Specter

7

A chilly wind had been blowing all morning, whipping down off the Khortiatis Mountains with a bitter reminder that winter wasn't quite finished yet. The sky, contrary to the usual blue-sky standards of Greece, was low and overcast, and prone to periodic flurries of snow.

Despite the unpromising weather, however, Congresswoman Ellen Louise Kingston had found an audience for herself. The reporters had been waiting for her just outside the passenger terminal, and as she emerged through the big double doors onto the painted walkway leading to her plane, they started shouting questions to her.

"Congresswoman! What do you think the chances are for peace in the Balkans?"

"Congresswoman Kingston! Does your government plan to launch new air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs?"

"Will the United States bomb Belgrade?"

"Have you consulted with America's NATO allies?"

Kingston stopped, smiling and waving for the cameras that clicked and whirred with each gesture, each motion she made. She was tall, with a regal and aristocratic bearing. Though she was only in her early fifties, her once-dark hair had turned to lustrous silver years before, and she'd left it that way to emphasize her maturity. She faced the cluster of eager reporters, the ranked microphones, and the glaring lights of cameras with practiced ease, a general marshaling her troops. Her tail — her escort of Greek security officials, two American Secret Service men, aides, secretaries, and staffers — piled up behind her in a confused huddle.

"Ms. Kingston," her chief aide said. "We really ought to board the plane."

"There's time, Bunny," Kingston told her, still waving. The reporters were crowded up against a metal railing that held them back, but camera lenses and microphones snaked across, probing toward her face.

"Congresswoman! Please!" a woman reporter shouted. Kingston recognized her — Marsha Shakarian, one of ACN's top foreign correspondents. "What about those bombing raids against Serbia?"

"Ladies and gentlemen," Kingston said, holding up both hands. "As I told you all in my press conference last week, I am just here in Greece on a fact-finding mission. I knew nothing about these terrible atrocities taking place in Bosnia during my visit. No, I've not consulted with NATO, though certainly I've discussed the situation with members of the Athens government and Greece, of course, is a NATO member."

A man with a BBC press card pinned to his lapel shoved a microphone toward her. "Madam Congresswoman, what do you say to General Mihajlovic's charges that the United States is deliberately provoking an international incident?"

"The United States does not want war in the Balkans," Kingston replied. "Indeed, any national interests we have in the region would be best served by peace. The attack on that Yugoslavian monastery was carried out without the knowledge of Congress and without the sanction of the American people. The moment I get back to Washington, I intend to look into this whole situation and demand a full accounting. The Cold War is over. So is the era of cowboy politics and shooting from the hip. I believe America has a very constructive role to play in the Balkans, and that role does not include bombers, aircraft carriers, and commandos!"

"Does that mean that Americans were involved in the attack?"

"No comment. Yes — in the back."

"Madam Congresswoman. There are unconfirmed reports that the raid the other night was carried out by American Special Forces. Officials in Belgrade have suggested that one of our heavily armed gunships fired on one of their patrols, killing thirty men and wounding many more. That's not the sort of thing that can be covered up, is it?"

"No, it isn't. And as I said, I am going to launch a full investigation when I get back."

"A follow-up, if I may. There are also reports that the operation may have been carried out by either Marine Recon forces or the Navy SEALS, operating off one of our Marine amphibious ships in the Adriatic. In view of your public position on these elite units in the past, would you care to make a statement?"

"Certainly. I have no information about what units may or may not have carried out this aggression in Yugoslavia. However, as soon as I return to Washington, I shall demand answers. If Americans were involved, this represents a shocking misuse of force. It is high time that these, these elite murder squads like the SEALs and the Rangers were disbanded. We do not need them any longer. They are the direct cause of a disproportionate drain on the tax monies allocated to the military. I might add that most senior officers in the Pentagon are united in their feeling that elite units such as the Navy SEALs funnel the best men, the most expensive equipment, and the lion's share of the money away from our regular forces. At best, this is an unproductive use of precious national assets. At worst, it's a potentially dangerous and terribly misguided attempt to circumvent clearly established national policy. I would like to see this insanity ended and I intend to do all in my power to make that happen."

