Trident Code

CHAPTER 1

Lana Elkins settled back in her office chair, basking in the scent of the narcissus that she’d just arranged in a crystal vase. The fragrance was so penetrating it felt narcotic. The narcissus had been waiting for her when she walked in the door of CyberFortress, her cybersecurity firm. They were the flower of the week. NSA Deputy Director Robert Holmes had sent her a bouquet every Monday since she returned to work four months ago. He’d vowed to start her week in similar fashion for as long as he lived. His first card had explained why: “Just a small token of my deep gratitude for all the exemplary work you performed during the greatest crisis of the modern age.” Signed simply, “Bob.”

Such an elegant term, “modern age.” Who talked that way anymore? No one but Holmes, and while others in the intelligence community viewed him as a dinosaur from the dark days of the Cold War for his attitudes, if not his expertise, Lana felt certain he was precisely the kind of cybergeneral you wanted in place when a crisis threatened to become a catastrophe.

So while she’d made a perfunctory effort to stop his weekly offering — cut flowers often carried large carbon footprints, depending on their point of origin — she’d relaxed and accepted his gifts, knowing “Thank you” was as much a part of his moral code as never flinching in the face of adversity. Even as Lana suspected her own principles were grayer — more tinged by the times — she appreciated the man’s spine, and, of course, the intoxicating scent of those elegant flowers with their white petals and yellow pistils.

She indulged herself with the aroma for a few seconds, thinking how much her fifteen-year-old daughter Emma would love a few of the flowers for her bedroom, before Holmes’s first encrypted communication of the week arrived. He wanted to draw her attention to a pair of Russian icebreakers and a cable-laying ship in the Arctic, and provided a link to satellite surveillance of the vessels. “If possible,” he wanted “CF” to intercept and relay to him all communications between the ships and their “masters in Moscow.”

If possible. In Holmes-speak, that was a command, and one Lana would do her utmost to fulfill. Her success at obtaining these sorts of intercepts had kept her company at the forefront of the intelligence world since she had left the NSA more than a decade ago to start her own firm.

Still, Holmes’s “masters in Moscow” line reminded her that he was a great fan of John le Carré, and always on the alert for moles and sleeper agents. Once a Cold War warrior always one, she figured of the deputy director. During the crisis last year that had all but brought the U.S. to its knees — and from which the country, indeed, the world was still recovering — Russian hackers, along with their devious counterparts in China, North Korea, Iran, and a host of other countries, had been immediate suspects in the massive cyberwar launched against the United States.

Remembering the real “masters” of all that mayhem still made her teeth grind, as did flashbacks of the harrowing events that finally led to their defeat. Well, it wasn’t the Russians, in any case. And despite the missive from Holmes on her screen, she doubted the great irascible bear of the north was up to anything more than its usual posturing over the Arctic. But then she immediately reminded herself that Russia’s aggressive actions in the Ukraine made any of its blustering deeply worrisome these days.

Climatologists were constantly noting that the northern region was heating up two to three times faster than the average rate for the rest of the world. Five fossil-fuel powers bordered the Arctic: the U.S.; Canada; Russia; Denmark, which included Greenland in its kingdom; and Norway. All were looking hungrily at what geologists said might be the last of the world’s great untapped reserves of natural gas and oil. In theory, those five countries were peaceably negotiating over mineral rights. In reality, most were also busy building icebreakers and other naval hardware in case words proved weak in ensuring both national sovereignty and prosperity.

Already an increasing number of commercial tankers were carrying gas and oil from Siberia through Russia’s Northern Sea Route, a more direct voyage for that nation and the vessels of other countries than the Northwest Passage through Canadian-claimed waters. In either case, the supertankers and container ships now plying those seas each saved many days and upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars per trip over the longer runs through the Panama or Suez Canals. And on those northern routes the captains needn’t concern themselves with desperate Somali pirates. Or hijackers of any stripe, though it was amusing for Lana to conceive of a Canadian pirate party seizing a Russian ship (“Beauty, eh?”).

In actuality, the Canucks were assembling Arctic-worthy warships at an unprecedented pace. But if they were really smart, she thought they’d also be building ports capable of catering to the needs of those massive boats — as the Russians were already doing along their portion of the route.

At least the Canadians were moving ahead forcefully. The U.S. maintained little more than the homely presence of the Coast Guard in the Arctic with two—Count ’em—icebreaking ships in its entire fleet. The U.S. Navy was stretched so thin elsewhere that it didn’t expect to have much of a presence up there until the middle of the next decade, and that would happen only if Congress ever got around to approving the navy’s budget requests for more polar-class icebreakers.

The Russians, meanwhile, were running nuclear-powered Arctic icebreakers, while building the largest and most powerful vessel of that type in the world. So a great deal of responsibility for tracing Russian and other nations’ activities in the region had been left to U.S.-based intelligence agents using satellite and other technology. Notwithstanding the U.S., at times the entire region appeared to be a free-for-all of competing interests, while the very accuracy of its icy borders — upon which so much negotiating depended — was abused not so much by the threat of war or lesser aggressions, but by the increasing impact of the warming.

Lana summoned Jeff Jensen, her carefully attired VP in charge of CF’s internal security, though he was also drawn inevitably into naval affairs because the tightly wound thirty-eight-year-old Mormon was an Annapolis grad and veteran navy cryptographer. He had also served with distinction in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jensen hurried into her office within moments, working what appeared to be a new digital device that likely came from a friend in the tech field. He kept those contacts current, which kept CF on top of all the advances in the soft and hard “wares” of the business.

“I know about the Russian ships,” he said, looking up as he pocketed the device. “I was getting ready to send you a report when you texted. We’ve already got a satellite photo of one of them. It’s leading a polar-rated ship that’s laying more cable on the seabed,” Jensen went on. “It’s very shallow there.” As it was along most of the Siberian shelf.

“Nice work, Jeff. So how long before all of that is operational for them?”

“I’ll bet we’ll know before our counterparts in the Kremlin.”

She thanked Jeff, expecting him to leave. Instead he sat in the office’s guest chair.

“There’s something else you should know.”

His tone set off alarm bells for Lana. “What is it?”

“We had a double murder in Cambridge Friday night. Our friends at the FBI have been busy all weekend because the presumed target was a Dr. Brian Ahearn, who worked in Harvard’s Computer Science Department. I should also note that the murders have our colleagues at the Strategic Studies Institute sniffing the air.”

“What’s SSI’s interest?”

“Apparently, Ahearn was working on a means of extracting carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.”

Lana swiveled to her keyboard and immediately created a new file. “You’re right,” she told Jeff, “I should know this.” And she would have learned it, sooner than later, being a member of a new, top secret task force examining the international security concerns facing the U.S. because of climate change. “What do we know so far?”

“More than Harvard does, that’s for sure. They’re just getting clued in now. They didn’t know anything about his research.”

“How do we know about it then?”

“The FBI had an asset who had lunch with him every Wednesday. A math professor at MIT. I guess they shared a taste for hamburgers, and Professor Ahearn’s wife didn’t approve of his eating meat. The mathematician’s wife didn’t care, but he pretended to be under similar constraints at home as a means of bonding.”

“Over burgers?” Lana asked.

“I know, mind-boggling, but there you go. During one of their secret forays to a joint in Harvard Square — this was about two years ago — Ahearn casually alluded to his research. Nothing so precise as ‘I’m working on Ambient Air Capture at home,’ but enough to have piqued the interest of the mathematician and his minders, who promptly supplied him with an eight-gig fob camera.”

“How did he manage to get photos of anything more than the burgers?”

“People do have to go to the bathroom,” Jensen said. “And Ahearn was a creature of habit. He always used the facilities as soon as they were seated in one of the booths, and our mathematician photographed everything he could from the man’s briefcase in the two minutes and forty seconds that Ahearn typically used to complete the trip.”

“The computer science professor left his briefcase unlocked?” Lana sat back. “That’s hard to believe.”

“No, never, it was always locked. But it was a combination lock, and they hacked the code from the briefcase manufacturer.”

“Did NSA do that?”

“I’m sure Ed could tell you.”

Snowden. His name came up in this sort of context all the time, not always bitterly.

“Most of the time the math professor found nothing,” Jensen explained. “But on four occasions he photographed notes and mathematical formulas that included algorithms applicable to AAC.”

“Did Ahearn actually advance the science?” she asked.

“Considerably. The last batch of photos showed him on the verge of nearing his goal, from the reports I’ve received. That was two months ago. If he actually pulled it off, it would have been a world changer.”

“But no final answers, I presume, for the key-fob cameraman or us?”

“None.” Jensen shook his head.

“Who was the other victim? You said it was a double murder.”

“His wife was killed, too, and that was bad. Her ring finger was hacked off before she was shot in the face. And their four-year-old twins were found bound in their bedroom, one still gagged. She reported that black men had been in the house. The other was just as insistent the men were dressed in black. The only thing they agree on is that the men wore black ski masks. The Bureau’s forensic team has found black threads that do not match other fabrics in the house, so we think they could have been men dressed in black. A caller alerted 911 to the murders. Agents were not able to trace the call and presumed a prepaid cell had been used. Whoever did make the call spared the twins having to wait for hours for their nanny to return to the house.”

“Has she been questioned?” Lana asked.

“At great length. She’s from Costa Rica, a part-time student at Boston University. Speaks excellent English. She’s not a suspect, just a person of interest.”

Lana nodded again.

“The other interesting thing about this,” Jeff continued, “is that the killers took a pizza out of the oven and helped themselves to it. No trace of it was found in the victims’ stomachs, and forensics found the kind of crumbs you’d expect from people casually lounging around eating. The Bureau thinks it was the killers’ way of saying, ‘Hey, we’re professionals. Good luck finding us.’”

“Well, the chopped finger makes sense from an intimidation point of view,” Lana said. “It showed they meant business from the get-go.”

“That’s been leading the coverage in Beantown, but what didn’t get leaked was that his hard drive was taken from his computer and his safe was left open. Agents say some of his colleagues think he might have had an external drive in there. Not unusual in their field, I guess. The Bureau has an Evidence Response Team, ERT, processing the entire crime scene now, including the safe.”

“Did anything get out about AAC?”

“Not exactly, but there were reports, mostly on the Web, that the professor was involved in some rarefied research, but not the exact subject matter.” Jeff started to get up, then sat back down. “One other thing. The Bureau thinks the professor might have built something in his home office, maybe the prototype. He was not a do-it-yourselfer, but they found specialized tools and instruments. Nothing definite, but the Bureau has a unit processing his work area as well. A visual observation alone suggests something else is missing.”

With that, Jensen made his exit and Lana turned to the icebreakers and cable-laying ship on one of her screens, hulls and decks gray as those great northern waters. She was giving herself the freedom to simply think about the goings-on in the Arctic, how fraught such a frigid region had become, when Holmes directed her to join an urgent secure video teleconference, SCVT, with him and the chief of Naval Operations, along with two of the admiral’s top-ranking Pentagon aides.

This can’t be about those ships, she told herself, not with Admiral Roger Deming on-screen. She was right. The concerns were much deeper and closer to home: The U.S.S. Delphin, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine, had been taken over thirteen minutes ago.

By hackers!

Admiral Deming leaned forward to talk, an old warrior’s phantom-limb response to an absent microphone. “We didn’t believe it was even possible for an enemy to do this. They must have some help onboard. A sub cannot be taken control of remotely.”

“Is there any communication with the command staff?” Lana asked.

“None,” Deming replied. “All contact is shut down. And they’ve got twenty-four Trident IIs, most with multiple warheads.”

“So how is this even possible?” Lana asked.

“That,” Holmes replied, “is what we need to find out.”

Lana’s video hookup showed not only her counterparts in Washington, but also the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina. A crosshair indicated the sub’s location.

Holmes, white hair combed straight back — looking exactly the same as when she had first met him more than fifteen years ago — said the sub was the nation’s highest priority. “The President has been alerted and command posts worldwide are fully activated. We have destroyers on their way down there.”

“I understand,” Lana said. “Is there anything else you can tell—”

She was silenced by the abrupt appearance on-screen of the sub’s interior. Now she saw why: it had surfaced and was also visible on the split screen. The hackers had taken control of the ship’s cameras in the control and attack centers. Sailors were staggering, clutching their throats, and falling to the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Deming said, jumping out of his chair.

“What’s going on?” Lana said, staring in horror as sailors appeared to be dying right before her eyes, just seconds after the video had come alive. They were staggering, vomiting, gasping for breath, and falling to the floor. Some were now going into convulsions.

“Poison,” Deming said, still standing. “They’re poisoned.”

“Good God,” Holmes replied. “Isn’t there emergency oxygen?”

“Of course,” Deming said sharply. “But this is happening so fast nobody has a chance to grab it, and it might not do them any good anyway because oxygen isn’t always an antidote for poison.”

Sailors kept dropping to the sub floor. All appeared to be in their death throes. It was the most ghastly sight Lana had ever seen.

And then the video ended as the sub dived back down, as if to suggest the men and women were headed to a watery grave, leaving a shadow of terror on the faces of Admiral Deming and Bob Holmes.

If she could have seen herself then, Lana would have noticed a familiar look on her own face: fear mingled with fierceness. Her jaw was tight, shiny black hair pulled behind her ears, clear blue eyes staring nakedly at the blank screen. And if she’d lowered her gaze a mite more, she would have seen her fingers flying across the keyboard, trying desperately to find her way into the deeply veiled and violent world of digital terrorism.

CHAPTER 2

You could miss Starbucks if you blinked. It was so unlike Russian businesses, which screamed for attention in the post-Soviet capitalist apocalypse. Oleg Dernov had just walked past a hotel — granted, a most esteemed establishment, one his father naturally favored — with a Rolls Royce dealership in the lobby! What, you can order Phantom with room service now?

For so long Oleg had had such a weakness for those cars. So beauteous. And he would own one soon, maybe even the hotel and the block it sat upon. Not a pipe dream. Very serious.

So’s this, he thought, swinging open the door to a more modest Moscow establishment, the Starbucks he’d been looking for. It spoke of wealth, too, but maybe not so loudly as a Rolls Royce Phantom. Though his English-speaking friends could no more read the Starbucks sign than the future, they recognized the distinctive green lettering — the color of the new one-thousand-ruble note. No wonder Muscovites loved Starbucks so much, a little bit of heaven with every sip.

For Oleg, heaven also had a name: Galina Bortnik. Where was she? The Starbucks was not so crowded, but Galina was so tiny.

Ah, there she was, her nose buried in a MacBook. Good girl. Always working. Fast as fire. But not online. No hacker would ever risk having their computer’s Mac address captured on a public network.

So adorable in her swishy pale-blue pleated dress that fell not even halfway down her milky thighs. Such a munchkin. Five feet — maybe. Black hair cut by his own stylist, so it looked chic, as in you’d never guess Galina Bortnik was a single mom, stuck with a deadbeat dad, or a former nanny or dropout from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Most of all, do you know what you would never guess? She is greatest hacker in all of Russian Federation. Maybe greatest in world.

Except for me.

He rushed to her table. Muah, a kiss for the right cheek. Muah, a kiss for the left cheek. Muah, a kiss for her cushiony lips. She smelled like lavender. And her cheeks so red. A shy girl, a sexy girl, a girl who blushes from such a modest greeting. How good is that?

She already had taken her first sip of her espresso con panna, three shots with real whipped cream. Nothing light for her. And she had the appealing, slightly plump pulchritude of a ripe apricot, and the complexion of — what did the Brits and Americans call it? — “peaches and cream.” That’s it. She was the whole fruit basket. She didn’t skimp on fats, but good fats. And she was slightly plump, but good plump.

True, Oleg’s plutocratic father had warned him that girls like Galina turned to lard quickly, with everything “sagging and dragging” by the time they were thirty-five, but right now Galina Bortnik was twenty-six years old with full bouncy breasts and thighs so smooth and wonderfully soft when she wrapped them around his back and rocked him in the warm bath of pleasure he didn’t care if she put on ten kilograms a year for ten years. They would be like candy to him. Besides, his father was a rich asshole, married six times. Still waiting for his Galina.

Was this love?

Not so much for Oleg. For her, yes. But for him, many girls to bed before he wed. On that he and his father could agree.

Not that his father didn’t like “the rose,” as he’d nicknamed Galina the first time he saw her blush. He worshipped her for nannying Dmitri after Oleg’s little brother took quite a hit to the noggin. Since he was eight, Galina had taken care of him. She was the only steady female presence in Dmitri’s life because Papa married three times during those tumultuous years. But now Dmitri, a hulking fifteen-year-old who towered over Galina like a polar bear, could tie his shoelaces and feed himself and take care of the business at the other end as well, which the doctors said was a miracle of no little magnitude in and of itself. Given “little” brother’s enormous size, Oleg had to agree these were major accomplishments. But miracle? No, not a miracle: Galina Bortnik.

After ordering, paying, and insisting on a mug, not a paper cup — because this was coffee with the former regional director of Greenpeace Russia, mind you, who had to be bribed to walk through the doors of a Starbucks — Oleg sat down and opened his own MacBook. Hers was already bleeding electrons, but hers, she would remind him when necessary, used a solar cell for its juice.

“So when are you going to tell me who?” she asked softly.

He smiled but shook his head, feeling his wavy dark locks brush against his thick eyebrows. He’d split up Professor Ahearn’s files to disguise his identity and give her only what she needed to break the professor’s algorithms and contextual esoteric information and nothing more. So far she had been extraordinarily productive.

It was her hacking, after all, that had led him to Ahearn. To find the latest research on Ambient Air Capture, he’d hired her almost two years ago to scour the web, finding promising leads, pinpointing the most likely servers, and even identifying their network administrators.

He’d known it was out there, and the incalculable potential — and profits — to be had from the technology. Last month she’d closed in on an MIT professor. Oleg took it from there, spearfishing the administrator with a faked LinkedIn request from a beautiful academic researcher. The administrator took the bait and promptly downloaded a payload of malware, including a keylogger. Then the man logged in to the server. Bingo! Oleg exfiltrated the files — zipping and encoding them to avoid attention.

Oleg was doing Galina a favor by not revealing whose science she was studying, even if he could never tell her what the favor was or why he was bestowing it upon her. Galina was a peaceful person, lured into providing her hacking skills for the “benefit of all humankind.” That was exactly how she put it when he told her about the AAC technology. She would not want to know about the others in the operation who got their hands very dirty. Let her think she was on the side of the angels in stealing the AAC from profit-binging pirates in the hands of U.S. oil companies.

“I think he was a man,” she told him. “An academic.”

“Sure narrows it down. A male academic.”

“Don’t make fun.” She eyed him for a moment. “I’m right, aren’t I? Do you know you can read gender rhythms in keystrokes?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

She nodded, puckering, then opening her lips to mouth the word “true.”

Shy, but also very sexy girl.

“I’m protecting you. I really am,” he said.

She would curl up and die if she knew what they’d really done to obtain the complete files of the professor. But America had so many homicides that she would need a whole new set of algorithms just to link the Ahearns to the work she was executing so brilliantly. And why would she look for murders? This was hacking computers, not fingers, using a keyboard, not a cleaver. She wouldn’t even think of such bloody business. And if she did? The consequences for her would be too gruesome to consider.

“Whoever he was, he—”

“How do you know it was a he?” Oleg jumped in. “And don’t tell me gender rhythms.”

“Don’t dismiss them. There’s a lot of research into unique biometric profiling in keystroking.”

Oleg snorted. She was using fancy language that didn’t fool him. All it meant was that metrics could apply to human characteristics and traits, which included keystroking. As for whether you could tell men from women working on a keyboard? Not for certain, not yet. Someday, though.

“And I have good instincts,” she replied, using both hands to raise her con panna, elegant fingers fanning out left and right as her lips met the mug just long enough to leave a narrow creamy mustache above her inviting lips.

Oleg had an overwhelming urge to kiss it away — and would have, too, had they not called his drink order. Instead, he rose, delighted to see that the prettiest foam artist was on duty today. She had Baltic blue eyes and teeth as white as glaciers. She’d drawn Lenin’s inimitable face on his latte, employing skills like that crazy Japanese artist whose foam and coffee creations — teddy bears, kittens, giraffes, and Daliesque melting clocks — had gone viral. Moscow’s foam queen had a more limited range: Lenin and Trotsky mostly. Icons of the left that appealed more to tourists than Muscovites themselves. What Oleg loved most about Lenin’s visage was devouring it the way the architect of the Russian revolution had devoured the motherland.

Good riddance, Vladimir.

“So now do I get to work on all of AAC?” Galina asked him as he sat back down.

“I’m betting you’re trying,” he said playfully.

She smiled, nodding at the remaining half of Lenin’s creamy head.

“Guess what she put on mine?” Galina slid her drink around so he could see part of the face of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Pussy Riot supreme; Galina had already sipped away the foamy chin. Nickname: Tolokno. “She’s doing her now, if you ask nicely.”

“No way!” He marched back to the counter as she started working her keyboard again. “Hey,” he said, “I want Pussy Riot, too. But the whole group.”

Baltic Blue shrugged. “I can only do Tolokno.”

Oleg plopped a one-thousand-ruble note down on the counter, about twenty-two U.S. dollars. That’s asking nicely, he told himself.

“But there are eleven of them. In foam? I can’t do that. Look, I’ve been working on Maria. I can try that, if you want.” Maria Alyokhina. A mouthy girl just like Tolokno, always sticking it to Putin.

Oleg glanced at Galina. “Okay, give me those two.”

“You’re crazy,” Galina said to him when he returned bearing a triumphant smile. “So you get two, and I only get one. How come that always happens?” she asked.

“I demand service. You ask for it like a nice little girl, even when we both know you can be so bad. How about if I pay you now? Before you let me see what you’re doing.”

Under the table, he slipped a hefty envelope filled with cash between her knees, a sex game that harkened back to her days as a nanny for Dmitri. When the boy was fully sedated — and Oleg made a sexy overture — she would tell him that she had to be paid. He would hand it over to her as he was doing right now, knowing how much it excited Galina, a girl who’d had sex with only one other man, her child’s father. She was blushing once more, as she always did. Oleg loved the game for other reasons: it made him feel less emotionally indebted, so for him it was real, and close to what he did a couple times a week with far less familiar faces.

“Now show me.”

“Show you what?” She reached down and took the envelope.

“Show me your screen.”

She looked disappointed, but swung her laptop around so he could see the AAC schematics she’d drawn up based on the files she’d been working on.

“But there’s still a problem of scale,” she told him. “He made amazing advances, but unless that stuff’s in the encrypted files, this isn’t the game changer you might have thought it was.”

Game changer. He could always tell when one of his hackers had been working American files because they started using the vernacular. But she was wrong. AAC would change everything. That was another key reason he’d held back the encrypted data — so she would not possess the means of unlimited riches, which in Russia meant her life would last about as long as it took some greedy bastards to extract the info from her. Not long, when any threat to Alexandra, her six-year-old, would have Galina giving away the worldwide “game changer.”

So Oleg gave and Oleg took away — data. Which she might have suspected because she suggested they publish everything about AAC on the web. “Pull a Snowden. Give it away,” she finished with a smile.

Snowden. Why did we ever let him in? Now every do-gooder — and Galina, a blushing outlaw in a short dress, was definitely a do-gooder — wanted to “pull a Snowden.”

More vernacular. And no doubt the favorite phrase of a do-good hacker.

“We have to be very careful now,” he told her. “You got paid and others must be paid. There were people in the States who collected the data.” He would say no more about that. “Investments have to be monetized.”

“How long will it take to pay the others?” Galina asked. “Every day is precious. We need to start extracting carbon dioxide everywhere we can. I have a list of all the solar and wind sites in Russia so we can set up carbon capture at as many as we can.”

“But it’s a very powerful tool, and in the wrong hands?” He smiled, for his hand was back under the table, thumb and pointer opening her knees again, the way you’d swell images on your screen with a track pad by spreading those fingers apart. He and Galina spoke the same sign language of sex, and had for years. Her legs opened just a little, teasingly, but enough that he could feel the velvety skin of her inner thigh right below her silky hem.

