Parallax View (23 page)

She lowered the
gun to his ribs and then held it there with her right hand while patting
Andrews down with her left. “One wrong move,” she said, “and I’ll blow your ass
into next week. All I need is an excuse.”

“Understood,”
Andrews said. He seemed mostly unaffected by the threat. Shane thought the
entire bizarre scene might be the strangest thing he had ever seen, and that
was saying something, given the events of the last couple of days.

“Where to?”
Andrews asked.

“Your office,” Tracie
said, and the older man turned and walked through a luxuriously appointed
dining room—Oriental rug covering gleaming hardwood floors, crystal chandelier
hanging over a massive maple dining table, fieldstone fireplace in one corner, fully
stocked bar in the other—and began climbing a set of stairs.

Tracie followed,
gun still in her hand but now pointed at the floor, and Shane brought up the
rear. He could feel sensation of pressure building at the base of his skull and
thought,
not now, dammit, not now.

About a third of
the way up the stairs, Tracie said, “You don’t seem all that surprised to see
us still breathing.”

“That’s because
I’m
not
particularly surprised,” Andrews said. “I helped train you, remember?
I was never convinced the Russians would be able to take you out of the
picture, and even when their team checked in and reported that they had
completed the mission, I didn’t completely buy it.”

Tracie stopped
dead on the stairs, Shane bumping into her from behind. Andrews seemed to feel
the movement stop behind him and then he stopped, too. In a puzzled voice,
Tracie asked, “If you suspected I might have gotten the jump on the Russians,
why was it so easy to get in here? Why weren’t you better prepared? You had to
know if I survived the ambush in New Haven, I would come straight to you—nobody
else knew we were there.”

Andrews glanced at
Tracie with a paternal half-smile that Shane instantly wanted to knock off his
face. “Because it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “Things have progressed to
the point now that they cannot be stopped. The slaughter by the KGB of law
enforcement and military personnel in Maine will prompt an investigation so
thorough I could never survive it. My cover will be blown and I’ll end up in
prison, if not in front of a firing squad. This is the end for me, my dear, one
way or the other.”

Andrews continued
trudging up the stairs and Tracie followed. At the top of the stairs a short
hallway led to a bedroom which had been converted into a home office. In one
corner stood an antique redwood desk, roughly the size of a small aircraft
landing strip. The top was bare, and in the center stood an empty glass, two
ice cubes melting inside. A ring of condensation had formed around the base. A
bank of telephones covered a rack next to the desk, and alongside that, against
one wall, was an array of electronic equipment, none of which looked familiar
to Shane.

There was no sign
of any work in progress in the room; no correspondence on the desk, no
paperwork anywhere. The office felt antiseptic, tidied-up. The low hum of
cooling fans, presumably protecting the electronic equipment, was barely
perceptible in the background.

Andrews stood in
the doorway, bushy white eyebrows raised, hands in his pockets, awaiting
instructions, and Tracie asked Shane to pull Andrews’ chair out from behind his
desk and drag it to the center of the room. When he had done so, she bent down,
ran her hand quickly along the underside of the seat, and, satisfied there was
no weapon hidden there, told her mentor to take a seat.

“For what it’s
worth, which is clearly not much,” Andrews said, settling into the chair and
folding his hands in his lap, “I have no idea specifically what information is
contained in that letter. When you were dispatched to East Germany to act as
courier for an emergency communique from Mikhail Gorbachev, I was as much in
the dark about its contents as you were. As anyone was.”

“Bullshit,” Tracie
said simply. “This is the biggest operation the KGB has ever attempted. You’ve
been working with them for years, therefore you knew about it. It’s that
simple.”

“You give me far
too much credit,” Andrews said. “I’ve been aware the assassination of a
high-ranking American is in the works—that much is true. But I’ve not been
privy to the specifics of the operation.” He gazed at Tracie appraisingly. “But
you have, haven’t you? The fact that we’re even having this conversation means
you’ve opened the letter. What does it say? My KGB contacts have their suspicions,
but no one seems to know for sure.”

