Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

L ANGLEY , V IRGINIA

Maggie wasn't used to Conroy popping his head into her office. Normally he summoned her to his. But with the situation in Belarus as it was, everyone at the CIA was on edge. Moving around, checking on other departments, conversing with "the troops," were all ways Conroy dealt with the stress.

"May I come in?" he asked.

"Of course," she replied. Putting the cap back on the highlighter she'd been using, she returned it to the mug that held the rest of her pens. It had been a gift, years ago, from her husband. Upon it was printed an inside joke, If you can't say anything nice, say it in Russian.

It was just one of the many unique items in her office, which her colleagues had nicknamed "The Overlook" after the hotel in the Jack Nicholson movie The Shining.

The sobriquet was not so much in reference to the hotel itself, but rather the hedge maze outside. Though the walls were lined with large, interactive touchscreen display monitors, Maggie was old-school.

She preferred blackboards, whiteboards, and bulletin boards—none of which were subject to crashing.

As such, her office was crammed with them. Some were on easels. Many were on wheeled stands. Others still were propped up on the furniture. When she was in full-blown research-and-analysis mode, like she was now, her workspace could be downright unnavigable.

Clearing a chair for her boss, she invited him to sit, asking, "What's up?"

"After our meeting at the White House, the national security advisor shared your suggestions with the rest of the National Security Council. The secretary of defense wants to take things a step further and President Porter would like to know your thoughts as to how the Russians might react."

"Okay," Maggie replied, leaning back in her chair. "I'm all ears."

"Under its ‘nuclear sharing' program, the United States stores a limited number of lower-yield, tactical nuclear weapons in five NATO countries—Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The SecDef thinks we should add another country to that list."

"Which one?"

"Poland."

The consummate poker player, Maggie didn't allow anything about her body language to belie her reaction. What the secretary was suggesting was highly provocative.

"I see where he's going with this," she replied. "Russia placed nukes on Ukraine's doorstep via Belarus, so why don't we place nukes on Belarus's doorstep via Poland."

"Precisely. As these are aircraft-dropped B61 gravity bombs, there's less flight time from Poland to Russian targets, no inflight-refueling requirements, which could make fighters vulnerable to long-range Russian air-defense systems, and it would demonstrate NATO's commitment to its eastern flank."

"My initial thoughts are that it would definitively piss the Russians off. Big-time. We're talking along the lines of how we felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Kremlin would absolutely see it as escalatory. They would be immune to the argument that the move is commensurate with what they've done in Belarus. It would also play right into their propaganda that NATO is at war with Russia and readying to invade. But on top of all that, Poland is just a bad choice."

Conroy looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"For starters, they don't have any place to properly store nuclear weapons. The five other NATO members we work with have WS3 underground storage vaults, which themselves are built within hardened aircraft shelters."

"We can't spend the time and the money building those?"

"Sure," Maggie replied. "Let's say we do and, once they're complete, we shuffle some of our existing arsenal around and place a few tactical nukes in Poland. The minute we do, they'd become targets for preemptive attacks by the Russians, who have Iskander-M ballistic missiles based just north in Kaliningrad. They can hit almost any location in Poland within minutes and with little to no warning."

"Then we up our Patriot missile batteries wherever the nukes get housed," he replied.

Maggie shook her head. "There are only two major Polish air bases that fly F-16s, which are what we'd be looking at for this kind of mission. Both of those bases are also within range of Kaliningrad's S400 antiaircraft missile systems, as well as their radar. Not only would the Russians know the Poles were coming, but they'd start shooting at them.

"By contrast, the base we use in Büchel, Germany, has a longer warning time of attack and NATO planes can take off outside the range of Russian air defenses. I could keep going, but the final hurdle, as I see it, is something called the three no's."

"What's that?"

"In 1997, a document called the ‘Founding Act' established relations between NATO and Russia. In it, NATO members asserted that they had no intention, no plan, and no reason to ever deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new NATO members. The Russians may lie, cheat, and obfuscate when it comes to their side of international agreements, but what does that make us if we do the same? As far as I'm concerned, incorporating Poland into the nuclear-sharing program doesn't make any sense. Especially not in the short term."

"Then what would?"

Maggie thought about the question for a moment before getting up from her desk and walking over to a large board with a map affixed to it that stretched from side to side. Tapping her finger on it, she asked, "What if we went back to a NATO member we've worked with before? Someone with all the infrastructure already in place who knows each and every one of our protocols."

"The Brits."

She nodded. "It made sense, when we were reducing our nuclear footprint almost two decades ago, to remove them from the sharing list. They've got their own nukes and, while they're all submarine-launched, they didn't necessarily need ours. But a lot has changed since then. Adding the air component back in ups their deterrence profile."

"What's more," Conroy added, "it should be relatively drama-free getting them back on the list. They were already previously approved. A unanimous membership vote for Poland might take a little longer, especially with what pro-Russian pricks the Hungarians have been."

"Don't get me started on them," Maggie lamented. "Listen, smarter people than me will make the call on how feasible Poland is. At best, though, it'll be a medium-term solution. Will it anger the Russians? Like I said, it absolutely will, but they're going to raise all the same issues that I did. It might not pass the smell test for them. They may think we're bluffing."

"How do you think they'll react to us putting nukes back in the UK?"

"No matter what we do, the Kremlin isn't going to be happy. If we send nuclear weapons back to RAF Lakenheath, Moscow will publicly accuse us of escalation and fomenting war. It's what they do. But privately, they'll see it as a sound strategic move. We'll be signaling that we're fully prepared to climb the escalation ladder. As they move up a rung, so will we."

"But will it stop them?" Conroy asked.

He waited for her answer, which she was reluctant to give.

"Maggie?"

"You want to know what I really think?"

The man nodded.

"You're not going to like it."

"Out with it."

"Okay," she replied. "But first, please close the door. I don't want this going department-wide."