The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  ‘No man on the scene? Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,’ said Miri, laughing as she apologised. ‘Our director’s married, but there are one or two others I could introduce you to.’

  ‘Very single, but I like it that way,’ said Rabinovich, cutting off any complications to her mission. ‘It gives me more time in the laboratory where I hope I can make a real contribution to our security, because I had no idea Israel was so small.’

  ‘And threatened by Iran who wants to destroy us, and surrounded by thieving, devious Arabs who want to kick us into the Mediterranean.’

  Rabinovich was taken aback by the vehemence in Miri’s verbal assault on her neighbours.

  ‘You don’t think peace is a chance?’

  ‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell. They say they want their own state, yet we’ve offered them that on no fewer than five occasions. They could have had it back in 1947 when Golda Meir, who was a minister in David Ben Gurion’s first government, addressed them from the balcony of her office in Jerusalem. After the United Nations decided on a state for Israel and a state for the Palestinians, she told them: “It’s not all of what you want, and it’s not all of what we want, but let’s go forward together in peace.” And what did the devious little shits do? Four days later they invaded us. If you offered the Kurds, or the Tibetans, or the Chechens their own state, they’d take it in a heartbeat, but not the bloody Arabs.’

  Rabinovich didn’t respond. Miri’s loyalty to her homeland was palpable and the director’s secretary was also extraordinarily well read. Was Miri just a passionate Israeli or was there something more to her, Rabinovich wondered.

  ‘They could have had their own state on four different occasions since,’ Miri continued, ‘and in 2008, Prime Minister Olmert offered a near total withdrawal from the West Bank.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that mean back to the 1967 borders?’

  ‘Yes – and we would be just 15 kilometres wide at the hip, which means we could be cut in two in an instant. Olmert not only offered them that, he told them we would just keep the major settlements and we would compensate them with an equivalent in Israeli land. What’s more, Olmert was prepared to give them East Jerusalem as their capital, and a corridor to the Gaza Strip and give up the Old City to international control. And still they said no. Pardon my French, but fuck them. They can burn in hell! Sorry,’ she said, her voice softening, ‘but welcome to our world. It’s us against the rest.’

  ‘No need to apologise,’ said Rabinovich. ‘My mother was Jewish, and she was probably more passionate than you,’ she added, should the conversation be repeated for the benefit of Regev and his colleagues. Play the game, right down to every last encounter.

  Miri turned off Route 25 and followed Sderot HaNassi into the city of Dimona. Rabinovich was pleasantly surprised by the tree-lined streets, neat houses and low, three-storey apartment blocks. For a city in the middle of the desert, the authorities had made it as livable as possible. Miri turned left into Sderot Golda Meir, and then right into HaMa’apil Street. A short distance later, she came to a stop outside a block of apartments.

  ‘This is home for you,’ Miri said, indicating a brown stucco apartment block. ‘Your unit’s on the top floor, so that will give you greater security.’

  Later that night, after she had unpacked, Rabinovich installed the high-tech miniature motion lights the FSB had provided. Satisfied, she settled in to send an encrypted message to her handler in Tel Aviv.

  Israelis experiencing the same, if not greater difficulties with miniature warheads than we are, stop. Makes Bartók thumb drive critical, stop. Suggest if successful in gaining thumb drive in Paris, we instigate evacuation plan from there? Prolonged stay at Dimona would seem superfluous. Longer report follows.

  Rabinovich walked to her window and gazed out across the Negev. She had no desire to spend more time in the desert than was absolutely necessary.

  Across the road, in a similar block of apartments, Rashid Suleiman, an eighteen-year-old radicalised Palestinian, kept watch on the block rented by the Israeli nuclear research centre.

  Barbara Murray knocked on Admiral Chandler’s inner door.

  ‘Morning, Mike.’

  ‘Have a seat, Barbara,’ said the admiral, indicating the chair in front of his desk. ‘Did you get the report on Bartók from the FBI?’

  Murray nodded. ‘Just finished reading it.’

  ‘I spoke with Jackson Harris on his secure line this morning. He’s quite worried. He thinks Bartók’s unhinged but Harris is in between a rock and a hard place. If he downgrades Bartók’s security clearance, he thinks Bartók will file a grievance and probably win.’

