“The obvious essential is to prevent a repetition,” declared the CIA director. “I suggest we make it immediately public that the missile is a flawed design that won’t work. If the terrorists have another, it might prevent them from trying to use it.”
There were frowns at Butterworth from around the table.
“Sir,” said Schnecker. “The missile that hit the UN building didn’t detonate because it went in backward and through practically unresisting glass. A fluke. If it had hit the concrete of the building, it would have gone off. As would another-bad design or not-if it hit a hard and solid object.”
“How many eyewitnesses do we have?” Hartz broke in quickly, to spare the agency chief.
“Three who seem reliable,” Cowley responded at once. “Another seaplane commuter pilot in addition to the one from Asharoken. And the captain of a trash barge that was going downriver. All were attracted by the firing flash but none was looking directly at the cruiser. They all agree it was motor, not sail, but we’ve got three different descriptions of size, color, and potential make. None of them saw the missile or the launcher, and when there wasn’t any obvious fire or distress signal all three dismissed it.”
“We’ve got nothing, in fact?” demanded Butterworth, too eager again.
“I’ve moved thirty agents up to the New York office,” said Ross. “There does seem to be agreement that the cruiser had a flying bridge. The uncertainty is the color: whether it was totally white or had some blue at the waterline. Quite obviously we’re tracing the owners of every flying-bridged cruiser in every marina, yacht basin, and mooring between New York and Boston as well as Long Island. We’re not, in fact, imposing a territorial limit: I’ve gone south as far as the Chesapeake. But we’re talking thousands of boats. We’re also, again obviously, checking any cruiser thefts or cruiser hire.” He looked invitingly back to Cowley.
“None of the three we’ve traced so far talk of anyone on the cruiser dressed unusually for a boat.”
“What did they see?” broke in Butterworth.
“Two people-the second commuter pilot thought one was slim enough to have been a woman-both in unmarked bill caps and boat anoraks, again unmarked, no distinguishing color: dark blue or black maybe.”
“I can’t understand if they looked in the direction of the flash why they didn’t see one of the two still with the rocket launcher,” protested Hartz.
“The missile hitting the UN tower appeared practically simultaneous with the flash,” said Cowley. “All three witnesses say they thought that was what caused the flash. They virtually ignored the cruiser after the initial seconds.”
“How many more potential witnesses could there be?” demanded the CIA director.
“We’ve got from the New York Port Authority the names of three cargo barges that were on the river at the time.” Cowley paused, looking at Peter Samuels, the Customs and Excise director who had been silent so far. “And Customs is checking reported yacht and cruiser arrivals in the East River back five hours from the time of the attack.”
“But our records would only be of incoming boats reporting their arrival,” qualified Samuels. “There’s no legal requirement for a yacht or cruiser to do that if it merely came down from an upriver mooring and turned back before exiting the river. At least half the craft that leave the river to go up and down the coast don’t report their return anyway.”
“The missile is Russian, whether it had one or two warheads,” said Bradley. “And by sea is the likeliest way of smuggling it into the country.”
“There’s something like four thousand miles of U.S. coastline, and that’s a straight measurement, not including about a million creeks and inlets and navigable rivers,” said the Customs director. “Of course I’ve issued watch orders at every major port, but the reality is that’s about as practical as trying to check every yacht and cruiser between Boston and Washington. It’s being done, because it’s got to be done, but no one should expect a quick result. No one should expect a result at all, unless the miracles continue.”
Once again there was silence. This time it was the CIA director who broke it. Butterworth said, “We don’t have enough to make a row of beans.”
“Everything that can be done has been done to initiate the most comprehensive investigation in the bureau’s history,” Ross said defensively.
Hartz concentrated on the CIA chief. “What about Plant 35, at Gorki?”
The bald man shifted uncomfortably. “Throughout the Cold War Gorki was a closed city. We know there were extensive armament and weapon facilities there but we have nothing specific about a Plant 35.”
“We have,” announced Ross, to an immediate stir around the table. “Our files have it as a conventional weapons facility at which production began to be wound down in 1994.”