"Congresswoman Kingston, is it your contention that all covert operations should be under direct Congressional control? That sort of thing has always been the prerogative of the President."

"Yes, it has, and look what trouble it's got us into. President Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. President Carter and the hostage rescue in Iran. And they were both Democrats." There was a ripple of polite laughter in the crowd, and she waited for it to die down. "Seriously, it's high time the people, and by that I mean Congress, be given total and complete oversight of the use of all of our military forces, and a say in how they're used. It's not as though we have a world-class enemy like the Soviet Union to worry about anymore, is it? We spend billions on the Army Special Forces, the Army Rangers, and Navy SEALS, and God knows how many other special warfare units, and what does it get us? Not one thing! That's taxpayer money being shoveled into a bottomless hole, and I intend to put a stop to it!"

"Madam Kingston!"

"Congresswoman Kingston!"

"That's all. I'm getting cold and I have a plane to catch!" Deliberately avoiding the questions and demands shouted after her, still smiling and waving, Kingston turned and walked on, her following straggling along after. The waiting airplane was an Olympic Airlines NAMC YS-11, one of the old-fashioned two-engine turboprops used on Greek domestic flights. Her schedule called for her to fly back to Athens that morning for a meeting with Constantine Mitsotakis, the Greek Prime Minister, that afternoon. After that, there would be a special chartered flight back to Dulles International and a meeting with the Select Committee on Monday.

Climbing the boarding ladder to the rear passenger door, Kingston entered the plane, where she was greeted by Colonel Ted Winters, her U.S. Army watchdog, and by Lochagos Dyonisios Mantzaros, her principal shadow from the DEA.

Not the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, of course. She smiled at the thought. The Dimona Eidikon Apostolon, or Special Mission Platoon, was a fifty-man unit established in the mid-1970s as a Greek SWAT and hostage-rescue unit within the Athens City Police. Its responsibilities had been extended recently to include airport security and protection for visiting dignitaries. Mantzaros and five of his agents had been dogging her every step since she'd arrived in Greece last week, all of them dressed in identical dark business suits, dark, narrow ties, and dark glasses, costumes that virtually screamed security force. The two men contrasted sharply with one another, Mantzaros being short, pudgy, and olive-skinned, while Winters was tall, bone-skinny, and so pale that Kingston had kidded him once about all the time he must spend in the White House basement.

"Well, well," she said, grinning at them. "If it isn't Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Been waiting for me long, fellas?"

"Congresswoman," Winters said, his mouth set hard and expressionless. Winters, she knew, didn't approve of her… or at least he didn't approve of her politics, which were liberal Democrat and anti-military. That was okay by her. She disliked Winters. She disliked all military personnel… or, to be completely fair, she disliked the military mind-set, the testosterone-drugged fascination for expensive toys and loud noises and macho confrontations with unpleasant strangers.

"The pilot said to tell you, Congresswoman," Mantzaros said, and he nearly bowed as he spoke, "that we will be able to take off as soon as you are ready."

"Thank you, Captain," she told Mantzaros. "I'll ride up there in the lounge."

"Of course, Congresswoman." And this time he did bow, ushering her forward up the aisle.

Normally seating sixty passengers, this particular aircraft had been modified for VIP use, with half of the five-abreast seats removed to make room for a comfortable lounge area forward. She allowed Mantzaros to escort her to one of the comfortable lounge seats behind a polished, wood-surfaced table. Barbara Jean Allison, her chief aide, handed Kingston her briefcase, then slid in next to her.

"Thanks, Bunny. What we got… about a half-hour flight?"

"Thirty-five to forty minutes, Ms. Kingston."

Winters slid into a seat across the table from them. "You never let up, do you, Madam Congresswoman?"

"What do you mean?"

"I was listening to your little off-the-cuff speech to those reporters. I wonder if it was wise blasting the U.S. military for what happened in Bosnia the other day when you don't even know if we were responsible."

