by Max Karpov
“Do you know how to find her?”
“I do.” David had found Sonya’s home address; Jon planned to go there if he couldn’t reach her through the law offices.
“All right, then.” Roger showed the edges of a smile. “Just keep in touch.”
“I will.” It was all Jon needed to hear. Whatever he didn’t know about this story—and there was still a lot, including Chris’s role and what Anna Carpenter wasn’t saying—Sonya Turov Larsen was a part of it that no one else knew. Walking down the corridor to the elevator, he glanced over at Liz Foster’s cubicle, and decided to keep going.
“Hey!” she called. Jon stopped. She looked sort of radiant, smiling as she turned from her computer. Maybe it was the break with Carole, but seeing Liz Foster melted all his resolve to keep his distance. “You’re doing great on this,” she said.
“Well. Trying, anyway.” For a long moment they just traded a stare. It was sort of nice. “Maybe go out for a drink sometime?” Jon said. She lowered her eyes and glanced back at her screen. “Or not,” he said. “It’s all right, bad timing—”
She began to blink. “I guess I ought to tell you,” she said. “I’ve kind of been seeing someone. I’m sorry, I should’ve said something before. Nothing super-serious or anything. But I just probably should let you know.”
“Oh, okay.” Jon laughed. So it really was bad timing, then. “No. I mean. Congratulations. And. We’ll catch up later,” he said and turned to go.
The evening air revived him a little as he walked down G Street to the parking garage. With all that was happening, it was easy to pretend the exchange with Elizabeth Foster didn’t hurt. But as he drove away, Jon felt a little like Bogart on the platform in Casablanca, after having his “insides” kicked out.
“It’s better this way,” he said aloud to console himself. “It really is.” Ten minutes later, he wasn’t even thinking about her.
Anna Carpenter finally lost her patience with Harland Strickland several minutes after Ming Tsu shut down the outer office. She had been studying the file she found on General Viktor Utkin, from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee archives: sixteen months earlier, a Russian souce had passed the CIA details of “subversive” conversations between two top-ranking officers in the Russian military, one of them Utkin. But the CIA’s counterintelligence chief at the time had written a follow-up assessment calling the source “unreliable.” Had something changed since then?
Strickland—the man who could answer that—was still avoiding her calls. But Anna knew things now that might force his hand. She decided it was time to be more direct.
“I’d like to see you tonight, Harland,” she said to his voice mail. “We need to talk about this Delkoff document.” She paused for a moment, adding, “And Sonya Natalie Larsen. ASAP?”
Six minutes later, he called back. “What’s this about Natalie Larsen?” he said, using a pseudo-comical tone.
“I was hoping you’d tell me. Can you meet?”
“Tonight.”
“Now.”
“Give me an hour?”
FIFTY-SIX
The address David found for Sonya Natalie Larsen was an apartment complex in Alexandria. Jon swung by his own apartment in D.C. first to pick up a tape recorder. The parking spots along his street were all taken, so he ended up driving around the neighborhood for fifteen minutes before giving up and parking seven blocks away.
He used the walk to formulate the questions that he would ask Sonya once he found her. It was a pleasant night, the breeze cooling, stirring the trees that were thick with summer leaves. Why had she chosen Jon to call? Who was she really working for?
After six blocks, Jon noticed an SUV inching along beside him in the shadows. He glanced over several times, but couldn’t see through the tinted glass. All sorts of ideas began to churn in his thoughts. Russia’s security forces were known to chase down threats or perceived threats in other countries now, he knew; journalists and opposition figures had died mysteriously, and some not so mysteriously, in London, Washington, Los Angeles, and the Middle East, not to mention in Russia and Ukraine. In 2006, Russia had passed a law permitting the killing of “enemies of the regime” abroad.
When the tinted window began to whir, Jon stopped, half-expecting to see a gun barrel poke out over the glass.
But there was no gun. Instead, a woman’s arm emerged and her hand dangled to get his attention. Her fingernails were painted black.
