The Kremlin's Candidate

by Jason Matthews

  The shocking loss of the DCIA was compounded by another catastrophe: sudden and inexplicable arrests inside the COPPERFIN spy network. A score of recruited design engineers in the OAK aerospace consortium were suddenly arrested by the FSB, and interrogations were being held around the clock in an attempt to identify other network members. Only two assets continued sporadic reporting, and their messages were panicked and barely coherent. COPPERFIN couriers were able to exfiltrate a handful of agents—in one case an entire family—but an equal number were caught and arrested at the border. At last count at least twelve sources did not respond to “sign of life” signals, and were unaccounted for, their status unknown. Benford knew very well that this was the worst case in the running of a large network—the inexorable unraveling, the continuing interrogations, the desperate attempts to escape, the arrests, and, ultimately, the triumphant news releases from the Kremlin.

  Benford knew that the COPPERFIN meltdown was the work of MAGNIT. But based on the chaotic counterintelligence performance of the FSB—they were picking apart the network in fits and starts, rather than in a complete roundup—Benford was convinced that the mole did not have direct access to COPPERFIN and had learned about the network incompletely and serendipitously. In the lexicon of spooks, MAGNIT had “vacuumed up” the information: an overheard conversation, whispered gossip, an intemperate aside, the contents of an inbox read upside down. Windfall collection that could not implicate the mole, and left the FSB free to act decisively. No BIGOT list, therefore, could be used to flush the traitor.

  “The trouble with running a mole hunt,” said Benford to Gable and Forsyth, “is that you cannot announce it, or drag suspects in for CI interviews, or immediately begin combing through one hundred thousand computerized personnel files, or tap the phones and computers of likely candidates without approvals and warrants. And you cannot brief a bunch of FEEBs, whose immediate reaction is to get into a black Crown Vic and interview suspects at home, asking them outright whether they are currently, or have ever, cooperated with a foreign power. They expect immediate compliance—it’s a crime to lie to the FBI, after all. The cumulative effect of their blandishments, of course, is to alert the mole, who heads for the hills, resulting in a permanent-resident visa from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an FSB-provided high-rise apartment in Babushinsky District, from the shabby comfort of which the traitor can listen through the clapboard wall every Saturday night to his neighbors fucking.”

  “Now we have a new problem,” said Forsyth. “MAGNIT apparently is getting around some more. He’s hearing about secrets like COPPERFIN. He’s disappearing into the woodwork.”

  “He’s a fucking flaming cactus,” said Gable. “The key is the goddamn railgun. Domi told me MAGNIT has been in harness for ten or twelve years. That’s gotta be key; who’s been on the railgun project that long?”

  Benford swiveled in his chair. “We’re running all the combos, but it could be someone who previously worked on that project, but no longer. DIVA reported that MAGNIT is moving up to a policy job. That widens the field.”

  “Okay,” said Gable. “But Domi mentioned that fancy-pants guy in the Kremlin wants to handle MAGNIT solely by the New York illegal, and take the case away from GRU goobers. With so much infighting, Domi may eventually find out MAGNIT’s true name on a restricted list.”

  “We can’t wait that long,” said Benford. “We’re hemorrhaging secrets.”

  “We may not have to. There’s a lot of intrigue going on in the Kremlin,” said Forsyth. “Not like the years Brezhnev shit his diaper and they held him upright to sign the disarmament treaty. DIVA says Gorelikov runs his own shop, is loyal to Putin, but does things his own way. He’s gunning for the GRU. DIVA is ripe for promotion. She’s going to get that name.” Benford shook his head doubtfully.

  “Dangerous territory for our girl with all these plots,” said Gable. “We got to keep an eye on her. She’s running a little hot these days, temperamental-like. She needs replacement SRAC gear ASAP.”

  Benford groaned at that. “There is no replacement SRAC. Our inscrutable colleagues from China Operations requested and received the last two available systems, which already are slaved to satellites in geosynchronous orbit to cover the Asian theater. They would not give up either one of them. Their refusal was polite but implacable, which I believe once again proves my contention that operational offices acquire the cultural characteristics of their target countries. Quite inscrutable.

