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Tracie nodded. “I
can’t tell you everything. I just can’t. But I’ll fill you in on what I can, I
promise. Not here, though. We’ll have that conversation in the car, away from
potentially prying ears.”

Shane looked
around the dining room. It was dark and mostly empty. “Who’s going to hear us
in here?”

Tracie shook her
head. “Later,” she said, and that was that.

***

May 31, 1987

10:30 a.m.

She paid the check and they
strolled back into the parking lot. The clouds had continued to gather and
there was a chilly bite to the air, more like March than May. Shane watched as
Tracie’s sharp eyes scanned the parking lot. She was obviously looking for
trouble. “I thought you said those guys would go south,” he said.

“I’m sure they
did,” she answered. “But if they hauled ass for ten or twelve miles, pushing
hard, and didn’t catch up to us, I think it’s at least a possibility they would
have doubled back and maybe started prowling the areas surrounding the Bangor
exits, looking for the Datsun.”

“That’s
reassuring,” he said as they walked back toward the knot of cars parked outside
the Laundromat.

She shook her
head. “Everything looks fine. I don’t see anything strange, do you?”

He glanced around
and shrugged. “Guess not. So what do we do now?”

“Now we try to
pass for a normal young couple as we look for a car with unlocked doors. I
really don’t want to drive around in this Arctic air again with a broken
window.” She took his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
They wandered across the parking lot, keeping several rows of cars between them
and the Laundromat windows.

“What if
everyone’s cars are locked?” Shane asked.

“Yeah, right,”
Tracie said, grinning. “Sooner or later, we’ll find an unlocked vehicle, and
I’m betting on sooner. When we do, we’ll ‘acquire’ it.”

She was right. The
words had barely left Tracie’s mouth when Shane spotted a white Ford Granada,
unlocked and empty. Tracie took a casual look around, and when she found no one
paying the slightest attention to them, she said, “Okay, let’s go.”

She hurried around
to the driver’s side door. She slid into the car and pried the plastic cowling
away from the lower portion of the steering column almost before her body had
even stopped moving.

Shane watched in
amazement as she pulled a pair of wires free and then touched the ends
together. There was a spark and the Granada started up, running roughly for a
second or two and then settling into a contented purr. “I always wondered how
they did that,” he said.

Tracie turned to
him with a dazzling smile. “I’ve picked up a few skills,” she said. “But it’s
time to go.” She wheeled the Ford toward the exit and freedom. Shane twisted in
his seat and looked out the rear window, certain the car’s angry owner would be
sprinting across the lot in hot pursuit. But there was no one, the lot was
quiet, and then they were on the road. Three minutes later they were back on
Interstate 95, this time headed south.

Shane slumped in
his seat. “That was nerve-wracking,” he said. “I’m really not comfortable with
stealing a car. What if we get pulled over? We’ll get busted for Grand Theft
Auto.”

“We’re not going
to get pulled over,” Tracie said. “I’m going to be the most careful little
driver you ever saw, and once we get a few exits south of Bangor, we’ll stop
somewhere and exchange plates with another car. The police will have no reason
to stop us.”

“Okay, fine, but
why can’t we just
go
to the police and tell them someone’s after you?
That way we stay on the right side of the law, instead of becoming wanted car
thieves.”

“We’re not
thieves,” Tracie said, exasperation evident in her tone. “The owner will get
his car back in short order, good as new. Probably. And in the meantime, we
stay alive. I can’t go to the police because…well, I just can’t.”

“Not good enough,”
Shane said. “You promised you’d give me some answers. Well, we ate, we
‘acquired’ another vehicle, and we’re on our way south, maybe driving into some
kind of ambush around the next corner. It’s time for you to tell me what’s
going on.”

So she did.

27

May 31, 1987

4:55 p.m.

Portland, Maine

After leaving the Bangor area
behind, Shane and Tracie drove for a long time without seeing much beyond the
occasional small town, appearing isolated and lonely in the distance. They
passed Waterville and then the state capital of Augusta, eventually reaching
Portland, where they stopped for gas, to use the restrooms, and to grab another
bite to eat, then continued on.

