The Russian Deception (21 page)

CHAPTER 47

Nick stood by the window in his hotel room looking out at the rain. His mood was blacker than the clouds outside. His left arm was in a soft cast and hung in a sling. He had no feeling in the fingers of his left hand. The bullet had nicked the bone and damaged the nerves. The prognosis was inconclusive. Feeling might come back or it might not. The arm was the least of his concerns.

It's my fault. I was careless. I thought with Gutenberg dead it was over. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Thoughts of guilt and blame made hammered drumbeats in his mind.

With Langley's help, Harker had kept them out of jail. DCI Hood had called in a favor with the
Bundesnachrichtendienst
, the German Intelligence Service. The BND had stepped in and taken over from the local police.

Lamont and Ronnie were in intensive care in the University Hospital. Ronnie had taken two 9 mm rounds through his guts. One of them had punctured his liver. The last time he'd been wounded he'd lost his spleen. This time was worse. It was touch and go whether he would survive.

Lamont wasn't much better off. One round had missed his heart by a centimeter and exited from his back, causing massive bleeding. The other bullet had gone through his left lung, the second time he'd been shot through a lung. If he survived, he would have matching wound scars on his chest.

A round had grazed Selena's side and glanced off a rib. They'd bandaged her up along with Nick and sent them back to the hotel. A man in a dark suit and tie from the BND stood outside their door. They weren't prisoners, exactly, but they were told not to leave their room. They were under a form of polite house arrest while the Germans figured out what to do with them. Their guns had been confiscated.

Selena came over and stood by Nick. She put her hand on his shoulder and looked out the window with him. The cityscape was a gray vista of steel and glass and wet concrete.

"What a fucking mess," he said.

"The police said they were local hoods. They think somebody hired them to come after us."

"It has to be the Russians. Probably Golovkin."

"Why him?"

"He's covering his ass. He doesn't know what Gutenberg may have told us. He was trying to make sure that anything we learned didn't go any further."

"Do you think he knows about Valentina?"

"I don't know. I guess we have to wait and watch what happens."

"If she gets that recording to Vysotsky, it could make a difference," Selena said.

"It could. Orlov isn't known for his forgiving nature. By convincing him NATO would stay out of the Baltics Golovkin put him in a situation where he can't win. Once he knows Golovkin screwed up, Orlov will make sure he disappears. It depends on whether or not Valentina got the recording to Vysotsky and if he follows through."

"She will," Selena said. "She's a very determined woman."

"I hope you're right."

Selena's voice was full of sadness. "What if they die?"

His voice was flat, hard. "Don't say that. They're both still alive. I'll worry about it if they do."

Nick's satellite phone signaled. He looked at the display.

"Harker," he said to Selena. He turned on the speaker and connected the call. "Yes, Director."

"How are you, Nick?"

"How do you think? I've been better."

Elizabeth let it go. "The German authorities have agreed to let you go. You and Selena are leaving as soon as the weather clears."

"What about Ronnie and Lamont?"

"As soon as they're stable and can be moved they'll be flown here. They're ready for them at Walter Reed."

"Any news from Moscow? Any sign Valentina got through?"

"Not yet."

"What's happening with the war?"

"Which one? The Balkan war is in winter stalemate with everyone bogged down. The weather has been bad. No one can do anything. NATO is trying to negotiate a truce between the Albanians and Macedonia but so far no one is listening. Unless Mitreski wants to take on more than he can handle he's going to have to pull back to his border. He doesn't have the resources or the heart to make a serious effort at conquering Albania and he can't win against NATO. He'll quit. That war is ending with a whimper instead of a bang."

"What about Latvia?"

"That's a different story," Elizabeth said. "The weather has made satellite surveillance difficult. We should be able to get a radar fix through the cloud cover but the Russians have come up with new stealth technology for their tanks. It makes them almost invisible to radar. Hard to track or get a missile lock."

"Where are they now?"

"One of their columns is east of Riga, right on the outskirts."

"And NATO? What are they doing?"

"Rice raised hell and got them off their asses. They're sending troops to Estonia and Lithuania. It's too late to save the Latvian capital. The plan is to go after the Russians on two fronts from the bordering countries. Air strikes will begin as soon as the weather clears if they don't back down. The logistics to support a serious ground operation haven't gotten there yet. NATO wasn't ready for this."

"That figures."

"So far there haven't been any skirmishes between the Russians and NATO but it's only a question of time. Once the air strikes begin things will heat up fast."

"Has Rice talked to Orlov yet?"

"Orlov is refusing all calls. He's stonewalling everyone. Rice is taking it personally. I've never seen him this angry. He's pissed."

"I'll bet he is," Nick said. "Maybe Orlov will change his mind when our missiles start taking out his tanks."

"We'd better hope it doesn't come to that. Our best bet now is Vysotsky." Elizabeth paused.

