‘With respect, SOCOM has no idea how deep the shit is around us,’ Jacobson said. His expression had changed. He looked like death.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In simple terms, the Soviets have access to information that is denied to us at this time. They are willing to share it, but the price of admission is a joint operation.’
‘It won’t work,’ Ulm said adamantly.
‘You said you were ready for anything.’
‘On our own, yes. But the only contact between Spetsnaz and the Pathfinders has been at commander level. As it happens, Colonel Roman Shabanov is with us at the moment.’
‘We know,’ Jacobson said, before pausing to take a sip of his coffee. ‘Have you been watching the news lately, Colonel?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you will have seen the items about the disappearance of that boat.’
‘Sure, but that’s public consumption shit, right?’
‘Wrong. That, I’m sorry to say, is how it is.’
It took a few moments for the impact of Jacobson’s statement to sink in. ‘Jesus, Jacobson, what kind of outfit are you running here?’
‘I don’t like it any better than you,’ Jacobson said. His voice never wavered from a dull, impassive monotone. ‘But for the past two decades my contemporaries at Langley relied heavily, far too heavily, on sophisticated surveillance methods in the Middle East. Sure, we have space-based radar, infra-red satellites, plus every conceivable ELINT and COMINT platform above the Eastern Med and the Gulf sucking intelligence out of the rawest data you can imagine. Between ourselves and the NSA, we can position a communications or signals intelligence ship off, say, the coast of Libya and listen to Gaddafi talking into a mobile phone from his toilet.’
Ulm sat back in his chair. He felt numb. He let Jacobson’s words wash over him.
‘I would not have known how to begin looking, however, for a bunch of two-bit terrorists roaming around the Southern Lebanon.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’ve lost the ability to do the one thing we used to do well — Humint. Human Intelligence, Colonel. Having a guy on the ground who does nothing but good old-fashioned cloak and dagger work.
‘When peace broke out between East and West, the budget resources allocated to the CIA, DIA, and NSA were pared back to record lows. We were trying to re-establish a new network in the Middle East when the finances were pulled from under our feet. Then the Gulf crisis came along. The dollars started flowing back again, but it takes years to get people back in place and we’re not there yet.’
Ulm recalled the collapse of their network in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria following the kidnapping of the CIA’s Beirut station chief, William Buckley, in 1984. Within a few months, every single operative had been wiped out.
‘And in the mean time,’ Jacobson said, ‘the Israelis had stopped helping us because we’d been leaning on Tel Aviv too hard over nuclear proliferation.’
‘What about the Brits?’
‘MI6? You know what the Brits are like. They’re good at asking, but they sure as hell don’t like sharing it. Basically, though you won’t get anyone to admit it, we’re blind from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Asian subcontinent.’
‘Which leaves the Soviets,’ Ulm said.
The rattle of the air-conditioning system seemed to fill the room.
‘Precisely, Colonel. I should add that we are under some pressure here to make this thing with the Soviets work. Politically speaking, that is.’
Ulm got the hint. It was obvious from its elaborate front that TERCOM received its funding from the Administration’s ‘black’ accounting jar, the source from which most classified programmes obtained their money. As a result, TERCOM was at its master’s beck and call.
‘All right, suppose we can make it work,’ Ulm said. ‘When would I be briefed about the target?’
‘That is being arranged, Colonel.’ Jacobson looked at his watch. ‘We have a preliminary briefing scheduled in an hour’s time. Until then, why don’t I show you around?’
The tour took something less than an hour in the end. Ulm saw everything from the front company that had been created to protect TERCOM from prying eyes — a fully-funded and functional computer software house — to the dark workings of the organization’s communications room. Throughout the walk-round he was conscious of Jacobson’s mounting agitation. The agent punctuated his talk with frequent references to his wristwatch.
The phone buzzed in the midst of a demonstration of TERCOM’s VLF communications suite. Jacobson picked it up and listened intently for a few seconds. He left Ulm alone for less than five minutes, returning to announce that their briefer had arrived.
Ulm followed him along the corridor, conditioning his mind already to expect a whole lot of things he wasn’t going to enjoy hearing about what lay ahead.
It was this discipline that undoubtedly saved him from an exclamation of surprise when he re-entered the conference room, for on the other side of the table it was Colonel Roman Shabanov who rose to greet him.
‘You two, of course, know each other,’ Jacobson said, a smile thinning his lips. He closed the door behind him with a soft click.
As Shabanov rose from his chair, Ulm couldn’t begin to think what the Russian — a mere colonel — was doing with information of the calibre required by TERCOM for a joint operation. Had he been in possession of the salient facts all along, or had he merely collected the information from the embassy as messenger boy for the Kremlin?
Either way, the Russian had been a sleeper, waiting for orders. It was a timely reminder that Spetsnaz was indivisible from the GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence. And however Westernized Shabanov seemed, Spetsnaz always drew its recruits from hard-core communist organizations like the Komsomol and DOSAAF before the fall of the Communists.
Jacobson gestured for Shabanov to take his chair again. With Ulm seated on his left, he took his seat opposite the Russian.
‘The floor’s yours, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Make history.’
Shabanov remained unmoved. He raised his eyes from the table and stared straight at Ulm. ‘I have known about the organization which carried out the hijacking for some time. Let me tell you it has not been easy, Elliot.’
Ulm held the Russian’s stare. ‘We all have our orders.’ Privately, however, he could not shake off an irrational sense of betrayal.
‘General Aushev has empowered me to deliver the identity of the terrorists as proof that the Romeo Protocol can succeed. Our motives are not altruistic. The general wishes me to be honest with you. For us, co-operation in the counter-terror field has a very practical purpose. Terrorism inside my country is on the increase. In the past three months, thirteen internal flights have been hijacked. Yet, a few months previously, Russians did not know the meaning of the word. You and your allies have had time to formulate your counter-insurgency doctrine and practices. As I said to you yesterday, Elliot, Spetsnaz can do many things, but we are still learning. There is much you can teach us.’
‘And vice versa,’ Ulm said. He thought of mother and child, three neat holes drilling each head.
‘Doubtless, you heard about our top military adviser in the Yemen, General Churmurov, killed by a terrorist car-bomb in Sana’a, Yemen, last February. In the following month, an 11–96 on an Aeroflot internal flight blew up at altitude between Moscow and Tashkent. There were no survivors. The war had shifted gear, Elliot, and we didn’t even know who had declared it upon us. There has been so much unrest in my country over the last two years it was difficult to isolate these two acts as the work of one group. Except in one respect. In both these instances, no one claimed responsibility. That struck us as strange.’