America (15 page)

“I guess the horse is gone,” Jake said finally, when she appeared to be through.

“Apparently.”

Jake Grafton slapped his knees. He too was running on empty. “Let's do this: Can you monitor all the traffic in the New England area, and the Washington area, and do a study on all conversations that talk about the stolen submarine?
America.
”

“Not legally. But we can ask the British to do it and give us their results.”

“That is legal?”

“Oh, yes. We do the British, they do us. Keeps the politicians happy.”

“When you get the study, what will you be able to tell us about those conversations?”

“Everything. We'll have the conversation, where it originated, where it went, voices that can be identified.…”

“What if they use some sort of code?”

“Breaking codes is what we do. We examine all suspect conversations to see if they contain a code. It's almost impossible to talk in code without revealing the fact that a code is involved. If it's there, we'll find it. Given enough time and some idea what the coded conversation might be about, we can break it.”

On that note, Jake rose to go. He took a step, then turned and returned to his seat.

“You got my security clearance?” he said questioningly, looking at the senior woman, who nodded. “Let's do this. Give me a summary of what's going on in the world that isn't in the newspapers. What are you people working on here?”

They looked at each other. Intelligence projects were discussed on a need-to-know basis, not in wholesale form.

“Pretend that you are writing a morning briefing for the president, who has been on vacation for a week. What would you tell him?”

They began. SuperAegis headed the list. Korea, Middle Eastern terrorists, Iraq, oil, an assassination attempt in Ireland … the list was extensive. Almost by the way, one of the men mentioned Antoine Jouany, the financier. “He's making huge bets on the euro, shorting the dollar. We also think he's betting billions on the index futures market. How much, we don't know.”

“What does that mean?” Jake asked.

“He thinks the American stock market and the dollar are going to get hammered in the near future.”

“Don't people buy and sell futures every day?”

“Of course. But Jouany has a massive position, we believe. Just how big we don't know.”

“How big is massive?”

“Ten billion dollars. Maybe twice that. We hope to know more next week. We're working with the CIA, trying to discover just how big the position is, what Jouany thinks is going to happen. His main office is in London, but he operates worldwide.”

“I know he's one of the world's richest men,” Jake said slowly. “Is this unusual behavior for him?”

“He's never bet more than two billion on a market move before, and even then, he hedged in the derivative markets. We think this is a ten-billion-dollar position, but we don't know. It could be smaller.”

“Or a lot more,” one of the men said. “Maybe he's been reading tea leaves or studying technical charts. Maybe he knows something we don't. Whatever, we hope to find out what induced him to make such a massive commitment.”

“Have you asked him?”

“The Brits did. He told them American interest rates were going to move.”

“Are you monitoring the calls to and from his company?”

“Oh, yes.”

On that note Jake thanked them and headed back toward the helicopter. He wanted desperately to go home to snatch a few hours' sleep. General Le Beau would want a briefing first thing in the morning.

*   *   *

“These are the targets,” Vladimir Kolnikov said to Leon Rothberg and handed him a slip of paper containing three sets of coordinates.

Rothberg looked at the paper in amazement. “What are they?”

“Targets.”

“You want to shoot a Tomahawk?”

“Three of them.”

Rothberg studied the paper. He was sitting on one of the two chairs in the captain's cabin, Kolnikov was sitting on the bunk. “We're almost five hundred miles off the coast.”

“We'll close to about four hundred by dark,” Kolnikov said. “I want you to rise to periscope depth—”

“We don't have a periscope.”

“Whatever. Stick the damn communications mast out of the water, update the inertial with the GPS. Then shoot. I want the missiles to hit their targets before midnight.”

“You know that the missiles must be programmed. I doubt that the United States database is in the mission-planning computer.”

“Of course it's there.”

“Don't tell me my business, Ivan. You are wasting air. Even if the U.S. is in the database, it will take hours to set up each missile.” He glanced at his watch. “We don't have anywhere near enough time.”

