The hatch led down a vertical ladder to the Ohio’s forward torpedo room, where several more sailors waited to receive him. He heard some murmurs among them. “So that’s our spook, is it?” some asked.
“Bond,” another voice replied with mock seriousness. “James Bond…”
“Shaken,” Dean told the watching sailors as he started stripping off life jacket, helmet, and parka and passing them off to waiting hands, “not stirred.” That raised a laugh. Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders. Another man offered him a mug of steaming coffee, which he gratefully accepted. He heard the hatch clang shut overhead and someone speaking over an intercom, saying, “Forward torpedo room hatch secured!” The compartment was surprisingly warm, the air fresh, though carrying the mingled scents of oil, salt, and too many men in a confined space.
A lean, pale blond youngster in khakis and a lieutenant commander’s rank insignia stepped forward. “Welcome aboard the Ohio, Mr. Dean,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Hartwell, the boat’s exec. If you’ll come with me, please?”
“Now hear this,” a voice sounded over the sub’s 1MC speakers. “Now hear this. Dive! Dive!” An alarm klaxon sounded, a computer-generated version of the classic ah- oogah! of the movies, followed again by the voice calling, “Dive! Dive!”
A modern submarine’s true element was the dark silence of the ocean depths, and no skipper wanted to leave his command exposed on the surface for longer than could possibly be helped. As the exec led Dean aft, he felt the deck tilt slightly beneath his feet as the Ohio returned to her proper realm.
15
Zhemchuzhina Hotel Sochi, Russia 1712 hours, GMT + 3
LIA AND AKULININ TOUCHED down at Adler-Sochi International Airport in the early afternoon after an uneventful flight from London. They passed through customs with passports listing them as husband and wife, picked up their luggage in the baggage claim, and caught a cab for the long ride up to Sochi. The airport was located in Adler, just five miles from the Georgian border, but Sochi was almost fifteen miles to the northwest, along the E97 highway that ran along the Black Sea coast.
According to the legend provided by GCHQ, they were Mr. and Mrs. Darby, John and Lisa of Mayfair, on holiday to this rather posh resort region on the Black Sea.
They noticed quite a lot of construction on the hillsides south of the city. Their driver was the talkative sort, running on without stop about Sochi having been chosen as the site for the Winter Olympics in 2014. It was, he proclaimed in heavily accented Russian interspersed with even worse English, just the economic boost the city needed, and everyone was soon going to be rich. Lia studied the new construction with a more cynical eye and wondered how deep the Organizatsiya had burrowed into the local landscape.
They checked in at the front desk, argued a bit with the desk clerk over whether their reservation had been for smoking rather than nonsmoking, then went up to their room. As soon as the door was shut, Lia pulled what looked like a compact from her handbag and began walking around the room, studying the tiny LED readout as she passed the device along the walls, over the lamps and TV, across the head of the big king-sized bed, across the big mirror in its ornate frame over the dresser. “Lovely room, John,” she said in a bright voice. “I think the travel agency picked a good one this time.”
“Nice view of the ocean,” Akulinin said from the window. He, too, was carefully scanning the glass doors onto the balcony with something like a small PDA. They continued to exchange uninformative chitchat until they were reasonably sure that there were no hidden listening devices in the room. Their argument at the front desk had been designed to get the desk clerk to make a last-minute change, just in case foreign tourists were automatically dropped into a room wired for sound or video. If they’d found anything, they were prepared-by means of a dead cockroach sealed in a small plastic bottle-to demand yet another room change.
But their room appeared to be electronically, as well as physically, clean.
Of course, the bad old days of the Soviet regime were long gone and tourists were no longer the targets of paranoid suspicion and KGB surveillance. The new and capitalist Russia desperately needed foreign currency and was doing her best to promote a lively tourist trade. The chances were good that no one was spying on the two spies. At least, not here.
