Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“You can’t guarantee that: No one could,” Ross objected at once. “It’s too dangerous, leaving it there.”

“We can’t touch it,” insisted Cowley, equally quickly, the euphoria all gone. “Finding it, like we have, still leaves us with as many problems as before, with the additional one that Dimitri’s just pointed out.”

An unformed idea, like a shadow in the dark, began nagging in Danilov’s mind but refused to harden.

“We know what they intended to do with their Pentagon access,” argued Norton. “It was Challenger, and we’ve got all the time in the world to correct it. We’re safe back here.”

“I’m not sure that we are,” said Pamela, pleased that her success had been acknowledged without her having to prompt the reference. “Remember what the woman says on the Chicago intercept:”more surprises than they can ever guess.” Surprises. Plural, not singular. I’m not convinced that we’ve got rid of the danger here by finding the Challenger interference. I’ve told Ashton to go on looking.”

“You’re surely not suggesting we do nothing about the Moscow cache!” Norton demanded incredulously.

“I’m reminding everyone that if we move too soon in Moscow-before we’ve got positive leads and identification here-we risk their triggering something we can’t anticipate or stop,” said Pamela. There was no hesitation, no deferring to rank or authority, and no one seemed to expect it.

“I agree,” said Cowley.

“So do I. And it’s the argument I’ve already put here, since we discovered what’s in the garage,” said Danilov. What was it that wouldn’t come to him!

Pamela filled the silence from Washington. “Something might be moving. From what we overheard from Bay View Road, Orlenko made contact last night. The new number is the public phone at the River Cafe below the Brooklyn Bridge: the one with the view of the Manhattan skyline. We’re putting a tap on it, of course. But the pattern is for him to speak to Moscow after hearing from whoever he talks to.”

“It’ll be about the money,” remembered Cowley. “Any progress on that?”

“No,” said Ross. “What did you get out of the Oldsmobile?”

“I’m hoping we’ll get more from what we put in, ” said Lambert. “We wired it, two separate microphones, one inside the radio, one inside the pod on the turning indicator arm. We’ve lifted five different fingerprint sets: There’s a match to the one print on the trigger guard of the launcher discarded after the embassy attack. We’ve got a lot of human hair and one cigarette butt from a filled ashtray on the front dash. We can pick up saliva from that for DNA-as well as from the hair-if we need a match. There’s clothes fibers, too. There’s some paint flakes from the trunk carpeting that could be from both the warhead and the missile that was fired at the embassy here. It’s all already on its way back to the laboratory.”

“I’m having the prints run through criminal records and against our ex-intelligence officer files,” said Danilov. “We’ve already shown last night’s photographs of the car to the embassy guard. He says it’s definitely the one used in the attack.”

“And you’re telling me that we still can’t move on it!” said the exasperated presidential aide. “I know the arguments, but we’ve really got to think this thing through. Do something!”

“From the photographs it looks to me as if there’s more explosives than were put in the Lincoln Memorial,” said Ross. “I know the reasoning for leaving it alone-have gone along with it until now-but I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t see how we can.”

The shadow in Danilov’s mind became a positive thought, literally like a shaft of light. “We don’t have to!” he announced.

The three men in the room turned to him, frowning. The same expression registered on the faces in Washington. “Naina Karpov and Yevgenni Leanov-and those we know about there, in America-aren’t ballistics experts. They’re stealing and selling. They won’t know if the stuff is armed-operational-or not. We can get back in to where they’re storing it-more easily than last night, because we know their security and booby traps now-and simply disarm everything. Remove firing mechanisms, sabotage the timers and detonators. The Watchmen would imagine its failure to be for the same reason as the UN missile: bad Russian manufacture. The last time they thought that, they came all the way from America to teach their suppliers a lesson.”

There were slow, nodded smiles of understanding from inside the room and from Washington. Pamela said, “How do you make the warhead inoperative if they get it and we find it? After last time they’ll check the detonating mechanism. That’s what the newspapers and television said had failed.”

The smiles went, but only briefly. Cowley said, “We won’t have to try. We’ve got two empty warheads of our own, one from each source. We bring them back from Washington and simply swop.”

“You haven’t found the warhead,” reminded Pamela.

“We’ll go ahead with the switch with what’s already there,” declared Norton, making the decision that should have been Leonard Ross’s.

“My people handle ballistics after their use,” reminded Lambert.

“Why don’t the Fort Detrick specialists come over? And bring the empty warheads just in case?” suggested Ross. “I want to be sure nothing can go off, no matter what’s done with it if we’ve got to let it come here.”

Danilov suspected that Georgi Chelyag used their second encounter as a planning rehearsal. The man seized the American sabotaging of the weaponry as a further distancing of Russian presidential responsibility. He insisted their agreement could be phrased as a favor to an America deeply embarrassed by the terrorists’ Pentagon penetration.

“We’ll have to be horrified at what could have been a space shuttle disaster involving our astronauts,” said Chelyag, almost to himself.

“I am !” said Danilov, still uncomfortable with the other man’s total political cynicism.

“And they still think there could be something more?” queried the chief of staff.

“Yes.” They hadn’t discussed it after the satellite closedown, but Danilov had been as conscious as Cowley of Pamela’s aggressiveness.

“Maybe we should put all our early-warning systems on standby?”

“I thought there’d been an assurance that nothing is directed toward us?”

“There has. And according to you it was Challenger ’s directional system that had been tampered with. What’s to stop something being put back on course?”

“It would become public knowledge that we’d done it.”

Chelyag smiled. “Of course it would. It’s a presidential decision, and the president would be failing in his responsibilities to the Russian people if he didn’t take the precaution, after what we’ve just learned. That can all be made clear in today’s conversation with Washington, with the assurance that there will be no leak from this end that what was done to the space shuttle is the reason for our doing it. Which it won’t, not even to the Duma as they prepare their censure vote. It might, of course, give them cause to pause and reflect, not having the slightest idea what’s going on.”

Danilov wondered how many situations there had ever been that Chelyag hadn’t manipulated 180 degrees to his or a superior’s advantage. Danilov suddenly decided the sewer life in which he lived and worked was preferable to what Chelyag inhabited and that he’d never again feel guilty at his own long-ago toe dip into what, by comparison, was perfumed corruption. He said, “I don’t think there’s anything else.”