by Max Karpov
And that’s when he felt certain: it was her. The voice belonged to Jon’s mystery source. 9:15.
He left a twenty on the table and rushed out, pulling his cell phone as a prop. He began to follow, staying a dozen paces behind as they walked down the street past the theater. But it didn’t matter: they were carrying on an animated conversation, too engaged to notice him. The woman was average height, but thin-hipped, well-dressed, with short dark hair and a slightly labored walk, as if her shoes were too tight. Not at all how he’d pictured her.
They stopped in the next block, and their argument suddenly flared up: the woman gesturing emphatically, her right hand poofing open in front of the man’s face at one point, as if she were casting a spell on him, or maybe a curse.
Jon gazed at his cell phone as he strained to hear what they were saying. The woman was young—not much more than twenty, he guessed. The man was at least twenty-five years older, heavy-jowled, gray, wearing a slightly oversized suit, no tie. Maybe her father.
They went two more blocks, saying nothing. Then the woman stopped beside an old model Jaguar parked at the curb. The man rounded the back of the car and opened the door for her. The woman glanced quickly Jon’s way, and he saw the unusual cast of her face—tall cheekbones and a wide mouth; smooth skin, like the face of a child.
Jon began to memorize the license plate number, watching as the car jerked away from the curb. Then he made his first phone call.
The DMV registration on the Jaguar came back to a man named Michael Ketchler. Forty-nine years old, home address a residence in Fairfax, Virginia. It took just a few minutes of online sleuthing for Jon to learn that Ketchler was a Washington attorney, a partner in the firm of Carrick & Carson Associates. There was a Russian connection, too: Ketchler had lived in Moscow during the mid-2000s, according to one bio, and worked for a year or so as a company attorney for Sputnik, the Russian news organization based in Washington.
Jon remembered what Anna Carpenter had said earlier about her son. David Carpenter was, among other things, a “penetration tester,” who sought out vulnerabilities in computer networks. But he could also negotiate his way around the dark web and access databases that Jon couldn’t. His next call was to Anna.
“Sorry to bother you so late,” he said.
“It isn’t late. What’s up?”
“Remember when you asked me about my sources on this story?” Jon said.
“Kind of.”
“I have an anonymous one,” Jon said. “She was the first person who told me about the preemptive strike discussion. 9:15, I call her.”
“9:15?”
“Yeah. Each time we’ve talked, that’s when she’s called. 9:15 in the evening. She’s the one who told me about the ‘no fingerprints’ thing,” he said.
“All right.”
“My editor, Roger Yorke, thinks that finding 9:15’s motivation might be the real story here.”
“Hard to do when she’s anonymous.”
“I know. Except that kind of just changed. I think I just saw her.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t have a name yet, but I just got an ID for the man she was with. I was wondering if maybe your son could help me dig a little deeper. I know he has access to databases. I don’t know, I just thought, if he could run some searches, the magazine will cover whatever—”
“Oh.” Anna laughed, her good nature immediately contagious. “Of course, he’ll help. He’d be glad to.”
“Good.” Jon took a breath. “So. I was wondering: how could I reach him?”
“David? I’m sitting next to him. He’d be delighted to help you. But call on his phone,” she said, and she gave him the number.
Jon looked out at the street, the night shadows, the pieces of sky among the buildings. David Carpenter answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” he said, receptive in a gruff, low-energy sort of way. Not exactly “delighted.”
He listened silently as Jon explained what he now knew about Michael Ketchler.
“Anything you can add to the picture would help,” Jon said. “Especially if he’s married or has a girlfriend. Or a daughter.” He described the woman he had seen earlier with Ketchler: early twenties, thin, short dark hair, five foot five or six. “Any images you can find of him with women matching that description would be helpful.”
“All right. I’ll have something for you by six, then,” David said, his tone surprisingly matter of fact.
“Six—?”
“A.m. I work at night,” David explained. “It’s quieter. I’ll send you a file in the morning.”
