The former FBI agent laughed. “You got a drug that works on that?”
CHAPTER 18
LOOKS
Popov boarded the morning Concorde flight. He’d never flown the Concorde before, and found the interior of the aircraft cramped, though the legroom was all right. He settled into seat 4C. Meanwhile, at another terminal, 13 Henriksen was in a first-class seat in an American DC for his trip to Los Angeles.
William Henriksen, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov thought. Formerly of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Teams: and an expert on counter-terrorism, president of an international security-consulting company now headed oft Australia to seek a consulting contract for the next Olympics …. How did that factor into what Popov had been doing for John Brightling’s Horizon Corporation? What, exactly, was he doing-more properly, what idea was he serving? What task? He was certainly being paid top dollar-he hadn’t even raised the money issue over dinner, because he was sure he’d get whatever he asked for. He was thinking in terms of $250,000 for this job alone, even though it held few dangers, aside from driving an automobile in British traffic. $250,000? Maybe more, Popov told himself. After all, this mission seemed pretty important to them.
How did an expert on the mission side of terrorism and an expert on counterterrorism factor into the same plan? Why had they so rapidly seized on his discovery that there was a new international counterterror organization? It was important to them but why? What the hell were they up to? He shook his head. He was so smart, yet he didn’t have a clue. And he wanted to know, now more than ever.
Again, it was the not-knowing that worried him. Worried? Yes, he was worried now. The KGB had never encouraged curiosity, but even they knew that you had to tell intelligent people something and so with mission orders had usually come some kind of explanation – and at the least he’d always known that he was serving the interests of his country. Whatever information he’d gathered, whatever foreign national he’d recruited, it had all been aimed at making his nation more secure, more knowledgeable, more strong. That the entire effort had failed was not his fault. The KGB had never failed the State. It had been the State that had failed the KGB. He’d been part of the world’s finest intelligence service, and he remained proud of its abilities and his own.
But he didn’t know what he was doing now. He was supposed to gather information, and it was quite easy for him, but he still didn’t know why. The things he’d learned at dinner the night before had merely opened another door into another mystery. It seemed so like some Hollywood movie of conspiracy or some detective book whose ending he could not yet discern. He’d take the money and do the job, but for the first time he was uneasy, and the feeling was not a pleasant one, as the aircraft raced down the runway and took off into the rising sun for London Heathrow.
“Any progress, Bill?”
Tawney leaned back in his chair. “Not much. The Spanish have identified two of the terrorists as Basque separatists, and the French think they have a line on another of their citizens at the park, but that’s all. I suppose we could ask Carlos for some information, but it’s rather doubtful that he’d cooperate-and who’s to say that he even knew the buggers in the first place?”
“True.” Clark took a seat. “You know, Ding’s right – One of these incidents was probably to be expected, but three all in the brief time we’ve been here seems like a lot. Is it possible that somebody is setting them loose somehow, Bill?”
“I suppose it’s possible, but who would do it – and why would he do it?” Tawney asked.
“Back up. Stay with the ‘who’ part first. Who has the ability?”
“Someone who had access to them back in the seventies and eighties-that means someone well inside the movement or someone who controlled them, ‘influenced’ them, from the outside. That would mean a KGB type. Notionally this chap would be known to them, would have means to contact them, and thus the ability to activate them.”
“All three groups have been heavily ideological . . . .”
“That’s why the contact would have to be former-or maybe active?-KGB. He’d have to be someone they trust – more than that, a person with the kind of authority they would recognize and respect.” Tawney sipped at his tea. “That has to mean an intelligence officer, perhaps a fairly senior one with whom they’d worked back in the old days, someone who interfaced with them for their training and support in the old East Bloc.”
“German, Czech, Russian?”
“Russian,” Tawney said. “Remember that KGB let the other Bloc countries support them only under their close direction – the standoff nature of the arrangement was always paper-thin, John. It was meant more for their own comfort than for anyone else’s. `Progressive elements,’ and all that rubbish. They were usually trained outside of Moscow, and then quartered in safe houses in Eastern Europe, mainly East Germany. We got a good deal of material from the old East German Stasi when the DDR collapsed. I have some colleagues at Century House going back over the information right now. That will take time. It was, unfortunately, never computerized or even properly cross-referenced. Funding problems,” Tawney explained.
“Why not go straight to KGB? Hell, I’ve met Golovko.”
Tawney didn’t know that. “You’re kidding.”
“How do you think Ding and I got into Iran so quick with a Russian cover? You think CIA can pull off an operation that fast? I wish, Bill. No, Golovko set it up, and Ding and I were in his office before we flew down.”
“Well, then, if you can, why not give it a try?”
“I’d have to get authorization from Langley.”
“Will Sergey actually cooperate?”
“Not sure,” John admitted. “Even money at best. But before I do, such a thing, I’d need a good idea of exactly what I want. It can’t be a fishing expedition. It has to be well directed.”
“I can see what we might have on the name of an intelligence officer who worked with them …. Problem is, it won’t be a real name, will it?”
Clark nodded. “Probably not. You know, we have to try harder to get one of these people alive. Kinda hard to interrogate a corpse.”
“That opportunity hasn’t presented itself yet,” Tawney pointed out.
“Maybe,” Clark thought. And even if you got one alive, who was to say that he’d know what was needed? But you had to start somewhere.
“Bern was a bank robbery. Vienna was an attempted kidnapping, and from what Herr Ostermann said, the subjects were after something that doesn’t exist-private, insider computer codes into the international trading system. The most recent incident was something right out of the seventies.”
“Okay, two out of three were about money,” Clark agreed. “But the terrorists in both those cases were supposed to be ideological, right?”
“Correct.”
“Why the interest in money? In the first one, okay, maybe it was a straight robbery. But the second one was more sophisticated well, both sophisticated and dumb, ‘cuz they were after something that doesn’t exist, but as ideological operators they would not have known that. Bill, somebody told them to go after it. They didn’t start that one by themselves, did they?”
“I agree, your supposition is likely,” the spook said. “Very likely, perhaps.”
“So, in that case we have two ideological operators, technically fairly competent, but going after something that doesn’t really exist. The combination of operational cleverness and objective stupidity just seems to cry out to us, doesn’t it?”
“But what of Worldpark?”
Clark shrugged. “Maybe Carlos knows something they need. Maybe he has a stash somewhere that they want, or information, or contact numbers, maybe even cash-there’s no telling, is there?”
“And I think it unlikely that he can be persuaded to cooperate with us.”
Clark grunted. “Damned skippy.”
“What I can do is talk with the chaps at `Five,’ too. Perhaps this Russian shadow fellow worked with the PIRA. Let me do some nosing around, John.” ,
“Okay, Bill, and I’ll talk things over with Langley.” Clark stood, wandered out of the room, and headed back to his own, still groping for the idea he needed before he could do something useful.
It didn’t start well, and Popov nearly laughed about it. On reaching his rental car he opened the left-side door instead of the right side. But he figured it out in as few seconds as it took him to load his luggage into the trunk – boot – and get in the driver’s side. From that point he opened the map book he’d purchased in the terminal and made his way away from Heathrow’s Terminal Four onto the motorway that would lead him to Hereford.
“So, how does this thing work, Tim?” Noonan moved his hand away, but the pointer stayed right on Chavez. “Damn, this is slick. It’s supposed to track the electromagnetic field generated by the human heart. It’s a unique low-frequency signal . . . doesn’t even get confused by gorillas and animals . . . .”