Remo The Adventure Begins Read online

  Nor did he have liaisons with females. Finally, Grove was forced to ask him what in hell he did for kicks.

  “I buy things,” Wilson had answered. “Expensive things.”

  In that one moment, George Grove had found a man whose purpose was to be bought for money. George Grove had found a man he could trust.

  “These generals. Pin a few stars to the shoulders and they become impossible.”

  “You have a problem, Mr. Grove?”

  “No, I called you because I want a look at a well-fitting suit. Wilson, we have the most important defense project of our entire corporate history moving through Congress, moving well and expensively I might add . . . given enough to charities to feed the poor fifteen times over . . . cure diseases they haven’t even invented yet supported enough Boy Scout troops to make a second army . . .”

  “Mr. Grove, the problem.”

  “General Scott Watson has got a leak in his staff. If he doesn’t know what to do, you do.”

  Wilson nodded.

  “The leak isn’t the only thing that worries me. We have problems closer to home. Who is this?”

  Grove flipped several eight-by-ten glossy photographs onto his desk. Wilson picked them up. They were of a black man, conservatively dressed in a cashmere jacket and striped tie.

  “Yes, I remember him. Just yesterday. He had perfect identification from the Internal Revenue.”

  “Really. Then why did these photographs appear on my desk this morning?”

  “Well, there was a problem. His fingerprints didn’t jibe with any in the national directory of anyone working in a sensitive government post.”

  “That should be impossible,” said Grove.

  “It should be, but from time to time we run into many impossibles. They happen.”

  “Only when someone makes them happen.”

  “If there is a someone, we have no inkling. And if we don’t know, no one does. Perhaps I shouldn’t have lumped all the problems together.”

  “No, there are too many accidents that somehow help the government. I can live with the fact that sometimes, for no apparent reason, a congressman who is bought, gets unbought. Some law-enforcement official we own suddenly does his job. Not just against us. It happens to others, more and more. But sometimes, Wilson, even you swear there is some ghost out there with central access to government files, a ghost screwing things up for us.”

  “Ghost was just a term I used for a whole bunch of computer phenomena,” said Wilson.

  Grove ignored the explanation. He pointed to the pictures of the black man.

  “Wilson, I want to know who he is and who he works for.”

  “Mr. Grove, sooner or later, our sources always prove to be greater than anyone else’s. We’ll find him.”

  “Well, I don’t like it. I don’t like things I can’t control. That’s how you get destroyed, not controlling things. And what the hell is he grinning about?”

  “I think he saw the camera in the ceiling, Mr. Grove. I imagine he is some sort of a wise guy,” said Wilson, who did not know that Con McCleary was always up for these little jokes: they broke the monotony of living in constant terror.

  7

  The beautiful part about being a defense industry was that Grove Industries had an absolute right to be protected by the government. And Wilson knew the government, though not as well as Mr. Grove. Mr. Grove was a benefactor of political powers, military men. Of every dollar spent by Grove to make America safe, thirty-seven cents of it was spent on making sure America kept on letting Grove Industries keep it safe.

  Wilson’s special expertise was in two fields. Use of government protection, and when that failed, other things. One never mentioned the “other things” but considering that government protection meant anything from undercover agents to gunship helicopters to defend the secrecy of military projects, rarely were the “other things” needed.

  This was fortunate for Wilson, because the “field personnel” who were most adept at the other things made Wilson’s delicate stomach turn. He was not a man who loved violence. It was just that arms manufacturing was where the money was, and Wilson knew how to use money, lots of it.

  Therefore Grove Industries was both mother and father for all his needs.

  He wasted no time bringing the picture of the intruder at Grove headquarters to the FBI building and his main contact, an agent named Harmon.

  The first thing Harmon asked, even before he studied the picture, was:

  “He didn’t get access to HARP, did he?”

  “No,” said Wilson.

  “Did he try to get access to HARP? We have to know. The Air Force would have to know. The Joint Chiefs, I think, might have to know.”

  “No, he did not get access to the HARP system,” said Wilson. Harmon was a ruggedly handsome man with a neat gray suit. But Wilson saw it did not mold to his shoulders and the stitching around the lapels was pure off-the-rack. He wondered if Agent Harmon or people like him actually were aware of the stitching on the lapels. He thought not. All the FBI required was a tie and neatness.

  “Was the HARP system accessible to the computer he entered?”

  “The HARP system was.”

  “Damn,” said Harmon. He had a small office with one window. It overlooked an adjacent building. It was not what Wilson would call a power office. Especially not with the dull metal desk with the gray top. The carpeting could not have been more than ten dollars a yard, suitable for an even lower government functionary. But Agent Harmon was one of those who probably never even wondered what the pile depth beneath his feet was. He was, however, a conscientious worker. If not, Wilson would have asked George Grove to get the Justice Department to give Grove another man.

