Another uniform entered. She started to get to her feet, but the commander sitting beside her placed a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her into her back seat. It wasn’t an overtly friendly gesture. He leaned in close and whispered, “I don’t know who you are, girl, or what you are doing here, but you are here, and you are meant to be here. That means you’re every bit as important as the rest of the blowhards at this particular dance. As long as you’re in this room, you don’t stand for a superior officer. You’d be permanently on your feet.”
She gave him a nervous look and saw he was smiling. “Thank you, sir.”
He nodded.
Someone dimmed the lights.
A face appeared on the screen at the front of the room. She recognized the man. It had been months since they last met. A year or more, she realized. His name was Jackson Carlisle. It was the kind of name mentioned in hushed tones throughout Naval Intelligence. She hadn’t known him well, but he was one of theirs. A month ago they’d got word of his death.
From near darkness a voice began.
“As most of you already know, a US citizen, Jackson Carlisle, was shot and killed in the Russian port of Murmansk. The story the Russians have given us is that he was in the red light district and managed to get himself shot because he refused to pay a prostitute.”
Leopov shook her head but said nothing, recognizing it as a better work of fiction than anything Tolstoy managed in his lifetime. She knew that Jackson wasn’t that kind of guy. The picture changed. The photo of the handsome man in the prime of his life was replaced by the grey image of a face no longer touched by it.
“The body was returned to us along with his personal effects. Needless to say we were a little surprised that although no autopsy had been carried out, the bullet that killed him had been removed. While we have no evidence we suspect that it was fired from either a Kalashnikov or a Makarov. What we do know is that Carlisle was assassinated by the KGB while he was in the act of completing a mission of the utmost importance to our National Security. We lost a good man, people.”
A murmur went around the room but none of them reached Leopov’s ears.
She was the cuckoo in their nest.
It was the way she’d been treated since she’d joined the service. Part of it was because she was a woman, but just as much of it came down to her name. It didn’t make any difference that she had been barely been able to walk when she had come to the States, or that her father had died getting his wife and daughter out of Russia. It was all about her name.
The picture on the screen changed. She felt a wave of relief. It had been hard enough to see his picture again, reminding her of how full of life he had been, but harder still to see him in death. The new image was a satellite picture of an island.
“It has taken our code breakers a while to decrypt the information he paid for with his life, and while I cannot provide all of the details at this moment, I can confirm that he provided us with the coordinates for this island in the Arctic Ocean.”
Leopov recognized the coordinates, and when someone in the near darkness asked where, she had no hesitation in saying, “Russian territory.” The words came tumbling from her lips before she had even realized that she was speaking out loud. She was only too aware of eyes turning in her direction to the sound of breaths being taken. “Sorry,” she said to break the moment of silence that filled the room. “I…”
“Forgive me,” the speaker said, preventing the embarrassment from lasting any longer than it needed to. “This is Lieutenant Leopov. She has been lent to us by Naval Intelligence.”
Leopov could almost feel the dagger of ice the sound of her name thrust into the room. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks, but forced a thin-lipped smile as she nodded to those looking in her direction.
“Lieutenant Leopov has been studying satellite data about the island, which as she quite rightly says, lies within Russian territory.”
The image on the large screen changed to show a closer view, and then again, zooming in frame by frame. Leopov was familiar with these images, she had spent most the last few weeks watching the slightest changes in the pictures that came through every time the satellite passed overhead.
“I’m sorry to put you on the spot, but perhaps you could tell us what you believe this picture is showing?”
She nodded. She took a sip of water to compose herself, trying to decide what she felt she could tell the men that were gathered around the table.
“Please.” The man offered his pointer to her. It was not the first time she had given a briefing, but she was coming into this blind. She’d have appreciated some kind of warning. She rose to her feet and took a deep breath as she moved to the front. She took the pointer from him.
“Wrangel Island lies in the Arctic Ocean, as I said, within Russian territory,” she began. She knew that she was repeating herself, but she wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page. She couldn’t just assume everyone got the implications of what she was about to say. “We have known for some time that the Russians have been using this island as an internment camp.” She pointed to a couple of the buildings, indicating what she believed to be accommodation blocks, then traced the pointer along a black line that surrounded the buildings. “This is a high security perimeter fence, with lookout towers here and here,” she pointed again.
“How many prisoners are held in this camp?” a voice asked.
“Maybe a thousand in these areas here,” She traced the pointer along the image, picking out parts of the camp. She moved the pointer again to a separate section of the photograph. “But in this section there is only one, kept separate from the rest of the prisoners.”
Now she’d got their attention.
“One? Why would they keep one man in solitary confinement?” the same voice asked, then answered his own question. “Someone who needs protection from the other inmates?”
“Perhaps the security is to keep people out rather than someone in?” another suggested.
“We are sure that this is a prisoner who stays in quarters here.” She pointed again to a building the same size as one of the other accommodation blocks. We have seen him alone in what we have termed the Exercise Yard. No one else goes into that space other than those going to and from the towers.”
“He gets that block to himself when the other thousand are squeezed into those dozen huts? Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” she assured the room.
“It seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? Building a separate part of a prison for one man?”
“Rudolph Hess has been the only prisoner in Spandau for nearly twenty years.” This observation came from the man who had been sitting next to her. “Clearly whoever this man is, we can assume he is very important to someone. Yet, at the same time, the Russians don’t want to shout about him? Now, ask yourself this, why do you think that would that be? What makes this man so special? That seems like a very important question to me. Lieutenant Leopov?”
“As of yet we don’t know.”
“Yet is a very powerful word,” the man noted. “It implies you will do soon.”
She nodded. “We know how many people are permanently on the island and have been able to identify some of the people who have visited the island recently. At least one of them was a high ranking officer of the Red Army. We believe the two are linked in some way.” When distilled to its essence she realized how little they had actually learned about the island. It felt like they had been wasting so much time to get so little tangible information.