The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  The old man coughed richly, then wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. ‘The stupid Jewish Cossacks should have either let the plane go or stopped it at the front gate,’ he said. ‘Then we would be seen as either tough or understanding—something positive, at least. As it stands, we’re viewed as incompetent, dithering and cold-blooded. The Americans must be rubbing their hands with joy. Our air force couldn’t shoot semen onto a virgin’s chest.’

  Korolenko saw that Penkeyev was staring at his glass, so he lifted it quickly to his lips and drank, finishing the vodka.

  ‘Where are you staying, Comrade Colonel?’

  ‘There is an Intourist hotel on the river—’

  ‘Nonsense. We have plenty of room here, as well as vodka. You like a drink, I can see. I will get my wife to bring another bottle. Tell me more about this McDonald. This is the best news I’ve had in days.’

  Roy Garret took his third scotch and sat on the arm of a chair, his gut a nest of coiling snakes. He drank half the tumbler and read the decoded notice sent through by the 6920th Electronic Security Squadron, Wakkanai. A radar tape of the last minutes of KAL 007’s doomed flight had gone missing. There was no explanation. The tape had apparently been secured, logged, tagged, and then it had simply disappeared. An internal investigation at the Wakkanai facility was under way to find out what had happened to it. The notice from the Security Squadron concluded with a statement that the tape could also have been accidentally destroyed. The point that it could therefore also not be destroyed was the issue.

  Garret glanced at the television. On the screen was a graphic of the White House at night, its arches accentuated by floodlights. The camera’s view widened and panned to the right until President Reagan appeared centered on the TV screen, behind his desk in the Oval Office. He was flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the flag of the President of the United States. On the sideboard behind him were various happy family photos of Nancy, their kids and grandkids. The President’s mood appeared subdued but determined.

  Garret’s mood was turning maudlin. There could well be a ticking time bomb circulating.

  ‘My fellow Americans,’ Reagan began, ‘I am coming before you tonight about the Korean Airlines massacre, the attack by the Soviet Union against 269 innocent men, women and children aboard an unarmed Korean passenger plane. This crime against humanity must never be forgotten, here or throughout the world. ’

  Garret’s attention drifted in and out as he wrestled with the stress brought on by this latest development. He had apprised Hank of the situation, and Hank would bring it up with Des Bilson.

  ‘Let me state as plainly as I can: There was absolutely no justification, either legal or moral, for what the Soviets did. One newspaper in India said, “If every passenger plane . . . is fair game for home air forces . . . it will be the end to civil aviation as we know it.”’

  Garret got up, wandered into the kitchen for more ice. He grabbed the bottle of Dewar’s and brought it back to the sitting room, pouring a tall drink and downing it along the way. The President was doing what the President was good at—talking like a concerned parent. Pouring another, Garret sat in front of the television again and saw two Presidents, his eyelids the weight of lead shot.

  ‘. . . But despite the savagery of their crime, the universal reaction against it, and the evidence of their complicity, the Soviets still refuse to tell the truth. They have persistently refused to admit that their pilot fired on the Korean aircraft. Indeed, they’ve not even told their own people that a plane was shot down . . .’

  Garret turned in the chair to get more comfortable. He smiled drunkenly as a passage of the President’s speech penetrated the alcohol.

  ‘Let us have faith in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it”. If we do, if we stand together and move forward with courage, then history will record that some good did come from this monstrous wrong that we will carry with us and remember for the rest of our lives.

  Thank you. God bless you, and good night.’

  ‘Good night,’ Garret mumbled, his eyes closed, the empty bottle of Dewar’s on the floor by his feet.

  January 28, 2012

  Gainesville, Florida. Ben sat at the bar and allowed himself to be distracted by the big screen. The Bulls were hammering away at the Timberwolves, a replay of one of the previous season’s games that had won the Bulls a place in the playoffs. The volume was up and the Bulls commentator, Tom Dore, was laying into the Timberwolves for fielding a team that, he said, ‘gave second-rate a bad name’. Ben smirked, sipped the Dr Pepper and switched his attention to another sweep of the booths. He was meeting a man here, a friend of chubster Lucas Watts, a former spook whose name was Jerome Grundy. Lucas had described Grundy as being in his mid-sixties, bald, short, with small eyes fixed in a permanent squint. Looking around, Ben could see no one by that description among the mostly student types scattered here and there in quiet conversation.

