Mirror Image

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Griff Egenes returned to the Oval Office.

"State troopers are on the way to Forest Road," he said, "and one of my teams is choppering in from New York. They'll have this lunatic before the half hour."

"He won't fight them," said Burkow.

Egenes sat heavily. "What do you mean'?"

"I mean, we've given him what he wants. He'll spout some radical crap and let himself be taken."

"Shit," said Egenes. "I really wanted to squeeze him."

"Me too," said Burkow.

The National Security Chief turned to Mike Rodgers. Though the mood in the Oval Office was grim, Burkow owned the gravest face of the group.

"So, Mike?" Burkow asked. "Who are these creatures and how do we squash the rest of them?"

"Before you answer," said the President, "can someone tell me if the Russians have anything going militarily that can snowball into an invasion? Aren't we supposed to watch for these things?"

Mel Parker, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the administration's silent man, said, "While Ekdol was busy dictating terms of unconditional surrender, I rang Defense Secretary Colon. He called the Pentagon. I'm told that several Russian divisions are on maneuvers right at the Ukrainian border. Pretty big numbers compared to what they usually do in the region, but nothing that would have sent up a warning signal."

"No troop movements anywhere else?" Rodgers asked.

"NRO is putting all their resources into finding out," Parker replied.

"But the border could be a staging area," the President said.

"It could very well be," said Parker.

"There's the goddamn problem," said FBI chief Egenes. "All this downsizing. We have too few HUMINT resources. A satellite can't tell us about foot soldiers bitching about tomorrow's march or what it says on a map inside a field tent. That's where the real intelligence is."

"That's a problem," Rodgers agreed, "but it has very little to do with this situation."

"How so?" asked Rachlin.

"The truth is," said Rodgers, "this Groznyite didn't buy himself a thing."

"What do you mean?" asked Tobey, who had been silent as she took notes for Burkow.

"Assume there's an invasion," Rodgers said, "say Russia goes into the Ukraine. We wouldn't intervene."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because then we'd be at war with Russia," Rodgers said, "and what do we do next? We don't have the capacity to wage an effective conventional war. We proved that in Haiti and Somalia. If we tried, casualties would be heavy and they'd be all over TV. The public and Congress would shut us down faster than a crap game in church. And we can't go in with missiles, bombers, and big-scale attacks because of the collateral damage and civilian casualties."

"I'm crying big, fat, Betty Boop tears," Burkow said. "It's a war. People are going to get hurt. And if I'm not mistaken, the Russians fired the first salvo against a bunch of civilians in New York City."

"We don't know that the Russian government authorized that," Egenes pointed out.

"Exactly," said Secretary Lincoln. "And frankly, as unpopular as this might be, I'm not sure I'd want to see us fight a war for Eastern Europe, even a just one. Germany and France wouldn't join us. They might not even support us. NATO could conceivably turn on us. The expense of repelling Russia and rebuilding those nations after a war would be horrendous."

"No," Burkow said with an edge of disgust. "Better to build another Maginot Line to keep the enemy out, like the Three Little Pigs and their house of straw. I don't buy that. I believe you go to the den of the Big Bad Wolf, napalm the bejesus out of him, and make a coat from what's left. I know that isn't the politically, sensitive thing to do, but we're not the ones who started this."

"Tell me," Lincoln asked Rodgers, "did the Japanese send you a box of chocolates and a thank-you note when you stopped Tokyo from being evaporated by those North Korean nodong missiles?"

"I didn't do it for a Pat on the back," said Rodgers. "I did it because it was right."

"And we were all very proud of you," Lincoln said. "But I still count two Americans dead versus zero Japanese.

The President said, "I'm in Mel's camp on this one, but we're losing sight of our immediate problem: who's behind this and why." He looked at his watch. "I'm scheduled to go on the air at ten past eleven to talk about the bombing. Tobey, will you have the speech updated to talk about the capture of the bomber thanks to the fast work of the FBI, CIA, and others?"

The National Security Assistant nodded and walked to the nearest phone.

The President regarded Rodgers. "General, is this why you advised me to capitulate to the bomber? Because we were going to do what he wanted anyway?"

"No, sir," said Rodgers. "The truth is, we didn't capitulate to him. We distracted him."

Lawrence leaned back, his hands behind his head. "From what?"

"Our counterattack," Rodgers said.

"Against whom?" Burkow asked. "The prick told us who he was with and turned himself in."

"But follow the thread backward," Rodgers said.

"We're listening," said the President.

Rodgers leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Sir, Grozny takes its name from Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Terrible—"

"Why am I not surprised?" muttered Rachlin.

"As far back as the Revolution, they've worked for political gain, not money," Rodgers said. "They were fifth columnists in Germany during the War and caused some minor trouble here during the Cold War. We traced some of the early, unmanned Redstone rocket failures to them."

"Who finances them?" asked Parker.

"Until recently," said Rodgers, "they were underwritten by extreme nationalistic political forces that needed terrorist enforcers. Gorbachev disbanded them in the mid-1980s, at which point they hunkered down overseas, especially in the U.S. and South America, and joined with the increasingly powerful Russian mafia in an effort to overthrow their westernized leaders."

