by Max Karpov
Ming was standing in the doorway, her long face downcast, waiting for Anna to emerge from her thoughts. “You okay?”
“Sorry.” She wiped at her eyes. “I was just talking with my father.”
Ming pointed to her desk phone. Anna looked, and she saw the number of the next-to-last person that she ever expected to call, after her father: Gregory Dial. Dial, the old-school Cold Warrior, now accused of meeting with a Ukrainian missile supplier to discuss killing Russia’s president.
“Hi Greg,” she said, tentatively. Anna had called Gregory Dial three times over the past week; he hadn’t called back until now.
“Anna. I thought you were quite good on television.”
“Okay,” she said cautiously. “Thank you.”
“How about we meet for a few minutes,” he said. “I think we ought to talk.”
“If you’d like. When’s convenient?”
“I’m in town,” he said. “I could come to your office right now, if it isn’t too late. Otherwise, tomorrow?”
“No. Come over now. I’ll wait for you.”
FORTY-ONE
The Weekly American offices. Foggy Bottom, Washington
After reading what Anna Carpenter had left with him, Jon Niles walked down the hall to Roger Yorke’s corner office. It was an amazing document, which he knew could completely change the narrative about August 13. It was also amazing that Anna had a copy—and wanted to share it with him.
The problem would be proving Ivan Delkoff’s version of events. As with all things Russian, there was a chance that the document wasn’t what it appeared to be.
Roger was watching television as Jon walked in, his legs crossed on the desk: a press conference on the Texas secession movement, which had piggybacked onto the anti-Washington protests stirred up by August 13. Seeing Jon in the doorway, Roger muted the sound and nodded him to have a seat.
“I don’t know the best way to preface this,” Jon said. “But I just got hold of something I think is big. It’s just—I can’t do anything with it yet. We’ve got to wait twenty-four hours.”
“All right. What’ve you got?”
“It’s a document,” he said, “explaining what happened last Friday in Ukraine. Written by one of the participants. Names, dates, money trail. It lays out the whole thing. I think it’s the real deal.”
Roger squinted and nodded soberly. Nothing seemed to surprise Jon’s editor. He sometimes thought that if he were to remove his head, set it on his desk for several seconds then put it back on, Roger Yorke would simply watch with a slightly detached expression, pleased to observe something he’d never seen before. “‘Written by one of the participants.’ Not Utkin?”
“No. The man you told me about. Ivan Delkoff.”
“Ah.” Roger looked at him with new interest. “And what does it say?”
“It lays out exactly what happened. It details how Delkoff was hired in the spring to carry out the attack by a former FSB man named Andrei Turov. And that Turov was working with—for—the president of Russia. It’s very specific. Names, dates, bank transfers.”
Roger’s eyes widened slightly, roughly the equivalent of anyone else exclaiming Oh, my God! “How’d you get it?”
“I can’t go there at this point. But let’s just say it’s a good source.”
“All right.” Roger sighed. “The trouble is, as you wrote yesterday—this thing could blow up into war by the weekend. And I’m told another damaging story is about to drop. Today or tomorrow.”
“Damaging to us?”
Roger made an affirmative sound. “What’s being called a ‘smoking gun.’ Photos and emails, supposedly, about this meeting in Kiev. Confirming the deal between the Ukrainian missile dealer and our CIA man. Gregory Dial. There may also be video.”
Jon sighed. He debated whether to share his suspicions about Harland Strickland or to wait. He decided to wait. “The Russians are good at this, aren’t they?” he said.
“Better than we are, yes,” Roger said. It was true, of course: while the US was still debating how to deal with cyber hacks and disinformation campaigns, Russia had fully integrated cyberwarfare into its military planning. Their 2008 war with Georgia marked the first time a nation had combined cyber attacks with military engagement. They’d since made cyber attacks a major component of their war with Ukraine.
“This will change it, though,” he said, thinking of what Anna had told him: If we don’t respond properly, the lie wins.
“Okay.” Roger eyed Jon for a long time, as if reading answers on his face. “And you’re sure this is legitimate?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. But yes, I believe it is.”
“Then we wait,” Roger said. “We wait twenty-four hours and hope that isn’t too long.”
Jake Briggs gazed out at the lights of Moscow as the plane came in to Sheremetyevo Airport, seeing, at certain angles, his own reflection in the window and turning his eyes away. The severe set of his face, the salt-and-pepper stubble, the rough, loose skin on his neck; the face looking back at him was someone he didn’t recognize.
He was still numb, hours after witnessing Ivan Delkoff’s murder, his thoughts recessed in the drone of the airplane engines. He’d called his wife Donna from Paris, to say that he was all right, to ask about Jamie and Jessie. But he couldn’t tell her what had happened or where he was. He’d caught the last Aeroflot flight out of de Gaulle, arriving in Moscow at 3:20 a.m. Wondering all the while if he was journeying into another trap.
