Patrick Carlton 01 - The Diamond Conspiracy

by Nicolas Kublicki

  Still, as improbable as they were, the explanations were explanations. Smoke was the investigator, not the judge. He switched to his external fuel tanks, prepared for the long flight to Aberdeen.

  64 CONTACT

  Castel MacLean

  Beverly Hills, California

  11:23 A.M.

  MacLean blew a cloud of smoke before placing his Montecristo 2 Habano in a square crystal ashtray and attending to the telephone’s high pitched trill. “MacLean.”

  “Buon giorno, Maximilliano.”

  “Don Forza. Good morning. Rather good evening for you.”

  “You are well?”

  “Yes, thank you. Don Forza, I must ask your forgiveness for canceling our...our arrangement about the South African as I did. At the last minute. It was disrespectful.”

  “Per piacere. There is no need to apologize. Besides, I knew that reason would prevail. One must never act out of hatred. It blurs one’s judgment.”

  “You are a wise man.” MacLean took a sip of coffee from a hand-painted Christian LaCroix espresso cup. Uncertain why the Sicilian was calling, he simply remained silent as his father had taught him.

  “Grazie. And I have good sources of information. Which is the reason for my call. I have a name for you.”

  “A name?” MacLean retrieved a pad of personalized Cartier message cards and a Parker Hemingway fountain pen from a small gunmetal case on his glass desk.

  “I understand you want to know the name of someone in the Church who knows about...certain assets.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “I am informed that one man is intimately aware of those assets. His name is Giovanni Benedetti.”

  MacLean wrote the name on one of the cards. The ink was red. He hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. “And who is this gentleman?”

  “Giovanni Cardinal Benedetti is the direttore of the Instituto per le Opere di Religione.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t heard of that organization.”

  “Most people have not. It is generally known as the Vatican Bank.”

  65 DESTRUCTION

  NATO Air Base

  Keflavik, Iceland

  8:06 P.M.

  U.S. Air Force Major Elmers was bent over daily reports when his telephone rang.

  “Elmers here.”

  “Sergeant Winston, sir. From maintenance. Forgive me for calling you directly without going through channels, sir. But it’s an emergency.”

  The sergeant was separated from the major by three full grades of rank. Regulations would have required the communication to go from Winston to her lieutenant to the captain and only then to Major Elmers.

  “What kind of emergency?” He suspected that it was a surprise birthday party ploy. Each year on his birthday, the men and women under his command racked their brains for an increasingly original hook to get Elmers to come running to some plausible but fictitious emergency during the day, only to discover streamers and balloons and cheers.

  “Well I...sir, you’d better come here yourself, sir.”

  “If it’s that important, Sergeant, I will.” He smiled. “Where are you?”

  “The morgue, sir.”

  “The morgue. Very well. I’m on my way.” The morgue? They had definitely outdone themselves this year.

  Elmers drove his Humvee from the commander’s apartment block on base to a large concrete building that housed the base hospital, rehab facility, and morgue. Sergeant Winston stood at the front of the building, saluted him as he approached in the freezing wind. The confused and fearful expression on her face caused him to think that she had one of the best poker faces he had ever seen.

  “Lead the way, Sergeant.”

  He followed her through the central corridor, past an airman who saluted him tensely, and into the small morgue.

  No streamers. No balloons. No cheers. What he saw surprised him far more than any secret birthday party.

  The bodies of three men lay on stretchers.

  Naked.

  Elmers crouched beside the body closest to him and winced. “My God.”

  “Do you recognize these men, sir?” Asked the head doctor, pulling double duty as coroner.

  He pointed to each body. “Major Leyland. Lieutenant Carruthers. Lieutenant Fox. Royal Air Force. What happened?”

  “Please note it, lieutenant,” the doctor ordered his assistant before turning back to Elmers. “Hypothermia, sir. They’re frozen solid. They were found in one of the dumpsters behind the officers’ showers.”

