by Peter Telep
“You work very closely with the intelligence community here, don’t you?”
“What is it they say in Top Gun movie? I could tell you, but then I must kill you, right?” He broke out in raucous laughter that wasn’t quite mimicked by the reporters.
“Mr. Kasperov, there have been some allegations linking you to the VK blackout during the elections. Some say you helped the government bring down the social media website to help quell the opposition. After all, they had struck a rallying cry on social media.”
“I’ve already commented on that. I had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all. We detected no attacks on VK. None at all. We don’t know what happened.”
“And you don’t find that—to use your word—suspicious?”
“Of course I do, but it’s all been investigated and put to sleep. Don’t you have any more fun questions? If not, I have some stories to tell you.”
The journalists frowned at each other, then the taller one spoke up again: “Your company is valuable to the Kremlin, so do you think you can ever really be independent of it?”
Kasperov tried to quell his frustration. He had been told this would be an interview, not an interrogation. “There’s no problem here. We work together the same way other companies work with American government. Executive orders by your past presidents provide exchange of data between private sector and government. Your Homeland Security regulates critical infrastructure, same as we do. We’re very happy in this marriage.”
He took a long pull on his vodka, then tipped his head and led them across the balcony to his office door. He ushered them inside, and they gasped over the mementoes of his past and world travels: an African lion mount from one of his safaris; thousands of rare artifacts and gem stones meticulously arranged in glass cases; walls of software boxes written in German and Chinese; Persian rugs splayed across the floor; a basketball jersey from the New Jersey Nets in a glass case, the NBA team owned by a Russian billionaire friend; photos of himself with celebrities and world dignitaries, including American President Patricia Caldwell and the pope; and finally, his dark green dress jacket from his tenure as an intelligence officer with the Soviet Army. His desk, which was loosely copied from the one located in the reception area of the British House of Commons building and cost more than a three-bedroom house in Liverpool, had an opaque glass top and a limestone front. On it sat a picture of himself with his parents before their house, a meager shack on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
He gestured toward a sprawling leather sofa that, when the reporters sank deeply into the cushions, made them look like dwarves. Kasperov gesticulated more wildly now as he spoke: “Welcome to my life. A poor boy from St. Petersburg. I got lucky. But you know story, right?”
One of the reporters glanced at his notes. “At sixteen you were accepted into a five-year program at the KGB-backed Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications, and Computer Science. After graduation, you were commissioned as an intelligence officer in the Soviet Army.”
“Yes, but reason I’m here is because one day, I’m like on my computer, and it’s virus there. This is long time ago, 1989. Every time I find new virus, I get more curious. I spend hundreds of hours thinking about them, working on them. This is how I made name for myself in Soviet Army.” Kasperov glanced to the doorway, where, in the shadows, a man appeared, a familiar man whose presence suddenly dampened his mood.
“Mr. Kasperov, you’ve been touted around the world as a generous and remarkable businessman, but you have to admit, you’re surrounded by others in your country who might not be quite as honest as you are. Oligarchs, mafia . . . How do you keep yourself above all the corruption?”
Kasperov glanced once more at the doorway and tried to keep a happy face. “I keep pictures of my family close to my heart. I keep pictures of children all over the world I’ve helped close to my heart. I know they need me and believe in me. I know this company can help me do great things because I believe in it.”
“Do you think your company can help foster better relations between our nations?”
“Oh, I think it already has.”
“I can see why you say that . . . Your girlfriend’s an American. Any talk of marriage?”
He blushed. “No marriage yet. Now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me, I have another visitor. If you’ll go downstairs, one of my best managers, Patrik Ruggov—we call him Kannonball—will show you exactly how we work with customer.”
The journalists rose and Kasperov escorted them to the spiral staircase, then he returned to the man who’d been waiting for him in the shadows.
“Hello, Chern,” Kasperov grunted in Russian.
“Igor, I see you are massaging your ego again.”
Kasperov ignored the remark and stormed back into his office. Chern followed.
“Shut the door,” Kasperov ordered him.
Chern smirked and complied.
Kasperov knew this man only by his nickname, “Chernobyl,” aka “Chern.” Leonine, with a prominent gray widow’s peak and fiery blue eyes, Chern contaminated everything he touched and was often the bearer of bad news. While officially he was a member of the SBP, the Presidential Security Service, he served unofficially as President Treskayev’s personal strong arm and courier.
“How is your daughter doing?” Chern asked.
“Very well.”
“She’s away at school, yes?”
“She just flew home for a short visit.”
Chern grinned over that, then moved to the window at the far end of the office. He spent a long moment staring at the snow through the frosted glass, then lifted his voice. “There’s someone else who needs to go home.”
“And who’s that?”
“Calamity Jane.”
Kasperov nearly spit out his vodka. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“That can’t be possible.”
Chern’s eyes widened. “Are you that naïve?”
“I was told from the beginning that it was a deterrent, a deterrent that would never be used.”
“Then you are that naïve.”
