She retrieved the Saturday-morning paper at the end of a short walk leading to the front door. A shoulder-high boxwood fence protected a small garden from the street. She’d called from the hotel and knew that Kris was waiting. Her knocks were answered almost immediately, Kris greeting her with a hug in a terry-cloth robe. She hadn’t visited her old friend in many months, though they occasionally talked on the phone. Kris had always been thin and trim and matronly, with short silver hair and bright blue eyes. She was approaching eighty, and for nearly fifty years worked for the CIA, first as an analyst but retiring as a deputy director. When the Magellan Billet was created it had been Kris who helped formulate its guidelines, and it had been Kris who’d encouraged that the unit be independent of DC influences. Stephanie had worked her whole career to maintain that mantra but, in the end, it had been those DC influences that had led to its destruction.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Kris said. “I’d offer you coffee, but I know you hate it, and you didn’t come to drink.”
“No, I didn’t.”
They sat in the kitchen and she reported everything that had happened over the past few days ending with, “I need to know about the words Fool’s Mate.”
Neither of them dwelled on the fact that she’d been fired. It was the way of the political world they both knew, and nobody understood those ways better than Kris. No nonsense. To the point. Get the job done. Three things she respected about this woman immensely, and three things she’d practiced every day as head of the Magellan Billet. Unfortunately, combined with those pesky DC influences, those three things had also gotten her fired.
“I remember Fool’s Mate. It was a code name that we thought was associated with a rogue Soviet intelligence operation, one Andropov may have been personally involved with.”
Perhaps the last of the old communists, Yuri Andropov may have been the most dangerous of all Soviets. Smart, cagey, he rarely made a false move. Definitely a throwback to the time of Lenin, Andropov had been appalled by the corruption during Brezhnev’s regime. Stephanie recalled the investigations and arrests that happened after Andropov became general secretary. Many of Brezhnev’s former inner circle had faced execution.
“Andropov was no friend of ours,” Kris said. “He always tried to couch himself as a reformer, but he was a hard-liner. Luckily, he served as general secretary for only a short time and was really sick for most of that.”
She’d thought this would be the right place to come, more so than waiting for Osin or Danny or Edwin to brief her further. That was why she’d left the White House early, deciding that knowing the answers to the questions before she asked them might prove beneficial.
“It’s 1983,” Kris said. “As you know, Reagan’s popularity was skyrocketing. He’d dodged an assassin’s bullet and was challenging the Soviet Union on every front. Eastern Europe was imploding, Poland exploding. The Iron Curtain had begun to fall. Brezhnev dies in November 1982 and Andropov takes over. Nobody thought that would be good. He’d crushed the Hungarian Revolt in ’56 and the Prague Spring in ’68. As KGB head he suppressed dissidents, then advocated invading Afghanistan. He was a real badass. The Soviet Union was not going to change under him, and the Cold War definitely heated up when he became general secretary. So we redoubled our efforts and heightened intelligence operations. I spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill lobbying Congress for more money. Then, one day, Fool’s Mate came across my desk.”
“Is what Osin told me true? Were there Soviet weapons repositories in this country?”
“Nothing we could ever verify. But those spetsnaz units were good. The KGB was good. And homeland security back then was nothing like today. You could get things in.”
She listened as Kris explained more about Andropov. “He hated Reagan, and Reagan had a hard time dealing with Andropov. We had an asset back then inside the Kremlin. A good one. Stuff you could take to the bank. He told us that Andropov was readying something. If Eastern Europe did not settle down, especially Poland, Andropov planned to make sure there would not be a second Reagan term. If the truth be known, the old communist was afraid of that actor.”
She recalled the tension within the State Department when it was announced Andropov had become general secretary. George Shultz had not liked the prospect, but had dealt with the situation. Nothing changed with Forward Pass. Everything kept moving ahead. John Paul revisited Poland in June 1983 in a triumphant seven-day extravaganza that reenergized every dissident. She’d helped coordinate the timing of that visit as a way to openly challenge Andropov’s reach.
“The threat of Reagan not serving a second term didn’t raise alarm bells?” she asked.
“The Soviets back then threatened stuff like that all the time. Nobody thought the USSR wanted a war with us. And that’s what it would have been, if they’d done anything. No way they could win that fight.”
Maybe so, but today a threat like that would be taken much more seriously.
And with good reason.
“When you called earlier and told me about Fool’s Mate, I had to think back long and hard. We heard that four agents were sent on a special mission. I remember it because each was code-named with a chess move. The last part of that mission was called Fool’s Mate. But we never learned much about any of it. Just snippets here and there, with no substance. Andropov died in February 1984 and nothing ever came up about it again. We figured if there was anything to worry about, it died with him.”
