Op Center 02 - Mirror Image Read online

  The men sat down, save for Grovlev.

  "We're all patriots," said the Finance Minister, "and I resent the theatrics. If I'm to put my resources in your hands, I want to know how they'll be used. For a coup? A second revolution? Or don't you trust us with this information, Mr. Minister?"

  Dogin looked at Grovlev. He couldn't tell him everything. He couldn't tell him about his plans for the military or his involvement with the Russian mafia. Most Russians thought that they were still a provincial peasant people without a worldview. Upon hearing his plans, Grovlev might back down or decide to support Zhanin.

  Dogin said, "Mr. Minister, I don't trust you."

  Grovlev stiffened.

  "And from your questions," Dogin continued, "it's obvious you don't trust me either. I intend to earn that trust through deeds, and you must do the same. Zhanin knows who his enemies are, and now he has the power of the presidency. He may offer you a post or an appointment you may be tempted to take. And you might then be required to work against me. For the next seventy-two hours, I must ask you to be patient."

  "Why seventy-two hours?" asked the young, blueeyed Ministry of Security Assistant Director Skule.

  "That's how long it will take for my command center to become operational."

  Skule froze. "Seventy-two hours? You can't mean St. Petersburg. "

  Dogin nodded once.

  "You control that?"

  He nodded again.

  Skule exhaled and the other men looked at him. "My most sincere compliments, Minister. That puts the entire world in your hands."

  "Quite literally," Dogin grinned. "Just like General Secretary Stalin."

  "Excuse me," said Grovlev, "but once again I'm on the outside looking in. Minister Dogin, what exactly is this 'thing' you control?"

  "The St. Petersburg Operations Center," Dogin replied, "the most sophisticated reconnaissance and communications facility in Russia. With it, we can access everything from satellite views of the world to electronic communications. The Center also has its own field personnel for 'surgical strike' operations."

  Grovlev seemed confused. "Are you talking about the television station at the Hermitage?"

  "Yes," Dogin said. "It's a front, Minister Grovlev.

  "Your ministry approved the finances for an operational facade, a working TV studio. But the money for the underground complex came from my department. And the funding continues to come from the Interior Ministry." Dogin thumbed his chest. "From me."

  Grovlev sat back down. "You've been planning this operation for quite some time."

  "For over two years," Dogin replied. "We go online Monday night."

  "And this Center," said Dhaka. "It's your command post for more than simply spying on Zhanin during these seventy-two hours."

  "Very much more than spying," said Dogin.

  "But you won't tell us what!" Grovlev huffed. "You want our cooperation but you won't cooperate!"

  Dogin said ominously, "You want me to confide in you, Mr. Minister? Fair enough. For the past six months, my man in the Operations Center has been using personnel as well as the electronics that were already installed to watch all of my potential allies as well as my rivals. We've collected a great deal of information about graft, liaisons, and-he glared at Grovlev- "unusual personal interests. I'll be happy to share this information with you collectively or individually, now or later."

  Some of the men moved uneasily in their chairs. Grovlev sat rock-still.

  "You bastard," Grovlev growled.

  "Yes," said Dogin, "I am that. A bastard who will get the job done." The Interior Minister looked at his watch, then walked over to GrovIev and stared down into his narrow eyes. "I must leave now, Minister. I have a meeting with the new President. There are congratulations to tender, some papers for him to sign. But within twelve hours, you'll be able to judge for yourself whether I'm working for vanity, or" -he pointed to the flag on the monitor--for this."

  With a nod to the silent assembly, Minister Dogin left the office. His aide in tow, he hurried to a car that would take him to Zhanin and then back here. And alone, with the door closed, he would place the call that would set events in motion that would change the world.

  TWO

  Saturday, 10:30 A.M., MOSCOW

  Keith Fields-Hutton burst into his room in the newly renovated Rossiya Hotel, tossed his key on the dresser, and ran into the bathroom. On the way, he stooped and grabbed two curled pieces of fax paper that had fallen from the dresser-top machine he'd brought with him.

  This was the part of his job he hated the most. Not the danger, which was at times considerable; not the protracted hours of sitting in airports waiting for Aeroflot flights that never came, which was typical; and not the long weeks of being away from Peggy, which were most frustrating of all.

  What he hated most were all those goddamn cups of tea he had to drink.

  When he came to Moscow once a month, Fields-Hutton always stayed at the Rossiya, just east of the Kremlin, and took long breakfasts in their elegant cafe. It gave him time to read the newspapers from front to back. More importantly, constantly draining his teacup gave Andrei, the waiter, a reason to come over with refills and three, four, or sometimes five fresh tea bags. Attached to the string of every bag was a label that bore the name Chashka Chai on the outside. Inside each tag was a circular spot of microfilm which Fields-Hutton pocketed when no one was looking. Most of the time, the maitre d' was looking, so Fields-Hutton had to recover the film when other patrons came into the restaurant, distracting him.

