The Watchmen (20 page)
Syzdukov said, “I think there really has been a misunderstanding!”
And then Chelyag came sharply on to the line. “What!”
Instead of immediately replying, Danilov leaned across the ambassador’s desk and pushed the button for speaker phone, so that Chelyag’s impatiently repeated demand echoed into the room.
“I am speaking to you from the office of His Excellency Ambassador Guliyev,” Danilov established formally. “Also with me are Head of Chancellery Timor Besedin and security officers Oleg Syzdykov and Ivan Obidin.” The first flicker of apprehension registered with the security chief. “There’s an operational difficulty that needs resolving.
The collapse of the four men was practically visible, their strings going slack. The ambassador tried anxiously to talk over Danilov, but Danilov refused the interruption, bulldozing on with the insistence that the separation was to spare the embassy embarrassment until Chelyag himself broke in.
“Is this line open, for everyone to hear? There’s an echo.”
“Yes,” said Danilov.
“Good,” said Chelyag. The lecture was terse, each man addressed individually by name. Any difficulty experienced by Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov would be considered positive obstruction, to be explained to the White House. Danilov was to be given every assistance and embassy facility without question or interference. Each of their department heads—the foreign minister himself in the cases of Ambassador Guliyev and Timor Besedin—would be notified of these instructions within the hour and asked why it had been necessary to reissue them, in view of the specific directives each had unequivocally been given.
“Dimitir Ivanovich?”
“Sir?”
“Anything further that needs to be made clear?”
“I don’t think so,” said Danilov. This whole episode had, he guessed, been set up. Some sort of loyalty test in the continuing internecine Moscow infighting in the middle of which he remained caught.
It was almost seven-thirty before Cowley and Pamela, working smoothly together from the communal incident room, organized all the searches possible from Danilov’s leads. The car rental companies hoped to complete their computer records check by the following day, but the Immigration Department thought it might take longer to trace the written visa slips, which weren’t transferred to computers and needed, therefore, to be gone through by hand.
Terry Osnan, pleased at last to be able to do something more than assemble records, said, “This has got a positive feel to it.”
“We hope,” said Cowley.
“Dimitri’s not the sort of guy I thought he would be,” said Pamela.
“Different how?”
She made an uncertain movement. “I don’t know. Quieter, I guess. If the forensic results turn out like he expects, it’s going to point toward some official complicity.”
“It’s something I want to talk through with him when we get the findings.” Cowley hesitated. “How about my buying you a thank-you dinner for last night?”
She looked at him silently for several moments from her desk. “I really was going through my angel-of-mercy routine, you know.”
“I know,” said Cowley, angry at himself. Shit! he thought: shit, shit, shit.
“I don’t want anything to get complicated.” Not unless it’s on
my
terms, she thought.
my
terms, she thought.
“Neither do I.”
“Maybe some other time.”
“Sure. Some other time.”
It was Cowley’s extension that rang. Carl Ashton said, “They’re jerking our strings again. All the blocked screens have cleared. And there’s another message, signed the Watchmen. It says within twenty-four hours they’re going to prove the hypocrisy that exists between America and Russia.”
“Where’s it being sent from?”
“They’re still using the Pentagon, for Christ’s sake! Proving we can’t catch them even though we know they’re there somewhere.”
“You think we should wake Dimitri up?” asked Pamela, when Cowley relayed the message.
“There’s nothing he can do to stop it happening, whatever it’s going to be,” said Cowley. “We can give him a few more hours.”
“What can we do to stop it?” Pamela said rhetorically.
“Nothing except wait.”
“What if they’ve got another missile? Or more bombs?” she said, still in self-conversation.
“Then we’ve got a new catastrophe,” said Cowley.
Anne Stovey took great care with her memorandum to Washington, believing that quite alone she’d found a lead—maybe even
the
lead—to the terrorist financing but not wanting to overstress the claim, in case she hadn’t.
the
lead—to the terrorist financing but not wanting to overstress the claim, in case she hadn’t.
But it had to be more than a coincidence that the security departments of four quite separate, unconnected banks had finally acknowledged complaints of irritating customers like Clarence Snelling that there had been nickel-and-dime differences in their accounts.
She rewrote her message three times, her conviction wavering at every attempt because there was so little to support her theory. For an hour she even considered saying nothing until the inquiries she’d asked the security departments to make produced something. An impossible task, she remembered, according to each security chief she’d spoken to. Her fourth rewrite included that phrase. It was late afternoon when she finally faxed it, quoting the reference from the terrorist inquiry incident room.
“Can’t it wait until we get home?” demanded Elizabeth Hollis.
