The Watchmen

15

The photograph had given Pamela Darnley an identification but not an impression of Dimitri Danilov, and for a moment she remained unmoving by an arrivals hall pillar, studying the man. A good six inches shorter than Cowley and much slighter, thinning blond hair carefully combed to cover where it was already receding, Slavic cheekbones giving his face a leanness: inconspicuous but confident, at least outwardly, not looking around anxiously to be greeted, intentionally just apart from the bustle all around him, making his own space. A man accustomed to being alone; maybe preferring it.

Danilov’s look encompassed the hall at the same time as she picked up the taxi direction sign, toward which he moved after just the briefest hesitation. It brought him toward her, so all Pamela had to do was step out into his path.

“Dimitri?” she said. “Pamela.”

He took the offered hand, the direct, unsurprised look confirming her inference of confidence. He said, “Thank you for bothering.”

“It’s no bother. Bill’s become a little too publicly recognizable, and a hospital appointment clashed anyway.”

“Is there a problem?” The concern was immediate.

“Having his stitches taken out. He should be back at the bureau by now. You want to go straight there or stop off at the Marriott? It’s the nearest.”

Pamela had driven to Dulles in her own car and used the return journey to bring Danilov completely up to date. With the Arlington Bridge still closed, the traffic began backing up along the George Washington Parkway before they got as far as Langley.

Danilov said, “They’re being very successful at making everyone look ridiculous.”

“The fear is what they’ll do next,” said Pamela.

“Let’s hope Bill’s right about them exhausting their supply.”

“How do we block their resupply?”

“I wish I had a better idea,” admitted Danilov.

“Have you got one at all?” Pamela immediately demanded.

“I’ll be better able to answer that after talking to your forensic people,” said Danilov.

“They’ve already got what you shipped earlier,” said Pamela.

“But not the way I want it examined,” said Danilov. “How strongly are you treating this sighting of the man in the camouflage jacket?”

“It’s the most hopeful lead so far.”

“How many have you traced from both tours?”

“Six from the morning descent. Seven in the afternoon. And no useful photographs.”

Danilov slumped into such contemplative silence that Pamela wondered if he’d actually fallen asleep after the flight. But then she saw his eyes were open and realized he was someone not discomfited by silence. She said, “I hear it’s not easy for you to work properly in Moscow.”

Danilov looked at her across the car, caught by the directness. Cowley must be working very closely with her to have told her. Was their relationship entirely professional? Pamela Darnley in person was even more attractive than he had thought her to be from TV. The briefing had been impressive, as well: A succinct, factual account spared any unsupportable opinion or conclusion and gave Cowley the credit for preventing the Lincoln Memorial explosion. Danilov said, “Sometimes it can be useful.”

The Key Bridge was blocked, stopping them. She turned to look directly at him, expecting him to elaborate, but he didn’t. The traffic became freer after Washington Circle but clogged again at the detour that had been imposed around the White House.

Cowley was back at the bureau building. He held up a warning hand as Danilov entered the incident room and said, “No Russian bear hugs.” He touched his head. “And you might as well laugh at this and get it over with.”

No dressing had been necessary after the removal of the stitches, and the two-inch-wide furrow along the entire side of Cowley’s head, where the hair had been cut away, made it look as if his scalp had slipped sideways. Pamela did grin and said, “If it’s a fashion statement, I can’t say I like it.”

There was definitely an easiness between the two of them, Danilov decided. “It’s not as if I have that much hair to spare.”

The relaxation was brief. Cowley said, “I’d rather you gave me now what you couldn’t from Moscow.”

“I need to give it to the forensic team who’ve got what was delivered to your embassy.”

In Paul Lambert’s section they were greeted by a mixture of curiosity at Dimitri Danilov-a Russian in the heart of America’s counterintelligence organization-and undisguised amusement at Cowley’s appearance.

Danilov said, “You’ve tested what was sent from Moscow? Compared the paint and the metals?”

“Not a single match,” dismissed the scientist.

“Good.” Danilov smiled, although he’d already known there would be some disparity when there shouldn’t have been.

“That prove something?” demanded Cowley.

“I hope this will,” said Danilov, taking from his pocket the envelopes he’d carried with him at all times since Gorki and added to after collecting the samples from the Moscow plant. Opening two separate, carefully labeled envelopes he said, “Is that enough metal?”

