The Kremlin Conspiracy

by Joel C. Rosenberg

“Come, Oleg, sit—make yourself comfortable,” she said, handing him a steaming cup of chai. “Your father wanted to join us. But you know his work. The board meets in two days. He left before dawn. But he’s proud of you, Oleg—very proud—and he cannot wait to hear how it goes. He wants you to call him the minute you have your answer. I’ve actually never seen him like this. He’s almost giddy.”

  Giddy? It was not a description Oleg had ever heard applied to his father. But it made him feel good. At the same time, he was far too anxious to eat, for reasons that had nothing to do with his dream. So he apologized to his mother, kissed her on the cheek, grabbed his overcoat and briefcase, and dashed to the garage.

  Moments later, he was sitting behind the wheel of his gleaming new silver Mercedes, lighting another cigarette, gunning the engine, and racing down the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway, heading east for the grueling two-hour slog through morning rush-hour traffic. Trying to get his mind off the night terrors and off the day’s business, which alone would have made him jittery, Oleg switched on the car radio and tuned in to a news station.

  The news anchor said an eight-story flat along the Kashirskoye Highway had been obliterated. Oleg could scarcely believe it. How was this possible? Three bombings in ten days? By whom? And for what? The attack had happened just before sunrise, while most of the building’s residents were still sleeping. Already the hospitals were filling up with the wounded. The morgues were filling with the dead. Local authorities were telling reporters that more than three dozen bodies had been pulled from the wreckage already. Oleg had no doubt the death toll would climb throughout the day. A spokesman for the Moscow police being interviewed live at the scene said the explosion had apparently been caused by a large bomb that had been placed in the basement, near the furnace, though he cautioned the public not to jump to any conclusions before a full investigation could be completed.

  It was too late for that, Oleg thought. His hands gripped the steering wheel until they were white. He was not scared. He was furious. His country was under siege, and the military would soon be striking back. That much was certain. What wasn’t clear was who the enemy was and what their motives could be. The Cold War had been over for nearly a decade. This wasn’t the Americans. It wasn’t the Brits or anyone in NATO. Then who?

  Oleg’s legal training began to kick in. As the youngest partner in one of Moscow’s most prestigious law firms, he was used to asking questions, collecting facts, sifting and analyzing dates and times and places and details large and small. What exactly was known for certain? What was speculation and what was really true? What were the connections between each of the attacks, and what could they reveal about potential suspects and motives?

  The first attack had occurred on 4 September in the city of Buinaksk, near the border with Chechnya. It had involved a truck bomb, not one placed inside a building. But there, too, an apartment complex had been the target. Oleg had seen pictures of it on the evening news. A five-story flat had been reduced to rubble. The TV had shown flames and smoke and charred human body parts and screaming children, faces bloodied, desperately searching for parents they would never find. Sixty-four people had been killed, and yet Oleg was ashamed to admit that at the time the whole thing had made little emotional impact on him. To Oleg, it had all seemed so far away. It was terrible—unfathomable—to be sure. But it happened in the Caucasus. What could one expect? The province of Dagestan was an unstable, war-ridden hornet’s nest. He had two cousins who had fought the Chechens in Dagestan. There was never good news from the Caucasus. So Oleg had winced but moved on.

  The second attack had happened just five days later, on 9 September. It had occurred on Guryanova Street, in a poor but quiet neighborhood in the heart of Moscow, only a few kilometers from Oleg’s own flat. This wasn’t a crime in some far-flung, godforsaken outpost of the Russian Empire. This was a dagger pointed at the heart of the Russian capital.

  Vasily Malenchenko, a prominent investigative journalist for Novaya Gazeta, one of the city’s most influential newspapers, reported that the explosion had been caused by a large bomb in the building’s basement. Malenchenko was well-known for having excellent sources inside the police department and other state security services. He reported that the bomb had been attached to the gas furnace. He also reported that there were no solid leads yet as to who was behind the attack, but the working theory among senior officials was that this was the work of Chechen rebels.

