Rainbow Six (1997) (70 page)

“Okay, what does that tell us?”

“It tells us that Rainbow is what it appears to be, a multinational counterterror group whose activities spread all across Europe. Spain is a NATO member, but Austria and Switzerland are not, you will recall. Could they expand their operations to other countries? Certainly, yes. They are a very serious threat to any terrorist operation. It is not,” Popov went on, “an organization I would like to have in the field against me. Their expertise in actual ‘combat’ operations we have seen on television. Behind that will be excellent technical and intelligence support as well. The one cannot exist without the other.”

“Okay. So we know about them. Is it possible that they know about us?” Dr. Brightling asked.

“Possible, but unlikely,” Popov thought. “If that were the case, then you would have agents of your FBI in here to arrest you—and me—for criminal conspiracy. I am not being tracked or followed—well, I do not think that I am. I know what to look for, and I have seen nothing of the sort, but, I must also admit, it is possible that a very careful and expert effort could probably follow me without my noticing it. That is difficult—I have been trained in countersurveillance—but theoretically possible.”

That shook his employer somewhat, Popov saw. He’d just made an admission that he was not perfect. His former supervisors in KGB would have known it beforehand and accepted it as a normal risk of the intelligence trade . . . but those people never had to worry about being arrested and losing their billions of dollars of personal worth.

“What are the risks?”

“If you mean what methods can be used against you? . . .” He got a nod. “That means that your telephones could be tapped, and—”

“My phones are encrypted. The system is supposed to be break-proof. My consultants on that tell me—”

Popov cut him off with a raised hand. “Sir, do you really think that your government allows the manufacture of encryption systems that it cannot itself break?” he asked, as though explaining something to a child. “The National Security Agency at Fort Meade has some of the brightest mathematicians in the world, and the world’s most powerful computers, and if you ever wonder how hard they work, you need only look at the parking lots.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“If the parking lots are filled at seven in the evening, that means they are hard at work on something. Everyone has a car in your country, and parking lots are generally too large to be enclosed and protected from even casual view. It’s an easy way for an intelligence officer to see how active one of your government agencies is.” And if you were
really
interested, you found out a few names and addresses, so as to know the car types and tag numbers. The KGB had tracked the head of NSA’s “Z” group—the people tasked both to crack and to create encryption systems and codes—that way for over a decade, and the reborn RVS was doubtless doing the same. Popov shook his head. “No, I would not trust a commercially available encoding system. I have my doubts about the systems used by the Russian government. Your people are very clever at cracking cipher systems. They’ve been so for over sixty years, well before World War Two, and they are allied with the British, who also have a tradition of excellence in that area of expertise. Has no one told you this?” Popov asked in surprise.

“Well . . . no, I’ve been told that this system I have here could not be broken because it is a 128-bit—”

“Ah, yes, the STU-3 standard. That system has been around in your government for about twenty years. Your people have changed to STU-4. Do you think they made that change merely because they wanted to spend money, Dr. Brightling? Or might there have been another reason? When I was in the field for KGB, I only used one-time pads. That is an encryption system only used one time, composed of random transpositions. It cannot be broken, but it is tedious to use. To send a single message that way could take hours. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to use for verbal communications. Your government has a system called TAP-DANCE, which is similar in concept, but we never managed to copy it.”

“So, you mean people could be listening in on every phone call I make?”

Popov nodded. “Of course. Why do you suppose all of our substantive conversations have been made face-to-face?” Now he was really shaken, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw. The genius
was
a babe-in-the-woods. “Now, perhaps, is the time for you to tell me why I have undertaken these missions for you?”

 

 

“Yes, Minister . . . excellent . . . thank you,” Bob Aukland said into his cellular phone. He thumbed the END button and put the phone back in his pocket, then turned to Bill Henriksen. “Good news. We’ll have that Rainbow group down to consult on our security as well.”

“Oh?” Bill observed. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt all that much.”

“Nose a little out of joint?” the cop asked.

“Not really,” Henriksen lied. “I probably know a few of them, and they know me.”

“And your fee will remain the same, Bill,” the Aussie said. They headed off to his car, and from there they’d drive to a pub for a few pints before he drove the American off to the airport.

Oh, shit,
the American thought. Once more the Law of Unintended Consequences had risen up to bite him in the ass. His mind went briefly into overdrive, but then persuaded itself that it didn’t really matter all that much as long as he did his job right. It might even help, he told himself, almost believing it.

 

 

He couldn’t tell Popov, Brightling knew. He trusted him in many ways—hell, what Popov knew could put him in federal prison, even on death row—but to tell him what this was really all about? No, he couldn’t risk that. He didn’t know Popov’s views on the Environment and Nature. So he couldn’t predict the Russian’s reaction to the project. Popov was dangerous to him in many ways, like a falcon trained to the fist, but still a free agent, willing to kill a quail or a rabbit, perhaps, but never entirely his, always able to fly off and reclaim his previous free life . . . and if he was free to do that, he was also free to give information to others. Not for the first time, Brightling thought about having Bill Henriksen take care of this potential problem. He’d know how. Surely, the former FBI agent knew how to investigate a murder, and thus how to befuddle the investigators as well, and this little problem would go away.

Assets, Brightling thought next. What other things could he do to make his position and his Project more secure? If this Rainbow was a problem, would it be possible to strike at it directly? To destroy it at best, or at worst, distract it, force it to focus in another direction?

“I have to think that one through first, Dmitriy,” he said finally.

