by Saul Herzog
He turned to Larissa, and she started blabbering frantically.
“They took my husband,” she said, feeling every bit as desperate as she sounded. “He’s Russian, and they took him into the embassy. They just took him.”
“What?” the driver said, outraged.
Someone rolled down a window and yelled at him to get his car out of the way.
The cab driver yelled back.
Larissa knew she needed to do everything she could to add to the commotion. She went into the street and blocked more of the traffic. The cars honked, some drove around her, but enough stopped that a backup along the street became inevitable.
“They have my husband,” she yelled at the cars, and some of the drivers began to get out. “The Americans. They took my husband.”
As more people heard what she was saying, a crowd began to grow in front of the embassy gates.
People were shouting at the guards, demanding an explanation, outraged that a foreign embassy would dare to snatch a Russian off the streets of Moscow like this.
“She’s crazy,” one of the guards shouted from inside the post.
The next moment, a large cobblestone smacked against the plexiglass window in front of his face.
“Don’t believe them,” Larissa yelled to the crowd.
More rocks started flying, forcing the guards to take cover behind the gates.
As the crowd grew increasingly unruly, it only served to attract more attention.
It wasn’t long before a city police cruiser pulled up and an officer stepped out.
Larissa was at the front of the crowd, whipping up the people’s emotions, and the police officer approached her.
“What’s the problem, here?” he said.
“Officer,” Larissa said, making sure as many people as possible heard what she was saying, “these guards dragged my husband into the embassy, and now they refuse to let him back out.”
“What?” the police officer said. If anything, he seemed even more outraged than the people in the crowd. “They can’t do that.”
“They snatched him,” she yelled.
When the crowd saw the officer’s reaction, it was emboldened.
“Let him out,” someone cried.
“Storm the gates,” someone else shouted.
“Your husband is Russian?” the police officer said.
“Yes,” Larissa cried.
Her story evolved as she told it, and the crowd grew angrier and angrier. It wouldn’t be long before they had a full riot on their hands.
“These guards whistled at me,” Larissa yelled. “They called me a prostitute.”
“What?” the officer said.
“Some Americans joined them and called me a Russian whore.”
“And then the guards took your husband?”
“They dragged him through the gate. A Russian man in the middle of Moscow. They took him as if the whole city belongs to them.”
The police officer started relaying the story on his radio. A minute later, five more squad cars had gathered around his, backing up even more traffic and creating a show of lights that attracted more people.
“They’re arrogant,” Larissa yelled. “They think they own everything. They think they can do whatever they want.”
“This is still Moscow,” someone in the crowd yelled.
“Show them who’s in charge here,” someone else yelled at the cops.
The embassy guards were getting very worried. They’d all retreated behind the safety of the high gates and riot gear was being distributed. They lined up in a show of force, and the situation looked so serious that the marines were being called from inside the buildings.
Even embassy officials, the few who were on-site, began to come out. They spoke to each other nervously in the courtyard behind the guards, trying to figure out what had happened to create such a dramatic situation right on their doorstep.
Some shouted into their cellphones. Others spoke to the marine commander, or the head of the guards, desperately trying to determine how they would protect the embassy.
And then, just when Larissa thought the atmosphere couldn’t get any more heated and the crowd looked like it was ready to try and storm the gates, the sound of low-flying helicopters filled the air.
36
Sandra entered the White House for her first face to face with the president since her appointment. As the aide showed her to the Roosevelt Room, she was keenly aware that she was there not as a patriot, sworn to defend the nation, but as a traitor.
Medvedev had made her options very clear. She could get the president to turn against Roth and Spector, or she could let her daughter be murdered in cold blood by a Russian assassin.
“Coffee?” the aide said.
“What?”
“Coffee?”
“No,” Sandra said, and belatedly, “thank you.”
The aide left her in the room alone, sitting at a large conference table surrounded by ornate wooden chairs. She rapped her fingers on the polished wood nervously. Every second counted. She’d already taken steps to hijack the situation in the embassy. Still, if she didn’t secure the president’s authorization in the next few minutes, the orders would be rescinded and Spector would be released.
The aide returned. “The president will see you now.”
Sandra stood up too quickly and almost knocked over her chair.
As she followed the aide, she felt as if she was in a dream.
She couldn’t allow herself to think. She couldn’t hesitate.
The slightest sign of doubt and the president would see right through her.
“Sandra,” he said, rising to his feet.
She stepped into the Oval Office and shook his hand firmly. She looked him in the eye. She cleared her throat and said, “Mr. President,” in as steady a voice as she could muster.
Outside on the South Lawn, she could see that it had begun to snow. A secret service officer stood on the porch and rubbed his arms for warmth.
“Can I offer you anything?” the president said.
She shook her head. She didn’t have time for niceties.
“Sir,” she said, “we’ve got a serious problem.”
