The Watchmen cad-3

by Brian Freemantle

  “Thank you. Your cooperation and future intentions have been noted,” said Pamela. Textbook testosterone, she decided. Not difficult to understand how Anne Stovey had been steam-rollered. It would be interesting how long the pomposity would last under different questioning by someone from out of town. Pamela slid a printout of the General’s e-fit across the table toward Standing and said, “Who is this man?”

  Standing studied it for several moments. “I have never seen or met anyone like him before.” His voice was strong but he was moving one hand over the other, as if he were washing them.

  “For the benefit of the tape, I would like this image identified,” intruded Lang.

  “The General,” said Pamela, still talking to Standing. “The man-the pseudonym-to whom you sent two messages at the Cyber Shack on Halsted Street, Chicago. I’d like you to tell me his real name.”

  “I do not know anyone who calls himself the General. Or of the Cyber Shack on Halsted Street or anywhere else in Chicago,” replied the man. “I have never been to the city.”

  “I am showing the suspect an electrically generated depiction of an American eagle,” said Pamela, doing so. “Who do you know who has this type of tattoo within a scroll?”

  “I don’t know anyone. Or what you’re talking about.”

  “I consider this questioning technique irregular,” said the lawyer.

  “A protest that can be made in open court to test admissibility,” dismissed Pamela. To Standing she said, “What’s a Land Cruiser?”

  “This is preposterous!” said Lang.

  “Sir, your objections do not concern points of law, they are intentionally diverting interferences which I am objecting to, on record, for later consideration by the court.” She went to Standing, who had begun to sweat again. “Will you answer, Mr. Standing?”

  “A car?” The man frowned.

  “Who do you know who owns a maroon Toyota Land Cruiser?” To the tape she said, “I am showing the suspect a dealer’s photograph of such a vehicle.”

  “No one.”

  Copies of the Cyber Shack messages were added to the exhibit pile, identified by Pamela as she offered them. She said, “What do those mean?”

  Standing again took several minutes. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  Pamela pushed over another piece of evidence, conscious that the lawyer’s interruptions had stopped. “Is this your personal computer log-on that identifies you, by name, to your bank’s computer system?”

  “Yes,” confirmed Standing.

  “Both messages I have just shown you were sent to the Cyber Shack in Chicago from your branch on your computer log-on.”

  “Not by me.”

  Another sheet of paper went across the table. “Do you recognize this photocopy to be that of your current bank statement?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know anything about the deposits you’re talking about.”

  “What deposits are those, Mr. Standing?”

  “The ones she asked me about before, that come to $3,400,” said Standing, nodding toward the silent Anne Stovey. He was sweating more heavily now, soaking his shirt anew.

  “That amount, in total, was stolen from client accounts in branches of your bank in Schenectady, Rochester, and Rome, and your computer ID has been traced to those illegal withdrawals,” Pamela set out. “How do you explain that?”

  “Somebody else must have done it.”

  “No one else has-or should have-access to your personal computer identification, should they?”

  Sweat was leaking from the man now. “No.”

  “Have you shared or given your personal ID to an unauthorized person?” Her warmth was frustration.

  “No.”

  “Then how was it used to withdraw these amounts of money and send messages to Chicago?”

  “I don’t know!” erupted the man, so unexpectedly that both women and the lawyer jumped. Standing began to cry. He let his nose run, uncaringly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening. I haven’t done any of this. Any of anything. I’m being framed.”

  “Why? By whom?” demanded Pamela. She wished he’d wipe his nose.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Is there anything you do know, Mr. Standing?”

  “No!” said the man, answering the ridicule genuinely as he at last wiped his eyes and nose. “Please believe me!”

  “Your problem is that I don’t.” She tapped the bank statement and computer ID. “That’s prima facie evidence of grand larceny.”

  “My client is prepared to undertake a polygraph test,” said Lang. There was very little pomposity now.

  “That’s a trial defense prerogative,” accepted Pamela.

  “I meant now, at this stage of the investigation.”

  “Mr. Lang, my investigations concern the attack upon the United Nations building, the massacre of FBI personnel at New Rochelle, the bombing and attempted bombing of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and several other matters. I intend charging your client today with grand larceny, pending further investigation, and the government will oppose in the strongest terms any bail application.”

  The bearded lawyer sat regarding her open-mouthed, wordless, able only to shake his head.

  Robert Standing fainted.

  “Clever ploy. Never had it happen before,” said Pamela. At her suggestion they’d gone directly across the street from the police headquarters and sat with coffee and Danish between them.

  “The doctor said it was genuine,” reminded Anne.

  “Shit scared of medical malpractice,” dismissed Pamela. “Safer to put him in the hospital for observation.”

  “Delays the formal charge though.”

  “He’s still in official custody. I’ll speak to Washington. I don’t want him copping any medical plea.”

  “You going to go along with the polygraph?”

  “Washington’s decision, but I don’t see why not. If he sweats while he’s on the lie detector like he did today, he’ll send the needle off the paper.” Her anger at being tricked was going, but only very gradually.

  “You think he’s guilty?”

