But she knew.
Her first memory upon waking was of Marshall Fulton’s kindness and calm logic in the face of her humiliating meltdown in his living room. She’d shown up drunk and uninvited and suffering a crisis of confidence the likes of which she had never before experienced.
Had never even imagined possible.
Marshall had taken it all in stride, and had gently but firmly forced her to look inside herself, to recognize the true nature of her inner turmoil. He had done so without shaming her or making her feel foolish or silly, and that was a good thing because she was perfectly willing to do all that herself.
Her second memory upon waking was of Marshall Fulton’s kindness and gentleness after…accompanying her…to his bedroom last night. “Accompanying” was probably the most accurate word she could come up with, because Tracie had been overcome by a sexual energy and desire she’d never before experienced.
She had been like a hurricane, slamming into Marshall in his living room, molding into his body in a manner that left no doubt as to her needs. They kissed long and hard and then she took him by the hand and practically ran to his bedroom, leading him down the hallway and to his bed with unerring accuracy despite having never stepped foot in his apartment before last night.
She had no idea what had gotten into her. It had been eight months since her last sexual encounter—a single night with Shane Rowley in a cheap motel outside New Haven, Connecticut—so she supposed that long drought might have something to do with the fury of her passion.
But there was more to it than that. Tracie had been overcome with desire at a level that was almost frightening. Her self-loathing from having executed an old man in Russia, the adrenaline from narrowly avoiding execution at the hands of a KGB assassin in D.C., Marshall’s ability to seemingly see inside her very soul, and his obvious and long-running attraction to her had all combined to explode into a nuclear blast of sexual energy.
And here I thought that ball of radiation in my belly would destroy me, she thought, smiling in the darkness.
Marshall had left the bedroom door cracked and the hallway light on, “In case you need to get up in the night to pee. Or, considering you’ve been drinking, to puke,” he’d added, grinning as Tracie punched him in the arm.
A narrow sliver of yellow angled across the bed, just enough light to reveal Marshall’s sleeping form. He lay on his side, one arm draped over Tracie’s bare hip, snoring softly and breathing deeply.
He looked handsome and sexy and sweet and innocent, and she felt an overwhelming surge of affection. She had loved Shane Rowley with a fiery intensity, despite—or perhaps because of—the limited time they’d had together. And most of that time had been spent running for their lives and trying to stop the assassination of the president of the United States.
Shane had been the only man she ever loved and she’d been convinced he was the only man she would ever love.
Maybe that was still true.
She didn’t know what she felt for Marshall, but it was different than the feelings she’d had for Shane. Was it possible to love two men equally but in different ways?
Affairs of the heart were foreign territory for Tracie Tanner. She was more comfortable by a country mile fighting for her life than she was deciphering her own feelings on any subject, and that was especially true when the subject was love.
She supposed that would have to change.
Maybe it was time for that change. Maybe dealing with feelings and emotions was the key to keeping a grip on the humanity Marshall claimed to have seen in her eyes last night, to not letting her soul slip away, as Piotr Speransky’s had done and as so many others in her line of work had done as well.
The prospect of that kind of loss was terrifying.
She had a lot of thinking to do. A lot of self-reflection.
It wouldn’t be easy because self-reflection was so foreign to her.
But she realized with more than a little surprise that she was looking forward to the prospect. The “Project Kremlyov Infection” assignment had brought her right to the edge of a line, had maybe even taken her over the edge. On the other side of that line was a cliff, and she knew two things with perfect certainty: she didn’t want to learn what was at the bottom of the cliff, and if she tumbled over it she would never climb out.
She glanced at the clock on Marshall’s bedside table. It was nearly four a.m. There was no way she was going to get any more sleep tonight.
Next to her, Marshall continued to breathe deeply and snore softly. She wondered whether he was a light sleeper and decided she was about to find out.
She lifted her head and placed her lips to his ear.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He stirred but did not awaken.
She kissed his forehead and then slipped out of bed.
Picked her clothes up off the bedroom floor and dressed quietly.
Then she eased out of the bedroom and down the hallway.
She double-checked the lock on Marshall’s front door before driving away.
THE BASHKIR EXTRACTION
Allan Leverone
1
January 28, 1988
10:40 p.m.
Moscow, Russia, USSR
“I am a foreigner, too.”
Ryan Smith flinched at the sound of a woman’s voice coming from just behind his right shoulder. It was a friendly voice, but he’d thought he was keeping a low profile, and he felt a slight spasm in his arms and lowering of his head in surprise. The reaction was minimal, probably invisible to the woman, but it caused a bit of his scotch and water to splash over the side of his glass and drip onto the table.
The bar wasn’t crowded, and the fact that Ryan had become drunk enough to allow a stranger to approach unobserved was cause for concern.
But it’s more than just cause for concern, isn’t it? he thought. Under the circumstances, it’s potentially deadly.
He decided this drink had better be his last. Four was plenty, anyway.
