Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“Except that she isn’t,” deflated Ross.

“She!” echoed the media spokesman, who thought in headlines.

“We definitely don’t want the fact that it’s a woman made public, not until we’ve traced her,” demanded Ross. “And it is still a process of elimination. The timer could have been set days before.”

“How about ‘closing in on the suspect’?” negotiated Prentice. “‘Dramatic breakthrough expected in twenty-four hours’?”

“It sounds good,” encouraged Norton. “I like it.”

“Definitely nothing about it being a woman,” insisted Ross.

“Agreed,” acceded Prentice, moving on. “I’ve checked the clips on this guy Danilov. He got quite a lot of space when he was here last time, when the joint investigation system was established, and there’s been demands to know who the Russian investigator is after last night’s statement. What about giving his name?”

“Not until I clear it with him and he gets Moscow’s OK,” Ross replied. “Cowley’s not happy about the exposure he’s already got, says it gets in the way. And let’s not forget the personal danger.”

“Let’s keep it in mind, though?” persisted Prentice. “We don’t feed the media every day, it’s us they bite.”

That night Pamela did go out to dinner with Cowley, as joint host to Dimitri Danilov. They went to a French restaurant on Georgetown’s M Street, which the Russian remembered from before and declared the vodka better than he could get in Moscow. Cowley tried to pace his scotch in time with the other two-Pamela went straight to wine-but his glass was always empty first.

She jerked her head toward the waitress’s station and said, “They’ve made you already.”

“I know,” said Cowley. He wondered when he’d be able to get to a barber to even up the freaky hairstyle. The waitress who recited that day’s specials and took their order called Cowley by name.

“It’s good to be anonymous,” said Danilov.

“You going to tell the director no?” asked Cowley, who’d relayed Prentice’s request to release Danilov’s identity.

“There’s no practical benefit, which would be the only reason to do so,” said Danilov.

“Safer to stay anonymous,” insisted Pamela. Difficult though the case was, she didn’t imagine there were many investigators who would have dismissed the offer of personal publicity for the reason Danilov had just given.

Cowley was curious at the concern and was then immediately surprised at himself. Why shouldn’t she be concerned, show some personal interest? It had been obvious for Pamela to accompany them, but Cowley wished it could have been just he and Danilov. That was an irritatingly unnecessary thought, too. There’d be time enough to renew the friendship-talk about other things-in the coming days and evenings.

But for the moment, in the noise-obscuring restaurant, the conversation was inevitably a continuation or reexamination of what had been discussed in the incident room. Almost at once Cowley wondered if he and Danilov really would have the time he’d imagined when the Russian recounted the exchange with Georgi Chelyag. If they didn’t get an American address for Viktor Nikov in the next two or three days he guessed he’d have to go back to Moscow to examine more closely what was possible from Paul Lambert’s forensic findings.

“It was a long way to come to confirm your own guys were cheating on you,” Pamela said with her usual directness.

And probably settled a personal question, Danilov realized. He’d have to expose the corruption within his department, not fantasize about becoming part of it again. Which was all it had ever been, a fantasy. He was embarrassed he’d even allowed himself to think of it. “It was the only way scientifically to do it.”

“You could still be obstructed,” said Cowley.

“It might be more difficult for that to happen if you were with me,” suggested Danilov.

Pamela was about to speak when her pager sounded. She rose from the table, checking the caller, and returned from the restaurant phone booth in seconds. She said, “Eduard Babkendovich Kulik rented a Lexus from Budget for five days. The address on the agreement is Bay View Avenue in Brooklyn.” She smiled and added, “That well-known and much-loved ghetto for Russian emigres.”

Patrick Hollis decided that the Internet disclosure of Russian and American intelligence agents was brilliant, as brilliant as using the Web for all the other mockery. Better than committing-or trying to commit-any more atrocities. Would the General be doing it personally, or were there other nerds equally as good at surfing? There had to be a lot-a unit-to carry out the bank thefts. Would the General maintain the telephone-at-fixed-times division between everyone else that the man had insisted upon with him as being necessary to prevent their being discovered? Hollis smiled at the question, knowing of one man who was soon to be discovered.

It made operational sense to split up, Cowley and Danilov flying up to New York by bureau plane leaving Pamela Darnley in Washington to supervise the individual checks on the former Pentagon employees on the following day’s promised list.

A bureau lawyer flew with them to make the application for a search warrant and wire tap on 69 Bay View Avenue to a judge roused by the Manhattan office and waiting in chambers by the time they got to the city. By then two agents from the Manhattan office had driven out to Brooklyn and made one pass by the house, a neglected clapboard owned by a property company in Trenton, New Jersey. No lights had been burning and it looked deserted. On Cowley’s orders from the incoming plane from which he was coordinating everything, they hadn’t attempted any neighbor inquiries but parked as inconspicuously as possible to wait and watch. The police commander of the local precinct was called at home, told of the bureau presence-and why-and asked that no foot or vehicle patrol interfere if they realized a surveillance was under way. The police chief said there weren’t any foot patrols in the area but he’d alert traffic. If there was anything he could do, all Cowley had to do was ask.

The telephone company night-duty supervisor with whom Cowley discussed the telephone tap assured him that the billing records of calls into and from the Bay View Avenue house would be available within five minutes of the clerical staff arriving at 8:00 A.M. the following morning. The tap itself was installed by 10:30 that night, to be monitored around the clock by a rotating task force of eight operatives. Cowley took them with him on the plane, freeing up the Manhattan office for the twenty-four-hour surveillance for which Cowley asked for intentionally battered, Midwest registered and apparently much used communications and observation vehicles. They were to be driven up from Washington overnight, with the exception of the one available in New York, which Cowley rejected as too new and likely to attract attention in the neglected suburb. He also ordered six vehicles hired by the following morning-none four-door Fords, the too-recognizable federal pool choice-so that no regularly parked cars or vans would arouse any suspicion.

The largest room at the bureau’s New York office on Third Avenue was turned into an incident room. On the first of the exhibit boards were pinned a blown-up street plan of Bay View Avenue and its surrounding waterfront roads. There also appeared photographs of Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov, one official militia arrest photograph of the man when he’d been alive, two more of him after his body had been recovered from the Moskva River.

At midnight Cowley demanded, “Anything not in place that should be at this stage?”

“I don’t think so,” said Danilov. He was, in fact, awed by the speed and completeness with which the entire operation had been organized in little more than the three hours since Pamela’s paged alert in the Georgetown restaurant. At its fastest-and most unobstructed-Danilov couldn’t have achieved it in Moscow in under two days. He’d also adjusted to the now-familiar curiosity at his presence on an FBI investigation, although he didn’t think the Manhattan office had, not fully.