The voice came out of the darkness. “Dad’s not coming, David. Dad’s not coming ever again.”
Stone, Finn, Lesya, the rest of the Camel Club and Alex and Annabelle were congregated in the cellar. Standing in the center of the room, Stone made introductions, and then told them the entire story. They sat back, an enraptured audience. Several of them occasionally glanced over at Lesya or Finn.
“My team and I killed Rayfield Solomon,” Stone concluded. “We killed an innocent man.”
“You didn’t know that, Oliver,” Milton protested, a response that Reuben and Caleb echoed.
Stone had noted gratefully that his fellow Camel Club members had taken his frank admission of being a former government assassin attached to the Triple Six Division of the CIA without much surprise.
As Caleb had pointed out, “We knew you weren’t a retired librarian, Oliver. I can sniff those folks out pretty easily.”
Lesya said, “Why do they call you Oliver? Your name is John Carr.”
Milton, Reuben and Caleb all exchanged curious glances. Stone looked at Lesya and said, “Have you kept your real name all these years?” Lesya shook her head. “Well, neither have I. For obvious reasons.”
Stone next looked over at Alex Ford. “Alex, you’re the only lawman here. And since what I’m proposing isn’t exactly lawful, you can bail out now.”
Alex shrugged. “I care about the truth as much as the next person.” He shot Lesya a glance. “But to play devil’s advocate for a minute, how do we know her story is true? We only have her word for it that all this happened. What if Solomon really was a spy? What if she didn’t come over to the American side? I mean, I’ve heard of Rayfield Solomon. And it seems like the gent was guilty as charged.”
All eyes turned to Lesya.
Stone said, “I have my own reasons for believing her, including someone at the CIA who would know.”
“Granted,” Alex said. “But we’re all going to be risking pretty much everything here. So I’d like to know it’s for the right cause. I mean, if she was this terrific spy she must be a pretty damn good liar.”
Stone started to say something else, but Lesya put up a hand and rose. “I will defend myself if you don’t mind. I’m actually surprised the question is only coming up now.” She gripped her walker, flipped it upside down, took off the foam booty and unscrewed the covering on the metal tube. Out came two rolled-up pieces of paper.
“These are the written orders we received from the CIA. We insisted on it because of the magnitude of what we were being asked to do.”
They all read through them. They were each on CIA letterhead, addressed to Lesya and Rayfield Solomon. The first instructed them to carry out the assassination of Yuri Andropov; the second, that of Andropov’s successor, Konstantin Chernenko. Each had Roger Simpson’s signature at the bottom. Everyone looked stunned.
“I take it you didn’t trust Simpson,” Stone said.
“We only trusted each other,” she replied.
“That’s Simpson’s original signature,” Stone said. “I know it well.”
“There’s no countersignature from the president?” Alex said incredulously. “Are you telling me you killed two heads of the Soviet Union on the orders of, what, a low-level case manager?”
“Do you think the president of the United States would actually put his signature down on such an order?” Lesya said with equal incredulity. “Our chain of command was what we worked with. If it came down that chain we had to rely on it being approved from the top. If we couldn’t rely on that, we couldn’t do our jobs.”
“She’s right about that,” Stone said. “Triple Six operated the same way.”
He was examining the letter against the lightbulb. He glanced at Lesya. “There’s a code line next to the watermark.”
She nodded. “That special encoded paper was only available from at least one level above Simpson.”
“Carter Gray?”
“Yes. We knew the orders had really come through Gray. And it was our experience that if they came through Gray, they had come from the top. We didn’t trust Simpson that much. He was a loose cannon.”
“But Gray might have played you for the fall guy too,” Stone pointed out. “The president might not have authorized the killings.”
She shrugged. “There is always that possibility. I am sorry but I did not have the opportunity to go to your White House and ask the president personally if he wanted me to kill two Soviet leaders,” she added in a bristling tone.
“Why didn’t you take this letter to the authorities back then?” Alex said.
“I had no reason to even think of doing so until Rayfield was killed. Even then I didn’t know he’d been murdered by the Americans until much later. Then an attempt was made on my life when Harry was still a child. At that point I knew we had been betrayed. We had to go into hiding. I spent decades finding out the truth, the people responsible. But even so, how could I use this evidence? I was a Russian spy. It was only Rayfield, Simpson and Carter Gray who knew I was a double agent. If I had come in from the cold even with this evidence no one would have believed me. They would have just killed me.” She paused and looked at each of them as they stared back at her in some disbelief. “You think your people would hold back from doing something like that?” She glanced at Stone. “Ask him.”
“I believe you, Lesya,” Stone said. “I know it could have happened exactly that way.”
“Rayfield and I were married in the Soviet Union. I was already carrying Harry. We couldn’t tell anyone we were married, either Soviet or American. We assumed double lives, new names, eventually settled in America. Rayfield spent as much time with us as he could. When Harry was still small Rayfield severed almost all ties with us. Someone was after him. He knew this. His fear was confirmed in Sa˜o Paulo. He was still working for the Americans, his own country. And they killed him.”
“Wasn’t there an investigation?” Alex added.
“What did I care for investigations that went nowhere? I didn’t want the truth covered up. I just wanted revenge.” She took Finn’s hand. “We both did.”
Alex said, “Oliver, can’t we just take this evidence to the authorities now?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Annabelle added.
Stone shook his head. “We don’t know that the CIA and the president at the time didn’t order those assassinations. If they did, others, who are still in the government, may know too.”
“And we go waltzing in with it,” Alex said slowly.
“And are never seen again,” Lesya said. “Look what happened to my poor husband.”
“And making this public now may start World War Three,” Stone said. “With the state of Russia right now and the tarnished global image of the U.S., I doubt the Russians would take kindly to us having killed two of their leaders even if it did lead to the fall of the Soviet Union.”
“So what’s your plan?” Alex asked.
“We have to get to Carter Gray,” he said. “And I think I know how to do it.”
Stone had just started to lay out his plan when Finn’s phone buzzed. He listened, clicked off and looked at the others. His face had gone very pale. “That was Mandy. David didn’t come back from the store.”
Lesya said quietly, “Carter Gray has taken him. As bait.”
Finn stood. “Then it’s over. I’ll trade myself for my son.”
“The only result of that will be both of you will die,” Stone said. “Gray never allows for leaving witnesses if he can help it.”