by Walter Grant
He was counting on the Illegal Rezidentura being overconfident and lax in their security, and probably, if Henri was right about the country’s attitude, there was little need for them to be concerned. After all, it had been luck that led him to the group even though he had been keeping an eye on Tolinger. Had he not been searching through the passenger lists in airline computers, trying to confirm Sherry’s itinerary, he would never have stumbled onto the name John Gilbird. Earlier, he had assumed Tolinger was selling out his country because of greed or possibly because he was being blackmailed. But now it appeared the colonel was very important to the Kremlin and was controlling at least two groups of Illegal Rezidentura. Only an officer of the KGB would be trusted to control or even know two groups in such deep cover and sensitive operations. If this was true, standard KGB procedures had been thrown out the window. In normal KGB operations members of the group would know only their controller and not one another.
The Gilbird group seemed to be working as a team, as was evident by the telephone recorder, and appeared to be actively engaged in sabotage, again not standard procedure for a group in such deep cover. The Challenger disaster followed by a Titan failure indicated a group at Cape Canaveral was also working together and engaged in sabotage. The failures of two separate Minuteman missiles followed by the Titan tonight indicated the two groups were working together and toward the same goal. But what could that goal be—to destroy the American shuttle fleet? Not likely. The loss of Challenger would produce a higher level of quality control and tighter security throughout the entire shuttle program. It would be unrealistic to believe a second shuttle launch could be sabotaged even by someone working in a supersensitive position.
A delay in the Atlantis launch at Vandenberg would be a more probable and realistic goal. This would do two things: It would give the Soviets more time to develop their own shuttle system while at the same time delaying America’s development and deployment of SDI. The Soviets were working on their own Star Wars system and by all credible sources, were already far ahead of the United States. The Soviets had already successfully tested a ground-based laser, powered by a small nuclear explosion, capable of destroying incoming aircraft, missiles, and possibly orbiting satellites. The nuclear-pumped laser system would soon be ready for deployment in strategic locations throughout the Soviet Union. According to reports, they were well ahead in space-based lasers as well, with the only problem being their lack of a deployment vehicle. However, with their own shuttle fleet under construction and a first launch scheduled for early ‘89 or possibly late ’88, this problem was close to being solved. Any delay by the United States to deploy SDI would give the Soviets badly needed time to get their own space transport system operational. If the Soviets could, through sabotage and propaganda, keep the American Space Transport System grounded for two or three years, they could have their own shuttle fleet delivering Soviet Star Wars systems into orbit, leaving the United States playing catch-up just like in the early days of space exploration when the USSR launched Sputnik.
Taking everything into account, it seemed highly probable they would even be willing to risk exposing some exceptionally valuable agents, even some working in sensitive DOD positions, in an all-out effort to keep America’s shuttle fleet grounded. But, even if they were willing to lose some agents in some desperate plan, why would they take an unnecessary chance with a simple tracking station in a house in a residential area next to an air force base? Maybe it was more than just a tracking station. Max continued thinking about the recent rash of accidents and failures involving all branches of the military as well as NASA. Did this mean the KGB had agents throughout the Defense Department? He believed this was exactly what it meant. Could these agents be engaged in a coordinated effort toward a single goal? He was afraid the unequivocal answer was yes! As these and other questions and likely answers! flashed through his mind the picture began to take focus.
He remembered during the sixties when Soviet Bears were making flights, on an almost daily basis, past the American fleet and in particular the newest aircraft carriers. At least a couple of times a week you would see a picture in the newspaper of the world’s largest bomber flying past one of our aircraft carriers. And before long the whispers had started. “Aircraft carriers are vulnerable because of their size and speed.”
This whisper was probably started and most certainly kept alive by KGB agents working at the Russian Embassy in Washington and at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. The media, always looking for a chance to undermine American prestige, picked up on the whispers and ran editorials and related stories proclaiming the aircraft carriers’ day was past and declaring them a waste of money and manpower. Many U.S. citizens were convinced by these stories and truly believed the carriers had outlived their usefulness while some legislators, eager to jump on the bandwagon, were referring to them as dinosaurs, comparing them to the slow-moving battle ships of World War II, which had been removed from service because they could not keep up with the newer and faster ships in the fleet.
The Soviets, of course, would have liked nothing better than to have America pull her carriers from service and reduce the size of her fleet, but they were actually taking aerial photographs to aid them in building their own supercarrier presently under construction at the Naval ship-building and repair facilities in Murmansk. But during that time the Soviets learned something much more valuable to them than the configuration of the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. They learned just how easily U.S. public opinion could be manipulated and it now appeared they were putting that knowledge to work. Every day now, you heard someone in the news expounding some reason why SDI couldn’t work. Or you heard how American weaponry was getting so sophisticated no one could operate it, or they lacked the training to keep it maintained. The media were always interviewing someone who recommended America stop building high-tech weapons and put all our efforts and resources into conventional weapons. The very first statement out of the Kremlin after the Challenger disaster was, “The Americans cannot be trusted with high-tech.”
