As soon as Jack entered the Oval Office he walked straight to his desk and grabbed his phone. He started to dial Arnie Van Damm, but the chief of staff came through the door that led to his office. Jack could tell Arnie had been working late. His tie was off and his sleeves were rolled up.
He motioned for Jack and O’Hearn to follow him back into the corridor, away from the children, and then he said, “Cathy, why don’t you come, too?”
This surprised Jack and Cathy both, but Cathy told Kyle and Katie to wait with the Secret Service team, and the three adults left the room.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
Arnie said, “The Secret Service station here in the White House just took a call from GW. Tests came back on Sergey Golovko. He is suffering from radiation exposure.”
“Radiation?”
“Yes. They see it as very unlikely that the White House has been seriously compromised by dangerous levels of the material, but just to be on the safe side, they wanted you and your family out.”
Jack turned white. “My God! Cathy, you held the man in your arms.”
Dr. Cathy Ryan seemed upset about what she had just heard about Sergey but oddly unconcerned about herself. She dismissed her husband’s concerns with a quick wave. “It doesn’t work like that. They’ll have to check me out, I’m sure. But I’ll be fine.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because this wasn’t something he had all over his body. The way he looked this afternoon. It makes sense now. That’s not a guy who ate a bad meal. And it’s not a guy who absorbed too many X-rays. He was exhibiting the classic signs of ingesting a large amount of a radioactive isotope. He was poisoned.”
She turned to Arnie. “Polonium?”
“I . . . I have no idea. The hospital is still running tests.”
Cathy seemed certain. “They’ll find polonium in him.” She looked at Jack. “Sorry, Jack. If it is bad enough to make him as sick as he was today, it’s lethal. There is no antidote.”
Ryan turned to O’Hearn. “I want everybody out of the residence. Every last cook, steward, security man, and janitor.”
Joe O’Hearn said, “Under way as we speak, sir.”
Cathy added, “No one should be allowed in the White House residence without level-three hazmat gear while they sweep and clean. It’s just a precaution. They’ll turn up high levels of the isotope, maybe they will have to decontaminate the cutlery he used and the glass he drank from, but nothing more than that.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe the bathroom will need to be decontaminated, too.”
Jack wasn’t so sure, but it was his job to also consider the political ramifications of this. To Arnie he said, “We’ll let them do what they have to do in the residence, but this will not affect the work of the Executive Branch. Business as usual here, okay?”
“Jack,” Arnie said. “We need to understand what we’re dealing with here. Maybe Golovko wasn’t the target. Maybe he was the weapon.”
“What do you mean?”
“This could have been an assassination attempt on you and your family. An attempt to decapitate the U.S. government.”
Cathy said, “I don’t think so, Arnie.” She turned to Agent O’Hearn. “We need to get Jack checked out just to be sure, but I feel certain anyone who had access to polonium and the ability to poison Sergey will have done their homework. The level of contact Sergey had with Jack was too incidental to be any threat.”
She added, “I don’t believe for a second that Jack was the target.”
President Ryan trusted his wife on this, so he was thinking of the larger picture. “There is no way in hell this can stay under wraps. Especially if I have to go to the hospital to get tests run. We need to get out in front of this as much as possible.”
Van Damm said, “A high-profile Russian dissident getting poisoned, presumably while in the U.S., and exposing the White House to contamination? This isn’t going to look good, Jack.”
“No shit.” Ryan sighed. “Sorry, Arnie. You are doing what you have to do. But we’ll deal with it head-on. It’s the only way.”
Jack walked back with Cathy into the Oval Office, and they spent a few minutes with the children, letting them know that everything was fine. Cathy explained that a visitor had become sick, and they needed to clean up the places he visited very carefully, but there was nothing at all to worry about.
Kyle was sold on the explanation as soon as he learned his father would let him sleep on the couch in his office. Katie was old enough and clever enough to raise her eyebrows in doubt, but Cathy managed to convince her that they were safe after a little more frank explanation.
Within minutes Cathy was seated at the desk in the Oval Office, getting in touch with doctors on the case at George Washington, probing for details about Golovko’s condition that could not be relayed by Van Damm, who might have been one hell of a chief of staff, but he was clearly no doctor. She then woke up colleagues at Johns Hopkins, experts in nuclear medicine and radiation sickness, obtained their confidentiality, and asked them for their take on the situation.
Ryan let his wife take charge; he knew he was lucky to have her expertise on hand in the first moments of this crisis so he could focus on what he needed to do. He headed over to Arnie’s office and they concentrated on the political fallout, which, he was afraid, would be every bit as radioactive. The two of them called in the national security team, asking them to get in as soon as possible. The West Wing was all but closed for the evening, but they ordered coffee to be sent to the Cabinet Room in advance of the middle-of-the-night meeting.
—
Jack headed into the dimly lit Cabinet Room, and Cathy met him there moments later. They sat down at the long table. “What did you hear from GW?” he asked.
Cathy said, “He’s bad, Jack. They suspect a high dose of polonium-210.”
“Why didn’t they know this immediately?”
“The hospital didn’t check for it when he came in. It’s so rare, it’s just not part of any normal toxicology screening.”
