Let’s keep moving!

TETE A TETE



It was neutral territory. An unprepossessing single story building at 9 Prechistensky Lane in the Khamovniki District, with a peeling yellow painted facade, white trim around the doors and windows, and small Danish flag hanging over the doorway.
“This is the place ma’am,” Ambassador McCarthy’s aide announced, as her security detail stepped out of their cars and took position on the deserted street. It was five in the morning, and they had gone to great pains to be sure there were no media or FSB goons tailing them. Devlin had been ordered by her Secretary of State to deliver a message to the Kremlin, just in case they hadn’t got the message from the President’s phone call to the Russian President, or the multiple other channels through which the US was screaming in outrage at the Russians.
Devlin looked dubiously out the window at the modest building, “Have I been here before?”
“Yes ma’am,” her aide, Brent Harrison said. “Six months ago; dinner with Frederik, King of Denmark and his wife, Princess Mary.” The man had a memory for every engagement, and had memorized just about every street in the city too, so if he said she had been here, she must have.
She gathered up her things, “It seemed bigger at night.”
She was met at the door by her junior aide, Lucy Sellano, who had come out earlier to ensure arrangements were in place. “Foreign Minister Kelnikov is here ma’am. He had a military attaché with him - there was some confusion about who should be present for your discussion.”
“I hope you told them it was a four-eyes meeting,” she said. She wanted to be able to speak frankly to Kelnikov, even though he would assume the conversation was being recorded. They had both agreed on the venue, but that didn’t mean Kelnikov trusted the Danes not to eavesdrop. It was Devlin’s experience that Kelnikov trusted no one.
“Yes ma’am,” Sellano said, a wispy brown strand of hair across her forehead bobbing up and down. As they turned a corner they nearly walked into a large, square shouldered man in his fifties, with thin blonde hair and round rimmed glasses. He held out his hand. “Ah, Ambassador Vestergaard, ma’am,” Sellano said. “I think you know each other?”
“A pleasure to welcome you to our humble abode again Devlin,” the Danish Ambassador said warmly. “But under less convivial circumstances than last.”
“Yes, sorry about the intrusion Jørgen,” she replied. “I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient.”
He smiled, “I have told the staff there is a security sweep being conducted this morning and they are not to arrive until eight. I myself have a breakfast appointment,” he said, and indicated the empty corridor with a sweep of his hand. “Vort hus er dit hus,” he said. “The place is yours. Your guest awaits.” With that, he bowed slightly and left them alone in the corridor.
“So, the military attaché is…”
“Sitting with the Russian security detachment in the kitchen,” Sellano said. “I have a room just here…” she stopped and opened a door, “For our people. I’ll wait here with them, and when you come out, the arrangement is that we will leave first.” She looked at her watch. “We have plenty of time. The Danish embassy staff won’t be here for another two hours at least.”
“Good,” Devlin said, handing the woman her coat. As she did, Harrison handed her a file, and she looked at it. It had, printed across the top of the file in letters big enough to be visible from a satellite if she stepped outside with it, OPERATION LOSOS. She was going to make sure Kelnikov could see it clearly too. It was a message to the Foreign Minister that US Intelligence was not blind to the Russian plan to take over Saint Lawrence as a permanent maritime base. She opened the cover … okay, it was a pretty thin file, but Kelnikov didn’t need to know that.
“You talked to the analyst?” she asked Harrison as they walked. “Williams?”
“Carl Williams, yes,” Harrison said, pointing to the NSA designator on the first page. He smiled, “CIA head of station wasn’t very happy about us going straight to ‘the Ambassador’s new pet’ as they describe him…”
“Then he should try giving me more than open source news reports I could just as easily pull from cable TV,” Devlin said.