Calamity Jane, named after the famous American frontierswoman, was created by Kasperov and a few of his lead programmers, most notably his man Kannonball. It was, in their estimation, the most malicious computer virus in the world; it not only would bring down the American banking system but would also render the country’s GPS system useless by exploiting a systemic problem with the cryptographic keying scheme. The virus would take advantage of this weakness before Raytheon delivered to the U.S. Air Force its Next Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, with the GPS III, third generation, satellites. With banks and GPS offline, the virus would move on to major utilities. Of course, he and his team were the best people to construct such a piece of horrific code because as antivirus champions, they knew the enemy better than anyone.
“I need to think about this,” said Kasperov.
Chern snorted. “There’s nothing to think about. You’re a brilliant man, Igor. You follow the news and world events. You understand the pressure. You know why it’s come to this. All the other elements are falling into place.”
Kasperov closed his eyes. Every time he consulted one of his news websites, there was a new threat to the motherland’s interests.
The merging of local European missile systems into a NATO defense system now put each country’s weapons under NATO command and standardized the command and control, along with local radar access and tactical communication systems. This gave NATO HQ the ability to launch each country’s missiles. The system was coming fully online, and the Kremlin feared it would interfere with Russia’s ability to launch their own preemptive strikes. The military had been threatening to attack the European sites for months . . .
The U.S. Navy’s decision to home port many of its Aegis missile system–equipped ships throughout key Mediterranean ports served as a bold parry to Russia’s opposition to American land-based missile defense installations in
the region.
And then, of course, there was the recent surge of American natural gas being exported and sold to European nations at less than half the cost of the Russian natural gas those nations had been buying.
However, there was an even larger economic threat, one Kasperov himself had noted to the Kremlin:
European nations were aggressively developing thorium reactors, the so-called green reactors with their low levels of radiation, minimal waste materials, and outstanding safety features. Thorium, a white radioactive metal with nonfertile isotopes, was proving a viable substitute for nuclear fuel in reactors, and its demand was ever-increasing. In fact, the United States had just struck a deal to sell its current stockpiles of thorium, which were stored in Nevada, to European nations. These stockpiles would be used to bring hundreds of liquid fluoride thorium reactors—FLTR, pronounced flitter—on line throughout Europe, ultimately making Europe fossil fuel independent and destroying Russia’s customer base there.
Finally, recent U.S. sanctions against countries like Syria and Iran, where Russia had strong economic interests, continued to tax the motherland’s ability to sustain herself.
If this was a new cold war, it was one of economics under the umbrella of MAD—mutually assured disruption. There had to be a better way to address these problems.
Kasperov locked gazes with Chern. “This doesn’t come from Treskayev. It comes from the men controlling him. They’ve forced him into this. They don’t think he’ll stand up to the Americans.”
“And they’re probably right. But that doesn’t matter. We have our orders. We do our duty.”
“I want to speak to the president.”
Chern smiled weakly. “He won’t take your call now. Igor, you’ve danced your little dance for long enough. And, from what I understand, you’ll be able to walk away from this. The virus hides our involvement. We blame it all on the hackers you love to put in jail, the Estonian hackers and others. Sure, your company will suffer a blow, but you’ll survive.”
Kasperov averted his gaze, his stomach growing sour.
Suddenly, Chern was clutching his arms. “Igor, we must all make our sacrifices for the motherland.”
“You’re not asking me to guarantee an election here. You’re asking me to cripple the economy of a nation that has been very good to me.”
“No one’s asking. You know what to do.”
A chill began at the base of Kasperov’s spine and wove its way upward, into his chest. “I’m sorry . . . sorry for my reluctance. I was thinking of my employees and of all the families that would be affected by this.”
“They will be okay. Will you?”
Kasperov steeled his voice. “You don’t need to threaten me. We’ve come from the same place. We have the same heart. Do we have a timetable?”
“Yes, I’ll be communicating that to you directly. I would expect sometime tomorrow. Now, it was good seeing you. I have a plane to catch.”
Chern reached the door, hesitated, then glanced back at Kasperov. “We’re trusting you, Igor.” He nodded, opened the door, and left.
Kasperov fired his empty vodka glass across the room, spun around, then bit his fist, trying to hold in the scream boiling at the back of his throat.
Last week he was in Cancun, Mexico, speaking at a convention. He had Bill Gates to his left and former President Clinton to his right. Colleagues.
Two weeks ago he and his girlfriend, Jessica North, were in South Beach at a fashion show and enjoying cocktails.
Three weeks ago, he was having lunch in San Francisco with Virgin empire mogul Richard Branson and discussing his ticket aboard one of Branson’s spacecraft.
The fairy-tale life would end today. No more rock star.
He began to lose his breath, eyes burning with tears. He glowered at his old Soviet uniform, then looked to the picture on his desk, the little boy there, the innocent little boy who would grow up to destroy the world.
They were asking too much. Their plan would not work. The truth would emerge and the motherland would become the pariah of the global community.
But if he failed to obey now, they would systematically tear apart his life. They would start with those he loved, then move on to the causes he loved, undermine and destroy the humanitarian work, punish him until he was a broken, bleeding, and bitter old man who’d “disappeared” but was, in truth, lying in a gulag and hunting roaches for dinner.
