Lucica Zenta marina
21000 Split
Split, Croatia
1935 local time
John Clark—actually traveling on this trip as John Clark for a pleasant change—pulled the starboard engine throttle to neutral, spun the wheel, and bumped up the port engine throttle just a touch. The Bertram 61C responded perfectly, angling toward the end of the dock. A mischievous grin curled Clark’s lips as the dock attendant sprinted forward to meet him. The kid surely expected Clark to cut power and throw a bowline for a nice slow docking by hand, but Clark had no intention of doing any such thing.
The deckhand’s eyes went wide as Clark kept coming under power. The kid scrambled to figure out how this lunatic was going to stop the Bertram from smashing into the dock and damaging it, the expensive boat, or both. At the last second, the former bosun’s mate turned SEAL turned spook expertly worked the throttles and wheel to stop the boat perfectly parallel and dead center against the pier, the gunwale just inches from the edge. He smiled down from the cockpit at the young man, who, line in hand, stared up at him with reverence and awe.
“Do you speak English?” Clark called down.
“Yes,” the deckhand said.
“Good.”
“Do you need petrol, sir?” the young man asked as he worked quickly to tie off the bow and stern cleats of the Bertram while Clark dropped two bumpers over the side.
“No thanks, I’m heading back out.” Clark jumped to the dock and slapped a ten-euro note into the attendant’s hand. “I’ll top off when I return.”
“But the sun is setting. It will be dark soon,” the deckhand said with real concern in his voice.
“There’s still an hour of twilight. Besides, I’ve got lots of practice driving in the dark.”
The kid glanced at the cash in his hand and smiled. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Clark looked up the long pier to where a man, almost certainly his man, walked from the wide, dirt parking lot along Spinčićeva Road. The CIA officer was carrying a small cooler, a backpack, and a fishing pole. A freshwater fishing pole, Clark noted, shaking his head.
Instead of walking to meet the guy, Clark waited beside the Bertram.
“So great to see you, John!” the man Clark had never met said, once he was in range.
“You too, Tommy,” Clark said with a fake smile.
The truth was, Clark was irritated. He was forty-eight hours from heading home to his wife and a week off with the grandkids. Before doing that, however, he needed time to decompress and purge the stress and emotions from a harrowing mission inside Ukraine. He’d learned that a day or two to get centered before crashing through the front door made him a much, much better husband. Back when he was a young man named John Kelly, Clark had never needed “time off” in the classic sense. But decades in this business had made him wiser and more self-aware. Men like him needed time to reflect and contemplate. The only place he did that well was alone on the water. He’d thought chartering a boat and exploring the Dalmatian Coast was the perfect solution.
Apparently, he’d been wrong.
The message he’d received via a secure satellite link on his computer had suggested this meeting was urgent, but “D.C. urgent” rarely met Clark’s operational definition of the term. Whatever was going on, this dude had scrambled for a face-to-face. And in fairness, Mary Pat Foley had signed off on the meet.
So . . . urgent may well mean urgent.
After shaking hands, Clark boarded the boat. He then turned to receive the guy’s gear. The spook handed Clark his backpack, which, as expected, was heavier than it looked. Next, he passed his fishing pole, then walked to the stern and stepped onto the boat by way of the transom.
“How’s the fishing?” the man asked, walking forward to join Clark.
“Been quiet out there,” Clark said, the irony of the challenge response not lost on him.
“Well, I’ll be your good luck charm,” the man said, completing the ritual and confirming he was the CIA officer that Mary Pat had sent to meet him.
“I doubt that very much,” he grumbled, this no longer part of the rote exchange, as he signaled to the deckhand to cast off the bow and stern lines.
Clark set the fishing pole on a long bench seat and then tossed the heavy backpack onto the couch in the salon before ascending the ladder to the flybridge. The man followed, dropping into the oversized captain’s chair beside Clark, who stood at the controls. With the lines cast off, Clark gave a two-fingered salute to the deckhand, then tapped both throttles out of idle. The younger CIA man opened his mouth to speak, but Clark cut him off.