“He might not be there if we wait.” Hollis hadn’t wanted another scene so he had taken his mother, announcing the sudden need to use the phone as they got close to the mall.
“What is it?” demanded the woman.
“A guy at work had a problem he couldn’t work out. I promised I’d think about it, try to find the answer. I think I have.” In more ways than Robert Standing would ever think possible, he thought.
“Maybe I’ll come with you. Look at Penney’s.”
“It’s too crowded. You’ll get tired. Stay in the car and listen to the music.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
Hollis had allowed ten minutes and felt a lurch of anxiety when he saw a woman using the telephone. He placed himself obviously outside the booth and just as obviously she turned her back to him. There was only a minute to go when she collected the unused coins from the ledge. He hurried forward, holding open the door. As she emerged she said, “Don’t worry, honey. She’ll wait, hunky guy like you,” and laughed. He could smell that she hadn’t showered. The phone rang.
“You’ve disobeyed orders!”
“I’m here.”
“Make sure you are in the future. You’re part of the struggle.”
Using pseudonyms and phrases was all right cracking through the Web and playing war games. Verbally it sounded ridiculous. Hollis said, “I’ve got some more account numbers.”
“How many?”
“Ten.”
“That’s not enough!”
“It’ll have to do. I’ll get more.”
“Don’t be insubordinate. We want you to work. We need a lot of money.”
“No more than cents. Otherwise you’ll be picked up.”
“I give the orders. Be here on time, for the next contact. And I want you personally to raise $20,000.”
“That’s impossible!”
“You invented the system. Make it work.”
“All sorted out?” his mother asked as he got back into the Jaguar.
“I think so,” Hollis said contentedly. There was no way thefts of the size the General was talking about could be restricted to cents and therefore no way they could go undiscovered.
The Chinese-initiated debate intended internationally to humiliate both America and Russia—the one unable to protect the world’s UN statesmen, the other the treaty-ignoring manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists—was destroyed as if by another bomb by the new, unspecified threat. Within an hour of its being made and relayed worldwide, the favored analyses of the intelligence and terrorist pundits in permanent—sometimes unshaved for effect—residence in television studios and newspaper offices was that the United Nations complex was to be targeted again.
Within almost the same time frame Beijing realized there wasn’t the remotest possibility of its carefully cultivated supporting army of podium attackers from Africa and Asia getting within fifty miles of Manhattan for the beginning of the assembly but refused an unthinkable loss of face by asking for a postponement. The impasse was resolved again by UN Secretary-General Ibrahim Saads, who ordered that the complex be evacuated once more. That announcement convinced the already uncertain New York mayor to declare the city closed the following day to all incoming commuters with the advice to residents to leave immediately.
The exodus was only slightly less chaotic than before, and there was almost a familiarity about the aerial television coverage of people in unthinking flight. All the city’s airports, including Newark, closed, although some landings were allowed for refueling. After Canada warned that its East Coast and central airports might not be able to cope with the rerouting, departures from Europe and eastbound from within the United States began to be canceled. Grand Central and Penn Central railway terminals were shut. There was looting and arson. By 3:00 A.M. seven looters had been shot.
The mayor of Washington stopped just short of officially ordering the evacuation of the district, gauging from the migration accounts of an increasingly overwhelmed police commissioner that so many people were already on the move that the advice was unnecessary. Besides, he wanted nothing later to prove an albatross around his already aching neck. The closure of the Mall and all government offices was extended to include the Capitol and all its administrative buildings, and thirty senators and House representatives issued individual declarations that their duty required them to be at home with their constituents in times of national crisis. Other congressmen who weren’t quick enough to think of the reelectorally correct escape were glad they hadn’t, so cowardly facile did the virtually identical statements sound, and left without attempting to justify their hurried abandonment of the as-yet unsinking ship. Dulles and Reagan airports closed down, as well as D.C.’s Union Station. Three blacks died when police opened fire on early-morning looters who started torching shops in Anacostia, just beyond Capitol Hill.
Throughout the long night there were equally frantic efforts made to guard other likely targets through the country. All army, airforce, and naval bases—including the already penetrated, previously and derided Pentagon—were placed on full alert. So were the Kennedy space launch site in Florida, Houston Control, and the Mojave space shuttle landing facility. Disney World and Disneyland announced their closure. After McDonald’s declared it would not be opening until the threat was understood and prevented, all the other fast food franchises shut, too.
