The Great Game

by D. R. Bell

  Wednesday, 5/4/2022, 12:01 p.m. MSK

  “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress

  discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”

  — Alexis De Tocqueville

  They walked up to the hostess. “Hello, we are here to see—”

  Maggie did not have a chance to finish, as the hostess grimaced into a forced smile and said, “This way, please.”

  They walked to the very end of the lounge. Three of the last four tables were empty with “Reserved” signs on them. At the corner table a man stood up to greet them with a courteous nod. “Mr. Ferguson, Ms. Sappin … I am Nikolai Nemzhov.”

  Nemzhov was a well-toned man around sixty, clean-shaven, short pepper-and-salt hair. He wore an impeccably tailored suit, white shirt, and a blue tie. Like John Platt, he projected an air of superiority about himself. But while Platt had a direct, in-your-face, I-have-no-time-to-waste aura, Nemzhov’s felt more stealthy and dangerous. Platt’s was an assurance of wealth and a touch of arrogance. Nemzhov’s, an assurance of power over the life and death of others.

  “I trust you’ve been treated well,” he stated.

  “Your Gestapo thugs behaved exceptionally.” Maggie was not buying the friendly tone.

  Nemzhov smiled, showing two rows of small, unnaturally perfect teeth. “Is this not a wonderful view?”

  Indeed, it was. They were looking right at Red Square.

  “Usually one gets a good view or good food, rarely both. Unfortunately, this place is not an exception. Still, I figured since it is Mr. Ferguson’s first visit to Moscow, the view is probably more important. I would recommend something simple, like blinis or salad. Would you care for a glass of wine? They do have a good selection here.”

  He is trying too hard, went through David’s head, and the thought calmed him down. “No, thank you.”

  The waitress came to take their order. Maggie surprised everyone by ordering single-malt straight up. David stuck with coffee, while Nemzhov asked for a glass of Bordeaux. Everyone opted for Caesar salad, which made Nemzhov laugh. “Great minds think alike.”

  David decided to dispense with pleasantries. “You realize that if you kill us, Schulmann’s research will be all over the world?”

  Nemzhov laughed. “Both of you are safer in Moscow than just about anywhere else in the world. The men who brought you here yesterday, the men who followed you this morning … if someone tried to kill you, they would throw themselves in front of the bullet. Because they would not be alive for long if they let anything happen to you. No, you are perfectly safe.”

  Nemzhov took a sip of the wine and continued. “We completely underestimated you once; we are not going to make the same mistake again. Poor Petr thought you were just an innocent unlucky helpless nerd who’d been randomly set up by Trimble.”

  David interrupted, saying, “And in truth I am an innocent unlucky helpless nerd who’d been randomly set up by Trimble.”

  “Innocent and set up, yes. Helpless and unlucky, no.” Nemzhov smiled. “Petr made a mistake and it ended up costing him his life. Can’t blame him for this mistake; ninety-nine out of a hundred times he would have been right. But you—and you, Ms. Sappin—have proven yourself resourceful, daring and, most importantly, very lucky. And I have learned to not underestimate the value of luck. I must say, you walking into Sheremetyevo the way you did and telling that idiot ‘call GRU General Nemzhov!’ ” He laughed. “You both are already legendary in the department.”

  Their salads came. Nemzhov was eating with relish, while David and Maggie picked at their food.

  After a few minutes, Nemzhov resumed in a business-like tone. “OK, let’s get down to business. How do I know you are not bluffing?”

  David said, “September 17th, 2019. Your account at Moscow Kommerse Bank was credited with just under three million rubles from a currency transaction placed two months prior through a series of intermediaries.”

  Nemzhov shrugged. “Even now this is only about $300,000. That’s all you have?”

  “Except that this was only one transaction, the smallest. That same week eight other bank accounts linked to you or your close relatives were credited with over 900 million rubles.”

  Nemzhov rubbed his chin contemplatively. “How did you find the file?”

