The Target

by Saul Herzog

  He was confident he could out-manuever the American president.

  Presidents came and went like the changing of the seasons. He’d sat across the table from so many of them he was beginning to lose count. They were tourists. Useful idiots.

  They were senators, or business men, or whatever they were. Then, suddenly, they won an election and randomly, without any control or planning or forewarning, they were the president of what was supposedly the most powerful nation on earth.

  A month earlier, they’d never even seen the inside of the White House.

  And he was supposed to sit across the table from them as equals?

  That was ridiculous.

  American politicians were ridiculous.

  They were like tough guys who signed up for a sheriff’s department because they liked the golden star they could pin to their lapel.

  The real threat from the US wasn’t the politicians, it was the career men. The military and intelligence men.

  The deep state.

  The men who remained in place regardless of who was in the White House.

  The real rival of the Russian president wasn’t the man in the White House, it was Levi Roth, and he’d been playing the game longer.

  He was the one Molotov needed to watch out for.

  “If Roth is onto us,” the president said.

  “He can’t be, sir. It’s not possible.”

  “Someone’s in Riga,” the president said. “Someone just killed Kuzis. You’re not going to tell me I imagined that.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  The president shook his head. He was worried, but like Kirov, he felt they’d gone too far to stop now. They’d come too close. They were so close to victory he could already taste it.

  He took a cigar from a leather case in the pocket of his coat and put it in his mouth.

  “If we’re going to play with fire, this close to Roth’s face, then we need to take every precaution,” the president said.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “What assets do the Americans still have in Riga?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “If they killed Kuzis, how are they operating.”

  “Out of the embassy, sir. That’s the only place.”

  “And can he still communicate with the embassy?”

  “The UHF system is down, sir, but there are still NATO systems. The embassy can still communicate.”

  “I want the US embassy completely cut off, Kirov. I want them put in the stone age.”

  “I can activate a team, sir. They can take out the embassy’s comms.”

  “Do it,” the president said. “If Roth’s trying to fuck with us, I want him cut off.”

  “Consider it done, sir.”

  The president brought his cigar to his lips and sucked.

  He felt this. In his bones he felt it.

  This was a risk.

  It was a roll of the dice.

  It was a mistake.

  “And give Zhukovsky the order to proceed with the massacre,” he said.

  68

  The US embassy in Riga was on a spacious compound in a leafy suburb west of the city. If it weren’t for the steel fencing and guard posts at the entrances, it could have been mistaken for a local college or community center. It was a modern building with blue windows and a sandstone facade. As Lance approached the front gate, two guards from a local security contractor waved their flashlights and told him to slow down.

  “The embassy is closed,” one of the guards said in Latvian.

  “I have to speak to the CIA station chief,” Lance said. “This is an emergency.”

  The guards looked at each other. They were local men. They’d never seen someone ask for the CIA station chief before. This was clearly something that went above their paygrade.

  One of them went back to the guardpost and spoke into a radio.

  “The comms are still acting up,” he called out to the other guard.

  “Comms are down everywhere,” Lance said. “The entire country is down.”

  “You don’t need to tell us about this country,” the guard said.

  “And you don’t need to keep me here talking,” Lance said. “I need to speak to someone who can let me into this compound and I need you two to make it happen. Fast.”

  The guards consulted, then the one who’d gone to the guardpost entered the compound and went to the main embassy building.

  “He’s going to speak to our supervisor,” the other guard said.

  “This is urgent,” Lance said. “I really need to get inside and speak to someone.”

  The man looked at him and then looked back toward the building where the other guard had just gone.

  “The supervisor will know what to do,” the guard said.

  Lance looked at his watch. An hour had passed since he’d let Kuzis’s dacha. Every minute that passed brought the Russian invasion closer. He needed to get the word to Roth, and the embassy’s NATO comms system was the only way he could reach him.

  With enough warning, Roth might be able to find out what the Russians were planning, where they were going to strike, and could maybe even authorize a preemptive response.

  Lance sat in the car for two more minutes, watching the seconds tick by, then got out and walked to the guard.

  “Get back in your car,” the guard said, pulling his weapon.

  Lance lunged forward and knocked the gun from his hand.

  The man looked at him in shock.

  Lance shook his head. “Don’t,” he said.

  From the tone of his voice, the guard knew that he wasn’t kidding.

  “Sir, I can’t let you past without authorization. You know that.”

  “Look at it this way,” Lance said. “Do you really want to get in a fight with the guy who’s asking to see the CIA Station Chief?”

  The guard didn’t say anything and Lance didn’t waste any more time. He stepped past him, grabbed a vistor’s pass from the desk, and walked through the guardpost to the entrance of the main building.

  It was the middle of the night, and the lobby which would normally be bustling with people was all but deserted. There was one marine sitting at a desk close to the elevators.