“Right … well, most of what Williams pulled together is SigInt, plus some human source stuff from CIA, but not much. He said he figured due to the situation you wouldn’t give him enough time to task any of our assets for primary intel collection, and you’d want something you could hang over Kelnikov’s head, so he directed NSA to focus all their energy on just trying to identify at least the code name for the Russian operation.” Harrison’s finger was resting on a Russian FSB intelligence bureau memo, with the code word LOSOS marked clearly across the top. Devlin’s rudimentary Russian wasn’t good enough for her to be able to read it, and she didn’t even know if it was real. “He figured if we had that, the Russians might assume we had it all.”
“Smart guy,” Devlin said. “I like how he thinks. At worst, they’ll wonder how much we know, at best, they’ll assume we know it all and might have to modify their plans on that assumption.”
“Good luck,” Harrison said, stepping aside so her security detail could get past him into the waiting room.
“It’s the red door at the end of the corridor ma’am,” Sellano said, pointing.
Devlin put the file under her arm and straightened her jacket. Except we know virtually zip about why they’re there. All we know is that the Russians are swarming all over Saint Lawrence, they’ve declared they’re acting under the authority of an Arctic treaty we never signed, and they’re putting enough firepower on that island to create a no-go zone for US aircraft and ships over the whole of the Bering Strait. Devlin sighed, and wiped her teeth with a fingertip in case there was any lipstick there. And they don’t look like they’re planning to leave anytime soon.
*
*
Kelnikov rose and buttoned his jacket over his expansive waistline. He didn’t smile, but gave her a small and almost ironic bow, “Madam Ambassador.”
Without any ceremony, she sat the LOSOS file down on the table between them and sat down opposite, “Minister Kelnikov.”
They looked at each other for a moment or two. There was no protocol to cover this. Devlin saw his eyes flick to the folder, but saw no immediate reaction. Give him time, she thought. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. The challenge now would be for her to reveal a little of what she knew, without giving away just how little.
“I believe you have a message from your government,” Kelnikov said. “Perhaps you have reconsidered your position and are willing to enter into negotiations for a new treaty guaranteeing free passage for all nations through the Bering Strait?”
It was all she could do to contain herself from swearing. The Russians had sunk one of their own ships, either themselves, or through a proxy. They had invaded US territory under the guise of a nuclear reactor emergency aboard one of their subs and had intimated that their submarine may have been the subject of a US cyber-attack, which could have resulted in a meltdown of its reactor. And then they had declared that they were taking control of the sea lanes and airspace over the Bering Strait to ‘guarantee freedom of navigation for all’ in the name of the Barents Euro Arctic Council of Nations. Williams’ report also stated that they had shot down two US reconnaissance drones. They had warned that any US military ship or aircraft breaking the no-go zone would be considered a threat to international shipping and dealt with ‘accordingly’.
“We are under no illusions about your real purpose on Saint Lawrence,” Devlin said. She reached down and took up the file, opening it to the first page as though she was referring to a briefing document. “Your Operation LOSOS? Is that how it is pronounced? It is nothing less than an old fashioned land grab.”
That got a reaction. Kelnikov’s eyes narrowed. “The United States sinks one of our freighters and disables one of our submarines, risking hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives from possible nuclear disaster, and you accuse us of an ‘old fashioned land grab’?”
“It is only us in this room,” Devlin reminded him. “So can we cut the hyperbola and discuss whether there is any way we can resolve this peaceably, because I can tell you Yevgeny, we are at about one minute to midnight on this one,” she said, referring to the infamous Doomsday Clock. Any student of history would know the last time it had been at one minute to midnight had been during the Cuban Missile crisis.
“If the US is willing to negotiate a new Arctic treaty, this can be resolved very quickly,” he said equably. “Why could you possibly imagine we have any interest in taking control of a tiny island full of eskimos and whale bones?” He was fishing now, she could feel it. Trying to see how deep her intel ran.
She pulled aside the first page of her dossier and ran her eyes over the list underneath.
“We don’t need to overfly Saint Lawrence to see what is happening there,” she said. “You have more than 500 ground troops on the island at least, four portable anti-aircraft systems capable of shooting down aircraft over US airspace, one submarine and five littoral naval vessels, armed with ship to ship and ship to air missiles.” She looked up, seeing a slight smile on the man’s face. “You have activated almost every unit in the Eastern District air army, moved a squadron of Hunter drones to
Lavrentiya and are staging continuous patrols up and down the Strait with manned Sukhoi fighters …”
“To secure the waterway for international shipping…” Kelnikov began again, but she held up her hand.
