The Watchmen (33 page)

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Authors: Brian Freemantle

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Espionage

BOOK: The Watchmen
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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.
 
“I didn’t think it fit because it wasn’t as cleverly planned as everything else. But now I’m sure it is! I even think it’s brilliant.” They were in Ashton’s inner courtyard office, Pamela leaning forward eagerly to convince the Pentagon computer security chief. She didn’t feel numb anymore. She felt excited.
Ashton sat behind his desk, blank faced, her first, gabbled explanation beyond him. “Run it by me again.”
Pamela sighed. “Roanne Harding was the one person who risked being identified from planting the Semtex in the Washington Memorial.”
“Right,” accepted Ashton. “That’s why they killed her. If you’d arrested her, she could have led you to them.”
Pamela smiled. “Obvious conclusion—my conclusion, your conclusion, everyone’s conclusion. What about their accepting that we’d find her and setting everything up to lead us
away
!”
“This is where you lose me,” protested Ashton. His hands were constantly moving about his desk, as if he were physically groping for something.
“And where I need your guidance to tell me I’m understanding it at last,” encouraged Pamela. “When did you start looking for the worms inside your computer systems?”
“The day the first Watchmen message was posted, when we realized there’d been an unauthorized entry. I told you that.”
“The fifteenth?”
“Yes.”
“That was the actual intrusion. When did you discover the list of possible security risk employees had been wiped?”
“Not until the eighteenth.”
“Why did the nine—including Roanne Harding—survive?”
“I told you that, too. By then we’d put up firewalls.”
“We had a spat, remember? You kept saying ‘maybe’ and I asked you to be specific and you said fifteen names had been erased.
How
did you know it was precisely fifteen?”
“I’m beginning to understand.” His nervous fingers stopped. Now he gripped the edge of the desk as if he needed to hold on.
“How, Carl?” she persisted. It had to be spelled out, the pieces numbered.
“The suspect dismissals were on a separate program. Sometimes, when information has been deleted, it can be recovered simply by hitting undelete; it’s a built-in fail-safe. We didn’t get the files back—they’d been properly wiped—but we recovered the date of the deletions.”
“Which was?”
Ashton was flushed now, acknowledging the oversight. He groped into a drawer, taking out his own investigation records and thumbing through them for several minutes. He looked up, swallowing. “All on the same day. The thirteenth.”
“How long would it have taken to wipe the entire program?”
“Seconds.”
“How
many
seconds?” pressed Pamela.
“Not seconds,” the man corrected. “It’s instantaneous.”
“So, on the thirteenth—two days before you put up firewalls—fifteen names were erased instantaneously. Five days later you were still able to find nine more names, Roanne Harding’s among them?”
“Yes.”
“You remember agreeing with me, during that argument we had, that logically the identity of the person who’d planted the Watchmen worms would have been the first thing to go?”
“Yes,” the man, said tightly.
“How can you explain those nine still being in the system if it would have taken less than seconds on the thirteenth to take them out, as well? And destroy the link between Roanne Harding and the Pentagon from which we made the connection to the Washington Monument?”
“I can’t.”
“Her name wouldn’t have meant anything to you if she had been identified in newspapers as a murder victim?”
“No.”
“So we had to be led to her: and from her, led here, to the Pentagon.”
“
Why?
”
“To make us think—as we
did
think—that Roanne Harding was the only Watchmen intruder.”
“She has to be!” It was a groan.
“The message after the Moscow embassy attack was posted on your site.” She felt very sure of herself, convinced she was right.
“The phony antistatic bands!” Ashton threw back. “I told you we’ll never be able to calculate how many passwords and codes Roanne made available by fixing those damned things. The fact that the Moscow message
was
posted from here proves we haven’t kept the bastards out by changing the lower security systems!”
“That’s one of the cleverest things,” said Pamela. “I went through our forensic findings, location by location, before coming here. And then read again what you and Bella Atkins told me—Bella in particular. She told me Roanne Harding’s access was officially restricted to the stationery and office ordering division, which was her workplace, but that Roanne had obviously moved far beyond that. Roanne’s fingerprints were everywhere, on all the bands.”
“Yes,” the man agreed doubtfully.
“Roanne shouldn’t have been allowed access, for instance, to the gatehouse ID computer system, should she?”
“No.”
“Remember you found a phony band on one of the garage terminals that shares the gatehouse database?”
The man nodded agreement.
“Although it’s part of the ordering division, the accounts and invoice office is separate, isn’t it? Actually on a different floor, according to the plan you gave me?”
Ashton nodded again. All the color had gone from his face. He was swallowing a lot, as if he were trying to force back the need to retch. His hands had gone back to the edge of the desk, holding on.
“There was a band there, you’ll remember. And that other one in the mail room: on the computer system that records incoming and outgoing mail—including the e-mail—in the building. Roanne shouldn’t have gotten anywhere near any of those: different floors, different security-classified divisions that her pass wouldn’t have accessed. And do you know what, there’s no forensic evidence that she actually did! Her fingerprints are over all the others, where her pass
would
have allowed her. But not on those three. There are prints, but they’re smudged too badly to be positive. But because there were so many elsewhere, we
assumed
she’d fixed those, too.”
“What are you saying?” demanded Ashton.
“I’m saying that Roanne, with a supposed Black Power background, was the deception, the decoy: like the virtually harmless explosion at the Washington Monument—with which she was also connected—was a deception. And littering the Pentagon with so many false antistatic bands was a deception.”
“To achieve what?”
“The concealment of the real cracker the Watchmen have here that we were never supposed to find: someone who really knows how to use a computer and is probably responsible for all the website postings that we’ve believed—because we were
supposed
to believe—came from outside, through all the back doors Roanne opened for them.”
The man looked solemnly at her for several moments. “How
are
we going to find who it is? Prove you’re right?
“I don’t know. But we might prove whether I’m right or not by checking the new antistatic bands at really sensitive levels—the ones you checked once and found to be safe.” She stopped, trying to think of something she might have missed. “The ones that, having been guaranteed safe, wouldn’t be checked again until the next regular security sweep.”
“You know what they could do—disrupt or destroy even—if they’ve penetrated the higher levels: gone sideways to one of our connected agencies!”
“Communication satellites: intelligence-gathering satellites?” guessed Pamela.
“Dear God, I hope you’re wrong,” said Ashton in a voice that sounded as if he didn’t think she was.
 
