Collision (43 page)

Turkey announced that the yacht had exploded from “a probable internal malfunction,” and there was no official investigation. The CIA denied having satellite evidence of a drone strike, but Komov believed the denial was an admission of such evidence. Far more important, there was enough suspicion of death-by-drone to give those who wished to scoff at Lebed's “not another Putin” propaganda campaign.

Basayev's death kindled in Komov's mind a suspicious speculation about Putin's fatal rare blood disease with no medical name. Komov admiringly wondered if somehow the Botox that smoothed Putin's brow had carried poison.

“Well? I ask again: What is it that demands this meeting?” Lebed said.

Komov snapped out of his reverie and said, “I am sorry, sir. There is unfinished business about Basayev. As the Presidential Intelligence Summary has informed you, Basayev had invited Robert Hamilton to join him on the yacht.”

“Robert Hamilton, I am informed, is still in Moscow,” Lebed said.

“That is correct. The executive suite of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski.”

“So he's a neighbor,” Lebed said, pointing toward the room's only window. “Right across the river.”

“Yes. And, sir, he must stay there.”

Lebed sighed.
Another damn “must” from the inscrutable Komov.

“Sir,” Komov said, “I told you before that Basayev was running a Russian-American criminal gang—and was aiding billionaire Robert Hamilton in his plan to mine asteroids. Hamilton's firm, SpaceMine, was to use a Russian rocket to carry what Hamilton called ‘a payload of scientific instruments' to an asteroid. As I said, asteroids have greater concentrations of precious metals, such as platinum and palladium, than any known ore mine on Earth.”

“But why must we keep Hamilton as a guest of Russia?” Lebed asked.

“There is a dark side,” Komov responded. “A SpaceMine engineer threatened to reveal that the SpaceMine asteroid would collide with the Earth in 2035.”

What the all-knowing Komov does not know,
Lebed thought,
is that the American president, Blake Oxley, has told me about that asteroid.

“To protect Hamilton and SpaceMine,” Komov went on, “Basayev ordered his gunmen to kill the engineer. As so often happens in badly planned assassinations, they killed four other people, and the gunmen themselves were killed by American police.”

Lebed, Komov noted, let a look of surprise pass across his face for an instant.
So,
Komov thought,
Oxley had held that back

“What of that warning about the asteroid hitting in 2035?” Lebed asked.

“I have no reliable information about that. It is science. I am not a scientist,” Komov replied.

“I will alert our space officials and see what they say,” Lebed said, declining to reveal that the 2035 threat was real and that Russian, American, and Chinese scientists were already jointly working on ways to defend the Earth.

 

 

4

Blake Oxley looked up
at the clocks clustered on a wall to his right, then impatiently turned back to Frank Carlton. Oxley recognized the look on Carlton's face.
Crisis. Trouble. Well, what else is new?
Although Oxley maintained a cool exterior, his mind operated at an aerobic tempo. He displayed little patience in dealing with slow-talking staff members, however high their rank. And here was Carlton looking as if he didn't know what to say.

“What's up, Frank? I don't have much time. Why the private session?”

“Mr. President, I have some bad news, and I'm afraid that I need to tender my resignation effective immediately.”

“Jesus, Frank! What now? Pardon my French, but the fucking world's coming unglued!”

Oxley was not given to vulgar speech, but the edges of his famed cool personality were starting to fray and unravel. “What can make things any worse?”

“Mr. President, in the wake of the Snowden scandal and the problems he caused us with our European friends and others, you gave a very specific directive. No monitoring of foreign leaders. No exceptions.”

“And I damn well meant it. So?”

“Well, some of the guys at NSA thought you went too far. They know that you were trying to strike up a new friendship with Russia's new man.…”

“Maybe not a new friendship, Frank,” Oxley said. “Boris Lebed is looking more like the new Putin. But I don't want the Cold War to start up again. Well, anyway, what is the new problem?”

