Parallax View (22 page)

He stared at her,
his stomach turning over slowly. The blueberry muffin he had eaten earlier felt
like a ticking time bomb and his mouth tasted sour and acidic, like he might be
about to puke. “What are we going to do, then?”

“We continue to
D.C. as planned. I have to interrogate Andrews, force him to give up the names
of everyone involved in this thing. Once I have those names, I’ll know who’s
clean.
Then
we pass along this damned letter.”

Shane punched the
gas and the Granada leapt forward again. They were still hours away from
Washington and time was ticking. Something was still bothering him, though.
“What if Andrews refuses to give up the information you need?”

Tracie stared
straight ahead, steely-eyed and determined. “He’ll talk.”

36

June 1, 1987

4:20 p.m.

Washington, D.C.

Winston Andrews’ two-story
townhouse was located in Georgetown, a couple of blocks northeast of the
Potomac River and Virginia, a couple of blocks west of the D.C. political
sprawl. Built of weathered red brick and covered in climbing ivy, the house
looked lush and full and green in the summer.

Tracie and Shane
had been forced to pass the time in the New York City area waiting for the bank
containing Tracie’s safe deposit box to open for business. At nine o’clock
sharp, they had parked outside a squat concrete bank building, and the moment
the manager had unlocked the front door, Tracie entered.

Shane stayed with
the car while Tracie carried in a cheap canvas backpack they had picked up at a
roadside Five and Dime store. She returned fifteen minutes later with the pack
bulging, then tossed it into the backseat where it landed with a metallic
clank.

“Don’t ask,” she
said, and Shane didn’t ask.

After that they
had taken turns driving, following the interstate, pushing the speed limit as
much as they dared. Getting stopped for speeding would be a problem, but arriving
in Washington too late to prevent the assassination of the President of the
United States would be a bigger problem. They stopped at a highway gas station
just after noon, where they filled up the tank and bought a couple of cold
burgers, then got right back on the road and ate in the car.

Conversation was
sporadic. Shane could see plainly that Tracie had been shaken to the core by
her betrayal at the hands of Winston Andrews. It was eating at her, seemingly
bothering her even more than the idea that the two of them were all that stood
between the Soviet Union and the likely outbreak of World War Three. She chewed
her lip and muttered to herself, shaking her head when she thought he wasn’t
looking. “Can’t talk about it,” was all she would commit to when he tried to
get her to open up.

Shane thought he
understood. The relationship between a field operative—Tracie refused to use
the term “spy,” but to Shane it seemed appropriate—and her handler was of
necessity extremely close, especially when clandestine operations were
involved. She had told him back at the New Haven Arms while they relaxed in bed
that often the handler was the only person alive besides the operative herself
who possessed all the details of an operation, making the handler the only
lifeline if the operative ran into problems in the field.

So Tracie had
placed an inordinate amount of trust—faith, really—in Winston Andrews. And he
had turned out to be a traitor both to Tracie and to his country, accepting
without question what he thought had been her execution in a dive motel by two
KGB agents as the cost of doing business. Shane wondered what was going to
happen when they arrived at Andrews’ townhouse. After having seen the results
of her interaction with the two Russian spies back in New Haven, he guessed
life would suddenly become exceedingly unpleasant for Andrews.

The sun had lost
its day-long battle with an overcast layer, and the slate-grey sky hung dour
and menacing over the mid-Atlantic as they entered the D.C. metro area. Tracie
was behind the wheel for this leg, and after exiting the highway, navigated the
streets with practiced ease. Fifteen minutes later, she pulled to the curb in a
quiet, leafy neighborhood, letting the Ford idle while she sat taking in the
activity, of which there was little.

“Which one is it?”
Shane asked, and she pointed out Andrews’ home.

“He lives alone?”

She nodded
wordlessly.

“He won’t be
expecting you, so you should have the advantage of surprise,” he said.