“Should be,” said Lambert.

“What about the paint?” asked Danilov, opening the other identified envelopes.

“More than enough.”

“How long?”

“Twenty-four hours, to be absolutely sure.”

“That’s what I’ve got to be, absolutely sure,” insisted Danilov.

“What are you trying to prove?” demanded Pamela.

“Where the UN missile definitely came from,” replied Danilov. To the forensic scientist he said, “Have you made a positive comparison between the stenciling on the UN warhead and what was sent to you, marked as coming from Gorki-specifically the name itself?”

Lambert coughed uncomfortably. “I need to double check that.”

“Do,” urged Danilov. “Should you be able to tell if the template from the two separate Gorkis is the same or different?”

“A simple matter of enlarging photographs of both names sufficiently to compare their outlines,” said Lambert. “It will show up the imperfections in the manufacturing stamp for each letter. If the imperfections are different, then so are the templates.”

“Gorki is the important word but I’d like every letter checked. And those from the Moscow plant: the words on the mines as well as the warhead from Kushino.”

Back in his office Cowley said, “What do you expect to find?”

“Quite a lot of effort to lead me-us-in the wrong direction,” said Danilov.

“How?” asked Pamela.

It took Danilov almost an hour to explain. Even then he omitted the cell threat to Anatoli Lasin and the importance he attached to Ashot Mizin, the man who had eagerly volunteered to deliver the warheads and mines from militia headquarters to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Long before he finished he was aware of Pamela’s skepticism. When he did stop, she said, “It can’t be as bad as that.”

“I’d like not to think so. But I do. That’s what I meant in the car by saying how misdirection of which we are aware could sometimes be useful.”

“You any idea how to use it yet?” asked the less doubtful and more pragmatic Cowley.

“Let’s wait for the results of the scientific tests.”

“Is there anything else?” said Pamela, making no more effort to hide her disappointment than she had her skepticism.

“Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov made two visits to America, one in January, the second in August of last year,” disclosed Danilov. “He’d have had to complete a visa application form with a contact address in this country, wouldn’t he?”

Cowley smiled broadly. “Absolutely!” he said.

“Both visits were on a passport in the name of Nikov,” added Danilov. “But there’s a possible alias, Eduard Babkendovich Kulik. He had a Russian driver’s license in that name. Which-”

“-he could have used to rent a car, which a man with an interest in cars would almost automatically do,” completed Pamela excitedly. “And rental agreements require residency addresses!”

Although Danilov telephoned from the J. Edgar Hoover building to warn of his impending arrival, there was still confusion when he got to the new Russian embassy off Wisconsin. The obvious initial reaction was that he was a deluded imposter. The jet lag that began to engulf him didn’t help his heavy-eyed, disheveled appearance, either, and he began regretting not waiting until the following day, which Cowley had suggested, when there might have been more on the suspect in the camouflage jacket. He spent more than half an hour alone in a bare room into which he was shown by an unnamed and clearly disbelieving reception clerk who demanded his passport and militia credentials before the door abruptly burst open and a gray-haired man, red faced with anger, demanded, “What the hell’s going on!” It was the start of a further hour of outraged demands, anger, threats, and quite a lot of communication by telephone and fax with both the White House and the Foreign Ministry in Moscow.

“I forbid you to behave in such a manner, imagining you can work totally independently of this embassy and my authority,” declared the ambassador, Andrei Guliyev, virtually at the moment of their meeting. “You will communicate through me-and only through me-at all times and do nothing without my prior approval. It’s also ridiculous for you to expect to live outside the diplomatic compound.”

“Hasn’t there been notification of my coming from the president’s office?” queried Danilov. This far from Moscow he had no way of protecting himself between the conflicting pressure from the Duma and the White House.

Guliyev looked to his head of chancellery. Timor Besedin said: “Our notification came from the Foreign Ministry.”

Why hadn’t it come from Georgi Chelyag? thought Danilov. “At most I don’t imagine needing more than the intelligence bureau’s secure communication facilities.”

“I have not been officially informed of this,” protested the embassy’s security chief, Ivan Fedorovich Obidin loudly. “The militia has no right of access to my rezidentura. It’s out of the question. I expect, however, to accompany you on inquiries you make while you are here in America. I shall contact Moscow suggesting this. That way the secure rezidentura facilities can be used. By me, to relay what’s necessary.”

