by Sean McFate
“I want prisoners, not corpses, Thomas. Pretty pictures for the press. We’ll charter two helicopters from Kiev for the media, and lure them with the tagline: evidence of a Russian military invasion.”
“And the real story?” I said, knowing that ink was too slim to cut through the clutter of cable news.
“Karpenko’s victory speech, which we’re writing. It will be his Yeltsin moment.”
In 1991, hardliners in the Soviet army surrounded the Russian White House. Boris Yeltsin, then in a power struggle with other reform leaders, stood on a tank and gave a rousing speech against the coup. The troops defected. Four months later, catapulted to a new level of popularity by his speech, Yeltsin became president.
That kind of moment was hard to engineer. I knew, because I’d tried. But it was worth the risk, since leaders mattered. If the Ukrainians lacked a focal point, they needed their own George Washington. But in a pinch, a Boris Yeltsin would do.
“Time frame?”
“Saturday,” Winters said.
Five days. Tough.
“I know it’s tight. And the window of opportunity is small. There will be less than an hour between the arrival of the Donbas Battalion at 0600 and the press at 0700.” If either showed up on time, that is, and militias and reporters rarely did. “This is an active war zone. We don’t want to give the Russians time for a counterstrike.”
I sat back. This wasn’t how Apollo operated. We took our time. We planned things carefully. That was how we stayed out of the news, not to mention the morgue. Someone was running hot on a unique opportunity, as Winters had called it. Maybe the U.S. government. Probably a business client. Someone was willing to gamble on a desperate man sitting on a lot of natural gas. I couldn’t quite figure out, though, why it should be me.
“It’s doable,” I said, “if the Donbas Battalion will follow Karpenko.”
“They’ll follow him,” Winters said, “I can promise you that. He’s partially paying them. You just need to get him there.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Karpenko isn’t with the Donbas Battalion?”
Winters laughed. “If he was, would I need someone like you?”
He was flattering me. Making me think of whatever he said next as a challenge, instead of a foolish risk. It wouldn’t work. Not this time.
“Where is he?”
“In hiding,” Winters said. “Bank accounts frozen. Warrant out for his arrest. A bounty on his head from the Kremlin, under the table of course, but enough to keep him on the run.”
“Then how can I help him?”
“We have an inside man—”
“And why?”
That was the difference between being a soldier and a merc. In the army, you did what your commanding officer told you to do, no questions asked. A mercenary could turn down work if he didn’t like it, logistically, morally, or for any other damn reason he pleased.
So I expected the hard sell: the importance of stopping Putin, Apollo Outcomes as the hand of the West, even Hitler-and-the-Sudetenland. Winters was a master talker, and this was the moment. Closing time. But instead of pumping me up, he stared into the distance. I couldn’t tell if he was contemplating what to say next, or chewing a dramatic pause.
“There are children, Thomas,” he said finally. “Young ones.”
I thought of Burundi. The new president was the ideal leader for a war-ravaged country: a capable man, a humanitarian. That’s why the opposition was desperate to assassinate him. The odds were he’d be dead in a month, everyone knew that, especially him, but he was willing to risk his life if it meant a small chance of a better life for his people. Ten years ago, Winters had handed me exactly what I wanted: a chance to make the world a better place. And I was going to turn it down, because keeping this noble man alive was impossible.
Then his eight-year-old daughter walked in and gave her father a hug.
Had I told Winters that? I must have—we were inseparable at one time, and I wasn’t as careful about revealing myself then as I was now—because Winters was drawing a line: a line visible only to me. Ukraine now is Burundi then. Karpenko is a good man, a family man. This is a war-torn nation’s best chance.
“Extraction or protection?”
“Extraction. Their passports have been revoked and Interpol is watching. But we have a window, three nights from now, and an An-12 on station in Bucharest.”
A military cargo plane, I thought, mulling the possibilities. The Antonov-12 could take a family out, but it could also bring things in. The kind of things difficult to get through customs. The kind of things you needed for an assault on a hardened natural gas facility.
