Cauldron

CHAPTER 11 Confederation

Falling snow blanketed the steep, wooded Maryland hills surrounding Camp David, drifting down out of a slate-gray sky. Soft white flakes settled gently across the mountainside presidential retreat. Wisps of steam rose from an outdoor heated swimming pool, glowing brightly in the light thrown by flood-lamps dotting the compound. Beyond the shining mists, men moved in the darkness growing beneath the nearest trees — Secret Service agents on guard duty.

Dogs barked in the distance — faint and far off. The snow hushed all sounds and made all the world seem at peace.

“Ross? Are you all right?”

Huntington turned away from the window. The President, Harris Thurman, and the others crowded into Aspen Cottage’s small wood-paneled parlor were staring at him. Damn. He’d let his mind wander when he should have been paying attention. The President needed an advisor who could give cogent advice. Not a daydreamer wrapped in his own weariness.

He forced a tired smile. “I’m fine, Mr. President. Just a little short on sleep is all.”

That was a half-truth hovering on the edge of being a full-fledged lie. Constant travel, stress, and gnawing worry over what he saw happening in Europe were taking a serious toll on his health. For the first time since he’d left the hospital two years ago, Huntington felt warning signs from his heart — warning signs he couldn’t easily ignore. An aching right arm and jaw. Trouble breathing after almost any unexpected exertion. Even climbing a single flight of stairs too fast left him winded.

He knew it showed. His wife was starting to look scared again. She wanted him to go in for a checkup, but he’d been putting her off.

A doctor would probably order him to slow down, to take some time for himself. And he couldn’t. His time belonged to the United States and to the President. As long as the nation’s chief executive found his efforts and counsel valuable, personal considerations had to be put on the back burner.

Crap, Huntington told himself. He reined his ego in before it soared out of control. The real truth was that he didn’t want to quit. He’d felt lost and useless after that first heart attack shoved him into early retirement. Gaining the President’s trust had helped him regain his own confidence, Settling for enforced idleness at home or on a golf course somewhere would mean surrendering to boredom and quiet despair all over again.

Besides, he couldn’t give up. Not now. Not when a crucial part of the foreign policy he’d helped shape seemed close to total collapse.

Political shock waves from the LNG tanker explosion were still echoing around the globe. Aided and abetted by the French, environmental extremists were using the North Star disaster as a rallying point for further, more radical opposition to tanker traffic in the Baltic. Even the region’s moderate, unaligned governments — Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic republics — were under increasing pressure to openly oppose the U.S.-and-British-led energy supply effort.

The administration itself was sharply divided over the wisdom of continued oil and gas shipments to Eastern Europe. An uneasy coalition formed by the Secretaries of Energy, Defense, and State still backed the program. But its cabinet-level critics were growing bolder, buoyed by polls that showed public opinion sliding their way. So far the President’s clear determination to help the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks had kept a lid on the debate. Policymakers sparring over the shipments were keeping their disputes out of public view. All that could change overnight if any of them sensed their leader’s resolution weakening.

Huntington knew how easily actions could be misinterpreted. Rightly or wrongly, the officials who opposed the President’s energy aid program saw him, Huntington, as the “evil genius” behind it. So if he threw in the towel and went home, even for medical reasons, he might take the cabinet’s shaky consensus with him. All their bickering and bitterness could break out into the open and onto the front page. And isolationist vultures in both Congress and the media were already circling — ready to pounce the first time the administration wavered.

That was the deciding factor.

France and Germany were waiting in the wings. Waiting for a cold-war-weary America to abandon the Eastern European countries to their tender mercies. Well, Ross Huntington would be damned before he’d walk away and watch that happen. Not without one hell of a fight. This wasn’t just another memo-riddled skirmish between factions scrapping for control over the administration’s agenda. There were bodies in the Gdansk morgue to prove that. For all practical purposes, whoever had planted the bomb aboard the SeaTrans North Star had declared war on the United States.

The President shared his view of the situation. Which explained this emergency meeting at Camp David.

