Authors: Allan Leverone
So he did what he
had to do, year after year, decade after decade, through Republican
administration and Democrat, and regretted none of it. Winston liked to believe
the fact that both countries were still standing forty years after his first
tentative information exchange was proof positive his theory had been right.
He pushed himself
up from his leather recliner, wobbling unsteadily, and tottered out of his
office for another drink.
He had no regrets
about anything he had done over the past four decades, but what was happening
now was different. This was a situation unlike anything he had ever
experienced. Lives were directly at stake. In fact, lives had already been
lost, and that loss of life could be traced straight back to Winston Andrews.
Winston could
accept the notion of sacrificing a few in the interest of saving many. He had
built a career on that concept. But in the past, that loss of life had been
largely theoretical, at least to Winston. He had no doubt Soviet citizens had
died thanks to intelligence information he had generated. Probably Americans
had lost their lives, too, due at least in part to information he had passed to
Moscow.
But as far as he
was aware, there had never been a direct connection.
Until yesterday.
Until he had
learned of a plan set in motion by the KGB to prevent a secret communique, from
Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev to President Reagan, from reaching the White
House. Despite his best efforts, Winston had been unable to ascertain what was
contained in the letter and, in fact, strongly suspected the KGB didn’t even
know.
But their plan had
backfired. The plane crash ordered by the KGB had occurred not in the middle of
the Atlantic as planned, but on U.S. soil, just a few hundred miles away, in
Bangor, Maine. Now, news organizations were reporting that an unidentified
female passenger, whose whereabouts were currently unknown, had survived the
crash.
The passenger
wasn’t unidentified to Winston, though. The passenger was his agent, Tracie
Tanner, a young operative he had discovered and helped train, talented and
smart. And things got even worse from there. A brutal massacre had taken place
at Bangor International Airport: seven people slaughtered in cold blood, one a
law enforcement officer. He shuddered at the thought of the carnage, a chill
running down his spine that was unrelated to the temperature in his office.
Winston had no way
of knowing whether Tracie was still alive. It was possible the KGB, whom he was
certain had engineered the attack at the airport, had killed or captured Tracie
and taken possession of the letter. He didn’t think that was the case, though.
Tracie Tanner was perhaps the finest operative he had ever supervised over
forty years in charge of CIA’s Soviet Intelligence Division. He doubted a small
group of Russian operatives working on U.S. soil would have had the ability to
eliminate her, unless she was badly injured or they simply got lucky.
He was in the
process of mixing another gin and tonic when the shrill ringing of a telephone
caused him to slop gin onto the bar in surprise. It wasn’t his house phone
ringing, it was one of his special telephones, the one that received incoming
calls only rarely, and only from a select few Russian intelligence officers.
Even the majority of his contacts in the USSR were not privy to this number.
This was the call
Winston had been dreading. He could predict, almost word for word, how the
conversation was going to go, and it would not be good.
He sighed deeply,
and reluctantly climbed the stairs to his second floor office. There was no
need to hurry, the caller wasn’t going anywhere. And he wouldn’t give up.
Winston walked to the phone, which he had placed squarely on the middle of his
desk in anticipation of this call. “Hello?”
“Are you secure?”
the caller asked, not bothering to identify himself. No introduction was
necessary. Winston recognized the distinct baritone immediately, the voice
raspy from a lifetime of abusing strong Russian vodka and unfiltered American
cigarettes. It was Vasily Kopalev, the highest-ranking KGB member Winston had
ever dealt with.
“Of course,” he
answered, hoping he sounded stronger and more confident than he felt.
“Good. I am
certain you are aware of the events of today?”
“I know what I’ve
seen on the news.”
“Then you know our
operation has, thus far, been an abject failure.”
“It would seem
so.”
“We need to know
where your agent is, Mr. Andrews. We need to know right now.”
“I understand, but
she has not yet contacted me. She has been quite busy, though, as I’m sure you
are well aware. If she is able, she will be in touch soon.”
“Are you being truthful
with me, Mr. Andrews? The critical nature of this mission cannot be
overstated.”
Winston’s heart
sank. There was no way out of this. Kopalev’s presence on the other end of the
line was indication the KGB intended to play their cards right to the end. He
hesitated long enough for Kopalev to bark, “Mr. Andrews!” and then answered.
“Yes, yes, of course I’m being honest with you, Vasily. The moment I hear from
my operative, you will know it.”
“Sooner is better
than later. We must gain possession of that letter.”
“I understand. As
I said, when I hear from my agent, you will hear from me.” The line went dead
and Winston returned the handset to its cradle, lifting the telephone off the
desk and placing it into a drawer, which he then locked.
