The Last Spy by Bob Reiss

Author:Bob Reiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61027-391-6
Publisher: Quid Pro, LLC

TEN

Ash stepped from the embassy into the broiling midday sun. The air was choking, like all oxygen had been sucked from it. He was furious. He couldn’t believe he’d been sent from the building. He could feel the cameras on him from across the street, in the itch on his shoulders. The sweat in his shirt.

Volsky had looked blank during his whole story.

And now they’d sent him back outside. To David. After he’d told about his operations. Given the code that Yuri had promised would bring safety. Ash had harbored it for years, hoping he’d never need it, praying he might. The password to his father. To no more lies.

Well, fuck Volsky.

Ash started walking. Come back tomorrow? That was what clerks said when stores closed. What motor vehicle bureau guards said when they cleared the lines at four-thirty each day. Go home and sleep. Give it another try in the morning. Get a good night’s rest.

Horns blared on Sixteenth Street. Ash pushed the dazed feeling away, there was no time for it. David might be coming. Through the crowds and almost by rote he picked up a movement out of sync at the far end of the block, a tourist in jeans and a black T-shirt pushing himself off a newspaper machine. It had been the flick of the head. The glance.

He turned his back on the man and walked south toward K Street. Making it easy. He shoved his hands in his pockets as if deep in thought, but he scanned the block for other followers. Ash passed two printers he recognized, heading back to the Post after lunch. A group of secretaries, giggling, and he heard one say, “It wasn’t a ring, just a bracelet.” The D.C. Gas men tearing up the street didn’t glance at Ash. That didn’t mean they were innocent. An off-duty Diamond cab was double-parked across the street and a Pakistani driver in a yellow cab pulled over and called, “Want a ride?” Ash shook his head. The man drove off. Ash told himself, anything special? Anything different? The Diamond cab’s insignia was broken off at the tip.

DuChamp used to say, “If you’re following a pro, sometimes it’s better to use more than one man and let him spot one. Once he does that, he’ll relax and stop looking for others.”

Ash thought, I’ll make my own rules now.

At K and Sixteenth he checked reflections in the City News machine. Superimposed over the headline “Soviet Union Breaking Up While Gorbachev Vacations at Black Sea,” Blue Jeans was still coming, same distance behind.

Ash crossed K street, turned right, and walked to a small park occupying a square block at K and Connecticut, just green grass and an X-shaped walkway lined with benches where workers ate sandwiches or got tans. At two-thirty only late eaters remained, and a smattering of homeless people who slept on the ground at night and begged money between police roundups. Ash slumped onto a bench and lowered his head in his hands. He wanted to look upset.

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