“Actually, sir, I submit that we’ll get better results with satellite imagery. We don’t need someone on the ground. Or the ice-”
“With respect, Mr. President, that’s not true. At high latitudes, the only satellites we have that can give us close surveillance of the area are those in polar or near-polar orbits. Currently, we have five such satellites… and there are two others that might be boosted into new, higher-latitude orbits. We’re not talking about geostationary here. To remain above the same spot on the Earth’s surface, a satellite has to be at geosynchronous orbit… and that’s above the equator and over twenty-two thousand miles up. A satellite in a polar orbit is typically only a couple of hundred miles up or so, but it’s orbiting the Earth once every ninety minutes or so. That means it’s only over a given part of the landscape for a few minutes before it drops over the horizon.
“So with seven spysats in a polar orbit, our satellite surveillance of the Russian base will consist of, at best, maybe thirty minutes out of every ninety. That’s eight hours out of twenty-four. And that assumes they all have enough fuel on board for course corrections, since to pass over the Russian base, they’ll need to be canted a bit off of a true polar orbit, and be precessed so that they keep passing over the same point on each successive orbit. They won’t be able to maintain even that much coverage for more than a day or two.
“Besides, the best spy satellite in the world can’t see inside those ships. The Lebedev is sixty-six hundred tons and longer than a football field. How will the SEALs know where the hostages are being held? And they might not be on the Lebedev at all. There are three ships up there. Thirty-two SEALs. What are you going to do, send ten SEALs to each ship?”
“It sounds like you’ve thought this out pretty carefully, Bill,” the President said.
“We try to… anticipate, sir.”
“Well, goddamn. It works for me. Tell your man to pack his long johns.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As they continued to discuss the situation, however, Rubens could sense the anger and the resentment among the others-in Collins especially, though that may have been because he knew her best. He still found it hard to believe. The two of them, Rubens and Collins, had been lovers once, if briefly, an episode that he now believed to be the biggest mistake of his life. Collins, he knew, had all the moral sensibilities of a tomcat pissing on the furniture to prove ownership, and she wouldn’t be happy until Desk Three was part of her Directorate of Operations.
There was hostility toward the DIA, too; there’d been head-to-head antagonism between the DIA and the CIA over a lot of intelligence issues lately-most memorably the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, back in ’03. As for Bing… she was tough to read. Most likely, she was simply trying to secure her own personal empire within the White House basement and would ally with anyone who could give her the power she craved.
The President’s injunction to “play nice” would only drive the interdepartmental hostilities beneath the surface, and that only for a time.
The important thing, so far as Rubens was concerned, was that the political infighting and turf wars not be allowed to affect his people, his field agents.
They deserved a hell of a lot better than that.
Menwith Hill Echelon Facility Yorkshire, England 1340 hours GMT
The Somerset Room was a large mahogany-paneled conference room a level above the Menwith Control Centre, with a long, oval table surrounded by comfortable chairs and the wall opposite the entrance covered by a huge flat-screen monitor. At the moment, that screen, flanked by the flags of both the United States and Great Britain, showed the NSA logo, but shortly it would provide the English end of a conference call, scheduled for 0900 hours EST, 1400 GMT. A row of LED panels above the big screen showed digital readouts for the local times at six different cities in the world. It was twenty minutes to nine, Dean saw, in Washington… and 4:40 in the afternoon in St. Petersburg.
Yakutsk would be… what? GMT plus nine hours? Something like that. The Arctic base north of Wrangle Island would be GMT plus twelve.
Lia took a seat on Dean’s left, Carolyn Howorth on his right. Evans sat across the table from them, with Akulinin next to him. The five of them had talked about the situation into the late evening the night before, discussing the Russian Mafiya, the Russian petroleum industry, and the current international crisis in the Arctic.
It all appeared to be related. Dean was willing to bet his paycheck on that.