“Not until we’re out,” was all he said.
The spy sighed and clenched his jaw at being managed, but didn’t argue.
Clark spun the boat around expertly and headed out to sea. Once clear of the pier and the no wake area, he opened up the throttles on the twin Cat C32s. The Bertram accelerated smoothly, and the bow dropped slowly as she auto-trimmed. He enjoyed the silence, the smell of salt, and the sea breeze as he maneuvered them south and east, away from the shipping channel and into the deep waters of the Jadransko More between the mainland and Brac Island to the south. Once he’d traveled a good two miles offshore, he eased the throttles back to idle. The Bertram rocked in the gentle waves, then windsocked into a stable heading of northwest. Clark scanned around them, saw no other boats anywhere nearby, before shutting the engines down.
“Come on,” he grumbled and beckoned the CIA man to follow him down the ladder.
Clark walked through the open slider into the spacious salon, picking up the man’s backpack as he passed the sofa and then dropping it onto the dining table before sliding around the breakfast bar into the galley. He bent over and pulled two Nova Runda beers, a local favorite, from the fridge without asking the CIA man if he wanted one.
If he doesn’t, then it’s two for me.
He sighed, trying to shake off the funk, and slid one of the bottles to the younger man already seated at the table.
“Thanks,” the spy said, raising it in a salute of sorts before taking a sip. “Wow, that’s really good. I bet you’re a microbrew guy . . .”
“What do you want?” Clark said, slipping into a white leather seat. “I’m on leave, as you may be aware,” he added, taking a long pull on his own beer. “Headed home in a day and a half to my grandkids.”
“Yes, and I’m sorry about that. Actually, I’m supposed to tell you that the DNI is sorry to interrupt your time off.” The man shook his head. “This was my first personal directive from her. Seems you have friends in high places, Mr. Clark.”
That brought the first real smile to Clark’s face, but he didn’t know this guy and had zero obligation to share anything about his relationships up the chain.
“What is it I can do for the CIA, Tommy?”
The man opened his backpack and pulled out a small tablet. He tapped in a password and then slid the tablet across to Clark, who glanced at the pictures that were fanned out in tiles.
“Looks like a submarine,” Clark said, then took another long swallow of cold beer. “If you’re hoping for more than that, you may have been given some bad intel. Submarines aren’t my area of expertise.”
“Right, sorry,” the CIA man said, pulling the tablet back and zooming it in with two fingers. “The submarine is the Belgorod, a heavily modified version of the Oscar II, which I, also, know little about. What has the analysts spooled up is a few things.” He slid the tablet to Clark again, this time showing what he guessed were torpedo tube doors. “Those torpedo doors were what got someone’s attention. This is a big modification, which the eggheads think is designed to accommodate a new—and I guess we read that as scary—weapon. There are other people working on that.”
“Well, that’s good, ’cause I got nothing to offer so far,” Clark said.
“Again, just background. The other modification to the sub is a docking station midship that the engineers think is part of a system to deliver special minisubs—like our SEAL team delivery vehicles, probably—but also some sort of underwater drones or something . . .” He raised a hand when Clark started to speak. “. . . another thing I know nothing about and suspect you are the same. The thing that has everyone in a tizzy is not just the strange modifications, but that this submarine has put to sea from the yard where she was undergoing the retrofit—headed out to the White Sea from Severodvinsk. A Russian boat putting to sea without us knowing is very, very unusual . . .”
“Some scary new submarine puts to sea without us knowing, and it has everyone spooled up. Got it. But where do I fit into this?”
The man shot him a look, and Clark felt a little bad about giving him a hard time.
“The unprecedented degree of compartmentalization is what has the DNI concerned.”
Clark leaned in, intrigued now.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Russian military complex,” the man said. “We have an asset inside Znamenka 19. Think Russian version of the Pentagon—”
“I know what Znamenka 19 is,” Clark said, “but go on.”
