RED Hotel

by Fuller, Ed; Grossman, Gary;

  “So a terrorist puts together his target folder. Now based on this field intelligence, a final target is selected out of the alternatives. Then comes the planning component—the how and when. They practice offsite and conduct trial runs and asset deployment. This is when an attacking force gets their equipment inside or near the target.

  “Given this clear, predictable, and absolutely required template, counterterrorism forces look for the same things, but with the goal of tightening the gaps and vulnerabilities. Our job is to disrupt and deny. Make the target unattractive. To put it more simply, visible defenses should make it not worth the effort. That’s the best way to take a location off the target list.”

  “Jay, can you explain the steps to accomplish that?” Cannon requested. He was on a first name basis with the retired FBI agent from their days together at the bureau. “And let’s drill down into what we can do.”

  “It comes down to distinct interdiction points. First and foremost, deter through highly obvious security measures: guards, cameras, patrols, and barriers. Second, train staff. You know the phrase, ‘If you see something, say something.’ You’d be surprised, but you can even turn the cleaning staff into unofficial operatives. If they see maps in hotel rooms with detailed markings that appear outside the ordinary tourist notations, speak up. If they find more than a typical amount of 9-volt batteries or battery packages, speak up. If they notice remote-control devices, speak up. If someone asks them about routine shift time changes for hotel staff or security, speak up. If they notice guests taking multiple selfies or pictures of the hotel that include closed-circuit camera placement, for God’s sake, tell security. And in case they don’t move on it, get to the general manager or whoever will get the blame if they ignore the obvious.”

  “Wait a second,” Chris Collins said. “Doesn’t this border on profiling? I can see lawsuits in the making here. Turning housekeepers into spies?”

  “Since you invoked spies, Mr. Collins, I’ll take this one,” Carl Erwin volunteered. “This is not about profiling. It’s about being vigilant. I take it your concern is religious or racial profiling?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “That is generally an American domestic issue. Many hotels that have been attacked have been in Muslim-majority nations. There, Caucasians stand out. So no, this is not a matter of profiling. And more to the point, you are facing a far bigger problem than a lawsuit from a guest who may be questioned.”

  Collins took in a deep breath. Reilly patted him on the arm and felt that his colleague was beginning to get it.

  Donald Klugo leaned into the conversation for the first time. He instantly commanded attention with his deep voice and staccato delivery.

  “I guess you invited me because you want my opinion.” It wasn’t a question and Klugo didn’t stop. “Well, unlike the men to my left, all government guys, I’m the one they quietly call when a job has to get done that they can’t do. I run a private international security firm with a fancy name that Googles easily. But the truth is, I’m a mercenary, running a mercenary squad that can deploy anywhere in the world. Not to beat around the bush—we kill people.”

  For his next comment he focused on the KR lawyer. “Too indelicate, Collins?”

  Collins offered a hand, palms up. A sign of acquiescence.

  “We worry about the bad guys, not the law,” Klugo continued. “Because in some places, there is no law, only chaos. Trust me, I’ve researched your international properties: Jerusalem, Cairo, Beirut, Mumbai, New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, Cartagena, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, London, Paris, and a whole helluva lot more. You’re going to need me on speed dial unless you come out of this meeting smarter than when you walked in.”

  “Mr. Klugo, we’re only smart enough to call this committee together,” Reilly said. “Please continue.” However at that moment, Chris Collins’ phone rang. Klugo gave him a dirty look.

  “Look, you’re paying for my time, so don’t waste it. Turn off your fucking phones and pay attention,” Klugo demanded.

  Everyone on the KR team complied.

  “Let me make it simpler for you,” the mercenary proposed. “Four Ds: Detect, Deject, Delay, Defend. If you learn these rules, you’ll have a better chance of saving lives and property.