  For days the government refused to either confirm or deny Malenchenko’s coverage. Yet everyone in Moscow and throughout Russia was fixated on his reports. Certainly Oleg’s neighbors and his colleagues in his office were all talking of little else. They had all seen the news. They had seen the smoking, gaping crater, the wrecked concrete, the twisted bicycles. They’d seen the severed arm hanging in a tree, an iconic image Oleg feared he would never forget. Ninety-four Muscovites were dead. Hundreds more were wounded. Burned. Disfigured. Shattered.

  Oleg had seen the interview, if you could call it that, with a man who had lost his wife and daughter. Apparently the man had just gotten into a cab. He’d been heading to the airport on business when his apartment had exploded right behind him. The reporter had tried to ask the man questions. She’d done it gently, respectfully, but the man could not answer. He had simply wept unashamedly and uncontrollably, convulsing with wrenching, unceasing grief.

  Unlike the attack in Dagestan, this one had unnerved Oleg. As he had stared at the incomprehensible images flickering across his television, he’d actually mumbled aloud what everyone in Moscow was thinking at the time: “It could have been me.”

  Now, just four days later, it had happened again.

  Panic was spreading across the country.

  Oleg briefly thought about turning his car around and heading back to his parents’ home. Driving into the heart of Moscow seemed foolish. This morning’s attack had occurred less than a kilometer away from his own flat. What was next?

  Still, he had business in the city. He’d waited for this day, planned for it more meticulously than for any trial. So he stayed on course, weaving through stop-and-go traffic for the next hour and a half, heading east into the heart of the capital. As he did, Oleg continued listening to the anchors and reporters on the radio providing further updates and analysis, trying like the ten million other residents of Moscow to process what it all meant. Innocent men, women, and children were dying. They were dying at night. In their sleep.

  Oleg recoiled at an ugly, unsettling new thought: Could this be what his dream had been about? Could his building be next? Or his parents’ house? Were the places he had known and loved and called home all his life about to go up in flames? Was he about to die—alone, unmarried, barely twenty-seven years old?

  Oleg had never had premonitions before. The very notion was ludicrous. He was an educated man. He’d graduated from Moscow State University, the finest in the country. He was an up-and-coming lawyer, making an excellent living. His clients included major Russian oil and gas companies. He wasn’t religious or even superstitious. He suddenly felt grateful he hadn’t sat down for breakfast with his mother. What if he’d told her about his dream? And she’d told others? He would have sounded crazy. Some things were best kept private.

  Just then a new and rather odd piece of information came over the radio. During a live interview, Vasily Malenchenko, the journalist with Novaya Gazeta, told a Moscow radio station that investigators at the scene of the blast were puzzled by finding not only traces of TNT but also a substance known as hexogen.

  “What is hexogen?” asked the radio reporter.

  “It’s an explosive compound,” Malenchenko said.

  “Like TNT?”

  “Actually, it’s far more powerful.”

  “So why’s that odd?” pressed the reporter. “Isn’t that what you’d expect at the site of a bombing?”

  “No, not really, not in a terrorist attack like this,” Malenchenko insisted.

  “Why not?”

/>   “Because terrorists shouldn’t be able to get their hands on hexogen,” he said. “It’s only used by the military.”

  A shudder rippled through Oleg’s body as he turned onto Third Ring Road, heading southeast. Was someone inside the Russian army helping Chechen terrorists? Had it come to this? He couldn’t imagine anyone cruel enough to perpetrate such atrocities. Who were these people?

  Marina’s father would know, he thought. Maybe not today, but soon, and he would know how to stop them. He would know how to make them truly suffer for this grave injustice. This gave Oleg a small measure of comfort.