And then she took an audible breath as he reached farther and began to languorously stroke her upper thigh just below her underpants, borrowing another motion from most track pads, the one that drew three fingers toward the operator to ferry a particular document or image to the forefront of attention. Each recoil brushed his fingernails against the taut fabric at the top of her legs.

Now that he had her attention, Oleg took the seat next to her, leaving his jacket hanging on the back of the chair he’d just vacated to block the view. He slid his hand back under her dress, delighting in exerting a firm grasp on her thigh. Then he inched aside the delicate elastic band and felt her most intimate pleasure as Galina, eyes looking far away, whispered, “It’s ready.”

“I know. I can tell.”

“No, I mean your latte.”

“What?” He looked up. Baltic Blue was smiling, waving him over.

“I have your Pussy Riot,” she called to him.

With an erection tenting his pants — and no sign of embarrassment — he picked up his latte and walked back with the likenesses of two of Russia’s most notorious women sharing the circular frame of his mug.

As he sat back down next to Galina his phone went off. He had to take it — a young Ukrainian hacker who’d been working for him almost as long as Galina. Oleg thought of himself as a great conductor, offering the baton of his expertise and wealth where it could do the most good — for him. Others might have called him a venture capitalist, a vulture capitalist, a vulgar throwback to a greedy era, but Oleg knew better. He was fusing the techniques of terror to the Digital Age, transcending politics as he pointed his baton left and right from center stage.

“Yes?” Oleg said, boldly pulling Galina’s dress all the way up and slipping his hand inside the satiny front panel of her panties. But instead of picking up where he’d left off — he froze, then gripped her pubis so tightly that she squeaked, “No!”

But he didn’t hear her. How could he? His ears were filled with the kind of wonder that trumped anything Galina Bortnik could have offered.

He turned from her and spoke into his phone with great care: “Tell me again. Say it slowly.”

“It is done,” the voice told him. “You can see for yourself. Then we can talk.”

“See for himself” meant the Ukrainian had posted an encrypted video on a YouTube channel and deliberately posted the decryption key to a Dark Web forum that the intelligence agencies monitored. That way the USIC — U.S. Intelligence Community — would find it. The Dark Web, a small portion of the Deep Web, was the part of the Internet where a lot of illegal and malicious behavior took place. It was inaccessible to conventional search engines, which meant only the most sophisticated users could access it.

Oleg already had the decryption key. He rushed out to his Maserati, away from the Starbucks’s Wi-Fi and surveillance cameras, and poached an unsecured Wi-Fi signal. In seconds he was looking at the interior of a nuclear-armed submarine with dead American sailors — proof that the young Ukrainian hacker had used the guidance and funds Oleg had provided him to unprecedented advantage.

Nobody, but nobody, had ever held the reins of world power as he did right at that moment. The submarine now had a job to do — and the tools and men to do it. And so did Galina. Though neither she nor the Ukrainian knew each other, they were working hand in hand through him — the conductor, now with a nuclear-armed baton.

CHAPTER 3

“You missed it!” Emma glared at Lana with the disdain of a teenage daughter harboring a genuine grievance.

Despite her mother’s weary appearance and late arrival home, her only child offered no greeting at the front door. Only the damning, “You missed it!” And for the life of her, Lana couldn’t recall what she’d missed, but it was clear that her fifteen-year-old — going on twenty, or so she would have liked to think — thought it warranted the full arsenal of aggressive body language: arms crossed, legs crossed, so agitated, in fact, that her eyes were almost crossed.

“You don’t even remember, do you?” Emma shook her head. “The big rehearsal, Mother. Remember? The choir.”

Lana worked her key out of the door lock and sloughed her bag onto an entry table, trying to keep her chin up as she walked into the living room. The literal weight on her shoulders had vanished, only to be replaced by the metaphorical heft of Emma’s vitriol.

Lana set down her computer case and settled into a chair that let her relax while she faced her daughter. She took a breath, fortifying herself. “Listen, dear heart, something came up. I just couldn’t leave work.”

She’d spare her daughter the grim particulars of watching those poor men and women die before her eyes on the encrypted video posted on YouTube. The decryption key had been found by a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

She couldn’t share the devastating news, in any case. The whole intelligence community was in a collective lockdown: no release of any information about the events off the coast of Argentina. Also today had come the less-than-inspiring news that Admiral Wourzy, in charge of cybersecurity for the navy, had been arrested in an Indian casino in California last weekend for using counterfeit chips. How in God’s name does crap like that even happen? That had been Lana’s first thought. The admiral tried to argue that the Native American dealer had fed the phony chips into the game but casino security trumped him.

Lana knew more than she wanted to about the impulse to gamble. She’d spent countless hours gambling on virtual poker tables before finding the strength to stop throwing money away on cheap thrills that had never paid off in the long run. Even so, the desire was still inside her, recrudescing after an especially stressful period. But even at her worst, she’d never cheated like Admiral Wourzy. She’d never even thought of doing so.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Deming’s first impulse had been to demand his underling’s resignation. Which also happened to be the immediate response of the casino owner, who could scarcely believe the crook at the craps table was one of America’s highest-ranking military officials.

But the Pentagon brass couldn’t fire the admiral. Despite his blatant idiocy in this regard — all for measly ten-dollar chips — he was a gifted cyberwarrior largely credited with bringing the navy’s old guard into the twenty-first century.

“So whatever you do,” Emma went on, bringing Lana’s attention back to more domestic concerns, “don’t tell me you can’t come to the actual performance tomorrow night because — I hope you’ve remembered this — it’s going to be at the National Cathedral.” Emma paused and performed a dramatic toe-tap. “And I want you to be there.”

All Lana could do was shake her head. Even before the crisis with the Delphin, she had been slated to attend a top-level briefing at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade about a newly discovered Chinese army unit of elite hackers, code-named Magic Dragon. Which was why Lana had planned to attend tonight’s rehearsal instead of the actual performance.

“Sweetheart, please—”

“Sweetheart, dear heart, you say all that stuff all the time, but where’s your heart? Because it sure isn’t where your home is.”

If I could only tell her.

But most of the information that Lana would have liked to share would never be declassified. She’d be taking it to her grave.

A pot clattered in the kitchen, startling her. “Who’s that?” she asked Emma, who only glared at her more intensely as Tanesa stepped into the room.

“I’m sorry, Lana. I was just getting us something to eat when you came home, and then it sounded like you guys needed some space.”

“That was good of you, but come sit.”

Mother and daughter took a pause while Tanesa, a fine calming influence on Emma, sat on the couch near her. The look on Emma’s face was about as ugly as it could get for a pretty young woman who, consensus held, bore a striking resemblance to her mother. They both had shiny black hair, smooth skin, cheekbones a Russian supermodel might envy, and, in Emma’s case, coltish legs that were on nearly full display under the kerchief passing for a skirt.

“Your mom has a really important job,” Tanesa said to Emma. “You’re not even supposed to know that, but you do.”

“She couldn’t exactly hide it from me after last year.”

More resentment over more secrecy, even when it wasn’t secret anymore.

But Emma did think the world of Tanesa, so whenever she spoke up in Lana’s defense, Lana felt grateful.

Tanesa was three years older than Emma and had been the girl’s nanny; odd as that might sound, it made sense in the way that life often mangled the logic of chronological age. Tanesa still watched over Emma, for which Lana paid a handsome wage, but in truth they had become close friends, much to Emma’s benefit. The strikingly attractive young African American woman had also recruited Emma into the Capitol Baptist Church Choir, an award-winning ensemble. Emma’s first solo was set for tomorrow night in Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion.

“Please don’t do that, Tanesa,” Emma said.

“Do what?”

“Sound so reasonable: ‘Your mom has a really important job.’”

Emma wasn’t being tart. Sadly, she was serious. As if to underscore this, she added, “This is emotional truth for me.”

Another notable influence in Emma’s life of late: her therapist. After enduring a harrowing abduction during last year’s cyberattack, and the second-by-second threat of nuclear annihilation, Emma had suffered nightmares and anxiety. Those were classic PTSD symptoms, so Lana had gotten her daughter professional help.

And it had eased Emma’s condition considerably, as well as provided her with a newly charged arsenal of emotionally laden language for skewering her mother. Which had proved painful only to the extent that Emma used her psychobabble accurately.

No denying her daughter’s deadeye now. Lana was flinching internally over the truth of much of what Emma had said, but not over what she now added:

“It can’t be as bad as last year, Mom, and anything short of that is a shitty excuse.”

“Emma!” Tanesa, a devout Christian, had no tolerance for profanity, and — miracle of miracles! — had managed to clean up Emma’s potty mouth, for the most part.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Emma instantly allowed, “but I’m so sick of ‘dear heart’ and ‘sweetheart’ when I want to see my mother in the front row looking up at me in the National Cathedral!” Suddenly, she burst into tears, sobbing, “I don’t have a dad. I’ve only got you.”

Lana choked up and rushed to her side, holding Emma as tightly as she had in many months, feeling her daughter shake with disappointment. Yet Lana also knew that she desperately needed to get back on her computer as soon as possible. Torn, once more, by her deeply conflicting obligations.

“Mom,” she said softly. “I’ve been tracking him down.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

Lana stepped back and looked closely at Emma. You mean that good-for-nothing deadbeat who walked out on me — us — when you were two years old?

That, of course, was what Lana wanted more than anything to say. Instead, she choked it all down before speaking: “That won’t be easy. I don’t know where he is.”

“I do, Mom. It’s not that far away.”

Oh, great.

Emma peered right into her mother’s eyes as she continued: “I found him through the Bureau of Prisons.”

“What?” Prison? Even for ne’er-do-well Donald, that was shocking.

“They caught him sailing four thousand pounds of marijuana up from Colombia on his sailboat. That’s two tons of pot, Mom.”

“Please don’t sound so impressed. When was this?”

“A few years ago. He’s in the jail in Cumberland. It’s a medium-security place. It’s not like he’s dangerous or anything.”

Oh, yes he is. But she couldn’t expect her daughter to grasp that truth so soon after locating him. Suddenly, a hacked and hijacked nuclear-armed submarine full of dead sailors, and the murders of a genius and his wife in Cambridge — and an admiral’s gambling addiction — all seemed far away. But Lana knew none of it would remain removed for long. And as a respite from a national security crisis, Donald Fedder’s imprisonment on federal drug charges left a great deal to be desired.

“Have you contacted him?” she asked.

Emma nodded. “He’s actually pretty handsome, Mom.”

“He’s an asshole,” Lana said, regretting her outburst even before she received Tanesa’s censorious gaze. “And looks aren’t everything.”

Which is exactly why you went to bed with Donald so quickly, right?

Lana groaned out loud at the memory. Now Emma took her mother in her arms and said, “It’ll be okay, Mom. He’s got a furlough for good behavior. He’s a model prisoner. As long as you agree, they’ll let him come to the concert tomorrow night in one of those ankle bracelets…”

Oh, my God.

“So… maybe it’s for the best that you’re not coming.”

No, it’s definitely not for the best.

Minutes later, in between checking grim status reports about the Delphin, Lana confirmed every detail of her Google-loving girl’s words. And it was all spelled out in the form that Emma had forwarded to her from the Bureau of Prisons, ready for her signature: “Request granted by daughter’s mother and legal guardian.”

Lana signed it electronically, groaning again when she sent it on.

What choice did she have? She was in a corner. If she denied Emma’s request — when she couldn’t make it to the concert herself — she would appear an emotional scrooge. But what made it worse, was after attending the concert, “Doper Don,” as Lana had already dubbed him, would be permitted fifteen minutes of supervised time to visit with his “long-lost” daughter.

She was never lost. He was.

Never had her profession cost her so much personally. She could see no good coming out of this, particularly after Emma had changed her life in such positive ways since meeting Tanesa.

After reviewing another status update, Lana received a call from Deputy Director Holmes.

“It’s very strange,” he said, eschewing all small talk, “because the hackers, whoever they are, wherever they are, aren’t making any demands.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a thing,” Holmes said. “They just keep showing the bodies of those sailors.”

“Are they surfacing to do that?”

Holmes shook his head, saying that the sub had probably deployed a radio buoy. The electronic device had small antennas that protruded just above the water line and were all but invisible on the vast reaches of ocean.

“Is there anyone alive?” Lana asked.

“Admiral Deming is certain there are. You couldn’t operate a sub without some crew, but we haven’t seen them yet. The video feed is still horrible to watch but you should study it, see if anything jumps out at you. Wait, get on it right now.”

“Sure.” She worked her keyboard. “Why?”

“There’s someone in a protective suit and breathing mask in front of the camera.”

Lana’s screen came alive with the eerie appearance of the man, who punched numbers into a box and began to speak.

“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Class Petty Officer Hector Gomez of the U.S.S. Delphin.” His words were garbled with that mask on, making him sound like he was shouting from the bottom of a well. “We’ve been attacked with poison gas. It’s killed a lot of sailors. I grabbed an anti-contamination suit and an OBA before it could get me,” he said, pointing to his oxygen breathing apparatus. “I found a bottle of cyanogen chloride. It must have been put into one of the burners.” Part of the sub’s atmosphere control system.

“That would do it,” Holmes said in Lana’s ear. “You know about CK?”

“No.”

“It stops your body’s ability to use the oxygen carried by your hemoglobin. It’s like walking through a desert with a glass of water with your mouth sewed up.”

“I got the cyanogen chloride out of there,” Gomez went on, “but I don’t know if it’s dissipated yet. If you can hear me, please respond. Over.”

“But communication is cut off to the sub, right?” Lana asked Holmes.

“That was the last I heard,” he replied.

“I am out of air!” Gomez shouted.

Lana could see Gomez’s panic in his eyes and rigid body language. Then he started shaking and ripped off his mask. His face was covered in sweat. He took deep breaths, looking around frantically. Neither Lana nor Holmes said a word. She knew they were both waiting to see whether Gomez keeled over.

Seconds passed like hours.

Gomez nodded. “I can breathe.” Then he looked at the dead bodies on the floor all around him. “Where are they? The people that did this?”

“What do we know about this guy?” Lana asked.

“I’m pulling that up right now,” Holmes answered.

Lana watched Gomez, who looked shocked to be alive, still taking in the grisly evidence that surrounded him.

“A mom and dad in San Pedro in LA,” Holmes reported.

“The port.”

“Correct. At a glance here, everything looks right. He has two brothers and three sisters, all living in LA, all upstanding citizens. Nothing noted about them.”

“So does Admiral Deming think he’s in on the takeover?”

“He doesn’t know yet,” Holmes said. “Gomez is the only able-bodied one we’ve seen. But as the admiral said, no one can possibly run that sub on his own. Whoever it is has got to have at least a half dozen, maybe more, qualified officers and senior enlisted missile operators. And it’s possible, not likely, mind you, but possible that Gomez isn’t even guilty, that whoever’s doing this isn’t showing up on camera yet. Maybe they never will. Look, I think you should plan on being out here all day tomorrow.” He meant NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. “I need you for a seven o’clock meeting in the morning.”

“All right, I’ll be there.”

Lana didn’t expect to sleep easily with her mind abuzz from the dire events of the day, and she was right. She dozed on and off, haunted for hours by those dead bodies.

Finally, at four thirty she arose, scrubbed her face with cold water, and logged on again.

What she saw was wrenching. Gomez, or someone, had propped the dead body of the sub’s commander, Captain Hueller, against a chair in full view of the camera. Gomez, she presumed — no, hoped—was scouring the sub for survivors.

Keeping a cap on this “incident” would be very difficult with so many service members dead. But they had to try to maintain the silence. The hackers had yet to make their demands known.

She began to imagine what they might be, each one more dreadful than the one that proceeded it. Many harkened back to last year’s horrors.

Lana told herself to stop, that no matter what she came up with, reality could turn out to be so much worse.

And she was right about that.

Unimaginably worse.

CHAPTER 4

Moscow, so old and so new. And so beautiful. Onion domes and brand-new skyscrapers. Gorgeous cars, like Oleg’s Maserati. Purring like a pussycat as he drove from the heart of the city. Exciting like Pussy Riot punk rock. Like Galina when she took the money from him under the table.

He passed his favorite onion domes of all, the ones with so many colors they looked like frozen yogurt swirls at Creamery Dreamery. Thank you, crazy Orthodox Church. I pray to Virgin, too. But I promise you, Vladimir, not like Pussy Riot.

Could a country be any greater than the new Russia, with its venerable traditions and history? No, not possible. That was what most of Oleg’s friends would have said. His father, Papa Plutocrat, would have shaken his head very slowly, looking very wise, or so PP would have thought, and said that it was true, he and his friends — crony capitalists all — brought Russia to its apogee. Yes, “apogee,” because a wise man would use such a word, and PP had an English-language word-a-day calendar in his private bathroom so he could sound wise and say those three syllables—ap-o-gee—like he was blessing them under an onion dome.

But Oleg knew better. Russia was not so great as it would soon become. In just days. Because he would generate the greatest wealth the world had ever known. So much money his fellow citizens would have untold rubles showering down on them.

He smiled at himself in the Maserati’s rearview mirror. Everything was falling into place. Engineers had reassembled the professor’s prototype, and when they turned it on and saw it sucking those heat-absorbing molecules out of the air in vast quantities, their tongues hung out. And so they had to be killed. Just a joke! Oleg laughed to himself. No, but they did have to be properly rewarded and left in isolated wonder. But better than death.

The days of fossil-fuel haters would soon be over. Conservation was never much fun anyway. Burn all the fuel you want. Drive a Maserati — as fast as you want. AAC will suck out the carbon and combine it with hydrogen and we’ll have—Voilà!—hydrocarbons. More gas. More oil. More money!

Those fossil-fuel companies would pop the bubbly when they found out. Russian ones, that is, because the others? Well, they wouldn’t be drilling so much anymore. They would have other problems. Some would say crises. Especially with their offshore platforms. Make BP in the Gulf seem like Roman candle.

AAC would be earth’s thermostat. World too hot? Okay, whoosh, suck out more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Too cold? Take out less. Auction off nice climates: “And the winner is Great Britain with a bid of 230 trillion rubles.”

God save the Queen.

Think about that. Start droughts, drum up more floods, make haywire weather. Why not? Or be nice and let the world live in peace — as long as you pay proper tribute to your master.

But first the world had to be brought to its senses, especially big boys like the U.S., Europe, and China. Which meant bringing them to their knees. Best position for learning. Ask Federal Security Service. And that was where the submarine came in handy. Very soon Oleg would tell those other Arctic nations to leave the gas and oil and minerals for Russia. And if they didn’t — and, of course, they wouldn’t — there would have to be a terrible catastrophe.

But that was so simple with a sub on your side because the world was already facing an extraordinary threat of a catastrophe of such massive proportions that nobody would even talk about it much publicly. Lots of scientists knew. Galina, good Greenpeace girl, knew, though not what Oleg was up to. The precipice was so well known it even went by an acronym in certain circles.

And when something teeters on a precipice, what does it need? A nudge. That was all. One teensy-weensy nudge. And a sub with missiles could nudge and nudge and nudge. And then everyone would hear the biggest plop in the history of the planet. But what will happen after the plop? Now that would be the most memorable sound of all.

Three years of planning and now he was down to less than a week, and everything that had sounded so ambitious in the beginning was falling into place. Oleg smiled over his private pun.

But he was still Papa Plutocrat’s son, and PP had summoned him to cottage country outside Moscow.

In the Soviet era, they called them “dachas,” special places where party officials with influence could rest and relax with one another and their mistresses — or, in Stalin’s case, make fun with his pen and sign tens of thousands of death warrants and condemn hundreds of thousands to slave labor camps while he sat on his bulletproof couch. But most dachas were tiny places on tiny plots. Who wanted one anymore? Not fit for men of means.

“Why don’t you just call it my country mansion?” Oleg had once needled PP.

“Not a mansion. A cottage.”

Okay, a cottage that was twelve thousand square feet with an indoor pool, ice-skating rink, ballroom, movie theatre, and two kitchens, one for the servants and one for the family. It looked like a French castle, complete with dungeon. Oleg wasn’t sure what his papa did down there, and even as a boy he knew better than to ask. He’d been forbidden to enter the castle’s north wing, under which the dungeon lay like a sleeping snake.

Still, he was a boy’s boy so he’d snuck down there and looked around. Very interesting dungeon. Iron rings on the wall. And a rack, too. He had been only fifteen but thought the rack was the coolest thing he would ever see. Such big gears and a hand crank. When he turned it the rack went clickety-click and the table spread apart. Clickety-click-click-click and it spread even more. Beautiful manacles had clearly been hand forged to fit feet and wrists. Superb workmanship, which he came to admire more as he grew older. The same artist had made the iron rings for the wall, and when Oleg had seen them close-up he’d been doubly impressed.

He had led his half brother Dmitri downstairs the very day he’d discovered the dungeon and swore the mutt — born to an ex-peasant mother — to secrecy. Then he told him to lie down on the “bed.”

“I’m going to make you big like Papa, stretch your bones a little. How’s that sound? No more ‘little’ Dmitri. Make you a big boy fast.”

“Big like Papa? You can do that?”

“Yes, big like Papa. Like me.”

“I want to be big like Papa.”

Whatever.

Oleg chained him up. Dmitri was not a good specimen, though. He started wailing with the first clickety-click. You can imagine what it was like after a couple more. So sweet Oleg had to shove one of his father’s old boot socks in the boy’s mouth. But he still had to threaten him with head injuries if he didn’t shut the fuck up.

After a few more clickety-click-click-clicks, he cranked the table back together.

“Now I’m going to take out Papa’s sock. But if you scream, I’m sticking it back in.”

He unchained his brother and said, “Look, you’re so much bigger.”

Dmitri had looked down, all wet-eyed, and shook his head. “No, my pants are still in the same place.”

Five years old and already an empiricist. That pissed Oleg off, so he led Dmitri toward the Iron Maiden replica, open and showing its broad array of sharpened spikes. With a cry, the peasant brother tried to run screaming from the room, but Oleg grabbed him before he could flee up the stairs.

“I will show you something else, and you can do it to me,” he’d told Dmitri.

“I can hurt you?” the boy said with more vengeance than Oleg would have liked.

“Sure.”

Oleg walked him over to a medieval skull crusher. Dmitri stared at it.

“What is it?” the boy asked.

He told him.

“I’m not putting my head in there,” the boy said.

“I will, if you’ll keep everything secret that we’ve done down here.”

“Get in,” Dmitri said.

Oleg placed his chin on the base of the torture device and told his brother to turn the wooden crank that would drive a metal cap down onto his noggin.

The child did it with abundant enthusiasm, but when Oleg felt the cap pressing down on him, he’d reached up and stopped his brother.

“No, I want to hurt you,” Dmitri yelled, yanking on the crank. Then he grabbed the saliva-slick sock Oleg had used on him and tried to push it into his brother’s mouth.

But he was no match for Oleg, who reached up and unscrewed the cap.

“No fair,” Dmitri said.

“Someday you’ll get your turn,” Oleg told him.

“That’s not what I mean,” Dmitri yelled.

“But you will,” Oleg had vowed.

Oleg now drove past lots of peasants on his way to cottage country. The last of the ordinary poor lived only a mile from the big green walls that surrounded the country homes of some of Moscow’s richest men. Twenty-five years ago the Russian people owned everything, according to Soviet propaganda of the time, which meant, in fact, they owned nothing. There were no millionaires, much less billionaires. Now, after free-market reforms, most still owned very little but Moscow had seventy billionaires, more than any other city in the world, and those men owned a quarter of the country’s entire economy. Even Oleg had to admit that his father’s friends had raised the bar, but not to a truly towering height. Not for him.

At last, Oleg’s red Maserati pulled up to the green wall that surrounded his father’s cottage. He didn’t even have to press a button. An electronic eye opened the gate. Good-bye potato-faced peasants, hello handsome happy people. Oleg didn’t disdain the peasantry. Not as much as the billionaires in cottage country. They had plundered old industries — mining, petroleum, steelmaking, shipbuilding — but most couldn’t even work the simple computers of that era. But they all knew how to come up with fistfuls of rubles when the whole economy had come up for grabs. They’d thought that meant they were smart. They had confused greed with intelligence.