  “D1. Detect. This builds on what you’ve already heard. Do you have the eyes and ears to detect surveillance? A new street vendor? Someone who’s sitting at a park bench across the street for an inordinate amount of time? People claiming they got lost in your subterranean levels where you house your electrical? Too many questions about the hotel being asked? You train your people to recognize behavior out of the ordinary, you reduce the odds of being targeted.

  “D2. Deject. Deject the bastards. You already heard it. Deject them with permanent barriers outside the hotel that prevent trucks from stopping too close. Deject with bollards that can be deployed quickly from under the road. Test these regularly. Word will spread that you have active defenses on your perimeter.

  “The more exposed you are, the more visible you want your defenses. You’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re used to this at airport security points. Nothing new. Bag searches. Metal detectors. Visible security. Electronic Trace Detectors. X-ray machines. Swab analyzers that read explosive residue. Hell, they’re all there. So when threats are evident, you step up. And of course get some fucking bomb-sniffing dogs. They’re better than humans at this.”

  The litany silenced the room. Satisfied he’d made his point, Donald Klugo continued, “Next, D3. Delay. Delay and you make an attack harder to execute. Plain and simple. Terrorists don’t want problems, especially the ones who are determined to live another day. So anything that can delay a mission jeopardizes that mission.”

  The mercenary waited for his KR students to catch up. “Now for D4. Defend. Are your security personnel armed?”

  “No,” Alan Cannon replied.

  “Then make arrangements to change that.”

  “That’s a serious liability problem,” Collins said, addressing the issue. “The hotel is responsible if a bystander gets shot by an employee. There’s less exposure if police are assigned to the hotel. We’ve done that.”

  “Well then, here’s your problem,” said Klugo. “Depending upon what country you’re in, you can’t always trust the local police. So at least up your perimeter patrols to occur hourly or, better yet, even more frequently and not on a regular schedule. And make sure the people you have on security are fully caffeinated. If a suspicious vehicle approaches, security can engage a hydraulic bollard and block the suspect. If they’re asleep, you’re dead. And increase those visible defenses I gave you!”

  The conversation that followed, smarter and more focused because of the preliminaries, took them to their morning break. Reilly and Cannon caucused in the men’s room.

  “Well worth the effort,” Cannon said.

  “Only because it’s coming from people other than us,” Reilly countered.

  “That’s what consultants are for,” the security chief laughed. “But these guys are the real deal. It’s an episode of Scared Straight!”

  Reilly agreed. They needed experts to come in. Cannon’s FBI experience could only go so far with the KR management. And Reilly couldn’t talk about everything and everyone he knew, especially now. He felt the best possible outcome would be a critical baseline understanding on which they could build an action plan. He was already thinking what that might look like. But they still hadn’t talked about motives and motivation. Reilly raised the point when they were back in the session.

  “The right question to ask,” former CIA director Erwin noted. “A terrorist act is almost always some form of political act. That doesn’t mean a government has to be behind it, but the act itself is planned and committed with the avowed goal to cause a political effect. Are you familiar with the Prussian officer Carl von Clausewitz?”

  Only Donald Klugo nodded.

  “Clausewitz was a solider in the Napoleonic Wars. Aft
er Napoleon defeated Prussia in 1806 at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt, Clausewitz worked on rebuilding his country’s army. He wrote what would ultimately become one of the world’s greatest works on warfare strategy, Vom Kriege, translated as On War. He focused on the relationship between war and foreign policy. Clausewitz saw war as a continuation of policy, arguing that war is not merely a political act, but a political instrument. No matter what the exigencies of a particular war might be, he contended that ‘the political view is the object.’ Keep that in mind. It is the ultimate truth of the people behind the terrorist.”

  The conference room shades were drawn, and KR management had told their staffs they were not to be interrupted. But there was a knock at the door, and Brenda Sheldon slowly opened it.

  Reilly had flown in his assistant to help in the DC office during the meetings and his Congressional appearance. Before the critical security meeting, he had told her who was worthy of an interruption. Anyone not mentioned could wait. This had to be one of the few sanctioned people.

