The Sum of All Fears

9 RESOLVE

“This is interesting.”

“It's a rather unique opportunity,” Ryan agreed.

“How reliable — how trustworthy?” Cabot asked.

Ryan smiled at his boss. “Sir, that's always the question. You have to remember how the game works. You're never sure of anything — that is, what certainty you have generally takes years to acquire. This game only has a few rules, and nobody ever knows what the score is. In any case, this is a lot more than a defection.” His name was Oleg Yurievich Lyalin — Cabot didn't know that yet — and he was a KGB “Illegal” who operated without the shield of diplomatic immunity and whose cover was that of a representative of a Soviet industrial concern. Lyalin ran a string of agents with the code-name of THISTLE, and he was running it in Japan. “This guy is a real field-spook. He's got a better net going than the KGB Rezident in Tokyo, and his best source is right in the Japanese cabinet.”

“And?”

“And he's offering us the use of his network.”

“Is this as important as I'm starting to think it is…?” The DCI asked his deputy.

“Boss, we rarely get a chance like this. We've never really run ops in Japan. We lack a sufficient number of Japanese-speaking people — even here on the inside to translate their documents — and our priorities have always been elsewhere. So just establishing the necessary infrastructure to conduct ops there would take years. But the Russians have been working in Japan since before the Bolsheviks took over. The reason is historical: the Japanese and the Russkies have fought wars for a long time, and they've always regarded Japan as a strategic rival — as a result of which they placed great emphasis on operations there even before Japanese technology became so important to them. What he is doing is essentially giving us the Russian business at a bargain price, the inventory, the accounts receivables, the physical plant, everything. It doesn't get much better than this.”

“But what he's asking…”

“The money? So what? That's not a thousandth of a percent of what it's worth to our country,” Jack pointed out.

“It's a million dollars a month!” Cabot protested. Tax free! the Director of Central Intelligence did not add.

Ryan managed not to laugh. “So, the bastard's greedy, okay? Our trade deficit with Japan is how much at last count?” Jack inquired with a raised eyebrow. “He's offering us whatever we want for as long as we want it. All we have to do is arrange to pick him up and fly him and his family over whenever it becomes necessary. He doesn't want to retire to Moscow. He's forty-five, and that's the age when they get antsy. He has to rotate home in ten years — to what? He's lived in Japan almost continuously for thirteen years. He likes affluence. He likes cars, and VCRs, and not standing in line for potatoes. He likes us. About the only people he doesn't like is the Japanese — he doesn't like them at all. He figures he's not even betraying his country, 'cause he's not giving us anything he isn't feeding them, and part of the deal is that he does nothing against Mother Russia. Fine, I can live with that.” Ryan chuckled for a moment. “It's capitalism. The man is starting an elite news service, and it's information we can really use.”

“He's charging enough.”

“Sir, it's worth it. The information he can give us will be worth billions in our trade negotiations, and billions in federal taxes as a result. Director, I used to be in the investment business, that's how I made my money. Investment opportunities like this come along about once every ten years. The Directorate of Operations wants to run with it. I agree. We'd have to be crazy to say no to this guy. His introductory package — well, you've had a chance to read it, right?”

The introductory package was the minutes of the last Japanese cabinet meeting, every word, grunt, and hiss. It was highly valuable for psychological analysis if nothing else. The nature of the exchange in the cabinet meetings could tell American analysts all sorts of things about how their government thought and reached decisions. That was data often inferred, but never confirmed.

“It was most enlightening, especially what they said about the President. I didn't forward that. No sense getting him annoyed at a time like this. Okay — the operation is approved, Jack. How do we run things like this?”

“The code name we've selected is M USHASHI. That's the name of a famous samurai dueling master, by the way. The operation will be called NIITAKA. We'll use Japanese names for the obvious reason”— Jack decided to explain; though Cabot was bright, he was new to the intelligence trade—“in the event of compromise or a leak from our side, we want it to appear that our source is Japanese, not Russian. Those names stay in this building. For outsiders who get let into this, we use a different code name. That one will be computer-generated, and it'll change on a monthly basis.”

“And the real name of the agent?”

“Director, it's your choice. You have the right to know it. I deliberately have not told you to this point because I wanted you to see the whole picture first. Historically it's evenly split, some directors want to know, and about the same number do not. It's a principle of intelligence operations that the fewer the number of people who know things, the less likely that there will be any sort of leak. Admiral Greer used to say the First Law of Intelligence Operations is that the likelihood of an operation's being burned was proportional to the square of the people in on the details. Your call, sir.”

Cabot nodded thoughtfully. He decided to temporize. “You liked Greer, didn't you?”

“Like a father, sir. After I lost Dad in the plane crash, well, the Admiral sort of adopted me.” More like I adopted him, Ryan thought. “On M USHASHI, you'll probably want to think it through.”

“And if the White House asks to know the details?” Cabot asked next.

“Director, despite what M USHASHI thinks, his employers will regard what he is doing as high treason, and that's a capital crime over there. Narmonov is a good guy and all that, but the Soviets have executed forty people that we know of for espionage. That included T OP H AT, J OURNEYMAN, and a guy named Tolkachev, all of whom were highly productive agents for us. We tried to do a trade in all three cases, but they were popped before negotiations had a chance to get underway. The appeals process in the Soviet Union is still somewhat abbreviated,” Ryan explained. “The simple fact, sir, is that if this guy gets burned, he will probably be shot right in the head. That's why we take agent-identity so seriously. If we screw up, people die, glasnost notwithstanding. Most presidents understand that. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“He's told us something else. He wants all his reports to be handled physically, not by cable. If we don't agree, he doesn't do business. Okay, technically that's no problem. We've done that before with agents of this caliber. The nature of his information is such that immediacy is not required. There's daily air service to and from Japan via United, Northwest, and even All Nippon Airways straight into Dulles International Airport.”

“But…” Cabot's face twisted into a grimace.

“Yeah.” Jack nodded. “He doesn't trust our communications security. That scares me.”

“You don't think…?”

“I don't know. We've had very limited success penetrating Soviet ciphers for the past few years. NSA assumes that they have the same problems with ours. Such assumptions are dangerous. We've had indications before that our signals are not fully secure, but this one comes from a very senior guy. I think we have to take this seriously.”

“Just how scary could this be?”

