RED Hotel

by Fuller, Ed; Grossman, Gary;

  Frederik took control of the dolly from the workmen and carefully rolled it back to the cooler.

  “Who?” she asked.

  Ketz’s assistant exhaled. “An important NATO delegate. I’ll find the receipt. He insisted on a live plant to take in the carbon monoxide. Can you imagine such a thing?” Frederik added with a laugh.

  Ketz lightened. “It’s an entitled Englishman, no doubt.”

  “I think he was. A bit officious. He was uncertain of his exact arrival date. I’m sure you don’t want to disappoint him.”

  “Of course not,” she replied. “But we have too little space and it’s taken too long. One more week, Frederik. Then it goes out to the lobby where I need it.”

  Frederik nodded. “Yes, Madame Ketz. One more week.”

  “Oh, and the temperature is too low in the refrigerator again. Please reset it,” the grand dame added before getting back to her own floral arrangements.

  “Yes, Madame Ketz.” Frederik checked the temperature. It was right where he needed it to be.

  75

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Back at his K Street condo the next day, Dan Reilly dove into more research Spike Boyce had emailed. He printed out twenty-two Excel spreadsheets and arranged them in ascending order on his dining room table—the same table he hadn’t eaten at in weeks. He also put State Department advisories for Eastern European nations on the living room floor. The latest warnings from private military contractors were taped to a large mirror. And his own internet searches covered his couch.

  After dividing up the content, he began a process of elimination, leaving the bookings to last.

  Identify the greatest political hotspots. Rate them on an inevitability scale of 1-5, one being highest. Add subjective analysis, which was simply his own gut reaction. Cross reference against the bookings, looking for any variables that would suggest a credible target.

  Reilly remembered the committee discussion about Prussian Army strategist Carl von Clausewitz. The quote that came to mind seemed all the more appropriate. “War is not merely a political act, but a political instrument. The political view is the object, the ultimate truth of the people behind the terrorist.”

  The political instrument? The political view? The ultimate truth? He thought about all three. The attack was the political instrument. The political view was NATO. The ultimate truth was territory. The terrorist and the people behind the terrorist? Andre Miklos. Behind him? The political stakeholder. The president.

  But what territory? Reilly couldn’t get the idea out of his head that he was missing something important, something just beyond his reach.

  He ran through a mental checklist that spanned his experience. College, military, government, and business. Boston University, Harvard, the US Army, the State Department, and Kensington Royal.

  Before he even realized why, Reilly was up and dialing his phone. He remembered.

  BRUSSELS

  The man kept up his vigil across the street from the Kensington Diplomat. He added a long-lens camera and computer to his tools, taking pictures, printing out headshots, charting delivery schedules, ID’ing security officers, and tracking defensive measures. He even itemized a list of changes that came with the hotel being elevated to Red status.

  Wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap and looking every bit like a tourist, he ventured into the target to reassess the active defenses. He casually walked through the lobby, into the restaurant, and back into the public areas. Workmen were installing a fabric of some sort on the windows, both exterior and interior, and a different material on the inside walls. He’d research what it was back in his lair. Large potted plants were in a corner, clearly positioned as a barrier to keep people away from the windows.

  All the measures would help contain a blast.

  He returned to his perch with dinner. In another few hours he’d sleep.

  WASHINGTON, DC

  “Colonel, it’s Dan Reilly. Sorry to bother you so late. I need your help.”

  Reilly was using another new cell phone and had called from the roof patio of his building.

  Colonel Harrison paused the History Channel documentary he was watching, The Plot to Overthrow FDR.

  “Not a problem, Mr. Reilly. What can I do for you?”

  “Ball’s Bluff. Can we talk about the Battle of Ball’s Bluff?” Reilly asked.

  “I see at least one of my Civil War lectures stuck. The Battle of Leesburg.”

  “It was considered a humiliating defeat for the Army of the Potomac. For Major General George B. McClellan.”

  “Quite correct,” Harrison confirmed. “Poor intelligence, an inexperienced leader, misunderstood orders, and ill-advised battlefield decisions. It all led up to a disaster.”

  “Didn’t it come down to the Union Army misreading signs? Looking in the wrong place?”

  “Precisely. McClellan ordered Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone to identify Confederate troop locations and troop strength near Leesburg, Virginia. Pomeroy sent in a raw officer who reported a line of thirty Confederate tents, but no troops. He assumed the encampment was unprotected. Operating under the limited intelligence, Stone ordered a raid. Three hundred Union forces of the 15th Massachusetts Regiment crossed the Potomac in just two boats, thirty men at a time. At first light they discovered that the trees had obscured the true scene. There was no Confederate camp. So the unit pressed on, but without a clear assessment of the terrain and the danger.”

  “And the enemy surprised them,” Reilly recalled. “From high ground.”

  “Yes, the North suffered a humiliating defeat. Hundreds killed and captured. For the South, it was a decisive victory early in the war. After the battle, the Union command took to pointing fingers at one another and Congress established a committee that nearly disrupted the war effort.”

  “The Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of War. A Congressional committee made up of politicians,” Reilly interjected.

