'No.' Tucker wound his window down and flicked his spent cigarette out.
'What's the computer say?'
'Nothing.'
Billie sensed they had come to the heart of the problem. 'If he was an asset, he must've been in the computer. I remember when we transferred from paper to tape. I spent three boring years inputting some of that information.'
'Which is why this is so damned sensitive.' He lit another cigarette and didn't see her scowl. 'When we checked the database, we found all the information relating to sleeper networks before 1958…,' Tucker paused, as if disbelieving what he was about to tell her. '…I know this is crazy, but there's a virus in the system that knocked out all the information on our European networks before 1958.'
'You're kidding?'
'I haven't flown all the way here for a joke. No. The virus was activated yesterday.'
'How?'
'As soon as we punched in a question on Gunnar Yokob…'
'Who?'
'Reindeer. That was his name. Anyway, soon as we input his name, this virus just upped and knocked out the file. The words just disappeared on the screen, one by one. First the A's, then the B's, right through to Z. Just fucking destroyed the file. When we called up the rest of the European network, exactly the same happened. Within fifteen minutes it had wiped out ten percent of the information we had on the agents in Europe right up till 1958.'
'That's impossible.'
'So impossible it happened. We've sealed off the computer room, switched off the whole system. When we powered up again, it just continued where it left off. We tried to dump the information onto safe systems, but they wouldn't transfer. Just got a message up saying ''NO COPIES OF THIS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION CAN BE MADE.' So we isolated the pre 1958 section until we can get some answers.'
'Only on info before 1958?'
That's right.'
'What're these?' She held up the discs he had given her.
'A few files hadn't been corrupted. Expenses, simple memos, that sort of thing. Just thought there may be an answer in there. If you chase the binary. There’s also a report on Reindeer and a breakdown of the rest of our old asset base. You might just find something we missed.'
'How long's that virus been there?'
Tucker shrugged. 'We've only just found the damn thing. Everything was a lot less secure in those days.’
'Don't you check for viral infection?'
'Regularly.' The questioned irritated Tucker. It hadn't been his idea to involve the girl. 'As long as you know what you're looking for. Trouble is, these files are never opened. No need for it. The virus could've been introduced years ago. Even before we knew about viruses. It was just waiting for us to go into those old archives, waiting to be triggered off. It was Reindeer, and not knowing who he was, that made us backtrack into the files. Nobody's needed them for nearly fifteen years.'
‘So it could be someone in the Agency?’
‘Could be. Or outside. We’re running blind right now.’
‘So I’m in because I’m in the backroom and no-ne will be expecting me.’
‘One of the reasons. They say you’re pretty hot as well. This is your chance to show what you’re made of. With all these latest peace and trade negotiations, the last thing we need is to find the KGB are still up to their old tricks. And we have to protect our assets. Even if they are all sixty and senile.'
'That it?'
'Yes.' Tucker flicked his second cigarette out of the window. 'Gotta quit these soon. They're killing me.'
'I'll need an index. A list of everything that's been contaminated.'
'Okay. Anything else?'
Tucker turned the door handle and climbed out of the car. 'You go. I'll walk back and wait for my connection.' He closed the door, then leant in the window as she started the engine. 'I forgot. Before the computer went down, it came up with one fact on Reindeer. We recruited him after the war. He was German. We think he could've been part of the VT’s.'
'VT’s?'
'SS Special purpose troops. Waffen SS — Verfugungstruppe. The best. They were the guys who were really mean.'
'What were we using them for?'
'I don't know. Trained men, I guess. Ready for the OSS to plant in Europe. I don't know if it means anything. Except it's all we got out of the computer.' He stood back and smiled at her. 'See you, Billie Knutsford.'
'Bye, Phil.' She watched him walk towards the terminal.
Then she shifted into gear and drove out of the parking lot.
This was her big chance. Her crack at the major league.
Ch. 8
The Carlton Hotel is the Queen all the great hotels that span the Croisette in Cannes. It is where everyone who is anyone must be seen, where the rich and famous can be rich and famous and not be embarrassed by their excesses. Nobody asks if the jewels are real, it doesn't matter at the Carlton. To be there, to be seen, is all that matters.
The building, set back in its majesty and overlooking the blue azure of the Mediterranean, even this late in December, is crowned at each corner with two cupolas shaped like enormous, skyward pointing breasts, nipple perfect in their form. For that is what they are. Designed by an amorous architect to represent La Belle Otero, the most beautiful and most famous of French courtesans at the turn of the century. The left cupola is slightly larger than the right one, a further tribute to the architect's search for detail and historical accuracy.
It was the witching hour before lunch, the time when the experienced Canne'ite stroll out to the beach from their hotels, knowing the morning beach restaurant tables will be vacated by the families who have tired of their early morning sojourn and are heading for the shops and amusements that will keep their children occupied. It’s the time that the whores, and there is a plentiful supply of them in Cannes all year round, from housewives and students paying for their holidays to hardened Parisienne professionals on the look-out for Christmas money, emerge to pick up the early trade, to prepare themselves for their daily diet of wine, dirty intentioned glances and sex with strangers whom they love for a few brief moments. There are the hustlers, the pimps, the fancy boys, the workers, the retired, the taxi drivers, the beach workers, the restaurant waiters, the hopeful, all filling the streets, all swelling the crowd that made the Croisette one of the busiest and most interesting thoroughfares in Europe.
And then there were the watchers, the army of ordinary people who wanted to touch fame by seeing it pass by, as if viewing this extraordinary procession of life somehow made them a part of it. The crowds were building, the mass saturating the Croisette.
Heinrich Trimmler came out into this thronging world from the comparative sanity of the Carlton Hotel. An American by naturalisation, a German by birth, the sixty six year old, large framed Trimmler spent each Christmas period in Cannes, a month's holiday away from the 'cultural wasteland', as he described it, of America. He had lived in California for over forty years, yet his instincts were still European, the American lifestyle never blunting his attitudes. His wife Trudi, only a few months younger, walked beside him, an elegant blonde woman. He pointed across the bay, to where an American aircraft carrier had berthed overnight.
'Looks like the fleet's in town,' he said, his accent American, yet still heavy with Germanic traces.