Deep Black (13 page)

As the engines revved and the helo began to skip quickly along the pockmarked pavement, Dean realized that sitting in the
front seat was a mistake. Whether it was because of the physical location or just the clear bubble, every move the chopper
made seemed amplified up here, ten times worse than it had been in the back. The helo pitched forward sharply as it came off
the ground; Dean felt as if they were going to do a somersault right into the tarmac. It turned sideways into a bank and he
swore he’d fall out. A sharp rise and then another bank and Dean wondered if his internal organs had rearranged themselves.

“Quite a ride, huh?” asked Fashona.

“Oh, yeah,” said Dean. “The best.”

His stomach was still unsettled ten minutes later when he heard the pilot curse and call Karr.

“What?”

“MiG-29s, hot, on our tail,” said the pilot tersely. “RWR says they’re scanning. Shit—we’re spiked!”

Before Karr could answer, the helo pitched hard toward the ground.

21

Nothing in the world was more depressing than a pure mathematician at middle age. Young, they were full of vim, vigor, and
fresh answers to Fermat’s Last Theorem. When they hit thirty, however, they inevitably began tumbling downhill. In Rubens’
opinion, it wasn’t that they lost mental acuity. Instead they started to question things outside of math, and that threw them
off. Questioning the sequence of prime numbers was one thing; questioning whether to change a haircut or have an affair was
something else entirely. By the time they hit forty, the questions had done serious damage to the certainty required for top-level
math.

And then, most devastatingly, they would ask the Impossible Question. This might be phrased many ways, but its most terse
expression found its way to coffee cups throughout the complex:
If
I’m
so smart, why
ain’t
I rich?

In a few cases, the result of asking the question was relatively benign—a bath in the stock market. Too often, however, Rubens
had watched it lead to ashrams and mass marriages in baseball stadiums.

Or stadia, as a mathematician would insist they be called.

John Bibleria—“Johnny Bib” to his co-workers—was fifty-one, and a prime candidate for the stock market/stadia stage. He had
joined the NSA out of Princeton. His area in the government was cryptoanalysis, but his true interests involved string theory,
and during the early years of his career he had published several papers with impressive titles and even more impressive arrays
of Greek letters in the text. He had also been responsible for realizing the Chinese were using a fractal code in the early
1990s.

The days of one individual “cracking a code” were long gone by the time Johnny joined the agency. “Codes”—lists of word-for-word
substitutions—had been obsolete for a hundred years or more, and even the more complicated ciphers of the early Cold War seemed
quaint. Modern encryption was done by translating plaintext into data streams through mathematical algorithms or formulas
governed by keys. Teams of cryptoanalysts, cryptologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and programmers with overlapping
abilities and responsibilities worked with cutting-edge computers to “solve” a cryptosystem.

But even with all that, Johnny Bib came as close as anyone to being a one-man show. To Rubens, his genius had little to do
with his math, at least not in the way most people thought about math. What Bib at the height of his powers did as well as
anyone in the world was intuit the significance of sequences. You didn’t need to know the precise words being used in a sentence
if you knew that the sentence told a missile to launch. Simply knowing that allowed you to answer many questions. Did you
want to know how many missiles there were? Count the sentences. Where they were? Look for the sentences. How they were aimed?
Study the events before the sentence was uttered. Bib not only spotted the sentences; he also could come up with questions
no one else had thought of that they would answer.

But Bib’s heyday had passed. Officially an Expert Cryptologic Mathematician, Johnny Bib was now an excellent team leader and
an invaluable member of Rubens’ inner circle. But he was no longer a star’s star. Rubens, a connoisseur of genius, hated to
see diminution. He looked at Johnny Bib and felt pain for the true heights the man’s mind might have reached.

Rubens had hopes, however—a few mathematicians were able to enter remission following the question 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.”

“Maybe,” said Karr. “I don’t know that anyone’s going to get there, though.”

“Well, we can.”

“Negative,” said Karr. “Get back on our course.”

“Wait a second,” said Dean. “You’re not going to let those people die out there, are you?”

“How do you know there are any survivors?” Karr asked.

“Fashona just said so. Let’s check it out,” said Dean.

“Listen, baby-sitter, no offense, but this is my gig, right?” For the first time since they’d met, Karr’s voice seemed actually
a little strained—not quite angry, but at least mildly displeased.

“We can’t let those people die.”

“Maybe he’s got a point,” said the pilot. “There’ll be nobody around to help them.”

“Guys, look, whatever happened to those people, our mission’s more important.”

“We have burnt metal in the cargo hold. What’s so important about that?” asked Dean.

Karr didn’t answer.

“How long would it take us to get there?” Dean asked.

“Eh, four or five minutes,” said Fashona. “A little more.”

“I say we go. It makes sense to check this out anyway, right? From a mission point of view—see if the shootdown is similar
to ours.”

“We’ve lost contact with the Art Room,” said Lia, speaking on the circuit for the first time. “The Russians are running some
of their jammers, and the satellite’s position changed. We’re at the far end of the range.”

“I say we go for it,” said Dean.

“We’re supposed to go back to Surgut,” said Lia. “And that’s quite a haul.”

“Princess, don’t you know it’s fashionable to be late?” said Karr, back to his buoyant self. “Fashona, get us out there now.
But that MiG comes back, anything comes back or around, bug out. Got me?”

“Loud and clear, boss.”

Dean’s night glasses worked fairly well even through the thick helicopter glass, and he could see the crash site when they
were still two or three miles away. Unlike the other plane, this one seemed relatively intact.

The chopper dipped downward, its nose pointing like a dagger at the destroyed Ilyushin. The left wing had separated and lay
in several pieces. One of the engines had fallen off on the right side and most of the tail and rudder assembly seemed to
have simply disappeared. But the main fuselage seemed unscathed, at least from the distance.

