by JT Brannan
‘Yes indeed,’ Krinitsky said, ‘it is as if 1991 never happened.’
‘Excellent,’ Emelienenko said with a nod. ‘And everyone is still primed to move,’ he added, ‘at a moment’s notice?’
‘Your generals have as much contact with these men as ours,’ Krinitsky said, ‘I am sure they can give you the answers you need just as readily as I.’
‘But I like to have the reassurance. This is your country, after all,’ Emelienenko said with a knowing smile.
‘Of course,’ came the acknowledgement of the fact, ‘and I can reassure you that everything is as it should be.’ Krinitsky sat back in his chair, folding one leg over the other. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘how is the situation in the Ukraine?’
‘Excellent,’ Emelienenko said, ‘again, just as planned. Our cyber warfare division has all but destroyed the legitimacy of the last election, and – as far as the media are concerned – over sixty percent of the population now desperately want to ally their country once more with Mother Russia.’
‘The plebiscite is soon?’
‘This weekend,’ Emelienenko confirmed.
Krinitsky grinned. ‘And all without a shot fired in anger,’ he said admiringly. ‘Well, if you excuse those few years of resistance in the east, anyway.’
‘Oh,’ Emelienenko said easily, ‘I think we can excuse them. Those years will all be forgotten soon anyway. After all, history is written by the winners.’ And no matter what the genuine result, Emelienenko didn’t have to add, Russia would be the winners in Ukraine. Hybrid warfare was a wonderful thing.
‘And if the UN objects?’ Krinitsky asked with a note of caution.
‘They won’t,’ the Russian president said with confidence, and the other man knew he was right; other things were needed right now at the UN, and this would barely register on the agenda.
‘I will take your word for it,’ Krinitsky said with a grin. ‘But now tell me,’ he added, ‘what did happen in Moscow last night?’
Emelienenko shuddered at being reminded of the thought. Moscow. Moscow! Yes, what the hell did happen there last night? He still didn’t understand all the pieces himself.
He had been right about the tunnels, at least; as well as sending troops down through the entrance below GUM, he’d sent also sent others to all the locations where the tunnels let out, and the team at the Bolshoi had found evidence that their man had made it out from there. A car had been stolen, it transpired later, and was then used to crash into an FSB sedan that was taking Veronika Galushka back to her home. What had happened to her after that, however, nobody seemed to be able to tell him.
Emelienenko himself suspected that she might well be out of the country by now, being debriefed at a CIA safe house somewhere in the verdant countryside of West Virginia.
But what could she tell them? As Manturov’s secretary, she knew nothing much beyond general governmental administrative details. And yet something that she’d said had already led that foreign spy to the offices of the SVR. But what? What was it, and could it harm them?
A nationwide manhunt was on, not just for Galushka but for the man who had taken her; even now, what limited CCTV footage there was of him was being disseminated to every intelligence and law enforcement agency in the country. If he was still inside Russia, he would be found.
Emelienenko had wondered about making a big thing of it in the press, but wanted to wait a while, see what other bargaining chips he could accumulate to use against the American president in their forthcoming dealings. Knowledge of another American agent operating on Russian soil could be very lucrative bargaining territory indeed.
‘A foreign agent was discovered,’ Emelienenko said carefully, wanting to give Krinitsky enough of the truth to allay suspicion, but without the full details. ‘He got into a shooting match with the FSB, and escaped.’
Krinitsky regarded him coolly, and Emelienenko was reminded that – for now at least – the Belarusian was holding the balance of power in their relationship. Emelienenko had helped him to gain the presidency, yes – but now that he had it, there was only his word that he was going to uphold his end of the bargain. For the time being, until the plan was fully under way and Krinitsky was fully committed, Emelienenko needed him more than he needed Emelienenko. Krinitsky could back out at any time, and the Russian president realized that he might have to be more open with him that he wanted to be.
