The Kremlin Conspiracy

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  They were taken first to the visitors’ center at the Kutafiya Tower.

  There they were met by a junior protocol officer who escorted them to the appointments desk, where they received visitor IDs and passed through metal detectors. Their possessions went through X-ray machines and WMD sniffers. Only then were they guided through Troitskaya Tower, past the Arsenal and the State Kremlin Palace, and into the pale-yellow building known as the Senate.

  Next they were handed off to a more senior protocol officer who was waiting for them. She did not smile. She did not shake their hands. She simply greeted the senator with emotionless indifference, effectively ignored his colleagues, and took them up an elevator to the third floor. They had to stop at another security checkpoint, where they once again submitted to the protocol.

  “In such times, one can never be too careful,” said one of the security agents, discerning the annoyance in Dayton’s eyes.

  It struck Marcus as an undiplomatic thing to say to a visiting U.S. senator, but he nevertheless respected the security protocols the Russians had in place, especially given the apartment bombings in Moscow years before, other more recent terrorist attacks in Moscow and various capitals throughout Europe, and of course the attack on the White House that he had personally experienced.

  When they were cleared, the Americans were led to an anteroom flanked by armed security men in dark suits with ugly ties. One of the men directed them to a waiting area with nicely upholstered couches and chairs and a mahogany coffee table, where they were served tea and some light snacks.

  Marcus took in and memorized every detail—how many men were in the lobby and down the hall, how many CCTV cameras there were and where they were positioned, the sound that the doors made when they electronically locked and unlocked, the number of nonsecurity staff in the vicinity, and so forth. He had been all over the world with the president and the VP. In the process, he had become acquainted with security personnel and procedures in palaces and government office buildings of every conceivable kind. But he had never been here, to the epicenter of the Russian government, and he found himself immensely curious.

  The senior protocol officer informed them that the four thirty meeting had been delayed until five. Then five thirty. Then six. As it turned out, it was not until nearly seven o’clock that they were finally ushered into the president’s office. Senator Dayton was furious, and Marcus braced himself for the tirade that was coming. But Aleksandr Ivanovich Luganov caught them all off guard by greeting them warmly and apologizing profusely for keeping them waiting. He explained that the crash of a Russian airliner near the border of Mongolia had kept him occupied for hours. He spoke only in Russian, while a fortyish woman standing at his side served as his interpreter.

  Rather than sit behind his desk, Luganov met them in the center of the spacious, dark-paneled corner office. He was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, a light-blue shirt, and a crimson silk tie, and he smiled broadly as he shook the senator’s hand while official Kremlin photographers and videographers captured the moment. Standing just a few feet away at all times was Special Agent Pavel Kovalev, who Marcus knew was the chief of the president’s security detail.

  Luganov gave them a brief tour of the artifacts and framed power photographs that hung on several walls. There was Luganov standing with various American presidents. There he was at several G8 summits, back before the invasion of Ukraine, when Russia was still a member. There was Luganov with the premier of China, the dictator of North Korea, the supreme leader of Iran, and even the prime minister of Israel. On his shelves he had two crisscrossing scimitars, gifts from the king of Saudi Arabia. He had some ancient pottery from Egypt and an exquisitely painted ceramic bowl from India.

  As the charm offensive continued, Marcus studied the man he had last seen at the German Chancellery in Berlin. Back then, Luganov’s hair had been sandy blond and thinning with just a touch of gray about the temples. Now the gray was gone, and his hair was a dark brown. Marcus almost smiled at the notion that Luganov was coloring it, but he forced himself to remain impassive and inscrutable. Still, the hair aside, Luganov looked decidedly older and weathered to Marcus, with crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and more wrinkles in his face and neck. The Russian had been only sixty-one when Marcus had seen him last and had seemed full of vim and vigor. Now he was approaching seventy, and Marcus couldn’t help but notice that though he was still quite trim and broad-shouldered, he seemed somewhat stiff and was maneuvering about the room with a slight limp in his left leg.

  When the tour was finished and they were about to take their seats, Luganov pressed a button to the right side of his desk. A door opened, and an aide walked in. Marcus recognized him instantly but maintained a poker face and said not a word.

  “Senator Dayton, I’d like you to meet my son-in-law and most trusted counselor, Oleg Stefanovich Kraskin.”

  The two men shook hands; then Oleg greeted Pete and Annie in turn. When Oleg got to Marcus, he hesitated, if only for a moment. He said nothing, but Marcus registered the look of recognition in the man’s eyes. They shook hands firmly, but that was it. Neither man acknowledged that they had met before.

  Luganov sat down behind his desk and motioned for everyone to be seated. The interpreter retreated to a small wooden chair beside the desk. Oleg sat on the other side of the desk, his notebook and pen at the ready. The senator sat in an ornate cushioned chair directly across from the president, with Annie to his right and Pete to her right. Marcus took the last open chair, to Dayton’s left, and the meeting got down to business.