  He crossed the river and inched along New Arbat Avenue, past the exit to the massive U.S. Embassy compound off to his left and the exit to the British Embassy and the Hard Rock Cafe—a favorite hangout in his youth—to his right. A few blocks up, but still progressing far too slowly, he decided to get off the main thoroughfare and zigzag through a series of side streets until he reached Kremlevskaya Nab. Finally, with only minutes to spare, he parked his Mercedes in a public garage behind the GUM department store, grabbed his briefcase, and headed for Red Square. The morning autumn air was cool and even a bit breezy, and Oleg was grateful he wasn’t heading to this meeting in the dead of summer. Walking this far, this fast, he surely would have melted in his designer suit from London and wound up looking like a wreck by the time he got there. What’s more, there would normally have been hordes of visitors from all over Russia and around the world slowing him down. But not today.

  On this particular Monday morning, there were no tourists on the streets whatsoever. They had all scattered to the wind. In their place, hundreds of police in riot gear were arriving. They were taking up positions around the State Museum, around Lenin’s Tomb and St. Basil’s Cathedral, and of course, around the Kremlin itself. Armored personnel carriers were being moved into position at various points to cut off all access to the square. Not one but two police helicopters were circling overhead. Moscow was moving to a war footing.

  Despite the clock, Oleg dared not break into a run to get to the meeting on time.

  He feared he’d be arrested, if not shot, for doing so. Rather, he walked as briskly as he could without arousing suspicion. Yet even as he did, he wondered if it was prudent to proceed at all. Surely his meeting had been canceled. No civilians in their right mind were anywhere to be seen. Perhaps it really was best that he head back to his parents’ home and reschedule. But still he kept moving forward.

  By the time he had skirted the enormous redbrick walls of the Kremlin and made it to the visitors’ center at the Kutafiya Tower, it was clear to Oleg he would not have any lines to wait in. Police carrying automatic weapons were buttoning up every entrance to the seat of the Russian government. All tours had been canceled, as had all but the most essential meetings. Oleg showed his ID to one policeman after another and explained why he was there and with whom he was meeting. Each time—to his astonishment—he was permitted to proceed. When he made it to the appointments desk, he slid his papers into the drawer and waited for the guard behind the bulletproof glass to review them.

  “Wait over there,” said the stone-faced guard. “Someone will collect you.”

  “The meeting is on?” Oleg asked, still not clear.

  “Wait,” the guard grunted without emotion. “Over there.”

  Oleg turned and saw a bench. But he could not sit. Instead he paced, then checked his watch, then reached for his pack of cigarettes and realized he had left them in the car. His appointment was in eight minutes. He had made it on time. The meeting had not been canceled. He could not explain why. But now he regretted his decision to come on an empty stomach. Anger and self-doubt made a toxic cocktail. He desperately needed a smoke. For the moment he would settle for a glass of water. He would get neither. Moments later a colonel in full dress uniform emerged from a side door, gave Oleg a plastic visitor’s badge he was to clip on his suit jacket, and ordered him to follow.

  Oleg was led to a security post manned by no fewer than four guards armed with machine guns. The colonel ordered Oleg to take any metal items out of his pockets and put them in a wooden bin. These were passed through an X-ray machine, along with his briefcase, which was also checked thoroughly by one of the guards as well as by the colonel. Then Oleg walked through the magnetometer. He cleared it without setting off any alarms, but this was not enough. A guard patted him down, then made Oleg take off his shoes, which were carefully examined. Only when the colonel and all four guards nodded to one another in agreement that Oleg and his few possessions posed no threat, and only after each man had signed a logbook of some kind attesting as much, was a vault-like door unlocked electronically.

  Oleg followed the colonel down a long hallway to the magnificent Troitskaya Tower, eighty meters high and built more than five centuries earlier. A guard standing ramrod straight held open a door, through which Oleg and the colonel exited into the open air. Dark clouds were moving in. Russian flags were snapping in the intensifying breeze. Oleg could feel no rain yet, but clearly a storm was coming.

  Oleg had never been to the Kremlin before, not even as a tourist. He had little time or interest for museums and tours and until recently couldn’t have imagined a circumstance that might bring him there. Now here he was. To his left stood the Arsenal, a pale-yellow, two-story building commissioned by Peter the Great that currently housed the security services responsible for guarding the Russian capital and its senior leaders. To his right was the massive marble-and-glass complex known as the State Kremlin Palace. Neither of these buildings, however, was their destination. Instead, the colonel led him past dozens more heavily armed soldiers to another pale-yellow building, this one shaped like an enormous isosceles triangle. It was known as the Senate.

