I
disconnected the VPN, staring out the window at the Istanbul skyline. I heard Jennifer say something, but the words didn’t penetrate.
Again, she said, “Did Kurt just say what I thought he said? Are we cleared hot to engage the Israelis?”
I closed the laptop lid. “Yes. We are. But it’s Chiclet only. No freelancing. Apparently, those Russian assholes who almost killed us are actively trying to kill a hell of a lot more people using him.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means Shoshana gets a chance to hit on you again.”
• • •
I felt Shoshana’s eyes on me through the door peephole. She cracked it and looked left and right down the hallway, presumably for a pack of American ninjas preparing to attack. She saw it was just Jennifer and me, then opened it wider, saying, “My, my. You two just can’t stay away.”
I pushed through the door, saying, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Shoshana’s face shone in a genuine smile. “That must be torture. Like a Bedouin craving ice cream. A mythical thing that’ll never happen.”
I said, “A man can dream.”
“He’s in the back room. Go give it your best shot. Jennifer can stay out here with me.”
“She would be honored. But fair warning: She already has her mythical wish.”
Shoshana said, “That being you, I suppose?”
“Yep.”
I winked at Jennifer, and she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, clearly not amused at our witty repartee.
Daniel exited the bath just as I entered the bedroom, one eye black and the left side of his face swollen. Aaron was packing a bag on the bed.
I said, “How come every time I visit the entire team is here. Do all of you sleep together? In America we get a per diem for each person. The Mossad doesn’t pay for separate rooms? Man, I thought you folks being cheap was just a stereotype.”
Daniel tossed aside the hand towel he was using and advanced on me, his jaw quivering. Aaron said, “Stop.”
He did so, but he wasn’t happy about it. Aaron said, “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
I said, “I need your help. I got the translation from the meeting, and it’s pretty bad.”
He carried the suitcase into the other room, saying, “I’ve told you this before. I can’t do anything because they killed your men. I’m sorry.”
I followed, Daniel right behind me, rubbing his hands together like he was itching to get them around my neck. I said, “Yeah, yeah, I heard you. It’s not ‘show friends,’ yada, yada, yada. I’m not here because of my men. Vlad and Yuri weren’t stopped by your interdiction of the Syrian.”
I now had his full attention. Aaron said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean Yuri’s on the hunt regardless of you smoking Vlad. He’s executing a plan, and if we don’t interdict it a lot of people are going to die. Specifically Jewish people.”
“How do I know you aren’t just saying that? Telling me a lie to manipulate my team?”
“Because unlike you, I wouldn’t do that. If I’m lying, you can keep Jennifer.”
Aaron smiled at my words. Shoshana tried to maintain a stoic face, but she couldn’t. Even Daniel let a small grin slip out. Only Jennifer failed to see the humor.
Aaron said, “I’ll have to send a message back before I can do anything. I’ll need some proof.”
I said, “I’ll show you what I learned from the meeting, but it’s still just my word that it’s the actual translation. Do what you must, but make it quick. Yuri’s not going to wait on us to catch up.”
Y
uri left two men at the entrance to the warehouse and carried the case inside, the cool fog of dawn exchanged for the pungent smell of bat guano and stale oil.
At twenty-five kilograms, the case was awkward, but not impossible for one man to manage. Yuri had always scoffed at the hysterical western news reports of “suitcase nukes,” with pictures of something the size of a briefcase. Yes, Thor’s Hammer was man-portable, but the container was more like a footlocker than a briefcase.
He swept his feet along the ground, kicking aside years of accumulated trash, and gently set the case down. He unlocked the four twist fasteners, hearing a slight hiss of air. He raised the lid and was surprised at the pristine nature of the device, having expected it to show some signs of decay. Instead, he saw a gentle pulsing light, indicating a sufficient charge remained for initiation.
The actual explosive device looked like a cartoonish bomb without the fins, a bulbous head thirty inches long seated into a custom Styrofoam bed. An egg of plutonium surrounded by a shell of explosives, it was utilitarian and ugly. In the front of the case was the permissive action link—or PAL—that allowed the timing and arming of the device. An ancient red LED screen, it was three inches by one inch and reminded Yuri of one of the first digital watches. Something that was ultramodern in 1978, but now looked dated.
