Ice Islands, page 9
‘I can find out.’
‘And the provenance?’ Quality doctored videos were made through artificial intelligence platforms which went by names like generators, discriminators, encoders and decoders, each with a specific task. They ran millions of images, choosing, compressing, changing and building them into a composition.
Case worked the keyboard. ‘For provenance, I’d say we’re looking at Ghana or North Korea.’
‘Governments?’
‘No, private. But blurry lines, my friend. Am I government? Are you government? Not governments, but hired by governments.’ Case typed in a series of codes and leant back, waiting for a result. ‘As for genuine, a work in progress.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The pixelation around the knife and the arm. Whoever’s behind this is planning to fabricate a murderer and show the face, which also means there was a face on there that’s been wiped.’
‘Can you reconstruct it?’
‘Like stripping back an oil painting, then redoing the Rembrandt again. Possibly.’
‘And can you stop it getting out?’
‘As in “going public”?’
‘Yes.’
‘That I can do.’
‘And can you help with this one?’ Harry sent across a portrait of Sara Kato. Case screwed his face into an exaggerated frown. ‘Is this the one they wanted to frame for the murder.’
‘Her name is Sara Kato.’
‘Do I know her?’ Case flopped back into his chair, hand on his chin, eyes looking out through the window, across the London skyline.
‘We’ve been tracking her family.’
‘Ariga? The Nevrosky case?’
‘Connected, yes.’
Case had made his name ensuring that Britain left the European Union in a long-ago referendum. His first job for Harry was to assess voting patterns in Eastern Europe. He boasted that he would never take on an election he couldn’t win. He expanded to embrace changing technology, using it to master every level of political manipulation, the dark web, social media, bots, trolling, cyber and more. He examined the human brain for areas of exploitation, neuromarketing, neurolinguistics, patterns on how people thought and acted. He called his company Future Forecasting and built teams of loyal, brilliant people, harvested data and created software to feed his growing army of artificial intelligence machines.
‘Sara Kato is very pretty,’ mused Case. ‘Clever, too. What am I to do with our lovely Sara?’
‘Find her?’
‘I presume, you want that five minutes ago.’ Case’s fingers moved back and forth across his keyboard like a piano player. ‘And I am not asking why the great Harry Lucas, with all the resources of the world’s most powerful governments at his disposal, is coming all the way across the pond to little old Stevie Case for this hunt job.’
‘She was last seen down a coastal track near the Finnish ferry port of Berghamn on the Åland Islands thirty minutes ago.’
Case lifted his hands and rested them on the top of his screen. He stared straight into the lens, wearing a quizzical smile. ‘Oh, Harry. My good friend, Harry. What a tangled web you bring me!’ He pressed an intercom on his desk. ‘Emily, tell everyone to stop what they’re doing. We’ve got something.’
SEVENTEEN
Nick Petrovsky’s Lincoln Town Car pulled up again outside Harry’s apartment, the second unannounced visit in as many weeks.
Two Secret Service agents stayed outside. Petrovsky’s worn expression showed that the early days of the Freeman presidency had not treated him well. A man who enjoyed his job could work hard on little sleep, look motivated and stay in shape. His pale, wan appearance belonged to a man whose job left him constantly fighting against his better judgment.
‘What the fuck happened on the Åland Islands, Nick?’ Harry let Petrovsky in and closed the door.
‘The President’s decision, Harry. I’m his messenger.’ Petrovsky kept a contrite, hangdog look on Harry, making out he didn’t want a fight, but a friend.
Harry kept up the pressure. ‘Why is the President micromanaging something like this?’ He had left the door to his workstation open. Usually with a security-cleared member of government, it wouldn’t matter. But he found himself in an alien situation of doubting the President and his messenger. He slid the door shut.
Petrovsky raised his eyebrows. ‘So low trust?’
‘You fucked me, Nick. Years of work. And we had a deal.’
‘That’s not why I’m here.’ Petrovsky rested his hands on the back of the leather sofa.
‘That’s why I let you in.’ Harry linked his hands together in front of him to control his temper.
