by Tom Clancy
“Your son?” he asked in Russian.
“Dead. Cancer,” the man explained, then saw that this bandit didn’t understand. “Sickness. Long sickness.” For the briefest moment his face cleared of pain and showed only grief. That saved his life. He was amazed to see the bandit sheathe his knife, but too deeply in pain to react in a visible way.
No. I will not visit another death upon this woman. The decision also amazed the Archer. It was as though the voice of Allah Himself reminded him that mercy is second only to faith in the human virtues. That was not enough by itself—his fellow guerrillas would not be persuaded by a verse of scripture—but next the Archer found a key ring in the man’s pants pocket. He used one key to unlock the handcuffs and the other to open the briefcase. It was full of document folders, each of which was bordered in multicolored tape and stamped with some version of SECRET. That was one Russian word he knew.
“My friend,” the Archer said in Pashtu, “you are going to visit a friend of mine. If you live long enough,” he added.
“How serious is this?” the President asked.
“Potentially very serious,” Judge Moore answered. “I want to bring some people over to brief you.”
“Don’t you have Ryan doing the evaluation?”
“He’ll be one of them. Another’s this Major Gregory you’ve heard about.”
The President flipped open his desk calendar. “I can give you forty-five minutes. Be here at eleven.”
“We’ll be there, sir.” Moore hung up the phone. He buzzed his secretary next. “Send Dr. Ryan in here.”
Jack came through the door a minute later. He didn’t even have time to sit down.
“We’re going in to see The Man at eleven. How ready is your material?”
“I’m the wrong guy to talk about the physics, but I guess Gregory can handle that end. He’s talking to the Admiral and Mr. Ritter right now. General Parks coming, too?” Jack asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. How much imagery do you want me to get together?”
Judge Moore thought that one over for a moment. “We don’t want to razzle-dazzle him. A couple of background shots and a good diagram. You really think it’s important, too?”
“It’s not any immediate threat to us by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a development we could have done without. The effect on the arms-control talks is hard to gauge. I don’t think there’s a direct connec—”
“There isn’t, we’re certain of that.” The DCI paused for a grimace. “Well, we think we’re certain.”
“Judge, there is data on this issue floating around here that I haven’t seen yet.”
Moore smiled benignly. “And how do you know that, son?”
“I spent most of last Friday going over old files on the Soviet missile-defense program. Back in ’81 they ran a major test out of the Sary Shagan site. We knew an awful lot about it—for example, we knew that the mission parameters had been changed from within the Defense Ministry. Those orders were sealed in Moscow and hand-delivered to the skipper of the missile sub that fired the birds—Marko Ramius. He told me the other side of the story. With that and a few other pieces I’ve come across, it makes me think that we have a man inside that place, and pretty high up.”
“What other pieces?” the Judge wanted to know.
Jack hesitated for a moment, but decided to go ahead with his guesses. “When Red October defected, you showed me a report that had to come from deep inside, also from the Defense Ministry; the code name on the file was WILLOW, as I recall. I’ve only seen one other file with that name, on a different subject entirely, but also defense-related. That makes me think there’s a source with a rapidly changing code-name cycle. You’d only do that with a very sensitive source, and if it’s something I’m not cleared for, well, I can only conclude that it’s something closely held. Just two weeks ago you told me that Gregory’s assessment of the Dushanbe site was confirmed through ‘other assets,’ sir.” Jack smiled. “You pay me to see connections, Judge. I don’t mind being cut out of things I don’t need to know, but I’m starting to think that there’s something going on that’s part of what I’m trying to do. If you want me to brief the President, sir, I should go in with the right information.”
“Sit down, Dr. Ryan.” Moore didn’t bother asking if Jack had discussed this with anyone. Was it time to add a new member to the Δ fraternity? After a moment he delivered his own sly smile.
“You’ve met him.” The Judge went on for a couple of minutes.
Jack leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. After a moment’s thought, he could see the face again. “God. And he’s getting us the information ... But will we be able to use it?”