Beneath the PAL screen were two sets of numeric keypads, requiring the input of two different sequential codes at the same time. In effect, requiring two people to arm the device. Remembering his training, he initiated a self-test sequence, and forty-two seconds later the system told him that it was green, capable of detonation.
The Hammer was alive.
He’d fully expected a fault. The RA-115s was a very delicate piece of equipment that had required constant attention in order to be capable of successful employment. There were literally a hundred things that should have gone wrong over the ensuing twenty-five years it had been stored. Something in the numerous chains of fail-safes, in the PAL, the triggering mechanism, or simply the decay of the plutonium itself should have registered as a fault, telling him he held nothing more than a very, very expensive conventional bomb. An IED with a unique twist in the form of the radiological waste it would throw out.
Instead, it was telling him the Hammer was capable of critical mass. He was unsure what to do now. He’d already made contact with Akinbo, preparing him for a linkup with the device. But that was when he thought the damn thing was just an improvised radiological explosive device. Not a nuclear bomb.
Should have known when I saw the power cable.
Four hours earlier, he and two men on his team had penetrated the location where the Hammer had been hidden. The defunct headquarters for the East German Ministry of State Security, otherwise known as the STASI.
Located in the old East Berlin section of the city, on a campus between Ruschestrasse and Magdalenenstrasse, the STASI had the unenviable reputation of being the most efficient and ruthless mechanism of state control ever created. And that was
including
the KGB and the gestapo. Yuri had been to the headquarters exactly once, when on a tour using the cover of a USSR diplomatic flunky. That had been years ago, and did him little good now, since according to the pinpoint mechanics of the cache instructions, the weapon was behind a panel ostensibly in place to service the electrical system.
Along with the device, the headquarters building housed the STASI museum, with displays on the first, second, and third floors. Run by a nonprofit, it wasn’t a tribute, but a warning for future generations.
Yuri had executed a quick reconnaissance, and found the rest of the campus being used for storage or rented out by other companies. Modern capitalists turning the fearful history of the STASI into a mundane office complex. Luckily for him, the least amount of security was in building one, the headquarters, as apparently the nonprofit couldn’t afford much more than an old guard who looked to be about seventy, armed with nothing more than a whistle. Beyond that, all he would have to contend with were standard door locks. Maybe they figured the association of the STASI alone would keep people out.
Building one was in the center of the campus and was the tallest structure on the compound, eight stories of utilitarian Communist brick and concrete built into an unimaginative rectangle. The primary entrance in the center of the building was also the museum entrance, with the rest of the building off-limits and not used. This, of course, would be exactly what Yuri would leverage.
Given the dilapidated nature of both wings of the headquarters, it had taken little effort to defeat the locks and penetrate the building away from the museum. Following the map he’d been given by Vlad, he’d descended below ground level, using a wall-mounted ladder to gain entry to a subbasement. He’d removed an access panel to an electrical junction box and had found the weapon. In among the myriad of electrical cables running up, down, left and right, he saw the RA-115s on a custom-built shelf. Looking like it belonged there. Still attached to a power source. Still gently blinking in the darkness as if it were 1984. Waiting to be employed by another Vympel team.
He’d disconnected the power cable and retraced his steps, struggling to carry the heavy box up the subbasement ladder. He’d rested for a moment, then had exited the building. He and Kristov were picked up by the team, driving the hour and a half to the abandoned Soviet Air Force base in Magdeburg, Germany.
They’d scouted the base earlier while looking for a secure location to give Akinbo the instruction he’d need for the device. Driving among the cracked and faded Cold War buildings, Yuri had picked a warehouse set off the end of the flight line, its position providing early warning for anyone attempting to interfere.
Now, watching the self-test light smugly blinking green, telling him the box held much more explosive power than he intended, he was unsure of his next steps.
