“But what if Clarke refuses to order U.S. forces into the Baltics? Or what if he does, but he doesn’t send enough? Or he can’t persuade the rest of NATO to send forces to help us create a deterrent? What if Luganov simply moves up his timetable and invades earlier than the seventh? We can’t base our entire plan on building up a big enough deterrent force in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. We need a plan B.”
“Maybe so,” Morris said. “But it’s sure not going to be an assassination.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, it’s illegal.”
“Okay, there’s that.”
“Second of all, who’s going to kill him—you?”
“I’d rather not, but . . .”
“But what?” Morris asked, incredulous. “Ryker, you really are mad. One, if you were actually to assassinate the leader of Russia, that’s an act of war. And who’s to say that would derail things? Why wouldn’t Luganov’s successor use the moment to invade anyway? Two, if you’re unsuccessful—if you’re killed or captured while trying to take out the leader of the Russian Federation—then you’ve given Luganov the ultimate pretext not just to seize the Baltics but to carry out any other crazy attack he’s planning. Three, it’s a completely stupid idea. And four, did I mention how stupid an idea it is?”
“So you’re saying you’ll keep an open mind—great,” Marcus said as the water came to a boil. “Tea?”
Morris stood there staring at him for a moment, then smiled and said yes. Marcus made them each a cup, and they sat down at the kitchen table and pushed aside the Glock and the cleaning supplies.
“Look,” he said, “the Raven was pretty clear that the invasion scenario is being driven entirely by Luganov.”
“No, he said the FSB chief supports him too.”
“Nimkov.”
“Right.”
“Fine,” Marcus said. “But there’s no indication that everyone else in the cabinet or even the war council does,” Marcus noted. “Do you have a copy of the transcript the Raven gave us of the conversation between Luganov and the army chief of staff just before Luganov sacked him?”
Morris pulled up the document on her laptop, and they reviewed it together.
GENERAL: You are asking us to capture and occupy three NATO capitals?
PRESIDENT: And secure their annexation so that they might be rightfully reintegrated into Mother Russia.
GENERAL: But not Kiev.
PRESIDENT: Not right now.
GENERAL: Would it not be in our interest to seize all of Ukraine instead? The Ukrainians are very patriotic, and they’re able fighters, but they are not members of NATO. Washington and Brussels will huff and puff, but in the end they will do nothing if we take Ukraine. I have war-gamed this with my staff. I’m convinced we could get it done in a month to six weeks.
PRESIDENT: But we can have the Baltics in four days.
GENERAL: How is it in Russia’s interest, if I may ask, to provoke such a confrontation with NATO when Ukraine is ours for the taking with no risk of triggering Article 5?
“So your point is that the head of the Red Army was sacked because he told Luganov that going after the Baltics instead of Ukraine was a mistake,” Morris said. “And you think maybe there are others around that table who harbor similar concerns?”
“What if there are?”
“Then wonderful, but what if there aren’t?” Morris pushed back. “You don’t have any proof, just a hunch. And how could you possibly justify a high-risk American operation to assassinate Luganov on a hunch?”
“Look, Jenny, the Raven made it perfectly clear to me that in Luganov we’re dealing with a psychotic personality. The man thinks he’s a czar. The Raven called him an old-guard imperialist willing to use any means necessary to take back lands he believes are rightfully his. Can we safely assume there are members of his war council that support him or at least won’t risk countering him? Absolutely. I grant you that. But if Luganov is gone, if he’s taken out of the picture, do the members of that cabinet still move forward with Luganov’s plan, knowing full well that they risk a nuclear war with NATO in the process? You’ve got to admit that if Luganov was dead, their calculus would have to change. And that might give the West the time we need to avert a full-blown war in Europe.”
Morris said nothing for several minutes. She slowly sipped her tea and stared at the Glock on the table in front of her while freezing rain pelted and rattled the windows.
“So—hypothetically speaking—how would you do it?” she asked finally, looking him in the eye once again. “How would you take him out? You’re not an assassin, Ryker. And with all due respect, even if you were, you haven’t fired a gun in years.”
“You’re right,” Marcus replied. “But you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m a Marine, and if there was one thing I was taught, it was this: Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
“Catchy,” said Morris. “So you have a plan?”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “But I’m working on it, and so should you.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.—26 SEPTEMBER
Senator Bob Dayton wasn’t sure which meeting worried him more.
The one he’d had with Luganov or the one he was about to have with Clarke.
True, Luganov was a modern czar, ruthless and throbbing with ambition. But he was not a figure unheard of in the history of Russian rulers. Andrew Hartford Clarke was something else altogether. Apparently willing to say anything and do anything to build his brand and advance his goals at all costs, Clarke was the most polarizing yet thoroughly original and entertaining political figure Dayton had ever met or even heard of. The man routinely, sometimes hourly, provoked surges of raging emotions both for and against him. He had single-handedly upended the Washington political establishment by winning first the Republican nomination and then the presidency when not a single pundit or pollster had given him a chance. Few members of Congress, if any, had spent any time before the election actually considering what a Clarke presidency would look like, how it would operate, or how they would interact with it. Dayton himself had bitterly railed against Clarke in dozens of campaign speeches and hundreds of radio, television, print, and electronic interviews. In turn, he had seen his own approval ratings soar among the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Indeed, this was what had prompted him to think a run against Clarke for the presidency was becoming not just plausible but imperative.