Ryan turned his head and focused his bleary gaze on a cute little blonde standing next to the table. She was dressed in skintight leather pants and a gauzy white button-down blouse that did little to hide the black lace bra underneath. She wavered slightly in her high heels, and Ryan guessed he was not the only one who had decided to blow off some steam with a few drinks tonight.
He cleared his throat and returned the girl’s smile. She was undoubtedly a hooker, but Ryan didn’t care. He’d spent the last six months operating under cover inside the Soviet Union, and during that time had seen many of his fellow CIA operatives murdered via the ghastly method of radiation poisoning, and he’d nearly reached the breaking point from stress and fear and even—oddly enough—boredom.
The running joke among longtime operatives was that undercover work consisted of weeks of downtime followed by hours of sheer terror. He’d never really understood the point of the gag until recently. Now he understood.
In any event, Ryan had decided the time for female companionship was long overdue, and if he had to pay for it, so what? It would probably be better if the cute little blonde were a pro, anyway. No invasive questions to sidestep, no personal entanglements to avoid, just a quick stress-relieving night together and they would both go their separate ways.
Or maybe she’s just a friendly girl, just looking to pass the time. Way to get ahead of yourself, dummy, Ryan thought.
He realized he’d been staring at her for several seconds with a stupid smile plastered on his face, and if he didn’t recover quickly even a hooker would be creeped out. He gestured at the empty seat on the other side of the table.
The cute blonde tottered gratefully to it and sat.
“Why would you think I’m a foreigner?” Ryan said. He was well aware that the moment he opened his mouth he would confirm the girl’s statement—his Russian, though passable, would never be on par with a native’s—but the first step toward a potential night of passion was conversation, and after four d
rinks, this was about the best he could manage.
The girl smiled. “It is obvious.”
“How?”
She giggled and he said, “Okay, I’ll admit it’s obvious now, but you made your observation before ever I said a word. How did you know?”
“You are not drinking vodka. You are probably the only person in this bar whose glass is not filled with it.” She shrugged. “It seemed clear to me.”
Ryan chuckled. He felt like an idiot. Even after all this time inside the USSR, if a drunk working girl could identify him as an outsider so easily, he figured he must have gotten damned lucky not to find himself at the bottom of a shallow grave somewhere in the Russian countryside by now.
He nodded at her glass. “It looks like you’re drinking vodka, and yet you said you’re not a Russian, either.”
She shrugged. “I like vodka.”
“My name is Michael,” he said, and extended his hand.
The cute little blonde reached across and shook it. “I am Hanna.”
“Where are you from, and what brings you to Moscow, Hanna?”
“I am from Hungary originally. I came to Russia several years ago to work as a schoolteacher.”
“I went to school, and none of my teachers ever looked like you,” Ryan said with a boozy laugh.
“None of my teachers ever looked like me, either, and I hated them all. I wanted to be someone students could relate to.”
“Lucky them.”
“Thank you. What is your story, Michael?”
“It’s not much of a story. I am originally from the German Democratic Republic. I am here working as a diplomatic liaison between our two countries on a temporary basis.”
Hanna pursed her lips. They looked red and plump and extremely kissable. “Ooh,” she said. “You are a very important man.”
He laughed. “Not really. I’m just trying to survive in this world, like everyone else.”
“That is an unusual choice of phrasing.”
He smiled. “Blame it on four drinks.”
They chatted and laughed and before he knew it, Ryan found himself ordering another round. He hadn’t forgotten his earlier vow to stop at four, but this unexpected opportunity to interact normally—relatively speaking—with a pretty young woman was comforting. Whether he eventually ended up sharing Hanna’s bed or not remained to be seen, but he wasn’t quite ready for the night to end.
Before long those drinks were gone too, and Ryan was trying to decide how to approach the subject currently uppermost in his mind. Obviously, he couldn’t bring Hanna back to a CIA safe house. He thought he had enough cash left after his night out for a moderately priced hotel room, but doubted he could cover the cost of lodging and a hooker’s fee.
The problem was Ryan couldn’t figure out how to determine whether he would actually have to pay Hanna to spend the night with him or not. She had made her interest in him quite clear; to the point Ryan felt he stood a good chance at getting her into bed. But she’d stuck to her story about being a teacher, so convincingly in fact that he damned near believed her.
She solved the thorny problem for him when she downed her drink and fixed him with a lustful gaze as she thumped the empty glass onto the table. “My apartment is just around the corner,” she said. “I am not usually this forward, but it has been a long time since I met a man as…interesting as you, and I would hate to waste such a rare opportunity. Would you care to accompany me to my home for a nightcap?”
Ryan swallowed heavily, unable to resist. If this adorable girl really was a pro he would deal with the cash flow issue later.
Hanna mistook his hesitation for reluctance and smiled shyly. “I am sorry to be so clumsy,” she said. “I am not in the habit of inviting handsome strangers to my apartment. ‘Accompany me for a nightcap,’” she repeated, shaking her head and blushing. “That sounded so stupid. Forget I said anyth—”
“No,” Ryan interrupted. “No, it wasn’t stupid at all. I’m just having trouble believing my incredible luck. I would love to join you for a drink.”
