Red Ice

by James Phelan

  There was a long silence.

  “You could have told me any time over the past six months.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Yeah,” he said. He sat on the end of the bed and put his socks and shoes on, grunted through the pain of the chest wound and other niggling aches and twinges. He stood up, went for his jacket hanging over the back of the chair, but she got there first, took it and held it close.

  “He’s a guy I met when I thought I’d never see you again. I had no one in my life and he’s—I couldn’t—I was empty and—”

  “You don’t need to explain it,” Fox said, reaching for his jacket, but she took a step back against the desk, held it out of reach.

  He looked away from her eyes, back out towards the view.

  “Kate, I … I mean, having you back in my life—”

  “This doesn’t mean I’m not in your life,” she said. “I was seeing him—”

  “You’re engaged to him!”

  Her turn to look away.

  “I was ready to walk away from this life for you! You know? I was starting to think I knew who I was again. Make a new life—with you!”

  “It doesn’t matter who you were before. It’s who you want to be that matters,” she said, facing him. “We have what we have and we got dealt a pretty shitty hand a while back and we’ve played it the best we could.”

  “Yeah. You done?”

  “No,” she said, tears in her eyes. She pushed up against him, her breath hot in his face. “I had nothing before and … now? I don’t know, maybe I have more, maybe it’s nothing, but … I never wanted any of this, this running, this hiding. If you get killed chasing this I have to go on without you. How’s that fair? You go on your adventures, and one day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, you don’t come back because you don’t give a shit for anything but the fucking so-called truth that you’re pursuing—and it’ll get you killed! Don’t you see? It will kill you—and you don’t give a shit about those around you!”

  She slammed her fist into his shoulder, again and again.

  “And what?” Fox said. “The chef from the Muppets out there does?”

  “He’s a lawyer with the European Commission—”

  “Wow.”

  “Well at least he won’t come home in a body bag!” Kate said. “How’s that for ‘wow’?”

  “I’ve gotta leave.”

  “Of course you do…” she said, handing him his jacket. “You always have some place to go, somewhere you’ve gotta be. Well fucking go! Go until you can’t go anymore and don’t bother coming back.”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  Fox nodded. He took her hand, her closed fist in his open palms. And they stood there. Two people who knew each other so intimately and yet hardly at all. Fox reached past her head and she softened a little—thought perhaps that he was reaching for her face, an embrace or a kiss—but he took the SOCOM pistol off the chest of drawers and put it into the back of his belt. He left the room.

  96

  SHANGHAI

  Malevich collected a parcel from the bell desk of the Park Hyatt driveway. He opened it—the hotel reservation and a schedule showing interviews with several heads of state in the morning. He showed these to his security checkpoint chaperone, who, having already checked Malevich’s name on his press list, was now satisfied he was a bona fide journalist.

  Malevich adjusted the bag over his shoulder, walked to the lift lobby, mindful that Russia and China had signed an agreement on intelligence cooperation in 1992. Every second he was here, Lavrov could have him taken in, then lose him in a Chinese cell for eternity. In and out, back to the waiting aircraft. He smiled as he thought how Lavrov’s guys at the airport would be waiting for him to emerge from an Air France flight he hadn’t taken.

  He checked his BlackBerry again. Still no messages from his sister. He tried her number again. Again it went straight to messagebank. The lift doors pinged open. Malevich entered, pressed ninety-three.

  97

  SHANGHAI

  “Al,” Fox said as he walked accross the lift lobby of the ninetyseventh floor observation deck, the mic concealed under his shirt, taped to his chest. “Al, can you hear me, buddy?”

  “10–4, chilly-willie,” Gammaldi replied over the earpiece.

  “How’s the party?”

  “We’re not quite in yet,” Fox replied, his thumb holding down the talk button on the little radio clipped to his belt. Zoe stood next to him, in a simple black cocktail dress that had been meant for Kate. Just the two of them on this mission; Fox had local communications set up to go through to Gammaldi, and with a flick of the switch he could talk to Hutchinson.

  “Man, that guy, Kate’s fiancé…” Gammaldi said, trailing off.

  “Yeah, what?” Fox said as they passed through a security checkpoint that scanned their wristbands.

  “All I’m saying is, of all the hotels in all the cities in all the world…”

  “You said it, mate,” Fox replied. He took a beer from a passing waitress. “It’s loud in here, Al, I’ll contact you when I know something. Stay sharp back there.”

  “Not how I would have pictured a G20 Summit,” Zoe said.

  The scene was wild. It was the closing night of the Summit and staffers and delegates were letting their hair down. The place was so crowded and dark that the dancers looked like one strange beast, thrashing and swaying to the beat. Most were in suits and dresses, some were in nightclub gear. One corner had a few drunk guys with just their pants on, in another were a couple of dozen young Chinese girls in short skirts hanging off the arms of fat, drunk men.

  Fox followed Zoe across the room, where they stopped close to the deck with sweeping views over the city. It was dizzying to see the streets below through a glass floor. Fox adjusted the SOCOM pistol tucked in his pants at the small of his back. Zoe took his beer, had a sip. They shared a look.

