The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

“I think those polls are measuring response to media coverage more than what’s actually happening,” Anna said, feeling an old twinge of frustration. “I think it’s up to us to pay close attention, and learn to differentiate between the stories Russia is spreading and the truth, which sometimes isn’t known. Particularly considering what’s at stake in the Baltic region right now.”

  “And who determines that?”

  “Who determines what—the truth?”

  “Yes.” It was a surprisingly good question, Anna thought; but rather than let her answer, the interviewer fumbled: “I mean—what is the truth, then, would you say, regarding August 13?”

  “Based on the intelligence we have? The truth is that this attack was planned in Russia and carried out by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.”

  “With no US involvement or knowledge.”

  “That’s right.”

  This seemed to momentarily derail her train of questions. “And so. But why isn’t the president saying this directly?”

  “I don’t know. The president, as I understand it, is preparing to make a statement,” Anna said. “I believe he will say it directly. But right now, I’m saying it.”

  “And are you aware of the comment from the Secretary of State earlier today? That this may’ve been a Russian military coup? Is that what you meant, that it was planned in Russia?”

  “I can’t really respond to that,” she said, feeling a flicker of resentment toward Harland Strickland again and the president’s advisers who were pushing this agenda. “Except to say this: personally, I don’t believe it was a coup attempt.”

  “You don’t.” The interviewer’s eyes clouded over with confusion. “And what does that mean, exactly?” she said. “You don’t believe it was a military coup?”

  “It means I believe the attack was planned in Russia, as I say, with the sole intention of damaging US credibility, of making us look like what they are: an autocracy with no respect for the rule of law. But that doesn’t mean it was planned by the Russian military. I can’t say anything more specific right now. But the key point is we didn’t do this. End of story.”

  “And so, what can the United States do, Senator, as a member of NATO, to prevent this from escalating into war? And—a related question—wouldn’t an attack on a NATO country be considered an attack on us, according to the NATO charter?”

  “Yes.” Anna took a breath. “Obviously,” she said, “we’re concerned about Russia’s military ambitions in the region. But I think the evidence will clearly show that the governments of Ukraine and Estonia had nothing to do with the attack. And I would call on our partners in the world community to demand a truthful accounting. And to prevent any form of aggression there.”

  Anna wanted to say more. She wanted to say exactly what she now believed had happened: that a man named Andrei Turov had planned the attack, with the knowledge of the president of Russia. But she knew she couldn’t go public with that. She had to wait on Christopher. Already, she’d said too much. “Let me add this,” she said. “You ask about war. I think Russia already has launched a war. An asymmetric war on the truth. And that’s something we need to defend vigorously. All of us. The truth matters. And I think what we most need to do right now is mobilize an international army to defend it.”

  The interviewer seemed to like this and let it be her wrap-up before going to a commercial.

  Anna monitored the response online as she rode back to her Capitol Hill office. Most of it was positive. People liked that someone was finally speaking up and defending the country. “We Didn’t Do This—End of story!” read one headline. “The Truth Matters,” read another; it struck Anna as sad that the US had come to a point where this argument had to be made.

  But the people within the administration who mattered the most weren’t so pleased. The president’s chief of staff left a message asking her to call ASAP. The CIA director called himself several minutes later, sounding terse in his message: “Would like to hear from you.” Anna understood: she’d been expected to repeat the administration’s talking point that the attack was a Russian coup attempt. And she’d done the opposite. She’d said she didn’t believe it.

  When she reached her office, Anna was surprised to find that her mother was among those who’d left messages. Before dealing with the CIA director or the White House, she decided to check in with her mom.

  “Honey, your father wants to talk with you,” Anna’s mother said, in her rich, reassuring voice. “He wants to congratulate you.”

  Anna didn’t believe her at first. Alzheimer’s disease had stolen her father’s ability to express himself. Anna braced herself as she glanced at the faded photo of him on her mantel, dressed in his general’s uniform twenty-some years earlier.

