After Vladimir Putin had showered and changed into comfortable evening clothes, Yuri Simplov showed up. Putin was in an good mood because he had seen both of his daughters in the afternoon and then was able to spend more than an hour and a half in judo practice. He worked on all forms of martial arts, but judo was his first love and the first martial art that really focused him as a child. He practiced it for hours on end. It was his form of meditation, and he now had two sergeants from the perimeter security patrol who were perfect to practice with. They were built like Putin, athletic but not too bulky, and they were aggressive opponents. They were both approaching their midforties, but Putin could still get the best of them in most circumstances. His early sixties had hit him harder than he expected, and he worked longer than ever to keep his edge and stayed in shape. And throwing around two army sergeants did wonders for his confidence.
Judo also taught Putin how to size up an opponent, in life as well as on the mat. He had been doing that to the Western leaders for years and finally found that he had a decisive advantage over the current crop of politicians. Maybe not all of them, but certainly the ones running the U.S. and France. That was why the timing of this operation was so important. He had to start thinking of his legacy. How would he be remembered? He wanted to lead Russia to the forefront of world affairs once again.
The dinner with his daughters and their respective boyfriends had been light and easy. Both the girls had been adults when he and their mother divorced, and neither seemed to hold it against him. His divorce settlement had been generous enough to ensure that Lyudmila didn’t make waves.
The girls had filled him in on all their activities. He couldn’t have been more proud of them. For much of their upbringing he was a lower-level functionary, and they lived very modest lives. In their early teens he started to get better positions such as the head of the FSB or the domestic security agency. Then Yeltsin’s inner circle took notice of him. When the Russian general prosecutor started an investigation into money laundering by Yeltsin and his associates, Putin fired the man. Sensing they could control Putin, Yeltsin and his men promoted him to prime minister.
The timing was fortuitous. Yeltsin’s health had been failing for years, and before long he passed away.
Putin’s older daughter, Maria, who had been called Masha since birth, lived in the Netherlands part of the year. His younger daughter, Katerina, or Katya, lived right here in Moscow. Both girls’ private lives had been kept out of the media completely. Incredibly, they had managed to attend the University of St. Petersburg under assumed names without anyone ever knowing, even their classmates. They were true daughters of an intelligence agent.
But now he was entering the parlor where Yuri Simplov waited.
Putin found Simplov studying two pieces of art that were technically on loan from a museum in Amsterdam.
The way his friend quickly turned and the look on his face told Putin things were in motion.
A smile spread across Simplov’s rugged face as he stepped forward and said, “The trades have been made successfully, and the distraction attacks will now start in full force.”
Putin kept his face blank as he said, “And all of our connections are secure?”
“Completely. Our U.S. agent is a bit of an odd duck, but absolutely reliable.”
“Odd duck?”
Simplov gave him a smile and said, “He’s been stationed in New York for a long time and handled many situations for us. He tends to take things a little personally. That’s one of the ways we manage him. He hates to lose. He’ll stay on an assignment after he’s been told to move on. He’ll do anything to finish an assignment totally and completely. That’s just the kind of man we need at this time.”
Putin nodded his head. That was exactly who they needed. “But if there’s a problem he’s insulated from us, correct?”
“He’s well insulated. He has been in the U.S. for decades, running a small import/export business in New York for most of that time, and hasn’t traveled to Russia or any of our satellites. He’s married to an American woman and has a daughter.”
Putin chuckled. “Does he make any money?” That was the question he always had for any operation that used a business as a cover.
Simplov shrugged and said, “He does okay. We haven’t had to send him much money over the years.”
Now Putin looked his old friend in the eye and said, “And the Muslims? No one can know anything about our temporary alliance with them. If they shoot down our planes and kill our soldiers in Syria, we must not be seen to be allied with them.”
He wanted Simplov to see just how serious he was about this aspect of the operation. This was exactly the sort of op he liked working on as a KGB agent years earlier, but as the president of Russia it was a wild gamble that could cost him everything.
Simplov took a breath as he gathered his thoughts and said, “We have had very limited contact with them. No one knows anything of our actual intentions in Estonia. I have not risked activating any cells there, and we will draw our scouts directly from the military units already on the border. There is a tentative plan to use a Muslim woman from France who has excellent language skills to assist our military scout. I believed there was less chance of someone watching an unknown French woman than one of our agents already in Estonia.”
Putin patted him on the shoulder and said, “As long as the French woman can be eliminated if necessary. Good, good. Well done.”
“The money transfers have been discovered, and it is my understanding that the U.S. authorities in the form of the FBI are involved in the case. Our man in New York will do everything he can to slow down the investigation.”
