The state of New Mexico is filled with areas belonging to the federal government, and has a long history of highly sensitive activities. The Captain didn’t know what had happened but he knew at once that this wasn’t a traffic incident. One minute after that, he was on the phone to the local FBI office.
Jennings and Perkins were there before Officer Mendez came out of surgery. The waiting room was so crowded policemen that it was fortunate the hospital had no surgical patients at the moment. The Captain running investigation was there, as were the state police chaplain and half a dozen other officers who worked the same watch as Mendez, plus Mrs. Mendez, who was seven months pregnant. Presently the doctor came out and announced that he’d be fine. The only major blood vessel damaged had been easily repaired. The officer’s jaw and teeth had taken most of the damage, and a maxillary surgeon would start repairing that damage in a day or two. The officer’s wife cried a bit, then was taken to see her husband before two of his fellows drove her home. Then it was time for everyone to get to work.
“He must have had the gun in the poor bastard’s back,” Mendez said slowly, his words distorted by the wires holding his jaw together. He’d already refused a pain medication. He wanted to get the information out quickly, and was willing to suffer a little to do it. The state police officer was a very angry man. “Only way he coulda got it out so fast.”
“The photo on the license, is it accurate?” Agent Jennings asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” Pete Mendez was a young officer, and managed to make Jennings feel her age with that remark. He next got out rough descriptions of the other two. Then came the victim; “Maybe thirty, skinny, glasses. He was wearing a jacket—like a uniform jacket. I didn’t see any insignia, but I didn’t get much of a look. He had his hair cut like he was in the service, too. Don’t know the eye color, either, but there was something funny . . . his eyes were shiny, like— oh, the Mace smell. Maybe that was it. Maybe they Maced him. He didn’t say anything, but, like, he mouthed the words, you know? I thought that was funny, but the guy in the right-front reacted real strong to that. I was slow. I shoulda reacted faster. Too damned slow.”
“You said that one of them said something?” Perkins asked.
“The bastard who shot me. I don’t know what it was. Not English, not Spanish. I just remember the last word . . . maht, something like that.”
“Yob’ tvoyu mat’!” Jennings said at once.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Mendez nodded. “What’s it mean?”
“It means ‘fuck your mother.’ Excuse me,” Perkins said, his Mormon face fairly glowing scarlet. Mendez went rigid on his bed. One doesn’t say such things to an angry man with an Hispanic name:
“What?” the state police Captain asked.
“It’s Russian, one of their favorite curses.” Perkins looked at Jennings.
“Oh, boy,” she breathed, scarcely able to believe it. “We’re calling Washington right now.”
“We have to identify the—wait a minute!—Gregory?” Perkins said. “God almighty. You call Washington. I’ll call the project office.”
It turned out that the state police could move the fastest. Candi answered a knock on the door and was surprised to see a policeman standing there. He asked politely if he could see Major Al Gregory, and was told that he wasn’t home by a young woman whose numbed jaw was coming back to normal as the world around her began to shatter. She’d scarcely gotten the news when Tea Clipper’s security chief pulled up. She was a mere spectator as a radio call was sent out to look for Al’s car, too shocked even to cry.
The license photo of “Bob Taylor” was already in Washington, being examined by members of the FBI’s counterintelligence branch, but it wasn’t in their file of identified Soviet officers. The Assistant Director who ran counterintel ops was called in from his Alexandria home by the senior watch officer. The AD in turn called FBI director Emil Jacobs, who arrived at the Hoover Building at two in the morning. They could scarcely believe it, but the wounded police officer positively identified the photograph of Major Alan T. Gregory. The Soviets had never committed a violent crime in the United States. This rule was so well established that the most senior Soviet defectors, if they wished, were able to live openly and without protection. But this was even worse than the elimination of a person who was, under Soviet law, a condemned traitor. An American citizen had been kidnapped; to the FBI, kidnapping is a crime hardly different from murder.
There was, of course, a plan. Even though it never happened, the operations experts whose job it was to think about unthinkable happenings had a pre-set protocol of things that had to be done. Before dawn thirty senior agents were taking off from Andrews Air Force Base, among them members of the elite Hostage Rescue Team. Agents from field offices throughout the Southwest briefed Border Patrol officers on the case.
Bob/Leonid sat by himself, drinking tepid coffee. Why didn’t I just keep going and make a U-turn down the street? He asked himself. Why was I in a hurry? Why was I excited when I didn’t have to be?
It was time to be excited now. His car had three bullet holes in it, two on the left side and one in the trunk lid. His driver’s license was in the hands of the police, and that carried his photograph.
You won’t get a teaching post at the academy this way, Tovarishch. He smiled to himself grimly.
He was in a safe house. He had that much consolation. It might even be safe for a day or two. This was clearly Captain Bisyarina’s bolt-hole, never intended to be more than a place where the officer could hide out if forced to run. Because of that, it had no telephone, and he had no way of communicating with the local resident officer. What if she doesn’t come back? That was clear enough. He’d have to risk driving a car with known license tags—and bullet holes!—far enough to steal another. He had visions of thousands of police officers patrolling the roads with a single thought: find the maniacs who shot their comrade. How could he have let things go so bad, so fast!
He heard a car approach. Lenny was still guarding their prisoner. Bob and Bill picked up their pistols and peered around the edge of the single window that faced on the dirt road to the trailer. Both breathed easier when they saw it was Bisyarina’s Volvo. She got out and made the proper all-clear gesture, then came toward the trailer, holding a large bag.
“Congratulations: you’ve made the television news,” she said on entering. Idiot. That part didn’t need to be said. It hung in the air like a thundercloud.
It’s a long story,” he said, knowing it to be a lie.
“I’m sure.” She set the bag on the table. “Tomorrow I’ll rent you a new car. It’s too dangerous to move yours. Where did you—”
“Two hundred meters ups the road, in the thickest trees we could squeeze it into, covered with branches. It will be hard to spot, even from the air.”
“Yes, keep that in mind. The police here have some helicopters. Here.” She tossed Bob a black wig. Next came some glasses, one pair set with clear lenses, and the other, a pair of mirror-type sunglasses. “Are you allergic to makeup?”
“What?”
“Makeup, you fool—”
“Captain . . .” Bob began with some heat. Bisyarina cut him off with a look.
“Your skin is pale. In case you haven’t noticed, a large number of the people in this area are Spanish. This is my territory and you will now do exactly as I say.” She paused for a beat. “I’ll get you out of here.”
“The American woman, she knows you by sight—”
“Obviously. I suppose you want her eliminated? After all, we’ve broken one rule, why not another? What fucking madman ordered this operation?”
“The orders came from very high,” Leonid replied.
“How high?” she demanded, and got only a raised eyebrow that spoke volumes. “You’re joking.”
“The nature of the order, the ‘immediate action’ prefix— what do you think?”
“I think all of our careers are ruined, and that assumes that we—well, we will. But I will not agree to the murder of my agent. We have as yet not killed anyone, and I do not think that our orders contemplated—”
“That is correct,” Bob said aloud, while his head shook emphatically from side to side. Bisyarina’s mouth dropped open.
“This could start a war,” she said quietly, in Russian. She didn’t mean a real war, but rather something almost as bad, open conflict between KGB and CIA officers, something that almost never happened, even in third-world countries, where it usually involved surrogates killing other surrogates, and for the most part never knowing why—and even that was rare enough. The business of intelligence services was to gather information. Violence, both sides tacitly agreed, got in the way of the real mission. But if both sides began killing the strategic assets of their opponents . . .