Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

THIRTY-FOUR

The vibration from the incoming call woke Stephanie from a short deep sleep on the couch in Prusak’s office. She fumbled with her phone, working out where she was. Prusak was by her side. He put in an earpiece for the line intercept and checked his tablet. ‘From the Russian base,’ he said.

Stephanie pressed the answer button.

‘Steph. It’s Carrie.’ The tone was calm and professional.

Stephanie gripped the phone harder than she should. ‘Carrie! Good God! Are you OK?’

‘I’m at the Russian military base on Big Diomede with Admiral Vitruk who instructed me to make this call,’ Carrie said like a doctor delivering a bad diagnosis.

‘The helicopter… the crash…’ Stephanie stumbled on her words. ‘Are you hurt?’ Phone pressed to her ear, she swung her legs off the couch to sit upright.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Carrie’s short precise answer shook Stephanie into doing the same. Vitruk was bound to be listening. This was not a time to show emotion. ‘Are you captive?’ she said.

‘Correct.’

‘Is Captain Ozenna with you?’

‘He is not.’

Stephanie shot a look at Prusak who shrugged as if to say that not even the NSA with all its gadgets had located Ozenna. He patted his hand in the air: Stephanie should hold back and let Carrie talk. An echo peppered with shots of static hung for a few seconds until Carrie said, ‘The Admiral has some requests. He needs a guarantee that the marine units on the northern side of Little Diomede will remain on standby. He wants Captain Ozenna and the civilian Eskimos who are at large with weapons between the two islands to give themselves up. Once that is done he is sure that a solution can be found without further confrontation. He warns, however, that any attack on Big Diomede island will be considered as an attack on Moscow and there will be consequences.’

Prusak mouthed that Stephanie should speak to Vitruk directly. ‘Thank you, Carrie,’ she said. ‘That is very clear. I need to speak directly to Admiral Vitruk.’

She heard Carrie talking in a low voice. When the line picked up again, it was Vitruk. ‘Hello, Madam Ambassador. I trust my requests are clear to you. They are small and I insist they are carried out.’ He spoke with an East Coast drawl, peppered with diplomatic charm, the type Stephanie had handled for years.

‘Your first responsibility, Admiral, is the safety of civilians, including Dr Walker.’

‘Civilian safety is in your hands, not mine. Since we rescued the pregnant teenager, Russia has saved lives. America has taken them.’

Prusak pointed towards the Oval Office. ‘All right, Admiral. I’ll take your wish list to the President. You have my word on that.’

‘Dr Walker is sitting with me,’ said Vitruk. ‘Please be quick. We are at a most critical stage.’

Prusak circled his finger in the air for her to keep the conversation going.

‘Critical stage? What do you mean? We are talking about winding things—’

There came static, clicking, then silence. Stephanie turned the phone round and round in her hand. His reference to a critical stage must mean the missile, nothing to do with Ozenna, except Ozenna could be the only obstacle that now lay between Vitruk and success. A few hours back Vitruk would have thought he had a whole army to take Ozenna out. So far, he had failed.

‘Steph, we need to brief the President,’ said Prusak, opening an adjoining door to the Oval Office. Stephanie desperately wanted to freshen up, splash some water on her face, but that would have to wait. She combed her fingers through her hair and followed Prusak in. Harry was there, unshaven and still wearing the same clothes. She counted twenty-two people, Pacolli, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, others she recognized, including Holland, who was by the window looking subdued and thoughtful. The conversation halted and Prusak signaled Stephanie to speak. She ran through the call recounting the demand that Ozenna surrender and the US troops remain on standby. She ended on Vitruk’s warning about a critical stage. ‘Does anyone know what he means?’ said Swain.

‘Obviously, it’s the transition,’ said Holland. ‘Six hours from now, they’ll be dealing with a new President.’

‘He said we are at a critical stage, not about to go into a critical stage,’ said Stephanie.

‘It has to be the North Korea play. That’s why he needed to communicate directly with the White House,’ said Harry. ‘He was saying that he knows we know about it, the first step of negotiation.’

‘We don’t negotiate,’ said Holland. ‘Kennedy didn’t with Khrushchev when they tried to put missiles in Cuba. I’m damned if I’ll negotiate now.’

Wrong, thought Stephanie. Swain caught her eye and she kept quiet. History lessons must wait. Prusak tapped her elbow, and she guessed from his expectant expression that they were thinking the same thing. She nodded. Prusak reminded the room that Stephanie had received a call from Sergey Grizlov, speaker of the Russian Duma. Would it be worth her trying again to get through to him?

‘To ask him what?’ said Holland.

‘Ask him straight,’ said Stephanie. ‘Is Russia planning an imminent missile strike against the United States?’

‘Would he know?’ said Holland.

‘We can judge a lot through voice analysis,’ said Prusak.

‘Do we have his whereabouts?’ said Swain.

‘He went into the Kremlin an hour ago,’ said Prusak. ‘He may be with Lagutov.’

‘Ask the question and add in nuclear, an imminent nuclear-missile strike,’ said Swain.

‘Once it’s asked, they will know we’re on to them,’ said Harry.

‘Your point?’ said Holland.

‘The question might be the catalyst to a launch, depending how ready they are.’

‘They’re not going to launch if they want to negotiate,’ said Swain.

‘That could hinge on who is actually running the Kremlin,’ said Stephanie.

‘Is Ozenna still bound by the deadline, sir?’ said Pacolli, who was lining up airstrikes less than four hours from now.

‘Nothing substantive has changed.’

The finality of Swain’s statement abruptly ended the quick-fire conversation. Stephanie understood Swain’s thinking. Obliterating the base before Holland took office threw down a marker to stop hostilities before the world was plunged into all-out war. It also gave Holland a choice. He could continue his plans to strike the Russian mainland and North Korea or he could sue for peace. Swain was giving him a clean plate.

