Arctic Gold

“Best guess on range and bearing, Chief.”

“Strongest registration was starboard side fairwater, sir. Range…” Mayhew screwed up his face, as though unwilling to go out on too slender a limb. “Not close, like right alongside close. Maybe one mile. Maybe two.”

“Good enough.” Grenville picked up an intercom mike. “Control Room, Captain. Helm, come right nine-zero degrees. Ahead slow.”

“Helm right nine-zero degrees, ahead slow, aye, aye,” was the response.

The Ohio was turning directly toward the Russian boat, slowly and quietly. The only question was whether the Russians had spotted them yet.

GK-1 Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1134 hours, GMT-12

Golytsin and the Russian marine led Dean down the long passageway, up a stairway, and directed him at last into a small and nondescript office. It might, Dean thought, have been Golytsin’s office while he was aboard the submerged GK-1 platform, but it could as easily have been a workplace for any administrator who needed one. There was a desk and two chairs, a computer and a telephone, but nothing in the way of photographs or decorations, books or paperwork, no human touch.

The marine stayed outside as Golytsin closed the door and gestured at one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”

“Is this where the torture starts?” Dean asked.

Golytsin shrugged, then dropped into the chair behind the desk and clattered an entry into the computer keyboard. “If you like.”

Dean was measuring the man. Golytsin was a little older than him, he thought-probably in his late fifties or early sixties. He had the look of a senior corporate executive.

He also looked lean and fit. If he spent much of his time behind a desk, he also must work out a lot, or get out into the country to work off the fat. Dean thought he could probably take Golytsin in hand-to-hand, but that assumption was by no means assured.

Besides, he still had the Makarov, and Dean’s chair was a good five feet from the desk. And there was the marine outside.

Golytsin completed the entry, then turned his full attention to Dean. “To tell you the truth, however, I dislike the idea of torture. I’m sure there are things we could do to you that would in quite short order have you telling us everything we want to know… or everything you think we want to know, anything at all to stop the pain. And yet, what would be the point? At the end, we still wouldn’t know whether you’d told us the truth or not. We would, in fact, have to start all over, at the beginning, and go through the whole process again. And again. And yet again. And then again, but this time with drugs, questioning and cross- questioning each of your answers. And then do it again with you wired to a polygraph.

“And we keep doing it all again until we can tell from changes in your responses at varying levels of stress whether you are, in fact, telling the truth… or making up stories, what you think we want to hear, simply in order to make us stop. That is the trouble with torture, you know. It takes so very long to arrive at the truth.”

“That, and the fact that you can never be sure you’ve actually gotten there,” Dean agreed. “Have you broken the subject? Or is he a very talented actor? Or might he truly believe what he’s telling you… but what he believes is a lie because someone lied to him?”

“Exactly! So… you can see my dilemma. I very much want to know about you, Mr. Dean. Who you work for. Why you’ve come here. What you know about this operation. What your employers know. What your employers might plan to do about us in the future. I could torture you until you told me… but I’d never be sure I was getting accurate information.”

“I appreciate your predicament.”

In fact, Dean was wondering where this line of conversation was leading. Golytsin evidently had tried threats of torture or sexual abuse to get information from Kathy. Why was he using such a markedly different approach with him?

“I tend to believe, personally, that torture is counterproductive.” Golytsin hesitated, then added, “Of course, not everyone shares this belief, you understand. And not everyone cares that it’s counterproductive. There are people who enjoy torturing subjects simply because… because they very much like doing it. My colleague, Sergei Braslov, for instance…”

Then it clicked for Dean. Of course! Golytsin was trying different psychological approaches, probing for weakness. With Kathy, he’d seen a woman, vulnerable, alone, a prisoner on a ship full of hostile male strangers… and he’d threatened her with rape, or with a cold and hideously lonely death exposed on the ice cap, with no one to help. With Dean, Golytsin was trying to engage him in an almost friendly, chatty relationship-not comrades-at-arms but certainly with the feeling that they all were in this together… with just a hint that the other guy might be a psychopathic monster capable of anything. It was, in fact, a variant of the old good-cop/bad-cop ploy, where a prisoner would willingly confide in the “nice” interrogator in order to avoid the mean one.

Okay. Dean could play this game.

In fact, Dean thought, he had an advantage over Golytsin. The Russian knew nothing about Dean whatsoever, but Dean already knew some of Golytsin’s background. He’d been a submarine skipper. That meant he was smart… and he knew psychology. He was also supremely loyal-back in the bad old Soviet days, Russian sub drivers were selected almost exclusively on that one factor alone. However, he’d been outspoken enough in his opposition to the war in Afghanistan that he’d been imprisoned. That suggested both a willingness to think for himself and the possibility that his loyalty might lie to his country, rather than to his government.

Feodor Golytsin, Dean thought, was a true patriot, a lover of Mother Russia willing to risk arrest and prison in her defense.

A patriot, but one working for the Organizatsiya, a criminal organization that had already done incalculable harm to post-Soviet Russia.

And at that moment, Dean saw Golytsin’s tragic flaw.

“Ah, yes,” Dean said, nodding. “Braslov. We have quite a file on him, you know.”

Dean saw the flicker of interest in Golytsin’s eyes. “File. And you work for?…”

“The Agency, of course.” Carefully, he didn’t specify which agency.

“Really? Some of my… superiors are of the opinion that the American NSA has been rather interested in their activities recently.”

Dean waved a hand carelessly, as if dismissing the thought. “Don’t be ridiculous. The NSA are mathematicians, technicians, and electronic eavesdroppers. They tap telephones. They don’t even have field agents, for God’s sake!”

“No. No, that’s what I always thought.” Golytsin was looking at him strangely, as though wondering if Dean was being honest and aboveboard… or putting on an act. He would be suspicious if Dean seemed too cooperative. “So, Mr. Dean. You claim to be a CIA agent?”

Dean spotted what was either a bit of carelessness… or a trap. “CIA agents are foreign locals recruited to work for us, one way or another. The people working out of Langley, or running local agents in other countries, are called case officers.”

“Quite so. Quite so.”

“And I gather you’re with Gazprom,” Dean said, taking the initiative. “You play with the big boys.”

“Actually, Mr. Dean, I believe that I’m the one conducting this… interview.”

“Ah. And would the information you’re looking for be for you? For the Gazprom Board of Directors? Or…” Dean leaned forward in a properly conspiratorial manner. “Or is it for the Organizatsiya?”

Golytsin looked startled, then uncomfortable. “What do you know about them?”

Dean shrugged. “Enough. I know Sergei Braslov works for them. As I said, we have quite a file on him. And we know he works for Grigor Kotenko, and Tambov. Kotenko would be the guy pulling the strings on this operation.”

“And why would the American CIA be interested in them? What happens inside Russia has nothing to do with American foreign interests.”

“Come, now, Admiral,” Dean said. He paused. “It was Admiral, was it not?”

Golytsin grimaced. “Actually, I was deprived of that rank.”