Red Deception

by Gary Grossman

  87

  Reilly was called in to debrief with Bob Heath at the CIA. He also gave EJ Shaw at Kensington Royal headquarters an abridged version of the events in Stockholm. It made Reilly uncomfortable not to be able to explain everything, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Issues of national security.

  He had three other appointments on his calendar—memorial services. The first in Washington, D.C. for FBI Agent Moore. Then Newtown, Pennsylvania for Savannah Flanders. Finally, Cambridge, England where he stood alone in the back of the church and heard speeches from Barclay colleagues who praised Marnie Babbitt as a loyal employee. They didn’t know otherwise. Reilly slipped out after the last Amen without talking to anyone.

  The next day, Reilly landed at Dulles. It was a particularly hot afternoon. Traffic was still being routed to the district across the Potomac through Arlington, onto the Theodore Roosevelt, the Key and the 11th Street Bridges. Repairs would continue on the 14th Street Bridge through the end of the year. This is where it had all begun for him less than three weeks earlier. A lot had changed for Reilly in that time. A lot had changed in the world.

  He arrived late for his appointment at the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department at 2201 C Street, NW, but no apologies were necessary. Everyone was late these days in D.C. and other cities hit by the terrorists.

  “Daniel, thank you for coming,” Secretary of State Elizabeth Matthews said. She rose from her austere oak desk, which once belonged to President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. “You’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry.”

  Reilly expressed his appreciation and accepted her invitation to take the leather chair facing her; a signal that this was going to be a formal discussion.

  “Coffee?” She gestured to a silver pot on a mahogany shelf to her right.

  “Rather we just get to business, Elizabeth. What’s on your mind?”

  “Daniel, you were instrumental in confirming the North Korea connection in Venezuela. For that, and so much more, thank you. I wish I could make that public. I can’t.”

  “Of course.”

  “We’re not out of it yet. We have a great deal to sort out.” She paused and lowered her voice. “I’ll get right to the point. I called you in for a reason.”

  “Elizabeth, I’m retired from government work. Remember?”

  “Right,” she said with a hint of irony. “Retired.”

  Reilly didn’t respond.

  “I’ll be blunt. Battaglio gave away the store in Stockholm. He caved. In Russian terms, he was a classic useful idiot. It was masterful on Gorshkov’s part—I believe everything from the domestic attacks right to President Crowe’s—” she hesitated, “—assassination attempt. Even the missiles in Venezuela: they wanted us to see them. You just happened to be the first.”

  “You shouldn’t be telling me this, Elizabeth.”

  She ignored him. “A deception and Battaglio played right into him.”

  Reilly was uncomfortable. He sought to change the topic.

  “Will Crowe make it?”

  “According to his doctors, yes,” she replied, leaving more unsaid than said. Reilly restated his question.

  “Will he return to the White House?”

  “We don’t know.”

  If she had more, Reilly believed she’d tell him. He switched to another open topic.

  “Have you found out who’s responsible for leaking my State Department report?”

  “Yes.”

  “A name?”

  “Strictly off the record?”

  “Who?”

  “I mean never,” she added. “Ever. No cocktail conversation. No memoirs.”

  “Who, Elizabeth?”

  “No name. Not impossible to discover, but don’t.”

  “Go on,” Reilly said neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  “The FBI targeted everyone who might have had access to the report and identified a significant person of interest, let’s call her Subject One, based on sudden out-of-town trips beginning last Christmas and the numerous times during that same period she had checked out of work extremely late and alone. Enough red flags to set up a sting. A week ago, the subject was seen leaving the Chairman’s office with confidential files, planted by the bureau. They were labeled top secret. They were totally manufactured. The FBI exercised a warrant and found a hidden safe in her Bethesda home and walked away with photographs of a very intense extramarital relationship she’d been having. And as you predicted, we ultimately nailed her through her office copy machine. The copy signature matched the Post’s copy. The leak, shall we say, has been plugged, and word circulating among her coworkers is that she’s on personal leave.”

