“I’m impressed,” he said.
“You make it sound as if I’m bragging. I’m not. You asked for my résumé and now you have it.”
“I don’t think you’re bragging. Some people take a lifetime to get where you are.”
“I’ll save you the trouble with the math,” Alex said and laughed. “I’m thirty-eight.”
“And single?”
A hesitation. “I was married—for a while. Single now.”
“What’s it like for a single woman living in Moscow?”
“Culturally it’s exhilarating, socially it’s deadening. But I do interesting work and meet interesting people like Frank Drummond. We had a fun time together.”
“What kind of things did you do?”
“Frank was interested in Russian history and I took him places that simply amazed him. We went to museums—not just the usual places like the Pushkin, but smaller ones I’d discovered, little gems tucked away in apartments and homes on the backstreets of Moscow where hardly anyone ever goes.
He was amazed at what he saw.”
“Frank was that rare individual one seldom meets in the military,” Scott said. “He was well read, culturally aware, and introspective. And he wasn’t afraid to fight for what he believed.”
“What’s his wife like?” Alex said. “I can’t stop thinking how difficult this must be for her.”
Scott told her about Vivian. He told her about the hardships and heartbreak. “It goes with the job of being a Navy wife,” Scott said.
Alex, perhaps sensing a hint of acidity in that observation, said, “If you don’t mind my asking, is there a Mrs. Scott?” She raised a glass of white wine to her lips.
“There was.” Scott’s face hardened. He looked at his watch. “Considering the time difference, I’d say she’s probably in bed with the U.S. military attaché she flew to Tokyo with last month.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Scott slugged down vodka.
“Kids?”
“There wasn’t ever time.”
Alex sipped wine and met his eyes when he looked up. “Too much sea duty, is that what you’re saying?”
“You spend a lot of time at sea in subs if you want command. I was exec on two boats, then CO of the Chicago and Tampa.”
“Now I’m impressed,” Alex said.
“Tracy sure as hell wasn’t.”
“So, what’s she like?”
How to describe a woman he had lived with for fourteen years? He wanted to say that she was a beautiful satin bitch. He remembered that Tracy’s voracious need for emotional support had drained him dry. So had her fits of manic jealousy and bouts of deep depression. Their breakup had been shattering. Coming as it had on the heels of his mission in the Yellow Sea, it had left him feeling alienated and cold.
Alex reached across the table and put a hand on his. The contact seared his flesh. “Sounds as if she didn’t like sharing you with that sub.” She took her hand away and returned his penetrating gaze with one of her own.
“So, what were you doing running around under the ocean in your sub?” Alex said after their dinner, which arrived on a silver cart accompanied by four waiters and a sommelier, had been served.
“Gathering intelligence,” Scott said.
“Spying on the Russians?”
“Not always.”
“It sounds dangerous,” she said, looking up at Scott from her salmon and pastry kulebiaka. “Tell me about it.” Her intensity made it hard for him to refuse.
“We went to extraordinary lengths to get what we were after. We took some terrible risks, had some close calls, and…well, sometimes things didn’t work out.” And sometimes men get killed, he could have added, but didn’t. And when the Navy had to have a scapegoat, he was it. From the start he’d been against a mission into the northern Yellow Sea between China and North Korea. The Yellow Sea was too damn shallow for sub ops, and, like the NKs, the Chinese considered it their private lake. So why send a submarine into the Yellow Sea on a virtual suicide mission where the Chinese and NKs had been waiting to set loose their antisub forces like a pack of wild dogs against a trapped hare?
“What kind of intelligence did you snatch from under the noses of the people you spied on?”
“Arcane technical stuff that would bore you.”
“What you mean is that you can’t talk about it.”
“I’ve already told you too much.”
“Maybe you haven’t told me enough,” she said cryptically.
He put down his fork and touched his mouth with a stiff linen napkin. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Jake, think about it. You and Frank are cut from the same cloth. You both were involved in intelligence work; it’s what you do. Is it possible that Frank, posing as a liaison officer with Earth Safe, was actually working for the CIA or someone else and was in Murmansk to gather intelligence and instead ended up dead?”
