Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766)

by Caplan, Thomas

  “No need to pause,” Oliver said. “I’m familiar with steganalysis.”

  “Then you know that it’s nothing more than a format for hiding data within images or within other files that don’t appear to be encrypted, often files of enormous size.”

  “Which is how it differs from cryptanalysis?”

  “Yes, essentially, for the purpose at hand,” Nevada continued. “I applied various steganography algorithms to the various photos and, to my astonishment and annoyance, came up blank. That’s when it struck me. All of a sudden, I had this crazy thought: What if I’m right? What if Melinkov had more information to store than he could trust to his memory? Where would he hide it? If he’s in league with Frost, who as far as I can tell is a fastidious son of a bitch and never colors outside the lines, he would be used to taking the cautious approach. Nor would he slip up by disguising a document as a photograph. He would know that either he would escape scrutiny entirely or that, if he were scrutinized, it would be by people like us, on whichever side, people who would run the same algorithms I did until one or another cracked the code or they all came up empty. So I asked myself that question and immediately answered it with another question of my own: What if steganographically encoded data were buried not in a picture or even text but within variations of white background or black keystrokes that would be imperceptible to the eye?”

  “And what did you come up with?”

  “On Melinkov’s computer, zilch,” Nevada said in a voice absent of regret, “nothing but the idea itself. It was when I applied that same idea to some mundane-appearing documents in one of Frost’s computers that my cock stood straight up.”

  “I’m sure that must have been a reassuring sight,” Bingo told him.

  “There’ve been women who’ve thought so,” Nevada parried. “You’ll be a better judge of what they mean than I, Commander, but what I found appear to be tracking numbers.”

  “Let me guess,” Oliver said. “Those numbers are for parcels on a Claussen ship.”

  “That’s right, the Claussen Wayfarer.”

  “That ship’s route began at the top of the Black Sea, did it not?”

  “Correct, in the Strait of Kerch, to be exact.”

  “And the parcels would have remained on board through a stopover in Istanbul, during which other parcels were unloaded and still others taken on.”

  Nevada said, “I can’t speak definitively about other parcels. If you want me to go in that direction . . .”

  “Hold your horses,” Oliver said. “Just tell me that those parcels remained on board at Istanbul.”

  “That’s what the record shows.”

  “The next port of call was Naples, wasn’t it?”

  “The parcels remained on the ship there, too.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Oliver said. “The labels and crates remained there, but the merchandise they contained came ashore, disguised as something else entirely. That’s where it vanished and the trail went cold.”

  “With all due apologies,” Nevada said, “I think you may be only half right.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Let me put it somewhat differently,” Nevada continued. “If whatever it was he was shipping was permanently offloaded in Naples, why would he have been following or have kept, at any rate, the tracking numbers of three new parcels that came aboard there?”

  Stunned, Oliver stared into the webcam as he considered the implications of Nevada Smith’s revelation. From a recess of his memory, a line from his school days’ reading surfaced: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” The astronomer Carl Sagan had penned it in regard to the possibility that there might be life in outer space—but oh my, how perfectly it described Philip Frost’s deception. “What were those parcels?” Oliver asked after a moment.

  “All I know is that they went by the same basic code: ‘engines and turbines,’” Nevada said.

  “Do you know where they are now?”

  “Not precisely, but they can’t be very far. The ship arrived in Gibraltar early this morning. It’s only just been offloaded.”

  “Did it put in to any ports between Naples and here?”

  Nevada’s smile filled the screen. “Apparently not,” he told Oliver.

  “Do we know who if anyone has taken delivery of these ‘engines and turbines’ here?”

  Nevada nodded. “It would seem that the freight service to which their bill of lading was addressed did so several hours ago, but the fixed address we have for that—Cardigan & Sons Transport—appears to be an office suite rather than an actual depot of any sort. I can try to drill deeper.”

  “As quickly as you can,” Oliver told him. “In the meantime I’ll get our people over there.”

  “Won’t they be closed at this hour?” Bingo asked.

  “They can open.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Entering Admiral Cotton’s office a minute later, Oliver said, “Frost’s even cleverer than I gave him credit for. I mean, a man has to be very clever indeed to be this unpredictable.” After explaining Frost’s ruse to the senior officer, he added, “I’m sure he chose Naples not in spite of but because of its well-polished rep for corruption. He could accomplish what he had to there. Anyone watching him, meanwhile, would be left to draw the inevitable conclusion we did.”

  Cotton shook his head in disbelief. “It’s a lot to reckon with. And, of course, it remains a surmise, doesn’t it?”

  “Technically I suppose it does, but the geeks have gathered an awful lot of facts to support it.”

  “Those kids!” Cotton exclaimed. “They never cease to amaze. When I was a boy, there was a run of films about aliens arriving on earth from outer space and taking control of all the levers of power. Some of them were so realistic they gave you nightmares for weeks. Who could have imagined that those aliens would turn out to be our own children?”