  Ben wondered at the direction his life had suddenly taken. Akiko, Tex, Lucas . . . ever since Curtis’s death, his world had been flipped on its head. Instead of sand and sun, it was now all spies and secrets.

  The door opened, letting in traffic noise and a woman in her early twenties. She was wrapped tight in a trench coat, the collar up. Maybe this Grundy character was also a master of disguise, he told himself.

  ‘You want another, Ben?’

  Hearing his name startled him. Ben looked up. The barman: early sixties, bald, short and squinty-eyed. ‘Did you serve me the first time?’ he asked.

  ‘I did.’ The man held his hand over the bar. ‘Jerome.’ They shook. ‘People see what they want to see, and, unless it’s wearing a skirt, the barkeep is a nobody.’

  The girl in the trench coat was no longer wearing it. She was now in a tight vee-neck T-shirt and low-slung jeans and she’d joined Jerome behind the bar.

  ‘Another Dr Pepper here, Jacqui,’ Jerome told her, pointing at Ben’s glass.

  ‘One Doctor for the surfer dude,’ she said.

  ‘My daughter, Jacqui,’ said Jerome, introducing them. ‘Jacqui, Ben.’

  ‘Hey, Ben.’ She flashed him a pearly-white smile and then freshened his drink.

  ‘Jac works the bar on Saturday nights with a girlfriend or two. You’d be surprised what a difference it makes to the bottom line.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Ben.

  Another woman was strapping on a low-slung apron, joining Jerome’s daughter. She was a strawberry blonde, emerald eyes, very tall, and she wore the same spectacular tight, low-cut uniform Jacqui had on.

  ‘Speaking of whom, that’s Tiffany.’

  Ben returned Tiffany’s wave.

  ‘If I’d known retirement was going to be this tough,’ Jerome said, toasting her, ‘I’d have done it sooner.’

  ‘Wouldn’t everyone?’ Ben caught himself staring at Tiffany.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ said Jerome. ‘Grab that table over there in the corner before someone else does.’

  The place was filling fast and the music volume was creeping up. Within an hour, it’d be standing room only. Ben took his drink and made for the corner table. A minute later, Jerome joined him.

  ‘So, you’re a friend of Lucas’s,’ said Jerome. ‘Known him long?’

  ‘Nope. A few hours, max.’

  ‘Well, you must have made an impression. Where’s the Japanese woman? I was told to expect her, too.’

  ‘Akiko had to do a few things.’

  In fact, Tex suggested that it would be safer for them not to be seen together, not unless it was absolutely necessary, given what they now knew they had in their possession. So Akiko had taken a bus to DC to organize visas for Russia, and Ben had gone back to work.

  ‘Count yourself lucky that we’re still talking,’ said Jerome. ‘In the old days, that kind of deviation would have been enough to terminate the rendezvous.’

  Ben shrugged. What was it with all
these adults playing spy games? ‘Next time I’ll remember to bring my cloak and dagger. So what has Lucas told you about all this?’

  Jerome took a crumpled letter from his pocket and handed it to Ben. The letter mentioned Akiko and him by name, gave the date that they’d be coming by, but not a lot else. Mostly, it was about the weather.

  ‘Lucas has never sent me a letter,’ said Jerome. ‘And I mean never. He’s Mr Internet. So the fact that he wrote this at all tells me quite a lot. You want to keep something secret, don’t create a digital file. Put it in an envelope with a stamp on it. The NSA isn’t employing nearly as many grandmas to steam open letters as it used to. So, whatever it is you do know, it’s obviously very big and very secret, and, as my expertise was the USSR, it has something to do with a world that doesn’t exist any more.’

  Ben finished his soda with a slurp. ‘You’ve got the big picture,’ he said.