“Terrifying,” Jack answered flatly. “Director, for obvious reasons we have numerous communications systems. We have M ERCURY right downstairs to handle all of our stuff. The rest of the government mainly uses stuff from NSA; Walker and Pelton compromised their systems a long time ago. Now, General Olson over at Fort Meade says they've fixed all that, but for expense reasons they have not fully adopted the TAPDANCE one-time systems that they've been playing with. We can warn NSA again — I think they'll ignore this warning also, but we have to do it — and on our end, I think it's time to act. For starters, sir, we need to think about a reexamination of M ERCURY.” That was the CIA's own communications nexus, located a few floors below the Director's office, and using its own encrypting systems.

“Expensive,” Cabot noted seriously. “With our budget problems…”

“Not half as expensive as a systematic compromise of our message traffic is. Director, there is nothing as vital as secure communications links. Without that, it doesn't matter what else we have. Now, we've developed our own one-time system. All we need is authorization of funds to make it go.”

“Tell me about it. I haven't been briefed in.”

“Essentially, it's our own version of the TAPDANCE. It's a one-time pad with transpositions stored on laser-disk CD ROM. The transpositions are generated from atmospheric radio noise, then superencrypted with noise from later in the day — atmospheric noise is pretty random, and by using two separate sets of the noise, and using a computer-generated random algorithm to mix the two, well, the mathematicians say that's as random as it gets. The transpositions are generated by computer and fed onto laser disks in realtime. We use a different disk for every day of the year. Each disk is unique, two copies only, one to the station, one in M ERCURY — no backups. The laser-disk reader we use at both ends looks normal, but has a beefed-up laser, and as it reads the transposition codes from the disk, it also burns them right off the plastic. When the disk is used up, or the day ends — and the day will end first, since we're talking billions of characters per disk — the disk is destroyed by baking it in a microwave oven. That takes two minutes. It ought to be secure as hell. It can only be compromised at three stages: first, when the disks are manufactured; second, from disk-storage here; third, from disk-storage in each station. Compromise of one station does not compromise anyone else. We can't make the disks tamperproof — we've tried, and it would both cost too much and make them overly vulnerable to accidental damage. The downside of this is that it'll require us to hire and clear about twenty new communications technicians. The system is relatively cumbersome to use, hence the increased number of communicators. The main expense component is here. The field troops we've talked to actually prefer the new system because it's user-friendly.”

“How much to set it up?”

“Fifty million dollars. We have to increase the size of M ERCURY, and set up the manufacturing facility. We have the space, but the machinery is expensive. From the time we get the money, we could have it up and running in maybe as little as three months.”

“I see your point. It's probably worth doing, but getting the money…?”

“With your permission, sir, I could talk to Mr. Trent about it.”

“Hmmm.” Cabot stared down at his desk. “Okay, feel him out very gently. I'll bring this up with the President when he gets back. I'll trust you on M USHASHI. You and who else know his real name?”

“The DO, Chief of Station Tokyo, and his case officer.” The Director of Operations was Harry Wren, and if he were not quite Cabot's man, he was the man Cabot had picked for the job. Wren was on his way to Europe at the moment. A year ago Jack had thought the choice a mistake, but Wren was doing well. He'd also picked a superb deputy, actually a pair of them: the famous Ed and Mary Pat Foley, one of whom — Ryan could never decide which — would have been his choice for DO. Ed was the organization man, and Mary Pat was the cowboy side of the best husband-wife team the Agency had ever fielded. Making Mary Pat a senior executive would have been a worldwide first, and probably worth a few votes in Congress. She was pregnant again with her third, but that wasn't expected to slow Supergirl down. The Agency had its own day-care center, complete to cipher locks on the doors, a heavily-armed response team of security officers, and the best play equipment Jack had ever seen.

“Sounds good, Jack. I'm sorry I faxed the President as soon as I did. I ought to have waited.”

“No problem, sir. The information was thoroughly laundered.”

“Let me know what Trent thinks about the funding.”

“Yes, sir.” Jack left for his office. He was getting good at this, the DDCI told himself. Cabot wasn't all that hard to manage.

Ghosn took his time to think. This was not a time for excitement, not a time for precipitous action. He sat down in the corner of his shop and chain-smoked his cigarettes for several hours, all the time staring at the gleaming metal ball that lay on the dirt floor. How radioactive is it! one part of his brain wondered almost continuously, but it was a little late for that. If that heavy sphere were giving off hard gammas, he was already dead, another part of his brain had already decided. This was a time to think and evaluate. It required a supreme act of will for him to sit still, but he managed it.

For the first time in many years he was ashamed of his education. He had expertise both in electrical and mechanical engineering, but he'd hardly bothered cracking a book about their nuclear equivalent. What possible use could such a thing have for him! he asked himself on the rare occasions that he'd considered acquiring knowledge in that area. Obviously none. As a result of that, he'd limited himself to broadening and deepening his knowledge in areas of direct interest: mechanical and electronic fusing systems, electronic counter-measure gear, the physical characteristics of explosives, the capabilities of explosive-sensing systems. He was a real expert on this last category of study. He read everything he could find on the instrumentation used in detecting explosives at airports and other areas of interest.

Number One, Ghosn told himself on lighting cigarette number fifty-four of the day, every book I can find on nuclear materials, their physical and chemical properties: bomb technology, bomb physics: radiological signatures… the Israelis must know the bomb is missing — since 1973! he thought in amazement. Then why…? Of course. The Golan Heights are volcanic in origin. The underlying rock and the soil in which those poor farmers tried to raise their vegetables were largely basaltic, and basalt had a relatively high background-radiation count… the bomb was buried two or three meters in rocky soil, and whatever emissions it gave off were lost in background count…

I'm safe! Ghosn realized.

Of course! If the weapon were that “hot”, it would have been better shielded! Praise be to Allah for that!

Can I… can I? That was the question, wasn't it?

Why not?

“Why not?” Ghosn said aloud. “Why not. I have all the necessary pieces, damaged, but.. ”

Ghosn stubbed the cigarette out in the dirt next to all the others and rose. His body was racked by coughing — he knew that cigarettes were killing him… more dangerous than that… but they were good for thinking.

The engineer lifted the sphere. What to do with it? For the moment, he set it in the corner and covered it with a tool box. Then he walked out of the building towards his jeep. The drive to headquarters took fifteen minutes.