“That may or may
not be true,” Tracie answered, the first time she had spoken more than a couple
of words at a time in several hours. “It all depends upon the communication
schedule he had set up with the Russians. If he expected them to check in
between New Haven and here, say at the halfway point or something, he’ll
obviously be aware by now that something’s gone wrong.”

“How likely is
that?”

She shrugged. “No
way of knowing. He wouldn’t have had that kind of arrangement with me, but then
again, he and I worked together for a long time.” Her voice was hard-edged and
bitter. “But with these guys, he may have wanted a more hands-on relationship.”

She shrugged
again. “Doesn’t really matter. Nothing we can do about it either way.”

They sat for
another moment. “What’s the plan?” Shane asked.

“The plan?
Reintroduce myself to my old friend and have a little heart to heart.”

37

June 1, 1987

4:50 p.m.

Washington, D.C.

Tracie knew she needed to move now,
but couldn’t shake her depression. She had been brooding for hours in the car,
the weight of Andrews’ betrayal throbbing in her gut like a physical ailment.
She liked to think of herself as a keen judge of character—staying alive often
meant sniffing out the difference between sincerity and bullshit—and she had
never viewed Andrews as anything but a patriot.

It was like losing
a parent. Hell, in some ways it was
worse
than losing a parent, because
Winston Andrews’ deception had been so willful, so heartless so…
complete
.
Death happened, it came for everyone eventually, and although the death of a
loved one could bring pain, the actions of Winston Andrews had brought that and
much more: the hurt of personal betrayal, and anger, and a confusion Tracie
simply could not work past.

She had signed on
at CIA not out of any desire to put her life on the line. Not because she had
an addiction to danger. Certainly not because she wanted to fly around the
world nonstop for years on end, working in the biggest hellholes, putting out
the biggest fires, always knowing that if things went sideways there would be
no one to come to the rescue, always knowing if she were captured or killed she
would be cast aside by her government, sacrificed on the altar of political
expedience.

No, she had signed
on at CIA out of an abiding love for her country, a knowledge that despite our
weaknesses and faults as Americans—we had them, of course we did, we would not
be human if it were otherwise—we possessed the best system of government in the
world, enjoyed freedoms unprecedented in human history.

She had wanted to
give something back, and fighting in the most significant philosophical conflict
of the twentieth century—Democracy versus Communism, freedom versus
repression—had seemed the best way to do that. She thought of herself as an
“All-American girl” in the truest sense of the word.

She had been a
fool, she now realized.

She had looked up
to Winston Andrews as a mentor and a friend, had considered him a fighter for
the cause of freedom, just as she was. And all the time she was traipsing
around the world, crawling through mud puddles, freezing her toes and fingers
inside substandard equipment, getting shot at and knifed, coaxing information
out of unwilling subjects, taking lives, working nonstop with never a moment to
enjoy life like a normal twenty-seven-year-old single woman, in all that time,
Winston Andrews had been sitting here in Washington, playing both sides against
the middle, sipping cognac and committing treason, making deals with Communists
and traitors.

And laughing at
her.

That was the worst
part. He had to have been laughing his wrinkled old ass off at her. Little Miss
Idealist, taking orders without question, doing as she was told, all in the
cause of freedom and the advancement of American ideals. What a joke. He had
played her for a fool and she had followed along blindly. Willingly.

Tracie felt her
eyes filling with tears and blinked them back. There was nothing she could do
about her monumental stupidity now, and this wasn’t the time to worry about it,
anyway. Winston Andrews had made a fool of her, but that had been his choice,
not hers. She still believed in her country even if he didn’t, and the clock
was still ticking down to the assassination of President Reagan, and it had
fallen to her to stop it, not out of choice but necessity.

How many others
were involved? That was the question. If Winston Andrews had been co-opted,
anyone could be. It was time to find out what Andrews knew, and Tracie had been
watching the neighborhood long enough. Activity was minimal. No one had come or
gone at Andrews’ townhouse, so he must have been working from home today,
something he often did, and was probably alone.

Tracie felt
certain he wouldn’t have gone to Langley with Gorbachev’s letter out there
unaccounted for.

