Tidal Rip

“Admiral,” a short and rotund balding man said. He also looked rather tired, but very focused.

“Director.” The man was the director of central intelligence — the DCI, the head of the CIA. Ilse knew he had a civilian background, in academia and high-power Washington think tanks. He wore a dark gray business suit, which seemed out of place amid the other people’s uniforms. But the national security adviser seemed not the least bit out of place; she carried herself as if she still bore four general’s stars on each shoulder.

Ilse noticed the director’s attache case was handcuffed to his wrist.

Hodgkiss noticed too. “This must be important if you came down here as the bagman, sir.”

“Let’s sit,” the national security adviser suggested. Hodgkiss’s aide left the room, locking the door shut behind him. Everyone else sat down without formalities; these senior people had bonded closely since the start of the war. Any politics or rivalry, Ilse noticed, was either nonexistent during the present national crisis or — as was more likely — it was suppressed to a level so subtle that it didn’t show to someone as junior as her. She began to wonder why she’d even been invited.

The national security adviser seemed to read her mind. “I wanted you here as a stand-in for Captain Fuller.”

“Yes, ma’am.” That again.

“So what’s going on?” Hodgkiss said. His tone put it somewhere between a question and an order.

The national security adviser sighed. She turned to the DCI. “Harry, you do the talking.” The retired general herself was known as a woman of few words, at least when not ensconced in high-level meetings with the president — or while playing with her grandchildren.

The DCI cleared his throat. “The president told us to fly here instead of teleconferencing because he’s very worried about enemy signals intelligence, and possible agents or moles in the White House or Pentagon. That brazen attack in the Capital has everyone stirred up about security.”

“Which I’m sure was part of the Axis intent,” Hodgkiss said rather sourly. “Gets us wasting time on mole hunts. Makes us scared to even use the phone.”

“Yup. And with good reason.” The DCI unlocked and opened his briefcase. “Most of you know that lately we’ve been increasingly concerned about Axis activity in South America.”

Hodgkiss and the others nodded, but this was new to Ilse.

“Pieces of the puzzle seem to be falling together,” the DCI went on, “and the picture looks ugly.”

“Brazil and Argentina,” Hodgkiss stated.

“The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency have been working together on this one. That’s giving us a good set of electronic reconnaissance assets and human intell sources too. In plainer language, satellites in space and spies and informers on the ground. We learned the hard way, ten or twelve years back, that we can’t get by with one and not the other.”

“Preamble heard and concurred with,” Hodgkiss said. He seemed a bit impatient for the DCI to get to the point. In the official Washington hierarchy, both the DCI and the national security adviser outranked the commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet — by several levels both inside and outside the military. But Hodgkiss was the battlefield commander, on the spot in more ways than one, and he knew it.

The DCI continued. “The recent incursion by Navy SEALs into northern Brazil gives us hard proof of strong Axis assistance to local insurgents in that area. Our conclusion is that the Axis presence there is a diversion, meant to draw Brazilian forces away from their front with Argentina way down on the other side of the country. And from what we see on roads and airfields, the diversion is succeeding all too well.”

“Have you told Brazil that?” Hodgkiss asked.

“Only in the vaguest terms,” the national security adviser broke in, “through our ambassador in Brasilia. Mention the SEALs and we admit we violated sovereign soil. Do that and we could end up in a three-way fight. Us against Brazil, Brazil against Argentina, and us against the Axis while the Axis aids Argentina.”

Hodgkiss grunted. “Go on.”

“We know a few things for sure.” The DCI ticked them off on his fingers. “A reactionary political faction in Argentina would dearly love to topple the moderate regime now holding elected office, and seize total power for themselves. The reactionaries include some dinosaurs and fossils in high places, who still bear a grudge against the UK for the Falklands business thirty years ago, and don’t exactly admire the U.S. either. And although the old Nazi refugees are dead of old age by now, their children in certain cases hold key financial and industrial posts.”

“Jesus,” Hodgkiss said under his breath.

“Also, Argentina and then Brazil recently mobilized all their reserves. This is a very serious step. Moving active-duty forces toward the short shared border was bad enough, but that could be dismissed as posturing, brinkmanship, as dangerous as such things are. Full-scale mobilization is not a good sign. It cripples both countries’ already hobbling civilian economies, further destabilizing social conditions and adding to heightened political discontent. It makes war between Brazil and Argentina almost inevitable.”

“Which is the last thing we need right now,” Hodgkiss said.

“It all started with the disaster in the Indian Ocean last month,” the national security adviser said. “Then the South Pacific atrocity, then Japan announcing that they’re a nuclear power…”

The DCI nodded. “War hysteria gets contagious and feeds on itself, like Europe in 1914. We’re sure Axis agents are behind the trouble inside Argentina, and also behind the trouble between Argentina and Brazil. Falsified provocations by paid agitators, shootings back and forth by unidentified gunmen who vanish, jingoist headlines in newspapers controlled by the pro-Axis groups, inflammatory speeches over TV and radio stations they own. And bombings, and orchestrated street riots. Some of this comes right out of Mein Kampf…. The Argentine president barely controls his own military, and what little control he has won’t last. His party, the Populist Peronist Front, is tottering…. I know, that lingo makes him sound like some kind of latter-day Communist Fascist all rolled into one, but the language and the history involved are hard to convey succinctly. Basically he’s middle of the road, and tries to stand up for the poor people. The opposition, who won some votes under their so- called Christian Democrat banner, are in danger of starting an all-out civil war if they have to. They’re anything but Christian in their values, and anything but democratic in their goals. And the Germans and Boers are secretly egging them on.”

“What’s the status of Brazil’s nuclear-weapons program?” Hodgkiss asked.

“I was just coming to that,” the DCI said. “And the answer is, we just don’t know. They might, repeat might, have several weaponized devices…. But the president of Brazil is apretty good guy. His Centrist-Pluralist Party is in solid control, and he definitely is the Brazilian military’s commander in chief in every positive sense of the phrase. I don’t see him being first to use atomic weapons, even if things went badly in a conventional war.”

“And Argentina?”

“That’s why we’re having this meeting,” the national security adviser said. “Harry?”

The DCI took over again. He removed a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “These are transcripts of several intercepted telephone conversations. Translated into English by the best linguists we’ve got on the Argentina desk.”

“How’d you get these?” Hodgkiss asked as he took the papers.

“The usual. Satellite eavesdropping, picking up the top lobes off microwave towers.”

Ilse understood what he meant. Every antenna, no matter how directionally focused its main beam might be, always leaked some energy to the sides — side lobes — and also straight up in the air: the top lobe. These weak lobes could be detected, amplified by millions or even billions of times, decrypted if necessary, and listened in on. Nuclear submarines lurking offshore, at periscope depth, with an antenna mast raised, were often used to catch these invaluable side lobes. Spy satellites could do impressive things with the top lobes.

Hodgkiss whistled as he read. “You’d think that with this kind of dynamite, they’d be more careful.”

The DCI nodded. “I don’t believe they realize quite how powerful our capabilities are. A group of prowar ringleaders in Buenos Aires needed to talk to some of the old-guard elite hanging out at a ranch on the pampas. We believe this rich guy’s cattle ranch is serving as a headquarters or safe house for the Axis sympathizers. They did use scramblers, but we were able to undo the scrambler routines.”

“And before you ask,” the national security adviser interjected, “the option of shooting a Tomahawk down their throat has been ruled out. The pro-Axis faction is too big, too well dispersed, too mobile. That sort of direct action would just give them martyrs, not to mention amount to an act of war, which we can ill afford under present