“Nice to see you again, Quinn,” he said and this time his smile seemed genuine.
“Likewise, Smith.” After a nearly eight-year career spent mostly working on her own, Tracie was familiar with solitude and most comfortable when working alone. If you relied only on yourself, you were subject to far fewer variables you could not control. But she had to admit Ryan Smith exuded a quiet confidence in his abilities that went a long way toward easing her concern about being trapped inside the crawl space, utterly at the mercy of an operative who was barely more than a stranger.
Many of the operatives she’d met were brash and bold, arrogant even, self-confident beyond all reason. But Smith seemed different. She decided if she had to place her fate in the hands of anyone not named Tanner, Ryan Smith was a pretty good alternative.
“Glad to see you’re okay,” he said as she tossed a small bag into the hiding place.
“Right back atya. Have you seen or heard any fallout from our KGB friend’s tragic ‘car accident’ outside Kremlyov?”
Smith stared in shock. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “It’s been all over the news. The guy was identified on state TV as a ‘law enforcement officer,’ rather than an intelligence specialist, but we stirred up a massive hornets nest. This little excursion is not going to be easy.”
“What about Yuri Ryakhin?”
He shook his head. “Nothing, about him or about Arzamas-16 being compromised. I’m sure the Soviets are squashing that story because they don’t want anyone knowing we successfully infiltrated a closed city.”
She nodded. Wait until they find Speransky, she thought to herself. Things will really explode then.
She locked eyes with her fellow operative. “We need to get out of this city now. Not this afternoon. Not in a couple of hours. Now. Let’s move.”
Tracie crawled into the darkness as Smith refitted the removable bumper onto the truck frame. A moment later the engine roared and the truck rolled out of the alleyway and into the early-morning Moscow traffic.
* * *
January 26, 1988
Time unknown
Somewhere northwest of Moscow
The first roadblock came a short while after they’d left Moscow and its stop-and-go city traffic behind. Tracie could have checked her watch but didn’t bother hauling her flashlight out of her pack to do so.
The time didn’t really matter. This trip would take the better part of a day, and focusing on the slow-moving hour hand of her watch would make the time drag even more than it already was.
The truck stopped and then eased forward.
Stopped and then eased forward.
Continued to do so for perhaps ten minutes, and then it was their turn to be searched. Tracie didn’t even know what had been loaded into the ZiL’s cargo box, but she knew that whatever it was, it would be legitimate enough to pass the scrutiny of suspicious Red Army soldiers, and would be accompanied by an equally legitimate bill of lading. Smith would have made sure of it; his life depended on it every bit as much as Tracie’s.
Problems would arise only if one of the soldiers were particularly sharp-eyed, enough so that they noticed the slightly lowered customized truck frame. That such an occurrence had never happened over the years of CIA use of the modified ZiL-157 provided a little peace of mind, but there was no way to avoid the racing pulse and sky-high adrenaline level Tracie experienced while lying helplessly beneath the idling truck as men with automatic weapons stood literally just inches away.
She had drawn her weapon during the several minutes Smith spent sitting in the line of vehicles waiting for the vehicle to be searched. She was determined to defend herself if discovered, all the while knowing such a defense would prove futile.
The cargo bed was searched, Smith’s paperwork was examined, and after a few minutes that seemed much longer, the truck pulled away and left the roadblock—the first of undoubtedly several—behind.
* * *
January 26, 1988
Time unknown
Somewhere northwest of Moscow
They stopped a couple of times for fuel and to allow Tracie to stretch her legs and both of them to relieve themselves, but that was all.
No food breaks.
No other breaks of any kind.
The Soviet government would never reveal to their citizens or anyone else that the purpose of the intense manhunt underway was to apprehend an undercover CIA operative who had executed a high-ranking KGB official in the middle of Moscow, just steps away from his KGB-driven limousine.
They would never admit to being victimized in such an audacious manner. To anyone. Ever.
But the lack of admission would do nothing to quell their desire to catch the perpetrator. They would quickly put two-and-two together, tying the kidnapping of Yuri Ryakhin and the assault on the Arzamas-16 nuclear plant in with the murder of the unidentified KGB operative outside Kremlyov, the disappearance of Piotr Speransky, and their own “Project Kremlyov Infection.”
They would tie all of those events together and reach the only logical conclusion possible: CIA.
Probably angry Russian calls were already being made to U.S. representatives, both inside and outside the intelligence community, demanding explanations and official apologies.
Those calls would be met with protestations of innocence and completely legitimate denials. After all, nobody knew of Tracie’s mission inside the Soviet Union but Aaron Stallings and now Ryan Smith.
And neither of them was about to say anything.
The ZiL-157 jounced and stuttered over frost heaves and potholes, leaving Tracie to wonder whether any part of her body would escape the ride bruise-free.