With nothing more—no way of predicting more—than a five-line message registered on the federal government’s Internet-accessible home page, the crisis team that assembled within two hours at the White House was limited to Frank Norton, Henry Hartz, the directors of the FBI and CIA, and Peter Prentice, the president’s media spokesperson. Prentice stood by the Oval Office television that was permanently left on, relaying developing frenzy throughout the country.
“I’ve got to say something, but what the fuck
is
there for me to say!” demanded the president. “If I go on television again with the same speech rewritten the fourth time I’m the dumbest-ass chief executive in history. Which is what I already am in the ratings history.”
is
there for me to say!” demanded the president. “If I go on television again with the same speech rewritten the fourth time I’m the dumbest-ass chief executive in history. Which is what I already am in the ratings history.”
“The bureau assessment is that it’s an overreaction,” suggested Leonard Ross. “Cowley sees the Watchmen’s message as some kind of embarrassing disclosure.” Ross had spent the entire journey from his home to the White House on the car phone to the incident room.
“About what?” demanded the president.
“We don’t know,” Ross conceded lamely.
“Thank you for that, Mr. Director! That really tells me how to convince the American people we’ve got everything under control and that there’s nothing to panic about!” He jerked a finger toward the television. “Look at it out there, for Christ’s sake!”
“We
don’t
have anything to say,” declared Frank Norton, ever mindful that he needed the endorsement of a respected departing president to further his own ambitions and that therefore the man had to be safeguarded from mistimed public appearances. “So it would be wrong to make another personal television address. Even worse to face the press, where you’d have to take questions. The announcement’s got to be in your name but by Prentice. It’s got to make it very clear that you’re still here in the White House, the president who definitely didn’t run—”
don’t
have anything to say,” declared Frank Norton, ever mindful that he needed the endorsement of a respected departing president to further his own ambitions and that therefore the man had to be safeguarded from mistimed public appearances. “So it would be wrong to make another personal television address. Even worse to face the press, where you’d have to take questions. The announcement’s got to be in your name but by Prentice. It’s got to make it very clear that you’re still here in the White House, the president who definitely didn’t run—”
“What’s the announcement say?” demanded the man, not needing the paint-by-numbers explanation. “There’s got to be some substance.”
“Russia,” said Hartz, as the idea came to him. “Call the Russian president personally. Maybe invite the Russian foreign minister here to talk to me. It’s positive. High level. And shows you’re standing up against the demands the Watchmen made in their first message, protesting the detente between the two countries.
“That’s good,” Norton agreed.
“Yes,” said the president more slowly, digesting before regurgitating. “Yes, that’s good. You following this, Peter? Put out something right away on the wires: that there’s soon to be an important announcement. Promise each of the majors personally—tell them I told you to—it’ll be in time for their late news. But insist I’m too occupied—occupied’s the word, not “too busy,” as if I don’t know what I’m doing—to do anything on camera myself.” The man began to make rolling motions with his hand. “We’re refusing to give in to terrorism …” He looked at the FBI director. “You say that Russian guy’s arrived?”
“Earlier today,” said Ross.
“Good,” said the other man, picking up the briefing. “Senior Russian investigators already here … combined, highest-level cooperation … nowhere to hide … that sort of stuff, got it?”
“I think so, Mr. President,” said the public affairs spokesman, a mop-haired man who talked a lot with his hands. “I think we should have a picture I can issue. You on the telephone to Moscow … world leader to world leader?”
“It’s building well,” congratulated the politician. “The pose will be important. Shirt sleeves and loosened tie, president hard at work in a crisis? Or jacket and tie, calm, refusing to be panicked? Which do you think?”
“Difficult one,” said the media specialist, frowning at the seriousness of the decision. “Shirt sleeves, I think. But maybe not loosen the tie, like you’re anxious.”
“Any thoughts?” the president invited generally. “This has got to be exactly right.”
“Shirt sleeves,” said Norton, the other White House professional.
Hartz and Butterworth nodded in uncomfortable agreement. Leonard Ross refused to become involved.
Prentice said, “I think we should stress, too, that it’s we who initiated the direct approach to the Russian president. Puts the pressure on Russia to respond after whatever the attack is. Spread the pressure.”
“Perfect!” agreed the president. “Get to it. You’ve only got an hour. And Peter?”
“Mr. President?”
“Change that tie. It’s too bright. We don’t want a happy mood image. People could die.”
Cowley woke Danilov in time to watch Peter Prentice face the White House press corps on his hotel room television. Cowley and Pamela saw it from the incident room. It was followed immediately by a roundup of the intended evacuations and closure precautions, the footage on every channel that of miles-long head- and-taillighted streams of fleeing, going-anywhere vehicles. When they talked again Cowley told Danilov he was going to use the office cot, but there wasn’t any practical reason for the Russian to come from his hotel simply to sit around and wait: He could get to the bureau from 14th Street five minutes after the Watchmen carried out their threat, whatever it might be.
