The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

  “Sort of like a Track II negotiation, you’re saying,” he said.

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Which you could sell to the Kremlin. And I could sell to Washington?” As you sold them the attack of August 13, he wanted to add. He watched the steadiness of Turov’s expression. Only his eyes did not seem ordinary; his blue eyes were so unusual that looking at them for long felt almost voyeuristic.

  “Yes, why not?” Turov said. “So much is done now by third parties, anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Forgetting for a moment the twenty-six people who died in that attack,” Chris said, in a tone that he expected would prod Turov.

  But Turov just smiled. “What happened on August 13 was a terror attack,” he said. “Right now, your country has its own theories about who was behind it, we have ours. There is some common ground in those ideas, and maybe that’s where we could start to work together. We could agree, for instance, that the attack was carried out by a rogue GRU colonel named Ivan Delkoff. And that a Ukrainian financier named Dmitro Hordiyenko—who operates a private militia and has funded campaigns against President Putin—procured the equipment.

  “We could also agree on who carried out the mission: Zelenko, Pletner, Kolchak.”

  “I won’t argue with any of that,” Chris said.

  “And so, the real question becomes: What could be accomplished if we were to align our narratives? If you were able to put aside your prejudices and conspiracy theories about Russia, to step back from your notions of American exceptionalism—or triumphalism, as we call it—so we could tell a story that benefited both of us.”

  “Is that what you’re proposing?”

  “It was, yes.” Turov smiled privately. “I have two proposals, actually. But we could begin with that: What if our countries were to agree—after a proper investigation, of course—on a public accounting of what happened on August 13? To say, for example, that the attack was planned not by the Kremlin, and not in Washington. Sparing our governments that humiliation.”

  Chris was silent. A sustained rumble of low thunder shook the house. Humiliation, he knew, was a sensitive subject in Russia; 1991 and the lost Soviet empire still sat uneasily in the psyches of many Russians.

  “Instead, we present evidence, at the conclusion of an international inquiry—and after negotiating certain concessions—showing that the operation was planned and carried out by Delkoff, working with extremist, right-wing forces in Ukraine.”

  “So that both the United States and Russia come out as winners, you’re saying.”

  A tiny smile tugged the corners of Turov’s mouth.

  “Your proposal would benefit Russia far more than us, though, wouldn’t it?” Chris said.

  Turov frowned, as if not comprehending. “Really? Most of the world now thinks that August 13 was planned and funded by your CIA. What I’m saying is, imagine what we could do if we were able to move past that story. And work together, on matters of substance: terrorism. ISIS. North Korea. Israel-Palestine. We could do some remarkable things together. We might even give the world a better example. One that would make war less likely in the future. Sometimes,” he added, “it’s up to people like us to make the moves that our governments aren’t able to make. I think you probably feel the same.”

  “Probably,” Chris said, knowing now what Turov was doing. “Although that sounds more like an American sentiment than a Russian one.”

  Turov smiled and turned to look at the rain. Christopher didn’t disagree with him. But he also sensed that this was a trick. For whatever reason, this conversation felt like a prelude to something else.

  “You mentioned concessions. What would they be?”

  “Both countries would remove sanctions,” Turov said. “You would consider repealing your so-called Magnitsky legislation. NATO would back away from our borders. And back away from this European Reassurance Initiative. Which gives you the right to put troops on our borders in violation of past agreements. It would be like us putting our troops along the borders of Mexico and Canada.” Chris smiled. “Instead, we’d resolve to work together. You’d come to respect Russia’s history and traditions, our role in the Middle East, our partnerships in Asia, and we’d respect America’s interests. Within reason.”

  A sudden burst of thunder shook the house, rattling the windows. Christopher felt Turov’s blue eyes watching him. “It’s a nice idea, anyway,” he said. “But none of that’s going to happen, is it? That isn’t why you called me here.”

  “It was.” Turov’s smile was like a twitch this time. “I wanted to give you the optimistic, more American version first, as you say. An idea we might come back to.”

  “All right.”

  Turov looked away, as though hearing something unsettling outside in the pounding rain, and Christopher caught a glimpse of his darker calculations. And understood: there was one more Turov illusion coming.

  “So tell me about the second proposal,” Chris said. “Tell me the reason I’m here.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Jake Briggs stood behind the wall, staring up at the bricks and mortar as rain fell in hard slants though the trees. He’d scaled walls like this hundreds of times in training. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether he should. Christopher had said nothing about following him onto the property. Only that he wanted him to know where he was, to “be a witness.” Briggs knew that he might jeopardize the mission now if he made a wrong move. He reminded himself that this was Chris’s operation, not his. He was here as backup.

  At the same time, Briggs didn’t care for Christopher’s vulnerabilities. There was something reckless about him going alone into the lion’s den this way. Niles was an analyst and a retired intel officer; he wasn’t a soldier. And Briggs wasn’t convinced Turov hadn’t laid an elaborate trap for him.

  It’s just us. No one’s coming in to rescue us.