“Hey. Why’d you call my office this afternoon?” she said.
Jon, speechless, scanned the street both ways, then took several steps toward her.
“Are you planning to write about me?” she said.
“No,” he said. “Do you want me to?” It was her: Sonya Larsen. 9:15. Thin face, wide mouth, serious eyes, short dark hair, a faint shadow of down on her upper lip.
“No. I want you not to,” she said. “How did you find out who I was?”
“Long story.”
“Do you want to talk and tell me?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Get in, then. I’m not going to talk here.” Jon hesitated for just a moment. He was half a block from his apartment, but sensed that if he didn’t get in now, she might drive off. As soon as he closed the passenger door, Sonya Larsen sped away through the narrow residential street in the direction of downtown. It wasn’t until they came to the traffic light at Wisconsin Avenue that Jon realized he’d left his cell phone in his car.
“How did you know who I was? How did you know where to find me?”
“Research?
“What does it mean, research?”
“I found your picture online,” he said. “A party at the Russian embassy. We used facial recognition software to ID you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have,” she said. “You’ve got me in trouble now.”
“How are you in trouble?” Jon asked.
She didn’t answer. She kept glancing at him as she drove, edgy and hopped up, maybe a little high on something, Jon thought, weaving wildly through the traffic on Wisconsin Avenue; running yellow lights, checking her mirrors compulsively.
“You’ve seen the news, right?” Jon said, when she finally slowed down. “About your father?”
“I’ve seen the news,” she said. “Of course, I’ve seen it.” She punched her horn at a slow driver in front of them, but not hard enough to make a sound. Then swung her car wildly around him. Several blocks later she made a sharp turn onto a residential street in Georgetown. “I know what happened to my father, yes,” she said, inching down a hill of brick townhouses. “Okay? I know he’s dead. I know who killed him. I know all about that.”
“I’m sorry.”
She made a scoffing sound—“pshh. Don’t be sorry,” she said. “It doesn’t even surprise me. I always knew this would happen: when the time was right, they’d send FSB after him. But the story they’re reporting in the news is all wrong. You know that, right? The media always gets it wrong. Especially about Putin. Always. I could tell you the real story, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“All right.”
“But I need you to help me. I’m afraid they’re going to be after me now, too.”
“Okay,” Jon said. “What do you want me to do?”
They’d come to Connecticut Avenue, where she pulled to the curb outside the Hilton Hotel. “I don’t want to be seen out right now, okay? How about if we get a room here. I’ll talk with you upstairs. Go in first and get the room. I’ll park.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Capitol Hill, Washington
Anna met Harland Strickland at a bar four and a half blocks from the Capitol. A tiny place with a lot of framed black-and-white photos and eccentric taxidermy on the walls, including a deer’s hindquarters and the front end of an anteater. It was one of Strickland’s favorite downtown haunts. A Nationals game was on television behind the bar.
He gave her the once-over as Anna slid into the leather booth, even though she was dressed conservative
ly in a dark suit. Anna ordered club soda, Strickland a bourbon on ice. He wore a navy pin-stripe suit but had loosened the tie and undone the top buttons.
They talked superficially about their children at first. But she could see that beneath his well-put-together façade of confidence, Strickland was worried.
“So what’s this about?” he finally said. “What about Natalie Larsen?”
“I’ll get to that. Tell me about the Delkoff document first. Tell me what you think about it.”
“What I think about it.” Strickland shook his head dismissively. “Not a lot. I think it’s a fabrication.”
“Go on.”
“I think it’s a little too obvious. And not supported by our intelligence. Frankly, I’m surprised the Russian opposition’s getting behind it.”
“Are you? I’m not.”