Shane spent most
of the drive in silent contemplation of the incredible turn his life had taken
in less than a day. A fiery plane crash. A secret document. A beautiful CIA
operative. KGB spies. Murder.

The whole scenario
was outlandish. It was like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. Twenty-four
hours ago, Shane would have dismissed it as a nonsensical nightmare. But that
was before he had seen a room full of professional investigators gunned down in
cold blood, had a silenced pistol shoved between his eyes, helped steal a car,
and gone on the run.

He shook his head.
He realized with a start he hadn’t given a single thought to the deadly
diagnosis he had received yesterday, the one that had shaken him up so badly,
since seeing the airplane burning in the forest.

Until now.

The miles
continued to melt away under the tires of the Granada. Shane found himself
struggling to keep his eyes open. He blinked a few times, stifling a yawn. They
had spent the entire afternoon in the car, with just the short break in
Portland at midday to gas up and stretch their legs, and it was now
late-afternoon. The skies had cleared as they moved south and the sun blazed
high in the sky, but Shane felt like he could drop into a deep sleep at any
moment.

“Go ahead and
relax,” Tracie told him, amused. “Once the adrenaline from the conflict melts
away, that high is replaced with a feeling of lethargy. It’s your body’s way of
coping. It’s not every day you have to fight off psycho gunmen. At least I
assume it’s not.”

“You assume
right,” Shane agreed. He chuckled, then sobered, thinking about the slaughter
that had taken place back at the Bangor Airport. “You don’t think the cops
believe
we
killed everyone back in Bangor, do you?”

Tracie was silent
for a moment. “Right now, I doubt they know
what
to believe. Witnesses
saw us leave the airport, undoubtedly followed immediately by the gorillas
chasing us, but that doesn’t mean much one way or the other. Unless there is
someone still alive who can describe exactly what happened—”

“—and I don’t
think there is,” Shane interrupted. “As far as I know, the only people they
didn’t kill were the controllers in the radar room working airplanes, and those
guys wouldn’t have seen anything, because they were inside a dark room in a
separate part of the building.”

“If that’s the
case, then it would be in our best interest not to get picked up by the police.
They would eventually have to release you, but it would take a long time to
verify your story, and they wouldn’t be in a very forgiving mood, not with a
half-dozen or more murdered people—one of them a cop—on their hands.”

Shane rubbed both
hands over his face, still just as tired but now nervous as hell, too. He
exhaled forcefully and looked across the front seat at Tracie. “So, what’s the
plan?” he asked. “Where are we going? What do we do now?”

“Well,” she said,
looking at her watch. “For the rest of today, we’ll have to maintain a holding
pattern. I’ve got some cash and a few goodies stashed away inside a
safe-deposit box in a bank just outside New York City. The first priority is to
retrieve that, but since today is Sunday, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to
get at it. We’ll have to find an anonymous motel somewhere between here and New
York and hole up for the night. I’ll call my boss and fill him in on what’s
going on, and then tomorrow we get up bright and early, make a little bank
withdrawal, and then continue toward D.C.”

Shane stared hard
at Tracie, who gazed straight out the windshield, pretending not to notice him
watching her. “A little bank withdrawal,” he said.

She glanced over,
a Mona Lisa smile on her face. “That’s right,” she said.

“What could you
possibly have stored in a safe deposit box that will help us out of this jam?”

“I told you, I
have some cash.”

“You told me. You
also said, and I quote, ‘a few goodies.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know, a
little of this, a little of that.”

“You’re talking
about weapons.”

“Well, maybe. You
know, a girl has to be prepared for anything.”

She returned her
attention to the highway and Shane watched the scenery roll by as the Granada
continued churning south.
What sort of girl just happens to keep a cache of
weapons and money handy? What else might she have stored in that safe-deposit
box?

