Arctic Gold

7

“London’s Living Room” GLA Building, London 1420 hours GMT

TOMMY KARR WALKED OUT onto the broad observation platform that encircled the uppermost floor of London’s City Hall.

The Thames lay spread beneath him, gray-green and dotted with pleasure craft and barges. An ancient light cruiser, the HMS Belfast, now a museum, lay tied up to the City Pier to the left, on the near bank almost at his feet. Beyond her, the clean, modern lines of the new London Bridge spanned the river, in front of the thrust and bustle of London’s business district and the far-off blue dome of St. Paul’s. To his right, downstream, rose the Tower Bridge, older and more conventional beneath its twin supporting caissons and towers that looked like the squared-off steeples of Anglican churches.

The bridge architecture fitted in perfectly with the sprawl of medieval castle walls, turrets, towers, and cupolas directly across the Thames from City Hall, the infamous Tower of London.

Closer at hand, the demonstration had spilled into the park and waterfront pier directly below City Hall, filling it as far as the near end of the Tower Bridge, perhaps 150 yards away. Karr was looking down on a sea of people and brightly colored banners. Occasionally megaphone-directed chants rose the ten stories to the observation promenade, but mostly the noise was little more than a distant, subdued rumble.

“Anything new on the telly?” he asked aloud.

“Nothing on CNN or the networks,” Jeff Rockman’s voice said in his ear. “BBC Two is carrying a lot of footage, though. It’s big news in Europe, at least. We’ve spotted you three or four times, now, when the cameras zoomed in on Spencer.”

Karr grinned as he turned from the sprawling city panorama. “Hi, Mom,” he said. He could see a couple of media types nearby, a sharply dressed woman with a microphone and a shirt-sleeved partner with a minicam, filming the delegates.

The meetings had broken for an afternoon recess. A number of delegates had spilled out onto the promenade outside or wandered off to the building’s restaurant. The symposium had been going for more than four hours now and already generated several spirited, even acrimonious debates between various of the attendees. A Nigerian delegate had been ejected, loudly shouting that caps on emissions were tantamount to racism, a means of strangling the economies of third-world nations. Supposedly, the Kyoto Accords exempted developing countries from the stringencies of limiting their industrial emissions, in effect requiring industrial nations to pay a tax on their behalf. There still seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding on that point, however, generating a widespread sense that the developed countries were either patronizing the third world or strangling it-take your pick.

The entire issue was now so bound up with politics, money, and shrill invective that it was nearly impossible for mere facts to make themselves heard.

Dr. Spencer, standing just outside the broad glass doors, appeared to be engaged in an ugly confrontation with a distinguished-looking Brit, a member of the Royal Society, if Karr remembered correctly.

“Nonsense!” the silver-haired delegate sputtered. “Your data, sir, are contrived and inaccurate! Nothing can be clearer from the record than that the increased temperatures of the past century and a half are due to increased industrial emissions. Human emissions!”

“Bullshit!” Spencer snapped back. “The total effect of the sun on Earth’s climate is overwhelmingly greater than anything we can do to add or detract!”

“Sheer moonshine, sir! You have no proof-”

“I have all the proof necessary, Sir James, if you’re willing to pull your head out of your ass and listen to a dissenting view for a change!”

“Doctor Spencer! I resent-”

“Well, I must say they’re getting on famously,” someone said at Karr’s side.

“If they don’t kill each other first,” Karr replied. He looked the other man over… a nondescript, older man with white hair and the air of a banker, perhaps. Karr had seen him earlier that morning in the conference hall, standing off to one side, and assumed he was a delegate to the symposium.

“Randolph Evans,” Rockman’s voice whispered in Karr’s ear. “GCHQ. He’s one of us.”

Karr extended a hand. “You’re Randolph Evans, aren’t you? GCHQ?”

Evans took his hand. “And you’re Kjartan Magnor-Karr. ‘Tommy.’ NSA.”

