Текст книги "Black Wolf"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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5

The Pentagon

Breanna Stockard was just about to leave her office at the Pentagon when she got an urgent alert on her encrypted messaging system asking her to call Jonathon Reid. She reached for the phone and dialed, knowing that the meeting she was headed to was unlikely to break up much before seven, and she had promised her daughter she’d be home soon after.

Reid picked up on the first ring, his raspy voice practically croaking in the receiver.

“That was fast,” he told her.

“I have a meeting upstairs,” she said. “What’s up?”

“More data on the Wolves.”

“And?”

“There’s a Moldova link,” said Reid. “It may just be a coincidence, but I thought I’d better tell you.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Transactions. I’ve forwarded the report to your secure queue,” said Reid.

Breanna clicked the file open and waited while it was unencrypted. The system used a set of temporary, real-time keys, and occasionally the process of turning it from unreadable hieroglyphics to clear text could take several seconds.

The file opened. It was a listing of plane tickets that showed transit in and out of Moldova, a small landlocked country between Romania and Russia.

“Those accounts will be backtracked,” said Reid. “They’ll look for patterns, connections to other accounts. We may have more of a profile in a few days.”

“Moldova may simply have been chosen because of its banking system,” said Breanna. “The banking system is notoriously opaque to outsiders. Even insiders. And there are plenty of suspect mafia connections.”

“Always a possibility.”

Breanna looked at the data. None of the transactions were recent.

“These are all connected to the Wolves?” she asked.

“They’re connected to accounts that were associated with the Berlin activity,” answered Reid. “As I say, the Moldova connection is still tenuous.”

Activity. An interesting way to describe murder.

“Everything is tenuous,” said Breanna.

“Not everything,” said Reid. “As for the identity—”

“The DNA is suggestive, not conclusive,” she said.

Reid didn’t answer. It was his way of reproaching her—worse, she thought, than if he had argued or even called her a name.

Not that Reid would do either.

“At some point we will have to address this with Colonel Freah,” said Reid finally.

“We’ll keep it where it is for now,” said Breanna. “Until we have more information, I don’t see any point in going down this road with Danny. It’s still… far-fetched.”

“Admittedly.”

Breanna looked at her watch. “I’m sorry, I have a meeting.”

“I’ll keep you up to date.”

“Thanks.”

The meeting Breanna was rushing to couldn’t start until she arrived, which meant that a dozen generals and three admirals stared at her as she came in the door. While her civilian position as head of the Office of Technology put her on a higher administrative level than most of the people in the room, she was still a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and not a few of the people in the room thought of her that way.

Sometimes she did, too.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, rushing in.

“Well, you’re here now,” said General Timothy “Tiger” Wallace. “Let’s get moving.”

Wallace gave her a tight grin, but the expression gave nothing away. He was the Air Force’s chief of staff—the top boss—and a difficult man for her to gauge. He’d served with her father, and claimed to be a great admirer of Dreamland and everything associated with it. He and Zen occasionally had lunch together during his visits to Capitol Hill. On the other hand, he frequently butted heads with Breanna’s boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Harold Magnus. The two had clashed when Magnus was in the Air Force some years before, and while they didn’t openly feud—Magnus wasn’t the type, and there was no percentage in it for Wallace—Wallace’s animosity was often subtly displayed, especially toward Magnus’s pet projects.

One of which Breanna had come to discuss.

“Thank you, General,” she said, sliding her laptop onto the table. “Everyone is aware of the Sabre UAV program and its present status.”

She nodded toward Steph Garvey, the two-star Air Force general in charge of the Sabre program. Garvey gave her a smile—genuine and easy to read.

“We have made good progress with the UM/F program in general,” continued Breanna. “Including the Navy variant.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” grumbled Admiral David Chafetz. There was no mistaking Chafetz’s attitude—he didn’t like anything even remotely connected to the Air Force, and was a skeptic of unmanned aircraft as well. That was two big strikes against the Sabre program.

