5

6:30 P.M., SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

Talagi Airport, Archangel

 

It was cold now, overcast, and growing dark. Across the parking lot, the sallow-looking man in the black leather jacket was still astride his dark-red Ural Wolf motorbike, a 750-cc V-Twin Russian-made powerhouse. The handlebars were high, wide, and gleaming chrome, and the rakish-looking rider had the gear to match: studded leather trousers, cowboy belt from the US Midwest, and ex–East German border-patrol guard boots, black steer hide with a steel horseshoe running right around the heel.

Kurt Petrov had spent the past half hour taking photographs of the distant mountains. And now, with the light fading, he was still snapping, still staring into the distance. But only with one eye. The other was focused on the main entrance to the airport, the only way in and out of the passenger lounge.

At 6:45 p.m. he saw what he’d come for—the uniformed Russian Navy lieutenant commander Nikolai Chirkov exiting the building in company with a smartly dressed foreign visitor, about whom there was nothing remotely Russian, from the cut of his suit to his Burberry overcoat and leather briefcase.

He leaned down low in the saddle and aimed the long lens of the camera straight at the two men, over the roof of the nearest car, firing off shots in quick succession.

Then they turned their backs, shook hands, and parted. It was all very swift. Kurt put down the camera and watched the Russian officer head for a black automobile and climb in. He took three more shots, then two more as the car pulled away, zooming in on the Russian license plates. He made no attempt to follow the car. No need. He knew precisely where it was going.

He then watched the foreigner, walking toward a waiting taxi. He kicked the Wolf 750 into life. He stowed the camera into the left-side holder behind the saddle and gave the cab a five-hundred-yard start before roaring out of the parking lot in effortless pursuit. He tracked it for several miles, all the way down to Vaskovo Airport, where the cab driver collected his fare and drove away.

Kurt Petrov parked and went immediately to the reception desk, where he showed his identifying badge and card. He was immediately escorted to a staff-only area with a straight view out to the private jet short-term parking area. And there, ten minutes later, he photographed Rani Ben Adan, in company with his pilot, making their way out to a waiting Learjet.

He never got a decent shot of either man’s face, but combined with the other set of pictures, taken at the other airport, he had most of what he needed. He also had a record of the tail numbers of the Learjet, and on his cell phone he requested details of the owners. The charter company was not relevant, but the organization that rented the aircraft was.

Kurt Petrov, field agent (FSB), worked for the one organization in Russia that answers only to the president. He now knew one impressive fact: that Learjet was currently chartered to the Israeli Embassy, Moscow. The passenger had signed in as a Mr. John Carter of Birmingham, England. The embassy was not at liberty to disclose any further details and indeed pleaded diplomatic immunity from so doing.

The Russian agent watched the aircraft take off and bank around to the south before he fired up the Wolf 750 and headed back to Severodvinsk. He wondered what the Russian Naval officer was doing in secret company with anyone from the detested Israeli Embassy.

Still, it was not the forty-nine-year-old FSB man’s job to find that out. He was a specialist in surveillance at the highest level, for Russia’s Federal Security Service, the counterespionage and border-protection force, now reputed to have more power and freedom to act than the old KGB ever had.

Kurt had been involved a dozen years before in one of the FSB’s most ruthless actions—when they finally located the “mad Muslim” Shamil Basayev, mastermind behind the Russian theater disaster and the Beslan school massacre. The FSB simply lured Shamil toward a truckload of high explosive and blew both him and the truck to smithereens. Questions were asked, but the reply was simple: the FSB had legal power to carry out targeted killing at its own discretion.

Kurt Petrov was accustomed to FSB autonomy and brutality. He had no idea what would happen to the naval officer, although he understood one thing: Nikolai Chirkov would require some very fast talking to get out of this one.

 

Things had moved very fast, and very unexpectedly, since the hour between eleven and midnight the previous evening. And neither Lieutenant Commander Chirkov nor “John Carter” knew one thing about it.

At ten o’clock the Internet security team, led by Lennart Weinert, had made a routine check on the desk computer of Admiral Alexander Ustinov. They had found a discrepancy—the system had revealed an update to his most protected file at 9:35 in the evening.

The team had not been able to look at the file, since they did not know the password, but they could see there had been “editing” at that time. Problem: Admiral Ustinov, commander in chief of the Northern Fleet, had not returned to the ship before eleven. So who had done the “editing”?

Lennart Weinert reported to the admiral as soon as he returned to his quarters and informed him that someone had been into his computer ninety minutes before his return.

The admiral was mystified and told the security guys there must be something wrong with the hard drive.

“This is not a discussion,” he told the highest commander in the fleet and almost certainly the next chief of Russia’s Naval Staff. “Someone went into that file. Otherwise, the information could not have been saved.”

“Well, the only person would be my personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Chirkov. He has access to the office. But not to that computer, certainly not to the most sensitive documents.”

“I am proposing to call in an FSB officer and discuss the matter further,” said Weinert.

“I am not ready for that,” replied the admiral. “And I forbid it. However, the lieutenant commander has informed me he will be off the ship for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, tomorrow. You have my permission to follow him. If there is guilt, we must find it. But I would be very surprised if Nikolai Chirkov had committed any kind of indiscretion.”

“As you wish, sir,” replied Weinert. “I will undertake that. And report to you as soon as possible.”

One hour later, FSB HQ, in Lubyanka Square, Moscow, had officially sanctioned a “tail” to be assigned to a Russian Naval commander, a man working personally with one of the two or three most auspicious men in all of the Russian Navy. It was not unprecedented, but it had not happened in recent years, certainly since the KGB had been formally dismantled in November 1991.

Thus, Kurt Petrov was hurtling around the shores of the White Sea on his motorbike, trying to find out precisely what Nikolai Chirkov was up to. And, by any standards, he’d gotten very close to achieving that on his first day at work.

He returned to the FSB private office inside the enormous waterside sprawl of Zvezdochka Shipping and Engineering, the world’s largest shipyard, in Severodvinsk, where the Admiral Chabanenko was still laid up after more than six months.

He printed his pictures, selected the best ones, and called in to report that the Learjet’s flight plan was direct to Sheremetevo-2 in Moscow. The FSB was mildly interested in the program of the Englishman, John Carter, but not sufficiently to arrest him and risk a blazing row with the British Embassy. All they really wanted was to know who he was, and why, as a paint salesman, was he apparently in cahoots with the Israeli Embassy?

