The major seemed mildly disappointed not to have received an answer. He shifted his gaze to Ryan’s escorts and said, “Remove his coat and shackles.”
The men hesitated. Clearly they had been instructed to maintain the highest level of security where their prisoner was concerned, and the notion of taking the handcuffs and chains off him seemed counterintuitive.
“Do it,” the officer said. His annoyance at not being obeyed immediately was plain. “This man is no longer your responsibility. My secretary is completing the transfer of control paperwork even as we speak, so you need not concern yourselves any further about liability.
“Besides,” he continued, his gaze drilling a hole into Ryan. “The prisoner is not stupid. He knows there is a base full of armed soldiers who would love nothing more to put a bullet in the head of an American spy, and that even if our new friend the American spy were to escape, there is absolutely nowhere for him to go. He would be dead from exposure to the elements before he made it fifty kilometers. Isn’t that right, my new friend?”
Ryan clamped his mouth shut and did his best to maintain a stoic demeanor, but the major was right. There would be no point in resisting these men and no point in attempting escape, at least for now.
His Russian escorts moved quickly after the curt words from the commander. Thirty seconds later the shackles had disappeared, as had his coat, and the Russian escorts vanished into the outer office as well. Ryan rubbed his sore wrists and waited.
“Now,” the major said. “Please take a seat.” He waved in the direction of the empty chair, and Ryan moved to it and sat, grateful to be off his feet now that the steadying hand of the escort was no longer on his elbow.
“Let me introduce you to your new reality,” the major said, nodding in the direction of the man seated next to him. “This is Doctor Vladimir Protasov, and as you will soon discover, you are about to become closer to Doctor Protasov than you could possibly imagine.”
Ryan looked from the major to the doctor and back again. He kept his expression impassive, but he didn’t like the direction this conversation had taken, and the familiar feeling of dread was again worming through his intestines.
“Good afternoon,” the doctor said, speaking for the first time. “I must say it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I mean that more sincerely than you know. I don’t suppose you would care to introduce yourself.”
Ryan wanted to laugh at the notion that he would tell these people anything. He wanted to, but he couldn’t quite manage it, thanks to the fear. The best he could hope for was to maintain a grim silence.
“No matter,” the doctor said. “Allow me to break the ice by speaking for a little while. Believe me,” he said with a cold smile, “we have much to discuss.”
17
February 1, 1988
4:25 p.m.
The mountains outside Mezhgorye, Bashkir
“How long has it been since Ryan Smith checked in with his handler?”
Tracie hadn’t planned on speaking with Aaron Stallings until returning to D.C. This was strictly a surveillance mission, relatively low-risk as these things went, and there had been no reason to expect she would have to communicate with the man who’d personified the term “plausible deniability” during his more than four decades working for—and then heading up—the CIA.
But she’d brought her secure satellite phone to the USSR anyway, sacrificing other items inside her go-bag to leave room for the heavy, boxy communications device. Long experience had taught her that things always went sideways, and no matter how simple or straightforward a mission might seem inside a briefing room, once in the field things inevitably changed, and rarely for the better. Retaining the ability to contact the only person in the world who could offer assistance was far more valuable an asset than anything else she might have stuffed inside the bag.
Stallings hesitated, surprised at the question. “Who?”
“I know him as Ryan Smith, so that’s certainly not his real name.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“He’s the operative who drove me into Kremlyov last month in the modified Soviet truck with the false bottom, and who helped me escape the country after I completed my mission.”
“Since we’ve lost so many operatives inside the USSR recently, I know who you’re referring to, although I don’t know his real name off the top of my head. I’ll have to contact his handler to get that information, and I’m extremely busy. I have no intention of taking those steps unless there’s a damned good reason to do so.”
Stallings had made no effort to conceal his testiness, so Tracie made no effort to conceal hers. “How about if I told you I just saw him being driven onto the secret base you have me monitoring? How about if I told you the Soviets pulled him out of the back of a truck at gunpoint and in chains, and marched him into what I believe to be the base commander’s office? Would that constitute a good reason?”
The CIA director ignored the rhetorical questions, but when he answered, his voice was measured. “Are you sure it’s the same guy? You only worked with him on one mission.”
“It was only one mission but we spent several hours riding in the cab of a truck together, and after that he helped me plan an ambush that took out a KGB operative. That ambush allowed me to capture the scumbag who poisoned half a dozen good men. In all, I must have worked at close quarters with him for eight hours or more. It’s the same guy. I’m one hundred percent certain.”
Stallings grunted. Tracie pictured him squinting at his desk in concentration, face red and angry, as if the notion of another American operative falling into the KGB’s hands was a personal affront. In some ways, she supposed it was.
“I’ll call Smith’s handler, but if you’re as certain as you claim to be, it’s—”
“I am,” she interrupted.
