Understrike

by James Barrington

  Chapter 16

  Thursday

  Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago

  ‘Tell us,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Pavlov has a burner phone,’ Steve Barber replied. ‘Burdiss told him to buy one when he got to Oslo, and then to ring Burdiss on his mobile so that he would know the number. That number was in the file. So what we have to do is call him, sort out a good place to meet, and then we can all get out of here.’

  ‘That sounds simple when you say it quickly, Steve,’ Jackson said, ‘but I can see a few problems.’

  ‘So can I,’ Richter said. ‘Burdiss was snatched and killed by the opposition, and I don’t believe they wouldn’t have grabbed his phone either out of his pocket if he’d been carrying it, or later from his hotel room. And if they had his phone, it wouldn’t have been rocket science for them to identify Pavlov’s number. Because of the route he took, they would have known it must have been a Russian or a Finnish number if he bought it before he got to Oslo, or a Norwegian number if he did exactly what Burdiss told him.’

  ‘Good thinking, but it’s not quite that easy,’ Mason replied, pulling a mobile out of his pocket and showing it to Richter. ‘Burdiss would have been carrying one of these, a Company phone. It looks like a regular mobile, but it’s not. There’s a built-in scrambling circuit and a few other extras, but the main difference is the security system. Most mobiles have a screen lock, and you need a four-digit number to access the phone. These models use facial recognition, so the phone has to recognize the owner before it’ll even display the unlock screen, and then it needs a six-digit number to open the phone. Three wrong tries and the whole thing locks permanently and the techies down in the basement at Langley have to work their magic to open it up again. And there’s what we call a "duress" number as well. Keying that in locks the phone permanently, and sends a continuous tracking signal through the mobile network to the Company situation room.’

  ‘Did that happen when Burdiss disappeared?’ Richter asked Jackson.

  ‘No, but based on the triangulation data provided by the local carrier, we’re fairly sure he was carrying it when he left his hotel room,’ she replied, ‘but then it was switched off, probably by his killers when they snatched him so that his location couldn’t be tracked. And he was most likely dead before they tried to access it, so he never got the chance to send the duress code. But whatever happened, we can be pretty certain that the Russians didn’t manage to identify the phone number Pavlov is using.’

  ‘Because another mutilated corpse hasn’t turned up here, and no seriously ill patients have been loaded onto an aircraft for some kind of specialist treatment that’s only available somewhere in Russia?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Historically, the repatriation of unwilling Russian citizens was often achieved by sedating them, strapping them to stretchers and flying them back to Moscow, where they usually vanished without trace.

  ‘Give us the short version of what Burdiss put in the file,’ Jackson instructed.

  Barber read out the highlights of the encrypted email he had been sent in a voice that was just loud enough for his three companions to hear. He confirmed the work-names that Burdiss and Mark Rawlins, the analyst in Moscow who Pavlov had first approached, had been using, and then went on to read out the details of the initial appreciation of the data the Russian had supplied. That surprised – and alarmed – them all.

  ‘Shit,’ Mason said. ‘Is that for real?’

  ‘Langley seems to think so, according to this,’ Barber replied. ‘Pretty scary stuff, if it’s true. I mean, I’ve been around weapons and stuff for twenty years, and most of that was new to me. The guys Pavlov has been monitoring are talking about the same kind of yields that were being developed by us and the Russkies back in the Sixties. The biggest nuke we ever built was the B41, and that had a yield of twenty-five megatons, but the Russian RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, the Tsar Bomba, was double that, at fifty megatons, about the same as nearly four thousand Hiroshima detonations, so we know they’ve had the technology to build this kind of stuff for years. In fact, if the Tsar Bomba had incorporated a uranium-238 tamper to reflect the neutrons back into the core at the moment of detonation, the yield could have been one hundred megatons. But the real big question, as far as I can see, is what they’ll be targeting, because I have no idea. I kinda thought the days of MAD ended at pretty much the same time as the Cold War finished. But,’ he added, ‘what was in the file and what’s happened out here have spooked Langley, and there’s a back-up squad of a dozen of our guys getting prepped to head out this way.’