  Andrei was one of Peggy's finds. His name came from a list of former soldiers, and she later learned that he had originally intended to make money working in a West Siberian oil settlement. But he was wounded in Afghanistan and, after back surgery, he could no longer lift heavy gear. After Gorbachev, he could no longer afford to live. He was the perfect man to shuttle data between deeply buried operatives whose names he didn't know, whose faces he never saw, and Fields-Hutton. If Andrei was ever caught, only Fields-Hutton was at risk ... and that came with the territory.

  Despite what many People Outside the intelligence community believed, the KGB hadn't collapsed with the fall of Communism. To the contrary, as the new Ministry of security, it was more pervasive than ever. The agency had simply changed from an army of professionals into an even larger force of civilian freelancers. These operatives were paid for each solid lead theyturned in. As a result, veterans and amateurs alike werelooking everywhere for spies. Peggy called it a Russianversion of Entertainment Tonight, with stringers everywhere. And she was right. The quarry was foreigners instead of celebrities, but the goal was the same: to report on furtive or suspicious activities. And because so many businesspeople assumed there was no longer a threat, they stumbled into trouble by helping Russian associates exchange rubles for dollars or ' marks, by bringing in jewelry or expensive clothes for the black market, or by spying on rival foreign companies doing business here. Instead of being prosecuted, foreign priszines, as well as videocassettes and toys featuring characters the Russians had designed. From the start, Fields-Hutton was amazed at how the gift of a superhero mug or bath towel or sweatshirt won him favors from airline employees, hotel workers, and even the police. Whether they turned around and sold the items on the black market or gave them to their kids, barter was a powerful tool in Russia.

  With all the magazines and toys he carried, it was easy to hide the microfilm-sometimes wrapped around the staple of a comic book, other times rolled inside a hollow claw on the hand of a Tigerman action figure. Ironically, the comic book operation had taken on a life of its own, and British Intelligence was actually collecting a handsome royalty from the licenses. The organization's charter prohibited money-making ventures"This is, after all, the government," Winston Churchill once told an agent who wanted to sell a code-breaking toy. However, then-Prime Minister John Major and the Parliament agreed to let the comic book profits go to social programs to help the families of slain or disabled British operat
ives.

  Though he had come to love the comic book business, and decided he would become a novelist when he retired-with more than enough material for realistic thrillers-FieldsHutton's real job with British Intelligence was to keep an eye on both foreign and domestic construction projects in Eastern Russia. Secret rooms, hidden bugs, and subsubbasements were still being built and, when found and eavesdropped on, they provided a wealth of intelligence. His present contactsAndrei and Leon, an illustrator who lived in an apartment in St. Petersburg-provided him with blueprints and on-site photographs of all the new buildings going up and renovations taking place on old ones within his territory.

  After leaving the bathroom, Fields-Hutton sat on the edge of the bed, took the tea-bag tags from his pocket, and tore them open. Carefully, he removed each circular piece of microfilm and slipped them in turn into a highpowered magnifier-which, he told customs, he brought to look at transparencies of paintings for cover art. ("Yes, sir, I have many more Grim Ghost baseball caps than I need. Of course you can have one for your son. Why don't you take some for his friends as well?")

  What he saw in one of the photographs could be related to a small article he'd noticed in today's newspaper. The picture showed tarpaulins being rolled into a service elevator at the Hermitage. Pictures taken on successive days showed large crates of artwork being brought in as well.

  That shouldn't have aroused any suspicion. Construction was taking place throughout the museum to modernize and expand it in honor of the city's tercentenary in 2003. Moreover, the art museum was right on the Neva River. It was possible the walls were being lined with tarpaulin to protect the artwork from moisture.

  But Leon had faxed him two sheets, and according to the entirely symbolic Captain Legend comic strip on the first sheet, the superhero had flown to Hermes' World-that is, Leon had gone to the Hermitage-a week after the photos were taken. He reported that no construction using tarpaulin was taking place on any of the three floors in any of the three buildings. As for the crates, though artwork was always being loaned to the museum, no new pieces had gone on display, nor had any new exhibits been announced: with sections closed off for the modernization, exhibit space was at a premium. Fields-Hutton would have D16 check to see if any museums or private collectors had shipped anything to the Hermitage recently, though he doubted they'd find anything.

  Then there were the hours of the workers who brought the tarpaulins and crates to the elevators. According to Leon's strip, the men-the Hera's World slaves who brought the weapons and food to a secret base-went downstairs in the morning and didn't come back until early in the evening. He had been watching two in particular, who came there day after day and whom he would follow if D16 thought it might help. Though they could very well be working on renovations, it was also possible they were simply using those to mask secret activity taking place underground.

  All of which dovetailed with the accident reported in this morning's newspaper, and also described in Leon's second fax page. Yesterday, six museum employees heading home from work had skidded off the Kirovsky Prospekt into the Neva River, where all of them drowned. Leon had gone to the crash site, and his rough cover sketch for Captain Legend told him more than the two-inch article had reported. It showed the hero helping slaves from a rocket that had crash-landed in a pool of quicksand. The color notation for the smoke rising from the quicksand said "Green." Chlorine.

