Power Play (23 page)

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.

 

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.

 

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 . . . ”

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.

 

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?”