The Russian

by Saul Herzog

  “Mr. President,” the reporter from The Times called out. “What evidence is there that this agent acted alone?”

  “Let there be no mistake,” the president said. “This man is the root of the evil we see before us.”

  “Sir,” the reporter from The Post called out, “how could one man pull off both attacks?”

  “This man is an elite agent, trained in all aspects of paramilitary warfare,” the president said.

  The questions began to come in a flurry.

  “What’s his name, sir?”

  The president looked down at the crowd. “I can’t divulge that information right now.”

  “What evidence is there that the Russians and Chinese weren’t behind the attacks, sir?”

  “Sir, what do you say to claims we’re not ready for a Second Cold War?”

  The president held up his hand to indicate the conference was coming to an end. He turned to his press secretary and was about to leave the podium when someone said, “Sir, is America scared to go to war with Russia and China?”

  He turned sharply. “Who said that?”

  No one owned up to the question.

  The president waited until the room was quiet again, then said, “Let me make one thing abundantly clear to anyone watching these events.” He let his voice grow louder as he spoke. “The United States is not now, nor has it ever been, afraid to go to war with anyone who threatens our democracy, our sovereignty, our military, our territory, or most importantly of all, our lives.”

  The cameras flickered, but the reporters remained silent.

  “If we find even a single shred of evidence that a foreign government was behind these attacks, we stand ready to mobilize. We stand ready to go to war. We stand ready to bring our enormous power to bear on any aggressor.”

  There was silence in the room. Ingram wanted the conference to end. He needed to get out of the spotlight. One final sentence was all that was required.

  “If we’ve been attacked, we will declare war on our enemies, and we will crush them.”

  89

  The Russian president watched the press conference with a wry smile on his face.

  He’d always enjoyed seeing his opponents squirm, and what he was looking at now was undoubtedly the greatest setback to American diplomacy in a generation.

  It was an enormous achievement, but it hadn’t come easy.

  Decades of diligent preparation, by Moscow and Beijing, had been required to make this outcome possible.

  It had cost him Medvedev, but he’d been beginning to suspect Medvedev was getting a little big for his boots anyway. Medvedev had broken the cardinal rule of Russian politics. He set his sights on the president’s job.

  And that was what had cost him his life.

  The president knew Spector was still loose in Moscow. He knew he’d find and kill the man behind the bombings, regardless of his orders, and the president was glad it happened.

  It solved a problem for him that would have been difficult to solve otherwise. Medvedev had amassed a great deal of power. Many in the Kremlin feared him.

  Now he was gone.

  The ordinary people had never heard of him, of course, but that wasn’t stopping the president from ordering the largest state funeral Moscow had seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would include a full military parade and draw millions of people to the streets of the capital. It would be televised across the nation, and the president himself would make a speech.

  He’d speak of the bravery of a patriot, a patriot who never lost sight of the true enemy of the Russian people, and he would make explicit mention to recent events that had shocked the world and put fear in the hearts of lions.

  It wasn’t out of affection for Medvedev that he would make the speech.

  He would be making a statement, rubbing salt in the wound of the Americans, and putting the world on notice that it had been Russians who were responsible for the embassy bombings, and that the Americans had backed down from a fight.

  He leaned back and lit a cigar, inhaling from it deeply.

  He’d be lying if he said Medvedev’s assassination hadn’t rattled him. Spector had proven that he could act in Moscow over an extended period with virtual immunity. If he wanted to kill someone, he could do it. He’d done it in the Kremlin. He’d done it at Novo-Ogaryovo.

  The president had ordered security at the estate to be dramatically increased, all systems were to be upgraded if possible, but he knew that no matter what he did, there was a risk that if Spector decided to come back, he could do it.

  He picked up his phone and asked to be connected with the Consulate General in New York. A moment later, Jacob Kirov’s granite voice came on.

  “Mr. President,” he said.

  “Jacob, are you watching?”

  “Of course I’m watching, sir.”

  The president laughed. “It doesn’t look good for them. The press is already skeptical.”

  “No one’s going to believe the two most important US embassies are in ashes because of the actions of a lone rogue agent.”

  “Well, they certainly won’t when we start planting the conspiracy theories.”

  “You’ll keep me updated on those, sir?”

  “Three separate farms are already planting the seeds.”

  “Very good, sir,” Jacob said.

  “A month from now, the whole world will know the Americans backed down from a fight.”

  “And then we can launch the next phase of our plan, sir.”

  “Exactly, Jacob. But we’ll need some more assurances from our Chinese friends.”

  “I can meet with the ambassador in Washington, sir,” Jacob said.

  The president nodded. “Maybe that would be the best way to broach it,” he said. “What we’ll be looking for is the slightest sign of increased American troop levels in Europe.”

  “I have no doubt the Chinese will support us in the case of American hostility, sir. They’re already increasing their strength level in the Taiwan Strait.”

