Ryan said, “Hell, all those presidential debates I had to endure during the campaigns should have taught me how to take on a tough interviewer.”
Van Damm kept reading the e-mail, then he said, “One perk to it, though. Tatiana Molchanova will be the one conducting the interview.”
Ryan replied sarcastically, “Sorry, Arnie, but I’ve been slacking. I haven’t been watching as much Channel Seven as I should. I don’t know their on-air personalities.”
Arnie said, “You just watched her interview Volodin. An eleven on a scale of ten in beauty, brains, and the amount of Kremlin Kool-Aid she’s drinking.”
“Oh… her.”
Van Damm said, “I’ll tell them no.”
“Tell them yes.”
Arnie was taken aback. “You’re kidding, right? There is nothing to gain by following their format for a sit-down interview.”
“I want to communicate directly with the Russian people. I’ll give her fifteen minutes, and I’ll be on my best behavior.” After an incredulous look from his chief of staff, Ryan said, “Think about it, Arnie. Volodin has been on every American network multiple times. You can’t get that guy to shut up. And what Volodin just said to his people was absolute insanity; he’s driving them headlong toward war and pinning it on the West. I know I can’t get my message to them unless I offer their state-backed TV exactly what they want.” He shrugged. “I owe it to the process to give this a shot, Arnie.”
Van Damm said, “I don’t like this, boss.”
Ryan smiled a little. “Put me in, coach. Give me a chance.”
Van Damm chuckled. He stood to leave the Oval and, while doing so, began to type a message on his phone. “I’m about to surprise the hell out of some producer in Moscow, because nobody over there seriously thought you’d accept this invitation.”
Ryan headed for his desk. He called out to Arnie as he left the room. “The big surprise in Copenhagen will be if I manage to convince twenty-six member states to predeploy forces in Lithuania before Russia invades.”
37
Ding Chavez and Dominic Caruso had been working twelve-hour days for the past week, scrambling all over the central eastern portion of Lithuania, photographing streets, fields, villages, creeks, even brick walls.
They had no idea why they were doing what they were doing, but they’d both spent the majority of their careers working for the U.S. government, so they had some background in following curious orders that didn’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense.
Today they worked along the banks of the Neris River, beginning in the northern suburbs of Vilnius, and then heading north and east, going to nearly two dozen locations designated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Following the river through the villages of Skirgiškės and Bratoniškės, and ending on the second of two bridges at Nemenčinė. The photographs today were much the same as all the others they had taken this week, although the two men were noticing some trends they hadn’t picked up on before. Several of the photos, maybe twenty-five percent of the total, seemed to be different positions of high ground looking north and east. They were even tasked with photographing from building rooftops and upper-level balconies in the towns.
And Herkus Zarkus was with them every step of the way. At each stop he contributed to their cover, usually just unpacking and prepping equipment, but occasionally actually digging trenches and climbing poles when the Campus men ran into unexpected delays.
He’d gotten them into private apartments, behind locked gates, and once even came up with a ruse to have them set up their “survey” equipment in a drainage culvert while curious traffic passed, claiming to the most inquisitive onlookers that a plan was in place to dredge below the culvert to expand the super-high-speed network.
While they worked, Ding and Dom had kept their eyes out for anything out of the ordinary, and this was tough for a couple guys who weren’t familiar with the area, but the pair had both been in Ukraine the year before, just prior to the invasion there, so they had some recent experience operating in similar territory.
An hour before nightfall they ran into another group of suspicious locals when they were parked on Highway 108. Just like last time, after convincing the locals they were fiber-optic linemen from America and not Little Green Men from Russia, Dom, Ding, and Herkus were told about suspicious vehicles in the area. It was anecdotal evidence that something was going on, nothing more, but the Campus men had no reason to doubt what they were hearing.
Tonight, once it got too dark for any more high-res photographs, the men headed south, taking a roundabout route back to the capital just to get a look at the area. The military presence they encountered to the east of Vilnius was impressive from a quantity standpoint. Lots of troop trucks, sandbagged positions, and young men carrying HK G36 battle rifles filled parking lots, roadsides, and other congregation points, but there were no roadblocks or any armor positions in sight.
As they drove along the E28, the main highway that went west from Kaliningrad, passed through Vilnius, and continued on to the Belarusan border, a pair of MI-17 helicopters churned the air above the DataPlanet truck.
Herkus looked up through the truck’s windshield as he drove. “You won’t believe it, but you guys are looking at about fifteen percent of Lithuania’s entire air force.”
Caruso said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. They only have one fighter, an old Czech trainer from the seventies. That and a few transport planes and helicopters. A few years ago we didn’t have any money, so we couldn’t spend it on defense. Now we are more prosperous, but we joined NATO, so our leaders told us we didn’t need to spend money on defense.”
Caruso said, “Figures.”
Chavez said, “No offense, but the military equipment we’ve passed on the road doesn’t make your army look a hell of a lot better than your air force.”
Herkus agreed. “Not a single tank in the Lithuanian Land Force. We’ve got some antitank weapons, a few artillery pieces, and a bunch of mortars. If the Russians come, and nobody shows up to help us…” Herkus surprised the Americans with a smile. “Well, at least everyone will get the news quickly with our superfast Internet.”
Jack Ryan, Jr., sat at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, waiting for his seven a.m. flight to Dulles. He’d positioned himself in a corner of the waiting area at the gate, his back to a wall and his eyes scanning those around him.
He’d arrived from Luxembourg City less than a half-hour earlier, which meant he was probably out of danger, but failures in his OPSEC had led to the situation he now found himself in, so even though he was in an airport terminal where no one should have a gun or a knife, and even though he was hundreds of miles from where he’d been attacked the afternoon before, he wasn’t going to let his guard down for one second.
Not again.
As soon as his flight from Luxembourg landed he called Christine von Langer at the hospital to check on Ysabel. Christine told him his injured friend had made it through surgery with flying colors. Ysabel was still in a medically induced coma because of the dangers of swelling of her brain, but all her vital signs were stable and the doctors felt she would make a slow but full recovery.
Christine also mentioned that a pair of very polite but very tough-looking Frenchmen who were friends of John Clark’s had arrived at the hospital and presented themselves as friends of Ysabel’s family. Out of earshot of the doctors and nurses, they assured Christine that they would take good care of her, but Christine insisted on staying around, at least for the first few days, to make sure the doctors knew Ysabel had a lot of people watching out for her.