Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set

by Allan Leverone

  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 assignment, 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 the 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 the man.

  The sun had lost its daylong 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 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’d 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 calling on 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 seem to work past.

  She had signed on at CIA not out of any desire to put her life on the line. Not because she had some 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 Americans—we had them, of course we did, we would not be human if it were otherwise—we possessed the greatest system of government in the world, enjoyed freedoms and opportunities 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 globe, crawling through mud puddles, freezing her fingers and toes 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 exactly as she was told, all in the name 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 he was likely alone. Tracie felt certain he would not have gone to Langley or received visitors with Gorbachev’s letter unaccounted for.

  It was time to move.

  She turned to Shane and saw him watching her closely.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, his voice gentle.

  She thought about it for a moment before answering. Then she said, “Yes I am.” And she discovered she meant it.

  She took a moment to tell him how she intended to gain access to Andrews’ home and what she needed from him to help make it happen.

  Then she opened the door of the Granada and stepped into the muggy late-spring air.

  38

  June 1, 1987

  5:25 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Shane walked up the front steps and pushed the buzzer. Whatever Winston Andrews’ faults, and it seemed there were plenty, being a lazy homeowner was not one of them. The grass around the flagstone walkway had been trimmed with military precision, and the home’s wooden shutters appeared freshly painted, the purity of their near-blinding whiteness providing a stark contrast to the tired-looking weathered grey of the shutters on the surrounding homes.

  Shane rang the bell and listened closely.

  Nothing.

  He waited maybe thirty seconds and pressed the buzzer again, worried Andrews might not even be home.

  Tracie had felt certain he would be. “He won’t go anywhere until he gets his hands on the letter he thinks is coming,” she had said, but Shane wasn’t so sure. Maybe he had found out somehow that the Russians had been taken down, or maybe he simply got cold feet a
nd skipped town.

  He lifted his hand to buzz the house a third time when through the closed door came a muffled voice. “Yes? What is it?”

  Tracie had said he wouldn’t open the door, not even a crack, and she had been right. There was a peephole in the middle of the heavy oak door, eye height, and Shane pictured a suspicious old man peering through it, sizing him up.

  “Thank God you’re home,” Shane said, following Tracie’s instructions. “I wonder if I could use your phone. I’ve been bitten by a dog and I need medical attention.”

  “Bitten? Where? I don’t see any blood.”

  “It’s on my lower leg. See?” Shane turned around and pointed toward the porch floor. Tracie had said the fisheye lens in the peephole would likely not show the floor clearly enough for Andrews to be sure whether Shane really was injured or not, and in any event the point was not to convince him but rather to keep him occupied long enough for her to do what she needed to do.

  “Please,” Shane said. “I feel queasy, like I’m gonna be sick. If you won’t let me in, could you please at least call an ambulance for me? The blood, it’s soaking into my shoe…” He sank to one knee, like an athlete offering up a quick prayer before a game.

  There was a short pause, and then the disembodied voice said, “All right. Stay where you are, I’ll be—”

  A second later the door swung open and Shane rose to his feet. A tall, deeply tanned white-haired man, trim but not skinny, faced him with a mixture of annoyance and resignation on his lined face.

  Tracie stood behind Andrews, backpack slung over one shoulder, barrel of her gun placed against the side of his skull.

  “You appear to have made a remarkable recovery,” the man said to Shane drily. “Please, won’t you come in?”

  “Yeah. It’s a miracle,” Shane answered grimly, brushing past the older man and into the house. He turned and closed the front door, suddenly gripped by a fast-building fury. This was the man who had wanted Tracie and him dead. This was the man who had betrayed his country. This was the man responsible for the deep despair in Tracie’s soul.

  The anger came out of nowhere, rising in him like a physical being, making him want to strike out.

  “Easy,” Tracie muttered, and Shane realized he had wrapped both hands tightly into fists and was holding them rigidly at his side.

  He blew out a breath forcefully. “Sorry about that. I don’t know where that came from.” He released his hands and shook the tension out of them.

  “I do,” Tracie said. “I feel the same way, believe me.”

  Shane smiled weakly and said, “Didn’t take you long to get in here.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t. All I needed was a minute or two’s worth of diversion to pick the lock on the back door. Nice job with that.”

  Andrews watched the exchange, an unreadable look on his face. “I’m unarmed,” he said, ignoring Shane and speaking to Tracie. “Any chance you can take that cannon out of my ear?”

  She lowered the gun to his ribs and held it there with her right hand while patting Andrews down with her left.

  “One wrong move,” she said, “and I’ll blow your ass into next week. All I need is an excuse.”

  “Understood,” Andrews said. He seemed mostly unaffected by the threat. Shane thought the entire bizarre scene might be the strangest thing he’d ever seen, and that was saying something, given the events of the last couple of days.

  “Where to?” Andrews asked.

  “Your office,” Tracie said, and the older man turned and walked through a luxuriously appointed dining room—Oriental rug covering gleaming hardwood floors, crystal chandelier hanging over a massive maple dining table, fieldstone fireplace in one corner, fully stocked bar in the other—and began climbing a set of stairs.

  Tracie followed, gun still in her hands but now pointed at the floor, and Shane brought up the rear. He could feel the sensation of pressure building at the base of his skull and thought, not now, dammit, not now.

