by Max Karpov
After the shootings, the sidewalk had overflowed with flowers. There were half a dozen bouquets marking the spot today, along with several homemade posters. A lot had changed in Moscow since Briggs had last been here. In 2011 and 2012, ahead of the presidential election, there’d been huge anti-Putin demonstrations in the city. Pundits had predicted for months that the Arab Spring fever then sweeping the Middle East would soon reach Moscow and might cost Putin reelection. But the pro-Putin forces managed that election well, busing in their own demonstrators, some of them paid in rubles or vodka to chant support. And Putin had prevailed. The laws on public demonstrations had tightened since then, making it more difficult to march and organize against the government. In December 2015, the Kremlin had passed a law authorizing the Russian security services to open fire in crowds “if necessary.”
Putin took it as an article of faith that the United States had been behind the 2011–12 demonstrations, much as he believed the CIA had engineered Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution of 2014. Putin’s greatest fear, Briggs knew, was still that a populist Arab Spring–style uprising would rock the streets of Moscow, bringing chaos to Russia and toppling his rule.
The demonstration in Red Square today was a different kind of rally: a protest against the United States for the August 13 assassination attempt. It was the sort of demonstration Putin welcomed.
Briggs walked across the bridge to Red Square, which was filled with thousands of protestors, and he was awed all over again by the architecture: the cathedrals and statues, the elegant pyramid of Lenin’s tomb, Resurrection Gate, the Kremlin walls. Most of the people here were oblivious to the history, though, waving the Russian tri-color flag or holding up cheesy anti-America signs. Some of the signs were in Cyrillic but most were in English for the international cameras. Lots of “USA KILLS.” To Briggs, the protests felt cheap and inappropriate for this magnificent setting. But then, Moscow had always seemed a schizophrenic city to him. He watched a group of four inebriated young men stomping on an American flag and fought the impulse to grab one of them and knock his head into the pavement. You could ruin your life acting on impulses like that, he counseled himself.
It was the same everywhere, demonstrators carrying on like overexcited children. There were cardboard cutouts of the US president with his face X-ed out; protestors trying to set oversized fake US currency on fire, becoming like passionate monkeys every time a camera went on to record them. Don’t waste it. Don’t let them do it to you, Briggs thought.
He began to feel a kind of morbid curiosity, though, as he walked among the protestors. This didn’t even feel real to him; it felt like a kind of manufactured anger, stirred up by fake stories portraying the West—the United States—as Russia’s dire enemy. He tried to keep his eyes on the ground, picturing himself in a tunnel with Christopher Niles at the other end. Just keep going. What happened in France had nothing to do with this. He felt sprinkles of drizzle on his arms as he crossed the cobblestones, and smiled as some of the demonstrators pulled out umbrellas. He recalled an old saying he liked: Americans never carry umbrellas.
“Jake.” He looked to his right and there was Chris, walking into step beside him. Dressed in old loose-fitting slacks and work shirt, a gym bag slung over one shoulder. Slapping him on the back instead of shaking hands. Christopher’d always had a skill for blending in. Somehow he’d found Briggs among all these people.
“Performance art,” Briggs said. “All for the cameras.”
“Yeah, I know.” They kept walking through the crowd, Briggs feeling the moisture gathering on his face, the cobbestones waxy with falling drizzle. “You didn’t fuck up,” Chris said. “Your good news was very good. Okay?”
“And the bad news very bad.”
“No. You got us what we need.”
“Except they’re going to say that what he gave me isn’t real. They’re going to say the US made it up.”
“Probably,” Christopher said. “If it comes to that. But I don’t think it will.”
Okay, Briggs thought. So tell me about that. A wet gust of wind cut across the square, and for a few fleeting seconds it felt to Briggs as if they were two soldiers walking toward a battlefield.
“I’m meeting Turov at 2:30 this afternoon,” Christopher said, speaking just above a whisper. “The document gives me what I need for that.”
“Okay.” Briggs waited through another silence, Chris Niles seeming almost too calm. “Do you want me involved?” Briggs finally said.
