“Thank you,” the goalie replied. There was no mention that he had once played on a Russian Olympic medal–winning team and knew exactly where he should have been positioned during a direct attack.
As Kalugin exited from the ice, he boasted to a teammate, “If I weren’t president, I would have been a professional in this sport.”
It was unclear to those who played each week if the president’s narcissism kept him from seeing through the final shot ruses or if he fully understood that the games were always fixed to flatter him and simply didn’t care. A benefit of his power.
Kalugin had just removed his skates when Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kazakov entered the plush presidential changing room at the ice rink built with public funds near Kalugin’s private estate in Novo-Ogaryovo, twenty-five minutes west of Moscow.
“Mr. President,” General Gromyko’s deputy said, “I have the general on a secure line. It is an urgent matter.”
“Help me with my shoulder pads,” Kalugin replied. “And stay.”
Kazakov only could hear Kalugin’s end of the conversation, but with each second, he watched the president become more and more agitated.
“Diplomatic immunity will not protect you, not for this!” Kalugin shouted.
Followed by, “Brett Garrett. The same American who twice escaped from you?”
Kalugin slammed down the phone when he ended the call.
“Join me in a bath,” he said, starting to strip. There was nothing sexual about the request. It was not unusual for the Russian president to discuss matters in a sauna. Being naked was how he could guarantee no secret recordings or eavesdropping. The self-contained cubicles that he’d ordered specially made were immune to foreign penetration. The sauna also gave him a psychological advantage. Kalugin was proud of his physique. He began each morning spending two hours swimming, another hour with his personal trainers. He felt superior when those around him were stripped naked with all of their physical faults exposed.
“A revolutionary group failed to release a poisonous gas in the United States Senate,” Kalugin said when they were seated on a wooden bench in the heat. “No American politicians were killed, but the general suspects the Americans will blame us.”
Kazakov already knew about Gromyko’s Kamera laboratory and his delivery of the Devil’s Breath variant to Antifa radicals. He knew President Kalugin had approved of the plan. But if the president now wished to distance himself, Kazakov would play along.
“You cannot be blamed,” Kazakov said. “You are innocent. Russia is innocent. Nothing but lies.”
“The Americans will have no choice but to retaliate. This was a direct attack on members of their government,” Kalugin continued, clearly concerned. “Cyber warfare is inconsequential compared to an attempted mass murder.”
“Yes, if they can find a connection with us,” Kazakov said, “they will demand blood. They started a war because of the attack by jihadists in New York and at their Pentagon, but surely they would not risk a nuclear confrontation,” Kazakov said. “We are not Iraq or Afghanistan.”
For a moment neither spoke. Kalugin was thinking.
“If I may speak openly,” Kazakov said, breaking the silence, “this is a problem of General Gromyko’s creation.”
“And so?” Kalugin replied.
“He should bear all responsibility. It is his doing, not yours. He should be the one who is punished.”
Kalugin turned his head, looked at Kazakov. How quickly he had turned on his superior. The president smiled. These were the men whom he chose to advise him. A paradoxical situation. He’d needed the likes of Gromyko and Kazakov to crush his opponents when he was rising to power. He needed them to retain his power. Unscrupulous men to do his bidding without moral misgivings. They intimidated and murdered for him. Yet Kalugin was no fool. He understood these same men would turn on him if he ever became vulnerable. Primates eating their young. It had been no different in Stalin’s day.
“Nikolai Aleksandrovich,” Kalugin replied, “General Gromyko ate the dog but choked on its tail.” He chuckled. It was an old Russian expression that Kalugin’s mother had taught him—to laugh at someone who had performed a difficult feat but tripped up at the end and failed.
Continuing, he said, “I will immediately deny all Russian involvement if the Americans accuse us. In a matter as grave as this, the Americans will need evidence. This always has been their pattern. They cannot justify retaliation based on speculation, even when the culprits are obvious. Unfortunately, there is someone who is an eyewitness, someone who can directly tie this attempted poisoning to General Gromyko.”
