Cruise

Chapter 1

Helsinki, Finland

Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa

Anna calls it the elevator ride that saved the world. She may be right. I was at the annual SPIE Conference (the International Society for Optics and Photonics) in Helsinki, Finland, to catch up on the latest in the world of lasers. I’ve worked on laser projects for Intel for several years, including anti-missile defense systems, so it was normal for Intel to pay my expenses to attend the conference each year.

The conference was scheduled to start on a Monday, so I had flown into Helsinki on Sunday, checked into my room at the hotel, and gone out to dinner with a couple of old friends from my days in graduate school in California.

Monday morning, I got on the elevator from my fourteenth-floor room, heading down to the big hotel conference room on the ground floor for the first talk of the day. Already on the elevator were a large man and a smaller woman, in the back corner of the elevator, and he was pawing at her. She kept saying, Nyet! and Get your hands off me! in Russian. Finally, she slapped him – and he slapped her back, hard enough to rock her. That is when I stepped in.

I said in my best Russian – I had taken the language for four years in college - Excuse me, but the lady asked you to leave her alone. The big guy turned around, glared at me, and said something like (if I had the translation right), Butt out, asshole. He turned back to the lady, and clinched his fist and reared his right arm like he was going to hit her again. I grabbed his arm, which only seemed to make him madder. He turned to me, and said, again in Russian, Looks like I need to teach you a lesson, too. He pulled open his suit jacket, and reached for the gun in his belt.

That’s when I kneed him in the groin. When he doubled over a little, I headbutted him, breaking his nose. The top of the head can be quite a weapon when you know how to use it! When he grabbed at his nose with both hands, I kicked him right between the legs with everything I had. He went down for the count. I had learned to street fight growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in San Antonio, so my reaction to his aggression was almost automatic. All of this only took about ten seconds, but it seemed like we had been in the elevator for an hour. Luckily, we had not stopped at any intermediate floors while heading down to the lobby.

I looked back up at the lady, to make sure she was OK, and the first thought I had was that she was strikingly beautiful, even with the welt on her cheek. And then I recognized her. You’re Anastasia Sagdeev, our speaker this morning! She smiled, and nodded. I continued, again in my best Russian, Sorry about your friend, but I think he deserved it. She nodded again and said, He was an oaf, but assigned to me to be my minder. He will be replaced shortly, but hopefully by someone that is a little more kulterny. The elevator dinged, and we got out on the ground floor, leaving the groaning man prostrate on the elevator’s floor. As we walked across the lobby toward the auditorium, I told her, I really liked that paper you published last year, where you were first author. Your ideas on using heated ionized gasses to help excite the laser beam have helped to make a huge difference in amplitude. She said, Thanks. But aren’t you a little concerned about our friend back there pressing charges? I told her, No problem. That’s what diplomatic passports are for. She laughed, and said, So, you are a diplomat? I stopped walking. I must apologize for not introducing myself, especially considering how we met. I’m Joe Green, from the United States. Ah, she said, nodding to herself, and she continued in Russian. The microwave guy. I liked the paper you did a few years back, at Cal Tech, on speeding computer decision making.

I just smiled. I thought to myself, does everybody here know what I am now working on back in Austin? We started walking again, talking while we walked. She said, Thank you for saving me from that idiot. He thought that because he is KGB, he could do anything he wanted with me. As if professors at Moscow’s Academy of Sciences don’t have any rights! I told her, I didn’t know you had gotten a professorship there. Taking after your father in a lot of ways, aren’t you? She stopped and looked at me again, and said, this time in perfect English, You are not old enough to have known my dad. But I’ve studied Roald Sagdeev’s work, I said. He was a pioneer in the field, and his breakthroughs helped us to get to where we are today." She smiled at the nice things I was saying about her father. He really was a great theoretical physicist, working on the Russian version of SDI back in the ‘80s.

We reached the door of the conference room. She shook my hand. Thank you again. I will be in here all morning, have a question-and-answer session scheduled for lunch, and then more classes all afternoon. But I’m free for dinner. Would you like to have dinner with me? That may seem a bit forward, since we just met, but I feel I do owe you something after what you did for me on the elevator. I said, Just you and I, or will your new minder be joining us? She laughed, and said she thought she could get completely free for dinner. If I do not go back to my room after the afternoon sessions, and then stay for the happy hour festivities, I probably won’t pick up a new jailer until late tonight. I’ll meet you here, at the door to the conference room, at 6:30 this evening. And dinner is on me. She smiled again, walked through the conference room entryway, and turned toward the podium. I found a seat, wondering what I had already gotten myself into on this trip!

