Price of Duty

FIVE

Listening to Gennadiy Gryzlov preach at her over a secure video link with Moscow, U.S. president Stacy Anne Barbeau blessed the decades she had spent smiling winsomely at men she secretly despised. For years, she’d schemed, flirted, and backstabbed her way up through the ranks of American politics — serving in the U.S. Senate, as secretary of state, and now as president. Washington was littered with the still-breathing political corpses of rivals and former allies she’d first charmed, then outmaneuvered, and finally dumped by the wayside.

There was a time, she admitted to herself, when the younger Russian president’s rugged good looks would have turned her on. But not anymore. Not since last year, when his threats and crazed nuclear saber rattling had pushed her into a corner, forcing her to choose between the safety and security of the United States and her personal pride.

She didn’t regret seeing Poland and the other Eastern and central European countries drop out of NATO. In her view, letting them into the American-led alliance after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the first place had been a huge mistake — one that virtually guaranteed continued conflict with Russia and threatened U.S. interests without any concomitant gain. But the way NATO fractured had made her look bad, and it had hurt her politically here at home, where right-wing hawks were always circling… looking for any excuse to bash her as a weak-kneed woman.

Someday she would find a way to stick a shiv in Gennadiy Gryzlov, she thought silently. Someone so arrogant and self-assured was bound to give her an opening, sooner or later. For now, though, she concentrated on hiding her seething anger behind a diplomatic mask of polite attention.

“My government is grateful for your efforts to restore order in Europe, Madam President,” the Russian said suavely. “And we share your view that this Alliance of Free Nations is a threat to the region’s stability. After all, if it were not for pressure from the militaristic Poles and their black-market hired soldiers, the Baltic states, Romania, and the rest would gladly see reason.”

Barbeau’s eyes narrowed. “And just how do you define reason, Gennadiy?” she asked pointedly.

He smiled broadly. “I mean, of course, that the nations of Eastern and central Europe could again assume their traditional role as neutral buffer states between the great powers — rather than serving the geopolitical ambitions of the Polish madman Piotr Wilk and your own former president, Kevin Martindale.”

“Martindale’s a criminal,” Barbeau shot back, touched on a sore point. “His actions are in no way condoned by my government.”

Gryzlov’s own gaze hardened. “If I thought otherwise, Madam President, our conversation today would be proceeding along very different lines.” He relaxed. “As it is, I am confident that our vital national interests coincide on this issue. Restoring the proper balance between NATO and Russia is the key to European peace and security. But this cannot be achieved unless we stop Poland’s efforts to build a ramshackle empire. If not, we may find ourselves again dragged to the edge of an abyss because some petty Polish client state sees war as an alternative to domestic unrest or self-imposed catastrophe.”

Barbeau regained her composure. She was not going to let this bastard rattle her again, she decided. Nor was she going to let him smooth-talk her into making any commitment she might regret later — like saying something Gryzlov could later claim gave him the green light for another military adventure against Warsaw.

“I agree that the instability of some of the countries in this new alliance worries me,” she said carefully. “But I think you exaggerate the short-term risks.”

“Do I?” Gryzlov replied, arching an eyebrow. “With the example of this terrible accident at the Cernavodă nuclear reactor before our very eyes?” He shook his head. “What more evidence do you need of the dangers posed by these backward countries?”

He raised his eyes as if to heaven. “If it were not for a miracle, your true allies in Western Europe — the Germans, the French, the Italians, and all the others — would even now be submerged by waves of refugees fleeing the radioactive contamination caused by Romania’s criminal negligence.”

Oh, good God, Barbeau thought disgustedly. How stupid did this clown think she was? “There are rumors that that reactor was sabotaged by Russia-based hackers,” she said dryly.

“If so, the gang in Bucharest must be reading too many spy thrillers,” Gryzlov said coolly. “Cernavodă’s design and construction flaws and management failures are matters of record. Read the reports from the IAEA and other responsible organizations if you doubt me.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Besides, blaming foreigners is always the first resort for any government eager to hide its own incompetence.”