Officially designated UM/F–9s, the unmanned aircraft had been developed as replacements for the Flighthawks, the robot aircraft that helped revolutionize aerial combat in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Though greatly improved over the years, the Flighthawks had a number of limitations, including range and speed. More importantly, their airframes were now well past their design age. Materials fatigue—both their metal skeleton and carbon-fiber skins—was starting to hamper their effectiveness. Internal fasteners had to be inspected before each flight on some of the high-hour aircraft—an onerous procedure that added several hours to the maintainers’ routine chores. It was time for a new generation of remote fighters to take over.

The Sabres were that fighter.

Nicknamed after the fighter that had dominated the skies over North Korea during the 1950s, the UM/F–9 was the first UAV capable of sustained Mach speeds. (Though technically the Flighthawks could fly faster than the speed of sound, they could not operate reliably in Mach-plus regimes for several reasons unrelated to their airfoil.) Long and sleek, the aircraft used a hybrid ramjet pulse engine to fly; an array of maneuvering nozzles and high-strength carbon-based alloys made twelve g-plus turns routine. Tests showed that it was more than a match for even the improved F–22C Block–150s that had recently joined the Air Force’s top interceptor squadrons.

But high speeds and maneuverability meant nothing if the aircraft could not be controlled. And this control system—called Medusa—represented the real breakthrough.

Like the Flighthawk, the Sabre was capable of “autonomous combat.” In other words, it could figure out on its own how to take down an enemy, then do so. Unlike Flighthawks, Sabres could work together against an enemy, employing section tactics without human intervention. Data from one aircraft was immediately shared with all of the aircraft in the same flight. Spotting a group of four enemy planes, for example, the flight could decide to break into two elements and attack from two different directions.

While the Flighthawks had small onboard flight computers to handle many of the basic tasks of flight, they relied heavily on a centralized computer and a human controlling them, generally from an EB–52 or modified B–1.

Medusa did not exist separately from the Sabres. It was, as the man who invented it liked to say with his droll puns, a true “cloud computer.” The interconnection of the units working together created the real intelligence.

But there had to be a human in the process somewhere. And that was what today’s meeting was about.

Actually, the man who invented Medusa didn’t agree that there should be any human anywhere in the process. It wasn’t that Ray Rubeo had no use for his fellow man or thought that human intelligence was an oxymoron, though charges along those lines had often been leveled at him. Rubeo simply saw no need for a human “to muck things up.”

“You don’t steer a Sidewinder to its target,” he had told Breanna on several occasions. “It’s fire and forget. Same with this.”

But the military was not ready to think about a squadron of aircraft as “fire and forget” weapons. And though Rubeo worked, as a contractor, for her, Breanna wasn’t ready to think that way either.

So where did the Medusa “control” unit go?

At a secure base far from harm, like those generally used for the Predator and Global Hawk? Or a plane, like the Flighthawk system?

A satellite control system with a ground base could be used, but there were problems with bandwidth, and the cost was considerable—much more than Medusa, let alone the Sabres.

Medusa’s range was roughly two hundred miles, a considerable improvement over the Flighthawks. Still, that was close enough that a savvy enemy could seek to locate and isolate the control aircraft. Simply making the plane run away would mean a cheap victory, as the Sabres would have to follow or lose their connection. That wasn’t much of an issue for a system like the Flighthawks, originally designed to protect a bombing package: their job was to stay close to the mother ship in the first place. But it would be disastrous for interceptors.

The Air Force was pushing for a new version of the F–35 to act as the Sabres’ controller. This would be a stretched, two-seat version of the stealthy lightweight fighter. There were considerable problems with such an approach, starting with the fact that the stretched F–35 couldn’t carry enough fuel to stay in a combat area for more than an hour, far less than the Sabre. There was also a matter of cost, which would be considerable for a plane not even off the drawing board yet.

The Navy had gone along with the plan, grudgingly, because it would allow the Sabres to operate from carriers for the first time. But as Chafetz’s demeanor made clear, their support was less than enthusiastic.

Breanna had come today to offer a different solution entirely.

“I should start by giving you all a bit of good news about the intelligent command system that flies the planes,” she said, flipping open her laptop. “We call it Medusa. It’s—”

“A Greek monster,” quipped Chafetz.