  “The SRAC larder is now officially bare. The last time this happened, the Carter White House suggested we use HF radio and Morse code. The Acting Director just ordered that R&D for the next generation of SRAC be put on hold. He wants to divert the tech budget to launch satellites that calibrate global warming. Orders from the NSC.”

  “Are you fucking shitting me? Leave inside assets without covcom?” said Gable.

  Benford ran his fingers through his already anarchic hair. “I am throwing histrionic fits at every leadership meeting, but the bureaucrats are unmoved and singularly focused on the one degree Fahrenheit change in global temperature since Charlemagne. Hearsey is racking his brains on cobbling together some sort of emergency-signaling gear, but as of today we’ve got nothing on the shelf for her.

  “We will have to rely on personal meets for the time being,” said Benford, wearing his February face. Every person in the room knew that each time Moscow Station—or any denied-area station—tried a personal meet, the probability of catastrophic flap (and loss of agent) rose to 90 percent. Opposition surveillance had to get it right only once, and your agent was dead. Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, it didn’t matter.

  “Personal contact with Domi is coming up in three days,” said Gable. “They got a good operator to meet our girl?”

  “Case officer named Ricky Walters,” said Benford, reading off a cable from Moscow Station. “Looked him up. Good on the street, ice for nerves, likes the ladies, but no zipper trouble in Russia. He looks okay.”

  Gable grunted. “In her current pissed-off state, she’s not gonna be happy without covcom. Hope he doesn’t try to get saucy with her,” he said. “He’ll start his return SDR with a kick in the nuts. She doesn’t need another Romeo. Nash is pissing her off enough as it is.”

  “Tell me that’s still not a problem, Nash and DIVA,” said Forsyth.

  “They’re fucking in love,” said Gable, holding up his hands. “I know, I know, but if you fire Nash, Domi might flat-out quit on us; she’s in that frame of mind lately. So you tell me what’s worse, them belly thumping or her quitting.”

  “We may be able to put some space between those thumping bellies,” said Benford. “The Aussies have a clambake brewing in Hong Kong, and they think they might need a Russian speaker. If we send Nash it’ll keep him away from her for a while. We can only hope that an extended separation will result in atrophy of one or both of their libidos.” No one laughed.

  “Christ, is there any good news? What about that illegal in New York?” said Forsyth.

  “Everything’s done,” said Gable. “Hearsey spritzed the phone and we wrapped it so Domi could load the dead drop in some crazy little 1805 Jewish cemetery on West Eleventh Street in the Village. Thirty moss-covered tombstones on a little triangle of land behind a peeling wall. You’d walk by it all day without seeing it. She put the package behind the middle headstone of three against the brick wall; it tilts forward, so she wedged the package down low. We left it alone, lots of apartment windows around. That gal could be watching the drop.”

  “We’ll give it some time, to insulate DIVA, then go up to New York with fifty UV flashlights and bag us an illegal,” said Benford.

  * * *

  * * *

  After New York City—even including Staten Island—feeling the energy, and prosperity, and freedom of America, Dominika had returned to Moscow, which in comparison she now found sluggish, gray, and sad. Back in her office, she attacked her in-box and read through the backlog of SVR global counte
rintelligence developments. Overseas rezidenturi reported three separate recruitments—in Venezuela, Indonesia, and Spain. The Signals Intelligence Agency, the FAO, had developed access to an encrypted military communications channel in the Baltics. The rezidentura in Washington, DC, reported the beginning of discreet developmental contact between an SVR intelligence officer operating under nonofficial business cover and a Congresswoman from California. The legislator was showing herself to be amenable to a lucrative consulting contract on international development policy and multilateral foreign assistance. The Washington rezident cautiously predicted that an eventual recruitment would be based on money—the representative had previously been implicated in a House banking scandal involving check kiting—and was judged to be corrupt and venal.

  These were important intelligence tidbits, but she could not report them to Langley for lack of functioning SRAC equipment. Last weekend, she had buried the SRAC gear damaged in the fight with the street toughs in a hole in Vorontsovsky Park, ten kilometers outside the ring road southeast of Moscow, on the forested grounds of the abandoned eighteenth-century neo-Renaissance Vorontsov-Dashkov Manor. It would be decades before the excavations for the high-rise developments inexorably spreading out from Moscow would reach this far, and by then the city might well be renamed Putingrad, with homeless zombies roaming the dystopian suburbs. By then she hoped she would be lying on a sun-drenched veranda somewhere tropical, sipping rum while Nate painted her toenails Island Pink and, maybe, she dreamed, with a little girl at their feet chattering to her dolls in Russian and English. Would my children be synesthetes? What would Nate say after all these years of keeping the secret? Would we be happy together? Will it ever happen?

