Make Russia Great Again: A Novel

by Christopher Buckley

  Judd kept bringing me fresh CIA phone intercepts from Communist Party headquarters, but I wasn’t in the mood to read them. I did ask him how Anatoli and Oksana were getting on.

  “She’s refusing to do any campaign events with him,” Judd said.

  “Can’t say I blame her. After what he went through.”

  “She’s still furious with him. She’s convinced he and his fellow bolshies did the hack. She wants him to pull out of the race.”

  “Maybe that would be for the best.”

  “He’s telling her that he can’t. He said—sure you don’t want to read the transcript?”

  “No, Judd, I do not. I feel awful about this.”

  “Herb, he’s a Communist. A Russian Communist. Remember them? The Soviets? There is no reason to feel ‘awful’ for him.”

  “I’m just saying we’ve screwed up his life. His wife is furious with him. And Putin may kill him.”

  “Yeah, well, life’s a bitch. Especially when you run against Putin and win. Let me just read you this bit.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Judd.”

  ANATOLI ZITKIN: I can’t pull out, Oksana. I owe it to the party.

  OKSANA ZITKIN: Anatoli Ivanovich! Wake up! The revolution is over! Dead! Which we will be if you don’t stop this stupidity.

  A.Z.: By “stupidity” do you mean Marxist-Leninist thought, under the ever-vigilant guidance of the party?

  O.Z.: On second thought, I may kill you before Putin can.

  A.Z.: Little Mink—

  O.Z.: Don’t call me that!

  A.Z.: The very fact that they went to the trouble of silencing me just shows that they fear me. Fear the people, I mean.

  O.Z.: I wouldn’t say they silenced you. It was very loud. And very embarrassing. As for fearing you—or the people—the Kremlin has an odd way of expressing this fear.

  A.Z.: What would you have me do, woman?

  O.Z.: Resign!

  A.Z.: Resign? Well, there’s a fine way to go down in history. What will history say of me: Zitkin, Anatoli Ivanovich, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, 2004 to 2020. Resigned because his dear wife was afraid he might win the runoff election and lead his country back to greatness. Devoted rest of his life to drinking and smoking heavily and writing pamphlets that no one read. Died in obscurity. Is buried somewhere. No one knows. Or cares.

  O.Z.: Would you prefer for history to say: Zitkin, Anatoli Ivanovich, convicted of treason for trying to steal the presidency from Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Died in Lefortovo prison, from beatings. Or tuberculosis. Or both. No one really knows.

  [PAUSE.]

  A.Z.: Well, either way, I would hope it would also say: “He is mourned by his wife, whom he loved very much.”

  [PAUSE. SNIFFLING.]

  O.Z.: Yes, it would say that. Also that her husband was sometimes so pigheaded that it was necessary for her to throw things at him.

  A.Z.: Do you remember when you threw the bust of Engels at me and missed? And destroyed the television? Ooh, you were mad.

  O.Z.: I am still mad. It was six months before we got another television. The bust you replaced the next day.

  [LAUGHTER.]

  A.Z.: Maybe I should hide the other busts until after the election.

  O.Z.: I’m scared, Anatoli Ivanovich.

  A.Z.: Don’t be, Little Mink. Truthfully, there is no possibility that I will win.

  O.Z.: That’s what they said about Trump. And look.

  A.Z.: Well, I’m not running against Hillary Clinton.

  O.Z.: Anatoli Ivanovich, swear to me that you won’t win. Swear that you are not up to monkey business.

  A.Z.: For the last time, Little Mink. We—the party—did no monkey business. We don’t know who was our mysterious angel on the night of the election. Surely it wasn’t the Americans. The last thing they want is the hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin. But whoever it was—Ukraine, who knows?—I assure you they won’t succeed again. Putin will build a cyberfortress around the Ministry of Elections. Worry not, Little Mink. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation will go down in glorious defeat. And Russia will remain not great. As Trump would say, Sad!

  [LAUGHTER.]

  I. Also known as “The Civil War.”

  II. The owner of the Washington Post. Also of Amazon.com.

  16

  Much has been said and written about Mr. Trump and his “cult of personality.” Frankly, I’ve never understood why the term is considered opprobrious, but maybe I’m missing something.

