Dean didn’t like the real-time communications hookup, which allowed several dozen people to look over your shoulder while you worked. He would grudgingly admit that being able to talk via satellite with Fort Meade could be useful at times, but often it was a royal, high-tech pain in the ass.
“ ‘Something’ is right,” Akulinin added. “I think this might be the truck.”
Walking around to the rear of the vehicle, he jumped up onto the flatbed and moved up toward the cab. “A tarp … a big wooden crate. It’s empty. We couldn’t have gotten
“You’re getting less radiation right now, Mr. Akulinin,” a new voice said, “than you would flying in a jetliner at forty thousand feet.” That was William Rubens, deputy director of the National Security Agency and head of the highly secret department of the organization known as Desk Three, the NSA’s field operations unit.
“Well, you’re up early, sir,” Dean said. “What is it back there — five in the morning?”
“Six,” Rubens replied. “Nine hours’ difference. But who’s counting?”
Dean chuckled to himself. Ops in places like China and Tajikistan guaranteed that the micromanagers back home would be keeping graveyard shift hours.
Both Dean and Akulinin wore small but extremely sensitive Geiger counters strapped to their legs just above their ankles, hidden beneath their uniform trousers. The readout was audible only through their transceivers — a faint, rapid-fire clicking that Dean could hear through the implant as he walked beside the truck. By walking slowly across different parts of the airfield, they could pick up minute traces of radioactivity left behind by the shipment they were looking for. They’d already paced through two small storage sheds and a hangar, without result.
An informant in Kazakhstan had told them that their quarry had taken a military truck and headed for Dushanbe, where he would be meeting with persons unknown. This parked truck was the first indication that they weren’t on a wild-goose chase.
Akulinin jumped off the tailgate and rejoined Dean beside the cab. Thunder rolled once more across the airfield as one of the twin-tailed MiG-29s boomed out of the east and gently touched down on the tarmac. The Indian Air Force had sixty-nine of the aircraft — known as Fulcrums in the West but called Baaz in India, the Hindi word for hawk.
“So, anybody else shipping hot nuclear material through Ayni?” Dean asked as the rumble died away.
“Negative,” Rockman replied over the Art Room channel. “Nobody
Akulinin glanced around to be sure they weren’t being watched, then opened the passenger-side door to the cab. Inside the glove box, he found a plastic envelope with various cards and papers. He pulled a card out and glanced at it. “Here we go.” He read off the registration number.
“That checks,” Rockman told them. “That’s the truck checked out to Anatoli Zhernov two weeks ago at the motor pool in Stepnogorsk.”
Stepnogorsk was a town in Kazakhstan, nearly a thousand miles to the north. Once, when it had been a part of the old Soviet Union, it had been a so-called secret town, operating under the code name of Tselinograd-25, and had been an important nuclear and biochemical manufacturing site.
“So where’s Zhernov now?” Dean asked.
Akulinin had one hand casually resting on the truck’s hood. “Engine’s cold. He could be anywhere.”
“More to the point,” Rubens said, “the
“At least this confirms our intel that Zhernov was bringing the shipment here,” Dean said. “But who did he meet?” Who was he meeting?”
“If you find Zhernov, find out,” Rubens said curtly.
“You bet,” Dean replied blithely.
“It might help,” Akulinin said as he replaced the registration card in the truck’s glove compartment, “if we knew when Zhernov was here. When he handed off the shipment. Is it still here? Did it leave by air? By road?”
“We have our technical assets on it, gentlemen,” Rubens said. “In the meantime, you two keep looking for traces there. That could narrow down the field a bit.”
“That it would,” Dean agreed.
“You can also check the ops log at the Ayni tower,” Rubens suggested. “Get a list of all aircraft that have left Ayni for the past, oh, three … no, better make it five days.”
“I can do that,” Akulinin said. “These people are still scared shitless of Russians.”
“Besides, your Russian is a hell of a lot better than my Hindi,” Dean pointed out.
“Looks like you might get your chance to practice,” Akulinin said. “Company coming.”
A small party of men, all wearing Indian Air Force uniforms, had just emerged from the base of the control tower and were walking toward them. One wore a group captain’s epaulets, making him the equivalent of a colonel.
“We have an ID for you,” Rockman’s voice whispered in Dean’s ear. “That’s Group Captain Sharad Narayanan. He could be trouble. He’s a relative of India’s national security advisor — and he
“You there,” Narayanan called in singsong English. “What are you about?”
“Sir!” Dean said, snapping to crisp attention and saluting as the party reached them. “Wing Commander Salman Patel. I am on Air Vice Marshal Subarao’s staff.” He spoke the phrase in memorized Hindi, then added in English, “I am here to complete a materiel inspection of this base.”
The cover story had been carefully fabricated back at Fort Meade, and Dean had papers in his breast pocket to back it up. During the weeks before the op he’d actually gone through a crash course in Hindi. Although Hindi was one of the official national languages of India and by far the most popular, only about 40 percent of all Indians spoke it as a native tongue; English, also an official language, often served as a lingua franca among the diverse ethnic groups of the gigantic and incredibly diverse subcontinent, especially within the military.
“And this?” the group captain demanded, turning dark eyes on Akulinin. Although Russia and India had long been close allies, relations between the two nations had been strained for several years now, as Moscow tried to force Tajikistan to expel the IAF from the Tajik air bases. If Narayanan didn’t like Russians, it was probably because of that.
“
“And what are you doing standing around out here?”
The second MiG dropped out of the sky and touched the tarmac, the thunder momentarily making conversation impossible.
“Staying in the shade, Group Captain,” Dean replied when the sound dwindled, “while we watch the MiGs land and talk about the possibility of expanding the facilities here at Ayni for the benefit of both India and Russia.”
The group captain seemed to relax slightly. The three-way political situation between Tajikistan, Russia, and India was delicate enough that he wouldn’t want to get involved, not if his superiors were insisting that the IAF had to work smoothly with their Russian counterparts — and that much of the story was true.
“I … see.” He snapped something at Dean in Hindi, the words too fast for him to catch.
“He just asked you, more or less, if you were giving away the store,” another new voice with a soft lilt to it said in Dean’s ear. A number of NSA linguists would be standing by, eavesdropping on Dean’s conversations and translating when necessary.
“No, sir,” Dean replied in Hindi. “The negotiations are going surprisingly well.” His crash course in Hindi had included the memorization of twenty-five useful phrases, everything from “I will need to discuss that with my superiors” to “Can you direct me to the men’s room?”
Narayanan barked something else.
“He just asked you where you’re from,” the linguist told him. “He says you have an unusual accent.”
Big surprise there. “I was born in Himachal Pradesh. My parents spoke Punjabi at home.”
Again the group captain seemed to relax very slightly. If he had to, Dean could spit back some memorized Punjabi as well, but Narayanan didn’t seem interested in pursuing the matter.
“We have had reports, Wing Commander, of terrorist agents covertly on the base, possibly in disguise,” Narayanan said in English. “The FSB warned us of an arms deal brokered here involving, shall we say, unconventional munitions. What have you heard of this?”