Of course, bruises were better than bullet holes, and an uncomfortable ride beat the hell out of a blindfold and a firing squad.
Before she knew it, the truck was slowing to a stop again.
Another roadblock.
* * *
January 26, 1988
Time unknown
Northwest of Moscow, approaching the Baltic Sea
Two more roadblocks came and went without incident. They seemed to be getting farther apart the more distance Smith put between the truck and Moscow.
Tracie tried to doze but even as exhausted as she was, sleeping seemed too much of a challenge. Between the relentless bouncing of the truck and the recurring rushes of adrenaline every time she heard Smith apply the brakes, Tracie realized she would simply have to suck it up and arrive at the escape boat not just hungry and sore, but tired as well.
So be it. Regardless of how famished she was, or how bruised and battered, she was a damned sight better off than the poor bastards who’d been dosed with radiation by Slava Marinov and Piotr Speransky.
She chewed on the information Speransky had finally given up during those last tension-filled hours in the safe house and found her mind wandering inexorably to her old CIA handler, Winston Andrews.
He was not a subject about whom Tracie enjoyed reminiscing. In fact, she had thrown herself into her work with a nearly manic zeal over the last eight months for a number of compelling reasons, one of which was to avoid, as much as humanly possible, having to think about Winston Andrews III.
About his treachery.
An intelligence specialist who had served the CIA and its forerunners for more than four decades, beginning during the Second World War, Andrews had guided the first seven years of Tracie’s career. He’d officially been her handler, but the reality was that he’d been much more than that: the professional equivalent of a father figure, a confessor, the rock upon whom a young single woman feeling her way through the world of espionage, with its snakes and tricks and backstabbers, could lean.
And he’d been a traitor.
Andrews had been working with radicals inside the USSR to facilitate the Soviet assassination of Ronald Reagan.
When Tracie had learned of the plot, Andrews had tried to have her silenced.
Permanently.
Andrews’ last words had
come seconds before his suicide, as a heartbroken Tracie desperately interrogated her handler to learn the location of the planned presidential assassination. The doomed man had said something that day that had haunted Tracie’s dreams ever since.
His words were burned indelibly into her brain and she knew she would never forget them: “You want to know who else is involved with the Soviets, is that correct? There aren’t many KGB collaborators in positions of authority above mine, but there are a few…”
It was a terrifying prospect at the time and it was a terrifying prospect now, not because Andrews’ words represented the possibility of treasonous activity inside the CIA—that possibility always existed, human nature being what it was—but because the kind of treasonous activity Andrews hinted at had the potential to be so far-reaching, so damaging.
Winston Andrews had been an important player inside the Central Intelligence Agency. An all-star. An A-Team member. A man with the ear of senators and congressmen and even presidents.
There weren’t many KGB collaborators above Andrews in the CIA chain of command because there simply weren’t many people above him. If his dying statement was even close to being accurate, that kind of treachery could be devastating, not just to the agency but to the nation as a whole.
Tracie had brought his words to the attention of CIA Director Aaron Stallings, repeating them exactly and emphasizing that they had been spoken calmly and rationally and did not strike her as the paranoid ramblings of a suicidal man.
On the contrary, Andrews had seemed almost pensive, had given serious consideration to his words before speaking them.
Tracie had no way of knowing what Stallings had done with the information. Presumably he’d launched an investigation, but he was not in the habit of discussing the inner workings of upper-management CIA with someone like Tracie, so she doubted she would ever learn exactly what actions the director had taken regarding Andrews’ words.
If any.
But she did know that nothing had ever resulted. No upper-level agency prosecutions, no unexplained removals from service.
With the passage of time, Andrews’ explosive charges had faded into the background, and while they had continued to concern Tracie, she’d been far too busy with active assignments to do much beyond worry.
She had hoped and prayed—and even begun to convince herself in the intervening months—that there was no substance to Andrews’ words, that he’d been doing nothing but obfuscating and delaying one last time before taking his own life.
But this was what had bothered Tracie so much about his charges: Winston Andrews had had no reason to lie. No reason to divert attention from his own betrayal of Tracie and of U.S. national security. He had known he was going to swallow a cyanide pill, and had known perfectly well what the result of swallowing that pill would be.
He had known he would be dead within minutes, which brought Tracie full-circle back to her original cause for concern: he’d had nothing to gain by lying.
Now she had proof that his words had been as truthful as any he’d ever spoken.
And the sense of betrayal came rushing back. It was personal as well as professional. Tracie didn’t think she would ever recover from the knowledge that the man she had been as close to as any family member for more than half a decade had tried to have her assassinated the moment she became a threat to him.
She didn’t think she would ever again trust anyone the way she had trusted Winston Andrews.
But with the knowledge that Andrews had spoken the truth came the hope that by eradicating the traitor her handler had spoken about in such a mysterious way, she could at last exorcise the memory of Winston Andrews from her nightmares once and for all.
