F
rom inside the surveillance room of the casino Yuri kept an eye on the entry chamber, but nobody cracked the door. Nobody had entered the entire time he’d been there. All he saw was the initial security man and the bag-check girl, both chatting with each other. On a Sunday afternoon, the floor was a little sleepy, with a couple of Bulgarians playing slots and several very attractive female dealers looking bored around the blackjack table.
He wondered how much they would cost, and whether he’d get a discount as a member of the Russian security services. One in particular caught his eye. A blonde with a slight overbite and a big rack, highlighted by the way she was leaning over her table, dealing cards to no one. The flicking of her wrists caused jiggles in other, more interesting places.
“Status?”
The speaker transmitting Vlad’s voice snapped him out of his fantasy. He whipped his head to the camera feed from the little room on the second floor, finding Vlad staring at him uncannily. As if he could actually see Yuri in the darkness. Yuri punched the microphone button and said, “Nothing yet. Still no entry.”
He watched Vlad grunt, no sound coming through the speaker, then heard, “Where is that dumbass? You positive the only phone call he got yesterday was ours?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely positive. When he began his surveillance detection route, we penetrated the room. The only thing besides TV noise on the recorder is him talking to you. He’s called no one.”
“What about Internet?”
“We’d still hear Skype, and he has no laptop anyway. I suppose he could have used the business center, but I thought you’d vetted this guy. Do you think he’s playing us?”
Vlad shook his head. “No. No, I don’t. He’s just an unreliable African. No different than an Arab. I should have expected as much. He doesn’t show in another thirty minutes, and I’m going to have to pay for this room a second time.”
Yuri was unsure how to respond. In truth, he was uncomfortable with the entire setup. After the fall of the USSR, and the subsequent turmoil in the KGB, many men had left the service and taken their skills to the highest bidder, working for criminal groups bent on succeeding in the brave new world of capitalism. But this type of capitalism bore little resemblance to any other industrialized country in Europe. It was a jungle, where the KGB skills came in quite handy. Espionage and covert action were executed more than the servicing of supply and demand, with the stakes as real as anything between governments. Actually, more real, as the end result wasn’t a wink and a nod, with a prisoner exchange. It was a meat hook after a healthy amount of pain.
The Bulgarians had marched to the top of the pyramid, building criminal networks that rivaled anything the Sicilian Mafia could brag about. Now in a majority of countries in Europe, extending all the way to the United States, the relationship between the Russian FSB and the Bulgarian criminal groups had become symbiotic and intertwined. The state security apparatchik, in an effort to exert control of the capitalist experiment, had been co-opted to an extent that it was hard to see who was using whom.
For Yuri, a man who’d never tasted the nectar of freelance work, it was confusing. And a little disgusting. Vlad walked between the two worlds with ease, and Yuri was sure he commanded respect in both.
He saw a flash of light from the outside door opening, and watched as a dark male entered the casino. He waited until the man approached the bag-check station, turning over a butt pack. The man looked into the camera, and Yuri recognized Akinbo.
“Sir, Akinbo just entered. He’s at bag check.”
Vlad nodded on camera, then said, “You know what you’re looking for.”
“Yes, sir.”
Akinbo entered the casino, escorted by the security guard manning the door. He looked hesitant and lost, following blindly behind the guard and clearly not there to gamble. He disappeared from the camera in the anteroom, then reappeared inside the casino. Yuri tracked him all the way to the second floor and the little room labeled
MANAGEMENT
ONLY
.
He returned to the camera focused on the front door, seeing the security guard reenter, and hearing Vlad talking to Akinbo.
“You’re late.”
“I’m sorry. I became lost following the directions you gave.”
“You should have called. I’ve been sitting here for over thirty minutes.”
“My cell phone no longer works.”
“What? You mean the battery’s dead?”
“No. I mean it’s broken. It fails to do anything. When I left the room it was fully charged.”
“The phone I gave you? That’s the one not working?”
“Yes.”
