Trinity Factor, page 29
Jada nodded.
“You called yourselves the Bradleys?”
Again she nodded.
Lovelace leaned forward. “Just one question for you, young lady,” he said, his voice eager. “Why in Christ’s name did you tear a piece out of the bed sheet back in Albuquerque?”
Jada tried to think. Bed sheet? And then she remembered, and she had to smile despite herself. “I made a lunch for Alek … some sandwiches. I had them wrapped in waxed paper, but he wanted them wrapped in cloth.”
Lovelace slapped his right hand against his leg, and laughed long and hard. “Goddamn, you don’t know how that has bothered me. Never could figure it out.” He shook his head. “Goddamn. It makes sense.”
“But you knew he was coming through Mockingbird Gap?” Mahoney asked.
Lovelace looked sharply at him. “That’s not why you came here, Mahoney. Let’s cut the bullshit. You want to ask me about the Russian fuse aboard that Nazi sub. You want to know why Hoover had a bug up his ass and wouldn’t cooperate.”
Mahoney nodded. He liked Lovelace, and wished he had known him during the war.
Lovelace took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, then reached in the side pocket of his sweater and took out a rumpled pack of Lucky Strikes. He looked over his shoulder toward the house before he lit one. “When my wife was alive she wouldn’t let me smoke. But since she died I’ve taken up the habit again. The nurse doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, and if I’m careful I can usually sneak a half dozen smokes a day.”
When he had his cigarette lit, he inhaled deeply, a pleasured look on his face.
“I’ve been waiting for someone to show up,” Lovelace said. “I knew someone would come knocking at my door sooner or later.”
Jada was sitting on the edge of her chair, her eyes bright.
“Your little operation was nothing more than a double cross …” Lovelace started to say, when a bright red hole appeared in his forehead, and he was flung backward off his lawn chair.
Before Mahoney could react, Jada jerked forward, doubling over, the back of her head erupting in a mass of blood and bone.
“No,” he shouted, rolling left off his chair as he pulled his .38 out of its shoulder holster. In the next instant something incredibly strong slammed into his side, literally lifting him off the patio blocks, and his vision began to blur.
He was dimly aware of a woman screaming, and he managed to turn his head enough to see Lovelace’s nurse, a buxom woman, jerk backward off her feet, and fall through a patio window, two large red stains on the front of her white uniform.
For a few moments he was able to focus on the nurse’s feet and legs, but then his consciousness was reduced to nothing more than the feel of the rough stone against his cheek. He was drifting for a time … his mind a hodgepodge of Jada and Lovelace, of Brezhnev and FDR smoking a cigarette in a holder, and of a mushroom cloud rising over a city.
The Soviet operation against the atomic bomb project had been only one factor in a much larger operation. The Trinity factor. But who was running the operation? And why? What were they trying to accomplish?
He was vaguely aware of a car engine revving up and then tires squealing on pavement, and then he could feel his heart beating against his chest and he began to understand that if he lay here he would bleed to death.
Somehow he managed to turn his head, and he could see Jada’s lifeless body curled up in a fetal position. Across from her Lovelace’s body lay spread-eagled on the lawn.
They were all dead. They had been murdered. But why, Mahoney silently screamed as he tried without success to sit up. By whom?
And then his mind locked on to the obvious. Whatever had happened thirty-five years ago was still going on. Whatever collusion there had been between the American and Soviet governments in 1945 was still intact today.
Was still intact. It was monstrous.
He pulled his right leg up and then pushed out, forcing his body a few inches forward.
A telephone. He would have to contact the Company. Tell them what he had learned. What he suspected.
His side was on fire, and a deep ache spread throughout his body as he continued to push himself toward the house while holding his arm against the wound.
If such an operation were still going on, however, who could he trust? Surely the CIA was involved. It had to be. And who else? The government? Business?
It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the nurse’s body, and another ten to get past it into the house, where he spotted the telephone sitting on a low coffee table.
The living room seemed dark, and yet he could see that a table lamp was lit in the corner, and he began to get frightened that he would not make it.
