“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the man held his hand out for the return of his pointer, signaling that her part in the briefing had come to an end. Leopov handed it over, wondering if she had really told anyone anything they hadn’t known. She made her way back to her seat, relieved to receive a reassuring nod from the man beside her.
“You did fine,” he whispered. “And now I’m thinking that’s not the only reason you’ve been brought here.”
A frown crumpled her face, but the man said no more.
The picture changed to show another face she had seen more than once in the last month.
“General Alexei Abramovitch. This is the man we believe has visited Wrangel Island a number of times over the last few months. Forgive me if this information has been kept from you Lieutenant, but it was felt that it would be better if we restricted this information to a need to know basis until this point.”
“Well, she was certainly right about it being a high ranking official in the Red Army.” The man next to her sat up straight, nodding at the screen. “They don’t have many fish bigger than this guy.”
“Indeed,” the presenter continued. “Abramovitch is a hard liner, very vocally uncomfortable with the way President Gorbachev is cozying up to the West. If he had just a little more support within the military his star would be on the rise and we’d be looking to the skies.”
The reference to a nuclear assault wasn’t lost on any of them.
The shadow of nuclear winter was a long one, but Leopov couldn’t believe anyone thought it would actually come down to that. Mutually assured destruction? That way lay madness.
“The plot thickens. I’m guessing he wasn’t taking a holiday on this little of island of theirs? Making a spot inspection to make sure that prisoners are being treated well would be a little below his pay grade, too.”
“That’s correct, Commander. We believe that Abramovitch has been visiting the prisoner being held in isolation.” He brought up another picture before there was the chance for anyone else to ask further questions. The man was clearly used to being in control, even amongst this group of officers. Leopov suspected he might be CIA.
“The intelligence that Carlisle managed to get out of Russia related to an Echo II Class submarine that has managed to get itself trapped in the ice around Wrangel Island. This submarine carried something either to or from the island; something referred to as Pandora’s Egg.”
“And do we know what this Pandora’s Egg is?” the commander asked.
“Not with any certainty, no, but we have suspicions. Or should I say concerns. Hence the perceived risk to National Security”
“No shit.” The commander’s language took Leopov by surprise. “So we come back to the same question we started out with: what makes this prisoner so special?”
“Unfortunately, this is where our intelligence starts to get a little hazy. We are piecing together bits of knowledge, and that means making some assumptions as we try and make sense of it.”
“You mean that you’re connecting the dots and hoping that your picture of a duck is right and that it shouldn’t have been an elephant? From where I’m sitting, it looks as if you’ve jumped the gun, hauling us all in here without any real evidence to support your concerns. Frankly, I’m not even sure there is a threat that we should be concerned about.”
The man didn’t try and hide his anger. He was clearly seething at the commander’s tone, not used to being spoken to like a child. The image behind him changed from the shot of a submarine to a grainy photograph of an old man, his shoulders hunched as he looked forward like a tortoise peering from its shell. “This is the only image of the prisoner on Wrangel Island.”
“I’ve never seen this before,” Leopov whispered to herself, loud enough for her neighbor to hear.
“So are you telling me we actually know who the prisoner is?” the commander asked.
“Not definitively. We think it might be this man. A second image appeared next to it like some conjurer’s trick. It was the face of a much younger man, but even then clearly not in the first flush of youth. “His name is Doctor Hans Luber, stationed in the Majdanek concentration camp from nineteen forty three to forty five.”
“What makes you think that this is the same man?”
“The Soviets liberated the camp just as the war was drawing to an end. Even that early in the game the Russians saw the benefit of learning the secrets that the German scientists had discovered in their experiments, even though they would never have carried them out themselves. Luber’s experiments involved exposing prisoners to radioactive materials. There are rumors of other, equally unsavory practices, but they amount to little more than whispers. We know that he was stationed at Majdanek at the time of the liberation, but he disappeared off the face of the earth from that date onward.”
“So the Russians shipped him back to the middle of nowhere and gave him a never-ending bunch of prisoners to experiment on?”
“So you think this place is some modern day camp?” another officer asked.
“What do you think a Gulag is exactly, sir?” The man was clearly growing tired of the interruptions. “The latest data we have suggests that there is a nuclear reactor on the island. I suggest you ask yourself what reasons the Russians could have for building something so expensive in such an isolated location.”
“More ducks and elephants?”
“That’s as may be, but the information we received from Carlisle has put a rather more important spin on things. Hence this briefing. Our government has made an offer of assistance in rescuing the submarine and its crew, but the Russians have denied the existence of a submarine in the area let alone that there is one caught in the ice.”
“Are you surprised by that? The Russians would rather see their men die than accept the help of anyone else. They won’t dare show any weakness to the world. And the last thing they want is their tech falling into what they see as enemy hands.”
“I’m not surprised at all, Commander. However, would it surprise you to learn our latest intelligence reports that a Spetsnaz team is being sent to the location of the Echo II sub? Their orders are to retrieve Pandora’s Egg. Their mission brief is not to free the submarine; not even to rescue the crew. Their sole objective is to retrieve the Egg.”
“Are you sure?”
“Carlisle was. That’s good enough for us.”
“And you think Pandora’s Egg is some kind of weapon?”
“Crack the shell and unleash all of the evils of the world,” Leopov said. That made them look her way again. “An Echo II submarine is equipped with Vulcan missiles. Wrangel Island puts it close enough to US soil to launch an attack. Now imagine something worse,” she said, voicing the suspicion they were all thinking.
The man still standing at the front turned toward Leopov. Her heart leapt, pounding a little too fast in her chest, before she realized he was actually looking at the man beside her.
“Commander Maxwell. What’s the status of your team?”
“They are already on route to Juneau, Alaska, and should be there in the next couple of hours.”
“Excellent. Then their task is simple. They need to locate the submarine and secure Pandora’s Egg. There’s a plane waiting to take you there. A helicopter will be on standby to take you to the ship. Your men will be on board.”
The commander nodded. “Then what are we waiting for?”
“There’s just one thing. I’d like you to take the Lieutenant with you.”