“Glad to see you two are still with us,” McNamara said, eyeing Vail’s sling and Rusakov’s splinted index finger.
“It was certainly an … interesting experience,” Vail said. “One I don’t ever want to repeat.”
“Yes,” Knox said. “We’re taking steps to make sure that doesn’t happen. In fact, it’s triggered a top-to-bottom review of all Bureau vehicles. It’ll then be expanded to all intelligence agencies and their vehicles, here and abroad. A bit like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but at least it served as a wakeup call.”
I like my horses and barn analogy better. But that’s just me.
“We’ve gotten some more intel on Lansford. We sent a covert team into Kerwin’s house in Rockville right after you grabbed her up. They found an encrypted laptop that’s taking a while to break.”
CIA director Earl Tasset pushed the glasses up his nose. “I’m told they still hope to get more off the hard drive, but it looks like Kerwin was involved with the people who planted the router in your house, Agent Vail. It also seems like she was in communication with someone in China. We’re working on identifying who and why.”
“And,” McNamara said, “Lansford was not being truthful with you. He wasn’t given code to insert into the Orion operating system. He co-wrote it.”
“So he knows more than he told us,” Rusakov said.
“That’s an understatement,” Knox said as he handed iPads to Vail and Rusakov. “We were in the ballpark regarding what was going on, but we were wrong about some very important things. Read what we’ve assembled, then get in there and talk with him, see what he’ll tell you.”
Vail set the iPad on the table and swiped with her good hand, skimming the document first to get an overview before reading it again more carefully. When she had committed the facts to memory, she pushed the tablet aside. “I’d like to take a crack at him first.”
Rusakov shrugged. “You seem to have a better rapport with him. I’m better off being the evil bitch who can’t wait to zap his balls with a million volts.”
I’m still not convinced she wouldn’t do it.
A moment later Vail entered the interrogation room. Lansford lifted his chin and gave Vail a pleading look—get on with it or execute him and get it over with. She was not sure which emotion he was projecting. He was once again hooked up to the polygraph.
“You don’t look so good, Jason.”
“Neither do you.”
“Would you like some news on your wife and kids?”
His features softened. “Yes.”
Vail nodded. “After you answer my questions, if you answer them honestly, I’ll give you an update.”
His shoulders drooped slightly but he recovered quickly.
“We had a chat with Jessie Kerwin.”
His eyes widened—genuine surprise.
“Yeah, we found her,” Vail said with a chuckle. “That’s how I ended up with this.” She gestured toward her sling. “And Jessie told us some really interesting things. Like your real name.” Vail stopped and studied his face. No reaction. “Ivan Lantsov.”
“Oh, yeah, nice heart rate, galvanic reaction,” Jones said in her ear.
Vail smiled tightly. “Jessie says that you were born in St. Petersburg. Russia, not Florida. Your father was Russian but your mother was Taiwanese, which explains why your facial features have a slight Asian appearance.” Vail stopped and studied him. “Was Jessie telling the truth?”
Lansford did not respond for five, ten, fifteen seconds. Then he nodded—slightly, reluctantly.
“You worked at a foundry that manufactured the communications chips for a company that assembled the Deep Space Network antennas. Your younger brother, Garry, was a techie too, and you got him a job at an antivirus company in Moscow. How am I doing so far? Jessie give us reliable info?”
Lansford looked at the ground.
“Still in an excited state,” Jones said.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Vail said. “But Garry screwed things up, didn’t he?” Vail bent over, trying to get a look at Lansford’s face. “He used his spare time to run an activist website that was critical of the Russian Federation for the way it treats homosexuals—which, we all know, is pretty shitty. Isn’t it?”
Lansford nodded but did not lift his gaze.
“The Federation discovered Garry was behind the site because, well, Garry is good but he’s no match for the army of hackers the government employs. So they arrested him. But it didn’t end there. Because of his exceptional programming skills, they held onto him and grabbed you up. They leveraged you, made you a proposition. Spy for them and they won’t make your younger brother disappear.”
“He was such an idiot,” Lansford said under his breath. “I warned him. I warned him.”
“Siblings can cause a lot of problems for us, can’t they?” Boy, ain’t that the truth?
“Yeah.”
“So they sent you to the United States, arranged a new identity for you: Ivan Lantsov became Jason Lansford. And they built an impressive backstory. You got hired at Aerospace Engineering as a software engineer. You had that gig for two years and did well. But Jessie created an opening at NASA in its space shuttle program by arranging an untimely death for one of its software engineers. And you submitted your application at a fortuitous time.
“You were hired and worked there for three years. But when the shuttle was discontinued, with no seniority, you were out of a job. So you went back to Aerospace Engineering. Your NASA experience got you an even better position there as head of software development for a program NASA was starting—which became the space launch system rocket and Orion crew exploration vehicle. How am I doing?”
Lansford swallowed noticeably. “Good.”
“And you weren’t given software code to insert into the avionics. You wrote it.”
“I had help. But yes.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Aerospace Engineering also made the mainboards and tested them.”
