stage. Whether this had to do with advancing senility or not, Rubens hadn’t yet decided.
Johnny Bib, standing over Rubens’ desk, pointed to the status sheet he’d just put down. The color of the sheet matched Johnny’s jacket.
“Now if you want my analysis,” started Bib.
“Actually, I don’t,” said Rubens. “We have plenty of analysts.”
“It’s the pattern that’s interesting,” said Johnny Bib. “Ten units, fuel purchases, obscure encryption, connection to Anderkov. Bingo.”
“Bingo,” said Rubens sarcastically.
“Russian coup,” said Johnny Bib.
“Bingo,” said Rubens.
“You can see it?”
“Not really.”
Johnny Bib blinked his owl eyes, then pushed back his longish hair, which had a habit of falling over his forehead and covering his right eye.
The E-mails that Bib’s group had selected from the vast array of intercepts harvested in the NSA’s Russia Military Project were, individually and collectively, benign — they were reports of fuel reserves in ten different Russian Army units. The fact that all of the units were east of the Urals did pique Rubens’ interest, as did the fact that they used network addresses formerly reserved for diplomatic channels. Most interesting, however — and this was Johnny Bib’s actual point — the messages used a very sophisticated but cumbersome asymmetrical or double- key encryption. Why go to so much trouble with information that was of relatively little strategic value?
“You really don’t see it?” asked Johnny Bib.
“Assume I’m playing devil’s advocate,” said Rubens.
“Ah,” said Johnny Bib, nodding knowingly.
“The CIA draft estimate doesn’t say who is organizing the coup,” said Rubens. He had obtained a copy of the draft from one of his usual sources even as Collins was leaving the Puzzle Palace; she had undoubtedly said it wasn’t prepared as a personal challenge to him.
Johnny Bib wrinkled his nose, fighting back a sneeze. He seemed to loathe the CIA people so badly he had an actual allergy to them.
“Are they holding back?” Rubens asked.
“They’re not smart enough to hold anything back.”
“Smart and devious do not go hand in glove, John. Who’s the leader of the coup? Vladimir Perovskaya, the defense minister?”
Johnny Bib stifled another sneeze by burying his nose in the crock of his arm. Rubens wondered if the agency ought to add etiquette and manners classes to its basic training regime.
“If you gave me access to the Wave Three findings,” said Johnny Bib finally, “perhaps we could pinpoint the players then.”
It was a variation of a common refrain — the intelligence expert asking for more intelligence. Wave Three, the program to take information off hard drives via aircraft, had not targeted government officials yet and, in fact, was currently on hold because of the shootdown in Siberia. But Johnny Bib wasn’t authorized to know that, which meant that the program represented a kind of Holy Grail to him — if only he had that information, he could solve the problem.
“You’re looking at me as if I don’t know about the program,” said Johnny Bib. “I was the one who invented the process for discerning significant magnetic wave patterns in real time. You’ve forgotten.”
“What wave patterns?” said Rubens. “And you’re exaggerating your role.”
The mathematician began shaking his head violently.
“Relax, Johnny. Relax.” Rubens realized he had gone a little too far. “Nothing in the data contributes to this.”
Johnny continued to shake his head. Rubens sighed.
“You are an important contributor to our operation,” Rubens told him. “Need I say more?”
Though still pouting, the mathematician stopped shaking his head.
“Do we have anything at all about our aircraft?” Rubens asked. “The PVO intercepts — that’s what we need.”
“It was a renegade unit. It’s one of the ones that sent the E-mails.”
“Now that’s interesting. What else do we know about it?”
Johnny pushed his hair back, then stuffed his arms into his pockets. A good sign — it meant he was thinking about something he hadn’t considered before.
“We have no other data at all,” said Johnny. “No intercepts from the unit.” Something had suddenly clicked in his complicated mind. “Yes. Well, yes. Yes. A subunit — if we go far enough back in the library, if we look at its creation — perhaps the person who created it: Perovskaya?”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Rubens. He slid back in his seat. He still wasn’t sure about the coup prediction, but they were definitely making progress. A light began blinking on his phone console. “I have to answer that.”
Johnny Bib scowled but then nodded. “I’ll update you when we have something.”
“Two hours,” said Rubens. “Every two hours.”
Johnny nodded, then closed the door behind him — a good sign.
“Karr’s team is being tracked by a MiG similar to the one that took Wave Three down,” said Telach when he picked up the line to the Art Room.
“I’ll be right there.”
22
The Hind whipped downward, the momentum snaring Dean’s body in the seat restraints like a flailing shark caught in a tuna net. The helo pitched right and he flew in the opposite direction, his arms smacking the side panel so hard they went numb. The Hind leveled off, spun, then zipped through a figure eight before plummeting another thousand feet in the space of a breath. Dean remembered the warnings they gave in commercial airlines about crashes and somewhat confusedly fought to tuck his head down, though the restraints kept him upright.
Somewhere around twenty feet off the ground, the helicopter stopped its tumultuous descent. Its path, however, ran toward a rise, and just as Dean thought the worst was over, the undercarriage smacked against some trees. The top branches hit the nose so hard Dean thought they’d been whacked by a cannon. In the next moment, he felt himself thrown back in the seat, the pilot yanking on his yoke to get over the rise, then flailing left.
“We’re clear,” said Fashona, even though they continued dodging left and right across the rough terrain. “They may have seen us, but they never fired at us.”
“So what happened to the MiG?” asked Karr. His voice sounded as nonchalant as ever.
“Uh, looks like, uh, they’re tracking another aircraft, I think. Escorting.”
“Escorting what?”
“An IL-62, passenger plane. Um, you know the identifier section on the—”
“You sure they’re escorting it?”
As Fashona began to respond, there was a warning beep in the pilot’s cockpit.
“Missiles in the air!” Fashona jerked the chopper hard left.
“They’re firing at the passenger plane,” said Karr calmly.
The team leader’s assessment proved correct. Fashona reported that their radar — a vast improvement over the unit the Poles had removed before selling the aircraft — showed the Ilyushin plane descending rapidly about fifteen miles away. The MiG, meanwhile, had curled off to the south and hit its afterburners.
“Damn,” said Fashona. “He’s going in.”
They were too far away to see the crash. Fashona said the pilot thought he had regained control of the plane, but then it disappeared from the screen. “Down,” he concluded. “Not sure how he went in — possibly there are survivors.”
