Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER FOUR

When we reached my car, I ran the SUV off the road and parked it. There was just room enough to turn my car around.

“Why did you park here?” Kelly asked as I put the suitcase full of paper into the trunk.

“There’s a guard shack up the hill. The agency sent me to do a week of guard detail, so I wanted to check in with the guys before I went up to the house. They were both dead. Shot with an automatic weapon, it looked like.” I didn’t think I’d need it, but I put the MP-5 on the ledge behind the coupe’s seats.

After I got the car turned around and we were headed for the hard road, she said, “Say your name again.”

“Tommy Carmellini. Why were you here?”

“I’m a Russian translator. All the notes are in Russian. That was the only language Goncharov spoke.”

“The suitcase contains his notes?”

“Yes.”

“So you saved them,” I mused, and glanced at her. She didn’t look like the toughest broad on the block, but she had backbone. Of course, one wondered how much. Those dudes with the camouflage and automatic weapons were supposed to kill everyone at the safe house and destroy all the notes. They were the A-team, but whose A-team?

Someone was going to be very peeved when he heard that there were two survivors. I glanced at her, wondered if that thought had occurred to her yet.

We crossed the bridge and took the graveled road across the meadow and airstrip and past the hangar. I felt naked. We had just turned onto the paved road when the first fire truck rounded the curve from Bartow. Fortunately no one in the truck could have seen our car come across the meadow… I hoped. As the truck went by, I slowed and looked back into the low hills. Although the rain was still coming down steadily, the ceiling had lifted enough so that I could see a column of smoke rising above the trees and merging with the clouds.

I eased the clutch out and got the car in motion again. Three cars with small flashing lights on the roofs, driven by volunteer firemen probably, went racing by us and turned into the gravel road, following the fire truck. They roared across the meadow, over the bridge, and disappeared up the road into the forest.

“I missed your last name, Kelly. What did you say it was?”

“Erlanger.”

“So what’s in the notes?”

“Everything. Goncharov summarized or copied verbatim every KGB file he thought significant during the twenty-some years that he was the head archivist, then smuggled the notes out of the building every evening when he went home. The collection filled seven suitcases — a mountain of material. We were just starting to dig into it. I’m guessing, but I would say roughly half the material deals with Soviet internal politics. The foreign intel files I saw were about recruiting and running agents — mercenary and ideological — illegal residents, assassinations, disinformation, payoffs, subversion of foreign regimes, support for indigenous Communists around the globe, running arms… you name it. Think of every dirty thing the KGB did before the collapse of Communism and every dirty thing it did since then, and you got it.”

“How far back do the files go?”

“Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, the purges… Goncharov had access to every file in the archives until he retired four years ago. He was fascinated by the way the party used the NKVD and KGB to eliminate opposition and maintain its hold on power, then lied about it. His superiors or high-placed members of the government periodically ordered files destroyed — getting rid of the evidence — so he copied them before they went to the shredder and furnace.”

We came to the bridge at Bartow and turned right, toward Staunton and the Shenandoah, which was seventy-five miles and seven mountains away. As we accelerated away from the intersection, I glanced in the rearview mirror. A large SUV coming from the north made the turn and fell into trail behind us. It wasn’t the one I had parked when we transferred to this car — it had come from the wrong direction, and besides, I had the keys to that one in my pocket.

“Those bastards,” Kelly Erlanger said hoarsely. “Goncharov and the others didn’t have a chance. They were slaughtered like steers. Murdered. Gunned down.”

I glanced at her. Tears were leaking from her eyes. She was staring straight ahead at nothing at all, remembering…

The SUV was still in trail, back there eight or ten car lengths. I was making fifty-five along the narrow, straight, wet highway, charging up the valley. A plume of road spray rose behind me. I slowed to fifty. The SUV stayed the same distance behind.

Shit!

“His wife defected with him. I don’t know what happened to her.”

“There were two dead women in the kitchen,” I said. “One of them was in her late fifties maybe. Perhaps early sixties, gray hair, sorta plump. The other was maybe thirty, tall.”

“Bronislava Goncharova was the older one. She didn’t speak any English. The tall woman was Natasha Romerstein. She was a translator, too — she and I worked together at the agency. Her parents were Ukranian; she was born in America. She had a two-year-old son.”

We were approaching a Y intersection. The road to the right was the one I had always driven to and from this valley — it was the only one I knew — so I took it. The SUV followed me.

