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”
“I’ll see what I can do from this end” McGarvey said. “It may not be much”
“I think you will go after Kurshin. I think that you will not let that go so easily, but it has nothing to do with Israel. It has only to do with you”
come up with something “Then you will contact me, or you will not. We’ll see” A Montgomery County patrol car pulled up, and the cop called to them from the open window. “Mr. McGarvey” McGarvey turned around.
“Yes”
“Been trying to find you for the last half hour, sir. You’re supposed to call two-eight-seven on the double. Sounded urgent. It was the extension Trotter had given him. “Hold on” he told Potok. “Can I call out on your radio” he asked the cop. “Yes, sir” the cop said McGarvey went around the car and got in on the passenger side as the cop contacted his central dispatch. He handed the microphone to McGarvey, who radioed the telephone number. It was answered on the first ring. “Good evening, the White House” The cop’s eyes widened. “Two-eight-seven” McGarvey said.
The connection was made a second later. “Yes”
“McGarvey”
“There may be a developing situation at Falmouth. Trotter is on his way there now”
McGarvey’s grip tightened on the microphone. “How long ago”
“Sixty-five minutes”
“Call him and say that we’re on our way. “Yes” the man said and the connection was broken. “Can you get
