“He got separated from his partner by a concrete barrier,” Cooke reported. “She reports that he was shot by the Russians, how seriously we don’t know. He could be dead. He told her to keep running. She evaded capture and delivered her evidence to our people in Berlin.”
“You’re saying that Russian Special Forces may have killed a U.S. citizen on allied soil?” Menard asked.
“That’s what she’s saying,” Marshall confirmed. “Kidnapped him at best, murdered him at worst.”
Menard sat back, amazed and trying to process what he’d heard. “That’s insane. Have the Germans checked the site?”
“Yes,” Marshall answered. The DNI’s voice was quiet. “They didn’t find anything beyond some blood on the ground. The generators, the test rig, the evidence of Strelnikov’s abduction, it was all gone. The Russians cleaned house. If we didn’t have those pictures, we wouldn’t be able to prove a thing.”
“We still can’t prove a thing,” Cooke corrected him. “If we made these public, the Russians would just claim everything was staged or Photoshopped. Those wouldn’t be enough to nail Lavrov on anything.”
“We’re not going to go public with them,” Rostow announced. All heads turned toward the president. “Russian soldiers have attacked and possibly murdered a U.S. citizen on friendly soil to cover up some covert action. That’s not going to stand, especially not when they’re about to cut us open like a trout and probably kill a lot of their own people in the process. We’re going to talk to them about it in the language they can understand.” Rostow opened a folder on the table and passed a sheet of White House letterhead to the FBI director. “Isaac, as of today, I want the FBI to arrest every Russian on U.S. soil who your people ever dreamed might be an intelligence officer. I’m going to talk to the secretary of state and have him start pressing allied countries to do the same. I expect most of the Europeans won’t be much use, but the Brits and the Aussies will probably jump at the chance to kick the Russians where it hurts.”
“We’ll never be able to hold them,” Menard advised. “Most of them will be under diplomatic cover.”
“I’ll declare them persona non grata as fast as you can lock them up, and I don’t care if you put most of their embassy staff behind bars. I want tit for tat on this, and I don’t care what stories you have to make up about them to get it done,” Rostow countered. “Clark, I want your operators to start disrupting every Russian covert operation they know about, and I don’t want them to be subtle about it. I want Arkady Lavrov and anyone else over there who’s in bed with him to know why we’re dropping the mountain on them.”
“Sir, if I may,” Marshall interjected. “I don’t think escalating the situation is the right approach. We don’t have our own Alden Maines fingering every Russian intel officer in their embassy up on Wisconsin Avenue. So if we start trying to arrest them en masse, the ones we don’t get will know that their cover is intact. They get bolder in their operations than they are now, and we don’t know many other potential Maineses they might already be talking to.”
“What good is collecting intelligence if we’re going to let our enemies murder our people whenever they get the urge? And when our own people are just going to run over the border and tear us down whenever they get an itch?” Rostow asked. “Cy, I thought snakes stopped walking on two legs when the dinosaurs died out until I met the Russian president. The Syrians drop nail bombs and nerve gas on their own people, and he vetoes any statement of condemnation coming out of the UN just because he can. He sells guns to every butcher with a bank account and murders journalists at home when they dare to talk about it, and no one can touch him. He plays rough and then rubs our nose in it, and the world gets a happy laugh because we look feckless. Well, enough. I’m not going to sit here and look feckless. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the men replied. Silence ruled the room.
Cooke had said nothing. “Kathy, are you with me on this?” Rostow asked.
Cooke looked at the president, murder in her eyes. “We have our orders, don’t we?”
“I’d rather hear that you’re behind this. The Russians are about to cripple us, and they might have killed one of our own… one of yours. I would’ve thought that you’d want to hit them back.”
“More people will die if we do this, you know that,” Cooke said. She let the silence hang for a minute, then turned loose. “Mr. President, you don’t know what you’re saying when you call that missing analyst ‘one of my own,’ ” she told him. “And I don’t understand how you plan to define victory with this.” She held up the White House letterhead that Rostow had placed on the table. “After the Soviet Union fell, the Russian intelligence services practically fused with the mob. Organized crime is running that country, for all practical purposes, so this operation will look like mob warfare in Chicago in the twenties before it’s over. You’ll get your tit for tat, but it’ll be a one-way ratchet of violence and every turn of the handle will be greased with blood. And, with all due respect, Mr. President, I don’t think you’ve considered how we’re going to break the cycle once it starts. The Russians assassinate their dissidents abroad by feeding them radioactive poison, and they just shoot the ones at home. So if you’re not prepared to fight in the mud, it would be better to walk away now because the Russian security services like it down there.”
No one spoke. Rostow stared at the deputy DNI, frowning, but the woman refused to turn away. He saw pain in her eyes that he didn’t understand. It was rare that he let a rebuke go, but an instinct, a voice somewhere in his mind, told him to let this one go.
Rostow finally broke the silence that no one else would break. “Thank you for your views, everyone, but I’m not going to back away from this. I consider it one of my primary duties as president to protect our citizens abroad, and I want the Russians to know that they can’t just take out our people for free.” He turned to the men in the room. “I expect daily updates on this during my PDB briefings, understood?” There were nods and mutters of assent. The president of the United States closed the file on the table, and the meeting was over.
Rostow walked back to his desk as the subordinate stood. “Kathy, my people will need to coordinate with yours,” Menard said, his voice low.
“I’ll have the Counterintelligence Center contact them,” Cooke promised.
“You knew the analyst who got taken down by the Russians?” Menard asked.
“We were close. Leave it there.”
“Sure. I am sorry.”
Cooke nodded. “Thank you… but right now we need to figure out how to manage the damage control on this,” she said. Only old Navy discipline was keeping her mind focused on anything other than her grief. “Between Maines feeding the Russians the names of our assets in Moscow and an open ground war between CIA, the GRU, and the FSB, maybe the SVR too? We’ll be lucky if the Russians don’t burn our embassy down.”
“Yeah,” Menard agreed. “But it’ll take my people some time to get moving on this, maybe three days. If you can figure out a way to snuff this fuse by then, I’ll be a happy man. If not, you said it — we have our orders.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Nothing?” Kyra asked. She was sitting on the conference room table, hunched over, elbows resting on legs that were hanging over the side. Her stare was vacant and she’d hardly made eye contact with him for more than a day now. She was trying to keep it hidden, but Barron heard the anxiety in her voice. He was strangely relieved to hear it. It was the only emotion the woman had displayed since she’d returned alone from the Vogelsang base.