As the somewhat bored duty officer in the Lubyanka said, “They’re probably redecorating, right?” The route of the private jet suggested he was leaving Russia anyway, and Kurt had noted that Carter and Chirkov had met, perhaps by accident, at the Vaskovo Airport. Yes, they had left together, but separated immediately and gone in totally different directions.

There was a naval inquiry scheduled for 9:00 a.m. the following morning, Monday, and Kurt needed to have his pictures ready. Admiral Ustinov was chairing it himself, since any aspersions cast upon his personally selected assistant would reflect very badly on him.

Alexander Ustinov, a bull-necked, bald-headed former nuclear submarine commander, had a towering reputation in the Russian Navy and had also commanded the eight-thousand-ton Sovremenny Class destroyer Nastochivy in the Baltic. He was a native of the city of Volgograd, which sits on the convergence of the Volga and Don Rivers and was the scene of the bloodiest battle in human history, July 1942, when the city was called Stalingrad.

Admiral Ustinov was fifty now, but he was an expert on that and many other aspects of World War II. His grandmother had died in the German bombardment, and his grandfather was one of the six hundred thousand Russian troops who also died. Alexander Ustinov had a total of twelve relatives killed in the siege of Stalingrad almost thirty years before he was born.

But to him, it was last week. The Northern Fleet commander was a Russian, through and through. He had nothing but contempt for any other nation and was indeed certain that no other nation in the annals of the human race could have withstood what the Russians endured in the face of the German army and then crushed them.

Every year he made a pilgrimage back to his hometown, and there, in company with his two army officer sons, he would walk up the long slope of the hill that serves as a plinth for the largest free-standing statue on earth, the Mamaev Kurgan . . . Mother Russia, in battle mode, sculpted to commemorate the most triumphant and tragic event in Soviet history.

The 236-foot female warrior, her sword brandished another 36 feet above her head, caused his heart to beat and his tears to flow as he stared across the distant Volga River. It was as if Alexander Ustinov was renewing sacred vows of devotion and, if necessary, valor. There was no military officer in all of Russia more suited to help President Nikita Markova fulfill his dreams of a dominant Russia.

Admiral Ustinov held his inquiry in the wardroom of the Admiral Chabanenko. He sat at the head of the table, surrounded by Weinert and one other member of the Internet security team; by Kurt Petrov, the man with the photographs; and by two officers of the FSB. Lieutenant Commander Chirkov was informed five minutes before proceedings began that he was required to attend.

But only when the admiral was finally seated did he realize this was about him and that he faced a possible charge of high treason against the state. Nikolai was terrified, and he tried to scramble his thoughts into line, asking Admiral Ustinov over and over what he was supposed to have done wrong.

The C-in-C informed everyone he would conduct the inquiry personally, and if anyone had any specific questions, they must be addressed to him alone. If he thought Nikolai Chirkov should answer directly, he would indicate his approval. Admiral Ustinov was accustomed to total command.

“Lieutenant Commander,” he began, “it has been brought to my attention that my personal computer was used by persons unknown during my absence from the ship on Saturday evening. The log on the hard drive showed a record of editing carried out at 2135 hours. I ask now, was that you?”

“Of course it was, sir. I entered the office to bring you the notes about the missile, and I noticed your machine was still switched on, although the screen was blank. I hit the space bar to wake it up, and it jumped instantly to the page you had left.

“The headline had a major mistake. It referred to an improved range for the Iskander of two-hundred-plus miles. I knew it should have been two-thousand-plus, so I added a comma and a zero. Saved it and shut it down.”

“Thank you, Nikolai. Weinert, what else?”

“Nothing on that, sir.”

“Very well.” Admiral Ustinov studied Kurt Petrov’s report. “Now, Lieutenant Commander, you left the base on Sunday afternoon, traveling by car. Where did you go?”

“Archangel, sir. To visit my aunt.”

“In the town.”

“Yessir. Gaidara Street, near the park. She’s Ludmilla Volkov—my father’s sister.”

“Lieutenant Commander, I put it to you that you never went anywhere near Gaidara Street, or the park, or your father’s sister. As a result of the computer confusion, you were followed by officers of Russian internal security, and you were ‘tailed’ and photographed at Vaskovo Airport.”

Nikolai Chirkov’s mind raced. If he was caught lying, seriously lying, he could be shot at dawn. He needed a story.

“Sir . . . this is hugely embarrassing. I did not wish you, or anyone else, to know the truth. But this is a very private family matter . . . ”

“In your own interests, I am afraid I must ask you to inform us of the truth.”

“Sir, Ludmilla Volkov is still attractive and very wealthy. She has been seeing some kind of a mysterious foreigner, intermittently, and both my father and her children are afraid this man is after her fortune. After weeks of persuasion, she finally provided us with his name and phone number.

“He’s English, younger than her, and a director of an industrial paint company. My father arranged for me to meet him at the airport and try to find out his intentions toward Ludmilla, who is, needless to say . . . smitten.”

Everyone in the room smiled at the vision of the wealthy widow and the plainly rakish paint salesman fortune hunting in Archangel.

“Then why lie to us?” asked the admiral.

“Sir, surely everyone can see this is not something my family would want made public, especially as Ludmilla might suffer a fit of pique and marry him . . . ”

“Well, yes, I see that. But to tell deliberate untruths to a naval inquiry such as this is punishable by a very long term in a military jail, or by an instant dishonorable discharge. For matters involving espionage . . . ”

“Sir, this is about as far removed from the affairs of Russia’s navy as it’s possible to get. Surely, I get some leeway to deal with a family problem, and try to keep it private?”

“Well, I see no reason to act in a completely inhumane way,” replied the admiral. “And your service record is quite outstanding. I would be inclined to drop the whole matter, pending Ludmilla’s broken heart. But the FSB must make their own decision whether to check out the story.”

“Sir,” said the resident FSB field officer in Severodvinsk, “with your approval, we will discuss this further and then decide.”

“Very well,” said Admiral Ustinov. “You make your decision later. For the moment this inquiry is suspended, and, I should record, with no blemish thus far on Lieutenant Commander Chirkov’s record.”

