The Persian Gamble

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “Petrovsky is moving to de-escalate,” Stephens said.

  “With the full support of the cabinet.”

  “So maybe he is more of a moderate. Okay, what else?”

  “Sir, Russian media just started reporting that Oleg Kraskin was, in fact, the assassin responsible for the murders of all three leaders.”

  “Confirming what we’ve been hearing from Moscow station.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Does that also confirm that Oleg Kraskin is the Raven?” Stephens asked.

  “It would appear that way, sir. And it’s consistent with everything Marcus Ryker has told us and all the intel Ryker has passed on to us so far.”

  “How so?”

  “Ryker was insistent from the beginning that he was not authorized to tell us the name of the mole. But Oleg Kraskin certainly had knowledge of the most up-to-date war planning. As the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor, he had access to Luganov’s personal correspondence and directives and the classified private phone numbers and email addresses of the highest-ranking officials in the Russian government, military, and intelligence networks. The analysts here have only just begun processing the tens of thousands of pages of documents—classified top secret or higher—that the Raven turned over to us. It’s going to take a long while to get through it all. But again, it’s all consistent with coming from Oleg Kraskin—with one exception.”

  “Which is?”

  “Kraskin somehow found a way to meet up with Ryker to hand over the thumb drive. After that, it’s possible Ryker allowed Kraskin to go back and meet with Luganov to get more intel, not knowing that Kraskin was going to assassinate the president and FSB chief. However, it’s more likely that Ryker advised Kraskin on exactly how to pull off the hit and escape cleanly. He probably collaborated with Kraskin every step of the way. Indeed, the consensus here is on the latter scenario. Kraskin had access to the president, but he had no prior training for pulling off something of this magnitude. It strikes us as nearly impossible that Ryker didn’t design the hit and walk Kraskin through the entire scenario, move by move.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But that doesn’t explain the assassination of Prime Minister Grigarin,” the DDI continued. “There was simply no time after taking out Luganov and Nimkov for Kraskin to get to Grigarin’s home before heading to the airport to link up with Ryker and Jenny Morris. The distances, the traffic—none of it adds up. And what would Kraskin’s motive have been for killing Grigarin, much less taking the risk of doing it? His motive for killing Luganov is fairly straightforward. Kraskin knows Luganov better than anyone. He concludes the man is not only evil but unstable and single-handedly dragging Russia into what could well become a nuclear confrontation with the West. Such an event could spell the end of the Russian Federation and the deaths of millions—possibly tens of millions—of Russian citizens. Kraskin considers himself a patriot. He becomes sickened by the ghoulish realization that he has married into a crime family, and he feels it’s his duty to take action that no one else could or would.”

  “And his motive for taking out Nimkov?”

  “That’s not clear,” the DDI conceded. “Certainly Nimkov was close to Luganov and shared the same aims. Maybe Kraskin feared Nimkov would carry on the Kremlin conspiracy against NATO and needed to be taken out as well. But it’s equally plausible that Nimkov was simply in the same room with Luganov when Kraskin chose to strike, and Kraskin felt he had no choice but to take them both out in order to have any chance of escaping cleanly.”

  “Perhaps,” said Stephens, maintaining a poker face but finally pleased with the work his staff was now producing. “Anything else?”

  Dell nodded and smiled.

  “Well?” Stephens prompted.

  “They’re alive.”

  32

  OZERKI, RUSSIA

  The Raven might have been a mole, but he was not a spy.

  Not a professional one, anyway.

  Oleg Stefanovich Kraskin was an attorney by training, Marcus knew. But apart from a year working at one of Moscow’s most prestigious law firms, the rest of his career had been spent at the vortex of the Kremlin. He had not only married into the First Family, he had served at the right hand of the former head of Russia’s spy services. Yet Oleg had had little direct involvement in any matters of espionage. That is, until he had become the highest-ranking mole in the history of the Russian Federation.

