The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

  “No, I guess I haven’t. I think Jon may be in one of his phases, actually, where he waits a week or two before returning my calls.”

  “Wonder why.”

  Chris sighed. Beyond politics, it was a complicated relationship and he didn’t feel like going into it now. Jon and Chris had the same father but different mothers, and Jon had always been fiercely private toward his older brother; there were rooms of his personality he had never let Chris see, and probably never would. “I sort of understand it,” he said. “When I worked for the Agency, I’d do the same thing sometimes. I’d avoid his calls because I knew he was going to ask about my work. Now he probably thinks I want information from him.”

  “You each want something the other has,” she said.

  “I guess.”

  “That’s classic sibling rivalry,” Anna said. “Going back to Genesis.”

  “Is it? Okay. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much I can do to change it.” They dropped into a brief silence. Anna had a knack for drawing Chris out on subjects he wouldn’t discuss with anyone else. Especially this one. Sometimes he felt an anxious pang when he thought of his quirky brother. Knowing that what was in Jon was also in him: a restless quality looking for a place to land. Sometimes it felt healthy to talk about it; sometimes not.

  “I remember when Jon first decided he was going to be a journalist,” he said, recalling a conversation he hadn’t thought about in months. “Our father said, ‘If you’re going to pursue this, then you have to do it right. Tell stories that mean something, that can help your country. Write a story someday that’ll change the world.’”

  “That’s setting the bar a little high,” Anna said.

  “Yeah. It’s not the standard advice they give out in journalism school,” he said. “It ignores the realities of having to get up each day and go to work, interact with people, and earn a living. His mother always understood the more practical side of life better than our father.”

  In truth, their parents had instilled in them both a sense of curiosity. But they were curious in different ways. Chris, who was four years older, looked at the world and tried to figure it out on his own. His brother asked questions, which had made journalism the natural career choice. Asking questions had also become Jon’s style of social interaction. One of Chris’s football coaches used to call him “the man with the questions.”

  “Would you mind if I called him?” Anna asked.

  “Jon?”

  “I wanted to ask about his column. Maybe we could even help each other,” she said.

  “Sure, if you’d like.” Chris felt a moment’s resentment, and waited for it to pass. It was fine. Right now, Jon was one of hundreds of journalists in D.C. chasing the same story. Maybe Anna could help him find what other reporters were missing; maybe she could put the story in a context he hadn’t considered.

  “Sure,” he said again. “But let me try him first.”

  SEVEN

  Thursday evening, August 12. Suburban Maryland.

  Jon Niles eased up on the gas pedal, reminding himself that he wasn’t really going anywhere tonight. He was killing time, driving his old Mustang down an unlit two-lane rural road in a part of the county that hadn’t changed much since he was a kid. He’d told his girlfriend Carole Katz that he’d be working late again, which was technically true. Some of his work involved thinking and some involved waiting. He was doing both tonight.

  For as long as he’d been a reporter, Jon liked to go out driving after work, to take stock and give the day some perspective, occasionally blasting out of his thoughts with music—the Stones from the late sixties, or Springsteen from the late seventies. Or something newer, like Lana Del Rey. When he was younger, he’d often have a tall can of Budweiser between his legs. These days, he waited until he got home.

  But there was a more specific reason he was on the road tonight: Jon was hoping to hear from the anonymous caller he had come to think of as his “9:15” source. 9:15 was a woman who seemed to read his blog and Twitter feed faithfully, and who’d twice called to share insider information about US military strategy. Both times she’d called within a minute of 9:15. Jon had no idea who she was. Over the years, he had cultivated sources this way: he took blind phone calls, anyone who rang his number. Occasionally, it paid off.

  9:15 had put him on to a potentially big story: what she claimed were high-level discussions within the US intel community about a “preemptive strike” on Russia. Some of what she told him checked out, but there were still big holes in the story, and allegations that had been met with denials or awkward silence by his sources in intelligence and national security. He’d twice alluded to it in his blog, thinking someone might come forward. But no one had; not yet. Jon hoped to find more tonight, as he’d hoped each night since 9:15 first called. But that would be up to her, not him.

