The Backup Asset (16 page)

Jeremy Weber knocked three times on the doorframe before stepping in his boss’s office.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes. Sit down.”

He sat where instructed, and waited for SAC Taylor to speak.

“I’m putting you on the Walcott case,” Taylor said, pushing a file folder across the desk.

“Me, sir?” Weber blurted, then bit his lip. Stupid remarks like that cost people their careers.

“Yes, and I’m doubting my own sanity as we speak,” Taylor replied coldly. “There’s no better choice . . . believe me, I tried. I had assigned Porter and Sinisky on it yesterday, but their car got rammed by an eighteen-wheeler. They’ll both be out of commission for weeks.” Taylor stopped for a second, drilling Jeremy with his intense gaze. “You’re it. Don’t screw this up. One moment of embarrassment from you while you’re on this case and you’re history.”

Jeremy didn’t reply; diplomatically he diverted Taylor’s attention to the work at hand.

“What’s the scoop?”

“Walcott’s got an info leak, state secrets, major damage,” Taylor replied. “The rest is in the file. Read it. Carefully.”

“Yes, sir. Umm . . . I don’t have a partner assigned yet,” Jeremy said hesitantly. “I’m perfectly fine without one, sir, but—”

“But I’m not,” Taylor cut him off. “Just get me preliminary findings and come back to report. I’ll assign you a partner.”

Jeremy stood and grabbed the file from Taylor’s desk.

“Understood,” he said, turning to leave.

“Weber?”

“Sir?”

“This could be a major clusterfuck . . . Huge government contractor, massive political influence, and the leak is scary as hell—their latest weapons technology, no less. Tread lightly, be thorough, but get the facts ASAP. Follow the damn procedure, got it?”

“Yes, sir, got it. You can count on me,” Jeremy added, and immediately regretted it.

“Well, that’s precisely it, Weber, I can’t. Can’t count on you, now can I?”

Jeremy hesitated, inclined to make additional promises to his reluctant boss, but decided to keep quiet instead.

“Sir,” he said in lieu of a farewell, then stepped out of Taylor’s office.

He didn’t even stop by his office; he went straight for the parking garage. He wanted to get as much work done as possible, before getting who-knows-who for a partner to slow him down or drive him crazy.

Henri Marino checked her reflection in the stainless steel doors and repressed a sigh. She looked professional, of course, yet not really in line with what she had in mind for herself. The loose ponytail keeping her long brown hair in check looked sloppy and hasty, like she’d tied that up in a hurry. Well, in fact, that was the truth. She had to admit it, remembering how she had finished dressing in her building’s elevator that morning.

She checked the time again; just a few more minutes before Director Seiden would see her. She put down the brief she had prepared for the director, afraid her sweaty palms would leave marks on the elegant cover bearing the CIA logo in gold foil emboss.

Now she had two idle hands and nothing to do, while waiting, pacing, checking the time once more.

“You can take a seat,” Seiden’s assistant said, visibly irritated by her restlessness.

She was tempted to oblige for a split second, then declined with a shy smile. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”

For the next few minutes, she tried to stay true to her commitment to never crack her knuckles again. She’d read somewhere it was a bad habit, not necessarily causing arthritis or anything, but annoying the hell out of everyone present.

“You can go in now,” Seiden’s assistant said.

She headed straight to the director’s door, then turned on her heels and grabbed the report she’d forgotten.

She knocked twice, then entered the director’s office. Seiden had loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves, but the perma-frown on his forehead looked deeper than usual, ridging canyons above his bushy eyebrows.

“Henri,” he greeted her and pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

“Sir,” she croaked, then cleared her throat. “Good morning,” she added, to demonstrate she could still use her vocal chords.

“So?” Seiden asked, keeping his hand extended toward her. “Are you gonna let me read it?”

“Umm . . . sure,” she said, handing him the brief, painfully aware she was blushing.

Director Seiden took the brief and started reviewing it, flipping through pages at a constant pace, for what seemed like endless minutes. Finally, he spoke.

