Stephen Coonts' Deep Black: Arctic Gold

by Arctic Gold (epub)

  “This has had a terrible effect on the Russian economy. People over there are actually yearning for the good old days when the Soviets had everything controlled and orderly. Of course, the criminals were active under the Soviets as well, but in a state-run economy, the problem was pretty well hidden. Now, it’s out in the open and clearly out of control.”

  Ryder continued his presentation, but Dean listened with only half an ear. He knew most of this already. He’d seen the moribund state of the Russian economy firsthand . . . the poverty, the hopelessness on the faces of people in the streets and on the subways, the dead factories and boarded-up shops, the crumbling facades in a state without enough free money to rebuild the infrastructure, to say nothing of launching into new business ventures.

  Ryder spoke for another ten minutes on the threat of the Russian mafia, touching on the sales of weapons to terrorist groups, the suspected theft of nuclear weapons and materials, the destabilizing effect the Organizatsiya was having globally. He mentioned, to a few chuckles, the sale of a Russian Tango-class diesel submarine to a Colombian drug cartel in the late nineties. The sale had fallen through, thank God, when the Colombians, thinking the plan just a bit too ambitious, had backed out. Had the sale been completed—just $5 million would have purchased the submarine and a trained crew of twenty for a year—the Cali Cartel would have been delivering multi-ton loads of cocaine and heroin to the California coast, completely eluding the web of land-, sea-, and air-based radar guarding the southern approaches to the United States.

  “But we know the Russian mobs have been delivering other military hardware to Colombia for over a decade,” Ryder continued. “Thousands of automatic weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition, at least two military helicopters, and a number of advanced surface-to-air missiles that are going to make our interdiction efforts in South America extremely difficult. The point is . . . the Russian Mafiya thinks big, very big, they have more money than God, and they don’t give a damn who they deal with or what the consequences might be.”

  The Russian Mafiya, Dean thought, had an overly developed sense of drama. He found himself thinking about various supervillain groups in spy fiction—Ian Fleming’s SPECTRE or even Thrush in the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series, comic-book criminal organizations bent on world domination.

  The Organizatsiya, evidently, was coming uncomfortably close to matching those fictional villains in the real world in the sheer scope and scale of their ambitions.

  An hour later, the briefing over, Dean was ushered into Rubens’ office. “Well, Mr. Dean, you now know more about the Russian mafia than you really cared to know.”

  “It still seems a bit odd, sir,” Dean replied, “going up against a bunch of criminals instead of a government.”

  “In this case, it’s tough to draw a line between the two,” Rubens said, booting up the computer on his desk. “In any case, we have you booked on a flight to London this afternoon, Dulles, fourteen thirty.”

  “And then on from there to St. Petersburg,” Dean said, completing the thought.

  “No,” Rubens said. “There’s been a change in plans.”

  Dean felt an unpleasant tickle, centered in his gut. “I thought I was supposed to join Lia and her partner in Russia.”

  “DeFrancesca and Akulinin are safe enough for the moment, and our organization inside St. Petersburg is arranging to smuggle them out of Russia within the next twenty-four hours. Right now we’re more concerned about the potential threat to another of our assets. An entirely different operation.”

  Rubens turned his monitor so Dean could see the screen, which displayed a grainy and slightly out-of-focus photograph of a laughing, half-naked blonde, Grigor Kotenko, and another man, lean, his hair buzz-cut short, his shirt open to reveal a number of blurry tattoos.

  “The man on the right,” Rubens said, “is Sergei Braslov, former Red Army, GRU, and later MVD. A Russian working for the CIA snapped this photo through a telephoto lens at a Black Sea resort last summer. Our agent on Operation Sunny Weather encountered Braslov a few hours ago in London. He appears to have infiltrated an environmental activist group, Greenworld.”

  “Excuse me,” Dean said. “This Braslov . . . is he still MVD? Or is he with the Tambov Gang? Who’s he working for?”

