Kilo Option, page 5
“But you don’t think so.”
Lane shook his head. “We’ll find out as soon as Maslennikov comes back here, especially by how he returns. For the moment he might not suspect we know he’s missing. If his conference in Kiev was routine, he’ll fly back to Dulles. If not, he’ll sneak back in.”
“There’s a question if he’s still in Kiev,” Hughes said.
“When did that come up?”
“Just before you came down here. I sent the query out to all stations this afternoon, and we started getting responses around six. Maslennikov may have been spotted in Budapest thirty-six hours ago, then he disappeared again. But he hasn’t come through Dulles yet, and no one is sure he actually left Kiev.”
“What about New York, or maybe Miami, or Chicago?”
“The search program’s been running for a half-hour now. I’m betting he came through Montreal via Paris, then by car to Burlington, Vermont.”
Lane smiled. “If the girls ever find out how efficient you are, your free ride is going to come to a screeching halt.”
“They’ll never know unless you rat on me.”
“It’s a thought.”
The familiar figure of Benjamin Lewis, director of NSA’s Russian Division, stepped off the elevator and lumbered across the room like a bull elephant. He was a huge man, with thick black hair, a massive head that seemed too large even for his large body, and a barrel chest. His birth name was Lebedev. He understood the Russian mentality better than anyone in the Agency.
“What’s happening in Kiev that has you gentlemen working overtime?”
“It’s Colonel Maslennikov, in the back row behind Sheskin and Lukashin,” Hughes said.
“That’s a rare combination,” Lewis said, staring up at the image on the big screen. “When was this?”
“Last week, but we think he’s on the way back here.”
“Good Lord, are they getting ready for something?” Lewis asked. “Something big again?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Lane replied. “One I’m going to ask him if and when he shows up in town.”
Lewis studied the photograph with great interest. “Could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
“Our short list is down to eight people in five offices,” Lane said. “We’ve started to lean on them, maybe something will shake lose when Maslennikov returns.”
Lewis thought it through. “Okay, I’ll take it upstairs. The director is starting to make noises. In the meantime, a friend of yours is here insisting on seeing you.”
“Who is it?” Lane asked.
“Frances Shipley,” Lewis said. “Something I should know about?”
“Or me?” Hughes asked innocently.
Lane had been divorced for over six years. Hughes and his wife, Moira, were after him constantly to find a good woman, settle down, and have a bunch of kids. Lane, who had come to prefer the peace and quiet of living alone with his black cat, Smokey, called it the “misery loves company syndrome,” although at rare moments he could see their point. Frances Shipley and he had had a thing a few years ago when he’d been stationed in London. They were still friends, seeing each other from time to time. But coming here like this, unannounced, was not like her.
“I don’t know, but I’ll ask,” Lane promised. “Where’d you put her?”
“In my conference room,” Lewis said.
“Invite her for a late dinner,” Hughes suggested. “I’ll tell Moira to expect us in a couple of hours.”
Lane ignored him, taking the elevator up to the third floor where the British naval intelligence officer was waiting for him.
She looked up from a series of photographs spread out on the table. Lane immediately recognized them for what they were. But his eyes were drawn back to the woman. Her coat was thrown over a chair. She wore a plain white silk blouse, a medium-short checked skirt, dark nylons, and high heels. On her slight frame the simple outfit looked elegant.
“You’re even more beautiful than the last time I saw you … what, two years ago? And then you were nearly perfect,” Lane said, crossing to her. They embraced warmly.
“Thank goodness for a man who’s not afraid to compliment a woman for fear he’ll be branded a sexist,” she said, and she sincerely meant it.
“But I’m a raging macho chauvinist pig, and can’t do a thing to change.”
“Rather,” Frances said, laughing lightly. “But you clean up nicely, and you do know how to order a decent bottle of wine.”
Lane searched her eyes for a hint of trouble, a reason why she’d come down here from New York, but he could detect only her British steadfastness.
“This is not a social call,” he said, looking at the satellite photos.
“No it’s not, Bill. These came up earlier this evening, along with a twixt.”
“Ours?” Lane asked, moving to the table and staring at the eight shots.
“Yes, but I have a problem with the analysis we were sent, so I thought I should come down to talk to somebody about it.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the only one I know here, and I can count on your either giving me a straight answer or telling me this is all we’re going to get.”
“Not my division, Frances.”
“I know that.”
Lane considered it for a second. “Okay, what am I looking at here?”
Frances handed him the message flimsy they’d received from NSA and then took him through the eight photographs, including the overlay she’d generated, and the conclusions she’d drawn.
“At the very least this was a violation of MEGAP,” she explained. “We’re putting together a team to check it out.”
“Are you in on it?”
“Of course,” Frances said seriously. “We leave for Tehran first thing in the morning, which means I have to take the shuttle back tonight.”
“What do you want specifically?” If she wanted straight answers she would have to give some of her own, something Lane had absolutely no doubt she’d do.