“Perhaps so,” Barbeau retorted. “But blackmailing President Dumitru by threatening to cut off Russian natural-gas exports just adds fuel to that particular fire.”

Gryzlov actually laughed. “What of it?” he asked. “Like any rational power, Russia will use whatever leverage it can to woo countries away from Poland’s dangerous embrace.”

He shrugged. “You should follow our example and further tighten your own restrictions on trade and commerce. Your Congress is too hesitant. Too weak-willed. You must show those now looking to Warsaw that the price of ignoring America is too high.”

“What Congress will or won’t do is an internal political matter,” Barbeau snapped, stung by the Russian’s barely concealed taunt. “It’s certainly not any of your business.”

“You have my apologies, Madam President,” Gryzlov said, though without an ounce of genuine contrition in his voice. “You are correct. Your disagreements with Congress are not my concern.” He smiled slyly. “But then neither should you criticize business decisions we make about our natural-gas exports to Romania. Gazprom is, after all, a wholly Russian-owned corporation.”

For a moment, Stacy Anne Barbeau fought the temptation to unleash every expletive in her formidable arsenal. Slowly, with enormous difficulty, she regained control over her temper. Gryzlov had set a cheap rhetorical trap and she’d walked straight into it. That was bad enough. But arguing the point with him further would just put her in the position of someone wrestling with a pig: you both got dirty and only the pig enjoyed it.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile sweetly at the Russian. “I’ll bear that in mind, Mr. President.”

“Excellent!” Gryzlov said with a wide, false smile of his own. “In that case, I look forward to our next discussion. I am sure it will be… illuminating.”

Once the connection to Moscow was broken, she sat glowering in silence for a few moments before spinning toward Luke Cohen, her White House chief of staff and longtime political adviser. The tall, rail-thin New Yorker had been hovering off-camera through the whole conference. “Well?”

“He’s up to something,” Cohen said flatly.

Barbeau snorted. “No kidding.” She spun back to stare at the blank screen again. “And we’d damned well better find out what it is… before it bites us in the ass.”

Frowning, she turned back to Cohen. “Pull together a special interagency group of economic, intelligence, and military analysts, including Cyber Command. Grab the best people you can find and get them focused on the situation in Eastern Europe. Tell them to flip over every goddamn rock from Moscow to Prague if they have to.”

Cohen nodded. He hesitated. “Should I bring Nash in on this?”

“Christ, no!” Barbeau said. “With a lot of help from staff, that moron might be able to find Bucharest or Budapest on a map.” She shook her head in disgust. “But I doubt if he’d know which was which.”

It had taken her months, but she had finally been able to force out the last holdovers from the Phoenix administration — the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force general Spelling, and CIA Director Thomas Torrey. Her replacement for Torrey, James Buchanan Nash, was an amiable nonentity, a former senator from Virginia. His onetime colleagues had confirmed him largely on the strength of his prior service in U.S. Navy intelligence. What most of them didn’t know was that Nash had spent most of his short naval service on “detached duty” in Guam, supervising the base bowling alley because his superiors had seen that as the safest place to park a junior officer with solid political connections but severely limited competence.

Despite that, Barbeau had made him her CIA director because she’d wanted someone politically reliable heading the agency — someone malleable enough to do what he was told without protest. Jimmy Nash might be dull-witted, but he looked good on television and in front of congressional committees… as long as he had aides close by to feed him the answers to tough questions. Best of all, the new CIA director had never been part of that aging prick Martindale’s faction or an admirer of the late, totally unlamented, and lunatic former Air Force Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan.

“Okay, I’ll keep Nash in the dark,” Cohen agreed. “That won’t be hard.” He jotted down a few notes to himself on his ever-present tablet computer. “Anything else?”

