The Watchmen

25

The argument was again about walking instead of driving to the Coney Island strip.

“I’m wearing heels!”

“Change your shoes.”

“You’re fucking paranoid!”

“I’m fucking careful.”

“It’ll be the Bare Necessities,” predicted Pamela, to no one in particular. “Fuck it! And fuck the D.A. most of all: He’s going to sleep well when half Manhattan gets wiped out in the next germ attack!” The dispute between Leonard Ross, the New York District Attorney, and the attorney general remained unresolved three days after Pamela had renewed Cowley’s already once refused request to tap the public telephone in the topless bar.

“We’ll get in place ahead of them,” said New York agent in charge Harry Boreman, who didn’t like what he considered Pamela Darnley’s unnecessary intrusion on his turf on her way back from Albany to explain the importance of the Brooklyn-Chicago monitor, which they understood every bit as much as she did.

A surveillance team did establish itself in the bar ahead of Orlenko, but other observer cars got in place as before along the seaside approach roads, keeping the couple constantly in view as a precaution against their going somewhere else. Mary Jo had refused to change her shoes and was hobbling before they got on to Riegelmann Boardwalk. It took them forty minutes, Orlenko constantly searching around, staging pauses to look for pursuit.

“Funny thing, but he seems more nervous than he was the day we blacked out the area, when he had more reason to be suspicious.”

“Agreed.”

The voices of two separately motorized observers, both of whom had watched the earlier public telephone routine, echoed into the Manhattan incident room. Pamela made a conscious effort to dismiss her irritation, acknowledging the unprofessional stupidity at it. She’d too rigidly made her mind up that the break was going to come from Chicago-which it still might-and wasn’t paying sufficient attention to alternatives. Such as why, without any apparent summons of which they were aware-certainly nothing involving the telephone or discussed between Orlenko and his hooker wife in the totally wired house-the couple was seemingly on their way to another contact. Or why Orlenko was behaving more apprehensively.

“It’s the same titty bar,” came an observer’s voice.

“We’ve got enough people inside. Let’s not overcrowd the place,” ordered the agent in charge.

“Spoilsport,” came the same voice.

The search for a table closer than the previous occasion to the public telephone was obvious, inside the Bare Necessities. They ordered the same drinks, straight vodka martini for Mary Jo, beer for the Russian. Mary Jo seemed more interested in the stage show, two black girls needing a lot of body touching helping each other to undress, than Orlenko whose attention alternated between his watch and the use of the boxed-in telephone. Without saying anything to his wife, he got up from his chair at 6:25 to claim the booth. Once inside he took a notepad from his pocket, followed by two pens, exposing both ballpoints and testing each.

Again the incoming call was precisely at 6:30. After what could only have been the briefest of identification Orlenko began to write, painstakingly slowly-as if he were printing the words, according to one observer later-and just as pedantically reading each line back once he’d completed it, visibly stabbing the pen from word to word. It took a full ten minutes for the dictation to be completed.

Once more Orlenko didn’t sit down when he rejoined Mary Jo, urging her to finish her drink. They appeared to be arguing as they left the bar, although Orlenko at once hailed a cab back to Bay View Avenue.

“You promised blinis at the Odessa again!” were the first shouted words that echoed into the FBI’s Manhattan office.

“Shut up! I’ve got to make a call first. Alone. Go and clean up the shit in the kitchen.”

“I can’t understand what the fuck you’re talking about anyway.”

There was the sound of a receiver being lifted, numbers being punched. The FBI operator at the front of the electronic equipment said, “One zero seven is the Russian country code. Nine five’s Moscow.”

The Manhattan agent in charge snatched up his own phone and said, “I’ll tell Cowley,” ignoring Pamela.

A woman answered, on the second ring. She said: “Yes?”

“Arseni,” identified Orlenko.

“You’ve had a call?”

“Yes.”

“I knew he would. He had to. How was he?”

“Like he always is. Where did you get the American rocket?”

