by F X Holden
He had met neither the Ambassador nor his nominal manager at the Embassy yet, and really hadn’t got much further than his orientation paperwork and some training in Embassy security protocols.
As an NSA analyst he would normally have an office in the Controlled Access Area or ‘Tophat’ of the Secure Chancery Facility, but Carl was an ‘undeclared’ officer attached to the Embassy’s Economic Affairs section and so instead of working in the Chancery, he was still learning how to get from his accommodations to the commissary for breakfast and then down through the labyrinthine New Annex basement tunnels to his desk monitoring Russian Federation Far East Military Command Traffic.
The traffic was of course encrypted, and couldn’t be broken in real time, even by the adaptive neural network natural language AIs he had at his disposal as an NSA analyst. No, his job instead was to look for patterns in the volume, origin and target of Russian Eastern Military District comms and try to tie them to complementary intel from either signals intel or human intelligence sources and see if they could confirm suspected meetings, military exercises, military equipment tests or even civil emergencies.
He had grown up as a kid on stories and films about the great cryptologists of history, like the men and women who broke the German Enigma codes using the world’s first electronic computers at Bletchley Park in the UK. Or the NSA cryptographers who helped avert World War Three by decrypting the Russian fleet signals during the Cuban Missile Crisis and were able to tell the Kennedy brothers that the Russian destroyers had orders to sail only as far as the line of blockade, and no further.
They had worked in rooms of buzzing, clacking equipment, discs of tape whirling, coding machines spitting cards into a fug of cigarette smoke as they desperately fought to break enemy codes ahead of invasions, revolutions or Scud missile launches. Even the generation of code breakers he had been born into had grown up needing to be able to read computer code, looking for potential exploits in a soup of alphanumeric gibberish.
As Carl walked past the other attaches into his cubicle sized office in the LED lit basement corridor under Nevsky Prospect that had been converted into a listening station he threw his sandwich on his desk, put his paper cup of coffee down next to it and glared almost resentfully at the tools of his trade. Instead of whirling reels of tape, he had a telephone headset. Instead of card readers spitting out index cards, he had a small laptop PC full of apps, including one which he could use to stream the latest TV shows. And instead of having to read and write code, he had HOLMES, the NSA AI system that was his own personal analytical assistant.
HOLMES was the name Carl had given the system – it was an acronym for Heuristic Ordinary Language Machine Exploratory System. Which sounded better than NLLS 1.5 or Natural Language Learning System 1.5. He had toyed with calling the system NESSIE, but that had an association with the Loch Ness monster he didn’t think was appropriate, because unlike the monster, HOLMES was not a mythological creature.
Carl sank onto his seat, pulled on his headset and logged in using his voice recognition code.
“Good morning Carl,” HOLMES said in his ears. “Did you sleep well?” In addition to a cool name he had also given the AI a plumb British male voice to match.
Carl’s hair wasn’t brushed and if anyone had paid attention, they’d see he was wearing the same t-shirt today that he had on yesterday. In fact, they might even question whether he’d taken it off when he went to sleep.
“Cut the chat routine,” Carl said grumpily. “Sitrep, anomalous traffic, Sector 42, all incidents since I logged off last night.”
There had been a bump in traffic in that sector before he went off duty last night but he wasn’t expecting anything. HOLMES was supposed to send a text and email alert to him and the watch officer if it detected a major incident worthy of deeper analysis. It hadn’t, so anything that it had logged could only qualify as routine.
“The most noteworthy event last night was the apparent loss of a Russian flagged commercial freighter in the northern approaches to the Bering Strait at 0215 Pacific Standard Time.”
Carl’s immediate reaction was ‘so what’. Sure, terrible for the crew and everything, but civilian shipping disasters weren’t exactly his priority. “Loss? What do you mean loss?” Carl asked. “Contextualize.”
“The Ozempic Tsar was a 400,000 ton fully autonomous cargo ship, sailing from Archangelsk in Russia to Hokkaido in Japan via the polar route, when it issued a mayday on open maritime emergency frequencies to say it was taking water rapidly following an explosion in its engine room and cargo bays and was sinking. It then deployed an emergency locator beacon.”
