Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

A cable ran from the back of the laptop to a suitcasesized unit beside the desk, the hardware necessary to link Lia’s computer to a satellite dish above the cruise ship’s bridge. A black-box encryption device guaranteed her that her connection to the NSA computer center back at Fort Meade was secure.

The laptop was open. Prominently displayed on the flat 19-inch screen were front and profile views of a bearded, rumpled-looking man with watery eyes. He might have been a thief… or, just possibly, an unshaven accountant. A third photo showed a candid surveillance shot of the same person, taken in a crowd on a city street.

No.

“Nothing so far,” she said. She was alone in the room. Llewellyn was off somewhere with his cleanup team, while Akulinin had gone to his stateroom to get showered and shaved.

She pressed the enter key, and another face came up on the screen. A big man with an ugly scowl.

No.

Enter .

“I’m not sure we’re going to find him this way,” she told Rubens. “How many mug shots of Russian Mafiya big shots do you have, anyway?”

“About a thousand,” Rubens told her.

Another face, small, thin, and mean. He looked like a school bully Lia once had flattened on the playground.

No.

Enter.

She’d been through about half of the database already, focusing on those members of the Russian crime syndicates known to be operating in and around St. Petersburg.

No.

Enter.

“This is getting us absolutely nowhere,” she said.

“It’s important that you look through these pictures while impressions are still fresh in your head,” Rubens told her.

No.

Enter .

With a start, she recognized the next face-the man with bad teeth she’d seen in the warehouse.

Airport Hilton Heathrow Airport, London 0815 hours GMT

THE POUNDING ON THE DOOR woke him.

Tommy Karr was on his feet next to the bed before he was fully awake. It took a moment for him to remember where he was. London. He was in London. The pretty flight attendant had agreed to have dinner with him, and they’d spent a pleasant evening chatting over espressos in a coffee shop. What was her name? Julie. Yeah, Julie… something.

“Hey, Karr!” a voice called from the hallway. The pounding sounded again. “We’ve got to get moving!”

He went to the door and peered through the spy hole. It was Payne, one of the FBI agents, blue suit, sunglasses, ear wire, and all. Karr opened the door partway. “Yeah?”

“Get dressed, lover boy. We’re rolling in ten.”

“Be right there.”

Minutes later, shrugging into his sport coat, Karr walked through the hotel lobby at Dr. Spencer’s side. Agents Payne and Delgado were with them. Agent Rogers was bringing the rental car around to the parking garage pickup.

“I trust you had a… pleasant night?” Delgado said, smirking.

Karr considered several ribald replies but then simply shrugged. “I slept okay.”

He knew the three Federal agents were about as thrilled to have him along as he was to be there. There’d been, Karr understood, quite a squawk out of the FBI overseas department when they’d learned the National Security Agency wanted to include an agent on Spencer’s security team. Karr’s presence implied that someone higher up the totem pole didn’t think the FBI could handle the job… or, possibly, it was just another inside-the-Beltway turf war. The Bureau’s director had finally agreed, but only on condition that the FBI agents-the real agents-had operational control and final responsibility for Spencer’s security… meaning, among other things, that Delgado, Payne, and Rogers would be solely responsible for Spencer’s safety at the hotel, sharing shifts in his suite.

Which was how Karr had found himself at a posh airport hotel with an evening free for socializing with a pretty flight attendant. He smiled to himself. Maybe the three Bureau suits were just jealous.

In the hotel lobby, a woman sat on one of the overstuffed leather sofas, watching from behind a copy of The Sun. As the four men-including her date from the evening before-strode across the polished marble floor twenty feet away, she felt a delicious shiver of excitement. Those men, she’d been told, were Russian spies posing as Americans, and MI5 had recruited her, her, Julie Henshaw, to help in the surveillance.

The young man, Tommy, had been engaging, charming, and smart, not at all the image of your typical Russian spy. He’d actually seemed quite nice.

But as the four walked through the double glass doors into the hotel garage, she reached into her handbag and extracted a cell phone. Punching out a memorized number, she held it to her ear. “They’re on their way.”

And she replaced the phone, mission accomplished.

According to the itinerary, Spencer was scheduled to give his talk at Greater London’s City Hall, in the speaker’s hall popularly known as London’s Living Room. He was one of a number of speakers attending the European Summit on Global Warming, a prestigious event sponsored by the Royal Society. London City Hall was located on the south bank of the Thames close by the Tower Bridge, a straight-line distance of just sixteen miles, but a considerably longer and more indirect drive by way of London’s tangled roads and highways.

“Okay, George, this is Gordon,” Karr said, using the communicator hidden in his collar. George and Gordon were handles sometimes used by the Art Room and agents in the field; they came from the name of the Civil War officer who’d given his name to Fort Meade-General George Gordon Meade. “We’re on our way to the garage. How are we doing?”

Marie Telach’s voice came back in Karr’s ear. “We’ve got you, Tommy. We’re picking up feeds from the hotel security camera. Wave!”

Karr glanced up and saw the small security camera mounted up near the ceiling and grinned… but decided not to wave as well. They were supposed to be keeping a low profile, after all.

“Switching to the camera in the parking garage,” Telach told him. “All clear outside the doors.”

Through the lobby, down some steps, and out through two sets of glass doors to the parking garage, where Karr spotted the second camera.

This, he knew, was the reason Desk Three had been roped in on a simple security detail. The National Security Agency possessed a remarkable asset in its ability to monitor electronic links of all kinds virtually worldwide: Any place where security cameras existed-like that one mounted atop the garage attendant’s shack across the driveway-the Agency’s signal-monitoring staff could trace the feed, duplicate the signal, and essentially peer over the security system personnel’s shoulders. It provided an extra layer of security for high-risk targets such as Dr. Spencer.

Karr still wasn’t sure why Spencer was considered so important but had by this time reconciled himself to the fact that someone thought him to be worth Desk Three’s time, attention, and resources. He felt he’d gotten off to a bad start with Spencer yesterday and hoped he could smooth things out this morning.

A few minutes later, Rogers drove the rented black Lincoln up to the door and the three climbed in, Delgado in front with Rogers, and Payne and Karr in the back, to either side of Spencer. Karr was momentarily startled to see the driver seated on the right, then remembered where he was.

“Okay,” Karr said as they pulled out of the garage. He glanced at the surrounding traffic, checking for possible tails. “We’re rolling.”

“Give us some video, will you?”

He pulled a small device from his jacket pocket, the size of a thimble, with a glassy lens on the narrow end. He stuck the base against the seat in front of them.