The President leaned back in his chair. “I see.”
“What do you want me and my men to do?”
“We will assume, for the time being, that they could be the ones behind this loss. Until we find out who is behind this, leave no stone unturned with the other countries discussed. Determine, through your assets, how bad the situation is for the North Koreans and their new leadership. You have convinced me that it bears looking into. We must also follow up any leads uncovered by Sturmovic in Batumi. Deploy the available NEST Team.”
Molotov nodded, “I will recall the Los Alamos team from the United States. The American woman commanding the Los Alamos team is regarded highly. As for Commander Sturmovic, he is a good man. It would be rash to destroy his career over this. If there was a conspiracy, it should have fallen on the GRU’s shoulders to prevent it.”
This admission surprised the President. In the old days, friendship was as fleeting as circumstance.
Molotov continued, “There is one other thing, Mr. President.”
“And that is?”
“It is regarding the warhead type. The guidance packet to be specific.”
“General Molotov, if you could be more specific, please.”
“The guidance packet was the newest one.”
“The one with…?”
“Yes, the one with the Hermes targeting system.”
“General! Find those warheads.”
“Yes, Mr. President. I’m doing my best.”
CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS ROOM, PENTAGON
FLASH, FLASH, FLASH, 08/14/14 02:00 ZULU. IDENT: PROMETHEUS
THREE WARHEADS HAVE BEEN STOLEN FROM MOBILE ROCKET FORCES BASE OUTSIDE BATUMI, GEORGIA. NO SOLID EVIDENCE AS TO PERPETRATOR AT THIS TIME. REQUEST IMMEDIATE RETURN OF NEST TEAM FROM LOS ALAMOS. REQUEST FULL COOPERATION OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE ASSETS IN BLACK SEA REGION, 08/14/14. MORE TO FOLLOW.
Master Seamen Harry Bell read the note twice before grabbing his telephone and dialing Command Duty Officer Seale’s number.
“Yes?”
“Sir, I have FLASH Traffic from the Russians. It came over the hotline.
“Get confirmation. I’ll be right there.”
The hotline Teletype had been installed by the Russian and the American governments after communications difficulties experienced during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The communications breakdown had resulted in the Russians transmitting their counter proposal to American demands over the Radio Moscow antenna. The hotline Teletype was used only in event of a nuclear confrontation, even though the once powerful Soviet Union was now a fractious collection of states. People forgot that the remaining ICBMs, with the exception of the Ukraine, were still under the unified command of Moscow; a power the Russian President was still reluctant to give up to individual states.
Bell quickly typed in Russian a request for confirmation and transmitted it to Moscow.
CDO Seale arrived just in time to see the confirming message return. He tore the message from the machine and read it. “Oh sweet Jesus. Better get CINCSAC on the line.”
“Aye, Sir.” He need not have bothered. A second branch of the hotline terminated in the underground fortress of Cheyenne Mountain. Moments later, the Command Duty Officer had the voice of CINCSAC on the other end of the phone.
“Has this been verified?”
“Yes, sir. It checks out as authentic.”
“Okay, forward the alert to NSA, CIA, DIA and the joint NEST team at Los Alamos. I’ll notify the President myself.” The line went dead. CDO Seale, the black console phone still clutched in his right hand, looked down at Bell. “Send it out to NSA, CIA, DIA and Los Alamos.”
Bell’s hands began to fly over his message center keyboard.
The Russians, although possessing a fairly good telephone system for official use, could still not quite grasp the size and depth of the United States secure communications lines. The Russian FLASH traffic was transmitted almost instantly to every destination specified. The one to Los Alamos, New Mexico, did take a half second more than the two to the NSA and CIA, but even light travels only so fast. To say that the message galvanized each organization into action would be an understatement.
FLASH Traffic is the military equivalent of an ambulance going ninety with its lights and sirens on. Its contents, like any victim of dire circumstance, are checked over and possible causes of action to control damage are discussed by a trauma team. If it’s required, outside specialists are called in to consult.
The mainstay of the CIA is its ability to take large volumes of intelligence data and successfully disseminate a great part of it into useful information. To aid in this daunting task is a IBM supercomputer designated, “ASCI White,” connected to a vast network of IBM PC’s and Data Entry Retrieval consoles. ASCI White, or at least part of its vast memory core, is programmed to flag sections of incoming messages containing “Hot” words for cross reference.
The information request on Andrew Verkatt, and his dealings with the North Koreans by a Senior Officer of MI6’s South African station, contained ninety percent of words the computers needed to “Hit” and fulfill the flag criteria. The FLASH Traffic was tagged with Hamilton Smythe’s MI6 Pretoria request and processed. The request, because it was coupled with the FLASH Traffic heading and because it also mentioned arm’s trading, activated a very old, little-used subroutine called BUCKLE in the supercomputer’s core program.
The request and the attached FLASH Traffic message were sent directly to the Director of the CIA and to the Director of MI6 before the safety interlocks installed in the latest update of the main program detected the error and tried to stop the data. Sir Arthur Harris, the Director of MI6, was notified in Whitehall, London, of the Russian’s problems in Georgia and the request of the MI6 station in Pretoria at exactly the same time as the Director of the CIA.
MOBILE ROCKET FORCES BASE, BATUMI
Sturmovic looked at the four bullet-ridden bodies. Three of them were his missing officers, but the fourth was unknown to him or any of his men present. More disturbing, the corpse was dressed in the uniform battledress of a Marine Forces Major. The commanding officer of the GRU detachment, Oleg Zatolutin, stood just behind him, conducting the scene. Two men in a boat were dragging the waters beside the dock, and another four were going over the ZIL heavy truck in great detail with Geiger counters.
Hours of exposure to the water in the bay had leached the color from the four bodies and swollen their skins. The Commander felt no pity as he viewed the corpses. They had received no less punishment for their treachery than he would have carried out himself.
The base doctor, a man half of Sturmovic’s age, struggled to do a hasty on-site autopsy on the bodies. It was a desperate attempt to find any physical clue that would allow them to get to the bottom of the theft of his warheads.
“Ah, got you, you little bastard!” The doctor held a bullet he had extracted from the body of Major Pieter Boskovitch, in the ends of a pair of surgical tweezers.
The doctor turned the bullet back and forth, frowning. “That is strange. It does not appear to be Russian. The round is too light, Commander, but the corpse on the end that we have not been able to identify has stainless steel dental work.”
Only ex-communist countries used stainless steel. There had been no identification on the mystery corpse. A series of photographs were taken of the man’s swollen face, to be flown by an interceptor fighter to Moscow. The pilot had been told not to worry about damaging his engines.
The small, misshapen bullet solidified his worst fears. This was a wide-based conspiracy. Perhaps even one originating outside Russia’s shores. Sturmovic squatted down and took the tweezers from the doctor’s hand. He turned the bullet around to get a better look. Mushroomed and bent as it was, the object was still identifiable as a NATO 5.56 millimeter round.