  ‘Pollard filed one and won, and he did us enormous damage, so Harris is probably right,’ Murray agreed.

  ‘And there isn’t much in that FBI report we could hit him with,’ said Chandler. ‘It isn’t a crime to have a dirty night in Boston.’

  For the next 20 minutes, the head of the NSA and his most trusted analyst weighed their options. ‘I know McNamara is up to his armpits in ISIS and Rabinovich at the moment, but he’s not alone,’ Chandler said finally. ‘Dragon is one of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, and if we need the CIA’s help, I’d rather they hit the ground running with every bit of information we’ve got. I’ll clear McNamara and O’Connor into the compartment and set up a meeting. Brief them on Bartók and keep this at the top of our radar. I don’t fancy having to brief Travers if this goes astray.’

  ‘I was just about to send O’Connor on leave but in light of this FBI report, that might have to wait,’ said McNamara.

  O’Connor winked at Barbara Murray. ‘Nothing new in that.’

  ‘What’s the prognosis?’ McNamara asked Murray, ignoring O’Connor’s aside.

  ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Admiral Chandler and I are very concerned. As you will have gathered from your entry briefing into Dragon, Bartók’s breakthrough is arguably the most highly classified compartment in the country. We haven’t aired our concerns with his boss, Jackson Harris, because to be honest, I don’t think they’ve handled Bartók particularly well. The biggest risk lies in Bartók jumping ship. He’s been an American citizen for 30 years and up until now, his loyalty to his adopted country has never been in question, but given the way they’ve sidelined him down there, that might change.’

  ‘O’Connor?’

  ‘I agree. This is absolutely groundbreaking research and they would have done well to find a way to reward him, instead of bringing in an outsider. Bartók’s work will not only enable a quantum leap in the development of the next suite of nuclear weapons, but the wider implications for the world’s supply of energy are immense. This is Nobel Prize material.’ O’Connor was well qualified to make the comment. After completing an honours thesis on polymerase chain reactions at Trinity College, Dublin, the Irish-American agent had followed that up with a doctorate on lethal viruses and biological weapons.

  ‘Well, he might still get one, but we don’t want him on the front page of the Jerusalem Post or the Moscow Times claiming it as an Israeli or a Russian discovery. What does NSA make of this Israeli woman – Cohen?’

  ‘There are several issues in that report that don’t add up,’ Murray replied. ‘We’ve got more information on Bartók than the FBI, so I’m not blaming them – tight restrictions on access to Dragon are essential because it’s one of the most sensitive compartments in the country. But firstly, that report indicates the FBI planted a listening device in Cohen’s Boston hotel room but it malfunctioned. That may be a coincidence, but on the other hand, if Cohen is not what she appears to be, then she may be up to no good. Tourists don’t search their rooms for hidden devices.’

  ‘I agree,’ O’Connor observed. ‘It might be coincidence, but she flew from Ben Gurion to Heathrow, and from there to Phoenix and on to Santa Fe where she hired a car. According to the FBI report, Cohen stayed in Los Alamos for just one night, and then she drove back to Santa Fe and flew on to Boston. That’s quite an odd tou
rist agenda. Boston, I can understand, but Los Alamos is a company town.’

  McNamara nodded. ‘Yes, and hardly a tourist hot spot. Poverty might be low, and they don’t have any homeless, but if it weren’t for the National Laboratory, it would still be populated by ranchers.’ In 1942, the United States government was searching for a remote location for the Manhattan Project, the research that led to the development of the atomic bomb. The properties of the ranchers were compulsorily acquired for the National Laboratory, and the town itself came under heavy classification. Residents were forbidden to talk about the presence of the laboratory, and the town was erased from driver’s licences, birth certificates and postal mail.