  “Dumpsters? How did three naked pilots freeze in the dumpsters?”

  “They must have been drugged. The autopsy should tell us how and...pardon me, Major. Did you say Royal Air Force?”

  “That’s right. They were part of an RAF training operation with a Royal Navy carrier this afternoon-” He remembered one of the daily logs. “Wait a minute. They left this afternoon at around 1400 hours.”

  “Sir, they’re still—”

  “Not them. Their planes. Their Harriers left this afternoon.”

  “But Major. That doesn’t make sense. How could their planes leave if their pilots are still—”

  “I need your phone. Right now.”

  “Dead? They’re dead?” Repeated Admiral Hennessey. “But they completed their mid-air ref—good God!” He turned to the young ensign next to him. ”Get me Jack Yorbis on the Reagan. Immediately!” He returned to his conversation with Major Elmers. “Thank you for the information, Major. I’ll get back to you.”

  The ensign handed him a handset. “Admiral Yorbis, sir.”

  “Jack? Cyril here. One of your majors at Keflavik just informed me that our three Harrier pilots were found dead a few minutes ago.”

  “Dead? Then who the hell is—”

  “Precisely.”

  “But now it all fits. Our scope shows the Harriers from Keflavik continuing on the same course and speed. Looks like they’re headed for London. And the way it’s looking, I don’t think they’re planning on having tea and cucumber sandwiches at the Savoy.”

  London. “Your interceptors?”

  “Already intercepted them.”

  “We have to assume the worst. I’m afraid her Majesty’s Navy must impose on our American brothers further.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Force the bandit Harriers down. God only knows who is flying those planes or what they’re planning to do in England.”

  “I agree. Anywhere in particular?”

  Admiral Hennessey traced the Harriers’ course on the map in front of him. “The RAF base at Aberdeen, Scotland would do. Right on their course.”

  “You got it, Cyril. I’ll call you as soon as I have any information.”

  “Thank you, Jack. Aberdeen will do. But wherever they’re forced down, they must be forced down. We can’t let them anywhere deeper in England.”

  “I was in the Pentagon on 9-11, Cyril. You don’t need to convince me.”

  Rear Admiral Yorbis slammed the bulky handset into its overhead receptacle. “Get me the Air Boss on the horn. Now. And send a message to the Seawolf UHF. Urgent.”

  One minute later, Smoke, Senator, Elvis, and Venus received and acknowledged their new orders and armed their weapons. Within five minutes, the Seawolf poked an electronic ear through the surface of the glacial North Atlantic to receive the Reagan’s latest UHF transmission.

  Carlton was beyond frustration, but his anger was not directed toward Hendricks. In fact, Hendricks genuinely appeared to share his belief that the Harriers were the true targets. But the calm, wise, experienced, and frustrating commander was right. The U.S. Navy could not simply blow RAF Harriers out of the sky, even as bandits. The communication from the Reagan informed them that the interceptors would force the Harriers down, not destroy them. They wouldn’t do that without a greater reason. But without visual proof, how could he demonstrate the three RAF Harriers were carrying the diamond stockpile? He continued to dredge his exhausted mind.

  Partly by instinct
, partly by default, he fell back on his thinking as a lawyer. Logic. The way he built cases against defendants back at Justice, now about a million miles and a lifetime away. But despite his playing secret agent for the past week, that was what he was, after all, wasn’t it? A lawyer. He needed evidence to convince Hendricks. Not just to convince Hendricks but to give him a legitimate reason to act on that conviction. Like a jury. If he could pile on little pieces of evidence, they ultimately would grow beyond the sum of their parts. That was what he had to do with these Harriers. Take every piece of evidence and string all of them together until the damning evidence became incontrovertible. But he was so tired.

  A list. He had to make a list. He looked around the plotting table for a pen and paper, hunched over the plotting table and began to list each piece of evidence against the Harriers.

  When he finished, he looked up at Hendricks, who was apparently deep in thought. “Okay, Captain. You want evidence. I’ll tell you what I want. I want to speak to the lead naval aviator who’s up there escorting the Harriers.”