“One of the NSA guys decided to keep all of our systems on Lebed. We've got every conversation he's had in his Kremlin office, private dacha, bedroom, bathroom.…”

“I get the picture, Frank,” Oxley said impatiently. “That's exactly what I wanted stopped.”

“Yes, sir. But…”

“I may have gone too far with that order,” Oxley said. “But that's
my
decision to make, not some anonymous Peeping Tom working for us out at NSA. I'm not a left-wing bumpkin, for Christ's sake! I put a hold on those activities until we can figure whether we're getting disinformation from Lebed and others. I'm not convinced they're not feeding us horseshit and we're thinking it's filet mignon. I…”

“Mr. President, I understand,” Carlton said, seeming unaware he was interrupting. “You're right. You gave me a specific order to shut down NSA's eavesdropping on heads of state. NSA did obey—except for Lebed. I missed that.
I'm
responsible, not anybody else. I decided that someone has to be accountable, and it should be me. Maybe everyone will get the message that the ax will come down on them in the future.”

Carlton paused for an instant. But before the stunned Oxley could speak, Carlton took a sheaf of papers from his suit coat pocket and lowered his voice. “I was just at NSA. Read the riot act to them. Got the Lebed intercepts absolutely stopped. But I think you need to see what they picked up this morning.” He handed the papers to Oxley.

Scanning the papers quickly, Oxley saw that it was a translation of a conversation, carried on hours ago, between Boris Lebed, president of the Russian Federation, and a Russian intelligence officer named Nikita Komov. They were talking about Robert Wentworth Hamilton and the SpaceMine asteroid. Oxley's eyes locked for a moment on
Ivan's Hammer.

“How sure of this are you?” Oxley asked. “How do you know…”

“We have multiple assets in Russia, and we've known about Komov for a long time. He's a throwback to the days of the Cold War. He's been a key adviser to Soviet presidents going back to the seventies.”

Oxley looked up from the transcript and said, “It looks as if the Russians don't want him to go home.” Nodding and still looking at the transcript, he went on: “So, you're convinced that Hamilton is about to become a permanent guest in Russia. Do you know or believe that he wants to stay there?”

“No, sir. But I don't think it really matters. He may want to come home and face the charges that will be leveled against him or just stay in Russia until we agree to drop everything and welcome him home as a hero. Point is, as long as he's the only one who knows where that asteroid is, the Russians will never let him go. And you saw that reference to Ivan's Hammer.”

Oxley nodded and asked, “So what options do we have?”

“We're going to have to go and bring him back, Mr. President. And quickly.”

“You want me to authorize a covert rendition operation?”

“No, sir. I don't think you should authorize any such operation.
You
can't do it. But it must be done.”

“What about Ray?” Oxley asked, referring to Ray Quinlan, his chief of staff. Oxley knew the answer, but he felt compelled to make the decision come from Carlton.

“No, sir. He hasn't been read into what Hamilton and his Chechen friend had been up to and I don't think he needs to know anything more … at this point.”

“And that transcript is for my eyes only.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think I know what you're actually not saying,” Oxley said, nodding wearily.
Deniabilty. He's giving me deniability.
“You can forget about that resignation.” With a slight smile, he added, “And don't you dare do anything illegal.”

“Understood, Mr. President. Absolutely understood,” Carlton said as the others began entering and the meeting was about to begin.

 

 

5

Back in his office,
down the hall from the Oval Office, Carlton sat at his desk and swiveled around for a moment to look out at the autumnal peace outside his window, and paused before calling Sean Falcone. He did not call him often, mostly because he knew it was bad form for a West Wing appointee to call his or her predecessor. Falcone always responded as a friend, and Carlton knew that there would never be any boast from Falcone about needing to help out his successor.

There was another reason for hesitating to call Falcone. Ray Quinlan had an enemies list, and Carlton knew that Sean Falcone had been at the top of it for most of his time as national security adviser. Quinlan had enormous power. Men and women in the West Wing may have served at the pleasure of the President. But they might not serve very long at the displeasure of Ray Quinlan.

