Damage Control

by Amy J. Fetzer

  But not to you? I asked. She shook her head and the chime of trinkets and bells laced in her hair made me smile. I saw you. Did I not? When she nodded I asked the single question that plagues me still, How did you cut the stone?

  You know well, Friar. You have watched me from your little haven. She pointed to the path from the monastery. I felt the flush of my own shame and spoke what I dared not repeat to a soul for it would mean this woman’s life. You are a sorceress.

  Nay. I am me. I know only this woman. She swept her hand down her length. Do not judge what even I do not understand. She stood and walked away, but I felt her frustration as it were a cloak in the summer. I can do no more than wield the elements, Friar. I cannot change a mind, stop a rock from falling. That treasure, I cannot destroy it and naught can harm it. Thousands have sought it and died for their greed of it. She kept her gaze on the sea. I will never see him again, will I?

  Mayhaps. The world, I have learned this day, is never as it really seems.

  She made a disappointed sound. Of all things, dear Friar, I know my fortune was never to find peace.

  She did not appear sad about it. I offered the only counsel I could and told her my thoughts. Peace often comes to us when we understand what we need to have it. Mayhap happiness has not graced you for you seek thus in the wrong places? She smiled then, laughed bit at herself and me. We enjoyed each other’s company and I am most heartened by her candor. I have never met a female with this woman’s intelligence and free will. She is ruled by no man, no faith, or society. She is Eve in the purest form.

  We sat long into the night, and I listened to the tales of lands she had visited with her father. Those places have shaped her. Then she entrusted me with the story behind the glass orb she has named Siofra. Show-fra she teaches me and she says ’tis the Irish word for changeling.

  Olivia felt a chill slid over her skin that had nothing to do with the arctic temperatures. The changeling.

  She read further, little checks going off in her head when she recognized parts of the legend she’d already learned. Emperor Jin, the princess told the monk, was a very old man, with many concubines and offspring full grown. Yet to her estimation, he appeared but two or three years senior to the princess. She saw this most precious stone in a guarded room of its own. No men stood near, their duty given to mongrel dogs as big as a man. She admitted to me she feared those animals and insisted they were not of this earth any longer.

  Like the wolves, Olivia thought and read the paragraph again. She looked up from the diary on her lap to the flat screen as if the digital version would give her a clue as to where the Viking went with the relic. Follow the traders, she thought again. Norsemen were traders as well as the Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Heck. Traders were all over Ireland then. She looked down at the diary copy. The princess sent it away with the Viking and his trade route would have been all over the map. She glanced at the clock, anxious to get back inside the site, and hoped the excavated remains would tell her where they’d been.

  She opened Noble’s flash drive, then split the screen with the images. One by one, she opened a file and searched its documents for the fifth time. She frowned until her face hurt and after an hour, she’d closed two. Her eyes burned and she rubbed them, mumbling to herself. “I’m trying, Noble. Hold on.” She looked up, flinched at the reflection in the screen, and twisted in the chair. “Make some noise next time. Jeez.” She covered her heart.

  “Sorry. It’s the rubber floor,” Sebastian said. “Shouldn’t you be digging?”

  “Dana and Kit are lifting out what we’ve excavated so far. We need the preservation tanks set up first.” She wished they’d done that while she was gone, but waved him closer, opening Noble’s leather book. “I think I figured out why this sphere was so coveted. We know it’s made of jade or alexandrite by the color and it heals enough that it reverses aging. I think it’s the equivalent to the fountain of youth.”

  “Then why send it away?”

  “Apparently its effect isn’t the same effect on everyone or everything.” She lifted the translation, her finger keeping her place. “Especially animals. The monk describes the stone as a skull with eye sockets and a mandible.” He scowled. “I know what you’re thinking…crystal skulls, aliens, and special knowledge stuff, but most of those were fakes, the bane of archaeology, but the monk says it wasn’t smooth. Now I’m trying to understand where Jal and Zhu might have gone with it.”

  “You know their names?”

  She lifted the translated diary. “Cool, huh? The Friar never mentions his own name, but he liked to talk. Great detail. It’s a bestseller.”