  ‘And there’s something else that doesn’t gel here,’ said Murray. ‘You can see from the photos of her that Cohen is a very attractive woman. Bartók is your classic nerd. I’ve spoken to a couple of trusted contacts, and apart from being a brilliant physicist, he’s as boring as batshit and about as unattractive to a woman as you can get. Unless there’s something more than I can see, it seems like a very odd match. And apart from trying to fathom why she was so keen to visit Los Alamos if it wasn’t to meet up with Bartók,’ Murray continued, ‘there are other issues too. She used cash to pay for meals and accommodation, and the Union Oyster House and the Mandarin Oriental aren’t two-star cash establishments, but I’m still trying to connect the dots. I’ve gone through the intercepts of all the cell phones that were in the Oyster House and the Mandarin. The one cell phone that was common to both places at the times Cohen was there had a very sophisticated encryption and surprisingly, despite the immense power of our computers out in Utah, we’ve still not cracked it, but trust me, we’re working on it. I’ve got a database of every call she made, and there was more than one to the Israeli embassy in Washington. That wouldn’t stand up in court, but it confirms my suspicions. Her tourist alibi was good enough to get her past Homeland Security, and her passport was clean, but unless I’m missing something, that would have come straight out of the Mossad passport factory in Tel Aviv. I suspect there’s a lot more to Ms Cohen than an Israeli coming to the US on holidays.’

  ‘Hmm.’ McNamara stroked his chin, deep in thought. ‘You saw that Cohen threw the FBI tail once they left the hotel?’

  ‘Yes, although that might have been just bad luck.’

  ‘I know Barrasso,’ offered O’Connor. ‘He’s one of the FBI’s most experienced agents. It might be coincidental, but it would be unusual.’

  ‘Bartók’s been billed as a speaker at a conference in Paris,’ said Murray. ‘Jackson Harris has thought about pulling him and substituting Bartók’s replacement, a nuclear physicist by the name of Magnuson, but the paper Bartók’s presenting is on nuclear energy and climate change – nothing to do with Dragon, and climate change is outside Magnuson’s area of expertise. Harris thinks that cancelling Bartók’s trip would just inflame things further, and I think Harris is right – Bartók’s planets are out of alignment as it is. This will bear careful watching,’ Murray added, ‘especially if the Israelis are up to no good again.’

  ‘Yes,’ McNamara agreed. ‘Pollard’s not the first case of Israel spying on us, and he won’t be the last. In 1954 they planted a microphone in our Ambassador’s office in Tel Aviv, and two years later we found telephone taps connected to the phones in the home of our defense attaché and it’s been going on ever since. They even tapped Monica Lewinsky’s phone. The classified material that Pollard passed to them did us untold damage.’ McNamara shook his head. ‘And if that wasn’t enough, the Israelis traded that intelligence with the Russians for more favourable emigration rules. Makes you wonder why we keep giving them US$3 billion a year in aid, but I think you’re on target with Cohen.’

  ‘So Cohen is presumably back in Israel now?’ asked O’Connor.

  ‘Flew from Boston to London and straight back to Tel Aviv.’

  ‘What does she do, exactly?’

  ‘We’re working on that. She’s listed as an executive in a large Israeli technology company, but I suspect that might just be a cover.’

  ‘You may well be right,’ McNamara opined. ‘I’ll get our chief of station in Tel Aviv to dig a bit deeper. When’s this conference in Paris?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘Seems as if you’re going to need me there,’ said O’Connor, grinning at Murray.

  ‘Can I come too?’ Murray suggested, flashing O’Connor a smile.

  ‘If you two have quite finished?’ There was no irritation in McNamara’s voice, more a touch of wistfulness. The job of the nation’s chief spy left little time for relaxation and he knew only too well the hours that O’Connor and Murray were also pulling for their country. Like him, theirs was often a 24/7 commitment, not that the new POTUS would notice, he thought ruefully.

  ‘If Cohen so much as puts a toe outside of Israel, I want to know,’ said McNamara. ‘Her cover as an ordinary citizen is not stacking up, so keep a trace on her cell phone and its whereabouts. In the meantime,’ the spy chief added, turning to O’Connor, ‘when I call you, I don’t want to hear any of your usual “weak and unreadable” responses from the Maldives or the Seychelles or wherever you were planning on skulking off to. Brush up on Bartók and be prepared to head for Paris as soon as I give you the word.’