"Oh, we're responsible, Colonel. You can take it from me."

His eyebrows crept up on his forehead. "You're sure of your information, ma'am?"

"Always," she said. "I heard some things before we left Washington. Ever hear of something called Operation Blue Arrow?"

"No. And I don't think you should be discussing code names with someone who hasn't been cleared to hear them."

"Colonel, do you think I give two pins for that macho-military bullshit?"

"No, ma'am, but you should. There're reasons for it. Damned good ones."

"God. Sometimes I just don't believe you people." She turned away, staring out the window. The plane's turboprops were firing up. There was a cough, then a roar as the right engine revved up to speed. "Anyway, Colonel, I didn't tell them we did it. When someone asked me if we did, I said, 'No comment.'"

"Uh-huh. And let them read between the lines. I thought you wanted to stop a war out here, not start one."

"You're out of line, Colonel."

"I'm out of line?" He laughed, but his eyes struck angry sparks.

"Yes, you are." She sighed and leaned back in her seat. "You know, Colonel, for way too long the American military has had its own way. It's about time the Pentagon realized that the Cold War is over, that the old way of doing things is gone for good, and a good thing too!"

Mantzaros and one of the American Secret Service men walked up to her seat. "Everything okay, ma'am?" the Secret Service man asked. The American agent was almost indistinguishable from the Greek DEA people, right down to the conservative suit and the dark glasses.

"Just fine, Franklin. Thanks."

"Pilot says to tell you we'll be taking off in about five minutes."

"Very well."

"Tell me, Colonel," she asked a moment later. "What's your opinion of the Special Forces?"

Winters almost smiled… almost. "To be honest, I'd have to say they're more trouble than they're worth."

"Expensive."

"That… and it's hard to maintain discipline in an organization that must have discipline to operate effectively, when there are units within that organization that claim to be better than everybody else."

"If I remember from your record, Colonel, you were in the Army Special Forces."

"That was quite a while ago. Yes, ma'am. I was."

"A green beanie. And you don't believe in special-warfare units?"

"Oh, there are places where special warfare is important, sure. Especially in counterinsurgency operations, training local forces, stuff like that. But I never have liked the elitist attitude behind some of the special-ops people. Like I say, it interferes with discipline."

"It is also an intolerable drain on our tax dollars," Kingston said, warming to the subject. "And a drain of our best men. I've heard even men volunteering for Delta Force."

"Yes, ma'am, that's true."

"Well, I'll tell you something, Colonel. Someone up in the Adriatic really put his foot in it the other day. I've wanted to see the special-warfare people put out to pasture for a long time now. And I think someone has just given me the weapons I need to see that done!"

For several minutes now, the NAMC had been taxiing slowly along the runway. Now, the roar of the aircraft's engines thundered louder and louder, until Kingston could feel the fuselage shuddering around her. There was a gentle shove of acceleration, and then the aircraft lifted clear of the runway, rising higher and higher. The airport dropped away astern, replaced by the steel-gray waters of the Thennaic Gulf. North, across the bay, she could see the city of Salonika, could even pick out the stubby thrust of the city's famous White Tower on the waterfront. Then the panorama was blotted out by a dark gray fog that grew swiftly lighter. Moments later, sunshine exploded in through the windows; the plane was above the cloud deck now, banking gently toward the right.

For the first time in several days, Kingston allowed herself a less than optimistic thought. Things were not going well here, with her mission, with the people she'd been seeing. She wondered if her presence here was making any difference at all.

It was this damnable situation in the Balkans, a situation already critical, and rapidly going out of control. She was beginning to think that nothing that she, Washington, NATO, or anybody could do was going to be of any help. And how the hell was she supposed to do her job when those military buffoons insisted on playing their games?

