Kompromat

Reznikov paused. ‘Of course, we will, I hope, have further conversations, many further conversations when Ron – may I call you Ron? – is elected. But perhaps our discussions today will do for starters.’

‘Just one thing,’ Craig intervened. ‘Don’t forget about my old friend Mickey Selkirk. Selkirk Global is planning a major expansion in Russia. I think he has his eyes on Pravda and Izvestia as well as RT, Russian television!’

‘I am sure President Popov will be pleased to hear that too,’ Reznikov replied.

Zhang turned the recording off. ‘There’s more where that came from. Of course, we don’t listen to all of it. Normally, we just store the recordings after checking electronically for key words. What we’ve just heard happens to be particularly interesting.’

President Liu Wang-Ji stood up and put his arm round Zhang’s shoulder. ‘Well done, old friend. You have been tested and have not been found wanting. Don’t forget to take those US-Flag boxer shorts with you when you go.’

Halfway to the door, President Liu Wang-Ji paused: ‘That Logan Act you mentioned. That’s a pretty old statute, isn’t it? Dates from 1799? Is it still in force?’

‘It certainly is,’ Zhang replied.

President Liu Wang-Ji didn’t miss a trick, he thought. That was probably why Liu was President and he wasn’t.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Galina Aslanova, head of Special Projects in the FSB’s Moscow Headquarters, had been required to undertake many strange assignments in the course of her career as a secret agent. She had learned how to assassinate people with undetectable poisons, how to kill them with a single blow of the hand, how to hack computers and siphon money from bank accounts. But up till now she had never been asked to impersonate a schoolgirl from Illinois.

Yuri Yasonov came to see her with less than ten days to go before the US Presidential Election. ‘I’ve had a message from our people in Washington,’ he said. ‘They think Craig’s in trouble. He’s closing the gap on Mann, but not fast enough. We’ve got to do more.’

‘What more can we do?’ Galina asked.

As the operative with overall responsibility for Tectonic Plate, the FSB’s project designed to change the whole structure of international politics, Galina was quite ready to do whatever was necessary to influence or subvert normal democratic processes but on this particular occasion, with time running out, she was at a loss.

‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ Yuri said. ‘I think we have to get the FBI to reopen the enquiry into Caroline Mann’s emails. I’m not criticizing you, Galina. Please don’t get me wrong. At the technical level, the FBI couldn’t have been more helpful. We handed them 30,000 of Caroline Mann’s hacked emails, via WikiLeaks. Wilbur Brown, the FBI director, put his analysts to work as we always assumed he would. Whatever the political pressures might have been on him to do nothing, he could hardly duck that one. And the analysts came up with a conclusion which was totally helpful to us.’

Yuri Yasonov paused while he consulted his papers.

‘Okay, I’ve found it,’ he continued. ‘The FBI read every single email and concluded – and now I’m quoting – that “out of the fifty-two email chains determined by the owning agency to contain classified information, eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; thirty-six chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification”.’

Yasonov put the paper aside. ‘So where did our scheme go wrong?’ he asked. ‘Confronted with the evidence, why didn’t the FBI bring criminal charges? They should have. We thought they were going to. Criminal charges at this point of her campaign would have holed Caroline Mann below the waterline. But what happens? What does Wilbur Brown, the FBI director, do? He lets Caroline Mann off with a slap on the wrist. Tells her she’s been a naughty girl, and “extremely careless” and please don’t do it again.’

‘I’m not sure where this is going?’ Galina said.

‘I’ll tell you where it’s going,’ Yuri Yasonov replied. ‘We’re going to force the director of the FBI to reopen the enquiry. He may not have time actually to conclude the new enquiry before Election Day. That doesn’t matter. It may not discover anything new anyway. But the very fact that the FBI is focussing attention yet again on those illegal Caroline Mann emails at this late stage should be enough to sink her. She’ll haemorrhage votes, I promise you.’