‘I’ll ask about an imminent nuclear strike against the United States and its allies,’ said Stephanie. ‘That would cover Japan and South Korea.’

Swain nodded. Harry said, ‘Use the Narva registered phone.’

Swain looked quizzical and Harry explained about the phone registered to the city in Estonia that was mainly populated by ethnic Russians. But Stephanie disagreed. Why should Grizlov answer a direct call from a stranger in Estonia when he might not from her? ‘I’ll try mine first, then the Narva phone,’ she said.

Harry said nothing. No one spoke. She scrolled to the last call from Grizlov and dialed. It rang three times and went to voicemail, a woman’s voice asking callers to leave a message for Chairman Grizlov. She cut the line. ‘Should I leave a message? “Call me” — something like that?’

‘No,’ said Swain. ‘But try again.’

Stephanie switched phones, punched in the number, and gave it a full minute. No one moved. The silence in the Oval Office was oppressive. Prusak put his finger to his earpiece for the intercept. She pressed Call and caught Harry’s gaze of approval as the first ring sparked up, then two more and she heard her former lover’s voice. ‘Speaker Grizlov, can I help you?’ His voice was friendly, full of charm and confidence. She detected no background noise, no traffic, no hotel lobby music, no muttering of other voices.

‘Sergey, it’s Stephanie. I need to know—’

There was a click, the same bouncing electronic silence, the same voicemail. Stephanie cut the line. Was that her one shot? He had declined her call on her known number, picked up the unknown one, heard her voice, and run away? Or was it a bad place to talk? Too risky? In which case, would he call back? An atmosphere of disappointment enveloped the room, then Holland asked, ‘How would we take out this Toksong missile base?’

Pacolli answered. ‘A GBU-57 bomb dropped from the B-2 stealth will drill down into the bunker before exploding. That’s a fifty three hundred-pound warhead which would destroy everything at that launch site.’

‘What would be the radiation leak levels?’ asked Swain.

‘Limited, sir. Secondary aircraft could deliver foam sealant to the strike site that would hold long enough for ground forces to get there—’

‘Whose ground forces?’ asked Holland.

‘They would be North Korean or Chinese,’ said Pacolli.

‘They would have to be ours,’ said Holland.

‘That would be impossible in the time frame.’

‘How long to do that strike?’ said Holland.

‘Fourteen hours from the order, sir,’ said Pacolli. ‘They’re at Whiteman’s Air Force Base in Missouri. Or we could be there in three hours out of Osan, South Korea with the HVPW and F-35s. That’s a smaller, more versatile version of the bomb, but it could work.’

‘I don’t like the word “could”,’ said Holland. ‘It has to be a single strike. Where is our closest nuclear launch?’

‘USS Florida,’ said Pacolli. ‘She’s in the Sea of Japan and carries nuclear armed cruise missiles. That would be a strike within a couple of hours.’

‘And is that “could” or “would” destroy?’

‘Guaranteed, sir. A conventional strike with a GBU-57 out of Missouri or a nuclear strike from the USS Florida are certainties. The F-35s from Osan — their payload might not have the explosive power to do the business.’

‘I recommend the nuclear,’ said Holland. ‘North Korea’s been a live unexploded mine from another era for too long. To protect America, we need to get rid of it and move on.’

Harry spoke up. ‘Sir, if we collapse the North Korean regime, it would take a hundred thousand troops two months to secure all of its nuclear arsenal during which time renegade generals will be hawking nuclear material to terror groups around the world. It will take another two hundred fifty thousand troops to stabilize the country, and the humanitarian crisis would make the Middle East look like a school picnic outing. And to get anything done we would have to work closely with the Chinese and the Russians.’

Harry had nailed it again. There was another pause. Stephanie kept coming back to the same question. Is it just Vitruk? Is it Russia? Is it Russia and China?

‘The economy, Tom?’ Swain asked Treasury Secretary Thomas Grant, who was also the temporary Federal Reserve chair. Grant spoke slowly and with confidence. ‘A conventional single strike will wobble the markets, but they will hold, depending on the response. Nuclear would create panic that could rupture the global economy into deep recession.’

‘But worse if that Topol-M with a nuclear warhead hits Hawaii or California,’ said Holland.

‘Strangely, sir, not. It would have less of an economic impact.’

Holland’s brow creased with suspicion. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘This is not a time for kidding, sir. The United States is stronger and more versatile than either Russia or China. If we strike first, the markets will see it as the world’s biggest economy becoming unpredictable and out of control.’

‘There is no love lost between China and Russia,’ said Stephanie. ‘The deep mistrust is exactly what Nixon exploited in his 1974 visit. If we get China onside—’

‘Screw the Chinese. They let that damn missile across into North Korea,’ said Holland. ‘We used nuclear weapons on Japan in 1945 to save lives and bring peace. That is what we will be doing here.’

Power was shifting away from Swain. In a few hours, Swain, Prusak, Pacolli, and others would be gone. At some stage, Stephanie would have to speak to Slater, mid-Atlantic on his way to London, but not yet. She had another idea. It wasn’t that it would work, or even change things. But it bought time and offered an alternative to the world’s first nuclear strike since 1945. ‘Why don’t we comply with Vitruk’s wishes?’ she said.

‘Are you crazy, Ambassador?’ said Holland.

‘The troops are on standby anyway. We can’t contact Ozenna. We can comply and do nothing. We call him. Keep up the conversation.’

The common sense of Stephanie’s suggestion rippled through the room. ‘Do it,’ said Swain. Stephanie flipped her phone over in her hand and dialed Vitruk again.