Huntington studied the men grouped together near the parlor’s stone fireplace. As always, Harris Thurman stood closest to the President, wreathed in the smooth-smelling tobacco smoke curling from his favorite pipe. Despite that, his lean, patrician features were tense. As the Secretary of State, a lot of the political flak lobbed at the oil supply effort was coming his way. In contrast, Clinton Scofield, the Secretary of Energy, looked considerably calmer. He leaned against a wall with his arms folded comfortably in front of him. The Secretary of Defense, John Lucier, stood beside Scofield, shorter by several inches than anyone else in the room. His intelligent brown eyes gleamed behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. The final member of the group, Walter Quinn, head of the CIA, perched on an armchair pulled up next to the fireplace. From time to time the CIA chief mopped sweat off his high, balding forehead, but he stayed right where he was. Caught between a desk job, a slow metabolism, and an aversion to exercise, Quinn carried enough extra weight to be far more comfortable sitting down than standing up. He’d learned how to cope with heat during half a lifetime spent suffering through Washington’s sweltering summers.

All of them were dressed casually, sporting a mix of jeans and corduroy trousers, sweaters, open hunting vests, and unzipped ski jackets. And all of them supported the President’s decision to aid the Eastern European republics.

The White House press office was telling reporters they were at Camp David for a day’s cross-country skiing, but every one of them knew that was pure bullshit. Calling the day-long gathering a ski trip gave the cabinet officers who hadn’t been invited up the mountainside a way to save face. In reality, the President wanted to reassess events in Europe without sparking another clash between those who wanted to help the three small countries and those who’d just as soon ignore them.

Huntington moved closer to the fire and away from the window. He didn’t see any point in giving his exhausted mind more chances to roam free. He was here to explore policy options, not to stare out at the falling snow.

They had already been at it for hours.

Scofield made room for him by the fireplace and kept talking. “What I’m saying, Mr. President, is that unless we take some pretty dramatic steps pretty damned quick, the whole Gdansk operation is dead in the water. Finished.”

“Insurance problems?”

“Sure.” The Energy Secretary ran a hand through his unruly red hair. “Lloyd’s and the other maritime insurers have jacked Baltic tanker rates up three or four hundred percent in just the last two days. That’s pushing costs way beyond what the Poles can afford and way beyond what we’d budgeted.”

He frowned. “Plus, I’ve been getting calls from every shipping firm and oil company we’ve been able to rope into this thing. They want out. Now, not later. Nobody bargained for what happened to North Star.”

“Shit.” The President rubbed his jaw, thinking hard. “What’s the supply situation like over there?”

“Still not good.” Scofield looked grim. “Even operating nonstop, we were barely able to move in enough oil and gas. My people tell me all three countries are down to a ten-day margin. Maybe less if the weather stays bad.”

Christ. Huntington’s mouth went dry. The Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks had almost unimaginably rigid conservation programs in place. No one with a private automobile could get any gasoline to keep it running. All cities were under strict, energy-saving curfews. And dozens of factories were operating only sporadically, idling tens of thousands of trained workers. Citizens in the three nations already faced lives that were increasingly dark, dreary, gloomy, and cold. He doubted their governments could survive for very long if matters got much worse.

He knew Scofield, Thurman, and the others shared the same somber conviction. He could see it on their faces.

The President stared into the fire, obviously making the same depressing calculations. For just an instant, sagging shoulders and a haggard, careworn look showed his true age. But when he looked up again, his aides saw only the same firm, youthful expression he was careful to show the public. “All right, gentlemen. We tried to help our friends out of a jam, and now we’ve been suckerpunched. The question is, what should we do about it?”

“Giving up isn’t an option?” Scofield asked quietly.

“No.”

The Energy Secretary nodded, satisfied. “Then we roll with the punch, Mr. President. We roll with it and shake it off.” He straightened up. “First we have to keep the oil and gas flowing. To do that, we’re going to have to insure the tankers ourselves. Provide total coverage against any losses.”

“And where do we find the money?” Harris Thurman didn’t conceal his skepticism. “Good God, man, they’re saying the bill for the North Star explosion will run close to a billion dollars by the time all the lawyers are through. What if there’s another disaster on the same scale? We couldn’t begin to scrape that much extra funding together — not without going to the Congress.”

