Well, the joke did not make Carlton smile today.
Out of sheer habit, Carlton snapped a quick salute to the two guards as he passed through a set of doors and entered a small vestibule and second set of doors. He skipped stopping by his office upstairs, and instead turned right and quickly descended a short set of stairs. At the base of the stairs, he turned right again and dropped his cell phone into the hands of a Navy lieutenant commander who motioned for the Marine guard to open the door to the Situation Room.
If there was a room that was completely protected against any form of electronic penetration, it was this. To the unknowing public, the room loomed as large as a football field and was filled with giant LED monitors that gave the President and his national security team a window into any place on the planet, day and night. From here they could monitor SEAL teams taking down Islamist leaders or send a hellfire missile into the lair of a jihadist before he could lop off the head of an American soldier.
In truth, the room was only big enough to accommodate a dozen or more people. Most corporate boardrooms would dwarf the President’s security quarters, but then, of course, virtually everything said in the corporate rooms of splendor could be monitored by cyber spies among competitors or in other countries. Size doesn’t always have its privileges.
Carlton had made it a practice to arrive a few minutes before scheduled briefings with President Oxley, who was a stickler for punctuality. In those stolen minutes alone with the President, Carlton could make a direct report unheard by the other officials who would soon be sitting around the table.
Today they would be briefing the President on things that were going to hell fast. The North Koreans were acting up again. China and Japan were in a facedown over the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, the name depending on what nation you believed actually owned them. With winter just a few weeks away, the Russians were threatening to cut gas supplies to Europe. A new Islamist group had surfaced in Pakistan, and the Centers for Disease Control had failed to come up with an antidote to the mysterious new viruses spreading across southeastern Europe.
But there was something that weighed more heavily on Carlton’s mind. He needed more than ever to have a private moment with Oxley. He had to explain to the President why he had decided to resign from office. He couldn’t wait any longer.…
2
After the KGB was dissolved, all the officers had been pensioned off and evicted—except Colonel Nikita Komov. The spacious, high-ceilinged apartments had been modernized for the new tenants, bright young government officials on their way up the ladder of privilege and corruption.
When Komov wanted to go to the Kremlin, a car was sent to an apartment house in an old Moscow square that once belonged to the elite of the KGB. Komov walked to his sixth-floor balcony to watch for the car. He saw it stop briefly at the unmanned guard gate, which opened automatically to the driver’s signal. There was a time, Komov remembered, when he would have seen a guard station manned by sentinels who belonged to the same KGB regiment that guarded Lenin’s tomb on Red Square. Now, robots.
He left the balcony, strode across his sparsely furnished living room, and locked his apartment door behind him with the key he had demanded after having been given a keycard. Walking down the corridor to the elevator, he turned his mind from remembrance to the present. At ninety-two years old, he still walked like a man who had urgent business to do, and he still had the steely eyes of command.
As Komov stepped out of the lobby, the driver at the open door of the ZIL limousine saluted solemnly, acknowledging with a slight bow Komov’s special status as a living relic of the KGB’s Cold War. The driver was in civilian clothes because the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, no longer had the military trappings of the KGB. Draped over Komov’s broad shoulders, however, was a khaki greatcoat bearing the epaulets of a colonel. Beneath was the formal uniform of a KGB officer—blue tunic with aiguillette, blue trousers tucked into thigh-high black boots, and gold-banded, high-crowned hat.
Komov could look back as far as Stalin, as far back as the Great Patriotic War. On his tunic, next to the Order of Lenin, was the medal for the Defense of Stalingrad. He had served the Motherland every day and every night since he enlisted in the Red Army on his eighteenth birthday.
But is this the last day of my service? he thought as the ZIL pulled into Moscow’s morning traffic.
