Parallax View (4 page)

She hoped she
hadn’t killed the man but couldn’t afford to take the time to find out. By now
the KGB agents monitoring the front of the club would have discovered the man
they had followed was empty-handed, and it wouldn’t take long before they
realized they had been victimized by the oldest trick in the book, the bait-and-switch.
Within minutes, maybe less, this place would be blanketed, locked down, and if
Tracie was still here when that happened she would never get out alive.

The sound of
pounding footsteps told her the soldier’s gunshot had been heard. She dropped to
one knee and turned, raising the man’s gun. An elderly man and woman—they each
had to be seventy years old if they were a day—burst out of the hallway and
into the storage area. They were undoubtedly the pair she had seen working in
the kitchen, although they had been too far away to identify for sure. “One
more step and you die,” she said in German, pointing the gun in their
direction, hoping her voice hadn’t carried into the bar.

The pair skidded
to a stop, the old woman banging into the old man in front, sending him
careening helplessly toward Tracie. He fell to the floor and then scrabbled
backward, almost knocking the old woman over in the process. It looked like a
Three Stooges routine, and under other circumstances might have been funny.

Right now, though,
the only thing on Tracie’s mind was escape. She had already been inside the
building far too long. She rose to her feet and said, “Go back to the kitchen
and stay there for at least ten minutes. If you move before ten minutes has
passed, I’ll come back and kill you both. Do you understand?”

The pair nodded at
the same time, then turned and hurried back down the narrow hallway. They moved
quickly, but did not scream or yell into the front of the club for help, as
Tracie had been afraid they might. She waited until they had reentered the
kitchen, then sprinted for the door.

She burst into the
night, the oppressive heat of the club vanishing in an instant. The service
entrance opened into a narrow, trash-littered alley. A row of frost-covered
garbage cans had been lined up next to the doorway and the rank stench of
spoiled food hung in the air around them like smog over L.A. The alley was
deserted.

She slowed to a
fast walk along the crumbling pavement, moving south, knowing their East German
collaborator had been instructed to turn north after leaving the club—not that
he would have gotten far before being intercepted by the KGB. The alley opened
onto a quiet street one block south of the bar. A pedestrian glanced at her
suspiciously but kept walking. If he noticed the blood staining her leather
pants he kept it to himself.
Your lucky night, pal,
Tracie thought
grimly.

She turned a
corner and walked a hundred yards. Parked at the curb was a battered
Volkswagen, at least two decades old. Tracie yanked the door open and eased
into the driver’s seat. She sank into the worn fabric and rested her head
against the steering wheel, breathing deeply in and out, adrenaline still coursing
through her body. Then she started the car. She flicked the headlights on and drove
slowly away.

7

Berlin, GDR

May 29, 1987, 11:25 p.m.

After his contact had departed,
Aleksander savored the relief he now felt. He took a deep pull on his vodka and
smiled. It wasn’t up to Russian standards, but it was better than he had expected
to find in Germany.

He wondered how
long he should wait before departing. His contact had said “a few minutes,” and
Aleksander wanted nothing more than to leave this club behind and get on with
his life.

He tried not to
think about the envelope, but couldn’t help it. General Secretary Gorbachev had
indicated it would eventually be delivered to the
Americans
, of all
people, which was strange, but Aleksander didn’t claim to know anything about
international diplomacy. Didn’t want to, either. If Comrade Gorbachev wanted
the Americans to have the envelope, and was willing to go to such great lengths
to conceal its contents from the KGB, who was Aleksander to question the
decision?

He shrugged. It
was no longer his problem to deal with. The damned envelope was out of his
possession. He had done what was asked of him, had performed admirably, he
hoped, in service to his country and the Communist Party, and could finally
relax. He looked at his watch and decided enough time had passed for his
contact to have disappeared into the night.

Aleksander
finished his vodka—was that his third or fourth glass? Fifth?—and slammed it
down on the tiny table before struggling to his feet, swaying unsteadily. The
German vodka may have been a poor substitute for the real thing, but it still
packed a satisfying wallop. He placed some of that phony-looking GDR money
under his glass and staggered through the crowd, unnoticed and unimpeded, just
another Friday night drinker on his way home to face the wrath of his frau.

