The Solomon Effect Read online

  Jax nodded toward the photo of the missing U-boat. “This one looks like it’s in pretty good shape.” He squinted at the ghostly image. “Except for that raggedy bit at the end there.”

  “It is. And it was in fairly shallow water, so raising it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Back in 2002, the Brits let out a contract to salvage the captured U-boats they sank off Ireland and Scotland after the war as part of Operation Deadlight. Those are scuttled war prizes, so the subs technically belong to the Brits rather than the Germans. And of course, there aren’t any bodies.”

  Jax frowned. “I don’t get it. What do they want them for?”

  “The steel.”

  “Sounds like an expensive way to get steel.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t just any steel. This is pre-1945 steel.”

  Jax shook his head. “Am I missing something? What difference does it make when the steel was manufactured?”

  “All steel manufactured since 1945 is radioactive.”

  “Radioactive?”

  “That’s right. Steel production involves a lot of air, and we’ve exploded so many nuclear bombs in the atmosphere in the last sixty-odd years that the air is radioactive. Steel picks it up.”

  “Now that’s a scary thought.”

  “No shit. The problem is, we need clean steel for certain kinds of sensitive instruments. The only place to get it is from old ships.”

  “And subs,” said Jax, staring down at the book in his hands. “Maybe terrorists didn’t have anything to do with your missing U-boat. Maybe it was simply stolen by someone looking to make a quick buck salvaging the steel.”

  “You’re forgetting the NSA intercept.”

  Jax huffed a soft laugh. “Right. You know as well as I do that most of the linguists the NSA has translating their intercepts would have a hard time ordering a cup of coffee in Cairo.”

  “Maybe. But these guys were speaking English. Unaccented English. Which is why Homeland Security thinks this operation is homegrown.”

  Jax reached again for the image of the empty seabed, and frowned. “Our satellite photos don’t show anything?”

  Matt shook his head. “We weren’t targeting that area. It’s open water. We’re running computer checks to see if we might have picked something up by chance, but it’s gonna take time. And time is one thing we don’t have.”

  “What kind of timeline are we looking at here? Any idea yet?”

  “These guys were talking about a terrorist attack going down on Halloween.”

  “A week? Shit.” The administration hadn’t leaked that, either. Jax was silent for a moment. “How long has it been since anyone saw this sub on the ocean floor?”

  “It was there ten days ago.”

  “And Homeland Security thinks these guys have a terrorist attack scheduled for Halloween? No way. That’s too tight of a timeline. Someone’s not playing straight with us on something.”

  “If the bad guys had everything lined up, it could be done.”

  Jax wasn’t so sure. “I assume we’re already scrutinizing the gold bullion markets?”

  “Yep. No one’s admitting to knowing a thing. But then, if the bad guys are selling the gold to the Chinese or through some African outfit, we won’t hear of it. We don’t control things as much as we like to think we do.”

  “How about going at it from the other end? How many ships in the world are capable of salvaging a sub that size?”

  “The DCI’s got some guys drawing up a list.” Matt glanced at the clock. “But we’re hoping to have a different kind of lead coming in the next hour or so. It’s going to be your assignment to follow up on it.”

  There was something airy about Matt’s tone that set off Jax’s warning bells. “A different kind of lead coming from where?”

  Matt’s gaze faltered away.

  Jax picked up the pile of files and books, and slid off the edge of the table. “Out with it, Matt. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The Vice President has asked Colonel McClintock to task Tobie Guinness.”

  A couple of books skittered off the pile of files in Jax’s arms and clattered to the floor.

  “Good idea,” said Jax, hunkering down to retrieve the dropped books. “A phantom Nazi sub loaded with stolen gold probably isn’t quite enough to get Division Thirteen laughed out of the Company. Why not add a touch of woo-woo?”

  “Remote viewing is not woo-woo. It’s science. And you know it.”