  She made an embarrassed face and quietly apologized. “Sorry.” She gestured to Reilly with her index finger to come out.

  He pushed away from the table. “I’ll be right back. Please keep going.” He intentionally did not meet any of his committee members’ eyes.

  Once outside and away from the door Brenda started. “I know, no interruptions, but I tried to text you.”

  “We turned off our phones,” Reilly explained. “What’s up?”

  “You told me to let you know if I got a call from a Jack Ryan.”

  “Right. Any message?”

  “No. I said you were in an all-day meeting.”

  Reilly wondered what it could be. Jack Ryan was a fun code name he’d given Bob Heath in honor of novelist Tom Clancy’s CIA hero. Since Heath had never phoned his office before, this had to be important.

  He turned on his cell. He saw that he had missed a call. The call came with no caller ID.

  “Okay, thanks Brenda.”

  She hung close to him, hoping for an explanation. “Anything you want me to do?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Reilly ducked into an empty office and dialed a number by heart.

  “Thanks for calling back,” Heath answered. “We should meet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I owe you a lobster. How about the usual spot? Tonight?”

  Dan Reilly bypassed the waiting line at Old Ebbitt Grill. Robert Heath had beaten him there and scored a secluded corner table in the back room.

  Old in the restaurant’s name wasn’t just a marketing moniker. Old Ebbitt Grill was the capital’s oldest watering hole, dating back to 1856. As a saloon in the early years, presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Warren Harding bellied up to the bar. Before he was president, William McKinley was said to be a resident when the establishment also had rooms.

  With all its history the Old Ebbitt Grill still fell on hard times. It was sold in the early 1970s for just over $11,000, and in 1983 moved to its present 15th Street location, a beaux arts building that had been a former theater.

  Today the plays staged in the restaurant were all high dramas, cast with dialogue from political actors like Reilly and Heath. They took place over scrumptious meals set amidst priceless antiques, Washington memorabilia, gas chandeliers, English lace curtains, and a mural depiction of a Mathew Brady photograph of Grant.

  Reilly sat down ready to get right into it, but a waiter interrupted. He had an order of steamed mussels in a white wine tomato broth and grilled flatbread with ricotta cheese, roasted butternut squash, arugula, and crispy prosciutto coated with a balsamic reduction.

  “No need to look at the menu,” Heath said. “The lobsters are next.”

  As much as Reilly wanted to discuss business, Heath delayed it. “Tell me how your first session went today.”

  Reilly explained the progress and his belief that they’d turned a real corner with the company’s lawyer.

  “No mention of …”

  “No, of course not,” Reilly answered.

  “Good. Keep it that way. For your own good.”

  The warning carried a great deal of meaning. Most of all trust and the potential lack of it.

  “Talk to me if anyone raises any questions,” Heath added.

  “I will.”

  They chatted about old times for fifteen minutes until Reilly brought the conversation back around. “You ever going to tell me why the hell it was so urgent we get together tonight?”

  Heath smiled. “Enough foreplay?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Okay.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll start with unconfirmed, uncertain, and an under 50 percent reliability factor.”

  “You wouldn’t be speaking to me with that kind of percentage,” Reilly maintained. “Try again. What do you have? You damn well know that Cannon’s already being stonewalled by the bureau. So don’t you hold out on me.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Heath, acknowledging the point. “One step at a time though. Your Mr. Smug is not al Qaeda or ISIS.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Reilly stated, not trying to be funny. “Remember, I brought you the damned video. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Dribs and drabs,” the CIA officer said.

  Reilly saw more dinner coming, and the two steaming lobsters put the conversation on hold.

  They ate their meal and, thirty minutes later after their table was cleared and coffee had been served, Heath returned to business. “Let me tell you a story,” he said.

  “Fact or fiction?”

  “Let’s just call it a story.”

