Shadow of the Condor (24 page)

"Yes, sir," replied Serov deferentially. "Might I make a suggestion?"

"Go on.’’

"Perhaps now is the time we try to ensure that we give them a fairly comprehensible but incomplete package."

Ryzhov smiled. "Perhaps you are right. Yes, yes, I think you are. Go ahead."

Serov nodded. Underneath his desk he wiped his sweaty palms on his pants.

….

The FBI agent in charge of the Woodward detail was unhappy. Thursday was normally his day off, but here it was, Thursday, a nice spring Thursday too; warm after a nasty cold spell, and he was sitting in a car outside the electronics shop where Woodward worked, waiting for something to happen. Except for Woodward acting as weird as the reports said he might, nothing had occurred in the five days the agent had worked on the case. The agent looked at his watch. Ten o'clock in the morning. Normally he would just be getting up, maybe calling for his wife to come visit him in bed and take a break from her household chores. He thought of his wife's broad hips, soft hands, and sighed.

His partner nudged him out of his delightful daydream: "Look."

Woodward had emerged from the shop. He nervously stood on the corner glancing at the people who passed him and occasionally looking over his shoulder. He wore a corduroy blazer over a shirt and cheap dress slacks. He kept the bottom button on the blazer fastened. The FBI agent wondered if it was true that he carried a gun. Woodward .quickly crossed the street as the light changed. The agent picked up the radio mike.

“Unit Four to Central and all other W units.’’ Subject has left work, headed west. All units, pick up on him and roll."

Woodward boarded a northbound
Clark Street
bus. The commanding agent and two other cars formed a box around the bus as it headed away from the
Loop
area. The traffic was light. Twenty minutes later Woodward left the bus and walked to a McDonald's on
Clark Street
.

"Unit W Four to Central and all W units. He's making for the phone. Alert the tap team and take up positions."

Woodward walked past the phone booth next to the McDonald's. That was the phone Kevin had tapped. The commanding agent held up his crossed fingers for his partner to see. Half a block from the tapped phone Woodward entered a bar. Two agents followed him in. Ten minutes later one came out and ran to the command car. "He's taking a call at the bar's pay phone!"

"Unit W Four to Central. Subject received call at pay phone in Club Bar and Grill. Standing by."

"Looks like somebody guessed wrong," muttered the driver. The commanding agent said nothing.

Woodward emerged from the bar less than two minutes later. He appeared shaken and darted up the street. He stopped next to the tapped pay phone, pressing his back against the door, his eyes constantly shifting to take in the scene around him.

"Unit W Four to Central. Looks like he's waiting for a call on the tapped phone after all. Alert the tap team. All units stand by."

The phone rang only once before Woodward stepped inside and picked up the receiver. The tap team patched the conversation into the radio so all the W team surveillance units heard the conversation..

"Yes?" Woodward's nervousness came clearly through the radio.

"This is Steel." The callers voice was faint. The call was long distance.

"This is Iron. Is that you, Comrade? Please, is that--?'

"Of course. Calm down. Do you have a message for me?'

"Yes, and they told me--'

"The message!" interrupted the caller. "Give me the message!"

"They said to say, here, I wrote it down-and I'll bum my notes, you don't have to tell me, I will especially now that- "

"The message first, then tell me what's wrong."

"Here it is: 'Striker. Seven. Five.' That's all. Striker seven five, that's all the message. But they told me…’’

"What? Quickly, what did they tell you?"

"They told me I might be blown! That the~ FBI might know I'm ... that you might be too! Is that what the code said? What will we do? What-"

"Shut up. Calm down. Do you have anything relating to me or this mission, anything at all?"

"Just ... just my notes that I read from."

"Burn them, crash them, then scatter the ashes. Do that now! Then . . . then take care of yourself. Keep away from them if they come after you."

"Yes, Comrade!" Woodward shouted into the phone. "Don't worry! They'll never stop us! Never! They'll never get. . . ." He-raved for several more seconds before he realized his comrade had hung up.

