12
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND
Wings. Beer. Sports.
The televisions in the Buffalo Wild Wings were tuned to English Premier League soccer this afternoon, thin gruel for sports addicts. The night’s first pro basketball and hockey games were still hours off. Eric Birman was happy to see the place was mostly empty. Eric didn’t like meeting the man he knew as Adam Petersen so soon after their last encounter in the casino garage, but at least he didn’t have to worry about running into a congressional staffer having a drink after work.
Adam sat alone in a corner booth, a computer programming manual on the table. Beside it was an oversized menu, open to pictures of entrées. As if B-Dubs didn’t trust its customers to know what wings looked like. This place catered to the idiots who enthusiastically supported his cousin.
It wasn’t until Eric left the Army that he realized what an elitist he’d become. Why not? He and his men spent years apart from their families. They risked torture and death to protect the sheep at home. They couldn’t tell anyone, not even their wives, what they’d done.
In truth, most civilians knew nothing about military service and cared even less. The okay ones thanked him, bought him a beer, left him in peace. The armchair warriors were the ones he couldn’t stand. The ones who wanted to hear about Black Hawk rides in the Empty Quarter, pretend they were soldiers, too.
His cousin had that streak. Paul liked to hunt. Once a year, he made Eric go with him. As if killing animals made him Eric’s blood brother. They can’t shoot back, idiot.
A decade ago, on one of those hunts, Paul had told Eric that he’d decided to run for the Senate. Take his dad’s seat. At the time, Eric was still in the Army. He hadn’t known what to say. He had always thought he would be the next Senator Birman. Henry was smart, but neither of his sons had inherited his brains. Paul barely scraped through the University of Tennessee, and spent twenty-five years cashing checks from the Birman family malls. He called himself a real estate developer. Like he’d ever developed anything other than tendinitis from playing too much tennis. His younger brother, Bobby, made him look good. Bobby spent most of his time dodging statutory rape charges.
Naturally, Paul was Henry’s favorite. Paul was living proof that it was better to be lucky than good. And of course he had grown bored with the mall business at exactly the right time.
“What do you think, cousin?”
That you’re the most fortunate sumbitch who ever walked the earth. That I’d like to have an accident with this Mossberg 500. Though even the dumbest sheriff’s deputy in McNairy County might wonder how a decorated Joint Special Operations Command officer had so much trouble with a shotgun.
“Sure people aren’t tired of having a senator named Birman?”
“You’re kidding me, right? They gonna love me even more than Henry.”
Paul was right. His aw-shucks conservatism played perfectly. Despite his wealth, he connected to average voters. I’m just like you, my fellow Tennesseans, only richer. Way richer. He rooted for the Volunteers, had a pretty wife, nice kids. He didn’t use big words or talk down. He listened to both kinds of music—country and western.
Ultimately, folks liked him. The unteachable gift.
Eric should never have gone to work for Paul. His fatal mistake. After Eric left the service, he figured he’d hang out for a while. Then hook up with a defense contractor or maybe go into politics. But he found spending time with his family next to impossible. He no longer understood his wife or kids. If he ever had. Their back talk made him grind his teeth. He was used to giving orders, not negotiating with a seventeen-year-old about her curfew while his wife yapped he was being too strict.
The contractors were the next disappointment. He met with executives at Boeing, Northrop, Lockheed, all the biggies. The guys who’d served were okay. Most hadn’t, though. They spent their lunches bragging about their golf handicaps, the money they made playing the stock market. When Eric talked about problems with weapons and systems, they steered him away. The engineers can handle the details, they said. From you, we’re looking for the bigger picture. The right people to talk to down in Tampa—at MacDill Air Force Base, where Central Command was headquartered. In other words, they wanted him for his connections, nothing else. He walked out of their fancy clubs feeling like a high-class whore. He didn’t return their follow-up calls.
That left politics. But Tennessee’s governor was popular. Eric had no shot to unseat him. And the thought of shaking hands for years to worm his way into Congress made his stomach ache. Even if he won, he’d be one of four hundred thirty-five representatives competing for attention. Decades from having any real power. He couldn’t wait decades.
The Senate. That’s where he belonged. Senators had national platforms. Senators became presidents.