Dean was quite taken with Carolyn-CJ, as she insisted on styling herself with her friends. She was quick and she was sharp, one of the infamous Menwith Girls, though she was unusual in actually being English rather than one of the small local army of transplanted Americans. He’d been surprised to learn that she was an American citizen, though her parents had brought her over from Yorkshire thirty-eight years before, from a tiny village less than twenty miles from this conference room. The NSA only rarely hired naturalized citizens… but they’d made an eager exception in CJ’s case. Her expertise in Japanese, spoken, she said, with a slight Kobe accent, had led them to make an exception so that she could work in the public relations bureau at Misawa. Only later had her knowledge of Russian brought her back to the Yorkshire moors and a place on the Russian desk.
And there might have been advantages, Dean thought, in having someone like her on the payroll here in England. The United States wouldn’t officially acknowledge her dual nationality, but so far as the Brits were concerned, she was a British subject until Her Majesty personally revoked her citizenship.
“I have some news,” Evans said as they took their seats, Styrofoam cups of coffee in front of Lia and Dean, cups of tea for Evans and CJ. “Fischer woke up last night at Barts, and MI5 has been talking to her. And we picked up Julie Henshaw at Heathrow. MI5 brought her in as well, and has been having a little chat with the lady.”
“Don’t tell us,” Lia said. “Neither of them knew a thing.”
“Nothing worth the asking,” Evans admitted. “Fischer knew Braslov as Johann Ernst. She thought he was German and a Greenworld activist, one of the group’s founders. She said he had money, a lot of it, enough to take care of her considerable debts, and those of her two friends.”
“At least that explains how the Russians recruited them,” Dean said. “It doesn’t explain how she got recruited for a suicide mission.”
“She insists that Braslov told her no one in the GLA building would be armed, for security reasons. Mr. Karr’s defense of Dr. Spencer, she said, was most surprising.”
“So she was willing to kill a stranger for money,” Dean said.
“It’s amazing what people will do if they’re desperate enough,” CJ told them. “If they’re hungry enough.”
“I’m beginning to think that the Russians created Greenworld to serve their agenda,” Akulinin said.
“Reverse propaganda,” Lia said, agreeing. “They set Greenworld up to do some outrageous things-like assassinate people at a scientific symposium in London-and then they can ignore all activist environmental groups when they do something like build a new pipeline through a wildlife refuge.”
“Or drill for offshore oil in the Arctic Ocean,” Dean put in. “I’m convinced that’s what this is all about.”
“Proving it will be tough,” Akulinin told him.
“Proving it isn’t our job,” Lia added. “The UN still has to rule on the Russian claim. It’s all a matter of international law, right? If the UN agrees they own half of the Arctic Ocean, they can do anything they want with it. That’s my take on it, anyway.”
“What about the flight attendant?” Dean asked. “Julie Henshaw?”
“Pretty much the same as Fischer,” Evans told them. “False-flag recruitment. Someone who called himself ‘Johann Ernst’ contacted her in London. He claimed to be with Europol, and told her a scientist named Spencer was going to be on her next New York to London flight, Spencer was an important suspect in a big anti-terror operation, a
nd that it was important that Ernst’s people be able to track him in London. Sounds like he dazzled her with tales of international intrigue… and the promise of a big reward.”
“Braslov again,” Dean said.
“Or someone else using the same cover, but I’d bet it was him,” Evans said. “All Henshaw needed to do was get close to one of Spencer’s guards, slip a tiny tracking device into the back of his coat collar, and then alert ‘Ernst’ when the target left the hotel room the next morning.”
“So what’s happening to them?” Dean asked. “To Fischer and Henshaw, I mean.”
“Fischer is under arrest for murder and attempted murder, plus criminal trespass and half a dozen firearms violations,” Evans said. “We’re holding Henshaw as a material witness and as a possible accessory to murder and conspiracy to murder, though the government may not be able to make that stick. We may have to release her, though, unless we can find evidence linking her more closely with Braslov.”
“You won’t find it,” Lia guessed. “These people are pros.”
