The Kremlin Conspiracy

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Marcus had completely underestimated what he was in for. Over the next three hours—without so much as a break to visit the restroom—Jenny Morris probed every part of his life, his career, his finances, his part-time work at Lincoln Park Baptist Church, the details of his compensation from Senator Dayton, his relationship with Pete Hwang, how he had chosen each of the men on the security detail, why he’d said yes to going on the trip at all, given that he’d initially said no, and rather definitively at that.

  Then the questions turned to his relationship to the Raven.

  “Do you know the source?” she asked.

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “That’s not an option,” said Morris.

  “Actually, it is,” Marcus replied.

  “At least answer this,” Morris pressed. “Do you know his name?”

  “I can’t answer that either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I gave my word to the source that I’m not going to discuss any details regarding his identity. You know he’s a male. You know I trust him. You know he has access. That’s it. That’s all I’m going to say.”

  “Had you ever met him before?”

  Marcus remained silent. He had nothing more to say if she was going to continue this line of questioning. He knew his credibility with his own government was on the line. A lie would not only go against his own code of ethics but could potentially cause President Clarke to disregard the urgent warning about imminent war in Europe. Better to just decline to answer.

  “Do you believe he reached out to you, of all people, because he had met you previously?” Morris asked, trying from another angle.

  Marcus felt deeply uncomfortable keeping information from his own government. He had, after all, spent most of his adult life protecting his country and his government. Now he was protecting a man deep inside an enemy’s inner circle. Yet having given Oleg Kraskin his word to protect his identity, he had no choice. So again, he kept quiet.

  So Morris changed topics, to one that made Marcus even more uncomfortable.

  “Your wife, Elena, and son, Lars—were they killed in a robbery attempt?”

  Marcus gritted his teeth. “Yes,” he finally conceded.

  “Shortly after their deaths, did you resign your position as special agent with the U.S. Secret Service?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of the killers died at the scene. Was the surviving perpetrator of these murders ever caught and brought to justice?”

  “No.”

  “Were any suspects ever arrested and charged in the case?”

  “No.”

  “So the case remains open today?”

  Marcus took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Any current leads?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Does that make you angry?”

  Again he had to pause to steady his nerves. “Yes.” There was no sense lying about that one.

  “Do you want revenge against whoever was responsible?”

  “No.”

  The lines on the display went crazy. Morris looked at him. He looked back and saw pity in her eyes. That only made the lines gyrate all the more.

  “Would you ever take revenge if you had the chance?”

  She was giving him a mulligan, and he was grateful for the small act of kindness.

  “No,” he said with every muscle in his body tensed.

  The lines moved not at all.

  The final area of questioning that created no small measure of discomfort pertained to his private life.

  “Mr. Ryker, after the death of your wife, did you ever remarry?”

  Marcus tensed again. “What does that have to do with anything?” he demanded.

  “Just answer the question, please. We’re almost done. Did you ever remarry?”

  Marcus shook his head slowly.

  “You need to give a verbal answer, Mr. Ryker.”

  “No,” he said softly.

  “Have you dated anyone in the last several years?”

  “No.” He suddenly felt very thirsty.

  “Have any women expressed interest in dating you?”

  Marcus couldn’t imagine how this was relevant, but he answered anyway. “Yes.”

  “But you declined?”

  “Yes.”

  “During your travels with Senator Dayton, were you ever propositioned by a woman?”

  “What?” Marcus snapped.

  “Were you?” Morris asked calmly.

  “Never,” he replied, then remembered to answer properly. “No.”

  “Not in the Baltic states?”

  “No.”

  “Not in Moscow?”

  “No.”

  “Were you in any environment, any situation, that could have been construed by you or by others as a honey trap?”

  It had taken several questions, but Marcus finally understood her purpose. He was a widower, potentially vulnerable to the efforts of a foreign intelligence agency to seduce him with romantic affections or sexual favors, compromising his credibility as a witness. Marcus was the only person who had met with the Raven. Everyone else in the U.S. national security apparatus was depending on his credibility. So Morris had to ask. Spy agencies had been setting honey traps for needy, vulnerable men from time immemorial, and the head of the CIA’s Moscow station would not have been doing her job if she hadn’t asked every relevant question, no matter how uncomfortable it made her subject.

  “No,” he said at last.

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.—26 SEPTEMBER

  In Washington the day was just beginning, and the president of the United States was fuming.

  Andrew Clarke entered the Oval Office at precisely 7 a.m. As a steward brought him coffee, the chief executive pored over every story on the front pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. They were all about Luganov, his surprise trip to Pyongyang, his extraordinary press conference announcing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and his announcement that he intended to deescalate tensions along the Baltic and Ukrainian borders. In a single day, the Russian leader had completely changed the media narrative about him. No longer was he regarded as a rapidly intensifying threat to global safety and security. Suddenly he was being hailed as a man of peace and a viable recipient of a Nobel Prize.

