Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  “Even so,” the army chief of staff said, “our prewar files on persons who might pose cyberwarfare threats should contain something.”

  “People like this Peapod, this Klaus Mohr, might have been identified, searched for, early on by the coup planners, and whisked into an underground where they could continue their work, almost as a form of national treasure.”

  “You’re trying to say that their best technical minds were drafted into the conspiracy and hidden away, even given new lives?”

  The national security advisor pursed her lips. “So it’s plausible, or at least conceivable, that Klaus Mohr, trade attaché, is in fact someone else, and his job at the consulate is his disguise.”

  The CIA director nodded. “That’s a good assessment, ma’am. Educated guesswork, intuition, hunches, lateral thinking, plain common sense, they’re squishy means of deduction but they’re effective tools in the hands of our capable analysts.”

  The president spoke again. “Mohr’s presence in Istanbul, instead of somewhere else such as safe in Berlin, suggests he needs to be forward-deployed for a purpose.”

  “Yes,” the CIA head replied. “Istanbul is potentially fatal ground. We know the Mossad is murdering people from the German consulate there.”

  “Not at the embassy in Ankara too?” Ankara was the capital of Turkey, almost two hundred miles east and well inland.

  “No, not in Ankara. Which says something, Mr. President. Istanbul is definitely Israel’s focus for their hit teams.”

  “How’s Turkey taking all this?”

  “They appear to not be reacting, and we can’t find out a thing about this from their government. . . . They’ve always had friendly relations with Israel. . . . Also, our brothel contact relayed that most of the people the Mossad killed were Peapod-Mohr’s subordinates.”

  “You’re suggesting the Israelis have launched a campaign against whatever it is the Germans are up to?”

  “That does appear to be the case, Mr. President. Even the Mossad would not be so aggressive on neutral soil without good reason. Or what seemed to them good reason.”

  “Have we asked them?”

  “Yes. They refuse to comment.”

  The president grunted. “Not surprising. Israel always does look out for number one. . . . But you are telling us that the Mossad’s behavior seems to confirm that Mohr’s actual activities, behind his cover story, are perceived as a serious threat to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which seems to further validate Mohr as someone with crucial expertise, who needs to be close to Israel, on neutral turf, to do what the Germans want him to do.”

  “Yes. At least, so the Israelis think. They’ve made mistakes before, though, killed innocent people before.”

  There was another long and uncomfortable silence.

  The FBI head broke it. “This is all so circumstantial. Whorehouses, maybe-misguided Mossad assassins, a trade attaché who might or might not be a trade attaché, who might or might not have sent us a weird transmission, which might or might not be a fake, and who might or might not sincerely want to betray his own country. . . .”

  The CIA director stared across the table and told him, “In the spy-versus-spy business, circumstantial is often all you get. You said it yourself.”

  “It’s not symmetric, as you’re perfectly well aware. Circumstantial evidence is enough to yank Reebeck’s clearance. It’s not enough to mount a big extraction job that could be a waste of time and lives, or a trap. . . . The Mossad activity, to me, is a throwaway. They could’ve been fooled by part of the same stratagem Mohr’s aiming to pull against us, his pretending to be so valuable. He might be in Istanbul, forward-deployed, because it makes him just accessible enough for the snare he’s setting to catch something juicy.”

  Jeffrey had to admit that the FBI director had done his homework. Everything we know could be taken two ways. Everything. The CIA and FBI are deadlocked here.

  The president shifted in his seat, to announce a change in subject. “Let’s tackle another wild card, the one that I don’t mind saying really scares me. The Israeli atom bombs planted in Germany. They’ve become severely relevant. Peapod claims he knows about German intentions in the Middle East, and Istanbul is on one doorstep to the Middle East. What’s the latest you’ve got on Israel’s rules of engagement for setting off those bombs? Their prime minister clams up every time I prod him for answers, then turns around and demands more arms, aid money, and loan guarantees. Same old same old, Israel’s stated official policy of nuclear ambiguity.”

  “Nothing new to report, Mr. President,” the CIA director said. “The bombs are there as a deterrent. A deterrent is only effective if the other side knows you have the will to use it.”

