Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8

by Tom Clancy

  Morgan trusted his ability to manage, and knew one of the keystones of his success was a talent for passing his confidence right on down the line. Business executives and government officials from several different countries, the people around him were behind-the-scenes movers, concealed switches embedded deep within the world’s political machinery. Men and women who could trip the right circuits and—by virtue of their relative obscurity—initiate activities their nominal superiors either would not or could not authorize. But he was the prime mover. The well of encouragement they turned to when their buckets needed replenishing. And his smile was an invaluable, pliable utensil that helped him ladle out the goods.

  He shifted his thickset frame in his chair. On his immediate right, Olav Langkafel, a quiet but integral cog in Norway’s Energy and Petroleum Ministry, was voicing an anxious hypothetical about the close reconnaissance capabilities UpLink might have out there on the ice. Morgan decided to address it with an example that would also hopefully resolve some of the issues raised by his six other guests. Give them the overview they seemed to be missing.

  “Before you go on with that last what-if, let me ask you a question,” he said, raising a finger in the air. “Are you by any chance acquainted with the term ‘zoo event’?”

  Langkafel was momentarily nonplussed. Morgan supposed it wasn’t too often that he got interrupted.

  “No,” he replied. “I am not.”

  Morgan slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose, regarding the Norwegian over their solid-gold rims. A man of few words, Langkafel. Blond hair and mustache, fair complexion, stern features. In his navy-blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, he gave off an almost regimental air.

  Morgan added a dimension of wise understanding to his self-assured smile . . . with just the merest hint of condescension thrown in to keep Langkafel in line. It was a delicate balance. His goal was to communicate that he was far enough ahead of the game to have expected Langkafel’s response, but that the expectation signified neither dismissiveness nor a lack of respect.

  “The phrase is pretty obscure,” he said. “Caught my ear a while back, though, and stuck with me. I like how it’s sort of mysterious, but not so dramatic you’d think a Hollywood screenwriter dreamed it up. It refers to something that happened near Bouvetoya Island, right at the edge of the Antarctic Circle, a frigid hunk of rock I’m betting you have heard about. Your country’s held a territorial claim on it for a while, correct?”

  Langkafel nodded rigidly. “Bouvetoya is a designated nature preserve with few natural resources worth mentioning. Its chief value is as a site for satellite weather stations.”

  Morgan knew that, of course. And he had known Langkafel would know. But he wanted to spread around the verbiage, engage the group, get his points across without appearing to lecture. It was an approach he’d borrowed from trial lawyers: When the goal was to deliver information through someone else’s his lips, you never asked a question whose answer wasn’t entirely predictable. Whether you were in the courtroom or boardroom, the essential tactic was the same.

  Mindful of his digestive problems, Morgan resisted the tray of biscotti in front of him, and instead raised a glass of carbonated mineral water to his lips. He drank slowly, watching buds of filtered sunlight shrivel on the burgundy curtains over the room’s terrace doors. Two floors below, in the main hall of the restored medieval guild house he had occupied since his lamented flight from the States, the art gallery his family had run for nearly a hundred years was silent, its staff having canceled the day’s appointments at his instruction. With dusk, the specialty shops and fashion houses along the right bank of the Limma would be closing as well. Morgan imagined their owners offering courtly good-nights to prosperous clients, the musical tinkle of chimes above their shutting entries, and then their lights blinking out one by one. That was Zurich for him. A city of ritualized decorum and sterile elegance. Of priggish, elitist bankers and financiers.

  And, Morgan thought, of ultimately civilized exiles.

  He put down his glass, scanning the group around the table, his eyes gliding from person to person. Stored in his mind were two curricula vitae for each of them—the public and private, sanctioned and unsanctioned, licit and illicit details of their personal lives and careers. All were tangled up in invisible strings, pulling some while they themselves got pulled by others.