"Come home, Nick."

CHAPTER 48

Colonel Dimitri Brusilov sat with his crew inside the armored capsule of his tank and studied the terrain in front of him. Condensation from the heat of their bodies ran down the cold steel walls. Resistance along the way had been intermittent and easily overcome and now his tanks were on the outskirts of Riga. Two rows of three-story apartment buildings and a small park lay directly in his path. A rusted swing set and a child's merry-go-round in faded colors of blue and yellow and red sat in the center of the park. Beyond the park a tall church spire painted white thrust upward into a gray-black afternoon sky.

Latvian artillery was targeting his tanks from somewhere a few kilometers away. Rounds were landing close by, too close for comfort. Dimitri had no confirmed target.
The
Afghanit
system that
was supposed to intercept the shells and pin down the location of the battery for a counter strike was acting up. The electronic gremlins that had plagued the tank in the past were back. Dimitri swore at the thinking that threw untested weapons systems into combat before they were ready. Testing systems on the factory proving grounds was one thing. Having those systems prove reliable under combat conditions was something entirely different.

Part of the system worked just fine. Alarms on Dimitri's console let him know an artillery shell was coming straight for them.

"Incoming," he said into his microphone. "Hold on."

Now we'll see just how good this armor is,
he thought.

The
Afghanit
system on the T-14 was designed to intercept incoming missiles and artillery rounds with guided missiles targeted by radar and fired by the computer. But the electronic problems interfered. The computer failed to intercept the round. The shell exploded a few yards away from the tank and blew off the tread on the left side. The tank skewed to the left and stopped. Inside, the crew was shaken up but unharmed.

The computer on the Armata was programmed to determine the nature of external threats and take countermeasures against them. It had the capability to correct what it interpreted as errors on the part of the crew. The artillery round had further damaged the erratic electronic system. The computer analyzed the situation, determined that the crew was not responding to threats and decided to fire a missile.

On Sergei's weapons board half the lights were out. He looked at what was still functioning. A cold fear swept over him.

"Commander. The
Sprinter
tactical missile is being loaded."

"Shut it down! Now!"

Sergei's voice was full of fear. "I can't. The board is not working."

The turret still functioned. The long barrel of the cannon swiveled and rose to its maximum elevation. Dimitri listened to gears meshing as the autoloader chose the missile and fed it into the cannon. The magazine and mechanism were outside the armored crew compartment, behind layers of hardened steel and ceramic plates, inaccessible. With the board out of commission, Dimitri was helpless to stop the sequence. He watched the screen on his console that showed him the outside world.

The missile left the cannon, trailing white smoke behind it, picking up speed as it rose into the air. It carried a one kiloton nuclear warhead that would destroy everything within a half mile radius. No one would survive. The blast wave would continue outward destroying structures as it went. Ground shock would cause major damage to critical infrastructure over a much wider area, as if a large earthquake had struck the region.

Maybe it will fail,
Dimitri thought.

He hadn't prayed since he was a boy but he found himself praying now.

Please, let it fail.

His prayers were not answered. The missile turned and twisted high in the air as the damaged computer sought for a target. It reached its maximum height and turned back toward the ground. Dimitri had time to see the outer world vanish in a burst of white light before the blast wave picked up his tank and hurled it through the air like a toy.

In Washington and in Moscow, in every Western capital and in every intelligence agency in the world with the capability to oversee the battlefield in Latvia, the reaction was the same when their instruments registered the explosion.

Shock, followed by fear and anger. For the first time since World War II a nuclear weapon had been used in combat.

The genie was out of the bottle.

CHAPTER 49

Vysotsky stared at Valentina in disbelief.

"Kepler was Johannes Gutenberg?"

"Yes. He will trouble us no more."

Alexei Vysotsky set the recording from the hospital down on his desk and looked at Valentina.

"The Americans were there? For the same reason?"

The way he said it made Valentina think that somehow she was supposed to be at fault for the American presence. She looked at the man across the desk, dressed today in his general's uniform. Vysotsky had shaped her into a weapon of the state. He had controlled her life, deciding what she should know and what she should do. He had never displayed anything that felt like genuine affection for her.

She wanted to make him see her as more than someone to manipulate.

"Yes, they were there, including my sister."

"What?" His face registered shock.

"It surprises you that I know about her? It shouldn't. After all, you are the one who trained me. You should have told me long ago."

Vysotsky looked down at his desk for a moment and shuffled a few papers. When he looked up his face was emotionless.

"It was the correct thing to do," he said. "What good would it have done for you to know you had a sister in America, someone you could never hope to meet? I was trying to spare you from unnecessary emotional stress."

"You were trying to spare yourself from the complications of dealing with my thoughts about having any family except the state. The only reason you kept that information from me was to serve your own purposes."

"Your sister is an American spy."