“I wonder if you can even prosecute,” Dean added. “If she genuinely thought she was helping the police…”
“Well, that’s for the courts to decide,” Evans said. “For right now, though… it looks like it’s time to talk with your boss.”
The NSA logo on the big screen had just dissolved, and after a connection prompt, Rubens appeared on the screen, seated at his desk. “Good morning,” he said. “Miss DeFrancesca, Mr. Akulinin… I’m glad to see you both safely back.”
“It’s good to be back, sir,” Akulinin said.
“It’s a shame,” Rubens said dryly, “that you couldn’t bring all of your equipment out with you.”
Akulinin winced. “Look, I’m sorry about that, sir,” he said. “Things were kind of hot and-”
“We will discuss the matter later,” Rubens said, interrupting. “At length.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Dean, we received the package with Mr. Karr’s effects. You were right. The tracking device is definitely of Russian manufacture.”
“We’ve been exploring the possibility of going back to Russia,” Lia told him. “Braslov appears to have left London for Yakutsk. Charlie thinks he’s going on to a Russian petroleum-drilling base in the Arctic.”
“A distinct possibility,” Rubens said. “And you’re quite right. Miss DeFrancesca, and Mr. Akulinin, I am indeed asking you to return to Russia.” He raised a small remote control and pressed a button. His image on the screen was replaced by a satellite photo, looking down on a stretch of beach with dark waters laced with waves, cliffs above white sands, and the sprawl of a large and secluded building behind the cliffs. It looked like the mansion of a country estate, complete with the bright aqua-colored kidney shape of a swimming pool, the much smaller blue circle of a hot tub nearby, a series of gardens on manicured lawns, and rising stables in the back.
“This,” Rubens told them, “is the private dacha of Grigor Kotenko, just outside of Sochi, on the Black Sea. The place used to belong to a high-ranking member of the Politburo, but Kotenko seems to have acquired it about ten years ago. He uses it several times a month for entertaining important people, but it is currently closed up, with only a small caretaker staff in residence.
“I want you, Miss DeFrancesca, and you, Mr. Akulinin, to gain covert entrance to that dacha and wire it for sound. In particular, we need some keyboard bugs, so that we can keep tabs on Kotenko’s computer dealings.”
Keyboard bugs were tiny microphone transmitters, half the size of BB shot, that could be dropped loose inside a computer keyboard. Each key, it turned out, made a unique sound print when struck. With those sounds transmitted to a nearby hidden relay and passed on to Fort Meade by satellite, it was possible for the supercomputers at the Tordella Center to reconstruct, keystroke for keystroke, what was typed into the target computer, including e-mail addresses, contact lists, account information, and passwords.
“A routine visit by the plumbers, then,” Akulinin said, nodding.
“Black bag work, yes,” Rubens said. “You’ll be working with Mr. Evans and GCHQ on the details of your insertion, legends, and extraction. We’re booking you on a flight to Sochi Monday.”
“Well,” Lia said, “back to the salt mines.”
“Mr. Dean,” Rubens said. “I have something special for you.”
Dean suppressed a small twinge of disappointment. He’d hoped to be assigned to Lia’s op, but something in Rubens’ voice told him that that wasn’t going to happen. “Yakutsk?”
“No. But you will need to pack cold-weather gear, I promise you.”
This did not sound particularly promising to Dean, but he nodded and said, “Right.”
“You,” Rubens continued, “will be hitching a ride on a submarine in two days.”
“The NOAA base in the Arctic, then?”
“Yes. And the Russian base near there as well, if necessary. We want Braslov, Mr. Dean. And even more, we want the Americans being held up there released… two in particular, a congressman’s daughter and an NSA technician.”
“Leave no one behind,” Dean said. “I understand.”
“Spoken like a true Marine.”
“Ooh-rah.” He recited the battle cry without emotion.