“I’d like you to be, yes.” Good, Briggs thought. “I’d like you to follow and cover me. Martin has arranged a car for you. I need you to be a witness to where we go. And provide a way out, if I need it.” Christopher stopped among a loose crowd of demonstrators and spectators. The incongruity of their conversation and the anti-American hysteria all around struck Briggs as funny. “So. Tell me what happened,” Chris said, meaning France.
Briggs gave him a ten-minute version as they milled among the protestors: how he’d arrived in Paris late Sunday and made his initial contact Monday night; the phone calls with Delkoff’s cousin Dmitri; the meeting Tuesday morning at an abandoned caretaker’s cottage; the final drive back to the house; Delkoff pushing the flash drive into his shirt pocket, saying he needed to “try to work things out” at the house. And then he told him the last part: how Ivan Delkoff had turned and looked back with that strange half-smile and said something to him in Russian, probably knowing that he was about to die. “It was very weird. It was a kind of bravery. Like he was ready to sacrifice his life for this.”
Chris Niles said nothing until Briggs finished. Then he told him, succinctly, about the mission they would be working together. “However this turns out,” he said, “it’s just us. No one’s coming in to rescue us. It’s a two-man op. But that’s a good thing.”
“Does Martin Lindgren know what you’re doing?” Briggs asked.
“He knows general terms. What he needs to. They’re providing a G-5 to get us out. It’s up to us to make it to the airport. I asked Marty to wait on releasing Delkoff’s statement for twenty-one hours. Or until he hears from us. Or doesn’t hear.”
“Twenty-one?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “I picked a number.” Christopher gave him the rest as they walked away from Red Square: Briggs would find a Lada parked at a residential address three subway stops from his hotel. “There’s a 9mm in the car,” he said. “Let’s hope you won’t need it.”
The rain made a steady beat now through the leaves, raising a dusty scent off the pavement as they came to the river. “Do you think Turov’s already seen the document?”
“I assume he has,” Chris said. “They raided the house in France where Delkoff was staying. That’ll give him a head start.”
“And couldn’t this just be some kind of trap?”
“Sure, of course.” They kept walking, Briggs thinking about ambushes, because that’s what this felt like, a classic reversal ambush: you think you’re pursuing your prey right up until the moment you catch him; then the prey turns and takes you.
“But I don’t think so,” Chris said, and Briggs saw from the long-view clarity in his eyes that he’d already considered this and rejected it. “What’s he going to accomplish killing me? I’m out of the business now. And anything I know is also known by others.”
“Unless it’s personal.”
“Unless it’s personal.” Chris made a face. Briggs regretted putting that thought in his head; but then he saw that it didn’t matter: Chris had thought of that, too. When he was working, Chris Niles carried the qualities that all thinking people aspired to but most couldn’t maintain—staying focused, avoiding distractions, making right choices. If he could bottle that stuff, he’d be a billionaire many times over.
“If anything happens, we put Delkoff’s statement out immediately,” Christopher said. “I told Martin the same thing.”
“Okay.”
By the time they reached the street, they had run out of things to say
. Talking too much loosened the focus; Briggs understood that. In a bus shelter, he saw a poster reading US KILLS INNOCENT PEOPLE. Briggs watched the rain dimpling the river as they went, a slow gust of wind tugging the leaves in one direction. He looked at Christopher, surprised how much his hair had grayed, and thought about the reflection of his own face in the airplane window, nearly unrecognizable. He thought of his boy on his knee last Friday in Virginia, watching the news about the “tear-riss” on TV. That seemed a long time ago now.
“What’s this rain going to do?”
“Supposed to rain all day.” Christopher glanced at him. “I thought you liked rain.”
“Yeah, I know. I do. You taking the bag with you?”
“No. You are.” Under a canopy of leaves, Christopher removed the gym bag from his shoulder and handed it to Briggs. “That’s for you. It’s got my phone and personal effects that I can’t carry to the meeting. Bring it with you.”