Karr grinned. Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was Great Britain’s equivalent of the NSA. An agreement dating back to 1947 called the United Kingdom-USA Communications Intelligence Agreement, usually shortened to “UKUSA,” had forged an unusually close and highly covert alliance aimed at intercepting and decoding electronic intelligence all over the world. If GCHQ wasn’t a branch of the NSA by now, it was the next best thing… a full partner in global espionage and SIGINT.

He didn’t bother asking Evans what he was doing here. If the operative was here on an op, he wouldn’t discuss the fact any more than Karr would. Karr could guess what GCHQ was interested in this afternoon, though.

“A lot of very noisy people down there,” he commented.

“Indeed. Greenpeace. Greenworld. Several other environmentalist groups. They seem to think the world’s governments aren’t moving fast enough.”

“All in all a good thing,” Karr said, nodding. “When governments move quickly, that’s when ordinary people need to start worrying.”

“As when they make the trains run on time?”

“Exactly. Or promise ‘peace in our time.’”

“Ouch. Touché.”

Karr nodded toward the confrontation near the doors. “Who’s the silver-haired gentleman threatening to throw Dr. Spencer off the roof?”

“Ah. Sir James Millvale. Distinguished member of Parliament. Highly respected Senior of the Royal Society. Environmental scientist. And thoroughly peeved that people like your Dr. Spencer may be about to turn the tide of official opinion against the idea that people are to blame for global warming… after he and his party rammed through some rather expensive and deucedly inconvenient emissions standards here in this country. Millvale and his allies will look like fools, lose professional standing, power, prestige. They have everything to lose, so they have stopped listening.”

“That’s supposed to be our fault?”

“Well, you Yanks do have the reputation for kicking over the apple cart. Boston Harbor, 1773?”

“You’re still carrying a grudge? You people have such long memories…”

Evans chuckled.

Before he could reply, however, Rockman interrupted over Karr’s communications system. “Hey, Tommy? Looks like some trouble is developing downstairs.”

“Excuse me,” Karr told Evans. “I have a call.”

He didn’t know if Evans was cleared to know about the highly secret communications implants used by Desk Three operators-for all Karr knew, GCHQ agents used the things as well-but pulling out a satellite phone and holding it to his ear gave him plausible cover with the surrounding crowd of guests and delegates as he spoke with Rockman.

“Jeff? What’s up?”

“We’re monitoring the situation through BBC Two and the security cameras inside the building,” Rockman said. The NSA, it was said, could tap into any security camera system worldwide, especially if the system was part of a computer-monitored network. “The crowd outside just exploded. About fifty of them muscled past the security guards at the main entrance. That seems to have been a distraction, though, because when the guards started struggling with them, about fifty more vaulted a set of barrier fences and entered the building through a side door.”

“Are they armed?”

“Not that we can see,” Rockman replied. “But you may be about to have company.”

Frowning, Karr said, “Excuse me,” to Evans and pushed through the wide glass double doors into the building’s tenth-floor lobby. Leaning over a railing, Karr could look straight down the center of the staircase spiraling up the inside of the building, all the way to the entrance floor. Shouts and wild yells echoed up the staircase, along with the magnified thunder of running feet coming up the steps. It looked like the mob was up to the third floor already… no, the fourth.

Returning to the promenade outside, he signaled Delgado and Payne, who were flanking Spencer as the American continued arguing with Sir James. With things apparently peaceful enough, other than Spencer’s disagreement with the locals, Rogers had wandered off to find the cafeteria and get something to eat.

“Some of the protestors just jumped the security barriers,” Karr told the two FBI agents. “They’re on their way up. We need to get Sunny here someplace safe.”

“Inside,” Delgado suggested. “In the speakers’ area. There’s a green room.”

The green room was a place for delegates to rest and hang out without being pestered by the news media or other noisy types. Karr nodded. The room had one entrance, which could be easily defended.