Chapter 2

Dinner was a blast. We caught a cab to Ateljé Finn, the old studio of sculptor Gunnar Finne, now turned into a great local restaurant. The place is decorated on all three floors with local art works. We toured the place, drinks in hand, while we waited for our dinner to be served. She took my arm as we walked around, and it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world. We dined on Silli Ja Uudet Perunat – new potatoes with herring, a local delicacy, washed down with a shared bottle of white wine.

We both got a little buzzed. We talked for several hours about everything from politics to the projects we had done in the past, and what we were now working on – both careful not to reveal too much. She told stories about her dad, and I talked about how I learned to fight dirty, and my days in the Army. She told me one thing that really surprised me – she had been raised a Christian, in the Russian Orthodox faith. I asked her if that had been difficult under the Communist regime, and she told me that her family had to be incredibly careful about how they worshipped – if their faith had been discovered, the people in charge would have immediately taken away her father’s security clearances, and almost certainly removed him from the faculty at Moscow University. And, of course, that she would have never had the chance to get the education she received, mostly because of her father’s successes. She sounded almost bitter. I asked her if she wanted to defect, and she said she would consider it, but if she left for the west the KGB would do horrible things to her sainted mother and sister, still living in the Moscow suburbs. They don’t send people to Siberia anymore – they just seem to disappear. She asked me if I would be interested in joining her at the University in Moscow, but I declined, too.

When we got back to the hotel, it was late, and the lobby was pretty much deserted. We got on the same elevator (sans the oaf we had left there earlier), and I asked her what floor she was on – I was going to walk her to her door. She shook her head, and pushed the button for fourteen, my floor. I have a favor to ask, she said. If I go back up to my room, I’ll be interrogated all night by my new minder and his friends about what happened today. I am not ready to face that just yet. Can we have a nightcap in your room? I thought for a fleeting second about getting into possible compromising situations, but then I nodded, and we got off the elevator on my floor and walked to my door. I slid the plastic key card into the door lock slot, opened the door when the lock light turned green, and motioned her into the room ahead of me. She turned on the entry light, and turned back toward me as I was shutting and locking the door. She put her fingers to my lips, and whispered into my ear. Don’t say anything. The room has probably been bugged. And then she was in my arms.

Chapter 3

I didn’t wake up the next morning until after nine. I was alone in bed, but there was a note on the pillow beside mine. Thanks for a wonderful evening. I have left you a little present to also thank you for what you did in the elevator. Don’t open it until you can use a secure computer. Under the note was a flash drive. I stared at it for a couple of minutes, wondering what was on the drive, and again wondering what I had started. Was this going to be some sort of political mess, with me being the cause?

Now is probably a good time for a little background, so let me introduce myself. I’m not a spy. So, why I am stuck in the middle of this caper is something I never expected. I am not James Bond, or even Jack Ryan – Tom Clancy’s fictional character who, like me, had events overtake his plans. I am a software engineer, and I run a coding team for Intel at our Austin facility. I have had experience on both the hardware and software sides of the house, so I’m good at integrating new software into machines of all sorts, making them more efficient. I guess my only connection with the spy world is that I’m working on a project classified top secret – how to improve the processing time for our anti-missile defenses as they try and seek out their high-speed targets. I have not always been a nerd. I had grown up on the streets in San Antonio, Texas, leading a hard-scrabble life until I managed to graduate from high school. I got a master’s degree in street fighting before I ever got to college! I earned my undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, there in Austin, in computer science. The college was only about eighty miles up the road from my home in San Antonio, so I was able to go home some weekends and help my family.

I financed my undergrad education with an ROTC scholarship, and went directly into the army as a 2nd Lieutenant when I graduated from UT. But I did not want to sit behind a desk, writing code for the army’s computers – so I volunteered for the Rangers, and spent a few years in some interesting places like Iraq and Afghanistan. When I got out of the army six years later, I used the GI Bill and some teaching assistant money to pay for my PhD at Cal Tech. My thesis was on how using artificial intelligence to speed computer decision making and communicating that information rapidly to the field could help with real time army strategy, and that made me popular in the small sector of computer scientists working on defense projects. I was a little late getting into the civilian workforce, but Intel didn’t hold my advanced age of 30 against me when they hired me. Now, at 35, I am running a team, and back in Austin, a place that I love.

