Divide and Conquer

THIRTY-EIGHT

At 9:22 A.M. Piotr Korsov e-mailed General Orlov a brief data file. The file contained a list of the secure calls that had been intercepted between Azerbaijan and Washington during the past few weeks. Most of those calls had been between the American embassy and either the CIA or the NSA. The Russian Op-Center had been unable to decrypt any of the conversations, but Orlov was able to scratch them off his list. Those calls were pretty much routine and not likely suspects for calls made by the Harpooner.

Over the past few days, there had also been calls to the NSA from Gobustan, a village to the south of Baku. They were all made before the attack on the oil rig. The calls from the embassy to the United States had a slightly different bandwith from the Gobustan calls. That meant the calls were made from different secure phones. In a note attached to the file, Korsov said he was watching for new calls made from either line.

Orlov was not very hopeful. The Harpooner probably would not signal his allies to tell them he had been successful. Whoever he was in league with would hear about that from their own intelligence sources.

The very fact that a secure satellite uplink had played any part in this business was personally disturbing to Orlov. That was the kind of technology his space flights had helped to pioneer — satellite communications. The fact that they were being so expertly abused by terrorists like the Harpooner made him wonder if the technology should have been developed at all. It was the same argument people had made for and against splitting the atom. It had produced plentiful and relatively clean atomic power, but it had also bred the atomic bomb. But Orlov had not had a hand in that work. Just in this.

Then again, Orlov thought, as Boris Pasternak wrote in one of his favorite novels, Doctor Zhivago, “I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.” Progress had to allow monsters like the Harpooner to surface. That was how it showed the creators where the flaws were.

Orlov had just finished reviewing the material when his private internal line beeped. It was Korsov.

“We picked up a ping,” Korsov said excitedly.

“What kind of ping?” Orlov asked. A ping was how his intelligence officers described any kind of electronic communication.

“The same one we recorded as having been sent from Gobustan,” Korsov replied.

“Was the call made from Gobustan?”

“No,” Korsov replied. “It was made from Baku to a site very close by. A site that was also in Baku.”

“How close?” Orlov asked.

“The caller and receiver were less than a quarter mile,” Korsov told him. “We can’t measure distances less than that.”

“Maybe the Harpooner was calling accomplices who have another secure line,” Orlov suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Korsov told him. “The phone call only lasted three seconds. As far as we can tell there was no verbal communication.”

“What was sent?”

“Just an empty signal,” Krosov said. “We’ve fed cartographical data into the computer. Grosky is overlaying the signal and trying to pinpoint the exact location now.”

“Very good,” Orlov said. “Let me know as soon as you have it.”

As soon as Orlov hung up, he put in a call to Mike Rodgers to let him know about the apparent NSA-HARPOONER connection and the possible location of the Harpooner. Then he called Odette. He hoped that the American she had saved was ready to move out. Orlov did not want to send Odette against the Harpooner unassisted, but he would if he had to. Because more than that, he did not want to lose the Harpooner.

As Orlov punched in Odette’s number, he began to feel hopeful and upbeat. The technology that he had helped put into space was actually a two-edged sword. The Harpooner had been using a secure satellite uplink to help destroy lives. Now, with luck, that uplink would have an unexpected use.

To pinpoint the Harpooner and help destroy him.