Tracie smiled tightly, eyes on the alert, her scan constant. She gripped his arm tightly and turned away from the busy main avenue and onto a much quieter side street. “That’s why you’re not leaving by plane,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to be out of the country and gone before you’re supposed to arrive in Moscow.”
“I do not understand.”
“You don’t have to. Just follow me.” They walked as fast as Tracie dared without drawing attention to themselves. She hoped they looked like a typical Russian couple enjoying some time together.
They crossed busy streets, moving steadily northwest through neighborhoods filled with drab Soviet apartment buildings as far as the eye could see, basic square cement block construction with all the charm and appeal of prison cellblocks.
After twenty minutes spent traversing these steadily deteriorating neighborhoods, they arrived at a busy commercial shipping terminal on the easternmost shores of the Baltic Sea. The terminal was shabby and faded, many of the buildings temporary Quonset hut construction that over time had become permanent. Strips of peeling paint hung off rust-covered walls, the entire complex ringed by an equally rusted chain-link fence.
“Over we go,” Tracie said, waving at the fence like a game show model.
“Climb over?” Rogaev asked incredulously. “That is your big plan? We will be seen by security. They will call authorities and we will be arrested!”
“Come on, Boris,” Tracie answered. “You’ve lived in the glorious Soviet state your whole life, you know how things work. Grease the right palms and almost anyone can be persuaded to look the other way. We have,” she glanced at her watch, “another six security-free minutes. I suggest we make the most of them.”
Rogaev shook his head in obvious disbelief but turned immediately to the fence. He tried to force the toe of one of his dress shoes into one of the small chain link gaps, but his foot was too big to fit.
Tracie sighed and intertwined her fingers, forming a cradle, then braced herself against a fence support and held her hands at knee level. The Russian bureaucrat unsmilingly stepped onto the makeshift stepstool, reached up and clung to the top of the fence. He then grunted and swung awkwardly over, dropping heavily to the ground on the other side.
Tracie was up and over the fence before Rogaev had even regained his footing. “We’re almost there,” she said. “But we have to hurry.”
They moved fast, abandoning all attempt at stealth, and trotted across the shipyard. Cranes roared, unloading huge wooden crates from mammoth ships, all of which seemed to be rusting as badly as the shipyard itself. Engines whined and voices bellowed. Men swore lustily almost nonstop.
Tracie knew she was being watched by at least half the men in the yard, shapeless dress or no shapeless dress. Not many females came around here. They would remember her, but it couldn’t be helped. By the time it occurred to the authorities to question the shipyard workers, she and Rogaev would be safe and sound across the Gulf of Finland.
She hoped.
They crossed the yard, Tracie finally spotting the vessel she was looking for. She made a beeline for a small fishing boat bobbing at the end of a long, rotting wooden pier, Rogaev right on her heels. The boat’s dual outboard engines were already running, burbling quietly as the two-man crew watched them approach, their faces giving away nothing.
One crewman, an ancient-looking Russian with shaggy hair and a long salt-and-pepper beard covering most of a weather-chapped face, helped them into the boat. The moment their feet touched the deck, Tracie said, “Go!” tersely, in Russian.
The crewman stepped onto the dock and unhitched a single rope from a cleat, tossing it onto the boat. Then he climbed back aboard and nodded to his counterpart at the helm. Instantly, the engines increased in pitch to a throaty roar and the boat leapt away from the dock, moving toward open water at a much livelier pace than seemed possible for such a beat-up old tub.
“Stealth wasn’t an option?” the Soviet bureaucrat muttered to Tracie.
She grinned. “Speed seemed like the better option.”
Worry lines etched Rogaev’s face. “This crew will eventually be questioned by the authorities. What happens then?”
“To you personally? Nothing. You’ll have long-since disappeared. And you needn’t worry about these men. They’ve worked with the agency many times. Once we’re safely ashore in Finland, they’ll relocate to a very private port where their boat will be repainted and renamed. In less than twenty-four hours, there will be no evidence this craft ever existed.”
“And me? What happens after I arrive in Finland?”
“There is a car waiting to drive us to Vantaa Airport in Helsinki, where we’ll be flown by private jet to Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. You’ll be debriefed there for several days and then flown to the United States, where you will be given a new identity and where you will start a new life.”
Bewilderment gradually changed to gratitude in the Russian’s eyes. “I…I don’t know how to thank you for risking your life for me.”
Tracie smiled. “No thanks necessary. I’m just doing my job.”
She gazed at the rapidly receding Leningrad shoreline. She had been uncertain whether she ever wanted to return to CIA clandestine operations after the disaster in Washington that had taken Shane Rowley’s life and forever changed hers; the tragedy that had left a permanent hole in her heart. But she realized now that she had missed the excitement of her old life.
Things would never be the same as they had been before. She accepted that.
Still, she was glad to be back at work.
3
Monday, September 7, 1987
11:35 p.m.
Georgetown – Washington, D.C.
