The Kremlin Conspiracy

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  The explosion could be heard for miles. Every windshield in the garage was blown out, and more than forty cars were completely demolished. The force of the blast could be felt throughout the city. Many people thought it was an earthquake.

  Oleg knew instantly it was not.

  He still hadn’t gone home after being kicked out of the Kremlin by Zakharov. He was just driving aimlessly. He wasn’t listening to the news. Rather, he was trying to drown his sorrows with Tchaikovsky when the violin concerto was abruptly interrupted by an announcer with breaking news.

  He couldn’t pretend he was surprised. The pattern was becoming obvious, though no one spoke of it. To do so, he suspected, would be to pronounce one’s own death sentence, and Oleg didn’t want to die. Even so, the moment he heard that Galina Polonskaya had been murdered—blown up in her own car in the heart of Moscow, just blocks from the Kremlin—he pulled his car onto the shoulder, leaped out, and vomited repeatedly.

  Traffic continued to rush by. No one stopped. No one seemed to notice or care. Not a fellow driver. Not a policeman. No one.

  That’s when he made the decision not to go home. It wasn’t a terribly well-thought-through plan. He was going on instinct now, and his instincts told him to flee the city. But where?

  He remembered that his parents were out of the country—in Hong Kong on business for the next week—so he drove out to their multimillion-dollar home in Rublyovka. It would be quiet there. He’d have time and space to think. To be sure, he’d need to call Marina, and soon. He didn’t want her to be worried, alone with Vasily. But he couldn’t bear to face them. Not yet. Not until he knew what he was going to say.

  A patrol car was waiting at the entrance to his parents’ gated community.

  The first thought that crossed Oleg’s mind was that he was about to be arrested. But the two uniformed officers merely asked for his ID, then ordered the gate to be opened and waved him through. When he reached his childhood home, there were several more squad cars parked out front, along with two black Mercedes limousines and four black SUVs. Oleg blanched. Marina was here. Was the president with her?

  There was no way he could turn around and leave now. So Oleg found a place to park away from the motorcade, shut down the engine, took a deep breath, and walked up the front steps and into the house. He knew these agents, and they knew him. This was not Luganov’s detail. It was the first lady’s.

  He crossed through the foyer and headed toward the rear of the house. When he got to the kitchen, he noticed agents on the back porch. Through various windows, he saw others patrolling the grounds. Then he entered the den and realized why. Marina and her mother were curled up on the couch in flannel pajamas, holding each other and sobbing.

  “What is it?” Oleg asked immediately. “What happened?”

  He assumed they had learned of the accusations against him. But then why were they crying? Why weren’t they angry? And why were they here? How could they have possibly known he was coming when he himself didn’t know until he started driving?

  Upon hearing her husband’s voice, Marina turned quickly, jumped up, and ran to him. With mascara streaked down her face, she threw her arms around him and sobbed all the more. Oleg held her and noticed the floor was littered with used tissues. A wastebasket near the couch where Yulia was curled up in a fetal position was overflowing. There was an empty bottle of red wine on the coffee table, another half-empty bottle, and two empty but lipstick-smeared goblets nearby. Clearly these two had been here for hours. But why?

  For several minutes, neither woman could speak, so Oleg just held his wife and let her cry. Eventually Marina wiped her eyes and her nose and tried to compose herself. It was difficult, but she had something to say and was determined to say it.

  “It’s Father,” she finally said.

  “What about him?” Oleg said, bracing himself.

  “He . . .” Again Marina became choked with emotion.

  Rather than becoming flush with anger or fear or even revulsion, Oleg found himself oddly empathetic. Had Luganov just been diagnosed with some life-threatening and incurable disease? Was he dying? Were both the family and the nation about to endure a wrenching upheaval?

  “Father wants a divorce,” Marina suddenly blurted out.

  The word left Oleg unable to respond. Marina wiped her eyes again. She poured herself another glass of wine and took several large sips.