  He debated it for several minutes as gusts of rain shook the treetops. Finally, Briggs stepped back, visualized what he was going to do, and did it—running up to the wall, planting his foot waist-high, swinging his arms for leverage, grabbing the top of the wall, and pulling himself up and over. He dropped down on the other side and lay flat on the edge of the lawn, knowing the rain had given him some camouflage. But was it enough?

  He raised his head and studied the setup: the house they’d taken Chris to was a modern-looking job, with geometric designs, tall ceilings, giant windows. Between him and the house was a long, manicured yard with topiary hedges, a narrow decorative pool, and four modern-looking sculptures of giant figures. Briggs skittered crablike to the cover of the closest sculpture, what seemed to be a large bronze of a kneeling nude woman. The sculpture would serve as his observation post. Briggs lay down behind it and waited, surveying the back of the house, looking for cameras, for the ways in and out.

  What he thought at first was a bush or a statue on the back porch, he began to see, was in fact a person: a security guard was standing outside the door under a metal awning. The tiny red glow against his face was a cigarette.

  Briggs knew that Turov depended on a handful of security men, and suspected there were just two or three with him here today. Like Christopher, he preferred small numbers. Anton Konkin, Turov’s security chief, was inside, probably monitoring the property on video cameras. Whether Konkin had already spotted him he didn’t know. But it was best to assume he had.

  Briggs saw moving shapes through the window of a corner room— smudges of shadow and light. Christopher’s in there. Briggs wasn’t going to make any move now unless he had to, he decided. Unless he was confronted. He wasn’t going to do anything that would jeopardize Chris’s mission . . . As he lay in the grass, Briggs thought of his respite at the French harbor—how the early morning scent of the sea had drawn him to the pebbly beach while he waited for Delkoff. And he thought of what had happened later that morning—the surprise ambush of Delkoff and his men. Other images filtered through his thoughts as the wind blew sheets of rain across t
he pool: the young Russian men dragging American flags over the cobblestones in Red Square, their faces strained with manufactured hate. This isn’t about what you saw in Red Square, he told himself, or about Delkoff. It wasn’t about anger, or revenge, or chasing phantoms. This was Chris’s mission, not his.

  But how will I know when enough time has passed? Or too much time? He’d have to trust his instincts.

  He saw movement again on the back porch: the guard was stepping out into the rain now, finished with his cigarette. Briggs lowered his head, flattening himself on the ground. He lifted his eyes and saw the man walking parallel to the house, beginning a surveillance round, maybe. Briggs recognized him now from the leather jacket and jeans: it was the man who’d opened the van doors for Chris near Gorky Park.

  Halfway across the back of the house, the man stopped. He turned, looking his way. Then lifted something to his face. A phone. Briggs reached for his gun. He rose to a crouch, shielded still behind the sculpture. The guard stepped away from the house and walked toward him for several paces. Then he stopped, and stood still.

  Briggs lost sight of him for a few seconds in the rain. Then he noticed something else—there was motion to his right now: another man was coming from around the front of the pool.

  So they’d seen him. Or seen something.

  The second man stopped. Briggs heard voices, the men talking above the beat of the rain. They began to move again, their paths converging as they walked toward the back of the yard. Briggs took a deep breath. He peered around the sculpture. One of the guards shouted something in Russian. He fired a shot that was wide to his left, maybe intentionally so. Briggs stepped to the side, returned fire and scrambled back to cover. Three more shots rang out immediately, two of them clanging off the head of the sculpture. Briggs waited. Briefly he had a clear view of the second guard, who seemed suddenly disoriented. Briggs stepped out from the sculpture again and fired, hitting the man three times as he tried to aim his gun. Briggs watched him go down, both legs tucked underneath him.

  That’s when he saw that the first man was down, too.

  The rain seemed to turn deafening after that, as if someone had turned up a volume knob. Briggs looked at the men he’d shot, both lying in the grass beside the pool, like modern sculpture. He scurried to the cover of a side hedge, and waited for the other one. Anton Konkin.

  Lit up with adrenaline, Briggs began to step along the perimeter of the yard toward the house. Knowing that Konkin must’ve seen, or heard, what had just happened. Briggs’s advantage was the storm. And momentum. And desire.

  He stood, flush against the house, out of range of the cameras.

  Waiting for the back door to open.

  When it did, Briggs didn’t hesitate. He knew that he had no choice anymore. There could be no half measures now. He had to keep moving forward, until this was finished.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The second proposal you’ll prefer,” Andrei Turov said, lowering his eyes in a way that suggested humility. Chris was still thinking about the first: the utopian idea of using the August 13 attack to create an alliance between their countries, a partnership dedicated to higher aims, such as “eliminating” terrorism. The grandiosity of Turov’s ambitions always seemed to blossom in the presence of other people, Chris knew; he’d written that in his report, a copy of which sat now on Turov’s desk. “If—let’s say—the Kremlin was unreceptive to what we just discussed. We might then bypass them altogether and negotiate a different arrangement.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your country’s loss of credibility and internal divisions will only worsen, as I’m sure you know,” Turov added solemnly. “Analysts are predicting that your country is on course to break into pieces, much as the Soviet Union did in 1991.”