  Oleg’s military experience had been brief. His parents were involved in international finance, not the intelligence services. Nor did Oleg have friends in the great game. While Luganov had brought his son-in-law slowly but surely into some of the most sensitive state secrets and given him the highest possible security clearance, the president had also shielded Oleg from many matters he considered his “private business.”

  Thus, the more Marcus explained the elaborate scheme that had been employed to get Oleg out of the country, the more intrigued Oleg became.

  “Jenny and I concluded from the beginning that a private aircraft was a safer bet than flying commercial,” Marcus explained, shutting down the laptop. “We knew we wouldn’t have time for fake passports and disguises. And we couldn’t take the risk of walking you through one of Moscow’s major airports. What we needed most was privacy, secrecy, flexibility, and speed. Jenny has her commercial pilot’s license with instrument ratings, so we decided on the Gulfstream. But like all missions, from the beginning you have to plan for everything that could possibly go wrong. What if the plane malfunctions in midair? What if Russian airspace is suddenly shut down? What if we’re found out and chased by MiGs? And so forth. That led us to insist that there be parachutes, jumpsuits, and oxygen tanks on board, along with all the supplies we’d need to survive for a time on the run.”

  Oleg was listening intently, even as Marcus kept glancing out the window of the master bedroom to keep an eye on the driveway and the front walk.

  “So we asked ourselves, What if we have to bail, and the plane goes down for whatever reason? That’s when Jenny recalled a trick one of her mentors taught her. She requested that the Gulfstream be loaded with three bodies—people recently deceased in Germany, from which the flight was going to originate—two men and one woman, dressed like a pilot, copilot, and navigator. The bodies were to be loaded into the cargo hold but specifically positioned directly under the cockpit, or as close to it as possible, so that if the plane were shot down after we’d all jumped out, the three bodies would eventually be found and the FSB would think we were all dead.”

  “Whom exactly did she ask for the bodies?” Oleg asked.

  “Not relevant for this conversation.”

  “You don’t think I’ve earned your trust at this point?”

  “Of course you have; that’s why I’m telling you this,” Marcus said. “But there are certain things you don’t need to know—not now, perhaps not ever.”

  Oleg was clearly not satisfied with that answer. But Marcus didn’t care and continued with his explanation.

  “The Russian authorities found the bodies a lot faster than I would have guessed. I’m sure they’re conducting DNA tests as we speak. We may have thrown them off the scent, but not for long.”

  “How much time do you think we have before they realize none of the bodies is mine?” Oleg asked, anxiety in his eyes.

  “Maybe twenty-four hours—I doubt much more.”

  “Who’s alive?” asked Director Stephens.

  “One of them, at least—possibly more,” said the DDI.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sir, we believe that either Jennifer Morris or Marcus Ryker is alive—possibly both of them—and Oleg Kraskin as well.”

  “Why? How?” Stephens asked, blindsided by the notion.

  Dell explained that an NSA satellite had picked up a signal earlier that morning from the satellite phone the Agency had put onto the Gulfstream. The phone could only be operated by entering a nine-digit passcode, and only Morris and Ry
ker knew those codes by heart. While they couldn’t be certain whose hands the phone was in, it had to be either Morris or Ryker.

  “You think they jumped from the plane before it went down?” Stephens asked. “And lived?”

  “One of them, at least. The phone was only turned on for a few seconds. We were able to pinpoint the location to a forest in the Karelian Isthmus, about twelve miles north of the largest amount of debris from the crashed Gulfstream.”

  “And then the signal went dead?”

  “Someone turned the phone off, yes.”

  “So if it’s Morris or Ryker, why haven’t they called us and asked for an extraction team to come get them?”

  “That, sir, is the $64 million question, the one we were discussing while we waited for you to arrive.”

  “And?”

  “The consensus in the room is that Ryker is the one in control of the phone.”

  “Why is that?”

  “If Morris had the phone—well, sir, she’s a highly trained and disciplined officer, one of the Agency’s best operatives and a station chief, at that. We have no doubt she would have made contact immediately upon getting to a secure location, out of immediate danger from the Russians.”