Everyone left the wardroom except for the admiral and his assistant, who had a huge amount of work to do, recording the official version of the test firing of the Iskander-K.

“I really am very sorry about that,” said Nikolai. “I probably should have told you the story before I even left.”

“You probably should have. But I think it will be fine. Except for poor Ludmilla. You probably frightened this Mr. Carter to death, turning up at the airport in naval uniform—he’ll probably never come back to Russia.”

“I suppose not . . . but still, anyway, I expect you want to start the full report of the test firing. Will I meet you in the office in ten minutes?”

“That’ll do well.”

“Yes, sir,” snapped Nikolai, saluting his boss, in deference to his exalted rank. At which point he left the room, unsure whether to (a) take his service revolver and commit suicide, (b) run for his life, or (c) try to contact Ludmilla.

Only one thing was certain. He was finished, in the navy and in Russia. The FSB would check out his story and find it was a pack of lies. His father would not have the slightest idea what they were talking about, and neither, for that matter, would Ludmilla Volkov. The “spooks” probably already had a phone tap on the landline in Ludmilla’s house and probably on his father’s. Neither of them had a cell phone, which rendered him just about powerless.

He could contact no one. The only area of confusion would be Ludmilla’s whereabouts. He happened to know she was on vacation somewhere down on the Black Sea. There would be no one at the house on Gaidara Street. Not even the housekeeper.

But the “spooks” would find her. It might take a couple of days, maybe three. But they’d locate her, and she would listen in amazement to the absurd tale of the British fortune hunter. At which point they would know the whole story was a fabrication, and a warrant would be issued for his immediate arrest.

If they were very smart, which they normally were not, a new question would leap to the forefront: who precisely was this John Carter? He clearly had not come to Archangel to see Ludmilla Volkov, who’d never heard of him. So whom, precisely, had he come to see? Lieutenant Commander Nikolai Chirkov?

If they got that far, the FSB might very well pinpoint the Israeli Embassy and burst in demanding answers, whether or not Rani was still in the country. Right now, Nikolai needed to get hold of Rani, on a cell phone, and make arrangements to get out of Russia. Luckily, he did have money.

He returned to his quarters and gathered up his gear—laptop, notebooks, pens, and Iskander-K missile-component guide. He reported to the admiral’s office and started mapping out headings for the missile report. He could tell Alexander Ustinov was busy because he was uncharacteristically late. When he did come in, he was preoccupied on the phone.

Eventually, he produced his hardcover notebook, opened it, smoothed out the page he wanted read, and told Nikolai to make a start on the report, following his own jottings in the book.

“Try to read my writing, and lay it out as well as possible. I’ll set aside a couple of hours right after lunch, and we’ll knock it into shape and then circulate it. I’ll see you around 1400 hours.”

The admiral walked off down the corridor, quietly singing the uplifting anthem of his hometown, “The Song of the Volga Boatmen”: Mighty stream so deep and wide, Volga, Volga, our pride.

He was unaware, of course, of the hard-angled attack the FSB was mounting on his office, and on Nikolai, who was effectively his chief of staff. He was certainly not aware that his closest colleague was a master spy who worked for the West and regarded the Israeli Embassy as his second home. Had he done so, he would have shot Nikolai Chirkov dead, no questions asked.

When Ustinov had left, Nikolai picked up the notebook, scanning it for further information. He realized he was in the last hours of his navy career—somehow he needed to get through to Rani and to arrange passage out of Russia. Slowly, he turned the pages of the book, stopping every few moments to make notes on his laptop.

There was a fund of knowledge in Admiral Ustinov’s pages, stuff Nikolai had never heard of, detailed accounts of progress made at China Shenzhen Technology, even more detail about a twenty-nine-year-old Russian lawyer living in Washington, DC, Nina Muratova, who appeared to work for a European bank.

He spent a half hour on the book and then left the administrative area. He collected documents from his cabin, stuffed them into his pockets, and prepared to leave the ship for the last time. He dared not take a bag of any kind, for fear they were already following him. If they could track him to the airport in Archangel, they sure as hell could track him out of the Zvezdochka dockyard, carrying even a small suitcase.

It was eleven thirty in the morning, and he had no idea where Rani was, since that destination had been on a strictly need-to-know basis. He walked along to the gangway that led to the shore and disembarked. The gatekeepers saluted him, and he walked away along the usual route to his car. Somehow he had to get away, far away, but he was nerve-wracked about this familiar vehicle, and whether anyone might track it. How far would he dare drive? How long did he have before he was missed?

He scanned the surrounding area and saw no one paying him the slightest attention. So he climbed into the driver’s seat and took off, making for the main gates to the dockyard, the town, and the fast route south down the M8. Happily, he had filled up with gas on the way to the airport and now faced a quick seventy-mile run down to a country road, leading over the mountains, to a little place called Emca, where there was a railway station on the main line to Moscow. Nikolai had no idea where he was going, only that he had to get away.

The first part of the journey was simple, straight down the freeway, checking all the while for any car that may be tracking him. For all he knew, there was a tracking device already fixed to his car, and then to the satellites, but he did not believe he was under quite that degree of suspicion.

At a quarter of two, he swung off the highway and headed for the mountains. He realized that sometime in the next few minutes there was likely to be a bellow of rage emanating from the admiral’s office when he discovered his assistant was either late or AWOL.

The thought made Nikolai doubly nervous. He ran the numbers through his mind and decided the FSB guys had already drawn a blank over at Ludmilla’s house. But he did have a chance: if he was lucky, they would merely wait around, or make a few inquiries, and discover she was away, maybe for a few days.

However, if they concluded that John Carter had come to Archangel from Moscow but not to see Ludmilla, then they would swiftly work out he came to see someone else . . . almost certainly Lieutenant Commander Nikolai Chirkov. Kurt Petrov had photographed them together.

That, in Nikolai’s mind, was the key. Would they refrain from getting aggressive for maybe another couple of days, or would they conclude that Ludmilla’s absence confirmed that Nikolai’s second story to the inquiry was a total pack of lies?

If so, all his dreads would come true, and he would be hunted down in this vast country by professionals who were supremely gifted at this type of relentless cruelty. Nikolai drove on between the hills, and he crossed the many rivers that cascade through this part of northern Russia.

