The Kobra Manifesto

Chapter Nine: SIREN

A series of soft thuds.

I woke.

The airframe was settling, and plastic creaked, 'Was that the undercarriage?'

'Yes,' Ferris said.

The sun was high in the windows opposite my berths Los Angeles?'

'Yes.'

I checked my watch. 06:00 hours.

Nine hours' sleep.

'What's the local time?'

'Fourteen hundred.'

We bounced twice.

'Do we change planes?'

'Yes.'

I went along to the lav.

A roaring began outside and there was a lot of deceleration.

'Have you altered your watch?' Ferris asked when I went back.

'Not yet'

There'd be extensive jet lag to take up when we reached the east coast and I wanted to know my own metabolic time for a while in case there was a chance to adjust.

'They're having a bad day,' Ferris said.

'What?'

I still had some buzzing in the ears, 'Look at that lot.'

The smog was mud-brown, hazing out the tops of the buildings, and we caught the Euston Station smell of it as we left the aircraft.

'How long have we got?'

'Ninety minutes.'

'Call or take-off?'

'Take-off.'

We went along to the men's room and had a wash and linen Ferris disappeared for a while and came back to our rdv in the coffee-shop and sat down on the next stool and ordered buttermilk.

'They've still got the road up,' he told me, I supposed he meant in Whitehall.

'Taking their time.'

I didn't see why he'd decided to get into signals with London from Los Angeles when he hadn't done so in Taipei.

I certainly couldn't ask him now.

'How's Charlie?'

Not his correct name. Correct name was Diego.

'Trouble with his dentist. Suing him.'

He crouched over his buttermilk, using a straw.

Diego was our man in downtown Hollywood and that was the only way Ferris could have signalled London in the limited time he'd been away: by phoning Diego and getting him to crank up the short-wave radio. That was partly what he was for. I assumed Ferris had just been reporting our travel pattern but it seemed a bit superfluous.

'How the hell,' I asked him, 'did our chum over there manage to screw the price of first-class berths out of those poxy old tarts in Accounts?'

'He looks after people.'

His straw made a sudden sucking noise as he got to the bottom.

On our way back to the departure gate we had three or four minutes in an open space and he said:

'Your interview in Washington is arranged to take place in the White House. The contact's name is Robert W. Finberg and he's an adviser to the US Secretary of Defence. You'll be put through a routine screening by the EPS at the British Embassy some time before noon tomorrow, all going well Questions?'

'EPS?'

'Executive Protection Service. They provide security for the White House and the diplomatic missions in Washington The actual screening won't take long because there's only the question of identity to be taken care of: the purpose of your visit and the nature of the interview are both subject to very strict hush.'

He was watching the passengers coming across to the gate and so was I. So far, three of them had been on the Pacific flight with us, two of them in the coach class and one in the first.

'I'll brief you first thing in the morning but it might be as well to get one fact memorized straight away: at this point only one man in the whole of the United States has any knowledge of our mission to counter the Kobra operation, and only one man knows that you and I have arrived in the country. That man is of course Robert W. Finberg. Questions?'

There wasn't a lot of time: a Pan Am official was taking up his station at the departure gate. To be noted in passing was a man in a white shirt standing next to him and using a walkie-talkie and looking everywhere except at the passengers. He didn't look like a boarding inspector and I would put Mm down tentatively as FBI.

'Did Finberg come to us, or did we go to him?'

'I don't know that,' Ferris said.

'These people we've got surveying Satynovich Zade: do they know we're here?'

'No. They won't be told.'

'Not when I take over?'

'No. We're going to put out disinformation that they've lost their objective.'

'They don't know about the interview?'

'No. They won't be told. The minute you take over the surveillance on Zade they'll start for the airport. Anything you're unhappy about?'

'Not so far.'

'Fair enough.' He turned his sandy head and gazed at me for a moment like an owl. 'You look in good form.'

'The shave helped.'

'I told London you were fit for operations.'

'I should bloody well hope so.'

'And I told them you've no intention of coming in.'

'Not really.'

It was raining when we got into Dulles International Airport.

My watch read eleven in the morning Taiwan time and in Washington it was ten at night but I'd slept the whole way across the Pacific and some of the way across the States so the jet lag was minimal.

By the time we'd gone aboard in Los Angeles I'd noted a total of four people who were in transit from Taiwan and we stayed in the baggage claim area and saw them out of the building before we went over to Avis and picked up a dark grey Mustang. Ferris was touchy about checking the transit passengers: he said there was absolutely no chance of any kind of surveillance in this travel phase and I said there'd been absolutely no chance of the opposition getting on to me so early in Phnom Penh but they'd hit me with a wall just the same.

It rained all night Some of the time I slept again but Ferris used the phone in the next room at midnight and three a.m., initiating the first call and receiving the second: I could hear the bell.

I called him at eight o'clock and the line opened at once.

'Yes?'