Tracie Tanner. His
protégée, the daughter he never had. To be delivered up to the KGB, after which
she would most certainly disappear forever. His stomach roiled, the gin sitting
in his gut like an unexploded bomb.
He sat at his
desk, head in his hands, for a very long time. Then he stood and walked
downstairs to the bar to finish making that drink.
29
May 31, 1987
9:40 p.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
They made it as far as New Haven
before stopping for the night. Shane felt almost as tired upon waking from his
nap as he had before falling asleep. He offered to switch places and take a
turn behind the wheel, but Tracie declined, saying, “I do some of my best
thinking when I drive, and right now I have a lot to think about. Besides,
we’ve gone about as far as we need to today.”
She steered the
car off I-95 and then seemed to drive aimlessly around the fringes of New Haven
looking for a suitable motel. She checked out three run-down establishments,
all equally unappealing to Shane, eliminating all three from consideration for
reasons he could not discern.
Finally she
selected one. The winner in the overnight housing sweepstakes featured a
central parking lot separating two rows of attached wood-frame rooms that
looked like mirror images of each other, right down to the peeling paint and
crumbling cement foundations.
The motel appeared
identical to the other three as far as Shane could tell, and he looked at her
quizzically. “This is the best we can do, huh?”
She smiled. “I’m
getting a little low on cash, so we’re going to have to slum it for tonight.
Once we hit the bank tomorrow, money won’t be as much of an issue, but for now
I’m afraid we’ll have to pass on the Four Seasons.”
“Not to worry,” he
said. “I’m a cheap date. But just out of curiosity, if we were only going to
stay at a roach motel, what was wrong with the first three places you scoped
out?”
“They didn’t have
the features I was looking for.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, you know, a
little of this, a little of that.”
“You’ve already
used that answer once today.”
“I know,” she said
brightly, looking like the cat that ate the canary.
“Has anyone ever
told you that you’re one frustrating person to deal with?”
“All the time.”
Tracie parked the
car in front of an office that looked like it had been designed by the
architect who built the Bates Motel. An old-fashioned MOTEL sign hung in the
front window, the glass tube letters filled with red neon gas. The “L” had
burned out, leaving MOTE flickering weakly in the darkness. Above it, unlit,
another sign said NEW HAVEN ARMS.
Shane looked at
the “MOTE” with distaste. “I hope that’s not a warning of what’s waiting for us
in the rooms.”
“Ah, come on, how
bad could it be? Where’s your sense of adventure?” she said, stepping out of
the car and stretching her legs. Shane reached for the door handle to join her
and then stopped, admiring the view through the windshield as she reached for
the sky. The night was mild and she hadn’t bothered to pull on her jacket, and
her blouse lifted as she stretched, revealing a taut belly. Shane had already
gotten an up-close and personal look at her legs last night while cleaning her
injury, and he decided this young woman was the complete package.
She bent down
suddenly and looked in the driver’s side window, catching him staring, and
laughed. She waggled her index finger back and forth. “Naughty boy,” she said
through the closed window. It looked to Shane like her face colored a little,
but maybe that was his imagination.
He clambered out
of the car after her. “Sorry about that,” he said, although he really wasn’t,
and he knew
she
knew he wasn’t. “So, what now?”
“What do you mean,
‘what now?’ Come on, Romeo, haven’t you ever shacked up with a girl of
questionable repute in a run-down motel before?”
“Sure,” he said.
“But when you say it like that it sounds so cheap.”
They shared a
laugh and she turned toward the door. “Just follow my lead,” she said, and
entered the office.
The décor was
Spartan and had gone out of date sometime before John Glenn orbited the earth.
A potted plant stood in one corner covered in dust. It looked like it was dying
despite the fact it was made of plastic. A small couch, the leather ripped and
torn, lined the wall next to it. To the left of the entrance was a single
rickety wooden chair.
They moved to the
front desk and Tracie dinged a small bell. Through an open door behind the desk
came a rustling sound and then the scraping of a chair, and a moment later a
rumpled-looking scarecrow of a man appeared. He was dressed in loose-fitting
jeans and a stained Rolling Stones T-shirt, and he gazed at them suspiciously
through red-rimmed eyes, as if not quite able to believe a customer had
actually entered his establishment.
“Help you?” he
asked, making clear through the inflection in his voice it was the last thing
in the world he really wanted to do.
Tracie flashed a
smile and Shane thought she could have been a beauty queen if she wanted to. Or
an actress. “We’d like to rent two rooms,” she said, and the clerk actually
took a step back, blinking in surprise. Shane knew how he felt.