“Exactly.” Scofield smiled tightly. “That’s why we have to make sure there aren’t any more so-called disasters.”

He glanced at the shorter man standing by his side. “And that’s where the navy comes in. Right, John?”

The Secretary of Defense stepped forward into the flickering firelight. “Precisely.” He turned to the President. “I’ve talked to the chief of naval operations, sir. We could have an escort force on station in a week. Sooner if the British will join us. Put enough ships and surveillance aircraft around any tanker and you can be pretty sure she’ll arrive safely.”

“A carrier battle group?”

“Not necessarily, Mr. President. A carrier operating in the North Sea could prove useful, but most of the real work would have to be done by smaller stuff — frigates and destroyers. The Baltic is too confined for anything bigger.” Lucier adjusted his glasses, pushing them tighter across his nose. “I think we’d also be wise to deploy a few Patriot and Hawk missile batteries around the harbor perimeter.”

The Defense Secretary’s lips tightened in a quick, thin smile. “Just in case some troubled maniac decides to take a bomb-loaded Cessna for a spin over Poland.”

“Sensible.” The President stood quietly for a moment with his hands in his pockets. Then he nodded. “Okay, John. Work up your plan and have it ready for me to look over. By tomorrow morning, if possible.”

“Sir, you’re not seriously considering this?” Harris Thurman sounded more and more agitated. “Sending U.S. forces in harm’s way for somebody else’s oil is practically guaranteed to set Congress off like a Roman candle. Pendleton and the rest of them will crucify you for risking American lives overseas.”

The President swung around to face his Secretary of State. “They can try, Harris. But I’m the commander in chief. I’m the one the people elected to watch over this country’s vital interests. Not Pendleton or the Senate majority leader. Hell, if the people don’t like the job I’m doing, they can always throw me out on my ear in the next election. Clear?”

“Of course, Mr. President.” Thurman backed off and tried another tack. “But I still think we might be jumping the gun a bit. All this protection against terrorists or commandos could be completely unnecessary. How do we know what happened to North Star wasn’t just a freak accident?”

“Because there’s almost no chance that it was.” Scofield stepped into the argument again. “I’ve had DOE and gas industry experts going over every detail they can get their hands on. The weather that night. The ship’s position. Crew experience. Maintenance records. The whole kit and caboodle. And not one of them can concoct a scenario that would result in that kind of explosion. Not without more warning.”

The President turned to Huntington. “You were just there, Ross. Are the Poles still convinced this was a deliberate case of sabotage?”

“They are.” Huntington nodded. “They’re still digging hard for evidence, any evidence, to confirm their suspicions. Their police and military intelligence people are questioning anyone who might have seen anything suspicious out near the anchorage.” He frowned. “But so far nothing’s turned up.”

“I’m not surprised.” Walter Quinn spoke up suddenly. “I don’t think there’s anything for them to find.”

“Oh?”

“Waiting until the tanker was anchored right off the Polish coast seems too risky. Anyone caught snooping around that mooring area would have been damned hard-pressed to explain what they were doing there.” The CIA director shook his head. “Professionals don’t like working without a safety net. They’d pick somewhere busier, with more ships of all types coming and going. Somewhere they could slip into without being noticed and still get out of fast if anything went wrong.”

Quinn wiped his forehead again and this time pushed his chair back a foot or so from the fire. “That’s why we’re fairly sure whoever sabotaged the North Star did it long before she ever reached Gdansk. Maybe while she was still loading in Stavanger. Maybe sometime during her transit through the Skagerrak or the Kattegat.”

He shrugged. “Trouble is, there are just too many bases to cover. I’ve got officers spread through the region and so do both the British and the Norwegians, but it’s like hunting for a needle that’s not only hidden but invisible as well.”

The President, Thurman, and the others nodded their understanding. Without any physical evidence to narrow down the type of explosive device or even its location aboard the ship, Quinn’s agents faced a Herculean challenge. They didn’t know whether to look for a turncoat dockworker, bearded Green lunatics aboard a sailboat, or a highly trained commando team sent in by minisub.

