Overkill pr-1

by James Barrington

  ‘Why not?’ Hicks asked.

  ‘Because until we know more about this offensive, we don’t know how we want them to react.’

  ‘They are supposed to be our allies, remember.’

  ‘That’s exactly the point,’ Westwood replied. ‘Whatever this offensive is, and there’s precious little to go on at the moment, we should wait until we have the big picture before we tell any of our allies. We don’t want the Brits or anyone else blundering into action ahead of time and then have to stage a rescue or support them in some ill-advised action.’

  Hicks nodded. ‘OK, that’s worth considering. However, the reality is that they have our aircraft and the films, and we – or rather the USAFE – will have to satisfy them before we get the access we need.’ He turned again to Richard Muldoon. ‘Let’s look at our options. Can we supply a faked set of pictures – something from the library?’

  Muldoon shook his head. ‘Not a chance. First, they will almost certainly want the films to be removed and developed under their supervision, so making a switch would be difficult if not impossible. Secondly, don’t forget that the Brits have JARIC.’

  ‘Remind me,’ Hicks said, looking blank.

  ‘JARIC,’ Muldoon went on. ‘The Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre, their own photographic interpretation unit. Any films we give them will be sent straight there for analysis. Even if we could switch the films, they’d know within an hour of looking at them, and that would only make them intensify their efforts to find out what we were up to. But if we give them the real films, they might write the flight off as a temporary aberration by USAFE, or a proving mission to test Russian reactions, or something like that.’

  ‘OK, but John’s objection still stands. When they analyse the films, they’ll see—’

  ‘Exactly,’ Muldoon interjected. ‘They’ll see what? They’ll see pictures of six hundred miles or so of Russian tundra. They won’t know what we were looking for, so they’ll concentrate on the obvious – new buildings, activity at known military units and so on. What they won’t be looking for is a hole in the ground.’

  ‘They’ll do comparison studies with earlier satellite photographs,’ said Westwood.

  ‘They’ll certainly try to,’ Muldoon replied, ‘but don’t forget that we’ve denied them access to the footage of that area ever since the last RAVEN contact.’ He looked over at Hicks. ‘That was just a precaution, Walter, but I think it was wise in the event. They won’t be able to see the vehicle concentrations prior to weapon detonation, so even if they spot the hole, all they’ll find on the earlier pictures will be tundra and maybe just a few vehicles. And the hill in the tundra was just a hill in the tundra.’

  ‘What reason do we give for the flight?’ Hicks asked.

  ‘Nothing at all. If we tell them a story, they’ll crack it sooner or later and know that we’re up to something. If we tell them nothing, just give them the pictures and let them get on with it, I believe there’s a good chance that they’ll analyse the films, find nothing of interest, and let the matter drop in a few weeks.’

  ‘Anyone got any better ideas?’ Hicks asked. Nobody spoke. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Do it.’

  Turabah, Saudi Arabia

  Sadoun Khamil stared intently at the screen of his laptop computer and read the decrypted text from the email message sent by Hassan Abbas three times, then leaned back in his chair to consider it. Like his despised infidel counterpart, Dmitri Trushenko, he had expected one of the Western intelligence organizations to stumble upon the operation sooner or later, as the number of people involved in it grew.

  They had, he acknowledged, been lucky so far, but obviously the Americans had suspected or had been told something, hence the flight by the spy-plane. Since the triumph of September 11th, which had worked even better than Hassan Abbas had promised, their security systems had remained on high alert, and they were even more sensitive than before to the possibility of any further attacks. Well, Khamil smiled to himself, it was too late now for them to do anything.

  Almost all the preparations were complete, and it only remained for the Russians to conclude their phase of the operation, the delivery of the last two weapons. Then Trushenko would implement the agreed procedure and issue the ultimatum that would permanently humiliate the United States and eliminate the countries of Western Europe as nuclear powers.

