The Watchmen

17

They did hurry-Cowley too fast and quickly forced to slow by the pain in his chest-but it wasn’t necessary. They got to the full but subdued incident room to see every computer screen split between digitized photographs of two men, beneath each of whom appeared a comprehensive biography.

“What …?” demanded Cowley.

“That’s the last of Beijing,” said Osnan. “The full staffing of our CIA station there compared one to one with that of the Russian’s Federal Security Bureau. The transmission opened with a repetition of the mistrust declaration, then a promise to disclose America and Russia’s hypocritical spy presence in every major world capital.”

At that moment on to the screens came a photograph of Ivan Fedorovich Obidin very similar to the one Danilov had seen in the man’s embassy office, now coupled with that of the CIA’s head of Moscow station. The pictures went, match for match, through the intelligence personnel in both stations and then switched to military intelligence, with a photograph of the Washington embassy’s Colonel Oleg Ivanovich Syzdykov against the FBI’s agent at Ulitza Chaykovskovo.

“Jesus H. Christ!” said someone.

“We have to get a trace!” insisted Pamela. “They can’t go on doing this without our being able to find where they’re doing it from!”

“I want everyone able to move the moment we do,” Cowley said generally. “This has got to be their big mistake.” Cowley said to Osnan, “Get on to the Pentagon now. See how they’re doing.”

“We’ve got two men with Ashton and his people,” protested the incident room supervisor.

“Do it!” said Cowley, at once regretting the impatient loudness.

Pamela answered the ringing telephone in their office, handing it to Cowley. “Not yet,” he said, to Leonard Ross’s demand. “We’re checking the Pentagon at this moment. As soon as we hear-’

On the screens all around them the kaleidoscope continued. London led the European capitals, after the complete listings in Washington, Moscow, and the United Nations in New York, to go in sequence to Paris, Rome, Madrid and Lisbon. Tokyo picked up the Asian identifications from Beijing.

Cowley said, “We copying all this!”

“Three terminals, printing as fast as we can,” called an operator at one of them.

Osnan replaced his telephone and said, “I don’t understand the technicalities, but Ashton says it’s not coming from one server. They’re using several. As soon as one of Ashton’s sweepers think they’re getting close, they run into what Ashton calls a firewall, which in computer-speak is exactly what it sounds like: something they can’t get past. Then the program starts up from another server and they’ve got to start all over again.”

“Bastards!” Cowley exclaimed.

Pamela broke away from a screen upon which the photographs and names of the CIA and FSB personnel in Canberra were being disclosed. Dimitri Danilov was perched on a table edge, chin reflectively cupped in his hand, smiling faintly. She said, “I miss something funny?”

“Something that could help us,” said Danilov. “Maybe not their big mistake, but it could definitely help.”

After Johannesburg came the Russian and American intelligence presence in the six major Middle East oil-producing states, headed by Saudi Arabia and followed by Kuwait, and after that the full American and Russian espionage staffing in Israel.

Pamela again moved to take one of the two ringing telephones, putting her hand at once over the mouthpiece. Excitedly she said, “There’s a positive Manhattan trace: The office there is already moving on to it.”

A man on the second line called out: “Seattle. Looks like the procurement division of Boeing. We’re moving there, too.”

“At last!” said Cowley.

“Let’s not get too hopeful,” cautioned Danilov. “I don’t understand computer technology, either, but if they put up barriers against some pursuit, why aren’t they doing it to others?”

“I don’t know and at this moment I don’t care,” said Cowley, still impatient. “I just want to have something positive.”

Into the telephone she was still holding Pamela said, “Son of a bitch!” Covering the mouthpiece again she said, “It’s the computer program in the United Nations’ library: the one that stores the index of all the issued pamphlets and reports and Assembly debate transcripts. Or did, until a minute ago. It’s been wiped, along with their bug. All that’s left is a message that says the Watchmen came calling. Just that. Those four words.”

“It’s stopped,” someone said.

The computers suddenly were filled by another split-screen picture of the American president in his shirt-sleeved pose of the previous night, seemingly face-to-face with a photograph of the Russian leader, also talking into a telephone. The caption beneath read:

TRUSTED FRIENDS SHALL SPEAK UNTO TRUSTED FRIENDS. BUT NOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY HEAR BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY ARE LIARS.

The final screen image appeared to hold for a long time, although in fact it was only seconds. It faded to be replaced by another Watchmen message:

ALL THOSE REASSIGNMENT AND RELOCATION EXPENSES!

