The Threat

by David Poyer

  “Well, I will check that out, sir. Now let me try one more thought on you.”

  Dan told him about his idea for a close-hold group to try to guess where the country was vulnerable, to envision unconventional means of attack or disruption. “I call it the ‘Threat Cell.’ To try to game out in advance how enemies could hit us in ways we don’t expect.”

  Freck sounded encouraging. He wanted to know who would run it, Pentagon, CIA? Dan said to be effective, it had to break the “stovepipes”—the vertical channels through which data went from the field to the respective agencies.

  “It’s got to be independent of the military and intel communities. Otherwise it’ll get coopted by whoever’s peddling the next glamour program.” He kept going, pulling ideas out of the air, playing to where he thought the congressman might want to go. Maybe it shouldn’t be part of government. Maybe it should have futurists, screenwriters, people who were more comfortable with using their imagination than retired generals. “You want people who can think outside the box. No offense, but that’s not something that gets rewarded in government work.”

  Freck was going through banana pudding like Godzilla through downtown Tokyo, but he was nodding, seemed to be with him. Dan was getting excited. If he could get Freck to back it in Congress, the Threat Cell could be up and running in a year.

  The fat man said, “It might be worth funding for a cycle, see what comes out of it. And you know what? You might be just the fella to head up something like that.”

  “Me? Well … thanks,” Dan said. Taken aback, but pleased. Maybe it wasn’t impossible to get something done around Washington after all.

  “You must run or something,” Freck said. “What is it? Gymnastics? Play tennis? Pretty buffed up.”

  “I work out,” Dan said. “Not so much since I got to D.C., but when I can.”

  “Look like you’re in shape. Good chest. Good arms. But you carry yourself stiff. No looseness there, like you see with most men in good shape. You know, we might get together sometime,” Freck said.

  Surprised someone with so much power on the Hill could be so approachable, Dan said, “Sure, we could do that. You mean run?”

  “No, no … been a long time since the knees were up to that! Just hang out. Just spend some time together. You like to swim? Come over to my place, we could swim. See what develops.”

  To his utter astonishment, Dan felt Freck’s hand sliding up his thigh. He jerked away. Freck’s face didn’t change, not an iota, still the grave mien of the rectitudinous statesman. Dan started to get up, felt his face burning. Freck was folding his napkin, blotting his lips, perfectly comfortable. Past him Dan saw two of the crew members grinning at him. As if they’d known all along.

  * * *

  It was dark when they landed, though only 3 p.m. local time. They left Pulkovo Airport in a motorcade, limos, but without the pomp and security that would have accompanied them had the president stayed. But De Bari was off again, en route to the emerging central Asian states. Actually he’d only landed here to pick up people he wanted to speak with en route to central Asia and perhaps on the way back as well. Or so Blair had said. Which was why they’d gotten to fly in Air Force One instead of the more usual military or commercial air.

  Dan had never been in what had so recently been the USSR. In fact security regulations had still required him to get clearance to enter the country. Blair was in another car, with the other Defense people; they’d had time for a hug-and-peck coming down the jetway, but no more.… He looked out curiously. They were heading down a broad avenue, six empty lanes of concrete lined with apartment blocks like some enormous, badly funded prison. Between them stumpy figures pushed snow around with brooms. As they passed a polished granite pylon, huge bronzes of soldiers, workers, women, their driver called back that this was the monument to the blockade during the Great Patriotic War. The main line of defense against the Germans had been two kilometers away; the monument marked where the relief forces had broken through to the jubilant Leningraders in 1945.

  As they neared the heart of town the buildings sank, grew lower, became stone and plaster instead of preformed concrete. Dostoevsky’s city. Dan remembered Raskolnikov stalking the slums and bars of the Haymarket, his crime gnawing at his sanity. The overcoated people, the babushkaed women, looked ground down and afraid, as if even after the fall of the Party so many years of state terror had milled deep into their souls. The only spots of color were advertisements for Western liquors and cigarettes. They crossed bridges, islands, more bridges. A golden spike jabbed the sky; the Admiralty Tower. A turn-of-the-century cruiser he guessed was Aurora. Spaced between the palaces, glimpses of lead gray sea. White-gloved policewomen waved them through barricades. Trucks filled with troops idled on the side streets.

