The Watchmen

18

Pamela’s firewall prediction was right, and the rest of their day, until the very end, continued in another downward spiral.

Brad Piltone wore his camouflage jacket and the same shaved haircut as his friend, Duke Lucas, who carried his shoulder satchel. Beneath their respectful demeanor-awe at actually being in the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation-there was the faintest indignation at the thought of their setting a bomb at the monument to America’s first president. Piltone said the sons of bitches who’d do a thing like that needed punching out and he’d like to do it, and Cowley believed him. They were both twenty-eight and lived in the same street in San Antonio, Texas. Piltone was a linesman for the telephone company, Lucas was a body repairman in a garage. The jacket had belonged to Piltone’s father who’d been killed in Pleiku, Vietnam (which Piltone called Nam) and whose name inscribed on the Constitution Gardens Memorial Wall was the main reason for their first, week-long trip to Washington. They’d gone to the memorial before going to the Washington Monument. Lucas had taken several photographs of Piltone pointing to his father’s name on the camera he had in the satchel and which he willingly handed over for the film to be developed.

Pamela took it to the bureau laboratory and continued on to the incident room from where she called the FBI office in San Antonio. Agents there took only fifteen minutes to confirm both men’s addresses, employment details, and that neither had any local police record. Lucas’s film had four frames of Piltone in front of the Vietnam shrine-his father’s name clearly visible in two-three from the top of the Washington Monument, and three of their descent on foot. One showed the half face of the man who hadn’t yet been traced, the other partially the back-but nothing of the face-of the still-unknown woman, who was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt and had her dark hair in a pony tail. Neither man had seen anyone behave suspiciously as they walked down the monument stairs or remembered anything particular about the untraced man or woman or anyone else in their group.

“I wish I had,” said Piltone, to his friend’s nodded agreement. “It would have helped, wouldn’t it?”

“Probably more than you can ever know,” said Cowley.

Within an hour the last remaining unknown man called the FBI’s Charleston, North Carolina, office to say he wasn’t sure if he was one of the people for whom they were appealing. He was wearing the same windbreaker as in Duke Lucas’s wired photograph when he arrived, as requested, at the local bureau building. Part of the identification procedure for the morning and afternoon descents had been to photograph everyone who had willingly come forward. Hans Bohl, the taxi driver son of a German immigrant, positively remembered eight from among his afternoon group. Prompted by Lucas’s picture, he thought the pony-tailed girl had been around thirty years old and “not American,” Hispanic or maybe Asian. He also recalled her bending to do something to her shoe as they came down, because he was at the back of the line and now he remembered her running to catch up. She’d been carrying in front of her the backpack that wasn’t visible in Lucas’s snapshot: He thought it had been green, with yellow buckles. Bohl spent a long time with a facial reconstruction technician trying electronically to re-create an image of the girl, which Cowley thought looked like the Disney animation of Pocahontas when it was wired down to Washington. Both Pamela and Danilov agreed it was unpublishable in a fresh appeal. Instead Cowley wired it, along with Lucas’s partial picture, to every regional office to which identified tour participants had come forward. He sent incident room agents to the hotel and motel addresses of those still in Washington to get their impressions and improvements.

When he spoke, quite alone in Cowley’s permanent office, to Georgi Chelyag in the Russian White House, Danilov claimed it was an American conclusion that the intelligence officer identification was from an official Russian source and that they hoped to establish a time frame from CIA records.

“Is there going to be an open accusation?” demanded the presidential aide at once.

“I don’t know,” admitted Danilov.

“Do you think it valid?”

Danilov smiled to himself. “Very much so.”

“It would put even more pressure on us here.”

“Deservedly, if it’s true. What’s the reaction to the disclosures?”

“There’s already been a formal protest note from Beijing. Everyone named is being expelled. We’ll do the same to their agents here, of course. And bring everyone back from everywhere else. What’s Washington doing?”

“I don’t know that, either,” admitted Danilov.

“You learning enough from being there?” Chelyag demanded pointedly.

“I think so,” said Danilov, who hadn’t told the man of the American forensic findings. “The CIA reassignment check could produce an important lead.”

“Leads here in Moscow, if Moscow is the source,” said Chelyag. “If it does I want you back here, handling it personally.”

“What about Chairman Kedrov?” Danilov asked uneasily. Once more in the firing line, he thought.

“I’ll want you back here,” insisted the chief of staff, refusing the question. “If we’re the source of everything that’s happening there, this is where you should be. Finding it.”

How positive-and determined-would Georgi Chelyag be when he discovered it? wondered Danilov. The qualification was immediate: If he discovered it. It came to Danilov again when he got back to the incident room at virtually the same time that Cowley returned from briefing the FBI director. Pamela Darnley looked at the two men and said, “Immigration says it’ll take at least another three days to find the visa applications for Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov. And neither Hertz nor Avis has come up with any rental in the Nikov or Eduard Kulik names. The only glimmer is that Ashton says he’ll have some of the possible disgruntled Pentagon dismissals by tomorrow.”

CIA Director John Butterworth was furious that the suggestion of the Internet’s disclosure source-and possibly how to date it-had come from Leonard Ross and not from anyone within the counterintelligence unit of his own agency. “It’s certainly a simple check to make,” he had to concede.

“Then let’s make it,” urged Frank Norton. “We could turn this back on the bastards! Could be our first break.”