  “Suzy Yamamoto saved a copy on a free online backup service.”

  “I see,” Nemzhov said. His lips curled in a hard smile, but his eyes betrayed a desire to kill someone for allowing this to happen.

  David hastened to add, “But of course it’s not there anymore, I removed it. Her husband did not know anything.”

  “Of course.” Nemzhov waved a hand. “Don’t worry, we won’t touch him now. What’s the point? We knew about her connection with Schulmann. I can’t believe our people did not clean this up. They made sure she didn’t have anything on her computer, but they did not find the online backup and they did not tie all the loose ends. That’s the devil of this business: no matter how thorough you are, there is always that one connection that you miss. Someone didn’t finish the job. I wonder why.”

  He turned to Maggie. “As Woland tells Margarita in your great uncle’s book ‘Mercy sometimes unexpectedly creeps through the smallest cracks.’ Perhaps that’s what it was, some silly mercy. Anyway, congratulations! You’ve made your point. Now, what do you want?”

  Maggie said, “First of all, I want my life back. I want you to call off the hunt. I want you to stop MSS and others from coming after us. Because the moment something happens to us, Schulmann’s file will go public.”

  Nemzhov laughed. “Like the ‘60s and the ‘70s.”

  David and Maggie looked at him in puzzlement.

  Nemzhov explained. “I am old enough to still remember the years of ‘mutually assured destruction,’ or MAD as it was fondly known. Nuclear standoff between the USA and USSR. Nobody could win. It was mad, but effective. We destroy you, you destroy us. OK, it’s a deal. The dogs will be called off.”

  Too easy, David thought. And what’s with all this smiling and laughing? He thinks he has us all figured out.

  As if reading his mind, Nemzhov continued. “I am not agreeing to it out of the goodness of my heart. I did not get where I am by thinking with my heart. It’s strictly cost-benefit analysis. You might be bluffing about releasing the report. Even if you are not bluffing, we could try to extract the information from you to stop it. But I don’t want to run even a ten percent chance of failing, when I have a guarantee of success by making it in your interests to not release the report. You can have your lives, you can have your old lives back if you want, and I’ll throw in some money to boot.”

  “Money?” Maggie’s hand with the glass of scotch stopped in mid-air.

  “Yes, Ms. Sappin, money.” He pulled out two envelopes, one blue, one white, from the inside pocket of his suit and slid them across the table. “We opened two numbered accounts in a Zurich bank, the information is inside the blue envelope. Each account has been funded with $1MM. As long as the report remains secret, May 5th of every year each account will be funded with an additional $1MM. We’ll even adjust it for inflation. I know $1MM is not what it used to be, but for a year one can still live comfortably on it. All you have to do is show up to claim the money in person. And if, God forbid, something happens to one of you—and it won’t be by our hand, I can assure you—the other person will collect the money for both. You can live what they call the ‘high life’ or even go back to the lives you had. You don’t have to be particularly creative about explaining things. Tell the truth, just omit the part about finding the file, of course.”

  “What’s inside the white envelope?”

  “Two first-class tickets for tonight’s Swiss Air flight to Zurich for Mr. and Mrs. Brockman. You, of course, are welcome to stay longer, the tickets are exchangeable.”

  “So you already decided to do this before you met us?”

  “We prepare for multiple scenarios, Ms. Sappin.
”

  Nemzhov’s tone was earnest and calm, conveying a how can you possibly disagree? reasonableness.

  David broke the air of rationality, “I did not tell you what I want.”

  Maggie grabbed his hand. Nemzhov tensed across the table. “And what do you want, Mr. Ferguson?”

  “I want to know the truth. Was it Trimble that betrayed Schulmann?”

  Nemzhov relaxed, thought about his answer. “OK. Yes, it was Trimble. We recruited Trimble in 2016 and helped to place him to work for Williams.”

  “Why?”

  “Williams looked like an up-and-coming young politician. A number of US presidents came from Texas.”

