The Seventh Angel (5 page)

The impression was further exaggerated by some indefinable element of presence. The agents looked sharp and professional in the conservative business suits that were the de facto uniform of the plainclothes branch of the Secret Service. Their suits were probably off the rack, with only the amount of alteration needed to make them fit properly. Frank’s suit was a masterpiece of single needle tailoring in blue-gray Hunt & Winterbotham wool, and he still came off looking like a farm hand dressed in someone else’s clothes. Even the legendary Georges de Paris, tailor for every American president since Lyndon Johnson, could not make Frank Chandler look at home in a necktie.

Back during Frank’s now famous underdog bid for Governor of Iowa, Jenny had started calling it the
Jethro
factor. His wife had only used the term in private, but Frank’s campaign manager had come unglued at the first mention of Jenny’s secret joke.

The man had very nearly shouted into Jenny’s face. “The
Beverly Hillbillies
? I’m trying to get the media to treat the son of a corn farmer like an honest-to-god political heavyweight, and you’re coming out with the Beverly-
frickin
’-Hillbillies? If word of this gets around, it’s going to make the front page of every newspaper in the state.”

Jenny hadn’t been the least bit intimidated by the man’s outburst. “It’s a joke,” she’d said calmly. “Lighten up.”

The campaign manager’s nostrils had flared visibly. “I
know
it’s a joke. And that’s exactly what your husband’s campaign is going to become when the media gets a hold of it.” He’d crammed his hands into his pockets with a force approaching violence. “What are you going to say when some reporter shoves a microphone in your face and asks you why your private nickname for your husband is Jethro?”

Jenny had rewarded the campaign manager with a mischievous little smile. “When he played the role of Jethro Bodine, Max Baer Jr. was six feet-four inches of strapping young stud. And—from what I’ve heard—the man is hung like a plow horse. So I guess I’ll tell the reporters that it’s an utterly natural comparison to make.”

She’d turned up the wattage on her wicked little smile. “Let’s see them run
that
on the front page of the papers.”

Frank nearly grinned at the memory. He knew perfectly well that Jenny would have made good on her threat if the Jethro question had ever come up at a press conference. She would have pointed her blue eyes directly into the camera lenses, and happily informed the assembled reporters and a few million television viewers that her husband was hung like a plow horse.

It wasn’t true, of course. But after sixteen years of marriage and two children, Jenny still seemed to be under the happy delusion that it
was
true. Sometimes she still called him
Jethro
in private moments, unless she had a couple of vodka martinis in her, in which case she might substitute the words
plow horse
.

Frank covered his mouth and faked a cough to hide the dopey smile that threatened to seize control of his face. He used the half second of respite to compose himself. He wasn’t twenty-five years old any more, or even forty-five. It was time to act his age and get his mind back on the job. It was time to be the President of the United States.

He covered the last few steps to his chair at the head of the long mahogany table, and turned to face the four members of his national security short staff. Per the dictates of protocol, everyone had come to their feet as their president had entered the room. He sat down, and motioned for the others to take their seats.

At the left side of the table sat White House Chief of Staff Veronica Doyle, and National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven. To the right sat the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Horace Gilmore, and the newly-appointed Secretary of Homeland Security, Becka Solomon—brought in after a third heart attack had forced her predecessor to retire from public service.

Most of the chairs at the long table were vacant. The small gathering formed the core group of regular attendees of the President’s Daily Security Brief: the so-called ‘short’
staff.

For a full-fledged meeting of the National Security Council, the vice president would have also been present, along with the secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury. In that case, the Director of Central Intelligence would have probably conducted the briefing himself, in his role as statutory intelligence advisor to the NSC. But this was a routine daily briefing, and the point man was a solemn-faced young analyst from CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence.

The president flipped open the blue-jacketed briefing folder and looked up at the analyst. The man was in his mid-twenties, probably not long out of college. Were they really getting younger? More than likely not, but it certainly
seemed
that way.

The analyst nodded, “Good evening, Mr. President.” He pointed a small remote toward the oversized flat screen plasma television at the far end of the table. The screen flared to life, showing the Presidential Seal against a blue background. The analyst pressed a button and the famous emblem vanished, replaced by a passport-style photo of a stocky middle aged man with heavy Slavic cheekbones and graying whiskers.

The analyst nodded toward the screen. “At approximately three AM local time on Friday the twenty-second of February, this man—a Russian citizen named Oleg Yurievich Grigoriev—approached the front gate of the U.S. Embassy in the Republic of the Philippines and asked for asylum. The Marine guards called for the embassy’s emergency medical team, because it was obvious that Grigoriev had been shot several times.”

“
That’s not standard procedure, Mr. President,” the national security advisor said. “Grigoriev is not a U.S. citizen or a member of the embassy staff. By the book, the guards should have contacted Manila emergency services and let the locals handle things. But the man was in shock, and losing blood fast. The guards figured he would bleed to death before the locals could get a medical team to the scene.”

Veronica Doyle jotted a note on the cover page of her briefing folder. “We should give State a heads-up on this,” she said. “We’re going to take some heat from the government of the Philippines for not following diplomatic procedure. They may want you to make a formal apology, Mr. President.”

“
I don’t mind taking a punch in the nose over this,” The president said. “Human life outweighs political protocol. Period. End of sentence. If the Republic of the Philippines wants to make a ruckus over this, we’ll turn it back on them. I’ll do a press conference, and publicly ask President Layumas if she thinks our embassy guards should stand around and watch gunshot victims bleed to death in order to satisfy the niceties of diplomatic procedure.”

“
I … uh … I don’t think there’s going to be a diplomatic issue, Mr. President,” the analyst said. “I don’t believe the locals even know that Mr. Grigoriev is in our custody. And the Operations Directorate doesn’t think we should tell them, sir.”

