She was silent. Shane could see her thinking. “Did you tell him about me?” she asked.
“Of course. You’re the whole reason I’m here and not there. It wouldn’t have made much sense for me to say I stopped and watched the burning wreckage of a crashed military jet before blowing off work and returning home.”
She blew out an angry breath and shook her head. “You could have said you checked inside the wreckage and didn’t find anyone alive. Dammit!”
Shane spread his hands in exasperation. “Why would I do that? What would be the point?” He turned toward his kitchen, anger building, and then spun back around to face the injured woman. “Who the hell are you? Why were you on that plane? Where were you coming from? What were you doing that’s so freaking top-secret that you can’t even go to the hospital after a goddamned plane crash?”
Again she was silent and Shane could see her weighing her options for a response. Finally she sighed. “Never mind,” she said. “Forget it. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful after everything you’ve done for me, but I simply can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back on Shane’s two Syracuse University throw pillows his proud mother had knitted when he was accepted into their journalism program after high school. He’d graduated with a degree he had never used, opting instead to apply for a job with the FAA after the disastrous PATCO strike in 1981, when President Reagan fired the illegally striking air traffic controllers en masse. His mother, angry and hurt, had never asked for the pillows back.
Shane walked across the room and perched on the arm of the couch at her feet, unsure of what to say. Tracie’s face was still bone-white, shiny from a thin coating of sweat. Her eyes looked glassy. “Sorry I’m dripping blood onto your couch,” she said, her voice weak, and suddenly she looked very young and vulnerable.
Shane waved a hand airily. “This old thing? Don’t worry about it. I picked it up for twenty bucks at the Salvation Army. In fact, I should apologize to you for subjecting you to all those potential germs.”
She attempted a smile.
“Speaking of germs…” he continued.
“I know. I need to clean this wound.”
“I’ll help you. I have a decent first-aid kit in the bathroom.”
She narrowed her eyes and Shane raised his hands in surrender. “My intentions are honorable, I swear,” he said. “Come on, I’ll help you to the bathroom. I think I still have a pair of gym shorts from high school that are too small for me. You might be able to wear them without them sliding right off. I’ll toss them in and you can put them on, then we’ll clean your leg in the bathtub.”
Tracie nodded and rose to a half-sitting position, gritting her teeth against the pain. Shane pulled her arm around his neck, then stood slowly and the pair began stumbling awkwardly across the living room. When they reached the bathroom, he kicked the toilet seat cover down and eased her into a sitting position on it.
“If you want to get those bloody pants off, I’ll be right back with the shorts.”
She nodded tiredly. He pulled the door closed as he was leaving and heard her say “Thank you” as he was walking away.
The wound was deep, but to Shane’s eye looked clean. He went to work on it, washing it as gently as he could with warm, soapy water and then disinfecting it with hydrogen peroxide. Her burns appeared minimal, and Shane knew she had been extremely lucky. Tracie was mostly silent, stoic, occasionally grunting or gasping through gritted teeth, but she never complained and even helped steady her leg with both hands.
After patting the wound dry with a clean towel, Shane pulled a new, sealed Ace bandage out of his medicine chest. He opened the package and began wrapping the stretchy gauze around her leg as tightly as he dared, closing the sides of the puncture wound together and sealing it. The bleeding had stopped, more or less, and when he had finished he examined his handiwork and said, “Well, you still should be in the emergency room for stitches, but it looks like you might survive another day.”
“I was afraid of that,” she answered jokingly. “Now if this invisible guy will stop hitting me in the head with a baseball bat, I’ll be good to go.”
“Concussion?” Shane asked.
She nodded. “Probably. I know I’m supposed to get woken up every hour or something, but screw that. If I can get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, I’m sure I’ll be as good as new. If you don’t mind helping me back to your couch, I’ll sleep a while and then I’ll be out of your hair in the morning, I promise.”
“No worries,” Shane said, helping her to her feet. “Except you’re not going to use the couch. You’re sleeping in my bed.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Assuming an awful lot there, cowboy, aren’t ya?”
He laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll be alone. I’ll take the couch.”
“I’m not going to take your bed and make you—”
“I know, I know, you’re tough as nails. A real badass. We’ve already established that. You could sleep on a bed of hot coals if you had to. Just do this one little thing for me, okay? My mom would never forgive me if she found out I made an injured woman sleep on the couch. You’d actually be doing me a favor,” he said with a smile.
She sputtered and shook her head, but allowed herself to be led into the apartment’s only bedroom. He helped her under the covers and turned out the light. “Goodnight,” he said, but she was already asleep.
20
“We have a problem.” The man on the other end of the secure telephone line spoke in a hushed voice, but the concern was plainly evident in his tone.
“Of course we do,” Vasily Kopalev said. “There is always a problem.” As head of the KGB’s American Operations Branch, Vasily spent most of his time dealing with one emergency or another from one of his small cadre of operatives stationed throughout the United States. He lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply, savoring the bite of the tar and the smooth flavor of the smuggled Lucky Strikes. The Americans may be a threat to Mother Russia, but they make a damned fine cigarette.
“Maybe so,” the voice continued, “but this problem is bigger than most.”
“Get on with it, then. Are you going to make me guess?”
“The airplane carrying Gorbachev’s letter has crashed, and—”
“That was the plan, remember?”
“No, you don’t understand. The plane did not disappear over the ocean. It crash-landed near an airport here in the U.S. In Bangor, Maine.”
“What?”
“That’s not the worst of it.”
“Of course not,” Kopalev muttered. Suddenly his Lucky Strike tasted bitter. He sucked down a deep drag anyway. He was going to need it. “Tell me,” he sighed, exhaling cigarette smoke.
“All of the crew members are dead, except the woman.”
“Except the woman.”
“That’s right. The CIA operative has vanished. Virtually the entire B-52 was destroyed in a massive fire following the accident, so it is of course possible the letter burned up in the blaze, but given the fact the agent has disappeared, it would seem likely the letter survived and disappeared with her.”
“Yes, it would seem likely,” Vasily agreed. He was silent for a moment, thinking. “We can’t be certain what is contained in that letter, but I have a pretty good idea.”