The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “I can’t do that, Stosh.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “He may be one of them.”

  It was midnight Washington time, and Wesley Sorenson studied the materials sent over by Knox Talbot from the CIA files. He had been studying them for hours, all fifty-one dossiers, looking for that relevant piece of information that would separate one suspect from the others. His concentration had been interrupted by Claude Moreau’s frantic phone call from Paris, describing Latham’s outrageous behavior.

  “He may be on to something, Claude,” Wesley said soothingly.

  “If he was, he should have told us, not acted alone. I will not tolerate this!”

  “Give him time—”

  “Absolutely no. He’s out of Paris, out of France!”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “He’s already done it, mon ami.”

  Later, after an awkward conversation with an equally furious Witkowski, Moreau had called back at five o’clock in the morning Paris time. The storm-tossed horizon began to brighten. Drew had delivered a bona fide neo in the guise of a Protestant minister.

  “I must admit, he’s somewhat validating his existence,” the Frenchman had said.

  “Then you’ll let him stay in Paris?”

  “On a very tight leash, Wesley.”

  Returning to the selected possibles among the material sent over by the CIA, the Cons-Op chief proceeded to weed out the obvious negatives much as Knox had done. From the remaining twenty-four, he pared further based on the time-honored principles of motive and opportunity, plus an element Sorenson called “why cubed,” or why to the third power; beyond the first and second motives, another was invariably hidden. Finally, as a result of an adult lifetime of searching for the elusive, there were three probables, to be expanded if none proved accurate. Each suspect had what he termed a “neutral” face, physiognomies that lacked the definition of sharp features, the sort political cartoonists emphasize. Second, none held a position of influence or high profile, either of which would disqualify the risk-taking. However, each was part of, or had access to, teams of examiners, either as couriers or researchers. Third, each lived beyond his apparent means.

  Peter Mason Payne. Recruitment development as per division’s requirements. Married with two children; residence a $400,000 house in Vienna, Virginia, complete with a recently added pool, estimated cost, $60,000. Automobiles: Cadillac Brougham and a Range Rover.

  Bruce N.M.I. Withers. Office procurement validation, one of many. Divorced, one daughter, limited visiting rights. Former wife living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, $600,000 house reportedly purchased by her parents. Subject’s residence, condominium in Fairfax’s high-rent district. Automobile: Jaguar SJ6.

  Roland Vasquez-Ramirez. Third-level researcher and coordinator, of which there were four, with the upper two levels. Married, no children. Residence, upscale garden apartment complex in Arlington. Wife, a bottom-rung attorney at the Justice Department. Known frequenters of expensive restaurants, clothes custom-made. Automobiles: Porsche and Lexus.

  Those were the essential facts, none provably relevant until one studied the inter-Agency relationships. Peter Mason Payne sought recruits as specific abilities were required. Perforce, he had to question the various divisions and legitimately ask for examples of subject matter to gain a clearer picture. Bruce Withers’s job was to justify the enormous expenditures for office equipment, including complex electronics. Quite correctly, he had to observe, even operate, certain machines himself, in order to ask a superior to sign off on huge purchase orders. Roland Vasquez-Ramirez coordinated the flow of information among three levels of researchers. Granted, there were extraordinary restrictions, sealed envelopes, et al, and a man violating them would not only lose his job but conceivably be prosecuted. Nevertheless, those restrictions, often innocently violated in the interest of expedience, would not stop an enemy of the state who did so with an absence of innocence.

  All three men fit the composite of the neo mole. They had the motives to maintain their lifestyles, opportunities due to the access their positions permitted … what was lacking was the abstract “why cubed.” What drove any of them to go beyond all that and become a traitor? A Nazi who had killed two captured Nazis. And then he thought he might have found it, but only might have. Each candidate was essentially a messenger, a liaison between superiors; none had real authority himself. Payne studied résumés of applicants, and those he advanced soon made far more money than he did. Withers could only recommend extraordinary purchases, purchases that made those demanding them even more efficient—and how many were on the receiving end of kickbacks while he got nothing? S.O.P. And Vasquez-Ramirez was really a messenger, collating sealed envelopes A, B, and C, secrets for others to evaluate, while he stayed out of the loop. And each had been at his innocuous job, his decisions easily overruled, for a number of years with little chance of advancement. Such men were hotbeds of resentment.

  There wasn’t time to intellectualize any longer, to analyze further. Either he was right, considered Sorenson, or he was wrong, which meant going back to the drawing board. As he had taught Drew Latham in the early stages of his training, sometimes a frontal assault was best, especially if it was totally unexpected. He wondered if Drew had used the strategy in trapping the neo minister. If not specifically, concluded Wesley, certainly a variation. With the constraints of time, there wasn’t much alternative. He reached for the telephone.

  “Peter Mason Payne, if you please?”

  “This is Pete Payne, who’s this?”

  “Kearns at the Agency,” answered Sorenson, using the name of a relatively well-known deputy director. “We’ve never met, Pete, and I’m sorry to bother you at this hour—”

  “No trouble, Mr. Kearns, I’m watching television in my den. My wife went to bed; she said it was rotten and she was right.”

