by Max Karpov
Jon watched her, one eye squinting more than the other. “Okay,” he said. “So tell me this. If the story isn’t true, why hasn’t the administration come out and directly refuted it?”
“That I can’t answer,” Anna said. “Except to state the obvious: it’s infected with politics.”
“Okay.” He glanced off for a moment. “And. An unrelated question: Does your meeting with me today have anything to do with my brother? Is that why we’re here?”
Anna pretended not to be surprised. “No, I’m not on a mission for your brother. I called you on my own. Because—as I said—what you wrote in your column got my attention. And because I’m angry about what’s happening, as you are. I think we’ve been caught flat-footed, as we were on 9/11, and if we don’t respond properly, I’m afraid that the lie that’s being perpetuated wins. Russia wins.”
“9/11,” Jon said. He gave her an inquisitive frown. “That’s an interesting comparison.”
“I think it’s apt.” She hesitated for a moment before explaining. “On 9/11, we were the victim of a kind of warfare that our intelligence community hadn’t anticipated. Something similar is happening now. In a subtler way, of course. This time the target is bigger and less visible, but just as vulnerable, and not very well protected. And this time, the attack is harder to see.”
His expression seemed to flatten. “You’re talking about propaganda now,” Jon said. “Information warfare.”
“That’s part of it. But a very sophisticated propaganda. Weaponized storytelling: telling a story so convincingly, with enough simulated corroboration, that people believe it. As we’ve become increasingly fragmented, there’s a hunger for some big, unifying story. Russia understands that. And they’re preparing to tell it, at our expense.”
“What did I say in my column that interested you?” Jon said.
Anna smiled. “That someone in the administration was nervous about this preemptive strike talk getting out to the media. I won’t ask who that was,” she added. “But I’ll just say: when I read it, I immediately thought of a colleague of mine. A man you probably know: Harland Strickland.”
Jon Niles’s jaw muscles clenched slightly; clearly, she’d caught him by surprise. “So,” he said, “what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that maybe we could work together to counteract it,” Anna said. “To tell a better story than they’re telling.”
Anna’s phone pinged: a text reminder from Ming that she had appointments.
“You know what? I hate to do this, Jon, but—how about we continue with this later,” Anna said, remembering her afternoon meeting in the Oval Office. Jon shrugged his mouth as if it didn’t matter. But she could see that it did. Very much. “Let me get through the next few hours,” she said, picking up her phone. “I think we may have a lot to talk about.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Jon Niles always had a weakness for the offbeat—in music, film, books, and people. Until this morning, he never would’ve put Anna Carpenter in that category. On television she came across as pretty mainstream: self-assured, bright, a classic overachiever. Maybe a little too outspoken at times, but a politician, comfortable with the compromises that came with her job. This woman he’d met for coffee at Starbucks was a different story, bearing only the slightest resemblance to the Anna Carpenter he knew from television—headstrong, impatient, mischievous, and attractive in ways he’d never noticed before. It had even seemed—briefly, at least—that she might’ve been coming on to him a little, although Jon had an overactive imagination when it came to that.
Beyond his interest in Anna Carpenter’s personality, he was intrigued by the prospect of working with her to figure out what really happened on August 13. And, in particular, by what she’d said about Harland Strickland. Jon had a strange feeling about Strickland, a persuasive, influential man who was interesting to talk with but hard to pin down.
Driving away from Capitol Hill, he decided that Strickland would be his next stop. With a little detective work, Jon was able to track him to the Wheel House, a dark, leather-boothed restaurant and pub in Tysons Corner, not far from the National Counterterrorism Center, where Strickland worked when he wasn’t at the White House. Jon had made it his business to learn as much about his sources’ personal lives as he could, and Strickland, he knew, had a handful of midday haunts where he liked to hold informal lunch meetings.
Jon stepped in and let his eyes adjust, scanning the restaurant booths. He finally found Strickland seated in a back booth with two other men in business suits and loosened ties. Strickland was talking as Jon approached, his arms animated, the other men laughing politely. With his exotic features and insistent eyes, Strickland seemed more like a character actor than a counterterrorism official, Jon had always thought. His newly added goatee enhanced the effect.
He turned his head as Jon approached, and his eyebrows jutted up theatrically.
“Mr. Strickland. Jon Niles. I’m sorry—I just wanted to ask you a question.”
Strickland exaggerated a grimace, trading looks with the men across the table. Then he smiled in that accommodating way he had, casting sprays of wrinkles around his eyes, and stood, extending his hand.
“I’m sorry,” Jon said again as they walked toward the bar. “I’ve been trying to reach you for several days. I don’t know if you got my messages—”
“I didn’t, no. What can I do for you?” he said good-naturedly, placing a guiding hand on Jon’s back.
“Just needed to clarify something.”
“All right.” Strickland stopped in the corridor by the restrooms.
“When I talked with you last week, you confirmed to me that this Russia committee had discussed some sort of preemptive action by the US. But the last time we talked, you said that there hadn’t been any discussion of it.”
“That’s correct.”