“Right, so this asset claims that the head of the NDMC, a General Andreyev, was furious that he didn’t know what was going on. Imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs not being in the loop when we deploy a new, high-tech submarine.”
“Hold on,” Clark said, realizing he was already all in, his interest beyond piqued. “Why do you say deployed? Why do we think she’s on deployment and not just doing some testing or even just moving to a permanent duty station?”
“That’s a good question. We’re not sure, but everyone is playing the worst-case-scenario game here. The CNO is concerned this sub is a special missions platform that not only has the ability to conduct secret missions off our shores, but also can carry nukes. Add to that the deep compartmentalization inside Russia and the sub going to sea without any forewarning, I mean—dude—you see how it looks?”
“Yeah,” Clark said, his mind now spinning furiously between doomsday scenarios and a deep sense of déjà vu. Talk about Cold War–era chess moves that feel like a bad dream. “But I still don’t see how the DNI thinks I can contribute?”
The CIA man smiled and pulled the tablet back, tapped again, and then slid it back.
“You know this dude, right?”
Clark stared at the image and felt himself stiffen. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s all good, bro. I’m read in.”
“The circle of people who know about this asset is supposed to be small,” Clark grumbled.
“And the circle is still small. I work with a special task force on emerging Russian threats and I’m the only guy on the team who knows about VICAR. I was briefed in the SCIF at ODNI by his handler.”
“Is that so. What’s the handler’s name?” Clark said, deciding that a little test seemed appropriate.
“Well, the handler’s NOC is Adam Yao. I’m not at liberty to say more.”
“What do I call you, by the way?” Clark asked, softening a bit. “Tommy?”
“You can call me James.”
“Okay, James,” Clark said. “Dovzhenko—code name VICAR—is a deep SVR asset who has taken decades to develop. What are you saying? The DNI wants to risk burning VICAR for this? She wants me to make contact?”
“Yes,” James said, closing the tablet to a dark screen. “Yao will make the initial contact with VICAR, but DNI Foley wants you to take the lead. We’ll set up the meet, provide you whatever support assets you need, and back you up. For the sake of expediency, I have a small team of seasoned field officers and ground branch operators at my disposal. The goal is to learn what’s happening within the Kremlin that has things fractured and compartmentalized in a way that we’ve not seen before. The hope is VICAR can provide insight for us on this matter.”
For the sake of expediency, eh? Translation: my guys are too busy to pull.
He laughed softly.
“Something funny?”
“Nah,” he said. “Where is best to schedule a meet? I assume you’ve coordinated with Yao already?”
“Yao is in the loop, but we were told to wait to pull the trigger until you were in and to get your thoughts. My guess is that VICAR may run the play for a meet, based on his own risk assessment and where he can make it happen without it raising flags.”
“Makes sense,” Clark said. “I trust Yao to get it set up. I can get my team here pretty quickly—”
“ODNI thinks we need to move fast, so there’s no time for that. Like I said, we have a team here, so we’ll support you on the meet, which needs to happen ASAFP.”
Clark frowned. He didn’t like working with strangers. Still, if it was just a meet for a data dump, that should be okay.
“It’s too bad we don’t have someone in the GRU who might have more insight on the military side of the house,” Clark said. “Does the CIA have any assets on that side we can use to vet whatever we learn from VICAR?”
James shrugged, but said nothing.
“Okay, well, any additional materials you need to share can go to my high side. In the meantime, I should drop you back at Lucica Zenta.”
“I can make calls from right here,” James said, “if you want to get some fishing in?”
“No,” Clark said. “Make your calls, but we need to head in. Looks like my vacation is over.”
He also needed to get in touch with Mary Pat and mobilize his team to Europe. If the meeting uncovered something actionable, then he’d need to be able to react quickly. And “actionable” wasn’t something he intended to manage with strangers.
Foley wasn’t using him for this meet unless she thought there would be follow-up work—something black and off the books . . .