A surprising number of people were already agreeing with this line of thinking. If the KGB was, indeed, behind all these failures and if their propaganda machine was in high gear, it might take only one more really big accident to turn the tide in the way the average citizen viewed national defense policies.
Max suddenly became aware of dryness in his mouth and a knot tightening in his stomach. Was his imagination running wild or was the KGB about to create a catastrophe so great America would put SDI as well as other high-tech weapons on hold indefinitely? If he had learned only one thing while in Moscow it was to never underestimate Soviet ambitions no matter how outrageous or farfetched they might appear. He had only to look at the lofty scheme they had hatched involving Jack Johnson and Ambassador Harte. During his years as an officer in the KGB he had come to know that within the Kremlin inner sanctum the unthinkable was considered achievable. Well, speculation was one thing, facts were another, and he had an uneasy feeling time was running out.
Max turned down the volume on the television, and headed for the bedroom. He figured if anyone came snooping and heard the TV they might figure someone was inside and be hesitant to break into the house. From a bag in his closet he removed two magnetic anomaly detectors with built-in transmitters. He marveled at their size. Twenty years ago you would have needed a truck just to carry them around. Today they were no larger than a cigar and contained batteries with enough power reserve for three months.
In strategic positions beside the road he used a small tubelike tool to remove two plugs of earth and dropped a MAD into each of the holes. He removed just enough sod from the plugs to fill the holes to the original level. When he finished, a small brown antenna about one millimeter in diameter and approximately ten millimeters in height was the only thing visible through the sage grass growing sparsely beside the road. Only a well-trained eye, lucky enough to focus on that
particular spot would detect his handiwork. The video camera was a bit harder to conceal. A Monterrey cypress about thirty yards off the road, directly across from his house, proved satisfactory. Back inside the house he removed the rest of the equipment from the bags in the closet. The setup, although sophisticated, was quite simple. The magnetic anomaly detectors were sensitive to any change in the earth’s magnetic field; a vehicle, having a flux field of its own, traveling along the road would disturb the earth’s magnetic field. The MAD would detect this change and cause the related transmitter to send a burst of RF energy to the receiver in the cypress, which would trigger the video camera. A transmitter would send the picture to the receiver in the house, which in turn would pass it along to the video recorder. When the car passed the second MAD the same thing would happen, but this time the receiver in the cypress would shut the video camera off. No matter which way the vehicle was traveling, the first signal from a MAD would activate the system and a second signal from the other MAD would deactivate it. With this setup he would be able to monitor traffic and visitors to the Gilbird house. Also, the system would automatically activate every two minutes and record for a period of five seconds; this would provide him a reasonably good chance of getting a picture of anyone entering his property. Since the video recorder only recorded when it received a signal from the transmitter across the road, Max would need to change the tape only every couple of days.
Satisfied everything worked, Max chose a few items from another piece of luggage and arranged them in a fanny pack, then pulled on a pair of black jogging shorts over his sweat pants, strapped on the fanny pack, and left the house by way of the patio.
He ran almost effortlessly along Surf Road with long strides that rapidly ate up the distance, but slowed to a walk when he reached the eucalyptus grove. In the open chaparral, moonlight made it easy to see the road, but in the trees it was more difficult, and he didn’t want to step in a hole and turn or maybe break an ankle. Also, he was concerned about stepping on a rattlesnake lying on the warm pavement. The blacktop soaked up the sun’s rays during the day, becoming very warm, and at night the Southern California red diamondback rattler liked to lie on the warm pavement.
It took almost an hour to reach his destination, a ground-level junction box where telephone services for Surf Road connected with the main line running along the highway. He had spotted the junction box the day Dickerson showed him the property. He was about to rotate the fanny pack around his middle to have better access to the zippered pockets when headlights from a car winding its way through the eucalyptus grove flickered through the trees. He walked back up the road and crossed over to the other side, stepping off to the inside of a wide sweeping curve and picked his way through the trees before dropping to the ground. He wondered why anyone would be leaving home at such a late hour.
As the car approached, its headlights lit up the woods to the outside of the curve, but very little light filtered through the trees on the inside of the curve where Max lay hidden. Even so, he didn’t move or look in the direction of the road until the vehicle had passed. What he had assumed was a car turned out to be a Dodge Maxivan. Through a small pair of Bausch and Lomb, custom-compact binoculars, designed to specifications of the National Audubon Society, he checked and made a mental note of the license plate. He took his time returning to the junction box. Rotating the fanny pack he removed a Swiss army knife from one of the compartments, opened one of the screwdriver blades and began removing the cover of the junction box. Once inside the J-box he played the high intensity beam of a Mini-Maglite over the list of house numbers taped to the back of the cover plate until he found Gilbird’s address. Locating corresponding terminals listed opposite the address he carefully connected the thin leads of a transmitter, no larger than a quarter—another miracle of the microchip—to the appropriate terminals. After hooking up the wires he activated the transmitter, removed a protective strip from adhesive on the tiny device, attached it to the underside of the junction box, and replaced the cover. Unless a telephone technician had some reason to look inside or underneath the J-box, it was highly unlikely anyone would discover his bug. The miniature transmitter had a range of only a few hundred yards, however, and would need a more powerful repeater transmitter to boost the signal enough to be picked up by the receiver in his house, more than six miles away. A dead eucalyptus tree about 200 feet away served the purpose well. Fifteen minutes later he was finished and on his way back through the woods.