“So I’m confused. Because I’m getting confirmation elsewhere now that the conversation did happen. I’m sure you’ve seen these latest reports—”
“Well, no, I think we’re talking about two different things here.” He stifled a smile, as if it were all a misunderstanding. “This is because of the paper, right? The editorials?”
“No,” Jon said. “I’m talking about our conversations. You were very specific the first time we talked about it. You said this discussion happened—”
“No, no. Look.” A wide grin creased his face. “Whether there ever was a conversation to that effect or not—and I think we’re talking about two different conversations, but that isn’t the point—the real question is, was there ever serious talk about regime change? And the answer is, unequivocally, no, there wasn’t.”
“So, in other words, you’re not denying there was a meeting at which regime—”
“I’m not denying anything,” he said. “I’m denying it matters. Okay?” Strickland had begun to breathe through his nose, Jon noticed, a sign he was becoming agitated. They moved sideways against the wall to let a man pass, coming out of the men’s room. Strickland summoned a gentler tone and continued: “What I’m denying, and you can quote me on this if you’d like, although I’d prefer you didn’t, is that there never was a plan—or knowledge of a plan—to take any sort of preemptive action on Russia. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“And that’s it, basically.” He glanced at his watch. “But look. I need to get back to the office. You can walk with me to the parking garage if you’d like.”
“All right.”
He took his time paying the bill and saying goodbye to his friends, a cordial man whose graciousness made Jon feel like a predator. Strickland led the way out into the August heat, walking with his loose-limbed, self-assured stride, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“We’re off the record here, right?”
“If you want.”
“So, look. Again. Just to clarify: there never was any discussion of a preemptive move against Russia. Okay? And that’s it, basically.”
; “Never a serious discussion, you mean.”
“Right. Or any discussion. But you see how these things get twisted?” He stopped and faced Jon in the shadows of the garage entrance. “As you know, there are people who think we’re taking Russia too lightly. I understand that. Eighty-five percent of NSC meetings over the past twelve months have been on the Middle East. Okay? Unpredictability: that’s the hallmark of Russian foreign policy. And frankly, we could take a lesson from them.”
“And what about this ‘no fingerprints’ allegation?” Jon said, hearing a familiar echo in what Strickland had just said. “Where did that come from? Wasn’t that discussed in one of these meetings?”
“I have no idea where that came from. None. All right?” He turned and began to walk the incline to his car. “Unless it was something one of the generals said,” he added. “But it would’ve been in the context of war-gaming.”
“Rickenbach?”
“I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t in the room. But I mean, even if someone said it, so what?” He smiled, shifting his tone again. “And, of course, if you report that, you’re only drawing thunder from the real story.”
“Which is what? What is the real story?” Jon said.
“The real story”—Strickland stopped walking again, surveying Jon—“is that Russia’s military did this, okay, and I guess—from what I’m hearing—they’re blaming us now? Which is how they do it. And a frightening prospect, considering the nuclear arsenal they’re sitting on. Do you know, our two countries make up less than seven percent of the world’s population but control ninety-three percent of its nuclear weapons?”
“Yes, I do,” Jon said.
“And so that’s where this is headed, frankly. And that’s why the White House has been careful. They’re getting their ducks lined up. As they should.”
“To say it was a coup attempt?”
“Coup attempt, right. Their generals, not ours.” Strickland began walking again. “Look, don’t make this more complicated than it is. What we have—will have—is incontrovertible evidence. As I say, they’re in the process of dotting all the i’s right now.”
“Evidence of—?”
“What you just called it: a coup. A plot that did involve this oligarch Hordiyenko. Hordiyenko, as you know, plays both sides. It would’ve been easy for the Russian generals to do business with him and set this up to look like a Ukrainian operation.
“Putin’s security detail evidently caught on at the last minute and kept him off that plane, as you know. The man leads a charmed life, doesn’t he? I’d hate to see what becomes of those generals,” he added, smiling.
Strickland pointed his key fob at a Lexus sedan. The locks slid open. The story was beginning to feel confusing again and Jon wondered if that was the idea. Noise at the expense of comprehension. But whose idea?
“You’re not getting any of this from me,” Strickland said, seeming anxious to go, “but I can tell you a name. That might give you a little leg up on the competition. It’s going to be out in a few hours anyway.”
“Okay.”
“The man in the Russian military who ordered the attack, I understand, is named Utkin. General Viktor Utkin. As I say, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.” He winked. “Now, do this country a favor and report that and stop trying to blame us, okay? Give America a break.”
Jon nodded and tried to apologize again, but Harland Strickland was already pulling at the creases on his pants legs, getting into the car. He waved to Jon as he drove away.
As soon as Strickland was gone, Jon walked back into the sunlight and called his editor Roger Yorke.
“I’ve got a name,” he said. “Supposedly the Russian general who ordered the attack.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Roger’s voice had its familiar neutral tone.
“The name I was given was General Utkin, Viktor Utkin,” he said. “Is that a name you’ve heard?”
