Bella Atkins called in sick at 8:45 the following morning, two hours after Cowley and Pamela got back to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. They’d driven directly from the airport to coordinate the scheduled 9:00 A.M. seizures and stood listening to Bella’s croaked explanation that she had the flu.
Leonard Ross answered his home phone on the second ring. Cowley said, “Just give me a few more hours! See what she’s going to do!”
“What if she
is
sick? We know what they are going to do and we haven’t got any way of stopping it.”
“We might find out if we wait a little longer.”
“And we might not, and by waiting a little longer we give the bastards time to commit more mass murder.”
“Midday,” pleaded Cowley. “There’s got to be a reason for her staying at home, and whatever it is we’ll hear it. If there’s nothing by noon we’ll round them up. Just three hours is all.”
“You haven’t forgotten what I told you last night?”
“No, sir.”
“I meant it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Noon,” agreed Ross.
Cowley replaced the receiver to see—and hear—Pamela replaying Bella’s call to the Pentagon. Pamela said, “She’s trying to
sound
sick. It’s the sort of voice she used for the New Rochelle call.”
“And sixteen guys died,” reminded Terry Osnan, immediately wishing he hadn’t from the look on Cowley’s face. “Sorry.”
Cowley shook his head against the apology. “We’ve got a postponement.”
“Flu would keep her off for more than a day,” Pamela pointed out.
Cowley said, “Let’s get people out to Reagan and Dulles. And to Union Station if it’s a train, not a plane.”
“Including females,” said Pamela. “If she goes into a washroom, we need to go with her.”
“I’ll wake Schnecker; maybe we’ll need his input,” said Cowley. The Fort Detrick team had returned from Chicago on the same Bureau plane and gone straight to the Marriott where Dimitri Danilov had stayed.
“We’ve got Bella under a microscope. If this is prearranged, why didn’t we hear the conversation?” queried Pamela. She was probably under the same threat from the director as Cowley, and she was damned if she was going to lose everything. They—she—had to second-guess everything.
“They’ve had the shipment for six days; we’ve only had Bella for two days,” reminded Osnan. “They’ve had plenty of time.”
“If she’s going anywhere she’s not going far,” estimated Cowley. “In those six days they could have driven that stuff anywhere in America. And if it was Midwest or West, they’d have offloaded it in Chicago. It’s East Coast.” To Osnan he said, “Go sit on that telephone monitor.”
As Osnan moved into the incident room, Pamela said, “You all right?”
“What’s that mean?” Cowley regretted the stiff scotches he’d had in front of her after the Chicago debacle, although everyone had gone to the improvised Customs bar—including Pamela—and he hadn’t by any means had too much.
“It means are you all right.”
Now Cowley regretted the defensive sharpness. “I’m impatient and I’m nervous: He’s given us three hours. If there’s nothing by then, we move.”
Pamela shrugged. “What the hell can we do in three hours, even if there is some contact! You know what you’ve done! You’ve made yourself the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.”
Cowley recognized she was probably right. So he’d hammered yet more nails into his own coffin. But there were so many already it hardly mattered anymore. “If we get a lead we can get another extension. I want the Watchmen as well as the rest.”
He personally called the FBI chiefs in Trenton and Manhattan, explaining the delay. In New York Harry Boreman said there’d been no movement from Bay View Avenue, but it was early for them. Everyone was in place, ready to go.
“We’ve got them boxed,” he guaranteed.
In New Jersey John Meadowcraft said they hadn’t heard any movement from inside the Kabanov home, either. Usually the Russian was up by now. Kabanov’s car was in the driveway. Guzov’s was still in the station parking lot. From Albany Anne Stovey said the state attorney was still objecting to any requestioning of Robert Standing. The bureau lawyer was considering an application to a judge in chambers.
It was nine-twenty when Cowley finished all the calls. He told Pamela, “I think you’re right. There wasn’t any point in my arguing the postponement.”
“Don’t wait then,” she urged at once, seeing escape for both of them. “Whatever happens after the arrests won’t be your fault. You’ll be following Ross’s instructions.”
Terry Osnan began waving exaggerately from the incident room. As they hurried into it he said, “Bella’s got a caller. So has Orlenko, in person! Brooklyn surveillance has positively IDed him as Yevgenni Mechislavovich Leanov!”
“We’re sure where everybody is?” demanded Georgi Chelyag.
“Absolutely,” said Danilov.
“And the
spetznaz
are in place?”
“They have been for two hours.”
“Briefed?”
“Fully.”
“No risk of a leak?”
“My deputy is personally going to arrest Mizin—had already summoned him for a conference, about the murder he’s supposed to be investigating.”
“Were you surprised at the American openness?”
“No,” said Danilov. “I always expected it to be this way.” Cowley had sounded crushed when they’d talked the previous night from Chicago. With every reason. There wasn’t any germ or bacteriological danger, but the explosives could still cause a catastrophe.
“There’s no way the Americans can turn the loss of the shipment into a Russian mistake?”
“No,” agreed Danilov. It was the third time the chief of staff had asked the same question.
“You think there’s any likelihood of Ivan Guzov trying to get back here? If we got him we’d be clearing up American’s mistakes, wouldn’t we?”
