The Watchmen

26

When the Chicago agent in charge complained that the manpower drain to carry out a local shipping companies’ registration check, in addition to the rotating surveillance on the Lake Shore Drive public telephone, Pamela Darnley told him all other ongoing cases should be suspended and promised an immediate authorizing fax, which she sent with the promise to draft in more personnel if it became necessary. From the equally quick, unargued acceptance of everything she said, Pamela wondered if her confrontation with Al Beckinsdale had already been churned out through the gossip grinder. There was constant communication among Chicago, Washington, and New York, and from the hostility she could have bruised herself against in New York it was obvious it was common, apprehensive knowledge there.

She wasn’t unhappy to be tagged a ball-breaker. Rather it was the reputation-the fear-she wanted. All it needed for her to be sucked down into quicksand oblivion was one mistake-someone failing instantly to react or recognize, as Beckinsdale had failed. She hadn’t realized, in the beginning, how useful that episode would be.

Based on her newly acquired cover-your-ass headquarters’ expertise, she enclosed a copy of her Chicago authorization to Leonard Ross that a register check was a way to locate the U.S. entry route of the next germ warfare weapon. It wasn’t, however, her major communication. Aware of Cowley’s direct contact with the man, Pamela turned her memorandum accompanying the actual tape and its transcript into an analysis, stressing what she considered an overwhelming priority.

A tap on the now clearly abandoned Bare Necessities telephone would have provided the number from which the weapon ordering call had been made, giving them a voiceprint. Knowing now, as they did, that another combined germ and biological attack was planned, there surely couldn’t be any constitutional or legal argument against tapping the public telephones on the Bay View Avenue billing records not just for Chicago but for Washington and Pittsburgh.

Terry Osnan arrived while she was in the middle of composing the memo. Without stopping Pamela handed him the Golden Hussar transcript and companies’ search instructions to Chicago.

He waited until she’d finished before saying “If we’d spoken last night, I could have set this up then.”

“It was even later in Chicago and only eight A.M. there today-two hours before the company records office opens-when I organized it all. We didn’t lose any time.” She hoped the incident room coordinator, who’d argued against her Beckinsdale complaint, wasn’t going to become a carping pain in the ass.

“It could be good,” judged the man.

“I want the master file. I’m going to do a complete review personally.”

There was a visible stiffening in the slim, fair-haired man. “I review everything in context as it comes in.”

Pamela sighed. “This isn’t any sort of attack, criticism. I haven’t reviewed everything in context-know, properly, where the pieces fit and where they don’t. I’m the joint controlling case officer but I’ve only been involved in parts. I need to know-should know-everything as completely as I know just some. OK?”

“OK,” Osnan said doubtfully.

Feather-smoothing time, Pamela decided; ball-breaker was all right, scalpel-wielding emasculator wasn’t. “So help me, Terry. What have I missed out, failed to do?” Quickly she corrected, “What might Bill and I failed to have done?”

“Nothing,” the man said tightly. “If you had-either of you-I would have pointed it out, obviously.” He waved the transcript he still held like a flag. “And as I said, the Chicago lead here really could be a step-a lot of steps-forward.”

“Do me a favor,” said Pamela. “Run a check, where we’ve withdrawn people, where there’s people we could still bring in. Just in case we’ve got to build up even more.”

“Chicago’s isn’t the only complaint,” said Osnan. “I’ve had it from Los Angeles, Houston, and Minnesota. And that was before we virtually took over the entire fraud division for the bank investigation. And sent half of forensic to Moscow. We get a major, competing crime and the overstretch is going to snap.”

“What would you say is a major crime likely to compete with a biological germ attack on an American city?”

“Just doing what you asked me, flagging up the hot spots,” said Osnan.

“And I appreciate it,” said Pamela. “Anne sends her love. I’m recommending a commendation for her picking up like she did.”

Pamela read the master file steadily, unhurriedly, breaking off more than once to go out into the larger room with the folder in hand to look at the scene-of-crime photographs of the United Nations building, the New Rochelle massacre, and the Washington Monument bait for the failed Lincoln Memorial trap. Each had its own individual pinboard, but Pamela remained in front of photographs of Roanne Harding in her Lexington Place apartment longer than the rest, finally stepping back to see all the illustrations at the same time.