Breanna smiled indulgently. Her solution would actually help the Navy, but she didn’t expect to be thanked for it.

“The admiral knows his myths,” she said. “Medusa is six months ahead of schedule. In fact, as you’ll see at the demonstration next week—those of you who are going out to Dreamland—it’s completely operational. Or would be, if we had more Sabres.”

“We will have a dozen by the end of the year,” said General Garvey.

“And that program is on schedule and on budget,” Breanna offered quickly, not wanting to seem as if she was criticizing Garvey. “Along the way, we’ve made some improvements to Medusa’s human input unit. It’s now as compact as the units in Sabres. Which gave us an idea.”

While talking, she had booted up her laptop. The computer found the secure local network, signing itself on automatically. Breanna glanced down and double-clicked on a PowerPoint icon. A pair of video screens began to rise from the center of the conference room tables.

“We’d like to propose a new aircraft as part of the control solution. Some of you will be familiar with it.”

A jet came on the screen. It looked like a cousin of the F–22, perhaps by way of the YF–23 and a Bird of Prey. Black, with an oval double wing at the tail and stubby fins at its side, it was two-thirds the size of a Raptor, as the next slide demonstrated.

“The Tigershark?” asked Chafetz. “A Navy plane?”

Wallace cleared his throat.

“Actually, that began as an Air Force project,” he said. “But it’s dead. The company’s bankrupt. No more aircraft can be built.”

“At the moment, we have all we need,” said Breanna. “There are three aircraft. They could all be given over to the program. That’s one more than you need, at least for the next two years.”

Three Tigersharks had been built and tested three years before. The aircraft was seen first as a replacement for the F–22, and as a possible fifth generation fighter for the Navy.

One had even appeared at a pair of air shows, as its maker—a small company formed by former Boeing and Lockheed engineers—tried to convince the military and Congress to award a contract for its development. Unfortunately, the wheels of government moved very slowly. While everyone agreed the plane was a winner, it couldn’t win funding for production in the tight budget. While Congress promised to consider it the next fiscal year, the debt-ridden company had folded. Its assets were put up for sale to pay creditors.

At that point the Office of Technology had stepped in, purchasing the aircraft, some spare parts, and all of the design work. The Tigershark now belonged to the Office of Technology.

“How the hell do you see in that thing?” asked one of the admirals.

“Screens,” said Garvey. “They provide a better view than your eyes would.”

Breanna pressed the button on her pointer. A close-up of the body appeared, revealing lines for the cockpit access panel. The next slide showed a breakaway of the body, revealing the cockpit itself. The pilot’s seat was pitched as if it were a recliner.

“We needed a high-performance aircraft to help us test Medusa,” explained Breanna. “The Sabres weren’t ready, and of course there are always questions about unmanned airplanes in test regimes. In any event, one of the aircraft had been disassembled for some tests, and adding Medusa to the rebuild was not very difficult. We decided we would use it. The results have been so spectacular that it makes sense to show you what we have. You’re scheduled to view the system tests with us in Dreamland next week—this is just an added bonus.”

“Hmph,” said Chafetz. Although he sounded unconvinced, he also seemed to be calculating the benefits.

“Why not just put the unit in an F–22?” asked Wallace. “If I might play devil’s advocate.”

“That’s doable,” said Breanna. “Though we would have to completely gut and rebuild the plane.” She shrugged. “The Office of Technology doesn’t own any of those, and the subcontractor wasn’t in a position to commandeer one.”

That drew a few laughs.

“This looks like just a backdoor way of getting the Tigershark into the budget,” said Admiral Chafetz.

“It is one argument for it,” admitted Breanna. “No one has ruled out the plane. They just weren’t ready to fund it.”

“I’d like to see it make headway in this Congress,” said Wallace with disgust. Then he glanced at Breanna. “Present company and their relatives excepted.”

“I haven’t spoken to Senator Stockard at all about this,” said Breanna hastily.

“Well you should,” said Admiral Garvey. “Because it’s a hell of an idea. When is the demonstration again?”