“We have enough. I know what is involved. Let's go to the control room and do it, shall we?”

“Shooting missiles wasn't in the plan. Heydrich won't like this. The plan was approved—”

“I don't care what Heydrich likes or doesn't like. He has no choice. The plan has changed. And you will do it right, won't you? The missiles will hit these targets.”

Leon Rothberg wanted to argue. He was a small man, thirty pounds overweight, a twisted genius who owed money to half the bookies in Boston. “Heydrich paid me. And he still owes me a ton of money, a shit-pot full.”

“Heydrich keeps his promises. He can be relied on to pay his debts. I assure you of that.”

“But he won't like this. This wasn't in the plan! We weren't going to shoot weapons, except as absolutely necessary in self-defense. If we shoot Tomahawks at anybody, every navy in the world will hunt us like we're rabid dogs.”

“It seems I must repeat myself. The plan has changed.” Kolnikov reached for Rothberg's face, latched onto his chin, held it as he looked into his eyes. “I want to be sure that you understand the situation. You will program the Tomahawks to fly the routes and profiles I chose and hit the targets I have designated. We will launch the missiles, they will strike their programmed targets, and we will hear that fact verified by news broadcasts on commercial radio. If the missiles don't hit their targets, I will kill you, Rothberg. No excuses, no reprieve, no second chance. Have I made myself clear?”

“I hear you,” Leon Rothberg said contemptuously. He brushed away Kolnikov's hand. “Now you listen to me! If anything happens to me you won't have anyone who knows how to operate the boat's systems. You think this boat is something you order from Dell and figure out by reading the fucking manual? There isn't another submarine in the world with a system like this. Without me you people will die in this steel coffin. I'm the man! You clear on that?”

Kolnikov slapped him. Just a quick open-handed slap as hard as he could swing his hand. Rothberg went off the chair onto the tiled deck. Quick as a cat Kolnikov reached for Rothberg with both hands, pulled him half erect, put his face within inches of the American's.

“The only way you can stay alive is to obey my orders. Disobey me just once and I'll put your silly ass in a torpedo tube and you can make like a fish. Maybe you can swim back to Boston.”

He opened the door to the passageway and threw Rothberg through it. The man bounced off the passageway bulkhead and fell heavily to the deck.

Kolnikov was all over him. “Do you tolerate pain well, Rothberg? Should I break an arm, smash some fingers? You are here for the money. Now you will earn it. Maybe you'll think better with only one hand.”

Kolnikov smelled feces. The American had shit his pants.

CHAPTER SIX

The director of the CIA was a tall, balding, sixtyish man with a portly frame. His smooth, round face wore a perpetual frown; he looked as if he hadn't smiled since he got out of diapers. He scowled now at the copy of the letter Jake Grafton handed him, inspected the letterhead, read every word, grimaced at the signature—which was that of the president of the United States—and reluctantly laid it on the desk. Then he read the second sheet of paper Jake had handed him, another letter, this one an original. He laid it on the desk next to the first, arranged the edges so that they touched each other.

This morning Jake was decked out in his blue uniform. He got a look at himself in the mirror in the foyer as he was shown into the director's office. The thought occurred to him that the uniform with its gold rings on the sleeves and splotches of color on the left breast looked incongruous, out of place among the gray men in this gray building. He had shaken off that thought and looked the director straight in the eye as he said hello and passed him the letters.

When the director had read both documents twice, he looked again at Jake.

“Okay,” said the director, whose name was Avery Edmond DeGarmo. He was one of those men who routinely used all three names. No doubt even his pajamas were embroidered with all three initials. “The president appointed General Le Beau to investigate this submarine mess and he sent you over here with full authority to ask questions in his place. So ask.”

Jake Grafton took his time responding. He crossed his legs, flicked an invisible mote of dust off his trousers. “I have been told that the CIA was training a team of Russian and German expatriates to operate a submarine with minimum manning.”

