Blood Covenent, page 37
Louis studied the email. “Do you think we should turn this over to the FBI?”
George shook his head. “Not until Harper has completed his mission. Harper sent a message asking for help in Chicago overHarlequin’s signature. We have a response, now we have a decision to make.”
George swirled the coffee in his mug. “You and I took an oath to defend the country against all enemies foreign and domestic,” he continued. “We’ve identified the enemy, or at least, we are very close to identifying the person responsible for ordering this aggression on our soil.” He alluded to the task assigned to his own people inside the NSA who were backtracking the message sent toHarlequin at his New York ISP email account. There were two ways to approach the problem: execute a full-fledged attack on the Fireball server and effectively blow the doors down, or surreptitiously slither through the firewalls, virus scans, and content filters. George elected to follow the second approach.
Louis glanced up from the email on his desk. His friend’s iron-gray hair seemed grayer today. Their friendship was one forged in the cold days of the Carter Administration when CIA Director Stansfield Turner determined electronic intelligence (ELINT) could replace human intelligence (HUMINT). He set the intelligence community on a disastrous course that failed to predict the Shah’s fall in Iran, the rise of the Islamic Republic, or the Soviet Afghan invasion. Because Louis and George considered HUMINT more important then ELINT, they were out of step with Turner’s thinking. Bill Casey was appointed as Reagan’s CIA Director, and Reagan was tired of losing. Casey set Louis and George on a course to defeat the Soviet Union, thus theBlackest of the Black was born.
“The last time you talked like that, Carter was President,” murmured Louis.
“This crowd doesn’t know the first thing about foreign or defense policy,” complained George. “If they did, we wouldn’t be chasing this nut case around. During the seventies, we didn’t have an organization, resources, or people like Harper.”
Louis nodded slowly. “You’re leading somewhere, George.”
It was an uncomfortable destination for a man dedicated to the chain of command. “I think we should deal with this problem in our own way. Deliver a message.”
“Something that might not be misunderstood,” suggested Louis.
“Yeah.” He swallowed the last of his coffee. “Twenty years ago you knew the Shah was finished. Not only was he sick, but the repression waged by the SAVAK under our supervision was coalescing the normal people around the Islamic hardliners. They killed fifty thousand people and Carter’s human rights policy did not extend to the Shah’s Iran. The President was reassured by his daily intelligence briefings that these problems would blow over the same way they had in the past.”
George looked up from the depths of his empty coffee mug and asked, “Do you think anything is different today? This President did away with the daily intelligence briefings when he was first elected. He had two, maybe three briefings during the Kosovo bombing campaign. The question I am mulling over is: Do we place in these hands a foreign policy decision regarding national security, when they clearly have no idea what to do?”
“George, you are toying with the idea of crossing a line that is not easily pulled back from. Conducting your own private foreign policy because you doubt the civilian leadership’s judgment will never fly if we’re caught. They’ll cashier you at best.”
George nodded agreement. “Do you really think they have a clue? Do you think they can make a proper choice?”
Louis understood. He had come close to crossing the same line, but he had managed to manipulate the political monster to bend to his will. “No, I don’t think they’ve got a clue.” His eyes strayed to the world map on George’s office wall.
“The Iranians need to be taught a lesson,” explained George.
Louis agreed. The Iranians needed to be put in their place, but turning this over to the White House might precipitate a response that could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Retaliation on a nuclear scale from a singleOhio Class boat would lay waste to the Iranian population. Most of those people were taught to hate America, but the propaganda and lies were beginning to wear thin as a new generation came of age. A generation who never suffered under the Shah, and saw the Islamic Republic for what it was—a different group of thugs under a religious banner.
“All right, I accept what you say. What do we do about it?”
Carnady walked over to the Mr. Coffee machine on his credenza and asked, “You want some?”
“Sure.”
George filled two mugs bearing the West Point emblem. “I’ve been thinking about our Iranian friends lately.”