  “Right.” Just because Tobie had managed to scuttle the Keefe Corporation’s nasty little scheme last summer didn’t mean Jax bought into the whole “alternative states of perception” business. With every passing month, he’d found himself growing increasingly skeptical, increasingly convinced there must be some other explanation for what had happened. “Maybe we can find an astrologer and a tarot-card reader to consult while we’re at it.”

  Matt made an incoherent noise deep in his throat, but said nothing.

  Jax straightened. “This is why the Director wanted me assigned to this, right?”

  “You got it.”

  4

  Naval Support Activity, Algiers Point, New Orleans:

  Saturday 24 October 4:30 P.M. local time

  Colonel F. Scott McClintock, United States Army, retired, stared through the one-way mirror at the small soundproofed room before him. October Guinness sat at one end of the table, a pad of paper and a pencil on the surface before her, a microphone clipped to the collar of her shirt. She was a small woman with a boyish body and honey-colored hair, which she wore pulled back in a casual ponytail. Dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, she looked more like a college student than a Naval officer. She was also the best remote viewer McClintock had ever worked with.

  Most people had an imperfect understanding of remote viewing, seeing it as a magical ability to transcend time and space in order to gather information about a “remote” target. Only, there was nothing magical about RV.

  The U.S. government’s awareness of the practice dated back at least to the end of World War II, when they’d captured a bunch of documents detailing some interesting Nazi experiments in the application of extrasensory perception to intelligence work. But what really caught the attention of the guys in the Pentagon was when the Soviets started investing in “psychic” stuff big-time back in the seventies. All the U.S. intelligence branches—the CIA, the Army, the NSA—had sunk money into the procedure over the years, although they were very careful never to use the word “psychic.”

  The term “remote viewing” was a nice, sanitized expression coined by two of the physicists working on the phenomena for the government out at Stanford Research Institute. As they defined it, remote viewing required strict adherence to specific, controlled scientific protocol. Some of the guys working with remote viewing for the Army back in the nineties had gotten sloppy. But McClintock was always very careful to adhere to protocol; he didn’t want anyone to be able to claim that their results were contaminated by leading questions and “frontloading.”

  He watched as his assistant, Peter Abrams, took the seat opposite Tobie. Normally, the Colonel was the tasker, the one who guided Tobie through her remote viewing sessions. But a clean session required the tasker to be kept ignorant of the target, and the Colonel had defined this exact target himself. He’d warned the Vice President that remote viewing didn’t work well with this kind of target, but Beckham wanted to go ahead with it anyway.

  McClintock had read about the impending terrorist attack in the press. He’d long ago learned to discount most of the sensationalism pumped out by the mainstream media, but according to Beckham, this threat looked like the real thing, and the government had virtually nothing to go on. They didn’t know who was behind it. They didn’t know what the terrorists were targeting. About all they did know was the date—Halloween—and that it was somehow linked to an old sunken U-boat.

  McClintock felt himself tense with anticipation as he watched Tobie settle comfortably in her chair and close her ey
es. Up until now, their viewing sessions had all been training runs. Remote viewing was a skill like anything else; the more you practiced it, the better you got. Now, finally, they were being given a chance to contribute to the defense of the country—and maybe show the doubters in D.C. what a good remote viewer could do, while they were at it.

  The physicists out at Stanford who’d done some of the early research on remote viewing had demonstrated that most people can be taught to do it, the same way most people can be taught to dance or play the piano. But that didn’t mean most people were particularly good at it. Remote viewing was a talent, and Tobie Guinness was a remarkably talented viewer.

  Successful viewing required sinking down into what they called the Zone, which was basically the same state of relaxed reception achieved by deep meditation. Tobie was very good at reaching that state. McClintock could see her visibly relaxing, her breath coming deep and slow.

  “Today is Saturday, 24 October,” said Peter, the microphone system echoing his voice as it was fed to the Colonel and their taping system. “That’s good, Tobie. Relax.” Peter laid his open palm on the opaque manila envelope that rested on the table before him. “All right, using the information in this envelope, tell me what you see.”

