The Hydra Protocol

by David Wellington

  A long couple of weeks at the Military Intelligence records center, huddled over computer screens and microfiche terminals, left him with a stiff back but little wiser. He looked for anything the DoD had on the Dead Hand system and came up with nothing of consequence. The best intelligence analysts of the Cold War had determined that, yes, the system existed and, yes, it was functional, but that was it—two things he hadn’t doubted since Hollingshead told him as much at the start of his briefing. U2 spy planes, reconnaissance satellites, even human intelligence—spies on the ground—had failed for thirty years to turn up anything concrete beyond those two facts. He did discover one thing new. In the 1970s, Project Azorian had recovered part of a Soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The Project’s findings had been limited—the sub broke into pieces while it was being hauled up—and as far as the public knew, nothing significant had been learned. In a top secret file, though, Chapel found out that Azorian had recovered the warhead from a Soviet ICBM and that for years afterward it had been carefully dismantled and every aspect of its hardware and software studied in secret American labs. There was a great deal of technical data there that Chapel couldn’t begin to comprehend, but one piece of paper near the back of the file indicated that an unexpected module was found inside the warhead’s control bus, little more than a single computer chip designed to accept commands received by shortwave radio. The module was completely isolated from the rest of the warhead’s electronics and had the capacity to arm, direct, and launch the missile by remote command. The scientists who found it believed it was there because the Soviet leadership didn’t trust their own people to launch the missiles when the time came. To Chapel, though, the presence of that module meant something else. It meant that Nadia’s story was true. That the Dead Hand—Perimeter, as he increasingly called it in his head—was completely capable of launching a nuclear strike, even now.

  Everything Nadia had said in her briefing checked out, as far as it was possible to verify such things. He’d had no reason to suspect she was lying, but he was glad to have some confirmation.

  That evening he took dinner at his hotel and then retired to his room. He switched on the television, not even really caring what was on. Eventually he fell asleep.

  The next day he spent talking with Angel, on his phone, asking her to look into a few things for him. She said she would get back to him as soon as possible, but that the answers he wanted would take time. He went for a very long swim, something he always did when there were too many thoughts in his head.

  He ate lunch, and then dinner, lingering over the meals.

  He checked his phone a couple of hundred times. Nobody was calling him.

  The next day he started again, looking at records that had been stamped secret and sealed for decades—whether or not there was any new information in them.

  And the day after that he did it again.

  The month he spent in Washington was hell. It was unbearable. He needed to be out in the field, away from memories and regrets. Away from any place Julia had ever been.

  One day he went in for a medical examination. The doctors cleared him to fly. He did not waste any more time—there was a flight from Ronald Reagan International leaving that evening.

  Hollingshead bought him a beer at a bar downtown, but he didn’t even finish it. He was too keyed up. It was time to go.

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 15, 20:04

  Forty thousand feet above the Atlantic, in the business class section of a 777, the lights had been turned down and all was quiet. Chapel couldn’t sleep. He’d never been good at sleeping on planes, and now he had enough on his mind to keep him awake anyway. He pulled on his headphones and switched on his tablet. Launched an audio player and loaded a language file. He was never going to get fluent in another language in the time frame of this operation, but he could at least pick up a few essentials.

  “Qos keldiñiz! Welcome.” The voice on the recording was flat, unaccented. He’d hoped to use the excellent audio files the army used to train its translators, but Hollingshead had nixed that. Chapel and Nadia were undercover, posing as an American businessman and his Russian assistant. If customs officials checked Chapel’s tablet and found military software on it, there would be questions, and that was unacceptable.

  “Tanisqanimizğa qwaniștimin! I am pleased to meet you.” So Chapel had been limited to commercially available language products, and finding one for Kazakh in a hurry had been difficult. He was forced to make do with a digitized version of an old language tape that was mostly just a list of common phrases and their English equivalents.

