The Garden of Betrayal (3 page)

“Strange how?”

“Today’s the day of the terminus construction completion ceremony. A lot of reporters and dignitaries are visiting. The whole site went quiet twenty minutes ago. Nobody can get hold of their people. And we just got word a moment ago that the Russians have closed their airspace between Saint Petersburg and the Finnish border, and that there’s been a huge increase in encrypted radio traffic out of their military bases at Pribilovo and Kronstadt.”

“So, how do your people know there was an explosion?” I asked, my adrenaline beginning to pump.

“There was a camera crew shooting the ceremony. The footage should be on air any minute. You can see the tiniest hint of a flash in the last frame of the video before it goes dark.”

“Satellite views?”

“Too cloudy. I’ve got to go.”

“Wait. You’re thinking terrorism?”

“It’s hard not to, isn’t it? But we haven’t got any facts yet.”

“Stay in touch.”

I turned on CNN after I hung up, listening for updates as I speed-typed an e-mail to my clients and Rashid. The newly completed terminus was doing only light duty while the attached pipeline was still under construction, a bare fraction of the capacity used to route gas locally, but an attack there would rattle the markets, an ominous portent for the future. Energy infrastructure was a soft target. A systematic campaign against refineries or pipelines or storage facilities could do an enormous amount of economic damage. The likely reactions were a knee-jerk spike in energy prices, weakening global equity markets, a steeping yield curve, and a declining euro. I wrote urgent in the subject line and hit the send button. Alex Coleman was in my office thirty seconds later.

“You think this is serious?” he demanded.

Alex looked terrible, rough patches of psoriasis visible on his hairline and bluish circles beneath his eyes. He’d had a difficult time during the recent market turmoil. In truth, he’d been having a difficult time for years. I could guess what his positions were from the sweat soaking his shirt beneath his arms.

“I don’t know anything more than what I put in my e-mail.”

“You have a hunch?”

“Half the countries that used to make up the Soviet Union are furious about this pipeline, and they’d all like to see Russia take it in the neck. I think this is bad.”

“Shit.”

He rushed out just as CNN cut to a special report. It took only a few seconds to figure out that they didn’t know anything more than I did. I grabbed my phone and started dialing.

Two hours later I was holding my phone to my ear impatiently, waiting for Dieter to pick up again. Equity markets were tanking and oil prices had gapped higher, but nobody knew a damned thing. Rashid was unavailable, having responded to my original e-mail with a note of his own saying that he’d be at the hospital all day and asking to be kept up to speed electronically. My phone turret was lit up like a Christmas tree, every one of my clients frantic for information, and I had nothing to tell them.

I stood to relieve my cramped muscles and turned to face the window. It was snowing, fat, lazy flakes drifting from a gunmetal sky and melting as they touched down. I’d come to hate the snow, just as I’d come to hate everything else about New York, the occasional cell phone–returning Good Samaritan regardless. But Claire and I could never move. Our apartment on Riverside Drive was the only home Kyle had ever known—the only home he’d know to come back to.

“Mark,” Dieter said into my ear, sounding rushed. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t have anything else to tell you.”

“Don’t hold out on me,” I insisted. “You must have twenty guys working on this. You’ve got to know something.”

“The Russians have everything shut down, but the prevailing wind is
from the west, and we were able to get a stringer south of Vyborg before he hit a police roadblock. There’s a lot of smoke in the air. That’s all I’ve got.”

I started to ask another question, but he was already gone. I hung up and smacked one hand down on my desk in frustration.