"My sister is my sister first and an American second," Valentina said. "My mother was a spy. I'm a spy. Why shouldn't she be one as well? What did you think, that I would run off to her with state secrets and tell her all about them?"

Vysotsky managed to look uncomfortable.

"It seemed best," he said.

"She knows who I am. Because of her I was able to get this recording. They may be Americans but in this we are all wanting the same thing."

Vysotsky's phone rang.

"
Da
." Valentina saw his face change. "
Da. Da.
Spasibo.
"

He put the phone down. He seemed shaken.

"There has been a nuclear explosion in Latvia," he said.

"NATO? The Americans?"

"No. One of our tanks fired a tactical missile. Part of Riga has been destroyed."

"Who gave the order to fire?"

"No one knows."

Vysotsky picked up the recorder with Gutenberg's statement on it and put it in his pocket. He stood. Valentina rose with him.

"Orlov has to hear this. This war must be stopped before the Americans retaliate." He paused. "For what it's worth, I admired your mother."

He walked out of the room, leaving Valentina standing there.

What the hell has that got to do with anything?
she thought.

Alexei knew Orlov was meeting with his military commanders. Golovkin was sure to be there. As his limousine sped toward the Kremlin, Vysotsky thought about how to confront Golovkin and try to persuade Orlov to pull back. When American troops began to die, war with the United States was inevitable. Russia would not survive a nuclear war. It would not be a popular position to point out that Russia would be defeated. Before this day was over he would be praised as a hero or shot as a traitor.

He thought back to his days in the field in Afghanistan. He'd been young then, naïve. There were times when he'd wished his commanders would use tactical nuclear weapons against a particularly stubborn enemy. Now he knew better. The world was too dangerous for anyone, Russia included, to use the power of the atom as a hard vehicle of policy.

The car entered the Kremlin grounds through the private entrance reserved for Russia's leaders. The driver parked in the underground garage. Two guards armed with AK 94s stood by the elevator that would take him to the sub level where the Operations Center was located. They came to attention when they saw Alexei's uniform.

"One of you, come with me," Vysotsky said.

"Sir, my orders are to stay here."

"Unless you want to find yourself posting guard in Novosibirsk you will come with me now. Understand?"

"Sir."

"Summon the elevator."

The guard pushed the button to bring the elevator down. They waited in silence until the doors opened. Inside, Alexei pressed the button that would take them up to the next level.

The doors opened onto the Kremlin Operations Center.

The room was large and brightly lit with overhead fluorescent lighting. The air was heavy with the acrid smell of unwashed bodies and stress. To Alexei's right and left the walls were covered with large monitors displaying a pictures sent by satellites, ground cameras and drones. Most of the aerial shots were useless, gray masses of cloud blocking everything on the ground from sight. Raised rose of desks with monitors lined both sides of the room, manned by uniformed men and women from the Federation ground forces. At the far end was a command room separated from the rest by a wall of glass. Over the glass was a huge map of the world covered with glowing symbols illuminated in bright yellow against a black background.

The men in that room controlled Russia's massive military might. Alexei saw President Orlov, Golovkin, Colonel General Kuznetsov, General Krupin, and Admiral Akulin sitting at a large table on the other side of the glass. Also at the table was Colonel-General Anton Brezhnev, Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Federation Air Force. Sitting next to him was Lieutenant General Victor Aronov, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces. Aronov was in charge of the Federation's considerable ballistic missile inventory.

People began to look up from their monitors as Alexei and his armed escort strode toward the conference room. Orlov sensed something out of the ordinary and turned toward the glass. He watched Vysotsky approaching.

Two guards stepped forward and blocked the way into the room.

"I must speak with the president," Alexei said.

"Entrance is forbidden."

Orlov's voice came through a speaker over the door. "Let him in."

The guard stepped aside and the door slid open with a quiet hiss of air.

"Mister President," Alexei said.

He took the recorder out of his pocket and held it up where everyone in the room could see. On the ride over he had decided that if Golovkin was present when he reached Orlov the only strategy was to attack without hesitation. Orlov was a forceful man. He appreciated forcefulness in others if it supported him. Just the same, Alexei knew he was playing a dangerous game.

"I have proof that we have been manipulated into this war. Mister President, we have been tricked into a confrontation with the Americans by this man."

He pointed at Golovkin in a theatrical gesture. Russians loved theater. Alexei now had gained their attention. He'd been careful not to single Orlov out as the target of Golovkin's manipulation. By using the collective 'we', he hoped to avoid triggering Orlov's massive ego. Any insinuation that Orlov alone was responsible for being duped by Golovkin would not go over well.

"Mister President, NATO will absolutely respond to our incursion into Latvia. Now that there has been a nuclear incident we are at risk of all out war with the West."

Orlov studied Vysotsky, the way a collector might look at a board pinned with butterflies.