‘I might fuck with you. But don’t fuck with us, Harry, because we’re bigger. Let’s try to work amicably.’ Petrovsky lazily waved his hand toward the entrance of Harry’s work area. ‘One call and I could have the Secret Service come in here and rip all this apart, analyze everything you have, find stuff that would wrap you in lawsuits and congressional investigations for the rest of your life.’ He was right because this was how Washington worked, similar conversations taking place a hundred times a day; leverage, the euphemism for blackmail.
‘What do you want?’ Harry responded flatly.
Petrovsky unfolded himself onto one of the sofas. ‘Freeman believes your work risks our relationship with Japan and Russia, his two foreign policy priorities.’
‘What’s new?’ Harry took a hardbacked chair opposite Petrovsky. ‘Bolster the alliance with Japan. Forge one with Russia. Keep China in its box.’
‘A Russian citizen murdered in Finland. A Japanese citizen suspected of the crime. An American soldier helps her escape. Moscow will be jumping up and down. We need to get this whole mess sorted before Sergey Grizlov finds out that his son has been murdered.’
‘He doesn’t know?’
‘The Finns have agreed to keep it under the radar.’ Petrovsky pursed his lips and lowered his voice. ‘Which is why I need you to reach out to your ex-wife.’
‘Stephanie?’ Harry wasn’t expecting that. He didn’t even know where Steph was.
‘Only one ex-wife, isn’t there?’
Harry leant back, hands hooked behind his head. ‘You come in here threatening me, then plead for my help.’
‘Don’t take Freeman on,’ said Petrovsky. ‘The man’s got tentacles all over the place. He destroys people like slapping mosquitoes. Check how many investigations against him have been shut down, no explanation.’
Freeman’s reputation swirled around favors and influence peddling, but nothing had been made to stick. ‘Then why work for him?’
‘So, ride with us, for Christ’s sake,’ answered Petrovsky.
‘Yes, Stephanie is my only ex-wife,’ he answered tightly. ‘And yes, she does know Sergey Grizlov.’ Harry understood the rawness of power that emanated from any White House, particularly a new administration. Petrovsky was as much advising as he was threatening.
Petrovsky said, ‘She’s currently a visiting professor at Harvard and a fellow at a Washington think-tank. She met Sergey Grizlov in her twenties and, with Grizlov’s help, made her fortune in wild post-Communist Russia.’
‘All right, you’ve read the file,’ interjected Harry. ‘What do you want with Steph?’
Petrovsky continued. ‘Her friendship with Grizlov. She has kept in touch with him throughout since they dated, when she was a member of the British Parliament, when she married you, when she abandoned politics to be ambassador to Moscow and Washington. Briefly, Grizlov was Russian Foreign Minister and Stephanie was Foreign Secretary as Baroness Lucas of Clapham. She is currently here in Washington, and the President needs her.’
‘You make it sound like conscription.’
‘It is.’
‘Then call her?’
‘No trails. No red tape, and you know her, Harry.’ Petrovsky got to his feet. ‘The Finns will hold for a couple of days. We need her to get to Grizlov before then. He doesn’t know that his son is dead. Let him hear it from Stephanie.’
Harry understood, and it could work. He hardened his next question. ‘What about Sara? You cut a deal with her, too?’ Sara knew Yuri Mishkin’s identity. She was with Michio. Her silence would mean a deal done with Michio Kato.
‘I talked to Habiki Saito. He says he’ll handle it.’ Saito was Japan’s National Security Adviser, Petrovsky’s direct counterpart.
‘And Saito talked to Michio Kato who said he would handle it.’ Harry’s tone was rich with sarcasm. ‘I can’t fucking believe it.’
‘Yeah. It stinks. But think carefully, Harry. Sergey Grizlov, the urbane, cosmopolitan Moscow insider won the Kremlin on a pro-Western platform. Russia is sick of antagonism. No more Ukraines, and it trusts Washington more than Beijing. Grizlov is lonely. In his sixties, he discovered a son he never knew existed. Yuri Mishkin became a hinterland of his life. Youth. Hope. Legacy. How is he going to react when he learns Yuri has been murdered?’
Harry stood, hands on hips. ‘Michio Kato ordered the murder.’