  If one has a strong personality, as Mr. Trump certainly does, why is it a bad thing for a “cult” to form around it? And what constitutes a “cult,” exactly? Isn’t it just a term for “group of insanely devoted admirers”? Why is this sinister?

  I am not personally Catholic, but Catholics are always talking about the “Cult of Mary” or the “Cult of Saint So-and-So.” Does this mean that Jesus’s mom and Saint So-and-So were malignant, attention-demanding narcissists? Really? Then someone ought to tell the pope, and pronto.

  That said, most of us at the White House were a tad surprised when the “Ever Trumper” movement folks started volunteering to be shot by Mr. Trump on Fifth Avenue. Here, certainly, was a cult of personality taking it to a whole new level.

  In early 2016, as you’ll recall, Mr. Trump declared that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot somebody and not lose voters.”

  What a hullabaloo that caused! He meant it as a compliment to the people who believe in him—the “base”—as a tribute to their fidelity and steadfastness.

  There are many historical precedents of devoted followers willing to sacrifice themselves for their leaders. It’s a very basic human instinct, not some evil, sinister thing. Look at the Japanese in World War II, hurling themselves off cliffs and blowing themselves up for their emperor. Not much fun for the US troops, but you can’t deny: they sure loved their emperor.

  Mr. Trump never had any intention of opening fire on his fans on Fifth Avenue. Okay, once or twice, in jest, while we were in the limo, he asked the Secret Service guy in the front seat to lend him his pistol so he could “find out if I’m right.” (By the way, this totally refutes the idea that Mr. Trump lacks a sense of humor.)

  Then the Ever Trumpers started showing up on Fifth Avenue with their bull’s-eye shirts saying, “Shoot me, Mr. Trump!”

  Yes, he was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? I don’t recall any Obama supporters offering to be shot by their big hero. If any of Hillary Clinton’s fans offered themselves as fodder, I missed it.

  Mr. Colonnity said on his program that he found the Ever Trumpers “incredibly moving.” His follow-up suggestion that Mr. Trump should instead shoot Democrats and the liberal mainstream media was perhaps ill-advised. The handwringers at MSNBC and the failing New York Times certainly milked that for all it was worth. Mr. Colonnity lost a few fainthearted advertisers, but they slunk back eventually. Greta was again on her hands and knees, begging Mr. Trump not to fan the flames with a tweet. She even offered to be shot herself as a propitiatory substitute. I think she actually meant it. A real pro, Greta.

  To defuse the situation, I did a little discreet outreach with the head of the Ever Trumpers, a former Navy SEAL whom Mr. Trump had pardoned for committing (so-called) “crimes against humanity” in Iraq. I told him that with everything else going on, now was just not a good time for Mr. Trump to be shooting people on Fifth Avenue. Good soldier that he is, he said he understood, but reiterated that the offer to “redeploy” along Fifth Avenue was good “till kingdom come.”

  Where do we get such men?

  Politics is supposed to be a cynical business, but it warmed my heart to see such devotion. Whenever I had doubts about taking the White House job, I thought of some of the people I met and I pinched myself. And when I think about some others, I punch myself.

  17

  A few days after “Brown Square,” President Putin held his annual press conference.
/>
  Yevgeny “Yev” Yussupoff, our Russian expert on the NSC staff, had told us that Putin press conferences were actually intended to be boring.

  “He doesn’t really want people to watch,” Yev explained. “The questions are scripted and his answers framed to put everyone to sleep or make them change the channel.”

  R-1, the state-owned TV network, dutifully broadcast the press conferences, and followed them with thoughtful but equally mind-numbing panel discussions. The panelists would reliably conclude that whatever the problem was, it certainly wasn’t the fault of our much-beloved Vladimir Vladimirovich, who, as everyone knows, works like a galley slave. By this time Russia had fallen asleep or switched to Black Sea Baywatch or I Love Ludmilla or CSI: Magnitogorsk.

  But this Putin press conference turned out to be “must-see TV.”