“For starters, is there anything going on at Bandar-é Emn Khomeini that we should know about before we go poking around?”
“Nothing I’ve heard about. Can you be more specific?”
“Nuclear-tipped subsea-launched weapons in Iran’s arsenal?”
Lane whistled long and low. “Is that what you think?”
“I think it’s a very real possibility that the jet attack on the oil rigs was nothing more than a diversion for a land assault on the base. But there was no significant damage, and no signs of any serious fighting. Which means an intel operation.”
“A possible intelligence operation,” Lane corrected.
“All right, possible,” Frances conceded. “But everybody knows what’s kept at Bandar-é Emn. The only question left is the nuclear one.”
Lane started to object, although he felt that she was arguing a legitimate point.
“Hear me out, William. Assuming someone thinks something is going on there, and assuming the jet attack was diversionary, then it could be that a small team of commandos got onto the base.”
“They had to get there somehow,” Lane said. “Probably by sea. So what you want is our satellite infrareds. If they were dropped by boat, and then picked up, we’d catch the heat signatures. Might even tell us who made the attack. Are you thinking the Israelis?”
“My bet would be Iraq,” Frances said. “Will you help?”
“Might not be a question of will, might come down to can. But I’ll give it a try. How will I be able to get in touch with you?”
“Through my office at the UN. We’ll set up a secure link as soon as we get to Tehran.”
Lane looked into her eyes again, this time for another reason. “How about a long weekend when you get back?”
She hesitated uncharacteristically, then smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Who is he?”
“A nice man, but we’re just friends,” Frances said.
“Take care of yourself over there, kid. They’re a little touchy about women.”
6
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
The penetration agent got dressed in the uniform of a navy lieutenant commander and, pulling a courier’s leather case on wheels, left his motel on Kings Highway, attached the base entry sticker to the lower left corner of the Corsica, and headed across town to the sprawling naval base. It was a few minutes before ten in the evening, and he was on schedule.
He checked his rearview mirror several times on the way over, but so far as he could tell he wasn’t being followed. Nor did he believe he’d been followed out of Washington. Nothing that had happened so far this evening would have any effect on his mission. But by morning the situation would be different.
This was his last assignment in the United States. Even Mikhail had finally come to realize that the walls were closing in on them. He wasn’t going to spend the next twenty years in an American jail because of bad timing, and because the Ukrainian KGB had not managed to catch any of the American spies working in and around Kiev who could be traded for his release. But this mission was important enough to carry out even though it would completely blow his Pentagon cover. It was the message his control officer had brought back from Kiev.
“We’re not simply throwing away the good work you’ve done over the past year and half,” Mikhail Maslennikov said, his coal black eyes flashing.
“I won’t be able to return to Washington,” Valeri Yernin told the older man.
“Of course not.”
“Will I be returning to Kiev?”
“Not immediately. First you will go to Mexico City to turn over the data, and you will wait there for further instructions.”
Yernin stared into the broad, squarely defined peasant face that radiated intense confidence. More than one of Maslennikov’s field officers took comfort from that face. “Is this merely the first part of a new assignment?”
“All in good time, Valeri. Do this thing well, and believe that we will not allow your special talents to languish. On the contrary.”
“As you wish,” Yernin replied.
Norfolk Naval Base is the largest navy installation in the world, home to twenty-nine major commands and 120 ships, including the aircraft carriers Roosevelt, Eisenhower, George Washington, America, and John F. Kennedy. Even with the recent military cutbacks, there are nearly 100,000 active duty personnel here, along with 6,000 reservists, 125,000 family, and nearly 40,000 civilian employees. Because of the sheer size of the place, base security is lax.
At the main gate Yernin powered down his window and showed the SP Stein’s ID card. The cop saluted and waved him through without question. He drove directly across base to a three-story complex that housed, among other commands, the Submarine Forces Atlantic Headquarters.
Traffic in town had been normal for this time of the evening, but on base it was light. He drove around back to a nearly deserted parking lot, where he parked the car in the shadows. He switched off the headlights and engine and sat for several seconds.
His window was still down, so he could smell the pungent odors of the bay and the tidal flats mixed with bunker oil and burned kerojet from the nearby air station. Out on the bay somewhere a boat sounded two blasts of its whistle. Another boat answered with the same signal.
He smiled in the darkness. No sweat, as the Americans liked to say.
The Commander, Submarine Forces, US Atlantic Fleet (COMSUBLANT) controlled the largest force of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and nuclear-powered strategic ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in the world, with bases as far away as Sardinia. Between the small Mediterranean Sixth Fleet and the much larger open Atlantic’s Second Fleet, thirty-eight SSBNs and forty-four SSNs were operational, or could be placed in operation on extremely short notice. It was an awesome force, even larger than the Pacific’s Third and Seventh Fleets.
Besides the submarines home-based in Norfolk, there were submarine groups and squadrons at Kings Bay, Georgia, and Groton, Connecticut. But it was here at Norfolk where submarines were designed, built, and tested. Where the crews were operationally trained. And where the vast majority of the institutional infrastructure was located. If COMSUBLANT didn’t know about it, it simply did not exist.
