Ridgely sometimes, in his more profanely imaginative moments, thought that God had been playing games when He decided where to put petroleum deposits. It seemed as if He had gone looking for the most miserable, useless places He could possibly put the stuff, godforsaken deserts, icy hellholes, underwater… maybe God just didn’t like oil, so He tried to put it in places where He wouldn’t have to look at it, places that belonged to the most unpleasant people available.
So, of course, the Yamal Peninsula was just filthy with the stuff.
Oil wasn’t radioactive, though. That wasn’t any oil spill or wellhead fire that the satellites had spotted. And there weren’t supposed to be any nuclear power plants anywhere around there.
There probably weren’t any power plants. Building a nuclear plant in the middle of an oil field a thousand miles from the nearest city-now, that would be way up there on the stupidity lists. It was a safe bet even the Russians weren’t that dumb. Ridgely wouldn’t have put it past the Iranians or the French, but the Russians knew better.
The flare-up was too far inland to be a grounded submarine with reactor trouble. The Russians still had plenty of subs cruising the arctic, but there wouldn’t be any reactor leaks a hundred miles from the coast.
Not natural, not a power plant, not a sub-that left weapons.
It had to be weapons, and messing around with nuclear weapons there was definitely out of line. The Russians swore they were disassembling nukes, not building them, and that sort of radiation and heat spill could equally well have come from an accident in either assembly or disassembly, but all the official disassembly was going on in the south, not way the hell up in the arctic.
So somebody was up to something.
Ridgely wasn’t entirely convinced it was the boys in Moscow. It could just as easily have been one of the various loony factions that were causing trouble over there, the nationalists or the leftover Commies or the local mafias, but whoever it was, Moscow had to know about it, and they should have passed on a quiet word or two to someone, just so no one would get too upset.
They should have told someone, and most likely, they should have told him.
Ridgely had gotten a few sub-rosa reports from his Russian counterparts in his day, and had now and then passed them along a few little warnings of his own. Just because he didn’t trust the sneaky bastards was no reason to risk letting the whole fucking world blow up in his face over some trivial little misunderstanding.
He hadn’t gotten any word on this one, though.
He dropped the printout, picked up the phone, then hesitated.
These were nukes they were talking about. This was the big time. And on the arctic coast, the only logical place to aim nukes was over the pole at North America. If this was a bunch of Islamic terrorists or some African government trying to pick up a little atomic blackmail fodder on the cheap, those readings would have been down in the Caucasus or central Asia somewhere, not in Siberia.
It might be Zhirinovsky’s crazies or something, but by God Moscow should have told them by now; they’d had a couple of days, and Ridgely hadn’t heard a peep. A phone call just wasn’t going to do an adequate job of expressing American displeasure at that silence.
This called for a personal visit.
A public personal visit.
He picked up the phone after all and punched the button for his secretary.
”Yes, Ambassador?” she said instantly. Ridgely smiled. He appreciated competence.
”Steffie, honey,” he said, “I’m going to be paying a little visit on the Russian ambassador at..” he glanced at the clock- “at about two, I’d say.” That would be after Grigori got back from lunch, but before he got busy, and if his lunch ran late, then Ridgely could camp out and make a show of it. “I think that if some of our friends from the press happened to come by about then, they might be interested in what I’ve got to say to the old boy.”
”On or off the record?” Steffie asked.
”Oh, I think this’ll be on the record,” Ridgely said, leaning back in his chair. “Nothing official, though, just a chat we don’t mind having reported.”
”Got it, Ambassador,” Steffie said. “So is this a surprise visit, or should I tell Mr. Komarinets’s staff that you’re coming?”
Ridgely considered that. He noticed that she didn’t bother asking if she should try to make an appointment; Steffie knew her job.
”Make it a five-minute warning, maybe,” he said.
”Yes, sir.”
Ridgely hung up the phone and smiled a tight little smile of satisfaction.
Those bastards weren’t going to get away with anything on his watch!
Chapter 15
“My government knows nothing of any clandestine activity of any sort in that area, Mr. Ambassador,” Grigori Komarinets had repeated, speaking not to Ridgely but directly into the CNN camera.
General Mavis stood with his hands clasped behind his back as he watched the report on the big TV in the situation room. This Ambassador Komarinets was good, no question-or maybe the folks in Moscow had lied to him, and he honestly didn’t know what was going on.
”Meeters,” he said, “call someone, make sure Ridgely gets a cookie for helping us out on this-an assignment in Vienna, a shot on Larry King, whatever makes him happy.”
”Yessir, “ Meeters replied. He stood where he was; Mavis hadn’t said to call now. And there wasn’t any hurry; these things were best done discreetly, not making the connection too obvious. Mavis glanced at him.
Meeters looked uneasy, preoccupied-but then, why shouldn’t he? According to CNN, they might be working up toward World War III.
And they might be, at that, but not the way any of these people thought.
Mavis turned back to the screen and watched for a few seconds more, until CNN cut to a commercial. Then he turned and headed down the corridor toward his office.
Meeters, after an instant’s hesitation, followed; when they were out of earshot of the officers still watching the TV, he jogged a few steps to catch up and said, “Excuse me, sir-might I have a word with you?”
Mavis glanced back at the other, then led the way into his office.
”Close the door if you like,” he said as he sat down on a corner of his desk. “What’s on your mind?”
Meeters stepped in and closed the door. “Sir,” he said, “I was there when the preliminary satellite reports came in-I was the one who released that first report, and at the time I was sure someone was hauling warheads out there.
”And?” Mavis said.
”Well, sir, I was wrong,” Meeters said. “I’ve been looking at the technical reports, and I don’t think we’re seeing missiles out there. The figures don’t add up.”
Mavis nodded. “You figured that out all by yourself, did you?”
”Yessir,” Meeters said. “And if those aren’t bombs or missiles, then Ambassador Ridgely and the rest could be stirring up a hornet’s nest over a threat that doesn’t even exist. We might be…”
Mavis held up a hand and cut him off. “Stop right there.” He stood up. “I like you, Meeters, you’re a good man, you take orders but you’re not afraid to make decisions. You’ve got a good brain. And that’s why I’m not going to have you arrested and thrown into protective custody.”
Meeters blinked. “Sir?”
”All right, that hot spot isn’t any Russian -missiles,” Mavis said. “Think it through, then. There’s something there, so if it isn’t nukes, what is it?”
Meeters looked blank.
”Think, man,” Mavis said. “What might it be?”
”I don’t know, sir.”
”Whatever it is, there’s a lot of energy being thrown around, right?”