Humphrey Hawksley - Man on Ice - Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

‘Install your missiles with a proxy, then negotiate away the American missiles in Europe.’

‘The Soviet missiles never got to Cuba. The Topol-M is already in North Korea.’

‘That’s why I needed to talk to you first. The transition, Steph, in particular the acrimony between Holland and Swain, is leaking like a gas can peppered with gunshot. Holland’s people brief against Swain, Swain’s against Holland. Ten thousand experienced staffers are clearing their desks at State and Defense alone, all looking for new jobs. We cannot afford to share this through the usual channels.’

She understood where he was coming from, but it wouldn’t work. Harry was always the impatient wild card that tore up the rule book. Sensible Stephanie reined him in.

‘No,’ she said, dialing Prusak. ‘You need to brief the President.’

‘Didn’t you hear me, Steph? I’m not briefing because it will leak. And how to explain the source of my intel? What reputation do I have? A failed congressman from a rival party who quit because he couldn’t hold his drink and keep his marriage together?’

Stephanie paused the dialing and put her phone on the table like a peace offering. Harry pointed at the men working in the room. ‘These are my guys, but they’re here privately, OK? If I bring my business direct to the Oval Office, half my clients will melt away.’

‘You brief the President as Harry Lucas, chief executive of—’ She stopped as she momentarily forgot the name of his company. Harry let her struggle for a few seconds, half-amused that she had been caught out. Stephanie picked up. ‘Your reputation speaks for itself. Just do it, for Christ’s sake.’

‘You do it.’

‘I can’t, I’m British.’

‘The way this is going down, you might as well be a Mongolian pagan dancer.’

Stephanie didn’t mean to, but triggered by the tension and the outlandish image conjured up by Harry, she laughed, a real belly laugh. It had been the pattern of their marriage; where his mood hardened, she would react, and at the height of their anger, he would come up with a ridiculous line that cracked her up.

‘Sorry. Yeah. I forgot,’ said Harry, chuckling too. ‘We’re not married anymore so we don’t have to yell at each other.’

‘You’ve still got your cute side.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘If all this fails, Swain, me and Slater are the scapegoats. It’s not right, but you know how these things work. No one will know you’re involved.’

His face opened, resistance gone. ‘OK. You win. I’ll do it, and tell Matt to get Frank Ciszewski over from Langley.’

Good. She had won him round. They understood enough of each other’s minds to know that this was far bigger than the two of them. But as Harry was unhooking his coat from a stand by the door, he announced a counter-deal. ‘I need something from you.’ He put on his coat, keeping his eyes on Stephanie. It wasn’t a sexual look, as he used to give her. He was studying her, measuring her, playing a thought through his mind, until deciding what to do with it. He handed her a phone. ‘Afterward, try Sergey Grizlov on this. It’s registered to Narva on the Russia–Estonia border. He won’t know it’s you, so he’ll likely pick up.’

‘But—’

‘No buts, Steph. Like you say, just do it. I know it wasn’t just one night with him, Steph. It was a full-blown affair. He’ll tell you more than he’ll tell anyone else. When you speak to him, just ask him outright what the fuck is going on.’

His suggestion was simple and brilliant. For some inexplicable reason, as she wondered what she would say and why Grizlov should reveal anything to her, Stephanie felt her heart pound. Harry was reading her mind. ‘I’ve been tracking him. For what it’s worth, I know he still holds a candle for you.’

The White House, Washington, DC

Asmell of coffee and pizza hung in the Oval Office. Suits were crumpled, faces unshaven, eyes red and focused. By the time Harry and Stephanie arrived everyone, including Holland, was there and Swain was ending a call with the Chinese President. ‘He’s refusing to condemn the Russian occupation of Little Diomede,’ he said to the room. ‘He referred to it as a routine border dispute and raised our issue with them over the South China Sea.’

‘We could take out their South China Sea positions in half an hour,’ said Holland.

‘Then what?’ said Swain dismissively. ‘Fight wars on two fronts?’ He addressed Stephanie. ‘New Jersey was a work of art, Ambassador. I must ask the Prime Minister to lend me your speech writer.’

‘That would be him, sir, and he’s on his way to London now.’

‘So, is Europe with us?’

‘Depends how many more aircraft get shot down. It’ll hold for a day or two. After that, as always, Europe will fracture.’

Swain turned his attention to Harry. ‘Good to see you, Harry. What’ve you got for us?’

Harry told it exactly as he had to Stephanie: the convoy, the Japanese agent, the camera catching the white forearm, the missile scientist Dmitri Alverov. He ended with Stephanie’s question: whether the team wanted to be spotted and if so, why?

Swain gave nothing away. No anger. No apprehension. No surprise. He drank from a plastic bottle of water, and his gaze shifted to two of his trusted security principals, the lean and alert Mike Pacolli from Defense and the rotund and avuncular CIA director Frank Ciszewski. He asked what either of them had that added to or contradicted Harry’s analysis.

Pacolli described a North Korean defector who claimed to have worked as an engineer at the Toksong missile site. ‘He says it’s been expanded a lot since the Trump presidency crisis. It’s a large, deep underground facility with four independent silos and launch pads and, from his description, it could have been redesigned to accommodate the Topol-M.’

‘Going back over our IMINT,’ said Ciszewski, glancing across to Stephanie. ‘That’s imagery intelligence, Ambassador Lucas. Examining vehicles from known armament factories and matching them with traffic going into Toksong, it is possible that between September 28th and October 7th dismantled parts of a mobile Topol-M were transported to North Korea. That would coincide with Alverov’s first visit. Nothing is concrete, sir. We’ve been at it for an hour. It’s a job that should take weeks.’

‘That was before the election,’ said Prusak. It was a salient observation. In October, a month before voting, the polls were neck and neck, meaning that Russia would have been making contingencies for this operation now regardless of who was in the White House.

‘We need to call Lagutov. Tell him to back off,’ said Holland.

Being President isn’t that simple, thought Stephanie. She caught Harry’s eye and checked her phone. It was filled with messages from everywhere, but nothing more from Sergey Grizlov. Prusak saw her, his eye questioning. She shook her head. ‘Where is Captain Ozenna?’ Swain asked.

‘Still alive, but Russian troops were closing in on him,’ said Pacolli. ‘Since then two have been killed.’

‘That man is lethal,’ said Holland.

‘It may not have been him. Radio traffic indicates that the shooter was the Eskimo tracker from Goose Creek Correctional, Don Ondola. He stole a snowmobile and escaped after guiding our men to Little Diomede.’

‘You mean without orders?’ Swain raised his eyebrow with a complex expression of anger and respect.

‘Essentially, yes,’ said Pacolli. ‘He’s an escaped civilian prisoner.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He may be with Ozenna.’

‘A damn stupid idea to use either of them,’ said Holland. ‘We need to get them back and under control.’