The old man meandered slowly along the sidewalk. He took small, careful steps in an effort to avoid stumbling, although in this area, roads, sidewalks and city light fixtures were scrupulously maintained. Residents demanded it. The old man had a better chance of tripping over his own feet than over a crack or depression in the cement.
It was warm and muggy in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, and yet the old man wore a light jacket over his standard attire of white dress shirt and grey polyester slacks. Both items had been ironed with military precision and featured razor-sharp creases. His body listed slightly to the right as he walked, and he leaned heavily on a cane, planting it with care prior to every second step. The man moved laboriously, painfully.
In his left hand he held a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Its plastic lid was tightly sealed, but a trace of steam found its way out through a small vent-hole and trailed the slow-moving man like steam from an old-time locomotive before dissipating in the heavy night air.
Most of the homes in this section of Georgetown were dark and still at this time of night, their owners fast asleep, but in one townhouse a light still burned in a single downstairs window, though it was nearly invisible behind a thick screen of lilac bushes.
After a glance in the direction of the lighted townhouse, the old man adjusted course, angling across the sidewalk toward a nondescript white sedan. The car was parked directly in front of the townhouse he had just passed. The interior of the vehicle was dark, but the old man knew it was occupied.
Whenever U.S. Secretary of State J. Robert Humphries overnighted at his Washington residence—the one where the light still burned—this car or one exactly like it was posted on the street. Inside it would be a Bureau of Diplomatic Security Special Agent tasked with providing security for the secretary of state.
The old man had been bringing a late-night coffee to the agent for the better part of six months now. The first couple of months had been an exercise in frustration, as he had spent night after night trudging along the sidewalk, offering coffee and a smile only to be rebuffed.
Finally, on an unseasonably cold late-April night, the agent had accepted the coffee, rolling down his window just enough to allow the old man to pass th
e cup through. Then he had asked the old man what he was doing out on such a blustery evening.
The old man was ready for the question; he had expected it. What else would the agent ask? That one question had been the opening he was waiting and working for.
He had responded that as a former civil servant himself he felt a certain kinship with the agent, stuck all alone outside the secretary of state’s house, earning his living with the thankless protection detail. “The least I can do,” he had said with a smile, “is bring you a coffee while getting my exercise.”
The agent had never come right out and admitted he was serving as Humphries’s protection detail, but he hadn’t denied it, either. An admission hadn’t been necessary. The old man was well aware of the agent’s duties. He may have been more aware of them than the agent himself.
Every night since, on the occasions Humphries occupied the townhouse, the old man had struggled along the sidewalk, coffee in one hand, cane in the other, timing his appearance to ensure that the agent would be inside his vehicle upon the old man’s arrival rather than patrolling the grounds.
And every night since, that agent had accepted his gift of coffee with a smile. On the nights that agent was off-duty, his replacement—an unsmiling hulk of a man—not only refused the coffee but also brusquely advised the old man to take a different route on his nightly constitutionals.
The old man didn’t care. Eventually he stopped going out on the nights he knew the unsmiling hulk of an agent was working.
He didn’t need that agent. He had the other.
Tonight he knew the friendly agent was working. Sure enough, the minute he reached the side of the vehicle—a Chrysler K-Car with U.S. government plates, kept so sparkling clean the old man thought the agent must run it through a car wash every day on his way to work—the passenger window rolled smoothly down.
“Evening, Mr. Jefferson,” the agent said from the driver’s side, his voice warm with recognition.
“Good evening, my friend,” said the old man, whose name was not Jefferson, in what had become an established routine. “I happened to be out for some exercise and thought you might appreciate a little pick-me-up, from one working man to another.”
The agent said, “Very kind of you, sir, and thank you.” The old man knew the agent was smiling, despite his face being obscured by the darkness of the car’s interior. He could hear it in his voice.
The agent slid across the front seat and reached up with two hands to accept his coffee. When he did, the old man simultaneously dropped the cane out of his right hand and the coffee cup out of his left. The cane clattered to the sidewalk and the coffee cup dropped to the road where it burst open, spraying hot coffee on the old man’s feet.
He paid it no attention.
The agent said, “Mr. Jefferson, are you all right?” concern evident in his voice.
The old man didn’t answer. He was too busy for conversation and there was nothing to say, anyway. He reached under his jacket and withdrew a Russian-made Makarov 9mm semi-automatic pistol with a long black sound suppressor screwed to its barrel. He pulled the gun clear of a custom-made Czechoslovakian leather shoulder holster and brought it to bear on the agent’s face.
Before the agent had a chance to reach for his own weapon, before he could even register surprise, the old man squeezed the trigger twice, firing point-blank into the agent’s upturned face. Two muffled pops sounded at the same time the agent’s head was exploding, splattering the inside of the vehicle with blood, bone and human tissue. The car’s interior looked as though a water balloon filled with fruit punch had exploded.
The assailant wasted no time by admiring his handiwork. He dropped the arthritic old man act and moved like an elite athlete, opening the door and rolling the agent into the passenger side foot well. He picked the agent’s windbreaker up off the front seat—it was covered with blood but still better than nothing—and used it to cover the still-bleeding, nearly headless corpse as best he could.
