"An investment opportunity?" Ostermann asked with a forlorn chuckle.
"I didn't mean that, " Winston replied with an almost laugh. It was good to laugh about it, wasn't it?
"George?"
"Yeah?"
"They were not Austrian, not what the television and newspapers said-and they told me not to reveal this, but you can know this. They were Americans and British."
"I know, Erwin, I know who they are, but that's all I can say.
"I owe them my life. How can I repay such a debt?"
"That's what they are paid to do, my friend. It's their job."
"Vielleicht, but it was my life they saved, and those of my employees. I have a personal debt to pay them. Is there any way I might do something for them?"
"I don't know," George Winston admitted.
"Could you find out? If you `know about' them, could you find out? They have children, do they not? I can pay for their education, set up a fund of some sort, could I not?"
"Probably not, Erwin, but I can look into it," the SecTreas said, making a note on his desk. This would be a real pain in the ass for some security people, but there might well be a way, through some D.C. law firm, probably, to double-blind it. It pleased Winston that Erwin wanted to do this. Noblesse oblige was not entirely dead. "So, you sure you're okay, pal?"
"Thanks to them, yes, George, I am."
"Great. Thanks. Good to hear your voice, pal. See you t, next time I come over to Europe."
"Indeed, George. Have a good day."
"You, too. Bye." Winston switched buttons on his phone. Might as well check into this right away. "Mary, could you get me Ed Foley over at the CIA?"
CHAPTER 10
Popov hadn't done this in ages. but he rembered how. His employer had been written about more than many politicians which was only just, Popov thought, as this man did far more important and interesting things for his country and the world-but these articles were mainly about business, which didn't help Popov much beyond a further appreciation of the man's wealth and influence. There was little about his personal life, except that he'd been divorced. A pity of sorts. His former wife seemed both attractive and intelligent, judging by the photos and the appended information on her. Maybe two such intelligent people had difficulty staying together. If so, that was to bad for the woman, the Russian thought. Maybe few American men liked having intellectual equals under their roof. It was altogether too intimidating for the weak ones - and only a weak man would be troubled by it, the Russian thought.
But there was nothing to connect the man with terrorists or terrorism. He'd never been attacked himself, not even a simple street crime, according to the New York Times. Such things did not always make the news, of course. Perhaps an incident that had never seen the light of day. But if it lead been so major as to change the course of his life - it would had to have become known, wouldn't it?
Probably. Almost certainly, he thought. But almost was a troubling qualifier for a career intelligence officer. This was a man of business. A genius both in his scientific field and in running a major corporation. There, it seemed, was where his passions went. There were many photos of the man with women, rarely the same one twice, while attending various charity or social functions - all nice women, to be sure, Popov noted, like fine trophies, to be used and mounted on the wall in the appropriate empty space, while he searched after another. So, what sort of man was he working for?
Popov had to admit that he really didn't know, which was more than troubling. His life was now in pawn to a man whose motivations he didn't understand. In not knowing, he could not evaluate the operational dangers that attached to himself as a result. Should the purpose be discerned by others, and his employer discovered and arrested, then he,Popov, was in danger of arrest on serious charges. Well, the former KGB officer thought, as he returned the last of the periodicals to the clerk, there was an easy solution to that. He'd always have a bag packed, and two false identities ready to be used. Then, at the first sign of trouble, he'd get to an international airport and be off to Europe as quickly as possible, there to disappear and make use of the cash he'd banked. He already had enough to ensure a comfortable life for a few years, perhaps longer if he could find a really good investment counselor. Disappearing off the face of the earth wasn't all that hard for one with proper training, he told himself, walking back out on Fifth Avenue. All you needed was fifteen or twenty minutes of warning… Now how could he be sure to get that?…
The German federal police were as efficient as ever, Bill Tawney saw. All six of the terrorists had been identified within forty-eight hours, and while detailed interviews of their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances were still underway, the police already knew quite a lot and had forwarded it to the Austrians, from there to the British Embassy in Vienna, and from there to Hereford. The package included a photo and blueprints of the home owned by Furchtner and Dortmund. One of the couple, Tawney saw, had been a painter of moderate talent. The report said that they'd sold paintings at a local gallery, signed, of course, with a pseudonym. Perhaps they'd become more valuable now, the Six man thought idly, turning the page. They'd had a computer there, but the documents on it were not very useful. One of them, probably Furchtner, the German investigators thought, had written long political diatribes, appended but not yet translated-Dr. Bellow would probably want to read them, Tawney thought. Other than that, there was little remarkable. Books, many of them political in character, most of them printed and purchased in the former DDR. A nice TV and stereo system, and plenty of records and CDs of classical music. A decent middle-class car, properly maintained, and insured through a local company, under their cover names, Siegfried and Hanna Kolb. They'd had no really close friends in their neighborhood, had kept largely to themselves, and every public aspect of their lives had been in Ordnung, thus arousing no comment of any kind. And yet, Tawney thought, they'd sat there like coiled springs… awaiting what?
What had turned them loose? The German police had no explanation for that. A neighbor reported that a car had visited their house a few weeks before-but who had come and to what purpose, no one knew. The tag number of the car had never been noted, nor the make, though the interview transcript said that it had been a German-made car, probably white or at least light in color. Tawney couldn't evaluate the importance of that. It might have been a buyer for a painting, an insurance agent-or the person who had brought them out of cover and back into their former lives as radical left-wing terrorists.
It was not the least bit unusual for this career intelligence officer to conclude that there was nothing he could conclude, on the basis of the information he had. He told his secretary to forward Furchtner's writings to a translator for later analysis by both himself and Dr. Bellow, and that was about as far as he could go. Something had roused the two German terrorists from their professional sleep, but he didn't know what. The German federal police could conceivably stumble across the answer, but Tawney doubted it. Furchtner and Dortmund had figured out how to live unobtrusively in a nation whose police were pretty good at, finding people. Someone they'd known and trusted had come to them and persuaded them to set off on a mission. Whoever it had been had known how to contact them, which meant that there was some sort of terror network still in existence. The Germans had figured that out, and a notation on their preliminary report recommended further investigation through paid informants - which might or might not work. Tawney had devoted a few years of his life to cracking into the Irish terrorist groups, and he'd had a few minor successes, magnified at the time by their rarity. But there had long since been a Darwinian selection process in the terrorist world. The dumb ones died, and the smart ones survived, and after nearly thirty years of being chased by increasingly clever police agencies, the surviving terrorists were themselves very clever indeed-and the best of them had been trained at Moscow Centre itself by KGB officers… was that an investigative option? Tawney wondered. The new Russians had cooperated somewhat… but not very much in the area of terrorism, perhaps because of embarrassment over their former involvement with such people… or maybe because the records had been destroyed, which the Russians frequently claimed, and Tawney never quite believed. People like that destroyed nothing. The Soviets had developed the world's foremost bureaucracy, and bureaucrats simply couldn't destroy records. In any case, seeking cooperation from the Russians on such an item as this was too far above his level of authority, though he could write up a request, and it might even percolate a level or two up the chain before being quashed by some senior civil servant in the Foreign Office. He decided that he'd try it anyway. It gave him something to do, and it would at least tell the people at Century House, a few blocks across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster, that he was still alive and working.