The Ganymede Project

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  Sverdlov needed reassurances. Explanations. Promises. Fortunately, Nathan was authorized to supply them. The promises had been choreographed in advance.

  “I want you to consider something, Yuri. Something your father would have appreciated. The principal intelligence agency of our global foe has a mission which is purely negative. Do you know what it is? The official mission of the KGB? I know it by heart, and I’m quoting now—’Not to allow the collapse of the Soviet Union from the inside.’“

  Nathan’s eyes locked on Yuri’s. “We’re the good guys. Really. Our mission is strictly positive—to enable the success of our way of life through the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. The difference is very clear. Very profound. And in our quest, we need heroes, Yuri. Creative people who can turn their talent to the service of their country. We need people like you. Like your father.”

  Yuri cleared his throat, fighting back anger. “Then why all this cloak and dagger stuff? Why Carrie? What does that have to do with foreign intelligence? Or saving the Western World?”

  Nathan grimaced, pressing his hands against his lips in a praying position, as if trying to explain to a small child the facts of life in words and symbols comprehensible to the child. “Counterintelligence is an adjunct mission of the Company. Operational security is another. We have many such adjunct missions. It’s imperative... to protect our own. You can see that, can’t you? We had to be sure about you, your motives and”—he hesitated—”your psychological stability.”

  Yuri winced.

  “Yes, let me say it again. Stability. A willingness not just to take chances, but to take orders. A willingness to act in support of the team. A penchant for keeping secrets a secret. We can’t afford a weak link. We can’t afford—”

  “Psychos? Madmen?”

  “You’re hardly... “ Nathan let the sentence fade into silence, then jutted a chin forward with conviction. “I don’t apologize for what we did, Yuri. The lives of other agents hang in the balance. There’s too much at stake.”

  “My sanity’s at stake.”

  “Look. This incident was just a benign encounter, but it gives you an idea of how things work. You’re a Company man, now. You think the events influencing your life—including the most intimate events—are random? They’re not. You think the big decisions you make in your life are your own? They’re not. Free will has been usurped by design. What seems real, isn’t. What seems fantastic isn’t. You’re in our world, now.” Nathan looked wistfully at the closed window, eyes focusing on some hidden scene beyond the frosted security glass. “I’m telling you this because I’m your friend. Your father was my friend. I feel a certain obligation.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “You don’t get it,” Nathan snapped. “You can never leave the Company.” He closed his eyes for a moment, as if envisioning options, then raised a single finger, signifying a solution. “But. You can leave the trappings of the Company. You can leave this place.” A practiced smile spread across his face. “We have liaison positions in many government departments and organizations. I can move you to one of them—FBI counterintelligence. Only the Director will know you’re one of us. For all practical purposes, you’ll be an FBI agent. Would you like that?”

  Yuri nodded. “In the absence of other options, yes, I’d like that.”

  “Good,” Nathan said, reaching for the STU-III encryption phone. “And Yuri...”

  “Yes?”

  “From time to time, the Company will ask you to do certain things. They will test you.”

  13. KATRINA’S WORLD

  1987

  Moscow

  The Party has its flaws, Katrina thought,but it is one way—in Russia, perhaps the only way—to follow your dreams . Her thoughts echoed her mother’s words, spoken before she died of pneumonia in a Moscow hospital a year earlier. The words had come out, reluctantly, between deep, wheezing breaths, as the old woman clasped Katrina’s arm, like a tree limb in some fast moving river. Then the eyes dimmed, the hand relaxed, and her mother went with the flow.

  Katrina had hoped things would be different, that the Party would not be the only boat to success. Two years earlier, in her final days of graduate school at the university, it seemed as if the Soviet Union would submerge, like Atlantis, under a tsunami of political dissatisfaction. When hundreds of students rallied in protest of Yeltsin’s ouster from the Gorbachev government, she sympathized, but, like most Russians, watched from the sidelines, keeping her options open, afraid to swim in the treacherous currents.