“How do I find them?”
Winters rose and walked to the door. Wolcott was waiting outside. Winters was the pitchman. Wolcott provided the details.
“We’ve set up a Sherpa,” Wolcott said, wasting no time. “John Greenlees. Former CIA station chief in Kiev, retired in place. He’ll meet you at the Hyatt Regency in Kiev at 1400 tomorrow.”
He placed a box of business cards on the table. “Green Lighthouse Group. Business: facilitation services in frontier markets. You’re the president, CEO, and only employee. We’ve created a legend. Articles on business blogs, old press releases, the usual. The website has been up since yesterday, but it looks like it’s been up for months.”
Wolcott placed a thick envelope beside the business cards. I knew what was inside: a debit card and €10,000, the maximum allowable without being declared. You broke the law in this business only when you had to. A fake passport meant arrest, a false identity, a hooded car ride to a Siberian prison. You could talk your way out of a two-month-old consulting business.
Besides, there was no hiding from the Internet. If anyone Googled me, it was all there: paratrooper, special warfare training. I even had a blog, the Musical Mercenary, where I wrote opera reviews. I had been interviewed about it on NPR, of all places. It was best, in this day and age, to own your past.
“The debit card is loaded with €50,000, for expenses. Greenlees will have another €50,000 in cash when you arrive. We’ll subtract out for your plane ticket and equipment.” They were making it look like I paid my own way. That was new. The company always ran cover for action, but not this deep. “Karpenko will pay additional expenses once you link up with him, anything you need.”
Wolcott dropped a gold necklace with thick links on the table. It was old school. If things got bad, I could snip off a link at a time and barter my way out of the country.
I didn’t like it. Apollo Outcomes was a corporation, not an Old West saloon. They took taxes out of my paycheck. My employment contract was fourteen pages long, for God’s sake—and I was a freelancer. You should see my 1099 tax forms.
“You’ll get your standard rate,” he continued. “Four weeks worth, plus a 50 percent bump up for danger pay, and Mr. Winters is adding a 50 percent completion bonus.” That came out to about $80,000 for a week’s worth of work. Arguably, my fee should have been higher. But you don’t haggle within the company, and if things went pear shaped, I knew Winters would get me out. Trust is worth more than money when your life is on the line.
“And,” he continued, “you get a team.”
I smiled, thinking of Miles and the boys. Having good men at your side was the only thing in the world more important than trust.
“I know you, Tom,” Winters said slowly, stepping in. He always knew when to step in. “I understand why you stayed in the field.”
He didn’t. He never had.
“You’re right,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I don’t understand. But I believed you when you said you thought you could do more good there.”
He paused again. The man used pauses better than Beethoven. “I know this is unusual. I know it’s outside your area of expertise. But it’s the big one. The ‘good job.’ The one we’ve been waiting for. Forget Africa and look at the big picture. If we shift the balance of power in Ukraine, we stuff Putin back in his box.
It’s good for our clients and better for the world. Break Russia, Thomas, and we don’t just win a victory. We change the future. Even for Africa.”
There it was, the Hitler speech, soft-pitched, but unmistakable: History needs us. We’re the chosen ones. This is your purpose.
He was stroking my ego. Manipulating me, like he always had. But so what? There were pieces missing here, explanations that were incomplete, but my job wasn’t to see the forest, it was to cut down trees. If I didn’t believe in myself, and my missions, on some deep fundamental level, why had I been risking my life all these years?
Winters rose and knocked on the door. Wolcott entered and handed me a flight itinerary. I glanced at it briefly. One way to Kiev. Three hours from now. Just enough time to head home for warmer clothes and a few appropriate downloads, such as Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony, known as the “Little Russian,” after the nickname for Ukraine during the reign of the Czar.
Wolcott handed me another piece of paper. It had my exfiltration data, handwritten: a time, date, and grid square location. I committed it to memory and handed the sheet back. Wolcott put it back into a folder with the photo of Karpenko. They would be in the shredder by lunch.