  “Okay.”

  “Nine, nine, ninety-nine.”

  “What?” Reilly asked.

  “September 9, 1999. Three hundred people died in a terrible apartment bombing in Moscow. Chechen rebels were blamed. Boris Yeltsin launched an attack against Chechnya.”

  “I remember. Bloody. Awful.”

  “Yes, it was. But do you remember anything about the investigation?” Heath asked.

  “As you said, Chechen rebels.”

  “I said they were blamed. I didn’t say they were responsible. Months after the September 11 attacks we knew a great deal about the terrorists—their identities, their nationalities. In Russia, little was reported other than that Chechens did it.”

  “Propaganda. The Kremlin controlling the press?” Reilly queried.

  “More.”

  Engrossed with what was obviously the preamble, Reilly gestured for Heath to continue.

  “It was 1999. The year’s important. Boris Yeltsin was president. He and his family were facing charges that they’d squirreled away a fortune in secret bank accounts—money linked to illegal transactions with a Swiss construction company. He was also an alcoholic and sick beyond anything the public heard. A political movement called Unity was building, building quickly enough that he could lose the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for the end of the year. And here’s where it really gets interesting.”

  “Oh, it’s already interesting.”

  “Yeltsin had a plan, taking a page out of Stalin’s playbook from the 1930s. It required buy in from the FSB, sing-along from the press, and a white hat hero on a rearing steed. He also counted on the Russian people rising up against an identifiable threat. To the point, he conspired to destabilize the newly re-formed government, declare a state of emergency, and potentially cancel the elections. How?” Heath asked rhetorically. “Create an act of terrorism against Russia, instill fear, and then solve it, thereby shifting attention away from his personal political problems.”

  “A false flag,” Reilly added. “Like conspiracy theorists applied to 9/11.”

  “Ridiculously in our case. Not so in Moscow. State journalists helped seed anxiety, warning that Moscow would be targeted by terrorists. That began midsummer. It was followed by increased press reports on Chechen separatists building strength, a clear threat t
o Moscow’s dominion over the Russian republic.”

  “All calculated.”

  “Remember, I said it was a story.” The CIA agent smirked.

  “You also mentioned a white hat,” Reilly reminded him.

  “Getting to that right now. Yeltsin had people in the wings, including high-ranking members of the FSB. You know a key player.”

  “Hardly a white hat,” Reilly commented. “Putin and now Gorshkov.”

  “Correct, and fiercely loyal. Able to bury Yeltsin’s scandals and attack some of his most vocal and visible political opponents and their wives.”

  Heath slowly sipped his coffee, drawing out his narrative.

  “Step-by-step intimidation,” he continued. “Calculated and orchestrated.”

  Another sip.

  “But to truly galvanize the hearts and minds of the Russian people, to stimulate nationalistic fervor, something dramatic was needed. Where the earlier propagandizing about Chechen rebels had fallen short of arousing Russian spirit, an attack on the homeland could.”

  Dan Reilly completed the sentence. “Bombings.”

  The restaurant had all but cleared out by this time. Heath continued, more animated now.

  “Precisely. After the bombings, three in all, in three different cities, the Kremlin linked the terrorists to Osama bin Laden. They were said to have trained in Chechnya. A few weeks later, another bomb was discovered in Ryazan, about one hundred miles southeast of Moscow. The next day retaliations against Chechnya.

  “However, the bomb found in Ryazan was linked to the FSB, which the intelligence service later explained was part of a ‘training exercise’ containing nothing more dangerous than sugar. Was the FSB caught in the act? It didn’t really matter. The war was on, and Yeltsin had the support of the country.”

  “Some of the timeline is coming back to me,” Reilly said. “But how much of this is confirmed?”

  Heath laughed. “Considering we never had a chat with Yeltsin over shots of vodka, who’s to say?”

  “How about you?”

  “I suppose it makes for a good political story. But there’s more.”