  Her conservatism and loyalty to the Party paid off with a commission in the Army and a good research and development job at ALMAZ, an immense electronics research center located in the heart of Moscow, on Leningradsky Prospect.

  ALMAZ was created in the mid 1940s to build anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems. In the mid 1980s, it was one of the principal centers of research on anti-ballistic missile systems—the Soviet response to Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative,Star Wars .

  And now, in 1987, using the Party as an instrument, Katrina prepared to follow her dreams as a communications engineer, dimly aware that technical brilliance could combine with politics to catapult a career—as it had with her father. Here at ALMAZ, she explored the link between information and power.

  She scanned the room, attempting to read the audience. They were mostly old men—Communist Party bureaucrats without vision or conviction, but politically powerful. Sprinkled among them, however, were a few engineers, scientists and military strategists—some of them top rate.

  In order to capture their attention and funding, she needed a circus act. High drama. Fear. Flawless analysis.

  To the rear of the room, Sergey Giglavyi, cigarette jutting aggressively from his lips, gave a nod. The ringmaster said it was time. She stepped to the podium and spoke boldly.

  “Gentlemen, I give you Brilliant Pebbles.”

  Room lights dimmed and the screen behind Katrina illuminated with a video. The picture zoomed to show a small device linked to a pole by an umbilical cord. The device ignited with a rocket plume, then lifted into the air, flying around the pole like an awkward, self-propelled tetherball.

  The audience gasped.

  “This is a caged rocket motor test for the Brilliant Pebbles kinetic energy weapon. Notice the jerky movements. It’s a function of a very unique flight control system. The Americans have announced that several of these weapons will be housed in orbiting carrier platforms and launched as needed to intercept ballistic missiles. There could be thousands of carrier platforms in orbit when Full Operational Capability is achieved.”

  Katrina nodded at Giglavyi, who quickly restored the room lights. She continued the pitch. “The Americans say this test proves that Brilliant Pebbles will work.”

  Once again, the room filled with excited murmurs.

  She noted the general reaction and Giglavyi’s cynical smile. “Comrades, we are used to viewing the Americans as ten-feet tall. We imagine they can do anything. I tell you that SDI can be defeated. The Strategic Defense Initiative will be a multi-billion dollar Maginot Line in space.”

  An objecting hand shot up near the front of the room.

  “Wait! Reagan announced his program in 1983. It took the Americans just four years to conduct this proof-of-concept test. How can we defeat this kind of aggressive technology development?”

  “A caged rocket motor test does not make a system!” Giglavyi pronounced, from the back of the room.

  “He’s right,” Katrina said. “In order for the system to work, the Americans will have to construct the most complex, integrated command and control system ever built. That’s what’s needed to control thousands of Brilliant Pebbles in low Earth orbit. That is a vulnerability we must exploit.”

  Colonel Anatoly Kazikov extruded a cigar from pudgy lips, flicked ash carelessly in the direction of a minor technologist sitting to his right and floated a smoke ring in Katrina’s direction.

  “How?�
� he asked.

  “By interrupting, delaying or modifying the flow of information in the system.” She smiled, allowing the strategy to sink in. “In order for SDI to work, thousands of elements in the system need to actively cooperate. They need to share accurate information over an area the size of the planet. Minor discrepancies between the actual and perceived position in each of the orbiting vehicles translate into uncertainty—or entropy—of theentire system. The greater the entropy, the less effective the system. We need to build information warfare systems that can increase the entropy of SDI, rendering it useless. We need to infect its mind with uncertainty.”

  “Entropy? Interesting! What do you need in the way of resources?” Colonel Kazikov asked.

  “Funding to systematically acquire U.S. computers, telecommunications and—if possible—radar technology. A laboratory to engineer and experiment with offensive information warfare techniques. A staff of first-rate scientists and engineers.” Katrina outlined a detailed program and budget, proposed a schedule wed to SDI’s schedule, and recommended immediate implementation, to avoid technological surprise—and the adverse consequences that it implied.

