Falling Star (30 page)

"Can I help you?"  The voice of the police sergeant came from behind the high golden oak counter.  Before the police sergeant stood a dazed man with dirty, matted hair, whose clothes were unkempt and who weaved as he stood.

"Yes," he stuttered.  "I'd like to speak to someone about something."

"That's not enough," said the police sergeant.  "You'll have to tell me more."

"I'm a secret agent, I need help."

God, thought the police sergeant.  Why do I get them all?

"Just sit on the bench there for a moment.  I'll get someone to help you."

As Sorenson moved away from the counter, the unmistakable scent of someone who hadn't bathed in many days wafted over the counter.  The police sergeant picked up the telephone and dialed the detective squad room.

"Pete, I've got a live one for you.  He claims he's a secret agent.  Do you want to see him or should I just get rid of him?" whispered the police sergeant into the telephone.

"Secret agent, huh?  Well, it's a slow morning.  Why don't you send him back," said Detective Sergeant Peter Wilkinson.

A moment later, Sorenson knocked on the door to the detective squad room.

"Come in.  Take a seat," said Wilkinson, as he put a blank interview form into his typewriter.  "Now what can I do for you?"

"My name is William Sorenson.  My real name is Nikolai Sakurov.  I was sent to the United States to infiltrate your country and to spy."

"By whom?"

"Russia."

"How long ago?"

"Ten years."

"Where do you live?"

"In the James Arms Apartments at 36th and South James Avenue, Apartment 28A."

"What is your telephone number?"

"436-4009."

"What do you do?"

"I operate the Lake of the Isles Bicycle Repair Shop in Lowry Hill."

"How is the security of the United States going to be hurt by a bicycle repairman?"

"You don't understand, I was sent here in deep cover."

"What?"

"I said deep cover."

"Can you explain that to me."

"My masters have been infiltrating the United States for years, particularly across the Canadian border."

"Who are your masters?"

"The Soviet military.  They have a program of training spies who can infiltrate a country like the United States.  The committee called this project 'Cicada', after the insect by that name."

"What's a cicada?" said Wilkinson.

"You know, the insect that hibernates for years," said Sorenson.  "We're told to go underground for long periods of time.  We've been penetrating the shores of the United States for over thirty years.  We're trained from youth in special camps in the Urals until we're indistinguishable from Americans.  We enter the country using either false visas from western European countries or travel through Canada and slip into the United States in such places as International Falls, Minnesota, Vancouver, or Detroit.

"The crossing guards at these stations on the Canadian border do little more than say hello to the occupants of cars.  And when we answer back in a mid-American accent, the guards assume that we're United States citizens.  Once in the country, we're instructed to live a modest life, drawing no attention to ourselves.  Often we don't hear from our controllers for years or even decades."

"That's a very interesting story, Mr. Sorenson.  What do you want me to do?"

Sorenson bolted out of his chair.  "You're the policeman, not me."

"Now calm down, Mr. Sorenson," said Wilkinson.  "Please take your seat."

"What I've been trying to tell you is that the KGB has infiltrated this country, your country.  Not in small groups, but in hundreds."

"But why are you telling me all this stuff?"

"I think my controller has gone crazy.  He shot this guy last week because he thought he was a CSAC agent.  I didn't think being a cicada meant we had to kill.  I just thought it would be a game."

"Who was this guy you say was shot?"

"A CSAC agent named Richard Winslow."

"What is Seasack?"

"CSAC.  C-S-A-C."

"What is C-S-A-C?"

"I don't know."

"What?  Who is your controller?"

"I only know his first name, it's Tim.  His real name is Dimitri."

"Where was this Winslow shot?"

"Near Mankato."

Sensing he was getting nowhere with this person, Wilkinson looked at his watch.

"Mr. Sorenson, I can't continue this discussion now because I have to be across town in ten minutes.  Can I call you tomorrow?"

"No, Dimitri might find out.  I'll call you."

"Well, have it your way," sighed Wilkinson as he escorted Sorenson out to the lobby.

