The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

The dispatch he expected confirming Ivan Delkoff’s death had instead confirmed the opposite: Delkoff was alive. There were surveillance images of him at the train station in Minsk over the weekend, wearing what looked like a paste-on beard and a stocking cap, and also at the airport in Riga Monday afternoon, without the hat. Anton had begun piecing together Delkoff’s route of escape, a slow trail that seemed to lead to northern France.

  Fortunately, the president trusted Turov, and did not want to be bothered by the details of August 13. He would not be aware of Delkoff’s flight. Not yet. But the escape seemed like a bad sign, and it gnawed away at Turov’s concentration as he polished the speech.

  The afternoon turned unseasonably warm. Heat pooled in the meadows, and the leaves outside his office window stood perfectly still. Turov felt the vacuum of what was missing—Svetlana, the grandchildren, Olga, Svetlana’s cat Boris. With Olga and his family here, these last four months had been the happiest time of Turov’s adult life. There were mornings when he had looked back at the long valley of his working days and seen clearly what he could never see then: how cluttered and unrewarding his life had been. The consolation was that Turov could try now to make up for those years. The shame was that it had taken this long to get the right desires into his head.

  But today he worried about something else: the unexpectedly terse replies from the Kremlin over his planned travel to Switzerland. He’d have to take that up with the president tomorrow.

  With sunset approaching, he forced himself to think like the president and train his thoughts on the speech again. The attack on the president’s plane showed Russian vulnerability, something Putin normally did not like to acknowledge. But Turov saw in this weakness a strength. The president would go before the Duma on Friday and the world would see a face of Putin it didn’t know, and they would feel empathy. And some would feel anger. He would talk about the families of the twenty-six men and women who had been murdered aboard the plane. He would talk about the forces working clandestinely to undermine Russia. And he would cite the words of the great Russian general Anton Denikin, who had said, more than a hundred years ago, that his country was “one and indivisible.”

  He would talk of the “war” on terror—a war the United States had bungled colossally after 9/11, even to the point of invading the wrong country. He would talk of Russia’s moral leadership in a new world order, describing the essential human values that separated Russia from the West. Those in the West no longer even took their lives seriously anymore, creating false excitements about inconsequential events, celebrities, and awards shows to fill their time. The president would talk about the dangerous waters of the West, whose surface glittered like rare jewels but which no longer contained any depth of purpose or moral responsibility.

  It was a speech that would change Russia. And for that, his old friend would give him a reprieve to spend some time with his family. All the same, it was good practice in Russia to be in more than one game at a time. And if the president was not receptive to Turov’s ideas and tried to outmaneuver him, Turov would have to outplay the president. He could still do that. The president’s weakness was that he was a tactician, not a strategist. Turov could be both.

  As the late sun narrowed to sword-like shards of red and gold in the trees, Anton finally arrived with an update. He opened his computer on Turov’s desk and showed him the latest: a new surveillance video from de Gaulle airport. A satellite image of two men walking to a car park. “That’s him,” Anton said. “The other man is his cousin.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Yes, no question. Dmitri Porchak is the cousin. Little Dmitri. I have a team headed to Paris right now. They will be at his house by morning.”

  “This won’t just be another trick by Delkoff?”

  “No. He was lucky before, he won’t be this time.” It was hard to tell much from the images, but Turov could hear the conviction in Anton’s voice. “He will be dead before noon.”

  “You are sure.”

  “I am certain.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Suburban Maryland.

  Work from my place if you want,” Carole Katz said. It was a standing invitation, which Jon Niles made use of too often. He associated Carole’s little wooden house in the country with his own bad habits: drinking beer, tweeting, watching the “news,” or staring at the cornfields. And she had made it easy, telling him early on to “keep the key,” their version of commitment.

  Jon had awakened that day with the crazy idea that he might even have a chance again with his old girlfriend Liz Foster. He got that occasionally, usually for no discernible reason. Part of it was just the Niles stubbornness, a desire to get right what had gone wrong the first time. It still felt strange sitting with her in staff meetings, this beautiful, knotty woman he’d put on a pedestal for months, now just an agreeable coworker.

  Jon drove down the country lanes for a while, listening to some middle-period Beatles, before finally circling back to Carole’s house. He needed to pick up a few clothes there anyway. Plus, it’d be quiet. Sitting in the kitchen, he placed calls to Gregory Dial and Maya Coles. He knew that Dial, the CIA officer named in the online “preemptive strike” stories, would never call him back. But he was pretty sure Coles, one of the president’s national security advisers, would. Particularly if he left a slightly provocative message, which he did.

  He watched the news for a few minutes as he waited, becoming angry at how the newcasters all repeated the buzz-phrases “assassination committee,” “no fingerprints,” and “preemptive strike,” which only seemed to reinforce Russia’s version of what happened.

  It took eight minutes for Maya Coles to call back. “Where are you getting that I had something to do with this ‘no fingerprints’ thing?” she said, an edge in her voice. “I assume you were kidding.”

  “You know I don’t kid about things like that,” Jon said. It was Maya Coles’s style to get right to business. “Actually, I’m told you were there when it was discussed. And also that you were at this meeting with Hordiyenko, the Ukrainian arms supplier, last month. In Kiev.”