Barbeau nodded. “Put the fear of God and the FBI into everyone in that working group. I don’t want any leaks — not to the Hill, not to the press, and especially not to anyone connected with Sky Masters or Scion. Whatever intelligence they dig up about Russian plans stays inside the White House. It doesn’t go floating around. Got it?”

“I’ll do my best,” Cohen promised.

“You’ll do more than that, Luke,” Barbeau said sharply. “You either keep a lid on this or I’ll find someone else who can. Is that clear?”

The New Yorker swallowed hard. “Yes, Madam President.”

“That’s just fine, Luke, honey,” she said, relenting slightly. “And as soon as you’ve handled all of that, I want you on a flight to Moscow.”

“Moscow?”

Barbeau nodded. “Get in touch with Gryzlov’s people. Arrange a private one-on-one with that smooth-talking son of a bitch. Push him, Luke. See if you can get a read on what the hell he’s planning.”

Major General Arkady Koshkin stood stiffly in President Gryzlov’s outer office, trying very hard not to fidget. He was uneasily aware that the continued existence of both Q Directorate’s cyberwar initiative and his own personal fate rested on the outcome of this hurriedly called meeting with Russia’s mercurial leader. While the computer viruses his specialists had crafted had done enormous damage to Romania’s Cernavodă nuclear plant, the results had fallen short of his more optimistic promises. He wished now that he had not so blithely assured Gryzlov that a total reactor meltdown and containment breach was inevitable and unstoppable.

A droplet of sweat rolled down his high forehead and dripped onto his spectacles. Nervously, he took them off, distractedly mopping at the thick lenses with his handkerchief.

The door to Gryzlov’s inner office swung open, held by Ivan Ulanov, the president’s private secretary. “You may go in, General,” the younger man said. There were dark bags under his eyes. Russia’s president kept late hours. “They are ready for you now.”

Quickly stuffing the handkerchief back in the breast pocket of his suit, Koshkin hurried through the door. Ulanov closed it silently behind him.

Hands clasped behind his back, Gennadiy Gryzlov stood by the far windows, looking out across the darkened Kremlin. Minister of State Security Viktor Kazyanov sat bolt upright in one of the two chairs set squarely in front of the president’s ultramodern desk.

Without looking around, Gryzlov said, “Sit down, Koshkin.”

Sweating even more heavily now, the head of the FSB’s Q Directorate did as he was ordered. Kazyanov didn’t so much as nod in his direction.

Abruptly, Gryzlov swung round and sat down behind the desk. “I have been going over your report on the Cernavodă operation,” he said, not bothering with any of the usual pleasantries.

Koshkin felt sick. “Mr. President, I—”

Gryzlov waved him into silence. “You and your people did well, Arkady,” he continued.

Caught by surprise, Koshkin could only gabble, “But… the reactor… the containment building, I mean…” He forced himself to slow down. “I regret that our attack was not entirely successful.”

“Calm yourself, Arkady,” Gryzlov said patiently. “No weapon works perfectly the first time it is used.” He shrugged. “And you certainly couldn’t have anticipated that the Poles and their American mercenaries would react so quickly and so effectively to the reactor meltdown.”

“No, sir.”

“What matters is that we now know your new cyberweapons are as powerful as you promised,” Gryzlov said. “Which is why we’re going to use them on a much larger and grander scale.”

“Mr. President?”

Gryzlov bared his teeth in a quick, wolfish grin. He tapped the slick surface of the computer built into his desk. The large LED display set into the same desk lit up, revealing the first page of a document marked Top Secret and headed Operatsiya Mor, Operation Plague. “Take a careful look, Koshkin. The time for tests and experimentation is over. Now is the time to put your prized theories into practice!”

Eyes widening, Koshkin leaned closer to the screen, rapidly skimming through the list of targets outlined in the detailed operational plan the president showed him, flipping through page after page with a flick of his finger across the display. He whistled softly in wonder.

“Well,” Gryzlov demanded. “Can you execute this operation?”

