by Scott McEwen
“At this hour, sir?”
The president stood up from his chair. “I asked you to get the car ready, Glen. Get it ready now.”
44
ISTANBUL,
Turkey
Gil and the others sat cooling their heels in a large briefing room usually reserved for airport security personnel. Most of the women were crying because the mob money and their passports had been confiscated.
Dragunov sat in the corner looking pissed, with his arms folded over his chest. “Do you have any more good ideas?”
Gil shook his head. “Fresh out.”
“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me.”
“Maybe,” Gil muttered, taking the pack of cigarettes from his peacoat.
One of two armed security men near the door stepped forward, wagging his index finger. “No smoking!”
“Roger that.” Gil put the smokes back into his pocket.
Dragunov smirked. “There will be plenty of smoking in prison.”
Gil looked at him. “That meant to be a double entendre?”
“What the hell is that?”
The door opened, and one of the Turkish airport officials stepped into the room, their passports in his hand. Everyone gawked in silence as he walked through the room handing them out. Gil’s was the last to be returned.
“Let’s go,” the official said in accented English. “The plane is now boarding.”
Katarina translated what he said, and the women all popped out of their chairs, making for the door.
Gil tucked the passport away with the cigarettes, exchanging suspicious glances with Dragunov. “The plane to where?” he asked the official.
“Moscow! Where else? Now, follow me.”
Dragunov shouldered past Gil on his way to the front of the line. “Bring up the rear and keep your eyes open,” he said in a low voice. “It’s possible they’re giving us back to the mafia.”
The official led them down a long white corridor. They emerged from a doorway just beyond the security checkpoint where late-night travelers were busy taking off their shoes and stepping through metal detectors.
“Wait here,” the official told Dragunov. “I have to get your boarding passes.”
The women huddled together, talking guardedly among themselves.
“What do you think?” Gil said.
Dragunov grunted, putting a hand on his shoulder and pointing beyond the bank of metal detectors. “It looks like our friends have come to see us off.”
Gil looked over to see a pair of angry-looking Russians in black leather jackets staring back at them. He gave them the finger and formed the words Fuck you with his lips.
The Russians stared a few moments more. Then they turned and left.
“Adios, assholes.”
“You think we’ve won,” Dragunov said. “But we’ve made very dangerous enemies tonight. They will hunt us forever.”
“Well, I don’t speak Russian,” Gil said. “So when you get the chance, do me a favor and tell ’em to get in line behind Al Qaeda, the RSMB, the ACLU, and every other motherfucker who wants a piece of me.”
The Spetsnaz man chuckled. “I’m going to catch hell for not shooting you. Because of this, the GRU will never be able to work with them in Turkey again.”
“Too bad.” Gil pointed to where the women were joyfully receiving their boarding passes from the airport official. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t make you feel good.”
Dragunov nodded. “Yes, but it wasn’t our mission—and you know that.”
They boarded the plane a short time later, and the captain of the plane joined them in the back. “Are you Major Ivan Dragunov?” he asked in Russian.
“Yes.”
The captain gestured at Gil. “And this is the American?”
“Yes. Ugly, isn’t he?”
The captain grinned. “Major, I need for you to collect the passports from these women and send them forward to the cockpit. Moscow wants a complete list of names so they can begin to notify the families.”
The women immediately began to object.
Gil reached across the aisle, putting his hand on Katarina’s arm. “What’s going on now?” She told him what the captain had said, and he shook his head. “Tell them not to give up their passports again until we arrive at Moscow customs.”
Katarina quickly told the others, and they all defiantly jammed their hands into their coat pockets.
Dragunov elbowed him in the ribs. “What the hell are you doing?”
“They can write their names down on a sheet of paper. These girls are traumatized as hell, and you wanna take their fuckin’ passports again?”
The captain stared at Gil. “Mr. Shannon, no one is going to steal their passports aboard my aircraft.”
“You can call me Master Chief Shannon, Captain.”
The captain smiled dryly. “Very well, Master Chief. If you would ask these young ladies to write their names down for me and pass the list to the cockpit? Then perhaps my government can get on with its work.”
“Hear that?” Gil asked Katarina.
She nodded, saying “Thank you” to the captain in English.
The captain nodded. “I’ll have the attendant bring paper and something to write with.” He then returned to the cockpit and closed the door.
Dragunov looked at Gil and smirked.
“You’re doin’ a lotta smirkin’ tonight, Major.”
“You seem to have no idea where you’re going,” Dragunov said, putting his seat back and making himself comfortable. “You will, though, soon enough.”
“Don’t get too comfy over there. You’re gonna have to return that seat to its upright position before we take off.”
Dragunov closed his eyes. “Leave me alone, Master Chief. A crazy American has been trying to get me killed for days, and I’m very tired.”
45
BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL,
Bethesda, Maryland
Robert Pope opened his eyes to see the president standing at the foot of his bed in the subdued lighting of his hospital room. His first thought was that something had gone terribly wrong in Turkey. “Has something happened to Gil, Mr. President?”