“And how radioactive is he?”
Cathy sighed. Passing on bad news was an unfortunate part of her job; she had a lot of experience with it. There were times when a little sugarcoating was necessary. But this was Jack; she knew he’d want the facts as cut-and-dried as she could possibly make them. She said, “Let me explain it this way. If he is not cremated, after he dies, his bones will be hissing with radioactivity for more than a decade.”
“Unbelievable.”
“By mass, polonium-210 is a quarter of a million times more deadly than cyanide. A portion the size of a grain of salt, if ingested, is more than enough to kill a full-sized man.”
“I thought we had radiation detectors in the White House?”
“Polonium emits alpha particles. They don’t show up as well on radiation detectors. That’s also why it is easy to smuggle into the country.”
“Terrific,” Jack mumbled. “But you are certain you are okay?”
“Yes. The effects are dose-dependent, and I didn’t get any dose to speak of. You touched Golovko yourself, when you shook his hand. They will test us, but as long as we didn’t ingest the poison, we are fine.”
“How the hell do you know more about this than I do?”
Cathy answered with a shrug. “I’m around radiation every day, Jack. You learn to take it seriously. But you also learn to live with it.”
“Sergey’s really going to die?”
Cathy nodded grimly. “I don’t know how much he was poisoned with, but the amount will only determine how long he suffers. For his sake, I hope whoever did this gave him a large dose. I’d guess he has no more than a couple of days. I’m so sorry. I know he was your friend.”
“Yeah. We go back a long way.”
12
The national security team met in the Cabinet Room at one a.m. Mary Pat Foley was there, as were the heads of NSA, CIA, and Homeland Security, as well as the secretary of state, the secretary of d
efense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Attorney General Dan Murray stood outside the Oval Office conferring with his senior staff both in person and over the phone, and he stepped in with the others only as the meeting was getting started.
Jay Canfield, director of the CIA, set the agenda with his opening comment: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m just going to go right out and say it. If anyone in this room doubts for a second that the Kremlin is responsible for this, they are hopelessly naive. You have to understand, this material is very uncommon. Only about one hundred grams are produced worldwide each year. Production is highly controlled and storage is highly regulated. We know where our polonium is.”
President Ryan said, “You don’t have to sell me on the concept that this was an assassination attempt by the Kremlin.”
“Mr. President. I’m sorry. I know he is your friend. But this was no assassination attempt. It was an assassination. Sergey Golovko is not dead yet. But it’s just a matter of time.”
Jack nodded soberly.
Mary Pat Foley spoke from her seat on Ryan’s left. “Golovko was a thorn in Valeri Volodin’s side. Of course Volodin killed him. The question is, can we prove it?”
AG Murray said, “We’ll have to do some more testing, but the chemical properties will lead us back to a specific nuclear reactor. I’m going to venture to guess that reactor will be somewhere in Russia.”
Scott Adler asked, “If this is so easily traceable, why didn’t they just kill him some other way?”
Mary Pat Foley took this one. “For the same reason they didn’t kill him in London. Look, I see this as payback for Estonia. They kill the President’s friend and they blame us at the same time.”
Adler didn’t buy that line of thinking. “But we will be able to prove the Russians did this.”
Now Ryan reentered the conversation. “Prove it to whom? A board of scientists? The average person in Russia or even in the West, for that matter, isn’t going to believe our assertions that we can prove the Kremlin did this, nor are they going to read some third-party scientific study that corroborates the claim.”
Mary Pat said, “They will say we did it to frame them.”
Adler shook his head. “That is ridiculous.”
Ryan rubbed his tired eyes. “I’d bet seventy, seventy-five percent of his domestic population will believe Volodin. We’ve seen this over and over in the past year—he’s playing to his own room. Russia, and all the other countries in that part of the world, are under the effects of Russian-dominated informational space. Russian TV, which is more or less state-controlled, like the old days, is broadcast all over the region. Russia has a massive leg up on us as far as giving their perspective on any issue. The outside world to the majority of people in the former Soviet Union is the enemy, even for those who are no big fans of the Kremlin.”
Ryan said, “The head of SVR, and the former head of SVR, both targeted the same day. Something big is happening, and it is the job of everyone here to find out what it is.”
The meeting broke up a few minutes later, but Dan Murray, Arnie Van Damm, and Mary Pat Foley remained behind. Ryan said, “Dan, while you get started on your investigation, I am going to talk to Sergey myself.”
Murray replied, “I looked into getting a statement out of him already. You can’t talk to him now. He’s in ICU and is being treated. Even if they could wake him, he is on medication to where he could do little more than stare at you.”
Jack was undeterred. “It’s in the interests of U.S. national security that he is made coherent enough to communicate. Talk to his doctors, make it happen. I hate to do this to him, but trust me, he would understand. He knows the importance of information in a crisis, and both of our nations are at risk.”
Arnie Van Damm said, “Look, Jack. Maybe we can set up a CCTV between the West Wing and his room in the ICU, but I don’t want you exposed to—”
“I’m going to the hospital. He is my friend. I want to talk to him in person. If I have to be decontaminated after or if I have to wear a fucking rubber suit, I still owe him a face-to-face visit, especially considering the fact I’m ordering his doctors to wake him up and take him off the sedation.”
