by Ben Coes
Calibrisi spoke first.
“No way do we tell Moscow,” the CIA chief said. “That’s a recipe for wasting a lot of time and energy that could be used to find this bomb. We ask for help, they deny the existence of it, we’re forced to try and prove our case that there are still nukes inside Ukraine, and all of a sudden we will have burned three days trying to win a debate instead of hunting this thing down.”
“I disagree,” said Mason, secretary of homeland security. “We should tap into their knowledge base immediately. This is not just America’s problem. It’s everyone’s problem.”
“General Krug,” said Brubaker, “any thoughts?”
“We’re way behind here,” said Krug. “If this bomb went missing four days ago, it’s through the Bosphorus Strait by now and probably most of the way across the Mediterranean. I wouldn’t bother with Russia, Ukraine, or anything other than the nine-mile stretch of ocean between Gibraltar and Tangier. If they make it past Gibraltar, they will enjoy open ocean all the way to the U.S. East Coast. There are simply too many boats and too much ocean.”
“What do you look for?” asked Raditz.
“We should assume they’re sophisticated enough to know they’re being watched and spectragraphed,” said Krug. “They’ll need a vessel that blends in and also is able to make a transatlantic crossing. My guess is they’re on some sort of deep-sea fishing trawler, a few hundred feet long. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them floating around. I think we need to get UAVs over the Strait of Gibraltar immediately, along with whatever warships we have at Naval Station Rota in Spain. SEAL Team 6 has some men at Rota as well, and I’d position them in fastboats.”
“How long to get everything in range?” asked Raditz.
“A few hours.”
“Get them moving.”
“I suggest we run this out of Langley,” added Krug.
“Why Langley?” asked Brubaker.
Krug cleared his throat.
“Because the truth is, if they make it past Spain, it becomes an intelligence operation,” he said. “Bill, you might as well start involving yourselves now.”
“I hear you,” said Polk, “and we’re ready to fill that role. I’ll have Control set up a secure uplink.”
“I’ll get the ships, SEALs, and drones moving,” said Krug. “Josh, you got anything else?”
“No, not at the moment. Let’s reconvene in an hour.”
Piper Redgrave, head of the National Security Agency, spoke up.
“I need to interrupt here,” she said. “I have to bring something to everyone’s attention that could be related.”
“Piper,” said Brubaker, “tell me it’s something good.”
Redgrave was silent for a few pregnant moments. She cleared her throat.
“We broke into a server we know to be run by an Al Qaeda tertiary in Damascus,” she said. “There is high-frequency chatter across the terror complex focused on a second major attack on the United States. They’re calling it ‘nine/twelve.’”
The conference call went silent.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Brubaker. “When were you going to elevate this?”
“We decrypted it half an hour ago,” said Redgrave.
Again, the call went silent.
“Mike,” said Brubaker, breaking the quiet, “we need to get the president up to speed. Bring Secretary Black with you. Brief him on the way to the White House. Hector, Bill: NCS has tactical command control. I want live protocols run in through Langley, then distributed across interagency in real time. The Milstar data is critical at this point. But it’s not as critical as the chatter. Piper: NSA has to dig deeper, and it needs to happen immediately. Open up PRISM, MYSTIC, ThinThread, and any other signals archives NSA has access to. We need to get to the bottom of this nine/twelve chatter and determine if it’s related to the nuclear device. God help us if it is.”
10
DIRECTOR’S OFFICE
LANGLEY
Calibrisi, Polk, and several other NCS staffers, analysts, and case officers were in Calibrisi’s glass-walled seventh-floor corner office when Calibrisi’s phone buzzed. It was Jim Bruckheimer from the NSA.
“Tell me you found Bokolov,” said Calibrisi.
“Yeah, we got ’em,” said Bruckheimer. “But we have something even better.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“We tracked Bokolov to southern France,” said Bruckheimer. “Fifteen minutes ago, he bought a forty-four-thousand-dollar Rolex Daytona at a jewelry store in Cannes. They must pay those Ukrainian generals well, huh?”
“Someone did.”
“That’s what we assumed, so we did a little more research. A month ago, Alexei Malnikov wired him eight million dollars from a Zurich bank account.”
Calibrisi looked at Polk. Both men knew Malnikov, along with his father, Yuri. Alexei Malnikov ran the largest criminal enterprise in the world. Langley had helped the FBI track down Malnikov’s father off the coast of Florida the year before, providing informal “off-log” support for the highly publicized arrest of the head of the Russian mob, a man now confined to a prison cell in Colorado.
“We scanned Malnikov’s bank accounts,” added Bruckheimer. “No significant payments were made to him. However, four days ago, he paid someone a hundred million dollars.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know. The account he wired it to isn’t there anymore. It’s almost as if it was created a half second before the wire, then disappeared.”
Calibrisi picked up his cell phone. He stepped to the corner of his office, out of earshot of the others.