After returning to her office, she abandoned the master file for the complete evidence dossier of the murder, which was cross-referenced to her own inquiries at the Pentagon. There was still an FBI team on the case but as a murder investigation, it was totally stalled. As Paul Lambert had warned, the apartment had virtually been polished clean of any forensic evidence and the decomposition had destroyed any evidential medical finding, certainly semen traces for a DNA match if Roanne Harding had been raped, which he also couldn’t prove.

Although Roanoke did appear to have been her hometown, the bureau team there had failed to locate friends or anyone who remembered her in any useful detail, despite local newspaper appeals that included publishing the Pentagon personnel photograph. Her teacher (“a quiet child who had difficulty in learning”) believed she’d left the town after grade school (“I thought the whole family had moved on”), and whatever had attracted the FBI to the parents’ black protest activities hadn’t been registered by the local police, who had no record whatsoever of the family. The graves of the mother and father were in the Baptist cemetery. There was no reference on the headstone to the grief of any child at their passing.

It didn’t fit, Pamela decided abruptly.

The UN missile had failed to explode because of a fluke, and the Lincoln Memorial explosion had been prevented by William Cowley’s clever lateral thinking, but both had been painstakingly-brilliantly, by terrorist criteria-conceived. As had the New Rochelle booby trap and the monument lure. But somehow-she couldn’t at that moment decide how-killing Roanne Harding seemed different: unconnected, although it wasn’t. And despite the efforts of the killers to make it appear so.

So what didn’t fit? Roanne Harding herself, perhaps? A girl with two names but no friends, no family, no lovers, no past, no future. A good choice, objectively, to infiltrate the Pentagon and its computer systems and humiliate America throughout the world. Except that she hadn’t been a good choice. She’d attached the phony antistatic bands upon which her fingerprints had been found, giving the Watchmen incalculable access. But she’d drawn attention to herself-gotten fired-because she was so incompetent at the job she was supposed to do. Was that it? Was attaching the bands all she’d had to do? After which she became, quite literally, disposable? No, Pamela answered herself at once. Roanne had also had to wipe the personnel records of possibly disgruntled dismissed employees. But hadn’t erased her own. Predictable, typical incompetence? Or … Pamela experienced the briefest feeling of numbness. It took her only minutes to find the notes-her own-that she wanted. And after that Paul Lambert’s forensic reports on the antistatic bands upon which Roanne Harding’s fingerprints had been found.

Hurriedly she reached for the telephone.

There were 120 photographs of women-the majority accompanied by men-from the Golden Hussar. Having been there, Cowley openly admitted the impossibility of photographing everyone and demanded an honest assessment of how many more might have been missed. The combined estimate, from the front and rear surveillance, came to twenty. Bad light and obstructing vehicles and people blurred the definition of ten of the 120 beyond any reasonable identification and the quality on a lot of the others was bad. The bristlechinned Cowley said, “Another fucking waste of time! What’s going to tell us who she is, even if she’s on one that’s half good!”

“Maybe something we haven’t yet got,” said Danilov. An hour later he said, “And this could be it,” after Pavin called from Petrovka to say that the records of 230 former KGB and Federal Security Bureau personnel had been delivered, with a note from the archive supervisor that there could be that many more again still to come. Nikolai Mikhailovich Belik was also demanding contact.

Cowley said, “We’re being buried under paper.”

“Which might be the idea,” suggested Danilov. He thought the cynicism might actually be true when he returned to Petrovka. Some of the dossiers were more than two inches thick, and Pavin had taken over a small lecture room adjoining his office to accommodate them all.

Pavin said at once, “I’ve got the key and as far as I know there’s only one spare.” He extended his hand. “And that’s it. What about Mizin?”

“You know one of the favorite mottoes of the old KGB? The spy you know is better than the spy you don’t know. Mizin stays until there’s a use for him.”