“I need to see the Commander,” Ghosn told the chief guard.

“He just retired for the evening,” the guard said. The entire detail was becoming protective of their commander.

“He'll see me.” Ghosn walked right past him and into the building.

Qati's quarters were on the second floor. Ghosn went up the steps, past another guard and pulled open the bedroom door. He heard retching from the adjoining bathroom.

“Who the devil is it?” a cross voice asked. “I told you that I didn't want to be disturbed!”

“It's Ghosn. We need to talk.”

“Can't it wait?” Qati appeared from the lighted doorway. His face was ashen. It came out as a question, not an order, and that told Ibrahim more than he'd ever known of his Commander's condition. Perhaps this would make him feel better.

“My friend, I need to show you something. I need to show it to you tonight.” Ghosn strained to keep his voice level and unexcited.

“Is it that important?” Almost a moan.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

Ghosn just shook his head, tapping his ear as he did so. “It's something interesting. That Israeli bomb has some new fusing systems. It nearly killed me. We need to warn our colleagues about it.”

“Bomb? I thought—” Qati stopped himself. His face cleared for a moment and the Commander's expression formed a question. “Tonight, you say?”

“I'll drive you over myself.”

Qati's strength of character prevailed. “Very well. Let me get my clothes on.”

Ghosn waited downstairs. “The Commander and I have to go see about something.”

“Mohammed!” the chief guard called, but Ghosn cut him off.

I'll take the Commander myself. There is no security problem in my shop."

“But—”

“But you worry like an old woman! If the Israelis were that clever, you'd already be dead, and the Commander with you!” It was too dark to see the expression on the guard's face, but Ghosn could feel the rage that radiated towards him from the man, an experienced front-line fighter.

“We'll see what the Commander says!”

“What's the problem now?” Qati emerged from the door, tucking his shirt in.

“I'll drive you myself, Commander. We don't need a security force for this.”

“As you say, Ibrahim.” Qati walked to the jeep and got in. Ghosn drove off past some astonished security guards.

“What exactly is this all about?”

“It's a bomb after all, not an electronics pod,” the engineer replied.

“So? We've retrieved scores of the cursed things! What is this all about?”

“It is easier to show you.” The engineer drove rapidly, watching the road. “If you think I have wasted your time — when we are done, feel free to end my life.”

Qati's head turned at that. The thought had already occurred to him, but he was too good a leader for that. Ghosn might not be the material of a fighter, but he was an expert at what he did. His service to the organization was as valuable as any man's. The Commander endured the rest of the ride in silence, wishing the medicines he was taking allowed him to eat — no, to retain what he ate.

Fifteen minutes later, Ghosn parked his jeep fifty meters from the shop, and led his Commander to the building by an indirect route. By this time Qati was thoroughly confused and more than a little angry. When the lights went on, he saw the bombcase.

“So, what about it?”

“Come here.” Ghosn led him to the corner. The engineer bent down and lifted the tool box. “Behold!”

“What is it?” It looked like a small cannonball, a sphere of metal. Ghosn was enjoying this. Qati was angry, but that would soon change.

“It's plutonium.”

The commander's head snapped around as though driven by a steel spring. “What? What do—”

Ghosn held up his hand. He spoke softly, but positively. “What I am sure of, Commander, is that this is the explosive portion of an atomic bomb. An Israeli atomic bomb.”

“Impossible!” the Commander whispered.

“Touch it,” Ghosn suggested.

The Commander bent down and touched a finger to it. “It's warm, why?”

“From the decay of alpha particles. A form of radiation that is not harmful — here it is not, in any case. That is plutonium, the explosive element of an atomic bomb. It can be nothing else.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive, absolutely positive. It can only be what I say it is.” Ghosn walked over to the bombcase. “These”—he held up some tiny electronic parts—“they look like glass spiders, no? They are called kryton switches, they perform their function with total precision, and that kind of precision is necessary for only one application found inside a bombcase. These explosive blocks, the intact ones, note that some are hexagons, some are pentagons? That is necessary to make a perfect explosive sphere. A shaped charge, like that for an RPG, but the focus is inward. These explosive blocks are designed to crush that sphere to the size of a walnut.”

“But it's metal! What you say is not possible.”

"Commander, I do not know as much as I should of these matters, but I do know a little. When the explosives go off, they compress that metal sphere as though it were made of rubber. It is possible — you know what an RPG does to the metal on a tank, no? There is enough explosive here for a hundred RPG projectiles. They will crush the metal as I say. When it is compressed, the proximity of the atoms begins a nuclear chain-reaction. Think, Commander:

“The bomb fell into the old man's garden on the first day of the October War. The Israelis were frightened by the force of the Syrian attack, and they were immensely surprised by the effectiveness of the Russian rockets. The aircraft was shot down, and the bomb was lost. The exact circumstances don't matter. What matters, Ismael, is that we have the parts of a nuclear bomb.” Ghosn pulled out another cigarette and lit it.

“Can you…”

“Possibly,” the engineer said. Qati's face was suddenly cleared of the pain he'd known for over a month.

“Truly Allah is beneficent.”

“Truly He is. Commander, we need to think about this, very carefully, very thoroughly. And security…”

Qati nodded. “Oh, yes. You did well to bring me here alone. For this matter we can trust no one… no one at all… ” Qati let his voice trail off, then turned to his man. “What do you need to do?”

“My first need is for information — books, Commander. And do you know where I must go to get them?”

“ Russia?”

Ghosn shook his head. “ Israel, Commander. Where else?”

Representative Alan Trent met with Ryan in a House hearing room. It was the one used for closed-door hearings, and was swept daily for bugs.

“How's life treating you, Jack?” the congressman asked.

“No special complaints, Al. The President had a good day.”

“Indeed he did — the whole world did. The country owes you a debt of thanks, Dr. Ryan.”

Jack's smile dripped with irony. “Let's not allow anybody to learn that, okay?”

Trent shrugged. “Rules of the game. You should be used to it by now. So. What brings you down on such short notice?”

“We have a new operation going. It's called NIITAKA.” The DDCI explained on for several minutes. At a later date he would have to hand over some documentation. All that was required now was notification of the operation and its purpose.

“A million dollars a month. That's all he wants?” Trent laughed aloud.

