I Minus 72 (20 page)

A few people passed in the first fifteen
minutes Grant was there. Not as much as one person even looked at
him. Grant was getting concerned that the contact wouldn’t show. As
he was standing facing the street, he heard a small scraping sound
down the alley behind him. He was tempted to ignore it and not take
his eyes off the street, but a nagging feeling caused him to turn
towards the sound. Just as he turned, although he didn’t hear
anything but the impact, his face was stung by brick fragments
chipping off the building he was just leaning on. A silencer—not
good, Grant thought. He immediately dropped to his knees and drew
his weapon, using the corner of the building to hide behind. Grant
couldn’t see anything but he knew someone was there. All he could
hope for was that the assailant would take another shot. In the
dark he’d be able to see by the fire from the muzzle where the shot
was coming from. He’d just open up on that spot. The little 9MM had
limited range, however, so he had to get within forty feet or so to
be sure of hitting his target.

Vladimir, meanwhile, was tucked inside a
back doorway exiting onto the alley about thirty feet away. He
couldn’t believe he missed. The perfect setup and he missed the
shot. This damn Russian piece of shit gun. He should have gotten
another one after he saw how bad it was when he shot at the woman.
Now that Thurmond knew he was there, the game had just changed.
Thurmond was a dangerous man. All DIA agents were dangerous. If he
pursued this, Vladimir knew that if Thurmond was armed, and he
surely would be, he might not survive. It looked like retreat was
the only option. He could see that Thurmond was backlit and he knew
he was in the dark so Vladimir backed out of the doorway and
trotted softly the direction he had come. His freshly stolen car
was less than a block away.

Grant, now behind the wall, both hands on
the gun in the classical military firing position with arms bent at
the elbow, gun pointed upwards, had a decision to make. Should he
engage the guy by trying to get a clean shot, or should he back off
and hightail it out of there back to the hotel? The problem was, if
he left, would he ever be able to find the guy again?

Retreat was a word not normally in Grant’s
vocabulary, but he didn’t really have much choice. Being backlit by
the streetlight he was a sitting duck if he leaned out to fire a
shot. It would be one way of drawing fire, but it might be fatal.
He decided to turn around and beat it back to the hotel.

Vladimir, now running full speed down the
ally, turned the corner. His car was ten meters away. He was safe,
he thought.

As Vladimir entered his car, the passenger
side glass shattered and shortly afterward he heard the very loud
report of a large caliber gun. “Who the hell was shooting at him?”
he thought. It couldn’t possibly be Thurmond—he was clear down the
alley on the other street. Did he follow him? He couldn’t have
gotten here this quickly.

Garcia, meanwhile, having followed Grant
from the hotel, had decided to circle around to the back, and as he
was walking down the street, had seen a man leave a car and walk
down the alley. There was something familiar looking about the man.
Also, he was staying in the shadows and was acting like he was
trying to go unnoticed. Garcia decided to watch him. A few minutes
later he saw the same guy running back to his car and Garcia
realized where he’d seen him before. This was the guy who had
demolished his taxi. As the man got into his car, Garcia fired. He
was quite a distance away for a handgun, even a Glock .40 caliber,
but his first shot hit the passenger side window, sending shards of
safety glass into the car. His next shot went into the pillar
behind the passenger window. His third shot, he was sure, hit the
target.

He was using law enforcement hollow points
so he was amazed to see the car pull away from the curb and rocket
down the street. He could have sworn he’d nailed the guy. The big
gun roared as he fired twice more, but the car continued speeding
away. He didn’t really give a shit if Thurmond had been hit or not,
but he thought he ought to know, so he ran quickly down the alley
keeping in the shadows. When he got to the corner, there was no
sign of Thurmond. He must still be alive, but Garcia didn’t know
whether or not he’d been hit. He could see where a bullet impacted
on the side of the building so if the assailant only fired once,
Thurmond should be okay. He had to get out of here fast before the
police showed up. Someone surely had called after hearing his big
.40 caliber go off several times. Nothing left to do but go back to
his hotel and wait for morning. He sure wished he knew more about
the driver, though.

