The Plot to Kill Putin

by Max Karpov

  By the time they checked in and were issued orange V visitor badges, it felt as if they were operating in sync. Which was what Anna wanted. In a sense, Christopher had accepted Jon as a member of the team, too, when he’d asked her to share Delkoff’s “Declaration” with him. Now she just needed to put him together with Martin.

  Lindgren met them in the lobby, coming out with his clipped walk, wearing a slightly rumpled gray suit and fashionably loosened tie. His face lit up as they made eye contact.

  “So good to see you, Anna,” he said, taking her hands and kissing her on each cheek.

  “This is Jon Niles. Christopher’s brother.”

  “Oh, yes. Pleased to meet you,” he said, surprisingly formal with Jon.

  Jon had been to CIA headquarters only once before, he’d told her, and just to the “new” building. He’d always wanted to see the Memorial Wall in the lobby of the Original Headquarters. So once they passed through the white marbled lobby with its iconic CIA seal, Martin took him to the north lobby wall and let him look. Unlike most memorials in D.C., this one was not open to the public.

  Anna felt a sense of reverence standing before the wall, which honored members of the Central Intelligence Agency who had died serving their country. There were 125 stars on the wall right now: eighty-eight named CIA employees, and thirty-seven others, whose identities remained a secret even in death. This was also where every CIA officer swore the oath to serve his or her country their first Monday on the job. The wall was flanked by a US flag on one side, a CIA flag on the other. Jon’s father, Anna knew, was one of the anonymous stars.

  While Jon read though the names in the Book of Honor, she wandered with Martin to the main lobby, stopping in front of the engraved quote that had become CIA’s unofficial motto: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” from John 8:32. It always struck Anna a little peculiar that CIA had adopted this quote—of Jesus speaking to his disciples—and engraved it in the lobby, along with the citation of chapter and verse.

  “The quote was Allen Dulles’s idea,” Martin explained to Jon, as they walked to the visitors’ cafeteria, his unruly eyebrows lifting. “His father was a Presbyterian minister.”

  “The fourth director of the CIA?” Jon said.

  “Fifth, uh-huh.”

  “But of course, the quote was taken out of context,” Anna said. “When Jesus said it, he was asking the disciples to follow his word. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’”

  “And here?” Jon said.

  “Here, in the context of the CIA, truth means information,” she said. “The CIA pursues information in the service of liberty. Liberty being one of our rights.”

  “God-given rights. Doesn’t it say?” Jon said.

  “More or less, it does.” Anna smiled. “It’s hard to get far from God in this country, isn’t it?”

  They bought coffees in the cafeteria. Anna chose a table in a corner. She had explained only vaguely to Martin why they were coming, just that Jon had something to share with him. Martin still seemed slightly perplexed.

  “Well, we’re up against it, aren’t we?” he said, stirring cream into his coffee. “You’ve seen the smoking gun stories, no doubt.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “And the latest polls. Sixty-seven percent of Russians support military action now against Ukraine or Estonia.” Anna grimaced a nod. “Which is roughly the same percentage that favored Russia going to war with Chechnya after the apartment bombings. Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “And it didn’t take long for them to take advantage of that, as I recall.”

  “No, that’s right,” Martin said. “The day after the explosives were found in Ryazan, Putin ordered the bombing.” It wasn’t hard to draw parallels, Anna knew: The four Russian apartment bombings in 1999, blamed on Chechen rebels, killed 293 people and created a wave of fear in Moscow and other Russian cities. Several days after the fourth bombing, a fifth attack was thwarted when an unexploded device was found in the city of Ryazan. Putin, who was then prime minister, praised the vigilance of the Ryazan people; the next day Russia ordered the bombing of Chechnya, launching the Second Chechen War. This was also the event that established Putin’s reputation as a leader with the Russian people. But the Ryazan device was later traced to Russia’s own intelligence services, and some Russia observers still believed the apartment bombings were a false flag carried out by the FSB at Putin’s direction.

