Putin's Gambit

10

Derek Walsh found himself almost stumbling by the time he’d reached Vestry Street in the neighborhood known as SoHo, which started south of Houston Street. He still felt out of place in a sweat stained white shirt, and he had taken several long breaks on his trek from Chinatown and Mulberry Street. He stepped inside a small grocery store and bought a Dr Pepper with the loose change in his pocket. He was using the break to catch his breath and to clear his head. He hadn’t seemed to do either successfully.

Several police cars passed him at different times, but all of them were racing along the street with their lights on. A couple of them used their sirens as well, and the drivers focused straight ahead. They looked like more reinforcements headed to a battle.

As he walked along Vestry, he heard an explosion from the direction of Wall Street. It was in the distance, but it was still clear, as was the smell of acrid smoke, which drifted along on a light breeze. He had seen brief reports of what was happening to New York when he ducked into stores and noticed a TV on in the corner, and it was almost impossible to believe. London was suffering worse violence than this, and there had been several terrorist attacks across Western Europe.

Walsh tried to block all of that out of his head and focus on the issues he was facing. How did someone make the trades without his knowledge? How could he get back inside Thomas Brothers and bring up photographs on his security plug? But mainly, for the moment, he just wanted to cover a couple more blocks and get into his apartment to grab some different clothes and the little bit of cash he had on hand. He was pretty confident that the FBI hadn’t figured out he had the tiny apartment yet.

He remembered something his friend Mike Rosenberg had said about the FBI being overrated. His lean CIA friend had looked into several law enforcement jobs and had friends with every agency. He said the agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration were the sharpest of all the federal agents. The DEA guys tended to look low key and weren’t noticeable in public. They were just as driven and high achieving as the FBI, but they understood what the real world was like. Rosenberg felt the FBI was too stiff and worried about image. He said the FBI had a certain “type.” Walsh thought that if Tonya Stratford was the FBI “type,” then he was in deep shit. She had proven to be knowledgeable and smart and had a look that could cut through him like a laser. Her partner might not have been as smart, but he seemed to have a certain ruthless quality that would help in looking for someone like Walsh.

Walsh approached his apartment cautiously and stopped on the corner when he noticed a blue Dodge parked across the street from his three-story building. He could just make out a young man with very dark hair sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette. He was clearly looking across at the apartment building and then scanning the street.

Walsh backed away and considered his options. Just as he was about to turn, someone bumped into him from behind, saying in a loud voice, “Hello there, Derek.”

Once they had left their meeting with Sam, Amir had not spoken to Fannie. At least not in words. His look and attitude made it clear that if he had the chance she wasn’t going to hold her position much longer. All they had to do was escort some Russian from Estonia down to somewhere south and west.

She hadn’t told them about her possible intelligence coup. She had flirted with the handsome army major named Bill Shepherd and even had a lovely dinner with him. She made it clear that once she was done traveling they would spend time together. She knew how most Western men thought, and he definitely believed she meant they would spend time in bed together. But the sight of him sickened her, and all she could think about was getting him to spill his secrets, either in the privacy of the bedroom or under great duress. Either way, he’d be able to tell them things they couldn’t get anywhere else.

She hadn’t bothered to return his calls, but he left two messages and sounded sincerely worried about her safety as violence bloomed across the continent. Now that she knew her assignment as a guide with a Russian, she was certain she knew what was planned, and she could take advantage of her encounter with the American. If the Russians were such a big part of this operation, the Americans would be, too. She took a moment to call him back and leave a quick message on his cell phone saying she missed him and hoped to see him soon, but she was absolutely safe. She hoped that was true. It was odd that while she fought against one of the most powerful nations on earth, her greatest fear was being murdered by one of her comrades.

Fannie couldn’t sleep and decided to explore Tartu, the second-largest city in the country, but more of a quaint town by Western standards. It had none of the traffic of Berlin or Stuttgart and none of the elegance of Paris, but it didn’t have tourists or smog, either. It was almost as if it hadn’t ever left the old Soviet Union’s influence. Beat-up Voleex hatchbacks and Yugos sputtered along the narrow streets, and heavy people with no regard for fashion shuffled along the broken sidewalks.

Fannie had to admit it felt a little bit like a slap in the face to go from planning large financial transactions to acting as an escort for some Russian army officer. The only consolation was that Amir had to feel even worse about it. His father had fought against the Russians in Afghanistan as a foreign fighter, and Amir had no use for either of the world’s major powers.

An alliance with Russia made sense even if it did go against the group’s long-term goals. For years Russia had been a target of jihadists. There was no great love for the former empire. But the group’s progress against the U.S. had been slow. An occasional success would be met with a massive military response. It could be devastating.

The other issue was developing leaders. Once someone established himself as an inspirational leader or tactical genius, the U.S. had an uncanny ability to find him and strike, either through a drone or the feared U.S. Navy SEALs.

This new alliance with Russia, no matter how distasteful, would draw U.S. resources away from the Middle East and ultimately help their cause. That was all that mattered to Fannie.