  “It’s mine next,” he said, then eyed the screen. “What’s all this? That’s Noble’s handwriting.” He pointed to one document.

  “It’s his backup. No diary though, but lots of copies of antique trade papers.” She opened a scan and narrowed the focus. “He said follow the traders and I’m not getting very far.”

  He studied the screen. “Yeah, you are,” he said, then searched for the mouse.

  “It’s a touch screen.” She left the chair and waved him on. “Go ahead.”

  “Man, all the bells and whistles in this joint.” He sat, tapped, enlarging two documents. “It’s not ships’ logs, they’re trade invoices.” He glanced. “A list of what people bought or traded from the traders.” He pointed one out, enlarging a digital replica of a fragment from a merchant’s pay book. “It’s Spanish. Four sheep, three female, one male, traded for pelts of white fox fur. Norwegian blue fox, maybe?”

  She hung over his shoulder and smelled his aftershave, distracted for a second. His face was next to hers. “Roos, the name for Vikings in the Middle East and Spain. It’s dated five months after the monk wrote about it. It’s possible it was Jal’s.”

  “Where were these found?”

  She thought for a second. “That one, in Cadiz.”

  “Wait a second.” He studied the files. “Chaucer’s House. That’s where he listed his e-mail on his computer in his house.”

  She frowned at him curiously. “You misbehaved, didn’t you?”

  “All the time, baby.” Sebastian opened the file and spread the e-mails, then sorted by date. “These are old, four years old. Why would he keep them?” He opened the last one, read, then studied the most recent. “Rut roh.” She nudged him, smiling. “I think the leak is Noble.”

  “No way, I’d swear to it.”

  “Not intentionally or recent.” He leaned to read for a second. “He’s corresponding to a running conversation about the Maguire’s princess. Before you recruited him.”

  “I knew about that. He was up-front. He was on a discussion board, a couple blogs. Like I said, the legend is there for anyone to find. We just happened to find the Viking’s ship and the diary.”

  “This e-mail address originates in Russia.”

  “Yes, I know that.” Her brows knit. “What are you getting at?”

  “The guy with the tattoos, he’s Spetsnaz, darlin’, and if you think the NSA snoops, try the FSB on for size. Someone has seen these on the other end.”

  “But there isn’t any conversation in three years. It’s a dead issue.” She inhaled, her eyes going wide. “Before Noble was kidnapped, someone called him offering to buy the Aramina log. The call was from a number U.S. intelligence was monitoring already.” When he scowled blackly, she cursed. “I’ll kill him. I told Ross to tell you this morning. He said he couldn’t find out who or why the call was on a watch list.”

  “Then it’s beyond his clearance,” he said. “But I’ll find out. Did you learn who this sender is?”

  “Gregor something, a Russian national. They didn’t exchange personal information, only a lively discussion.” She touched the screen, right clicked, and matched the e-mail with Noble’s address book.

  Sebastian opened his phone and spoke to Safia. “I need anything you can find on a Russian, Gregor Nevolin.”

  It was a moment before she said, “I can tel
l you he’s dead.”

  His brows shot up and he put her on speakerphone. “Dead. How so?”

  “The name’s familiar because he was the captain of a Russian nuclear powered fast attack submarine, Akula class, that went down in the Bering Sea. Russian authorities pretty much blamed him, though I don’t recall more than that. So what’s up?”

  Sebastian recalled the news reports of an explosion aboard, all hands lost. That was the FSB version. “Noble knew him by Internet contact.” He gave the details, and mentioned the monitored phone number. “They were discussing the legend. When did the sub go down?”

  “About three years ago.”

  Sebastian’s spine stiffened. “Mills and his wife were listening to the airwaves then and Vince was aboard a submarine somewhere in the North Atlantic.”

  “It’s what they heard, too,” she said, catching on. “Then maybe you need to look at those Sat photos I sent you.”

