The 14th Colony: A Novel (34 page)

He’d truly felt abandoned and alone.

“I almost wish that I’d been like you,” he said. “Living here you were able to avoid the failure.”

“But I never forgot that I was an officer of the KGB. Not once. And I was given a mission by Andropov himself. That meant something to me, Aleksandr.”

As it had to him.

He listened to the patter of water against the hull. Salmon-colored sky off to the east signaled dawn. The wind had not weakened, the water shifting like a sheet of wrinkled foil. Kelly reached into his bag, found a map and flashlight, opening the folds and spreading the paper out on the deck. Zorin saw that it showed the eastern United States, stretching from Maine to Florida.

“We’re here,” Kelly said, pointing the beam at the northeastern tip of Maine. “We’re going to drive west to Bangor, then take Interstate 95 south. Once we get on that superhighway we can make good time. We should be where we need to be by tonight.”

“I assume you don’t plan to tell me any details.”

“How about we discover things together, one step at a time.”

He was in no position to argue, so he stayed silent. Kelly was doing what he wanted so little reason existed to complain. He stared past the deck at the town on shore. A few people moved across the dock near the marina. Headlights passed back and forth on a street that paralleled shore, then turned inland illuminating buildings on either side.

The United States of America.

It had been a long time since he last visited.

“How do we get onto those highways and head south?” he asked. “Stealing a car could be a problem.”

“That’s why we’re going to do this the easy way and rent one. I’m a U.S. citizen with a Canadian driver’s license. It shouldn’t be a problem. Is anyone in America aware of you?”

He shook his head. “Not that I know of. Apparently, Moscow is watching, but they have no idea where we are now.”

He wondered about Anya and how she was doing. He still carried the mobile phone that matched hers and would try and make contact tonight.

“What about the SVR?” Kelly asked. “They obviously knew you were coming to me.”

Which made him wonder again about Belchenko. Had what the archivist said in the black bath been repeated to Moscow? “You’re right. They knew.”

“Then why haven’t they made contact until now?” Kelly asked.

“Because there was no reason, or maybe they simply did not know everything until now.”

“Do they know of Fool’s Mate?”

“It’s possible. Those old records I found, they could find, too. Other archivists could know what I was told. But you said you told no one of your success. No report was ever made. Was that true?”

Kelly nodded.

He still could not believe Belchenko had talked. “They have to be grasping in the dark, hoping you and I will lead them to the cache.”

Another look across the water. Eastport had a somber, eerie quality—inviting, tranquil, yet ominous.

And he wondered.

Was
the SVR here?

Waiting?

*   *   *

Malone slowed the car as he and Cassiopeia entered Eastport, Maine. The town sat on Moose Island, connected to the mainland by a causeway. They’d kept watch from St. Andrews on the sloop as it dipped and rose across the swells, wind nudging it forward, the water giving way as it heeled over slightly to the pressure of its sail. Once it was no longer in sight they’d fled the Canadian side of the bay and driven south, entering the United States on U.S. 1, passing through a border station, then paralleling the St. Croix River even farther south. Cassiopeia had determined from her smartphone that Eastport would give them the farthest point east.

Then they’d caught a break.

The drone, which had kept the sailboat under surveillance, revealed that it was now anchored in the lower reaches of the bay just off Eastport.

All in all they’d made good time and kept up.

Eastport’s central downtown was small and eclectic, its main street lined with squatty wood buildings, some with black ironwork railings and decorative grilles. A Stars and Stripes on an eagle-topped pole blew stiff in the cold wind. The place seemed like one of those perfect weekend escapes, with Portland less than 250 miles south. Edwin Davis had just reported that all was quiet on the boat, its two occupants still aboard.

“How do they get into the country?” Cassiopeia asked.

“Believe it or not, up here this time of year it’s the honor system. Somewhere down near the docks will be a video telephone booth. You’re supposed to stand there so your image can be sent back to inspectors. Then you dial the phone inside and they ask you some questions. If it looks good you’re given permission to enter, if not you’re supposed to go back where you came from. The inspectors rely on the locals to police things for them and report problems.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’ve made that call myself a couple of times in other places. Guarding a 5,500 mile border is tough and expensive. I imagine Kelly knows how loose things are with Canada. After all, he came straight here.”

He eased the car to a stop in front of a bed-and-breakfast. “Zorin knows me, so I have to be scarce. But you’re a different story. We’ll let the drone do the seeing, until we need the personal touch. That’ll be you.”

She gave him a mock salute. “Yes, Captain. I’m ready to serve.”

He smiled. “I’ve missed that attitude.”

“Good thing.”

Her cell phone buzzed.

She answered on speaker.

“They’re leaving the boat in a dinghy,” Edwin Davis said.

“Is everything clear here? If anyone calls anything in, Border Patrol will squelch it.”

“All done. They should have an open-field run. I’m told we do have hidden cameras all over that dock. It’s a busy place in the summer.”

“Have you found out anything about Fool’s Mate or zero amendment?”

“Oh, yes, and you’re not going to like either one.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

W
ASHINGTON
, DC

8:05
A.M.

Stephanie left the White House and rode in a cab back to the Mandarin Oriental where she showered, changed clothes, and grabbed something to eat. She’d managed just a few hours of sleep, her mind reeling from what she’d read in the file Danny had provided.

The Soviet Union had been intently interested in the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. So intent that they’d even provided it with a nickname.

The zero amendment.

What that meant the old memo had not explained, but other memos in the file noted that references to the term appeared repeatedly in Soviet communiqués back in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, all linked directly to Yuri Andropov himself.

Then in 1984 references to the term vanished.

American intelligence paid close attention to when subject matters blossomed and wilted, as both events were significant. Analysts spent whole careers pondering why something started, then equally as much time on why it may have stopped. Linking subject matters was the Holy Grail of intelligence work and here the connection had been provided to Cotton when Vadim Belchenko, in his dying breaths, said
“Fool’s Mate”
and
“zero amendment.”
Stephanie needed to know more about the term
Fool’s Mate,
and knew exactly where to go.

Kristina Cox lived within sight of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the city and diocese of Washington, DC. Most people simply called it the National Cathedral, as most called Kristina, Kris. Her husband, Glenn, had been an Episcopal canon, a towering man with a booming voice. For thirty-one years he’d served the church, eventually rising to bishop of the DC diocese, working from the cathedral. But one sad Sunday he’d dropped dead at the pulpit from a heart attack.

In gratitude for his long service, a small house had been provided to Kris for life, a two-story cottage that sat back from the street, its cream-colored façade dominated by tall windows whose symmetry was marred only by an air-conditioning unit set into the bottom left one. No one had thought it strange that the wife of the Episcopal bishop of DC had also been a spy. In fact, no one had ever even questioned it, her professional and personal lives never mingling. That separation was one of the first things she’d learned from Kris Cox, and only once had Stephanie ever violated that rule.

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.