America (14 page)

“Are you going to tell Ilin that the hijackers were a CIA team being trained to steal a Russian sub?”

“Yes. If he doesn't already know.”

“What if the Russians weren't behind it?”

Jake turned over a hand.

“The Russians are going to get a good laugh over that one.”

“As long as a laugh is all they get!” Jake muttered.

Toad tapped the table with a finger three or four times. “Were you thinking what I was thinking when the simulator guys told us about that portable sim?” he asked, glancing up at Jake's face.

“Yeah. The FBI is going to follow up on that. If the portable computer went off base to train the hijackers, someone took it off.”

When Toad went back to his room in the BOQ, Jake called for a car and rode to the base communications center. There he used a secure telephone to put in a call to General Flap Le Beau.

“Jake Grafton, General. Thought I would give you a progress report.” He did so. When he had finished talking, the marine told him that the rest of the
America
crewmen had been pulled out of the ocean by a freighter several hundred miles off the New Jersey coast.

“So there are no more American sailors aboard that sub, sir?”

“Not to our knowledge. Two are unaccounted for and may have been killed. Or they may have drowned at sea, although we don't think so. The
America
sailors think the missing men were killed by the hijackers. Fourteen are known dead and four are wounded.”

“Do the sailors have any ideas about what the hijackers are up to?”

“They are full of ideas,” Flap said heavily. “Nothing to back up their ideas, but they have them.”

A moment later in the conversation, Jake said, “I'm troubled about possible Russian penetration of the SuperAegis liaison team. We've done routine sweeps in the office and taken all the usual precautions, but we haven't been suspicious enough. The FBI says they've bugged my house at the beach. Ilin's dancing around chattering to himself. They're playing games, General.”

“I'll pass that to General Blevins.”

“I recommend a complete, thorough security review for the project, top to bottom, reexamine the credentials of everyone. I get this feeling that Ilin's onstage, that he expects us to catch him sooner or later.”

“And?”

“Maybe Ilin's a diversion. He wants us to catch him. I would bet some serious change that he's just the first layer of the onion.”

Jake told the driver to park the car two blocks from the BOQ. He walked toward the building with his hands in his pockets. He saw smoke rolling out of an open window in the upper story of the building just seconds before he heard the fire alarm ring. People came running from the building, some half dressed. In less than a minute two fire trucks rolled up. Firefighters charged into the building while another group attached a hose to a hydrant with a minimum of lost motion.

Jake was leaning against a tree a block away when Krautkramer found him ten minutes later. “We waited until he was in the shower,” the FBI agent said, “then popped the smoke bomb and pulled the fire alarm. We unlocked the door, hustled him out with a towel around his waist within twenty seconds. He didn't flush the commode.”

“And?”

“His black leather belt contains a microphone and battery-operated transmitter. There is an on-off switch so he can get through electronic scans.”

“A black leather belt? I've only seen him in that a couple of times.”

“He has three belts. Another black and a brown. Both are clean. Everything else in his luggage seemed innocent enough. We didn't have time to inspect everything closely, but we ran everything he had through a portable X-ray machine.”

“No cyanide pill in the heel of a shoe?” Jake asked savagely. “A bottle of invisible ink, maybe a cipher pad? A code ring from a cereal box?”

“Ahhh … no.”

“Okay. Thanks for your help.”

“Sure, Admiral.”

“Someone or several someones who know that submarine inside out went to sea with it. Either they boarded the boat with the hijackers or they were already aboard. Who were they?”

“We don't know yet, Admiral.”

“That boat is a giant, seagoing computer. No sane man would go to sea in it without an expert or two at hand. If the hijackers didn't force the U.S. sailors to stay at their posts and operate the boat for them, and apparently they didn't, it is only because they already had an expert. This is an inside job. Find the people on the inside.”

“We'll do our best,” Krautkramer said. “We are going through the base files right now. There are people on leave, civilians on vacation, people out sick—all those people have to be accounted for. Then we have to figure out who knows what. It's just going to take time.”

“Send Toad Tarkington out to talk to me.”

Toad came walking down the sidewalk three minutes later.

“I'm going back to Washington now,” Jake told him. “You and Ilin stay with the FBI. Keep me advised. I told Krautkramer that someone who knows that submarine inside out went to sea with it. When they figure out who that person is, call me.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And keep an eye on Ilin. So far he's played us for suckers. Don't let him out of your sight.”

*   *   *

When the others had gone for the night, Zip Vance was alone with Zelda Hudson. She was, he knew, not going anywhere. The bathroom in the far corner of the upper story of the old warehouse had a shower in it. A couch piled with several blankets and a pillow was shoved against the wall near the door, beside the refrigerator and sink. She lived here, worked the computers at night until she finally wound down and slept. He had never seen her sleeping but knew that she must.

“This is a dangerous game you're playing,” he said tentatively.

The remark irritated her. “We've been all through that.”

Indeed, they had argued many a night. Smart as he was, Zip Vance didn't understand Zelda Hudson. He chewed a fingernail and thought about what he wanted to say.

“They'll never convict us of anything,” she said flatly. “We'll know if they get a sniff. And if they surprise us, we've got the money to hire an army of smart lawyers.”

“It had better never come to that.”

“It won't. I know what I'm doing. You know what you're doing. These others”—she waved a hand dismissively—”what are they going to say? Zelda did this? Zip did that? Naw. They don't
know
anything. They think we're doing just what we always did, hack into other people's networks, see what the vulnerabilities are, then get a contract to plug the holes.”

Irritated, he brushed her argument away with a flick of his fingers. “They may not know about this operation, but when the heat arrives, they'll turn state's evidence to save themselves from jail. Half of them have already been there, and they don't want to go back.”

