Authors: Allan Leverone
“I’m going to make
sure the first guy told me the truth.”
34
June 1, 1987
4:50 a.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
They moved quickly, Tracie
directing the action. She had returned fifteen minutes after leaving Shane with
the lookout, her face grim but satisfied. “I got what we need,” she said, “and
now we have to move. Help me get this guy to the other room.”
After Shane had
secured the man in the dummy motel room, she instructed him to wipe down all of
the surfaces they may have touched. “I’m going to call the spooks on these two
once I’m sure about who we can trust at CIA,” she said, “so fingerprints won’t
be an issue. But just in case someone finds them before I do that, I want to
make sure you’re protected. My prints are untraceable, but I doubt you would be
so lucky.”
While Shane toured
the room with a worn bath towel, scrubbing every surface he could, Tracie
double-checked Shane’s bindings to satisfy herself they would hold. Then she
applied a double layer of tape over each man’s mouth, winding it tightly around
their heads and patting it in place. Despite the fact the two men had been
there to kill them, Shane almost felt sorry for them. They looked like twins,
their cheeks flaming crimson, shiny and burning, and the tape’s sticky adhesive
must have felt like an additional torture session.
Tracie didn’t seem
to notice.
Once she seemed
satisfied both men would stay immobilized, she gathered up the weapons and
picked up a DO NOT DISTURB placard off the inside doorknob and told Shane,
“Let’s go.” She said nothing to the Russians, neither of whom had spoken since
the end of the interrogation, and both men stared straight ahead, ignoring
Tracie and Shane and, it seemed, each other.
They paused at the
door, Tracie doing one last quick check of the room, Shane pondering how
quickly his life had turned upside-down. After a few seconds, she hung the DO
NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob, then eased the door shut and locked it from
the outside.
They hurried
across the rapidly lightening parking lot to the second motel room and threw
their gear together quickly. Shane repeated his print-scrubbing exercise with
the bath towel while Tracie packed their few meager supplies in the Granada.
Tracie hung another DO NOT DISTURB sign on that door, then they slid into the
car and drove to the motel office.
After paying for a
second day’s rental of both rooms, they hurried back to the car and drove out
of the New Haven Arms lot, Tracie at the wheel. They turned toward New Haven
proper in search of an all-night restaurant. It was 5:05 a.m.
***
They found one almost immediately,
tucked away under an I-95 overpass. The Original Greasy Spoon seemed to embrace
the 1950s with an enthusiasm bordering on obsession. Shane knew Tracie was
almost out of money and he thought he might have just enough cash left for two
cups of coffee and a couple of blueberry muffins. He was right, and they walked
out of the diner and back into the 1980s with their food and coffee less than
three minutes later.
Tracie asked Shane
if he wanted to drive. He hadn’t bothered to offer because even with all the
traveling they had done yesterday she had not so much as considered giving up
the wheel. “Sure,” he answered, surprised and pleased although he was not
entirely sure why. It was as if he had passed some kind of test back at the
tumbledown New Haven Arms in the surreal few hours they had spent there.
She climbed into
the passenger seat and sat demurely, smiling at him while he dropped into the
driver’s seat. “What?” he asked. “What’s so funny?”
Then he went to
start the car and realized. There was no key. “Okay, you win. Would you mind
starting this piece of junk for me?”
“No problem,” she
answered, pleased. “We’ll make a proper criminal out of you yet.” She leaned
over his lap to hot-wire the ignition and he flashed back to their time
together in bed at the motel before the Russians had arrived. Her silky skin,
her luscious lips, the curve of her naked hip under his hand, the way her
breathing quickened as he had stroked her inner thigh, the sweet sound she made
when—
He realized she
had spoken to him and he cleared his throat. “Uh, sorry, I missed that,” he
said, embarrassed.
“I asked if you
were going start driving or whether you planned to sit there the rest of the
day replaying your mental movie of us together in the sack.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Don’t even try to
deny it. I’m a trained interrogator, remember?”