By now it was almost two thirty. He was within striking range of Emca and was almost certain there would be a major alert for him in the Zvezdochka Shipping and Engineering yard. He had left no indication of leaving the ship permanently. His cabin was shipshape, and aside from his documents and his greatcoat, he had taken nothing. He hoped they would be baffled, but the most urgent matter on his mind was his current dress. If the navy had put out an emergency alert to locate this missing lieutenant commander, it was plainly not smart to be walking around in uniform.

He needed clothes, but he did not want to start a trail in a small-town shop where he might buy new trousers, shirt, and sweater. The heavy overcoat would blend in with other dark coats in the chill of the Moscow night. If he got there.

The road was winding and slow. Nikolai was stuck behind a large agricultural truck for six miles, and he did not drive into Emca until around ten past three. He went past the railway station and parked on a deserted piece of land at the north end of the town. He took a screwdriver out of the tire-changing pack and unscrewed the front and back license plates of the vehicle.

Nearby was a pile of old building material, and he leaned a piece of flat wood on the rear end of his car, covering the empty space. Then he walked to the station and purchased a regular ticket to Moscow. The train was due at 4:00 p.m., forty minutes from now.

“Change at Vologda,” said the clerk. “You want the 11:00 p.m. express to Moscow, arriving Yaroslavskiy Station 7:00 a.m.”

Nikolai purchased a newspaper and walked back to the car, dumping the license plates in a trash bin without breaking stride. He only wanted to avoid being noticed, and this did not include a half-hour wait on a station platform where anyone might see and remember him.

He started the engine and ran the heater against the chill of the late afternoon. The newspaper was not especially interesting, though it did have a story about a possible missile test over the White Sea three days ago. The reporter knew about one-tenth as much about the incident as Nikolai did.

At ten minutes to four, he locked the car and strolled back to the station, where he walked to the far end of the platform, still pretending to read his newspaper. The train was only three minutes late and not very crowded. Nikolai found a near-deserted part of the passenger car and settled down, making sure his greatcoat covered his uniform. He removed his Russian Naval tie and opened his collar, which made him carelessly unlike a military officer.

For six hours he slept fitfully, trying to cast from his mind the scale of the uproar he must by now have left behind in the Zvezdochka shipyard. He was certain that by now the FSB officers had contacted the Israeli Embassy and once more insisted on knowing the identity and whereabouts of “John Carter.”

Equally, he knew they would never be provided with that information. Nikolai thought it likely that Rani would be warned off Moscow altogether and transferred back to Tel Aviv. For himself, there was an extremely difficult path to take—principally, to get out of Russia forever.

The FSB was not anxious these days to launch operations in other countries. The president did not like it and considered it bad for Russia’s image—too much of a reminder of what the world saw as “the bad old days.” Markova himself regarded them as the very best old days, when a steel-edged Russia had growled at a nervous world from behind the Iron Curtain.

Nonetheless, the FSB would be relentless in their operations inside Russia. They would search to the end of the tundra and back to find the naval officer they believed had become a traitor. God knows what his father and Anna would think. Even Ludmilla might look askance.

Over and over, the roads led to only one solution: he had to get out of Russia. There would be a cordon around airports, railway terminals, and bus stations. This was becoming a nightmare, despite the presence of almost a half-million dollars, with more to come, in Geneva.

On reflection, he would be lucky to get out of Yaroslavskiy Station without being arrested. He was certain the FSB would have covered all major railheads. And now he had no car. His only chance was a private plane, and the only person who could possibly help with that was Rani, who had temporarily vanished.

Nikolai understood it would be hopeless to try to contact the Israeli Embassy, because that would be asking them to shelter a fugitive. He thought it likely the FSB would be encamped outside the place, just waiting for him to show up. As far as he could tell, Moscow was just about the worst idea possible for him. He was safer in a remote, provincial city where the FSB had few resources.

He looked at his train map, and he checked his wallet for the credit card no one knew about, the one with one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of credit on it, backed as it was by his Swiss bank.

With Rani’s help, he could fly out. He had two false passports, one British, one German. Rani had insisted on these as soon as they began working together. If he could just find different clothes, he had a chance. If Rani would answer his phone, he had a better than good chance. But Nikolai knew the pilot must never be aware of his true identity.

With the northern Russia southbound local still clattering through the night, Nikolai made a clear-cut decision. He was getting off the train at Vologda at 10:00 p.m. and not getting on the Moscow overnight express.

So far as he could guess, the Russian railroad system represented a potential valley of death. When he reached Vologda, he would try to find a hotel and contact Rani. Failing that, he would take a taxi out to the airport, six miles out of town, and try to charter a flight either to Helsinki or at least to the Russian airport at Brest, hard against the Polish border.

LATE AFTERNOON

Frankfurt Airport, Germany

 

Rani had made his flight connection. He and Mack Bedford were at a corner table in the Goethe Bar, and they were very serious, Rani having already heard from the embassy in Moscow that officers of the FSB were looking not only for John Carter but also for Lieutenant Commander Chirkov.

Rani had his encrypted cell switched on, in case Nikolai called. He also understood it might now be too dangerous for him to return to Russia. Mack listened gravely to the ever-increasing conundrum facing his two prize contacts.

“Okay, let’s not dwell on the working problems facing my Russian officer,” said Rani. “Let’s get up to date with FOM-2, because we now know a lot about it.”

“It stands for ‘Fort Meade,’ and the 2 means ‘nuclear.’ These guys aim to slam a couple of these new Iskander-K missiles right into Building 2A at the National Security Agency.”

Mack stared incredulously at Rani. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“That’s what they’re planning, and those plans are very far advanced.”

“Well, we saw the new missile in action,” said Mack. “It was very fast, and it went way more than eighteen hundred miles, and blew the bejesus out of the polar ice cap, right?”

“Worse than that. The Russkies dropped a massive wooden structure on the ice with parachutes. That missile blew every last plank into the stratosphere. They can hit that, they can hit the NSA.”

“So give me the plan as we now know it.”

“They decide to whack America and somehow hide behind a bunch of lies and evasions. First step was to build a new missile with the correct range, propulsion, and payload. The new Iskander-K that we saw last Friday possessed all three of those qualities.”

“Right.”