FORTY-FOUR
Wednesday, August 18. Moscow.
Jake Briggs walked across the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge toward Red Square, stopping at the spot where Boris Nemtsov had been murdered in February 2015. He looked out at the river and the crazy-colored onion domes of St. Basil’s, the famous cathedral built by Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, now Moscow’s most recognizable tourist site.
Briggs knew the story about Nemtsov’s murder: the former deputy prime minister turned opposition leader was shot here on a Friday night while walking home from dinner with his girlfriend. Two weeks before the killing, Nemtsov had written on a Russian blog, “I’m afraid Putin will kill me.” They were crossing the bridge at 11:40 when a car stopped behind him; a gunman got out and shot Nemtsov four times in the back. Nemtsov had been planning to lead an anti-Putin rally in Red Square that Sunday; he’d also been finalizing a report on Russia’s clandestine military role in Ukraine. The killing turned Sunday’s rally into a memorial and sent the opposition movement into retreat.
After the shootings, the sidewalk had overflowed with flowers. There were half a dozen bouquets marking the spot today, along with several homemade posters. A lot had changed in Moscow since Briggs had last been here. In 2011 and 2012, ahead of the presidential election, there’d been huge anti-Putin demonstrations in the city. Pundits had predicted for months that the Arab Spring fever then sweeping the Middle East would soon reach Moscow and might cost Putin reelection. But the pro-Putin forces managed that election well, busing in their own demonstrators, some of them paid in rubles or vodka to chant support. And Putin had prevailed. The laws on public demonstrations had tightened since then, making it more difficult to march and organize against the government. In December 2015, the Kremlin had passed a law authorizing the Russian security services to open fire in crowds “if necessary.”
Putin took it as an article of faith that the United States had been behind the 2011–12 demonstrations, much as he believed the CIA had engineered Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution of 2014. Putin’s greatest fear, Briggs knew, was still that a populist Arab Spring–style uprising would rock the streets of Moscow, bringing chaos to Russia and toppling his rule.
The demonstration in Red Square today was a different kind of rally: a protest against the United States for the August 13 assassination attempt. It was the sort of demonstration Putin welcomed.
Briggs walked across the bridge to Red Square, which was filled with thousands of protestors, and he was awed all over again by the architecture: the cathedrals and statues, the elegant pyramid of Lenin’s tomb, Resurrection Gate, the Kremlin walls. Most of the people here were oblivious to the history, though, waving the Russian tri-color flag or holding up cheesy anti-America signs. Some of the signs were in Cyrillic but most were in English for the international cameras. Lots of “USA KILLS.” To Briggs, the protests felt cheap and inappropriate for this magnificent setting. But then, Moscow had always seemed a schizophrenic city to him. He watched a group of four inebriated young men stomping on an American flag and fought the impulse to grab one of them and knock his head into the pavement. You could ruin your life acting on impulses like that, he counseled himself.
It was the same everywhere, demonstrators carrying on like overexcited children. There were cardboard cutouts of the US president with his face X-ed out; protestors trying to set oversized fake US currency on
fire, becoming like passionate monkeys every time a camera went on to record them. Don’t waste it. Don’t let them do it to you, Briggs thought.
He began to feel a kind of morbid curiosity, though, as he walked among the protestors. This didn’t even feel real to him; it felt like a kind of manufactured anger, stirred up by fake stories portraying the West—the United States—as Russia’s dire enemy. He tried to keep his eyes on the ground, picturing himself in a tunnel with Christopher Niles at the other end. Just keep going. What happened in France had nothing to do with this. He felt sprinkles of drizzle on his arms as he crossed the cobblestones, and smiled as some of the demonstrators pulled out umbrellas. He recalled an old saying he liked: Americans never carry umbrellas.
“Jake.” He looked to his right and there was Chris, walking into step beside him. Dressed in old loose-fitting slacks and work shirt, a gym bag slung over one shoulder. Slapping him on the back instead of shaking hands. Christopher’d always had a skill for blending in. Somehow he’d found Briggs among all these people.