Later, back in the hotel room he shared with
Sam, Grant finished telling the story of the evening events.

“You could have been killed,” Sam said. “Why
did you just stand under the light like that?”

“I needed to make sure he would see me.”

“Obviously, he did. You’re lucky he’s not a
good shot. Come to think of it, guess I’m lucky too. If he’d aimed
just a little to the left when he shot at me, his bullet would have
gone right through my neck.”

“Hmm. You might be on to something there.
His shot at me went to the right as well. Maybe the gun pulls
right. Not sure how that helps us, but who knows. At least we can
assume now that the person code named Vladimir is our mystery
killer. Wonder if he is working for someone else or just himself.
If just for himself, why? What’s he trying to accomplish?” As he
usually did when thinking things through, Grant started pacing
around the room. The he continued. “And, why now, after all this
time? Damn. Nothing but questions.” Another pause, then shaking his
head said, “Well, we’d better get some sleep. I’ll need to call
General Wheeler tomorrow morning and tell him about Vladimir. We
may not know who he is, but we should be able to review all the
information he’s fed us over the past twenty years or so. Maybe
there’s a clue in there somewhere. First thing in the morning I’d
like you to check out flights home. Don’t book anything just yet,
but I think we ought to go home and continue there. I’ll ask
General Wheeler to have someone pull out everything we have that
refers to Vladimir and have it ready for us when we get back.”

Sam, who’d been quiet, giving Grant time to
work through his thoughts, now said, “Okay, Grant. I’ll get on the
airline schedules first thing in the morning.”

They said good night and after a short
embrace they retired to their separate bedrooms and both were
asleep within fifteen minutes. It had been a long day for both of
them.

Garcia, meanwhile, had returned to his hotel
and after a short thought about how seriously he might have wounded
the assailant, he, too, fell asleep.

I minus 31

At 1:00 a.m. Vladimir was parked about five
kilometers away from the hotel examining the wound in the back
portion of his upper right shoulder. It was really painful and
bleeding pretty badly. He knew he needed to have it looked at, but
it was obviously a bullet wound and any doctor he went to in Poland
would report it to the police. He knew a doctor he could count on
who, for a couple hundred US dollars, would treat the wound and
never make a report. Unfortunately, this doctor was in Moscow. He’d
have to pack and bandage the wound as best he could and get back to
Moscow immediately. He just hoped he wouldn’t lose too much blood
before he could get to the doctor. He drove back to the Hilton,
went to his room, wrapped the small amount of ice he found in his
mini bar inside a hand towel and pressed it to the wound. That
should slow down the bleeding.

After that he called the airline office and
booked an early morning flight to Moscow. He could sleep for about
three hours before he had to leave for the airport. He also made a
mental note: while in Russia, get a better gun, but not another
Russian-made gun. The black market always had plenty of weapons,
even American made.

The wound in his shoulder, while not life
threatening, was painful, so he washed down four ibuprofen tablets
with a vodka from the mini-bar. That should help. He fell asleep
quickly, but slept fitfully until the alarm sounded a few hours
later.

When he awoke three hours later, he took
three more ibuprofen, this time with water. He then stuffed part of
a washcloth into the wound, trying to cut off the bleeding and
bandaged it as best he could by taping a piece of plastic bag over
the washcloth. That should keep the blood from leaking through
until he got to the doctor that afternoon. Even with the ibuprofen
it was still really painful, though. On the flight to Moscow
Vladimir thought about what all this meant to his plans. He knew
he’d need a few days to recuperate so he couldn’t do anything right
away about Thurmond and the other guy who shot him. He was
confident they wouldn’t be able to track him back to Moscow. But
time was running out.