But Paul was in his way. Lucky Cousin Paul. Tennessee was happy to have one Senator Birman. Not two.
Eric figured the only saving grace was that Paul would tire of the Senate after a few years. Paul liked hanging out at home. Home. A nice way to describe a twenty-acre estate with a garage full of hundred-thousand-dollar cars. So when Paul asked Eric to be his chief of staff, Eric agreed. In a term, two at most, Paul would quit. Meantime, Eric would make the important decisions.
But Paul had a nasty habit of making up his own mind. Eric would never forget the day he’d told Paul the United States didn’t need new visa rules because of the Ebola epidemic.
“We shouldn’t stop aid workers from going. It’ll be counterproductive.” They were in Paul’s palatial office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington.
“Counterproductive.” Paul made the word sound like a curse. “Folks back home don’t want Africans bleeding Ebola all over them. That simple.”
“The public health—”
“Public health where? The Congo?”
“The Congo is two thousand miles from West Africa.” As soon as he spoke, Eric knew he’d made a mistake.
“I don’t need geography from you, cousin. Let me explain exactly what’s going to happen with this stupid Ebola. It’s about as big a public health emergency as hemorrhoids. Something for CNN to talk about while they’re waiting for something else to talk about. In a few weeks, we’ll forget all about it. Until then, the people who voted for me don’t want any brown people getting them sick with the E-bola or the AIDS or anything else. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Now out. And the next time you have something you think I need to know, a teachable moment, you don’t call me Paul. You call me Senator. Better yet, keep your mouth shut.” He was shouting. Eric knew the staffers in the big office outside could hear.
Worst of all, Paul was right. A few weeks later, everyone had forgotten Ebola.
Eric could have quit, of course. Maybe he should have. But now that he was a few years out of the Army, his connection with Paul was his best selling point. He needed Paul more than ever.
He couldn’t stand needing Paul.
He started to think about the Russians. They’d approached him after he retired from the Army, of course. They approached every important officer. Their pitch was public and relatively subtle. A St. Petersburg–based think tank called the Federation for Defense Cooperation offered him two hundred thousand dollars to speak at a conference. The group’s president, Gennady Petyaev, was a retired general smooth as a talk show host. Eric merely had to give a forty-five-minute speech about the way the United States military viewed the world, Petyaev said. And answer questions afterward.
“What questions?”
“Nothing surprising.” Then Petyaev mentioned that his group could pay far more if Eric attended other conferences. “These would be smaller events, and more tactical issues would be discussed.”
“Sounds like you’d want me to disclose classified information.”
“No, Colonel. Never. Only what you’re comfortable with.”
Even then, before his hatred of Lucky Cousin Paul became overwhelming, the offer had a surprising pull. As a soldier, Eric admired the Russians for their uncompromising approach. When they decided to fight, they fought. They didn’t worry about civilian casualties or whiny journalists. They understood that too-strict rules of engagement could prolong wars and, ultimately, cost soldiers their lives. They’d lost twenty million of their own people in World War II, after all. And beaten the Nazis.
In Syria, Russian fighter jets had done what the United States couldn’t: Stop the Islamic State from toppling the Assad regime. Bashar Assad was a butcher, Russian bombing had killed thousands of civilians. But did anyone doubt that letting Daesh take Damascus would have been far worse?
The money was appealing, too. Eric’s branch of the Birmans had missed out on the mall fortune, thanks to his idiot granddad Philip, who refused to invest with the rest of the family. But Eric ultimately decided that taking money from Petyaev’s group would make defense contractors wary of him, an option that still seemed viable at the time.
Now that he worked for his cousin, he couldn’t possibly take Russian money openly. Anyway, he’d decided that he was past the winking corruption of a think tank. Like the Russians themselves, he had no interest in half measures. Fortunately, Lucky Cousin Paul’s seat on the Intelligence Committee gave Eric nearly complete access to CIA and NSA secrets.
He memorized the details of a program he knew the Russians would like, rented a storage room in Northeast D.C., and waited for the moment when he could meet a Russian intelligence officer without being obvious. It came at a dinner to celebrate the French president’s visit to Washington. The food was always excellent at the French embassy, and its dinners were always crowded. During cocktail hour, Eric spotted Dmitri Zlobin, the SVR’s deputy chief of station, in a line for the bathroom.