“What it says,”
Tracie began, her voice cold and her face hard, “is none of your business.
You’re a traitor and an embarrassment to the agency. An embarrassment to your
country. You’re still alive for one reason and one reason only—I need to find
out how deep inside the government this conspiracy reaches.”

“The letter is a
warning to President Reagan, isn’t it? Gorbachev wants to stop the
assassination attempt,” Andrews continued, ignoring Tracie’s statement.

Her face boiled
red, and Shane could see how close she was to losing control. “How can you sit
there, calmly discussing a presidential assassination?” she asked. “An event
which, if successful, will in all probability launch World War Three? How?”

“So the president
is
the target,” Andrews answered, still seemingly unruffled, a note of wonder
in his voice.

“I understand you
view me as a traitor to my country,” he continued, “but what you don’t realize
is that my work as a buffer has saved tens of thousands of lives, hundreds of
thousands probably, and prevented outright war between the United States and
the USSR many times. My role has been to prevent the destruction of the country
I have spent my life serving, and to my way of thinking, I’ve done exactly
that.”

“Your work as a
buffer?” Tracie asked, nonplussed. “You mean your unsanctioned, illegal, treasonous
work? Is that the work you’re referring to?”

Andrews shrugged.
“Most of the work
you
do is unsanctioned and technically illegal, too.”

“There’s no
comparison. I’m serving my country. I’m certainly no traitor.”

Andrews said
nothing and she continued. “You claim to have prevented war between the two
countries, but you’re assuming the people in the highest positions of
responsibility would have responded to situations in a certain way had you not
acted, when you have no justification for those assumptions. And if you’ve
contributed to the beginning of a Third World War
now
, what the hell has
been the point?”

Andrews started to
answer and Tracie held up a hand. “This is not a debate,” she said. “You don’t
get equal time. This discussion is over. I told you once, you’re still
breathing only because I need information. And you’re going to give me that
information. Right now.”

Andrews smiled
sadly and said nothing.

Tracie shrugged
her backpack off her shoulder and it dropped heavily to the floor. She knelt
and unzipped it, all the while holding her weapon on Andrews, who sat quietly,
making no move to interfere.

Shane ran a hand
over his face and sighed shakily. The pressure at the base of his skull had
increased steadily until it was now a dull throb, radiating waves of pain
outward into his neck and shoulders as well as through his head. He had been
here before. The pain would get much worse before it got better. He cursed the
timing, wished he had the pain medication back home in his medicine cabinet.

Tracie paused, gun
hand leveled against Andrews, her other hand buried in the backpack. She could
sense that Shane was in pain and watched him closely, her eyes flicking back
and forth between Andrews and Shane. “Are you all right?” she finally ventured.

Shane nodded,
closing his eyes against the discomfort. “More or less. I could use a glass of
water, though.”

“You look like you
need to lie down. You’re white as a ghost.”

“I’ll be okay.” He
wondered if his words sounded as unconvincing to Tracie as they did to him.
Judging by the look on her face, they probably did.

“Go get yourself
some water,” she said quietly. “I can handle this from here.”

“No.” Shane shook
his head. It felt like someone had let loose a baseball inside his skull. Soon
it would feel like a bowling ball. “I’m okay. I’ll stay.”

She returned
reluctantly to the search of her backpack, her hand emerging a few seconds
later with a red-handled pair of pliers and a set of handcuffs, both of which
she tossed onto Andrews’ desk. They landed with a clunk on the polished surface
and spun to a stop. “Careful with the desk,” Andrews said mildly. “It’s an
antique.”

She smiled at him
acidly. “So are you, and wait ’til you see what I’m going to do to you.”

Andrews grimaced,
looking at the pliers. “A bit barbaric, wouldn’t you say?”

“You didn’t leave
me a lot of time to prepare for this. I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive.
Besides,” she said, making a show of looking at her watch, “the hours are
slipping away. The time for subtlety is long past, not that I particularly care
what happens to you, anyway.” Her lie was blatantly obvious to Shane, he could
see through it even with the black waves pounding through his head. It had to
have been even clearer to Andrews after more than half a decade spent working
with Tracie.