  Like McClintock, Peter was watching Tobie’s face. He saw her mouth open, her nostrils flaring as if she were gasping for air. “It’s dark. Cold. It’s like…I can’t breathe. Oh, God.” Her voice broke, her face going slack with horror. “They’re all dead.”

  Since Peter didn’t know the target, he didn’t understand what was happening. But McClintock understood only too well. “Back her out of there, fast,” whispered McClintock, his fingers curling around the frame of the one-way mirror because he knew Peter couldn’t hear him.

  Peter might not understand what was happening in Tobie’s mind, but he recognized the signs of distress. “Okay, Tobie,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “I want you to back away from where you are a bit, maybe get above it. Now tell me what you see.”

  Tobie took another breath and shuddered, but McClintock could see the tension in her begin to ease. She licked her lower lip. “There’s a long, rounded object. I think it’s metal but it’s…It must be old. It’s rusted. Wet. It’s resting on something bigger, something flat. I think it’s also metal.”

  McClintock felt his heart begin to race. He’d been working with remote viewing for some thirty years. Yet every time he witnessed a successful viewing, every time he watched someone reach out with their mind and touch a distant place—he still felt the same chilling rush of excitement and wonder.

  “Good, Tobie,” said Peter. “Now I want you to move a little farther away.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “I get the impression of water. Lots of water. Rocks. Pebbles. It’s a beach. A rocky beach. There’s a rise of ground…here.” Her pencil scratched across the pad as she drew a rough sketch. “A rise with trees.” She paused. “I get a sense of cold. Clouds.”

  “Good,” said Peter as she worked on her sketch. She barely glanced at what she was drawing. It was as if the image flowed directly from her mind to the paper. “Now look back at the long metal object. What do you see?”

  “Wooden planks. It’s…it’s like a wooden platform or a dock. That’s it. It’s a dock. Wharves. A long stretch of wharves. But they seem old. Deserted. There’s a big piece of machinery. Here.” She added to her sketch. “It’s yellow, and it sticks up in the air.”

  A crane? wondered McClintock, watching her.

  Her pencil skittered across the page. She said, “I see a long row of something rectangular. I get the impression of storage, like warehouses, although they’re mainly empty. And a road. Here.”

  “Can you follow it?”

  “Yes.” There was a pause. “It goes up a rise.”

  “Go to the top and tell me what you see.”

  “It’s open, like a meadow. Maybe farmland. But it feels oddly empty, like it’s…like it’s abandoned.”

  McClintock knew a sense of frustration. Remote viewing worked best when the viewers were given specific geographical coordinates and simply asked to describe what was there. Back in the eighties, the Army remote viewers up at Fort Meade had successfully described secret Soviet submarine installations and the insides of enemy embassies. But there was a reason remote viewing had never worked well when it came to finding missing persons. The viewer could describe a room, maybe even a house or a ravine in the woods where the missing person was being kept. But where was that house? Where was that ravine?

  Where was this beach?

  McClintock had heard stories about how, back in the seventies, remote viewers at Fort Meade had helped the government find a Soviet plane that had crashed in the jungles of Africa. But that was a rare success story in the history of using RV as part of an attempt to find missing people or things. The Army viewers who had tried to trace kidnapping victims in Italy and Lebanon had been able to describe the captives; they had accurately described their physical health and mental states, the rooms in which they were being held, sometimes even the street outside. But they’d never been able to provide the specific type of information that could enable the Special Forces guys to go in and rescue anyone.

  “Okay, Tobie,” said Peter. “Go back to the wharves and look again at the metal object. You said it was by the water?”

  “Not by the water. On the water.” She worked on her sketches some more, refining them, adding details. “There’s another building. Away from the warehouses, maybe halfway up the hill from the water.”