But the sharpest ones had sent their sons to school — Caltech, MIT, University of Cambridge, and Moscow’s own Institute of Physics and Technology. And the lucky offspring studied computer science, software engineering, and the emerging fields of cybersecurity and information assurance. That was what he had done. His father was always saying, “Come work for me. You can make millions.” But Oleg didn’t want millions. He wanted billions so his father could work for him.

He slowed to motor across the drawbridge at Papa’s castle. Another electronic eye recognized the Maserati and the portcullis rose, revealing silver-tipped spikes on the bottom.

Oleg drove into the interior courtyard, one huge English garden with a dozen varieties of roses and pergolas and lush grass and striped canvas chairs. Like a Saturday fair every day of summer. Sometimes PP even had magicians dazzling guests, and musicians strumming and strolling, playing Russian folk tunes.

He drove into a car elevator, which lifted him to the second floor, then turned like a wheelhouse till he was pointed at his reserved place. As he parked, his phone vibrated. The Ukrainian hacker again, telling him 146 crew members were dead. “Even the captain.”

Yes! Oleg pumped his fist. Just the ones he needed alive. Like he’d planned.

“This is very good,” Oleg said. Then he affirmed that a news blackout was holding.

“So I think it’s time to send a message, don’t you?” the Ukrainian asked.

Oleg agreed.

“We want all—”

“Not ‘we want,’” Oleg corrected. “We demand. They expect demands. Let’s not disappoint.”

“We demand that all Arctic nations renounce their claims to the region’s oil, gas, and minerals and make it a non-exploitation zone.”

“Yes, that sounds good. Very progressive.”

“Or else?” the hacker asked.

“What do you mean, ‘Or else?’” Oleg asked.

“What will we do if they don’t renounce their claims?”

Oleg laughed quietly at the Ukrainian hacker. He thought the demand applied to Russia, too. That was why he was working so hard. He wants Russia to get screwed, too, the way Russia screwed the Ukraine by claiming Crimea, then backed the rubes in the eastern half of the country with guns and bombs so they might realize their dreams of separatism. Hilarious.

“We have a submarine with nuclear missiles, right?” Oleg didn’t wait for an answer. “We don’t have to say what we’ll do. They know.”

“When do we bomb them?”

The hacker sounded excited to get on with it. That worried Oleg, but not too much. He had him by the short hairs in so many ways. The hacker had kids. “Hostages to fortune,” as some English philosopher once said. PP liked to quote him. Such a paterfamilias. But Oleg knew that kiddies kept daddies in line. Not all, but this Ukrainian daddy, definitely.

“We don’t bomb them,” Oleg said cryptically. “Better than that.”

“What could be better than that?”

“You’ll see.” Oleg cut off the call. He wasn’t getting into a discourse right now, not with PP on the monitor right in front of Oleg’s parking place. He was wrinkling his forehead. Oleg could read his lips. “Come in. Come in.” PP the Prince of Impatience. So fond of saying, “Patience is a vastly overrated virtue.” But only true for plutocrats.

Oleg spotted Dmitri on the screen hovering in the background. He saw the resemblance between father and second-born son. Both handsome. PP was a “silver-haired devil” in the words of wife number six. He was seventy-six years old, but still tall and straight with shoulders that hadn’t begun to slump. Clear blue eyes. He appeared twenty years younger. By all rights he should have looked like a ham hung in the smokehouse too long. He’d been puffing all his life. But he had very few lines on his face. The picture of health.

Dmitri was as well. But a skull injury had scrambled too many brain cells. The neurologist had said the accident had severely damaged the boy’s brain. “It was an accident, right?” the doctor asked.

Which had made PP stare at Oleg, who’d claimed he found him at the bottom of the dungeon stairs. Oleg had nodded at the doctor and said, “I don’t know what he was doing there.”

In any case, Dmitri’s skull had been crunched and his brain hadn’t looked so good. A lot of bleeding in both hemispheres, and it had gone on for too long before he got help. Oleg knew exactly how long: four and a half hours. He’d figured that was long enough — and he’d been right.

So Dmitri looked good on the outside, but not so good where it counted. At least he didn’t drool anymore, a big plus, and if he’d had any life in his eyes and didn’t try to talk, just played the silent mysterious type, he could probably have gotten laid a lot — on his own. But instead, PP had to pay his “special friends” to play with him. Dmitri didn’t seem to mind. Nothing wrong with the south end of the complex. PP’s friends and the ten-meter waterslide for the heated indoor pool kept Dmitri very happy, except… he was missing Galina.

He called her “Gull,” like the English word for that disgusting seabird. Oleg always told him “Gull” had flown away. “Doesn’t like you anymore.”

Which meant nothing to him.

“Oleg, my firstborn son,” PP said when he walked into the castle. That had always been the old man’s greeting. It was as if he were reminding himself of the birth order, which actually made Oleg wonder if PP had another firstborn, the real one, still stashed away in a dacha somewhere like a lot of Party hacks had done in the old days. Of course, that would have meant that the real firstborn might have been a grandfather by now. PP had been “rutting like crazed weasel” for more than six decades, which he let everyone know after a few bottles of Stoli.

He told his son to sit in a big stuffed chair in the living room that he had redone to look like the one in Downton Abbey after wife number six insisted that as a “lady of sorts”—an ex-stripper — she should have some gilded bookshelves, furniture, and woodwork to “grace” her eyes. So she had. Even gilded books. PP bought them by the pound. Oleg found a complete collection of Karl Marx’s works beautifully bound and preserved. He never told PP. He guessed the old man would have just shrugged and said, “Let the free marketplace of ideas compete on a level playing field.” Or some such platitude widely embraced by monopolists.

“Dmitri, tell your brother what you told me.” As an aside to Oleg, PP said Galina had been making great strides with him.

“Galina? She was here?” News to Oleg. His lovely lady had gone behind his back? Not good.

“Yes. She’s so helpful,” PP said to him. “You remember how Dmitri was saying ‘Gull, Gull, Gull’ all the time? Well, Galina came over Sunday. You were busy. She’s going to keep coming over. I think it’s a good idea.” Turning to second-born son, PP said, “Go ahead, tell him what you can say now. After just one session with Galina,” PP added in a second aside to Oleg.

He watched his little brother, who was much bigger than him now, struggle to say something other than his mangled attempt at Galina’s name. His lips twisted grotesquely, and all Oleg could hear at first was “Skkkk,” like he was trying to say “skank,” maybe. Must have been eavesdropping by PP’s big bedroom. Boy was learning.

But then the last sound came out and it went straight to Oleg’s solar plexus: “Skkkkuullll.”

“What?” Oleg shook his head.

“That’s what I said,” PP agreed. “Why when my baby boy hasn’t said a word in ten years, except for ‘Gull,’ does he suddenly say ‘Skull’? And then baby boy dragged me to the dungeon.”

Oleg reminded himself to keep a poker expression. He shrugged. Why would he say that? That’s so weird. But the news had shaken him so that he didn’t actually speak those words. When he finally said them, he had to force them out. And though he knew it was not possible, he imagined his lips twisting and his voice struggling just like baby brother’s.

“So the rose is going to keep coming. See if we can make him bloom some more.” PP’s eyes looked clearer than ever. “Isn’t this wonderful? I think Dmitri is trying to tell us something, or maybe he’s remembering the names of my museum pieces. I can’t wait to hear it all. Now, tell me what you’ve been doing, but take that device out of your ear. I’m talking to you.”

Oleg removed his phone’s Bluetooth earbud, but all he wanted to know was what the hell happened down in the dungeon, so he asked.

“That’s the sad part of the story,” said PP. “He started to cry on the bottom step and wouldn’t go any farther. We’ll see if Rose can get the rest out of him, yes?”

Oleg shrugged. His shoulders felt set in concrete.

PP yammered about the massive icebreaker his company was building so they could mine methane in the Arctic. The Japanese were already trying to do it in their own waters, but the Siberian shelf was so rich with methane — and the waters so relatively shallow — that the gas was bubbling up from the bottom of the sea.

Dmitri hovered over his father most of the time PP talked, but on three occasions he drifted toward Oleg, only to veer away quickly.

“So it’s time you stopped playing with computers and came to work for me. Or I will have to put you on a budget,” PP said.

Oleg almost laughed. Everything was playing out as he had planned for years. In no time he’d buy his father’s companies and put him on a budget. And if he didn’t want to sell? Oleg would have the clout to make him.

But for now he smiled and repeated “Yes, Papa” every few seconds before getting up to leave.

But who got the last word?

“Skkkkuullll!”

Using his Maserati like the race car it had been designed to be, Oleg made it to Galina’s apartment in record time. She lived in a nice neighborhood near the Institute. Much better than student housing, but still Bohemian for someone with sweet milky thighs and big bouncy breasts. Three bedrooms, two baths, with a beautiful view of — what else? Onion domes. Enough space for little Alexandra to have her own room. And one for Oleg, too, Galina had told him many times.

Now she could tell him why she was planning to spend Sundays in cottage country.

“It’s simple,” she replied as she welcomed him into her immaculate foyer. “I like Dmitri and your father’s paying me a small fortune to work with him.”

“Let him work with someone else.”

“But Dmitri wants to work with me, and he’s making real progress for the first time in years, and—”

“I don’t care. I pay you plenty.”

“Not enough.”

Together they walked into her well-lit apartment’s living room. Galina looked horrible, he realized with a start. Dark circles under red eyes, as though she’d been crying. Maybe he should stop breaking her heart. Set her free like a bird. A nice bird. Not like a dirty gull. But definitely, she should take better care of herself, not let him see her like this. She never knew when he might stop by. Not that she appeared to care what he was saying because she was still talking:

“Alexandra has—”

“You’ll get millions when the AAC is running.”

“But it’s not yet and I need a lot of money because—”

“I will take care—”

“Stop, Oleg! You’re not listening.” She’d raised her voice to him. She’d never done that before. “Alexandra has leukemia.”

Oleg stopped. Now Galina was crying, and he was at a loss as to what to do with her. Alexandra walked out of her bedroom in her blue bunny pajamas with the attached feet, dragging a blanket as she had done when she was a toddler.

“What’s leukemia, Mommy?”

Galina rushed to take Alexandra in her arms as Oleg’s phone vibrated. Ukrainian hacker again. “I have to take this,” he said to the rose.

“I think I figured it out,” the hacker said.

“Figured what out?” What’s he talking about?

“The ‘or else?’”

“Don’t say another word.” Oleg hung up on him even faster this time.

No telling what the Federal Security Service — or even NSA’s latest-generation Echelon system — might scoop up. Oleg would take no chances with his crowning moment. Not now. Not when he was down to days.

He turned back to Galina, still holding Alexandra as if the little girl’s life depended on it. He gave them both a big smile.

“Now what were you guys talking about?”

CHAPTER 5

The appearance of normalcy in Lana’s home unnerved her. It made her feel eerie this morning. Such was the nature of cyberterrorism. The whole world could be on the very cusp of collapse, yet few, if any, palpable hints of mayhem would appear until it was too late. So while kinetic war — guns and ammo, jets and bombs, choppers and troops — made it explicit that life itself was at stake, the hackers’ hijacking of the U.S.S. Delphin made her feel as if she had a different kind of poison seeping silently, invisibly from under the floorboards as she walked into Emma’s room.

Her daughter slept on a twin bed across from the one occupied for the night by Tanesa. Their alarm was set for 7:00 a.m., when they would awaken to rowdy rock downloaded by the otherwise staid Tanesa. Despite her admirable restraint in so many respects, the young woman loved her headbanger music with the morning’s first blinks. Emma also did, and Lana supposed that would hold true even on the day she would make her solo debut singing Bach at the National Cathedral.

Lana kissed Emma on the head so softly she didn’t stir, then inhaled her sleepy scent in a manner not unlike the one she’d cherished fifteen years ago when her baby was a newborn and she’d cradled that dark-haired head in her hand and drawn her close enough to feel her breath. And of course Lana knew why the memory flooded through her right now and left a pang in her belly: life always felt most precious when it was under threat.

She tiptoed out of the room, knowing that by the time that rock music blasted the girls awake she’d be meeting with the nation’s top cybercommand at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. And when Emma and Tanesa stood in the National Cathedral, attired in blue satin robes along with the rest of the choir, Lana would find herself in yet another meeting — this one regarding Magic Dragon, the newly discovered Chinese Army hacker unit.

Lana backed her Prius out of the garage and left behind Bethesda, Maryland, a sleepy, leafy bedroom community, for DC. Most of the townspeople would rise blissfully ignorant of the crisis taking place off the Argentine coast. But a healthy number of the town’s population worked for the CIA, FBI, or NSA, and would learn soon enough of the impending peril, if they hadn’t been informed already. That would lead to a run on gas stations this morning; Lana had topped off last night. The more observant nongovernmental employees in town had long ago dubbed it “panic at the pumps,” having learned that the sudden, otherwise inexplicable lines could foretell a national crisis.

She merged onto the Beltway, soon passing Reagan International, recalling how last year’s disaster had her studying the skies as she drove to affirm that civilian airlines had been spared — and they had been, but only briefly. She winced, wondering what the latest calamity might bring.

Lana drove up to the guard station at Fort Meade’s main gate at 6:45 on the dot, plenty of time to clear security and motor to the complex of fifty-plus buildings that formed the heart of the nation’s intelligence complex.

At a glance, even a novice’s eye would have gleaned the tough security: antitank barriers, ubiquitous guards on foot and in patrol cars, electrical fences, one-way windows, and the vast variety of antennas sprouting from the buildings. But not even the keenest eyes could have spotted NSA’s copper-clad interior walls, which repulsed electromagnetic probes.

When she arrived at Deputy Director Holmes’s office, his longtime assistant, Donna Warnes, stout and gray and unstinting in her loyalty to her boss and country, directed Lana — with a tight smile of welcome — to a familiar SCIF, Secure Compartmented Information Facility: a room absolutely sealed off from the hydra-headed electronic incursions that daily tried to unveil the agency’s deepest secrets.

But who was the enemy this time? That was chief among the many questions plaguing Lana and, she was certain, everyone else meeting behind the windowless door still closed to her. She handed over her laptop and personal items to security personnel, black and white burr-headed men with demeanors that might have been chiseled from stone.

One of them, a former safety for Ole Miss, read her in, which meant he informed Lana that life as she had known it would end if she violated any of the security precepts to which she had long ago agreed. She acknowledged his every word, saw the slight, almost undetectable smile he bestowed upon her every time they met or passed each other since last year’s attack, and signed the obligatory form.

Another security agent, fully taciturn, held the heavy door for her. No windows inside, either, unless you saw the motion detectors and cameras in the corners of the room as metaphors. They did, after all, provide a view of any unauthorized entry.

Participants were still settling in as Lana made her way to her assigned seat. They included General Clifford Sprouse, the Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command (USCC), who sat directly to the right of Holmes. The general rose, meeting her halfway around the table for the introduction that Holmes provided with his customary briskness.

Others were more familiar to her, men such as Joshua Tenon of the NSA, a veteran cyberwarrior who’d had a salt-and-pepper beard before last year’s catastrophic attack on the grid. Today, he tugged nervously on the pure white hair that framed his chin, giving Lana a lascivious stare when he thought she wasn’t noticing.

Teresa McGivern was present, which came as no surprise to Lana. McGivern had been at the agency “forever,” as she generally put it when queried, and had been slated to retire when the grid went down thirteen months ago. Her display of mettle throughout the ordeal made Holmes recognize, once again, how truly irreplaceable she was. “Sayonara Myrtle Beach,” McGivern once joked to Lana about her postponed retirement dream.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Deming was seated with two senior aides across from Lana. She rose to greet him formally, having only “met” him previously in the videoconference called by Holmes yesterday. Deming looked as though he hadn’t slept last night and might have nicked himself shaving this morning. Lana spied a red spot on his neck and a tiny pink smudge just below it on his starched white collar.

But for Lana’s money, the shocker at the table was Admiral Wourzy, the chip counterfeiter from the California casino, who also happened to be the navy’s chief of cybersecurity. He was short, squat, with hair so black and lacquered straight back that he might have dyed and shaped it with shoe polish. He also appeared unhealthily pale, as though he had, indeed, spent too many hours resting his elbows on the green felt of gaming tables. Just seeing him made her think of gambling, the way a smoker lighting up can make an ex-smoker watch in envy as the tobacco reddens and the addict draws the gray fumes deep into his lungs. She was glad she was in a SCIF with no opportunity to jump online for a quick hand of Texas Hold ’em.

When Wourzy smiled anxiously at her, she sensed his embarrassment, which she found disarming for reasons that did not register readily. She nodded at him, maintaining a pleasant enough expression, to which he responded by mouthing “Hello,” as though a bond had just been formed.

Oh, great.

But Lana had always taken up for the underdog. She could easily imagine how humiliating it would be to find yourself the pariah at the table, someone so clearly tolerated only because of extreme circumstances. But it wasn’t as though he’d sold state secrets. He’d been a buffoon, and would undoubtedly pay for it once his expertise was no longer part of the nation’s triaged response. She’d certainly behaved foolishly at online gambling sites, where she’d watched her money disappear into cyberspace. She’d lost enough in one year to have paid for Emma’s first year at the college or university of her choice. Lana winced inwardly at the memory.

“What we’re seeing with the hacking and hijacking of the submarine is unprecedented,” Holmes began after they were all in place. “So far, we’re aware of only one survivor. He’s First Class Petty Officer Hector Gomez, who’s in charge of the Missile Control Center. He says he cannot take control of the Delphin or its missiles. But the submarine is operational and Admirals Deming and Wourzy assure us that there must be more than half a dozen men or women running the reactor plant, control room, and missile system.

“The parts of the sub in view of cameras show dozens of dead bodies. Early this morning we received their demand. They, whoever ‘they’ turn out to be, want all the Arctic nations making claims on the resources of the region to abandon their ‘exploitive practices’ and leave. That was the entire communiqué that first showed up on my home computer at 4:00 a.m. Of course, such abandonment is not going to happen, which they must anticipate.”

Home computer? That was what resonated most for Lana, and she suspected that was true for Holmes as well. He looked profoundly disgusted over having to admit that his sophisticated cyberdefenses had also been penetrated by the hackers — plural — for surely this was a high-performance team at work. She figured a corps of the NSA’s finest techies was at his house triaging and performing digital forensics on every piece of hardware he owned.

“Sounds, on the face of it, like it could be Anonymous, or an environmental offshoot,” Tenon said. Anonymous, as the name would suggest, was a band of mostly unknown, decentralized hacktivists who embraced a wide spectrum of progressive and environmental causes — and had made hash of their enemies’ computer systems, which included the U.S. government’s on occasion.

Lana was dubious. Hacking a nuclear-armed submarine, even with inside help, went well beyond the capabilities of anything Anonymous or its affiliates had demonstrated in the past.

“We prepared a report just last month,” Tenon continued, “on the increasing militancy of that sector. Although, to be frank, it feels like too easy a conclusion for my comfort, and a task too difficult for what we’ve seen from them in the past.”

Lana nodded her agreement. The question that troubled her was: What would the hackers do now? Use the submarine as the weapon it was intended to be? Threaten to bomb DC and Moscow if the two most powerful Arctic nations refused to budge? Killing untold millions and spewing sickening levels of radiation over several continents seemed counterproductive from an environmental point of view. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds, but in this case inconsistency would make absolutely no sense if it hailed from Anonymous or its cohorts.

“So that was it?” McGivern asked. “Just leave?”

“That’s correct,” Holmes said.

“How bizarre. No threats?”

“None,” Holmes replied. “But with a nuclear-armed sub the threat’s implied.”

“But not with any specificity,” McGivern countered, to which Holmes nodded.

General Sprouse asked about the hackers’ TTPs: tactics, techniques, and procedures. “Do we know of any digital fingerprints that might suggest any known perpetrators? I’m thinking of APTs and the Chinese.”

Beijing had made great use of Advanced Persistent Threats, which were essentially gangs so corporate in nature that many worked normal business hours to hack targets with great patience. They often spent years surveilling and doing careful reconnaissance of their targets’ networks and computer systems, carefully probing a target’s cybersystems. Among their favorite malware were Trojans, which provided backdoor access to a computer system, and worms, which spread their virulent code throughout the target. Sometimes their malware was even introduced during the construction of the device, which, theoretically, could include components of a nuclear-armed submarine of sufficiently recent vintage.

“It’s too early for the forensics,” said Admiral Wourzy. “That sub is almost a completely isolated entity. We have few trails to follow. It’s not like the attack on the grid where there were defined ports of entry.” Trojans and rootkits. “Our Cyber Incident Response is going to be virtually impossible with our limited remote access.”

He might have been chintzy with his chips, but Wourzy lacked no confidence in his opinions. In fact, Lana would have bet that he was pleased to be back in the game.

“I find it interesting,” Admiral Deming said, raking his gray hair back as he had during yesterday’s videoconference, “that this attack was launched on the eve of our meeting to discuss Magic Dragon and the Chinese. Are we just looking at it as a coincidence that a new Chinese hacker unit has been identified and, ‘Oh by the way, there’s an unprecedented attack on a nuclear submarine’?”

“Are you suggesting that they know that we know and that this is payback for their exposure?” Tenon asked the admiral, with another tug on his beard.

“It’s possible,” the admiral said.

McGivern was their acknowledged China expert, so when she promptly placed her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers, everyone looked at her.

“The Chinese are far too invested in the status quo to make this kind of high-stakes move. What’s in it for them? They’re ill prepared, by all accounts, to take over Arctic drilling and shipping, if that’s the end game to what we’re now seeing. Nor does this seem remotely like the Chinese state’s typical MO.”

“I suppose,” Tenon said, “they could be Chinese hackers operating without Beijing’s approval, or with only the tacit approval of an arm of their intelligence service. China’s suffering devastating droughts in the north and south and have millions of acres of farmland lying fallow. It’s so bad they’re starting to get some religion on climate change.”

Unlikely, thought Lana. To what end?

“Are you suggesting,” McGivern asked, “that the Chinese might be adopting the Russian model, letting so-called ‘patriotic citizens’ do the dirty business of hacking opponents? Building deniability into the plan? Because if you are, let me point out a big difference between the Chinese and the Russians. The Chinese have substantial control of Internet access in their country. They can put up their ‘Great Firewall’ not only to censor outbound connections, but block inbound connections and effectively isolate themselves from most of the rest of the world. The Russians would find it impossible to match that kind of control. The Internet in Russia is almost as much of a food fight as it is here. Moreover, it is still Chinese state policy to grow the economy, not stifle it. They would take a dim view of any of their citizens, or an arm of their intelligence service, hacking and commandeering a U.S. submarine to stymie oil and gas development that would benefit them.” She shook her head, wrapped a wave of gray hair behind her ear, and concluded: “Not the Chinese, and not Chinese renegades. As for Magic Dragon,” she turned her attention to Admiral Deming, “that is a Chinese Army unit, not some rogue outfit.”

Lana liked McGivern; she gave no quarter to anyone, regardless of rank. Perhaps that was a perk of wanting to retire and being implored to hang around.

“I think Teresa has brought up an interesting point about the Russians,” Lana said. “But it’s nearly impossible to fathom that any government would sanction this kind of action.” Tenon started to speak but she rode over him: “Yes, I know that there are cyberunits in many countries now, and a lot of them hate us, but would any of them risk life and limb to do something like this? Even jihadists like to pick with care their time and place to fight. Plus the Russians already control about half the oil and gas interests in the Arctic, so why would their leadership countenance such a move?”

“Only if they knew that it didn’t affect them,” Admiral Wourzy said. “If they were in league with the hackers from the very beginning.”

“Okay,” Lana said, “but whoever the hackers are they must have some consequence in mind, some punishment in store, when the Arctic nations refuse to pull up stakes. This is clearly not an academic exercise. The planning for this must have taken years. That’s the only reason the Russians would play this hand. So I’d suggest we start thinking very hard about what these hackers can do with their missiles that would have minimum impact on Russia, and maximum impact on the rest of the world. Otherwise, we should start looking elsewhere.”

“Noted,” said Holmes. “Any ideas?” He looked around the table. “Anyone?”

When no one spoke up, Holmes resumed: “Then there’s another question: Why are they quiet? Whoever they are, they’re sitting on a propaganda coup of staggering proportions.”

“They won’t be quiet for long,” McGivern replied. “First, we’ll see that horrible video on every screen in the world; then we’ll hear their threats.”