  Disgusted, Clarke tossed the papers aside and informed his secretary that she could send in the guests who were waiting in the lobby of the West Wing for their 7:30 meeting.

  The first to enter the Oval was Richard Stephens, the balding, sixty-four-year-old director of the CIA who had previously served as the senior senator from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Following him in was Cal Foster, the silver-haired, seventy-one-year-old secretary of defense. A retired four-star general, Foster had served more than three decades in the U.S. Army and nearly five years as the supreme allied commander of NATO. Also joining them was Bill McDermott, recently appointed deputy national security advisor. The last man to enter the room was the White House chief of staff.

  Director Stephens began the briefing by giving the president and each participant a black leather-bound notebook embossed in gold lettering with the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency and the words The President’s Daily Briefing. Underneath that was the president’s name. Below that were the words TOP SECRET: Contains Sensitive Material. Inside was an eight-page bullet-point summary of the most urgent and important intelligence information the commander in chief needed to know.

  During the previous day’s briefing, Stephens had introduced Clarke to the emergence of a possible high-level mole in Moscow code-named the Raven. He’d given the president an overview of the mole’s allegations and the fifty-three photos of documents the source had passed to an American case officer. No specifics about either figure were given, but plenty of caveats were. Stephens had underscored to the president how raw and unconfirmed this intel was. He’d also drawn the president’s attention to the section of t
he PDB mentioning the fact that Senator Dayton had met with President Luganov in the Kremlin, promising that more details of the meeting would be forthcoming.

  Today they were.

  “Mr. President, you’ll find that the last five pages in today’s PDB are a point-by-point account of Senator Dayton’s conversation with President Luganov,” the CIA director explained. “These are the verbatim notes taken by our station chief in Moscow, who met with the senator and his team when they briefed Ambassador Reed. I’d like to go over this with you rather carefully, because we expect the senator to be here by nine, and when he arrives, we want you to be fully versed on what was said in the meeting so we can focus our time with him on drawing some conclusions and seeing if we can come to a bipartisan agreement on where to go from here.”

  “Fine,” Clarke said, leafing through the pages as he sat behind the Resolute desk.

  “That said, Mr. President,” Stephens continued, “the first two pages of your brief focus on what we’re learning from the Raven and his case officer. Page 3 is a summary of Russian military activity over the last twenty-four hours. With your permission, I’ll cover these. Then I’ve asked Secretary Foster to discuss options.”

  “What do we know about the Raven?” asked Clarke. “How close is he to Luganov? And how credible is the material he’s passed on to us?”

  “All excellent questions, and I will get to each one in turn,” Stephens replied. “But if you’ll allow me, sir, I want to start with the identity of the figure we described in yesterday’s briefing as our ‘case officer,’ because to a certain degree, our level of confidence in the Raven is predicated on our level of confidence in the one bringing him to us.”

  “Very well,” said the president. “Proceed.”

  “Thank you, sir. Now, keep in mind that the information we had regarding the Raven was only hours old when I briefed you yesterday. Therefore, I essentially gave you a mere abstract of what we’d received because we believed it could be enormously important. But I did not bring more detail at the time because there had been effectively no time to cross-check any of the information. Today I can tell you much more.”

  Clarke nodded and Stephens continued.

  “This case officer—the person who made contact with the Raven—is not an actual case officer at all. He’s neither an employee of nor a contractor for the Agency. Nor is he a Foreign Service officer or even an employee of the U.S. government. Not anymore.”

  “But he was?”

  “He was never with the Agency in any capacity, but yes, he did work for the U.S. government in various capacities over the years.”

  “Do you believe he is credible?”

  “We do, Mr. President. He served in the U.S. military and received a Purple Heart. Later he worked here at the White House for a time.”

  “So who is it?”

  “Marcus Ryker.”

  “Ryker? You mean the Secret Service agent?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Stephens confirmed.

  “The one who lost his wife and son a few years back?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought he’d retired. What’s he doing in Moscow, of all places?”

  Stephens looked to Bill McDermott.

  “I think I can explain that, sir,” the deputy NSA said. “Marcus has known Senator Dayton since he and I both served on the senator’s protection detail on his codel to Afghanistan back in ’04. They have totally different political views, at least on domestic and social issues, but when Dayton decided to go to Europe to raise his profile for a presidential run, he hired Marcus to help him put together a security team. Though Marcus does not support the senator’s presidential run, he agreed out of friendship and, you could say, out of a sense of loyalty to the man.”

  “Loyalty?” the president asked.

  “It’s a bit complicated.”

  “Give me the short version.”

  “Well, sir,” said McDermott, “Marcus was under my command back in Afghanistan. So was a guy named Peter Hwang. During Senator Dayton’s trip to Kabul, we came under attack by the Taliban. Two of our choppers were shot down. One was a total loss. The other—the one Dayton was in—had survivors. We had to make an emergency landing and found ourselves in a pretty serious firefight with a clan of jihadists. All of my men fought with tremendous distinction, but no one more so than Marcus. When it was all over, Dayton credited Marcus with saving his life. Every year on the anniversary of that attack, Senator Dayton either calls Marcus personally or sends him a handwritten note. I’ve heard them get into some rip-roaring fights on policy and politics. But they genuinely like and appreciate each other. Marcus believes he got into the Secret Service, in part, on the basis of a recommendation Dayton wrote for him.”

