Provalov's eyes looked up. "You're not saying . . ."

"No, Oleg. The Mafia isn't that crazy. You don't go around looking to make enemies that big. You can't predict the consequences, and it isn't good for business. The Mafia is a business, Oleg. They try to make money for themselves. Even their political protection is aimed only at that, and that has limits, and they know what the limits are."

"So, if Suvorov is Mafia, then he is only trying to make money?"

"Here it's a little different," Reilly said slowly, trying to help his brain keep up with his mouth. "Here your OC guys think more politically than they do in New York." And the reason for that was that the KGB types had all grown up in an intensely political environment. Here politics really was power in a more direct sense than it had ever been in America, where politics and commerce had always been somewhat separate, the former protecting the latter (for a fee) but also controlled by it. Here it had always been, and still remained, the other way around. Business needed to rule politics because business was the source of prosperity, from which the citizens of a country derived their comforts. Russia had never prospered, because the cart kept trying to pull the horse. The recipient of the wealth had always tried to generate that wealth-and political figures are always pretty hopeless in that department. They are only good at squandering it. Politicians live by their political theories. Businessmen use reality and have to perform in a world defined by reality, not theory. That was why even in America they understood one another poorly, and never really trusted one another.

"What makes Golovko a target? What's the profit in killing him?" Reilly asked aloud.

"He is the chief adviser to President Grushavoy. He's never wanted to be an elected official, and therefore cannot be a minister per se, but he has the president's ear because he is both intelligent and honest-and he's a patriot in the true sense."

Despite his background, Reilly didn't add. Golovko was KGB, formerly a deadly enemy to the West, and an enemy to President Ryan, but somewhere along the line they'd met each other and they'd come to respect each other-even like each other, so the stories in Washington went. Reilly finished off his second vodka and waved for another. He was turning into a Russian, the FBI agent thought. It was getting to the point that he couldn't hold an intelligent conversation without a drink or two.

"So, get him and thereby hurt your president, and thereby hurt your entire country. Still, it's one h.e.l.l of a dangerous play, Oleg Gregoriyevich."

"A very dangerous play, Mishka," Provalov agreed. "Who would do such a thing?"

Reilly let out a long and speculative breath. "One very ambitious motherf.u.c.ker." He had to get back to the emba.s.sy and light up his STU-6 in one big f.u.c.king hurry. He'd tell Director Murray, and Murray would tell President Ryan in half a New York minute. Then what? It was way the h.e.l.l over his head, Mike Reilly thought.

"Okay, you're covering this Suvorov guy."

"We and the Federal Security Service now," Provalov confirmed.

"They good?"

"Very," the militia lieutenant admitted. "Suvorov can't fart without us knowing what he had to eat."

"And you have his communications penetrated."

Oleg nodded. "The written kind. He has a cell phone-maybe more than one, and covering them can be troublesome."

"Especially if he has an encryption system on it. There's stuff commercially available now that our people have a problem with."

"Oh?" Provalov's head came around. He was surprised for two reasons: first, that there was a reliable encryption system available for cell phones, and second, that the Americans had trouble cracking it.

Reilly nodded. "Fortunately, the bad guys haven't found out yet." Contrary to popular belief, the Mafia wasn't all that adept at using technology. Microwaving their food was about as far as they went. One Mafia don had thought his cell phone secure because of its frequency-hopping abilities, and then had entirely canceled that supposed advantage out by standing still while using it! The dunce-don had never figured that out, even after the intercept had been played aloud in Federal District Court.

"We haven't noticed any of that yet."

"Keep it that way," Reilly advised. "Anyway, you have a national-security investigation."

"It's still murder and conspiracy to commit murder," Provalov said, meaning it was still his case.

"Anything I can do?"

"Think it over. You have good instincts for Mafia cases, and that is probably what it is."

Reilly tossed off his last drink. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, right here?"

Oleg nodded. "That is good."

The FBI agent walked back outside and got into his car. Ten minutes later, he was at his desk. He took the plastic key from his desk drawer and inserted it into the STU, then dialed Washington.

