Second Strike

CHAPTER 86

^{BETHANY BEACH, DELAWARE,}

^{AUGUST 29, 8:14 P.M. EDT}

A cooling breeze lilted off the ocean as the eastern horizon shaded midnight blue and threads of yellow and orange rays played across the ocean as the sun set to the west. The heat from the blistering day radiating from the white sands of the beach below belied the fact that fall would soon be approaching.

The lone figure standing on the second-floor balcony of the sprawling beach house on the northern end of Bethany stood tall, drawing from a Winston and savoring the calming sounds of the crashing waves.

They’d been thwarted. The meticulous planning, the Machiavellian maneuvering, had all come to nothing. Worse. After the finger-pointing and recriminations were complete, heads would roll. Almost literally. In fact, several had already been executed and more would follow in the immediate future.

He would be safe. He had performed all of his tasks flawlessly. Besides, other than the assassin, he was Mikhailov’s most valuable aide. And Mikhailov, despite the debacle, remained secure, in large part because he’d eliminated almost anyone who could mount an opposition. The ruthless typically survive.

He was still trying to determine why the event had failed. The consensus among the forensics examiners was that it must have been due to an extraordinarily sophisticated worm of some sort, but thus far not a trace of such a worm had been found. The most accomplished cybersleuths in Russia remained stumped, and it was whispered that only one person in the country, perhaps in all the world, could’ve designed such a thing, and that person was dead—found murdered in the famed Tatiana Palinieva’s luxury apartment.

Perhaps even more extraordinary was the failure of the secondary plan. The assassin had, as usual, performed with nearly supernatural efficiency. Yet the American operator, the one the assassin adamantly insisted be eliminated, had intervened. The assassin had been proven right. The entire operation should have been placed on hold pending the death of the former leader of Omega. But for the American, the world today would be a vastly different one. For all intents and purposes, a Russian one.

Now they were checkmated. By idiot Americans, no less. Marshall had convinced NATO that the troop buildup along the Baltics, the incursions into eastern Ukraine, and the movements toward Iran merited a response almost akin to Article 5. Even the weaker sisters in the EU reluctantly concurred. As a consequence, several divisions of NATO troops were deployed in the Baltics and Poland, and an armada of naval vessels supplemented the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf.

Several Western European nations, sufficiently alarmed by the Russian aggression, began to shift to more US-produced oil and gas, something that would pose a threat to the Russian economy and, unless he found other means to float such economy, to Mikhailov himself. Marshall was shrewd enough to employ that as a lever against Mikhailov, gaining concessions and keeping him in check. The patrician was sure Marshall would do just that.

The debacle, however, could have been worse. There was no evidence of Russian involvement in either the suicide bombings in Washington or the planned hijackings. All evidence pointed to jihadists as the culprits. The captured volunteers believed they were discharging their missions on behalf of ISIS. They had no inkling whatsoever who their real leader was. The assassin had shrewdly altered his appearance sufficiently to frustrate facial-recognition software. Any surveillance cameras that captured his image—whether at the airport or elsewhere—would be unable to identify him as a Russian operator. And the Zaslon operators the American had killed were all functional cleanskins—utterly untraceable. Even Stepulev couldn’t be linked. The volunteers too. All of their flights had been grounded, all had been seized by the American authorities, and all believed they had been prospective martyrs for ISIS. The only evidence of Russian involvement was the Butcher, of whom the DIA had long been aware—but only by reputation, not by identity. Regardless, that piece of evidence had been eliminated when a potential crime scene in Lorton, Virginia, had been reduced to rubble due to an inexplicable gas-line explosion.

The infernal American operator knew, of course. He knew the signature of a Russian operation. And he knew the assassin. Thus, the American president knew. But mere knowledge was immaterial in international relations. Nations couldn’t, and didn’t, act publicly based on knowledge. They acted on proof—especially when a nation’s allies assiduously resisted anything that might involve tough choices, let alone the possibility of military reprisal. No one wanted to go to war with a nuclear power over suicide attacks that, by all accounts, had been perpetrated solely by jihadists untethered to any nation-state.

Nonetheless, the West’s reaction to the troop buildup was ample sanction. Russia was worse off now than before the entire operation, including the EMP affair. There was no denying it was a disaster, all because of that abominable American operator.

The patrician, however, remained unaffected. Throughout, he had performed his role brilliantly. Indeed, the aspects of the operation for which he was responsible proceeded precisely as planned, despite all of the constraints under which he labored. Mikhailov recognized this. Indeed, Mikhailov had quietly rewarded him for it—both financially and with an even more trusted role in the Russian president’s orbit.

Perhaps just as important, he remained a trusted confidant of the American president.

The patrician flicked the cigarette onto the beach below and opened the sliding screen doors leading to his darkened study. Somewhere outside he could hear the radio belonging to members of his protective detail broadcasting the Orioles–Indians game. It was the middle of the seventh, the Indians with a 5–3 lead. Stretch time.

He padded to the bar next to the bookcase and poured himself a glass of Smirnoff, room temperature. Then he sat in a high-backed leather chair facing the balcony and took a long, slow sip—but not a mournful one, not one prompted by failure and dejection. Rather, a contemplative one—one to slow, order, and distill his thinking.

They had suffered a crushing defeat, even if their adversary didn’t fully realize just how big a defeat it was. But they had suffered seemingly crushing defeats in the past, only to emerge the victor in the long run. And so it would be once more.

Because it wasn’t over.

The Western powers, having imposed sanctions and deployed military assets, would be satisfied that Russia had been dealt with, the matter concluded. They would then turn their attentions to the latest frivolity, convincing themselves it was some matter of importance.

The patrician, however, knew that the West’s demise lay dormant here in the United States, somewhere in a rural county in the southeast part of the country. And every single person in the United States but the patrician was oblivious to it. In fact, only two others in the entire world were not oblivious to it.

Consequently, no one would find it. It would remain hidden until unearthed from deep beneath the floorboards of a rickety wooden barn that stood approximately two hundred feet from a pile of cinder blocks and ashes that had once been the home of Oleg Nikolin of Leningrad and Aleksandra Ivanova of Moscow.

And shortly after it had been unearthed, Russia, ever destined to rule the world, would finally do so.