“Then my call becomes moot. We know the Soviets have him. His real name becomes irrelevant at this point.”
“Okay.”
“The question is what are they doing with him, and why has he been transported to a secret installation in the mountains? Why not show him off to the world? Why not conduct a public trial on state-run television and use him to embarrass the United States?”
Tracie knew he was thinking out loud. Those questions were above her pay grade, and while that wouldn’t have stopped her from offering an opinion in answer to any or all of them, the fact was she had no opinion. Without a better handle on what the hell the USSR was working on inside the strange camp built into the side of a mountain, she couldn’t even hazard a guess regarding Smith’s fate.
And ultimately, it didn’t matter anyway. Whatever the purpose in trucking a captured CIA clandestine operative to the base, she knew it wouldn’t be good. Ryan Smith was facing a grim fate, and Tracie already knew what she had to do.
“I’m going to go in there and get him,” she said.
“No you’re not.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Stallings’s voice was crisp and decisive. “Your mission has not changed. You are to monitor the installation and gather as much intel as you can before flying back to the states to brief our people.”
“Sir, with all due respect, you know as well as I do that seeing Smith paraded in front of the television cameras while the Russians conduct a mock trial is the best possible outcome he can expect. You know as well as I do that once the trial is over—and it’s not like there’s any doubt about what the outcome would be—our man will be marched into a public square somewhere in Moscow and hanged. Or shot.”
“Tanner, I’m telling you—”
“And, again, that’s the best-case scenario. The much more likely occurrence is that the short trip from the back of a cargo truck into the base commander’s office at gunpoint is the last time we’ll ever see Smith, dead or alive. He’ll disappear. He’ll never be seen again. His family will never know what happened to him.”
“Now you listen to me, Tanner. Assuming the man
you saw even is the operative you know as Ryan Smith, you’re—”
“It’s him,” she said obstinately.
“Fine. It’s him. That changes nothing. You’re a thousand miles from anyone who could help you, and even those people aren’t coming to Bashkir to extract you for days. Entering a Red Army installation with no backup and no plan, after one day’s surveillance, would be suicide.”
“But sir, I can’t just—”
“And what would the end result be?” Tracie couldn’t help but note the tone of satisfaction in Stallings’s voice after cutting her off mid-sentence, as she had done to him twice already. “I’ll tell you what: we would lose not just one more operative inside a country where we desperately need eyes and ears, we would lose two. That is not what I consider to be an acceptable risk.”
“I can’t just let them take him. It was sheer random luck I was here to see them unload that poor man from a truck, surrounded by four soldiers pointing guns at him like he’s the most valuable prize in the world. We can’t squander what will be our only opportunity to get him back.”
“You have your orders, Tanner, and—”
“I’m sorry sir, you’re fading in and out. There must be some sort of interference. Sunspots maybe, I don’t know, but your last few transmissions have come through almost completely garbled. I’m pretty sure you approved my mission inside the base, though, that was what it sounded like. Thank you, sir. I’ll be back at Langley with Smith soon.”
“Don’t you even think about—” Stallings was shouting now, and if Tracie hadn’t already been turning down the volume knob, she thought she would have been forced to do so just to keep the sound of her boss’s rage from echoing down the mountainside and into the Soviet base far below.
She broke the connection on the sat phone and then lowered its antenna and returned it to its carrying case.
Despite the gravity of the situation—and calling it “grave” was an understatement—she couldn’t help but smile at the reaction she’d provoked. Aaron Stallings had tried his best to bully and intimidate her since the first time they met. He must have learned by now that it wouldn’t work, that she would be unfazed by threats and shouting and belligerence, but it hadn’t stopped him from trying, and any day she could turn his bellicosity against him and get under his skin she considered to be a good day.
Even if, like today, the reality was anything but.
By now the sun had long-since slipped below the crests of the Urals. The darkness was nearly complete and the temperature was falling rapidly. Even dressed head to toe in survival gear Tracie was rapidly transitioning from mildly uncomfortable to freezing cold.
Her plan had been to conclude the day’s surveillance at least an hour ago, but the unexpected sight of Ryan Smith had thrown a monkey wrench into the works.
She recalled the help he’d given her just last month. His unassuming manner and his easy smile and his willingness to do anything necessary to ensure her mission’s success. He was probably close to her own age, but he’d only been in the field a few months and she’d viewed him almost as a little brother. She’d offered advice about operating in hostile environments that had been gratefully received, even if—obviously, given his situation—poorly implemented.
Then she thought about Aaron Stallings’s insistence that she stick to the original mission.
Maybe Stallings was right. Maybe attempting to rescue Smith was the wrong move. Hell, probably it was the wrong move.
She didn’t care. She couldn’t leave a man to the kind of fate facing Ryan Smith if there was any chance she could take action to change that fate, even if she had no idea yet what that action might be.