“Control,” came the female voice.
“Get me John Barrows.”
* * *
A tall, gray-haired man was standing on the fringe of the seventeenth green of Augusta National Golf Club, watching one of his clients prepare to putt.
He felt a small vibration in his pocket. He wasn’t supposed to have his cell phone with him. It was strictly forbidden at Augusta. Yet certain phone calls were more important than being a member of the most exclusive golf club in the world.
Barrows watched his client, a businessman from Omaha, tap the ball. He glanced down at his cell as the ball rolled in a poetic curve across the ice-hard green.
:: CALIBRISI H.C.::
This was one of those phone calls.
Barrows lifted the phone to his ear.
“Hi, Hector.”
“I need to speak with one of your clients.”
“I have a lot of clients.”
“He’s Russian.”
Barrows cut away from the green and walked toward a line of dogwood trees, looking about for anyone who might be watching him.
“I really don’t think my client is in any mood to do the head of the Central Intelligence Agency any favors,” said Barrows. “Being locked up in a windowless six-by-six cell has made him a little grumpy.”
“I’m not talking about Yuri,” said Calibrisi, his tone polite but unmistakable. “I need to speak with Alexei Malnikov, John. It needs to happen immediately.”
Barrows glanced at his client, who was walking toward the eighteenth tee.
“Are you prepared to work with me on a transfer of Yuri Malnikov to a more suitable facility?” asked Barrows.
“If I’m not on the phone with Alexei Malnikov in the next five minutes,” said Calibrisi testily, “he’ll be going to a place that makes Yuri’s cell look like a suite at the Four Seasons. Got it?”
“Stay by your phone.”
* * *
Alexei Malnikov stood on a terrace outside his suite at the Bulgari Hotel Milan, looking down at La Scala. He wore Derek Rose black silk pajama pants. In the darkness of the Milan evening, he was practically invisible, except perhaps to the woman inside the suite.
He’d flown from Moscow to Paris, then to Milan. Somehow, he thought that getting away from Moscow would ease his mind about the entire interaction with Cloud, but it hadn’t. He realized how quickly and precip
itously his world could, and probably would, come crashing down around him.
His cell phone made a low beeping noise.
“Hello?”
“Alexei, it’s John Barrows. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“In exactly three minutes, your cell phone is going to ring. Answer it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what you did, and I don’t want to know. But you need to answer the phone.”
“Who is it?”
“Hector Calibrisi,” said Barrows.
Malnikov shut his eyes.
“Why is he calling me?”
“Don’t bullshit me,” said Barrows. “And don’t attempt to bullshit Calibrisi. If you lie, no one can protect you. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s after you.”
“How do you know?”
“If he was, he wouldn’t have called me.”
“What is your advice, John?” asked Malnikov, a hint of anxiety in his voice.
“My advice? Be honest with him. There’s something going on here, and you’re involved. I have a feeling you know perfectly well what it is. The last guy you want to piss off is Calibrisi. You’ll disappear quicker than you can say ciao to that high-priced hooker in your bed.”
“How did you know—”
The phone clicked.
Malnikov took a deep drag on his Gitano. He walked into the hotel suite and picked up a red silk negligee.
“Get out,” he said, throwing the negligee at the woman in the bed. “Now.”
In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face. Then his cell buzzed. Malnikov lit another cigarette and stepped onto the terrace.
:: CALIBRISI H.C.::
“Hello.”
“Alexei, this is Hector Calibrisi.”
“What do you want?” asked Malnikov.
“I’m going to be very direct with you. You need to understand something. It’s not a threat, it’s just fact. The moment you acquired that nuclear bomb, you became a terrorist in the eyes of the United States government.”
There was a long silence on the phone. Malnikov stared down at the sidewalk.
“I’m not a terrorist,” he whispered.
“That remains to be seen. Do you want to help us?”
“Do I want to? Of course not. Will I? Yes.”
“Who has the bomb?”
“His name is Cloud. He’s a computer hacker. I don’t know his real name. He’s Russian.”
“Was the bomb delivered to one of the ports?”
“Sevastopol.”
“Is that why you paid him a hundred million dollars?” asked Calibrisi. “To take it off your hands?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you buy it in the first place?” asked Calibrisi.
Malnikov tossed the remainder of his cigarette into the air, watching as it floated down toward the busy street a dozen floors below.
“Protection. A poker chip to play if I was ever in danger of being arrested.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know where he’s taking it?”
Malnikov paused.
“No. I asked what he was going to do with it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘something that should have been done a long time ago.’”
There was a pause on the phone.
“Interesting,” said Calibrisi. “That might be helpful. What about the boat? Did your people see the boat?”
“No. They delivered it to a parking area outside Sevastopol. His men had on ski masks.”
“How do you communicate with him?” asked Calibrisi.
