by Saul Herzog
The waitress returned and said, “What can I get for you?”
Lance spoke Russian fluently, he’d trained in all of the major dialects and accents, but he hoped now, here, that no nuance of pronunciation or diction would give him away as an American.
“I need to make a phone call,” he said, taking out his wallet and counting out three American hundred dollar bills.
The waitress was as smart as he’d predicted, and quickly threw a cloth napkin over the bills. Then she picked them up.
“I’ll be right back with a phone, sir,” she said.
“And I’ll have some hot coffee,” he added as she left.
She came back a minute later with a personal cell phone and his coffee, then left him again.
Lance then went through the routing process with the phone, calling a partially automated CIA switchboard located inside Russia. No one, not even Roth himself, knew for sure where the switchboard was located, or who exactly was responsible for operating it, but it provided an extremely valuable backup system for operatives located inside Russian territory. The fact it was manual, and built entirely on Cold War era telephony, meant that it was immune from satellite interference or modern cyber attacks.
The phone clicked and beeped, like an old modem from the nineties, and eventually, someone on the other end picked up.
“This is Lance Spector for Levi Roth,” Lance said.
A female voice with a slightly British, slightly foreign, accent said, “Under what authorization?”
Lance had no active authorization codes, he hadn’t been sent to Russia by the CIA and had no operational codes of any kind. What he did have were older, top-level codes, complete with embedded distress flags, and he gave one of those codes to the operator. He didn’t append a distress flag, but he did provide a little nod to sentimentality that he wasn’t even sure Roth would notice.
“Please hold,” the operator said.
Lance took another sip of the coffee, then raised his hand for the bill.
87
Deep beneath the Pentagon, in a secure conference room that was equipped with its own air and water filtration system, lead shielding, and enough communications equipment to allow for direct orders to be issued to any branch of the US military, the president’s cabinet sat assembled, ready for war.
Roth sat at one end of the table, the president at the other, and around them was the president’s Chief of Staff, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the director of the NSA, as well as the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, the Navy, the Air force, and Space Operations. The Commandant of the Marine Corps was also present, as well as a number of other cabinet members.
On an enormous screen was a live satellite feed of Latvia and the surrounding territory. The three remaining Keyhole satellites had been reoriented to provide coverage over the region, and the National Reconnaissance Office, along with the DoD, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Geospatial-Intelilgence Agency were working furiously to ensure that all of the Pentagon’s advanced systems that relied on Keyhole integration were up and running.
“The question is,” the president said, “do we or do we not invoke Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty?”
Article Five was the crux of NATO’s defensive alliance. It stated that an attack on one member was to be regarded as an attack on all.
Everyone sitting at the table looked at each other, and at the little icons on the screen that represented Russian troops.
Schlesinger was the first to speak. “I think there’s no question,” he said. “This is it. This is the day we’ve been preparing for since the end of the Second World War.”
“World War Three?” the president said.
“Well,” Schlesinger said, “an attack, at any rate. We’ve got Russian missiles in the air. We’ve got Russian tanks crossing the border. As far as I’m concerned, this is game on.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do to get Russia to stand down?” the president said, looking directly at Roth.
“Sir,” Roth said, “at this stage, I really don’t see Russia standing down. They’re claiming there’s been a massacre of Russians on Latvian soil.”
“We all know that’s bullshit,” Schlesinger said.
“No we don’t,” the president said. “Not definitively.”
“Why on earth would a country the size of Latvia do something like that?” Schlesinger said. “It would guarantee a response from the Russians. That village is less than five kilometers from the Russian border.”
“Maybe someone in Latvia is trying to trick Russia into making an attack,” the president said.
Everyone at the table looked down at their documents.
No one believed that.
This was an act of Russian agression, plain and simple, and everyone but the president was ready to admit it.
Russia had been itching for decades to take back the land lost in the collapse of the USSR. Every minute that those tiny Baltic Republics were allowed to defy Moscow was an insult. Not only had they broken free of Moscow’s grip, but to rub salt in the wound, they’d also become fully fledged members of NATO.
The Kremlin had learned from the experience.
When the Ukraine tried to pull closer to NATO, Moscow stopped the process in its tracks.
And now, they were taking back what they saw as territory that was rightfully theirs.
The president let out a long sigh and looked at Roth as if he was begging him for a solution.
“Sir,” Roth said, “you’re right. It’s not, strictly speaking, too late for something to pull us back from the brink. If we were able to get the Russians to hesitate. If we were able to get them to question their own plans. If we were able to somehow scare them back into their corner…”.
“Then war might still be averted?” the president said hopefully.
“Yes,” Roth said, “but it would require something extraordinary. It would require them to change course, now, when they’re on the very precipice of an invasion.”
“What could make them lose faith now?” the president said.
“I don’t know, sir,” Roth said. “And I think it would be prudent for us to get in a position for war.”