  ‘What do you know about me?’ Jerome asked.

  ‘Lucas told us that you worked out of the US embassy in West Berlin in the seventies and eighties. He said that you were former Defense Intelligence Agency and that, as you say, you knew a thing or two about the Soviet Union.’

  Jerome nodded. ‘Now that we have the formalities out of the way, what can I do for you?’

  Ben found himself scoping the bar.

  Jerome reassured him. ‘You’re safe here, kid, believe me.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Ben said. He found what he’d been looking around for—Tiffany. And she was reaching for a bottle on the top shelf.

  ‘So let’s talk,’ said Jerome.

  ‘Do you remember much about the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 off Sakhalin Island?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I do—that was a biggie. It made things very tense, a great year for the end of the world. Yuri Andropov was the Soviet Premier. He was a sick man—kidney trouble—and none too bright, neither. He believed NATO and the US were planning a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union. So he had the KGB and the GRU out scouring the world for telltale signs to confirm this hunch. Meanwhile, Reagan was calling the Soviets the “Evil Empire” and talking about missile defense shields, which didn’t help. And then the Korean 747 came along, flew 200 miles off course and almost directly over the USSR’s secret sub base at Petropavlovsk. It jinks left and right over military installations on Sakhalin Island, and then heads straight for Vladivostok, home of the Soviet Pacific fleet. So they shot it down, thinking it was a spy plane. Quite a few of us were worried that the Russians, being so jumpy, might believe we’d use the incident as an excuse for that first strike, which would, ipso facto, increase the risk of a pre-emptive first strike on us by them. World peace was pretty finely balanced back then.’ Jerome took a mouthful of ice and crunched it. ‘From memory, all the passengers on the plane were killed.’

  ‘Two bodies were recovered, both unidentifiable.’

  ‘If the bodies were unidentifiable, who’s to say that they came from the airliner?’

  ‘Good point,’ said Ben.

  ‘There were a whole bunch of unanswered questions, right? Didn’t we lose a senator on that plane?’

  ‘A congressman.’

  ‘Yeah . . . That business was one of the final bastard acts of the Cold War. A tense time was had by all. What’s your connection with it?’

  ‘My father flew RC-135s—a Cobra Ball. His plane was somehow involved in the incident.’

  ‘He tell you that?’

  ‘Not in as many words. He died and left me a tape, a radar tape.’

  Jerome seemed dubious, but also curious.

  Ben continued. ‘Lucas decoded it. It shows that the Korean airliner didn’t crash into the sea as reported, but made it to Sakhalin Island. It was headed for one of the Soviet air force bases there.’

  ‘Jesus. I see why Lucas didn’t want to write any of this down. Where did the tape come from?’

  ‘Lucas thinks the joint Japan/US radar base at Wakkanai.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Jerome.

  ‘I think I’d like to go back to Key West and sit on the beach.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘Akiko, the Japanese woman who was supposed to be here with me, her mother was a passenger on that 747.’

  ‘Right . . . And if the plane landed, there’s a chance there were survivors who became prisoners.’

  ‘That’s the theory.’

  ‘Shit.’ Jerome exhaled, sat back to catch his breath, and then leaned forward. ‘So what do you want from me?’

  ‘Akiko and I are going to Russia, apparently.’

  ‘To look for her mother?’

  ‘That’s the plan. You have any thoughts on where she might have ended up?’

  Jerome looked at Ben’s empty glass. ‘You want a refill, kid? Something harder? I sure as shit could use something.’

  ‘Can’t. The FAA says eight hours bottle to throttle.’

  ‘You a pilot like your old man?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What do you fly?’

  ‘Seaplanes, mostly. Choppers occasionally.’

  ‘What kind of helo?’

  ‘JetRanger.’

  ‘Been in a few Hueys in my day. I believe Tiffany wants to learn to fly. You should give her a few pointers.’

  Ben glanced over at the bar. Tiffany was sharing a joke with a customer while she worked. She caught him looking at her and gave him a small wave. ‘Yeah, pointers,’ he said.

