Trinity factor, p.3
Trinity Factor, page 3
There was no one here in Beirut for her. No one back in Moscow. No one anywhere.
After a long time she opened her eyes, sighed deeply in an attempt to calm the butterflies in her stomach, then took the keys out of the ignition and got out of the small car. She opened the trunk and from the compartment beneath the mat where the spare tire and jack were kept, she took out a large flashlight and a .380 Beretta automatic wrapped in a dirty rag. Checking the weapon’s clip to make sure it was loaded, she snapped the slide back, levering a round into the chamber, then turned to look back toward the highway, which was still deserted.
She closed the trunk lid and, leaving the keys dangling in the lock, turned and headed down the path to the beach, which was only a couple of hundred meters away.
The sky was clear and the night was bright, although there was no moon. The stars seemed to be splatters of white paint flung by some insane artist on the inside of a huge, inverted bowl. Beneath them was the dark sea.
She checked her watch, which showed it was nearly time, pointed the flashlight out to sea and began signaling—two longs, one short, three longs. Repeating the signal over and over again.
To the south she could make out the dim glow of Beirut jutting out on its peninsula into the Med, but elsewhere was darkness as she continued to signal.
And then there was a pinprick of light out to sea. She held her breath for a long moment, until the second signal came—two shorts, one long, three shorts, the inverse of her signal.
She flashed back her reply and strained to listen over the gentle sounds of the nearly calm sea lapping against the beach for the sounds of the rubber dinghy coming for her.
But then she heard another sound from behind her, up near the highway, and she snapped around. At first she could not identify what she was hearing, as she held her breath, straining to listen. But then it suddenly struck her that she was hearing the stamp of leather boots. Soldiers! They were coming for her!
She threw her flashlight down, ripped open her blouse, and struggled out of it as she hurried down to the water’s edge. She kicked off her sandals and stepped out of her light pants.
The beach was suddenly bathed in lights, and from behind her someone shouted, “Halt!” in Russian.
Ignoring the command, she turned and fired five quick shots toward the road, threw the automatic down, and ran into the water until it was deep enough for her to swim.
The water was warm, the swells gentle, but it smelled and tasted of oil and diesel fuel, as she swam as fast as she could possibly go in the direction of the signal light that had answered hers.
Behind her, on the beach, there was a great deal of commotion, and then spotlights were stabbing the darkness, searching the water for her.
Don’t leave me, the thought screamed in her mind. Christ, don’t leave me like this.
A flash of light stabbed the surface of the water a few meters ahead of her and then was gone. A moment later it was back, and it centered directly on her. She dove under the surface just as the rattle of a machine gun started up on the beach.
Something hard and hot slammed into her right leg, causing her to nearly cry out, and she swallowed some seawater.
“No,” she screamed out loud as she surfaced. “Don’t leave!”
The spotlight on the beach had lost her, and was shining twenty meters or so to the left, as several more machineguns on the beach opened up, spraying the water all around her.
She was weakening. She could feel what little strength she had ebbing away from her. Perhaps, she told herself, what she was attempting to do was not really necessary, after all. Perhaps it was nothing more than the insane desires of a tired old woman.
It would be easy, so easy, to quit now—to stop swimming and merely let herself sink beneath the surface. Down deeper and deeper, until she could no longer hold her breath, and then to inhale deeply of the warm salt water. Breathe deeply and peaceful oblivion would be hers at long last.
But then there were voices, somewhere ahead of her, and she looked up, trying to peer through the darkness.
“Sonofabitch,” someone swore in English. In English!
“Here!” Jada cried out. “Don’t leave, I’m here!” She redoubled her efforts, and the machinegun fire from the beach also seemed to increase in intensity, once again sweeping her way.
Suddenly there were hands grabbing her arms, lifting her out of the water, dragging her nearly naked body against something hard, something metal. It was the submarine.
And then her world faded as she let herself go into a peaceful, dark void.
3
NORTHERN MINNESOTA
The sun was just coming up over the trees across the lake when Wallace Mahoney carefully closed the screen door of the cabin and stepped off the porch. He went around to the side of the small house and got his fishing poles and tackle box from where he had carefully laid them out last night after dinner.
It was well before six A.M., and Mahoney’s wife Marge would be at least another hour in bed. By that time he hoped to have caught their breakfast.
He went back around the cabin and shuffled down the front lawn to the dock, where his thirteen-foot aluminum fishing boat, with its small, seven-and-a-half-horsepower outboard motor, was tied. He carefully laid the fishing gear alongside the landing net and live-box already on board, before he untied the bow, and carefully stepped in to sit on the rear bench.
At sixty-three, Mahoney was no longer as spry as he once had been, and yet ever since he had retired from the Company one year ago, he had felt good. Two years ago he had completed his last assignment as the Central Intelligence Agency’s chief analyst out of the Moscow Embassy under the cover of trade mission specialist. There had been some trouble there that, when it was over, convinced him finally to bow out.
