Spyder Web (33 page)

The bundle contained miscellaneous bills and recent bank statements. Harmon had pored over Cole’s financial picture with a magnifying glass, trying to pinpoint the circumstances surrounding the new money, with no results.

A letter from a suburban Virginia bank caught his eye as he thumbed through the stack of new mail. Cole had accounts in Washington and Chicago, but Harmon didn’t recall any activity with this bank. He slit open the top of the envelope and found a bank notice regarding the rental of a safety-deposit box. The box had been rented the previous December, just ten days before Cole’s death.

He quickly scanned over the pile of labeled boxes and located the one marked Bank Records. Inside, he found the warrant and evidence tags for the safetydeposit box that he’d seized last January, and now he confirmed that the new letter identified a different box. Harmon signed out the letter and returned to his office to make a call for another search warrant.

The branch manager of the bank carefully scrutinized Harmon’s warrant to verify its authenticity. The young man was obviously new on the job and was following bank procedures to the letter. Harmon had called ahead and requested that the manager have the bank’s locksmith on hand when he arrived.

The young manager handed back the search warrant. ‘Your warrant appears in order, Agent Harmon. If you’ll follow me, I’ll have the box opened for you. I do expect an inventory of its contents before you leave.’

‘Of course,’ Harmon assured the manager. ‘I have all the necessary documentation for this seizure.’

The manager’s curiosity finally got the best of him. It was the first official dealing he’d had with the FBI, and visions of drug dealers or Mafia conspiracies were playing in his imagination. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, what do you expect to find in the box?’

Harmon deflected the inquiry. ‘I can’t comment on that right now.’

‘What about the owner, Michael Cole?’ the manager asked.

‘Recently deceased.’ The abrupt manner in which Harmon replied left no doubt in the manager’s mind that Cole’s passing was not from natural causes. He asked no further questions.

A high-pitched whine filled the concrete-and-steelwalled vault as the locksmith bored through the lock. Metal filings trickled out from the carbide-tipped drill bit as it sank deeper into the brass core. The drill groaned in protest as the core grabbed at the spiraling bit. Finally, the core broke free. The locksmith extracted the bit and punched the lock. The door of the safety-deposit box opened slightly.

The bank manager pulled the long plastic box from the wall and escorted Harmon back to his office with one of the bank’s guards as a witness. He closed the door and set the box on his desk; a look of curious anticipation filled the manager’s face. This was obviously the most exciting event he’d witnessed since starting work at the suburban bank branch.

When Harmon flipped the lid open, the box appeared to be empty. He then shook the box and dislodged a brown envelope from the rear of it. Harmon pulled the envelope out and rechecked the box. It now was empty.

‘Contents of safety-deposit box five oh four, one envelope,’ Harmon announced as he unfastened the metal clasp and opened it, ‘containing four three-anda-half-inch high-density floppy disks, three sequentially numbered and one labeled Cormorant. ‘ Harmon studied the disk, wondering what information Cole had placed on it.

‘Is that what you expected to find?’ the manager asked.

‘I won’t know until I find out what’s on them. I’ll be taking these disks back to FBI headquarters as evidence. Once the case is completed, all personal effects of the deceased will be turned over to his family. This clears your bank’s obligation regarding this box. Thank you for your help.’

Harmon walked out to his car and picked up his cellular phone. After dialing Mosley’s direct number, he waited for the connection to be made.

A gruff voice rumbled through the earpiece: ‘This is Cal Mosley.’

‘Afternoon, Cal. Dan Harmon. You got a minute?’

Mosley’s voice warmed. ‘For my favorite FBI man, you bet.’

Harmon picked up one of the disks and looked at the label. ‘Michael Cole had a safety-deposit box we didn’t know about. He rented it ten days before his death and tucked four diskettes inside. Got a question for you?’

‘Shoot.’

‘Does the word Cormorant mean anything to you?’

‘Not really. Hold on while I look it up.’ The phone clunked as Mosley set it on his desk. Harmon heard Mosley get up from his swivel chair and rustle through his books.