The rest was history.
The Russians had run him cautiously. Still, he knew the risks. Almost every agent was discovered sooner or later. Despite what he’d told Adam, Eric had decided that if he was found out, he would flee to Moscow. The Kremlin would take care of him. Russia treated its spies well. And his wife and kids would hardly notice he was gone.
Plus, if he was discovered, Paul’s political career would end. How could Senator Birman survive the revelation that his cousin, a man he’d appointed as chief of staff, had betrayed the United States? So if it all went wrong, Eric would wind up alone in an apartment in Moscow. But Lucky Cousin Paul would be disgraced, too.
Eric figured he could live with that trade-off.
Now Eric sat in the Buffalo Wild Wings across from Adam.
“I hope you like wings. I ordered two platters. Barbecue and Hot Sauce.”
Eric glanced over his shoulder. No one was in earshot. “Maybe you’ve acclimated a little too well.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy the crunch of a frozen chicken wing fried in oil.”
Eric tapped his wrist: Let’s get to it. “First. The FBI is still stuck on Dallas.”
“Are you sure they’re telling you everything?”
“They’ve briefed us twice this week, and they seem edgy. Without coming out and saying so, they’re hinting they’ve asked the NSA and CIA for help, which is dangerous, because it could mess up any court cases. They’d only do that if they were desperate.”
“They haven’t mentioned my friends?”
“Not once. And that’s the kind of tidbit they would give us. See how hard we’re pushing, we’re even looking at—”
Adam looked over Eric’s shoulder, a warning. “Hey there, bud—”
“Straight from the fryer,” the waiter said. “Give ’em a second to cool.” He put down two plates of wings and nodded at Eric. “Get you a drink?”
Eric shook his head, just a fraction.
“We have an afternoon special—”
“I said no.”
Something in Eric’s eyes must have scared the waiter. The guy backed away. Civilians.
Adam grabbed a wing. “You were saying.”
“I have to watch you eat?”
“I came here to eat. And study novel concepts in advanced C++ programming. You should eat, too.”
The last sentence was half suggestion, half order: You’ll draw attention to yourself if you don’t. Eric didn’t like grease. At JSOC, he’d prided himself on being able to outrun soldiers half his age. He forced a stingingly hot barbecue wing into his mouth.
“Good, right?”
No. Eric finished three wings, anyway. Satisfied with my cover, fatso? “Second, if your friends are hoping they can stampede Duto into an alliance, they’re wrong.”
For years, the Kremlin had proposed the United States work with it in Syria. After Dallas, it was making the case increasingly loudly. The Russian foreign minister had spent the last ten days in the United States, appearing on every media outlet that would have him. Whatever our differences, our countries have this terrible enemy in common, he said. The argument conveniently ignored that the United States was already fighting Daesh.
“Duto won’t be president forever.”
Words that made Eric sit up. The Russians couldn’t possibly be thinking about trying to kill the President. “Tell me that’s not on the agenda. You’d start World War Three. Anyway, this isn’t some dissident in Moscow. You can’t get to him.”
“I’m just stating a fact,” Adam said primly. “Look at the polls.” Duto’s approval rating had fallen almost fifteen percentage points post-Dallas. “He got elected to keep the country safe. Look what happened.”
Almost but not quite admitting that the Russians were behind the attack.
“What about your cousin?” Adam said. “Does he understand the benefits of an alliance?”
“Doubt he’s considered it either way. He thinks one sentence at a time.”
“Could you convince him?”
The wings had left Eric’s mouth coated with a sugary aftertaste. No wonder these places sold beer by the gallon. “What does it matter? I told you last time, he can’t win.”
“He can put pressure on Duto. People listen to him.”
Don’t I know it. Eric was almost sure Adam had just given him the real reason for this meeting. He didn’t love the idea of pitching his cousin to make a pro-Russian speech. Pushing too hard on Paul could be dangerous. Still, Paul liked strong men, and the Russian president was nothing if not strong. Look how they handled their own Muslim problem. They don’t screw around.
“It would be good to do this as soon as possible,” Adam said.
“What’s the rush?”
Adam shrugged.
“Fine. I’ll try.”
“I’m sure you’ll succeed. He trusts you, yes?”
“Why wouldn’t he? We’re blood.”