  “He says he does not love Mother anymore,” Marina continued, pale and shaken. “He says he has never loved her, that he loves someone else.”

  “Who?” Oleg asked, immediately wishing he had kept his mouth closed.

  Marina answered the question before he could apologize. “That skater, that whore!”

  Marina did not mention the woman’s name. She did not have to. Everyone in Russia knew who Katya Slatsky was. The twenty-eight-year-old figure skater had competed in three Olympic Games, winning a gold medal and two silver medals and becoming a heroine for millions of young Russian girls. She had also become the subject of tabloid rumors in Europe as being the paramour of the Russian president. Oleg’s father-in-law had strenuously denounced those who trafficked in such “baseless gossip” as those with “snotty noses and erotic fantasies” who had nothing better to do than “prowl into others’ lives.”

  Oleg had never taken the rumors seriously because Marina hadn’t. He’d certainly never asked his mother-in-law. It was not his place. Yes, he had seen signs of discontent in his in-laws’ relationship. Yet he had never really considered that the rumors of Luganov’s infidelity might be true. Why was that? He had developed and harbored so many profound concerns and suspicions about Luganov the leader. Why had he never taken the time to carefully analyze Luganov the man?

  “Where is Vasily?” he asked.

  “He’s asleep in your parents’ room,” Marina said. “He’s fine. I checked on him just before you arrived.” Then she whispered to him. “I’m so grateful you got my message to meet us here. Thank you for dropping everything and coming straight to us. I honestly didn’t expect you for hours more.”

  Oleg said nothing. He realized he had completely neglected to check his voice messages. Upon getting in his car and driving away from the Kremlin, he had turned off the ringer on his mobile phone. He hadn’t wanted anyone to be able to find him.

  Was this the time? he now wondered. Was this the place? With emotions running so high in this home against Aleksandr Ivanovich Luganov, was this the moment Oleg should disclose his immense and growing misgivings about the decisions the president was making and the direction he was leading the nation?

  Oleg considered this briefly but thought better of it. Yulia and Marina were already grieving so much. It would be terribly unkind to add to their distress. Instead, he nodded toward his mother-in-law, sobbing into a pillow on the couch. Marina nodded back, and together they went to her side to comfort her as best they could.

  Just then there was a sharp knock on the door of the den, startling them all. Oleg turned and saw an agent in the doorway, holding out a mobile phone and beckoning Oleg to take it.

  “It’s for you,” the agent said.

  “Who is it?” asked Oleg.

  “It’s the president, sir.”

  Oleg swallowed hard. But he could hardly ask the man to take a message, as awkward as the moment was. So he took the phone and went to the bedroom that had been his since childhood. He dreaded what was coming and didn’t want Marina or Yulia to have any chance of overhearing the conversation. It was quite clear they had no idea the accusations that had been leveled against him in the last few hours. They were dealing with bombshells of their own, and now was no time to add to their burdens.

  “Mr. President,” Oleg said quietly, “how can I be of service?”

  “Oleg, my son,” the president began, “I want to apologize.”

  Oleg was caught off guard. He’d never heard the man say these words, and certainly not to him.

  “For what?” he asked.

 
“Boris Zakharov has been arrested,” Luganov said. “The FSB has determined that he, and he alone, was responsible for the leak of the S-400 deal.”

  Once again Oleg found himself without words. But Luganov continued.

  “The investigators believe Zakharov was trying to frame you for the leak,” the president explained. “This was the reason for his outburst this morning. I wanted to personally call you and inform you that he was arrested. He has confessed and has been taken to prison. You have been fully cleared of all wrongdoing.”

  Oleg let out a breath. “I appreciate you taking the time to inform me, Mr. President,” he said, reeling from the contradictory emotions surging within him.

  “That is not all, my son,” the president said.

  “Yes?” Oleg said, eager to get off the phone and back to his wife.

  “I need you to go to London for me.”

