by Stuart Woods
“Now that we’re all here,” he said pointedly, looking at Rule, “I want to have a little chat with you all. As you know, I’m testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee tomorrow on the subject of our request for funds to expand our technology. As you also know, Senator Carr, the chairman of the committee has something of a little crusade on these days about our use of technology, as opposed to HUMINT. The senator is a bit of a romantic, I believe, and he thinks we should be devoting more of our resources to cranking out James Bonds and less to the high tech stuff and disinformation operations that have proved so productive since I became Director of Central Intelligence. He claims that you people, the best intelligence analysts in the world, can’t analyze unless you hear from some supersleuth out there on his belly in the grass. Well, I think that’s a lot of horseshit, and I intend to tell him so tomorrow.
“Now, I also intend to tell him that my analysts are behind me on this, and that’s why I’ve called you here today. I do not want to pick the Washington Post the day after tomorrow and read that so-called informed sources are saying that there’s dissent on this in the directorate of Intelligence. In short, I don’t want any leaks to the press on this. I …
The director paused. Harmon Pool, the head of the Central American Office, was on his feet. Rule knew him well enough to know he was angry. “Mr. Director,” Pool said, in a low, even voice, “forgive me for interrupting, but can you cite a single instance of a leak from the Directorate of Intelligence, ever?” He remained standing. Harmon Pool was retiring soon, and he apparently was in no mood to take any crap from a political appointee.
The director looked flustered. “Now, uh …”he leaned toward Alan Nixon, who said something without moving his lips, “Pool, yes. I know how loyal you people are, and I certainly didn’t mean to imply that security was lax in the DI.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pool said, and sat down.
“What I mean is, I want unanimity on this issue, and I just want to say to you people that if there are any complaints about my position on this, I want to hear them now.” He looked defiantly around the table. “Anybody?”
The group exchanged glances or looked away from him, but nobody said anything. Rule knew of at least two other office heads who had been complaining about a shortage of HUMINT coming in, but nobody had been prepared for this sort of bullying from the director.
“Come on, let’s hear it,” the director said, sensing victory in their silence, “can anybody cite so much as a single instance of a critical absence of HUMINT on a tech-based report?” He looked slowly around the table, his jaw set. “Good,” he said. “I expect that …” He stopped, his eyes narrowing. “Ms. Rule?”
Rule was surprised to find herself on her feet, but now that she was, she had no intention of stopping. “Yes, sir, I think I can do that; in fact I can cite two instances in less than thirty days. In the first, a satshot came through showing what I think might be a new Soviet SPETSNAZ training base on the coast of Latvia, disguised as a sports facility. There are indications that it might also be a submarine base, and although I have requested HUMINT from ops, we apparently have no one on the ground, not a cleaning lady, not a garbage collector, who can confirm or dispute it.” The director was glaring at her, his eyes slits, his nostrils flared. “In the second instance,” she went on, being careful to keep her tone informative and civil, “satshots have confirmed the existence of at least two wing-in-ground-effect aircraft which are operational, although we didn’t believe such a plane was feasible. That work must have been going on for years, and our technical facilities didn’t detect it until the aircraft were flying, and we don’t really know whether the Soviets have two or two hundred of them.” She sat down.
The director continued to stare at her. Simon was staring at her, too. Alan Nixon had taken off his glasses and was rubbing the bridge of his nose, his eyes tightly shut.
“That’s all,” the director said, suddenly, then he turned on his heel and left the room.
A moment passed before anyone realized they had been dismissed. Finally, people began silently filing out. Rule got out of her chair and started for the door.
“Katharine,” Simon’s voice said from behind her.
She turned.
“Stay a moment, please.”
She sat down again. Simon and Alan Nixon remained seated at the opposite end of the table. Simon turned to Nixon.
“Alan, I don’t want to trespass on your directorate, but I wonder if I might have a moment alone with Katharine.”
“Of course, Simon,” Nixon said. He left the room.
Simon stared silently at her for a moment. He was aging well, she thought. The yellow hair was streaked with gray, now, and his neck bulged around his button-down collar a bit, but he remained a handsome, even distinguished-looking man.
