The pale blue eyes of Dimitri surveyed the carnage before him. In a soft, dispassionate voice, Dimitri said to the earthly remains of his former comrade, “Nikolayevich, you have betrayed us.”
He calmly placed the pistol in his trouser belt and walked quietly out to his Jeep, parked in front of Sorenson’s shop.
“Wow!” exclaimed Martha. “I’m flabbergasted.”
Adams had just finished explaining all the details of the CSAC assignment and how they suspected that there had to be some connection between the attacks on its agents and how CSAC functioned. Martha had been cleared for temporary duty with CSAC through the FBI director’s office and McHugh’s.
“What we need you to do, Martha, is use your best hacking skills to find if there is a connection and what it is. Be careful. These people have killed. They are professional killers.”
“I’ll get right on it,” she said, a big grin on her young face. “I have a theory that somehow the bad guys have gotten access to the communications network and are exploiting that for their purposes.”
Sitting down at her computer terminal, Martha was able to access the Department of Defense telecommunications network with relative ease. After experimenting with a few random access codes, Martha was able to gain access into the DODNet, an informational network of sensitive, but not classified, Department of Defense communications.
Puzzled by the relative ease with which she was able to access the Department of Defense telecommunications, Martha decided to determine how travel arrangements were either made, arranged, or documented. That had to be the key to the puzzle.
Martha decided to call George Smith, whom she understood from Adams to be the security officer for CSAC.
“Hello, Mr. Smith?” said Martha.
“Yes?”
“I’m Special Agent Martha Thomas with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Could I set up a meeting with you for this afternoon?”
“Herb has told me all about you. I’d be very pleased to see you. About 3 p.m. O.K.?”
“See you then.”
“That is really some security system,” Martha said, impressed.
She was sitting in Smith’s office. Also crammed into the small office were Mike, Adams, and Mildred.
“Well, it’s something you have to get used to,” said Smith.
“Tell me about how CSAC travel arrangements are made,” she said.
“Each center is responsible for making its own arrangements. The tickets are secured by the center without prior approval by Washington. Therefore, the agent is not subject to any scrutiny at a central point.”
“Then how do you know when the courier is supposed to arrive?”
“We’re notified by telephone as to their arrival and the itinerary is noted in our computers.”
“How secure are the computer programs?” said Martha.
“Very secure. No one outside of a control group at CSAC knows of the program’s existence.”
“How do you coordinate the travel?”
“Through scrambled telephonic transmissions. Shit, that’s got to be it,” he said suddenly. “Someone has tapped into our secured telephone system.”
“Wait a minute, George. That doesn’t account for the fact that the courier from Watch Station One arrived unscathed. There has to be another connection. Was the secured line used for his message?”
“Let’s plot this out,” said Smith as he went to the green chalkboard in his office. “First, Mildred took commercial scheduled service from Minneapolis to New York and from there to National. She was stalked at least from New York by Davenport, who lived in Des Moines.”
Smith drew a line and a box on the chalkboard. “Winslow flies scheduled airline service from Seattle to Minneapolis, disappears and turns up dead in a farmhouse fire in Mankato, Minnesota.”
“Excuse me,” said Mike. “The attacks on me didn’t coincide with any scheduled air service.”
“But both of your trips used CSAC personnel and equipment,” said Adams. “In addition, on the second trip you were coming from Newport News, Virginia, the logical point for encoding messages from Watch Station One.”
“That’s right,” said Smith. “The real courier was a seaman rotating off Watch Station One. He hitched a ride from Newport News on an Orion flying to Andrews Air Force Base. There, his wife picked him up and dropped him off at CSAC-Washington. Now the mystery is why our friends would think that you, Mike, were the courier, instead.”
“Because I flew down to Newport News with a lot of security and then turned right around and flew back with even more security,” remembered Mike aloud.
“Yes, that would have attracted a lot of attention,” said Martha.
“But Mike didn’t fly commercial, so how did the bad guys point him out?” said Smith.
“Where is the connection in all of this?” said an exasperated Mildred. “The only point I can see is that the bad guys knew who we were or suspected we were couriers.”
“Given the quickness with which the attacks occurred, this has to be an inside job,” said Mike.
“Want to hear some more?” said Adams. “Over this morning’s InfoNet and DODNet was a crazy report that a bicycle repair man turned himself in for the murder of Richard Winslow. Believing the man was hallucinating, the Minneapolis police turned him away.”
“Didn’t we squelch the InfoNet report on Winslow?” said Mike.
“That’s right,” said Adams. “We need to get to that officer as soon as possible. I can get there by this evening.”
“Has anyone got anything on Eastwood?” said Mike nonchalantly.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Liu,” said Martha. “Selby Eastwood was a true orphan. Seems his parents came to the United States from Canada. They were killed in an automobile crash when Eastwood was a child. They left a trust fund for Eastwood. It was that trust fund that financed his education through Choate, Harvard, and Yale.”
Mike winced ever so slightly. “My hunch is that he may be part of this network of people who seem to be after us. There is no way that anyone at Smedleys could have known I was at the Hyatt.”
“Just can’t admit to yourself that maybe you popped off a collateral, can you,” said Mildred, without looking up from her knitting, with a trace of a smile.
“Can you dig further, Martha?” said Mike ignoring the jibe.
“Yes, sir,” said Martha, jotting a reminder in her brown leather notepad.
“Pete, there’s an FBI agent out here to see you.”
“Send him right back,” said Wilkinson.
Adams walked back to the Detective Squad Room and let himself through the door.
“How can I help you?” said Wilkinson.
“I saw your report on InfoNet about that alleged Russian spy and wanted to follow up,” said Adams, showing his FBI identification and gold badge to Wilkinson.
“You mean that poor schmuck, Bill Sorenson?” said Wilkinson.
“Why do you say that?” said Adams.
“Sorenson was found shot to death in his bicycle repair shop Wednesday evening by two customers. It may have been a robbery attempt that went sour, we don’t know. Large caliber wounds, however. Whatever we could find was sent to forensics.”
“Do you believe his story?” said Adams, as he kept his emotions in close rein.
Wilkinson shrugged. “Just too screwy. When we couldn’t find any mention of a guy named Winslow losing it in Mankato — well, you know, you get them all the time, mostly when the moon is full.”