Parallax View

PARALLAX VIEW

ALLAN
LEVERONE

C
opyright ©2012 by Allan
Leverone

All rights reserved as permitted
under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be used,
reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
or retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where
permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is unintended and entirely coincidental.

Parallax View
is dedicated
to the selfless Americans who fight for freedom, toiling in obscurity, getting
their hands dirty—and sometimes bloody—doing the jobs the politicians will
never acknowledge, and the citizens will never know about.

Special thanks to Scott Carpenter
for the outstanding cover art.

1

Nikolayev South Shipyard,
Ukraine

May 20, 1987 – late in the Cold
War

2:25 a.m.

Tracie Tanner carefully eased one
drawer closed and opened another in the dented, World War II-era metal filing
cabinet wedged behind the desk of the general manager’s office at Shipyard No.
444.
Where’s that damned file?
She’d been searching for nearly half an
hour already with no luck, unable to decipher the Soviets’ Byzantine filing
system.

Her eyes burned
from the strain of reading reports typed in Cyrillic on substandard Russian-made
typewriters, and she could sense time ticking away—surveillance reports
indicated the guards’ patrol patterns included a walk-through of this very
office every forty-five minutes or so.

The darkened
office smelled sour, its cement block construction retaining the unpleasant
fishy stench of the Black Sea combined with old sweat. She clenched a small
penlight between her teeth to free up both hands for the search, and she worked
methodically, flipping through file after file under the most likely tab
headings.

Tracie, a CIA
clandestine ops specialist, had been assigned to remove the guidance system
software specs for the Soviet aircraft carrier
Buka,
scheduled for
commission later this year, and replace them with bogus specifications.
Construction had been completed on
Buka
years earlier, but bugs in the
ship’s sophisticated software had delayed commissioning ever since.

Four years ago, in
a successful nighttime operation, another CIA clandestine ops specialist had
broken into this very office and replaced the proper specs with useless,
CIA-generated data. Now the goal was to repeat the scenario and delay launch of
the
Buka
for several more months, if possible.

Tracie worked
quickly but thoroughly. Next to the office door the Soviet bureaucrat in charge
had placed a large aquarium filled with exotic fish, and the steady drone of
the water filter motor began to lull her into drowsiness. She blinked hard,
closed the filing cabinet drawer, and opened another. She had worked her way
through nearly two-thirds of the file cabinet and had found nothing.

And then, there it
was. The first folder in the new drawer. It was blue, filled with several dozen
sheets of numbers, diagrams and specifications. Tracie lifted out the folder
and compared some of the sheets inside it to corresponding sheets of paper in
the dummy file she had brought into the office. They appeared identical. The
differences in the specifications were so minute it would take a team of engineers
months to decipher the problem, and that was after they had discovered there
was
a problem.

She smiled in the
darkness and removed the original specs, sliding the forged documents into the
file folder in their place. She rolled the drawer closed, slowly and quietly,
and then stood, glad to be finished. She placed the original software specs
into a small briefcase and snapped it shut.

Padded quietly across
the office.

And dropped her
flashlight. It slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor, rolling to a
stop against the door.

Dammit.

Tracie froze,
waiting to hear a shouted challenge or footsteps pounding down the hallway.

Nothing.

She waited fifteen
seconds. Thirty. Then breathed a silent sigh of relief and picked up the
flashlight.
Be more careful, dummy.

She eased the door
open and stepped into the hallway. And walked straight into a Soviet security
guard’s Makarov semiautomatic pistol.

Tracie stepped
backward instinctively, calculating the odds of reaching her Beretta 9mm inside
the shoulder holster under her jacket. Result: not good.

The guard said,
“Stay right where you are,” in Russian, and Tracie moved back another three
steps, hoping he would follow her into the office. He did.

She stepped back
and he moved forward. Stepped back again and he followed, still holding the gun
on her. She backed into the general manager’s desk, studying the guard. He was
barely more than a kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen, and he wore a threadbare
Red Army uniform that had probably been handed down from soldier to soldier two
or three times, maybe more. His hands were shaking, just a little, and he said,
“You’re coming with me.”

I don’t think
so,
Tracie thought, but raised her hands to chest level in submission. “All
right,” she answered in Russian, hoping her slight English accent would be
undetectable. “This is a simple misunderstanding. I can explain.”

“Not my problem,”
the guard said. “You will explain to my superiors.” He gestured with his head
toward the door. “Go,” he told her, “and do not try anything stupid.” The
Makarov stuttered and jumped and Tracie hoped he wouldn’t shoot her by accident.

The guard stepped
aside to allow Tracie to pass him into the hallway. He brushed up against the
table holding the aquarium, and as she moved past him, she pushed hard, a blur
of sudden motion in the semi-darkness, and smashed his hands, gun and all,
straight down into the side wall of the aquarium.

The glass
shattered and the guard gasped, the sound almost but not quite a scream. He
pulled the trigger reflexively and the gun fired, the slug whizzing past Tracie’s
head. A wave of water and fish flooded out of the tank, soaking Tracie and the
guard. Even in the dim light she could see the razor-sharp glass had ripped a
gash in the guard’s forearm. Had she been sliced, too? No time to worry about
that now.

The guard stumbled
forward and Tracie ripped the gun out of his hands and slammed it against his
temple. He sank to his knees, stunned. She hit him again and he dropped to the
floor. He didn’t move. She prodded him with her foot and he lay unresponsive.
He was out.

