I Minus 72 (15 page)

Sam nodded and Grant continued, “I’ll be ten
minutes behind you. Remember, watch me as I approach. If anyone
else stops at the same place, let me know ASAP. Let’s go over some
basic surveillance techniques and then I’ll give you some tips to
recognize if you’re being tailed.”

They spent about half an hour covering these
topics and Grant also told her where the meet was, describing the
area in a lot of detail. He’d decided she should sit in the park
just across from the café. When he was finished, Grant stood and
said, “Okay, it’s time. Off you go. Be careful . . . please. And
remember, if you see anything . . . anything at all that would
indicate someone is watching either me or you, let me know
immediately.”

“Got it.” Sam said, but she sounded a lot
more confident than she felt. She gave Grant a quick hug and then
left the room, taking the elevator to the lobby floor.

Vladimir watched as Sam
crossed the lobby and left through the front door. So, they
were
here. He decided
not to pursue her, betting that Thurmond would follow soon. He knew
Thurmond was the person who had to make the meet and that the girl
may be just out for a walk or going shopping like American women
did. Maybe when he got to America, he’d meet a beautiful American
woman and marry her. He would buy a house and be a perfect citizen.
The American dream.

Garcia about this time was getting really
tired of sitting, also saw Sam leave the hotel. He decided that
Thurmond would never leave her alone very long, so he decided to
tag along with her. Sam, having no experience in this area, never
even glanced at him as she hurried along the busy sidewalk looking
for a taxi. She finally saw one, hailed it down, got in and gave
the driver an address. Garcia wasn’t far behind and was able to
quickly flag down another taxi. He handed the driver a US twenty
dollar bill and told him to discreetly follow Sam’s taxi. The
driver didn’t reply, just shrugged and took off.

Twenty minutes later, Sam arrived at her
destination, paid the driver and looked around. The café was on the
corner, just as Grant had described it and, as he said, there was a
park on the opposite corner across the street. Perfect. She’d just
sit in the park on one of the wooden benches pretending to enjoy
the sunny day. From there she could see anyone who approached the
café. As she sat there, she noticed it was cold enough to see her
breath, but wrapped up in her winter coat and with the sun shining
directly on her she was warm enough to sit for hours. It certainly
was going to be boring, though, if it lasted that long. As she
looked around she could see that it really was a beautiful park
with old Sycamore and Oak trees, all with bare limbs this time of
year. Sometimes she liked seeing the trees in winter better than
any other time of year. In winter she could see the entire
structure of the tree; the trunk and all the limbs going every
which way. It always reminded her of a black and white print her
mother had in the house when she was growing up.

Garcia stopped his taxi
almost a block short of where Sam exited hers and was able to
observe her as she first looked around and then walk across to the
park. He paid no attention to the beauty of the park nor to the
warming sunshine, instead he focused completely on Sam’s every
move. Now she was sitting there like she was just someone out on a
cold but sunny winter’s day enjoying the morning. Surely, Thurmond
wouldn’t have sent
her
to make the meet, Garcia thought. No, he was sure that
Thurmond would be close by or would show up soon. He paid the
driver, got out of the taxi and sat down on the bench at a bus stop
where he could watch her.

Grant left exactly ten minutes after Sam.
Although he tried to sneak out the side door of the hotel without
drawing attention to himself, Vladimir had seen him leaving the
elevator and followed close behind. While Grant flagged down a
taxi, Vladimir walked half a block down the street, got into his
car and followed Grant’s taxi when it left the hotel. Vladimir felt
lucky that his car had suffered only minor damage when he hit
Thurmond and the woman. Although dented and had a broken headlight,
it still drove fine.

