Arctic Gold (23 page)

this!

I’m not trying to steal the Agency thunder, sir. But I do submit that one man, with a portable satellite relay station and some rather small communications pickups, ought to be able to slip in and give us the insight we need into just what the Russians are doing up there. He shrugged. If the CIA wants to send their own team, that fine with me. But I do

want a piece of this, sir.

How about it, Roger? the President asked Smallbourn. Does the CIA have a team they can insert right away?

Actually, sir, I submit that we’ll get better results with satellite imagery. We don’t need

someone on the ground. Or the ice

With respect, Mr. President, that not true. At high latitudes, the only satellites we have that can give us close surveillance of the area are those in polar or near- polar orbits. Currently, we have five such satellites and there are two others that might be boosted into new, higher- latitude orbits. We’re not talking about geostationary here. To remain above the same spot on the Earth surface, a satellite has to be at geosynchronous orbit and that above the equator and over twenty- two thousand miles up. A satellite in a polar orbit is typically only a couple of hundred miles up or so, but it orbiting the Earth once every ninety minutes or so. That means it only over a given part of the landscape for a few minutes before it drops over the horizon.

So with seven spysats in a polar orbit, our satellite surveillance of the Russian base will consist of, at best,

maybe thirty minutes out of every ninety. That eight hours out of twenty- four. And that assumes they all have enough fuel on board for course corrections, since to pass over the Russian base, they’ll need to be canted a bit off of a true polar orbit, and be precessed so that they keep passing over the same point on each successive orbit. They won’t be able to maintain even that much coverage for more than a day or two.

Besides, the best spy satellite in the world can’t see inside those ships. The Lebedev is sixty- six hundred tons and longer than a football field. How will the SEALs know where the hostages are being held? And they might not be on the Lebedev at all. There are three ships up

there. Thirty- two SEALs. What are you going to do, send ten SEALs to each ship?

It sounds like you’ve thought this out pretty carefully, Bill, the President said.

We try to anticipate, sir.

Well, goddamn. It works for me. Tell your man to pack his long johns.

Thank you, sir.

As they continued to discuss the situation, however, Rubens could sense the anger and the resentment among the othersin Collins especially, though that may have been because he knew her best. He still found it hard to believe. The two of them, Rubens and Collins, had been lovers once, if briefly, an episode that he now believed to be the biggest mistake of his life. Collins, he knew, had all the moral sensibilities of a tomcat pissing on the furniture to prove ownership, and she wouldn’t be happy until Desk Three was part of her Directorate of Operations.

There was hostility toward the DIA, too; there’d been head- to- head antagonism between the DIA and the CIA over a lot of intelligence issues latelymost memorably the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, back in ‘03. As for Bing she was tough to read. Most likely, she was simply trying to secure her own personal empire within the White House basement and would ally with anyone who could give her the power she craved.

The President injunction to play nice would only drive the interdepartmental hostilities beneath the surface, and that only for a time.

The important thing, so far as Rubens was concerned, was that the political infighting and turf wars not be allowed to affect his people, his field agents.

They deserved a hell of a lot better than that.

Menwith Hill Echelon Facility

Yorkshire, England

1340 hours GMT

The Somerset Room was a large mahogany- paneled conference room a level above the Menwith Control Centre, with a long, oval table surrounded by comfortable chairs and the wall opposite the entrance covered by a huge flat- screen monitor. At the moment, that screen, flanked by the flags of both the United States and Great Britain, showed the NSA logo, but shortly it would provide the English end of a conference call, scheduled for 0900 hours EST, 1400 GMT. A row of LED panels above the big screen showed digital readouts for the local times at six different cities in the world. It was twenty minutes to nine, Dean saw, in Washington and 4:40 in the afternoon in St. Petersburg.

Yakutsk would be what? GMT plus nine hours? Something like that.

The Arctic base north of Wrangle Island would be GMT plus twelve.

Lia took a seat on Dean left, Carolyn Howorth on his right. Evans sat across the table from them, with Akulinin next to him. The five of them had talked about the situation into the late evening the night before, discussing the Russian Mafiya, the Russian petroleum industry, and the current international crisis in the Arctic.

It all appeared to be related. Dean was willing to bet his paycheck on that.

Dean was quite taken with CarolynCJ, as she insisted on styling herself with her friends. She was quick and she was sharp, one of the infamous Menwith Girls, though she was unusual in actually being English rather than one of the small local army of transplanted Americans. He’d been surprised to learn that she was an American citizen, though

her parents had brought her over from Yorkshire thirty- eight years before, from a tiny village less than twenty miles from this conference room. The NSA only rarely hired naturalized citizens but they’d made an eager exception in CJ case. Her expertise in Japanese, spoken, she said, with a slight Kobe accent, had led them to make an exception so that she could work in the public relations bureau at Misawa. Only later had her knowledge of Russian brought her back to the Yorkshire moors and a place on the Russian desk.

And there might have been advantages, Dean thought, in having someone like her on the payroll here in England. The United States wouldn’t officially acknowledge her dual nationality, but so far as the Brits were concerned, she was a British subject until Her Majesty personally revoked her citizenship.

I have some news, Evans said as they took their seats, Styrofoam cups of coffee in front of Lia and Dean, cups of tea for Evans and CJ. Fischer woke up last night at Barts, and MI5 has been talking to her. And

we picked up Julie Henshaw at Heathrow. MI5 brought her in as well, and has been having a little chat with the lady.

Don’t tell us, Lia said. Neither of them knew a thing.