“Nearest road is about a half-mile, call it southwest of the wreck,” he told the others.

“I’m going to circle once, then swing down near the cockpit area,” Fashona said.

“No, land on the road,” said Karr. “We’ll hike in. We don’t want any marks from the helicopter, and if it’s wet we get stuck.”

Dean found that he could get a more focused view through the night glasses by holding the frame with his hands. The terrain
seemed like black-and-gray soup, with odd pieces of vegetables sticking up here and there. The road ran ruler-straight into
the horizon in both directions.

“Going down,” warned the pilot, tipping the nose forward and descending quickly.

Dean braced himself, but the landing still rattled everything from his shinbones to his teeth. By the time he had stopped
shaking and unhooked himself from the cockpit, Karr and Lia had trotted in different directions down the road about a quarter-mile.
Unsure what they were up to, Dean started for the plane. As he did, the helicopter’s blades whipped up behind him. The wash
as it took off bent him forward and nearly knocked him down.

“What the hell?” he said over his com system.

“Just a precaution,” explained Karr. “He’ll watch from the distance. We’re putting little mines along the road in case we
need to keep anyone back,” he added.

Dean took one of his ear buds out, expecting he might hear someone crying or screaming in pain. But the night was quiet, except
for the Hind in the distance. He smelled jet fuel and burnt metal.

The cockpit glass had been shattered on the pilot’s side. Dean kicked something as he walked and turned back, bracing himself
to see a body. But it was just a log petrified into stone.

“Here,” said Lia, who was on the left side of the plane. “Radar missile again. Hit very close to the wing root.”

“Hey, there’s something alive in there,” said Dean. He saw something, or rather someone, moving in the cockpit. He started
to run, but as he reached the nose of the plane something grabbed him from the side and threw him down. Dean rolled to his
feet with his left arm forward and his right cocked back.

“Easy,” said Karr. “It’s just me.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“We can’t touch anything.”

“We have to get those people out before there’s a fire or something.”

“Relax. If it hasn’t caught on fire yet, it’s not going to catch on fire now. Just slow down. We can’t compromise the mission.”

“We have to save these people.”

“Slow down,” said Karr. “We’re not in Vietnam.”

The remark struck Dean as smart-ass bullshit. And what the hell was the sense of coming here if they were going to let the
survivors burn to a crisp?

“Couple of bodies in the field here,” said Lia over the circuit. “I can see inside. Two or three people moving.”

“Let’s get them out,” said Dean. “There’s jet fuel all over the ground.”

“Wait,” snapped Karr. He put his hand to his ear. “Back to the road. Lia, grab the mines. Go south to the second pickup point.”

“We have to save those people,” said Dean.

“Someone else already plans to,” said Karr. “Fashona says there’s a helicopter on a direct vector five minutes from here.
If you want to help, slip these on the bodies out near that wing. Put this glove on first.”

He pulled a thin latex glove from his pocket and held it out, then retrieved a small test tube. The glass seemed empty; it
was only by staring at it very closely that Dean discerned four or five tiny specks at the bottom. They looked like ticks.

“Flies,” said Karr. “They’re just tracking devices. One on each body if you can. No fingerprints, no sweat, no spit, if you
can help it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You wanted me to help them, right?”

Karr disappeared around the other side of the airplane. Dean made his way around to the wing area but had trouble finding
the bodies. Finally, he saw one—a woman facedown in the muck, her long hair splayed to the side. He bent toward her, then
slipped down to one knee. As he unscrewed the top of the test tube, his hands started to shake and he had to stop for a moment.
He’d touched corpses before—more than his share—but the woman’s body unnerved him somehow. He shook his head, silently scolding
himself, then tipped the tube gently to work one of the flies into his palm. Two or three tumbled out, bouncing across his
palm onto her body.

There was a screech of pain.

Dean jerked back, completely overcome by shock and fear. It took him at least ten seconds to realize that the cries he heard
were coming from someone else.

Someone nearby. He scanned the area quickly, saw a piece of white near the plane but not attached to it. As he stepped toward
it he realized the white belonged to the body of a man—or rather, the top half of a body of a man. The legs were missing.

As Dean looked away, he glimpsed a shadow writhing on the other side of him. He couldn’t help but think he was going to see
the dead man’s legs, but he went to it anyway.

Legs, yes, but tiny. And attached to a body, a kid, a small child no more than five years old. And alive.

Dean bent to the kid, turned him over. There was a thread of blood across his forehead, but his eyes were wide open. They
closed, then opened again. The child screamed. Dean saw a pair of thick blankets nearby. He pulled them over, arranging them
to make the kid comfortable. The boy seemed to realize that the stranger wasn’t going to hurt him and stopped screaming, though
his expression remained somewhere between suspicion and complete bewilderment. He looked almost comfortable—Dean saw no obvious
broken bones or other injuries—but he’d need an expert to check the boy over.

“Dean. Time to go,” said Karr in his ear bud.

“I got a kid here.”

“They’ll save him. Go.”

“I’m taking him with us.”

“Don’t do it.”

“How do you know they’ll find him?”

“Look, we got to go,” said Karr. “You hear the helicopter. I promise, if they don’t take him, we’ll come back. But not now.
Most of these people are dead, or will be soon.”

“We can save this kid,” said Dean.

“You sure about that? You have a trauma center handy? One that won’t ask questions?”

Something inside Dean resisted the logic of the argument. Nonetheless, he tilted his hand, tilted the small test tube, showering
the flies over the child’s body. Then, with the helicopter rotors pounding the ground and a searchlight playing over the broken,
discarded wing, he began trotting south, following Karr’s outline against the open terrain.