by Brad Thor
“Or so we thought,” replied the defense secretary.
“What are you talking about?” asked Harvath.
“What if the Cold War hadn’t ended?” said the president.
“Are we talking about a hypothetical here? Like what if there had been a different outcome?” asked Harvath.
“No,” replied President Rutledge. “What if the Cold War didn’t end? What if we thought it had ended, but the Soviets were just playing possum?”
“That would be the greatest Trojan horse in history. But it would be virtually impossible. I mean, look at the condition their country has been in since the end of the Cold War—life expectancy falling, rampant corruption, fifty percent annual inflation. A lot of people could argue that it is worse now than it has ever been.”
“And many opinion polls out of Russia would agree with you,” offered the defense secretary. “An overwhelming percentage of middle-aged and older Russians believe that their lives were significantly better under Communism.”
“But why are we even talking about this?” asked Harvath.
“Agent Harvath, do you have any idea how much the international community, both private and public, has funneled, into Russia since the early nineties?”
“I don’t have an exact figure, but it has to be in the billions of dollars.”
“Try tens of billions. Of which, several billion have gone astray.”
“I’ve read about that,” said Harvath. “The Russian mafia has slithered its tentacles very thoroughly into the Russian banking system, right?”
“You’re half right. As far as we’re concerned, there is no Russian mafia.”
“No Russian mafia? What are you talking about?”
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB underwent several face-lifts. When it emerged, it had a new name, had placed one of its own colonels in the president’s seat in the Kremlin, and was making megabucks by taking even greater control of its country’s illegal activities,” said the secretary.
“Are you telling me the Russian mob is actually run by the Russian Federal Security Bureau, formerly known as the KGB?”
“You catch on quick, kid,” said Defense Secretary Hilliman.
Harvath ignored the remark and studied the graying, sixty-some-thing Defense secretary with his neatly pressed Brooks Brothers suit, wire rim glasses, and blue silk tie. “I guess not,” said Harvath. “With all due respect, does this have something to do with Gary and the deaths of the Army Intelligence operatives from Berlin? Because this isn’t making any sense.”
“That’s enough of the questions, Bob,” interjected the president. “Let’s focus on the answers.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” responded Hilliman, as he placed his briefcase on the table and extracted a large manila envelope. He fished out an eight-by-ten color photograph, handed it across the table to Harvath, and said, “Three days ago, security staff at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, received a tip and discovered a Russian suitcase nuke hidden within the NASCAR Silicon Motor Speedway exhibit.”
Harvath was at a loss for words. “I can’t believe this. TheRussians ? That’s insane. Why would they do something like that? Are you positive the device was one of theirs?”
“There’s no question. Both the Cyrillic markings and laboratory tests on the fissile material have come up positive for Russia.”
“How could they have gotten a suitcase nuke into the United States?
“During the Cold War, our borders were a lot more porous than they are now,” said the Secretary.
“You think that’s when this thing came in?”
“According to interviews we’ve conducted with Russian defectors over the years, the Soviets were actively trying to smuggle these things in. We even had a former Russian nuclear scientist testify before Congress about it.”
“So why haven’t we conducted an all-out search for them?”
“We did. In fact we conducted several searches and spent a lot of money but always came up empty. Either the stories were bogus or the devices were too well hidden.”
“Wait a second,” said Harvath. “Even if the Soviets had been able to pull it off, we’re talking at least twenty years ago.”
“At least.”
“Then in this case, time to a certain degree is on our side. Russian suitcase nukes, just like our backpack nukes, needed to be refreshed at least every seven years to assure maximum potency.”
“Unfortunately,” responded the defense secretary, “your information is incorrect. Both the United States and the Russians had been experimenting with a hybrid fissile material with a seriously expanded potency and shelf life.”
“How potent?” asked Harvath, studying the photograph of the device.
“Somewhere between forty-five and fifty kilotons. And although we live in a megaton world today, I don’t have to remind you that the device the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima nicknamed “Little Boy” was only a twelve point five kiloton device and “Fat Boy” dropped on Nagasaki was just twenty-two.
“With the amount of people who visit the Mall of America on a daily basis, the death toll would have been astronomical. Factor in the right weather patterns to disperse the radiation and the fact that the mall is only fifteen minutes from the downtown areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the death toll would’ve skyrocketed even higher. The entire country would have been put into an immediate panic, with everyone wondering if it was an isolated incident or if their town would be next.”
“Was the device active?”
“Thankfully, no.”
“How was it smuggled into the mall in the first place?”
“We don’t know,” said Hilliman. “The FBI has been poring over security footage, but they haven’t come up with any leads. For all we know, it could have been broken into several pieces and then reassembled inside.”
“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t the end of the story?” said Harvath.