Woodward slowly replaced the receiver and stepped out of the phone booth. So at last it had come. The revolution; that time was here! He walked to the comer, turned south down
Clark Street
. He wouldn't go back to work. He'd go underground. Dodge them. Fight them. They would never get him, never! He quickened his pace, sweat glistening on his face.

They were probably closing in on him, but they didn’t know he was ready for them. They didn't know! He unbuttoned his blazer, quickly glancing from side to side. Several people seemed to regard him strangely. That woman with the briefcase. The man carrying groceries. Woodward's pace increased until he was almost running. He jostled an old lady waiting for the bus.

You can't tell who they are, he knew that. Besides the FBI, there were the Trotskyites. They were probably after him too. And the Chinese revisionists. And the Cubans. And the CIA. He almost tripped over a baby carriage. The child screamed and burst into tears.

"Unit W Four to all units and Central. I think Woodward is panicking. Surveillance teams, be ready."

Half a block behind Woodward the two agents trailing him on foot unbuttoned their suit coats. The agent dressed as a laborer who walked parallel to Woodward on the opposite side of
Clark Street
unzipped his stained Army fatigue jacket.

The black man loomed from out of nowhere. He collided with Woodward; both of them momentarily lost their balance and they staggered apart. Woodward was three paces away when the black man, an attorney on the way to meet his mistress, yelled, "Hey, man! Why don't you watch where you're going? You crazy or something?"

Woodward looked over his shoulder. The big man stood watching him. When their eyes met, the black man-whose wife later said his temper always had been too quick jerked his right fist toward Woodward, shooting one long dark finger into the air with the emphatic American sign of defiance and, contempt. Woodward, not watching where he was going, walked into a light pole. He bounced off the pole, the recoil turning him full face to the attorney. Woodward stopped, his hands trembling.

"You slimy son of a bitch, you drunk enough to think you can go running into people on the street and just stumble away? I ought to beat your ass and teach you a lesson." The attorney's hand closed into a menacing fist. Woodward reached under his coat just as the attorney realized what a ridiculous scene he was creating. Woodward's hand returned cradling the Russian Tokarev. Recognition and fear flashed across the attorney's face as Woodward pulled the trigger. Two of the three shots Woodward fired tore through the expensive suit and into what the eulogy called one of
Chicago
's finest rising young legal talents. The third bullet splattered itself harmlessly against -a storefront. The attorney died two hours after his body hit the concrete amid screams from the shocked onlookers.

The agent across the street reacted first. "Woodward!" he yelled as be drew his gun. "Drop it! Drop it!"

Woodward turned and blindly fired twice in the general direction of the voice. The bullets shattered a Japanese restaurant's plate-glass window, but harmed no one. The agent fired once as he ducked behind a parked car. The agent's bullet passed through two car windows, a store window and a mannequin before burying itself in a box of winter furs waiting to be shipped to storage. By the time the agent peered around the edge of his cover Woodward had run up a side street angling away from
Clark
.

"W Four to all units! Woodward's flipped! He's shot a civilian! Neutralize him, get him! Alive if you can, but don't let him hurt anyone else!" The commanding agent's car tore down
Clark Street
and squealed around the corner after Woodward. One of the two men who had been following Woodward on foot was already chasing down that street. His companion had stayed with the wounded attorney. The agent who had fired first followed his colleague closely.

Woodward cut down an alley. He had been right! They were after him! All of them. His breaths came harder, his side hurt from running. He fled, directionless, frightened, but somehow happy, justified. He was right!

A car screeched to a halt ahead of him, blocking the mouth of the alley. The driver huddled down on the seat seeking cover behind his door. The front-seat passenger leaped from the vehicle, crouched low and aimed over the car's hood. A man in the backseat jumped out and dodged behind some garbage cans.

