Straits of Power

disguised in Bedouin robes on camels, bribing smugglers and checkpoint guards, that sort of crap? Getting past separatist ethnic factions and drug lords and fundamentalist militias who’d slit a stranger’s throat as soon as look at him? That plus a stretch of Turkey that’s longer than from New York to Atlanta, and almost as heavily policed and defended, each way?”

“You have a better idea?”

“Yes, in fact I do. We’d get him via submarine.”

Oh boy, Jeffrey told himself. I knew this was coming.

“With all due respect, Admiral,” the general said, “are you crazy? Look at a map! The only way in or out of the Med is past Gibraltar or using the Suez Canal. You’d have to run a sub on the surface through the canal, in plain sight for a hundred miles. The Gibraltar choke point’s even worse! You might get a submarine in, but you’d never get it out again!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the CNO shot back. “We have some pretty stealthy submarines, and some aces up our sleeve. We didn’t start thinking about Peapod just this morning either, you know.”

“I can send in twelve guys! You’re talking about a two-billion-dollar submarine with a hundred and fifty people aboard!”

“Not necessarily one sub. Maybe two.” The CNO shrugged with theatrical nonchalance.

“That’s even worse! It’s double the risk, and the whole damn thing could still be a trap! I can do it with twelve low-profile expendable guys!”

“Enough,” the president said.

Someone knocked on the door, then entered. The staffer handed a message to the director of central intelligence. He studied it. “We have another communication from Peapod.”

“Enlighten us,” the national security advisor told him.

“The message is forty-five hours old, that’s how long it took to get here from there. It’s been deciphered already from the code words actually passed. Part was added by Peapod’s contact. She says Israelis tried to assassinate Peapod, right in the brothel, and killed both his German bodyguards, but he was able to barely escape.” The DCI let that sink in, then continued. “She was able to verify that he made it back to his consulate safely, then she used her Ukrainian passport to catch the next plane home to Odessa.” He turned to the CNO. “I think you should see this first.” The CNO read the message silently, then it passed along the table to Hodgkiss, then Wilson, then Jeffrey. The army generals and FBI director were annoyed by being kept waiting.

When Wilson handed the message to Jeffrey, the CNO said, “You better read the part from Peapod aloud, Captain.”

Jeffrey saw that every eye in the room was on him. He read the message to himself first. He felt like he was suffocating, and elated, at the same time.

He cleared his throat, then had to clear it again.

“ ‘Captain Fuller: I, Klaus Mohr, sender of Beck’s reports, am Zeno. I own the key to halting Plan Pandora. There is very little time left. Only you can get me out.’ ” Jeffrey had to clear his throat a third time. “ ‘Endless darkness if we fail.’ ”

The FBI director sputtered; he was brimming with piss and vinegar now. “What does some computer geek know about defector extraction? The fact that Peapod’s asking for Challenger specifically only makes it look more like a trap!”

The FBI director keeps pounding on that. He’s so fixated he missed the vital fresh clue, that Peapod mentioned Pandora and Zeno. Jeffrey was disturbed that someone at so high a level could commit such a glaring oversight. Well, it sure wouldn’t be the first time a ranking official screwed the pooch.

“It could very well be a trap,” the president said, “nested within a much bigger, less visible trap. I’m sure Peapod’s message was worded by design. ‘Pandora.’ ‘Zeno.’ ” The president spat out the code words. “They’re attention getters, teasers, hooks. The fate of Israel, our Middle East oil, and our entire grand strategy to liberate Europe, even atomic warfare on land and the lives of maybe ten million people, hinge on whatever the Germans are up to.” The president became grim. “It might not stop at the first ten million, either. Every country on the planet with A-bombs or H-bombs is already balanced too close to the edge, especially pro-Axis Russia. The wrong sort of initial spark to this tinderbox, with so many nations then getting more panicked or confused by the second, and things could escalate irrationally, spread wildly out of control. We could all get sucked into a black hole of thermonuclear annihilation, where everybody rushes to push the button before someone else does. Zeno’s reference to ‘endless darkness’ might mean exactly this, a nuclear winter…. And the Axis are ruthless enough to try to use the mere threat of that happening, embodied in the potential for a first new mushroom cloud erupting near the Nile or in Germany to ignite the global tinderbox, to force an armistice where we cede them all of Europe and Africa.” The president grew bitter. “This Israel-to-Berlin atomic trip wire, instead of a deterrent by the Israelis, becomes a lever with which the Axis propagandist bastards want to break the American public’s will to resist by inflicting sheer terror.”

The national security advisor gave her assessment, coldly and tersely. “The Axis aren’t the types to blink first in that sort of all-or-nothing quick-draw showdown, which means in the worst case, we could be forced to accommodate them fast or be incinerated slightly less fast. Either way, we lose the war.”

A collective shudder went through the group. No one spoke.

Jeffrey had been feeling a conceptual insight sneak up on him during the past few minutes, as he struggled to mentally integrate everything he’d heard and learned; now the intuitive leap burst fully formed, like a tsunami, inside his brain.

I suspect how the Germans intend the brinkmanship to work. It’s the ultimate act of can’t-lose aggression, if everything goes just right for them…. If something goes wrong at their end, it is wholesale Armageddon.

The bleak mood in the room had reached a crisis point. Jeffrey began to wonder if his well-honed ability to think on his feet during combat, further primed that very morning, let him form a conjecture that his superiors, all desk jockeys, just couldn’t see. He opened his mouth, and Hodgkiss frowned at him instantly, but the national security advisor gestured for him to continue.

“Ma’am, the point is, the Germans are not insane. They wouldn’t attack through Egypt and Israel unless Berlin really believed they had a way to keep their homeland, the sacred German fatherland, safe. Suppose that Zeno is a great computer genius after all, and he did make some kind of breakthrough. And I mean a really huge breakthrough, maybe with some strange new logic algorithm, or hardware a decade ahead of its time, I don’t know. Then Plan Pandora could be to somehow neutralize Israel’s ability to blow their bombs in Germany, at just the proper moment for the Afrika Korps to assault to the east. Peapod mentioning Zeno and Pandora by name in this message from the brothel might be his way of establishing bona fides to us. And if he is for real, he might be so appalled by what he knows and what he created that that’s the reason he wants to defect, to help stop Pandora.”

Everyone stared at Jeffrey, then turned to the president. Once voiced like this, it all fit too well for even the FBI director to object. The president looked up at the ceiling again, considering things very carefully. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, an exhalation that seemed to Jeffrey to be driven out of the man by the weight of the world.

At last the president nodded decisively. “There’s no way in hell we buckle under to Axis intimidation or trickery without first putting up a damned good fight. We take the risk and take Mohr at his word…. Much as I’ve always thought some interservice rivalry is a healthy thing, we can’t have separate teams competing and tripping over each other on this…. General, sorry, your Delta guys have to sit this one out.” The president glanced at Jeffrey and winked, then turned to the CNO. “Admiral, activate Undersea Task Group 47.2 immediately. For now, we’re in the body-snatching business, and Zeno is our prize.”

Chapter 4