This time, though, a pair of agents had been waiting for her cab when it pulled to the curb, and one had whisked her inside the complex in a wheelchair while the other paid the driver and took charge of her few personal items.
Tracie hated hospitals. Hated being admitted to them, hated driving past them, hated thinking about them. So the news that her bullet wound could be cleaned, disinfected and bandaged and her head injury could be sutured, all on site and all by the agency’s medical staff, had come as a pleasant, if not entirely unexpected, surprise.
Treating patients without asking too many questions—or any questions at all—was routine for CIA doctors, and Tracie was thrilled she would not have to deal with the DC police, who would certainly have been notified immediately had she appeared at any area hospital with a bullet wound in her leg.
She was treated professionally and courteously, and four hours after being ushered inside, she exited the complex on a brand-new set of crutches, with a freshly bandaged left leg and freshly sutured right side of her head, not to mention freshly shaved right side of her head.
She found herself worrying more about what Marshall would think of her now odd-looking hairstyle than about recovering from the bullet wound. All things considered, she supposed that was a good sign.
The diagnosis regarding her still-throbbing headache was that she had suffered a concussion—no surprise there—and the consensus of the medical staff seemed to be that the headaches would begin to subside over the next few days.
They offered prescription medication to minimize the pain, which she turned down flat. Anything that could serve to dull the senses or slow reaction time was potentially deadly to a covert operative, and while Tracie doubted she would be sent into the field on crutches, she couldn’t entirely discount the possibility, either. Aaron Stallings was that unpredictable.
At no time while inside Langley did she see anyone she knew, which was probably another good sign. It seemed unlikely any employee of the Central Intelligence Agency would ask the obvious question of why an ex-operative with no current ties to the CIA would be receiving treatment for a gunshot wound, but still, her preference was not to have to discuss the issue at all.
And she couldn’t deny feeling a certain sadness at being back here as an outsider. The CIA was the only employer she had ever had as an adult, and her entire identity had been tied up in her work as a covert operative—a NOC, which stood for non-official cover.
She was doing the same type of work now, and she supposed her current position—working for the agency on the blackest of black ops missions while not even officially being employed by the agency—was as NOC as NOC could get, but she missed the camaraderie of fellow intelligence employees.
Before her official termination, she would have felt a sense of belonging, of shared commitment, when walking the halls of CIA Headquarters, even though she might not see a single face she recognized. The bond of sacrifice toward a common goal was that strong.
But now, despite the fact she had been treated well and cared for in the most professional manner possible, that camaraderie was gone. That sense of shared purpose was missing.
She was the outsider.
Still, she knew she was doing important work, work critical to national security, and although the history of the CIA was that once terminated, an employee—especially an operational employee—would never be rehired, Tracie held out hope that her case might be different.
If she performed her duties as Aaron Stallings’s personal Black Ops agent to the highest level possible, if she made herself so valuable he would have no choice in the matter, maybe he would see his way clear to returning her to the CIA’s roster of operatives on an official basis.
She knew she was probably kidding herself. Hell, she was definitely kidding herself. But she had to have something to hold on to. She needed that little bit of hope, even if it was unreasonable hope. She needed it like an addict needed his next fix.
The sound of her crutches echoed down the hallway as the rubber stoppers moved along the meticulously polished hardwood floors. As always when she visited her boss, Tracie marveled at the exquisite furnishings, wondering how even a decades long civil servant could possibly afford the expensive taste Stallings exhibited.
She arrived at the director’s closed office door and before she could raise her hand to rap on the door, he bellowed, “Come in!” He had heard her less-than-stealthy approach.
Tracie turned the knob and struggled inside, leaning on her right crutch to keep it from clattering to the floor while she opened the door with her left hand. She clomped through and then paused just inside the office, using her crutch to push the door closed.
Stallings glanced up from the ever-present pile of paperwork cluttering his desk, grunted something that may or may not have been “hello,” and then dropped his attention back to his work. He didn’t bother to offer her any assistance, which was just as well. She would never have accepted. Not from him.
The usual hard-backed chair had been placed in front of his desk, and Tracie crutched her way across the room and eased into it. The boss paid her no attention after his brief glance as she was entering, and Tracie took advantage of the opportunity to lean her crutches against the desk as Edison Kiley had done during her last visit here.
Stallings showed no signs of being prepared to interrupt his paperwork, so she lifted her injured leg with both hands and propped it onto the surface of the desk and then leaned back in the chair with a sigh of satisfaction.
Stallings lifted his eyes from the desk, made a point of staring at her leg, and then raised his gaze to meet hers, his forehead wrinkled and his entire demeanor screaming, “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Tracie smiled brightly in response. “Gotta keep it elevated,” she said, although the doctors had told her no such thing. It only made sense, though, and she decided they had probably meant to give her those instructions, but that it had just slipped their minds.
Better safe than sorry, she thought. Especially if I can tweak the boss.
Stallings cleared his throat and said, “So, you weren’t able to apprehend Maria Carranco.”