Still astonished by the scope of his president’s ambitions, Koshkin sat back in his chair, thinking fast. At last, he nodded cautiously. “We can, sir. Q Directorate has all of the essential cyberwarfare capabilities needed to strike these targets.” He pursed his lips. “But hitting them with the necessary precision and speed will require some additional work to fully weaponize specific computer programs.”

Gryzlov’s expression soured.

“It’s not a question of hardware,” Koshkin hastily explained. “Between the new supercomputer at the Perun’s Aerie complex and equipment at other sites, we have all the computing capacity needed.”

“Go on,” Gryzlov said, through gritted teeth.

“It’s a matter of personnel, Mr. President,” Koshkin said, sweating again. “To keep up with the proposed operational tempo after our first strikes go in, my directorate will need the services of additional special information troops. Coding is labor-intensive work and each attack demands malware individually tailored for the precise target.”

“Very well,” Gryzlov said curtly. “Present your requirements for more komp’yutershchiks to Tarzarov on your way out. He’ll find the hackers you need.”

“Sir.”

“And inform me at once when you are ready to launch Mor’s first phase.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Koshkin said, already moving toward the door.

“Oh, and Arkady?”

The head of Q Directorate looked back toward Gryzlov. “Mr. President?”

“Be quick about it,” Gryzlov said. “Remember, no man is irreplaceable.” His eyes conveyed all the warmth of the Siberian tundra in winter. “Do not learn that the hard way, eh?”

When the door closed behind Koshkin, Gryzlov turned his icy gaze on his minister of state security. “You were very quiet just now, Viktor.”

Kazyanov actually squirmed nervously in his seat, an oddly unbecoming gesture in one so tall and powerfully built. “I did not wish to interrupt, Mr. President.” He spread his hands in an embarrassed gesture. “This new cyberwar technology is not something I fully understand. At least not yet.”

“Yes,” Gryzlov said contemptuously. “That much is all too clear. Though perhaps I should expect more from you, since Koshkin is at least nominally one of your subordinates.”

He watched the other man’s face turn gray. Insulting poor, fearful Viktor Kazyanov really was about as dangerous as kicking a toothless puppy, Gryzlov decided. It might be enjoyable, but there really wasn’t much sport in it.

“On the other hand,” he said. “The reports from your GRU unit outside Cernavodă were excellent.” He shot the bewildered and frightened minister of state security a cynical smile. “It was fortunate that Usenko and his team were ready and waiting to catch a glimpse of one of these Iron Wolf machines in action, was it not?”

“You knew one of those combat robots would enter the damaged reactor building?” Kazyanov realized, unable to conceal his surprise.

Gryzlov shrugged. “Let us say that I thought it more likely than not.”

“What game are you—” Kazyanov stopped himself in midsentence, obviously afraid that he was crossing onto dangerous ground.

Gryzlov let that slide. “But we still need more information about these Cybernetic Infantry Devices.” The corners of his mouth turned down. “That bitch Barbeau, for all her high-minded prattle about international cooperation, still won’t tell us all she knows about their design, their capabilities, and their weaknesses.”

Kazyanov nodded. Every request they’d made to the Americans for more technical data on the CIDs had been shunted aside with a welter of unconvincing excuses, delays, and outright lies.

“So the answer is obvious,” Gryzlov said. He tapped his desk. “We lure one of these machines out into the open again, this time for a closer look. Even at the cost of lives.” Seeing the confusion on his spymaster’s face, he sighed. “Think of chess, Viktor. This match is just beginning. And if we have to sacrifice a pawn or two to gain the advantage we seek, then so be it.”

Baffled, Kazyanov decided to fall back on simple, unquestioning obedience. It was a habit that had served him well all his adult life. “What are your orders, Mr. President?” he asked.

And then, listening closely while Gryzlov outlined the gambit he had in mind, he began to understand. Outwardly simple in its details, the younger man’s stratagem possessed a certain brutal elegance.