  Take Feodor Nikolin down at the opposite end of the table. On the front of the sheet, Nikolin was an advisor to the elected governor of Russia’s Baltic oil and gas pipeline region. Back of the sheet? The election and his civilian appointment had been fixed by the new ultranationalist boss at the Kremlin, President Arkady Pedachenko, whose Honor and Soil Party had crested a populist wave to power . . . Nikolin by no coincidence being Pedachenko’s nephew by marriage, and a former colonel from the military’s Raketnye voiska strategicheskogonaznacheniya, or Strategic Rocket Forces, which oversaw Russia’s nuclear arsenals.

  Take Azzone Spero, the Italian Treasury and Economic Planning Minister. King of the kickback, he’d violated a slew of legal bidding procedures to award government waste-collection licenses to front companies run by the LaCana crime syndicate, known to earn billions annually from the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes throughout Europe.

  Or take Sebastian Alcala, the squat, dark man seated opposite Nikolin. His open résumé showed him to be a mid-level administrator with the Argentinian mining exploration secretariat. But Morgan’s secret file tied him to everything from embezzlement of state funds to facilitation of illegal arms traffic for the black marketeer and narco-terrorist El Tio, who’d recently slipped into limbo like a vanishing ghost.

  The book was similar for the rest. There was Jonas Papp from Hungary, an entrepreneur in the transitional market economy with several legitimate upstart software firms and a flourishing underground income stream from his money-laundering enterprises. There was Constance Burns, Morgan’s UKAE inchworm. And there was the South African foreign trade deputy with a perpetually outheld palm, Jak Selebi. . . .

  “I’m wondering if you can explain the incident to everyone, Jak?” Morgan said at length. His eyes had come to rest on Selebi. “I realize this Bouvetoya thing was long before your government’s time, but maybe it’d be best that way.”

  Selebi looked back at him. “In a sense you’ve answered your own question,” he replied, speaking with a mannered British accent. “When the change came, our predecessors took much of the information about their relinquished nuclear weapons program with them. They did not want it available to us. We may assume they judged that the development of such capabilities was to be exclusively reserved for civilized races.” He paused a moment, his brown face expressionless, devoid of the cutting irony in his voice. “I can tell you this. Throughout the nineteen-sixties, America launched a dozen orbital satellites for the detection of atmospheric nuclear explosions. This program was named Vela. A Spanish word, I believe . . .”

  “Meaning ‘Watchmen,’ ” said Alcala.

  “Thank you.” Selebi exchanged glances with him. “The crude optical sensors on the Velas could not fix locations with anything close to the exactitude of modern satellites. Otherwise, their reliability was unchallenged . . . until one of them, Vela 6911, registered a double flash scientists associated with an atomic blast of between three and four kilotons.”

  “These matched other signals the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory picked up here on earth,” Morgan said. “Acoustic waves around the Scotia Ridge, a chain of mountains between Antarctica and Africa that’s mostly underwater. Except where it isn’t underwater and the mountaintops poking out above the ocean’s surface form islands. Bouvetoya’s one of them.” Another smile. “Sorry to break in after asking you to tell the tale, but I felt it was important for everyone to be aware of that little nugget.”

  Selebi’s nod showed flat acceptance.

  “The consensus of military, intelligence, and government nuclear research scientists responsible for analyzing the Vela evidence
was that an atomic detonation had occurred at or below sea level,” he continued. “But when these findings were presented to the Carter Administration, it ordered a second panel of academics from outside the government to conduct a separate review. Their assessment refuted the original determination. It stated the indications were unverifiable and may have been based on false signals caused by sensor malfunction or a meteor collision. The dispute it sparked between the two panels led to animosities that I understand linger to this day.” He looked at Morgan. “That is the extent of what I can say about the affair with confidence.”

  “Then let me put in some footnotes,” Morgan said. “One of the scientists in that first group was a top-notch man with the Los Alamos think tank. Knew his stuff inside out, helped develop the Vela program. When their report got the presidential blow-off, he made some testy comments, said they were all zoo animals coming out with idiotic theories to discredit his panel’s conclusions. Talk is that the White House was gun-shy about a confrontation with the South Africans, whom it damn well knew were manufacturing atomics, and maybe doing it with Israeli participation.”