  “Tell me about the building.”

  “I get the impression of metal. A wavy metal. It’s like another warehouse, but smaller. I can see cars parked behind it. No, not cars. Vans. Blue vans. I think they all have the same thing written on the sides.”

  McClintock felt a renewed surge of hope. Most remote viewers couldn’t read words or numbers. McClintock had heard it had something to do with the way the two halves of the brain process information. But Tobie—like Pat Price, back in the seventies—could do it.

  Her forehead crinkled into a frown. “It’s in Greek. No. Not Greek. Cyrillic.” A talented linguist, Tobie knew Russian. But many other languages, from Macedonian and Serbian to Belarusian and Ukrainian used the Cyrillic alphabet, and she didn’t know any of those.

  “Militia,” she said. “That’s what it is. They’re militia vans. I think I can read…K…A…” Her frown deepened as she slowly sounded the word out. “KALININGRAD,” she said suddenly. “That’s it. Kaliningrad.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said the Colonel, pushing away from the window. He put in a call to Division Thirteen. “Matt? McClintock here. I think what you’re looking for is at a shipyard on a rocky beach in Kaliningrad Oblast. That’s right. Russia.”

  5

  Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia: Sunday 25 October

  12:30 A.M. local time

  Stefan Baklanov awoke in the grip of a blind terror. He felt his heart pound out one, two panicked beats before he realized the blackness that seemed to have swallowed him was merely the darkness of a cloud-shrouded night. It was another moment still before he remembered where he was.

  He sat up, his arms wrapping around his bent knees, an ache pulling across his chest as he thought about Uncle Jasha and the others on the Yalena. There had been times during that long, seemingly endless swim to the shore when he’d come close to giving up and letting the sea take him. But he’d pushed on, even when his arms went numb and his legs felt so heavy he could barely move them. He still wasn’t sure how he managed to drag himself up on the rocky point, gasping for breath and shivering so hard he didn’t think he’d ever stop.

  All he’d wanted to do was lie on the shore, close his eyes, and let exhaustion take him. But the throb of an outboard motor somewhere in the misty cove had driven him up and across a rutted, narrow road into the protective shelter of a copse of birch. His legs had felt as wobbly as a newbo
rn calf’s and his teeth chattered so hard he kept biting his tongue, but he knew he had to move or die.

  He figured he’d covered maybe nine or ten kilometers, sticking to the fields and woods, hiding at the sound of every voice or approaching car, before he came upon the abandoned old German farmhouse. Built a century or more ago of good red brick, it sat well back from the main road in the midst of an overgrown field. There were tens of thousands of such houses scattered across Kaliningrad Oblast—entire villages whose inhabitants had fled west ahead of the conquering Red Army, or had been shot, or had disappeared forever into the frozen wastelands of Siberia.

  The farmhouse door had long since been battered in and broken, but the old tile roof was still fairly sound and the stout brick walls kept out the cold wind that cut cruelly through Stefan’s wet clothes. He thought about building a fire to warm himself, then realized that would be a mistake. Staggering up the stairs, he rummaged around until he found a tattered old blanket. Stripping off his icy clothes, he curled up in a leaf-littered corner and fell immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  He’d had a vague idea of sleeping until nightfall and then pushing on under the cover of darkness. But when he now looked at his watch he realized it was already past midnight. He’d slept far longer than he’d intended.

  He pushed to his feet. Hugging the motheaten blanket around his shoulders, he lurched to the nearby window and peered through the broken panes at the dark, silent yard below.

  He stared in helpless frustration into the blackness of the night. He could vaguely make out the looming outline of a collapsed barn and the distant, darker smudge of a copse of trees. But there could be a hundred men out there hiding in the shadows and Stefan knew he’d never see them. A sudden noise and a flurry of movement made him jerk back, gasping with terror. Then he let out a weak laugh as a barn owl landed on the rotting window casing, its eyes wide and staring.