“Performance art,” Briggs said. “All for the cameras.”
“Yeah, I know.” They kept walking through the crowd, Briggs feeling the moisture gathering on his face, the cobbestones waxy with falling drizzle. “You didn’t fuck up,” Chris said. “Your good news was very good. Okay?”
“And the bad news very bad.”
“No. You got us what we need.”
“Except they’re going to say that what he gave me isn’t real. They’re going to say the US made it up.”
“Probably,” Christopher said. “If it comes to that. But I don’t think it will.”
Okay, Briggs thought. So tell me about that. A wet gust of wind cut across the square, and for a few fleeting seconds it felt to Briggs as if they were two soldiers walking toward a battlefield.
“I’m meeting Turov at 2:30 this afternoon,” Christopher said, speaking just above a whisper. “The document gives me what I need for that.”
“Okay.” Briggs waited through another silence, Chris Niles seeming almost too calm. “Do you want me involved?” Briggs finally said.
“I’d like you to be, yes.” Good, Briggs thought. “I’d like you to follow and cover me. Martin has arranged a car for you. I need you to be a witness to where we go. And provide a way out, if I need it.” Christopher stopped among a loose crowd of demonstrators and spectators. The incongruity of their conversation and the anti-American hysteria all around struck Briggs as funny. “So. Tell me what happened,” Chris said, meaning France.
Briggs gave him a ten-minute version as they milled among the protestors: how he’d arrived in Paris late Sunday and made his initial contact Monday night; the phone calls with Delkoff’s cousin Dmitri; the meeting Tuesday morning at an abandoned caretaker’s cottage; the final drive back to the house; Delkoff pushing the flash drive into his shirt pocket, saying he needed to “try to work things out” at the house. And then he told him the last part: how Ivan Delkoff had turned and looked back with that strange half-smile and said something to him in Russian, probably knowing that he was about to die. “It was very weird. It was a kind of bravery. Like he was ready to sacrifice his life for this.”
Chris Niles said nothing until Briggs finished. Then he told him, succinctly, about the mission they would be working together. “However this turns out,” he said, “it’s just us. No one’s coming in to rescue us. It’s a two-man op. But that’s a good thing.”
“Does Martin Lindgren know what you’re doing?” Briggs asked.
“He knows general terms. What he needs to. They’re providing a G-5 to get us out. It’s up to us to make it to the airport. I asked Marty to wait on releasing Delkoff’s statement for twenty-one hours. Or until he hears from us. Or doesn’t hear.”
“Twenty-one?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “I picked a number.” Christopher gave him the rest as they walked away from Red Square: Briggs would find a Lada parked at a residential address three subway stops from his hotel. “There’s a 9mm in the car,” he said. “Let’s hope you won’t need it.”
The rain made a steady beat now through the leaves, raising a dusty scent off the pavement as they came to the river. “Do you think Turov’s already seen the document?”
“I assume he has,” Chris said. “They raided the house in France where Delkoff was staying. That’ll give him a head start.”
“And couldn’t this just be some kind of trap?”
“Sure, of course.” They kept walking, Briggs thinking about ambushes, because that’s what this felt like, a classic reversal ambush: you think you’re pursuing your prey right up until the moment you catch him; then the prey turns and takes you.
“But I don’t think so,” Chris said, and Briggs saw from the long-view clarity in his eyes that he’d already considered this and rejected it. “What’s he going to accomplish killing me? I’m out of the business now. And anything I know is also known by others.”
“Unless it’s personal.”
“Unless it’s personal.” Chris made a face. Briggs regretted putting that thought in his head; but then he saw that it didn’t matter: Chris had thought of that, too. When he was working, Chris Niles carried the qualities that all thinking people aspired to but most couldn’t maintain—staying focused, avoiding distractions, making right choices. If he could bottle that stuff, he’d be a billionaire many times over.
“If anything happens, we put Delkoff’s statement out immediately,” Christopher said. “I told Martin the same thing.”