He could hear the
smile in her voice. “Okay, okay, I admit it. Just don’t come at me with an
iron.”
She laughed, the
sound light and girlish, light-years removed from the ice-pick chill she had
displayed when dealing with the Russians. Shane shook his head and dropped the
car into gear, turning left, right and then left again, climbing the ramp onto
I-95 south, thoroughly confused by this young woman sitting to his right.
Thoroughly
enchanted by her as well, although he knew he could not afford to be.
She ate delicately
as Shane drove, picking tiny pieces off the muffin with her fingers and placing
them on her tongue before chewing soundlessly and swallowing, brow furrowed in
concentration. Shane had to be careful not to get so caught up watching Tracie
out of the corner of his eye that he drove off the highway and into the
guardrail.
He let her think
for a while and when it became clear she had no intention of starting a
conversation, said, “So what did those guys tell you back there?”
“I know where the
assassin is going to be stationed.”
“How can you be
sure they told you the truth?”
“They both gave
the same location. There’s no way they would have done that if one of them had
been lying.”
“Unless they
agreed on a story beforehand, in case they were caught.”
Tracie shrugged,
conceding the point. “True enough,” she said, “but I don’t think so. Those guys
were one hundred percent certain they were going to walk in on us in our sleep,
put a bullet in each of our heads, and walk away with the letter. That’s why they
were so sloppy. They had no reason to suspect we were on to them, and thus no
reason to make up a story. Plus, they wouldn’t have expected us to know about
the assassination.” She paused. “I’m confident I got the truth out of them.”
“Okay,” Shane said.
“So what’s the plan from here?”
“The plan? I wish
I knew.” She sighed heavily. “First stop is New York. We’ll pick up my
supplies, then head straight to D.C. I’ll find a safe place to stash you, and
then I’ll have to pay a visit to my traitorous boss, Winston Andrews. From
there, I stop an assassination. I’m not exactly sure how yet.”
“Stash me? I don’t
think so. You said yourself I’m neck deep in…whatever is going on, and I’ve
nearly been killed twice now in less than twenty-four hours. I have a stake in
this thing, too, Tracie, in case you’ve forgotten. Plus, you can’t do
everything yourself. You need help, and I’m going to help you. Period. End of
story.”
35
June 1, 1987
5:45 a.m.
Interstate 95, just outside
Newark, NJ
“I don’t understand,” Shane said. They
had pulled off the highway at a random exit, bought fresh coffee, and then hit
the road again. Steam curled out of the plastic lids, dissipating in the air.
“It doesn’t make sense. What possible advantage could there be for the KGB to
launch World War Three?”
“It
does
make
sense,” Tracie said. “It actually makes perfect sense if you consider it in
context. Think about it. Exercising tyranny is dependent upon maintaining
control, but the world is opening up. Citizens who have been under the thumb of
the communists for decades are beginning to get a glimpse of the freedoms they
have long been denied, and they’re starting to realize those freedoms are
within reach. They want them.
“The Soviet Union
is crumbling, Shane. I know because I’ve seen the evidence firsthand. They have
arguably the finest, most modern military in the world, next to ours, and yet
the rest of the Soviet infrastructure is in a shambles, as is their economy.
It’s getting harder and harder for the Soviets to keep their satellite countries
in line, and more and more expensive to do so at a time when resources are
shrinking.
“This makes
perfect sense,” she concluded, a reluctant sense of wonder in her voice.
Shane shrugged,
frustrated. “I still don’t get it. Okay, Czechoslovakia wants to break away
from the Russians. So what? How does that tie in with the KGB assassinating the
president of the United States?”
Tracie sat for a
moment, thinking. Shane could see her working through it. “Okay,” she said at
last. “It’s obvious from this letter,” she tapped the grimy envelope, “that
Gorbachev can see the changes coming, and that he knows he is helpless to stop
them. He admits that much. Whatever the future holds for the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, in ten years’ time it is going to look very different than
it does right now.”
“So?” Shane said.
“Things change all the time. I still don’t understand why they have to kill
Reagan.”