  Were the men gassed? Was the truck that hit them off the bridge sent to do just that to cover the fact that the men were murdered?

  The accident might be a coincidence, but intelligence work couldn't afford to overlook any possibility. The signs pointed to something unusual going on in St. Petersburg, and Fields-Hutton wanted to find out what it was.

  Faxing Leon's artwork to his office in London, Fields-Hutton included a note that ordered them to advance him twenty-seven pounds-meaning they were to look at page seven of today's Dyen-and that he was going to St. Petersburg to meet with the artist about this cover design.

  "I think we're onto something here," he wrote. "My feeling is, if the writer can come up with a connection between the pool of quicksand and the underground mines of Hera's World, we'll have ourselves a fascinating story line. I'll let you know what Leon thinks."

  After receiving an okay from London, Fields-Hutton packed his camera, slender vanity kit, Walkman, and artwork and toys into a shoulder bag, hurried to the lobby, and took a taxicab two miles to the northeast. At the St. Petersburg Station on Krasnoprudnaya he bought his ticket for the four-hundred-mile ride, then settled in on a hard bench to await the next train leaving for the ancient city on the Gulf of Finland.

  THREE

  Saturday, 12:20 P.M., Washington, D.C.

  During the Cold War, the nondescript, two-story building located near the Naval Reserve flight line at Andrews Air Force Base was a ready room, a staging area for crack flight crews. In the event of a nuclear attack, it would have been their job to evacuate key officials from Washington, D.C.

  But the ivory-colored building was not an obsolete monument to the Cold War. The lawns were a little neater now, and there were gardens in the dirt patches where soldiers used to drill. Concrete flower pots had been erected on all sides to prevent anyone from getting too close with a car bomb. And the people who worked here didn't arrive in jeeps and Hughes Defenders, but in station wagons, Volvos, and the occasional Saab and BMW.

  The seventy-eight full-time employees who worked here now were employed by the National Crisis Management Center. They were handpicked tacticians, generals, diplomats, intelligence analysts, computer specialists, psychologists, reconnaissance experts, environmentalists, attorneys, and even media manipulators, or spin doctors. The NCMC shared another forty-two support personnel with the Department of Defense and the CIA, and commanded a twelve-person tactical strike team known as Striker, which was based at the nearby Quantico FBI Academy.

  The charter of the NCMC was unlike any other in the history of the United States. Over a two year period, the group had spent more than $100 million on equipment and hi-tech modifications, turning the former ready room into an operations center designed to interface with the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, White House, State Department, Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center. But after a shakedown period of six months, in which they handled both domestic and international crises, "OpCenter," as it was familiarly called, now had parity with those agencies and then some. Director Paul Hood reported to President Michael Lawrence himself, and what had started as an information clearinghouse with SWAT capabilities now had the singular capacity to monitor, initiate, and manage operations worldwide.

  They were a unique mix of old professionals who took a methodical, hands-on, agents-in-the-field approach to intelligence, and fair-haired boys who reveled in hi-tech and bold strokes. And on top of the patchwork tapestry was Paul Hood. Though Hood was not quite a saint, his selflessness had caused his jaded coworkers to dub him "Pope" Paul. He was scrupulously honest, despite having been a hotshot banker during the Reagan terms. He was also exceedingly low-key even though he'd served as the Mayor of Los Angeles for two years. Hood was constantly schooling his team in the new art of crisis management. He saw this as an alternative to the traditional Washingtonian responses that leaned toward inactivity or all-out war. In Los Angeles he had pioneered the art of slicing problems into manageable segments and handing each to professionals who worked closely with one another. It had worked effectively in Los Angeles and it was also working here, though it went against the prevailing "I'm in charge here" mind-set of Washington. His number two man, Mike Rodgers, once told him that they'd probably find more adversaries in the nation's capital than anywhere else in the world, since bureau chiefs, agency directors, and elected officials would view OpCenter's management style as a threat to their fiefdoms. And many of them wouldn't stop at trying to undermine Op-Center's effectiveness.
r />   "Washingtonians are like zombies," Rodgers had said, "able to rise from the politically dead as times and moods change-look at Nixon, at Jimmy Carter. As a result, rivals don't just try to destroy careers, they try to ruin lives. And if that's not enough, they turn on families and friends as well. "

  But Hood didn't care. Their charter was to look after the security of the United States, not to advance the reputation of Op-Center or its employees, and he took that mission very seriously indeed. He also believed that if they did the job they were supposed to do, their "rivals" couldn't lay a glove on them.

  At the moment, Ann Farris didn't see the hotshot or the politician or the "Pope" sitting in the Director's chair. Her dark rust eyes saw the awkward young boy in the man. Despite the strong jaw, wavy black hair, and steely dark hazel eyes, Hood looked like a kid who wished he could stay here in Washington and play with his friends and spy satellites and field operatives rather than go on vacation with his family. If the kids didn't miss their old friends, and the move east hadn't put such a strain on his marriage, Ann knew that Paul wouldn't be going.