Still, many of the old ploys used by the KGB were still employed in the new Russia-especially where business people were concerned. The honey trap was an old favorite. The traveler might come back to his room one evening to find a lovely and willing young woman waiting for him in bed, complete with a story about how she’d bribed a maid to let her in just so she could meet him, or how the people with whom he was working had hired her for his pleasure, or how she’d accidentally ended up in the wrong room. Sound recordings and video footage would then be used to blackmail the traveler. If Russia was no longer as interested as she once was in political or military espionage, industrial espionage was still big business. It was amazing what a business traveler might reveal about a new technical process in order to keep a wife or a boss from seeing a certain compromising and decidedly X-rated video.
And the Organizatsiya was always on the lookout for useful information to sell to the highest bidder or for the payment of a few thousand euros or dollars from a horny and gullible mark. One reason Akulinin and Lia were here posing as a married couple was to make the two of them a less obvious target than the traditional lonely businessman.
“So is everything in there to your satisfaction?” Jeff Rockman’s voice said in Lia’s ear.
“I got weak positives off the wall outlets and the phone jack,” she said. “As usual.” Her detector picked up copper wiring as well as electronic circuits. “But I think we’re clear.”
“I’ve got nothing,” Akulinin said, stepping back inside from the balcony. “It really is a great view, though.”
“We’ll need you to put down your eyes so we can cover your room,” Rockman told them. “And you have a visitor coming up. I just gave him your room number.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Akulinin peered through the spy hole, then opened the door. James Llewellyn walked in.
“Good afternoon,” Llewellyn said with an affable grin. “How’s the old married couple, then?”
“Jet-lagged,” Lia replied. “And in no mood for games.”
“Understood.” He glanced around the room. “We’re secure?”
“Yes.”
“Capital.”
“As secure as we can be, anyway.”
“Yes, well, that’s what keeps the game interesting, don’t you think? You can never be sure.”
“What’s interesting,” Akulinin said with a grimace, “is waiting to hear if you guys ever recovered that tool kit. You said you had a team on it that night, but then we got hustled back to England so quickly we never heard what happened.”
“Ah,” Llewellyn said. “As it happens… no.” He set his laptop computer on a desk in one corner of the room and opened it. “But, actually, that’s a bit of good news. Hang on a tick. I think you’ll be interested in what I have here.” He began booting up the computer.
“They weren’t able to recover the damned thing and that’s good news?” Akulinin said. He looked bleak.
“He’s been afraid they’re going to take it out of his paycheck,” Lia put in.
“Yes, well, the thing is, we were able to track it for a time,” Llewellyn said. “Used a satellite to query the satcom’s imbedded GPS. We were able to plot its movements over the course of two days, from St. Petersburg to Moscow to someplace near Donetsk. The last time we got a signal from the unit, we think it was airborne and moving south.”
“Donetsk is more or less halfway between Moscow and Sochi,” Lia said. “You think it was on its way here?”
“A distinct possibility,” Llewellyn told them. “We’re now certain the gang that jumped you in St. Petersburg was with the Tambovs. Grigor Kotenko is a high-ranking Tambov chief, and he w
as closely involved in the beryllium sale in St. Pete. Those were probably his enforcers on the waterfront. He specializes in high-tech items, remember, and the black box alone from the AN/PSC-12 would be worth millions to the right buyer.”
“Tell me about it,” Akulinin said. “Rubens is going to have me shot when I get back to the States.”
“Only after he skins you alive,” Lia told him.
Llewellyn grinned. “Maybe they’ll just take it out of your pay. In any case, we couldn’t find the kit on the waterfront where you said you must have left it. The sensors you two left in the area showed the whole place was crawling with people for hours after you left, so it’s a fair bet they found it and looked inside. If they reported it to Kotenko, he would have wanted to see just what it was that had so unexpectedly fallen into his hands.”
Lia looked at Llewellyn. “So does that mean Kotenko is in Sochi now? I thought the dacha was closed except for a housekeeping staff.”
