Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  He left the doorway and perched on a corner of her desk. “Show me.”

  “All right. But it’s a pretty tangled web.” She leaned back in her chair, clearly considering where she should begin. “I’ll give you the punch line first: the French have significantly upped the amount of foreign aid they’re sending to the Russians. Both on a government-to-government level and on a corporate basis. What I don’t know is why they’re doing it.”

  Her voice changed subtly as she started retracing her reasoning, always highlighting the differences between what she knew and what she could only guess at. Banich listened intently, more and more impressed by her abilities.

  There were dozens of pieces to the puzzle she’d put together, some so small and so obscure that he was amazed anyone had ever spotted them, let alone recognized their significance. Some were tiny, cryptic notations on copies of shipping manifests. Others were coded transactions buried inside the State Central Bank’s computer data base. Still other clues came from conversations she’d had with friendly Russian officials and business leaders or from radio and wire intercepts passed on by the NSA.

  By itself none of the information she’d collected seemed particularly meaningful. It was like looking too closely at an impressionist painting. Until you stepped back far enough all you saw were tiny dots of different-colored paint. But Erin McKenna had a talent for seeing the patterns behind bits of apparently unconnected data.

  Banich sat still, waiting until she was finished. Then he leaned forward. “Let me get this straight. What we’re looking at is a massive flow of new French aid to the government and to state-run industries. Things like no-interest loans and outright grants. Massive shipments of high-tech industrial machinery, spare parts, and computer software. A lot of it has both military and civilian uses. And it’s all been showing up over the past several weeks. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Any ideas on how much this stuff is worth?”

  Erin nodded. “From what I’ve seen so far… at least two billion dollars. That’s just a ballpark guess, but I think it’ll hold up over time.”

  Banich whistled softly in astonishment. Two billion dollars’ worth of foreign aid in five or six weeks was an extraordinary effort. The whole U.S. foreign aid budget didn’t amount to more than fifteen or sixteen billion dollars spread out over a whole year. “What the hell are the French up to?”

  She shook her head. “That I don’t know. All the money and goods are coming in under the table, so they’re sure as heck not trying to win brownie points with the Russian people.”

  “True.” Banich rubbed the sore muscles at the back of his neck. “But nobody throws that kind of funding around on a whim. The Frogs want something from Kaminov and his pals and they want it bad. The only question is, what?”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah.” He stood up. “I’m going down the hall for a talk with Kutner. If he sees it my way, we’ll send your report off to D.C. by special diplomatic pouch tomorrow morning. I don’t think we should sit on this until we’ve crossed every t and dotted every i.”

  Erin nodded wearily and turned back to her keyboard. He knew she’d be working all night and regretted the need for it. Sleep was tough to come by at Moscow Station.

  Banich paused by her open door. “Oh, McKenna?”

  She looked back over her shoulder.

  “Good work.”

  The smile she gave him would have launched a thousand special couriers.

  JANUARY 23 — PRZEMYSL COMPRESSOR STATION, DRUZHBA II (“FRIENDSHIP II”) GAS PIPELINE, POLAND

  The natural gas pipeline compressor station sprawled over several acres near the Polish-Ukrainian border. Machine shops, chemical labs, fire-fighting stations, and administrative offices surrounded a long metal-roofed shed and an adjacent cooling tower. Steam rose from the cooling tower, white against a clear blue sky.

  Although nearly a foot of new-fallen snow covered the empty fields around the station, very little was left inside the compound. Work crews with shovels, the passage of wheeled and tracked heavy equipment, and the heat produced by dozens of massive machines running around the clock were more than a match for nature.

  Inside the compressor shed, two men knelt beside an enormous reciprocating engine — a gas-fired monstrosity three meters high and ten meters long. Each of its sixteen cylinders was as big as a beer keg. The engine was one of eighteen mounted in pairs down the shed’s long axis. Color-coded pipes wove in and out of each compressor assembly.

  Chief engineer Tomasz Rozek clapped his coworker on the shoulder. “Nice job, Stanislaw! Now, tighten it down and you’re done!” He had to yell to be heard over the constant, deafening roar.

  The younger man flashed him a thumbs-up and then went back to work replacing an inspection hatch near the engine’s gas intake valve.

  Rozek stood up slowly, silently cursing his aching back and knees. As a young man, he’d have been able to scamper through the tangle of piping and machinery around him like a chimpanzee. Well, not anymore. Thirty-five years spent toiling in Poland’s labor-intensive energy industry had left their mark.

  He limped toward a thick metal door at the far end of the shed, performing a quick visual inspection on each pair of gigantic compressors he passed. That was standard operating procedure for any engineer moving through the shed. When his subordinates bitched about the time they wasted in such routine inspections, he ignored them. In Rozek’s view, anything that cut the chances of a major mechanical failure was worth doing. As the station’s chief engineer he set high standards for his crews, but he also made damned sure that he lived up to them himself.

  You didn’t screw around with high-pressure natural gas. Not and live to regret it.