“Beijing has formally complained about American spying,” said Henry Hartz.

“Posturing, for public consumption,” dismissed Ross. “My people had already identified every Russian agent from Wisconsin Avenue on today’s list. So will every counterespionage agency in every other country.”

“I’d like to think my agency is more successful overseas,” said Butterworth.

“You might like to think so,” said Ross. “Surely what we all sat and watched this morning shows you’re not.”

“It’s public consumption we’re here to discuss,” said the White House chief of staff. “What’s our response?”

“We’re in a bind with a Russian detective actually here, cooperating with the bureau,” said Hartz. “What I’ve proposed to Moscow, through Ambassador Guliyev, is that instead of formal, tit-for-tat protests and expulsions they simply withdraw their people and we withdraw ours.”

“That sounds the most practical,” agreed Norton, although looking at Ross. “What we really need is something positive in the actual investigation.”

“We’ve narrowed the Washington Monument list down to one suspect,” said the FBI director. “By tomorrow we might even have an eyewitness compilation good enough for an electronic reproduction and a physical description.”

“We could go with that now,” Peter Prentice said quickly. Sonorously, as if reading a headline, he said, “Washington Monument Bomber Known!”

“Except that she isn’t,” deflated Ross.

“She!” echoed the media spokesman, who thought in headlines.

“We definitely don’t want the fact that it’s a woman made public, not until we’ve traced her,” demanded Ross. “And it is still a process of elimination. The timer could have been set days before.”

“How about ‘closing in on the suspect’?” negotiated Prentice. “‘Dramatic breakthrough expected in twenty-four hours’?”

“It sounds good,” encouraged Norton. “I like it.”

“Definitely nothing about it being a woman,” insisted Ross.

“Agreed,” acceded Prentice, moving on. “I’ve checked the clips on this guy Danilov. He got quite a lot of space when he was here last time, when the joint investigation system was established, and there’s been demands to know who the Russian investigator is after last night’s statement. What about giving his name?”

“Not until I clear it with him and he gets Moscow’s OK,” Ross replied. “Cowley’s not happy about the exposure he’s already got, says it gets in the way. And let’s not forget the personal danger.”

“Let’s keep it in mind, though?” persisted Prentice. “We don’t feed the media every day, it’s us they bite.”

That night Pamela did go out to dinner with Cowley, as joint host to Dimitri Danilov. They went to a French restaurant on Georgetown’s M Street, which the Russian remembered from before and declared the vodka better than he could get in Moscow. Cowley tried to pace his scotch in time with the other two-Pamela went straight to wine-but his glass was always empty first.

She jerked her head toward the waitress’s station and said, “They’ve made you already.”

“I know,” said Cowley. He wondered when he’d be able to get to a barber to even up the freaky hairstyle. The waitress who recited that day’s specials and took their order called Cowley by name.

“It’s good to be anonymous,” said Danilov.

“You going to tell the director no?” asked Cowley, who’d relayed Prentice’s request to release Danilov’s identity.

“There’s no practical benefit, which would be the only reason to do so,” said Danilov.

“Safer to stay anonymous,” insisted Pamela. Difficult though the case was, she didn’t imagine there were many investigators who would have dismissed the offer of personal publicity for the reason Danilov had just given.

Cowley was curious at the concern and was then immediately surprised at himself. Why shouldn’t she be concerned, show some personal interest? It had been obvious for Pamela to accompany them, but Cowley wished it could have been just he and Danilov. That was an irritatingly unnecessary thought, too. There’d be time enough to renew the friendship-talk about other things-in the coming days and evenings.

But for the moment, in the noise-obscuring restaurant, the conversation was inevitably a continuation or reexamination of what had been discussed in the incident room. Almost at once Cowley wondered if he and Danilov really would have the time he’d imagined when the Russian recounted the exchange with Georgi Chelyag. If they didn’t get an American address for Viktor Nikov in the next two or three days he guessed he’d have to go back to Moscow to examine more closely what was possible from Paul Lambert’s forensic findings.

“It was a long way to come to confirm your own guys were cheating on you,” Pamela said with her usual directness.

And probably settled a personal question, Danilov realized. He’d have to expose the corruption within his department, not fantasize about becoming part of it again. Which was all it had ever been, a fantasy. He was embarrassed he’d even allowed himself to think of it. “It was the only way scientifically to do it.”

“You could still be obstructed,” said Cowley.

“It might be more difficult for that to happen if you were with me,” suggested Danilov.

Pamela was about to speak when her pager sounded. She rose from the table, checking the caller, and returned from the restaurant phone booth in seconds. She said, “Eduard Babkendovich Kulik rented a Lexus from Budget for five days. The address on the agreement is Bay View Avenue in Brooklyn.” She smiled and added, “That well-known and much-loved ghetto for Russian emigres.”

Patrick Hollis decided that the Internet disclosure of Russian and American intelligence agents was brilliant, as brilliant as using the Web for all the other mockery. Better than committing-or trying to commit-any more atrocities. Would the General be doing it personally, or were there other nerds equally as good at surfing? There had to be a lot-a unit-to carry out the bank thefts. Would the General maintain the telephone-at-fixed-times division between everyone else that the man had insisted upon with him as being necessary to prevent their being discovered? Hollis smiled at the question, knowing of one man who was soon to be discovered.