into the Georgetown neighborhood. A couple of houses away, a young boy rode a tricycle up and down the length of his driveway, otherwise the street appeared empty. “Let’s go,” she said, and they stepped out the front door. He watched as she wiped down the inside and outside of the doorknob, then used the rag to pull the door closed behind them. Thirty seconds later, they were accelerating away from the well-maintained home with the dead body of Winston Andrews inside.

  ***

  “Pull over,” Shane said suddenly. They had been driving for no more than ten minutes, working their way through Georgetown toward a motel on the outskirts of D.C. He had known the nausea would strike suddenly and it had.

  “What are you talking about?” Tracie asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just pull over, right here, right at this corner.” Shane clamped a hand over his mouth like that might make a difference as Tracie swerved to the curb. He pushed the door open before the car had even stopped rolling, vomiting mostly stomach acid into the dirt and trash littering the gutter.

  He leaned out the door, retching, waiting for the nausea to pass, embarrassed and humiliated. At last it did and he eased back into the seat. He pulled the door closed and accepted a tissue from Tracie without a word. He wiped his mouth. His head felt like someone was attacking it with a jackhammer. While he knew from recent experience the feeling wasn’t going to go away any time soon, he suspected he would begin to feel marginally more human shortly. For a little while.

  “I’m all set,” he said quietly, looking straight out the windshield, refusing to meet Tracie’s gaze. He could feel her watching him, holding him in her intense stare with those captivatingly beautiful eyes. Somehow that made things much worse.

  The car didn’t move. “You can start driving again any time now,” he said, then gave up and turned to look at her, waiting for the question he knew was coming.

  “What’s going on?” she asked quietly. “Something is wrong. What is it?”

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  ***

  June 1, 1987

  7:30 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  “It’s a brain tumor. Inoperable and growing like a weed.” They had checked into a motel on the outskirts of D.C., close to the city but cheap and anonymous. It was maybe a half-step up on the quality scale from the New Haven Arms. The minute they checked in, Tracie pulled the bedcovers down, plumped up the pillows, and helped Shane into bed. He hadn’t needed the help, not really, but her touch was so comforting he wasn’t about to try to dissuade her, even feeling as poorly as he was.

  “The tumor is growing and I’m dying and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” Shane shrugged. He sat propped against the cheap motel headboard as Tracie stared at him, horror written on her delicate features.

  “Can’t they treat it somehow? What about surgery? Chemotherapy?”

  “The tumor’s too advanced. There’s no way to remove it or kill it without also wiping out most of my grey matter. And I don’t have that much to spare,” he said, trying to make her smile.

  It didn’t work. Her eyes began to fill with tears and he said quickly, “Most of the time the pain’s not that bad. I go for days on end without feeling any different than I ever did. Then, out of nowhere, it’ll strike.”

  “Like now.”

  “Like now,” he agreed.

  “How much worse is this headache going to get?”

  “There’s no way to tell. Over time, obviously, the headaches are going to get worse and worse, but each individual one is a crap shoot. I’m hoping this time that it won’t get too much worse than it is right now. I can still function, more or less, except for those brief time-outs when I have to puke my guts out.” He was trying to keep things light, still embarrassed.

  Tracie looked away and shook her head.

  He said, “I’m really sorry about this. I was hoping nothing would happen until our little road trip was all over.”

  “My God, Shane, you don’t have to apologize. I should apologize to you for dragging you into this mess. It’s not bad enough you’re suffering from a terminal illness, I have to pull you away from your family and your job and haul you into the middle of an international incident.”

  Shane smiled weakly. “Are you kidding me? I haven’t had this much excitement in…hell, probably ever. When your plane crashed, I was driving to work, I already told you that. What I didn’t tell you was that I had come from an appointment with the oncologists that afternoon. They told me there was nothing more they could do, that they would help make me comfortable when the time came, but that I needed to get my affairs in order. That’s exactly how they said it, too: ‘Get your affairs in order,’ like we were in some bad Hollywood movie or something.

  “So, needless to say, I was feeling pretty sorry f
or myself that night. But then, when your plane crashed and I worked my way through the woods and saw you trapped inside that B-52, somehow still alive but about to be burned to a crisp, it served as the wake-up call I think I needed. It shook me out of my self-pity, reminded me other people have problems, too, and that I could still actually make a difference to someone. It made me realize that I might be dying, but I’m still here for now. I’m not dead yet.” He looked up and Tracie had moved next to him, tears running silently down her face.