“Ask him,” Knox cut in, “if he arranged for Aerospace Engineering to get the transmit chips from China.”
Vail posed the question.
“That was the riskiest part of the operation. We had to use a redundant chip on the board. It was so tiny the feeling was that no one would notice. And even if they did notice, it’d be a Chinese chip, not a Russian component. So fingers would be pointed at China. I thought it was a big gamble, but I did as I was told.”
Vail sat down across from Lansford. “You said you had help writing the code.”
“A team in Russia. I couldn’t have done it myself.”
“Were there other spies working with you? Here in the US.”
“We had someone on the hardware side, to get the chip installed on the board. But I never had any direct contact with him. Or her. Jessie coordinated it all. She said it was safer that way.”
“Just one?”
“I assumed one, but I really don’t know.”
“Appears to be telling the truth,” Jones said.
“And because you’d proven your worth to Russia, they released Garry from custody and sent him to China to spy for them—and to serve as a plausibly deniable reason for you to go to China … when in fact you were flying on to Moscow to report to Russian officials. Yes?”
“No.”
Vail drew back. Damn, I was doing so well. “What do you mean, no?”
“You don’t know what you think you know.”
“Then enlighten us.”
Lansford did not speak, did not move.
“We’ll give you one chance to be honest with us. You get it wrong this time, the deal for your family is off.”
Lansford squirmed in his seat. “What else are you going to give me?”
Vail chewed on that a moment. “A sit-down with your children. Not your wife—you could pass
her a code word. Less likely with your kids. And it would be supervised. You’ll be cut off if you appear to be passing information to them.”
Lansford sat there, head bowed, as he thought it through.
“There’s really nothing to think about, Jason. Veronika’s ready to rip up our agreement.” Not to mention what she wants to do with that battery. “And frankly, I’m worried about Renata, Kathy, and Zack. I don’t give a shit about you. But them, they’re innocents.”
No response.
“You’ve got thirty seconds,” Vail said, consulting her watch, “and then I leave. And once I walk out, we’re done. I won’t be back.”
Ten seconds passed, then another five. He lifted his head, made eye contact with Vail, and nodded.
“Okay then, let’s have it. And don’t leave anything out. No more bullshit.”
“It’s not the Russian government that’s behind the spying, but Ronck Mining Robotics, a Russian company hired by the Chinese Space Agency that built their robotic rover. They pioneered specialized mining equipment for drilling into various depths of the lunar surface to sample, test, and secure the caesarium. Ronck is the only company with this technology.”
“How do you know this?”
“It was need to know, and I needed to know.”
“Because of what you did to the software? The malware?” Vail asked.
“Yes. And no. Originally they wanted me to sabotage the operating system of the Orion rover. But their plans changed.”
“So who’s behind all this? China? Russia?”
“Yes.”
“Which?”
“I can only tell you what I know. I suggest you look into Ronck Mining. You may find something of interest.”
“No more games. You know something, now’s the time to tell us.”
Lansford shifted his jaw. “One of the main people involved with Ronck has a history. With the KGB.”
“Give me a name.”
He sighed, hesitated, then said, “Mikhail Uglov.”
Vail pulled out her encrypted OPSIG phone and plugged in the name. Well that can’t be right. “Not sure I spelled it correctly.”
Lansford chuckled.
Then again, maybe I did. “Uglov is a Russian diplomat?”
“And the second largest shareholder of Ronck Mining.”
Vail turned and looked at the two-way glass and nodded at Rusakov. She—or Knox or Tasset or someone at OPSIG—would be digging into Mikhail Uglov’s background. If they weren’t already.
And if this diplomat was involved with Ronck Mining Robotics, they might be on the cusp of getting some answers.
48
Taurus-Littrow Valley
Gavin Stroud and DeSantos joined Uzi and Carson in front of the rover, which they had deployed down the long ramp from inside the storage bay beneath the crew cabin.
“Here are our priorities,” Stroud said. “I’ll secure a sample of caesarium and run the designated tests, then transmit the data to ground control. We’ve now got a fuel issue, so I’m putting Uzi and DeSantos on that. And we’ve got the other mission objective—to prevent the Chang’e 5 from getting off this surface or prevent their robotic rover from obtaining the caesarium. Our option. Need be, we’ve got C-4 and timers, but I’d rather keep it low tech and avoid explosives if we can. Digger, that part of the mission hasn’t changed, so you’ve still got that.”
“And let’s not forget the new task on our plate,” DeSantos said. “The Russians.”
“Right,” Stroud said. “We don’t know their intentions, but we can guess—they want to bring caesarium back to Earth—which we can’t allow. So soon as they arrive, that becomes our primary mission objective—so let’s try to get these others taken care of in the next eight hours.”
“We’ve got another problem.” Uzi turned to the rover. “The mining equipment you’ll need to locate the caesarium, drill it out of the ground, and run the tests, is built into the Spider. Which means no one’s going anywhere we can’t walk. Because you’ll have the rover. We can’t do everything simultaneously. That wasn’t an issue before, but the situation’s changed. And time is tight.”