  “You’re underestimating the United States, Andrei, but go ahead.”

  Turov smiled slightly. Then his expression stiffened, as if correcting itself. Chris could see he didn’t like that. “If,” Turov said, “some documents existed—not here—but say some documents existed, the kind of evidence you’d need to tell a different story about August 13.”

  “Evidence—?”

  “Digital recordings of phone conversations. Records of transactions between Colonel Delkoff, Anton Konkin, my head of security, and the Kremlin. More significantly: a transfer of funds from a Kremlin-run RFM account—the president’s personal financial intelligence unit—that ended up with Delkoff. Real evidence. Not these ramblings of the ‘crazy colonel.’”

  “Tying the events of that day to the Kremlin, in other words,” Christopher said.

  Turov nodded once. “Evidence that would allow your journalists and political leaders to tell the story you’ve been trying to tell about Russia for years now.”

  “Okay,” Chris said. They’d come, at last, to Turov’s real trick, he sensed: for years, Putin’s critics had portrayed the Russian president as a high-level “thug,” the silent force behind the murders of journalists and dissidents. But there’d never been good evidence linking him directly to those crimes. Here was someone offering that. Putin Kryptonite. Turov was taking this in a direction he hadn’t expected: offering to betray his country, to sell out the president. Cassius scheming against Caesar.

  “Okay,” Chris said. “And in exchange—?”

  “We would need to work out terms.” He looked away for a moment. Perhaps Turov saw this as his only way out now; maybe he felt that Putin had hijacked his original plan and he needed the US to bail him out. Or maybe this was something else. Chris reminded himself that Turov was an illusionist.

  “I’d want some personal assurances, obviously,” Turov said. “Information for immunity.”

  “For you.”

  “For my family. I’d want an assurance that neither of my daughters would be prosecuted or harmed in the event that details ever came out. I’d want immunity for my daughter Svetlana, in particular, and her children. And for my closest staff, Olga Sheversky and Anton Konkin, and their families. And lastly, for myself, yes. That’s all I would ask.”

  Chris waited on a boom of thunder. “Immunity beginning—?”

  “Tonight. Now.”

  The diplomat in Christopher wanted to agree; the pragmatist wanted more details. He recalled what Amira had told him on Tuesday, about Turov’s concerns for his family. “I don’t know that I could do anything that quickly,” he said.

  “Unless you had to.” His eyes went calmly to Christopher’s report. “You have a private plane at the airport, don’t you? You are planning to fly to Washington tonight, correct?” Chris tilted his head to acknowledge it was possible. “I think you understand how we can help each other. And our countries.”

  Chris glanced at the blur of rain out the window, almost believing Turov. Here was a man who had devised a project to destroy the United States’s credibility in four moves, while creating the conditions for a regional conflict in the Baltics that could easily escalate into a war against the West. Now he was trying to play ambassador? It meant that on some level he must feel that he was being betrayed by his own country.

  “You’re not afraid that you’re under FSB surveillance now?” Chris asked.

  “Not here, no. We are safe in this building. We’ve been very careful.”

  Chris knew that he was nowhere right now, in a neighborhood he’d probably never find again. “What are you proposing, then? Specifically?”

  “I can provide a set of nine documents, including bank transfer records, phone transcripts, and emails, which will confirm the Kremlin’s role. They will include a document I generated summarizing the entire plan, a copy of which was handed to the president.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I’ve given them all to a personal carrier. They’re not in this country,” he said. “Once we complete the deal, however, the information is yours.”

  “Once you’re out of the country, in other words.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this information will prove co
nclusively that the president was directly involved in August 13?” Turov nodded in that almost imperceptible way he had. Chris held his gaze. He had come to Turov hoping to strike a deal; he didn’t expect Turov would make it so easy. “And explain to me exactly why you want to do this.”

  “Because.” He looked at Chris as if he already knew the answer. “We all have an expiration date. I have no reason to think mine isn’t coming soon. I can’t just go into exile in London like some of the president’s other former friends. But even if I could, it’s my family I care about. My grandchildren, and their children. My lineage. At the same time,” he added, “I care what happens to our countries. The big war that is coming will not involve nuclear weapons, you know that. It will be a game that is played in rooms that most people will never see.”

  “The children’s game.”

  Turov said nothing. But there was a twinkle now in his eyes. “And I could help you with that. I could help your side.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because.” His smile this time was unexpected. “You know me. You know who I am. And no one else in your government seems to, as this shows.” He tapped an index finger on Chris’s report. “We might even make a good team. Certainly an interesting one.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then we’d drive you back. Or to the airport. And you’d leave. And I’d make other arrangements. But you won’t say no,” Turov said. “You didn’t come this far to say no.”

  Christopher gazed again at the rain, beginning to play out the moves he’d need to make for this to work. “All right,” he said. “Tell me what you need, then, and let’s do it.”