  His eyes went to the dash clock: 9:07. One minute since he’d last looked. Jon still had faith in his chosen profession, even if there were lots of reasons he shouldn’t. People didn’t read newspapers much anymore, and they didn’t have a lot of patience for lengthy, in-depth reporting. They were “getting their news,” as pundits liked to say, from social media now; except it wasn’t really news they were “getting.” The information they absorbed was increasingly filtered and customized, telling them what they already knew, confirming views they already held. When the media uncovered ethical wrongdoing these days, the wrongdoers could dismiss the reporting as “biased” and were sometimes given a pass. On cable “news,” the prosaic tradition of objective reporting had been replaced with the highly competitive game of peddling opinions to create consensus. When it was done well, viewers became convinced that they cared about things that didn’t really interest them at all. All of which was creating what Jon thought of as a bigotry of indifference toward those things that really mattered.

  And yet . . . he maintained an abiding faith in his profession, partly because journalism was the only job he was any good at. When he was focused, Jon had sometimes been able to break stories that no one else in Washington was reporting. There was no secret to it, other than persistence and patience, and the fact that he tended not to run out of questions. But Jon sometimes had trouble with the focus part—going back to J-School, when he used to load up on courses that had nothing to do with his major just because they interested him. He’d been an “experience junkie” for years, traveling for the sake of traveling and entering into several ill-advised romantic relationships. Only in recent months did he realize that he was becoming too old for that; collecting experiences was starting to seem like a substitute for living a life. It was something he was going to have to deal with, an appointment he’d have to make with himself.

  9:09. The road turned slowly toward familiar reference points: the ominous oak that could’ve been scenery from a horror flick, the sagging barn that had stood since before he was born, before redevelopment churned through the D.C. suburbs, linking everything to the city. There were still rural pockets like this, two-lanes that felt like secret roadways into the past.

  9:10.

  The road straightened and Jon reflexively hit the music button and pressed the accelerator: Lights out tonight, trouble in the heartland, Got a head-on collision, smashin’ in my guts, man, I’m caught in a crossfire, that I don’t understand . . .

  He let up on the gas where the road turned. How did we become such a nostalgic country, anyway? he wondered, although he already knew the answer: failure. It was one of Jon’s theories; everything had turned to crap for America in the mid-seventies: the presidency, the economy, Vietnam, the dream of an expanding middle class. The gasoline supply. A stunning series of failures had engulfed the country, leaving people distrustful of government and skeptical of the post–World War II notion of the US as a beacon for the free world. Then, as if to make up for it, when the decade ended we hired a president who told feel-good stories and made people nostalgic for an earlier version of itself, a president whose style alone be
came a form of leadership. And now the country was nostalgic for him.

  Jon pressed twice on his brakes. Distantly, in the rearview mirror, he saw headlights; ahead, as the road turned, the red glow of taillights. For the past week—since he’d been writing about Russia—his life had felt a little like that.

  He slowed again and jammed the brakes: his cell phone was ringing on the passenger seat. “Damn!” he said, punching off the music and skidding to a stop on the shoulder. It was 9:16.

  “Hello?”

  “Jon?”

  “Yes. Go ahead.”

  “I don’t have more than a minute,” the woman said. “Can you talk?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You didn’t print what I gave you. You left out most of the details. It was good information.” Perfectly enunciated words, syrupy voice, heavy breathing during the pauses; Jon pictured his caller, for some reason, as dark and statuesque, late forties or early fifties.

  “I know. Thing is, I’m having trouble confirming some of it, okay?” He was out of the car, walking into the field as if the outdoors might add some clarity to her words. The car behind slowed, double-flashing its lights at him as it passed. “Could we go over a couple of things you said? Real quickly?” When she didn’t respond, he went on: “You said at the last meeting of this group, there was talk of a preemptive strike, right? That was the word—”

  “Which would leave no US fingerprints.”

