Commander-In-Chief (11 page)

But he was still speaking, wrapping up by talking about the new breeze of nationalism blowing across the nation and how this benefited the status quo, when he noticed that Levshin had begun drinking his vodka, not waiting for the toast.

Diburov noticed this, too, and he downed his own.

Around the room, others began reaching for the glasses on the table in front of them.

This was an insult.

As Valeri Volodin offered a high, reedy
spasiba
, thank you, at the end, he saw that almost all the glasses were empty, facedown on the table.

These men had been his peers, his equals, for most of his adult life, but in the past few years Valeri Volodin had become a reverential figure among them. He was not their equal, this he knew.

But now he saw they were treating him as if he was their lesser. Beneath them.
Who the fuck do they think they are?

A combination of fury and paranoia began to well up in the pit of his stomach.

Slowly, he nodded his head. In a measured tone he said, “I see the malice. You express it clearly. So . . . which of you would like to begin? Who among you wants to start off by telling me how you would have steered the national economy in a manner that would have brought the past year to a different conclusion? Who here would have been a better steward for Mother Russia? You, Levshin? Are you the one to say your face should be on every newspaper and not mine?”

Levshin looked back at Volodin with a placid smile. “Of course not, Valeri Valerievich. You were chosen to lead because of your skills, your abilities. No one is denying this.”

It was a smooth backhanded compliment, Volodin knew. “Chosen to lead” indicated to Volodin that the foreign minister was pointing out that he didn’t think Russia’s president could have made it into that role without the help of the other men in the room.

Volodin said, “You are my foreign minister. This precludes you
from complaining too much about international events, because you are our conduit to the rest of the world.”

Levshin simply said, “I follow your instructions, Valeri Valerievich.” Again, he was smooth, but there was ice in his words.

Bogdanov sat at a table right in front of Volodin. He spoke up now. “We are concerned about the oil prices, but no one blames you for this. But the sanctions . . . these are a direct result of the attack in the Ukraine. This was your decision, and you are in day-to-day control. I speak for those of us caught up in the sanctions. We are angry, Valeri. We could have weathered the storm caused by the drop in oil prices. But our international relations have been a disaster.”

Volodin shook his head vigorously. “Events in Ukraine have not gone according to plan, but we hold several oblasts along our border and we now control Crimea. The Black Sea Fleet is secure in a way it has not been in a generation.”

He saw that he wasn’t going to be getting a round of applause for the stalemate he’d entered into in Ukraine, so he spoke of other foreign initiatives.

“We have reached out in positive ways to the Chinese.”

Diburov parried this away. “Reaching out isn’t very specific, is it? Our pipeline talks with China stalled the day oil dropped below eighty U.S. dollars a barrel. It’s trading below sixty now, so China can buy from anywhere. They don’t want or need a pipeline now—”

Volodin did not wait for Diburov to finish speaking. He said, “And Saudi Arabia, long an adversary, is reaching out to us on many fronts.”

Now Levshin spoke up. “They are doing this because they have cash we need, and they think we are desperate enough to chance our policies on Iran and Syria to get it. Those are your policies,
Valeri Valerievich, and it is through your mishandling of the economy that we are in such desperate need of their cash.”

Volodin’s eyes scanned the room, saw men sitting up straighter, looking to one another. Something was coming. A threat, a demand. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, his palms begin to sweat.

He knew he needed to head this off.

For the first time this evening, Valeri Volodin looked to Mikhail Grankin, the head of his Kremlin Security Council. From what he had seen, Grankin had been the only man in the room to save his vodka for a toast to Volodin.

Grankin was young, only forty-five, a full twenty years below the average age in the room. He had been FSB, a bold and successful foreign intelligence officer, then he left intelligence work to serve under Volodin in Saint Petersburg. When Volodin came to the Kremlin a few years earlier, Grankin came with him, rising through the ranks from junior consultant to senior adviser on security matters. Volodin had been Grankin’s
krisha
, his roof, his benefactor.

And then, some months earlier, the head of the FSB had been killed by his own security force. Of course Volodin had been responsible for the death of Roman Talanov, and it was up to him to replace him. He sent Mikhail Grankin to Lubyanka to take the reins, not because he was smart and crafty, although he was. He was not necessarily the best man to lead one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world, but he was a Volodin confidant in the ways the fifteen other men in this room were not.

