The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

  “That depends.” She watched Chris more closely now. This was the crux of it, he knew; they had to trust each other to move this forward. “Why are you asking?”

  “Because what I’m talking about would be enough to change things,” Chris said. Her eyes quickly scanned the room and returned to his. “To accomplish what some of the people who aren’t alive anymore wanted to accomplish.” He thought of Marina Vostrak—the dour, worried face of his Russian asset, who’d been murdered in Tallinn. And then, for maybe fifteen or twenty seconds, Amira let him in, telling Christopher what he needed to know without saying a word. On the other side of those eyes was a world hidden and protected, still wild, angry and full of possibility; Chris saw what he needed in those twenty seconds. He completed the transaction he’d come here to make.

  “How soon?”

  “Less than forty-eight hours,” he said, hopefully.

  Amira reached for one of the books he’d purchased at the gift shop. She opened and began to page through it, talking to him about the history of Christ the Savior cathedral as Christopher’s watcher walked past the window again. Amira told him how Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture had been written with the cathedral in mind and was first performed there in 1882. How part of the cathedral’s first floor had originally been a memorial commemorating Russia’s defeat of Napoleon. They became slightly more detached as she spoke, but he appreciated what she was doing; it was as if their orbits had brought them close enough to see each other’s faces through the windows of their capsules, and now they were preparing for reentry to their own worlds. At one point, Amira wrote a number inside the book’s back cover, and asked him to use it for future communications.

  When they walked outside, there was a smell of rain in the breeze and a gray starkness to the neighborhood. They walked two blocks before saying goodbye, giving each other a warm hug. Chris felt lifted by the scents of baked bread and laundry—by the connection they’d just made—as he walked back to the National. The operation had depended on the meeting with Amira. And the meeting had gone as well as he had hoped. Better, even.

  The first connection had been Delkoff. He had just made the second.

  Chris returned to the hotel hoping to find a response from Andrei Turov. The third connection. Coming up the elevator he recalled the one time he had met Turov, across a chess table in Gorky Park: Turov ordinary, as he’d heard, only more so, down to the uneven cut of his fingernails, the lowered blue eyes, the modest smile, the stray nasal hairs; you wanted to look around and say, “Who’re you? Where’s Turov?” But Turov was an illusionist. Even his surname was an invention, Chris had learned, taken from a medieval principality in Belarus where, supposedly, his family descended from royal blood.

  When he reached the room there was no response, though. Christopher turned on television, feeling anxious again, imagining where Anna was right now. Where Andrei Turov was. He lay on the bed and closed his eyes, surprised at how tired he felt. Thinking about Amira, the way she had let him into her world for fifteen or twenty seconds. How one person could change a country; how one country could change the world. It’s about waiting now, he reminded himself. Managing time and expectations.

  The trill of his phone startled him.

  Christopher reached for it on the nightstand. Wondering if he would recognize Turov’s voice after four years. The third connection.

  The voice on the other end was familiar. But it was not Andrei Turov’s. And the news it bore was not what Christopher expected. Or wanted to hear.

  THIRTY

  Northern France.

  The Americans’ first contact with Ivan Delkoff came on the evening of August 16: an envelope left in a small seafood restaurant off the coast road. The envelope had actually been left for Delkoff’s cousin, Little Dmitri, who went to the restaurant in the evenings to drink a pint of ale with the owner and one of the local fishermen. Someone, evidently, had noticed that.

  Dmitri’s nightly habit would be discontinued now that Delkoff was here; he had assured his cousin of that. But on Monday night, he’d come to the restaurant for a different reason: to buy Delkoff a pint of vodka so he could return to the house and finish writing his “Declaration.” It was funny: For months, Delkoff had considered himself a conspirator; now, he understood that he was something else, a witness. His plans were not about survival and concealment anymore; they were about making sure his country’s deceptions became known. And that meant he had to rely on basic rules of combat. If your enemy is stronger than you are, evade him. If your enemy is temperamental, seek to irritate him. If your enemy is a clever coward—as Andrei Turov was—expose him. That was what he was going to do. Delkoff’s initial strategy after August 13 had been escape and evade. He’d planned to use France as his base for two or three days, then he’d travel on to Germany; from there, to South Africa. He had already arranged his accounts so that his family members would be taken care of for the rest of their lives. And so that Delkoff had enough ready cash to avoid leaving an electronic trail.

