Putin's Gambit

by Lou Dobbs

  “There is some kind of bigger conspiracy working here. I keep running into Russian men with guns. One of them is the same man who mugged me last week. He’s a middle-aged man with a scar on his face.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “No. But one of his associates is named Serge Blattkoff. And he was waiting outside my apartment.”

  “How did you get his name?”

  “I happened to see his driver’s license.”

  “How did you get away from him?”

  “You’ll know if you see him.”

  “When and where do you want to meet?”

  Now Walsh took a moment and finally said, “I’ll call you back when I have more information and I can think clearly. Until then, I’d appreciate it if I stayed off the news.”

  “No promises until we meet face-to-face. All I’m offering you is a fair chance to explain yourself.”

  Walsh hung up without saying anything else. He had no idea how hard or easy it was to trace a phone call. He immediately sprinted back up to the street and continued his walk toward Thomas Brothers Financial. He figured he’d be there sometime around noon.

  *

  Major Bill Shepherd took a moment to consider how this FBI agent had manipulated him into finding out information about his friend Derek Walsh. He didn’t answer when she dropped the bombshell and made some comment about back-channel communication. Finally he said, “So this is an all-business dinner?”

  “Enjoyable business, but business nonetheless.” She had a smug smile that was not endearing in any way.

  “I can honestly say I have not spoken to Derek in over a week.”

  “But you know he’s in trouble and allegedly made a money transfer that is partially responsible for the protests and the financial markets collapse.”

  “A mutual friend told me about it.”

  “Who’s your mutual friend?”

  Shepherd realized how serious this was and didn’t want to implicate Mike Rosenberg. He carefully wiped his mouth, folded the napkin, and stood up from the table. “As an officer in the United States Marine Corps, I pride myself on good manners. Good manners dictate that I excuse myself from dinner before I say something which would reflect badly on the Corps and me.”

  He turned and marched out of the dining room, happy he was able to get some distance before she started hitting him with more questions. But now he had to wonder how much of his life she had been investigating. Did she know there were several German women he kept company with?

  *

  Joseph Katazin was chilly and had thrown on a New York Giants windbreaker as he waited. He’d decided he needed to be more efficient and had told his contact to meet him at noon on Wall Street near the site of the most successful protests. Most of the protests had fizzled, but the terror attacks were still going on. It was only a matter of time before the Staten Island Ferry and the subways were hit. Katazin wanted the protests fired up again as well.

  He was on the edge of the courtyard of Thomas Brothers Financial and was disappointed to only see a dozen or so lackluster protesters holding signs and a couple even chatting with the police. That would not happen in Moscow after a display like the ones over the past two days. The police were a little less friendly.

  Even the cops didn’t expect much trouble. There were more on patrol than usual, but they didn’t have their riot gear on, and there were no large groups of staged officers like there had been. Everyone had the sense that this had run its course, but if Katazin had his way, that wouldn’t be the final chapter in this aspect of his operation.

  The further the operation proceeded, the less contact he had with other areas, and now he was solely focused on what he could affect here in New York City. He could only assume the events in Europe were proceeding as planned and the Red Army was ready to move. He needed to give them more time and divert the U.S. government’s attention a while longer. That was where his contact would come in—Lenny Tallett, a twitchy weasel of a man who talked too fast with a Bronx accent that made it hard for Katazin to understand. Just then he saw the thirty-year-old man coming toward him. As usual, he proudly displayed the tattoos stretching from his hands past the collar of his shirt and wore more than a dozen studs in each ear. A younger woman, perhaps even a teenager, hustled along behind him as he approached.

  Katazin said, “Is this the crowd you expected?”

  Lenny said, “It’s about what I thought.” His dark eyes darted around the area, focusing for a moment on a uniformed police officer across the street.

  That made Katazin a little nervous, and he scanned the courtyard to make sure no one was close. There was one man on the far side of the courtyard walking up to a bench. No one else moved. Then Katazin focused his full attention on Lenny and said, “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Alice. She’s my girlfriend. She’s also a witness in case you go nuts.” He held up his hands in a defensive movement and said quickly, “You have to admit you sounded a little unglued on the phone. I didn’t know what would happen in person.”

  Katazin stared at the rail-thin young woman. She had a wide array of tattoos herself and light brown eyes that made her look like a deer eyeing a wolf. Her hair was frizzy and popped out at odd angles from under a wool hat with the Stand Up to Wall Street logo across the front.

  Katazin decided he didn’t have time for this and got right to the point. He looked at Lenny and said, “Are the protesters really just scared? Or are they lazy?”

  Lenny shrugged and said, “Little bit of both. I worked with the people who showed up. But who shows up in the middle of the day during the week? Mostly unemployed and homeless people. They lost interest, and so has the media.”

  Katazin had noticed only one TV crew, stationed in a truck at the far end of the courtyard, and they weren’t even filming at the moment.

  He said, “What will it take to get the protests started again?”

  Lenny smiled and said, “Money. Money to advertise on Facebook and other social media and to cover my time and talent.”