“I overheard his name in your conversation,” Kazakov said.
“Brett Garrett—the American the CIA sent here to escort the traitor Yakov Pavel to the West. He has been to the Kamera laboratory in Svetogorsk.”
Once again, this was information Kazakov already knew, but he remained quiet. Listening.
“General Gromyko just assured me that he will eliminate this witness,” Kalugin said. “He is sending a man.”
“Without Garrett, the Americans will have only hearsay,” Kazakov said.
It was a comment, but it sounded more like a question.
Kalugin used a towel to wipe his sweat-covered face. He was again thinking through his thoughts, wanting to be certain of his plan.
“How many Zasion officers are currently in our embassy in Washington?” he asked. A reference to Russia’s elite Zasion Special Operations Group, whose existence was officially denied by the Kremlin but whose soldiers were used to protect Russian diplomats.
“Five,” Kazakov replied. “Under the command of Fedor Ivanovich Vasiliev.”
“Tell him that he needs to escort General Gromyko back to Moscow immediately. Tell him we do not want to risk having the Americans detain the general for questioning.”
“They wouldn’t dare. Such a move would break all diplomatic protocols.”
Kalugin scoffed. “I suspect that line already has been crossed.” He again wiped the sweat from his face. “The general flew to America on a private plane, not a government aircraft,” he said. “This is a good thing. It was not a government flight. It suggests that he was operating independently. It would be best if that same private airplane returned for the general. To bring him back home.”
He twisted in his seat so that he was now looking directly at Kazakov. “It would be best if that aircraft encountered a mechanical malfunction while returning across the Atlantic.”
“Survivors?”
“None.”
Forty-Three
The slug fired into Brett Garrett’s leg had been a hollow-point round, designed to mushroom upon impact to cause maximum damage. His tibia, the second-largest bone in the body, had been fractured and it had taken surgeons more than four hours to perform open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF), a procedure that involved placing a metal rod down the inner aspect of the bone to stabilize and repair the fracture.
He had awoken from anesthesia in recovery but had been given several high doses of morphine, despite his opioid addiction, as well as powerful sleep medication before being moved to a private hospital room. He immediately fell into a deep sleep.
Sally North had instructed an FBI agent to stick close to Garrett and alert her when he was coherent enough to be interviewed. Thomas Jefferson Kim had taken it upon himself to have an IEC security guard stationed outside Garrett’s door, primarily to keep reporters from intruding.
A few minutes after 3:00 a.m., while the FBI agent was flirting with the nurses at a workstation, a lone assassin peered out from an emergency stairway and, seeing no one, stepped onto the rectangular floor. He’d already familiarized himself with the layout: two hallways running north to south holding five rooms each, joined at their ends by matching east-west corridors. The end units housed three patient rooms apiece. The nurses’ workstation was located in a cut-through in the center of the wing, allowing easy access to the longer hallways. Glass offices on each
side of the nurses’ station filled the rest of the unit. Normally, lights in these offices allowed the nurses to look directly through them. Because it was night, those lights were switched off, diminishing the view.
Garrett’s room was on the southeast corner. Gromyko’s hired assassin entered the floor at its northwest corner, as far away as possible from Garrett’s room. The assassin ducked into a nearby patient’s room where an elderly woman was sleeping peacefully, attached to monitors tracking her vital signs. He clutched the woman’s throat with his right hand and began to squeeze while covering her mouth with his left palm. Her eyes shot open, and she struggled to grab hold of the stranger strangling her, but she was no match, and within moments, an alarm sounded inside the nurses’ station.
Knowing they would respond via the west hallway running north, the assassin dashed into the east hallway and walked by the now-empty nurses’ base. The FBI agent who’d been chatting there had followed the nurses.
Garrett’s room was easy to identify because it was the only one with a security guard outside it. He was sitting scanning through Facebook on his cell phone.
As Gromyko’s man neared the IEC guard, the killer slipped his right hand up under his light blue jacket.