  Dmitri came out looking sullen, as always, his open hunter’s jacket flapping in the sea air. Delkoff heard the bottles clinking in an old paper sack. They rode inland, dipping into a shallow and coming to the turn with the upside-down rowboat. Dmitri touched Artem’s shoulder, asking him to stop. He turned and signaled Delkoff.

  The two men got out, much as they had on the drive from Paris. Artem stayed behind the wheel with the engine running, watching in the mirror.

  They walked down the road behind the SUV. Then Dmitri stopped and handed him the envelope. “For you,” he said. “Not me. You.” His cousin watched like an angry police sergeant as Delkoff opened the envelope.

  It was a brief note, handwritten in French. Delkoff read it in the moonlight: Turov sait que vous êtes ici. Je voudrais vous aider. Appelez ce numéro. Jake Briggs, USA. “Turov knows you’re here. I want to help. Call this number. Jake Briggs, USA.”

  He read it again and passed the note to his cousin. Dmitri looked up at Delkoff when he finished, his mouth parted, as if someone had hit him in the stomach.

  “Who the fuck knows you’re here?” Dmitri said. “You know this person?”

  “I’ve met him. Several years ago,” he said. “I met him in Estonia.”

  Jake Briggs. He did know him. But Delkoff was still trying to form a clear picture. He studied the countryside, the dark wooden houses perched at odd intervals in the moonlight. Was Jake Briggs out there somewhere right now, watching him?

  “It’s a trick,” Dmitri said. Delkoff saw the look of concern in his cousin’s face. He understood: no one was supposed to know he was here.

  “Call him,” Delkoff said. “Go ahead and call him.”

  Dmitri pulled his phone. Artem was outside the SUV now, too, smoking a cigarette, watching. He wasn’t supposed to know about any of this, he was just security. But Delkoff was sure he’d picked up most of it by now. Maybe all of it.

  “Ask him a question,” Delkoff said. He felt the fresh breeze from the Channel and became inspired. “If he gives the right answer, we’ll meet him. If he doesn’t, we don’t.” Dmitri remained silent. “All right?” Delkoff said. “Ask him the name of the restaurant, in Narva.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Ask him the name of the restaurant. If he doesn’t know, ask him what beer we drank.”

  Dmitri finally did what he requested. Delkoff heard his cousin pushing the buttons. Delkoff stepped away from the road and began to urinate. He watched the stars and the strange, iridescent light in the Channel. He felt the outlines of his son’s medal in his shirt pocket, and thought of Pavel’s willingness, his form of patriotism. He recalled the little crease of smile Pavel would reveal as a boy, glancing shyly up at his dad.

  While he finished peeing, Delkoff turned and saw Dmitri walking toward him.

  “Antalya Kebab,” Dmitri said, holding the phone on his jacket. “You both had Põhjala.”

  Son of a bitch. Delkoff grinned. Yes. �
�Tell him we’ll meet him in the morning, then. First thing.”

  “He doesn’t want that. He wants to meet you tonight,” Dmitri said.

  “In the morning. Tell him I’ll call him myself, first thing. Where’s he staying?”

  Dmitri relayed his words and then turned back to his cousin. “He says tonight. He wants to talk to you now.”

  “No.” Delkoff began to walk back to the car, anxious to return to the document he was writing. It was an odd coincidence: he’d been thinking earlier that he’d do this as a “walk-in” at the American embassy in Paris. Instead, they’d come to him. They’d made it easy.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw Dmitri still talking on the phone, facing south now. “Tell him I’m too tired tonight,” he called to his cousin. “First thing in the morning. Eight o’clock. I’ll have something to give him then. A document. Tell him that.”