“Because it isn’t,” replied the president. “Bob, show him the rest of the photos.” As the defense secretary slid a stack of Polaroid photos across the table the president continued, “We found these pictures in an envelope taped to top of the Mall of America device. Apparently, we were led to the first nuke so there’d be no doubt in our minds that we are dealing with very serious players.”
Harvath studied the photos, which showed similar devices placed in the trunks of cars and inside nondescript vans parked in front of recognizable landmarks in major cities like Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Denver, New York, and Washington, DC. After he was finished looking at them he asked, “Are we positive that this isn’t just one device that has been on a grand tour of the United States?”
“We’re sure,” answered the president. “Several years ago, we began helping the Russians implement a real-time computerized monitoring system to keep track of their nuclear weapons. Before that, every Russian nuclear device had a paper passport recording where and when it had been made, where it had been transported and stored, when it had undergone maintenance, and so on.
“It was in our best interest to help the Russians put into action an accounting system for their weapons, which would hopefully prevent them from falling into the hands of any third parties. It was also an opportunity to try and peek behind the curtain and see what was in their arsenal. Suffice it to say that they did everything they could to limit our access to sensitive information. One of our operatives, though, did come across a list of weapons from the early eighties that had been exported to undisclosed locations outside of the USSR.”
“And were those weapons suitcase nukes?” asked Harvath.
“Correct,” responded the president. “By enhancing the photos we could clearly make out the serial numbers. They’re a match for the ones on our Russian manifest.”
“How many devices were listed as exported on that manifest?”
“Twenty-five.”
“How many pictures were in the envelope?” asked Harvath
, as he reexamined the photos in front of him.
“Nineteen.”
“So with the Mall of America device, that makes twenty. What about the other five from the Russian manifest? Do we believe those devices are also in the United States?”
“They could be,” said the president. “Or they could be in major cities of our international allies.”
“Why? Concurrent strikes?”
“Or more likely, to be used as a means of dissuading our allies from coming to our aid.”
“Coming to our aid for what?” asked Harvath.
The president removed a folded piece of paper from inside his suit coat and handed it to him. “It was slid in between briefing papers I received from the National Security Council. And before you say anything, it is being vigorously investigated, but no, we don’t have a single lead at this point.”
Harvath didn’t allow his face to reflect the utter shock he was feeling as he read the letter:
President Rutledge:
By now you have authenticated the device we strategically placed within your Mall of America and you have seen a representative sampling of the other weapons we have at our disposal. These weapons have been repositioned throughout your country where they will be guaranteed to wreak the most physical and psychological damage to the United States. Neither small town, nor large city will be spared the horror of nuclear destruction. Americans will be forced to live in fear, never knowing where the next device will be detonated. The realization that no place in your country is safe will soon impact every American.
The era of arrogance and America’s misguided international policies has come to an end. In your State of the Union address on January 28th, you will announce to the world that the United States has seen the error of its ways and is removing itself from global politics to focus upon pressing domestic issues. In addition to removing all of your forward deployed troops on the Korean Peninsula, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, you will close down all of your International Development Missions, will surrender all of your seats at the United Nations, and will immediately divest the United States of any involvement with any of the organizations listed at the end of this letter.
If you have not made this announcement in full within the first three minutes of your State of the Union address next week, a device will be detonated promptly at 9:05 eastern time, and every hour thereafter, until you come to your senses or America lies in smoldering ruins.
So has the world and the balance of power changed. Pitiable is the leader who does not know when he is beaten and arrogantly leads his people into the mouth of the abyss itself.
Sincerely,
The New Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
As Harvath finished reading the list of international organizations at the end of the letter, which included, among many others, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the G8, he said, “This is insane. What they’re talking about is tantamount to economic suicide.”
“And that’s what the Russians want,” replied the defense secretary. “The business of Americais business. It’s not our military that makes us strong, it’s our economy. Take that away and we’d have no military. We’d have nothing.”
“But if the U.S. even hinted at such an isolationist policy, we’d be done for. Confidence in everything we stood for would evaporate. Faith in our currency, our economy, even our way of life would fail. Our markets would collapse and we’d be plunged into an economic winter that would never thaw.”
“Exactly,” said Hilliman.
Harvath couldn’t believe he was having this discussion. “Not only is this whole thing insane, but there is no way they could ever get away with it. You’ve spoken with the Russian president about this already I assume.”
“I was on the phone to him the minute we verified the device was one of theirs,” answered President Rutledge. “We spoke again when I received the letter.”
“And?” said Harvath expectantly.
