The Apocalypse Watch (45 page)

“Are you people always so polite in these situations?” asked Latham.

“It doesn’t help to be uptight, sir. It blurs your focus.”

“Why do I think I’ve heard that before?”

“I don’t know. See you downstairs.”

Three minutes later, Drew walked out the door and went to the elevators. At that hour the ride down was swift, the lobby practically deserted except for a few late-night revelers, Japanese and Americans, by and large, all
of whom disappeared into the bank of elevators. Latham strode across the marble floor, every inch the military man, when suddenly, ear-shattering gunshots exploded, echoing off the walls, emanating from the mezzanine balcony. Drew lunged toward a space between the lobby furniture, his eyes riveted on the two men behind the concierge’s desk. He saw the chest and stomach of one literally explode, a monstrous detonation that sent the man’s bloody intestines hurling across the lobby; the other raised his hands as his head blew apart, skull tissue flying everywhere.
Madness!
Additional gunfire then filled the huge ornate enclosure, followed by voices, shouting in English with American accents.

“We’ve got him!” yelled a man, also on the mezzanine level. “In the legs!”

“He’s
alive
!” roared another. “We’ve
got
the son of a bitch! He’s nuts! He’s crying and moaning in German!”

“Take him to the embassy,” said a calmer voice in the lobby, turning to the terrified clerks behind the front desk. “This is an antiterrorist operation,” he continued. “It’s over now, and you may assure the owners that all expenses for damages will be covered, as well as generous compensation for the families of your personnel who tragically lost their lives. However meaningless it may appear to you now, they died heroes, and a grateful Europe will honor them.…
Hurry up!
”

The horrified clerks stood frozen behind the marble counter. The man on the left began to weep as his colleague slowly, as if in a trance, reached for a telephone.

Latham and De Vries embraced under the disapproving eyes of Colonel Stanley Witkowski and Ambassador Daniel Courtland in the latter’s office at the American Embassy.

“May we get to the issue—the issues—at hand, if you please?” said the ambassador. “Dr. Gerhardt Kroeger will survive and our two-man computer team will arrive shortly. Actually one of them is here now, and his superior is being flown in from his holiday in the Pyrenees. Will somebody
now
tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Certain intelligence operations are beyond your purview, Mr. Ambassador,” replied Witkowski, “for your own deniability, sir.”

“You know, I really find that phrase rather obscene, Colonel. Since when did civilian intelligence, or military intelligence, or any of the clandestine exercises take precedence over the State Department’s ultimate control?”

“That’s why Consular Operations was created, sir,” answered Drew. “The purpose was to coordinate between State, the administration, and the intelligence services.”

“Then I can’t say that you have, have you?”

“In crises we can’t afford a bureaucratic delay,” said Latham firmly. “And I don’t give a goddamn if it costs me my job. I want the person, the people, who killed my brother. Because they’re part of a much larger disease, and it’s got to be stopped—
not
by bureaucratic debate, but by individual decision.”

Courtland leaned back in his chair. Finally, he spoke. “And you, Colonel?”

“I’ve been a soldier all my life, but here I must reject the chain of command. I can’t wait for some Congress to declare war. We
are
at war.”

“And you, Mrs. de Vries?”

“I gave you my husband, what more do you want?”

Ambassador Daniel Courtland leaned forward in his chair, both hands on his forehead, his fingers massaging his flesh. “I’ve lived with compromises all my diplomatic life,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to stop.” He raised his head. “I’ll probably be demoted to Tierra del Fuego, but go for it, you rogues. Because you
are
right, there are times when we can’t wait.”

The three rogues were taken down to the supercomputer thirty feet below the cellars. It was both enormous and frightening; an entire ten-foot wall was covered by a plate of thick glass with whirling disks behind it, dozens spinning and abruptly stopping, trapping information from the skies.

“Hi, I’m Jack Rowe, one half of your deep, under the-earth geniuses,” said a pleasant-looking sandy-haired man of less than thirty years. “My colleague, if he’s sober, will
be here in a few minutes. He landed at Orly a half hour ago.”

“We didn’t expect to find drunks,” exclaimed Witkowski. “This is serious business!”