All of the fleet’s business was managed by Computer Control, housed in a hardened subbasement beneath the headquarters building. Entry through the main doors was controlled by restricted pass, like the one Yernin had taken from Stein’s body. But entry to the computers was restricted to personal recognition. It was the only real difficulty Yernin figured he would have to face tonight.
He checked the load on his Heckler & Koch, made sure the silencer was screwed tightly to the end of the barrel, and put the gun back in his case. He got out of the car and walked across the parking lot to the rear entry.
A security guard behind a glass booth watched as he passed Stein’s security card through the reader. The door buzzed open and he stepped inside.
“Good evening, sir,” the chief petty officer said, sliding the glass aside.
“Computer center?”
“First elevator on the left. May I see your orders, sir?”
“Courier duty,” Yernin said. He handed the SP a set of the orders that Maslennikov had supplied. He was delivering classified computer documents from CINCLANT Admiral Norbert Thompson at the Pentagon to COMSUBLANT Rear Admiral Donald Horvak.
The SP scanned his orders, his eyebrows knitting. “May I see your ID?”
“Sure.” Yernin dug Stein’s ID card out of his pocket and handed it over the counter.
The guard reacted, then hid his reaction as he looked up from the photograph on the ID card to Yernin’s face, and then over at a monitor panel on his security board.
“There a problem, Chief?” Yernin asked, keeping the tone of his voice routine.
“Sir, I know Lieutenant Commander Stein. You’re not him.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Yernin demanded. He opened his case, and before the guard could pull his gun, he pulled out the pistol, switched the safety off, cocked the hammer, and pointed it at the young man’s face. “Okay, Chief, I want your hands in plain sight now.”
The SP stepped back a half-pace, spreading his hands, palms out. The flap on his holster was open. His eyes darted toward a panel on his left. Measuring the distance. Calculating his chances.
“I’ll kill you if you make a sudden move,” Yernin warned. “Are you clear on that?”
The guard stiffened. “Yes, sir.”
“I need a visitor’s pass, and then I want you out of there. Right now. Over the counter.” He stepped back to give the petty officer room.
The guard hesitated for just a moment before he eased a visitor’s pass out of its slot on the main board in front of him. Then he jumped up on the counter, swung his legs over, and jumped down, using his left hand as a pivot while reaching with his right for the pistol at his hip.
Yernin moved to his right and brought the muzzle of the silencer up to the base of his skull. “Don’t do it, Chief. I mean it.”
The SP stopped dead in his tracks. “Okay, whatever you say.”
Yernin took the pass from the guard, clipped it to his lapel, then glanced over his shoulder at the door. No one was coming, but he was pressing his luck. “Let’s move it.”
“Yes, sir, where?”
“The first empty office. You’re going to call the computer center and tell them that we’re on the way down.”
“They won’t let you in.”
“That’s my problem, Chief.”
They started down the hall. If someone else came in, he was going to have to kill them as well as the guard and scrub the mission.
“There’s a phone in here,” the SP said at an office across from the elevators.
Yernin opened the door, and as he stepped inside the dark room he fired one shot point-blank into the base of the SP’s skull. The noise seemed louder than it was, but anyone within fifty feet wouldn’t have heard it or recognized the sound for what it was if they had. The force of the shot drove the dead chief the rest of the way inside.
“Too bad,” Yernin said without feeling.
7
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Lane had the full set of satellite images from the Persian Gulf incident, including the infrared shots, downloaded to his console from the National Reconnaissance Office over the objections of a very puzzled night supervisor. But senior NSA analysts were never denied any piece of information. Never.
The thirty-two separate images displayed in chronological order filled the Situation Board. Hughes came down from his console one tier up, a computer printout in hand, as Lane overlayed the infrareds with an outline of the coast and all the known man-made features in the coverage area. Next, he duplicated the heat signatures of the fifteen weapons strikes, laying them on top of one another so that they would cancel out. What was left were thirty-two images of the shoreline and immediate coastal waters minus the heat effects of the attack.
“What is this?” Hughes demanded.
“Someone hit the Iranian sub pens at Bandar-é Emn tonight, and Frances thinks it was the Iraqis.”
“Whoever it was came by boat.”
Lane had also picked out the strong thermal images of a boat lying nearly dead in the water about five kilometers off shore. It was too small to be a cargo vessel, and the heat images were far too strong, indicating two very powerful engines, for it to be a commercial fishing boat. Which left military.
He set the interrogation pipper directly over the strongest of the images, which showed up on photograph eighteen, and let the computer crunch the data to come up with a matchable outline that would conform to the probable engine sizes.
“The Iraqis don’t have anything like that these days,” Hughes pointed out. “Nor a port to launch it from.”
“But they still have oil, which means they have friends.”
The outline of the boat began to clear up a minute later, and within seconds the computer’s recognition program kicked over.
