Arctic Gold

by Stephen Coonts

  Put another way, Washington functioned on funding and on size. The NSA was the largest of America’s intelligence agencies and received the biggest chunk of the funding pie. The CIA had been looking for ways to cut into that pie slice for a long time.

  Rubens was close to making a bitter retort, but he clamped down on the surge of anger. Damn it, he could feel his blood pressure rising, a red heat climbing behind his eyes.

  Within Washington, the man who determined where the paper went and, even more, who decided who got to talk face-to-face with policy-makers such as the President or the ANSA was the man who ruled, who controlled the real power within the government. The former ANSA, George Haddad, had been a close personal friend of Rubens’, a mentor and a confidant. His death had been devastating personally for Rubens.

  It had also profoundly affected Rubens’ career and possibly the future of Desk Three as well. He was used to having direct personal access to the President; now, though, Rubens could feel himself being shouldered aside, ignored, sidelined… and possibly even reduced to the role of official scapegoat.

  But venting his anger here and now would get him nowhere. If Rubens had learned one thing in his years of public service, it was that patience was almost as valuable in this town as face time with the President.

  So Rubens forced himself to relax. A longtime practitioner of Hatha Yoga, he let his mind momentarily settle into a place of calm, watching as he drew in a deep breath from the belly. Through breath control alone, Pranayama, it was possible to control the blood pressure… and the deep-seated fury within.

  He released the breath and, with it, the rising knot of anger.

  “Very well,” he said after a moment. He opened his eyes to find Wehrum staring at him curiously. “Please inform Dr. Bing that I do wish to see her at her earliest convenience. Shall I give you my report on Operation Magpie?”

  Wehrum shrugged again. “You can send it as an e-mail attachment. I’ll see that it gets to the proper desks.”

  Another slap, a means of telling him quite distinctly that his report wasn’t important enough to warrant discussion or close consideration.

  “I also wish to discuss future operational plans.” That was something that did have to go through Bing, at the very least.

  “Dr. Bing has instructed me to inform you,” Wehrum said, “that all Desk Three operations should be put on hold for the time being. It is possible that Operation Magpie will be detailed to another agency.” He hesitated. “Why ‘Magpie,’ anyway?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why’d you name the operation Magpie?”

  “Our Russian ops currently share a bird theme,” Rubens said. “Magpie, Blue Jay. We’ve found a connection between those two, by the way, and we think it’s important.”

  “Oh?”

  “‘Augurs and understood relations have,’” Rubens quoted, “‘(by magotpies and choughs and rooks) brought forth the secret’st man of blood.’”

  Wehrum smirked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Macbeth,” Rubens said. “Act three, scene four. Magotpies are what we call magpies today. The King was referring to things in nature revealing a man’s bloody secrets.”

  “If you say so. In any case, I suggest you start making whatever arrangements you need to make to bring your ‘magotpies’ home.”

  Rubens considered this. “We’re doing so now. There are still some loose ends to tidy up in St. Petersburg, however.”

  Again, a dismissive wave. “Whatever. I don’t need to know the details. But you should be prepared to hand the operation in all respects over to Debra Collins. I suspect that’s where this is going. I can’t imagine them allowing your Desk Three to continue operating while an investigation is under way. What other irons do you have in the fire?”

  “Several. Blue Jay is investigating the Russian mafia, which appears to be making a serious effort to take control of Russian petroleum resources. And Sunny Weather involves the protection of a scientist at a symposium in England.” He decided not to add that there was now a strong link between the Russian ops and the attempt to kill Spencer in London. “That’s the one where we just lost an agent.”

  “Not my concern.” Wehrum sniffed. “If I were you, I would simply get my house in order and await further instructions. Someone on the DNI’s staff will, no doubt, be in touch with you on the details soon.”

  Wehrum reached for a file lying in his in-box and flipped it open, effectively ending the interview.

  A most unsatisfactory interview, from all perspectives. Rubens was furious as he left Wehrum’s office. There’d been nothing in this meeting that could not have been handled more efficiently by e-mail or phone.

  As Rubens pulled out of the secure underground parking lot and turned left on Fifteenth Street, he was considering his options. Clearly, Bing, Smallbourn, and Collins were going to use the F-22 shoot-down as a reason to remove Desk Three from the aegis of the NSA and, quite likely, to demand Rubens’ resignation as well.

  If that was the way it had to be, so be it. Rubens disliked Washington inner-circle politics, hated them with a white-hot passion, in fact, that frequently had him wondering if retaining his position as the NSA’s Deputy Director was even worth it. Only two things had kept him at this damned job for as long as he’d been here-his loyalty to the agents working for him and his rock-solid belief that Desk Three was making a difference in a very dangerous, very twisted world.

  Whatever happened, he was not going to abandon his people.

  First things first. Dean was on the way to London and would have to take over the investigation of Karr’s death. And Magpie needed to be pulled out of Russia.

  But something was nagging Rubens, something sinister. What was the connection, through Sergei Braslov, between a scientist working on global warming and the Russian mafia? Why did they want Spencer dead? And what was their link with Greenworld?

  Rubens was determined to follow those questions through for as long as they let him.