“Everything’s serious here, Colonel—yes, I know who you are, it’s standard operating procedure. You too, Cons-Op guy,
and
the lady who probably could have run NATO if she were a man and wore a uniform. There are no secrets here. They all spew out on the disks.”

“Can we get at them?” said Drew.

“Not until my buddy arrives. You see, he has the other code, which I’m not allowed to have.”

“To save time,” said Karin, “can you collate the data from my office with specific dates as I recalled them?”

“Don’t have to, it’s one and the same. You give us the dates, and whatever you recorded on those days will show up on the screen. You couldn’t change it or erase it if you wanted to.”

“I don’t care to do either.”

“That’s a relief. When I got the hurry-up from the Big Man, I figured we maybe had one of those Rose Mary Wood things we read about in history books.”

“
History
books?” Witkowski’s brows arched in indignation.

“Well, I was about six or seven when all that stuff happened, Colonel. Maybe
history
is the wrong word.”

“I hope to kiss a pig it was.”

“That’s an interesting phrase,” said the young, sandy-haired technician. “Root linguistic vernaculars are kind of a hobby with me. That’s either Irish or Middle European, Slavic probably, where
sus scrofa
—pigs or hogs—were valuable property. To ‘hope to kiss a pig’ implied ownership, a status symbol, actually. And if you supplant the
a
with a
my
, therefore
my pig
, it meant you were either pretty rich or soon expected to be.”

“Is
that
what you do with computers?” asked an astonished Latham.

“You’d be surprised at the mountains of incidental intelligence these Big Birds can hold. I once traced a Latin chant, a religious chant, to a pagan cult in Corsica.”

“That’s
very
interesting, young man,” interrupted Witkowski, “but our concerns here are speed and accuracy.”

“We’ll give you both, Colonel.”

“Incidentally,” Witkowski said, “the phrase I used was Polish.”

“I’m not sure of that,” said Karin. “I believe it stems from Gaelic roots, Irish in fact.”

“And
I
don’t give a damn!” cried Drew. “Will you please concentrate on the days, the time spans, you can remember, Karin?”

“I already have,” replied De Vries, opening her purse. “Here they are, Mr. Rowe.” She handed the computer expert a torn piece of notebook paper.

“These are all over the place,” said the technician partial to linguistic vernaculars.

“They’re in sequence, it’s the best I could do.”

“No problem for the biggest bird in France.”

“Why do you call this thing a bird?” asked Latham.

“ ’Cause it flies into the ether of infinite recall.”

“Sorry I asked.”

“But this helps, Mrs. de Vries. I’ll program my side, so when Joel arrives, he can key in and the sideshow can begin.”

“
Sideshow?
”

“The screen, Colonel, the screen.”

As Rowe inserted the codes that released his side of the massive computer, and typed in the data, the metal door of the subterranean complex opened and another technician, this one perhaps in his early thirties, perhaps older, walked in. What distinguished him from his colleague was a long, neatly bound ponytail, held in place by a small blue ribbon at the nape of his neck.

“Hi,” he said pleasantly, “I’m Joel Greenberg, the resident general here. How’re you doin’, Jackman?”

“Waiting for you, Genius Two.”

“Hey, I’m
Numero Uno
, remember?”

“I just replaced you, I got here first,” replied Rowe, still typing.

“You must be the exalted Colonel Witkowski,” said Greenberg, extending his hand to the perplexed chief of
security, whose glare did not convey much pleasure at the sight of the slender man in blue jeans and an open-collared bush jacket, to say nothing of the ponytail. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir, and I mean that.”

“At least you’re sober,” said the colonel awkwardly.

“I wasn’t last night. Wow, did I do a mean flamenco!… And you have to be Mrs. de Vries. The rumors weren’t wrong, ma’am. You’re a gorgeous, A-plus.”

“I’m also an officer-attaché of the embassy, Mr. Greenberg.”

“I’ll bet I outrank you, but who’s counting.… I apologize, ma’am, I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just sort of the ebullient type. No offense, okay?”

“Okay,” said Karin, laughing quietly.

“You’ve got to be our Mr. Cons-Op, right?” said Greenberg, shaking hands with Drew, then becoming suddenly serious. “My heart goes out to you, sir. You lose a parent, it’s kind of expected, you know what I mean? You lose a brother—yes, Jackman and I were told the scenario—well, it’s something else. Especially the way it happened. I don’t know what else to say.”