6

Berlin

During his relatively short career with the CIA, Nuri Lupo had worked with a variety of foreign agencies, sometimes officially, sometimes unofficially. He’d had varying degrees of success and cooperation, but by far his worst experiences had come when working with the FBI, which he’d had to do three times.

The Berlin assignment made four. The Bureau could not be bypassed for a number of reasons, all of them political.

Actually the most important wasn’t political at all: Reid had told him to work with the Bureau. Period.

“To the extent possible,” said Reid. “Which means you will, at a minimum, make contact. Before you arrive. If not sooner.”

FBI agents were, in Nuri’s experience, among the most uncooperative species on the planet, at least when it came to dealing with the CIA. The two agencies were natural rivals, partly because of their overlapping missions in national security and espionage. But sibling rivalry wasn’t the only cause of conflict. G-men—and -women—regarded “spy” as an occupation somewhere lower than journalist and politician. From the Bureau’s perspective, the CIA sullied every American by its mere existence.

It was also no doubt galling that Agency field officers had expense accounts several times larger than FBI agents.

Nuri tried to use the expense account to his advantage, but had to use all of his persuasive skills merely to get the FBI agent, a middle-aged woman whose gray pantsuit matched her demeanor, to have breakfast with him as soon as he arrived in the city.

“I’ve already had breakfast,” insisted Elise Gregor as they sat down in the small café a short distance from the airport. “And I don’t want any more coffee.”

“Have a decaf,” said Nuri, trying his best to be affable.

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I just need background,” said Nuri. He stopped speaking as the waiter came over, switching to German to order.

“Eggs with toast, American style,” said the waiter in English far superior to Nuri’s German.

“That’s it,” said Nuri.

The putdown was regarded as some sort of triumph by Gregor, who practically beamed as she told the waiter in German that she would have a small orange juice. Nuri considered whether he ought just to leave, but the FBI might be of some use at some point in the investigation, and closing the door now didn’t make sense.

Well, maybe it did. How much help could they possibly be?

“German’s not one of your languages, is it?” Gregor asked as the waiter left.

“I can speak a little.”

“Very little.”

I’d like to see you handle Arabic, thought Nuri. Or Farsi. Or maybe a subdialect of Swahili.

“So what do you want?” said Gregor. “Why are you here?”

“I want to talk to the investigator on the Helmut Dalitz murder case.”

“Dalitz? The banker?”

“Businessman. Do you have any information?”

She made a face. “That’s too local for us to get involved in.”

“You have nothing?” asked Nuri, surprised. The FBI had been briefed, to some degree at least, on the Wolves and the suspected connection to the murder. Was Gregor out of the loop? Or playing coy?

Coy. The word evoked images of sex kittens… a nauseating concept when connected with the woman sitting across from him.

“Why is the Agency interested?” Gregor asked.

“They don’t tell me everything,” said Nuri, deciding he could be just as hard to deal with as Gregor. “They sent me here to see what was going on.”

“They didn’t tell you why?”

“I think it has to do with money laundering,” said Nuri.

“That’s an FBI area of interest.” Gregor’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing like that has come up.”

“So you are following the case?”

“From a distance,” she said. “We’re somewhat interested—not involved.”

The orange juice and coffee arrived. Nuri took a sip of the coffee. It was surprisingly weak.

“I don’t see where he could have been laundering money,” said Gregor. “He was a respected businessman.”

“Yeah, it’s probably a total waste of time. That’s the sort of crap they send me on these days,” said Nuri.

Gregor frowned. “This is because of the connection to the Wolves, right?”

“Well, I—”

“All right. Let’s go,” she said, rising.

“But—”

“I have other things to do today,” she told him. “If you’re coming, come. And you better leave the waiter a good tip. They really like me here.”

The Berlin detective heading the investigation into Dalitz’s murder was a thirty-something woman who spoke English with a pronounced British accent. She was also among the most beautiful women Nuri had ever met.