Wourzy nodded. “You can bet on that.”

“Well,” Lana said, “they are hackers first and foremost. Don’t be surprised if they hijack CNN and FOX and every other media outlet.”

“That’s what happened last year,” Tenon reminded everyone unnecessarily.

“They’re holding all the cards,” Wourzy said. “And in a very real sense they’re forcing our hand. If we don’t come forward and announce the hijacking, especially with these deaths now, they’ll do it for us. It’s like we’re shooting at shadows.”

That phrase resonated strongly with Lana. Shadows. Nothing was ever as it appeared. So if that were the case, then it wasn’t the Russians or Chinese or Iranians or Anonymous or any other antic actors on the cyberscene. The rogues were in the shadows. They were the Ted Kaczynskis of their time. But what alarmed Lana was the continuing recognition that the hackers in the shadows often did work hand in glove with the established war rooms of the world.

The meeting was interrupted by the sudden opening of the SCIF door. A young female aide rushed in and turned on Reuters News Online. The news channel had obtained video of the interior of the submarine, undoubtedly provided by the hackers, showing the many dead on the vessel, including Captain Hueller. Then a computer-generated voice warned against “anyone” interfering with the nuclear-armed sub, “or else.”

By late afternoon Lana felt as if all the oxygen had been drained from her own brain. She’d made no headway in cracking the hackers’ code, finding no consolation in hearing from her VP, Jeff Jensen, that he’d made no headway, either. The former navy cryptographer had been in near-constant communications with cohorts in the service, who also found themselves frustrated with every click.

Lana’s efforts had taken her around the world through a wide assortment of servers. Though dubious, she’d finally gone to work on Anonymous, but after three arduous hours of finger-flying over their terrain she’d come to the same conclusion with which she’d started her trek: no involvement by the most notorious hacker brand.

Which did have her thinking the Delphin’s hackers were an entirely new crew, or one savvy and technologically sophisticated enough to have cleaned their virtual slate of every last chalk mark.

Holmes caught her sitting with her fingers sunk into her hair, clutching her head.

“Magic Dragon’s canceled for tonight,” he announced. “The President has called an emergency meeting at the White House. Admiral Deming and General Sprouse will be joined by the various secretaries.”

She knew what that meant: Defense, Homeland Security, each of the services, plus the directors of the CIA and FBI.

“I think you should take this opportunity to go home,” Holmes advised. “Get some rest and get ready for tomorrow. In fact, I’m ordering you to do it.”

Her first impulse was to resist, but she felt fully depleted after last night’s lousy sleep. Then, of course, she thought of Emma and the National Cathedral and knew where she was headed. But would it be fair to show up when her daughter would be meeting Don, for the first time?

Of course it would. Do you trust him with her?

The answer was a resounding no, and why should she? Delaying no longer, she headed for the District, fighting traffic all the way. She would not make a scene with Donald, but she would keep a keen, if discreet, eye on the federal prisoner in his ankle monitor.

The neo-Gothic cathedral was lit up, brilliantly displayed against the night sky as she walked toward it. Lana heard the choir even before she entered, and as she passed under the exquisite stone carving of the Last Supper over the entrance, she saw that the church was packed.

She felt fortunate to find a seat in the last pew, barely able to pick out her daughter in the broad display of blue satin up on the wide altar.

A violin solo rose to the side of the choir as she settled in. Lana hadn’t realized that they would have a full orchestra to accompany them, but she’d been playing catch-up on choral music since Tanesa had led Emma down this artistic path.

Tanesa’s solo came first, and Lana caught herself digging for tissues and dabbing tears as the girl’s voice filled the cathedral. Tanesa sounded pure and flawless to Lana’s admittedly unpracticed ear, but she looked around and saw many people nodding approvingly.

She knew little more about St Matthew’s Passion than the name itself suggested: a demonstration of Bach’s fealty for his faith. Lana lacked great devotion to any religion, but did have tremendous admiration for the art inspired by fervent spiritual belief.

That thought was interrupted when Emma began to sing her solo. Lana did not recognize her daughter’s voice right away, but glimpsed enough of her to be sure that Emma was now the focus of audience admiration wherever she glanced. Her daughter had a lovely soprano voice and handled the German with aplomb.

How does this happen? she asked herself. Your child leaps from gangly childhood to exhibitions of skill and beauty that you could never have anticipated a year ago. Lana had to dig for her tissues once more.

After the choir bowed to sustained applause, Lana edged along the side of the cathedral, moving past stately stone columns, hoping to watch Emma meet her father for the first time. Mostly, she wished that she could have rushed to Emma to congratulate her right then. But she had to grant her daughter — and Emma’s father, Damn him! — their first meeting. One more reason to resent Donald Fedder.

She caught the moment seconds later. Donald, blue suited with a crimson striped tie — looking anything but a convict — shook Emma’s hand. At least he hadn’t presumed to have earned a hug by showing up. Lana had to concede that much.

For her part, Emma looked curious, pleased, but also tentative as she chatted with him.

Don gestured to a pew, away from others still congregating near the altar, including the musicians packing up their instruments.

Lana checked her watch; Don was to have fifteen minutes max. She needn’t have bothered; a woman from the Bureau of Prisons — that was Lana’s bet, in any case — had apparently been dispatched to monitor the pair, which she did from a few rows back. Lana could pick out a spy even in a cathedral. And then she realized, naturally, that she herself was spying, which formed the first direct parallel she could think of between her professional and personal life.

The watch checking proved unnecessary, in any event; after fifteen minutes Don stood. So did Emma. He reached to shake her hand again, but Emma deftly moved it aside and took her father in her arms instead. It was such a smooth adult move that Lana choked up.

But Lana also felt a distinct pang of jealousy, followed quickly by a wholly unexpected pulse of happiness on Emma’s behalf: she had found her father, and he had accorded his child the dignity she so richly deserved.

Lana slipped away quietly, knowing that Tanesa’s parents would bring Emma home.

As soon as she exited the cathedral, she checked for messages. There were several, but the one from Holmes, presumably sent from the Oval Office, drew her instant attention. It provided a link to the inevitable threat from the hacker-hijackers.

Finally, she thought grimly.

Her fierce desire for them to come forward with their “or else” had been satisfied.

Standing in light bleeding from the front of the cathedral, Lana read the threat twice. It was so unthinkably dangerous to the entire world — and yet so obvious — that she knew the likelihood of an actual missile attack had escalated from the unthinkable to the probable.

And it would be far more devastating than anyone, including herself, could possibly have imagined.

CHAPTER 6

Oleg was so frustrated he pounded the trident symbol in the middle of the Maserati’s steering wheel to sound the horn. That earned him the temper of the long-haired blonde in front of him, who made an obscene gesture and honked her own horn. So Oleg roared past her lousy little Lada, gave her another blast, and the same gesture. Wanted to run her off the road.

Okay, so bad mood, Oleg. Get a grip. Don’t abuse such a beautiful car.

Why was he in such a bad mood? All he’d wanted when he stopped by to see Galina was a simple apology: “I’m sorry, Oleg, for working for Papa Plutocrat and Dmitri.” That was all she had to say — and then some make up sex to show that she was really sincere.

Not kiddie cancer. Who wanted to hear about that?

Secret for girlfriend success: Apology + Sex = NO BIG DEAL.

And then you’re forgiven. Jesus.

But she got pissed off.

Go figure.

Bigger sturgeon to fry now. Oleg had used his own hacked channels to the White House to let them know about the threat hanging over their heads — and the rest of the world’s — so it was time to make sure Numero Uno hacker, the Ukrainian, was fully in the loop, too.

Uno was a smart boy, so it was very possible that he’d identified the target all on his own. If not, though, Oleg needed to inform him straightaway because Uno had hacked the sub’s communications and — with some valuable help aboard — would be aiming the Trident IIs. “Like very exciting video game,” Uno had told him.

The target was not going to be Washington, much as Oleg hated that place, or New York, much as he loved it, or Paris, London, Hong Kong, Beijing, or Flint, Michigan, a shitty city Oleg personally would have been happy to blow up with a thermonuclear device. He had been carjacked there by big black men on a hot summer night when he was just passing through minding his own business and thought it would be a nice boost for the local economy if he bought some excellent crack cocaine for a special friend whose acquaintance he’d made on a street corner a few blocks away. Those American blacks were ingrates. They threatened to tear out his lungs for bringing his “ofay self” into their hood, which had enough problems without “fucking ofays” like him.

Ofay? Ofay? That’s the best they can do when it comes to name-calling?

Maybe hard to believe, but the real target was even better than Flint. He smiled just thinking about it, so pleased at finally knowing that he could tell Uno where to aim those nuclear missiles. He was speeding home, prepared to bribe stupid Muscovite cops if he had to. Ripping along at one hundred fifty kilometers an hour, he checked out his mug in the rearview mirror—What was that thump? Potato-faced peasant? — pleased to see the handsome look of the man staring back at him. Who really needed multiple warheads when the target he’d picked out would be like hitting hundreds of cities all at once?

Leukemia? Oleg dismissed it with a flick of his hand. “Such a trifle.” He’d take care of the leukemia later. Give Galina girl some money. He had a good fund-raising idea that would not cut into Ambient Air Capture profits.

No, not car wash. What, you think this is America? Need books for school kids? Car wash. Need blankets for squeegee people? Car wash.

But Oleg’s fund-raising idea did have lots of liquids and—Who knows? — maybe some bright red spots.

And then, after taking care of the leukemia money, he would accept Galina’s apology for working for Papa Plutocrat and helping Dmitri. Little brother who’s bigger than a horse does not need help. Great life. Hookers and indoor waterslide. For a man with a broken brain, doesn’t get better.

But right now Oleg needed to get up to his plush penthouse with a skylight in the living room and another one high above his bed with special heating systems to vaporize the snow so he could see the night sky burning with stars that spoke to him in ways he could never quite put into words. His poetic side that wanted to dance with the stars. The real stars, not those losers on bad TV for potato-faced people without satellite or even the crappy Russian version of Netflix.

When he needed ultimate encryption there was only one safe bet: home sweet home. He thought it and sang it as he drove into the underground garage and waited all of three seconds for the elevator before darting up to the lobby.

Argh! The cripple. Yes, it was bad to call the wheelchair-bound neighbor a “cripple,” but the cripple was a nasty fuck. And there he was, holding the hand of his crippled girlfriend, both of them wheeling around Moscow like they belonged everywhere. Slowing down everyone. Waiting for the damn elevator. Just getting them on was like loading nuclear pellets. First, she went, doing a six-point turn until she faced out. Then he got on; with even less room to maneuver, he needed a ten-point turn. By then the doors were boing-boinging off his chair. But each of them never seemed to notice because they were always busy flashing big toothy smiles at everyone except him.

But he didn’t dare rush ahead and close the elevator doors on them. He’d done that last month and they’d filed a complaint with the co-op board, which threatened to force him to sell and leave.

“If you’re not careful,” he’d warned the board in his most cunning voice, “I’ll buy the building and send all of you packing. Cripples first.” Ha-ha-ha. That had shut them up.

But now he was paying the price of his impatience because he couldn’t push past them when he really needed to. Too many witnesses getting mail, smoking, talking, watching, and waiting to see what the “Penthouse Prick” would do. That was what a crone on the co-op board had nicknamed him — and it stuck.

Oleg took the stairs, panting after two flights. Then he had a better idea. He burst through the next stairwell doorway and raced to the elevator, pushing the up button.

Ding.

And there they were, just as he figured, staring at him. No toothy smiles now. He pushed the button for the very next floor.

The doors closed.

Ding. They opened.

“Here, cripple girlfriend. You first,” he said, giving her a good shove.

“And now your turn, Wheel Beast.”

“No!” the cripple bellowed. “It’s not our floor.”

“I know, but better — no witnesses,” he added as he pressed a button and closed the doors.

In seconds he rose to the top floor and stepped into his penthouse, to which only he had the key. Then he rushed to his bank of computers to bring up hacker #1.

Click-click-click. Then more clicks. Lots of clicks.

“Okay, hooked up,” he said to himself. “So tell me,” keyboarding to #1, “what do you think ‘or else’ means?”

Don’t disappoint me, thought Oleg. I want to talk to someone about this most magnificent target in all of world history.

“WAIS,” was Numero Uno’s total answer.

But it made Oleg hug himself because Uno was spot-on: West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

“You are right!” he keyboarded back.

“Pure genius,” Uno replied. “Theoretically unstable,” he added.

“Theoretically?” Oleg guffawed so hard he almost fell off his Aeron.

A renowned geologist had called the massive WAIS an “awakened giant” that could reach a “tipping point”—not a metaphor, for once — and crash into the ocean. Bombing it would create the biggest kerplunk in history and raise sea levels by 3.3 meters (eleven feet, Americans!).

If the Arctic, with all its gas and oil, was the prize — and it most certainly was — Oleg thought Antarctica, with its deliriously unstable ice sheet at the bottom of the world, would soon provide the punishment for all those other countries that had, once again, underestimated Russian resolve.

Other than Holland, of course, the nation that would be hammered hardest would be the United States, where 40 percent of the people lived right on or near the coast. And even though the seas would rise almost everywhere, they would be 25 percent higher on America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts because as ice melted from the nuclear blast — and vast chunks were dislodged by the explosion — the planet’s spin would begin to change, which would shift the focus of the earth’s gravitational field farther north. That would pile up seas higher on the coasts of North America. The process was already underway. Thanks to climate change, Antarctica had one of the fastest warming rates in the world. The continent had actually shrunk by 125 cubic kilometers every year since the beginning of the decade. But a nuclear blast would make global warming’s impact seem puny by comparison.

When Oleg had first learned about America taking it on the chin, he thought it was too good to be true. But what was even better was that Russia didn’t have a single city in the top-fifteen list of those most in danger of sea-level rise.

All through Russian history its leaders had worried about ports. Never enough ports. All the time it was ports-ports-ports and the fear of being landlocked. That was a big reason for taking Crimea from those ingrate Ukrainians—Bad as black men in Flint. Maybe related even—to keep the Port of Sevastopol firmly in Russian control for the Black Sea Fleet.

But when the seas rose, Russia would be nice and cozy. For the imperialist western powers and the inscrutable Chinese? Disaster. Russia’s great destiny, sought for centuries, would come to completion in the hands of Oleg Dernov.

Just a single warhead on a Trident II would be dozens of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and the Tridents with multiple warheads would most certainly drop the entire ice sheet into the ocean in seconds. So Oleg was understandably overjoyed to have someone, at last, to chat with about this triumph. An enthusiast, no less, much like himself.

“So let’s do it,” Uno wrote.

“Patience, patience,” Oleg wrote back. Even if PP was correct that it was a greatly overrated virtue.

“Must target very carefully,” Oleg typed. “Shave off portions of WAIS. Show them we’re serious. Raise sea level a foot or two.” Good-bye Miami, Amsterdam, good-bye parts of London, New York, Boston, and other cities too numerous to name.

Oleg knew, naturally, that you roll the dice when you bomb the ice because the awakened giant of WAIS, well, it could become chaos theory in action. Only this time it wouldn’t be a butterfly flapping its wings in China, but a Trident II in Antarctica persuading those reluctant Arctic countries to leave the oil and gas fields on the top of the world.

They’d have to, anyway, because they’d all be in crisis.

But not Russia.

The strongest men in the Kremlin privately, quietly, had long ago given the go-ahead to certain Russian explorers to claim the entire Arctic for the motherland. The rest of the world laughed when Artur Chilingarov sailed a submersible to the floor of the Arctic Ocean, planted a titanium Russian flag in the seabed, and claimed all of the Arctic for the Russian Federation. To make his point even clearer, the intrepid Chilingarov rose from the ocean floor with words that were cheered by the country’s true patriots: “The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass.”

What the rest of the world didn’t know was that with another wink and a blink, the same powerful men had also let it be known to an intrepid hacker named Oleg Dernov that his project was viewed most favorably from on high. Never a direct word — and wholly hands off — but Oleg’s project had been blessed just as the minor efforts of lesser hackers had long been.

With the WAIS in the ocean — and massive emergencies all over the planet — who could possibly stop the Russians from exploiting the wealth that was properly theirs? They would sell the gas and oil to pathetic, broken countries, while having the technological capacity to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Russia could raise and lower temperatures to reward friends and punish foes.

It wouldn’t be the Russians’ fault that history and destiny had seen to their safety and security. The rest of the world would be so preoccupied with simple survival that they’d scarcely have a moment to notice Russian extraction of gas and oil in the north.

“So when? When!” Uno asked.

“When I say. You have twenty-four hours to get ready. Go to work. Report back. Then you can launch the missile with the single warhead.”

So Florida, get in your boats. Amsterdam, pull on your boots. Washington, break out your ditch bags.

And that would be just the beginning.

Oleg signed off with Uno but undertook some more direct hacking of his own. Nothing so challenging as trying to hack into the White House network. Now he was just tracking down Alexandra’s deadbeat dad so he could put his fund-raising idea into action.

It didn’t take Oleg long to find him, or to fill out the online form for a life insurance policy that would benefit the girl if something “unforeseen” should happen to her father. A really big policy with a special accident clause.

Oleg knew the little love of Galina’s life needed the money. So the big love of her life would provide it.

“Always be generous to the women you love,” PP had often said.

With a final click, Oleg prepared to follow his sage advice.

But there was something else PP had always said about girls. It was even more important, if Oleg remembered correctly. That’s it, he recalled with a smile. PP had called it “the key to happiness.” The old man had been dandling Oleg on his knee when he whispered these wise words into his ear for the first time: “The secret to a really happy life, firstborn son, is to always tip the really hot chicks.”

It hadn’t meant much to the six-year-old, but PP had repeated it every year on Oleg’s birthday until finally, when he turned fourteen, PP’s generosity found genuine meaning.

Before calling it a day, Oleg turned his attention back to Uno, finding that his protégé and his onboard help were maintaining command of the Delphin’s Missile Control Center.

Oleg studied the scene in the Center of Submarine Control, COC, located in the upper level of the Operations Compartment. He couldn’t help but admire the dazzling computer touch screens and the green, orange, and blue glow from the Attack Center, Ballast Control, and other displays reflecting on the faces of the sailors who stared so intently at them — the pure dynamism of America’s weaponry. Like Disneyland for death! Or, as Uno had put it, “a very exciting video game.”

Oleg knew that with all those dazzling technologies now under his command, there would be little to stop him from launching a direct hit on the WAIS. Massive fireworks would light up the Frozen Continent and unprecedented flooding would devour much of the world.

CHAPTER 7

Lana had shed her elegant heels to keep running from the National Cathedral, and now had the Prius in sight when one of Holmes’s aides texted that the deputy director was calling an emergency session at NSA headquarters in an hour. She had assumed they’d be meeting tonight: a threat of unprecedented magnitude demanded immediate action.

When she’d received the message about the threat she should have turned right around and told Emma that she might bed down at Fort Meade tonight.

Too late for that now. Text her.

Lana slowed just enough to put her digits to work—“Working late. Don’t want u home alone. Ask Tanesa to stay with u.”

Holmes’s aide sent another text with a detailed map of Antarctica and a color-coded view of the WAIS that highlighted the ice sheet’s most vulnerable point. It lay just west of the Transantarctic Mountains, which ran roughly north and south like a fragile spine.

Even staring at the announced target, Lana could not help but experience a measure of comfort. At least the aim wasn’t to vaporize Washington, New York, Paris, Berlin, London, or any other major city.

But that first flush of relief faded quickly. While she was glad to know that mass incineration of citizens wasn’t on some terrorist agenda — if the hackers’ communiqué about bombing Antarctica could actually be trusted — she also recalled that a slow-motion catastrophe, by thermonuclear standards, would be triggered if the WAIS were hit.

She wasn’t an expert on Antarctica, but knew that scientists worldwide already considered it one of the major worries of climate change: if the whole ice sheet were cleaved from the continent by the warming, or a massive bomb, seas would rise by a staggering eleven feet, in a matter of days.

WAIS was such a looming topic for the U.S. Task Force on Climate Change that it was slated as the subject of next month’s meeting in Annapolis, which now sounded like an academic exercise with the real threat of a nuclear missile strike — or strikes—on the planet’s southernmost region.

Lana threw herself behind the wheel, wondering what an eleven-foot rise in the waters of Chesapeake Bay would mean. She was tempted to do the research then and there but weightier concerns saw her speeding out of the car park.

Not for long. She had to hit the brakes quickly, then fought traffic for blocks, noting the unworried faces of so many drivers and pedestrians, including the young couples, hand in hand, who were crossing at streetlights blissfully unaware of the impending peril.

If they only knew.

This was so unlike last year, when the whole country became aware of the attack with the speed of a blackout. That assault had come with no warning, taking down the grid and setting off a nationwide power outage on a balmy September morning. No couples had strolled hand in hand with traffic jams seizing virtually every intersection. Then train derailments began across the country, along with pipeline explosions and a vicious array of other cyberattacks, all of which were brutally visible, even if the cyberterrorists themselves had been wholly absent to the eye.

A nuclear attack on the WAIS, on the other hand, would be so far removed by comparison that most citizens of the U.S. and the rest of the world would feel little impact initially — but then the waters would begin to rise and all too quickly the horrifying ramifications would sink in.

It took Lana almost a half hour of grindingly slow city traffic to escape to the Beltway, which wasn’t exactly the Indy 500, either. But at least the Prius was plodding along now.

Her thoughts quickly focused on the agents of the threatened apocalypse. She knew that word was far overused, but a sudden and radical rise in sea levels, with its consequent smothering of coastlines that had been stable for the last twelve thousand years, certainly did not make the term seem like a stretch. And all of it would happen in the geological equivalent of a blink.

Taking the HOV lane, she powered past miles of lone drivers on her right, feeling no compunction at all because she thought her car carried plenty — the weight of the world. Without the congestion, she felt free to think, but she still could not wrap her head around the idea that any country powerful enough to put this catastrophe into play would actually commit such a self-destructive act. Yet only a highly trained and immensely sophisticated cyberunit could have hacked the navy’s communications and, with accomplices onboard, hijacked the Delphin. Those hackers now threatened to launch an attack that would change the very contours of the continents for millions of years to come.

Millions?

She could scarcely make sense of her own well-reasoned conclusions. Communicating this to the public would be unfathomably difficult. The attack last year had set off savage displays of panic; she could hardly grasp what would happen this time around — and didn’t want to.

Lana had yet to hear back from Emma, so she tried again, adding “ASAP!” before hitting “send.”

Respond, Em, come on.

The next instant she was back in professional mode, wondering when the cyberattackers—Murderers, that’s what they are—were going to launch their lethal assault. The communiqué, which had been boldly sent to the White House and cc’d to Holmes, didn’t reveal a countdown. Shrewd — from the unknown enemy’s point of view. Whoever had decided on that strategy might have borrowed a page from last year’s attackers who toyed with turning the grid on and off to keep everyone in a near panic. And then they turned it on with the vow to shut it down for good at any second, which had unleashed mass hysteria.

But what would Americans — and everyone else in the world — make of seas rising past shorelines and engulfing entire island nations and other vulnerable low-lying countries? Even in the developed world, whole cities and smaller communities would disappear under floods of Biblical proportions. Trillions of dollars’ worth of water treatment plants and sewage facilities, hospitals — emergency services of all kinds — along with nuclear power plants, naval bases, and scores of defense installations, would disappear. So, of course, would hundreds of millions of people. Hiroshima and Nagasaki countless times over, but instead of fires raining from the sky, there would be relentless flooding by the seas.

She texted McGivern: “Is Besserman there?”

“Running late, but coming,” she replied.

Excellent. Clarence Besserman was one of the government’s top experts on climate change’s impact on national security. He was also an ex officio member of the Joint Task Force.

Lana rolled up to Fort Meade’s front gate, eyed closely by security personnel who waved her through. That had never happened before. But she was stopped seconds later by a band of marines from the service’s Fort Meade detachment, one of whom tapped the passenger window and jumped into the seat a moment later.

“Ma’am, drive up to the door and deploy. I’m going to park your car. Your keys will catch up to you, along with the car’s location.”

