Kompromat

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.’

‘So how do we persuade Wilbur Brown to take another look at this?’ Galina asked. ‘Some piece of Kompromat, perhaps? Something that might persuade him to change his mind?’

‘We have nothing on Brown,’ Yuri Yasonov said. ‘He’s squeaky clean. And we don’t have enough time anyway to set up a Kompromat scenario, even assuming Brown would fall for it, which he probably wouldn’t.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Galina Aslanova asked.

‘I checked with President Popov this morning. He thinks it’s time for Plan B. Our last best hope to swing this before it’s too late.’

‘Plan B!’ Galina exclaimed. ‘Don’t we always say, “there is no Plan B”?’

‘Well, there is this time,’ Yasonov replied.

Julius Lomax, former congressman for Massachusetts 9th Congressional District, had form. A few years earlier, he had had to resign his seat in the House because of a ‘sexting’ scandal but he was still addicted to this particular form of entertainment.

His wife, Sandra, one of Caroline Mann’s principal aides, had left early for work. His two kids were at school, he had lost his job and he had time on his hands. Only that morning he had met up online with a schoolgirl from Champagne, Illinois, whom he felt, with a bit of help, might be ready to share some of his wilder fantasies.

He typed a brief, lewd message into his smartphone. He had an appropriate photo of himself all ready to upload.

In Moscow, 4,500 miles away from Boston, Galina Aslanova gave a thumbs-up sign as the message pinged into her inbox. ‘Bingo,’ she said. ‘He’s hooked.’

The KSB Moscow office had very kindly supplied a variety of photos of teenage girls in their underwear, all waiting to be uploaded. Galina quickly selected one and pinged it back.

Lyudmila Markova, tough, ferocious Lyudmila, stood behind her with her own mobile, videoing the exchange. Some of these ‘sexting apps’ had self-delete programmes, as soon as the exchange ended, so you had to take care to make real-time recordings.

‘We need to fire him up a bit,’ Markova said. ‘Send him a boob shot. Here what about that one? She’s young and pert and pretty. I wouldn’t mind her myself. I wonder where they found her?’

Seconds later, Julius Lomax fired back. ‘Great! Loved it. What’s the weather like in Champagne? It’s pretty cloudy here in Boston.’

Galina Aslanova didn’t answer that one immediately. ‘Could be a trap,’ she whispered. ‘He may be checking that I really am in Illinois.’

She Googled: ‘What’s the weather in Illinois today?’

‘Actually, it’s unseasonably warm here today,’ she typed. ‘With highs in the upper seventies.’

Lyudmila punched her: ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t send that. You’re meant to be under fourteen. Talk like a teenager, not like the weatherman!’

‘The weather here’s great’, Galina tried again. ‘You may think this photo’s great too.’

Within seconds the former congressman sent what he considered was his finest literary effort so far: ‘I can’t help thinking about your pretty little pussy.’

Later that morning, Galina Aslanova phoned Yuri Yasonov.

‘I think we’ve got what we need,’ she said.

‘Attagirl!’ Yasonov replied.

Less than two hours later, the Selkirk Clarion, America’s biggest-selling national newspaper, published both online and in print a series of messages sent by former congressman Julius Lomax to an underage girl in Champagne, Illinois, although fortunately they kept this as a one-sided conversation with words suggestively blanked out.

Within an hour the FBI succeeded in obtaining a court order permitting it to seize and examine Lomax’s mobile and laptop as well.

In seeking the warrant, the FBI indicated it would not only be looking for illegal activity involving the grooming and exploitation of a minor for sexual purposes. It also asked the permission of the court to undertake a complete forensic analysis and review of the files on Lomax’s laptop.

The FBI argued that such a review ‘will also allow the FBI to determine if there is any evidence of computer intrusions into the subject laptop, and to determine if classified information was accessed by unauthorized users or transferred to any other unauthorized systems’.