Understrike

by James Barrington

  ‘Fuck me,’ Carole-Anne Jackson said, and it was indicative of the massive relief that everyone in the room was feeling that nobody even commented on her offer. They were all too busy laughing and shouting and slapping each other on the back.

  ‘So now what?’ Reilly asked.

  ‘Well the first thing we do is not shoot any more Russians,’ Richter said. ‘The weapon’s been fired, so your people won’t get a look at that, but they will be able to examine the launch system, and there are bound to be some kind of technical manuals here on board, just in case anything went wrong with the Kanyon and it had to be fixed by the crew. So what I suggest you do is tell your masters stateside to get the Russian crew flown to an interrogation centre somewhere and then organize a relief crew to sail the ship to Norfolk, Virginia, or some other base where you can take it to pieces. And, short-term, we sail the ship from here straight to Madeira and sort everything out there.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Reilly said, ‘and pretty much exactly what I was briefed to do if we managed to take the ship with the weapon still on board. What about you, Carole-Anne? I guess you and your men will be heading back to Virginia?’

  Jackson nodded.

  ‘We might take a couple of days of R and R in the sun on the island, and then we’ll head for home. Paul, what about you?’

  ‘My esteemed boss has instructed me to get my arse on a plane and fly back to London as quickly as possible, so that probably means another journey in cattle class courtesy of British Airways out of Madeira, surrounded by screaming children and idiot parents who can’t see anything wrong with their little darlings.’

  Jackson shook her head.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she said. ‘We still have the Gulfstream sitting on the tarmac in Madeira, and I’m still the ranking Company agent. So I think that you can join us on the beach for a couple of days, and then we’ll make a liaison visit to London. I’ve heard a lot about Richard Simpson, and I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘The pleasure, I can assure you,’ Richter said, ‘will be all his. He’s a short, pink, poisonous, sarcastic little bastard, and those are just his good points. But if that’s what you want to do, be my guest.’

  Chapter 53

  Friday

  Hammersmith, London

  ‘I told you to get back here as fast as you could, Richter,’ Simpson said when Richter walked into his office at Hammersmith. ‘That was on Monday. Today, just in case you haven’t noticed, is Friday. What the bloody hell have you been doing for the rest of the week?’

  ‘I was just following orders,’ Richter said mildly.

  ‘I told you to get on a plane, not ponce about on Madeira.’

  ‘I know, but it wasn’t your orders I was following at that stage.’

  ‘But you work for me.’

  Richter was trying very hard not to start smiling.

  ‘When you called me up in Longyearbyen, after you’d been talking to one of your chums over at Langley, you told me that I was to consider myself a part of the CIA team. That meant I had to take my orders from the ranking agent in charge of that team. Nobody rescinded those orders, and I was instructed by the agent in charge to remain with the team on Madeira until they were ready to fly back to Virginia. So that’s what I did. And if you’re interested, I saved the cashier the price of an airfare, because the CIA team decided to route to Virginia via Northolt, and they gave me a lift.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, Richter, and you know it.’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, but at least you can make your displeasure known personally to the agent in charge, who’s waiting in the corridor outside your office.’

  Before Simpson could respond, Richter stood up, pulled open the office door and ushered Carole-Anne Jackson inside.

  To give Simpson his due, he stood up the moment Jackson walked into the room, a broad smile on her face and her right hand extended.

  ‘This is Carole-Anne Jackson,’ Richter said, ‘the ranking agent on this operation. And this, Carole-Anne, is my boss, Richard Simpson.’

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Jackson said, warmly shaking Simpson’s hand, ‘and it’s a pleasure to meet you in person at last. Paul has always been very complimentary about you and the way you always back him to the hilt on any matter. And let me tell you that on this operation we literally could not have done without him or the back-up you provided from here in London. Without the two of you, the world would be a very different place today.’

  Even Richter thought that was laying it on a bit thick, but he nodded and smiled pleasantly.

  Simpson, faced with the extremely unusual sight of a very attractive young woman looking at him across his desk and praising him to the skies, appeared uncertain how to respond, which was unusual for him, but eventually he nodded and let go of Jackson’s hand.

  ‘I’m delighted we were able to help,’ he said, ‘and I’m pleased that Richter’s performance was satisfactory.’

  As he said the last four words, Simpson managed to convey rather more meaning than the words themselves expressed, but if Jackson noticed she didn’t respond.

  ‘I’ll be staying in London until next Wednesday with my team,’ Jackson added. ‘My superiors at Langley have asked me to debrief the Company personnel here in London before we return to Virginia. Because Paul has been such an integral part of this operation from the start, I presume you would have no objection if he accompanied me to these meetings at the Embassy?’

  Simpson stared into Jackson’s deep brown eyes and immediately nodded.

  ‘That would be no problem at all,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Richter said. ‘I thought you wanted me back here soonest so I could explain what happened to a whole bunch of officials.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Simpson replied. ‘They’re only politicians and civil servants, so they really don’t matter at all. It’s far more important for you to keep our American Cousins onside.’