“A company helicopter will extract your team,” he said. “Fifteen-minute window. Don’t be late.”
And that was it. The operation was set. There would be no file, no photos, no written mission brief. And despite the cubicle gerbils toiling fifty feet away, no useful information. There never was.
“I’ll see you in a week,” I said, standing up and straightening my suit.
Winters stood up. I thought he was extending his hand for a shake, but instead, he slipped me a phone number. “My personal line,” he said. “You’ll know when to call.”
CHAPTER 3
Three hours later, at almost exactly the time Locke was boarding his flight to Kiev, Brad Winters laid his knife and fork across his plate at the Occidental and pushed away the last of his steak. It was just past one P.M., but he had been here for more than an hour. It was time to get moving.
“You got the talking points?” he said to Tom Hagen, the man sitting across from him. Hagen was the only thing more synonymous with Washington, DC, power than a private government contractor: a law firm partner without a law degree.
Hagen’s story was one Winters had heard a hundred times, with slight variations. Undergraduate at Georgetown (sometimes they were Ivy); Senate staffer at twenty-three (after one or two years of “charity work”); chief of staff at thirty; then a permanent member of a prestigious Senate or House committee; and, finally, a filthy rich lobbyist by the time the midlife crisis kicked in at forty. After that—at least in Tom Hagen’s case—came the long, slow decline, something Winters had long ago decided was attributable to a lack of both ambition and imagination. He’d seen it too often, from too many people who had cashed out and lost their way. Never make your goal something you can achieve.
“I’ve got them,” Hagen said, knocking back the last of his Sancerre. “It’s more than stopping a tyrant. It’s energy security. Ukraine has Europe’s third largest shale reserves. Putin is imperiling the world economy.”
“Freedom gas,” Winters said slowly, as you would while teaching a toddler. “Ukrainian gas means freedom from the Soviet threat. Freedom gas.”
“I’ll start with members from Texas and Louisiana,” Hagen said, ignoring the condescending tone. “We’ll establish the Friends of Ukraine.” Politicians were forever creating informal groups around newsworthy issues—the Friends of the Farmer, the Friends of Coal, the Friends of Real Americans.
“I know a crisis communications firm on K Street for the public angle. We’ll create a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called . . .” Hagen paused, thinking “. . . the U.S.-Ukraine Democracy Alliance.”
“Good.” Throwing democracy in a name was always a good idea.
“It will be a media platform and attack dog, going after the White House and critics, saying things Congress won’t. Don’t worry, the firm is clever, founded by ex-CIA. They do oppo research, media hit pieces, muddy reputations. They even infiltrated Greenpeace.”
“Make it AstroTurf.” Meaning the “nonprofit” should look and feel and, most importantly, sound like a legitimate grassroots organization. “When’s the press conference?”
“When do you want it?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. So we get ahead of any breaking news. I want four senators, at least.” Hagen started to object, but Winters cut him off. “Addison is already onboard.”
Hagen nodded. Addison had pull. “Ten and four,” he said, meaning at least ten from the lower house—they were easy—and four known names. “And then—”
“I’ll see what I can do with Shell.”
Shell Oil held the rights to the eastern Ukrainian gas fields, and they were halfway through an estimated infrastructure investment of $410 million, but they had pulled back because of violence in the area. A Putin victory, or a government collapse in Kiev, would put their leases and infrastructure investments at risk. It was a hazard of the modern world economy and, since the pullback in government contracts at the end of the official Iraq War, Brad Winters’s main engine of growth. Hagen would kill, almost literally, to have a fat oil company like Shell as a client.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go through State?” Hagen said, trying to prove his worth. “I can get you in at the DepSec level.” The deputy secretary was the alter ego of the secretary of state and the power behind the policy throne.
“I think it’s best if I stay out of it for the moment,” Winters said. He had no interest in going anywhere near this political charade until it was safe. That was why he needed Hagen.
“As long as it’s for the good of the country,” Hagen said with a knowing smile.
Winters figured at one point the phrase had meant something, but it was so de rigeur by now it had become a punch line.