“A few hacking charges! We'll pay a fine and get probation, and business will boom. The publicity will be wonderful. Pfffft!”

“What they'll say will make the FBI dig deeper. I'm not talking about hacking, Zelda, and you damn well know it.”

“We'll be long gone by then, Zipper. Absolutely gorgeously, filthy rich, rich beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe not as rich as Warren Buffett, but we'll be younger and will have had a lot more fun, and we won't be stuck in Omaha.”

“Actually, I think you're doing this for fun, for the challenge of it.”

She eyed him carefully. “You know me pretty well,” she conceded.

Zip Vance stood. “I want to leave you with one thought. The United States government may never get enough evidence to prosecute, and granted, they may even offer immunity if we'll cooperate and tell them what we know.” He shrugged eloquently. “But remember this—Antoine Jouany and Willi Schlegel don't play by civilized rules. They've paid us huge heaping piles of money and are going to pay mountains more. And you aren't playing straight with them. They aren't the type to call their lawyers.”

“We've been all through this, Zip,” she said, her voice rising, “time and time again. I know what I'm doing. If you don't want to play the game, maybe you'd better go now.”

Their serious conversations on this subject always ended like this. Zelda was … well, shit, she was Zelda.

“Maybe the game is worth the risks,” he said lightly and headed for the elevator. “I just don't want you to forget what the risks are.”

*   *   *

Vladimir Kolnikov stretched out in the captain's bunk aboard
America.
He glanced at his watch, made sure the cabin door was locked, then turned out the light. Lying in the darkness, he closed his eyes, tried to force his body to relax.

He had a hell of a headache, so he snapped the light back on, wet a washrag at the sink tap, and lay down again. After turning off the light a second time, he arranged the cool, wet cloth over his forehead and eyes.

He had first gone to sea thirty-five years ago, a diesel-electric sub that rattled underwater. The Soviets had not known then how good American sonar was. Or would become. If there had been a war with the United States, that old boat would have been quickly sunk.

Didn't happen, of course. After all the propaganda, all those lies about the superiority of the Soviet system and the moral and financial bankruptcy of the free nations of the West, the whole Soviet edifice shattered and collapsed. All the lies the Communists had told, the crimes they committed, the lives they shattered, the people they murdered—that was the foundation of the Soviet state, and the whole colossal sand castle fell of its own weight.

If that wasn't bad enough, then came the aftermath! The now anti-Communist
nomenklatura
soldiered on as before, spouting propaganda about freedom and democracy. Same people, different song. They stole the foreign aid donated by the West, looted the national treasury, sold military equipment, literally robbed their fellow citizens of everything they owned to line their own pockets. They wanted to continue to live the privileged life they had enjoyed in the workers' paradise of Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, Kosygin, Brezhnev, and all the others.

Civilization collapsed in Russia. That was the optimist's take on it. Cynics said it never existed there. Certainly the liberal civilization of the West never existed in Soviet Russia, which had gone directly from a totalitarian society ruled by czars to one ruled by absolute dictators. Now, with the dictators gone, no one ruled. That would change of course, Kolnikov knew. Another dictatorship would inevitably follow, he thought. The Russians liked dictatorship, were comfortable only in an authoritarian, autocratic society where everyone behaved and did as he was supposed to do. And the people at the top set the standard. The Russians did not know how to live any other way.

Except Kolnikov. He had refused to wait for the inevitable. So had Turchak. The two of them gave up on Mother Russia and sneaked out of the country. Now they were criminals. Traitors.

Captain First Rank Vladimir Kolnikov, criminal. Thief. Terrorist. Pirate!

He lay now in the silent darkness listening in vain for sounds of the ship.

God, she was quiet!

He turned to the computer screen mounted beside his pillow and touched it with a finger. A menu appeared. He studied the options, then selected one. The boat's depth, course, and speed appeared instantly. Another touch showed him a variety of reactor temperatures and pressures. All normal. He turned his head, closed his eyes, tried to relax.

Before this adventure was over he was probably going to wish he had stayed in that Paris hire car. It was a living. An honest one, even.

The hell with it. He had made his choice, cast the dice. However it came out … well, it didn't really matter how it all came out. He knew that. And in truth, didn't really care.

*   *   *

The National Security Agency is a collection of buildings behind a chain-link fence on the edge of the army's Fort Meade complex between Baltimore and Washington. It is bordered on two sides by major arterial highways. South of the complex across one of the highways sits a regional military jail surrounded by concertina wire. The ugly, gray NSA buildings are festooned with an odd assortment of antennas, although no more so than many other high-tech headquarters in the Washington area. What is not readily apparent from the highway, however, is the size of the complex, which employs sixteen thousand people and houses the largest collection of computers in the world. Most of the complex is underground.

It was three in the morning when Jake Grafton arrived by helicopter at the National Security Agency. A gentle rain was falling as he walked across the helo pad.

The woman who met him shook hands, led him through a security checkpoint, and took him into a nondescript government office where three other people waited, two men and another woman.

“As you know, we've lost a submarine,” Jake said to get them started. “We need all the help we can get to find it. I was hoping you folks could do a study of telephone traffic for the last two or three weeks around Providence and New London.”

“It doesn't work quite that way, Admiral,” the senior NSA briefer said. She was in her fifties, looked like she had just gotten out of bed an hour ago, which she probably had. “As you are probably aware, we use the Echelon system to monitor foreign telecommunications traffic—hardwired, wireless, satellite, all of it—but legally we can't monitor U.S. domestic communications: That is the FBI's job. And we don't have the storage capacity to record even a statistically significant part of the traffic we do study. We sample conversations and automatically record those that use certain keywords; for example,
terrorists, bomb, assignation,
etc. But we have to choose our keywords in advance.” She explained how they did it, discussed interception techniques, hardware and software.