Still, he didn’t want to overreact. When Greenpeace activists protesting the Star Wars initiative had broken through the security perimeter at Menwith Hill a few years ago, they’d used similar tactics. A few, designated “hares,” had cut through the fence and run across the compound, drawing off the security guards. Then the main body, designated “rabbits,” had swarmed over the fence, climbed communications towers, and raised banners. They’d stayed long enough to pose for the media cameras, some of them wearing outlandish costumes representing ballistic missiles, before being evicted or, in some cases, arrested and carried off to waiting police vans for trespass.

Most likely, the activists downstairs were going to try to crash the symposium’s party, shout some slogans, maybe hang up some banners, and grab some high-quality airtime on the evening news.

But they couldn’t afford to take chances, not with the death threats against him. They closed in on Spencer.

“Excuse me, sir,” Payne told him, interrupting a diatribe by Sir James. “We have a situation. If you would come with us…”

“I beg your pardon, young man,” Sir James said. He was furious, his face bright red. “We are having a private discussion!”

“You can discuss things with the mob, sir,” Karr told him. “They’re on their way up!”

“Eh?” Sir James stopped, listened, then scowled. “My word. What is that ungodly racket?”

“We have them on the eighth floor,” Rockman said. “They just pushed past a couple of security guards like they weren’t even there. More of them are coming in through the main doors now, too. Looks like this thing was planned.”

“We may not have time to reach the green room,” Karr told the FBI agents. “Come on. Over here.”

Delgado was holding his earphone in place, talking rapidly to Rogers over a needle mike beside his mouth. Karr heard him say, “Get the hell back here!”

Karr led them back from the glass doors, putting a number of confusedly milling delegates between them and the oncoming mob. Moments later, the doors swung open and a large number of activists spilled out onto the sightseeing platform.

Most, Karr saw, were young people-teenagers or twenty-somethings. They had the somewhat trendy-shabby look of protestors everywhere, wearing jeans, sandals, T-shirts, and, among the males, at any rate, lots of facial hair. Many were chanting: “USA! CO₂ USA! CO₂!” Karr saw signs and waving banners, clenched fists and raw emotion.

Security guards and London bobbies burst through the door after them, but there were too many protestors scattering across and around the encircling promenade. Five protestors emerged from the tenth-floor lobby of the GLA carrying a cumbersome sixty-foot-long bundle, bright green and tightly rolled up. They hauled it to the safety railing at the edge of the promenade, which canted sharply inward over the walkway, and began muscling their burden over the side. Others formed a barrier between the five and the police, who in short order were surrounded by a mob of chanting, shouting protestors.

Delegates to the symposium were scattering everywhere, running protestors among them. The situation was completely chaotic, completely out of control. Tightly wedged in around Dr. Spencer, Karr and the two FBI agents backed their charge away from the confrontation.

The five protestors had everyone’s attention now. They’d anchored their heavy bundle to the top railing of the safety fence around the promenade, locking it in place with chains and padlocks sewn into the heavy material. When they released the bundle, it tumbled out over the slanted railing, then down the side of the building with a sharp crack, an enormous green banner hanging from the building’s top floor.

From this angle, Karr couldn’t see what was on the banner, but he could guess… something about a green world and no global warming, perhaps. The protestors now were ganging up on the police and security guards. People were screaming and running.

“Hold it!” Delgado yelled. He had his sidearm out and had pivoted to aim it back in the other direction, behind Karr. “Drop it! Drop it!”

Karr spun. Several protestors had come all the way around the promenade, circling it clockwise as Spencer and his guards backed around counterclockwise. One of the protestors, oddly on this brilliant late-spring morning, was wearing a heavy overcoat. That was damned strange…

With a sense of dawning horror, Karr saw the man pulling something out from under the coat… a weapon… an Uzi submachine gun… raising it to his shoulder…

Spencer was between Karr and the gunman… no, the gunmen. Another activist nearby had a pistol in his hand, was aiming it at Spencer.

Karr lunged, plowing into Spencer from behind and the side with his shoulder, a football block that sent the American scientist sprawling. Karr hit the deck of the promenade, his Beretta out of its shoulder holster and gripped two-handed as he slid over smooth concrete.