“Okay.”
Minutes later, Christopher slapped Briggs on the back, the same way he’d greeted him. Physically Briggs liked how this day was turning: the prematurely dark sky, the sopping hiss of car tires, the shiny reflections on the pavement, the white-blue-red lights strung across Moskvoretsky Bridge, the textures of the world sparkling with mysterious clarity all of a sudden.
He didn’t notice when exactly it was that Christopher Niles began to move away from him. But he looked over at one point and saw that he wasn’t there anymore. Briggs stopped and turned, looking all directions among the dripping trees. But Christopher was gone.
FORTY-FIVE
Washington.
Jon’s cell phone woke him at 5:58. Reaching for it, he knocked the water bottle from the nightstand and it splatted on the floor.
“Hello?”
“I’ve got your information, I just emailed it to you.”
“Okay.” The voice sounded unfamiliar, although he knew it had to be David Carpenter.
“Look at your email.”
“Did you have any luck?”
“Look at your email. I’m here if you want to call. If it’s her, and you want more, let me know.”
David clicked off. All business again, intense, unsociable, the opposite of his mother. Jon got up and fixed a cup of coffee. He sat at his kitchen table and skimmed through the notes that David had sent. It became apparent very quickly that he had found more than Jon expected, including a name and bio for his 9:15 caller: Sonya Natalie Larsen. She worked as a legal secretary for the high-end D.C. law firm of Carrick & Carson, which represented charitable foundations and nonprofits. Her boss was Michael Ketchler, the man Jon had seen her arguing with the night before.
David had sent eight images along with the text file. Only one identified her by name, and the photo was grainy. Of the others, which he’d ID’d through facial recognition, the first three were marked “probable,” the other four “possible.” It was one of the “possibles” that clinched it.
He called David back six minutes later. “Yeah. It’s her,” he said. “Great work.” David said nothing. “How soon can you get me more?”
“Now, if you want. The senator asked me to drop everything else. Which I can do.”
Jon smiled. The senator. “I really appreciate this,” he said.
He began to read through David’s preliminary report more carefully. Sonya Natalie Larsen was twenty-five years old; at work, she apparently went by the name Natalie, according to a company website. She had moved to the United States last summer from London, where she’d worked for Linklaters LLP. “Married, and separated. To attorney Edward Larsen,” according to David’s report. For eleven months, she’d been renting a two-bedroom apartment in Alexandria.
It was all pretty weird, Jon thought. He’d assumed before last night that 9:15 would be someone older, and better connected. A political operative, or someone in the IC. Maybe the wife or girlfriend of a high-level operative at Defense or CIA. Someone with a clear political agenda on US-Russia relations.
So who was Natalie Larsen? And how would she have been privy to classified intelligence conversations about Russia? Jon spent half an hour running his own data searches on her, but they turned up nothing. And that was sort of weird, too.
Then he got a different idea. Recalling his conversation with Harland Strickland, and his last phone call with 9:15; and the place they had intersected.
He read through the Delkoff document again, considering the scenario it detailed about what had led up to August 13. Remembering what Roger Yorke had said Thursday, after 9:15’s third call: “I wonder if her agenda may be the real story rather than what she told you.”
He called David Carpenter back. “I need you to try something for me, if you can. I need you to run a search on somebody else.”
“Go ahead.”
Jon told him what he was thinking. Afterward, he walked to the window, sipping coffee. Letting this new idea spool out in his head for a while longer. He watched the news as he ate a bowl of Raisin Bran. There was breaking news—real breaking news—on all the networks, just as Roger had said: photos from the meeting last month in Kiev, with “senior CIA operative” Gregory Dial and two of the August 13 “co-conspirators,” Mikhail Kolchak and Ivan Delkoff.
Delkoff was now being called the attack’s “ringleader.”
The photos had been released through a WikiLeaks-style website called InternationalEthicsWatch. There was also a rough audio from the meeting, on which Dial purportedly said, “We want this to happen, but can’t be connected in any way.” Jon listened to it several times and couldn’t make out anything except the word “connected.”
