“The problem isn’t the asking; the problem is getting permission to ask.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Cummings said.
He wasn’t, Mary Pat knew. While Kilborn’s deputies in intelligence and Clandestine hadn’t guzzled the Kool-Aid like the DCI had, they were certainly imbibing. In choosing Kilborn, President Kealty had ensured that the CIA’s upper echelons would toe the executive branch’s new line, regardless of the consequences to the agency or to the intelligence community at large.
“So don’t ask,” Mary Pat said simply.
“What?” replied Margolin.
“If we don’t ask, we can’t get a no. We’re still spitballing here, right? Nothing’s operational, nothing’s funded. We’re just fishing. It’s what we do; it’s what they pay us to do. Since when do we have to ask anyone about a little chat with an ally?”
Margolin looked hard at her for a few moments, then shrugged. The gesture said nothing and everything. She knew her boss well enough to know she’d struck a chord. Like her, Margolin loved his career but not at the expense of doing his job.
“We never talked about this,” Margolin said. “Let me run it up the flagpole. If we’re flamed, we’ll do it your way.”
This was the real Russia, Vitaliy thought, with the harshest winters in a nation famous for bitter weather. The polar bears here were fat now, covered in a thick layer stored up for insulation, enough to allow them to sleep the months away in caves hollowed out amid the pressure ridges and seracs on the ice, waking occasionally to snatch a seal that ventured too close to a breathing hole.
Vitaliy stood up and shook himself awake, then shuffled into the galley to get the water started for his morning tea. The temperature was just above freezing—what passed for a warm fall day. No new ice had formed overnight, at least nothing his boat couldn’t crush or bypass, but the decks were coated in an inch-thick layer of frozen spindrift, something he and Vanya would have to chop free, lest the boat grow top-heavy. Capsizing in these waters meant almost certain death; without immersion suits, a man could expect to be unconscious within four minutes and dead within fifteen, and while he had enough suits aboard for everyone, his passengers had shown little interest in his explanation of their use.
His charter party was awake, struggling to stamp their feet and fling their arms across their chests. They all lit their cigarettes and moved aft to the boat’s primitive head facilities. All ate the bread and ice-hard butter set out for breakfast.
Vitaliy gave it an hour to get the day started, then he fired up his diesels and backed off the gravel beach on which they’d spent the night. His charts were already laid out, and he headed east at ten knots. Vanya spelled him at the wheel. They listened to an old but serviceable AM radio, mostly classical music beamed out from Archangel. It helped pass the time. There were ten hours of steaming remaining to their destination. About 160 kilometers. Ten hours at ten knots, so said the chart.
“That doesn’t look good,” Vanya said, pointing off the starboard bow.
On the eastern horizon was a line of swollen black clouds, so low they almost seemed to merge with the ocean’s surface.
“Not good at all,” Vitaliy agreed. And it would get worse, he knew. To reach their destination they would have to pass through the storm—either that or go far out of their way, or even ground the boat and wait it out.
“Ask Fred to come up, will you?” Vitaliy said.
Vanya went below and returned a minute later with the leader of the charter group. “A problem, Captain?”
Vitaliy pointed through the window at the squall line. “That.”
“Rain?”
“It doesn’t rain here, Fred. It storms. The only question is, to what degree? And that mess there, I’m afraid, is going to be bad.” Worse still for a T-4 slab-sided landing craft with one meter of draft, he didn’t add.
“How long until we reach it?”
“Three hours—a little longer, maybe.”
“Can we weather it?”
“Probably, but nothing is certain out here. Either way, it’s going to be rough going.”
“What are our alternatives?” asked Fred.
“Return to where we just overnighted or head south and try to get around the edge of the storm. Either option will cost us a day or two of travel time.”
“Unacceptable,” Fred replied.
“It will be dicey, going through that—and you and your men are going to be miserable.”
“We will manage. Perhaps a bonus for your trouble will make the inconvenience more