The man with the Uzi was the greater danger in terms of sheer firepower; the man with the pistol was already drawing a bead on Spencer. In an instant’s instinctive decision, Karr swung his Beretta to aim at the one with the pistol, squeezing the trigger in a fast double tap.

The gunman fired in the same instant. Karr felt the sting of concrete chips slashing his cheek. The activist with the coat and the Uzi opened up on full-auto, sending a stream of slugs slamming into Delgado, then sweeping the chattering weapon around, trying to hit Spencer.

Spent brass cartridges tumbled and flashed in the sunlight. Delgado was falling; Payne was aiming his weapon in a stiff Weaver stance, firing into a third gunman, no, a gun woman…

Karr shifted aim as he got his feet underneath him, throwing himself between Spencer and the attackers, firing into the guy with the submachine gun as he moved. As he came to his feet, however, he felt something like a hammer slam into his side… then again, hard against his chest.

Part of him knew he was hit, though there was no pain… not yet. He kept squeezing the trigger as he fell and turned, sending round after round into the gunman, slamming against the railing, dropping to one knee.

Two more hammer blows… and a terribly wet crunch against his throat. Karr felt himself falling, the Beretta gone, spinning off into space. Damn it, he couldn’t breathe!

He tasted blood, salty and hot.

Tommy Karr collapsed as the darkness descended, engulfing him…

The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1035 hours EDT

“Jesus!” Rockman stared at the big display screen, which currently was showing a number of TV monitors. On one, the earnest, too-perfect makeup of a BBC anchorwoman stared from the screen as she mouthed unheard words into her microphone. Another screen showed the view of another camera, aimed up at the green banner unfurling ten stories above the Thames. The banner, so huge it could easily be read from the ground, showed the Greenworld logo, together with the words “Save Our World!”

But Rockman and the other runners in the Art Room were staring at one of the other monitors, this one tapping into a security camera mounted in the ceiling of the overhang above the outside sightseeing promenade around London’s Living Room. The scene was one of incredible confusion, of an enormous, surging crowd struggling hand to hand with the police. Gunfire had panicked the mob, sending it scattering across the observation deck.

But in the background…

“My God!” Sarah Cassidy shouted. “They shot him! They shot him!”

Jeff Rockman couldn’t believe what he thought he’d just seen… Tommy Karr catching a full-auto blast from the gunman’s Uzi, exchanging fire, then falling backward against the guardrail before crumpling to the concrete deck.

Spencer was on his hands and knees, looking dazed but apparently unhurt. Karr had thrown himself between the gunmen and the scientist, had probably saved Spencer’s life. One of the FBI men was down; another was on one knee, his pistol locked in a two-handed grip and swinging wildly back and forth as he looked for another target, another threat. He was screaming into the needle mike at his mouth, calling for backup.

The third FBI agent entered the picture from behind the foreground a moment later, weapon drawn. And Evans, the GCHQ agent, was there as well, also armed.

But too little, too late. All three tangos-in his mind, Rockman had immediately reverted to the code term meaning “terrorists”-all three, two men and a woman, were down. The woman appeared to be wounded, was trying to get up. Evans pushed her down again as Rogers kicked her handgun away. More backup arrived, London bobbies and several in plainclothes… MI5.

Payne was checking the motionless form of Delgado.

“Call Rubens,” Rockman said.

“He’s… he’s in a briefing,” Ron Jordan said, his voice shaking. “He can’t be-”

“Call Rubens!”

Desk Three had lost agents before. The NSA had lost agents and operators many times since its creation in the late 1940s. But the loss of another agent was never easy.

The loss of a friend was much worse.

