Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  Desaix was delighted. The TV journalist’s commentary might almost have been written by his own staff.

  “If North Star had been in port when she blew up, Gdansk itself would have been utterly destroyed. Tens of thousands would lie dead or dying in the rubble — far more than the hundred or so who died three days ago. And a hellish fire storm fed by natural gas and oil would be sweeping across northern Poland, blackening the skies above all Europe.

  “One thing more is clear. Poland and the Czech and Slovak republics cannot be allowed to put us all at risk for their own selfish aims. The time for nationalism is over. Europe must stand united as a single, strong force for peace and prosperity. Or else surrender in shame to those who would exploit us for their own profit.

  “This is Raoul Peree, reporting live from Gdansk…”

  Desaix used a remote control to turn off the small television. After checking his watch, he punched a special code into his secure phone.

  The head of the DGSE was still in his own office. He answered immediately. “Yes, Minister?”

  “Fine work, Morin. A most satisfying operation. Congratulate Commander Regier and his men for me.”

  “Of course, Minister.”

  Desaix hung up, confident that Poland and Eastern Europe would soon submit and join the new European order. Their vaunted independence had fallen prey to a single, well-timed explosive charge.

  CHAPTER 11

  Confederation

  FEBRUARY 23 — CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND

  Falling snow blanketed the steep, wooded Maryland hills surrounding Camp David, drifting down out of a slate-gray sky. Soft white flakes settled gently across the mountainside presidential retreat. Wisps of steam rose from an outdoor heated swimming pool, glowing brightly in the light thrown by flood-lamps dotting the compound. Beyond the shining mists, men moved in the darkness growing beneath the nearest trees — Secret Service agents on guard duty.

  Dogs barked in the distance — faint and far off. The snow hushed all sounds and made all the world seem at peace.

  “Ross? Are you all right?”

  Huntington turned away from the window. The President, Harris Thurman, and the others crowded into Aspen Cottage’s small wood-paneled parlor were staring at him. Damn. He’d let his mind wander when he should have been paying attention. The President needed an advisor who could give cogent advice. Not a daydreamer wrapped in his own weariness.

  He forced a tired smile. “I’m fine, Mr. President. Just a little short on sleep is all.”

  That was a half-truth hovering on the edge of being a full-fledged lie. Constant travel, stress, and gnawing worry over what he saw happening in Europe were taking a serious toll on his health. For the first time since he’d left the hospital two years ago, Huntington felt warning signs from his heart — warning signs he couldn’t easily ignore. An aching right arm and jaw. Trouble breathing after almost any unexpected exertion. Even climbing a single flight of stairs too fast left him winded.

  He knew it showed. His wife was starting to look scared again. She wanted him to go in for a checkup, but he’d been putting her off.

  A doctor would probably order him to slow down, to take some time for himself. And he couldn’t. His time belonged to the United States and to the President. As long as the nation’s chief executive found his efforts and counsel valuable, personal considerations had to be put on the back burner.

  Crap, Huntington told himself. He reined his ego in before it soared out of control. The real truth was that he didn’t want to quit. He’d felt lost and useless after that first heart attack shoved him into early retirement. Gaining the President’s trust had helped him regain his own confidence, Settling for enforced idleness at home or on a golf course somewhere would mean surrendering to boredom and quiet despair all over again.

  Besides, he couldn’t give up. Not now. Not when a crucial part of the foreign policy he’d helped shape seemed close to total collapse.

  Political shock waves from the LNG tanker explosion were still echoing around the globe. Aided and abetted by the French, environmental extremists were using the North Star disaster as a rallying point for further, more radical opposition to tanker traffic in the Baltic. Even the region’s moderate, unaligned governments — Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic republics — were under increasing pressure to openly oppose the U.S.-and-British-led energy supply effort.