Danilov sighed, holding back the irritation he felt for the president’s chief of staff not personally sending the message. He hadn’t expected to make friends but to make enemies here would serve no purpose. And there would, he was sure by now, have been a lot of separate conversations and instructions from Moscow to each of these men from their respective superiors. “I’m fully aware of the pressure you have personally been under since all this began. Which is precisely the reason why there has to be a separation. The FBI has no positive leads. Neither have I, from Moscow. There will be more outrages-atrocities even. If I am attached to this embassy and living in the Russian diplomatic compound-and my presence here in Washington becomes known-then it will be to this embassy and you, Mr. Ambassador, that fresh demands and criticism will be directed. Working independently of the embassy is diplomatically essential, in the opinion of the president.” He paused, confident the inference of ultimate, inner sanctum access was necessary. “I don’t need secure facilities to talk to Chief of Staff Chelyag. Any telephone will do.”

“I’m not being obstructive,” the local intelligence chief said uncertainly.

“No one is suggesting that you are,” Danilov said easily.

“If the purpose of the conversation with the president’s office is to ensure we each understand your position and function here, there’s surely no reason why we can’t hear it?” the military attache, Colonel Oleg Syzdykov, said with a smile.

Danilov forced himself to smile back, recognizing the military intelligence chief to be the most formidable opponent and warmed by a further realization. Chelyag hadn’t personally sent the advisory cable, and they believed he was exaggerating his authority! “None whatsoever.”

Guliyev gestured toward the telephone bank beside his expansive desk.

Danilov booked the call in his name through the embassy switchboard, turning to face his audience. Who was calling whose bluff? Hardly a bluff, in his case. He’d made it quite clear to Chelyag how he needed to work in America, and at the very first crisis meeting the presidential aide had precluded the direct involvement of any other agency. But there was something close to overconfidence in the attitudes of the people facing him.

The telephone rang and the ambassador again held out his hand in invitation. It was a secretary, a voice he didn’t recognize. Danilov repeated his name, feeling the perspiration prickling his back, and said he would not give a message but that he wanted Chelyag to be told personally who was calling from Washington. It was difficult to keep his voice even. The line went dead, as if the call had been disconnected.

Syzdukov said, “I think there really has been a misunderstanding!”

And then Chelyag came sharply on to the line. “What!”

Instead of immediately replying, Danilov leaned across the ambassador’s desk and pushed the button for speaker phone, so that Chelyag’s impatiently repeated demand echoed into the room.

“I am speaking to you from the office of His Excellency Ambassador Guliyev,” Danilov established formally. “Also with me are Head of Chancellery Timor Besedin and security officers Oleg Syzdykov and Ivan Obidin.” The first flicker of apprehension registered with the security chief. “There’s an operational difficulty that needs resolving.

The collapse of the four men was practically visible, their strings going slack. The ambassador tried anxiously to talk over Danilov, but Danilov refused the interruption, bulldozing on with the insistence that the separation was to spare the embassy embarrassment until Chelyag himself broke in.

“Is this line open, for everyone to hear? There’s an echo.”

“Yes,” said Danilov.

“Good,” said Chelyag. The lecture was terse, each man addressed individually by name. Any difficulty experienced by Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov would be considered positive obstruction, to be explained to the White House. Danilov was to be given every assistance and embassy facility without question or interference. Each of their department heads-the foreign minister himself in the cases of Ambassador Guliyev and Timor Besedin-would be notified of these instructions within the hour and asked why it had been necessary to reissue them, in view of the specific directives each had unequivocally been given.

“Dimitir Ivanovich?”

“Sir?”

“Anything further that needs to be made clear?”

“I don’t think so,” said Danilov. This whole episode had, he guessed, been set up. Some sort of loyalty test in the continuing internecine Moscow infighting in the middle of which he remained caught.

It was almost seven-thirty before Cowley and Pamela, working smoothly together from the communal incident room, organized all the searches possible from Danilov’s leads. The car rental companies hoped to complete their computer records check by the following day, but the Immigration Department thought it might take longer to trace the written visa slips, which weren’t transferred to computers and needed, therefore, to be gone through by hand.