  “And Trimble overheard about Schulmann’s work?”

  “Politicians don’t suspect their security people. In June of 2020 Williams and some of his people had a conference call with Schulmann. Trimble overheard parts of it. That’s when we took interest. Then Schulmann came to Texas to meet with Williams in person. He was careful with the information, but by then we’d been following him closely, looking under each and every rock. From the data on SEC servers we could determine that he’d gone pretty far with his research.”

  “Why didn’t you kill Schulmann then?”

  “In retrospect, I wish we had. But we wanted the information for ourselves, so at the time we wanted him to continue, hoping to intervene before it was too late. We knew what we had done and we knew some of the things that others had done, but not nearly to the extent that Schulmann uncovered. He and his computer genius Marchuk were a great team. They managed to follow threads that nobody else could find. You saw his research, how many highly placed people he implicated in the US, in China, in Saudi Arabia, in Turkey …”

  “So you now use this information to blackmail these people?”

  Nemzhov laughed, clearly amused by David’s naiveté. “Call it what you want, Mr. Ferguson. We use the information to influence events in our interests. It’s particularly effective when they did something that was not sanctioned by their superiors. Like placing a bet outside of semi-officially set up arrangements. People like that have a really good reason to ensure that the information remains hidden. And so do we: as long as we know things about them that nobody else does, we can occasionally tell them what we need done.”

  Nemzhov leaned forward and spoke in a quiet but serious tone. “Do you comprehend the power of having such knowledge? Of being able to tell people in the highest echelons of power that we can destroy them with one anonymous e-mail? And that such an e-mail will go out if they don’t do exactly what we ask them to? I am emphasizing this to you, so you understand how far we will go to protect this power and what fate would await you if you try to cross us.”

  “But why did you kill Williams and others?”

  “Why do you think that we did it?”

  “Because you were trying to get the US to split up, and he stood in your way, didn’t he?”

  Nemzhov signaled to waitress to get him another drink, then he leaned back like a chess-master relaxing between moves. “This will take a while. Fortunately, I took all other meetings off my calendar. See, you are important, Mr. Ferguson. How well do you know history?”

  David was caught off guard and mumbled, “Just what I studied in school.”

  “This is part of the problem: you Americans, you don’t really know history. You study your own history and think that that’s all there is to know. For example, do you know how many Americans were killed in World War II?”

  “A million?”

  “About 400,000. And how many Russians?”

  David shrugged, admitting his ignorance.

  “I guess it’s entirely forgivable for Mr. Ferguson, but you, Ms. Sappin, you know very well what I am talking about.”

  Maggie lashed out. “Spare me. I know the numbers. And how many of them were sacrificed by a regime that did not give a damn about people’s lives? And how many were killed by famine and in Gulag? You are a bunch of gangsters that have taken over the country, just like Stalin before you. Crooks and gangsters.”

  Nemzhov smiled, but his eyes were not smiling. “Ignoring Ms. Sappin’s outburst, the Soviet Union lost twenty-six million people during the war. For a math specialist like Mr. Ferguson, sixty dead Russians for every one dead American.”

  “I didn’t know it was that many,” David said.” But what does this have to do with anything now?”

  “Oh, but it has everything to do with everything. While you Americans were sitting pretty behind the oceans, our country has been invaded three times in the last two centuries. It was by the blood of our citizens that the Nazis were defeated, but you were the ones that took credit and benefited. And how nicely you benefited! For years and years have you enjoyed the fruits of a powerful economy that had not been destroyed, and of having the most sought-after currency in the world. Benefits that you did not deserve, but used quite successfully to ‘contain’ us. That’s what you called it, containment, locking us in our cage while you used your superior naval power to encircle us.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I am getting there. You were too young to remember the day that the Soviet Union had fallen, but I remember it well. The pain, the humiliation of going from being one of the two most powerful countries in the world to a basket case. And we were at fault for putting up with a sclerotic bureaucracy and stupid mismanagement for too many years. But it was you, the Americans that pulled the trigger. That was your goal and your victory. And those of us that served the country, we vowed that eventually America would be humbled the way we were.”

