Authors: Allan Leverone
“I wouldn’t mind
at all,” she shot back. “It’s about President Reagan’s appearance, which is due
to begin down the block in just,” she glanced at her watch, “nine minutes.”
“Yes,” he said
exasperatedly, “what about it? You folks were a major disruption yesterday,
disturbing my employees and poking around my building. Last night I was
promised these disruptions were over with. So, what is it now?”
“We’ve had a
report of a man acting suspiciously in the area. The report stated the man may
have entered this building. I need to take a walk through to check it out. I
just wanted to let you know I’ll be here for the next few minutes. Oh, and I’ll
need a key for the roof access. Preferably a master, if you have one.”
The manager huffed
and looked at his watch distractedly. “Fine, look around, just try not to
disturb my people too much this time.” He didn’t specify whether he considered
the employees or the customers—or maybe both—to be “his people.” He pulled a
set of keys out of his pocket and fussed with it, finally removing one, which
he handed to Tracie.
Tracie took it. “I’ll
return the key to your receptionist when I’ve finished. Thank you for your
time.”
The bank manager
had begun striding away before she finished talking, barreling back toward the
bank of elevators on the far wall. She lowered the hand she had begun to offer
him and followed, moving quickly. She didn’t trust the speed of the elevators,
so her goal was the fire stairs, the doorway to which was in the same corner of
the lobby as the elevators.
When Foley stopped
suddenly and turned, she almost plowed him over. He blinked in surprise at
finding her right behind him. “You say there may be someone inside the building
who’s been acting strangely?” he said.
“That was the
report,” she answered brusquely, anxious to get to the roof.
“You know, there
was one odd incident this morning,” he said, cupping his chin with one hand.
“Yes?”
“That’s right. We
employ a security staff of one during overnight hours. Break-ins are not
uncommon in this neighborhood, and it just seems prudent.” He seemed to be
waiting for a response, so Tracie nodded impatiently and he continued. “Well,
the guard on duty last night, Sean Sullivan, never clocked out at the end of
his shift and he was nowhere to be found when we opened up this morning.
Nothing is missing and the janitorial staff reported that he was here to let
them into the building at midnight last night.”
“Maybe he simply
forgot to sign out before he went home,” Tracie said.
“I don’t think so.
Sean has been with us for over five years and has never forgotten to sign out
before. He is ex-police and very professional. Anyway, with the report of a
suspicious person, I thought you should know. We’ve been trying to get in touch
with our man at home, but so far, no luck.”
“Hm,” Tracie said,
thinking. “What time do the rest of the employees usually show up for work?”
“The managers and
supervisors around eight, and the rest of the staff just before nine.”
“Okay, thank you,”
Tracie began, but the man had once again dismissed her. He turned and punched
an elevator button. Tracie pushed through the door to the stairs, and began
sprinting up them two at a time.
The guard was
dead, Tracie was certain of it. There was no doubt in her mind what had
happened—the KGB’s man had overpowered the guard sometime between midnight and
eight this morning.
Her calves began
to tighten as she rushed up the stairs. She tried to tell herself maybe she was
wrong, that the assassin might simply have neutralized the guard and then tied
him up somewhere. But it didn’t feel right. There would be nothing for the KGB to
gain by leaving a witness alive. The guard was dead, his body dumped somewhere
out of the way. He would be discovered in the next day or two.
The floor numbers
were posted in the stairwell next to the doors. Tracie passed the fifth floor
and pushed herself harder. Two more to go. She was beginning to breathe
heavily. A few seconds later she arrived at the seventh floor landing,
surprised to see the stairway suddenly end. There was no roof access.
She paused, taking
a moment to get her breathing under control and to think. There had to be a way
to access the roof from inside the building. If it wasn’t via this stairway,
then there would be another one somewhere. Maybe at the opposite end of the hallway.
She drew her
weapon and eased the door open a crack. Peered into the hallway. Empty. Nothing
out of place. A third of the way down the length of the corridor she could see
a sign on a closed metal door that read ROOF – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She slipped
into the hallway, eased the door closed quietly behind her, and began walking
rapidly toward the roof access.