“You’ve said it very well; it’s appreciated.… Who else down here knows what you just told me?”

“Nobody, only Rowe and myself. We have two pairs of relief. The last left when the Jackman arrived, but none have the codes to invade our super bird. If either of us has an accident or a cardiac arrest, a sub is flown down from NATO.”

“I’ve never seen you around the embassy,” said Witkowski. “And I’m
sure
I’d recall having seen you.”

“We’re not permitted to fraternize, Colonel. We have a separate entrance and our own very small elevator.”

“That seems rather excessive.”

“Not when you consider what’s in Mother Bird. The only people accepted for this job are computer Ph.D.’s, male and unattached. That may be sexist, but it’s the way things are.”

“Are you armed?” asked Latham. “Just curiosity.”

“Two weapons. Both Smith and Wesson, nine millimeters.
One in a chest holster and one strapped to the leg. Trained in usage, by the way.”

“May we get to work,” said Karin firmly. “I believe your partner has inserted the information I need.”

“It won’t do us any good until I repeat it,” said Greenberg, heading for his chair on the left of the giant equipment and sitting down, entering his code. “Print it up for me, Jackman, okay?”

“Transfer in sequence,” answered Rowe. “It’s in your ballpark. Repeat and release on demand-print key.”

“I’m with you.” Joel Greenberg swiveled in his chair and addressed the three intruders. “As I repeat his data, it’ll come out on the printer below the center screen. That way you won’t have to remember everything on the movie.”

“The
movie
?”

“The screen, Colonel, the screen,” said Jack Rowe.

As the computer printouts spewed forth, page by page, date by date, Karin ripped them off and studied them. Twenty minutes passed. When the printouts were finished, she went back over each, circling items in a red pencil. Finally, she said softly but emphatically, “I’ve found it. The two occasions when I went back to Transport. I remember exactly.… Can you now bring up the names of the D and R personnel on the left side of the center aisle?” She handed the printouts with the data circled in red to Greenberg.

“Sure,” said the Ph.D. with a ponytail, in concert with his associate. “Ready, Jack?”

“Go ahead,
Numero Duo
.”

“Asshole.”

The names appeared on the screen before the ten-second delay for the printer. “You’re not going to like this, Mrs. de Vries,” said the computer Ph.D. named Rowe. “Out of the six days you specified, you were on three of them.”

“That’s crazy—insane!”

“I’ll bring up your data, see if you recall it.”

The screen printed out the information. “Yes, that’s
mine
!” cried Karin, her eyes on the line of green letters as they first appeared. “But I wasn’t there.”

“Big Bird doesn’t lie, ma’am,” said Greenberg. “It wouldn’t know how.”

“Try the others,
their
inputs,” insisted Latham.

The bright green letters appeared again on the screen, each from different offices. And again, the very data Karin had recognized was on two others.

“What more can I say? I could not have been in three offices at once. Someone has penetrated your holy computers.”

“That would require such a complex number of codes, including insertions and deletions, that it would take someone with more knowledge than Joel and I have to do it,” said Jack Rowe. “I hate to say it, Mrs. de Vries, but the info on you from Brussels made it clear that you were pretty expert in this department.”

“Why would I implicate
myself
? With three insertions?”

“You’ve got me there.”

“Run down our top personnel, and I don’t care if it takes until the sun comes up,” said Drew. “I want to see every résumé from the Big Man on down.”

The minutes passed, the printouts continued, studied by all, until an hour went by, then an hour and a half. “Holy shit!” exclaimed Greenberg, looking at his screen. “We may have a probable.”

“Who is it?” asked Witkowski, ice in his voice.

“You’re not going to like this, any of you.
I
don’t like it.”

“Who
is
it?”

“Read it yourselves,” said Joel, arching his head, his eyes closed as if in disbelief.

“Oh, my
God
,” cried Karin, staring at the center screen. “It’s Janine Clunes!”

“Correction,” said the colonel. “Janine Clunes Courtland, the ambassador’s wife, his second wife, to be precise. She works in D and R, under her maiden name for obvious reasons.”