“He’s gotten us technical data before. Most of it we’ve put to use.”
“Do we tell the President this?” Jack asked.
“No. That’s his idea, not ours. He told us some time ago that he didn’t want the details of covert operations, just the results. He’s like most politicians—he talks too much. At least he’s smart enough to know that. We’ve had agents lost because presidents talked too much. Not to mention the odd member of Congress.”
“So when do we expect this report to come in?”
“Soon. Maybe this week, maybe as long as three—”
“And if it works, we can take what they know and add it to what we know...” Ryan looked out the window at the bare limbs of trees. “Ever since I’ve been here, Judge, I’ve asked myself at least once a day—what’s most remarkable about this place, the things we know or the things we don’t?”
Moore nodded agreement. “The game’s like that, Dr. Ryan. Get your briefing notes together. No reference to our friend, though. I’ll handle that if I have to.”
Jack walked back to his office, shaking his head. He’d suspected a few times that he was cleared for things the President never saw. Now he was sure. He asked himself if this was a good idea and admitted that he didn’t know. What filled his mind was the importance of this agent and his information. There were precedents. The brilliant agent Richard Sorge in Japan in 1941, whose warnings to Stalin were not believed. Oleg Penkovskiy, who’d given the West information on the Soviet military that might have prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And now another. He didn’t reflect on the fact that alone in CIA, he knew the agent’s face but not his name or code name. It never occurred to him that Judge Moore didn’t know CARDINAL’s face, had for years avoided looking at the photograph for reasons that he could never have explained even to his deputy directors.
The phone rang, and a hand reached out from under a blanket to grab it. “H’lo.”
“’Morning, Candi,” Al Gregory said in Langley.
Two thousand miles away, Dr. Candace Long twisted around in her bed and stared at the clock. “You at the airport?”
“Still in Washington, honey. If I’m lucky, I’ll fly back later today.” He sounded tired.
“What’s happening anyway?” she asked.
“Oh, somebody ran a test, and I have to explain what it means to some people.”
“Okay. Let me know when you’re coming in, Al. I’ll come out to get you.” Candi Long was too groggy to realize that her fiancé had bent a rule of security to answer her question.
“Sure. Love ya.”
“Love you, too, honey.” She replaced the phone and rechecked the clock. There was time for another hour’s sleep. She made a mental note to ride into work with a friend. Al had left his car at the lab before flying east, and she’d ride that one out to pick him up.
Ryan got to drive Major Gregory again. Moore took General Parks in his Agency limo.
“I asked you before: what are the chances that we’ll find out what Ivan is doing at Dushanbe?”
Jack hesitated before answering, then realized that Gregory would hear it all in the Oval Office. “We have assets that are working to find out what they did to increase their power output.”
“I’d love to know ho
w you do that,” the young Major observed.
“No, you don’t. Trust me.” Ryan looked away from the traffic for a moment. “If you know stuff like that, and you make a slip, you could kill people. It’s happened before. The Russians come down pretty hard on spies. There’s still a story floating around that they cremated one—I mean they slid him into a crematorium alive.”
“Aw, come on! Nobody’s that—”
“Major, one of these days you ought to get out of your lab and find out just how nasty the world can really be. Five years ago, I had people try to kill my wife and kid. They had to fly three thousand miles to do it, but they came anyway.”
“Oh, right! You’re the guy—”
“Ancient history, Major.” Jack was tired of telling the story.
“What’s it like, sir? I mean, you’ve actually been in combat, the real thing, I mean—”
“It’s not fun.” Ryan almost laughed at himself for putting it that way. “You just have to perform, that’s all. You either do it right or you lose it. If you’re lucky, you don’t panic until it’s all over.”
“You said out at the lab that you used to be a Marine...”
“That helped some. At least somebody bothered to teach me a little about it, once upon a time.” Back when you were in high school or so, Jack didn’t say. Enough of that. “Ever meet the President?”