  Her silence stretched out. Politically, Coles leaned to the right, like Kettles, but unlike Kettles she was also a staunch defender of the president and his policies.

  “I take that as a yes?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where’d you hear about Kiev?”

  “So it’s true—you were there?”

  “No,” she said, and made a startling throat-clearing sound. “Hey, Jon. Don’t play into this conspiracy crap, okay? There was a meeting but it had nothing to do with assassinating the president of Russia. Don’t be manipulated, honey.”

  Jon was scribbling don’t play into conspiracy crap . . . don’t be manipulated, honey. No matter how many times she used the word “honey,” it always felt disconcerting.

  “So why are we having this conversation?” he said. “Why is there a conspiracy theory? I mean, there’s something out there that’s scaring the administration. Tell me what it is.”

  She laughed loudly, one of her standard deflections. Jon waited. “Okay, here’s a question for you, Jon. And this is just conversation now.”

  “Okay.”

  “What if a handful of people did have intel about a planned assassination? From within the Russian military, I mean. I’m not saying good intel. But say we had something. And failed to bring it to Mr. Putin’s attention. Is that the same as being complicit?”

  I don’t know, Jon thought. But you’re changing the subject. “You didn’t answer my question about the meeting in Kiev,” he said. Maya Coles said nothing. “I understand you were in the meetings in Washington, too, that we talked about before.” More silence. “When this ‘no fingerprints’ idea was first floated.”

  “When we put out the hit, you mean?” she said.

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “No. Okay, look,” she said. “For starters: I’d be very careful abo
ut how you handle that no fingerprints thing.”

  What sounded like a garbage truck went by on her end. “You’re not denying it, then.”

  “I’m not denying the words ever came up in conversation. As table exercises; war games. But never for real. Maybe if you told me where you heard it, I could elaborate.”

  “I can’t give you a name. But I’ve heard about these meetings from several sources.”

  “And therein lies the problem,” she said, a muscle of anger again in her voice. “Since reporters are never in the room when these national security issues are discussed, and the information is classified, your stories are by definition based on leaks. And leaks aren’t information. They’re cherry-picked to reflect someone’s agenda. By definition.”

  “So help me out, then,” Jon said. “I know there were five people in the room when this ‘no fingerprints’ thing occurred. You were one, I’m told. General Rickenbach was one, Gregory Dial from CIA. Edward Sears from the State Department—?”

  This last was a bluff to see how she’d respond. Maya Coles laughed loudly. “Nice try,” she said. “Listen. Jon. Here’s the deal. Since you’re pushing it. I’m willing to tell you the real story, okay? As much as I can—if you agree to verify it elsewhere.”

  “Okay.” When she began a statement with “Listen”—rather than her usual “Look”—it meant she was going to tell him something significant. “Listen” also carried a note of sincerity, although it was never clear how sincere her sincerity was.

  “Off the record. There’s a big story that’s about to drop, okay? Maybe not the story you guys would like and I’m sorry about that. But a big story. The real story.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “There’s intel, HUMINT, which you’ll be hearing about very soon—they’re just dotting the i’s right now—about one of the Russian generals. Okay? That’s all I can say. But here’s a prediction: within forty-eight hours, that’s all you guys are going to be talking about. In the meantime, the responsible thing is wait until it’s been vetted. What’s the adage you guys use—better to get it right than get it first?”

  “I don’t use that one,” Jon said. “Tell me about this general, though. This is someone within the Russian military who was working with Hordiyenko in some way?”

  “That’s what I understand. But you have to source that elsewhere. Okay? Hey, Jon: gotta go. Just remember: it’s more than your own personal glory that’s at stake here.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said. Maya Coles clicked off.

  Jon opened his computer and typed in his notes from their conversation, pausing several times to watch the “Breaking News” on television—although “Breaking News” was the permanent banner now on all the cable networks, and “breaking news” seemed redundant to him anyway. What did she mean about someone in the administration knowing? Kettles had suggested the same thing. How far within the administration did this go?

  When all three news networks were on commercials, Jon wandered into the living room, where he became distracted for a while with Carole’s matchbooks. Carole kept a couple hundred matchbooks in a large fish bowl, an inheritance from her father. Freddie Katz had been a salesman who traveled the US highways in the sixties and seventies, back when people still smoked openly in public. Jon picked through a few of them, imagining an older, more dimly lit version of the country, with cigarette machines and juke boxes, names like Starlite Lounge, Dew Drop Inn, Pine Cone Motel. They made him feel lonesome.

  With Carole, he was a little pre-nostalgic now: they hadn’t broken up yet but he was already missing her. He looked at the print of House by the Railroad above the table. Carole liked Hopper’s old houses and window shades, the gleaming slants of sunlight. She loved gothic architecture. Jon preferred Gas and Shakespeare at Dusk, 1935: fading light, encroaching nature, the lack of people.

  His cell phone startled him. It was Anna Carpenter calling back.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, a buoyant tone that felt contagious. “I read your blog today. I thought maybe we could meet. I suspect we may have some mutual interests.”