Grant had his taxi driver approach the
intersection by a side street and got out a block away from the
café. He walked up the street and entered the café courtyard by the
gate on that side, unseen by Garcia. He took an outside corner
table and placed an open matchbook standing up in the shape of a
triangle in front of him. He had no idea if this would work, but it
was all he had. He’d placed the mark in the right spot, he had the
matchbook signal on the table and now there was nothing left to do
but wait. This was the last of the three days the contact had to
show up. He sure hoped it would work. Given the “accident”
yesterday, he was particularly alert to anything that seemed out of
the ordinary. He could also see Sam across the street watching him.
From his position, he couldn’t see the bus stop where Garcia was
seated.

Vladimir saw Thurmond leave the taxi and go
into the café, so he drove past, made a U-turn a little further up
the street and parked facing the cafe less than half a block away.
From here, he could watch all foot traffic around the café and no
one would pay any attention to a man sitting in a car. He observed
Thurmond as he took a seat at a table next to the sidewalk and
noticed the matchbook. Could that be the signal? Vladimir, looking
around, saw the girl in the park. So this is where she was going.
She must be watching Thurmond. Covering him? Looking for
Vladimir?

Since he was concentrating on Sam, Garcia
wasn’t in a position to see the café, so he didn’t see Thurmond
arrive. Nor did he notice Vladimir. Neither did Sam.

The meeting time used to be set for 9:00
a.m., with the window being fifteen minutes before and after the
hour. Thurmond, hoping the contact would remember the time and
place, had arrived at around 8:30 a.m., so he had a forty-five
minute swing. When the waiter came around, he ordered coffee and a
pastry. He’d been sitting for nearly thirty minutes sipping his
coffee when an older guy at the next table leaned over and asked
for a light. Thurmond handed him the matchbook, watched as he lit
his cigarette and noticed the pack in front of him: Marlborough’s,
the right cigarette brand. The man’s next comment was in English:
“A good day for a walk, but my knee is acting up. How are your
knees?”

Grant’s response was, “Normally fine, but a
little sore today.”

“Must be a weather front,” the man said with
a smile.

“Most likely,” Grant responded, smiling
back. That was it. The right sequence! Grant stood up and asked the
gentleman if he would care to join him at his table. The man
replied that he was very kind and that he’d like very much to join
him and then took a chair next to Grant. Grant ordered two more
coffees. The man introduced himself as Ivan Granowli, an ex-Russian
who had lived in Poland for many years.

They chatted easily, with Grant laughing
often. This guy told really funny stories, mostly about his youth
in the 30’s, but some about the war. Even talking about heavy
things like war, Ivan was able to inject humor. Anybody seeing them
would think they were just friends having a laugh.

After about fifteen minutes, the area around
them cleared out and the tone became serious. “Koslowski’s dead,”
Granowli said after looking around to make sure no one could
overhear. “So are Kunichki and Poslusny. I’m the only one in the
network left in Warsaw.”

“Yes, I know,” Grant’s serious tone matched
Granowli’s. Both men were now leaning forward with elbows on the
table. “I saw Koslowski a few days before he died and I was with
Kunichki when she was hit by a car. I had intended to talk to
Poslusny today. You might say it’s a coincidence that all three
died when I got close to them. But, in my line of work, I don’t
believe in coincidences. I think someone is using me to get to
them. The only problem with that is whoever it is tried to kill me
also. I’m still trying to work that out. But I do know that you
need to be extremely careful over the next few days. You have to be
a target too.”

“I’m an old man. I can’t believe anyone
would want me dead. Any information I may have possessed is out of
date and, anyway, I’ve forgotten most of it. But, as you say, I
have never believed in coincidences either, which brings me to you.
What do you need of me?” Granowli’s accent was heavy, but Grant
understood every word.

Still leaning forward, Grant turned his head
to the side to look directly at Granowli. “I’m trying to fill out
the list of people that helped the US by passing on valuable
intelligence information over the past thirty years. Koslowski gave
me your name and said you know some that he didn’t. I’d like you to
tell me their names and how to contact them.”

“I can certainly give you all the names I
have, but several new people have replaced some of us who have
retired. I don’t know all of their names or even if they continued
providing information. Why do you need them?” Granowli said.