“They’re everywhere.” She had a throaty voice, deep.

“He was impressed about us keeping our side of the bargain.”

“Pity for him and his great big cause that he didn’t keep his. He say anything?

“Most of the time talked a lot of shit about battles and wars.”

“Let him talk about what he likes.”

“You have any problems?”

It was a dismissive laugh. “Not good, working with outsiders. Not ones who think they know it all, arrogant cunts. Didn’t even have transport. And when it came to it they couldn’t hit the embassy building itself.”

“Going on to Russian government websites in Russian was a good idea, though.”

“Our idea, from here.”

“He wants us to be very careful.”

“Like he should be, in future. All he’s got to worry about is the money and realize no one can do better than us.”

Orlenko hesitated. “He says he doesn’t want what happened last time happening again. That he hopes everyone got the message.”

“He tried the side deal!”

“He meant the missile not detonating.”

“There was an obvious answer to that: It didn’t come from us. But you didn’t remind him of that, did you?” The contempt in her voice was obvious.

“He reestablished contact, came to us. He was admitting his mistake doing that.” Orlenko hesitated again. “I’m sorry, incidentally.”

“It was business-only ever business.”

“Still unfortunate.”

“What does he want?” Now the tone was impatient.

“Quite a lot. Certainly another microbiological missile: one that will detonate this time. A conventional rocket, if you can get one. More than one, if possible. That’s why I asked about the embassy rocket, although it’s American manufactured. Antipersonnel mines. Semtex. And detonators and timers.”

“Quite a lot,” she echoed.

“I know.”

“They shouldn’t have used everything on the memorial.”

“It would have been spectacular.”

“Except that it wasn’t and they lost everything. He admit that was a mistake?”

“Talked about it being an unfortunate battlefield loss.”

She snorted in disgust. “They’re mad, you know? Him and his group.”

“He thinks it’s working in America. Says there’s a lot of anti-Russian feeling, particularly after the intelligence revelations,” said Orlenko. “Told me to ask what the real political feeling was there: whether the Duma move against the president would come to anything.”

“I’m not interested in politics, revolutionary shit. I’m only interested in business.”

“So, can you meet the order?”

“Of course.”

“How long?”

“What about the money?” she countered.

“He said it would be ready.”

“Would,” she qualified. “Not is?”

“No.”

“The bastard’s got to be fined for what he was prepared to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“A germ warhead will be a million. Rockets a quarter each. We’ve already got most of everything else. A half a million for that.”

“Two million, two million plus?”

“Depends on how many missiles and rockets I can get. I thought you said he wanted everything we could get hold of?”

“I need to check with him. And tell him the price. What if he says no-to the price, I mean?”

“If he had another supplier he wouldn’t have come back like he has. He’s created the momentum; he’s got to keep it up. Hasn’t got time to come all the way here again, start from scratch.”

“Gavri gave him a coup with the intelligence identities. Maybe, with his contacts, Gavri could introduce him to someone else?”

“The intelligence deal was separate. Just Gavri. If Gavri had a different source they would have used it, wouldn’t they? But they didn’t. They came to us,” insisted the woman.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“You think Gavri would do another separate deal?”

“Of course he would, if he had something to sell.”

“I didn’t like what he did, cutting us out: saying we had nothing to do with it and didn’t deserve a cut.”

“Maybe we don’t need him anymore,” suggested the woman. “Maybe nobody needs him anymore.”

“If he’s killed it would bring attention to the legit business. And through that to me.”

“I’ll think about it. I didn’t like what he did, either. What’s the arrangement for the next contact?”

“Him to me, as always. But not the topless bar anymore; says we’ve used it enough. I have to go through the routine of getting a new number, to be ready when he calls.”

“Mad, like I said. Playing at being soldiers.”

“With germ warheads and real bombs.”

“I’ll be waiting to hear.”

The phones were put down without any farewells.