All manner of people with STU phones had access to Murray's private secure number, and so when the large system behind his desk started chirping, he just picked it up and listened to the hiss of static for thirty seconds until the robotic voice announced, "Line is secure."

"Murray," he said.

"Reilly in Moscow," the other voice said.

The FBI Director checked his desk clock. It was pretty d.a.m.ned late there. "What's happening, Mike?" he asked, then got the word in three fast-spoken minutes.

Yeah, Ellen?" Ryan said when the buzzer went off.

"The AG and the FBI Director want to come over, on something important, they said. You have an opening in forty minutes."

"Fair enough." Ryan didn't wonder what it was about. He'd find out quickly enough. When he realized what he'd just thought, he cursed the Presidency once more. He was becoming jaded. In this job?

What the h.e.l.l?" Ed Foley observed.

"Seems to be solid information, too," Murray told the DCI.

"What else do you know?"

"The fax just came in, only two pages, and nothing much more than what I just told you, but I'll send it over to you. I've told Reilly to offer total cooperation. Anything to offer from your side?" Dan asked.

"Nothing comes to mind. This is all news to us, Dan. My congrats to your man Reilly for turning it." Foley was an information wh.o.r.e, after all. He'd take from anybody.

"Good kid. His father was a good agent, too." Murray knew better than to be smug about it, and Foley didn't deserve the abuse. Things like this were not, actually, within CIA's purview, and not likely to be tumbled to by one of their operations.

For his part, Foley wondered if he'd have to tell Murray about SORGE. If this was for real, it had to be known at the very highest levels of the Chinese government. It wasn't a freelance operation by their Moscow station. People got shot for f.u.c.king around at this level, and such an operation would not even occur to communist bureaucrats, who were not the most inventive people in the world.

"Anyway, I'm taking Pat Martin over with me. He knows espionage operations from the defensive side, and I figure I'll need the backup."

"Okay, thanks. Let me go over the fax and I'll be back to you later today."

He could hear the nod at the other end. "Right, Ed. See ya."

His secretary came in thirty seconds later with a fax in a folder. Ed Foley checked the cover sheet and called his wife in from her office.

CHAPTER 35.

Breaking News s.h.i.t," Ryan observed quietly when Murray handed him the fax from Moscow. "s.h.i.t!" he added on further reflection. "Is this for real?"

"We think so, Jack," the FBI Director confirmed. He and Ryan went back more than ten years, and so he was able to use the first name. He filled in a few facts. "Our boy Reilly, he's an OC expert, that's why we sent him over there, but he has FCI experience, too, also in the New York office. He's good, Jack," Murray a.s.sured his President. "He's going places. He's established a very good working relationship with the local cops-helped them out on some investigations, held their hands, like we do with local cops over here, y'know?"

"And?"

"And this looks gold-plated, Jack. Somebody tried to put a hit on Sergey Nikolay'ch, and it looks as though it was an agency of the Chinese government."

"Jesus. Rogue operation?"

"If so, we'll find out when some Chinese minister dies of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage-induced by a bullet in the back of the head," Murray told the President.

"Has Ed Foley seen this yet?"

"I called it in, and sent the fax over. So, yeah, he's seen it."

"Pat?" Ryan turned to the Attorney General, the smartest lawyer Ryan had yet met, and that included all of his Supreme Court appointees.

"Mr. President, this is a stunning revelation, again, if we a.s.sume it's true, and not some sort of false-flag provocation, or a play by the Russians to make something happen-problem is, I can't see the rationale for such a thing. We appear to be faced with something that's too crazy to be true, and too crazy to be false as well. I've worked foreign counterintelligence operations for a long time. I've never seen nothing like this before. We've always had an understanding with the Russians that they wouldn't hit anybody in Washington, and we wouldn't hit anybody in Moscow, and to the best of my knowledge that agreement was never violated by either side. But this thing here. If it's real, it's tantamount to an act of war. That doesn't seem like a very prudent thing for the Chinese to do either, does it?"

POTUS looked up from the fax. "It says here that your guy Reilly turned the connection with the Chinese . . . ?"

