Authors: Jim DeFelice
Luksha had flown all night and his eyes felt as if they were on fire. He stared through the window as the car sped down Pereulok Sivtsev Vrazhek in the Arbatskaya section of Moscow just outside the Kremlin. Once something of a bohemian quarter and now a tourist favorite, the area included several new government buildings carefully concealed behind old facades. The one Luksha’s military driver was taking him to, in fact, had only been occupied a few months before; this was Luksha’s first visit, and he did not quite know what to expect.
The car stopped in the middle of the street, in front of a four-story yellow building whose exterior dated from the late eighteenth century. A single guard in a black suit stood at the doorway, eyeing Luksha suspiciously as he walked up the steps. The man touched his ear—there was an ear bud for a communications system there—then nodded to Luksha, who nodded back and pulled open the thick door. Two guards, these in paratrooper uniforms, stood inside the long but narrow vestibule. The men had AK-74s equipped with laser-dot sights; their fingers rested on the triggers. They neither moved nor said anything as the general walked past. His boots slid slightly on the polished marble floors; the lighting was so dim that he could not have read a newspaper. A large abstract painting by Kandinsky hung at the far end of the hall, which formed an alcove for a short flight of stairs to the left. Luksha walked down the stairs and there was met by two more paratroopers, who snapped sharply to attention and stood silently while a petite woman in an army uniform strode forward.
“General, please,” she said, waiting for his nod before turning on her heel and leading him to a waiting elevator.
As soon as Luksha was inside, the doors slid shut and it started downward, picking up speed as it went. The young woman stared at the door as it descended; Luksha felt his ears pop.
The door opened on a corridor of polished granite. The rug on the floor was so thick Luksha felt as if he would trip as he walked. They turned right; two men in civilian dress passed, saying nothing, eyes studiously avoiding both Luksha and his attractive guide.
Two short corridors later the young woman deposited the general in the office of his commander, Andrev Orda, who besides being a major general was a member of parliament. As was his habit, Orda played the fussy old maid welcoming a long-lost relative, ushering Luksha in and offering him a vodka, which could not be turned down. Luksha felt himself sinking into the leather chair in front of Orda’s pristine glass desk, his tired bones precariously close to sleep.
Two toasts later Orda’s hospitality evaporated into the more comfortable—for Luksha—abruptness of a former army field general.
“The American weapon was used over India,” said Orda. “You told me it was not operational.”
“On the contrary,” said Luksha. “My last communication not only noted that the remaining plane and its escorts had left the base but spoke of the possibility that the weapon might be used.”
“The Americans are celebrating already. Their president has gone on television and declared war obsolete.”
Luksha said nothing. He could not blame the Americans for celebrating, though in his opinion their claims for the weapon were overblown. It would make war more efficient, not obsolete.
“What happened to the plane that crashed?” asked Orda. “Or was that intended as some manner of ruse?”
“That is why I am here,” said Luksha. As succinctly as he could, the general laid out what his people had found and what they had surmised. He made it clear that he could not explain why the weapon would have been flown under such conditions from its development base; he was not, he admitted, certain that the aircraft had not crashed, since the American actions were consistent with an all-out search. But the hints of activity at the supposedly abandoned island in the Kurils, added now to telemetry that seemed military in nature and records of a fuel delivery some eight months before, seemed “provocative.”
Luksha used the word deliberately; it was one Orda relished.
Two flyovers by his Geofizia, outfitted with a photo reconaissance pod, had proven inconclusive; a ground inspection was necessary.
“I can answer many questions simply by going there,” said Luksha. “Four or five destroyers, a battalion of paratroopers…We quarantine the island, take it over, capture the weapon.”
Orda’s face, reddened by the vodka earlier, turned nearly white.
“This is Japanese territory,” said the general.
“The presence of a military installation would violate the treaty and return the land to us,” said Luksha. He had been prepared for the objections—legitimate, surely—and now played his trump card. “Given that we have detected signals from a Tu-160 device, we could say that we were searching for such an aircraft that was reported missing.”
Orda remained silent, staring at him as if he were an unfamiliar man who’d burst into the room with an incredible plan to go to war against America. Luksha began to feel less sure of himself.
