He did walk again.
However, he did so with the aid of a cane, suffering a noticeable limp. Over the years, Speransky said, the severity of Marinov’s limp had lessened, but it had never disappeared.
If you look closely, Tracie’s reluctant informant had told her, you will see the limp. You cannot miss it. That is how you will identify your man.
The first people to exit the train began streaming past, most heading straight for the outdoor stairway, preferring to get the chilly walk to their destination over with right away.
A few entered the train station instead.
None were Marinov.
Tracie shifted her gaze to the people exiting the lead car by the rear stairway.
No luck.
She scanned the crowd exiting the second and third passenger cars, determined to be thorough despite Speransky’s insistence Marinov would disembark from the first car.
Nothing.
She scanned constantly, reverting her attention to the car directly behind the engine as passengers continued to exit. This was a popular stop.
The platform was now filled with people, the crowd churning toward her, and Tracie began to fear she would miss Slava Marinov.
He would slip past her in the mass of humanity.
Maybe he already had.
She choked back a rising tide of concern that was edging close to panic. This had to work. There was no backup plan. It was Monday morning, and if Yuri Ryakhin had not yet been discovered bound and gagged in his kitchen, he soon would be.
Dammit.
An odd motion from inside the crowd drew Tracie’s attention. It was unlike the rest of the expected movements of people within the seething crowd.
She narrowed her eyes and focused on where she thought she had observed something…different.
There it was again.
People’s heads bobbed up and down slightly as they walked, but one head in particular stood out because its bobbing motion was more pronounced than the rest.
Someone was limping.
And that someone was a man.
As the bustling group of people approached, Tracie stared, trying to catch a second glimpse of the man between the constantly shifting heavy winter coats.
There it was again: and the man walking with a limp was using a cane.
It had to be Marinov.
She’d identified her target.
31
January 25, 1988
7:55 a.m.
Belorussky Station, Moscow
Tracie had assumed the KGB officer would bypass the train station’s interior, preferring to move directly to his waiting car via the outdoor stairway. Her assumption had been a good one. Marinov showed no inclination to turn toward the warmth of the building.
He was more or less boxed in by a small group of people all with the same plan in mind: to hit the stairs and get started toward their destinations. That was why she’d nearly missed seeing him. He wasn’t tall, and he was surrounded by men. They dwarfed him in height and rendered him nearly invisible.
The crowd moved right to left past Tracie’s position. Marinov didn’t seem to take notice of her, and neither did anyone else. No one was talking. The commuters didn’t know each other. They were just all strangers of a single mind.
Marinov’s position, tucked away inside the small group, was far from ideal. It was almost as if the travelers had formed an unwitting protective phalanx around Tracie’s target. To be successful she needed to get close to him, and doing so the way the pedestrians were currently positioned would present a major problem.
She tracked their progress as they approached the stairs and then fell in behind them. The crowd had finally stopped surging off the train cars, but there were still plenty of people following Tracie and her target across the platform.
Marinov moved more slowly than the average walking adult male, thanks to his limping gait, and given the bitter cold, none of his fellow travelers seemed inclined to dawdle. The KGB officer began to fall back in the pack. As they reached the top of the wide staircase and began to descend toward the street, the men behind Marinov parted, one to his right and one to his left, and passed him.
Tracie picked up her pace and moved closer. If at all possible, she wanted to finish this before Marinov reached the streets and came within sight of his car. She had no doubt the limousine was being driven by a KGB case officer, and also no doubt that officer would be armed and inclined to protect his boss.
Tracie had chosen a parka to wear that was too big for her small frame. The large size made for a cold walk, as the coat struggled to contain her body heat.
But she hadn’t chosen the winter wear for comfort. She’d chosen it for operational advantage, and now her discomfort would pay off.
Hopefully.
She kept her coat zippered and held her right sleeve at the cuff with her left hand. Pulled her right arm in toward her body and slipped it out of the sleeve. Now the right sleeve of the parka hung limply to the side, her arm free inside the coat.
She snaked her hand up her ribcage, resting it on the butt of her Beretta. Her shoulder holster was big and bulky and more than a little uncomfortable, but it was specially designed and customized to hold not just the weapon, but the weapon with sound suppressor already threaded into place.
Tracie eased her gun out of its shoulder rig. It had been specially modified with a pair of nylon straps encircling Tracie’s ribs and waist, securing it in place with the butt of the weapon forward of its positioning in a standard shoulder holster.
The placement provided the extra room necessary to allow Tracie to do what she did next: lift the butt of the Beretta toward her left shoulder with her right hand and pull the gun—now with a much longer barrel than usual, thanks to the suppressor—out of the holster.
She continued walking as she worked the weapon free. Marinov was now halfway down the stairs, supporting himself with his left hand on the rusted iron railing as he held his cane above the steps with his other hand.
