Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“How long?” demanded Pamela, the moment she replaced the telephone.

“Not long,” assured the technician leader. “Quite a simple electronic comparison.”

“How sure are you?” Cowley asked Pamela.

“Eighty-five, ninety percent. Now! Why the hell did it take me all this time!”

The technician returned to the incident room just short of one hour. He said, “Absolutely no doubt. A classic voiceprint, the peaks and troughs fitting perfectly over each other.”

Pamela looked at Cowley. “So Bella Atkins is the Pentagon mole?”

“And the first voiceprint comes from her conversation to Chicago with someone who’s more than likely the General.”

What everyone else regarded as yet another coup Pamela Darnley considered a failure. Why hadn’t she pursued her belief that she recognized the voice beyond the one comparison against the New Rochelle telephone call? Her anger at herself fueled the urgency as well as her need personally to organize the concentrated investigation.

The entire Washington, D.C., field office-which operates separately from the J. Edgar Hoover building-was assigned to Bella Atkins. To it Pamela added from Roanoke the four agents still working the Roanne Harding murder. Pamela summoned Carl Ashton from the Pentagon with the widowed Bella’s personnel file and warned the stunned man that every check he and his sweepers had been so confident of having completed, not just throughout the Pentagon but in all the other associated agencies, had to be repeated.

“She’s got Grade V clearance, so she’ll know that some codes at least have been changed. She’ll have been literally following in your footsteps all the way.”

“So she’ll know we think Roanne wasn’t the mole, that we’re still looking,” said Cowley, sitting in on the meeting.

“Not necessarily,” said Ashton. “It’s routine to change codes.”

“Make Challenger and the satellite navigational system your first rechecks,” insisted Pamela. “She’d go back to her sabotage-do it again-if she suspected we were looking.”

“It’s almost too fast to keep up,” protested the Pentagon computer specialist.

“Don’t let it be!” Pamela urged worriedly. “We’ll do all we can outside. But inside-which is where it matters-you’ve got to reverse what’s been happening. You’ve got to follow in Bella Atkins’s footsteps now. Whenever, however, she accesses a computer, you’ve got to be right behind her. You think you can do that?”

“Technically, yes.”

“What about practically?”

“I hope so,” said Ashton.

“She got a cell phone?” demanded Pamela, conscious of the continuing Trenton problem.

“Not Pentagon issued. She might have a private one; most people have.”

“We’re searching under her own name through all the providers,” picked up Cowley. “But if there’s a way you can find out without her knowing, we need it.”

There was a routine familiarity in attaching an exchange monitor on Bella Atkins’s telephone, which was as much as they could do overnight. From the surveillance already in place they knew that she was in her York Avenue apartment. The judge had also approved a search warrant, enabling them legally to enter the following day to install listening devices while she was at the Pentagon. And by the time she got to work that day a listening device would have been attached to her office extension.

“We forgotten anything?” demanded Pamela. It was past nine, dinner abandoned.

“I don’t think so,” said Cowley.

“You know what we’ve got?” Pamela said rhetorically. “We’ve got another loose end.”

There were more about to unravel.

It was the predictability that began the problems, which compounded themselves as the day continued. Ivan Gavrilovich Guzov and Vyacheslav Fedorovich Kabanov left their executive homes at the same time as they did every morning, and the discreet FBI surveillance slotted into place as it had done every morning since it had been imposed. Dutifully both observers reported that the two Russians were on their way, which was logged by the duty officer in the Trenton office. No one bothered anymore with tired airwave jokes or traffic complaints.

Kabanov lived closer to their office than the other Russian, so the first alert came from his followers, the sudden announcement that he wasn’t going in the expected direction, almost immediately followed by the similar realization from those behind Guzov.

“The station!” decided the first observer. “There’s the Amtrak commuter service to New York.”

The quickly summoned John Meadowcraft decided to wait until he reached the office before ringing any headquarter bells. By the time he got there both Russians were aboard a Metroliner due at Manhattan’s Penn Station at 10:15, which gave the New York office forty-five minutes to get into position. Meadowcraft told the protesting Harry Boreman it didn’t matter that the New York office didn’t have a full team available on such short notice. The two Trenton observers were three tables away in the approaching Metroliner club car, watching the serious-faced Russians drink Bloody Marys. Both were on their third.

Boreman himself was one of the four New York agents waiting when the train pulled in. All instantly identified Kabanov and Guzov from their photographs, without needing the additional marker of the two closely following Trenton officers. Boreman fell into step with one of the men as soon as the Russians passed, saying as unobstrusively as possible that he needed them as reserve backup but until that need arose for them to remain in the waiting surveillance vehicles so they wouldn’t be recognized from the train.

The Russians had to line up for a cab, so all six agents were distributed in three bureau vehicles by the time the Russians were moving. Boreman, in the lead vehicle, gave the commentary on the open line to the bureau’s Third Avenue office, from which it was simultaneously relayed to the Washington incident room on what had grown into a sophisticated electronics system manned by specialist officers.

When the arrival in the New York office of other agents was reported back to Boreman, Pamela said, “They weren’t ready! Why the hell weren’t they ready!”

No one answered her.

“Crossing Seventh,” Boreman was saying. “South now, downtown on Broadway, turning … we’re turning on to Twenty-third.”

“Heliport!” Cowley guessed at once.

As he spoke, Boreman said, “Could be a helicopter to the airports. Call our own helo, start moving from the office by road. I want agents on their way, direct to La Guardia and Kennedy.”

“They’ll never get there in time!” Pamela moaned, exasperated. “Won’t get anywhere in time.”

“There’ll have to be a helicopter flight plan,” said Cowley.

“To LaGuardia or Kennedy,” insisted Pamela. “Buy an internal flight anywhere within the United States for cash and you don’t show up on a passenger list or a credit card slip. They get to an airport, we’ve lost them. And we can’t risk airport police. Immigration doesn’t come into it. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“Not the heliport,” came Boreman’s voice. “They’ve gone over FDR …. it’s looking good, going into Waterside apartments. We’re stopping short-” There was the sound of angry horn blasts and the muttered driver’s voice “Go suck pussy.” Then Boreman said: “Shit!” There was a momentary pause. “They’re going into the marina alongside the apartments. Got guys going on foot over the road bridge …. Let me talk on the phone ….” There was the muffled sound of a separate conversation. Then: “There was a cruiser waiting. One guy as far as they could see. Backing out. They’re trying for a name … I want a boat …. Get on to Customs for something unmarked. And a helicopter. I still want a helicopter. There’s enough in the air to cover us. We’ll pick them up.”