Aleksander pushed through
the door into the cool German night. The stars glittered overhead and a light
breeze caressed his flushed face. He felt light-headed, more than he should
after just a few glasses of vodka, and decided it was due to lack of sleep and
the tremendous strain he had been operating under. But that didn’t matter now.
He had done his duty and was in the clear.

He turned right
and staggered unsteadily along the dimly lit sidewalk, occasionally
sidestepping an onrushing pedestrian or couple walking arm-in-arm. Tomorrow he
would take a cab to the airport and fly home to Moscow and the reassuring
monotony of his bureaucratic life. Tonight, though, he walked unhurriedly,
enjoying the fantasy he had constructed in his alcohol-addled mind. He was a
superspy, a man counted on by all of Mother Russia, indeed, all of the USSR, to
keep the empire safe. He felled all enemies of the state and was treated like
royalty by the Supreme Soviet. He was James Bond, only on the proper side of
the equation.

It was an
enjoyable fantasy, and Aleksander was lost in it when two men overtook him from
behind. They were on him before he knew what was happening, and when they
reached him, each one grabbed an elbow in a vice-like grip and propelled him
forward. “Do not say a word,” the man on his right side whispered fiercely into
his ear in Russian, and Aleksander did not say a word.

He risked a quick
glance to his right and then his left. The two men were dressed
identically—black overcoats, black slacks, black shoes, even black Homburgs covering
their heads. They escorted him directly past the entrance to his hotel, walking
him roughly half a kilometer along the main road, still busy with pedestrians
at this relatively early hour. None of them paid any attention to him or to the
men dressed in black. Aleksander’s heart was racing but he tried not to panic.
One call to Secretary Gorbachev’s office and this misunderstanding would be
cleared up.

The strange
threesome continued, moving so far down the sidewalk that they left the
flickering, pre-World War Two-era streetlights behind. They turned a corner
into a secluded alleyway, walking Aleksander to an East German-made Trabant
automobile parked in the shadows. The car was ancient, tiny. They shoved him
wordlessly into the back seat. One of the men leaned over and lifted a
foul-smelling cloth from a well-sealed plastic bag in his pocket and pressed it
to Aleksander’s face. Aleksander willed himself not to panic and tried not to
breathe.

Eventually he did
both, in that order, and everything went black.

8

May 30, 1987

Time Unknown

Location unknown

Aleksander regained consciousness
slowly. He was sitting on a hard chair, probably in a basement or storage room
of some sort. It was cold and dark and damp and smelled of rotting vegetables
and something vaguely sinister. Copper? Aleksander wasn’t sure.

He could hear
voices muttering somewhere nearby. Two people, it seemed. He was afraid to open
his eyes to check. His hands and arms ached. He tried moving them but they were
secured tight to the chair, arms pulled behind his back, wrists shackled
together.

Tried his feet
next. Same result. Each ankle had been affixed to a chair leg with something
heavy and solid, probably a length of chain.

Aleksander felt
queasy and weak. He knew he had been drugged into unconsciousness inside the
tiny East German automobile and wondered how long he had been out. Was he even
still in the German Democratic Republic? Was he back in Russia? Somewhere else?
He concentrated on the voices, trying to pick up enough of the conversation to
determine what language they were speaking and how many people were inside the
room with him.

No luck. The
voices were too quiet.

He risked opening
his eyes, just a sliver, and moved his head very slowly to look around. In the
dirty yellow light of a single bulb he could see a pair of shadowy figures
huddled together in a corner of the room. The image blurred and doubled, then
cleared. The lingering effects of whatever drugs he had been given, Aleksander
guessed.

The men were
sitting around a rickety table drinking something hot out of mugs—Aleksander
could see the steam rising into the air even from here—and his stomach clenched
and rumbled.