The call timed out at eleven minutes forty-five seconds, and it took Cowley and Danilov exactly twenty-three minutes to get from the Savoy to Pereulok Vorotnikovskij. Immediately after alerting them the bureau duty officer, at Cowley’s instructions, had told the telephone-linked surveillance teams-particularly those at the rear-that every woman had, without fail, to be photographed leaving the Golden Hussar.

Danilov, who was driving, parked some way from the restaurant, but that was an unnecessary precaution, too. Vehicles-predominantly Mercedes and BMWs, as Yuri Pavin had reported-overflowed from the parking lot into adjoining streets. As they moved unobtrusively through the crush both men looked for American models. There were some-at least three Cadillacs-but none with upthrust rear fins and none were dark in color. They had, in fact, taken with them to Lasin’s apartment photographs of the three cars-two Oldsmobiles and a Lincoln-the embassy guard thought might have been the vehicle he’d seen, but Lasin claimed not to know of such vehicles in Moscow. Would there be any recognition from the supposedly gang-retired Igor Ivanovich Baratov, who ran a garage? Danilov wondered.

Besides a lot of cars there were a lot of people-not just from the vehicles but on foot. Danilov said, “We’re not going to get photographs of every woman here.”

“I know,” agreed Cowley, and repeated the same acceptance to each of the three surveillance teams as they were located. He also accepted that, by comparison to the brightly lit front of the Golden Hussar-complete with a neon depiction of a plumed and cloaked soldier-the rear of the building was almost too dark even for the fastest of infrared films on the longest of exposures.

Cowley used the mobile telephone of a rear car driver to summon replacement teams. The current ones would return to the embassy to begin developing their prints, then come back afterward with Danilov to the easier concealment of the jammed parking lot.

“There’d be no purpose, even if there wasn’t the risk of our being identified, in our going in there,” said Cowley. “But there’s a woman probably still inside who could tell us all-a hell of a lot, at least-of what we want to know. And there’s no way of knowing or finding out who she is. That’s crazy. Downright fucking crazy.”

“No way yet,” qualified the equally frustrated Danilov.

“Manhattan relayed the conversation to a copy tape back at the embassy.”

“No real reason for our hanging around,” said Danilov.

“No real reason for us coming here in the first place,” Cowley said bitterly. “Downright fucking crazy.”

There was a printed transcript and English translation by the time they got back to Ulitza Chaykovskovo, but they still listened, twice, to the recording.

Cowley said, “They’re going for their germ warfare massacre.”

“We knew they would, if they had another warhead. Which they haven’t, not yet,” said Danilov, more objectively. “We’ve got time and we’ve got Bay View Avenue.”

“Which we mustn’t lose.” Cowley checked his watch. “I’ll speak to the director-Manhattan, too-when everyone wakes up in America.” They’d both already given up any idea of sleep for what remained of that night.

Danilov tapped the transcript. “There’s a lot here, if we can see it.”

“Gavri?”

“Doesn’t sound Russian. Greek maybe.”

“Where’s that leave the theory of the intelligence agent identification being KGB?” queried Cowley. “KGB didn’t employ foreign nationals in Moscow Center, did they?”

“Not as far as I know, although Feliks Dzerzhinsky, who founded the service, was a Pole,” admitted Danilov. “I’ll check. If it turns out to be a working code name, we’ve got our KGB search down to one.”

There were only the two of them in the FBI section. Martlew, at Cowley’s suggestion, had provided a bottle before leaving to check the picture development. Cowley and Danilov were on their second drink.

“Gavri has to be in America if killing him risked bringing attention to Orlenko,” said Cowley. “But what legitimate business was Orlenko talking about? You remember any reference to a business in anything we’ve heard from Bay View Avenue?”

“Not from the bugging,” said Danilov. “But when we were wiring the house she told Harrison they’d been in Chicago seeing import-export business friends of Arnie’s. And that Arnie was always talking deals.”

“There’d need to be an import-export front to bring in weapons,” said Cowley. “And Chicago’s a port.”