  “London?”

  “Ten Downing Street, to be precise.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “The prime minister and I just got off the phone. He wants to meet with me next week. Iran and North Korea are on the docket, among other issues. I need someone to lead an advance trip. Negotiate the agenda. Make sure the security arrangements are acceptable. You’ll have a team of seasoned professionals with you. But I need someone I can trust to manage the process, someone loyal to me, someone who will report back to me directly, not through the Foreign Ministry. And I need you to leave in two hours. One of my planes is already on the tarmac, fueled and waiting for you. Can I count on you, my son?”

  How quickly a man’s fortunes could change and change again. No longer was Oleg being fired or investigated for treason, a crime punishable by death under Russian law. Instead, he was being asked to go on—no, lead—a highly sensitive assignment to the British capital, a city he’d never set foot in before, with no warning and no time to prepare. And Luganov had referred to him as “my son” three times in less than a minute.

  Oleg was torn. If he said yes, he would be drawn still deeper into his father-in-law’s web of deceit and corruption. He would give short shrift to his mother-in-law’s betrayal and unremitting grief and add to his wife’s already-bitter pain. He would be ignoring every flashing light on the dashboard that told him to take these two women and Vasily and flee to the West without looking back.

  A line from one of Solzhenitsyn’s books came to mind: “You can resolve to live your life with integrity,” the great conscience of the Russian soul had written. “Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

  And yet, as if detached from his own body, as if disconnected from all his fears and doubts and resentments and revulsion, Oleg Kraskin heard himself say, “Of course, Mr. President. I am, as ever, your loyal servant.”

  WASHINGTON, D.C.—10 OCTOBER 2013

  Special Agent Marcus Ryker was getting noticed by his superiors.

  A quick study and always ready to tackle a new assignment with vigor, he’d just been promoted again, and this was the big time: the nation’s capital.

  Atlanta had been his first assignment, and there he had helped solve dozens of counterfeit cases—including several significant ones—while learning the ropes of protection work when POTUS or VPOTUS would come to town and during the presidential primaries. From there he was transferred to the Manhattan field office, where he helped guard foreign dignitaries each September as the U.N. General Assembly kicked off its fall session. He did occasional protection work for visits by the president and VP. Most of his time, though, was spent on a task force locating and seizing illegal assets from Russian crime bosses.

  Elena had never enjoyed Atlanta, and she’d been claustrophobic in New York. Marcus loved the city’s energy and intensity, not to mention all that he was learning and doing and the respect he was gaining among his peers. But Elena wasn’t a big-city girl, and she refused to become one. She resented the fact that everything was so expensive. The traffic was horrific. The subway tunnels smelled of urine. The schools were an abomination. The only thing she hated more than sending Lars to the public school they’d found in Atlanta was putting him in the one they’d found in Queens.

  Lars had just turned seven, and now they’d moved again. No longer was Marcus learning enough Russian to bust mafia goons from “the old country”; now he was on the vice president’s protective detail. They were living in the Eastern Market section of D.C., in a two-bedroom apartment a few blocks southeast of the Capitol. Lars had to go to yet another lousy public school. They simply couldn’t afford a private one.

  Marcus was working constantly. They rarely had time to eat dinner as a family at home, much less go out as a family, and Marcus and Elena struggled to find time for dates. The problem wasn’t simply that Marcus loved his job. It was that he was good at it. He wasn’t trying to catch his bosses’ attention, but he was doing it just the same. With every passing year, he was being given more important assignments, each of which kept him busier than the last. No wonder the divorce rate for agents was so high, Elena mused.

  Not that she would ever consider such a thing. “Divorce? Never. Murder? Maybe,” she’d recently quipped to Maya Emerson, the wife of their pastor at Lincoln Park Baptist, where Elena and Lars attended church. Marcus did too when he wasn’t on duty.