  “Annie?”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “You did a good job. We were watching you. Your mother and me. I’m proud of you.” His voice sounded a little distant but his diction was surprisingly sharp. “You said it just right. About the truth. I was watching with your mother. You defended your country nicely.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you, I didn’t expect you’d be watching.”

  “Of course, we were. Don’t give up. Keep doing what you’re doing, only more so.”

  “My gosh, thank you, Daddy.” Moments later, Anna’s father began to repeat himself and sound confused. She could hear her mother talking to him, trying to take the phone away. They’d spoken for less than three minutes, but the opening exchange had felt miraculous, like her father had reached back in time to pull out one of his old pep talks: Keep doing what you’re doing, only more so. Anna stood in front of her office window after saying goodbye, her eyes full of tears, recalling how her dad could make her day with a compliment, or send her into a deep funk with a criticism. As an only child, Anna had sometimes been the buffer between her father, a lifelong military man who had little patience with popular culture, and her sociable, homemaker mother, who seemed to have patience with everything. That was how she had first learned the art of diplomacy.

  Ming was standing in the doorway, her long face downcast, waiting for Anna to emerge from her thoughts. “You okay?”

  “Sorry.” She wiped at her eyes. “I was just talking with my father.”

  Ming pointed to her desk phone. Anna looked, and she saw the number of the next-to-last person that she ever expected to call, after her father: Gregory Dial. Dial, the old-school Cold Warrior, now accused of meeting with a Ukrainian missile supplier to discuss killing Russia’s president.

  “Hi Greg,” she said, tentatively. Anna had called Gregory Dial three times over the past week; he hadn’t called back until now.

  “Anna. I thought you were quite good on television.”

  “Okay,” she said cautiously. “Thank you.”

  “How about we meet for a few minutes,” he said. “I think we ought to talk.”

  “If you’d like. When’s convenient?”

  “I’m in town,” he said. “I could come to your office right now, if it isn’t too late. Otherwise, tomorrow?”

  “No. Come over now. I’ll wait for you.”

  FORTY-ONE

  The Weekly American offices. Foggy Bottom, Washington

  After reading what Anna Carpenter had left with him, Jon Niles walked down the hall to Roger Yorke’s corner office. It was an amazing document, which he knew could completely change the narrative about August 13. It was also amazing that Anna had a copy— and wanted to share it with him.

  The problem would be proving Ivan Delkoff’s version of events. As with all things Russian, there was a chance that the document wasn’t what it appeared to be.

  Roger was watching television as Jon walked in, his legs crossed on the desk: a press conference on the Texas secession movement, which had piggybacked onto the anti-Washington protests stirred up by August 13. Seeing Jon in the doorway, Roger muted the sound and nodded him to have a seat.

  “I don’t know the best way to preface this,” Jon said. “But I just
got hold of something I think is big. It’s just—I can’t do anything with it yet. We’ve got to wait twenty-four hours.”

  “All right. What’ve you got?”

  “It’s a document,” he said, “explaining what happened last Friday in Ukraine. Written by one of the participants. Names, dates, money trail. It lays out the whole thing. I think it’s the real deal.”

  Roger squinted and nodded soberly. Nothing seemed to surprise Jon’s editor. He sometimes thought that if he were to remove his head, set it on his desk for several seconds then put it back on, Roger Yorke would simply watch with a slightly detached expression, pleased to observe something he’d never seen before. “‘Written by one of the participants.’ Not Utkin?”

  “No. The man you told me about. Ivan Delkoff.”

  “Ah.” Roger looked at him with new interest. “And what does it say?”

  “It lays out exactly what happened. It details how Delkoff was hired in the spring to carry out the attack by a former FSB man named Andrei Turov. And that Turov was working with—for—the president of Russia. It’s very specific. Names, dates, bank transfers.”

  Roger’s eyes widened slightly, roughly the equivalent of anyone else exclaiming Oh, my God! “How’d you get it?”

