The Persian Gamble

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “Are you finished?” Marcus asked.

  “Quite,” Stephens said.

  “Good—now, listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once,” Marcus continued. “I have a recommendation for you.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Destroy the recording of this conversation—or at the very least, tuck it away in a vault in the bowels of Langley, never to see the light of day.”

  “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “You and I and everyone else listening in know that what Oleg Kraskin and I did stopped a Russian invasion of NATO dead in its tracks. You know full well that our actions have prevented the most serious nuclear showdown between Washington and Moscow since the Cuban Missile Crisis. You’re really going to prosecute me for stopping a war? You’re really going to hand Mr. Kraskin over to be brutally tortured and executed by the Russian government because he single-handedly stopped the Kremlin from starting World War III? I don’t think so.”

  Again Marcus checked his mirrors. Nothing. He glanced at Jenny.

  She shook her head. It was still quiet, but he doubted it would be for long.

  Marcus picked up the pace. “What you are going to do instead, Mr. Stephens, is extract the three of us out of Russia immediately. You’re going to get Ms. Morris the medical care she needs. You’re going to give Mr. Kraskin an entirely new identity and new life in the Witness Protection Program, having him sign a nondisclosure agreement that he will never reveal his identity or what he did as the most effective and important Russian mole in the history of the Agency. And you’re going to give me a full presidential pardon and complete immunity from prosecution for any and all of my actions in assisting Mr. Kraskin and preventing the deaths of thousands, if not millions. And you’re going to do all that in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “You’ve got quite an imagination, Mr. Ryker,” Stephens said.

  “Is that a yes?” Marcus asked.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Stephens shot back. “Why in the world would the American government ever do such a thing for the likes of you two?”

  “Two words, sir—North Korea.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Oleg Kraskin possesses information about North Korea that is crucial for you and the rest of the U.S. government to know,” Marcus explained calmly, though he was talking a bit faster now. “All the talk in recent days about Pyongyang agreeing to denuclearize and sign a peace treaty with Seoul is nothing but an elaborate disinformation plot. The fact is, the leaders in Pyongyang now have in their possession some of the most sophisticated nuclear warheads ever built. These are not warheads they built themselves. They’re warheads built by the Russian government and transferred to North Korea in recent days. Each has a yield of 750 kilotons and is capable of taking out an entire American city. In a very short period of time, these warheads will be fitted atop intercontinental ballistic missiles scattered around the North Korean countryside, each of which has a far greater range than any current U.S. intel analysis suggests. Each can hit not only Los Angeles but Washington, D.C., as well.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Stephens sniffed. “You’re being sold a bill of goods. I won’t be.”

  “Think about it, sir. Everything Oleg Kraskin told us about Luganov’s plans and intentions proved correct. You know his intel is good.”

  Marcus didn’t wait for a reply.

  “And at my own risk I’ve just told you the truth about Oleg’s and my involvement in the deaths of Luganov and Nimkov. We’re not liars, Director Stephens. Oleg has critical information. You need to bring us in and let us help you.”

  “You’re telling me the treaty Luganov signed with North Korea just days ago—a treaty in which Pyongyang publicly agreed to give up all of their nuclear weapons in return for a formal defensive alliance with Moscow—is meaningless?”

  “Worse than meaningless. It’s a ruse—a smoke screen—designed to cover up a far more dangerous plot.”

  “Which is?”

  “Making Americans feel more relaxed about North Korea while actually giving Pyongyang greater capacity to inflict far more devastation on the American homeland than we previously thought was possible,” Marcus said. “Some of this Oleg told me in my first meeting with him. I passed on everything he said at the time. Look back at the report I filed, and you’ll see. I noted that the Russians have been working for years on an EMP bomb to fry our entire electrical grid and send us back to the Stone Age. According to the information Oleg provided us, the technology has been perfected, and the missiles are ready for launch. Luganov was fully prepared to detonate an EMP bomb over Chicago or somewhere in the Midwest if we fought him in the Baltics. But Oleg says the missile would have been launched out of North Korea, not Russia, seriously complicating our response. That was then. This is now. Oleg has told me more—far more than I’m telling you now. We’ll tell you everything if you make this deal. But I’ll tell you three more things for free.”

  “And what’s that?” Stephens asked.

  “First, Oleg knows every senior official in the North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile program. He knows their private mobile phone numbers, their emails, their code names, and even where they live. He’s been in the room with Hyong Ja Park and Pyongyang’s top generals. What’s more, he knows where all the missiles are located—today, at least. He says some of them are on mobile launchers, which are moved every thirty days. The next rotation is scheduled for six days from now.”

  “And the second freebie?” Stephens pressed, his tone growing more cynical.