  Then he and Hassan Abbas would implement their own procedure, agreed to and approved by the al-Qaeda leadership, and about which the Russians knew nothing. And then the world would change, instantly and for ever.

  Chapter Seven

  Sunday

  Office of the Director of Science and Technology, Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  Muldoon passed the signal from Mildenhall across the table to John Westwood. ‘This isn’t really your field, John, but you’ve been involved from the start. You see what it says?’

  Westwood read through the text of the signal, then nodded and slid it over to Ron Hughes. ‘The RAVEN message is beginning to make a bit more sense. This is presumably based upon an analysis of the Blackbird product – by Mildenhall staff?’

  ‘Yes, with back-up from the recce guys at Beale, who flew across to England a couple of days ago. The ’bird, by the way, was released by the Brits yesterday afternoon, and landed at Mildenhall about nine, local time. The films were developed at Lossiemouth and copies were supplied to the British there. There were no requests to see the radiation detector records, and now we’ve got the ’bird back we can keep that data to ourselves.’

  ‘Any chance that the Beale people have got it wrong?’ Westwood asked.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Muldoon said, ‘but the films and detector records should be on their way right now from the airport by courier. I’ve got a couple of our in-house specialist analysts here waiting to look at them. We should have confirmation no later than this evening, but unless they say something different, this is pretty much what we expected, and as RAVEN hinted. The device on the tundra had a calculated yield of about five megatons. That’s around two hundred and fifty times more powerful than the twenty-kiloton Hiroshima device, but only about one quarter the yield of the weapons that the old Bear bombers used to carry.

  ‘The yield calculation was based upon the estimated volume of matter in the hill and the degree of destruction shown by the Blackbird photographs. They had to make certain assumptions, including the soil type, the depth at which the device was placed and other factors to do with the method of detonation, and the five megaton figure may have to be modified when they’ve had time to do a full analysis, but they think it’s about right.

  ‘More important,’ he went on, ‘is the radiation detector result, which was nil. Or, rather, nil significant – there’s always some background radiation. The Beale experts calculated the theoretical fallout from a conventional nuclear device of that power, made allowances for the weather patterns over the Asian landmass since the detonation, and for the Blackbird’s altitude, but what they expected the detectors to register simply wasn’t there. What they expected were traces of radio-isotopes strontium 90, caesium 137 and iodine 131, which are released in all nuclear explosions, but they didn’t find any of them in statistically significant quantities. So it rather looks,’ he added, ‘as if the Russians have managed to develop some kind of high-yield, but very low-radiation, nuclear weapon. What amounts, in fact, to a strategic-power neutron bomb.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Westwood said slowly, ‘is why they’d want to do that.’

  Muldoon looked at him. ‘Funnily enough, I’ve been wondering about that too.’

  ‘I’m not with you,’ Hughes interrupted.

  Westwood leaned forward. ‘Think it through,’ he said. ‘The balance of terror – Mutual Assured Destruction – was based on the premise that if the Soviets attacked us, they would suffer unacceptable losses through our retaliatory strikes, and vice versa. Both sides will lose and nobody will win, so there’s no point in launchin
g an attack in the first place.’ He pointed at the signal sheet that Hughes was still holding. ‘That just doesn’t make sense. The yield from that weapon is certainly significantly higher than from our neutron bombs, but they were always intended to be tactical or battlefield weapons, not strategic arms. The fear of nuclear weapons is based on the destructive force of the explosion, but also on the effects of the fallout, the radiation. Take away the radiation, and you take away half the destructive effect of the weapon. And that,’ he added, warming to the theme, ‘would actually favour the enemy – us.’

  ‘You’d better explain that,’ Hughes said.

