If HOLMES and Williams were right, then Russia was already at war, it just hadn’t declared it yet.
Foreign Minister Kelnikov had organized to meet Devlin at an office inside the Foreign Ministry building on Moscow's Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square. As with everything in Devlin’s world, such meetings always had an element of predictable theatre. The Minister had kept her waiting an unreasonably long time, even given the state of relations. The seating was arranged so that she was uncomfortably perched on an ornate 18th-century chair that seemed to have been stuffed with porcupine quills. It was mid-morning by the time the Minister arrived, a bright sunlit day, so she was of course arranged with the sun in her eyes and his face in shadow. He had insisted she come alone, while he was flanked with a phalanx of Foreign Ministry officials. It was so predictably pathetic.
But he wouldn’t have taken the meeting if he didn’t have something to tell her. She doubted he was there to listen, but she hoped to change that.
Adjusting himself behind a long low desk, Kelnikov smiled expansively, “Madame Ambassador I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting, I was in a tiresome meeting with the Prime Minister of Burundi.” Translation; this business with Saint Lawrence is not top of my agenda. Devlin smiled back at him, “Julius? Yes, I met with him yesterday.” Translation; screw you.
“To the business at hand,” Kelnikov said, one of his aides handing him some papers. “It is good our ceasefire seems to be holding. Great powers have great responsibilities. A slip now by either side could have global repercussions neither of us wants.”
“Indeed,” Devlin replied carefully. “And on that point, I have been asked by our Secretary of State to convey to you once again our very simple demand, that you liberate the citizens of Saint Lawrence and withdraw your remaining forces.”
“Yes,” he affected to sound bored. “And is there another deadline accompanying this ultimatum?” He looked at the top page of the papers he had been handed. “I see you have just announced you are going to try to send an aircraft carrier task force through the Strait. A ‘freedom of navigation’ exercise you call it. We might see it differently.”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand,” Devlin said, and paused. She was supposed to communicate that the Enterprise task force would not be dissuaded from trans-navigating the international waters of the Strait, Russian objections or not. After the devastation of the US cruise missile strike it was to be seen as an unsophisticated attempt to force Russia’s hand and give them the opportunity to withdraw their meager force without any further combat. Looking at Kelnikov, even in the half shadow caused by the light behind him, she could see something of the same smugness in his eyes as she saw all those weeks ago — he radiated it, and her blood was boiling.
She had decided. She was going to go seriously off-script.
“That’s just media spin,” she said. “The Enterprise task force is actually moving into position to be able to take back Saint Lawrence and protect us from any likelihood you might be stupid enough to attempt to invade Alaska.”
Now she had his attention. Oh, she would have paid a million dollars for video of his face as she said it. That insufferable smugness vanishing in an instant to be replaced by a horrified uncertainty.
“I am sorry?” he said. “You accuse us of…”
She reached for her own briefcase, and took out the printout she had made of HOLMES analysis of Russian troop activations and air force dispositions. She handed it across the table, and one of Kelnikov’s aides took it, studying it with a frown before handing it to the Minister.
“You have a serious leak at the highest levels of your defense ministry,” she lied, maliciously. “Clearly not everyone in your government agrees with the insanity of its leadership.”
“What is this?” Kelnikov demanded, turning the page over and back again.
“Your timetable for war. A timetable in which Saint Lawrence was the first move, and Nome will be the next.”
He threw the paper down on his desk, “This is fiction.”
“As you will,” Devlin said, standing. “Minister, the Enterprise is not sailing to the Bering Strait for a ‘freedom of navigation exercise’. And we are doing more than preparing to take back Saint Lawrence Island, which we soon will. We stand ready to defend the sovereign State of Alaska against invasion, with every man, woman and weapon at our disposal.” She delivered a small, mocking bow. She had rehearsed her next lines in the car, and took a breath to make sure she delivered them properly.
“You seem to have forgotten that the last ‘great power’ that attacked a US territory was Japan. That decision ended for them in ruin and nuclear fire.”
She turned to leave, the sound of voices arguing with each other in Russian behind her as Kelnikov’s aides broke their silence. He said nothing himself.
On a whim, she turned to face the Russian delegation again but fixed her eyes on the Foreign Minister, speaking only to him, “Minister, there is a way out of this. Russia will find it humiliating and the compensation terms will not be favorable. But it could save millions of lives. Just put your troops back on the helicopters they rode in on, and bring them home.”
His glare burned through her back as she closed the door behind her. She hadn’t actually lied. Not really. She was pretty damn sure that as soon as Carl Williams report started circulating inside the State Department and Pentagon, that everything she had just said was about to be true.
As she reached the end of the corridor outside her aide Harrison fell into step beside her.
He wasn’t able to contain himself this time. “How did it go ma’am?”
“Not well Harrison,” Devlin said. “Not well at all. I’m terribly afraid I nearly lost my temper.”
Life in the age of ‘always on’ had its advantages. Perri had found that if he ran a copper wire from the antenna input on the radio, up the ladder to the sheet of tin covering the hatch, his Russian radio connected automatically to some sort of satellite communications network. So far so good. He could read just enough Russian from years of watching Russian TV to see the display was asking him to input a code word to link into a Russian military network. That wasn’t an option. But the radio also had a guest device connection capability, and it was more than happy to hook up to his telephone and connect him to the unencrypted world wide web. ‘Warning,’ said the text scrolling across the display, ‘Communications on this channel are not secure.’
The person he had called was a kid they met in Vancouver, who actually lived in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Alaska. He was a member of the Ta’an Kwach’an first nations tribe, called Johnny Kushniruk. Perri and Dave had agreed Johnny was the best person to call because his old man was a Mountie in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Whitehorse, and they needed someone with a few stripes to help get their story out and tell them what the hell they should do.