by Ben Coes
“Of course,” she said.
She led Gant to an empty office down the hallway.
“Perfect,” he said.
He shut the door, then dialed.
“Senator Furr’s office.”
“It’s Josh Gant.”
“Yes, Mr. Gant. Please hold.”
Gant reached up and pushed his glasses higher on his nose.
“What is it?” asked Senator Furr.
“You need to cool down on the thing we’ve been working on.”
“Andreas?”
“Yes.”
“I just had my fucking counsel prepare a laundry list of requests—”
“There’s blowback, Senator. It will come back to bite us. Trust me.”
Furr was silent for several seconds.
“I can’t just—”
“Kill it,” said Gant.
70
SHENNAMERE ROAD
DARIEN, CONNECTICUT
Katie knocked on the door to the library.
“Can I come in?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
Katie stepped into the library. She had on green running shorts with yellow piping, a white tank top, and high-heeled leather sandals, all of which showed off her long, tan, muscled legs and arms. As she entered the room, Igor was staring at the computer screen.
She had two Starbucks cups. She stepped to Igor’s side and placed one of them on the desk.
Slowly, without taking his eyes off the screen, Igor reached for it. As he did, he accidentally touched Katie’s hand, which she had yet to remove from the cup. Igor looked at her fingers, then his eyes traced her tan, sinewy arm all the way up to her shoulder. Then their eyes met.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I found something.”
Igor pointed at the screen. On it was a block of computer code.
“This is the attack code that enabled Cloud to penetrate a Langley switch outside of Madrid,” explained Igor. “The penetration occurred fourteen months ago. He broke the encryption algorithm. It’s called a cold boot attack. He, or someone working for him, actually went to Madrid, found the switch, shut the power to it, then sucked the memory onto a USB. Once he did that, all he had to do was break the key, which he quickly did. He was inside within a week of the Madrid attack. Here’s the amazing thing. He didn’t alter the CIA encryption algorithm. Instead, he embedded a virus in the actual physical unit of the text. The virus was like a little spy, hiding in the physical representation of the text. It’s poetic, if you think about it. Spying on the spies. What appeared to be a relatively innocuous switch failure was quickly closed out and sanitized by Langley’s defense systems, its malware and other such useless things. In closing it out, it was, in fact, initiated.”
“That’s how they got inside the CIA?” asked Katie.
“Getting in was the easy part,” said Igor. “That code is how they remained, and how they did so without being noticed.”
Katie nodded.
“I’m impressed,” she said.
Igor looked up.
“Thank you.”
“So what’s next?”
“The virus that Cloud placed inside Langley is, in point of fact, just code. Like all computer code, it makes commands. For example, it tells certain internal Langley communications devices, phones on a specific channel, to transcribe their activities, then send those transcriptions, as they’re occurring, to him. What I need is to somehow hitch a ride on where they’re being sent. If I can do that, I will be able to get a peek at his defenses. His encryption protocols. That is when the real work begins.”
“Without being noticed.”
“Exactly.”
Igor looked up at Katie. She smiled.
“You have a nice smile,” Igor said.
Katie’s smile disappeared.
“I wasn’t smiling.”
“Yes, you were. You have a very hard time taking a compliment, don’t you? You should consider seeing a shrink. I see one.”
“You see one?” Katie asked, a bit surprised.
“Yes. I’m not afraid to admit it.”
“You shouldn’t be,” she said empathetically. “It’s brave to admit it. If you don’t mind my asking, why do you see one?”
“Sex addiction.”
Katie shook her head in disgust and turned to leave.
“By the way, there’s something else,” said Igor.
“What, I have a nice ass?” she asked sarcastically.
“You do have a sweet ass, yes, but no, I meant I found something else inside Langley.”
Katie stepped back to the table.
“Why are you being so mysterious?”
“I might have gone someplace I wasn’t supposed to.”
Katie crossed her arms.
“Inside the Agency?”
“Yes.”
Just then, the door to the library opened. Calibrisi and Tacoma stepped in. Both men looked visibly upset.
“Tommy’s dead,” said Tacoma, referring to Fairweather, an agent both he and Katie had worked with. Katie had recruited Fairweather.
“His plane crashed on approach to Moscow,” said Calibrisi. “A hundred and fifty-five passengers died, all to prevent Tommy from entering Russia.”
Silence took over the room.
“I need to get back to Washington,” said Calibrisi.
“Igor found something,” said Katie. “Inside Langley.”
Calibrisi shot Igor a look.
“You read Agency files?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Calibrisi.
“I scanned Agency logs, archives, directories, stuff that was deleted, you name it. I found a blocked archive. Even with top secret access I wasn’t able to open it. Anyway, I figured out a way around it, of course. It’s a bunch of projects that were apparently the sort of projects you didn’t want anyone to know about.”
“What does it have to do with Cloud?”
“Something happened in 1986. Something involving a Russian nuclear scientist named Anuslav Vargarin. It was a project. They called it ‘Double Play.’ The Agency was recruiting Vargarin. He was supposed to defect and work out of Los Alamos.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. They destroyed everything else.”
