He leaned across the table toward Jake. “They missed the collapse of communism. The biggest political event on this planet since World War II and they missed it. Apparently not a soul at Langley ever predicted it or suggested it as a possibility. They said the Soviet economy was three times larger than it was. They said the Soviet military was much stronger, more capable, more combat-ready than turned out to be the case. They sat there looking at a society in meltdown and never saw a wisp of smoke. The fact is that for the last five years you could have gotten a better picture of what was happening inside the Soviet Union by reading the New York Times than you could from reading the CIA intelligence analyses. But was that intentional?
“These damned CIA briefings and intelligence reports give me a queasy feeling,” Brown continued after a moment’s pause. “Nothing I can put my finger on—the stuff is too slickly written for that. Maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe it’s too slick, every mousehole carefully papered over. I don’t know. I just get this feeling. I’d really like to see the raw intelligence, all of it.
“What I think…what I think we’re looking at in Russia is merely an interlude between dictatorships, like the 1917 republic after they toppled the czar. The problems are too big, the people are bigots intolerant of dissent and diversity, they are too easily swayed by demagogues spouting bullshit and hate, they readily swallow any hint of a conspiracy, they despise anyone with a ruble more than they’ve got. The average Russian can’t conceive of a loyal opposition: the concept doesn’t compute. That’s the background for the biggest economic experiment ever tried on this planet, the conversion of a centralized socialized economy into a free market one. But the CIA downplays all that. The folks at the CIA aren’t worried. And no one over at the White House seems to be in a sweat. Our politicos have bigger fish to fry, like squabbling over Clinton’s tax increases and waggling their fingers at the Japanese.”
Brown rearranged the salt and pepper shakers. “I’m not sure what the National Security Adviser thinks. At the CIA briefings sometimes he acts like he smells a rat, other times he sits there like he was getting the gospel in Sunday school.
“What’s happening in the former Soviet Union right now may turn out to be the seminal event that determines the course of human life on this planet for the next century. The old union is in the midst of total social and economic collapse. Nothing works. Nothing! No one knows how to make a decision. All look to central authority, which is corrupt, incompetent, self-absorbed. The republics constitute the most highly polluted nation on earth. It’s one giant petrochemical sewer, thousands of square miles of soil so radioactive that humans can’t survive on it, social systems that have completely collapsed. Doctors are poorly trained and incompetent—they routinely misdiagnose ailments, sick people go to unbelievably bad hospitals where they are butchered by quacks, there isn’t enough medicine, equipment, food, clothes, anything…
“I could go on for hours.” He picked up a pepper shaker and tapped in on the table, hard. “I think the pollution is what did in the Communists. Too many people are getting sick. Best guess is at least a million people in the old union are sick with radiation poisoning. Lack of basic sanitation and immunizations causes epidemics of diphtheria, dysentery, polio, influenza—fifty percent of their conscripts are rejected for military service. It’s estimated only one in fourteen of the people in uniform could pass a flight physical.
“You can only run a society for the benefit of the elite at the top for so long before the whole thing implodes.” He shrugged.
Jake Grafton found himself leaning forward and lowering his voice. “So what about those nuclear weapons?”
“CIA hasn’t told us the whole story. You can bet your pension on that. Reality has a feel, a texture, that’s unique. It’s seasoned with insanity and random chance. This stuff the CIA’s selling hasn’t got that feel.”
“You sure?” Jake pressed.
“I wish I was. But no, I ain’t sure. The key is money. If nuclear weapons are leaving Russia, someone is paying big bucks for them. CIA is looking and says they can’t find the trail.”
“Perhaps we should do some looking on our own,” Jake suggested.
“How?”
“Well, we need to draft a computer expert.”
“You say that like you have one in mind.”
Jake did. He just nodded.
“CIA, Treasury, and State won’t like it.”
“If we find the trail their objections won’t matter much.”
“If it’s there to find,” Brown said without enthusiasm.
Jake decided to change the subject. “What are you going to do about the bugs, General?”
Albert Sidney Brown pushed back his chair and stood. “I’m going to write a report to the president and send copies to everybody on the list. The CIA will think I’m a patsy if I don’t. But just the bugs. Nothing about Nigel Keren or Mossad photographs or intimidation efforts. You were right about that. If we run those shitty rags up the flagpole now, you and I’ll be diving headfirst into a foxhole to keep from getting squashed.”
The whole mess was pretty bizarre, Jake Grafton reflected later. It was like climbing a mountain: the higher you got the worse the visibility became, the thicker the cloud. And if it was like this at his level, presumably the president, the man at the top, couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. No wonder the government stumbled from crisis to crisis!
That night Jake and Toad searched the Grafton house from top to bottom for bugs. They didn’t find any, which merely increased Jake’s sense of unease. Then they went over to Tarkington’s house and turned it inside out. Rita helped. And they found nothing.
“So what are we gonna do, Admiral?” Toad asked when they had finished and were drinking beer in the kitchen.
Rita flipped on the radio and cranked up the volume.
“Do?”
“Yessir. About Herb Tenney and going to Russia with him and all of this.”
