The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

  This morning was mostly that, so he was pleased when he finally saw headlights winding through the sunflower fields from the north: two long, unmarked diesel trucks; a lowrider transport towing the Buk antiaircraft missile launcher; and a midsized cargo truck, bearing the mobile command center radar unit.

  Delkoff walked down to the farmhouse to wake his men. “Vstavay. Let’s go!” he called, shining a flashlight in their faces, holding the beam for an extra moment on Zelenko’s eyes.

  Delkoff walked back to the road. An hour earlier, primed with suspicion, he’d gone downstairs and taken Zelenko’s travel bag. Digging through it as the men slept, he’d found the pistol stuffed inside a sock with his change of clothes and something else that seemed to be an electronic transmitter. He removed the bullets and returned the gun to his bag. Delkoff gave the soldier credit; he’d searched their packs before setting off and found nothing. There was only one reason Zelenko would have smuggled a gun into this operation. Finding it confirmed what Delkoff had suspected earlier: Zelenko was Turov’s assassin. The bullets were intended for him.

  The ground rumbled now as the trucks came closer, their headlights diffused in the mist. In a war without insignias or uniforms, these two vehicles had passed as a Russian Volkov artillery unit at the checkpoint eighteen kilometers northwest of here. Delkoff himself had arranged the passage, to make sure no one examined their cargo or noticed the men’s Ukrainian accents.

  Delkoff and Pletner walked out to meet them—“the Ukrainians,” he called the other team, although one of the three was actually Estonian—while Zelenko opened the warehouse.

  The five men exchanged cursory greetings in Russian, all of them dressed in military fatigues, none quite the same design, color, or fabric. They’d been through more than a dozen drills together now, but it still felt like an unholy alliance to Delkoff: soldiers from different armies fighting for the same outcome and no one really at peace with it. Friday night, after the operation, they would all go back to being enemies again. That was the idea, anyway.

  Mikhail Kolchak was a missile regiment commander from the Ukrainian army, a compact man almost Ivan’s age, with four grown children, all married and living in Kiev. He had intense, military eyes offset by a soft, splotchy face, with tiny red and green veins on his nose and cheeks. The two missile operators were closer to Zelenko’s age, one a muscular bodybuilder type from Kolchak’s SBU regiment, the other a lean man with sinewy arms, an engineer and former intelligence officer from KaPo, Estonia’s intelligence service. Good soldiers.

  They stored the vehicles in the warehouse, where they would stay until Friday afternoon, safe from Russian satellite surveillance. Afterward, the men went in the farmhouse to sleep, the Ukrainian team upstairs, the Russians downstairs. In the morning, they all gathered back in the warehouse for breakfast as Delkoff reviewed the mission. They took turns, then, running simulations, Delkoff watching the men closely, keeping them busy all day.

  Delkoff sat out alone again Thursday night in the Ukrainian farmland, waiting for daylight the way he had waited for headlights the night before. It was quiet again, the strangest part of the night, when even the breeze seemed tired, whispering in the sunflower stalks. Occasionally, he recited part of “The Sacred War,” the song Delkoff’s father used to sing to his sons: Arise, vast country, Arise for a fight to the death . . . Fly over the Motherland . . . This is the people’s war, a Sacred war!

  Delkoff fingered the wooden cross around his neck, the cross his son had worn. This morning, with the old Russian melody in his head, he felt more certain about his assignment than ever before. If God existed, this was what He had put him on earth to do. He’d never felt that as strongly as he did tonight.

  It was close to four in the morning when he decided at last to go inside, locking himself in the room at the rear of the warehouse. He stretched out on the cot in his fatigues and army boots, closed his eyes, and was asleep almost instantly. When he woke, ninety-five minutes had passed. Delkoff walked outside and urinated into the corn field. He walked down the unpaved road, his boots crunching the gravel. There was no music in his head anymore.