  Obviously Jackson wasn’t the only person who could lay it on with a trowel.

  ‘I’ll expect you back here on Thursday then, Richter,’ Simpson said, an unaccustomed smile on his face. ‘I’ll organize those meetings for Thursday and Friday. That should be time enough. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Jackson.’

  Outside the office, Richter led the way towards the lift, and they didn’t speak until they were standing inside it.

  ‘I thought he was rather sweet, actually,’ Jackson said. ‘I hope I didn’t butter him up too much.’

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ Richter replied. ‘I didn’t realize you had three days’ worth of debriefings to go through.’

  ‘I haven’t. I have to be at the Embassy first thing on Monday morning, and unless things take a whole lot longer than I expect, I should be walking out of the door before lunch. But now that we’re here in London together, and working on my expense account – the three of us have booked into the Hilton – I expect you to show me the sights, and you’ve got three days to do it. And we’ve also got a fair number of nights, so hopefully the next few days are going to be enlightening, entertaining, and above all satisfying. And yes, I did pick up on Simpson’s slightly lewd inference.’

  ‘He does sometimes have a slightly juvenile sense of humour,’ Richter admitted.

  ‘You can say that again. Rumpy pumpy, indeed.’

  ‘You heard that?’

  ‘The speaker on your mobile phone is actually quite loud, and it was quiet around us when he made that call, so yes, I did hear it. And it doesn’t seem to me to be that bad an idea. Unless you’ve got something else planned?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing organized,’ Richter said.

  ‘Good. So let’s get to it,’ she finished as they stepped out into the street.

  ‘I’ll call a cab,’ Richter said, a broad smile on his face.

  Author’s note

  Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System/Poseidon/Kanyon

  In 2015, details of this potential doomsday weapon first beca
me public knowledge, and in 2018 the American Nuclear Posture Review confirmed that Russia was developing a ‘new intercontinental, nuclear armed, nuclear powered, undersea autonomous torpedo.’ It is known in Russia as Poseidon, and the United States’ code name for it is Kanyon.

  According to both information released by the Russians and that derived from Western intelligence sources, the device is a submarine-launched autonomous drone almost 25 metres – about 80 feet – long and 1.6 metres, over 5 feet, in diameter, that functions something like an underwater cruise missile, and with impressive performance characteristics. Two existing submarines that are believed to have the capability of carrying this drone, mounted externally, are the Oscar-class submarine Belgorod and the Yasen-class boat Khabarovsk, and it has also been conjectured that the large Oscar-class submarines could carry as many as four of these weapons simultaneously.

  Initial reports suggested the Status-6 device would have a top speed of around 100 knots, though this estimate was later reduced to a perhaps more realistic 50 knots, with a range of over 5,000 nautical miles and an ability to operate down to depths of over 3,000 feet. It incorporates stealth technology to avoid being detected by acoustic tracking devices of various sorts. Equally impressive is its potential payload. Analysis of the design suggests a warhead size of 4 metres by 1.5 metres – 13 feet by 5 feet – giving a total volume of 7 cubic metres, sufficient to accommodate a nuclear weapon with a yield of up to 100 megatons.

  The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Soviet RDS-200 Tsar Bomba tested in 1961, which measured 8 metres by 2.1 metres (26 feet by 7 feet) and had a calculated yield of 50 megatons. If its warhead had incorporated a uranium-238 tamper – an outer shell of uranium that would reflect escaping neutrons back into the exploding mass of radioactive material at the moment of detonation and hence greatly increase the explosive power – the yield could have been double that.

  The Tsar Bomba was also known as Kuzma’s Mother, a reference to a promise made by the then First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev at a session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1960, to ‘show the United States a Kuzma’s mother,’ an idiomatic Russian expression more or less meaning ‘we’ll show you.’

  The stated intention of the Status-6 weapon is to decimate an enemy’s naval ports and coastal cities, either by a direct strike using its massive warhead or, and potentially equally devastating, to perform a stand-off detonation of the weapon whilst still in deep water. A direct strike could also render coastal cities uninhabitable for some years by contamination with radioactive isotopes. There has been speculation, for example, that the warhead could be in the form of a cobalt bomb, what’s known as a ‘salted bomb’, incorporating cobalt pellets that would be transmuted in the explosion into radioactive cobalt-60 dust and debris that would fall on the surrounding landscape. Cobalt-60 has a half-life of a little over five and a quarter years. The stand-off detonation could produce a tsunami-like wave up to 500 metres (1,600 feet) high that would cause immense damage to the infrastructure and buildings along the coastline and for a considerable distance inland.

  It is the enormous potential destruction that could potentially be caused by the Status-6 weapon that has caused it to be referred to as a doomsday device, a last-ditch weapon to be used only when all other forms of aggression have failed.

  Some experts have suggested that this weapon is something of a paper tiger, a theoretical construct that doesn’t exist except as a few drawings and plans, which were intentionally leaked to try to intimidate the United States. However, the Nuclear Posture Review, a survey of American nuclear forces and assets undertaken every four years by the Department of Defense, a survey that of necessity considers American plans for nuclear conflict against potential aggressors, and the nuclear assets of those aggressor nations, clearly believes that the Status-6 weapon is a viable threat. The Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, shares this view.