  Their hotel was a Scandinavian-style aluminum-sheathed central block with two even taller wings. The limos deposited them before a reception table marked with the U.S. flag, one among dozens cracking in the chill wind. It overlooked a shingle beach and then the Baltic. He didn’t see any ice yet, but to judge by the temper of the wind, it would be forming soon. Blair smiled at him over bent heads.

  Dan was working his way toward her when he bumped into Dina White. The State staffer was supporting a bent senior with a fringe of cottony hair. He looked feeble and, without even a topcoat, was seriously underdressed for the windchill. White said, “Dr. Sola, this is Commander Lenson, National Security Council. Dr. Umberto Sola, director of the Office of Nuclear Affairs.”

  They shook hands, but the old man dropped his grasp as a dark-eyed woman in a business suit and fur hat whacked her clipboard against the table for attention.

  She said her name was Larissa Fyodorovna. She worked for the Russian government, and her assignment for the next three days was to make the U.S. delegation comfortable, welcome, and happy. Which she sounded determined to make happen come what may. Dan leafed through his welcome packet as they trailed her through an entrance hall.

  He caught up to Blair as they climbed a staircase in blond wood and mauve carpeting. Larissa, chattering explanations in English and for some reason French too, took them into a business center. Yet another area held “technical facilities,” library, dining areas.… Only gradually did he realize how huge the complex was.

  Behind them the press peeled off to a media lounge. Everything was new but already worn around the edges, and the staff, except for Fyodorovna, didn’t seem all that interested in their guests. The two-room suite a bored escort showed him to was adequate, no more, with a sterile air that made him uncomfortable. It was icy cold, too. He turned the thermostat up and stood before a casement window. It overlooked a cruise passenger terminal, with a small ship flying Dutch colors.

  When he turned around, he was alone, though he’d thought Blair was behind him. He went back to the elevators, looking for her blond height. Instead he caught sight of Larissa again, who was waving her clipboard and screaming at a porter.

  Somehow they’d been booked in separate rooms. The desk people were uncooperative and belligerent. They insisted the reservations were correct. The Defense people had a separate block from State and the White House. Dan was frustrated, but assumed they’d get it straightened out. They’d talked about getting away together. He wanted to see the Central Naval Museum; she wanted to see the Hermitage, though she’d been before on other jaunts.

  He finally found her room. When she said, “Hey, come in,” he rotated, looking up, and whistled. Three big rooms, with a knockout sea view and a curved steel staircase leading up to a loft.

  “You should see the bathroom,” she said.

  “You live nice up here.”

  “Up here?”

  “They’ve got me in the other wing. Nothing like this.”

  “Well, go back and get your suitcase,” she said, smiling. He held her off to look at her. She was so slim and honed the air around her seemed to glow. She met his lips in a kiss, then kneaded his neck. “How is it today?”

 
; “Not too bad, actually.”

  “I have to have dinner with my people. To get our positions straight.”

  “Need company?”

  “Sorry, honey, this’ll be a working meal. Why don’t you just get some rest?” She gave him another quick kiss and patted his arm. “And I’ll be back, and we can go down to the bar or something before it gets too late.”

  * * *

  But as it turned out he slept through the afternoon and night, more tired than he’d realized from the stress and long hours. He was vaguely aware of her sliding in next to him, sometime late, but didn’t come fully awake. The next morning she had to shake him into consciousness to make the limo shuttle out to Tsarskoye Selo for the opening ceremonies.

  The space was unashamedly opulent: a massive ballroom at the Catherine Palace, half baroque fantasy, half barbaric nightmare; the walls seemed to be made of solid gold. Three speakers kicked off: a UN diplomat from a Geneva-based center, the colonel general in charge of the Twelfth Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and Dr. Sola. The old man still looked wilted, but lectured with messianic fervor on the need to secure both nuclear weapons and nuclear materials.

