Shane twisted in his seat and looked out the rear window, certain the car’s angry owner would be sprinting across the lot in hot pursuit. But there was no one, the lot was quiet, and then they were on the road. Three minutes later they were back on I-95, this time headed south.
Shane slumped in his seat. “That was nerve-wracking,” he said. “I’m really not comfortable with stealing a car. What if we get pulled over? We’ll get busted for Grand Theft Auto.”
“We’re not going to get pulled over,” Tracie said. “I’m going to be the most careful little driver you ever saw, and once we get a few exits south of Bangor, we’ll stop somewhere and exchange plates with another car. The police will have no reason to stop us.”
“Okay, fine, but why can’t we just go to the police and tell them someone’s after you? That way we stay on the right side of the law, instead of becoming wanted car thieves.”
“We’re not thieves,” Tracie said, exasperation evident in her tone. “The owner will get his car back in short order, good as new. Probably. And in the meantime, we stay alive. I can’t go to the police because…well, I just can’t.”
“Not good enough,” Shane said. “You promised you’d give me some answers. Well, we ate, we ‘acquired’ another vehicle, and we’re on our way south, maybe driving into some kind of ambush around the next corner. It’s time for you to tell me what’s going on. It’s past time.”
So she did.
27
May 31, 1987
4:55 p.m.
Portland, Maine
After leaving the Bangor area behind, Shane and Tracie drove for a long time without seeing much beyond the occasional small town, looking isolated and lonely in the distance. They passed Waterville and then the state capitol of Augusta, eventually reaching Portland, where they stopped for gas, to use the restrooms and to grab another bite to eat.
Then they continued on.
Shane spent most of the drive in silent contemplation of the incredible turn his life had taken in less than a day. A fiery plane crash. A secret document. A beautiful CIA operative. KGB spies. Murder.
The whole scenario was outlandish. It was like something out of a Tom Clancy novel.
Twenty-four hours ago, Shane would have dismissed it all as a nonsensical nightmare. But that was before he’d seen a room full of professional investigators gunned down in cold blood, had a silenced pistol shoved between his eyes, helped steal a car, and gone on the run.
He shook his head. He realized with a start he hadn’t given a single thought to the deadly diagnosis he had received yesterday, the one that had shaken him up so badly, since seeing the airplane burning in the forest.
Until now.
The miles continued to melt away under the tires of the Granada. Shane found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. He blinked a few times, stifling a yawn. They had spent the entire afternoon in the car, with just the short break in Portland at midday, and it was now late afternoon. The skies had cleared as they moved south and the sun blazed high in the sky, but Shane felt like he could drop into a deep sleep at any moment.
“Go ahead and relax,” Tracie told him, amused. “Once the adrenaline from the conflict melts away, that high is replaced by a feeling of lethargy. It’s your body’s way of coping. It’s not every day you have to fight off psycho gunmen. At least I assume it’s not.”
“You assume correctly,” Shane agreed. He chuckled and then sobered, thinking about the slaughter that had taken place back at the Bangor Airport. “You don’t think the cops believe we killed everyone back in Bangor, do you?”
Tracie considered the question. “Right now, I doubt they know what to believe. Witnesses saw us leave the airport, undoubtedly followed immediately by the gorillas chasing us, but that doesn’t mean much one way or the other. Unless there is someone still alive who can describe exactly what happened—”
“And I don’t think there is,” Shane interrupted. “As far as I know, the only people they didn’t kill were the controllers in the radar room working airplanes, and those guys wouldn’t have seen anything, because they were inside a dark room in a separate part of the building.”
“If that’s the case, then it would be in our best interest not to get picked up by the police. They would eventually have to release you, but it would take a long time to verify your story, and they wouldn’t be in a very forgiving mood, not with a half-dozen or more murdered people—one of them a cop—on their hands.”
Shane rubbed his face, still just as tired but now nervous as hell, too. He exhaled forcefully and looked across the front seat at Tracie. “So, what’s the plan?” he asked. “Where are we going? What do we do now?”
“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 across the front seat, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. “That’s right.”
“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, wearing 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 communiqués or spies or airplane crashes.
He daydreamed about sexy secret agents for awhile, 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 wit
h 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 politically and militarily.
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 Soviet 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 through 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 superpowers 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 describing the concept. It signified each nation’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’d 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 right 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 on to Moscow.
But as far as he had been aware, there had never been a direct connection.
Until yesterday.
Until he had learned of a plan set in motion by some in the KGB to prevent a secret communiqué, written by Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev and addressed 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 he 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 the 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, 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 inside 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 wouldn’t 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 in 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 Vasiliy 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 honest 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!”
“Yes, yes, of course I’m being honest with you, Vasiliy. 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 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 New Haven looking for a suitable motel. She checked out three run-down establishments, all equally unappealing to Shane, eliminating each 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 virtually 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 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.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 13