Deep Black

26

His name was Laci Babinov, and his death clinched it for Rubens. He hated — loathed — admitting the CIA was right on anything, but Babinov’s presence on the airplane that was shot down was a smoking gun.

An obscure one, certainly, but good intelligence was often a matter of making the obscure obvious.

Babinov was the number two man in Moscow’s OMON, or Otryad Militsii Osobgo Naznacheniya, the riot police. He’d been appointed by Kurakin and would undoubtedly have been loyal in a coup.

Assume the Ilyushin had been targeted to get Babinov. Was the strike on the Wave Three plane then a mistake?

Rubens wanted badly to think it was. But he couldn’t let himself reach that conclusion, not yet anyway; he wanted it too badly and there was no supporting evidence. It might just be a coincidence — which happened just enough to keep conspiracy theorists in business.

As soon as he saw the manifest, the NSA deputy director picked up the phone and called Hadash. In the time it took for Hadash’s assistant to run him down, Rubens had retrieved Babinov’s dossier and copied the information Johnny Bib had given him onto a small device the size of a key fob. The flat plastic housing covered a chip of specially designed flash ROM; the chip would flush its memory clean in eight hours, leaving no trace of the information recorded on it.

“Hadash.”

“We need to talk about Russia,” said Rubens. “The CIA’s estimate may be correct.”

“All right,” said Hadash. “How quickly can you get here?”

“I can leave immediately.”

“Yes, wait—” Hadash held his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, checking with someone about a schedule. “Go directly to the White House. The president wants to talk to you as well.”

An hour and a half later, Rubens found himself on the back lawn of the White House trotting alongside one of the staff people as they hustled to board Marine One before the president emerged with the mandatory entourage of media people.

Like its Air Force equivalent, Marine One was simply the designation for the Marine Corps helicopters transporting the president. For years, Marine One was an ancient, spartan Sikorsky used essentially as a flying taxi to take various presidents (and sometimes their dogs) on short hops, often to catch Air Force One. The S-58 model was a superb aircraft in its day, but that day actually passed back in the 1950s. President Marcke had decided to upgrade, and out of the Marine Corps’ impressive stable of aircraft chose arguably the best — a CH-53D capable of taking him over two thousand miles on literally a moment’s notice. The interior was nearly as well equipped as that of Air Force One. And if the three-engined monster helicopter wasn’t quite as fast as the Osprey, its performance record was considerably better.

The interior of the helicopter was cordoned off into three different spaces. The first included the doorway and bench seat pretty close to the simple slings used on many military aircraft. The next, which was generally occupied by the Secret Service detail and whatever staff people were aboard, had cushioned vinyl seats that could have been pulled from a bus stop and spray-painted a tasteful gray.

The third compartment, the president’s, had a thick though admittedly synthetic Persian carpet and very real leather chairs. These were bolted to the floor and had special three-point seat belts (never used, in Rubens’ experience) and small pockets at the side with splash guards. Of considerably more interest to Rubens were the fold-up panels that flanked the seats; two seventeen-inch TFT screens were tied into a hard-wired LAN that could be connected with all of the government’s secure computer systems. The panels also had keyboard and assorted ports for plug-ins, including the memory device Rubens had loaded with the information he believed pointed to the coup plot.

The stations also included television feeds. Rubens turned his on, cycling among the cable news networks to see what they were reporting on. It was a mistake — all three featured live feeds from a press conference called by the House Judiciary Committee to announce that it was going to hold hearings into Congressman Greene’s death. The head of the committee, an ambitious Democrat from California named James Mason, smiled and stared portentously at the screen as he declared that any elected representative’s demise was a matter of primary concern for the public.

“So you believe it wasn’t an accident?” one of the reporters asked Mason.

The congressman bobbed and weaved, giving hints of his true political potential.

Yesterday morning, Rubens had called one of the FBI agents who had interviewed him to discuss what he called “speculative ideas.” Along the way he suggested how they might go about checking the guitar and the pool to make sure this was a freak thing. The agent not only thanked him but also asked if he happened to know anyone who could do the work.

Naturally, he demurred at first. But within a few minutes an assistant called back with information about a company in Virginia that might be able to help. Coincidentally, the company did not hold a contract with the NSA. Not so coincidentally, its vice president had been one of the midlevel analysts who got a soft landing during the infamous wave of layoffs in the 1990s — a soft landing Rubens had helped arrange.

The findings were already en route to the Bureau: “Bare wires and a short in one of the pickups. Alterations to the amp the guitar was plugged into, causing it to supply an outrageous amount of electricity to the guitar. Alterations to the fuse circuitry. Fraying on the pool heating elements that seemed suspicious or at least out of the ordinary. All told, a bizarre, fatal combination.”

Purposeful? The lab didn’t say, though the implication was clear.

Rather than short-circuiting the investigation, Rubens had made things worse. The inconclusive report would encourage speculation once it was leaked — inevitable now that Congress was involved.

“Gilligan’s Island again?” said President Marcke, pushing into the compartment.

Rubens rose from his seat as Marcke, Hadash, Blanders, and James Lincoln, the secretary of state, came in.

Followed by Collins.

“Ms. Collins,” said Rubens.

“NSA finally realized we were right, huh?” she said, smirking as she sat. The helicopter whipped upward.

“We’re headed for Camp David,” said the president. “I’m going to guess you can’t stay, Billy.”

Rubens hadn’t planned to, but could he afford to let Collins and the CIA have the president’s ear?

