49
In the MARC computer lab, an alarm sounded, announcing that the Spyder was once again active. Harbke and Ullrich gathered around Grin’s station to watch the action unfold. The Spyder had just passed through the university network into another computer system. Grin punched a couple of keys and the alarm went silent.
‘Liz,’ Ullrich said, turning to her partner, ‘let our monitoring teams know that the Spyder is on-line.’
Harbke dialed out and passed the word while Grin and Ullrich watched the Spyder traverse several private networks.
‘This thing still amazes me,’ Ullrich commented as she watched the Spyder punch through one computer system after another.
‘It’s a slick piece of work all right.’ While despising the people who controlled the Spyder, Grin still respected the technology behind the device.
Harbke returned after making the calls. ‘The CompuServe team reports that someone recently sent a file to the Spyder’s E-mail box.’
‘Maybe that’s where it’s headed,’ Ullrich replied.
Fifteen minutes passed as the Spyder penetrated system after system, finally stopping at CompuServe.
‘Looks like this is it,’ Grin announced. ‘Let’s see what they want the Spyder to do today.’
Grin split the laptop screen to display the CompuServe screen in one window and what the Spyder was seeing internally in another.
‘All right, he’s logged on and he’s checking the mail,’ Grin said, announcing the play-by-play. ‘Bingo, it’s found the message. The message is blank, but there’s a file attached to it. He’s downloading the file; everything’s fine. He’s logging off; he’s done and closing up the connections.’
The laptop’s active-matrix screen flashed quickly as the Spyder logged off the computer networks that had covered its electronic tracks. Once the Spyder had returned to a dormant state, Grin loaded up the diagnostic program from Moy Electronics.
‘Now let’s find out what our friends in London are planning.’
Grin switched off the monitoring program and enlarged the bypass window to full screen.
‘Grin, what’s all that gibberish?’ Harbke asked.
Grin checked the program status bar at the bottom of his screen. ‘That file it downloaded was encrypted. What we’re watching is a translation-in-progress.’
The odd-looking characters were rapidly converted into a new instruction set for the Spyder.
‘Can you hand me that blank optical-disk cartridge?’
‘Sure thing,’ Ullrich replied.
Grin fed the cartridge into the laptop’s external drive and directed the bypass to copy the new instruction file. Unlike their initial attempt to dump the Spyder’s core program, an effort that had almost cost Nolan and Kelsey their lives, the Spyder’s internal security was completely oblivious to the information flowing out through the bypass.
After a few minutes, Grin ejected the cartridge and labeled it. ‘Now let’s see if we can get Iverson on the phone. I assume that the FBI is interested in knowing what the Spyder has just been told to do?’
‘Hell yes,’ Ullrich replied.
50
Alex Roe spent the rest of the day at Parnell’s office, attending to the details of a few of the legitimate assignments that she was working on. After locking up, she left the building and decided to have dinner in a quiet pub in a less developed part of the wharf district.
She’d walked about half the distance there when she began to feel like she was being followed. Roe looked around but failed to detect any of the telltale signs of surveillance. Still, she sensed something out of the ordinary. To ease her fears, she began running a varied pattern of movement through the area in hopes of shaking any pursuit out into the open. She made abrupt turns at random locations, ducked in and out of stores, and crisscrossed the street at random intervals. If anyone was mapping her movements, they would make no sense at all.
Just behind Roe as she made another turn, the team currently tracking her movements was having great difficulty keeping pace while remaining undetected.
‘Team two to Looking Glass, over,’ the young officer whispered into a miniature microphone.
‘Looking Glass here, team two, over.’
‘Tweedledum is running about like a rabbit. She’s all over the place. I think she’s onto us. Over.’
‘Pull back a little, and give her some room,’ the Looking Glass leader advised. ‘We don’t want to alarm her.’
‘Roger, team two, out.’
The British surveillance teams watching Roe pulled back, maintaining only the lightest contact. After a few more minutes of Roe’s chaotic trailblazing, they lost her completely. The watchers reconvened at various points in the area, hoping to reestablish contact.
Roe kept her random movements up for another ten minutes, searching the thinning crowds for any sign of pursuit; she found none.
‘Probably just imagining things,’ she reprimanded herself.
Roe’s meandering course had pulled her nearly a mile away from her original destination. Halfway there, the hairs on her neck bristled in response to a regular pattern of footsteps that had maintained a constant beat several strides behind her. Turning quickly into an empty alleyway, she heard the footsteps slow and finally stop.
Roe flattened herself against the alley wall, out of the line of sight from her pursuer. Her heart raced as she tried to rein in her imagination and focus on the situation at hand. She had to assume the worst-case scenario: Her pursuer was either official or criminal. She’d ruled out coincidence, since whoever was following her had stopped when she had turned the corner, and was now waiting at the alley entrance.
Soft footsteps echoed from the mouth of the alley, measured and confident. The footsteps didn’t rush in, but moved with patience, closing the distance between them. About ten feet from her position, the footsteps stopped. Backlit from the adjacent street, the silhouette of a slightly built man wearing a hat became visible; the figure threw a long shadow across the alley floor. The head of the shadow fell in line with Roe’s concealed position. For what seemed like hours, neither one of them moved.
The man casting the shadow finally spoke. ‘Anya, it is your old friend, Andrei. I am alone. You may come out now.’
A sudden shock swept through Alex at the sound of Yakushev’s familiar voice. She’d prepared herself to fight or run, but not to face a ghost. Her mind froze and she found that she couldn’t move.
The shadow drew closer, until the man stood before her. Half in light, he turned to face her. The harshly shadowed face was that of her mentor, Andrei Yakushev. Alex’s mouth opened, but no words formed to express the jumble of thoughts that filled her mind.
Yakushev smiled at the sight of his protegee. ‘I see that you are full of questions. I understand. Come. I believe that you were on your way to dinner. If you don’t mind, I would like to join you and get reacquainted.’
Yakushev threw his arms around the still-shocked Roe in a warm Russian greeting. Alex returned the embrace feebly, still waiting for her mind to reconnect with her body.
‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,’ Yakushev said jokingly. ‘I assure you that I am very much alive. Let us go now-there is much to discuss and little time before your British surveillance relocates you.’
The firmness of her mentor’s voice finally brought Alex out of confusion. Yakushev turned away and began moving back toward the street. Roe collected herself and followed. She watched Yakushev practice the expert tradecraft that had made him one of the Soviet Union’s greatest spymasters. Not since she had been in training had