Carl looked up at the ceiling, hands behind his neck. “Cargo?”
“The registers at Lloyds show that the primary cargo was 162,000 tons of processed lithium.”
“Value of the cargo?”
“Landed value one point nine six three billion US dollars.”
Carl put his coffee down so quickly it splashed out of the cup and over his empty desk. “Billion? Did you say nearly two billion?”
“Yes Carl. Do you want me to source more intel on this incident?”
“Access all available intel, compile and report,” Carl replied. Two billion dollars? Someone had just lost real money. Either the owners, the buyers or the insurers. He picked up his coffee and sipped. How did it get so cold so fast? He should really get one of those absorb and release gel-lined mugs. Those things could keep soup warm all day, they should be able to solve his cold coffee problem.
“Do you want a full or brief report?” HOLMES asked, coming back to him within about three minutes.
“Brief,” Carl said. “Very brief.”
“Open source and US Coast Guard intel indicates the Ozempic Tsar issued its first mayday call at 0210, issued two more between 0210 and 0214 and ceased mayday transmissions at 0215. A distress beacon was released and started transmitting the ship’s location at 0216 at which time the US Coast Guard logged it as a probable sinking, cause unknown.”
“Boring. Location?”
“The distress beacon transmitted the Ozempic Tsar’s location as latitude 65.74 longitude 169.69, which is five miles inside the Russian Federation Exclusive Economic Zone west of Big Diomede Island.”
“Their problem then,” Carl said. “Not even international waters. Any salvage operation initiated yet?”
“Satellite intel indicates there are a number of civilian and two Russian naval vessels at the scene.”
Carl perked up slightly. The Russian Pacific fleet base at Vladivostok could be expected to direct maybe one vessel to check out an incident involving an autonomous ship with no human life at risk; to investigate the area, recover the distress buoy and download the black box data. But two showed a higher than normal level of interest.
“Associated military communications activity,” he said. “Three degrees of separation.” He was asking in shorthand for HOLMES to look at intelligence reports from around the time of the incident, including first hand, second hand and even third-hand source reporting. It was about as broad a search as he could ask for, a total fishing exercise.
“Signals intel analysis indicates a spike in Russian Pacific Fleet Command traffic 33 minutes before the incident and then for two hours following the incident, after which traffic returned to near normal levels except for comms to and from vessels in the area of the incident,” HOLMES replied. “Do you wish to deep dive or continue?”
Carl had been trained to follow his instincts. With AIs like HOLMES to do the actual analysis, instinct was the only competitive edge humans had over neural systems now. AIs were the masters of cold hard logic, but they sucked at Wild Assed Guessing.
“Continue. Related air or land-based military traffic analysis,” Carl replied.
“Satellite and signals intel indicate two Russian Federation Okhotnik Hunter drones were sent to the scene of the incident, arriving over the wreck at 0225 and returning to their base in Vladivostok at 0245. Their flight track is indicative of a ded
icated reconnaissance mission rather than a standing combat air patrol.”
OK, this shit was starting to get interesting. Not a lot interesting, but a little. Ten minutes after the Russian freighter sinks, and two Russian drones are already on station right over the top of it, transmitting images? Pretty convenient they just happened to be available. Carl didn’t believe in coincidences like that.
“Wait, you said there was an uptick in Far East HQ comms traffic 33 minutes before the incident?”
“Yes.”
“Origin and target?”
“The origin of the transmission was Russian Pacific Fleet Command. The target is unknown.”
Carl sighed, “Deep dive. Other non-routine Russian military traffic in the area of Bering Strait between the uptick in comms traffic at incident minus 33 minutes and incident time zero.”
“There was a non-routine code burst on a Russian Federation military channel six minutes and twenty-eight seconds before the incident. The origin of the code burst was 100 miles north of Saint Lawrence Island. No other non-routine traffic reported.”