“The Director was appalled,” Jack reported.

“I've always liked Marcus, but he's a tightfisted son of a bitch. We've got two certified Japan-bashers on the oversight committee, Jack. It's going to be hard to rein them in with this stuff.”

“Three, counting you, Al.”

Trent looked very hurt. “Me, a Japan-basher? Just because there used to be two TV factories in my district, and a major auto-parts supplier has laid off half its people? Why the hell should I be the least bit angry about that? Let me see the cabinet minutes,” the congressman commanded.

Ryan opened his case. “You can't copy them, you can't quote from them. Look, Al, this is a long-term op and—”

“Jack, I didn't just get into town from the chicken ranch, did I? You've turned into a humorless SOB. What's the problem?”

“Long hours,” Jack explained, as he handed the papers over. Al Trent was a speed reader, and flicked through the pages with indecent speed. His face went into neutral, and he turned back into what he was before all things, a cold, calculating politician. He was well to the left side of the spectrum, but, unlike most of his ilk, Trent let his ideology stop at the water's edge. He also saved his passion for the House floor and his bed at home. Elsewhere he was icily analytical.

“Fowler will go ballistic when he sees this. They are the most arrogant people. You've sat in on cabinet meetings. Ever hear stuff like this?” Trent asked.

“Only on political matters. I was surprised by the tone of the language, too, but it might just be a cultural thing, remember.”

The congressman looked up briefly. “True. Beneath the patina of good manners, they can be wild and crazy folks, kind of like the Brits, but this is like Animal House… Christ, Jack, this is explosive. Who recruited him?”

“The usual mating dance. He shows up at various receptions, and Chief of Station Tokyo caught a whiff, let it simmer for a few weeks, then made his move. The Russian handed over the packet and his contractual demands.”

“Why Operation NIITAKA, by the way? I've heard that before somewhere, haven't I?”

“I picked it myself. When the Japanese strike force was heading for Pearl Harbor, the mission-execute signal was ”Climb Mount Niitaka.“ Remember, you're the only guy here who knows that word. We're going onto a monthly-change identification cycle on this. This is hot enough that we're giving him the whole treatment.”

“Right,” Trent agreed. “What if this guy's an agent provocateur?”

“We've wondered about that. It's possible, but unlikely. For KGB to do that — well, it kinda breaks the rules as they are understood now, doesn't it?”

“Wait!” Trent read over the last page again. “What the hell's this about communications?”

“What it is, is scary.” Ryan explained what he wanted to do.

“Fifty million? You sure?”

That's the one-time start-up costs. Then there's the new communicators. Total annual costs after start-up are about fifteen million."

“Pretty reasonable, actually.” Trent shook his head. “NSA is quoting a much higher price to switch over to their system.”

They have a bigger infrastructure to worry about. That number I gave you ought to be solid. M ERCURY is pretty small."

“How soon do you want it?” Trent knew that Ryan quoted hard budget numbers. It came from his business experience, Al knew, which was pretty thin in government service.

“Last week would be nice, sir.”

Trent nodded. “I'll see what I can do. You want it 'black,' of course?”

“Like a cloudy midnight,” Ryan answered.

“God damn it!” Trent swore. “I've told Olson about this. His technical weenies do their rain dance and he buys it every time. What if—”

“Yeah, what if all our communications are compromised.” Jack did not make it a question. “Thank God for glasnost, eh?”

“Does Marcus understand the implications?”

“I explained it to him this morning. He understands. Al, Cabot may not have all the experience you or I would like, but he's a fast learner. I've had worse bosses.”

“You're too loyal. Must be a lingering symptom of your time in the Marines,” Trent observed. “You'd be a good director.”

“Never happen.”

“True. Now that Liz Elliot is National Security Advisor, you'll have to cover your ass. You know that.”

“Yep.”

“What in hell did you do to piss her off? Not that it's all that hard to do.”

“It was back right after the convention,” Ryan explained. “I was up in Chicago to brief Fowler. She caught me tired from a couple of long trips and she yanked my chain pretty hard. I yanked back.”

“Learn to be nice to her,” Trent suggested.

“Admiral Greer said that.”

Trent handed the papers back to Ryan. “It is difficult, isn't it?”

“Sure is.”

“Learn anyway. Best advice I can give you.” Probably a total waste of time, of course.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good timing on the request, by the way. The rest of the committee will be impressed as hell with the new operation. The Japan-bashers will put the word out to their friends on Appropriations that the Agency is really doing something useful. We'll have the money to you in two weeks if we're lucky. What the hell, fifty million bucks — chicken feed. Thanks for coming down.”

Ryan locked his case and stood. “Always a pleasure.”

Trent shook his hand. “You're a good man, Ryan. What a damned shame you're straight.”

Jack laughed. “We all have our handicaps, Al.”

Ryan returned to Langley to put the NIITAKA documents back in secure storage, and that ended his work for the day. He and Clark took the elevator down to the garage, and left the building an hour early, something they did every two weeks or so. Forty minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven between Washington and Annapolis.

“Hello, Doc Ryan!” Carol Zimmer said from behind the register. One of her sons relieved her there, and she led Jack into the back room. John Clark checked out the store. He wasn't worried about Ryan's security, but he had some lingering worries about the way some local toughs felt about the Zimmer enterprise. He and Chavez had taken care of that one gang leader, having done so in front of three of his minions, one of whom had tried to interfere. Chavez had shown mercy to that lad, who hadn't required an overnight stay at the local hospital. That, Clark judged, was a sign of Ding's growing maturity.

“How is business?” Jack asked in the back room.

“We up twenty-six 'rcent from this time las' year.”

Carol Zimmer had been born in Laos less than forty years before, rescued from a hilltop fortress by an Air Force special-operations helicopter just as the North Vietnamese Army had overrun that last outpost of American power in Northern Laos. She'd been sixteen at the time, the last living child of a Hmong chieftain who'd served American interests and his own — he'd been a willing agent — courageously and well, and to the death. She'd married Air Force sergeant Buck Zimmer, who'd died in yet another helicopter after yet another betrayal, and then Ryan had stepped in. He hadn't lost his business sense despite his years of government service. He'd selected a good site for the store, and as fate had it, they hadn't needed his educational trust fund for the first of the kids now in college. With a kind word from Ryan to Father Tim Riley, the lad had a full scholarship at Georgetown and was already dean's-listed in pre-med. Like most Asians, Carol had a reverence for learning that bordered on religious fanaticism, and which she passed on to all of her kids. She also ran her store with the mechanistic precision a Prussian sergeant expected of an infantry squad. Cathy Ryan could have performed a surgical procedure on the register counter. It was that clean. Jack smiled at the thought. Maybe Laurence Alvin Zimmer, Jr., would do just that.

