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.
As soon as it pulled to a stop, ground crewmen checked the wheels, while others brought up the boarding ladder. Otto, wearing a dark blue flight suit, was first out. He scrambled down the ladder, peeled off the flight suit and got his small bag from a crewman, who’d retrieved it from a locker forward of the swept-back port wing. He no longer wore the sling on his arm. He gave the pilot a wave, then walked across the tarmac to a line of parked cars. He got into the passenger side of a light gray RAV4 SUV, which immediately backed out and headed to the main gate. Yemm caught a glimpse of Louise Horn in her air force uniform behind the wheel. She’d lied to them. She’d known where Otto had gone and when he would be returning. It’s why she hadn’t sounded all that shook-up about his disappearance. There was no real reason to follow them. Louise would either drive back to their apartment in Arlington first, or she would take Otto directly to Langley. Either way he’d show up out there sometime today. Yemm headed back to his office, even more depressed and confused than he had been earlier. Otto was a friend who might finally have gone around the bend. A lot of geniuses did. The problem Yemm was having the most trouble with was Louise Horn’s involvement. A woman would do anything for her man. But treason and murder?
TWENTY-FIVE
When Otto Rencke entered his office, Louise was immediately placed in a safe corner of his head. Sometimes during the day, when he was troubled, he would take her out, look at her beauty, think about how much he loved her, replay a favorite conversation they’d had, then put her back safe and sound. She had become his escape mechanism, a safety valve. He was back, and she had helped him with that much. He didn’t want to place her in any further danger. He laid the case with his laptop computer on the cluttered conference table and let his eyes roam around the room. Everything was as he had left it. No one had screwed with his things this time. It was a Baranov operation. Otto was sure of at least that much. First General Gennadi Zhuralev, who had been Department Viktor chief of operations in the seventies, had been killed in Moscow. Then Vladimir Trofimov was shot
