Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“They don’t think so.”

“They must be very confident.”

“Or to have chosen the wrong man in Reztsov.”

“You told Chelyag?”

“Not yet.”

“Let him know that we know.”

Danilov was surprised at Cowley’s political awareness and at once wondered why he should be. “America knowing is probably my greatest protection.”

Very quickly there was more. When they went back to the American contingent, Paul Lambert, who declared he’d come along for the ride, said, “Guess what was on the A2 launcher?”

In sighed resignation Danilov said; “What?”

“Alcohol,” announced the scientist. “Might even be vodka. Alcohol’s a great cleaner, and that’s what it was used for.” Abruptly he smiled. “But whoever did it did it badly. Left a very good forefinger print on the trigger guard. We were even able to tell that the shooter was left-handed.”

Cowley nodded to the stacked folders and said, “I wonder if there’s been an attempt to sanitize those.”

There hadn’t been.

One of the young Russians made the match within the first hour, approaching Pavin with a print in either hand, visibly relieved at the large man’s shout of “Got something!”

The Golden Hussar photograph was one of those in which the woman was too blurred to be identified. But quite clearly, although pictured at such an angle that it was impossible to be sure if he’d actually been with her, was a smiling man named in his First Chief Directorate file as Yevgenni Mechislavovich Leanov. His job was given as translator and one of the four listed languages was English.

Cowley turned over the Golden Hussar print and said, “It’s one taken at the rear. They weren’t using the public entrance. It’s beginning to move!”

It didn’t stop, although what amounted to a virtual breakthrough wasn’t pictorial and was found by the detail-attentive Yuri Pavin checking through a folder that had already been scrutinized. He gestured for Cowley and Danilov to move out of the hearing of the searching groups before offering it to them.

“Ivan Gavrilovich Guzov,” he said simply.

“Codirector, with Vyacheslav Fedorovich Kabanov, of the New Jersey company from which Orlenko rents 69 Bay View Avenue, Brooklyn,” Cowley recognized at once.

“Gavrilovich is an Armenian patronym,” continued Pavin. “It’s quite customary to shorten it to Gavri.”

“How many?” demanded the General.

“Five,” said Hollis. He painstakingly dictated the codes, enjoying ordering the other man to repeat them back to him.

The General said, “They big? We need customers with substantial accounts.”

“Yes,” said Hollis. He was quite sure of the customer assets of one. It was his until now untouched own branch, where at that very moment an FBI auditor name Mark Whittier was monitoring computer movement, hunting a thief.

Carl Ashton, who was waiting for her at the Pentagon gatehouse, said, “What the hell’s the panic?”

“We got it all wrong,” Pamela Darnley said simply.

“I didn’t think it fit because it wasn’t as cleverly planned as everything else. But now I’m sure it is! I even think it’s brilliant.” They were in Ashton’s inner courtyard office, Pamela leaning forward eagerly to convince the Pentagon computer security chief. She didn’t feel numb anymore. She felt excited.

Ashton sat behind his desk, blank faced, her first, gabbled explanation beyond him. “Run it by me again.”

Pamela sighed. “Roanne Harding was the one person who risked being identified from planting the Semtex in the Washington Memorial.”

“Right,” accepted Ashton. “That’s why they killed her. If you’d arrested her, she could have led you to them.”

Pamela smiled. “Obvious conclusion-my conclusion, your conclusion, everyone’s conclusion. What about their accepting that we’d find her and setting everything up to lead us away !”

“This is where you lose me,” protested Ashton. His hands were constantly moving about his desk, as if he were physically groping for something.

“And where I need your guidance to tell me I’m understanding it at last,” encouraged Pamela. “When did you start looking for the worms inside your computer systems?”

“The day the first Watchmen message was posted, when we realized there’d been an unauthorized entry. I told you that.”

“The fifteenth?”

“Yes.”

“That was the actual intrusion. When did you discover the list of possible security risk employees had been wiped?”

“Not until the eighteenth.”

“Why did the nine-including Roanne Harding-survive?”

“I told you that, too. By then we’d put up firewalls.”

“We had a spat, remember? You kept saying ‘maybe’ and I asked you to be specific and you said fifteen names had been erased. How did you know it was precisely fifteen?”

“I’m beginning to understand.” His nervous fingers stopped. Now he gripped the edge of the desk as if he needed to hold on.

“How, Carl?” she persisted. It had to be spelled out, the pieces numbered.

“The suspect dismissals were on a separate program. Sometimes, when information has been deleted, it can be recovered simply by hitting undelete; it’s a built-in fail-safe. We didn’t get the files back-they’d been properly wiped-but we recovered the date of the deletions.”

“Which was?”

Ashton was flushed now, acknowledging the oversight. He groped into a drawer, taking out his own investigation records and thumbing through them for several minutes. He looked up, swallowing. “All on the same day. The thirteenth.”

“How long would it have taken to wipe the entire program?”

“Seconds.”

“How many seconds?” pressed Pamela.

“Not seconds,” the man corrected. “It’s instantaneous.”

“So, on the thirteenth-two days before you put up firewalls-fifteen names were erased instantaneously. Five days later you were still able to find nine more names, Roanne Harding’s among them?”

“Yes.”

“You remember agreeing with me, during that argument we had, that logically the identity of the person who’d planted the Watchmen worms would have been the first thing to go?”

“Yes,” the man, said tightly.

“How can you explain those nine still being in the system if it would have taken less than seconds on the thirteenth to take them out, as well? And destroy the link between Roanne Harding and the Pentagon from which we made the connection to the Washington Monument?”

“I can’t.”

“Her name wouldn’t have meant anything to you if she had been identified in newspapers as a murder victim?”

“No.”

“So we had to be led to her: and from her, led here, to the Pentagon.”

“ Why? ”

“To make us think-as we did think-that Roanne Harding was the only Watchmen intruder.”

“She has to be!” It was a groan.

“The message after the Moscow embassy attack was posted on your site.” She felt very sure of herself, convinced she was right.

“The phony antistatic bands!” Ashton threw back. “I told you we’ll never be able to calculate how many passwords and codes Roanne made available by fixing those damned things. The fact that the Moscow message was posted from here proves we haven’t kept the bastards out by changing the lower security systems!”

“That’s one of the cleverest things,” said Pamela. “I went through our forensic findings, location by location, before coming here. And then read again what you and Bella Atkins told me-Bella in particular. She told me Roanne Harding’s access was officially restricted to the stationery and office ordering division, which was her workplace, but that Roanne had obviously moved far beyond that. Roanne’s fingerprints were everywhere, on all the bands.”