  “I talked with the president,” Martin said. “The NSC is putting its full weight behind this coup story. Saying the copilot supposedly has a connection with one of the generals. The CIA is being asked to support it.”

  “Colonel General Utkin,” Anna said.

  “Utkin, yes.”

  “That story worries me a little,” she said.

  “It worries me a lot,” Martin replied. “The public is starting to believe Russia’s version of events now, particularly with these new revelations about the Kiev meeting. If we come out backing this coup story, and the media tears it apart—which they will—we’re going to have a tough time recovering. Our country, I mean. I don’t know that we will. And I have to think that Russia knows that. They’re counting on it. Which is particularly worrisome now, as Russia prepares for war.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Anna said, surprised at Martin’s pessimistic tone. “I think the war’s already started. But Jon has a theory you need to hear.” His eyes swung to Jon, then back. “If nothing else, we need to make sure we’re not crossing signals.”

  He briefly showed Jon a gracious face, part of Martin’s charm. “All right. Please.”

  “Jon has learned something about Andrei Turov’s daughter,” Anna said, “and I’m curious how much of it you know.”

  “His daughter?”

  “Yes. Christopher mentioned something the other day about a Russian asset. I know you can’t discuss that, but I just want to make sure we’re not talking about the same person.”

  “I don’t follow,” Martin said. Comfortable talking with her, not him.

  “Jon thinks Andrei Turov’s daughter is the person who leaked this story about the so-called assassination committee to the media. Maybe working for the Russian government.”

  Martin frowned. “And how would that be?”

  “We think she’s living here in D.C.” Anna said. “And that, for whatever reason, she may have become friendly with someone in the intel community. Who inadvertently gave her some classified information. As pillow talk.”

  Martin’s smile was careful. “I don’t think Svetlana Turov’s ever even been to the States, actually,” he said. “She’s been living with her father in the country outside of Moscow. Or staying at their vacation home in Switzerland.”

  “Not Svetlana,” she said, glancing at Jon. “Sonya. The older daughter.”

  “Sonya.” The vertical lines deepened between his brows. Sonya’s not his asset, Anna could see. “Sonya Turov’s been estranged from her father for years,” he said. “Living in London under a different name.”

  “We don’t think she’s in London anymore,” Anna said. She realized that he hadn’t denied that Svetlana was his asset. “We think she’s in D.C.”

  Jon summarized for Martin what he and David had discovered, as they’d discussed on the drive over. “I wanted to make sure she wasn’t your source first,” she said once he finished. “I didn’t want to—” Anna stopped, so as not to say the rest out loud.

  “No,” Martin said, picking up on it. “Have you made any contact with Sonya Turov?” he asked Jon, taking on his more formal tone again.

  “Not directly, no. But I plan to.”

  Martin looked at Anna. “So even if this is true, we have to be prudent. We can’t do anything, of course, until we hear back,” he said.

  “I agree.” They couldn’t risk this story going out while Christopher was still in Moscow pursuing Turov.

  Jon lowered his eyes. He seemed to be tuning them ou
t as they spoke in coded language about Christopher and his mission in Russia, without using names. But Anna had a sense that in his faraway silence, in his look of detached disinterest, Jon was absorbing every bit of it, every word and nuance. It was funny, catching a glimpse of Christopher’s personality in someone else’s face. It was the first time she really saw them as brothers.

  FORTY-NINE

  Moscow.

  Christopher Niles walked through the rain alongside the river after meeting Briggs, enjoying how the sky had turned dark like evening, headlights skimming off the wet asphalt and apartment facades.

  At the hotel, he changed into a dry shirt and pants and lay on the bed, focusing, the way he used to focus before Friday night football games. Thinking about the trajectory of events that had brought him here—not Turov’s four-move chess game, but the game Turov was playing with him. And returning to the same question: How much of this had been a setup? The urgent summons to London for the meeting with Petrenko. The revelation of “the children’s game.” The toss-away detail that maybe the first move had already been played. And now this meeting. Could all of that have been Turov, tugging on the same string?