  ‘Right. Let’s suppose that this weapon test was just a demonstration – in fact, the last RAVEN message talked about a demonstration, so this may have been what he meant – and that they had developed high-yield but very low-radiation weapons. Now, if the Russians rearmed with weapons like this, and then attacked the States, we would suffer enormous damage from the detonations. We’d lose whole cities, and the majority of our citizens would be killed, but only – and this is the point – only as a result of the initial detonations and the massive, but short-term, burst of neutron radiation. Nobody would die from the long-term effects of fallout, because there wouldn’t be any. Within a few days we could begin to rebuild our cities, without having to wear NBCD suits, and without worrying about contamination.’

  ‘You don’t paint a very attractive picture, John,’ Muldoon said.

  Westwood smiled thinly. ‘I know, I know. It’s a nightmare scenario, but the Russians must have thought it through. Now,’ he continued, ‘we don’t have any of these fancy new nukes, so if the Russians attacked us we would just have to rely on the good old high-radiation stuff in our subs and ICBMs. And that means that our nuclear response would turn the Confederation of Independent States into an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland. OK, again, nobody really wins and both sides actually lose, but on points we’d be ahead. The CIS might never be able to recover. I mean, just look at them now. Even with all the help the West can give them, they’re still trying to sort out the damage caused by the reactor accident at Chernobyl, and that was over twenty years ago.’

  Hughes nodded abstractedly. ‘I hear what you say, John, but the fact is that the Russians quite obviously have developed a new type of bomb, and I don’t believe they did it just for fun. They have to have a specific purpose in mind.’

  ‘That,’ said Muldoon, ‘is what’s been bothering me ever since I read that signal. What the hell are they going to do with it?’ He looked over at John Westwood. Muldoon was a planner and a specialist in technical surveillance techniques, but he knew almost nothing about HUMINT – human intelligence, or espionage. Satellites and reconnaissance platforms provided very precise information about hardware, but no data whatsoever about the intentions of the people who were building that hardware. For that, you needed an agent in place, somebody who could ask the right questions or listen to the right answers.

  Westwood shook his head. ‘We have no source we can tap about this – apart from RAVEN, of course, and we can’t establish a dialogue with him because we don’t know who he is. If we’re lucky, he might pass further data to Rigby, but we can’t rely on that.’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Hughes said. ‘In view of the last message received from RAVEN, I think the safest course would be to assume that he’s been burned. Even if he hasn’t, the Russians are bound to have increased security measures after the Blackbird flight, and I doubt he’d be able to pass anything further for a while.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Muldoon said. ‘So, what do we do? This is your department, John – what’s your recommendation?’

  Westwood was silent for a minute or so. ‘Technical analysis,’ he said finally, ‘isn’t much use to us now. I’d like confirmation from our in-house experts that the conclusions reached by the Beale team are accurate, though I don’t have much doubt that they are. What we have to do is find a way to discover what the Russians are planning for their new weapon, and the only way to do that is to tap another intelligence source close to the top in Moscow. As I said, we don’t have one, but it’s possible that the British, or maybe the French or the Germans, have. My recommendation is that we approach the British first – because of the “special relationship” and all that – and see if they have a line into the GRU or SVR.’

  Muldoon smiled. ‘I thought you were opposed to telling them anything, John?’

  ‘I am, and I wasn’t intending to change my mind, not unless it’s unavoidable. I’ve already cleared it with Walter that I go to London, liaise with our people there, and see if I can get anything. The local Chief of Station should, I hope, have a decent working relationship with their Secret Intelligence Service, and maybe I can find out something through him. This isn’t,’ he added, ‘something we can sort out over a telephone or through signal traffic.’

  ‘How soon would you go? I mean, what’s the priority for this?’ Muldoon asked.

  ‘I talked with Walter about this yesterday afternoon. Despite the negative feedback we’ve got, I think whatever is planned is imminent – maybe no more than a month away. If we’re to get anywhere, I think we have to move quickly. I’ve got an open ticket to Heathrow, and I’m planning on leaving no later than Tuesday morning.’

