Fatal (15 page)

“New people?” he asked, when she had settled herself at the table again.

“Your neighbors. They come from that place down the road from your house. Most of them stop in every once in a while. I guess they get tired of cafeteria food.”

“They’re from the Ag Center?”

“Yeah, the Ag Center,” Karen said, and he caught something in her voice. He couldn’t tell what it was. Anger? Fear?

“What’s that mean? You sound like you don’t like them. They give you trouble?”

She shook her head. “No, never any trouble from those guys. They come in, they order, they pay and then they leave.”

“So what then? They don’t tip?”

“They tip fine. Better than most of the yokels around here.”

“Are you going to tell me what the problem is or make me sit here and guess?”

Karen looked at him for a minute without saying anything. During that time, he noticed fine lines around her eyes. Hell, she’s pushing forty, he thought. If you spent any time looking in a mirror you’d probably see she isn’t the only one who’s gotten older. The eyes themselves, though, were still a bright blue, and there was no trace of grey in the blonde hair she wore pulled back in a ponytail. Even better, she still felt as if she was the same girl he had known before his mother died and his father had sent him away. Right now, that seemed important.

“There’s no problem really, it’s just that … well, everyone around here calls it the Ag Center. Even they call it that, but it isn’t an Agricultural Center. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that.”

“What is it then?”

Karen shrugged her shoulders. She seemed undecided for a moment. “I don’t know. But, I do know this. Those two guys who came in a few minutes ago? They carry guns. They all carry guns. Now, why would they need guns in an Ag Center?” She reached across the table and patted his hand. “Now let me ask you a question.”

“What’s that?” Beuhl asked. He was thinking of men with guns and walled off compounds, and most of all he was thinking of Black Lincolns sliding by his place in the night.

“I’ll accept your invitation to come to dinner out at your place.” She was smiling wickedly now, her tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth. “You got any hay out there in that barn of yours?”

*****

Ronnie spent the early hours of his second morning sleeping. Breakfast, brought in a plastic tray with plastic utensils, was oatmeal and a swampy mess of scrambled eggs with burnt toast on the side. He forced it down methodically, one spoonful at a time. No sense in being hungry; he needed to keep his strength up. If they were planning to starve him into submission, they had gotten off to a good start. Afterwards, he lay back down on the bed and slept for a few more hours. He dragged himself out of bed, putting on a fresh set of clothes, and opened up the folder Wesling had given him.

The first five or so pages were a detailed analysis of the current state of nuclear arms within the Soviet Union. Estimates were made of the command structure and the physical assets within the military. It was an alarming set of opinions. According to the writer, there was little central control, or at least no strong central control. Soviet President Brezhnev instead relied on a loose alliance of political and military leaders whose allegiances blew in and out like a cold wind from Siberia. Talks were in progress with the United States to limit the growth of nuclear weapons through disarmament, a standing down of forces. The problem was nobody trusted the Soviet Union. Ronnie was still working his way through the report when Wesling opened the door.

“I see you’ve decided to at least think about working with us,” she said. “Come on with me to the conference room.”

For the next hour, Ronnie and Wesling went over the report in detail. He was surprised to find himself almost liking the analyst. Wesling was curt and to the point, but it was easy to see that she believed in what she was doing.

“Our biggest worry in this is not that we can’t come to an agreement with Brezhnev,” Wesling explained. “That will take a lot of hoopla and political gamesmanship, but the press experts can spin that any way they want and make it sound good. On our end, the real nuts and bolts of this is: How do we verify that they’re living up to the treaty?”

“Don’t we just send people in? Don’t you have experts that can work this?” Ronnie asked. “I don’t see where I fit in.”

Wesling laid her copy of the folder down on her desk. She got up from her chair, walked to the window. There were steel bars set every few inches across the open space. Industrial curtains framed the square. Through the glass, Ronnie could see a wide expanse of grassy open space, the roof of a farmhouse on the outer edge, just beyond a barbed wire topped fence. Wesling turned back from the window.

“Yes, we can do that,” she said. “And we will do that. However, it’s not that easy. Open the envelope.”

Ronnie opened his folder and took out the small brown envelope. The envelope closed with a small string wound around a hook. He opened it and found a single photograph inside. The shot was a long distance snap. A grey-haired man was standing with two other men. He had coarse features on a square face with a strong jaw line. Bushy eyebrows crowned in two massive arches over his eyes. The other two men had their backs to the camera.
They were studying something on a table, the grey-haired man pointing. At what, Ronnie had no idea. Behind them was an expanse of building filled with machinery. He could see overhead tracks, and row after row of what looked like metal stands. Each stand held rows of cone shaped objects with blunt noses.

“The man you see at the table is Vitaly Bigolopev. I call him Vit. He was educated at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He spent time in both France and oddly enough England, where he attended Oxford. He is the Soviet Union’s foremost expert on nuclear arms.” Wesling went back to her desk. From a bottom drawer, she pulled another file, this one in a red folder. She removed another photograph and tossed it on the desk.

“The disturbing thing is that he doesn’t seem to fall under the control of Brezhnev. For some reason he operates under the direction of this man.” She tapped the photo. “General Alexi Andropov. Basically, Andropov operates in cooperation with Brezhnev, but they’ve been known to disagree.” She closed the folder.

“That’s all important to us, but not to you. As I said, the problem is verification. The whole world is concentrating on numbers. So many thousands of warheads, the world destroyed so many times over, blah, blah, blah. That’s the company line. Here’s what we want from you.”

Wesling got up again and began to pace. The room was twenty by twenty and she covered it in quick steps, end to end.

