The Kremlin's Candidate

by Jason Matthews

  As usual, scheduling conflicts resulted in the need for three separate briefings, an infernal nuisance. Forsyth and Westfall would backbench the sessions, to provide moral support. Briefing Senator Feigenbaum and her mealy-worm butler Farbissen would be a matter of gritting teeth and weathering the senator’s scorn and her doughy aide’s ready accusations of being lied to. Briefing Admiral Rowland would be a matter of getting through a polite if impenetrable indifference to intelligence matters: if it wasn’t naval science, she didn’t seem interested. Ambassador Vano had seemed appreciative of prior briefings while clearly understanding no more than half of what was being said to him.

  Benford spent the morning locked in his office. Even Forsyth couldn’t get in to see him. At the first of the afternoon briefings, Forsyth watched with alarm as Benford walked into the room. He was chalk-white and moved slightly bent over, as if in physical pain. A heart attack? Forsyth made to rise, but Benford waved him off. He slowly shuffled the papers in his folder. Before he began briefing the senator he turned to Forsyth and Westfall, leaned close, and whispered. His lips quivered.

  “I ask that both of you make no comment or otherwise display even a mote of surprise or approbation when I brief the candidates. None. Can you do that?”

  “What are you going to do?” hissed Forsyth. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I intend to sell my soul.”

  “What does that mean?” said Westfall. “You can’t bullshit these candidates.”

  “That’s not what he means,” said Forsyth, in a whisper, divining the truth in a flash. “He’s going to save Dominika.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Senator, I have a new development to brief you on, one that I’m sure you and Mr. Farbissen will find fascinating,” said Benford. They both looked bored.

  “Another intelligence failure?” said Farbissen. “What’s that make it, a major fuckup a year, on average?”

  “One a year would be a good year,” said Senator Feigenbaum. Benford smiled.

  “Nothing like that,” he said briskly. “It’s what we call a crash dive. Something quite urgent.”

  “Yeah, everything you guys do is urgent,” said Farbissen.

  “I’m sure you’ll be interested to know an important asset of ours in Moscow has discovered the identity of a highly placed mole in the US government, but unfortunately cannot transmit the mole’s identity due to technical difficulties. We’ve sent a case officer to Russia to exfiltrate the asset—code-named HAMMER—to report the mole’s name so we can arrest the traitor.” Benford heard Forsyth’s chair squeak, but didn’t dare look at him.

  “How do you intend to get your man into Russia to meet this HAMMER?” asked the senator, calmly, no alarm on her face. “And how do you propose to spirit him out of the country?” Her decades on intel committees made her familiar with the Game, even though she despised and derogated the Agency with vigor.

  “HAMMER will be among the guests at a large reception at President Putin’s Black Sea estate,” said Benford. “Gaining access will be relatively easy for our case officer, certainly easier than doing this in Moscow. Exfiltration will be accomplished by a JAVELIN aircraft, a powered stealth glider. The numerous valleys and plains in the area are more than adequate for STOL aircraft to get in and out.” The short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft was all hogwash, but it sounded good.

  “And where is this Russian mole?” said Farbissen, somewhat agitated, whether from fear or congenital disdain was not apparent.

  “We do not know,” said Benford. “All we know is that he has been active for some time.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be some kind of legendary mole hunter,” said the senator.

  “Maybe he’s lost his touch,” said Farbissen, looking at Benford. “Maybe it’s time to turn in your badge.”

  From the back, Forsyth saw Benford’s hands shaking. God, what a gamble. What a choice. Deliberately setting up Nate as the ultimate bait. Not even the conspiratorial Russians would consider something so extreme to be a counterintelligence trap. Sacrificing a case officer—for instance by abandoning him behind the Iron Curtain—to save a blown agent had happened before during the Cold War, but an officer had never purposely been set up to protect a source. They both saw it; Benford’s face showed he was trading his soul to sell out Nate. Forsyth knew this was a mortal decision for Simon, one made without the possibility of redemption or exculpation. We all of us are expendable, Benford had once told Nash. Today, that included Benford’s devoir and conscience.