“If Orlenko’s name was on the register of an import-export business based there we’d have the route,” said Danilov. “And Chicago’s on the telephone list.”

“About time,” insisted Danilov.

“The Watchmen are definitely a fanatical military group,” said Cowley, looking down at his own transcript copy.

“Operating like an insurgency group in enclosed cells: like the booby trap at New Rochelle was insurgency,” said Danilov.

“What’s new, leading us somewhere?” complained Cowley.

“Torture,” said Danilov, to himself.

“What?”

“It fits,” insisted the Russian, still reflective. “Remember I told you how Nikov and Karpov had been tortured before being tied together and finally thrown in the Moskva? As an example to anyone else? Now look at the conversation between Orlenko and the woman. There was a falling out: someone trying to cheat. I’d say that someone was Vitali Nikolaevich Nikov, who got mutilated and murdered for doing it.”

“With Valeri Karpov, who worked at Plant 43 and had access to double war-headed missiles,” said the American, going along with the reasoning.

“According to Lasin, the story is that the killings were carried out by Americans,” recalled Danilov. “You think some of the Watchmen came in personally to set the example of what happens when something goes wrong?”

“‘Hasn’t got time to come all the way here again’” quoted Cowley. “Could be interpreted that way.”

“And Nikov stayed at the Metropole Hotel, the favorite of American visitors,” filled in Danilov.

“So,” said Cowley, underlining passages in the transcript as he talked. “The Watchmen set up a deal to buy a germ war-headed missile. Get a better offer-they think-from Nikov, who supplies them with one that doesn’t go off. They also think it’s his fault, that he sold them a dud, so he gets tortured and killed. So does Valeri Karpov, his supplier, by a Watchmen group. Who then have to go back to their original source.”

“Problems,” cautioned Danilov, lifting the paper toward the American. “This is Arseni Orlenko, a boyhood friend of Vitali Nikov-to whose garages in Gorki we know calls were made, and received, from Bay View Avenue-talking to the Watchmen’s original supplier. So who’s Orlenko running with?”

“Both?” suggested Cowley.

“Wouldn’t he have been tortured and killed, as another example, if he was?” asked Danilov.

The room became silent, both men hunched over their transcripts.

“Why was Orlenko sorry?” demanded Cowley, not looking up. He quoted: “‘I’m sorry, incidentally …. It was business-only ever business …. Still unfortunate.’ What was? What’s that all about?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Danilov. “What we do know-can be positive about-is that for the moment there aren’t going to be any more outrages in America because their arsenal has gone.”

“It’s not empty here,” Cowley reminded. “Who are the outsiders she refers to? And the deal? She’s only interested in business, not in any revolutionary shit, so why’s she involved, as she obviously was, in the attack on the embassy?”

“Another question that has to go on hold,” said Danilov.

“Which plant are the warheads coming from, Moscow or Gorki?” demanded Cowley.

“Karpov had to be Nikov’s supplier: That’s why he died tied to him,” said Danilov. “Which points to Gorki. But the stenciling on the UN missile was wrong compared to the sample your forensic people checked. It could be either plant. Or one we don’t even know about.” He went to his transcript yet again. “She’s got virtually all the conventional stuff the Watchmen want. And the type of bazooka that hit your compound is everywhere-sixth line from the top.”

A gray dawn was spreading across the city outside, slowly, as if it really wasn’t interested in starting a new day. Cowley wasn’t sure if he was, either. He took a third scotch, ignoring Danilov’s look. Cowley said, “I think I’ll call the director.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“That we know there’s most likely going to be another disaster and we don’t know how to prevent it.”

