by David Poyer
“I don’t stay at the Mir.”
Dan said lamely that was right, he’d forgotten. They made arrangements to meet precisely at six at the address Dvorov had given them, shook hands, and parted.
Henrickson got back a little after he did. They were about to leave for lunch when there was a knock. Dan opened the door to find a well-built black guy in a close haircut, down jacket, jeans, and spanking-new bright-red running shoes. They stared at each other.
“Commander Lenson?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Gunnery S’r’n’t Moale, sir. From the embassy.”
Dan checked the proffered green ID. Moale was a Marine. “Come on in, Gunny. What can I do for you?”
Moale nodded to the sliding doors to Dan’s balcony. “It’s awful warm in here, sir. Don’t you think?” For a moment Dan stared; then understood.
The wind was cold. Moale slid the door closed behind them and turned to face the railing, looking down on the street. Henrickson fluttered behind the glass like a captive butterfly. Dan turned up the lapels of his jacket. He didn’t feel like leaning against a Soviet-era railing, four stories up, but stood close to it as he dared. “What’s going on, Sergeant? I’m assuming something’s wrong?”
“Hand-delivered message, sir.”
Dan tore the envelope open, wondering what would happen if the wind got it. He held it firmly as he read. Moale moved a pace away, as if to be sure not to see the text.
There was no header and no salutation. All it said was SEE ME AT ONCE. DO NOT CONTACT DVOROV OR ANYONE ELSE FROM KOMPONENT.
“This is from who?”
“Captain S. At the Embassy? Wants to see you. Right away.”
“Yeah, that’s what it says. Just let me grab my coat.”
With Moale at his side he got a swift pass through embassy security. Siebeking was on the covered phone when Dan came into his office. The first thing he said when he hung up was, “Where’s that other guy who was with you?”
“Henrickson? Or de Cary?”
“Crap. Both, I guess—I forgot about the French guy. Sergeant!”
“I didn’t, sir. Corporal Difilippantonio’s over at his hotel now.”
Siebeking nodded for the sergeant to leave. Dan waited till the door closed. “What’s up, sir?”
“We have a complication. It seems that unknown to you, and unknown to me, too, up till about ten minutes ago, there’s a parallel effort underway to yours. With the same target in mind.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh. Because you’re overt, but they’re not.”
“That is bad. Who is it?”
“The covert effort’s being run by Naval Intelligence and an allied secret service. You don’t need to know more, okay? Obviously they compartmented you out, and me, too. Not a good decision, but that’s the cookie. They’ve apparently got something going with somebody on the inside. So they’re trying to buy the guidance system documentation from him.”
Dan considered. Could this seller be the source of the original intelligence that a guided Shkval existed? Mullaly had said that source was in the Admiralty. He decided to start with a simpler question. “Okay, but—I don’t understand. The missile’s on the block. For sale. They just demonstrated it in the fucking Moscow River, with free vodka and two TV crews. Why would we, or these allies, whoever they are, screw around with covert action when we can just buy what we want?”
“Well, let me ask you a question back: Why bother with the metal when we can just get the documentation?”
Dan frowned. Siebeking went on, “Maybe it’s not immediately evident, but take my word for it, we’d be better off with just the specs and circuit diagrams, and let them keep the hardware. Especially if they don’t know we have them. It’s one of those spycraft things. Make sense?”
Dan said slowly, “It’s not just because getting the specs would be an intel coup? And buying the missile free and clear, wouldn’t?”
“Boy, there’s a cynical comment.” The attaché rolled his eyes. “Let’s just forget you said that, okay, Commander?”
“I didn’t mean that, sir—”
“Like I said, I forgot you said it. But when you take delivery on a weapons system, especially something cutting edge, you don’t typically get complete specs. We sure don’t furnish them with our foreign military sales. You get operating documentation, enough to do fault analysis and board-swap repairs. But not what you need to engineer countermeasures. You buy iron, you’re committing yourself to a lot of reverse engineering, a lot of guesswork and testing—by the time you’re finished you might as well have done all the R&D in-house. What they’re trying to get is exactly what we need. Are we straight now?”
