Judgment

63

The Old Saloon, on Fifteenth Street, was a Washington institution, established in the mid-nineteenth century, and known for its oysters and its crab cakes and its rude waitresses. It was the oldest saloon in Washington. The bar was made from solid mahogany, and the antique gas fixtures had been electrified. The Old Saloon was also known as a watering hole for CIA types.

Juliana quickly found the man she was meeting. It wasn’t hard; he would stand out in any crowd. He was wearing a blue-and-white seersucker suit and a navy bow tie. He looked as though he’d walked out of another era. She gave him a smile and sat at his two-top. She thought: What kind of undercover CIA operator actually wants to stand out in a crowd?

“Should I say ‘Your Honor’?” he said. She’d lost count of how many times someone had asked her that, socially. People were sometimes intimidated by judges and dealt with it by joking around.

“You must be Paul.”

They shook hands. He was working on a drink already, something brown on the rocks.

His name was Paul Ashmont, and he was some kind of muckety-muck in counterintelligence at the CIA. He’d gone to Yale with Martie Connolly. Besides that, she knew only that he was a Russia expert and pretty high up the ladder. He was in his seventies and looked as though he enjoyed a hard-drinking, hard-smoking life.

She started at the beginning, told him about how she’d been entrapped. Ashmont nodded and smiled. “What the Russians call kompromat,” he said. “Compromising material. Blackmail. They’re skilled at the art. And of course they used a cutout.”

“I’m surprised you were willing to meet me,” she said. “I’m not exactly getting the welcome wagon in DC.”

Ashmont chuckled. “Any friend of Martie Connolly’s is a friend of mine.” He took a sip of his drink. “Though I understand you tried my friends at the Bureau and got turned away.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Call it a personal interest of mine. Mention Yuri Protasov and you sure as hell get my attention.”

“Why’s that?” she said.

“How much do you know about the guy?”

“I think I know the basics. Philanthropist, investor, billionaire...”

“That’s right. Estimated wealth of fifteen billion dollars, which puts him at number sixty-one on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires. Owns the largest private bank in Russia. Owns a Siberian natural gas company. Owns the largest private house in London — Paragon House, in Mayfair.”

“I know.”

“He owns a Manhattan penthouse and a villa in Sardinia and, last I heard, a Greek island. Guy’s got houses in California, Aspen, Montana, Nantucket, Paris, Moscow...” He counted out with his fingers. “And he’s a sailor. Owns the world’s biggest superyacht. Two hundred forty meters long. Cost a half billion dollars. Two swimming pools and two helicopter pads on deck. Sorry, I’m kind of a yacht freak. What else? Two kids at Yale — my alma mater, like most Ivy League colleges, sure loves those oligarch kids. Good for the endowment.”

“Sure.”

He drained his drink and signaled the waitress for another.

“His private Boeing 767 has a dining room that seats thirty, okay? Beyoncé sang at his wedding. Party like a Russian, dude. It’s a song.”

She laughed. “I’m getting the picture.” He was an odd duck, but she was starting to like him.

“But here’s the thing — he’s a good guy. You can’t hate him. You go to his business headquarters, and the walls are lined with books. Why? Because Yuri loves reading. And he loves dogs, right? He paid for a bunch of kennels to house stray dogs left by the construction workers who did the Sochi Olympics. The guy owns six dogs at his house outside Moscow.”

“Okay.”

“He’s a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. His foundation promotes the love of chess among youth. It also supports the elderly and also orphans. He owns the Tottenham Hotspur football club in Britain. He gave a wing of the Tate and too many hospital pavilions to list. And then there’s the Protasov Peace Prize, the richest prize in the world, for contributions to peace and amity among the nations.”

“I get the point,” she said politely.

“No, I haven’t even gotten to my point. Which is that Yuri Protasov is a myth.”

“A myth?”

“A creation. A notion. A Potemkin oligarch.”

She furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Okay. Protasov is different from the other Russian oligarchs.”

“How so?”

“The other oligarchs basically stole what used to be state-owned enterprises as the Soviet Union was going private. They were all friends of Putin — it was an inside job. The biggest theft in the history of the world. I mean, Putin’s stolen hundreds of billions of Russia’s wealth and in the process helped enrich his closest friends. The guy is probably one of the richest men in the world. There’s a cellist in Russia who’s a childhood friend of Putin’s, he’s the godfather to Putin’s daughter, and he’s got a Swiss bank account worth two billion dollars.”

She nodded.

The waitress set down his drink.