“And he said very much what we thought he would say. After we gave him the serial number from the device at the Mall of America, he looked into it and called us back. He claims the suitcase nuke was a regrettable loss from a storage facility raided three years ago by Chechen rebels, the fashionable Russian scapegoats. He claimed the Chechens must have sold the nuke to a terrorist enemy of the United States. The thing is, because of the Russian manifest we have, we know the device was never anywhere near that storage facility and that it couldn’t have been stolen three years ago because it hasn’t been in Russia in at least twenty.”
“So he’s lying,” said Harvath.
“But, why is he lying?” responded the president. “Is he lying because he’s embarrassed that Russia lost a nuclear device, which has turned up in a plot against the United States or is it something else?”
“What did he say about the letter?”
“He denied any knowledge of it and said that it was regrettable that a terrorist organization was claiming to be operating under the mandate of reestablishing the Soviet Union. He, of course pledged any assistance the United States might need from Russia and asked to be kept abreast of all events as the situation developed.”
“How nice of him,” replied Harvath. “Do you believe him?”
“Absolutely not,” said the president as he took the note back from Scot.
“Mr. President, if I may?” said Defense Secretary Hilliman.
“Please,” responded the president, who folded the note and put it back inside his breast pocket.
“Agent Harvath, American intelligence, in particular the FBI, has long suspected the Russians might have smuggled man-portable nuclear weapons into the United States, but until now, we had never had any concrete evidence. We have dispatched Nuclear Emergency Support Teams to cities across the country where those photos were taken, but we’re holding out little hope of uncovering any of the devices.”
“Why not?” asked Harvath.
“For the same reason we haven’t uncovered any over the last twenty years—they’ve been too well hidden, and even when they come out of hiding, the fissile material is incredibly well insulated. We’ve alerted law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for suspicious activity involving the kinds of cars and trucks pictured in those Polaroids, but for all we know showing us the devices inside of cars and trucks was just a way to further throw us off the scent. Besides, every car and truck in those pictures was different and there has been nothing that the FBI can use to track even one of them down.
“As far as the Mall of America device is concerned, we’ve got it at a secure facility now and we’re taking it apart, trying to discover if it has any sort of unique signature that could aid us in our search for the other nukes, but it’s not looking good.”
“Could this get any worse?” asked Harvath.
“Yes,” replied the secretary. “And it has. Now comes the Gary Lawlor connection.”
“If you are going to try and tell me that he is somehow aiding the Russians—”
“No, that’s not why he left the country.”
“He left the country? Then why is his house being watched, and why was I taken down at Frank Leighton’s?”
“Agent Harvath, what I am about to tell you goes beyond top secret. You are not to discuss this with anyone other than the president or myself. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Are you familiar with the code namesLast Dance andDead Hand ?”
“Of course. Last Dance was our code name for the procedure that would automatically launch our nuclear missiles at Russia if they ever struck us first. They had the same setup in case we ever preemptively struck them called Dead Hand. The guarantee that either side would always retaliate with overwhelming force is what gave birth to the acronym MAD—mutually assured destruction, but we haven’t threatened the Russians, so what’s the point of all this?”
“The point could be one of two things,” said the secretary. “Either
we really are dealing with a terrorist organization that wants to strike fear into the heart of every American while simultaneously turning us against an old enemy who, at best, has been a very shaky ally, or this is a bona fide move by the Russians to try to finally win the Cold War.”
“If it was the latter, that would explain their behavior over the last couple of years. They did everything they could to keep us out of Iraq. They’ve gone to insane lengths to help the Iranians with their nuclear program. In fact, I can’t think of much of anything the Russians have done in recent memory that wasn’t directly opposed to our international policies. In fact, their behavior has actually been pretty arrogant, especially in light of the deplorable state of their own country.”
“Agreed,” responded Hilliman.
“But even so,” continued Harvath, “we still have a ton of ICBMs with some damn sharp tips, and though we don’t talk about it much anymore, mutually assured destruction is just as real now as it was twenty years ago. Nothing has changed.”
“What if it has?” asked the secretary. “We know the Russians still have sleeper agents here in the United States. For every Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, there could be God only knows how many others we have never gotten wise to. If Russia wanted to hold us hostage, all they would have to do is strategically place their man-portable nukes around the country and let us know that we had the proverbial gun to our heads. We’d go looking for the devices, but if they were well hidden enough and we couldn’t find them in time, tens if not hundreds of thousands, even millions of Americans could be killed.”
“But we would retaliate,” responded Harvath with even more conviction. “And our allies would retaliate, even if devices were detonated in their cities. The Russians would be signing their own death warrant. We’d wipe their country off the face of the earth.”
The president looked at Harvath and said, “What if we’d lost the ability to respond with conventional nuclear weapons?”
“Mr. President,” replied Harvath, “I don’t understand. Are you saying that somehow the Russians have gained control over our launch capabilities?”