The guard glanced up and saw him approaching. The killer smiled and in a well-practiced move drew his Ruger .22-caliber pistol fitted with a suppressor, firing twice at close range into the startled guard’s face.
Having disposed of the guard, the assassin slipped into Garrett’s room.
* * *
General Gromyko had just drifted to sleep when his bodyguard, Boris Vladimirovich Petrov, gently awakened him.
“Sokolov has sent his plane from his sports team in Texas.”
Gromyko had moved his quarters from the former Soviet embassy to a nineteen-room mansion on Pioneer Point, a scenic peninsula on the eastern Maryland shoreline where the Corsica and Chester Rivers merged. The main house was part of a forty-five-acre compound that contained two swimming pools, a soccer field, multiple tennis courts, and ten bungalows—all purchased in 1972 by the Soviet Union as a Chesapeake Bay “dacha” for its diplomats and visiting Kremlin dignitaries. The house had been owned previously by John J. Raskob, best known as the builder of the Empire State Building. Although the property was not legally sovereign Russian territory, under the Vienna Convention no one could enter it without permission, and any attack on its grounds was the equivalent of an assault on Russia.
Gromyko dressed quickly, tucking a PSM pistol, an easy-to-conceal handgun issued to top Russian diplomats, under his suit jacket.
Petrov was waiting outside his bedroom door.
“Did you do what I asked?” the general said.
Petrov nodded. “It’s ready.”
Four men were waiting for them in the house’s grand foyer. Gromyko recognized Fedor Ivanovich Vasiliev, the Zasion commander in charge.
“Why are you here?” Gromyko asked.
“Moscow ordered us to escort you to your airplane in case the Americans attempt to detain you,” Fedor replied.
“Moscow? Who in Moscow?”
“I received a direct order from your deputy Nikolai Kazakov.”
The four soldiers split into pairs. Two fell in next to Gromyko, the other two next to Petrov. They were greeted outside by two drivers standing next to twin black Mercedes-Benz S Class sedans that had been lightly armored.
“General,” Fedor said, “it would be better if Mr. Petrov rode in the second vehicle so two of us can ride comfortably with you.”
“Tell me,” General Gromyko said, “who does Kazakov report to?”
“Why, he reports to you, General.”
“Then he has no authority over me, does he?” Gromyko replied. “Unless you wish to find yourself stripped of your duties, you need to acknowledge my authority. I decide who sits where and my bodyguard will travel next to me.”
Without waiting for an answer, Gromyko and Petrov both took seats in the backseat of the first Mercedes.
“I meant no disrespect, General,” Fedor said, slipping into the front passenger seat. “I simply thought it safer if two of us were in this car with you.”
“Now you have offended Petrov,” Gromyko chuckled. “Do you think he cannot keep me safe?”
The three other Zasion soldiers rode in the second Mercedes. The two-car motorcade exited the mansion’s circular driveway, traveling along Corsica Neck Road toward the property’s gated exit. Two of the compound’s bungalows were now on the left side of the moving vehicles. To the right of the two-way road was an undeveloped plot covered with Atlantic white cedars and underbrush. It was a buffer to the Chester River.
As the lead car neared Towne Point Lane, the first intersection on the resort property, Gromyko announced, “I need an item from my suitcase in the trunk. Inform your men that we are stopping. No need for them to exit their vehicles. It will only take Petrov a moment to fetch it.”
Fedor spoke through a handheld two-way radio. He started to turn his head so he could glance backward to address Gromyko when Petrov lunged forward from the seat directly behind him. He had put on leather gloves and drawn a garrote from his coat pocket. In a well-practiced move, the massive bodyguard dropped the wire over Fedor’s head, pulling it taut around Fedor’s neck. Petrov used his legs to thrust himself backward. The wire nearly decapitated the unsuspecting Fedor, who raised his hands to his neck in a panic much too late.
General Gromyko had drawn his pistol and now pressed it against the back of the driver’s skull.