“And,” she said loudly, interrupting him, “And, you have the entire population of the island in the villages of Gambell and Savoonga under house arrest. They are being held hostage.”
“No,” Kelnikov insisted. “Clearly your intelligence is unreliable. The local inhabitants have been moved to a safe location, so that there will not be any civilian casualties if you are foolish enough to respond militarily to our intervention.” He tapped the table, “They are being given food, shelter and even advanced medical care. Which I understand is more than their own government has given them for decades. When the situation is stable enough, we will allow the International Red Cross access to the residents to verify they are safe and well.”
“It is not your place to allow anything!” Devlin protested. “These are US citizens, being held against their will by the armed forces of Russia.”
“Protected,” Kelnikov corrected, leaning forward, “Against a rogue nation which has already demonstrated a reckless and violent disregard for the rules of international relations.”
“You would be wise not to treat us like fools, sir,” Devlin said. “This aggression has one purpose, and that is to secure Russian control over a strategic waterway, and this we will not abide.”
The minute she spoke, Devlin saw her assertion was somehow wide of the mark. Kelnikov smiled and sat back in his chair, relaxing visibly. His eyes, which had been flicking between her file labelled LOSOS, and her face, settled now on the sleeve of his jacket as he picked lint from it, as though he had suddenly lost interest in the meeting. Struggling to maintain her outrage, Devlin continued, “Our demand is simple,” she said. “All Russian military forces and any other Russian nationals will depart Saint Lawrence within 48 hours, that is, by 1800 hours Tuesday, Alaskan Standard Time...”
“Please,” Kelnikov interrupted her. “Don’t tell me. You were about to say … ‘or there will be grave consequences’.”
“No,” Devlin replied. “That is what our President is saying to the world press and to your President.
The message I have for you is a little more direct.” Now she had his attention again. Good.
“Go on.”
“I have been authorized to tell you that if you do not withdraw by this deadline, Russian forces on Saint Lawrence will be wiped from the face of that island with a fire and fury unlike any seen this century.” She drew a breath, “And the United States will hold Russia entirely responsible for any and all civilian casualties that result from your refusal to comply.”
*
*



As she walked to her car, Devlin glowered. She had delivered her message, but there was no victory in that. Kelnikov would pass the message to his government, of that she was sure. But the State Department’s theory that this entire affair was about securing Russian control over the Bering Strait waterway had fallen flat on the floor. Kelnikov had smirked, as though by accusing them of it, she was just showing how ignorant she was. Dammit.
Her aide Harrison knew her well enough not to hit her with a barrage of questions as they climbed into her car. As it pulled away from the curb, he let her gather her thoughts. Finally, she spoke.
“This analyst, Williams.” she asked, patting the file on her knees. “Tell me he’s on station here in Moscow, not in some bunker in Virginia.”
“Yes ma’am,” Harrison said. “NSA secondment. He’s an attaché in the Environment, Science,
Technology and Health Section.”
“But he’s a spook?”
“Yes ma’am, undeclared. Just arrived in country I believe,” Harrison said. In fact, he knew exactly how long Williams had been in Russia. Forty two days.
“Get him on the phone,” she said, holding out her hand. “Encrypt.”
Harrison pulled out his phone, and then tapped on the app that gave him an encrypted connection via a US Embassy VPN to other Embassy staff. He looked up and dialed Williams, then handed it to Devlin. “I asked him to stand by his phone, just in case,” Harrison said.
“That’s why I love you,” Devlin smiled and heard the ring tone stop to be replaced by a deep bass voice.
“Hello? Williams speaking.”
“Mr. Williams, this is Ambassador Devlin, I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said.
“No ma’am,” he replied. No fumbling, fawning chit chat. She liked that.