He kept thinking of Christopher Niles: his tough, steady temperament, his ability to suppress anger and subversive thoughts while he was working. Briggs didn’t always do that so well. He had boarded the plane in Paris too angry to have a rational conversation with himself or anyone else, Delkoff’s death still looping in his head: the way he’d taken an extra two steps before his body caught up with the fact that he’d been shot. Briggs had seen similar kills a dozen times in combat, but something about Delkoff’s death felt more personal. Part of it was the last look he’d given him as he walked away from his car, as if he knew something Briggs didn’t.
He tried counseling himself with the words of an old commanding officer, a gritty rear admiral named Ray Lacey: Don’t look for answers, look for better questions. In service, in life: it was good advice. So Briggs came into Moscow telling himself to ask better questions. Not about what he might have done differently, which wasn’t a good question, but about what he could do now. He arrived in the city with just a carry-on, pretending to be a tourist. Speaking to the cab driver with the few Russian sentences he could muster, the man all the while giving him uncomprehending looks.
Briggs stood on the narrow leafy Moscow street before entering his hotel, soaking in the pre-dawn silence, as a low mist rose from the ground. Upstairs, he went online to check messages and catch up on the news. There were fresh allegations about Washington’s connection with the alleged August 13 planners and weapons supplier, he saw. The New York Times was reporting a meeting between the former Ukrainian intelligence officer Mikhail Kolchak, who allegedly operated the missile battery that brought down the president’s plane, and “two American intelligence officials” in Kiev last month.
Briggs turned off his phone and watched the night trees for a while through the small window in his second-story room. He didn’t think he could sleep, but finally he did; and sleep did its work, clearing away some of the flotsam in his head.
In the morning, Briggs did his hundred push-ups and hundred sit-ups. Then he called Christopher Niles on his cell to tell him he’d arrived.
“There’s an anti-US rally today on Red Square,” Chris told him.
“Okay.” Briggs had forgotten how another human voice could shift his perspective so dramatically, particularly this one.
“Can you meet me at eleven?”
“All right.”
Briggs walked down the street to a diner. He ate a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, porridge, and hotcakes, sti
ll angry about losing Delkoff, but ready now to meet Christopher and whatever came next.
He saw that it was supposed to rain today, beginning by noon, and that seemed a good omen. Rain had been part of Briggs’s training. It almost made him feel at home.
FORTY-TWO
Capitol Hill, Washington.
Gregory Dial’s eyes were slits, as if he were looking at Anna from a distance, safe from scrutiny, his thin white hair combed up from the temples, his craggy features an affable shell. When Dial was younger, some said he resembled a clean-shaven Abe Lincoln, a blend of wise man and working man. Now, in what seemed an incredible turn of events, the press was accusing him of spearheading a US assassination plot against the president of Russia.
Anna hadn’t seen Greg Dial in nine or ten months. He seemed thinner and a little frailer than she remembered, although his movements and his deep voice carried a familiar authority. He set a worn leather satchel on her desk, something Anna’s grandfather might’ve carried.
“And how’s your dad?”
It was always the first or second question he asked. This time, Anna had a good answer. “I just talked with him. He sounded great. He inspired me.”
“Good, good,” he said absently, beginning to open the satchel. There was something endearing about his bony fingers unwinding the leather strap. Dial was a former marine, who took issue with some of the administration’s foreign policy. But he was by nature fiercely loyal.
“I commend you for what you did, Anna,” he said. “Going on television and speaking your mind like that. You did a nice job defending us. And me. Not that I needed it.”
“I didn’t think of it as defending anyone,” she said. “I answered the questions I was asked.”
“Yes, well. I came here to head off trouble. For all of us.” He frowned as he reached in the satchel. Whatever he was about to do, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, Anna could see. You could have made this easier by just returning my calls, she thought. “As you can imagine,” he said, “the media’s been calling me nonstop for the past few days. Legally, of course, I can’t say anything. Not that I would, anyway—” He pulled printouts of four images and spread them on her desk. “These came to me this morning. From the Associated Press. I’ve been asked to comment. I’m not going to, but I wanted you to see. So you’ll know what you’re getting into.”
Anna took a few moments to absorb what she was looking at: photographs of men seated at a small restaurant table, shoulder to shoulder. It resembled the blurry image that Russian blogs had sent out last Friday, purportedly showing “an American CIA officer” meeting with the Ukrainian missile dealer. These images were better focused and showed a wider view, revealing two additional men. This time, the “American CIA officer” was recognizable. In one of the photos he was looking right at the camera.
“That’s you.”
“It’s me, yes. And this—” But he didn’t have to tell her; she knew the big man sitting across from him, the man she’d seen in intelligence files: the serious face, flat mouth, crew cut. “—is Ivan Delkoff.” He moved his index finger to the man beside Delkoff. “This,” he said, “is Hordiyenko’s agent, Petrofsky. And this man is Mikhail Kolchak, the Ukrainian who operated the missile battery that brought down the president’s plane.”
“My God,” Anna said. “So you’re saying this is real, then?”
“This is real, that’s right.” He scooted forward. “It’s Kiev, July 12. This is the meeting that’s been reported all over the Internet. I was there.”
Anna stared at him, incredulous. So the reports were right? The US was behind the failed assassination attempt? Here was the evidence, the “smoking gun.” They had them.
“The president told me today that this meeting didn’t happen,” Anna said. “I just went on national television saying it didn’t.”
