Independence Day (21 page)

“Katya?”

“Who is it from?”

“He didn’t say.”

She shut her eyes and steeled herself. She stood and walked to the door, opening it slightly, and took the package.

The box was blue and was tied with white string. She sat down at her makeup table. She put the box on her lap, then yanked up on the string. She lifted the top of the box.

Inside the box was another, this one long and thin, wrapped in light blue velvet. She opened it. Inside was a stunning diamond necklace. It was anchored by a large yellow diamond. Katya pulled the necklace out and stared at it for several moments. She fastened it around her neck and admired it in the mirror.

A small note was stuck inside the box:
I love you, my future wife.

A light tap came at the door.

“Two minutes, Katya.”

Katya let the note fall from her fingers onto the floor. She took the necklace off and placed it on the dressing table, then walked to the door.

“Yes,” she said, barely above a whisper.

The door opened. Katya walked past the bodyguard, saying nothing, as the lights from the theater flickered in the distance.

*   *   *

Bond was seated in the backseat of the red Mercedes limousine, at that moment parked one block behind the Mariinsky Theatre. He was dressed in a linen suit, his hair combed back and dyed black, a white handkerchief puffed out of his breast pocket. The get-up was perhaps overkill, but Bond had spent two years in Saint Petersburg working for the CIA, and Polk didn’t want to take the risk he might be spotted in the middle of a live operation.

In the front seat, Joe Oliveri had on a chauffeur’s outfit. A former member of Force Recon, the Marines’ elite deep reconnaissance unit, Oliveri was considered one of Langley’s top “escape men,” the agent charged in a dead zone operation with getting whatever individual or materials that needed to be extracted to a drop zone.

Tonight, if necessary, it would be Bond’s job to grab Katya, and Oliveri’s job to get her to water, where Navy SEALs lurked eighteen feet beneath the waterline.

Bond stared out the side window, in silence, as Oliveri tapped his fingers absentmindedly on the steering wheel.

“Your kid make that baseball team he was trying out for?” asked Bond.

“Yeah,” said Oliveri, keeping his eyes trained on the street ahead. “First game’s tomorrow night. Hopefully, this’ll all be cake and I’ll be there to watch it.”

*   *   *

An usher led Dewey to the orchestra section near the front of the theater. His seat was on the aisle.

Dewey sat next to a woman and her young daughter. Dewey smiled at the girl, who smiled back. Her mother stared at him.

His eyes scanned the left and right balcony boxes. Seated inside were elegant-looking groups of Russians dressed in evening attire. The men varied in their looks, but each woman seemed like she could have been on the cover of a magazine.

The curtain opened to the final act of
Swan Lake.

At Katya’s entrance, a wave of hushed whispers swept the theater. Even Dewey leaned forward in his seat to get a better view.

The ballerina wore a simple white dress, which looked as if it had been painted onto her body. Her black hair was braided on top of her head and shone like leather beneath the stage lights. Her skin was dark and dusted with white makeup. She stood motionless near the back of the stage. She looked sad, vulnerable, even frail. And then her head moved slightly around and her gaze ripped across the crowd.

In an instant, what had appeared weak and frightened disappeared. Her beauty shot from the back of the stage like lightning across the night sky. Audience members reflexively moved forward in their seats. The little girl two seats away from Dewey shot her arm out, pointing. The electricity in the audience was palpable, and Katya had yet to take even her first step.

And then she began her run. She moved as if galloping on the wind, toward the center of the stage, then leapt high into the air as gasps arose above the orchestra music. She seemed to hold the air for an inhuman amount of time. The lights from behind her brightened, creating a dark silhouette of her soaring figure, like a five-pointed star crossing in front of the sun. Then, just when it seemed like she would remain airborne forever, she fell like a bird in flight, a bird who’s been shot, falling helplessly, listlessly, freely, with no concern for her own safety. She fell as if she had just died midflight. Inches from striking the stage, a male dancer caught Katya, swinging her up and around, landing her on one toe, upon which she proceeded to pirouette like a top, until at long last she stopped, raised her arm triumphantly above her head, then looked out across the audience. A mysterious smile creased her lips. The entire audience erupted in a cacophony of cheering as it stood up to welcome its beloved Katya.

She seemed to glow, to radiate, and yet her eyes met no one’s, not the dancer who caught her, not the audience that screamed in delight. She was in a different world altogether.

Dewey had never seen anything like it. He’d never seen a woman with such beauty as the woman standing on the stage before him.

Finally, the clapping ended, and the audience sat down to watch the rest of the performance.

In Dewey’s ear, the monotone Philadelphia accent of Bill Polk brought him back into focus.

“We have sign-off from the president,” said Polk. “Get in and get it done.”

31

ELEKTROSTAL

Sascha nodded at Cloud. Cloud stepped around the table and walked to him.

Sascha was a gifted programmer in his own right and was the one who was able to penetrate Alexei Malnikov’s father’s VPN, thus enabling Cloud to anonymously set up the elder Malnikov.

“What is it?” asked Cloud.

“The trapdoor into Langley,” said Sascha. “It was there an hour ago. Now I can’t find it.”

In hacker lingo, a trapdoor was a hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by a designer or maintainer.

Cloud moved quickly to Sascha’s workstation.

“The operation will be going live,” said Cloud.

“I know.”

Cloud leaned over and took Sascha’s keyboard, then started typing.

“Yes, I see,” said Cloud, typing away. “They found the evidence of one of the times we were inside. Like finding the ashes after a fire. But they’re not anywhere near the matches or the gasoline.”

