“So you’re saying you’ll keep an open mind—great,” Marcus said as the water came to a boil. “Tea?”
Morris stood there staring at him for a moment, then smiled and said yes. Marcus made them each a cup, and they sat down at the kitchen table and pushed aside the Glock and the cleaning supplies.
“Look,” he said, “the Raven was pretty clear that the invasion scenario is being driven entirely by Luganov.”
“No, he said the FSB chief supports him too.”
“Nimkov.”
“Right.”
“Fine,” Marcus said. “But there’s no indication that everyone else in the cabinet or even the war council does,” Marcus noted. “Do you have a copy of the transcript the Raven gave us of the conversation between Luganov and the army chief of staff just before Luganov sacked him?”
Morris pulled up the document on her laptop, and they reviewed it together.
GENERAL: You are asking us to capture and occupy three NATO capitals?
PRESIDENT: And secure their annexation so that they might be rightfully reintegrated into Mother Russia.
GENERAL: But not Kiev.
PRESIDENT: Not right now.
GENERAL: Would it not be in our interest to seize all of Ukraine instead? The Ukrainians are very patriotic, and they’re able fighters, but they are not members of NATO. Washington and Brussels will huff and puff, but in the end they will do nothing if we take Ukraine. I have war-gamed this with my staff. I’m convinced we could get it done in a month to six weeks.
PRESIDENT: But we can have the Baltics in four days.
GENERAL: How is it in Russia’s interest, if I may ask, to provoke such a confrontation with NATO when Ukraine is ours for the taking with no risk of triggering Article 5?
“So your point is that the head of the Red Army was sacked because he told Luganov that going after the Baltics instead of Ukraine was a mistake,” Morris said. “And you think maybe there are others around that table who harbor similar concerns?”
“What if there are?”
“Then wonderful, but what if there aren’t?” Morris pushed back. “You don’t have any proof, just a hunch. And how could you possibly justify a high-risk American operation to assassinate Luganov on a hunch?”
“Look, Jenny, the Raven made it perfectly clear to me that in Luganov we’re dealing with a psychotic personality. The man thinks he’s a czar. The Raven called him an old-guard imperialist willing to use any means necessary to take back lands he believes are rightfully his. Can we safely assume there are members of his war council that support him or at least won’t risk countering him? Absolutely. I grant you that. But if Luganov is gone, if he’s taken out of the picture, do the members of that cabinet still move forward with Luganov’s plan, knowing full well that they risk a nuclear war with NATO in the process? You’ve got to admit that if Luganov was dead, their calculus would have to change. And that might give the West the time we need to avert a full-blown war in Europe.”
Morris said nothing for several minutes. She slowly sipped her tea and stared at the Glock on the table in front of her while freezing rain pelted and rattled the windows.
“So—hypothetically speaking—how would you do it?” she asked finally, looking him in the eye once again. “How would you take him out? You’re not an assassin, Ryker. And with all due respect, even if you were, you haven’t fired a gun in years.”
“You’re right,” Marcus replied. “But you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m a Marine, and if there was one thing I was taught, it was this: Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
“Catchy,” said Morris. “So you have a plan?”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “But I’m working on it, and so should you.”
70
WASHINGTON, D.C.—26 SEPTEMBER
Senator Bob Dayton wasn’t sure which meeting worried him more.
The one he’d had with Luganov or the one he was about to have with Clarke.
True, Luganov was a modern czar, ruthless and throbbing with ambition. But he was not a figure unheard of in the history of Russian rulers. Andrew Hartford Clarke was something else altogether. Apparently willing to say anything and do anything to build his brand and advance his goals at all costs, Clarke was the most polarizing yet thoroughly original and entertaining political figure Dayton had ever met or even heard of. The man routinely, sometimes hourly, provoked surges of raging emotions both for and against him. He had single-handedly upended the Washington political establishment by winning first the Republican nomination and then the presidency when not a single pundit or pollster had given him a chance. Few members of Congress, if any, had spent any time before the election actually considering what a Clarke presidency would look like, how it would operate, or how they would interact with it. Dayton himself had bitterly railed against Clarke in dozens of campaign speeches and hundreds of radio, television, print, and electronic interviews. In turn, he had seen his own approval ratings soar among the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Indeed, this was what had prompted him to think a run against Clarke for the presidency was becoming not just plausible but imperative.
As the leased Learjet touched down at Dulles International Airport and taxied to the Signature Flight Support Center for private aircraft, Dayton faced the most difficult decision of his political career. In less than an hour, he would be sitting in the Oval Office with a man he utterly despised, a man his supporters despised even more. To evince any hint of being ready to work together on the Russia crisis in a bipartisan manner with such a man could very well be political suicide. Yet not to work together, Dayton feared, could lead in short order to a nuclear disaster of incalculable magnitude.
If this weren’t bad enough, Dayton could hardly expect to sidestep the media and hope his conversations with Clarke could somehow be kept confidential. Even before they’d left Moscow, Dayton had instructed his press secretary to pull out all the stops and line up every interview he could, and the young man had done his job. Tonight Dayton was scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes to give an exclusive on his discussions with Luganov and the leaders in Eastern Europe who believed they were facing an imminent military showdown with Russia, and how the news out of North Korea could be dramatically changing the story line. The following morning he was set for back-to-back live interviews on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC on the same topics. Surely his meeting with Clarke would leak, and surely he would be asked about it in every interview. What would he say?
In many ways, this was a potential presidential candidate’s dream scenario—a big media platform at a moment of global import. Yet Luganov’s moves were scrambling Dayton’s playbook. The senator now had no idea what advice he wanted to give to Clarke or even how he wanted to characterize his meetings with Luganov or Clarke to the press, and he was quickly running out of time to figure it out.
