Scott Roarke 01 - Executive Actions

by Gary Grossman

As Roarke began he noticed that the president’s eyes almost imperceptibly shifted to the name Hoag. Morgan Taylor was a very good poker player. He rarely showed his cards, but Roarke recognized a blink when he saw one. He completed his review of the chart and addressed the president.

  “If I can put these names together, so can any diehard late night radio talk show conspiracy theorist like Elliott Strong. And you know what? The first person they’ll point at is you.”

  “Now wait a goddamned second,” the president huffed.

  Roarke continued unaffected. “Look I can’t control what Strong or anyone else might pick up on. On face value, the man who you least wanted to run against was nearly killed. But he lived. And he even gets the nomination. Would he have if his wife hadn’t died?”

  The President looked over Roarke’s shoulder into the eyes of Franklin Roosevelt. A portrait of the 35th president hung on the wall over the Adams chair. Of all the American leaders, Taylor admired Roosevelt the most. For a man who never served in the military, FDR was a brilliant strategist. His cunning gamesmanship combined with a ruthless desire to crush any enemy. Any. He disarmed political adversaries as well as nations. Roosevelt used his disability to lure foes closer, thinking he could not strike. And they were all wrong.

  Roarke broke the president’s concentration. “So you tell me, Morgan, were you involved?

  The president slowly turned to Roarke and without hesitation, without emotion, stated in one word the truth. “No.”

  Roarke accepted the answer from his friend and smiled. “You knew I had to ask.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Now, something you can’t deny,” Roarke noted. “One name on the board caught your attention.”

  The president looked as if he he didn’t understand the question.

  “There’s one name on the chart that you focused on. I saw it.”

  “Was there?”

  Roarke pointed to the right hand column. “Hoag. Steven Hoag. How about you tell me what you know about him, boss?”

  The president let out a small laugh, as if to say, You’re a smart sonofabitch.

  “I’m sorry, Scott. I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “It’s extremely sensitive.”

  “Like Jennifer Lodge’s brain when the bullet shot through it. Like the kid’s reaction in the crowd?”

  Morgan Taylor sighed deeply. Roarke wasn’t making it easy for him.

  “Who is he, Mr. President?” Roarke said forcefully.

  The president looked at the painting of FDR again.

  “Who is he?” Roarke asked again one more time. “Fuck security! Who is he?”

  “Want a drink?” the president said, rising to get one for himself.

  Roarke declined, waiting for his question to be answered.

  The president poured himself a glass of port from a bottle on a silver tray. “Jack Evans should be here for this. He knows more than I do.”

  “Who’s Hoag?”

  The president took a sip on his way to his desk. He pressed an intercom button on his phone. Louise Swingle immediately answered. “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “Louise, have Bernsie take my meeting with the Secretary of the Interior. I’m going to be awhile with Scott.”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll call him now.”

  The president invited Scott to join him at the couch.

  “Many years ago, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviets created a specialized spy school for the most elite students. They called it Andropov Institute after Yuri Andropov. It was the principal training ground of the FCD —the First Chief Directorate of the old KGB. That was pretty well known by us and British intelligence. But lesser known or not known at all were the closed Soviet cities. ZATO, as they were dubbed.”

  “ZATO?”

  “It’s an acronym. You’re not going to make me try to pronounce it?”

  Roarke encouraged him.

  The president went to his desk, pressed something underneath in a sequence which Roarke suspected was a coded lock, then opened a drawer. He removed a file that read “Top Secret.” On the first page he found what he wanted.

  “Okay, but it won’t be pretty. Zakrytye administrativno-territorial’nye obrazovaniia. ZATO.”

  “Thank you,” Roarke said, stifling a laugh.

  The president reclaimed his seat. “These cities were uncharted on maps and usually named after the closest administrative centers. A simple post office designation helped the mail get through.” He looked at his report again. “Like Krasnoyarsk-26 or Chelyabinsk-45. Most of them were physically closed, surrounded by high concrete walls. Access was permitted only with the most stringent proof. Some of the ZATO cities were designed for the creation and testing of biological warfare. We figure there were at least 40, about ten were devoted to nuclear research and missile testing. But the Soviets ran another 15 ZATO for other purposes. We believe a few served as remote campuses for Andropov I.”

  “Which was?”

  “Have you ever heard of Red Banner?”

  “No.”

  “Few people have. Red Banner was a unique division of the Andropov Institute, with very unusual classes.”

  Roarke settled into the seat for what he gathered would be a complicated story.

  “Red Banner graduated many people with special talents. They offered a variety of courses that couldn’t be found elsewhere. Even Aleksandr Putin went through the school before serving in East Germany. Most relevant was a special curriculum nicknamed Red Banner 101. ‘101’ for introductory. Students went in as Russians. They came out as Americans.”

  “I don’t like where this is going,” Roarke commented.

  “This was total immersion training. The purpose was to graduate men and women who could pass as Americans,” the president emphasized, “in America. That was the purpose: Integration in American life; some as active spies, others as sleepers waiting for their assignments.

