Primary Threat

by Jack Mars

  This was the famous “red phone” of legend, the direct line to the Kremlin, in use during crises since the darkest days of the Cold War.

  Dixon almost couldn’t believe the thing really existed. Sure, he always knew that there must be a way for the White House and the Kremlin to be in contact, but for some reason he had never keyed in on the fact that the red phone was really the red phone. He had seen photos of it many times, and he still didn’t believe it.

  But now he did.

  Eisenhower had held this very phone.

  Kennedy.

  LBJ.

  It jazzed him just to touch it. He couldn’t explain the feeling. It was like being a part of history, something so much larger than himself that he…

  He shook these thoughts away, and focused on what Vasil was saying. Dixon could hear Putin speaking in the background, just a second or two ahead of Vasil. The two voices in tandem—one in Russian, one in English—made an odd echo effect.

  “We know you have made your initial intelligence assessments, and we understand that you have come to conclusions similar to ourselves. The traitor Marmilov acted of his own volition, in concert with a small group of conspirators. Most ground troops and individual scientists associated with the plan did not grasp the nature of the project, nor did they know where their orders were coming from.”

  Dixon looked around the room. Half a dozen men were listening in on the conversation, holding modern handsets of their own. He imagined there must a hundred or more people listening—here in the White House, at CIA and NSA headquarters, in the Kremlin, the GRU, the FSB, probably even in China.

  Two world leaders were having a telephone summit, coming to grips with a violent and unfortunate incident, and trying to find a way to move on from it.

  Richard Stark was nodding—what Vasil was saying was consistent with the direction American intelligence officials were leaning. A rogue agent from the GRU had gone all the way off the reservation.

  “We want you to know that the Russian government is an open book on this matter. We would like to share with you, in as transparent a way as circumstances will allow, all of the data we have compiled about this incident, and the people who were involved. We have nothing to hide. We look forward to continued good relations with the United States, both in our shared neighborhood of the Arctic Circle, and everywhere on Earth. And we intend to compensate the families of the oil rig workers and the American commandos who died in the attack.”

  Personally, Dixon was okay with all of this.

  Putin hadn’t ordered the attack on the oil rig. He hadn’t even known about it. Also, his people hadn’t known. Dixon wasn’t sure what that said about the state of the Russian government, but he did know that revenge was off the table. This was a good thing. Tit for tat attacks between Russia and the United States were a problem for everyone.

  The major issue was going to be selling this point of view to the public.

  “Well, Mr. President,” Dixon said, “I’m pleased by your candor and by your commitment to the victims and their families.”

  Dixon prattled on for a few moments, mouthing the right platitudes. Before too long, he realized he was starting to bore people, and that it was time to wrap up the conversation.

  “Please know that our commitment to partnership runs as deep as yours.”

  Across from him, the big flat-screen TV was on. CNN was showing a clip of the Russian Prime Minister, Dmitri Gagarin, speaking in front of a group of people. Gagarin was as handsome as people said, but from here he looked like a bit of an empty suit. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, was the real deal.

  Along the bottom of the TV there was a headline: BREAKING: Russian Prime Minister issues vote of confidence for Putin, calls for unity.

  Dixon scanned the people in the room, hunting for a certain face. In a moment he found it: Jepsum, the young guy who had overstepped and suggested that Dixon step in and support Gagarin as the next Russian President.

  It was laughable, and Jepsum looked like a man trying to make himself disappear. He needn’t bother. He was going to disappear from the West Wing, whether he wanted to or not.

  Dixon glanced at Gagarin on the TV again.

  Boy, he was glad he hadn’t backed that guy.

  A new thought occurred to Dixon. He needed to find a way to get closer to this guy Don Morris, and his team of covert operatives. They had been right all along, and they kept doubling down on their rightness, despite all the obstacles that had been thrown in their way. Dixon could use some people like that in his corner.

  There was a pause over the line, and Dixon jumped in to fill the space.

  “Yes, Mr. President, I’m glad we had this chance to talk as well. Let’s do a better job of making it a regular thing, shall we? I’ll have my people get in touch with your people.”

  When he hung up, Dixon carefully placed the handset back in its cradle. It was such a heavy phone. There was something masculine about it. He almost wished that when his time here was over, he could take the telephone home with him.

  Vice President Thomas Hayes had just hung up his own extension. They made eye contact through the crowd of people. Thomas was standing now, and he was taller than most men, by a lot. His overlarge nose suddenly became a symbol of strength, like the woman’s bicep in the old Rosie the Riveter posters.

  Dixon decided that he and Thomas were going to make a run at this thing. They had weathered a crisis, they had a mandate to govern, and by God, they were going to do so.

  “What do you think?” Thomas said.

  “Some days,” Clement Dixon said, “it’s good to be the President.”

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  Time Unknown

  Place Unknown

  “Wake up, miserable dog.”

  In the first seconds, he didn’t remember who he was.

  Then the pain came rushing back, and he remembered everything. His name was Oleg Marmilov. They had come for him and taken him out of his hotel suite.

