“Come on, sir, you know that could easily be faked.”
Stallings sighed. For the first time, Tracie felt as though she might be getting through to him. He said, “Yes, it could be faked, and my thoughts were exactly the same as yours when I saw the crime scene photo of that Makarov lying invitingly on the floor of Humphries’s townhouse. But while you’ve been running around Washington threatening diplomats, there have been further developments.”
Tracie’s heart sank. “What developments?”
Stallings picked up the document he had been studying when she entered and tossed it across the desk at her. He remained silent until she had finished reading. It didn’t take long. Thanks to Tracie’s familiarity with the Russian language, she was able to read the original ransom note, rather than the English translation provided below it.
As had been the case when examining the photograph of Humphries holding the Russian newspaper hours earlier, something bothered Tracie about the letter—something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She pushed the unformed concern to the back of her mind for the moment, though, as the impact of the words hit her. She shook her head. “Am I reading this right? They want us to dismantle Western Europe’s nuclear defense systems? Are they crazy? Reagan would never go for that, and if he did, our allies would scream bloody murder!”
Stallings shrugged. “I agree,” he said simply. “But that’s not relevant to the situation. The relevant point is that this seals the deal. This proves it. The Soviets are holding the secretary of state prisoner.”
Tracie scanned the document, looking for a signature. There was none. She turned it over. Nothing. She spread her hands in confusion. “Who, specifically, is it from? It’s unsigned.”
Stallings said, “The official signature has been redacted in the copies provided to law enforcement and diplomatic agencies, but I had a brief opportunity to examine the original. The signature belonged to Soviet Foreign Minister Sergei Tamarkin. Assistant Secretary of State Joe Malone has dealt extensively with Tamarkin, and he says the signature appears legitimate. I requested to take possession of the original in order to have our cryptographers authenticate it, but was denied in favor of the FBI’s experts. Let’s hope they know what they’re doing, but until we hear otherwise, we have to operate on the assumption that the signature is real.”
“Presumably we’ve confronted the Soviets with all of this?”
“Of course. They’re denying everything, which means nothing. We’ve demanded to speak directly to Tamarkin and, of course, they’ve refused. It all adds up to verification.”
“Unless they’re telling the truth.”
Stallings’s jaw dropped open and he leveled a look of incredulity at Tracie. “What? You’re not still supporting this ridiculous notion that the Soviets are being set up, are you? Not in the face of all of this evidence, which includes what amounts to a signed confession.”
Tracie shook her head. “None of this proves—”
Stallings exploded. “Now you listen to me, Agent Tanner. Enough with the hunches and wild goose chases. You’ve already wasted the better part of a day, and as far as I can see are no closer to finding J.R. Humphries than you were when I recruited you for this assignment. The Soviet Union has kidnapped our secretary of state. That much is obvious. Go get him back or pack your things and start looking for a new line of work, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Tracie said. “Understood.”
“Good. Now take this copy of the ransom letter and get the hell out of my office. The next time we chat you’d better have made real progress, not stirred up a diplomatic hornet’s nest.”
Aaron Stallings glared at her before turning his attention to the mass of paperwork littering his desk. Tracie stood and exited without a word.
13
Tuesday, September 8, 1987
11:45 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
Back in her car, Tracie sat under the light of a sodium arc street lamp and studied the ransom note again. It was short, straightforward, and to the point. “Immediately begin disassembling all strategic nuclear weapons in Europe.”
There was no, “Or else” attached to the ultimatum. But then again, there was no need for one. The Soviets knew that U.S. officials would recognize the threat implicit in their instructions. The “or else” was assumed. Begin removing the missiles or bad things would happen to Secretary of State J. Robert Humphries.
Chances were those bad things didn’t include death, at least not immediately. Chances were he would lose a finger, or three, at various intervals designed to transmit a sense of urgency to the United States. Competent removal of Humphries’s digits would not threaten his life but would make perfectly clear the Soviets’ seriousness.
As plans went, Tracie mused, it wasn’t bad, if undertaken in a vacuum. The problem, of course, was that it was not undertaken in a vacuum, but in the real world. Ronald Reagan had been president for better than six and a half years, more than enough time for the rest of the world—the Soviet Union in particular—to understand the man’s approach to foreign relations.
Reagan would never allow himself to be bullied in such an obvious and brutal fashion, not even with the life of his close friend on the line. The Soviets had to know that. They had seen Iran release U.S. hostages they had held for nearly four hundred fifty days just after Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, in part to demonstrate their contempt for President Jimmy Carter, but also out of concern over what the much more hawkish Reagan might do in retaliation if they weren’t released.
Most recently, they had seen the president take advantage of a failed KGB assassination plot directed at him. President Reagan had gone on the offensive and called for the destruction of the Berlin Wall. The Soviets would be forced to comply with the demand or would risk the Americans revealing to the rest of the world how the KGB had utterly lost control of a number of their operatives.