As the leased Learjet touched down at Dulles International Airport and taxied to the Signature Flight Support Center for private aircraft, Dayton faced the most difficult decision of his political career. In less than an hour, he would be sitting in the Oval Office with a man he utterly despised, a man his supporters despised even more. To evince any hint of being ready to work together on the Russia crisis in a bipartisan manner with such a man could very well be political suicide. Yet not to work together, Dayton feared, could lead in short order to a nuclear disaster of incalculable magnitude.
If this weren’t bad enough, Dayton could hardly expect to sidestep the media and hope his conversations with Clarke could somehow be kept confidential. Even before they’d left Moscow, Dayton had instructed his press secretary to pull out all the stops and line up every interview he could, and the young man had done his job. Tonight Dayton was scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes to give an exclusive on his discussions with Luganov and the leaders in Eastern Europe who believed they were facing an imminent military showdown with Russia, and how the news out of North Korea could be dramatically changing the story line. The following morning he was set for back-to-back live interviews on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC on the same topics. Surely his meeting with Clarke would leak, and surely he would be asked about it in every interview. What would he say?
In many ways, this was a potential presidential candidate’s dream scenario—a big media platform at a moment of global import. Yet Luganov’s moves were scrambling Day
ton’s playbook. The senator now had no idea what advice he wanted to give to Clarke or even how he wanted to characterize his meetings with Luganov or Clarke to the press, and he was quickly running out of time to figure it out.
The meeting did not go well.
For starters, President Clarke was not interested in being briefed by a man actively planning to run against him in the next national election. Twice he interrupted the senator to ask if this wasn’t all a ploy for big ratings and fifteen minutes in the spotlight.
Dayton told the president it was his “moral and constitutional duty” to rapidly deploy tens of thousands of American and NATO forces to the Baltics and to supply the Ukrainians with arms, ammunition, and intelligence. “The only thing standing in the way is your own inexperience and hubris!” he shouted. When Clarke accused Dayton of using the crisis for political gain, the senator responded, “Mr. President, if you refuse or even hesitate to come to the aid of vulnerable NATO allies in a moment of peril, you will undermine the greatest military and political alliance in the history of freedom.”
As McDermott would later relay to Nick Vinetti, the heated voices could be heard throughout the West Wing. Both men either were unable to control themselves or believed that when the high-profile dustup in the Oval Office inevitably leaked to the press, it would help them with their bases.
There was just one problem with such calculations, McDermott would tell his old friend. “Both men seem to have forgotten a nuclear war might bode poorly for either of their political fortunes.”
MOSCOW—26 SEPTEMBER
Marcus knew Jenny Morris would be no help in taking out Luganov.
She’d humored him for a moment, but only because she believed he was kidding or yanking her chain. Pressed, however, she’d thrown Executive Order 12333 in his face, notably Part 2.11, which read, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”
Marcus was not only familiar with the order, he’d studied it quite carefully, as had all special agents, and he knew it wasn’t quite as clear-cut as it might seem. Signed by Ronald Reagan back in 1981, the order never actually defined the term assassination, creating a significant gray area. Several later presidents and their attorneys general had, in fact, concluded that “targeted killings” of terrorist leaders—such as Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership—were not just legal but morally justified. The order had never been tested in the courts, and over the past few days Marcus had been asking himself whether an order inhibiting the nation’s ability to act in self-defense was even constitutional.
It wasn’t that Marcus supported killing foreign leaders in general. Still, he kept thinking of what might have happened if someone had taken out Hitler before he invaded Poland, before he set the Final Solution into motion. At least twenty-five attempts were made against the führer’s life. Weren’t men like Claus von Stauffenberg and his colleagues—who initiated the much-heralded, if unsuccessful, Operation Valkyrie—heroes for at least having tried to stop a madman from murdering millions?
What about Dietrich Bonhoeffer? His story cut closer to home. He was a German Christian, a Protestant pastor and theologian. When Hitler outlawed the preaching of the gospel and the teaching of the Bible and moved to take over the state church, Bonhoeffer first started an underground seminary, training young men to remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus instead of selling out to the Nazis. In the end, however, after much prayer and study, Bonhoeffer joined a conspiracy to assassinate the führer to prevent him from destroying the Germany he loved. Was something similar needed now?
Marcus wasn’t entirely certain, but he was determined to have a plan, should an opportunity present itself. Of course, such a plan would hinge on his knowing exactly where Luganov was going to be at any given moment. Perhaps Oleg could get him the president’s schedule. Right now he was probably in the air, on the way home from North Korea. And once he was back in Moscow, why would Luganov go anywhere public if he was counting down the hours to a full-on invasion of three NATO countries? More likely he would be holed up for the next few days in the Kremlin, huddling with his generals. Still, Marcus needed to be ready.