Butterworth’s face blazed at what he regarded as territorial intrusion. “I was under the impression that this was a totally shared investigation.”
“It is,” said the disheveled Bureau director. “I’ve just shared.”
There was a ripple of forced laughter. Flushed because of it and trying to recover, Butterworth said, “If the Russians still possess the sort of warheads fired yesterday-which they clearly do-they are in provable breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention that was internationally concluded, with them as signatories, in 1993.” He answered Hartz’s look. “Are we making diplomatic representation about that?”
“I don’t think our two countries need to get into that sort of exchange at this stage,” the presidential chief of staff warned sharply.
“I agree,” said Hartz just as quickly and as diplomatically rehearsed. “I spent an hour with the Russian ambassador last night and spoke to him again on the phone before this meeting. They’re as concerned-as frightened-about this as we are. We need to cooperate, not confront.”
“As we’ve done before,” reminded Ross, indicating Cowley by his side. “And as we need more than ever to do again now.”
The connection an hour later between the FBI headquarters on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue and the Moscow Militia building on Ulitza Petrovka was immediate. Dimitri Danilov said, “On television it looked as if you’d put on weight.”
“I’m already losing it,” said William Cowley.
“I’m glad it’s you,” said the Russian. He was, genuinely. It made a change for him to have anything like a personal feeling about anything.
“And I’m glad it’s you.” Having been in Moscow when Larissa had been killed and knowing the other man’s devastation, Cowley said, “How’ve you been?”
“So-so. You?”
“So-so. You in operational charge?”
“Officially appointed by the White House, with a remit as wide as the Volga itself,” confirmed Danilov.
“The assurance here is total cooperation?”
“Here, too,” said the Russian. From his just-concluded conversation with the Gorki Militia detective chief, Danilov suspected the working relationship was going to be more difficult there than with Washington. He said, “What have you got?”
“Two intact warheads, one containing sarin, the other anthrax. And a smashed up SA-7 delivery system.”
“I’ll need the details.”
“I’ll fax it all now. And wire photographs. What about Plant 35?”
“Includes a facility for defensive chemical and biological weapon research,” Danilov admitted at once.
Normal voices, conversational voices, Cowley thought: How’s the weather with you, raining here, good to hear everything’s all right with you. Except that nothing was all right. At this very moment, while they were talking, two other cans of topsy-turvey shit capable of killing thousands of people might already be slotted into a delivery system aimed at a building anywhere …. Cowley stopped the drift. Not anywhere. The United Nations complex had been chosen for exactly what it was, the one-the most-internationally attention-attracting target in the world. The next, inevitable attack would be on a similarly focused
site. Which could only be Washington itself. Security alerts had gone out throughout the country, but Cowley was suddenly convinced they needed to be concentrated in D.C. “You coming here or am I coming there?”
“Let’s decide the order of priority first,” said Danilov.
“The priority is the priority,” said Cowley, and immediately wished he hadn’t. It echoed like a soap opera sound byte just before the credits ran, to bring viewers back for the next episode. Hurriedly he added, “Whoever, wherever, gets the first break.”
“Let’s hope one of us recognize it,” warned Danilov.
Someone had stolen Larissa’s flowers, which didn’t surprise Danilov. The daffodils he’d brought now would probably go within a day. He cleared the fallen leaves and twigs from the Novodevichy Cemetery grave, unashamedly talking to her as he always did, imagining her replies in his mind.
Remember Bill, the American … big man? That’s right … good to go to America again … get away. Olga’s Olga, just the same …. Of course I miss you-ache for you. Don’t feel like being careful …. All right, of course I will be …. Why couldn’t you have been …. I know, I’m sorry. Not your fault. Yevgennie’s fault-your cheating, bastard militia colonel husband, failing his Mafia masters. Why did you have to be in the car, though? Leave me? I won’t be long …. Wish I could bring you something … see you … be with you. No, I’m all right. No, not all right: able to handle it. Sorry about the flowers. It’s Moscow-Russia. Good night. I love you.
