by Tom Clancy
“At the University of Kansas he made a speech and took part in a Q-and-A with students at the Hall Center. His hotel, his rented vehicle, the dais on the stage in the auditorium where he talked, the waiting room, and the bathroom backstage where he got ready—they all have evidence of polonium.”
Murray smiled a little. “And then… nothing.”
Ryan cocked his head. “Nothing?”
“Yep. The place where he had breakfast before going to the university. Clean. The commercial aircraft he flew from Dallas to Lawrence. Clean. His hotel in Dallas. Clean. We went all the way through all his other stops on his trip. Every hotel, car, restaurant, airplane. There are no radiation traces anywhere before he went into a meet-and-greet room with students at KU.”
Mary Pat said, “That sounds suspiciously like a dead end.”
“You might think so, but we picked up the trail again. We found a glass in the kitchen of the cafeteria on campus that basically glowed in the dark, even though it’s been washed since the event. Witnesses said Golovko drank a Sprite while onstage—we think that was his glass.
“We got a list of the people who worked in the cafeteria during that shift, and we were going to start interviewing them one by one, but they have an employee locker room, so we started there, instead. We tested the lockers, and got a hit on one, both inside and out. It belongs to a twenty-one-year-old student, the same person who gave the drink to Golovko before he went onstage.”
“The student, don’t tell me he is Russian.”
“It’s a she, and she’s not Russian. She’s Venezuelan.”
“Oh, boy,” said Ryan. Venezuela was a close ally with Russia. If they sent an intelligence agent into the United States for an assassination, it would only further hurt U.S.–Venezuelan relations, which were already bad enough.
Murray said, “We were going to put a surveillance package on her, to build an investigation, but we really need to know there isn’t any more polonium out there that might expose others to danger. My experts tell me they think she’s handled it so extensively and haphazardly she probably only has weeks to live, but if she’s got more of it than what she put in Sergey’s drink, then we need to find it and throw it in a lead box asap.”
Jack sighed. “Pick her up.” It really wasn’t a tough call to make, though it was frustrating to think they might miss an opportunity to film her meeting with a Russian intelligence agent.
Mary Pat asked, “What do you know about her?”
“Her name is Felicia Rodríguez. She has been living in Kansas since she was fifteen years old. She’s been back to see her grandparents a few times in Caracas, but not for any length of time. She doesn’t seem to be an active intelligence agent, or even affiliated with the ruling power in Venezuela.”
Jack said, “You can’t possibly think she was unwitting in this.”
“She obviously knew she was spiking Golovko’s beverage, but she might have been duped somehow. My experts tell me there are so many traces of polonium-210 in her locker, they think she had no idea what she was dealing with. Maybe she thought she was slipping him a roofie.”
“A roofie?”
“Yeah. You know, to slur his speech, make him look senile and out of it. The Cubans have done this sort of thing to marginalize their adversaries.”
“That’s true,” Mary Pat agreed.
Murray stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make the call to have her arrested. They will get her to the hospital and put her in quarantine.” Murray added, “Where she will be well guarded, obviously.”
As Murray left the Oval Office, Ryan’s secretary announced the arrival of Robert Burgess, secretary of defense, along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mark Jorgensen. They were here for the morning meeting, but immediately Ryan could see something even more pressing was on their minds as they entered.
“What’s up?”
Burgess said, “Russia’s defense minister announced this morning that a series of war games are starting, today, in the Black Sea. Within an hour of his announcement, virtually the entire Black Sea fleet started mobilizing. Two dozen ships raised anchor and moved out of the port of Sevastopol.”
“They are calling this just a run-of-the-mill military exercise?”
“That’s right.”
“How threatening is it?”
“The fact that it was unannounced is unsettling, to say the least. It looks like it has been in the works, but that’s impossible to know. The Russians’ agreement with Ukraine states that military exercises with fewer than seven thousand participants do not have to be scheduled in advance.”
“Are they operating within those numbers?”
“Doubtful. There are thirty-six warships involved, and that is fewer than seven-K sailors, but there are also an unknown number of land-based aircraft in the exercise. On top of that, they’ve announced the drills will include members of paratroopers, GRU Spetsnaz, and Marines.”
Jorgensen said, “Just eyeballing the announcement, sir, I put the number around twenty-five thousand, minimum.”
“And this is on top of the troops they have already moved into Belarus?”
“Yes, and the forces on Russia’s western border.”
Ryan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They are going to invade, aren’t they?”
Burgess said, “It sure looks like it. Volodin rattles his saber a lot, but this is a level of mobilization we haven’t seen. Even his attack of Estonia didn’t have these numbers attached to it.”
Ryan said, “The Crimea is a bigger prize.”
“Indeed it is.”
“What are our options?”
“Limited.”
“Limited as in strongly-worded-letter limited, or limited in some other way?”
Burgess said, “Militarily, not much we can do. We have a few boats in the Black Sea, but not enough to intimidate or impact their fleet operations. As far as diplomatic options, I guess that’s a question for Adler.”