As Sorenson left the precinct house, Wilkinson asked the police sergeant if he had heard of any shootings in Mankato, involving a Richard Winslow.  The sergeant said he would check InfoNet and switched his computer on.  After the greenish prompt, he typed in the alphanumeric identifying the precinct and requested the search mode.

The computer responded:  SEARCH KEYWORDS:

The police sergeant typed in: Winslow, Richard Winslow, R. Winslow, Mankato.    In a short minute, the computer responded: SEARCH TERM NOT FOUND.

Wilkinson looked over his colleague's shoulder at the response.

"What are you gonna do, Pete?"

"I guess we should write it up and send it down the chain.  Maybe we should also send it to DODNet, just in case.  My guess is that we'll never see him again.  I wonder what he was smoking."

Wilkinson trudged wearily back to his desk.

1600 Hours: Wednesday, June 16, 1993: Lake of the Isles Bicycle Repair Shop, Minneapolis

Sorenson worked on the aquamarine Diamond Back trail bike trying to get the derailleur to work right.  "Damn kids, they spend five, six hundred dollars on an expensive bike and then they hop curbs and go up and down steps like they were in Sherman tanks," he muttered.

Here, at least, surrounded by his beloved bicycles, there was order to the world.

Visiting the police station had a cathartic effect on Sorenson, but had instilled anger as well.  That detective had been making fun of him.

When he arrived home, Sorenson went into the bathroom, took a shower, got a beer out of the refrigerator, and sat down before the television and then went to his shop for the first time in days.

Sorenson was thoroughly engrossed in the problem of straightening out the derailleur that had been mangled in a fall its rider had taken while going down a flight of stone steps.  He did not hear the front door of his shop open and the man walk in.

Feeling a presence, Sorenson turned to see the outline of a man framed in the doorway.  The outside light, shining behind the man, made it difficult to see who the newcomer was.

"Can I help you?" said Sorenson.

"Nikolayevich, I've sent you many messages, but I've heard no response."

"Dimitri."

"Nikolai, why have you not responded to my commands?"

"I've been very busy with my repair shop.  I haven't gone by the canoe racks."

The canoe racks on the northern shore of Lake of the Isles was the drop point for messages from Walsh to his subordinates.  They were required to check for messages regularly.  Sorenson has ignored this duty in recent days.

"But you know your prime duty."

"Yes, Comrade.  I know my prime duty."

"Nikolayevich, you have failed me one too many times."

Sorenson saw the glint of the pistol and the silencer in Walsh's hand.  He turned to escape.  Walsh calmly squeezed the trigger of his Colt Commander auto pistol.  The silent bullet found its mark.  It entered through Sorenson's upper right arm, coursing through his chest cavity, tearing muscle, exploding lung tissue, breaking bones, and tearing membrane along its way.  The exit wound was big enough to put a fist through.  As the bullet exited, it tore a gushing, gaping wound.  Sorenson's blood flowed out in waves, splattering crimson on every surface.

The force of the bullet threw Sorenson against the aquamarine Diamond Back trail bike, which fell to the floor in a metallic clatter.  The wheels of the bike caught other bikes that were in storage and caused a chain reaction with bikes of all colors and makes falling and jumbling into a heap of rubber and metal.

Sorenson lay in this wreckage, still conscious.  His brown eyes met the pale blue eyes of his executioner.  "Why, Dimitri?" said Sorenson, as blood gurgled out of his mouth.  "Why?"

Walsh walked over to the mortally wounded Nikolai Sakurov and calmly squeezed the trigger of his silenced pistol two more times.

The pale blue eyes of Dimitri surveyed the carnage before him.  In a soft, dispassionate voice, Dimitri said to the earthly remains of his former comrade, "Nikolayevich, you have betrayed us."

He calmly placed the pistol in his trouser belt and walked quietly out to his Jeep, parked in front of Sorenson's shop.

0800 Hours: Thursday, June 17, 1993: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.

"Wow!" exclaimed Martha.  "I'm flabbergasted."

Adams had just finished explaining all the details of the CSAC assignment and how they suspected that there had to be some connection between the attacks on its agents and how CSAC functioned.  Martha had been cleared for temporary duty with CSAC through the FBI director's office and McHugh's.