47
June 2, 1987
9:52 a.m.
Minuteman Mutual Insurance
Building
Nikolai was hot. He had been
huddled on the roof for two hours on a sunny day in early June. If there was
one thing Nikolai Primakov hated, it was heat. Cold he knew. Cold he could deal
with. In seventeen years growing up in Yakutsk, and then years of service to
the Soviet government, Nikolai had lived and worked in some of the most frigid,
forbidding places on earth.
But here, today, the
sun caused the heat to radiate off the asphalt roofing gravel, making the
temperature skyrocket. He was thankful the mission would soon be complete and
he could climb down off this roof and out of the damned sunshine.
Nikolai had burned
a lot of nervous energy simply waiting. After killing the guard and dumping his
body next to the roof’s access door, he had lugged his cart up the stairs and
then hustled down to the seventh floor entrance. There he removed the belt
sander he had been using to prop the door open and placed it on the stairs
while he used a strip of duct tape to seal the latch open. Then he eased the
door closed and retreated back up the stairs to the roof.
With the door’s
one-way locking system, if the tape were to fail and the latch were to operate
as designed, the door would open only from the interior and Nikolai would be
trapped on the roof, unable to escape after shooting Reagan. There was a metal
ladder fastened to the rear of the building to be used as a fire escape, but
Nikolai fully expected that escape route to be blocked within seconds after the
U.S. president fell.
After ensuring the
viability of his escape route, Nikolai returned to the roof and rolled his cart
toward the front of the building, struggling to pull it through the asphalt. He
stopped next to a gigantic air conditioning unit that rose out of the roof like
a monstrous tumor. He snugged the cart up against the west side of the unit,
using the massive structure to shield him and his equipment from prying eyes in
the closest buildings.
To counteract the
possibility of being seen by a worker on the east side of the Minuteman
Insurance Building, Nikolai dug through his cart, pulling out two signs
attached to portable metal stands. He unfolded the signs and placed one six
feet away from each corner of the air conditioning unit, facing the adjoining
building. The signs read, CAUTION, CONSTRUCTION ZONE — HARD HATS REQUIRED!
After erecting the
signs, Nikolai pulled off the heavy canvas tarpaulin he had used to conceal his
guns and other equipment. A large clamp had been affixed to two of the corners,
and after unfolding the tarp, he lifted one corner up to the edge of the air
conditioning housing and clamped it home, as he had planned on his
reconnoitering visit, then repeated the process on the other side. He pulled
the remaining two edges as far away from the unit as he could manage, then
anchored them to the roof with the belt sander on one side and a heavy portable
jigsaw on the other.
By the time he had
finished, Nikolai had transformed the east side of the air conditioning unit
into a portable work area. Stamped on the side of the tarp, in bright red
letters, were the words DC HVAC INC — INSTALLATION AND SERVICE — AVAILABLE 24
HRS A DAY. The KGB’s theory was that hiding in plain sight would be the most
effective way to avoid detection on the roof of a Washington building.
Residents of large cities were so accustomed to construction sites and repair
work on infrastructure that eventually the workers became almost invisible. It
was simple human nature. People saw what they wanted to see.
Once he had placed
his signs and set up the tarp, Nikolai finalized his preparations and then
ducked his head and disappeared out of sight under the canvas lean-to. He had
stayed there ever since, munching on his candy bars and sipping on his water,
not even leaving the protection of the tarp to take a leak. When nature called,
he simply unzipped and pissed into one of his empty water bottles.
To pass the time
once day had broken, he disassembled and reassembled the Dragunov, working
methodically, then checked the magazine on his Makarov pistol and sharpened his
combat knife. None of it needed to be done, but he did it anyway. Checked his
watch and discovered it was barely past nine. Did everything again.