  “The students never knew each other’s real names and many never saw one another again unless they were sent into the field as couples. Oh, and they had a no fail policy. That’s not to say you couldn’t fail, but you wouldn’t live long enough to get any remedial work. It was a killer course.”

  The president consulted his file before continuing again.

  “Scott, let me give you a better picture of their success rate. For a long time, the Russians were pretty inept at getting the basics of American life. They could perfect an accent, drive an automatic, and disappear in a crowd, but it was the little things that confused them. The things that are so, so normal for us. Buying the right sneakers or toothpaste or jeans. They couldn’t do it. Too many choices for them. They didn’t even know where to begin. They’d try to haggle. Well, that’s not the American way. They’d take one product not knowing the other is really what they needed. From what I understand, things were so culturally different, most of the spies didn’t even have a clue.

  “Just imagine landing here in a space ship and suddenly needing to apply for a house loan or buy a car. That’s what it was like. Way beyond their comprehension. So eventually the KGB wised up and created a program designed to teach Russians the practical fundamentals of American life. Both men and women were enlisted. Sometimes the Soviets trained off site in Moscow apartments. People like Abel or London’s Philby often lectured them. But Red Banner 101 was the main campus.”

  Roarke found the story totally fascinating.

  “It was an acting job,” the president continued. “The student spies lost their Russian accent, worked American idiomatic expressions into their speech, and became young Republicans or Democrats. Oh maybe they dreamt in Russian, but on the street you’d never know.

  “Evans told me he heard from one former asset, that a couple placed here as sleepers even raised a family in America. The wife was East German and he was a Czech citizen. They came to the U.S. from South Africa, via Canada, with a young son.

  “Here’s the worst of it. The
y made a spy out of their nineteen-year-old son while he was a student at Georgetown. Their other kid, born here, didn’t know that mommy and daddy were Russian spies. But I can guarantee you the whole family would have been ready to serve old Mother Russia by the time they were through. And just string it out. The boys could have married and co-opted their wives…and then their children…and their wives. You see how insidious it is?”

  Roarke followed the lesson. “This isn’t going to have a happy ending, is it?”

  “Well, in the case of this family, the older son was about to be sent back to Russia for more training, but the couple was brought in by the FBI. The DCI assures me we learned a great deal about Red Banner from them and the lengths to which they trained their actors for the roles of their lives.

  “And now to your question. Who’s Hoag? Much of the latest picture we have on the old Soviet intelligence apparatus comes from a man named Yuri Kusnitzoff. He learned to be an exceptional American at Red Banner. He blended right in, waiting a good twenty years to be activated. A leak in Moscow turned us onto him and I’m told that Evan’s people had what you might term a ‘come-to-Jesus meeting’ with him.

  “Kusnitzoff decided to share some information with us, a little bit at a time. Gradually we got the most complete picture of Red Banner we ever had. Through him we discovered that maybe one-hundred graduates remain in deep cover within our borders. They’re still here, Scott. Still in America. Many of them have to be in their late forties or even much older. Who knows what their instructions are. Who controls them. Or whether they’ll ever be activated.”

  The president paced. Heavy steps. “We were working on Kusnitzoff to identify other graduates, which so far he had been unwilling to give up, though he supplied us with other important information. But according to Evans, he recently called in. That’s something he never did on his own. The CIA thinks he may have decided to report somebody else; a classmate. Or he had a change of heart on some other important information. But we won’t find out from Kusnitzoff. You see, in the States he went by the name Steven Hoag.”

  The president stopped and smiled at Roarke. “Are you sure you won’t take that drink now?”

  Roarke went to get a glass. The president met him at the sideboard and poured the Tawny.

  “Interesting when you consider it in context, Scott. What’s a Russian spy got to do with an assassination attempt of a presidential candidate?”

  “Shades of Lee Harvey Oswald,” Roarke offered.

  “Oh, that doesn’t even scratch the surface, my boy,” Taylor said. The two men stood side by side. “This runs deeper into American life. How deep, we don’t know.” The president handed Roarke his port. “Now, tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Roarke took a sip and let the warmth work its way down. “You realize, nobody is who they’re supposed to be.”

  The president frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Starting with what you just told me. Hoag is Kusnitzoff.”

  “And?”

  “You’re familiar with the name Sidney McAlister?”

  “The assassin.”

  “What about Frank Dolan?”

  “The man who shot Hoag.”

  “Yes. Well, as far as we can tell, neither of them exist, at least with those identities. So they have to be somebody else. Who is the question. But that’s not all.”

  Roarke removed a manila envelope from his backpack and from within that, a photograph. “You tell me who it is.”

  He put the photo, not in the least looking computer-generated, on the art stand.

  The President studied the picture and then asked, “I’ll bite. Who is it?”

  “It’s an age progression photograph created by the FBI’s top computer artist, the one you helped set up through Bob Mulligan. Touch Parsons. He’s a wizard. He’s able to take photographs of children and reliably predict what they’ll look like later in life. It’s proved invaluable for locating and identifying kidnapped kids.”

  “So who’s this?” Taylor repeated.

  “As far as I can tell, it’s nobody.”