“When I get back to Spaso House I’d like to see you there, I need your thoughts on something,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” he replied. “But can you come to me instead?”
She blinked, “I beg your pardon?”
“Ma’am, there’s someone you should meet,” he said. “But I can’t bring him to Spaso House. You have to come to my office in the New Annex. Or, under it, actually.”
She put her hand over the telephone and turned to Harrison, “What do you know about this guy?” Harrison shrugged, “Crack analyst, earned his stripes in China before being sent here, expert in neural networks…”
“Neural what?”
“Artificial Intelligence,” Harrison explained.
She put the phone back to her ear. “OK Mr. Williams, your office it is. We’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
“You’d better allow a bit more time ma’am,” Williams said.
She smiled, “Are you going to tell me your computer is showing heavy traffic on the ring road Mr. Williams?”
“No ma’am,” he replied. “For the paperwork. I’m pretty sure you don’t have the code word clearances for what I want to share with you.”
*
*
Roman Kelnikov was also finishing a phone call from his car, but it was a much more straightforward one. His call was to the Defense Minister, Andrei Burkhin. They discussed the American threat, and whether it was possible that the words ‘fire and fury’ were meant to convey a willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons.
“I can’t rule that out,” Kelnikov said. “But we knew it was a possibility. She mentioned civilian casualties.”
“It won’t be a disaster if they do use tactical nukes,” Burkhin responded. “They would become international pariahs.”
“We could lose thousands of front line troops, aircraft and ships,” Kelnikov said. “Not to mention the civilian casualties. Surely…”
“The troops on Saint Lawrence are … expendable,” Burkhin said. “And they number in the hundreds, not thousands. The ships are cold war relics. Aircraft losses would be limited to those directly over Saint Lawrence at the time. Civilian losses are a US matter. I’d almost welcome a nuclear strike. We could probably march into Alaska with the whole of the UN at our backs.”
“All we need is a military response of some sort, preferably conventional,” Kelnikov said, a part of him recoiling at the thought of nuclear weapons being used so close to the Russian mainland. “Could we not just have our ships…”
“There will be a military response, that is guaranteed now,” Burkhin said. “And it will be executed with the typical American aversion for risking the lives of its troops - a blizzard of cruise missiles is most likely. All we need is for America’s allies in Europe and Asia to baulk at entering the conflict when we announce we are creating a demilitarized zone in Alaska. Two to four weeks, and we will control the entire Yukon River Basin from Fort Yukon to Holy Cross.”
Kelnikov couldn’t help notice the uncertainty in his colleague’s timeline. “You said two to four weeks? I thought this was supposed to be a lightning attack, over in days.”
“Relax Roman,” Burkhin said. “You get the United Nations behind us, leave the battle plan to me.”
*
*


Williams had been right, Devlin had to admit. Of course there were areas of her own embassy that she was not able to waltz in and out of - high security communications or intelligence collection areas on the ‘Tophat’ restricted access floors for example. But she hadn’t been aware that an obscure office of the ESTH section in the basement of the New Annex was one of them. Mind you, she’d never had occasion to go there. It had taken Harrison a frustrating two hours on the telephone; first to find out from whom he needed to the secure the above Top Secret clearances needed so that Devlin could be briefed directly by Williams, and then to get the clearances sent through from Washington where it was still the middle of the night and no one seemed to want to take responsibility for letting a lowly Ambassador into what was apparently a very closed circle of Need To Know.
As she followed Harrison and a security guard through the maze of corridors in the New Annex it struck Devlin that they should find a new nick-name for it. Built at the turn of the century, it had the working name ‘New Annex’ when people moved in, before later being officially called the ‘Mueller Wing’, after a former head of the CIA, in a move intended to irk their Russian hosts. The new name came too late though. To everyone working at the Embassy, it would always be the New Annex, just as the additional secure floors of the Chancery were called the Tophat.
“In here ma’am,” the security guard said, keying a door. “Mr. Williams is third office on the left.” He held it open to let Harrison and herself through but Harrison stayed in the doorway with a shrug, “I’ll wait here. I could only get clearance for you ma’am.”
