Tracie paused, gun leveled against Andrews, one hand buried in her backpack. She could sense that Shane was suffering and watched him closely, her eyes flicking back and forth between Andrews and Shane.
“Are you all right?” she finally ventured.
Shane nodded, closing his eyes against the discomfort. “More or less. I could use a glass of water, though.”
“You look like you need to lie down. You’re white as a ghost.”
“I’ll be okay.” He wondered if his words sounded as unconvincing to Tracie as they did to him. Judging by the look on her face, they probably did.
“Go get some water,” she said quietly. “I can handle this from here.”
“No,” Shane shook his head. It felt like someone had let loose a baseball inside his skull. Soon it would feel like a bowling ball. “I’m okay. I’ll stay.”
Tracie returned reluctantly to the search of her backpack, her hand emerging a few seconds later with a red-handled pair of pliers and a set of handcuffs, both of which she tossed onto Andrews’ desk. They landed with a clunk on the polished surface and spun to a stop.
“Careful with the desk,” Andrews said mildly. “It’s an antique.”
She smiled at him acidly. “So are you, and wait til you see what I’m going to do to you.”
Andrews grimaced, looking at the pliers. “A bit barbaric, wouldn’t you say?”
“You didn’t leave me a lot of time to prepare for this. I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive. Besides,” she said, making a show of looking at her watch, “the hours are slipping away. The time for subtlety is long past, not that I particularly care what happens to you, anyway.”
Her lie was blatantly obvious to Shane, he could see through it even with the black waves pounding through his head. It had to have been even clearer to Andrews after more than half a decade spent working with Tracie.
She wrapped her hand around the back of the chair and yanked it across the Persian rug with Andrews still sitting in it, bringing it closer to the desk. He nearly tumbled onto the floor but regained his balance and for the first time looked angry. Or maybe what Shane could see on his face was the beginning of real fear.
Tracie held his left hand in her right and thumped it down on the surface of the desk, snapping the pliers with her left for emphasis.
“Why don’t you try asking me what you want to know before beginning to pull out my fingernails?” Andrews said.
“I already told you what I wanted to know, and you insisted on playing games with me,” Tracie answered. “I don’t have time for games. And, by the way, when I’m done with your fingernails I’ll be taking your teeth. I don’t want to hurt you, Winston, but time is running out, and the only thing that matters is stopping this madness. So I’ll do what I have to do, and by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to tell me everything.”
Her face was grim but determined, the sight chilling Shane, who flashed back to the faces of the two Russians after her interrogations twelve hours ago.
“You want to know who else is involved with the Soviets, is that correct?”
“See? I told my new friend,” she nodded at Shane, “that you were relatively sharp for a dinosaur. Start talking and maybe you can save a few of those choppers, so when you have dinner at Leavenworth while you’re serving your life sentence, you won’t have to suck it through a straw.”
“There aren’t many KGB collaborators in positions of power above mine,” Andrews said softly, “but there are a few. Listen to me. No one’s going to believe you when you claim there’s a Russian hit man out to kill President Reagan. A far better strategy for you to follow right now would be to prepare for the new reality. Things are going to change in the world, and quickly. Position yourself to benefit from the upcoming war. I can help you with that.”
“You make me sick,” Tracie said, her voice dripping with venom. “Stop dragging your feet and just give me the fucking names. Last chance.”
“Okay, you win,” Andrews said. He bent his head in defeat, running his hand over his face like he was exhausted. Finally he dropped his hand to his lap and he looked up at Tracie, mouth closed. Shane could see the muscles in his jaw tense as he ground his teeth together.
He looked almost expectant, like he was waiting for her to answer a question, which didn’t make sense because Tracie had been the one asking questions of him.
“Well, “ she said. “Who are you working with? Goddammit, Winston, I need to know…” Her words began to fade as she realized something was wrong.
Andrews’ eyes bulged out and his face reddened. His body stiffened in the chair and he began to struggle to breathe, almost panting, unable to fill his lungs.
“Winston, no!” Tracie cried as he began convulsing. His body pitched sideways off the chair and he cracked his head on the edge of the heavy wooden desk. He hit the floor and flopped around like a fish out of water. Tracie knelt next to him and Shane stood frozen, helpless, unable to comprehend even what was happening.
A thin line of drool, whitish and foaming, trickled out of the corner of Andrews’ mouth and sprayed into the air as the convulsions caused his head to snap back and forth.
“What’s wrong with him?” Shane asked anxiously, his headache momentarily forgotten.
“Cyanide,” Tracie said. “He must have had a capsule in his pocket. He’s poisoned himself.”
Shane recalled him keeping his hand in a fist. He had assumed it was a reaction to the stress of being unmasked as a traitor. Obviously it had been something else.
Tracie reached under his head with one hand and supported him at the neck, trying to force his mouth open, presumably to clear his breathing passage, unable to do so. Andrews’ mouth was clamped shut in what must have been a muscular reaction as he slipped into unconsciousness.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Tracie said. “I should have seen this coming.” She felt for a pulse in his neck and then shook her head.
She rose and turned to Shane. “There’s nothing we can do for him. He’s going to be gone in seconds.”
Shane said nothing, stunned at the ugliness and brutality of the scene, at the speed at which the poison had done its job. Finally he shook his head and asked, “What do we do now?”
Tracie’s 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, still 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 dead on the floor?”
“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 ab
le to convince them you didn’t kill Andrews, but I guarantee you won’t do it before spending a full day—if not a lot more—in custody. 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.”
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 night, even if we do nothing.”
Tracie stopped in front of 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 home containing the dead body of Tracie Tanner’s handler.
***
“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, 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 now that he’d thrown up that 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 any time now,” he said, and 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 it’s 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, especially 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.”
“Yes, like now.”
“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 crapshoot. 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 was 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 for myself that night. But then, when your plane crashed and I worked my way through the woods and saw you stuck 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 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’m telling you, 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.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It keeps being true.”
“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 al
l 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 to run an op: I know where the hitter is going to set up, I know the method he’s going to use to take down 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 precise scenario. I’ll take my chances and worry about the fallout later. I’m certainly not going to sit by and allow the president’s assassination because I’m afraid to act.”
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 out a professional assassin 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.
“Absolutely not. That’s out of the question. You’re NOT going to be there.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 19