that had caused the deaths of thousands around the world and that had come within a hairsbreadth of killing millions. In his postcrisis assessment of the incident, Castilla had come to certain ominous conclusions about America's capacity to deal with such threats.
The American intelligence and counterintelligence communities, by their sheer size and breadth of responsibility, were becoming clumsy and bureaucratically overburdened. Critical information was being "stovepiped" and was failing to reach its needed destinations. Petty interdepartmental jealousies created unnecessary friction, and a growing number of professional political ass-coverers strangled operational initiative, crippling America's capacity to react to a rapidly changing global situation.
Castilla's had always been an unconventional administration, and his response to the Hades incident had been unconventional as well. He had chosen Fred Klein, an old and trusted family friend, to create an entirely new agency built around a small, handpicked cadre of specialists, military and civilian, from outside the regular national intelligence community.
These "mobile cipher" agents were carefully chosen both for their exceptional and unusual skills and capabilities and for their lack of personal commitments and attachments. They answered only to Klein and Castilla. Financed from national "black" assets outside the conventional congressional budgetary loop, Covert One was the personal action arm of the President of the United States.
That was why Castilla had Klein standing by during his conference with the Russian general.
A beverage cart had been wheeled out beside the table, and a pair of shot glasses, one filled with an amber fluid and the other with water, sat at each place.
"Bourbon and branch, Sam," Klein said, lifting his own drink. "It's a little early in the day, but I thought you might need one."
"I appreciate the thought," Castilla said, sinking into his chair. "You heard it all?"
Klein nodded. "I had a clear pickup on the shotgun mike."
"What do you think?"
Klein smiled without humor. "You're the National Command Authority, Mr. President. You tell me."
Castilla grimaced and lifted his drink. "As it stands, it's a mess. And if we aren't exceedingly careful and extremely lucky, it's going to grow into a vastly larger mess. For certain, if Senator Grenbower gets his hands on this, the Joint Counterterrorism Act is as dead as fair play. Damn it, Fred, the Russians need our help, and we need to give it to them."
Klein lifted an eyebrow. "In essence we're talking about American military aid to the former Soviet Union, monetary and advisory. That still doesn't sit well with a lot of people."
"A Balkanized Russia wouldn't sit well, either! If the Russian Federation disintegrates, as it is threatening to do, we could find ourselves facing Yugoslavia squared!"
Klein took a sip of whisky. "You're preaching to the choir, Sam. The Russian devil we do know is better than the several dozen we don't. The question, again, is, how do you want to proceed?"
Castilla shrugged. "I know how I wish we could proceed: with a squadron of Strike Eagles armed with precision-guided thermite bombs. We incinerate the damn thing where it sits, along with anything it might be carrying. But it's too late for that. The global media knows the aircraft exists. If we simply destroy the plane outright and without a viable explanation, every foreign affairs reporter on the planet will start digging. Before we know it we'll be facing a congressional investigation-just what we and the Russians don't want."
Klein alternated a taste of whisky with a sip of branch water. "I think an investigation may be the first step, Sam. At least our investigation. Everyone could be getting ahead of themselves here-you, me, the Russians. There may not be a problem at all."
Castilla lifted an eyebrow. "How do you figure that?"
"The emergency procedure the Soviet aircrew was supposed to follow: the jettisoning of the bioagent reservoir. For all we actually know, that load of anthrax may have been rotting on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean for the past half century.
"The discovery of the wreck of a fifty-year-old Soviet bomber on an arctic island, even if it had been outfitted as a biowarfare platform, would not be an insurmountable difficulty. As you pointed out, the plane itself would be just a Cold War anecdote. What supplies the 'flash' to the problem, what makes it politically indigestible, is the possible presence of the anthrax. We have to find out if it's still aboard the aircraft. We have to find out fast and we have to find out first, before some war-bird enthusiast or extreme tourist decides to have a look inside that wreck.