by Tom Clancy
All he knew right now was that the next step in the courier chain was dead at his feet, and with it his only hope of linking the microfilm to the American spy in the Defense Ministry. Vatutin corrected himself: He also knew that he’d have to report this to the Chairman in about six hours. He needed a drink. Vatutin shook his head and looked down at what was left of his suspect. The snow was falling so rapidly that you couldn’t see the blood anymore.
“You know, if they’d only been a little bit more clever putting his body on the tracks, we might have written it off to an accident,” another KGB officer observed. Despite the horrendous work done to the body by the wheels of the locomotive, it was clear that Altunin’s throat had been expertly sliced by a narrow-bladed knife. Death, the responding physician reported, could not have taken longer than a minute. There were no signs of a struggle. The victim‘s—the traitor’s! —hands were not bruised or cut. He hadn’t fought back against whoever had killed him. Conclusion: His killer was probably known to him. Might it have been an American?
“First thing,” Vatutin said. “I want to know if any Americans were away from their flats between eighteen and twenty-three hours.” He turned. “Doctor!”
“Yes, Colonel?”
“Time of death again?”
“Judging by the temperature of the larger pieces, between twenty-one and midnight. Earlier rather than later, I think, but the cold and snow cover complicate matters.” Not to mention the state of the remains, he didn’t add.
Vatutin turned back to his principal assistant. “Any who were away from quarters, I want to know who, where, when, and why.”
“Step up surveillance of all the foreigners?” the man wondered aloud.
“I’ll have to go to the Chairman for that, but I’m thinking about it. I want you to speak to the chief Militia investigator. This is to be classified most-secret. We don’t need a mob of fumbling policemen messing this affair up.”
“Understood, Comrade Colonel. They’d only be interested in recovering the auto parts anyway,” the man noted sourly. This perestroika business is turning everyone into a capitalist!
Vatutin walked over to the locomotive driver. “It’s cold, isn’t it?”
The message was received. “Yes, Comrade. Perhaps you’d like something to take away the chill?”
“That would be very kind of you, Comrade Engineer.”
“My pleasure, Comrade Colonel.” The engine driver produced a small bottle. As soon as he’d seen that the man was a colonel of the KGB, he’d thought himself doomed. But the man seemed decent enough. His colleagues were businesslike, their questions had been reasonable ones, and the man was almost at ease—until he realized that he could be punished for having a bottle on the job. He watched the man take a long pull, then hand the bottle back.
“Spasibo,” the KGB man said, and walked off into the snow.
Vatutin was waiting in the Chairman’s anteroom when he arrived. He’d heard that Gerasimov was a serious worker, always at his desk by seven-thirty. The stories were right. He came through the door at seven twenty-five and waved for the “Two” man to follow him into his office.
“Well?”
“Altunin was killed late last night in the railyards outside the Moskvich Auto Factory. His throat was cut and his body left on the tracks, where a switch engine ran over it.”
“You’re sure it’s him?” Gerasimov asked with a frown.
“Yes, he was positively identified. I recognized the face myself. He was found next to a railcar that had ostensibly been broken into, and some auto parts were missing.”
“Oh, so he stumbled upon a gang of black marketeers and they conveniently killed him?”
“So it is meant to appear, Comrade Chairman.” Colonel Vatutin nodded. “I find the coincidence unconvincing, but there is no physical evidence to contradict it. Our investigations are continuing. We are now checking to see if any of Altunin’s comrades from his military service live in the area, but I am not hopeful along these lines.”
Gerasimov rang for tea. His secretary appeared in an instant, and Vatutin realized that this had to be part of the regular morning routine. The Chairman was taking things more easily than the Colonel had feared. Party man or not, he acted like a professional:
“So, to this point, we have three confessed document couriers, and one more positively identified, but unfortunately dead. The dead one was seen in close physical proximity to the senior aide of the Defense Minister, and one of the live ones has identified his contact as a foreigner, but cannot positively identify his face. In short, we have the middle of this line, but neither end.”
“That is correct, Comrade Chairman. Surveillance of the two Ministry colonels continues. I propose that we step up surveillance of the American Embassy community.”
Gerasimov nodded. “Approved. It’s time for my morning brief. Keep pushing for a break in the case. You look better now that you’ve cut back on your drinking, Vatutin.”
“I feel better, Comrade Chairman,” he admitted.
“Good.” Gerasimov rose, and his visitor did the same. “Do you really think that our CIA colleagues killed their own man?”
“Altunin’s death was most convenient for them. I realize that this would be a violation of our—our agreement along these lines, but—”
“But we are probably dealing with a highly placed spy, and they are undoubtedly most interested in protecting him. Yes, I understand that. Keep pushing, Vatutin,” Gerasimov said again.