  And to hell with what anyone in Washington thinks.

  10

  Ice Station Bear Arctic Ice Cap 82° 24' N, 179° 45' E 0205 hours, GMT-12

  HARRY BENFORD STEPPED OUT into the bitter wind. The clouds on the horizon, during the past day, had spread across most of the sky, blotting out the wan and heatless sun and causing the temperature to drop by a good ten degrees. Snow snapped along with the stiffening breeze, stinging the exposed skin of his face. His breath steamed in quick-paced puffs, quickly stripped away by the wind.

  God, I hate this place.

  God, in fact, had very little to do with this forsaken corner of the planet, at least in Benford’s heartfelt opinion. It was amusing to remember that the lowest circle of Hell, according to Dante’s Inferno, was not fire but ice, that Satan was pictured as a devouring monster trapped in eternal ice.

  Hell indeed.

  But Golytsin had promised Benford money, a lot of money, to play spy. Payment was due when he completed this mission-half a million dollars American deposited untraceably in a Bahamian bank. At the moment, though, he was wondering if it was worth it, if he should have held out for more.

  Up ahead, just visible through the layers of horizontally blowing snow, Larson and Richardson had reached the garage and were going in. Benford heard the yapping of the dogs as the door opened.

  “The garage” was what they all called the building, a large shed twenty yards from the main building. Inside, along with propane tanks, spare parts, stored food and gasoline, were the expedition’s snowmobiles-three of them, now that Yeats had the other three out on the ice-as well as the kennel holding the expedition’s dogs. While snowmobiles provided excellent mobility over the ice cap, the expedition had brought along a sled dog team as well, a bit of a belt-and-suspenders precaution against the possibility of mechanical breakdown. Arctic conditions were appallingly tough on mechanical devices. One of the chores assigned to the Greenworld visitors was the daily routine of thawing out chu
nks of meat, then throwing them to the dogs.

  Benford reached the door, hesitating. He was carrying a canvas satchel tucked under his arm and didn’t particularly want to have to explain what was in it. Extending from one end of the bag was a heavy, four-foot-long pry bar. He took a long look around, but no one else was visible, no one following from the Quonset hut, no one else out on the ice. Back in the main building, several of the team members were preparing to go out on the ice. There’d still been no word from Yeats or the other two expedition people, and Larson had finally decided that a run by snowmobile out to Remote One was necessary. Yeats and his people should have been back, now, long before this, and the storm would make their survival problematical.

  Benford eased the door open and stepped inside the garage. It was chilly inside-he could still see his breath with each cold exhalation-but warmer than the bitter cold of the wind. The dogs yapped and bawled. Richardson was near the door, opening up the locker that contained slabs of thawed meat; Larson was a few feet away, pulling a five-gallon container of gasoline off of a rack. As was usual, they were arguing.

  “I’m not disputing global warming, damn it!” Larson snapped. “But there’s no proof yet, one way or another, that we have anything to do with it!”

  “Proof? What proof do you need?” Richardson snapped back. He was a young man, in his twenties, and passionately opposed to the injustices of the world. “The industrial revolution comes along and bang! Temperatures go up. Carbon dioxide goes up. Summers start getting hotter-”

  “An oversimplification, Richardson. Back in the seventies there was a scare that the climate was getting colder, remember that?”

  “That was before my time.”

  “Kids.” The word was a snort. “Yeah, well, there was a downturn in global temperatures from the fifties through the seventies that suggested we were on the verge of a new ice age. The point is, we don’t know. All we can do is gather data at this point, which is why we’re up here in the first place.” He looked past Richardson as Benford stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. “Oh, Benford. What do you want?”

  “I just came out to help. Thought I could give a hand fueling the snowmobiles.”

  Larson looked surprised, then shrugged beneath his heavy parka. “Suit yourself. Here.” He passed Benford the container of gasoline, then turned to reach for another one.

  “How many are we fueling up?” Benford asked, shouldering the bag so he could take the can. “All three?”

  “Just two. I want to leave one on reserve in case something happens to the rescuers. We’ll leave one plus the dog team in reserve. Just in case…”

  He didn’t elaborate, but Benford heard the worry in his voice. Fifteen people at this outpost… three of them now missing. Communications with the mainland were dodgy at best, and it was two weeks until the next supply flight was due in. Commander Larson was having to do some nasty juggling with his assets, trying to find the three missing personnel without leaving the remaining twelve at risk.

  Larson handed Benford the second container of gasoline, then nodded down the concrete aisle toward the other end of the building. “Go ahead; get started with the fueling. I’ll be with you in a minute and we’ll do the mechanical checkout.”

  “Right.”

  As he lugged the gasoline past the cacophony of the dogs, he could still hear fragments of the argument at his back.

  He paid no attention. The philosophical divide between the scientists and the Greenworlders had reached a fever’s pitch during the past few days. Benford had added a little fuel to the fire here and there, helping to enflame the debate, but it had scarcely been necessary. The scientists resented, deeply and angrily, the Greenworld presence here. For their part, the other four Greenworlders felt the scientists were all but betraying the human species by downplaying the world-threatening dangers of major climatic change. Richardson and that little rich bitch Cabot, in particular, were convinced that the climatologists all were deep in the hip pockets of Big Oil, that they were being paid to downplay the immediacy of the global threat.