“We know they worked in secret at a monastery on the Solovetsky Islands. All kinds of international-class nuclear weapons guys turned up from North Korea and Tehran. A presidential party walked out to see the launch last Friday. No bullshit.”

“Okay, that’s all clear.”

“However, Mack, there is still a gray area, and that’s the launch site. Our man at the table heard them repeatedly discuss the possibility of Central America. A two-thousand-mile range makes everything possible from that area. If they can somehow launch from the narrow land between Mexico and Bolivia, they can stand well clear of the blame.

“And this brings us to the nuclear football, which I believe is the most complicated part of the deal. The Russians have to shut it down, and you’d think it would be easier from Central America than from Russia, forty-five hundred miles away.

“My man has the distinct impression they intend to transport the whole setup—missiles, launchers, jammers, computers, code breakers, and people—by surface ship to wherever they are going.”

“You dismiss the possibility of a submarine?”

“Yes. When the Gepard hit the beach in Scotland, that was the end of it. Especially now that SOSUS is returning in a big way.

“The Kremlin has no appetite for a Russian submarine to sail through the GIUK Gap and somehow be apprehended by the Americans with all that Russian intelligence on board. They’ve settled on a surface ship.”

“And we cannot get a handle on the place they might launch . . . ”

“Not yet.”

Right then Rani’s phone rang three times and then stopped. There was no one there. The Israeli agent was nearly certain it was Nikolai trying to get through—as it happened, from a train in the middle of nowhere.

“I’ll just have to wait,” he said. “He’ll get into a good reception zone sooner or later.”

Mack was a great deal more concerned about the National Security Agency getting hit by a nuclear missile than about anything else. So far as Mack knew, the agency had its own police force and SWAT team right on campus. He did not, however, know whether there were antiaircraft missiles and artillery on the NSA roof to shoot down intruders.

The real problem was the part they knew least about—the jamming of the football. It was possible that Bob Birmingham’s boys would find something inside China Shenzhen Corporation in Guangdong Province. Meanwhile, they could do no more than have all the codes changed and hope to hell the Russians did not have hot intelligence operators deep inside the Pentagon or even the White House itself.

“We can match them militarily any day of the goddamned week,” said Mack. “It’s this tricky stuff with computers, and all this code shit—that’s what bothers me. Also, I wish to hell we knew where this proposed strike against us was actually coming from.”

In the years since they had half jumped, half fallen off Saddam’s oil rig, Rani had always followed the career of the man he regarded as a blood brother. He never really knew what the legendary SEAL commander was doing, but he had an instinct, as if Mack Bedford left his personal signature on certain operations. When a busload of jihadist terrorists was blown up in an operation that made the state of Connecticut literally shudder, Rani knew. When four of the most dangerous al-Qaeda men on earth were hunted down and “eliminated” somewhere up the Khyber Pass, he knew. But when an entire town of Somali pirates was obliterated in brutal battles, both at sea and on land, Rani Ben Adan could not help himself. He shouted to an empty room, “That’s gotta be Mack!”

And now they were together once more, plotting and scheming in this German airport, trying to make sense of a Russian president who thought he was a twenty-first-century Peter the Great. They knew almost enough, but not quite. At this point Russia had done nothing to break international law, except maybe a mildly illegal but harmless missile test firing.

They had nailed down the significance of the monastery, site of the new missile development. They knew its projected target, although not from whence it would come. They also knew that Nikita Markova would not dare hit the United States in any way until they had cracked that nuclear football. Equally, they knew one of the world’s leading cyber-warfare specialists was in the Solovetsky Islands, helping with the program that would temporarily castrate the president of the United States.

Mack was already inclined to “slam the friggin’ monastery” with either a SEAL attack or a very large bomb. But that would solve the problem only in the short term. Markova would simply start over, or, at least, he might. A far better plan would be to wait until this entire FOM-2 operation was ready to go and then somehow obliterate it and hang Russia’s government out to dry, universally accused of planning crimes against humanity.

So far as Rani could make out, there were two priorities. They had to find out the precise launch site of that Iskander-K and then discover the precise method by which this Dr. Yang was proposing to “jam” the football. If it were by way of a Chinese or Russian satellite, the United States would knock it clean out of the sky, probably with a supersonic missile launched from the Colorado Rockies.

But these were tomorrow’s refinements that would move onto the front burner as soon as Mack was back in San Diego. Right now they had a serious situation developing. Their master spy, Lieutenant Commander Nikolai Chirkov, was in danger, being hunted down by his own side. And, worse yet, the Russian was probably carrying the priceless information that might make the difference between success and failure of their bid to crack and eliminate FOM-2.

There was nothing either he or Mack could do except sit and wait for the phone to ring and hope to hell it was Nikolai with some kind of scheme to get out of Russia and join them in the West. Rani himself was waiting for instructions from Mossad HQ. He already knew it was unlikely he would return to Moscow, but he would still be effective, as long as he had access to Nikolai’s vast knowledge of FOM-2.

Mack, too, was unable to return home until the Nikolai problem was cleared up, especially if the fugitive Russian officer needed rescue. Captain Bedford was good at that type of stuff, considered a world expert, even in the slick and ruthless environment of SPECWARCOM.

Right now they were both bored sideways with the enormous airport and decided to get a cab into the city, check into a hotel, and try to leave phone numbers on Nikolai’s text service—anything to provide the Russian with options to communicate.

10:00 P.M. (LOCAL), SAME DAY, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

Vologda Station
Northern European Russia

 

The southbound local from Archangel ran into the slow approaches to Vologda with a rattling and clanking of railroad points and locomotive brakes. They were down to a speed of 10 mph a half mile from the passenger platforms, trundling past the outskirts of the twelfth-century town, which sits astride the Vologda River, 250 miles north of Moscow.

It was very dark now, and the tracks were not well illuminated. Nikolai Chirkov was standing in the train’s corridor and never saw the parked helicopter, standing somewhat incongruously in the dark on a playing field at the edge of the town.

In fact, there was nothing incongruous about that helicopter. It was one of the great military warhorses of the world, the Mil M8T 260-mph twin-turbine transport and gunship used almost universally by every Russian satellite armed force. It possessed a wonderful track record, on and off the battlefield, going back deep into the old Soviet Union.