  “Will do. Call ya back.” Sebastian unzipped his Gore-Tex jacket and walked to the other end of the communications room. Like everything else, it was state of the art, big screens and superpowered. Most of the computers were for scientific use, the three in here were NSA linked. He sat at Ross’s computer, glad the guy made himself scarce. He was nice enough, but pretty much out of his element. A slacker, he thought, and earlier, he’d spent a half hour deleting games the agent had loaded on a classified computer. What an ass, he thought, and brought up the photos. Safia sent several and he was about to call her back when he noticed the time and date stamps. Each group was a year apart and he pulled them all up, moved them side by side, then called Safia. He put her on speaker. “What am I looking at? It’s all trees and mountains.” He spotted the river, but not much else with all the snow.

  Olivia inched around the edge of the partition, and he beckoned her closer. She pulled up a chair beside him and studied the screen.

  “Look at the base of the mountain where the bombs dropped after we escaped with Mills. Near the river.”

  Safia gave the exact coordinates and he typed. The focus narrowed. Olivia pointed, and he felt his skin tighten along his arms when he recognized a nose cone. The next photo, taken seconds later—from a surveillance drone maybe—showed the outline of that nose cone along the riverbank before it went under.

  “Jesus. It’s a submarine.”

  “Oh yeah. I think it’s where they built and launched it. I’ve gone back over sats and all the work had to have been done at night. I’ve got spots of lights, headlights maybe, but those are the only twilight shots that show something. It’s not at a known military facility, possibly a Stalin-era bunker, but you don’t have to be smart to get that they did all this against the NATO arms treaties and right under our nose. That’s why they destroyed it. I’d bet good money Beckham was in Chechnya looking for that subfactory or the sub and got too close. Moscow cleaned the trail.”

  “I don’t doubt your theory. Those MiGs showed up too damn fast. Someone was watching that area before we showed.” With the exception of the few men they encountered on the way to the prison, everyone was dead before they arrived. Erase the trail, leave no proof, he thought. He rubbed his neck, a headache brewing. “So the Akula class that went down in the Barents Sea is the sub that launched from Chechnya.”

  “Timing is too good,” Safia said. “Nevolin was stationed at Ana Bay, but wasn’t officially assigned an Akula boat. Including the one that went down. That’s an alarm, Russia doesn’t have that many skilled captains just hanging around. Whatever sent it down didn’t matter, blaming Nevolin was FSB being expedient.”

  He remembered the story from the Russian’s failed attempt to rescue the crew. He looked at the images. “That nose cone is smaller than the Akula class. It would have better maneuverability. But if that sub went down, why is Beckham investigating it now?”

  “Secret factory and secret sub, breaking about ten UN statutes, not to mention NATO treaties, what do you think?”

  He smirked to himself. “With all this maneuvering, it was loaded for war, but I give the Russians credit. Good snow job.”

  “The E Ring knows about this, Sebastian. The question is, when? Price was a big mover in Moscow then. She had Kremlin contacts, KGB hard-liners, corrupt as hell. My bones say she covered this up or we’d have known about it before Chechnya.”

  “Oh hell yeah.”

  “We need to send this to Deep Six.”

  “We work for McGill, and to them we’re shut down. Send your intel to McGill, give him your theory, too, but he’ll handle the Pentagon. He knows how to use those stars.” In Venezuela, McGill practically wore the shine off them for Logan’s wife, Tessa, when she was infected with a virus.

  “Roger that. I owe him.” When Safia was active, she had constant intel feed in the field, all from McGill sitting in the CIA director’s chair for a few months. Safia said something, but her voice faded out with a hiss of static.

  “We’re going out of satellite range,” Olivia said. “You can use the net for about ten more minutes, but we’re blacked out for the next twelve hours.”

  He closed his phone. “That would have been helpful to know.” Then the dome lights suddenly lowered.

  “Quitting time, too,” she said. “If we didn’t keep a day-night schedule, we’d all go slowly nuts.” She smiled, then looked at the screen, the images of the blue-gray nose cone. “What’s going on, Sebastian?”

