That had gone well, he thought, going through the mental checklist. He’d have to find out who’d trained the Swiss. He made a mental note to have one of his contacts chase that one down. If it were a private company, that was serious competition, though it was probably the Swiss army perhaps even a military formation disguised as policemen maybe with some technical assistance from the German GSG9. A couple of phone calls should run that one down.
Popov’s four-engine Airbus A-340 touched down on time at JFK International. You could always trust the Swiss to do everything on time. The police team had probably even had a schedule for the previous night’s activities, he thought whimsically. His first-class seat was close to the door, which allowed him to be the third passenger out, then off to claim his bags and go through the ordeal of U.S.Customs. America, he’d long since learned, was the most difficult country to enter as a foreigner-though with his minimal baggage and nothing-to-declare entry, the process was somewhat easier this time. The customs clerks were kind and waved him right through to the cabstand, where, for the usual exorbitant fee, he engaged a Pakistani driver to take him into town, making him wonder idly if the cabbies had a deal with the customs people. But he was on an expense account-meaning he had to get a receipt-and, besides, he had ensured that day that he could afford such things without one, hadn’t he? He smiled as he gazed at the passing urban sprawl. It got thicker and thicker on the way to Manhattan.
The cab dropped him off at his apartment house. The flat was paid for by his employer, which made it a tax-deductible business expense for them-Popov was learning about American tax law-and free for him. He spent a few minutes dumping his dirty laundry and hanging up his good clothes before heading downstairs and having the doorman flag a cab. From there it was another fifteen minutes to the office.
“So, how did it go?” the boss asked. There was an odd buzz in the office, designed to interfere with any listening devices that a corporate rival might place. Corporate espionage was a major factor in the life of this man’s company, and the defenses against it were at least as good as those the KGB had used. And Popov had once believed that governments had the best of everything. That was certainly not true in America.
“It went much as I expected. They were foolish-really rather amateurish, despite all the training we gave them back in the eighties. I told them to feel free to rob the bank as cover for the real mission-”
“Which was?”
“To be killed,” Dmitriy Arkadeyevich replied at once. “At least, that is what I understood your intentions to be, sir.” His words occasioned a smile of a sort Popov wasn’t used to. He made a note to check the stock value of the bank. Had the intention of this “mission” been to affect the standing of the bank? That didn’t seem very likely, but though he didn’t need to know why he was doing these things, his natural curiosity had been aroused. This man was treating him like a mercenary, and though Popov knew that was precisely what he’d become since leaving the service of his country, it was vaguely and distantly annoying to his sense of professionalism. “Will you require further such services?”
“What happened to the money?” the boss wanted to know.
A diffident reply: “I’m sure the Swiss will find a use for it.” Certainly his banker would. “Surely you did not expect me to recover it?”
A shake of the boss’s head. “No, not really, and it was a trivial sum anyway.”
Popov nodded his understanding. Trivial sum? No Soviet employed agent had ever gotten so much in a single payment-the KGB had always been niggardly in its payments to those whom it gave money, regardless of the importance of the information that had earned it – nor had the KGB ever been so casual in disposing of cash in any amount. Every single ruble had to be accounted for. else the bean counters at Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square would bring down the devil’s own wrath on the field officer who’d been so lax in his operations! The next thing he wondered about was how his employer had laundered the cash. In America if you deposited or withdrew so little His ten thousand dollars in cash, the bank was required to make a written record of it. It was supposedly an inconvenience for drug dealers, but they managed to work with it nevertheless. Did other countries have similar rule,,’.’ Popov didn’t know. Switzerland did not, he was sure, but that many banknotes didn’t just materialize in a bank’s vaults, did they? Somehow his boss had handled that, and done it well, Popov reminded himself. Perhaps Ernt Model had been an amateur, but this man was not. Something to keep in mind, the former spy told himself in large, red, mental letters.
There followed a few seconds of silence. Then: “Yes, I will require another operation.”
“What, exactly?” Popov asked, and got the answer immediately. “Ah.” A nod. He even used the correct word: operation. How very strange. Dmitriy wondered if he’d be well advised to check up on his employer, to find out more about him. After all, his own life was now in pawn to him-and the reverse was true as well, of course, but the other man’s life was not an immediate concern to Popov. How hard would it be? To one who owned a computer and a modem, it was no longer difficult at all . . . if one had ‘he time. For now, it was clear, he’d have but one night in his apartment before traveling overseas again. Well, it was an easy cure for jet lag.
They looked like robots, Chavez saw, peering around a computer generated corner. The hostages, too, but in this case the hostages were computer-generated children, all girls in red-and-white striped dresses or jumpers-Ding couldn’t decide which. It was clearly a psychological effect programmed into the system by whoever had set up the parameters for the program, called SWAT 6.3.2. Some California-based outfit had first produced this for Delta Force under a DOD contract overseen by RAND Corporation.
It was expensive to use, mainly because of the electronic suit he wore. It was the same weight as the usual black mission suit – lead sheets sewn into the fabric had seen to that – and everything down to the gloves was filled with copper wires and sensors that told the computer – an old Cray YMP – exactly what his body was doing, and in turn projected a computer-generated image into the goggles he wore. Dr. Bellow gave the commentary, playing the roles of bad-guy leader and good-guy advisor in this particular game. Ding turned his head and saw Eddie Price right behind him and Hank Patterson and Steve Lincoln across the way at the other simulated corner-robotic figures with numbers on them to let him know who was who.
Chavez pumped his right arm up and down three times, calling for flash-bangs, then peered around the corner one more time-
-at his chair, Clark saw the black line appear on the white corner, then hit the 7 key on his computer keyboard
-bad-guy #4 trained his weapon on the gaggle of schoolgirls
“Steve! Now!” Chavez ordered.
Lincoln pulled the pin on the flash-bang. It was essentially a grenade simulator, heavy in explosive charge to produce noise and magnesium powder for a blinding flash – simulated for the computer program – and designed to blind and disorient through the ear shattering blast, which was loud enough to upset the inner ear’s mechanism for balance. That sound, though not quite as bad, came through their earphones as well, along with the white-out of their VR goggles. It still made them jump.
The echo hadn’t even started to fade when Chavez dived into the room, weapon up and zeroing in on Terrorist #1, the supposed enemy leader. Here the computer system was faulty, Chavez thought. The European members of his team didn’t shoot the way the Americans did. They pushed their weapons forward against the double looped sling, actually extending their H&Ks before firing them. Chavez and the Americans tended to tuck them in close against the shoulder. Ding got his first burst off before his body hit the floor, but the computer system didn’t always score this as a hit which pissed Ding off greatly. He didn’t ever miss, as a guy named Guttenach had discovered on finding St. Peter in front of him without much in the way of warning. Hitting the floor, Chavez rolled, repeated the burst, and swung the MP-10 for another target. His earphones produced the too-loud report of the shots (the SWAT 6.3.2 program for some reason didn’t allow for suppressed weapons). To his right, Steve Lincoln and Hank Patterson were in the room and shooting at the six terrorists. Their short, controlled bursts rang in his ears, and in his VR goggles, heads exploded into red clouds quite satisfactorily