  Before going out again, Chris said a prayer, because he had promised Anna he would do so each day, and it felt like a way of connecting with her. Having given his travel bag to Briggs, he walked into the rain carrying only an umbrella and a binder with Delkoff’s “Declaration,” which he’d printed out in the business center at the hotel.

  He walked to the Metro stop and caught a train to the Park Kultury station at Gorky Park. There he waited for several minutes out of the rain, watching traffic, stepping to the curb just before 2:30 p.m. as a white cargo van stopped, its emergency lights flashing. The van’s rear doors opened and a thuggish-looking man in jeans and a leather jacket waved him in. The man frisked him for a weapon and asked to see his passport. Then he stepped out and closed the doors, leaving Christopher inside, seated in an old armchair.

  He heard the front passenger door open and close. Then the van lurched from the curb, speeding into the thundering rain. Music played through a single speaker, a Russian symphony he half-recognized: Tchaikovsky, maybe. He tried to picture their route for a while, recognizing when they came to the MKAD, Moscow’s ten-lane beltway that circled the city. Wondering if Briggs was with them, although he wasn’t especially worried about that. Jake Briggs was good, relentless, and a little crazy. He’d find them.

  Chris eventually closed his eyes and tried to rest his thoughts in preparation for what was coming. There was a story he’d heard once about meeting Andrei Turov: when he summoned you to his home— which wasn’t really his home, but a residential front in one of Moscow’s new gated “villages”—Turov sometimes gave his guest what was known as the Turov Option. Visitors had the choice of accepting or declining. If you accepted, your life entered a new, more prosperous phase; if you declined, you didn’t leave the house alive. It wasn’t much of an option.

  The drive went on for nearly an hour, although Chris suspected from the turns and reversals that they hadn’t gone far, entering and exiting the MKAD several times. Finally, the van slowed to a stop and he heard the faint whirr of a gate through the rain and over the Russian music. Minutes later, they stopped again for another gate; he felt them turning around and backing into a garage. Then suddenly the rain was muted.

  The man who greeted him when the doors sprang open was Anton Konkin, Turov’s lieutenant and chief of security. Chris recognized him right away, although they had never met. Konkin had been Turov’s liaison to the main office of Turov Security for eight or nine years. It was Konkin who oversaw the large “hackers-for-hire” operation that Turov ran out of Moscow. Supposedly he had earned his stripes carrying out several high-profile political killings during the late 1990s. A small, heavily muscled man with a shaved head, he led Christopher down a polished wooden hallway in what seemed a brand-new two-story house, with lots of modern touches, to a corner office. Konkin stood outside and motioned Chris in, closing the door behind him.

  Briggs watched the van’s turn signal begin to flash and he immediately pulled to the side of the road. He had followed the van for nearly an hour, never losing sight of it for more than a few minutes as Turov’s driver doubled back on the MKAD and finally took a highway northwest of Moscow to this two-lane country road. Now he’d have to go the rest of the way on foot.

  He parked the Lada in a gully off the shoulder, stuffed his 9mm Glock inside the waist of his pants, and jumped out. He began to run toward the fenced development, where the van was now queued up to enter. On the other side was a mishmash of nouveau mansions: English country estates, Italian villas, neo-modern monstrosities. Most of them, Briggs suspected, were owned by Moscow’s young capitalists and robber barons. Some were still under construction. The gated community was set off from the road by a wrought-iron fence, which Briggs was able to climb easily.

  Once inside, it took him a few moments to spot the van, which was now moving down the main road of the development through the rain. Briggs ran full tilt across an empty lot. He stopped on the road to catch his breath and to get his bearings, having lost sight of the van again among the houses. But then he found it: the familiar pattern of the taillights braking in the distance, seeming to blur and disappear and then reappear in the open spaces.

  Briggs began to run again, cutting through another empty lot. Seeing the lights brighten and blur and then disappear behind a brick wall.