Grankin was
siloviki
, like the others, even though he was younger. His time in FSB had led him to riches and influence, but Volodin determined that Grankin was also young enough to be spared the hubris felt by every other man in this room.

Valeri Volodin no longer trusted the
siloviki
, nor did he trust the FSB, but he did trust Mikhail Grankin to comply with his wishes.

After a few months in power at Lubyanka to right the ship Grankin had left the FSB at Volodin’s request, and he came to lead the Kremlin’s Security Council, a small, tight group of men who advised Volodin on all matters of intelligence, diplomacy, and military. The hyper-compartmentalized and secretive president of Russia listened to Grankin and his small team, and he gave them directives, plotting the course for the nation.

Grankin, next to Volodin, was the most powerful Russian when it came to international affairs.

With a nod from the young Kremlin Security Council chief, Valeri Volodin turned his eyes back to the room and said, “Gentlemen. I can see you have all put your heads together and come up with a solution. But I am the president. So why not listen to
my
solution first?”

Shelmenko said, “You brought a solution to our problem with you tonight?” The skepticism was obvious in his voice. “Well, then, the boys and I can’t wait to hear it.”

After Grankin nodded to his president, urging him on, Volodin said, “You all want a change. I see this. A return to prosperity. I understand. Who wouldn’t? What if I told you there is an initiative I have been working on with Misha Grankin that will cause a transformation in the order of things? I wanted more time to perfect every note in this concerto, but I see from your faces that you men are not the type to wait. You’ve been sharpening your knives since last year’s meeting, and tonight your knives are out.”

Diburov sighed, blowing out smoke from his cigarette as he did so. “Details, Valeri Valerievich. Give us details. Without specifics this is just talk.”

“This is an operation of wide scope and immeasurable depth. I
can’t give you details, but I can tell you that once it begins, you will know, and when it ends, that is to say when we all come back here in one year’s time, Russia will be a very different and much improved place.”

Pushkin called out from the back. “You are going to throw
another
lady punk band in prison for dancing in the Christ the Savior Cathedral?”

This line got the biggest, and perhaps only, real laugh of the evening.

Volodin even smiled at this, but his sharp, angular face showed the malice he felt.

He said, “I smile, Pushkin, not because you are funny, but because I am already picturing the reception you will get here next year when I remind the room of your comment. No. Something big is on the horizon. It involves our military, our intelligence organizations, and the diplomatic offices at the Foreign Ministry.”

Heads turned to the foreign minister. Levshin shrugged. “First I am hearing about this.”

Volodin snapped back, “Because you have no orders yet. You’ll get them soon enough.”

“This sounds like the fantasy of a man trying to stave off the ignoble end of his tenure.”

Volodin bit his lower lip, the shaking of his hands nearly visible now.

Mikhail Grankin stood suddenly, surprising everyone in the room, even Volodin. “With your permission, Valeri Valerievich, I would like to address the group for just one moment. I know you are too wise and careful to provide specifics, but I am willing to stick my neck out.”

Volodin made a dozen calculations in his head, then slowly he nodded. “Be as sparing as possible, Misha.”

Grankin turned to the room. “We will bring the West by the nose to the negotiating table.”

The men looked at one another. Confused. Unconvinced.

“Negotiating for what?”

“The Baltic.”

There was laughter, jeers, and hisses, but from only half of the group. The others sat silently, curious to know more.

Grankin talked for ten minutes only, but this was more than Volodin had been willing to do. He was short on the details of the operations, but he went to some length about the results he expected to attain. When it was over, a show of hands indicated the
siloviki
were at least willing to let the opening volleys of the plan play out, to see where it went.

Diburov muttered that things couldn’t get much worse, so he’d watch Volodin’s scheme for a while.

The meeting broke up at three a.m. The mood, while certainly not ebullient, at least was decidedly more upbeat than it had been an hour earlier.

Grankin shook Volodin’s hand in the little lobby in front of the bar. Volodin said, “Are you heading back to the office or to your home?”

“I am going home.”