'All in order?'

'Perfectly.'

'Thank Christ for that,' I said and hung up.

I'd been worrying more than I'd realized: three people were more than enough to hold down one objective but the opposition had been fighting all along the line and what had happened in Milan and Geneva and Phnom Penh could happen in New York. The three a.m. call to Ferris must have been from one of them, reporting progress, and they must have Zade still in their sights or Ferris would have got me out of bed for a crisis briefing.

But he'd picked up the phone so fast, just now.

Maybe he'd been close to it Discount.

The nerves always start jumping a bit at the start of a new phase and this one was ultra sensitive because the mission now hung on a fine thread. If they lost Zade in New York it would finish us: Ferris had said this objective was the last hope. Despite this I was briefed to delay travel in Washington for an interview with the only man in the whole country who could help us.

The rain had stopped by half-past eight and when I went out at nine the sky was clearing for spring sunshine.

I took an hour, re-kitting. The bush jacket I'd bought in Phnom Penh wasn't the right image for a White House meeting and in any case it was streaked with wall plaster and one shoulder was blackened. I was back in the hotel soon after ten and Ferris was waiting for me by the time I'd changed.

'Briefing,' he said.

'I'm ready.'

'You're due at the British Embassy at 11:00 hours and the screening will take some fifteen minutes. You'll use your present cover and if they try to shake you on it I want you to phone me at this hotel. All they need to know is who you are, not what you're doing in Washington. Finberg has told them he wants to interview you and that's enough for them. The Executive Protection Service does exactly what it says: it protects executives in the White House, and all they need to know is that you're not going to assassinate Finberg at the meeting — or anyone else. Questions?'

'Finberg knows I'm using a cover?'

'He knows you are operating for a London shadow agency under the aegis of the UK government; he therefore realizes you're not a bona fide journalist. In talking to him you don't have to protect the cover image unless someone else is present — then you protect it.'

I went across to the door of the room and stood there, 'What happens if the EPS tries shaking me?'

'You phone me here and I'll ask Finberg to come to the British Embassy.' He paused.

I opened the door with a jerk.

Housemaids with a trolley of linen at the end of the passage.

I shut the door.

'At the embassy,' Ferris went on, 'we'd open up what would amount to a hot line connection by radio, Finberg to Control. But that's last ditch. Don't let them shake you. More questions?'

'No.'

'Finally, you'll be met at the West Executive Entrance by a security escort and a man named George Ryan Jr. He'll take you to the meeting place, and by the way, he's in the Company.'

'What does he know?'

'Only that you're operating as a British agent. Nothing else.'

I went over to the window.

'How deep is the CIA in this?'

'The CIA isn't in it at all. He happens to be a member, but be knows absolutely nothing about Kobra or our mission. He's a courtesy escort, more or less — service to service.'

The trees were in early leaf below the window but there were still enough gaps between them to take in extreme angles and expose normal cover.

'Ferris,' I said, 'how important is this bloody meeting?'

He gave a soft laugh.

'Not your field, is it? Never mind.'

'I want to get to New York and take over Zade.'

'Don't worry,' he said. They'll hold him.'

The dark grey Mustang looked clean but total security wasn't possible because this was the third floor of the hotel and some of the downward extreme angles were critical or even useless: I wouldn't be able to see anyone sitting in a parked car within a thirty-degree vector from this viewpoint because the top overlapped the scuttle. But they could be checked when it went down there. The rest of the street looked secure.

'But since you asked,' Ferris said in rather precise tones, 'let me say that Robert Finberg probably knows the exact target of the Kobra operation.'

I swung round.

'Oh does he?'

'Probably.'

That could make quite a difference. Satynovich Zade could lead me all over New York for days and I could finish up blown or lost or dead but if Finberg could tell me what the target was I could drop Zade and go straight into the penetration phase with Ferris working out the access. I could be there at the Kobra rendezvous in time to set up support systems, audio surveillance, radio monitoring, the whole bazaar.

So at this moment the mission didn't depend exclusively on our holding down Zade: it depended also on what Finberg could tell me. I suppose I should have known. Egerton wouldn't keep me hanging around the White House if it wasn't fully urgent.

Ferris was checking his watch.

'How's the car?'

'It looks clean.'

'We'd better synchronize.'

'What's local?'

'Ten thirty-nine. Leave for the embassy in six minutes.'

I turned the knob and reset.

'Ready when you are.'

He picked up his mackintosh.

'Want to recap anything?'

'No, I've got it.'

Ferris saw me through the clearance at the embassy and then left for the hotel in a cab, leaving the Mustang outside. He didn't want to stay away from the base phone too long because New York could come through at any time, The EPS people didn't try to shake me on my cover but they were top professionals and some of their questions were throw-aways, casting for slips, and I couldn't relax.

There was a solid front at the West Executive Entrance to the White House and I cut the engine and got out and a man came forward and said he was George Ryan.

