“I’m not sure. I—” The Major pushed his commander’s head down. A moment later an airplane streaked down the valley.
“That was a MiG-21, reconnaissance version. We are not dealing with fools.” He looked to make sure that all his men were under cover. “We may just have had our pictures taken.”
“Did they—”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to trust in God for that, my friend. He has not let us come this far to fail,” the Major said, wondering if that were true or not.
“So where are we going?” Gregory asked in the parking lot.
“Meet me at the mall, south side of the lot, okay? I just hope it’ll fit in the car.”
“See you there.” Gregory walked to his car and drove off.
Bea waited a few minutes before following. There was no sense in having anyone notice that they left at the same time. She was excited now. To combat this, she tried driving slowly, but it was so out of character that it merely fed her excitement, and as though by its own accord the Datsun seemed to work its way up through the gears and change lanes. She arrived in the mall parking lot twenty minutes later.
Al was waiting. He’d parked his car two spaces away from a station wagon, well out from the nearest store. He’d even picked more or less the right place, Bea Taussig noticed as she pulled in alongside his car and got out.
“What kept you?” he asked.
“No real hurry.”
“So now what?”
Bea didn’t really know. She knew what was to happen, but not how they planned to do it—in fact, she didn’t even know for sure that it was a they doing it. Perhaps Ann was going to handle the thing all by herself. She laughed to cover her nervousness.
“Come on,” she said, waving for him to follow.
“This must be some birthday present,” Gregory noted. Off to his right, he noted a car backing out of its place.
Bea noted that the lot was crowded with cars but not people. The afternoon shoppers had gone home for dinner, the new arrivals were just beginning their activity, and the movie crowd wouldn’t come for another hour or so. Even so, she was tense as her eyes scanned left and right. She was to be one lane over from the movie entrance. The time was right. If anything went wrong, she almost giggled to herself, she’d have to pick out a large, bulky present. But she didn’t have to. Ann was walking toward her. She carried nothing but a large purse.
“Hi, Ann!” Taussig called.
“Hello, Bea—oh, it’s Major Gregory.”
“Hi,” Al said, while he tried to remember if he knew this woman or not. Al didn’t have much of a memory for faces, so occupied was his brain with numbers.
“We met last summer,” Ann said, confusing him all the more.
“What are you doing here?” Taussig asked her controller.
“Just some quick shopping. 1 have a date tonight, and I needed—well, I’ll show you.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out what to Gregory looked like a perfume dispenser—or whatever they called those little spray gadgets, he thought while he waited. He was glad Candi wasn’t like this. Ann seemed to spray some of the stuff on her wrist and held it up to Bea’s nose as a car came down the lane.
“Candi would love it—what do you think, Al?” Bea asked as the dispenser came up toward his face.
“Huh?” At that moment he got a face full of chemical Mace.
Ann had timed it perfectly, spraying Gregory just as he was taking a breath, and aimed it to get under the glasses into his eyes. It seemed that his face had been set afire, and the searing pain went down into his lungs. In a moment he was on his knees, hands to his face. He couldn’t make a sound, and couldn’t see the car stop right beside him. The door opened, and the driver only had to take half a step before chopping him on the side of the neck.
Bea watched him go limp—so perfect, she thought. The car’s rear door opened and hands came out to grab his shoulders. Bea and Ann helped with the legs as the driver got back in. Just as the rear door closed, Gregory’s car keys flew out the window to them, and the Plymouth rolled away, having hardly stopped at all.
Instantly, Ann looked around. No one had seen them. She was sure of it as she and Bea walked back away from the stores to where the cars were.
“What are you going to do with him?” Bea asked.
“What do you care?” Bisyarina replied quickly.
“You’re not going—”
“No, we’re not going to kill him.” Ann wondered if that were true or not. She didn’t know, but suspected that a murder was not in the cards. They’d broken one inviolable rule. That was enough for one day.
22.
Active Measures
LEONID, whose current cover required him to say, “Call me Bob,” headed for the far end of the parking lot. For an operation with virtually no planning, its most dangerous phase had gone smoothly enough. Lenny, in back, had the job of controlling the American officer they’d just kidnapped. A physical type, he’d once been part of the Soviet “special-purpose” forces, known by the abbreviation Spetznaz. Bill, next to him, had been assigned to the mission because he was a scientific intelligence specialist; the fact that his area of expertise was chemical engineering hadn’t mattered to Moscow. The case called for a scientific specialist, and he was the closest.
In the back, Major Gregory started to moan and move. The chop on his neck had been enough to stun, but not enough to produce any injury more serious than a blinding headache. They hadn’t gone to all this trouble to kill the man by accident, something that had happened before. For the same reason, he hadn’t been drugged. An exercise much more dangerous than most people might think, it had once accidentally killed a Soviet defector whose mind, as a result, had never been picked by the people of the Second Chief Directorate. To Lenny he seemed much like an infant coming out of a long sleep. The smell of chemical Mace was thick enough in the car that all of the windows were down a few inches to keep it from overpowering the KGB officers. They wanted use physical restraints on their prisoner, but those might troublesome if spotted. Lenny was able to control the American, of course. It was just that caution, the distillation of experience, taught them to take nothing for granted. For all they knew, Gregory’s hobby might have been unarmed combat—stranger things had happened. When he became vaguely conscious, the first thing he saw was an automatic pistol’s silencer pressed against his nose.
“Major Gregoriy,” Lenny said, using the Russian pronunciation for a purpose, “we know that you are a bright young man, and perhaps a courageous one also. If you resist, you will be killed,” he lied, “I am very skilled in this. You will say nothing at all, and you will be still. If you do these things, no harm will come to you. Do you understand—just nod if you do.”
Gregory was fully conscious. He’d never quite been out, merely stunned by the blow that still made his head as taut as a swollen balloon. His eyes were shedding tears as though from a leaky faucet, and every breath seemed to light a fire in his chest. He’d commanded himself to move as they pulled him into the car, but his limbs had ignored his frantic wishes while his mind raged at them. It had come to him in an instant: That’s why I hate Bea! It wasn’t her snotty manner and her weird way of dressing at all. But he set that one far aside. There were more important things to worry about, and his mind was racing as it had never raced before. He nodded,
“Very good,” the voice said, and strong arms lifted him off the floor and onto the rear seat. The metallic prod of the pistol was against his chest, hidden under the other man’s left arm.
“The effect of the chemical irritant will pass in about an hour,” Bill told him. “There will be no permanent effect.”
“Who are you?” Al asked. His voice was a mere whisper, as raspy as sandpaper.
“Lenny told you to be still,” the driver replied. “Besides, someone as bright as you must already know who we are. Am I correct?” Bob looked in the mirror and was rewarded with a nod.
Russians! Al told himself in a combination of amazement and certainty. Russians here, doing this . . . why do they want me? Will they kill me? He knew that he could not believe a thing they said. They’d say anything to keep him under control. He felt like a fool. He was supposed to be a man, an officer, and he was as helpless as a four-year-old girl—and crying like one, he realized, hating every tear that dripped from his eyes. Never in his life had Gregory felt such a killing rage. He looked to his right and realized that he didn’t have the smallest chance. The man with the gun was almost twice his weight, and besides, he did have the gun pressed right against his chest. Gregory’s eyes were blinking now almost like the windshield wipers of a car. He couldn’t see well, but he could tell that the man with the gun was watching him with clinical interest, no emotion at all in his eyes. The man was a professional in the application of violence. Spetznaz, Gregory thought at once. Al took a deep breath, or tried to. He nearly exploded in a convulsion of coughs.