  “All right, I’m with you,” said the director. “Go on.”

  “We know there was a shoot-out on the tarmac in Moscow just before the Gulfstream took off. We also know Morris was shot and wounded—severely enough that Ryker had to fly the plane. Marcus told the watch commander in the Global Ops Center as much when they spoke briefly after their chaotic departure from Moscow. At this point, several scenarios are possible. One, Morris died on the plane, and Ryker and Kraskin jumped without her. Two, they all jumped, but Morris didn’t make it. Three, Morris did make it, but her injuries are preventing her from taking the lead among the three of them.”

  “Which leaves Ryker because Kraskin didn’t know the passcode.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then why hasn’t Ryker called in?”

  The question was followed by silence. Stephens looked at the DDI, then around the room at his top Russia analysts. He turned to one, a twenty-nine-year-old woman with a PhD in Russian studies from Georgetown.

  “Why hasn’t Ryker called in?” he asked again.

  “Would you?” the analyst asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sir, Marcus Ryker was the Raven’s handler. He had one job—get the guy’s intel and get him safely out of the country. Instead, after getting the thumb drive, Ryker allows the Raven to leave his custody—a direct violation of his orders. The Raven goes straight to the presidential palace and pops Luganov in cold blood. Then he pops the FSB chief. Now, as Dr. Dell has noted, Kraskin has no experience in such matters. Ryker had to have helped him. Yet Ryker knows full well that this is all in blatant violation of U.S. law, international law, the Agency’s code of conduct, basic morality—the list goes on. Sir, there’s a lot we don’t know right now. We’re operating in the fog of war. But two things we do know: First, the Raven is an assassin. Second, Ryker is an accomplice. Would you call in under those circumstances?”

  “Probably not,” said the director. “But then why turn on the phone at all? Why let us know you’re alive if you’ve gone rogue and are on the run?”

  “Right now we don’t know, sir,” the analyst said. “Maybe Ryker wasn’t carefully briefed by Morris in how to use the phone, though I doubt it. I know Jenny Morris. As the DDI said, she’s an outstanding officer. I don’t see her making a mistake like that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Maybe in all the chaos and confusion of the last twenty-four hours, Ryker forgot that the code doesn’t simply power up the phone but also sends us a flash confirmation that the person using it is alive.”

  “But you don’t buy that,” Stephens said.

  “No, sir, I don’t. Ryker’s too smart. He’s not one of us. He wasn’t trained by the Agency. He doesn’t know our tradecraft. But he’s sharp. He’s not just a Marine but a highly decorated combat veteran from Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s a former special agent with the Secret Service, also highly decorated for bravery under fire. His file indicates he’s got a near-photographic memory. Believe me, sir, he didn’t forget.”

  “So he wants us to know he’s alive, but not exactly where he is.”

  “That’s what we’re thinking, sir.”

  “Why?”

  When the analyst hesitated, Martha Dell spoke up again. “I think he wants to make a trade, sir.”

  That took Stephens by surprise. “A trade? What kind of trade?”

  “I think he’s going to offer us the Raven.”

  “In return for what?”

  “If it were me?” the DDI said. “I’d be asking for a full presidential pardon and entrance into the Witness Protection Program.”

  33

  U.S. EMBASSY, MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  The call from Pete Hwang could not have come at a worse moment.

  “I can’t talk right now,” Nick Vinetti said from behind his desk at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with the ambassador holding on line one and deputy CIA director Martha Dell expected to call at any moment.

  “Why not?” Hwang asked.

  “Because I can’t. My hands are a little full around here right now, Pete.”

  “But you’ll call me the minute you hear something?”

  “If I can.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just what it sounds like, Pete. I’m sorry—I’ve got to go.”