Several times during the past year, NATO — under pressure from the U.S. — had launched punitive air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs in an attempt to stop their wholesale slaughter of Bosnian Muslims. Somehow, that war had continued… and lately two new wars had been added to the flames already devouring the Balkans. One was the renewed warfare between Croatia and Serbia; for some time now, the Croatians had been rounding up Bosnian Croatians who'd fled their war-torn homeland and forcing them to "volunteer" for service in the various Croat militias, first to fight the Bosnian Muslims, and lately to take on the Serbian militias as well.

The second new outbreak of fighting was even more worrisome, for it threatened to spill over across the borders of the various states that once had made up Yugoslavia and engulf other nations in the region. If that happened, well, all of those impassioned speeches she'd delivered in the House about how large military forces were no longer necessary now that the Soviet Union was gone could very well blow up in her face. The United States was a hairbreadth from war, and sometimes it seemed like every step her country took was exactly the wrong one.

The root of this latest problem was an ancient and unhappy land called Macedonia, divided since 1913 when the Treaty of Bucharest had partitioned the nation among its four neighbors. The biggest chunk had gone to Serbia, and after World War II it had been incorporated as a republic within the Yugoslav Federation. Smaller slices had been gobbled up by Albania to the west and Bulgaria in the east. The southern portion had gone to Greece, which itself had won independence from the Ottoman Turks only eighty-three years before.

Greek Macedonia today was the largest single region in Greece, as well as its most productive. Salonika, its capital, was the second largest city in Greece. There were still those who wanted to see a united and independent Macedonia, however; the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, the IMRO, had waged a bitter terrorist war throughout the first half of the twentieth century to achieve that end. Early in World War II, Bulgaria's claims to Macedonia had led to that nation's alliance with Nazi Germany and her occupation of Macedonia in 1941.

With the breakup of Yugoslavia, Macedonia had again become a potential problem in the area. Yugoslav Macedonia had declared its independence and applied for membership with the UN; Greece had blocked the application, insisting that it had all rights to the ancient name "Macedonia," which it was not going to share with this northern upstart. The matter had been only partly resolved when the two parties had finally agreed that the new republic would be called "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," a temporary compromise that pleased no one. With independence from Serbia in April of 1993 had come UN peacekeeping troops, including three hundred Americans, and the UN-mandated requirement to maintain an embargo against what was left of Yugoslavia… an economic disaster for an area that depended on trade with Serbia for survival.

But Macedonia was at the very center of a potential international firestorm. Serbia wanted Macedonia back, a part of the historical "Greater Serbia." Greece too wanted northern Macedonia to again come under Serbian rule, because a free Slavic Macedonia gave too many ideas to Greek Macedonians. The IMRO still existed and still had the goal of liberating all of Macedonia, north and south, and uniting it as an independent nation.

For that reason, Greece and Serbia were cooperating with one another on the problem, for both nations had reasons to keep a lid on Macedonian nationalism. Other countries in the region, though, saw it differently. Bulgaria was flexing its muscles with a rather cynical demand for Macedonian independence. Bulgaria's claim to Macedonia went back before World War I. It was no secret that Serbia had its eye on the possibility of a Greater Bulgaria, one that included at the very least northern Macedonia. Albania felt the same, and for the same reason, with the added twist that Tirand had a long-unsettled grudge with Serbia over Kosovo Province, which once had belonged to Albania and still had a large, ethnic Albanian population. Turkey, the bitter historical enemy of Greece, supported Macedonian independence, if only to see Greek power in the region weakened.

And as for the Macedonians, well, they saw themselves as the heirs of Alexander the Great, even if they were historically Slavs for the most part rather than Greeks. Most saw no reason why their national pride and character should be stifled, especially now that the world was changing and nationalistic ideals were blowing freely in the wind. All too many Macedonians, on both sides of the Greek-former-Yugoslav border, Kingston thought, would love to see an independent Macedonia that stretched clear from Serbia to the Aegean, from Bulgaria to the Adriatic.

And in all of that political turmoil and suffering, all of that bluster, threat, and counterthreat, there were painfully few options that did not lead to a war that would ravage every nation from Croatia and Hungary to Greece, Albania, and Turkey. Once that happened, an even larger War, one involving NATO and the United States, and probably Russia as well, was a near certainty.