  “Does Battaglio know?”

  “Knows, but doesn’t grasp the significance. Said we do the same thing all time and therefore we shouldn’t be surprised. He wrote it off as normal meddling. But it was much more than that.”

  “Caught in a classic honey pot operation. Sexpionage.”

  “You could call it that.”

  “What about the agent? Have you identified him?”

  “Not a him. A her. A her, Daniel. In fact, in a direct way, the FBI was able to make the connection thanks to you.”

  “Kushkin,” Reilly said resolutely.

  “Correct. Colonel Martina Kushkin. AKA Maria Pudovkin, Nikki Romanovich, Rhonda Nealy. Just a few of her aliases. On this mission, she was Sally Ann Chalmers, a Miami divorcee. Attractive, fun, and sexy. She set her sights on her mark. It took time and opportunity. Nothing rushed. First, a friendly encounter during a family ski trip to Vail. Innocent conversations on the slopes, a seemingly chance meeting over a latte, and since they hit it off, flirtations, and an invitation for dinner in Washington if Chalmers ever made it there. Which of course, she did. We’ve got CCTV footage of them together at hotels, streets, stores.”

  Though the locations were different, Reilly thought, it was precisely how Marnie Babbitt had zeroed in on him. Probably for corporate secrets. First in Tehran, then in Moscow, and on and on. He was grateful he never provided her with any confidential information or even talked about his State Department report. Nonetheless, she likely suspected he had more going on and had advised Kushkin.

  “Subject One confessed to everything. It was all new and exciting for our bored middle-aged Capitol Hill lawyer, a textbook seduction. Pure Cold War tactics still very much in the Russian spycraft handbook. And once seduced, Kushkin had a highly placed asset. Compromised by letters, texts, photos and videos. You get the picture.”

  “I do,” Reilly replied.

  “We suspect she’s not the only one recruited by Kushkin. We’ve got our work cut out for ourselves. She handed over intelligence and strategy. Your file, Dan. And now she has deaths on her conscience,” Matthews said somberly. “She’ll be thinking about that in protective custody for the rest of her life. 18 U.S Code section 2381 is quite specific.”

  Reilly was familiar with the penalty for treason.

  “Of course, we’ll bury her with some other charge. Give her a new life and a pretty ankle bracelet she’ll never take off. She’s already said goodbye to her family.”

  Reilly nodded.

  “Speaking of pictures, I have some you will be interested in seeing,” Matthews said.

  She handed Reilly a file containing a series of long-lens photographs. His eyes immediately went to the most identifying elements.

  “What do you see?”

  “Surveillance of a—” he paused and evaluated the clues. “—Russian port?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “And what looks like a Korean ferry docking.”

  “That would be North Korean. Keep going.”

  Reilly examined more photos. The ship mooring. The gang plank being lowered, and then tighter shots of—

  “Just one person disembarking?” he asked. “Only one?”

  “One,” Matthews affirmed. “Which makes him a person of interest”

  Reilly no
ted the date on the photo. “It’s a few years old.”

  “Yes, taken by one of ours overlooking a dock in Vladivostok.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  At that moment Reilly’s cell rang.

  “Sorry.” He pulled his phone from his suit jacket pocket and looked at the incoming number. Edward Jefferson Shaw calling from Chicago. He hadn’t checked in with his boss all day.

  “Need to take that?”

  Reilly shook his head and, conflicted, sent his boss to voicemail.

  “I’ll get back to it. Go on.”

  “At this moment, we’re convinced he’s the point man on the domestic attacks and the operative behind the remote bombing that killed Moore and his team. His description matches eyewitness accounts at various locales near the targets. Hotels included, Daniel. The FBI is on it.”

  “Any leads?”

  “None so far, but he’s not as invisible as he once was. That’s all I can share with you now.”

  “Now? That seems tentative. What do you really want from me, Elizabeth?” Reilly asked directly.

