Lee Vance: The Garden of Betrayal

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.”

The camera scrolled up until the Gulf of Finland was just visible at the top of the screen and then began tracking to the right. Alex pointed to the screen.

“What’s that?”

Four metal struts reached skyward, the ends blackened and twisted. Dark smoke was spewing up between them.

“The control tower,” I replied, horrified. Even with the terminus performing only minimal duty, there would have been at least three or four guys in the control tower.

The camera kept panning, and the white marquee where I’d last seen the Russian deputy prime minister about to speak-or what was left of it-came into view.

“Jesus Christ.” Alex gasped.

Flaming scraps of canvas surrounded a charred rectangular area that looked like an airplane crash site. Burned corpses and scattered body parts became distinguishable as the camera zoomed in. A few survivors crawled on the ground, blood seeping from appalling wounds. Alex grabbed hold of my garbage can and threw up. I felt I wouldn’t be far behind him. Walter started to leave.

“Wait,” I managed to say. “My contact said I should watch until the end.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you speed it up?” Walter asked impatiently.

“I think so.”

I clicked my mouse on the appropriate button and the video began playing at ten-times speed. Walter lifted my phone without asking, reeling off a litany of crisp orders while I tapped out yet another urgent e-mail with trembling fingers. Six minutes later-an hour of elapsed real time-the Russians had four military helicopters and fifteen or twenty fire trucks and ambulances on the ground, and another pair of helicopters circling overhead. The parking lot I’d seen earlier had been converted into an emergency triage zone, with dozens of coveralled medics working on the injured.

“Stop,” Walter ordered.

I’d already moved my mouse to the pause button. A pale red X had suddenly appeared in the center of the screen, a column of similarly colored numbers superimposed to the far left.

“Play,” Walter said. “Half speed.”

I watched curiously as he bent closer to the screen. The camera swung slowly toward the helicopters and the emergency vehicles. Walter tapped the changing column of numbers on the left with one finger.

“Distance and azimuth,” he declared crisply. Walter had been an army officer in Vietnam. I hadn’t, but I had a sudden dread of what to expect. “Speed it up again.”

The camera lingered fractionally on each of the landed helicopters and on the larger pieces of emergency equipment, the central X blinking repeatedly. Each time the X blinked, it left behind a red dot. The camera pulled back for a wide view, and I felt my heart in my throat. The blow wasn’t long coming.

Every one of the emergency vehicles and helicopters exploded simultaneously. A fraction of a second later a rolling wave of synchronized explosions took out the triage zone. No one on the ground had a chance. Alex retched again.

“Mortars,” Walter announced. “Some targeted, some pre-positioned. Probably on the roof of one of the buildings. They must’ve anticipated where the emergency workers would set up. Who the hell are these guys?”

I shook my head numbly as the camera rose higher, pointing at the sky. The pale red X changed to blue, as did the column of numbers on the left. It panned left until it located a hovering helicopter and then zoomed in. The blue X began flashing.

“I don’t believe it,” Walter said, sounding amazed for the first time since I’d known him.

A streak of white smoke appeared on the lower-right side of the screen. The helicopter burst into flames, heeled over onto its side, and fell from the sky. The camera swung left again with the same terrible mechanical precision. A second helicopter came into view, fleeing to the east. A second later, it too fell out of the sky in flames, taken down by a second missile. Walter rapped his knuckles on my desk, and I looked up at him, stunned.

“There’s nothing we can do from here. We need to focus. What’s the opportunity?”

I forced myself to look at my market screens. The Dow was down five hundred points, oil was up eight dollars a barrel in the front month, the long bond was getting crushed, and the euro had fallen three percent against the dollar.

“Short second month oil and buy back two-year,” I said, surprised to discover that my brain was still functioning. “This has no immediate impact on energy supply, and short-term demand’s only going to be forecast weaker if the market keeps tanking this hard.”

“Good,” he said, turning to Alex. “What are your exposures?”

Alex didn’t respond. He was still staring at my computer screen. The camera had zoomed all the way out and was doing a slow pan. The horizon was empty, save for bellowing plumes of black smoke, and the ground was a sea of fire.

“Alex,” Walter repeated sharply.

“I’m the wrong way around,” Alex confessed dazedly, running one hand through his hair. “I was positioned long the market and I’m short volatility.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“I see.” Walter turned on his heel and walked out. Alex hesitated a moment and then followed him.

I began typing another e-mail, searching for words to describe what I’d just seen.

I was on a conference call with a group of fund managers late that afternoon, going over pretty much the same points I’d been covering all day. My voice was hoarse, and I was scanning headlines while half listening to repetitive questions, struggling to stay in front of the news. Everything I knew was already in my written bulletins, but I’d learned long ago that people are more likely to believe things if they hear you say them.

“It depends,” I said, in response to a question about who might be responsible. “If the completion ceremony was just a target of opportunity, with the primary intent of killing a bunch of diplomats, then your guess is as good as mine. It could have been Islamic fundamentalists seizing the moment, Chechens working off old grievances, or some other terrorist organization. But if the goal was to make a statement about the pipeline per se, then it seems reasonable to ask who has motive. The countries most unhappy about the Nord Stream pipeline are Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus, and Slovakia. They all stand to lose the transit fees they’ve been earning from the existing pipelines that pass through their territory, and-more to the point-they all become significantly more vulnerable to energy blackmail from Russia.”

“Natural gas is cheap now,” one of the listeners interrupted. “Why can’t the Ukrainians and the Poles and the rest of them just buy from someone else?”

I stifled a sigh. My clients were financiers, accustomed to moving money and securities around the world at the tap of a computer key. Logistics was as esoteric a subject to them as mortgage-backed securities had been to everyone else prior to the housing meltdown.