He wanted nothing more now than to get home and talk with his wife Marge. He had a lot to tell her, including the fact that for a time he had found himself falling in love with Jada, who had been an extraordinary woman. A very extraordinary woman, indeed.
“Operator,” a voice was saying to him, and he knew that he had the phone to his ear.
“Operator,” the woman’s voice repeated.
“Operator?” Mahoney mumbled.
“May I have your call, please?” the woman said.
“My call,” Mahoney stumbled over the words, but then it was clear to him what he had to do, and he managed to give the woman the duty officer’s number at Langley, and a few seconds later it was ringing.
The Trinity factor. That had been in 1945. What else was there? What was happening right now?
“Night desk,” a man’s voice was saying.
Mahoney knew the words to say, but he was having difficulty in speaking. Christ.
“Night desk,” the man’s voice came sharper.
“This … is … a triple six,” Mahoney said.
“Who the hell is this?” the man snapped. It was a familiar voice.
“Mahoney …”
“Wallace?” the man said. “Where are you? What’s the matter?”
Then he had it. “Switt?”
“This is Switt. Are you in trouble, Wallace?”
He had worked with Switt in Moscow what seemed like a century ago. He was a man to be trusted. “Listen, Darrel,” Mahoney forced himself to speak clearly. “I’m wounded. San Antonio, Texas. Seven-oh-three Craig Avenue.”
“I’ll get someone to you …” Switt started to say, but Mahoney cut him off.
“Listen, Darrel … listen. Erase the tape. Don’t tell anyone from the Company. No one. This is important. Get me help, and then get down here yourself. This is important.”
Mahoney could feel himself slipping away again, and he tried to concentrate on what Switt was saying to him, but he could not. He wanted Marge, and he wanted Switt to be here. He had so much to tell them both. So much, but he did not know if there was enough time. He worried that they were already too late. Thirty-five years too late.
Better thy heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend …
—John Donne
“Trinity,” Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jr., breathed the single word. “We’ll call it Trinity.”
NOVELS BY SEAN FLANNERY
The Kremlin Conspiracy
Eagles Fly
The Trinity Factor
The Hollow Men
Broken Idols
False Prophets
Gulag
Moscow Crossing
The Zebra Network
Crossed Swords
Counterstrike
Moving Targets
Winner Take All+
Kilo Option+
Achilles’ Heel+
WRITING AS DAVID HAGBERG
Twister
The Capsule
Last Come the Children
Heartland
Without Honor*
Countdown*
Crossfire*
Critical Mass*
Desert Fire
High Flight*
Assassin*
White House*
Joshua’s Hammer*
Eden’s Gate+
(*Kirk McGarvey adventures)
(+Bill Lane adventures)
“Flannery runs in the same fast, high-tech track as Clancy and his gung-ho colleagues, with lots of war games, fancy weapons, and much male bonding.”
—New York Daily News
“Clancy and Cussler need to look over their shoulders.”
—Library Journal
“ … A maven of mach speed mayhem, intricately moves the pieces around his global chessboard, until many bodies, plane crashes, and a running sea battle later.”
—Booklist
“Flannery’s characters are believable, both good and bad guys. The plot is well designed, the dialogue crisp, and the pacing speedy.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Sean Flannery’s novel serves the oldest and most primal of literature’s purposes—to divert us, to transport us, and to allow us to dream.”
—The Washington Post
“Sean Flannery is good at what he does—very good.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Nonstop action on land, sea, and air as the CIA, FBI, KGB, and Soviet Military Intelligence pool wits and resources to apprehend a deadly sociopath.”
—Publishers Weekly on Counterstrike
“High Flight ends the twentieth century with a bang. Russia verses Japan, with the U.S. caught in the middle. Perhaps it’s time. There’s a lot of techno and a lot of thrills in High Flight. Better strap in and hang on when you go for this ride.”
—Stephen Coonts on High Flight
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE TRINITY FACTOR
Copyright © 1981 by David Hagberg
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781466815100
First eBook Edition : March 2012
First Forge edition: August 2001
Sean Flannery, Trinity Factor
