Arctic Gold by Stephen Coonts Page A

to be standing on a beach, laughing. With him were a pretty, bare- breasted blonde in red bikini briefs and an older man with a bushy mustache. Both men wore swim trunks and short- sleeved shirts, both shirts open enough to reveal a number of tattoos on their torsos as well as their upper arms.
Who is this? Rubens asked, clicking and dragging a square over the second man. Do we have a positive ID?
Telach eyes shifted as she studied her own monitor, then typed in a command at her desk. A new window opened on Rubens’ display, filling up with text and photos.
Yes, sir. Grigor Kotenko.
That, Rubens said slowly, nodding, is what I was afraid of. And these tattoos on Braslov chest?
Telach nodded. I ran those through the Vault as well. It difficult to make out details, of course. But it looks like both men are sporting eight- pointed stars on their chests in blue ink.
Mafiya, then the Organizatsiya. The Russian mafia made extensive use of tattoos to convey a wealth of data about a person rank, reliability, and criminal history. Often the tattoos were acquired in prison or within the
Russian gulag, where the rubber heels of shoes were melted down and mixed with soot and urine to produce a characteristic blue ink. The eight- pointed star indicated a very high rank within certain Mafiya groups.
This was not good. Not good at all
.
The Green Room
NSA Headquarters
Fort Meade, Maryland
0912 hours EDT
Individual rooms and corridors within the Puzzle Palace might not be outwardly named or numbered, but human nature being what it was, unofficial names continued to arise as needed. The Art Room was one such necessity; the Green Room was another, one of a hotel worth of meeting rooms, briefing rooms, and auditoriums where face- to- face business within Crypto City could be conducted.
Dean took a seat at a long oval table that was already fairly well occupied. The wallspainted a pale shade of hospital green, hence the namewere hung with photographs of presidents and NSA directors past and present, and an American flag and a flag bearing the NSA seal flanked a large flat- panel wall screen at the head of the room.
He didn’t like these gatherings. Once, Rubens had tried to keep them small and informal. Things went a lot faster that way. Cleaner. More efficient. Lately, though, these sessions had begun resembling the dog- and- pony shows put on at the Pentagon, with staffers, officers, and assistants all trying to grab face time with the Deputy Director. There was even an Air Force general at the table this morning, a man named Blakeslee, who was a Pentagon liaison because of the presence of the F-22 in Operation
Magpie. Several of the people present, Dean knew, were lawyers, there solely to present opinions on any legal risks the Agency might be facing.
Black ops, espionage, electronic eavesdropping. Hell, everything
Desk Three did was illegal in one sense of the word or another. What was the point of having lawyers at a briefing, for Christ sake?
A number of low- voiced conversations were taking place as people continued trickling into the Green Room and taking their seats. Voices in the chamber took on an oddly muffled quality. Like similar spaces within the CIA headquarters at Langley and in the Pentagon subbasements, the room was electronically isolated from the outside, with armor plating thick enough to shield the occupants from a near miss by a small tactical nuke.
Before we begin, Rubens said, standing at the head of the table, I have some news. We’ve confirmed that Ghost Blue went down in the Gulf of Finland last night as a result of enemy action. We believe the pilot ejected, but so far, search efforts have been unsuccessful. We’re continuing the search through the daylight hours over there, of course, but as of ohthree hundred this morning, the pilot has been logged as missing, presumed dead.
Dean leaned back in his chair, a sigh escaping as he sagged. Damn
.aE.aE.
Has there been any word from the Russians? Greg Paulson asked.