To Tracie, whose career had dovetailed neatly with the Reagan presidency and who had spent most of her time as a covert ops specialist working in and around Soviet Russia and East Germany, this sudden, brutal change in tactics by the Soviet Union didn’t add up.
Not that she didn’t think they were capable of it. Of course they were. She simply knew that they would know it wouldn’t work, that they would be risking war for nothing. And the Soviets were not stupid.
Tracie blew out a breath in frustration and read the ransom note again.
She reviewed the photograph of Secretary of State Humphries holding the Russian newspaper. Looked more closely at the headline. It was something about an eight-car pileup on a freeway near Moscow, an event that could be easily verified. The newsprint under the headline was too small and too fuzzy for Tracie to read the accompanying article with any real comprehension.
Something about the newspaper photo and the ransom note was not quite right. She still couldn’t figure out what it was.
She rolled her shoulders and yawned. Ever since she’d been shot, her still-healing shoulders would stiffen and ache relentlessly when she began to get tired. She wished she could grab a quick nap. Not only would she feel better physically, but perhaps whatever was bothering her about the supposed Russian correspondence would come out of hiding and resolve itself.
She recalled what CIA Director Aaron Stallings had said about trying to authenticate the signature on the ransom note: I requested to take possession of the original in order to have our cryptographers authenticate it…
Authenticate it.
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and thought hard. Stallings had directed her in no uncertain terms to follow up on the Soviet connection to the case. There could be no mistaking his orders. He was quite clear.
Authenticate it.
For the second time in just a few months, she would be risking her career if she followed her instincts.
Authenticate it.
She had been given this assignment because the director of the CIA knew that following standard chann
els and standard protocols would likely result in one dead United States cabinet official, with the likelihood of war to follow.
Authenticate it.
Still deep in thought, Tracie returned the documents to her briefcase. She snapped it shut and started her car, motoring toward Alexandria, Virginia.
It was now nearly midnight and she had been going practically nonstop since smuggling Boris Rogaev out of Leningrad. She needed sleep.
Craved it.
She wasn’t going to get it.
She needed to pay someone a visit.
14
Wednesday, September 9, 1987
12:50 a.m.
Alexandria, Virginia
The tiny ranch-style home was crammed onto a piece of property roughly the size and dimensions of a high school softball diamond. Overgrown ornamental shrubs were working diligently to take over a weed-strewn yard weeks overdue for a mowing, and pale yellow light flickered hesitantly from a rusting electric lantern set back from the road.
Tracie had to smile as she stood outside of her vehicle taking it all in. She hadn’t visited this house in more than six years, but every detail of the exterior—at least what she could make out through the uneven light—looked exactly the same as it had the last time she had been here.
She navigated a rickety staircase, stepping up to a small front landing. Then she set her briefcase down and pressed the doorbell. A loud buzzing noise filled the house and then died away.
Silence.
She pressed the bell again.
Buzzing noise and then silence.
The resident was home; she knew it. He never went anywhere besides work if he could help it, and he certainly didn’t do that after midnight.
She tried again, this time holding the button down while counting to ten in her head.
At last, through the door’s decorative frosted glass window, Tracie saw a scarecrow-thin man stumble around a corner, moving more or less in her direction. The man, who had clearly been sleeping, ran a hand through his unruly mop of mud-brown hair before flipping a light switch. A floodlight mounted over the door blazed on and the man peered out the window. A confused look crossed his face before he blinked in surprise and smiled broadly. Then he threw the door open.
“Well, Lord Almighty, if it isn’t my favorite student ever! Welcome, Tracie, come on in. I haven’t seen you in…let’s see…must be almost seven years. What in the heck brings you out here at this time of night? And by the way, would it kill you to call ahead first?”
Tracie grinned at the barrage of questions. Peter Brickley had been her favorite instructor when she was going through training at The Farm. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you any advance notice that I was coming to see you,” she said as he led her down a short hallway and into a living room cluttered with books, newspapers and scholarly journals. “But I’m caught up in something classified and didn’t even want to use an unsecured telephone line.”
“Have a seat,” Brickley invited, tossing assorted paperwork onto the floor and making just enough room on his couch for her. “Can I get you a drink or a bite to eat?”
Tracie smiled. “Thank you, Dr. Brickley, but I really have to get right down to business. My assignment is extremely time-critical and I desperately need your help.”
“Okay.” He nodded gravely and eased into an overstuffed chair placed directly across a small coffee table from her. “How can I help you?”
One of the reasons Tracie Tanner had been recruited by the CIA immediately following her graduation from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, had been her degree in linguistics. The outstanding grades she had earned in that field of study, combined with her athleticism, beauty, and family pedigree of service to country, had made her an attractive target for the agency specializing in foreign clandestine operations. The fact she was a quick learner and so talented at the job had been a pleasant surprise both to her handler, Winston Andrews, and to herself.