Strickland flashed her an accusatory look. “What I’m afraid of,” he said, his hands encircling the drink glass, “is that someone in the Russian opposition movement invented this thing out of whole cloth—seeing it as a chance to regain some of their lost glory. Russia’s going to have an easy time debunking it, you know. That’s not just me talking; that’s what our Russia experts think. They don’t buy this at all—”
“You mean because it doesn’t fit with what you want the president to tell the world tomorrow.” His eyes narrowed. “That this was a coup engineered by the Russian military.”
“That’s not me, Anna, that’s the IC. Between us? We have solid HUMINT that it was a coup attempt. We had implants on their computer networks, bank transfer records, intel traffic. And—on top of that, we know that this copilot who flew over Ukraine had a history of mental issues. Bottom line, Anna: we can’t afford another half-baked story going out. Like this Delkoff thing. You know that. That’s exactly what they want.” Anna sighed, disappointed at how convinced he sounded. He had a point, she thought. But it wasn’t the right one.
“We need to change the conversation,” Strickland went on, buoyed a little by her lack of challenge. “I mean—why wouldn’t the administration go out with this tomorrow? If we have solid intel behind it. Which we do. What do we lose?”
“In the short term, not much,” she said. “In the long term, maybe a lot.” His eyes narrowed again. “I’ve researched this coup allegation a little. Most of the intel on it is old. It came to us from a less-than-reliable Russian asset more than a year ago. A former military intelligence officer. There are some national security reporters who are going to recognize that.”
Anna turned on her phone and called up the document she’d found in the intelligence committee files. She rotated the phone and showed him. “I haven’t seen all the intel you have, Harland. But this is where the story about General Utkin originates, isn’t it?”
He scanned it quickly and pushed her phone back to her. “I don’t know what that is,” he said. “But even if he came on the radar before, so what?”
“No, you’re right,” Anna said. “Although I was told the date may have been removed or changed on one of the internal memos to enhance what the president saw, which could be a problem. You know how the media is when they get information like that.”
He grinned, probably suspecting that she was bluffing, which she was. Anna watched him as he took another sip of bourbon. “What about Natalie Larsen?” he said.
“I’m getting to that. Where did you first hear about this coup plot, Harland? Where did it come from?” He started to speak, but seemed to change his mind. “Don’t you think it’s possible this is the story the Russians want us to put out? So that the media can then prove us wrong?”
Strickland lowered his eyes, shaking his head, but with less conviction, it seemed.
“I agree with you in principle,” she said. “We need to change the subject, and turn the blame away from us. But not at the expense of the truth.”
“There’s that word.” He looked up, forcing a smile. “Okay. And so what is the truth, then, Anna? Tell me about that.”
“Ivan Delkoff’s version is the truth,” she said.
“Ivan Delkoff was a crazy warmonger. Have you seen him? The man looks like a reject from the World Wrestling Federation—”
“He was a key figure in the Donbas war,” Anna said. “And a man people underestimated. He had a whole network of fighters in eastern Ukraine who could have made August 13 happen.”
“Not without Utkin and the generals,” Strickland said.
“That’s where we disagree. This wasn’t a coup attempt, Harland. It was something more sinister. It was an attack on us. I think on some level you know that.”
Strickland sighed, holding up his hands in a deflective posture. “Look, I hate to state the obvious here, Anna. But the world doesn’t believe this Delkoff story. You know that. We can’t just wave a magic wand and change that.”
Yes, we can, she thought. “You have influence with the president I don’t have,” she said, feeling a stir of emotion. “And with the DNI and DCI. You could talk to the president before he goes on television tomorrow. Tell him you have doubts about this intelligence. Tell him we need to do more than just ‘change the story.’”
“Come on,” Strickland said. Which seemed to Anna a good cue to show what her son had found. She scrolled through the images on her phone, coming to the one of Sonya Natalie Larsen at the Russian embassy party. She pushed it in front of him.
Strickland lifted the phone and studied Sonya’s picture. He exaggerated a frown, looked again, and replaced it on the table.