  Now he was in total darkness—the darkness that comes when they put a heavy bag over your head and cinch it tight around your neck.

  “Marmilov.”

  “Yes,” he said. His voice made a faint whistling sound that he didn’t associate with himself at all. He was missing teeth now. His mouth felt strangely empty. He had lost the first couple of teeth in the initial beatings. After that, a man had come in and simply wrenched some of them out with pliers.

  They did that to you. They erased you. The person you once thought you were was taken away piece by piece. Marmilov was all too familiar with the process.

  Perhaps, if he lived long enough, days or weeks from now, they would show him his reflection in a mirror. His body would be half-starved and wasted. His eyes would be sunken, blackened from punches, and ashamed. His teeth would be gone, his skin would hang on bone. His face would look like the skull of a corpse, buried and later exhumed. Maybe they would cut his nose off to complete the effect.

  Maybe, after he had told them everything, they would cut his tongue out. And by “everything,” he did not mean everything about the conspiracy against Putin, or his dreams of a return to greatness for Russia—but everything, every loss, every defeat, his worst, most secret humiliations going all the way back to childhood.

  None of this even touched upon what they would do—what they were already doing—to his bones. He had several broken ribs on his left side that made breathing difficult and painful. Most of his fingers were broken. He thought maybe one of the bones in his right forearm was broken—the last time he saw it, the lower arm had swollen up like a sausage about to burst its skin.

  And the pain had hardly even begun.

  Without warning, someone grabbed him by the neck and roughly pulled the bag from his head.

  Marmilov blinked at the light flooding into his eyes. It was not bright in here. He was somewhere underground, in a place without windows. A dim yellow arc lit the room from the ceiling. But after absolute darkness, the bleak light seemed to
sear his retinas.

  He was bound to a metal chair. The chair was uncomfortable, all hard edges, and bolted to the floor. He had no idea how long he had been sitting here.

  “You smell. Do you know that?”

  Marmilov nodded. Of course he knew that. He had wet himself, more than once. He hadn’t done the other thing yet, and that was a small blessing. But he would, if they held him here long enough.

  The man speaking to him had hair the color of sand. He was short and muscular, a sportsman, or someone who spent long hours pushing weights in a gym. His jaw was strong like that of a caveman. There were many such men in Russia.

  There were other men in the room, but the sandy-haired man was the one in charge. He wore a tight black shirt, slacks and shiny black shoes. The man stared at Marmilov with the eyes of a hawk.

  “I killed Zelazny myself,” he said, and smiled.

  Around the room, a couple of the other men laughed.

  “It’s true. I was with our American visitors. Nice guys, they thought I was their tour guide. I put one bullet in Zelazny’s brain, then pushed his body into the Moskva with my foot. Do you know that he cried? He was a degenerate, and of course he cried. He cried several times. But at one point, he wept like some grandmother. Why did he weep?”

  Marmilov didn’t say a word. He just looked at the man. If circumstances had turned out differently, and this tormentor had ended up here in the chair… Marmilov was careful not to smile at the thought.

  “Do you know why?” the man said.

  Marmilov shook his head. He still didn’t speak. He loathed the sound of his voice with the teeth missing.

  “He wept when he revealed your name.” He looked around the room at the other men. He smiled. “Can you imagine?”

  They all laughed.

  “He wept because merely uttering the name Oleg Marmilov was so frightening, he could barely make himself do it. The name alone was enough to break the spirit of a grown man. Oleg the Terrible. Oleg the Great.”

  He shook his head.

  “Look at you now.”

  There was a long moment of quiet. The man appeared to be thinking about something.

  “We know everything,” he said finally. “We have finally learned all of your reckless, foolish plans. A friend from the other side informed me of them once he was free to do so. Have you no brain, Marmilov? Would you destroy the world to save it? Russia will return to greatness without you. It does not need your help. In fact, Russia will be better off when you are gone.”

  He paused.

  “We’ve read your diaries, you know? Such grandiosity, such self-regard. Me, me, me, me, me. It reads like the diary, not of a great man, but of a teenage girl. Rest assured we have also looked at all of your files. We have the kompromat on your puppet Gagarin. He’s our puppet now, so thank you for that. And we know who your co-conspirators were—all of them, I suppose. Of course, you gave up most of them yourself, didn’t you?”

  Again, the men around the room laughed.

  Marmilov did his best not to cry. So far, he had denied them this. His own end was tragic enough, but this was truly the end of everything. The people who would remove Putin were likely being rounded up at this moment—men in the government, in the military, in business. Marmilov knew who all the players were. If there were any besides these, they were well-hidden and powerless.

  Far from overthrowing Putin, the entire exercise had only cemented his rule.

  “I also killed Chevsky,” the man said. He shrugged, as if he was just bringing up a minor issue he had forgotten to mention earlier.

  Chevsky.