  Lance walked up to him and said, “Where do I find the CIA offices?”

  The marine looked up at him and his eye stopped on the vistor’s pass.

  “Who’s asking?” he said.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” Lance said. “ But if there’s someone with the CIA here, I need to talk to them.”

  “There’s a CIA presence,” the marine said.

  “In this building?”

  The marine nodded toward the front doors. “The one across the courtyard,” he said.

  Lance went back outside. The building across the courtyard was made of the same sandstone, low-rise, with windows that were shaped like slats. He walked through the glass doors and inside, another marine sat at another desk.

  “You need to send someone down from the CIA,” Lance said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Just tell them it’s an emergency.”

  The marine was smart enough to know that something was going on. The communications across the country were down and riots were beginning to break out across the capital.

  “They’re on the second floor,” the marine said.

  “Can you let me up?”

  Someone came rushing through the door. It was the guard from the front gate, breathless.

  He stood awkwardly by the door and Lance and the marine looked at him.

  “He just walked in,” the guard said to the marine.

  “Just walked in?”

  “Through the front gate,” the guard said.

  The marine’s hand moved down to his weapon.

  “Don’t break my balls,” Lance said. “Just get them to send someone down. It’s urgent.”

  The marine bit his lip, thought about it for a second, then picked up the phone. As soon as he heard
the dialtone, he remembered that the system was done and replaced the receiver with a sigh.

  “Escort me up,” Lance said.

  “I’m going to regret this,” the marine said.

  69

  Kirov felt sick. The president had almost called off the entire operation, and he didn’t even know about the fuck up with Alex Sherbakov. He had no idea that Lance Spector was involved. If he knew that, he would have cancelled it for sure, and it would mean Kirov’s head.

  He dialed Prochnow’s sat phone and waited.

  “Sir,” Prochnow said. “What do you need?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Making my way back into the city, sir.”

  “Stop,” Kirov said. “I need you to head east. There’s a village near the border called Ziguri. Have you heard of it?”

  “No, but I’ll find it.”

  “I need you to go there immediately.”

  “Sir, you realize, don’t you, that I still don’t know what this operation is?”

  “There are only three men alive who know what this operation entails, Prochnow, and it’s going to stay that way.”

  “That’s all well and good, sir, but if our friend is in Riga.”

  “Our friend?”

  “Lance Spector.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  “Sir. It’s got to be him. Who else would have gone after Kuzis?”

  Kirov sighed. He knew Prochnow was right. And he knew what it meant. He was just having trouble coming to terms with it.

  “Have you spoken to the president, sir?”

  “Prochnow, don’t forget yourself.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. But does he know what’s going on?”

  “He knows what I told him.”

  “Which was what?”

  “That someone killed Kuzis, and that we don’t know who. Which is the truth.”

  “He’ll suspect Roth.”

  “He did suspect Roth.”

  “But he didn’t call off the operation?”

  “I persuaded him that we had to keep going.”

  “And he gave the green light?”

  “Would I be telling you to go to Ziguri if he didn’t?”

  “I don’t know what you’d be telling me, sir. I don’t know what’s waiting in Ziguri.”

  “I’m giving you an order, Prochnow. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Sir, could Kuzis have told Spector about Ziguri?”

  “Just get out there, and give me a call when you get there.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “And if anything happens to you, you take the information you have to the grave, you hear me?”

  “I hear you, sir.”

  70

  When the CIA station chief arrived he was breathless. He knew something was going on and even though he had no idea who Lance was, the fact that he was there, asking for him, was enough to get him to run.

  He was an older guy, in his mid-fifties, a real career man in a tweed jacket and comfortable shoes. He introduced himself as Greenfeld.

  “We’ve got an emergency,” Lance said to him without wasting time on formalities.

  “Mister,” Greenfeld said, “I don’t know who you are, and I just walked out of a top-level meeting with the ambassador to come see you.”

  “You ask Levi Roth who I am,” Lance said.

  “I’m going to need more than that,” Greenfeld said.

  “How about Special Operations Group security clearance Delta, Delta, Charlie, Bravo?”

  “That code expired weeks ago,” Greenfeld said.

  “Look, do you want to get in a pissing match over technicalities, or do you want to find out what’s going on? You’ve got riots in the streets. Protestors marching on the capital. And the entire communications network of the country is down. What do you think that is?”

  “That’s exactly what I was just discussing with the ambassador.”

  “And let me guess,” Lance said. “Neither of you had the faintest idea what to make of it?”

  “We’re completely blind here,” Greenfeld said.

  “You need to get in touch with Langley,” Lance said. “I have urgent information you need to get to Levi Roth.”

  “I already told you, the comms are down. I can’t speak to Roth.”

  “Latvian comms networks are down,” Lance said. “But you have your own satellite link, right?”