  This was more heavily guarded than any of the other buildings, yet the two men entered without obstruction. Inside, the colonel led Oleg through the cavernous vestibule to a guard station where they checked in, and where both men and their few possessions again passed through metal detectors and X-ray machines. A smartly dressed aide in her early thirties was waiting for them. She did not smile, did not shake their hands, did not salute the colonel as others at the guard station had. She simply led the two men to an elevator, took them up to the third floor, and ushered them through more security checkpoints and a maze of corridors lined with paintings of all the Russian leaders of the past—from Alexander the Great and Peter the Great to Ivan the Terrible and Nicholas II—until they finally reached an anteroom flanked by security men in dark suits and ugly ties and jackets bulging from the weapons they carried underneath.

  A rather dour-looking older woman wearing a frumpy gray dress and sporting a hairdo that struck Oleg as a throwback to the days of the Soviet Politburo sat at a desk behind a large computer screen and a bank of telephones. She looked up at Oleg and the colonel but said nothing. She just pushed a button on one of the phones and then nodded at two agents guarding a large oak door.

  To the left of the door Oleg noticed a waiting area with nicely upholstered couches and chairs and a mahogany coffee table. But there would be no waiting. No small talk. No greetings of any kind. Not today. For no sooner had Oleg arrived than the security men opened the door and the colonel motioned him to enter. Alone.

  Oleg did as he was instructed and to his astonishment found himself standing before the next president of the Russian Federation.

  Aleksandr Ivanovich Luganov sat behind his desk, impassive and inscrutable.

  For the moment, he was still merely Russia’s prime minister.

  But Luganov was also the chosen—indeed, the openly anointed—successor of the nation’s current president, a man whose health had taken a serious turn for the worse in recent weeks. It seemed an unlikely choice. National elections were less than a month away. Luganov was not particularly well-known or well-liked among the Russian people, though with the president’s ill health, Luganov was already acting as chief executive in most ways that mattered. The latest polls showed ba
rely 4 percent of the public supported a former FSB chief to be the nation’s leader. Yet Oleg hoped he could find a way to win. The people did not yet see what Oleg saw—a man of strength and great courage, a man willing to do whatever was necessary to keep the country safe and to restore the glory of Mother Russia, so battered and tarnished in recent years. No one seemed better suited or more prepared to lead Russia into the challenges of the twenty-first century. To say that Oleg felt intimidated in Luganov’s presence was putting it mildly.

  Dressed in a dark-blue business suit, a crisp white shirt, and a navy-blue silk tie with small white polka dots, the man sitting behind the desk was relatively young—late forties—in excellent health and physically fit. He had the lean yet muscular physique of a wrestler or a judoka. His sandy-blond hair was thinning with a touch of gray at the temples. He was not tall—perhaps five feet six inches, a good two inches shorter than Oleg himself. But to Oleg, Luganov was a giant among men, and Oleg had no doubt the nation and the world would soon see and come to admire these qualities.

  Luganov didn’t smile or nod, much less greet Oleg, who stood frozen in the middle of the spacious, dark-paneled corner office, unsure what to do next. Oleg’s eyes darted around the room, taking in the arched ceiling and crystal chandelier above them and then the glass-enclosed bookshelves lining the walls to either side. Behind the prime minister to the left was a Russian flag on a gold stand. Behind him to the right was another flag. It too bore the distinctive broad white, blue, and red stripes but also featured the Russian state seal, embossed in gold. On the floor a large potted plant stood next to a credenza, upon which sat a color television, its sound muted, showing live pictures from the site of the latest bombing. On the paneled wall behind the prime minister was mounted a glistening gold carving of the national coat of arms with its double-headed imperial eagle and mounted horseman slaying a dragon.