“What’s that?” the president said, taking a seat on the sofa in the center of the room.
Sandra sat across from him and pulled a folder of documents from her briefcase. The documents were a prop. They contained nothing but raw data, ordinary SIGINT streams from communications networks around the globe. It hadn’t been analyzed and had nothing to do with the embassy in Moscow.
“It’s urgent, sir.”
“All right.”
“We don’t have time to go through the data right now, but I need you to authorize the NSA to take control of the embassy in Moscow.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. I’m gravely concerned that unless we act very quickly, something catastrophic is about to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“An attack, sir.”
“Sandra,” the president said, “why have you come to me with this? There are proper channels.”
“Because, sir,” she said, and she glanced around the room, “this attack is coming from our own side.”
“What?”
“Sir, what I’m telling you is alarming. I understand that. But there are factions in Washington that want to go to war with Moscow.”
“Of course there are,” the president said. “There are factions in Washington for everything.”
“But this faction is taking action, sir. They’re making a move.”
The president looked at her very closely, as if trying to read her mind.
She shifted uncomfortably in his gaze.
“What faction are we talking about here, Sandra?”
“Sir,” she said, “before we go any further, I need to know the embassy has been secured.”
The president said nothing. She could see the cogs in his mind working. He didn’t like what he was heari
ng.
“I need to speak to Levi.”
“Sir,” she said, thinking only of Lizzie and what was going to happen to her, “that would be a very bad idea.”
The president pulled out his phone. Roth was just a call away.
“Please, sir,” Sandra said.
The president gritted his teeth. He pushed a button on the phone, and the aide entered immediately.
“Yes, sir?”
“Get Roth down here,” he said to her. “I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing. You tell him to get his ass to the Oval Office pronto.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir,” Sandra said, almost in a whisper. She was thinking of her daughter, but the terror in her face added to what she was saying. “Roth is implicated in this.”
The president became very still. For a moment, Sandra thought he was going to kick her out of the office. There was no turning back now.
She was ruining her career, committing treason against her country, and probably securing a life sentence in a supermax prison.
The president would see this for what it was, a bald-faced attempt to lie to his face.
He looked at her, eyeing her very closely, then said, “Whatever you’ve got in your little binder there, I think it will wait for Levi to get here.”
“Sir,” she said, and even to her own ear, her voice sounded false, “the threat to the embassy is from the CIA.”
“I beg your pardon,” the president said, outraged that she would even dare utter such a claim in his presence.
“The data streams,” she said, opening the documents as if they could somehow make him believe the impossible, “we’re getting multiple indications that Roth’s most trusted asset, a man named Lance Spector…”.
“I know Lance Spector,” the president said, almost daring her to impugn him.
“Sir, he just walked into the embassy in Moscow, threatening to blow the entire compound sky-high.”
“I don’t know where you’re getting this data,” the president said, shaking his head.
“And that’s not all, sir,” she said, her words getting faster and faster. “Spector, he’s receiving his orders directly from Washington.”
“Sandra, stop this.”
“From Roth, sir. From Levi Roth.” She pushed the papers toward him, and in her haste, they fell to the floor. “It’s all here,” she said, reaching for the scattered pages.
“Sandra, you need to stop talking.”
She knew she’d gone too far. She’d destroyed her credibility. Ruined herself in his eyes. How would he ever trust her again when all this proved to be a bunch of nonsense?
But she had no choice.
The president got up from his seat. She could tell from his body language that he was about to have her removed from the room. He walked over to his desk and very deliberately reached underneath to where his security button was located.
“Do I understand this correctly?” he said. “Levi Roth, trusted advisor to generations of American leadership at the very highest level, is plotting to blow up an embassy he’s spent the better part of his life protecting?”
“I know it’s far fetched, sir.”
“Far fetched? Sandra, were you aware that twenty years ago, Roth almost lost his life rushing into the embassy in Nairobi before it was blown to pieces.”
“Sir, I know that’s in his file.”
“Over two hundred people died that day, Sandra.”
“Sir,” she said. He paused to give her a chance to reply, but she had nothing.
“Enough,” he said. “Whatever your data streams purport to show, you can save it until Roth gets here. I won’t hear another word of it until he can defend himself.”
Sandra felt her entire world collapsing. She’d lied to the president, ruined her reputation, and worst of all, Lizzie, the person she loved most, was going to be horrifically murdered.
She couldn’t even come clean now. She couldn’t ask the secret service for help.
She was a traitor.
They would despise her.
The door flung open, and she expected to see security guards, ready to manhandle her out of the office.
But it was the aide.
“Sir,” she blurted. It was only then she realized she’d opened the door without knocking. She looked from him to Sandra.
“What is it?” the president said.
“Multiple reports from the Pentagon, sir. The embassy in Moscow, it’s under attack.”