  He stared into those wicked green eyes and knew he wasn’t going to hide anything from her and not because of her security clearance. He told her about rescuing Mills and being shut down, and finished with his feelings that Dragon One was set up to take the fall for Beckham’s screwup.

  Typical Olivia, all she had to say was, “You can disarm a bomb?”

  Deep Six

  Satellite Intelligence

  Mitch rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. His eyes burned from reading page after page of intercepted transmissions. It was a waste of time and while David was running it through the computer, Mitch searched through intelligence on Russia’s arsenal and came up empty. It was constructed in the mountain and when he got too close, they bombed away the evidence. Though at the time, he didn’t know they’d actually built it. He needed a chat with Lania Price, he thought when he heard his name. He looked at David. The kid was a little pale.

  “Transmissions from Vince and Anna Mills are a match.”

  He stood, grabbed the cane, and walked to the main console. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Mills was aboard the USS Bowman, and at the time, traveling under the polar ice cap when they intercepted a distress hail.”

  “Under the ice?” So they really wanted Mills for what he’d heard. Then he remembered Mills’s sonar was designed for arctic temperatures. Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought. They wanted both.

  “It’s Russian, and I should mention that all this”—David waved at the screen flowing with listening-post data, satellite images, and dossiers—“was around the same time that Russian submarine had a reactor mishap and went down in Barents Sea off the Russian coast.” Mitch scowled. “The transmission interception was after the Bowman broke through the ice in Greenland, sir.”

  A hard chill worked up from his bones. Fontenòt was in Greenland. He’d flown Dragon One’s behemoth of a cargo jet there. After that, nothing. Not even a car rental. He tapped a key and held the headset to his ear, translating in his head.

  The distress hail was standard for Russian. System failure and he thought they said gyroscope, and if that was screwed up, it would be hell to navigate. Reactor problems, possibly, the captain said, unable to move, but the transmission stopped abruptly after a minute. “That’s it?”

  “The commander of the Bowman tried to hail them again and offer assistance, but the Russian naval command claimed it was in Russian territory and they were handling it. Three ships went to the location, but I’m having trouble swallowing that story.”

  Mitch made a rolling motion.r />
  “It’s not possible for the transmissions to be that clear under the ice unless the Russians were there at the same time as the Bowman.”

  “A Russian sub went down, the Akula class.” He glanced at his notes. “The Trident. Seventy-three men died.”

  David was already shaking his head. “I’m sure that’s true, but that transmission interception wasn’t even close to where the Bowman broke the ice to pick up that signal.”

  “Your theory? I know you have one.”

  “Our subs don’t go under the ice cap from anywhere near Russian territory. They skate by the Bering Straits on the way out. But it’s slow going because there’s some big curve of underwater ice to navigate. Russian subs are out there since they always try claiming the north pole as federation land.” He snickered to himself as he brought up a map of the arctic. “U.S. subs, say out of Newport, drive up Denmark straits, then go deep north of Iceland near Svalbard.” David traced a line from the U.S. East Coast, along Greenland to the white ice just south of Norwegian territory, Svalbard.

  It was another fifteen hundred miles to come out on the other side in the Bering Straits, taking over a month, but that’s not where the intel insisted the transmission originated. He’d been on subs numerous times as a Special Ops detachment. He never got used to the feeling of being in a tin can and on a sub, the teams left the boat out a torpedo tube like Jonas spit from the mouth of a whale. He honestly admired submariners. It took guts to live underwater for months at a time, especially going under the ice cap.

  “The exercise is completed maybe once every couple years and it’s more to test the crew than whether it can be done. It can be, just takes a great sub captain and crew and we have them in spades.” David’s smile fell a little. “But navigation is the real problem. Arctic water distorts radar and communications. Especially at that depth. At certain points in the crossing, they are running without any outside link.” David shivered. “A floating coffin. The Bowman didn’t get a clear transmission.” He nodded to the printout that was at best a third of the transmission. “But arctic listening posts got it. The problem is, if the Trident was sending a signal the Bowman could pick up when they broke the ice, it wasn’t in the Bering Sea. It was on the other side of the world, somewhere on Greenland’s coast.”