The Innocents Club. Taylor Smith

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      Chapter Four

      Frank Tucker sat in his windowless office, feet on his desk, reading files that were mildewed and yellow with age. He’d been at it three hours, and his eyes felt scoured. His nose had long since blocked in protest over the barrage of mold spores, and his head ached from lack of sleep and the concentrated effort of reading the musty Russian documents. But his brain was racing.

      He set down the file in his hand. As he stretched, the worn, cloth-covered swivel chair under him shrieked in protest at the shift of his great frame. Hands clasped behind his head, he stared at the random punctures on the ceiling’s gray acoustic tiles, pondering again how it was that he, personally, had been selected to receive this carefully selected record of KGB mischief and misdeeds.

      History is a moth-eaten fabric, full of holes—a vast tapestry of change whose underlying pattern is obscured by official secrecy and necessary lies. A thousand untimely ends and unaccountable triumphs are doomed to remain mysteries forever, their solutions locked away in the memories of shadowy operators who die unconfessed.

      Some clues lie buried in the dusty files of the world’s great clandestine agencies, where the harsh light of public scrutiny never falls. But as each regime gives way to the next, furnaces are lit and burn bags are consumed by flame—incriminating evidence lost forever.

      Most, but not all, Tucker thought, glancing at the tattered files around him.

      Of all the secret agencies, none hid more mysteries than the yellow and gray stone walls of the KGB’s old Moscow headquarters. It was from behind the heavy steel doors of Lubyanka that a message had originated in late June, marked for delivery to one semi-burned-out official of the American CIA. It was that message, delivered late one night, a week earlier, that had sparked Tucker’s quick, clandestine trip to the Russian capital.

      He’d been driving home by a circuitous route along quiet back roads. It was nearly midnight, but day and night tended to lose meaning in his underground office, where not much happened and few people dropped by. Tucker spent his time these days poring over old agency files, responding to Freedom of Information requests from historians, journalists and the generally curious. He culled cover names, sources and other sensitive data from the files, deciding which could safely be declassified and released, and which had to remain closed to protect ongoing operations.

      He had no clock to punch, no strenuous deadlines to meet. He simply worked alone until his eyes grew too bleary to read any longer. Then he returned to his empty house and prayed for sleep. Taking the longest possible route was his way of decompressing, releasing tension like a ball of string unwinding on the road behind him.

      On that particular cool, starlit June night, the suburban back roads of Virginia were deserted when Tucker brought his Ford Explorer to a stop at an intersection in McLean, just a couple of miles from the agency. As he waited for the light to change from red to green, a dark sedan materialized out of nowhere, pulling alongside him. The driver got out and knocked at his passenger-side window.

      Instantly on alert, Tucker sized him up—medium height and build, sandy hair. Fit-looking under his dark wind-breaker. Young—thirty, tops, he decided.

      Tucker pressed a button on his armrest to lower the opposite window. With his other hand, he reached down between the seats and came up with a nine-millimeter surprise. If the stranger was a cop or a fed, Tucker could produce a carry permit for the gun. If this was a hit, the guy might as well know right off Tucker wasn’t going down without a fight.

      The blue eyes in the window widened. “I mean you no harm, Mr. Tucker,” he said. His tongue was tripping on the words in his rush to get them out. The vowels were clipped, the consonants weighted with a heavy Slavic burr.

      “You know my name,” Tucker said. “I should know yours.”

      “It is not important.”

      “That’s a matter of opinion.”

      “I am only a courier.”

      “What can I do for you?”

      “I have a message for you. Please?” The man raised a brown manila envelope in his trembling hand.

      “Who’s it from?”

      “I cannot say. You take it, please?” He started to pass the envelope through the window, but Tucker raised the gun until it was aimed right between the young man’s eyes.

      “Hold it right there,” he said. “I don’t want that.”

      Obviously, this wasn’t the anticipated response. “But…but, it is for you!” the courier sputtered.

      “Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

      “No.”

      “Then you’ll believe me when I say I know a blackmail play when I see one. Where’s the camera?” Tucker glanced around. The road was dark and quiet as death. If there were professional watchers out there, they were good. Still, the whole thing stank to high heaven. If he accepted the envelope, he was damn sure the next visit he got would be from this fellow’s friends, threatening to expose him as a double agent. Then, another wary thought occurred to him. His own side? Could CIA security or the FBI be looking to jam him up for some reason?