Tracie’s surprise was so great that she stood for a moment beside her car, unsure whether she was supposed to join Stallings or if maybe he’d been called away on some national security emergency during the time it had taken her to drive here.
He turned in her direction and spread his hands, making his impatience clear. Why are you not right behind me?
“Good Lord,” Tracie muttered to herself. “This could be a very long day.”
She sighed and joined Stallings at his limo, flexing her still-healing left hand compulsively. She’d broken several small bones in it back in November during the ill-fated attempt to recover three hundred million dollars worth of buried Nazi treasure—the fabled Amber Room—in Wuppertal, West Germany, and her efforts at speeding recovery time from the injury had been so single-minded she now found herself working the bones, tendons and muscles in the hand constantly and without conscious thought.
But not without lingering pain.
Stallings opened the door and clambered into the back seat. Then he slid to the other side to allow Tracie room to enter. The moment she closed the door, the car began accelerating down Stallings’s long driveway.
“How’s the hand?” he asked, bypassing chitchat as he always did.
“Never better.”
He bent and examined the scars on the back of her hand, delicate lines, still raw and red, where surgeons had sliced open the skin to access the damaged bones. It was a surprising gesture of concern from a man to whom sensitivity was a mostly foreign concept, but the intensity of his stare made Tracie uncomfortable.
She felt naked and exposed, and after a moment she folded her hands together in her lap, covering the scars and removing them from his penetrating gaze.
“So,” she said.
“So,” he agreed.
“Why am I here?” she asked, already annoyed after spending maybe thirty seconds with the man. “And where are we going?”
“What do you know about Polonium-210?” His answer was disingenuous, as usual. And confusing, also as usual.
She looked up into his face and said nothing.
“Well?” he challenged. “Did you not understand the question?”
“I understood the question. I just told you everything I know about Polonium-210, which is absolutely nothing. It sounds like something that might power the Millenium Falcon.”
“The what?”
“Never mind. I’ve never heard of Polonium-210, or Polonium with any other number attached. I assume that’s about to change.”
“You assume correctly.” For the second time this morning, Tracie’s boss surprised her. He fell silent.
Since her dismissal from the CIA and then her rehiring by the legendary spymaster as his own personal one-woman black ops team, their meetings had always followed a certain predictable, if uncomfortable, protocol: hostility from Stallings, followed by defensiveness from Tracie, culminating in the boss laying out an assignment and then Tracie stomping away in anger.
While the hostility and defensiveness were still present, this meeting had deviated from the script, leaving Tracie feeling off-kilter. She elected to sit back and let things play out. She had little choice in the matter, in any event. Aaron Stallings had spent close to a half-century in the spy game and wasn’t about to reveal anything to an underling—especially her—unless and until he had decided the time was right.
The route taken by the limo driver felt familiar, and after just a couple of minutes, Tracie was almost certain they were headed someplace she had not expected—CIA headquarters. She’d been inside the complex several times since her firing last spring, but always on an unofficial basis and never accompanied by the head man himself.
Stallings seemed to be getting impatient. He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in the seat next to her and Tracie smiled to herself. He had expected her to press him for details of the meeting and when she sat back quietly she’d thrown him off his game.
It was a good feeling.
Without preamble, he said, “Polonium-210 is a radioactive element.”
“I thought it sounded nuclear.”
“It is. There have been rumors through the years of the Soviets—and others, most notably the East Germans—using Polonium-210 as a poison. I assume you’re familiar with hydrogen cyanide?”
“Of course. It’s what Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun supposedly used to commit suicide in their bunker at the end of World War II. We know now nothing of the sort ever happened, but that’s the story the world has accepted for nearly the last half-century.”
“Correct. Well, for purposes of comparison, Polonium-210 is around two-hundred-fifty thousand times more deadly than hydrogen cyanide.”
Tracie whistled softly. The comparison was hard to imagine.
Then she tilted her head, concentrating. “Wait a second. If this Polonium-210 is so deadly and so radioactive, how the hell could any assassin use it without being contaminated with radiation and suffering the same fate as the victim?”
“That was my exact first question as well.” Stallings nodded his approval. “The actual science is complicated and hard to understand. And for our purposes, it’s also irrelevant. But basically, Polonium-210 emits Alpha radiation, which, due to the large size of the particles, is unable to penetrate human skin. It can’t even pass through something as flimsy as a piece of paper. To be deadly, it must be ingested—swallowed or breathed in—by the victim.”
“So as long as the assassin is extremely careful, he should be okay.”
“Theoretically,” Stallings said. “At least that’s what the science people tell me.”
The limo pulled up to a gate at Langley that Tracie had never noticed before. It was unobtrusive, in an area not easily accessible. The driver flashed a badge at a sentry and the fortified gate swung open.
“I assume you’re telling me all this because one of our people has been poisoned with Polonium-210.”
“No. That’s not why I’m telling you.”
“Then…?”
“I’m telling you because I have reason to believe several of our people have been poisoned in that manner.”
A sick feeling rolled through Tracie’s belly. “How many?”
