Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

They did hurry-Cowley too fast and quickly forced to slow by the pain in his chest-but it wasn’t necessary. They got to the full but subdued incident room to see every computer screen split between digitized photographs of two men, beneath each of whom appeared a comprehensive biography.

“What …?” demanded Cowley.

“That’s the last of Beijing,” said Osnan. “The full staffing of our CIA station there compared one to one with that of the Russian’s Federal Security Bureau. The transmission opened with a repetition of the mistrust declaration, then a promise to disclose America and Russia’s hypocritical spy presence in every major world capital.”

At that moment on to the screens came a photograph of Ivan Fedorovich Obidin very similar to the one Danilov had seen in the man’s embassy office, now coupled with that of the CIA’s head of Moscow station. The pictures went, match for match, through the intelligence personnel in both stations and then switched to military intelligence, with a photograph of the Washington embassy’s Colonel Oleg Ivanovich Syzdykov against the FBI’s agent at Ulitza Chaykovskovo.

“Jesus H. Christ!” said someone.

“We have to get a trace!” insisted Pamela. “They can’t go on doing this without our being able to find where they’re doing it from!”

“I want everyone able to move the moment we do,” Cowley said generally. “This has got to be their big mistake.” Cowley said to Osnan, “Get on to the Pentagon now. See how they’re doing.”

“We’ve got two men with Ashton and his people,” protested the incident room supervisor.

“Do it!” said Cowley, at once regretting the impatient loudness.

Pamela answered the ringing telephone in their office, handing it to Cowley. “Not yet,” he said, to Leonard Ross’s demand. “We’re checking the Pentagon at this moment. As soon as we hear-’

On the screens all around them the kaleidoscope continued. London led the European capitals, after the complete listings in Washington, Moscow, and the United Nations in New York, to go in sequence to Paris, Rome, Madrid and Lisbon. Tokyo picked up the Asian identifications from Beijing.

Cowley said, “We copying all this!”

“Three terminals, printing as fast as we can,” called an operator at one of them.

Osnan replaced his telephone and said, “I don’t understand the technicalities, but Ashton says it’s not coming from one server. They’re using several. As soon as one of Ashton’s sweepers think they’re getting close, they run into what Ashton calls a firewall, which in computer-speak is exactly what it sounds like: something they can’t get past. Then the program starts up from another server and they’ve got to start all over again.”

“Bastards!” Cowley exclaimed.

Pamela broke away from a screen upon which the photographs and names of the CIA and FSB personnel in Canberra were being disclosed. Dimitri Danilov was perched on a table edge, chin reflectively cupped in his hand, smiling faintly. She said, “I miss something funny?”

“Something that could help us,” said Danilov. “Maybe not their big mistake, but it could definitely help.”

After Johannesburg came the Russian and American intelligence presence in the six major Middle East oil-producing states, headed by Saudi Arabia and followed by Kuwait, and after that the full American and Russian espionage staffing in Israel.

Pamela again moved to take one of the two ringing telephones, putting her hand at once over the mouthpiece. Excitedly she said, “There’s a positive Manhattan trace: The office there is already moving on to it.”

A man on the second line called out: “Seattle. Looks like the procurement division of Boeing. We’re moving there, too.”

“At last!” said Cowley.

“Let’s not get too hopeful,” cautioned Danilov. “I don’t understand computer technology, either, but if they put up barriers against some pursuit, why aren’t they doing it to others?”

“I don’t know and at this moment I don’t care,” said Cowley, still impatient. “I just want to have something positive.”

Into the telephone she was still holding Pamela said, “Son of a bitch!” Covering the mouthpiece again she said, “It’s the computer program in the United Nations’ library: the one that stores the index of all the issued pamphlets and reports and Assembly debate transcripts. Or did, until a minute ago. It’s been wiped, along with their bug. All that’s left is a message that says the Watchmen came calling. Just that. Those four words.”

“It’s stopped,” someone said.

The computers suddenly were filled by another split-screen picture of the American president in his shirt-sleeved pose of the previous night, seemingly face-to-face with a photograph of the Russian leader, also talking into a telephone. The caption beneath read:

TRUSTED FRIENDS SHALL SPEAK UNTO TRUSTED FRIENDS. BUT NOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY HEAR BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY ARE LIARS.

The final screen image appeared to hold for a long time, although in fact it was only seconds. It faded to be replaced by another Watchmen message:

ALL THOSE REASSIGNMENT AND RELOCATION EXPENSES!

“They’re certainly right about that,” said one of the terminal operators. “They did thirteen countries, if we include the UN. Averaging five people in each station, we’ve just witnessed sixty-five officers, American and Russian, totally blown.”

The man was right, thought Danilov. Ivan Fedorovich Obidin wouldn’t have to wait three months now before rejoining his plump wife and two teenage sons. Danilov wondered if the significance of what the Watchmen had just done would have registered with him so quickly if he hadn’t sat that morning in the bald man’s memorabilia-packed office of stiff-faced official photographs. It certainly didn’t appear to have occurred yet to either William Cowley or Pamela Darnley. Maybe it would when they studied the computer printout more carefully, had the complete selection of images directly in front of them.

It didn’t.

Between the three terminals they managed to get printouts of every disclosure, which was then photocopied and made up into full sets. Danilov went through his individually, confirming the idea that had come to him as he’d watched the procession of identities come and go on the screens. He spent longer doing it than either Cowley or Pamela, for whom the greater urgency was following the separate leads thrown up by the transmission.

Pamela retreated to a separate office for a single but protracted telephone conversation that went back and forth between Carl Ashton, at the Pentagon, and the bureau specialists who were with him and who’d sat in during the attempted entrapment. Cowley established contact at the Boeing factory with agents from the FBI’s Seattle office. After listening to their preliminary findings with the New York team at the UN, he realized almost at once, with a sinking feeling of renewed frustration, that neither was going to produce anything worthwhile. Cowley quickly warned the bureau director it didn’t look like the breakthrough they had all hoped for.

It was almost an hour before they reassembled in Cowley’s incident room office. He said at once, “Looks as if they just got into the UN and Boeing systems-the Trojan horse thing that Ashton told us about earlier-and simply relayed their photographs through two or three intermediary terminals. New York and Seattle reckon they’ll be able to locate the intermediary computers-”

“Ashton’s people already have,” Pamela interrupted, although no longer with any excitement, knowing it was a cul-de-sac. “That’s how they made the trace, going back from the Pentagon through each invaded system. It gave them numbers and passwords in sequence. Ashton’s also already established, from user logs, that the intermediary links and the Boeing and UN numbers would have been on two of those phony antistatic bands they found attached to the feed cable of their computers. It’s not going to take us anywhere-” Her head came up quickly, toward Danilov. “Hey! What mistake?”