Calibrisi took a sip from his coffee cup, thinking.
“There are plenty of Vargarins. How do you know he’s related?”
“He had a son named Pyotr.”
Calibrisi—momentarily taken aback—dropped the cup. It hit the floor and tumbled.
“Are you kidding?” he asked.
“I’m dead serious.”
“Show me the scan.”
Igor pointed at his screen, which Calibrisi quickly read. The file—what remained of it—was only a few words.
PROJECT 818:
DOUBLE PLAY
01/82—07/86
Recruitment of Vargarin, Anuslav, wife Sylvie, son Pyotr
“We need to know what happened,” Calibrisi said. “You need to find that case and decrypt it.”
“The data’s gone, Hector. Poof. Doesn’t exist. What you’re looking at is some sort of catalog key. They got rid of it, perhaps because it’s so old.”
“They didn’t get rid of it,” said Calibrisi. “I know where it is.”
Calibrisi looked at Katie and Tacoma.
“You two, you’re coming with me,” he said.
71
GEORGES BANK
ATLANTIC OCEAN
80 MILES EAST OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, CANADA
As dawn broke over the horizon, Faqir was already in the galley, making breakfast for the crew. It wasn’t fancy. He brewed a pot of coffee, then cooked oatmeal, which he ladled into six bowls and sprinkled with brown sugar.
At seven, he woke the men.
He left Poldark in his bed. The old professor was now too weak to get up. The night before, when he heard two of the Chechens debating how long it woul
d take for Poldark to die, Faqir had slapped each man viciously across the face, telling them to keep their mouths shut.
Now, even he was beginning to feel the radiation sickness. Though he’d yet to vomit, the nausea had arrived in the middle of the night and hadn’t left. Faqir planned to make breakfast just once on the trip, on this day, a critical day, and now he realized it would probably be a waste. If the others felt anything like he did, they would have no appetite.
When they gathered around the galley table, only one man wanted oatmeal. The others weren’t hungry.
Faqir spoke in Chechen.
“I want every man ready,” he said. “That means weapons in hand, loaded. You wait belowdecks. When the boat arrives, you know what to do. Watch your field of fire.”
“How long until it happens?” asked one of the men.
“Who knows?” answered Faqir. “Could be soon. Could be all day.”
One of the Chechens leaned forward, then placed his head on the table. He groaned.
“What the fuck?” shouted another man.
Suddenly, the man began to throw up, coughing white, thick liquid out in an acrid, chunky splash across the table.
One of the others stood to run.
“Don’t move,” snapped Faqir, “until I tell you you can move. Do you understand?”
“But he just—”
“Don’t talk back either!” yelled Faqir, voice rising in anger. “Shut the fuck up and do your job.”
Faqir stepped to the sick man, grabbed his hair, and jerked him up.
“You too,” Faqir said, his teeth visible as a look of anger crossed his face. “We all feel sick. Either toughen up, or get off the fucking boat.”
“What about the old fuck downstairs?” complained one of the others. “Why isn’t he here?”
Faqir’s eyes moved slowly, deliberately, and hatefully to the young Chechen who’d just asked the question.
“That old man is the only reason any of us are here,” said Faqir.
He paused, then looked at all of the men.
“We’re about to make history on behalf of Allah,” said Faqir. “We will kill as many people as one hundred nine/elevens. You will all be famous. Each one of your names will be known around the world. Your actions today will be studied, hated, and reviled by the West. But they will know you. And where it matters most, you will be loved and honored, forever, by those who matter. Allah will greet you at the fourth gate.”
Faqir paused and stepped toward the man who’d mouthed off. He leaned toward him, an intense look, a savage expression on his face as he stared into the young man’s black eyes.
“Without the work of that old man, you would be nothing. You would do nothing. If any of you say even one word more of disrespect for him, the next thing you’ll know is the feeling of a bullet striking you in the head. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” said the young Chechen, bowing his head. “I’m very sorry.”
Faqir nodded, acknowledging—just barely—the apology.
“Now we begin,” he said calmly. He nodded toward the door. “Belowdecks. And remember, watch your field of fire.”
Back in the wheelhouse, Faqir moved the radio frequency to channel 16, reserved for marine distress calls. He picked up the mike.
“Mayday,” said Faqir. “Mayday. Is there anyone who can hear me?”
Over the next two hours, every minute or so, Faqir repeated the call for help. Finally, a faint, scratchy voice came over the radio.
“Roger on that mayday. Over. This is the Dogfish. I hear you. What’s the situation?”
“This is the Lonely Fisherman,” said Faqir. “We have a priority problem. We are in need of urgent assistance. Over.”
“What’s the problem, Captain?”
“We have fuel, but the pump is not transferring. We need a pump.”
“Where are you?”
“East of Newfoundland,” said Faqir. “Near the Flemish Cap.”
He gave the captain of the Dogfish his coordinates.
“Let me see what I can do,” said the captain. “We’re at the beginning of our trip and we’ll be heading a little south of you. Let me see if we can we spare a pump. Switch to forty-one.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, the captain of the Dogfish came on channel 41.