“
Hold it,” The president said. “This hasn’t been reported to the Philippine locals?”

The analyst swallowed visibly. “Uh … no, Mr. President.”

Becka Solomon, the Secretary of Homeland Security, closed her briefing folder with a thump. “Why the hell
not
?”

“
I’d like to take a crack at that question,” Brenthoven said. He pulled a small leather-bound notebook from the pocket of his jacket, flipped it open, and read for a few seconds. His eyes were still on the notebook when he resumed speaking. “The CIA has been interested in Mr. Grigoriev for several years, now. He was a soldier in the Red Army before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a tank commander with the Soviet Iron Saber Brigade during the last eighteen months of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His highest rank was
Stárshiy Serdzhánt
, or Senior Sergeant—roughly equivalent to Sergeant First Class in the U.S. Army. You’ll find a short dossier on the man in your briefing packages.”

Everyone except for the DI analyst and Brenthoven stopped to thumb through the blue folders on the table in front of them.

The national security advisor continued. “Mr. President, the CIA has fairly conclusive evidence that Grigoriev is a covert international operative.”

Doyle’s eyebrows narrowed. “You mean a spy?”

“
More of a bag man,” Brenthoven said. “A courier, who hand carries sensitive documents and information back and forth between his sponsor nation and foreign countries they want to communicate with.”

“
Isn’t that kind of thing usually handled by diplomats?” the president asked. “Wasn’t that the whole point of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations? Governments send sensitive documents by diplomatic courier, because it’s illegal to detain a diplomatic pouch, or search its contents.”

“
You’re quite correct, Mr. President,” the analyst said. “But there are cases in which a particular government might not want even its diplomatic corps to know what it’s up to. Circumstances that call for a higher-than-normal level of secrecy, or circumstances where a country’s leaders want to maintain maximum deniability.”

The secretary of homeland security looked at the analyst. “So that’s this man’s job? To bypass the Russian government’s legitimate diplomatic channels of communication?”

The analyst nodded. “Yes, Madam Secretary. That’s Langley’s assessment. Except we don’t think Grigoriev is working for the Russian government.”

General Gilmore stared over the tops of his black-framed glasses at the analyst. “If it’s not his own government, then who does our Russian friend work for?”

The general’s voice was quiet and even-toned. Like his round pleasantly-featured face, his voice seemed out of place in a professional warrior. He looked and sounded more like a librarian than a fighting man. But, appearances aside, he was a combat Soldier, from his boot laces to his regulation Army hair cut. The rack of ribbons above the left pocket of his uniform jacket included the Bronze Star medal, with the affixed “V” insignia for valor under enemy fire.

The analyst shifted his gaze to the general. “The … uh … The Operations Directorate thinks that Mr. Grigoriev works for Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov, the governor of the Kamchatka kray, on the Kamchatka peninsula in southeastern Russia.” The analyst paused for a second to let this strange pronouncement sink in. Then he continued. “Analysis of Grigoriev’s travel and spending patterns over the past year suggests strongly that he has been acting as the go-between for confidential negotiations between Governor Zhukov and certain elements of the government and military of the People’s Republic of China.”

The last word caught the president’s attention. “China? What does the Chinese government want with the governor of an obscure Russian province?”

“
We don’t know for certain,” Brenthoven said. “We have very little hard evidence, but what we
do
have is frankly scaring the hell out of us, Mr. President.”

The president nodded. “Alright, Greg. Enough pussyfooting around. You’ve set us up for the bad news. Now, go ahead and deliver the knockout punch.”

Brenthoven closed his notebook and looked directly into the president’s eyes. “Sir, due to the extent of his injuries, Mr. Grigoriev has only been conscious for short periods of time since he came into our custody. It may be several days before we can interview him properly. However, during his brief periods of lucidity, he’s managed to let us know that he wants to negotiate a trade. He’ll tell us what he knows in exchange for political asylum.”

The president cocked an eyebrow. “If he crawled into our embassy with a bunch of bullet holes in him, there’s a good chance that this man qualifies for asylum whether he knows anything useful or not. What do we think he can tell us?”

“
We’re not sure yet, sir,” the analyst said. “But he’s already revealed one piece of information that we didn’t have before.”

“
And what would that be?” the general asked.

The analyst took a breath. “Most of the top positions in the government of Kamchatka are held by former officials of the Soviet communist regime. Sergiei Zhukov is no exception. In the eighties, he was a mid-level apparatchik in the communist party. That’s pretty much common knowledge in the intelligence community. But we
didn’t
know that Zhukov used to be senior security officer for KB-11.”

Veronica Doyle frowned. “KB-11 … Where do I know that from?”

“
KB-11 was the old Soviet designation for Design Bureau Number 11,” General Gilmore said quietly. “It was the main laboratory at a Soviet military research city called
Arzamas-16
. After the collapse of the USSR, the facility was renamed the
Russian Federal Nuclear Center
. Back in the bad old days, that’s where the Cold War got started. Design Bureau Number 11 designed and assembled the nuclear weapons for the Soviet military arsenals. That’s where the Russians first built the atomic bomb.”

The president looked at the analyst. “You’ve followed up on this?”

The analyst nodded. “Yes, sir. We don’t have much to go on yet, but the few pieces we know about all appear to confirm Grigoriev’s story. The Ops Directorate has verified that Sergiei Zhukov
was
the senior security officer at Design Bureau Number 11.”

“
You still haven’t told us how this all connects to China,” The president said.

Brenthoven looked at the president. “Sir, Mr. Grigoriev claims to have been the middle man for a deal between Zhukov and the Chinese Politburo. Russian nuclear technology in exchange for some kind of Chinese military intervention.”