  Delkoff got into the back seat of the SUV and waited, breaking open the liter of vodka. He watched the Channel, thinking that maybe his future lay over there now, across the ocean. He drew on his kaleidoscope of American images: Coca-Cola signs and fast-food restaurants, neon-lit interstates, the Grand Canyon, the Google logo, Marilyn Monroe, Mount Rushmore, the Abraham Lincoln monument, the Empire State Building, and—high up in the California mountains somewhere—the sign: HOLLYWOOD.

  They rode back to the farmhouse without speaking, Delkov drinking vodka, the SUV bouncing on the gravel road. Dmitri’s silence felt thick with anger; Delkoff’s was a mist of hope. It might’ve been funny, except Delkoff cared very deeply about his little cousin. And he worried about him, as he always had.

  He walked up the steps to his room with the bottle of vodka, feeling reenergized, and closed the door. He pulled off his combat boots, sat at the wooden table, and went to work, using both index fingers on the Cyrillic keyboard. Delkoff knew that he needed to keep his story simple. But he had to include all of the pertinent names and details. Because what he wrote tonight would very likely become the official record, an account that would stand up to anything Turov and the propagandists tried to pass off as the truth.

  He paused from his work only to drink and, several times, to look at the picture of his son Pavel. When Pavel was a boy, he was often caught in photos looking to the side. Delkoff had tried for a while to startle him out of it. “Hey! Look straight ahead, boy!” he’d say, clapping his hands. But it only embarrassed Pavel and caused him to look down . . . And he recalled something else, a memory of Pavel he’d forgotten: tossing his boy into the lake from the end of a dock when he was five or six years old and Pavel paddling frantically in the steel-colored water, his face like a frightened dog, his eyes darting to his father’s as Delkoff shouted encouragement. God, he loved that boy so much. Why had he let him go to war? Why hadn’t he tried harder to save him?

  When he finished his “Declaration,” Delkoff read through it twice, making only a few small revisions and additions. He was very pleased. Then he began to write a more personal account, a record of his own thoughts and feelings as the operation had unfolded. This one was easier, and more dramatic. It might one day be the opening to a book or movie. We felt the ground shaking like divine thunder, he wrote, the great Russian-made rockets bursting out of their launchers, the sensors locking in, chasing the elusive target. This was what we had been hired to do and we all felt enormous pride knowing we were fulfilling the secret destiny of our country. I thought of my son Pavel. He had given his life to this cause of Russia Mir months ago, but he was with us on that afternoon. He was there with his father in the sunflower fields. He was right there, as were all the men who had given their lives to this war. We were all together at last on that afternoon in the brown sunflower fields of the Donbas.

  Of course, I still believed at the time that I was working for Andrei Turov, and for the good of the Russian Federation. I did not yet imagine that the Kremlin itself had a hand in this. That they might even be paying my salary. Now, of course, I know. I know many things that I did not know on that clear afternoon.

  Delkoff stopped, looking up at the motion of the blowing curtains, filled with a sense of purpose. He could do with words now what the missiles had failed to achieve; he could force the Russian president to face his crimes. Not only that: he could force Russians to see their leader’s deceptions. This was Delkoff’s mission now, to tell the real story about his country. Because if he didn’t, the story would never be told. And then what? Ivan Delkoff would go down as the engineer of a failed attempt on the president’s life, that was all. His role in history would be written by other men and, almost certainly, trivialized. Or, just as bad: he wouldn’t be known at all.

  Delkoff finished and decided to take a break, to give his eyes a rest. He lay down on the narrow bed against the wall, still dressed in his fatigues, and immediately fell asleep.

  When he woke, the sun was a sharp glare through the glass. Delkoff sat up groggily. The room appeared dusty and unfamiliar. A breeze puffed out the curtains and he smelled sea brine and coffee. Slowly it came back to him: the trip to the restaurant, the note, his mission.

  Then he heard what had awakened him: Little Dmitri was in the hallway calling out his name, banging on the door and trying the knob. Had he locked it? It was Tuesday morning, already past 7:30. “Ebat’-kopat’,” he said to himself. Oh, shit. Delkoff unlocked the door and let his little cousin see that he was okay.