  The Russian president was answering a softball question about the status of some natural gas pipeline from Umpsk to Leipzig. Yes, Mr. Putin admitted with chagrin, it was behind schedule. But the delay, as he understood it, was owed to a complexity of factors, among them a difficulty involving blah-blah-blah.

  Then, just as viewers were reaching for the remote control (assuming they have those in Russia), the chyron “crawl” at the bottom of the screen started suggesting a rather more aggressive line of questioning.

  ASK HIM WHY HE HAS 20 PALACES WHEN 20 MILLION RUSSIANS CAN BARELY MAKE ENDS MEET… ASK HIM WHY THERE WERE 10,700 HOSPITALS WHEN HE BECAME PRESIDENT IN 2000 AND NOW THERE ARE ONLY 5,400… HERE’S SOMETHING ELSE TO ASK OUR “GALLEY SLAVE” VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH: Mr. PRESIDENT, WHEN YOU TOOK OVER 20 YEARS AGO, THERE WERE 1.2 MILLION BUREAUCRATS. NOW THERE ARE 2.2 MILLION. WHY? WHAT DO THEY DO? DO YOU HAVE THAT MANY BOOTS THAT NEED DAILY POLISHING?

  Well. On and on it flippantly continued:

  DEAR MR. PRESIDENT, KINDLY EXPLAIN WHY SINCE YOU BECAME PRESIDENT, CHINA’S ECONOMY HAS QUADRUPLED, AMERICA’S HAS DOUBLED, AND OURS HAS SHRUNK… WHY DO 35 MILLION RUSSIANS GO WITHOUT INDOOR PLUMBING WHILE YOU CRAP ON A GOLD TOILET SEAT?

  The horrified R-1 production staff was unable to stop the fiendish crawl. They frantically pressed buttons and threw kill switches. Finally, in the midst of yet another impertinent question, this one concerning the president’s twenty-two-million-ruble collection of wristwatches, they shut off the electricity, plunging Russia’s leading network into blackness in the middle of a presidential press conference.

  Our embassy in Moscow reported that the president of the Russian Federation was not pleased. (Big surprise.) Also that the red-faced management of R-1 was at a loss to explain what in God’s holy name had happened. Their protestations of innocence did not spare them intense questioning by the organs of state security.

  President Trump ordered Miriam to find out “what the fuck is going on over there.” CIA Moscow reported that Putin’s deputy told the head of R-1 he should commit suicide “as a gesture of regret.” Putin nixed that, on the grounds that no one would believe it was suicide. Murdering members of the media was currently out of vogue, thanks to our old friend Oleg’s handling of Glebnikov and the murder of Mr. Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.

  What a disaster—and with Mr. Putin in the middle of a runoff election! It certainly must have made for lively staff meetings at the Kremlin.

  Russian media went into overdrive to refute the “odious insinuations” the rogue chyron had posed. They stoutly averred that Russia was prospering as never before under the inspired and benevolent leadership of President Putin.

  What’s more, they said, the worthy organs of state security were certain that this latest hack was “yet another undoubted provocation by anti-Russia elements in Ukraine.” The Kremlin’s patience with Kiev, they said, was “approaching the limits of tolerance.” That must have made for lively staff meetings in Kiev.

  “Fucking Ukraine,” Mr. Trump remarked. He added that Hillary Clinton surely had a hand in it.

  Miriam urged him not to accept Russian propaganda at face value. “This wasn’t Kiev,” she said.

  “Who, then? The Commies?”

  “We don’t know, sir. CIA is looking into it.”

  “Looking into it.” The president snorted. “What does CIA stand for, anyway? Completely Ignorant Agency?”

  Judd and I pulled Miriam into my office after we left the Oval. Judd wanted to know if our Moscow “asset” Huggybear could shed any light on what had happened.

  “It wasn’t the CP,” Miriam said, referring to the Communist Party. “They don’t have the capability to pull off something like this.” She paused, then added with a Mona Lisa half smile, “Any more than they did the last time.”

  “Miriam,” Judd said, “what are you saying?”

  “Not here,” Miriam whispered. Intelligence professionals always assume someone is listening. We followed her to the Situation Room, where, as the name suggests, one goes to discuss situations in a secure environment.