She didn’t have to worry about where to go once the door swung shut behind her. A chubby bearded man with disheveled brown hair and a spot on his khaki shirt which looked distinctly like ketchup stepped out into the corridor and gave her a small wave.
She walked down and held out her hand, “You must be Carl Williams?”
“In the flesh, Ambassador,” he said, shaking her hand then turning to open the door behind him.
“Call me Devlin, please,” she said stepping inside and looking around. “OK … disappointed.” It just came out, without her thinking. She had expected to walk into some sort of supercomputer center, huge mainframes in liquid nitrogen cooled towers behind hermetically sealed glass, sucking power from a small nuclear reactor buried under the floor of the New Annex. What else could have required such an effort to get her cleared?
Instead, Williams office was about the size of her walk in wardrobe in Spaso House, with just enough room for desk holding a laptop and a coffee cup, a file safe and a chair for one visitor. Looking at the chair, she could see it hadn’t had much use. Although he had a bit of the mad professor look about him, Carl Williams’ office wasn’t as disheveled as his person. There wasn’t a piece of paper, stray paperclip or even a pen on his desk; just a few rings from coffee cups that hadn’t been cleaned off. The only personal item was a photo of a seascape that looked like it had been taken on a Pacific Coast somewhere.
“I know, right?” he said, clearly not offended. “They asked what kind of office I would need and I said as long as it had an encrypted 1.5 terabit fat pipe up and down, I didn’t care.” He looked up, “At least it has high ceilings. You want a coffee?”
“Thanks, do you even…” she asked, looking dubious.
He held up a finger and then pulled out a drawer. Inside was a kettle, which he switched on, and a container of instant coffee. “You take cream and sugar?” he asked, pulling a paper cup full of small sachets out of the drawer. “I don’t myself, but I still have the stash I stole on the plane flight over.” The water boiling was very loud in the small space.
“Black is fine,” she said. She looked up at the seascape photograph on his wall, “You grew up on the coast?”
“No ma’am … Devlin,” he said. “That’s where I’m going to retire. La Jolla, San Diego, you know it?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“I’ve been putting away every spare dollar I made in China, and now here. Should have enough to buy into a condo by the beach in a couple of years, and then I’m going to learn to surf.”
She looked at him dubiously. With his mop of brown hair he didn’t look old enough to be thinking about retiring, nor fit enough to think about surfing.
He held up a hand, little finger and thumb outstretched, “Sick idea, right?”
“California dreaming,” she said. “There are worse retirement plans. But it takes a lot of money to retire.”
He pulled out the kettle and poured two cups of coffee, “Oh, not completely retire. I’ll still do consulting and stuff to pay the bills. There are only about 20 people in the world who can do what I do.”
“And what is that, exactly?” she asked. “I’m told I’ve been cleared now.”
“Sure. I program natural scenes and natural language on recursive neural networks,” he said.
“Again?”
“I teach machines to speak and understand plain English, and to look at images the way we do,” he said.
“OK, and what do you do for the NSA?” she asked. “Here at my Embassy?”
“Oh, I work with HOLMES, keeping him fed, debugged, and reporting on any intel he finds interesting,” he said.
“HOLMES?”
“I know, you’re wondering is it an acronym or something?” he said. “It’s, well... it’s like, I’m Dr. Watson, and he’s…”
“Sherlock Holmes?”
“Yeah, the someone I wanted you to meet,” he said, opening his laptop and typing in a long password that he supplemented with a thumb swipe. The laptop was hard wired to the wall by something Devlin hadn’t seen in a long time – a long optical fibre Ethernet cable. “I couldn’t just bring him to your office. You don’t have the bandwidth.” He turned his laptop around and Devlin saw a window that looked like a simple video conference window. She saw an image of herself captured by the laptop camera, on one side of the screen, and a Japanese manga style image of Sherlock Holmes on the other.
“Say hello to the Ambassador HOLMES,” Williams said.