“If the terrorists have got the weapons, Guzov’s got the money. Some of it at least. It wouldn’t make sense his trying to get back here after the publicity there’s going to be.”
“I want to hear the moment we make the last arrest. The announcement will be in the president’s name, with another televised address to follow.”
As the recognizable voice of Bella Atkins’s caller echoed into the totally silent Washington incident room Pamela said, “It just might work.”
Cowley said, “Fuck! I didn’t tell Dimitri!”
The man said, “Ready?”
Bella said, “And waiting. How’d it all go?”
“Looks like there’s changes. A new Russian.”
“What about Gavri?”
“Disposed of. Seems he cheated with the money. Tried to cut Moscow out for a new supplier.”
“That going to be a problem?”
“Theirs, not ours. Our problem is that son of a bitch of a bank guy. Won’t respond.”
“What can we do?”
“Hit the banks he gave us access to a second time.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“With me. And the missile.”
“So we’re hearing Peter. Peter’s the General,” breathed Pamela. She looked sideways at Cowley’s return.
Cowley said, “I can’t reach Dimitri. He’s going by the old time.”
Before Pamela could respond Osnan declared, “He’s using a cell phone. We’re getting a scan intermittently. So they’re moving, like they did in Chicago.”
“But somewhere in D.C.!” seized Cowley. “Surely we couldn’t pick it up outside the district!”
“Affirmative,” confirmed Osnan.
“Get guys out to the obvious places. The monuments and memorials again. White House. Emphasize the maroon Land Cruiser.”
“What are you going to do about Dimitri?” asked Pamela.
“Nothing I can do.”
“It going to go off this time?” Bella was saying.
There was a muffled exchange away from the mouthpiece and the sound of laughing. Peter Barrymore said, “The detonator pins are intact. Jake says something that big, a monkey could hit it. He’s going to get a window, like before.”
“We going to be OK?”
There was another laugh. “Of course I checked. Wind’s southwest. Property’s going to be as cheap as hell in Crystal City and Arlington by tonight.”
“Where are you?”
“In traffic, on the bridge. You leave now, it should work out fine.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
The line went dead.
“Windows!” seized Cowley. “Not a monument.”
“The White House!” said Pamela. “It’s going to be the White House!”
“From around Lafayette Square, with the wind behind them,” said Osnan.
“Switch from the monuments. Concentrate on the White House. Bring in the SWAT teams. Use Bella as a marker … .” There was a general movement throughout the room, and Cowley turned to see Leonard Ross entering.
The director said, “I overheard enough. We need to evacuate?”
“The missile’s empty,” reminded Cowley.
“What about the explosives?”
“We’re not hearing anything about those,” admitted Cowley.
Ross found James Schnecker. “The stuff’s still got explosives in it, right?”
The bearded expert moved forward. “It’s the timers, detonators, and the fuses we’ve fixed. It can’t be rigged and left.”
“What happens if they don’t try until they get to the target? Nothing sophisticated like the Lincoln Memorial: just a crazy car bomb?”
“It’ll go at the first attempted connection. That was all we could do in Moscow, anticipate their trying to assemble a lot in advance, like they did for the memorial.”
“We get the president out,” decided Ross, hurrying from the room.
“Bella’s moving, on foot,” came the voice of an observer. “Walking nice and easy down York. We’re by the Civic Center.”
“It’s a straight line to Lafayette,” said Pamela.
“Everything’s in place around the White House: virtually sealed,” reported Osnan. “She’s going directly to us. Everyone’s watching for a maroon Land Cruiser.”
“They could get at least half the explosives in a vehicle that big,” estimated Schnecker. “But there’s got to be more than just two of them.”
“She’s changed direction!” the observer said urgently. “Made a left on Massachusetts … now she’s hailing a cab, going toward Union …”
“Surely it’s not a train,” said Cowley. He looked toward Osnan. “We still got people there?”
“Withdrew them to the White House,” the other man replied.
“Get them back,” said Cowley. He was sweating but dry-throated.
“Windows,” Pamela said quietly. “The Capitol’s got windows. Hundreds of them. And it’s as easy to reach down Massachusetts as the railroad terminal. And a far more dramatic target.”
“She’s getting out at North Capitol …” said Osnan, maintaining the commentary. “ … going away from Union Station … Jesus! She’s taken a park bench on Louisiana … sitting there, waiting.”
“Let’s go!” said Cowley. “Keep the White House covered. Move one SWAT team up to Union forecourt … . Tell our guys with her not to approach. We want the brothers … . Talk to me in the car before moving, even if they arrive.” Both Schnecker and Pamela moved with him. Cowley paused momentarily, then continued on with both of them following.
Orlenko:
You should have called.
Leanov:
I wanted to surprise you.
Leanov:
I surprised Gavri, too.
Leanov:
In a wood, with a bullet through the mouth for not telling the truth.
Orlenko:
Yevgenni, I want to say—
Leanov:
You haven’t told the truth either, have you, Arseni?
Leanov:
That we could be cut out in Moscow? I know. He told me he was sorry about that. And he was, in the end. Are you sorry, Arseni?
Orlenko:
Yevgenni, I want to explain.
Leanov:
You don’t have to, Arseni. I know all about it now from Gavri. You’re superfluous now, just like Gavri.