  “You don’t hack, yourself?” Oliver inquired with a smile.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  The admiral laughed. “I’ve fat fingers, as the young would say. I did try following the keystrokes of one of them once as he worked his magic at War College, but when it came my turn to input the data, the program simply ‘jumped off into never-never land’—at least that’s how he put it.”

  Oliver’s phone rang as the admiral finished. The fleeting blue light showed that it was in secure mode, with a randomly generated encryption key. “Yes,” he answered.

  “Commander Molyneux, this is George Kenneth,” said the cordial if businesslike voice on the other end of the connection.

  “Dr. Kenneth,” Oliver replied, laughing suddenly to himself when he recalled that that had also been the name of his mother’s gynecologist.

  “Where are we?” Kenneth inquired.

  When Oliver had brought him up to speed, he added, “I don’t know where we’d be without Ty or the computer jocks. It’s been a good team.”

  “That was the intention,” George Kenneth said. “Look, Oliver, I appreciate how far you guys have come.”

  “But we’re coming down to the wire—”

  “Very rapidly,” interrupted the President’s National Security Advisor, “and we’re placing all our bets on one possibility. What if we’ve guessed wrong?”

  “You don’t doubt that Frost’s our man?” Oliver asked edgily.

  Kenneth hesitated. “No, not really, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he isn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t? Come on, if there really are loose warheads—which, granted, no one’s seen—and if Santal was involved in capturing and brokering them, Frost has to be involved, too. Otherwise what in hell is he doing on both sides of the equation? Facilitating Santal’s plan, whatever it was, whatever it
is. That’s what! Any other premise flies in the face of reason.”

  “Are you that sure you’ve considered them all?”

  “Don’t be gormless,” Oliver said.

  “Watch it, Commander,” Kenneth snapped.

  “Sorry,” Oliver replied, “but there’s absolutely no evidence that points elsewhere and lots that points to Frost.”

  “No one suggested abandoning surveillance of him, but we have only so many eyes and ears, human or electronic, and we have to keep a certain number of them free for and alert to other scenarios. We can’t be caught flat-footed.”

  “By what? Phantoms? If we were bound for a court of law, I might be inclined to agree with you. Right now, though, it isn’t proof we need, but information. Our goal is to prevent a transaction, not convict anyone for it later on.”

  “Frost called me,” Kenneth said.

  “Is he in the habit of doing that?”

  “No, but it’s not without precedent. We have known each other for a long time. I recollect telling you that.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “The CEO of Claussen Inc. had written to Ian Santal, worried that his company’s whiter-than-white reputation was being tarred by its involvement in a deal Santal had put them into.”

  “That deal wouldn’t happen to be the redevelopment of a missile installation into a resort near the Strait of Kerch?”

  “Of course it would. Against that incriminating fact, one must question why Frost would contact me. He said it was because Claussen’s CEO had copied the Secretary of State on his letter to Ian Santal, no doubt to register his purity and protect the company’s many international licenses. But I think Frost called me because he was trying to protect Ian Santal. He as much as admitted that Santal had cut it close on occasion. Afterward I began to wonder if we might not have been a bit cynical about Philip. He is planning to marry Santal’s goddaughter, after all.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Oliver said.

  “Why would you? Mind you, I am only suggesting, not positing, that what appear to be the actions of a very guilty man might be explained as no more than those of a young man in love.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Oliver said.

  “That Frost is playing me?” George Kenneth replied.

  “Spot on.”

  “I would have heard it in his voice.”

  “Have you spoken to the President about this?”

  “Of course, and he’s put the ball in my court.”

  “The flow of funds would seem pretty conclusive,” Oliver suggested.

  “It’s a complicated world of complicated people doing complicated things. More than one interpretation could be valid.”

  Oliver drew a deep breath. “Cards on the table?” he said. “I believe that from very early on in their deal Philip Frost intended to skim, using an account in Vienna to do so. I further believe that the de Novo Fund, suddenly flush with other money, was actually purpose-built as a conduit for the sale of the missing warheads. Santal must have become suspicious of Frost and made that obvious, catalyzing Frost’s own suspicion of Santal, an apprehension that grew into a fear that led to murder. If that’s what happened, he will wind up his business as quickly as he can. So we have no time to lose painting in pictures of the conspiracy, or trying to plumb or game it further. We have to act else, before we know it, the warheads will have vanished from our grasp once and for all.”

  “Slower, please,” George Kenneth insisted. “Supposing he did manage to wind up his business, what would he do then?”

  “I don’t know. My guess is that he would tie up any loose ends, perhaps first by marrying Isabella Cavill, as apparently he told you he planned on doing. Then, for the time being, he would probably go dark.”

  “Finished?”

  “Not quite, but it’s your turn.”