  “Then you don’t mind breaking away for a few minutes?”

  “Not at all. What can I do for you, sir?”

  “It’s a little touchy, Pete, but the reason I’m calling you now is that you may be asked upstairs in the morning, and it’s possible you might want to consider your answers.”

  “What answers? What questions?” Peter Mason Payne might not be the killer mole, thought Wesley, but he was taking something from somebody. It was in the gasp that had preceded his words.

  “We’ve had severe problems in recruitment, so we’re holding evaluation meetings, have been holding them damn near around the clock. Several of your recommendations have been sorely underqualified, costing the Company a lot of wasted man-hours.”

  “Then it was the résumés, or the applicants were rehearsed for interviews, Mr. Kearns. I never advanced anyone I didn’t believe could do the job, and I never took money under the table for a recommendation!”

  “I see.” So that was it, mused Sorenson. The denial was too quick, the inference had not even been made. “But I didn’t suggest that, did I, Peter?”

  “No, but I’ve heard the rumors—wealthy families wanting their kids in the Agency for a couple of years because it looks good when they go after other jobs.… I’m not saying it’s not possible a few slipped through, due, as I say, to false information and rehearsed interview responses, but you’d have to look to other recruiters for those things. They could supply that information, I never did!”

  Thank God you’ve been kept out of the field, Mr. Payne, thought the Cons-Op director, you’d last eleven seconds. However, Peter Payne had just led him to the conclusive question. “Then maybe one of the others is trying to lay something on you. You see, the parents of one of our underqualified say they met with a recruiter in the early morning hours the night before last to make their final payment.”

  “For Christ’s sake, not me!”

  “Where were you, Pete?”

  “Hell, that’s easy.” The relief in Payne’s voice was, well, painful. “My wife and I were up the street at Congressman Erlich’s home for a late-night
neighborhood barbecue—late because the House stayed in session. We were there until around two-thirty in the morning, and frankly, Mr. Kearns, none of us cared to get into a car and drive anywhere.”

  Candidate Rejected

  “Mr. Bruce Withers, please?”

  “No one else lives here, pal. Who are you?”

  Sorenson repeated the Deputy Director Kearns introduction, now zeroing in on the constant and considerable overruns on office procurements.

  “High technology’s expensive, Mr. Director. There’s nothing I can do about that, and, frankly, it’s not in my province to make those decisions.”

  “But it is in your province to make recommendations, isn’t it?”

  “Somebody has to do the initial spec work, and that’s what I do.”

  “Say there’s a competitive bid for a more powerful computer in the range of a hundred thousand dollars. Your word means a great deal, doesn’t it?”

  “Not if my bosses know a megabyte from their elbows.”

  “But most of them don’t, do they?”

  “Some do, some don’t.”

  “So with those who don’t, your recommendation is probably accepted, wouldn’t you say that?”

  “Probably. I do my homework.”

  “And there could be instances when the selection of a certain company could benefit you, couldn’t it?”

  “Stop with those kind of questions’. What are you trying to pin on me?”

  “A payoff was made the other night, early morning to be precise, by a Seattle firm with lobbyists here in Washington. We’d like to know if it was you.”

  “This is bullshit,” cried Withers, almost breathless. “Excuse me, Mr. Director, but I’m deeply offended. I’ve been at this lousy job for seven years now because I know high tech better than anyone else, and it’s nowheresville! I can’t be replaced, so I don’t go up, or even down, which has to tell you something.”

  “I don’t mean to offend you, Bruce, I just want to know where you were at three o’clock in the morning the night before last.”

  “You don’t have any right to ask that.”

  “I think I do. That’s when the payoff was made.”

  “Listen, Mr. Kearns, I’m a divorced man and I have to find my pleasures where I can, if you understand me.”

  “I believe I do. Where were you?”

  “With a married woman whose husband is out of the country. Her husband’s a general.”

  “Will she back you up?”

  “I can’t give you her name.”

  “We’ll find out, you know that.”

  “Yeah, I guess you will.… All right, we spent this evening here, and she just left. The general’s on an inspection tour in the Far East and calls her around one o’clock—God forbid he should upset a military schedule for a lonely wife. It’s the story of her marriage.”

  “Very touching, Bruce. What’s her name?”

  “It takes her twenty, twenty-five minutes to get home.”

  “Her name, please?”

  “Anita Griswald, General Andrew Griswald’s wife.”

  “ ‘Mad Andy’ Griswald? The scourge of Vietnam’s Songchow? He’s pretty old, isn’t he?”

  “For the army, definitely. Anita’s his fourth wife. She’s much younger, and the Pentagon’s keeping him on loose duty until they can get rid of him next year, which, I gather, they’d like to do as soon as possible.”

  “Why did she ever marry him?”

  “She was broke and had three kids. Enough questions, Mr. Director.”

  Candidate Still Open

  “Mr. Vasquez-Ramirez, if you please?”

  “Just a moment,” said a female voice, slightly accented with Hispanic inflections. “My husband is on the other telephone, but he will be finished quickly. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Deputy Director Kearns, Central Intelligence Agency, Counselor.”