  The administration itself was sharply divided over the wisdom of continued oil and gas shipments to Eastern Europe. An uneasy coalition formed by the Secretaries of Energy, Defense, and State still backed the program. But its cabinet-level critics were growing bolder, buoyed by polls that showed public opinion sliding their way. So far the President’s clear determination to help the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks had kept a lid on the debate. Policymakers sparring over the shipments were keeping their disputes out of public view. All that could change overnight if any of them sensed their leader’s resolution weakening.

  Huntington knew how easily actions could be misinterpreted. Rightly or wrongly, the officials who opposed the President’s energy aid program saw him, Huntington, as the “evil genius” behind it. So if he threw in the towel and went home, even for medical reasons, he might take the cabinet’s shaky consensus with him. All their bickering and bitterness could break out into the open and onto the front page. And isolationist vultures in both Congress and the media were already circling — ready to pounce the first time the administration wavered.

  That was the deciding factor.

  France and Germany were waiting in the wings. Waiting for a cold-war-weary America to abandon the Eastern European countries to their tender mercies. Well, Ross Huntington would be damned before he’d walk away and watch that happen. Not without one hell of a fight. This wasn’t just another memo-riddled skirmish between factions scrapping for control over the administration’s agenda. There were bodies in the Gdansk morgue to prove that. For all practical purposes, whoever had planted the bomb aboard the SeaTrans North Star had declared war on the United States.

  The President shared his view of the situation. Which explained this emergency meeting at Camp David.

  Huntington studied the men grouped together near the parlor’s stone fireplace. As always, Harris Thurman stood closest to the President, wreathed in the smooth-smelling tobacco smoke curling from his favorite pipe. Despite that, his lean, patrician features were tense. As the Secretary of State, a lot of the political flak lobbed at the oil supply effort was coming his way. In contrast, Clinton Scofield, the Secretary of Energy, looked considerably calmer. He leaned against a wall with his arms folded comfortably in front of him. The Secretary of Defense, John Lucier, stood beside Scofield, shorter by several inches than anyone else in the room. His intelligent brown eyes gleamed behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. The final member of the group, Walter Quinn, head of the CIA, perched on an armchair pulled up next to the fireplace. From time to time the CIA chief mopped sweat off his high, balding forehead, but he stayed right where he was. Caught between a desk job, a slow metabolism, and an aversion to exercise, Quinn carried enough extra weight to be far more comfortable sitting down than standing up. He’d learned how to cope with heat during half a lifetime spent suffering through Washington’s sweltering summers.

  All of them were dressed casually, sporting a mix of jeans and corduroy trousers, sweaters, open hunting vests, and unzipped ski jackets. And all of them supported the President’s decision to aid the Eastern European republics.

  The White House press office was telling reporters they were at Camp David for a day’s cross-country skiing, but every one of them knew that was pure bullshit. Calling the day-long gathering a ski trip gave the cabinet officers who hadn’t been invited up the mountainside a way to save face. In reality, the President wanted to reassess events in Europe without sparking another clash between those who wanted to help the three small countries and those who’d just as soon ignore them.

  Huntington moved closer to the fire and
away from the window. He didn’t see any point in giving his exhausted mind more chances to roam free. He was here to explore policy options, not to stare out at the falling snow.

  They had already been at it for hours.

  Scofield made room for him by the fireplace and kept talking. “What I’m saying, Mr. President, is that unless we take some pretty dramatic steps pretty damned quick, the whole Gdansk operation is dead in the water. Finished.”

  “Insurance problems?”

  “Sure.” The Energy Secretary ran a hand through his unruly red hair. “Lloyd’s and the other maritime insurers have jacked Baltic tanker rates up three or four hundred percent in just the last two days. That’s pushing costs way beyond what the Poles can afford and way beyond what we’d budgeted.”

  He frowned. “Plus, I’ve been getting calls from every shipping firm and oil company we’ve been able to rope into this thing. They want out. Now, not later. Nobody bargained for what happened to North Star.”

  “Shit.” The President rubbed his jaw, thinking hard. “What’s the supply situation like over there?”