She was so pretty, in fact, that if she and Gregor were combined and averaged out, the result would still be among the top ten or so models in the world. Nuri felt his head flush just meeting her; her handshake—firm, not too eager but not unfriendly—weakened his knees.

“I will be very happy to tell you what we know,” Frau Gerste said, leading them to her office in the upstairs of the municipal building. She worked for the national police even though her office was in the local police station; Nuri couldn’t quite grasp the relationship between the local, state, and national police agencies but decided it was irrelevant for now.

“I am afraid that it is not much,” Gerste continued, taking a seat behind her desk. This was unfortunate; it removed half of her body from view. “What we have does not seem to lead to much that is usable.”

Frau Gerste recounted the details of the crime, which had happened in a relatively popular part of Berlin, in an area that had been under communist control before the Wall came down. There had been few people on the street at the time, however, and apparently the assassin and any assistants had gotten away without being seen.

“We would believe he was waiting somewhere outside,” said Frau Gerste. “There are video cameras, but several blind spots. So he must have studied the area.”

“It was a professional job,” said Nuri.

“Very. The bullet was significant—undetectable by metal detectors,” said Gerste. “We imagine this was because the killer was in the music hall with him, or thought he might be. There were detectors at the door. His weapon, I assume, would have been undetectable as well. Very unusual.”

“Yes.”

“From what I understand,” she said, “the bullet is similar to one used in another murder, this one political. Do you have details on that?”

Nuri shook his head, trying not to make it too obvious that he was lying. It was terrible to lie to beautiful women.

“I have heard that there was an organization responsible for the political murder.” Frau Gerste smiled—it was as if the sun had come out after a winter’s worth of cloudy days. “Interpol’s information is very limited. A code name, the Wolves. That is why your interest, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” said Nuri.

“Of course a professional committed the crime,” said Frau Gerste. “But why? Helmut Dalitz did have some enemies, but hiring someone to murder him?”

“You don’t buy the mafia connection?” said Nuri.

She made a face. “Revenge for a heart attack? Would you commit murder for a heart attack?”

“Well, I wouldn’t commit murder,” said Nuri.

“If you were the mafia, would you hire another killer?”

“If they owed me money or a favor,” said Nuri.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Frau Gerste preferred a more local motive—a jilted lover, perhaps, though the investigation had not produced one. There were rumors that the victim saw prostitutes and had a gay lover.

Gregor nodded vigorously as Frau Gerste proffered the theories—none of which had any firm evidence to back them up. But they would be more acceptable to a German, thought Nuri; they were signs of personal disorder, which would explain the external disorder of murder.

“Could the murderer have been working with someone on the inside?” asked Gregor.

“The inside?”

“Someone who was part of his business. Who would know where the video cameras were and the security arrangements. His daughter? I heard he was with his daughter and her boyfriend.”

“The daughter was there. The boyfriend is no longer a boyfriend. We did check that possibility,” said Frau Gerste, nodding approvingly. “That is something we continue to explore. Jealousy from the boyfriend. Perhaps he wanted a fortune.”

The look in Frau Gerste’s eyes—approval—would have melted Nuri on the spot had it been directed at him. It had a distinctly sexual tinge to it.

Aimed at Gregor, it seemed almost immoral, even sacrilegious. Nuri felt his stomach turning, just a little.

“Of course, with a little bit of planning, then it would be possible to compute the lines of sight at the square,” said Frau Gerste. “No sources would be necessary.”

“Maybe he is on the tape from a few days before,” suggested Nuri, finally finding his tongue.

“We have thought of that. The tapes are kept for only forty-eight hours. There was nothing overly suspicious in that time.”

Nuri found himself staring at Frau Gerste’s profile. She wore her blond hair in a bob. Ordinarily not a perfect choice, he thought, though in this case she pulled it off.

And her breasts…

She turned suddenly to him.

“So why are two Bureau of Investigations agents interested?” asked Frau Gerste.

She gave him the look. It wasn’t really approval. It was… something more basic. Nuri, blood thumping in his temples, was temporarily tongue-tied.

“He’s not with the Bureau,” said Gregor.

“No?”

