by Ben Coes
2010
Ph.D. with highest honors
Pushkin Prize for Highest Academic Achievement
“You’ve already seen this, everyone,” said Calibrisi, “so we don’t need to waste time rehashing Cloud’s bio. Let me cut to the chase. We believe he’s in Moscow. We’re doing everything we can to find him. It’s a game of hide-and-seek.”
“What do you have on the ground in Moscow?” asked Dellenbaugh.
“Right now, we have two operators and a case officer.”
“Is that enough manpower?”
“No, and we’re doing everything we can to build a bigger team.”
“Did we have anything to do with the events that are on the news?” asked Lindsay, the secretary of state.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what events you’re talking about, Tim.”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. The abduction of the ballerina.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been on the phone four times with the Russian foreign minister.”
“How’s he doing?” asked Calibrisi.
Lindsay shook his head, slightly exasperated.
“He’s pissed,” barked Lindsay. “We could’ve run this through the Russian foreign ministry. We could have—should have—flown over there and sat her down and talked to her, official channels.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why do you doubt it? Do you think he’s lying? We need to work with the Russians, Hector. And I’m not talking about the Russian mafia. My God, what has Langley gotten us into?”
Calibrisi nodded, then glanced at Rickards, the attorney general, who had obviously shared the Malnikov deal with Lindsay and others.
He took a deep breath.
“It was your State Department that led the negotiations regarding the disposition of nuclear materials after the Soviet Union imploded,” said Calibrisi. “It was Russia’s foreign minister who claimed, as recently as last month, that all Soviet-era nuclear materials and weapons were accounted for and safeguarded. This bomb was one of those weapons. If you’d like to play Monday-morning quarterback, I’d start by looking in the mirror.”
“I was a United States senator when those deals went down—”
“So it’s not your fault?” asked Calibrisi. “Is that what you want us all to know?”
“How dare you—”
“We’re in the real world now, Senator,” said Calibrisi, interrupting. “In that world, a nuclear bomb is on its way to the United States. In that world, a terrorist succeeded in penetrating Langley’s computer networks and killing six American soldiers. I will do everything in my power to stop that bomb from detonating on American soil, including working with people like Alexei Malnikov. You had to take some angry phone calls? All I can say to that is, stop your whining and either start pitching in or get out of the way.”
Lindsay, face beet red, lurched forward in his chair. But Dellenbaugh held up his hand, telling him to keep quiet.
“Enough,” said the president.
“But Mr.—”
“I said enough. If you two want to take it outside, that’s fine with me.”
The president was silent for several moments as he took control of the room. He looked at Lindsay.
“I authorized the Malnikov deal,” he said, before turning to Calibrisi. “And I was in the Senate when the Soviet Union broke up and we paid lip service to the warnings by Mossad about their nukes. So I guess if you two want to blame someone, you can blame me.
“When I was on the Red Wings, I could always tell when we weren’t going to win the Stanley Cup. It was during those seasons when guys would start pointing fingers at each other in the locker room after we lost a game.
“I would trade my life to stop that bomb, and I expect each of you feel the same way, regardless of your title, your rank, or your beliefs. If you don’t, I want your resignation right here, right now. If that bomb goes off, our country will be forever, permanently scarred. Hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, will die. We have to stop that bomb. There is no other option.”
80
VERNACULAR HOUSE
POBEDY PARK
MOSCOW
“Ty v poryadke?”
The words intermingled with at least a dozen screeching car alarms and sirens in the distance.
How long he’d been unconscious, Dewey didn’t know. He was on the ground. There were several people kneeling over him. Everything was cloudy and blurry.
“Ty v poryadke?” repeated the man leaning over him, asking Dewey if he was all right. He placed his hand on Dewey’s forehead.
Dewey pushed the man’s arm aside, then climbed to his feet. He looked to where the car had been. Then he turned. Flames and smoke billowed from up the block. Vernacular House was gone. The buildings on either side were rubble. The cars in front of the house were on fire.
Weaving, Dewey started to move back toward the explosion. He pushed through a line of bystanders, knowing the agents inside were dead yet needing to get back there. As he reached the corner, the first police car arrived, followed by several fire trucks.
Dewey moved up the sidewalk toward the safe house, delirious with shock, his head concussed. He pulled out his cell phone. The glass was shattered. When he tried to turn it on, nothing happened.
He felt for his gun. It was gone.
Dewey turned back toward where he’d landed on the ground.
A woman was pointing at him. She was speaking to a police officer who, Dewey could see, was holding the gun. The officer yelled something in Russian. Dewey turned again. He continued toward the safe house, now blocked by a pair of police cars, their blue and red lights flashing through the rain. He registered two policemen climbing from the first cruiser, looking in his direction.
Dewey turned again. The first officer—the one with Dewey’s pistol—was sprinting toward him.
He turned yet again. The two officers from in front of the safe house were also running toward him, weapons out and raised.
He was hemmed in.
Dewey cut abruptly left, away from the two converging lines of policemen.