“You really mean that?” the president said.
“I do, sir.”
“Because you, Levi Roth, you’re my last chance here. You’re my tertio optio. If you can’t find me a way to pull the plug on this, the United States is going to be at war with Russia. And we all know the unprecedented carnage that might follow from such a course.”
“I understand, sir.”
“You’re the last line of defense, Roth.”
“Sir, my recommendation is to prepare for war. I’m sorry that I can’t give you advice that would be more palatable.”
“If you’re telling me we’re out of options, Roth, then that’s the end of the line. The end of diplomacy. The end of intelligence. The end of counter measures.”
“And the beginning of war, sir,” Elliot Schlesinger said.
“And the beginning of war,” the president repeated.
“Shall I go over our dispositions, sir?” Schlesinger said.
The president nodded sadly, looking at Roth one final time before turning away from him.
Schlesinger pressed a button on the desk and the satellite imagery moved westward, from Latvia to the open waters of the Baltic.
“Vice Admiral Cleveland, of the US Sixth Fleet,” Schlesinger said, “is already moving a destroyer squadron from its home port in Gaeta. He has also ordered Task Force Sixty, currently assigned to Carrier Strike Group Two, to sail into the Black Sea.”
“The Black Sea?” the president said. “You told me that we would be doing everything in our power to limit this conflict to the Baltics.”
“Sir, we thought a full Carrier Strike Group so close to the Russian fleet at Sevastopol might give them pause.”
Roth knew this was a long shot. A single carrier strike group, thousands of miles from the Balti
c, while formidable, was not about to scare the Russian president back into his lair. If anything, it threatened, as the president feared, to turn a conflict in Latvia into a broader war.
“What are we threatening with this move?” the president said.
“Currently, between Novorossiysk, Sevastopol, and occupied Ukrainian facilities, the Russians have their entire Thirtieth Surface Ship Division, as well as seven improved Kilo-Class diesel attack subs, four guided missile corvettes, and a few dozen smaller ships, stationed in the Black Sea.”
“So we’re threatening their navy?”
Schlesinger looked around the table. “I’d say we are, sir. That strike group includes the Eisenhower, the nine squadrons of Carrier Air Wing Three, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, three Arleigh-Burkes.”
“So you’re proposing?” the president said.
“It’s a show of force, sir.”
“Sir,” the navy Chief of Staff, Frederick Winnefeld, said, “in addition to Task Force Sixty, we’ve got two additional carrier strike groups currently heading for the Baltic.”
“That’s the Ford and the Truman?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Something tells me that’s not going to be enough to get the Russians to stand down,” the president said.
“It might if we show that we’re willing to use them, sir,” Schlesinger said.
As much as Roth hated to admit it, he had to agree with the president. Russia was not some second-rate rogue state. It had been staring down the US nuclear arsenel for the better part of a century. It was used to brinkmanship. It had been gauging America’s willingness to respond to aggression for a long time. First, by flagrantly breaching bioweapons treaties, then by coordinating with Beijing to blow up two high profile embassies.
In both cases, president Montgomery had backed down.
Now, they were paying the price for that failure to respond.
“Sir,” Roth said, “if we don’t show the Kremlin a willingness to use overwhelming force in the next hour, we’re going to be looking at a full-scale invasion of Latvia. That means an invasion of a NATO member, which is tantamount to an attack on our own territory. If we don’t defend Latvia, we’re sending a clear signal to all our allies that they’re on their own.”
“I understand that, Levi,” the president said.
“We need to be decisive, sir,” Roth said. “We need to go to war.”
Roth didn’t agree with those who thought President Montgomery was weak. He understood his reservations. The prospect of war with Russia sobered the president, as it should.
It wasn’t a political consideration.
It was existential.
The president brought up God when he spoke of it, not because he was a zealot, but because war with Russian threatened every man, woman, and child on the planet.
It threatened annihiliation of the race.
“So we strike at their forces?” the president said.
“A mere show of force will do nothing,” Roth said. “We need to strike immediately, sir. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.”
“And what targets do you propose?” the president said, turning to Schlesinger. “Surely you don’t want to attack their ships in the Black Sea.”
“No, sir. The forces in the south are a threat. Our actual strike should focus on the forces directly involved in the invasion. That includes the units already crossing the Latvian border, as well as the other units that have been mobilized by the Western Military Distict.”
“Is everyone at this table certain of this?” the president said.
Roth looked around the table. The assembled cabinet members nodded their heads in unison. The president was the only one who was hesitant.
“We need to launch now, sir,” Roth said. “If we wait any longer, it will be too late. If we hit them hard enough now, we might be able to turn them around. It’s the only way to end this quickly.”
“They’re not going to turn around though, are they?” the president said.
“No, sir,” Roth said. “They probably will not.”
“And what then, Levi?”
