Williams really was a spook of sorts, a young man on his first field assignment outside his own country. It was typically a safe, comfortable job, in a major city of an allied country, and he did work a few agents, all of them diplomats working at the United Nations. From them, he sought and sometimes got low-level diplomatic intelligence, which was forwarded to Whitehall to be examined and considered by equally low-level bureaucrats in the Foreign Office.
This smelly passport was unusual. Though his job was supposed to handle things like this, in fact he most often arranged substitute passports for people who’d somehow lost them in New York, which was not exactly a rare occurrence, though invariably an embarrassing one for the people who needed the replacements. The procedure was for Williams to fax the identification number on the document to London to identify the owner properly, and then call him or her at home, hoping to get a family member or employee who would know where the passport holder might be.
But in this case, Williams got a telephone call from Whitehall barely thirty minutes after sending the information.
“Peter?”
“Yes, Burt?”
“This passport, Joseph Serov- rather strange thing just happened.”
“What’s that?”
“The address we have for the chap is a mortuary, and the telephone number is to the same place. They’ve never heard of Joseph Serov, alive or dead.”
“Oh? A false passport?” Williams lifted it from his desk blotter. If it were a fake, it was a damned good one. So was something interesting happening for a change?
“No, the computer has the passport number and name in it, but this Serov chap doesn’t live where he claims to live. I think it’s a matter of false papers. The records show that he is a naturalized subject. Want us to run that down, as well?”
Williams wondered about that. He’d seen false papers before, and been trained on how to obtain them for himself at the SIS training academy. Well, why not? Maybe he’d uncover a spy or something. “Yes, Burt, could you do that for me?”
“Call you tomorrow,” the Foreign Office official promised. For his part, Peter Williams lit up his computer and sent an email to London, just one more routine day for a young and very junior intelligence officer on his first posting abroad. New York was much like London, expensive, impersonal, and full of culture, but sadly lacking in the good manners of his hometown.
Serov, he thought, a Russian name, but you could find them everywhere. Quite a few in London. Even more in New York City, where so many of the cabdrivers were right off the boat or plane from Mother Russia and knew neither the English language nor where to find the landmarks of New York. Lost British passport, Russian name.
Three thousand four hundred miles away, the name “Serov” had been input onto the SIS computer system. The name had already been run for possible hits and nothing of value had been found, but the executive program had many names and phrases, and it scanned for all of them. The name “Serov” was enough-it had also been entered spelled as Seroff and Serof – and when the e-mail from New York arrived, the computer seized upon and directed the message to a desk officer. Knowing that Iosef was the Russian version of Joseph, and since the passport description gave an age in the proper range, he flagged the message and forwarded it to the computer terminal of the person who had originated the enquiry on one Serov, Iosef Andreyevich.
In due course, that message appeared as e-mail on the desktop computer of Bill Tawney. Bloody useful things, computers, Tawney thought, as he printed up the message. New York. That was interesting. He called the number of the Consulate and got Peter Williams.
“This passport from the Serov chap, anything else you can tell me?” he asked, after establishing his credentials.
“Well, yes, there are two credit cards that were inside it, a MasterCard and a Visa, both platinum.” Which, he didn’t have to add, meant that they had relatively large credit limits.
“Very well. I want you to send me the photo and the credit card numbers over secure lines immediately.” Tawney gave him the correct numbers to call.
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that at once,” Williams replied earnestly, wondering what this was all about. And who the devil was William Tawney? Whoever it was, he was working late, since England was five hours ahead of New York, and Peter Williams was already wondering what he’d have for dinner.
“John?”
“Yeah, Bill?” Clark replied tiredly, looking up from his desk and wondering if he’d get to see his grandson that day.
“Our friend Serov has turned up,” the SIS man said next. That got a reaction. Clark’s eyes narrowed at once.
“Oh? Where?”
“New York. A British passport was found in a dustbin pit La Guardia Airport, along with two credit cards. Well,” he amended his report, “the passport and credit cards were in the name of one Joseph A. Serov.”
“Run the cards to see if-”
“I called the legal attaché in your embassy in London to have the accounts run, yes. Should have some information within the hour. Could be a break for us, John,” Tawney added, with a hopeful voice.
“Who’s handling it in the U.S.?”
“Gus Werner, assistant director, Terrorism Division. Ever met him?”
Clark shook his head. “No, but I know the name.”
“I know Gus. Good chap.”
The FBI has cordial relationships with all manner of businesses. Visa and MasterCard were no exceptions. An FBI agent called the headquarters of both companies from his desk in the Hoover Building, and gave the card numbers to the chiefs of security of both companies. Both were former FBI agents themselves-the FBI sends many retired agents off to such positions, which creates a large and diverse old-boy network-and both of them queried their computers and came up with account information, including name, address, credit history, and most important of all, recent charges. The British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare leaped off the screen-actually the faxed page-at the agent’s desk in Washington.
“Yeah?” Gus Werner said, when the young agent came into his office.
“He caught a flight from London to Chicago late yesterday, and then a flight from Chicago to New York, about the last one, got a back-room ticket on standby. Must have dumped the ID right after he got in. Here.” The agent handed over the charge records and the flight information. Werner scanned the pages.
“No shit,” the former chief of the Hostage Rescue Team observed quietly. “This looks like a hit, Johnny.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the young agent, fresh in from the Oklahoma City field division. “But it leaves one thing out-how he got to Europe this time. Everything else is documented, and there’s a flight from Dublin to London, but nothing from here to Ireland,” Special Agent James Washington told his boss.
“Maybe he’s got American Express. Call and find out,” Werner ordered the junior man.
“Will do,” Washington promised.
“Who do I call on this?” Werner asked.
“Right here, sir.” Washington pointed to the number on the covering sheet.
“Oh, good, I’ve met him. Thanks, Jimmy.” Werner lifted his phone and dialed the international number. “Mr. Tawney, please,” he told the operator. “It’s Gus Werner calling from FBI Headquarters in Washington.”
“Hello, Gus. That was very fast of you,” Tawney said, half in his overcoat and hoping to get home.
“The wonders of the computer age, Bill. I have a possible hit on this Serov guy. He flew from Heathrow to Chicago yesterday. The flight was about three hours after the fracas you had at Hereford. I have a rental car, a hotel hill, and a flight from Chicago to New York City after he got here.”
“Address?”
“We’re not that lucky. Post office box in lower Manhattan,” the Assistant Director told his counterpart. “Bill, how hot is this?”
“Gus, it’s bloody hot. Sean Grady gave us the name, and one of the other prisoners confirmed it. This Serov chap delivered a large sum of money and ten pounds of cocaine shortly before the attack. We’re working with the Swiss to track the money right now. And now it appears that this chap is based in America. Very interesting.”
“No shit. We’re going to have to track this mutt down if we can,” Werner thought aloud. There was ample jurisdiction for the investigation he was about to open. American laws on terrorism reached across the world and had draconian penalties attached to them. And so did drug laws.
“You’ll try?” Tawney asked.
“You bet your ass on that one, Bill,” Werner replied positively. “I’m starting the case file myself. The hunt is on for Mr. Serov.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Gus.”
Werner consulted his computer for a codeword. This case would be important and classified, and the codeword on the file would read . . . no, not that one. He told the machine to pick another. Yes. PREFECT, a word he remembered from his Jesuit high school in St. Louis.