  “Okay,” the president said looking closer. “It’s nobody. Is it supposed to be somebody?”

  “Mr. President, I believe it’s supposed to be the man you’re running against. Teddy Lodge.”

  CHAPTER

  38

  Burlington, Vermont

  Wednesday 8 October

  Teddy Lodge was ahead with Black voters, Hispanics, Jews, and most importantly in female demos. His cross-over numbers were especially telling. Republican women openly talked about how good he looked to them. The New York Times poll had him ahead by nine percent, with a margin of error of three. If the momentum continued, he’d take the election by fifteen points. Lodge was going into the first debate on sure footing.

  Geoff Newman ran Lodge through the mock debates as if they were real. He used law students as journalists and Madison Avenue consultants who critiqued him through real time sessions. They drilled him and coached him. And with every rehearsal, Lodge’s responses drew sharper. He was prepared to answer the reporters directly and calmly and deflect any political salvo from the President.

  In four days they’d both be tested. In one month the voters would decide.

  At the end of the long day Newman let Lodge catch up on his newspaper reading. He tossed him the Times. O’Connell’s latest front-page article landed face up on his lap.

  THE ICEMAN IN THE LODGE CAMP

  A sub-heading clarified the point.

  Geoff Newman Cold and Calculating.

  “The Iceman!” Lodge yelled out. “How did you let this happen?”

  “Let it happen? I made it happen.”

  “What?”

  “Classic good cop, bad cop. Makes you come off warmer. You were the only one who was interested in me. I was the only one who helped you. Read it.”

  Lodge did as he was told. O’Connell recounted Newman’s early life in Germany, how his father was killed in the military helicopter crash, getting lost on his way to America, and his difficulties blending in at school.

  The unusual fraternity he forged with Teddy Lodge gave him the ability to find himself through the success of another.

  Lodge saw what Newman meant. While the reporter painted a personally acrimonious picture of Newman, he showed how their fellowship completed Lodge, helping him grow into a leader in school, in business and in politics.

  There were harsh words like “shrewd and calculating,” but they were balanced with observations that termed Newman as “intense and determined.” Altogether, O’Connell presented the most complete portrait of Newman to date.

  Teddy Lodge may receive enough votes to become president, but if he wins, Geoff Newman is the one man who really got him elected. Come January 20th, the question may not be what Lodge will be doing, but which job he’ll give to Newman. At times the two men appear to be inseperable parts of the same being, with the public potentially getting two presidents for the price of one.

  The last line was not Lodge’s favorite, but he clearly knew that the reporter had gotten that part of their story right.

  A rare photograph of Newman’s father in Germany accompanied the article.

  “Nice picture of dear old Dad,” Lodge said.

  “Took me by surprise. But I give O’Connell credit. He did his homework. See the photo caption? Courtesy, U.S. Department of Defense. Good digging.”

  Lodge nodded and continued. There were no other archival photographs, which wasn’t surprising. There weren’t any. Instead, the article relied on campaign photos and a still frame credited to Chuck Wheaton’s video coverage from Hudson. The picture showed Newman consoling Lodge immediately following Jennifer Lodge’s death.

  “I can’t believe it. The iceman melteth,” Lodge joked.

  “See, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

  Hudson, New York

  Thursday 9 October

  Chuck Wheaton’s real paying job was teaching 20th Century wo
rld history to his high school students. Every autumn he ran one of his favorite films, Constantin Costa-Gavras’ Academy Award winning 1968 conspiratorial tale, Z. He was absorbed in the intricate layers of the story, which masterfully fictionalizes the real life assassination of a notable Greek doctor and humanist. The movie’s critical tension is owed to the subtle dialogue during the investigation. Z never failed to hold his students’ attention.

  The twenty-two Hudson High seniors watched the film over three class days. With only twenty minutes left the final day, Wheaton also sat mesmerized as if it were his first time screening the classic thriller. He’d seen it every fall for the last twenty-five years. The film was in French, but he could mouth the subtitles almost verbatim. There was a rhythm to the structure and to the dialogue. The key plot twist hinges on the conspirators using the same rehearsed phrase, “Lithe and fierce as a tiger.” One government official and dubious character after another comes to testify before the chief investigator, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. Each uses the same phrase that only they would know. Costas-Gavras cut the scenes together with an ever increasing pace, emphasizing the connection.

  Suddenly Wheaton looked away from the screen. The rhythm. Lithe and fierce as a tiger. There was something utterly familiar to that rhythm. What is it? He thought harder. Something in the rhythm. The audio of the French language film continued to fill the classroom, then without even realizing it, Wheaton was now mouthing English words to himself. Other words. He felt his palms perspire and his heartbeat quicken. He closed his eyes and pictured the movements that went with his words. Just as the words fit specific actions and gestures in the movie, so did the phrases echoing in his mind.

  The film ended and the bell rang. Wheaton’s students sat stunned, as they always did. But their teacher wasn’t there to send them off to 5th period. He was already out the door to see an old friend.

  “Carl, come on with me. I want you to watch the footage again.” The Hudson Police Chief had no doubt what footage Wheaton meant.