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

asking. Please, tell me why I’m so lucky, considering I am handcuffed inside an empty building that looks like it’s about to fall down on top of me, while matching bruises swell up on the side of my skull and a man who smells like a dirty sock threatens my life.”

He glowered darkly. “You are lucky because you are worth more to me alive than dead. If that were not the case, I would even now be shoveling dirt on top of your lifeless corpse in the forest outside Sevastopol.”

Tracie held his gaze defiantly but had no retort.

“You had better hope that continues to be the case,” he said. “Now, place your left hand on the table, palm down. Face the table and spread your legs.”

“Couldn’t you at least buy me dinner first?”

“Shut your mouth and do as you are told.”

Head throbbing from two separate blows, Tracie shut her mouth and did as she was told. There weren’t many reasonable alternatives. She inhaled deeply, then blew the breath out and awaited the inevitable.

Slowly he patted her down. His hands lingered on her body in places where she could not possibly be concealing a weapon. She screwed her eyes shut, refusing to give him the satisfaction of voicing a complaint.

He found her Red Army ID first, removing the forgery and chuckling. “Olga Koruskaya, is it?”

“So you do know how to read,” Tracie said. “Congratulations.”

“I think I will just keep this as a reminder of our little dalliance.” He slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit coat and continued.

After what felt like hours, his hands arrived at her left ankle and he removed her backup Beretta. He repeated the process with her right leg and pulled her combat knife out of its sheath, whistling softly. “A lot of weaponry here for a woman who claims just to be lost, Olga.”

“It’s a dangerous world out there.”

“Oh, yes it is,” he agreed.

Tracie could hear the amusement in his voice. She debated trying a kick to his head as he was crouched behind her, but decided against it. With her face pressed to the table she couldn’t be certain exactly where it was, and if she didn’t score a direct hit, she wouldn’t get a second chance. He hadn’t put his gun down, holding it in his right hand as he frisked her.

A single squeeze of the trigger could end her life.

He tossed her gun and knife away and they skittered across the floor. To Tracie, the metallic clatter was the sound of freedom vanishing.

Then he straightened, wheezing from the effort, and said, “Any other weapons I need to know about?”

“Do you really think I would tell you?”

“Do you want me to strip-search you? It would be my pleasure.”

Tracie snorted. “I’ll bet it would. No, I have no other weapons on me. Where else would I hide one?”

“I have a few ideas,” he said tauntingly. “But as tempting as it is to give special attention to those areas of your body, I have other priorities at the moment.”

“What a shame.”

“Do not worry, little girl, there will be plenty of time to continue what I have started later.”

“I can’t wait,” Tracie said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she fought back against the lightning bolt of fear lancing through her.

He turned and began striding toward the entrance to the old factory. “I will return soon,” he called over his shoulder. “Do not go anywhere without me.”

36

 

June 25, 1988

12:15 p.m.

Telephone booth in northern Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

 

It had taken all of Andrei Lukashenko’s willpower to stop beating on the operative once he’d pistol-whipped her the second time. For all his skill at convincing and/or coercing citizens of enemy nations to betray their countries, Andrei was a killer at heart.

And the messier the kill, the better.

Over time he had learned to ignore his homicidal urges, to push them away and bury them deep inside his psyche. He had been fortunate to fall into an occupation that was perfectly suited to his skillset, an occupation that, while admittedly dangerous, paid him well and offered adventure and career satisfaction by the boatload. He wasn’t about to risk everything he’d earned over the last couple of decades by going off the deep end and murdering the young woman who might well end up being his ticket to wealth and status beyond his wildest imagination.

But it had still been hard to stop. He didn’t think he could have pulled it off if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes exactly how badly General Gregorovich wanted to get his hands on the woman with the striking red hair and the jagged scar running down the side of her head.

That picture he’d seen—the one plastered all over Lubyanka as well as KGB stations all over the USSR—had featured an unconscious young woman lying in a hospital bed, looking surprisingly small and young and frail, covered in blood and with half her head shaved.

This woman had cut her hair, changing its style in an obvious effort to alter her appearance, but despite the fact it had begun to grow back on the shaved half, the scar was still plainly visible to anyone paying attention. It was a dead giveaway, in fact, as was her incredible beauty. Andrei was shocked the Americans or the British—he still couldn’t decide which intelligence agency she worked for; that was how impressive her language skills were—had allowed her to return to the field so quickly.

That wasn’t his problem, though, it was theirs. And, of course, it was now hers.

After he’d cuffed her to the table, Andrei had walked immediately to the old factory building’s front entrance and then to his car. He wished he’d been able to secure both of her hands, but with only one pair of cuffs,