“Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll give your name to the Marines at the front gate.”
Marcus hung up the phone and headed to the elevator. Along the way, he told three of his men he was going out for a bit and if they needed anything to talk to Pete. Hailing a cab, he directed the driver to Bolshoy Deviatinsky Pereulok, Number Eight.
“Ah, the embassy?” the driver asked. “You Amerikanski, da?”
“Da,” Marcus said, handing him a wad of rubles. “And there’s a lot more if you can get me there by seven.”
The unshaven man didn’t speak much English, but he understood enough. He hit the gas and raced through the streets of Moscow at high speeds. When he finally pulled up in front of the U.S. Embassy, they were late. It was twelve minutes past seven. But Marcus gave him the big tip anyway, knowing full well he’d never have gotten there any faster on his own. He showed his passport to the Marines in the front guard station. They immediately cleared him through and passed him off to a young aide who took Marcus straight to Nick’s office.
“What’s wrong, Marcus?” the deputy chief of mission asked when they were finally behind closed doors. “You okay?”
“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “I think so.”
“So what is it? Why all the secrecy and urgency?”
“This room is secure, right?” Marcus asked, walking about the spacious corner office covered with power photos of Vinetti with all kinds of high-ranking American officials and a few Russian ones as well. “I mean, it’s not bugged, is it?”
“No, of course not.”
“You’re sure?” Marcus pressed.
“Yeah, I’m sure. It was swept yesterday. Sit down, let me get you a cup of coffee, and then you can tell me what’s got you on fire.”
“No, no coffee—I’m fine,” Marcus said.
“Well, I’m not,” Nick said. “I was up late with a couple of old buddies and a few too many beers. As I recall, you were there too.”
He walked over to his desk, pressed an intercom button, and asked his secretary to bring in a fresh pot of his favorite Brazilian blend and some blueberry muffins.
“Right away, sir,” came the reply.
“Nick, I don’t want a muffin.”
“Too bad—I do. Now sit. Talk to me.”
Marcus was pacing, but at Nick’s insistence he took a seat across from his old friend.
“Last night was great,” he began, trying to figure what exactly to say and how. “I mean, I completely disagree with the senator’s analysis of the meeting with Luganov. But the time with the ambassador and you and your team was great. You put together a stellar evening with almost no notice, and I owe you one. Thanks.”
“You got that right, and you’re welcome.”
“But something happened after we left.”
“Tell me.”
Marcus paused and took a deep breath, then lowered his voice and looked Nick square in the eye. “Someone came to see me in the middle of the night.”
“Who?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Just hear me out.”
“Fine, but hurry it up. I don’t have all day, even for you.”
Marcus reached into his pocket, pulled out a black sapphire Samsung Galaxy phone, and handed it to Nick.
“Thanks, buddy, but I have my own.”
“Turn it on,” Marcus said.
Nick looked down and turned the phone on.
“Now enter 6653 and the pound sign.”
Nick did.
“Open up the photo gallery.”
Again Nick did as he was told and found fifty-three photos. Nick looked at Marcus, then back at the phone. It took a moment as he scrolled through the photos, but Nick could read enough Russian to understand what he was looking at. Marcus saw the blood drain from his friend’s face. “One of these documents is a Russian war plan to invade the Baltics,” Nick said. “And soon.”
Marcus nodded.
“And this one is an internal memorandum from inside the Kremlin.”
Again Marcus nodded.
“Where did you get this, Marcus?”
“Luganov has a mole.”
“How high? How close?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too soon. They’re nervous.”
“They?”
“I don’t want to say if it’s a man or a woman.”
“But it’s a man.”
“I don’t want to say.”
“Just one person?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s a man,” Nick pressed. “At least tell me that much. Because if it’s a woman that came to you in the middle of the night…”
“Fine, it was a man,” Marcus confirmed.
“And he obviously has access to classified information at the highest levels.”
Marcus said nothing.
“Is he a middle man?” Nick asked. “Or did he get these himself?”
“He says he has direct access to these and more.”
“How much more?”
“Get out a pad and pen.”
Suddenly there was a light rap on the door, and in came Nick’s secretary, a pleasant, round woman in her late fifties, with a large pot of coffee, two U.S. Embassy Moscow mugs, a carafe of cream, a glass jar of brown sugar cubes, and two spoons.
“Thanks, Maggie—that’ll be all for now,” Nick said. “Hold my calls and all visitors until you hear otherwise. Oh, and one other thing.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I need Morris to come up here immediately.”
“Right away, sir,” she replied, then left and shut the door behind her.
Nick pulled a yellow legal pad out of a drawer in his desk. Marcus poured them both steaming mugs of freshly brewed coffee even as he kept talking.
“Luganov is running a highly sophisticated disinformation campaign to keep the U.S. and the rest of NATO confused about his real intentions. That’s why he accepted Dayton’s invitation—to tell him he’s going to end the war games early and pull his forces off the borders, when he’s not.”
“He’s planning to invade. When, exactly?”
“On or about October 7,” Marcus explained. “But there’s more.”
“I’m listening.”
“You heard last night that Luganov is about to fly to Pyongyang to make a major announcement,” Marcus continued. “But it’s all bogus.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning the treaty he’s signing with North Korea in which Pyongyang will publicly agree to give up all of their nuclear weapons in return for a formal defensive alliance with Moscow is completely meaningless. There will be huge headlines in the next few days, and Luganov will win international acclaim for being a peacemaker both on his Western and Eastern flanks. But according to my mole, Moscow will actually replace North Korea’s flawed and somewhat-unreliable nuclear weapons with far more powerful, accurate, and reliable Russian nuclear warheads and tactical nukes. See photo thirty-nine.”
Nick did and began shaking his head.
“The Russians have been working for the past six years on an electromagnetic pulse bomb to fry our entire electrical grid and send us back to the Stone Age,” Marcus continued. “According to the last document in the photos, the technology has been perfected, and the missiles are ready for launch. What’s more, Luganov is fully prepared to detonate an EMP bomb over Chicago or somewhere in the Midwest if we fight him in the Baltics. But the mole and these documents say that the missile will be launched out of North Korea, not Russia, seriously complicating our response.”
“Impossible,” Nick protested. “The North Koreans don’t have an ICBM capable of reaching Seattle or L.A., much less Chicago.”
“Read to the end,” Marcus replied. “Apparently they do.”