  Briggs stopped, figuring his options. He was maybe a third of a mile away now. He saw the house lights go on. Christopher had asked him to provide cover, to be a “witness.” To do that, Briggs needed to stay close. Ready if Chris gave a signal, and even if he didn’t. Christopher’s words played like dark music in his head as he walked across the field in the rain: However this turns out, it’s just us. No one’s coming in to rescue us. It’s a two-man op. But that’s a good thing.

  Briggs didn’t know how the op was going to end, but he knew this: it wasn’t going to end the way France had ended.

  FIFTY

  The office was furnished with expensive leather and brass, dark cabinets and shelves, a plank floor with oval throw rugs. It took Christopher a few seconds to find Turov, seated at a desk in the far corner, his face in shadows behind a desk lamp. “Welcome,” he said, rising to extend his hand as if they were old acquaintances. “It’s been a few years.”

  Chris recognized Turov’s understated confidence immediately, as he did the reasonable set of his mouth and the strange, pale blue eyes. The great Turov. There was the reputation—which even Chris had allowed to become inflated in his mind—and there was the man, who always struck people as smaller and more ordinary than they expected.

  “You’re a teacher now,” Andrei Turov said, speaking Russian in a soft, pleasing voice. “You’re in Moscow researching the Orthodox Church.”

  “Yes.”

  “A worthy subject. The church has become an integral part of Russia’s vision for the future. As you know.”

  “I see that,” Christopher said.

  Turov motioned for him to sit in the leather chair in front of the desk.

  “Shall we talk in English?” Turov said.

  “Please.”

  Turov nodded to the laptop screen on his desk: a Russian television newscast. “It’s not going so well for your country. I’m sorry to see that,” he said, grimacing as if the news troubled him personally. As with many people who were despicable from a distance, it was surprising again to find Turov so likeable up close. But then, Turov was in the illusion business, Chris reminded himself. “The world’s opinion has turned,” he said. “They don’t believe you anymore. They’ve found the ‘smoking gun’ now, they’re saying.”

  “That’s the story, anyway,” Chris said.

  Turov moved a folder to the center of his desk. Christopher noticed the dirt crescents under two of Turov’s fingernails as he opened it. “I have a copy here of the report you wrote about me, s
everal years ago.” This surprised him, that Turov had this, and he wondered for a moment if Briggs had been right, if this meeting might be a trap. “We’ve met only once. But you write here as if you know me. You did a very thorough job. I was impressed,” Turov said, speaking English with just a trace of accent, his “r”s rolling slightly. “But your conclusions made me seem like a very bad man.” He flipped several pages, past sections highlighted in yellow. “For instance, you claim here, on Page 8, that I was quote ‘potentially the most dangerous man in Russia.’” He looked up. “I guess I should be flattered.”

  Christopher shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I quoted someone who did. Is that why you contacted me? To discuss my report?”

  “No.” Turov closed the file, serious again. “Actually, you contacted me first, I believe.” His eyes turned to Chris’s binder. “You’ve brought some business with you?”

  “Yes. I thought you’d like to see what Ivan Delkoff left behind for the world to read. If you haven’t seen it already.” He handed Turov a copy of Delkoff’s “Declaration.” “They have copies of this in Washington,” he said. “The media will have it, too. It’s his account of August 13. Not what we’ve been hearing so far on television.”

  Turov’s face retained a mask-like expression as he skimmed the document. By the time he set it down, and smiled, Christopher knew that he’d already seen it. “No one’s going to believe this, of course,” Turov said. “We both know that. There’s too much evidence now against your country. And there’s more coming, I hear. Much worse.”

  “Maybe true,” Chris said. “And from what I’m reading, it may only be two or three days before Russia takes retaliatory action in Ukraine or Estonia.”

  “Yes.” For a surprising moment, the bulb of Turov’s confidence seemed to dim. “Obviously, we’d all like to avoid that. Publicly, of course, your country has been locked out of a serious negotiating role, for obvious reasons.” Christopher said nothing. “But privately, it’s a different business, isn’t it? Privately, there’s no reason we couldn’t try to work something out on behalf of our countries. As two outside agents.”