Suddenly Huntington’s mind came alive as he remembered what he’d seen and been told at the Polish port. He lifted a hand, interrupting the CIA chief. “Hold on, Walt. It’s likely this mine or bomb or whatever it was, was set to go off at a particular time, right?”

Quinn nodded. “Probably. Command detonation would be chancy — especially through the water or a metal hull. Radio waves don’t travel too well through either medium. Given that, using a timed device of some sort would be the best method.”

“And that’s exactly why we know the explosives were planted sometime after the North Star arrived off Gdansk.” Huntington looked around the parlor. “The tanker didn’t offload on schedule. We all know that now. But who could have known that before she got there?”

He answered his own question. “Nobody. By the time she showed up, Gdansk was taking ships in on almost a catch-as-catch-can basis. Some tankers were in and out of the port on schedule. Others wound up days late.”

Quinn looked puzzled. “I don’t see your point.”

“Think about it.” Huntington felt excitement rising inside. It was the same feeling he used to get when he spotted the solution to a stubborn production problem or when he held a winning poker hand. “If the explosives were planted aboard any earlier, they’d have been timed to go off while the North Star was in port. Anchored smack-dab in the middle of Gdansk instead of sitting several miles offshore.”

Scofield saw it first. “Of course. Not even those bastards in Paris or Berlin would destroy a whole city just to cut off Polish oil imports.”

The President turned his gaze on the CIA director. “I think your invisible needle just turned visible, Walt. And the Poles are looking in exactly the right place.”

“So it seems, Mr. President,” Quinn said stiffly, obviously irked and embarrassed at being one-upped by an amateur. Huntington had a feeling that the director’s senior advisors were in for a tongue-lashing when he got back to Langley.

Fortunately for the CIA chief, the President seemed more interested in the next move than in finding fault for past errors. “Okay, Walt. I want a full-court press from every intelligence organization and asset we’ve got, focusing on the area around Gdansk. Satellite photos. SIGINT. Everything. Get your field people in touch with the Poles and coordinate with them. Somewhere, somehow, there’s evidence that connects the goddamned French or the Germans to what happened. And I want it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The President paced to the window and stood staring out into the fading afternoon. “Then, when Pendleton or any other congressional son-of-a-bitch starts moaning about our support for Poland, I’ll be ready to fire back.”

“That could be very risky, Mr. President,” Thurman warned. “Telling the American people that French or German agents murdered the North Star’s crew could rouse a fire storm of public fury — one we couldn’t control.”

“You think we should just look the other way?”

Thurman paused to relight his pipe, then nodded slowly. “There are precedents.”

Huntington knew that was true. During the cold war, the Soviets had shot down several U.S. reconnaissance aircraft — some over the Sea of Japan, others closer to the Russian coast. And Israeli jets had turned a U.S. intelligence ship, the Liberty, into a flaming, bombed-out wreck during the 1967 Six-Day War. In each case, the United States had ruled out direct retaliation or even immediate public disclosure. At the time no one in power had wanted to provoke a crisis or escalate existing tensions.

“After all, a quiet, unofficial approach to Paris with the information could…”

The President turned his head. The cold, grim expression on his face choked Thurman off in midsentence. “First we find the evidence, Mr. Secretary. Then I will decide what we do with it.”

He turned back to the window. More lights were coming on around Camp David as the day gave way to another long winter night.

Nicolas Desaix stood near the entrance to the old European Parliament’s debating chamber, watching government officials from half the continent mingle with one another, each surrounded by a gaggle of junior aides and translators. The vast hall was one great sea of gray — gray hair, gray suits, and dull, gray faces.

What a gathering of apes in fancy dress, he thought sourly.

The prospect of spending the next several days in close contact with these bumpkins from a dozen different countries was anything but pleasing. Nevertheless, it was the price he would have to pay to see his dreams for a Europe united under Franco-German influence take final shape. This conference was a necessary formality. The little nations must have their chance to babble and fume and fuss before they signed agreements already reached by their powerful patrons. International diplomacy was a game more of form than of substance.

Well, so be it.

