Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“It’s a quarter after two.” She turned briefly to his desk, coming back with a disposable razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a can of shaving foam. “I went shopping for you.”

“What’s happened?” he demanded, swiveling his legs off the cot, pleased there wasn’t any pain from his rib.

“You just won gold.” She smiled. “They found enough explosives packed in and around the Lincoln Memorial to blow it all the way to California. It’s going to take at least another hour to defuse it all, so you’ve got time to clean up before we go take a look-see.” She turned back to the desk. “I have salt beef on rye-a pickle’s optional-coffee, Tylenol, and water to take it with.”

“I’ll pass on the Tylenol,” he said.

“That’s a good sign.”

So was this personal attention, thought Cowley.

The bank manager regarded Anne Stovey with roughly the same surprise although none of the cynicism of the metro detective to whom Snelling had earlier complained, shaking his head in expectation of something more. “It’s computer error,” he said. “What else can it be?”

“Aren’t you worried about it?”

“It’s pennies,” dismissed the man. “It’s not uncommon. We’ve always credited Mr. Snelling.”

“No other customer complaints?”

“Not a one.” He smiled invitingly. “The fact is that Mr. Snelling is the sort of man whom banks don’t particularly welcome as customers.”

“Because he keeps such a close eye on his account and expects it to be in order?”

The smile went. “He’s a pedantic man.”

“How long have you been in banking?” asked Anne.

“Twenty years.” The man frowned.

“I really thought you would have heard of one of the most successful computer scams ever directed against a bank,” said the woman.

The man was completely serious now. “What scam?”

“Happened very soon after banks were computerized,” said Anne. “It’s lectured about at Quantico, the bureau’s training academy. Can’t, for the moment, remember the bank, although it was certainly in New York State. A teller calculated that most people had a good idea of the dollar balance in their checking accounts but never knew to within ten to fifteen pennies how many cents they had. So he opened his own account, under a fictitious name, in a branch in a nearby town and creamed off a few cents from the most active accounts. In a year he had a country house in Westchester, with a pool and a tennis court, to which he stupidly invited people from the bank for weekends. Just as he stupidly drove a new Cadillac into work every morning. When anyone asked he said there’d been an inheritance from a rich aunt, only when there were a few isolated complaints-like the ones you’re getting from Mr. Snelling-bank security couldn’t find any rich aunt.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked the man, completely serious now.

“Check to see if there are any more accounts from which pennyante amounts seem to have disappeared, like they have from Mr. Snelling.”

The president had been helicoptered to Camp David from the White House, which had been evacuated. So had all the buildings in the federal triangle down to the Agricultural Department and every government office farther along Constitution Avenue, at Foggy Bottom, which included Henry Hartz’s State Department and went up as far as the Kennedy Center. The barricading of Pennsylvania Avenue, to provide a clear route for emergency vehicles, began at the FBI building. Cowley and Pamela walked on the outside of the fencing behind which people were jammed ten deep. Cowley was recognized long before he reached the television and press pen in front of the Willard Hotel and walked a gauntlet of name-shouting and cameraclicking. It became a flash- and strobe-light dazzling clamor at the media enclosure. Cowley walked carefully, shaking his head against the interview demands, grateful there was no sudden burst of pain.

Abruptly they were alone in another moonscape more desolate than the emptiness into which he’d flown in Manhattan. This clearance had been organized and orderly, and there were no haphazardly abandoned vehicles. The only movement was far away at the memorial itself, a seething of black, antlike activity in which the figures did not become recognizably human until they had passed the nowignored Washington Monument.

Pamela said, “I don’t know why we couldn’t have used a car, if they’re sure there’s no risk of a vibration setting something off. You sure you’re OK?”

“I keep telling you I’m fine,” insisted Cowley. He was. There was no headache and he didn’t have any difficulty going along the avenue, although Pamela was, considerately, walking quite slowly. The tightness to his chest was caused by the strapping, nothing more.

At that moment a car carrying the police commissioner swept by without stopping.

“Truculent bastard!” accused Pamela. “Just because you realized the danger and he didn’t.”

“He’s a political policeman among politicians.”

“He’s certainly not a policemen’s policeman. There’s a couple of calls logged from Dimitri.”

“We need to talk; see if ‘Watchmen’ means anything to him.”

“We’ve drawn a blank from everyone else we’ve run the name by.”

Cowley saw that the monument scanner had been moved to the closed off half-circle in front of the Lincoln shrine and was drawn up alongside three additional vehicles, one the commissioner’s car. David Frost was standing by the main control vehicle, flanked by the two other uniformed officers from that morning’s suspended meeting. As Cowley and Pamla arrived, a yawning Nelson Tibbert emerged, stretching, from a van. He still wore his body armor, although it was unbuckled. Paul Lambert came at the same time from the Doric-columned re-creation of the Greek temple in which the Lincoln statue sat. Cowley realized both men had been summoned by the commissioner.

“Right now!” Frost said briskly. “What have we got?”

Lambert ignored the police chief, talking instead to Cowley. “Word is it was you who thought this might be set up.”

The commissioner’s face became tight. Cowley wondered who had told the head of the bureau’s forensic team. The normally fresh-faced Lambert was hollow-eyed and sag-shouldered from fatigue, and Cowley thought how much better he felt after being able to sleep and to shave. He said, “Lucky guess.”

“Deductive guess,” contradicted the scientist. “Thank God you made it.” He nodded behind him. “We’ve deactivated everything but we’re leaving it all in place to get it on film. None of my people-or Nelson’s-has ever seen anything like it before. It’ll be a visual training manual.”

“You sure that’s safe?” demanded Frost.

“Yes, sir,” Tibbert said wearily. “If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

“What is it?” asked Pamela.

“Semtex, mostly,” said Lambert. “Haven’t weighed it yet, but provisionally I’d say over a thousand pounds. So we’re talking about half a ton-”

“And rigged like a firecracker,” Tibbert broke in, rubbing the sleep from his face. “The way it was set it would have destroyed the entire thing.” He led the way up the steps toward the huge sculpture.

Standing in front of the statue, Tibbert pointed to the folds fashioned in the marble of the frock coat. “Look. Two separate charges there alone, with fragmentation antipersonnel mines on top. The funnel effect of the carving would have acted like a gun barrel. The mines are shrapnel-packed but in addition the marble would have splintered like razors.”

“And our estimate is that we cleared over three hundred people from in and around this area alone, not counting those lining Constitution Avenue,” supplied Frost, in shocked awareness.