  The national security advisor corrected him. “Effective if the other side thinks you have the will to use it. There’s a difference between deterrence and retaliation. If Israel were really going down for the count, from a conventional or nuclear Axis assault, would they blow the bombs in Germany just for spite? Or would they fold, make peace, to prevent their own complete annihilation? Remember, Germany is a much bigger and more populated country than Israel, and this new regime is not anti-Semitic. . . . Germany would be hurt bad if ten tactical nuclear warheads went off, but their forces and command and control are dispersed throughout the occupied territories for exactly that reason. Israel, on the other hand, is the size of New Jersey. They haven’t much room to disperse. Hit a handful of cities and there’d be nothing left of the place.”

  “That’s true, ma’am,” the CIA director said. “The problem is, this war is so different from the Cold War that all our old thinking and intell on Soviet thinking just don’t apply. We don’t know for sure if the Mossad sleeper agents in Germany who’d be told to set off the hidden bombs need a positive, specific, verifiable order to do so, or if they’re also held under a sort of dead-man’s switch. By the latter I mean that they need periodic ‘all’s well’ messages, and if those stop for too long, their prestanding instructions are to yank the triggers. Kablooey.”

  The national security advisor looked dismayed. “With reliable covert comms from Israel to agents in Germany being so difficult, given German jamming and signals manipulation, an Israeli dead-man switch seems horribly reckless.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But remember, this was all arranged before the war, as a sort of ultimate fail-safe against another Jewish Holocaust, using supposed cooperation with German authorities in the war on terror as camouflage. Israel naturally felt they could rely on their fighter-bombers with tactical nukes to take care of the Arab countries. Their Jericho ballistic missiles and submarine-launched Harpoon cruise missiles are also more than adequate for that, but only local in range. Our assessment is that with the bombs sequestered in Germany, predelivered, so to speak, over intercontinental distances, the Israelis might not have fully considered the specific conflict situation we find ourselves in now . . . and independent of that factor, they might really be that reckless, or paranoid, or vindictive, or whatever you want to call it. The bombs quite possibly are on a dead-man’s switch, with the Israelis locked into preexisting ROEs.”

  “How? Why? This sounds insane.”

  “Because any supposed change to the ROEs might’ve been defined as a sign of German tampering, and thus as a reason to detonate before the deterrent power was lost.”

  “Jesus.”

  “This raises the stakes to a whole new level,” the president said. “It seems to me it’s bad all ways, whatever Israeli A-bomb ROEs apply inside Germany. And it’s bad all ways if the Germans’ next move is attacking through Israel. Either nuclear detonations do break out, starting in the buffer zones of Libya’s and Egypt’s deserts, and ending in the middle of major population centers like Cairo and Tel Aviv and Frankfurt. Or the fighting stays nonnuclear, and if Germany wins, they impress and intimidate the neutral Muslim nations and we lose the Persian Gulf oil. Lose the oil and our war effort is crippled.”

  “
If Plan Pandora has something to do with attacking Israel,” the CNO said, “as combined Allied intelligence strongly does seem to suggest, then it’s aptly named. The Germans are taking a mind-boggling gamble, whatever they do.”

  “I’d have to concur,” the army chief of staff said. “Our own read on signals intercepts and satellite recon is that the Afrika Korps is building up for a major strike eastward soon.”

  “The NSA’s best interpretation,” the DCI added, “is that Plan Pandora is somehow wrapped up in German designs on conquering Israel by a modern blitzkrieg that isn’t far off on the calendar. Pandora appears to not mean the entire offensive, but something unconventional that would aid or assist it. We warned Israel, of course, and they said contemptuously that they’re way ahead of us, they’re digging in, and their ambassador plans to squeeze us for stepped-up shipments of fighter jets and fuel.”

  “You didn’t mention Peapod?”

  “Of course not. There’s proven lethal distrust between Israel and any purported German defectors. We do know they kill them on sight, on the presumption that it’s safest to assume they’re always double agents, or the contact meet is a lure to abduct or murder Mossad people. We’re sure that’s why Klaus Mohr went through all this rigamarole to contact us, when Israel is geographically much closer. We also know better than to try to convince Israel of Mohr’s sincerity, given Israel’s posture plus the fact that we aren’t convinced about him ourselves.”