  His thoughts kept returning to Zelenko, whose eyes had reminded him of his own boy . . . dark, recessed, seeing life from a distance, but eager if you called on him, eager for anything. Pavel’s life had ended in an instant, exploded by Azov battalion fire two hours from here, on a little farm road like this. He’d been killed by contract soldiers from Ukraine’s National Guard, days before one of many “cease-fires” went into effect. Killed by men like Kolchak and this missile operator, who’d probably celebrated their strikes with high fives and cries of Slava Ukrayini! “Glory to Ukraine!”

  By the time Delkoff returned to the warehouse, the air had lightened, and the corn and sunflower stalks glinted with dew. He could see the impressions his boots had made in the dirt going the other direction. Zelenko and Kolchak were standing together again, in the cleared field beside the warehouse, Zelenko talking and gesturing. But when he saw Delkoff, Zelenko turned away and lowered his arms.

  “This is the day,” Delkoff said. August 13. It seemed, already, a historic date.

  Late that morning, they ran a full launch simulation from inside the warehouse, Delkoff sitting with Kolchak in the tight quarters of the command vehicle. Afterward, they relaxed in the shade, watching sunlight strengthen above the fields in a cloudless sky.

  Zelenko heated up canned chicken stew for lunch, which they washed down with warm tea drunk from canteen cups, the men gathered around a wooden table Delkoff had pulled from the farmhouse. They kept their eyes on their plates, each in the channel of his own thoughts. The lunch gave Delkoff a chance to recall why he’d selected these men, each of whom brought his own skill and motivation to the operation: four of them, including Zelenko, had lost a friend or family member to the war, and they blamed Russia’s president for that. Even Tamm, the Estonian, had motive: his brother, who’d worked for KaPo, the Estonian security forces, had been jailed in Russia for a month on phony espionage charges. Kolchak, on the other hand, came from a family of Ukrainian businessmen; he believed that what happened today would create new economic opportunities in his country. He was fighting for that.

  This afternoon, all of them would get what they wanted. Together they would produce an outcome that would break the impasse over Ukraine and allow the motherland to rise again. And even if these five men were not able to enjoy the fruits of that victory personally, their families would be taken care of.

  At 2:00 p.m., and again at 3:00, Delkoff put the team through launch simulations in the warehouse to keep everyone alert and motivated. Especially Zelenko. If Zelenko knew that Delkoff was on to him, he did a good job concealing it.

  The first signal from Moscow came at 3:47, a coded text on Delkoff’s phone: the president’s plane had just lifted off from Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport, bound for his vacation palace on the Black Sea, 885 miles to the south. A two-hour-and-twenty-five-minute flight. It would take about half that time for the plane to come into range.

  Delkoff and Kolchak stood watching as the vehicles growled out of the warehouse, their Caterpillar tracks rolling across the road and into the cleared field. Pletner moved the radar module first. Then Tamm lowered the ramps from the transport truck and drove out the mobile command unit. Finally, Kolchak guided the missile launcher over the ramp of the lowrider truck, parking it between the other two so the three vehicles were lined up in the field side by side, ready to go. The rumble of the monstrous vehicles stirred something in Delkoff as powerful as any patriotic music, bringing tears to his eyes several times.

  Zelenko climbed into the radar module to turn on the optical tracking systems while the “Ukrainians” began activating the command unit. Delkoff waited outside, keeping lookout. He recalled how dark the clouds had been over his son’s rainy final battlefield last summer. Today, the skies were perfectly clear.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar grinding sound of
the missile unit rising on the transloader: the giant four-missile carrier tilting up from its flat position, as if waking from a great sleep, then beginning to rotate, the four eighteen-foot missiles pointed into the sky at a seventy-degree angle.

  Delkoff could hear the music again in his head as he walked back, feeling the Russian winds blowing across these Ukrainian fields. He knew the histories that bound the two countries: how Russia had begun as a settlement on the Dnieper River, in Kiev, back in the ninth century. How many years later, in 1922, it was Ukraine that had helped create the Soviet Union, and also Ukraine that had caused the empire to break apart, with its declaration of independence in 1991. Now, again, Ukraine would play a historic role, in establishing Russia’s return to greatness.

