Lee Vance: The Garden of Betrayal

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 exterieur, 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.”