This particular one, with two armed navy guards in attendance, was virtually brand new, blue and white in color with a sixty-nine-foot rotor span. It was built at the world’s largest helicopter plant, in Kazan, Tatarstan.

It had taken two aircrews and an engineer to ferry four FSB agents in this big military transporter south from Severodvinsk, on what was a routine line of inquiry—just checking the main railroad stations for the missing lieutenant commander, sometimes following a mainline train, sometimes not. It was a dull and laborious task without much hope of success, especially as everyone thought Nikolai Chirkov would keep going all the way to Moscow.

The M8T was formally owned by the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, but right now had been seconded to the FSB, although Admiral Ustinov had insisted his own men operate it for as long as it was on loan. The agents had not yet arrived at any station in time to search the train’s passengers, and in any event this type of behavior was not encouraged.

The one aspect of his near-totalitarian rule that made Nikita Markova truly jumpy was any accusation of bullying and harassment. He might have been all in favor of such tactics, but he had no plans to make that public.

Which was why the four FSB agents were sitting quietly in the Vologda Station, reading, dozing, or chatting, waiting to see if anyone interesting disembarked from the train. Failing that, given the late hour, they would board the helicopter and fly to check out Yaroslav. After that it was Moscow, a routine check-in at Lubyanka Square, and then to the FSB hotel where all the agents stayed.

Nikolai climbed down from his car, buttoning his greatcoat around him and joining a substantial number of visitors from the North who had also been traveling all evening. He walked down the station platform to the main station concourse, which had a tomblike atmosphere with hardly anything still open. He asked the ticket collector for directions to a hotel or café and was told, “Café Lesnaya, three hundred yards that way, or Hotel Vologda, just up the street. Both open until late.”

Nikolai, who had been too nervous to eat anything all day, headed straight up the side street that led to the Lesnaya and found it agreeably warm, cheerful, and fairly crowded. He ordered coffee and a couple of cream cheese and caviar sandwiches. He had ceased to worry about the cost of anything, only the possibility of leaving Russia at dawn tomorrow.

He used his cell to call the Hotel Vologda and book a single room, and then, restored by the excellent sandwich and coffee, he moved outside and into the shadows of Galkinskaya Street, which seemed deserted, with the time now around a quarter to eleven.

The two men who had spotted him at the station, and then tracked him all the way to the Café Lesnaya, were now into Galkinskaya but had lost sight of him. They moved quicker on soft rubber-soled boots, coming swiftly down the street and listening at the same time.

They heard him rather than saw him and ducked into a doorway perhaps fifteen feet from the shop entrance into which Nikolai had retreated. They could hear him speaking on the phone. They heard the name Rani. And they heard “Frankfurt,” and then “Brest,” the town on the Polish border. Within seconds they heard “Ustinov.” They scarcely needed to hear more. Their orders were succinct.

9:45 P.M. (LOCAL), SAME DAY

Holbein’s Restaurant, Frankfurt

 

Rani’s phone rang just as they finished dessert. He almost dropped his final spoonful with the pure excitement of seeing Nikolai’s number come up on his cell-phone screen.

He covered the mouthpiece and hissed to Mack, “It’s him. Can’t see where he is . . . ”

“Hello, Nikki . . . Where are you? . . . Where the hell’s that? . . . Okay, I got you. What? You need a plane? No problem. Going where? Where’s that? . . . Christ! You have his notes? Whatshisname? . . .”

Right then Rani heard the shot, the bullet that smashed through the back of Nikolai’s skull.

Pedro. He’s Pedro Miguel . . . Those were the last words the Mossad field agent heard. And then there was a loud clatter as the phone hit the sidewalk and another crash! as the dying Nikolai slammed the heel of his leather boot into the fallen telephone, resolutely ensuring the phone had surrendered its last secrets.

Rani did not hear the second shot, which shattered once more the dark quiet of Galkinskaya Street. This bullet cleaved into Nikolai Chirkov’s just-beating heart. Then there was nothing.

The agent reholstered his service revolver and tapped the buttons on his own cell phone. Within one minute a Vologda Police Lada Priora came hurtling around the corner, with no sirens or flashing blue lights. Two officers jumped out and bundled the somewhat messy remains of Lieutenant Commander Nikolai Chirkov into a black body bag and stowed it, with some difficulty, in the trunk.

The two FSB agents climbed into the backseat, and the Lada swerved out of the downtown area and headed for the waiting helicopter, which now had its main rotor running. They loaded the body bag on board and lifted off, bound for Moscow. A couple of hours later, the deceased Nikolai would be in the morgue of the Lubyanka, where the agents would discover incontrovertible evidence that he had indeed been a master spy of the very worst type.

They would find his extra passports, the notes written down from Admiral Ustinov’s logbook, his credit card with the hundred-thousand-dollar limit, and his Russian, Swiss, and German driver’s licenses. And a lot of rubles. This was a Russian insider, and he was selling secret military information to the West.

There was, however, no record of his contacts, no trace of Rani’s name, no mention of the Israeli Embassy, no record of his most recent meetings, and not a word about the mysterious John Carter he had met in the airport at Archangel.

Nikolai had been careful and very professional, but he was planning to make the final break, to get out of the country he had betrayed. And for that he needed documents and cash. No need to try to conceal them. If he was caught, he would be a dead man, as he now most certainly was.

9:55 P.M.

Holbein’s Restaurant, Frankfurt

 

The line to Nikolai Chirkov had gone dead for the last time. Rani still held the phone in his hand, but there was, plainly, no connection. He’d heard the shot and knew that his contact and friend was gone.

“They got him,” he said quietly. “As I guess they were bound to do. He never had a prayer getting out of Severodvinsk. There’s hardly any roads, one railway line, and I imagine the airports were cordoned off. I didn’t really hear where he was.”

“What about this Pedro Miguel? Who the hell’s he?” asked Mack. “That’s a Latin American name—sounds like Pedro’s somehow mixed up with the launch site.”

“I think you are right about that,” said Rani. “I know that was Nikki’s priority—to get us the precise area where they planned to fire those missiles.

“He’d already established Central America. And that was important to him. He was a lifelong military man, and he knew we’d have a ten-times better chance of intercepting those Iskanders if we just knew where they were coming from.”

“What do we do if we find Pedro? Kidnap him and find out what’s going on?” Mack Bedford was, as ever, practical to the last degree.