“It’s always different. Phone, e-mail, or else he just shows up. It’s always initiated by him. Somehow, he knew about the deal with Bokolov.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he wanted the bomb. I thought he was offering to buy it.”
“But you paid him?” asked Calibrisi. “A hundred million, right?”
“Yes,” said Malnikov. “Actually, he took the first fifty before we came to an agreement.”
“Brazen.”
Malnikov laughed mirthlessly.
“He’s a scrawny little fuck,” he said. “There’s evil behind his eyes. They say he helped disrupt American air traffic control systems on nine/eleven.”
Calibrisi was silent.
“He said you would come to me and seek my help. He said to tell you everything I know.”
Calibrisi paused.
“He told you to help us?”
“He was quite emphatic.”
“My God,” said Calibrisi. “What else did he say?”
“He said he was the one who supplied the information that enabled the U.S. to arrest my father.”
Calibrisi was silent on the other end of the phone.
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Do you have a photo of him?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you’ve met him, right?”
“Twice.”
“Stay on the line, Alexei. I’m going to bring in a sketch artist.”
* * *
Five minutes later, the CIA’s top sketch artist was seated in Calibrisi’s office, listening to Malnikov and drawing a portrait of Cloud as the Russian mobster described him over speakerphone.
Calibrisi glanced at his watch; he was supposed to be at the White House.
He stepped outside and looked at Lindsay, his admin.
“Is Pete back?” he asked.
“He’s waiting for you in two.”
“Is Dewey with him?”
Lindsay shook her head.
Calibrisi walked down the hallway to the conference room. Seated, Prada wingtips up on the table, was Pete Bond. He stepped inside and shut the door.
“How did Mexico go?” asked Calibrisi.
Bond had a blank look on his face.
“We accomplished the mission.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“He froze up,” said Bond, “just like you said he would.”
Calibrisi nodded.
“Where is he?”
“I dropped him off in Georgetown.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
Calibrisi turned to leave.
“Chief, you need to know something.”
“What?”
“Gant met us at Andrews. He was waiting for the plane to land.”
Calibrisi’s head turned sharply back to Bond.
“What?”
“He was waiting on the tarmac,” said Bond. “He asked for a first look on the debrief. Gave me a rash of shit.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Well, I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I told him I report to Bill and he could get my brief from him.”
“That’s exactly what you should’ve done. Thanks for the heads-up.”
Calibrisi reached for the door, then turned.
“Bring him in,” said Calibrisi. “Whatever condition he’s in.”
Bond nodded at Calibrisi.
“Will do, J.P.”
Calibrisi walked to the fire stairs, then descended, two steps at a time, to the fourth floor. He moved down a curving glass-walled hallway to the offices of Josh Gant, deputy director of the CIA.
Unlike Calibrisi, Gant had a fancy set of offices, complete with a large entry foyer adorned with framed photographs of Gant posing with President J. P. Dellenbaugh.
Gant’s assistant stood up as Calibrisi marched into the outer office and brushed past her. He stepped into Gant’s office and shut the door.
Gant held his hand over the phone. Gant had on a bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses. He was tan. His hair was brown and neatly coiffed. He had on a seersucker suit, a yellow button-down, and cordovan loafers.
“I’m on a call,” said Gant.
“Get off it.”
Ga
nt stared at Calibrisi. He put the phone back to his ear.
“I’ll call you back.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” asked Calibrisi.
“I was trying to convince my daughter not to change her major from economics to French literature, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m talking about Dewey Andreas.”
“Sinaloa is in my matrix, Chief. You’re the one who assigned it to me, remember?”
“I’m talking about that psych eval you got Furr to order up,” said Calibrisi.
“He’s got a screw loose, Hector, and I don’t like it when NOCs have loose screws. You shouldn’t either.”
“I’m not going to dignify what you just said,” said Calibrisi, barely controlling his temper. “You stay the fuck away from Dewey. Do you understand me? What you did—using the Senate Intelligence Committee to try and build an incarceration order on Dewey, on U.S. soil—is against the law.”
Calibrisi noted a slightly surprised look on Gant’s face.
“You’re not trying to incarcerate him, are you?” said Calibrisi, studying Gant. “You want a hit order on the man who stopped Alexander Fortuna?”
“That’s absurd,” said Gant. “I don’t want him dead. I just want the right thing to be done. If that means sending Dewey back out in the field, great, I have no issue with that. It’s not personal. If it means removing him to a clinic for a few months, or years, until his value as a breach target is diminished, then that’s what I’m for. We’ve had two NOCs punctured in the last year. It has to stop.”
Calibrisi walked over to Gant’s desk.
“Either you stay away from Dewey, or I’ll call Dellenbaugh and tell him what his little political hack has been doing. You’ll go straight back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
Gant stared at Calibrisi.
“The president is aware of my concerns and my actions,” said Gant calmly.
Gant held up a small electronic recording device.