  It most certainly did not go as any of them expected.

  Dayton wasted no time lighting into the president.

  Diplomatically yet with fierce conviction, the senator charged Luganov with breaching the terms set forth in the Budapest Memorandum by violating the territorial integrity of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Then he expressed outrage at what he called Russia’s “war crimes” in Georgia and Syria before launching into a brief but aggressive closing argument.

  “I urge you, Mr. President, not to take any action the people of Russia would regret in regard to the Baltics or any other member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I am well aware that you have recently massed tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of battle tanks, and scores of bombers and fighters on the borders of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in addition to the hundred thousand troops you’ve put into Belarus and on the borders of Ukraine,” Dayton said. “You say it’s a series of military exercises, but that’s what you said before you invaded Georgia in 2008 and before you invaded Ukraine in 2014. I have just spent several days in Kiev and the Baltics. I have met with their political leaders and their generals. I have reviewed their forces and seen their consummate professionalism and powerful commitment to freedom and their own sovereignty. Furthermore, I would remind you that the Baltic States are proud and loyal members of NATO, and they have the full backing of the rest of the alliance. And this is why I have come: to urge you not to gamble in this neighborhood. Stop attempting to intimidate the alliance. Give no more thought to acquiring territory that is not legally, morally, or in any way rightfully yours. Do not miscalculate here, Mr. President. The stakes are much too high.”

  Marcus found himself at once impressed and as tense as he’d ever been in a meeting between world leaders. He hadn’t been certain this Iowan known for his “Midwestern nice” had the wherewithal to speak so directly to arguably the most dangerous man on the planet, and in his own office, no less. Only time would tell whether Dayton could prove to be a Churchill, but he certainly was no Chamberlain. Not today.

  Marcus could see the anxiety in the translator’s eyes, and at that moment he doubted she had ever been required to communicate such a statement to her boss before now. Marcus glanced at Oleg. The man’s hand had stopped writing. An icy chill fell over the room as the senator looked the president directly in the eye. Marcus could see the man’s jaw clenched as he waited for the translation.

>   “I did not invite you here to be lectured in my own home, Senator,” Luganov began, eyes narrowing, when the translation was complete. “That said, I will give you credit for your candor. Believe me, I have heard you rage against me and against my government’s decisions over the years from the safe confines of the Senate floor and the Senate Press Gallery and the Washington studios of CNN. I agreed to your request for a meeting because I wanted to see if you had the courage to say to my face what you routinely spout to the American people. Now I see you do, and I congratulate you, sir.”

  “Mr. President, with respect, I did not come here to lecture you,” the senator replied. “And I most certainly did not come to be patronized by you. There is one purpose, and one purpose only, in my visit—to urge you to back your forces away from the borders of the Baltics and Ukraine and to warn you, if I may put it so indelicately, not to risk making a miscalculation that could plunge your country, mine, and the whole of Europe into a war that would surely spin rapidly out of control.”

  The senator paused, either for effect or for the translator to catch up. The Americans in the room braced for Luganov’s reaction. But when the president spoke, he threw a curveball none of them had war-gamed.

  “Message received, Senator,” Luganov replied, his countenance softening and his body language relaxing. “I intend nothing threatening in these exercises. We conduct them all the time. We will continue to do so. Your country conducts such exercises. So does the rest of NATO. After all, I believe you attended a series of live-fire exercises in Estonia a few days ago. So I say again, these are nothing out of the ordinary, nor should they be construed as menacing in the slightest. Indeed, while they were scheduled to last through the month of October, my generals and I are so pleased with how they are going that I have decided to conclude them early.”

  Dayton was visibly astonished. “How early?” he asked, trying to regain his composure.

  “They should be wrapped up in ten days’ time, give or take a day.”

  “The exercises near the Baltics as well as those close to Ukraine?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have your word on that.”

  “Don’t be impertinent, Senator. I’m agreeing with you that we don’t want anyone to miscalculate here. I’m agreeing to stand down my forces for the time being.”

  “Mr. President, please understand my country’s hesitancy to count upon the word coming out of the Kremlin. How does the Russian proverb go? Trust, but verify.”

  “Doveryai, no proveryai,” Annie said almost under her breath.

  At this, Luganov smiled. “Miss Stewart, you speak Russian?” he said in Russian.

  “Da,” she replied.

  Luganov asked, again in Russian, how much of his side of the conversation she had understood.

  “All of it,” she replied instantly, but in English.

  Luganov looked impressed.

  “And how precisely is my young translator here communicating my meaning?” he asked. It struck Marcus as an odd thing to say since the translator was almost certainly at or near the age of fifty, while Annie, Pete, and himself were in their late thirties.

  “She is doing an excellent job,” Annie said, looking at the woman in the corner and smiling warmly.

  The woman looked simultaneously grateful and mortified. The thought of being a topic of the president’s conversation had to be anathema to her. But Luganov abruptly changed the subject.

