Commander-In-Chief

by Mark Greaney

  After a serious greeting and a little background on the short land war in Lithuania, he said, “From here on, I will refer to the actions of the Russian military currently under way in the Baltic as Volodin’s invasion. While he enjoys the support of the majority of the Russian population, I am aware that the information on which the Russian population is basing its support for Volodin is carefully manipulated.” Ryan placed the palms of his hands on his desk and looked down at them. For a moment it looked like the teleprompter had stopped and he was lost.

  Then he said, “No. Not tonight. Tonight I am going to change the manner in which I address you all. I apologize in advance for my frank tone, and my lack of diplomatic nuance, but millions of lives are depending on an understanding of what is going on.

  “To the Russian people: You are being lied to, manipulated, tricked, used. Valeri Volodin was a product of the Soviet Security Services; he was born and trained to use deception. He is very good . . . no, he is better than that. He is the best I have ever seen.

  “But it is not possible to tell a lie well enough to make it true.

  “Volodin’s invasion has failed. His tanks have stalled east of Vilnius. His three most dangerous subs in the area are all at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. A large and growing coalition of nations is standing up to this illegal attack. Armies are moving into Poland and now Lithuania to assist the defensive actions of local forces and the United States Marine Corps.

  “Valeri Volodin went into this thinking NATO would hand him the three nations of the Baltic in exchange for a promise that he would leave Poland and the rest of Ukraine alone. That plan is up in smoke now, but instead of him just losing this conflict, a conflict he started, now he is about to lose a lot more.

  “What I am about to say might make many of you angry. I ask you to keep an open mind. As we speak, the armed forces of Poland are preparing to launch an attack into Kaliningrad. Russian territory. The Russian defense there is weak at the moment, because they have been focusing on Lithuania. Further, NATO has agreed today in special session to immediately send its Very High Readiness Joint Task Force to defend Poland in the case of attack there. And in the sea off Kaliningrad, where Volodin’s Baltic Fleet is still smoldering, multiple amphibious assault ships carrying thousands of United States Marines have been moving into position to land.” He looked in the camera. “I thought I would be sending them to defend Lithuania. But now? Now I am considering sending them into Kaliningrad Oblast.”

  Ryan looked hard into the camera. “These are indeed difficult times.

  “Please understand, all these tens of thousands of armed men, all these aircraft and ships and special operators and missiles and tanks, all NATO and NATO-allied forces, will begin to turn around and go back to their bases the second Valeri Volodin gives the order to his army to quit Lithuania and quit Belarus, removing the threat of an invasion of Poland. Despite everything you have heard in the Russian media, and despite everything you will no doubt hear from the television pundits waiting for me to finish my speech so they can hastily discount everything I say here, we do not want one inch of Russian territory. Not now, not ever. It belongs to you, the Russian people. But we can’t let a madman like Valeri Volodin go on threatening his neighbors.

  “We will invade Kaliningrad to stop war in the Baltic, but we will return Kaliningrad to Russia, when we achieve our aims.

  “My message to Valeri Volodin is a simple one. You have, once again, overplayed your hand. Get out of Lithuania now or lose long-held Russian territory.

  “And if you dare employ any weapon of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, or biological, we will be forced to respond in kind. Launch a nuclear weapon at us, at any of us anywhere, and Moscow will open itself up to devastating retaliatory strikes. I want to speak plainly. I will not fire first, Mr. Volodin. But I will fire last.”

  Ryan took a sip of water. “One more message for the good people of Russia: As I said before, the moment I stop talking, you will be lectured to by a number of well-trained disinformation specialists from the Kremlin, attractive men and women with a gift for selling whatever Valeri Volodin has to offer. But moments from now, when they begin talking, you will notice something different about them. A bit of confusion, a measure of caution with their words.

  “Why is this?

  “Because while I have been speaking with you, all Russian media outlets have received a statement from a Kremlin banker from Moscow. This man was Valeri Volodin’s personal cashier, and the statement is backed by evidence to prove his assertions that for the past several months he has been moving the personal assets of Valeri Volodin out of Russian control, and into a series of offshore accounts. He was captured in the British Virgin Islands along with a Kremlin security official, and he is revealing all the information about Volodin’s crimes against his own nation.

  “Your president has been stealing money from Russia, and then hiding this money in overseas banks to the tune of billions of dollars, ladies and gentlemen. He even hid it from insiders within his own government, creating an escape in case this war did not turn out his way. Long before the first shot was fired in the Baltic, Valeri Volodin had been preparing to leave Russia behind if he needed to.

  “Your media will still mock me and disagree with me, to be sure. You can’t retrain a parrot in a number of minutes, but prepare yourself to look confusion in the face when the Kremlin’s spin doctors posing as unbiased journalists show themselves in about thirty seconds.”

  Ryan signed off moments later.

  All across Russia, the image of President Ryan sitting at his desk at the White House switched to that of a panel of Russian journalists. As predicted, they seemed confused by the accusations, but they did their best to carry the water of their leader.

  At least for now.