Dan judged it best to nod. Siebeking explained that the planned purchase was via a Dr. Leopold Cecil. Siebeking didn’t know Cecil, but assumed he was either British or Canadian. That evening, Cecil was supposed to meet with his source, one of Dvorov’s people, apparently, to swap a briefcase of cash for complete schematics and copies of two classified reports: the official Russian Navy submarine handling and safety evaluation of the Shkval-K, and a top-secret countermeasures vulnerability evaluation the Northern Fleet had staffed out the year before.
“As soon as I heard that, I said, ‘all stop,’ and buzzed Moale to get you. I was afraid you were already on your way to Komponent. Which could have put a serious crimp in the operation.”
“No, we weren’t supposed to go over till later.” Dan hesitated. “Uh—can I ask you something else?”
“You can ask me whatever you want. Whether I can answer, depends.”
“You said somebody who worked for Dvorov was furnishing the data. Can you tell me who?”
Siebeking shrugged. “I guess, why not. An ex-navy guy.”
“Who?”
“Who? Who? You sound like an old hooty owl. An engineer, okay? Somebody named Yefremov.”
Dan felt a chill. “You mean . . . Yermakov?”
“I think that’s it. Something like that.”
“We have to warn whoever’s meeting with him.”
Siebeking frowned. “Yeah? Why?”
“It’s a trap.”
“A trap? Why do you say that?”
“Or a sting, or whatever you call it in intel circles. Yermakov’s not an engineer.”
The naval attaché’s eyebrows cranked downward as he peered into Dan’s face, then up again. “Now, how would you know that? And what would he be?”
“Never mind how I know, but he’s no engineer. He’s a vice admiral—retired now, working for Komponent, or with Dvorov—but he’s no huggy bear, sir. If he can screw us, he’d be more than happy to.”
“You serious?”
“Deadly serious, Captain,” Dan told him.
Siebeking nodded, and reached for the phone again. “You sit tight. If that’s true—”
“It’s true, all right. I met him last year. I saw him again, yesterday, on the test barge. If he’s part of the deal, it’s not going to turn out the way we want.”
When he hung up the attaché slid open a desk drawer. For some reason Dan thought he might take a gun from it, but instead he shoved across a cell phone. “Here. They quit listening to the land lines for a couple of years, but what we’re hearing now, they’re back at it again. But we’re pretty sure they’re not up to intercepting cell calls yet. There’s a commercial encryption on this one that’s supposed to be tight. I want you back in your room. Don’t let anyone in, don’t go out to eat, don’t use the hotel phone. Understood?”
“Aye aye, sir,” Dan said. He slid it into his pocket and stood. “But what about our meeting? Our deal with Dvorov? Seems to me, we’d be better off buying exclusive rights to this thing. That way, none of the rogues gets it. I think—”
“Just hold your horses on all that. We’ll get back to you when this situation resolves,” Siebeking told him. He raised his voice. “Gunny!”
The marine poked his head in. “Sir!”
“Co
mmander Lenson’s ready to leave.”
Henrickson had trail mix, granola bars, and instant oatmeal, and there was a coffeemaker in the room to heat water. They managed to make do for a late lunch, but Dan found it hard to sit and watch Russian game shows. He paced back and forth between the bed and the balcony window. Maybe he was wrong about Yermakov. Even vice-admirals must have a price. And afterward he could push his idea again. Maybe they’d end up with the specs, and the weapons, and an exclusive agreement. The best of all possible endings.
Somehow, it didn’t seem likely.
A soccer game was blaring and Henrickson was on the carpet cranking off sit-ups when the cell phone chirped. He was little, but it looked like he could do sit-ups forever. Dan grabbed it off the coffee table and searched for the right button. “Lenson here. Hello? Hello?”
“Dan? Al Siebeking here. Bad news.”
“Turn up that soccer game,” he said to Henrickson. To Siebeking, “What is it, sir?”
“The meet was busted by the FSB.”
“Oh, no. Did they get—”
“Yeah; they got Cecil. And it’s gonna be ugly. Have you got alternate passports?”
He searched his brain: alternate passports? Did he mean false passports? “Uh . . . all we got were the official passports, the ones we usually travel on. The red ones. And our blue ones, our personal ones.”