“
Two
rooms?” he said, and then paused, like he was waiting for the punch line.
“That’s right, and
I know exactly which ones I want.”
“Oh-kayyyy,” the
clerk said, now clearly convinced the world as he knew it had been thrown off
its axis.
“We would like to
rent the rooms at the far end of the parking lot, one on each side, facing each
other,” Tracie said, still smiling, enjoying the clerk’s confusion.
Scarecrow-man
shook his head, not even attempting to hide his skepticism. “Sign here,” he
mumbled, picking a worn log book up from under the desk and sliding it across
at Tracie. “That’ll be fifty bucks total.”
She dug the money
out of her pocket, signed the log book—Shane watched as she wrote “Sally
Field,” next to one room and “Kathleen Turner” next to the other, and the clerk
shook his head again—and then received two keys, each attached to a red plastic
fob with the words “New Haven Arms,” as well as the room numbers, stamped in faded
gold lettering on both sides.
“Thanks,” she
said, flashing another dazzling smile at the clerk, although she had to have
known by now charming this guy was impossible.
They turned toward
the door and the clerk mumbled, “Check-out time’s ten a.m.” Tracie waggled her
fingers in response and then they were back in the parking lot, the smell of
the nearby Atlantic Ocean floating across the night air as they walked to the
Granada.
“Two rooms?” Shane
asked.
“Security,” she
said, the answer puzzling him. Was she afraid of him? If he was going to hurt
her, he could have done it last night when she was passed out on his couch.
Besides,
he thought, remembering the pistol she had waved in his face.
She’s the
one with the gun.
Tracie laughed.
She seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. “Not security from you,
silly.” She started the car and drove slowly to the back of the lot, then nosed
into the parking space directly in front of the last room on the right.
“Then from who?”
Shane asked. “You don’t think those guys from the airport can find us, do you?
I mean, how could they possibly know where we would be?”
“How, indeed,” she
said thoughtfully.
Shane shrugged,
exasperated. This was one strange young woman: beautiful and alluring and sexy,
with a girl-next-door innocence about her, but also tough as nails and somehow
world-weary, as if being chased by cold-blooded killers represented just
another day at the office. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I give up. Which
room do you want me to take?”
She flicked her thumb
in the direction of the room across the parking lot, directly behind the Ford.
Shane held his hand out for the key and Tracie looked at the room numbers
stamped on the plastic fobs, then handed him one. He took it without a word,
annoyed, then opened the door and stalked off across the lot.
When he reached
the other side, he stuck the key in the door, surprised by the motel’s poor
lighting. The doorway was bathed in shadows despite the fact the moon was full.
He opened the door and realized Tracie was right behind him. “I thought you
wanted me to take this one,” he said.
“I do. I also want
me to take this one.”
“Then why the hell
did we rent two rooms when you said you’re almost out of money?”
“I told you,” she
said. “Security.”
Shane stared at
her. “You really are worried about those guys.”
“I wouldn’t say
worried, exactly, but let’s just say I like to maintain a healthy awareness of
possibilities at all times. It’s what keeps me alive.”
30
May 31, 1987
9:55 p.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
The room was more or less what
Tracie had expected—small and cramped, with outdated furnishings and a bed with
a mattress that was probably as old as she was, covered by an off-white set of
threadbare blankets and a fading blue bedspread. She had stayed in a hundred similar
rooms all over the world—and many that were much, much worse. This one was
clean at least, more or less.
Shane bounced on
the bed like a little kid, grinning. “Wanna take it for a spin?” he asked,
waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, and she burst out laughing.
“As tempting as
you make it sound,” she said, “I have work to do. I really need to call my
handler. In fact, this phone call is way overdue. I should have gotten in touch
with him last night, but I was down and out, and then today we’ve been too busy
trying not to get killed. Before we do that, though, we need to set up the room
across the way.”
Shane looked at
her quizzically. “Set it up?”
She nodded. “Yep.
You can put all that excess energy to good use, although maybe not the way you
intended. We’re going to haul all the pillows over there, and any extra
blankets you can find, too.”
“What for?”
“Bait.”
Shane picked the
two lumpy pillows up off the bed while Tracie investigated the tiny closet. Inside
was a small ironing board, an ancient iron, and an extra set of bedding: two
sheets and two blankets. She grabbed the blankets and sheets, wondering if
anyone frequenting this run-down piece-of-shit motel had ever had occasion to
iron an article of clothing, or if the iron even still worked.
