The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

“And what happens to Nate?” whispered Westfall. He resented this fall-on-your-sword macho bullshit with these ops maniacs. To deliberately do this to Nate was beyond comprehension to Lucius.

“They’ll arrest him, interrogate him, and throw him in prison. Knock him around a little, nothing bad. I know Simon will persuade Department of Justice to offer MAGNIT and SUSAN in a swap for him. The Russians like to get their people back. Saves face. Nash’ll be home for Christmas.”

“Seems like we shouldn’t have to resort to kamikaze missions,” said Westfall, staring at the floor.

Forsyth gripped his arm. “Whichever of these esteemed candidates is MAGNIT—my money’s on that bottom-feeder Farbissen—one thing’s for sure: they will not fail to report this operation to Yasenevo, to save their own ass.”

“What about the Polish woman, Agnes?” said Westfall. “The Russians will really work her over.”

Forsyth shook his head. “You noticed Benford didn’t mention her during his briefings? The Russians won’t be expecting another ringer. Nash and Agnes will be arriving with a gaggle of new art students from Warsaw, part of the restoration crew rotation. The Russians will sniff at the students and Agnes, but with Nate in the bag they’ll have only one concern: who among the two hundred guests is the US-run mole. The cryptonym the interrogators use will tell us who MAGNIT is. HAMMER, CHALICE, or FLOWER.”

“And how do we find out which?” said Westfall. “How do we know this’ll work? Benford’s previous bait stories never got a rise out of the Russians.”

Forsyth shrugged. “Not every trap catches a bear,” he said. “The mole doesn’t report it, no one in Moscow believes it, they decide to wait before acting. Could be anything.”

“And getting the name back?”

“DIVA puts a note in the USV,” said Forsyth. Shit house of cards, thought Westfall. Selling Nate out for a name.

“Nate’s back by Christmas?” said Westfall, doubtful.

“Safe and sound,” said Forsyth. “And DIVA will start reporting the inside scoop on the SVR and the Kremlin right from her director’s desk.”

“Unless a wheel comes off,” said Westfall. Forsyth noticed the young analyst was using more operational slang. And he was also correct: unless a wheel comes off.

In Moscow, Gorelikov was busy trying to improve MAGNIT’s chances: He had set in motion two minutely subtle activniye meropriyatiya, active measures, using two agents from the stable of innumerable assets used by the Kremlin for Putin’s political-influence campaigns around the world. These were favored tactics during the Cold War to spread the communist cant. Now they were designed to sow discord among those who sought to weaken Putin’s kleptocracy. Active measures were most effective when the disinformation was woven into a macramé of truth, which effectively obfuscated the deception. The toolbox was diverse: influence elections, disparage opposition leaders, disrupt inimical allegiances, support friendly despots, circulate disinformation, leak forgeries, and, in extreme cases, use people like Iosip Blokhin to eliminate the most tenacious enemies of the State. The attempted assassination of a Polish-born Pope in 1981 who was encouraging the Solidarity movement in the Gdansk shipyards was an extreme example of an active measure.

A tame journalist named Günter Kallenberger—on Gorelikov’s payroll for decades—from the German investigative magazine Der Spiegel asked for an interview with Senator Feigenbaum’s staff chief, Rob Farbissen. Aware of Kremlin assessment data on the fatuous staffer, Kallenberger asked Farbissen if the senator became DCIA, wouldn’t Farbissen surely become executive director, or perhaps deputy director for administration? If that was the case, what changes or reforms within CIA could allied intelligence agencies expect in the coming years? It was a classic journalist’s open-ended question, in Russian a lovushka, a deadfall, a snare, designed to give Farbissen enough rope to hang himself (and his patron). The voluble Farbissen did not disappoint. He railed to Kallenberger that CIA had evolved from a postwar collection of has-been Nazi hunters to a futile and undisciplined anachronistic agency prone to intelligence failures, and unable to collect on relevant intelligence gaps. Instead, CIA spent its time and resources trying to suborn Russian code clerks in South America in what he called sex traps. The firestorm that erupted in Congress and Europe, and in the indignant editorials in RIA Novosti and TASS went on for a week, at the end of which Senator Feigenbaum withdrew her name from consideration for DCIA. Farbissen left the senator’s staff and became a lobbyist on the hill for the ACA, the American Coal Association.