“If you want to live, keep your hands on the wheel and stare straight ahead,” he warned.
* * *
A sliver of light from under the bathroom door in Brett Garrett’s hospital room provided enough glow for the assassin to quickly survey his surroundings.
As expected, a patient was in the bed, but he was not the room’s only occupant. An Asian woman was asleep under a blanket in a lounge chair near him.
The assassin would deal with her after Garrett. The killer lifted his left hand so he could compare a photograph of Garrett on his cell phone with the patient in the bed. It was his target. Satisfied, he lowered his cell while simultaneously raising the .22-caliber pistol in his right hand.
Thomas Jefferson Kim opened the bathroom door directly behind the assassin, startling both of them. Still wearing a sling from the bullet wound to his right arm, Kim yelled and lowered his shoulders, charging the surprised gunman. The impact caused both of them to bang against Garrett’s hospital bed before they tumbled onto the floor.
Kicking his feet wildly, Kim scrambled to remain on top of the assassin while managing to grab his right wrist.
“Help! Help!” he hollered.
Now pinned to the floor by Kim, the assassin slammed his left fist against the right side of Kim’s skull with dizzying force. A second blow was delivered to Kim’s wounded right shoulder, causing him to yelp in pain. The killer’s third left blow to Kim’s jaw caused him to go limp.
Shoving Kim off his body, the assassin rose to his feet with his pistol aimed directly at the still-unconscious Garrett.
Boom!
The loud gunshot blast caused a confused look to appear on the assassin’s face.
Boom!
The assassin shifted and aimed his handgun at Rose Kim, who’d cast off her blanket and fired her Glock semi-auto.
He pulled his Ruger’s trigger.
Rose Kim had never been in a shoot-out before. She would later claim that the .22 round had barely missed her head. But everyone who had ever been fired upon believed he or she had been barely missed.
Boom! Boom! Two more shots—from Rose.
The assassin fell backward and hit the floor hard.
The FBI agent, who’d run toward the room when he’d first heard gunshots, shoved open the room’s closed door but positioned himself along the hallway wall. As soon as the door opened, Rose Kim fired into the hallway, assuming the assassin had an accomplice. Her slug shattered the gla
ss exterior of the office across from Garrett’s room.
“FBI!” he yelled. “Drop your weapons!”
“It’s me!” Rose Kim squealed. “My husband is hurt! I’ve shot a man attacking us.”
“Put down your gun,” he ordered. “Put it on the floor. Don’t shoot me.”
She put aside her Glock and hurried to her husband, still prone on the floor.
The agent edged his way around the corner, darted into the room, and immediately stripped the .22-caliber pistol from the assassin’s hand. Kneeling, the agent felt for a pulse.
There was none.
* * *
Bodyguard Boris Petrov stepped from the first Mercedes into the morning darkness. The headlights of the second car some fifteen yards behind him caused him to blink and shield his eyes. He waved his hand downward, and the car’s driver extinguished the front lights. None of the car’s occupants bothered to exit.
Petrov opened the trunk and reached inside. When his hands emerged, they were holding a Russian-made RPG-7, a shoulder-fired, reusable antitank rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He spun, and before any of the soldiers seated in the Mercedes could undo their seat belts, Petrov fired. At that close range, the blast from the explosion knocked Petrov down onto the asphalt. Flying debris from the Mercedes flew in all directions. Everyone in the car was dead.
Inside the first Mercedes, the driver pleaded, “General, I’m only a driver. I know nothing about any of this.”
“It’s a pity,” Gromyko said. He fired a round from his pistol into the back of the man’s skull.
Stepping from the safety of the car, he called to Petrov: “Can you walk?”
Petrov used his palms to push himself onto his feet. He had been struck by shrapnel and his face was bleeding. He tugged a piece of chrome fragment from his left upper arm. Gromyko did not wait for him. He started walking toward the trees to their right. Behind him, the second Mercedes was burning, casting an eerie yellow light across the landscape.
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