  “That,” Rubens said dryly, “is what you are going to find out. As Mr. Ryder pointed out at the briefing, it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether an individual over there is with the government or with the crooks, and where their loyalties lie. However . . .” He touched a lectern control, dragging a square around Braslov’s upper torso in the photo, then enlarging the picture, in effect zooming in for a close-up of the man’s partly revealed chest. Dean could just make out the blurred blue shapes of several tattoos on the man’s skin.

  Rubens used his mouse to bring up an overlay of straight lines, resolving and clarifying the tattoos. “Within the Russian Mafiya,” Rubens said, “tattoos comprise a rather complex symbolic language, a code, if you will. This image isn’t clear enough for a complete translation, but computer enhancement allows at least a partial reading.

  “Here—” A pointer darted across the screen, indicating a large tattoo over Braslov’s solar plexus. “A crucifix. It signifies a ‘prince of thieves,’ someone with a high ranking within the organization. Above the crucifix . . . a crown. That means the wearer is a pakhan, the leader of a thieves family. Think of a Sicilian Mafia don, the head of one of the Five Families.

  “And above the crown . . .” The pointer shifted to a blurred mark beneath Braslov’s throat. “An eight-pointed star, sometimes called a chaos star. Another rank insignia. It means Braslov is a member of the very highest levels of Russian organized crime.

  “From this, we can infer that Braslov is a member of the Russian Mafiya, most likely one of the Moscow families. If he’s socializing with Kotenko at a Black Sea dacha, it’s possible that we’re seeing evidence of some sort of alliance. Braslov’s direct involvement with Greenworld suggests some sort of disinformation campaign, but we’re not sure of that yet. Braslov may be there in his official capacity as an officer of Russian Internal Security . . . or he may be there as a key player with the Mafiya . . . or he may be there for both.

  “You, Mr. Dean, are going to make contact with Braslov in London. You’ll have Mr. Karr already there, as backup. ‘L’ Section will provide you with a small bugging device and remote transmitter that will allow us to eavesdrop on Braslov’s conversations. We’re particularly interested in what he is doing as an agent inside of Greenworld.

  “I can’t stress this strongly enough, Mr. Dean. The Russian Mafiya is an extraordinary threat in today’s world. It has already demonstrated its potential for destabilizing nations and economies worldwide, and might well do so on a global scale. We need to know what’s going on over there—if there is an alliance between the St. Petersburg and Moscow gangs, if the Russian government is in on such an alliance, and just what it is that they’re up to.”

  Dean slouched back in his chair, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He was worried, frankly, about Lia. From the little he’d heard so far, Lia and Akulinin had come up against the St. Petersburg mob and bounced. It hardly seemed credible. Desk Three routinely took on national governments—China, North Korea, Syria, Russia—and emerged victorious. It didn’t seem possible that a gang of common criminals could best the Agency’s field operators.

  And that thought, Dean decided, highlighted the problem. Members of the Russian Mafiya, whatever else they might be, were not “common criminals.” They were smart, they were wealthy, they were powerful, they were as well armed and as well equipped as some small countries, and they were well connected with members of their own government and with powerful people in the governments of other countries.

  Underestimating these people, Dean decided, could have decidedly lethal consequences.

  7

  “London’s Living Room”

  GLA Building, London

  1420
hours GMT

  TOMMY KARR WALKED OUT onto the broad observation platform that encircled the uppermost floor of London’s City Hall.

  The Thames lay spread beneath him, gray-green and dotted with pleasure craft and barges. An ancient light cruiser, the HMS Belfast, now a museum, lay tied up to the City Pier to the left, on the near bank almost at his feet. Beyond her, the clean, modern lines of the new London Bridge spanned the river, in front of the thrust and bustle of London’s business district and the far-off blue dome of St. Paul’s. To his right, downstream, rose the Tower Bridge, older and more conventional beneath its twin supporting caissons and towers that looked like the squared-off steeples of Anglican churches.