  Dominika instead minutely printed her report in pencil on both sides of two sheets of water-soluble paper—it would dissolve to mush instantly on contact with liquid—and rolled the sheets into a tight tube. She unscrewed the bottom of a clunky Russian Pukat-brand thermos bottle and slid the paper into the narrow space between the interior glass vacuum chamber and the plastic outer case. In an emergency, throwing or whacking the thermos against a hard surface would shatter the inner-glass chamber, flooding the space between the outer shell, rendering the paper the consistency of ovsyanaya kasha, Russian oatmeal. If you had to use this prehistoric destruction device (Nate had showed it to her in Finland), you already were probably stopped at the roadblock about to be carted off, but it was effective. The personal meet was in two days, and pray God they’re sending someone smart. She fantasized it would be Nate coming out of the shadows to wrap her up and kiss her forever in the fog-shrouded woods.

  Then the inevitable courtly call from Gorelikov, welcome back, congratulations on the meet with SUSAN, and the president would see them this afternoon at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow in the Odintsovo District on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The yellow mansion, nestled among pines, with its classical peaked façade and four Corinthian columns, seemed small and modest when compared with the regal apartments of the Kremlin. They were shown into a living room of pale blue with peach-colored satin curtains, sat at a small antique table, and listened to a clock ticking from a corner bookcase across the room. Anton Gorelikov was stylish as usual, in a tailored dark suit and starched tape-stripe shirt. Delicate ceramic cuff links in blue and green showed at his sleeves. The blue halo about his head and shoulders was like a diadem, and glowed in exultation.

  They were served tea in elegant podstakanniki glasses emblazoned with the double-headed eagle of the new Russian Federation, ironically similar to the bygone imperial eagle of the Romanovs and the tsar. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, thought Dominika, The more things change, the more they stay the same. A young aide in a light-blue suit stood against the wall near the door, eerily blending into the blue paneling like some color-adaptive rain forest lizard, so that only his face was visible and seemed to be floating in the air. Dominika reflected that disembodied heads floating in the air seemed normal in a Putin residence.

  The little gold and ormolu clock chimed eleven, and at that instant the door opened and the president walked in. How does he do that? thought Dominika. Was he outside the door, hand on the knob, waiting for that infernal clock to chime? Or was the clock connected to an unseen power source and made to chime as the president entered?

  Vladimir Putin was, as ever, dressed in a navy suit, white shirt, and trademark aquamarine tie. His blue halo likewise was pulsing with energy. Why shouldn’t it be? He had consolidated his hold on Crimea and secured his Black Sea naval base; the rearguard action in Eastern Ukraine kept Kiev off balance; alliances with Damascus and Tehran were paying dividends politically, and he was a major player once again in the Great Game. Oil. Munitions. Uranium (ROSATOM even owned 20 percent of America’s mined uranium). And there was more.

  Activniye meropriyatiya. Active measures, political subversion, propaganda, media manipulation, forgeries, and assassination. Gorelikov’s campaigns in Europe and the United States were shaking the trees of NATO, the EU, and those upstart pricks in the Baltics. That maniac Kadyrov kept Chechnya quiet, and his own presidential domestic approval rating was holding steady at 85 percent. Gorelikov was conceiving new mayhem, and Egorova was a new talent, a steady hand in the field. The president wondered how steady her hand would be in bed. He had checked: no husband or significant other, a former Sparrow, and the resident expert in honey traps. He was sure Egorova would figure into his further plans, especially with his gift today. The president nodded to Gorelikov and Dominika, and sat down. An aide put a square velvet box on the table in front of the president, and read from a sheet of paper.

  “Medal ordenia «Za zaslugi pered Otetchestvom» I Stepeni,” he bellowed. “Medal for the Order ‘for Merit to the Fatherland,’ first-class. Awarded to citizens of the Russian Federation for outstanding achievements in various fields of industry, construction, science, education, health, culture, transport, and other areas of work.” Other areas of work, thought Dominika.