Louis stirred the sugar into his coffee.
“Ever since I watched Pete Rasmussen fly his helicopter towards Bloodworth Island and nearly get himself killed. We got lucky because an everyday working stiff had the stuff it takes to save a bunch of people. We owe it to people like that to take care of this problem.
“The Iranians have come after us very aggressively. Whoever is selecting the targets is working on symbols. Trump Tower and Rockefeller Center display wealth and power. Yankee Stadium goes after our mania with sports. Who knows what they were after in Boston, but there are plenty of symbols and icons there that would strike to the heart of the country. In Washington, they went after the Supreme Court and the Capitol Dome. Everyone knows what those look like.
“The White House doesn’t want to admit any of this happened. The biggest problem they have is Connecticut, yet it appears they have muzzled the major networks. The newspapers seem to believe their story and JFK Junior’s plane crashing into the ocean off of Martha’s Vineyard didn’t hurt. There is an opportunity to hide this thing completely.”
“You want to help the administration?” asked Louis, a bit puzzled.
George shook his head and jabbed a finger at the map. “I want to help the country. It depends on two things, Louis.”
Strategy and tactics were two things George understood intimately. If he had commanded a major division or been privy to the halls of power as a National Security Advisor, there was no doubt George would have become a member of the Joint Chiefs, but warriors in the secret wars never got their due.
“How certain are you that Harper can stop this thing?” George was more reserved about a maverick like Harper. He trusted the man’s honor and ability, but there was wildness in the man. He tended to find solutions outside of his orders. The FBI was no longer inside the information loop. Everything rested on the shoulders of a single man, and George wondered about Harper’s sanity.
“Darby and Jonas believe they have isolated a location. Harper has the address. If this is our man, then Harper will finish it.” Louis had his own problems with Harper. The man did not trust him. While Louis had never directly lied to the man, he had shaded the truth enough to bring his credibility into doubt. To Louis, Harper was a weapon fashioned and trained to be aimed at an adversary. “We’ve pulled the trigger, George.”
Carnady mulled the idea over. “Then it doesn’t end withHarlequin. ” He flipped open a file folder on the corner of his desk. “My NSA boys think they can track down a specific name attached to the email address whereHarlequin is sending his stuff.”
Louis nodded slowly. “Do you think we could lure them to Turkey?”
“Cyprus would be better.”
* * * *
Moscow, Russian Federation
Yevgeny felt the greasy hands grab his hair and jerk his head back. Officially, the dungeon cells at Lubyanka were no longer used by the Federal Security Service, the successor to the infamous KGB. But old habits are hard to break, and skills mastered for institutional generations are not easily forgotten.
His wrists were manacled behind his back, and his legs strapped with ancient leather to either side of an even older wooden chair. The walls were not smooth cinder block; rather they were made of hewn rocks and cracked mortar. The floor was dirt, which meant Yevgeny had been taken to the lowest level. The room stank of vomit, urine, and blood. Large arc lamps blazed heat and light into his swollen eyes. His lips were blistered and nasty yellowish green bruises covered most of his ribs. He was completely naked and whatever supper he had last eaten had been thoroughly beaten from his body.
The men swinging their rubber truncheons, dousing him with ice water and attaching electrodes to his private parts was a familiar breed. They were the same types used to man the camps in the Gulag or batter down doors in the middle of the night. The government might fail to pay their soldiers, bread lines could form around whole city blocks, and precious mineral deposits could be handed over to Japanese developers, but they never hesitated to pay the men beating Yevgeny. For eight hundred years, Russia had found these men on the dark side of her soul, and the ruling class never failed to use them at their most dire moments.
Somewhere in the haze he still called a mind, Yevgeny knew he was safe as long as he kept his mouth shut. He had been trained to beat the polygraph machines and handle hallucinogenic drugs. He only felt the air compress before the rubber truncheon smacked the side of his face and drew more blood from his ruptured features. Another tooth loosened and blood dribbled down the corners of his mouth. His body jolted spastically as they threw the switch to the dry cell batteries connected in series along the back wall. His brain seemed to sizzle between his ears before he lost consciousness again.