  “This is Lieutenant Stevan. What do you need, Lieutenant?” Smoke demanded from his cockpit while he watched the Harrier’s wings glow in the dim orange of the setting sun.

  “I need some information about the Harriers,” Carlton replied.

  Smoke would have hesitated to answer absent the Air Boss’s statement that Carlton had clearance. He gave Carlton a detailed report of the RAF Harriers.

  “Are they armed?”

  “No missiles.”

  “What about tanks? Are they carrying tanks or pods under their wings?”

  “About as many pods as they can carry. I count...four pods each. Which is pretty strange if all they were doing was training.”

  A grin creased Carlton’s stubbled chin. Go Navy. “Thanks, Smoke. Safe flying, Lieutenant.” He removed the headset and handed it back to the communications officer.

  “It’s enough proof for me, all right,” Hendricks agreed with Carlton. “The problem is you’re going to have to convince the battle group C-in-C. Even if I had the authority to shoot those bastards down on my own, our weapons don’t have the necessary range. The only way you’re going to splash those birds is to have the Reagan’s fighters do it. They’re there already. Problem is, the Harriers still haven’t threatened deadly force, and standard Navy operating procedure outside of a combat zone is not to fire unless fired upon. Even if they are bandits like the Reagan now says.”

  “Right. It’s no use trying to convince the Reagan. Even if they had the political situation digested, which I don’t even think we do and we’ve been on this since the beginning, they’re not going to order a kill unless they’re under orders to do it.” Carlton looked at Pink. “What do you think, Tom? Forbes?”

  “We can try.”

  “He have that kind of pull?”

  “He can’t order the battle group commander to splash the Harriers, that’s for sure. He might be able to order a black op out of Aberdeen Air Force Base. That’s nearby,” he said, looking at the chart.

  “That would only screw things up,” Hendricks said. “You’d have a set of black op fighters with one mission heading for Harriers intercepted by Navy fighters with a different mission. Plus a black op is secret because it’s secret. There are way too many parties watching this to perform even a usual black op. The Brits. The French. The Russians. Who knows who else. Too conf—”

  “I agree,” said Carlton. “But I was thinking about something much more simple. Forbes will have to convince the president.”

  “The president?” Replied Pink. “How is—”

  “Carlton’s right,” Hendricks agreed. “the president ordered us to pick you up in the first place.”

  “So he’s definitely in the loop. Now all we need to do is to convince Forbes to convince him,” pushed Carlton.

  “Easier said than done.”

  “The good part is that Douglass won’t waffle,” said Hendricks. “He may be president and he may have been a minister, but he was a general for fifteen years. He’ll make his decision quickly.”

  “Which means he may decide against it quickly, too.”

  “We’ll have to see. Mr. Wathne, take us to antenna depth.”

  “Antenna depth. Aye, sir.”

  “I will not do it. You should know better than that as a Russian analyst. Give me Carlton.”

  “Yes, sir.” Pink handed the handset to Carlton. “Good luck.”

  “He’s your boss. You have to obey him. I don’t.” He grabbed the handset. “Carlton here.”

  “Have you lost your mind, Carlton? Are you really suggesting I wheel myself into the Oval Office to convince the president to shoot down three RAF Harriers?”

  “I would think Tom made the suggestion quite clear, sir.”

  “It’s unacceptable.”

  “It’s not only acceptable, sir. It’s imperative. We know these are bandit Harriers. The registration on those jets may read RAF, but the pilots flying them are former Spetsnaz working for Russkost’s Volki. In any case, the dead RAF pilots in Keflavik prove this is at least a deadly situation. Whoever is flying those planes sure as heck isn’t RAF. The Royal Navy agrees with the analysis and asked our Navy to intercept and escort them. And there’s no other logical explanation. The Harriers have storage pods under their wings, and their course clearly intersected the Pushkin’s course. And as Tom informed you before, we know that the diamonds were transferred onto the Pushkin before the Nevsky sank and are no longer there. We have to splash the Harriers. Immediately.”