"We have classified documents proving that NATO will not get involved," Orlov said. "The nuclear event, as you call it, can be written off as an unfortunate accident."

"The documents are false," Alexei said. "I can prove it. We must pull back before everything escalates. We cannot win against the Americans. We are not yet strong enough."

Golovkin spoke for the first time since Alexei had come into the room. "Mister President, he wishes to stop us from reclaiming what is ours. His fantastic accusations are the product of a treasonous mind."

"Is that right, General?" Alexei said. "Then perhaps you would kindly explain this recording of Johannes Gutenberg on his deathbed. He clearly states that with your help he has been funding our war efforts to provoke a confrontation between us and the West. He made sure that you received false documents showing that the NATO high command would not respond if we liberated the Baltics."

"That is a lie," Golovkin said. "Gutenberg died in Switzerland."

"Mister President, judge for yourself."

Vysotsky set the recording device on the table and pressed play. Gutenberg's words sounded tinny on the small speaker but clear. Golovkin rose as if to grab the recorder.

Orlov said, "Sit down. We will hear this."

Vysotsky relaxed just a bit. The first hurdle had been overcome. The men in the room listened to Gutenberg laughing as he described how he'd manufactured the NATO documents and convinced Golovkin that there would be no intervention if the Federation decided to expand its territory. They heard him gleefully explain how Russia and America would destroy each other in a nuclear war, giving him the revenge he sought. The last thing they heard on the speaker was the sounds of Gutenberg's death and Valentina's voice demanding the recording.

The room was silent. Everyone looked at Golovkin.

"Lies," he said. "This recording is false, made up by this traitor. These are lies. Arrest him."

"If they are lies," Orlov said, "how did he know about the secret notes supposedly from NATO's high command?"

"A lucky guess. Or he used his resources at SVR to discover them. Those documents are genuine."

"You never did explain where the money came from," Orlov said. "You said you had recruited a foreign source which supported our aims. I was unwilling to pursue it further. I see now that I made a mistake, one I will not make again."

Vysotsky risked an interruption. "General Golovkin, tell the president about your personal account."

The temperature in the room was ice cold from air conditioning to keep the computers happy. Even so, droplets of sweat appeared on Golovkin's forehead.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course you do," Alexei said. "The private account in Switzerland with thirty-five million euros in it. You do recall it?"

"You are lying again. Where would I get that kind of money? Mister President, please, arrest this man. We are wasting time listening to this babble."

"This is true?" Orlov asked Alexei. "Thirty-five million euros?"

"It's true, Mister President. You can easily verify it. I can give you the account numbers. He siphoned off the money from what Gutenberg gave him to fund our military."

Orlov didn't like that. "Play the recording again," he said.

Alexei played it again.

"I know about Gutenberg." Orlov drummed his fingers on the table. "His organization was one of our greatest enemies. He would have destroyed us if he had not been stopped. I thought him dead."

"He is dead, now," Alexei said. "No thanks to Golovkin."

"You knew Gutenberg was our enemy," Orlov said to Golovkin. His voice was quiet, controlled. "You let yourself be persuaded because of money and now we face a crisis."

"One of our nukes has destroyed part of Riga," Alexei said. "How do you think the Americans and NATO will respond? How would we respond if our positions were reversed?"

Golovkin stood and pulled his pistol and pointed it at Vysotsky. "These are all lies. NATO will not respond. Even if they did we would destroy them. You are a traitor."

Alexei sneered at him. "You are a fool. You have put us on the path to nuclear war with America. You sold us out because you wanted the money and because you thought you knew better than the rest of us. The only traitor here is you."

Golovkin's face was white with rage. His finger tightened on the trigger.

A shot boomed harsh and loud in the enclosed room. Golovkin looked surprised, then down at a hole in his uniform jacket. Blood spread in a widening stain. He collapsed, knocking over his chair.

Orlov held a pistol in his hand. The room smelled of spent powder. All of the men in the room had seen violent death many times over. None of them had expected to see it here in the secret heart of the Kremlin.

Outside the glass enclosure, the ops center was at a standstill, everyone looking at what was happening inside the room. The guards outside rushed in, uncertain. Orlov still held his pistol.

"Get that piece of shit out of here." He waved the pistol at Golovkin's body and put the gun back in his pocket.

"General Vysotsky, sit down."

Vysotsky sat.

"Gentlemen," Orlov said. "I am convinced that General Vysotsky has uncovered the truth. We must decide how to proceed."

The first to speak was Admiral Akulin. He was a small man, dwarfed by the broad shoulder boards of his rank and his tailored uniform jacket.

"We have gone too far to retreat now. The fleet is at Riga as we speak. We can crush the city if we wish. The government will capitulate. Why give up our gains? I am not convinced that the West will risk war with us over Latvia. We could give assurances that we will pursue no territory in the other Baltic states."