Ryan nodded. He would need to confer with Scott Adler as soon as Scott got back to Washington.
He imagined that over in Moscow, Volodin did whatever the hell Volodin wanted. That was the rumor, anyhow. But was it true? Ryan knew there were rampant rumors about Volodin’s ties to organized crime. Although no one had really pinned him down on any involvement with criminal activity, Ryan liked to imagine the bastard was up to his eyeballs in dirty deals with mobsters who had him by the balls. Chances were, Jack knew, that the truth was probably exactly the opposite. With control over the nation’s military, interior ministry, and intelligence agencies, Volodin almost certainly was the one true power in Russia.
Ryan asked, “And the Ukrainian military is weak, correct?”
Jorgensen answered, “Very weak. Their defense spending is a whopping one percent of their GDP, just a couple billion dollars. It’s not enough money for new systems and equipment. They can barely maintain what they have.”
“Tactics and doctrine?”
“They will put up a fight on the border, and they have decent air defenses, but that’s about it. Through NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, we have been able to put about three hundred U.S. military personnel on the ground there. We have Green Berets training their infantry, Delta Force guys working with the CIA to get intel on the situation in the Crimea. All reports I’m getting on the situation is that the best Ukraine can hope to do is bloody the Russians’ noses a bit as they take the Crimea and the eastern regions of the country. If they make it painful enough, maybe Volodin won’t march his army all the way to Kiev in the west.”
“Jesus,” Ryan said. “The best-case scenario is they only lose a big chunk of their nation.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Ryan thought it over for a moment. “Our military on the ground. Do they know to get the hell out of the way if the shooting starts?”
“Yes, Mr. President, they aren’t going to stick around to fight with the Russians. I’ve ordered them all to keep a low profile. Thi
ngs have been getting dicey in Sevastopol and Odessa, the major cities in the Crimea. Pro-Russian protests are kicking up all over and spreading like wildfire. A good portion of the citizenry wants the Russians to invade. Ukraine is using its military to quell some of the rioting, which just makes the nation look like a police state, which just increases the number of citizens who are backing a Russian ‘liberation.’”
Ryan groaned. “We don’t want any part of that.”
“No, sir,” agreed Mark Jorgensen.
As they were talking, Ryan’s secretary stepped into the doorway. “I’m sorry, sir. AG Murray is on the phone.”
Jack was surprised by this. Dan had just left the Oval Office five minutes earlier. “Put him through,” Ryan said, but he turned back to Jorgensen and Burgess. “I want to convene a meeting of our full national security staff to look over all options we have to stop Russia’s invasion. Let’s say seventy-two hours from now. I need your best and your brightest working around the clock, and I want to see all feasible options.”
The men left the Oval Office, and Jack went back to his desk to grab the phone. “What’s up, Dan?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid. Felicia Rodríguez was hit by a car. She’s dead.”
“Damn it. I thought you were picking her up.”
“I was just making the call when I got word. We had a team watching her, but they weren’t close enough to stop it.”
“And the car that ran her down?”
“Hit-and-run. It happened in the parking lot of her apartment building, no security cameras. Our surveillance team wasn’t mobile. By the time they got into their vehicle, the car was gone. We’re chasing down vehicles fitting the description, but I’d bet you a week’s pay it was stolen and will turn up burning under an overpass somewhere.”
Ryan looked off into space. “Does that sound like a professional job to you?”
“Very much so.”
“Russians or Venezuelans?”
“That’s the only question. Either way, it’s going to create massive headaches internationally.”
“And either way, it was definitely the Russians who orchestrated it,” said Jack. “But we find the truth, and we get it out there.”
“Absolutely. I’m working on it. Sorry about this, Jack. We should have been quicker.”
Ryan could hear the frustration in his AG’s voice.
“This will make your job harder, Dan. But don’t feel too bad for the girl. From what you told me earlier, she was covered with polonium. After having seen Sergey in the hospital the other night, I can say with authority that I would much rather get run over by a goddamned car.”
28
Throughout the day, Clark, Chavez, and Kryvov moved from one bar to the next, each more shady than the last, drinking beer and sitting around while Igor called and texted people he knew on the periphery of the Kiev underworld. They steered far away from the chaos of Independence Square, and instead remained in remote working-class neighborhoods outside the city center. At each different location men would show up, scope out the table of journalists from across the room, and then, as often as not, leave.
But half the suspicious characters that came into the bars to eyeball the two foreigners and their local fixer did, in fact, come over and sit down. These men were drug dealers, human traffickers, and a man who said he could get any car off a German street and into the driveway of any Ukrainian—for a price. Through these men with firsthand knowledge of the local underworld, Clark and Chavez learned a great deal about the workings of the organized-crime situation here in the city.
While it was true that there were representatives of Russian organized crime active in Kiev, Clark and Chavez were surprised to hear how many FSB active measures operations seemed to be going on in the area as well.