When Carlton decided that he had to turn to Falcone, he knew that the decision could put him on Quinlan's enemies list. But he had faith in Falcone. He picked up the phone and punched the button alongside Falcone's cell phone number.

Before Falcone spoke, Carlton said, “Four o'clock in the grand old bar. See you then.”

*   *   *

A summons to service.
Falcone smiled to himself. He pocketed his phone and told Ursula, his executive assistant, he would shortly be leaving for the day. He welcomed the chance to close the thick yellow folder on his large mahogany desk, embellished with lions' heads and knightly emblems. A few minutes later, he was emerging from the tall glass structure known as the Sullivan & Ford Building, which contained one of the world's largest law firms. Its managing partner was Sean Falcone.

A black town car emerged from the building's underground parking garage and Falcone slipped into the car's rear seat. He knew that China was trying to cause trouble again over the Senkaku Islands, the Japanese name that President Oxley preferred. He knew little more about that issue than what he read in the
New York Times
and
Washington Post.
But he didn't think this was a crisis beyond what Carlton and Oxley could handle. Carlton was a solid man, as Falcone's Irish mother used to sing:
As I walk the street, each friend I meet says,“There goes Muldoon—he's a solid man.”

When, as a kid, he had asked her who she was singing about, she said, “A man like your father. His folks may come from Italy. But he's a solid man.” And that became Falcone's standard for whom to trust, for whom to help, for whom to be. A solid man.

So what can this be about?

Carlton had picked the usual place, a bar beneath the elegant lobby of the Hay-Adams Hotel, a close neighbor to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. From the hotel's rooftop terrace and through the windows of many of its rooms, you had a clear view of the White House, a fact well known to the window-watching Secret Service marksmen on the White House roof.

The bar tried to live up to its name, Off the Record—a recognition of Washington geography: From the plush, low-lit bar to the White House was a brisk nine-minute walk across Lafayette Square. Although some journalists went there to hear politicians and agenda pushers hold forth
on
the record, there was a tradition of discretion, symbolized by its underground location.

Falcone, who arrived first, ordered a Grey Goose vodka at the bar, and remembered how he had met his predecessor here on his first day as national security adviser. And now he was having another drink with his successor.
Washington. Only the names change.

Carlton came in and sat with his back to the red-velvet wall at the two-person table farthest from the door. Falcone picked up his glass, walked over, and took the seat opposite Carlton. A red-vested waiter promptly appeared and Carlton ordered a Yuengling draft.

As the waiter walked away, Carlton said, “Thank you for meeting on short notice.”

“You are more than welcome, Frank,” Falcone said. Because he knew there would be no small talk, he added, “What's up?”

Carlton splayed his hands on the table, looked down at them, then raised his eyes to Falcone, and said, “You've got to do something for me.”

“For you, sure,” Falcone said, surprised at the harsh urgency in Carlton's voice.

“I'm going to tell you what I want, and once I tell you, you can't back out. Agreed?”

“We both know that volunteers can't be choosy,” Falcone said, smiling. “Tell me.”

“I need to get somebody out of Moscow.”

“Hamilton?” Falcone asked.

Carlton nodded and said, “I guess you know the background.”

Over Falcone's shoulder Carlton saw the waiter coming back and said “Thank you” when the waiter placed the glass of beer on a coaster. It had a cartoon of a donkey and an elephant trying to wrest a gavel from each other.

Carlton took a sip of beer and leaned back and waited for Falcone to speak.

“He has to be
taken
? As in exfiltration?”

“Yeah. That's the big word for it.”

“Off the books, I assume.”

“Oh, yeah,” Carlton said. “Very much off the books. And if it's fucked up, the President might get impeached and you and I go to jail.”

“How long will I have?”

“Until yesterday, Sean. Maybe a week or two at best. The guy's a ticking bomb.”

“I'll have to discuss this with Oxley.”