The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

  He glanced over at Liz Foster’s cubicle as he passed and nodded hello. Liz gave him a double thumbs-up. “Big stakes,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Call me later, if you want to talk about it or anything, okay?”

  “Oh? Okay.” Jon hesitated for a moment, wondering what she meant by that. It was still hard to read Liz Foster sometimes. Normally, he would have stopped and tried to feel her out. But this time, he didn’t. This time he kept going.

  EIGHTEEN

  Western Virginia.

  Growing up, Jake Briggs had always been aware of the shadowy corners of American life, look-the-other-way places where illicit deals went down: the edges of parking lots, back rooms, clearings in the woods; places where drugs and weapons were sold, where trysts were carried out, fights fought; city blocks that became floating red-light districts or open-air drug markets after dark. Places every city and community had, which managed to survive by a kind of unnatural selection, staying a few steps ahead of the law.

  Ivan Delkoff was like one of those places, Briggs thought. A law unto himself, inventing his own rules as he went along. A man who probably thought that by carrying out the August 13 attack, he’d been a defender of Russia. But then again, Russia itself was like one of those places.

  Briggs set out driving to Dulles that morning with Ivan Delkoff in his head. He’d gone through data searches for more than four hours and reviewed his files from the mission in Estonia, where he met Delkoff. He’d learned all he could about Delkoff’s past, his family, his temperament, his bad habits, his singular skills, his failures and successes.

  Thinking like the enemy had become a cliché in intelligence circles. But for the most part, it was more a theory than a practice, an idea the bureaucracy of the IC wasn’t really built to sustain. Thinking like the enemy—really thinking like the enemy—meant allowing a demon into your head and letting it live there for a while. It wasn’t a nine-to-five job. To really think like the enemy, you also had to feel what the enemy felt; and once you’d given those feelings a space in your psyche, it could be hard to get them out. That was the part of his work Briggs didn’t like so much. Christopher Niles had that problem, too, he knew; when he worked a case, he was all in, there were no half measures. Washington didn’t always respect that. But it was okay. You could love the country without having any love for the government.

  Briggs would have preferred doing this op more conventionally: going after Delkoff with a team, using a helicopter rescue unit to extract him from wherever he was hiding. But Chris had made it clear this wasn’t that kind of job. The op for Briggs was simple. He needed to find Ivan Delkoff, make contact, and give him an incentive to come in. That’s what Lindgren’s division did: small, off-the-books operations. Drug deals, Briggs called them.

  It was two and a half hours from Briggs’s home in western Virginia to Dulles International Airport, where he was supposed to meet Niles and Lindgren in a conference room at ten o’clock. Donna had gotten up early to fix him a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage. “This really isn’t much,” he’d tried telling her. “I’m being hired to find someone and talk with him, that’s all.” It wasn’t hostage rescue. It probably wouldn’t even involve weapons.

  He watched the lines on the road now, the spooky early morning light rising from the fields. Missing his children already. How would this week fit in their lives; where would the events in Ukraine settle in their memories? Would he ever be able to tell Jamie what he’d done in the days after the Russian president was blown out of the sky? How he’d tried to help fix things?

  The countryside brightened as he approached Dulles, and his thoughts were all with Ivan Delkoff again. Briggs had a pretty good idea now where Delkoff was: he’d already mapped the escape route he’d likely taken out of Ukraine. It was not a route that CIA or anyone else would be looking at. Not right away. Lindgren, he was pretty sure, would place Delkoff in Belarus or on the outskirts of Moscow. But those locations, Briggs knew, were too obvious.

  He chugged the last of his Red Bull, seeing the airport signs, feeling energized. When Briggs was working, caffeine became one of the essential food groups.