  Marmilov did cry then, just a few tears running from his eye. Chevsky was a good man, almost like a son to him. If he’d had children, Marmilov would have wanted a son like Chevsky. But Marmilov didn’t have children—he had given his life to the country that was now killing him.

  “Shot him in the head,” the man said. “Threw him in the river, too. What else are you supposed to do with traitors?”

  Behind him, a heavy steel door opened.

  Another group of men came in. They were tall, very broad, with stern faces. Marmilov recognized them right away for what they were—bodyguards. From behind them a much smaller man emerged. He wore a dark business suit, with no tie, and a white dress shirt open at the collar.

  Vladimir Putin.

  He looked down at Marmilov—Marmilov sitting in the hard metal chair that had become his home. Putin’s eyes said everything. It was business as usual. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t amused, either. The state of Marmilov was already past the place where Putin could derive pleasure from it.

  Marmilov hated that his old rival would see him like this.

  “Marmilov,” Putin said.

  “Putin.”

  There was that whistling sound again.

  “You were always envious,” Putin said. “Even when we were young.”

  Marmilov shook his head. That was a lie. It was never envy.

  “You have not done your job,” he said. He ignored the cartoon quality of his own voice. He ignored the humiliation of his defeat. He would say his piece. He must speak the truth of what was happening.

  “You promised greatness. But you and your friends will strip us bare, and run us into the Earth.” It was all he could muster so far, but there was more to come.

  Putin smiled and shook his head. A small breath of air escaped from him.

  “I assure you I’m doing my best.”

  He looked at the man with sandy hair.

  “End it. No more of this. However flawed, he was an asset to us at one time.”

  The sandy-haired man nodded. “Yes, sir. As you wish.”

  Putin turned to leave. Without a backwards glance at Marmilov, he disappeared behind his wall of bodyguards.

  “Putin!” Marmilov said. “Vladimir!”

  The heavy black bag came down over his head, and he plunged into darkness again. His throat constricted as they cinched the bag tight around his neck.

  Something very hard pressed against his right eye. Marmilov felt a surge of panic rise through his body. The end was coming now. There would be no more statements, and no more truth would be told. The hard object was the barrel of a gun.

  This was not right, nor wrong. This was Russian justice.

  “Goodbye, Marmilov,” a voice said.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  10:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  Queen Anne’s County, Maryland

  Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay

  Luke was cold.

  It was a sunny September day, with a stiff breeze that had just a hint of winter’s approaching bite hidden within it. There were whitecaps out on the bay. Close to shore, people in black wetsuits raced back and forth on old windsurfing boards, or caught big air hanging from colorful kite surfing rigs.

  It looked like fun out there.

  But Luke couldn’t seem to get the cold out of his bones. He sat at the table out on the patio, with a pair of old, worn jeans on, and a paint-splattered green sweatshirt. He wore a knit wool cap on his head.

  He had a cup of black coffee in front of him, along with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on toast. Not only was he cold, but he couldn’t motivate himself to whip up anything more than the world’s easiest sandwich. This was his breakfast.

  Becca had been calling him all morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to answer the telephone. He gathered from her messages that the video which showed he was a monster had been publicly debunked.

  It was now widely understood on TV that the raid to take back the oil rig was an act of heroism. Also, rumors of the second Arctic operation were beginning to leak out. Anyone familiar with the SRT, and who could read between the lines a little bit, would know that they were involved.

  So now Luke was her hero again, and she wanted to make up.

  She couldn’t keep doing this.

  She couldn’t keep accusing him of being a murderer, only to take it back later.

&
nbsp; She couldn’t keep forcing him to lie about and cover up his activities.

  She couldn’t keep withholding her love.

  He could make a list of the things that she couldn’t keep doing, but he knew that idea was going nowhere. He loved her. They had a child together, and he loved that child more than anything in the world.

  He was tired. Physically, emotionally, in every way. He knew there was a compromise here somewhere, he just didn’t know where it was, and he didn’t know if he had the energy to find it.

  There was a thick book open on the table in front of him. This cabin had been in Becca’s family for generations, and they were nothing if not highly educated. The living room wall was lined with two floor-to-ceiling bookcases, both of which were chock full of books. The books were old.

  It was kind of incredible, given the way the world was going, that bookcases like these still existed. But they did, and Luke had gotten into the habit of reaching in and taking a random book out from time to time. And a couple of months ago, Luke had come across something that seemed to sum up his situation quite well.

  That was even truer now than before.

  Murphy was dead. That was sad, but Luke was numb to it right now. He imagined he would come face-to-face with that loss repeatedly over the next several months. He might even come to terms with it over time. For the moment, he was rejecting the idea that he had killed Murphy. Yes, Luke had called him, and had asked him to come on the mission. Yes, that happened. But he hadn’t tried very hard to convince Murphy of anything. Murphy hadn’t needed much convincing.

  At the moment, what bothered Luke most about it was what it said about him—he was the last person left alive from the doomed mission in eastern Afghanistan. And Murphy had always accused Luke of being responsible for those deaths. Martinez had done the same, before he killed himself.