The group of commuters with whom he’d exited the train had pulled ahead of Marinov, and now Tracie had the opportunity she’d been waiting for: the target positioned in front of her and slightly to her left.
No innocent bystanders between them.
Nobody on the far side of Marinov who might take a bullet if Tracie missed the shot.
No reason to hesitate.
But Tracie hesitated anyway. A niggling concern nagged at her in the back of her mind.
What if it was the wrong man?
The odds were against it. What was the likelihood of two men, with identical disabilities, riding the same train car and disembarking at the same Moscow station at the same time, with Tracie’s target disappearing into the crowd and the innocent victim taking a bullet?
The odds against that scenario were astronomical. This had to be Slava Marinov.
But still…stranger things had happened, and she could never forgive herself if she gunned down an innocent man.
She wasn’t entirely sure she could ever forgive herself for what she was about to do, anyway. She’d killed before, been in gunfights and taken bullets that, had they been placed differently, would have killed her.
But she had never assassinated an unsuspecting, unarmed person without warning. She knew she was about to cross a line, about to take an action from which she might never recover.
Still, her concerns and misgivings were fodder for another day. Or another thousand sleepless nights. She had her assignment and was determined to carry it out.
But she had to be sure.
The target had now nearly reached the bottom of the steps. She closed the distance between them and spoke softly. “Comrade Marinov?”
The man swiveled his head instantly, searching for the person who had called his name.
It was the right man.
Marinov met Tracie’s eyes for a split-second and then he turned his attention back to navigating the stairway. It was wide and steep and he risked
falling. He had apparently decided he’d imagined hearing the near-whisper of his name.
Tracie adjusted her aim. The first rule of shooting a pistol was to aim center-mass at the target. It was true in normal circumstances, where the weapon was held eye-height in a two-handed shooter’s grip and it was even truer now, when she would be firing almost blindly through a thick winter parka, with no opportunity to sight down the barrel.
She hoped for the best.
Squeezed the trigger.
Once, twice, three times, then a fourth, firing her silenced semiautomatic pistol in a lethal burst of 9mm slugs.
Marinov stumbled forward. He was still clutching the railing but his body swung left from the force of the bullets ripping into his body. He struck the iron railing and bounced off and then he was tumbling down the remaining stairs.
He struck the sidewalk with a wet splat, his skull cracking the cobblestones hard. He lay face down and unmoving.
Tracie swept past him, walking at a normal pace but not slowing, acting as though she had not noticed the pedestrian tumbling down the stairs outside the train station like a rag doll.
She glanced sideways, not turning her head but looking at Marinov in her peripheral vision. No blood was visible, as the slugs had torn through his parka, but it soon would be.
She wanted to kneel and feel for a pulse, to be certain she’d succeeded in her assignment, but didn’t dare. Already a buzz of excited confusion was audible from the crowd of people descending the stairway behind Marinov.
She would have to take on faith that four slugs fired at close range into the body of an older man would be enough to finish him off. He wasn’t moving. He was likely already dead.
Tracie continued along the sidewalk, just another commuter heading into Moscow to start another long workweek. She slipped her Beretta back into its customized holster but didn’t bother trying to maneuver her arm back into its sleeve. The awkward motions it would require to do so would draw more attention than simply allowing the sleeve to hang limply at her side.
Behind her, the screams for help started. They faded into the background as she turned a corner and left the Belorussky Station behind.
32
January 25, 1988
11:20 a.m.
CIA safe house
Moscow, Russia
Tracie took her time returning to the safe house, wandering the streets of Moscow despite the bitter temperatures on yet another slate-gray, overcast winter day.
She tried to convince herself part of the reason for the delay was operational. That she wanted to make absolutely certain she wasn’t being followed. That she wanted to minimize the chances of leading the KGB back to Piotr Speransky if she’d been compromised.
And as far as it went, she supposed the rationalization was even true. Working alone in a hostile environment, caution was always a prime consideration. It was just as important to avoid revealing the location of agency assets such as informants and safe houses as it was to avoid capture herself.
But she had to admit that caution wasn’t the reason for delaying her return to the safe house and to Speransky. She could make a beeline for the safe house and there would be virtually no chance the KGB would follow.
Because if the KGB had been tailing her she would already be in custody. Hell, if the KGB had been tailing her, they would likely already be well into her first torture session. They would waste little time dealing with the American who had assassinated a high-ranking Soviet intelligence official.
She sighed and wrapped her arms around her body in a vain attempt to ward off a chill that was only partially due to the temperature.
Be honest with yourself.
Her delay in returning to the safe house was due mostly—almost entirely—to a reason other than operational necessity. Her delay in returning was due to the knowledge that once she stepped through the door, she had to finish her assignment.
And finishing her assignment meant killing Piotr Speransky.
And she didn’t know if she could do it.
