Taylor Smith - The Innocents Club

“No, Chap,” Mariah said wearily. “We all lost.”

Frank Tucker sat in his windowless office, feet on his desk, reading files that were mildewed and yellow with age. He’d been at it three hours, and his eyes felt scoured. His nose had long since blocked in protest over the barrage of mold spores, and his head ached from lack of sleep and the concentrated effort of reading the musty Russian documents. But his brain was racing.

He set down the file in his hand. As he stretched, the worn, cloth-covered swivel chair under him shrieked in protest at the shift of his great frame. Hands clasped behind his head, he stared at the random punctures on the ceiling’s gray acoustic tiles, pondering again how it was that he, personally, had been selected to receive this carefully selected record of KGB mischief and misdeeds.

History is a moth-eaten fabric, full of holes—a vast tapestry of change whose underlying pattern is obscured by official secrecy and necessary lies. A thousand untimely ends and unaccountable triumphs are doomed to remain mysteries forever, their solutions locked away in the memories of shadowy operators who die unconfessed.

Some clues lie buried in the dusty files of the world’s great clandestine agencies, where the harsh light of public scrutiny never falls. But as each regime gives way to the next, furnaces are lit and burn bags are consumed by flame—incriminating evidence lost forever.

Most, but not all, Tucker thought, glancing at the tattered files around him.

Of all the secret agencies, none hid more mysteries than the yellow and gray stone walls of the KGB’s old Moscow headquarters. It was from behind the heavy steel doors of Lubyanka that a message had originated in late June, marked for delivery to one semi-burned-out official of the American CIA. It was that message, delivered late one night, a week earlier, that had sparked Tucker’s quick, clandestine trip to the Russian capital.

He’d been driving home by a circuitous route along quiet back roads. It was nearly midnight, but day and night tended to lose meaning in his underground office, where not much happened and few people dropped by. Tucker spent his time these days poring over old agency files, responding to Freedom of Information requests from historians, journalists and the generally curious. He culled cover names, sources and other sensitive data from the files, deciding which could safely be declassified and released, and which had to remain closed to protect ongoing operations.

He had no clock to punch, no strenuous deadlines to meet. He simply worked alone until his eyes grew too bleary to read any longer. Then he returned to his empty house and prayed for sleep. Taking the longest possible route was his way of decompressing, releasing tension like a ball of string unwinding on the road behind him.

On that particular cool, starlit June night, the suburban back roads of Virginia were deserted when Tucker brought his Ford Explorer to a stop at an intersection in McLean, just a couple of miles from the agency. As he waited for the light to change from red to green, a dark sedan materialized out of nowhere, pulling alongside him. The driver got out and knocked at his passenger-side window.

Instantly on alert, Tucker sized him up—medium height and build, sandy hair. Fit-looking under his dark wind-breaker. Young—thirty, tops, he decided.

Tucker pressed a button on his armrest to lower the opposite window. With his other hand, he reached down between the seats and came up with a nine-millimeter surprise. If the stranger was a cop or a fed, Tucker could produce a carry permit for the gun. If this was a hit, the guy might as well know right off Tucker wasn’t going down without a fight.

The blue eyes in the window widened. “I mean you no harm, Mr. Tucker,” he said. His tongue was tripping on the words in his rush to get them out. The vowels were clipped, the consonants weighted with a heavy Slavic burr.

“You know my name,” Tucker said. “I should know yours.”

“It is not important.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“I am only a courier.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I have a message for you. Please?” The man raised a brown manila envelope in his trembling hand.

“Who’s it from?”

“I cannot say. You take it, please?” He started to pass the envelope through the window, but Tucker raised the gun until it was aimed right between the young man’s eyes.

“Hold it right there,” he said. “I don’t want that.”

Obviously, this wasn’t the anticipated response. “But…but, it is for you!” the courier sputtered.

“Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll believe me when I say I know a blackmail play when I see one. Where’s the camera?” Tucker glanced around. The road was dark and quiet as death. If there were professional watchers out there, they were good. Still, the whole thing stank to high heaven. If he accepted the envelope, he was damn sure the next visit he got would be from this fellow’s friends, threatening to expose him as a double agent. Then, another wary thought occurred to him. His own side? Could CIA security or the FBI be looking to jam him up for some reason?

“There is no camera. I swear it,” the messenger said fervently.

“Just the same, I don’t want that thing.”

“It is important. I am instructed to give it to no one but you.”

“You know where I work?”

“I am guessing you are employed at the C-I-A in Lan-ge-ley, Virginia,” the stranger said with heavily accented precision. “Am I correct?”

“Deliver it to me there, then.”

“Are you mad? I cannot walk into that place!”

Tucker considered the situation, then nodded toward the intersection. The light had changed from red to green, then back again. “There’s a 7-Eleven store up ahead. Follow me, and you can hand it over inside.” In front of a witness, he thought, and the store security cameras.

The courier shook his head. “If I do that, I am a dead man.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

The other man sniffed, as if such a threat was beneath his dignity to ponder now that he’d recovered from the initial shock of having the gun thrust in his face. “It is not you I am worried about, Mr. Tucker, nor your colleagues. My own people are another matter.”

Tucker frowned. “Your own people? Oh, I see. You want to defect, is that it? Or are you just in sales?”

“I am a patriot!” the other man said indignantly. “It is why I do this. But perhaps my colleagues are mistaken. Perhaps you are not the man they take you for. In which case, Mr. Tucker, I will bid you good-night.”

“Hold it right there.”

Tucker studied him for a moment, as well as the thin envelope. Then, he reached into his pocket, withdrew a penknife, pausing to wipe the handle on his shirtsleeve before handing the knife over by the key ring attached to one end.

“Open this and use the blade to lift the flap. But do it carefully, hear? You’re going to reseal the envelope afterward.”

“I must not open it.”

“Why? Some danger in that?”

“No, but—”

“Do it.”

The young man hesitated, then sighed heavily. Opening the penknife, he inserted the blade under the flap, separating it gingerly, leaving just enough gum in place to allow it to be closed once more.

“Now, spread the edges and show me what’s inside,” Tucker said.

No money. No fat wad of smuggled documents. Just a single sheet of paper that seemed to be covered with handwriting.

Tucker nodded. “Okay. Seal it back up again.”

The other man licked the flap and pressed it shut. “You will take it now?”