“I’m a liaison with State,” said Nuri, preferring not to use the words Central Intelligence Agency if at all possible. “We—there may be a national security connection.”

“National security? Because of the Wolves? Ah. So you believe that?”

He had Frau Gerste’s interest. Maybe he should admit to being with the CIA. Some women liked the excitement it implied.

“These things have to be checked,” said Nuri apologetically. “But we do have a lot of resources. Perhaps they can be of help.”

“What sort of resources?”

“DNA sampling. If you have something from the scene—”

“Nothing. We have our own labs. But we found nothing.”

“Well, if we had access to billing done in the area, we might be able to find a pattern,” offered Nuri.

“Billing?”

“Credit card payments, that sort of thing. Restaurants. See if the place was under surveillance. The person or persons might have bought something in the area. It’d be a long shot.”

“German law makes that difficult to obtain,” said Frau Gerste. Indeed it did, which was why he had to ask; the credit card companies would not simply part with the information, even to their American counterparts. “And that would be a needle in the haystack, I think you say.”

God, she was beautiful, even when she was skeptical. What is it exactly, he wondered. Her blue eyes? They were set perfectly apart. Her nose—not too big, not too small. The lips were a little full, but that only sealed the deal.

Her face was unblemished and, surprisingly given her job, unwrinkled. And her breasts—not large, actually, but high and seemingly firm under her very proper blouse.

“Thank you for your time,” said Gregor, starting to rise.

“You said that someone may have checked the video cameras,” said Nuri. “I’d like to look at them myself. And the funeral. Was there anything unusual about the funeral?”

“Only the flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“The dead roses. It is not clear whether they were deliberate or not.”

“Would you happen to know the shop that sent them?” he asked.

A dozen black, withered roses had been sent to the funeral. The state of the roses wasn’t a matter of poor service—they’d been ordered that way.

Nuri talked Frau Gerste into taking him to the shop to see the owner. He was hoping Gregor would beg off because of her allegedly heavy schedule, but no such luck—she not only came, but insisted on driving. That left him in the back, slowly getting intoxicated on the scent of Frau Gerste’s perfume.

The scent was hard to describe. A kind of exotic lilac thing. Spicy, yet sweet.

Like her, no doubt. He wondered what kind of lingerie she preferred.

“It’s not the strangest order he’s ever had, especially for a funeral,” Frau Gerste translated as they interviewed the owner of the small shop. “One time he had to make a delivery with several mice’s heads. He doesn’t like to do it, but for the extra fee…”

“Can I get a copy of the invoice, or order, or whatever?” asked Nuri.

“I can’t order him to give it,” said Gerste.

“But he could give it to us voluntarily, right?” he asked.

“The laws regarded evidence in court—”

“But they apply to you,” said Nuri. “Not me. And if I then made a copy available to you…”

“I don’t know…”

“If the information came from the FBI,” suggested Gregor, “then it would be usable.”

“Hmmmmph,” said Frau Gerste.

The order had come through an e-mail system. The owner printed it out. Nuri took it, then asked if there was a small office where he could use the phone. He wanted privacy, not the line—he pulled the headset for the MY-PID out and connected to the computer network.

“Good morning, Nuri,” said the computer.

“Working on the personality modules again?” asked Nuri.

“Please repeat request.”

“I need this order tracked.” Nuri read in the particulars. The computer took several seconds before telling him that the order had come from a shop in Naples.

“Any known mafia connection?” asked Nuri.

It was another few seconds before the computer answered. The shop’s owners had been named in two different indictments related to La Costra Nostra.

When Nuri came out of the office, Frau Gerste and Gregor were nodding solemnly as the owner of the shop told them, in German, about the fine points of caring for freshly cut flowers. It was all in the water, he said, and in the angle of the cut.

Nuri would have been content to let the conversation continue—it gave him a good chance to watch Frau Gerste surreptitiously—but Gregor noticed him gawking and abruptly asked him if he’d discovered anything.

“Definitely a mafia connection with the flowers,” he said. “It reinforces the revenge theory.”

“Perhaps,” said Frau Gerste, sighing just a little.