“Okay.”
By the time they reached the street, they had run out of things to say. Talking too much loosened the focus; Briggs understood that. In a bus shelter, he saw a poster reading US KILLS INNOCENT PEOPLE. Briggs watched the rain dimpling the river as they went, a slow gust of wind tugging the leaves in one direction. He looked at Christopher, surprised how much his hair had grayed, and thought about the reflection of his own face in the airplane window, nearly unrecognizable. He thought of his boy on his knee last Friday in Virginia, watching the news about the “tear-riss” on TV. That seemed a long time ago now.
“What’s this rain going to do?”
“Supposed to rain all day.” Christopher glanced at him. “I thought you liked rain.”
“Yeah, I know. I do. You taking the bag with you?”
“No. You are.” Under a canopy of leaves, Christopher removed the gym bag from his shoulder and handed it to Briggs. “That’s for you. It’s got my phone and personal effects that I can’t carry to the meeting. Bring it with you.”
“Okay.”
Minutes later, Christopher slapped Briggs on the back, the same way he’d greeted him. Physically Briggs liked how this day was turning: the prematurely dark sky, the sopping hiss of car tires, the shiny reflections on the pavement, the white-blue-red lights strung across Moskvoretsky Bridge, the textures of the world sparkling with mysterious clarity all of a sudden.
He didn’t notice when exactly it was that Christopher Niles began to move away from him. But he looked over at one point and saw that he wasn’t there anymore. Briggs stopped and turned, looking all directions among the dripping trees. But Christopher was gone.
FORTY-FIVE
Washington.
Jon’s cell phone woke him at 5:58. Reaching for it, he knocked the water bottle from the nightstand and it splatted on the floor.
“Hello?”
“I’ve got your information, I just emailed it to you.”
“Okay.” The voice sounded unfamiliar, although he knew it had to be David Carpenter.
“Look at your email.”
“Did you have any luck?”
“Look at your email. I’m here if you want to call. If it’s her, and you want more, let me know.”
David clicked off. All business again, intense, unsociable, the opposite of his mother. Jon got up and fixed a cup of coffee. He sat at his kitchen table and skimmed through the notes that David had sent. It became apparent very quickly
that he had found more than Jon expected, including a name and bio for his 9:15 caller: Sonya Natalie Larsen. She worked as a legal secretary for the high-end D.C. law firm of Carrick & Carson, which represented charitable foundations and nonprofits. Her boss was Michael Ketchler, the man Jon had seen her arguing with the night before.
David had sent eight images along with the text file. Only one identified her by name, and the photo was grainy. Of the others, which he’d ID’d through facial recognition, the first three were marked “probable,” the other four “possible.” It was one of the “possibles” that clinched it.
He called David back six minutes later. “Yeah. It’s her,” he said. “Great work.” David said nothing. “How soon can you get me more?”
“Now, if you want. The senator asked me to drop everything else. Which I can do.”
Jon smiled. The senator. “I really appreciate this,” he said.
He began to read through David’s preliminary report more carefully. Sonya Natalie Larsen was twenty-five years old; at work, she apparently went by the name Natalie, according to a company website. She had moved to the United States last summer from London, where she’d worked for Linklaters LLP. “Married, and separated. To attorney Edward Larsen,” according to David’s report. For eleven months, she’d been renting a two-bedroom apartment in Alexandria.
It was all pretty weird, Jon thought. He’d assumed before last night that 9:15 would be someone older, and better connected. A political operative, or someone in the IC. Maybe the wife or girlfriend of a high-level operative at Defense or CIA. Someone with a clear political agenda on US-Russia relations.
So who was Natalie Larsen? And how would she have been privy to classified intelligence conversations about Russia? Jon spent half an hour running his own data searches on her, but they turned up nothing. And that was sort of weird, too.
Then he got a different idea. Recalling his conversation with Harland Strickland, and his last phone call with 9:15; and the place they had intersected.