CNN had obtained the footage Dieter referred to in his first call. I watched on one of my desktop monitors as they began running it for the twentieth time. It opened with an establishing shot: frozen marshes, snow, and the bleak gray waters of the Gulf of Finland. The shot tightened as it panned to the terminus. It was nothing much to look at—squat scrubbing and absorption towers, low brown buildings to house the compressor equipment, an antennae-festooned central control station on tall stilts, and endless miles of dull blue pipe and valves. There was no housing—according to the CNN commentator, the workers commuted from Vyborg, thirty miles to the east, or from Hamina, in Finland, thirty miles to the west. The shot tightened further as a group of heavily bundled dignitaries began emerging from a building that was probably a dining hall. Jacques Pripaud, the head of Banque Paribas, was one of the first out the door. His expression seemed consistent with having eaten at a Russian cafeteria. He was closely followed by his counterpart at Deutsche Bank. I pulled my yellow pad closer and turned the volume up a little, hoping the commentator might identify more of the unknown faces this time around. I already had twenty-two names written down, including the chairmen of four of the largest banks in Europe, a Russian deputy prime minister, the mayor of Saint Petersburg, and the German foreign minister. The pipeline had been hugely controversial in Europe, implying an energy dependence on Russia that made people old enough to remember the Cold War queasy. All the businessmen and politicians who’d supported it had turned out to wave the flag.

The camera followed closely as the men trooped across an icy parking lot to a white canvas tent. Inside was a gang of valves, one of which had a gilded control wheel attached to it. The diameter of the attached pipe was way too small to be anything other than some kind of secondary line, but then the entire act of turning a valve by hand was pure theater—everything in the facility was automated. A microphone on a stand stood to the left of the pipe gang. The Russian deputy prime minister tapped on the microphone a few times to settle the crowd, took a
sheaf of folded papers from his pocket, and opened his mouth. The screen flared orange for a tenth of a second and then went black.

“Shoot.” I drummed my fingers on my head, trying to think of who else I could call. CNN had frozen the last frame of the footage on the screen, and my attention drifted to the small yellow credit on the bottom-right corner that read courtesy of euronews. I didn’t usually bother with broadcast journalists, but I remembered that someone I knew had gone to work at Euronews a few years back. I willed my mind blank and the name suddenly popped into my head: Gavin Metcalfe. He was a Brit who’d worked at the
Economist
, but he’d quit to take a job as a producer with Euronews because they were headquartered near the French Alps. He and his wife were big skiers. Typing the name into my address book, I saw two numbers, both with U.K. country codes. I punched the intercom button on my phone.

“Amy, have you got an updated number for Gavin Metcalfe? M-e-t-c-a-l-f-e. Used to be in London, but I think he’s in France now.”

I heard her fingers clicking on her keyboard.

“I have a work and a cell, but they’re both U.K.”

“Same. Do me a favor, please. Call the main switchboard at Euronews in Lyon and ask for him.”

“Will do.”

I hung up and dialed the cell phone number anyway, figuring there was some chance he’d kept it. The call kicked directly into voice mail, a generic prompt suggesting I leave a message. Hoping the number hadn’t been reassigned, I explained why I was getting in touch and then followed up with a quick text from my own cell. My intercom flashed as I pressed the send button.

“It’s weird,” Amy said. “No one’s answering.…”

“Hang on,” I interrupted. My BlackBerry was ringing. I picked it up and checked the display, seeing the London number I’d just tried. “Gotta hop. This might be him.”

I hung up the intercom and lifted the BlackBerry to my ear.

“Mark Wallace.”

“Open a browser window on your computer,” a voice answered. There was a rushing sound in the background that I couldn’t identify.

“Gavin?”

“Don’t interrupt. I’m in a car, and I haven’t got much time. You want to know about Nord Stream, right?”

“Right,” I confirmed, my excitement building.

“So, do what I tell you. Open a browser window and type this in the menu bar: F-T-P colon backslash backslash euronews dot net backslash …”

I pecked carefully at the keyboard as he dictated a URL that was about fifty characters long, interrupting several times when I wasn’t sure what he’d said. Gavin had some kind of impenetrable northern accent that made all his vowels sound the same. He told me to press enter, and I did.

“It wants a username and password,” I said.

“The username is
extérieur
, all lowercase. Password
baiselareine
. Bloody frogs having a go at me every time I turn around.”

I entered both, my high school French sufficient to translate the juvenile slur. I heard someone else on his end of the line as I pressed the enter key. It sounded like a child.

“I see a bunch of folders. You’re with your family?”

“On our way to the airport. Click the folder labeled
archive
, and then click the one inside that with today’s date, and then click the one inside that named Nord Stream.”