More London Center Near the GLA Building 1435 hours GMT

Directly adjacent to the black, leaning egg shape of the GLA, some fifty meters to the southwest across the tree-lined pavement of a park known locally as Potter’s Field, loomed a brand-new office building, the More London Center, housing a bank, an insurance firm, and a number of government offices that had not fitted in with London City Hall or the Greater London Authority. Hours ago, Sergei Braslov had used a back stairwell and a stolen passkey to gain entrance to a maintenance door leading out onto the roof. Twelve stories up, the roof let him look down onto the outside promenade at the tenth floor of the GLA building. By climbing a ladder up onto the top of the small rooftop structure housing the building’s air-conditioning system, he gained a bit more elevation… and a perfect shot.

Braslov carried with him a black, leather camera bag, as well as various ID proving him to be a cameraman with the BBC. If anyone happened to be on the More London Center’s roof, Braslov could flash the ID and claim he was looking for a good vantage point overlooking the fast-developing riot below. Inside the bag, however, was not a minicam, but a high-powered rifle broken down into four pieces, a weapon originally designed for use by the Soviet Spetsnaz, the Russian equivalent of the American Special Forces. It was a matter of two minutes’ work to snap or screw the pieces together, chamber a round, and peer through the telescopic sight into the crowd on the GLA building’s promenade deck.

At a range of just under fifty meters, he could hardly miss.

He’d not fired the weapon, however… and didn’t plan to do so if he could possibly help it. Mallet, Berger, and Fischer, simpleton dupes, the lot of them, had done exactly as he’d coached them over long, patient hours during the past week, finding Spencer, rushing in as close as possible, and only then pulling out their weapons and opening fire. Braslov was ready with the sniper’s rifle if necessary, if none of the three succeeded in hitting anything, but at point-blank range, they were almost certain to hit someone.

That they appeared to have missed Spencer mattered not at all. They’d killed one, perhaps two of Spencer’s bodyguards.

It would be enough.

There was one final task Braslov had set for himself, however. None of the three, after his coaching, had expected the bodyguards to be armed, and, as a result, all three of the Greenworld attackers were now down. Two were almost certainly dead, but the third, the woman, was still moving, a puddle of blood spreading on the concrete beneath her and soaking through her T-shirt. He shifted his aim until the crosshair reticules in his scope centered on her head. A squeeze of the trigger and the only person on the GLA observation deck who knew exactly what had happened would be dead.

It was a difficult shot, however. The surviving bodyguards and several GLA security personnel were clustered around her, and she was partially blocked from his view by the back-slanting safety railing at the edge of the deck.

No, he decided. Too risky. Shooting the woman would alert the security forces that a fourth shooter was in the game. They might even spot him and call in support before he could get clear of the building.

Fischer was done for, shot in the stomach and chest several times. Even if she survived, she didn’t know enough to be a threat to Braslov, or to the Organizatsiya.

Moments later, paramedics arrived, and they began strapping Fischer onto a gurney. The window of opportunity was past.

Thoughtful, Braslov disassembled the rifle and stowed the pieces back in the camera bag. Only then did he pull out a satellite phone and punch in a number, opening an encrypted line.

“Rodina,” he said. Motherland. Mother Russia.

“We’re watching BBC Two. Excellent work.”

“One of our agents still lives. I cannot get a clear shot, however.”

“She knows nothing. We don’t want to reveal your presence. That might tell the opposition too much.”

“That was my thought.” He hesitated. “Perhaps it is time to activate Cold War. The two… incidents should take place close together, for maximum effect.”

“We agree. A ticket and new identity papers are waiting for you at the embassy. You fly out tonight.”

“Good. Until tonight, then.”

Utter pandemonium reigned throughout the GLA building and in the surrounding parks and waterfront. It was simplicity itself to walk down the stairwell and let himself out onto Potter’s Field. Terror-stricken people continued to flee the area, spilling out of the GLA building and into the surrounding park. Police were arriving now, many in heavy combat gear, but no one took notice of the lone cameraman with a BBC ID badge clipped to his shirt.

He looked up at the enormous green banner for a moment, hanging ten stories above his head, smiled, then mingled with the fast-thinning crowd and disappeared.