Desaix donned a pleasant smile suited to the occasion and sauntered through the crowd, exchanging friendly words with those he knew and polite nods with those he didn’t. It was an exhausting charade. Delegates from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, and Hungary approached him one after the other, each seeking some special concession or sign of French favor. Each went away dazzled by his charm and completely empty-handed. Their Serbian, Romanian, and Bulgarian neighbors followed close behind, and received the same polite attention.

He moved on, paying careful heed to several of the neutral observers attending the conference. Russia, Ukraine, and Denmark were all nations he had set his sights on. Bringing them into the emerging European Confederation would greatly increase its size and power. The new alliance would then run unchecked from the Atlantic to the Urals and beyond.

Or almost unchecked, he reminded himself.

There were still no representatives in Strasbourg from Warsaw, Prague, or Bratislava. Desaix pondered that irritably while swapping meaningless courtesies with one of the Russians. The Eastern Europeans were proving far more recalcitrant than he’d imagined possible. What else would it take to bring them to heel?

“Minister!”

Desaix glanced toward the voice, frowning as he recognized one of his own aides. He drew away to a quieter corner. “What is it, Girault?”

The younger man handed him a wire service printout. “It’s the Americans, Minister. And the British. They’re going to keep shipping oil and gas to Gdansk. And they’re sending warships to escort each tanker from now on!”

Desaix was stunned. “What? Impossible!”

“The American Secretary of Defense made the announcement an hour ago.” Girault pointed to the crumpled piece of paper still clutched in his superior’s hands. “He called it Operation Safe Passage.”

The Foreign Minister skimmed through the report, his jaw tightening as he realized that his aide was right. Against every expectation, the Americans and their British lapdogs were not abandoning their attempt to break the Russian oil embargo. If anything, they were upping the ante. Committing military forces to the Baltic was a clear signal that the two English-speaking countries planned to reinvolve themselves in Europe’s internal affairs.

That spelled trouble. Trouble because the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks would be even more likely to spurn his latest diplomatic overtures. And trouble because a strengthened Anglo-American presence could only encourage the irresponsible elements already resisting Franco-German influence throughout Europe.

He shoved the printout into his pocket and grabbed Girault by the arm. “Find Chancellor Schraeder and bring him to me. Immediately. Tell him we have important matters to discuss. In private.”

The younger man nodded and hurried away into the milling crowd.

Desaix watched him disappear and then swung away on his heel. His mind was already busy exploring ways to hurry this insufferable conference along. With luck, the Americans and British would soon see their paltry naval venture overshadowed by the power of a newly united Europe.

The National Photo Interpretation Center occupied a large, nondescript office building deep inside Washington’s Navy Yard. Managed by the CIA for the country’s other intelligence services, the NPIC’s several thousand specialists were responsible for analyzing the pictures obtained by America’s orbiting spy satellites. Every president since John F. Kennedy had relied on their skills and expert knowledge during times of crisis.

This President was no different.

Bill Reilly was the senior photo interpreter assigned to the center’s northern Europe section. He’d spent years analyzing satellite pictures covering the old Warsaw Pact’s major naval bases, airfields, and army installations all the way from the Baltic to the Kola Peninsula. So many years, in fact, that he often joked he could find his way around Murmansk better than he could around his own hometown — at least from two hundred miles straight up.

His coworkers called him the KH Gnome. He stood just an inch or so over five feet tall, and even on a good day his short-sleeved shirts, wide ties, and brown or blue slacks looked like he’d slept in them. A surprisingly deep, gravelly voice and tufts of white hair that stuck up despite his best efforts to comb them down only reinforced the nickname.

Now he sat hunched over the wide-screen computer monitor on his desk, studying pictures taken days earlier over Gdansk. The pictures, stored on high-capacity CD-ROM disks, were from a KH-11 satellite pass requested in the hours immediately following the North Star explosion. Storing them on computer saved time and space. It also made them easier to enhance and call back.

The pictures Reilly was scanning were thermal infrared images — images produced by the heat given off by different objects and surfaces. Thermal imaging was a capability only recently added to the KH-11 series satellites to allow night surveillance missions. In the Gnome’s expert view it was a redesign that had been long overdue. The bad guys never seemed to work in broad daylight.