“We thought it was,” Llewellyn said. “But several days ago, we saw signs that the place was open for business. Here.” He typed a set of commands into the laptop, and a full-color photograph came up on the 17-inch screen, a shot apparently taken from a boat offshore. The camera angle looked up from the water, framing a large two-story villa on a hilltop. Snowcapped mountains-the Caucasus-rose behind, almost lost in a blue haze. The house, its walls and roof brightly colored in tropical aquas, reds, and yellows, looked deserted. He hit a key and a second photo opened up, this one taken from either a satellite or a high-flying aircraft, looking down on the same building. The grounds, the large deck, the balconies, all were deserted.
“Those first two are from a week ago,” Llewellyn said, pointing to the date and time stamps on the photos. “You can’t tell for sure from two photos, but our agents watching the place reported no activity at all, save for a gardener, a pool caretaker, and two security types. Then, three days ago, we got this.”
He brought up a third photo, again taken from overhead. This one showed two cars in the driveway at the front of the dacha, an open table umbrella on the poolside deck, and a number of human figures around the pool. Five security men were visible around the property’s perimeter, two of them with dogs on leads.
“My God,” Lia said, looking close. She hit a key several times, zooming in closer on the scene. “Is that an orgy?”
“Kotenko appears to have been, ah, entertaining some guests this past weekend,” Llewellyn said. “We’re checking our sources in Moscow, and going through some backlogged cell phone intercepts to be sure, but we think he’s brought in some VIPs from Gazprom. Probably for some high-level… I think you Yanks call it ‘wheeling and dealing’?”
“Looks like that’s not all they’re doing,” Akulinin said, studying the screen. “Damn. That does complicate things a bit.”
“Indeed. We were counting on you two having the place more or less to yourselves. But if Kotenko is in residence, he’ll have a small entourage with him. Bodyguards. Office assistants. Maids and butlers. Secretaries. And, from the look of it, girls from one of his brothels in town.”
“Yeah. Looks like it’s a hell of a party,” Akulinin said.
Llewellyn typed another entry, and a number of architectural drawings came up-blueprints on the dacha. “We got these from the company in Moscow that built the place,” he told them. “The same company made a number of alterations to the house after Kotenko bought it. Notice here… on the first floor, and here, in the basement directly below.”
“Looks like it’s wired for Internet,” Lia observed, studying the wiring schematics. “And what’s all this in the basement? Looks like they added structural reinforcement.”
“Right the first time. They reinforced the floor, there, with load-bearing beams.”
“A safe?”
“That’s a good bet, Lia. Something damned heavy, anyway. We think this area on the first floor is Kotenko’s office… and that eight years ago he installed a heavy floor safe, right here.”
Lia nodded. “So… if we can’t sneak in without being seen, we might make it look like a burglary.”
“That was our thought,” Llewellyn said. “I brought some specialist tools for you from St. Petersburg.”
“Wait a second,” Akulinin said. “You guys are jumping way ahead of me here. A burglary? I thought this was just a quick in-and-out to plant bugs.”
“Ideally,” Lia told him, “we could sneak past a couple of security guards, gain entrance to the building, plant our surveillance devices, and slip out again and no one would ever know we’d even been there.”
“Right,” Llewellyn said. “But with that many people on the property, it’s more likely that you’ll be spotted.”
“Exactly. If we pretend to be burglars, though, they might not think to look for bugs afterward. At least, not the kind of bugs we’ll be leaving.”
“And if you’re burglars,” Llewellyn added, “the safe, obviously, becomes your target.”
Lia watched realization unfold behind Akulinin’s eyes. “Ah. Got it,” he said. “If Kotenko has the satcom unit, there’s a good chance that he’ll have it in that safe. We might be able to get it back after all.” Akulinin pumped his arm happily. “Yeah! The new kid gets a chance to redeem himself! I can live with that.”
“I’d still rather go in without a crowd on the premises,” Lia told Llewellyn. “Any chance we could just kick back and wait for a few days, maybe hope Kotenko goes back to St. Petersburg?”