Lana did as directed, pulling up to the biggest of the NSA buildings, the one with what appeared to be a white tray cake plopped on top. She popped the trunk and hopped out.

“Thank you, sir,” she said to the young marine.

“Thank you, ma’am. Godspeed,” he added.

She grabbed her computer case out of the trunk and rushed inside.

An NSA security guard was waiting to escort her swiftly to the SCIF, the secure conference room that was starting to feel more familiar than her own office at Meade.

She checked her watch: 10:30 p.m. Just before entering the electronically secured enclosure, she tried Emma again, apologizing to a pair of NSA guards waiting to clear her for entry to the room.

Lana tried texting Tanesa this time. No sooner sent than replied to: “Got Em at my house.”

“Thx!” Lana answered before surrendering her devices and enduring the critical security protocol, which included signing off on the procedure. At least her daughter and Tanesa and children everywhere were peacefully ignorant of the threatened assault. But for how long?

That was the first question Holmes raised: “What’s our countdown look like? Any ideas?” The deputy director looked every day of his seventy-eight years.

Admiral Wourzy, the chip counterfeiter, said he thought the enemy would strike in a matter of hours. “Or, more to the point, any time now.”

“Why?” Holmes asked with unusual impatience.

“Now that they’ve announced their target,” Wourzy replied, “they’ll move quickly rather than risk shutdown. And once the attack has taken place, it gives them breathing room while chaos breaks out.”

“Or it gives us a means of tracking the hackers to their lair,” said the lean, bearded Tenon, once more speaking up early in a meeting, as if always fearful of being overlooked.

“In classic terrorism, that often holds true,” Wourzy replied, “because the terrorist leaves behind physical evidence. But this has been engineered by hackers who are much harder to locate. To put it simply, this isn’t like tracking an ISIL missile fired from the Iraqi desert. Plus, they’ve got to know we’ll do everything we can to find and sink that sub, so I’d say the good money’s on a fast launch.”

“Find the sub?” Holmes asked. “What are you—”

“We’ve lost the Delphin,” Admiral Deming answered. “They moved it into a deep trough and rigged for ultra quiet. The sub has the latest in sound-suppression technology. They’ve shut off all nonessential equipment, slowed down the fans, and reduced speed to less than ten knots. We’ve got two destroyers racing to the southern ocean now but they’re going to have a helluva time finding the Delphin.”

“How did we lose them?” Holmes sounded incredulous. “We had them literally in our sights before.”

“That was when they used the buoy, and we saw them from the air,” Deming replied.

“Believe me, I know how we saw them,” Holmes fired back. “How long have you known this?”

“Minutes,” Deming reported. “The admiral and I found out walking in the door here.”

“What about the destroyers?” Holmes persisted.

“They were also too far away when the Delphin went to depth, and the hackers and their accomplices certainly appear to know their topography.”

“And the sub’s Operations Compartment,” Wourzy added. “I’ll give you odds-on that navigating the underwater canyons is the least of the challenges they’ve overcome. They’ve had plenty of practice of playing around with the navy’s computers,” he said with raised eyebrows.

An overt reference, Lana was certain, to a cyberincursion revealed by Snowden. As early as three years ago hackers had infiltrated a navy computer system. Iranians were suspected in that attack. A security upgrade — more layers, network segmentation, and enhanced monitoring — had been implemented, which made Lana doubtful that the Iranians had a part in the Delphin’s takeover, largely because they always seemed too inept to avoid leaving their fingerprints on whatever havoc they caused.

The U.S., of course, had proved equally clumsy — the Iranians would say even more so — with its infamous Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. While renowned among experts for its almost flawless code, the U.S. was implicated when the worm escaped Iran’s Natanz plant and made its way all around the world. But when a cyberattack was executed well, anonymity made responding quickly and forcefully almost impossible. There were plenty of potential culprits, but getting confirmation of a single one was much tougher. And now Lana and her colleagues were up against an enemy unlikely to ever claim credit for an environmental disaster that would devastate every continent on earth.

Clarence Besserman arrived late, looking as if he’d stepped from a World War II Defense Department photo, even though the climate-change expert was in his early thirties. He sported the wet-look haircut of a military attaché and a bow tie that could have been filched from the collar of Winston Churchill himself. Like the late British prime minister and war hero, Besserman was chubby. In Lana’s view, he fit the very definition of that word: cheeks, arms, chest, legs, everywhere she looked he carried a few extra pounds of padding. But not obese, not by any means.

Despite the starched bow tie and carefully oiled hair, he was disheveled with his shirttail hanging out of his pants. It wasn’t simply that he’d been rousted late at night for a meeting, though, because Besserman always looked like he slept in his clothes. Only his computer looked crisply intact as he pulled it from its case, likely because his screen wasn’t yet visible. Lana would have guessed his desktop might also need some ordering. But there was no disputing Besserman’s brilliance.

Holmes, she noticed, looked on the verge of saying, “Glad you could make it, Clarence,” but the younger man looked so flustered that the deputy director might have spared him out of charity alone.

“You have something for us, I gather,” Holmes actually asked him.

Did Besserman ever. He launched right into the geopolitical implications of a rapid rise in sea levels: “We just ran our first climate-change war games last week. To prepare for the Task Force presentation next month, we looked at who the actors might be in a similar attack on the ice sheet. We weren’t gaming with a nuclear-armed submarine in mind because we didn’t think the hacking and takeover of one was possible. A lack of imagination on our part, clearly. But we did decide after extensive analysis that hackers targeting the WAIS in any manner would have to be other than a state actor. No country with the ability to bomb the ice sheet into the ocean would ever have enough to gain to make it worth their while. But here was the quandary: No individual hacker would have the means to launch an ICBM in such a precise fashion. So before the Delphin was taken over, that was our conundrum and why we concluded such an attack was highly unlikely.”

McGivern put up her index finger. Talk about looking war weary and ruffled. “I’m surprised to hear—”

“Except for Russia.” Besserman had the presence of mind to let that bulletin settle in.

“But you just said,” Tenon broke the silence, “that ‘No state actor would have—’”

Besserman rode right over the analyst: “Until the Delphin. Taking over a submarine of that caliber by hackers working without the support of a state security apparatus is so unlikely that our latest calibrations rank it as a 1 in 1.9 billion possibility. It’s not just the sub, it’s all the onboard systems. And to launch the missiles, there are codes, required verifications, keys, and a number of manual procedures. We’re looking at such extreme expertise needed in so many areas. U.S. submarine technology alone would demand teams of highly trained specialists, all of which would require unprecedented incursion skills, not to mention bringing all that to bear on the earth’s Achilles’ heel. It’s so demonically inspired, it’s mind-boggling.”

“So nobody saw it coming,” Wourzy said, “yet it was hiding in plain sight?”

“Yes,” Besserman said. “It’s the single most vulnerable climate-change catastrophe that could be set off immediately. We can watch Greenland melt, Arctic ice disappear, the Amazon burn — along with the American West — and the Sahara spread north into Mediterranean countries, but there’s not much we could do to speed up any of that, other than what we’re already doing inadvertently by continuing to accelerate the release of greenhouse gases. But as we all know now, the WAIS is the world’s first big tipping point.”

“So what changes if the ice sheet gets hit?” Holmes asked, urgency fueling his tone.

“What doesn’t change is the question, if I may reframe what you’ve just asked, sir.”

Holmes nodded.

“With an eleven-foot rise in sea level, every map of the world will have to be redrawn. It would shut down our country for months, at the very least, quite possibly years. Every port would flood, and many, if not most, would disappear. They would be underwater. Storm surges could be more than twice that eleven-foot rise. We’re still assessing how many major military installations would be wiped out but I can tell you that we’d be looking at more than one hundred. Even if we were sure of how to respond to the attack on Antarctica, we’d still be severely handicapped by the absolute necessity of responding to what would be our overwhelming domestic crises. One hundred fifty million Americans, about half our population, would either be racing from the coastlines, with calamitous results, or those not immediately affected would be overrun by climate refugees. All imports and exports would cease right away, and not just on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The Great Lakes would rise, too. From the shores of Lake Superior to the St. Lawrence Seaway, cities would eventually flood. Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Duluth, Syracuse, Rochester. Our most critical cities are on our shores. For all intents and purposes, they would come to a standstill at best, or float away at worst.”

Besserman looked startled by his own words. His stunned gaze took in everyone at the conference table. Then he drew another breath and went on: “I’ve talked to every one of my colleagues at Defense, CIA, you name it. They all agree. This has got to be Russian in origin. The Russians are denying any role, but they’ve always done that and we know that’s true because we’ve caught them red-handed at it, though nothing of this magnitude. And then they always blame it on ‘patriotic citizens’ hacking at their leisure. We’ve even discussed that in here. But this was not a casual incursion. This was planned for a long time and executed with precision.”

“What’s your sense of the likelihood of a launch?” Holmes asked him.

“Strong likelihood for one deceptively simple reason: The Russians will gain the international upper hand almost right away. They would not be spared entirely from the rise of the oceans, but given what their chief competitors would endure — meaning us, China, the NATO nations — the Russians would be mostly insulated from the worst impacts of the rise. The brutal truth is that in a matter of weeks they would become the dominant world power for decades to come.”

“Not if we bomb them to rubble,” Admiral Deming said.

“Of late, we’ve looked at that as well, Admiral,” Besserman replied, “and that kind of response would be almost as dangerous as a bomb landing on the WAIS. We’d be cutting off our nose to spite our face because, first of all, we may never be able to conclusively prove their role. No smoking gun. And, even more painful to accept, maybe, is that we, along with the rest of the world, would become highly dependent on Russian aid. Without it, billions would starve. Every year they have more arable land stretching up into Siberia because of the warming. Their vast agricultural base is expanding. And I’m sure you realize the radioactivity released from a massive bombing of Russia would soon sweep over the rest of the world, including America. And of course they’d respond in kind.”

“So you’re saying they’re going to have us coming or going?” Lana asked, unable to keep the outrage from her voice.

Besserman nodded.

Lana didn’t accept that pinning it on the Russians — if they were indeed the hackers — would be impossible. Identifying hackers was what she did for a living, but the other part, the radioactive blowback and depending on them for aid, well, that was truly “mind-boggling,” to borrow Besserman’s own words.

And humiliating.

“But the Russians are being ordered out of the Arctic, too,” Tenon said.

“They’re giving themselves cover,” Besserman replied. “Nobody’s actually leaving, are they? Which was the result the hackers no doubt expected. If and when the WAIS gets hit, Russia will probably pull out of the Arctic, too, but only for a little while. They’ll argue that the gas and oil will be needed to help save the world. And the most galling fact is, they’ll be right because with much of the fossil-fuel economy shut down everywhere else, Arctic resources will become very valuable. We certainly won’t have the means to begin massive extraction up there. Every possible vessel and all our human resources will be dedicated to simple survival. That’s going to be true for all the Arctic nations, and most of the rest of the world as well. Holland, for one, will disappear. If the Russians retreat from the Arctic at all, it will be purely a performance. They believe the Arctic belongs to them. They always have.”

“Is it coincidence, then, that Professor Ahearn and his wife were murdered and his prototype likely stolen just before this happened?” Lana asked.

Besserman paused. “Outside my purview, okay? But I don’t think it was a coincidence. If Ahearn had the breakthrough with AAC that we’ve come to believe, and the Russians took it, they’ll have the means to use it on a wide scale while the rest of us are tripping over ourselves trying to recover from the collapse of that one very fragile part of the planet.”

A messenger entered and handed Holmes a slip of paper. In the silence before the woman passed back through the door, Lana watched Holmes crumple the paper and drop it on the table.

He lifted his eyes to them. “They’ve announced the threat publicly. While we’ve been hoping they’d keep it secret for as long as possible, they were planning a worldwide communications takeover to say that at any moment a Trident II will strike the ice sheet.”

Holmes, perhaps thinking better of himself, leaned forward and retrieved the balled-up paper and unfolded it. “They even wrote the headline.”

Lana had no trouble reading it: “The Oceans Rise. Billions Die.”

CHAPTER 8

America woke up to the momentous announcement. Montevideo, Oleg’s favorite hippie city, woke up to it. Moscow went to sleep knowing about it. And everybody everywhere was shocked. The whole world was quaking to Oleg’s threat. He sat watching reports on his big flat screen from all over the Big Blue Ball, which was about to get a lot bluer.

“A great flood is coming,” a reporter with a gravelly voice announced over video of an endless sea on NBC TV in New York City. Then the same newsman intoned, “This clip from the movie Noah is what a huge flood might have looked like the first time.”

Okay, Oleg got it now. The reporter who sounded like a three-pack-a-day smoker was mixing a little entertainment with the news by dragging that flick back off the shelf to make the most of the crisis. How purely American.

But the WAIS flood would be real, and people knew it. Boat prices were going through the roof. In fact, prices for anything that could float — rafts, dinghies, inner tubes, bathtubs — were getting priced right out of reach of most people. Bologna — the city, not the sausage — was putting up barriers to prevent coastal dwellers from the Adriatic and Ligurian Seas from overrunning its ancient streets.

There were boat people in Kiribati, the Maldives, Bangladesh, La Jolla. And in Florida, street gangs were “boatjacking” yachts, according to a reporter down there. The term caught on fast, but not as fast as the gangbangers in speedboats could catch up to cabin cruisers. Those banger boys were like cheetahs pouncing on lumbering wildebeests.

Oleg gawked at video of tattooed guys who looked like linebackers storming a sixty-foot boat. Two of the biggest grabbed a hefty woman in a muumuu by her ankles and wrists and swung her back and forth—“Uno, dos, trés.” He could read their lips — before they tossed her into the sea.

At least the gringa could float. Not all of them could.

He sat there stunned by what he was seeing. For reasons he could not fathom, “Itchycoo Park” started playing in his head. The worst earworm of all time.

PP’s third wife used to sing it to Oleg when he was a teen: “It’s all too beautiful, It’s all too…”

He hated it, but loved the way her dangly earrings caught the sunlight. Finally, one day he grabbed both of them and jerked her close, head-butting the hippie. Fourteen years old and so sick of hearing “It’s all too beautiful” bullshit that he couldn’t stand another second of it. But he did like her earrings. He walked away with one in each hand.

Look, look at that! Big news. And it was beautiful. New York Stock Exchange — collapsed. NASDAQ — collapsed. Dow Jones — collapsed. The Nikkei — collapsed. London Stock Exchange — collapsed. Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges — collapsed. The Moscow Stock Exchange — through the roof. Huge profit taking, and then even higher, like Trident IIs, up-up-up. Just like the Russian spirit when the President assured his people that their country would not leave the Arctic and succumb to a terrorist threat, saying, “Destiny is on our side.” So was geography.

When the camera zoomed in on the Russian President, Oleg could almost glimpse another wink and a blink just for him. The President was a great man. He could ride race cars, race horses, racy women. All man.

Oleg clicked his remote, bringing in news from America. A white weather guy was talking to a black anchorwoman on a New York morning show. The weather guy was so funny. He actually said sinking the WAIS would be like raising the floor of a basketball court so that anyone could dunk.

Dunk? And they say Russians have a dark sense of humor.

Numero Uno called. Oleg muted the TV.

“Yes,” he said in his most amused voice.

“Best bet for first Trident is the big ice shelves, like dams, near the Weddell or Ross Seas.” The north or south part of the WAIS, close to the Transantarctic Mountains, which ran roughly north and south along the eastern edge of the massive ice sheet. “You choose, you can’t lose, Oleg.” The Ukrainian laughed.

“Help me,” Oleg said gregariously. “North is closer to the U.S., right? Maybe get the gravitational shift going sooner.” Which would raise the seas on both sides of America higher than in the rest of the world, but not the full 25 percent bonus that Oleg wanted most. That wouldn’t come till the whole WAIS was bombed loose.

“Maybe not such a big gravity shift with just one ice shelf,” Uno told him, “but oceans would get deeper. I can guarantee that. No telling how deep because this is chaos theory, like you say, Oleg.”

Trying to butter me up. Another Americanism. Oleg knew he was watching too much American TV. But it was so much fun.

“Either one, north or south,” Uno said, “will be like blowing up a big dam so lots of ice can slide into the ocean.”

“Like a sleigh ride!” Oleg laughed.

“Sleigh ride? I don’t think so,” Uno replied soberly. “But very good chunk of ice. Hard to be so precise.”

What? “You have their launch systems.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it.”

“How are things on board? They still dead?” Oleg laughed again. He hadn’t checked on the Delphin for a while. Didn’t like micromanaging Uno or the men whom the Ukrainian was working with on the vessel, all under severe duress. Oleg had the same well-dressed crew that had seen to the Ahearns keeping a close eye on the families of the sailors assigned to the submarine’s Operations Compartment, including the upper level where Control housed the ballast control panel, a navigation station, attack center, and more. In fact, photos of the Ahearns had even been shown to them. That was just in case they decided they didn’t want to cooperate in keeping the vessel moving through the southern ocean, though watching the rest of the crew drop dead would have persuaded most anyone to put on an oxygen mask.

“Still dead,” Uno replied.

“And Hector Gomez?”

“Don’t see much of him but he’s still kicking.”

“Try to nail down what happens when you hit those ice dams,” Oleg ordered before hanging up. “And I mean work on it,” he texted Uno promptly. The hours were ticking by. He wanted to launch tomorrow. And Uno knew that. He should be ready now.

What? Do I have to do everything? Take out life insurance on deadbeat dad? Arrange his accident? Find way to hack into White House? And now Galina was texting him: “I must see u.”

What’s going on?

Made him a horndog to think of her so worked up.

Make-up sex, he thought right away, imagining her next to him, already quivering. Are you really sorry? Super sorry? He would whisper those words in her ears, lick the curly cartilage and watch her squirm with delight. Listen to her breath grow faster. How sorry are you? Show me, bad girl, Galina. Show me.

The “bad girl” business always got her. Made her crazy. Made her do things she swore she’d never done with deadbeat dad. And now she never would. Oleg was sure of that. Deadbeat dad would never do anything to anyone again, except provide a nice death benefit to little Alexandra.

He brought up the sound on his flat screen to hear the American President, who did not race cars. He did not race horses. But he had a very racy wife. So hot. Like horrible Henry Kissinger once said, “Power is the great aphrodisiac.” Only reason toadstool like him got laid.

But the American President was starting to look like a woolly mammoth. Too tired for sex. He was getting grayer every day. All the American Presidents do. Fun to watch it happen. Like Grecian Formula 44 in reverse.

“My fellow Americans,” he started. “We face an unparalleled challenge…”

Must have been reading a boilerplate response filed under “Nuclear Bomb Threat.” But what Oleg listened for most closely was the finger-pointing. And there was lots of that. But—Ho-ho-ho—at everyone. Which meant no one. Everyone who’s a terrorist, that is. Oleg wasn’t a terrorist. Oleg was a Pirate of Diplomacy.

But now he needed to be sensitive for Galina, who texted that she was on the elevator: “I’m coming now. Now!”

He’d heard that many times before, under the most pleasing circumstances.

The elevator stopped and he opened the door, ready for some frisky fun.

But she was carrying Alexandra, arms under her knees and shoulders. The girl’s head lolled back like a rag doll’s. She looked shriveled, too, which did not arouse Oleg, who didn’t appreciate Galina bringing such sickness into his apartment. Penthouse, no less! That made Galina a very bad girl, but not a good bad girl. Just a bad girl. Nothing he would want to whisper into her ear. What did she think the penthouse was? Kiddie cancer ward? Like book by Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward. Great story with magnificent hero named — what else? — Oleg.

Galina rushed Alexandra to his couch and spread the girl’s bunny blanket over her, the one that matched her bunny pajamas. The girl’s eyes were slits. Such a pretty kid not so long ago. What happened? She needs to smile more. Cancer feeds on despair. Just read Solzhenitsyn. That was why they had an epidemic of cancer in America.

Galina turned to him. “What have you done?”

She sounded hurt, really upset. Not sexy.

“Done? What do you mean?”

“I’ve been busy.” She moved her hands as though they were working an invisible keyboard, then pointed both index fingers at him. “You are doing this to the world. Do you know what could happen down there?”

“Down where?” He walked to his Sub-Zero Pro. “Do you want some fresh-squeezed orange juice? From Florida, the Sunshine State, but we better drink fast. I hear it’s going to be Florida the Flood State pretty soon.”

Smiling at her. Making joke! Brushing his dark bangs aside, giving her all the moves that made her moist.

She shook her head and advanced on him. She looked murderous.

“I worked hard on those AAC files. Did you think I couldn’t figure out who developed it just because you tried to hide that from me?” She made her fingers dance on the invisible keyboard again, but Oleg noticed her eyes. On fire. “It was Professor Brian Ahearn, and he was murdered! So was his wife. They had two children, little girls even younger than Alexandra. And the prototype was stolen. Where is it? What did you do with it? And I want to see the rest of his files. You have everything, Oleg, because you took everything, or someone working for you did. I know you’ve got it. And don’t try to tell me that the plan to bomb Antarctica isn’t yours. It closes the circle, doesn’t it?”

“Circle? What circle?” He poured her some juice. “Maybe her, too?” He looked at the cancer kid. “She looks like she could use some sunshine.”

“Her? You mean Alexandra? Say her name. You haven’t used it once since I told you about the leukemia. Show some guts, Oleg. Don’t pull away because someone you love is sick.”

Someone I love? Oleg found that most presumptuous.

He watched her glance at the TV. The woolly mammoth looked like he’d been eating ashes for hours, but he was still talking. All politicians can talk. But his words hadn’t caught Galina’s eye, and they didn’t snag Oleg’s for long, either. What held their attention was a simple declaration crawling continually across the bottom of the screen: “He lies! He lies!”

Oh, that’s good. Definitely the work of Uno, who would get a bonus for his most creative thinking.

“I did not have the professor killed.” Oleg walked over to the couch, where Galina had settled next to Alexandra, who was sleeping. He tried to hand Galina the orange juice. She shook her head.

“I don’t want it. I want to know why the professor suddenly showed up dead. With his wife’s finger chopped off.”

“I think I know the answer,” Oleg replied, putting the juice on an end table. “Maybe others tried to steal his secrets after we got them. Maybe they were a day late and a dollar short, so he had nothing to give up but his life.”

“Hers, too.”

“Could be. Very sad.”

She looked like she believed him. He put that to a test by resting his hand on her knee, half covered by her summery skirt. Pale-yellow cotton. He loved her skirts, the delicious way they made secrets of her legs — and surprises of all her other wonders. With Alexandra asleep, they could scoot into the bedroom.

“No, I don’t believe you,” she blurted suddenly. “I don’t believe in coincidence. Someone else tried to get secrets of the AAC just after your people got them? No. And that finger business? That sounds like KGB. Are you working with them? You must be.”

He shook his head. “And it’s not KGB. It’s FSB now.”

“Same thing, and you know it.”

“I will talk to my people, find out the truth,” Oleg vowed. He thought he sounded convincing. “I will ask if they did anything to hurt the smart professor and his wife. I will take care of them if they were bad. How about you, Galina girl? Are you bad?”

“Stop that ‘bad’ business. I’m not here for that. How are you going to take care of them? You’re not even taking care of us.” She looked at her daughter. “She needs the best medical care in the world and you still haven’t paid me enough to get it for her. You owe me millions, and she needs help.”

“I have paid you something. Everybody’s getting paid everything in the end.”

“That’s what you said last time, after you came from your papa’s.”

And you looked so bad, he remembered. At least she had lipstick on now.

“So tell me, do I get paid before or after the killers? Afterward, I’m sure, because they would kill you otherwise.”

“No killers, I promise. And you are first on my list.”

“What list?” She sounded alarmed.

He knelt in front of her and began to rub her foot.

She jerked it away, showing her underpants for a second. Long enough. Flashing the green light. Go-go-go.

No, he realized a moment later. Just means she should go.

And take cancer kid with her.

But Galina wasn’t done yet: “I was back at PP’s last night because Dmitri was upset and your papa couldn’t get him to stop his tantrums.”

Oleg leaned closer to her, saying, “Yes?” But he said it in a new way, and she pressed her back into the couch as though she were scared of him. She’d never done that before. He’d never seen her fear. Only her anger, her accusations. Fear was better. Much better. “I told you I didn’t want you going over there.”

