Power Play (22 page)

“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.

 

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.