  “What part of the comms being down don’t you understand?” Greenfeld said.

  “What are you saying to me? That the embassy’s cut off from Washington? How is that possible?”

  Greenfeld gave a look to the marines like maybe he thought Lance was simple. “The. Comms. Are. Down.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” Lance said. “What comms protocol do you usually have with DC?”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me who you are and what it is you want to say to DC?”

  Lance looked at the man. He looked at the marines who were standing next to him. “Where’s the rest of your department?” Lance said. “Where’s your command center?”

  Greenfeld laughed, as if that confirmed his concerns about Lance’s intelligence. “My department? My command center? Are you kidding me? Where do you think we are? Baghdad?”

  Lance shook his head. “What are you saying? It’s just you here?”

  “It’s just me,” Greenfeld said.

  “I need to speak to Levi Roth right now.”

  “And I told you, the embassy’s comms link to Washington is down.”

  “You’re expecting me to believe that we’re completely in the dark.”

  “Where I come from,” Greenfeld said, “that’s what comms down generally means.”

  Lance gave him a look that told him not to get sarcastic.

  “How is it possible that an American embassy in a NATO country is completely cut off from communications with Washington?” Lance said.

  “We were attacked.”

  “What do you mean, you were attacked?”

  “Three men, less than an hour ago. They took out the satellite dish with a small explosive. We’re working on getting it back up and running, but it’s going to take time.”

  “Who made the attack?”

  “We don’t know,” Greenfeld said.

  “The Russians.”

  “It could be anyone.”

  “Just when the entire communications network of Latvia goes down, someone coincidentally takes out your satellite dish? This is a coordinated attack.”

  Lance sat down. He ran his hands through his hair and thought. Then he stood back up. “I need you to get a message to Langley as soon as you can. And you need all hands on deck getting those comms back up, because if they don’t get this message out soon, it’s going to be too late.”

  “The ambassador’s working on the comms. We’re sure the Pentagon is too,” Greenfeld said.

  Lance turned to the two marines who were still in the room. “Do you have a fuel tank here?”

  “What kind of fuel?” one of the marines said.

  “Gasoline, for that car out there?”

  “We do,” the marine said.

  “Then go get that tank filled,” Lance said. “I’m not going to be able to buy gas on the road.”

  The two marines looked to Greenfeld and Greenfeld nodded.

  When they were gone, Lance said, “You need to tell Roth that Russia is going to invade Latvia. That’s what all this confusion is about. They’re going to cross the border near a village called Ziguri.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Greenfeld said.

  “They’re coming,” Lance said.

  The look on Greenfeld’s face said he didn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “I know it sounds far-fetched,” Lance said.

  “Far-fetched?” Greenfeld said. “It’s impossible. If they did that, they’d trigger NATO’s defensive pact. It would be the beginning of World War Three.”

  “They’re g
ambling,” Lance said.

  “They wouldn’t gamble on that,” Greenfeld said.

  “Then you explain to me what’s going on right now. You’ve got Russians demonstrating on the streets of Riga. Our comms with Washington are down. The entire communications system of this country is down.”

  “Oh my God,” Greenfeld suddenly said.

  “What is it?” Lance said.

  “I didn’t put two and two together until just now, but when the comms went down, I tried our emergency protocol.”

  “What protocol is that?”

  “We’re equipped with a separate Keyhole UHF capability here.”

  “You’ve got full Keyhole comms?”

  “Yes we do. A secret satellite dish that wasn’t hit in the attack. Our comms automatically switched to it as soon as the main dish was taken out.”

  “And?”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “What do you mean it didn’t work? It’s UHF. It’s rock solid.”

  “It didn’t work,” Greenfeld said again.

  “It must be your dish,” Lance said.

  “That’s why I didn’t connect the dots,” Greenfeld said. “I figured, our dish is down, that’s why our comms are down. But like I said, the UHF comes in on a completely different dish. That dish wasn’t attacked.”

  Lance shook his head. That didn’t make sense.

  “Wait,” he said. “Why would you have Keyhole UHF here? You don’t need it.”

  “We’re right on Russia’s doorstep,” Greenfeld said. “It’s precisely because of a situation like you just outlined that we were equipped with it.”

  “But Keyhole isn’t a local service,” Lance said. “There are four satellites covering the globe. If your dish isn’t the problem…”.

  He waited a moment for the meaning of his own words to sink in, then he saw what had caused Greenfeld to go so suddenly pale.

  “If Keyhole is down…”, he said.

  “If it’s down here,” Greenfeld said, “then it’s down for all of Europe.”

  “It’s down for a quarter of the globe,” Lance said.

  “Which means…”.

  Lance shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do about that right now,” he said. “You just focus on getting the regular comms up and running, and then you tell Roth the invasion is about to take place near the village of Ziguri.”