“It may not have,” she said.
Kris had carried the highest security clearance that anyone within the government could hold, so Stephanie felt safe discussing this with her. But what did it matter? Her own security clearance had ended hours ago.
“We all thought,” Kris said, “that Andropov, if he’d lived, planned on stopping reforms. He would also have cracked down on Eastern Europe. Everything would have played out differently. But then he gets sick and dies. Problem solved. A year later we had Gorbachev, who was a pussycat, and the rest is history.”
“Reagan knew exactly how to handle him.”
“That he did. But I’m real concerned about this current split within the Russian government you told me about. The Daniels people knew how to deal with things like that. We have no idea how the new guys will do. Transition time is always tricky. I know you realize, but I hope the Fox people realize, too, that the new Russians play for keeps.”
“What’s your best guess here?”
Kris seemed to consider that question carefully, especially with what she’d told her about the 20th Amendment.
“Inauguration time is only a matter of hours away,” Kris said. “I do recall the Soviet fascination with presidential succession. It is a mess, no question. You would think after 9/11 Congress would be more vigilant, but nothing has changed. Of course, logic here says that Zorin wants to attack the inauguration. It certainly looks that way. But first he has to find an over-twenty-five-year-old suitcase nuke and hope it still works. Then, if it does, those things have to be positioned really close to the target. It’s a nuke, but a small one. Dogs, radiation detectors, EM monitors, you name it, they’ve got it in DC right now, watching everything. The odds of his getting close enough to take everyone out is virtually impossible.”
“Yet Zorin isn’t stopping.”
Kris sat back in her chair. “I know. That bothers me, also.”
“So what is it he knows that we don’t?”
Kris shrugged. “Impossible to say, but it must be good.”
Bell chimes disturbed their solitude. Kris’s cell phone. She reached for the unit lying on the table. “I’ve been expecting this call.”
“You want me to wait in another room?”
“Not at all. It concerns you.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Luke drove northwest out of DC into Maryland. Fritz Strobl’s car had been returned by the Secret Service and he’d been provided with a nondescript, government-issued sedan. His Mustang still sat in the Virginia junkyard, where it mos
t likely would remain since he hadn’t carried much insurance. Just the minimum, since he never anticipated that it might one day be involved in a car fight. The repair bills to restore it would be in the thousands, far more than he could afford to sink into a nearly fifty-year-old vehicle. Too bad. It was great while it lasted.
He’d slept a few hours and even had breakfast. Stephanie had called just after 7:00 A.M. and told him what she wanted him to do, providing a Germantown, Maryland, address for Lawrence Begyn, the current president general of the Society of Cincinnati.
“We need to know about the 14th Colony,” Stephanie had said to him. “All the details with no bullshit. You have my permission to be your most charming, direct self.”
He’d smiled at that last part. Normally, she would demand diplomacy. Not here, though. He’d sensed that things were accelerating and she’d told him Cotton and Cassiopeia were back in the United States, north at the Canadian border, dealing with Zorin. Stephanie still carried Anya’s cell phone, which was activated, but had yet to ring. She’d assured him that they were ready if and when it ever did.
Of that he had no doubt.
Stephanie Nelle never entered a fight without being prepared. And getting fired yesterday had not seemed to slow her down. But having the current president of the United States in your corner, if only for a few hours more, had to count for something.
He found the address outside of Germantown in a tree-shrouded suburb, amid old spacious houses—Begyn’s a large, wood-sided, white rectangle atop a small knob. The area reminded him of where Charon’s house stood in Virginia, a similar wrought-iron gate denoting an entrance to a graveled drive. He turned in and followed the path through bare trees up to the house.
Two things immediately grabbed his attention.
A car parked in the woods just where the drive ended and the splintered front door, half opened.
He wheeled to a stop, gripped his Beretta, then hustled to the entrance, stopping short of entering, listening for any sound but hearing nothing. A glance inside revealed an entrance hall dotted with antique furniture. What was it about these Cincinnati people? They all seemed loaded. First Charon’s mansion, now Begyn’s.
He slipped inside and kept to the exterior wall, searching the sunlit interior for any sign of trouble. He glanced into other rooms and immediately spotted overturned furniture, slashed upholstery, armchairs gutted, and books off their shelves lying in a jumble on the floor. Bureaus were ransacked, drawers ripped out, the contents dumped and scattered about as though an earthquake had hit. Somebody had definitely been looking for something.