"What we need you to do, Martha, is use your best hacking skills to find if there is a connection and what it is.  Be careful.  These people have killed.  They are professional killers."

"I'll get right on it," she said, a big grin on her young face.  "I have a theory that somehow the bad guys have gotten access to the communications network and are exploiting that for their purposes."

Sitting down at her computer terminal, Martha was able to access the Department of Defense telecommunications network with relative ease.  After experimenting with a few random access codes, Martha was able to gain access into the DODNet, an informational network of sensitive, but not classified, Department of Defense communications.

Puzzled by the relative ease with which she was able to access the Department of Defense telecommunications, Martha decided to determine how travel arrangements were either made, arranged, or documented.  That had to be the key to the puzzle.

Martha decided to call George Smith, whom she understood from Adams to be the security officer for CSAC.

"Hello, Mr. Smith?" said Martha.

"Yes?"

"I'm Special Agent Martha Thomas with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Could I set up a meeting with you for this afternoon?"

"Herb has told me all about you.  I'd be very pleased to see you. About 3 p.m. O.K.?"

"See you then."

1300 Hours: Thursday, June 17, 1993: CSAC Offices, Washington, D.C.

"That is really some security system," Martha said, impressed.

She was sitting in Smith's office.  Also crammed into the small office were Mike, Adams, and Mildred.

"Well, it's something you have to get used to," said Smith.

"Tell me about how CSAC travel arrangements are made," she said.

"Each center is responsible for making its own arrangements.  The tickets are secured by the center without prior approval by Washington.  Therefore, the agent is not subject to any scrutiny at a central point."

"Then how do you know when the courier is supposed to arrive?"

"We're notified by telephone as to their arrival and the itinerary is noted in our computers."

"How secure are the computer programs?" said Martha.

"Very secure.  No one outside of a control group at CSAC knows of the program's existence."

"How do you coordinate the travel?"

"Through scrambled telephonic transmissions.  Shit, that's got to be it," he said suddenly.  "Someone has tapped into our secured telephone system."

"Wait a minute, George.  That doesn't account for the fact that the courier from Watch Station One arrived unscathed.  There has to be another connection.  Was the secured line used for his message?"

"Let's plot this out," said Smith as he went to the green chalkboard in his office.  "First, Mildred took commercial scheduled service from Minneapolis to New York and from there to National.  She was stalked at least from New York by Davenport, who lived in Des Moines."

Smith drew a line and a box on the chalkboard.  "Winslow flies scheduled airline service from Seattle to Minneapolis, disappears and turns up dead in a farmhouse fire in Mankato, Minnesota."

"Excuse me," said Mike.  "The attacks on me didn't coincide with any scheduled air service."

"But both of your trips used CSAC personnel and equipment," said Adams.  "In addition, on the second trip you were coming from Newport News, Virginia, the logical point for encoding messages from Watch Station One."

"That's right," said Smith.  "The real courier was a seaman rotating off Watch Station One.  He hitched a ride from Newport News on an Orion flying to Andrews Air Force Base.  There, his wife picked him up and dropped him off at CSAC-Washington.  Now the mystery is why our friends would think that you, Mike, were the courier, instead."

"Because I flew down to Newport News with a lot of security and then turned right around and flew back with even more security," remembered Mike aloud.

"Yes, that would have attracted a lot of attention," said Martha.

"But Mike didn't fly commercial, so how did the bad guys point him out?" said Smith.

"Where is the connection in all of this?" said an exasperated Mildred.  "The only point I can see is that the bad guys knew who we were or suspected we were couriers."

"Given the quickness with which the attacks occurred, this has to be an inside job," said Mike.

"Want to hear some more?" said Adams.  "Over this morning's InfoNet and DODNet was a crazy report that a bicycle repair man turned himself in for the murder of Richard Winslow.  Believing the man was hallucinating, the Minneapolis police turned him away."

"Didn't we squelch the InfoNet report on Winslow?" said Mike.

"That's right," said Adams.  "We need to get to that officer as soon as possible.  I can get there by this evening."