  “As you know, we have more safety precautions surrounding the HARP system than any other project in the nation’s history. That is a major part of our operating budget,” said Wilson.

  “I don’t even admit this to my wife, Wilson,” said Agent Harmon. “But it terrifies me how much we are going to depend on HARP in the coming years. And the Joint Chiefs are probably five times as concerned as I am because they know what is going on.”

  “No one gets into the HARP system,” said Wilson. “The security systems we have for HARP makes Fort Knox look like a vacant shed, and the first atomic bomb an advertisement on primetime TV. It is the most advanced security system in history.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Harmon, shaking his head. “But it gives me the willies that some guy off the street can get into your computers at all.”

  “What the intruder accessed was some form of finance control concerning a personnel weapon, a new rifle, the AR-60. Why he got no further, incidentally, was that there is an A-root access code, what our computer people tell me is a subpath to information, shared by HARP. Everything turned off, and the cameras started shooting away. But apparently this man was a professional agent of some sort because he knew enough to get out of there right away.”

  “The Russians?” asked Harmon.

  Wilson shrugged. “His voice and manner were American. That couldn’t be disguised.”

  “Russians use Americans. They use Bulgarians, Czechs, too,” said Harmon.

  “I don’t have any idea where this one comes from,” said Wilson.

  “Well, if he is American, and if he is a professional, maybe he is one of ours?” asked the FBI inspector.

  Access to a defense computer was a nightmare to counterintelligence operatives. In an age of technological warfare, the spies and those who chased them were not people who skulked through alleys, but those who understood the effects between RAM chip and atmospheric pressure on missile parabolas.

  The very plan of battle for war was not in some general’s head, but in what a weapons system could do or hope to do. America’s vulnerability was inside the memory of defense-company computers.

  To allow unauthorized personnel to break into those systems, especially Grove Industries’ file now that it was working on HARP, the la
st, best defense hope of the near future, was to take off the protective roof from every American home. And like missing roofs from America’s homes, people would realize it most in a rainstorm. A nuclear rain.

  Harmon felt himself hating that smooth black face in the picture. Who could be arrogant enough to smile at a surveillance camera? To Inspector Ralph Harmon, this man was laughing at his country’s safety.

  “His prints don’t check with our own security files,” said Wilson. “And you know our fingerprint files are almost as good as yours.”

  “Do you have them?”

  “We got the right hand. The left gave us no impression,” said Wilson. “The prints are on the back of the photographs. We can give you separate copies if you want. We thought one piece of paper was always better than two. I distrust paper.”

  “Do you think this man might have anything to do with your leaks on the AR-60?” asked Harmon.

  Beautiful, thought Wilson. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Now, we are not in the business of stopping people talking to the newspapers. And frankly the technology of a field weapon is not going to endanger us a whit,” said Harmon. “Dammit, the enemy is going to capture three or four hundred the first time they ever see action anyhow. Or maybe before, from warehouses some punks break into. The reason I ask about the leak is only because of HARP.”

  “I just don’t know.”

  “We’ll look into it, but frankly, your sources in the news media are better than ours.”

  “We try,” said Wilson.

  “I’ll bet,” said Harmon. He only suspected Grove power, but he knew it had to be enormous.

  “And. maybe we succeed a bit,” said Wilson modestly.

  “I saw something on the AR-60 the other night. A general was defending it. He made a good case. I only hope the gun is as good as he says it is,” said Harmon.

  “It is,” said Wilson. “It might be the best rifle we have ever built. But when someone, somewhere, questions whether a gun is functional, doubt is cast over a whole program. One simple slip of the lip, and one million guns are put in doubt. And then it becomes an attack against the morale of troops. All that damage is done with the first words.”

  Wilson had every confidence in Harmon. He was a good man. Grove Industries liked to use patriots. They were better than the people you had to buy. You could always trust them to do their jobs.

  • • •

  Inspector Harmon made copies of the pictures of the smiling well-dressed black man and circulated them throughout the intelligence agencies. He sent them to key FBI offices. He did not know he was also sending them to a computer room in a bank, where only one man ever seemed to go to the twentieth floor during working hours, a New Englander who took his hat off in the elevator and was never known to start a conversation. Everyone in the building thought of Mr. Smith, who brought his lunch every day in a brown paper bag, as an actuarial analyst with a very large private practice.

  This day, the computer itself interrupted Smith’s work with a flag. A flag was a form of alarm. It flashed a small red light to indicate there was something Smith should look into. If it were important enough, it would break into anything Smith was working on. First came the small red light in the upper corner of his screen, and then, everything else disappeared. Thrown onto the screen was an alarm that something might compromise the secrecy of the organization. It was a confirmed image of McCleary and his fingerprinting confirmation on the right hand.