  He shrugged. “You got to sympathize with Jimmy’s predicament. With the gas crunch fresh in people’s minds, and Khomeini swift-kicking the Shah out of Iran, the poor guy was deep in the moat. Sharks closing in around him. Another domestic or foreign affairs boondoggle and any chance he had of swimming his way out was finished. The press, political opponents, average citizens, everybody wanted a pound of his flesh. Jimmy, well, the last thing he would’ve wanted was to out two long-standing allies for their complicity in banned nuclear-bomb testing. What was he supposed to do? Impose trade embargoes? Ask the U.N. Security Council to censure them? Neither option would’ve been to America’s advantage. So the sats, Navy, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency people became wrong, and the ivory-tower professors became right. In my opinion, Jimmy managed to convince himself of their rightness, and the nuke turned into an unexplained occurrence. Better for everyone that way.”

  Constance Burns was nodding her head.

  “A zoo event,” she said.

  The affirmative smile Morgan directed at her was as gentle as a pat on the back.

  “There you go,” he said. “Now, as our good friend Jak more or less implied, there’s a dash of supposition in what we’ve been talking about. Over the past couple of decades South African officials have admitted to the test, then backed off their admissions, then acknowledged them again, then qualified their acknowledgments, then shut up altogether. Same with the Israelis. Their newspapers printed articles quoting Knesset members about their government’s exchange of nuclear weapons blueprints for uranium from South Africa’s mines, then got those quotes retracted on them. But I believe the story of the zoo event’s been written. A nuclear detonation took place near Bouvetoya Island in September 1977. Low yield, about a third of a Hiroshima. Maybe subsurface, maybe an air-burst. It took place. And the leader of the Western world covered his ears, and closed his eyes, and claimed to be deaf and blind to the incident. Because dealing with it wasn’t advantageous to him. And for one other major reason.”

  Langkafel looked at him. “Which would be . . . ?”

  “It happened within the Antarctic Circle.” Morgan swiveled around to face the Norwegian and pushed his glasses lower down his nose with his finger, perching them on his nose’s tip. “Where else on earth would it have been so easy to chalk the whole thing up to a quirk of nature? Where else does every country that’s got a flag-pole stuck in the ice want to pretend it’s given up strategic interests for some high-flown scientific principle? They all want to tap the continent’s resources. They all want bases where they can deploy armed forces. But they keep skating around each other, none of them wanting to make the first move. If the time ever comes when one of them does, their loops, spins, and figure-eights will stop, the blades will come off, and they’ll have to use their edges to carve out real territorial borderlines. This is my wedge of the snow pie. This is yours. You say no? Well, we got ourselves a scrap here. Power replaces principles. The coldest spot on the planet becomes its biggest geopolitical hot spot. That’s the reality nobody’s set to confront. For now they’d rather leave it to the polies and penguins.”

  “And us,” Constance Burns said.

  “That’s right.” Morgan’s eyes swept the table. “Us.”

  The group sat quietly for a while. Morgan sipped his water, feeling tiny bubbles bursting on the back of his tongue. There were no remaining traces of sunlight on the curtains. He was eager to adjourn the meeting. Get out alone, walk the dark twisting streets of the city’s old town. Take a shot at scraping some dirt from between its pristine cobblestones.

  It disappointed him when Nikolin broke the silence to voice his concerns. “As far as everything you’ve mentioned, Gabriel . . . the information is enlightening, yes. Fascinating. And I’m sure we all understand the points it exemplifies. Its general bearing upon the UpLink problem. But the issues Olav raised—I still would like them addressed with greater specificity. UpLink is a transcontinental firm, not a national entity. Like our own alliance, it enjoys an independent status that relieves it from certain conventions . . . and constraints . . . to which governments must adhere. To what extent in the present context, we cannot be certain. But its resources, should they be marshaled against us, would be a serious threat. That I do know.” He paused. “UpLink’s support of my chief of state’s predecessor, Vladimir Starinov, kept him in office years longer than would have been the case had it not lobbied NATO to give him economic assistance.”

