by Mike Lawson
“Like one time he calls me to his office and says: ‘Dobson.’ I say, ‘Dobson?’ And he says, ‘Yes, Dobson. That’ll be all.’ It took me two days to figure out that Dobson was this activist who was about to screw up a job in Oregon and that he wanted Dobson to go away.”
“What did you do?” Brayden asked.
“You don’t need to know that,” McDonald said. “The other thing—and it’s the only reason I’ve been doing this job as long as I have—is that when me and my guys pull off something that’s, well, let’s say extraordinary, we get a bonus. The bonus I get every year can be two or three times my salary when things go right. Spear might be a heartless prick, but he rewards a job well done.”
Bill Brayden knew that when it came to Lyle Canton, the bonus he would get this year would be unprecedented.
Bill Brayden’s office was on the second floor of the building; the only view he had was of the parking lot. He could have had an office on one of the upper floors with the other VPs and the lawyers, but he liked his office where it was. The computers that controlled the security system for the building—cameras, motion detectors, the system that permitted him to lock down the building and electronically monitor when doors were opened and closed—were all on the second floor. The two men who supervised the security guards at the Virginia location and at other locations around the world were in offices thirty feet from his, so Brayden could easily yank their chains when so inclined. In the office next to him was Nick Fox, his cybersecurity expert. Nick Fox was also the newest and brightest member of Special Ops.
Nick Fox’s real name, by the way, was Nikita Pavlovich Orlov.
As head of security, Brayden was responsible for protecting facilities, personnel, and information. In some of the places where Spear worked—places like Africa and Central and South America—this wasn’t a matter of a couple of overweight rent-a-cops patrolling the premises. He had a core group of elite personnel, all of them trained to kill by Uncle Sam, and when he needed more manpower for jobs overseas, he contracted with companies that supplied mercenaries. In some areas—like Mexico and South America—kidnapping was a cottage industry, and it was Brayden’s job to make sure his employer didn’t have to pay millions to ransom back his own personnel. Theft was also a major problem in some backwater countries. People who made a few dollars a month were willing to risk their lives stealing the materials Spear used, particularly the copper used in distribution systems. Last, under Brayden’s umbrella was cybersecurity. Cyberattacks could be devastating to the bottom line, and Brayden was responsible for preventing them—and Nikita “Nikki” Orlov was his pit bull, the prettiest pit bull you’ve ever seen.
Brayden had met Nikki in Russia. Spear Industries had won a $350 million contract to accomplish various upgrades on the hydroelectric stations on the Volga River. Contrary to the way things happened in the United States and other parts of the world, Spear Industries did not get the contract for being the lowest bidder. In fact, it was the highest bidder, because Sebastian Spear and Bill Brayden understood the way government contracts worked in Russia—and the Russians knew that they understood.
To keep the math simple, a $100 million contract in Russia was actually a $75 million contract, because $10 million went to the oligarch who operated the power company—a guy who was a good friend of Vladimir Putin—and $10 million reportedly went to Putin. The other $5 million went to various local functionaries, including members of the Russian mafia, to keep the necessary wheels greased and prevent production “inefficiencies.” In other words, the money flowed from the Russian government to the contractor, who then kicked back 25 percent to Putin, his cronies, and various other criminals.
While in Russia, however, Spear’s computer systems—systems vital to engineers and financial managers—crashed a dozen times, bringing work to a complete standstill. Brayden flew in experts from the States, who told him the system was being hacked, but they weren’t smart enough to stop the hacker. Then one day, with Brayden standing there, watching the so-called experts frantically trying to build an electronic wall around Spear’s computers, the hacker crashed the system again. It was as if he knew Brayden was there and was just rubbing Brayden’s nose in what he was doing.
That evening, a frustrated Bill Brayden was sitting alone at a table in the bar of the Hotel Alpina. The Alpina, in Brayden’s opinion, had as much charm as a Russian winter, but it was the best hotel available in Zhigulyovsk, a city on the banks of the Volga and near one of the hydroelectric stations being modified. He was drinking vodka. What else would one drink in Russia?
A strikingly handsome man in his twenties took a seat at Brayden’s table. The man’s dark hair was gelled into little rock-star spikes, and he was wearing a vintage Grateful Dead T-shirt and stonewashed jeans mass-produced with holes in the knees. His eyes were as blue as the sky in Montana.
“Go sit somewhere else,” Brayden said in English. He wasn’t a particularly sociable person to begin with, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood for company that night.
“I am the one who fucks up your computers,” the young man said. His English was excellent, although he had a noticeable accent. Then he had the balls to stick out his hand for Brayden to shake. “My name is Nikki.”
Brayden ignored the outstretched hand. “So how much do you want?”
Brayden actually wasn’t all that displeased; paying off the hacker—a guy who was obviously smarter than his guys—was the simplest and cheapest solution to his current problem.
“I don’t want money,” Nikki said. “I want a job with your company. In America. And I need your help to leave Russia.” He paused, then added, “Before I’m killed.”