The president shook his head. “No, Gil’s fine. He and the others left Istanbul for Moscow half an hour ago. I’m here at this untimely hour because I need your counsel on a very personal matter.”
Pope adjusted himself in the bed, wiping his face with his hands to wake himself up. “You look worried, sir. What can I do for you?”
The president took the phone from his pocket and stepped around the side of the bed. “I received this . . . message . . . from Tim Hagen two hours ago.” He put the phone into Pope’s hand and touched the screen to start the video clip.
In the video, the president was sitting beside a young Korean woman in the back of a limousine. He was clearly drunk and quite taken with the young woman. He was kissing the side of her face, running his hand in and out of her blouse and up and down the inside of her thigh, beneath her skirt. She was laughing and rubbing the bulge in his trousers. The voice of Tim Hagen could be heard very close to the phone, talking and chortling as if he were having a conversation with someone on the other end. After twenty seconds, the video cut to the president performing cunnilingus on the woman. Twenty seconds later, it cut again to her straddling him, and the president moaning that he was about to climax. After a full minute, the video stopped.
Pope gave the phone back to the president. “That’s obviously an edited version?”
“Yes,” the president said quietly, slipping the phone into his jacket. “I expect it probably is.”
“And you had no idea he was filming you?”
“None. We’d just won the Iowa caucuses, and I was drunker than the Lords of London. I thought he was bragging to someone about
the victory.” The president massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “I trusted that man with my life, and he put me in the White House. I had no idea I’d made a deal with the devil.”
Pope blessed his luck. “Why have you shared this with me, sir?”
“Hagen’s letting me know that if he goes down, he’s taking me with him. My wife is nothing like Hillary Clinton. She would divorce me immediately—and publicly.”
Pope nodded his understanding. “With respect, Mr. President, that doesn’t really answer my question.”
The president spoke to him gravely. “Can you stop this video before it goes viral?”
“Is this a frank and open conversation, sir?”
“It is.”
“In that case, I can stop it with a ninety percent certainty,” Pope replied. “But I’ll have to remove Hagen from the game board to do it. There’s a slight chance he’s arranged for the video to go viral in the event of his death, but under the circumstances, I believe that to be unlikely.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“I’m extremely close to Hagen, Mr. President. I have been since shortly after I ended up here. For all intents and purposes, I might as well be in the room with him at this very moment. If he’s arranged for that video go viral automatically, he did so a long time ago—which isn’t likely, in my opinion.”
The president let out a heavy sigh and stood away from the bed, resting his weight on the back of a chair near the window. “I can’t give you an order like that to protect my own hide.”
“You don’t have to order anything,” Pope said. “All you have to do is agree not to ask any questions about him after tonight. Hagen’s a traitor, Mr. President. Innocent people are dead because of him and his coconspirators.”
“But can you prove that?”
“In a court of law? No. But one of the CIA mainframes was accessed by an old series of codes that Hagen would have had access to during his time as chief of staff. Normally that series of codes would have been canceled after Hagen’s resignation, but the agency’s a mess, and a number of department heads have been slacking off. The day I get out of here, I plan to fire more than fifty people.”
The president felt sick to his stomach. “I know I’m a pathetic coward for asking you this, Robert, but what are the chances of it coming back to bite us if he’s removed?”
“Zero,” Pope answered. “He’ll simply vanish. The FBI will be left to assume that he’s gone on the run. He has plenty of money offshore, so it’s more than believable. He should have run already, but he’s a very foolish man.”
“Foolish how?”
“Foolish in that he’s too stubborn to admit that he’s lost. He lost the day you asked for his resignation. He’s the one who burned Gil in Paris, Mr. President. He did it to get revenge against me—and Gil—for reasons probably only he would truly understand.”
The president stared. “You said you’re in the room with him right now. That means you’d already planned on his disappearance, doesn’t it?”
Pope smiled. “Maybe not quite this soon . . .”
“So I’ve unnecessarily shown you my ass this evening.”
“I wouldn’t say so, sir. A man like Hagen could do a lot of damage with that video in a very short period of time. The sooner he takes a little vacation, the better.”
“A vacation . . .” The president thought it over at length, at last deciding that Hagen had asked for whatever Pope had in mind for him. “Okay. I won’t ask about him again. Now, what about the CIA? Can you save it, or will I have to dissolve it?”
“If I’m given a free hand, sir, you won’t even recognize the CIA nine months from now.”
The president touched Pope on the shoulder. “Heal up, Robert. I’ll look forward to seeing you at the White House for dinner the day you’re released. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I appreciate the invitation. Thank you.”
The president went to the door and was about to step into the hall when he turned on his heel. “Will Putin let Shannon out of Russia, or will he hold on to him?”
Pope grinned. “Do not fear, sir. Everything is going according to plan.”
The president shook his head as he slipped out of the room.