Ryan looked over the books. His CPA certificate had lapsed, but he could still read a balance sheet.

“You eat dinnah with us?”

“Carol, I can't. I have to get home. My son has a Little League game tonight. Everything's okay? No problems — not even those punks?”

“They not come back. Mistah Clark scare them away fo' good!”

“If they ever come back, I want you to call me right away,” Jack said seriously.

“Okay, okay. I learn lesson,” she promised him.

“Fine. You take care.” Ryan stood.

“Doc Ryan?”

“Yes?”

“Air Force say Buck die in accident. I never ask anybody, but I ask you: Accident, no accident?”

“Carol, Buck lost his life doing his job, saving lives. I was there. So was Mr. Clark.”

“The ones make Buck die…?”

“You have nothing to fear from them,” Ryan said evenly. “Nothing at all.” Jack saw the recognition in her eyes. Though Carol had modest language skills, she'd caught what he'd meant by his answer.

“Thank you, Doc Ryan. I never ask again, but I must know.”

“It's okay.” He was surprised she'd waited so long.

The bulkhead-mounted speaker rattled. “ Conn, sonar. I have a routine noise level bearing zero-four-seven, designate contact Sierra-5. No further information at this time. Will advise.”

“Very well.” Captain Ricks turned to the plotting table. “Tracking party, begin your TMA.” The Captain looked around the room. Instruments showed a speed of seven knots, a depth of four hundred feet, and a course of three-zero-three. The contact was broad on his starboard beam.

The ensign commanding the tracking party immediately consulted the Hewlett-Packard mini-computer located in the starboard-after corner of the attack center. “Okay,” he announced, “I have a trace angle… little shaky… computing now.” That took the machine all of two seconds. “Okay, I have a range gate… it's a convergence zone, range between three-five and four-five thousand yards if he's in CZ-1, five-five and six-one thousand yards for CZ-2.”

“It's almost too easy,” the XO observed to the skipper.

“You're right, X, disable the computer,” Ricks ordered.

Lieutenant Commander Wally Claggett, Executive Officer, “Gold,” USS Maine walked back to the machine and switched it off. “We have a casualty to the HP computer… looks like it'll take hours to fix,” he announced. “Pity.”

“Thanks a lot,” Ensign Ken Shaw observed quietly to the quartermaster hunched next to him at the chart table.

“Be cool, Mr. Shaw,” the petty officer whispered back. “We'll take care o'ya. Don't need that thing now anyway, sir.”

“Let's keep it quiet in the attack center!” Captain Ricks observed.

The submarine's course took her northwest. The sonar operators fed information to the attack center as she did so. Ten minutes later, the tracking party made its decision.

“Captain,” Ensign Shaw announced. “Estimate contact Sierra-5 is in the first CZ, range looks like three-nine thousand yards, course is generally southerly, speed between eight and ten knots.”

“You can do better than that!” the CO announced sharply.

“ Conn, sonar, Sierra-5 looks like Akula-class Soviet fast-attack, preliminary target ident is Akula number six, the Admiral Lunin. Stand by”—a moment's silence—“possible aspect change on Sierra-5, possible turn. Conn, we have a definite aspect change. Sierra-5 is now beam-on, definite beam-aspect on target.”

“Captain,” the XO said, “that maximizes the effectiveness of his towed array.”

“Right. Sonar, conn. I want a self-noise check.”

“Sonar aye, stand by, sir.” Another few seconds. “ Conn, we're making some sort of noise… not sure what, rattle, like, maybe something in the aft ballast tanks. Didn't show before, sir. Definitely aft… definitely metallic.”

“Conn, maneuvering room, we got something screwy back here. I can hear something from aft, maybe in the ballast tanks.”

“Captain,” Shaw said next. “Sierra-5 is now on a reciprocal heading. Target course is now southeasterly, roughly one-three-zero.”

“Maybe he can hear us,” Ricks growled. “I'm taking us up through the layer. Make your depth one hundred feet.”

“One hundred feet, aye,” the diving officer responded immediately. “Helm, five degrees up on the fairwater planes.”

“Five degrees up on the fairwater planes, aye. Sir, the fairwater planes are up five degrees, coming to one hundred feet.”

“ Conn, maneuvering, the rattle has stopped. It stopped when we took the slight up-angle.”

The XO grunted next to the captain. “What the hell does that mean…?”

“It probably means that some dumbass dockyard worker left his toolbox in the ballast tank. That happened to a friend of mine once.” Ricks was truly angry now, but if you had to have such incidents, here was the place for them. “When we get above the layer, I want to go north and clear datum.”

“Sir, I'd wait. We know where the CZ is. Let him slide out of it, then we can maneuver clear while he can't hear us. Let him think he's got us scoped before we start playing tricks. He probably thinks we don't have him. By maneuvering radically, we're tipping our hand.”

Ricks considered that. “No, we've cancelled the noise aft, we've probably dropped off his scopes already, and when we get above the layer, we can get lost in the surface noise and maneuver clear. His sonar isn't all that good. He doesn't even know what we are yet. He's just sniffing for something. This way we can put more distance between us.”

“Aye aye,” the XO responded neutrally.

Maine leveled off at one hundred feet, well above the thermocline layer, the boundary between relatively warm surface water and the cold deep water. It changed acoustical conditions drastically and, Ricks judged, should eliminate any chance that the Akula had him.

“ Conn, sonar, contact lost in Sierra-5.”

“Very well. I have the conn,” Ricks announced.

“Captain has the conn,” the officer of the deck acknowledged.

“Left ten degrees rudder, come to new course three-five-zero.”

“Left ten degrees rudder, aye, coming to new course three-five-zero. Sir, my rudder is left ten degrees.”

“Very well. Engine room, conn, make turns for ten knots.”

“Engine room, aye, turns for ten knots. Building up slowly.”