  From the back of the room, Sergey Giglavyi seconded the idea. Half an hour of debate and discussion convinced everyone in attendance.

  Colonel Kazikov summed up. “Thank you, Lieutenant Fontanova, for a very provocative proposal—one which seems to have a high potential for success. It is now up to us to make it happen.”

  He smiled at the brilliance of the plan. It would be well-received at the highest levels of the Kremlin, because it felt soright —they would fool the SDI system by feeding it lies.

  “And now,” he continued, “you must excuse us. Our committee has another aggressive American technology effort to consider—reported development of a Biefeld-Brown effects generator and testing at a secret desert base. It is very puzzling. Very troubling. We must talk in private, please.”

  When she left the meeting, Katrina was euphoric. Approval of the program meant almost certain promotion. She was on the fast track. She made her way through the corridors of power, clutching the notes and ideas that made success possible. She exited through a control point, head still in the clouds, and was confused when people around her yelled in panic. She heard the sound of an airplane engine.

  Then, a small aircraft landed in the middle of Red Square. The event created another ripple which washed through the political landscape.

  * * *

  “It’s falling apart,” Katrina said.

  “No,” Vladimir responded. “It’s evolving. The Communists and Yeltsin are in conflict. Dialectical materialism says this is natural. All change comes through struggle between antagonistic elements.”

  They were in the open, yet alone, walking in the immense pedestrian-way known as Red Square. Katrina smiled at occasional passers-by, but threw barbed words at her brother.

  “You sound like your father—repeating the mindless chants. I don’t care what you say, there is nothingnatural about a jackboot on your neck. For seventy years, we’ve been controlled by flawed ideas.”

  “No. Social conditions predispose people to certain ideas.What we are determineshow we think. That is a fundamental principle of the universe.”

  “Only in Marx’s alternate universe.”

  Vladimir stopped as they approached Varvarka Street. “So, we come to a crossroads, you and I.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a meeting in a few minutes.”

  “Vladimir, I know how you feel. You are very much... a traditionalist. But please accept how I feel. I can’t live in a prison anymore.” She rubbed his arm with her hand, then adjusted a ribbon on his uniform. “Just remember. We are family. Whatever happens, we help each other.”

  “Yes,” he said. “These are uncertain times. We need to think about survival. You’ll be a spy in one camp, I’ll be a spy in another. Anyway, your solution would appeal to Papa’s other side.”

  “Which side is that?”

  “His Machiavellian side.”

  She giggled. “So we have a pact?”

  He shook her hand, then kissed her on the cheek. “Whatever happens, we’ll always be family. We have a pact.”

  14. SPOOKS AND MONSTERS

  February 1991

  Florida

  Yuri’s stomach rumbled uneasily.Calm down , he thought.Sun’s going down, but we still have daylight .

  From an altitude of 5,000 feet, Highway One appeared as a thin ribbon of white concrete, tying the blue waters of the Straits of Florida like an Earth-scale birthday present. Yuri Sverdlov and Jack Dugan were about to unwrap the prize. As they talked strategy and tactics, the loud, rhythmic thumping of rotor blades made conversation difficult.

  “You sure about the time?” Yuri shouted. The dark-haired, 31-year-old athletic figure sported a jacket that said ‘FBI’ in big, bold letters. He glanced nervously at his watch.

  Jack, a crewcut, bespectacled National Security Agency (NSA) agent, three years his senior, yelled back. “All I know is what we got on a coded intercept from the Russian site at Cienfuegos, Cuba. Pick up’s scheduled for five minutes from now. Big Pine Key.”

  They both looked down at the causeway unrolling below them at high speed, and at the sinking red sun. Yuri felt a slight nausea.

  “Take it to that point!” Jack yelled.

  The pilot pulled the SH-60B chopper around in a wide arc to the left, then vectored toward a spit of sand bordered by pine trees. Yuri spotted a metallic glint to the West, tugged on Jack’s arm and pointed.

  Jack nodded. “I see it—a sail or periscope!”