Foley was already at his office also. On his desk were three film cassettes for CARDINAL. The next problem was delivering the damned things. The business of espionage was a mass of interlocking contradictions. Some parts of it were devilishly hard. Some carried the sort of danger that made him wish he’d stayed with the New York Times. But others were so simple that he could have had one of his kids handle it. That very thought had occurred to him several times—not that he’d ever entertain it seriously, but in moments when his mind was affected by a few stiff drinks, he’d muse that Eddie could take a piece of chalk and make a certain mark in a certain place. From time to time, embassy personnel would walk about Moscow doing things that were just slightly out of the ordinary. In summer, they’d wear flowers in buttonholes, and remove them for no apparent reason—and the KGB officers watching them would anxiously scan the sidewalks for the person at whom the “signal” was aimed. Year round, some would wander about, taking photographs of ordinary street scenes. In fact, they scarcely needed to be told. Some of the embassy people merely had to act like their eccentric American selves to drive the Russians nuts. To a counterespionage officer, anything could be a secret sign: a turned-down sun visor in a parked car, a package left on its front seat, the way the wheels were pointed. The net effect of all these measures, some deliberate, some merely random, had “Two” men scurrying all over the city running down things that simply didn’t exist. It was something Americans did better than Russians, who were too regimented to act in a truly random fashion, and it was something that made life thoroughly miserable for the counterspies of the Second Chief Directorate.
But there were thousands of them, and only seven hundred Americans (counting dependents) assigned to the embassy.
And Foley still had the film to deliver. He wondered why it was that CARDINAL had always refused to use dead-drops. It was the perfect expedient for this. A dead-drop was typically an object that looked like an ordinary stone, or anything else common and harmless, hollowed out to hold the thing to be transferred. Bricks were especially favored in Moscow, as the city was mainly one of brick, many of which were loose due to the uniformly poor workmanship found here, but the variety of such devices was endless.
On the other hand, the variety of ways to make a brush-pass was limited, and depended upon the sort of timing to be found in a wishbone backfield. Well, the Agency hadn’t given him this job because it was easy. He couldn’t risk it again himself. Perhaps his wife could make the transfer ...
“So,
where’s the leak?” Parks asked his security chief.
“It could be any one of a hundred or so people,” the man answered.
“That’s good news,” Pete Wexton observed dryly. He was an inspector in the FBI’s counterintelligence office. “Only a hundred.”
“Could be one of the scientific people, or somebody’s secretary, or someone in the budget department—that’s just in the program itself. There are another twenty or so here in the D.C. area who’re into Tea Clipper deep enough to have seen this stuff, but they’re all very senior folks.” SDIO’s security chief was a Navy captain who customarily wore civilian clothes. “More likely, the person we’re looking for is out West.”
“And they’re mostly scientific types, mostly under forty.” Wexton closed his eyes. Who live inside computers and think the world’s just one big videogame. The problem with scientists, especially the young ones, was simply that they lived in a world very different from that understood and appreciated by the security community. To them, progress depended on the free transfer of information and ideas. They were people who got excited about new things, and talked about them among themselves, unconsciously seeking the synergism that made ideas sprout like weeds in the disordered garden of the laboratory. To a security officer the ideal world was one where nobody talked to anyone else. The problem with that, of course, was that such a world rarely did anything worth securing in the first place. The balance was almost impossible to strike, and the security people were always caught exactly in the middle, hated by everyone.
“What about internal security on the project documents?” Wexton asked.
“You mean canary traps?”
“What the hell is that?” General Parks asked.
“All these papers are done on word processors. You use the machine to make subtle alterations in each copy of the important papers. That way you can track every one, and identify the precise one that’s being leaked to the other side,” the Captain explained. “We haven’t done much of that. It’s too time-intensive.”
“CIA has a computer subroutine that does it automatically. They call it Spookscribe, or something like that. It’s closely held, but you should be able to get it if you ask.”
“Nice of ’em to tell us about it,” Parks groused. “Would it matter in this case?”
“Not at the moment, but you play all the cards you got,” the Captain observed to his boss. “I’ve heard about the program. It can’t be used on scientific documents. The way they use language is too precise. Anything more than inserting a comma—well, it can screw up what they’re trying to say.”
“Assuming anyone can understand it in the first place,” Wexton said with a rueful shake of the head. “Well, it’s for damned sure that the Russians can.” He was already thinking about the resources that this case would require—possibly hundreds of agents. They’d be conspicuous. The community in question might be too small to absorb a large influx of people without someone’s notice.
The other obvious thing to do was restrict access to information on the mirror experiments, but then you ran the risk of alerting the spy. Wexton wondered why he hadn’t stuck to simple things like kidnappings and Mafia racketeering. But he’d gotten his brief on Tea Clipper from Parks himself. It was an important job, and he was the best man for it. Wexton was sure of this: Director Jacobs had said so himself.
Bondarenko noticed it first. He’d had an odd feeling a few days previously while doing his morning run. It was something he’d always had, but those three months in Afghanistan had taken a latent sixth sense and made it blossom fully. There were eyes on him. Whose? he wondered.
