Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“You mean they’re on computer, too? No prints?”

“We’d run off some before the crash.”

“You know what I always thought?” said Cowley. “I always thought the Pentagon was the super-efficient institution that fought wars and kept the free world safe.”

“We had a mole in here,” said Ashton. “Someone we didn’t know about.”

“If that’s supposed to be an excuse, it isn’t,” said Cowley. “I wouldn’t offer it to anyone else if I were you.”

Pamela Darnley had stood at his side throughout the exchange, mostly staring at the screen. She said, “I heard enough to understand. Ashton’s right. It’s a disaster.”

“Not quite,” contradicted Cowley. “There hasn’t been another missile. Or any more bombs.”

“Yet,” qualified Pamela.

Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov eased the seat back and closed his eyes even before the plane leveled off, uninterested in seeing the Moscow hinterland disappear beneath him. He scarcely had sufficient data to justify the trip this soon, he knew. But equally-more so in fact-he needed personally to be in Washington to evaluate the forensic tests, even though he was sure what the results would be. The big uncertainty was what to do when he got the confirmation: assessing-if he could even then-the obstacles and obstruction he was facing. At least he’d be free of the distraction of Olga. Who was confusing him even further. There’d been no threatening belligerence before he’d left. She’d been positively docile and actually wished him a good trip as he was packing. He couldn’t remember her doing that when their relationship had been amicable. It probably would all be changed by the time he got back.

“There are certainly disparities,” said the head of bank security, a thin-faced, blinking man named Hank Hewitt.

“Thefts?” insisted Anne Stovey.

“The surprising thing is that apart from Mr. Snelling-and one or two people who believe there are discrepancies, since we’ve begun to check specifically-no one’s actually complained. There has to be a complaint to constitute a crime, doesn’t there?

“It’s a legal point,” said Anne. “How much, so far?”

“It’s still far too early to tell. As you yourself warned, the discrepancies never amount to more than a few cents, a dollar at the most.”

Anne refused to be irritated. She’d gotten the same reaction at three different banks she’d asked to check. One had even refused outright, if there hadn’t been a complaint from a customer. “If, over a long period, four or five cents have been taken from the checking accounts of all your bank’s customers, in all your branches, how much could have been stolen?”

The blinking man tried a disdainful laugh, which didn’t quite work. “That’s an impossible hypothesis. And an exaggerated one.”

“Indulge me,” coaxed Anne. “If it’s been going on for say two to three years, I think we could be talking of hundreds of thousands of dollars, don’t you?”

“I really won’t go into a hypothesis like that,” refused the security chief.

“It has to be a bank employee, doesn’t it?”

“Accounts never balance at the end-of-day trading.”

“What checks can you put in place?”

“I don’t know, apart from making a visual examination at the beginning and end of each day’s trading against deposits made during that day. It would be totally out of the question.”

“I’d like you to spread the inquiries through all your branches,” insisted the woman. It was time to respond to the memorandum about possible robberies that could be financing the terrorism.

In the locked study of the Rensselaer house Patrick Hollis surfed through the sites where he customarily played his war games. Posted on two was a message that read: THE GENERAL IS CALLING THE QUARTERMASTER AT THE USUAL PLACE AND TIME.

Hollis had been disappointed by his probe into Robert Standing’s background. The man had no medical history that could have been embarrassing and his financial records were haphazard but disclosed no excess or irregularity.

Hollis sat looking at the screen and its message for a long time before the idea began to germinate. Robert Standing was the sort of person whose account he plundered, Hollis recognized: someone who’d never be sure to the last cent-even the last dollar-what his balance was.

Hollis called up the screen-filling list of bank account numbers he had accumulated over the years, choosing at random. It was going to work, he knew; work very well indeed.

The photograph had given Pamela Darnley an identification but not an impression of Dimitri Danilov, and for a moment she remained unmoving by an arrivals hall pillar, studying the man. A good six inches shorter than Cowley and much slighter, thinning blond hair carefully combed to cover where it was already receding, Slavic cheekbones giving his face a leanness: inconspicuous but confident, at least outwardly, not looking around anxiously to be greeted, intentionally just apart from the bustle all around him, making his own space. A man accustomed to being alone; maybe preferring it.

Danilov’s look encompassed the hall at the same time as she picked up the taxi direction sign, toward which he moved after just the briefest hesitation. It brought him toward her, so all Pamela had to do was step out into his path.

“Dimitri?” she said. “Pamela.”

He took the offered hand, the direct, unsurprised look confirming her inference of confidence. He said, “Thank you for bothering.”

“It’s no bother. Bill’s become a little too publicly recognizable, and a hospital appointment clashed anyway.”

“Is there a problem?” The concern was immediate.

“Having his stitches taken out. He should be back at the bureau by now. You want to go straight there or stop off at the Marriott? It’s the nearest.”

Pamela had driven to Dulles in her own car and used the return journey to bring Danilov completely up to date. With the Arlington Bridge still closed, the traffic began backing up along the George Washington Parkway before they got as far as Langley.

Danilov said, “They’re being very successful at making everyone look ridiculous.”

“The fear is what they’ll do next,” said Pamela.

“Let’s hope Bill’s right about them exhausting their supply.”

“How do we block their resupply?”

“I wish I had a better idea,” admitted Danilov.

“Have you got one at all?” Pamela immediately demanded.

“I’ll be better able to answer that after talking to your forensic people,” said Danilov.

“They’ve already got what you shipped earlier,” said Pamela.

“But not the way I want it examined,” said Danilov. “How strongly are you treating this sighting of the man in the camouflage jacket?”

“It’s the most hopeful lead so far.”

“How many have you traced from both tours?”

“Six from the morning descent. Seven in the afternoon. And no useful photographs.”

Danilov slumped into such contemplative silence that Pamela wondered if he’d actually fallen asleep after the flight. But then she saw his eyes were open and realized he was someone not discomfited by silence. She said, “I hear it’s not easy for you to work properly in Moscow.”

Danilov looked at her across the car, caught by the directness. Cowley must be working very closely with her to have told her. Was their relationship entirely professional? Pamela Darnley in person was even more attractive than he had thought her to be from TV. The briefing had been impressive, as well: A succinct, factual account spared any unsupportable opinion or conclusion and gave Cowley the credit for preventing the Lincoln Memorial explosion. Danilov said, “Sometimes it can be useful.”