Brayden told the bartender to bring Nikki a glass and poured from the bottle of Zyr on his table. In this part of Russia, you were expected to buy a bottle rather than run the bartender ragged bringing you drinks.
Brayden learned that Nikita Pavlovich Orlov had been born into a middle-class family and had aced every math test he’d been given since the age of four. He graduated at eighteen from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology—the Russian equivalent of MIT—with master’s degrees in mathematics and computer science. “I’m a genius,” Nikki said. He wasn’t bragging; he was simply stating a fact.
Then he went to work for the GRU, the Russian foreign intelligence agency.
“Cyber warfare?” Brayden said.
“I don’t know if I’d call it warfare,” Nikki said. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He smiled before adding, “Which is why I need to leave Russia.”
Nikki explained. He said he couldn’t resist women, and few could resist him. Considering how good-looking the guy was, Brayden could believe this. Nikki’s problem was that he was caught in bed with the wife of a GRU general—a man in his sixties who had married a twenty-four-year-old model/actress/hooker from Saint Petersburg.
“He beat Galina so badly she’s going to need plastic surgery, and he said he was going to kill me. And this isn’t a man who makes idle threats. A month ago I returned to my apartment, and two GRU thugs were waiting for me. It was just luck that I got away, and I’ve been in hiding ever since. I can’t get on a plane or train because they’ll catch me.”
Nikki said he left Moscow with nothing more than his laptop—which in Nikki’s case meant he left with a complete set of cyber burglary tools. He’d been tickling money out of ATMs and living off stolen credit card numbers since fleeing Moscow. Screwing up Spear Industries’ computers was his idea of a job application.
He said, “I know you use charter planes to bring equipment into Russia and figured you could get me out of the country on one. After I get to the United States, I won’t have a problem creating an identity.”
When Brayden didn’t respond, Nikki said, “I can be very valuable to you. I can protect your computers from, well, from people like me. And if your competitors—and your government—have information you need, I can get the information.”
So Brayden hired Nikki
Orlov, who became Nick Fox.
Sending a text message from John Mahoney’s cell phone to DeMarco’s phone, and moving a hundred thousand dollars from an untraceable source into DeMarco’s bank account, was, for Nikki Orlov, literally child’s play. He could have done those things when he was sixteen.
15
The Hay-Adams Hotel was constructed in 1928. It’s an Italian Renaissance–style building made of white granite and fronted by Doric columns and a sculptured frieze with rosettes and triglyphs. It’s impressive, in other words, and suitable for the nation’s capital. It’s also one of the most famous hotels in the world, because it’s a short walk across Lafayette Square from the White House, and folks visiting the president often stay at the Hay-Adams.
The hotel bar is cleverly named Off the Record. It’s a dimly lighted room—ideal for hatching conspiracies—and has a reddish glow thanks to high-backed red-cloth-covered benches along one wall, overstuffed red chairs, and a hardwood floor and bar stained mahogany red. On the walls are amusing caricatures of past and present occupants of the Oval Office. That is, the bar’s patrons find them amusing. The presidents, not so much.
Emma was drinking a Grey Goose martini at a corner table beneath a cartoon of George W. Bush, the man’s ears drawn large enough to make flight seem possible. She was a regal-looking woman, with patrician features and blue eyes as pale and cold as chips of Arctic ice. She was dressed in a black Armani suit. She could afford Armani. She was tall, had short, expensively styled blond-gray hair, and was slim because she ran in marathons. She was disdainful of golf—DeMarco’s favorite pastime—as she considered it to be the aerobic equivalent of sitting in a recliner eating potato chips.
Emma could see two senators at a table near hers, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, who railed at each other on political talk shows but appeared to be having a great time getting drunk together. Seated at the bar was a Washington Post reporter assigned to the White House press corps and known to have a severe drinking problem; he was typing furiously on a laptop with two fingers, stopping frequently to lower the level in the glass near his right elbow. Emma wondered how long it would be before he spilled his drink onto his laptop. Also present were a man and a woman, the man wearing a suit, the woman a black cocktail dress that clung to her rather generous figure. Emma knew the couple were military: the man an admiral, the woman an air force colonel and a Pentagon spokesperson who appeared frequently on the news. She also knew they were married—but not to each other. The Hay-Adams bar was a great place to people-watch.
The man Emma was waiting for rushed into the bar, twenty minutes late. She wasn’t surprised or annoyed that he was late; with his job, he was probably running late most of the day. He was in his mid-forties, and his dark hair had thinned considerably since Emma had last seen him. When Emma knew him as an army lieutenant he’d been slim and muscular; now he was at least thirty pounds overweight, most likely because the only exercise he got was picking up the phone to scream at someone. His name was James Foster. He was the president’s latest chief of staff. (The president went through chiefs the way a wood chipper disposed of tree limbs.)
“I apologize for being so late, ma’am,” he said.
Emma laughed. “James, you’re the president’s chief of staff. I’m no longer a ma’am to you. Call me Emma.”
“Well, if that’s an order, ma’am, I’ll follow it,” Foster said, but he smiled.
