“But there are concerns that the Russian Mafiya is trying to take over the Russian petroleum industry,” Dean said. “So if what you say is true, that means Gazprom.”

“There’ve been a number of corruption scandals involving Gazprom in the past. Our Russian desk believes that Golytsin is part of what we think of as a Mafiya beachhead within the corporation.”

“An ex-submariner,” Dean mused. “That suggests some interesting possibilities.”

Arctic oil exploration would almost certainly require submarines.

He was beginning to think he knew where Braslov had gone out of Yakutsk.

Executive Cafe K Street NW, Washington, D.C. 1225 hours EDT

It was two days after his unsatisfactory interview with Wehrum.

Rubens sat at a small table set up outside of a popular Washington sidewalk café, waiting for Barbara. She was late. She’d promised to meet him for lunch at noon, but so far only strangers had passed on the sidewalk or on the other side of the street, through McPherson Square.

He enjoyed watching people, and the table gave him the perfect vantage point. A few had been quite exotic-including one silver-goateed individual with a black and red cape streaming from his shoulders, plus any number of people in saris, turbans, caftans, or other foreign dress. Washington was truly the international city, with Embassy Row only a few blocks to the north, and hordes of international tourists descending on the Mall, the White House, and the monuments. It was a gorgeous spring day, and the tourists were certainly out in force.

The White House was an easy six blocks away, down Vermont Avenue and past Lafayette Square. He wondered what was keeping her… then decided the question was nonsense. He knew what Barbara’s schedule was like these days. And he expected that the e-mail he’d sent her yesterday afternoon had stirred things up a bit there.

There she was, cutting across McPherson Square and breaking into a near jog across K Street, as fast as her platform heels would permit her. Barbara Stahl was an attractive woman in her forties, with PhDs in both international studies and economics. She was the senior Russian specialist currently serving on the National Security Council.

He stood up as she neared the table. “Hello, Barbara.”

“Hi, Bill. Sorry I’m late.”

“Not at all. Waiter!”

“Get for yourself, not me. I have to get right back.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Coffee, perhaps?”

“Thank you.” She took a seat. “Things are not so quietly going nuts back there. Full-blown crisis mode. But I did need to see you.”

He sat down opposite her. The waiter came up and Rubens ordered coffee for the two of them. “Your e sounded stressed.”

“Mm. And your e-mail has stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

“I was afraid it might.”

“I’m not on the eyes list for Powerhouse intercepts,” she told him. “Why the hell did you do it? Damn it, Bill, are you begging to get canned?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad? Twenty years in federal prison and up to half a million dollars in fines? You don’t call that bad?”

“As Deputy Director of the NSA, I have some leeway,” he told her. “Not a lot, but some.”

“Are you saying you make the rules, so you can break them?”

“No. But I reviewed your security clearances and made sure you were cleared for Powerhouse-level documents before I sent that e.”

“If Dr. Bing finds out, she could have those clearances revoked. And God only knows what they’ll do to you.”

“Barbara, overclassification of sensitive material is as dangerous in this job as underclassifying it, maybe more so. The whole point of intelligence is making sure the people who need to see something actually do see it. You won’t get in trouble with your boss over your level of security; trust me on this. As for me, well, they can play those games with me later. Right now, it is important, imperative, that the President knows what’s going on up in the Arctic. Those intercepts went to Langley, but I don’t trust them to see the whole picture. Or to put it into the pickle.”

“The pickle” was D.C. insider-speak for the President’s Intelligence Checklist, a daily ten-page newsletter prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence for the President on overnight developments of five or six items of immediate presidential concern. CIA headquarters at Langley was sometimes called “the pickle factory” for that reason.

“You’re just pissed that you don’t have POTUS access through George Haddad anymore.”

That hurt. He frowned, sitting back.

“I’m sorry, Bill,” she said, seeing his expression. “I shouldn’t have said that. But you’ve got to know that every time you try working through the back doors in this city, you’re stepping on toes. Powerful toes.”

“And sometimes working through back doors and stepping on toes is the only way to get anything done. Look… did you do as I asked?”

“Yes. I was in on the briefing on the Arctic situation this morning, and I brought up the intercepts. I have to tell you, though, both Bing and Collins were there, and they were furious.”

“I can imagine.”

Presidential briefings tended to be carefully scripted affairs, with no digressions from the planned agenda. Rubens had asked Barbara to interject a new issue into the session, bringing up the Powerhouse intercepts as hot new intel just received from the NSA… which was true, as far as it went. But to bring up something not already on the agreed upon list of topics was a serious breach of protocol.

“I didn’t say where the message had come from. I just said ‘a highly placed intelligence source.’”

“They’ll guess. It’s okay. I was expecting that. Did it get you into trouble, departing from the agenda like that?”

“No. Not yet, anyway, though Dr. Bing did tell me she wants to have a chat with me.” She grimaced. “First, though… the President wants to hear those intercepts for himself.”

“Good.”

“This afternoon.”

Rubens’ eyebrows went up at that. “That was fast.”

“Do you have them?”

He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small, flat case, half the size of a credit card and a little thicker, a data storage device similar to an iPod, but with more memory and the ability to link into computer networks. He handed it to her, and she slipped it into her handbag.

“So what’s the word on the Russian ice-grab as of now?” he asked her.

“Canada and Denmark are both screaming bloody murder. They’re dispatching warships.”

“That bad?”

She nodded. “That bad. The President has decided to send a couple of subs into the region as well. The Ohio and the Pittsburgh.”

That news startled Rubens. It represented a major, and very serious, escalation in the growing crisis.

The Ohio was a relatively new addition to the U.S. special ops arsenal. She’d started out as a ballistic missile submarine, a “boomer” in naval parlance, but with the end of the Cold War, she and several other SSBNs had been targeted for decommissioning in order to adhere to treaties requiring a reduction in ICBM platforms in the post-Soviet drawdown.

Instead of being scrapped, however, four excess boomers had been converted into SSGNs, guided-missile submarines equipped to carry out covert Special Forces operations. The Ohio and her sister boats could carry over sixty SEALs or other special ops troops, as well as over 150 Tomahawk cruise missiles with either conventional or nuclear warheads.

The other sub, the Pittsburgh, was a Los Angeles-class attack boat and would be operating under the Arctic ice as the Ohio’s escort. The deployment was an indication of just how sharply the situation up there had deteriorated over the past week.

The waiter returned with their coffee. Rubens thought about what this new wrinkle might mean for the NSA and Desk Three.