As Marge had told him when they returned to the States then, “Old man, it’s time to quit so we can spend the rest of our days on that northern Minnesota lake you’ve talked about for thirty years.”
And quit he had, after the navy doctors at Bethesda Medical Center had cured his problem with varicose veins in his legs.
That had been a year of intense pain, but now as he untied the rear line holding the small boat to the dock and started the quiet, well-muffled motor, he was glad he had gone through with it.
The surface of the lake was glass-smooth, reflecting the pine trees that in some places around the shore grew down to the water’s edge. As he headed toward a small bay a half a mile away, he could see the ripples of feeding fish coming to the surface, and he sighed deeply. He was a contented man at long last, if not a happy one.
There had been the period of a year when he was recuperating from the painful operations on his legs and when he had gone through his extensive debriefing. Report after endless report detailing every aspect of his career, and every nuance of every decision he had been a part of, were requested. And he had complied. Hell, the reports had helped take his mind off his pain.
Afterward he had written another extensive round of reports—his studied assessments, actually, of the world situation as it stood at the moment.
The work had taken the better part of a year, and when he had finally finished—after the retirement papers had finally come through, and after the party in Langley (attended, it seemed, by half the Company) was over with—he and Marge had visited their son and grandchildren in Los Angeles.
On the way back from California, they had stopped in Missoula, Montana, where their second son Michael had worked for the Forest Products Laboratory. Michael had been murdered two years earlier by the Soviets. It was part of the trouble Mahoney had been involved with during his tenure at the Moscow Embassy.
Then, earlier this spring, they had come to northern Minnesota and within two weeks had found this small house on Schultz Lake, north of Duluth, and had settled in.
“For the duration, old man?” Marge his wife of forty-one years had asked.
“For the duration,” Mahoney had said with a gentle smile. And so they had settled in to do exactly that.
The morning was cool, almost crisp, and after Mahoney had shut off the outboard motor and dropped anchor, he baited his two lines and cast them overboard, one on each side of the boat, before he hunched up his coat collar and sighed deeply again, something he had been doing a lot of lately.
He moved to the cushioned seat clamped to the center bench of the boat, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The smell of the pine trees and of the water brought him a small measure of peace. And there was absolutely no noise this morning—not even the wind sighing through the trees.
He had promised Marge that after lunch he would drive her down to Duluth, thirty-one miles away, to do some shopping. Perhaps they would catch a movie and have an early dinner before returning. In three days their first son, John, his wife, and the kids were coming out from California to spend a week, and before that Mahoney wanted to make sure the guest cottage, which had once been used as a boathouse, was ready for them.
But there was plenty of time for that, he thought. He had retired so that he would never have to worry or ever be in a rush again, and he was not going to get back into his old habits.
Marge’s voice drifted across the lake to him, and he opened his eyes, swiveled around in his seat, and looked back toward his cabin. He could just make out Marge’s figure standing on the dock, but she was not alone. From here it looked like two men were with her.
She called his name again and waved. With shaking hands he reeled in his lines, pulled up anchor, and started the outboard. His heart was hammering by the time he got the small boat turned around; he headed back toward his dock as fast as the tiny outboard would push him, his stomach tightening into a knot.
There were very few people who knew where this place was. His son. A couple of friends from Duluth. And of course the Company. But there could be others. He had spent his life as an intelligence officer, and during the course of his career he had made many enemies. There could be others now coming for him.
Keeping one hand on the throttle and his eyes on the dock, Mahoney reached down and opened his tackle box. He lifted the hinged tray up, and from under it pulled out a snub-nosed .38 revolver, which he stuffed in his jacket pocket.
As he got closer to the dock he let his hand rest lightly in his pocket, his finger on the trigger of the gun, and he throttled down.
The two men, both of them apparently in their mid-thirties, were dressed in business suits. Both of them were smiling.
“Good morning, Mr. Mahoney,” one of them called out. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“It was,” Mahoney snapped. He shut off the outboard and the small boat drifted to the dock. One of the men bent down to grab the edge of the boat, and Mahoney pulled out his gun and pointed it directly in the man’s face. “I’ll want to see some identification, son,” he said.
The man’s eyes widened. “I …” he started to say, and from the corner of Mahoney’s eye he saw the other man reach inside his coat.
“Your partner is a dead man unless you get your hand away from there.”
The man complied, slowly spreading his arms away from his body, his hands open. The man bent over the boat was sweating.
“Move off the dock, Marge,” Mahoney said, and she went back without a word. When she was on the lawn, he nodded toward the bow of the boat. “Tie it up to the dock. Very slowly, please.”
The man he was pointing the gun at moved forward very carefully, grabbed the rope, and tied the boat. When he was finished Mahoney got to his feet and stepped up on the dock.
“Identification,” he said.
Both men unbuttoned their coats, and from inside their breast pockets took out small leather wallets, which they flipped open. The carried Central Intelligence Agency plastic ID cards.