  The same briefing was given two more times with the other candidates, each with different code names, the classic barium-enema trap. VADM Rowland was told the CIA asset Nate would contact and rescue was encrypted CHALICE. She was calm and collected at the news, bored as usual. Ambassador Vano was told the agent was encrypted CHRYSANTHEMUM, but his blank stare prompted Benford to mercifully tell him the asset was also known as FLOWER. If he is the mole, thought Benford, looking at that handsome profile powered by room-temperature IQ, the Russians must be better than we thought.

  For the three CIA officers, the afternoon was an interminable bad dream, a sightless stumble through a hazy swamp, each of Benford’s compounded lies rendered more bitter by betraying Nate. Admiral Rowland once perked up at mention of the JAVELIN stealth glider, and asked technical questions about the airframe, the answers to which Benford promised to supply. He silently wondered whether Westfall could research gliders and invent a variant they could call JAVELIN. By then he hoped it wouldn’t matter.

  As Benford briefed at the front of the room, Westfall leaned over to Forsyth, his own face ashen and eyes wide. “Why not tell Nash ahead of time?” he whispered. “Give him advance warning.”

  Forsyth shook his head. He knew how Benford thought. “The surprise has to be genuine,” said Forsyth. “The Russians will be looking for false notes. Besides, Simon knows Nash would have gone in anyway, witting or not. He’ll figure it out in the first ten seconds and sell the deception.”

  “And what happens to Nate?” whispered Westfall. He resented this fall-on-your-sword macho bullshit with these ops maniacs. To deliberately do this to Nate was beyond comprehension to Lucius.

  “They’ll arrest him, interrogate him, and throw him in prison. Knock him around a little, nothing bad. I know Simon will persuade Department of Justice to offer MAGNIT and SUSAN in a swap for him. The Russians like to get their people back. Saves face. Nash’ll be home for Christmas.”

  “Seems like we shouldn’t have to resort to kamikaze missions,” said Westfall, staring at the floor.

  Forsyth gripped his arm. “Whichever of these esteemed candidates is MAGNIT—my money’s on that bottom-feeder Farbissen—one thing’s for sure: they will not fail to report this operation to Yasenevo, to save their own ass.”

  “What about the Polish woman, Agnes?” said Westfall. “The Russians will really work her over.”

  Forsyth shook his head. “You noticed Benford didn’t mention her during his briefings? The Russians won’t be expecting another ringer. Nash and Agnes will be arriving with a gaggle of new art students from Warsaw, part of the restoration crew rotation. The Russians will sniff at the students and Agnes, but with Nate in the bag they’ll have only one concern: who among the two hundred guests is the US-run mole. The cryptonym the interrogators use will tell us who MAGNIT is. HAMMER, CHALICE, or FLOWER.”

  “And how do we find out which?” said Westfall. “How do we know this’ll work? Benford’s previous bait stories never got a rise out of the Russians.”

  Forsyth shrugged. “Not every trap catches a bear,” he said. “The mole doesn’t report it, no one in Moscow believes it, they decide to wait before acting. Could be anything.”

  “And getting the name back?”

  “DIVA puts a note in the USV,” said Forsyth. Shit house of cards, thought Westfall. Selling Nate out for a name.

  “Nate’s back by Christmas?” said Westfall, doubtful.

 
; “Safe and sound,” said Forsyth. “And DIVA will start reporting the inside scoop on the SVR and the Kremlin right from her director’s desk.”

  “Unless a wheel comes off,” said Westfall. Forsyth noticed the young analyst was using more operational slang. And he was also correct: unless a wheel comes off.

  * * *

  * * *

  In Moscow, Gorelikov was busy trying to improve MAGNIT’s chances: He had set in motion two minutely subtle activniye meropriyatiya, active measures, using two agents from the stable of innumerable assets used by the Kremlin for Putin’s political-influence campaigns around the world. These were favored tactics during the Cold War to spread the communist cant. Now they were designed to sow discord among those who sought to weaken Putin’s kleptocracy. Active measures were most effective when the disinformation was woven into a macramé of truth, which effectively obfuscated the deception. The toolbox was diverse: influence elections, disparage opposition leaders, disrupt inimical allegiances, support friendly despots, circulate disinformation, leak forgeries, and, in extreme cases, use people like Iosip Blokhin to eliminate the most tenacious enemies of the State. The attempted assassination of a Polish-born Pope in 1981 who was encouraging the Solidarity movement in the Gdansk shipyards was an extreme example of an active measure.

