Straits of Power

envelopment.”

“Is the U.S. homeland under threat from the worm?”

“Not over intercontinental ranges. Quantum decoherence makes the entanglement deteriorate from too many collisions with external matter and energy. The error-correction packet needed gets impractically large…. Decoherence with range is why a fiber-optic tap is preferable to beaming at a radar dish, and why you can attack a nearby plane but not a satellite directly.”

“Are Axis systems protected?”

“Yes, as one of many standard periodic security updates. Remember, the worm manifests itself, it runs, like a normal program. The difference is how quantum teleportation gets it past firewalls and antivirus screening…. In fact, I recommend that you let me inject the patch into Challenger’s systems, since I’m not sure how safe you’d be under Israeli airspace otherwise.”

Parker sputtered, “You can’t possibly trust this guy. This is way over the top.”

“I’ll be the final judge of that. I’m in command of this ship.”

“I’ve already seen what happens when you’re in command.”

“How dare you?”

Parker backed down, and put a more conciliatory tone in his voice. “I dare because I need to get something across that you don’t seem to be willing to hear, Captain. What Mohr says is too pat. This talk about teleportation is beyond me. Even if it’s true, especially if it’s true, we definitely haven’t precluded that the Germans could be using us as their messenger boys. Also, it’s outside the plan and it violates orders.”

“You mean bringing him back to the U.S. for a long debrief?”

“Precisely. Let the National Security Agency get hold of his equipment and pick his brains and see what the hell he’s talking about. If what he claims holds up under studied scrutiny, and from the Allied perspective his intentions are benign, there’s plenty of time to warn Israel convincingly and then give them his gear with the patch.”

“But Mohr says the offensive opens Tuesday morning.”

“That’s another part that’s too pat. How do we know, except for his say-so? A standard part of any con is pressure to make the victim decide before common sense can kick in. To me, his talk of a moved-up timeline is a warning in itself.”

“Lieutenant, your opinion?”

“From the parts of the technical stuff that I can follow, sir, the hacker attack is plausible enough to be scary. If Herr Mohr is telling the truth, and we don’t help him, Israel will lose, big time, and the Allies will lose big too.”

Jeffrey turned to Mohr again. The German seemed annoyed by the fact that everyone had been talking about him as if he wasn’t there.

“Herr Mohr, lay out for me explicitly how Pandora is supposed to help Berlin with the atom bombs that Israel planted in Germany.”

“The worm will prevent Israel from getting the go codes to their agents within Germany to detonate the bombs. Also, the worm does not destroy data files. The Afrika Korps and German intelligence experts, with pretasked special-forces strike teams, expect to capture people, documents, and disk drives they can use to quickly identify the agents who control the bombs and also learn the location of each bomb. That’s how they preempt any potential dead-man switch in the Israeli ROEs.”

“Makes sense,” Jeffrey said. “It also neatly explains why they’d dare an offensive against Israel when Israel already holds a prepositioned deterrent in Germany.”

“No,” Parker insisted. “Mohr himself implied that the success of the quantum attack isn’t fully guaranteed. This scheme to find the bombs and catch their Mossad trigger agents before Germans see mushroom clouds on their soil is also much too iffy. No commander in his right mind would trust to luck like that…. Which only makes me more sure Mohr’s whole story is ridiculous.”

“Knowing the high command in Berlin the way I’ve come to know them,” Jeffrey said, “I think they’d take the risk of having some bombs go off on their soil if the odds are low enough and the rewards are high enough. From what Herr Mohr here says, this attack greatly lowers the odds of high cost inside Germany. And the Afrika Korps offensive, by succeeding, offers great rewards in terms of influencing Turkey and the Persian Gulf nations to turn Axis, with all their strategic geography, and their oil…. Besides which, if one or two bombs do go off, the Germans can blame it on Israel and gain sympathy from the Muslim states.”

“We both already covered that in Washington.”

“Yes. And the president decided it was worth the risk to send a task group to fetch Herr Mohr.”

“There was no talk then about us invading Israel.”

“We were not aware then that there was a need for us to invade Israel.”

“Then get in touch with Washington. Ask what we should do.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“My orders insist on radio and laser-buoy silence until we’re far outside the Med. To maintain total stealth we can’t transmit.”

“You’re contradicting yourself.”

“How?”

“You’re happy to obey one part of your orders, yet ignore another part of the same orders, and go entirely outside your orders in certain other very material respects.”

“As in…? ”

“Radio silence, but entering Israeli waters. And not only entering them, but invading them, taking a German with German equipment onto friendly turf without permission.”

“True.”

“You can’t do that.”

“It’s my job to know when to bend or disregard or even reformulate my orders.”

“I—”

“Look. If we did break stealth to transmit and thus gave away our existence and our position to the enemy while in hostile waters, and we didn’t then end up getting sunk like Ohio already did when she was detected, messaging the Pentagon or Norfolk wouldn’t accomplish much aside from me covering my ass, and maybe you covering your ass.”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Come on, use your head. The situation is so complex, nuanced, and ambiguous that we’d be going back and forth with senior people in the States till kingdom come, just to convey what the issues and uncertainties are. Think about how this whole conversation has already gone, just between the few of us face-to-face in this compartment. Anyone above us in Norfolk or Langley or Washington probably won’t have any more information than we do with which to decide. If they did have something relevant, they’d know we needed to know and we’d’ve heard something by passive ELF, and we haven’t. If anything, the higher-ups will have much less feel for the real-time dynamics of what’s happening now with Pandora. I’m the commander on the spot. I’m supposed to show initiative. Maintaining stealth is a matter of common sense, of self-preservation. Breaking stealth just to protect my backside could get us all killed — it’s absurd. The status of your backside is not pertinent to my decision.”

Parker turned beet red. “Then don’t break stealth. Just stick to the original plan. We have Mohr. Let’s go home.”

“I’m beginning to think that I need to change the original plan.”

“Christ.”

“Listen. We’ve gotten a lot of new information since we made contact with Herr Mohr, staggering information, because we did what the president himself decided we should do. The idea that Germany needs us to sneak this quantum worm into Israel seems unlikely. Herr Mohr himself says they have eleven attack teams on the way. I know for a fact that Kampfschwimmer are extremely good at their jobs. Lieutenant Estabo and I have personally seen, at bayonet range in recent months, that their training and equipment, their courage, and their battle skills are superb. You’ve never smelled a Kampfschwimmer’s