  88

  Dan Reilly settled onto a weathered park bench in Edward J. Kelly Park just east of the State Department at 21st and Virginia Avenue. He needed to rest and process what he’d heard. Most of all, Reilly had read anxiety in Elizabeth Matthews’s voice as she explained how ill-prepared Battaglio was for the job. Actually, in retrospect, the greater clue was in her eyes. It was more than anxiety. She showed true worry for the country. Now alone, he contemplated all the variables. From his perspective, none of them had immediate positive outcomes.

  Reilly tried to relax. He took in his surroundings. To his right, a tourist asking a stranger for directions; approaching, a woman pushing a stroller; and in the distance, a couple racing to catch a bus. All normal.

  Reilly took out his iPhone and was about to hit the programmed speed dial button and finally call his boss back, but a familiar large bronze sculpture pulled his eye. It shimmered particularly brightly in the late afternoon sun. He knew the piece; a replica of a classic Greek work, Discobolous of Myron, or as it was called in the park, The Discus Thrower. It depicted a young athlete, perhaps an Olympian, in the act of throwing.

  The figure’s body was curled, his concentration fixed. His muscles swelled with immense energy. His mind was focused on a single purpose: to unwind and hurl the discus with great fury. Except he wouldn’t. The motion had been frozen by the artist’s hand sometime between 460 and 450 B.C. when the original work was sculpted.

  Now Reilly’s thoughts shifted to the identity of the Greek who had posed for sculpture. He looked the part; muscular, fit, and focused. But was he actually an athlete or just a brawny model standing in for one? Then Dan Reilly tensed. He considered his own identity—an international hotel executive who brought experience, professionalism and honor to his job. Yet, at the same time, was he being sculpted by America’s intelligence community to serve their purpose, much like Discobolous of Myron, The Discus Thrower?

  Reilly shivered even though the temperature pushed past 90. He forced himself to dismiss the notion as he put the call through to Edward Jefferson Shaw’s office. Reilly had a pleasant, but short conversation with the Kensington Royal president’s secretary. A minute later she put him through.

  “Are you packed?” Shaw barked. His manner was friendly, but without a hello. Hello was always implied, but often never offered when Shaw wanted to get right to the point.

  “Always,” Reilly replied.

  “Good. Back to England before the end of the month. Then Beijing and Nairobi, or whatever order you want to circle the globe. Oil ministry meetings coming up. You should do a swing around. Make sure everything is okay.

  “Oh, before you fly off,” Shaw said almost as an afterthought, “You and I need to have a serious conversation on Twenty-one.” Twenty-one was Shaw’s floor at the Chicago headquarters. “Off the phone. Just you and me.”

  Reilly had been anticipating this, too. He’d been involved in too much intrigue too publicly to hide from his boss any longer. He owed Shaw an explanation. Just how much detail did he want to give? How much did Shaw want to hear? Reilly ended the call with the promise to himself to have that conversation.

  He looked at the sculpture again, this time considering the Discus Thrower more as himself. Was he also a model simply striking a pose? Or was he the real thing capable of competing at the highest level? These were the questions, once answered, that would determine Dan Reilly’s future.

  89

  THREE DAYS LATER

  The call went out from the White House press secretary at 7 a.m., enough time to assemble the press at 8901 Rockville Pike. President Alexander Crowe would address the nation from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland at noon. Five hours to prepare. The Secret Service took control of the perimeter; by 10 a.m. helicopters circled overhead and drones flew even higher. Rooftop snipers covered angles in all directions.

  Rumors over whether Crowe had died circulated for weeks despite White House denials, actual Instagram photographs, Twitter postings, and YouTube video. Such was the world where conspiracy theories replaced facts and the nation faced an ever-worsening case of truth decay.

  Mainstream media commentators had picked up on the old saw, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.” The phrase has been alternately attributed to Mark Twain and satirist Jonathan Swift. But the truth was, no one really knew any more about the origin of the expression than what Crowe would decide today, including Acting President Ryan Battaglio.