Maine steadied up on a northerly course and increased speed. It took several minutes for her towed-array sonar to straighten out and be useful again. During this time, the American submarine was somewhat blinded.

“ Conn, maneuvering, we got that noise again!” the speaker announced.

“Slow to five — all ahead one-third!”

“All ahead one-third, aye. Sir, engine room answers all ahead one-third.”

“Very well. Maneuvering, conn, what about that noise?”

“Still there, sir.”

“We'll give it a minute,” Ricks judged. “Sonar, conn, got anything on Sierra-5?”

“Negative, sir, holding no contacts at this time.”

Ricks sipped at his coffee and watched the clock on the bulkhead for three minutes. “Maneuvering, conn, what about the noise?”

“Has not changed, sir. It's still there.”

“Damn! X, bring her down a knot.” Claggett did as he was told. The skipper was losing it, he realized. Not good. Another ten minutes passed. The worrisome noise aft attenuated, but did not go away.

“ Conn, sonar! Contact bearing zero-one-five, just appeared real sudden, like, it's Sierra-5, sir. Definite Akula-class, Admiral Lunin. Evaluate as direct-path contact, bow-on aspect. Probably just came up through the layer, sir.”

“Does he have us?” Ricks asked.

“Probably yes, sir,” the sonarman reported.

“Stop!” another voice announced. Commodore Mancuso walked into the room. “Okay, we conclude the exercise at this point. Will the officers please come with me?”

Everyone let out a collective breath as the lights went up. The room was set in a large square building shaped not at all like a submarine, though its various other rooms duplicated most of the important parts of an Ohio-class boomer. Mancuso led the attack-center crew into a conference room and closed the door.

“Bad tactical move, Captain.” Bart Mancuso was not known for his diplomacy. “XO, what advice was that you gave to your skipper?” Claggett recited it word for word. “Captain, why did you reject that advice?”

“Sir, I estimated that our acoustical advantage was sufficient to allow me to do that in such a way as to maximize separation from the target.”

“Wally?” Mancuso turned to the skipper of the Red Team, Commander Wally Chambers, about to become the CO of USS Key West. Chambers had worked for Mancuso on Dallas, and had the makings of one hell of a fast-attack skipper. He had just proven that, in fact.

“It was too predictable, Captain. Moreover, by continuing course and changing depth course you presented the noise source to my towed array, and also gave me a hull-popping transient that ID'd you as a definite submarine contact. You would have been better off to turn bow-on, maintain depth, and slow down. All I had was a vague indication. If you'd slowed down, I would never have ID'd you. Since you didn't, I noted your hop on top the layer and sprinted in fast underneath as soon as I cleared the CZ. Captain, I didn't know I had you until you let me know, but you let me know, and you did let me get close. I floated my tail over the layer while I stayed right underneath it. There was a fairly good surface duct, and I had you at two-nine thousand yards. I could hear you, but you couldn't hear me. Then it was just a matter of continuing my sprint until I was close enough for a high-probability solution. I had you cold.”

The point of the exercise was to show you what happened when you lost your acoustical advantage.“ Mancuso let that sink in before going on. ”Okay, so it wasn't fair, was it? Who ever said life was fair?"

“Akula's a good boat, but how good is its sonar?”

“We assume it's as good as a second-flight 688.”

No way, Ricks thought to himself. “What other surprises can I expect?”

“Good question. The answer is that we don't know. And if you don't know, you assume they're as good as you are.”

No way, Ricks told himself.

Maybe even better, Mancuso didn't add.

“Okay,” the Commodore told the assembled attack-center crew. “Go over your own data and we do the wash-up in thirty minutes.”

Ricks watched Captain Mancuso exit the room sharing a chuckle with Chambers. Mancuso was a smart, effective sub-driver, but he was still a damned fast-attack jockey who didn't belong in command of a boomer squadron, because he simply didn't think the right way. Calling in his former shipmate from Atlantic Fleet, another fast-attack jockey — well, yeah, that's how it was done, but damn it! Ricks was sure he'd done the right thing.

It had been an unrealistic test. Ricks was sure of that. Hadn't Rosselli told the both of them that Maine was quiet as a black hole? Damn. This was his first chance to show the commodore what he could do, and he'd been faked out of making a favorable impression by an artificial and unfair test, and some goofs from his people — the ones Rosselli had been so damned proud of.

“Mr. Shaw, let's see your TMA records.”

“Here, sir.” Ensign Shaw, who'd graduated sub school at Groton less than two months before, was standing in the corner, the chart and his notes grasped tightly in his tense hands. Ricks snatched them away and spread them on a work table. The Captain's eyes scanned the pages.

“Sloppy. You could have done this at least a minute faster.”

“Yes, sir,” Shaw replied. He didn't know how he might have gone faster, but the Captain said so, and the Captain was always right.

“That could have made the difference,” Ricks told him, a muted but still nasty edge on his voice.

“Sorry, sir.” That was Ensign Shaw's first real mistake. Ricks straightened, but still had to look up to meet Shaw's eyes. That didn't help his disposition either.

“'Sorry' doesn't cut it, Mister. 'Sorry' endangers our ship and our mission. 'Sorry' gets people killed. 'Sorry' is what an unsatisfactory officer says. Do you understand me, Mr. Shaw?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine.” The word came out as a curse. “Let's make sure this never happens again.”

The rest of the half hour was spent going over the records of the exercise. The officers left the room for a larger one, where they would relive the exercise, learning what the Red Team had seen and done. Lieutenant Commander Claggett slowed the Captain down.

“Skipper, you were a little hard on Shaw.”

“What do you mean?” Ricks asked in annoyed surprise.

“He didn't make any mistakes. I couldn't have done the track more than thirty seconds faster myself. The quartermaster I had with him has been doing TMAs for five years. He's taught it at sub school. I kept an eye on both of them. They did okay.”

“Are you saying the mistake was my fault?” Ricks asked in a deceptively gentle voice.

“Yes, sir,” the XO replied honestly, as he had been taught to do.

“Is that a fact?” Ricks walked out the door without another word.

