Arctic Gold

13

Oval Office, the White House Washington, D.C. 1508 hours EDT

“THE PRESIDENT WILL SEE YOU now.”

The three of them had been waiting on benches set against the walls of the main corridor of the West Wing, Collins, Bing, and Rubens. None of the three had spoken a word when they’d arrived separately half an hour earlier, but Rubens could feel the chill in the air, the psychic sharpening of knives. For his part, Rubens had leaned back on the bench and focused on a relaxation mantra, calming himself. If these two harpies were going to descend on Desk Three, he wanted to be able to respond with cool logic, not a storm of emotion.

As the secretary held the northwest door of the Oval Office open, they stood and, still without a word to one another, entered the historic room.

All three had been here before, of course. The ancient grandfather clock against the northeast wall still clucked quietly to itself. The familiar portrait of George Washington still glowered down from over the fireplace on the room’s north wall, the rosy-cheeked figure still looking as though his mouth hurt. Swedish ivy, grown from cuttings in a series going back to President Kennedy, adorned the mantle itself while, elsewhere, Remington bronzes of horses and western themes graced tabletops and niches in the walls.

President Marcke sat behind the familiar Resolute Desk… so named because it had been made from the timbers of a British frigate, HMS Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes in 1880 and brought out of storage a century later by President Carter. That touch seemed appropriate to Rubens now. They would need to rely a lot on their British counterparts if they were going to have a chance at getting a team back into Russia anytime soon.

James Fenton and Roger Smallbourn both were already in the room, standing before the desk. A third man stood near the east wall, the only uniform present. He was Admiral Robert Thornton, the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Rubens was surprised to see them, but he could feel the startled shock of both Bing and Collins; obviously they’d not been expecting the DNI or the D/CIA to be here, the top two men in U.S. intelligence. As for the number-two man in the DIA, Rubens could only imagine why he was here as well. It was almost unprecedented, having this many top spooks together in the same room at the same time.

“Ladies,” President Marcke said, looking up. “Charlie. I would like to know what the hell is going on.”

“I… I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. President,” Bing said.

“I mean how the hell this mess could have exploded in the Arctic and no one in U.S. intelligence was aware of anything going down!”

“Sir, we were aware of ongoing developments,” Collins said. She spoke with a crispness that might have been meant to convey cool efficiency, but Rubens could hear her gears shifting in her mind. “We had two officers up there with the NOAA expedition with orders to determine what was going on at that Russian base. It was all there in your pickle a couple of weeks ago.”

“Your two officers have been captured by the damned Russians, along with a number of American civilians and NOAA personnel. The Russians say they’re being interned for the time being, pending a resolution of the status of their territorial claims in the Arctic.”

“In other words,” Fenton said, “they’re holding them hostage to ensure that we go along with Moscow’s agenda. They particularly want our assistance in reining in the Canadians and the Danes.”

“You’re kidding,” Rubens said.

“Unfortunately, I’m not.” Fenton gestured at a paper on Marcke’s desk, closely typewritten beneath the richly decorated letterhead of the Russian embassy. “Their ambassador gave us official notification this morning. Very politely worded, of course. But it amounts to a ransom demand just the same.”

“Publicly, we’ve been staying out of this brouhaha up north,” the President said, “and Moscow seems to have taken that as acquiescence on our part. They may see hostages-though they’d never actually call them that, of course-as a guarantee of our active support.”

It made sense in a weird way. Normally, the United States would have sided immediately with Canada, her old ally to the north, but in this recent exchange of confrontation politics over the Arctic, the U.S. had been keeping an uncharacteristically low profile. Cynics, both inside the Beltway and those writing op-ed columns, had pointed out that America had her own territorial ambitions in the Arctic. The North Slope oil fields provided just a glimpse of what riches might yet be hidden beneath the seabed north of Alaska.

The Russians might think that Washington’s support at the United Nations would resolve the issue in their favor. Holding a few Americans as “guests” while their legal status was determined might nail things down just that much more firmly.

“This situation has been brewing since the Russians planted that damned flag at the North Pole in ’07,” the President went on, “and the intelligence community has let me down big-time. Why the hell didn’t we see this coming?”