  “About—?”

  “Russia. Noise at the expense of comprehension?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell me when you’re free.”

  “Okay,” Jon said. “How about now?”

  To his surprise, Anna Carpenter accepted. If he could make it downtown, she’d meet him in an hour at the Starbucks on Capitol Hill.

  As he drove away toward the city, Jon began to wonder about his brother again. The real reason Anna Carpenter was asking to meet him, he suspected, had to do with Christopher, not Russia, or truth, or noise at the expense of comprehension. It was even possible that Christopher would be there, he realized. But, then again, maybe not. He hoped not.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Moscow.

  Christopher Niles knew, as he walked from the plane into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport Sunday afternoon, that he was under surveillance. He knew, from having worked in Moscow for eighteen months, that the FSB ran surveillance from the observation room in the control tower.

  He was arriving as himself: a college teacher researching the Russian Orthodox Church, ahead of a class he was teaching and an op-ed he intended to write. It was his job over the next two or three days to do nothing that would make anyone think otherwise.

  It wouldn’t be easy. Russia had grown increasingly wary of Americans since economic sanctions were imposed in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. American embassy staff and their families were now routinely harassed, sometimes in bizarre ways. Diplomats reported Russian agents breaking into their homes at night, turning on lights, rearranging furniture. One diplomat returned home to find someone had defecated in his living room.

  Chris’s task in Moscow was to find and meet with Andrei Turov. He had left messages for him before leaving Washington and was confident that he would call him back. But until then, he’d have to wait and not arouse anyone’s suspicions.

  Russia’s intelligence services knew who he was; they knew of his tenure in Moscow. If the FSB wanted, they could pull him in at any time on a pretense—to check his “paperwork,” or for some other contrived reason. They could easily create enough interference to sidetrack the mission. But Chris didn’t think they’d do that. They’d be more interested in following him, hoping his movements would give away the real reason he’d come to Moscow. It presented an interesting challenge.

  He had two interviews scheduled for Monday morning, and expected to spend the afternoon at the Tretyakov Gallery, which was home to the finest collection of Russian art in the world. The Tretyakov would be a pleasant diversion. On Tuesday, he would meet Amira Niyzov at Christ the Savior cathedral and take her to lunch nearby. Amira was a prominent Russian online journalist who wrote about culture and religion. She was, he hoped, the “secret weapon” in Christopher’s plan.

  He checked in to the elegant Hotel National on Tverskaya Street Sunday evening and found two waiting messages. Both interviews Martin had arranged for Monday had canceled. Stanislov Ryzanov, the Russian Orthodox Church spokesman, left regrets that his schedule now “makes it impossible” to meet, this week or next. His other appointment, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said “circumstances” prevented him from rescheduling. “Circumstances” were August 13, of course.

  Chris went for a walk that evening to Red Square, watching sunset wrap around the candy-colored domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. He tried to be just a tourist on his first night, enjoying the grandeur of Red Square, the cool night air and restaurant aromas, not thinking much of Turov. Later, he walked down Tverskaya Street, gazing in the shop windows, his memories stirred by the Cyrillic signs and the stream of traffic thick with SUVs and BMWs, by the grilled kebab aroma from a familiar Uzbek restaurant. Walking was Chris’s favorite recreation, and Moscow had been a city he’d always enjoyed exploring, ever since his first visit in 1996, particularly the medieval streets off the main arteries. But he
couldn’t help notice the changes this time. There were many more construction cranes in Moscow than on his last visit, and most of the vendor stalls and kiosks were gone. It was again a city in transition.

  There were also changes not visible from a street level. Vladimir Putin had continued to realign the country’s power structure, he knew, giving the security services a stronger role, moving former bodyguards into governorships and top intelligence posts, taking policy-shaping powers away from the Foreign Ministry. In Moscow, the line between Kremlin-sponsored black operations and mafiyas activity had further blurred. And stringent new laws had been passed limiting public protest. Who would have imagined when the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991 that Russia would look like this a quarter century later?

  As he walked the narrow backstreets, Christopher fell naturally into surveillance-detection mode—scanning for moving shadows, repeat vehicles, shapes in windows. Eventually—briefly—he got a clear look at the Russian agent who was tailing him: a stocky man with close-cropped gray hair and wide-set eyes.

  Chris felt a familiar obsession as he returned to the hotel. When Martin had recruited him last week in Greece, he’d felt wary of returning to work for the US government, afraid he’d be jeopardizing the precious life that he was building with Anna—the sort of life he’d never had before. Tonight, walking through the heart of Moscow, with its enormous, largely hidden deception industry, he didn’t feel that so strongly; tonight he felt as if he were answering a summons. He felt like an athlete, becoming sharper in anticipation of the main event.

  Russia’s war on the West had begun here almost invisibly, while the US was looking the other way, focused on Afghanistan and Iraq. Led by an unlikely new president with little political experience, and spurred on by a revitalized petro-economy, Russia had seized the chance to change its destiny. Each year under Putin, the country had increased military spending as it exerted political power in Europe and the Middle East and interfered with the aspirations of its immediate neighbors—particularly those with eyes for the West, such as Ukraine.