To say that Petra Hassler-Bock was unhappy was an understatement of epic proportions. A woman in her late thirties, she'd lived over fifteen years on the run, hiding from the West German police before things had simply become too dangerous, precipitating her escape to the East Zone — what had been the East Zone, the Bundeskriminalamt investigator smiled to himself. Amazingly, she'd thrived on it. Every photo in the thick file showed an attractive, vital, smiling woman with a girl's unlined face framed by pretty brown hair. This same face had coldly watched three people die, one after several days of knife-work, the detective told himself. That murder had been part of an important political statement — it had been at the time of the vote on whether or not to allow the Americans to base their Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles in Germany, and the Red Army Faction had wanted to terrify people into seeing things their way. It hadn't worked, of course, though it had made the victim's death into a gothic exercise.

“Tell me, Petra, did you enjoy killing Wilhelm Manstein?” the detective asked.

“He was a pig,” she answered defiantly. “An overweight, sweaty, whoremongering pig.”

That was how they'd caught him, the detective knew. Petra had set up the kidnapping first by attracting his attention, then by establishing a brief but fiery relationship. Manstein had not been the most attractive example of German manhood, of course, but Petra 's idea of women's liberation was rather more robust than the norm in Western countries. The nastiest members of Baader-Meinhof and the RAF had been the women. Perhaps it was a reaction to the Kinder-Küche-Kirche mindset of German males, as some psychologists said, but the woman before him was the most coldly frightening assassin he'd ever met. The first body parts mailed to Manstein's family had been those which had offended her so greatly. Manstein had lived for ten days after that, the pathologist's report stated, providing noisy red entertainment for this still-young lady.

“Well, you took care of that, didn't you? I imagine Günther was somewhat unsettled by your passion, wasn't he? After all, you spent — what? Five nights with Herr Manstein before the kidnapping? Did you enjoy that part also, mein Schatz?” The insult scored, the detective saw. Petra had been attractive once, but no longer. Like a flower a day after cutting, she was no longer a living thing. Her skin was sallow, her eyes surrounded by dark rings, and she'd lost at least eight kilos. Defiance blazed out from her, but only briefly. "I expect you did, giving in to him, letting him 'do his thing.' You must have enjoyed it enough that he kept coming back. It wasn't just baiting him, was it? It could not have been just an act. Herr Manstein was a discerning philanderer. He had so much experience, and he only frequented the most skillful whores. Tell me, Petra, how did you acquire so much skill? Did you practice beforehand with Günther — or with others? All in the name of revolutionary justice, of course, or revolutionary Komaradschaft, nicht wahr? You are a worthless slut, Petra. Even whores have morals, but not you.

“And your beloved revolutionary cause,” the detective sneered. “Doch! Such a cause. How does it feel to be rejected by the entire German Volk?” She stirred in her chair at that, but couldn't quite bring herself… “What's the matter, Petra, no heroic words now? You always talked about your visions of freedom and democracy, didn't you? Are you disappointed now that we have real democracy — and the people detest you and your kind! Tell me, Petra, what is it like to be rejected? Totally rejected. And you know it's true,” the investigator added. “You know it's no joke. You watched the people in the street from your windows, didn't you, you and Günther? One of the demonstrations was right under your apartment, wasn't it? What did you think while you watched, Petra? What did you and Günther say to each other? Did you say it was a counter-revolutionary trick?” The detective shook his head, leaning forward to stare into those empty, lifeless eyes, enjoying his own work as she had done.

“Tell me, Petra, how do you explain the votes? Those were free elections. You know that, of course. Everything you stood for and worked for and murdered for — all a mistake, all for nothing! Well, it wasn't a total loss, was it? At least you got to make love to Wilhelm Manstein.” The detective leaned back and lit a small cigar. He blew smoke up at the ceiling. “And now, Petra? I hope you enjoyed that little tryst, mein Schatz. You will never leave this prison alive. Never, Petra. No one will ever feel pity for you, not even when you're confined to a wheelchair. Oh, no. They'll remember your crimes and tell themselves to leave you here with all the other vicious beasts. There is no hope for you. You will die in this building, Petra.”

Petra Hassler-Bock's head jerked at that. Her eyes went wide for an instant as she thought to say something, but stopped short.

The detective went on conversationally. “We lost track of Günther, by the way. We nearly got him in Bulgaria — missed him by thirty hours. The Russians, you see, have been giving us their files on you and your friends. All those months you spent at those training camps. Well, in any case, Günther is still on the run. In Lebanon, we think, probably holed up with your old friends in that ratpack. They're next,” the detective told her. "The Americans, the Russians, the Israelis, they're cooperating now, didn't you hear? It's part of this treaty business. Isn't that wonderful? I think we'll get Günther there… with luck he'll fight back or do something really foolish, and we can bring you a picture of his body… Pictures, that's right! I almost forgot!

“I have something to show you,” the investigator announced. He inserted a video cassette into a player and switched on the TV. It took a moment for the picture to settle down into what was plainly an amateur video taken with a hand-held camera. It showed twin girls, dressed in matching pink dirndl outfits, sitting side by side on a typical rug in a typical German apartment — everything was fully in Ordnung, even the magazines on the table were squared off. Then the action started.

“Komm, Erika, Komm, Ursel!” a woman's voice urged, and both infants pulled themselves up on a coffee table and tottered towards her. The camera followed their halting, unstable steps into the woman's arms.

“Mutti, Mutti!” they both said. The detective switched the TV off.

“They're talking and walking. Ist das nicht wunderbar! Their new mother loves them very much, Petra. Well, I thought you'd like to see that. That's all for today.” The detective pressed a hidden button, and a guard appeared to take the manacled prisoner back to her cell.

The cell was stark, a cubicle made of white-painted bricks. There was no outside window, and the door was of solid steel except for a spyhole and a slot for food trays. Petra didn't know about the TV camera that looked through what seemed to be yet another brick near the ceiling, but was really a small plastic panel transparent to red and infra-red light. Petra Hassler-Bock retained her composure all the way to the cell, and until the door was slammed shut behind her.

Then she started coming apart.

Petra 's hollow eyes stared at the floor — that was painted white, also — too wide and horrified for tears at first, contemplating the nightmare that her life had become. It could not be real, part of her said with confidence that bordered on madness. All she'd believed in, all she'd worked for — gone! Günther, gone. The twins, gone. The cause, gone. Her life, gone.