"Keep reading," Murray told him. "He was there during a surveillance and just kinda volunteered his services, and-bingo."

"But can the Chinese really be this crazy . . ." Ryan's voice trailed off. "This isn't the Russians messing with our heads?" he asked.

"What would be the rationale behind that?" Martin asked. "If there is one, I don't see it."

"Guys, n.o.body is this crazy!" POTUS nearly exploded. It was penetrating all the way into his mind now. The world wasn't rational yet.

"Again, sir, that's something you're better equipped to evaluate than we are," Martin observed. It had the effect of calming Jack down a few notches.

"All the time I spent at Langley, I saw a lot of strange material, but this one really takes the prize."

"What do we know about the Chinese?" Murray asked, expecting to hear a reply along the lines of jack s.h.i.t, because the Bureau had not experienced conspicuous success in its efforts to penetrate Chinese intelligence operations in America, and figured that the Agency had the same problem and for much the same reason-Americans of Chinese ethnicity weren't thick in government service. But instead he saw that President Ryan instantly adopted a guarded look and said nothing. Murray had interviewed thousands of people during his career and along the way had picked up the ability to read minds a little bit. He read Ryan's right then and wondered about what he saw there.

"Not enough, Dan. Not enough," Ryan replied tardily. His mind was still churning over this report. Pat Martin had put it right. It was too crazy to be true, and too crazy to be false. He needed the Foleys to go over this for him, and it was probably time to get Professor Weaver down from Brown University, a.s.suming Ed and Mary Pat wouldn't throw a complete hissy-fit over letting him into both SORGE and this FBI bombsh.e.l.l. SWORDSMAN wasn't sure of much right now, but he was sure that he needed to figure this stuff out, and do it d.a.m.ned fast. American relations with China had just gone down the s.h.i.tter, and now he had information to suggest they were making a direct attack on the Russian government. Ryan looked up at his guests. "Thanks for this, guys. If you have anything else to tell me, let me know quick as you can. I have to ponder this one."

"Yeah, I believe it, Jack. I've told Reilly to offer all the a.s.sistance he can and report back. They know he's doing that, of course. So, your pal Golovko wants you to know this one. How you handle that one's up to you, I suppose."

"Yeah, I get all the simple calls." Jack managed a smile. The worst part was the inability to talk things over with people in a timely way. Things like this weren't for the telephone. You wanted to see a guy's face and body language when you picked his brain-her brain, in MP's case-on a topic like this one. He hoped George Weaver was as smart as everyone said. Right now he needed a witch.

The new security pa.s.s was entirely different from his old SDI one, and he was heading for a different Pentagon office. This was the Navy section of the Pentagon. You could tell by all the blue suits and serious looks. Each of the uniformed services had a different corporate mentality. In the U.S. Army, everyone was from Georgia. In the Air Force, they were all from southern California. In the Navy, they all seemed to be swamp Yankees, and so it was here in the Aegis Program Office.

Gregory had spent most of the morning with a couple of serious commander-rank officers who seemed smart enough, though both were praying aloud to get the h.e.l.l back on a ship and out to sea, just as Army officers always wanted to get back out in the field where there was mud to put on your boots and you had to dig a hole to p.i.s.s in-but that's where the soldiers were, and any officer worth his salt wanted to be where the soldiers were. For sailors, Gregory imagined, it was salt.w.a.ter and fish, and probably better food than the MREs inflicted on the guys in BDUs.