  “Radical politicians,” Harrison added. “Absent of military training or experience. And what did they do?”

  “They put political pressure on Lincoln and challenged his command decisions. They got in the way of prosecuting the war.”

  “Well, you’ve proven yourself a good student once again,” Harrison said with a full-throated laugh. “So why is this centuries’ old battle important to you today?”

  Reilly explained that he didn’t want to end up like Brigadier General

  Stone, “looking the wrong way.”

  “I think you need to tell me more, my boy. What you’re really up to.”

  For the next twenty minutes Reilly explained the through-line from Tokyo to Brussels, his suspicions and his fears. Everything but his work with the agency.

  “Well then, if I understand correctly, you’ve got three objectives to figure out. Exactly when and where the attack will occur, and what the true objective is. Perhaps I can help you with the latter, but the rest is up to you.”

  “Go ahead,” Reilly encouraged.

  “If reclaiming territory is Russia’s goal, which it most certainly is from a historic standpoint, you must consider the question from a contemporary perspective.”

  “I am. What country can Gorshkov afford to take?” Reilly asserted.

  “No!” Harrison declared. “Go back to your research. Look at your map. Read those reports. But not as Daniel Reilly. Read it through Gorshkov’s eyes.”

  “I’m not sure I …”

  “Come on,” Harrison prompted. “Where’s my A student?”

  Reilly didn’t respond.

  “Put it together like a Lincoln, not the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of War. It’s not at all what Gorshkov can afford to take—”

  Reilly completed the sentence. “It’s what can we afford to lose.”

  “And more.”

  “Without having to go to war.”

  “Precisely,” Harrison told him.

  76

  WASHINGTON, DC

/>   “Well Dan, you dodged the bullet,” CIA agent Bob Heath said, towing the company line. “Time to move on.”

  They met one another at the Smithsonian American History Museum on Constitution Avenue, walking together for a while, sometimes apart, and constantly scanning to see if they were being followed.

  “No,” Reilly declared. “We were right and wrong. No victory to celebrate.”

  “You have something?” Heath countered. “Talk.”

  “I’m working on it. But I need your help,” Reilly responded.

  “Look, if you haven’t noticed, I don’t make all the decisions. They’re putting me on something else.”

  “And when NATO blows up?”

  “Wait.” Heath noticed someone lingering too close. Not within earshot, but too close for comfort. “Meet me in twenty. Second floor. Political buttons exhibit. Watch your back.”

  They separated. Heath peeled off to the right. Reilly strolled casually through an exhibit on modern medicine, then World War II Japanese internment. Occasionally he pivoted to see if he was being followed. Only once did he feel concerned. A woman stared just a little too long. He smiled at her, as if to engage. She ignored him and left.

  Uncomfortable or burned? Reilly didn’t know, but he took extra care until meeting up with Heath again.

  “Followed?” the agent asked.

  “No. You?”

  “Clear.”

  “Good, then get to it.”

  “Okay. Stop me when you don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “If it makes you feel better.”

  “It might.”

  Reilly talked to Heath quietly while they pretended to examine campaign buttons as far back as Lincoln. Reilly recounted his conversation with Colonel Harrison and the political theory that came out of it. “So, what can we afford to lose without having to go to war?”

  Heath didn’t stop Reilly.

  “I know it’s reverse reasoning,” Reilly admitted. “Counter to policy, agreements, and treaties. Whatever.”

  Still no signal to stop.

  “So I’m asking you to find out what the Company can’t say on the record, but what Nikolai Gorshkov damn well knows is true.”

  Heath remained quiet.

  “It goes right to the core of Gorshkov’s beliefs. Nikita Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall in 1961. The US gave up the open city rather than risk war in ’61. 1990? A different story. At that point, Mikhail Gorbachev was willing to lose it. Then East Germany. Then the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Now what country or countries have we made a commitment to that we’d be willing to walk away from?”

  Reilly fixed his eyes on Heath. The CIA agent thought for a moment and then proposed, “Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.”

  “Damned straight,” Reilly replied.

  LANGLEY

  “Your friend … ” CIA Director Gerald Watts stated.

  “Our associate,” Heath replied.

  “… is playing a dangerous political game of chicken.”

  “Then Reilly’s right.”

  “I hope he’s not,” Watts stated solemnly.

  “He needs help.”

  Now Watts didn’t respond.

  Heath rephrased his assertion. “Mr. Director, we can help.”

  Gerald Watts stood behind his desk. “Bob,” he began, “tell Reilly to take a breather and stick to his own knitting.”

  Stick to his own knitting. There was more unsaid than said. In agent-speak it meant “call Reilly off and you dig into the possibilities.” Heath heard it perfectly. “Thank you, sir. That’ll work for me.”

  On his way to his office, Heath texted Reilly: “You’ve got your history professor. I’ve got mine. Give me a few days.”

  77

  LANGLEY, VA

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  Heath’s expert was a 280-pound PhD from Stanford, as solid in his Baltic history as he was in muscle. This was his tenth year with the agency. Even though he wasn’t a field operative, he had trained with them at the Farm. Bob Heath had only met Dr. Ted Policano once, but his reputation preceded him.