  They were both so tired and wired—they needed each other’s A-game right now. They stood in silence, scanned the crowd, until Fox tapped her on the shoulder and they made for the lift lobby.

  “We can’t see shit in there,” he said. “What floor was the dinner?”

  “Ninety-third.”

  “Let’s check it out.”

  Zoe nodded and they took the lift down.

  People were still milling about on the ninety-third floor, talking and drinking at the bars set up outside the dining room. Malevich made a call on his new pre-paid mobile phone. Lavrov answered on the second ring.

  “You have not transferred the money,” Malevich said, making for the main bar.

  “Where are you?”

  “Shanghai. With your document.”

  “Your flight—”

  “Listen to me!” Malevich said. He wanted to ask Lavrov about his sister, but he didn’t want to show that he was fearful. They might not have her … better to be silent about it. “I will check the money has been transferred in five minutes. If it’s in my account, I will call you back and tell you where to meet me.”

  “If—”

  “If it’s not transferred, I will be selling the document to the Americans.”

  He hung up and ordered a glass of wine.

  98

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Bowden had been quiet, doing his thing, doing it in secrecy. Plans would be in motion.

  He called McCorkell over, nodded to a CIA analyst and played a phone call between McCorkell and Fox.

  “Hutchinson will meet you at the hotel.” McCorkell heard his voice. “Good luck.”

  “You wanna elaborate on that?” Bowden asked, smug.

  “No.”

  “Okay. I’ve activated all assets in the area, just a matter of time.”

  “And when you find them?”

  “Then we’re in play.”

  “We bring them in,” McCorkell said. “Unharmed.”

  �
��Look at your boy, Fox,” Bowden said, pointing to a tech who brought up an image of the Elysée scene to sit alongside those of the Louvre courtyard and two separate car chases. “He’s in this, too. Who’s to say there’s a phantom Russian agent with this secret protocol? Who’s to say that Fox isn’t there, about to hand it to Babich?”

  “Babich is the man we want.”

  “We’re closing on the hunt.”

  “Sounds like you know exactly where he is,” McCorkell said.

  “No. The hunt ends when we know exactly where he is.”

  McCorkell had had enough. There was no way he was going to let Fox hang out to dry—the guy was doing work on behalf of all the people in this room. McCorkell had seen the face of the man with the protocol, a blur at best. Fox had seen him first-hand. He was their best shot, period.

  “You still won’t accept that Fox may have turned?” Bowden asked. “What if he’s playing you? You ever think of that?”

  “That’s horse shit,” McCorkell said. “Where would he turn? He wants Umbra finished as much as we do—probably more.”

  “He’s loose,” Bowden said. “He’s out of control, an unknown. It’s very clear to me what needs to happen.”

  Silence. The idea dangling for a moment. Then it was over. Resolve in Bowden’s eyes.

  “I have work to do,” McCorkell said.

  Bowden didn’t say anything. He turned his attention back to his team; news and intel was flooding in thick and fast, things were coming to a head. McCorkell moved back to the printers, collecting transcripts, within earshot.

  “Kate Matthews just popped up on the grid—vocal match on a cell phone, we got a location.”

  Bowden looked vindicated. “Let me guess…”

  “Shanghai—Pudong,” the NSA tech said. “At or close to the World Financial Center building, definitely within the secure zone of the Summit.”

  “How old?”

  “Ten minutes, and her phone’s still on—we’ll have an exact location momentarily.”

  “So, they’re on scene,” Bowden said.

  “We just got a confirmation from the building’s security screening, facial shots of Fox and his party of three, arrival close on twenty minutes ago.”

  “And I’m just hearing that now because?”

  The tech shook his head.

  “Okay,” Bowden said, looking across to the Air Force detachment. “Activate the air asset, prepare to wait on final target acquisition.”

  The techs and agents looked at each other as the DoD men prepared to activate their mission.

  “Should we evac the Summit?” Bowden’s deputy asked. “Communicate a high-priority security concern?”

  Bowden shook his head—hell no.

  “Can’t afford the evac, can’t afford targets getting lost in the masses.”

  His operators seemed to understand, they didn’t like the risks, but they’d never felt things go wrong up close in their face.

  “Have the air asset ready to rock and roll within range of the building—and keep tabs on all exits, I wanna know every ID of every person in and out of that damned building,” Bowden said. “Whoever is giving this protocol to Babich, however, wherever, we’ve gotta intercept that pass—at all costs.”

  McCorkell looked at the last image of Fox they had, from the lobby of the Shanghai World Financial Center. You’re it, Fox—for God’s sake hurry up and don’t give this SOB a chance to do it the hard way …

  99

  EAST CHINA SEA

  Bowden’s air asset was a heavily modified C-130H flying high over a black sea, in airspace controlled by the George Washington’s carrier strike group. Designated the ATL001, the aircraft’s matt black paint scheme rendered the aircraft near-invisible against the night sky. Soaring high, waiting for mission orders, there was no more-advanced covert-action strike weapon on the planet.