“I need a favor, James,” Emma said.
“Anything,” Foster said.
“Don’t say that until you’ve heard what I want.”
“The answer will still be the same, Emma. Anything.”
Emma had spent her career working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. At the DIA she’d been a spy, a handler of spies, and an intelligence analyst. Almost everything she’d done during her thirty-year career would stay classified for another fifty years, because she’d done the sort of things the Joint Chiefs wanted done but hadn’t really wanted to know about.
James Foster had also worked briefly for the DIA. He was a West Point alumnus, one who had graduated near the top of his class. After giving back to the army the obligatory five years to repay the service for his expensive education, he had resigned his commission to do what he really loved: politics. The first time Emma had met him, however, Foster had been a newly minted first lieutenant assigned to the Defense Attaché System, an arm of the DIA. Defense Attachés, similar to members of the CIA, operate out of U.S. embassies around the world.
On August 7, 1998, two truck bombs exploded simultaneously at the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya, killing two hundred people, mostly non-Americans. The attack was the work of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which had connections to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The masterminds behind the attack were two Egyptians, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah—and the U.S. government wanted their heads.
Two months after the bombings, young Lieutenant James Foster was approached in a café by an Egyptian professor of literature who taught at Cairo University. He knew Foster was assigned to the U.S. embassy, and he may even have known that Foster was DIA. The professor said he knew that one of the embassy attackers, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, would be in Cairo in two days to visit his dying mother.
The United States pounced on this information. President Clinton wanted Abdullah captured, and he didn’t trust the Egyptians to make the arrest. Elite soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Command were flown secretly to Cairo. The professor who’d provided the information was quickly vetted and determined to have no connection to al-Qaeda or the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Young Lieutenant Foster, however, said that he wasn’t sure the professor should be trusted. The man simply didn’t smell right to him. But a couple of army generals and the president’s national security adviser told the lieutenant to sit down and shut up. Smarter guys than him had done the background checks on the professor.
It turned out that the professor’s tip was a setup, and one American soldier was killed when the U.S. team raided Abdullah’s mother’s empty house. The remaining soldiers, one of them wounded, picked up their dead comrade and beat a hasty retreat from Cairo. The Egyptian government—maybe thanks to the same professor—learned about the raid and the gun battle that had taken place in its capital city and was naturally outraged.
The president ended up with egg all over his face, and he wasn’t in the best of moods anyway, because at the time he was also dealing with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Consequently, Clinton wanted someone’s head on a platter—and the army decided that the head that should be proffered was that of Lieutenant James Foster. Discussions began regarding whether Foster should be court-martialed for his incompetence; he was, after all, the man who had passed on the professor’s bogus tip and was therefore responsible for the dead soldier and a diplomatic nightmare. He would certainly be drummed out of the army with a dishonorable discharge. Foster’s dreams of a brilliant career in politics were about to end before they ever started.
Well, Emma wouldn’t allow it. She went toe-to-toe with generals and the president’s national security adviser. She told them—which they already knew—that Foster had expressed concerns about trusting the professor. Emma wasn’t a person anyone told to sit down and shut up, and at that point in her career, she knew where all the bodies were buried. She said she’d go public with the entire debacle—classified material be damned—before she’d allow young James Foster to become the designated scapegoat.
Emma made more enemies—as if she hadn’t had enough already—but she eventually won. The army ultimately wrote a report spreading around the blame without really identifying anyone as being singularly responsible. Clinton, at this point, didn’t care—he was worried about being impeached—and James Foster finished his brief army career and vectored into politics.
James Foster owed Emma.
“I want to be on the inside of the FBI’s investigation into Lyle Canton’s murder,” Emma said.
“I don’t understand,” Foster said.
“The FBI has arrested the wrong man, James. Joe DeMarco didn’t kill Canton.”
“Do you know DeMarco?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you how I know him but I’ve known him for years. And he once saved my life. Actually, he saved it twice.”
“The evidence against him is overwhelming.”
“I don’t care. DeMarco didn’t do it.”
Foster was silent for a moment. He knew Emma was rarely wrong. In fact, he couldn’t remember her ever being wrong.
“Exactly what do you want?”
“I want to see all the evidence the FBI has, and I want them to understand that if I ask them for something, they’re to give it to me.”
“They won’t agree to that.”
“Which is why I’m talking to you. They’ll agree to whatever you direct them to do. Tell them that the president wants one of his people—namely me—looking over their shoulder because of the political significance of Canton’s murder.”
“Man, they are not going to like that at all,” Foster said.
“Well, there’s an old army expression that covers these situations, James.” She paused and then said, “Tough shit.”
James Foster had wanted to be a politician. After he gave the army the active-duty years he owed for West Point, he set his sights on becoming the U.S. congressman from his district in Colorado. He soon learned, however, that he didn’t really have what it took to be the guy up front. He wasn’t charming; he wasn’t good in front of a camera; he didn’t have the patience to put up with all the bullshit a candidate had to tolerate to get elected. He found out after his first failed campaign that where he belonged was behind the guy running for office.