He’d always hated the cold…
14
Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 1510 hours, GMT + 3
GRIGOR KOTENKO WATCHED impassively as the man walked into the room, stopped, spread his arms, and stood motionless, waiting. Antonov had been through this many times before, and he knew the routine. Andre, a man-mountain as heavily padded as a Japanese sumo wrestler, emerged from the far corner to check him for wires or hidden weapons. Yuri Antonov had been with the Organizatsiya for fifteen years, but since Victor Mikhaylov’s sudden and untimely death last week, Kotenko was taking no chances. No one entered his presence without a thorough search, even after the metal detectors and X-ray scanners downstairs.
It wasn’t Mikhaylov’s unknown killers Kotenko feared so much, and it certainly wasn’t the police, most of whom belonged to him. The majority of his security efforts were actually directed against other Russian Mafiya groups, the circling sharks, as he thought of them. The events at the waterfront in St. Petersburg last week had both wounded the local arm of Tambov and reflected the toothsome possibility of weakness. In such a starkly competitive environment as modern Russia, the other gangs could turn on Kotenko’s organization like sharks in a feeding frenzy, maddened by bloodlust.
Within the shadows of the Russian underworld, the wounded, the weak, the indecisive were shown no mercy.
“Mr. Antonov,” Kotenko said as Andre straightened up and gave the signal indicating that the visitor was clean. “So good to see you again. What is it you have for me?”
“Something most interesting, Mr. Kotenko. Ah, one of your people took it from me downstairs…”
Antonov was a small, nervous individual with a goatee and a receding hairline that gave him a passing resemblance to Vladimir Lenin. He did not, Kotenko knew, have Lenin’s strength of purpose, or his sheer force of will. Antonov did, however, know how to follow orders.
“Yes, yes,” Kotenko said. “Security, you understand?”
Dmitry, one of Kotenko’s personal assistants, walked in carrying a capacious metal toolbox. Antonov had brought it with him from St. Petersburg, surrendering it to Kotenko’s trusted people outside for a careful search.
“This is the box?” Kotenko asked.
“Yes, sir. We found it close to where one of the assassins was hiding. We believe he forgot it as he fled the scene.”
Carefully Kotenko took the toolbox and began removing its contents. There wasn’t much… a length of climbing rope tightly bundled and tied; some devices obviously designed to slip over a person’s boots or hands with protruding spikes to help him or her climb walls or telephone poles; some cinches, straps, and buckles that likely were rappelling gear; five thirty-round magazines ma
nufactured by Heckler & Koch, loaded with 9mm ammunition. Of more interest was a set of low-light binoculars with a single light-gathering tube, obviously of military manufacture.
And a communications terminal complete with folded satellite antenna, battery, and encryption box.
“Have our people in St. Petersburg looked at these?” Kotenko asked, examining the binoculars. They might be worth fifteen thousand rubles on the open market. They were certainly much better than anything in the Russian military’s inventory.
“Yes, sir,” Antonov said as Kotenko set aside the binoculars and began looking at the satcom gear. “They say it is obviously CIA issue. The communications equipment is something called an AN/PSC-12 com terminal, I’m told. Our friends in China might be quite interested in purchasing it.”
“Indeed.” Kotenko picked up the encryption device, a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes. He knew little about the technology-one employed others to do the knowing with complicated gadgets like this-but he did understand the price of technology. The satellite terminal itself might be worth some hundreds of thousands of rubles to governments that might from time to time find themselves the target of American intelligence-China, yes, but also Iran, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea, Venezuela… oh, the list of America’s enemies was quite long.
But the true treasure here was this small and seemingly innocuous black box. There would be codes stored within the computer chips inside, codes that would allow the owner of the box to turn it on its makers and listen in on their secret communications.
And that bit of technology was almost beyond price.
Almost. Grigor Kotenko made his very comfortable living by acquiring priceless items, putting a price on them, and finding people able and willing to pay. Normally, these days, he trafficked in corporations and in the future of Russian oil and gas production, but he traded in military hardware as well.
There was also a danger, however. He examined the case of the device closely, searching for any words, logos, or imprints at all. He didn’t expect to find them…
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