“Fisherman, you there? This is the Dogfish. Over.”
“We’re here, Captain.”
“We have a pump we can spare. I expect to be compensated for it.”
72
ELEKTROSTAL
Cloud watched the news reports on his computer, volume turned down. The plane had crashed near the airport, in a town called Tolstopaltsevo. The scene was pandemonium.
A low beeping noise sounded from Sascha’s computer. Cloud looked up. Sascha was waving him over.
“There’s something happening,” he said.
“Move over.”
Cloud took over the keyboard, sitting down in the seat, quickly scanning the screen. It showed signals intelligence activity over the past day originating at the CIA. The activity had virtually ceased the evening before, then started back up.
The analysis was displayed as a long list. These were precise nodes of activity, fed back to them via the virus infecting Langley. Next to each entry, electronic activity was represented by percentages, over time.
It was clear that Langley had shut down everything following the failed attempt to extract him. That was expected. What he hadn’t expected was the resumption of activity. It could mean only one thing: they were hunting for him. Langley would attempt to find him in the same way he’d found them, via the Internet.
Cloud’s entire network was protected by several levels of state-of-the-art encryption. The only way to find him was for someone to find the encryption key, then break it. Breaking the key itself would require months. More important, someone would first have to find an instance of the algorithm itself just to have a chance to break it. As of now, Langley was clueless.
Yet, theoretically, it was possible for them to use the trapdoor to find the encryption layer. It didn’t mean they could get through it, but even giving Langley that glimpse of his line of defense made Cloud nervous.
He sat back, crossed his arms, and shut his eyes. After a few moments, he opened them. He leaned forward and started typing.
“Go to access four,” Cloud said without looking up.
“And do what?” asked Sascha.
“Destroy it.”
“If I do that, the trapdoor will be gone,” protested Sascha.
“If they find access four, they will be able to find us. Shut it down immediately.”
73
BANCHOR COTTAGE
SCOTLAND
Chalmers stepped through the back door of Banchor Cottage, then down a flight of stairs that led to a locked door. He inserted a key and pushed into the windowless basement.
Few who’d been to Banchor had seen this part of the rustic fishing camp.
Behind the door, an intimate, low-ceilinged room looked like an old-fashioned hospital room. On one side, communications equipment was stacked on shelves, all of it tied to MI6 headquarters in London. At the back of the room was medical equipment, including heart and life monitors. A beat-up leather sofa was pushed against the wall to the left. Two hospital beds occupied the right side of the room.
A closet next to the sofa, out of view, held a mysterious-looking device that could be used by an interrogator to elicit information through the moderated application of electricity. For all of the publicity surrounding waterboarding, it was electricity that worked best at getting terrorists to talk, and Banchor, despite England’s stated dislike of torture, had heard its share of screams over the years.
Smythson was seated on the leather sofa, reading a magazine. Robbins, the MI6 physician, was standing against the back wall, back turned, inspecting the contents of a drawer filled with pharmaceuticals.
Robbins turned when he heard Chalmers enter.
&n
bsp; “Hello, Derek,” he said.
Chalmers nodded but said nothing. His eye went to one of the beds. Katya was strapped to it, a variety of sensors attached to her neck, arms, head, chest, and legs. If necessary, her heart, blood, and breathing patterns could be run through MI6 computers in order to assess her level of honesty.
“Give us a few minutes, will you?” Chalmers said.
“Yes, of course. I’ll be upstairs.”
Chalmers looked at Smythson, who was still seated. She met his look.
“Me too?” she asked.
Chalmers nodded.
Katya had not moved since being strapped to the bed. She lay beneath a flannel blanket, her clothing having been removed except for panties and a bra. Her head was facing the wall, eyes shut.
What played through Chalmers’s mind, as he prepared to interrogate Katya, were the choices before him.
In Chalmers’s storied intelligence career, he’d been subjected to a multitude of enhanced interrogation techniques. As a KGB prisoner in 1979, Chalmers wasn’t allowed to sleep for extended periods of time. In 1982, the IRA locked him in a Belfast warehouse for almost a month. There, he was waterboarded and electrocuted, though the memory he hated most was of the time they made him kneel in front of a concrete wall for five days with a lightbulb dangling down in front of him. He remembered crying when they finally turned the lightbulb off, as if it had become his only friend, or a god. To this day, Chalmers never changed a lightbulb, an idiosyncratic remnant of his time in that basement.
Chalmers thus had a view of enhanced interrogation techniques that was less theoretical than that of most others in the intelligence community. He’d been there. He knew what worked and what didn’t. The challenge was that there was no way to know until the sessions began. Chalmers believed all torture could be effective if there was something there in the first place. If there weren’t secrets to be found, however, a prisoner could lead an entire operation down a rat hole simply to stop the pain.
Chalmers could understand Katya having a relationship with someone who had a secret. The question was, did she have real knowledge? It seemed a practical impossibility. How could someone who had to travel all the time, to practice every day for hours on end, be shielding someone with such dark intentions?