46
MOSCOW,
Russia
More than half of the young Russian women rescued from the brothel in Istanbul had family waiting for them at the Domodedovo Airport southeast of Moscow when the plane landed shortly after sunrise. The women cheered the moment the wheels touched down and smothered both Gil and Dragunov with kisses upon deplaning.
The rescuers were not afforded the opportunity to see the women reunited with their loved ones, however. The Russian media had been invited to film the tearful reunions for propaganda purposes, and the Kremlin had given express orders for Gil and Dragunov to be kept away from the cameras. They were ushered immediately from the plane to a waiting blue and white Mi-8 helicopter, which lifted off the moment the door was closed.
The Mi-8 was a large military model, but there was nothing military about the luxurious interior. Gil sat across a table from Dragunov, facing forward as they were served coffee and orange juice. “Something tells me this isn’t standard treatment,” he said dryly.
Dragunov sat looking pensively out the window. “This is Putin’s personal helicopter.”
Gil glanced around. “You’re kidding me.”
The Russian looked at him. “I would never joke about Putin.”
“Well, you don’t have much of a sense of humor, anyhow. Where are we going?”
Dragunov asked the Russian sergeant who had served their coffee. “We’re going to the Kremlin.”
“What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know, but what it does not mean is that they intend to pin medals to our chests, I can assure you of that. Your people must have contacted Moscow before we boarded the plane in Istanbul. They were too well prepared for us at the airport.”
Gil grinned. “Washington likes to keep things tidy with you guys. You’re too touchy.”
Dragunov was agitated by Gil’s lightheartedness. “You still don’t understand, do you? This is Russia.”
“I understand that, Ivan, but what do you want me to do about it? Sit over here pissing myself? What’s gonna happen is gonna happen.”
“That’s an easy attitude for you to take,” Dragunov said irritably, looking out the window again.
Gil realized for the first time that Dragunov was legitimately spooked. “What are you so worried about? You weren’t this rattled when we had people shooting at us.”
Dragunov turned toward him again. “Do you think Putin would send his personal helicopter for a lowly major returning from a failed mission?” He shook his head. “This helicopter is for you. It has nothing to do with me. You’re probably going to be treated like a celebrity. I’m going to be demoted and tossed into an infantry brigade. I’ll probably be in Ukraine before tomorrow night. My career is ruined because of this!” He swore foully in Russian and asked the sergeant if there was any vodka aboard.
The sergeant produced a bottle of Russian Standard vodka from a small refrigerator and poured the major a drink.
A short time later, Gil saw looming in the distance the five gold onion domes of the Dormition Cathedral located within the walls of the Kremlin. “It’s an awesome sight, Ivan.”
For a moment, Dragunov seemed to forget his concerns, moving around to Gil’s side of the table and pointing out the window to the northwest. “There near the horizon is the town of Khimki, where we stopped the Nazis in December of ’41—barely eight kilometers outside of Moscow.”
Gil converted the distance in his head to just shy of five miles.
Within a minute, they buzzed past the multicolored onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral located just outside of t
he Kremlin near Red Square. Seconds later, they were over the landing threshold of the Kremlin helipad, constructed two years earlier in the southeast corner of the Kremlin compound. Russian presidential motorcades were infamous for causing traffic jams, and President Putin had ditched his Mercedes limousine in 2013 in favor of faster, less obtrusive transportation.
The Kremlin—meaning “fortress”—had been constructed over a period of thirteen years from 1482 to 1495 and covered almost twenty-eight acres in the heart of the city. It was surrounded by a defensive brick wall more than a mile in circumference, ranging in height from sixteen to sixty-two feet, and in thickness from eleven to twenty-one feet.
The sergeant opened the helo door, and they stepped down the short staircase to the pad, where they were received by a large contingent of Russian military personnel. Winter had not yet relinquished its grip on the city, and though there was no snow on the ground, it was still cold enough to see everyone’s breath.
“Major Dragunov,” said a stern-looking Spetsnaz colonel, “you will come with me.”
Dragunov saluted, responding, “Yes, sir!” He turned to offer Gil his hand. “In case we never see each other again.”
Gil matched his grip. “It’s been a privilege, Major. I’m sorry we missed our man.”
Dragunov smiled a melancholy smile. “Perhaps next time, eh?”
Gil watched as he was led away toward the western part of the fortress, accompanied by eight armed Spetsnaz soldiers.
“Master Chief Shannon?” said another Russian colonel in nearly perfect-sounding English. “I am Colonel Savcenko. I will be your interpreter during your stay here at the Kremlin.”
Gil saluted the colonel at once. “I am at your orders, sir.”
The colonel returned the salute. “If you will follow me, please?”
“Of course, sir.”
They were escorted northward by no fewer than a dozen armed soldiers toward a large building referred to as the State Kremlin Palace.
“How was your flight from Istanbul, Master Chief?”
“A little tense at times,” Gil replied, his hands in his pockets against the cold. “The girls have all been severely traumatized. I don’t think they believed they were really coming home until the wheels were on the ground.”