"Drop it, Woodward! FBII"'

Woodward fired twice, both bullets harmlessly hitting the car. He snapped a fresh clip into his weapon while the agents watched, uncertain of what to do. The FBI does not fire warning shots. The agents knew Woodward was important to their mission, and they were leery of jeopardizing their mission by shooting him. Woodward rapidly snapped back the gun's slide to load the weapon. The agents fired as he raised his arm.

The coroner's report noted that any of four of the seven bullets that hit Woodward might have been the one that killed him. The incident report noted that, in all, the three agents expended eleven rounds.

The commanding agent felt a little ill as he walked toward the crumpled form oozing blood on the pavement. He stopped ten feet away. He was close enough to identify the body. He turned and walked back to his car. In the background he heard sirens closing in on the alley. A few of
Chicago
's braver and more curious citizens were already peeking out of windows, peering around the corners of buildings, He picked up the microphone.

"W Four to Central. Woodward is dead. No agents hurt. One civilian critical. We'll hold everything until the
Chicago
police come, then we'll handle it with them. I assume no publicity except through you."

"Central to W Four. Proceed."

"W Four clear."

The commanding agent tossed the microphone back into the car. It bounced off the front seat and fell to the floor. He looked up. the alley. A leather-clad, heavily zippered, equipment-encumbered form walked toward him. The cornmanding agent slowly moved to meet the cop.

All on my day off, he thought.

….

Nurich slowly hung up the pay phone in the
Minot
,
North Dakota
, caf6. He then finished his coffee, paid his check and drove northwest on U.S. 52. Eventually interstate U.S. 52 meets U.S. 2, and old two-lane highway running parallel to the Canadian, border across the northern sections of
North Dakota
and
Montana
. Nurich had planned to take U.S. 2 to his destination. He revised that plan after Woodward's message had corroborated his vague but persistent fears.

The message was simple. Before he left on his mission, Nurich had spent two days memorizing the code sequences and his contact information. Striker meant danger. His mission had been partially blown. The Americans at least knew of his existence. They might not know where he was, and they probably didn't know his exact mission, but he was blown. Seven was the priority number, the value of his mission to the KGB. Seven wasn't the highest priority by any means, but it was high enough to warrant considerable risk. Five was the ordered procedure. His control wanted him to continue the mission, but to do so as quickly as possible within the limits of safety. Should he run into trouble, he was to abort the mission, destroying as much incriminating material as possible, and then do his best to avoid capture. Procedure five carried the tacit suggestion that protective suicide was an acceptable choice.

Nurich briefly considered phoning his. GRU contact, then discarded the notion. If he was blown, there was no sense dragging down other operations. He would save the link to safety until he had no other alternatives. He also considered and discarded the idea of abandoning the mission. He had been in difficult situations before. Even though this was a KGB mission, it was a mission for
Russia
. He couldn't let
Russia
down because of the bungling of a few idiot bureaucrats. He was sure his jeopardy came from KGB ineptness, and he comforted himself with the thought of the trouble he would create for his KGB superiors when, not if, he returned to
Moscow
.

But first is the mission, he thought. And to do that, I must be sure the Americans are not on top of me.

"We have a problem." The old man's voice crackled with static as it came over the radio. The words were intelligible, but Kevin worried the transmission would deteriorate.

"It could be the radar, sir," interrupted the eager-to-please patrolman, hoping he interpreted the sullen frown on Kevin's face correctly. "Sometimes it can do funny things to radios. Especially if the transmission covers a long distance and the radio isn't so good to begin with."

"Hold for a minute, sir," Kevin said into the mike. He looked at the patrolman. They were now the tail radar car, keeping the radar on as a precaution in case the other units failed or their operators goofed. The radar showed Rose driving just over five miles ahead of them. Kevin thought for a second, then decided to sacrifice the backup system for what might be an important message. He nodded to the patrolman, who in turn shut off the-set. Kevin spoke into the mike again. "Go ahead."

The transmission improved considerably. "Woodward blew up in
Chicago
. He killed one civilian before our boys killed him. Some minor property damage, but that's really nothing."