  “There is more I will tell you, Senator,” he said.

  “By all means.”

  “I have not made this public yet, but I will tell you all because it will be news very soon,” Luganov continued. “Tomorrow I am flying to Pyongyang to announce the conclusion of several months of secret negotiations.”

  “Regarding what?”

  “The North Korean leader and I will sign a treaty,” Luganov said. “The signing will be broadcast live around the world. I am creating a military alliance with Pyongyang. I will pledge to come to North Korea’s defense should it ever be attacked by the South or by the U.S. or by any other force. In return, Pyongyang will completely abandon its nuclear program and turn all of its nuclear weapons, uranium, and additional nuclear materials over to me. Their nuclear reactors and laboratories will be dismantled or destroyed. What’s more, I will invite international inspectors to observe and monitor the process.”

  Luganov stopped speaking, but the senator did not respond immediately. When he did, he congratulated the president on what he hoped would be a “significant move toward true peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

  Marcus’s defenses were on full alert. He was certain Dayton was being played by the world’s master manipulator, but even a blind man could see that Luganov’s charms were casting their spell as intended. As surprised and impressed as Marcus had been with the senator when the meeting began, he now felt just as surprised and equally dispirited. If one of the leading Russia hawks in Washington could be so easily beguiled, then the people of the West were sitting ducks indeed.

  Marcus brooded over his worries for the rest of the evening. Even the catered dinner with Ambassador Tyler Reed and DCM Nick Vinetti couldn’t shake Marcus’s genuine fear for the people of Europe and the fate of the NATO alliance. He was all but certain Luganov was preparing to strike hard and strike soon. At which target—Ukraine or the Baltics—he could not say. Luganov’s plan for a treaty with North Korea was almost certainly sheer disinformation and sleight of hand. Yet in the absence of proof, who would listen to an ex–Secret Service agent whose closest friends had diagnosed him as depressed?

  THE HOTEL NATIONAL, MOSCOW—25 SEPTEMBER

  The phone startled Marcus awake.

  It was not his mobile ringing, nor the secure satellite phone he’d rented for the trip. This was the hotel phone on the nightstand beside the bed. Marcus was instantly awake and on his feet, the muscle memory reaction of years of training. He picked up the receiver even as he read the LED display on the clock radio. It was 3:37 in the morning.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Agent Ryker?” asked a man’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Is this Special Agent Marcus Ryker?” the man asked again, stressing each word.

  “I’m retired, but yeah, why?”

  The line went dead. Then Marcus heard two light raps, not on the door to the hallway but on the one that connected to the adjacent suite.

  “Who’s there?” Marcus asked as he walked to the closed and locked door.

  “Don’t you recognize my voice?” the man said from the other side.

  Marcus tried to place the voice but couldn’t. It was definitely a native Russian speaker and a Muscovite. But the man was speaking too quietly for accurate identification.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Agent Ryker, this is Oleg Kraskin. Please let me in. We must talk.”

  Oleg Kraskin? Why in the world would the son-in-law of the Russian president be staying in the suite next door?

  Marcus wished he had one of the Sig Sauer pistols Nick had given to his team, but there was nothing he could do about that now. When he heard two more knocks, Marcus decided to take the bait. He unplugged the lamp on the nightstand, wielded it like a club, and unlocked and slowly opened the door. He was tense, suspicious, and ready for a fight.

  To his astonishment, it really was Kraskin. He wore a black silk shirt, black jeans, and snakeskin boots, and he was alone—no handlers, no security.

  “May I come in?” Oleg asked, his Russian accent thick, almost overpowering.

  Marcus looked him over for a moment, then glanced behind him to see if there was anyone else in Oleg’s room. Not seeing anyone, he finally nodded and stepped aside. Oleg was shorter than him—though not as diminutive as Luganov—and rail thin, almost gaunt. But he strode in with great purpose, through the bedroom and into the adjoining sitting room, and sat down on the couch.

  Marcus closed and locked the door behind Oleg. He set down the
lamp and followed the Russian into the sitting room.

  “To what do I owe this early-morning honor, Mr. Kraskin?” Marcus asked, standing there in boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

  “I don’t have much time,” Oleg said in a whisper. “So I’ll get straight to the point.”

  Marcus opened his hands as if to say, The floor is all yours. Then he sat down in a chair opposite Oleg.

  “Agent Ryker, you must promise me that whatever I share with you, you will tell no one that you heard it from me. Please, I must insist. I am putting my life in your hands by even coming to meet with you.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Marcus said. “But I have no idea what you’re about to say.”

  “I can give you information critical to your national security and that of your allies. But I cannot do so unless I have your word that you will protect my identity.”

  Was this a trap? Marcus immediately asked himself. Was he being set up? Recorded? Videotaped? How could he make such a promise without knowing answers to these and so many other questions? Marcus glanced around the room, but Oleg quickly assured him that the rooms were no longer bugged.