  The bridge architecture fitted in perfectly with the sprawl of medieval castle walls, turrets, towers, and cupolas directly across the Thames from City Hall, the infamous Tower of London.

  Closer at hand, the demonstration had spilled into the park and waterfront pier directly below City Hall, filling it as far as the near end of the Tower Bridge, perhaps 150 yards away. Karr was looking down on a sea of people and brightly colored banners. Occasionally megaphone-directed chants rose the ten stories to the observation promenade, but mostly the noise was little more than a distant, subdued rumble.

  “Anything new on the telly?” he asked aloud.

  “Nothing on CNN or the networks,” Jeff Rockman’s voice said in his ear. “BBC Two is carrying a lot of footage, though. It’s big news in Europe, at least. We’ve spotted you three or four times, now, when the cameras zoomed in on Spencer.”

  Karr grinned as he turned from the sprawling city panorama. “Hi, Mom,” he said. He could see a couple of media types nearby, a sharply dressed woman with a microphone and a shirt-sleeved partner with a minicam, filming the delegates.

  The meetings had broken for an afternoon recess. A number of delegates had spilled out onto the promenade outside or wandered off to the building’s restaurant. The symposium had been going for more than four hours now and already generated several spirited, even acrimonious debates between various of the attendees. A Nigerian delegate had been ejected, loudly shouting that caps on emissions were tantamount to racism, a means of strangling the economies of third-world nations. Supposedly, the Kyoto Accords exempted developing countries from the stringencies of limiting their industrial emissions, in effect requiring industrial nations to pay a tax on their behalf. There still seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding on that point, however, generating a widespread sense that the developed countries were either patronizing the third world or strangling it—take your pick.

  The entire issue was now so bound up with politics, money, and shrill invective that it was nearly impossible for mere facts to make themselves heard.

  Dr. Spencer, standing just outside the broad glass doors, appeared to be engaged in an ugly confrontation with a distinguished-looking Brit, a member of the Royal Society, if Karr remembered correctly.

  “Nonsense!” the silver-haired delegate sputtered. “Your data, sir, are contrived and inaccurate! Nothing can be clearer from the record than that the increased temperatures of the past century and a half are due to increased industrial emissions. Human emissions!”

  “Bullshit!” Spencer snapped back. “The total effect of the sun on Earth’s climate is overwhelmingly greater than anything we can do to add or detract!”

  “Sheer moonshine, sir! You have no proof—”

  “I have all the proof necessary, Sir James, if you’re willing to pull your head out of your ass and listen to a dissenting view for a change!”

  “Doctor Spencer! I resent—”

  “Well, I must say they’re getting on famously,” someone said at Karr’s side.

  “If they don’t kill each other first,” Karr replied. He looked the other man over . . . a nondescript, older man with white hair and the air of a banker, perhaps. Karr had seen him earlier that morning in the conference hall, standing off to one side, and assumed he was a delegate to the symposium.

  “Randolph Evans,” Rockman’s voice whispered in Karr’s ear. “GCHQ. He’s one of us.”

  Karr extended a hand. “You’re Randolph Evans, aren’t you? GCHQ?”

  Evans took his hand. “And you’re Kjartan Magnor-Karr. ‘Tommy.’ NSA.”

  Karr grinned. Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was Great Britain’s equivalent of the NSA. An agreement dating back to 1947 called the United Kingdom–USA Communications Intelligence Agreement, usually shortened to “UKUSA,” had forged an unusually close and highly covert alliance aimed at intercepting and decoding electronic intelligence all over the world. If GCHQ wasn’t a branch of the NSA by now, it was the next best thing . . . a full partner in global espionage and SIGINT.

  He didn’t bother asking Evans what he was doing here. If the operative was here on an op, he wouldn’t discuss the fact any more than Karr would. Karr could guess what GCHQ was interested in this afternoon, though.

  “A lot of very noisy people down there,” he commented.

  “Indeed. Greenpeace. Greenworld. Several other environmentalist groups. They seem to think the world’s governments aren’t moving fast enough.”