“They’re certainly right about that,” said one of the terminal operators. “They did thirteen countries, if we include the UN. Averaging five people in each station, we’ve just witnessed sixty-five officers, American and Russian, totally blown.”

The man was right, thought Danilov. Ivan Fedorovich Obidin wouldn’t have to wait three months now before rejoining his plump wife and two teenage sons. Danilov wondered if the significance of what the Watchmen had just done would have registered with him so quickly if he hadn’t sat that morning in the bald man’s memorabilia-packed office of stiff-faced official photographs. It certainly didn’t appear to have occurred yet to either William Cowley or Pamela Darnley. Maybe it would when they studied the computer printout more carefully, had the complete selection of images directly in front of them.

It didn’t.

Between the three terminals they managed to get printouts of every disclosure, which was then photocopied and made up into full sets. Danilov went through his individually, confirming the idea that had come to him as he’d watched the procession of identities come and go on the screens. He spent longer doing it than either Cowley or Pamela, for whom the greater urgency was following the separate leads thrown up by the transmission.

Pamela retreated to a separate office for a single but protracted telephone conversation that went back and forth between Carl Ashton, at the Pentagon, and the bureau specialists who were with him and who’d sat in during the attempted entrapment. Cowley established contact at the Boeing factory with agents from the FBI’s Seattle office. After listening to their preliminary findings with the New York team at the UN, he realized almost at once, with a sinking feeling of renewed frustration, that neither was going to produce anything worthwhile. Cowley quickly warned the bureau director it didn’t look like the breakthrough they had all hoped for.

It was almost an hour before they reassembled in Cowley’s incident room office. He said at once, “Looks as if they just got into the UN and Boeing systems-the Trojan horse thing that Ashton told us about earlier-and simply relayed their photographs through two or three intermediary terminals. New York and Seattle reckon they’ll be able to locate the intermediary computers-”

“Ashton’s people already have,” Pamela interrupted, although no longer with any excitement, knowing it was a cul-de-sac. “That’s how they made the trace, going back from the Pentagon through each invaded system. It gave them numbers and passwords in sequence. Ashton’s also already established, from user logs, that the intermediary links and the Boeing and UN numbers would have been on two of those phony antistatic bands they found attached to the feed cable of their computers. It’s not going to take us anywhere-” Her head came up quickly, toward Danilov. “Hey! What mistake?”

Cowley looked at the two of them, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

Danilov unpicked the staple holding together the hard copies of the digitized pictures of the Russian and American intelligence officers, carefully laying them out so the entire collage was presented at once. “What do you see?” he demanded.

“Well, I’ll be …” Cowley smiled in instant awareness. “You think so?”

“Do I get to know the code we’re talking here?” protested Pamela, still confused and fervently-angrily-wishing that she wasn’t appearing so lacking in the presence of the two men.

“Look!” insisted Cowley. “What’s different between the photographs? In every case?”

“Too obvious to see!” Pamela recognized at last.

“Every picture, of every American, is snatched: not always sharp. Surveillance photographs. Every Russian is an official personnel file print.”

“You actually suggested a disaffected or disgruntled CIA officer might be involved,” remembered Cowley.

“Or former KGB,” said Danilov. “Which is where I think all these came from. From Lubyanka records, taken by someone who doesn’t have a job anymore because of the scaling down of the service.”

“As a result of the detente which the Watchmen are protesting against,” offered Pamela, anxious to contribute.

“Or someone still there with access,” suggested Cowley.

“And there’s a way of finding out which,” Danilov pointed out. “The CIA will know at once if all the officers exposed today are still on station. And if not, the date they were reassigned. And that date of reassignment will tell us how current these disclosures are. And a time frame against which to check KGB dismissal of officers with access to counterespionage archives.”

“Haven’t a lot of ex-KGB people crossed the street to join your mafias?” pressed Pamela.

“Most of them,” Danilov admitted easily. “Which, with luck, will continue taking us in the right direction.”

“What about the cooperation we’ll need from the FSB who took over your external intelligence service?” asked Cowley.

“I don’t know,” Danilov further conceded. The reasons for his returning to Moscow were building, and he’d scarcely gotten over his arrival jet lag.

“All this interrupted us downstairs,” reminded Pamela.