“They’re my friends.”

“Papa and Dmitri? Friends?” He leaned so close he could smell her lavender oil.

She stiffened, turning as still as Lenin in his tomb.

“Are you scared, Galina girl?” he asked softly, but not a whisper. A whisper wouldn’t have been right. That would have sent the wrong signal. But he spoke those words directly into her ear, where they couldn’t escape, where they would go straight to her soul. He repeated the question. Then he said, “You shouldn’t be scared. But have you heard from deadbeat dad?”

She shook her head.

“You will,” Oleg told her. “I’m making sure he pays you everything he owes you — and more!”

“What did you do to him?”

Oleg didn’t reply. He placed both hands on her knees and then pointed his index fingers at her just as she had pointed to him only minutes ago, before making the most outrageous claims. Tit for tat. Then he curled them back so he could flick her hem high onto her thighs.

“Not now,” she said.

But she was trying too hard to be firm. He heard the slightest quaver in her voice. He pushed his hands up under her skirt, watching the outline of his knuckles move under the yellowy fabric. Almost as soft as her skin. He started kneading her sweet soft flesh. Alexandra looked asleep. Her mother’s legs were pressed together, unforgiving.

“Please. My baby’s sick.”

“She’ll get better. I will take care of everything.”

He let her push his hands away. Why not? He’d made his point.

She was shaking when she scooped up her daughter and hurried to the elevator. But she couldn’t leave unless he unlocked the door.

Oleg strolled over, and from behind saw her bare shoulder. Alexandra’s weight was pulling down on her mother’s shirt. He wet his lips and kissed her warm skin, then her neck. He felt her shudder. Didn’t mind. That was the nature of their relationship now: fear. He would make sure the insurance company spoke to her soon. He would also make sure the police had her identify the body. Even the rendering of deadbeat dad’s face had been done with great care. Half of it remained just as it was when they made the cancer kid. It would be easy for her to say, “Yes, that’s him.”

Oleg inserted a red key and turned it, hailing the elevator. They listened to the soft hum as it rose, never saying a word. But he saw bumps on her arms, and said nothing to break the stark symphony of their silence.

He felt like a conductor again, waving his baton, leading the darkest orchestra of all.

The elevator doors opened. She stepped inside and turned around. He reached in and pushed the button for the garage. Then he ran his hand over Alexandra’s brow. Galina stepped away.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said to her.

She was staring at where he’d just touched her child.

CHAPTER 9

Lana awoke as if she’d been catapulted from sleep in her small dormitory room at Fort Meade. The middle of the night, to judge by the darkness beyond the blinds — and the cosmic clock in her core. She wasn’t far off: 3:05, according to a digital readout on the nightstand next to her bed.

She sat up and swung her legs over the side. Couldn’t hear a sound, a silence so complete it felt eerie. She wondered if Emma was sleeping well at Tanesa’s. She also wondered if her daughter would ever forgive her for all the times she’d had to leave her in the hands of nannies and babysitters. But Lana took comfort in knowing that the latest arrangement needed no apology, for Tanesa had proved the best caregiver of all.

It also occurred to her right then that although she had Tanesa’s address in Anacostia, she had never, in fact, visited her home. How safe is it there? Am I gambling with Emma’s safety?

When Emma was little, Lana wouldn’t have even considered a childcare provider without carefully inspecting the premises. And now she’d sent her girl off to one of the toughest neighborhoods in the entire District?

Hold on, she told herself. It was safe enough to raise a great kid like Tanesa. And safe enough for the wonderful family that raised that courageous young woman.

Safe enough, she decided at once, for Emma, who had lived a life of relative privilege. Maybe it was time she saw how the other half lived.

Half? Try the other 99 percent.

Lana figured Tanesa’s home was far safer and saner than letting her daughter spend much time with Doper Don, who was about to be released on parole after serving four years of his six-year sentence. Out early for “good behavior.” Lord knows, she’d seen little of that when she’d been with him. And now he was saying that he wanted the company of his “long lost” daughter as much as possible.

He’d be getting out just in time for a catastrophe, Lana realized.

Maybe it’ll get him.

She forced herself to take a breath. Then, exerting more effort, she forced herself to say, “You don’t mean that,” as she headed to the bathroom to freshen up.

Minutes later, she left her room for the walk to her NSA office.

A marine greeted her as she exited the dormitory, as though he’d been waiting all night for the opportunity. Then he stepped to her side, clearly ordered to escort her on the short walk.

“Quiet tonight?” she asked him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Replies as crisp as the creases in his uniform.

She wouldn’t pester him anymore. They were almost at the entrance. She spotted a scattering of office lights up above, including Holmes’s. When she looked back down, her escort was turning her over to fellow marines. Two of them accompanied her up the elevator.

Lana stopped to look in on the deputy director. The pair of marines slipped away behind her. Odd to find Holmes without his loyal gatekeeper, Donna Warnes, who apparently got to sleep through the night.

“You too?” Holmes asked, when she poked her head in the door.

“I got three hours. I’m good to go,” she replied. “How are our allies in NATO reacting?”

“There’s some anger directed toward the President.”

“Why?” He’d been working overtime to try to solve the crisis. She wasn’t his biggest fan, but she would never begrudge his genuine efforts.

“There’s a growing body of opinion overseas that we wouldn’t be in this mess if the U.S. hadn’t antagonized most of the world.”

“That’s the very definition of misplaced anger. Blaming a victim.”

“Come in. Close the door and grab a seat.” Holmes turned his screen aside, but remained at his desk.

She settled into a chair across from him. His eyes, always dark and clear, looked gray, as if they’d lost their luster.

“Imagine you live at 10 Downing Street and your city is about to be flooded, quite possibly right out of existence, because the U.S. and Russia, after the briefest détente imaginable, at least from a historical perspective, are back at each other’s throats. How would you feel?”

Holmes didn’t wait for a reply. “Or you’re living in Rotterdam or The Hague, and you know for certain your country might cease to exist within days. That no matter what you and your fellow citizens do, you can’t even begin to evacuate all your children, the elderly, all the infirm, even the healthiest young adults of your nation.”

The deputy director fixed those graying eyes back on her. “We’re not blameless, Lana. It may surprise you to hear that coming from me, but just look at how the rest of the world views our Congress. Well, tonight I was ready to drown them. Those buffoons displayed the most deplorable behavior I have ever seen in the White House. And I’ve been around a long time, so that’s saying a lot.”

“I take it you mean during the meeting with the President?” He’d been scheduled to powwow with the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, along with lesser-ranking members of both bodies.

“Yes, the wrecking crew. First, you have to understand that the President had just managed to get Canada, Norway, and Denmark to withdraw from the Arctic, along with us, of course.

“He was sticking his neck out politically, knowing the Russians would continue to refuse to withdraw, but he also knew that if the other Arctic nations pulled back, and only Russia remained, it would put their leaders in a very peculiar position if we’re correct that the terrorists are Russian, or ‘patriotic hackers’ working for them. It would make it appear that they do, in fact, know something the rest of us don’t. Well, whatever doubt I had about Russian culpability was all but crushed when a few minutes before the meeting, the Kremlin announced that they would never give in to the demands of terrorists, and that no nation with any courage or self-respect should ever take such a cowardly step.”

“Their posturing is certainly taking a U-turn back to the bad old days,” Lana said.

Holmes nodded. “It sure is, but I knew right then that the real audience for the Russians was the House and Senate leadership. As soon as the President explained the agreement he’d reached with the other three Arctic nations, the wrecking crew jumped up and started bellowing ‘coward’ right on cue. The speaker actually called him a ‘quisling.’ I’m sure he had to pull out his thesaurus for that one. Our dimmest bulbs played right into the hands of our greatest threat. The President’s going to cave. And you know why? Because they’re threatening to start impeachment proceedings if he pulls our two measly icebreakers out of the north.”

“That’s outrageous,” Lana said. But not unexpected. The Senate and House leaders were a wholesale embarrassment. Not that the denizens of Capitol Hill cared what people outside their states or gerrymandered districts thought.

“I may be seventy-eight years old,” Holmes went on, “but I had all I could do not to punch out those demagogues. At the very least, if we’d pulled back with the others, the Russians would have looked like the most belligerent of the Arctic nations, and that could have taken some of the international heat off us. Now we’re going to be seen as having backed out of an agreement with our close allies that could have thwarted a nuclear attack. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

“Were the House and Senate leaders briefed about where our investigation is pointing?”

“Absolutely.” Holmes nodded heartily. “By me. They knew. But they don’t care as long as they can make the next news cycle and drive down the President’s numbers a little bit more. I’m sure the morning news shows are going to be full of leaks, so in a few hours the echo chamber will also be calling him a coward.”

How do you rule the unruly? she asked herself.

“I’ve had some ideas about where to move with this,” she said. “I should get on them.”

“Anything you’d like to share right now?”

“Just something Jensen and I have been working on. You’ll be the first to know. You always are. Try to get some sleep, sir.” She glanced at his couch, on which he had spent many a night.

“After that tirade, I believe I’d better.”

Lana settled at her computer and brought up the Ahearn murders. She reviewed all the forensic evidence, physical as well as the little they’d gleaned from Ahearn’s computer. Her effort yielded nothing new, which didn’t surprise her. But now it was time to apply the new data analysis techniques that she and Jensen had been working on and take another look at the metadata.

Metadata was data about data itself. It provided information about the kind of communication taking place — different from traditional intelligence gathering, which focused on the content of the information. Metadata would note that telephone calls had been made, but not what was actually said. But drill deeper into the metadata and you could well find patterns of phone calls that might prove damning. Patterns could also be found with email addresses, their times of communication, locations of users, along with ample technical detail about the nature of the data being distributed.

For this case, she and Jensen had been developing sophisticated link analysis tools for both structured and unstructured data, which could help establish larger patterns of communications. These rarefied data analysis techniques might also let them track individual devices, making it possible in some cases to determine the identities of users who were doing all they could to hide who they were.

She started by putting the new tools to work mapping out the geographical areas with the most data flows related to the Ahearn murders. More of a simple test of their model because that task was relatively easy and highly predictable. The greatest concentration centered on Massachusetts, Boston in particular, and for obvious reasons: outside of intelligence circles, no one had reason to connect Professor Ahearn and his wife to the threats against the WAIS.

Next, she applied their link analysis across all of North America. Beyond a two-hundred-mile radius of the crime scene, the interest in the Ahearn murders diminished notably. Where it did exist, it was confined mostly to academic institutions. The California Institute of Technology, for example, had a fair amount of metadata that appeared related to Ahearn. So did other institutions of that nature.

That also proved true of scientific journals based in major urban areas.

Comfortable that the link analysis was passing its initial challenges, Lana extended it across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Not surprisingly, China and Japan led the way, but Beijing’s metadata flows far outstripped Tokyo’s. In fact, Lana would have characterized China as having a consuming interest. It made her wonder what the Chinese, archrivals of Russia, knew or suspected. And it killed her to think the Chinese might already know more than the U.S. did.

Tokyo’s lesser level of interest prevailed throughout Europe where metadata rose and fell largely along academic lines, with departments of physics, computer science, and, to a slightly lesser degree, math, displaying the most activity.

She saved Russia and its former republics for last. The latter yielded little, with the exception of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a hotbed of pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists. She would keep it in mind as she moved on to her major interest, Moscow.

Russia’s capital was a veritable beehive with metadata levels linked to the Ahearn murders topping Beijing’s. More notable to Lana was the recent intense interest, as in the last twelve hours.

She forced herself to remain steady, though, because dry wells with metadata were as common as the grimier efforts in the world’s oil fields. But you still have to drill, she told herself.

Especially with billions of lives potentially on the line.

She began with Russia’s energy sector, finding metadata way beyond the norm between Moscow and almost all of Russia’s nuclear generating stations. Which made no immediate sense with most of the plants in no danger of flooding from an attack on WAIS. But it would make sense if a comment from Clarence Besserman after last night’s meeting were about to bear fruit.

With his shirt fully untucked by that point, and even his bow tie drooping, Besserman had said that if he were looking for connections between the Ahearn murders and the threats to the WAIS — the issue Lana had brought up only minutes before — he would keep in mind that proponents of AAC advocated building those facilities near plants producing renewable energy. The reason was simple: until the AAC process was refined further, it would use a lot of energy to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“See, there’s no point,” he’d added, “in pursuing AAC with dirty fuel. You’d end up pumping as much, if not more, CO2 into the atmosphere than you’d take out.”

Fingers flying, Lana now checked Russian hydropower, centered in Siberia and the eastern end of the country. Quantitative analysis of that metadata demonstrated even stronger linkage between Russia’s foremost renewable energy sector and the Ahearn murders. Lana didn’t need to make a similar check of wind and solar production in Russia because, for all intents and purposes, they didn’t exist, providing less than 1 percent of the nation’s energy needs. But hydro? A fat 16 percent.

Normally, she would have started diving into the metadata, unveiling the full content, but these were not normal times. She’d found connections, but not enough, not yet.

Pressing on, her link analysis also showed massive metadata flows from the country’s largest hydroelectric plants and the Russian secret police, FSB, in Lubyanka Square, which had its own distinct flows to and from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

By comparison, she found only marginal levels of activity from, or directed to, the country’s scores of fossil-fuel-fired plants. The significant metadata load emanated from those non-CO2-producing facilities, which made sense, given the reality of AAC energy consumption.

Pushing herself even further, she worked the link analysis once again and watched a tangle of metadata take a neat and familiar shape right before her eyes.

Would you look at that? A nearly perfect equilateral triangle showed scores of unmistakable links between Russia’s renewable energy sector, its secret police, and the Ahearn murders.

With the ice sheet added, the triangle morphed — even as she watched — into the four points of a square.

Focusing even more closely on Moscow, she saw a fierce flurry of activity based, of all places, in an apartment building in the city’s downtown.

What the hell is going on in there?

She forced aside any considerations of that for now because what struck her most pointedly in the last few seconds was that the FSB was positively data-drunk with the WAIS.

Excavating deeper, she found no previous history of such metadata flows between those four points of interest.

Nice work, Jeff. She would call Jensen later to let him know their efforts appeared to be panning out.

But that would be the beginning and end of the good news. The metadata square made it appear that Russians were coordinating an effort that would have them bomb the WAIS, raise sea levels, take control of Arctic gas and oil reserves, and control the world’s thermostat with AAC, which would be fueled by their ample reserves of hydro- and nuclear power.

Those reserves would be worth countless trillions of dollars once the means of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere was in place. And with so many other oil-producing nations reeling from the shock of a sudden rise in sea levels, most of the planet would be forced, by necessity, to become Russia’s customers simply to survive.

But what galled Lana almost as much as that scheme was the ongoing attempt by the perpetrators to create plausible deniability. Maybe that was the reason for all metadata arising from a Moscow apartment building.

She checked her watch. Three hours had flown by. But three very productive hours. She wanted to look into what the devil was going on with that apartment building but drilling deeper there would have to wait. Her head felt like it was about to explode. She needed to get away from her computer. Not only to clear her thoughts but to see her daughter. But not without a quick text to Jensen letting him know their work had paid off, and another one to Holmes saying they needed to talk as soon as he was vertical.

It was still early enough to beat rush-hour traffic, the millions who would be rising and driving, oblivious to the demons that were about to haunt their lives.

She found Tanesa’s house quickly, a tidy single-story home across the Potomac. Tanesa’s mother, Esme, met Lana at the door. She welcomed her like an old friend. They’d met ever so briefly at last night’s choir performance at the National Cathedral. Lana apologized for arriving at such an early hour.

“You kidding? I’m on my second cup of coffee. You want some?”

“I’d love to but I am buried by work.”

“I’ll go get your girl.”

Esme led Lana into the living room, then disappeared down a short hallway. Minutes later she emerged with Emma in tow.

Lana’s daughter rushed up and hugged her tightly.

What a difference a year makes, Lana thought, hugging her back. Ninth grade had been a misery for Emma, and for her, too.

“Please thank Tanesa for me,” Lana said to Esme. “And thank you, too, for having Emma.”

“It was a pleasure, I assure you.”

On the way home, Emma said, “It’s bad this time, isn’t it, Mom?”

“We’ll see.” Lana answered as vaguely as she could in good conscience, squeezing Emma’s hand. Her daughter looked well rested. She was glad to see that, but certainly not about what her findings at Fort Meade portended.

As she drove toward Bethesda, her thoughts were drawn less to the metadata square she’d uncovered and more to that Moscow apartment building.

A lone wolf. A common intelligence term for a terrorist operating with strict independence. The words came to her as if on their own.

But in the heart of Moscow? Surrounded by all that interest in every aspect of this case?

That could not be a coincidence. But she had to allow that it was remotely possible. What she had not found was evidence indicating Russia’s traditional use of “patriotic hackers.” Indeed, the FSB appeared to not only be involved, but a vital link. And that strongly suggested official jurisdiction, even as the Russians denied every charge.

Which only made the possible lone wolf in that apartment more mystifying.

“Mom, you missed it!” Emma said.

“Missed what?” Lana thought of the Russians: what had she missed?

“Our turnoff.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Lana had to get her mind back on the road. And then she had to get it back on that apartment building in Moscow as fast as possible.

What’s going on in there? she asked herself again.

It was time to drill into the metadata. Time to see the content.

CHAPTER 10

Galina thought she’d collapse from exhaustion by the time she carried Alexandra up the steps to their second-floor walkup. She wished she could have spared the six-year-old from being carted around all day, but she couldn’t leave her with anyone. Alexandra was so anxious that she could not bear to be separated from her mother, even for a short time. Six, seven times a day, she asked, “Mommy, am I going to die?”

“No, you’re not going to die. I promise. Mommy would never let that happen to you.” Words spoken from the heart, yet so painfully empty of real meaning.

Now Alexandra asked again, clutching her bunny blanket close to her neck on the couch where Galina had just laid her down.

“No, I promise,” Galina said, then checked her messages and heard the oncologist’s receptionist confirming Alexandra for tomorrow morning. “Payment in full is expected before the appointment,” the woman added at the end.

Why would she say that?

It was as though she knew Galina didn’t have her money yet.

The pediatric oncologist was in such demand — with cancer rates sky-high in Russia — that he had his choice of patients, so he chose to take the ones wealthy enough to “augment” his income. That was how his assistant had put it, as though a fancy word would somehow make the payment less of a sleazy bribe.

Galina was prepared to pay under the table, happy to pay for the best medical care — and had certainly earned more than enough money to handle the extra bills that were never expressly invoiced — but Oleg had dribbled out only enough rubles for living expenses. He was controlling her — as he always had. And it infuriated her. He never would have dared to try it with the rest of his “team,” those killers who worked for him in America, or the one who had basically hacked his way aboard the U.S.S. Delphin.

Galina had made headway tracking down the submarine hacker. Not who he was exactly, but his trail in cyberspace. She was now certain that he acted out of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. She’d seen video of the dead American sailors, sickened by knowing that she was an unwitting player in a larger plot that linked her to the monster who’d killed them. What also weighed on her conscience was that she now understood without question that turning over the information about AAC to Oleg had led to two gruesome murders in the States.

Oleg had made the whole project sound like a great environmental dream — hack the AAC and save the planet. Save the children. Save all the animals.

But instead it was just kill, kill, kill.

When she did identify the sub hacker — and she thought she could — she knew precisely whom she would pass it on to. She’d have her choices because there would be plenty of buyers for that information. Two could play the game of betrayal, and she’d pit her skills against Oleg’s.

And your life, she realized at once. And Alexandra’s.

She sat back, recognizing the gravity of that step, and all the chess pieces that would have to be moved — if she were to forge ahead.

Think about it. Think hard.

Alexandra looked like she was settling down. Time to get back on the tail of the sub hacker. But first she ran to the bathroom and dampened a washcloth. Then she hurried back to Alexandra and placed it on the girl’s brow, rubbing gently. Not to cool her off because of a fever or one of her pounding headaches, but to wipe away any trace of Oleg’s touch. Galina’s skin had almost crawled off her body when he reached into the elevator and rubbed her daughter’s precious forehead. It was like he was cursing her.

Condemning her.

Fears that made her realize you didn’t need to believe in the devil to understand evil.

“There,” she whispered to Alexandra, who looked ready to rest. “Get to sleep, little love of my life.”

Words that pierced her own heart. She used to call Oleg the “big love of her life” to distinguish between her man and child, the way her heart had gone out so fully to both. She needn’t make that distinction anymore.

Twilight was peeking around the blinds as she sat on the couch next to Alexandra, still moving the cloth gently against her daughter’s forehead. She kept the blinds drawn all the time now, worrying constantly about surveillance, the FSB breaking in and sending her to Siberia, then dumping Alexandra in a medical ward with the children of other parents who couldn’t afford to “augment” their doctors’ incomes.

Alexandra reached up, stilling her hand. “Is there something wrong, Mommy? Do I have a black spot from him?”

“No, don’t be silly,” Galina said as gaily as she could, but she knew she sounded grim as a grindstone. She laid the face cloth on her lap and kissed Alexandra’s cheek. “Sleep, the big-big love of my life.”

She started toward her home office as a series of knocks pounded the door, startling her and Alexandra, too, who now sat up, holding the bunny blanket so tightly her knuckles were white.

Galina hurried to the door and stared through the peephole. “Who is it?” she demanded, knowing the dire answer even as she spoke.

“Police. Open up.”

Oh, God, what’s he doing to us? Galina had no doubt that Oleg was behind the two policemen at the door, even if he wasn’t in the hall.

She drew open the locks. A hulking man stared at her. He bore a neck tattoo of crossed axes that signified veterans who had been part of a secret military unit notorious for its atrocities in Chechnya. The other cop could have been a clerk in a supermarket. Tattoo spoke up: “You must come with us.”

“Why? What have I done?”

“What have you done?” He leaned down. She barely came to his chest. “Did you kill him?”

“Kill who?” What is he talking about? “I’ve never killed anyone.” As she said it, her deep-seated guilt about the Ahearns made her feel like a liar. She worried that she sounded like one, too.

He seized her arm. “You will identify a body first, and then we will see if you killed him.”

“Wait. I can’t. My daughter. She’s sick.”

The other policeman patted his burly colleague on the back, then looked at Galina. “You may bring your girl.”

That only panicked Galina more. Adrenaline flooded through her. She wanted to run away with Alexandra — as far as she could.

The businesslike policeman smiled and shook his head. Almost kindly. But Galina knew better.

“She has leukemia,” Galina said softly. “Can we do this tomorrow when I can get someone to stay with her?”

Tattoo shook his head and forced a smile, as if mimicking his partner. “We can get a special nurse to take care of her.”

“You don’t want a special nurse,” the other policeman said. “You want to bring her.”

Alexandra began to cry when Galina, more weary than ever from the burdens of her never-ending day, gathered her daughter into her arms once more. Galina would have wept, too, if she hadn’t been more worried about the evidence on the computers in her apartment that could incriminate her in even more grievous crimes than the murder of some man.

Who? Oleg?

No, Oleg would never be the murdered. Oleg was the murderer.

Awkwardly, she locked up with Alexandra’s arms around her neck, face nestled against her chest. For all the good the locks would do.

If they want in, they’ll get in.

The two officers put her in the backseat of a black SUV with metal mesh separating her and Alexandra from the two of them.

Alexandra was weepy, so Galina kept telling her that everything would be fine. But Galina didn’t believe a word of the comforts she tried so hard to give, and doubted her daughter did, either.

Tattoo looked back at her in the rearview mirror. “Why are you so sure everything is going to be all right?” He turned to stare at Alexandra. “She’s not too young to know that life can be cruel.”

No doubt he was an expert in that regard. Galina didn’t reply.

Night was falling in full. Not a great time to go to the Moscow morgue, but that was where the two cops brought them, pulling up in front.

“Door to dead service,” Tattoo said.

“Put your arms around Mommy’s neck,” Galina told Alexandra. “Can you do that?”

Her child, still weeping quietly, complied.

Tattoo opened her door and Galina slipped out of the car. The hem of her yellow skirt rose as she slid off the seat. The nice cop, who had come around to the curb, looked away. Tattoo stared so hard she thought he’d demand a replay.

They really are good cop, bad cop.