‘I’m back. Let’s see what Webster’s has to say. Cormorant, cormorant,’Mosley repeated absently while searching through the dictionary. ‘Ah, here it is. “Cormorant: any of several widely distributed aquatic birds of genus Phalacrocorax, having dark plumage, webbed feet, a hooked bill, and a distensible pouch.” The second definition says a cormorant is “a greedy or rapacious person.” Take your pick.’

‘Knowing Cole the way we do, I’d lean toward the second one. You say the main definition is a bird?’

‘Yes.’ The illustration in the dictionary didn’t show the cormorant to be a remarkably graceful or majestic creature.

‘Didn’t Cole work on a project involving a defector that had to do with birds?’

There was a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Son of a bitch! You’re right. I completely forgot about that. Cole salvaged a bunch of old KGB computer disks. The agents listed on those disks all had bird code names. Where are you at?’

‘Out in Virginia, about twenty minutes from Langley.’

‘Well, get over here with that disk. I’ll have our computer people up and ready to take a look at it when you get here.’

Harmon’s drive to Langley went quickly in the midafternoon traffic; maybe things were going his way today. Mosley met him at the main reception desk, where Harmon was fitted with visitor’s credentials. The bright orange-and-black badge clipped to his lapel singled him out as a guest with limited access to the facility.

‘I’m taking you down to see Frank Villano. You’ll remember him from our meeting with the DCI. When I told him what you’d found, he just about jumped out of his skin.’

After a dozen turns in the look-alike corridors of the main office building, Harmon was thoroughly disoriented. Occasional glimpses through office windows allowed him to reestablish his bearings in terms of direction. Mosley ran his ID badge through a magnetic strip reader, which confirmed his access code and released the lock.

Harmon looked over the banks of computers lined up within a glass-enclosed space that filled the interior of the Computer Department. Offices and support spaces lined the perimeter of the glass core, each space dependent on the powerful machines in the center.

They stopped at a corner office on the perimeter, where Villano’s assistant waved them through. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Mosley replied.

Villano’s large office was filled with the typical debris found in the office of any manager of information systems: piles of printouts, odd software products, and the occasional piece of hardware. Villano was pounding away at his keyboard when Mosley and Harmon entered.

‘Have a seat, gentlemen,’ Villano offered over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be right with you.’

Harmon hung his coat on the wall rack and pulled up a chair beside Mosley while Villano tapped out a few more keystrokes.

‘There, that did it.’ Villano sighed with relief as he finished. He then turned around to face his guests. ‘Thanks for coming down. I understand that you’ve found some disks that Cole stashed away, one with the name Cormorant on it.’

‘Yes.’ Harmon fished the disks out of his shirt pocket and handed them to Villano.

Villano looked over the floppy disk. It was the same make as those purchased en masse by his department, and Villano easily recognized the distinctive handwriting. ‘This is Cole’s all right. Let’s find out what he was up to.’

Villano inserted the disk into his desktop computer and directed the program to work with the files found on the disk. The drive light flashed as the computer read the disk and filled its internal memory with information. In a few seconds, the operation was complete and the program asked Villano what he wished to do next.

‘You’ll have to pardon me, but my Russian is not quite what it used to be.’

Harmon and Mosley peered over Villano’s shoulder and saw a screen filled with Cyrillic characters. It looked like any other computer program, except it was a language neither of them could read.

‘What is that?’ Harmon asked.

‘This is a gift from a defector,’ Villano replied while trying to decipher the menu offered by the program. ‘Recovering this program and its related data files was Michael Cole’s final assignment before going on vacation. The program seems to have found some data files on your disk that it recognizes. I’d say that you’ve found the files of another Soviet spy.’

‘Another spy?’ Mosley asked. ‘Weren’t all the original disks and data files accounted for last January when we started looking through Cole’s work?’

‘Yes, but a few of the original disks were damaged and the data was unrecoverable, including one labeled Cormorant. ‘

‘Frank, I suggest we find out who the hell this Cormorant is,’ Mosley offered. ‘That might just tell us why Cole squirreled away a copy of this disk.’