  The pilot, dressed in a nomex flight suit devoid of nametag or patches, looked, too. “Got it,” he grinned.

  The pilot hovered near a wide, flat area of beach, then let down. Yuri made a quick radio call during the approach to verify that backup forces were moving into position.

  They didn’t wait for the rotor blades to stop. They slid open the door, covered their faces to protect against blasting sand and ducked below the rotor wash as they ran toward the edge of the trees.

  They watched the Sikorsky-made machine lift off in a plume of sand and debris. The Magnetic Anomaly Detector, used for locating and attacking submarines, glinted dull red in the setting sun. Two homing torpedoes interrupted the contours of the Seahawk’s underbelly—lethal eggs waiting to be laid.

  “Those guys are good,” Yuri said, nodding at the retreating chopper. “They’ll give that sub something to worry about.”

  Jack had a rough idea of what Yuri meant. The troops in the back looked pretty mean. He had personally listened in on two of their operations in the Persian Gulf. He knew that SEAL Team 2 was highly effective. As one of the troops told him, half in jest,You don’t want to meet us at work unless you’re a friend .

  “Drop point’s just south of here along the beach,” Yuri said. “Saw it on the way in.” Jack nodded in agreement. They skirted the tree line until they spotted the pier. It was a dilapidated structure with rotting timbers. A section had collapsed, piling posts in a heap that spiked the purling surf with rude wooden edges.

  Two men in wet suits and diving gear talked rapidly to a casually dressed civilian—a huge man whose oversized shirt barely contained his stomach. A small box and a piece of equipment on the ground appeared to be the focal point of conversation. Yuri saw one of the men put the equipment in the box and seal the lid.

  “Spetsnaz,” he said. “Russian naval special operations.” His voice betrayed emotions. He was less concerned about a tactical engagement than with its borders, constraints and dimensions. The Spetsnaz stood on solid ground, but dark water lapped along a shoreline of seemingly infinite dimensions. He bit into his lip. Finally, he said, reluctantly, “I’ll take the swimmers. You take the civilian.”

  “Chrissake, Sverdlov, I’m an analyst! This gun’s for show.”

  “That’s all I want you to do. Backup’s in place. When we run toward them, the swimmers ‘ll break for the water. The other
guy ‘ll head for his car. Just follow and keep him occupied.” Yuri felt more confident now—in control. Even in the fading daylight, the training kicked in. He went on automatic pilot.

  Jack nodded. “Okay. But no macho bullshit. Just a straight arrest.”

  “Right,” Yuri replied. “No bullshit.”

  Jack took a few deep breaths. “Let’s go.”

  They braced their guns and rushed onto the beach.

  One of the men looked up.

  “FBI!” Yuri shouted. “Stop!”

  The swimmers pulled pistols.

  Yuri dived forward, squeezing off a single round before he hit the sand.

  Two gunshots exploded in rapid point-counterpoint. Yuri’s shot hit in mid-chest. A swimmer collapsed with a mortal wound. The other grabbed the box and ran toward the pier.

  Yuri watched the civilian waddle toward the road.

  “Go, Jack!” he shouted.

  Jack pursued.

  Yuri sprinted toward the pier, scrambling along the decaying wood just behind his quarry.

  The swimmer jacked one leg over a railing.

  Yuri called out in Russian. “Don’t!”

  The swimmer turned, startled to hear an order in his native tongue.

  A mental duel bound the two in dynamic tension, like a wire stretched and twisted to the breaking point. The swimmer was poised to jump, one hand gripping the box. Yuri was poised to shoot, both hands bracing the stainless steel Smith and Wesson. Yuri moved slowly and deliberately, eyes and gun trained on the chest—slightly off center. It was a ‘dead man’ shot to the heart that would simultaneously puncture the buoyancy control vest and rebreather.

  “Put the box down,” Yuri said, again in Russian.

  The swimmer did not move.

  Yuri closed in. He was almost to the railing when his foot punched through a decayed plank. He stumbled.