  “Men tüsinbeymin. Sorry, I didn’t get that.” Chapel smiled to himself. He was going to need that one a lot. He remembered when he’d had to learn Pashto, back when he was first shipping out to Afghanistan. He’d thrown himself into that language, immersed himself in it night and day. “I don’t understand” had quickly become his most commonly used phrase.

  “Osini jazip bere alasiz ba? Can you write that down for me?” He’d been a different person back then. So committed to his job. So desperate for a chance to head overseas and do his part, to track down Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice after 9/11. He hadn’t been a real soldier then, not quite. Years in Ranger school and then at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, where they trained him in intelligence work, had left him feeling more like a student than a warrior. He’d had both arms back then, too.

  “Keșiriñiz! I beg your pardon.” For a brief while he’d gotten to be a real soldier. A silent warrior. It hadn’t lasted long enough. What was he now? He sometimes wondered. The jobs Hollingshead found for him weren’t classical intelligence work—no dead drops or clandestine meetings in parking garages, no miniaturized cameras up his sleeves. His work didn’t follow the comfortable pattern of military life, either. He didn’t report to a commanding officer. He didn’t get direct orders from anyone wearing a uniform. Now he was an invisible warrior, not just a silent one. Now he was flying to Bucharest in preparation for sneaking into a foreign country and carrying out illegal sabotage. Now he was the kind of person Julia couldn’t love anymore—

  “Sizben bïlewge bola ma? Would you care to dance?”

  Chapel flinched in his seat. That wasn’t the same voice he’d been listening to. It was sultry and velvety and sent a chill down his neck.

  “Sorry to break in on the lesson, sweetie,” Angel said. “I just figured now would be a good time to check up on you. Don’t say anything; just lie back and listen, okay?”

  Chapel glanced over at Nadia. She was curled up in her seat with the back reclined as far as it would go. Sleeping like a baby. She was even snoring—if she was faking it, she was doing an excellent job.

  “Nobody can hear me,” Angel told him. “You hear that faint hiss in the background? That’s not just because the recording quality on your language file is so cruddy. I’m pumping some pink noise into this connection so that even the little bit of sound that leaks from your headphones won’t make sense to anyone listening. We’re safe, communicating like this. The director told me how important it was that we keep things on the quiet side.”

  Chapel reached for the tablet. He tapped a few keys. As he’d expected, nothing appeared on the screen. He typed SHE’S ASLEEP and hit the enter key.

  “You should be, too,” Angel told him. “Still, I don’t want to take any chances. I’ve got a preliminary report on those questions you asked me, in case you’re . . . curious. Don’t bother answering, baby—I know you are.”

  Chapel tried not to grin. Good old Angel. She could make even a dry intelligence briefing sound like a naughty innuendo. He suspected she did it just to make sure he was paying attention, but he’d never complained.

  “Nadia Asimova,” Angel said, “never mind the patronymic. Russian citizenship, born in Yakutia—Siberia, in other words, the exact geographic center of nowheresville. Daughter of a metallurgist and a doctor. Age thirty-one, a little on the young side for you but not ickily so.”


  I’M NOT LOOKING TO DATE HER, Chapel typed.

  “If men spent more time doing background checks on the women they chased,” Angel said, ignoring Chapel’s words, “they wouldn’t get in trouble so often. Anyway, it looks like she had a pretty normal childhood, except she showed an early talent for gymnastics, which is something they take very seriously in Russia. Got her name in the paper a few times for winning competitions. But she wasn’t just a jock. She did very well in school. Top of her class every year, and she even skipped two grades. At sixteen they whisked her away to the Bauman school in Moscow, which is the Russian equivalent of MIT. She started a six-year course in nuclear engineering.”

  DIDN’T FINISH?

  “Disappeared off the face of the earth,” Angel told him. “There are no black marks on her record—I mean, at all. Her faculty adviser was already looking to place her in a high-powered job during her second year, which means she wasn’t exactly struggling with her course load. But then the records just stop. No incomplete credits, no notice that she had dropped out, but no degree awarded, either. I think you know what that means. Somebody in the intelligence community over there took an interest and recruited her before she could finish her studies.”