We were still in a narrow valley. The stream meandered back and forth, but the road ran straight for almost a mile, crossing the stream several times on small bridges. Then it went into a long sweeping left turn and continued for another mile. Only at the head of the valley did the road began to wind and twist as it climbed Allegheny Mountain. I checked to see that Kelly had her seat belt on. She didn’t.

“Put the belt on,” I said over the growl of the engine.

She snapped herself in, then looked behind us. The SUV was not falling back. I kept the car at fifty.

“They’ve been behind us since Bartow, keeping their distance,” I told her. “If we can’t outrun them going up the mountain, this is going to get messy. Can you shoot an MP-5?”

“No.”

She pulled a cell phone from her pocket, looked at it, then announced, “No service.”

“Who you gonna call?” I asked.

“Why… the agency! My supervisor.”

“Those guys weren’t Russians. They were Americans. I listened to them talk.”

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. Yeah, the Russians may have hired some Americans to assault that house to kill Goncharov and burn the notes, but how did they know he was there?”

While she was mulling that over, we reached the head of the valley and started climbing the mountain. I downshifted and put the hammer down. Although the road was wet, the Mercedes had good rubber.

The SUV wasn’t as agile in the curves as the coupe. They must have had a hell of a mill under the hood, because even with my maneuvering advantage the big SUV hung in there. I felt my back end start to break loose on one of the horseshoe turns halfway up… I managed to save it and kept the throttle on the floor as the SUV slid into the berm and gravel flew. The driver swiftly recovered without losing much momentum and stayed on my tail.

Right, left, higher and higher on the mountain, working the clutch and stick, I kept the Mercedes as near the adhesion limit as I could. Kelly used both hands to brace herself.

We didn’t pass a single car climbing the mountain. We topped the ridge — blew by the sign that read radar detectors were illegal in Virginia — and went into a long, descending sweeper down the eastern slope. I let the Mercedes accelerate… past sixty, seventy… the distance was opening… then braked hard for a blind right-hand turn.

Too fast… the rear end broke loose and we slid across the road, headed for the berm and the edge. Of course, on that curve the state had not gotten around to putting up a guardrail. The edge was right there, like the Grand Canyon. The added friction of the rocks saved us.

With gravel flying, I threw the car back on the road and missed a shift, almost stalled the engine, then was accelerating hard again.

In the rearview mirror I got a glimpse of the SUV sliding across the berm and going over the edge.

I slammed on the brakes.

“Why are we stopping?” Kelly shouted as the deceleration forces threw her against her shoulder belt.

“They went off the road, over the edge,” I told her as the Benz slid to a halt and I slammed it into reverse. “This is our chance to find out who those dudes are and who the hell they’re working for.”

I backed up at full throttle, the engine howling, then braked to a stop on the berm where they went over. I popped the shifter into neutral and jammed the parking brake on, then bailed out with Fred’s automatic in my right hand.

No one was moving in the SUV, which was impaled on a large tree trunk thirty feet down the slope. It had slammed into the trunk of the tree just behind the driver’s door, and the tree had arrested it. The glass was gone; the vehicle was badly twisted from impact. I could see two heads — the driver’s and passenger’s — and they weren’t moving.

I slid down the mud and gravel of the slope, struggling to keep my feet under me, until I reached the wreck.

Three men were in the vehicle. The passenger and the man on the back seat were dressed in camo pants and shirts, while the man behind the wheel was wearing jeans and a pullover. At first glance, it looked as if the air bags had saved their asses. Not the guy in back, however. His neck was obviously broken. His corpse was partially on the floor, partially on the seat.

I felt the passenger’s carotid artery. He was still alive. And out cold. He had a snub-nose .38 in a holster on his ankle and an MP-5 between his legs. A two-way radio lay at his feet. One of his legs was broken — apparently he fractured it on the weapon during the crash.

I reached across and felt the driver’s artery. No pulse.

I was struggling to get the passenger door open when I heard the Mercedes engine wind up. I started up the muddy slope, took two steps, and quit. Standing there in the rain, ankle deep in mud, leaves, and roadside trash, I listened to my Mercedes going down the mountain until the sound completely faded.

What a hell of a day this turned out to be.

I hadn’t been smart enough to pull the keys from the ignition, so ol’ Kelly what’s-her-name made like a jackrabbit, leaving me with two corpses and a comatose killer ready for intensive care. It was enough to piss off the pope.

A common, coarse word seemed to fit the situation, so I said it aloud, then repeated it because I liked the sound of it.