Unlike many other former KGB officers, Komov had survived the demise of the KGB. The agency was dissolved in 1991 after its chief was involved in an attempted coup to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. Komov, called Comrade X-ray for his ability to see traitorous hearts, had used his seemingly mystic talent to ferret out the coup plotters. And so he stayed on, hailed as a counterintelligence genius. Four years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the FSB became Russia’s prime intelligence agency. In 1998, Boris Yeltsin, first president of the Russian Federation, appointed Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, director of the FSB.
The FSB was touted as a modern intelligence agency that would reflect the principles of a democracy. But, as a FSB spokesman said, “We have been gradually given other tasks, such as fighting organized crime and gangs, contraband and corruption-fascist elements.” A new law gave the FSB the right to operate its own prison system, infiltrate criminal gangs, create commercial enterprises, and obtain information from private firms without warrants. Komov realized that deep within the new agency the old KGB still managed to exist, especially after Putin succeeded Yeltsin as prime minister.
Komov had first met Putin at the KGB counterintelligence school, which Komov presided over. Pupil and professor became mutual admirers. And Putin, as head of the KGB, ordered that Komov not be retired. After becoming prime minister and then president of the Federation, Putin put many of his supporters in high-level FSB posts. One of them was Komov, who was made a special presidential adviser. Komov’s official title was Director Emeritus of the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, meaning that he had access to any top-secret document that he wanted to see.
*
At Pushkin Square, Komov tapped on the glass divider behind the driver and ordered him to stop. The driver pulled to the curb, serenaded by a chorus of angry horns. Komov stepped from the car and donned his greatcoat. The flakes of a first snow were dancing in the November air and disappearing as they touched the ground.
Komov gazed up at the statue of Pushkin, who looked as if he had stopped for a moment on a Moscow street, a line for a poem forming in his mind. Now Komov stood before the statue and thought of the glory of the Moscow winter, whose white curtain was rising this morning. Soon would come the cold, the snow, the whiteness everywhere. Pushkin and winter entered Komov’s mind:
The storm covers skies with darkness,
Spinning snowy whirlwinds tight …
Komov looked at his watch, calculated the timing of a two-kilometer walk, and determined that he would be on time for his dreaded meeting in the Kremlin. The car crawled alongside him until he waved it away. Snowflakes swirling around him and calming his thoughts, he quickened his step.
3
As Komov approached the front gate of the Kremlin, his mind refused to shake off the persistent doubts he had had about Vladimir Putin’s “rare blood disease.” None of it made sense to him.
Few specific details about Putin’s death had been released by medical authorities. Within hours after the notice went out, Alexander Lebed emerged as the first candidate to become the new Russian leader. Russian kingmakers declared that they had found a worthy successor in the telegenic Lebed. He had run a tumultuous election campaign, promising voters that he would lead Russia out of the darkness and the doldrums and into prosperous economy worthy of a great nation. And he had convinced most of the outside world that he was not another Putin.
When he and Komov first met, Lebed recognized Komov’s Defense of Stalingrad medal and noted a link between them. As mayor of Volgograd, Lebed had proclaimed that each year the city would revert to its previou
s name, Stalingrad, on six commemorative days, including February 2, the day that the Nazi invaders of the city surrendered to the Red Army. The Stalingrad proclamation was well known because Lebed had frequently mentioned it during his election campaign, reminding voters how he venerated the supreme victory of the Great Patriotic War.
As much as Lebed touted that he was the new face of Russia and that things were going to change, things remained the same. Investigative journalists discovered that the gnawing questions about Putin’s untimely death went unanswered after months of promises of a full investigation.
As Putin had done before him, Lebed clamped down on all official media outlets. Those who rode the waves of the new social media could not escape Lebed’s scrutiny or punishment. They quickly learned that behind the smiling mask of Russian moderation was not the new Russia but the old one.
None of the secrets locked away in vaults were ever able to escape Komov’s eyes. He had friends in every Directorate. A copy of the pathologist’s report stated that the cause of Putin’s death was a stroke precipitated by extensive microscopic clots that formed in the small blood vessels throughout Putin’s body. TTP, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Moschcowitz’s syndrome. Ha! How ironic! A disorder named after a Jew who had once inaccurately diagnosed the condition of a patient.