  He took her hand and she squeezed it ferociously. “Besides,” he said, “we’re all dying. Some go quicker than others, but nobody gets out alive.”

  Tracie looked away, her eyes bleak. “What about medication? I’ll go to the drugstore and try to get you something for the pain.”

  He shook his head. “It won’t matter. Just talk to me. That’ll give me something else to think about besides the pain.”

  “Of course.” Her voice sounded gravelly and she cleared her throat. “What would you like to talk about?”

  “With Andrews dead, what happens now? I’ve only known you for a couple of days, but that’s long enough for me to know you’re not just going to shrug your shoulders and give up and accept that the KGB is going to assassinate the president of the United States. Have you decided who at the CIA you’re going to give Gorbachev’s letter to? I think you should go right to the top, to Aaron Stallings.”

  “I’m not giving it to anyone,” Tracie answered, her lips set in a grim line. “Nothing’s changed. I still don’t know who I can trust. If they could get to Winston Andrews, they could get to anyone, even Director Stallings.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to catch the assassin.”

  Shane leaned back on the pillow and closed his eyes as the waves of pain rolled through his head. He pictured the tumor as an invading army, the attacking troops dressed all in black, his body repelling them time after time, fighting hard but eventually weakening in the face of the tumor-army’s endless supply of reinforcements. “How do you propose to do that without any backup? It seems impossible.”

  She shrugged. “Why? Between the letter and the information our KGB friends supplied in New Haven, I have everything I need: I know where the hitter is going to set up, I know the method he’s going to use to take out the president, and I know he’s going to strike at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. This will be no more difficult than a dozen other missions I’ve completed—all successfully, I might add.”

  “But isn’t the CIA prohibited from working inside the boundaries of the United States? Aren’t you only supposed to operate in foreign countries?”

  “That’s true,” Tracie admitted. “But this situation is one in a million; it seems highly unlikely anyone in Congress could have envisioned this scenario. I’ll take my chances and worry about the fallout later.”

  Shane nodded. He saw Tracie watching him closely and tried not to wince from the pain. “I figured you were going to say something like that. But I still can’t imagine taking down a professional hit man without a team to work with, especially with no time to develop a plan.”

  “Even with the support of a team,” she said, “there are no guarantees. Things always go wrong, that’s a given. It’s just that this time there won’t be anyone to pull my butt out of the fire if I get in trouble.”

  “Yes there will.”

  “You?”

  Shane nodded gingerly.

  “Absolutely not. That’s out of the question. You’re not going to be there.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for me.”

  “Bullshit. I can at least drive a car. I’m going.”

  Tracie shook her head, her lips compressed into a thin slash across her pretty face. She had placed her fists on her hips and her eyes looked like chips of flint. Her red hair hung in fiery ringlets, cascading over her shoulders. Shane thought she might just be the sexiest thing he had ever seen.

  He reached for her right wrist and pulled her down onto the bed, her lithe form molding onto his like they had been meant to be together. Maybe they had.

  She whispered, “What about your headache?”

  He said, “What headache?” as the tumor armies continued their assault, wave after wave of pain rolling through his skull.

  But right now, none of that mattered. He didn’t care about the tumor. Didn’t care about the pain. Didn’t even care that a KGB assassin was out there somewhere right now, waiting to pull the trigger on the president of the United States. He needed Tracie and, what was more, he knew she needed him. Tomorrow she would undertake what might be a suicide mission, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But tonight there was nothing to do but pass the time and wait. It was nine p.m.

  He began caressing her, his hands moving of their own accord, breaking down her half-hearted resistance, until soon everything melted away and nothing existed but their dance.

  ***

  June 1, 1987

  8:20 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tracie lay still, listening to Shane breathe, the sound slow and steady. Peaceful. He had fallen asleep quickly, not surprising given what she now knew about his health. She savored the nearness of his body, warm and comforting under the blankets, wanting nothing more than to join him in sleep.

  But there were things to do first. She sighed softly and slipped out of bed. Dressed quietly. Then she walked out the door, locking it behind her.