  “Are you finished with your tirade?” Forbes waited several seconds. “Good. The reason we can’t shoot those planes down is precisely because they’re carrying the diamonds. Those diamonds don’t belong to us or Waterboer, they belong to Russia. The last thing we need in our relationship with Russia is to destroy a billion dollars worth of their property.”

  “Sir, didn’t we just go through your suicide mission to find the Russian stockpile for the sole purpose of preventing Russkost from selling it to Waterboer and financing their civil war?”

  “Finding the diamonds, yes. Destroying them, no.”

  “Sir, the purpose of finding the diamonds was to make sure Russkost wouldn’t get them and sell them to Waterboer.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you think is going to happen once those planes land?”

  “They’ll be taken over by the British authorities.”

  “Exactly. Which means the diamonds be handed over to Waterboer within a matter of hours.”

  Silence. “I don’t follow.”

  “Sir, the Brits don’t have the monopoly laws we have. Waterboer operates largely out of London. The Brits have no problem with Waterboer’s monopoly of the diamond market. That Waterboer operates out of London means they’re connected, protected. You think Waterboer has U.S. government people in its pocket? Think about how many Brits they have when their main distribution point is in London. Just wait to see how many MPs will clamor against the U.S. for the stockpile to be returned to Waterboer. And most ironic of all is that the British government may legally be forced to hand the stockpile back.”

  “How?”

  “The entire Russian stockpile was supposed to have been transferred by Russia to Waterboer. The deal was for the entire stockpile. The KGB may have pulled the wool over Waterboer’s eyes and convinced them at the time the stockpile Russia transferred was the entire Russian stockpile, but now Waterboer knows that wasn’t the case. They’ll argue the Russians fraudulently hid the remaining stockpile, that the diamonds legally belong to Waterboer. And when Waterboer gets the diamonds, it’ll finance Russkost because Russkost has control of the Mirny mines and will sell them Russian diamonds for far less than the Orlov government or just accept payment to simply stop producing them.”

  Forbes paused for a few moments. Carlton could hear him puffing on a pipe. “I hadn’t thought about that. I agree. But Waterboer wins either way. If we don’t destroy the stockp
ile, Waterboer gets the diamonds and removes a destabilizing stockpile from the potential marketplace. If we destroy the stockpile, we remove the destabilizing stockpile for them. Destroying the diamonds helps Waterboer.”

  “I realize that, sir. But under the circumstances, it’s the lesser of two other evils, considering what Tom has told me about Russkost. And—”

  “Enough, Carlton. You’ve convinced me. I’ll get back to you.”

  It took longer for Forbes to drive from Langley to the White House than for President Douglass to make his decision.

  “Interceptor. Interceptor, this is Strike. Destroy all three bandit Harriers. I repeat. Destroy all bandit Harriers. You are weapons-free.” The order was relayed by the Reagan’s Air Boss, but it came straight from the Big Boss himself.

  “Roger, Strike. Okay. You heard the man. Let’s go get ’em boys and girls.”

  Smoke moved his finger expertly along his joystick. The Super Hornet targeting mechanism and ordnance were state of the art. He could target an enemy aircraft directly by looking at it through his helmet. And since the AIM-9X missile could destroy an aircraft at a straight 90-degree angle, he could look at an aircraft directly beside him and launch a missile straight into it.

  However, his present situation was a far more traditional dogfight. He selected ‘TWS Dogfight’ then ‘slave.’ Dead steady, his finger hovered over the pickle switch, then pushed down on it hard. He felt a rumble under his seat seconds before a plume of white smoke streamed out past his cockpit from the tail of a AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile. It tore through the sky and slammed into the unsuspecting lead Harrier as he broke hard left. The two remaining bandits immediately took evasive action, one breaking hard left, the other nearly straight up.