But from his conversations with the squids, he'd learned much of what he'd already known. The Aegis radar/missile system had been developed to deal with the Russian airplane and cruise-missile threat to the Navy's aircraft carriers. It entailed a superb phased-array radar called the SPY and a fair-to-middlin' surface-to-air missile originally called the Standard Missile, because, Gregory imagined, it was the only one the Navy had. The Standard had evolved from the SM-1 to the SM-2, actually called the SM-2-MR because it was a "medium-range" missile instead of an ER, or extended-range, one, which had a booster stage to kick it out of the ships' launch cells a little faster and farther. There were about two hundred of the ER versions sitting in various storage sheds for the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, because full production had never been approved-because, somebody thought, the SM-2-ER might violate the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile Treaty, which had, however, been signed with a country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which country, of course, no longer existed. But after the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, the Navy had looked at using the Standard Missile and Aegis system that shot it off against theater-missile threats like the Iraqi Scud. During that war, Aegis ships had actually been deployed into Saudi and other Gulf ports to protect them against the ballistic inbounds, but no missiles had actually been aimed that way, and so the system had never been combat-tested. Instead, Aegis ships periodically sailed out to Kwajalein Atoll, where their theater-missile capabilities were tested against ballistic target drones, and where, most of the time, they worked. But that wasn't quite the same, Gregory saw. An ICBM reentry vehicle had a maximum speed of about seventeen thousand miles per hour, or twenty-five thousand feet per second, which was almost ten times the speed of a rifle bullet.

The problem here was, oddly enough, one of both hardware and software. The SM-2-ER-Block-IV missile had indeed been designed with a ballistic target in mind, to the point that its terminal guidance system was infrared. You could, theoretically, stealth an RV against radar, but anything plunging through the atmosphere at Mach 15-plus would heat up to the temperature of molten steel. He'd seen Minuteman warheads coming into Kwajalein from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base; they came in like man-made meteors, visible even in daylight, screaming in at an angle of thirty degrees or so, slowing down, but not visibly so, as they encountered thicker air. The trick was. .h.i.tting them, or rather, hitting them hard enough to destroy them. In this, the new ones were actually easier to kill than the old ones. The original RVs had been metallic, some actually made of beryllium copper, which had been fairly st.u.r.dy. The new ones were lighter-therefore able to carry a heavier and more powerful nuclear warhead-and made from material like the tiles on the s.p.a.ce shuttle. This was little different in feel from Styrofoam and not much stronger, since it was designed only to insulate against heat, and then only for a brief span of seconds. The s.p.a.ce shuttles had suffered damage when their 747 ferry had flown through rainstorms, and some in the ICBM business referred to large raindrops as "hydro meteors" for the damage they could do to a descending RV. On rare occasions when an RV had come down through a thunderstorm, relatively small hailstones had damaged them to the point that the nuclear warhead might not have functioned properly.

Such a target was almost as easy a kill as an aircraft-shooting airplanes down is easy if you hit them, not unlike dropping a pigeon with a shotgun. The trick remained hitting the d.a.m.ned things.

Even if you got close with your interceptor, close won you no cigars. The warhead on a SAM is little different from a shotgun sh.e.l.l. The explosive charge destroys the metal case, converting it into jagged fragments with an initial velocity of about five thousand feet per second. These are ordinarily quite sufficient to rip into the aluminum skin that const.i.tutes the lift and control surfaces of the strength-members of an airplane's internal framing, turning an aircraft into a ballistic object with no more ability to fly than a bird stripped of its wings.

But hitting one necessitates exploding the warhead far enough from the target that the cone formed of the flying fragments intersects the s.p.a.ce occupied by the target. For an aircraft, this is not difficult, but for a missile warhead traveling faster than the explosive-produced fragments, it is-which explained the controversy over the Patriot missiles and the Scuds in 1991.

The gadget telling the SAM warhead where and when to explode is generically called the "fuse." For most modern missiles, the fusing system is a small, low-powered laser, which "nutates," or turns in a circle to project its beam in a cone forward of its flight path, until the beam hits and reflects off the target. The reflected beam is received by a receptor in the laser a.s.sembly, and that generates the signal telling the warhead to explode. But quick as it is, it takes a finite amount of time, and the inbound RV is coming in very fast. So fast, in fact, that if the laser beam lacks the power for more than, say, a hundred meters of range, there isn't enough time for the beam to reflect off the RV in time to tell the warhead to explode soon enough to form the cone of destruction to engulf the RV target. Even if the RV is immediately next to the SAM warhead when the warhead explodes, the RV is going faster than the fragments, which cannot hurt it because they can't catch up.