Simplov said, “I told you that some of our tech people had developed an algorithm that would cause computers on the New York and London stock exchanges to start a sell-off catastrophic enough to trip the built-in circuit breakers. It is a relatively simple algorithm that works on the same principle as the computer program that manages trades. It will cause two major trading houses to sell, which will trigger the other houses’ computers to start to sell. It will be a cascading effect, gaining momentum quickly until the trading is stopped.”
“And the money transfers?”
“Introducing the algorithm was the challenge. It was introduced at almost exactly the best time, so that now the news should break just as the public learns of the out-of-control stock panic.”
Putin understood the world of finance. The sell-off would be temporary; its primary impact would be psychological. The Americans were already nervous about the markets after their long recession. This was precisely the kind of distraction he appreciated.
“Won’t the Americans be able to trace the source of the algorithm?” Putin asked.
“It will come back to a Swiss bank,” Simplov said, “where I’ve been assured they will find a dead end, at least in the near term. This entire operation is simply about delaying the discovery of our efforts until after we have control of Estonia.”
Putin was pleasantly surprised at how effective the plan had been so far. He embraced his old friend and patted him on the back.
* * *
It was a Monday morning, and Derek Walsh was thinking about Alena on his way to work. He’d had real trouble committing to women since his days in Germany. His girlfriend when he was stationed there had done a real number on him. He truly believed she had feelings for him, but all she really needed was access to his company credit cards. After stealing the cards and racking up thousands of dollars in iPads and other electronics, she’d been arrested, and he’d been disgraced. It didn’t escape him that she looked quite a bit like Alena. The fall weather and cool breeze only made him think of Germany and his bitter encounter all the more clearly.
Alena had done a lot to help restore his faith in women. Although she had some expensive tastes and he figured she thought he made more money than he really did—no one really understood how many grunts there were in the financial world—she had bought him expensive gifts as well. The Tag Heuer Aquaracer watch on his wrist was one of them. He also had an extra debit card she’d insisted on giving him so he could access her bank account in case of emergency. He’d only used it once, when they were on a date and he was short of cash. But he did notice she had over $4,500 sitting in her checking account. At least she wasn’t after his money. That meant something to him after being burned.
He’d be late getting to work but had played it off to the bosses as a breakfast meeting. In truth, the meeting was just a cup of coffee with a local Deutsche Bank analyst, and they discussed the sad state of the New York Jets—something Walsh had learned New Yorkers did a lot of over the years and had gotten very good at.
When he came up this way toward Wall Street, Walsh always gave the same three homeless people a five-dollar bill each. They were all veterans and down on their luck. Two had been in the navy, and one was an old Ranger who had served in Vietnam. Walsh sat with him one evening and listened to his stories of combat just before the withdrawal of U.S. forces. These poor guys had been virtually forgotten and almost completely ignored since the start of the First Gulf War. But they had done what was asked of them in a much more difficult time with no public support.
He stopped for a few moments to talk with the Vietnam vet, who, ironically, was named Charlie. The man once told Walsh his last name was Williams and on another occasion told him it was Wilson. Walsh knew not to pry but just do what he could to make the man’s life a little easier. Charlie occasionally stayed at a shelter near Walsh’s tiny apartment in SoHo and would walk with him all the way to work on nice days.
Charlie gave him a jack-o’-lantern grin with three teeth missing as Walsh approached. The older man said, “I haven’t seen you in a few days, Captain. Everything all right?”
Walsh smiled back and nodded. “Been busy at work.”
“Good for you. I like to see any former military man succeed. Even if he was a marine.”
As Charlie walked along with him, Walsh stopped at a bakery with a window onto the sidewalk and bought the man two doughnuts and coffee. He knew how Charlie took his coffee and didn’t say anything, just handed him the food.
The older man accepted it with a smile. After a minute of walking and throwing down the doughnuts like pieces of candy, Charlie said, “The cops find out anything more about the two thugs that tried to rob you?”
“They told me it was just a robbery and that I should feel lucky I wasn’t hurt.”
“Typical cops, just explain things away without trying to solve anything.”
Walsh normally would have defended the police, but in this case Charlie was right. It just didn’t feel like a robbery to him. It was more calculated. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had been much more alert in the past week.
As he reached the courtyard that led to the entrance to his building, Walsh stopped and stared at the animated crowd of Stand Up to Wall Street people. Two dozen cops were trying to keep them from destroying a cruiser they’d flipped onto its side and move them off the property.