  “Okay. But if you’re right about German intentions,” the president said, “the wider implications are even worse. If the Persian Gulf states and Turkey stay aggressively neutral or go fully Axis, we haven’t got a prayer of invading Germany on a broad land front. Lose that land bridge up through the Balkans into Europe’s underbelly, and our one survivable way to topple the Berlin regime without resorting to nuclear arms would be hopeless. . . .”

  The president sat back and stared at the ceiling for a minute. Still looking upward, he said to the room at large, “I’m beginning to think the only way to find out what’s really going on and what to do about it would be to extract Klaus Mohr and see what happens and what he tells us, ASAP.”

  “We’ve already considered that option,” the army chief of staff said, jumping in at once, as if he’d been waiting for this opening all along. “We propose sending a Delta Force team cross-country. Make contact with Mr. Peapod-Mohr, liberate him from the clutches of his employers with as little fuss as possible. Wangle our way past Turkey’s high-tech counterinfiltration and refugee snaggers with tech of our own, and bring him out.”

  “Staging from where?” the president asked.

  “We have assets in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

  “What are the odds of success?”

  “Hard to quantify, Mr. President. It’s about three thousand miles, round-trip.”

  The chief of naval operations harrumphed. “And that’s just from Riyadh to Istanbul and back to Riyadh.”

  The army chief of staff’s response was icy. “With no available bases or overflight rights, with Turkish airports under relentless surveillance, and with travel-documentation checking and fingerprinting so rigorous, we can’t exactly take a scheduled airliner to Istanbul, or send Nighthawk choppers to whisk Mohr away. He’d be much too closely watched by his own people for him to hop on a plane, with or without our help.”

  The CNO made no attempt to conceal his skepticism. “Overland? Crossing Turkey’s frontier through the most chaotic parts of Syria, Iraq, and Iran? Hidden in hay wagons or decrepit pickup trucks, disguised in Bedouin robes on camels, bribing smugglers and checkpoint guards, that sort of crap? Getting past separatist ethnic factions and drug lords and fundamentalist militias who’d slit a stranger’s throat as soon as look at him? That plus a stretch of Turkey that’s longer than from New York to Atlanta, and almost as heavily policed and defended, each way?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Yes, in fact I do. We’d get him via submarine.”

  Oh boy, Jeffrey told himself. I knew this was coming.

  “With all due respect, Admiral,” the general said, “are you crazy? Look at a map! The only way in or out of the Med is past Gibraltar or using the Suez Canal. You’d have to run a sub on the surface through the canal, in plain sight for a hundred miles. The Gibraltar choke point’s even worse! You might get a submarine in, but you’d never get it out again!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the CNO shot back. “We have some pretty stealthy submarines, and some aces up our sleeve. We didn’t start thinking about Peapod just this morning either, you know.”

  “I can send in twelve guys! You’re talking about a two-billion-dollar submarine with a hundred and fifty people aboard!”

  “Not necessarily one sub. Maybe two.” The CNO shrugged with theatrical nonchalance.

  “That’s even worse! It’s double the risk, and the whole damn thing could still be a trap! I can do it with twelve low-profile expendable guys!”

  “Enough,” the president said.

  Someone knocked on the door, then entered. The staffer handed a message to the director of central intelligence. He studied it. “We have another communication from Peapod.”

  “Enlighten us,” the national security advisor told him.

  “The message is forty-five hours old, that’s how long it took to get here from there. It’s been deciphered already from the code words actually passed. Part was added by Peapod’s contact. She says Israelis tried to assassinate Peapod, right in the brothel, and killed both his German bodyguards, but he was able to barely escape.” The DCI let that sink in, then continued. “She was able to verify that he made it back to his consulate safely, then she used her Ukrainian passport to catch the next plane home to Odessa.” He turned to the CNO. “I think you should see this first.” The CNO read the message silently, then it passed along the table to Hodgkiss, then Wilson, then Jeffrey. The army generals and FBI director were annoyed by being kept waiting.

  When Wilson handed the message to Jeffrey, the CNO said, “You better read the part from Peapod aloud, Captain.”