  About a third of the way up the stairs, Tracie said, “You don’t seem all that surprised to see us still breathing.”

  “That’s because I’m not particularly surprised,” Andrews said. “I helped train you, remember? I was never convinced the Russians would be able to take you out of the picture, and even when their team checked in and reported that they had completed the mission, I didn’t completely buy it.”

  Tracie stopped dead on the stairs, Shane bumping into her from behind. Andrews seemed to feel the movement stop behind him and he stopped, too.

  In a puzzled voice, Tracie asked, “If you suspected I might have gotten the jump on the Russians, why was it so easy to get in here? Why weren’t you better prepared? You had to know if I survived the ambush in New Haven, I would come straight to you—nobody else knew we were there.”

  Andrews glanced at Tracie with a paternal half-smile that Shane instantly wanted to knock off his face.

  “Because it doesn’t matter anymore,” the old man said. “Things have progressed to the point now that they cannot be stopped. The slaughter by the KGB of law enforcement and civilians in Maine will prompt an investigation so thorough I could never survive it. My cover will be blown and I’ll end up in prison, if not in front of a firing squad. This is the end for me, my dear, one way or the other.”

  Andrews continued trudging up the stairs and Tracie followed. At the top of the stairway a short hallway led to a home office. In one corner stood an antique redwood desk, roughly the size of a small aircraft landing strip. The top was bare, and in the center stood an empty glass, two ice cubes melting inside. A ring of condensation had formed around the base.

  A bank of telephones covered a rack next to the desk, and alongside that, against one wall, was an array of electronic equipment, none of which looked familiar to Shane.

  There was no sign of any work in progress in the room, no correspondence on the desk, no paperwork anywhere. The office felt tidied-up, antiseptic. The low hum of cooling fans, presumably protecting the electronics, was barely perceptible in the background.

  Andrews stood in the doorway, bushy white eyebrows raised, hands in his pockets, awaiting instructions.

  Tracie asked Shane to pull Andrews’ chair out from behind his desk and drag it into the center of the room. When he had done so, she bent and ran her hand along the underside of the seat. Satisfied there was no weapon hidden there, she told her mentor to sit.

  “For what it’s worth, which is clearly not much,” Andrews said, settling into the chair and folding his hands in his lap, “I have no idea specifically what information is contained in that letter. When you were dispatched to East Germany to act as courier for an emergency communiqué from Mikhail Gorbachev, I was as much in the dark about its contents as you were. As anyone was.”

  “Bullshit,” Tracie said simply. “This is the biggest operation the KGB has attempted in years, probably decades. You’ve been working with them at least that long, therefore you knew about it. It’s that simple.”

  “You give me far too much credit,” Andrews said. “I’ve been aware the assassination of a high-ranking American is in the works, that much is true. But I’ve not been privy to the specifics of the operation.”

  He gazed at Tracie appraisingly. “But you have, haven’t you? The fact that we’re even having this conversation means you’ve opened the letter. What does it say? My KGB contacts have their suspicions, but no one seems to know for certain.”

  “What it says,” Tracie began, her voice cold and her face stony, “is none of your business. You’re a traitor and an embarrassment to the agency. An embarrassment to your country. You’re still alive for one reason and one reason only: I need to find out how deep inside the government this conspiracy reaches.”

  “The letter is a warning to President Reagan, isn’t it? Gorbachev wants to stop the assassination attempt,” Andrews said, ignoring Tracie statement.

  Her face boiled red and Shane could see how close she was to losing control. �
��How can you sit there, calmly discussing a presidential assassination?” she asked. “An event that, if successful, will in all probability launch World War Three? How?”

  “So the president is the target,” Andrews answered, still seemingly unruffled, a note of wonder in his voice.

  “I understand you view me as a traitor to my country,” he continued, “but what you don’t realize is that my work as a buffer has saved tens of thousands of lives, hundred of thousands probably, and prevented outright war between the United States and the USSR many times over. My role has been to prevent the destruction of the country I have spent my life serving, and to my way of thinking, I’ve done exactly that.”

  “Your work as a buffer?” Tracie asked, nonplussed. “You mean your unsanctioned, illegal, treasonous work? Is that the work you’re referring to?”

  Andrews shrugged. “Most of the work you do is unsanctioned and technically illegal, too.”

  “There’s no comparison. I’m serving my country. I’m certainly no traitor.”

  Andrews said nothing and she continued. “You claim to have prevented war between the two countries, but you’re assuming people in the highest positions of responsibility would have responded to situations in a certain way had you not acted, when you have no justification for those assumptions. And if you’ve contributed to the beginning of a third world war now, what the hell has been the point?

  Andrews started to answer and Tracie held up a hand.

  “This is not a debate,” she said. “You don’t get equal time. This discussion is over. I told you once, you’re still breathing only because I need information. And you’re going to give it to me. Right now.”

  Andrews smiled sadly but did not answer.

  Tracie shrugged her backpack off her shoulder and it dropped heavily to the floor. She knelt and unzipped it, all the while holding her weapon on Andrews, who sat quietly, making no move to interfere.

  Shane ran a hand over his face and sighed shakily. The pressure at the base of his skull had increased steadily until it was now a dull throb, radiating waves of pain outward into his neck and shoulders as well as through his head. He had been here before. The pain would get much worse before it got better. He cursed the timing, wished he had the pain medication back home in his medicine cabinet.