Murray said, “If you are going to push for this, I’d like to get an agent in there to interview him, too. We can see if he knows when and how this happened.”
“That’s fine,” Jack said. “But they go in after I talk to him. We need to catch the assassin, but the larger ramifications of this are even more important. I don’t want them to wear him out before I get a chance to talk to him.”
Jack sipped his coffee. “I wish I thought finding the culprit in Golovko’s poisoning would lead back to Volodin and cut him off at the knees. There are those in the West, those on the margins, who will be swayed, but that’s not the point.”
Dan Murray, the law-and-order man, said, “The point is to catch an assassin. I’ve got my best people on it. We will find out when, where, and how. The why is going to have to come from CIA or State, I guess.”
Ryan put down his cup and thought about the prospects of catching the assassin. “Whoever did this is probably long gone from the U.S. CIA or State might end up involved in the takedown of the perpetrators. Keep them updated on the investigation.”
Murray nodded. “Will do.” He shook his head. “Can you believe it’s come to this? What the hell has happened to Russia? We’d come so far since the Cold War. A few years ago I was over there, working hand in hand with their Interior Ministry.”
Ryan said, “And I supported their short-lived move to NATO, helped them in their conflict with China. Times change.”
Mary Pat said, “The leadership changed, and that changed the times.”
“All right, everyone, keep me posted.” Jack looked to Arnie. Before he could say a word, Arnie spoke.
“I know. You want to be made available for anyone here if they need you.”
“You got it.”
13
The new U.S. embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, was on A. I. Sikorsky Street, in a leafy section on the western side of the city. Deep within the walls of the sprawling compound, the CIA station occupied a six-room professional suite on the third floor of the main embassy building. During the day a small cadre of case officers, administrative assistants, and secretaries filled the cubicles and offices, but in the evening the space had a tendency to quiet down. Virtually every weeknight at nine p.m., however, the lights in the small but well-appointed break room flicked on, and a gaggle of mostly middle-aged, mostly white men pulled whiskey and scotch out of a cupboard and sat at one of the break room’s large round tables.
The chief of Kiev Station was a forty-eight-year-old New Jerseyan named Keith Bixby. He ran a sizable staff of case officers here at the embassy, each of whom was tasked with running agents in the Ukrainian government, military, and local businesses, as well as with reaching out to diplomatic personnel from other nations who were themselves stationed in the city.
For many years Kiev Station was given short shrift by Langley for the simple reason that the best and the brightest officers, along with the vast majority of the dollars, went to combating Islamic terrorism, meaning this and other former Soviet republics were relegated to yesterday’s news.
But this had changed, slowly, at first—with the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the reduction in focus on the Middle East in general—and then more quickly, with the ascendance of Valeri Volodin to power in Moscow and his imperialistic aspirations. The former Soviet republics began receiving more focus from Langley, and nowhere was that renewed focus more important than in Kiev.
Even though the CIA was putting resources into Ukraine again, it remained a tough posting for Keith Bixby and his team. The country was divided between the nationalistic and somewhat pro-Western west side of the nation, and the staunchly pro-Russian eastern side of the country. Russia itself was actively meddling in the nation’s affairs, and like a dark cloud, a very real threat of Russian military power being
used against the nation hung over everyone’s head.
Keith Bixby had started his career as a young case officer in Moscow, but because of his organization’s focus on Islamic-based terrorism, he had spent the entire past decade in Saudi Arabia, scrambling to learn the lay of the land in a completely different environment and culture from what he was accustomed to. Only nine months earlier had that phase of his career ended, and he was given the top posting in Kiev.
And Kiev was, as far as he was concerned, ground zero in U.S. dealings with Russia.
Sure, COS Moscow would be a more prominent posting, but the Moscow Station chief’s movements were highly controlled and curtailed. Of course, Keith knew there were FSB agents here in Kiev, and they were no doubt monitoring U.S. embassy personnel to the extent they could. But Bixby and his case officers had a lot more mobility around the city and much more access to the cordons of local power than if they had been working in Russia itself, and for this reason he felt Kiev was a better and more important place to serve as COS.
Bixby worked extremely hard at his difficult job, and he’d been getting less than five hours of sleep a night ever since the conflict up north in Estonia, but he rewarded himself every evening by getting together a group of his staff to play Texas-hold-’em poker and drink Jack Daniel’s and Cutty Sark.
As much as he wished he could hang out in a local pub and take in the nightlife here in Kiev, his poker games were with his case officers, and they doubled as one more opportunity to talk shop each day. That wouldn’t be possible in the city, of course, so the office’s boring and antiseptic-smelling break room was the venue for the nightly event.
Some of Bixby’s best case officers were women, which came as no surprise to him, because Mary Pat Foley was known in CIA circles as perhaps the best on-the-ground case officer ever employed by the Agency. But every female case officer on Bixby’s staff had a family, and juggling their difficult jobs along with a domestic life was tough enough without adding on the additional chore of heading back up to the office each evening to play poker with the boss.