“Pleased to meet you Ambassador Devlin,” a British accented voice said from the speakers of the laptop. “That’s a nice necklace you’re wearing. Australian South Sea Pearls from Broome, correct? A present from the Australian Foreign Minister.”
Involuntarily, Devlin’s hand went to the pearls at her neck. She looked at Williams, “That’s creepy. I was given this about six years ago, when I was leaving Canberra.”
“There must be a photo of it on a server somewhere,” Williams said, sounding unimpressed. “Ignore him, he’s just trying to show off. HOLMES, the Ambassador met with the Russian Foreign Minister today. She is going to ask you some questions.”
Devlin stared at the manga detective on the screen, not sure where or how to start.
“Just ask,” Williams prompted. “If I need to rephrase your question, I’ll chime in.”
“Ok… do… what do you know about the current political situation between Russia and America over Saint Lawrence Island?” She leaned forward, but Williams spoke before the A.I. could.
“Parse it HOLMES, brief download, specific answers only from here,” he said, then looked at Devlin, “I’m guessing you don’t want to know everything he knows. That could take hours.”
“Yes Carl,” the British voice said. “At 0400 hours last Monday Russian ground, air and sea forces invaded the US territory of Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait and have occupied the territory claiming they are doing so to protect commercial shipping from quote ‘unprovoked US aggression’. They have demanded that the US enter into negotiations on a new treaty guaranteeing freedom of navigation in Arctic waters. The incursion followed the destruction at sea of a Russian owned merchant vessel and the alleged stranding of a Russian nuclear submarine. Is this summary sufficient?”
“Ah, yes, sure. State department has a theory that this is just a pretext, and the Russian occupation of Saint Lawrence is intended to be permanent, and give them the ability to control all shipping in the Bering Strait. But when I put this to the Russian Foreign Minister this morning, he looked… I don’t know…”
“Confused, relieved, guilty, happy, sad….” Williams offered.
“Smug,” Devlin said after thinking about it. “He looked smug.”
“Thankyou Ambassador, that is very valuable input,” HOLMES said. “I was able to take the audio file of your meeting off the Danish Embassy server but I had no video with which to put your discussion into emotional context.”
Devlin looked at Williams, “The Danes recorded us?”
“Of course,” Williams said. “Wouldn’t we have?”
“I guess,” she said. “But you hacked…”
“Their server, yeah. We already had a backdoor into most of the missions in Moscow. Those we didn’t, we do now. Except for the Chinese. Those Unit 61398 guys are good. What do you want to ask, Ambassador?”
“You worked out it was a Finnish submarine firing one of our own missiles that sank that Russian robot ship,” she said to Williams. “You warned in a briefing note to NSA of a scenario in which Russia would use that attack as a pretext for a political or military action of some sort in the near future and you were right.”
“That was HOLMES,” Williams said. “Scenarios are his thing. He runs them night and day. He has access to every single data point collected by the NSA, CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, Border Force, DIA, Aerospace Command… you name it… going back twenty years. Once he lands on a scenario he tests it against the data, and then refines it as new data comes in.”
“I love new data,” HOLMES said.
Devlin raised her eyebrows.
“I didn’t program that,” Williams said, defensively. “He’s decided that himself. He means ‘like’, he likes new data. I give him broad areas of investigation. Then he builds scenarios and he’s programmed to seek data out, use every new datum point to refine the probabilities in his scenarios. Once they reach a threshold of 30 percent probability, I write them up.”
“I don’t like new data,” the voice from the laptop said, sounding piqued. “I love it.”
“Still working on that,” Williams said to Devlin. “You want him to share the scenarios he’s building on the Russian invasion of Saint Lawrence?”
“Yes,” Devlin said. “That’s exactly…”
“OK, HOLMES? What’s the highest probability scenario you are working on the Russian invasion of Saint Lawrence.”
“I currently have a scenario with 83% probability Carl,” the voice said.
“Describe that scenario, parse, brief summaries until further notice please.”