Roth looked at the president and shook his head. He knew what they were looking at. Air strikes would not be enough to turn the Russians around, and that would mean sending in more and more forces.
It was a path to all out war.
And he’d just recommended to the president that they embark on it.
He didn’t know what to say.
There were moments when men had no choice, when nations had no choice.
Moments when fighting, and not fighting, both led potentially to annihilation.
He knew that if the president made this order, he would be failing to do what every American president since the Second World War had successfully done. He’d have failed to prevent the Cold War from turning into a Third World War.
Roth was about to speak, he wasn’t even sure what he would say, when there was a knock on the door.
Every person around the table turned as an orderly entered the room and approached the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
He handed Schlesinger a note, then left.
Schlesinger read the note, then handed it to the president.
Everyone in the room waited. Then the president looked up and Roth and said, “Levi, there’s a call from your man in Saint Petersburg.”
Roth was surprised. “I don’t have a man in Saint Petersburg, sir.”
The president raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said, “it would appear that you do now.”
88
Lance’s call was patched through to the conference room, where it came through on a speaker in the center of the table.
“Lance,” Roth said, “Nice of you to check in.”
“Comms were down across Latvia,” Lance said.
“Well, I should let you know,” Roth said, “I have you on speaker, Lance. We’re in the situation room at the Pentagon. The president and the joint chiefs are listening in.”
“I see,” Lance said.
“Lance Spector,” the president said. “We understand you’re in Saint Petersburg.”
“That’s correct, sir. I killed Zhukovsky and Kirov, but the Russians will just replace them.”
“Zhukovsky and Kirov?” the president said.
“They were the GRU operatives responsible for laying the groundwork for this operation, sir,” Lance said. “They’re dead now, sir, but I think this has switched from being an intelligence operation to an all out military assault. It’s not longer the GRU we need to worry about, it’s the Russian Army.”
“And what do you propose, Mr. Spector?” the president said.
“Well, sir, I’m looking at the Western Military District headquarters right now.”
“But that’s the General Staff Building in the center of Saint Petersburg, isn’t it?” Schlesinger said.
“Yes, it is,” Lance said.
“That’s one of the most secured facilities on the planet, Lance.”.
“It’s got its weaknesses,” Lance said.
“How could you possibly know that?” Schlesinger said.
“Because, sir,” Lance said, “this is precisely the type of situation you trained me for.”
Schlesinger turned to Roth. “What’s he talking about?”
“You didn’t train me just to be an assassin,” Lance said.
“I didn’t know that we trained assassins at all,” Schlesinger said.
“Sure you did,” Lance said. “You just didn’t want to admit it.”
“If you’re not only an assassin,” the president said, “then what else are you, Lance.”
“I’m what Roth is,” Lance said. “I’m the last line of defense. I’m a sentinel against the things we’ve always known were out there, lurking, waiting to strike.”
“We’re taking lessons now from this guy?” Schlesinger said to the president.
The president turned to Schlesinger and said, “Shut
up, Elliot.” Then he said, “And what’s that, Lance? What’s lurking out there?”
“Sir,” Lance said, “it’s not losing a war that we’re afraid of. With our weapons, with Russia’s weapons, with our destructive capability, it’s not losing a war that will destroy us.”
“Oh, please,” Schlesinger said.
“If it’s not losing a war that we’re afraid of,” the president said, “then what is it?”
“It’s fighting one,” Lance said.
Roth watched the president closely. He’d never heard Lance speak like this before, and he was surprised at how closely Lance’s and the president’s views coincided.
The president said, “So you’re our last line of defense in terms of…”
“In terms of preventing a war that could destroy us, sir. Even if we win it. That’s what you trained me for. That’s what Roth created me for.”
“You think you can prevent this war?” the president said.
“Yes, I do, sir.”
“How?”
“I’ve studied the schematics of every known military site and command post in Russia, sir. At Roth’s direction, I’ve memorized the location of every service entrance, every water main, every electrical box, every utility intake. I’ve studied every inch of this building, sir. ”
“And you think you can hit it.”
“I wouldn’t have come to Saint Petersburg if I didn’t, sir.”
The president looked at Roth.
“Lance,” Roth said, “you know that if you walk into the General Staff Building right now…”.
“I’m not going to walk in,” Lance said.
“Lance, you’ll never come back out.”
“That’s an outcome I’ve considered, sir.”
Roth looked at the president, and the president nodded.
“You’re okay with that?” Roth said.
“Sir, you know me. You know my life.”
“What does that mean?” Roth said.
“You know I’ve got nothing to live for, sir.”
“Lance,” Roth said.
“This is what I trained for,” Lance said. “If war breaks out between the United States and Russia, that’s on us, Roth. That’s our failure. Our job is to keep that fight at bay. To push it back. To postpone it. To postpone that final reckoning for as long as possible.”