The Watchmen (21 page)
Seeing Danilov’s look, Obidin said, “They’ve already gone back. My tour ends in three months.”
The system on Obidin’s desk appeared to be an ordinary fivetelephone console, the security route through which the lines were channeled—and to the sort of soundproof booth in which Danilov knew he should actually have been shown—in another part of the complex. Danilov wasn’t surprised his conversation was being monitored, in the hope they could achieve the sort of control they’d imagined possible the previous day. He would have eavesdropped in the same circumstances, with the same facilities.
He talked on the assumption that he was being listened to, keeping any deference from his voice when he was connected to Georgi Chelyag to maintain the impression of upper-echelon access and equality. Danilov told the presidential chief of staff there was no indication what the threat could mean or when it might be carried out, although it was expected sometime that day. He hoped later to get some insight into Washington’s genuine political attitudes, and if he did he’d call immediately. It would be helpful—show the required cooperation—to be able to hint what that was in Moscow. The FBI had two suspects for the small explosion in the Washington Monument but the lead was very slender. He believed the bureau was being totally cooperative and wished he was able to contribute more. And he thanked Chelyag for the requested guidance that the American leader’s offer might be accepted, although Moscow wanted a neutral venue to avoid the impression of the Russian foreign minister having to come to Washington to meet the secretary of state.
Danilov went into more detail about the tourist in the camouflage jacket when he was connected to Yuri Pavin, although again for the benefit of any listener he said the likelihood of tracing the man and his satchel-carrying companion wasn’t promising.
“Anything you want me to follow up here?”
If there was he’d call from another phone, Danilov decided: maybe even from the FBI building itself. “What’s there been from Reztsov in Gorki?”
“Promising to come back in twenty-four hours.”
Obidin came from a room farther within the
rezidentura
—proof that Danilov didn’t need that the security chief had heard him terminate his conversation—as Danilov emerged from the man’s office. As they walked back through the embassy, Obidin disclosed that on Moscow’s instructions, security had been tightened around the building and the compound. Danilov held back from asking how they intended stopping a missile. A clearly alerted Timor Besedin intercepted them in the final corridor before the entrance to ask if everything had gone satisfactorily, volunteering the just-made announcement that Wall Street wasn’t opening. Danilov made his way back to the bureau building unsure if their obviousness was openly to mock him and his belief that he was beyond their control or if they were simply inept.
rezidentura
—proof that Danilov didn’t need that the security chief had heard him terminate his conversation—as Danilov emerged from the man’s office. As they walked back through the embassy, Obidin disclosed that on Moscow’s instructions, security had been tightened around the building and the compound. Danilov held back from asking how they intended stopping a missile. A clearly alerted Timor Besedin intercepted them in the final corridor before the entrance to ask if everything had gone satisfactorily, volunteering the just-made announcement that Wall Street wasn’t opening. Danilov made his way back to the bureau building unsure if their obviousness was openly to mock him and his belief that he was beyond their control or if they were simply inept.
Cowley had agreed that they should remain vague about the purpose of the forensic tests until what Danilov knew partially to be a fact was fully confirmed. Leonard Ross himself decided not to promise too much from the visa applications or car rental checks on Viktor Nikov’s two American visits. “Everyone’s too eager to clutch at straws: We’ll get the criticism if it comes to nothing.” Cowley told his director that they’d identified and eliminated all ten tourists on the Washington Monument stairs in the morning of the explosion and only had the two male suspects and another man and women on the afternoon visit to eliminate. Anticipating that the Watchmen would make another claim or boast after carrying out their threat, Carl Ashton had assembled a squad of twenty computer specialists at the Pentagon to attempt a source trace, and every available bureau technician at Pennsylvania Avenue had been briefed to do the same, the moment a new message was posted. Others were at the communications centers of all the major telephone companies, whose engineers were mobilized for the hunt. Ross expected that Moscow’s reservations regarding the foreign minister’s visit to the American president had already been sent to Henry Hartz or maybe the American White House direct but thanked Danilov for the guidance.
“We’re doing everything we can—and should—do, but it’s not enough,” summed up the director. “They can carry out whatever threat they damned well like.”
Pamela Darnley was hovering impatiently at the incident room door when Cowley and Danilov returned. “Lambert’s got the forensic results!” she announced. “But he says he doesn’t understand them.”
“Let’s hope I do,” said Danilov.
The forensic scientist had assembled everything in a small conference room off his working laboratory, what had been sent from Moscow and what Danilov had later brought laid out as if for an exhibition but very distinctly separated. Each item was just as distinctly labeled. The now-empty United Nations warhead was on its own table. On another table next to it were the defused mines, Semtex and timers recovered from the Lincoln Memorial, divided from the debris lifted from the Washington Monument. Lambert’s team of specialists were grouped around their supervisor, as if for a lecture.
Lambert said at once, “We’ve got some inconsistencies.”
“I expected there to be,” said Danilov. “Take me through it all.”
Lambert patted the UN missile. “Here’s our attack weapon. We’ve subjected it to every forensic test and examination available in metallography. We’ve also analyzed the paint and”—he paused, looking to Danilov—“made photographic enlargements of the stenciled identification lettering. From each we are able to make a positive comparison with similar weapons, their metal, paint, and lettering.”
The man moved to an adjoining assigned table. “These mines and this explosive came from the Lincoln Memorial. The mines have been subjected to the same metal, paint, and lettering tests. He picked up an intact timer in one hand and the shattered remains of the Washington monument detonator in the other, lifting and dropping his hands as if weighing them. “These are identical, the metals and wiring match, and there’s enough lettering actually left on the side of the monument device for us to be certain they formed part of the same production batch, off the same assembly line.” He shrugged. “Semtex is Semtex. It was the monument explosive.”
He replaced the timers, moving back to the larger table. “Here, to the right, are the empty warheads, mine casings, and paint samples which were shipped from our embassy in Moscow to compare with the material we already had. None of it—either that marked as coming from Gorki or what came from Plant 43 in Moscow—makes any metal or paint match.
“What about lettering?” broke in Danilov.
“The first inconsistency, although not against our original warhead,” said Lambert. “On the sample that came from the embassy marked as having come from Gorki, the name itself—Gorki—has quite definitely not been applied by the same stencil as the rest of the lettering. It’s a different template. And it doesn’t match the lettering on the UN missile, either.
Beside him, Danilov was aware of Cowley and Pamela shifting uncertainly. He looked in time to see the woman shake her head in bewilderment. Danilov said, “Now tell us about what I brought personally.”
Again Lambert used both hands, holding both up for everyone to see. “This is a firing pin—the sort that fortunately broke off and stopped anthrax and sarin being released in Manhattan—and this is a casing clasp which you can see here”—he pointed—“on the mines from the Lincoln Memorial.”
Lambert paused theatrically, a magician with a trick he knew would work. “The pin was marked as having come from Gorki and is a perfect metal match to the UN missile. The clasp marked Plant 43, Kushino, is a perfect metal match to the mines from the Lincoln Memorial.”
“A match in both cases!” Danilov frowned.
“Absolutely,” insisted Lambert. “And so, again, is the paint you gave me, from both Plant 35 and Plant 43. He paused. “I can explain the science but I’m damned if I can make sense of anything else.”
“I can,” said Danilov.
Before he could continue, the door jarred open behind them and Terry Osnan said, “It’s started! Hurry!”
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!”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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?”
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