But even with her honors degree in linguistics and her considerable field experience, Tracie knew she could not begin to compete with the knowledge of the man seated across the messy table from her. Dr. Peter Brickley was one of the most accomplished figures in the field of linguistics, a world-renowned lecturer and the author of dozens of groundbreaking treatises in his field.
And, unbeknownst to almost anyone in the world outside the company, he was a CIA contractor.
Tracie lifted her battered briefcase and set it atop the mess. She unsnapped the clasps and withdrew the top two documents, turning them around and placing them on the table. “I was hoping you might look at these two items and give me your impressions.”
She waited in silence as Dr. Brickley leaned over the table. His eyes widened as he took in the photograph of Secretary of State Humphries. He looked up and stared at her for a moment, saying nothing, before beginning to study the sheets. Two minutes stretched into four, and then six. The linguist squinted hard and eventually searched around until locating a large magnifying glass. He lifted it to his face and returned his attention to the papers. At last, Dr. Brickley sat back in his chair and gazed at Tracie. “What would you like to know?” he asked quietly.
“Are these documents written by a Russian?”
A trace of a smile flitted across the professor’s cadaverous face. “This is why I always felt you should have gone on and achieved a postgraduate degree in the field of linguistics,” he said. “I would have loved to work with you. You have marvelous natural ability.”
“So your answer is…”
“Let me ask you a question,” Brickley said. “Why would you suspect these documents were not Russian in origin? All of the grammar, even what I could read of the newspaper article itself, is technically correct.” He shrugged. “Why do you have a problem with it?”
Tracie thought for a moment. “I…I don’t know. I can’t really put my finger on it. I’ve spent a lot of time inside Soviet Russia and many of their satellite states since the last time I saw you, and I’m fairly comfortable with many Russian dialects, which can differ somewhat from region to region—”
“—Just as English dialects can differ from region to region inside this country.”
“Exactly. But after being exposed to as much Cyrillic as probably any outsider has been over the past half-decade, I can’t say what it is that bothers me. Something just doesn’t seem right about it. It seems somehow…contrived.”
This time Brickley’s smile wasn’t just a trace flitting across his face, it was broad and proud, like a father watching his daughter excel in the school spelling bee. “Again, it’s a shame you chose to move right into CIA fieldwork. You would eventually have made an outstanding linguistic analyst.”
Tracie laughed. “And people shooting at me would have been a rare occurrence.”
“Longer average career span, too,” Brickley said seriously. “Anyway,” he continued, “I can see from the photograph that the secretary of state’s recent disappearance from the world stage isn’t due to illness, as has been reported. You meant it when you said your assignment was time-critical if this evidence is indication, so I won’t waste any more of your time.
“Your suspicions about the origin of these documents are one hundred percent on-target. They were written in Cyrillic but were definitely not composed by someone of Russian origin, or even by someone with significant Russian connections. There are subtle errors in phrasing that, while not distinguishable to a layman, are quite noticeable to anyone with an extensive background in the study of linguistics.
“That’s why I am so proud of you,” he added. “Despite being so long removed from your studies, you picked up on the phrasing problems, even though you were not able to recognize exactly what it was you didn’t like.”
“Thank you for confirming my suspicions,” Tracie said. “Director Stallings thinks I’m misguided at best and a lunatic at worst.”
“You’re working directly with Stallings? What in the world is going on?”
; Tracie met his gaze and said nothing.
“Uh, right,” he stammered. “You can’t talk about it. Sorry about that. In any event, don’t worry about Stallings; you can handle him.”
“Thank you,” Tracie said. “Now comes the hard part. It’s nice to know my suspicions were correct, but my next question is really why I woke up one of the world’s preeminent linguistics experts in the middle of the night.”
“Any time, for you,” Brickley said sincerely.
“What I really need to know is this: if the documents weren’t written by a Russian, who were they written by?”
* * *
The professor spent a long time studying the two photocopies. He leaned back in his chair, reading glasses perched on his nose, holding the papers just inches from his face. Then he leaned forward, plopping them down on the table before bending over them as if waiting for them to perform a trick.
Then he repeated the process. Twice.
“The Russian language is ancient, as are many languages,” he finally began. “Due to the vastness of Russia’s land mass, the differences in dialect can be significant from one part of the country to another. Complicating matters is that their language has been influenced to varying degrees by the dialects of Europe to the west, and of Asia to the south and east.
“That said, there are patterns that remain consistent throughout all Cyrillic dialects that are missing here. Their absence is subtle but recognizable, if you know what to look for.”
Tracie glanced at her watch. Her mission was time-critical, but she knew that any attempt to hurry Brickley along would be pointless. Like many true geniuses, the linguist operated on his own wavelength, which was often very different from everyone else’s. She knew that once he started his explanation, he would eventually give her the information she needed. All she could do was let him get to the point in his own way.
“This is why,” the professor continued, “you were able to discern that something was not quite right in the phrasing of the Cyrillic. Your linguistic studies, combined with your exposure to real-world Russian dialects, made this…forgery…ring false to you.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 33