He walked slowly and carefully until the eucalyptus gave way to chaparral. Dawn was already breaking and with light gathering in the eastern sky, Max could see well enough to run the rest of the way home, arriving just before the sun broke above the horizon. Following warm-down exercises and a shower Max began fixing himself breakfast while watching the morning news. The local news was a repeat of last night’s except for one added bit of information—the Titan had been carrying a classified military payload. Max doubted the payload had anything to do with the missile’s blowing up. The national network was already into its anti-high-tech routine as they interviewed a left-leaning politician and a low-ranking official from the Soviet embassy.
When his breakfast was ready he placed it on a serving tray, turned off the TV, and carried the tray outside. It was still cool on the patio but he liked the fresh air and the smell of the ocean. Soon the sun’s rays would knock down the chill and the Santa Ana winds would pick up again, making it appear almost like summer. He smiled briefly, thinking of how Sherry would lecture him on the evils of bacon and eggs, on cholesterol, clogged arteries, and so on. He missed Sherry, but he put her out of his mind and returned his thoughts to the events of last night and his theory of one final disaster, a disaster of such magnitude it might very well write an end to American space exploration in this century. It would surely sound a death knell for the Strategic Defense Initiative and possibly, somewhere in the not too distant future, an end to the free world.
He ate slowly, studying the Gilbird house, wondering what was inside. He had to get inside, but not today. He had other things to do today.
Highway 1 turned south just outside of Lompoc and through a series of switchbacks climbed rapidly out of the Santa Ynez valley onto the coastal range, connecting with Highway 101 about twenty miles north of Santa Barbara. A scenic pullout on one of the switchbacks gave a commanding view of Lompoc and the valley below, but Max wasn’t interested in the panorama. His only interest was in the fact that the pullout was above Highway 246, which ran between Lompoc and Buellton, and was directly opposite the Spic and Span janitorial compound. Spic and Span was five hundred feet below and a half mile away just across Highway 246.
A warehouse with a loading dock across the front and back, along with a half dozen metal sheds and a couple of Quonset huts scattered about to the rear of the warehouse made up the bulk of Gilbird’s operation. Except for the front of the warehouse, a ten-foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire encompassed the premises. Guard dogs were visible inside the enclosure. It had the look of a prison or a military complex rather than a private business. Max had already decided the best way in was through the front door. He lowered his binoculars as a silver-gray Ford Tempo turned off Highway 246 onto a dirt road and continued a tenth of a mile to the end of the road, where it stopped by Spic and Span’s front loading dock. Peering through the binoculars again he watched a woman get out of the car, climb six steps to the loading dock, unlock a door and disappear inside the warehouse. Ten minutes later he parked the Pontiac beside the Tempo, got out, climbed the steps, and stood for a moment in front of the door the woman had disappeared through only minutes earlier. A sign above the door read Office.
Inside a rather cramped office he found a couch to his left, on the right a desk, and in the wall directly opposite the door he had entered was another door marked Private. An overweight woman of about thirty sat behind the desk eating a cinnamon roll and drinking coffee. A portable radio on the desk was tuned to a local country western s
tation. The woman put down her mug of coffee, moved the cinnamon roll to one side, turned down the radio, gave him a tired smile and asked, “Can I help you?” She tried to sound enthusiastic but her heart just wasn’t it.
“My name is Jeff Price. I have an appointment with a Mr. Oscar Bell.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bell won’t be in until six this evening.”
“Well, he personally told me to meet him here at nine o’clock.”
“I’m sure you must have misunderstood him, sir. There are never more than two or three people here during the day. Everyone works at night. Mr. Bell works ten to twelve hours every night and I’m sure he would not have agreed to meet with you at nine o’clock in the morning.”
Max already knew all this; he was just setting her up for his next move. His plan was to bluff his way inside and poke around as much as he possibly could. “Well, if we could just call him and—”
The woman interrupted him, displaying some annoyance at his persistence. “Mr. Bell does not like to be disturbed at home!”
“Well, if you could just give me his number—”
She interrupted again. “I can’t give out employees’ home phone numbers.” The woman was obviously getting tired of the conversation and appeared eager to get back to her cinnamon roll and coffee. Max figured now was the time to go into the second part of his act.
“Look lady, I’m sorry if I seem a bit anxious. But I’m a one-man detective agency and I’m having a very hard time making it, okay? I’m working for a very big insurance company and this is the first job they’ve given me. If I can turn in a clear and speedy report there’s an excellent chance they’ll give me more work, and I sure can use the work. Actually, I need the work. I need the work very badly.”