Again, this was not coming from the president. Kasperov knew this in his heart of hearts. Yes, Treskayev was a nationalist like his father, but he was also a pragmatist, spending much of his administration mending fences with the United States and Europe, earning him the ire of the imperialists. He wanted to call the man, beg him to stop this, but Treskayev might not even know what was going on. This could be bigger than all of them.
Kasperov backhanded the tears from his cheeks. If he did not comply, he, like the malicious objects identified by his own software, would be quarantined . . . then erased.
3
THE C147-B, call sign Paladin, had become Fourth Echelon’s mobile headquarters and was cruising over the Atlantic at thirty thousand feet, traveling at a speed of Mach 0.74, or 563 mph. She was a fully customized C-17 Globemaster III with special composite matte gray fuselage that functioned as a Faraday cage, shielding her cutting-edge components from electromagnetic pulses. Her interior was TEMPEST certified up to and including NATO SDIP-27 Level A standards. Her avionics/comm circuits met RED/BLACK separation standards, and her computers were shielded against electromagnetic eavesdropping techniques called Van Eck phreaking. These countermeasures had been phased in after the jet’s flight controls had been hacked, and Fisher had made damned sure that would never happen again.
With a length of 174 feet and wingspan just shy of 170 feet, Paladin was originally designed for heavy lift military cargo and troop transport and was powered by four fully reversible Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofan engines similar to those used on commercial Boeing 757s. Her original cargo compartment was 88 feet long by 18 feet wide, with a ceiling height of over 12 feet, but now much of that open space had been converted into living quarters, a galley, a fully stocked armory with more than a thousand pieces of ordnance, an infirmary with complete surgical center, and a holding cell.
Located at the bay’s core was Fourth Echelon’s control center—a cocoon of flat-screen computer monitor stations, along with giant displays affixed to either side of the hatch leading to the infirmary. Cables lay like piles of spaghetti beneath the flickering glow of computer stations, and dim starlight filtered in through the circular portholes above them. The desktops of several junior analysts were piled with hard-copy files and seemingly every portable electronic device known to mankind: Kindles, iPads, iPods, and tablets of varying sizes, colors, and shapes. Heavily padded computer chairs sat on tracks bolted to the deck, and you could tell where Charlie Cole was working based upon the coordinates of a jar of extra-crunchy peanut butter with a fork jutting from it. The kid said Skippy helped him think.
Positioned at the center of this technological nest was a rectangular-shaped table about nine feet long and six feet wide constructed of magnesium and titanium to support a glass touchscreen surface. This table with its linked processors was Fourth Echelon’s Strategic Mission Interface, or SMI, an advanced prototype analytics engine capable of news and Internet data mining, predictive analytics, and photo and video forensics. The SMI enabled them to have backdoors into foreign electronic intelligence, or ELINT, systems, as well as facial recognition integration from the CIA, NSA, DHS, and FBI. They were linked directly to the National Counterterrorism Center and to the watch teams inside the White House Situation Room. In the blink of an eye they could pull up surveillance video from a hundred different locations simultaneously, analyze those videos, and issue a report.
Opposite the SMI, Sam Fisher leaned back in one of the computer chairs, pillowed his head in his hands, and reflected on his new life. Talk about a reboot. A breath ago h
e’d quit Third Echelon—once a top secret sub-branch within the National Security Agency—but then he’d been caught up in a 3E conspiracy that had resulted in the entire covert ops organization being grounded and gutted, dismantled forever. Fisher assumed he’d never again be a Splinter Cell. He was done.
But then President Caldwell had come to him with an operation that required a man not only with his skill set but one with the internal fortitude to get the job done:
A coalition of rogue nations had come together to bankroll and support a terrorist group called the Blacklist Engineers, who were bent on forcing the United States to withdraw its military forces from around the world. Their leader was Majid Sadiq, a former MI6 deep cover field agent and sociopath. The group’s plan involved a “blacklist” of American targets that would be hit if the Americans did not comply.
Caldwell had sweetened the deal, told Fisher the entire op was off the books, no NSA jurisdiction, no open government involvement. She had granted him “the fifth freedom” to use any means necessary to take out the terrorists with no fear of prosecution. The freedoms of speech and worship, along with the freedoms from want and fear, had first been articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt. The fifth freedom was the freedom to protect the first four. Fisher had the right to defend our laws—by breaking them; the right to safeguard secrets—by stealing them; and the right to save lives—by taking them.
No more bureaucratic bullshit. No more politics. No more red tape. It was a covert operator’s dream come true. Clandestine backing from the government without interference.
That Majid Sadiq had been dispatched and members of his group were dead or on the run was an important victory in the never-ending war on terrorism because it had proven that Fisher and his team were a viable asset.
Indeed, this was Fourth Echelon, and Fisher answered only to the President of the United States. He no longer worked alone in the field but relied upon his team. He’d come a long way since his early days of hanging out in a ventilation shaft at the Tropical Casino in Macau. However, the ghosts still hovered at his shoulders, the ghost of his old boss Lambert, a man whose life he had once saved but then had been forced to take . . .