Yuri heard the conversation and glanced away from the front door video feed, the words causing a heightened awareness. He saw Vlad pass across another cell phone, saying, “Take this. As before, do not call anyone but me on it. Understand?”
Yuri saw him pass across a sheet of paper and a netbook computer. “This laptop is clean. Never used. The e-mail address on that paper is what we’ll use to communicate. Use
only
that e-mail for operational matters. It is protected from the United States.”
Vlad continued by passing across a wad of euros. “Go to the bus station and get a ticket to Istanbul. There is a bus leaving in thirty minutes. You still have the passport with the visa, correct?”
“Yes, but I can’t get back to my hotel room and pack in thirty minutes. Why didn’t you say something yesterday? I would have made arrangements.”
“I didn’t plan on you leaving so abruptly, but that was before your cell phone quit working. I don’t believe in coincidence. I want a clean break. Buy what you need with the money I gave you.”
“I’m going back to the hotel room. I have time if I leave right now.”
On the monitor, Yuri saw the front door open and a man enter. Blond-headed and about six feet tall, he looked fit. He handed across his passport, as everyone had to do if they wanted to gamble, and Yuri saw he was American. A spike, but not much of one. The man had appeared much slower than a person conducting surveillance would have.
He entered the casino and wandered around, playing a couple of slot machines, then taking a few hands from the chesty blonde. Yuri watched his demeanor closely, seeing the man’s eyes rarely made it to the dealer’s face. He smiled inwardly.
No threat.
He continued studying the man for a few more hands, hearing Vlad arguing with Akinbo in the background. After three deals Yuri perked back up. In between bets the man was casing the establishment. Searching for something. It was by no means obvious, and he would have missed it had he not been looking for this very thing, but it was there, nonetheless.
He leaned over and keyed the microphone, giving Vlad a code word. Without shifting a beat, he heard Vlad say, “Never mind. You won’t be making that bus. There’s another one leaving at four.”
Yuri saw Akinbo scrunch his eyes in confusion, but Vlad ignored it, giving new instructions. “Remember the trip we had you make the other day to the fortress? You’re going to repeat it.”
P
resident Peyton Warren thanked the assembled crew and stood up, signaling the meeting was over. One more presidential daily brief completed, and, as usual, the world was on the brink of disaster from forty-seven different directions. Also par for the course, every analyst had an opinion on how it should be handled. But none had the mantle of responsibility.
Syria, Iran, North Korea, Brazil, you name it. They were all one giant cluster fuck. The only good news today had been when Bruce Tupper, the director of national intelligence, had described the treasure trove of information purchased from a former KGB man, now an oligarch selling information to the highest bidder. Russia’s own version of Edward Snowden, he’d apparently raided the new FSB for everything it had.
Most of the information had been historical, and the DNI was still going through the repository—a mountain of documents, all in Russian—to see what else could be gleaned. Warren hoped it would be something they could leverage in their quest to negotiate with the egotistical whack-job running the Russian Federation.
President Warren checked his calendar on an iPad, seeing his next meeting was with the principals of the Taskforce Oversight Council and the Taskforce commander, Colonel Kurt Hale.
Shouldn’t be too contentious
.
Apparently, Kurt had deployed another team in place of the one that had lost its team leader a few days ago. The sticking point was he’d done it without proper oversight. At least that’s what was going to be discussed. Well, that and the fact that the team he’d deployed was Pike Logan’s. Someone who gave the Council fits because Pike routinely ignored the word
oversight
in its title. Pike listened when he wanted, and pretended not to hear when he didn’t. But at the end of the day, he’d earned the right to get more rope than other teams since he had a nearly flawless track record. It was just a question of whether he’d ever hang himself with the slack. So far, he’d proven adept at dancing through the raindrops.
President Warren sat down and saw that the DNI, Tupper, was still in the room. Which was going to cause an issue with the Taskforce meeting.
