again himself. Perhaps his wife could make the transfer
'So, where's the leak?' Parks asked his security chief.
'It could be any one of a hundred or so people,' the man answered,
'That's good news,' Pete Wexton observed dryly. He was an inspector in the FBI's counterintelligence office. 'Only a hundred.'
'Could be one of the scientific people, or somebody's secretary, or someone in the budget department-that's just in the program itself. There are another twenty or so here in the D.C. area who're into Tea Clipper deep enough to have seen this stuff, but they're all very senior folks.' SDIO's security chief was a Navy captain who customarily wore civilian clothes. 'More likely, the person we're looking for is out West.'
'And they're mostly scientific types, mostly under forty.' Wexton closed his eyes. Who live inside computers and think the world's just one big videogame. The problem with scientists, especially the young ones, was simply that they lived in a world very different from that understood and appreciated by the security community. To them, progress depended on the free transfer of information and ideas. They were people who got excited about new things, and talked about them among themselves, unconsciously seeking the synergism that made ideas sprout like weeds in the disordered garden of the laboratory. To a security officer the ideal world was one where nobody talked to anyone else. The problem with that, of course, was that such a world rarely did anything worth securing in the first place. The balance was almost impossible to strike, and the security people were always caught exactly in the middle, hated by everyone.
'What about internal security on the project documents?' Wexton asked. 'You mean canary traps?'
'What the hell is that?' General Parks asked.
'All these papers are done on word processors. You use the machine to make subtle alterations in each copy of the important papers. That way you can track every one, and identify the precise one that's being leaked to the other side,' the Captain explained. 'We haven't done much of that. It's too time-intensive.'
'CIA has a computer subroutine that does it automatically. They call it Spookscribe, or something like that. It's closely held, but you should be able to get it if you ask.'
'Nice of 'em to tell us about it,' Parks groused. 'Would it matter in this case?'
'Not at the moment, but you play all the cards you got,' the Captain observed to his boss. 'I've heard about the program. It can't be used on scientific documents. The way they use language is too precise. Anything more than inserting a comma-well, it can screw up what they're trying to say.'
'Assuming anyone can understand it in the first place,' Wexton said with a rueful shake of the head. 'Well, it's for damned sure that the Russians can.' He was already thinking about the resources that this case would require- possibly hundreds of agents. They'd be conspicuous. The community in question might be too small to absorb a large influx of people without someone's notice. The other obvious thing to do was restrict access to information on the mirror experiments, but then you ran the risk of alerting the spy. Wexton wondered why he hadn't stuck to simple things like kidnappings and Mafia racketeering. But he'd gotten his brief on Tea Clipper from Parks himself. It was an important job, and he was the best man for it. Wexton was sure of this: Director Jacobs had said so himself.
Bondarenko noticed it first. He'd had an odd feeling a few days previously while doing his morning run. It was something he'd always had, but those three months in Afghanistan had taken a latent sixth sense and made it blossom fully. There were eyes on him. Whose? he wondered.
They were good. He was sure of that. He also suspected that there were five or more of them. That made them Russian? probably. Not certainly. Colonel Bondarenko was one kilometer into his run, and decided to perform a small experiment. He altered his route, taking a right where he normally took a left. That would take him past a new apartment block whose first-floor windows were still polished. He grinned to himself, but his right hand unconsciously slapped down on his hip, searching for his service automatic. The grin ended when he realized what his hand had done, and felt the gnawing disappointment that he did not have the wherewithal to defend himself with anything other than bare hands. Bondarenko knew how to do that quite well, but a pistol has longer reach than a hand or foot. It wasn't fear, not even close to it, but Bondarenko was a soldier, accustomed to knowing the limits and rules of his own world.
His head swiveled, looking at the reflection of the windows. There was a man a hundred meters behind him, holding a hand to his face, as though speaking on a small radio. Interesting. Bondarenko turned and ran backward for a few meters, but by the time his head had come around, the man's hand was at his side, and he was walking normally, seemingly uninterested in the jogging officer. Colonel Bondarenko turned and resumed his normal pace. His smile was now thin and tight. He'd confirmed it. But what had he confirmed? Bondarenko promised himself that he'd know that an hour after getting to his office.
Thirty minutes later, home, showered, and dressed, he read his morning paper-for him it was Krasnaya Zvesda, 'Red Star,' the Soviet military daily-while he drank a mug of tea. The radio was playing while his wife prepared the children for school. Bondarenko didn't hear either, and his eyes merely scanned the paper while his mind churned. Who are they? Why are they watching me? Am I under suspicion? If so, suspicion of what?
'Good morning, Gennady Iosifovich,' Misha said on entering his office.
'Good morning, Comrade Colonel,' Bondarenko answered.
Filitov smiled. 'Call me Misha. The way you're going, you will soon outrank this old carcass. What is it?'
'I'm being watched. I had people following me this morning when I did my run.'
'Oh?' Misha turned. 'Are you sure?'
'You know how it is when you know you're being watched-I'm certain you know, Misha!' the young Colonel observed.
But he was wrong. Filitov had noticed nothing unusual, nothing to arouse his instincts until this moment. Then it hit him that the bath attendant wasn't back yet. What if the signal was about something more than a routine security check? Filitov's face changed for an instant before he got it back under control.
'You've noticed something, too, then?' Bondarenko asked.
'Ah!' A wave of the hand, and an ironic look. 'Let them look; they will find this old man more boring than Alexandrov's sex life.' The reference to the Politburo's chief ideologue was becoming a popular one in the Defense Ministry. A sign, Misha wondered, that General Secretary Narmonov was planning to ease him out?
They ate in the Afghan way, everyone taking food barehanded from a common plate. Ortiz had a virtual banquet laid out for lunch. The Archer had the place of honor, with Ortiz at his right hand to act as translator. Four very senior CIA people were there, too. He thought they were overdoing things, but then, the place that put the light in the sky must have been important. Ortiz opened the talking with the usual ceremonial phrases.
'You do me too much honor,' the Archer replied.
'Not so,' the senior CIA visitor said through Ortiz. 'Your skill and courage are well known to us, and even among our soldiers. We are ashamed that we can give you no more than the poor help that our government allows.'
'It is our land to win back,' the Archer said with dignity. 'With Allah's help it will be ours again. It is well that Believers should strive together against the godless ones, but the task is that of my people, not yours.'
He doesn't know, Ortiz thought. He doesn't know that he's being used.
'So,' the Archer went on. 'Why have you traveled around the world to speak with this humble warrior?'
'We wish to talk with you about the light you saw in the sky.'
The Archer's face changed. He was surprised at that. He'd expected to be asked about how well his missiles worked.
'It was a light-a strange light, yes. Like a meteor, but it seemed to go up instead of down.' He described what he had seen in detail, giving the time, where he'd been, the direction of the light, and the way it had sliced across the sky.
'Did you see what it hit? Did you see anything else in the sky?'
'Hit? I don't understand. It was a light.'
Another of the visitors spoke. 'I am told that you were a teacher of mathematics. Do you know what a laser is?'
His face changed at the new thought. 'Yes, I read of them when I was in university. I-' The Archer sipped at a glass of juice. 'I know little of lasers. They project a beam of light, and are used mainly for measuring and surveying. I have never seen one, only read of them.'
'What you saw was a test of a laser weapon.'