  • • •

  Five minutes later the cameras were out of the Oval and they were replaced by Ryan’s national security staff.

  Mary Pat Foley said, “Mr. President. This puts significant pressure on Volodin. You add that to the announcement you are about to make and . . . I think you should consider what Volodin might do.”

  “You are talking about the Borei somewhere off the coast. You are saying Volodin might order a nuclear launch.”

  “The captain of the Knyaz Oleg is a pro-Volodin zealot. Very political. He’ll do whatever his president orders.”

  Bob Burgess added, “He is literally the worst person we’d want to have commanding a nuclear submarine off the coast of Washington.”

  Ryan said, “And still no hint of where it is?”

  Burgess replied, “Finding a submarine off the Atlantic coast is like finding a specific pebble in the bottom of a lake. As long as it sits there quietly and doesn’t draw attention to itself, we will not find it, Mr. President.”

  Mary Pat said, “I think you need to think about leaving Washington until this crisis passes.”

  Ryan shook his head immediately. “No, I’ll stay here. I’m not jetting off to a bunker in Colorado.”

  Arnie Van Damm had sat quietly behind the conversation. He said, “I’ve been thinking about a vacation to South Dakota. Or maybe Micronesia. Wonder what Tierra del Fuego looks like this time of year. I’d like to take a lengthy sabbatical.”

  Jack chuckled. “Request denied. Hell, I’m protecting you. You are in no shape to hike the southern tip of Argentina. Better take your chances with the inbound nukes.”

  “Funny, Jack.”

  • • •

  The café on Krivokolenny Lane had hosted dozens of these meetings, but never one in the fall. Usually these were springtime occasions, every year at the same time.

  Volodin would have preferred the tradition remained. It was another half year to the next scheduled meeting, and in a half year Volodin was certain he’d be in a better place than he was now.

  But he had to come tonight. Diburov was powerful,
he had called the meeting, and Valeri Volodin knew all the siloviki, not just Diburov, were restless and they were angry. The events of the last several weeks would just play into this anger.

  The Kazan was sunk, this was true, and the action in Lithuania was stalled. But the Northern Fleet had more subs, and reinforcements were on their way to Belarus. He saw the failures as mere speed bumps.

  More damning, perhaps, was the fact that Western media was parading around a female Spanish terrorist who claimed Russia had organized the attack against the European Oil and Gas Conference and the bombing of the LNG facility in Klaipėda. Volodin knew this to be true, and it was in line with his assertions during the last siloviki meeting that he would engage in a campaign to boost energy prices in order to raise Russia’s standing in the world, but Grankin had assured Volodin the Russian contact with the Earth Movement group could in no way be tied back to the Kremlin.

  Volodin could deny this to his siloviki, and he planned on doing just that when he got inside. They might not believe him, but he had to try.

  No, Volodin did not want to come tonight. He knew things were dangerous for him politically, and here he would have to face the rage of the most powerful men in the nation.

  But he had to come tonight. He had to come because fucking Limonov had run off with all his money.

  In the spring when these affairs took place at Café F, the security was locked down tight. But tonight things appeared altogether different. He assumed the late word of the meeting was the reason that there was no roadblock at the end of the street and that he saw a few passersby walk down the lane as if it were just any other night.

  Volodin wasn’t worried about security. His detail was here with him. They would protect their president. The other men could go to hell, for all he cared.

  But his security officers were livid about the lack of controlled access to the street. They made phone calls and demanded answers about when the road would be blocked off.

  Once the motorcade pulled up to the alcove in front of the café, Volodin looked in the window of the door. He saw Grankin at the bar, and next to him was Diburov.

  Volodin’s security men told him to wait. He did as they said, sitting silently, thinking about what he would say inside, while his security men argued over mobile phones.

  Finally Grankin walked to the window, looked out at his president, and motioned him in. Volodin just nodded in response, then he turned to his security men in the limousine with him.

  “What the fuck is the problem?”

  His lead security officer leaned back to him. “Mr. President, I don’t want you to leave the motorcade until they block off the street. I don’t know what is going on, but this isn’t the protocol.”

  Volodin sighed. This was turning into a train wreck.

  Diburov came to the window and looked at Volodin sitting there in his car, and Volodin looked back at him. He knew how this made him look. Weak, scared, afraid to face the music.

  Volodin shouted at his men around him. “Damn it to hell! I’ll just go in. No one will say Valeri Volodin was afraid to meet with his own supporters.”

  “It’s not safe, sir.”

  “They aren’t going to shoot me, Pasha. They might want to, but they would never get away with it. They know that. Plus, they are weak men. They would never dare.”

  Pasha said, “I’ll go with you.”

  “All right, but only you. Security men are only allowed in the front room by the bar. I will not look scared in front of these bastards.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pasha opened Volodin’s door, and together the two men crossed the sidewalk and stepped into the alcove in front of Café F. Normally, one of the security men inside the building would hold the door for the president here, but the door did not open, so Pasha had to rush forward and do it himself.

  The door seemed to be locked.