  “Oleg says the secret deal Luganov negotiated with Pyongyang was predicated on a single safeguard,” Marcus explained. “North Korea couldn’t launch any of the missiles at the United States or any other target without the express permission of Luganov himself. Luganov created his own passcode that only he knew. If North Korea felt for any reason they needed to launch one or more missiles, Luganov would have to enter that precise code into an electronic relay system via a secure, direct fiber-optic link to Pyongyang. But with Luganov’s death, everything has changed. Oleg has reason to believe that even as we speak, the North Koreans—free from any arrangement with a Russian leader who is no longer living—are rewiring the system so that the Dear Leader can launch the missiles himself. Based on this and other information, we believe the American homeland now faces grave peril at the hands of a vicious and unstable leader who has publicly vowed to annihilate the American people and our way of life.”

  “And the third?”

  “Pyongyang has just agreed to sell five of those new Russian warheads to Iran, and we understand they will be transferred soon.”

  There was another pause.

  “I need to talk to the president and the attorney general,” Stephens finally said. “Give me a few hours.”

  Marcus’s reply came back curt and fast.

  “You have precisely one hour to get whatever authorization you need. Twenty-four hours after that, we disappear.”

  Marcus hung up, took a hammer out of his rucksack, and smashed the satphone into pieces that he promptly tossed out the window onto the snow-covered highway. Rolling up his window, he checked his watch and his mirrors again. They couldn’t afford to wait much longer. Maybe he’d been wrong about Stephens.

  But then it happened. Two enormous explosions in rapid succession shook the ground like an earthquake and shattered every window in the diner. The resulting fireball nearly blinded both Marcus and Jenny. Even from this distance, they could feel the searing heat. And when the smoke finally began to clear, Marcus could see nothing left of the snowplows but a flaming crater.

  45

  NORTHWESTERN RUSSIA

  They drove most of the way back to the dacha in silence.

  A few miles away, however, Jenny spoke. “When you said Langley might try to kill you, I thought you were nuts.”

  “At least now we know what we’re up against.”

  “You mean we don’
t just have one government hunting you down, we have two.”

  Marcus held his tongue and just kept driving.

  “You guys have put me in a terrible situation, Ryker,” Jenny continued. “You’ve made me a traitor to my own country without me even knowing it.”

  “They don’t consider you a traitor.”

  “They will when they figure out what I just did to help you.”

  “They’ll never find out,” said Marcus. “Right now they think all three of us are dead, but as far as they know, you’re innocent.”

  “For now, maybe,” Jenny said. “But soon enough they’re going to find out we’re very much alive. How long until their calculus changes? No witnesses. No loose ends. That’s the way Langley likes it.”

  “They’re not going to hunt down and kill a station chief.”

  “They just tried to take me out with a drone strike!”

  “That was different. That was to get to me and Oleg. You were collateral damage. Once they find out you’re alive, you’ll be protected.”

  Jenny winced. The painkillers were wearing off. “Look, I don’t agree with what you guys did, and I sure don’t agree with how you did it,” she said. “But I’ll give you credit for one thing, Ryker: you owned up to it—to me and to Stephens. I don’t know many people who’d do that. It took guts.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t start thinking I’m not mad at you. I am. I’m furious. And you owe me an apology.”

  “That’s true. I’m sorry. Really, for everything.”

  “Nice try, Ryker. Talk is cheap. Get us out of this thing alive, and maybe I’ll consider forgiving you. Until then . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. It was just as well. They were back at the dacha.

  Inside, they found that Oleg had packed up all their things. They quickly loaded it all into the trunk of the Mercedes. Then, at Jenny’s suggestion, the three of them ransacked the place. First, they took all the drugs, loaded them into the trunk of the Jeep, and pushed the Jeep down the slope in the backyard until it rolled into the Gulf of Finland and sank to the bottom. Then they returned to the house, cleared out the safe, and ripped out the drawers of the file cabinets, making sure all of Zakharov’s most incriminating correspondence and financial records were strewn across the third bedroom on the chance—slim though it was—that an honest cop might piece together the clues and vacuum up the rest of the drug network. They overturned tables and lamps. They ripped out bookshelves and emptied the kitchen cabinets of dishes. Finally, determined not to leave a trail, they wiped down the entire place to make sure they hadn’t inadvertently left any fingerprints. To whoever entered the house next, they hoped, it would look like Zakharov had been killed by rival members of the Russian mafia.

  Soon they were back on the road, heading south.

  “So how did it go?” Oleg asked from the backseat after a few kilometers.

  Marcus knew the question was coming, but he and Jenny had decided not to tell Oleg about the drone strikes. There was no point terrifying Oleg even more. He had already taken enormous risks, and more lay ahead. They needed him calm, focused, and optimistic about their chances, even if their odds of getting out of this thing alive were fading fast.

  “About as well as I expected,” Marcus replied.

  “What does that mean?” Oleg pressed. “Are they going to make the deal or not?”

  “I’m not sure. Not yet. I made our case. They asked a lot of questions. There’s a lot for them to consider, and they’ll need to discuss everything with the president and, I suspect, the entire NSC. But let’s just say, in the end, I’m hopeful.”

  Jenny, sitting in the front passenger seat, shot Marcus a look. But it wasn’t a lie. Not for Marcus. And it seemed to calm Oleg, who stretched out across the backseat and closed his eyes. Jenny leaned her seat back and followed suit.

