“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-mile radius were looking for Kurshin. But no one had actually 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, but he looked like he was thirteen or fourteen.
“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 readers was empty.”
“Which means?”
“It might mean nothing. But for a man like Dr. Rand, 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.
Lillianthal 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 U.S. 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.”
“If I 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 me a helicopter?” he asked the cop. “Now?”
“Yes, sir. On the hospital roof. Five minutes.”
“Do it,” McGarvey snapped and he jumped out of the car.
Potok had heard the entire exchange. “He made his contact, took care of Schey, and now he's after Dr. Abbott?”
“Looks like it,” McGarvey said. “We just might have the bastard after all.”
Â
Arkady Kurshin lowered his police-band walkie-talkie, a thin smile coming to his lips. From where he stood on the roof of the hospital building he had a clear sight line down into the parking lot.
The game he was playing was dangerous, and he knew it. If he lost now, his life would be forfeit. Baranov would see to it. The entire project rested on his decision and his ability to carry it out.
But the timing was tight. It depended upon who would show up first, McGarvey or the helicopter.
Kurshin was still dressed in his blue hospital scrubs. He moved away from the roof edge and in the shadows pulled off the bloodstained clothes, bundled them up and stuffed them behind an air-conditioning vent. Beneath, he wore a short-sleeved khaki jacket, khaki trousers, and soft boots.
He had reloaded his automatic on the way up to the roof, and he checked its action as he moved directly across to the helicopter pad on the north side of the building, low red lights outlining the landing circle. From where he crouched in the darkness behind the main air-conditioning equipment house he could see the elevator door to his left, and the helicopter pad directly ahead.
Trotter was assistant deputy director of operations for the Agency, and a longtime friend of McGarvey's. Baranov had described him as a capable administrator and more than a fair cop. Something had spooked him into going out to Falmouth. Kurshin figured it was probably the helicopter overflight this afternoon. Antipov was probably right, the Americans had discovered the true nature of Xavier Enterprises.
Again, Kurshin had the thought that he was backing himself into a trap. He had the data they needed, so why hadn't he turned and left the hospital when he'd had the chance? By now he would have been long gone. On his way back to Rome where his team would be gathering.
McGarvey. He had eyes now only for that man. He could still
hear the American's voice clearly in his mind from the sewer tunnel beneath the streets of Kaiserslautern. He could still see McGarvey disarming the missile. And he could still feel the incredible surprise and anger that had overcome him at that moment. The bile then as now tasted bitter at the back of his throat.
He had been staring at the elevator indicatorâthe car was still on the ground floorâwhen he suddenly could hear the distant sound of an incoming helicopter. He looked up and searched the sky, finally finding it coming fast from the northeast. He glanced at the elevator indicator again; still the car remained downstairs.
Time. It always was just a matter of timing.
The helicopter, with police markings on its tail, quickly loomed large overhead as it slowly came in for a landing, centering on the pad and swinging around in a tight little circle before settling in.
Hiding his gun behind his right leg, Kurshin ran across to the helicopter, keeping low. The pilot was alone in his machine. As Kurshin approached he popped open the door.
“Mr. McGarvey?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors.
“No,” Kurshin said. He raised his pistol and shot the cop in the face, careful to aim above the microphone in front of his lips, and below the rim of his helmet. The cop's body was shoved to the side against his restraints, and then slumped forward.
Kurshin looked over his shoulder. The elevator indicator was on the second floor and starting up now!
Shoving his pistol in his belt, he quickly unharnessed the cop's body, manhandled it out of the helicopter, and dragged it across the roof, dumping it in the darkness behind the air-conditioning house. He unstrapped the helmet and pulled it off the cop's head. Only a small amount of blood had spattered the inside of the helmet which Kurshin quickly wiped off with his handkerchief, and as he raced back to the helicopter he pulled the helmet on.
He scrambled into the machine, strapped himself in, and plugged in his headset. A split second later the elevator door opened, and two men stepped out, one of them McGarvey.
They rushed across the roof to the helicopter as Kurshin reached over and popped open the rear door, then turned back to his instruments and control column.
This machine, he decided, wasn't much different from the larger Hind trainers he had learned on.
“We have to get down to Falmouth in a hurry,” McGarvey said, climbing into the rear seat.
“Yes, sir,” Kurshin replied. “Exactly where do you want to go?”
“I'll tell you on the run. Now get us out of here.”