Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

"The need-to-know principle in action. That’s really insane, isn’t it?"

"No, to tell the truth, I think it makes sense. You couldn’t do ordinary police work-the kind I do-that way…separate investigations, completely separate systems. But espionage is a different thing. It took us a long time to figure out that you can’t let even your own agents in on other agents’ secrets-"

"Come on, John, really-"

"No, it’s true. That’s why the British have MI-5 and MI-6. The Russians have their separate departments too, but they keep changing the names. Even the U.S., for that matter, has the FBI and the CIA. A Russian spy in Texas, that’s FBI business; the same spy goes over the border to Mexico, it’s the CIA’s affair."

"All right, I buy it…I don’t, really…but if Marks doesn’t tell this Bureau Four the reason I was in Sigonella, won’t they suspect me?"

"Marks has told them. They do communicate when they have to. They’re on the same side, you know. They just don’t do it any more than they absolutely must."

At the far end of the bridge, they turned left along the path that followed the bank of the Neckar. The rain had subsided to a mist; Gideon stepped away from John’s umbrella to enjoy the feel of it moistening his face and collecting in his hair.

"You’re crazy," John said. "You really enjoy getting wet, don’t you? You’re going to catch one hell of a cold."

"You don’t-"

"You don’t catch colds from the rain. I knew you were going to say that." John was slightly annoyed. "Colds are caused by getting wet and tired," he went on. "Goddamit, just because you’re a professor doesn’t mean you know everything about everything. Why the hell do you want to take chances? You just came out of the damn hospital."

John’s tone was exactly that of an anxious mother scolding a five-year-old who had gone into the rain without galoshes. He was not so much angry as worried, Gideon realized with a stab of guilt.

Gideon moved back under the umbrella’s shelter. "You’re right," he said.

"It’s stupid to take chances."

"You’re right," Gideon said again.

When they reached the modern Theodore Heuss Brucke, they turned back. The rain had stopped, and blue sky was visible.

"John," Gideon said after a while, "it just occurred to me that there’s someone else from USOC who was at Sigonella. Does Bureau Four know that?"

"Who?"

"Do you know Eric Bozzini?"

"I think so. Middle-aged surfer type?"

"Yes. When I telephoned him from Sigonella, he told me that he’d been there a few days before. Friday, I think he said. That’d be the day after I was ambushed."

"Do you know why he was there?" It was a professional question. John wasn’t impressed.

"Can’t remember. Whatever it was, it sounded legitimate at the time."

"It probably was. He’s Logistics. Has to visit a lot of bases. So do some of the other administrators: Dr. Rufus, Mrs. Swinnerton-"

"Still, it seems worth getting the information to Bureau Four, doesn’t it?"

"All right," John said without enthusiasm. "I’ll mention it to my contact, and they’ll hear about it if they don’t already know. But I can’t just go up to Bureau Four and say, ‘Here’s some information I have on this super-secret case I’m not supposed to know about.’ I wouldn’t even know who to talk to, and I don’t want to know."

Fine. If John didn’t think it was worth fighting the bureaucracy, then Gideon would follow it up with Eric himself. In a way he was pleased. It gave him a direction, a place to start. Not that he believed Eric could be a spy or- appalling word-a traitor. But then, could Bruce Danzig, or Janet, or Dr. Rufus, or anyone else he’d met at USOC?

"I’m still a little puzzled," Gideon said.

"Only a little? Then you’re in better shape than I am. What’s your problem?"

"I can’t figure out what a USOC’r’s role would be. We just have low-level clearance; we wouldn’t have access to secret materials or high-security areas. What could any of us do for the Russians?"

"That’s true," John said. "Hmm."

They had reached the Alte Brucke again and began to walk back across it to the Old Town. Now that the weather had cleared, cars were zipping down the narrow center, so they had to keep to the walkway along one side.

"Hmm," said John again.

Gratified to have come up with a question that hadn’t occurred to the policeman, Gideon tried to answer it. "Is it possible that the USOC’r is a go-between? That somebody who works on the base gets the information and passes it on to him, and he passes it on to a KGB agent?"

It seemed absurd to Gideon as he said it. Talking about KGB agents so matter-of-factly was preposterous, like play-acting.

But John was excited by the idea. "Yeah, yeah! That’s right! Maybe." As always when he was excited, his speech turned vehement, ejaculatory. "Somebody on the base gets the information. He gives it to the USOC’r. A live drop, they call it. The USOC’r leaves whenever he wants, and passes it on, probably in another country. Sure! Makes sense. Hey, good thinking!"

He banged Gideon on the back so hard that he almost propelled him off the curb into the oncoming traffic, then pulled him back with the same motion. They both laughed.

"I’m glad you think it’s so brilliant," Gideon said, "but it’s full of holes. If a base employee can get the stuff, whatever it is, why doesn’t he just pass it on to the KGB agent himself? Why complicate things with a middleman?"

"Because a Russian agent would try to avoid having direct contact with someone with access to secret NATO information. It would make it too easy for us to figure things out. But what’s suspicious about some Sigonella employee- who works with computer flight-planning programs, say- talking to a USOC instructor or counselor? And why should NSD be suspicious when the same USOC’r happens to share a table with a stranger in Vienna a month later? Why would NSD even be watching him?"

"I suppose so," Gideon said doubtfully. "But-"

"In fact," John said, chopping at the air with his hand, "they wouldn’t have to meet at all! They could use dead drops! The base employee just leaves the information at some predetermined place on the base, and the USOC’r picks it up later. Then the USOC’r uses another drop to get it to the KGB, maybe a thousand miles away. What’s wrong with that?"

"It’s too complicated, that’s what," Gideon said. "If they use… dead drops, then they don’t need the USOC’r, do they? You’re always telling me that the fewer people there are involved, the better. Why couldn’t the base employee just drop it off in Vienna himself? No one would ever see him meet the KGB man."

"He couldn’t do that, because he’d never get off the base with it in the first place," said John. "Somebody who works in a top-secret area of the base gets pretty thoroughly shaken down when he leaves. At least I think he does. But a guy like you just gets waved through, right?"

"Well, yes, but now look; if all this is so important, why don’t they just check out everyone who leaves the base? They do it when they have alerts."

"A brilliant question," said John. "I asked it myself. And the answer is that we don’t want the Russians to know that we know they’re up to something. If we put the bases on alert, they’d know we were onto them, and that might precipitate whatever it is that they’re planning to do. Which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. Simple, yes?"

Gideon shook his head. "My God, this is like listening to someone read an IRS tax manual."

They were back in the vicinity of the Marktplatz. John gestured at a gray Volkswagen. "Going back to USOC Administration? Can I give you a lift? You look too confused to use the strassenbahn."