And the damned U.S. military had just gone and stuck a pin in Serbia. It was enough to make a grown Congresswoman cuss.

"Oh, shit," Winters said suddenly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Uh, sorry, Congresswoman." Winters leaned across the empty seat beside him and peered out the plane's window. Kingston glanced out her own window curiously. Everything looked perfectly normal to her. Sunlight dazzled off a solid mass of snow-white clouds, seemingly just below the plane's wings.

"Colonel, what is the matter?"

"That's damned peculiar."

"Is there a problem, Colonel Winters?" Mantzaros asked, walking up the cabin's central passage.

"Damn right there is," Winters muttered, more to himself than to those within earshot.

"Colonel, please," Kingston said tiredly. "I'm in no mood for your military theatrics."

"Beg your pardon, Congresswoman, but we're flying the wrong way."

She laughed. "Really? Your Boy Scout manual told you to check for moss on the north side of the plane?"

"No, but common sense tells me that if the sun is behind us and to the right at ten o'clock in the morning, we must be flying northwest. And we've been flying northwest for a good five minutes now."

"But Athens-"

"Is south of Salonika," Winters said. "Actually a little east of south. We're flying almost exactly in the wrong direction."

Mantzaros gave a start at that, performing an almost comical double take. Reaching inside his suit coat, he dragged out an automatic pistol, then jerked the slide back with a sharp snick-snick.

"Gentlemen, please," Kingston said.

"Maybe the pilot's just detouring around a storm or something," Bunny said. But she looked scared.

"I checked with the met office at the airport," Winters said. "No storms between there and Athens. Agent Mantzaros?"

"I think perhaps I should check up front," the Greek DEA man said.

"I think that's an excellent idea," Winters said, rising. "Let's go have a word with the pilot."

"That won't be necessary," one of Mantzaros's men said, brushing through the curtain at the front of the passenger compartment. He was holding an ugly-looking automatic weapon which he kept centered on his boss's chest. Kingston searched for the gun's name. What was the thing called? Uzi, that was it.

"Stavrianos!" Mantzaros cried, eyes widening behind his comic-opera dark glasses. "Ti kaneteh? Then kantalamvano!"

"Skasmos!" The DEA man kept the Uzi pointed at Mantzaros in one hand as he held out the other, palm up. "Thos moo toh! Grigora!"

His dark features growing darker still, Mantzaros slowly handed his pistol to the DEA man butt first.

"Kalos." He gestured toward a seat behind the VIP lounge with the pistol, then dropped the weapon into his pocket. "Kathesate!"

"What the fuck is the meaning of this, you bastard?" Winters demanded.

The man with the Uzi whipped the ugly weapon around, catching the colonel on the side of his head, just behind his left eye. Kingston winced at the crack of metal striking skin over bone. Winters gasped and dropped to his knees clutching his head.

"Colonel!" she exclaimed. There was blood… a lot of blood, welling up from a cut just behind the officer's left eye.

"I advise you to watch your language, Colonel Winters," the man said smoothly. "There is a lady present." With his free hand, he reached out and grabbed Winters by the hair, shoving him back against the table and pinning him there with his bloody head all the way back. He brought the muzzle of the Uzi down and pressed it against Winters's throat.

"No!" Bunny cried. "What are you doing? You can't do that!"

"We already have, Miss Allison. My, ah, associates and I are now in command of this aircraft."

"Son… of a… bitch…" Winters gasped against the pressure of the gun's barrel resting on his Adam's apple.

The man pulled Winters's head up, then slammed it viciously down on the table again. Winters reached for the gun, but the man stepped easily back out of reach.

"As I say, we are in charge now. All of you would be well advised to stay in your seats and remain silent. You will not be hurt if you do precisely what I say."

"Who are you?" Kingston demanded. "What is it you want?"

The man smiled. "I am Mikos Stavrianos," he said, turning his gun on her. "I am a member of the EMA… and what we want, Congresswoman, is you."