  The way to get to Delkoff—assuming he was alive—was to offer him something he wanted. And Briggs knew that he could do that. He understood Ivan Delkoff. He even saw some of himself in him, although he didn’t like thinking that. Delkoff was a stoic man who had put himself on the front lines of a people’s war, a narod, fighting for an idea rather than for land or politics. Ukraine was one battle in that war. He’d also fought in Chechnya, where he’d suffered a shrapnel wound, and in Georgia and Transnistria. And Crimea, where he helped force the referendum that enabled Russia to annex the peninsula, much to the chagrin of the West. He’d given his life to the war, and lost his only son last summer to the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

  But there was something less tangible, too, about Delkoff’s war. Briggs understood that human beings were by nature among the most aggressive creatures on the planet. Most people channeled those impulses into careers or sports or hobbies; some, who weren’t so fortunate, fought with them all their lives, or deadened them with drugs and alcohol. Delkoff accepted his human nature head on and tried to give it a larger purpose. Briggs liked that about him. Above everything, Delkoff wanted to believe that the sacrifices he’d made for his country, including his son and family, had not been in vain. That was what Ivan Delkoff most wanted, he sensed: to play some role in Russia’s destiny. And that’s where Briggs could help. That’s exactly what he could give him. Briggs did not even know, yet, that Christopher Niles was thinking the same thing.

  NINETEEN

  Washington.

  The announcement came just after 7:30 a.m., 2:30 in the afternoon, Moscow time. Anna held out her phone to Chris over a plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs, hash browns, buttered toast. They were at a window booth in the Pancake House on Wisconsin Avenue, the windows fogged from air conditioning. The Breaking News banner reduced it to two words: PUTIN ALIVE.

  The story began about as he had expected—“Russian President Vladimir Putin was not on board the presidential plane that was shot down Friday over Ukraine . . . The Kremlin is now calling the attack ‘a brazen but failed assassination attempt carried out by the West.’”

  “‘Brazen’ being the code word for United States?” Anna said.

  “Evidently,” Chris said, scrolling through the article. “The Kremlin has confirmed that twenty-six people died in the attack . . .” Chris skimmed through the official condolences, looking for the next part, the part he hadn’t expected so quickly: “Russian military intelligence officers have captured a missile launcher that they say was used in the attack and have detained three soldiers in eastern Ukraine near Donetsk. Two of the men are believed to be Ukrainian nationals and a third is Estonian. The Estonian was a former member of KaPo, Estonia’s Internal Security Service.

  “One of the three men has been identified as Mikhail Kolchak, an official of the SBU, Ukraine’s intelligence service.”

  Too fast, Chris thought. Just what Anna had said. This is coming too fast.

  “You see what they’ve done,” she said, taking her phone back. “They’ve just indirectly blamed Ukraine and Estonia.”

  “Not so indirectly.”

  “They’ve established justification for retaliatory strikes on those countries.”

  Chris said nothing. This was unfolding like the programmed moves in a game whose outcome had already been determined. A deception that no one in Washington had seen coming. Not because it was too big, but because it was too small. It was what Martin had warned of on Tuesday in Greece: I think they’re planning something else entirely. Something we’re not even considering.

  “This is what Turov does,” he said. “It wasn’t an attack on Putin, it was an attack on the United States.”

  “Disguised as an attack on Russia.”

  “Yes. And yesterday was just the opening salvo. The real attack is what’s happen
ing now. This story they’re telling that the media’s unwittingly repeating.” Christopher glanced around the restaurant, thinking of his conversation with Martin yesterday. Diplomatically, Washington was going through the motions, saying the right things—offering “thoughts and prayers” for the victims, reacting almost as if Russia were a brother nation, not the country it had been punishing with sanctions for years. But at the same time, the stories that the US caused the attack were spreading faster than Washington could keep up with, making the administration’s efforts at statesmanship seem like a grand hypocrisy. This would become the official line now from Moscow, he knew: two Ukrainians and an Estonian had carried out the August 13 attack. With support from the Ukrainian military, and the US.

  If the attack on the president’s plane was the second move in a four-move game, then maybe this, the disinformation campaign, is the third. But what was the first move?

