Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Mohr stared right back at Jeffrey. “If you tell Israel you’re coming, they’ll never agree. Never! With the way you all keep showing so much skepticism, how can you possibly expect them to take seriously whatever arrangements you present before Tuesday that have anything to do with quantum patches? That’s totally obvious already, isn’t it?”

  “Granted.”

  “And you can’t ask them for permission to do the patch even if you believe me, because if they hear one word about this, they’d refuse and you forfeit the option to go in secretly! If they learn that I and my device are getting anywhere near them, they’d do everything possible to stop us!”

  “What’s this us?” Parker snapped.

  “Ease up,” Jeffrey cautioned him sharply. “Don’t distract me.” He turned back to Mohr. “You’re telling me that if I take you in there at all, the whole operation has to stay invisible.”

  “Yes. Do you at least accept that part, Captain Fuller, in isolation from everything else?”

  “Yeah. . . . What do you have to say for yourself about Lieutenant Estabo’s comments? His views on the safe-house raid?”

  “I knew those men from training and working with them. They all had wives and children. They had every reason to live, to fight for their lives for the sake of their families.”

  “You abandoned your family,” Parker stated. “Supposedly for some higher cause. Why couldn’t the Kampfschwimmer too?”

  “I did it to protect my family! The Kampfschwimmer would have gained nothing for their dependents by allowing themselves to be killed! They’d have left widows and orphans! No German ideology or military tradition has ever glorified such conduct!”

  “All right,” Jeffrey said. “Let’s leave that particular point aside and cut to the chase. Is there a way to demonstrate your device for us?”

  Mohr sighed. “Not convincingly, Captain. The patch and then the worm? Nothing would happen. The worm alone? Your ship would be crippled. A single laptop? Without close verification by scientists in your country, you’d just see a dead computer. You wouldn’t know absolutely that quantum hacking was what I did to kill it.”

  Jeffrey nodded, making a sour face. He knew Mohr was correct on this bit, which only made the broader issue harder to resolve. “Just out of curiosity, what keeps this worm from taking over the world?”

  “The worm is programmed to know where it is by detecting characteristics of the host systems it attacks. It’s also set to expire, six days postattack. Damage outside of Israel and Egypt should be minimal. Affected computer networks there will come back up, after the Axis has occupied both countries through the land-and-cyberspace envelopment.”

  “Is the U.S. homeland under threat from the worm?”

  “Not over intercontinental ranges. Quantum decoherence makes the entanglement deteriorate from too many collisions with external matter and energy. The error-correction packet needed gets impractically large. . . . Decoherence with range is why a fiber-optic tap is preferable to beaming at a radar dish, and why you can attack a nearby plane but not a satellite directly.”

  “Are Axis systems protected?”

  “Yes, as one of many standard periodic security updates. Remember, the worm manifests itself, it runs, like a normal program. The difference is how quantum teleportation gets it past firewalls and antivirus screening. . . . In fact, I recommend that you let me inject the patch into Challenger’s systems, since I’m not sure how safe you’d be under Israeli airspace otherwise.”

  Parker sputtered, “You can’t possibly trust this guy. This is way over the top.”

  “I’ll be the final judge of that. I’m in command of this ship.”

  “I’ve already seen what happens when you’re in command.”

  “How dare you?”

  Parker backed down, and put a more conciliatory tone in his voice. “I dare because I need to get something across that you don’t seem to be willing to hear, Captain. What Mohr says is too pat. This talk about teleportation is beyond me. Even if it’s true, especially if it’s true, we definitely haven’t precluded that the Germans could be using us as their messenger boys. Also, it’s outside the plan and it violates orders.”

  “You mean bringing him back to the U.S. for a long debrief?”

  “Precisely. Let the National Security Agency get hold of his equipment and pick his brains and see what the hell he’s talking about. If what he claims holds up under studied scrutiny, and from the Allied perspective his intentions are benign, there’s plenty of time to warn Israel convincingly and then give them his gear with the patch.”