She wrapped her
hand around the back of the chair and yanked it across the Persian rug with
Andrews still sitting in it, bringing it closer to the desk. He nearly tumbled
onto the floor but regained his balance and for the first time looked angry. Or
maybe what Shane could see on his face was the beginning of real fear. Tracie
held his left hand in her right and thumped it down on the surface of the desk,
snapping the pliers with her left for emphasis.

“Why don’t you try
asking me what you want to know before beginning to pull out my fingernails?”
Andrews said.

“I already told
you what I want to know, and you insisted on playing games with me,” Tracie
answered. “I don’t have time for games. And, by the way, when I’m done with
your fingernails I’ll be taking your teeth. I don’t want to hurt you, Winston,
but time is running out, and the
only
thing that matters is stopping
this madness. So I’ll do what I have to do, and by the time I’m done with you,
you’ll be begging to tell me everything.” Her face was grim but determined, the
sight chilling Shane, who flashed back to the faces of the two Russians after
her interrogation twelve hours ago.

“You want to know
who else is involved with the Soviets, is that correct?”

“See? I told my
new friend,” she nodded at Shane, “that you were relatively sharp for a
dinosaur. Start talking and maybe you can save a few of those choppers, so when
they serve dinner at Leavenworth while you’re serving your life sentence, you
won’t have to eat through a straw.”

“There aren’t many
KGB collaborators in positions of power above mine,” Andrews said softly, “but
there are a few. Listen to me. No one’s going to believe you when you claim
there’s a Russian hit man out to kill President Reagan. A better strategy for
you to follow right now would be to prepare for the new reality. Things are
going to change in the world, and quickly. Position yourself to benefit from
the upcoming war. I can help you with that.”

“You make me
sick,” Tracie said, her voice dripping with venom. “Stop dragging your feet and
just give me the fucking names. Last chance.”

“Okay, you win,”
Andrews said. He bent his head in defeat, running his hand over his face like
he was exhausted. Finally he dropped his hand to his lap and he looked up at
Tracie, mouth closed. Shane could see the muscles in his jaw tense as he ground
his teeth together. He looked almost expectant, like he was waiting for her to
answer a question, which didn’t make sense because
Tracie
was the one
who had been asking questions of
him.

“Well,” she said,
“who are you working with? Goddammit, Winston, I need to know…” Her words began
to fade as she realized something was wrong. Andrews’ eyes bulged out and his face
had reddened. His body stiffened in the chair and he began to struggle to
breathe, almost panting, unable to fill his lungs.

“Winston, no!”
Tracie cried as he began convulsing. His body pitched sideways off the chair
and he cracked his head on the edge of the heavy wooden desk. He hit the floor
and flopped around like a fish out of water. Tracie knelt next to him and Shane
stood frozen, helpless, unable to comprehend even what was happening.

A thin line of
drool, whitish and foaming, trickled out of the corner of Andrews’s mouth and
sprayed into the air as the convulsions caused his head to snap back and forth.
“What’s wrong with him?” Shane asked anxiously, his headache momentarily
forgotten.

“Cyanide,” Tracie
said. “He must have had a capsule in his pocket. He’s poisoned himself.”

Shane recalled him
keeping his hand in a fist. He had assumed it was a reaction to the stress of
being unmasked as a traitor. Obviously it was something else.

Tracie reached
under his head with one hand and supported him at the neck, trying to force his
mouth open, presumably to clear his breathing passage, unable to do so.
Andrews’ mouth was clamped shut in what must have been a muscular reaction, as
he slipped into unconsciousness.

“Dammit, dammit,
dammit,” Tracie said. “I should have seen this coming.” She felt for a pulse in
his neck, then shook her head. She rose and turned to Shane. “There’s nothing
we can do for him. He’s going to be gone in seconds.”

Shane said
nothing, stunned at the ugliness and brutality of the scene, at the speed at
which the poison had done its job. Finally he shook his head and asked, “What
do we do now?”