  FSTEK?

  “Yes. FSTEK. Though I had a heck of time proving it. She isn’t on the books with any intelligence group, which is unusual even in Russia. No payroll records, no tax forms, no health insurance forms. The only mention of her anywhere since college is when she received a medal.”

  A MEDAL?

  “‘For Distinction in the Protection of the State Borders.’ It’s a medal usually reserved for members of the FSB—the organization formerly known as KGB—but it can be given to anyone in intelligence, or even a private citizen. There’s no indication why she got it. She’s too young for it to be a lifetime achievement award, though. She must have done something really valuable to the Fatherland. Something nobody wants to talk about, but they’re real glad it got done. There was a brief private ceremony at FSTEK headquarters in 2011 and then . . . she disappears again. Nothing since.”

  NOTHING AT ALL?

  “Not that I can find. It wasn’t easy getting what I have,” Angel said. “It’s not exactly like I can just call up the Kremlin and ask them for the personnel dossier on one of their secret agents.”

  Chapel frowned to himself. You didn’t expect to turn up much on a spy—the Russian government would go to great lengths to keep Nadia’s operations secret, of course. But there should be something more if she was what she said she was—a “glorified file clerk.” The absence of evidence in this case suggested that Nadia was something like him. Invisible, and vital to Russian state security. THANKS FOR CHECKING, he typed.

  “No problem, sugar. You know I’d do anything for you. I’ll be in touch,” Angel said.

  “Joliñiz bolsin. Bon voyage.” It was the same flat voice from before, the voice of the language file. Chapel shut down his tablet and took the headphones off his ears.

  Without the light of the screen, the dimness of the airplane cabin felt oppressive and chilly. Chapel huddled down in his seat. Then he turned and looked at Nadia where she was curled up and snoring, still.

  She had pulled a blanket up over herself minutes after takeoff, but now it had slipped down off one shoulder and fallen partially to the floor. She was still dressed for July in New York, and the scarf she wore was just a thin scrap of silk. He saw her hugging herself for warmth.

  He felt a sudden wave of tenderness toward this woman. She had saved his life in Miami, which was enough to make him feel something for her, but it wasn’t just that. She really was like him, wasn’t she? Sucked up into the black hole of intelligence before she even knew there were options. A brilliant childhood and then she just fell off the map. No. She’d been intentionally vanished. Taken away from her life because she was too valuable to waste on normal things like having a family, a career, a life.

  He wondered if there had been someone waiting at home for her, someone who had dreaded every second she was away, not knowing if she was alive or dead. Someone who couldn’t handle it after a while and walked away from her.

  Or maybe not. Maybe she’d never had anybody. Maybe there’d been no time.

  Reaching over her, he lifted the blanket and pulled it back up to her chin. He’d been very careful not to touch her, but as he sat back down in his own seat he saw one of her eyes open and peer up at him. Like any good intelligence operative she had the ability to wake very quickly from sleep.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “You looked cold.”

  She smiled at him and wriggled around for a second, pulling the blanket closer around herself. A moment later she was fast asleep again.

  Damn.

  He couldn’t believe he’d let himself get carried away like that. It had been inappropriate, for one thing, and, worse, he’d let his emotions rule him. Always a dangerous thing on an operation.

  He sighed and sat back. Tried closing his eyes for a while.

  It occurred him only hours later that Angel hadn’t told him the one thing he truly wanted to know—something that had nothing to do with Russian spies. She hadn’t told him whether Julia had called his phone or not.

  Which meant she hadn’t.

  Angel would have told him, otherwise.

  BUCHAREST, ROMANIA: JULY 15, 10:06 (EET)

  Nadia’s plan was to travel to Uzbekistan, where she knew some people who could get them across the border into Kazakhstan. First, though, they had to make a quick stop in Romania to pick up the third and last member of the team.