Pavin said, “The minister’s called again.”

“It’s best I spend as much time as I’m doing at the U.S. Embassy: It distances you-you and the few others we might be able to trust here.”

“I didn’t realize you were that exposed.”

A totally unconnected thought suddenly presented itself. “Does your church do charity work?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got all Olga’s things-dresses, stuff like that-in the car. Could you find a use for it?”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

He still had to give Olga’s photographs to Irena to pass on to Igor. Igor who? he suddenly wondered, realizing he didn’t know the full name of the man who’d made Olga pregnant. The name wasn’t important or necessary. He’d keep one, he decided-their wedding photograph. He didn’t know why. It just seemed the right thing to do. An easier decision than the one he’d made about choosing professional sides.

Danilov’s office television was showing the early-morning buildup of protesters outside the U.S. Embassy and promising coverage of the public appearance of Henry Hartz and the Russian president, expected later in the day. The alley beside the legation had been sealed off by Moscow militia, but it was still possible to see the blackened and burst-apart side of the compound over the shoulder of the CNN reporter who was suggesting that the absence of any FBI statement indicated a total lack of progress.

The American axiom Danilov had always liked about being caught between a rock and a hard place didn’t seem so slick now that he was the one in the middle. Committed, he reminded himself. Too late now to change his mind. All he could hope to do-had to do-was cushion as much as possible one of the hard surfaces between which he was being squeezed.

Danilov was connected at once to Georgi Chelyag, who listened without comment to his and Cowley’s interpretation of the intercepted telephone conversation. When they did start to discuss it, Danilov patiently put up all the middle-of-the-night arguments against sealing off both the Moscow and Gorki plants they knew to hold germ warfare weapons or doing anything to disclose the importance of the Golden Hussar.

“We know we’ve got time,” stressed Danilov, trying to direct the conversation. “There’s Chicago and now the intelligence files.”

“I can order Kedrov to produce Gavri-identify him-if it’s a code designation.”

“I don’t think it is. I don’t see the point of Orlenko and the woman continuing to use it and he’s in America, not here. All we’d risk is alerting them, if there is still a link with the Security Bureau.”

“I think we’re standing back too much,” protested the presidential aide.

“Is that the White House view? Or that of the rest of the control group?” demanded Danilov. The moment of truth or of suicidal self-destruction? He could easily have already pressed the self-destruct button.

A response was a long time coming. “The inference from that question-those two questions-is that one is very different from the other.”

“They might be.”

“From what? Or whom?” demanded Chelyag.

There was no purpose in continuing the ambiguity. “I have been ordered to duplicate my reports to the interior minister.”

“Which I have forbidden.”

“And which puts me in the impossible position I feared would arise. And has.”

Nikolai Mikhailovich Belik’s call came within thirty minutes. “I warned you against choosing the wrong side.”

“I don’t regard it as choosing sides. I’m following orders.”

“Don’t you think you might have overlooked something?”

“What?”

“How long, constitutionally, a man is allowed to serve as Russian president. And how, when he leaves office, all his acolytes and supporters are swept away with him.”

Pavin appeared at the door, gesturing that the other call on Danilov’s blinking telephone console was important.

“I told you to wait!”

“We didn’t have any direct evidence. We needed a confession, which we got,” said Reztsov. “Your jurisdiction doesn’t extend to Gorki.”

“That of the White House does. Having got the confession, why didn’t you tell me before going to seize Zotin!”

“We needed to arrest him, too. Wrap everything up.”

“So the maintanence man at Plant 35 who confessed to supplying Nikov with the UN’s warhead committed suicide in his cell and Aleksai Zotin died resisting arrest?”

“That’s what happened. There is the confession implicating Zotin. And the evidence of an entire spetznaz squad of his brigade fighting to prevent Zotin being taken into custody. Six others died. The theft from Plant 35 is solved.”

Not even Reztsov’s arrogance would have been as great as this without the confidence of official support. “Everything wrapped up.”

“That’s what I said,” reminded Reztsov.

“But I meant it differently from the way you did,” said Danilov.