Outside of the president, the director of national intelligence was the highest position within the Intelligence Community. The one person who was read on to
everything
, be it CIA covert action, NSA signal intercepts, or simply mundane Army intelligence about the intentions of the Taliban. The one person whose “need to know” automatically applied to every bit of intelligence collected in the name of the United States.
And yet Bruce Tupper wasn’t read on to the Taskforce. He had no idea that an illegal intelligence organization was operating under his nose. In fact, if he were aware, he would immediately demand its closure. He would never have authorized the Taskforce to purchase a single pistol, much less rampantly conduct illegal operations throughout the world.
Unfortunately for him, he’d been appointed DNI after the Taskforce and Oversight Council had been created, and President Warren had decided to keep him in the dark. It wasn’t an insult, as only thirteen persons sat on the Oversight Council, a mix of civilian and government personnel all handpicked for their temperament and expertise. Hell, President Warren had even kept his vice president in the dark for close to two years, only allowing the VP to be read on when he—as the president—had become bedridden with the flu, necessitating the action in case the worst occurred.
At any rate, the Taskforce was a temporary thing. Something created after 9/11 because the traditional Cold War intelligence and military establishments weren’t up to the task of combatting twenty-first-century terrorist threats. It had come about for the same reasons as the creation of Tupper’s position of director of national intelligence in 2004.
Recently, there had been some discussion among the Oversight Council about disbanding the unit, given that the heady days of 9/11 were long gone and the US population had begun to think government counterterrorism efforts were worse than terrorism itself, but every time that bubbled up the Taskforce had managed to avert a catastrophe and validate its worth.
No, in President Warren’s mind, there was no reason to mess with success. The Taskforce was clicking just fine. In fact, he wanted to expand its mandate. Broaden its portfolio beyond terrorism. The intelligence and military bureaucracy had grown unwieldy, with it practically a foregone conclusion that any mission conducted would not remain secret. Not so with the Taskforce. They were very small and very nimble. Maybe his successor would see it differently, but in his mind, living with the risk of exposure was worth the protection.
He routinely conducted backroom deals on everything from sugar subsidies to EPA legislation, burying his principles in a cesspool of human frailty in order to keep the leviathan of the US government working, but there was one thing he would never compromise. One thing he knew would keep him awake long after he’d left the presidency if he did: the deaths of US citizens that he could have prevented. He knew that protecting the life and limb of American citizens was his clearest, most fundamental task, and he’d do whatever it took to guarantee it, regardless of the less-than-legal nature of the work. Something the DNI would definitely take issue with.
While a good man, Bruce wasn’t exactly the bend-the-rules superspy of movies and novels. Far from being James Bond, he had been selected for two very mundane skills: one, he had proven very good at collating and integrating disparate organizations with different agendas, something the DNI needed in spades, and two, he was a fervent by-the-book bureaucrat.
While the job of DNI sounded sexy, in reality, it was so far removed from actual intelligence work that the position had turned off potential applicants who lived for the field. Men who would—and did—bend the rules where necessary. Men who could—and had—caused embarrassment because of a myopic vision of what was necessary for the United States.
President Warren didn’t want anyone like that at the helm of the US intelligence community. He had enough of a vulnerability with the Taskforce’s very existence. What was needed to rein in such men was a manager like Bruce. A man who took the rules seriously, and would drop the hammer to maintain compliance. If it wasn’t codified into law, then it wouldn’t be executed by any agency under his control.
Bruce had grown up in the Central Intelligence Agency at a very difficult time, thrown into the maelstrom of the Middle East during the seventies and eighties. He’d been tangentially involved with Iran-Contra, an effort to free US hostages in Lebanon through less than legal means, and had thought the entire effort was an abortion. A huge, dancing polar bear of a circus designed to avoid US law.
The mess had spawned a plethora of second-guessing on other intelligence operations where none was required, but he understood why. If you did secret things, you needed to ensure you walked the line. The minute you didn’t, people assumed you had strayed long before with much broader implications than the ones they were looking at. Like what was occurring now with the Snowden revelations.
