“Will do” Agent Sills said.
Yuri Deryugin and Mikhail Lakomsky lay on the floor of the dark woods a few meters down from where the blue pickup truck was parked. They were dressed in black night fighter coveralls, their faces blackened. Each of them was armed with an AK74 assault rifle equipped with infrared spotting scope. In addition they each carried a suppressed .22 caliber automatic pistol, a razorsharp stiletto, and a wire garrote capable, in the right hands, of completely severing a man’s head from his body. They were both experts, KGB Department Viktor graduates, whom Baranov had handpicked for advancement. For the past hour since penetrating the property’s outer spotting the three FBI agents, one by the pickup truck, one just within the woods down from the clearing, and the other on the east side of the house. They assumed there would be at least one other agent within the house, in addition to the man who’d just shown up. They had been close enough to overhear most of the conversation between Sills and Trotter, so they knew that they would have to get in and out soon, before the reinforcements arrived. Deryugin motioned for Lakomsky to hold up. The other man nodded and took aim on Agent Sills’s back with his rifle. It was very quiet. Even so, Lakomsky could hear absolutely no noise as Deryugin crept forward toward where Agent Sills was backing the pickup truck into place. Sills got out of the truck. He was dressed in a blue windbreaker and dark blue baseball cap. He carried an M16 rifle, which he slung, barrel down, over his shoulder as he stepped off the road, and hid himself behind the hole of a larger tree, barely one meter from where Deryugin lay perfectly still. Slowly, the Russian rose up from the darkness behind Sills. He held the garrote loosely in his two hands, and as he took a single step forward he raised it up over his head. Sills never really knew what happened. One instant he was standing behind the tree looking toward the driveway, and in the next something incredibly sharp was around his neck, and his world began immediately to grow gray and soft.
“We think there may be some trouble coming our way” Trotter told Lorraine Abbott. They sat in the pleasantly furnished living room across from each other. Agent Bert Langerford had stepped out into the stairwell to let them talk. “Is it the Russians” she asked. She hadn’t gotten much rest in the past few days, and it was beginning to show in her eyes, which were red and puffy. “We think so” Trotter said. “I’m not going to lie to you. But I think you will be safe here for the moment.
In the morning we’ll be moving you to another place” She was watching him, her nostrils flared. “You think there may be some trouble.
You think they may be Russians. You think I’ll be safe here for the moment. What, Mr. Trotter, do you know”
“That you are a very important woman, Dr. Abbott” Trotter said tiredly.
“And that the Russians want you dead “Why, in God’s name? What have I done to them”
“You got in their way”
“How”
“By helping Kirk McGarvey”
“Damn” Lorraine said in frustration. She jumped up and went across to the heavily draped window, hugging herself as if she were cold. “Please don’t open the curtains” Trotter said. She spun on him. “Are they here now”
“It’s possible”
“Then what” she demanded. Trotter didn’t understand the question.
“Doctor”
“If they come here tonight and try … and fail. Then what happens to me”
“As I said, we’ll be moving you to a new safehouse. “I mean afterward.
How long is this going to keep up”
“I don’t know” Trotter admitted. “But not very long”
“It’s already been too long” Lorraine snapped. “Far too long.
“It was Kurshin on the telephone” Potok said.
HE and McGarvey stood back as the FBI’s forensics crew worked with two computer experts from the CIA’s Technical Services Division, going over Rand’s van. There were police and military security people everywhere, and more were coming. They could hear sirens in the distance. “Yeah”
McGarvey said. “And now the sonofabitch is gone” It rankled, and it was all he could do to hold his anger in check. The man was good. Almost too good, as if he had gotten information from another source. “If I had stayed “
McGarvey shook his head. “He would have found another way in, or he would have killed you” An APB had been put out, and police in a twenty-five seen him leave the hospital or seen what kind of a car he was driving. The Soviet Embassy was being watched, but it wasn’t likely he would go back there. He’d had this all worked out in the beginning.
Rand’s meeting him here like this was nothing more than a convenience for him. All of his ducks had been lined up in a neat little row. “What I can’t figure out is what happened here. The shots you heard were fired from Rand’s pistol”
“He was on Trotter’s short list, and he was smart enough to figure that we were on to him. He probably came here demanding that Kurshin get him out of Washington. When Kurshin refused he pulled out a gun”
“The poor bastard never had a chance” Potok said. McGarvey looked at him. He was starting to come down, and a deep tiredness seemed to be closing in. But there was something else. He was missing something.
Kurshin had known what the setup was on the fourth floor. How? Who knew besides Trotter? Don Lillianthal, one of the CIA technicians, broke away from the others searching Rand’s van and came over to where McGarvey and Potok were standing. He was young, in his early twenties. “It’s all there” he said. “Hell of a setup. State of the art. The man definitely knew his shit”
“What have you got for us” McGarvey asked. “It’s hard to say, Mr.
McGarvey. What he’s got in there is an IBM XT, but jazzed up with some of his own circuitry, and wired directly into a cellular telephone.
Which means he could tap into his own home system, which I’m sure is a doozy, and in turn tap into any computer network in the country … hell, probably the entire world”
” Any physical evidence that he turned something over to the Russians”
“Only in a negative sense, sir” Lillianthal said. “One of his disk drawers was empty”
“Which means”
He’d almost always be running one program or another. We found plenty of disks in the van”
“Anything classified”
“Almost certainly” Lillianthal said. “That’ll be up to the Pentagon to decide, they know their own shit better than I do.
But the point I’m trying to make, sir, is that it’s possible that whatever information he’d wanted to pass over to the Russians was contained on the disk he took out of the reader. He just bought the farm before he had a chance to reload”
“How much information is on one of those things” McGarvey asked. “A lot”
“Enough, let’s say, to reprogram an intercontinental ballistic missile”
Potok asked. Lilliandial grinned. “Hell, sir, there’s enough room on that type of disk to build an ICBM” Potok turned away, his jaw tight.
McGarvey knew what the man was thinking. June thirtieth was less than two weeks away, and almost certainly Kurshin had the data he needed for the second attack. But what data? Rand was an expert on virtually every weapons system within the US. and NATO arsenals. That was a lot of dangerous territory. “Thanks” McGarvey told the kid. “We’ll get out of your hair now”
“No sweat. We’ll have something put together for you first thing in the A.M. We’re heading over to his house now”
“That’s it for us now” Potok said when Lillianthal had gone. “Truly, I am sorry that this did not work out”
“It’s not over with yet” Potok shrugged. “It is for me. Now I must call my embassy, and in the morning I will return home. We have much work to do”