The Bundeskriminalamt detectives only interrogated her for amusement. She knew that much. They had never seriously probed her for information, but there was a reason for that. She had nothing worthwhile to give them. They'd shown her copies of the files from Stasi headquarters. Nearly everything her erstwhile fraternal socialist brothers had had on her — far more than she had expected — was now in West German hands. Names, addresses, phone numbers, records dating back more than twenty years, things about herself that she'd forgotten, things about Günther that she'd never known. All in the hands of the BKA.

It was all over. All lost.

Petra gagged and started weeping. Even Erika and Ursel, her twins, the product of her own body, the physical evidence of her faith in the future, of her love for Günther. Taking their first steps in the apartment of strangers. Calling some stranger Mutti, mommy. The wife of a BKA captain — they'd told her that much. Petra wept for half an hour, not making noise, knowing that there had to be a microphone in the cell, this cursed white box that denied her sleep.

Everything lost.

Life — here? The first and only time she'd been in the exercise yard with other prisoners, they'd had to pull two of them off her. She could remember their screams as the guards had taken her for medical treatment — whore, murderess, animal… To live here for forty years or more, alone, always alone, waiting to go mad, waiting for her body to weaken and decay. For her life meant life. Of that she was certain. There would be no pity for her. The detective had made that clear. No pity at all. No friends. Lost and forgotten… except for the hate.

She made her decision calmly. In the manner of prisoners all over the world, she'd found a way of getting a piece of metal with an edge on it. It was, in fact, a segment of razor blade from the instrument with which she was allowed to shave her legs once a month. She removed it from its place of hiding, then pulled the sheet — also white — from the mattress. It was like any other, about ten centimeters thick, covered with heavy striped fabric. Its trim was a loop of fabric in which was inserted a rope-like stiffener, with the mattress fabric sewn tight around it to give the edge strength. With the razor edge she began detaching the trim from the mattress. It took three hours and not a small amount of blood, for the razor segment was small, and it cut her fingers many times, but finally she had two full meters of improvised rope. She turned one end of the rope into a noose. The free end of the rope she tied to the light fixture over the door. She had to stand on her chair to do that, but she'd have to stand on the chair in any case. It took three attempts to get the knot right. She didn't want too much length on the rope.

When she was satisfied with that, she proceeded without pause. Petra Hassler-Bock removed her dress and her bra. Next she knelt on the chair with her back to the door, getting its position and hers just right, placed the noose around her neck, and drew it tight. Then she drew up her legs, using her bra to secure them between her back and the door. She didn't want to flinch from this. She had to show her courage, her devotion. Without stopping for a prayer or lament, her hands pushed the chair away. Her body fell perhaps five centimeters before the improvised rope stopped her fall and drew tight. Her body rebelled against her will at this point. Her drawn-up legs fought against the bra holding them between the backs of her thighs and the metal door, but in fighting the restraint, they merely pushed Petra fractionally away from the door, and that increased the strangulation on her upper neck.

She was surprised by the pain. The noose fractured her larynx before sliding over it to a point under her jaw. Her eyes opened wide, staring at the white bricks of the far wall. That's when the panic hit her. Ideology has its limits. She couldn't die, didn't want to die, didn't want to—

Her fingers raced to her throat. It was a mistake. They fought to get under the mattress trim, but it was too thin, cutting so deeply into the soft flesh of her neck that she couldn't get a single finger under it. Still she fought, knowing that she had mere seconds before the blood loss to her brain… it was getting vague now, her vision was beginning to suffer. She couldn't see the lines of mortar between the even German-made brickwork on the far wall. Her hands kept trying, cutting into the surface blood vessels of her throat, drawing blood that only made the noose slick, able to sink in tighter, cutting off circulation through the carotid arteries even more. Her mouth opened wide and she tried to scream, no, she didn't want to die, didn't — needed help. Couldn't anyone hear her? Could no one help her? Too late, just two seconds, maybe only one, maybe not even that, the last remaining shred of consciousness told her that if she could just loosen the bra holding her legs, she could have stood and…

The detective watched the TV picture, saw her hands flutter towards the bra, searching limply for the clasp before they fell away, and twitched for a few more seconds, then stopped. So close, he thought. So very close to saving herself. It was a pity. She'd been a pretty girl, but she'd chosen to murder and torture, and she'd also chosen to die, and if she'd changed her mind at the end — didn't they all? Well, not quite all — that was merely renewed proof that the brutal ones were cowards after all, nicht wahr?

Aber natürlich.

“This television is broken,” he said, switching it off. “Better get a new one to keep an eye on Prisoner Hassler-Bock.”

“That will take about an hour,” the guard supervisor said.

“That's fast enough.” The detective removed the cassette from the same tape recorder he'd used to show the touching family scene. It went into his briefcase with the other. He locked the case and stood. There was no smile on his face, but there was a look of satisfaction. It wasn't his fault that the Bundestag and Bundesrat were unable to pass a simple and effective death-penalty statute. That was because of the Nazis, of course. Damned barbarians. But even barbarians were not total fools. They hadn't ripped up the autobahns after the war, had they? Of course not. So just because the Nazis had executed people — well, some of them had even been ordinary murderers whom any civilized government of the era would have executed. And if anyone merited death, Petra Hassler-Bock did. Murder by torture. Death by hanging. That, the detective figured, was fair enough. The Wilhelm Manstein murder case had been his from the start. He'd been there when the man's genitals had arrived by mail. He'd watched the pathologists examine the body, had attended the funeral, and he remembered the sleepless nights when he'd been unable to wash the horrid spectacles from his mind. Perhaps now he would. Justice had been slow, but it had come. With luck, those two cute little girls would grow into proper citizens, and no one would ever know who and what their birth mother had once been.

The detective walked out of the prison towards his car. He didn't want to be near the prison when her body was discovered. Case closed.

“Hey, man.”

“Marvin. I hear that you did well with weapons,” Ghosn said to his friend.

“No big deal, man. I've been shooting since I was a kid. That's how you get dinner where I come from.”

“You outshot our best instructor,” the engineer pointed out.

“Your targets are a hell of a lot bigger than a rabbit, and they don't move. Hell, I used to hit jacks on the move with my.22. If you have to shoot what you eat, you learn right quick to hit what you aim at, boy. How'd you do with that bomb thing?” Marvin Russell asked.

“A lot of work for very little return,” Ghosn replied.

“Maybe you can make a radio from all that electrical stuff,” the American suggested.

“Perhaps something useful.”