She followed them into the building, then walked down a marbled flight of stairs to the morgue proper. Galina thought of the thousands — no, tens of thousands — who had taken those same steps. But horrible as their journeys had been, they were the lucky ones. So many millions had disappeared into mass graves. Nobody had ever found them. Even the existence of their bodies — their locations and identities — were lost to history and the long blank stare of Stalin and his henchmen.

So she felt a dread that had been known to scores of others as a large room spread out before her downstairs, an open space bordered by offices on both sides. The reek of chemicals soured her every breath.

She had no inkling as to why they wanted her there, except that it had to be connected to Oleg. Everything in her world was now connected to him.

But a murder in Moscow?

Would they have a body waiting for her on a gurney, or in one of those drawers they pull out? Like in the movies where you’re supposed to look at it and say, “That’s him.”

After placing Alexandra on a couch in the medical examiner’s office, the two policemen led her out under bright fluorescent lights to a body bag laid out on a table. Tattoo unzipped it from the top of the dead man’s head to his feet in a single flourish, as if he were a magician unveiling the final stage of an illusion.

But this was terribly real. Gritty beyond all measure, no matter how much Tattoo tried to make a performance out of it. The worst, though, was the reason she couldn’t identify the body: The dead man’s head was turned to the side — and missing all of its features. All she could see was bone and brain expressed through a gaped and cracked cranium, and the mashed inside of his torso — chest and stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, squashed and mangled and scarcely recognizable. His legs had been flattened by a force so powerful that even the femur was less than a quarter inch thick.

“Somebody pushed him into a garbage truck,” the nice policeman said. “We have a witness. I’m sorry, but you must look.” He reached past Tattoo to turn the head aside. “This is a better angle.”

And there was half of Viktor Vascov’s face: one nostril, one eye, a mouth cleaved neatly — almost surgically — down the middle. Alexandra’s father.

She’d had so few expectations of him, but never had she thought she’d end up down there identifying his crushed body on a gurney.

“Yes, I know him,” Galina said, turning away as she spoke, her voice shaky.

“Who?” Tattoo demanded. “Who is this?”

She gave him the name.

“You are certain.” Tattoo held up his hands flashing two peace signs. “V for Viktor,” he waved his left hand, “V for Vascov,” then his right.

She was still looking away, missing the show.

“Yes, Viktor Vascov. I know him.” She looked at the open door of the medical examiner’s office, making sure Alexandra was still on the couch. She didn’t want her to come out and see this nightmare face that belonged to her father. “He is my daughter’s father. Please, can we go? The smell.”

“Not so good,” Tattoo agreed, sniffing and smiling.

He zipped up Viktor’s body with another dramatic sweep of his hand.

Galina thought she would be sick. She stumbled away. Good Cop wrapped his arm around her back for support, then guided her toward the stairs.

“Take her to my office,” Tattoo ordered from behind them.

“Alexandra,” she said.

“She’ll be okay,” said Tattoo.

Galina pushed past him and lifted her daughter off the medical examiner’s couch. Each arm felt heavy as a ship’s anchor as she carried her up the stairs. Good Cop led her into an office with a large portrait of Stalin on the wall. He was making a brilliant comeback, even in death.

“Sit,” Tattoo said, apparently oblivious to the fact that she had already settled on a chair with Alexandra on her lap.

Tattoo swung his legs over his chair, macho style, and faced her, nodding to his left for Good Cop to sit.

“How did you kill this Viktor Vascov? You must tell me now,” Tattoo said, a wry smile on his face. “You are so small, and he’s so much bigger. You must be very good at it.” He scratched his neck, right by the crossed axes.

“What?” she shouted, almost jumping out of her chair with Alexandra, whom she startled enough to look around, panic once more straining the girl’s face. “It’s okay,” Galina whispered to her.

“What did you say?” Tattoo shouted. “There are no secrets in here. You must learn that quickly or it won’t go well for you.”

“I told her ‘It’s okay.’ That’s all. Because I didn’t do what you say.” She chose her words carefully, trying to spare Alexandra a reference to her father. “I would never do that. What does your witness say? I’ve been around people all day. I couldn’t have done this.”

“Last night you could have,” Tattoo retorted. “That’s when it happened. Our witness says a woman with dark hair, short, pushed him in.”

“How? How could I push someone so big into a garbage truck? That’s crazy.”

“Not crazy,” Tattoo said. “Because we are also following the money. Always follow the money,” he repeated, as if enunciating a principle of investigation that had never been uttered before, much less one that had become a cop-honored cliché. “It wasn’t like that in his time,” Tattoo added with a respectful nod at Stalin.

Galina refrained from saying the reason Russian police hadn’t needed to “follow the money” back then was that the Soviet state had been so impoverished there was no money to follow, though privileged Party members were often compensated richly in other ways. Often unspeakably so, even to this day.

“But now we have to follow the money,” Tattoo repeated. “So let’s do that. You just took out a life insurance policy on Viktor Vascov.”

“What?”

“Don’t play the innocent with me.” He opened a file and peered at it. “Yesterday. What a coincidence. And within hours, Vascov is dead and you’re supposed to get fifty million rubles. But my computer here found something else, a publicly registered document. It is Viktor Vascov’s will. Such a careful man, making sure his estate was delivered directly into the hands of his daughter’s mother. Isn’t that something? The executor is someone named Oleg Dernov. He controls when you get the money to make sure you are ‘responsible’ with it. That is the very word Vascov used, ‘responsible.’ So tell me,” Tattoo closed the file and leaned over the desk, “who is Oleg Dernov?”

As if you don’t know. As if this whole thing isn’t a show.

Good Cop eyed Tattoo: “Oleg Dernov is a son of—”

“A son of a what?” Tattoo asked.

“Of an oligarch. Petroleum and mining.”

“I know what they are.” Tattoo smiled, his every move as choreographed as a Kremlin dinner. “They’re all sons-of-bitches. But that looks like your problem,” he said to Galina. “My problem is your confession. We have a witness. We have followed the money. Everything leads to you. Would you like to make everything easy and confess?”

Only to stupidity, Galina thought. She wanted to kick herself for believing — if only for a moment — that Oleg would ever have done anything for anyone other than himself.

“Or do you think this Oleg Dernov killed your Viktor Vascov?” Tattoo asked, all his humor gone, his eyes as steely as the bars of a cage.

Good Cop shook his head almost imperceptibly, but Galina caught his eye and his meaning. Not that she needed the hint. She was sure Oleg had set this up, and it all came down to whether she would try to implicate him. If she did, she was dead. She was, in every sense, betting her life on her next few words:

“I can’t imagine Oleg Dernov doing anything like this.”

Tattoo’s grimace softened. “Maybe we need to talk to our witness again.” He waved her away. “Go. Take your sick kid and go home. You’re a rich girl now. Or would you like me to give you a ride?” He winked at her. “I’m a very good driver.”

She already had her phone out, dialing a cab. And Tattoo was already laughing again, closing a file as treacherous as his offer.

Oleg’s ring tone went off — John Lennon’s “Instant Karma.” He had just downloaded it. With oceans sure to rise around America, it sounded so good: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you…”

Lennon was the best Beatle. Ringo’s an idiot.

But better to be lucky than smart, Oleg reminded himself in the next breath.

Reluctantly, he forced himself to mute the webcast of the Midget World Windsurfing Championships in Manila, men’s competition. Dwarves in purple thongs were shredding tiny waves on tiny boards with tiny sails, using the surf to launch miniloops that took them twelve, thirteen feet in the air. Surreal. And these tykes were tough. Looked like little balls of muscles.

But the call had to be taken — from the medical examiner’s office.

“She identified the body?” Oleg asked.

“Yes,” the cop told him.

“And how did that go?”

“It set the mood.”

“And when she heard about the life insurance and me?”

“She did not look so happy when your name came up.”

Oleg cut the line.

Not happy? He’d raised fifty million rubles for her, made himself the executor so she wouldn’t make foolish female money mistakes, like PP’s many wives had done. And she’s not happy? Not grateful?

Maybe he wouldn’t give her any money now. But he knew he could never deny Galina, that his generosity would win out, after all. He would give her an advance on the life insurance. Like a payday loan, like they have in America for all the unfortunates. He would have to charge interest and special fees, of course, but if he gave her a little cash now under those conditions, he could afford to be generous to others, too, and use most of the money to pay off the operatives in the U.S. — before their impatience turned into something he’d rather not consider. Besides, they were on standby to pay special attention to the children of certain sailors, should their fathers fail to cooperate fully. After satisfying the operatives, he could then place an equal amount in a Channel Islands account for Uno.

His own benefactors were holding back until they saw a Trident II hit the WAIS. Then the first $2 billion would be released to him. A trifle, considering the long-term profits they would make, but enough for him to launch the construction of the AAC plants, which would be Oleg’s real money mill.

He returned his attention back to the Midget World Windsurfing Championships where Mr. Universe, a muscled tiger of a man, was crowning the men’s and women’s winners. Both were sponsored by Neil Pryde, sailmaker to champions of all sizes, and both were built like fire hydrants with excellent glutes—like bowling balls—flossed so neatly by their matching thongs.

Please, drop trophy. Pick it up.

Oleg liked midgets. Maybe that was why he’d been so attracted to Galina. Not truly a midget, but pretty damn short.

He loved midget tossing even better than midget bowling. He once threw a midget more than a hundred feet. Won a big bet when, as he’d expected, a boaster in the hotel bar said nobody could throw a midget that far. Many thousands were bet against Oleg.

At gunpoint, Oleg marched the midget over to the elevator, and when they got up on the roof, he threw him off. Everybody paid up.

When you’re right, you’re right.

Maybe next year he would sponsor the championships right there in Russia. Extend a big Russian welcome to the little people of the world.

But those dreams would have to wait. He texted Uno: “So r u ready?”

“For prime time.”

“EST, U.S.” Better be, Oleg thought.

“Yes.”

“Gives u 10 hrs.”

“Gives me all I need.”

Uno would have to get a bonus, even if it cut into Galina’s share.

Galina fed Alexandra a bowl of her favorite cereal and tucked her into bed. Tomorrow, they would go to the oncologist, and Galina would beg.

For now, she returned to her keyboard. She logged on and typed in an elaborate code, planning to find the submarine hacker. After what she’d seen at the morgue, she’d made her decision. She couldn’t trust Oleg not to kill her. Viktor, dead. For Oleg, that was more than just money. That was a message.

She sat back and watched the screen open to something she never expected and surely had not programmed:

WHO ARE YOU? in big block letters.

Galina froze, wondering who had left the message. But what shook her up the most was the timing: she had been asking herself the same question over and over the past few days.

Who am I? What have I turned into?

CHAPTER 11

Emma had been quiet on the drive from Tanesa’s. Lana had fought morning traffic, hoping she’d eke out enough time for her daughter to wash up, change, and head off to school. Or even talk, if she needed to. Emma’s life had been a jumble of late with her mother gone so much. Lana also needed all the time she could squirrel away to brief Holmes about her findings, and certainly wasn’t comfortable committing that information to the “hackisphere,” as she’d started to think of it.

But one of the knotty challenges of raising a teen was they often didn’t appear to want your attention — and were perfectly content to study their smartphones as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls — until a light went off in their heads, instead of on their screens.

This would be one of those times.

After they arrived home, Lana toasted Emma frozen waffles, her favorite breakfast, and remembered that it was the same meal she’d fed her on the day the grid suddenly went down. Not so much coincidence as consistency, because left to her own devices Emma would have eaten frozen waffles with oodles of butter and warm syrup every day of her life. Nevertheless, she got to finish her meal this morning without the lights going dark. Success of sorts. And a smile. A teen fed and fueled and ready for the day with a load of simple carbohydrates to wreak havoc with her blood sugar levels.

“Dad gets out of the pen tomorrow,” Emma said without preamble.

The pen? How much has she been talking to him? Argot already?

“Yes, I heard,” Lana replied as neutrally as possible, which is to say that her jaw was so tight she could have ground her molars flat. Of course, Lana knew Doper Don was getting out of the… pen… tomorrow. As a matter of fact, she’d been waiting to see whether — more likely, when—the subject would rear its ugly head with Emma.

“Where’d you hear?” the girl asked.

“His parole officer.”

“So do you know where he’s going to live?” Emma asked.

“I presume somewhere close to a parole office.” So he may be remanded to the… pen… as soon as possible.

“I do. It’s a beach house near Annapolis. He’s just rented it. He said he can’t wait to walk along the shore and get his feet wet again.”

Chesapeake Bay? Lana figured he was likely to get the whole of himself wet, given what she feared was on the horizon. Besides, a single man in a beach house? Donny boy wanted to get more than his feet wet. But Lana reined herself in. This was, after all, her daughter, so she posed a question instead:

“Does he follow the news at all, Em? There’s a horrible cyberterrorist threat to the oceans. And the Union of Concerned Scientists says that the Annapolis area is already at huge risk from rising seas. After the last big hurricane up there, it cost the government $120 million to fix things up. And that was before those cybernuts said they were going to blow up the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

Emma offered a knowing shake of her head. “Dad says that Antarctica stuff is just a big conspiracy of bankers and real estate agents trying to drive up the price of homes that aren’t on the shore because there’s actually a whole bunch more houses behind them.”

“Do you believe that?” Please say you don’t.

“You’ve got to admit, it could be true.”

Lana replied more calmly than she felt: “That’s the nature of conspiracy theories. If they don’t sound like they could possibly be true, nobody would believe them. Those are the same terrorists killing those sailors on the submarine.”

“Dad says that’s like the moon landing, easy to fake.”

“What?” Lana was losing it. She looked at the clock. Emma was going to be late. “Let’s save this for another time.”

“You could be a little more open-minded, Mom, like you’re always telling me to be. Anyway, he’d like me to spend the weekend there. Kind of a ‘Welcome home, Dad’ thing.”

“A welcome home thing? You’re not going anywhere near Chesapeake Bay right now.”

“So do you know something about that thing on the news?”

“You mean the conspiracy?” Lana raised her eyebrows.

“Well, I’m not saying you’re part of the conspiracy. Just tell me, is that what you’ve been working on?”

“You know I can’t discuss my work ever.”

“Look, Mom, if I can’t go to Dad’s new beach house, how about if he comes here for the weekend? He’s getting out after only four years for good behavior. He should be with his family.”

“He could have been with his family fourteen years ago, Emma. But he decided to be a pot pirate instead. And to do that he emptied out all our savings so he could fill a forty-four-foot sailboat with pot and punch his ticket to prison. We never heard from him again until last week. I think he should stay the hell out of our lives.”

“I don’t. He’s my father and I want to see him, and I can’t go stay at his place because you’re worried about a little bit of water.” With that, Emma stormed toward the front door.

“Stop, Em. I’m sorry. I’ll give you a ride. He can come here,” she added with such a false note of accommodation that her daughter rightfully rolled her eyes.

“Mom, you’ve been a big success. He’s not. Show a little compassion.”

That phrase stuck firmly in Lana’s craw: more of her own words coming back boomerang style.

“You’re running late, aren’t you? First period’s gym, right?”

“I hate it.”

“I’ll give you a note. Let me shower quickly and change.”

“Maybe you’ll actually like him.”

It wasn’t Emma’s words but the sudden longing in her voice and eyes that stunned Lana. “Meaning?”

Emma shrugged. “Even you admitted he’s good-looking.”

“Not that good-looking, and he’ll never be for me, so put that impossibility right out of your mind. He’ll sleep in the basement on the pullout bed.” And I’ll bring in a surveillance team so I can monitor his every breath.

“Not even the guest room?”

Lana shook her head.

“I thought you might say that. If you’re going to make the guest room off limits for my guest, then I’ll sleep down there and he can have my room. It is my room. Why can’t you show him a little respect?”

I’d rather show him the door — as soon as possible — so I don’t want him getting comfortable.

But Lana stifled those words as she had so many others of late, figuring it was good practice for all that was likely to follow with Doper Don trying to wheedle his way back into their lives.

Within an hour Lana was back at NSA headquarters, feeling remarkably refreshed for the grudging amount of sleep she’d managed. But a shower and a smoothie — and a daunting array of supplements — had revitalized her enough to hurry down to Holmes’s office.

Donna was back at her desk, waving Lana inside.

Holmes was on the phone, pacing and uttering a series of “Uh-huh… uh-huh… uh-huh…” that kept perfect rhythm with his steps.

He looked over to Lana and pointed to the screens on the wall, then brought up the sound just enough for her to hear the House Speaker on The Today Show lambasting the President, calling him a “coward.” Certainly no surprise there. Neither was his skill at shoehorning the word into his next four sentences, which he spieled off in less than thirty seconds. He might not have two brain cells to rub together but he had earned a veritable PhD in sound bites.

Lana picked up the remote and switched to Good Morning America, where the Senate Majority Leader was performing a similar routine, using the same words as if he were literally an echo chamber and not merely a man who sounded like one.

The House Whip was working his dark magic over on CNN. And FOX had two members of the House and two senators who sounded like a geek chorus.

Holmes hung up and said, “It’s been like this since they went on the air this morning.”

“Hardly a bulletin.”

“From your message, it must have gone well for you.”

She briefed him about the four-pointed “square” between Russia’s renewable energy sector, its secret police, the Ahearn murders, and the WAIS that she’d uncovered with her link analysis of the metadata last night. As she talked, she brought out her computer, summarized the “hops” through routers, gateways, and other systems, then focused Holmes on the unusually intense packet flows into and out of an apartment building in downtown Moscow.

“Here it is,” she said, using Google Earth to show him the residence.

“I don’t know what to make of that. It looks like a thousand other places around the world. Maybe that’s the point. Keep it anonymous when you’re going anomalous.”

“I think it’s feistier than that. I sent a message to the source of that transmission before signing off a few hours ago.”

“You mean the person you suspect is in that building — if there really is an operative in there?”

“I think it is a person, unless, for some bizarre reason, Russian cyberagents have themselves set up in there as some kind of dodge. But I can’t see why they would. Based on my trace-routing as well as activity trends and some behavioral analytics, I’m reasonably sure we do have an individual inside that building performing all these acrobatics. Not as efficiently as I am, because whoever it is lacks our resources, but they’re doing a pretty decent job.”

“A lone-wolf terrorist?”

“I don’t think so. This is someone who’s been actively trying to figure out who hacked into the Delphin’s communications, so that means it’s not the FSB or whoever might be spearheading this hacker group. They’re not working for us, but given what they’re doing, they might as well be. And in the recent past they were looking for links to the Ahearn murders and AAC. In short, Bob, whoever this is has been doing what I’ve been doing.”

Holmes sat down on the couch, then stood right back up, as if he couldn’t contain his energy. “I don’t think it matters. If they know that much right there in the heart of Moscow, they’re guilty. They’re implicated. I wish we could send in a drone right now.”

“But what if we’re dealing with someone who, for whatever reason, has tapped into material that we don’t have, but is not part of what the Russians are up to? Or even knows their plans?” She paused. “I put out a feeler.”

“Meaning?”

“I let them know someone new was watching them. And I had the encrypted message sent through proxy servers that strip away the sender’s personally identifiable information. Let’s just say I don’t care who they are, they’ll never trace it back.”

“But your subject can respond?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, show me what you sent.”

Lana turned the screen toward Holmes. “WHO ARE YOU?” appeared as he watched. “I kept it simple.”

“In those block letters?” he asked.

She nodded. “It felt blunter that way.”

Holmes scratched his head. She knew he was trying to figure out whether she’d been rash. She was ready for that. “Look, the Trident’s missile launch system is very likely compromised, right?”

“Yes.”

“They have control of a nuclear sub and they say they’re moving ahead to send that missile somewhere, and we have no reason not to believe they’ll detonate it right over Antarctica. Today, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s why everyone with your level of clearance has been notified.”

“So if this person is part of that plot — which I doubt because he or she would be working with the hacker, not trying to crack his codes — it won’t make any difference. That missile is going to fly and we’ll have a whole new world to contend with.”

“And we’ll lose all those scientists at the Amundsen-Scott research station.”

“Oh, no. I thought we were set to get them out of there.”

Holmes shook his head. “You know how bad the weather can be down there. We couldn’t get them out. Go on.”

She paused respectfully for a moment. “Anyway, if this hacker’s connected to those killers, let’s see what kind of reaction we get. Maybe he’ll panic. Maybe it’s a she. If whoever it is tries to figure out that I’m onto them, they’ll never get through our computer security defenses.”

“I wish you had cleared that with me.”

“I’ve done this before. We move when we have to. You’ve always given me that latitude.”

“The stakes are extraordinarily high,” Holmes said.

“I know. We’re talking about the geologic clock speeding up so fast we could see billions die in the days and weeks ahead.”

“And then be left with Russia in control.”

“Of everything,” she added.

Holmes walked over to his desk and sat down before going on: “You don’t think you’re getting played, do you?”

“No, not at all. And you’ll be the first to know, either way. What’s going on at the White House? From the ‘Uh-huhs,’ it sounded like the Oval Office.”

“It was the President’s chief of staff. His boss, our boss, met with the Russian ambassador early this morning. It was deny, deny, deny.”

“We didn’t really expect anything different, did we?”

“No. I’ll tell you something we expected even less. The Chinese ambassador is in the Oval Office right now offering his country’s considerable assistance.”

“What?” That floored Lana. The U.S. wanted to prosecute Chinese military officials for hacking U.S. corporations and government secrets.

“I know, it’s hard to believe,” Holmes replied, “but China has four of the world’s top fifteen cities that would be hit hardest by a sudden rise in sea levels, more than any other country. And the total numbers for China are sobering to the extreme. They’re looking at twenty-two million people directly threatened with just a half-meter rise, and we’re looking at a lot more than that. And about $7.5 trillion in losses. Their economy would be shredded and the internal disruptions would be monumental and pretty much impossible to contain.”

“Those are extraordinary numbers. The brink of disaster for them, too, then.”

“So they have very sound reasons to help. Russia, by the way, doesn’t even make the list. We’re next, after China, with two cities, the New York-Newark region and Miami. The Russians aren’t just targeting us. They’re also targeting another old rival.”

“What about their economic ties, the gas and oil deals?”

“I think worldwide domination trumps that from the Russian standpoint. Besides, they’ll still be selling all the fossil fuels they want, along with a tax, I’m betting, to cover the AAC fees that will be in every contract the Russians sign after this.”

“So we’re going to accept China’s help?”

“Not officially. You can imagine what the Speaker and Majority Leader would do with that.” They both glanced at the muted TV screens. “Unofficially, we wouldn’t say no to anyone who walked in the door and said, ‘Here are your hackers.’ So good work on that apartment in Moscow,” Holmes said, nodding at her screen, “and good luck. I’ll let you get back to work.”

“Thanks for the update. That was stunning news.”

As Lana went to shut her laptop, Holmes pointed to her screen and said, “What’s that?”

She turned it toward her and said, “That’s called a response.”

“From the hacker?”

“Yes!” She held it up to him: WHO ARE YOU?

It wasn’t much, but this wasn’t a hit-and-run posting. The hacker had signaled a desire for a conversation.

The very first step across the cyberminefield.

CHAPTER 12

Galina couldn’t sleep. The night had turned into a long dark voyage that would not end. Each time she felt herself drifting off, she’d be seized by fears about Alexandra. Not her daughter’s cancer so much as whether she would be abducted in the middle of the night. Galina’s weak hold on her own fate made her even more wary of Alexandra’s.

Finally, after checking on her repeatedly, Galina climbed into bed with Alexandra and held her close. “No one’s going to take you. I promise,” she whispered. Not God, not cancer. Nor any of the devils who had been haunting their lives.

She watched with weary eyes as first light painted the familiar features of Alexandra’s room, the porcelain dolls on her shelf that had been Galina’s playthings little more than twenty years ago, and a pair of ballet slippers in their special place at the center of the top shelf. They looked so new, for Galina had given them to Alexandra only two days before the leukemia first left her too weak to dance.

A clown-face clock showed the time, 5:25, its eyes fixed on a stuffed bunny as big as Alexandra herself, won by her father at a carnival last year. Galina could not think of Viktor as a “deadbeat dad” anymore. He was Alexandra’s father, and every once in a while he had been wonderful to her. At the carnival, Viktor had accepted the barker’s dare with a smile and insisted that Alexandra stand by his side as he confidently sank ten free throws in a row to win the grand prize. Till then, Galina had not known that Viktor had lived, eaten, and slept basketball for most of his childhood.