‘It is my understanding,’ Krinitsky said, ‘that this foreign agent was discovered during a sting operation focused on the prime minister’s secretary, the woman who had been having an affair with that man you are holding in Akvadroma.’
Emelienenko raised his cup to the man, impressed – if a little annoyed – with his sources.
‘You are correct,’ Emelienenko said without skipping a beat, ‘and we assume that this agent was trying to reestablish contact with her, or else was trying to locate the first man, in order to affect some sort of rescue.’
‘And you believe that this does not affect our business?’ said Krinitsky with a raised eyebrow.
‘Not substantively,’ Emelienenko said.
‘But this woman is now missing, is she not?’ Krinitsky didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. ‘And if she is being questioned, what might the Americans learn, eh? Might they start to put things together?’
It was a valid point, Emelienenko had to admit, but he didn’t think so. At least, he hoped that it wasn’t the case.
‘If that had happened,’ he said reasonably, ‘then I am sure we would already know about it, yes? Given what we have planned, confrontation would be immediate if the facts got out.’ He shook his head, then took a sip of the rich black coffee. ‘No, my friend, they do not know anything.’
‘But will they?’ Krinitsky persisted, and Emelienenko realized that the man was scared that he might lose the power he had so recently accrued. The Russian president’s predatory instincts leapt on the perceived weakness immediately.
‘They will not,’ he said confidently, ‘and even if they do, it will not be until some distant point in the future, by which time it will be far too late for them to do anything about it anyway. But let us hope,’ he added with a shark’s smile, ‘that your people do not find out about your own particular rise to power, eh?’ He shook his head knowingly. ‘They would not like that at all, would they?’
‘They would never find out,’ Krinitsky said, slightly unsure.
‘Of course they won’t, my friend,’ Emelienenko reassured him. ‘Of course they won’t.’ He drank more coffee, looked the old general in the eyes. ‘Now,’ he added, ‘I can still count on you, can’t I?’
There was an awkward pause, but then Krinitsky broke it with a laugh. ‘Of course, my friend, of course. This is what we have been waiting for all this time. So,’ he asked after another pause, ‘when do you want to make the announcement?’
‘After the UN vote, certainly,’ Emelienenko said thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps straight after?’ Krinitsky asked with a raised eyebrow, and Emelienenko smiled at the idea.
‘Yes,’ he said, raising his cup in a happy toast to Krinitsky, his mission here in Minsk fulfilled. ‘Why not?’
2
‘It was something called Proyekt Yevropy,’ Veronika Galushka said, her tired eyes glazed and red-rimmed even after twelve hours of sleep.
Cole had wanted to start questioning her the night before, when they’d returned to the safe house which was – perversely – only a few blocks away from FSB headquarters at the Lubyanka.
But by the time they’d got her upstairs, she was already fast asleep. Cole knew it was from the build-up of adrenaline and the subsequent parasympathetic backlash; she’d seen a gunfight, survived, had very nearly escaped but then been betrayed by her friend; after a glimpse of freedom had probably thought she would spend the rest of her life rotting in jail; and had been involved in a car crash, before being forcibly kidnapped at gunpoint. That was enough to drive anyone’s adrenaline to fever pitch.
Cole had explained who he was while they were in the trunk of the car, that he would help to get her out of Russia, take her back to the United States. The relief she must have felt would have been enormous, Cole knew; and when they finally reached the secure apartment – safety, finally! – the adrenaline would have been washed away, and the effect had been almost immediate unconsciousness.
Cole had let her sleep, preferring her to be fully conscious when he started talking to her; he used the time to verify that the apartment was indeed secure, and to check in with Vinson back in Forest Hills. Then he’d allowed himself to sleep too, not knowing when he might have another chance.
Now, after a hearty breakfast, he’d spent the past hour listening to Galushka’s life story; Cole already knew most of the details from her file, but it was important to hear them from her, to make sure that she was able to be open and honest with him.