Popov nodded soberly, wondering what thoughts had gone through his employer’s mind in the fifteen seconds he’d taken to consider the question. Now it was his turn to be concerned. He’d just informed John Brightling of the operational dangers involved in using him, Popov, to set up the terrorist incidents, and especially of the flaws in his communications security. The latter, especially, had frightened the man. Perhaps he ought to have warned him earlier, but somehow the subject had never arisen, and Dmitriy Arkadeyevich now realized that it had been a serious error on his part. Well, perhaps not that great an error. Operational security was not all that bad. Only two people knew what was happening . . . well, probably that Henriksen fellow as well. But Bill Henriksen was former FBI, and if he were an informer, then they’d all be in jail now. The FBI would have all the evidence it needed for a major felony investigation and trial, and would not allow things to proceed any further unless there were some vast criminal conspiracy yet to be uncovered—

—but how much larger would it have to be than conspiracy to commit murder? Moreover, they would have to know what the conspiracy was, else they would have no reason to hold off on their arrests. No, security here was good. And though the American government had the technical ability to decode Brightling’s supposedly secure phone lines, even to tap them required a court order, and evidence was needed for that, and that evidence would itself be sufficient to put several people in death-row cages. Including me, Popov reminded himself.

What was going on here?
the Russian demanded. He’d just thought it through enough to realize something. Whatever his employer was doing, it was
larger
than mass murder. What the
hell
could
that
be? Most worrisome of all, Popov had undertaken the missions in the hope—a realized hope, to be sure—of making a good deal of money off the job. He now had over a million dollars in his Bern bank account. Enough for him to return to Mother Russia and live very well indeed . . . but not enough for what he really wanted. So strange to discover that a “million,” that magic word to describe a magic number, was something that, once you had it . . . wasn’t magical at all. It was just a number from which you had to subtract to buy the things you wanted. A million American dollars wasn’t enough to buy the home he wanted, the car he wanted, the food he wanted, and then have enough left over to sustain the lifestyle he craved for the remainder of his life—except, probably, in Russia, where he did not, unfortunately, wish to live. To visit, yes; to stay, no. And so Dmitriy was trapped, too.

Trapped into what, he didn’t know. And so here he was, sitting across the desk from someone who, like himself, was also busily trying to think things through, but neither of them knew where to go just yet. One of them knew what was happening and the other did not—but the other one knew how to
make
things happen, and his employer did not. It was an interesting and somewhat elegant impasse.

And so they just sat there for a minute or so, each regarding the other, and if not
not
knowing what to say, then unwilling to take the risk of saying what they needed to. Finally, Brightling broke the silence.

“I really need to think this situation through. Give me a day or so to do that?”

“Certainly.” Popov stood, shook hands, and walked out of the office. A player for most of his adult life in that most interesting and fascinating of games, he realized now that he was in a new game, with new parameters. He’d taken possession of a vast sum of money—but an amount that his employer had regarded as trivial. He was involved in an operation whose import was larger than that of mass murder. That was not entirely new to him, Popov realized on reflection. He’d once served a nation called by its ultimately victorious enemy the Evil Empire, and
that
cold war had been greater in size than mass murder. But Brightling was not a nation-state, and however huge his resources might be, they were minuscule in comparison with those of any advanced country. The great question remained—what the hell was this man trying to achieve? And why did he need the services of Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov to achieve it?

 

 

Henriksen caught the Qantas flight for Los Angeles. He had the better part of a day ahead of him in his first-class seat, a good deal of time to consider what he knew.

The plan for the Olympics was essentially in the bag. The fogging system was in place, which was just plain perfect for the Project’s purposes. He’d have one of his men check out the system, and thereby get himself in place for the delivery part on the last day. It was that simple. He had the consulting contract needed to make it all happen. But now this Rainbow bunch would be down there as well. How intrusive might they be? Damn, there was just no telling on that one. Worst case, it was possible that something small could toss a wrench into the works. It so often happened that way. He knew that from his time in the FBI. A random police patrol, a man on foot or in a radio-car could wander by and cause a well-planned robbery to stop. Or in the investigation phase, the unexpectedly sharp memory of a random passerby, or a casual remark made by a subject to a friend, could come to the right investigator and blow a case wide open. Boom, that simple—it had happened a million times. And the breaks always went to the other side, didn’t they?

And so, from his perspective, he knew he had to eliminate the chance for such random events. He’d been so close to it. The operational concept had been brilliant—it had mainly been his from the beginning; John Brightling had merely funded it. Getting the terrorists to operate in Europe had raised the international consciousness about the threat, and
that
had allowed him and his company to get the contract to oversee the security for the Olympics. But then this damned Rainbow team had appeared, and handled three major incidents—and what asshole had instigated the third one? he demanded of himself—so well that now the Australians had asked
them
to come down for a look. And if they came down, they’d stay and keep looking, and if
that
happened, they might be there for the games, and if they wondered about chemical weapons, then they might spot the perfect delivery system for them and—

A lot of ifs, Henriksen told himself. A lot of ifs. A lot of things had to go wrong for the Project to be thwarted. There was comfort in that thought. Maybe he could meet with the Rainbow people and direct them away from the threat. After all, he had a chemical weapons expert on the payroll, and they probably did not, and that gave him the edge, didn’t it? With a little cleverness, his man could do his job right in front of them and not even be seen to have done it. That’s what planning was for, wasn’t it?

Relax,
he told himself, as the stewardess came around with drinks, and he had another glass of wine.
Relax.
But, no, he couldn’t do that. He had too much experience as an investigator to accept the mere chance of random interference without consideration of the possible consequences. If his man were stopped, even by accident, then it was also possible that the entire Project could be uncovered. And
that
would mean more than failure. It would mean lifelong imprisonment at best, which was not something he was prepared to accept. No, he was committed to the Project for more than one reason. It was his task to save the world first of all—and second, he wanted to be around to enjoy what he’d had a hand in saving.