“Well, it did. That’s why I’m here. I understand these will go public tomorrow. Along with a story.” They shared a look, Anna thinking about the damage ahead: this could instantly shatter US credibility around the world, maybe permanently.
“So, we did meet with Hordiyenko. The meeting in Kiev—?”
“The meeting in Kiev happened,” he said. “As you can see.”
“And the secret meetings in Washington—about regime change?”
“The Russia Strategic Planning Group, we called it. I was there for those, too, yes.”
Anna dropped her gaze to the photos again, trying to imagine some benign explanation. “But it wasn’t an assassination committee, as the media are calling it. You weren’t meeting to discuss regime change in Russia?”
He exhaled audibly. “No. It was never called that. But we met. And we discussed regime change. Among other things. Many other things. The meeting in Kiev came out of those discussions. I was sent there, along with Maya Coles.”
So was this why the administration was pushing the coup story? Anna wondered. Was it just to keep the real story out of the news? Did the president know all this? And was Greg Dial the spy in the house, who’d assisted the Russia plot?
“Help me understand, then,” she said. “What happened at this meeting exactly? I was told it was exploratory, part of an information-gathering mission.”
He shrugged. “‘Information-gathering,’ okay. We were looking at ways of dealing with the Russia threat in Ukraine. That was the information we were gathering. As you know, Russia is very threatened by what’s going on there. If Ukraine succeeds as a sovereign nation, Russia’s role in the region will be greatly diminished.”
“So you went there and you met with Hordiyenko, Delkoff, and this Ukrainian military commander.”
“No. We met with Hordiyenko’s agent. Hordiyenko wasn’t there.” Anna felt a momentary relief. The president was right about that, anyway. “Hordiyenko is aligned with anti-Russian interests in Ukraine. He’s someone we thought we might cultivate a relationship with. That’s all it was. We met in a private room at a restaurant in Kiev. And discussed various things: politics, where the economy of the Donbas is headed, Russia’s efforts to set up control there—replacing Ukrainian street signs with Russian street signs, for instance.”
“But nothing was said about assassinating the president.”
“Not in Kiev, no. Not a word.” Anna sighed. “Of course,” Greg said, “looking at it now, I see the whole thing must’ve been staged, to produce this.” He tapped one of the images.
“You didn’t know your picture was being taken?”
“No, of course not. Until this morning, I had no idea. Not until this showed up at my office and I received the call from Associated Press.” Anna recalled something Christopher had told her once: how Russia was winning at games we didn’t even know were being played. “Hordiyenko’s man contacted us about a meeting,” he said. “We went. Delkoff sat across from me for all of five minutes. He didn’t say a word. Then he left. Kolchak, the missile captain, was with him. I asked at the time why they were there. No one had a good answer. Now I know.”
“We can’t just let this go out,” Anna said. “We need to respond, to say what it really is.”
“Perhaps,” Dial said. “But that isn’t my job.” He began to gather the images. “I spoke earlier to the president’s chief of staff. I spoke to the DNI. I’m now speaking with you. I’m not going to push it beyond that,” he said. “I hear now that the White House wants to send out a different story,” he added. “A counter story.”
“Yes, apparently.” Counter story? Was that what the coup allegation was? Anna thought about Turov: how he arranged simple but potent deceptions. If Ivan Delkoff was working for Turov, it would’ve been easy to put him in a meeting with an American intelligence officer long enough to have their photo taken together. A tactic from the Russian playbook.
“Tell me how this started,” Anna said. “Tell me about the meetings of this secret committee. There were five people in the room, I was told.” Dial lifted his chin, affirmatively. “Maya Coles. Edward Sears from the State Dep
artment. You. Two military?”
“One military.”
“Rickenbach.”
“Mmm.”
“All right. And so who was the fifth?” She stared into his face, waiting, understanding why Gregory Dial would have been chosen: a loyal intelligence veteran with connections to Russia and the former Soviet states, an ability to work back channels, an aversion to publicity.
“The fifth man in the room was the head of our little committee,” he said. “He was also the man who set up Kiev. Our contact point with Hordiyenko.”
Anna’s heart began to beat faster. Dial looked at her a long time. He was waiting for Anna to say it. “Not Harland Strickland?”
He moved his head just enough for her to see that his answer was yes. “I don’t know how far you want to take that, Anna,” he said. “I have issues with Harland, which pertain mostly to his personal life.”
“Personal life?” But she could see that he wasn’t going to explain that. “What role did Harland play in this? He called the meetings? Was he part of the setup?”
“Strickland called the meetings, yes. Candidly? It was his committee. And he was our liaison with Hordiyenko. The idea of regime change: it was his.”
“So, he contacted Hordiyenko?”
“No. I said he was our liaison.”
“In other words, they contacted him?”
“That’s what I understand. But I can’t tell you the rest of it. I don’t know what was driving him, if he was acting on the president’s directive or someone else’s. Or if he was working with Russia. And I don’t know if he was part of the setup, to answer your question.”
“But since Friday,” Anna said, “he’s denied—to me and others—that these conversations ever happened. Or that he was on this committee.”