Kurcek said. “You have saved my life here.”
The next morning, back in East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie, Yemm was arrested by the Stasi and held for ten days. Nothing was asked about his trip to Poland; evidently the Stasi knew nothing about it. They were only interested in his activities in East Berlin over the past year and a half.
Eventually he was released, not too much the worse for wear, except that some of the interrogation methods they’d used on him at the Horst Wessel Center left his head a little fuzzy. He never had all the dates and times straight in his head afterward except that he’d been released on a prisoner exchange. He’d evidently been grabbed solely for that reason.
He was immediately flown to the air force hospital at Ramstein for a checkup, and from there back to Langley, where his debriefing lasted the better part of two weeks.
After that he was given a thirty-day leave, and then reported back to duty, this time in Madrid.
The CIA never asked him about his trip to Poland. They, too, were evidently unaware of his extracurricular activities, and he never volunteered the information. By then he had been in the business long enough to understand that oftentimes the best and most useful alliances were the ones kept closest to the vest. Living the lie for just one day meant that he could never go back, but neither could Janos, who within the year was in Washington, where he’d created a highly successful Beltway computer company.
Otto was out of the CIA again. But true to his word, he and Janos did lend Yemm a helping hand from time to time, mostly in the form of information.
“Right now?” Janos asked. “Right this minute, Richard?”
“At the fallback,” Yemm said. “It has to do with Otto.”
Kurcek arrived ten minutes later, as flashy as usual, driving his bright red Mercedes E430. He was dressed in an Armani suit and hand-sewn Brazilian loafers. His shoes got soaked in the slush when he left his car and came over to Yemm’s. He’d brought a laptop computer that looked like a musical instrument in his long, delicate, well-manicured hands. He had the appearance of a magazine fashion model; whip-thin, stylish blond hair combed straight back and brilliant blue eyes.
“How is our friend?” Kurcek asked. “He must be staying out of trouble now that Kirk is becoming director.” “He’s working on something that has us scratching our heads,” Yemm said. “Frankly, we don’t know what to make of it.” Kurcek laughed. His voice was baritone, like an opera singer’s. “Since I’ve known Otto he’s been working on things to make heads spin. But I’ll advise you now. Ask him about it. He trusts you.” “He went to France yesterday, but no one knows for sure why, or even when he’ll be back,” Yemm continued. “But we think that his trip has something to do with an old Department Viktor psychologist. Anatoli Nikolayev. He disappeared from Moscow, and the Russians asked Interpol and the French police to help find him.” “How long ago?” “August.”
“Otto has gone after him, you think?” “It’s possible.” Yemm hesitated. “There are some other things going on here, Janos, that make it important that we find out what Otto’s up to.” Kurcek held up a bony hand. He wore a two-carat diamond ring in a platinum setting on his pinky finger. “I don’t want to hear about it.” Yemm took a floppy disk out of his jacket pocket. “I need your help.” Kurcek refused to take the disk or even look at it. “This is getting into an area that we must not go.” “Come on, Janos,” Yemm said. “I’m asking you as a friend.” Kurcek’s shoulders sagged. He opened his laptop and booted it up. He took the disk. “What’s on this?” “It’s today’s access codes to the CIA’s mainframe, and a half-dozen of Otto’s most recent encryption busters.” Kurcek studied Yemm’s face. “You want that I should go naked into the lion’s den? He’s set booby traps, fail-safes, probably viruses.” “That’s why I asked you to bring a laptop. If you’re compromised, you’ll burn one hard disk, nothing more.” “If he suspects it was me, do you know the kind of trouble he could make?”
Kurcek practically shouted. “Goddammit, this is important. Lives are at stake.” “Yeah, mine.” Kurcek said. He inserted the floppy disk, brought up the screen, then linked with Yemm’s encrypted cell phone.
As soon as the call went through, the CIA’s logo came up. Using prompts provided by the data on the floppy disk, Kurcek got into the Agency’s main frame, and then into the Special Operations territory that Rencke had staked out as his own. Zimmerman had prepared the disk for Yemm, and when he’d handed it over, he shook his head. “I don’t even want to know why you want this,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ll deny having anything to do with it.” “Fair enough,” Yemm said. A skull and crossbones appeared on the screen against a lavender backdrop. The skull grinned and began to laugh. “You have ten seconds to get through the first barrier,” Yemm said, Kurcek brought up the first series of encryption busters, his fingers flying over the keys as he tried one after the other. Lines of data flashed across the screen.
The skull’s grin broadened, but suddenly fragmented and flew off the edges of the screen. As the Directorate of Operations, Special Operations, screen came up, a faint voice in the background whispered: “Ah, shit.” “We’re in,” Yemm said. “Not for sure, Richard. This could be a trap. I know Otto.” “We’re looking for an operation called Spotlight.” Kurcek brought up a menu window, and under operations, entered: SPOTLIGHT. Nothing happened. Kurcek tried to back out of the window, but none of his keys worked. However, the cursor was still flashing after the last T in SPOTLIGHT. He backtracked, and the letters began to disappear one at a time. His keyboard hung up again at the letter I. Nothing he tried worked. He said something in Polish that Yemm didn’t understand, and reached to break the phone link to the computer. Otto Rencke’s image came up on the screen first. “Bad dog,”
he said, waving his finger. “Bad, bad dog.” He glanced at something off camera and smiled. “But I know who you ” The screen went blank, and Rencke’s voice cut off. Kurcek sat back. “Were you too late?”
Kurcek shook his head. “I won’t know until he gets back.” His eyes narrowed. “You better talk to him, Richard.” “I’ll do that,” Yemm said. He held out his hand for the floppy disk, which Kurcek retrieved from the computer. “You can throw it away,” he said. “I think that you will find it’s been completely erased.”
As Yemm pulled out of the parking lot he got an urgent call from his office. The Aurora was inbound to Andrews Air Force Base and would touch down within the half hour. It was unknown if Rencke was aboard, but it was the same plane he’d commandeered to take him to France. He had to fight traffic four blocks over to the 1-95 ramp, and then from there to the Beltway East, where he was able to make good time. Otto knew that someone would come snooping into in computer files, and he had been ready for it. Maybe McGarvey would finally see what a few people on the seventh floor most notably Dick Adkins and the deputy director of Intelligence Tommy Doyle had been trying to tell him all along. Otto was a wild card, impossible to control. With the simple flick of his fingers across his keyboard he could crash the CIA’s entire computer system. He had designed it that way. He had even bragged about it. But nobody took him seriously, or nobody cared, because the system worked. And, Otto was a personal friend of the boss’s. Now the situation was totally out of hand. Kurcek would be insulated because the call to the computer mainframe would be traced to Yemm’s cell phone. But what Otto was going to do when he found out that someone from inside the Company was messing with his computers was anyone’s guess. Which left the larger, more urgent problem that Yemm couldn’t get a handle on. It seemed as if there was something just at the back of his head that he should understand; some bit of information, a name or a place; something that would make the situation clear. Someone was trying to kill Kirk McGarvey, and Yemm felt as if he was running through glue in his effort to find the assassin or assassins. The only thing he knew for certain was that the killer was someone on the inside. Someone close to McGarvey. Very close. Yemm showed his identification at the main gate. He drove directly over to the 457th Air Wing, where military equipment and personnel used for special missions by the CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA and other government security agencies were staged. The sleek, all-black supersonic airplane was just taxiing over from the active runway, its canopy coming open when Yemm parked behind a line of start trucks and other maintenance vehicles in the lee of a hangar. The Aurora looked like a hybrid of the B2 bomber and the Concorde SST, with a drooped nose, canard wings and anechoic radar-absorbing skin.