President Warren knew that Bruce had his hands full dealing with the constant barrage of leaks, trying to stem the sea of distrust springing forth from Internet conspiracies. He didn’t envy the man, but that’s why he had been hired. He wondered what had caused Bruce to remain behind, knowing it wouldn’t be good.
He said, “Can I help you, Bruce? Was there something else you wanted to say?”
The DNI shuffled forward, his thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses making him seem much older than he was. Making him look like a librarian instead of a spymaster. President Warren knew those looks were deceiving.
“Yes, sir. You remember the Boris file we were discussing? About Russian intentions with Syria and Iran?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“There’s more than just Russian intentions in those documents. There are Russian reports of American activities, and some of those activities are volatile.”
President Warren waited a beat, then said, “And?”
“And they could have a significant impact on the current trust in government if they were exposed right now.”
Warren leaned back into his chair and studied his DNI. It was the first time the man had ever suggested hiding something for reasons other than to prevent the loss of sources or methods. The first time he’d ever broached the subject of burying something simply to protect reputations and the facade of trust.
He said, “So don’t let it out. What’s the big deal?”
Bruce shifted on one foot, then the next, clearly uncomfortable. He said, “Boris, our source, apparently sold the same package to the Israelis, with some cutting-edge intelligence we weren’t privy to.”
“So it’s the new stuff we need to worry about? Something we didn’t get?”
“No. Sorry. I’m confusing the issue. From our sources, the Mossad got an encrypted drive that held all the historical information we received. That’s what’s volatile.”
President Warren said, “What do you mean? How could something from the past affect us now?”
Bruce took a breath and said, “Remember the seventy-two Olympics? The massacre of the Israeli athletes? The documents prove that Russia—or the USSR—provided crucial assistance to the Palestinians. Assistance that allowed the attack to occur.”
“Okay. I’d think that would help us. Give us some leverage with that asshole running the country.”
“It’s more than that. It also talks about US involvement. We knew about the attack before it was going to occur, and we did nothing to stop it.”
President Warren took that in, incredulous. He leaned back in his chair and said, “Are you telling me the CIA knew the Palestinians were going to murder Israeli athletes, and we did nothing? Seriously?”
“Yes. Well, no. I mean, we didn’t
know
they were going to do it. We only had indications, and the head of Black September—Ali Salameh—was helping us deal with the Middle East. We were using him to further American interests. The reporting was just like a hell of a lot of other stories being spewed at the time. There was constant chatter about attacking Israel. We didn’t know it would actually happen. We didn’t
know
. . .”
President Warren heard Bruce’s voice break, and understood something more was going on. “Okay, Bruce, okay. What’s that mean to us right now?”
“Boris passed an encrypted drive, then died of a heart attack before he could give the password. Israel will crack the encryption given enough time. Boris was very thorough about protecting his return on investment. If it’s like our pass, the drive will simply give the location to another thumb drive. We need to prevent that from falling into Israeli hands.”
“Because they’ll find out about our supposed complicity in the attack? It’s old news. Nobody will care about that now.”
“Because it will expose the fact that we could have prevented the slaughter of innocents. The Munich massacre was horrific for Israel, and if it comes out that we could have stopped it, it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. After Snowden, this will cause the American people to forever lose trust in our intelligence community. It can’t come to light. It
can’t
come to light.”
“Calm down. It won’t be that bad. We can firewall it. Blame it on some guy that left the service decades ago. Trust me, political games are easy. We just need to manage the release. Defang it before the Israelis get the documents.”
“You can’t do that here. You can’t fake it. The documents name
names
. It can’t be hidden.”
“So we find the man who got the intel and prep him for a fall. How bad could it be? The guy’s got to be retired. The only way it could hurt us now is if it was someone still active in the intelligence community. You’re worried about nothing, trust me. I’ve lived in this world of political BS for much longer than you. Shit, the only way it would be a problem is if your name came up.”
Bruce winced, and President Warren felt his skin grow cold. He said, “Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to hear that.”
Bruce nodded. “I was Ali Salameh’s case officer. I’m the name on the disk.”