  Vinetti had known Peter Hwang all their adult lives. Almost twenty years after boot camp, it still astonished Vinetti how high they and their two buddies from the Corps had risen. Hwang was a senior advisor to a U.S. senator that a growing number of columnists and TV pundits believed could be the next president of the United States. Their onetime sergeant, Bill McDermott, was now working at the White House as the second-highest-ranking official on the National Security Council. Vinetti himself was now the second-highest-ranking American diplomat in Moscow, while his beautiful and brilliant wife, Claire, was also in the Foreign Service, serving as the embassy’s cultural attaché.

  And then there was Ryker.

  Over the years, the four men had done everything together. They’d fought together. Killed together. Chased girls together in their bachelor days. They’d also stood as groomsmen in each other’s weddings, occasionally vacationed together as families, and gone to more funerals together for more fallen friends than any of them cared to remember.

  Now one of them was wanted for murder and crimes against the Russian state. Vinetti hadn’t seen it coming, and the dread he felt for what was surely ahead was growing.

  He hung up the phone and shut his eyes. He wasn’t being coy with Hwang. He simply had no answers. But this was a capital offense. As every hour passed, Vinetti’s fear grew. As the ambassador’s second-in-command, he would be the one ordered to oversee an operation to hunt down and take out the best friend he’d ever had.

  “I apologize, Mr. Ambassador,” he said, finally taking his boss off hold. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’d better clean up downstairs,” Marcus said.

  Oleg nodded. “Of course. But first, I found something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You really need to see it for yourself.”

  Oleg led him to a bedroom across from the master, not the room where Jenny was sleeping but another one next to it. Marcus followed him, and when Oleg flipped on the light and opened one of the dresser drawers, he saw dozens of large clear plastic sandwich bags filled with white powder. Oleg opened another drawer, revealing dozens more. He opened the closet to reveal still hundreds more, plus a large wall safe and several padlocked file cabinets.

  Marcus opened one of the bags. One whiff and it was clear the elder Zakharov was running quite a drug operation, and a lucrative one at that. Marcus wasn’t up on the latest street prices of cocaine in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but he had to figure this cac
he was worth at least several million dollars.

  “I saw some tools in the garage,” Marcus said. “See if you can find a bolt cutter.”

  Oleg hurried to it, and while Marcus waited for him to return, he scanned the framed photos on the walls, wondering where in Siberia the former Kremlin chief of staff was serving his prison term. The pictures saddened him. They had all been taken when Boris’ brother was much younger. There was nothing more recent than high school except for one presumably taken the day Boris’s brother had been inducted into the Red Army and had had all of his hair shaved off. Most were from his teen years—on a wrestling team, in a boxing ring, cliff diving with friends, standing on top of a mountain with his arm around a pretty blonde.

  The faded photos reminded Marcus of his own youth, growing up in Colorado. It made him wonder. Why had this man taken the trail he had? Had he always been corrupt, even in his days in Spetsnaz? And what about Boris? Perhaps one brother had corrupted the other. The higher Boris had risen in Luganov’s sphere, had he felt invulnerable? Had he pulled his brother into his criminal world to taste the fruits of what he felt were “just rewards”?

  “Don’t die, and don’t get arrested,” Marcus whispered aloud. But for the prayers of a godly mother, Marcus knew he might very well have gone down the same road.

  Oleg returned with a pair of hedge clippers—not bolt cutters, but they would do. Marcus took them, fixed the blades against the first padlock, and pressed the handles together with all his might. The lock snapped apart and fell to the floor. Marcus did the same for each of the four other cabinet drawers. Inside the file cabinets was a gold mine of intelligence on a network of drug dealers, couriers, and middlemen throughout much of the northern Russian provinces. Then again, they weren’t looking to bust a drug ring, and they hardly needed more evidence the elder Zakharov was dirty. What Marcus did need was hard, cold Russian cash. They had some that the CIA had included in their rucksacks, just in case. But if Marcus couldn’t find a way to persuade the Agency to bring them back in, they were going to need to run, and that would take more rubles than they had. A lot more.