“Well, there’s probably about 17 billion Pedros in Central America, so that’ll take the rest of the century.”

“Yeah, but if this guy’s a president, or at least a minister of defense, the NSA will find him.”

“They’d better. Or they might be off the map. A nuclear warhead on one of those missiles would nearly level Fort Meade.”

“Look,” said Mack, “let’s get back to the hotel. It’s only four o’clock in Washington. We can get on a landline and talk to someone at the NSA, brief them, and get the right people on the case. That’ll give me a chance to talk to Andy Carlow—and you probably want to find out where you’re going to live.”

“Guess it’ll make a change from hiding in some Moscow alley trying to make the cell connect,” said Rani. “I’ll tell you something: I won’t be sorry to be out of Russia. Two years is enough for one lifetime.”

They were back in the Intercontinental Hotel, on the banks of the Main River, within ten minutes. Mack Bedford opened up the line to the NSA in Fort Meade, asking to be connected to the director’s office.

When someone answered, he went very official. “US Navy SEAL Captain Mackenzie Bedford, SPECWARCOM, speaking . . . personal to Captain James Ramshawe. Tell him to use the encrypted line.”

“Hey! G’day, Mack. Where the hell have you been?”

“Well, right now, Jimmy, I’m in Frankfurt, Germany.”

“What the hell are you doing there?”

“Just had some kind of apple strudel, since you ask. But I have stuff you need to know.”

“Lay it on me, Mack.”

“Can I assume you are well briefed on this Russian problem—Solovetsky Islands and so on?”

“As well as I can be. Not many hard facts, though.”

“Well, here are some for you. That missile test last Friday—in the Arctic . . . ”

“Yup . . . I got it.”

“We encrypted right now?”

“Affirmative.”

“Okay. They’re planning to hit Fort Meade with that Iskander-K. Their working code’s FOM-2. Stands for ‘Fort Meade—nuclear.’ Building OPS 2A.”

“Christ,” said Ramshawe.

Mack continued, “We don’t think anything is going to be fired directly from Russia. Our source thinks South America. Unhappily, he was just shot by the FSB earlier this evening.”

“Jesus Christ, this is like the Wild West.”

“Tell me about it. But there’s something important. He was on the phone to my contact when he died. And he was trying to tell us about the missile launch site. He was saying the name of some guy in Latin America. And I think we need to locate this character, real quick.”

“That’s my part?”

“Hope so.”

“What’s his name?”

“Pedro Miguel.”

Captain Ramshawe said, “Pedro Miguel’s not a person. That’s the name of the second big shipping lock at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. It’s the Pedro Miguel Lock. Named after the little town on the waterway.”

Mack saw the funny side of the discussion. “How the heck do you know that?” he said finally.

“I’ll tell you, mate. It’s why I’m sitting here in the big chair and you’re fucking about eating apple crumble with the Third Reich.”

Mr. and Mrs. Ramshawe had bequeathed their son the outrageous humor of the Australian Outback. And he’d mastered the art of saying the worst thing he could think of at the hands of his mentor, Admiral Arnold Morgan.

But now he was extremely serious. “That missile they fired was the most advanced rocket they’ve ever launched,” he said. “I’m talking speed, accuracy, and range. You want to stop something like that, every second matters. You guys detect any Chinese involvement in any of this?”

“Some,” replied Mack. “They’re helping with a cyber-warfare action to jam the president’s nuclear football. They got a guy from China Shenzhen Technology ensconced in the fucking monastery . . . Why’d you ask?”

“Well, China does have an involvement in the running of the Panama Canal. They have a major interest in the ports at either end. If they are in any way involved in this FOM-2, it would make sense to launch from somewhere along the canal. It’s kind of quiet, with a lot of jungle. They launch from in there, no one would ever know.”

“When they test fired from Solovetsky,” said Mack, “they used one of those regular vehicles. It sure would make life easy for ’em, if they could off-load a launcher through a Panama gateway port. Then just drive it into the jungle.”

“When are you back?” asked Jimmy.

“Tomorrow sometime. I’m getting a ride from Landstuhl.”

“Check in with me, will you? I’d like to compare notes. Meanwhile, I’ll get guys active in the Pedro Miguel area . . . By the way, am I going to read about your buddy who was shot?”

“I doubt it. That’s not the type of stuff the old Russkies issue these days. Anyway, I’m one removed. Don’t even know his name.”

“Poor bastard.”

0900 (LOCAL), TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

Russian Navy Main Staff HQ
St. Petersburg

 

Admiral Vitaly Rankov, C-in-C Russian Navy, stood in jackbooted splendor in his new headquarters. The move from the old Kremlin offices in Moscow to the majestic and historic Admiralty Building on the shores of the wide Neva River had delighted the entire Russian Navy.

This was reflected glory in its most dazzling form, beneath the epic gilded spire of the old Naval Academy, with its time-honored golden weather vane, a Russian sailing ship of the line, swiveling quietly, the focal point above the central area of St. Petersburg.

Housed in a great building of the empire style, rows of white columns, and statues, the subject of a book by Vladimir Nabokov, the very embodiment of Russian Naval power, rising now from the hard-up ashes of the old Soviet era and into the new, prosperous, oil-rich glitter of the twenty-first century.

Admiral Rankov, a former Russian Olympic oarsman, presided over a dark-blue service comprising 150,000 active personnel, a burgeoning blue-water fleet, and a desk full of wonderful reports revealing updates on new and brilliant nuclear submarines, plus nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Russia’s first. The latest guided-missile destroyers and frigates were being constructed along the river, just as they always were in Russia’s maritime history, when this building was for so long the hub of the navy, the old HQ, until the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Rankov was one of the first Russian Naval chiefs ever to stand on the brink of such overwhelming improvements. Before him stood a man whose star was plummeting to earth, as surely as Rankov’s was rising to the heavens. Alexander Ustinov, despite his status as patriot, fleet admiral, and heir apparent, had the appearance of a defeated warrior.

His face was crestfallen, his expression was resigned, and there was a slouch to his shoulders. His very bearing suggested the end of the line. But Vitaly Rankov had known him for many years and had long admired his clear grasp of Russia’s problems. When the chips were down, when the dockyards were falling apart, when the old government could not afford to pay the dockyards’ electric bills, Admiral Ustinov was a power in the land.