  “But Mohr says the offensive opens Tuesday morning.”

  “That’s another part that’s too pat. How do we know, except for his say-so? A standard part of any con is pressure to make the victim decide before common sense can kick in. To me, his talk of a moved-up timeline is a warning in itself.”

  “Lieutenant, your opinion?”

  “From the parts of the technical stuff that I can follow, sir, the hacker attack is plausible enough to be scary. If Herr Mohr is telling the truth, and we don’t help him, Israel will lose, big time, and the Allies will lose big too.”

  Jeffrey turned to Mohr again. The German seemed annoyed by the fact that everyone had been talking about him as if he wasn’t there.

  “Herr Mohr, lay out for me explicitly how Pandora is supposed to help Berlin with the atom bombs that Israel planted in Germany.”

  “The worm will prevent Israel from getting the go codes to their agents within Germany to detonate the bombs. Also, the worm does not destroy data files. The Afrika Korps and German intelligence experts, with pretasked special-forces strike teams, expect to capture people, documents, and disk drives they can use to quickly identify the agents who control the bombs and also learn the location of each bomb. That’s how they preempt any potential dead-man switch in the Israeli ROEs.”

  “Makes sense,” Jeffrey said. “It also neatly explains why they’d dare an offensive against Israel when Israel already holds a prepositioned deterrent in Germany.”

  “No,” Parker insisted. “Mohr himself implied that the success of the quantum attack isn’t fully guaranteed. This scheme to find the bombs and catch their Mossad trigger agents before Germans see mushroom clouds on their soil is also much too iffy. No commander in his right mind would trust to luck like that. . . . Which only makes me more sure Mohr’s whole story is ridiculous.”

  “Knowing the high command in Berlin the way I’ve come to know them,” Jeffrey said, “I think they’d take the risk of having some bombs go off on their soil if the odds are low enough and the rewards are high enough. From what Herr Mohr here says, this attack greatly lowers the odds of high cost inside Germany. And the Afrika Korps offensive, by succeeding, offers great rewards in terms of influencing Turkey and the Persian Gulf nations to turn Axis, with all their strategic geography, and their oil. . . . Besides which, if one or two bombs do go off, the Germans can blame it on Israel and gain sympathy from the Muslim states.”

  “We both already covered that in Washington.”

  “Yes. And the president decided it was worth the risk to send a task group to fetch Herr Mohr.”

  “There was no talk then about us invading Israel.”

  “We were not aware then that there was a need for us to invade Israel.”

  “Then get in touch with Washington. Ask what we should do.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “My orders insist on radio and laser-buoy silence until we’re far outside the Med. To maintain total stealth we can’t transmit.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself.”

  “How?”

  “You’re happy to obey one part of your orders, yet ignore another part of the same orders, and go entirely outside your orders in certain other very material respects.”

  “As in . . . ? ”

  “Radio silence, but entering Israeli waters. And not only entering them, but invading them, ta
king a German with German equipment onto friendly turf without permission.”

  “True.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “It’s my job to know when to bend or disregard or even reformulate my orders.”

  “I—”

  “Look. If we did break stealth to transmit and thus gave away our existence and our position to the enemy while in hostile waters, and we didn’t then end up getting sunk like Ohio already did when she was detected, messaging the Pentagon or Norfolk wouldn’t accomplish much aside from me covering my ass, and maybe you covering your ass.”

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “Come on, use your head. The situation is so complex, nuanced, and ambiguous that we’d be going back and forth with senior people in the States till kingdom come, just to convey what the issues and uncertainties are. Think about how this whole conversation has already gone, just between the few of us face-to-face in this compartment. Anyone above us in Norfolk or Langley or Washington probably won’t have any more information than we do with which to decide. If they did have something relevant, they’d know we needed to know and we’d’ve heard something by passive ELF, and we haven’t. If anything, the higher-ups will have much less feel for the real-time dynamics of what’s happening now with Pandora. I’m the commander on the spot. I’m supposed to show initiative. Maintaining stealth is a matter of common sense, of self-preservation. Breaking stealth just to protect my backside could get us all killed—it’s absurd. The status of your backside is not pertinent to my decision.”