“The Americans have occasionally used private companies as fronts for the CIA,” he said, repeating a theory Chapeav had raised. “It is possible they are planning to do something against the North Koreans, if not ourselves.”
Luksha waited, trying not to wince under the force of Orda’s stare. General Orda had the authority to grant permission for the operation, but if he didn’t, should Luksha go over his head?
He would have to speak to the premier himself. Just getting on his calendar would take days if not weeks.
“The Japanese would view this as an attack,” said Orda finally. “If there are troops there, they would resist.”
“There are no defense forces that are using standard communications equipment on the island,” said Luksha. “The Japanese have not been on the island as far as we can tell for at least six months. We would approach peacefully, with no intent to harm anyone, unless we were fired upon.
“A reconaissance is hardly an attack,” he added quickly. “Looking for our aircraft, we find another. If a weapon happens to be aboard it—in violation of an international agreement—then surely it would be our right to examine in detail.”
Orda stared at him. There was no doubt about the laser’s capabilities; the Americans had just proven all of the scientists’ speculation. If it truly was this close to them, it had to be examined—if not destroyed.
“A large-scale operation would be out of the question,” said Orda finally. “But a reconaissance in force, conducted at a time when the island was not monitored by the Japanese or the Americans, proceeding carefully as you’ve outlined…What is the minimal force you would need, if such a group were under your direct, personal command?”
“Define
venti.”
The skinny young man with half a goatee blinked.
“Venti?”
repeated Fisher.
The thick aroma of ground caffeine in the upscale coffee shop had obviously intoxicated the clerk’s delicate senses. Fisher sympathized, but not to the point of being patient.
“How about I hop over the counter and get the coffee myself?” he asked the clerk, who had a tag on his shirt declaring he wasn’t a clerk at all but something in an obscure Romance language that seemed to mean lawgiver.
“
Venti
would be, uh, bigger than
grande,”
said the clerk. He pronounced the last
e
with an exaggerated swagger, as if the accent might somehow make him European.
“So there’s
grande
and extra
grande,
which is large and extra large, except that large is what used to be regular, but you can charge more by calling it large. So
venti
is large, and I want extra large, so I guess I want extra
venti.”
Fisher took out a cigarette. “What would that be?
Vento?”
“Um—”
“Because it sounds kind of Latin, you know what I mean? It’s not Latin, but it’s close.” He lit the cigarette.
“Venti, vento, ventanimous
—I came, I saw, I coffeed. Works for me.”
“You can’t smoke in here,” said the clerk.
“Yeah, I know,” said Fisher. “So you gonna get me the
ventanimous
or what?”
The clerk stared at the cigarette. “Mocha?”
“Just regular coffee. Straight.”
The young man took cover behind the dessert display, whispering to one of his coworkers. Fisher surveyed the counter, looking for something to put his ashes in. A display near the register was filled with CDs “celebrating the organic music of the Rain Forest.” Next to it was a small glossy photo of the man who had actually picked the coffee being prepared today; it seemed likely the company had spent more on the glossy photo than on the beans. A legend below the photo declared that the coffee had been harvested with integrity, which Fisher agreed was a good thing: You couldn’t have too much integrity in a hot beverage, as far as he was concerned.
On the other hand, Fisher wasn’t sure about organic music. Possibly it was the song they sang when they tore the trees down to panel the interior of the store.
The clerk with the pseudo-Latin job title sent a braver, skinnier coworker forward with the coffee. Fisher paid for it—the price represented a month’s car payment—and then sat along the wall. Several people stared, eyeing his cigarette with obvious envy.
He’d taken only two sips from the coffee—while admittedly on the strong side, it lacked the metallic, burned aftertaste so highly prized by true connoisseurs of java—when a gentleman clad in the dark blue favored by officers of the law approached his table. Fisher reached into his jacket for his Bureau ID, expecting the cop to riff a variation of “license and registration” on him. Instead he touched his holster, unsnapping the gun restraint at the top.
“FBI,” said Fisher. “Relax.”
“Put it down slowly,” said the cop.
Fisher pulled out his ID and laid it on the table.
“I meant the cigarette,” said the policeman.
