Last on the list was Zeus. Zeus was an ongoing development of the SATWEP program, with the goal of creating super storms at will over an enemy's homeland.
Her coffee was cold. Stephanie got up and headed for Elizabeth's office.
CHAPTER 57
Alexei Vysotsky set the phone down and sat for a moment, thinking of Korov, dead in America. He cursed and slammed his fist down on his desk. The door to his office opened and his aide looked in.
"Sir? Is everything all right?"
Vysotsky picked up an ashtray and hurled it at the startled man. It shattered against the wall.
"Out! Get out, now!"
The aide closed the door. Quickly.
Korov! Damn the day he had listened to Harker. Damn the Americans.
Vysotsky took a deep breath, another. He reached into his desk drawer and took out a bottle of vodka and a glass. He poured four fingers of the clear liquid into the glass and downed it. He poured another. The vodka ignited inside him. The warmth spread through his body, calmed him. He took out a papirosa, a long tube of paper and harsh, Russian tobacco. It was a peasant's cigarette, a habit left over from the old days when luxuries like American cigarettes were impossible to obtain. He pinched the end together and lit up, exhaled a stream of blue smoke toward the ceiling.
He thought about the Americans. Everything to do with America had always been a problem. He'd thought that he could work with Harker, even though she was the enemy.
Now my best officer is dead. That's what I get for trusting Americans. Lie down with dogs, get fleas.
He thought about Harker and her Project team. It was a good thing she didn't know about California.
In 1988 he'd been an ambitious young officer in the KGB, back in the days when the Russian security apparatus was far flung and almost invincible. Before Glasnost and the shame that followed. He had been adept at wet work, targeted assassinations carried out for the glory of the Motherland. A traitor had been discovered, an American recruited years before, supposedly a disgruntled CIA agent. The man had fooled them. He was a double, taking his orders from Langley and feeding Moscow false information. Who knew how many Russian lives had been lost, what damage had been done because of his betrayal? Alexei hadn't needed to think much about killing him.
It hadn't been hard to arrange the car accident. It was simple bad luck that the target had his family with him when the car went over a cliff. All except his daughter Selena, who now worked for Harker.
Vysotsky scuffed out his cigarette on the edge of Beria's desk. The irony did not escape him. The daughter of one of his assignments, now a key part of Harker's elite team. A dangerous woman. If she ever found out that he was responsible for her family's deaths, she'd come after him. But she never would. There was no way she would ever find out.
No way.
Vysotsky poured another vodka.
CHAPTER 58
Stephanie told the team about the DARPA weapons in Westlake's encrypted files.
"He could go after the grid" Ronnie said. "You take it down, out come the lowlifes looking for a free TV and you get troops on the corner. Martial law, like he wanted."
"That's what I thought at first," Stephanie said. "But things have changed. Before, Westlake had Homeland Security lined up and support from some key generals and politicians. That's gone. Taking the grid down would cause a lot of disruption, but it wouldn't have the same result."
"What's left for him to do?" Ronnie asked. "Like you say, his support is gone. He can't pull off his plan. I was him, I'd disappear. Get a new identity and go underground. Someplace like Brazil."
"Yeah, but you're not him," Nick said, "and Miller said he heard Westlake mention a backup plan to Martinez."
"We need to look at this differently," Selena said.
"What do you mean?" Elizabeth picked up her pen and began tapping it on her desk.
Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
"We've been trying to figure out what he might do but we haven't thought about why he would do it."
"Go on."
"We need to get inside his mind if we want to predict his actions, or try to. He's finished as far as starting a government takeover. So what's left?"
Elizabeth set her pen down. "I guess that depends on who he is. What makes him tick."
"There ought to be a psych profile in his jacket," Nick said.
"It probably wouldn't tell us much," Stephanie said. "This man reached the highest rank possible in a world of psych testing and rigid structure. He fooled everyone. I don't think we're going to learn anything from it."
"We haven't been asking the right questions," Selena said. "So far we've been asking ourselves what he's going to do and where he might have gone. A better question might be why did he want to take over the government in the first place?"
"Why would anyone?" Nick said. "He wanted power."
"More than that," Selena said. "He thought he was going to make America strong."
"We're already strong," Stephanie said.
"But Westlake saw attempts to gain peaceful solutions on the world stage as a sign of weakness."
"Some would say he had a point," Ronnie said. "I wouldn't trust any of the so-called world leaders out there, no matter what treaties they signed. Treaties are only pieces of paper. My people know all about treaties."
Elizabeth said, "Let's stick to his motivation. Nick, you said he wanted power. That seems obvious, but it doesn't tell us anything we didn't know."
"It's not so much that he wanted it," Nick said, "it's what he was prepared to do to get it. That puts him in the company of the psychopaths. People like Caligula and Pol Pot."
"You think he's a psychopath?" Selena said.
"What else would you call someone who's ready to kill thousands of people so he can get what he wants?"
"Westlake believed in what he was doing," Stephanie said. "That tells us something."
"People like that always have a good reason for murdering everyone."
"I can guess what he might do," Selena said.
"What?" Ronnie said.
"He's finished, right? I mean, there isn't any way he can gain what he wanted."
"Of course not. What are you thinking, Selena?" Elizabeth asked.
"Westlake is a megalomaniac. A narcissist. He thinks the world revolves around him. He wants to be remembered. When people like him have nothing left to lose, the only thing left is revenge."
"Oh, my God," Stephanie said.
"Steph?" Harker looked at her.
"He's going to use Prometheus," Stephanie said. She began twisting bracelets on her arm. "It's armed with heavy nukes. If he can control it, he could start a world war.."
"There have to be safeguards on it," Selena said. "Fail safes."
"He'd have to know the codes," Nick said.
"He was in charge of the weaponized satellites," Elizabeth said. "He must know the codes." Elizabeth set her pen down. "You could be right, Steph. Westlake has nothing to lose and sooner or later he's going down. He could try and take everyone with him."
"He could use Prometheus as a negotiating point," Nick said.
"It wouldn't work. The Pentagon would just change the firing codes. They should change them anyway. I'd better call the President," Elizabeth said.
CHAPTER 59
A half hour later, Elizabeth's worst fears were confirmed.
"The President didn't know about Prometheus."
"That figures," Nick said. "Someone thought it was need to know and Rice wasn't on the list."
"That's not all. He got the Joint Chiefs on the line and told them what we thought. After they got over their surprise that anyone knew about Prometheus except them, they assured him it couldn't happen. Ten minutes later they called back. They can't access the satellite. Normal control procedures have been locked out. No one knows when that happened, or how. The satellite sends regular status reports and nothing indicated any change."