Judgment

80

She flew home that afternoon on Cape Air, which was a bit of a comedown after Giles McNamer’s Gulfstream G650.

Duncan got home from New York much later, looking rumpled and bleary-eyed, and made them both espressos. He had drunk a lot of Scotch at lunch, he said. But he’d accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do, which was the second phase of Juliana’s plan.

He had had lunch in New York with his old friend, Professor Arnold Coren, at the Metropolitan Club. What he and Juliana called his “disinformation” lunch.

He and Arnold had been in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, when Duncan was a junior fellow and Arnold a senior. Coren, an old Russia hand, later moved to the Columbia University faculty and had appeared on Russian TV. He wrote a lot for The Nation. He’d interviewed Putin, was said to be friendly with him. He defended the Russian invasion of Ukraine, said that Crimea belongs to Russia anyway. He harped on American anti-Russian attitudes, insisting that powerful, greedy, sinister forces wanted, needed Russia to be our enemy. A recent article on him was headlined, “Putin’s Favorite Professor.”

Arnold Coren made no bones about the fact that he had sources in the Kremlin, what he called his Kremlin drinking buddies.

“We talked a lot about Pale Moth,” Duncan said, as they sat at the kitchen table that evening.

“Pale Moth?”

“That’s Putin’s nickname.”

“Putin has a nickname?”

“Apparently. Among Arnie’s Kremlin drinking buddies. After our third whiskey, I became indiscreet.”

“Sounds about right.” She smiled.

“Sure, I told him in the strictest confidence about how you’d been brought in to consult with the CIA’s new cooperating asset, the oligarch Yuri Protasov. Told him about how Protasov wanted to cut the cord with his Kremlin masters. How he was now spilling all kinds of secrets to the CIA.”

“But I’m sure that’s not leaking to Moscow any time soon.”

She remembered seeing at a distance the heated conversation at the board meeting between Protasov and Olga. How she seemed to be berating the oligarch. Juliana’s unexpected arrival, which so clearly dismayed Olga, would cause questions about Protasov to be asked in Moscow. Or so Paul Ashmont of the CIA believed. Olga would report back about the meeting between Protasov and an American judge. Then there was the ten million dollars Protasov was about to transfer to an offshore account the Treasury Department had set up, which would look suspiciously like a bribe.

That, in combination with Arnold Coren’s well-known ability to circulate rumors that would reach all the way to the Kremlin. Protasov would be summoned back to Moscow, questioned, maybe even arrested. He would no longer be a threat.

It was only a matter of time.

They had no idea how soon.

The next morning, as Duncan was watching Meet the Press Daily and she was putting away groceries, he suddenly called out, “Jules?”

He pointed, and she looked at the TV. She hadn’t been paying attention to the news, but then she heard “philanthropist and investor Yuri Protasov.” They were showing video of what looked like a downed helicopter. The chyron on the bottom of the screen read: BREAKING NEWS — BILLIONAIRE PHILANTHROPIST KILLED IN HELICOPTER CRASH.

“—are telling us that Protasov’s helicopter experienced a mechanical malfunction of some kind and crashed upon takeoff on the island of Nantucket. We are hearing reports of wind conditions and structural fatigue.”

“My God,” she said, stunned, sinking into a chair. “My God.”

She stared at the television. This she hadn’t planned on. The most she’d dared hope for was that Protasov would be summoned back to Moscow and arrested. But not this.

Her phone rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She saw a 202 area code, meaning the Washington, DC, area. She picked it up.

“Well, you’re safe now.”

It took her a moment to recognize Alex Venkovsky’s voice. The FinCEN guy.

“But the Kremlin—”

“No,” Venkovsky said. “The Kremlin has been suspicious of Protasov for a while. They thought maybe he’d gone native. Gone soft. That he’d been so lionized in America and the UK, so deified, that he probably imagined he could slip the Kremlin’s strings.”

“But why kill the man?”

“Apparently the Kremlin got intelligence that he’d been cooperating with the CIA. And to the Russians, that’s betrayal of the Motherland. And turncoats get assassinated.”

She thought about Pale Moth and went silent for a beat. Then she said, “Must have been persuasive intelligence.”

“And the Russians know that the US Government is moving in on Protasov’s empire. Which means that, even if he isn’t working for the CIA yet, he could. Meanwhile Olga, Protasov’s minder, sees this judge, who may be working with the feds, swan right into this highly secure enclave. That itself was highly suspicious.”

“And what about my... kompromat? The sex tape?” She’d told him about it, of course; she had to. But she hadn’t briefed him on Duncan’s lunch with Arnold Coren. Her agenda wasn’t the same as theirs.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Venkovsky said. “If the video got out, it would focus attention on how Sanchez died. The Kremlin will open cans of worms, but only strategically. This would not be strategic. They don’t want the details of Protasov’s misadventures to become public.”

“Understood,” she said.

“We’ve reviewed the interagency briefs. This campaign of his, this operation — they’re saying that’s all Protasov. That he wasn’t acting with Kremlin approval. He went rogue. In Moscow, they’re telling each other that the whole disaster was his doing. To finish his work would be to own it, see. So they’re washing their hands of the whole thing.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does that mean? It means you’re safe.”