“That is correct.”

Jake waited. When nothing else was forthcoming, he asked, “Why?”

The CIA director picked up the letters, studied them again. “The answer to that question is classified above your security clearance.”

“Oh?”

“You have only a top-secret clearance, according to my staff.”

“Mr. DeGarmo,” Jake shot back, “those letters are all the clearance I need to ask any question I choose.”

“These letters are not clearance to violate the security laws. If you think this”—he fluttered one of the sheets—”grants you carte blanche to stroll willy-nilly through that building asking any question that pops into your head, regardless of its bearing on the matter you are investigating, you are sadly mistaken.”

Jake Grafton had been in Washington long enough to know that you got only as much respect as you demanded. “General Le Beau and I will decide the relevance of the information I receive,” he replied smoothly. “If you're in the mood for a pissing contest this morning, sir, I'll be delighted to get the commandant on the telephone and you can take it up with him. If you wish, he will call the White House and get someone over there to discuss the fine points with you.”

“The responsibility for security breaches will be on your head, not mine.” First and foremost, Avery Edmond DeGarmo was a bureaucrat. “I want that clearly understood.”

Jake gave a curt nod.

“What was the question?” said DeGarmo.

“The CIA trained this crew?”

“What crew?”

“The crew that hijacked
America.
”

“I don't know who hijacked that ship. Do you?”

“The FBI agent in charge has informed us that these were the men.”

“But you don't know for a fact.”

“I am not going to split legal hairs with you this morning, sir, or debate the meaning of ‘is.' Did or did not the CIA train a team to run a sub with minimum manning?”

“I have answered that question. Yes.”

“Why?”

“The operation was properly authorized and funded. We did what we were told to do.”

“What was the objective of the operation?”

“To steal a Russian submarine.”

“Was that Operation Blackbeard?”

“Yes.”

“Why did the CIA want a Russian submarine?”

DeGarmo shifted his weight in his chair. He leaned forward, played with the letters, tapped his fingers on them. Both men were well aware that this information was available elsewhere. Finally DeGarmo said, “For several years the Russians have been working on revolutionary new torpedoes. The technology, we believe, uses supercavitation and rocket propulsion to drive a torpedo through the water within a bubble, reducing drag dramatically. Our theoretical physicists think the technology might ultimately yield a torpedo capable of a thousand knots. The Russians aren't that far along yet. We hope. They have produced a torpedo that uses the first generation of this technology, we believe. They call it the
‘Shkval'
or ‘Squall.' The
Kursk
was testing this torpedo when the thing exploded, fatally damaging the submarine.”

Jake had seen classified summaries speculating that this was the case. So far, DeGarmo hadn't told him anything he didn't know. “We are doing similar research and having our problems,” DeGarmo added. This Jake didn't know. “We wanted to see what the Russians really have, if anything.”

It went on like this for five minutes before DeGarmo agreed to make the complete, raw files on the men the CIA trained available that afternoon for Commander Tarkington to study. “We'll need copies of those files,” Jake added, “and I would appreciate your staff making them and sending the copies over. For now, however, a look at those files will be sufficient.”

It took another minute to persuade DeGarmo to have his staff run the copy machine. Then Jake asked who authorized the operation to steal a Russian sub.

“The national command authority, of course.”

“Who wanted this information?”

“The navy, primarily. The planning people at DOD. My staff. Everyone was interested.”

“Admiral Stalnaker?”

DeGarmo nodded.

“Why a team of Russians and Germans? Why not Americans, who presumably would have been more trustworthy?”

“The committee thought that the difficulties involved in getting Americans onto a Russian naval base where they could get access to a submarine with
Shkval
aboard lowered the probability of success to an unacceptable level. If the Russians caught these people, the fallout would be manageable if they were former Soviet-bloc sailors but damn near catastrophic if they were Americans. And of course there was the deniability issue, which I think was crucial to getting it approved.”