‘Let’s assume he did it to screw over Grizlov, mess with his mind, weaken the Kremlin, weaken a recovering Russia.’ Petrovsky stood up and ran his hands around the waistband of his pants, tucking in his crumpled shirt. ‘When that comes out, Grizlov will rightly kick shit, and we would have to side with Japan. Freeman’s foreign policy out the window in less than a hundred days.’
Petrovsky’s analysis made big picture, global strategy half-sense. But the details didn’t add up. Why would Michio kill Mishkin only to be silenced by his government? And did Michio really have the muscle to buy off half the Finnish police force?
‘Who in Finland tried to stop Ozenna?’ asked Harry. ‘Who sealed off the road? Who countermanded the ferry extraction?’
‘Names, I don’t know. We’ll get there eventually. The Finns have an election around the corner where their big neighbor Russia is a divisive issue. Michio Kato tapped into that. The shooter in the lecture hall. The road block. Those guys all came from one unit. The Finns are dealing with it.’ Petrovsky tightened his belt a notch. ‘I’m to the Oval and need to bring an answer with me about Steph.’
‘You’re not getting one, Nick. Until I’m a lot clearer about the mess you and Freeman have got us into.’
‘I’ve told you what I know.’ Petrovsky adjusted his yellow patterned tie. ‘There’s a bond between Stephanie and Grizlov. Time to use it for the greater good.’
‘Whose greater good? Explain exactly the deal with the Japanese government and Kato.’ Harry posed the question as an accusation. Michio Kato was a killer. His family ran a crime network that threatened America. What Harry had not yet revealed to Petrovsky was the exact level of that threat. Nor had he decided when or if he should.
‘Sara Kato is innocent,’ answered Petrovsky. ‘She’s on her way home to Japan.’
‘Her home is in London.’
Petrovsky ran his hand down his front to flatten the tie. ‘This big, rich crime family is like a prosthetic limb to the Japanese government. But we can’t have Sara shouting her mouth off. For the next few days, we need her to be under the control of her family.’
Harry let out a sigh of resignation. The aim had been to bring Sara in and turn her to inform against the family. Instead, his own government had made sure she would keep her mouth shut under her family’s protection. ‘And the killers,’ he asked more amicably. ‘They were delegates, planted there.’
‘The Finns gave us prints and facial. There are two, both decorated captains, both ex-Marine Corps. Simone Tallick, who posed as a Black Lives Matter activist, and James Hunter, who Ozenna knocked out cold, posing as an activist from the far right.’
‘Working for Michio?’
‘Let’s presume.’ Petrovsky sluggishly wiped his hand through the air. ‘They’re not speaking. They are lawyered up. They’re pros. No one’s holding their breath for a flood of confessions.’ He seemed to have laid it out as much as he could. Harry wasn’t going to fight him. ‘Can you get me back inside the tent, Nick? Access back. Your people at the White House stop trashing me.’
‘Done.’
‘I’ll get hold of Steph.’ He stepped toward the door to let Petrovsky out.
‘I’ll tell the President.’
‘Best efforts. No guarantees.’
‘Understood. And where is Rake Ozenna?’
‘He should be on Swedish soil in ten minutes.’ Harry had arranged for the helicopter to take Ozenna to the Swedish military air base at Uppsala, about fifty miles inland.
Petrovsky stepped into the doorway, knowing his next words would be heard by the waiting Secret Service agents. ‘We’ll be taking Ozenna from here, Harry. This whole thing is too hot for you to be running wild and alone.’ It was a statement not a consultation.
EIGHTEEN
Baltic Sea, Sweden
Rake’s thoughts churned as the Swedish helicopter flew low and fast over the Baltic Sea. What could he have done differently? He watched sunlight dance on the gray water, sometimes clear, sometimes through thin mist. He played images back and forth of Sara in those last moments. There had been no fear in her as she walked with him, no resistance, an acceptance that they were leaving until jolted by the unexpected. She saw Michio, missed her footing, regained her step and tore herself away to run to him at precisely the moment Harry Lucas shouted Rake an order to abandon her. There was nothing he could have done. She wanted to be with her brother. The Finnish police had him by the arms, walking him to the chopper. Rake wasn’t big on reflection. He had ridden through operations that had gone wrong. Except this one hadn’t. He had been given orders. Keep Sara safe. He had followed them until they were reversed.