“No, sir.”
“The name’s Jack, okay? He’s a pretty good guy, pays attention and asks good questions. Don’t let the sleepy look fool you. I think he does that to fool politicians.”
“They fool easy?” Gregory wondered.
That got a laugh. “Some of them. The head arms-control guy’ll be there, too. Uncle Ernie. Ernest Allen, old-time career diplomat, Dartmouth and Yale; he’s smart.”
“He thinks we ought to bargain my work away. Why does the President keep him?”
“Ernie knows how to deal with the Russians, and he’s a pro. He doesn’t let personal opinions interfere with his job. I honestly don’t know what he thinks about the issues. It’s like with a doc. A surgeon doesn’t have to like you personally. He just has to fix whatever’s wrong. With Mr. Allen, well, he knows how to sit through all the crap that the negotiations entail. You’ve never learned anything about that, have you?” Jack shook his head and smiled at the traffic. “Everybody thinks it’s dramatic, but it’s not. I’ve never seen anything more boring. Both sides say exactly the same thing for hours—they repeat themselves about every fifteen or twenty minutes, all day, every day. Then after a week or so, one side or the other makes a small change, and keeps repeating that for hours. The other side checks with its capital, and makes a small change of its own, and keeps repeating that. It goes on and on that way for weeks, months, sometimes years. But Uncle Ernie is good at it. He finds it exciting. Personally, after about a week, I’d be willing to start a war just to put an end to the negotiation process”—another laugh—“don’t quote me on that. It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry, tedious as hell, but it’s important and it takes a special kind of mind to do it. Ernie’s a dry, crusty old bastard, but he knows how to get the job done.”
“General Parks says that he wants to shut us down.”
“Hell, Major, you can ask the man. I wouldn’t mind finding out myself.” Jack turned off Pennsylvania Avenue, following the CIA limousine. Five minutes later, he and Gregory were sitting in the west wing’s reception room under a copy of the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware while the Judge was talking to the President’s national security advisor, Jeffrey Pelt. The President was finishing up a session with the Secretary of Commerce. Finally, a Secret Service agent called to them and led the way through the corridors.
As with TV studio sets, the Oval Office is smaller than most people expect. Ryan and Gregory were directed to a small sofa along the north wall. Neither man sat down yet; the President was standing by his desk. Ryan noted that Gregory appeared a little pale now, and remembered his own first time here. Even White House insiders would occasionally admit to being intimidated by this room and the power it contained.
“Hello again, Jack!” The President strode over to take his hand. “And you must be the famous Major Gregory.”
“Yes, sir.” Gregory nearly strangled on that, and had to clear his throat. “I mean, yes, Mr. President.”
“Relax, sit down. You want some coffee?” He waved to a tray on the corner of his desk. Gregory’s eyes nearly bugged out when the President got him a cup. Ryan did his best to suppress a smile. The man who’d made the presidency “imperial” again—whatever that meant—was a genius for putting people at ease. Or appearing to, Jack corrected himself. The coffee routine often made them even more uneasy, and maybe that was no accident. “Major, I’ve heard some great things about you and your work. The General says you’re his brightest star.” Parks shifted in his chair at that. The President sat down next to Jeff Pelt. “Okay, let’s get started.”
Ryan opened his portfolio and set a photograph on the low table. Next came a diagram. “Mr. President, this is a satellite shot of what we call sites Bach and Mozart. They’re on a mountain southeast of the city of Dushanbe in the Tadzhik Soviet Socialist Republic, about seventy miles from the Afghan border. The mountain is about seventy-six hundred feet high. We’ve had it under surveillance for the past two years. This one”—another photo went down—“is Sary Shagan. The Russians have had ballistic-missile-defense work going on here for the past thirty years. This site right here is believed to be a laser test range. We believe that the Russians made a major breakthrough in laser power here two years ago. They then changed the activity at Bach to accommodate it. Last week they ran what was probably a full-power test.
“This array here at Bach is a laser transmitter.”