  “You know I am a lawyer?… Oh, but of course you do.”

  “I apologize for calling so late, but it’s urgent.”

  “It would have to be, señor. My husband works long hours for you, sometimes until late in the evenings. I wish you paid him accordingly, if I may be so bold to suggest. Please hold.”

  Silence. There were no records of Vasquez-Ramirez working late hours. Forty-five seconds later, “Rollie” Ramirez came on the line. “Mr. Kearns, what’s so urgent?”

  “Leaks in your department, Mr. Vasquez-Ramirez.”

  “Please, we’ve met, sir. Rollie or Ramirez is sufficient.”

  “It saves time, I’ll say that.”

  “Do you have a cold, Mr. Kearns? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “It’s the flu, Ramirez. I can hardly breathe.”

  “Rum, hot tea, and lemon will relieve you.… Now, what are these leaks and how can I assist you?”

  “They’ve been traced to your section.”

  “In which there are four of us,” broke in the Hispanic. “Why call me?”

  “I’ll call the others; you’re first on the list.”

  “Because my skin is not as pale as the others?”

  “Oh, cut that out!”

  “No, I don’t ‘cut it out,’ for it’s the truth. The spic is the first you go after.”

  “Now you’re insulting both me and you. Money was made by revealing maximum-classified information from your section two nights ago, a great deal of money, and we’ve got the people who paid it. At this moment it’s merely a question of who got paid! So don’t give me any crap about racism. I’m looking for a leak, not a spic!”

  “Let me tell you this, Americano. My people do not pay for information, it is freely delivered. Yes, there have been times when I’ve steamed open the sealed envelopes, but only when they’ve been marked ‘Caribbean Basin.’ Why have I done this? Let me explain. I was a sixteen-year-old soldier at the Bay of Pigs and spent five years in Castro’s filthy prisons until I was exchanged for medicine. This great Estados Unidos talks and talks but does nothing to liberate my Cuba!”

  “How did you get into the Agency?”

  “The easiest way possible, amigo. It took six years, but I became a scholar, with three degrees, way overqualified for what you offered me, but I accepted what you offered me, truly believing you would see my qualifications and put me into a position where I could make a difference. You never did, for I was the spic and you gravitated to the white boys and the blacks—oh, were unqualified blacks chosen over me! You had to clean your racist slate, and they were the answer.”

  “I think you’re being unfair.”

  “Think what you like. I’ll be out of this house in twenty seconds and you’ll never find me!”

  “Please, don’t do that! You’re not what or whom I’m after. I’m after Nazis, not you!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s too complicated,” said Sorenson calmly. “Stay on your job and do what you’re doing. You’ll get no grief from me, and I’ll make sure your superior qualifications are brought to the attention of those who should know about them.”

  “How can I count on that?”

  “Because I’m a fake, I’m not with the Company. I’m the director of an outside agency that frequently coordinates with the CIA at the highest levels.”

  “Circles within circles,” said Vasquez-Ramirez. “Where will it ever end?”

  “Probably never,” replied Sorenson. “Certainly not until people trust one another—which will be never.”

  Candidate Possible

  33

  Suddenly it occurred to the director of Consular Operations that he should follow his immediate instincts. Peter Mason Payne was out, Roland Vasquez-Ramirez barely a possible, but the craw in his throat was Bruce Withers, the man with a quick tongue and an all-too-believable saga of a destitute widow or divorcée with three children who had latched on to an overage general of the army, with all the retirement benefits that implied. It would be easy for Withers to reach the general’s wife by car tel
ephone, if she really had spent the evening with him, or at her home.… It’ll take her twenty—twenty-five minutes. More than enough time for the lonely general’s wife to be given instructions. The answer might be found somewhere else. On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, perhaps, with the former wife of Bruce N.M.I. Withers.

  Again Sorenson picked up his phone, hoping that Withers’s name would be listed because of his teenage daughter. It was, with an alternate name, McGraw. McGraw-Withers.

  “Yes … hello,” whispered the sleepy voice on the line.

  “Forgive me, Miss McGraw, for calling you at this hour, but there is an emergency.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Deputy Director Kearns of the Central Intelligence Agency. It concerns your former husband, Bruce Withers.”

  “Whom did he shaft now?” asked the barely awake ex-Mrs. Withers.

  “Perhaps the United States government, Miss McGraw.”

  “Thanks for the Miss—I earned it. Of course, he shafted the government, why should it be any different? He’d flash his CIA badge around, not saying much, but implying he was Mr. Super Spook himself, all the while fleecing somebody.”

  “He used the Agency to gain favors?”

  “Please, Mr. Whoever-you-are, my family has connections all over Washington. When we found out he was sleeping with every secretary and bimbo tramp who worked for a defense contractor, my father said we should get rid of him, and we did.”

  “He still has visitation rights to your child.”

  “Under the closest supervision, I can assure you.”

  “Because you fear violation?”

  “Good God, no. Kimberly is probably the only person in this world that bastard can relate to.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because children don’t threaten him. Her hugs erase the terrible thing inside of him.”