She had been reluctant to talk at first, not knowing whether this was some sort of FSB trick; maybe Cole was a Russian intelligence agent, and this was all a put-up job designed to get her to talk? But he soon made her see that this wasn’t the case, that such wanton destruction would be too much for even the Russian intelligence agencies to be involved in, if their only desire was to get her to talk. After all, he reasoned, they could much more easily drag her back to the Lubyanka and get information from her with a judicial mixture of torture and drugs.
And now, after the preliminaries were finally out of the way, and he had her trust, Cole was getting to the heart of the matter. Galushka was excited beyond reason at the prospect of escaping to America, and was willing to tell him everything she knew.
‘Project Europe?’ Cole said. ‘What is that?’
Galushka shrugged her shoulders. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘but I do not know.’
‘You have no details?’
‘None,’ she said sadly. ‘I only heard the term once, when Boris was on the phone to somebody at Yasenevo.’
‘The SVR?’
‘Yes,’ Galushka confirmed, ‘the SVR. I know it was Yasenevo, because I placed the call for him. And Aleksandr . . . well, this friend of yours, anyway,’ she corrected herself bitterly, ‘he had asked me to try and find out more about it, so I listened in to the call.’
Cole nodded his head. Galushka had told Jake that Boris Manturov was unhappy with a certain project that was happening at the SVR, and Jake had told Cole; Cole, in turn, had asked him to press Galushka for the details, as he realized it could be important. If the Russian prime minister was disturbed by a project emanating from the Russian foreign intelligence service, then it might very well be something to worry about.
‘And what was said?’ Cole probed.
‘Boris was very angry,’ she said, ‘shouting and so on. It was very strange; this was not like him at all. But he kept on asking, ‘What is Project Europe? What is Project Europe?’, over and over. The man he spoke to simply told him that he was not authorized to know, that even speaking about it openly might have ‘grave repercussions’ for him.’
‘Who was this man?’ Cole asked.
‘Colonel Vladimir Dementyev,’ Galushka told him.
‘You know this man?’
She shook her head. ‘No, only his name, from the phone call. Your friend seemed very interested in him.’
The name meant nothing to Cole either, and he made a mental note to check it out.
‘And he threatened the prime minister?’ Cole asked, still surprised.
‘Not in so many words,’ she replied, ‘but the message was quite clear, even to me. He did not want Boris meddling.’
‘And what did Boris say to this?’
‘He told Dementyev that he would speak to President Emelienenko about this SVR project, that he would have it shut down.’
‘And did Dementyev accept this?’
Galushka issued a hollow laugh. ‘Hardly,’ she said. ‘He simply told Boris that the president had authorized everything that was happening, there was no aspect of which Emelienenko was not aware.’
‘Did Boris speak to the president?’
‘Yes,’ Galushka said. ‘He put the phone down on Dementyev, then called Emelienenko straight after.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Boris was summoned to see him in Novo-Ogaryovo.’
‘And he went?’
‘Yes, immediately. When he left, I contacted Aleksandr, or your friend, or whoever he is, and told him what I’d heard.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He asked me for the details, and I told him everything I could. And that was the last I heard from him. From what my interrogators at the Lubyanka said, he was caught that evening in the SVR offices at Yasenevo. He must have thought it was important enough to act on immediately.’
Cole nodded, at the same time wondering why Navarone hadn’t informed him of what he was doing. If Cole – and Force One – had known about his visit to SVR headquarters, then perhaps they could have helped him.
‘And Boris?’ Cole asked.
‘He returned to work the next day,’ Galushka told him, ‘but he was a shadow of his former self. It was clear that he had been told to go along with this Project Europe, whatever it is, by Emelienenko himself. He seemed drained of all his power, a man lost and alone.
‘And then the day after that,’ she continued, ‘the FSB came for me. Arrested me as a traitor.’ She sniffed sadly. ‘And I suppose they were right.’