“How long did it take, Harland, before you realized she was getting information from you and slipping it to the media?” Strickland said nothing, and Anna knew for certain then that Jon was right: it was Strickland helping the Russians; he was the spy in the house. “When you brought me that story about preemptive action last week, you must’ve been sweating this. You did a good job of not letting on. Is this whole coup story an attempt to cover up now for Sonya? To keep the press from finding out that this story really came from you? Through her?”
Strickland’s eyes seemed to be searching for somewhere to look now. Anna sensed the hurt and confusion behind them. Sonya Turov had used him, preying on Strickland’s weaknesses, much as Russia had done with the United States.
“I mean, I would hope we’re not putting the country’s reputation on pins and needles because of Harland Strickland’s love life,” she said. “Or is there more to it than that?”
“Love life?” He tossed back his head in a mock laugh. “Please,” he said. His response struck her as false this time. In a funny way, he’d just shown his hand. And they both knew it.
“That’s what it sounds like,” she said. “It sounds like you were seeing this woman for several months, and along the way, she got you to talk about things that you shouldn’t have—in some cases involving these meetings on Russia. Maybe not a lot, but enough for her to know that there’d been this discussion of preemptive action.”
“Hypothetical discussion,” Strickland said. “It was discussed hypothetically.”
“And then, when some of these stories began to leak to the media,” Anna said, “you became worried that it might come back to bite you. Because this was classified information and only a few people knew about the meetings.” She paused for effect. “I can see how it evolved. Russia takes a tiny thread of truth—that there was talk about a preemptive strike—and spins it into an elaborate fiction, using all the resources of social media. Then fits it to their larger plan, which included the meeting in Kiev. Which I understand they set up, not you.”
“Of course.”
“Meanwhile, as you say, the infighting in Washington has prevented us from responding properly. So a small group in the administration decides to push an alternate story. Thinking that if the president takes it to the nation, giving it his stamp, the preemptive strike story may go away. But that’s just what Russia wants us to do. You’re doing their work for them. Sometimes consensus is more dangerous than dissension, Harland.
“They’ll say the story is a cover-up, and they’ll be right. But you’re not covering up a plot to assassinate Russia’s president, as they’ll charge. You’re covering up your own personal indiscretion. It’s a Washington sideshow.” Anna felt a momenatary tingle of pride, quoting her son. “You could save us a lot of trouble by simply ending it.”
“Come on.” He exhaled a lengthy sigh. “It’s not that simple. You know that.”
“We could make it that simple. I’ll help.”
Strickland gazed toward the street. She knew what he was thinking. This was his life now. He understood that Anna was sitting on a story that could damage him personally, irreparably. A story that could wind up as a sentence or two in his obituary. Maybe the lead sentence. But it was also a story that could be made to disappear. That’s what she was offering him. “How long have you known this?”
“Not long. I’m sorry, Harland, I didn’t want to do it like this. But you kind of brought it on. You insisted to journalists—and me—that those meetings never happened. You denied having had contact with Hordiyenko.”
“You know I couldn’t talk about any of that. Legally, I couldn’t say a word.”
“But you did talk about it. You told us those conversations didn’t happen. When in fact you called this committee together and you discussed preemptive action.”
“Hypothetically. It was discussed hypothetically.”
“Yes, I know,” Anna said. “But you said it was never discussed.”
He drew out a sigh. “You know what the media does with this stuff, Anna. Sometimes it’s okay to cover your ass. And also, I thought—frankly—that it was possible I was being set up.”
Anna didn’t know if he really believed that or was saying it to draw empathy. Or shut her up. At this point, it didn’t matter.
“What do you want me to do?” he said.
“Talk to the president. Tell him the truth. Tell the DNI. Call them tonight. You’ll also be helping yourself. We need you on board.”
“We?”
“Me. I need you on board.” He frowned, the skin wrinkling around his eyes and cheeks. “The intel on this Russian general isn’t going to check out,” she said. “The media will tear it apart if it goes out. Let’s cut it off now before it becomes a national humiliation.”