  “What are you thinking?” Anna said, reaching for his hand. “You’re a mile away.”

  “At least.”

  “I was being conservative.”

  “I have that effect on people.” He waited for her smile, which took slightly longer than expected. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m just thinking: if someone from our side was involved in this, did they think the president was on board the plane? Or did they know he wasn’t?”

  “That’s a strange thought,” Anna said. “Why would you think someone from our side is involved?”

  “I don’t. I’m just speculating. Something Max Petrenko said. I’m just worried there may be another part to this I’m not seeing. Which would make our job harder.”

  “Someone from our side—meaning inside the government?”

  Christopher shrugged. “Or someone with access to the government. A spy in the house—it’s a phrase Turov uses. I’m just considering all options. And probably getting ahead of myself.”

  “More coffee?” the waitress asked.

  Chris turned and smiled. “Please,” he said.

  Anna went back to her phone as the waitress topped off his cup.

  “Look at this,” Anna said, after she’d walked away. It was a clip of Russia’s assistant foreign minister, saying, in English: “America has finally crossed the line. These are very desperate people. They’ve been trying to destroy Russia for twenty-five years. Remember, Hitler wanted to destroy Russia. Napoleon: the same. We shouldn’t forget what happened to them.”

  “I recognize the Hitler line,” Anna said.

  Yes. They were the words Putin had used in his War Day speech several years ago, comparing the West to Nazi Germany. Tough words, but considered irrelevant bluster at the time.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, handing back her phone.

  “I’m thinking what I told you yesterday,” Anna said. “That despite everything, they’ve given us an opportunity. It’s up to us what we do about it.”

  Chris liked that, as he did the intensity and openness in Anna’s face. Before she could explain, though, his phone buzzed. It was Jake Briggs.

  He took the call as he walked outside. It was warm on the sidewalk, a scent of auto exhaust in the air, sharp glares of sunlight among the buildings and windshields. He had a tender feeling turning and seeing Anna through the glass, looking down at her phone attentively as Briggs talked; Briggs so pumped up about Putin and Delkoff that it didn’t seem to matter if anyone was on the other end.

  Anna had eaten maybe a quarter piece of toast while he was gone. “Briggs,” he said. “He’s at the airport already, an hour and a half early. He wants to see me ASAP.”

  “Why?”

  “He just heard the news. He wouldn’t say anything else. Just that he needs to talk before Martin Lindgren arrives. You want to drive me?”

  “Let’s go.”

  TWENTY

  Dulles International Airport. Northern Virginia.

  Jake Briggs was pacing the conference room in that stiff, slightly side-to-side way he had, as if his legs were wooden poles. He wore a black T-shirt, cargo pants, and work boots, and held a Starbucks cup in his left hand. Briggs had been a wrestling champ in school and still carried himself like one. A muscled five foot six, he’d been state high school champion at 170 pounds and wrestled 174 in college. Before he’d found wrestling, he once told Chris, people used to pick on him. It was hard to imagine.

  His dark eyes turned as Chris entered the room and his faintly pockmarked face creased into a familiar smile. His skin had a natural dirty tint, as if he’d been working in a field.

  “Professor.”

  “Jacob.”

  Briggs gave him a hard handshake and quick man-hug. “Like the specs,” he said.

  “Thanks.” They sat at one end of the conference table. Martin Lindgren had rented the room for their ten o’clock, but Briggs was already at work, his laptop opened, papers spread out. Meeting Briggs could be like encountering an old obsession, Chris thought: realizing that he hadn’t really gotten past the obsession, he’d just set it aside.

  Anna, who’d come to see him off, went for coffee while they talked. Briggs didn’t particularly like Anna, and she was okay with that. It wasn’t just the obvious differences—Briggs was a soldier, Anna a politician and diplomat; Anna had been raised Catholic, Briggs was an atheist. There was also something that caught in their personalities— his, mostly—that prevented them from meeting halfway.