Walsh looked at Charlie and said, “I haven’t seen these guys this active since they started protesting.”
Charlie said, “It’s not just them, there’s problems all over the city. I don’t catch much news, but someone said there had been more terror attacks and people are getting scared.”
Just then Walsh’s phone let off an alert tone he had set for breaking news on the financial markets. He fished the phone out of his pocket and swiped the screen. The markets had been open less than thirty minutes and were already down hundreds of points. Computer trading had been stopped, and the London Stock Exchange had halted trading altogether.
What the hell was going on?
* * *
Joseph Katazin sat in the home office of his comfortable Brooklyn residence. The converted bedroom held three TVs mounted in different corners, a pressboard computer desk, and two black leather rolling chairs. On a separate oak desk, paperwork related to his business was piled in a seemingly random order.
The room had little natural light because files and invoices sat on the windowsill and took up more than half the window space. Even though it was fall, the sun was shining. That was good: It would give these Americans a false sense of security. Nothing bad ever happened in sunshine.
Katazin was still amazed he was allowed to take such a big part in an extensive operation from outside Moscow. On the other hand, if something went wrong, he had no illusions. He would be the scapegoat, and no one in the Russian government would acknowledge that he ever had anything to do with them. And if he somehow escaped American custody, his own government would stop at nothing to eliminate him. There was nothing more terrifying to a government than a loose cannon who knew too much. This was not Hollywood. There were no tales of forgiveness and redemption. Only success or failure.
He’d really done very little so far. A few financial transactions, that was it. The only thing that really made him uneasy was the alliance his government had made, however temporary, with extremists who cared little about Russia’s interests. Katazin wondered if they even realized these Islamic extremists would turn on them in a heartbeat. But he worked with the resources that had been provided, and so far they had done everything they said they would.
Yesterday, Katazin had been able to leak the story of Thomas Brothers Financial sending money to an account accessed by terrorists. In addition, if anyone cared to look into it, Thomas Brothers would be missing hundreds of millions of dollars. The story hadn’t broken to the general public, but there were already rumors burning across the Internet.
He had a lot to keep track of. Some would say too much, but after years of relative inactivity, enjoying the good life as an American, he was ready for some excitement. His meeting in Battery Park in forty minutes would give him a better idea of how things were really going and whether his superiors were happy with him.
There was a barely audible knock on his closed office door. He turned and rolled across the hard wooden floor in his black leather chair to unlock the door, letting it open a few inches. He saw the pale face of his twelve-year-old daughter, home from school with strep throat.
She croaked, “Papa, can I watch TV?”
He motioned the girl into his office, and she automatically climbed up on his lap. He rocked her gently and said, “Yes, but don’t tell your mother. She doesn’t approve of TV when you’re home from school.”
She gave him a weak smile as he felt her forehead. She was still warm but getting better. She scurried out of the office, and he heard her pounding down the stairs. Her mother wouldn’t be home for another few hours, so he was safe from her murderous stare for overruling one of her strictest edicts. But his daughter’s smile made the risk worth taking.
Someone once told him they would rather have the flu in America than be healthy in most Eastern European countries. That was probably accurate. Most Americans never appreciated how good they had it. They would scoff at the thought of waiting in line for groceries or a new pair of jeans.
Now they were about to get an idea of how the rest of the world lived.
* * *
Major Anton Severov sat in the billowing tent hidden by tall trees on the border with Estonia and stared at his commander. The temperature had dropped in the last two days, and he felt a chill, but at the moment he wasn’t sure what the cause was. He took a step back and absently plopped onto a wooden bench. It was just after sunset. He wondered why this assignment couldn’t wait until tomorrow. All Severov could do was stare at the plump colonel with jowls that wiggled as he turned his head. The man was a stereotype of a Russian held by Westerners. He had a bottle of Dovgan vodka sitting on his camp desk, and he continued eating pork chops as if they were cookies on a stick, smacking his lips as he tore the meat from the bone.
Severov said, “Sir, I don’t understand. I’m a tanker, not Spetsnaz. I have a company to administer. I have been lining up my tanks for days and making sure they have plenty to eat and are well covered from satellite surveillance.”
The jolly colonel said, “Listen, Anton, you need to see this for what it is. You being asked to do this is an honor. It actually makes sense for a change. There’s little enough of that in the army.”
“But a scout? In civilian clothes? Isn’t that something intelligence should do? What good is the GRU?”
The colonel’s eyes shifted in both directions, and he lowered his voice. “Don’t talk like that, Anton. The fact is you were told to do this and you’re going to do a good job.”
“If I’m not in uniform, I could be shot as a spy.”