“The threat has been eliminated, yes. Those were your instructions, correct?”
“I would have much preferred you to bring the young woman in, so we could interrogate her and perhaps gain intel that would be of use to the agency down the line.”
“And also so you could wait a sufficient amount of time and then release her discreetly back to Omega 7. You wouldn’t want to jeopardize your working relationship with Juan Gonzalez, now, would you?”
Aaron Stallings’s temper was legendary around Washington, DC. It was never far from the surface, and now anger smoldered in his gaze. “Thanks to your heavy-handed tactics, we’ll never have a ‘working relationship’ with Gonzalez again. And before you try to justify your methods, let me remind you that the ‘working relationship’ you denigrate so easily has resulted in the prevention of numerous felony crimes, including murder.”
“So you have no problem with this supposed ‘ally’ sending me to Havana on a wild-goose chase and then leaving me there to die.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Tracie had by now dealt with the legendary spymaster long enough that she had convinced herself she would be able to keep her temper in check, that she was used to his manipulations and the unending mind games. But once again, she felt her anger rising to match his own.
Her voice had begun rising in volume and now she lowered it but continued to speak. “Your instructions to me were very clear: I was to remove the burgeoning threat to defense-related industries ASAP, and to do so by any means necessary. Those were your exact words. ‘Any means necessary.’ Given the opportunity, I would have brought Carranco back with me, but I have to tell you, if there was any chance at all she would have ended up back on the street, where she could have killed or injured more innocent people, I don’t apologize for be
ing forced to kill her. And for the record, it was either her or me in that goddamned hole in the ground. I was forced to kill her or die myself.”
Stallings glowered at her but said nothing, and after a moment she continued. “This woman was a Grade-A, first-class psycho, Boss, and protecting her in order to maintain connections with Gonzalez would have been the wrong move. Trust me on this.”
He continued to stare her down and she returned his gaze defiantly. Finally he changed the subject.
Sort of.
“We have a team of agents removing all the weapons, bomb-making materials and other evidence from her shack in the middle of the Everglades even as we speak. That place was a treasure-trove of extremely dangerous substances. It was a minor miracle she never blew herself sky-high while constructing explosive devices out there. It’s a tremendous win to get those materials off the street.”
Tracie realized this was as close to an apology as Aaron Stallings would ever allow himself to come. It was also as close as he would come to admitting she had done well, and she smiled—sincerely, this time—at her boss. Of course, a return smile was unthinkable, but she thought the hard set of his face might have softened just a bit.
Maybe.
Stallings cleared his throat and said, “We can only hold Gonzalez for so long. He’s going to be released from custody down in Miami very soon, probably by the end of the day if our recovery team can get everything out of Carranco’s shack by then. Once that happens, he’s going to discover Maria has gone missing, and once that happens, he will come looking for you.”
Tracie chuckled grimly. “Let him look. He’ll never find me, and even if he does, good luck to him. I handled him once, I can handle him again.”
“I know this man. He’ll never give up.”
“I’m not worried.”
“I’m not saying you should be. But you should definitely be wary.”
“I’m always wary, Director.”
“Good. Now, how long did the medical quacks say you were going to be laid up?”
“They didn’t say, specifically. But the slug went through and through, and caused no structural damage to my leg. My head injury—aside from the sewing job required to close the gash—is just a concussion. They say the headaches will begin to diminish soon, and I’m a fast healer. By the time I get the stitches out of my head and my leg I should be fine.”
Stallings looked at her dubiously.
“What?” she said. “You don’t like my new hairstyle? Buzz-cut on one side, long on the other?”
The CIA Director grunted in what may or may not have been a chuckle. With Aaron Stallings, it was hard to tell; he might just be suffering from heartburn. He shook his head and said, “Is there anything else, Tanner?”
“No, sir.”
“Then get your leg off my goddamn desk and get the hell out of here. Rest up and feel better, but stick close to your phone. You can expect a call from me five minutes after you’re ready to return to work.”
“I’m ready right now.” That wasn’t entirely true, of course. Her head continued to pound and she wouldn’t be winning many footraces any time soon. But it was close enough as far as she was concerned. She’d be damned if she was going to show any sign of weakness to Aaron Stallings.
He expelled a blast of air in what she knew this time was a chuckle and said, “Yeah, right. Get out of here, Tanner.”
Tracie eased her leg off the desk and struggled to her feet. She leaned onto her crutches and began clumping slowly toward the office door. Again Stallings declined to offer any assistance and again she was unsurprised.
She exited the office without saying goodbye.
Called a cab from Aaron Stallings’s empty kitchen.
Began working her way to the end of his long driveway to wait for her ride.
It would be a few minutes before the taxi’s arrival, and she passed the time thinking about Marshall Fulton and that second date. She wondered what he would say when he got a glimpse of her half-shaved head.
She found herself smiling at the thought. She didn’t think he’d mind too much.
