“His outlook is limited to tactical matters, yes. On tactical matters he is quite useful, however. His assistance will be crucial to that phase of the operation.”
“Fromm is working out well.”
“As I thought he would. It really is a pity that he will not see it to fruition. The same with the machinists?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Qati frowned. Not a man who blanched at the sight of blood, neither was he one to kill unnecessarily. He'd had to kill people for reasons of security before, though never this many. It was almost becoming a habit. But, he asked himself, why worry about a few when you plan to kill so many more?
“Have you planned for the consequences of failure or discovery?” Bock asked.
“Yes, I have,” Qati replied with a sly smile, followed by an explanation.
“That is ingenious. Good to plan for every contingency.”
“I thought you'd like it.”
21
CONNECTIVITY
It took two weeks, but something finally came back. A KGB officer in the employ of CIA nosed around and heard something: there might be an ongoing operation about nuclear weapons in Germany. Something being run out of Moscow Center. Golovko himself was overseeing things. People working in KGB Station Berlin were cut out of it. End of report.
“Well?” Ryan asked Goodley. “What do you think?”
“It fits the SPINNAKER report. If the story about a flukey inventory of tactical nukes is correct, it certainly makes sense that it would have something to do with the pull-backs of their forward-deployed forces. Things get lost in transit all the time. I lost two boxes of books when I moved down here myself.”
“I'd like to think that people take closer care of nuclear weapons than that,” Ryan said dryly, noting that Goodley still had a hell of a lot to learn. “What else?”
“I've been looking for data to counter the report. The Soviet reason for their inability to deactivate the SS-18s on schedule is that the factory they built for the purpose is inadequate. Our on-site inspectors can't decide if it's true or not — engineering question. I find it hard to believe that if the Russians actually built the thing — and, hell, they've been building SS-18s for quite a while, haven't they? — they should be able to design a place to dismantle them safely. They say the problem is in the fueling systems, and the wording of the treaty documents. The -18 uses storable liquids and has a pressurized body — that is, the missile structure depends on pressurization to remain rigid. They can defuel in the silos, but then they can't extract the birds without damaging them, and the treaty requires that they be taken intact to the disposal facility. But the disposal facility isn't designed right for defueling, they say. Something about a design flaw and possible environmental contamination. The storable liquids are nasty, they say, and you have to take all sorts of precautions to keep from poisoning people, and the facility is only three kilometers from a city, etc., etc.” Goodley paused. “The explanation is plausible, but you have to wonder how people could have screwed up so badly.”
“Structural problem,” Jack said. “They have trouble placing facilities out in the boonies for the simple reason that there few people have cars, and getting people from their homes to their place of work is more complicated there than here. It's subtle stuff like that that drives us crazy trying to figure the Russians out.”
“On the other hand, they can point to a basic mistake like that and try to explain all kinds of things away.”
“Very good, Ben,” Jack observed. “Now you're thinking like a real spook.”
“This is a crazy place to work.”
“Storable liquids are nasty, by the way. Corrosive, reactive, toxic. Remember all the problems we had with the Titan-II missiles?”
“No,” Goodley admitted.
“Maintenance of the things is a bastard. You have to take all sorts of precautions, despite which you routinely get leaks. The leaks corrode things, injure the maintenance people…”
“Have we exchanged positions on this?” Ben asked lightly.
Ryan smiled, eyes closed. “I'm not sure.”
“We're supposed to have better data than this. We're supposed to be able to find things out.”
“Yeah, I thought that way once myself. People expect us to know everything there is about every rock, puddle, and personality in the whole world.” His eyes opened. “We don't. Never have. Never will. Disappointing, isn't it? The all-pervasive CIA. We have a fairly important question here, and all we have are probabilities, not certainties. How is the President supposed to make a decision if we can't give him facts instead of possibly learned opinions? I've said it before — in writing, even. What we provide people with, most of the time, is official guesses. You know, it's embarrassing to have to send something like this out.” Jack's eyes fell on the Directorate of Intelligence report. Their teams of Russian experts had chewed on SPINNAKER for a week and decided that it was probably true, but could represent a misunderstanding.
Jack's eyes closed again, and he wished his headache would go away. “That's our structural problem. We look at various probabilities. If you give people a firm opinion, you run the risk of being wrong. Guess what? People remember when you're wrong a lot more often than when you're right. So the tendency is to include all the possibilities. It's intellectually honest, even. Hell of a good dodge. Problem is, it doesn't give people what they think they need. On the user end, people as often as not need probabilities rather than certainties, but they don't always know that. It can drive you crazy, Ben. The outside bureaucracies ask for things we often as not cannot deliver, and our inside bureaucracy doesn't like sticking its neck out on the line any more than anyone else. Welcome to the real world of intelligence.”
“I never figured you for a cynic.”
“I'm not a cynic. I'm a realist. Some things we know. Some things we don't. The people here are not robots. They're just people looking for answers and finding more questions instead. We have a lot of good people in this building, but bureaucracy mutes individual voices, and facts are discovered more often by individuals than committees.” There was a knock on the door. “Come in.”
“Dr. Ryan, your secretary isn't—”
“She's having a late lunch.”
“I have something for you, sir.” The man handed the envelope over. Ryan signed for it and dismissed the messenger.
“Good old All Nippon Airlines,” Ryan said after opening the envelope. It was another NIITAKA report. He snapped upright in his chair. “Holy shit!”
“Problem?” Goodley asked.
“You're not cleared for this.”
“What seems to be the problem?” Narmonov asked.
Golovko was in the uncomfortable position of having to announce a major success with unpleasant consequences. “President, we have for some time been working on a project to penetrate American cipher systems. We've had some successes, particularly with their diplomatic systems. This is a message that was sent to several of their embassies. We've recovered all of it.”
“And?”
“Who sent this out?”
“Look, Jack,” Cabot said, “Liz Elliot took the last SPINNAKER seriously, and she wants State's opinion.”
“Well, that's just great. What we've learned from it is that KGB has penetrated our diplomatic ciphers. NIITAKA read the same cable that our ambassador got. So now Narmonov knows what we're worried about.”
“The White House will say that it's not all that bad. Does it really hurt that he knows what our concerns are?” the Director asked.
“The short version is — yes, it does. Sir, you realize that I didn't know about this cable, and how do I read it? I get the text from a KGB officer in Tokyo. Jesus Christ, did we send this inquiry out to Upper Volta, too?”