  ‘You have an ETA for them?’ Mason asked.

  ‘Not yet, and it looks like it might take them a while. They’re planning on flying direct to Svalbard from the States in a Company aircraft, and they’ll be carrying weapons, so that means they’ll need DipClear – diplomatic clearance – from the Norwegian government before they lift off, and getting that could take some time. They’re sending another half-dozen men, unarmed, by commercial air, but again, they ain’t gonna to be walking through that door any time soon, because pretty much whatever route they take they’re gonna be travelling for twenty-five hours, minimum, and spending a whole heap of time in transit lounges.’

  ‘Just a thought,’ Richter said, ‘but there might be a way of getting your guys here a hell of a lot quicker.’

  ‘There is? What?’ Jackson demanded.

  ‘I was a military pilot for years. There’s one guaranteed way of getting on the ground at pretty much any airport you want. The trick is what happens after you’ve landed. All you do is file a flight plan to somewhere else, somewhere beyond the place you actually want to get to, and then you pull an in-flight emergency. Shut down one engine, have a fire indication, something like that, and then you call Pan-Pan or Mayday and request an immediate descent and emergency landing at the nearest available airfield. And bearing in mind where we are, if the aircraft’s within a hundred miles of us, the nearest available airfield is definitely going to be Longyearbyen.’

  ‘I see that,’ Barber said, ‘but unless the aircraft’s heading for some place in Russia, which is pretty much all that there is out to the east of us, that isn’t going to work.’

  Richter shook his head.

  ‘You’re thinking straight lines, as in the shortest distance between two points, but that doesn’t apply in aviation. Long-distance flights use great circle tracks, because that’s the shortest distance between two points on a globe, but it looks completely wrong on a map. If you’re flying from the States to somewhere in Europe, if you look out of the window about halfway through the flight, the land you’ll see below you will probably be Iceland. If your guys in America flight plan for an airfield right up in the north of Scandinavia, probably somewhere in Finnmark, the great circle track will take them way up to the north. I don’t think it’ll take them right over Svalbard, but that isn’t the point. If they pull their emergency when Longyearbyen is the closest airfield, that’s where they’ll be able to land. The other thing they need to do is make sure that whatever they’re flying can use the local airfield, because the runway’s only just over eight thousand feet long.’

  ‘Send a message to Langley, Steve,’ Jackson instructed. ‘Suggest they consider trying that as a way of getting armed support here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘If that does happen,’ Richter said, ‘a lot will depend upon how good America’s relations are with Norway, and particularly with the governor here on the archipelago. If the pilot pretends he’s had a fire warning, getting everyone out of the aircraft and into the terminal building will happen really quickly once the aircraft has landed. The trick then will be getting them out of the terminal building and off the airfield, with their weapons. There’ll be nothing wrong with the aircraft, as any competent team of maintainers will be able to tell, and the Norwegian authorities will probably see the diversion and landing as exactly what they are – a device – and they’d be quite right. Your Stat
e Department will need to be quite persuasive to get it sorted.’

  ‘That’s all way above my pay grade,’ Jackson said, ‘and not my problem. We’ve made the suggestion and somebody else can sort out the details, if they decide it’s feasible.’ She paused for a moment, and shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe the Russians are trying to start another arms race,’ she went on. ‘That just doesn’t make any sense. They know we can match them, bomb for bomb and missile for missile, so why would they even try?’

  ‘They must have a reason,’ Richter said. ‘I have no idea why they’re developing this high-yield device, but in my experience the Russians don’t do anything on a whim. There’s someone sitting in Moscow or somewhere who’s worked this out very carefully. He’s seen an opportunity to do some nation – almost certainly America, unless the Kremlin has had a bit of a rethink – considerable harm with this device. But I agree with you. This can’t be the start of a new arms race, because the Russians would lose, and they know they would lose. There must be something else going on here, and as far as I can see the only person who’s likely to be able to give us a steer in the right direction is Pavlov.’