They were good. He was sure of that. He also suspected that there were five or more of them. That made them Russian ... probably. Not certainly. Colonel Bondarenko was one kilometer into his run, and decided to perform a small experiment. He altered his route, taking a right where he normally took a left. That would take him past a new apartment block whose first-floor windows were still polished. He grinned to himself, but his right hand unconsciously slapped down on his hip, searching for his service automatic. The grin ended when he realized what his hand had done, and felt the gnawing disappointment that he did not have the wherewithal to defend himself with anything other than bare hands. Bondarenko knew how to do that quite well, but a pistol has longer reach than a hand or foot. It wasn’t fear, not even close to it, but Bondarenko was a soldier, accustomed to knowing the limits and rules of his own world.
His head swiveled, looking at the reflection of the windows. There was a man a hundred meters behind him, holding a hand to his face, as though speaking on a small radio. Interesting. Bondarenko turned and ran backward for a few meters, but by the time his head had come around, the man’s hand was at his side, and he was walking normally, seemingly uninterested in the jogging officer. Colonel Bondarenko turned and resumed his normal pace. His smile was now thin and tight. He’d confirmed it. But what had he confirmed? Bondarenko promised himself that he’d know that an hour after getting to his office.
Thirty minutes later, home, showered, and dressed, he read his morning paper—for him it was Krasnaya Zvesda, “Red Star,” the Soviet military daily—while he drank a mug of tea. The radio was playing while his wife prepared the children for school. Bondarenko didn’t hear either, and his eyes merely scanned the paper while his mind churned. Who are they? Why are they watching me? Am I under suspicion? If so, suspicion of what?
“Good morning, Gennady Iosifovich,” Misha said on entering his office.
“Good morning, Comrade Colonel,” Bondarenko answered.
Filitov smiled. “Call me Misha. The way you’re going, you will soon outrank this old carcass. What is it?”
“I’m being watched. I had people following me this morning when I did my run.”
“Oh?” Misha turned. “Are you sure?”
“You know how it is when you know you’re being watched—I’m certain you know, Misha!” the young Colonel observed.
But he was wrong. Filitov had noticed nothing unusual, nothing to arouse his instincts until this moment. Then it hit him that the bath attendant wasn’t back yet. What if the signal was about something more than a routine security check? Filitov’s face changed for an instant before he got it back under control.
“You’ve noticed something, too, then?” Bondarenko asked.
“Ah!” A wave of the hand, and an ironic look. “Let them look; they will find this old man more boring than Alexandrov’s sex life.” The reference to the Politburo’s chief ideologue was becoming a popular one in the Defense Ministry. A sign, Misha wondered, that General Secretary Narmonov was planning to ease him out?
They ate in the Afghan way, everyone taking food bare-handed from a common plate. Ortiz had a virtual banquet laid out for lunch. The Archer had the place of honor, with Ortiz at his right hand to act as translator. Four very senior CIA people were there, too. He thought they were overdoing things, but then, the place that put the light in the sky must have been important. Ortiz opened the talking with the usual ceremonial phrases.
“You do me too much honor,” the Archer replied.
“Not so,” the senior CIA visitor said through Ortiz. “Your skill and courage are well known to us, and even among our soldiers. We are ashamed that we can give you no more than the poor help that our government allows.”
“It is our land to win back,” the Archer said with dignity. “With Allah’s help it will be ours again. It is well that Believers should strive together against the godless ones, but the task is that of my people, not yours.”
He doesn’t know, Ortiz thought. He doesn’t know that he’s being used.
“So,” the Archer went on. “Why have you traveled around the world to speak with this humble warrior?”
“We wish to talk with you about the light you saw in the sky.”
The Archer’s face changed. He was surprised at that. He’d expected to be asked about how well his missiles worked.
“It was a l
ight—a strange light, yes. Like a meteor, but it seemed to go up instead of down.” He described what he had seen in detail, giving the time, where he’d been, the direction of the light, and the way it had sliced across the sky.
“Did you see what it hit? Did you see anything else in the sky?”
“Hit? I don’t understand. It was a light.” _
Another of the visitors spoke. “I am told that you were a teacher of mathematics. Do you know what a laser is?”
His face changed at the new thought. “Yes, I read of them when I was in university. I—” The Archer sipped at a glass of juice. “I know little of lasers. They project a beam of light, and are used mainly for measuring and surveying. I have never seen one, only read of them.”
“What you saw was a test of a laser weapon.”
“What is its purpose?”
“We do not know. The test you saw used the laser system to destroy a satellite in orbit. That means—”
“I know of satellites. A laser can be used for this purpose?”
“Our country is working on similar things, but it would seem that the Russians are ahead of us.”
The Archer was surprised by that. Was not America the world’s leader in technical things? Was not the Stinger proof of that? Why had these men flown twelve thousand miles—merely because he’d seen a light in the sky?
“You are fearful of this laser?”
“We have great interest,” the senior man replied. “Some of the documents you found gave us information about the site which we did not have, and for this we are doubly in your debt.”
“I, too, have interest now. Do you have the documents?”