“Sir, in all fairness, our assets are stretched rather thin,” Bing said. She glanced at Thornton. “Between Iraq, the nuclear situation in Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea, and trying to contain al-Qaeda-”

“I don’t want fucking excuses, Donna!” the President said, his voice rising to a shout. “You people have been so busy playing Beltway power politics, trying to upstage each other, trying to cut each other out, pissing on the boundaries of your own turfs, you’re not delivering the results I need! This thing came out of nowhere and bit me in the ass, and I don’t like that one damned bit!”

“Sir,” Fenton said into the shocked silence following the presidential outburst, “you already have my recommendations for streamlining U.S. intelligence. It may be that by eliminating certain inefficiencies-”

“Inefficiencies my ass,” the President said. “I’m going to start eliminating some of the political deadwood around here and see what that does for inefficiencies!” He glared at them from behind the desk for a moment before continuing in a calmer voice. “Now, I’m going to say this just once. We are, all of us, on the same side, tough as it may be to recognize that fact sometimes. I want you people to stop the infighting and play nice. Pull together. Produce results I can use. Or I’ll fire the lot of you and put in people who give me what I need! Do I make myself clear?”

A mumbled chorus of, “Yes, sir,” rippled about the room. Rubens was surprised at the outburst, surprised and pleased. Marcke tended to present a laid-back and folksy outward charm that was both disarming and ingratiating, a tool he’d used to superb effect when it came time for rounding up votes, both at the polls and on the Hill. Only rarely was a steel core revealed beneath the country-boy demeanor, so rarely that the man was often castigated by the press for being wishy-washy.

“Okay? We’re on the same page? Good.” The palm of his hand slammed down on the polished oak desktop. “On to business. I’ve directed that one of our SSGNs be redeployed to the Arctic. Admiral Thornton? Tell the rest of them what you told me this morning.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Thornton cleared his throat. “Last evening, at the President’s instructions, we transmitted new orders to the SSGN Ohio, then en route for the eastern Med. Four hours later, she rendezvoused with the Pittsburgh, a Los Angeles attack sub, just south of Greenland. The two are proceeding north up the west coast of Greenland as we speak, with orders to proceed to the NOAA base and investigate the situation.

“On board the Ohio are thirty-two Navy SEALs and one of their ASDS minisubs. We do not believe the Russians have a military presence at their base in the Arctic. Not yet. The SEALs have been instructed to resolve the situation, using the threat of force if necessary.”

Rubens considered this. Thirty-two SEALs could handle any number of civilians, but how good was the intel that said there weren’t any military personnel at the site? Whoever had taken the Americans out of Ice Station Bravo must have had weapons simply to enforce compliance, and the volume of military radio traffic up there suggested a lot of movement and preparation. There were rumors of Russian submarine deployments in the region, and those might have naval troops on board. Besides, Mys Shmidta was only a three- to four-hour flight by helicopter to the south. If the Russians wanted a military presence on the ice cap, they would have one in very short order.

“I’m not sure a military option is our best choice at this time, Mr. President,” Donna Bing said. She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Perhaps we should give diplomacy more of a chance here.”

“Did you hear those intercepts from our listening station up there?” the President demanded.

“Yes, but-”

“Did you hear them?”

“Yes, sir.” She glanced at Rubens, an expression of pure venom.

“The Russians were just waiting for an excuse,” the President said. “Just waiting. Damn it, we are not going to take this lying down. If they think they can snatch our citizens out of international waters under some flimsy legalese pretext, they’re going to find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun!”

“Perdicaris alive,” Rubens said quietly, “or Rasuli dead.”

“Eh?” Marcke said. “What was that?”

“Perdicaris alive or Rasuli dead,” Rubens said again, more loudly. “One of your predecessors, sir. Teddy Roosevelt in… oh, it must have been 1904 or thereabouts. Just before the presidential election, anyway. Ion Perdicaris was a wealthy businessman representing American interests in Morocco who managed to get himself kidnapped by a Berber bandit leader named Rasuli. When Rasuli demanded a ransom from the United States-which harkened back to the old Barbary pirate way of doing business, actually-Roosevelt sent the U.S. Atlantic Squadron to Tangiers with instructions to free Perdicaris or kill Rasuli.” He smiled. “Perdicaris was released unharmed in short order. It turned out after the fact he wasn’t even an American citizen, but the Republican Party went wild at the news, and the affair helped elect Teddy.”