  The president opened the velvet box and stood. Dominika and Gorelikov also stood, and Putin presented the box to Gorelikov. Nestled on a bed of blue satin was a starched claret ribbon with a tooled hanging gold medallion with the ubiquitous double eagle. Order for Merit to the Fatherland. Putin stepped up and pinned a small red ribbon bisected by a single yellow stripe to the lapel of Gorelikov’s suit. Gorelikov bowed slightly and shook the president’s hand. The aide unobtrusively reached over and took the velvet box, softly snapped the lid shut, and left the room. In the nature of commendations for clandestine missions, the award would be stored in the Kremlin—Gorelikov would not be allowed to hang the medal in his office or take it home. All he could do was finger the rosette in his lapel and bask in the knowledge of his accomplishment.

  “The planning for the Repina operation was flawless, its execution precise, the results exceedingly satisfactory,” said Putin. Gorelikov bowed again, slightly.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. Dominika’s mind reeled. The Repina operation? What is this? Was she assaulted? Or simply framed in some false scandal? Then she knew. Blokhin. That’s why he came to New York. Repina was getting too loud, raising too much money, and attracting too much attention. She’s gone.

  This was a crushing shock, to find out a full two days after the act. She had been traveling the entire day after and hadn’t seen any news reports—perhaps the New York authorities had held the news of the murder for a day. And it was no mystery that the assassination was not mentioned in the SVR news roundups stacked in her Line KR in-box. What would they say? We report the unfortunate demise of activist Daria Repina, who passed away from unspecified causes in New York City, once again exposing the unchecked violence in American cities, and the lawlessness inherent in American culture? The news would break in Moscow soon enough, but Putin’s control of the Internet and television would distort the reporting and the Moscow militsiya would disperse mourners before serious demonstrations could coalesce, while Putin sanc
timoniously called for bogus investigations.

  Dominika swayed on her feet, telling herself to stay in control, to remain impassive. She felt faint and pinched her wrist to clear her head. She did not have to obsequiously applaud this kind of murder, but neither could she show revulsion, which would be considered a fatal weakness. Gorelikov was speaking again and Dominika forced herself to concentrate. They had killed Repina.

  “I must highlight that Colonel Egorova’s performance in support of the MAGNIT operation was brilliant. Without her operational acumen we would not be congratulating ourselves. I commend her highly.” Dominika could see only the lanky body of Daria Repina on the stage pacing back and forth, railing internally against this man with a wry smile of satisfaction on his face standing a meter from her.

  “I am aware of Colonel Egorova’s performance and contribution,” said Putin. “Her diligence is constant affirmation of my decision to appoint her Chief of Counterintelligence in SVR. I am confident that she will attain to the Directorship of the Service.” He looked slyly at Dominika, judging her reaction to essentially being told that she one day would be Director. She nodded her head in thanks. You bastard. Putin was pleased. Gorelikov was pleased. Benford would be pleased.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” said Dominika, fighting to conceal her rage. “I will try to continue to be worthy of your trust.” Such verbal pap, thought Dominika, the Russian version of small dogs lying flat in the presence of an alpha dog. But zlodey, you hellkite, you do not know that I am inside your house to bring it down, to rid the Rodina of you. What do you think of that? Can you read my thoughts?

  As if he had heard, Putin gave her his trademark watery smile, like slivers of ice in warm beer. “I have designated a dacha on the compound at Cape Idokopas for your exclusive use. The weather on the coast is mild well into October.”

  Through her fury, she was caught unawares. It was something. Even as Dominika thanked the president anew, she calculated furiously. A gosdacha, short for gosudarstvennaya dacha, was a State-owned vacation home on a lake or river, or in the cool piney forest, parceled out to functionaries to reward diligence, productivity, or loyalty. This particular dacha, however, was more than a three-room birch-plank cottage with a garden plot outside Nizhny Novgorod. This was one of the luxury hillside concrete villas within Putin’s seventy-hectare complex on the Black Sea coast, on wooded Cape Idokopas. The presidential residence there, an Italianate château as big as Buckingham Palace, was said to cost a billion dollars. Being given this sort of dacha on this particular compound signaled patronage on a grand scale.