“Who sent you? Carlisle?” Mahoney asked. Farley Carlisle, who had been his boss in Moscow a couple of years ago, was now head of the Company’s Directorate of Operations, which was nothing more than a euphemism for clandestine services.
“No, sir,” one of the men said. “Mr. McBundy in Missions and Operations sent us to ask for your help.”
“With what?”
Both men seemed very uncomfortable. “There is a defection in progress. At a rather high and somewhat sensitive level. Mr. McBundy thought you might be able to help with her debriefing. We have a safehouse in Greenwich, Connecticut. It wouldn’t take too much of your time.”
“Shit,” Mahoney said half to himself. He looked up. “Why me?”
“You know their organization chart and methods of operation better than anyone.”
“I’m needed as a lie detector?”
Neither man said a word.
“Will you gentlemen stay for breakfast?” Marge asked from where she was standing.
“We can’t …” one of them started to say, but Mahoney cut him off.
“They’re staying for coffee,” he said. “We’ll be up shortly.”
“Of course,” Marge said, and she turned and went back up to the cabin, her slippers flopping on the grass.
The three men watched her shuffle up the lawn and enter the house before they turned to look at each other. Mahoney was angry, and it showed in his expression. He stuffed the pistol back in his jacket pocket, and without a word turned and strode back up to the cabin, not bothering to see if the pair of them were following him. They appeared to be genuine, but he found that he didn’t really give a damn.
He entered the cabin through a side door to his small study, where he slumped down behind his desk. The two men came through the door as he picked up the phone and dialed a number that he knew by heart.
It was answered on the third ring. “Six-six-four-eight,” a woman said.
“Four-twenty-six,” Mahoney replied, and the operator was gone. A moment later Robert McBundy answered.
“Yes.”
“Bob, this is Wallace.”
“Good morning, Wallace,” McBundy said brightly. “How are you getting along these days as a man of leisure?”
“Is there an identity code for these two you sent me?” Mahoney asked.
“Yes,” McBundy said. Mahoney looked up at the two men expectantly, and one of them managed a weak smile.
“Twixt defect,” the young agent said softly.
Mahoney repeated the two words into the telephone.
“That’s it,” McBundy confirmed. “Are you with us?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mahoney said. “Let you know later.” He hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the two men for a long moment. “All right, what have you got?” he finally asked.
“Her name is Jada Natasha Yatsyna. She’s fifty-nine years old, and is the chief of station for the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, Eighth Department.”
“Beirut?” Mahoney asked, and both men nodded.
4
GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT
The farmhouse was located five miles north of Greenwich, off the secondary highway, several hundred yards along a well-tended gravel road. Ostensibly it belonged to a New York corporation attorney who liked his privacy, and the fifty acres of heavily wooded property were completely surrounded by a high wire fence. In the three years it had been used as a safehouse, none of the locals had ever bothered to try to get in. Most people in Greenwich enjoyed their own privacy, and respected the privacy of others.
For the first couple of weeks Jada was on the mend from the flesh wound she had received in the calf of her right leg. The wound was painful, but had caused no complications, nor had it required that she be hospitalized.
By the end of the fourth week she had gone through all the usual things with her interrogators, and had been quite cooperative, although at times it seemed at least to Mahoney that she was holding something back.
They had set up shop in what had once been the farmhouse’s parlor; they had equipped it with a medium-sized conference table and several comfortable chairs, a portable blackboard, recording equipment, and, most importantly, it seemed at times, a large-capacity electric coffee pot.
Two technicians had come up from Langley, had installed antisurveillance equipment, and were always present during interrogations—one operating a scanning detector, and the other operating the recorder.
The chief Company historian, Stan Kopinski, had shown up in the third week with a station wagon filled with books for cross-references. Kopinski, who was nearly as old as Mahoney, seemed almost like a machine to them all. He never slept. During the day he sat in on the sessions with the Russian woman, and during the night he reviewed the tapes, cross-checking data.
Philip Braiteswithe, the Company’s foremost expert on Soviet affairs, came up at least one day a week to review everything that had gone on, and usually managed to ask one or two pertinent questions that no one else had thought of.
Bob Greene and Leonard Sampson, who had graduated from New York University together twenty years ago, and who had since never been separated, were the chief interrogators. They were good, and even Mahoney had to admit it.
At times they would be gentle with the woman. At other times they would be harsh. But always they played off each other, one of them acting the heavy, the other Mr. Nice.
Usually when the all-day sessions came to an end, everyone was exhausted because of their intensity. But in the four weeks Jada had been here, they had wrung nearly every bit of pertinent information from her that was humanly possible.
And yet, Mahoney was left with the feeling that she was holding something back. Not necessarily holding back information that she did not ever want to tell them, but holding back because she was waiting for the right moment.
The routine was for all of them to have breakfast in the kitchen from seven until eight, after which they moved into the parlor for a session until noon when they broke for lunch. The session was picked up again at one and usually lasted until five-thirty or six. The evenings were spent in analysis of tapes, or relaxation.