“How’s Peter?” she asked into the silence.
“He’s very well, thank you. He and Missy have become quite good friends.” He was silent for another moment. “Katharine, I think you should resign from the agency.” His voice was flat and without expression, which made it seem menacing.
She was shocked. “You have no right to say that to me,” she was finally able to say.
“I’m speaking professionally, not personally,” he said. “I don’t believe you are suited for this work.”
“What?”
“You are beginning to show signs of instability, and you know as well as I that the Agency cannot tolerate instability in its people.”
“Oh? And just how is this instability manifesting itself?”
He placed his hands on the table, palms down, as if to steady himself, but his tone did not change. “You are publishing wild, unfounded theories. You are becoming insubordinate.”
“I believe I can support my theories, given time and resources, neither of which I’m getting,” she said, hotly. “And you think I was insubordinate just now? He asked a question, and I answered him, as respectfully as I know how. Did he really expect to be able to drag us all in here and browbeat us into accepting a position that, I know for a fact, half a dozen of the office heads in that meeting have the gravest reservations about? Do you think that was a reasonable thing for him to do?”
“The director’s ability to reason is not in question,” Simon replied, his tone still unchanged, that of a psychiatrist speaking to an unruly patient, “Yours is. Your conduct calls it into question.”
“My conduct? What conduct?”
“The day before yesterday, you left the country without authorization. That, as you well know, is a serious breach of Agency rules.”
It was, and she knew it. She wanted out of this room. “Simon, you are way out of line. I don’t work for you, and you have no right to question my conduct, let alone my stability. I am a loyal, hardworking member of this establishment with an outstanding record of accomplishment.” She stood up. “If you have any accusations to make against me, make them before a review board. I may not be a politician, but I’m a lawyer, and I know how to defend myself.” She walked to the door and turned back. “Tell me something, Simon,” she said. “What is Snowflower?”
He seemed to redden slightly. “You know better than to ask a question like that.”
“I have the highest security clearance the Agency can award,” she said. “What is Snowflower?”
Two small wrinkles appeared between Simon’s eyebrows. “You don’t have a need to know,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to find out,” she said, and started out the door.
“Katharine!” he called after her.
She stopped.
“You are digging your own grave here. Get out while you can still do it with some remaining shred of an honorable career. You owe your son that much.”
She left the room, slamming the door behind her. She walked back to her office in a haze of rage, breathing hard, closed the door, sat down at her desk and switched on her computer terminal. When COSMO came to life, she tapped in a ten-digit code, not
her own, Simon’s, the one Ed Rawls had given her.
GOOD MORNING, MR. RULE. WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU? SNOWFLOWER, Rule typed.
SEARCHING…
She stared at the screen, waiting impatiently.
TYPE (S) FOR SUMMARY, (F) FOR ENTIRE FILE, (X) TO RETURN TO SYSTEM.
She typed S.
TYPE (P) FOR PRINTER, (S) FOR SCREEN. She typed S.
SNOWFLOWER IS A DISINFORMATION OPERATION DESIGNED TO CAUSE THE SOVIET UNION TO COMMIT A DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF TROOPS AND MATERIEL TO THE EASTERN BALTIC, WHERE NO REAL THREAT TO THEM EXISTS. IF THIS CAN BE EFFECTED, IT IS ANTICIPATED THAT THE BULK OF THE FORCES DEPLOYED THERE WOULD BE DRAINED FROM EASTERN EUROPE, PARTICULARLY THE EAST GERMAN BORDER REGION, THEREBY REDUCING THEIR ABILITY TO LAUNCH A WESTWARD THRUST IN THAT REGION, IN THE EVENT OF HOSTILITIES. THE THRUST OF THE DISINFORMATION IS TO BE THAT SWEDEN, HERETOFORE DETERMINEDLY NEUTRAL, IS SECRETLY PREPARING TO JOIN THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (NATO).
