“Osprey,” Dean said. He looked at Evans. “Braslov, do you think?”
“It’s possible.”
“So who is Kotenko speaking with?”
For answer, Carolyn typed at her keyboard again, bringing up a file on her screen. A photograph showed a ruggedly good-looking man, blue-eyed, blond-haired. Dean could just make out a piece of a tattoo on his chest.
“Another Russian mafioso?” he asked.
“His name,” Carolyn told him, “is Feodor Golytsin. Formerly Soviet Navy-specifically their submarine services. He was court-martialed in 1986 for speaking out against Soviet military policies in Afghanistan. He spent four years in a gulag, where, yes, we believe he made connections with the Organizatsiya. However, in 1995 he took a job with Gazprom.”
“Gazprom?” Dean asked. “That’s natural gas?”
“Gazprom,” Carolyn told him, “is the largest natural gas company in Russia… and by some measures the third- largest corporation in the world. With its oil-producing subsidiary Gazprom Neft, it’s also the third-largest producer of petroleum in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Iran. It started off under the Soviets as a state-owned subsidiary, of course, but has been operating as an independent corporation since the mid-nineties. Today, a dozen Eastern European nations all depend on Gazprom for natural gas. The European Union gets twenty-five percent of its natural gas from them.”
“But there are concerns that the Russian Mafiya is trying to take over the Russian petroleum industry,” Dean said. “So if what you say is true, that means Gazprom.”
“There’ve been a number of corruption scandals involving Gazprom in the past. Our Russian desk believes that Golytsin is part of what we think of as a Mafiya beachhead within the corporation.”
“An ex-submariner,” Dean mused. “That suggests some interesting possibilities.”
Arctic oil exploration would almost certainly require submarines.
He was beginning to think he knew where Braslov had gone out of Yakutsk.
Executive Cafe K Street NW, Washington, D.C. 1225 hours EDT
It was two days after his unsatisfactory interview with Wehrum.
Rubens sat at a small table set up outside of a popular Washington sidewalk cafe, waiting for Barbara. She was late. She’d promised to meet him for lunch at noon, but so far only strangers had passed on the sidewalk or on the other side of the street, through McPherson Square.
He enjoyed watching people, and the table gave him the perfect vantage point. A few had been quite exotic- including one silver-goateed individual with a black and red cape streaming from his shoulders, plus any number of people in saris, turbans, caftans, or other foreign dress. Washington was truly
The White House was an easy six blocks away, down Vermont Avenue and past Lafayette Square. He wondered what was keeping her… then decided the question was nonsense. He knew what Barbara’s schedule was like these days. And he expected that the e-mail he’d sent her yesterday afternoon had stirred things up a bit there.
There she was, cutting across McPherson Square and breaking into a near jog across K Street, as fast as her platform heels would permit her. Barbara Stahl was an attractive woman in her forties, with PhDs in both international studies and economics. She was the senior Russian specialist currently serving on the National Security Council.
He stood up as she neared the table. “Hello, Barbara.”
“Hi, Bill. Sorry I’m late.”
“Not at all. Waiter!”
“Get for yourself, not me. I have to get right back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Coffee, perhaps?”
“Thank you.” She took a seat. “Things are not so quietly going nuts back there. Full-blown crisis mode. But I did need to see you.”
He sat down opposite her. The waiter came up and Rubens ordered coffee for the two of them. “Your e sounded stressed.”
“Mm. And your e-mail has stirred up a hornet’s nest.”
“I was afraid it might.”
“I’m not on the eyes list for Powerhouse intercepts,” she told him. “Why the hell did you do it? Damn it, Bill, are you
“It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad? Twenty years in federal prison and up to half a million dollars in fines? You don’t call that bad?”
“As Deputy Director of the NSA, I have some leeway,” he told her. “Not a lot, but some.”
“Are you saying you make the rules, so you can break them?”
“No. But I reviewed your security clearances and made sure you were cleared for Powerhouse-level documents before I sent that e.”
“If Dr. Bing finds out, she could have those clearances revoked. And God only knows what they’ll do to
“Barbara, overclassification of sensitive material is as dangerous in this job as underclassifying it, maybe more so. The whole point of intelligence is making sure the people who need to see something actually do see it. You won’t get in trouble with your boss over your level of security; trust me on this. As for me, well, they can play those games with me later. Right now, it is important,
“The pickle” was D.C. insider-speak for the President’s Intelligence Checklist, a daily ten-page newsletter prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence for the President on overnight developments of five or six items of immediate presidential concern. CIA headquarters at Langley was sometimes called “the pickle factory” for that reason.
“You’re just pissed that you don’t have POTUS access through George Haddad anymore.”
That hurt. He frowned, sitting back.
“I’m sorry, Bill,” she said, seeing his expression. “I shouldn’t have said that. But you’ve got to know that every time you try working through the back doors in this city, you’re stepping on toes.
“And sometimes working through back doors and stepping on toes is the only way to get anything done. Look… did you do as I asked?”
“Yes. I was in on the briefing on the Arctic situation this morning, and I brought up the intercepts. I have to tell you, though, both Bing and Collins were there, and they were
“I can imagine.”
Presidential briefings tended to be carefully scripted affairs, with no digressions from the planned agenda. Rubens had asked Barbara to interject a new issue into the session, bringing up the Powerhouse intercepts as hot new intel just received from the NSA… which was true, as far as it went. But to bring up something not already on the agreed upon list of topics was a serious breach of protocol.
“I didn’t say where the message had come from. I just said ‘a highly placed intelligence source.’”
“They’ll guess. It’s okay. I was expecting that. Did it get
“No. Not yet, anyway, though Dr. Bing did tell me she wants to have a chat with me.” She grimaced. “First, though… the President wants to hear those intercepts for himself.”
“Good.”
“This afternoon.”
Rubens’ eyebrows went up at that. “That was fast.”
“Do you have them?”