  Benford didn’t buy any of that himself. He’d joined Greenworld because the people represented by Feodor had sought him out during his trip to St. Petersburg two years ago and offered him a proposition, quite literally an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  He wished now he had refused it. Things were getting entirely too nasty, too risky personally. The trouble was, he’d gotten into this mess step by tiny step, had never seen ahead of time where the bastards were leading him.

  Two years before, he’d been a very junior sales rep for Wildcat Technologies, a Houston-based firm that manufactured high-tech drilling equipment for the petroleum industry… especially for certain highly specialized deep-ocean drilling rigs.

  In 2006, Benford had been sent to Russia with a WT sales team to negotiate a $500 million deal. A Russian petroleum company was interested in the new robotic drilling rigs that could actually work on the seabed itself, and the order for a single test rig alone would have guaranteed Wildcat’s success.

  Unfortunately, doing any business in Russia at all these days was an ongoing exercise in frustration, unforeseen expense, and delay. The Russian mafia had its hand in everything-including in the Russian petroleum industry, it turned out-which meant they had to be paid off before any negotiations could even begin. That half-billion-dollar deal would cost 10 percent, an extra 50 million, just to get to the talking stage, and there’d be another 10 percent in fees, bribes, and special considerations for each consignment shipped into the country.

  And Wildcat Technologies, frankly, was on the ropes. They’d developed the Deepsea platform over the past ten years at considerable expense, and they’d overextended on the loans needed to begin production. So far, though, none of the big global petro companies had shown more than an initial and passing interest. The Canadians were intrigued, but there were some governmental barriers there on both sides of the border… and way too many rumors that Mobil and Exxon both were working on their own versions of the Deepsea drilling technology.

  The Russians could make or break Wildcat Technology with this one order, and that extra 10 to 20 percent on the red side of the ledgers might well have killed the entire deal.

  And then Benford had met Masha.

  Maria Antoninova. She’d been one of the interpreters for the sales team in Russia, blond, leggy, and drop-dead gorgeous. They’d flirted, harmlessly enough… and then one evening after a particularly discouraging round of negotiations with the reps from Russian Petro-Gas, he’d come back to his hotel room to find her naked and waiting for him in the bed.

  The next morning she’d told him that she might know some people who could help.

  And, in fact, Feodor had been most helpful. The barriers, the difficulties, the need for yet another round of high-level approvals and special payments, all had vanished as if by magic. Benford had been able to secure several signatures in particular that had opened up a whole new world of possibilities for Wildcat, including no less than Putin’s signature on a long-term agreement for continued sales and service that would guarantee Wildcat’s survival for the next decade.

  It hadn’t hurt that the unexpected turnaround had transformed Benford, the very junior member of the sales team, into Houston’s fair-haired boy, with promises of a big raise and bonuses that would set him up very well in the years ahead.

  And all he’d had to do in exchange was make a promise to join a bunch of tree-hugger freaks out to save the planet… and maybe do a little job for Golytsin later on, when the time was right. Where was the harm in that?

  Joining Greenworld had been simple enough. Apparently, the Russians already had people-sleepers, they called them-planted inside the organization, though Benford still had no idea what interest the Russians could possibly have with the environmental activists. He’d joined the American branch of Greenworld by contacting one of their agents in California and happily gone back to work in Houston for more money than he
’d dreamed was possible. Not only that, but it turned out, just by chance, that Masha was now working in Houston for a travel agency and she’d wanted to keep seeing him. Benford was married already, but Masha hadn’t minded in the least seeing him as his mistress while he stayed married to Georgette. Life had been good. So very good.

  Benford reached the far end of the aisle, set down the gasoline, and looked around. Yeah, this would work okay. And he might not get another chance, not one as good as this, anyway. Both Larson and Richardson were here, with no one else around. There wouldn’t be a better time.

  He was terrified. Could he go through with it?

  He had to. That was the problem. He had to. There was no other way out.

  Benford had thought he was home free. As a member of Greenworld, he received a certain amount of junk mail and computer spam, but he hadn’t been expected to do anything. He’d not even had to attend any meetings. Then, just five weeks ago, his contact had phoned him and told him it was time to make good on his promise.

  When he’d learned what was involved, what was expected of him, he’d done his best to back out and renegotiate the deal. Three weeks in the Arctic… God, there was a reason he liked living on the Texas gulf, despite the mosquitoes and the cockroaches. And what they wanted him to do…

  He’d tried to get out of it; he really had. He’d threatened to go to the authorities and blow this filthy thing wide open. But it seemed the bastards had been filming him and Masha in that hotel room through a one-way mirror, both that first night and on some of their subsequent trysts over the two years since.

  If he didn’t do precisely what he’d been ordered to do, Georgette would find out about Masha. Worse, his bosses at Wildcat would receive convincing documentation suggesting he’d been feeding the Russians highly proprietary information on Deepsea drilling technology, passing it through Masha to Moscow.