“Whereas Protasov is a creation of Putin. He poses as a brilliant investor, but he’s basically underwritten by the Kremlin. The Kremlin secretly owns all these companies like Wheelz, through a straw. A cutaway named Yuri Protasov. Who everyone thinks is worth fifteen billion dollars.”

“Okay.”

“He’s an invention,” Ashmont said. “A stooge. He’s a childhood friend of Vladimir Putin’s, played ice hockey with him. See, Protasov isn’t independently wealthy. All his money comes from the Kremlin. And all his investments — all the companies he supposedly owns? All owned by the Kremlin.”

“You know this for sure?”

“We have a lot of signals intelligence. And human intelligence — people talk. Then there’s our eavesdroppers over at Fort Meade.”

“The NSA?”

“Exactly. We discovered some really interesting bank records, the movement of billions of dollars from Russian state banks into thousands of shell companies linked to Protasov. Basically, Yuri Protasov gets to live the life of a stratospherically rich man, one of the greatest philanthropists in history, as long as he does whatever his old judo partner Vladimir Putin asks. He gets to play a combo of Warren Buffett and Mother Teresa, right?”

Juliana was puzzled about something. “Is this the kind of secret the KGB, or whatever, will kill to protect?”

Ashmont cocked his head, looked at her curiously. He gave a quizzical smile, which quickly disappeared. His expression became somber. “What do you know?”

“About what?”

“People dying. Why do you say they’ll ‘kill’? What do you know?”

“I know that a Chicago lawyer named Matías Sanchez was recently killed.” She didn’t feel the need to get into who Matías was. Or whether he had committed suicide. “And a lawyer in London named Fiona Charteris.”

He nodded. He seemed to know about these deaths. “Yeah, the law’s a dangerous profession recently. Then there was Kevin Mathers, who had the misfortune to be the last lead investor in Wheelz and who died in an accident on the slopes.” He drained his drink and signaled the waitress for another. “These guys don’t mess around.”

“These guys being — who? The oligarchs, like Protasov?”

He shook his head. “All the signs say it’s their foreign intelligence service. FSB. Which you may know is the reincarnation of the KGB. Roughly speaking.”

“You think these people were killed by the Russian intelligence service?”

“That’s the speculation. To be specific, URPO.” He pronounced it “urp-oh.” “The FSB’s kill squad. But they’re very careful when they’re dealing with non-Russians. They have no compunctions about blatantly killing off Russians who get in their way. Feeding them polonium, shit like that. Make them suffer long and painful deaths. But when it comes to foreigners — it always has to be done subtly. With plausible deniability. All done through cutouts.”

Greaves, she thought. “But what I don’t get is why Protasov is so concerned about keeping his ownership of Wheelz under wraps. Yes, his money comes from a bank under US sanctions — but so what? Doesn’t sound like anyone much cares about sanctions, or sanctioned banks, in DC these days.”

“No, people care. There’s just no capacity to do anything about it. The Russia experts are thin on the ground.”

“I see.”

“As usual with the Russians, it’s all about secrets within secrets. Let’s start with this: Yuri Protasov has eighty percent of that investment round in Wheelz. Series D convertible preferred.”

“Meaning?”

“He owns the company. But more to the point, he owns the software.”

“So the Kremlin owns Wheelz.”

“Right.”

“But for God’s sake, why? What’s the big deal about owning another Uber? Why is this so important?”

“Because this is actually all about a secret technology transfer.”

She shook her head. “What’s the technology?”

“Wheelz has a shitload of proprietary technology for autonomous vehicles. They own a lot of significant patents. Big-time military applications. That’s what the Kremlin is after. Valuable intellectual property with significant military uses. The Russian Ministry of Defense wants self-driving tanks and convoys of supply trucks. The future of warfare is autonomous vehicles, man. That’s the next frontier. Autonomous military vehicles are the backbone of next-gen warfare. Tanks, mobile artillery, logistics trucks. And Wheelz’s self-driving car unit is believed to be way ahead of Uber or Lyft. That’s really the crown jewels.”

“Self-driving cars?”

“And if it could be proved that the Russians secretly siphoned off this technology? You’d have Congressional inquiries up the wazoo. It’s a total violation of US export control laws. Starting with the Arms Export Control Act. Plus, apparently Wheelz is in the process of acquiring a Silicon Valley start-up with major defense contracts, and that would certainly come screeching to a halt. Look, we’ve been lax about the Kremlin’s gambits, but a scandal like this would really tip the balance.”

She nodded.