Danilov didn’t respond at once. Then he said, “I hoped-we all hoped-there was just one source for what was coming out of Russia. What your forensics found most obviously gives us two, but like a lot of what emerged in Gorki and Kushino, it might not be as obvious as it seems.”

“I can’t quite reconcile that to what you’ve already told us,” complained Pamela.

“The colonel in charge of organized crime investigation in Gorki drives a BMW he would need a lifetime’s salary to buy,” said Danilov. “When they realized I wasn’t part of the system, I had the constant attendance of him and the major supposedly in charge of the actual case. When I got back to my hotel room after picking up a comparison missile at Plant 35 I snapped off a detonating pin-just as it was snapped off the missile that hit the UN building-and scraped off a lot of paint.” He smiled bleakly. “It was switched: The one I took back to Moscow had both pins intact, but I’d kept the one I’d broken off and the paint with me. I detached a clasp off one of the mine casing samples I collected from Plant 43 at Kushino and scratched off more paint before they were delivered to the Foreign Ministry and from the ministry to your embassy. I kept that clasp and paint permanently with me, until I got here and personally gave them to Paul Lambert. From what Lambert said downstairs-what he didn’t find in what came ahead of me supposedly from Plant 43-they were switched too.”

“We talking crooked cops or official interference?” broke in Pamela.

“Crooked cops, certainly,” said Danilov. “But there’s a lot of people-some still in government and in ministries-who think communism worked better than the reforms that have bankrupted Russia: reduced it as a world power. And would be happy to return to the old ways and the old days. Who would, in fact, like the sort of confrontation the Watchmen seem to regret doesn’t exist between Moscow and Washington anymore.”

“Are you suggesting there might be a group in Russia linked to the Watchmen here?” demanded Cowley.

“I’m suggesting it wouldn’t be difficult to find people there thinking the same way, even if they aren’t definitely part of the same organization-certainly prepared to cooperate.”

“Wouldn’t that fit your theory of former KGB-succeeding FSB even-being involved in what we’ve just seen on all these screens?” wondered Pamela.

“Yes,” agreed Danilov.

“So now we’re into global conspiracies!” said Cowley.

“Put together what we know so far,” urged Danilov. “It’s not difficult to make that sort of pattern.”

“I wish it were,” said Cowley. “I’m not happy offering this to the director or the crisis committee, whether some parts fit or not. I want more before I throw this fox into the henhouse. Accepting the situation in Moscow-which I do-you think there’s a chance in hell of your getting anywhere?”

“A lot further than I have already,” promised Danilov. “And here’s another theory, based on the autopsies on Viktor Nikov and Valeri Karpov. They were horrendously tortured, half drowned, revived, and tortured again before finally being drowned and shot. I think that was done as an example to others. And Karpov worked at Plant 43 at Kushino.”

“So what’s the theory?” Cowley frowned.

“Gangs-brigades-falling out or fighting,” said Danilov. “I might have a way of infiltrating or exacerbating it.”

“That could produce something,” agreed Cowley.

“I’m not sure, though, that it would lead us to the connection we need between Russian suppliers and our unknown Watchmen,” cautioned Danilov. He was glad he’d taken the chances he had, in Gorki and in Moscow. He was sure he had unsettling bombs of his own to detonate to see which way people ran for cover. His bigger uncertainty was his own crisis group-even some of its members, maybe.

The door into the office opened and one of the incident room agents said, “There’s two guys downstairs think you want to talk to them. One’s wearing an army camouflage jacket.”

“Looks like we just hit another firewall,” said Pamela.

In the FBI office in Albany Anne Stovey was thinking roughly the same thing about her overnight communication with Washington, although she accepted that the day’s terrorist sensation would be occupying everybody at headquarters, to the exclusion of everything else.

Which it was. Her memorandum about missing pennies from banks had already been greeted with snorted derison and filed under nonaction miscellaneous by Al Beckinsdale, seconded on to the investigation from his normal role as agent in charge in Philadelphia.

Anne supposed she’d have to allow another day or two for a reaction, but she hoped it wouldn’t be any longer than that. Ridiculous though it might seem, she instinctively felt it was a significant lead.

There was a temptation to leave Robert Standing’s personal bank log-in on all the accounts he’d supplied to the General, but its being there had to look like Standing’s carelessness, so Patrick Hollis restricted himself to three. It meant accessing them, of course, and because he’d downloaded the accounts when he’d chosen them, he was easily able to see that amounts as high as fifteen dollars had already been withdrawn. It wouldn’t be long before the internal investigation began.