  Pasha yanked again, embarrassed. Volodin looked through the glass at Grankin and Diburov. They just sat at the bar and stared back at him blankly. Volodin then turned to look to the right, at the main room of the café. He couldn’t see this space from his motorcade.

  It was empty. No security, no siloviki, no waiters.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  Pasha turned toward the president, took him by the shoulder, and spun him around. “Let’s go.”

  A gunshot cracked close in the alcove, and Volodin recoiled all the way back to the locked door. His big security man on his right lurched back, blood splattered the glass behind his head, and he slid down the door to the pavement.

  A figure with a gun stood in the darkness to one side of the alcove, just feet from Pasha’s crumpled body. Volodin froze in fear, but for only an instant. Then he started for his limousine, fifty feet away. He could see doors open up and down his motorcade and his detail rush forward. They would be with him in seconds.

  He’d been so focused on the man with the gun in front of him, and his security men in the street, that he’d not seen the other figure in the dark, hidden on the other side of the alcove. This man stepped forward to Volodin as if he would give him a hug, and the Russian president flinched when he felt the presence.

  The second man in the alcove drove a knife into Valeri Volodin’s gut.

  The Russian president’s eyes shot open and then softened, his knees gave out and he dropped onto them, and then he pitched forward, the blade still protruding from his body.

  The two men left standing in the alcove looked at each other for an instant; then the gunman shrieked, “Allah’u akbar!” and he shot his compatriot, the assassin of Valeri Volodin, in the forehead. Then the gunman turned his weapon on himself and began the pledge again, but before he could finish it he was cut down by a hail of bullets from Volodin’s protection detail.

  • • •

  Arkady Diburov and Mikhail Grankin left Café F via a back door moments later. They climbed into separate Mercedes sedans and rolled off into the night in opposite directions.

  • • •

  One hour later, Channel Seven news anchor Tatiana Molchanova appeared in the homes of most Russians watching television at eleven-thirty p.m. Her eyes were rimmed with red as if she had been crying.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Late-breaking news from Moscow. President Valeri Volodin has been assassinated at the hands of Chechen terrorists this evening, just blocks from the Lubyanka, the building where he worked as a young man to build a greater Russia. Apparently the president became separated briefly from his security detail, and he was attacked in the street. He received a knife wound to his stomach, and even though his bodyguards immediately killed the savage terrorists and took their president to the hospital, he could not be saved.”

  Tatiana Molchanova wept openly on camera.

  81

  The President of the United States sat at his desk with the complete dossier on Arkady Diburov lying open in front of him. The new Russian president had been in office only four hours, and already he was going to conduct his first red-phone call with the President.

  Ryan thought it a little awkward that this man was under economic sanction by the U.S. Justice Department, but the dossier spoke for itself. As the director of Gazprom, he had been the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars that had been rerouted from oil receipts into shell companies around the world.

  The guy was a crook, just like the man he replaced, Ryan knew. But Ryan did not yet know if the guy was a crook who would be willing to make a deal.

  He’s siloviki, a billionaire, shadowy, but perhaps less so than Valeri Volodin.

  I can work with that, Ryan said to himself.

  And Ryan also didn’t know if he would be able to fool the man into thinking the Russian ballistic missile sub off the American coastline was currently being targeted by the Navy. The truth was he had no idea where it was, so Ryan felt his best option wa
s to feign a position of authority with the new president, to negotiate America’s way from the brink of nuclear war.

  He heard a sound through the phone in his ear and then a man speaking Russian. The translator conveyed a few words of introduction, and then Diburov said he hoped the two nations of Russia and the U.S. could have better relations.

  Ryan said he felt the same way, but things would only improve when Russia obeyed international agreements and norms.

  After a pause, Diburov said, “President Ryan, I am disappointed you think you can bully me in our first conversation.”

  Ryan replied, “My intention is to state facts, because if we both understand the facts, our nations will be better off. Fact one . . . we know where the Knyaz Oleg is. We can destroy it right now if we want.”

  Diburov said, “You said it is time for facts, but that is not a fact. That is a threat, Mr. President.”

  Ryan replied, “If you aren’t interested in threats, President Diburov, what is that submarine doing off our coast? Why hasn’t it turned around and returned to Russia?”

  There was no response from the Russian president.

  Ryan said, “It would be an extremely helpful first step in reconciliation.”

  “My feeling is we have nothing to reconcile. My administration is not the administration of Valeri Volodin.”

  “No, it’s not. But your administration is the one with the ballistic missile submarine parked off the U.S., so you have to accept responsibility for any actions we might take. Things went bad for Volodin when the Kazan was destroyed. You won’t be able to wrap yourself in the excuse that it’s your predecessor’s fault when your other most advanced warship sinks.”

  After a long pause Diburov said, “I will need significant concessions from you if that is to happen. Very significant, indeed.”

  Ryan thought to himself that this clown wasn’t ready for prime time, but he was now in charge of the nuke codes in Russia, so by that factor alone he deserved some respect. “President Diburov, stop your attacks on all fronts, and then we’ll talk about a deal.”