  ‘We’ve had a departure.’ President Travers’s chief steward aboard Air Force One announced the president was inbound toward his aircraft. It was 0600 hours, and Marine One had lifted off from the White House lawn en route to Andrews Air Force Base, or Joint Base Andrews as it was now known. The base was only a short distance from the White House and it was home to two very special 747s – tail numbers 28000 and 29000 – flown by the Presidential Airlift Group which was part of the 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews.

  The president’s plane, which carried the call sign Air Force One whenever he was aboard, was capable of being refuelled midair. The 747s were equipped with the most sophisticated array of missile defenses of any military aircraft. Matador infrared countermeasures were located in the tails and behind the engines, emitting infrared signals as a counter to heat-seeking missiles. A missile launch warning receiver, the same as that fitted to Special Forces Talon aircraft, provided the president’s pilots with early warning of any missile launch. The aircraft were also insulated against electromagnetic pulses, enabling them to continue to function in the event of a nuclear attack. In addition to sophisticated encrypted satellite communications, the aircraft were equipped with a conference room, a personal suite for the president, and an operating theatre and medical staff, just in case.

  The week before, a Secret Service team had left for Santa Fe and Los Alamos. Whenever the president travelled, whether it was in the United States or abroad, a Secret Service advance team would be sent to ensure his security. Nothing was left to chance. The day before, the ground equivalents of Air Force One – the president’s armoured cars – had been loaded onto a massive C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. The Secret Service agents would have preferred President Travers travel on Marine One, direct from Santa Fe to the National Laboratory, but the president had insisted there should be a welcoming parade through Los Alamos. To ensure his safety, the president’s armoured Cadillac, otherwise known as ‘the beast’ – together with a duplicate to confuse any attacker – and heavily armoured Suburbans, including a communications vehicle known as ‘the Roadrunner’, had already arrived in Los Alamos.

  There was a very good reason for the elaborate safety precautions. On 22 November 1963, President J. F. Kennedy was assassinated when his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, and as a result, the cars used to carry the President of the United States had been completely redesigned. Powered by a massive 6.5-litre engine, the armour plating on the current vehicle was over eight inches thick. The bulletproof windows were five inches thick, and the tyres were reinforced with Kevlar, and capable of running flat at speed. The fuel tank was surrounded by foam and the interior was sealed to foil any chemical or bi
ological attack. The trunk contained fire-extinguishers, weapons, tear gas canisters, oxygen and a reinforced container that held the president’s blood type. And just in case, the Secret Service maintained spare cars in a secret heavily guarded underground car park.

  With the president aboard, the president’s chief pilot, Air Force Colonel Mike Munro, requested start clearance from ground control. Clearance came back immediately. ‘Air Force One, you are cleared to start.’ The airspace around the field had already been closed. Flying time to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, one of the largest bases belonging to the Air Force Global Strike Command, would be a touch under three hours.

  Denis Bartók, now relegated to a very small office, sat at his desk wrestling whether or not to accede to Lisa Cohen’s request for the top-secret data from the Dragon compartment. Once he released it to whomever her wealthy client was, he knew he would be in the same position as Edward Snowden, the CIA operative who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency. Snowden could never return to the United States without being arrested, and he was now in stateless limbo in Russia. Bartók stared absentmindedly toward the car park that had been cleared for the president’s visit. For the umpteenth time he asked himself, why would he want to stay? Darlene was screwing her ass off with that maintenance jerk, although that seemed to have cooled of late, and Magnuson was wandering around claiming credit for Dragon every chance he got. Bartók’s anger rose again. Bastards. With the code-breaking software Cohen had given him, there might be a chance he could defeat the National Laboratory’s computer security, but he still couldn’t quite bring himself to betray the country. Bartók knew well that whichever country finished up with this technology, it would immediately put them into a different zip code from the rest of the world.

  Colonel Munro brought Air Force One to a halt and President Travers exited the aircraft, pausing to wave from the top of the boarding stairs, but he was waving to thin air. In effect, other than a few air force personnel who had stopped to watch the arrival, there was no one to wave to, but just in case a video found its way into the public arena, whenever he arrived anywhere, he made sure he waved from the aircraft stairs. If asked, he and his advisors would always state that it was to a very large, appreciative crowd.