“OK, never mind this,” he said, putting it on the table and placing his hand on it. “What do you think?”

“Well, it’s in there,” she started talking, then stopped abruptly.
Of course, it’s in there,
you ninny,
she thought.
He knows that. He just wants to have a conversation with his senior analyst.

“Since my last report, the count of incidents climbed to sixty-two total,” she finally heard herself say, in a relatively confident voice.

“Since when?”

“I’ve gone back eighteen months, but their frequency has increased over time.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were only seven incidents in the first six months I looked at. Then in the following six months, the count jumped to nineteen. And the most recent six months had forty-three incidents, more unevenly distributed from a geographical perspective, and more aggressive each month.”

“Any geographical prevalence?”

“N–no, not really, not overall, anyway. While the incidents remain relatively evenly distributed on the map over the entire eighteen months, the past six months showed more North American occurrences, and their severity has increased on average.”

“How do you measure that?” Seiden asked.

“I classified all incidents in one of three categories. They can be near-routine incidents, such as flight intercepts, interference with normal civilian operations, or incursions into our Air Defense Identification Zone. Then they could be serious incidents with escalation risk, such as the Russian aircraft that approached the Danish island of Bornholm in what appeared to be an attack, then broke off at the last minute. Finally, they could be high-risk incidents, such as the Russian submarine incursion into Swedish territorial waters, or the Alaska missile lock incident last month.”

“And how do they break out by severity, the incident counts?”

She opened the brief to make sure her memory didn’t fail her at the wrong moment.

“Umm . . . there were fourteen high-risk incidents, twenty-one serious with escalation risk, and twenty-seven near-routine incidents.” She pushed the brief over the desk, so the director could read the numbers from the table.

He looked at the page for a few seconds, then deepened his frown.

“But that’s not it, sir,” she added, pulling the brief from under his hand. “
This
is what’s more interesting,” she said, flipping a couple of pages and showing Seiden an image of the world map with colorful pins on it. “I’ve colored the oldest incidents blue, the six-to-twelve months old in purple, and the most recent ones in red. What do you see?”

Seiden looked at her for a second, surprised by her unusual question. She wanted to kick herself . . . it was unprofessional, rude even to question a high-ranking executive as if he was a child.

Before she could figure out if she should apologize or just fix her blunder, he answered.

“Yes, that is interesting. The red dots are mostly near our borders, with just a couple elsewhere, just enough to keep things confusing. So what are you saying?”

“I am saying things are definitely escalating. The same worrisome distribution remains true from the incident severity point of view, where we see the high-risk incidents clustering more and more near our borders, near NORAD space.”

Seiden remained silent for a minute, staring pensively at the colorful map that spelled trouble.

“We need to inform USNORTHCOM about this. Let’s talk threat scenarios,” he said, rubbing his forehead forcefully.

“In my previous report, I was listing three possible threat scenarios. The most plausible at first sight is that they’re testing our response. The second one is that they’re keeping the world busy while they’re preparing a nuclear strike and the commencement of World War III. Finally, the third, and least plausible considering President Abramovich’s psychology, is that they’re provoking us, our allies, so we end up being the ones who push one button or another and start World War III.”

“Why do you think the third scenario is not that plausible?” Seiden asked.

“Abramovich, well, he’s a pure sociopath on a mission of revenge over Crimea and what he perceives as a colossal offense brought to Russia by the West, by America. This particular psychology is incompatible with caring what the world has to say about who started the war. He wouldn’t care . . . he doesn’t.” Henri stopped for a few seconds, collecting her thoughts, to make sure she wasn’t omitting anything. “He is actively working to restore Russia to its pre-glasnost position of power,” she continued. “But I don’t think that his strategy is contradicting either of the first two scenarios.”

Seiden took a sip from a bottle of sparkling water, then took his time to screw the cap back on.

“If you were to pick one of these scenarios to prepare response strategies for, which one would you choose?” Seiden asked, suddenly looking at her with focused, intent eyes. “Do you maintain your former assessment, does the nuclear scenario still seem more plausible to you?”