  ‘So we need to get him out,’ Barber said, looking up from his laptop and stating the obvious, ‘before the Russians can shut him up. But I think there are a few things we need to bear in mind before we do anything, like the fact that we’re probably being watched ourselves by the opposition, and if we simply make the call to him and then leave the hotel, we’ll probably be followed by a bunch of former Spetsnaz soldiers each carrying a pistol and maybe a rifle as well.’

  ‘Check out the table by the main door,’ Richter said quietly. ‘Three men, and they don’t look like locals to me.’

  Both Jackson and Barber were far too professional to turn around and look in the direction of the door, and Mason, who was sitting and facing in that general direction, simply flicked a quick glance towards the group of men Richter had indicated.

  ‘Confirmed,’ Mason said. ‘I can see at least two rifle cases, and all three are still wearing parkas despite the fact that it’s pretty warm in here, so they’re probably carrying pistols. Good call, Paul.’

  ‘They were already sitting there when we came down to the lounge,’ Richter said, ‘and they looked out of place to me then. If they are some of the opposition, then that means they’ve made the three of you and now me as well, and because they’ve already killed Walter Burdiss I don’t think they’d find it too difficult to send us to meet our makers if they want to. Whatever we do now, we have to think it through first, carefully. The only good thing is that as far as I could see they hadn’t got a directional mic or anything else they could be using to bug us, so at least they don’t know what we’ve been saying over here.’

  Jackson nodded.

  ‘That makes sense,’ she said. ‘OK, from now on, we work on the basis that our rooms might have been compromised, and we don’t have any equipment with us to try to locate any bugs, so every time we talk about what we’re doing, we do it in a different public place, or outside. And we don’t say anything definitive even then. If we need to tell each other a time, a place or a phone number or anything like that, we write it down, memorize it, and then destroy the paper. Burn it or swallow it or something.’

  ‘You’ve got the phone number in that email?’ Richter asked Barber, who nodded. ‘OK. We’ve all got mobiles, and there are four of us in here and three of them, so just to start the ball rolling, as it were, why don’t we each make a note of the number, then leave the hotel and walk in four different directions. Whichever one of us doesn’t get followed makes the call.’

  Barber started to shake his head, then stopped and nodded.

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he admitted. ‘If "George" answers, at least we’ll know we’re not wasting our time up here in the frozen north. And if he does pick up the phone, what do we tell him?’

  ‘That’s the easy bit,’ Jackson said. ‘We tell him we’re here, in Longyearbyen, and we will get him out. We tell him to stay where he is, and not to go outside for any reason. He’s to keep his phone switched on and fully charged at all times, and we’ll get back to him as soon as we’ve decided what the hell we’re going to do.’

  ‘And at least we know what plan Burdiss had in mind,’ Barber said. ‘You ever heard of the Thomas G Thompson?’ Three faces looked at him with varying degrees of blank incomprehension. ‘OK. It’s a survey vessel, a blue-water research ship operated by the University of Washington, but more importantly it’s owned by the US Navy, and right now it’s somewhere between the northern tip of Greenland and Svalbard. It should be docking here very late tonight, maybe in the early hours of the morning. Burdiss had arranged passage for himself and Pavlov on that ship. He was worried about being intercepted if they tried to fly out of an international airport in Europe, and I suppose he figured that Svalbard would be nice and quiet and they could just kind of walk on board and slip away. The ship should have arrived here the day after Burdiss flew in to Longyearbyen, but it was delayed leaving Greenland. That probably wasn’t the brightest idea he’d ever had.’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ Jackson said. ‘I’ll check with Langley, and make sure that the arrangement is still in place, despite Burdiss’s death. If it isn’t, then we’ll have to get something else sorted, either a commercial flight or we’ll try and divert a Company Lear or something bigger up here to pick us up. How big is that NOAA ship, Steve?’

