Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“They’d suspect something if we openly approach him so soon after seeing the woman,” said Danilov. “We’ll have to split the Leanov surveillance.”

“If they’ve taken over the Osipov Brigade, Anatoli Lasin would know about it,” Pavin pointed out.

Cowley shook his head. “I don’t think we can risk going anywhere near anyone. It’s a bastard that even now, we still haven’t got anything legal we can move on spread like this between America and Russia!”

“Sometimes,” said Pavin, “the law gets in the way of enforcing it.”

The other two men took it as truism, not cynicism. Neither smiled.

Pamela Darnley wasn’t smiling, either, because the development that should have been to her credit ended, in her opinion if no one else’s, in more frustration than the unqualified success it should have been.

Because there was no precedent, it had been impossible to predict the volume of calls from or to the limited number of public telephones on the contact list from Bay View Avenue.

It was so great that it overwhelmed every physical monitor; within two hours that had to be abandoned for duplicated sound recordings. The delay in reading the transcripts built up to three hours before one of the Washington technicians listening to the targeted D.C. phone heard what they were waiting for. By then the conversation-between the Washington telephone and that on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive upon which Pamela had reduced physical surveillance-was three hours and seven minutes old.

Pamela wasn’t satisfied that the Washington voiceprint proved to be that of the woman who’d made the booby-trap call from New Rochelle. Or that they had a new voice trace from the man who’d spoken from Lake Shore Drive, who was obviously a leader-maybe the leader-of the Watchmen. And they’d lost him.

Once again there was no identification. The man said, “Any problem?” It was a deep bass voice. American. No discernible accent.

“They haven’t got a clue.” Her voice was deeper than how she’d distorted it from New Rochelle.

“They won’t find anything?”

“No way they can until it’s too late. More surprises than they can ever guess.”

“We’re going to mount another operation first.”

“What?”

“A warhead. One that works this time.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because we showed them last time what happens if it doesn’t.”

“United Nations?”

“Not decided yet. There’ll be some other stuff, too. I’ve got a lot coming in.”

“Separate, you mean?”

“One after the other, bang, bang, bang.” He laughed. “That’s good: bang, bang, bang!

She laughed obediently. “I’ve been working my ass off getting the money.” There was another laugh. “Kinda fun, helping ourselves.”

“How much are you taking, for yourself?”

There was a pause. “Cab fare is all.”

“That’s OK. And we’ve all been working at it.”

“We got enough?”

“Whatever we’re short I’m going to fine the asshole for going AWOL.”

“What’d he say?”

“He had a virus.”

“You think it’s true?”

“He got chicken: changed his mind.”

“You want me to go on having fun and helping myself?”

“Gotta get a price from the Russians yet; maybe put it on hold for a coupla days.”

“Any hard feelings there?”

“I guess but so what? We’re the buyers, they’re the sellers. What choice they got, they want to make money?”

“We would have been there by now, that fucking thing gone off like it should have.”

“It will next time. And maybe we’ll do something else in Moscow. That worked better than we expected.”

“What?”

“Need to speak to them there: See what ideas they got.”

“America taking over the Moscow investigation was good.”

“You see the speculation there could be government changes there-the president even?”

“I saw it. Be good to claim credit. Prove our strength.”

“We will claim credit. We’ll deserve it.”

“When do you want me to call?”

“Friday. Same time. But not this number.”

“Security change?”

“It’s time. You got the next number?”

“Of course. What about an announcement on the Net like before?”

“Need to finalize the target first. Might even do Moscow before here. We’ll talk about that on Friday, too.”

“Take care, brother.”

“And you, sister.”

Pamela was glad the director insisted on time to read everything. It gave her the matching space to talk it through with Terry Osnan-lessen her fury at the setbacks that couldn’t have been avoided and the stupidity that could-and read what had come in from Moscow. She also made several phone calls.

When she did finally enter the fifth-floor office Leonard Ross greeted her with “We got a new ball game here?”

“New game plan, certainly,” she agreed. There was no way to avoid some of the responsibility. It might be an idea, maybe, to admit at least to part.

“Talk it through.”

A sudden awareness further dampened her anger. She had made it! She’d attended the topmost planning session at the White House-and been acknowledged-and here she was, by herself, being asked for opinions by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who called her by her first name. Which made today such a bastard, she thought, the annoyance flaring again. She had to think of everything she said before saying it. “After all the effort, the public telephone taps are useless, now they’ve changed their numbers.”

“What about picking the new ones up from Orlenko’s billing, like we did the others?”

“Maybe, in time. But we don’t know how much time we’ve got. Or if Orlenko will call them, like he did last time. We can’t rely on it.”

“Didn’t we have Lake Shore Drive under physical surveillance? Cameras?”

Careful, Pamela warned herself: Apportion as much blame as possible away from herself. “With the tap in place-and Chicago stretched, checking out OverOcean-I agreed the surveillance could be reduced. I didn’t mean-or approve-that reduction in any way including cameras.”

Ross regarded her steadily for several moments. “Nothing?”

“I don’t know,” Pamela admitted. “We have the conversation specifically timed. The photographic coverage is estimated. There might be a half hour overlap.”

“ Damn! ”

“I know.”

“That’s a bad mistake, Pamela. A hell of a bad mistake.”

Pamela said nothing.

Ross waved the transcript at her. “This could be the man in charge!”

“I recognize that.” She didn’t think Damn. She thought Fuck! fuck! fuck!

“What about the taps on OverOcean? And the Trenton company?” demanded Ross. He was only just controlling the anger.

“Everything strictly business. Nothing relevant at all.”

“And the two Russians, Guzov and Kabanov? What the hell we doing about them?”

Still only just in control, judged Pamela. “Both houses bugged from the exchange. We didn’t think we could risk another entry like in Brooklyn.” William Cowley didn’t think, not “we.” Should she have qualified the decision? Too late now. The encounter was far more critical than she’d anticipated. Wanted. Hurriedly she added, “Twenty-four-hour physical surveillance, of course. Including communication vehicles. Nothing so far.”

“I’d like a legal reason to bring the bastards in-cut the thing off at the head.”

Could she risk the argument? She had to, because there was one to make and because there was more than enough in the conversation to stage at least a partial recovery. “We would not be cutting them off at the head. We don’t know who or what that head is.”