Stroud walked toward the Spider’s suit port, a type of airlock that enabled them to remove their pressure suits and enter the cabin of the rover relatively quickly—and then be able to carry out their duties free of the encumbrance of the bulky gear and large primary life support system backpack. “You guys work on that while I start scouting out the caesarium. Need be, you can walk—or hop—the two miles to the Chang’e.”
“Unless …” Uzi stopped.
“Unless what?” Carson asked.
“We’ve got a used vehicle gathering Moon dust, waiting for a new owner. The Apollo 17 LRV,” he said, referring to the lunar roving vehicle. “The Moon buggy.”
DeSantos looked at Carson. It was difficult to make out his expression through the glass of the visor—which reflected the lunar surface as well as the black of space—but it was clear he was thinking the same thing: he was not sure he heard correctly.
“Did you just suggest we try to resurrect a forty-six-year-old convertible?” DeSantos asked. “I know a thing or two about old cars and—”
“Less than ideal, I know. But it’s there, we need it, and every problem has potential solutions.”
“Uzi,” Carson said, “it was an electric vehicle and the batteries are long dead.”
“So what?” Uzi asked. “We’ve got solar arrays on the Chang’e—both the rover and the lander. We should be able to use them, wire them into the LRV. What I don’t know is what kind of battery they’ve got.”
“And a battery is necessary?” DeSantos asked.
“My technologically challenged friend … yes. A direct-to-motor solar-load is theoretically possible, but very challenging. The solar array captures the sunlight and converts that energy into electricity. But then what?”
“It gets used.”
“Not that simple. Without a battery, you have no way of storing that energy. So you’d need constant sunlight or the rover would stop. And the array would have to be able to turn to face the sun and move up and down for the same reason. In case you haven’t noticed, the Moon’s hilly and mountainous, so we could easily move out of direct line of sight of the sun. And the motor loads will be constantly changing because the terrain is so uneven—we’ll need more, or less, power as we move from one area to another, from low ground to high ground. We’ll have no way of storing the excess if we don’t need it at that moment. Over the course of starting, accelerating, stopping, climbing, and turning, the battery gives and takes for instantaneous demand while balancing the amount of total energy generated with total energy used.”
“So we really need a battery.”
“We really need a battery. And a charge controller.”
“Oh,” DeSantos said. “Of course. I knew that.”
Uzi laughed. “I didn’t realize you knew what a charge controller does.”
“Boychick, how ignorant do you think I am?”
“Really want me to answer that? Let’s just say that using a solar array is not like plugging an appliance into a 120-volt wall outlet. When you plug into an outlet, you get standard voltage and frequency—doesn’t matter if you’re pulling a small amount of power to recharge your cell phone or a large amount for a hair dryer, table saw, or oven. Because the voltage and current production of a solar array change with the amount of power you’re pulling, how efficient you are at pointing the array at the sun, and how hot its operating temperature is, you need a charge controller to keep the power draw constant. But you knew that. Right?”
“Like I said.”
Carson tapped the mic button on his helmet. “Hey CAPCOM.”
“Go, Raptor,” Maddox said.
He explained what Uzi had suggested. “Not that I don’t trust Uzi, but
we’re tight on time and if it’s not going to work, we need to know. And if it’s feasible we’re gonna need some help.”
“Stand by, Digger. I’ll talk with the engineers. I’m sure we have the old LRV specs on file. And I can probably reach one of the guys at Boeing who designed the thing. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s a well-built, complex machine. In today’s dollars, it cost a quarter billion dollars to develop and build.”
“Cowboy,” Uzi said. “Drop us at the Chang’e, then you can come back here and start mining. I’m almost positive we can make those solar panels work.”
Stroud was now seated in the pressurized cabin at the front of the Spider, minus his suit. “Ten-four. But you’re not driving.”
Wise guy.
Carson, Uzi, and DeSantos jumped onto the Spider’s small rear platform, which was designed to transport astronauts on short trips across a planetary surface. This was significantly more efficient than having them remove their suits, only to don them again moments later.
“I’ll give you a rundown of the LRV while you’re en route,” Maddox said, “in case Uzi’s right about the solar power. I’ve got the spec sheet in front of me. The buggy had two 36-volt batteries and four 1/4-horsepower drive motors. One for each wheel.”
“True four wheel drive,” DeSantos said. “How fast could it go?”
“If I remember right, about ten—no, check that, max speed was nine miles per hour. It could go forward or reverse, and drive over objects about a foot high. You’ll be able to cross crevasses about two feet wide, but I wouldn’t push it. It can climb and descend moderate slopes, but that’ll probably depend on how much power you can generate from the solar array.”
“Roger that,” Uzi said.
“And there’s no steering wheel. It’s got a main center console and a hand controller, so it’ll take some getting used to.”
“Hang on a second,” DeSantos said. “Boychick, you see what I see?”
“Hey, Cowboy, slow down, we want to get a look at this.”
“The Apollo 17 descent stage,” Carson said.
Dark Side of the Moon Page 25