He wondered how
long it had been since he had eaten. He wondered whether he would ever eat
again. The terror of his predicament struck him like a wrecking ball and
Aleksander puked all over the floor, the vomit burning his gullet on the way
out.
Cheap German vodka.
Aleksander sobbed, then quickly stopped
himself. His eyes widened in mounting panic as the men pushed their chairs back
and began walking across the room.

The men stopped
directly in front of him. One was tall and thin, skeletal. The other was
completely bald. Aleksander looked up in fear, feeling like he might be sick
again. He hoped when the vomit erupted from him it wouldn’t splatter all over
his captors.

“Welcome back to
the land of the living, Comrade,” the bald man said in Russian, which meant
nothing, since his East German contact had spoken Russian, too. “Time is of the
essence, so let us skip the preliminaries and get right down to business, shall
we?”

Aleksander’s
terror was nearly overwhelming. His stomach rolled and yawed. He was afraid to
speak for fear of vomiting again.

But as terrifying
as this situation was, he knew he possessed the ultimate trump card—provided he
had been kidnapped by Russians. If these two weren’t citizens of the USSR, he
didn’t know what he was going to do.

“Where is it?” the
bald man said. So far skeleton-man had not spoken.

Aleksander had no
choice but to answer now. He hoped he wouldn’t puke on the men, but they were
standing perilously close. He swallowed hard. “Where is what?” he croaked. He
hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until just now.

“Do not play games
with us. Doing so will only cause you pain,” the bald man said, and
skeleton-man drew back his foot and kicked Aleksander in the shin, hard, with
his steel-toed boot. The pain exploded, racing up and down Aleksander’s leg
like an electrical current.

He screamed in
agony and fell forward, desperate to cover up, to protect his injured shin, but
could barely move with his wrists shackled to the chair behind his back. He
hadn’t heard anything crack but couldn’t believe the bone hadn’t shattered.

“Where is it?”
the
bald man repeated, his voice slashing like a knife.

“I don’t know,”
Aleksander gasped. “I passed it along just as I was instructed to do. Where he
went with it after he left the club I have no idea.”

“You know him,”
the man said. It was not a question. “You have done business with him in the
past.”

“No, never. I
swear. I’ve never seen him before.”

“You were laughing
and joking like old friends, Comrade Petrovka. Do not insult our intelligence.”

“I was just doing
what I was told to do by my contact, to blend in, that’s all. I’ve haven’t been
to East Germany since I was a teen, I swear. You can check my travel records if
you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, we will,
don’t worry about that. Next question: What was the item you delivered?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe
you, traitor.”

“Traitor?”
Aleksander looked up at his tormentors, sweat dripping into his eyes. His shin
throbbed with every beat of his heart. He knew now was the time to play his
trump card. It might be his only chance. “No,” he said, “I am not a traitor. I
was doing exactly as ordered by General Secretary Gorbachev. I am here on
official state business.”

“Official state
business?” the man said, his voice mocking and cruel. He turned to his partner.
“Did you hear that, Vasily? He is here on official state business, representing
Secretary Gorbachev himself.”

The man turned his
attention back to Aleksander. “Well, I have news for you, Comrade Aleksander
Petrovka of Ivanteyevka. Mikhail Gorbachev is just as much a traitor to his
homeland as you are. We care nothing for Mikhail Gorbachev’s orders. If Gorbachev’s
reckless stupidity is not checked, he will be the downfall of the Soviet
Empire, and Vasily and I are just two of many who refuse to see that happen.

“Betraying your
country under the orders of a fellow traitor is no excuse, Comrade Petrovka. So
I ask you again, for the last time: what was the item you delivered to your
contact?”

Terror flooded
through Aleksander’s body. The terror overwhelmed the pain so his throbbing
shin did not even exist. The terror overwhelmed his queasy stomach so he no
longer felt he was about to puke. The terror was everything.

These men
were
Russians,
but it did not matter. They were Russians, but the word of Mikhail Gorbachev
meant nothing to them. They were accusing him of treason, but
they
were
traitors. The irony struck him like another kick to the shin. Aleksander
realized he was breathing heavily, forcing air in and out through his mouth
like a panting dog. He was hyperventilating but could not stop himself.