“Good. Come with me, I will take you. We can discuss matters in the car.”

“Thank you, Valeri Valerievich.”

•   •   •

O
n the drive through the darkened streets of Moscow, Grankin addressed his president. “They were even bigger old pigs than I expected them to be. They showed you no respect, and you handled them expertly.”

“But?”

“But we are not ready. Our plan is more aspirational in nature.”

“We have one year.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I was there. I heard you assure everyone that the world would be quite different in twelve months. But what if it’s not?”

Volodin chuckled. “Then we’ll both be sacked, of course.”

Grankin was not laughing. “Me they can sack. They can put pressure on you to have me replaced. But you? They can’t just remove the president!”

Volodin smiled. “You’re right.” With a shrug he said, “I’ll most likely be assassinated.” He held a finger up. “That reminds me, Misha. I want a list of the best offshore banking specialists known to the FSB. Your staff can compile it quite easily, I should think.”

Grankin cocked his head. “This is part of the operation? Something you haven’t told me about?”

“This is just one piece of my puzzle. I will work the diplomatic front, the military front, the cultural front, domestic avenues. Financial resources. There are many moving parts.”

“And you need to move some money, I take it.”

“Exactly so. But just give me the names of the people the FSB trusts the most. Men whose discretion is beyond reproach. Check with their leadership, and make sure you have a consensus from them.”

“I’ll have it for you in a week’s time, Valeri Valerievich.”

The motorcade pulled into Shvedskiy Tupik, a blind alley a kilometer from the Kremlin, and the limo pulled over to the curb in front of house number 3.

After shaking his president’s hand once more, Grankin climbed out of the limousine and entered his apartment, his security force
converging on him around the pavement as he climbed the steps to his building.

Volodin looked out the window at the dead city as his motorcade headed back to the Kremlin. His mind was not as quiet as the roads here at half past three in the morning. The city looked dead as he thought over all he had learned this evening. His mistrust for the men he had been with his entire career was complete now. Any one of these sons of bitches would do him in if it benefited them to do so. Grankin was better than the others, but that was only because his debt to Volodin was more obvious. He’d follow along with the plan as long as it moved in his favor, but he’d go running off after a new
krisha
if the storms became too heavy.

Hell,
Volodin thought to himself. Grankin didn’t need a
krisha
anymore.

Volodin looked forward to getting the list of the FSB’s most trusted minds in the world of offshore banking. There would be dozens of names; the FSB was always moving money and managing holdings for the
siloviki
, so there were quite a few men in the upper echelon of the industry they called on. But Volodin wasn’t interested in the names that would be on the list. He was looking for a name
not
on the list. One of the great financial minds of Russia who, quite simply, the FSB did
not
trust to move their money.

That
was the person Volodin needed to find, because if the FSB trusted a man, that meant the FSB could control the man, and Volodin needed to find someone with a unique level of discretion to help him prepare his escape in case this whole thing went to hell.

Present day

T
hirty-eight-year-old American Peter Branyon considered himself to be the luckiest man in the intelligence business. Not because he’d uncovered any particular nugget of information that would change the world. No, that hadn’t happened yet. But simply because of his current position. He was station chief in Vilnius, Lithuania, and it seemed like fate had given him one hell of a good opportunity to shine.

He’d come a long way in a short time, and he was smart enough to realize he hadn’t completely made it on his merits. A year earlier, one of the top men in the Ukrainian Intelligence Service was caught spying for the Russians, but not before he had passed on the names of many of the top CIA officers working in Ukraine.

As a result of this outing of CIA officers, dozens of men and women, all of them experts in the region and most of them Russian speakers, were recalled to the United States. Consequently, their roles had to be filled by CIA officers whose identities had not been revealed to the Russians. A massive reshuffling happened at the CIA’s Near East desk. The former chief of Lithuania Station was
promoted to the more important Ukraine Station, and a case officer in Vilnius was promoted to run the CIA operation in Lithuania.

This man’s tenure at the top of Lithuania Station did not work out. He was a field man, fair to good in his role as a case officer but completely unable to manage an office full of case officers from the top, delegate with authority, and administrate effectively. He was brash and direct to the point of being rude, and consequently lousy at building liaison relationships with the Lithuanians. Within a few months of his taking over, the new CoS had alienated longtime partners and delivered no real guidance or discipline over the men and women in his station who were out in the field, running agents and operations in the nation.