  “I can’t go there at this point. But let’s just say it’s a good source.”

  “All right.” Roger sighed. “The trouble is, as you wrote yesterday—this thing could blow up into war by the weekend. And I’m told another damaging story is about to drop. Today or tomorrow.”

  “Damaging to us?”

  Roger made an affirmative sound. “What’s being called a ‘smoking gun.’ Photos and emails, supposedly, about this meeting in Kiev. Confirming the deal between the Ukrainian missile dealer and our CIA man. Gregory Dial. There may also be video.”

  Jon sighed. He debated whether to share his suspicions about Harland Strickland or to wait. He decided to wait. “The Russians are good at this, aren’t they?” he said.

  “Better than we are, yes,” Roger said. It was true, of course: while the US was still debating how to deal with cyber hacks and disinformation campaigns, Russia had fully integrated cyberwarfare into its military planning. Their 2008 war with Georgia marked the first time a nation had combined cyber attacks with military engagement. They’d since made cyber attacks a major component of their war with Ukraine.

  “This will change it, though,” he said, thinking of what Anna had told him: If we don’t respond properly, the lie wins.

  “Okay.” Roger eyed Jon for a long time, as if reading answers on his face. “And you’re sure this is legitimate?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out. But yes, I believe it is.”

  “Then we wait,” Roger said. “We wait twenty-four hours and hope that isn’t too long.”

  Jake Briggs gazed out at the lights of Moscow as the plane came in to Sheremetyevo Airport, seeing, at certain angles, his own reflection in the window and turning his eyes away. The severe set of his face, the salt-and-pepper stubble, the rough, loose skin on his neck; the face looking back at him was someone he didn’t recognize.

  He was still numb, hours after witnessing Ivan Delkoff’s murder, his thoughts recessed in the drone of the airplane engines. He’d called his wife Donna from Paris, to say that he was all right, to ask about Jamie and Jessie. But he couldn’t tell her what had happened or where he was. He’d caught the last Aeroflot flight out of de Gaulle, arriving in Moscow at 3:20 a.m. Wondering all the while if he was journeying into another trap.

  He kept thinking of Christopher Niles: his tough, steady temperament, his ability to suppress anger and subversive thoughts while he was working. Briggs didn’t always do that so well. He had boarded the plane in Paris too angry to have a rational conversation with himself or anyone else, Delkoff’s death still looping in his head: the way he’d taken an extra two steps before his body caught up with the fact that he’d been shot. Briggs had seen similar kills a dozen times in combat, but something about Delkoff’s death felt more personal. Part of it was the last look he’d given him as he walked away from his car, as if he knew something Briggs didn’t.

  He tried counseling himself with the words of an old commanding officer, a gritty rear admiral named Ray Lacey: Don’t look for answers, look for better questions. In service, in life: it was good advice. So Briggs came into Moscow telling himself to ask better questions. Not about what he might have done differently, which wasn’t a good question, but about what he could do now. He arrived in the city with just a carry-on, pretending to be a tourist. Speaking to the cab driver with the few Russian sentences he could muster, the man all the while giving him uncomprehending looks.

  Briggs stood on the narrow leafy Moscow street before entering his hotel, soaking in the pre-dawn silence, as a low mist rose from the ground. Upstairs, he went online to check messages and catch up on the news. There were fresh allegations about Washington’s connection with the alleged August 13 planners and weapons supplier, he saw. The New York Times was reporting a meeting between the former Ukrainian intelligence officer Mikhail Kolchak, who allegedly operated the missile battery that brought down the president’s plane, and “two American intelligence officials” in Kiev last month.

  Briggs turned off his phone and watched the night trees for a while through the small window in his second-story room. He didn’t think he could sleep, but finally he did; and sleep did its work, clearing away some of the flotsam in his head.

  In the morning, Briggs did his hundred push-ups and hundred situps. Then he called Christopher Niles on his cell to tell him he’d arrived.

