Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

TWENTY-SEVEN

Vitruk came across as the exact older version of the man Stephanie had just been looking at in Chechnya, with a leathered face and a smile for the camera that wasn’t enough to cover the hard cruelty in those photographs. The framing went to a wide shot of Vitruk with a Russian reporter. In the hazy distance was Big Diomede island. A logo said the interview was live, but Stephanie couldn’t be sure because Fox was taking it straight off the Russian channel. Harry turned up the volume.

‘Yes, of course, without doubt, Russia utterly condemns the attack on the Federal Reserve, as do I,’ said Vitruk.

‘Then why raise your fucking flag now?’ muttered Harry.

‘That was an act of horror that has nothing to do with my government,’ Vitruk went on. ‘America has many enemies, including among its own people, as we know. Everything I am doing here is being conducted under international law.’

Vitruk spoke about the medical evacuation and the new border, and Stephanie ran scenarios through her mind. What was his endgame? The presenter even pressed him on the hostages in the school, and Vitruk insisted the villagers were there voluntarily. What exactly was he doing and why? She repeated the question to herself until it echoed like a chant. The screen split, with Vitruk on one side and shots of Carrie on the other working with paramedics in the gymnasium, blunt but effective propaganda. It switched again to the corpses on the plateau at the top of the island with both the presenter and Vitruk expressing shock and outrage. Harry’s face creased with curiosity.

‘We’ve got someone out there,’ explained Stephanie. As she outlined the barest details, she realized now how crucial Ozenna would be to what unfolded next. She told Harry of the decision for him to cross to the Russian base.

‘Tough one,’ Harry said after a pause, thinking. ‘My guess is that Vitruk will fly back to the base as soon as he’s done with the TV and he’ll have worked out a way to protect his aircraft from us taking it out.’

‘If we could kill him, would that end it?’

‘What do you think, Steph? You said you had something else in mind.’

She poured herself more coffee, mixing the hot with the tepid, and kept pacing. ‘When did we last have a showdown like this with Moscow?’

‘Ukraine 2014.’

‘That wasn’t a direct confrontation.’

‘The cold war—’

‘Yes, but I mean a head-to-head challenge.’

Harry took a moment. ‘Way back. 1962. The Cuban missile crisis.’

‘And what happened then?’

‘The communists wanted to put missiles in Cuba, a hundred miles from our coastline. We came to the brink of nuclear war. Then Moscow backed down.’

‘That’s the point, Harry. It didn’t “back down”. Moscow withdrew only when we promised to take our missiles out of Italy and Turkey.’

Harry looked at her quizzically. She had piqued his interest. Even if she were going off on a crazy track, he wanted to hear it. That was how it had always worked between them. Stephanie stopped, put down the cup, and folded her arms. ‘No one’s putting missiles on Little Diomede. There’s no need. But Moscow does need to create leverage to get us away from its borders in Europe.’

‘Breaking NATO’s ring of steel.’

‘Correct. It needs a bargaining chip to achieve that. The only other time Moscow directly threatened American territory was Cuba, and it won concessions. Lagutov begins the crisis now because Swain is on his way out and Holland is raw and new. Holland will step straight into this with a team that has no experience of working together. Bush had more than six months in office before Nine-Eleven; Kennedy had more than eighteen months before Cuba.’

‘And your point?’

‘If this is Russia’s game plan, then it’s not Vitruk going rogue. It’s Lagutov, Grizlov, the whole Russian government.’

There was a quiet knock on the door. Harry’s gaze drifted over as it opened enough to reveal a young woman, dark hair loose on her shoulders, wearing a red silk robe. She could have been taken from a magazine cover. Harry held up his hand with splayed fingers as if to say five more minutes. She flashed Stephanie a silent smile, and the door closed. Stephanie unfolded her arms and reached for her coat. Harry shrugged as if to say, You threw me out when I was a loser; now I’m recovered and I’ve gone for someone younger and less complicated.

‘I’ll get back to the White House, run stuff past them,’ Stephanie said, fighting an urge to ask who the woman was. Was it serious? For how long had he been seeing her? Was it better? She pursed her lips to hide conflicting feelings. If she asked, they would start circling each other and it would get scrappy; it always had and there was no luxury of time for that now. Harry had helped her tonight. A lot.

‘Hold on. What’s this?’ Harry’s concentration returned to the TV screen. Fox News was interviewing Carrie directly inside the school gymnasium. Carrie was angrily gesticulating. Harry turned up the volume. The anchor had a reputation for aggressive questioning. ‘So, you agree then with the Russian assessment that the people of Little Diomede have been neglected?’

‘I’m a doctor. Don’t draw me into your politics.’ Carrie’s face was etched with irritation. ‘Check our findings here against neighborhoods in any American city and compare how normal or bad it is.’

‘When you say “our,” who are you referring to?’

‘I am working with Russian military paramedics.’

‘Cooperatively?’

‘We are medical professionals. That’s what we do.’

‘Then, I have to ask: Do you feel right about coming on air like this?’