“Done.”

“You’ll see two files—EsatIIB135542 and EsatIIC141346. Clicking on either will download it to your desktop. They’re big files, but our server’s hooked directly to the Internet backbone, so the limitation will likely be on your side.”

“What are they?”

“Video. The first is the raw footage you’ve been seeing on television. The second is something else entirely.”

I clicked the second. We were connected to a dedicated fiber-optic cable as well. A dialogue box indicated that I had ten minutes to wait, the file transfer speed a number I’d never seen before.

“Give me a hint,” I said, wondering what the hell was going on. “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

“You?” he sneered. “I’ve had the effing DGSE in my face all afternoon.”

“Remind me who the DGSE are?”

“French foreign intelligence creeps. Jackbooters. They turned up just after we released the first footage and put a lid on us. I went out for a cigarette and kept going. If I wanted to work for fascists, I would have taken a job with Murdoch.”

“So, what’s the second file?”

“It’s what it isn’t that bears thinking about. It isn’t our footage. We had one cameraman and one reporter on the ground, and we lost them both in the initial blast. I’m inside the airport now, on the ring road. I’m going to have to hang up in a moment.”

I scribbled the words “initial blast” on my yellow pad. I had to stay focused.

“Who shot the footage, then?”

“Our satellite truck kept running after our lads went off the air. Someone pirated one of the frequencies, and their feed uploaded automatically. We didn’t even realize we’d received it until an hour ago.”

“Does it show what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Is it bad?”

“It makes the guys who did 9/11 look like a bunch of shit-arsed kids. Be sure to watch the whole thing.”

“Will do,” I agreed, wondering fearfully what I was about to see. There was just one more question I had to ask. “Has anyone else got this yet?”

“No. I hadn’t figured out who to give it to. I want it distributed, but I don’t want my name mentioned. You understand?”

“You’re fleeing the country, Gavin,” I said, feeling obliged to point out the obvious. “It’s not like they aren’t going to figure it out.”

“There’s a difference between suspecting and knowing. I have your word?”

“Of course.”

“Fine, then. And listen, Mark—I’m going to need a job. Something in Dubai might be nice. I’m sick of the bloody winters. You know people there?”

“I do. Give me a shout when you want me to make some calls. And thanks.”

He hung up without saying good-bye. The dialogue box indicated that I had seven minutes to wait. I typed another urgent e-mail, warning my clients and Rashid that I’d had tentative confirmation of a major terrorist action and that full details were to follow shortly. The Dow was down one hundred points when I hit the send key. By the time Alex and Walter showed up in my office, it was down two hundred and fifty, and my phone turret was pulsing like it was going to explode.

“What the hell is going on?” Walter demanded. He had a raptor’s profile—aquiline nose, deep-set eyes, and short-cropped white hair. Part of his legend was that pressure only ever made him meaner. Alex looked as if he’d been run over.

“Two minutes,” I said, bristling at Walter’s tone. Gratitude for his professional help had never reconciled me to his habit of acting as if the entire world should jump when he spoke. I nodded toward my screen. “I have video of what happened. The guy who gave it to me said that it’s bad. He mentioned an ‘initial explosion,’ implying there’s been more than one.”

Amy stuck her head in again.

“Sorry,” I said, before she could open her mouth. “I can’t speak to anyone right now. E-mail bulletins only for another half hour at least. Hang on.”

The file completed downloading, and I dragged a copy to the folder where I kept documents for client access.

“I’m writing a big video file to the public drive. As soon as it finishes, e-mail the address to Rashid and then to everyone else on the prime distribution list.”

“Right,” she said, closing the door.

“Can we get on with this?” Walter snarled.

I clicked on the file irritably. My media player opened, and a second later the screen filled with an image I couldn’t identify, the lower half shiny gray metal and the upper a blurry blue tube. The field of view began shifting smoothly upward, and suddenly I got oriented.

“The camera’s mounted on one of the scrubbing towers,” I said. “It was pointed straight down, maybe so nobody would notice it.”

“Whose camera?” Walter asked.

“My contact didn’t know. Pirates, he said.”