  “All in all a good thing,” Karr said, nodding. “When governments move quickly, that’s when ordinary people need to start worrying.”

  “As when they make the trains run on time?”

  “Exactly. Or promise ‘peace in our time.’”

  “Ouch. Touché.”

  Karr nodded toward the confrontation near the doors. “Who’s the silver-haired gentleman threatening to throw Dr. Spencer off the roof?”

  “Ah. Sir James Millvale. Distinguished member of Parliament. Highly respected Senior of the Royal Society. Environmental scientist. And thoroughly peeved that people like your Dr. Spencer may be about to turn the tide of official opinion against the idea that people are to blame for global warming . . . after he and his party rammed through some rather expensive and deucedly inconvenient emissions standards here in this country. Millvale and his allies will look like fools, lose professional standing, power, prestige. They have everything to lose, so they have stopped listening.”

  “That’s supposed to be our fault?”

  “Well, you Yanks do have the reputation for kicking over the apple cart. Boston Harbor, 1773?”

  “You’re still carrying a grudge? You people have such long memories. . . .”

  Evans chuckled.

  Before he could reply, however, Rockman interrupted over Karr’s communications system. “Hey, Tommy? Looks like some trouble is developing downstairs.”

  “Excuse me,” Karr told Evans. “I have a call.”

  He didn’t know if Evans was cleared to know about the highly secret communications implants used by Desk Three operators—for all Karr knew, GCHQ agents used the things as well—but pulling out a satellite phone and holding it to his ear gave him plausible cover with the surrounding crowd of guests and delegates as he spoke with Rockman.

  “Jeff? What’s up?”

  “We’re monitoring the situation through BBC Two and the security cameras inside the building,” Rockman said. The NSA, it was said, could tap into any security camera system worldwide, especially if the system was part of a computer-monitored network. “The crowd outside just exploded. About fifty of them muscled past the security guards at the main entrance. That seems to have been a distraction, though, because when the guards started struggling with them, about fifty more vaulted a set of barrier fences and entered the building through a side door.”

  “Are they armed?”

  “Not that we can see,” Rockman replied. “But you may be about to have company.”

  Frowning, Karr said, “Excuse me,” to Evans and pushed through the wide glass double doors into the building’s tenth-floor lobby. Leaning over a railing, Karr could look straight down the center of the staircase spiraling up the inside of the building, all the way to the entrance floor. Shouts and wild yells echoed up the staircase, along with the magn
ified thunder of running feet coming up the steps. It looked like the mob was up to the third floor already . . . no, the fourth.

  Returning to the promenade outside, he signaled Delgado and Payne, who were flanking Spencer as the American continued arguing with Sir James. With things apparently peaceful enough, other than Spencer’s disagreement with the locals, Rogers had wandered off to find the cafeteria and get something to eat.

  “Some of the protestors just jumped the security barriers,” Karr told the two FBI agents. “They’re on their way up. We need to get Sunny here someplace safe.”

  “Inside,” Delgado suggested. “In the speakers’ area. There’s a green room.”

  The green room was a place for delegates to rest and hang out without being pestered by the news media or other noisy types. Karr nodded. The room had one entrance, which could be easily defended.

  Still, he didn’t want to overreact. When Greenpeace activists protesting the Star Wars initiative had broken through the security perimeter at Menwith Hill a few years ago, they’d used similar tactics. A few, designated “hares,” had cut through the fence and run across the compound, drawing off the security guards. Then the main body, designated “rabbits,” had swarmed over the fence, climbed communications towers, and raised banners. They’d stayed long enough to pose for the media cameras, some of them wearing outlandish costumes representing ballistic missiles, before being evicted or, in some cases, arrested and carried off to waiting police vans for trespass.

  Most likely, the activists downstairs were going to try to crash the symposium’s party, shout some slogans, maybe hang up some banners, and grab some high-quality airtime on the evening news.

  But they couldn’t afford to take chances, not with the death threats against him. They closed in on Spencer.