  ‘Pretty small. According to the entry in Wikipedia, which I’ve just looked up, it’s a little over three thousand tons displacement, and it carries about sixty scientists and crew. But if you’re asking if we could all fit into it, then I guess the answer is yes, as long as the captain is happy to take us.’

  ‘OK. That might still be the best option, because it’s American territory, and the sooner we’re out of Europe, and especially Norway, the happier I’ll be. Right. We’ll do as Paul suggested. Whichever of us isn’t followed will make the call, and we’ll meet up in half an hour at the Basecamp Hotel.’

  ‘I’d feel better if I was carrying,’ Richter said, ‘and you should have a weapon as well, Carole-Anne.’

  ‘I’m happy with the rifle, and I don’t think these guys are going to want to get involved in a firefight in the middle of the town,’ Mason said, ‘so why don’t you take my Smith. Six cylinders, all loaded. We can sort you out your own handgun later.’

  ‘Thanks. That makes me feel happier. Carole-Anne?’

  Jackson gestured towards her handbag.

  ‘What I’ve got in there probably wouldn’t stop a polar bear,’ she said, ‘but it would be quite enough to take care of some Russian thug. Right, let’s do this. Thirty minutes, Basecamp Hotel. We’re out of here.’

  Barber took out a small notebook, ripped out one page, tore it into four pieces, wrote the telephone number on each and handed them around. He closed the laptop, slid it into his bag and stood up. He and Mason picked up the rifle cases, and the four of them walked out of the lounge, paying no attention whatsoever to the three hard-faced men sitting around a low table cluttered with empty cups and empty plates. They walked out of the door of the Radisson Blu Hotel, stood for a few moments just outside the building, then Richter separated from them and walked away briskly.

  He headed back the way he had come, walking in the general direction of the Basecamp Hotel, the Smith & Wesson Model 29 now a comforting weight on his right hip. After about a hundred yards, he stepped off the path and looked back towards the Radisson Blu, checking to see if he was being followed. But there was nobody in sight, no shadows moving, and no sign of anyone anywhere near him.

  Maybe he’d been wrong about the men in the hotel lounge. Maybe they were just miners or naturalists or scientists. But they didn’t look like miners or naturalists or scientists, and if they had been following one of those professions, that didn’t begin to explain the two rifle cases on the seat beside them. Or maybe they weren’t following him because they were fol
lowing the other three. Or maybe they had bugged that corner of the lounge and knew exactly what Richter and the others had planned, and had decided to grab Jackson as potentially the weakest and most vulnerable of the four. If they had, Richter wished them luck, because he knew just how tough Carole-Anne Jackson actually was.

  He waited in the shadow of a building for another couple of minutes, but still saw no one. Speculation was useless. They had a plan, and he had a part to play in it, so he walked on through the settlement, past the Basecamp Hotel, until he reached an open area that appeared to be entirely devoid of people and occupied only by rank upon rank of snowmobiles.

  He turned round in a complete circle, twice, checking that he had missed nothing and no one, then took out his mobile phone, selected the keypad and entered the number Barber had written on the slip of paper. Then he crumpled the paper into a ball, popped it in his mouth and swallowed it. Not the most secure way of disposing of classified information, but he was quite sure it would be just as effective as doing anything else. Then he pressed the green button symbol on the screen to make the call.

  The phone rang four times before the ringing tone cut off, and he heard a male voice say, somewhat hesitantly, ‘Ja?’ – ‘yes’ in Norwegian.

  Richter didn’t know what language abilities Dmitri Pavlov had, but the one thing he was quite certain about was that the man would speak Russian, so that was the language he tried first.

  ‘Dmitri, you don’t know me, but you did know a man I worked with. His name was Richard. Do you remember him?’

  There was a brief pause before the Russian responded. Richter guessed that hearing a Russian voice, or more accurately a voice speaking Russian, on the telephone would initially have panicked Pavlov because he would have assumed he had been tracked down by the team of hunters sent out from Moscow to take him back or kill him. That was why he had said little, and mentioned the name ‘Richard’ as soon as he could.