“I’m sure it is.”
“Tell him he’s still on our tab. Got a Russian agent, probably heading out through Juliaca. Need confirmation that she left. Maybe he can help track her.”
“This the Snow Maiden Charlie’s been talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard she’s a real ball breaker.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“And Kobin?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re still alive.”
“Wow, Fisher. You’re gonna make me cry.”
“Yeah, in pain, if you don’t shut up. Call your guy. Get me what I need.”
The trip back from Peru to Virginia would take over eight hours, and Kasperov did not rise from his slumber for nearly six. Once he was rested and ready, he asked his girlfriend to leave the infirmary so that he, Fisher, and Grim could have a private conversation with the president, whose face glowed from a nearby monitor.
“All right, Mr. Kasperov. I’ll be blunt,” Caldwell began. “A hundred pounds of weapons-grade uranium is stolen from Mayak. Not long after, you suddenly flee your country. Is there a connection? What’re you running from?”
“I need assurances, guarantees that you’ll keep me and my family safe — because what I will tell you will get me killed.”
“You have my word. And behind me is the greatest military machine the world has ever known. What else do you need?”
“Trust. And can you put price on that?”
“No. But you can let us earn yours. What do you have for us?”
“It’s not Treskayev,” Kasperov answered quickly. “I know him. He’s good man, supported by you and your government. But they’ve put gun to his head.”
“Who?” asked Caldwell.
“Men… men like me. I have only opinion, no proof, so no actionable intel as you say. But I know who they are. Perov, the arms manufacturer; Yanayev, the aerospace mogul; and Kargin, the investment banker. Mostly ex-KGB, Yeltsin’s drinking buddies back in ’93. When he busted up state financial apparatus, they got special consideration. Now they buy American sports teams, hunt for American wives, and put big pressure on Treskayev. There are more, but these three are troika that lead all others.”
“What do they want?” Fisher asked.
Kasperov snorted. “What all men want: money… power. They’ve secretly won sympathy of prime minister, and he’s recruited many of deputy prime ministers, and they in turn have won over federal ministers. Right now, America stands in their way. Their plan is to weaken your government and undermine your economy, and they would do so in three stages. I was to be first stage.”
“Let me guess: a computer virus attack against the United States,” Grim concluded.
Kasperov nodded slowly. “We call it ‘Calamity Jane.’”
“And it attacks our banking system,” said Caldwell.
“Much more than that. It renders GPS systems useless by exploiting systemic problem with cryptographic keying scheme.”
“That’s impossible,” said Grim. “The GPS control segment is encrypted and uses top secret algorithms. It’s managed from five redundant, high-security, and very hard to reach ground stations all over the world. The master control station is in Colorado Springs, with a backup at Vandenberg. You guys can’t get into their systems. No way.”
“Calamity Jane takes all of that into account. It brings down banking system. It exploits vulnerabilities in military computer systems, and it interferes with GPS. Even Chinese have nothing like it. And more you try to kill it, more powerful it becomes.”
President Caldwell closed her eyes, bracing for impact. “How much time do we have?”
“You’ve misunderstood,” said Kasperov. “I refused to release it. That’s why I ran. They asked me to construct it, assured me it would be nothing more than deterrent, and I even convinced myself that creating it would help me to write best software to combat such virus. Keep your enemies close, right?”
“Yeah, but you had to suspect something,” said Fisher. “You had to know that one day, they’d ask you to use it.”
Kasperov pursed his lips and shook the hair out of his eyes. “Maybe in more limited way and on much smaller scale. I always assumed that ruining America’s economy would ruin Russia’s. Conventional wisdom no longer true for oligarchs. They will take risk and break world’s dependence on your economy. They say clean break is only way.”
“So they came to you, gave you the orders to throw the switch, and you told them to screw off and bolted,” said Fisher. “But why the loud exit?”
“I wanted to go quietly, but I knew my people would suffer. I wanted to give them time for escape. I couldn’t just leave them with nothing.”
“Can the Kremlin gain access to the virus?” Grim asked emphatically.
“No,” said Kasperov. “There is no way.”
“Are you willing to turn it over to us?” asked Caldwell.
“Absolutely not. Men should not wield such power.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you started banging in your code,” said Fisher.
“Maybe so.”
“You said their plan has three stages. If you’re out, can they still go through with the other two?” asked Grim.
“I would think so.”
Grim’s tone grew more demanding. “And what are they?”
“First, some important background. One of my company’s more recent projects involves hardening thorium reactor control computers against cyber attack.”
“Thorium… is that a nuclear material?” asked Fisher.
Grim had already pulled it up on her tablet computer and read from the screen. “It’s a fissile material that can be used for nuclear fuel. They call thorium reactors the ‘clean reactors.’ The stuff is a lot safer to work with than uranium or plutonium but pretty toxic nonetheless, especially if you get it into your lungs.”
“That’s right,” said Kasperov. “Well, we received pressure from government to limit scope of our research — for political reasons, of course. There’s a lot of money at stake here, so I began small investigation, trying to understand why Kremlin wasn’t supporting my work.”
“And what did you find?” Fisher asked.
“It was quite simple. Once hundreds of thorium reactors in Europe go online, Europeans will eventually become fossil fuel independent — and this will destroy Russia customer base. I had no idea my work would help undermine Russian economy.”
Grim frowned. “But how does that involve us?”
“I’ll tell you how,” Caldwell interjected. “We just struck a deal to sell our current stockpiles of thorium to Europe, along with moving out some material belonging to France and India. The buyers were lining up.”
“Yes, I know all about that,” said Kasperov. “And I know that oligarchs are not happy about sale.”
“Exactly how unhappy are they?” asked Fisher, sensing where this was going.
Kasperov hesitated. “Unhappy enough to make sure your thorium never reaches destination.”
Grim’s tone grew urgent. “Madame President, you said we just struck a deal. What’s the status of the thorium?”
“Final approval on the sales occurred last week. I assume it’s being prepared for shipment.”
Grim bolted out of her chair and went charging across the room, toward the hatch.
Fisher glanced to Kasperov. “Come with me!”
26
Charlie was calling out to Grim as Fisher and Kasperov arrived in the control center:
“Just got a huge hit on our old friend Rahmani from Bolivia.”
“It has to wait, Charlie!”
“All right, but—”
“Listen, right now we need to get into hazmat transport out of Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Ghost truck fleet. We need direct access to their command center in Albuquerque. I need to know if they’re currently shipping any thorium.”