Damn, damn, damn. He got up from his desk, leaned up against one of the walls in his broom cupboard sized office and began bouncing on his heels. A ship explodes. Six minutes earlier, a burst of Russian military traffic from the middle of the Bering Strait. 33 minutes before that, an uptick in Russian Eastern Military District traffic. Wait.
“HOLMES, assume the transmission six minutes before the sinking was from a Russian Federation Naval vessel. Do we have any data on Russian naval vessels within missile range of the freighter at that time?” It was a long shot, but maybe a Russian missile test had gone haywire.
“Checking Satellite, Signals, Human Intelligence … no Russian naval vessel within range within the communications window,” HOLMES said. “Do you wish me to expand the search to vessels of other navies?”
“What? Repeat, contextualize.”
“I have a 98.4% match on both a possible launch vessel and missile type,” HOLMES said. Carl could swear it sounded pleased with itself. “The time to target projected from the location of the comms burst at six minutes to the time of first mayday call from the Ozempic Tsar matches the profile of a US PIKE long-range stealth anti-ship missile launched from the Finnish Scorpene class submarine FNS Vesikko.”
Carl snapped forward in his chair, “Say again? Expand!”
“Signals intel indicates the FNS Vesikko sent a message to Finnish Fleet Command at Heikkila, Finland, one hour before the incident, reporting its position, bearing and speed. The FNS Vesikko is a refurbished French Scorpene class submarine equipped with the US PIKE long-range stealth anti-ship missile. My analysis shows that if the Vesikko had maintained its stated bearing and speed, its estimated position would correlate with the location of the anomalous comms transmission 100 miles north of Saint Lawrence Island. A PIKE missile fired by the FNS Vesikko at this position would have taken six minutes and eighteen seconds to reach the Ozempic Tsar, which correlates with the timing of the anomalous radio transmission. The triangulation of these three data points gives a 98.4 percent certainty that if the Ozempic Tsar was destroyed by a naval vessel, it was a PIKE missile fired by the FNS Vesikko.”
He was starting to sweat. He wasn’t a small man - in fact he was carrying about fifty pounds more than he probably should be, but it would usually take a lot more than just sitting in his chair in the cold corridor under the Embassy compound to make him break out in a sweat. This sweat wasn’t exertion, it was fear.
“Would a what-you-call-it missile …”
“AGM-158C PIKE.”
“Yeah. Would one of them be enough to sink a 400,000-ton freighter inside ten minutes?”
“If it successfully struck the ship’s hydrogen storage or fuel cells, one such missile would be sufficient. Standard military doctrine would dictate two are fired to secure catastrophic target destruction.”
Carl whistled, “A double tap. Just to be sure.”
“Please repeat. Was that a question or comment?”
“Neither. Please tell me there were no US naval vessels, capable of firing a PIKE missile, inside that kill zone at the time of the incident.”
There was a slight pause, then HOLMES responded, “The nearest long-range cruise missile capable US vessel was the subsea drone USS Venice Beach, which was on station 290 miles south-southeast at the time.”
“Inside missile range?”
“300 nautical miles,” HOLMES said. “The USS Venice Beach could also have engaged the Ozempic Tsar with its missiles at that range but it would have had to fire thirty minutes earlier. I am unable to locate any US Pacific Fleet Command traffic to or from the USS Venice Beach at that time.”
“But that is around the time of the Russian Pacific Fleet comms burst. They might have been reporting on a suspected US missile launch. Dammit, this is ugly. HOLMES, deep dive Navy command and control logs and check whether the Venice Beach fired a PIKE missile in the last 24 hours. Check whether any US Navy vessel in the Northern Pacific has fired any sort of weapon at all. Check for any intel indicating that Russia has the capability to hack a US naval vessel and order it to fire one of its missiles. I want you to run three scenarios: one, the Finnish submarine sank the Russian Freighter. Two, the USS Venice Beach sank the freighter. Three, an unknown Russian vessel, aircraft or land-based missile battery sank it. Summarize potential supporting data and assign probabilities then send the report to my laptop with a copy to the Senior Defense Attaché and NSA Russia Desk.”
“Will do Carl. What should I title the report?”