“That’s the beauty of the European Union. No one knows where you came from or where you’re supposed to be. A German will think you’re a Pole, a Pole will think you’re Ukrainian. And besides, you’re going to have someone with you that’s supposed to speak several languages.”
Severov still wasn’t convinced and stared off into space as he tried to find a new angle on this assignment. All he had ever done was arrange tanks in attack formation and fire the main gun. His dream was to meet NATO soldiers on an open battlefield, not creep around towns and villages dressed like a tourist.
The colonel said, “Relax, Anton, you could have fun. You eat some good food, meet pretty girls. You’ll be traveling with someone as soon as you cross the border. I’m told your contact will be with you for several days. Just scout out what routes are acceptable to the tanks and supply train and look for possible resistance. You’re the perfect choice. An intelligence officer won’t know where a T-90 can go or if a building would house enough soldiers.”
Severov said, “I could walk all of Estonia in a few days. Why so long?”
“You think too small, my boy. This trip could take you into Poland or perhaps even Germany. With the price of oil plunging like it is, no telling what we might need to do to survive. This is what drove the breakup of our great Soviet Union. We had nothing to sell but our oil. At least now we have leaders that are looking to the future and figuring out how to avoid another disaster.”
Severov just stared at him. Then he mumbled in a low voice, “We might go into Germany?”
“I’m telling you we’re on the verge of history.”
“Has anybody in command read history? The last time we tangled with the Germans it almost didn’t work out well. If it weren’t for the Americans, we’d be speaking German right now.”
The colonel put on his paternal act again and chuckled. “Anton, you’re a good soldier. Do your duty. You’re a good-looking, single young man. Have some fun for a change. I’ll have Lieutenant Poola take over your company. He’s quite a competent but humorless new officer.”
“Poola! The Georgian? He’s a Muslim.”
“We have almost seventeen million Muslims as citizens. They do their duty just like everyone else.”
Severov didn’t want to look like a sullen schoolchild, so he sat up straight and tried not to sulk. He didn’t like it, but he’d do it. It wasn’t as if he had a choice.
* * *
Walsh had given Charlie a little more cash and sent him the other direction, away from the growing chaos. The last thing he wanted was his elderly friend getting caught up in a riot. He jogged for the entrance to his building and made it past several of the shouting protesters. The keypad on the courtyard entrance was disabled, and one of the security guards had to unlock the huge glass doors to let him into the lobby. The young Hispanic man, whose name was Hector, gave him an odd look. Walsh gave his usual greeting and passed the man and another guard on his way to the elevator.
He couldn’t help checking his phone again as the elevator doors shut. Now the Dow was down almost eight hundred points. That was scary.
On the thirty-first floor, he turned down the wide hallway into the office that held his cubicle. He was barely looking ahead as he kept scrolling through the information on his phone. Once he was in the office he looked up and felt like every eye in the office was fixed on him. Maybe they didn’t realize he was supposed to be late today. The brightly lit office was augmented by the tall glass windows with the sun streaming through. Now a few of the other workers had turned to look out the windows at the protesters. Another police car had been flipped over, and six cops were backing up in the face of aggressive protesters armed with boards and pieces of a crushed police cruiser. A helicopter buzzed low overhead.
His boss, Ted Marshall, looked grave. The portly Northwestern grad was not his usually jovial self.
Walsh stopped and said, “What’s going on, Ted?”
Ted gave him a funny look and said, “Have you been living on the moon the last twelve hours?”
“No, but I don’t live here.”
Ted, always trying to be the diplomat, said, “Cheryl will handle this. You need to talk to her.”
“Handle what?” He was about to ask exactly what was going on when Cheryl, dressed as usual in an immaculate pantsuit, motioned him over toward her office. She was a pretty woman in her early forties, but her no-nonsense approach and brusque manner made her seem much older. She was the perfect enforcer for Ted.
The blinds on Cheryl’s office were pulled down. As he stepped through the door he saw a tall, attractive black woman about his age standing with an older, plump white guy fighting a losing battle against a receding hairline. The woman watched Walsh with sharp eyes like a hawk about to dive on an injured bird. The man seemed tired and possibly bored. All Walsh could think of was that they were auditors of some type. Great.
Cheryl shut the door behind him and wasted no time saying, “Derek, these folks are from the FBI.”
He offered a hand. The man ignored him, but the woman took it and said, “Tonya Stratford.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Take a seat.”
He hesitated, wondering if he should ask some questions first.
The FBI agent added in a calm voice, “Now.”
The command reminded him of the marines. He just followed orders.