They were yelling at him, barking at him in Russian, telling him to stop. But he kept moving.
Dewey ran, limping, still weaving, toward a side street, as the officers closed in on him.
He reached the corner of the side street. A block away, he saw lights from a passing car. Suddenly, the car stopped, paused, then jacked right, directly toward him, bursting up the street at high speed.
Dewey heard a gunshot from behind him as the low red sports car ripped up the cross street directly for him. Dewey kept running as the car flew down the thin lane. At the last second, the driver of the car swerved left and slammed the brakes, just feet away. Dewey heard yelling from inside the car. He went to the open passenger window and looked in.
The muzzle of a gun was aimed at him.
“Duck,” the man said.
Dewey moved down just as the driver fired. The bullet struck the closest policeman in the head, kicking him to the ground two car lengths away.
“Get in,” came the thick Russian accent inside the sports car.
Dewey climbed in as gunfire erupted from behind him.
“Hold on.”
The driver put the car in reverse and slammed the gas, tearing backward as, with his left hand, he fired his gun at the line of policemen now charging on foot. The car sped backwards up the street. When the mag was spent, he dropped the gun. In one fluid motion, he jacked the wheel and with his other hand pulled the emergency brake. The car flipped one-eighty. He released the brake, then slammed the gas. Soon he had the car speeding away from the scene, moving rapidly away from the chaotic scene.
“You must be Dewey,” he said as he steered without looking up. “I’m Alexei Malnikov. Welcome to Moscow.”
81
CAPE ANN MARINE COMPANY
GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
�
��There’s a guy out on the dock.”
Saxby looked up.
“Should we call the cops?” he asked.
If Scranton understood the sarcasm in Saxby’s voice, he didn’t let on.
“Or should we perhaps ask him if we can help him?” continued Saxby. “You are aware that we sell boats, aren’t you, Jack?”
“This guy ain’t buying a boat. He looks suspicious. That’s all I’m saying.”
Saxby shook his head. He went out the side door of the marina building and walked to the long pier in back, on the harbor. It was crowded with a variety of boats moored along the teak pier.
When he got to the middle of the pier, he saw the individual. He was on one of the boats, a dark green forty-four-foot Hinckley Talaria. As much as he doubted Scranton, he had to admit the man did look suspect. His hair was long and dark, stubble covered his face. He was Arab. He looked ill, like he was going to get sick right there on the boat.
“Can I help you?” asked Saxby.
“Good morning. I would like to buy this boat.”
“You are aware of the cost?” asked Saxby. “That’s a four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar boat right there. Now we do offer financing, but the approval process can take a while.”
“I’ll pay cash,” he said.
“Cash like a check? I can call Mr. Gardiner and ask—”
“Cash like cash,” the stranger interrupted. “And I would like it right now.”
82
LE DIPLOMATE
I4TH STREET NW
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The cell made an incessant high-pitched beeping noise, startling Gant as he ate.
He was alone. Le Diplomate was his favorite restaurant. It brought back memories of different postings in his career. Paris was the most obvious, but for some reason the cozy, eclectic European ambience reminded him of Prague, where he met his first wife.
Gant was feeling sentimental, even sad. He’d been sidelined from the Agency’s most important operation in years. When he’d attempted to access status files earlier, he had not been allowed in. He was shut off.
But if he thought Le Diplomate would help, he was wrong. If anything, it only made him realize what he was about to lose.
Or maybe it was guilt finally catching up to him.
His phone started to ring. He looked down at the phone number. It was him, the man who started it all, the one who killed a kindly Soviet scientist as his only child watched.
He picked up the phone.
“Hi, Sage.”
“That’s not my name anymore.”
“Maybe not on that fantasy island where you live, but you’ll always be Sage Roberts to me.”
“What do you want?”
“Something’s happening.”
“What’s that, Josh? Did you finally worm your way to the director’s job?”
“I called to warn you.”
“You’ve never done a fucking thing your whole entire life for anyone other than Josh Gant, so let’s cut the bullshit. What is it?”
“Vargarin.”
The word shut Roberts up. He was quiet for several moments. Then he let out a loud sigh.
“Oh, boy.”
“Boy is right,” said Gant. “The son you had me stick in the orphanage.”
“Pyotr. Smart kid.”
“He’s a terrorist now.”
“I knew I should’ve put a bullet in his head,” said Roberts. “Why are you calling? To ‘warn me’? Because you’re such a nice fucking guy?”
“Why did you do it?” asked Gant.
“Do what?”
“Why couldn’t you just let the family stay? They wanted to stay in their country, you sick fuck.”
“The answer to that question was wired into your bank account fifteen years ago, Josh. Grow up. That’s the way the world works.”
“All I can say is, you better hope he fails at what he’s trying to do. Because if this thing unwinds, they’ll be sending the Killer Kanes after you.”
83
SHENNAMERE ROAD
DARIEN, CONNECTICUT
Igor knew something was happening. In a tight geographic area east of Moscow, the level of defensive activity was spiking. It meant that his target’s automated countermeasures were fighting back.
