DuBrul and Ross had understood in advance that using the map would yield imprecise results. But after the Russian’s previous collapse, it had seemed unlikely that Grigoriev would recover enough strength to pass detailed verbal information, like map coordinates. So they had agreed on a setup that would permit the patient to communicate by pointing.
Instead of precise navigational coordinates, they had approximate locations, with built-in margins of error. Not exactly ideal, but — outside of James Bond movies — intelligence information was rarely absolute.
With a few jabs of his finger, Grigoriev had reduced the search area from over a half a million square miles, to a few hundred square miles. The area of uncertainty had just shrunk by a factor of two thousand, or maybe even three thousand. As far as DuBrul was concerned, that was pretty damned good work. It was a lot better than they usually managed.
He tucked the map under his arm and walked to the door, signaling to the Marine guard to follow him. The medical team had abandoned their attempt to revive the patient. They were taking last minute readings and making final chart entries — following the procedures required to certify the time of death.
Agent DuBrul paused to look back at Oleg Grigoriev one last time. “Spaciba,” he said softly. “Thank you, old warrior. Go with God.”
CHAPTER 44
President Chandler leaned against the railing of the Truman Balcony, and looked across the south lawn to the crowd of protesters gathered on the Ellipse. The District of Columbia was experiencing its last hard cold snap of the year. The temperature was hovering just above freezing, and there were two inches of snow on the ground. But the protesters didn’t care. Their shoes had trampled the Ellipse so thoroughly that the snow had been churned into muddy brown slush.
The Secret Service was now estimating the head count at thirty-thousand, and the mob was still growing. Or — more correctly — the mobs were still growing. There were several groups down there. The Peace-At-All-Costs lobby was rubbing shoulders with the Nuke-the-Bastards-Now gang, and the fundamentalist This-is-the-Wrath-of-God faction was marching beside the America-Must-Rule-the-World-for-its-Own-Good cult.
Those weren’t the real names of the organizations represented here, of course, but their platforms were nearly all that silly, and that simplistic. Most of them couldn’t find Kamchatka on a map, and probably fewer than one out of twenty could spell the name of the country that had suddenly inflamed their passions. But they all knew exactly where the president had gone wrong in managing this crisis, and they all knew exactly how to fix it.
The answer is simple—lay down our arms and live in peace with other nations. The answer is simple—blow those sons-of-bitches to kingdom come. The answer is simple—outlaw all foreign trade and shut off all foreign aid. Let the commies and the ragheads try to get along without American dollars. The answer is simple—fill in the blank here …
Except that the answers were all different, and none of them were simple. The protesters down on the Ellipse disagreed with each other about nearly everything, but they were united on one point. They all wanted Francis Benjamin Chandler to get the hell out of the White House, and make room for the kind of leader who could save the nation in its moment of peril. Of course, depending on which group you talked to, the next person in the Oval Office should either be a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, an unaligned independent, or a pair of Wiccan Siamese Twins with the secret communications frequency of the alien mother ship.
The president snorted, and the exhalation turned to steam in the cold morning air.
“Uh, Mr. President?” The voice belonged to National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven.
The president turned to see the man standing at the open door leading to the yellow room.
He beckoned with his fingers. “Come on out, Greg. I’m just having a look at the newest members of the Frank Chandler Fan Club.”
Brenthoven stepped out onto the balcony and closed the door. He looked out at the roiling crowd on the Ellipse. “What do you think they want, sir?”
“That’s easy,” the president said. “They want world peace, unrestricted warfare, a global economy, utter severance of all foreign trading agreements, open borders, and strict isolationism.”
Brenthoven grinned. “So it’s business as usual, sir?”
The president raised his hands and let them drop. “Pretty much.”
He sighed. “What have you got, Greg?”
Brenthoven walked over to the railing. “The Russian courier, Oleg Grigoriev, is dead, sir. Medical complications from the gunshot wounds.”
The president nodded gravely, and looked back out toward the growing mob of his detractors. “That puts me in a bit of an emotional conflict,” he said. “On the one hand, a man has lost his life. As a human being, my first thought should focus on the tragedy of that loss. But I’m also the Commander-in-Chief of a nation under siege. And I have to confess that I’m more concerned about losing a possible source of critical intelligence. Because some of the secrets that Mr. Grigoriev took to the grave could drastically affect the future of this country, and the world.”
“I understand, sir,” the national security advisor said. “But he didn’t take quite everything to the grave.”
The president turned and met Brenthoven’s eyes.
“Mr. Grigoriev confirmed the CNO’s theory that the submarine is shooting from prepared positions, where explosives have been planted in the ice cover. There were five positions. Governor Zhukov apparently called them …” Brenthoven paused, reading the unfamiliar words from his notebook. “… zashishennaja pozicija.”
He sounded the words out clumsily. “That appears to be the Russian term for a protected position, or a hidden place to shoot from.”
“I see,” the president said. “And did Mr. Grigoriev happen to provide us with the coordinates of any of these protected positions?”
“He gave us approximate locations, Mr. President,” Brenthoven said. “One of them corresponded pretty closely with the first position that the submarine launched from. If the other four are in the same ballpark, accuracy-wise, we’ve got the remaining launch positions narrowed down fairly well.”
The president frowned. “Why didn’t he just feed us the latitudes and longitudes? That’s what he did the first time, right?”
“He was too weak, sir,” Brenthoven said. “The DIA agent in the hospital room reported that Mr. Grigoriev literally used his dying breath to pass this information to us.”
“It’s pretty tough to complain about that,” the president said. He paused for nearly a minute. “Are we getting this information to our Navy ships?”
The national security advisor nodded. “COMPACFLEET is sending the message out now, sir. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is putting together a tactical proposal for your consideration.”
“What’s he got in mind?”
“I haven’t seen the details yet, sir,” Brenthoven said. “But the general plan is to send Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams onto the ice pack to locate and disarm Zhukov’s explosives. If the submarine can’t blow holes in the ice, it can’t launch missiles.”