Carl thought about it, “Heading: Battle of Bering Strait. Subhead: Who killed the Ozempic Tsar?”
“Yes Carl. Compiling.”
Carl drew a dot on a page and wrote OzTsar next to it, then a ring and FNS Vesikko at six minutes eighteen seconds. Further out at thirty minutes, USS Venice Beach. It was the time correlation between the position of the Finnish sub, the flight time of a PIKE missile, and the timing of that comms burst from the middle of the Bering Strait that bugged him the most.
“HOLMES, do you believe in coincidence?”
“I do not indulge in beliefs, Carl.”
“Point taken. HOLMES, book me some serious bandwidth. Something stinks here.”
HOLES IN THE CHEESE
The US Ambassador to Moscow, Devlin McCarthy, had several firsts to her name but the one she liked best was that she was the first black Irish American to be named Ambassador to a top tier post like Moscow. In fact, Devlin was pretty sure she was the first black Irish American in the State Department, let alone in Moscow. She wasn’t the first ever black Irish American, that she knew for a fact because that honor went to her father, his father, and his father’s father. Further back than that, she hadn’t checked. She loved her Grandfather’s explanation though - he insisted his ancestors were Viking slaves, captured Moors bought in the slave markets of Hedeby and shipped to Ireland to serve in Viking families during the reign of Harold Bluetooth.
It was a great story, and she told it to anyone brave enough to ask her about her family history, which most of the Embassy staffers were too timid to do. She wouldn’t mind if they did - it would give her a chance to break down the Ice Queen reputation she seemed to have brought here with her. Small talk wasn’t something people seemed comfortable trying on her, so luckily she was comfortable with their small awkward silences. She really didn’t think she deserved the rep she had. Sure, she was forty and twice divorced - she never had much of an interest in lifelong attachments - and she spent most of her waking life at work, but she did take two weeks holiday every year to be with her now-adult daughter, always taking her somewhere outdoorsy for at least a week, followed by a week somewhere nice like a beach resort or theme park. When Cindy had hit her adult years she’d been expecting her to find something better to do in the summer than hang with her absentee State Department mother, but Cindy hadn’t missed a holiday yet and these days there was a third guest on their holidays, Cind
y’s new daughter Angela. Devlin figured the fact they’d stayed close said something nice about them both.
Apart from her annual family get together then, most of her daily life was polite society and diplomatic doublespeak. So she relished days like today when she was summoned to meet with the Russian Foreign Minister Roman Kelnikov at his State offices inside the Kremlin walls. His Ministry was on the ring road that circled Moscow, but the fact he was meeting her here indicated to her she was in for a bit of diplomatic theatre where frank views might actually be exchanged.
She sat in the back of her two-ton armored limo with two bodyguards up front, one facing forward, one backward and her personal aide beside her. In the days when cars needed a driver, they’d needed a detail of three - one to drive, two to guard. But driverless vehicles had freed up the third spot either for additional protection, guests or in this case, legroom. As they approached the River Gates that led directly into the Russian foreign ministry underground carpark there was the usual ceremony with credentials and Kremlin guards running a sweep of the car and its occupants. They all had to demount and go through biometric scanners before they were allowed back into their car and inside the Kremlin walls.
As their car found its assigned parking bay, Devlin patted the small printed folio on her lap. She never took a tablet or telephone into Russian Government offices because since passive data retrieval had become a thing, it was the work of seconds for a concealed scanner to strip an electronic device of all its data. The great privacy backlash of about 20 years ago when people got sick of their data being stolen, their identities cloned and their secrets sold to the highest bidder had seen a revival in the use of good old-fashioned paper that had to be physically stolen, held and read before it gave up its secrets. All truly sensitive information these days was only held on paper.
And the information in the folio on her lap was about as sensitive as it came.
“Tea?” Kelnikov asked, motioning to the samovar on a silver table next to his desk. His office was big enough to hold a large oak desk which legend said had been gifted to the Russian foreign minister Molotov by Minister of the Reich Ribbentrop. There were also two long sofas both facing in towards a less formal teak coffee table decorated with fresh flowers and fruit.