  The FBI was looking for him and the prints. Smith watched the electronic memos route themselves throughout the government. The prints even went into the CIA files because the FBI suspected this man might be a former government agent. Good guess, thought Smith. But there, where they had once been, they no longer were. Smith had had them removed years before when he had chosen this man despite obvious personal flaws concerning drink and women. The thing about Con McCleary that made him so worthwhile was that he got things done. And he was loyal to his country.

  What McCleary had done most recently was to raid the AR-60 files and verify what Smith had suspected: they had used the secrecy of the HARP system, namely its multitudes of electronic defenses, to shield all their operations at Grove.

  McCleary had found the parameters of the blocks by trying to get into HARP, and then all Smith had to do was send them back into the Grove system, and let the Grove teckies (technologists) think they were repairing an access problem. They would simply show Smith how to get in without ever knowing they were doing it. Then Smith would make access to the AR-60 available to the proper Army sections or the General Accounting Office that made sure Americans got what they paid for.

  Smith waited as the warning filled the screen with information as to who was looking for what and how much they knew. Looking in on this world, safe from detection but able to influence events, was almost like playing God, he thought. And as soon as the thought became conscious, he pushed it from his mind.

  The good Lord was always sure of what he was doing. Smith only hoped he knew. He didn’t try to stop the search for McCleary. That would only create an information block and as soon as someone discovered the wall was there, they would figure out how to scale it, break it, or get around it some other way.

  So one did not block, one redirected. Smith sent in a security clearance for McCleary with McCleary’s face and prints, under the name Mel Bergman, computer engineer, Grove Industries, Grove, Idaho, on special assignment Taiwan.

  Then he created a payroll record for Mr. Bergman, including complaints about withholding. He created a system for Mr. Bergman that would enable Grove and the FBI to chase him for months, and then declare him missing.

  This job finished, Smith phoned McCleary.

  “I’d like to see you in the shop,” he said. He had reached McCleary’s apartment.

  “Does it have to be now?” asked McCleary.

  “Yes,” said Smith.

  Smith heard a woman’s groan through the receiver.

  “Does it have to be now? I have met the one woman who stands me on end. I have never in my life been so moved. And I have never met someone who is so intelligent, and kind and courageous, weak when she should be weak, and strong when she should be strong.”

  “Will it be long?”

  “As long as I can make it.”

  “Well, make it quick,” said Smith. “I don’t suppose you could be here in a half-hour?”

  “Something important?”

  “I think we might be in danger. Nothing firm yet. Something I want to talk to you about.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “What about your woman?”

  “I’ll return her to the bar I met her in twenty minutes ago,” said McCleary.

  There was a scream of indignation on the other end, but McCleary was at the “shop” within twenty minutes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Grove Industries,” said Smith.

  “I got what you wanted right on those little floppy disks you had designed so that they could pass through security and not be destroyed.”

  “I didn’t design them. The CIA designed them. Con, how many penetrations have you done?”

  “For work?”

  “Yes, work,” said Smith, realizing he should have let McCleary finish what he was doing with the woman. It would be on his mind all day.

  “A hundred. A hundred and twenty. It’s not really something difficult with all the really valid identification you can get for me.”

  “And how many did you have to flee from because they saw through what was going on?”

  “Two,” said McCleary.

  “And how many were able to mount a search for you right within the United States government itself?”

  “None,” said McCleary.

  “One,” said Smith.

  “Grove?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that only shows how well protected they are from spies. We should like that in a defense industry.”
/>   “Except when they seem to defend themselves too well. They got to the CIA, McCleary. That’s closer to you than anyone has gotten before.”

  “Anyone remember me?”

  “No, you were a small Far East branch. I made sure all of those who knew you by face, sound and walk stayed in the Far East.”

  “Those were the only friends I had.”

  “Those were your drinking buddies. You didn’t have any friends,” said Smith.

  “I know,” said McCleary. “But when it comes to these things, you should be allowing a man to lie to himself.”

  Smith understood the loneliness of it very well. This man, who would have preferred to spend a life pleasantly over a beer in a bar, chose instead to defend his country. McCleary, unlike Smith, was the sort who did need friends. He just didn’t happen to have accumulated any since high school.

  “I’m worried,” said Smith.

  He wore his three-piece gray suit and sat on a stiff-backed chair before a computer terminal. McCleary wore an open shirt showing a gold chain on a hairy chest, and loose gray pants. He lounged against a computer storage unit.

  “You think they are going to come after us?” asked McCleary.

  “I think we might be needing the new man sooner than we expected. With Grove we sent in General Accounting. We sent in Army comptrollers. We even isolated a major in the Pentagon and fed her enough information to get her on the case. But nothing has worked so far. The only one able to get into Grove Industries’ books is Grove Industries. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What about me? I got in.”

  “You were our last resort. And now they may be coming after us. What is the situation with Remo?”

  McCleary shook his head. “I don’t know. I think there might be some trouble there.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. That’s what’s wrong. Every day until two days ago, I heard one complaint per twenty-four-hour period from Chiun about Remo. Every day. Now nothing.”