“A half-dozen that we know of, maybe more. We’ve lost several people, good men and women, over the last few years to a mysterious illness. The indications are always the same: flu-like symptoms, vomiting and extreme weakness followed by hair loss and death in less than a month. Sometimes a lot less.”
Tracie whistled again. She wondered if any of the victims were operatives she’d worked with over the years.
“Obviously,” Stallings continued, “we suspected poison. We even thought we might have narrowed the possibilities down to thallium poisoning. But the doctors assure me that that thallium contains certain radiation signatures that were not present in any of the victims. And Polonium poisoning is rare. Almost unheard-of, in fact, not to mention extremely difficult to diagnose, since the radioactivity is invisible to typical testing.”
“Invisible? Then how did you make the connection?”
The car pulled to a stop in front of a glass door. Tracie wasn’t sure but she thought they might be near the CIA’s in-house infirmary.
“It doesn’t matter,” Stallings said. “I’ll tell you later if you really want to know. His voice was subdued and his manner restrained in a way Tracie had never seen before out of the CIA’s top man.
“Right now, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
3
January 18, 1988
8:10 a.m.
CIA Headquarters
Tracie walked wordlessly with the subdued Stallings through Langley’s infirmary, which was small but well staffed with medical personnel and stocked with supplies sufficient to operate a midsized city hospital.
The CIA chief stopped in front of a closed door. Despite her near certainty that they were here to visit a case officer who had suffered radiation poisoning, the bright red and white wa
rning placard affixed to the door caused Tracie a moment’s hesitation and a spike of uneasiness.
Stallings smiled grimly. “Don’t worry. He’s under quarantine but it’s precautionary only. We can safely enter.”
Tracie followed him into the room and blinked in surprise. She almost could not prevent herself from gasping aloud at the sight of the man prone in the hospital bed. His skin was pale and translucent, with the delicate wrinkled appearance of a man in his nineties. Any hair he’d had before the poisoning was long gone, and tubes ran from various machines and monitors into both of his arms and both wrists, with others disappearing under the thin blanket covering the patient.
Stallings moved to the foot of the bed and said, “Agent Tanner, I’d like you to meet Agent Fowler. Agent Fowler, Agent Tanner.”
The man’s eyes had been closed since their entrance despite the fact Stallings had made no attempt at stealth. Now they fluttered open. They were bright and piercing blue, and they locked onto Tracie like laser beams.
He tried to smile and almost succeeded, but his lips were cracked and scabbed over and covered in dried blood.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, the voice wafer-thin and reedy. “And please, call me Charles. Let’s not stand on formalities, shall we?”
Tracie stepped forward and took the agent’s left hand in both of hers. She maintained a gentle grip, worried about causing more pain than he was clearly already suffering. Stallings’s use of her real name had jarred her—she rarely used it unless among family or friends—but the reason was obvious: there was no risk because Fowler wouldn’t be going back to work.
Or even getting out of bed.
Ever.
“I’ll call you Charles if you call me Tracie. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Stallings watched the exchange quietly, his eyes never leaving Tracie. She felt the steady gaze on her even as she smiled at the dying man in the hospital bed.
The CIA director waited a moment and then said, “Up until two weeks ago, Agent Fowler was in Moscow on assignment. You’d been feeling well, correct, Fowler?”
“Yes sir, that’s correct.”
“When did that change?”
“After my meeting with a Soviet informant on New Year’s Eve. I took possession of classified documents, left the rendezvous point and was in bed shortly after one a.m. Moscow time. By five in the morning I was vomiting, heaving so badly I thought I might break a rib.”
“Were you concerned about your illness?”
“Not particularly. I assumed I’d either caught a flu bug or maybe was suffering food poisoning from something I’d eaten that day. But from there things only got worse. I spent all that day in bed and by the next day I was still vomiting—not that anything was left in my stomach—and could barely walk. That’s when I knew I’d been poisoned.”
Stallings rested a hand lightly on the man’s blanket, a paternal gesture surprisingly—and touchingly—out of character. He said, “Agent Fowler notified his handler of his concerns, and we had him on a plane out of the Soviet Union the next day.”
Tracie grimaced. “That must have been horrible, having to fly halfway around the world when you were so sick.”
“The flying wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was getting from the safe house to the airfield. It’s not easy trying to remain inconspicuous when you can barely walk and can’t eat without puking everything back up.”
Fowler again attempted to smile and again mostly failed. “I wasn’t this bad off back then, though. At least I could get out of bed. That capability deserted me over a week ago. They tell me it won’t be coming back.”
Tracie’s heart broke for the man. She had worked extensively in the Soviet Union and East Germany prior to her dismissal from official CIA duty, and the thought that it could have been her lying in that bed was impossible to ignore. “Do you think your informant poisoned you?”
He shook his head, the motion slow and careful. Then he closed his eyes, as if that small act had caused severe pain.
Probably it had.
“It wasn’t my informant. He had no reason to kill me. And even if he wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have been as subtle as radiation poisoning. Two 9mm slugs to the skull would have been more his style.”