  The KGB, SVR and FSB

  In 1991 there was an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and as a part of it the chief of the KGB, Colonel-General Vladimir Kryuchkov, used the organization’s resources in support of that coup. The rebellion failed, and on 23 August 1991 Kryuchkov was arrested and replaced by General Vadim Bakatin, who was instructed to dissolve the KGB, which he did on 6 November the same year.

  Interestingly, Kryuchkov, who was imprisoned for his part in the coup but released three years later under an amnesty, clearly saw that the writing was on the wall as far as the Soviet Union was concerned and, as we are aware, it finally collapsed in 1991. But in the months before this happened, Kryuchkov reportedly diverted $50 billion worth of funds from the Russian Communist Party coffers to an unknown destination, presumably to provide himself with a comfortable retirement fund. He died in November 2007 at the age of 83.

  But the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, the Committee for State Security, the ‘sword and shield of the party’, responsible for the Russian secret police, internal security and intelligence, was far too valuable to lose, and the result was little more than a cosmetic reorganization. The KGB’s previous functions continued essentially unchanged, and were divided between two new organizations.

  The first of these was the SVR, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the country’s external intelligence agency and the direct successor of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate or FCD. It was created in December 1991 and still occupies the FCD’s former headquarters in Moscow’s Yasenevo district. It was little more than a change of name, and only required minor alterations in titles and the like. The duties and functions performed by the KGB were continued without pause by the newly created organization.

  The second was the Federal’naya Sluzhba Kontrrazvedki or FSK, the Federal Counter-intelligence Service, which provided exactly that – counter-intelligence – taking over the old KGB’s functions in this field. Like the SVR, it was created in the aftermath of the break-up of the KGB in 1991, but was reorganized into the FSB, the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoi Federatsii or Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, in April 1995.

  Caesar cipher

  The Caesar cipher is one of the oldest and simplest encryption techniques ever developed. Named after Julius Caesar, who employed it in his private letters and other correspondence, it’s a monoalphabetic substitution cipher where every letter in the original plaintext message is replaced by the letter which is located a fixed number of positions away from it in the alphabet. So a right shift of five, for example, would turn the words ‘SECRET MESSAGE’ into ‘NZXMZO HZNNVBZ’. The encrypted text is always gibberish, confirming that a cipher of some sort has been used.

  This is a Caesar cipher with right shift of five, with the plaintext alphabet above and the encrypted or shifted version below:

  A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U

  As a refinement, breaking up the message into groups of, say, five letters adds an extra level of security, so the plaintext ‘SECRET MESSAGE’ would become ‘SECRE TMESS AGEXX’ the two final missing letters in the last group of five being replaced by the letter ‘X’. The encrypted version would then read ‘NZXMZ OHZNN VBZSS’ or possibly ‘NZXMZ OHZNN VBZXX’ depending on whether or not the letter ‘X’ representing a blank space was encrypted or not.

  The obvious weakness of the Casear cipher is that, like all single alphabet substitution systems, it is very easy to break simply by using frequency analysis, identifying the letters that occur most often in any particular language, and applying that knowledge to the encrypted message.

  In the example above, the encrypted letter ‘Z’ occurs four times, and in English the 12 letters used most frequently in any piece of text are, in order, E T A O I N S H R D L U, so it would be a reasonable guess that in this case the letter ‘E’ is represented by the encrypted letter ‘Z’. If that assumption were applied to the shift, then the plaintext could
be read almost immediately.

  Removing the vowels from the message, as described in the text of this novel, would add an extra layer of complication, and would make frequency analysis much more difficult or even impossible by removing five of the 12 commonest letters. Doing so would turn the plaintext ‘SECRET MESSAGE’ into ‘SCRT MSSG’ and into ‘NXMO HNNB’ as encrypted text.

  However, today it is generally considered that a Caesar cipher offers almost no reliable encryption, though the substitution technique is still applied as part of other ciphers, including the Vigenère cipher, a polyalphabetic encryption system using interwoven Caesar ciphers.

  The Thing

  The Thing was a passive cavity resonator, a bugging device hidden inside a replica of the Great Seal of the United States which was given by the Russian Young Pioneer organization to the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union in August 1945. It was a passive listening device which had neither a power supply nor any active electronic components, which meant that it was extremely difficult to detect using normal anti-surveillance equipment. It had to be illuminated by an external transmitter using a continuous radio signal on a specific frequency to work.

  The Thing contained a capacitive membrane that was linked to an antenna. When the radio signal was transmitted and the device became active, any nearby sounds, such as people talking in the Ambassador’s residential study, where the Great Seal replica hung for seven years until the bug was finally discovered, penetrated the thin wood of the carving and caused the membrane to vibrate. This modulated the radio waves being received by the device, waves that were retransmitted and could then be demodulated by a receiver and recorded by the Russian team monitoring the operation, in a similar way to a programme being received by a normal radio.