Langley belatedly recognized they had the wrong man for the job, so they demoted the CoS back to case officer, moved him to Jakarta, and then they went looking for his replacement.

And they found Peter Branyon in Buenos Aires.

Branyon had been CoS in Argentina only a few months, but before that he made a name for himself in Chile and Brazil. He was a hard-charging case officer, able to recruit and manage many agents, and his work running a network of Chilean embassy staff at the Chinese embassy in Santiago had won him the appreciation of Langley. An operation he managed in São Paulo involved bugging business-class hotels and recruiting tipsters at an executive airport, and it led to solid intelligence material on many visiting government employees of several nations, including breaking up a Russian SVR operation to plant listening devices in the U.S. embassy and an Al-Qaeda terrorist plot against a synagogue in the city.

Pete Branyon earned his way to the top of the Argentina Station, no doubt about that, but the Lithuania posting had fallen in his lap only due to the misfortune of others. Any Central European nation was a huge posting for a young CIA station chief, but the
Baltic was the center of the action these days, and for a number of reasons, Lithuania was the star of them all.

And that was even before somebody killed a bunch of Russian soldiers in the heart of the nation’s capital and blew up a natural gas facility on the coast.

Branyon told himself that although he might have lucked his way into his present predicament, he was going to make the most of it and prove that he merited the post.

To that end, in only seven weeks in the position Branyon had taught himself an impressive amount of Lithuanian, he’d taken a tiny and inefficient network of informants in the eastern part of the small nation and whipped them into shape personally. He acted not just as a station chief, but also as a case officer, unafraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, and unwilling to sit at his desk in the embassy all day. But unlike the last station chief, Branyon led from the front, had no problem delegating a dozen different jobs to a dozen case officers under him, and had no compunction about demanding hard work and discipline from all his staff.

Branyon wasn’t really supposed to be as hands-on as he was, but he was getting things done, sending back nightly cables to Langley about his quick progress in the station.

The only ding on his time here was a worry by others about his personal security. He was CoS, and he was sitting in cars in gas stations a mile from the Kaliningrad border, or walking down blind dark alleys in the capital, looking to meet with petty criminals who might have information to sell about shady foreign elements in the city.

After some prodding from the CIA security office, Branyon accepted a bodyguard, but only under the condition his was to be a low-profile version of personal security. Greg Donlin was a forty-seven-year-old ex-SEAL, and a longtime CIA security officer, with
stints all over Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He could work low-pro, just an MP5K hanging under his arm and hidden by his jacket and a subcompact Glock pistol under his shirt, a hidden radio earpiece that linked 24/7 to both the CIA security office and the Marine guard force at the embassy.

It wasn’t much protection for a chief of station who enjoyed hanging out in bandit country. Donlin would have preferred three or four guys with him, but Branyon said he didn’t want to wander the streets with a half-dozen other dudes like a goddamned boy band about to take the stage.

So Donlin worked alone keeping Branyon alive.

•   •   •

I
t was just dawn now, below freezing here in Vilnius, and Peter Branyon made a mental note to buy a thicker coat as soon as he could. His jacket was barely keeping his body heat in, and it was just October. By December he figured he’d be dead up here in Lithuania, found frozen stiff on the sidewalk after trying to walk to work.

He looked next to him to his security man, and he saw Greg was feeling it, too.

Donlin was from California, and Branyon from New Mexico. This was the first autumn in the Baltic for either man, and their first winter was just around the corner. Neither man was accustomed to the cold, and they both hated it with a passion.

Branyon looked his security officer over for another second and said, “I guess the reason I’m station chief and you’re not is because I’m smart enough to button my coat.”

Donlin sniffed, rubbed his red nose. “I’d
love
to button my coat, but I can’t. Got to have quick access to my piece, because my station chief insists on standing on a train platform out in the open.”

Branyon chuckled. “Okay, how about we go down to the train and warm our hands on a smoldering artillery shell?” He headed off down the platform, closer to the derailed Russian train.

“You’re just full of great ideas today, aren’t you, Chief?”