Fisher’s cell phone began to vibrate.
“How about I take it outside?” he suggested, figuring the heavy lacquer of the walls would interfere with his reception.
“Good idea,” said the policeman, whose hand remained poised near his weapon as the FBI agent walked out. The small concrete patio near the sidewalk was crowded with smoking refugees, but Fisher found an unoccupied table near the Dumpster, where the refreshing aroma of spent coffee beans mixed with more earthly scents.
“Fisher.”
“McDonald.”
“Betty, how are you?” he asked, starting to sip the coffee. “Did the GSA help?”
“About as much as Congressman Taft,” she said.
“Good,” said Fisher. It was best not to acknowledge sarcasm in an amateur.
She sighed. Fisher recognized the sound of a Tootsie Roll being unwrapped.
“We persevered despite your help. There are some interesting intersections,” she said between chews. “Ferrone Radiavonics, which according to your papers worked on the F/A-22V’s radar.”
“Yup?”
“They’re owned by a company which is owned by another company which is part of a trust controlled by the people who control El-Def.”
“This is going somewhere, right?”
“Megan York’s family and friends have an important interest in about half a dozen defense projects besides Cyclops,” she told him.
“Controlling interests?”
“Big interests.”
“Like which ones?”
“God, Fisher, do you do anything besides drink coffee and smoke cigarettes all day?”
“Nope.”
“The augmented-ABM project is the biggest. The connection’s rather convoluted.”
“Bonham’s involved?”
“He has stock in some of the companies. His stake is unclear. There are others.” Betty ran down a list that included an unmanned submarine project and a satellite network. “Awful lot of stock to own, given his supposed net worth. Get this: He claims his condo cost under two-fifty. Can’t possibly be, not near the Beltway. No way.”
As she talked the call-waiting feature beeped Fisher’s line with another call.
“Gotta get going, Betty. Keep digging.”
“Digging for what?”
He clicked onto the other line and immediately regretted doing so.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Why, Jemma, hello to you. Actually, I am in a coffee emporium in downtown central north Alexandria. I think it’s downtown. Hard to tell.”
“I need you to get on a plane right away. You have to go to Afghanistan. Did you catch the President’s speech?”
“The President?”
“Fisher, I don’t have any time for your bullshit.”
“Such language. I bet there’s an ordinance against it here.”
“Fisher—I’m going to give you twenty minutes to get over to Andrews. There’s a plane waiting.”
“A big one, I hope.”
Blitz had expected some of the criticism. It was mostly knee-jerk anti-Americanism, the kind that would interpret a cure for cancer as somehow part of a plot to bring a McDonald’s restaurant to every intersection in the world. A few of the sources were surprising, or at least ironic: A German newspaper accused the U.S. of trying to enforce its “ethos” on the world, as if eliminating all life-forms from several hundred thousand square miles was a lifestyle choice.
But there were a few nuanced opinions—he couldn’t call them criticisms exactly—that did disturb him. One, recognizing that mankind now stood at the precipice of a new age, went on to warn that the shape of this age was not so clear-cut:
One of the lessons that seems not to be understood about the use of the atomic bombs against Japan was that they helped end the war precisely because they were weapons of indiscriminate annihilation. They made possible the erasing of an entire people—not simply the removal of combatants, but of all people. World War II to a great degree erased the line between combatant and noncombatant. The Allied powers involved in the fight understood—though they could not admit it publicly—that the only real way to win the war was to combine military victory with severe crippling of the civilian population. The atomic bombs were the culmination of that, a step further along the line that led from Dresden to the firebombing of Tokyo. There would have been no final victory without these mass destructions, just more in the cycle of engagements that had wracked the world for one hundred, two hundred years.
And so, when the possibility of complete destruction is removed, what then? Does it lead to more stability—to no more war, as the President declared in his forceful speech last night? Or does it lead paradoxically to an era of more instability? If a country can only be defeated in war by total annihilation—the lesson of World War II—what happens when that possibility is removed? Is the answer truly peace? Or is the result more cycles of violence? Low-grade violence compared to world wars, certainly, but inevitable and intractable nonetheless.
