Gordon Kent - Night Trap

“There’s something else,” she said.

“Oh, shit.” He retreated behind his desk.

“I’m sure there’s a discrepancy between his claims for eighty agents and the agents themselves. I haven’t got proof yet, but there’s too much organization, too much system manipulation, and not enough information. I think some of the eighty are dummies.”

He leaned his forehead on one hand. “Not all of them. Efremov got wonderful information from real agents!”

“I have an idea, Director.”

“Good, because I certainly don’t.”

“There is probably more in the computers than we can tease out. We need specialists. The computer was installed ages ago by East Germans who would not even be seen speaking to us now. Let’s go to the Americans.”

He paused, a tissue halfway to his nose.

“The Americans know everything about computers,” she went on. She was more cheerful, talking about what could be done. “We tell them that Efremov has bolted and that one of his agents is American. That will make them hot, you know. Then we tell them there is more in the computer but we can’t winkle it out. We will let their specialists into the computer if they will replace the system with IBM machines when they are done. And give us whatever they find of Efremov’s. We lose nothing. And they will take care of Efremov for us.”

He stared at her.

“I am sick of using low-end technology!” she shouted. “And I want a new telephone, too!”

He swiveled to look out the window. The rain was still streaming down. He balled a damp tissue between his palms, rolling it back and forth, back and forth, at last dropped it into the plastic bag, then got up and left the office. She heard the water run in his private bathroom. The toilet flushed. He came out wiping his hands on a handkerchief.

“Not yet,” he said.

She hitched forward in her chair. “I was approached by an American at the Venice Conference. A very obvious move—in fact, she said so. ‘Now that the Cold War is over,’ and so on. I know I could make the contact!”

“Of course you could make a contact; I could make a contact; who couldn’t? You’re not thinking clearly, Ouspenskaya. No, letting the Americans into Efremov’s computer files would be obscene. Just now. Not that I wouldn’t do it if I was absolutely sure he was alive and working for somebody else.”

“He has been responsible for killing twenty-nine of his own people. And he is a traitor!”

“You don’t know that! Did you report this approach at the Venice Conference?”

“Of course.”

“Who was it?”

“A woman. It’s all in my report.”

He hesitated for that millisecond that betrays suspicion, then glanced at her almost apologetically. He was thinking Those American women—you hear strange things—they do things with other women —He moved uncomfortably; he felt out of place in this new and more dangerous world. He cleared his throat. “What did she offer you?”

“It wasn’t an offer. An idea—a Soviet-American thinktank. American money. I would participate at a high level.”

“A little obvious, maybe?”

“She said as much—pointed out that three SVRR generals were touring US military bases as we spoke.”

He made a little throat-clearing sound, a sign of hesitation—this hint of possibly irregular sex embarrassed him—and said gently, “Who is she?”

“She works for George Shreed. She made that quite clear enough.” She laughed, throatily. “ Quite clear. What is it Americans call it—’name-pushing’?”

“Name- dropping , I believe. George Shreed. Well, well.” Shreed was more or less his opposite number in the CIA, at least so placed that the Director looked upon him as almost a rival in the same bureaucracy. Competitiveness tingled, despite his cold. “People like Shreed never dared reach into my directorate before. It’s a new world.”

“One in which a Colonel murders twenty-nine of his own people and betrays his country. For money! I know it! I feel it! The bastard!”

The Director groaned. He was sure that Ouspenskaya would resist any seduction from an immoral American woman. Wouldn’t she? He had managed to clear one nostril. He breathed through it for some seconds. “Did I tell you Gronski left with twenty-four hours’ notice ‘to enter the private sector’? What private sector? Money—the new socialist ideal. Well. All right, renew the contact with Shreed’s woman. Prepare the ground, but do nothing. File a report on everything you do. Put everything in writing for me. Get together with somebody who knows the computer and draft a plan for clearing it, then have them squeeze every drop of data out of it. I want every individual who has worked for Efremov in the last five years interviewed on polygraph—right down to the clerks. You run this, Ouspenskaya. If there are dummy agents he was taking money for, I want details. The individuals won’t know about it; they’ll think everything was straight. If they had suspicions, maybe he paid one or two off. But he was so good I’ll bet nobody got suspicious. But somewhere in the records there will be glitches. You can’t run ghosts and not have it show up.”

She stood. “You go to bed.”

He groaned. As she turned to go, he said, “Get what you can on the four agents who were being run out of the place that was attacked. You’ll have to go back to before he compartmentalized them. Maybe even back before we computerized. A big job.”

“I want to nail him like a new Christ.”

“Yes, but don’t want it so much that you overlook things that will exonerate him. Remember—maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s under a new pouring of concrete somewhere. Maybe he’s innocent.”

“He isn’t!”

He ignored that. “I want everything on those four agents. Especially the American. I think we can do something with that.”

She didn’t ask him what.

Kim fed Alan a strawberry from her plate and pressed her leg against his. She had forgiven him, because he had wangled an extra day’s liberty and because he had taken her to this elegant, expensive restaurant where Italian men looked at her as if she were the dessert cart. Then, Alan had pointed out three officers from the carrier, then Narc and two guys and a couple of women who wouldn’t have dared look into the same mirror with Kim. Narc’s eyes had bugged out, not only because Kim was such a woman, but because it was the Spy who had her. She giggled and pressed his leg and said she loved him so much.

“I hate the Navy,” she said happily. Her tongue flicked at a dot of whipped cream at the corner of her mouth. “I’m going to make my father give you a job so you can get out of the Navy and we can stay in bed all the time.”

He was not immune to being flattered. “You really believe your father’s going to pay me to stay in bed with his daughter?”

“What Kimberley wants,” she said, with a tiny smile, “Kimberley gets.”

Her father was a big shot in Florida. The Hoyts had a huge house on the beach near Jacksonville; Alan had got lost in it, trying to find the head. Her brother had laughed at him for that. Alan hadn’t liked him, a muscled twenty-year-old who spent his spare time on a jet ski and talked a lot about reverse discrimination. He had called Alan “admiral.” Something in his posture, his aggressiveness, had challenged Alan, as if they were rivals. The father had looked on at this with a small smile.

“I don’t think I could work for your father,” Alan said now.

“Oh, if the price is right, I bet you could.” She kissed him. “And the price will be right.”

She smiled. She licked her lips. He thought she was about the most desirable thing he’d ever seen. He began to tell her the story of landing into the net.