by Dale Brown
New menus flickered onto Bunin’s multifunction displays. “Attack judged complete,” he murmured. “We are returning to base.”
In confirmation, the PAK-DA banked hard again, turning back toward the airfield at Akhtubinsk. From the start of this mission, the aircraft had been operating entirely under computer control, relying on its autonomous systems to handle every detail from takeoff to its precise flight path to target designation and weapons launch. Essentially, its human pilot and copilot were along on this particular test flight only in case something went wrong with the computers or their operating systems.
Throughout the flight home, Petrov kept his attention resolutely focused on his HUD indicators, ready to take back over at the slightest sign of trouble. In one sense, he welcomed the success of this first real test of the prototype’s autonomous systems. It would allow him to push his proposal for a full-scale combat exercise. But he still found the experience of being reduced to a mere spectator aboard the bomber unpleasant, even a bit unnerving. After all, by training and inclination, he was first and foremost a pilot, not a nursemaid for some incomprehensible blur of digital ones and zeroes inside the circuits of a highly advanced thinking machine.
Suddenly, a sharp pain stabbed through his left temple. It felt as though someone had punctured his skull with an ice pick. The glowing numbers and icons on his HUD blurred in his vision, becoming unreadable. Damn it, he thought desperately. Not now. His teeth ground together as a second wave of agony flared through his head. Trying hard not to groan out loud, he unzipped a pocket on his flight suit and grabbed a couple of the powerful pain pills he’d stashed there before takeoff. Aware that he was sweating, he popped them into his mouth and swallowed them whole. He coughed dryly as they scraped down his throat.
“Are you all right, Colonel?” Bunin asked. The bomber copilot looked concerned.
Petrov forced himself to grin. “No problem, Oleg,” he lied. “Just a slight headache.” He shrugged. “I had a little trouble sleeping last night, that’s all.”
“So what was her name?” Bunin asked, grinning back. The worry faded from his friendly, open face.
“A gentleman never tells,” Petrov retorted. His headache dialed back a bit as the fast-acting drugs took effect. Now it was more a sensation of steady, unrelenting pressure than of pulsing, stabbing torture. The indicators on his HUD swam back into focus.
“Just so long as it wasn’t that hot blonde,” Bunin laughed. “You know, the curvy captain in Operations?” His hands sketched out what he considered the officer in question’s most obvious assets. “Because I’ve already got my eyes on her.”
Half closing his eyes against the dull pain still squeezing his head in a vise grip, Petrov settled back against his seat. Beside him, his copilot droned on and on, outlining an elaborate scheme to woo and seduce the young woman. Although he nodded encouragement from time to time, inside he was far, far removed from any real interest in Bunin’s sex life. Unfortunately, he thought coldly, the late and unlamented Dr. Viktor Obolensky had been right. His headaches were definitely increasing in both their frequency and severity. With that in mind, perhaps he should be more grateful that the PAK-DA bomber’s autonomous systems had just demonstrated their operational readiness. The time could be coming, and much sooner than he hoped, when he might be forced to rely very heavily on the prototype’s soulless computer programs to carry out his secret plans.
Ten
Prague Castle Riding School, the Czech Republic
A Few Days Later
Set high on a hilltop just west of the Vltava River, Prague Castle was a sizable complex of several Renaissance and Baroque-era palaces and towers, a Gothic cathedral, and other churches and convents that could be seen looming on the horizon from almost everywhere in the Czech capital. Long a seat of government, culture, and religion, tourists thronged to its picturesque grounds and world-famous museums throughout the year.
One of those art museums, the Riding School, stood not far outside the north gate, bounded by scenic gardens on either side. Centuries before, the large, red-roofed Baroque hall had been built so that the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and his courtiers could exercise their horses indoors in bad weather. Stucco reliefs of leaping steeds, lances, and other weapons still decorated the front above its main doors. Inside, under high ceilings and wooden rafters, the works of various modern painters and sculptors were periodically exhibited.