“And they blasted a satellite with it?” Jeff Pelt asked.
“Yes, sir,” Major Gregory answered. “They ‘slagged it down,’ as we say at the lab. They pumped enough energy into it to, well, to melt some of the metal and destroy the solar power cells entirely.”
“We can’t do that yet?” the President asked Gregory.
“No, sir. We can’t put that much power out the front end.”
“How is it that they got ahead of us? We’re putting a lot of money into lasers, aren’t we, General?”
Parks was uncomfortable with the recent developments, but his voice was dispassionate. “So are the Russians, Mr. President. They’ve made quite a few leaps because of their efforts in fusion. They’ve been investing in high-energy physics research for years as part of an effort to get fusion-power reactors. About fifteen years ago that effort was mated with their missile-defense program. If you put that much time and effort into basic research, you can expect a return, and they’ve gotten plenty. They invented the RFQ—the radio-frequency quadrapole—that we use in our neutral-particle beam experiments. They invented the Tokamak magnetic-containment device that we copied up at Princeton, and they invented the Gyrotron. Those are three major breakthroughs in high-energy physics that we know about. We’ve used some of them in our own SDI research, and it’s for sure that they’ve figured out the same applications.”
“Okay, what do we know about this test they ran?”
It was Gregory’s turn again. “Sir, we know that it came from Dushanbe because the only other high-energy laser sites, at Sary Shagan and Semipalatinsk, were under the visible horizon—I mean, they couldn’t see the satellite from there. We know that it wasn’t an infrared laser, because the beam would have been seen by the sensors on the Cobra Belle aircraft. If I had to guess, sir, I’d say that the system uses the free-electron laser—”
“It does,” Judge Moore noted. “We just confirmed that.”
“That’s the one we’re working on at Tea Clipper. It seems to offer the best potential for weapons applications.”
“Can I ask why, Major?” the President asked.
“Power efficiency, sir. The actual lasing occurs in a stream of free electron
s—that means they’re not attached to atoms like they usually are, sir—in a vacuum. You use a linear accelerator to produce a stream of the electrons and shoot them into the cavity, which has a low-energy laser shining along its axis. The idea is that you can use electromagnets to oscillate the electrons crosswise to their path. What you get is a beam of light coincident with the oscillation frequency of the wiggler magnets—that means you can tune it, sir, like a radio. By altering the energy of the beam, you can select the exact light frequency you generate. Then you can recycle the electrons back into the linear accelerator and shoot them back into the lasing cavity again. Since the electrons are already in a high-energy state, you gain a lot of power efficiency right there. The bottom line, sir, is that you can theoretically pump out forty percent of the energy you pump in. If you can achieve that reliably, you can kill anything you can see—when we talk about high energy levels, sir, we’re speaking in relative terms. Compared to the electrical power that this country uses to cook food, the amount needed for a laser defense system is negligible. The trick is making it really work. We haven’t done that yet.”
“Why not?” The President was interested now, leaning forward slightly in his chair.
“We’re still learning how to make the laser work, sir. The fundamental problem is in the lasing cavity—that’s where the energy comes off the electrons and turns into a beam of light. We haven’t been able yet to make a very wide one. If the cavity is too narrow, then you have such a high power density that you fry the optical coatings both in the cavity itself and on the mirrors that you use to aim the beam.”
“But they’ve beaten the problem. How do you think they did it?”
“I know what we’re trying to do. As you draw energy into the laser beam, the electrons become less energetic, okay? That means you have to taper the magnetic field that contains them—and remember that at the same time you have to continue the wiggling action of the field, too. We haven’t figured that out yet. Probably they have, and that probably came from their research into fusion power. All the ideas for getting energy out of controlled fusion are concerned with using a magnetic field to contain a mass of high-energy plasma—in principle the same thing we’re trying to do with the free electrons. Most of the basic research in that field comes from Russia, sir. They’re ahead of us because they’ve spent more time and money in the most important place.”