“Hello.” His right hand suddenly stopped moving the mouse he was using to scroll through the series of computer-enhanced images. He’d gone over them once before, right after they’d been shot, downloaded off the MILSTAR network to the Mission Ground Site at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and then uploaded into his computer. But the first lesson in photo interpretation was that you usually only saw what you were looking for. And he’d been studying those first satellite photos to get a handle on the disaster’s size and scope — not its cause.

Even then he’d barely been able to make out anything interesting. The enormous heat “bloom” caused by fires aboard the sinking oil tankers had blotted out an equally enormous amount of detail.

These pictures were different. They’d been broken down, digitized, and “washed” pixel by pixel to produce cleaner, sharper images. More important still, he knew what he was supposed to be looking for this time. Anything odd. Anything that looked out of place near the Gdansk oil port holding area.

And that was exactly what he’d just found.

Reilly used the mouse to draw a quick, ragged circle around the object centered on his computer screen. Several seconds later, NPIC staffers were treated to a rare and startling sight — the KH Gnome sprinting down the corridor to his supervisor’s office in his stocking feet.

“You want me to do what?” Stuart Vance stared down at the artist’s sketch he’d just been handed. It showed what looked like a small, dilapidated fishing trawler from several different angles.

His boss, the CIA’s chief of station in Berlin, said it again, slower this time. “I want you to go looking for that trawler.”

“But why?” Vance saw the older man starting to glower and hastily rephrased his question. “I mean, why this particular trawler?”

“Because the director thinks there’s a good chance the people on board that boat were the ones who blew that LNG tanker to hell and gone.” The station chief held up his own copy of the sketch. “Apparently it showed up on a satellite photo taken right after the explosion.”

Vance chewed on his lower lip and then shrugged, still puzzled. “I guess I still don’t see what the big deal is. What’s so surprising about a fishing trawler steaming around the Baltic? There must be a thousand or so running around up there or out in the North Sea.”

“Maybe. But there are several very strange things about this one.” Berlin’s chief of station started holding up fingers. “First, Gdansk Bay is too polluted for fishing. Seems the old communist government never invested much in sewage treatment plants and the new guys don’t have the money to build them. Second, that boat was spotted way out of the normal channel. Right up against the coast in real shallow water. Pretty stupid if you’re just a law-abiding sailor on your way past Gdansk. But pretty smart if you’re trying to avoid radar detection by mixing in with the coastal clutter.”

He stopped and held up a third finger. “Third? Well, the third one’s the charm in this case. The Poles say nobody, and I mean nobody, saw that trawler. It sailed in that night without lights and it left that night without lights.

“Now, I don’t know what they taught you down at Yale Law School, Vance, but when I was learning how to add two and two to make four, that’s what we’d have called suspicious behavior.”

Vance reddened. The chief of station was a Harvard man and it showed. “Yeah, okay.” Then the tall, fair-haired CIA officer spread his hands helplessly. “But those photos were taken more than ten days ago. That trawler could be almost anywhere by now!”

“Right.” The older man grinned unsympathetically. “That’s why every junior intelligence officer from here to Oslo is going to be very busy for the next couple of weeks or so.”

He walked over to the map pinned on his office wall. “You, Mr. Vance, start at Heringsdorf.” He tapped a tiny dot near the Polish border. “And work your way west toward Kiel.

“I want you to visit every town that’s got so much as a single rotting wharf. Talk to the locals. Find out if any strangers bought or leased a boat like that recently. And if they did, see if you can dig up who they were or claimed to be.” The chief of station showed his teeth again. “Technology can only take us so far, fella. Now we’re down to pure, slogging legwork. In this case, using your legs.”

Great, Vance thought gloomily, join the CIA and get to see a dozen stinking German fishing villages. He folded the sketch in half and left, inwardly fuming at an assignment that seemed certain to be tedious, demeaning, and futile. He passed other young officers waiting outside the station chief’s office for their own orders.

The lambs were going forth to stalk lions.