  Przemysl was one of several similar stations strung out along the Druzhba II Pipeline as it stretched from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine, into southeastern Poland, and on to Germany. Sited roughly two hundred miles apart, their massive compressors kept natural gas flowing through the network’s twin meter-wide pipelines at the required pressure — around eleven hundred pounds per square inch, roughly seventy-five times the force in earth’s atmosphere.

  And high pressure meant high temperature. You couldn’t pack that many gas molecules into that small a space at that speed without generating heat. A lot of heat. The natural gas moving through the station’s compressors and piping ran at close to seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Even a pinhole rupture in the pipeline could create a deadly fireball twenty meters or more wide — a fireball that would burn until it ran out of fuel.

  Rozek had seen the charred corpses of those who’d found that out the hard way. He didn’t want to see any more.

  The control room at the end of the compressor shed was a blessed haven of relative peace and quiet. Thick insulation reduced the shed’s steady, pounding roar to background noise. Four technicians sat facing a dial-studded console, continuously monitoring readings from the flow meters laid every twenty miles or so up the line to the next pumping station.

  The engineer took his earplugs out as he closed the door. “Everything okay here?”

  “Smooth as a pretty woman’s behind, chief.”

  Rozek snorted. “That’s good. Because this is as close to a pretty woman as any of you lot are likely to get.”

  He dropped behind a battered steel desk parked next to a window overlooking the rest of the complex. Although his rank entitled him to an office in the administration building, he’d never used it. He preferred being closer to the action. The one concession to comfort he allowed himself was a cushioned swivel chair.

  With a small sigh, Rozek settled in to wade through the pile of maintenance reports, time sheets, and union grievances waiting for him. Paperwork was the one constant in his working day. And he loathed it.

  Alarm bells shattered his concentration.

  “We’ve got gas pressure falling rapidly on both One and Two! Down to one thousand p.s.i.!”

  Mother of God.
Rozek whirled toward the window, fully expecting to see a pillar of flame streaming skyward somewhere close by. Nothing. The break must be further up the pipeline. But how the hell had anyone cut through both lines simultaneously? They were buried several meters apart as a precaution against just that kind of accident.

  “Pressure at nine hundred and still falling!”

  The chief engineer jumped to his feet and ran for the control console. Suddenly his back didn’t hurt at all.

  He leaned over the senior technician’s shoulder, squinting to read the old-fashioned dial meters. They’d been hoping to put in more modern digital readout equipment, but the government hadn’t been able to afford it yet. The indicators were still plunging, plummeting past 850 pounds per square inch.

  In the shed outside the control room door, the regular, chugging roar from the compressors was changing, speeding up as they ran faster with less natural gas flowing through them. The sound sent a chill down Rozek’s spine. The engines were overrevving. Much more of that and they were likely to tear themselves apart, slashing through piping still filled with highly flammable gas.

  He reached past the technician and slapped down switches controlling the first pair of compressors, turning them off. “Knock ’em down! Shut everything down! Now!”

  His men hurried to obey the order while he grabbed the phone connecting Przemysl to the next station up the pipeline — two hundred miles to the northeast, on the border between Belarus and Ukraine.

  A technician, an ethnic Russian by his clear diction, answered on the first ring. “Compressor Station Six.”

  “This is the chief engineer at Przemysl.” Rozek fumbled for the right Russian words. He’d learned the language out of necessity, not because he liked it. “I think we’ve got a line break somewhere between us. We’re closing down right away.”

  “There is no accident, chief engineer.” The Russian technician’s voice was guarded.

  “No? Then what in God’s name is going on?”

  “Please hold for a moment.”

  Rozek could hear clicking sounds as the man switched him to another line.

  A new voice came on, colder and more precise. “You are the engineer in charge at Przemysl?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Colonel Viktor Polyakov. As the Commonwealth military representative for this district, I now command this station. I suggest you put your facility on permanent standby.” The Russian Army officer delivered his next bombshell bluntly. “My orders are to inform you that all oil and gas deliveries to your country are being stopped. Effective immediately.”

  Rozek gripped the phone tighter. “Orders? From where?”

  “From Moscow, chief engineer.” The phone line went dead.

  Rozek stood clutching the phone for several seconds as his mind sorted through the implications of what he’d just been told. “Oh, shit.”

  He slammed the red emergency phone down and reached for the black phone next to it. This one was a dedicated line to Poland’s Ministry of Mining and Power. “This is Rozek. I need to speak with the minister. We have a problem.”

  JANUARY 25 — THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The senior members of the National Security Council filled the White House Cabinet Room. They were meeting here because the basement Situation Room they ordinarily used was being given a multimillion-dollar face-lift. Work crews were busy installing the latest computer-driven displays and secure communications gear, including equipment intended to allow real-time teleconferences with military commanders and other leaders around the globe during some hypothetical future emergency. Naturally, now that they were facing a real crisis, the timing couldn’t possibly have been any worse.

  It was the first time Ross Huntington had ever been invited to sit in on such a high-level administration gathering. He felt distinctly uncomfortable.