  Jeffrey saw that every eye in the room was on him. He read the message to himself first. He felt like he was suffocating, and elated, at the same time.

  He cleared his throat, then had to clear it again.

  “ ‘Captain Fuller: I, Klaus Mohr, sender of Beck’s reports, am Zeno. I own the key to halting Plan Pandora. There is very little time left. Only you can get me out.’ ” Jeffrey had to clear his throat a third time. “ ‘Endless darkness if we fail.’ ”

  The FBI director sputtered; he was brimming with piss and vinegar now. “What does some computer geek know about defector extraction? The fact that Peapod’s asking for Challenger specifically only makes it look more like a trap!”

  The FBI director keeps pounding on that. He’s so fixated he missed the vital fresh clue, that Peapod mentioned Pandora and Zeno. Jeffrey was disturbed that someone at so high a level could commit such a glaring oversight. Well, it sure wouldn’t be the first time a ranking official screwed the pooch.

  “It could very well be a trap,” the president said, “nested within a much bigger, less visible trap. I’m sure Peapod’s message was worded by design. ‘Pandora.’ ‘Zeno.’ ” The president spat out the code words. “They’re attention getters, teasers, hooks. The fate of Israel, our Middle East oil, and our entire grand strategy to liberate Europe, even atomic warfare on land and the lives of maybe ten million people, hinge on whatever the Germans are up to.” The president became grim. “It might not stop at the first ten million, either. Every country on the planet with A-bombs or H-bombs is already balanced too close to the edge, especially pro-Axis Russia. The wrong sort of initial spark to this tinderbox, with so many nations then getting more panicked or confused by the second, and things could escalate irrationally, spread wildly out of control. We could all get sucked into a black hole of thermonuclear annihilation, where everybody rushes to push the button before someone else does. Zeno�
��s reference to ‘endless darkness’ might mean exactly this, a nuclear winter. . . . And the Axis are ruthless enough to try to use the mere threat of that happening, embodied in the potential for a first new mushroom cloud erupting near the Nile or in Germany to ignite the global tinderbox, to force an armistice where we cede them all of Europe and Africa.” The president grew bitter. “This Israel-to-Berlin atomic trip wire, instead of a deterrent by the Israelis, becomes a lever with which the Axis propagandist bastards want to break the American public’s will to resist by inflicting sheer terror.”

  The national security advisor gave her assessment, coldly and tersely. “The Axis aren’t the types to blink first in that sort of all-or-nothing quick-draw showdown, which means in the worst case, we could be forced to accommodate them fast or be incinerated slightly less fast. Either way, we lose the war.”

  A collective shudder went through the group. No one spoke.

  Jeffrey had been feeling a conceptual insight sneak up on him during the past few minutes, as he struggled to mentally integrate everything he’d heard and learned; now the intuitive leap burst fully formed, like a tsunami, inside his brain.

  I suspect how the Germans intend the brinkmanship to work. It’s the ultimate act of can’t-lose aggression, if everything goes just right for them. . . . If something goes wrong at their end, it is wholesale Armageddon.

  The bleak mood in the room had reached a crisis point. Jeffrey began to wonder if his well-honed ability to think on his feet during combat, further primed that very morning, let him form a conjecture that his superiors, all desk jockeys, just couldn’t see. He opened his mouth, and Hodgkiss frowned at him instantly, but the national security advisor gestured for him to continue.

  “Ma’am, the point is, the Germans are not insane. They wouldn’t attack through Egypt and Israel unless Berlin really believed they had a way to keep their homeland, the sacred German fatherland, safe. Suppose that Zeno is a great computer genius after all, and he did make some kind of breakthrough. And I mean a really huge breakthrough, maybe with some strange new logic algorithm, or hardware a decade ahead of its time, I don’t know. Then Plan Pandora could be to somehow neutralize Israel’s ability to blow their bombs in Germany, at just the proper moment for the Afrika Korps to assault to the east. Peapod mentioning Zeno and Pandora by name in this message from the brothel might be his way of establishing bona fides to us. And if he is for real, he might be so appalled by what he knows and what he created that that’s the reason he wants to defect, to help stop Pandora.”