“Yes Carl. The Russian government plans a nuclear attack on the United States of America which will result in assured mutual destruction, massive radiation fallout, climate change and potential human extinction,” the voice said calmly.
Devlin felt the hairs rise on her neck, but Williams just sighed.
“OK, let’s just assume for now that isn’t their plan - what is the second highest rated probability?”
“The Russian government is trying to create international sympathy for its next move, which is likely to be an invasion of the United States mainland.”
“Supporting evidence?” Williams asked, ignoring the shocked look on Devlin’s face.
“In the two weeks prior to the invasion of Saint Lawrence Island, Russian military command ordered the following elements of the Eastern Military District to high readiness: the 29th Army, the 5th Red Banner Army and the 36th Army, totaling 120,00 troops. Ordered to active combat duty was the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command and the 14th Spetsnaz Brigade which was the unit which conducted the initial ground operation on Saint Lawrence. Further Special Forces ordered to active combat duty but not yet deployed include the 24th Spetsnaz Brigade, the 11th and 83rd Airborne Brigades. Do you want me to continue?”
“Yes.”
“In the Russian Central Command, the following units were also activated. The Yekaternina Communications Brigade, 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade, 31st Guards Airborne Brigade and the 14th Air and Air Defense Forces Army.”
“How do these ‘activations’ support your hypothesis of a ground invasion of mainland America?” Devlin asked.
“In the last two years the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command has been built up significantly and almost exclusively with squadrons and pilots returning from the Middle East and it now comprises the most combat hardened air force unit in Russia. It is a composite force comprising fighters, ground attack, airborne refueling, command and control, electronic warfare, transport and close air support rotary winged aircraft. It would be ideally suited to the task of achieving air supremacy over a battle front, while the air army of Central Command filled in for its continental duties. Continue?”
“Yes.”
“The ground units ordered to active combat duty in the Eastern Military District are almost exclusively rapid deployment units: Spetsnaz and airborne troops. These are the forces that would be used in the initial phase of an invasion to quickly eliminate threats and secure high value targets…”
“Stop,” Williams said. He had a pencil twirling between his fingers and tapped it on his teeth. “HOLMES have you seen any evidence of major ground forces of battalion strength or greater being brought to readiness?”
“No Carl.”
“But that would be necessary if Russia intended a full scale invasion of the US mainland?”
“Yes Carl. In 2019 the US Army War College in Carlisle Pennsylvania wargamed a major conventional war in Europe between Russian and NATO forces. Russia initially made significant gains in Eastern Europe before the intervention of US forces on the Western Front. ‘Russian’ commanders then decided to try to alleviate the US pressure by attacking the USA through Alaska in order to threaten the major population centers of the US northwest. The US invasion required the initial commitment of 80-100,000 Eastern District ground troops and if successful would have required up to 620,000 troops.”
“It wasn’t successful,” Williams guessed.
“No. However Russian airborne forces nullified and captured the key US military bases at Elmendorf-Richardson, Anchorage, and Eielson, Fairbanks, and used them to land ground forces via an air and sea bridge. From there, they attacked through Canada, reaching Vancouver, where they paused to consolidate before attacking Seattle. Two US carrier task forces were deployed and together with attack submarines began interdiction of Russian sea and air supply lines across the Bering Sea and Alaskan airspace. A Russian attempt to land elements of the 35th Army in Anchorage by sea through the Aleutian
Islands was intercepted by the US Pacific Fleet. US ground forces attacked Russian forces in Vancouver from the south and then Canadian and US ground forces attacked their eastern flank through the Canadian Yukon Territory, recapturing Fairbanks and Anchorage and causing the Russian attack to collapse. The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Russian Armed Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453. Russian Army formations, units, and HQ elements lost 13,833, FSB subunits lost 572, MVD formations lost 28, and other ministries and departments lost 20 men. US and Canadian losses were about half of these numbers.”
“An invasion makes no sense,” Devlin said. “They couldn’t even hold Alaska, let alone invade the USA with a few brigades of special forces troops, no matter how powerful their air force.”