There must have been so much more about him that she hadn’t known. And now, she realized, she’d never be able to give his daughter a full understanding of his life. She hadn’t loved Viktor in the end — and had been enormously frustrated by him much of the time — but she missed him on Alexandra’s behalf. Another fatherless child in Russia.

Oleg had killed him or had him killed. As soon as Galina had heard about the terms of Viktor’s so-called will, she’d known its true author. And when Tattoo had tried to get her to blame the murder on Oleg, she’d also known the deadly trap Oleg had tried to set. Galina would never let him near her again — or Alexandra. It still filled her with revulsion to think of him touching her daughter’s forehead in the elevator.

But what could stop him from killing her? Or Alexandra? Those questions ate at Galina as dawn opened up the sky. The lone answer, though, could have darkened the noonday sun, for nothing, nothing could stop Oleg from yet another murder. He’d seen to the merciless slaying of the Ahearns, Viktor, and the sailors on that submarine. And now news reports were saying the scientists in Antarctica would likely die from radiation poisoning if the missile landed on the continent because none of them could be evacuated.

Galina, still sleepless, propped herself on her elbow and looked around Alexandra’s room, forcing herself to take deep breaths to try to relax. She saw her daughter’s two favorite picture books open on the floor. One featured a little girl as the captain of a pirate ship that sailed the seas in search of the most wonderful treasure of all: love. And the other showed the stars twinkling on a snowy night, lantern light soft on a city’s white street.

She’d read those books — and so many others — to Alexandra dozens of times, and remembered her daughter’s pure joy as she was ushered into those richly imagined worlds.

Galina smiled and dearly hoped she would read so many more to the “little love of her life.” And she believed she would — if Galina could just get her the cancer care she so desperately needed.

The next time Galina glanced at the clown clock, an hour had passed and she understood that she’d finally snoozed.

She sprang from the bed and bolted to the bathroom, showering and washing her hair. She wanted to make herself look as presentable — and as affluent — as possible, donning one of her most tasteful dresses.

Galina planned to plead with the older woman who ran the oncologist’s office. She had a voice like a man’s and was as burly as those testosterone-laden female Russian weightlifters who, along with their East German counterparts, had dominated their Olympic events for so long. Her father had laughed heartily as they’d watched a documentary during her childhood about those “great Russian female athletes,” as the narrator had described the masculine-looking medalists on the podium.

Her poor papa. In truth, he had laughed very little, making that occasion in front of the TV so memorable. She wished he were alive so she could flee to him, have his help, but at fifty-nine he had died the slow-motion suicide of a functional alcoholic and chain-smoker.

Galina’s mother had died even younger from a botched gall bladder surgery.

With Alexandra’s room fully lit, she woke her daughter and fed her the same cereal for breakfast that she’d eaten last night. “When they are this sick,” a nurse at a pediatric clinic had told her, “give them whatever they’ll eat that’s reasonable.”

Galina didn’t know if cereal that was supposed to taste like mini chocolate donuts was reasonable, but the milk had protein and healthy fats, and Alexandra let her mother spoon it into her mouth. Galina felt like a mama bird feeding her frail offspring.

They arrived at the doctor’s office right at eight thirty, when the staff unlocked the door. The doctor’s hours started at nine.

The office manager’s steely gray hair was pulled back so tightly it looked like the pressure would pop the roots right out of her hairline.

“I don’t know if you remember, but I’m Galina Bortnik,” she said quietly. “I was in last week to make the appointment, and then I called yesterday. We talked about the money.”

“Do you have what you need to see the doctor?” the woman replied obliquely.

Galina lifted Alexandra up so the office manager could see her over the counter. “I have my daughter. She has leukemia. I know your doctor can do miracles.”

“We do not do miracles for everyone. Do you have what you need?” she asked again, less patiently.

“Money, yes, I know. I have so much coming in. That’s not even an issue. I just inherited fifty million rubles.”

“And I am Czar Nicholas. Go.” She waved Galina away. More women with sick children were lining up behind them. “And don’t come back,” the manager warned. “You waste my time and are disturbing everyone.”

With tears streaming down her cheeks — and Alexandra asking, “Why won’t they help me, Mama?”—Galina carried her daughter outside, still bundled like a baby in her bunny blanket. Every day her daughter got lighter, even as Galina herself felt weakened by the horror of what was happening to her child.

She sat with Alexandra on a bench by the parking lot in back of the building. She’d seen photographs online of the doctor smiling at charity events for “cancer kids.” She would curbside him. That was a term she’d read on American websites. There was no Russian equivalent that she knew.

At precisely nine o’clock a black Mercedes coupe with smoked windows pulled into the parking spot reserved for Dr. Kublakov. It was closest to the rear entrance. His Benz was shiny black with sparkling chrome. Perfect. Not a speck of dust on it. She wondered how many “cancer kids” had made that purchase possible.

Galina lifted Alexandra and stood as the driver’s door opened. But the handsome doctor did not get out. Instead, a stocky man with a shaved head and dark sunglasses stood and scanned their surroundings, as if for assassins, then buttoned his black suit jacket and walked around to open the passenger door. That was when she saw the revered doctor for the first time, the man the media called a “miracle maker.”

“Doctor Kublakov,” she called to him. “My daughter needs your help so much.”

She carried Alexandra toward the two men. As she neared them, the bodyguard placed his ample bulk in front of the oncologist, who was hurrying toward the door.

When Galina tried to reach past the bodyguard, he karate-chopped her arm. His hand felt like steel. It hurt so badly she almost dropped Alexandra.

Kublakov disappeared through the doorway.

“Go away,” the bodyguard told her. “Do not be here when I come back.”

Galina, forearm throbbing, retreated to the bench and sat back down. She watched with blurry eyes as the bodyguard paused to glare at her one more time before following his boss into the building.

She rocked Alexandra, forcing herself to stop crying, then climbed to her feet and trudged to her car. She made Alexandra comfortable in the backseat, checking her messages quickly. Just one, from Oleg: “Where are you?”

The question chilled her, and she was glad she’d found and disabled the customized app locator he’d put on her phone. She certainly didn’t reply. She turned out of the lot, knowing she had only one possible course of action.

The drive home, through the thick of Moscow morning traffic, took longer than she expected. Alexandra, so startled at the clinic, now looked sullen, without hope. Galina wished she could say something to cheer her up, but what would that be?

She hoped the answer would come soon. After carrying her daughter to the couch, where she’d been spending most of her days, and tempting her with berry juice and crackers — overjoyed at seeing her eating anything on her own — she rushed to her computers, moving every vital file from her desktop to her laptop. Then she burrowed a trail deep into the “cloud,” where she secured backups of her most important files. She also logged on to Internet Relay Chat, IRC, where the first anonymous message had appeared, sitting back in surprise when she saw the simple response: “I am someone who can help you and your sick daughter.”

Oleg, she thought at once. He was setting her up. Now that Tattoo had failed, he was testing her.

She called PP, asking if she could see him for just a few minutes.

“Yes,” the old man’s familiar voice said. “But I won’t be back until later this afternoon. Come join us for dinner. I was going to call you. Something’s come up with Dmitri. He’s very upset. Maybe you could talk to him. He’s saying your name.”

“Yes, of course.” The “Gull, Gull” that passed for it, she presumed. “One thing,” she said to PP. “I hate to ask this of you, but please don’t tell Oleg I’m coming over.”

“Don’t worry,” PP said so soothingly that it scared her, though she couldn’t be sure exactly why.

Galina spent an anxious day packing up her daughter’s belongings and medications. She also took a few changes of clothes for Alexandra and their toiletries. Not too much, she advised herself. If they come, you don’t want them to know right away.

Who were “they?” She was sure only of Oleg but she also knew that he had a team that killed for him. And a cop — or two — who might be part of it.

As late afternoon turned orange and golden, she fired up her computer one more time and found yet another message: “I am not who you think I am.” Again, she thought only of Oleg. But then she wondered.

She shut off her laptop and placed it in a well-padded carrying case. Driving out of Moscow, checking her rearview constantly. She didn’t know what to expect, but more trouble of the kind she’d experienced at the morgue seemed likely.

Galina heard Alexandra singing to herself in the backseat. She appeared so much better now that she’d napped and put the experience at the clinic behind her.

The electric eye opened the gate to PP’s country palace, as it had for her many times before. She figured her old Renault was the most humble vehicle to ever roll through the entrance.

In seconds, she turned into the car elevator, which lifted her to the second floor, rotated, and left her facing one of the visitor spots.

Carrying Alexandra — the poor child seemed to have no strength left for walking — Galina entered a hallway that ringed the main floor of PP’s huge residence. She peered at a door that opened only by iris recognition.

PP welcomed her with a gentle hug, encircling both mother and child in his strong arms. He led them into the high-ceilinged kitchen. His cook, a Eurasian woman in a pale-blue muslin dress with a crisp white apron and matching cap, was tossing cilantro into a Thai stew. Steam rose to a copper vent, fragrant scents to Galina’s nose. Her stomach rumbled; she realized she had eaten very little all day.

PP had set a place for them, and timed the meal well. Even Alexandra ate spoonfuls of broth, noodles, scallions, and a shrimp. Dmitri, oddly, was not present.

“And papaya juice?” PP asked Alexandra. “It came all the way from Hawaii just for you.”

The girl, wide-eyed at PP’s attention, nodded.

And she did drink the juice — eagerly. Galina thought that if Alexandra could live like this and see Dr. Kublakov, she might survive the leukemia.

PP used a napkin to dab his lips, the cotton so crisply ironed that it unfolded like a deck of cards.

“Now that we have eaten,” he said, “tell me what is wrong, Galina. Did Oleg hurt you?”

How should she respond? In the pause she took trying to answer her own question, PP nodded and spoke again. “I am not certain of what he is up to, but it is not good.”

Again she did not respond quickly enough.

“What did he do to you?” he asked more sternly.

“I can’t say, PP. I’m so sorry. But he did not hit me, nothing like that. Did you want me to talk to Dmitri? I thought he would be here.”

PP shook his head. She didn’t know if that was in response to her refusal to say what Oleg had done, or to the concerns about his younger son. He called out the fifteen-year-old’s name in a voice both commanding and consoling. “Come, Galina is here to see you. Gull has come.”

Dmitri shuffled into the dining area, looking warily at his father and Galina.

“This is the first time he’s left his room since last night,” PP said.

“What happened last night?” she asked.

“He took a photograph of Oleg that was hanging in the upstairs hallway with other family pictures. His fine motor skills are not so good anymore, so to get it out of the frame he broke the glass. Maybe that explains the gash in Oleg’s face in the picture,” PP added dubiously as he held up the torn photo. “Maybe not. Here he is. Have a seat, my son.”

The fifteen-year-old, bigger than most men, settled next to Galina and took her hand. She squeezed his gently. Two children, one on her lap and the other to her side. Both holding on to her.

“Do you remember how he would walk toward the door to the dungeon, then hurry away from it?” PP asked.

She nodded.

“He does that with Oleg, too, always approaching him then turning away. Then last night, after taking the photo of Oleg, he made horrible sounds, like he had a pain deep in his belly. He was bent over, one arm cupped around his stomach, the other holding out the picture of Oleg. It was like he was holding it as far from himself as possible, and then he started for the dungeon door again, but this time he pounded on it as if someone down there would open it for him. So I did.”

Galina looked at Dmitri, who was staring at her hand, still holding it, but she thought he was also listening very carefully to his father, who went on:

“He looked down the stairs, so I turned on the light. By then poor Dmitri was crying. ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘Papa will come with you.’”

“He’d never been down there?” she asked.

“Only the one time that I know of, and that was with Oleg.”

That’s right. She remembered now.

“But I’m wondering about that now,” PP added quickly.

He held her gaze. Neither the old man nor young woman spoke for a moment. Then he continued: “We went down the stairs all the way to the museum.”

PP’s word for the dungeon with its macabre collection of medieval torture devices. Galina had been down there only once, and had not been able to leave fast enough.

“Then he started with the back-and-forth business,” PP said. “This time by the skull crusher.”

A metal skullcap attached to the end of a heavy-duty screw that was turned from above by a wooden crank. Just thinking about it tightened Galina’s belly. A gruesome instrument.

“That was when he said your name,” PP told her. “Every time he turned from the skull crusher, ‘Gull, Gull.’ I wonder why?”

Galina felt accused. Nothing PP said exactly, but still…

“Would you see if he’ll go downstairs with you? He tries so hard to talk to you. I think it’s important we try this.”

Galina cleared her throat. “May I put Alexandra to bed?” She didn’t want her daughter out of her arms, but she wanted her down in that dungeon with those devices even less.

At PP’s assent, she took Alexandra away and settled her in one of the many lavishly appointed guest rooms, promising that she would be right back.

Please, dear God, let that be true.

Alexandra looked sleepy, perhaps from eating, and hardly seemed to notice her mother leaving.

Galina held Dmitri’s hand, now sweaty, and led him down the stairs. But once they reached the concrete floor, she had to coax him to move. PP stayed up by the door. She guessed that he might have thought Dmitri would be more forthcoming if just the two of them were alone. At least she hoped that was the reason.

Dmitri, indeed, proved more willing — but not with words. They walked past the rack, from which Dmitri pulled away, and armaments, including a spiked ball and serrated swords, mace and maul, halberd and war hammer. Galina had to avert her eyes, but curiously, Dmitri stared at the medieval weapons in what she would have called wonder. Maybe that was why he was so surprised when he realized they’d come upon the skull crusher.

The young man bellowed, as if hacked by the halberd, which had held his gaze seconds ago, then wrapped his arms around his abdomen. That was when Galina spotted the photo of Oleg crumpled in his hand. PP must have given it back to him when she was putting Alexandra to bed.

Then, with another shout — pure emotion, no attempt at a word — Dmitri lunged at the skull crusher and slapped the balled-up photo on the metal plate where a victim’s head would lie. He began to crank the wooden arm.

It creaked horribly, as if in protest, a sound almost overwhelmed by Dmitri’s own cries. It seemed each creak of the crusher were coming alive under his skin.

When he finished turning the crank, the crumpled photo sat under the cap like a pea in a shell game. But there was no longer any mystery for Galina about what the skullcap was hiding: the unvarnished truth.

She embraced Dmitri and let the young man with the broken mind of a little boy sob loudly in her arms.

“I’m so sorry,” she said softly to him. “Nobody should ever have to go through something like that.”

She guessed she would have to tell PP what he had not witnessed. She hoped he would believe her. She still felt uneasy in his presence tonight and couldn’t fathom why, which compounded her anxiousness.

Galina led Dmitri upstairs. She glimpsed PP standing feet away from the landing. The rage on his face was unmistakable. She wanted to shrink from him, but didn’t dare.

“I have to tell you something,” she managed, wishing she sounded less apologetic, but she felt bad for the boy; he had carried such a brutal burden for so long.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” PP said, smashing his fist against the brocade wallpaper in the short hallway.

He turned to a built-in walnut cabinet, throwing open the door. Inside was a screen and recording device. He punched a button and video appeared of what had just transpired.

“I put cameras in after Dmitri’s ‘fall.’ The moment the light switch goes on, it triggers the digital recorder. I know what he showed you. I’ve waited years to find out what happened.”

“It’s so sad.”

Her cheeks were wet. Dmitri destroyed, his father now broken by the ugly truth about his only healthy son.

“I want to thank you for what you’ve done. It’s not easy to be the bearer of bad news — of the worst news,” he added with a shake of his head. “You don’t have to tell me what Oleg did to you because you have just told me what he did to my baby boy. He is capable of anything. Here.”

He handed her one of his finely spun cotton handkerchiefs. She felt hollowed out by what they had just learned. And yet she wasn’t surprised, just horrified. There was such a vast and disturbing difference.

“What do you need?” PP asked her. “I know you need something.”

“A loan. I’m so sorry to have to ask.”

“Whatever you need. You are the rose. If I were fifty years younger…” He shook his head. He looked like he might have been ruing the fleet passage of the last half century — only to arrive at the torturous revelations of this moment.

“Go get Alexandra. Meet me in the kitchen.”

When she walked back downstairs with her daughter, PP handed her a thick envelope. “That will take care of you wherever you’re going. I can help again, if you need it. Do not hesitate to ask. This is nothing to me.” He indicated the money. “He is everything to me, though.” He looked at Dmitri, slumped on a chair. Then he peered into Galina’s eyes. “But you and I must have an agreement.”

“Yes, of course. What is it?”

“Never to speak to anyone about what you learned here. And I shall never ask you to go through anything like this again.”

She nodded, as solemn a vow as she had ever made.

“You need to get away from Oleg. You should not take your car,” PP warned her. “They will be searching for it.”

“They?” she asked, remembering that she’d asked herself exactly the same question at home.

“Whoever Oleg has hired to do his dirty work. Thugs. Take my Macan.” He handed her the key fob for a new Porsche SUV Turbo. “The papers are all in the glove box, if you need them.”

“Thank you.”

As she left the house, she saw PP staring at the dungeon door. He looked aggrieved, as sad as any man she’d ever known.

Galina carried Alexandra to the silver Porsche, nestling her daughter in the backseat.

The car elevator lowered them to the ground floor and she drove out the front gate into the velvet blackness of the rural Russian night.

A car appeared almost immediately in her rearview mirror, out of nowhere it seemed. She reached to put the envelope stuffed with cash into the glove box — and discovered a small gun.

With another look in the rearview, her foot found the adrenaline-pumping power of the Porsche’s gas pedal.

CHAPTER 13

Lana was gathered with the rest of Deputy Director Holmes’s closest advisors and aides in his office. They had received one more communication from the submarine hacker, announcing the launch of the Trident II for one a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, which would be nine p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Prime time, they all recognized at once, in the nation’s most populous time zone.

Other than noting the carefully calculated schedule, there had been little talk, either from Teresa McGivern or Joshua Tenon or Clarence Besserman. Few comments even from General Sprouse, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, or Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Deming. Admiral Wourzy also appeared subdued, as if his arrest for chip counterfeiting had taken place only seconds ago. All seemed stunned into silence, including Lana, by the imminent prospect of the launch.

Now, with fewer than thirty seconds remaining, never had a deadline held a more lethal or precisely defined threat.

With eight screens on, Holmes’s office looked like a network control room. They were monitoring the major news outlets, all of which had interrupted “normally scheduled programming.” Plus, Holmes had had a satellite feed from above Antarctica brought in, along with a screen devoted to the radar that would track the launch. Lana could still scarcely believe it would actually come to pass.

The digital readout on a clock solely devoted to this unprecedented catastrophe wound down to eight seconds. Lana trained her eyes on the numbers, as if will alone could undo this act of mass murder: “… 3, 2, 1.”

The Trident II launched. Though she did not see it on any screen — a mere speck on the radar tracker — she had no difficulty imagining the light-colored missile rising from the sea in a blaze of solid-rocket fuel turning the blackness orange and red, and white hot in the center of its wake.

Within seconds, the latest advances in the Aegis Missile Defense System flew into action. Aegis had begun in the mid-eighties, and had many successful test knockdowns to its credit. But nothing was foolproof.

Aegis had its own radar, of course, but the military’s high-resolution defense system was also tracking the Trident with its single missile head. In its infancy, the weapon had been a hedge against war, a key component of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Now in minutes it could rain down from the heavens onto the frozen continent with heat unimaginable to most nonscientists — but there would be nothing mutual about its destruction, with worldwide catastrophe striking many, but not all, nations.

An aide wearing headphones and peering at a computer said the Trident was, indeed, heading toward Antarctica.

The speck on the radar screen indicated nothing of the ICBM’s lethality. But would the technical wizardry noted by the Pentagon briefer actually work? All she’d ever known of missile shields and interceptors made them sound more mythical than real, no more likely to actually shoot down an ICBM than a lightning bolt from Zeus or — more appropriately, perhaps — a strike by Neptune with his primitive trident, for which the missile had been named.

It would be brutally ironic, Lana realized, if the U.S. could not save itself from one of its own creations. And a single Trident II rising from the sea could claim much of the whole world if it exploded on the WAIS.

“Time?” Holmes asked.

The aide with the earphones nodded at the digital readout, where another countdown had begun. Eight minutes turning to seven in the frightening increments, red diodes spelling out the time remaining in the color of blood.

Lana caught Holmes’s eye, then glanced at the door. He nodded. She had to call Emma. She was all but certain that her daughter was watching coverage of the missile launch somewhere. And if Lana could offer her any comfort, she wanted to, but quickly.

Once in the hallway, she reached Emma on the first ring.

“Why, Mom?” Emma asked as soon as she answered.

“Where are you?”

“Tanesa’s.”

Thank God. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

“No, Esme’s here. And so is Dad,” she added hesitantly.

Lana didn’t want her daughter feeling torn between her parents, especially at a time like this. “I’m happy for you, if he can be of any help.”

“Not exactly, Mom,” Emma said impatiently. “I’m going in the other room,” she said to the others.

“What is it, hon?” Lana asked.

“He and Esme got into an argument. She didn’t appreciate him saying this whole missile thing was nothing but a big conspiracy, like the moon shot.”

“No, I can’t imagine she did.”

First, through Emma, Lana had learned that Esme did not suffer fools gladly. Second, through research, Lana had found out that Esme’s brother was an astrophysicist who had played a key role in the success of the Apollo 11 moon landing. In fact, he’d counted Neil Armstrong among his closest friends. Lana asked if Tanesa’s mom had mentioned any of that.

“All of it.”

“And your dad said?”

“That lots of people got duped by the moon landing and he figured lots of people would get duped by this, too.”

“Emma, this is very, very real. I am so sorry to have to say that.”

“I know that, Mom.” Emma started to cry.

“Go ahead, tell me,” Lana said, checking her watch, knowing she had to get back in that room soon.

“It’s just so, I don’t know, embarrassing to have him say crap like that. I mean, it’s one thing sitting around and talking about stuff, but Esme must think we’re all idiots, and I really respect her, Mom.”

“I promise you that Esme doesn’t think you are an idiot.” Lana left the rest of what she could have said remain unspoken.

“Where are you? I wish you were here,” Emma said.

“I’m at work. I wish I were with you, too.”

“Will I see you tomorrow, Mom?”

“Yes, you will. You’re going to stay there tonight, right?”

“I’m not staying with him,” Emma said angrily.

“I understand.”

“I doubt he will,” her daughter said.

“Don’t worry about that. I love you.”

“You, too, Mom.”

Lana took a deep breath and cleared her own eyes, recognizing that she’d nimbly sidestepped Emma’s first question: Why, Mom? That would have taken more time than the moment allowed — and more horrors than she wanted to visit upon her daughter at a time like this.

Down to less than thirty seconds again in Holmes’s office. As Lana walked back into the room, the Aegis missile interceptor plunged into the sea more than two hundred miles from the Trident II. They knew immediately that it failed because tracking devices showed it vanish from the screen. But the Trident II was very much aloft, charted every moment by the military’s high-resolution defense system.

“What happened?” Holmes asked, sounding numb.

Admiral Deming looked up from his computer. “It looks like the hackers were ready for Aegis because a geostationary satellite that we needed to pinpoint the Trident II was hit with a denial-of-service attack.”

The final seconds were approaching fast.

Lana took her seat, feeling as numb as Holmes had sounded. She imagined what it would be like at the Amundsen-Scott research station right now, or one of Antarctica’s other facilities. Prayer vigils were reportedly being held at many of them, certainly at Amundsen-Scott, which only mirrored what was also taking place in churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples all around the world.

She wondered if the vigils in Antarctica were well attended. The scientists she knew were the least likely to find hope or solace in prayer. But she understood the impulse. While she was unlikely to ever pray to some omnipotent power — about whom she had the gravest doubts — to save her own life, she’d learned the hard way that when Emma was in danger, she’d crawl across miles of broken glass to try to curry the favor of a creator.

It hit her right then: Emma’s life might well be on the line.

Lana squeezed her eyes shut and offered prayer, drawn from the distant annals of childhood.

The digital readout slipped from 1 to 0.

The countdown ended.

The nightmare began.