Arctic Storm Rising Dale Brown (literature books to read TXT) 📖

passed along to her through a chain of cutouts were so tantalizing that she had decided this meeting was worth the gamble.

That was especially true now, when the CIA was viewed so unfavorably by the president and his closest advisers. The huge mediaand congressional black eye Langley had sustained over that mess in the Libyan desert a couple of months ago hadn’t helpedmatters any, Reynolds thought gloomily. Boiled down to its essentials, the agency needed to score a massive success if itwere to regain its influence over national intelligence policy anytime soon. That went double for Miranda Reynolds. Like sharks,the rivals who coveted her position in charge of the CIA’s covert operations unit scented blood in the water. They were alreadycircling, waiting for the right moment to strike.

She was no stranger to the ritual. Years before, she’d maneuvered her own predecessor out of office and into retirement inthe wake of a blown operation in Afghanistan. With that in mind, however, she had no plans to yield so tamely to the samekind of internecine Agency coup. If anybody wanted her chair, they’d better be ready for a fight—and if arming herself forthat inevitable confrontation required coming all the way to Prague for this mysterious rendezvous, so be it.

“Well, I think you’ll find what I can offer you reasonably interesting,” the elegantly dressed young man said. “Perhaps evenworth your long trip from Washington.” Graciously, he offered her a folded art brochure.

Reynolds glanced inside the brochure and saw a photograph of a large blended-wing aircraft with obvious stealth features. It bore clear similarities to speculative media and Pentagon illustrations of Russia’s rumored PAK-DA strategic bomber. But there were also significant differences. For one thing, the images she had seen all showed an aircraft with raised winglets at the outer edge of each wing. According to analysts, these winglets would reduce turbulence, but they would also increase the hypothetical stealth bomber’s radar cross-section. Their presence had seemed to suggest Russia’s aeronautical engineers hadn’t yet fully solved the stability problems inherent to any tailless flying wing design.

If so, it was clear that this was no longer the case. This photo showed a plane without winglets, one very similar to America’sB-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider stealth aircraft. More important, it showed the bomber prototype in flight, with a twin-tailedfighter close by to provide a sense of scale. The image was clear enough to provide U.S. intelligence analysts with a wealthof new data. Carefully, she refolded the brochure and slipped it into her purse. “Reasonably interesting, indeed.” She turnedher apparent attention back to the sculpture of the old woman. “And your price for more?”

He smiled gently. “Not so much, compared to its value. Shall we say, something on the order of what your government routinelyspends in just four or five hours in a single day?”

Reynolds arched one of her finely sculpted eyebrows in sheer incredulity. That would put the price tag at well over two billiondollars—20 percent of the CIA’s current operating budget and close to 3 percent of what the U.S. government spent annuallyon its entire alphabet soup tangle of civilian and military intelligence organizations. She sniffed in disgust. “For images,specifications, and data we might be able to obtain ourselves through other means? Or that could easily be faked? You mustbe joking.”

Without waiting to hear more, she started to turn away. Whether she’d been lured to Prague by a con artist or a lunatic wasrelatively unimportant. Her first priority was to cover her tracks fast and get out on the earliest possible flight to theStates. If her rivals inside the agency found out she’d been wasting her time playing Jane Bond, amateur field agent, they’dhave all the ammunition they needed to pull her down.

“You misunderstand me, Ms. Reynolds,” the young man said soothingly, holding up a hand. “My patron proposes providing you with something far more tangible for your scientists and aviation engineers to examine—perhaps even something on the order of the Hakodate Incident of 1976.”

Hakodate Incident? What the hell was he talking about? Hurriedly, Reynolds ransacked her knowledge of intelligence history.She knew there was something, some sort of massive intelligence coup linked to that phrase, which sounded vaguely Japanese.Something about a plane, she thought. A Russian plane. And then, when she made the connection, her eyes widened involuntarily.

In September 1976, a Soviet pilot, Lieutenant Viktor Belenko, had flown his MiG-25P Foxbat fighter to Hokkaido’s HakodateAirport and announced his intention to defect. The U.S. and its Japanese allies had eventually returned the MiG-25 to theUSSR, but not before they’d stripped the Soviet jet down to its constituent parts—gathering incredibly valuable data aboutSoviet aircraft design, electronics, and manufacturing techniques in the process.

For a long, uncomfortable moment, she stared back at the tall young man, completely unsure how she should react to this veiledproposition. Was he seriously signaling the possible defection of another Russian flight crew, this time with their country’smost advanced experimental aircraft? If so, this was either the most outrageous scam ever dangled in front of the CIA . . .or a golden opportunity to pull off one of the most incredible espionage breakthroughs in modern history.

He read her confusion. “Obviously, we don’t expect you to commit your government or its money on the basis of a single photograph,”he assured her. “But if you would like to explore our offer further, I’ll need a highly secure means of contacting you directly—onethat avoids the usual delays involved in covert communications.”

“I can arrange that,” Reynolds said slowly, privately relieved that she wasn’t being asked to make a spur-of-the-moment decision. She reached into her purse, selected a business card from among several in her wallet, and gave it to him. It was blank, except for a single email address, a collection of assorted characters using the domain name “spyder.biz.” Messages sent to that address would be funneled to one of several covert servers CIA officials used for “private communications”—emails they wanted to hide from congressional scrutiny, nosy administration snoopers, and Freedom of Information Act requests from journalists and good-government groups. She made