There was a long silence, Roger making his odd purring sound, an indication there might be a problem with this information. “I’ve heard it, yes,” Roger said. “But I don’t know that it’s the right one. Utkin. There’s actually an old story about Viktor Utkin.” Jon waited. “I’m getting a different name, actually,” he said. “The name I’m getting is Ivan Delkoff. He’s kind of a renegade colonel in Russia’s military intelligence branch, the GRU. Important figure for Russia in eastern Ukraine, supporting the rebels. He was called back to Moscow in the spring, evidently, and may have hired the men who carried out the attack.”
“Oh.” Jon scribbled the name in his pad. “So why would the White House put out Utkin?”
“Is the White House putting it out?”
“Not yet. But I’m told they will be, soon.”
Roger said nothing for a while. Jon recognized that he had just equated Strickland with the White House and wondered if he was being played: was Utkin a name the White House wanted to float in the media for some reason?
“Then you’ve posed a good question,” Roger said, and Jon waited through another silence. “But it’s Delkoff, I think, we need to go after, not Utkin. Delkoff.”
As he drove away, replaying the conversation with Harland Strickland in his head, Jon felt a chill of recognition. A phrase Strickland had just said to him in passing: he suddenly remembered why it sounded familiar. Strickland might have just inadvertently given him the solution to a different puzzle: the identity and motivation of his 9:15 source.
THIRTY-SIX
Hotel National, Moscow.
When he heard Jake Briggs’s voice, Christopher Niles was surprised but pleased. The lunch with Amira Niyzov had gone well, and Jake Briggs was the next step. But then Briggs’s tone became unfamiliar. “Good news and bad news,” he said.
The bad news was very bad. The good news, he didn’t know yet. But he needed Briggs to not talk about it over the phone. He needed him to leave France right away and join him in Moscow.
Chris lay on his bed in the Hotel National that afternoon trying to put the change of plans into some kind of perspective. All Briggs’s “bad news” meant was that they had gone off script a little. He’d expected that anyway. He exchanged encrypted emails with Martin Lindgren, Martin asking him to wait before he did anything. There was a document he would be sending, Martin wrote, something Christopher could use for his leg of the operation. Chris asked him to arrange for a rental car and handgun for Briggs through Moscow station, similar to the setup in France.
Martin complied, but ended their last exchange with, “May need to abort tomorrow, for your own safety.”
Chris deliberately hadn’t answered that one. He didn’t know what pressures Martin Lindgren was under, but he knew he couldn’t abort the mission. Especially not now, with Briggs en route to Moscow.
So Christopher waited, watching television, sometimes with the sound off. By then, Russia’s coverage of August 13 had become so predictable he could provide much of the commentary himself: the foreign minister raised his fist, warning that America must face the consequences of what they’d done. “This is provokatsiya!” he declared. Provocation! “Any further escalation by the Americans will create a situation that no one desires.”
Other world leaders expressed stunned sympathy, saying in carefully worded statements how they would wait for the investigation to run its course before making any comment about the United States.
When Lindgren’s encrypted document at last arrived, translated from Russian to English, it became clear that Briggs’s good news was better than good: during the final hours of his life, Ivan Delkoff had written an account of what actually happened on August 13, including the names of the planners and participants. He’d written it with the intention of giving—or, more likely, selling—his story to the United States.
Delkoff’s document was the real thing, the first verification of what Christopher had traveled to Moscow to prove: that Andrei Turov had masterminded August 13. It also told them something more significant: that the operation couldn’t have occurred without the
blessing of Russia’s president. Whether they’d be able to convince the world of it was still an open question.
Christopher read the file several times, sifting through the wording for hidden nuances. But it was all pretty straightforward, and pretty remarkable. Delkoff had written his “Declaration” to record a chapter of history that would otherwise never be known. The juxtaposition of these old-world furnishings, the view of the Kremlin and Red Square out his window, and this document alleging high-level crimes and deceit at the heart of Russia’s government, was hardly lost on Christopher.
Briggs’s op in France had in one sense been a failure. They’d intended to come away with a clean deal: Delkoff would be granted immunity and Christopher would gain the leverage he needed to negotiate with Turov. It didn’t happen that way, but Briggs had given him what he needed anyway. It was some compensation knowing that Turov had a more pressing problem now than he did. And that Chris could help him solve it. Turov’s mistake had been underestimating Delkoff. He’d gotten Delkoff in the end, just not quickly enough.
Still, Christopher knew that Russia was more accomplished than the United States was at the art of disinformation. If Delkoff’s document went public, the Kremlin would claim the US had fabricated it in order to steer attention from their own involvement in August 13. And there would be no shortage of conspiracy theorists in the States—and supportive Russian bots—to help the story circulate.
But Chris didn’t want Delkoff’s document to go public. He had a much better use for it.
After a small dinner of salmon soup and crab salad in his room, Christopher shut his eyes and tried to catch a nap. He was deep in a dream about wandering through darkened corridors in the Kremlin, lost, hearing Anna’s voice calling to him, when the room phone rang. The sound jolted him to an upright position. It wasn’t late. Just past 8:20. He stared at the night sky for a moment, reorienting himself. Then he reached to answer it. “Hello.”
“Mr. Christopher Niles.”