  A tame journalist named Günter Kallenberger—on Gorelikov’s payroll for decades—from the German investigative magazine Der Spiegel asked for an interview with Senator Feigenbaum’s staff chief, Rob Farbissen. Aware of Kremlin assessment data on the fatuous staffer, Kallenberger asked Farbissen if the senator became DCIA, wouldn’t Farbissen surely become executive director, or perhaps deputy director for administration? If that was the case, what changes or reforms within CIA could allied intelligence agencies expect in the coming years? It was a classic journalist’s open-ended question, in Russian a lovushka, a deadfall, a snare, designed to give Farbissen enough rope to hang himself (and his patron). The voluble Farbissen did not disappoint. He railed to Kallenberger that CIA had evolved from a postwar collection of has-been Nazi hunters to a futile and undisciplined anachronistic agency prone to intelligence failures, and unable to collect on relevant intelligence gaps. Instead, CIA spent its time and resources trying to suborn Russian code clerks in South America in what he called sex traps. The firestorm that erupted in Congress and Europe, and in the indignant editorials in RIA Novosti and TASS went on for a week, at the end of which Senator Feigenbaum withdrew her name from consideration for DCIA. Farbissen left the senator’s staff and became a lobbyist on the hill for the ACA, the American Coal Association.

  Concurrent with Farbissen’s scandalous interview, an article in the Business Standard financial newspaper in New Delhi reported a new mineral-supply contract signed with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko and IPL, Indian Potash Limited. The article described the chaotic practices of Belarus’s state-owned fertilizer group Belaruskali, which in 2013 caused global prices to collapse, as they had in 2008 and 2009. A sidebar—drafted by Gorelikov and obligingly run by a Business Standard editor on Kremlin retainer—mentioned that American businessman and former US ambassador to Spain, the Honorable Thomas Vano, had been a member of an international commodities consortium that had benefitted from insider tips from the Belarus government to invest in and then short volatile mineral futures. The sidebar piece finished by estimating that the insider trading had netted Ambassador Vano’s group $1.5 billion in 2013 alone, profits realized while he was a US government employee, a serious ethics violation. The facts were fudged: no insider tips were given (who in Minsk would confirm that?) and the figure of $1.5 billion was a fabrication, but uncheckable, giving the further impression of currency sheltering and tax evasion. Though Vano blithely did not withdraw his name as a candidate for DCIA, the ambassador’s nomination was quickly characterized as “implausible” by the Wall Street Journal, and vozmutitelnyy, scandalous, by Channel One Russia in Moscow.

  In two deft moves, Gorelikov had eliminated the other candidates as realistic contenders. He knew that this theoretically helped the mole hunters at Langley—they’d now be free to concentrate on vetting Admiral Rowland—but he was not worried. The admiral had no detectable flaws in her cover, and the final decision to confirm was imminent. For all CIA knew, one of the failed candidates could be the mole; the Kremlin would swallow its disappointment, and would direct their asset to an equally sensitive position elsewhere in Washington.

  In Headquarters, Benford likewise recognized that the obvious hatchet jobs on Feigenbaum and Vano put the spotlight on Admiral Rowland, but that was exactly the problem. In the world of counterintelligence, especially with the Russians, nothing was ever as it seemed. Feigenbaum’s and Vano’s apparent disqualification might actually be an insidious red herring to divert attention—like fake defector Yurchenko sent to protect Ames. The goal would be that while Benford wasted time looking under Rowland’s bed, the real mole would be free to burrow somewhere else: the NSC; the Pentagon; the West Wing. One hope remained. The Center didn’t know about Benford’s final trap.