  “Loyalty,” the president said. “Got it.”

  “So that’s what put Marcus Ryker in Moscow,” McDermott noted. “It’s still not clear to us why this source—whom we’re calling the Raven—came to Marcus. But Marcus says the Raven reached out to him, made the initial contact, and I believe him. Marcus believes the source is totally legit. Says he’s wired in at the highest levels, though he won’t give us a name or a title or even a hint at who he is, out of fear of putting the man’s life in danger.”

  “We’re sure it’s a man?” asked Secretary Foster. “No possibility of a honey trap?”

  “Marcus says it is, and I have no reason to doubt him,” McDermott replied. “Ryker has served our country honorably. He took a bullet in the line of duty, Mr. President. I don’t see any evidence that suggests he was compromised, nor do I believe he could be.”

  “Was Ryker subjected to a PDD?” asked the White House chief of staff.

  “What’s that?” the president asked.

  “He’s referring to a psychophysiological detection of deception test,” McDermott said. “More commonly known as a polygraph.”

  “So was he?” the president asked.

  McDermott looked back at Stephens.

  “He was, sir,” said the CIA director.

  “And?”

  “He passed with flying colors.”

  At that, Clarke pushed his chair back from the desk and stood. He walked over to the windows and looked out at the falling leaves and changing colors of autumn.

  “So, bottom line, gentlemen, you believe this case officer—who is not a case officer at all—is credible. And by reading ahead in the PDB, I gather that the Raven’s statements and the documents he’s handed over to us have borne out so far. Correct?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Stephens confirmed.

  “Meanwhile we have Russian fighter and bomber squadrons and tanks and ground forces being transferred in recent weeks from the Pacific theater to the borders of the Baltics and Ukraine.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “And the written orders the Raven turned over indicate that Luganov intends to use these forces to invade NATO allies?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And both the CIA and DIA assess that unless we move a whole lot of men and matériel into the Baltics in the next few days, Luganov actually does have a credible capacity to seize Latvia and Estonia in less than sixty hours, followed by Lithuania in another forty-eight to ninety-six hours, give or take.”

  “We do, sir,” Stephens confirmed.

  “Moreover, the Raven claims that Luganov’s trip to Pyongyang is nothing but a smokescreen.”

  “Correct.”

  “Yet Luganov has signed a strategic alliance with North Korea, and the North Koreans have promised to fully dismantle their nuclear program and turn all the components over to the Russians.”

  “Correct.”

  Clarke was now pacing around the Oval Office. “Not only that, but Luganov has just held a press conference in Pyongyang saying fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and/or the Baltics are preposterous. He says the Russian military is merely conducting exercises and that in the interest of international peace and harmony, he has ordered all or most of these f
orces to be withdrawn by next week at the latest.”

  No one said a word. It was all true.

  “So those are the banner headlines we’re waking up to,” the president continued. “Luganov defusing two regional crises in a single day. Looks like a genius. A man of peace. And what do I look like if I mobilize the Eighty-Second Airborne and the 101st and start moving battle tanks toward the borders of Russia?”

  Every eye in the room turned to the secretary of defense.

  “Mr. President,” Foster said calmly, “I don’t see that we have a choice. We have to move, and we have to move fast. You can announce that the moment Russia really does remove 150,000 troops off the borders of our allies, you’ll be happy to consider redeploying our forces elsewhere in Europe. But until then, you have an obligation to ensure the NATO alliance is strong and that our capacity deterrence is unmistakable.”

  Clarke stopped pacing. “My only obligation, as you put it, is to the American people, who elected me in no small part to end our involvement in overseas conflicts, not exacerbate them and certainly not to potentially spark an international crisis by sending troops into a standoff with Russia. Until we have more information, until we have absolute proof that the war plan the Raven gave us is genuine, I will not send a single American soldier, tank, or plane into harm’s way.”

  MOSCOW—26 SEPTEMBER

  “I think we need a plan to assassinate Luganov,” Marcus said.

  Jennifer Morris was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a briefing on her Agency laptop. Marcus was standing at the sink, filling a kettle to make a pot of tea. He had just finished cleaning his Glock 9mm pistol, which lay on the table across from Morris along with a spare magazine. Beside them were bottles of cleaning solvent, gun oil, a soiled toothbrush, a cleaning rod, and a small box of Q-tips. It was clear from the stunned expression on Morris’s face that he’d caught her completely off guard. But in his mind the conversation couldn’t wait.

  “Assassinate the president of Russia?” she whispered, standing and moving across the kitchen to have the conversation up close and as quietly as possible.

  “Yes,” said Marcus.

  “Are you insane?” she replied. “We’re trying to stop a war, Ryker, not start one.”