B
ruce Tupper heard his wife in the hallway, forcing him to tap the laptop keyboard. By the time she entered, he was playing a game of computerized chess.
Wearing a worn terry-cloth bathrobe, she faked a theatrical scowl and said, “I thought you were working. When are you coming back to bed?”
“Soon, honey. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Problem at the office?”
She knew not to ask anything more specific. He said, “Yeah. Something that’s still spinning in my head. Keeping me awake.”
She opened her robe and said, “Come back to bed. You don’t have to sleep. I’ll take your mind off of it.”
Surprisingly, given what was hidden behind the chess game, he felt a warmth flow into his groin.
“Soon, honey. I promise.”
He heard her pad back up the stairs, waiting an additional three minutes before minimizing the chess game. Behind it was a message in the Blofeld SMS window ready to be encrypted into a URL, asking the source on the other end where and when he would prefer to ambush the American team.
Tupper couldn’t manipulate a damn thing the Taskforce controlled, but it didn’t mean he was powerless. As the director of national intelligence, it was his job to arbitrate the allocation of intelligence assets, from top secret MASINT satellites to the omnipotent SIGINT capabilities of the National Security Agency. In this case, he’d issued instructions to intercept e-mail traffic from Grolier Recovery Services, layering it deep within the bureaucracy of the NSA. The only question now was whether he would replace them with instructions of his own.
In effect, setting up an ambush.
He’d been relieved when he’d found out about Vladimir’s death, not really caring about the impact to Russian intelligence. He was much more concerned about his own secret, and Vlad being gone cauterized a potential leak.
The relief had been short-lived, however. It vanished when he received contact from an unknown agent on the special system he’d devised. At first he thought it had been Vlad reaching out to him from beyond the grave. A message sent before he’d been killed. As soon as he read it, he knew that wasn’t the case. It was an introduction from Yuri Gorshenko, the assassin working for Vlad whom Kurt Hale had spoken about at the Oversight Council meeting. After providing his bona fides, Yuri gave—of all things—a tasking for intelligence on the new Taskforce team.
Tupper had never been tasked before, and the precedence was unsettling, especially when given in the same e-mail providing an introduction.
He had no idea if it truly was Gorshenko, but he was inclined to believe it. Clearly the agent had talked to Vlad, as the procedures for contact were very complex. It wasn’t like Yuri had just stumbled onto an e-mail address and fired off a message. All of the proscribed methods had been used, including the NYM remailer and Blofeld. Which made Tupper wonder how many other people Vlad had confided in.
A long-term problem.
The immediate decision was whether he should help the Russian agent or remain on the sidelines. Whether he would choose the United States or the Russian Federation.
If he did nothing the Taskforce would probably locate Yuri using his phone, and if that happened Pike would kill him, erasing yet another thread. But there was a risk. A chance that Pike and his new friends might actually capture the agent. After hearing about Pike’s past actions, he couldn’t see that happening, but if it did Tupper was under threat of significant exposure.
The other solution was to work the problem from the opposite end. Eliminate Pike himself. If Tupper set him up, walking him right into his own death, the threat of exposure would be over, at least in the short term.
As he mulled the decision he absently checked his message. He realized one thing was missing. He typed, “Destroy current phone. Being tracked.” He read it one more time, ensuring his instructions were clear, then had the Blofeld application turn it into a URL. He placed the URL into a NYM e-mail message, then stared at the screen.
Stay or go. Go or stay.
At the end of the day it may be a moot point. If Kurt sent the linkup instructions before Yuri replied with his own, he wouldn’t be able to switch the messages. And did he really wish to start the precedent of being tasked by Yuri? Is that what he wanted?
But he
was
an agent of the USSR. The highest mole they had ever produced. He still had some patriotism buried in his heart.
Patriotism for a government and country that no longer exists.
He grew tired of the back-and-forth. This was only a first step. If he changed his mind he could always just ignore what came back. He hit “send” and opened a drawer of the credenza, pulling out a set of handcuffs. He had more pressing matters to attend to.
Like his wife’s breasts.