  The Advanced Tactical Laser aircraft was built for one main purpose: deniable air strikes. The modified Hercules aircraft was fitted with a high-energy chemical laser. The 5.5-tonne weapons system combined chlorine and hydrogen peroxide molecules to release energy, which was used in turn to stimulate iodine into releasing intense infra-red light. It gave the operators the ability to strike night or day with maximum precision from long distances, the ultimate tool of plausible deniability.

  The accuracy of this weapon was little short of supernatural—it could destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tyres to immobilise it, from thirty kilometres out. It could assassinate a specific individual standing among a group with sniper-like precision. Targeting was no less advanced. A recent showing of power at Kirtland Air Force Base showed a thirty-second engagement in which the beam destroyed over a hundred separate targets while avoiding collateral damage of dummy personnel standing in close proximity. A three-month deployment to the Afghan–Pakistan border had provided kill results equivalent to no less than a dozen Predator drones flying similar hours. The ATL001’s effectiveness had proven it to be a future replacement of the ageing Lockheed AC-130 gunship fleet.

  The laser itself was a silent, invisible killer. It could bore a hole through a tank or a concrete wall in a quarter of a second. Whatever the target, one thing was constant: the recipient would never know what hit them. There would be no munitions fragments or ballistics residue for investigators to find. At this time, no pathologist would be able to definitively say that a laser was involved—the injury might resemble a lightning strike more than anything else.

  The US Air Force flight crew had flown out from Kadena Air Base, Japan, two hours ago and had been doing a circuit out at sea, waiting for a go order. When they received the encrypted command, the pilots vectored towards Shanghai, while the gunners manning the computer suite in the cargo hold began setting up the fire sequence. Though staffed by DoD personnel, the ATL001 was the exclusive property of the CIA for strikes against Tier One Personalities.

  For this mission, they had two targets.

  100

  SHANGHAI

  Babich signalled for another drink for the President of the European Commission.

  “It’s a legally binding treaty that has been in place since 1867,” he finished. “This secret protocol? It is but an amendment that has no sunset clause?”

  “Correct.”

  “Forgive me,” the EC President said, “but this is a major security and economic issue for them—the Americans; they would be handing you the Arctic seas … and those resources. If they refuse to comply?”

  “They rescind, it is in violation of the treaty—so the original treaty itself is invalid.”

  “And they would have to give Alaska back to Russia?”

  “You know, no country enters into a treaty unless it has the intention and means to enforce the treaty provisions … Put it this way,” Babich said, “States who commit themselves to obligations under treaties, arrangements or resolutions from the Security Council at the United Nations—should then follow through with those commitments. Violating such a treaty is a crime, whether the United States commits it, or whether it is Russia or Denmark, enforceable by all sorts of sanctions and force. They can’t lay down a rule of negligent conduct against others and not allow it to be invoked against them as well. They have no choice and they know it. We must never forget that the record on which we judge them will be the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. America’s standing in the world, as seen by the Americans themselves, is so important—but you know that.”

  That drew agreement. Good. Babich didn’t want to be honest with everything. He told the man what he needed to know.

  “So, you see, they will really have no choice,” he continued. “I come to power in my country, I exploit these resources in the north, and we have a new relationship to make a much better future for our two countries.”

  The EC President nodded.

  “And you want Denmark’s help with this, to sway the votes when it comes time to move on n
ew agreements in the Arctic?”

  “We are helping each other,” Babich said. “You know, I could have taken this to Norway, or to Canada, but I came to you.”

  “Well, we have history,” the EC President said, smiling. “I will speak with my Prime Minister and get back to you as soon as I can.”

  The two men stood and shook hands. Helena, the EC President’s only witness to the meeting, rose and followed her boss out. Babich watched them leave.

  101

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Bowden was up front, pointing, pacing, chewing his nails. He was passed a phone, listened, covered the mouthpiece and spoke to the Air Force men.

  “Get ready for coordinates coming in. You give the go-ahead to the aircraft.”

  “Roger boss,” the senior Air Force operator replied.

  Valerie motioned McCorkell over to an FBI tech’s console.

  The young guy was the team’s computer guru and he’d been flicking through the CIA team’s computers all day.

  “Bill,” Valerie whispered, “the CIA know where Babich is.”

  “Shanghai.”

  “No,” Valerie said. “I mean where in the hotel he is. They have a double agent in there, a woman in the Danish Intelligence, she’s shadowing the President of the EC—he just met with Babich.”

  “You got the room number?”

  “Yes.”

  102

  SHANGHAI

  Boris Malevich hung up his mobile phone. The money was there, and he’d transferred it to his account in Malta. He now had over five million euros. Enough to disappear for life.

  He redialled Lavrov’s number, told him where to meet, finished his wine and ordered an espresso. He picked up his phone, confirmed with his pilot that he was on schedule and they would be flying to Valleta within the hour.