Danilov rose, just as unashamedly staring back at another mourner looking curiously at him. He drove without hurry or interest to Ulitza Kirovskaya, knowing the sound was from his apartment as he stepped out of the elevator. His wife sat in front of the new, blaring set that had been her latest insistence, initially oblivious to his entry. She became aware of it when he went in front of her to reduce the volume.
“It’s too loud!” It was a Russian subtitled Australian series that had been running for weeks. There was a kangaroo that did tricks.
“I like trying to hear the English words.”
“You don’t speak English.”
“Irena says this is a way to learn.”
“She’s wrong.” Irena, who worked in the same ministry office as Olga, claimed to have learned her English from American movies. Danilov, who’d studied languages at the university, reckoned she knew about a dozen words, most of which she mispronounced.
The kitchen sink still had the stalagmite of unwashed dishes that had been there that morning, and on his way to the bathroom to wash Danilov saw the bed was in the upheaval in which she’d left it when she’d gotten up. The Australian soap had ended when he returned.
He said: “What words did you learn?”
“You interrupted me. I couldn’t concentrate.”
“I’m going away.”
“Where!” she demanded, suddenly attentive, turning to him.
“Gorki. What happened to your hair?”
“Igor said I needed this color, while the other tints grew out. What’s in Gorki?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“Any point in my making a present list?”
“None.”
“That American you worked with was on television before my program. Something about a missile.”
“I spoke to him today.”
Olga’s interest returned. “You’re going to America!”
“Maybe.”
“So I can write a present list!”
Danilov realized for the first time she was wearing a shirt he’d brought back for her the last time. Two buttons were missing and the stain over her left breast looked old and ingrained. Larissa had been wearing the bracelet he’d given her from the same trip. It had been one of the few things that had been identifiable after the bombing of the car.
“It’s the fifth time it’s happened in the last six months!” protested Clarence Snelling.
“The bank’s extremely sorry,” apologized the desk assistant, who’d dealt with the man’s previous complaints. “Computers do make mistakes.”
“No, they don’t!” Snelling replied. “It’s the people who handle them who make the mistakes.”
“It’s twenty-two cents,” the bank official pointed out. “It’s never been more than fifty. And as before, I’ll see that the amount is immediately restored.”
“I want an assurance that it won’t happen again!” insisted Snelling. “And this time I want it kept, which so far you haven’t done.”
“Sir,” said the man, “I promise you we’ll do our very best.”
5
Dimitri Danilov’s plane came in directly over the joining of the Volga with the river Oka. Briefly it was impossible to see both banks of the waterway that flows for more than two thousand miles from the frozen north to the subtropical Caspian Sea, to separate European from Asiatic Russia. It narrowed nearer to Gorki itself, but there were so many boats and ships-two cruisers large enough to be considered liners-that they looked from the air like discarded debris, without any regulated direction. He tried to locate the canal from the Volga to Moscow that Stalin forced his gulag prisoners to scoop from the earth with their bare hands but couldn’t and decided it must be farther downstream. The vast, flat hinterland of taiga forests was black, not conifer green, pockmarked in a lot of places into total baldness by clear-cutting without replanting. There were also the huge interruptions of uniform, regimented weapons and military materiel manufacturing buildings, each visibly divided from its matching neighbor by watch-towered, fenced perimeters. Two actually on the riverbank were on either side of an enormous man-made canal he could see humped with the pens in which the submarines now hemorrhaging their nuclear core into Murmansk harbor were originally housed, ready to fight America into mutual atomic annihilation. Which factory below was known simply by the number 35 and specialized in another sort of annihilation? Danilov wondered.
The aircraft, surprisingly, arrived exactly according to the schedule he’d given Colonel Oleg Reztsov, head of Gorki’s serious crime division, but there was no greeting officer. There was no waiting militia car outside, either, and Danilov accepted both, sadly, as an augury.