Seminars like the one here in Helsinki are a part of every scientific endeavor, as scientists get together with others in their field a couple of times a year to share what they have learned. At this conference, speakers from five different countries were giving talks on laser generation, focusing, frequencies, and so on. I had been invited since I had worked on laser software over the last few years. Both the U.S. and Russia were sending large scientific delegations. A week before the seminar, I had been called to Washington, to get briefed with some of the other attendees on what we can talk about, and what we cannot. Some of the people at the conference – from various countries - will be there to try and steal secrets.

After the lecture from the National Intelligence Advisor on what we would be allowed to talk about at the conference in Helsinki, I was asked to stay behind for a minute after the meeting ended. After everyone else left, a guy in a gray suit came into the room at the Executive Office Building, and introduced himself as FBI Agent Bill Peterson. He seemed to be about my age, but looked a little older, as his hair had turned what I presumed to be prematurely gray – matching his suit nicely. He got right to the point. We hear that the Russians have somehow gotten wind of your microwave project, and they may be willing to go to extremes to get information from you. So, we want you to be careful about not only what you say, but what you do – we don’t want you to be caught in any circumstances that could be used as a possible blackmail attempt against you.

I just stared, not willing to speak at that point. He continued. Do you have your passport with you? I dug it out of my briefcase, and handed it to him. He pulled out a new one, a gray one that also matched his suit. He tossed it to me, saying, This one will replace your old one, and will hopefully help to keep you out of any trouble stirred up by the KGB or others while you are in Finland.

That is when I started to get a little worried. KGB? Why would they be interested in an Intel employee from Texas? Peterson continued. We will have one of my colleagues along on your trip, providing necessary security. Steve Jennings works for another three-letter agency, and you can probably guess which one, but you should never say the name of that agency out loud. If you have any problems while in Helsinki, find Steve, and he will get you whatever you need.

The new passport was definitely different – it said Diplomatic Passport right on the cover. I asked, Why a Diplomatic Passport? I’m not a diplomat, or even in the Foreign Service. Peterson said, Well, someone high up thought it was a good idea for you to have one, probably because the project you are working on is so sensitive. With a Dip, you cannot be arrested, or, more importantly, questioned, for any reason. Even if you killed someone, all they could do in Finland is have you expelled. Also, I am required keep your old passport. You’re only allowed to have one passport at a time. Peterson nodded at me, picked up his briefcase, and walked out of the room. Leaving me there to think.

My new passport was made out in the name Joseph Augustus Green, PhD. You can call me Joe, Dr. Green, or even my old army nickname, JAG, because I really am just another guy. I still wondered if a diplomatic passport was really necessary. What would the Russians want with a small-fry computer geek? I do speak a little Russian, but that does not make me a target for a KGB goon squad!

Chapter 4

Ever since Ronald Reagan started his Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, we have been working on ways to stop incoming missiles from reaching their intended target. We’ve done a great job over the last few years improving our ballistic missile defense system, using nuclear-powered satellites to attack the missiles in space with lasers. Since I worked on the targeting software, I got to see the project tests – and the results were spectacular. The good news is that the United States can now defend against ICBMs launched from any other continent. We finally developed lasers strong enough to blast a missile into small pieces, and we have a series of nuclear-powered satellites in place in orbit, capable of eliminating missiles as they approach apogee (the high point of the flight path, in outer space). I worked on the software for those satellites, helping to speed up the processing time on the birds so that they could find their targets more quickly and accurately, and I’ve seen the live tests – I know these things work, so we can all breathe a little easier about this threat. If Kim Jong-un decides to make good on one of his threats and send a ballistic missile our way, he is in for a big surprise when that missile gets into the stratosphere.

The bad news is that ballistic missiles are only one possible method of attack. Many nation-states now have submarines capable of launching cruise missiles from just off our shoreline, with only a small window of time available before the missile reaches its target. Up to this point, the only defense we’ve had against cruise missiles are Patriot anti-missile batteries strategically placed around our big cities. And Patriots are known to be less that 50% effective against cruise missiles. We now have the satellites in place to identify when missiles are launched, even in bad weather or in extremely cloudy conditions – our birds use infrared technology to find the heat bloom of a launch, anywhere in the world. The problem is tracking the missile in flight, as these rockets are designed to fly low, under normal radar, and the defensive response time must be in seconds instead of minutes because of the possible proximity of the launch point to our major city targets. Determining a missile’s flight path, and trying to shoot it down, has been a quest since President Reagan first dreamed up the project. We now think we have the solution.

And it is based on technology that a lot of you have mounted over your stove at home – microwaves! Back in 1967, physicist Edward Teller gave a lecture on what he called possible directed-energy weapons, or