  “There’s an anti-US rally today on Red Square,” Chris told him.

  “Okay.” Briggs had forgotten how another human voice could shift his perspective so dramatically, particularly this one.

  “Can you meet me at eleven?”

  “All right.”

  Briggs walked down the street to a diner. He ate a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, porridge, and hotcakes, still angry about losing Delkoff, but ready now to meet Christopher and whatever came next.

  He saw that it was supposed to rain today, beginning by noon, and that seemed a good omen. Rain had been part of Briggs’s training. It almost made him feel at home.

  FORTY-TWO

  Capitol Hill, Washington.

  Gregory Dial’s eyes were slits, as if he were looking at Anna from a distance, safe from scrutiny, his thin white hair combed up from the temples, his craggy features an affable shell. When Dial was younger, some said he resembled a clean-shaven Abe Lincoln, a blend of wise man and working man. Now, in what seemed an incredible turn of events, the press was accusing him of spearheading a US assassination plot against the president of Russia.

  Anna hadn’t seen Greg Dial in nine or ten months. He seemed thinner and a little frailer than she remembered, although his movements and his deep voice carried a familiar authority. He set a worn leather satchel on her desk, something Anna’s grandfather might’ve carried.

  “And how’s your dad?”

  It was always the first or second question he asked. This time, Anna had a good answer. “I just talked with him. He sounded great. He inspired me.”

  “Good, good,” he said absently, beginning to open the satchel. There was something endearing about his bony fingers unwinding the leather strap. Dial was a former marine, who took issue with some of the administration’s foreign policy. But he was by nature fiercely loyal.

  “I commend you for what you did, Anna,” he said. “Going on television and speaking your mind like that. You did a nice job defending us. And me. Not that I needed it.”

  “I didn’t think of it as defending anyone,” she said. “I answered the questions I was asked.”

  “Yes, well. I came here to head off trouble. For all of us.” He frowned as he reached in the satchel. Whatever he was about to do, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, Anna could see. You could have made this easier by just returning my c
alls, she thought. “As you can imagine,” he said, “the media’s been calling me nonstop for the past few days. Legally, of course, I can’t say anything. Not that I would, anyway—” He pulled printouts of four images and spread them on her desk. “These came to me this morning. From the Associated Press. I’ve been asked to comment. I’m not going to, but I wanted you to see. So you’ll know what you’re getting into.”

  Anna took a few moments to absorb what she was looking at: photographs of men seated at a small restaurant table, shoulder to shoulder. It resembled the blurry image that Russian blogs had sent out last Friday, purportedly showing “an American CIA officer” meeting with the Ukrainian missile dealer. These images were better focused and showed a wider view, revealing two additional men. This time, the “American CIA officer” was recognizable. In one of the photos he was looking right at the camera.

  “That’s you.”

  “It’s me, yes. And this—” But he didn’t have to tell her; she knew the big man sitting across from him, the man she’d seen in intelligence files: the serious face, flat mouth, crew cut. “—is Ivan Delkoff.” He moved his index finger to the man beside Delkoff. “This,” he said, “is Hordiyenko’s agent, Petrofsky. And this man is Mikhail Kolchak, the Ukrainian who operated the missile battery that brought down the president’s plane.”

  “My God,” Anna said. “So you’re saying this is real, then?”

  “This is real, that’s right.” He scooted forward. “It’s Kiev, July 12. This is the meeting that’s been reported all over the Internet. I was there.”

  Anna stared at him, incredulous. So the reports were right? The US was behind the failed assassination attempt? Here was the evidence, the “smoking gun.” They had them.

  “The president told me today that this meeting didn’t happen,” Anna said. “I just went on national television saying it didn’t.”

  “Well, it did. That’s why I’m here. I understand these will go public tomorrow. Along with a story.” They shared a look, Anna thinking about the damage ahead: this could instantly shatter US credibility around the world, maybe permanently.