Grant explained, “Anything you can provide
will be helpful. As to why I need the names, someone is
systematically killing people in the old network that I put
together many years ago. I’m trying to find him and it’s possible
he may be among the names you provide or additional names they
might provide. Unfortunately, one of the people we believe to be on
his hit list is a very important person in America, a person we
can’t afford to lose. And we don’t have much time—less than a month
to find the killer and take him out.”

They continued to talk for the next thirty
minutes during which Granowli gave all the information he had
regarding the small network he had set up. When he was active, he
had contacted a couple of the people through newspaper personals
ads. Grant memorized the ad copy, deciding to place the first ad
tomorrow. He recognized most of the names Granowli gave him from
the list Koslowski had given him, but there were three new ones. Of
the three, Granowli said he was sure one was a codename and all he
knew was where he said he used to work. He said this man was
extremely cautious and while he gave Granowli important information
about Soviet weapon movements, he refused to tell him anything
about himself. Granowli at first thought that was unusual, but
since the information the man relayed to him was very valuable,
eventually he accepted it.

Granowli also explained to Thurmond about
the drop box used with this mysterious person. It was a trash can
sitting in the middle of the block of a fairly busy thoroughfare
and was immediately adjacent to an alleyway that ran clear through
to the parallel street a block away. The way they had worked it, at
the informant’s insistence, was that whenever he had something to
pass on, the informant would place the ad in the personals column.
Granowli would get to the spot early, the informant would walk by
and drop a bag into the trash can and Granowli, after waiting a few
minutes to see that they weren’t being watched, retrieved it before
anyone else could get to it. It was strictly a one-way
communication. At their first and only face to face meeting, during
which the informant was clearly wearing a disguise, Granowli had
also worked out a unique newspaper ad in case he needed to contact
the informant. He had tried it a couple of times, but the man never
responded.

During the time the two
men were talking, Sam sat on her park bench and looked around,
trying to spot someone who was paying too much attention to them.
Even though she had received some instruction from Grant, she
wasn’t a pro and she completely missed both Garcia and Vladimir.
She knew she didn’t know exactly what to look for so, as Grant had
instructed, she just looked for anything out of the ordinary.
Garcia and Vladimir, of course,
were
pros in the surveillance
business, so they did nothing out of the ordinary, nothing for Sam
to notice.

Vladimir, on the other hand, was unnoticed
by everyone and watched the entire café meeting with great
interest. His job now was to follow the old man home and kill him.
After all, he was the only one in the old network left alive who
knew about his spying and who had seen his face. He was sure
Granowli had given his code name to Thurmond, but that didn’t
matter. The only way he and Granowli had communicated was through
the drop box. Granowli knew only his code name and where he had
worked. They had met only once at the beginning, but with his
disguise he knew Granowli couldn’t accurately describe him and
would never be able to recognize him. Anyway, neither Thurmond nor
Granowli had any way of knowing he was the one Thurmond was looking
for. Also, no one knew where he lived, so even if Thurmond did have
his code name and decided he was the person who was killing all the
others, there was no way to trace it to him or his new flat in the
Moscow suburbs. He had left his job in the Polish ministry some
time before and no one there knew where he went. Nor did anyone,
including his ex-bosses in Russia, know his new identity.

Remaining slumped down in the driver’s seat
of his car, he smiled to himself. This was going to work. He would
assassinate everyone who knew of his existence and the coup de gras
would be when the United States lost their newly elected president
just after being sworn in. In the confusion following all the
carnage, he would easily be able to blend in. Who knew, in time
maybe he could even become a citizen? Also, even though he’d be the
only person who knew, he’d be famous. As best he could figure, the
people on the podium would include the current President-elect, his
Vice-President-elect, all the military leadership, the Supreme
Court, plus the outgoing president and vice-president, and all
their families. If all went according to plan, they would all die
at the same time. There would be mass confusion for days or maybe
even weeks. He didn’t know what America’s plans were for such a
catastrophe, but he knew it had never happened before.