  Marcus was grateful for some time effectively to himself. He’d been more shaken by the morning’s events than he had let on. A mixture of rage and bitter betrayal roiled just under the surface. His own country—a nation he had served since he was twenty-two years old—had just tried to kill him. How was one supposed to respond to such a thing? And what exactly was he supposed to do now?

  Two police cars—lights flashing, sirens wailing—raced past them, going in the opposite direction. A moment later, a pair of military helicopters roared by, flying low in a northeasterly direction. This helped snap Marcus back to reality. He couldn’t afford to wallow in anger or self-pity. They were being hunted. He had to stay sharp.

  He started by checking his speed. He was driving well over the speed limit, and there were more cars on the freshly plowed roads than there had been the previous day. Easing back on the pedal, he hit cruise control at the legal limit. The last thing they could afford was getting pulled over.

  Using the car’s onboard navigation system, Marcus plotted a course around St. Petersburg. He didn’t want the fastest route. There would likely be roadblocks and checkpoints. He needed back roads, side roads, anything less traveled and less patrolled. That done, Marcus reviewed every action he’d taken before leaving the dacha, trying to think if he’d missed anything or made any mistakes. Short of setting the place on fire and burning it to the ground, he couldn’t think of anything more they could have done.

  The black Mercedes sedan raced east on the Primorskoye Shosse, the coastal road along the gulf. The storm had lifted. It was still cloudy, but the sun was beginning to peek through. As they got closer to St. Petersburg, Marcus saw police and army personnel everywhere, but civilian traffic was growing quite heavy as well. For now at least, they could blend in.

  In the silence, Marcus’s thoughts kept coming back to the drone strike. He tried to think about how his mother was doing, what his sisters and their husbands and his nieces were up to, how the Colorado Rockies had blown yet another season and would probably never win a pennant much less make it to the World Series.

  None of it worked. The explosions were all he could think about.

  46

  The only good news about the drone strikes was that no one had been killed.

  For this, Marcus said a silent prayer of thanks, something he should have done earlier as he was speeding away from the scene and back to the dacha.

  Everything else about the call to Director Stephens and its aftermath had been a disaster, and the magnitude of it all weighed heavily. One question particularly nagged at Marcus. How could the CIA have gotten a Predator drone into Russia and over his location so quickly? It didn’t make sense.

  Marcus had wanted to see if Stephens was going to set him up. He’d hoped not, but he certainly hadn’t been surprised when the attack came. He had not, however, expected a drone strike. Rather, he’d expected a crack unit of Spetsnaz operators to swoop in on the snowplows from every direction or to fast-rope from helicopters. He’d assumed Stephens wanted the Russians to arrest Oleg and give him a big show trial while quietly handing the two Americans back to the CIA. That’s why he’d been monitoring his side and rearview mirrors so often and Jenny had been repeatedly checking the sky through the sunroof.

  A drone strike wasn’t even something he’d contemplated. He’d been certain he’d considered every angle. Clearly fatigue was clouding his judgment. He desperately needed sleep, but even more desperately he needed a plan. He’d offered the director of the Central Intelligence Agency actionable intelligence about a plot to put some of the world’s most dangerous thermonuclear warheads in the hands of not one but two of America’s worst enemies. But Stephens hadn’t taken it. Why not? And now what?

  They drove for another few minutes before the picture came into focus. Killing the three of them with a drone would have been simpler for the administration—a quick, satisfying resolution to a messy ordeal with no loose ends. Still, there was no way Langley had sent a drone into Russia. It was far too risky even in peacetime, and Moscow and Washington were already on the verge of war. The only other possibility was that Stephens had called
Nikolay Kropatkin at the FSB. But what exactly would he have said?

  Nikolay, my old friend, I’m so sorry for all that you and your country have been through in the last twenty-four hours, but I’m not calling with condolences. The NSA has just picked up a satellite call from Oleg Kraskin. We have the precise coordinates of his current location. We have no eyes on the target, but as an act of good faith—to show you we pose no threat to the Russian Federation—we want to offer you this information. You’ll have to act fast. Any chance you have an armed drone flying over the Karelian Isthmus just now?

  It would have been a lie, of course. The NSA hadn’t intercepted a call from Oleg. The director of the CIA had been on a satellite call with an American. But Stephens couldn’t say that. It would raise too many questions. Indeed, it would implicate the Agency in the assassinations, and that was the last thing Stephens wanted. So he would have had to fib a little. Would Kropatkin have taken the bait? Why not? The acting director of the FSB would be a hero to his government and nation. Stephens would have taken a big step in restoring détente between the U.S. and the Russian Federation. Two Americans would be killed in the process. But at least there wouldn’t be any messy congressional hearings.

  Stephens had had two hours to formulate his plan. That was more than enough to consider all the alternatives, discuss them with the National Security Council, and rule them all out. Why go through all the hassle of bringing Marcus and Jenny in and risk exposing them to the Russians when he could simply pass along their location to the FSB and have them taken out with one drone strike?