  Morgan was careful to screen his impatience behind a polite, attentive expression. He linked his hands across his chest and leaned toward Nikolin.

  “Think about it,” he said. “Think practically. It isn’t hard to get a read on UpLink’s limitations out there. The ice station is small. Isolated. Contained. What’s the lid on its sustainable personnel? Let’s estimate two, maybe three hundred. Ninety-eight percent of them would be technical engineers, researchers, and support people. No chance they could run the works when it comes to the security operations we’ve all heard tales about. It would be logistically impossible to carry anything like a full detail. And they wouldn’t feel the pressing imperative anyway. On one hand, the continent’s a fortress. On the other, remember, it’s the big rink. Nobody for us to worry about there but Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts at a skating party. So now we learn they got this ace—you use that same word in Russia, right?—they got this ace out of San Jose investigating their own zoo event. I say, don’t let it faze you. The situation’s manageable. Look at how we did it in Scotland. Now think Antarctica. Last year, midwinter, that party of ten, eleven researchers and staffers got evacuated out of McMurdo. Biggest incident of its kind ever. USAP was a little vague with its explanations, don’t ask me why. Maybe the beakers came down with cabin fever, went a little crazy, got into an old-fashioned punch-out, and were embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe the caginess was just a typical bureaucratic reflex. Next thing you know, though, you got thousands of conspiracy theorists on the Internet posting bulletins that they made first contact with flying saucer people. There’s Antarctica for you. Ace and his skeleton crew want to start grubbing around us? What we do is complicate their lives. Create distractions. Diversions. We know the playing field, and we’re in place to capitalize on its eccentricities. Things can happen. Freak accidents. Unexplained occurrences. Zoo events that will keep them too busy to get close to us. And the long night’s coming on them soon enough. Then they’ve either got to leave for where the skies are blue, or ball up in their hole for the duration.”

  There was an extended silence. Morgan watched his company at the table. They were looking at one another, nodding.

  “Your words are encouraging,” Langkafel said then. “I believe that I speak for the entire group in that regard.”

  More nods around the table.

  “But,” Langkafel said, “I do have one further question.”

&nbs
p; Morgan looked at him. Waited. His smile gone now.

  “Our pursuits in Antarctica require long-term stability,” Langkafel said. “What will we do when those at the UpLink station awake from their hibernation to probe our affairs again?”

  Morgan thought a moment before he answered. He took off his reading glasses, folded their stems, and put them carefully beside the thin report binder in front of him. Then he fastened his eyes on the Norwegian’s thin, dour face.

  “They won’t awake,” he said. “Trust me, Olav, things are already in motion. UpLink’s about to be touched by us. They’ll think it’s a disaster, but that’s all it’ll be—a touch, a prelude to the real action. Before we’re through, I intend to give them a zoo event to remember. This is going to be their final night. Just trust me. Their final night.”

  Gabriel Morgan’s bodyguard slid from the alcove in the hallway as his boss left the office, discreetly trailing as Morgan descended the steps of the Zurich guild house toward his black S55 AMG Mercedes. Another of his men stood at the landing; Morgan was not generally given to such ostentatious shows of protection, but today’s matters called for certain realistic precautions. Not that he expected the Italian to ambush him—it had been made quite clear by all concerned that nothing of value would be brought to the meeting by either side—but being an Italian, the man was likely to be careless, and thus might have provoked the attention of unwanted guests. Interpol already had its hounds out.

  As his man opened the door to the street, Morgan felt a wave of paranoia sweep in with the cold air of the street. It did not come, however, from his present mission, but from what had to be considered diversions. Important, certainly, but not of the moment. Nonetheless, they percolated inside his chest, making him hesitate as his bodyguards scanned a street he already knew instinctively would be safe.