  “Come down for breakfast. We need to call the American.”

  Delkoff nodded and closed the door. He wasn’t okay, really, but he would be. He stuck his head out the window, breathing deeply the morning air. It was a beautiful day. He looked across the grain fields toward the Channel, blinking at the blue horizon.

  He returned to the table and refreshed the screen on his computer. It was still there. His “Declaration.” And the first-person account that accompanied it.

  Delkoff began to read what he’d written, but began to have trouble focusing on the sentences. The house felt like it was moving, as if Delkoff were on a ship. He’d forgotten the way vodka could do that, take him on a wild ride through his memories and emotions. And then . . . you wake up, your head’s thumping, and you can’t put together the simplest thoughts. Like: which should come first, breakfast or shower? Delkoff couldn’t decide. He walked to the bathroom first and violently threw up. Then he settled in for a long, hot shower. There was a time, years ago, when this had been his life—when he’d spent every morning just waiting to feel normal again; often, it wouldn’t come back to him until afternoon, and then he was grateful just to be able to think clearly for a couple of hours. The war had pulled him out of that cycle; it was why he’d quit drinking, because you can’t live that way in war and be any good. War turned some people into drunks; it’d done the opposite for Delkoff.

  He made the shower run ice cold over his chest and face and stayed under it for several minutes. Then he dressed in his fatigues and army boots, feeling better, his skin tingling from the cold as he walked downstairs, his son’s medal in his shirt pocket again, Pavel’s cross around his neck.

  “It’s five till eight,” Little Dmitri said as he sat at the breakfast table.

  “What time did we say?”

  “First thing. Eight o’clock.” Dmitri wrinkled his nose. Delkoff watched him, trying to figure what else was wrong. The air from the meadow already felt warm through the kitchen windows. Something good was trying to bubble up in Delkoff’s sore head. We can delay this a few minutes, he thought, reaching for the orange juice carton.

  He poured a small glass of juice. Dmitri cooked him fried eggs and bacon. “I’ll call him in ten minutes,” he said.

  The breakfast brought Delkoff back a little more; he could feel his mental energies recharging. He had always been able to adapt. People didn’t know he could do that. Delkoff understood that he’d made a mistake when he took that first drink on the plane to Paris. But he could put that in a box now and bury it, as he could his earlier mistake. He could only afford to be
fighting his enemies today, not himself.

  “I’ve heard bad news,” Dmitri told him. “I’m told they went to my sister’s house in Gomel yesterday. We’re going to have to move quickly.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “They didn’t harm her. But they interrogated her and threatened her. I’m sure they’ll be coming for us soon.”

  Delkoff reached for a piece of buttered toast, feeling enormous affection for Dmitri again, for all that his cousin had done for him. Delkoff knew his options: He could hide and work his networks; if he was lucky, he might last another week or two. Or he could deal.

  “Before I go,” Delkoff said, “I want to review my accounts with you again, Dmitri. And then I want you to leave here. As soon as I do.”

  Delkoff would take what he needed in cash and leave the rest for Dmitri. He’d never been very interested in financial wealth, anyway. Most of his fortune—and that’s what it was now, since signing on to Turov’s project—would help his family and Dmitri’s family.

  “Now go ahead,” he said. “Call the American. Deliver the message that I’ll meet him at 10:30. Tell him I have something important to give him.” He looked at his cousin’s disapproving face and dabbed at the crumbs on the plate with his fingertips. “Make it 10:15.”

  Dmitri said nothing. Delkoff knew what he was thinking. He watched his little cousin as he began to clean the plates. “The trouble with our president is that he never was a real soldier, isn’t it?” Delkoff said. “His training was to deceive foreigners, and he’s good at it. But now this man controls all of the armed forces, and that is not good.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Dmitri said. They had talked of this before. Both were wary of powerful men who had never served as soldiers, particularly men as ambitious and devious as Russia’s president.

  “Can you trust them, though?” Dmitri asked, wiping his hands. Meaning the Americans.

  “Look who I trusted before. And where it got me.”