No words were spoken between Rake and the single crewman in the cabin. He was given no headset to hear communication. His rucksack had not been searched. Nor had he. Close to the Swedish coastline, they flew into low cloud. The pilot brought them down into a washed, blurry landscape of a small airstrip, shut down for the winter. Vegetation grew through ice. There were a dozen civilian light aircraft, their red and blue covers showing in patches through freshly fallen snow. A ragged orange windsock hung from a white rusting pole like a torn dress. There was a low-rise timber hut, more a village sports pavilion than an airfield mess room. Next to it stood a white station wagon, no ice on the windscreen, no snow on the hood, recently arrived.
The crewman slid open the door and beckoned Rake out. Rake hooked his rucksack over his shoulder and followed the crewman’s footholds from rung to skid to ground. The crewman walked across to the station wagon, opened the door and took a large, plastic Ziploc folder from the front seat. He handed it to Rake, gave a brief salute and turned back to the helicopter. Inside the folder was an electronic car key fob and a dismantled phone, a Nokia cell, not a satellite, meaning it would rely on a signal from a cell tower. The helicopter scattered loose debris and ice as it took off.
Rake could not see or sense anyone around. Snow chains were fixed to the vehicle’s wheels. The single snow-covered road that led out from the airfield carried the tracks of two vehicles, the station wagon and a second, heavier vehicle with a longer wheelbase. Flat open ground running down to a rocky coastline surrounded the runway. Behind the parking lot, there was a steep hillside, mostly covered in snow, with clusters of pine trees and rocks jutting from the ground. Whether snow stayed in place depended on how much sun got through and how protected it was from the wind. In some places on the hillside, snow had not settled.
‘This is Ozenna,’ Rake tested the line that half an hour ago had carried Lucas’s order to abandon Sara Kato. Nothing. Dead. Rake was relieved. Lucas had cut it. Some other agency. He was in a low-trust frame of mind. Sara had been sacrificed in some stinking political deal. There was no way Sara would be safe with Michio. Lucas had let him down. Rake had let Sara down. He had broken his word to her. She was not safe.
He was not going to slot the new phone together, call Lucas, find out what was happening, get in the station wagon and drive to wherever he was ordered. Assembling the phone could be like taking a shortcut across a minefield, the kind of narrow thinking that gets people killed. Whoever made this delivery of vehicle and phone knew where he was now, most likely watching. The station wagon would have tracking sensors. The phone, once on, would shine like a huge spotlight.
A few hundred yards along, the narrow road curved away. Old snow was packed on either side, making it easy to block.
To Rake’s tracking eye, a hill trail was visible underneath fresh snowfall where it was uneven with rock, hard ground and scree, not soft undergrowth. The hillside offered good cover. With the advantage of the high ground, he would reset the satellite phone to an alternative encryption. He dropped the Ziploc bag back onto the front seat of the station wagon, shut the door and hooked his rucksack onto both shoulders.
A man with walking boots and a forty-five-pound rucksack could not avoid leaving tracks in snow. Trees and undergrowth came down to the edge of the parking lot, meaning that anyone would have to look closely. Rake began staying with the trail, but soon moved out at a right-angle and back again in a zigzag, all the time looking ahead for an area of ground where snow had not settled. He found it halfway to the top, a thin strip of greenery that branched off like a river tributary. He continued upwards in the snow, leaving heavy prints, until he reached a dense cluster of trees. Then he turned back, exactly placing footstep into footstep the same way he had come up, until he reached the fork, when he jumped out of the snow into the hard, clear, frozen ground.
An experienced tracker would not be fooled. But any standard police or military deployed to bring him in would spend time working it out. Time was what Rake needed. He judged he was a thousand feet up and a thousand from the top. He had a good view over the airfield and its approach road.
He focused one half of his mind on his ascent and the environment and the other half on Sara and their mission with the Kato family. If Lucas had been overridden by the new administration, it would either be something personal, someone wanted to get rid of him. Or it would be on policy. Rake had a hard time matching the dormant island dispute between Russia and Japan with a critical American foreign policy change. Few people had ever heard of the islands, certainly not voters. Yet this was the mix he was in.