When his vision swam back to life again, water was dripping down the end of his nose. He could see the polished shoes of an officer standing before him—a silhouetted monolith between him and the harsh arc lamps. The greasy hands jerked his head back again. He could barely make out the face staring down at him. The eyes were a pair of black pools holding no compassion or mercy. He recognized the look. It was the same expression that stared back him every morning in the mirror.
“Clean him up, then bring him upstairs,” Colonel Mikitim Feognost ordered.
He found his knees no longer could lock well enough to hold his legs up. The ice-cold water from the shower stung him to a hazy consciousness. The bar soap slipped from his hands several times until he came to be a slumped figure in the shower stall. The water ended as abruptly as it had started. A rough towel was rubbed over his body and he was pushed into a set of coveralls. The gray and blue striped ones used for prisoners hustled to trains heading east over the Urals. With a broken economy, the Russian government had an even greater need for slave labor than before the end of the cold war.
The elevator took him from the sunless squalor below Lubyanka Prison to the air-conditioned comfort of one of the top floor offices. His minders hauled him unceremoniously to one of the chairs, planted him, and backed away awaiting further instructions. They were dismissed with a simple snap of the fingers.
Yevgeny brought his head up and found two men sitting in comfortable chairs sipping tea from glasses. He recognized the uniform of a general officer. His red stripe ran the length of his trouser seam to the polished shoes. His brimmed cap sat quietly on the table next him and there was an intense look of disgust on his features. The other was a FSB colonel. A Turkish cigarette’s smoke curled up in the ashtray at the edge of his desk.
“Major, how kind of you to join us,” intoned Feognost.
Yevgeny ran his tongue along the broken portions of his dental work. It would take some time and effort to repair the damage inflicted over the last several hours. He forced his neck muscles to hold his head up and match eye contact with Feognost. “I didn’t have much choice.”
“You would prefer ourother accommodations?”
Yevgeny considered the beating he had been subjected to, and the broken bodies he had left behind on Menorca. He should have run when the Israeli promised to keep his whereabouts a secret. But he never had much luck with those sorts of people. Thespetsnazteams killed everyone. The dogs, the laborers, and the bodyguards were cut apart by rifle and grenade fire. It was a warning.
“Death isn’t the greatest challenge,” he said slowly.
“Ah, so you wish to know what price life has.”
Yevgeny grunted, studying the general. From his collar insignia, he found the man was part of the Strategic Rocket Forces. It occurred to Yevgeny, they might not know where any of the weapons were located.
“You’ve been a very busy man since leaving our service,” continued the colonel. “I see you have financial holdings in the billions of dollars. Money rightfully belonging to Russia.”
Yevgeny half laughed before his ribs reminded him breathing was difficult enough. “You’ll never get your hands on the money if that’s what you’re after. It needs my retinal scan and voiceprint to gain access. With me dead, it doesn’t work. And I’ll never give you the money.” He ended up dribbling blood down the front of his chin.
GeneralOleksei Kolokol leaned forward. He was tired of Feognost who wanted to play at torture and gimmicks. The time was too short, and with two detonations on American soil, he did not wish to wait for a third. There were no winners in an all out American assault. “I don’t want your money.”
Yevgeny turned his attention to the general. There was an ominous quality to his body language. He wondered if he might be facing one of the last Russian patriots. “Really?” A smile broke across his battered lips. “What do you want?”
“I want the list.”
Yevgeny examined the officer. He counted the stars for the first time on his shoulder boards, and realized he might be talking to the commanding general of the Strategic Rocket Forces.
Yevgeny cocked an eye towards Feognost. “What about him?”