  Parker turned beet red. “Then don’t break stealth. Just stick to the original plan. We have Mohr. Let’s go home.”

  “I’m beginning to think that I need to change the original plan.”

  “Christ.”

  “Listen. We’ve gotten a lot of new information since we made contact with Herr Mohr, staggering information, because we did what the president himself decided we should do. The idea that Germany needs us to sneak this quantum worm into Israel seems unlikely. Herr Mohr himself says they have eleven attack teams on the way. I know for a fact that Kampfschwimmer are extremely good at their jobs. Lieutenant Estabo and I have personally seen, at bayonet range in recent months, that their training and equipment, their courage, and their battle skills are superb. You’ve never smelled a Kampfschwimmer’s breath while you grappled hand to hand, both sure that one of you would certainly die in that encounter. They don’t need Challenger to run their errands. But I think the Allies do need Challenger to do a different job, finish the job for which the president sent us into this theater, by using the most up-to-date information we possess.”

  “We’re going in circles. I simply cannot concur with your willingly violating Israeli sovereignty at the behest of a German agent we barely know. Mohr could just be using you to clinch the effectiveness of his overall virus attack by us becoming another team, Challenger, with Mohr himself as their first team, to reinforce the Kampfschwimmer. You believe him, and deliver him, but he still works for Berlin. He inserts the virus instead of immunizing against it. Nothing you’ve said, nothing, precludes that from being the true scenario. . . . And while he’s at it, he could compromise Challenger while you violate Israel’s sovereignty. Mohr plans to ruin your stealth, maybe by something with this so-called patch he wants to give you, and Israel gets rather irate at America. You aid the Axis cause. You might even get sunk that way, by accident or on purpose. Remember, Israel shot USS Liberty to pieces for snooping during the 1967 war.”

  Jeffrey couldn’t refute that logic. The whole business could be a different sort of trap, with Istanbul merely a way point, and the bristling coast of jumpy Israel as Challenger’s grave.

  “Lieutenant, find Mr. Salih. I want his read on Herr Mohr.”

  “Yes, sir.” Felix left.

  “Captain, I must warn you, I think you’re making a terrible error in judgment.”

  “I understand, Mr. Parker. I’ve listened carefully to everything you’ve said.”

  “Then why are you ignoring it?”

  “I’m not. I’m weighing all the factors I have in front of me. We do know that the Afrika Korps plans an offensive. We do know that the offensive only makes sense if they have some way of crippling Israel’s command and control. We knew that before we left Norfolk. In his last message, the one he got out through that brothel contact, Peapod said he held the key to Pandora. Now that we’re here, and Klaus Mohr’s here, he’s offered us that key in specific detail.”

  “That’s what I mean. I’ll say it again. It’s too pat. You can’t trust Mohr by going solely on what you now know. To invade Israel based on the word of an untested defector goes beyond irresponsible. It’s criminal negligence. Letting him co-opt your ship for his own purposes is entirely outrageous!”

  Before Jeffrey could answer, someone knocked. “Come in!”

  It was Felix. “Salih said he thinks Mohr is sincere, and unless he’s somehow been misled by Berlin, or brainwashed, we should trust him.”

  “There,” Parker said. “Misled or brainwashed. Even Salih is hedging. How can we know Mohr isn’t a Trojan horse and doesn’t realize it himself?”

  “Because it’s his equipment the Germans are working with!”

  “But—”

  “No more buts. Mohr is the smartest man in the German computer-espionage shop. Nobody there understands his hardware and software better than he does. No one misled him on anything. Gamal Salih says to trust him, and I trust Salih. My own instinct at this point says to make the choice to trust him. No known fact tells me not to trust him.”