“And yeah, the Kremlin also doesn’t want it known they wholly own an oligarch. They’ve invested a lot in the myth that’s Yuri Protasov, and they don’t want to lose it. So tell me, how did you have the bad luck to preside over the Wheelz sexual harassment case?”

“Luck of the draw. We’re just assigned our cases; we don’t choose.”

“I’m sorry you ended up with it. To me it looks like Yuri Protasov set you up — entrapped you — to ensure he ended up with the right legal decision.”

“To keep the documents from being released, you mean.”

“Right.”

“And I’m alive because — what, I haven’t yet issued a decision?”

“They need you.”

“For now. And when they don’t—” She shrugged and stopped, thought: They kill me. She said, “So this is what I want to do.”

She told him.

“But can you get yourself in a room with him, do you think?” Ashmont asked.

“I think so. Can you help?”

“Okay.” He nodded his head slowly, musingly. The waitress arrived with another drink for Ashmont. He waited for her to leave; then he said, “I’m sure you’re aware that we’re not supposed to get involved in any domestic spy business. Doesn’t exist, we don’t do it, we leave that to the FBI.”

“Right,” Juliana said skeptically.

“I’m not saying it hasn’t happened.”

“Right.”

“Also, by the way, officially this conversation never happened. We never met.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not sure you do. Things are different these days inside Christians In Action.”

“Christians In Action?”

“Sorry. A bad joke. It’s what some of us call CIA. Anyway, like I say, the Russia section’s been decimated. Russian operations have been cut way back. A big re-org. And these days, no one’s going to sign off on an op targeting a Russian oligarch, a Putin crony. Especially involving a civilian.”

“A civilian?”

“You. You’re not a professional. So that’s just not happening.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said.

“You’re not a trained operative. This is against medical advice.”

“Medical...?”

“You know how when a patient leaves a hospital despite his doctor’s advice to stay, the hospital makes him sign a legal waiver, confirming he’s leaving against the advice of his doctors?”

“Okay, I get it.”

“You would be putting yourself in great danger. First of all, he’s got bodyguards up the wazoo.”

“I get that.”

“Do you? Because if he finds out what you’re doing — well, I don’t want to think about it. Bad news.”

“If I do it right, that won’t happen.”

“You know what the motto of the Central Intelligence Agency is? Shit happens.”

She thought of Hersh and his fatalism. You take every precaution to prevent disaster. But disaster is a cunning beast.

“Let’s put our cards on the table. You’re saying I’d have no backup, no one covering me.”

“You got it. Totally off the books. You do what you’re going to do, and then you come to us with the results. A citizen volunteer. You okay with that?”

He looked at her for a long time, waiting.

Finally she said, “I am.”

“This is going to sound cold, but if anything happens, if it goes south, if it goes to shit — I can’t be connected to it.”

“Understood.”

“If you’re volunteering as a walk-in and willing to assume all the risks and plausible deniability and all that, I may be able to make something happen. But know this: you’re messing with some very dangerous people.”

“So I’ve been told. I understand.”

“I hope you do,” he said.

“So how quickly can this happen?”

“I will make some calls and sound some people out. I know how to reach you. I’ll be in touch soon.”

“No,” she said. “I need to know within twenty-four hours.”

He cocked his head: Why?

“In two days, a meeting is taking place at Protasov’s house on Nantucket. A board meeting of the Protasov Foundation.”

“You know this how?”

“I have my sources. Tell me more about Protasov, about these people. Tell me how they think.”

“How much time do you have?”

“About another hour.”

“Should be enough for a start,” he said. He took a long pull of his bourbon. “You know, it’s interesting.”

“What’s that?”

“This case that pulled you into this whole thing. Wheelz. How strange is it that the thing that unmasked this whole foul affair — the thing that exposed this nest of illegal... manipulations — was a woman employee who refused to put up with a toxic environment.”

Juliana nodded.

“She may have unwittingly ended up exposing more than she realized,” he went on. “But it wouldn’t be the first time that sex led to money.”

“Which led to lies, violence, and power,” she said.

“The usual unholy trinity.” The ice cubes in his glass clinked.

“Surprise, surprise,” Juliana said.

He leveled his gaze at her. “They underestimated you, didn’t they? They looked at you, and they saw a delicate flower.”

“I don’t know what they saw.”

He nodded. “They didn’t see the honey bee inside, though. The bee with the very formidable stinger.”

“Is this supposed to be cheering?”

“Not entirely,” he said. “Bearing in mind that a bee sting is always fatal.”

“That’s not true,” she said.

He drained his glass and put it down on the table with the sound of a banged gavel. “Oh, it’s invariably fatal, all right. To the bee.”