The American action against Iraq in the first Gulf War is a case in point. By limiting their objectives in the war, America and its allies inadvertently set the stage for years of continued conflict and great suffering, necessitating actions in 2003 which even now we do not fully understand the ramifications of. Would the result have been so much different if Saddam Hussein—or, better, a successor who rose to power by assassinating the despised leader—swore off weapons of mass destruction? Would the Kurds have been freed, the Shiite majority unchained? The Cyclops weapon—along with the ABM and augmented ABM system currently envisioned—can eliminate nuclear war. But will they make the world safer? And in pursuing this safety—admittedly a seemingly glorious goal—are we actually making ourselves less secure?…
Not only did Blitz disagree with some of the essay’s conclusions; it bothered him considerably that the essay had been written by one of his mentors, Donald Byrd, who had preceded him at Harvard and in his estimation remained his teacher. In essence, his friend was saying he had done the opposite of what he had intended.
But what was the alternative? What would he have said if they let the war go on?
“Lost in thought?” asked the President as he entered the East Sitting Room on the second floor of the White House. The President pulled one of the ornate wooden chairs from the table where one of the aides had stacked the newspapers and printouts. A silver coffee service sat on the floor; D’Amici bent over and helped himself. “So?” he said finally. “What’s the verdict?”
“Mostly positive,” said Blitz.
“I don’t mean the press reaction,” said D’Amici. He waved his hand dismissively. “Will the cease-fire hold or not?”
“I think it will,” said Blitz. “They sound scared.”
“What about the other plane? Was it Cyclops?”
D’Amici hadn’t slept—Blitz knew this for a fact, since he hadn’t himself—but he looked as if were rested and ready to go bicycling or on a picnic. The doubt he’d seen the other night was gone. He’d made the right decision, and his people had executed it perfectly.
“We’re still going through the satellite photos,” said Blitz. “Colonel Howe should be conducting the search by now.”
“Howe’s still in Afghanistan?”
“Yes, sir. The Pentagon…His aircraft have the most advanced gear available. And he volunteered.”
“He’s got a future.” The President smiled in a way that suggested he might consider adopting the colonel—or placing him on the ticket as vice president for the next election.
“We’re a little worried about Chinese reaction,” added Blitz.
D’Amici shrugged. “If they’re the ones who have the plane, their reaction is irrelevant. And if they don’t, well, we’ll deal with that down the line. You don’t think this is parallel Chinese technology?”
The CIA had raised that possibility yesterday, claiming that their review of the strikes showed differences in the weaponry. Bonham’s experts had snickered, and Blitz sided with them.
“Doubtful. And it’s definitely not Russian. They’re clearly years behind.”
“So the Pakistanis stole it?”
“I just don’t see that,” said Blitz. The Pakistani theory—that they had stolen the plane to protect themselves from just such an attack—was popular at the Pentagon but had no evidence to back it up, especially given the plane’s flight path from the time it was spotted off the Indian coast. A task force of intel experts was trying to piece together the plane’s flight path prior to that, but had made little progress.
“Someone took it. I doubt the original crew hijacked it for Greenpeace,” he said sarcastically.
“I agree,” said Blitz. “Maybe the Russians.”
“Then why aren’t they talking about the shootdown, or the fact that they lost the aircraft?” The President was referring to intercepted communications, not public announcements, since saying anything would implicate their guilt in taking it.
“They know we can read them.”
D’Amici bent to the floor and poured himself another cup of coffee. “Congress is going to approve the augmented-ABM funding, as long as next week’s tests go well. We’re riding a wave, Professor. Riding a wave. The end of war as we know it.” He picked up a folded newspaper from the floor, holding open the editorial page. The lead editorial, congratulating him, bore that title: “The end of war as we know it.”
Blitz looked up as a familiar set of footsteps echoed through the second-floor hallway. Mozelle appeared from behind a pair of Secret Service agents. She greeted the President first, then looked at Blitz, tacitly asking whether she should speak. But there was really no option: D’Amici didn’t like secrets, especially ones so obvious.
“McIntyre is missing,” she said. “We’re not sure yet, but it looks like he was at one of the Indian bases in Kashmir. No one’s heard from him since the exchange.”