  Katazin recognized this wasn’t an off-the-cuff answer. He had been waiting to spring this for some time. Finally Katazin asked, “How much?”

  “Fifty grand.”

  The little anarchist-for-profit had answered much too quickly. This was part of a plot to extort money and nothing more. Katazin gave him a flat stare but didn’t answer.

  After twenty seconds of silence, Katazin said, “That sounds awfully steep.”

  “It’s nothing compared to what the rich dude, what’s his name?” He paused, then answered his own question. “George Soros. What he paid for the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. He gave them millions to keep up the protests. And that turned out to be a fake issue. All I want is a measly fifty K.”

  In the ensuing silence Lenny blurted out, “It’ll also keep me quiet.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but there’s a reason you want the protests. And I bet you don’t want the cops to know. Let’s call it fifty grand either way.”

  Anger flashed through Katazin as he calmly gripped the handle of the pistol he had in the pocket of his windbreaker. He looked around and realized too many people were close by, but it was awfully tempting. If only he had a knife on him this conversation would be over. He needed a few moments to think.

  22

  Vladimir Putin sat at his official desk in his office at the palace at Novo-Ogaryovo. He told his personal assistant he needed some quiet time to concentrate on several issues. His assistant, a former army captain, always did an excellent job understanding exactly what his boss was asking for. He was not easily bullied, either. If Putin asked for time alone, he got it. It didn’t matter who came to his door or called demanding immediate access.

  Right now he had difficulty concentrating on the daily, mundane demands of his job even if he was undistracted by visitors. All he wanted was information about the Estonian operation. He had always found it hard not to look ahead. />
  He was very pleased with the planning and work that had gone into this operation. It would cost almost nothing. Barely more than a military exercise. The distractions, financial and terrorist-wise, had not cost anything at all. And, from his perspective, had little risk.

  He didn’t care about the GDP of Estonia. It was strategically important for its location. It was one less border he would have to cross when Russia decided it wanted to regain even more territory.

  As soon as they had control of the country, they would start to use the ports as a means to increase trade.

  Putin blustered about NATO, and he did worry about them some. That was why they had gone to the trouble of causing the distractions to the West. There was no doubt the United States had a strong military; the question was the leadership’s willingness to use it. Putin believed that by bringing terrorism to U.S. shores he would scare them into limiting their foreign commitments. Either way, he did not believe they were prepared to go to war over something as inconsequential as Estonia.

  This was a political decision, and Putin knew his politics.

  *

  It was noon when Derek Walsh walked into the quiet courtyard of the three Wall Street buildings that included Thomas Brothers Financial, the tallest building to the east. Wearing a Buffalo Bills ball cap he’d found in the lobby of his hotel to cover his new hair. He sat on the first bench he came to and looked up at the building, almost forgetting what it felt like to work inside. Had he taken all of this for granted? He reached into the left front pocket of his pants and pulled out the Thomas Brothers security plug and started to think of ways he might slip into the building. After a moment, his stomach growled, and he reached for one of the pieces of classic pink bubble gum he’d grabbed from a dish at the hotel, knowing it would stem hunger in a pinch.

  He looked around the courtyard and was amazed there was no one close to him. At the far end, closer to his old building, a man in a Giants windbreaker with his back to Walsh was having a serious conversation with a younger couple. To his left was the lone film crew from a local TV station, with no one manning the camera. CNN had gotten tired of the story with no real violence or connection to a missing plane.

  The man talking to the young couple looked agitated, and it caught Walsh’s attention. He seemed familiar from behind, and Walsh waited a moment to see if he could get a look at the man’s face. It distracted him from all of the problems he knew he’d face if he tried to enter the building, access Thomas Brothers’ network, and retrieve the photographs on his security plug.

  Someone plopped down next to him with a bag from a local sub shop. Walsh almost didn’t turn away from the man talking to the young couple. Then he nodded to his new companion on the bench, and it took a moment for him to realize who it was. Holy shit.

  At least Walsh had the satisfaction of seeing how shocked Ted Marshall was, too.

  *

  It was lunchtime at the CIA, and the cafeteria, which had several mainstream chain restaurants, was starting to fill up. Mike Rosenberg did not feel guilty in the least for having ignored his boss’s order to get a handle on the protests that might start up across the country today. It had only taken a few minutes watching CNN and their moving story about the people killed from terror attacks to know that the country was in mourning and soon would switch to the next phase of grief, which would be anger. Only this time the anger would be focused not on Wall Street but on the people who launched the attacks. The streets were quiet in all of the major cities. It took him a while to find a newsfeed from a local New York station to see that the few people protesting in the same area as the last few days had no energy or enthusiasm.

  He’d written a quick report on the matter but hadn’t submitted it. It never paid to let someone know you could do your job much more efficiently and quickly than they thought. Jesus Christ, he was becoming a government employee. He had spent the remainder of the morning talking to several of the financial analysts who had uncovered all the information they could on the money transfer from Thomas Brothers Financial to the accounts in Bern, Switzerland.