Out on Columbia
Road, eight stories below in front of the Minuteman Mutual Insurance building,
Nikolai could hear the city as it groaned and creaked through another late
spring morning, the nonstop rumble of cars and trucks, horns and voices
floating through the air, and the occasional far-off scream of a siren. Early
in the morning, the sounds of the police cars and fire trucks had caused
Nikolai to tense up and become instantly wary, but he quickly concluded there
must be no shortage of crime in America’s capitol city because the sirens
seemed at times to come almost nonstop.
The time passed slowly,
although Nikolai was well acquainted with the prospect of lying in wait for his
prey. He had hunkered down much longer than this plenty of times, spending one
memorable mission shivering for three days inside the hollowed-out trunk of a
massive downed oak tree on the outskirts of Moscow waiting for a local party
commissar who had become a little too fond of the wife of a Red Army general.
The general had
commissioned Nikolai privately, paying him out of his own pocket, not that
Nikolai cared. Somehow the guilty party had been tipped off that the general
was gunning for him. The man had holed up inside his house like a scared
rabbit, refusing to move. Eventually he had, though, peeking out the back
door—who knew why?—and Nikolai had put a bullet through the center of his
forehead.
After three days.
In the bitter
chill of a Moscow winter.
So in many ways,
to Nikolai this was a walk in the park. The only thing complicating the mission
was the stature of the target, but Nikolai had eliminated high-profile men
before and had always been as cold as the Siberian wind when the time came to
pull the trigger. Today would be no different.
***
June 2, 1987
9:56 a.m.
Minuteman Mutual Insurance
Building, Washington, D.C.
Finally it was time to assassinate
the President of the United States. Nikolai wished he could have napped at some
point, but hadn’t felt comfortable enough in his surroundings to do so. If
someone discovered the taped latch on the roof access door and came to
investigate, Nikolai knew he would have only seconds to eliminate the intruder
and do it quietly enough to avoid jeopardizing the entire mission.
He stretched. Yawned.
Checked the time. Nine-fifty-five. President Reagan’s remarks were to take
place at ten o’clock exactly. The KGB had no way of knowing how long the speech
would last, but the consensus had been that it would likely be short and to the
point, given the fact that the U.S. President was not a young man and the
speech was to take place outdoors in the sun and heat of June in Washington.
That meant Nikolai needed to be in position and ready to go the moment Reagan
stepped to the podium.
He shook out his
arms, then did a quick set of deep knee bends to get his blood flowing. Nikolai
crawled to the edge of his shelter and poked his head out the side, like a
turtle gazing out of its shell. He looked first at the much higher structure
next to the Minuteman Building. Saw nothing. Banks of windows soared overhead,
but there were no faces looking down at him, at least none that he could see.
He shrugged. It
didn’t matter anyway. It was time to get to work. He stepped out from under the
shelter of the tarpaulin and carried his sandbags to the two-foot-high
retaining wall at the edge of the roof, facing Columbia Road. He duck-walked as
he approached, to avoid detection by the crowd assembling eight stories below.
After stacking the
sandbags, creating a nice V-shaped notch, Nikolai retrieved his sniper rifle.
Fully assembled, scope attached, full magazine. He combat-crawled to the edge
of the roof. Reached the retaining wall and eased his rifle onto the sand bags.
Lifted himself up and peered over the edge. The top of his head would be
visible from street level but there was no way to avoid that. The Secret
Service would be scanning the buildings, but from a distance of over one
hundred feet and eight stories up, he would be as good as invisible.
The temporary
platform from which President Reagan would deliver his remarks—the few he would
live to deliver—was filled with dignitaries. There was not one empty chair
behind the podium. Nikolai didn’t recognize any of the people, figured they
must be local politicians and businessmen. The sun was shining brightly and
everyone was squinting against the glare and fanning themselves. Nikolai eased
his Dragunov onto the sandbags, seating it carefully.
Behind the podium,
a pair of shiny black armored limousines idled at the curb. As Nikolai watched,
the rear door of the first one in line opened and out stepped the target.
Ronald Reagan rose to his full height—he was taller than Nikolai would have
expected—and strode briskly along the sidewalk. A group of people moved with
him, like moons orbiting a planet. Nikolai assumed the moons probably
represented an even split between political aides and Secret Service agents.