The smell of stale tobacco competed with the even staler stink of body odor in the rattling, sag-seated taxi festooned with dangling trolls and head-nodding toy animals. One had a broken neck. Danilov had forgotten the horizon-to-horizon taiga-covered mosquito bog and marsh. Flying things feasted off him, despite his lowering the window as far as it would go. The incoming breeze didn’t disperse the smell, either. When he told the inquiring driver, who’d smiled expectantly at Danilov’s American-bought suit bag, that he wasn’t going to pay in dollars, the man said having luggage inside the car would cost an extra fifty rubles. Danilov told the driver who he was, and the man said there wasn’t an extra charge for carrying a militia general.
Danilov’s room at the National Hotel overlooked a trash-strewn square at the rear, next to an air-conditioning or heater unit the throbbing of which reverberated into his room. Cockroaches killed by whatever was in an upturned cardboard container in the closet lay atrophied, legs stiffly in the air. There was no soap or sink or bath plug, which Danilov knew he should have anticipated and was annoyed that he hadn’t.
Colonel Reztsov wasn’t available when Danilov called. The woman who answered the telephone said she didn’t know where he was or when he would be back. Danilov suggested she find out to tell the president’s chief of staff when he called from the White House in Moscow in fifteen minutes, and in ten Reztsov came thickvoiced on the line.
“I didn’t think you were arriving until tomorrow.”
“I sent a fax.”
“It must have been mislaid.”
“You do understand how seriously it’s being treated?”
“I’ve got a squad on it already.”
“I’d like whoever’s in charge waiting when I get to your office. Which I will do in thirty minutes.”
“That-” the m
an began but stopped.
“What?” demanded Danilov.
“Nothing. I’ll send a car.”
Danilov parted with another ten dollars to get his room changed to one with soap and a bath plug and without mummified cockroaches. The mystery throbbing was less intrusive, too. The promised driver waiting in the lobby was a woman and blonde, and the car was a blue BMW. Danilov stopped momentarily-stupidly, he recognized at once-halted by the unneeded and unwelcome deja vu: The vehicle in which his mafia paymasters had blown up Yevgennie Kosov had been a BMW, blue like this one, and Larissa, who’d died with him, had been blonde, although slim and poised and beautiful, not at all like this woman, who was plump and round-faced and waddled. The obvious comparison made his reaction even more stupid. It had to stop, as the one-sided graveside conversations had to stop. He was hovering, Danilov supposed, on the edge of a nervous breakdown-close to some sort of breakdown. Time-long past time-to take hold of himself. Learn to live with the grief, as sensibly mature adult people adjusted to loss, no matter how traumatizing or unbearable it first appeared.
The driver took Danilov’s hesitation to be admiration and said it was Colonel Reztsov’s personal car. Danilov decided Reztsov was either a fool or very arrogant to show off a vehicle that would have cost the man a lifetime’s salary if he’d bought it honestly. And then Danilov accepted that Reztsov was probably neither. What the police chief was, in fact, was a typical senior Russian militia officer, living more than comfortably on a mafia payroll, and eager to show a visiting senior Moscow militia officer he imagined similarly cared for that life was as sweet in the provinces as it was in the capital.
What about his own foolishness? Danilov demanded of himself, settling into the squeaking leather upholstery and initially savoring the aroma from an unseen, perfumed deodorizer after the gagging journey from the airport. Danilov wasn’t a rarity in Moscow policing. He was now an arm’s-length, ostracized oddity, as unknown in modern Russia as the Neolithic long-haired mammoths occasionally found frozen in perfection in Siberian glaciers. So why had he come-alone-expecting honest, find-the-truth cooperation from a major provincial militia? He should, at least, have brought Yuri Pavin, whose apparent elephantine slowness belied a mind of jaguar speed. On something as high profile as this he should have risked the very real and constant backstabbing danger of an unsupervised department to bring his trusted deputy with him. Although Pavin was his deputy, now with the rank of senior colonel, he was still a street-level, gutter-thinking policeman who could smell a lead, like a bloodhound scenting a trail. It was the sort of expertise Danilov suspected he was going to need.
The Watchmen cad-3 Page 4
