Death Wave

“With respect, Mr. Mullins,” Rubens replied carefully, “until now, there really was no useful way to evaluate Lebed’s claims. Of course the Russian government would deny the weapons’ existence.

“It’s important to remember that Mr. Lebed’s claims were corroborated by Alexei Yablokov, a scientist and former environmental advisor to Yeltsin, and by a former Soviet colonel and GRU operative named Stanislav Lunev. And sources within the Russian government did later admit that such devices — built around 105 mm nuclear artillery shells, each containing around fifteen kilograms of plutonium— were constructed for the KGB during the 1970s. It was Colonel Lunev, testifying before a congressional hearing on Russian espionage in January of 2000, who claimed that some or all of those nuclear weapons had already been smuggled into the United States, and were either already in place within a number of American cities and key parts of our command-control infrastructure, or they were hidden in caches out in the country, awaiting the order to have them planted. That’s not exactly something a government admits to the world.”

“Well, that may be,” Mullins said. “The U.S. Army had its own SADM project, after all. But I have been assured that these devices have a very short shelf life. They would have become inert and harmless years ago.”

SADM stood for Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, backpack-portable nukes that could be dropped with Special Forces teams behind enemy lines during a war. The most common had been the W54, a cylinder two feet long and weighing sixty-eight kilograms. Some three hundred of the devices had been a highly secret part of the U.S. arsenal until their removal and disassembly in 1989.

General James leaned over and whispered something close to Mullins’ ear. Mullins listened, then looked angry. “General, I was assured that this meeting would offer the opportunity for a free exchange of ideas—”

“And right now, sir, it’s Mr. Rubens’ turn,” James said. “Mr. Rubens? If you would continue?”

“As I was saying,” Rubens said, “we can not objectively evaluate the claims of Lebed, Lunev, and others. They were politically motivated, and they had both political and personal agendas. I think the point we should be keeping in mind, though, is that if there is even a chance that there are several small, easily hidden nuclear weapons floating around loose out there, we need to take that possibility very seriously indeed.

“Two weeks ago, an informant in the central Asian city of Astana, in Kazakhstan, told Central Intelligence operatives that twelve suitcase nukes stored at a former Russian military facility in the city of Stepnogorsk had been stolen by elements within one of the Russian mafiya and been sold to an extremist Muslim group — quite probably the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Army of Mohammad, in Pakistan.”

“What does Pakistan want with Russian nukes?” Mullins said, interrupting again. “Pakistan is a nuclear power already.”

“The Jaish-e-Mohammad is operating independently of the Pakistan government, sir,” Rubens pointed out. “The two might have congruent goals, especially where Kashmir and India are concerned, but Pakistan can’t afford to be seen as officially supporting terrorists.”

“India has nuclear weapons, too,” Wehrum pointed out. “Pakistan must be as anxious to catch these guys as we are.”

“The Islamabad government has assured us of their full cooperation in this matter,” the observer from the State Department, Catharine Tognetti, added.

“For whatever that may be worth,” General James put in. “Go ahead, please, Mr. Rubens.”

Rubens gave a wry smile. James was doing his level best to keep the meeting on track. That was no small feat, particularly given the size and number of egos in the room.

“The informant indicated that the weapons were being transported by road south to Karachi, in Pakistan, a journey overland of some eighteen hundred miles. According to this informant, in Karachi the weapons were to be put on board a freighter for transport to their final destination, which he believed to be someplace in the Middle East — most likely Israel.

“The CIA initiated what became known as Operation Haystack, in hopes of intercepting these weapons before they reached Pakistan. They brought the NSA into the operation in order to directly employ our SIGINT and other intelligence-gathering assets for this search.”

Rubens could feel Debra Collins’ cold stare as he spoke. For several years now, Collins, deputy director of operations at the CIA, had been trying to gain control of the NSA’s Desk Three, charging that the NSA’s charter did not allow for field-operational intelligence-gathering teams and that units such as Desk Three were in fact wasteful duplicates of the CIA’s Operations Directorate. In fact, the vast majority of the NSA’s duties were limited to signals intelligence, code breaking, and electronic surveillance. That meant spying at long range from satellites and from eavesdropping facilities at places like Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England, and Misawa Air Base in northern Honshu, in Japan.

However, not all intelligence could be intercepted by antennas from hundreds or thousands of miles away. As computer and communications technologies advanced around the world, the NSA had developed the technical means for tapping those technologies — but often that meant first sending someone in on the ground to plant eavesdropping devices, steal computer passwords, copy software or records from hard drives not connected to the outside world, or otherwise physically hack computer networks.

Hence, Desk Three.

Rubens thought he knew just what it had cost Collins to actually request the NSA’s help with this op. She hated admitting that sometimes she needed Desk Three’s unique capabilities.

“Just how reliable is this CIA source?” This time, the interruption was from James himself, but it was a good question. Rubens and his superiors within the NSA had debated that particular issue for hours when the CIA’s request had first come through.

“You’ll need to have Ms. Collins address that particular question, sir.”

“Ms. Collins?”

“Intelligence evaluation rated the report as a B-2,” Collins said. She didn’t look at either man as she spoke.

Within the intelligence community, an intelligence source was given a letter code, from A to F, indicating its reliability, while the likely accuracy of the intelligence was given a number, from 1 to 6. B-2 meant that the Agency’s source had been evaluated as reasonably reliable and the information transmitted was considered to be probably true.

“Can you tell us anything about your source?”

“No, sir. There are people in the room who are not cleared for that level of security.”

Did she mean Mullins? Or some of the staffers and aides? Most of the people in the room were cleared for security access at least at the Top Secret level, but Wehrum had warned them early on to limit discussions to Top Secret and below.

“Two days ago, NSA personnel were deployed to several central Asian nations,” Rubens continued. “People on the ground. Their orders were to use various technical assets to find the nuclear weapons, which were to be referred to solely as ‘the shipment.’ In particular, the CIA’s original report suggested that one of the devices might be damaged, that it was leaking small amounts of radioactivity. This left a trail of contamination that could be detected by intelligence operatives on the ground, using small radiation detectors strapped to their persons.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Rubens,” Mullins said. “I must admit to some small confusion here. It was my understanding that the NSA did its surveillance through electronic means and by satellite. Why in God’s name do you need people over there?”

The existence of Deep Black and Desk Three was also classified above Top Secret. The fact that the NSA used sources that included operatives on the ground was not, though the NSA never talked about it. One of the well-known meanings of “NSA” among insiders was Never Say Anything.

He wondered if he could use Mullins to build some support for his agency. He didn’t yet know where ANSA stood on Desk Three’s existence — and he could count on Debra Collins to cut him down when she could.

He remembered, though, that Mullins represented a district with strong connections with aerospace, especially the manufacture of high-grade precision lenses used by Crystal Fire and other optical surveillance satellite programs.

“Sir, you are correct that most of our chartered mission is carried out at long range. Our original mandate