God, he thought to himself, what if Marcke is banging her?

God.

“No, sir, I, uh, have a full agenda. Things are popping,” said Rubens.

“Next time,” said the president. He glanced at the television screen. “Mason announcing his inquiry, eh?”

Rubens nodded.

“You know, I think he’s related to the James Mason. Not the actor, the Virginia statesman.”

“Could be.”

“Mr. Rubens has data confirming the CIA assessment,” said Hadash.

“Go for it, Billy.”

“We’ve been studying intercepts relating to various troop movements, status states, that sort of thing. They’ve been building very slowly,” said Rubens. “And this lines up with the analysis by the CIA people. Which I’m sure the DDO could talk about if necessary.”

“I already have,” said Collins.

Would Marcke really give it to her? Rubens momentarily felt a wave of nausea.

“In the past few days, we harvested communications via an E-mail network used, at least until now, strictly by diplomatic personnel.” Rubens explained that the odd thing about the E-mails wasn’t the information — that was fairly routine — but the fact that they were so heavily encrypted in a back-channel or even off-channel communications line. He then ticked off indicators — fuel, leaves allowed, even the assignment of medical personnel to sick call — that showed all of the units were getting ready for some type of campaign.

As he spoke, he inserted his memory device into the keyboard in front of him and punched up the data on the screens.

“And it’s not a fresh move against the southern rebels?” asked Blanders.

“The units are mostly near Moscow and in Siberia,” said Rubens. “Two armored battalions have been moved within a twelve-hour drive of Moscow, and there’s another about the same distance outside of the dachas south of—”

“The southern units are also within range for an offensive in the Caucasus,” noted Blanders.

“True,” said Rubens. The defense secretary was a potential ally, and so Rubens made sure to concede the point graciously. “If it were just those units, I’d agree.”

“There is overlap with the units we tagged,” said Collins. “Of course, we have additional humint.”

She said “humint”—short for human intelligence, or old fashioned “spy information”—as if it were potting material for an exotic houseplant.

Rubens brushed aside her attempt to steal back the spotlight. The CIA might have made the first guess, but the NSA had done the hard work to show what was really going on. “Most interestingly,” he said, “they’ve killed Laci Babinov.”

“Babinov is who?” asked the president.

“The leader of the riot police in Moscow,” said Hadash.

“Actually, the number two man, but he’s really the one in charge,” said Rubens. “He was on the aircraft shot down by the unmarked MiG.”

They all knew which plane he was talking about, so Rubens didn’t have to explain. Collins took another shot at bringing the attention back to the CIA by saying that two colonels who worked as military attaches in the Kremlin were missing from their posts, but the others ignored her.

Rubens had clearly supplied the key.

“It does line up,” said Hadash. “But who’s behind it?”

“Perovskaya,” said Collins. “Has to be.”

The defense minister was an obvious choice, and Rubens would have suggested Perovskaya himself if she hadn’t. But now he made a face. “No intercepts support that.”

“Who else could it be?”

“I don’t know, Christine, but until I have evidence, I can’t say.”

Using her first name was a slip and he knew it; Rubens went silent.

“What about the shootdown?” asked the secretary of state. “The plane was similar to yours. Maybe they simply thought it was another.”

“Doubtful,” said Rubens. Lincoln should not have known that the planes were similar. Who leaked that to him? Collins? But she shouldn’t have known, either.

Hadash? Blanders? The president?

“The Russian media are playing it as if it were an accident, and there were no intercepts at all about it,” said Rubens, subtly changing the subject. “No transmissions at all. Highly unusual. As far as we can tell, the MiG that shot it down didn’t even get a tower clearance to take off.”

“So the consensus is that the military, or part of the military, is planning to revolt,” said the president. “Do we know when the coup is planned for?”

“Impossible to know,” said Rubens.

“Within a week,” said Collins.

“What do we do?” asked the president. He pushed back in his seat.

“We should tell Kurakin,” said Lincoln. “Head it off.”

“That might not be enough,” said Collins.

“We should squash it,” said Rubens.

They all looked at him.

“You have a plan?” asked Hadash.

“No,” said Rubens. He saw Collins’ mouth twist — she did, or at least was going to claim she did. “Not a specific plan. But if we’re concerned about a coup, obviously we could interfere with it. Desk Three has the capability.”

Rubens knew he was overreaching, but he felt he had to stake out the ground quickly. Desk Three was supposed to be the country’s preeminent covert intelligence organization — it couldn’t afford to sit on the sidelines.

He wasn’t overreaching. Desk Three could disrupt communications among the different military groups quite easily. Providing the Russian president with real-time intelligence would be child’s play — they did it all the time for their action teams on the ground. The Russian president would have to do the heavy lifting himself, of course — but with judicious assistance, surely he would prevail.

“A coup would be disastrous,” said the secretary of state. “But we can’t get directly involved.”

“True,” said Hadash. “On the other hand, it would be very risky. We still don’t know exactly who’s behind the coup.”

“We’re working on it,” said Rubens.

“So are we,” said Collins.

“I can’t see helping Kurakin, or any Russian,” said Blan-ders. “It’s galling.”

“I don’t necessarily disagree on an emotional level,” said Rubens. “But of course, it may be to our advantage.”

“Maybe,” conceded Blanders, still clearly reluctant.

“Billy, put together a plan,” said the president.

Rubens let himself bask in the rarefied air of presidential approval for a few seconds, then turned his mind toward a plan that would justify it.