He shook his head again, despite the obvious discomfort it caused. “I know exactly when I got poisoned. The waiter who’d been serving us all night disappeared just before midnight and was replaced by a different man. The guy gave off a very bad vibe, like he was trouble. There was no way he was a waiter. I can’t explain how I knew, I just did. Work in the field long enough and you become very good at judging people.”
Tracie nodded. She’d discovered the same thing after eight years of nearly continuous service in hot spots around the globe.
And yet Fowler had been victimized anyway.
“I know what exactly you’re thinking,” he said. He may have been physically wasted, but his eyes were fine and his mind clearly still sharp. In a way, it magnified the tragedy. “You’re wondering why I drank the vodka when I was so concerned about the waiter-who-wasn’t.”
“Why did you?” Tracie’s voice was almost a whisper.
“I wish I could give you a good answer. I guess I was so concerned about maintaining my cover while working inside the Kremlin, that I allowed my desire to blend in to override my sense of caution.”
He looked up at Tracie and Stallings, his sunken eyes red and haunted. “I imagine my contact is in the same boat as me. He drank a glass of vodka from the fake waiter, just as I did. Hell, maybe he’s dead by now. Lucky bastard.”
Tracie dropped her eyes and then glanced across the room at Stallings. “It’s obviously the KBG’s doing. But why go to all the trouble, with all the attendant risks, of radiation poisoning, when they could simply have taken Agent Fowler, interrogated him and then executed him? No one would ever have been able to prove what happened, even if we knew.”
“They’re sending a message,” Stallings said, “in a way that making someone disappear—or even putting two bullets in his head—doesn’t do. They’re telling us they know exactly who Agent Fowler is and exactly whom he works for. And they’re telling us they can get to our people whenever they want.”
“They’re sending a message,” he repeated. “And it’s costing a good man his life.”
“I’m not in the ground yet,” Fowler said. “I’m going to keep fighting until I take my last breath. You can count on that.”
“I know you will,” Stalling said. He reached for Fowler’s hand and squeezed gently. “I would expect no less.”
The CIA director cleared his throat violently and Tracie knew it was to cover the fact that he was nearly in tears. “We’re going to leave now and let you rest. It will take all you’ve got to recover and get back to work, and we need people like you in the field.”
Stallings stalked to the door and opened it, and Tracie turned to follow. Fowler had closed his eyes again and already looked as lifeless as he had when they first entered the room.
Before they could leave, though, Fowler said, “Director Stallings?”
“Yes, Charles?”
“I have a wife and two young children.”
“I know.”
“Please make sure they’re taken care of.”
“Of course, Charles. I’ll personally make sure your sons never forget their father was a hero.” He pulled the door closed, and through her tears Tracie noticed Stallings was crying as well.
4
January 17, 1988
8:45 a.m.
CIA Director’s limousine
McLean, VA
The limousine was quiet for a long time during the ride from Langley back to Aaron Stallings’s home. Tracie was a little surprised the director hadn’t stayed at the facility to begin his workday and simply instructed the driver to bring Tracie back to her car.
Finally she said, “Why did you bring me to meet Fowler?”
“Isn’t it obvious? He had
intel to share.”
“I didn’t learn anything from him you hadn’t already told me, or at least nothing you could have told me.”
Stallings had been shuffling through a sheaf of papers he’d pulled out of his briefcase, and now he slid the paperwork back into the case. He snapped it shut and gazed at Tracie levelly.
The silence stretched out. It was different from the previous quiet, which had been shocked and sad.
This felt electric.
“I brought you,” he said, “because I wanted you to know what’s at stake when you go to Moscow.”
“I thought that might be it. And don’t worry, the message has been received loud and clear.”
“Good.”
“Is there any chance Fowler could recover? I mean, now that the doctors know what’s wrong, they must have some course of treatment they can try.”
“Fowler’s a dead man,” Stallings said after a moment’s hesitation. “He knows it, his family knows it and the doctors know it. He’s been a dead man since the moment he drank that vodka in the shadow of the Kremlin. There is no cure for Polonium-210 poisoning. There is no treatment. Fowler’s almost at the end now. The doctors say it’s a little surprising he’s lasted this long, but his organs have started shutting down. He’ll be gone soon. Tonight, tomorrow, maybe the next day at the latest.”
“What’s my assignment?” she asked, her voice hard and cold.
“I think I told you back in my office that we suspect Fowler is not the only operative who’s been a victim of Polonium-210 poisoning.”
“You told me. And now that you know what to look for, you can exhume the dead agents and have their bodies tested to be sure, correct?”
“No. That’s not correct.”
“Why not? Don’t you want to be certain?”
“Of course I want to be certain, Tanner, but it’s simply not feasible.”
“Not feasible? What do you mean? Can’t the doctors test for radiation?”
“No, Tanner, they cannot,” Stallings snapped. Whatever trace of humanity he’d inadvertently allowed himself to display back inside Agent Fowler’s infirmary room had vanished, replaced by the short-tempered irascibility Tracie had become accustomed to.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 100