  “Which—wait, what?”

  “That’s a direct quote,” she said. “From someone in the room. Maybe that’s your story.” There was a light, spooky insistence in her voice, different from the other times.

  “A preemptive strike on Russia. Which would leave no US fingerprints.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Go on,” he said, feeling a rush of adrenaline. “Tell me what that means. And which room are we talking about? Can you give me the names—?”

  “And here’s something else,” she said. “I understand there was also a meeting about this in Kiev. Last month, okay? And that someone from CIA was there, in the room.”

  “A meeting about this preemptive strike on Russia, you mean. In Ukraine?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Some of this is starting to leak on military websites, by the way,” she added. “I’m told the Post has some of it now, too.”

  “Okay,” Jon said, “but don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Play news organizations off of one another. Can you give me a name? Or a time frame? I want to do this, but I need specific details to confirm—”

  “I’m sure you can find more from your sources,” she said. “Gregory Dial may have been there, from CIA. And one of the generals. I’d guess there aren’t a lot of people in that circle, are there?”

  “‘Circle’ meaning—?”

  “Meaning it’s a small group. As I told you. Probably just five.” She paused, breathing heavily. “Most people aren’t paying attention, anyway. Eighty-five percent of national security meetings are on the Middle East. People don’t know what’s really happening with Russia. What the US is planning. Someone needs to report that. Quickly.”

  “Okay,” Jon said, concentrating for a moment on breathing normally. What the US is planning. “That’s where—Tell me about this ‘no US fingerprints’ thing. Where does that—?”

  “And I asked you not to record these calls, didn’t I?”

  Jon said nothing. Which was probably a mistake. Because a moment later, she said “Buh-bye” and was gone.

  He walked across the field to his car, his shoes sticking lightly to the earth. Jon had recorded her this time, actually, and was thinking about who he might go to now for a voice ID. He stopped and listened to the silence, turning in the stillness. He used to come out to these same summer fields with his ex-girlfriend Liz Foster, four or five years ago, parking among the cornfields like they were high schoolers, dousing the lights to make out.

  Jon pushed the play button on his recorder app and waited. Nothing. He checked the list of phone recordings. Nada. It wasn’t there. “No! Damn it! Shit!” he shouted.

  He tried again, several times, but nothing had recorded. The app hadn’t worked. He sat on the trunk of his car, fuming, breathing the warm air and craving a beer. Letting his heart rate return to normal as he began to recreate the conversation in his head. Someone needs to report that. Quickly. There was an urgency in her voice this time that hadn’t been there before. What was that about?

  Jon finally called Roger Yorke, his editor at the Weekly American. Yorke had been Jon’s mentor since he first went to work at the magazine eight years ago. He lived on a leafy suburban street in Chevy Chase, where he was probably in his second-story study right now, reading history, sipping an iced bourbon. Yorke was a tall, introspective man with a mop of gray-white hair, a Brit who’d lived in the States for the past twenty-odd years editing the left-leaning Weekly American. Some journalists called him “the philosopher,” always respectfully, because of his deliberative manner and his tendency to put the news of the day into historical context. In his earlier career, Roger had been a foreign reporter, writing from war zones and on intelligence issues. He was still a reporter at heart, Jon thought, stuck in an editor’s job, with good sources in the intel community and at the Pentagon.

  “So obviously she has an agenda,” he said, after Jon reconstructed the conversation. “I wonder, in fact, if her agenda may be the real story here. Rather than what she told you.”

  “Possibly.” Jon batted gnats from the air. It was a typical Roger Yorke thought puzzle. But Jon was more interested in what she’d said about Kiev, and about “no US fingerprints.”

  “So, then, to recap,” Roger said, “we know that this committee— was it a strategic advisory committee, she called it?”

  “Right, Russia advisory group,” Jon said. “Five members, representing the Pentagon, NSC, State Department, and the IC.”