  At the customs desk in Bucharest, Chapel handed over their fake passports—the best the U.S. military could supply. He had to remove his artificial arm and let the officials x-ray it, even though it was clear they had no idea what they were looking at. A woman in a leather jacket frowned at the arm as it lay in a plastic bin, the lifeless hand dangling over the side. She pulled on latex gloves and then took out a pocket knife. Chapel protested as she extended the blade, but she said she had to stab the arm for security reasons. “What exactly would that prove?” he demanded, but that just made the woman look more stern than before.

  Nadia pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and pushed it across the desk.

  The customs woman put her knife away. “Welcome to Romania, Mr. Carlson,” she said, with a very warm smile.

  As they walked toward the taxi rank, Chapel whispered to Nadia, “If I’d known it was that easy, I would have brought my gun, too.”

  “Oh, no,” Nadia said. “There are very strict laws here about firearms. That bribe would have been ten times as much.” She pointed at the restrooms. “I need a moment,” she said. “Can you wait here with the luggage?”

  Chapel nodded and sat down on a plastic bench marred by old cigarette burns. He watched the people flow by while he sat with their two small suitcases. Nadia didn’t return for ten minutes. When she did, she had completely changed.

  She had ratted out her hair and put on a lot more makeup—far more than she’d worn on the party boat. She had kept her business slacks but rolled up the cuffs to show the pair of cheap sandals she’d slipped on. Her blouse was gone in favor of a halter top and a thin gold necklace with a crucifix. She looked ten years younger.

  Chapel must have been staring wide-eyed, because she laughed when she came up to him. “Where we’re going,” she said, “we need to look the part.”

  “Should I change?” he asked.

  “No, you’ll be fine in that jacket. Just don’t smile, whatever you do.” She smirked at him again. “Come on. We have an appointment to keep.”

  They took a bus to a nearby train station, one that had lockers big enough to hold their bags. Once those were secure, they went outside and stood in a long line for private transportation. As they waited for a taxi Chapel argued again that they didn’t need to be here. “This computer tech you want to hire—he’s just a security risk,” Chapel said.

  “You don’t know him yet. He’s
adorable. You want to just give him a hug, he mopes so,” Nadia told him.

  “I’ll buy him a stuffed animal and we’ll leave him here.” He tried to think of a way of explaining to her they didn’t need a computer tech when he had access to Angel. There was no way her guy could beat Angel’s abilities. But how to say that without giving away Angel’s existence? “I know enough about computers for this job,” he said.

  “Really. You know how to reprogram a Soviet legacy system from the eighties? In the Cyrillic alphabet? Don’t worry so, Jim. I’ve worked with this man before. He can be trusted. And anyway, I’m lead on this mission, am I not?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chapel said. He had a feeling he wouldn’t have any trouble remembering not to smile. Between the jet lag and this security risk and the fact he hadn’t gotten much sleep on the plane, he was already in a foul mood.

  Bucharest didn’t help.

  He’d read it was called the Paris of the East, but the city Chapel saw wasn’t exactly a glittering metropolis. Every building seemed to be the same gray-yellow color—maybe the structures had been white once, but the million cars that puffed black exhaust had stained them like a coffee drinker’s teeth. Half the buildings were enormous brutalist office blocks; the other half sprawling palaces that looked like they were about to fall down. Some of them looked like they’d been built from cardboard and then sprayed with quick-setting concrete, they were in such bad shape. Construction cranes and scaffolding covered half the façades, apparently fixing up the buildings as fast as they could fall down.

  Chapel couldn’t make sense of the place. There had to be money here—all that construction was costing somebody. But on the street level the city looked depressed and decrepit. He saw piles of trash on street corners, where mangy dogs fought over choice pieces of refuse. The people didn’t seem to take much notice. There were also a lot more Western Union offices than he thought a city like this probably needed. “What’s with all the wire transfer places?” he asked.