  He watched the radar receiver groan to life, rising up on the turret and swiveling in slow circles as if sweeping the sky for its target.

  Delkoff finally went inside the TAR to observe Zelenko, although he did not like being inside. Claustrophobia was one of Delkoff’s weaknesses; very few people knew that.

  He crouched closer and watched Zelenko’s screen, seeing what had just happened—the plane was beginning to turn slightly to the west from its normal path south, meaning it was heading toward Ukrainian airspace. Zelenko’s face was damp, but his hands were steady and his eyes remained fixed on the controls in front of him as the hypnotic pattern blinked on the circular radar screen. He barely seemed to notice that Delkoff was there.

  The radars were operating on automatic now, and Delkoff controlled the authorization codes for the missile launcher. Even if Zelenko had some sort of a meltdown, there was nothing he could do to sabotage this mission—although sabotage probably hadn’t entered his thoughts. He was here to complete his job successfully, and then kill Delkoff. Nothing else. He’d been paid well for that.

  Before going back out, Delkoff patted Zelenko on the shoulder, feeling a flicker of compassion for his “son.” He had no intention of ever going in the radar unit again.

  Outside, he breathed deeply the Ukrainian air and turned toward Moscow, to the northeast. Toward where the president’s plane would appear in the sky, at 33,000 feet. He smoked a cigarette, touching the cross around his neck several times. He talked to his son, telling him again what they were doing, his eyes moistening with emotion in the warm air.

  When he finished, Delkoff crushed the cigarette under his boot and walked to the command vehicle. It was time.

  Kolchak and his two men were seated in front of the guidance and radar screens. The horizontal blink on Kolchak’s screen was the plane. Delkoff knew this from dozens of simulations; he’d seen the same signal in real time, as well, from tracking Ukrainian military transports over the past three years. This, of course, would be a very different target.

  He stood directly behind Kolchak as the radar shifted from SEARCH mode to TRACK. And then, at 5:12, Kolchak began a litany of verbal operational checks: “Optical system check. TRACK mode check. Lock target . . .” Finally, the last, “IFF override,” removing the Identification-as-Friend-or-Foe lock that prevented the launch. There were no barriers left. “Ready,” Kolchak said. He stood, yielding his seat at the center module to Ivan Delkoff.

  Delkoff heard the grinding of the launch rails elevating and locking in position. He typed in the ten-digit activation code, which he and Kolchak had built into the system weeks ago, and which he’d carried only in his head. The combination to Russia’s future, he thought, smiling to himself, as he had done many times over the summer.

  Then he nodded at the controls and stood, returning the seat to Kolchak. The missile launch was now operational. It would take less than five minutes to activate.

  Delkoff observed the rest of it from over Kolchak’s shoulder. He didn’t understand all of the signals they were monitoring, but he knew what was happening: the radar data had been transferred to the “seeker” controls in the heads of the missiles—data containing the plane’s location; its height and trajectory; all the information necessary to find, attack, and take down the president’s plane.

  “Ready for launch,” Kolchak said.

  The last phase was to unlock the command-fire control. All it took, then, was to press two buttons. They’d practiced this, too, many times. The Estonian, Tamm, pushed the first launch release. The Ukrainian, Kolchak, the second. There was good reason for that.

  “Launch,” Kolchak said. Moments later, the ground began to tremble and then the command center shook violently, as if it were being consumed by a massive earthquake. Delkoff felt the first of the eighteen-foot missiles burst from its launch chute, then the second.

  Then he heard the explosions, like sonic booms, coming seconds apart: a sound they hadn’t heard in any of the simulations. And, at last, silence. The men kept their eyes down at first, before cautiously trading glances. Twelve seconds was all it had taken for the missile to reach the plane, for the fragmentation warhead to take out the cockpit and front fuselage, blowing up the fuel tanks. It was done.