  * * *

  * * *

  Admiral Rowland did not have an adventure vacation scheduled for at least six months. Next spring, it was going to be Argentina: she planned to hike in Patagonia, because she had discreetly done research on a nonattributable Homeland Security library computer downtown—it was already brimming with downloaded porn—and had read about Crocodilo Club in Barrio Norte in Buenos Aires that catered to girls. She wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but it sounded interesting. She’d meet Anton in BA and have fun.

  Then she read about Argentine wine. And the food. There was an Argentine food truck in downtown DC that served delicious choripanes, mini grilled-chorizo sandwiches with onions and chimichurri sauce. If the little girls in Buenos Aires were as tasty as the street food, she would enjoy herself. But the heady prospect of meeting an exotic Latina lover was overlaid by the shock of this afternoon’s CIA briefing.

  This was trouble, bad trouble, and she needed to talk to Uncle Anton. Not to the Center. Not to the Kremlin. Not to Moscow. She needed Anton. If that unkempt troll Benford at CIA was telling the truth, in a couple of days a CIA case officer would be talking to someone named CHALICE who, somehow, knew that Audrey Rowland, vice admiral, US Navy, was spying for the Russians, and had been spying for more than a decade. She had to tell Anton, which meant she had to call SUSAN to pass the message. That evening, she dug her clunky Line T encrypted phone out of the hinged concealment compartment in the arm of a couch in her bedroom—a crappy piece of furniture delivered by the GRU years ago. Big as a brick, it was a location-spoofing FIPS140-2 encrypted secure phone whose software obfuscated phone position by canceling the device’s connection to the nearest cell towers while permitting the call to go through using more-distant towers. A call, therefore, from Audrey in Washington to SUSAN in New York caromed first to Las Vegas, then bounced through Traverse City, Michigan, to SUSAN’s New York City phone, which would use similar circuitous routing through Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Tarpon Springs, Florida, and back to Audrey in DC.

  SUSAN did not answer her special phone in three separate tries—there was no capability for leaving messages, too insecure—so Audrey had to stew all night and finally connect with an irascible SUSAN the next morning. What the hell was she doing? This was an emergency. Using her admiral’s voice, Audrey ordered her hot-shit handler to send a flash message to Anton about the imminent infiltration of a CIA officer at Putin’s reception to connect with a spy code-named CHALICE, got that? CHALICE, and he’s going to fly the mole out on a stealth glider, no he didn’t say from where, but this CHALICE bastard knows my name, and once they tell Langley, I’m finished. Do you understand? And I want to meet you in Washington soonest: I’ve got new information on cavitation propulsion tests, never mind what it is, and more tidbits CIA has been briefing on, about recruitments of Russians, that’s right, recruitments, and one more thing, I want to be ready to bug out if the CIA guy gets CHALICE
out of Russia, yeah, well fuck authorization, because if they arrest me I’m going to tell them about a magazine staffer in New York working for Vladimir Vladimirovich, then you’ll be swimming the Rio Grande yourself to get to Mexico. You have all that? Do it now, I don’t care what time it is there, the CIA guy may already be eating hors d’oeuvres at the buffet table with CHALICE. And call me back about our meet down here. Good-bye.

  Audrey Rowland’s orderly mind was not panicking, yet, but like any astute scientist she was watching the gauges carefully to determine the degree of danger and to identify the propitious moment to contemplate flight. This was not the first time there had been a security scare in her twelve-year career as a spy. She’d had long discussions with Anton about tradecraft, spying, and the mental discipline required of a mole collecting, storing, and passing sensitive secrets from within a large organization. The intricate discipline appealed to her quantitative brain. The US Navy had many layers of security designed to protect secrets, but no navy counterintelligence system could conceive of, much less make allowances for, a three-star admiral and director of ONR operating as a clandestine source for the Kremlin. NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, was ill equipped to detect the tradecraft nuances of a Russian-run mole. But it was the little gray rumpled men like that annoying Simon Benford at CIA who were the real danger. Audrey thought it ironic that the famous little mole hunter himself had delivered the warning that would keep Audrey out of trouble. If she was selected for DCIA, the irony would continue.