  “Still not good.” Scofield looked grim. “Even operating nonstop, we were barely able to move in enough oil and gas. My people tell me all three countries are down to a ten-day margin. Maybe less if the weather stays bad.”

  Christ. Huntington’s mouth went dry. The Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks had almost unimaginably rigid conservation programs in place. No one with a private automobile could get any gasoline to keep it running. All cities were under strict, energy-saving curfews. And dozens of factories were operating only sporadically, idling tens of thousands of trained workers. Citizens in the three nations already faced lives that were increasingly dark, dreary, gloomy, and cold. He doubted their governments could survive for very long if matters got much worse.

  He knew Scofield, Thurman, and the others shared the same somber conviction. He could see it on their faces.

  The President stared into the fire, obviously making the same depressing calculations. For just an instant, sagging shoulders and a haggard, careworn look showed his true age. But when he looked up again, his aides saw only the same firm, youthful expression he was careful to show the public. “All right, gentlemen. We tried to help our friends out of a jam, and now we’ve been suckerpunched. The question is, what should we do about it?”

  “Giving up isn’t an option?” Scofield asked quietly.

  “No.”

  The Energy Secretary nodded, satisfied. “Then we roll with the punch, Mr. President. We roll with it and shake it off.” He straightened up. “First we have to keep the oil and gas flowing. To do that, we’re going to have to insure the tankers ourselves. Provide total coverage against any losses.”

  “And where do we find the money?” Harris Thurman didn’t conceal his skepticism. “Good God, man, they’re saying the bill for the North Star explosion will run close to a billion dollars by the time all the lawyers are through. What if there’s another disaster on the same scale? We couldn’t begin to scrape that much extra funding together — not without going to the Congress.”

  “Exactly.” Scofield smiled tightly. “That’s why we have to make sure there aren’t any more so-called disasters.”

  He glanced at the shorter man standing by his side. “And that’s where the navy comes in. Right, John?”

  The Secretary of Defense stepped forward into the flickering firelight. “Precisely.” He turned to the President. “I’ve talked to the chief of naval operations, sir. We could have an escort force on station in a week. Sooner if the British will join us. Put enough ships and surveillance aircraft around any tanker and you can be pretty sure she’ll arrive safely.”

  “A carrier battle group?”

  “Not necessarily, Mr. President. A carrier operating in the North Sea could prove useful, but most of the real work would have to be done by smaller stuff — frigates and destroyers. The Baltic is too confined for anything bigger.” Lucier adjusted his glasses, pushing them tighter across his nose. “I think we’d also be wise to deploy a few Patriot and Hawk missile batteries around the harbor perimeter.”

  The Defense Secretary’s lips tightened in a quick, thin smile. “Just in case some troubled maniac decides to take a bomb-loaded Cessna for a spin over Poland.”

  “Sensible.” The President stood quietly for a moment with his hands in his pockets. Then he nodded. “Okay, John. Work up your plan and have it ready for me to look over. By tomorrow morning, if possible.”

  “Sir, you’re not seriously considering this?” Harris Thurman sounded more and more agitated. “Sending U.S. forces in harm’s way for somebody else’s oil is practically guaranteed to set Congress off like a Roman candle. Pendleton and the rest of them will crucify you for risking American lives overseas.”

  The President swung around to face his Secretary of State. “They can try, Harris. But I’m the commander in chief. I’m the one the people elected to watch over this country’s vital interests. Not Pendleton or the Senate majority leader. Hell, if the people don’t like the job I’m doing, they can always throw me out on my ear in the next election. Clear?”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” Thurman backed off and tried another tack. “But I still think we might be jumping the gun a bit. All this protection against terrorists or commandos could be completely unnecessary. How do we know what happened to North Star wasn’t just a freak accident?”

  “Because there’s almost no chance that it was.” Scofield stepped into the argument again. “I’ve had DOE and gas industry experts going over every detail they can get their hands on. The weather that night. The ship’s position. Crew experience. Maintenance records. The whole kit and caboodle. And not one of them can concoct a scenario that would result in that kind of explosion. Not without more warning.”

