“This would be considered good news, yes?” Fedorov said softly between bites of omelet, flecks of cheese peppering his black beard.
“It most certainly would,” Anatoli agreed.
“What is next? Find out where this Shane Rowley lives and force him to lead us to the girl?”
“We could do that,” Anatoli said, “but why wait to take him at his home? This is a matter of no small importance, and, according to Colonel Kopalev, it is extremely time-critical. We know where and how Mr. Rowley will be spending his morning. Our instructions are to retrieve the letter absolutely as soon as possible. Since we don’t know when Shane Rowley will be alone again, I suggest we pay these investigators a visit and remove Mr. Rowley from his meeting. Once we have secured Rowley, we can find a nice, secluded location — that shouldn’t be difficult, there is nothing much in this wasteland but trees — and extract the information we need. Now, let us finish our delicious breakfast. It seems this will be a busy day.”
23
Tracie’s eyes fluttered open and she felt a rush of intense panic. She saw no one. Recognized nothing. Had no idea where she was or how she had gotten here.
She sat bolt upright in a strange bed, feeling stiff and sore, and then the memories came rushing back: Major Mitchell shooting his fellow B-52 crewmembers, Tracie returning fire and putting Mitchell down, the desperate attempt by a dying Major Stan Wilczynski to land the big jet in Bangor, Maine, the subsequent plane crash, and her rescue by air traffic controller Shane Rowley, who brought her to his apartment and cleaned and bandaged her injured leg.
Then she had fallen asleep in his bed. She started to panic again as she looked for the letter she had to deliver to President Reagan from Mikhail Gorbachev. She snatched up her pillow, and there it was where she’d stuffed it, crumpled and sweat-stained, flecks of blood splattered across it.
She grabbed it with a sigh of relief and then looked around, wondering about the time. A digital clock-radio on a dresser on the far side of the room said eight twenty. Tracie tried to remember the last time she had slept this late and couldn’t. Stretching, she eased off the side of the bed and gingerly placed a little weight on her injured leg. Her thigh throbbed but the pain was bearable. She leaned more firmly and finally took a couple of shuffling steps toward the bedroom door.
Painful but not overwhelmingly so.
She poked her head into the short hallway and looked around, seeing no one. She smelled fresh coffee and her stomach rumbled. Shane must be in the kitchen. She decided to take advantage of the opportunity for a shower and slipped into the bathroom. Splotches of dried blood covered her arms and she could feel more blood flaking off her face. Her hair was matted and stringy. She felt as though she had crawled through a mud puddle the size of a football field.
She closed the bathroom door, put the letter on top of the toilet tank, and undressed, casting a critical eye at the makeshift patch job Shane Rowley had done on her leg last night, pleased to see only a slight discoloration of the Ace bandage at the site of the injury. There was no oozing or seeping of blood.
She knew she should remove the bandage and clean the wound again, but didn’t want to take the time now. She’d do it later.
Tracie eased into the shower, holding her injured leg awkwardly out of the tub in an effort to keep the bandage dry. It was uncomfortable standing like that, hard to keep her balance, but she turned the hot water up as high as she could stand, then showered quickly. She washed her hair with some shampoo she found in a hanging shower caddy and then got out, dripping water all over Shane’s floor while she searched for a towel.
She found a stack of clean bath towels in a cabinet under the sink, dried off, and wrapped one around her body, now clean and pink from the hot shower. She wasn’t looking forward to getting back into her filthy clothes, but didn’t have much choice — her travel bag had been lost in the crash. She decided to delay the inevitable, instead picking the precious envelope up off the toilet tank, opening the bathroom door and limping down the hallway in search of the coffee.
And, she had to admit, Shane Rowley.
The kitchen was empty. So was the living room. A couple of blankets had been thrown carelessly to one side of the couch and a pillow lay on the far end. It was obvious Rowley had slept here, but Tracie’s assumption that her rescuer was anywhere in the apartment had been off the mark. She turned and wandered into the kitchen, finding a pile of neatly folded clothing on the counter. A handwritten note had been placed atop the clothes.
Tracie furrowed her brow and unfolded the note. Good morning, Tracie, it read. I hope you’re feeling a little better. Sorry I’m not here, but I got called in to work. I have to talk to the NTSB investigators about the crash. They’re going to want to talk to you, too, but you looked so exhausted last night that I didn’t have the heart to wake you up before I left. The bureaucrats can wait.
The coffee is fresh, and the water is hot if you’d like to shower. I made the assumption you’ll want clean clothes, so I dug out some of the stuff my ex-wife left behind in her rush to escape her boring husband and the backwoods of Bangor, Maine. You’re probably not exactly the same size, but I’m guessing it will fit okay. I have a feeling you could wear just about anything and look stunning.
Make yourself at home, and if you’re so inclined, I would love to help you figure out your next move when I get back. If you decide to hit the road before I return, good luck to you, and thanks for my most interesting Saturday night ever.
Shane
Tracie finished reading, then rummaged around in the cupboard above the counter until she found a mug and poured herself a cup of coffee. She stood at the counter sipping it as she read the note a second time. I have a feeling you could wear just about anything and look stunning.
She found herself smiling as she thought about the handsome young air traffic controller, and then shook her head at her foolishness. Something explosive was contained in the envelope she held in her hand, something someone was willing to go to great lengths to destroy.
She sat down at Shane Rowley’s tiny kitchen table, thinking about secret communications and international diplomacy and who might have the desire — and more importantly, the ability—to commit murder in the interest of squelching a communique that only a handful of people in the world even knew existed. There seemed to be only one possibility, and if she was right, that possibility was terrifying.
Tracie knew she needed to contact her handler, and she needed to do it before speaking to anyone at the NTSB, or even anyone from the Air Force. A U.S. military officer had brought down that jet last night and had murdered two fellow officers in cold blood, and the only entity Tracie could think of that possessed the reach to accomplish that — and the desire to do so — was the KGB.
She limped back into the living room and flipped on Shane’s television. A local news reporter was doing a live broadcast from Bangor International Airport on last night’s B-52 crash, and in the lower right corner of the screen was a picture of Shane. “Our source tells us this man, Shane Rowley, an air traffic controller living here in Bangor, was on his way to work at the time of the crash and was able to rescue the as-yet unidentified woman. Her condition and whereabouts, as well as the whereabouts of Rowley, are at this time unknown, but our source tells us Mr. Rowley is scheduled to meet with NTSB investigators as well as representatives of the Air Force at nine a.m. at the control tower building here at BIA to assist in the investigation. More on this story as it develops. Jane Finneran, WBGR News 9.”