  “We know that they met and discussed some sort of covert action. And the only name she’s given you is Gregory Dial at CIA—who categorically won’t talk with us.”

  “Or with anyone in the media.”

  “And she mentioned one of the generals again, whom she won’t— or can’t—name. But you think it might be General Rickenbach.” Roger’s mostly Americanized accent became British again when he pronounced “can’t” as “cawnt.”

  “That’s who it sounds like.”

  “And now she’s saying there was also a meeting last month in Kiev. Same subject: covert action on Russia. And that we had a CIA man there—was that Greg Dial again, or did she say?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  Jon waited, as Roger thought it out. “It sounds as if she doesn’t really know the whole thing, then, doesn’t it? Like she’s overhearing it in dribs and drabs.” Jon listened to the discreet sound of ice clinking as Roger swallowed a sip of bourbon. “Anyway, we’re not going to solve this tonight, are we? Let me make a call,” he said, which was one of Roger’s standard exit lines. “Go home. We’ll revisit this tomorrow.”

  “All right, I will.” Jon took a long breath of the night air and returned to his car. He sat for a while and checked messages, noticing a missed call and text from Christopher. Jon’s older brother had been calling recently, sometimes leaving a message that he “just wanted to see how you’re doing.” The sort of thing Jon used to do, years ago. Strange.

  Instead of heading home, he decided to drive out to see Carole Katz, his girlfriend, at her modest wood frame house among the corn-fields. Carole was up past midnight most days, and urged Jon to come by anytime. Their relationship had become increasingly casual, which bothered him a little. He stopped on the way at the Gas ’N Go for a six-pack of Budweiser. The familiar white-haired clerk looked up and smiled when he came in, as if she’d been expecting him.

  On his way to Carole’s, though, Jon changed his mind. He was too wrapped up in this story now to sit under the stars with Carole and listen to music, which was usually
what they did at night. He needed to get home and write out everything he could remember from his conversation with 9:15.

  Jon lay awake until well past 2:00 a.m., thinking about the phone call. Hearing the insistence in her voice: Someone needs to report that. Quickly. He thought of his father’s admonition to tell a story “that can help your country,” whatever that meant, and the way he used to pit Jon against his brother, as if trying to force a bond between them that never really formed. Jon attributed some of that to Chris’s unwillingness to accept another woman in the house after his mother’s death from cancer. He thought of his own mother, a quiet, gentle woman who’d returned to her native Switzerland after their father died. “Do something great today,” she used to tell him, although her definition of “great” was different from most people’s, certainly Christopher’s. What she really meant was, “Do something unexpected, selfless, generous.”

  Maybe that’s your story, 9:15 said. Jon replayed the conversation over and over, sensing that somewhere in their brief exchange she had given him an important clue—not only about Russia but about who she was. Maybe Roger was right. Maybe that was the main thing: to figure out 9:15’s motivation. Maybe everything else flowed from there.

  EIGHT

  Thursday, August 12. Eastern Ukraine.

  As distant headlights swung through the mist, Ivan Delkoff stood on the narrow gravel road, a Kalashnikov AK-103 strapped to his shoulder, a Makarov handgun and an NR-40 combat knife at his waist. It was twenty minutes past two, meaning the Ukrainians were arriving early.

  The air was cool, thick with moisture. Delkoff had spent most of the past two and a half hours sitting on a wooden folding chair on the dirt road, chain-smoking Sobranies, occasionally eating a stick of beef jerky. Thinking about Zelenko and the little Makarov pistol he’d found hidden in his travel bag.

  Delkoff had suffered from insomnia most of his life. It had grown worse since he’d quit drinking fourteen months ago. When he fell asleep too early, he often woke at night from battlefield dreams: dead soldiers coming to life in the farmlands, or his son searching for him in pitch-dark fields among the casualties. So Delkoff had developed a habit of staying awake as long as he could. There were times when he found solace in the deep silence of early morning, as if he’d wandered into some undiscovered country. But other times the stillness felt suffocating, reminding him of what he had lost and what he had squandered.