Cloud gently pushed Sascha aside and took over his computer. He typed a URL into the Web browser. This was the enterprise server in Elektrostal. He went through a series of consecutive screens, entering passwords, each time pressing his right thumb to the computer’s thumbprint detection security device. At the fifth screen, a large cartoonish-looking eye suddenly appeared. Cloud leaned forward, staring into the laptop’s built-in camera. After a few moments, a soft musical note chimed, the eye disappeared, and the words came onto the screen.

Welcome home, Cloud

Cloud had succeeded in hacking into the CIA but not by penetrating the Agency’s computer networks. The odds of being able to pull off such a “front door” intrusion were not only remote, but they would also likely lead the CIA back to him. The CIA was in large part a closed-loop user of the Internet and originator of signals intelligence. This meant there were few exposed access points into the Agency. Those that did exist were for noncore, “passive” activities, such as human resources and public relations. Those access points which allowed the general public into the CIA through e-mail or a Web browser were heavily monitored and delivered visitors to a digital world entirely separate from the important stuff, such as communications regarding live operations.

The coming attack on America was based on surprise. Although he’d stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. corporations over the years, he’d never targeted any entity that would consider it a national security violation.

Instead, Cloud had taken a more prosaic approach to worming his way into Langley. He’d written a virus, which, once downloaded, was innocuous and invisible to its users. It sat there in silence and was impossible to detect. The virus was activated by a user mistakenly clicking a link in an e-mail. Once activated, the virus targeted music files, striking the digital code of a song as it was being downloaded. Then the virus waited. For most people, it waited forever and did nothing.

The virus was designed to awaken if it was ever placed on the CIA mainframe. Then it would go live and create a single trapdoor for Cloud.

Cloud had designed the virus, then blanketed a fifty-mile radius around Langley. The goal was to have a vital employee of the Agency, with access to the closed-loop mainframe, break Agency rules and share music on a home computer with a work computer.

It took almost a year of daily e-mails, often in the millions, but eventually it happened. A young case officer had synced his iPhone with his computer at Langley. Within forty-five seconds of the insertion of the USB, Cloud, on the other side of the world, had a ladder into Langley’s closed-loop mainframe.

He was soon staring at a live video, the same video being watched inside the CIA mission theater.

He typed in silence for more than five minutes, then, with a dramatic flair, hit Enter.

Sascha smiled at him.

“A lucky break,” said Cloud, pretending to be modest.

In a dialogue box at the lower left of his screen, the audio communications passing between Langley and the Agency’s operators in the field were transcribed in real time:

Cloud sat back, crossed his arms, and stared at the screen.

“It is beginning,” he said.

32

IN THE AIR

BRITISH AIRWAYS FLIGHT 319

Dowling looked down at the earth. He clicked the ceramic switch in his glove. A digital altimeter in his helmet read:

32,880.7FT

006.23M

He glanced at the mission clock, dimly illuminated in orange in the upper left corner of his glass:

1:06:32

They had a little over an hour to go. He clicked again. A digital chart appeared, displaying Dowling’s position relative to where, based on trade winds and other metrics, he should have been.

The data that informed the charts was compiled and processed in real time, based on readings in their helmets, in communication with an Air Force AWACS that was flying, at that moment, above the Caspian Sea.

Dowling clicked again and looked at yet another chart, which showed the three commandos, along with data as to how much height and distance separated them.

All three commandos had spent years learning how to do high-altitude high-opening (HAHO) and high-altitude low-opening (HALO) parachute jumps as Rangers. HAHOs were exhausting. The adjustments to the steering and altitude of the canopy, based upon a constant cycling through the charts, was endless. It required intense concentration, especially for the lead navigator, who, in this case, was Dowling. A strobe on his helmet enabled the other men to follow.

The sky above Russia was clear and warm as the commando team descended. The lights of the Moscow suburbs were like a carpet beneath them—yellow, increasingly bright—as they came concentrically closer to the dacha.

They reached the outskirts of Rublevka while still a thousand feet in the air. A green light appeared in the upper corner of Dowling’s helmet along with a steady beeping noise. They were directly above the dacha.

The lights of the modern glass mansion were visible below.

The three Americans circled concentrically above, funneling rapidly lower as if swirling down a drain. The lights grew brighter. Dowling triggered the ceramic in his glove several times until the plot lines of the property appeared in bright orange. He made out a line of cars in the driveway. He soared left, over the house, moving out over a dark lawn. Night-vision goggles lit up the ground in light green. Several large pine trees lay dead ahead, then a field, and he dropped rapidly now. When his feet were about to hit the ground, he adjusted his chute, letting it pull him up one last time, softening the coming landing.

A minute later, Fitzgerald landed a few feet away, then Tosatti.

The team removed their parachutes, flying packs, tanks, helmets, and anything else that was unnecessary, packing it in black nylon bags they’d carried in. All three men were sweating profusely, from the heated flight suit and from the adrenaline now coursing through them like fire.

Each commando was dressed the same: black synthetic wicking shirt and pants, light duty combat boots.

Fitzgerald pulled a thermal night scope from a pocket and scanned the property for any signs of life.

Dowling activated his commo.

“We’re clear,” he said.

The dacha’s lights cast bright warm blue and orange light into the night sky.

Each commando unzipped his weapons ruck, removed the submachine gun and slammed in a mag. Tosatti reached for his ASh-12.7 urban combat assault rifle, equipped with night optics and an undermounted grenade launcher. Dowling and Fitzgerald followed suit, slamming in mags, then grabbed several extras and attached them to their belts.

Each man grabbed O
T
s-33 Pernach 9
×
18 machine pistols, tucking them into the holster on his belt.

They moved across the field, dead silent as they traversed toward the dacha.