Stroke was rarely causally related to TTP. And it was a disease that if detected early could be successfully treated through blood transfusions. No. There was something very rotten in Moscow.…
And now Lebed was set to send him into retirement. For what? Being right that one of his oligarch friends—and a gay one at that—had betrayed him? Had become an informant for the CIA?
Well, if that’s the reward for his loyal service, then maybe Komov just might have to dig a little deeper into Putin’s grave.
*
The Kremlin office of Boris Lebed could have belonged to a minor official. The walls were oak-paneled and unadorned, the carpeting was gray. His barren desk was the size of a restaurant table for four. In front of the desk were two chairs with spindly legs and thin golden cushions. Behind his similar chair was the tricolor flag of the Federation, its bands of white, blue, and red adding the room’s only touch of color.
The office was a stage set for Lebed, who projected a humble image and often reminded Russians that power had not changed him and that he governed in the same plain way that he had during his four years as the earnest young mayor of Volgograd.
The major contributor to Lebed’s own great election victory had been Kuri Basayev, one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs. Basayev’s death had been the subject of a recent meeting between Komov and Lebed. And now once more Komov must speak of Basayev.
*
When Komov entered, Lebed stood and motioned him to one of the chairs. “You said that you had to make a report,” Lebed said, smiling. “As usual, you did not wish to go through channels or submit the report on paper.”
Komov nodded, accepting the condescension as the price that a ninety-two-year-old must pay to a forty-seven-year-old. “I speak, Mr. President, because it is always easier to deny what is said than to deny what is written. And one cannot wrap fire in paper.”
“So what you wish to tell me is fiery? As Basayev was?”
“It relates to the late Kuri Basayev, Mr. President,” Komov said. They locked eyes for a moment, each man going back to the recent day when Komov had voiced his belief that Kuri Basayev was a CIA asset. He had been turned, Komov said, because of threats to expose him as gay—a blackmail weapon that could still be wielded in homophobic Russia.
“Why must I hear anything more about Kuri Basayev?” Lebed irritably asked, leaning across his desk, eyes still locked on Komov’s. “He is dead.”
“I am well aware of his death, sir. A terrible accident,” Komov said.
“Yes, colonel, terrible,” Lebed said. As they both knew, Basayev had been killed when a Russian drone’s missiles struck Basayev’s yacht in the Black Sea. The order that aimed that drone had come from Lebed. But, as Komov well knew, there are orders that are given, orders that are withheld, and orders that are so enwrapped in secrecy and deception that they do not have a discernible existence.
Komov admired the way Lebed had dealt with the traitorous Basayev. The yacht had disappeared without a trace in a world where objects as large as airliners can similarly vanish. The official verdict on the sinking had come from Turkey, whose warship had sped to the scene of the sinking after a fisherman reported hearing an explosion and seeing a plume of smoke.
Turkey announced that the yacht had exploded from “a probable internal malfunction,” and there was no official investigation. The CIA denied having satellite evidence of a drone strike, but Komov believed the denial was an admission of such evidence. Far more important, there was enough suspicion of death-by-drone to give those who wished to scoff at Lebed’s “not another Putin” propaganda campaign.
Basayev’s death kindled in Komov’s mind a suspicious speculation about Putin’s fatal rare blood disease with no medical name. Komov admiringly wondered if somehow the Botox that smoothed Putin’s brow had carried poison.
“Well? I ask again: What is it that demands this meeting?” Lebed said.
Komov snapped out of his reverie and said, “I am sorry, sir. There is unfinished business about Basayev. As the Presidential Intelligence Summary has informed you, Basayev had invited Robert Hamilton to join him on the yacht.”
“Robert Hamilton, I am informed, is still in Moscow,” Lebed said.
“That is correct. The executive suite of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski.”
