Standing in the heart of the Center, Orlov felt as if he were commanding a ship of the future-one that went nowhere, yet had the ability to look down from the heavens or peer under rocks on the earth, one that could know nearly anything about almost anyone in a moment. Even when he was in outer space, with the earth turning slowly beneath him, he had never felt this omniscient. And because every government required accurate, timely intelligence, his funding and the operation of the Center had been unaffected by the chaos in many quarters of Russia. He almost understood how Czar Nicholas Il must have felt, living in splendid isolation until the end came. It was easy to be in a place like this and feel cut off from the day-to-day problems of others, and Orlov made sure to pick up three or four different newspapers every day so as not to lose touch with reality.
Corporal Ivashin suddenly stood, faced the General, and snapped off a salute. He removed his headset and held it out. “General, sir,” he said, “the radio room reports a private communication for you.”
“Thank you,” Orlov said, waving away the headset. “I’ll take it in my office.” He turned and headed toward the door on the far right.
Entering his personal code on the keypad to the left of the door, Orlov entered. His assistant, Nina Terova, poked her head from behind a divider in a back comer of the room. A stately, broad-shouldered woman of thirty-five, she was dressed in a tight-fitting navy-blue jacket and skirt. She had chestnut hair worn in a bun, large eyes, a handsomely arched nose, and a deep, diagonal furrow along her forehead where a bullet had creased her skull. A former officer on the St. Petersburg police force, she also carried scars on her chest and right arm, the result of having stood her ground to bring down two men during an attempted bank robbery.
“Congratulations, General,” she said.
“Thanks,” Orlov replied as he shut the door, “but we’ve still got several hundred checkpoints to go-”
“I know,” Nina said. “And when we pass those, you won’t he happy until we’ve put a successful day behind us, and then a week, and then a year.”
“What’s life without new goals?” the General asked as he sat behind his desk, a black acrylic surface on four thin, white legs made from the remains of one of the Vostok boosters that had carried him into space. The rest of the room was decorated with photographs, models, awards, and mementoes of his years in space, including a display case with his prize possession, a switch panel from the crude capsule that had carried Yuri Gagarin on the first manned flight into outer space.
He sat in a leather-upholstered bucket chair, swung it in front of the computer, and typed in his access code. The screen quickly filled with the back of Interior Minister Dogin’s head.
“Minister,” Orlov said into a condenser microphone built into the lower left comer of the monitor.
It was several seconds before Dogin turned around. Orlov wasn’t sure whether the Minister liked making people wait for him, or whether he didn’t like to appear to be waiting for others. In either case it was a game, and Orlov didn’t like it.
The Minister smiled, “Corporal Ivashin tells me that everything went on as planned.”
“The Corporal was out of line, not to mention premature,” Orlov said. “We haven’t reviewed the data as yet.”
“I’m sure it will check out,” Dogin said. “And don’t be hard on the Corporal for his enthusiasm, General. This is a great day for the entire team.”
The entire team, Orlov rolled the phrase over in his mind. When he was working in the space program, a team was a group of dedicated people working toward a single goal: expanding human capabilities in space. There was a political agenda, but the importance of the work itself made that seem almost trivial. Orlov didn’t have a team here. He had several of them, all pulling in opposite directions. There was a group working to get the Center on-line, another group sneaking information to Dogin, and even a team of paranoid in-betweeners headed by Security Director Glinka, desperate to determine which of the other teams they should be supporting. It might very well cost him his command, but Orlov promised himself that this place would work as a team.
“As it happens,” Dogin said, “we couldn’t have timed the countdown better. There’s a Gulfstream jet moving through the South Pacific toward Japan. After refueling in Tokyo, the jet will fly on to Vladivostok. I’ll have my assistant send the flight path through to you. I want the Center to monitor the plane’s progress. The pilot has instructions to contact you after he lands in Vladivostok, which will be at approximately five o’clock in the morning, local time. When he does, let me know and I’ll give you further instructions to radio to him.”
“Is this a test of our system?” Orlov asked.
“No, General. The cargo on the Gulfstream is of vital importance to this office.”
“In that case, sir,” Orlov said, “until everything here has been thoroughly checked, why not let Air Defense handle it? Their Radio and Electronic Technical Forces would be-”
“Extraneous and obtrusive,” Dogin said. He smiled. “I want you to follow the plane, General. I’m confident that the Center can handle it. Any and all communications from the aircraft will come to your radio room in code, of course, and any problems or delays will be reported to me directly by you or by Colonel Rossky. Do you have any questions?”
“Several, sir,” Orlov admitted, “but I’ll log the order and do as you ask.” He entered a command, which automatically recorded the date and time, and a window opened in the bottom of the screen. He typed, Minister Dogin orders monitoring of Gulfstream jet bound for Vladivostok. He reread it and hit the Save button. It beeped to show that the save had been successful.
“Thank you, General,” said Dogin. “All your questions will be answered in time. Now, good luck with the countdown: I look forward to hearing that the jewel in our intelligence crown is fully operational in less than three hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Orlov said, “though I wonder. Who’s wearing that crown?”
Dogin was still smiling. “I’m disappointed, General. Impertinence doesn’t suit you.”
“My apologies,” Orlov said. “I find it disturbing myself. But I’ve never been asked to run a mission with incomplete information or untested equipment, nor have I been in a situation where subordinates feel free to break the chain of command.”
“We must all grow and change,” Dogin said. “Let me remind you of something Stalin said in his speech to the Russian people in July 1941: ‘There must be no room in our ranks for whimperers and cowards, for panic-mongers and deserters; our people must know no fear.’ You are a courageous and reasonable man, General. Trust me and, I assure you, your faith will be rewarded. ”
Dogin pressed a button and his image winked out. Staring at the dark screen, Orlov was not surprised by the rebuke-though Dogin’s answer hardly put him at ease. If anything, it caused him to wonder if he had trusted too much in Dogin. He found himself contemplating the World War that had prompted Stalin’s speech and to wonder, with alarm he tried hard to suppress, if Minister Dogin somehow imagined Russia to be at war … and if so, with whom.
TWENTY
Tuesday, 3:03 A.M., Tokyo
Simon “Jet” Lee, Honolulu-born and -raised, resolved to devote his life to police work on August 24, 1967. On that day, at the age of seven, he watched as his fatherwho was a hulking movie extra-acted in a scene with Jack Lord and James MacArthur on their TV series Hawaii Five-0. He wasn’t sure whether it -was Lord’s intensity or the fact that he was able to manhandle his father that gave him the police bug-though it was the habit of dyeing his hair jet-black, like Lord’s, that gave him his nickname.
Whatever the reason, Lee joined the FBI in 1983, graduated third in his class at the Academy, and returned to Honolulu as a fully fledged agent. Twice he’d turned down promotions so he could stay in the field and do what he loved: hunt down bad guys and make the world a cleaner place.
Which was why he was in Tokyo, working undercover as an airline mechanic with the blessings of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Raw drugs were going from South America to Hawaii to Japan and, with his partner in Honolulu, Lee was tracking the private planes as they came and went, looking for likely suspects.
The Gulfstream III was a very likely suspect. Lee’s partner in Hawaii had tracked the Gulfstream from Co lombia and it was registered to a company that was owned by a baked-goods distributor in New York. Ostensibly, it was carrying ingredients used to make the distributor’s specialty, exotic bagels. Awakened in his room at the inn just a five-minute drive from the airport, Lee had called his partner, JSDF Sergeant Ken Sawara, and hurried over.