  “As long as we coordinate our actions with them perfectly,” the president said.

  “And they don’t stab us in the back,” Jacob said.

  “And they don’t stab us in the back,” the president reiterated, “we should be able to each pursue our own expansionist moves without fear of American interference.”

  “I think the president’s speech confirms that, sir.”

  “Yes,” the president said, sucking deeply on his cigar. “I think it does.”

  He put down the phone and looked up at the enormous map on his wall. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, separated from the rest of the country by the three tiny Baltic states, was colored in bright red.

  He had enough forces in the region to crush the tiny states a hundred times over, but he couldn’t move while they were under the umbrella of NATO protection.

  But if he could be confident the Americans wouldn’t respond to his actions, there was nothing the rest of the alliance could do to stop him. Without the Americans, the European allies would blow away like a house of straw.

  The European Union would bitch, it would moan, it would object on humanitarian grounds, but ultimately, if America held back, they would shut up.

  The president practically salivated as he looked at the map. The Baltics had been part of Soviet territory until 1991, and it was his urgent wish to pull them back to the Motherland. Historically, they were tied to Russia, not the West, and their NATO membership was an aberration.

  He’d shown his generals that the Americans wouldn’t fight back against provocation, and if the Chinese continued to hold up their part of the bargain, his next steps would be to put in motion events that would lead, ultimately, to a Russian invasion of the Baltic states.

  False flag operations had worked in the Ukraine. He’d been able to stir up enough ethnic and political trouble that he could justify a ground invasion in the name of Russian national security.

  He now had the confidence that
a similar strategy along the Baltic borders, combined with Chinese actions against Taiwan, would force the Americans to accept a similar settlement in the Baltics.

  90

  Lance had an uneasy feeling. The plane had been circling Dulles for over an hour, and it could only mean one thing.

  “I thought you’d be happier to get home,” Larissa said as she poured coffee from the pot.

  The journey out of Moscow, across western Russia, over the Ukrainian border, and through the disputed Donbas region, had been arduous. It was no small accomplishment that all three of them survived.

  When Lance got back after killing Medvedev, he thought he might die of hypothermia. Svetlana had been traumatized in the palace. It had fallen to Larissa to get them out of the city and onto separate trains without losing track of each other.

  Now that they were over US territory, they should have finally been able to breathe an enormous sigh of relief.

  “Something’s not right,” Lance said.

  Larissa nodded. They all knew it. Even the pilot.

  “I thought everything in America would be rosy?” she said. “All Cadillacs and hamburgers and movie stars.”

  “And a few other things,” Lance said.

  He sipped his coffee and looked out the window. A low fog hung over the land, obscuring everything below.

  He’d watched the president’s press conference from a hotel room in Kyiv and knew he wasn’t coming home to a welcoming committee. The CIA agents who met them and brought them to the jet confirmed as much, but were cordial. They knew what he’d done. They knew the man behind the bombings was dead.

  But orders were orders, and no president could allow the provocations of a man like Mikhail Medvedev to pull him into a global war.

  Especially if a scapegoat could be found.

  Lance knew that when the plane landed, he was going to be taken into custody. He was the perfect candidate. A rogue agent. He’d broken into the embassy just before the attack. His face was already all over the news. The president couldn’t have asked for a better fall guy.

  He winced as he rose to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” Larissa said.

  She’d been concerned for his wellbeing since his return from Novo-Ogaryovo. He was still weak, but at least they knew he’d live.

  “Go tell the pilot to land,” he said.

  She got up, and when she returned, the pilot was with her.

  “Take us down, captain,” Lance said.

  “Sir, are you sure?”

  “What are we going to do? Run?”

  “I don’t recommend that,” the pilot said.

  “They’d shoot us down,” Lance said. “Save them the hassle of a trial.”

  “They’re preparing for you down there,” the pilot said. “There are more military vehicles than at Bagram Airfield.”

  “They think I’ll try to escape,” Lance said.

  “Won’t you?” the pilot said.

  Lance said nothing. He drained his coffee and then said, “Take us down. I won’t do anything to put you or the crew at risk.”

  The pilot went back to the cockpit and a few minutes later announced the final approach.

  From the window, Lance saw a wintery afternoon at Dulles. It had been raining, and the tarmac was slick. Ice-removal vehicles lined the runway. At the end of it, next to a small terminal building used exclusively by the federal government, was a fleet of military, FBI, and Federal Aviation Authority vehicles. On the roof was an FBI Swat team, still getting into position.

  “They really brought out the welcome wagon,” Lance said.

  Across the aisle, Svetlana was waking up. She’d had a few drinks during the flight and still looked a little tipsy.

  He knew, whatever else happened, he wasn’t going to allow his arrest to put them at risk. He’d wait on the plane while they disembarked, and whatever was to follow wouldn’t begin until they were well in the clear.

  The way he saw it, he had two options now.