We shook hands.

'It won't take a moment, Mr Wexford.'

Medium height, crew cut, pleasant blue eyes and freckles, the knife-edge of his right hand calloused by practice. He watched the pass being stamped and signed, a fixed half-smile on his face to let me know that this was all a ridiculous formality and that if it was up to him he'd usher me through this gate without any hesitation.

I didn't think he would.

'We've been wondering if it would ever end, Mr Wexford. Then the clouds rolled away this morning and now look at it. How was it in London?'

'Bright intervals.'

Another security agent signed his name on the pass and gave it to Ryan, who checked the stamping and signatures and handed it to me with a gesture of formality, 'Keep it to show your grandchildren, huh?'

I could hear the gate guard using the radio to the west lobby door as I went back to the Mustang and got in. Ryan came with me and talked most of the time as we took West Executive Avenue to the parking lot near the White House.

'I was in London a couple of months ago, took my wife along this time — she'd never been there before. First thing we took in was the Horse Guards' — er — '

'Parade?'

'Sure, parade. We really flipped over that, you know? Fantastic precision.'

'I think your majorettes are sexier.'

He gave a big laugh and we got out and began walking.

'What do you think about our security here, Mr Wexford?'

'It looks like a hundred per cent. Are these chaps all EPS?'

'Some of them. The others are PPD.'

'I don't think I know that one.'

'Huh? Oh, there's the Presidential Protective Division.'

I counted sixteen agents within sight of the west lobby entrance.

'Are there normally this many?'

'Well yes.' He invited me inside. 'If you've read our history, you'll know the office is vulnerable.'

He asked me to show my pass to the sergeant at the door and took me deeper into the building, talking about London again and nodding sometimes to one of the agents posted in the cavernous 'hallways. There were footsteps behind us at every stage of the journey but he never looked round.

'In here,' he said and opened a plain white-panelled door.

Dark blue carpet, polished mahogany, framed and coloured photographs of various monuments. The acoustics were dead in here, in contrast with the high-ceilinged corridors and marble floors outside.

Assume bugs.

Ryan checked his watch.

'Mr Finberg should be along in just a few minutes, so why don't we sit down while we talk a little? The meeting will take place in the adjoining room: I'll show you in there and introduce you.' He took a chair and tugged at the creases in his slacks and sat down and crossed one knee over the other. 'It's a pleasure to meet somebody from — uh — a British agency.' He gave a sudden white smile. 'How's business?'

'Catch-as-catch-can. How's yours?'

Another big laugh.

'We keep busy, though we don't get much help, that's for sure. Guess you read the newspapers.'

'Not often.'

'You know what bugs me right now? These goddamn KGB people crawling all over the Capitol! Guess you've read about that.'

'No.'

A very faint whining began and I couldn't place it.

The air-conditioning was going but the sound came from somewhere near the window. Or against the window.

That place is a safe house for Moscow, no less,' said Ryan, not smiling any more. 'Hoover made a fuss in 1960 putting the Capitol off-limits for the FBI's counter-intelligence personnel, can you imagine that?'

It was a siren, that was all. Emergency vehicle, 'I suppose he had his reasons.'

He gave a brief snort. 'Who knows what goes on at the top, Mr Wexford? Who knows what reasons people have? Obviously I don't suggest Hoover wasn't a hundred per cent loyal to his office and his country that'd be ridiculous. But frankly I can't think of any useful reason why Capitol Hill should be swarming with KGB men at the express invitation of the FBI.' He turned his head as he heard the siren, then turned back. 'The thing is, it's created an invisible power bloc: a nucleus of thirty or forty KGB officers who deal with the Congress staff on a daily footing. Now if you take this situation to its logical-'

He broke off.

The siren was close, howling past the front of the building. I didn't see the vehicle but a rectangular blob of white passed across the ceiling as the reflection came through the window. The siren was dying away but not into the distance: I thought the vehicle had pulled up near the West Wing.

It wouldn't be police. They had their own police here and they wouldn't use their sirens, 'Is that a fire engine?'

'Huh? No.'

Ryan got up and looked out of the window. In a moment he turned back with a slight shrug. 'Anyway, why should I bore you with my favourite bete noire! I lose a dozen friends a day!' His laugh seemed slightly forced. 'Have you met Bob Finberg before, Mr Wexford?'

'No.'

'You'll like him — he's a really great guy, I've known him for years. You'll find him a little reserved, maybe, if this is the first time you've met. Later on, you'll find he can relax with the best of us.'

There were voices outside the room and I could hear someone's footsteps across the marble, running. Somewhere a metal door slammed.

'Excuse me a minute,' said Ryan and went out, shutting the door.

He was absent for seventeen minutes. I think he'd forgotten me, and had then remembered. When he came into the room his face was white and he spoke haltingly.

'I regret to say your meeting with Robert Finberg is unavoidably cancelled.'