  “These warheads have been around a long time,” George Kenneth said, his tone of voice suddenly remote and professorial. “In fact, the International Atomic Energy Authority recorded 1,562 incidents where nuclear material was lost or stolen between 1993 and 2008, mostly in the former Soviet Union, and sixty-five percent of those losses were never recovered. What haven’t been around until recently are people who would use them. Which raises the question: How do sane men deter madness?”

  “You’re only proving my point.”

  “What I’m proving is that we have to be like a Cyclops, with an eye in all directions.”

  “This is not the time to dilute the strength of our effort,” Oliver said.

  “Is that your decision or mine?”

  “I can tell you what you ought to do,” Oliver said. “You ought to hoover those funds right out from under them as quickly as you can. Don’t tell me that that’s impossible! I’ve been with a few of your players lately, as you well know. I have a pretty damned good idea what’s possible.”

  George Kenneth snickered. “There is a larger view to be taken,” he said, with a calm Oliver found distressing.

  “Not in this instance.”

  “Again, who is to decide that?”

  “The man you work for, I would have thought,” replied Oliver. “How could the stakes be greater? If you were to seize their funds, they would be bound to panic and almost certainly make mistakes. Their plan would grind to at least a temporary halt. What else could it do? So we’d buy time as well as very likely gain the opening we need.”

  “Take a deep breath and think about it, Commander. Even if we do have genies on a leash, we can’t just let them slip. To do so would be to confirm that we possess capabilities best left unconfirmed, but that’s the least of it. Stealing that money could well destroy the fragile faith that underlies the whole modern economy. No transfer would ever again be deemed secure, no bank anywhere sound, no deal final. That strikes some people as far too high a price to pay, most especially in today’s delicate financial climate.”

  Oliver shook his head. “Does it really?” he asked.

  “You mentioned Secretary Burr a moment ago. He is of that view, as are the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, your Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England.”

  “Where, if I may ask, do the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense stand?”

  “Conflicted, I think that’s the apposite term. The point is that the President has already come down against having the geeks fiddle the world’s financial system.”

  “Which means you’ve thought this through?”

  “Eight ways from Sunday,” George Kenneth insisted. “It isn’t just yours truly flying by the seat of his pants.”

  “I wish I could say I am relieved to hear that.”

  “Don’t lose your focus, Oliver. You’re too valuable. Keep Philip Frost in your sights, but not so tightly that you miss whatever else might turn up.”

  “In other words, do what I can with what I’ve got?”

  “If you are as close as you believe, you’ll have more than enough. Adding to it now could be counterproductive—in fact, a distraction.”

  “That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” Oliver observed.

  Kenneth left a thoughtful pause. “But you take my point?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed, sir. I take it completely,” Oliver said before switching off his phone.

  Reading Oliver’s face a few seconds later, Giles Cotton said, “When I put a man in the field, I don’t second-guess him.”

  Oliver smiled. “The way the great Dr. Kenneth sees it, it is I who am second-guessing the President and most of his cabinet.”

  “In my experience it often comes down to a tribal thing with politicians and civil servants,” Cotton reflected. “Sooner or later a line of demarcation develops between those who believe the world is abstract and those who know it’s
real.”

  “It’s real, all right,” Oliver said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “My job,” Oliver answered, “with one hand tied behind my back. What the hell, that’s the way they play the game. Because that’s what it is to men like Kenneth: a game. Life and death, sure, but by remote control.”

  “Don’t be too harsh,” Giles Cotton implored.

  “Is that possible?” Oliver asked. “Considering that this is the same clique that sends kids to war without body armor?”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Across the carefully laid, candlelit dinner table, Ty regarded Philip with intensified wariness. Since Philip had returned later than expected from Gibraltar, the meal before them was actually more of a supper, scallops Mornay and a Caesar salad with a chilled bottle of Ian’s favorite Corton-Charlemagne, Remoissenet. They had barely begun it when Philip, in a puzzled tone, asked, “What do people in the States make of your President?”

  Ty shook his head. “That’s difficult to say. I suppose it’s pretty much the same as with most of his predecessors. Any president is lucky if his popularity ends up a bit over fifty percent. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason in particular. I happened to catch a glimpse of him on television while I was waiting for the pilot to finish signing the necessary departure forms at Gibraltar Airport, and it struck me not for the first time that I couldn’t make up my own mind.”

  “I wish I could help you,” Ty said diffidently.

  “Have you met him?”

  “I have, but ‘met’ is the operative word. I would never claim to know him.”

  “Of course,” Philip said, then added, “I gather he has an interesting background.”

  “He does. Not long after they got out of college, Garland White and a friend started a restaurant—the Skillful Skillet, if I remember correctly—that was on its way to becoming one of those very successful chains when, who knows why—probably too much optimism spiraling into too much debt—it suddenly went belly-up, which left him a rising star at twenty-seven and a burned-out one by thirty. Then a strange thing happened. In the early days of his restaurant, he had done a television promotion in which he’d been featured on-screen.”