  Pamela regarded the other woman disbelievingly over the rim of her coffee cup. “Do I think he’s guilty! Come on!”

  “Why make stupid mistakes now?” questioned the local agent. “If he’s our man, he’s been doing it for years and could have gone on doing it except for a bookkeeper named Clarence Snelling who literally counted his pennies. And who we still might not have caught on even if the amounts went into dollars. Why, suddenly, does Standing start stealing so obviously and leaving ID traces all over the place-send crazy, war-type messages-and dump over three grand in his own account, in his own bank, where everybody knew there was an FBI audit going on?”

  “That’s what I’m going to have him tell me when he gets over the phony stress attack,” promised Pamela. The case-closing break had only been postponed, and not for long. The collapse had been phony, when he’d known he was going over the edge: worked once but it wouldn’t work again. Next time she was going to make sure he went over the edge and broke into a lot of little pieces.

  It was William Cowley’s idea to return to America, which in the normal circumstances of a normal investigation he wouldn’t have cleared first with the director. He did in these abnormal circumstances, left in no doubt that Leonard Ross held him to some degree responsible for lifting the street surveillance on the Nikitskij cul-de-sac. He made the approach a request to let some of the team he’d taken with him remain in Moscow, with Barry Martlew as supervisor.

  “There’s a lot happening here,” agreed Ross. “But you sure there’s nothing else to do in Moscow?”

  “Nothing that Martlew can’t handle. Or the Warsaw station.”

  “Give it a couple of days,” insisted the director. Ominously he added, “I want your personal assurance we’re covered on all bases. Pamela seems to have things in hand here.”

  “I’d like to come with you,�
�� said Danilov, meaning it, when Cowley told him.

  “I’d like it, too, but there’ll need to be a lot of coordination between both places,” reminded Cowley.

  “Let’s hope we get it right.” At once Danilov said, “That didn’t come out as it was meant to. It wasn’t a criticism of you. It was the right decision: I’m sorry.”

  Cowley smiled, ruefully. “Get up off your knees. I know it wasn’t a crack.”

  “You going to be all right?” Danilov asked seriously.

  “It’ll blow over. You know the saying.”

  “The buck stops here,” provided Danilov.

  “Or where it’s most convenient,” qualified the American.

  Danilov was suddenly caught by the thought that the aphorism of a long-ago American president was probably more appropriate for him than for Cowley. Chelyag was now initiating the approaches, but with the passage of days what had seemed as protective knowledge didn’t appear as strong as he’d first thought. And the political embarrassment it would cause ended when the case did. Danilov acknowledged that ironically his future would be best safeguarded by the case not, in fact, being solved at all.

  “I liked the other car!” protested Elizabeth Hollis. “Everyone drives Fords like this.”

  “I told you,” said Hollis. “It was an economy decision that I return it. There’ll be a policy change soon. We’ll get another one just like it.” Hollis didn’t like being reminded of the one extravagance that might have made people curious.

  “You’ve heard that news already on the other channel,” complained the cantankerous woman, jabbing an arthritically twisted finger toward the radio.

  “I wanted to check something, make sure I didn’t mishear,” said Hollis. There should surely have been a public FBI announcement by now? He didn’t understand it.

  He’d specifically timed their arrival at the mall the General had designated and was walking his mother by the telephone on their way to J. C. Penney when the public telephone rang. He continued on by without pausing, looking back only when the ringing stopped. A boy of about eighteen in jeans and a back-to-front ball cap was shaking his head. He was still shaking it when he put the phone down and walked away.

  The announcement Hollis was anxious to hear concerned Robert Standing, but as they’d arrested him, the FBI must have a lead from the Cyber Shack to the General. Who, wondered Hollis, would the General turn out to be?

  37

  Robert Standing was charged with larceny, despite passing a polygraph test that went beyond the bank stealing to include every attack the Watchmen had committed or attempted. The man did not break down or cry, although he did perspire heavily during his second encounter with Pamela Darnley. After that the New York State district attorney, who’d appointed himself prosecutor, demanded further corroborating evidence of Watchmen association before permitting a third attempt to obtain an admission linking Standing to the terrorists.

  With the agreement of both a subdued Albert Lang and his client, bail was discussed in camera before a judge. The term “national security” was repeatedly invoked by the New York state lawyer. He’d been in frequent contact with the Justice Department in Washington and was aware of the political platform an eventual trial would provide. Bail was not sought after the judge indicated it would be set at millions. The publicity-attracting sum would jeopardize the unbiased fairness of any jury.

  Throughout the legal maneuverings Pamela Darnley seethed at what she considered the second lost breakthrough opportunity. She briefly considered moving Terry Osnan as Albany agent in charge to head up the continuing investigation there until deciding the man’s total command and knowledge of the Washington incident room would be weakened. Instead she put Anne Stovey in charge of three drafted-in agents with the instructions to find out more about Robert Standing than he knew about himself.