  He could let them take him without a fight. He would take the fall for what had happened, he’d be tried in a FISA court, and he’d go down in history as the biggest traitor the nation had seen since the days of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

  There were worse things. The people who mattered would know what he’d done. He’d know what he’d done.

  And war would be averted.

  He’d be able to sleep in his supermax cell at night, knowing his incarceration helped prevent a war.

  That was one option.

  The other was to run.

  Either way, the president would have his fall guy. The world would still remember Lance as the man behind the bombings, war would still be averted, and if anything, his running would only make him appear more guilty.

  He knew he might not make it off the runway, the authorities seemed ready for a fight, but dying on a runway felt more his style than living out his years in a concrete box.

  Everyone died sooner or later.

  And he knew he’d done his best. He’d warned the staff at the embassy. He’d tried to stop the bombing. And when it happened, he found and killed the man behind it. If that was what brought him down, he could accept that.

  He’d done things in his life he was ashamed of, things he’d never be able to atone for. He knew better than anyone that there were things a man could be asked to do for his country that he would never be able to square away with his God. There were things he’d done that were incompatible with his idea of God.

  But this wasn’t one of them.

  As near as he could tell, and he was no expert, he’d done right in Moscow. It had ended in tragedy, he’d disobeyed orders, people were dead, but he’d done right.

  And maybe that was the most a man like him could hope for.

  To die at the end of a mission he at least believed in.

  As the plane taxied in front of the arrayed military force, he realized something.

  They wanted him to flee.

  It would be cleaner that way. A tidier case. A cleaner headline.

  Rogue Agent Behind Embassy Attacks Killed while trying to Flee.

  91

  Laurel stood at the back of the SUV and watched the plane come in. She’d parked in a way that blocked the view into the trunk, and she looked now at the array of weaponry Roth had provided. He didn’t want a bloodbath, but he wasn’t messing around. There was an M-32 grenade launcher, pre-loaded with six CS gas grenades, and she unpacked it from its case carefully and set it aside.

  By the looks of things, the military had been warned Lance might not come in easy, and they were prepared for a fight.

  She could have expected that, but what she now realized was that these men weren’t there to apprehend Lance. They were there to kill him. The heavy caliber guns, the live ammo, they were going to kill Lance and, quite possibly, take out everyone else on the plane in the process.

  From the president’s perspective, it made perfect sense.

  Kill Lance, kill anyone who could prove his innocence, and cut out the risk of the truth getting out.

  But what Laurel realized as she looked around at the assembled military units, and in particular at Sandra Shrader standing at the rear with the commanders, was that Roth hadn’t been let in on the plan.

  Roth had thought this was an arrest.

  The president had lied to him.

  After Lance killed Medvedev against the president’s orders, perhaps that shouldn’t have been surprising.

  But it marked a shift. A new dynamic. Roth and the president had been like brothers once. Perhaps those days were over.

  As the plane taxied toward them, Laurel knew the stakes were life and death. For Lance, and possibly for Larissa and Svetlana too, if she didn’t act fast, this was going to be a bloodbath.

  Afterward, the president would say Lance fired first.

  And that would be the end of it.

  She glanced up at the roof of the terminal building. She couldn’t see them, but she
knew it was bristling with FBI and army sharpshooters. The moment Lance stepped out of the plane, a dozen triggers would be pulled.

  And those guys didn’t miss.

  Tatyana was standing next to her own vehicle, watching the scene unfold with the same sense of growing dread Laurel felt.

  “This is an ambush,” Laurel said under her breath.

  Tatyana nodded. “They’re going to kill him.”

  “We need to get your sister and Svetlana out of the way.”

  “Lance will send them out first,” Tatyana said.

  “If he sees this coming.”

  “He’ll see it,” Tatyana said. “And he’ll give us enough time to get them out of the way.”

  Laurel nodded. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Me too,” Tatyana said.

  “Okay, you get them into your car and get the hell out of here before anyone can stop you. I’ll do what I can to get Lance.”

  “The snipers are the biggest threat,” Tatyana said.

  “I’ve got smoke grenades.”

  Tatyana took a deep breath. “Whichever way you slice it, it’s a tight spot.”

  Laurel nodded.

  She went to the door of the vehicle and looked back at Tatyana. “See you soon,” she said.

  Tatyana nodded. “I hope so, Laurel.”

  Laurel got into the driver’s seat and reached back for the M-32. The vehicle’s windows were tinted, and she could climb back and prepare for the assault without anyone seeing what she was doing. She placed the grenade launcher on the floor in front of the passenger seat and got back in.

  As the plane came to a halt, she opened her window and watched with bated breath. She knew every sniper’s eye was at his scope. Their fingers were on the trigger.

  If Lance emerged first, game over.

  There would be nothing she could do.

  They waited while the engines powered down, and then the door near the front of the craft opened with the hiss of released air pressure. A small set of stairs withdrew from the vessel, ready for the passengers to disembark.