  Dan listened with rapt attention. Probably alone among all those in the magnificent room, he’d experienced a nuclear detonation close up. He could put faces to the dead. Had seen men and women he was responsible for blinded, flesh roasted on their bones by the thermal pulse. He got letters from them every week, telling him about their recurrent nightmares, their white blood cell counts, and most poignant, thanking him for saving the ship.

  He wished again he hadn’t taken Horn in so close. No one had told him a nuclear weapon might be aboard the trawler. But he still felt guilty, and figured he always would.

  Sola said, “At Princeton I was privileged to work with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. Before he died he said to me, ‘The genie won’t go back into the bottle, for me. But maybe he will in your lifetime.’ And ever since, that is what I have worked toward.

  “The theft of one nuclear weapon, or of fifteen kilos of enriched metal, would inflict suffering never seen on the face of the globe since 1945.

  “This is not just a problem for the United States, or Russia, or the European Union. It is a problem for every country that harbors a dissatisfied minority, an insurgent group, possibly even one madman with enough resources and helpers.

  “When I wonder why this nightmare has not taken place yet, I have only one answer. We have been fortunate beyond our deserts. Humanity has not been granted a pass from catastrophe. We have given our very existence into pawn.”

  The ballroom was silent when he bowed his white-maned head. His audience dispersed with uneasy coughs, clearings of throats, to the labor of the day.

  * * *

  That afternoon Dan sat in on a breakout panel on nuclear-materials protection, control, and accounting. Mainly it focused on which tracking software to buy. He was standing in the lobby afterward hoping for the coffee break noted in the program, though no one was setting up for it, when Dr. White grabbed his arm. “Dan.”

  “Present.”

  “We have a problem. Umberto’s taken ill.”

  Dan said he was sorry to hear that, then blinked as she asked him to substitute the next morning on a panel titled “Disposal of Legacy Nuclear Components.” “We don’t have anyone else who can step in,” she told him. “The moderator’s the deputy minister of atomic energy of the Russian Federation. We have someone from the UK, a representative from the Chinese State Science and Technology Commission, and one government rep each from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. What we don’t have is an American.”

  “I don’t even know what ‘legacy components’ are,” Dan said. “Maybe Dr. Sola’ll bounce back by tomorrow.”

  “Umberto’s dying. The only reason he came is because this is more important to him than his comfort, maybe his life. I can’t do it, I’m on another panel. The White House is on board with this push, isn’t it?”

  Dan said unwillingly, “Well, yeah. But I—”

  “So you’ll sit in? I have some papers you can read tonight. To get familiar with the various alternatives.”

  Dan thought that over, making sure he was covering not just his own druthers but his direction from the assistant national security adviser. Gelzinis had told him the administration policy was to push hard on both threat reduction and further arms reductions. Reducing the weapons the other side held would give the president chips to keep trimming the defense budget. “If that’s what you need me to do.”

  “Our official stance, State favors return of all weapons still held by the successor states to the USSR. I mean, the CIS. But you don’t have to say much. Just be there, and fix the little U.S. flag in front of you so it comes out clear in the pictures. Can you do that?”

  “I guess so,” he told her. “On one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “Find me a cup of coffee.”

  She looked taken aback, then put out. But at last muttered, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * *

  That evening he and Blair finally got away. Neither to the Hermitage nor the Naval Museum, but a reception at Petrodvorets. Peter the Great’s “Great Palace” lay west of the city, on a range of low hills overlooking the sea. As their limo trailed its headlights down the coast road he could see out in the black the distant twinkle of Kronstadt, a Russian and then a Soviet and now a Russian naval base again. He thought of all the neglected, poorly guarded reactors over there and shivered.

  He was going to have to look intelligent tomorrow, at a mike with some very savvy people. He’d barely had time to glance over the studies and monographs. “Legacy” systems were nuclear and missile components stranded in the various republics when the Soviet tide had receded. Those in the earliest states to go—Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia—had been pulled back in good order. Those in the “Bubbastans,” State-speak for the Muslim-populated republics, had not. Which was where the device that had devastated Horn had probably come from, according to the findings of the board of inquiry.