And there's the problem, Gregory saw. The laser chip in the Standard Missile's nose wasn't very powerful, and the nutation speed was relatively slow, and that combination could allow the RV to slip right past the SAM, maybe as much as half the time, even if the SAM came within three meters of the target, and that was no good at all. They might actually have been better off with the old VT proximity fuse of World War II, which had used a non-directional RF emitter, instead of the new high-tech gallium-a.r.s.enide laser chip. But there was room for him to play. The nutation of the laser beam was controlled by computer software, as was the fusing signal. That was something he could fiddle with. To that end, he had to talk to the guys who made it, "it" being the current limited-production test missile, the SM-2-ER-Block-IV, and they were the Standard Missile Company, a joint venture of Raytheon and Hughes, right up the street in McLean, Virginia. To accomplish that, he'd have Tony Bretano call ahead. Why not let them know that their visitor was anointed by G.o.d, after all?

My G.o.d, Jack," Mary Pat said. The sun was under the yardarm. Cathy was on her way home from Hopkins, and Jack was in his private study off the Oval Office, sipping a gla.s.s of whiskey and ice with the DCI and his wife, the DDO. "When I saw this, I had to go off to the bathroom."

"I hear you, MP." Jack handed her a gla.s.s of sherry-Mary Pat's favorite relaxing drink. Ed Foley picked a Samuel Adams beer in keeping with his working-cla.s.s origins. "Ed?"

"Jack, this is totally f.u.c.king crazy," the Director of Central Intelligence blurted. "f.u.c.king" was not a word you usually used around the President, even this one. "I mean, sure, it's from a good source and all that, but, Jesus, you just don't do s.h.i.t like this."

"Pat Martin was in here, right?" the Deputy Director (Operations) asked. She got a nod. "Well, then he told you this is d.a.m.ned near an act of war."

"d.a.m.ned near," Ryan agreed, with a small sip of his Irish whiskey. Then he pulled out his last cigarette of the day, stolen from Mrs. Sumter, and lit it. "But it's a hard one to deny, and we have to fit this into government policy somehow or other."

"We have to get George down," Ed Foley said first of all.

"And show him SORGE, too?" Ryan asked. Mary Pat winced immediately. "I know we have to guard that one closely, MP, but, d.a.m.n it, if we can't use it to figure out these people, we're no better off than we were before we had the source."

She let out a long breath and nodded, knowing that Ryan was right, but not liking it very much. "And our internal pshrink," she said. "We need a doc to check this out. It's crazy enough that we probably need a medical opinion."

"Next, what do we say to Sergey?" Jack asked. "He knows we know."

"Well, start off with 'keep your head down,' I suppose," Ed Foley announced. "Uh, Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"You give this to your people yet, the Secret Service, I mean?"

"No . . . oh, yeah."

"If you're willing to commit one act of war, why not another?" the DCI asked rhetorically. "And they don't have much reason to like you at the moment."

"But why Golovko?" MP asked the air. "He's no enemy of China. He's a pro, a king-spook. He doesn't have a political agenda that I know about. Sergey's an honest man." She took another sip of sherry.

"True, no political ambitions that I know of. But he is Grushavoy's tightest adviser on a lot of issues-foreign policy, domestic stuff, defense. Grushavoy likes him because he's smart and honest-"

"Yeah, that's rare enough in this town, too," Jack acknowledged. That wasn't fair. He'd chosen his inner circle well, and almost exclusively of people with no political ambition, which made them an endangered species in the environs of Washington. The same was true of Golovko, a man who preferred to serve rather than to rule, in which he was rather like the American President. "Back to the issue at hand. Are the Chinese making some sort of play, and if so, what?"

"Nothing that I see, Jack," Foley replied, speaking for his agency in what was now an official capacity. "But remember that even with SORGE, we don't see that much of their inner thinking. They're so different from us that reading their minds is a son of a b.i.t.c.h, and they've just taken one in the teeth, though I don't think they really know that yet."

"They're going to find out in less than a week."

"Oh? How's that?" the DCI asked.

"George Winston tells me a bunch of their commercial contracts are coming up due in less than ten days. We'll see then what effect this has on their commercial accounts-and so will they."