  To herself privately and to Anne Stovey very openly Pamela vowed to find another Watchmen tie-in to justify a third confrontation with the bank official. It was Anne Stovey who suggested tracing any association Standing or his family might have with any branch of the military. Allowing Anne the credit-and the chance to tell her official supervisor of her own supervisory promotion-Pamela let Anne ask Osnan to initiate the Pentagon check, taking over the telephone only to ensure that the Chicago e-fit image and the full, detailed description of the General was being run through all military records, past and present, and even extended to the navy, despite the rank.

  It was during the call that she learned of William Cowley’s impending return to Washington. She said, “Atmosphere any better there?”

  “No,” Osnan said shortly. “Got something to run by you when you get back.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Not the time or the place,” refused the man. “It’s personal.”

  Pamela spent the return flight mentally examining the past few days, searching for oversights. She had forgotten Osnan’s remark when she entered the J. Edgar Hoover building to find another setback awaiting her.

  “Problem,” announced John Meadowcraft when she returned his call. “Both Guzov and Kabanov are using two different cell phones. But there’s only one issued in each name. They must have the other under other names.”

  “How’s that affect us scanning in?” queried Pamela.

  “They don’t use it to talk,” declared the man.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Each number on a cell phone pad also represents three letters of the alphabet and can be used to send text messages: no conversation.”

  “Which we can’t break into?”

  “The experts say it would be difficult, even if we had the number. We’ve only caught them using text on a few occasions, always in the parking lot of their realtor building. I sent a gal in looking for apartments. She saw Kabanov and Guzov both hammering away separately. They’ve only got one floor of a twenty-story building. So many phones it sounds like a bird aviary scanned from outside.”

  “There must be something!”

  “I spent the morning with virtually every electronics expert we’ve got.”

  “Bank statements!” she demanded. “They have to pay!”

  “Sure they do,” agreed the Trenton bureau head. “But not off any statement we’ve accessed, private or company. It’s either cash-and we haven’t followed either to any cell phone office or outlet-or a check in the name in which they hold the phones. And we don’t have that name, so we’re back where we started.”

  “Shit!” Pamela said vehemently.

  “So much I can’t see through it,” accepted Meadowcraft. “You or anyone else have a way around, I’d like to hear it.”

  “I’ll run it by technical.”

  “I already have,” reminded the man.

  Too much was going wrong: confusingly, frustratingly wrong! “I’ll talk around,” she said, aware of the hollow echo of empty words.

  It was only when she was setting the latest difficulty out to Osnan, for him to take up with any bureau division he thought might have a suggestion, that Pamela remembered his remark on the telephone in Albany.

  “What’s personal?” she asked.

  “How well do you know Bill? Socially, I mean?”

  “Hardly at all. We only met on this case. A dinner, a few drinks is all.” The man wouldn’t have understood the nursing overnight.

  Osnan hesitated. “Would you say he had a drinking problem?”

  “No,” Pamela said at once. “Why?”

  “A few rumors going around since the technical guys got back.”

  “Who?” she demanded.

  “Rumors don’t have names attached.”

  “Being given as the cause for lifting the surveillance?”

  “Inevitably.”

  “Find the source. This isn’t the time for a story like that.”

  “That’s why I told you. And why I thought you ought to know.”

  There wasn’t any relaxation in Moscow. Cowley convened a conference of those he was le
aving behind with Danilov present, making it clear the Russian unofficially shared control with Martlew and should know everything that went on, but there was the impression of slowing down. The round-the-clock watch was maintained on the Oldsmobile’s garage, but Baratov didn’t take his sister out again. There was no advance warning from the Manhattan listeners of telephone contact between Brooklyn’s Bay View Avenue and the restaurant on Moscow’s Pereulok Vorotnikovskij. The Warsaw agent in charge called several times, apologizing on each occasion for not being able to locate any Polish freighter shipments to America. They hadn’t located the name Yevgenni Mechislavovich Leanov on the passenger list of any Aeroflight or America-bound airline, but it was possible for people to travel on tickets in a name different from that on their passports. Georgi Chelyag’s concern at the president being associated with the ordnance loss revived when Danilov told him of Cowley’s return to America. Danilov exacerbated it by suggesting the American was going back for an inquiry into the disappearance, which didn’t actually amount to a lie.

  Danilov even found time to go to Larissa’s grave in the Novodevichy Cemetery and was shocked by its neglect. The few flowers that hadn’t been stolen for other graves were atrophied, the vase on its side. They were dead leaves everywhere, and the headstone was covered in birds’ shit from a now-abandoned nest in the overhanging tree. It took him a long time to clean everything up and arrange the fresh flowers he’d brought. Afterwards he went to the other side of the cemetery, where Olga was buried. The headstone and surroundings were scrubbed clean; there wasn’t any leaf or tree debris, and the flowers were fresh. Igor, he guessed. One of the photographs he’d given the man had been mounted in a mourning frame and fixed to the base of the headstone. Danilov was surprised how attractive-beautiful-his wife looked. On each of the concluding evenings Danilov and Cowley drank, Cowley increasingly too much.

  Until the very last night, that was. Things had, in fact, started to happen much earlier in the day. Danilov had only been in his office for an hour when the call came from Chelyag, asking if he had an available television. When Danilov told the chief of staff that he had, Chelyag said, “Watch the parliamentary coverage. I’ll see you at three.”