  “Thank you for coming, Dr. Policano,” Heath said with a handshake. The professor had a good four inches on him. He had to look up.

  “Ted. Plain and simple. What can I do for you?”

  “High-stakes gamble in the Baltic states,” Heath said.

  Policano smiled. “Somebody finally read my paper.”

  “No. What paper?”

  The PhD was dismayed. “You mean you didn’t see what I wrote?”

  “No.”

  “How urgent is your problem?”

  “I didn’t say it was urgent.”

  “Yes you did. By calling me,” Policano declared. “Sit down. You better take some notes.”

  REILLY’S OFFICE

  It was basic, old-fashioned legwork. The kind that newspaper reporters have done for generations. Detailed, painstaking, exhausting, and mostly unfulfilling. But not unproductive. Crossing names off lists, the process of elimination, no matter how time-consuming, remained the best investigative tool available to him.

  Reilly focused on the three possible countries. From north to south, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They all shared borders with Russia. They all had ports on the Baltic Sea. All strategic … like Crimea, Reilly thought.

  Reilly scoured the internet for history on the Baltic states. An hour into the research he began leaning toward Latvia over Estonia and Lithuania. He read about the nation’s struggles. German invaders during medieval times, the Polish-Lithuanian rule that followed, the Swedish reign, two hundred years under the Russian Empire, short-lived independence, three governments during World War I, the German march through Latvia, Hitler’s order to reduce the population by 50 percent, the postwar Soviet era, which lasted into 1991, and finally the modern era as an EU nation. But, based on what he read, Reilly believed that finally might not be so final. He found reports that pointed to a pro-Russian separatist movement that harkened back centuries.

  “Jesus,” he said aloud. “It’s a country with a lit fuse. A damn short lit fuse.”

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  Policano similarly narrowed his discussion to one country. “The most vulnerable,” the CIA historian observed.

  “Latvia is really two countries with two distinct populations. The Latvians and the others. The others are left over from Soviet-era rule. They’re virtually second-class citizens who speak Russian and have limited voice in the government. Yet, they represent 40 percent of the population. In Riga, the capital, it’s 50 percent. There, Russian is spoken as much as Latvian. For those 200,000 people, their news and entertainment comes from Moscow. Many supported the annexation of Crimea. They’re disenfranchised noncitizens. Leftovers from the Cold War. They weren’t granted Latvian citizenship after the USSR imploded, and they’ve been discriminated against ever since.”

  “They’re the perfect scapegoat,” Heath concluded.

  REILLY’S OFFICE

  It gets worse, Reilly concluded as he continued to read. After the Soviet Union broke up, Russia developed a patron relationship over its former states, encouraging partnerships, especially over oil. Latvia’s pipelines to Western European markets were absolutely critical. Its ports, essential.

  He learned how Latvian ports played a key role in Russia’s economic survival and how a new oil terminal in the Gulf of Finland would be a game changer for Russia’s economic development.

  A report from Stratfor, a leading geopolitical research site, pointed to a political roadblock. Votes. A huge slice of Latvia’s population that would support Russian deals couldn’t vote simply because as noncitizens, they lacked the right to vote. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  “And that has had a direct impact on the Kremlin’s ability to close the deals it wants. But Russia has a poison bullet that’s been loaded and ready to fire since 1993,” Policano continued.

  “What?” asked Heath.

  “In 1993 Russia ma
de a declaration not unlike NATO Article 5. It’s called the military doctrine. Fundamentally, Russia allowed itself the right to use force if the rights of Russian citizens in other nations were violated or if military blocs that threatened Russian security interests ever expanded.”

  “Jesus! This has been out there all this time and no one’s made hay of it?”

  “For years things just moved along, governed by a regard for ‘conflict management.’ The principal objective? Not to piss off Moscow. But if anyone had read my paper …” Policano shook his head. “Hell, I’ve been talking to a wall for years.”

  REILLY’S OFFICE

  Why? Reilly wondered at the same time. Exactly why Latvia? Further research told him. Years ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin had taken a conciliatory approach, seeking a spirit of friendship with the Baltic states.

  He scanned the Stratfor summary further. He discovered a disturbing ticking time bomb. In opposition with Yeltsin, Russian generals and a number of high-ranking ministers wanted the Kremlin to keep its military bases in Latvian territory. Yeltsin disagreed and gave them up. Those generals and ministers were now in control of Russia.

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  “We’re listening now,” Heath said. “The pressure point is Latvia?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Policano stated. “It goes back to when Russia abandoned its Skrunda early-warning radar sites in Latvia. Those installations had covered Western Europe. But they were disassembled. The facilities become ghost towns. As a result, the Kremlin lost key assets for tracking incoming ICBMs. Big regret.”

  “Did they get anything in return?” Heath asked.

  “Yes. Oil routes. More than half of Latvia’s natural gas, oil, and electricity now comes from Russia, with the Latvian ports of Riga, Ventspils, and Liepāja all being vital to the trade. In fact, Latvia traffics more Russian oil than any other Baltic state. On the flip side, Latvia’s oil purchases account for one of the largest and most reliable sources of profit for the Russian Federation.”