  40

  June 1, 1987

  11:50 p.m.

  Columbia Road, Northeast of Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

  Nikolai Primakov eased his plain white panel van into an empty parking space. The spot was perfect—a block and a half away from his destination. Close enough to be within walking distance, but far enough away for the vehicle to go unnoticed.

  Tomorrow would be a long day, a history-making day. Nikolai pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes out of the breast pocket of his shirt and tapped out a cigarette. He lit it and took a deep drag. Lucky Strikes were the closest thing he could find in this country to the Soviet-made Belomorkanals—unfiltered, strong and cheap—which he smoked occasionally when he was home.

  Outside, the dim light from a quarter-moon cloaked the buildings of the city in a gauzy sheen. Millions of stars twinkled overhead. Nikolai examined the horizon and nodded. The weather would be perfect. Clear skies, virtually no wind. The temperature was chilly right now, but the day would warm nicely. Besides, cold didn’t bother Nikolai. He had been born and raised in the bitter chill of Yakutsk, where winter temperatures plummeted to depths the soft citizens of this decadent country couldn’t even comprehend, much less weather.

  But Nikolai had withstood the temperatures just fine. And he had been comfortable with weapons from a very young age, excelling as a marksman. He had trained as a sniper in the Red Army, serving with distinction in Afghanistan before being recruited by the KGB for more delicate, and much more important, work.

  Nikolai was one of the finest assassins in the Soviet arsenal. Over the course of the last decade-plus, Nikolai Primakov had eliminated somewhere in the neighborhood of forty people; he had lost track of the exact number years ago. All of the targets had been enemies of the Soviet state, although surprisingly few had been politicians. Some were, of course, but many more were business leaders, or dissidents, or people who to Nikolai’s eye were nothing special, simple people living simple lives who had somehow found themselves on the KGB’s radar, marked for removal from this earth.

  Their offenses were irrelevant to Nikolai, as were their job titles. When he was given an assignment he carried it out, coldly and efficiently, and then moved on to the next. It was a job, no different than farming or factory work. He had a talent for assassination, so he was an assassin. End of story.

  Tomorrow’s job, of course, was a rare exception. Eliminating the president of the United States was an assignment even Nikolai Primak
ov had to admit was special, even though it was a mission no one could ever know he had performed.

  He checked his watch. Nearly midnight. It was time to go.

  Nikolai took a last deep drag on his cigarette and opened the door, flicking the butt onto the pavement where it dropped into a thin film of condensation. It hissed and died away. He slipped into a windbreaker with the Capitol Floor Refinishing logo sewn onto the breast and stepped out of the van.

  Capitol Floor Refinishing was a cover created specifically by the KGB for this mission. The temperature was cool, but not so cold Nikolai actually needed his jacket. However, creating the illusion of legitimacy was critical to mission success, so he shrugged it on over a uniform shirt with the identical logo sewn over the breast pocket, opened the van door and slid to the ground.

  He stepped to the rear of the vehicle, then glanced around for any signs of law enforcement presence. All clear. He opened the rear doors, revealing only one item secured in the back of the van—a wheeled cart with the Capitol Floor Refinishing logo prominently displayed on its canvas sides.

  To the casual observer, the cart would appear identical to those used by janitorial services everywhere. The top portion was filled with tools and equipment necessary for the business of floor refinishing. There was an electric hand buffer, brushes and cloths of all different sizes and shapes, and a healthy assortment of hand tools and small power tools, none of which Nikolai would be using.

  Hidden under the top portion of the cart were the things he really needed, the tools necessary for the business of ending lives. There were four sandbags, each roughly the size of a cement block. There was a Soviet-made Dragunov SVD sniper rifle, disassembled and secured inside a hard plastic traveling case, along with three cartridges filled with 7N1 steel-jacketed sniper rounds, though Nikolai was confident he would require just one shot. There was a PSO-1 optical sniper sight with Bullet Drop Compensation turret and quick-release mounting bracket. There were shooting glasses, binoculars, a small pillow, candy bars and water. There was a Makarov PB silenced semiautomatic pistol with three eight-round magazines, an NR-40 combat knife, and a change of clothes in which Nikolai intended to effect his escape upon completion of the mission.