  Monday

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter arrived at Hammersmith just after seven thirty in the morning, and had the first SIS file open in front of him ten minutes later. He was halfway through it when Simpson rang.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ Simpson asked, as Richter reached his desk.

  Richter looked at the file Simpson passed over to him and read the title – ‘Forced-landing of USAF reconnaissance aircraft at RAF Lossiemouth’. ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘OK,’ Simpson said. ‘To save time I’ll give you the short version. Last Thursday morning a Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft—’

  ‘ABlackbird?’ Richter interjected. ‘They’ve been withdrawn from service for years.’

  ‘I know,’ Simpson said, ‘and don’t interrupt. Last Thursday a Blackbird landed at Lossiemouth with empty fuel tanks, signs of light battle damage and a really close-mouthed crew. Since then the USAFE has been trying everything to get the aircraft back, but the Ministry of Defence, showing an unusual degree of common sense, refused to let them take it away until they were told what the aircraft had been doing. Yesterday, the Blackbird finally flew back to Mildenhall, and a copy of the films it had taken were sent to JARIC.’

  ‘And?’ Richter enquired.

  ‘And you can take this file, plot the route the aircraft flew and work out what exactly the Yanks were so keen to photograph, and why they didn’t want to tell us anything about it.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No. Tomorrow you can get your arse over to JARIC and take a look at the films.’

  Kutuzovskij prospekt, Moscow

  The black ZIL limousine drew into the kerb and stopped. The chauffeur got out, opened the rear door and stood respectfully at attention as a tall slim man emerged from the back seat. For a minute or so the two men stood together, exchanging a few words, then the passenger walked into a shop. The chauffeur closed the rear door, got back behind the wheel, and drove away.

  Thirty seconds after the car had disappeared around the corner, the tall man emerged empty-handed from the shop and glanced quickly up and down the street. He nodded as if satisfied, then crossed the road and strode off briskly in the direction opposite to that taken by the car. Three minutes later, and without a backward glance, he entered the foyer of a large, and comparatively elegant, apartment building. The lift had just stopped on the ground floor to disgorge an elderly woman, and the visitor smiled pleasantly at her as he entered the lift. When the doors had closed, he pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  Genady Arkenko had been expecting the knock on the door, and opened it almost immediately. Dmitri Trushenko nodded his thanks and stepped into the apartment.

  ‘Dmitri,’ Arkenko said
, his face splitting into a smile of welcome as the two men embraced, ‘it is so good to see you.’

  Genady Arkenko was a short, dark-haired Georgian, and was Minister Dmitri Trushenko’s best-kept secret. In a country where homosexuality was illegal, and where exposure would mean certain ruin, the two men had been lovers since their schooldays. ‘Can you stay?’ Arkenko asked hopefully.

  Trushenko shook his head regretfully as he sank into a chair. ‘I can’t,’ he replied. ‘I have to return to the Ministry this evening.’ He looked round the familiar apartment. ‘Is everything ready?’

  Arkenko nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve installed the radio and it’s working well. I haven’t transmitted, of course, as you instructed, but I have listened in to a number of transmissions. I have the contact frequencies pre-set on the receiver, all the numbers are programmed into my telephone, and I have memorized all the codewords and responses.’

  ‘And you have everything else you need?’ Trushenko asked.

  Arkenko nodded again. ‘I have plenty of spares for the radio, plus the back-up transceiver. The kitchen cupboards are full of food and I have plenty to drink. Once the operation starts, I will not need to leave the apartment for at least a week.’

  ‘It will be starting, Genady, sooner than we expected,’ Trushenko said. ‘I have had to bring the date forward – the Americans have somehow found out something about Podstava – and I may have to implement the plan at very short notice.’ Trushenko noticed the look of concern on Arkenko’s face, and reached across and patted him on the knee. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you as much warning as I can. In the meantime, you should receive the first message from the ship sometime this evening, and you’ll probably have to transmit a number of changes to the vessel’s route over the next few days if it is to be in position as planned and on time.’