“The total number of warheads will be reduced, we know that. There will still be enough out there on both sides to annihilate most of the world’s population. If you don’t live at the North or South Pole or somewhere in the wilds of Siberia you’ll be dead. What concerns us is an unknown trigger, one, or two, or three warheads in the wrong hands. Let’s say Andropov gets fed up with Brezhnev, or more likely, Brezhnev gets fed up with Andropov. Andropov has to have an ace up his sleeve, and he does. Vit is his ace. With Vit and just one warhead, he’s got the ability to wreak havoc. He can hold out the threat of his own private nuclear stash.”

“Vit disappeared two months ago. Generally, we can find people if we look hard enough. We can’t find Vit. Our concern is that he’s working with Andropov on preparing a small, mobile, nuclear package that can be delivered and detonated. An attack like thatcould touch off the kind of nuclear exchange the newspapers have been crowing about for years. We need you to find Vit. If we know where he is we can take steps to eliminate the threat.”

“You mean kill him,” Ronnie said.

Wesling shrugged. “That’s on the table of course, and it is possible he’s off doing something relatively innocuous. We’ll make that decision when we find him.”

Ronnie put the photographs back in the envelope, folded the whole thing up. When he was finished, he faced Wesling directly. “You know I’m not here because I want to be. So, I’m going to tell you this. If I try to find this man, I want out. I want Cassie and I to be left alone. You have to get Luke Francis out of our lives. For good. Otherwise … well, otherwise you can keep looking on your own.”

Now it was Wesling’s turn to pack up her folder. She did it quickly, tossing papers and photographs together into a pile before stuffing them into the folder and putting it back in a drawer. That done, she turned to face Ronnie directly.

“I can’t guarantee anything like that. Luke Francis is Operations. I’m Intelligence. Strictly speaking, he owns you. All I can do is try to talk to him. Maybe I can get some concessions, but I can’t promise you anything.”

Ronnie shook his head. Cassie was still out there. He knew she would be coming, and probably sooner rather than later. If he could reach some kind of agreement, he might be able to prevent trouble. It occurred to him that the more valuable he made himself the more leverage he could wield.

“Get Luke Francis in here and we’ll talk. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do. You get nothing from me, no information at all, until I know Cassie is safe and we work out some kind of a deal to protect us in the future. Francis is going to have to give something up to get what he wants. Threats aren’t going to work. Deal?”

“I can get Luke Francis out here, but what happens after that is up to him,” Wesling said. “I’m asking you to help. This is important.”

“If it‘s that important, you need to help me. You help me with Francis, I help you with Vit,” Ronnie said. With that, he walked out the door. Wesling let him go.

*****

Cassie was three miles up Highway 29, a half hour removed from the service station, when the headlights showed up behind her. Around her the stores and mini malls began to thin out. The rain came down in sheets again, rolling off the windshield and running in waves off the back glass. Black puddles on the road fought to break the steering loose and she hunched over the wheel, following the faded yellow line in the middle of the highway. The headlights behind her advanced and receded in the pouring water. Five miles flowed by, then ten, and the lights stayed behind her. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she leaned over and popped the glove box open, retrieving the pistol, which she placed on the seat beside her. Just having it there made her feel better.

She began to weigh her options. The rain had settled into a steady pour, lessening in intensity but still heavy enough to force her attention on the road. Pulling off to the side would leave her alone on an empty stretch of highway. The headlights grew in the rearview mirror; whoever it was beginning to close the gap. Another two miles and the lights were right on her, a half a dozen car lengths back. Cassie picked up speed though she had to fight the wheel against the slick pavement beneath. She picked up the pistol, jammed it into her back pocket. The vehicle kept pace, accelerating along with her, then adding more, and before she could react was right on top of her and then into her, the driver smashing his right bumper into the left rear bumper of the truck. The back end broke loose, Cassie gripping the steering wheel as the truck went into an agonizingly slow spin down the center of the road. She had enough time to see a green field on the side of the road, then the bright flash of headlights, more road, and another green field, this one with a silo set at the far end.

Cassie fought the wheel, turning into the spin. She felt the tires grab, turned back again and went too far. The rear end threw itself back in the opposite direction, caught a dry spot and went rigidly straight, catapulting her toward the ditch on the side of the road. The crunch of gravel vibrated up through the truck as the front tires plowed through, found some purchase and yanked the truck back onto the road. Cassie caught her breath, gulping in air, her heart pounding inside her chest. The vehicle bore down on her again. She punched the accelerator to the floor, felt the impact as the driver behind her punched his vehicle into the rear end again, this time dead on. The truck lurched forward, swerved crazily and dug in. She gained some separation, checked the rearview mirror. She could see the driver now with perfect clarity. He was leaning over the wheel and he was smiling as he surged forward, intent on ramming her again. The sight infuriated her. She stood up on the brakes with both feet.

The driver behind Cassie was a low level operative named Carson Black. His status gave him a bad attitude. Recruited into the search at the last minute, he was given no information other than the girl would be driving a white pickup. The orders were to take her by any means necessary but take her alive. He understood that to mean it didn’t matter what shape she was in as long as she was alive, which was fine with him. The junction of Hwy 90 and 29 seemed a good place to pass a few lazy hours, and he wasn’t expecting anything to happen, when Cassie cruised by his spot in the parking lot of a grocery store. The description matched. The license number matched. Black let Cassie get a few hundred yards down the road before he pulled in behind her, headed north. The first time he tagged her bumper it sent the white pickup into the expected spin. This was all going according to training, maybe even easier. He watched as the girl fought for control, got the truck back on track, and took off again. He punched the pedal and felt a satisfying slam as he plowed directly into the back of the fleeing vehicle. The truck rocketed forward. He stepped on the pedal again, intending to ram her straight ahead and send her into the ditch. His foot was firmly on the gas pedal when the brake lights flashed bright red and the rear end of the truck raced right at him.