“Because,” Tracie
said, rubbing her eyes. She suddenly looked very tired. “The Soviet Union is no
different than any other government, at least as far as the inner workings are
concerned. Politicians disagree philosophically, squabble, grab power,
consolidate that power, whatever. Obviously there’s a faction—in this case, a
group of high-ranking KGB officials—who will stop at nothing to prevent the
destruction of their power base and their personal empires. This faction
wants
to start a war, and the bigger, the better. You think Czechoslovakia is
still going to want to step out from under their protector’s umbrella once the
world’s two great superpowers start lobbing nuclear warheads at each other?”
“But all wars end
eventually. What happens then?”
“Whoever is behind
this mess doesn’t care what happens then. Assassinating Reagan and starting
World War Three will give those people inside the Kremlin plenty of time to
consolidate their power and stockpile resources so that no matter who wins—and
even if everyone loses, which seems likely—
they
are provided for. Plus,
their precious Soviet empire remains intact that much longer, or at least has
not fallen completely apart, which seems to be the most likely outcome the way
things are going right now.”
Shane stared out
the windshield at the cars on I-95, metal boxes hurrying to unknown
destinations. “But if Gorbachev is so opposed to this plan, why not just stop
it from inside his government? He’s the man in charge, after all.”
“Gorbachev’s
skating on thin ice over there. He has instituted reforms that have outraged
the hard-liners in the political structure, people who would like nothing
better than to go back to the days of Khrushchev, or even Stalin. Gorbachev
recognizes that he doesn’t have the muscle politically to take on these
hard-liners directly, so instead he’s going through the back door. He couldn’t
trust anyone within his government to deliver his message intact—he certainly
couldn’t ask the KGB to do it—so he tried to do it clandestinely.”
“Why not just go
public with what he knows? That would stop the whole thing in its tracks.”
“If he tried to do
that, he’d be gone by the next day. He would either be arrested or killed. He
would likely disappear in the middle of the night and never be heard from
again. The Soviet political system is not like ours—there isn’t even the
illusion of openness. The truth is considered an asset only when it advances
the Communist cause. If Gorbachev went to the press with the details of this
plan, even his supporters would consider him a traitor to his country. No,” she
said slowly, thinking out loud, “this is really the only way he could have
handled it, and he’s taking one hell of a big chance as it is.”
“Okay, that’s it,”
Shane said. “We’re hours away from the assassination of the president and the
start of a war maybe no one will survive.” He eased down on the accelerator and
the car surged forward. “We’ve got to get you to a phone. You have to call your
superiors at CIA and tell them about this. Never mind Winston Andrews—call the
CIA Director himself, if you have to.”
“I can’t,” Tracie
said simply, shaking her head.
Shane pulled his
foot off the gas and stared at Tracie in amazement. He ignored the honking of a
car behind him. A middle-aged woman flipped him off as she pulled around the
Granada, and he barely noticed. “What do you mean, you can’t? You have to!”
“No,” she said. “I
can’t. Nothing’s changed, Shane.
I don’t know who can be trusted.
I
trusted Winston Andrews with my life, put it in his hands dozens of times, and it
turns out he’s involved with the Soviets, apparently has been for years. I have
no way of knowing who else in the power structure is compromised, and that
includes Director Stallings. If I alert the wrong people, or even if I alert
the right people but the wrong people get wind of it, the letter gets
destroyed, you and I get neutralized, and the president of the United States
gets assassinated.”
“
Everyone
can’t
be involved.”
“Of course not.
I’m sure only a small percentage are involved. But I can’t take the chance of
the one person who
is
involved finding out. The stakes are just too
high.”
“Call the cops
then. The Secret Service. Alert the media. We have to do something.”
Tracie sighed.
“I’d like nothing better. But do you have any idea how many ‘tips’ the
authorities get every day about assassination plots against the president? Dozens,
especially when he travels or makes public appearances. We won’t be taken
seriously, Shane, trust me on this. We’ll be detained and the speech will go on
as planned.”