  ‘Have a drink, Ben. You and I aren’t going anywhere for a while.’

  Ben thought about it. He’d flown up in the chopper—a guy had walked in wanting a ride to Orlando and all the other aircraft were booked solid. Gainesville was just a short hop north from Orlando, and he’d needed a few hours in the JetRanger to stay current anyway. Two birds, one stone. Now it was almost dark and it had been a while since he’d flown anything with a rotary wing at night. And there was an added reason behind the bar not to rush this meeting.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’ve twisted my arm.’

  ‘What’ll you have?’

  ‘A Sunset, thanks.’

  ‘Hey, Tiff,’ Jerome called out over the music. ‘A couple of Sunsets and a jigger of rye.’

  Tiffany indicated that she had the order.

  ‘So, where to start looking?’ said Jerome, posing the question to himself. ‘They landed on Sakhalin, in the Soviet Far East. There’s not much out there and so they don’t have to rush.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘The Soviets on Sakhalin Island. They’re going to keep everyone together till they know what they’re going to do.’

  ‘From what I’ve read, the Russians took forever to admit they shot it down,’ said Ben. ‘They finally came clean on September 6, five days after the attack.’

  ‘That fits. They would have looked at it from every angle before making up their mind about which way to jump. Making the decision to keep everyone locked up is one thing that does make sense—the Soviets were scroungers, especially when it came to information. They fessed up on the sixth, you say?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Then pretty soon after the sixth you can assume the passengers the Soviets considered VIPs would have been flown to Moscow and taken to either the Lubyanka or Lefortovo prison. My money would be on Lubyanka. Lefortovo’s less conspicuous, but the Lubyanka’s set up for secret deliveries.’

  ‘What about all the other passengers? Akiko’s mother, for instance.’

  ‘Was she a rocket scientist or a nuclear physicist?’

  ‘Nope, just a mom.’

  ‘Was she healthy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If she was, then she’d have been transported to any one of countless labor camps and put to work.’

  ‘Are we talking . . . like a gulag?’

  ‘More or less. The Soviets stopped calling them that after Stalin’s time—but a rose by any other name, right? There are still labor camps today in the Soviet Far East. They’re full
of North Koreans.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They were slaves in the seventies and eighties,’ said Jerome. ‘The Democratic Republic of North Korea owed Moscow money, so its President, Kim Il-sung, paid some of it back with a labor force. The North Koreans are still there, but they’re paid these days. Not much, but a fortune by the standards of the Korean People’s Paradise. They mostly work in forestry and mining, I believe. My point is that if Moscow wanted to hide Asian foreign nationals, like Akiko’s mother, those labor camps would be as good a place as any to look. Siberia is a big empty wasteland. For all we know, there might also be camps holding European foreign nationals. And if there are, you can bet the Russians aren’t ever going to let them go—way too embarrassing.’

  ‘Where are these labor camps?’ asked Ben. ‘The North Korean ones. A street address would be helpful.’

  Jerome chuckled. ‘Somewhere in the Ulan-Ude/Lake Baikal region, which is over the top of Mongolia. There are also supposed to be some north of the city of Khabarovsk. Best I can do.’

  ‘Any suggestions for narrowing that down?’

  ‘The only way I can think of would be to get into the records at the Lubyanka. The Soviets were pretty good with their record-keeping.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘Beats me. The Lubyanka was the home of the KGB, an agency that amalgamated state security, the secret police and intelligence under the one big, ugly roof.’

  ‘I know about the KGB,’ said Ben.

  ‘I’d be real surprised if you didn’t—mean dispositions and crummy black limousines. When the Iron Curtain came down in ’91, the KGB dumped its old uniforms in the trash, put on some new cheap vinyl jackets and called itself the FSB. The Lubyanka is still its HQ, along with a new building built just next door, right in the heart of downtown Moscow. When the communists fell, the new government said it would give some of the Lubyanka’s files a public airing, but it ended up being all talk. Never happened. The FSB, like the KGB before it, isn’t exactly amenable to freedom of information enquiries.’