  Briggs nodded at his PC: the video clip of the Russian minister making his Hitler comparison. “They’re hammering us, aren’t they?” he said. “War bait.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I see they’re reporting an Estonian and two Ukrainians. No mention of Delkoff, though.”

  “Not yet.”

  “It means he’s still alive.”

  Christopher nodded. He’d been thinking the same: Delkoff could only be a part of the story Russia was circulating if he was dead.

  Briggs was looking at him pointedly, as if Chris knew what he was thinking.

  “What.”

  “You knew, didn’t you? When you called me yesterday, you already knew. You knew Putin wasn’t on that plane.”

  Christopher shrugged and nodded. “Speculation.”

  “How?”

  “Because. I know who did this,” Chris said. “I don’t know all the specifics yet or where it’s going exactly. But I know who did this.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I need you to help me get to him. I think we can do that through Ivan Delkoff. He’s going to be our point of entry. That’s why I need you.”

  Briggs rubbed his hands together, watching Chris appraisingly. “Okay, professor,” he said. “And so why aren’t you in the Oval Office right now, telling the president all this?”

  “Because the White House has their own idea about who did it. Russia Ops has three names now and a theory, tying it to Ukrainian intelligence. They’ve already made up their minds. They’re not particularly interested in contradictory facts. And, besides,” he added, “even if I told them, and they believed me, I suspect they’d handle it wrong.”

  This drew Briggs’s second smile of the morning, a huge one.

  Christopher gave him a cursory biography of Andrei Turov as they waited for Martin: how he’d come up through the FSB and earned a prominent place early in the president’s inner circle, then built a private security business in Moscow while continuing to work in the shadows for the Kremlin.

  Briggs watched him intently, drawing it all in, saving his questions. When Christopher finished, Briggs shared what he’d learned about Delkoff. Like Anna’s son, Briggs worked with offline and dark-web databases, sources Christopher couldn’t access. He also had a unique ability to hack into the thought processes of the people he was pursuing. Chris was amazed by how much he’d already learned about Delkoff in a few hours. But then Briggs was one of those people who would wrestle with an assignment if you gave him two months, but transform into a superhero if he only had a couple days.


  “So, assuming Delkoff’s alive,” Chris said. “Where is he?”

  “Lindgren is going to tell us Belarus. I’m fairly certain of that. Gomel, Belarus, is where his trail will lead. He has family there, an ex-girlfriend. Maybe an estranged daughter. He knows some ex-military there. Russian patriots, who’d hide him if he asked.”

  “But Belarus isn’t where he is.”

  “No,” Briggs said with that certainty of tone that rubbed some people wrong. He moved several papers on the table. “He also has a cousin who used to live in Gomel. Dmitri Porchak. Former Belarus state security. Retired now, living in northern France. He may be—or may have been—involved in drug trafficking. Little Dmitri, he was called. He was fairly close with Delkoff at one time. Dmitri’s ex-wife’s family has relatives scattered along the French coast. It’s a region Delkoff has probably visited a few times, too. That’s where he’s going to be.”

  “France.”

  “Yes.”

  Chris studied him. “Has there been some recent contact, then, between Delkoff and this cousin?”

  “No,” Briggs said. “None that I can find.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s why I think his cousin’s helping him. I think they set this up some months ago, and he’s deliberately distancing himself so no one will look at that. He probably left a false trail back to Gomel.”

  “All right.” Briggs liked to place his chips on a single number, Chris knew, and he wasn’t always correct; but he gambled with such certainty that people tended not to question him. He had a good feeling about Briggs on this one, though. And he also liked the fact that Briggs spoke French. “So, northern France?”

  Briggs opened a folder and pulled out a black-and-white map. “In here is where Dmitri’s wife’s family lives. The Opal Coast. They have several properties here. I kind of have it narrowed down to three or four spots—probabilities. I’m still working it.”