Her face brightened as she pushed to her feet and reached for his hand.
Ryan tossed enough money to cover the drinks and a decent tip onto the table and then shrugged into his coat, gloves and hat as Hanna did the same. They began threading their way through what had become a fairly large crowd, making slow but steady progress toward the front entrance.
They pushed through the door and into the frigid Moscow night. “I’m glad your apartment is close,” Ryan said. “Otherwise I’m afraid our noses might freeze off. Among other things.”
Hanna didn’t answer, and he noticed she had removed her hand from his as they left the bar behind and turned down a side street.
He opened his mouth to ask where she lived and then froze as a small pistol appeared in the cute little blonde’s suddenly ungloved hand. She placed the gun against the side of his head and he tried with little success not to panic.
“I take it this means we won’t be having that drink,” he said, wishing for a clear head more than he’d ever wished for anything in his life.
“I am sorry,” she said. “You seem like a decent person, but a mission is a mission, as I am sure you well know.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Of course you do. I do not know your real name, but I know it is not Michael, and I know also that you are not a diplomatic liaison from the GDR.”
He shook his head. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re making a mistake. Let me go and—”
“That is enough.” Suddenly the blonde didn’t seem quite so little or cute anymore.
A pair of men dressed all in black materialized out of the Moscow night, one on each side of Ryan, and he realized he was in even more trouble than he’d thought.
And he wouldn’t have thought that possible.
“Take my cash and my wallet,” he said, only to be cut off by the blonde again. She was probably all of five feet two inches tall and one hundred ten pounds soaking wet, but she had no problem asserting herself, and neither of the men in black seemed inclined to interrupt.
“This is not a robbery,” she said scornfully, “although before all is said and done, you will wish it had been.”
“I already do,” he said softly.
The not-so-cute and no-longer-so-little blonde nudged him with her gun and he reluctantly moved deeper into the murk of the alley.
“We have been watching you for some time. We know you are CIA, and we know you have been spying inside Russia. We know your disappearance will go unremarked-upon by your government, unless you turn up on the nightly news back in your country, standing trial for espionage.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do.”
Ryan closed his eyes and wished he were asleep in bed, suffering from a nightmare. “Is that the plan for me? A show trial, followed by a public execution?”
“I do not know,” the blonde answered as Ryan reopened his eyes to discover the nightmare was real but the bed was not. “That is a decision to be made by others far above me in rank.”
They continued walking and in seconds arrived at an automobile idling softly in the darkness at the end of the alley. Predictably, the car was black.
“Get in,” the blonde said.
Ryan hesitated and the girl said, “You should know I have been instructed to shoot you should you resist. If you wish to have any chance of surviving beyond the next three or four seconds, you will climb into the back seat of the car. I will not tell you again.”
Ryan cursed inwardly at his extreme foolishness, at the errors in judgment that would now cost him his life.
Then he sighed heavily and slid into the car.
2
January 29, 1988
8:10 a.m.
Washington, D.C.
Tracie Tanner wasn’t quite sleeping when the knocks began sounding on her apartment door, but she couldn’t clai
m to be fully awake, either.
She’d spent most of last night at Marshall Fulton’s apartment, not sleeping any better there than she’d slept at home. First because they were busy conducting bedroom gymnastics, and afterward because Tracie couldn’t manage to shake the depression that had dogged her since the conclusion of her last assignment in Moscow.
After falling into an uneasy slumber next to Marshall, she awoke around four a.m., instantly aware she would sleep no more in a strange bed, even as exhausted as she was. She kissed the man who had helped her deal with her rising crisis of confidence, careful not to wake him, then dressed quietly and slipped out of his apartment.
A few minutes later she was home. Without a clue what to do with herself at four-thirty in the morning, she slipped under the covers in her own bed and dozed fitfully for a couple more hours before stumbling into the kitchen at eight a.m. to make coffee.
She jumped, startled, at the three raps on the door, instantly filled with shame at her actions last night. It’s Marshall. He’s angry that I left without saying goodbye, or even giving him the courtesy of a note. After all he did for me, he’s mad and he’s come over here to chew me out, and I deserve every last bit of his anger.
But almost as soon as the thought flitted through her brain she dismissed it. Storming across town to confront Tracie was not Marshall’s style. He was, quite simply, one of the kindest and most generous people she’d ever met, a man seemingly blessed with an almost mystical ability to see deep inside her soul.
Marshall would understand her leaving in the middle of the night.
It didn’t justify her actions, he deserved better, but whoever was outside Tracie’s door, it was almost certainly not Marshall Fulton. And eliminating Marshall as a possibility also pretty much eliminated any reasonable guesses as to who it could be.
Tracie rarely received guests, partly because she was rarely in D.C., more often traveling the world as CIA Director Aaron Stallings’ personal black ops specialist. But even when she was home, she simply didn’t mingle like the typical late-twenties single woman living in a large metropolitan city.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 122