It wasn’t the defeatism of the remark that unsettled Danilov. It was the feeling that he’d missed the most important thing in the telephone conversation between Brooklyn and Moscow. As Cowley went into Barry Martlew’s office to make the Washington connection, Danilov pressed the replay button for the third time and listened to the tape in its entirety. The unsettled feeling didn’t go; it actually increased. “Told me to ask what the real political feeling was there: whether the Duma move against the president would come to anything” echoed in his mind and stared up at him from the printed page in his hand. Was that it? The reminder of what he’d done by ignoring not just the early-morning demand but the repeated afternoon telephone calls that Pavin had relayed from Interior Minister Nikolai Mikhailovich Belik?

Pamela Darnley was unsettled, too.

She’d carried a transcript and a copy of the telephone conversation with her on the first morning shuttle to Washington-calculating that professionally and politically the J. Edgar Hoover building was the place for her to be-refusing the irritation at Cowley talking directly with the director from Moscow, just as she’d discarded what she now embarrassingly accepted to have been an irrational disappointment that Orlenko hadn’t called Chicago.

There had been nothing to detract from what she’d achieved in sole command. From the long conversation she’d just concluded with a tired-sounding William Cowley, it appeared they were still going to need a miracle-several, maybe-to benefit from the tape or identify the unknown woman who’d featured on it. If anything concrete was going to emerge it would be linking Arseni Orlenko to a Chicago import-export firm. If she did that, it would again be to her credit, despite the lead coming from Moscow. Letting her mind run on, Pamela recognized that although, objectively, it would have achieved nothing-and risked destroying the only positive Russian lead they had-Cowley’s explanation why he and Danilov had not gone into the Golden Hussar, that they didn’t have the slightest clue to whom the woman was, had sounded lamely facile. She wondered if Leonard Ross had thought the same.

She had posed a number of questions to herself the previous evening in the Manhattan incident room. And she’d come up with some more since. Besides initiating the Chicago company search, it was time to regain a total overview: to look down from the top of the mountain of what they had, searching for what might have been overlooked.

“I’ll try not to get in the way.”

“There’s more than enough room,” said Patrick Hollis. He encompassed his office with a gesture. “If you like I could move out of here into the open room and you could have it all to yourself.” He felt totally relaxed, unfazed: enjoying it even. It was being interrogated by the enemy after being captured. Except that he hadn’t been captured. And wouldn’t be.

“That desk and the terminal out there are all I need,” Mark Wittier said. The FBI auditor was a dry, thin, bespectacled man whose overburdened briefcase sagged, strained against its side straps.

“You change your mind, all you’ve got to do is say. You think you’ll be here long?” Hollis had read books on interrogation technique: how to resist and throw questioners off the scent. This was classic so far. Affably willing to cooperate in every way, become the questioner rather than the questioned.

“Depends what we find. Sometimes it’s months.”

“What, exactly, are you looking for?” Still the questioner.

“What do you imagine?”

Careful: turned it back on him. “The gossip is that you’re in a lot of branches. If that’s true-a lot of branches, I mean-it’s a pretty substantial fraud.” He paused. “That’s what I’ve guessed.”

“You ever come across anything that seems out of order?”

Clever again. Avoid the question and ask another. Still not fazed, still in command. “Out of order?”

“Disparities. Things not quite adding up as they should?”

The moment for indignation. “Not in my department, Mr. Whittier! I’ve had Al in-house audits ever since I got appointed, and I’m proud of it. We talking a loan or securities fraud here? If we are, then I think I need to be told about it!”

Whittier’s supposedly reassuring smile clicked on and off, like a light switch. “Actually it’s customer accounts. Day-to-day transactions, things like that.”

Hollis was sure he allowed just the right amount of relaxation. “Afraid I can’t help you there. Not my division.”

“I know,” said Whittier. “That’s why it was thought best I work out of here: out of the way of everyone in the bank who deal day to day. Less upsetting.”

He had a reaction ready for that one. Hollis actually counted, in his head, stretching the apparent surprise. “You mean you believe the fraud is being committed from someone within the bank! An employee!”

“That’s how these things usually turn out.”

But not this time how the auditor imagined, thought Hollis. And even more certainly not how Robert Standing imagined, either.