“Right,” Chambers began. “I understand Alvarez is on the line. Can you hear me?”
Alvarez’s voice came through the table’s speakerphones “Yes, ma’am.”
Procter knew Alvarez pretty well and knew that although he had all the attributes necessary for a good field agent, he was also one of the true good guys. There was a sense of duty and patriotism so ingrained in him that his blood wasn’t just red but white and blue as well. Over a long career in the CIA Procter was surprised to say that he found straight shooters like Alvarez few and far between.
Chambers said, “Okay, then. A few of us are up-to-date with what’s happened today, some are not, so if you could begin by giving us a summary of the operation’s background.”
“This morning, Paris time,” Alvarez began, “I was due to meet one Andris Ozols, a retired Latvian officer of the Russian navy and the Soviet fleet before that. Ozols claimed to know the location of a Russian frigate that had sunk in the Indian Ocean back in 2008. The Russians have never acknowledged the accident, a catastrophic engine malfunction that led to the deaths of all sailors on board, one because it came embarrassingly soon after the Russians and Chinese navies had been doing exercises in the area, and two because, according to Ozols, the ship was carrying eight Oniks antiship cruise missiles.”
Chambers said, “I’d now like William to tell us about the Oniks.”
William Ferguson sat on Procter’s side of the table. The head of the Russian office, Ferguson was one of the company’s true old boys. He was in his late sixties, and his face was deeply wrinkled, but he hadn’t lost a strand of the gray hair that was combed back from his high forehead. Unless he wore his long overcoat to bulk him out, he looked thin, half-starved almost, but never weak. He had fought three tours in Vietnam and had received more major medals than Procter had fat fingers. The old guy was a staunch patriot and career spy who had done America’s much-needed dirty work for forty-odd years. His list of exploits against the Soviets during the cold war was legendary, and to those who knew of his achievements he was rightly regarded as a hero. Even though he was a decade older than Procter, Ferguson was one step down the food chain. That was, in Procter’s understanding, Ferguson’s choice. He had remained in the trenches of his own free will, and Procter had huge respect for that.
“The SS-NX-26 Oniks,” Ferguson began in his slow baritone, “is quite simply the missile we wish we’d designed. It is the replacement for the SS-N-22 Sunburn, a missile that was described by some experts, myself included, as the most dangerous missile on the planet. The Oniks is even more lethal.”
He cleared his throat before continuing. “These missiles practically come guaranteed to ruin your day. They have a range of 162 nautical miles and can cruise at an altitude as low as nine feet if necessary, flying at two and a half times the speed of sound, carrying either a 550 pound conventional warhead or a two-hundred-kiloton nuke. For comparison purposes, our equivalents, the Harpoon and Tomahawk, have a range of less than fifty miles and fly at subsonic speeds. Think of a push bike versus an Indy car.
“But it’s not just the speed or even the range that keeps our admirals awake at night, it’s the accuracy of these weapons. It’s extraordinary. In ’03 Russian and Chinese fleets performed joint war games in the Indian Ocean, simulating attacks against aggressive American-carrier battle groups. The timing of the demonstration was not coincidental. We just happened to be flexing our own naval muscles at the same time, in that same part of the world.” He showed a wry smile. “The highlight of the show was when a Chinese missile destroyer fired a Sunburn with a practice warhead. A high-speed camera recorded the missile hitting the center of a white cross painted on the hull of the target vessel over sixty nautical miles away. The Sunburn flew at just twenty-two feet above sea level. The Oniks is faster, carries a larger payload, and is even harder to detect, let alone stop.
“Do we need to be concerned about this weapon?” Ferguson looked around the room briefly. “Absolutely. They’ve been specifically designed to defeat the U.S. Aegis radar and Phalanx defense system that protect our ships. Phalanx’s replacement, the rolling-action missile, has never been tested against these kind of weapons. Quite simply, we have no proven defense for the Oniks or even the Sunburn. They completely upset the balance of naval warfare, and a few humble destroyers armed with these missiles can take out an entire carrier group. We don’t have anything that comes close to the Oniks. And we want them. Bad.”
Ferguson enjoyed his little speech, Procter could tell. The old man had spent his career battling the Soviets, and since the Berlin wall had come down his experience and knowledge just wasn’t as valuable. Now, everyone was more concerned with the Middle East than the Russians. If the shoe had been on the other foot Procter knew he’d be resentful of that fall from glory. If Ferguson carried any resentment though, he hid it well.
One of the mandarins decided to get his money’s worth. Nathan Wyley was on Procter’s side of the table. Though he was just on the sunny side of fifty, Wyley looked at least ten years younger with his ridiculous shock of floppy blond hair. For some reason Procter had yet to work out, Wyley didn’t much like him, not that Procter cared how the lanky streak of piss felt.
“How the hell do the Russians have this missile and not us?” Wyley asked.
Ferguson sighed and motioned for his deputy, Sykes, to answer for him. Procter wasn’t one hundred percent sure of Sykes’s first name. It was Karl or Kevin or something. He had the build of someone who trained at the gym but not enough to warrant advertising the fact. Procter didn’t know exactly how old he was, but Sykes looked as if he was somewhere in his midthirties. Though in the wrong light his tired eyes made him look much older. His suits were always immaculate, tailored, far more expensive than his pay grade should allow. Procter had put Sykes under investigation a couple of years back to find out if he had been supplementing his income, but it turned out he had wealthy parents and a trust fund.
Sykes was something of an unknown quantity to Procter. He had the nice clothes, the clean-cut face, good teeth, and said all the right things. He was almost the antithesis of Ferguson-young and frighteningly ambitious. Sykes was in the department to make a name for himself, and probably disliked being assigned to the unglamorous Russian office, but he was keen to impress. Procter could see shades of his own ambition in the guy’s eyes and didn’t always like what he saw.
“Because,” Sykes began with a smile that showed lots of bleached teeth, “believe it or not, we’re not the top of the pile when it comes to missile technology. Russia may have left most of her arms development in the trash, but the budget strings are still thick in places. Russia has focused on a few key technologies and has more than kept up in areas such as fighter jets. In certain missile technologies they’re the market leaders by a long way, earning billions in sales to other countries. Their antiship-cruise-missile capabilities are not just a step up from our own but a whole leap. They’re at least twenty-five years in advance of anything we’ve got.”
Chambers: “If we could let Alvarez continue now.”