Cole put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s alright,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. You thought you were doing the right thing, and that’s all any of us can hope to do.’
‘Yes,’ she sobbed after a long pause, ‘yes, I suppose you are right.’
‘My friend,’ Cole said next, ‘the man you knew as Aleksandr Petrushkin. Do you know where they took him?’
Galushka cleared her eyes and looked back at Cole. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I do not think he was at the Lubyanka. I heard some of the FSB men arguing, asking why he wasn’t being held at one of their own facilities. There is a lot of infighting between the different agencies here, you know.’ Cole nodded as she spoke; America had some of the same problems, although perhaps not to the same extent. ‘It made me think,’ she continued, ‘that perhaps he was being held by the SVR, at one of their secret prisons.’
‘Do you think Colonel Dementyev knows where he is?’ Cole asked, and Galushka looked at him and nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If anyone knows, it is surely him.’
Cole sat back in his chair and drank from the mug of coffee that sat next to him, now cold.
It was time, he decided, to meet Colonel Vladimir Dementyev.
3
‘So how about China, Mr. President?’
The question came from Quincy Rush, Clark Mason’s National Security Advisor. Mason met the man every day for his morning intelligence briefing, and liked him. He kept things short, for starters.
They were seated in the Oval Office, Mason behind the huge Resolute desk, Rush sitting to one side, his intelligence briefing folder resting in front of him.
Mason drank some coffee. Had Rush mentioned something about China? The truth was that Mason didn’t even hear the question; his mind was on other things, and who gave a damn about China, when the United States was all set to invade Iran?
And that was the subject that consumed all of Mason’s waking hours, and why he was only half-heartedly involved in this meeting.
Iran.
Had he made the right decision? It had all seemed so easy at the time, hadn’t it? America was the world’s only superpower, its military expenditure dwarfed that of every other nation on earth. Indeed, the United States spent more money per year on defense than the next ten countries combined.
Hell, the US defense budget was fifty times higher than that of Iran!
So why the hell was there such a problem?
He knew he wasn’t a military man, but it enraged him to have his inexperience thrown back
in his face by Olsen and the others. Damn the joint chiefs to hell! What were they getting paid for, the stubborn sons of bitches?
Such was their recalcitrance that he now wondered if indeed they could win. Damn it, he should have just nuked the bastards when he’d had the chance. Nobody would have blamed him; at least not right away, anyway.
But now he was stuck with a situation of his own making, and it would be political suicide to back out now. He had to go through with it, and that meant that the coalition had to win.
The key, Mason knew, was in staging the most important attack from Turkmenistan. And the key to Turkmenistan was Russia.
Could a man like Rush, sitting there lecturing him in his prissy little suit, imagine the presence of mind it took, the will to win at any odds, that drove Mason into his deals with Mikhail Emelienenko? The military needed Turkmenistan, and therefore it needed Russia. It wasn’t even about support at the UN, although that would of course be a nice bonus. No, it was about Turkmenistan.
Mason justified it to himself with the knowledge that access to Turkmenistan would save American lives. And that was what his job was all about, wasn’t it? Saving American lives. Perhaps some of his dealings would lead to suffering elsewhere, but that wasn’t really his concern, was it?
He had made a public pledge to invade Iran, and it was going to happen, one way or another. But if he wanted to stay in power, if he ever wanted to win a real election, then American casualties had to be kept to a minimum. The coalition had to win, America had to win, he had to win, and win cleanly.
President Emelienenko of the Russian Federation was just a means to an end, a way of ensuring that things turned out the way Mason wanted.
‘Mr. President?’ asked Rush, and Mason realized the pause had been unnaturally long.
‘China?’ Mason said, to confirm that he had been listening, but also to perhaps elicit a little bit more information from his national security adviser.
‘Yes,’ Rush said, adjusting his rimless spectacles and looking back at his notes. ‘We think China is becoming something of a problem. Potential problem, anyway.’