•   •   •

B
ranyon approached the massive crime scene; the cold air was full of the scent of burnt fuel and plastic, the sound of construction equipment and men hard at work cutting the dead out of the wreckage. He saw a small cluster of men in trench coats right next to a car torn open as if by a giant can opener, and he recognized the man in the middle. Branyon made his way through the group and up next to his local counterpart, the Vilnius director of the Valstybės Saugumo Departamentas, the State Security Department. The man held a cigarette in one hand and a telephone in the other, and he stood talking into his phone alongside the tracks as a dead Russian soldier was carried out in a blue body bag.

Branyon didn’t wait for the man to stop speaking into the phone before greeting him. “Morning, Linus. You’ve had a busy week.”

Linus Sabonis, head of the SSD, hung up the phone and shook Branyon’s hand. “Peter, nice to see you down here, but I hope you’ve just come as a friend of Lithuania. I hope Washington did not send you to investigate this. Everyone knows already who is responsible. All the people with one half brain know Russia did this to themselves.”

Branyon looked into the twisted mass of barely distinguishable items in the center of a train car. He saw some smoldering wreckage, but it gave off no warmth. “I’m just here to poke around. I had to see this for myself.”

Donlin kept his head moving in all directions, even up on the overpass nearby.

Branyon also looked above. The weapons there had been roped off, and there were guards standing around them, even though morning traffic was allowed to traverse the overpass. “Those are B-10s, right?”

“That’s right,” Linus said. “But don’t get any bad ideas. The Lithuanian Land Force can vouch for every one of those old things in our inventory.”

“What about Poland?”

Linus sighed. “No, Peter. Don’t be fooled by Russia. Even if those weapons turn out to be from Poland, it is still just a Russian ruse.”

Branyon shrugged. “I know I’m the new guy around these parts, but you’ll forgive me if I go where the facts lead. Everybody is saying Russia did this to foment the conflict, and you may be right. We just don’t know for sure yet.”

Linus said, “I know your government is looking for answers, but just look at who benefits from this. There are Russian troops to our east in Belarus, and west in Kaliningrad. The Russians have spent the past years putting a lot of troops and equipment very close to our western border. With this attack here, they have all the excuse they need to come over and say hello.”

Peter Branyon said, “We’re with you, Linus.”

“Is NATO with us?”

“You know I don’t speak for NATO.”

The director of the SSD nodded slowly and took a drag on his cigarette. “I know you don’t. I only hope you guys know that we do not trust NATO to come to our aid. Maybe America will help like they did in Estonia, like you guys are doing in Ukraine. But France, Spain, Italy? Forget about it. They are sorry they let us join their little group, and they will bow to Russia, let it do whatever it wants, even if they fill our skies with paratroopers.”

Branyon shrugged. “That sounds like an Article Five violation. They’ll have to come if that happens.”

Linus shook his head. “No. NATO will just say the Russians are only coming in for a visit.”

Branyon knew Linus was probably right, and he also knew he never had to worry about this sort of thing in Buenos Aires. The idea that Brazil would invade his host nation was laughable.

But here nobody was laughing about the prospect of the skies filling with Russian troops under parachute canopies.

Branyon said, “Tell you what, Linus. Let’s you and me work our asses off to keep our governments aware of the situation around here. That’s all we can control, so let’s stick to that.”

Linus nodded and puffed on his cigarette, then motioned to the train. Another body bag was being removed, and the sun glowed in the east over low buildings and factories. “You and I are standing on ground zero, my friend. This piece of train track. Believe me, people will look back and say this was the beginning of it all.”

Linus and his entourage turned and headed back up the tracks toward the station.

Branyon looked at his security officer. “What do you say we take a drive to the eastern border today? I want to see what our agents there say about the news coming out of Belarus.”

Donlin sighed a little. “What do you say you let one of your case officers handle your network on the Belarusan border?”

“It will be fine, Greg. We’ll be back before lunch.”

In a resigned voice the security officer said, “Not worried about lunch. Worried about Little Green Men.”

Branyon give Donlin a wink. “We see some Little Green Men, I’ll be the first guy in the country to turn around and run.”

“And I’ll be the second.”