But now she had
another problem. The shipyard was patrolled at night by a team of two guards,
and if the other man was anywhere near he would have heard the gunfire. He
could be rushing here right now. He could be on her in seconds. Tracie
unlatched the briefcase and dropped the guard’s Makarov inside, then snapped it
shut and eased out the door, her Beretta drawn, alert for any signs of the
second guard.

He was nowhere in
sight.

She made her way
out of the building and through the shipyard, moving between concrete and
aluminum structures like a wraith. At the edge of the shipyard property, she
turned toward the Black Sea shoreline and an inflatable boat which would take
her to a U.S. submarine stationed nearby. She disappeared into the black
Ukrainian night.

2

The Kremlin, Moscow

Mikhail Gorbachev’s residence

May 28, 1987, 11:15 p.m.

Mikhail Gorbachev trudged into his
den. He was exhausted and felt like a man carrying the weight of the world on
his shoulders. Raisa had gone to bed hours ago, but sleep would be elusive for
Mikhail tonight. He eased into his plush leather office chair, selected a sheet
of custom stationery, and got to work.

This might be the
most important letter he would ever write, and it was imperative he compose it
here, at home. Working in his office, filled as it was with monitoring
equipment, would risk his words being seen by the wrong set of eyes.

KGB eyes.

So he began
writing, taking his time despite the fact he had put in a full day already and
had another long day planned for tomorrow. He paused every few words to rub his
chin and think. It was critical every word be phrased to convey the proper
sense of urgency. Mikhail knew full well the letter’s recipient would be
suspicious, if not outright dismissive, of the veracity of his words and the
motives behind them. And that was assuming the letter even reached its intended
destination.

Mikhail realized
he was probably under surveillance here, too, but working at night in his home
office was not an unusual occurrence and should not elicit undue suspicion.
More importantly, the quality of the surveillance cameras here was likely a
step below those in his executive office. It was a risk, but a calculated one,
and one worth taking.

He had long-since grown
accustomed to being watched. Clandestine KGB surveillance was ingrained in the
consciousness of Soviet society, accepted as just as much a part of the
late-twentieth century Russian experience as exquisite vodka and blisteringly
cold winters. Still, he hunched over his work, shielding the letter to the
maximum extent possible with his body’s bulk. The KGB might not be able to read
the specifics of what he was writing, but they could probably guess the
subject. And that made this communique one of the most dangerous pieces of
paper in the world.

Once he finished
crafting the letter, the next step would be to enlist a trustworthy courier to
make delivery. That would be a tricky and dangerous proposition, and where his
plan could easily fall apart. A contact well-versed in espionage techniques
would be the obvious choice, and as Soviet General Secretary, Gorbachev could
take his pick of the skilled KGB operatives in their considerable arsenal.

But there was a
problem. This assignment would require personal loyalty, and a career spy would
have no reason to offer such loyalty to Mikhail Gorbachev. In theory, Russia’s
espionage service existed to support the Communist party, of which he was
titular head. The reality, however, was much different. KGB officials enjoyed
tremendous power and were accustomed to wielding that power to their own
benefit. Mikhail knew if he entrusted this mission to the KGB, the document
would not be out of his hands thirty minutes before it would be undergoing
intensive scrutiny. And the consequences of
that
could be dire.

But Mikhail
Gorbachev had not risen to power through the cutthroat ranks of the Soviet
political system by being timid—or by being stupid. He wielded power and
influence, too, and his inner circle was filled with men fiercely protective of
him. Not only because he was their friend and confidant, but also because their
livelihoods depended upon his maintaining power. Were he to be overthrown, the
new Russian leader would bring in new lieutenants, disposing of the old power
brokers in whatever manner he saw fit.

Including making
the most knowledgeable—and thus most dangerous—of them disappear.

Gorbachev knew the
courier would have to be a man inside his inner circle, but it could not be
someone so close to the General Secretary that he was indispensable, because
the odds of the man completing the mission successfully and also returning
alive were slim.
Practically nil,
he thought grimly.

The Soviet leader
took a break from composing his letter and flipped it face down, then stretched
out in his chair. His eyes were tired, burning from the exhaustion of a full
day followed by the stress of tonight’s illicit work. Tomorrow he would have to
carry on as though he had gotten a good night’s sleep. It would not be easy, but
then nothing was easy in a world where Mother Russia’s hold over the rest of
the Soviet republics was slipping steadily away.

The world was
shrinking, and people who at one time were easily controlled via intimidation
were beginning to demand freedoms unthinkable just a decade ago under Russian
rule. No one inside the Kremlin wanted to admit it, but the burden of
repressing the citizens of so many nations, all yearning for freedom and
self-government, was stretching the Soviet Union to the breaking point. The
largest military in the world was not going to be enough. Things had to change,
and they had to change
soon,
but most inside the ruling body of the USSR
refused to see it. They buried their heads in the sand and pretended the year
was still 1962.

Mikhail Gorbachev
knew better. The Soviet Union was headed for disaster. It was inevitable, and
would tear his country apart. The KGB had set a plan in motion that would cause
a massive shift in global conditions, allowing them to consolidate their own
hold on power, and he could not allow that plan to happen. It was too extreme.
It would trigger World War Three.

So he would do
what must be done. But to challenge the KGB openly would be foolhardy and
likely considered treasonous. He would disappear without a trace in the middle
of the night, just like millions of his countrymen had disappeared under Josef
Stalin. The KGB could make it happen, his status as Communist Party General
Secretary notwithstanding, and no one would question a thing. A new leader would
be installed and the system would lurch along toward its own demise.