  The men and women seated around the long rectangular table eyed him from time to time, some with frank curiosity, others with open envy. His reputation as the President’s unofficial right-hand man was spreading. Huntington tried not to let their stares bother him. There were plenty of top officials who resented his easy access to the Oval Office. Nothing would bring their PR knives and malicious press leaks out sooner than any sign of uncertainty on his part. Politicians, like other finned scavengers, homed in on the first taste of blood in the water.

  He forced himself to pay close attention to the handsome, red-haired man giving the preliminary briefing.

  “Basically, Mr. President, the Poles are up shit’s creek, and the Czechs and Slovaks aren’t much better.” Clinton Scofield, the Secretary of Energy, was a former South Carolina governor who lived up to his tough-talking reputation. The Washington rumor mill said the forty-five-year-old widower liked betting on fast horses and dating even faster women. He was also known as a knowledgeable, hardworking, and completely loyal cabinet officer. In Huntington’s eyes that made up for a multitude of real and imagined sins. “Poland imports better than ninety-eight percent of its crude oil — ninety percent from one source, Russia. They’re a little better off when it comes to natural gas supplies, but not by much. Siberian gas met sixty percent of their needs last year. The two other countries are in pretty much the same position.”

  “What about stockpiles?” Harris Thurman, the Secretary of State, asked his question around the stem of a pipe he wasn’t allowed to light. “Don’t they have strategic reserves?”

  Scofield shook his head. “They do. But not a lot. Two weeks at normal consumption. Maybe thirty days’ worth under the emergency rationing program they’re implementing. If they’re lucky. They sure won’t make it through the winter without suffering a complete economic collapse.”

  Most of those around the table looked astonished by the Energy Secretary’s dire assessment. The United States held enough oil in its SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to meet all domestic needs for at least three full months. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that other, poorer nations operated closer to the margin.

  “Can’t they just find other suppliers?” The dark-haired woman who headed the Treasury had done some homework. She held up one of the weekly reports prepared by DOE’s Energy Information Administration. “Your own department keeps saying there’s no worldwide shortage of oil or natural gas. If that’s true, I think we should simply urge them to look elsewhere and be done with it.”

  Several cabinet officers murmured their agreement. Even inside the administration there were deep divisions over fundamental policy. A strong minority opposed any moves to increase America’s overseas commitments. Domestic initiatives were closer to their hearts and departmental budgets. They were backed by isolationist sentiment in the Congress.

  “It’s not that simple.” Scofield cleared his throat. “You can’t buy on the spot market without hard currency — real dollars — and that’s something else the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks are short on. They were paying the Russians in kind, trading iron, steel, chemicals, computers, and the like for crude oil and gas. No OPEC country’s going to cut the same kinds of deals with them.”

  Nobody could dispute that. The world’s oil powers weren’t famous for their disinterested charity.

  For the first time, the President spoke up. He looked down the table toward Walter Quinn, the director of Central Intelligence. “There’s no doubt that the French are behind this oil embargo?”

  “None at all, sir.”

  The Secretary of State added his own two cents to the discussion. “Paris wants all of Eastern Europe inside this new monetary union — or else too bankrupt to give it much trouble.”

  The President acknowledged Thurman’s point with a quick nod before turning back to the DCI. “One thing still puzzles me about this, Walt. What about the Germans? Weren’t they pulling oil and gas through those pipelines, too?”

  “Yes, sir. Mostly for refineries and factories in the east. Replacing those supplies on the open market will cost them a pretty penny.”

  Hunti
ngton mentally chalked one up for the nation’s chief executive. He’d overlooked the German angle during his own hasty boning up for this meeting.

  “Well, we know the French are covering Russia’s out-of-pocket expenses for this thing. Are they doing the same for the Germans?”

  The DCI looked troubled. He’d been riding high on the credit the CIA had gained for its heads-up warnings of Kaminov’s putsch and the secret French subsidies to Russia. Now he had to admit ignorance. “If they are, we haven’t seen any signs of it. But I can’t be sure about that, Mr. President. We don’t have any sources high enough in the Schraeder regime to tell us, one way or the other.”

  Huntington wasn’t particularly surprised by that. Germany had been a trusted American ally for decades — a close partner in the long straggle against Soviet communism. It took time to successfully shift the CIA’s German operations from open cooperation to covert competition. Still, even the faint possibility that the French hadn’t bothered telling Berlin what they were up to inside Russia was intriguing. Maybe their fledgling friendship wasn’t as solid as all their joint press releases made it seem. That was worth closer study.

  The President evidently agreed. He jabbed a finger toward the CIA chief. “Keep digging, Walt. I’d like to know exactly who’s orchestrating this damned embargo.”

  He ran his gaze around the crowded table. “All right, folks, let’s move this along. The problem our Polish, Czech, and Slovak friends are facing is pretty damn clear. What I need to hear are some workable solutions.”

  “Is that even necessary, Mr. President?” The Treasury Secretary didn’t mince her words. She had been in the cabinet long enough to know that the nation’s chief executive valued candor more than consensus.

  “I still don’t see that we have any compelling interest at stake here. Who really cares whether they pay their bills with zlotys or with franc-marks?” She shrugged. “After all, every dollar American-owned companies make in those countries wouldn’t keep this government in pocket change for half an hour.”