  “So it was revenge?”

  “Revenge? No. It would have been revenge if we did it to you. It’s more like retribution because you did it to yourselves. Which, frankly, makes it even more enjoyable. Fiscal irresponsibility, reckless wars … Lenin said that all we had to do was to give you a rope and then to watch and be ready. And perhaps to help the events unfold from time to time. And it’s been a long rope, but eventually these ropes always end. It was almost amusing to watch the arrogance of people convincing themselves for years that they could consume much more than they produce and pay for it with monies created out of thin air. You did not even have to print it, just press a few buttons on a keyboard. I bet many Americans knew that this couldn’t last, but they just could not help themselves. Or rather, you let your political and financial elites do that while you were voting for them. I am looking forward to the ‘Less-United States of America’—but we did not do it, you did. Yes, we made a little profit. We were entitled after all those years of your Wall Street robbing the world and getting away with it.”

  “And Williams was getting in the way of your plans?”

  “He could have. By the time we assembled most of Schulmann’s research, it was almost September. We knew through Trimble that Schulmann was going to meet with the Williams team in Philadelphia. We also knew that they had a number of conversations before that and had to believe that Williams had at least some of the information. We did not want him to become president using Schulmann’s research. We wanted the incumbent to win. For years, we’d been watching the great American Union tear itself apart between the red and the blue states, sometimes feeding the flames a bit with an article or a book or with a donation from a properly named group, but mostly just watching and hoping. You were doing just fine without our help. The presidential race was essentially tied, and we were not going to interfere; our internal projections were pointing to re-election for the incumbent. Our projections were also showing that the post-crisis frustration in the ‘red states’ would have produced a powerful secession movement.”

  “Your projections?” wondered David.

  “Yes, market research. We learned well from your presidential elections, you truly turned predictive public polling into a science. I wonder how history would have turned if George Washington or Abraham Lincoln had been polls-driven? Anyway, it’s the matter of asking the right questions and we could see that the cris
is of 2019 worsened the “red states” vs. “blue states” divide quite a bit. See, the Chinese were after the money in this whole game: making money off your misfortune, setting up their currency as ‘best amongst equals,’ all that.”

  “And you were not? Please. You’ve made a bundle.”

  “Of course, when there is money to be made, why not? But we were not greedy, not on the same scale as the Chinese. Yes, our goal was the breakup of the USA. We thought that the crisis would be the last straw, so to speak. But Williams going public with Schulmann’s materials would have changed the equation. Williams would have won in a landslide and very likely kept the country together. Moreover, the shock of proven betrayal by some of the highly placed government officials had a potential to transform the public mood, and to get people to make the hard choices that they were not willing to make before. America still had some powerful cards: given a few years of constructive policies, it could have cured its account deficit issues and started recovering. We did not have a wide open window of opportunity.”

  “Did Trimble do the assassination?”

  “No. We paid him very nicely for the information, but that was it. Somehow he managed to get Schulmann’s computer and disappeared with the money we paid him. We actually thought he was killed in the blast, even though his remains were not found. Did not hear about him until recently, when he tried to sell the file to the Chinese.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Thanks to the information in the Schulmann’s file, of course. That’s a gift that keeps on giving. There were a number of highly placed people in Beijing that did not want the MSS to get the file, knowing that it would mean a death sentence for them. Not only did we find out about his approach, it was easy to persuade some of the MSS elements to try to kill or capture him. Greed was ultimately Trimble’s downfall. If he had gone to a country whose highly-placed leaders were not involved in the 2019 stocks and currency trading, he probably would have gotten away with it and made some money. But he wanted to hit the jackpot, so he went to the Chinese that were the greediest and bet the most heavily in 2019. You see, Mr. Ferguson, greed kills. Yes, this is a warning.”