DO YOU WISH TO SEE THE ENTIRE FILE? Y/N
Rule gaped at the screen, reading the summary again. “Jesus Christ,” she said aloud. Everything was clicking noisily into place in her mind. She typed Y.
TYPE (P) FOR PRINTER, (S) FOR SCREEN.
She switched on her printer and typed P. She sat and read from the screen, apalled, as the printer whirred back and forth. The fools, she thought, as the amber lines moved up the screen. The goddamned fools.
33
APPICELLA gazed intently through the lighted magnifier and carefully soldered a microchip onto the computer circuitboard. He had been at Malibu, as they called it, for three days, and he had been astonished and intrigued at what he had seen here. He had made more than sixty trips to the Soviet Union over the past fifteen years, mostly dealing with the foreign trade people; he had visited factories, laboratories, homes, and the dachas of very highly placed Soviets, including Majorov’s, and he had never seen such an allocation of resources as had been invested at Malibu.
Quite apart from its restaurants and shops filled with Western goods, the place had every technological innovation available to the Soviets, and some he had thought were not available. It did not surprise him very much when Firsov, or rather Majorov, as he now called himself, telephoned him to say he had one of the newest American computers, one that was in short supply even in America. He knew from past experience that Majorov was resourceful and determined when it came to getting what he wanted, especially with regard to the technological. What did astound him was that Malibu was equipped with the latest digital telephone exchange, made by Western Electric in the United States, one that allowed Majorov, via his own satellite station, to place and receive calls nearly everywhere in the world. The Soviets had, years before, after a brief experiment, ended personally placed telephone calls outside the country, and the equipment installed in this relatively small place would normally have been used to serve a large city. The satellite television reception surprised him, too, not so much because of the technology involved, but because of what the system received—uncensored American television newscasts and films. Only a person in a very particular position of power in in the Soviet Union could possibly have access to that sort of privilege.
What he had seen at Malibu made Appicella absolutely certain that Majorov was KGB, and that frightened him. It also made him extremely curious. Even if he had not promised the beautiful American woman information about his visit, he would have been curious enough to explore for himself. Appicella had no intention of climbing over fences or peeping through keyholes for this information, though. He reserved his bravado for his relations with women. But he knew that whatever this Majorov and his incredible “sports center” were about would be recorded in the storage devices of his computers, which Appicella knew well, having stolen or designed their workings himself.
He finished the last of his soldering and fitted the circuit board into its intended slot in the computer. He booted the system and typed the word INSTALL into the keyboard, then watched with satisfaction as the installation program he had written checked each of the computer’s components and reported it working satisfactorily. That done, he installed his specially modified, multiuser software, then moved back and forth between two terminals, checking their access to the central computer. All was perfection, but then, this miracle had been performed by Emilio Appicella, had it not?
Now came the part he had been itching for. He plugged the waiting cables, which led from the the old computer system, into the serial port of the IBM, put a floppy diskette containing his communications software into the IBM’s floppy drive, and tapped in a few instructions. Having satisfactorily got a systems prompt from the old computer, he typed in the word TREE. Immediately, there began to scroll up on his monitor a list of all the directories and subdirectories on the old computer’s tenmegabyte hard disk. He was now operating Majorov’s system remotely, from two rooms away. Abruptly, he stopped the scrolling. There was a subdirectory called WAR. War? It must be an abbreviation or an acronym, surely. Still, he looked at the sub-subdirectories branching off it. AMPHB, AIRBRN, LOGIS, SUB, ARMR, AIRCRFT, SUM. Amphibious, airborne, logistics, submarine, armor, aircraft? SUM must be summary. He typed in instruction to open the file. Then, on the screen before him, he read, in English,
SUMMARY OF PLANS FOR AN INVASION OF SWEDEN
Appicella quickly scrolled through a few pages of the file. He was stunned. Could this possibly be real? He quickly removed the communications diskette from the floppy drive and inserted a blank diskette, then instructed the computer to copy the file, SUM. In seconds, the file had been copied onto his floppy diskette.
“How is it going?” Majorov’s voice suddenly asked from immediately behind him.