That was why she had made the decision she chose regarding Piotr Speransky back in the Moscow safe house as she agonized over whether to allow the assassin to live or die.
It hadn’t been an easy decision.
Tracie prayed it had been the right one.
* * *
After successfully slipping through the fourth roadblock, the remainder of the long drive to the shores of the Baltic Sea was completed without incident.
Tracie had used the waterborne escape route several times in the past to escort CIA assets out of the country. While still containing an element of danger—there was no such thing as safety for an American espionage agent operating inside the USSR—the reassuring familiarity of the process helped her regain her bearings after the agonizing hours spent torturing Speransky and then trying to decide whether to spare him.
One final time she said her goodbyes to Ryan Smith. The young man had surprised her with his reliability, strength and wit, and while it was never a good idea for operatives to become close—and she wasn’t about to allow that to happen here—each succeeding goodbye had become a little more difficult.
Now she hugged him tightly.
Released him and drew back to arm’s length, holding his gaze with an intense stare.
“You’re a good agent,” she said quietly. “It was an honor to work with you, and I would do so again without hesitation.”
“Thank you.” He seemed surprised but touched. “And the feeling is mutual.”
“Be careful out there, Smith.”
“You too, Quinn.”
Then he climbed into the cab of the ZiL-157 and was gone. The truck pulled away with a diesel rumble and a blast of noxious black smoke, and Tracie was left—as always—to continue on alone.
35
January 26, 1988
10:45 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
The buzzing of Lisa Porter’s secure satellite phone caught her off-guard. To say she was surprised at receiving a call would be an understatement. In all the time she had been immersed in American culture, all the years she had spent preparing for this mission and then the months spent executing it, there had not been one single unscheduled communication from her Moscow handlers.
Early in her training there had been much coordination, sometimes with sat phone exchanges coming as often as every day. But as time had gone by and she became more comfortable in her ‘Lisa Porter’ identity, the communications from Moscow had lessened.
The calls ramped up again when the time came to snare David Goodell, but they were always on a set schedule. Once Lisa had established firm control over the KGB’s newest informant, they had lessened once again.
More calls meant greater risk. Despite the fact the sat phone signals were scrambled, every communication represented an opportunity for the CIA to uncover the KGB’s Washington operations.
Capture would mean charges of espionage leveled by the United States government.
Charges of espionage by the United States government would result in immediate denials from Moscow, of course. But of more serious concern to Lisa was that those charges would also result in her being cut loose by her Soviet handlers.
She would face the likelihood of execution by her captors. There would be the possibility of diplomatic intervention of course, perhaps an exchange of some sort: an American operative for a Soviet operative. But since the point of Project Kremlyov Infection was the elimination of as many American assets in Russia as possible, there likely would be few American operatives left to offer in trade.
And Lisa guessed the United States government would be in no mood to offer mercy, given the circumstances.
Thus, there was every reason for her handlers to avoid unscheduled contact and no good reason to initiate it.
The sat phone buzzed and she stared at it, eyebrows raised. During the time she’d been forced to live with that worm Goodell, keeping the sat phone hidden had been of paramount importance. It had obviously been critical she not raise the man’s suspicions regarding her interest in him.
He’d been so desperate for someone to believe in him, so easy for her to hook, that she doubted much of anything would have raised his suspicions. But a satellite phone sitting in a charging base might have one of the few things to accomplish it
.
Since establishing a more appropriate handler/operative relationship with Goodell and finally moving out of his apartment, Lisa had felt no need to hide the sat phone. Goodell had no idea where she lived, and neither did anyone else who mattered. Lisa brought no one here. She’d never had a single guest in this apartment, and barring a visit from the FBI, she never would.
So she’d set up the phone’s charging base on her nightstand.
The fact that the unit buzzed in the first place was a very bad sign. The fact that it continued to buzz as Lisa considered the potential ramifications was an even worse sign.
She sighed and lifted the heavy handset off the base.
Activated the receiver.
Said “Da.”
Identification protocols were conducted, each side had confirming to their satisfaction that the entity on the other end of the satellite signal was, in fact, the appropriate contact.
Then Lisa said, “What is happening? Why the unscheduled contact?”
“We have been compromised.”
“How do you know?”
“Comrade Marinov is dead. Assassinated in Moscow.”
“Assassinated? How?”
“Shot at close range at Belorussky Station as he exited the train en route to headquarters.”
“And Speransky?”
“Missing. We believe he is dead as well, although we have no direct proof of that.”
“What happened? How did we get burned?”
“We do not yet know, but it has always been inevitable that the United States would eventually realize their people are being eliminated. Once they realized that fact, it was only a matter of time before the method of execution was uncovered.”
“And that has happened now.”
“As I said, it was expected. What we did not anticipate was the speed and ferocity of the American response.”
“What happens now? I assume I execute my escape protocols?”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 116