  On Thursday Marcus woke up well before the sun rose and certainly well before Elena. He ran his usual five miles, showered, dressed in a dark-blue suit and red-striped tie, kissed his wife and son on their foreheads, and left their apartment for the White House while it was still dark. When the sun finally peeked over the horizon and the alarm beside their bed went off, Elena padded to the kitchen in her bathrobe and poured herself a cup of the coffee Marcus had brewed for her before he’d left. Then she read the Scriptures for a bit in her favorite chair by the bay windows in the living room while their cat, Miles, curled up on her lap. When the alarm on her phone buzzed, she got Lars up, made him breakfast, and walked him to school.

  Lars was struggling to make friends, struggling to fit in. He constantly told them he wanted to move back to Monument, back to his grandparents and all the good memories he’d ever had in his life. Elena didn’t just sympathize. She fully agreed with him. Yet whenever she brought up with Marcus even the possibility of moving back, he bristled and changed the subject.

  By noon the vibrant autumn sun blazed across a bright-blue canvas. There was no humidity, and the temperature hovered in the low seventies. Plenty of tourists were in town, but not nearly as many as during the summer when school was out or even in the spring when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, vivid pink and delicately aromatic, making the trees look like billows of cotton candy. At this time of year, with American children back in class, most visitors to the national landmarks—from the Capitol Building and the National Archives to the varied Smithsonian museums, from memorials of presidents and veterans and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the White House itself—were from abroad.

  With hundreds of people strolling along E Street and down Pennsylvania Avenue, taking selfies and shooting home videos of themselves near “the people’s house,” the young Asian man in his early twenties hardly drew special attention. He wore a New York Yankees baseball cap he’d bought from a street vendor, tan khakis, and a black polo shirt. He had on a light-blue windbreaker and new Nikes and sported a backpack. A DSLR camera dangled around his neck as he meandered through Lafayette Square, drifting slowly toward the north side of the White House, snapping pictures every few steps. He and his six friends—all with Asian features, though some darker than others—could easily have been graduate students or members of a college sports team. But they were neither athletes nor students. Nor were they alone.

  At precisely 12:05, the leader—the one in the Yankees cap—glanced at his watch. Then he shouted something in a foreign language and broke into a sprint. He was heading directly for the black wrought-iron fence protecting the North Lawn of the president’s home. The six others were ru
nning too, just a few paces behind him. Simultaneously, two other groups of college-age young men—one about forty yards to the right, the other about thirty yards to the left—all began sprinting toward the White House as well.

  Uniformed Secret Service officers yelled at them to stop but were immediately shot dead as the young men pulled handguns and fired with deadly accuracy. Others ripped the cameras off their necks and hurled them onto the White House grounds and into the guard stations, where they exploded with horrific force. The grenades hidden inside the cameras were powerful ones. As they detonated and the crackle of gunfire broke the early-afternoon calm, chaos erupted. Secret Service officers were being blown to pieces. Tourists were screaming and running for cover.

  In the midst of it all, twenty attackers scaled the fence, jumped onto the grass, and bolted for the North Portico, the closest White House entrance. Snipers on the roof opened fire. They took out five of the men in quick order. Uniformed officers and Marines at the doors opened fire as well. They killed four and severely wounded four more before being killed themselves. But this still left seven able-bodied attackers taking up positions under the North Portico, firing at agents and members of the emergency response team and K-9 units emerging from the West Wing and the Treasury Building. One of the men affixed plastic explosives to the electronically locked north entry door and blew it to smithereens.

  Marcus had just finished his shift, standing post outside the VP’s office in the West Wing, and was on his way to Room W-16—the Service’s White House basement command post, code-named Horsepower—when he heard the gunfire and explosions. Immediately he drew his Sig Sauer P229 automatic pistol. As he did, he received the call on his radio from the watch officer. He was instructed to race back upstairs and assist agents defending the North Portico. He responded at once, bounding up the steps two at a time, and heard a blizzard of situation reports coming in from all sectors.