“Frank would never serve two masters—never let himself be used in that way.” As soon as Scott said that, he realized how wrong he was. Like Scott, Drummond had worked for the SRO before and had been working for them when he was murdered. It would have been easy enough for Drummond to slip into a role that would give him access to what was at one time some of the most inaccessible submarine bases in the world. But for what reason? There was little the SRO and CIA didn’t already know about the once-mighty Russian sub force and its now crumbling bases on the Kola Peninsula and in the Far East. So why send Drummond to Russia when Alex Thorne and the Norwegians were capable of handling the cleanup work on their own? Scott didn’t have an answer.
“I keep asking myself why someone would kill Frank,” Scott said. “He was an American naval officer, not a professional spy.”
She made an explosive sound. “You met Yuri Abakov. To some people in Russia, there’s no difference.”
After dinner, bundled up against Moscow’s cold, they strolled a mostly deserted Ulitsa Petrovka. Scott said, “Tell me about Frank’s files stored in the chancery.”
“What’s to tell? Individuals, even those who are assigned to the embassy on a temporary basis, are provided with B-level secure storage for sensitive materials. They’re kept in the same underground vault as the embassy’s A-level top-secret materials are, but in a different area. Frank was assigned a lockup and had access twenty-four hours a day. Jack Slaughter is chief of security. He also handles the comm center and the embassy’s voice mail net. Did you meet him?”
“Stretzlof introduced us,” Scott said. “I told Slaughter that I had orders to round up Frank’s papers and ship them out via diplomatic pouch. He seemed eager to help out.”
“That’s Slaughter.”
Scott suddenly stopped walking. “And you say that we can access the B-level lockup twenty-four hours a day?”
“Yes,” she said, turning around, walking back to him.
“Then, let’s go,” Scott said, and hailed a taxi.
Alex led Scott through the embassy’s elaborate security apparatus, consisting of retinal screening devices and voice recognition monitors at B level, far below the streets of Moscow. The duty officer accompanied them to the lockup area, where Scott took custody of a metal box filled with Drummond’s papers. Once they were settled in a conference room, the duty officer closed the door and departed after making sure that he had displayed the Occupied sign outside.
Scott noticed the room’s oddly shaped sound suppressing wall and ceiling tiles, which greatly attenuated their voices and imparted a palpable sense of claustrophobia. Filtered air hissed from a ceiling fixture. It was like being aboard the Tampa.
“Are you cold?” Scott asked.
Alex lifted and dropped her shoulders, hugged herself with both arms. “No, just wired.”
Her mood of expectancy had affected Scott too. “Then let’s get to work.”
Drummond’s papers, reports, and CD-ROMs had been carefully organized. Most of the material bore a Confidential or Secret heading.
“Should I be looking at this stuff?” Alex said. “I don’t have a clearance for Secret, only Confidential.”
“Never mind that; does any of it look familiar?”
Alex read a document. “Yes, some of it. This one, for instance, pretty much covers the time line we had established to search the Kola Peninsula for loose fissile materials. I don’t think you’re going to find anything in here that will be useful.”
“First rule of intelligence work: Don’t jump to conclusions,” Scott said.
“It’s also the first rule of science.”
“Then, follow the rules.” Most of the material made no sense to Scott, but he knew it would be easy to overlook something important. “It’s like looking through the periscope of a submarine: Things you think aren’t there sometimes are. Believe me, I know.”
The evening quickly ran its course. And though the conference table was a storm of papers, notes, and CD-ROMs containing only dry technical information on the storage and handling of fissile materials, Scott refused to admit defeat.
“Will you be using the conference room all night, Dr. Thorne?” said the duty officer when he called from his station at midnight.
Alex sucked a paper cut on her finger. “No, Hank, we’re about to wrap up. Give us another fifteen minutes.”
She gave Scott a look and said, “Face it. We’re on a wild-goose chase.”
There was a rap on the door and it opened. A man with dark blond hair and dressed casually in jeans, penny loafers, and a flannel shirt entered the conference room without bothering to ask permission.
“Hello, David,” Alex said pleasantly, trying hard not to show that she was annoyed by his intrusion.
“Have you met Captain Scott? Jake, this is David Hoffman, my boss. David’s head of the embassy’s department of energy—the DOE office.”
Hoffman, his face a mask, ignored Scott. “Where’ve you been, Alex? I haven’t seen you for a couple of days.”