“This is clever,” said Danilov. “Psychological. Military. Professional insurrection training. You thought of extending the disgruntled search beyond the Pentagon to the CIA?”
“Not until now,” admitted Cowley. It was a valid but numbing suggestion.
“There was a lot to learn—and be taught—from Vietnam. Africa before that. And Latin America: Chile particularly. That’s the time—and the attitude—reflected in that first Watchmen message.”
Pamela decided to go home, which Cowley discovered for the first time was north, a condo in Westminster. He was surprised that he actually slept and for so long, from just after midnight to five. He thought it was the sound of a telephone that woke him, but the night operator came on asking what he wanted when Cowley snatched it off his desk.
There were no fresh towels or soap in the mess washroom where Cowley went to shower, and to shave he had to try to lather the sliver he did find. He managed without cutting himself and was glad there wasn’t any discomfort from his rib or head. He spent several minutes studying his lopsided appearance in the mirror and decided it might look less ridiculous if he had the rest of his hair cropped much shorter than it was. Would Pamela judge a crew cut as a better fashion statement? The coincidence of the new threat had wiped away any embarrassment at her dinner rejection, but he’d clearly and badly misjudged a situation. Which she was right about, he further accepted. They couldn’t allow the intrusion of even the most basic of social relationships, which it hadn’t seemed as if she would have welcomed in other circumstances. What about himself? Hardly a rebound reaction from Pauline’s marriage announcement, after almost three years of divorce. He’d been flattered, he acknowledged, at someone—not just someone, but an attractive, intelligent woman—seeming to show some interest in him. And got it wrong. Been naive. Laughably so. Lucky to have gotten away with it. No risk of it happening again.
The television commentaries this early were all replays from the previous night and very early morning, so he turned the sound down. The footage was virtually all repeats, too, although there were some new but familiar shots of an empty New York and Washington. The voice-over reporter added that the volume of early-morning commuter traffic was averaging less than fifty percent of normal in every major American city. Over the previous night’s still photograph of the serious-faced, shirt-sleeved president on the telephone to Moscow came the promise of a response during the day from the Russian White House.
Pamela included Danilov in the coffee and Danish that she brought when she got back at six-thirty, which was fortunate because the Russian arrived only five minutes behind her. She would have been earlier, Pamela apologized, but her normal coffee shop and the one after that were closed. There was virtually no conversation while they ate, watching the repetitive newscast. The only fresh item was the worldwide stock market slump, with overnight panic selling in Tokyo triggering a plunge in London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong. There was speculation that trading on Wall Street might be suspended even before its opening in an effort to break the cycle.
Pamela said, “This is driving me nuts!”
Danilov said, “That’s what it’s meant to do! Drive everyone nuts. It’s called psychological warfare—as infectious and as deadly as anthrax or sarin.”
Cowley said, “Makes a change from everything moving so fast we can’t keep up.”
Leonard Ross came on to Cowley’s direct incident room line at seven demanding a complete update in time for an eleven o’clock presidential briefing. When he learned the Russian was in the building, he asked that Danilov come along, as well. Seizing that as an excuse—in reality as impatient as Pamela by the inactivity and needing to move—Danilov borrowed her car to drive along deserted streets to the Russian embassy. The head of chancellery accepted at once there was no point in a meeting with the ambassador if there was nothing positive to advise the man about. Ivan Obidin came to the foyer himself to escort Danilov to the Security Bureau’s communications center, and Danilov decided that ironic and rare though it might seem, there was sometimes benefit from operating in the cesspit of Moscow deceit. This was actually amateur by Petrovka standards.
On their way to the communications facilities, the nervous intelligence chief hoped the previous day’s difficulties had been totally resolved. He certainly hadn’t intended any personal offense or obstruction and wanted to make his own office available. Danilov came close to feeling sorry for the man.
Obidin’s office was remarkably large and comfortable—almost as expansive as the ambassador’s suite—and very much the man’s own territory. Obidin’s various promotion testimonials and commendations were framed on the walls and on a low bookcase. There was an official, full face portrait of the man at a citation ceremony. Next to it was an official group photograph of what Danilov assumed to be the rest of the
rezidentura.
On the desk was a photograph of a plump woman flanked on either side by two boys in their early teens. St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square was in the background.
rezidentura.
On the desk was a photograph of a plump woman flanked on either side by two boys in their early teens. St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square was in the background.
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