  “Flipper didn’t call you,” she said to Judd, referring to Admiral Murphy of US CyberCom, “because he didn’t want to go into it over the phone. Anyway, I told him I’d be seeing you. Placid Reflux reactivated. In response to the attack on Zitkin.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Judd said. “Flipper said he was going to shut it down.”

  “They tried,” Miriam said. “But it’s tricky, shutting down these autonomous protocol platforms. Kind of makes you yearn for the good old days of analog.”

  “Is that how you’re going to explain it to the president?”

  “I’m not suggesting we bother the president with this. For now.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “So we’re also not telling the president about this?”

  “For now,” Miriam said.

  “What if this thing starts launching missiles?” I said.

  “Herb. Relax,” she said, as though my asking if the world was about to end in thermonuclear holocaust was annoying. “Placid only retaliates in kind. Its operational parameters are limited to elections.”

  “Oh, well then,” I said in a sarcastic tone. “If it’s only a matter of a rogue computer serially attacking one of the most powerful men on earth, no problemo.”

  I had to sit down and loosen my tie while the director of national intelligence and head of the National Security Council conversed. I pondered what other surprises Placid Reflux might have in its hard drive. The numbers of Mr. Putin’s bank accounts in Zurich and the Cayman Islands?

  I have an unusual disorder. In moments of great stress, I sometimes go to sleep. It’s why I wouldn’t have made a good fighter pilot or astronaut. Or policeman, or fireman, or hold any type job where falling asleep at the critical moment is undesirable.

  I woke up to Miriam rubbing the top of my head and saying, “Wakey-wakey.”

  “What did you and Judd decide?”

  “We think we’re okay. For now.”

  Another “for now.”

  “What if this mishegoss machine steals the runoff election from Putin?” I asked, using the Yiddish word for nutty.

  Miriam nodded. “It’s a concern. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

  “What baby?”

  “We have an election coming up, too, Herb.”

  “So?”

  “If the Russians interfere—which they’re planning to—Placid Reflux could be a very useful countermeasure.”

  I groaned.

  “So you’re proposing to subcontract election security to a rogue computer?”

  “Would you rather we subcontract it to Russia?”

  I suppose Miriam had a point. Still.

  “Herb,” she said in full Herb-mollifying mode. “If this thing counters Russian interference in our election, wouldn’t you call that a desirable outcome? Think of it this way: if the federal government got its act together to be serious about getting the Russians to butt out, something like this is what they’d come up with.”

  I was reasonably sure that Mr. Trump would not consider this a “desirable outcome.” But I agree
d with Miriam and Judd to leave it alone. For now. Sometimes the best course of action is no action. I’m sure there’s a Winston Churchill quote somewhere about that.

  18

  One of Mr. Trump’s great talents is to “suck all the oxygen out of the room,” as the saying goes. It was breathtaking to watch, especially if you were in the room.

  As the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee approached, Mr. Trump was determined to inhale every molecule of air in Wisconsin and to dominate the news cycle as the Democrats decided which among their candidates was best suited to make America ungreat again.

  Normally, the custom is for the incumbent president to go away while the other side has its convention. But no one ever accused Mr. Trump of being customary.

  A number of disruptive ideas were floated: nominating a tenth justice to the Supreme Court; leaking a report that North Korea was fueling a nuclear missile targeting Milwaukee (that might get their attention); urging Mr. Putin to send a few tank divisions into Ukraine (“He would if I asked him,” Mr. Trump said); holding an impromptu summit with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Being July, there was always the possibility of a hurricane, an opportunity for Mr. Trump to visit the scene of devastation and throw rolls of paper towels at the survivors.

  Of course—though known only to a select few of us—there was also the possibility that Placid Reflux might start World War III. Which would certainly put a firecracker up the donkey’s tail.

  The idea that most appealed to Mr. Trump was a “megarally”—in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a mere two hours from Milwaukee.

  Green Bay’s Lambeau Field seats eighty-one thousand people, whereas the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee seats only seventeen thousand. Mr. Trump loved the idea of holding a bash four times the size of theirs.