“No, Lia,” Llewellyn said. “Mr. Rubens was most insistent. Something big is happening either in Siberia or up in the Arctic. He wants to be able to read Kotenko’s mail as quickly as possible.”
“We should have done this as soon as we heard Kotenko was behind the beryllium shipment,” she said. She was thinking that she and Akulinin might have had a better command of the situation in St. Petersburg if there’d been some hard intelligence from Kotenko’s dacha before they’d inserted.
“Yes, well, that was on the to-do list, don’t you know. But it wasn’t quite so urgent then.”
“That’s the government for you,” Akulinin pointed out. “Hurry up and wait… and then you find they needed it done yesterday.”
“So when do we go in?” Lia asked.
“Some of our local assets are still getting into place,” Llewellyn said, “and we need to coordinate with your Puzzle Palace. Besides, if you’re jet-lagged, a good night’s sleep would be just the thing, eh?”
“Sounds heavenly,” Lia said.
“Tomorrow night then?” Akulinin asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Llewellyn agreed. His fingers clattered over the laptop’s keyboard again, bringing up more photographs and diagrams. “Now, let me show you what we’ve worked out…”
Beaufort Sea 75° 18' N, 129° 21' W 1732 hours, GMT-7
A shadow, whale-lean and 560 feet long, moved through the eternal night of the abyss, six hundred feet beneath a ceiling of solid ice, invisible and silent.
The Ohio had remained submerged as she threaded her way through the Parry Channel south of the barren Queen Elizabeth Islands, emerging at last in the iced-over deeps of the Beaufort Sea. Dean followed the vessel’s progress with interest in the big plot board at the aft end of the control room, where an enlisted watchstander marked the Ohio’s position each hour, connecting the most recent navigational waypoint with the last.
They were now some 820 miles from NOAA Arctic Meteorological Station Bravo, about twenty-eight hours at their current speed. Officially, an Ohio missile boat had a maximum speed of twenty knots; in fact, her actual speed was closer to twenty-five, and Dean was pretty sure she could manage even better than that in a hell-bent-for-leather emergency dash.
Dean was in the Ohio’s tiny wardroom, seated at the table with Captain Eric Grenville, Lieutenant Commander Hartwell, and a third man in a black acrylic pullover and no rank insignia. The third man had been introduced simply as Lieutenant Taylor. Mugs of coffee, each adorned with the Ohio’s l
ogo, rested on the table before them.
“We should be able to maintain flank speed for most of the way,” Captain Grenville told Dean, “if we don’t run into major ice problems.”
“What would be a major ice problem, sir?” Dean asked.
“Pressure ridges,” Grenville told him. “Places where ice bangs together and creates a kind of mountain range, but sticking down underwater, instead of up in the air. That doesn’t look very likely at the moment, and now that we’re clear of the continental shelf, we can stay deep enough to avoid anything that’s likely to show up.”
Hartwell took a sip from his mug, then added, “We’ve been coming to dead slow every so often to get a good sonar picture. Sonar’s pretty useless above fifteen knots or so. Too much noise. So we dash along at flank, stop, listen, then dash some more. And we’ll need to slow down for the final approach, of course.”
“So they don’t hear us coming?” Dean suggested.
“Exactly,” Grenville said, nodding. “Intelligence says there may be Russian subs operating up there. We’d rather our appearance be a surprise.”
That was news to Dean, but then, the National Security Agency wasn’t usually concerned with Russian naval movements unless they showed up on SIGINT intercepts. Word on the arrival of Russian submarines had probably reached the Ohio via naval intelligence, the DIA, or, just possibly, the CIA.
Dean sipped his coffee. True to the traditions of the submarine service, the stuff was pretty good. “Will Russian subs pose a problem for your operation, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Taylor gave a thin smile. “I don’t think so.”
“I was wondering if I could come along.”
Taylor exchanged a quick glance with Grenville. “Negative. My people know how to work with one another. As a team.”
“So do the Marines, Lieutenant.”
Taylor’s hard expression barely changed. “You’re a Marine?”
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