Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) by Allan Leverone (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

story she’d concocted: she had been sent here by the KGB to retrieve the device because her superiors had changed their minds, deciding they wanted more time to examine it at Lubyanka.

When she finished talking, he said, “Why take the risk of abducting me at gunpoint? Why didn’t you show up at the facility and use your KGB cover story to retrieve the device?”

“Would you have believed me and accepted my story without checking with Lubyanka?”

“Well, no.”

“There is your answer. Your way would not have succeeded. My way will, because your men have no choice but to accept orders from you.”

He shook his head and muttered something else under his breath.

Tracie ignored him, easing her weapon away from Morozov’s skull as the car approached the parking lot. She held it between her knees, pressed into the back of the driver’s seat at an angle that would allow her to fire into his spine should he begin lowering his window to scream to the sentry inside the guard shack.

He didn’t lower his window.

Didn’t do anything suspicious at all.

He nosed his vehicle into the same parking spot Tracie had seen him use yesterday. Apparently it was reserved for the base commander, although there was no sign, or any other indication of that being the case.

He shut down the engine. “What now?”

“Now we do exactly as I told you. We enter the facility and move to your office.”

“You will need to sign in at the guard shack.”

“Bullshit,” Tracie said, her voice steely.

“Excuse me?”

“You think I haven’t had Objekt 825 under surveillance? I saw you escort Comrade Lukashenko inside the facility yesterday without signing him in. You will do the same thing with me.”

He cursed and then said, “Very well.”

“I know what you are doing,” Tracie said. “You are trying to draw the sentry’s attention by delaying, by sitting here with me inside your vehicle until he becomes suspicious. Now, get moving and do not try my patience.”

He reached for the door handle as Tracie eased her weapon into the shoulder holster hidden beneath her blazer. “I still do not believe you would shoot,” he muttered.

“Try me,” she answered, timing the opening of her door to match his. They stepped out of the vehicle at the same time and Tracie moved to a position immediately off his right side as they approached the pathway leading to the front entrance.

“You might be interested to know,” she said, speaking quietly enough not to be overheard inside the guard shack, “that I could access my weapon in plenty of time to eliminate you and then your young sentry, should you elect to do anything stupid. And then I would remove your keys from your right front pocket, climb into your car, and be on my way before anyone else could react. Just in case you were wondering.”

She offered her little soliloquy not just to remind Morozov of the deadly consequences that would follow should he attempt to warn the soldier watching them stroll past that he was in distress. She wanted it to appear to the guard as though the two of them were sharing a pleasant little conversation. If he’d watched them exit the car—and he probably had, who wouldn’t pay attention to his boss as the man arrived at work?—he’d likely had his suspicions aroused simply from seeing Tracie exit the back seat, rather than the front.

Whether he’d become suspicious or not, they passed him without incident. “Good morning, Commander,” the man called through the open door, and Morozov raised a hand in a friendly response, and then they left him to his duties, as cars were steadily entering the lot.

Plenty of people had walked to work as well, and as soldiers, scientists and office staff passed by, a few offered tentative “Good mornings” to the base commander. Most seemed to want to avoid attracting his attention.

That was just fine with Tracie.

They entered the building through the double glass doors, into a stark lobby featuring a concrete floor and mostly bare walls. The monotony of the interior was broken only by the occasional framed photograph—a Russian submarine here, a Soviet dignitary there. The obligatory hammer and sickle flag hung squarely in the middle of the lobby, directly above a massive picture of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

A young receptionist seated behind a large desk looked up and smiled quizzically as Tracie and Morozov approached.

“Good morning, Commander,” she said. “I was not aware we had any visitors scheduled for this morning.” Her smile faltered as she caught a glimpse of the jagged scar running north to south along the right side of the visitor’s skull.

Tracie almost laughed. Almost.

“Car accident,” she said.

“This visit is unscheduled,” Morozov interrupted, talking over her. “Lieutenant Koruskaya has come from Lubyanka.”

The receptionist’s smile disappeared entirely. As legendary as the KGB was in the west, Tracie had discovered the Soviet security organization was even more renowned—and feared—inside Russia and its associated satellite states. Nobody wanted to come to the attention of the KGB if it could possibly be avoided.

“I see,” she said, lowering her head and beginning to write out a visitor’s badge.

“Do you not wish to see my identification?” Tracie said frostily. She didn’t want to rattle this young woman any more than she already had, but thought that any KGB representative who did not insist on following protocol might seem more suspicious than one who did.

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” The receptionist smiled gamely and held out her hand as Tracie produced her forged credentials. There was virtually no chance the forgery would be uncovered by anyone short of a Soviet document expert, which this nervous, intimidated young woman clearly was not.

She glanced at the ID for maybe a half-second before returning it to Tracie, studiously avoiding meeting her eyes. Then she resumed working on the badge,