  “You’re quiet,” Blair said.

  “So are you.” She was wrapped in a heavy coat. He put his arm around her in the backseat. “Do any good today?”

  “Maybe we did.”

  She told him about her committee meeting, on tactical nuclear weapons. He was about to say he’d be on display tomorrow when the heavy Chaika wheeled uphill and there was the palace, a kilometer of shimmering light: windows, arches, cornices, balustrades, cascades, fountains, statuary groups. As the car glided to a stop soldiers sprang forward to open their doors.

  * * *

  He was in uniform: the formal white gloves, blue short jacket, white shirt with studs, bow tie, gold cummerbund, and high-waisted trousers of mess dress blue. He left his cap with a bowing soldier on the way into the Chesme Hall. He patted Blair’s arm and said to stay put, he’d get the drinks.

  But as he’d started to notice, in Russia no one drank anything nonalcoholic. Finally he talked one of the soldier waiters into opening a bottle of voda gazifie. He took Blair her wine and found her deep in conversation; she accepted the glass without looking at him.

  Taking the hint, he circled off on squeaky parquet, sipping the sparkling water as he inspected huge paintings of forgotten battles hung so high it pinched his neck to look up at them. Each canvas was huge enough to serve as the topsail of one of those long-vanished men-of-war.

  He felt both out of place and perfectly at ease. It was like a formal dance in Memorial Hall at Annapolis. He slipped among diplomats, officers, consular personnel and their elegantly dressed ladies. A few even of what he guessed were the new biznessmen. Larissa was speaking rapidly with her flat expression to a man in gray. Solas, looking cadaverous, sat in a carved chair with his back to a painted door as another elder statesman gesticulated.

  A group of soldiers in 1945-ish baggy uniforms and high boots too
k center stage, singing Red Army songs that the Russians roared out along with them. Gradually, like diffusing isotopes, the guests parted into separate groups. He found himself near a group in the dark blue naval-style uniforms of their respective countries. Englishmen, Dutch, many Russians. A Britisher was drawling out a tale of sailing the Baltic in the seventies when Dan felt a tug on his sleeve. He turned to confront an unfamiliar face, a shock of blond hair.

  “I think I know you. No?”

  Dan studied him. Slavic cheekbones, clear blue eyes. Buttoned-tight formal blues.

  “Gaponenko. Grigory Vasileyevich. And you are … Lenson, no? Lenson. Daniel, right?” He pronounced it Den-yell. “Ten years ago now. No, more. I was captain lieutenant then. Politruk, on Razytelny.”

  Dan remembered then. Recalling a leaky, sinking skiff bobbing in the blue clear of the Windward Passage, and a shape pushing up under the topaz haze of turbine exhaust. The reluctantly recognized silhouette of a Krivak-class destroyer.

  “Den-yell. Yes? You recall me now?”

  He said he did, and they pumped hands with more warmth than had been present, Dan thought, when Gaponenko’s frigate had pulled him out of the water after a night of hurricane seas. He wondered if the Cuban woman and her baby had ever made it to shore.

  Gaponenko was chattering away in a lubricated amalgam of languages. He told Dan he was a polkovnik kapitan now, captain first class. When Dan told him where he worked now, Gaponenko’s eyes widened. “T’chort vozmi! The White House? I am much impressed. Hey, you have ‘dark eyes’ with me.”

  Dan had a lot of trouble convincing him he didn’t want one, he didn’t drink anymore. Finally the Russian desisted, though he went on marveling at how young Dan looked. “Americanyets, they don’t age like us. Especially the women. Oh, you see that over there? Look at that fucking blonde. How fucks-able, no? How old you think she is?”

  “That’s my wife,” Dan said. Blair was wearing a deceptively casual silk ensemble. The blouse was black and the pants were sheer, with lace cutouts at midthigh and silver heels with starbursts of glittering gems. Her hair was up; simple but elegant turquoise earrings played off her eyes. Her skin glowed like vanilla ice cream beneath the ruddy spectrum of the chandeliers, and an admiring circle surrounded her as she laughed, almost spilling her wine.