Miranda Reynolds paused just inside the entry to assess her surroundings. Dozens of life-sized, though oddly distorted, human sculptures filled the gallery. Some were painted entirely red or green or blue. Others were a pallid white or gray. Still others wore long strands of fake hair that morphed strangely into clothing. A handful of visitors drifted through the large space, admiring the bizarre atmosphere created by the ultramodern art installation.
To anyone who didn’t know her well, Reynolds appeared to be a successful, middle-aged Western corporate executive on a business trip to Prague. Her perfectly coifed dark hair matched her understated, but obviously expensive, blazer, slacks, and shoes. A simple gold necklace and the barest hint of lipstick completed her carefully curated look. Certainly no one outside the arcane confines of the world’s intelligence agencies would have guessed that she was the current head of the CIA’s highly secret Directorate of Operations.
A bearded man in jeans and a windbreaker brushed past her on his way out of the museum. “You’re clear,” he muttered softly, carefully not looking in her direction.
Without acknowledging the report, Reynolds strolled nonchalantly toward one of the sculptures near the far end of the hall. It portrayed an elderly woman with upraised hands and an eerie, expressionless gaze. A tall, well-dressed younger man was there ahead of her. He had been moving slowly around the carved figure, apparently intent on examining it from every angle.
Politely, he stepped back to make room. They stood together in silence for several moments, each looking at the sculpture. Then he shot a sidelong glance in her direction. “I understand the experts claim this is one of Zoubek’s finest works,” he said with a slight smile. “Having seen it now up close, I think I agree.”
Reynolds shrugged. “Personally, my tastes run more to Calder.”
His smile widened a little at the agreed-upon recognition phrase. He lowered his voice. “I assume your coming here means that my patron’s proposal intrigues your agency, Ms. Reynolds.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a terse nod. In ordinary circumstances, no high-ranking CIA official would ever agree to a clandestine rendezvous like this on foreign soil. The risks were simply far too high. Intelligence agency executives at her exalted level were accustomed to dispatching worker bees—case officers and their agents—to do the hard and dangerous work, while they stayed safely sheltered at headquarters. But the tidbits of secrets about Russian stealth aircraft and weapons passed along to her through a chain of cutouts were so tantalizing that she had decided this meeting was worth the gamble.
That was especially true now, when the CIA was viewed so unfavorably by the president and his closest advisers. The huge media and congressional black eye Langley had sustained over that mess in the Libyan desert a couple of months ago hadn’t helped matters any, Reynolds thought gloomily. Boiled down to its essentials, the agency needed to score a massive success if it were to regain its influence over national intelligence policy anytime soon. That went double for Miranda Reynolds. Like sharks, the rivals who coveted her position in charge of the CIA’s covert operations unit scented blood in the water. They were already circling, waiting for the right moment to strike.
She was no stranger to the ritual. Years before, she’d maneuvered her own predecessor out of office and into retirement in the wake of a blown operation in Afghanistan. With that in mind, however, she had no plans to yield so tamely to the same kind of internecine Agency coup. If anybody wanted her chair, they’d better be ready for a fight—and if arming herself for that inevitable confrontation required comin
g all the way to Prague for this mysterious rendezvous, so be it.
“Well, I think you’ll find what I can offer you reasonably interesting,” the elegantly dressed young man said. “Perhaps even worth your long trip from Washington.” Graciously, he offered her a folded art brochure.
Reynolds glanced inside the brochure and saw a photograph of a large blended-wing aircraft with obvious stealth features. It bore clear similarities to speculative media and Pentagon illustrations of Russia’s rumored PAK-DA strategic bomber. But there were also significant differences. For one thing, the images she had seen all showed an aircraft with raised winglets at the outer edge of each wing. According to analysts, these winglets would reduce turbulence, but they would also increase the hypothetical stealth bomber’s radar cross-section. Their presence had seemed to suggest Russia’s aeronautical engineers hadn’t yet fully solved the stability problems inherent to any tailless flying wing design.