It was time to
move.

She turned to
Shane in the passenger seat and saw him watching her closely. “Are you all right?”
he asked, his voice gentle.

She thought about
it for a moment before answering, and then said, “Yes, I am.” And she
discovered she meant it. She took a moment to tell him how she intended to gain
access to Andrews’ house and what she needed from him. Then she opened the door
of the Granada and stepped into the muggy late-spring air.

38

June 1, 1987

5:25 p.m.

Washington, D.C.

Shane walked up the front steps and
pushed the buzzer. Whatever Winston Andrews’ faults, and it seemed there were
plenty, being a lazy homeowner was not one of them. The grass around the
flagstone walkway had been trimmed with military precision, and the home’s
wooden shutters appeared freshly painted, the purity of their near-blinding
whiteness providing a stark contrast to the tired-looking weathered grey of the
shutters on the surrounding homes.

Shane rang the
bell and listened closely. Nothing. He waited maybe thirty seconds and pressed
the buzzer again, worried that Andrews might not even be home. Tracie had been
certain he would be. “He won’t go anywhere until he gets his hands on the
letter he thinks is coming,” she had said, but Shane wasn’t so sure. Maybe he
had found out somehow that the Russians had been taken down, or maybe he simply
got cold feet and left town.

He lifted his hand
to buzz the house a third time when through the closed door came a muffled, “Yes?
What is it?” Tracie had said he wouldn’t open the door, not even a crack, and
she had been right. There was a peephole in the middle of the heavy oak door,
eye height, and Shane pictured a suspicious old man peering through it, sizing
him up.

“Thank God you’re
home,” Shane said, following Tracie’s instructions. “I wonder if I could use
your phone. I’ve been bitten by a dog and I need medical attention.”

“Bitten? Where? I
don’t see any blood.”

“It’s on my lower
leg. See?” Shane turned around and pointed toward the porch floor. Tracie had
said the fisheye lens in the door’s peephole would likely not show the floor
clearly enough for Andrews to be sure whether Shane was really injured or not,
and in any event, the point was not to convince him, but rather to keep him
occupied long enough for her to do what she needed to do.

“Please,” Shane
said. “I feel queasy, like I’m gonna be sick. If you won’t let me in, could you
please at least call an ambulance for me? The blood, it’s soaking into my shoe…”
He sank to one knee and put his head down, like an athlete offering up a quick
prayer before a game.

There was a short
pause, then the disembodied voice said, “All right. Stay where you are, I’ll be—”

A second later the
door swung open and Shane rose to his feet. A tall, deeply tanned white-haired
man, trim but not skinny, faced him with a mixture of annoyance and resignation
on his lined face. Tracie stood behind Andrews, backpack slung over one
shoulder, barrel of her gun placed against the side of his skull.

“You appear to
have made a remarkable recovery,” the man said drily. “Please, why don’t you
come in?”

“Yeah. It’s a
miracle,” Shane answered grimly, brushing past the older man and into the
house. He turned and closed the front door, suddenly gripped by a fast-building
anger. This was the man who had wanted Tracie and him dead; this was the man
who had betrayed his country. This was the man responsible for the deep despair
in Tracie’s soul.

The anger came out
of nowhere, rising in him like a physical thing and making him want to strike
out.

“Easy,” Tracie
muttered, and Shane realized he had wrapped both hands tightly into fists,
holding them rigidly at his side.

He blew out a breath
forcefully. “Sorry about that. I don’t know where that came from,” he said,
releasing his hands and shaking the tension out of them.

“I do,” Tracie
answered. “I feel the same way, believe me.”

Shane smiled
weakly and said, “Didn’t take you long to get in here.”

“I told you it
wouldn’t. All I needed was a minute or two’s worth of diversion to pick the
lock on the back door. Nice job with that.”

Andrews had been
watching the exchange, an unreadable look on his face. “I’m unarmed,” he said,
ignoring Shane and speaking to Tracie. “Any chance you can take that cannon out
of my ear?”