He had kept the shipyards open. Even as a rear admiral, he had fought and argued for his men to be paid, and when they weren’t (which was often), he issued great patriotic speeches, imploring his captains not to give in, promising that Russia would rise again, reminding them of the times Russians had stood alone in the face of unprecedented human onslaught. And, above all, telling them that they were the best, that a united Russia was unstoppable. Mother Russia must be protected . . . If not by you, who?

Admiral Rankov had never forgotten this martinet of the Northern Fleet, and now, for the first time in his long career, he was witnessing the man at his lowest level. But Vitaly was a sportsman. He understood the levels of performance required to stay at the very top. And he knew about days when everything went wrong. His mighty heart went out to his longtime colleague Alexander, the peerless commander who had been compromised by a cheap little traitor who had tried to sell everyone down the river.

Rankov, a massive man, an Olympian, and, like Alexander, a patriot, smiled and said, “Sit down, old friend. Let me pour you some coffee.”

Admiral Ustinov sank gratefully into a chair. He watched the all-powerful Vitaly tilting the coffeepot, and he knew that on his huge mahogany desk there was a document demanding his own court-martial for dereliction of duty, allowing the Northern Fleet to be infiltrated by a spy for the West and failing to protect documents of a vital nature. He was further accused of endangering Russia’s homeland security and of willful neglect of duty.

“Have you read the charges?” asked Admiral Rankov.

“I have.”

“Will you plead guilty?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you what you’ll do,” added the boss. “You’ll plead not guilty to every one of those charges. Because they’re trumped up, cobbled together by a bunch of fucking politicians who, as usual, know nothing. There’s not one senior admiral in the entire Russian Navy who believes you should be court-martialed. And, in the end, you will be tried by a Navy Board of Inquiry, and I’m the fucking head of it, and I won’t put up with it.”

“That’s kind of you, sir.”

“It’s right. That’s what it is. That lieutenant commander could have gotten inside any part of the Russian Navy. He had a flawless record, he was from an important family, and he was destined for the top. He could have worked for me, and I would never have known what he was doing.”

“Sir, I do understand the damage he may have done. And I do accept the responsibility for what happened on my watch.”

“That’s still no excuse for some kind of political witch hunt. Alexander, times have changed. Modern communications, computers, and cell phones have made it near impossible to intercept a really determined infiltrator. Until he makes a mistake.

“However, to court-martial a fleet admiral for the unforeseen actions of a trusted Russian officer is the height of folly. First of all, because the whole matter will rapidly become public, which we do not need. But, mostly, because it does us no good. If they were to find you guilty, we lose the best fleet commander in the Russian Navy—for no good reason whatsoever.”

“Again, sir, I thank you. But what happens now?”

“I’m speaking to the president this afternoon. I’m having this whole bullshit court-martial thrown out. I have asked you here because I need a few facts. And the first is, how much did Chirkov find out about FOM-2?”

“Too much. He was in the rotunda when we had the most important meeting. No one revealed the meaning of the code, but I still think he could very quickly have put two and two together. The president kept mentioning his desire to strike against the USA.”

“Alexander, with you on Solovetsky, he must have known the missile we test fired was the selected weapon chosen by the president for the strike.”

“Sir, he also knew the president was there at the launch. He took the call, which informed me of the lineup at the monastery. So he must also have known of the presence of Dr. Yang, but I don’t think he could have known what he was here for, nor where he came from.”

“Do you think there’s any possibility he could know what Operation FOM-2 stands for?”

“Well, I have never written it down, nor seen it in any document. If he found out, which I doubt, it must have been from somewhere beyond Northern Fleet Command HQ. You have my guarantee the words Fort Meade do not appear anywhere in my office, or on any computer. Not even my deputy has that information, and, as you know, he’s a vice admiral.”

“And how about the launch site? Could he have found that out?”

“Sir, that’s more of a problem. I did write it down in my notebook, but I did so as if it were a person. Pedro this, and Pedro that. Pedro has to understand . . . That type of thing. Chirkov could have copied the name, but I would be very surprised if he understood the implication.”

“Alexander, did he have permanent access to that notebook?”

“Absolutely not. But in this case I used a clip to show him the significant pages because I was under pressure to write up the Northern Fleet’s official report of the test-firing operation.”

“And Chirkov was to draft this?”

“Yes, from my notes. He was very good at getting hold of reams of rough notations and turning them into ordered, well-written reports, with all the correct headings and source notes . . . He was actually the best I ever knew at it.”

“I’m not sure that is very helpful right now,” said Admiral Rankov wryly.

“No. I understand that. But you want the truth. And I must give it to you.”

“So, at this stage, he almost certainly found a way to inform the Americans we planned a revenge strike in return for the Iranian debacles at Qom and Natanz. But he probably was not specific about the target, and certainly not about the launch?”

“Correct.”

“Can you estimate how great an opportunity he had to transmit knowledge to his contact on his way out of Russia?”

“Well, he was driving fast for the first three hundred miles in an area notorious for its lack of cell-phone reception. Then he was on a train for six hours, surrounded by people. It seems to me his first attempt at contact was in that shop doorway in Galkinskaya Street, in Vologda.

“The agents were hiding within fifteen feet of him, and they heard him say only three words, Brest, Frankfurt, and Ustinov, before they took him out.”

“Any clues who Chirkov was talking to?”

“’Fraid not. His phone was dropped and smashed. They tested it, but nothing worked.”

“And how about his pockets?”

“Just what you’d expect from an escaping traitor: extra passports, British and German; cash; driver’s licenses; and his notes.”

“Copied from your own?”

“Correct. Specific reference to the test firing.”

“Anything incriminating?”

“Not really, except for ‘Pedro Miguel.’ There were two references.”

“But he never had a chance to relay them to anyone in the West?”

“I don’t think so, sir. And neither do the agents. They swear to God his phone would have been dead all the way from Severodvinsk. Mostly because their own cells would not work until they reached Vologda.”

“Then there is just one further matter. This afternoon, I will have this court-martial stopped. After that, in association with the Lubyanka, you will devote your entire energies to tracing this John Carter.

“I don’t care if you have to ransack the Israeli Embassy. I don’t care if they close it. But I want to know the precise identity of this fucking paint salesman from England.”