Danilov insisted they take what they considered quantum-leap discoveries back to the security-guaranteed U.S. Embassy, leaving Pavin to supervise the extended search through the remaining intelligence records. They did so discreetly and with Paul Lambert, the two breakthrough dossiers hidden in briefcases—one Lambert’s—before quitting the lecture room to go through the corridors of Petrovka. They avoided the chanting protesters just as discreetly by entering the legation from the bordering alley on which Aleksandr Pushkin’s house is preserved as a monument to the poet.
The date of his dismissal made Ivan Gavrilovich Guzov a victim of the KGB disbandment. The file picture was of a heavily built man with the swarthy skin and swept-back, deeply black hair of his Armenian ancestry. Compared against the snatched surveillance photograph Guzov had gained at least ten pounds, maybe more. From the listed date of birth in his dossier, he was now thirty-eight years old. He was described as a bachelor. When he read that Guzov had been a middle-ranking finance officer in the First Chief Directorate, with special responsibility for North America and Canada, Cowley, the counterespionage expert, said, “Paymaster for overseas deep cover or diplomatic agents.”
“Who as paymaster would have had details—and access to their archives—of all those agents,” completed Danilov.
“At last a shape, a pattern!” said Cowley.
“Was the realtor business from which Orlenko is renting Brooklyn the legitimate business he was referring to if anything happened to Guzov?” wondered Danilov. “If it is, there’s no purpose in continuing the company search in Chicago.”
Cowley considered the question. “It’s already been started. I’ll let it run. And add Guzov’s name. Chicago seems to come up a lot, and it
is
a shipping entry point into America.”
Yevgenni Mechislavovich Leanov had also worked at Lubyanka for the old KGB. He was forty-two years old and ironically had attended the same Moscow University language college as Dimitri Danilov, although two years later. Leanov had joined the intelligence organization directly after he had graduated, with distinction, and for two years acted as deputy supervisor for the English language department. The last listed Moscow address was Ulitza Krymskij Val.
Cowley said, “I’m surprised they let him go.”
“There’s never any logic in Russian bureaucracy,” said Danilov.
“The file says he’s married,” Cowley pointed out. “Be interesting to hear what his wife’s voice sounds like?”
“We’re getting a voice analysis from the intercepted conversation, incidentally,” came in Lambert. “Arriving in tomorrow’s diplomatic bag.” The forensic scientist stopped at the sudden expression on Danilov’s face. “What?”
Danilov frowned, shaking his head: “I just had the oddest recollection. Stupid. There was something about the tape when I first heard it: couldn’t think what it was, but now it’s come to me. I thought I’d heard the woman’s voice before.”
Now Cowley regarded the Russian quizzically. “How? When?”
Danilov was embarrassed, particularly in front of Paul Lambert, whom he scarcely knew. “It’s ridiculous. Forget it.”
Lambert said, “The analysis is that it’s a Muscovite accent. Age range between thirty-four and forty-five, which is pretty wide.”
Danilov shook his head again. “It’s ridiculous,” he repeated.
“You want to listen to the tape again?” offered Lambert.
“We’ve got more positive leads to follow,” dismissed the Russian.
That was Pamela Darnley’s thought when she got back to the J. Edgar Hoover building to further developments and a coincidence about voice recognition that had occurred to her and Danilov within an hour of each other.
 
Besides reacting to Cowley’s instructions to add Guzov’s name to the Chicago company search, Terry Osnan had liaised with Manhattan, from which the New Jersey surveillance was being coordinated, to suggest it be intensified. He handed Pamela the list she’d asked for earlier and said, “We could draw a total of fourteen people from Seattle, Austin, and Atlanta for that and to build up Chicago.”
“Let’s do it,” she decided. Pamela didn’t fill the incident room coordinator in on her Pentagon visit, wanting the further confirmation of Carl Ashton’s promised computer sweep to announce her deduction as an unarguable fact instead of a theory based for the moment on an inexplicable date difference.
Instead she went back to her earlier review. Because she’d urged the tapping of the public telephones, she concentrated on the billing from Bay View Avenue from which the calling pattern had first emerged. She began searching for patterns additional to those already established in the four cities, even though there’d already been a computer comparison that hadn’t thrown up any extra ones. She created her own handwritten pattern blocks, listing on a yellow legal pad Chicago, Manhattan, Pittsburgh, and Washington against the dates of the calls for more repetitions that hadn’t already been eliminated, curious now that she knew the added significance of the New Jersey property company that no calls were recorded to its number from Orlenko’s house. On impulse she even looked for a call from Brooklyn to the public booth at the New Rochelle mall from which the booby-trap massacre had been initiated. There wasn’t one.

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