Kolokol reached forward and laid his bear like paw Yevgeny’s hand. “It’s me you need to satisfy. Thespetsnaz were sent at my direction. They killed everything in sight at my direction. This worm of a man does what he does to you at my direction. Toy with me and I’ll leave you to his pleasure. I care nothing for the money. I want the list.”
Yevgeny forced his back straighter and rested his head on the back of the chair. “If you want the list, then we walk out of here together.”
Kolokol glared at him. He started to reach for his hat.
Yevgeny coughed and said quickly, “But as a gesture of good will, I will tell you something you should already know.” He suspected they knew nothing. He suspected the secret died with Andropov.
“What might that be?” he growled.
“Chairman Andropov trusted no one,” he explained in a rush of air. “He didn’t trust me with the entire mission. He separated the weapons into five storage caches around Russia. The weapon’s lockers were guarded by computerized terminals. At least the ones I saw.”
“How many did you see?” snapped Kolokol.
“Three. He gave me access to only three of them. There were twenty-five weapons in each locker. I did as I was ordered.”
“Who knows about the other two lockers?” demanded Kolokol, letting go of his cap.
“He should know,” he nodded in the direction of Feognost. “The operation was run from inside the KGB. Andropov made sure it was hidden from the army as well. He did not want these weapons appearing on any order of battle that might get passed to the Americans. The KGB controlled the other storage lockers.”
Kolokol turned from Yevgeny to Feognost. “You knew about this and didn’t tell anyone?”
“No, he’s not telling the truth,” Feognost protested.
Yevgeny sighed. It had been a long journey to this point. From the time he left Andropov in his Kremlin apartments, he knew the knowledge or lack of knowledge for where all the bombs were stored would haunt him. “Why should I lie about this Colonel? Somewhere in the KGB’s old files, there must be a scrap of information. Think about it for a second. Andropov, while he was still KGB Chairman, embarked on a secret project to build portable nuclear weapons. He scheduled the project through Arzamas-16, which is nominally under his control, because he was responsible for security. He became party chairman and decided to use these toys he’d built. His plan was to deploy them and then threaten Thatcher and Reagan. I know; I heard him tell me those very things.”
Yevgeny shifted in his chair. He spoke to Feognost, but he knew the real power rested with Kolokol. “Then a funny things happened. Andropov died six months later and no one tells me to abort the mission. He gave me an eighteen-month window to get the job done. I got it done. I deployed weapons in Europe, Japan, and America with a couple thrown in towards our more worrisome neighbors.”
“And the Soviet Union collapses,” ended Kolokol. It made a sick logic. Even as the world was falling down around their heads, successive party leaders continued to commit troops and resources to a lost war in Afghanistan. Five-year plans to plant potatoes when wheat was needed. Factories producing obsolete barrels for tanks no longer made. The machinery continued to crank along without understanding the reason behind the orders.
Feognost spread his hands and said reasonably, “What does it matter where these bombs are? They’ve been silent for this long, what’s to disturb them?” He licked his lips as if considering what he would do to a rogue KGB officer.
Kolokol looked across the desk to the FSB colonel. “Because the bombs are beginning to detonate.”
Yevgeny crinkled his brow. “What are you talking about?”
Kolokol turned on Yevgeny. The anger boiled forth towards this smug man who would walk out of this place with him because he needed him. “Your very tame Jew happened to program a long term detonation sequence into the weapons. He built a countdown timer into the code, and none of your fabulously brilliant scientists ever figured it out. Well the clock’s running down and the so-called gas line explosion in the United States last week was one of our weapons. A second blast occurred on Monday. The American’s are highly agitated, but they don’t want war anymore than we do. Who knows what they will do if one of these things goes off in a major American city and half a million people vanish? Do you think the American President can ignore the provocation? They know the bombs are Soviet, but they don’t know who’s detonating them. Or what about the French or English or Japanese? Do you think they’ll simply roll over? It’s our mess. We committed an act of war. Just because it’s twenty years later and a different government doesn’t mean they won’t retaliate.”