“Right now,” he said, putting his napkin on the table and pushing back from the table, “I’m in the process of saving our asses.”
Hagen glanced up, surprised by Winters’s serious tone. “You’re a patriot, Brad,” he said, standing to shake his hand. “Just like the rest of us.”
The waiter appeared with the dessert menu, stepping deftly aside as Winters turned. “On my tab,” Winters said, as his eyes scanned the room.
“Bodegas Hildalgo Napoleon, thirty-year,” Hagen said absently, as he watched Winters glad-hand a few familiar faces as he left, the hundreds of black-and-white portraits of Washington players behind him on the walls, portraits that seemed to retreat farther and farther away the longer Hagen stayed in town.
CHAPTER 4
I’d seen the lobby of the Kiev Hyatt Regency a hundred times in a dozen different countries. The glass façade and square beige furniture were standard business class, the clean, modern lines not fashionable so much as what corporate architects and factories in China churned out to meet the needs of the world’s discerning travelers. Even the painting on the wall—red and green interlocking salamanders, either fucking or forming a faux native pattern, I wasn’t sure—could have hung on any hotel wall anywhere in the world. The only thing that would be unique, I knew, was the requisite sky bar on the top floor—this one was on the eighth—and then only because of the surrounding city. Fortunately, my suite had a firm mattress, always a pleasant surprise after three weeks on a cot, and a view of the gold onion domes of Saint Sophia’s Cathedral (according to the bellboy) to remind me that I wasn’t in an upscale area of Juba, South Sudan, or Wichita, Kansas.
The lobby bar was even more comfortably familiar, filled as it was with the usual conflict carrion. People assume upscale accommodations are deserted in war zones, but in the modern world, where economics trumped politics, reliable chain hotels like the Hyatt Regency quickly became de facto embassies. This is the place where conflict entrepreneurs, recently arrived from Lebanon by way of London or, if I had to guess, the more Eastern European sections of Broo
klyn, swapped tips on how to “exploit” the situation, a word that wasn’t just a positive, but a life mission.
The diplomats, meanwhile, were slumped into their drinks, waiting for whatever it is diplomats spend their lives waiting for. I spotted two squared-off Germans drinking pilsner in the corner; three Frenchmen at the bar with mineral waters and Gauloises; and two Brits in overly wide pinstriped suits with a little coin pocket above the regular pocket on the right side. Only English tailors bothered with that pointless little pocket.
“Woodford Reserve on the rocks,” I said, nodding to the Germans and leaning on the bar between the businessmen and the French. Every nationality has a drink, and the bourbon would mark me as American, something I didn’t mind. The dozen or so obvious undercover agents hanging around the lobby had already noticed me; the only question was whether they were working for the Ukrainians or the Russians.
Besides, I liked Woodford Reserve.
“Keep it,” I said, sliding twenty euros to the bartender and shrugging off the glance of a barfly with blond hair and augmented assets. She was a professional, but she wasn’t working for money. In a war zone, information was more valuable, that was what made hotels like these hothouses of intrigue. Everyone wanted a piece of everyone else. She’d probably be outside my room tonight, hoping to catch me in a moment of weakness.
Her, or another one like her.
I sighed. It was 1340 local time, twenty minutes until my meeting with Greenlees, and I’d been traveling for forty-two out of the last fifty-six hours. Despite a nap in my suite and on the Lufthansa overnight, I could feel the fatigue. But it was a virus I’d been living with for years. I was so used to it that I could sit perfectly at ease at a bar in a strange part of the world and use the reflections in the backsplash to pigeonhole everyone in the room.
There were the misfits: maybe tourists caught in the wrong place, maybe missionaries, who always managed to appear awkward. There were a few wealthy locals waiting for visas or other arrangements they needed before leaving the country. They’d probably been here for weeks, holed up inside except for shopping trips on whatever strip was considered the Fifth Avenue of Kiev. Their children looked so bored, I could image them chewing the upholstery. These kids weren’t used to slumming it at a four-star hotel.