He didn’t add that Perdicaris had been released because a weak and vacillating Moroccan government, fearing the arrival of the U.S. fleet, had quietly paid Rasuli the seventy-thousand-dollar ransom. The story was too good to risk muddying the waters with extraneous details.

“Right, right. I seem to remember seeing a movie about that once,” the President said.

Rubens grimaced. “The Wind and the Lion,” he said. “As usual, Hollywood botched it pretty badly. Somehow, a dumpy, middle-aged Greek businessman got transformed into Candice Bergen.”

“If you please, Mr. Rubens,” Smallbourn said, “I fail to see what all of this has to do with the Arctic situation.”

“Mr. Rubens is reminding us, Roger, that we can’t give in to ransom demands,” the President said. “And that’s what the Russians are doing here… holding our people hostage in order to gain our compliance. We will not let that stand!”

“One of the captured agents, Mr. President,” Dean said, “is actually one of my people, a technical specialist on loan to the CIA.”

“And you’d like to have a hand in getting her back, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you suggest?”

“That depends on what you decide to do, sir. However, at a minimum I’d like one of my people up there. He could deploy certain devices with which to track and eavesdrop on the Russians, maybe find out where they’re holding the prisoners.”

“You have someone specific in mind, then?”

“Yes, sir. His name’s Dean. A former Marine.”

Collins made a face. “Charles Dean?” she said. “I’ve seen his folder. He’s old.”

Rubens wondered what Collins had been doing going through NSA personnel records… and how she’d managed that. He gave her a cool, appraising look. “He’s one of my best field agents, Ms. Collins, and frankly, I’ll take a tough old Marine with combat experience over a young pup any day. And if you’ve been going through my filing cabinet lately, you’ll know he’s just completed his quals with a four-oh. He’s good. And he gets results.”

The President chuckled. “Think your old Marine can keep up with a SEAL platoon, Bill?”

“He’ll do whatever is necessary to get the job done, sir.”

“The SEALs have experience in deploying all sorts of high-tech gadgets,” Thornton put in. “Why do we need your man up there?”

“The SEALs are good,” Rubens agreed, “but they haven’t been trained in some of our more recent high-tech bits of hardware.”

“Mr. President!” Collins said. “I must protest! Once again, this is a job for the Central Intelligence Agency! We have the trained personnel and the equipment for covert operations of this nature! The NSA should stick with what it knows… signals intelligence!”

“How about that, Charlie?” the President asked. He was smiling. Damn the man, he was enjoying this!

“I’m not trying to steal the Agency’s 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’s 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’s 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’s surface, a satellite has to be at geosynchronous orbit… and that’s 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’s orbiting the Earth once every ninety minutes or so. That means it’s 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’s 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 others-in 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 lately-most 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’s 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’s 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 Carolyn-CJ, 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’s 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’s 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’s defense of Dr. Spencer, she said, was most surprising.”

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

“It’s 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 things-like assassinate people at a scientific symposium in London-and 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s for the courts to decide,” Evans said. “For right now, though… it looks like it’s 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’s good to be back, sir,” Akulinin said.

“It’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s op, but something in Rubens’ voice told him that that wasn’t going to happen. “Yakutsk?”

“No. But you will need to pack cold-weather gear, I promise you.”

This did not sound particularly promising to Dean, but he nodded and said, “Right.”

“You,” Rubens continued, “will be hitching a ride on a submarine in two days.”

“The NOAA base in the Arctic, then?”

“Yes. And the Russian base near there as well, if necessary. We want Braslov, Mr. Dean. And even more, we want the Americans being held up there released… two in particular, a congressman’s daughter and an NSA technician.”

“Leave no one behind,” Dean said. “I understand.”

“Spoken like a true Marine.”

“Ooh-rah.” He recited the battle cry without emotion.

He’d always hated the cold…