If so, it was clear that this was no longer the case. This photo showed a plane without winglets, one very similar to America’s B-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider stealth aircraft. More important, it showed the bomber prototype in flight, with a twin-tailed fighter close by to provide a sense of scale. The image was clear enough to provide U.S. intelligence analysts with a wealth of new data. Carefully, she refolded the brochure and slipped it into her purse. “Reasonably interesting, indeed.” She turned her apparent attention back to the sculpture of the old woman. “And your price for more?”
He smiled gently. “Not so much, compared to its value. Shall we say, something on the order of what your government routinely spends in just four or five hours in a single day?”
Reynolds arched one of her finely sculpted eyebrows in sheer incredulity. That would put the price tag at well over two billion dollars—20 percent of the CIA’s current operating budget and close to 3 percent of what the U.S. government spent annually on its entire alphabet soup tangle of civilian and military intelligence organizations. She sniffed in disgust. “For images, specifications, and data we might be able to obtain ourselves through other means? Or that could easily be faked? You must be joking.”
Without waiting to hear more, she started to turn away. Whether she’d been lured to Prague by a con artist or a lunatic was relatively unimportant. Her first priority was to cover her tracks fast and get out on the earliest possible flight to the States. If her rivals inside the agency found out she’d been wasting her time playing Jane Bond, amateur field agent, they’d have all the ammunition they needed to pull her down.
“You misunderstand me, Ms. Reynolds,” the young man said soothingly, holding up a hand. “My patron proposes providing you with something far more tangible for your scientists and aviation engineers to examine—perhaps even something on the order of the Hakodate Incident of 1976.”
Hakodate Incident? What the hell was he talking about? Hurriedly, Reynolds ransacked her knowledge of intelligence history. She knew there was something, some sort of massive intelligence coup linked to that phrase, which sounded vaguely Japanese. Something about a plane, she thought. A Russian plane. And then, when she made the connection, her eyes widened involuntarily.
In September 1976, a Soviet pilot, Lieutenant Viktor Belenko, had flown his MiG-25P Foxbat fighter to Hokkaido’s Hakodate Airport and announced his intention to defect. The U.S. and its Japanese allies had eventually returned the MiG-25 to the USSR, but not before they’d stripped the Soviet jet down to its constituent parts—gathering incredibly valuable data about Soviet aircraft design, electronics, and manufacturing techniques in the process.
For a long, uncomfortable moment, she stared back at the tall young man, completely unsure how she should react to this veiled proposition. Was he seriously signaling the possible defection of another Russian flight crew, this time with their country’s most advanced experimental aircraft? If so, this was either the most outrageous scam ever dangled in front of the CIA . . . or a golden opportunity to pull off one of the most incredible espionage breakthroughs in modern history.
He read her confusion. “Obviously, we don’t expect you to commit your government or its money on the basis of a single photograph,” he assured her. “But if you would like to explore our offer further, I’ll need a highly secure means of contacting you directly—one that avoids the usual delays involved in covert communications.”
“I can arrange that,” Reynolds said slowly, privately relieved that she wasn’t being asked to make a spur-of-the-moment decision. She reached into her purse, selected a business card from among several in her wallet, and gave it to him. It was blank, except for a single email address, a collection of assorted characters using the domain name “spyder.biz.” Messages sent to that address would be funneled to one of several covert servers CIA officials used for “private communications”—emails they wanted to hide from congressional scrutiny, nosy administration snoopers, and Freedom of Information Act requests from journalists and good-government groups. She made a mental note to make sure her tech people cut that particular server out of the loop, as a precaution to protect the rest of the dark network. After all, this might still be some kind of complicated con, or worse, a disinformation ploy run by Russia’s own intelligence outfits.