Alex brushed loose strands of hair from her face and said coolly, “I thought I told you, David, I’ve been helping Captain Scott wrap up Admiral Drummond’s affairs. Jake’s here to escort the Admiral’s body back to the States and—”
“So I hear,” Hoffman said. “I also hear that you’ve signed out for Murmansk tomorrow. May I ask why?”
“We’re going to take a look at the hotel where Frank and that sailor died,” Scott interjected. “Alex agreed to be my escort.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Alex,” said Hoffman sourly. “There are some important things that need attention here. For one, there’s the summit briefing document.”
“David, I’ve already promised Jake that I’d go,” she said, chagrined.
“If you’ll permit me, Mr. Hoffman,” Scott said, “I’ve been ordered to report all the details of the incident in Murmansk to my commanding officer in Washington. The FSB report is quite thorough, but there’s nothing like seeing that place firsthand. While we’re there, I might want to visit the sub base in Olenya Bay, and Alex knows it like the back of her hand. I’d say that’s pretty important.”
Hoffman turned his gaze on Scott. “Alex works for me, Scott, and the DOE, not the U.S. Navy. I don’t lend my people out for use as tour guides.”
“This is no tour we’re taking,” Scott said acidly. “An American flag-rank officer has been murdered in Russia. I need Alex’s help to find his killer.”
“I heard,” Hoffman said, gazing past Scott to the blizzard on the conference table, “that Drummond took his own life.”
“You heard wrong,” Scott said. The look he gave Hoffman said further discussion about Drummond had ended.
“David, we’re packing up Admiral Drummond’s papers right now.” Alex swept an arm in the direction of the table. “Another day and we’ll be finished.”
Hoffman moistened his lips. “All right, one more day. But that’s all. I expect everyone in the office to turn to.”
“Thanks, David,” Alex said to Hoffman’s departing back.
She wouldn’t look at Scott. Arms folded, she paced the room with her head down and said, “I’m sorry, but I should have warned you. David’s very defensive.”
“And he’s jealous too,” Scott observed.
“Jake, that’s ridiculous. He’s simply worried about the budget cutbacks at State. They’re looking hard at DOE and usually start by cutting frills.”
Scott moved papers around on the conference table. “Securing loose fissile materials is considered a frill?”
“State prefers to leave the hunt for nuclear material to private organizations with money like Earth Safe. David worries that he’ll be sent stateside to oversee the dismantling of an old nuclear power plant. Would you want a job like that?”
“Have it your way.” Scott picked up a batch of documents and squared their sides.
“Look, I’ll smooth things out with him later. I have to live with him after you’re gone.”
“Is he your lover?”
She stopped pacing and gave Scott a hard look. “Of course not. I told you, he’s my boss. We’ve worked together a long time, I like David, and—” She caught herself and looked away. “God, why am I telling you this?” She waited a bit before she turned back and saw Scott looking intently at a document that he had found tucked inside a report that he held spread open on the table with his other hand.
“Bingo,” Scott said.
Alex moved to his side. “What?”
“It’s him,” Scott said.
“Who?”
There was no mistaking the significance of what he’d discovered. He planted a thumbnail under a name in capital letters in the text of a decrypted message. “That Chechen terrorist. Alikhan Zakayev.”
Scott and Alex read the message together.
////PURPLE//INTERCEPTS INDICATE (GEN)
ALIKHAN ZAKAYEV OPERATING ST
PETERSBURG VICINITY AND NORTH//
CONCERN REGARDING TIMING RE POSSIBLE
OPERATION(S) COINCIDE SUMMIT//URGENT
YOU IDENTIFY-CONFIRM//CONTACT
AUTHORIZED//USE EXTREME CAUTION//RISK
RED DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT//PURPLE END////
“What does contact authorized mean?” Alex asked.
“That Frank had permission to meet with and talk to Zakayev.”
“Why? Zakayev’s a terrorist. He kills people.”
“We must have information that Zakayev is planning an operation to coincide with the summit.
Washington wanted Frank to get information and if necessary meet with Zakayev, try to head it off.”
“Head it off? How?”
“Offer him something. Or kill him.”
Alex’s voice came out strained. “What you just said. Do you know what that means? It means the United States government has a connection to Alikhan Zakayev, who just killed a thousand civilians in Moscow.”