The president looked at Sandra. His face went pale with shock.
“Good God,” he said quietly.
“Sir,” Sandra said, sensing that she’d just been given one last-ditch chance to save her daughter’s life, “you need to order the CIA to stand down immediately. It’s a matter of life and death.”
37
Laurel kicked off the high heel shoes and went down to the control room barefoot.
The control room was a work of art. Roth had spared no expense. In complete secrecy, without using any CIA resources, he’d created a completely secure facility with full satellite communication links, onsite encryption and quantum-based cyberattack safeguards, backup systems for power and communications outages, and direct tie-ins to Pentagon, CIA, and NSA real-time intel streams. It was as effective as anything they would have had at Langley.
Laurel typed her passcode and entered the room. There was a fresh pot of coffee at the machine, and she poured herself a cup.
Tatyana was at a satellite terminal and looked up at her.
“I’ve been drinking,” Laurel said.
Tatyana scanned her, taking it all in, the bare feet, the short dress, the makeup.
Then she pulled up some footage to the main screen. Laurel just stared at it.
“What…” she said, lost for words. “That’s…”.
Tatyana nodded. “This is live,” she said.
The footage showed Lance being arrested at gunpoint by marines.
“Why are they arresting him?”
“His credentials,” Tatyana said. “Roth had them flagged.”
Laurel looked at the screen in disbelief. There he was, larger than life, his face in perfect high definition. And he was on his knees, letting marines handcuff him.
“Why did he turn himself in?”
Tatyana looked at her blankly.
“It makes no sense. He’s been hiding out for weeks. Now he just walks into the embassy and gets himself arrested?”
Laurel turned to Tatyana and again got the feeling there was something she wasn’t telling her.
“Where’s the sound?” Laurel said.
“This feed is coming from the NSA. They’re saying there’s something wrong with the buffer.”
“So, we can’t get sound?”
“Not until they fix it.”
“We can’t get sound on what’s happening inside our own embassy?”
Tatyana shrugged. “NSA’s got control. I can’t access it.”
Laurel shook her head. “We need to speak to Lance immediately. He wouldn’t just turn himself in like this without reason. Something’s going on.”
“Agreed,” Tatyana said.
“Whatever brought him in, it’s going to be something big. Get the station chief on the line.”
Tatyana hit some keys, and a dial tone came over the speaker. It was followed by the voice of the CIA Station Chief in Moscow.
“This is Rapaport.”
“Rapaport,” Laurel said, “this is Laurel Everlane calling under authorization Alpha, Alpha, Lima, Alpha.”
Tatyana sent the security verification, and they waited while Rapaport checked his phone for confirmation.
“Ms. Everlane,” he said after a moment, “I take it this isn’t a personal call.”
“Are you at the embassy?” Laurel said.
“I am, and before you say anything, I’ve got to tell you something very strange is going on. We’ve just been ordered to stand down here.”
“What?”
<
br /> “The entire CIA operation in Moscow.”
“Under whose authority?”
“The president’s.”
“The president’s?” Laurel said. She looked at Tatyana.
“NSA,” Tatyana mouthed.
Laurel nodded. It had to be.
“That’s got to be coming from the NSA,” Laurel said.
Rapaport said, “Do you know what’s going on?”
“A CIA asset just walked in. He’s on the third floor. He’s been arrested.”
“Why would NSA lock us out of that?” Rapaport said. “It makes no sense.”
“You’ve got to get to him,” Laurel said. “Find out what’s going on. Why he came in.”
“My hands are pretty tied here,” Rapaport said. “They’ve got marines at our door. Whatever’s going on is way above my pay grade.”
“You’re the CIA station chief,” Laurel said. “That man is a CIA asset. Get your ass to the third floor and give this phone to Lance Spector. We’ve got to speak to him.”
There was some noise in the background, someone telling Rapaport to get off the phone. Then the line went dead.
Laurel looked at Tatyana. “What the hell?”
“NSA is up to something,” Tatyana said. “They’re trying to kick me off the video feed now too.”
“What?”
“Whatever brought Lance in,” Tatyana said. “They don’t want us to know what it is.”
Laurel gritted her teeth. Her mind ran over the permutations. None of them made any sense. “We need to speak to Roth.”
Tatyana hit some keys, and a moment later, Roth’s gravelly voice filled the room.
“Laurel,” he said immediately, “are you getting this?” He sounded out of breath.
“Are you all right?” Laurel said.
“Something’s going on. What have you got?”
“A live feed from the embassy. Lance is in custody. The stream’s being buffered by NSA, and they’re trying to kick us off.”
Roth cleared his throat. He sounded rattled. “The president’s just ordered in-country CIA to stand down.”
“We spoke to the station chief,” Laurel said.
“Any way he can get to Lance?”
“It sounded like the marines took his phone from him.”