Nothing worth the asking, Evans admitted. Fischer knew Braslov as Johann Ernst. She thought he was German and a Greenworld activist, one of the group founders. She said he had money, a lot of it, enough to take care of her considerable debts, and those of her two friends.

At least that explains how the Russians recruited them, Dean said. It doesn’t explain how she got recruited for a suicide mission.

She insists that Braslov told her no one in the GLA building would be armed, for security reasons. Mr. Karr defense of Dr. Spencer, she said, was most surprising.

So she was willing to kill a stranger for money, Dean said.

It amazing what people will do if they’re desperate enough, CJ told them. If they’re hungry

enough.

I’m beginning to think that the Russians created Greenworld to serve their agenda, Akulinin said.

Reverse propaganda, Lia said, agreeing. They set Greenworld up to do some outrageous thingslike assassinate people at a scientific symposium in Londonand then they can ignore all

activist environmental groups when they do something like build a new pipeline through a wildlife refuge.

Or drill for offshore oil in the Arctic Ocean, Dean put in. I’m convinced that what this is all about.

Proving it will be tough, Akulinin told him.

Proving it isn’t our job, Lia added. The UN still has to rule on the Russian claim. It all a matter of international law, right? If the UN agrees they own half of the Arctic Ocean, they can do anything they want with it. That my take on it, anyway.

What about the flight attendant? Dean asked. Julie Henshaw?

Pretty much the same as Fischer, Evans told them. False- flag recruitment. Someone who called himself Johann Ernst’ contacted her in London. He claimed to be with Europol, and told her a scientist named Spencer was going to be on her next New York to London flight, Spencer was an important suspect in a big anti- terror operation, and that it was important that Ernst people be able to track him in London. Sounds like he dazzled her with tales of international intrigue and the promise of a big reward.

Braslov again, Dean said.

Or someone else using the same cover, but I’d bet it was him, Evans said. All Henshaw needed to do was

get close to one of Spencer guards, slip a tiny tracking device into the back of his coat collar, and then alert Ernst’ when the target left the hotel room the next morning.

So what happening to them? Dean asked. To Fischer and Henshaw, I mean.

Fischer is under arrest for murder and attempted murder, plus criminal trespass and half a dozen firearms violations, Evans said. We’re holding Henshaw as a material witness and as a possible accessory to murder and conspiracy to murder, though the government may not be able to make that stick. We may have to release her, though, unless we can find evidence linking her more closely with Braslov.

You won’t find it, Lia guessed. These people are pros.

I wonder if you can even prosecute, Dean added. If she genuinely thought she was helping the police.

Well, that for the courts to decide, Evans said. For right now, though it looks like it time to talk with your boss.

The NSA logo on the big screen had just dissolved, and after a connection prompt, Rubens appeared on the screen, seated at his desk. Good morning, he said. Miss DeFrancesca, Mr. Akulinin I’m glad to see you both safely back.

It good to be back, sir, Akulinin said.

It a shame, Rubens said dryly, that you couldn’t bring all of your equipment out with you.

Akulinin winced. Look, I’m sorry about that, sir, he said. Things were kind of hot and

We will discuss the matter later, Rubens said, interrupting. At length.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Dean, we received the package with Mr. Karr

effects. You were right. The tracking device is definitely of Russian manufacture.

We’ve been exploring the possibility of going back to Russia, Lia told him. Braslov appears to have left London for Yakutsk. Charlie thinks he going on to a Russian petroleum- drilling base in the Arctic.

A distinct possibility, Rubens said. And you’re quite right. Miss DeFrancesca, and Mr. Akulinin, I am indeed asking you to return to Russia. He raised a small remote control and pressed a button. His image on the screen was replaced by a satellite photo, looking down on a stretch of beach with dark waters laced with waves, cliffs above white sands, and the sprawl of a large and secluded building behind the cliffs. It looked like the mansion of a country estate, complete with the bright aqua- colored kidney shape of a swimming pool, the much smaller blue circle of a hot tub nearby, a series of gardens on manicured lawns, and rising stables in the back.

This, Rubens told them, is the private dacha of Grigor Kotenko, just outside of Sochi, on the Black Sea. The place used to belong to a high- ranking member of the Politburo, but Kotenko seems to have acquired it about ten years ago. He uses it several times a month for entertaining important people, but it is currently closed up, with only a small caretaker staff in residence.

I want you, Miss DeFrancesca, and you, Mr. Akulinin, to gain covert entrance to that dacha and wire it for sound. In particular, we need some keyboard bugs, so that we can keep tabs on Kotenko computer dealings.

Keyboard bugs were tiny microphone transmitters, half the size of BB shot, that could be dropped loose inside a computer keyboard. Each key, it turned out, made a unique sound print when struck. With those sounds transmitted to a nearby hidden relay and passed on to Fort Meade by satellite, it was possible for the supercomputers

at the Tordella Center to reconstruct, keystroke for keystroke, what was typed into the target computer, including e- mail addresses, contact lists, account information, and passwords.

A routine visit by the plumbers, then, Akulinin said, nodding.

Black bag work, yes, Rubens said. You’ll be working with Mr. Evans and GCHQ on the details of your insertion, legends, and extraction. We’re booking you on a flight to Sochi Monday.

Well, Lia said, back to the salt mines.

Mr. Dean, Rubens said. I have something special for you.

Dean suppressed a small twinge of disappointment. He’d hoped to be assigned to Lia op, but something in Rubens’ voice told him that that wasn’t going to happen. Yakutsk?