  The President turned to Huntington. “You were just there, Ross. Are the Poles still convinced this was a deliberate case of sabotage?”

  “They are.” Huntington nodded. “They’re still digging hard for evidence, any evidence, to confirm their suspicions. Their police and military intelligence people are questioning anyone who might have seen anything suspicious out near the anchorage.” He frowned. “But so far nothing’s turned up.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Walter Quinn spoke up suddenly. “I don’t think there’s anything for them to find.”

  “Oh?”

  “Waiting until the tanker was anchored right off the Polish coast seems too risky. Anyone caught snooping around that mooring area would have been damned hard-pressed to explain what they were doing there.” The CIA director shook his head. “Professionals don’t like working without a safety net. They’d pick somewhere busier, with more ships of all types coming and going. Somewhere they could slip into without being noticed and still get out of fast if anything went wrong.”

  Quinn wiped his forehead again and this time pushed his chair back a foot or so from the fire. “That’s why we’re fairly sure whoever sabotaged the North Star did it long before she ever reached Gdansk. Maybe while she was still loading in Stavanger. Maybe sometime during her transit through the Skagerrak or the Kattegat.”

  He shrugged. “Trouble is, there are just too many bases to cover. I’ve got officers spread through the region and so do both the British and the Norwegians, but it’s like hunting for a needle that’s not only hidden but invisible as well.”

  The President, Thurman, and the others nodded their understanding. Without any physical evidence to narrow down the type of explosive device or even its location aboard the ship, Quinn’s agents faced a Herculean challenge. They didn’t know whether to look for a turncoat dockworker, bearded Green lunatics aboard a sailboat, or a highly trained commando team sent in by minisub.

  Suddenly Huntington’s mind came alive as he remembered what he’d seen and been told at the Polish port. He lifted a hand, interrupting the CIA chief. “Hold on, Walt. It’s likely this mine or bomb or whatever it was, was set to go off at a particular t
ime, right?”

  Quinn nodded. “Probably. Command detonation would be chancy — especially through the water or a metal hull. Radio waves don’t travel too well through either medium. Given that, using a timed device of some sort would be the best method.”

  “And that’s exactly why we know the explosives were planted sometime after the North Star arrived off Gdansk.” Huntington looked around the parlor. “The tanker didn’t offload on schedule. We all know that now. But who could have known that before she got there?”

  He answered his own question. “Nobody. By the time she showed up, Gdansk was taking ships in on almost a catch-as-catch-can basis. Some tankers were in and out of the port on schedule. Others wound up days late.”

  Quinn looked puzzled. “I don’t see your point.”

  “Think about it.” Huntington felt excitement rising inside. It was the same feeling he used to get when he spotted the solution to a stubborn production problem or when he held a winning poker hand. “If the explosives were planted aboard any earlier, they’d have been timed to go off while the North Star was in port. Anchored smack-dab in the middle of Gdansk instead of sitting several miles offshore.”

  Scofield saw it first. “Of course. Not even those bastards in Paris or Berlin would destroy a whole city just to cut off Polish oil imports.”

  The President turned his gaze on the CIA director. “I think your invisible needle just turned visible, Walt. And the Poles are looking in exactly the right place.”

  “So it seems, Mr. President,” Quinn said stiffly, obviously irked and embarrassed at being one-upped by an amateur. Huntington had a feeling that the director’s senior advisors were in for a tongue-lashing when he got back to Langley.

  Fortunately for the CIA chief, the President seemed more interested in the next move than in finding fault for past errors. “Okay, Walt. I want a full-court press from every intelligence organization and asset we’ve got, focusing on the area around Gdansk. Satellite photos. SIGINT. Everything. Get your field people in touch with the Poles and coordinate with them. Somewhere, somehow, there’s evidence that connects the goddamned French or the Germans to what happened. And I want it. Understand?”