  Now, at his desk, he had a stack of records laid out in front of him. Other analysts were looking at similar records, but everyone took a different path to find information. That was why it was rare that only one analyst examined something important. The bank had been very thorough in handing over information, obviously because it was a victim of a terror attack and everyone wanted to catch the people responsible. There were notes and phone numbers scribbled on the edges of photocopied sheets, and twice he needed the analyst in the next office to interpret scrawled notes written in German and French.

  From what he could tell, a woman had opened all of the accounts that received money. All of the accounts were opened in the same branch of the bank in Bern. The woman used a name that had already led analysts to a dead end. As long as you provided something with your name on it, banks didn’t really care how accurate your information was when they were doing business. It was only at times like this that they regretted not being more diligent.

  Rosenberg felt there had to be another avenue. He looked through the records and jotted down a few notes of his own on a legal pad. He was missing something obvious. Then he noticed a phone number scribbled on the side of an application. It was in sloppy block handwriting that looked like a male’s, but he needed to find out more.

  He just wished he wasn’t so worried about his friend Derek Walsh. There was no telling what Derek might do if he was pushed into a corner.

  Rosenberg went to find an analyst to trace the phone number.

  *

  Joseph Katazin had slowly moved away from the protest area and into the courtyard with Lenny Tallett and his creepy-looking girlfriend walking along with him. The young man, who claimed to be an anarchist, had made it plain: He had moved on to extortionist. This was a headache Katazin did not need.

  As they slowly walked, the younger man said, “You have no idea how hard it is to organize things like this. No one ever does what they’re supposed to.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “And then the trick is to get the crowds stirred up and fade from the front line so you don’t get arrested. We used that trick at a couple of the presidential debates. The one in Miami worked especially well. Grabbed some of the hard-core anarchists out of Lake Worth and bussed them down to Miami and shit got real.”

  “But you can’t do the same thing here for me today?”

  “I can try, but it will cost you. So far I haven’t seen any hint that you’re willing to pay.”

  Katazin looked up and saw they were getting closer to the end of the courtyard. There were now two men sitting on a bench, and the TV camera was not far from them. He desperately wanted to teach this dog a lesson right here and now. Instead he tried to get hold of his emotions.

  *

  Derek Walsh looked up to make sure no one was close enough to hear anything he said to his former boss, Ted Marshall. The only people coming his way were the guy in the Giants windbreaker and the young couple he was talking to. But they were still too far away to hear anything. Walsh appreciated the stunned silence and the look of amazement on Marshall’s face. Finally the older man stuttered, “Derek, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I guess I’m a little like a zombie in a movie. You come back to the place you know best.”

  “You need to get outta here before the cops grab you. There are FBI agents still in our office going through things. They’ve asked a lot of questions about you.”

  “Did anyone tell them where I live? Or who my girlfriend is?”

  “I don’t think anyone knew where you live. But every guy in the office knew you had a hot girlfriend. They just had no information about her. Barely anyone could even remember her name.”

  Walsh absorbed that information but still didn’t know how the Russian figured out where she lived. He also felt encouraged at how open Marshall was talking to him and telling him about the FBI.

 
; His former boss said, “You need to turn yourself in before something bad happens.”

  “What could be worse than what I’m going through now?”

  Marshall was silent.

  Walsh took a chance and said, “Listen, Ted, is there any way you could get me back into the office for five minutes?”

  “What are you talking about? I’d end up in the cell next to you.”

  “Look, I have my security plug, and I activated an extra security protocol so that whoever made the trade would’ve had their photograph taken and stored on the plug. In order to get the photograph, I have to log back on to the network.”

  Now Marshall looked truly stunned.

  Walsh had the plug in his left hand and thought about showing it to Marshall, maybe even asking him to access the network. That would solve the hassle of getting back inside, but something told him never to give the plug away. It was his only leverage. He was taking action. He was being a marine. And a marine wouldn’t let something like the security plug out of his sight. Unless it was out of everyone’s sight. It gave him an idea.

  Just as he was about to say something else, Walsh looked up and realized that the man who was walking toward them with the young couple was the Russian guy who had already caused him so much heartache. Was he after the plug? How did he keep finding Walsh?

  Without thinking, Walsh coughed, covering his mouth with his left hand. He spat his gum into his palm, then jammed the plug under the bench until it was stuck between the gum and a support. The security plug was firmly in place as Walsh turned his head in hopes that the Russian wouldn’t notice him. His heart started to race, and his hand slipped toward the pistol in his belt. This was not the time to get into a gunfight. Nor would it help his status as a fugitive. He doubted it would convince Ted Marshall to help him, either. He stole a glance and saw that the man was on the pathway that turned past the bench.

  He found himself holding his breath.

  *

  Joseph Katazin just needed one empty street to stick a bullet into the side of the head of this moron. He wasn’t crazy about having to kill the girl, too, but this was war, and the stakes were too high. He kept walking, drawing them along, hoping to find the right spot.