“I dunno,” Jake said. “Any suggestions?” He glanced at Rita Moravia, who stood with her back against the sink, trying to look deadpan. She wasn’t supposed to know about the Russian trip, which was still highly classified. Her hair was pulled back and held with a clasp tonight. Tall for a woman, she had the sleek look of solid, healthy muscle. She colored slightly when she met the admiral’s eyes. Feeling a touch of amusement, Jake’s gaze returned to Toad Tarkington. “What would you suggest?”
“I’d like to go over to Langley and sweat somebody.”
“Who?”
“I’d start with Herb.”
“He wouldn’t tell you jack, even if he knew anything to tell.” Jake sighed. He drained the last of his beer, then sat the glass out of the way. “Got a phone book?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go calling. There is a fellow who works at Langley that I’d like to talk to.”
There were fourteen Richard Harpers and eleven R. Harpers listed in the Washington metro telephone directory. Rita did the calling while Toad listened on the living room extension. She worked for a pizza company and they had lost a delivery address.
“This won’t work if his wife answers,” Rita pointed out.
“I don’t think he’s married,” Toad told her. “He isn’t the type.”
“Oh, and what type is that?”
“Sensitive, warm, loving, wholesome, handsome, sharing, caring—”
“Shut up. It’s ringing… Hello, Richard Harper please… Mr. Harper, did you order a pizza about a half hour ago? No? Well, a Richard Harper on Gordon Street ordered a large pepperoni and olive and our driver can’t find the house…”
She fell silent as the man on the phone talked. From the living room Toad signaled no. Rita made her excuses and thanked him for his time.
They got lucky. They found him on the fifth call. An address in Chevy Chase.
“Let’s go,” Jake said.
Richard Harper wasn’t going to invite them in. Toad shoved the door open and pushed past him. J
ake Grafton followed. “It’s two in the morning,” Harper squeaked.
“I know,” Toad Tarkington said. “But I wanted you to meet my boss, Admiral Grafton. Admiral, this is Richard Harper, late of the DIA and now with Central Intelligence.”
Jake stuck out his hand. Reluctantly Richard Harper took it. While Harper was still wondering how to handle this intrusion, Jake dropped into a chair and turned on the light on the reading stand beside him. “Let’s all sit down and visit a minute.”
Harper moved toward a chair, but he didn’t sit. “This won’t take long,” Jake assured him. Harper perched on the front edge of the seat.
Jake displayed his green military ID card and his DIA office pass. Harper refused to touch them. Jake made a show of replacing the cards back in his pocket, then began. “There’s been a security violation at the DIA and we’re trying to find the leak. We have to do this after office hours since people don’t want to talk about their colleagues at the office. You understand?”
Harper nodded reluctantly.
From Toad’s attaché case Jake removed a tape recorder—borrowed from Rita—and placed it on a low table between himself and Harper. He pushed the play button and made sure the tape was turning. “This is Rear Admiral Jacob L. Grafton. It is now two oh seven A.M. on June eighteen. I am interviewing Richard Harper. Mr. Harper, last Monday did you conduct a computer search of CIA records at the request of Lieutenant Commander Robert Tarkington at the DIA computer facilities?”
“Now wait a minute—”
“No, you wait a minute, Mr. Harper. Someone revealed classified information about that computer search to persons without access. Top secret information has been compromised. This is an official investigation. If you fail to cooperate you can be dismissed from government service and prosecuted. Do you understand?”
Harper’s face contorted. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I’ve already been fired.”
“Say again.”
“The CIA fired me this afternoon. They found out about my record.”
The two naval officers exchanged glances. Jake reached over and turned off the tape recorder. “Maybe you’d better tell me about it,” he murmured.
The recitation took most of an hour. Periodically there were tears. Richard Harper was twenty-seven and had been fascinated with computers since he was in high school. Just for the challenge of it, he became a hacker, a person who breaks into industry and government computer files for the sheer joy of outwitting the security devices that guard the files. He had been caught once while he was in college and received a suspended sentence. The second time, when he planted a virus program, he had gone to jail.
The computer industry refused to hire him. Computers were his life and he was blacklisted. He had managed to secure a temporary appointment at DIA by lying on his employment application. He knew the FBI would learn the truth sooner or later, so when agents of the CIA approached him about supplying them with information about DIA projects, he had agreed if they would give him a permanent computer job. A month went by, he supplied all the information they asked for, including Toad’s bizarre request, and they had him start work at Langley last week. Then today they pretended to have just learned of his previous convictions and fired him. It wasn’t fair. He had quit the DIA, the CIA had canned him, the FBI would eventually learn of his record. Computers were his whole life yet he couldn’t work in computers.
“Do you have a computer setup here at home?” Jake asked.
It was in the guest bedroom at the back of the little house. There Jake and Toad were treated to a proud recital of hard disk capacity, extended and expanded memory, CPU speed, and all the rest of it as they stared at screens, keyboards and the innards of computers that were scattered everywhere.
“How good a hacker are you?” Jake asked.
