The Russian Deception

CHAPTER 34

Elizabeth watched a live feed from a German satellite passing over Albania and Macedonia. The Europeans had pulled the rapid deployment force out of Poland and sent it to Albania. The politicians were trying to avoid the firestorm of public opinion certain to follow if they sent a new levy of troops to Albania as a peacekeeping force. It looked like the Russians had pulled back from the Ukrainian border. NATO high command in Brussels wanted to believe the retreat was genuine. It made things so much simpler. But the war in the Balkans promised to be anything but simple.

Ground forces from Albania and Macedonia were dug in along a rugged mountain front in Eastern Albania. Mitreski's main thrust had only gotten as far as the town of Librazhd before it bogged down. His army had followed the improved highway leading from the border of Macedonia to the Albanian capital of Tirana, the only road suitable for wheeled vehicles. Both sides had brought up artillery and the town was being shelled. Streams of refugees lined the road west of Librazhd as they fled the fighting.

An attempt by Mitreski's commanders to initiate a pincer movement toward Tirana from the north had stalled out at the town of Bulquize against stiff resistance. Reports of atrocities were beginning to drift in as the old regional hatred between Muslim and Christian flared anew. Memories were a thousand years long in the Balkans. In the Balkans, no one forgave and no one forgot.

The NATO peacekeepers idled away the time in Tirana while the allies argued in Brussels about the mission. As always, the main problem was the rules of engagement. Elizabeth had never understood the mentality that sent armed soldiers and equipment into the heart of a conflict and then couldn't decide whether or not to use deadly force. The Europeans wanted American air strikes and were waiting to see what the White House would do. American airpower cost them nothing and if the strikes succeeded there would be no inconvenient deaths of their nationals to explain back home. But Rice had yet to commit American planes.

Stephanie came into Elizabeth's office. She looked up at the monitor.

"What's happening?"

"A miniature replay of World War I," Elizabeth said. "Both sides are dug in along a static front. It's snowing like crazy and civilians are fleeing toward the capital. Neither side has an advantage."

"NATO?"

"Nothing yet. The forces in Albania are waiting for orders and sitting on the outskirts of Tirana cooling their heels."

"What's happening in Russia with the troop movements?" Stephanie asked.

"It still looks to me like Orlov is going to invade. NATO command thinks it's all just an exercise but I think Brussels has its head in the sand. There are columns of support equipment and troops moving in from east of the Urals. I think that once Orlov has everything in place he's going to move fast. I can't be sure but I think I've identified some of the new T-14 Armata tanks. It's hard to tell with the camouflage. If he's got them there it's a bad sign."

"If he does invade, how do you think it will start?"

"If I were Orlov, I'd go right for Kiev. He has an army group in Belarus that he could send across the border. He could drive toward the city from the Russian side through Chernihiv and Sumy, making a three-pronged advance. There are tanks and motorized transport positioned on the border near Kharkiv and Donetsk. Ukraine is perfect country for tanks, mostly flat steppes. It wouldn't take him long to reach the major cities."

"A modern blitzkrieg."

"Exactly."

Stephanie sat down on the couch.

"I spoke with DCI Hood half an hour ago," Elizabeth said. "He's asked for our help. Someone has been shoring up Orlov with a lot of money. It's one of the reasons he's in power and one of the reasons he's been able to buy all those new weapons he's getting ready to try out."

"Where is it coming from?"

"That's where you come in, Steph. I'd like you to try and find out. The money ended up in the Russian central bank. I'm hoping you can get into their servers and backtrack it from there. Clarence wants to know where it came from. So do I. It has to be someone with access to enormous funds. We're talking about billions of euros."

Clarence? Stephanie thought. Is something going on between them?

She filed the thought away.

"How come Langley didn't spot it before?"

"Good question, I don't know."

"The Russian central bank," Stephanie said. "I don't think I've tried to get into them before."

Elizabeth watched Stephanie brighten with the prospect of a new challenge.

Just what she needs to keep moving through the grief. Something to keep her mind occupied until she comes out on the other side.

Elizabeth knew what it was like. The loss of her own child still echoed in a distant chamber of her mind.

"I'll get on it right away," Stephanie said. She headed off to the computer room.

Elizabeth looked at the monitor. The satellite was passing out of range. She turned off the display and leaned back in her chair and thought about Nick and the others.

They'd had a close call in Hamburg. Someone had made sure Helmut Schmidt would disappear. Whoever that someone was couldn't have known the team was interested in him. Schmidt had been eliminated for some other reason.

Not about the team, yet…something bothered her about it. Elizabeth's intuition was tapping on her awareness, telling her to pay attention. Her intuition was one of her strengths and she'd learned long ago to honor it. Experience told her that sooner or later whatever it was about would become clear.

Her father had taught her to believe in intuition. She'd been a teenager at the time, a senior in high school. The Judge had been sitting on the porch outside their Colorado home, sipping bourbon. It was a pleasant autumn afternoon, the smell of burning leaves in air touched with a hint of winter to come.

Two days before, five of her classmates had died when their '57 Chevy plowed into a bridge abutment at over a hundred miles an hour. Elizabeth and most of the older students at her high school had been at a party after a football victory. The driver of the car was the high school quarterback. He'd been drinking beer to celebrate. Elizabeth was telling her father how she'd had a feeling something bad was going to happen as she watched her friends drive away.

She remembered the sound of his voice, warmed by the bourbon and the afternoon sun.

"People talk about intuition as if it's some kind of feminine nonsense, but it's a valuable thing to have. Some people have a natural gift for it. This isn't the first time you've had a feeling like that, is it?"

"No. But how do you explain it?"

"I don't think there is an explanation. A psychologist would probably say that the unconscious puts together clues from what the mind is observing and figures out a result. That might be true sometimes but I don't think it's always that simple. Maybe your unconscious put together enough clues to tell you that those kids shouldn't be driving and could get in trouble. But I'll bet it was more than that. What did it feel like?"

"It's hard to explain," Elizabeth had said. "Like a warning, an electrical tingling. It even had a sense of color to it, a sort of unpleasant, yellow feeling."

Her father nodded, rocking back and forth in the chair on the porch.

"See? That's what I mean. You're describing a thought, a sensation and a color, all associated with a bad feeling. An experience, not just an idea. That sounds like a lot more than just putting a few clues together. It's a gift to have intuition like that and you should always pay attention to it. Don't be afraid to act on it, if that's what it's telling you."

"But what if I'm wrong?"

"What if you are? Once in a while you probably will be. But what about the times when you're right? Would you have gotten in that car if they'd offered you a ride?"

"They did offer me a ride," Elizabeth said. "It didn't feel right. That's why I didn't go. After they left I felt like a fool."

Her father looked at her in surprise. "Thank God you didn't get in that car. If you had, you'd be dead. I think that proves my point."

Something about what had happened in Hamburg felt wrong. Even though she couldn't see how, her intuition was making a connection to what had happened to Selena in Vienna. The only thing she could do was wait and see if something turned up to prove her intuition right.