Power Play by Patrick Robinson Read Free Book Online

intervene, or even to conduct real surveillance. We’ve lost our teeth.”
    “It’s not that the Americans don’t trust us,” replied the navy boss. “But they can’t really count on us. After all these years, we’ve just faded out of the picture. The United States knows we’re loyal, and they know we’re competent. We’ve just been disarmed by our own side. We can’t really help anyone anymore.”
    “Pretty damn depressing, eh?” said Admiral Young.
    “Yes, but the trawler men may not have died for nothing . . . It’s about
time I had a chat with the US Navy Department in Washington—just to alert them we think the Russians are on the move in more ways than one.”
    “That’ll wake ’em up, sir. They get extremely spooked about renegade submarines, as you know.”
     
     
    Office of the Director
National Security Agency
Fort Meade, Maryland
     
    Captain James Ramshawe, the Australian-sounding but American-born intelligence chief at the National Security Agency, shared his old title of director these days. Since the Chinese and the Russians were suspected of hacking into the Internet systems of the Pentagon, Boeing, Mitsubishi, and other military installations in the early part of the century, a new appointment had been made—commander of cyber warfare.
    The immensely popular former West Point lecturer General Harlan Forster had been selected, and while the Pentagon had always hoped the top man at Fort Meade could stand tall over all branches of the secretive spy center—interception, code breaking, cryptology, and cyber warfare—that had proved too difficult.
    By 2018 the duties had been separated. Captain Ramshawe, the eavesdropping and spying maestro whose operation intercepted almost 2 billion signals a day, retained his old office on the eighth floor of building OPS 2B, and he retained his old areas of responsibility.
    A brand-new headquarters was constructed on the same floor for General Forster, whose duties were wide ranging but essentially defensive. He was provided with a gigantic staff, a brand-new operational building, and a brief to provide the United States, and all of its military and military-related organizations, with protection from any foreign “invaders” trying to launch attacks through cyberspace—hacking, that is, into America’s most secret computer systems, listening to the most secretive messages, discovering the innermost workings of the greatest superpower the world has ever known. With every passing year of the twenty-first century, the march of the cyberspace vandals had become more intense.
    And one ultramodern objective on an ancient military adage had jumped into focus: to dismantle your enemy, you must dismantle his intelligence,
communications, and forward planning. Where once this meant erecting electronic radar pylons on the coast of the English Channel to foil the advance of Hitler’s air armadas, now it meant something similar, but about four zillion times faster and ten zillion times sneakier.
    And despite the colossal volume of information bombarding the electronics of the National Security Agency, the word submarine never failed to cause every nerve in Ramshawe’s personal early-warning system to vibrate.
    The encrypted message from the Pentagon this morning was pretty lucid : RN suspects Russian sub operational in Western Isles off the Hebrides—almost certainly responsible for that Scottish trawler vanishing with six crewmen last week. Dragged her down by accident.
    Question: What was Russian sub doing there in the first place? Meeting tomorrow here possible? Assistant to CNO, Navy Dept.
    “Good question,” Ramshawe muttered to himself. “What the hell were they doing creeping about the Hebridean islands in the middle of the friggin’ night?” He’d read about the tragedy days ago, and he’d logged it in his computer to revisit.
    It was a constant theme. After years of having their backs rammed against the harbor wall in search of funds, the