It had been Georgi Chelyag’s suggestion during the morning conversation that the impression of a combined investigation could be achieved-after announcing the intention in advance-by publicly bringing an FBI group from the embassy to Petrovka. There was an additional, practical benefit of giving them more space in which to compare the Golden Hussar photographs against those in the personnel files of ex-intelligence officers.

To protect their identities, the American group left Ulitza Chaykovskovo in an enclosed minibus, which actually got hammered by some of the protesters both leaving the embassy and arriving at militia headquarters. The closed vehicle minimized much of what Chelyag had hoped by the exercise but at least provided new television footage.

Danilov relied entirely on Yuri Pavin’s selection of three juniorgrade militia detectives for whose honesty the man vouched to comprise the Russian contingent. All three were young, none more than thirty.

They’d been given the records of redundant employees from every department of the old and new intelligence organization. Danilov concentrated the search upon the First Chief Directorate, exclusively responsible for overseas espionage. Following the logic that only someone attached to that directorate or one of its subdepartments-most likely the archival-would have had access to so many CIA identities. That reduced the 230 possibilities to 52. Six were women.

“We can always extend-we will, whatever the outcome-if nothing comes from the first search,” he told his deputy.

While the groups were divided up, with Pavin the liaison officer, Danilov drew Cowley aside from the American group to recount his conversation with Gorki.

Spacing his words, Cowley said, “That is quite simply beyond belief.”

“They don’t think so.”

“They must be very confident.”

“Or to have chosen the wrong man in Reztsov.”

“You told Chelyag?”

“Not yet.”

“Let him know that we know.”

Danilov was surprised at Cowley’s political awareness and at once wondered why he should be. “America knowing is probably my greatest protection.”

Very quickly there was more. When they went back to the American contingent, Paul Lambert, who declared he’d come along for the ride, said, “Guess what was on the A2 launcher?”

In sighed resignation Danilov said; “What?”

“Alcohol,” announced the scientist. “Might even be vodka. Alcohol’s a great cleaner, and that’s what it was used for.” Abruptly he smiled. “But whoever did it did it badly. Left a very good forefinger print on the trigger guard. We were even able to tell that the shooter was left-handed.”

Cowley nodded to the stacked folders and said, “I wonder if there’s been an attempt to sanitize those.”

There hadn’t been.

One of the young Russians made the match within the first hour, approaching Pavin with a print in either hand, visibly relieved at the large man’s shout of “Got something!”

The Golden Hussar photograph was one of those in which the woman was too blurred to be identified. But quite clearly, although pictured at such an angle that it was impossible to be sure if he’d actually been with her, was a smiling man named in his First Chief Directorate file as Yevgenni Mechislavovich Leanov. His job was given as translator and one of the four listed languages was English.

Cowley turned over the Golden Hussar print and said, “It’s one taken at the rear. They weren’t using the public entrance. It’s beginning to move!”

It didn’t stop, although what amounted to a virtual breakthrough wasn’t pictorial and was found by the detail-attentive Yuri Pavin checking through a folder that had already been scrutinized. He gestured for Cowley and Danilov to move out of the hearing of the searching groups before offering it to them.

“Ivan Gavrilovich Guzov,” he said simply.

“Codirector, with Vyacheslav Fedorovich Kabanov, of the New Jersey company from which Orlenko rents 69 Bay View Avenue, Brooklyn,” Cowley recognized at once.

“Gavrilovich is an Armenian patronym,” continued Pavin. “It’s quite customary to shorten it to Gavri.”

“How many?” demanded the General.

“Five,” said Hollis. He painstakingly dictated the codes, enjoying ordering the other man to repeat them back to him.

The General said, “They big? We need customers with substantial accounts.”

“Yes,” said Hollis. He was quite sure of the customer assets of one. It was his until now untouched own branch, where at that very moment an FBI auditor name Mark Whittier was monitoring computer movement, hunting a thief.

Carl Ashton, who was waiting for her at the Pentagon gatehouse, said, “What the hell’s the panic?”

“We got it all wrong,” Pamela Darnley said simply.