Terry Osnan, pleased at last to be able to do something more than assemble records, said, “This has got a positive feel to it.”

“We hope,” said Cowley.

“Dimitri’s not the sort of guy I thought he would be,” said Pamela.

“Different how?”

She made an uncertain movement. “I don’t know. Quieter, I guess. If the forensic results turn out like he expects, it’s going to point toward some official complicity.”

“It’s something I want to talk through with him when we get the findings.” Cowley hesitated. “How about my buying you a thank-you dinner for last night?”

She looked at him silently for several moments from her desk. “I really was going through my angel-of-mercy routine, you know.”

“I know,” said Cowley, angry at himself. Shit! he thought: shit, shit, shit.

“I don’t want anything to get complicated.” Not unless it’s on my terms, she thought.

“Neither do I.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“Sure. Some other time.”

It was Cowley’s extension that rang. Carl Ashton said, “They’re jerking our strings again. All the blocked screens have cleared. And there’s another message, signed the Watchmen. It says within twenty-four hours they’re going to prove the hypocrisy that exists between America and Russia.”

“Where’s it being sent from?”

“They’re still using the Pentagon, for Christ’s sake! Proving we can’t catch them even though we know they’re there somewhere.”

“You think we should wake Dimitri up?” asked Pamela, when Cowley relayed the message.

“There’s nothing he can do to stop it happening, whatever it’s going to be,” said Cowley. “We can give him a few more hours.”

“What can we do to stop it?” Pamela said rhetorically.

“Nothing except wait.”

“What if they’ve got another missile? Or more bombs?” she said, still in self-conversation.

“Then we’ve got a new catastrophe,” said Cowley.

Anne Stovey took great care with her memorandum to Washington, believing that quite alone she’d found a lead-maybe even the lead-to the terrorist financing but not wanting to overstress the claim, in case she hadn’t.

But it had to be more than a coincidence that the security departments of four quite separate, unconnected banks had finally acknowledged complaints of irritating customers like Clarence Snelling that there had been nickel-and-dime differences in their accounts.

She rewrote her message three times, her conviction wavering at every attempt because there was so little to support her theory. For an hour she even considered saying nothing until the inquiries she’d asked the security departments to make produced something. An impossible task, she remembered, according to each security chief she’d spoken to. Her fourth rewrite included that phrase. It was late afternoon when she finally faxed it, quoting the reference from the terrorist inquiry incident room.

“Can’t it wait until we get home?” demanded Elizabeth Hollis.

“He might not be there if we wait.” Hollis hadn’t wanted another scene so he had taken his mother, announcing the sudden need to use the phone as they got close to the mall.

“What is it?” demanded the woman.

“A guy at work had a problem he couldn’t work out. I promised I’d think about it, try to find the answer. I think I have.” In more ways than Robert Standing would ever think possible, he thought.

“Maybe I’ll come with you. Look at Penney’s.”

“It’s too crowded. You’ll get tired. Stay in the car and listen to the music.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

Hollis had allowed ten minutes and felt a lurch of anxiety when he saw a woman using the telephone. He placed himself obviously outside the booth and just as obviously she turned her back to him. There was only a minute to go when she collected the unused coins from the ledge. He hurried forward, holding open the door. As she emerged she said, “Don’t worry, honey. She’ll wait, hunky guy like you,” and laughed. He could smell that she hadn’t showered. The phone rang.

“You’ve disobeyed orders!”

“I’m here.”

“Make sure you are in the future. You’re part of the struggle.”

Using pseudonyms and phrases was all right cracking through the Web and playing war games. Verbally it sounded ridiculous. Hollis said, “I’ve got some more account numbers.”

“How many?”

“Ten.”

“That’s not enough!”

“It’ll have to do. I’ll get more.”

“Don’t be insubordinate. We want you to work. We need a lot of money.”

“No more than cents. Otherwise you’ll be picked up.”

“I give the orders. Be here on time, for the next contact. And I want you personally to raise $20,000.”

“That’s impossible!”

“You invented the system. Make it work.”

“All sorted out?” his mother asked as he got back into the Jaguar.

“I think so,” Hollis said contentedly. There was no way thefts of the size the General was talking about could be restricted to cents and therefore no way they could go undiscovered.