Villano followed the menu instructions that guided him into the late Soviet spymaster’s database. From the list of agent code names, he selected the Russian version of the word Cormorant. Villano’s computer began churning away at the data until the screen cleared and a new image filled the nineteen-inch monitor. A grainy photograph appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. The face was that of a young woman.

Mosley walked around and crouched beside Villano to get a closer look at the photograph. ‘What’s the text say?’

‘The woman pictured is Anna Mironova. Born in the Russian Republic. Parents deceased. Educated in various preparatory schools and trained by the KGB at the First Chief Directorate Institute. She got in there very young, about high school age, if these dates are correct. Let’s see what she’s currently up to.’

Villano selected one of the menu options that appeared in a status bar along the bottom of the screen. ‘Current assignment: First Chief Directorate, Directorate T, deep-cover agent in the United States.’

‘What’s Directorate T?’ Harmon asked.

‘I believe that was the KGB’s Science and Technology Group,’ Villano replied. ‘Some parts of the FCD were geared toward political or military information. Directorate T officers used to comb the outside world for any technology or scientific information that the Kremlin wanted.’

‘What’s that part on the bottom of the screen?’Mosley asked, pointing at a block of text. ‘That part right there.’

‘Hmm, says that she works as a writer-more precisely, a journalist, by the name of Alexandra Roe.’

‘Damn!’Mosley growled. ‘Get me back to that picture.’

Villano tapped a couple of keys and the photograph of a young Soviet agent filled the screen.

‘She look familiar to you, Dan?’Mosley asked, testing Harmon’s imagination. ‘Add a couple of years, style the hair, and who do you have?’

Harmon studied the image, mentally altering it as Mosley suggested until his mind made the transformation. ‘It’s her all right.’

Mosley and Harmon had raced well beyond Villano at this point. ‘Who’s her? Who is she?’

‘Someone Cole met just before he was killed. Dan and I have been checking into her background, and so far, we’ve come up empty.’

‘Roe’s background always seemed too clean to be real. She’s got all the right documentation, but there’s no depth, no personal history. It’s like she existed only on paper before starting college.’

Mosley had seen the signs of a deep-cover agent before. ‘It sure smells like a legend. If Roe really is a Russian agent and Cole tried to put the squeeze on her, it’s no wonder he wound up dead. Frank, can you punch me out some hard copy? I want to take this to the DCI.’

As Villano worked his way through the menus to request a printout, Mosley then sat back in his chair, shook his head, and laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ Harmon asked.

‘Do you remember our little powwow last week, when we thought we had this whole thing figured out?’

‘Yes, so?’

‘We’ve already got the FBI, the CIA, British Intelligence, and the Chinese knee-deep in this little mess and now we discover that our old friends, the KGB, may have a player on the field, too. Who’s next, the Mossad?’

Two hours ago, Sir Daniel Long finished a phone call with Jackson Barnett of the CIA. His counterpart in the American intelligence community had just forwarded some startling news that one of the industrial spies, currently under surveillance, might also be a former Soviet agent. Barnett had asked that the new information about Alexandra Roe be verified by British Intelligence’s high-level source. What disturbed Long most about Barnett’s call was that if the information that the CIA had uncovered about Roe was genuine, then he should have already known about it. After the call, Long requested a driver for a trip out to the cottage-a country estate that British Intelligence used as a safe house.

The ninety-minute trip into the English countryside was uneventful, if not downright depressing. The past two days had seen nothing but rain and clouds over the British Isles and the weather didn’t help Long’s mood. A sense of betrayal burned inside of him as he looked over the pages that Barnett had sent, wondering what else he hadn’t been told by the former mole.

The two black Austins that formed Long’s entourage cleared the cottage’s security and pulled into the circle drive by the main entrance. Long could make out the shapes of security officers, their collars turned up against the driving rain, patrolling the estate’s perimeter. A guard with a large umbrella met Long at the car and escorted him into the main house. Long took off his wet mackintosh and handed it to the guard.