He got up and went into the kitchen. Morris was still sitting at the table, now sending an encrypted cable back to Langley, a pot of tea at her side.
“I need a weapon,” Marcus said.
“No, you don’t,” she said, not bothering to look up from her work. “You’re never going to get near him.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. “But even if you’re right, we still need an extraction plan for the Raven, don’t we?”
Now she looked up. “Yes, but—”
“I think I may have one.”
“You already have a weapon,” she said, glancing at the Glock.
“You’re telling me that if something goes down, you really want me defending myself with an American sidearm? No, I need something Russian, something untraceable. A Vul and a Vintorez would do nicely.”
“A silent pistol and a sniper rifle?”
The MSS Vul had been the standard-issue pistol for the KGB, Spetsnaz, and other Russian and Eastern Bloc assassins and spies since the early 1980s. It could fire a 7.62mm round with impressive accuracy and make no more sound than a nearly inaudible metallic click. Even better, it emitted no smoke or flash.
The VSS Vintorez—“thread cutter” in English—was a highly effective Soviet-era sniper rifle used by Special Forces. Traditionally equipped with a high-end telescopic sight, when it was fitted with a night-vision scope, it became even deadlier.
For the next ten minutes, Marcus walked Morris through his idea to get the Raven out of the country. It was incredibly risky and somewhat complicated. It would require not just Morris’s green light but her active cooperation. And there was one big problem: Russians were almost certainly going to have to die. Four of them, to be exact. Marcus didn’t like it, and he said as much. But those were the facts. The Raven had a four-man security detail with him at all times, Marcus told her. He had given them the slip once, on the night he came to the Hotel National to meet with Marcus. It was too much to hope that the Raven would be alone again, especially in the lead-up to a major military operation. If Langley truly wanted this source in their hands, back in the U.S. or some place where they could debrief him to their hearts’ content, to learn every secret they possibly could about Luganov and the inner workings of his regime, then this was the only way.
Morris was quiet. She asked a few questions, and he provided what he thought were reasonable answers. Then the two just looked at each other.
Finally Morris excused herself.
“Where are you going?” Marcus asked. “I need an answer.”
“So do I,” she said. “And this is above my pay grade.”
NOVO-OGARYOVO, RUSSIA—28 SEPTEMBER
“Mr. President, we have a problem.”
The tense voice on the other end of the phone belonged to FSB Chief Dmitri Nimkov.
“It had better be an emergency, Dmitri Dmitrovich—I’ve only recently returned from North Korea, and it’s the middle of the night!” Luganov shouted into the receiver by his bed. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Clarke, sir.”
“What about him?”
“He just mobilized the Eighty-Second and the 101st Airborne Divisions.”
One hour later, Luganov’s chopper landed at the Kremlin.
He strode into the cabinet room with Oleg and Special Agent Kovalev right behind him and found his senior military and intelligence officials nervously waiting to give him a more-detailed briefing.
Nimkov took the lead, as Oleg expected he would. In recent months, Oleg had watched as Luganov leaned more and more heavily on the FSB chief and less and less on Defense Minister Petrovsky. Oleg had first seen it on his trip to Vladivostok for the meeting with the North Korean leader. Nimkov had been the president’s confidant, while Petrovsky was kept out of the loop on c
ritical details of Luganov’s meetings.
And Petrovsky hadn’t even been invited to come to Pyongyang on the most recent trip. Nimkov had been, and Oleg had watched the fifty-four-year-old spymaster—operating in a role Luganov himself had once held—not only taking commands from the president but providing counsel that, from Oleg’s vantage point, was being listened to and even heeded. Nimkov, more than any other cabinet member, was emerging as Luganov’s right-hand man. Oleg had even begun to wonder if his father-in-law saw Nimkov as his heir apparent. Both men were ruthless and driven and supremely comfortable with the dark arts of statecraft. And Nimkov knew his place. He was careful to be—or at least appear to be—exceedingly loyal to Luganov. And Luganov always rewarded loyalty.
Nimkov began the briefing by explaining that while the news hadn’t broken in the media yet, Russian intelligence had determined that the Pentagon was in the process of mobilizing and rapidly deploying more than forty thousand combat soldiers and Special Forces commandos along with hundreds of battle tanks, heavy artillery, antiaircraft batteries, and Patriot missile launchers. At the same time, at least a dozen fighter squadrons and four heavy bomber wings had been ordered to be prepared to leave American bases and head for Europe in the next forty-eight hours. Though it wasn’t precisely clear where in Europe they were going, the FSB’s operating presumption was that the squadrons were headed to the Baltics. Meanwhile, the Americans’ Carrier Strike Group 10—with its flagship USS Dwight D. Eisenhower—had just been ordered to move out of the North Atlantic and into the Baltic Sea.
As best they could tell, Nimkov noted, the orders for the American ground forces were to deploy from bases across the American East Coast and Southwest to bases in Poland as part of NATO’s ongoing Enhanced Forward Presence. They weren’t deploying to the Baltics—yet—but twenty teams of American logistical officers had landed overnight in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, strongly suggesting that the U.S. and other NATO forces would be arriving there within four to five days and certainly no more than a week.