Appicella jumped. Majorov had entered the room from his adjoining office and was now looking over his shoulder. “I’ve just this moment got the whole thing together,” he said, quickly typing in other instructions. I’m ready to copy from your old tenmegabyte hard disk to your new twenty-megabyte one. Watch.” He hit the return key and the message, DISKCOPY IN OPERATION. STAND BY, came onto the screen. “There,” Appicella said, “it’s copying now.”
“How long will it take?” Majorov asked.
“Well, I don’t know how much is on your old disk. If there’s a lot, it could take several hours. It’s transferring information at 9600 baud, though, and that’s fast.” Appicella pushed back his chair. “Well, there’s nothing to do but leave the equipment to do it’s work. I think I’ll call it a day.”
“Come on into my office,” Majorov said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I could use one,” Appicella replied, following him. In the next room, he sank into a sofa, while Majorov got together an iced bottle of Stolichnaya and opened a tin of caviar.
“I think this calls for a celebration,” Majorov said, “completing your work so quickly.”
Appicella shrugged. “It was all pretty straightforward,” he said, “given the development work I had already done. You certainly came to the right man.”
Majorov smiled and lifted a glass. “I’ll drink to that,” he said. “You’ve done your usual fine job.”
“Thank you, Viktor. I’ve also installed a new internal modem, for transmitting data over telephone lines. Your old one only worked at 300 baud. The new one works at 300, 1200, or 2400 baud, and you can install your own password to prevent any tampering with your data.”
“That sounds great, Emilio. Will it be very secure?”
“Of course. You can change the password as often as you like with a few keystrokes. Not even I could crack it from outside. I’ll show your secretary how it works, then I’ll have a couple of hours instruction for your girls tomorrow morning, and that’ll be it. Since they’ll still be using the WordStar software, there will be very little new for them to learn, just how to gain access and so forth. I’ll like to be on my way by lunchtime, if you can arrange some transportation for me.”
Majorov said nothing for a moment, merely gazed a
t the Italian. Then he said, softly, “Emilio, I’d like you to stay on for a few days more, just in case there are any bugs in the equipment.”
“There will be no bugs,” Appicella protested. “Everything has been thoroughly tested, hardware and software. It was perfectly straightforward, I told you. In any case, I’ve a great deal of work waiting for me in Rome, and I must get back.” He smiled. “You can’t expect to monopolize all the time of the fantastic Emilio Appicella.”
Majorov smiled, and his voice remained very soft. “I’m afraid it won’t be possible for you to leave tomorrow,” he said. “We’re in rather a remote location here, and there is no scheduled air service. Because of other events, there is a great demand for aircraft, and the plane that brought you here from Leningrad is not available.”
Appicella began to feel a distinct chill. “I see,” he said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep you occupied and entertained, and, of course, we’ll pay you your usual daily fee, since your continued presence here is our fault. It’s the least we can do.”
“Thank you. This is going to cause me some problems, though. Can I telephone my office from here? They’ll need to know that I’m going to be late returning.”
“Of course. Simply ask the operator for an international line, then dial 0101, the country code, the code for Rome, and your number.”
“Good.” He tossed off the vodka and stood up. “Well, I must clean up some odds and ends, and I don’t want keep the lovely Olga waiting any longer. You will let me know as soon as there’s transportation, won’t you?”
Majorov stood with him. “I will, indeed. Don’t worry, it will only be a matter of a few days.”
Appicella excused himself and left Majorov’s office. He went back into his workroom, closing the door behind him, and pretended to tidy up. He removed the floppy diskette containing the summary file, and with a craft knife, opened the paper envelope meant to permanently contain the diskette. He removed the fiveinch disc of thin mylar plastic, and looked around for a place to conceal it. His eyes fell upon a penlight which he used for seeing into tight places in computers. He unscrewed its cap and shook out the batteries. Then he wrapped the plastic disc tightly around the batteries and reinserted them into the penlight. It was a close fit, but when he replaced the cap and switched on the light, it worked. He clipped the penlight into his inside jacket pocket and congratulated himself on his ingenuity.