THE HITLER DECEPTION
Allan Leverone
Prologue
April 29, 1945
7:10 p.m.
Führerbunker, Berlin, Germany
The young soldier was afraid.
His position on Adolph Hitler’s personal security detail for the past three years had allowed Klaus Newmann to witness the tide of war turning against his country even as he developed a personal relationship with the man whose life he was sworn to protect.
By April, defeat for the Thousand Year Reich was imminent. It seemed obvious, even to a common soldier like Klaus. The Soviet Union’s Red Army had by now fully encircled Berlin, and relentless Soviet bombing runs were pounding the capital city into smoking ruins.
The Führer’s behavior had become more and more erratic, even as wild rumors of impending coup attempts and assassination plots swept through the bunker. Klaus had observed first-hand some of the Führer’s near-incoherent rages, as Hitler spent hours and days developing elaborate defense plans, only to scrap them abruptly and begin work on new plans.
Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht’s supply of ammunition was dwindling, defense of the capital city falling to the elderly, and women and children.
Time was running out, and Klaus knew Hitler knew it, even if he refused to acknowledge the obvious.
But none of that was why he was afraid at this moment. He was afraid because of the look on his fellow soldier’s face when the man—Hirtzel, his name was—approached him in the flickering half-light of a bunker hallway and said, “Klaus, your presence has been requested by the Führer, for a meeting in his personal quarters.”
Hirtzel’s face was pale, his lips set in a tense line. Of course, by now everyone was tense. A black sense of despair filled the bunker. This had been a very bad day, even in comparison to the series of bad days that had piled up, one after another, over the past several weeks and months.
The morning had begun with Hitler’s marriage to his longtime companion, Eva Braun. What should have been a joyous occasion was offset by a series of steadily worsening developments that poured in hour by hour over the course of the day.
First came the news of SS leader Heinrich Himmler’s offer of surrender, presented to the Allies and immediately refused. Capitulation had not been authorized by the Führer and word of Himmler’s treachery sent Hitler into an apoplectic rage. The mood in the Führerbunker turned even darker with word that Italy’s leader and close Hitler friend Benito Mussolini had been executed, his corpse then defiled by an angry Italian mob.
Time was running out for Adolph Hitler and everyone inside the Bunker. The steady stream of visitors coming and going throughout the day made it clear the Führer recognized as much. High-ranking Nazi Party officials, Army generals, diplomats, they all came and went, convening in Hitler’s office and then departing with uniformly grim looks on their faces.
But what possible reason could Hitler have for wanting to speak with a common foot soldier right now, even one he had begun to treat almost like a son?
Hirtzel cleared his throat. “Klaus,” he said softly, almost apologetically. “It would be a mistake to keep the Führer waiting.”
Klaus recognized the wisdom of his fellow soldier’s words and he chuckled nervously. The stress of counting down the days—perhaps the hours—of precious freedom was wearing on him, as it was wearing on everyone inside the bunker. Soon they would all be prisoners of war.
Or worse.
“Of course, you are right,” he said. “I do not want to keep Adolph waiting for our evening game of whist and our snifter of brandy.”
“How can you joke at a time like this?”
“How can I not? It is either laugh or break down, and I don’t see how breaking down would help my situation.”
“I hope not to break down,” Hirtzel said, “but laughing is beyond me at this point. Now, go, before the Führer b
egins to doubt whether I passed along the order. I do not need to try to deal with that problem.”
A trembling Klaus Newmann double-timed down the drafty hallway. Although it by now had become crystal clear that the Thousand Year Reich was doomed to fall well over nine hundred fifty years short of completion, Adolph Hitler was still the leader of the country and the party, not to mention an obviously unstable man operating under almost crippling stress levels.
Keeping him waiting meant risking two slugs in the head from the Führer’s own Walther. And although Klaus would have preferred almost anything to facing Adolph Hitler at this moment in time, disobeying a direct order was something he would never consider.
Klaus Newmann was a man to whom honor mattered.
***
Newmann was escorted to the Führer’s quarters by a pair of guards. Klaus had served with both men for months. They weren’t exactly friends, but had shared beers and laughs on more than one occasion, and he assumed they must be as curious regarding the unexpected summons as Klaus himself was.
Neither man said a word, however. They simply flanked him as they walked, and when the small group reached Hitler’s private office they turned, one on each side of the door, and began scanning the empty hallway.
For what, Klaus did not know. Soviet troops, perhaps.
He took a deep breath and then knocked, two quick raps with his knuckles. From inside the room came a muffled command to enter, the response clipped and curt.
One more deep breath—almost a sigh, really—and then Klaus pushed open the door and slipped into the small office. Even as close as he had gotten to Hitler over the past few months, he had never been inside this room. No one he knew had ever been inside it.
The Führer sat behind a desk. A security guard had been stationed just inside the doorway, and the man immediately spun Klaus around and forced him up against the wall next to the door. He slipped Klaus’s service weapon out of its holster and quickly patted him down.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 73