  “I—”

  “Lieutenant, please take Herr Mohr and wait in the XO’s stateroom.”

  Felix and Mohr went next door.

  “Mr. Parker, you’re welcome to put your official disagreement on record. My XO will show you how to have an entry made in the ship’s formal log. I have no problem with you disagreeing with me. However, this ship is not a democracy. I am the ship’s commanding officer. I have used you and everyone else as sounding boards and sources of information. And I’ve made my decision. Challenger is the ideal platform for sneaking up to Israel and dropping off operatives with no one noticing. And for God’s sake, I’m not a fool. I intend to put Mohr through his paces very rigorously between now and then. He won’t have a single moment to himself. No one can keep up an act under the pressure and scrutiny I intend to apply. . . . And you’ll note that I’m not breaking laser-buoy silence to get out a warning that the Afrika Korps will move on Tuesday, important as such news is, precisely because it might be some sort of a trick. Our National Command Authorities have other ways to monitor that and warn Egypt and Israel if they don’t see it themselves.”

  Jeffrey reached for his phone handset and called the control room. “Give me the navigator.” Sessions answered.

  “At top quiet speed, by the most direct route, how long to the coast of Israel?”

  Sessions was taken aback. “Which point on the coast, sir?”

  “Oh, the middle somewhere. For now, use Tel Aviv.”

  “Wait one, please. . . . Twenty-seven hours, sir.”

  “Thank you. That’s all.” Jeffrey hung up. “Twenty-seven hours.” That would be midafternoon tomorrow, Sunday. I think it’s a working day, with Israel’s overstrained economy on a war footing.

  Jeffrey got up and went through the connecting head and brought Mohr and Felix back. Jeffrey’s stateroom was crowded again.

  “Herr Mohr, I gather from what you said about there being so many attack teams that the portable equipment can be operated without you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can the particular gear set you brought with you with your patch be worked by a properly trained commando team, without you actually being there?”

  “If nothing goes wrong with the hardware, and the team is properly competent. To train them will be grueling, with a significant chance of failure. Why can’t I go with them? I strongly advise it. I have practice at such things no
w from the extraction process in Istanbul.”

  “Because anywhere in Israel, especially with no proper papers, you’d stick out like a sore thumb. You’re much too valuable to take such risks. The SEALs, at least, with their builds and complexions, can try to pass as Mediterranean Jews. It’s also a precaution just in case you are a double agent. I’m sure you understand that.”

  Mohr nodded. “If I’m not there, I can’t do something to draw attention to the SEALs and reveal the presence of Challenger.”

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in!”

  The SEAL chief Costa squeezed into the compartment. “Excuse me for interrupting, Captain.” His face was etched with concern. He nodded at Felix to acknowledge his superior officer, but then met Jeffrey’s eyes.

  “What is it, Chief?”

  “We’ve got big trouble, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’ve been cleaning off the computer-module cases. There was a lot of dirt and dried blood caked together on the outsides.”

  “And . . .”

  “One of the cases took a bullet through a corner.”

  Mohr went white.

  Parker smirked. “I guess that settles it. No trip to Israel.”

  “Quiet,” Jeffrey said. “Chief, which module?”

  Costa described it.

  “That one is the power unit,” Mohr said.

  “Chief, I need to ask you a very important question.”

  “Sir?”

  “Can you tell from the damage whose bullet it was?”

  Mohr and Felix looked at each other meaningfully. Both knew what Jeffrey was getting at, and how significant the answer would be: Both sides’ MP-5s and pistols all used the same ammo, 9-millimeter rounds. Which side in the firefight hit the module?

  “Captain, powder burns show the round was fired at point-blank range.”

  Parker’s jaw set. Mohr and Felix didn’t say anything; instead they peered expectantly at Jeffrey.

  “That dead German was trying to destroy your modules, Herr Mohr.”