With a nod of thanks, the young man slid the card into his jacket pocket. “One word of friendly warning, Ms. Reynolds: you understand that this is an extremely valuable property, so I cannot guarantee that our offer will be exclusive to your country. Quite naturally, others may prove equally intrigued.” Then, without waiting for a response, he turned away from her and walked off through the gallery.
Miranda Reynolds stared after him with a frown. Con game or not, she didn’t like the idea of a possible bidding war against Beijing. The People’s Republic of China had its own stealth bomber program. Its agents would leap at the chance to acquire Russia’s advanced prototype. The situation she now faced was complicated enough without turning into a possible high-stakes auction involving another of the world’s great powers.
One of her aides materialized by her side. “Do you want him followed?” he asked quietly. His smartphone was already in his hand.
Impatiently, she shook her head. “Too risky. Whoever that guy really works for, he moves like a professional. We wouldn’t learn anything that he doesn’t already want us to know.”
“So what’s our next move?”
“We take the first available flight back to D.C., Charlie,” she said. “And then we wait to see whether this trip was just a wild goose chase . . . or a real chance at the mother lode.”
Minutes later, Pavel Voronin climbed into a taxi. He sat back with a pleased expression as it pulled away from Prague Castle. His meeting with the CIA had gone about as well as could be hoped. He reached into his jacket, pulled out his own phone, and texted a short report to Dmitri Grishin in Moscow. “Kryuchok nazhivlen. The hook is baited.”
Eleven
Kaktovik, on Barter Island, Alaska
The Next Day
Late in the afternoon, with the sun already low on the southwest horizon, a regularly scheduled Beechcraft 1900D twin-engine turboprop came in from the east on its final approach to the island’s airport. Streamers of freshly fallen snow sprayed out from under its landing gear when it touched down. The pilot, used to winter flying in northern Alaska, slipped the props into beta, carefully used reverse thrust until his forward vision was being affected by blowing snow, then applied his brakes gently to avoid sliding off onto the tundra. Carefully, he tested their action on the slick surface as his aircraft rolled down the runway, gradually increasing his pressure on the pedals to decelerate slowly and steadily. After the turboprop came to a complete stop, it turned through a complete circle and taxied over to a small metal shed and gravel-topped parking apron that were the tiny airport’s only permanent facilities.
Just four passengers deplaned from the Beechcraft, while its crew unloaded a few bags, boxes, and bundles of mail and other general cargo destined for Kaktovik and the Ba
rter Island radar station. They were all lean, fit-looking men shielded against the harsh weather by colorful ski parkas and dark snow pants. Each man carried a large duffel bag and a small overnight backpack.
The town’s yellow airport bus was already parked just off the apron with its engine running to provide heat for the driver, a middle-aged man with graying hair and a broad, weathered face. His vaguely Asiatic features marked him as one of the local Inuits. Smiling genially, he climbed down off the bus to help his passengers load their heavy luggage. “Don’t usually get many tourists up here at this time of year,” he commented politely. “The polar bears are all back north on the pack ice, and all we got otherwise is a whole lot of nothing much to see. Unless you got a thing for whale bones. Got a lot of them lying around in one big heap.”
They all smiled ruefully. “As a matter of fact, that bone mound is why we’re here,” one of them explained. “We work for Fish and Wildlife and someone at headquarters back in D.C. wants an updated survey to pick up any significant changes from last season.”
The bus driver nodded at that. Among its many other responsibilities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which included Barter Island. “Makes sense to map it out now, I guess,” he allowed. “While the bears aren’t around. They get seriously territorial when they’re scavenging on those bones and scraps of spoiled blubber and skin.”
Apparently satisfied with their stated reason for visiting the island, he climbed back aboard the bus and waited while his handful of passengers settled themselves. Then he put the vehicle in gear and drove off toward town. Kaktovik had two small hotels and a bed-and-breakfast inn. At this time of the year, any of them would be grateful to have paying guests, even at a reduced government rate.