He had to come up with a new plan for
Thurmond. He thought about it and concluded that Thurmond couldn’t
go much further contacting people on the list because everybody was
dead. Thurmond didn’t necessarily know that, but when no one showed
up at the meeting places, he would eventually have to give up and
go home. Maybe he could find him in Washington. Maybe Thurmond
would be at the inauguration and he’d take care of him there. It
was highly likely Thurmond knew his code name, but he couldn’t know
his real identity and would never be able to find him. Even after
it was over and he knew he killed the new President, Thurmond would
only know him by Vladimir and he was pretty sure Thurmond had never
gotten a visual on him. That wouldn’t be enough to find him in a
country as big as the United States. No, he really didn’t have to
worry about Thurmond.

The other guy, however, the one who shot
him, did get a look at him and might be able to identify him. But,
he didn’t know who that person was, so there really wasn’t anything
he could do about it right now. Not what he’d hoped for, but maybe
the best he could get under the circumstances. His first priority
was to get bandaged up before the wound got infected.

I minus 31

Thurmond slept until 6:30 a.m. then got up.
Sam was in her bed still asleep so he quietly showered, shaved,
dressed, wrote a note telling her what he was doing and left the
apartment. He got a cab right outside the hotel and, fifteen
minutes later, was entering the US Embassy. No one saw him
leave—Vladimir was on his way to Moscow and Garcia was still sound
asleep. He started to call General Wheeler when he realized that
with the time difference it was just before midnight in Washington.
So instead he called the night duty officer at the DIA ops desk.
Grant explained what he was looking for in the files and asked him
to leave a private brief for General Wheeler. He told the duty
officer, a LTC Bailey, that this was extremely confidential and
that the brief should not be copied or logged and be marked “Eyes
Only” for General Wheeler and that he, the duty officer, should not
mention this to anyone else. LTC Bailey, used to such requests from
field agents, assured Thurmond that he would do as requested.

Grant didn’t have anything further to do at
the Embassy so he went back to the hotel. When he got to the room
he found a note from Sam on the table saying she was going out to
buy a book and that he shouldn’t worry because she was sticking to
busy sidewalks. Grant smiled at the note and decided to go
downstairs to the restaurant for a late breakfast. There, he
ordered a full American breakfast of three eggs, scrambled; three
pieces of bacon, crispy; buttered toast, dark; and a carafe of
black coffee, American style. The hot coffee was served right away
and he sipped slowly, waiting for his breakfast to be served. He
thought about all that had happened and how lucky he was to have
survived the attempts on his life. Although he was still pretty
sore, he was much better than he had been and even though he’d been
shot at last night, he was still alive. He cheered at that thought
and when it was served, he thoroughly enjoyed his breakfast.

Sam, at the same time, was meandering slowly
between the racks of books at a store about four blocks down the
street from the hotel. The store had quite a few English language
books and it was taking her some time to see all they had. She had
no clue that she was being watched from outside the store.

Garcia, at his usual post at the bus stop,
had seen her leave the hotel and had followed her to the book
store. He knew she might recognize him if he went into the store,
so he was content to just lounge on the corner across the street
until she came out. Sam finally picked out a book, paid for it at
the front counter and walked back to the hotel. The December air
was cold and the stores lining the street were fully decorated for
Christmas, bringing a cheery look to what otherwise would have been
a string of dreary, soot-stained, old Soviet-era buildings. Sam
enjoyed her walk without once suspecting that Garcia was not too
far behind her. As she entered the hotel lobby, Grant was just
exiting the restaurant and they met up with each other at the
elevator.

“Everything go okay?” Grant asked.

“Completely uneventful,” Sam replied.

“Good. Let’s go upstairs and plan our next
move.”

Garcia, just outside the hotel entrance,
watched Sam and Thurmond meet and enter the elevator. He resumed
his position at the bus stop. At least it had a bench. He sat and
lit another of his local cigarettes. Not so bad this time. Maybe he
was getting used to them. All this waiting would get on the nerves
of most people, but in his career with the CIA Garcia had spent a
lot of time just sitting and watching.