“Y–yes,” she responded, not blinking under the director’s scrutinizing gaze, just letting a split moment of hesitation show.

“Why hesitate? What’s on your mind?”

“Well, sir, you might think I’m crazy,” she blurted out, “but even the nuclear scenario seems too clean, too easy for Abramovich at this time.”

“Too easy? How the hell can nuclear war be too easy?” Seiden said, letting his voice reflect his frustration. He stood and started pacing the room.

A little flustered by his unusually emotional response, Henri tried to formulate an answer that could make sense to other people, not just in her own mind.

“You assigned a task force under my command, sir,” she explained. “I’ve engaged the team in several areas. I had an analyst focus on Russian uranium ore extraction and potential arsenal build-ups. Another one was tasked to monitor Russian ICBM sites and any related activities. The field operative you deployed came back with preliminary findings into the research facility being built near Moscow—it’s gonna be a huge data processing center, storing massive amounts of data and a basement full of computing capabilities, 350,000 square feet. Finally, I had a senior analyst look into the military training, simulation exercises, and readiness.”

“And?” Seiden asked impatiently.

“Well, their activities sort of line up, more like they line up with two different strategies. One,” she held up one finger, “they are most definitely getting ready to engage data in a new, unprecedented way. That could mean cyber warfare or increased foreign intelligence activities. Two,” Henri’s second finger went up, “if they’re looking at more traditional warfare, including nuclear, they are definitely getting ready, but not in a massive way.”

“What are you trying to say, Henri?” Seiden made a visible effort to calm down and took a seat back in his leather chair.

“We need to get back to Abramovich’s psychology and state of mind to understand this,” Henri said almost apologetically. He nodded, and she continued, “OK, we’ve established Abramovich is a pure narcissistic sociopath who will stop at nothing. Correct?”

Seiden nodded again.

“But what does that mean? What does it feel like to be Abramovich and to have the world tell you what you can and cannot do and insult you all over the news channels for Crimea, for the ethics of your policy, and so on?”

Seiden silently encouraged her to continue, intrigued by her approach to the point where his frown almost disappeared.

“He’s in pain, sir, that’s what that means,” she said, gesturing with her hands to underline the simplicity of this fact. “He’s in immense, excruciating psychological pain, and has been ever since Crimea. He’s lost so much because of what the world thought of his actions in Crimea—cash flow, the respect of other world leaders, the intoxicating devotion of his oligarchs. He’s hurting so badly he can’t think of anything else but how to make us all pay for it, painfully, slowly, indefinitely, and beyond repair. From his perspective, we are torturing him and he’s dying to get even and then some. In his mind, he’s screaming,
How could you do this to me?
”

“What are you trying to tell me, Henri?” Seiden asked again, his voice only slightly stronger than a whisper.

She hesitated a little, then said, “Dropping a few nukes on us would be too easy in his mind. We’d just retaliate; millions would die on both sides of this war. He needs much more than that . . . he needs us helpless at his mercy, begging for his help. This is the only scenario that would heal Abramovich’s pain and restore his blemished image of greatness, as he perceives it.”

“What would do that?” Seiden asked quietly.

“I don’t know . . . not yet.”

“So all this is just a hunch?” Seiden’s irritation was seeping back in his voice.

“No, sir, this is the result of my analysis. I still think the Russians are preparing for some kind of a nuclear attack. I just don’t think it will be anything like a traditional war. I’m not seeing them pick an American city or a military target and just strike. It would be too clean, too easy and painless by his standards. I strongly believe they’re trying to keep us busy while they’re prepping some terrorist-type incursion in our space, with a nuclear threat on the agenda.”

Seiden loosened his tie a little more, while his deep frown reappeared.

“Find out what that is, Henri, find out now. Get all your people on it, and get more people if you need them.” Seiden stood and looked outside at the sun-lit cityscape. “This incredible scenario of yours makes sense; it fits. We need to brief the president.”