He examined the mess inside the car with a critical eye and wrinkled his nose in distaste, recognizing immediately that he could not afford the time it would take to clean all the gore off the windows. He was going to have to trust that the lack of activity on the quiet street at this time of night, combined with the car’s location—positioned almost precisely between two street lights and covered in shadows—would prevent all but the nosiest of passersby from seeing the devastation and alerting police.
Eventually the body would be discovered, but the assailant wasn’t concerned. He only needed a few minutes to complete his chore.
The no-longer-old man holstered his weapon. Then he bent and picked up his cane and the now-empty coffee cup off the sidewalk. Both would contain fingerprints but he didn’t care. He tossed them into the back seat of the K-Car, then locked the vehicle.
The man then closed the window and gently shut the door. He looked up and down the street and was rewarded with exactly what he was hoping for: absolutely no activity. A quick scan of the townhouses lining the street showed darkened windows in all but the secretary of state’s home.
The assassin turned away from the car and strolled casually along the sidewalk until passing a stately elm tree that he guessed had been planted around the time of the Gettysburg Address. Still seeing no suspicious neighbors, he eased left and melted into a small opening between two shrubs in a row of immaculately trimmed hedges.
A moment later he emerged in J. Robert Humphries’s front yard. He crossed the yard in a matter of seconds and moved noiselessly along the side of the house. He bypassed the window with the light burning on the other side, careful not to make a sound as the window had been propped open several inches to allow fresh air inside.
At the rear of the house a sliding glass door overlooked a red brick patio. The assassin stepped to the door and looked down through the glass, unsurprised to see an adjustable metal bar placed along the base. The bar was a common tool used to prevent an intruder from opening the slider and gaining access to the home.
The assassin smiled. The bar would be utterly ineffective.
A thin gauze curtain had been pulled across the inside of the door, but the assassin could see through it to the vague outline of a man writing at a desk. The man’s back was to the door, and he was bent over his work in concentration.
The assassin reached into his pants pocket and removed a small diamond-tipped glasscutter attached to a suction cup by a sturdy metal chain. He licked a finger and moistened the edges of the suction cup before placing it against the glass door at roughly chest height.
He pushed the cup carefully against the glass until it was it was firmly attached to it. Then he very slowly scribed a circle on the glass with the stylus, maintaining a steady pressure. A slight rasping noise accompanied the act, but the assassin was unconcerned. He assumed the man at the desk would be so engrossed in his work he would not even notice the barest hint of sound.
Even if Humphries did detect it, there was virtually no chance he would be able to identify the source of the noise before it was too late.
When he had scribed a full circle, the killer removed the stylus from the glass and eased the diamond tip under the rubber suction cup, breaking the seal. He capped the glasscutter and replaced the tool in his pocket. Then he stepped back and breathed deeply, allowing himself a moment of satisfaction for a job well done.
So far.
After the ten-second break, the assassin refocused and got back to work. He again removed his Makarov from its holster. He placed the butt of the gun’s grip against the glass and tapped firmly, still unconcerned that the noise would attract any unwanted attention. A four-inch circle of glass fell away from the door, dropping to the interior floor of the townhouse where it spun like a coin before settling to a stop.
This time, the noise did get Humphries’s attention, which was exactly what the assassin wanted. The secretary of state rose from his chair, turned, and scanned the empty room behind him. The killer could see o
nly the vague suggestion of a body through the gauze curtain, but what the man was doing—and thinking—was as clear as day.
The killer crouched, still as a statue, and waited while the townhouse’s occupant tried to locate the source of the noise. Finally Humphries spotted the small circle of glass on the floor. He crossed the room, his form clarifying through the sheer material of the curtain as he approached.
The secretary of state knelt and picked up the glass. He examined it for a moment and then made the decision that sealed his fate. He reached up and slid the curtain open, exposing himself to the assassin waiting as patiently as death on the other side of the door.
The assassin took a half-second to appreciate the look of stunned disbelief etched on J. Robert Humphries’s face as he gaped into the barrel of the Makarov, which must have seemed as big and threatening as a cannon from his position just inches away. The killer said, quietly, “You’re going to reach down and remove that steel bar, and then you’re going to open this door. You’re going to do it in the next two seconds or you will die.”
The look of surprise on Humphries’s face was replaced almost immediately with one of indignation followed by steely-eyed determination. “I can’t,” he said simply. “If I slide the door open my security alarm will activate, and I assume you wouldn’t want that.”
The killer was thrown off his game for a moment. He had expected his victim to panic, perhaps try to run, perhaps beg for his life. What he hadn’t expected was this kind of calm, quick-witted response, but he adjusted quickly. “Not true, Mr. Secretary. I am well familiar with your alarm system. It is rudimentary, and cannot be activated until all of the doors and windows on this floor are closed. I passed an open window on my way here, therefore the alarm is off. Now, do as I say. You will not receive another warning.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 27