“I’m good. Real good. If I hadn’t done that virus way back when… And it was nothing, just tidbits of zen philosophy that popped onto the screen at holidays and all. It didn’t hurt anyone and…”
Back in the living room, Jake told Harper, “I have a job for you. I can’t promise a permanent job at the DIA until we get a final FBI check and go over it line by line. But I can pay you by the hour on a temporary basis if you can do this job. It would be here at home, on your own equipment.”
Harper was enthusiastic. Yes. He agreed before he even knew what the job was. Jake felt as if he were throwing a rope to a drowning man. He thought he had the authority to hire Harper on a temporary basis, but if it turned out he didn’t he would pay him out of his own pocket.
“I want you to find a river of money,” Jake said, intently watching Harper’s face, “a subterranean river flowing through the world banking systems. The task won’t be easy. I’m not even sure that you will be able to recognize the river when you see it. The mouth of the river is in Moscow, but I don’t have any idea where it begins.”
“Banks?”
“Banks.”
“I’ll need computer access telephone numbers, user names and passwords. If I go after that stuff myself they’ll be on to me in hours.”
“I thought—”
“Hackers get into computers by conning the phone number and codes out of somebody. I can do that. But I can’t do it three dozen times and get away with it. The National Security Agency has that stuff. They monitor bank transactions on a daily basis.”
“If NSA has it, we can get it,” Jake said, glancing at Toad.
“You give me that stuff, and if the money is there, I’ll find it,” Harper said confidently. Too confidently, Jake Grafton thought.
“Don’t be so quick to make promises. And I don’t want anyone to know you’re looking.”
“Maybe you’d better tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for so I’ll know it when I see it.”
Fifteen minutes later Harper knew everything Jake did, which was precious little. So Jake devoted another hour to discussing the possibilities and the probabilities. “The problem,” he told Harper, “is that I don’t know who I can trust. I’ve got to trust my boss, but who else? I can’t call friends in the FBI, in the CIA, people I’ve known for years. If there is a small cabal in the CIA, only the people involved know it is a cabal. Everyone else thinks they are doing their duty when they report conversations, fill out reports, do what they are told to do. That’s the problem.”
“How do you want me to report to you?” Harper asked.
“Well, written reports would be okay. Mail them to my wife. She’ll see that I get them wherever I am. I may be out of town for a few weeks.” He gave Harper his address.
When Jake and Toad left at four in the morning, Rita was asleep on the front seat of the car.
Under the streetlight Toad said, “I have a real bad feeling about this, Admiral. If Harper steals money or screws up some accounts, you and I will end up in prison.”
“I hope they give us separate cells,” Jake told him. “A rear admiral ought to rate a private cell.”
5
Yeltsin said yes. Two hours ago.”
“Sure took him long enough,” Jake Grafton muttered. “If I were sitting on all those weapons I’d have got a hot seat months ago.”
General Brown consulted his watch. “Fifteen hours ago two army bases were attacked. The Russian government says the attackers stole machine guns, artillery, APCs and at least ten truckloads of ammunition.”
“Truckloads?”
“Yeah,” General Brown said. “They killed sixty soldiers at one base, fifty at another, and blew up all but the trucks and APCs they drove out.”
“Who?”
“They aren’t sure. Maybe criminal gangs, maybe Armenians again. Maybe some ex-soldiers who are starting their own private army.” General Brown stepped to the map on the wall and pointed. “Here and here.”
When he had resumed his seat, he said, “The CIA’s man went over yesterday.”
“Tenney?”
“Yes. He’ll meet you at the embassy. Ambassador Lancaster will brief you. The pr
esident wants the nukes neutralized and the Russian government strengthened. Talk to those people. Let us know what you need to do the job.”
Jake Grafton didn’t laugh. It was too ridiculous for that. How in hell had he gotten into the middle of this mess?
“And,” General Brown continued, “if you can piss on any of those outlaw or rebel gangs, that’ll be all right too.”
His stomach felt like there was a rock in it. “Yessir,” he managed.
“The air force will have a C-141 at Andrews in six hours. Be on it.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Albert Sidney Brown came around the desk and held out his hand. “Good luck, Admiral.”
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll take my rabbit’s foot along.”
“You’re going to need more than a rabbit’s foot,” Callie told Jake as she passed him aspirin and toilet articles to put in his bag. He had just mentioned his parting remark to General Brown. She didn’t think it was very funny. As she watched him stuff underwear around his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum and shoulder holster, she tartly added, “You’re also going to need more than that little popgun.”
She pushed her hair back out of her eyes. “Oh, you men! Jetting off into the middle of a revolution. It’s so damn pathetic.”
“It isn’t really a revolution,” her husband replied as he folded underwear around a box of pistol ammunition and added it to the bag. “Yeltsin’s still in the driver’s seat, still in control.”
“For how long? What does anyone think you and Toad can really accomplish?”
“Oh, we’ll have some help. Too much probably. But if we can just prod the Russians into—”
“Don’t change the subject,” Callie said sharply. “You know precisely what I mean. Even with the entire United States Army over there you’d still be outnumbered ten to one. Sending you and Toad over there is some kind of insane joke.”
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