“I concur Ambassador. This scenario does not consider that Russia intends a full scale invasion of the USA,” HOLMES said.
“What then?”
“In this scenario, the forces assembled are too numerous for Saint Lawrence Island to be the main objective. However they may be sufficient to take and hold Western Alaska.”
“Western Alaska?” Devlin asked, clearly sceptical.
“Nome and environs,” HOLMES explained. “It is not well known that there are no significant roads or railways between western Alaska and the rest of the State. If an enemy occupied Nome, there woud be no easy way to counter attack over land using heavy armour or ground forces.”
“Thanks HOLMES, let us think about this,” Williams said. “Stand by.”
Devlin reached for her coffee cup, “No wonder that #%&*$# Kelnikov looked so smug when I accused him of designs on the polar sea lanes. If your silicon friend is right, I couldn’t have been further from the mark.” She sipped. “But, Alaska?”
“I know, right? They have a billion acres of unoccupied land in Siberia they could use if they were looking for icy wasteland real estate, so it isn’t living space they’re after. HOLMES, list the main natural resources of Alaska.”
“Alaska has commercially viable deposits of oil, gold, copper, silver, mercury, Gold, tin, coal, iron ore, borax, chromite, antimony, tungsten, nickel, molybdenum, sand, gravel, and limestone,” the British detective voice intoned.
“Does Russia have significant shortages of any of these resources?” Williams asked.
“No Carl. Russia is either an exporter or is self-sufficient in all of these resources.”
Williams dropped his pencil on his desk, “Nah. This scenario doesn’t make sense HOLMES. Russia needs a reason to want to mount a ground invasion of Alaska. You’ve got all the other pieces, but you’re missing motive my man.”
“Thankyou Carl. I will take your input into consideration in my analysis,” HOLMES said. Devlin couldn’t help smile, despite how she felt. The voice of the great detective sounded distinctly miffed.
“Continue speculative analysis with full focus on the implications of the Russian Saint Lawrence operation please, disregard all other tasking,” Williams said. “I want a motive HOLMES.”
“Yes Carl.”
Williams reached out and pulled the lid of his laptop down.
“He’s annoyed,” Carl said. “That’s also programmed. It forces him to revisit all of his analyses and broaden his search for data to support high probability scenarios.”
Devlin stood. She had called in a report of her conversation with Kelnikov but still had to write it up, and include some of what Williams and his silicon sidekick had shared with her. She sat down again.
“How reliable is this AI of yours?” she asked.
“Only as reliable as the intel he can access,” Williams said. “But don’t worry, he’s not the only one working this on our side. NSA has three systems like HOLMES. All of them are learning systems and they share their analyses and test hypotheses with each other. When they agree on something, it’s usually rock solid.”
“They talk to each other?” Devlin asked, sounding dubious.
“In code, yeah. At quantum speeds. They’re like brothers, argue a lot,” Williams said.
“Brothers.”
“Yeah. And HOLMES is the big brother,” Williams said proudly. “He was the first, and he’s learned more. I’ve got him doing stuff the other two systems are years away from being able to mimic.”
Devlin shook her head, “Look, can you send me a report on the top three most likely scenarios you are working on and the intel you have backing them? I am going to send a report to State saying Kelnikov’s reaction makes me think their theory about controlling polar sea lanes is bogus, but I need to be able to put an alternative or two forward.”
“Like invading Alaska for no reason we can see?” Williams asked, and Devlin realized as he spoke that it sounded a long way from plausible.
“Like that,” Devlin said. “Thankyou Carl.” She stood to leave, then hesitated. The man intrigued her, the whole setup with the NSA AI system did too. “Can I ask you something.”
“You’re cleared for it ma’am,” his whiskery Father Christmas face smiled at her.
“Not this. If all you need is broadband and a laptop, you could probably work from anywhere in the world, but your last posting was China and now you’re here in Russia. Why?”
He looked around him at the bare walls and sparse furniture and shrugged, “I like exotic locales?”
*
*