Logically, there was no difference between putting bullets into Slava Marinov outside the Belorussky Train Station this morning and putting bullets into Piotr Speransky inside the CIA safe house this afternoon. Both had been directly responsible for the deaths of multiple CIA case officers, good men whose only offenses had been the willingness to work toward nullifying the threat the Soviet Union represented to freedom and democracy.
Marinov had been the brains of the operation and was now gone. Speransky had been the “blunt instrument,” as he called it, and deserved to go as well.
It was her mission.
But as difficult as it had been to pull the trigger on Marinov, it would be doubly so to pump Speransky full of bullets as he sat, secured and defenseless, in the chair to which Tracie had left him tied.
She was wandering Moscow, risking detection and capture, because she wasn’t sure that when push came to shove, she would have the ability to look a helpless man in the eyes and pump 9mm bullets into his body until he was dead.
Be honest with yourself.
That was the long and the short of it. Her actions were irrational and dangerous. Self-destructive. The more time she spent alone inside the heart of the Russian bear, the less likely it became, not just that she would complete her mission, but that she would ever escape Russia alive.
If Yuri Ryakhin had not yet been discovered in Kremlyov—a possibility that became less likely by the hour—and the KGB hadn’t already begun scouring the country for her, they certainly would now. She’d assassinated Slava Marinov in front of dozens of witnesses, and while it was highly unlikely any of them had gotten a good look at her, dressed in anonymous clothing and buried inside a massive winter coat and a hat and scarf, her gender and small size would immediately eliminate probably eighty percent of Russians from suspicion.
She had to return to the safe house and finish this.
* * *
Without conscious thought, Tracie’s travels around Moscow had drawn her closer and closer to the safe house and Piotr Speransky. It was as if, while trying to drum up the fortitude to complete her assignment, her subconscious mind had been pointing her in the direction she would eventually have to travel to do so.
She sighed angrily and turned toward mission completion.
* * *
Twenty minutes later she unlocked the safe house door. Even at midday and in the middle of a gigantic Russian city, Tracie was forced to take only minimal precautions to avoid being observed. The safe house was tucked away in a rundown industrial neighborhood, with the vast majority of the crumbling structures standing empty and unused. Aside from the occasional homeless drifter attempting to stay warm in front of fires blazing in rusting trash barrels, potential witnesses were few and far between.
She stepped inside, relishing the warmth of the interior after hours spent outside in the cold. Her stomach pitched and rolled. It felt like a ship on stormy seas, and she knew the queasy feeling would stay with her until she finished what she’d been sent to Russia to do.
She removed her winter coat and dropped in on the floor. Left her suppressed Beretta in its holster for the time being and walked across the room, stopping directly in front of Piotr Speransky.
Tracie had replaced the gag on her informant before leaving for Belorussky Station this morning, but despite his arms and legs being securely restrained, Speransky had retained some range of motion with his head. He tracked her progress with obvious concern, eyes narrowing steadily until they were mere slits by the time she positioned herself in front of him.
She lifted her combat knife out of its sheath at the small of her back and sliced through the duct tape holding Speransky’s gag in place. Ripped the tape roughly off his head. A small clump of hair came with it and a bright red welt was left on the exposed skin of his face.
It had to have been painful but he barely seemed to notice.
“I want you to know something,” she said before he could speak.
“Thanks to the intel you provided I was able to rid the world of the cockroach known as Slava Marinov.”
“Wonderful,” he muttered as he looked away. The sarcasm was impossible to miss.
Tracie smiled grimly. “Just keeping you in the loop.”
“I told you the information would be accurate.”
“Yes, you did. And that is exactly why you’re still alive to discuss the issue with me right now.”
“But…” Speransky’s body had gone rigid in the chair. His face looked every bit as pale as it had last night while Tracie was using a pair of long-nose pliers to dig into the skin under his fingernails. “There is a ‘but’ coming, is there not?”
It was phrased as a question, but it might as well have been a declarative statement. He knew what was going to happen next.
“Yes, there is a ‘but’ coming,” Tracie said. The butterflies were still swarming in her stomach, but her earlier moment of self-doubt had passed. A little time considering the fate of Charles Fowler and the other dead CIA case officers had been sufficient to harden her resolve.
“But you are a professional, as I am,” she continued. “And while your dedication to duty is in some ways admirable—although mostly just twisted and horrifying—there can be no excusing your actions. Condemning a half-dozen good men to the kind of death you inflicted upon them is simply inexcusable.
“Plus,” she smiled at him, “I have my mission to consider. Eliminating Marinov was only one-half of the equation. You represent the other half, and I’m sure you can understand the importance of completing my assignment. We’re on opposite sides of the fence, but some things, even a hated enemy can relate to.”
“So you are going to spray the Polonium-210 down my throat or into my nasal passages despite your promise to spare me if I gave up my KGB superior.” He looked away and shook his head. “It figures. I don’t know why I am even surprised. I would expect no less out of an…American.” He grimaced as he spit out the last word, as if he’d just bitten into a sandwich filled with rancid meat.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 114