She also realized the importance of Estonia to a country like Russia. Not only did they share a border, but Estonia was technologically advanced, at least as far as Internet infrastructure and computers. Far more so than Russia. Anyone with common sense recognized the next phase of global conflict would include serious cyberattacks. Already it was viewed as the only recourse for countries like North Korea. They couldn’t hit the U.S. with missiles yet, so they harassed major U.S. corporations with sophisticated cyberattacks and disrupted credit and banking by stealing credit card numbers from retailers.

Estonia could be the piece of the puzzle Russia needed. Fannie didn’t care what Russia did, as long as its first act was to hurt the United States. That would start the Islamic revolution she was praying for in Europe. If the U.S. couldn’t help, Europe was as defenseless as a baby.

Derek Walsh was startled by hearing his name and feeling someone bump into him. He almost darted back onto his own street but remembered the young man in the Dodge waiting for him. He turned quickly and released a breath of relief when he realized it was his friend Charlie, the Vietnam vet.

Charlie said, “What are you doing home in the middle of the day? You didn’t get fired, did you?”

Walsh regained his senses, blinked hard, and said, “No, no, nothing like that.” He paused for a moment, staring at Charlie and recognizing one of his old shirts. It looked good on the older man. He had trimmed his gray beard and smelled like he had taken a shower recently. Walsh thought for a moment and said, “Charlie, can you help me out?”

“Anything for a fellow vet. What do you need?”

“I’d like to get into my apartment, but there’s someone watching it. It’s a young guy in the Dodge across the street.”

Charlie took a moment to do some recon like the former Ranger he was. He stepped back from around the corner and said, “Have you checked all sides of the building?”

Walsh shook his head. He liked that Charlie asked no questions. He was just ready to help.

Charlie said, “Give me a few minutes. I’ll meet you in the corner grocery store. They don’t mind me coming in there, and they won’t notice you.”

Walsh followed the instructions and hustled down the street to the store owned by a young Korean couple. He used it sometimes to buy fresh fruit and milk. They greeted him like always, with a pleasant smile. He felt awkward lingering as long as he did, but no one seemed to notice, and finally, after nearly ten minutes, Charlie stepped into the store and greeted the young couple by name. Then he stepped directly back to Walsh and wasted no time. “There’s no one in back of your apartment. The guy in the front is definitely watching your building. He must not expect you to be sneaky. But I guess with no way to get in the back, he’d only watch your front door. Just follow my lead and we’ll get you in there, no problem.”

Major Bill Shepherd had seen protests before. Many of the marine officers in Europe had commanded embassy security details and seen how people could get stirred up about events halfway across the world. Even if they weren’t targeting the United States, he had studied crowds of protesters in front of other embassies. He had once seen a protest in front of the Israeli embassy in London that taught him how ugly these things could get. It was the typical, uninformed protest against so-called Israeli violence against Palestinians, which was actually self-defense. The London police had allowed a number of people to hide their faces, not just in traditional Muslim headgear but with ski masks and Guy Fawkes masks as well. Walsh had seen how that emboldened people, and soon there were a number of bottles of urine and red paint slung over the wall at the Israeli soldiers guarding the embassy. When the London police tried to stop this, the crowd turned on them and other bystanders. Before it was over, two little girls had been seriously injured by the protesters, and the London police had been forced to use tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Here in Germany it was a more complex situation. It was clear to the protesters, as well as the soldiers guarding the front of the base, that no one was going to get on the property. Any idiot could see that the soldiers with their rifles and ballistic shields could withstand just about anything the protesters threw at them. The responsibility really fell at the feet of the German police, and there were not nearly enough on the fringes of the crowd to control them if things got ugly. That would mean U.S. military personnel would have to take action, and that was the sort of thing that drew media attention.

Shepherd didn’t want to undercut the army commander, but his marines had had more experience with this at the embassy. It didn’t take much to convince the young army captain to let the marines step to the front of the defenders. Shepherd was right there with them, scanning the crowd. It was a mix of people, but most of them appeared to be under thirty. The crowd was close to two hundred and growing as cars came down the main road. He was shocked so many people would be out in the middle of the night. But the news covering the financial meltdown in Europe and the U.S., as well as pointing the finger toward one specific U.S. firm, Thomas Brothers Financial, had stirred the public up, and young people with nothing to do could easily enough find trouble.

Most of his marines were behind shields, and everyone had a helmet on. A bottle sailed out of the crowd and shattered harmlessly twenty feet in front of them. Shepherd looked to each side of the crowd to see if the police would react in any way. They looked nervous and ready to flee rather than prepared to keep the peace.

A blond man shouting in English with a German accent edged away from the crowd and closer to Shepherd. “We’re not going to let the U.S. ruin our economy. We’re not going to let the U.S. continue to occupy our country,” he yelled. “You must go. You must go.” The last part was chanted and immediately picked up by the rest of the protesters. A crushingly loud “You must go” pounded in Shepherd’s ears.

Shepherd looked along the line and could see that his marines were getting anxious and itching to point their rifles. He said in an even voice, “Stay calm, they’re just blowing off some steam.”

He could tell there was more behind this protest. He just didn’t want his marines to make it worse. They stayed in line right at the gate. The crowd surged forward, and the blond guy who was leading the chant came face-to-face with Shepherd.

The younger man smirked and said, “America is done. You will see your world burn.”