"So they must really hate Zhanin," said Lincoln.

"You've got it," said Rodgers.

"But if they're not tied to the government," the President said, "what can they be planning in Eastern Europe? A military operation of any size can't be run without the approval of the Kremlin. This isn't Chechnya, with a handful of generals in the field dictating military policy to President Yeltsin."

"Hell," Rachlin observed, "I never believed he wasn't calling the shots behind his hand the whole time."

"That's just it," Rodgers said. "Something big just might be run without the Kremlin. What we saw in Chechnya in 1994 was the beginning of a trend toward decentralization in Russia. It's a big country with eight time zones. Suppose someone finally woke up there and said, 'This is like a dinosaur. It needs a couple of brains to make the whole work'?"

The President regarded Rodgers. "Has someone, in fact, done this?"

Rodgers said, "Before the blast, Mr. President, we intercepted a bagel order sent from St. Petersburg to a shop in New York."

"A bagel order?" said Burkow. "Get real."

"That was my reaction," said Rodgers. "We noodled around with it, but it didn't make any sense until after the blast. Using the Midtown Tunnel as a point on a grid, one of our cryptologists figured out that it was a map of New York, with the tunnel as one of the highlights."

"Were the other points secondary targets?" asked Egenes. "After all, the World Trade Center bombers had alternate targets, including the Lincoln Tunnel."

"I don't think so," said Rodgers. "It looked to our analyst like stops in the bomb-making process. Now, Larry— you'll bear me out on this. For a couple of months now, we've been picking up microwave radiation from the Neva in St. Petersburg."

"It's really been cooking over there," Rachlin agreed.

"We thought the radiation was coming from a TV studio being built in the Hermitage," said Rodgers. "We now believe that the studio is a front for some kind of top-secret operation."

"A second 'brain' for the dinosaur," said Lincoln.

"Exactly," said Rodgers. "It was financed, apparently, using funds approved by Interior Minister Nikolai Dogin."

"The loser in the elections," said the President.

"The same," Rodgers said. "And there's one thing more. A British agent was killed trying to have a look at the place. So something is going on there. And whatever it is, whether it's a command center or military base, it's probably connected to the attack in New York through that bagel order."

"So," said Av Lincoln, "we have the Russian government, or some faction thereof, in league with an outlawed terrorist group and, quite possibly, with the Russian mafia. And they apparently control enough of the military so that they can make something major happen in Eastern Europe."

"That's right," said Rodgers.

Rachlin said, "God, how I'd love to grill that arrogant little Grozny rat personally when we have him."

"I guarantee we won't get a thing from him," Egenes said. "They wouldn't have told him anything, then let him hand himself over to us."

"That would be kind of dumb," Rachlin agreed. "They gave him to us just so we could took good, like we wielded a swift and terrible sword of justice."

"Let's not spit on that," the President said. "We all know that JFK had to compromise the U.S. military in Turkey to get Khrushchev's missiles out of Cuba. The fact that only half the deal came out made him look like a hero and Khrushchev a chump. So," he said, "let's assume that, through St. Petersburg, a government official ordered the attack in New York Could it have been President Zhanin?"

"I doubt it," said Secretary Lincoln. "He wants a relationship with the West, not war."

"Do we know that for sure?" Burkow said. "Speaking of Boris Yeltsin, we've been snowed before."

"Zhanin has nothing to gain," said Lincoln. "He ran against military expenditures. Besides, he and Grozny are natural-born enemies."

"What about Dogin?" the President asked. "Can this be his doing?"

"He's a likelier candidate," said Rodgers. "He paid for the place in St. Petersburg and probably owns the people in it."

"Is there any way we can talk to Zhanin about it?" asked Tobey.

"I wouldn't risk it," said Rodgers. "Even if he's out of the loop, chances are good that not everyone around him is trustworthy."

"So then what's your plan, Mike?" Burkow said testily. "From where I sit, one bomb has effectively put the United States on the sidelines. Christ, I remember when things like that used to galvanize people and get us into wars."

Rodgers said, "Steve, the bomb hasn't stopped us. From a strategic point of view, it may have helped."

"How?" asked Burkow.

"Whoever is behind this probably feels they don't have to watch us closely," Rodgers said. "Just like the Russians felt about Hitler after signing the Nonaggression Pact."

"They were wrong," said Lincoln. "He attacked them anyway."

"Exactly," said Rodgers. He looked at the President. "Sir, let's do the same. Let me send Striker to St. Petersburg. As promised, we don't do anything in Eastern Europe. In fact, we let Europe tremble a little at our isolationism."

"That'll certainly tie in with American sentiments these days," said Lincoln.

"Meanwhile," said Rodgers, "we let Striker take these people apart from the brain down."

The President looked at each man's face in turn. Rodgers felt the mood in the room shift.

"I like it," said Burkow. "A lot."

The President stopped at Rodgers's face. "Do it," he said. "Bring me the head of the Big Bad Wolf."