Another troubling bit of information that came to light involved the clashes going on all over the city. The Nationalist Party had taken the presidency the year before, wrestling it away from a pro-Russian party that had been caught up in a series of corruption scandals. But the nationalists were not without issues of their own.
The rumor Clark and Chavez were picking up on the street, however, was that the current clashes were stoked on both sides by the FSB. It was said the Russians were organizing bus caravans from the pro-Russian east, filling the buses full of paid union workers, and dumping them in Kiev just upstream from the marches. At the same time, they secretly funded media outlets that pushed the pro-nationalist agenda.
If this was all true, it would show the Russians were interested less in winning hearts and minds in Ukraine, and more with causing chaos and civil strife.
* * *
By eight p.m. Clark called a halt to the day’s recon, and the men returned to the flat. After sitting together in the living room to discuss the day’s events, they decided they would go out for a quick dinner on nearby Khreshchatyk Street. They took a few minutes to sanitize and secure the flat, and then they headed out.
It was a breezy thirty-eight degrees outside, but the residents of Kiev considered this a spring evening; there were many pedestrians out in European Square as the six men walked along toward a restaurant recommended by Igor Kryvov.
As they walked through the square to the restaurant, they were spread out several yards wide, making their way through the crowd. Clark, Kryvov, and Chavez chatted in Russian, and the three non–Russian speakers mostly walked along with their hands in their pockets to keep warm. Gavin Biery was on the far right-hand side of the entourage, and when a group of young men got in front of him on the sidewalk, he moved to get out of the way. As he passed them, however, one of the men stepped into his path and shouldered straight into Biery’s side, spinning him around and knocking him to the ground.
The man kept walking with the rest of his small group, barely breaking stride.
Caruso didn’t see the impact, but he saw the result. As the obvious culprit walked away, Dom turned and started after the young man.
Sam Driscoll grabbed him by the arm, restraining him. “Let it go.”
Chavez helped Gavin back to his feet. “You okay, Gav?”
“Yeah.” He brushed himself off, more embarrassed than hurt.
Caruso looked at Kryvov. “What the hell was that about?”
Kryvov had no idea. “I didn’t see what happened.”
Chavez finished brushing the Campus director of information technology off and patted him on the back. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
* * *
Once inside the restaurant, the men moved to a long table with benches in the back of a dark bar area. Beer was brought to Gavin, Dom, and Sam; Igor Kryvov ordered a bottle of vodka on ice. Ding and Clark had been drinking in the bars where they met with the locals since ten-thirty that morning, so they ordered mineral water, although Igor had the waiter bring shots of vodka for everyone so they could toast.
They kept their conversation centered on topics that fit with their legends as journalists. They talked about the news in other parts of the world, hotels and computers and other technology. There were enough similarities with their actual lives and the lives of their covers that the conversation was in no way stilted or forced.
Just after their food came, three men in dark coats entered the restaurant. The operators of The Campus all noticed them; they were conditioned to keep an eye open for any threats, even while eating dinner. As the hostess greeted the men, they walked past her without responding and went into the bar area.
Gavin Biery was talking about photography now, the differences between the quality of film prints and digital images, but the other five men at the table were silent, and all focused on the three new arrivals. The sullen, darkly dressed individuals walked straight over to the long table where the Campus men sat, and they sat down on opposite sides of the table just feet away. They turned their chairs toward the group and just stared quietly.
Biery stopped talking.
There were a few uncomfortable moments while the Americans waited for Kryv
ov to introduce the friends he’d obviously neglected to mention he’d invited along for dinner, but very quickly it became obvious Igor didn’t know the men, either.
“Who are you?” Kryvov asked in Ukrainian.
The three men just looked back at Kryvov without responding.
The waiter came by to offer menus to the new visitors, but one of the men reached up and pushed him back, sending him on his way.
After another minute of awkward silence, Chavez looked at Driscoll. “Can you pass the bread?”
Sam picked up the bread bowl and sent it on its way down to Ding.
Within seconds everyone was eating again, and although Dom kept his angry staring contest going with one of the men, he still dug into his lamb and potatoes.
When the check came, delivered by a waiter who went out of his way to approach the middle of the table, staying away from the evil-looking men at both ends, Clark paid it, finished the last of his water, and stood up. “Gentlemen. Shall we?”
The rest of the group followed him out the door, but the three men who’d latched on to them during dinner did not follow.
As soon as they were halfway across European Square, Igor Kryvov said, “My friends, I’m sorry about that.”
Clark said, “FSB?”
“Yes. I think so.”
Dom nodded, “Those guys are the Keystone Kops. The worst surveillance I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Clark shook his head. “Dom, they are demonstrativnaya slezhka, demonstrative shadowing. They want us to know we are being followed. They will harass us, annoy us, generally make things tough so we can’t do whatever it is they think we came here to do.”
Driscoll said, “I could understand that in Russia, but this isn’t Russia. How can those guys get away with that here in Ukraine?”
“It’s certainly brazen,” Clark had to admit. “They must be pretty confident we aren’t going to go to the local police.”