“Take the blankets
and bedspread off this bed,” she told Shane. “We can use those across the way
as well. We’ll leave the sheets, though. I don’t think I’d want to even sit on
this bed without something covering it.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Take this
bedding? What about you? What are you going to sleep on? I figured I could sleep
on the floor in my clothes and you could have the bed, but without blankets it
won’t be very comfy.”
Tracie smiled. He
was being a perfect gentleman, despite his half-joking proposition of a moment
ago. “We’re going to trade off sleeping,” she said. “Nobody will have to sleep
on the floor, because one of us is going to stay awake all night, watching the
room across the way. Even when you’re sleeping you’ll have to stay in your
clothes, anyway, because if we have to move we’ll need to be able to do it
quickly.”
“What will we be
watching for?”
Tracie chewed on
her lower lip, a reaction to stress she had been trying unsuccessfully to break
for as long as she could remember. “Hopefully nothing,” she said in a tone that
didn’t even convince herself.
Shane stared at
her for a long moment. She thought he was going to reply but he didn’t. Then he
stripped the covers off the bed, rolled them up into a ball, and hugged the
pillows and bedding to his chest. He opened the door and they trooped across
the parking lot to their second room. Tracie examined the lot as they crossed,
pleased with her choice of motels. The sight line between the two rooms was
perfect, the lighting in the parking lot was abysmal, and only a couple of the
other rooms appeared occupied, both far off in the distance, close to the road
and next to the office.
They entered the
second room and found a mirror image of the one they had just left, right down
to the faded coloring in the decades-old bedspread. She pulled the spread to
the foot of the bed and then did the same thing with the blankets and top
sheet. She placed her blankets on the right side of the bed and then told
Shane, “Hand me yours.” When he passed them over, she placed them lengthwise on
top of hers, folded the whole pile back on top of itself, and then scrunched
everything up into the rough approximation of a sleeping body.
She stepped back
and examined her handiwork with a critical eye. “Hmph. Guess it’ll have to do,”
she muttered. “Good thing it’s dark out there.”
She walked around
the bed, darting past Shane with the grace of a dancer. “Toss me the pillows,”
she said, and when he did, she arranged them lengthwise along that side of the
bed, creating a second sleeping body. Then she pulled the original blankets
back over her creation, covering the two lumps.
She took one more
look and shrugged. “What do you think? Does it look like two sleeping people?”
“Maybe to Ray
Charles,” Shane said and she punched his arm.
“Wise ass,” she
said. “It only has to fool them for a couple of seconds.”
“Then what
happens?” he asked.
“Then they get
interrogated.”
“By you?”
“That’s right.”
“But this is all
for nothing, because nobody’s coming.”
“Hope so.”
“You and me both,”
Shane said, concern in his voice.
She winked at him
and walked to the bathroom, flipping on the light. Then she pulled the door
almost all the way closed. A thin shaft of dirty yellow light slashed across
the main room, illuminating just enough of the bed, she hoped, to convince any
interested observers that two people were actually sleeping in it.
“That’s going to
have to do,” she said.
“Now what?” Shane
asked.
She pulled her
dwindling supply of cash out of her pocket and studied it. “You said you had a
little money, right?” she asked hopefully.
Shane said, “Yeah,
I’ve got about twenty bucks.”
“Good,” she
answered, tossing him the car keys. “Take the Granada and find a hardware store
that’s still open. We need duct tape.”
“Duct tape. What
do we need duct tape for?”
Tracie grinned and
waggled her eyebrows as he had done when they entered the first motel room.
“Use your imagination.”
***
Back in the original room, Tracie
picked up the phone and dialed a complex series of numbers from memory, waited
for an accompanying series of beeps, then dialed more numbers. After a thirty-second
silence the earpiece buzzed, indicating the line was ringing.
The call was
answered almost immediately. “Green twenty-seven,” a voice said.
“Red eighteen,”
Tracie answered.
“Thank God you’re
okay,” Winston Andrews said. “When I didn’t hear from you last night I started
to think maybe you had crawled off into the woods somewhere and gotten yourself
eaten by a bear.” He seemed to be enunciating carefully, like he was trying not
to slur his words.
“Nope, I’m still
kicking. So far.”
“Do you have the
cargo?”
“I have it.”
“Any damage?”
“No, it’s like me:
a little beat-up but otherwise okay.”
“How close are
you?”
“Still a few hours
out. We’re going to hole up in a cheap motel for the night and come into D.C.
tomorrow.”
“We?”
“I have a civilian
with me. It’s the guy who rescued me from the burning B-52. The media got wind
of his name and plastered it all over the news. He’s got a target on his back
now and will until this thing is over. I thought it best to keep him close.”