“In your own names?”
He did mean false papers. “Yessir. They’re all in our, uh, real names.”
“Here’s what I recommend: Better clear out. You might have only minutes.”
“Get packed,” Dan snapped to Henrickson, who’d been listening to one side of the conversation without stopping his exercises.
“Why? What’s going on?”
He covered the phone. “I didn’t know about this, Monty. Not till today. But the FSB just picked up a spy who was trying to buy data about the Shkval.”
“Really? I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”
“Me, neither. But the embassy says we could be, if we don’t get the hell out of Dodge.”
The analyst jumped up and dashed into the adjoining room. Dan muttered under the TV’s clamor, “Captain? We can check out. But how are we going to get out of the country? Our tickets are for next week.”
“Trying to work that out. Might have to pull you back inside the compound and sort it out then. See, any Americans in Moscow will be suspect. Especially guys who’re sniffing around the same system, like you. I know, you were overt, but they’ll see it as part of one plot. Hold on—”
Siebeking’s voice went muffled, speaking to someone else with his hand over the cell, Dan figured. Drawers slammed next door. He tucked the phone between ear and shoulder and started throwing clothes into his suitcase, not bothering to fold them or separate clean from dirty. He made sure his passports were there, though, and the envelope with their orders and tickets.
Siebeking came back on. “Get your asses over here. Don’t bother to check out. Leave your clothes and shit—we’ll send Moale with your keys to pack it and bring it back. Just get over here, and bring anything with the word ‘supercavitating’ on it. If anybody tries to stop you on the street, keep going. If a car pulls up next to you, go the other way. I’m hanging up.”
“Monty!” Dan yelled, cramming the cell in his pocket and grabbing his coat. “Forget packing. Get in here!”
But the phone was ringing in the other room. Dan stuck his head in to tell Henrickson not to answer it, but he already had. He glanced at Dan, eyes wide, and held it out.
“It’s for you.”
7
When the voice said, “Dan?” he frowned, knowing he knew it before recognition itself arrived.
“Uh . . . Jack? Jack Byrne, right?”
“Pretty sharp, Dan. It’s been a while.”
Images rose from the past. John Anson Byrne had been the squadron intel officer on Dan’s first staff duty, the Med float that had ended with the incursion into Syria. Dark-complexioned and distinguished-looking, the N2 had kept his tan current with sunbathing on the flight deck, eyes hidden behind tinted aviator’s glasses. They’d met again years later, when Byrne, now a captain, had been on the staff of COMIDEASTFOR in Bahrain.
He recalled a bright morning in the Gulf when he and Byrne had exchanged winks on the quarterdeck as USS Turner Van Zandt’s new CO was sworn in. Byrne had briefed Blair before she and Dan had met on the deck of an Iraq-bound tanker. Later, Jack had been best man at their wedding; the bridesmaids had nicknamed him “Captain Wonderful.”
He hadn’t seen him since, but that didn’t mean they’d drifted apart. You often ran into people you’d served with before, in the Navy, and picked up where you’d left off. Dan cleared his throat, snapping back to the present: on a phone in a Moscow hotel room, and needing very much to get out of there. He didn’t wonder how Jack had tracked him down. Byrne always seemed to know everything, the story behind the story. Which was probably as much an illusion as anything else.
“Uh, Jack, great to hear from you. What’re you doing these days? We were just going out the door. Super-important meeting. Can I call you back? Where you calling from? We’re due at the embassy—”
“Heard you were in town. You’re working for, let’s see, you’re at TAG now, right? What’s Steamin’ Dan Lenson doing in a shore billet?”
“Oh—special projects. Logistics, mostly. I’m hoping to get back to sea next tour. How about you?”
“I was over Krasnaya Presnya, too. The exhibition center. Didn’t see you—”
“Guess we missed each other. Look, I’ve really got to—”
“Just give me a minute, Dan. How’s Blair? You two starting a family yet?”