  While Battaglio publicly prayed for Crowe’s return, privately he had already begun maneuvering to reshape the administration. His handling of Ukraine and Latvia demonstrated the extent to which he was eager to set a new course for American foreign policy even through Crowe’s recovery. The fact that Crowe had remained in a coma through the Stockholm negotiations worked to his favor: he didn’t have to consult with the president. And considering most Americans polled proved they didn’t truly understand the issues that faced NATO, it strengthened his resolve to withdraw from many historic commitments so long as Crowe stepped down…or died. Either way, he hoped it would happen soon.

  At precisely noon, President Alexander Crowe was wheeled to the front lobby from the elevator. From there Crowe told the Secret Service and his doctors he would walk across the lobby with his wife on his arm to steady him. They had practiced already. Once in front of the cameras, Crowe would anchor his hands on a bulletproof White House podium, acknowledge everyone with an appreciative nod, and when comfortable wave to the cameras: a front-page photo opportunity, an image that could appear in a box behind TV anchors.

  Cued by the Marine Band playing “Hail to the Chief,” President Crowe stepped forward, confidently approaching the podium. Once in place, he kissed his wife Sasha and stood as straight as he could while acknowledging the thunderous applause and cheers. White House staffers, aides and reporters all focused on a president some thirty pounds lighter than when they’d last seen him. His wife had his favorite blue suit tailored from 44 to a 37. She dressed him in a new white shirt with a 15½-inch collar, a full two inches smaller than before the assassination attempt. Buttoned and with a proper blue tie, it hid Crowe’s loose neck skin.

  After a minute he gestured for everyone to quiet down. It took another minute of applause and three attempts before he could begin. “Well, I’ll make it easier for you all. Am I a sight for sore eyes?”

  The crowd of nearly one hundred roared their approval. Crowe went on to thank his doctors and his family. His wife smiled. She’d stood by his side through his four Congressional runs, eight years in the Senate, his one term as Vice President, and nearly three years as President of the United States. But just prior to heading downstairs, she had whispered in his ear, “You look so handsome. Now go get ’em. Then, let’s go home.”

  And so President Alexander Crowe announced his retirement. Gasps ripple
d through the throng of well-wishers. The Secret Service agents stood expressionless. However, inwardly, the senior member of the detail silently worried over how well his successor would fare as president. There were already ripples of discontent in the White House.

  Secretary of State Elizabeth Matthews watched from her office. The announcement was not a complete surprise. In a phone conversation, Crowe had indicated he would likely step down even though she strongly advised against it. He had told Ryan Battaglio the same thing. But it was truly his wife’s wishes minutes before speaking that cemented Crowe’s decision.

  Battaglio watched the announcement from the Oval Office. When the news became final, Battaglio shouted a resounding, “Yes!” heard down the hall. Then he began drawing up a list of names: those to keep, those to cut, and who he could truly count on as political allies. No drastic changes immediately, he reasoned. The news channels, columnists, and commentators would be all over him. Patience. Measured steps. But in time, he knew the changes to make. High on the to-go list was Matthews. Further down, Pierce Kimball.

  Crowe’s resignation speech at Walter Reed and Battaglio’s White House swearing-in led the news for only five hours. Then another story grabbed the headlines: Russia was on the move.

  “Jesus!” Battaglio shouted to the people he’d called into the Oval Office. “We had a deal.”

  He’d summoned Matthews, Defense Secretary General Ellis Chase, National Security Advisor Pierce Kimball, and CIA Director Gerald Watts. They stood facing him while Battaglio held court from behind his desk.

  “What the hell is that fucker doing?” he demanded. Matthews took the lead.

  “Exactly what he intended from the start. Mr. President, you trusted Gorshkov. He can’t be trusted.” Implied was I told you so.

  Battaglio stammered, “What do we have? In detail!”

  Already knowing that Battaglio was not a detailed person, General Ellis replied in simple terms. “In the last three hours, Russian troops seized Kiev. They now completely hold the city.” He had Pentagon assessments including satellite imagery in a file on his lap. He handed it to the new president. It was marked TOP SECRET with a time stamp.