“Is this the smoking gun proving that the United States was involved in the assassination attempt?” asked the CNN newscaster. “So far, there has been no formal response from the White House, although one senior official is questioning the authenticity of the tape, calling the story a ‘diversion.’”
On Fox, he saw that Russia was running snap drills with twenty thousand troops on the Ukrainian border right now; meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister had announced plans to meet with the president of Ukraine. “Sources say a resolution may be under discussion which could eventually result in a partition of Ukraine,” said the Fox newsreader. “But the State Department calls the story ‘completely unfounded.’”
Jon took a shower, anxious about the fragmented, confusing way the news was playing out, but energized by his new idea. If we don’t respond properly, the lie wins. Russia wins. He was in the kitchen running his own searches again when David Carpenter called back. “Okay,” he said. “You were right.”
“You confirmed it?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“Can you email me what you found?”
“I just did. How did you know?”
Jon listened to David’s breathing. “I don’t know how much your mother told you—”
“I know what’s going on,” he interjected, a slight tremor in his tone. “But as I told her last night: we need to prove the real story, not just disprove the false one. Especially with this threat of war. Everything else is just a sideshow.”
“Okay. I agree.”
“I found more on Ketchler, too,” David said. “His businesses do have a presence on the dark web. No question. Some of these foundations are using an overlay network—which is an anonymous network within a network, basically—”
“Okay,” Jon said, no longer following. “I want to hear more about that. But I need to check on something else first.”
David went silent for a moment. “I’ll be here if you need anything else,” he said.
As soon as he hung up, Jon called David’s mother.
“I think I just figured something out,” he said. “Can we meet?”
“Okay. But it’ll have to wait a couple hours. I’m about to go into a meeting.”
Jon said nothing at first, feeling a surge of impatience. He had to remind himself that he was talking to a US Senator. “Okay. A couple of hours wou
ld be fine. Sure.”
Anna asked, “What did you figure out?”
“I think, maybe, everything?” Jon said.
FORTY-SIX
Northwest of Moscow.
It was still raining heavily as Anton drove into the gated neighborhood, the Mercedes’s wipers whipping furiously side to side. Rain felt like the wrong accompaniment to this afternoon, Andrei Turov thought, although it fit nicely with the music inside their sedan, which was Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony: the stormy, emotional melodies his mother used to listen to when he was a boy. Turov had hoped to say goodbye to his country home in the sunlight. But many things were beyond his control now.
Much of the world believed that the US government had been the invisible hand behind August 13, a perception that earned Russia enormous empathy capital. The latest revelations were being characterized internationally as “the smoking gun.” Which was good. Just that phrase, repeated by Turov’s bot armies and political operatives on social media, would cause enormous damage, much as the phrase “assassination committee” had done. Soon, Washington would revert to full panic mode, and eventually make some rash overcompensation, only worsening their position.
Yes, Russia would surely benefit from this. But Turov’s old friend, he feared, was only going to squander it, thinking that he could outplay history somehow. Going back to their schooldays in Leningrad, Putin had been a gambler: if he took a risk and won, then his next move was to take a bigger risk. It had worked for him so far. But it was not the way to build a legacy. In truth, his old friend was not really a nationalist as he pretended to be; he was a gambler and a kleptocrat, as his critics charged. Turov did not want to be around him when he finally lost.
In Switzerland, Turov would have a spectacular view from his office window, of enormous white mountaintops. There—and wherever he traveled next—he would nurture new dreams, surrounded by his family, by Olga, Konkin, and a few associates.
They parked in the two-car garage at the house Anton had rented. Turov had never been to this one before, and it was a little larger and more modern than he liked. But otherwise it felt like the dozens of other dwellings he’d used for his client meetings, designer-furnished properties rented or purchased for him by Konkin. Even though Russia as a whole was losing population every year, Moscow itself was growing and decentralizing, expanding into hundreds of gated villages and residential developments such as this one.