She got her things together and began hiking through the woods to the Lada SUV, only now realizing she’d begun to shake violently.
Much more so than the temperature would warrant.
18
February 1, 1988
Time unknown
Base Commander’s office, unknown Soviet military installation
“We have much to discuss,” Vladimir Protasov said, his lips fixed in a mirthless smile. The Russian major had introduced Protasov as a doctor, and the title mystified Ryan almost as much as it frightened him.
Why a doctor? Ryan doubted very much that the Soviets were so concerned about his health they’d brought in a medical professional to give their new prisoner a physical. That left only one real possibility he could come up with, and it was one that made his stomach turn and sweat break out on his forehead, despite the chill still permeating his bones from his time in the back of the cargo truck.
Torture.
This man in the white smock was a KGB doctor, and he was here to introduce Ryan Smith to previously unimagined levels of pain.
Ryan swallowed heavily and pressed his lips together. He would stand strong as long as he could. If the Soviets truly wanted to break him, to learn details of the missions he’d run inside their borders, and to learn the names of other operatives still operating in country, he knew they would do so eventually.
But he vowed to make it absolutely as difficult as possible before they ever got one word out of him.
The doctor and the Red Army major stared at him without speaking. Ryan felt like a bug being examined under a magnifying glass by a couple of curious twelve-year-old boys.
But Protasov hadn’t yet asked a question, so Ryan felt no answer was necessary. He didn’t know what was coming next, but he guessed it would be a lot more unpleasant than the current situation, and he had no interest in speeding the process along.
The silence dragged out. Ryan’s heart was racing as adrenaline pounded through his system, but he thought he was—so far, at least—doing a pretty good job of maintaining an impassive expression. Without a watch it was impossible to tell for sure, but Ryan guessed ninety seconds or more dragged by without anyone speaking or even moving.
Eventually it occurred to the two men sitting across the desk that their prisoner would not be pressured to fill the screaming silence in the room, and Doctor Protasov tried again. “I am sure you are wondering where you are and why we have brought you here.”
Another declarative statement requiring no response. Again Ryan remained silent. Whatever Protasov’s specialty, it was clear he wasn’t a professional interrogator.
The familiar awkward silence dropped over the room. Ryan felt like a man who’d been stranded in a broken elevator with a couple of strangers.
The silence was much shorter this time.
Protasov frowned and said, “Your reticence is understandable but I assure you it changes nothing. We know you are an American CIA operative, and we know that you have been working inside the Soviet Union toward the destruction of our country.”
Ryan cleared his throat and attempted to maintain his mask of calm.
“But that is only part of the reason you are here,” Protasov said. “You see, my work here has been hampered by the poor quality of my test subjects. Men afflicted with mental illness or long-term addiction to drugs or alcohol suffer changes in brain chemistry. This makes successful manipulation of the brain tissue through electrical stimulation extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.”
Protasov paused and met Ryan’s eyes. Ryan was proud he held the man’s gaze steadily despite the terror coursing through his system.
The doctor continued. “I have been insisting to my superiors for quite some time that I require higher quality test subjects if I am to continue making progress in my research.”
He smiled. “This is where you come in, my American spy friend. A man such as yourself, able to work inside a foreign country, gathering military and civilian intelligence and passing it along to the enemies of that country, is clearly blessed with intelligence of his own, not to mention a quick wit, and, it goes without saying, bravery.
“Of course,” he added with an acid smile, “the fact that you are sitting here with us today tells me you may not be quite as intelligent and quick-witted as yo
u thought you were, but you’ve undoubtedly reached the same conclusion on your own by now, so there is no need to cover that ground, don’t you agree?”
Ryan thought the pounding of his heart inside his chest must be visible to these men by now. It felt as though it might just explode and blast through his ribs like a small nuclear device.
He remained silent.
“But that is neither here nor there,” Protasov continued. “My point remains unchanged. You possess a level of intelligence and high-capacity brain functionality that far surpasses that of any previous test subject. This is why I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.”
The Russian major had remained silent while Doctor Protasov spoke, but it was obvious he’d seen enough of Protasov’s timid soft shoe routine and decided to take control of the meeting.
“You have heard from Doctor Protasov,” the major said. “You will soon become intimately familiar with the good doctor and his work. However, I have a few words to say as well. As an American CIA operative, I am sure you—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ryan said. His voice was strong and his tone decisive. He didn’t know how he was managing it, but he was proud of himself. “CIA? That’s ridiculous.”
“Please,” the major said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Do not waste my time and insult my intelligence. We have been watching you long enough to know exactly what you are, if not who you are. We have people searching your apartment even now. No matter how careful you may have been, I feel confident we will find additional evidence of your treachery against the Soviet Union. Feel free to argue my point, if you believe you can.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ryan repeated.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 132