“So he’s a neighbor,” Lebed said, pointing toward the room’s only window. “Right across the river.”
“Yes. And, sir, he must stay there.”
Lebed sighed. Another damn “must” from the inscrutable Komov.
“Sir,” Komov said, “I told you before that Basayev was running a Russian-American criminal gang—and was aiding billionaire Robert Hamilton in his plan to mine asteroids. Hamilton’s firm, SpaceMine, was to use a Russian rocket to carry what Hamilton called ‘a payload of scientific instruments’ to an asteroid. As I said, asteroids have greater concentrations of precious metals, such as platinum and palladium, than any known ore mine on Earth.”
“But why must we keep Hamilton as a guest of Russia?” Lebed asked.
“There is a dark side,” Komov responded. “A SpaceMine engineer threatened to reveal that the SpaceMine asteroid would collide with the Earth in 2035.”
What the all-knowing Komov does not know, Lebed thought, is that the American president, Blake Oxley, has told me about that asteroid.
“To protect Hamilton and SpaceMine,” Komov went on, “Basayev ordered his gunmen to kill the engineer. As so often happens in badly planned assassinations, they killed four other people, and the gunmen themselves were killed by American police.”
Lebed, Komov noted, let a look of surprise pass across his face for an instant. So, Komov thought, Oxley had held that back
“What of that warning about the asteroid hitting in 2035?” Lebed asked.
“I have no reliable information about that. It is science. I am not a scientist,” Komov replied.
“I will alert our space officials and see what they say,” Lebed said, declining to reveal that the 2035 threat was real and that Russian, American, and Chinese scientists were already jointly working on ways to defend the Earth.
4
Blake Oxley looked up at the clocks clustered on a wall to his right, then impatiently turned back to Frank Carlton. Oxley recognized the look on Carlton’s face. Crisis. Trouble. Well, what else is new? Although Oxley maintained a cool exterior, his mind operated at an aerobic tempo. He displayed little patience in dealing with slow-talking staff members, however high their rank. And here was Carlton looking as if he didn’t know what to say.
“What’s up, Frank? I don’t have much time. Why the private session?”
“Mr. President,
I have some bad news, and I’m afraid that I need to tender my resignation effective immediately.”
“Jesus, Frank! What now? Pardon my French, but the fucking world’s coming unglued!”
Oxley was not given to vulgar speech, but the edges of his famed cool personality were starting to fray and unravel. “What can make things any worse?”
“Mr. President, in the wake of the Snowden scandal and the problems he caused us with our European friends and others, you gave a very specific directive. No monitoring of foreign leaders. No exceptions.”
“And I damn well meant it. So?”
“Well, some of the guys at NSA thought you went too far. They know that you were trying to strike up a new friendship with Russia’s new man.…”
“Maybe not a new friendship, Frank,” Oxley said. “Boris Lebed is looking more like the new Putin. But I don’t want the Cold War to start up again. Well, anyway, what is the new problem?”
“One of the NSA guys decided to keep all of our systems on Lebed. We’ve got every conversation he’s had in his Kremlin office, private dacha, bedroom, bathroom.…”
“I get the picture, Frank,” Oxley said impatiently. “That’s exactly what I wanted stopped.”
“Yes, sir. But…”
“I may have gone too far with that order,” Oxley said. “But that’s my decision to make, not some anonymous Peeping Tom working for us out at NSA. I’m not a left-wing bumpkin, for Christ’s sake! I put a hold on those activities until we can figure whether we’re getting disinformation from Lebed and others. I’m not convinced they’re not feeding us horseshit and we’re thinking it’s filet mignon. I…”
“Mr. President, I understand,” Carlton said, seeming unaware he was interrupting. “You’re right. You gave me a specific order to shut down NSA’s eavesdropping on heads of state. NSA did obey—except for Lebed. I missed that. I’m responsible, not anybody else. I decided that someone has to be accountable, and it should be me. Maybe everyone will get the message that the ax will come down on them in the future.”
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