they need.”
Jorgensen nodded, and Burgess turned to one of the other Navy officers against the wall and began conferring.
Jack said, “This is not the endgame. This battalion taking the shoal is just one tiny step. We protect Taiwan, we reach out to our friends in the SCS, and we stress to China that we aren’t going to take anything lying down. I want information about their intentions and their capabilities.”
The men and women in the Situation Room conference room had their instructions. It was going to be a long day.
Valentin Kovalenko liked Brussels in the fall. He’d spent a little time here when working for the SVR, and he found it beautiful and cosmopolitan in a way London could not quite reach and Moscow could not even imagine.
When Center ordered him to Brussels he’d been pleased, but the reality of this operation had kept him from enjoying the city.
Right now he sat in the back of a hot van full of crypto gear, looking out the rear window, watching well- heeled lunchtime patrons enter and exit an expensive Italian eatery.
He tried to stay on mission, but he could not help but reflect back to a time in the not-too-distant past when he would have been inside the restaurant, enjoying a dish of lasagna with a glass of Chianti, and he would have made some other bastard sit in the van.
Kovalenko had never been much of a drinker. His father, like many men of his generation, was a world-class consumer of vodka, but Valentin preferred a glass of fine wine with dinner or an occasional aperitif or digestif. But since his experience in the Moscow prison and the pressure of working for his shadowy employer, he’d picked up the habit of having a few beers in the refrigerator at all times or a bottle of red that he tipped each evening to help him sleep.
It did not affect his work, he reasoned, and it helped keep his nerves settled.
Valentin looked over at his partner today, a sixtyish German technical assistant named Max who had not said one word all morning that was not mission-critical. Earlier in the week, when they met in a parking lot at the Brussels-Midi train station, Kovalenko had tried to draw Max into a conversation about their mutual boss, Center. But Max would not play. He just held up a hand and said he’d need several hours to test the equipment and their safe house would need to have a garage with ample electrical outlets.
The Russian sensed the mistrust in the German, as if Max thought Valentin somehow would report whatever he said back to Center.
Valentin assumed Center’s entire enterprise maintained organizational security on the principle of mutual distrust.
Much like Valentin’s old employer, the SVR.
Right now Valentin could smell the garlic wafting out of the entrance of the Stella d’Italia, and it made his stomach rumble.
He did his best to push it out of his mind, but he hoped like hell his target would finish soon and head back to his office.
As if on cue, just then an impeccably dressed man in a blue pinstripe suit and cherry wingtips stepped out through the front doors, shook hands with two other men who’d come out with him, and then began heading to the south.
Valentin said, “That’s him. He’s heading back on foot. Let’s do it now.”
“I am ready,” confirmed Max with his typical brevity.
Kovalenko hurriedly crawled past Max, through the van and toward the driver’s seat; around him electronics buzzed and hummed and warmed the still air. He had to push himself all the way against the wall for part of the crawl, as a metal pole jutted up into the ceiling of the van. The pole contained wiring that attached to a small antenna that extended out over the roof, and could be directed by Max in any direction.
Valentin made his way behind the wheel and began following his target at a distance down Avenue Dailly, turning slowly behind him as he made a left on Chausee de Louvain.
The man, Kovalenko knew, was the acting assistant secretary for public diplomacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. He was Canadian, in his mid-fifties, and he was in no way, shape, or form a hard target.
Though he worked for NATO, he possessed no military bearing. He was a diplomat, a suit, a political hire.
And though Valentin had not been informed of this by Center, the assistant secretary was about to be Center’s access into NATO’s secure computer network.
Kovalenko did not understand the technology humming and buzzing in the van behind him; he had Max for that. But he did know that the tiny roof antenna could pinpoint and then receive leaking radio signals off a mobile phone or, more specifically, the chip in the mobile phone that performs the encryption calculations that make the device secure. By taking these leaked signals, received initially as a series of peaks and valleys in the radio waves and then converted by the computer in the van into the 1’s and 0’s that make up any electronic signal, the phone’s encryption key could be deciphered.
As they followed the assistant secretary, Kovalenko was happy to see the man pull his phone from his jacket pocket and make a call.
“Max. He’s on.”
As Kovalenko drove, he listened to Max flip switches and type on his keyboard. “How long?” he called back.
“Not long.”
The Russian was careful to stay close enough to the target for the antenna to pick up the signal and far enough back to where any odd glance over the shoulder would not alert his target to the presence of an ominous- looking beige van rolling slowly at his five-o’clock position.
The assistant secretary ended his call and put his phone back in his pocket.
“Did you get it?”
“Yes.”
Valentin turned to the right at the next intersection and left the neighborhood behind.
They parked in a lot by the train station and Kovalenko climbed into the back to watch the technician at work.
The smart phone, Kovalenko knew, used a common cryptographic algorithm called RSA. It was good, but it wasn’t new, and it was easily breakable with the tools at the technician’s disposal.
Once the German had the key, the software told him that it could now spoof the device. With a few clicks, he opened the website for NATO’s secure Brussels command network, and then sent the encryption information taken from the Public Diplomacy Department man.
He then impersonated the smart phone with his software and logged on to the NATO Communication and Information Systems Services Agency’s secure network.
It was the responsibility of Max and Valentin to get into the network, just to test the access. They would do no more, other than return to the safe house and e-mail the encryption information for the diplomat’s smart phone to Center. The German would leave immediately, but Valentin would take a day or two to break down the van and sanitize the safe house, and then he would get out of Brussels.
Easy work, but that was nothing new. Kovalenko’s job, he had determined over the past month, was little more than child’s play.
He would bide his time for now, but before much longer, Valentin Kovalenko had decided he would make a break. Leave Center and his organization behind.
He still had friends, he was certain of it, in the SVR. He would reach out to someone at an embassy somewhere in Europe, and they would help him out. He knew better than to go back to Russia. There the government could pick him up and “disappear him” with little trouble, but he’d reach out to an old friend or two working at a foreign posting, and he’d start laying the groundwork to allow for his return.
But this travel and this waiting would take money, and for that Kovalenko would continue to work for Center