Carrie tensed. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You are helping the Russians in this military operation against America. Your parents are Russian—’

‘My father’s Estonian.’

‘They were both citizens of the Soviet Union. Therefore, I have to ask, Dr Walker, because our viewers will want to know, what your loyalties are to Russia?’

Every muscle in Carrie’s face seemed to stiffen. Her eyes sharpened. Stephanie remembered one evening when they got drunk together while she was splitting from Harry. Carrie told how she dealt with whatever operating-theater shit was thrown at her. Stay focused. No crying in surgery. Keep punching on. That was what she delivered now, upfront and personal to the anchor: ‘How do you feel about promoting an enemy state while drawing your seven-figure salary behind your studio presenter’s desk?’

‘Excuse me, Dr Walker!’ The anchor looked stunned.

‘Your network has just given Russia millions of dollars of free publicity.’

‘That’s not the—’

‘Yes, it is!’

‘Dr Walker, I have to—’

‘Don’t you dare cut me off! I’m here because I was ordered at gunpoint to go on air to tell your audience what I’ve seen and done. And you consorted with Moscow—’

‘What I meant was—’

‘Your question was phrased to imply that I was being unpatriotic.’

‘I appreciate it must be stressful—’

‘You asked if I felt right about supporting the enemy.’

‘Yes, I did.’ The anchor recovered her composure, but only for a second.

‘I feel fine about it. And I’ll tell you what’s happening next. In the next few minutes I’m being ordered into a Russian helicopter with Admiral Vitruk to fly three miles across to Big Diomede to help in an operation to drain fluid from the brain of a one-day-old United States citizen. Why don’t you keep your cameras rolling, and ask your audience if they want President Swain to comply with your definition of patriotism and shoot our aircraft down?’

‘There’s that bit of intel we wanted,’ said Harry, as the newscast switched to a commercial break. ‘Vitruk protects himself by taking Dr Carrie Walker with him.’ Harry held Stephanie’s coat to help her into it. She took it from him and did it herself.

‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ she said. ‘By painting Carrie a traitor, they’re making her expendable.’

‘Yes. They won’t touch her on this flight. But if they choose to strike later and the casualty cost is limited to, say, eighty Eskimos and a traitor, then yes, they could get away with it.’

‘That would be Holland, not Swain,’ said Stephanie.

‘Don’t underestimate Swain.’

They walked to the entrance. Harry opened the door to a blast of cold night air. To her surprise, he kissed her lightly on the lips, then hugged her. ‘It’s good working with you again, Madam Ambassador. We’ll fix it, you and I.’

Stephanie walked into the Oval Office where Swain’s advisors were watching her Prime Minister address shift-change workers on the New Jersey docks. The television shot was stunning, Slater raising his arms, turning to the Statue of Liberty, the camera moving from the Manhattan skyline to the transfixed expressions of his audience. Slater stood next to Jeff Walsh, the union leader she had met at that dinner that now seemed so long ago. They looked like two ageing revolutionaries, brothers in arms, voices for the forgotten and ignored.

When Slater had suggested that he make this speech, she’d thought it a crazy idea. If his task was to rally support in Europe, why would a British Prime Minister make his case to American dockworkers in the middle of the night? Why not do it with a few discreet phone calls?

But she was wrong. Slater had warmed them up and they looked as if they were hanging on his every word. He spoke about the universal aspiration of mankind, a bond that no one nation could break. ‘A bond forged by working men and women, like you, not jumped-up politicians seeking a cause for war.’ A single wolf whistle was picked up by others to create cheering applause. ‘Way to go, Kev,’ came a shout, followed by another. ‘Right on, Europe.’ Slater wrapped his arm around Walsh. ‘Shoulder to shoulder. Shoulder to shoulder,’ he shouted, and the chant ran like a Mexican wave with fists pummeling the air, dockers linking arms and the camera director skillfully picking out the faces of firemen, police, paramedics, the civilian heroes who kept people safe.

‘And my message to the Russians on Alaska is clear and direct,’ Slater continued as the cheering subsided. ‘Leave, and leave now. Leave and be free.’ Sleet across lamps, breath on faces, the camera moved from him to the crowd, the stamping of feet, the raising of arms. No one else could have pulled it off as Slater had. She disagreed with just about all his policies, but she had never heard a finer orator or seen a more skillful working of a crowd.

‘And to my colleagues in Europe…’ Slater was saying as Stephanie’s phone lit up, a message from Harry. She read it and looked up, stunned and afraid. Prusak was on the phone too, his eyes on the television. The Defense Secretary took a call. A moment later, the Secretary of State did the same. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff took two fast steps to the Oval Office desk. ‘Sir, they’re saying we shot down another Russian helicopter.’

‘Who’s saying?’ said Swain.

‘Tin City radar station picking up Russian military traffic. It’s the one Dr Carrie Walker was on.’

Stephanie re-read Harry’s message — Vitruk’s helicopter down. A Moscow number on Stephanie’s phone lit up. Sergey Grizlov.