  Delkoff was the first to look. The launch site was smothered in smoke, the air acrid with the stench of burning rocket fuel; a ribbon of sunflower stalks was on fire. Delkoff pushed open the hatch and stepped out, hearing a sound he recognized from other, smaller operations: debris still falling from the sky, a faint sound like broken glass in the distance. And Delkoff knew: the president’s plane was gone. Turov had been right: America was about to be shaken from its sleep. But so, too, was the motherland. He turned and watched the other men emerging in the smoke, as if they’d just materialized on another planet. Which, in a sense, they had. The “Ukrainians.” Like three statues in the smoke. Then “his” team came out of the radar vehicle.

  “The new front has opened,” Delkoff said aloud, coughing as he tried to outpace the smoke. He said it louder, calling to his son, to his father, to his country, tears stinging his eyes, some of it caused by the smoke, some by his patriotism: “Arise, vast country.”

  NINE

  Friday, August 13. Washington.

  Christopher Niles shaped his hands into parentheses and peered through the window blinds into his brother’s living room. Jon had lived in this unpretentious apartment just over the D.C. line for three years now and Chris still hadn’t been invited in.

  He tried knocking first. Now he wondered if Jon still lived here. He saw a dozen cardboard boxes inside, piles of books and magazines, a few pieces of mismatched furniture, two framed paintings leaning against a wall, a dress shirt on a hanger hooked over the knob on a chest of drawers. He pushed his face against the glass, looking closer, and saw the familiar old writing desk in a corner, with scraps of notes tacked to a cork board. His brother’s work station.

  Chris had decided to swing by Jon’s place before his “debriefing” on Petrenko, which was scheduled for 10:00 at Martin’s office. Sometimes, the best way to catch his little brother was to just show up. After talking with Anna last night, Chris had decided to try reaching out to him again. He’d even decided to offer help with the story. Maybe tell him about Andrei Turov. If Chris wasn’t going to pursue Turov, maybe Jon could.

  Talking, though, had never been their strong suit, and he knew it wouldn’t be easy to begin now.

  “Help you find anyone?”

  Chris looked down at a young woman walking her Yorkie. “Jon Niles,” he said.

  She arched her eyebrows and smiled. “Good luck. He keeps strange hours.”

  They walked into the parking lot together. She was an American U student, she told him, who seemed just as interested in Jon’s whereabouts as Chris was. Jon deliberately set himself up as a man of mystery sometimes, he knew. Women were intrigued by it, though seldom for long. Jon seemed to have a different girlfriend every eighteen months or so. Chris sometimes wondered if he was still searching for the sort of woman he’d imagined as a teenager, listening to his rock albums on headphones; the kind who didn’t actually exist in real life.

  By the time he reached the main gate to the 258-acre CIA campus off
GW Parkway, Christopher was thinking again about Anna. About getting their life back and making plans.

  He was ready to hand off his “ten-minute” project to Martin. It felt like his last official act for the US government.

  “Turov’s operation—whatever it is,” Martin Lindgren said, as he slowly poured tea into his nineteenth-century-style English cup, “has been in the works for at least two years, we believe.”

  Chris nodded, although he suspected the op had been in the works much longer than two years. Certainly in Turov’s mind, it had.

  “What Max Petrenko knows is limited, probably to what he told you,” Martin added. “We’re not interested, frankly, in paying him another $85 K.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Chris said, watching the steam rise from Martin’s cup. Petrenko’s USB drive had contained a single file, which was largely worthless—a rambling seven-page report on “the children’s game,” with a few names and dates, and a lot of wordy and improbable speculations; parts of it read to Chris like a seventh-grade term paper. “Although I have to say, I’m a little concerned about Petrenko. Knowing what he does.”

  “Yes, well.” Martin set his teacup down gingerly, the handle gripped between his thumb and forefinger. It was one of Martin’s many incongruities: the proper demeanor, the slightly disheveled appearance. “So, what are we missing?”

  “Why Turov would hire Ivan Delkoff, for starters.”

  “Is there an answer here?” He reached for Chris’s report, then seemed to change his mind.