He’d been vaguely aware from the first moment of someone talking behind Byrne, some sort of background murmur. At first he’d put it down to crosstalk; you heard it a lot on lines with older switching equipment. But Byrne’s voice was different. He always sounded relaxed. Now, though, he didn’t, not at all. Dan motioned to Henrickson to leave, go, and sat on the bed. “Uh, right, yeah, it’s been a while. She’s okay. We’re both doing okay. How’s Rosemary?”
“Great, great, she’s holding up. Look, Dan, sounds like you’re busy, but I’d like to see if we can get together in the near future. Long’s we’re both in town. Sound good?”
Henrickson hovered by the door, tapping his watch. Dan grimaced and put his hand over the receiver. “Get over to the embassy, Monty. Be there in a minute.”
“You said we had to go now.”
“We do—it’s an old friend—I’ll be right there, okay? Tell Siebeking I’ll be right over.”
As he was speaking his gaze roved to the television. The soccer game was over. An impeccably coiffed anchor was announcing a western-style news show. Now he froze, hand over the mouthpiece, as Henrickson walked out, then back in again, and stood in the door, watching, too.
Two burly men were hustling another out of a building. The man between them was swarthy and distinguished-looking. He wasn’t wearing aviator glasses, though. Without them his face looked naked.
The scene changed to an office, cameras, lights, a pushing and shoving. Documents were spread across a table. A small camera was being held up and examined by another suit. The announcer intoned grave statements. Text bannered across the bottom of the screen. Dan wasn’t too hot on Cyrillic, but it was perfectly plain some of them read Cecil.
Byrne was Cecil. Not some anonymous Canadian. John Anson Byrne, U.S. Navy. He rubbed his mouth, seeing but not quite registering Henrickson staring at him, then at the TV. Then the analyst disappeared.
A click; someone lifting a receiver on the same line. In the next room? Henrickson? Or someone else?
“Dan? You there?”
“Uh, yeah, Jack . . . I’m here. Sounds like . . . like somebody’s there with you.”
“What? Here? I’m callin’ from a bar. Yeah, there’s some asshole in the other booth.”
“Sounds like a Russian assho
le.”
Byrne seemed to relax. “What can I say, country’s full of them. So what do you think? How about we get together? We might even figure out we’re in the same line of work this time.”
Dan balanced the handset, feeling like his brain was just too slow. He stuck his head around the door, and saw indeed it was Henrickson on the other extension. Byrne’s fate might depend on what he said next. Or didn’t say . . . or half conveyed . . . he tried to game it out while not pausing too long. Byrne would be calling under coercion. His captors—the FSB—would be coaching in the background. But Byrne hadn’t just played along. Instead he’d managed to warn him, with the comment about “the same line of work.” But probably he actually knew more than Byrne knew he knew. So the first thing to do was get that across. “Uh, Jack, ran into a mutual friend. Over at the embassy? Al Siebeking. Know him?”
“Oh, Al? Sure, I know Al. You been talking to Al?”
“Yeah, interesting guy, knows a lot about a lot. Really up to the minute.” He hesitated. “Jack, you okay?”
“Okay? Sure, I’m okay. Never better. Everything’s hunky here.”
A disturbance on the other end; by pressing the receiver close to his ear, Dan could almost make out the words. They were in Russian. “Jack? Jack?”
A note pad by his elbow. WHO IS THIS GUY?
Dan took the pencil from Henrickson. FRIEND. NAVY INTEL. CUSTODY FSB.
SHKVAL? THE COVERT ACTION?
How had Henrickson known that? Dan scribbled angrily, RIGHT.
Byrne came back. He was breathing harder, but still sounded perfectly self-possessed. “Sorry . . . sorry. Well, look, if you can’t make it—”
“Wait a minute, Jack. Hold your horses. Where are you?”
“Where? Uh, Moscow. Didn’t I say that?”
Now he had it. It was the next stage in the sting setup Siebeking had described. Byrne, AKA Dr. Cecil, had shown up to buy schematics and official reports. Instead the FSB broke in and took him into custody as soon as he had the classified materials—that was what the clip on the news had shown. Now his captors were forcing him to make this call, and maybe others, to suck more Americans into the trap. Dvorov must have given them his phone number here at the Mir. Yes, he’d given that to the academician.