Igor’s server farm was pounding against Cloud’s 128-bit encryption key, hitting it with attempt after attempt as they enumerated every possible combination of characters. Cloud had embedded logic bombs within the encryption algorithm, so that as someone trying to break the key came closer, countermeasures were instigated. Like a wounded animal, Cloud’s defenses were doing what they could to kill, delay, and misdirect the onslaught that was coming from Iceland. A normal attempt at breaking Cloud’s key would have long since been stopped. But a warehouse full of single-purpose attackers was not normal in any sense. They smelled blood. They could not be stopped.
Igor had two of his three screens focused on the hunt. One screen showed packet activity in real time—the granular communications between his servers and the servers running Cloud’s defenses. At the beginning of the process, those servers running Cloud’s protections were distributed all over the world, striking back at the earliest attempts at finding the root line in. But as Igor’s overwhelming wall of computing power discovered shortcuts and ways around those first defenses, Cloud’s power retreated and focused in a concentric circle. Igor watched the punch-counterpunch in real time, like watching a tennis match in digital form.
The second screen mirrored the locations of the individual battles and displayed them in red dots on a digital map.
As if sensing the end, he leaned forward over the keyboard. A minute passed, then two. Then it hit. The first screen locked on to a 128-bit line of characters. Igor started typing furiously now, reprovisioning the key into his own, then instructing the remaining servers to metastasize. Like a fast-moving cancer, they pounced and started eating into Cloud’s network, spidering themselves across every packet, byte, and line of code in Cloud’s possession, locking down and freezing a lifetime’s worth of cybercrime.
The map zoomed in to a single address:
17 Vostochnyy
Elektrostal
Igor reached for his cell and speed-dialed Calibrisi.
84
SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
Calibrisi remained quiet as Dellenbaugh spoke. He knew he shouldn’t have ripped Lindsay in front of the group, but he didn’t regret doing it. Calibrisi had a deep distrust of politicians, and that included former ones like the secretary of state. They weren’t all that way. He thought Dellenbaugh was growing into being a great president, and he practically worshipped Dellenbaugh’s predecessor, the man who appointed him to his post at Langley, Rob Allaire. But they were exceptions. Most politicians cared only about whether people liked them. Most ran for office out of some deep-seated need to prove—to themselves, to their parents, who knows—that people liked them. If they happened to do good things once they were elected, that was a bonus.
Calibrisi was tired. Except for a nap on the chopper ride down to D.C., he’d barely slept in days. Had he been rested, he would’ve ignored Lindsay during the meeting. Silence was always the best fuck you.
As he rubbed his eyes, he felt his cell vibrating. He read the caller ID:
:: JAGGER MICK::
He put the cell to his ear.
“Hi, Igor,” he whispered. “What do you have?”
“I found him.”
“You sure?”
“Sure as shit.”
Calibrisi looked at the president.
“What is it?” asked Dellenbaugh.
“I need to take a call, sir,” said Calibrisi, standing up.
“Anything you care to update us with?” asked Lindsay.
Calibrisi ignored the question.
“Come with me,” said Brubaker.
Calibrisi put the phone to his ear.
“Okay, I’m hanging up and calling you back fr
om a tactical line. Stay by the phone.”
Calibrisi nodded across the table to Polk, telling him to come with him, then picked up his briefcase and followed Brubaker to the door.
85
BOSTON HARBOR
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Boston harbor was crowded with boats on a calm, sunny July afternoon, the day before Independence Day.
In addition to hundreds of sailboats, power boats, and fishing boats, there were dozens of police boats and Coast Guard patrol boats crisscrossing the water.
Faqir putted into harbor in the middle of the afternoon.
He noticed the many law enforcement vessels. They were looking, he knew, for the trawler, unless they had somehow discovered the theft of the second boat, though he doubted it.
Besides, at this point, Faqir didn’t care. He wanted to execute the plan, and then die.
As it was, he was vomiting every half hour or so. It had turned into dry heaves. He didn’t want them to catch him, but if they did, whatever pain or disappointment he might’ve felt at the beginning of the journey wasn’t there anymore. He was physically and emotionally numb with radiation poisoning.
Faqir steered the Talaria the way he imagined a wealthy American might during the summer, at the beginning of a holiday weekend. He cut straight across the water, pushing the boat in a measured way across the crowded harbor.
With the GPS on his phone, he navigated toward Revere. Past a marina filled with sailboats, he came upon an old chain-link fence that ran along the rocky, garbage-strewn waterfront. Behind the fence was an aggregates business. Piles of road salt and gravel dotted a dusty lot. Farther on, lashed to the pier, were several long, flat barges, used for hauling road salt to customers.
Faqir scanned the water for anyone who might see them, but there was no one within a quarter mile. He navigated alongside one of the barges, put the boat in neutral, and then moved to the stern and lifted a storage bin near the transom.
Inside were two nuclear devices, wrapped in a green tarp.
Faqir and the other man lifted one out of the boat, walked to the port gunnel, and lowered it to the deck of the barge.