He thought about
the events of last night, about her insistence on avoiding the hospital despite
being injured in a deadly plane crash. About her stoic toughness as he cleaned
and dressed her deep thigh wound, dressed in his gym shorts and little else.
About those long legs, slim and smooth and sexy. Then he started thinking about
things that had nothing to do with secret communiques or spies or airplane
crashes.

He daydreamed
about sexy secret agents for a while, and eventually he fell asleep.

28

May 31, 1987

8:10 p.m.

Washington, D.C.

Winston Andrews was well into his
third gin and tonic when he realized he was gulping rather than sipping. He
pondered that realization for a moment and eventually concluded he didn’t care.
His Georgetown condominium felt cold, empty and lonely since Emily had died—was
it really almost three years ago?—and he could no longer come up with a single
reason to sip rather than gulp.

The endgame was
coming, Winston could sense it, and he was surprised to discover he didn’t mind
all that much. He and Emily had never had children, so when she succumbed to
lung cancer—the ultimate irony, Winston thought, given her status as a
nonsmoker and lifelong health nut—the only thing left to occupy the long hours
in the day was work.

And that was fine,
as far as it went. Winston had always been nearly fanatical about his work. But
now, push was coming to shove, and Winston was no longer particularly
interested in dealing with the shove. Approaching seventy, he had devoted his
life to United States intelligence services since playing a critical role in
the U.S.–Soviet collaboration to defeat the Nazis in World War II.

Winston had spent
virtually that entire war on the ground in Russia, making and cultivating
contacts with the Soviets while they were suffering horrific losses of life,
more than twenty million people dying before the defeat of Hitler had been
accomplished. By 1945, when the Axis nations finally surrendered, Winston
Andrews—genteel, Ivy League-educated Winston Andrews—had emerged as the most
knowledgeable American alive regarding the affairs of the Soviet Union, both
political and military.

Winston had served
in the CIA for the next four decades, keeping his contacts inside Moscow active
and even, to the utter astonishment of his superiors at the agency, developing
new contacts as the older ones died, retired, disappeared, or faded away.

During the darkest
days of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s, Winston was considered a star,
funneling to the highest levels of the United States government classified
intel regarding Soviet military buildups, aggression in foreign countries, KGB
activity, and the Russian space program. You name it, Winston Andrews knew
about it. His information helped shape the foreign policy decisions of an
unbroken string of eight presidents from Truman to Reagan. He wasn’t a Democrat
or a Republican—although if pushed, Winston might reluctantly admit toward a
liberal bias—he was simply an intelligence gatherer.

But Winston
Andrews harbored a secret. While funneling all of that sensitive information
regarding the Soviets to the U.S., he was simultaneously funneling information
regarding the United States intelligence services to the Soviets.

This was Winston’s
secret.
This
was how he had developed the deep connections in Moscow
that others had never been able to accomplish.
This
was how he was able
to retrieve sensitive information regarding the Soviets almost in real time. He
knew there had been the occasional whisper questioning his loyalty over the
course of the last forty years, suspicions muttered, his work examined with
narrowed eyes. But the intelligence he delivered was so consistently valuable,
so up-to-the-minute, so sensitive, that the whispers and suspicions never
developed into anything more. They invariably died away, often for years at a
time.

Winston
supposed—hell, with the clarity provided by gulping three gin and tonics, he
more than supposed, he
knew
—that most people would consider him a
traitor to his country if they learned his secret, but he didn’t see it that
way. Above all, Winston Andrews was a pragmatist. The more information the two
countries with opposing political philosophies and mutual suspicion possessed
about each other, the less likely they were to blow each other up.

“Mutually assured destruction,”
was the term. It signified each country’s knowledge that the other could
retaliate for any aggressive act, nuclear or otherwise, by wiping their enemy
off the face of the earth. It sounded like a terrifying prospect because it
was
a terrifying prospect, and as an academic, Winston knew nothing could
diminish the likelihood of mutually assured destruction as effectively as
information.