It was the moment of truth.
In every operation, there comes a time when one must decide whether to pull the trigger, in metaphorical, and often real, terms. It is the moment after which there is no retreat and the only direction is forward.
Ending the call with the rascal Coluzzi, Vassily Borodin surveyed the bound dossiers arrayed across his desk. Each represented a documented instance of high treason.
The first sheaf bore the title “Kremlin Decree No. 1, 12/31/99.” He opened the cover to read the text as set forth the day the traitor took office. “No corruption charges shall be allowed against outgoing presidents,” it began, before listing in detail all such acts that might qualify as “corruption.”
The decree was also known as the “grand bargain,” the brilliant piece of political chicanery that secured the president his job by granting his predecessor immunity, and then protected himself against all financial misdeeds he might undertake during his own tenure.
For perhaps the thousandth time, Borodin marveled at the man’s audacity. Was there ever a more telling way to begin a regime?
The second dossier, dated 2002, was titled “Nord-Ost.”
The third, dated 2007, discussed the Ivanchuk affair.
The fourth, the invasion of Crimea.
There was nothing damning about the events taken alone. In fact, it was possible to argue that the president’s decisions in each case were made for the benefit of the country. It was impossible, however, to ignore payments to a series of shell corporations—set up in the name of the president’s closest friends and housed in places like Liechtenstein, Panama, and the Cayman Islands—that corresponded precisely to the dates of these events.
The largest of the payments dated to October 2014, one week after the invasion of Crimea, totaled two billion dollars. The recipient was one Platinum Holdings of Curaçao, a shell company set up in favor of one Oleg Kharkov, aged eighty-seven, retired judo instructor and, by odd coincidence, the man who had taught the president during his youth.
Good luck explaining that, mused Borodin, to a group of generals living on a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year.
“But why would anyone pay me to invade Crimea?” the president would surely demand. “Or Ukraine?”
To which Borodin would pass out the documents his men had obtained detailing secret NATO meetings in which top U.S. generals had argued for a substantial increase in military spending to counter the “rising threat in the East.”
“Because,” Borodin planned to explain, “without a threat, the West has no excuse to re-arm itself.”
Some traitors came cheap. Some even betrayed their country for free, so eager were they to do their homeland harm. Not this one. For him, every action was for sale. Every decision carried a price tag. The man viewed the country as his own candy store, which he could sell off piecemeal. Timber for two billion. Aluminum for six. Oil for ten. The highest price was for the store itself, the Rodina, Mother Russia.
Borodin slammed a fist onto his desk. His Russia.
The sum total of these payments came to sixty-one billion dollars. Not bad for a lieutenant colonel passed over three times for promotion and stationed in Dresden of the former German Democratic Republic, a backwater so unimportant its offices had been equipped with computers nearly twenty years old. No wonder the man hated his country.
One day soon he, Vassily Borodin, would present all this information to a group of senior government ministers and high-ranking members of the military. It was imperative his case was airtight. For that, he needed the letter. It was the detonator that would ignite the explosives he’d labored years to gather. With a sweep of his arm, he gathered the folders and replaced them in his private safe.
The moment of truth had arrived.
First a call. “Kurtz. Bring the car around in five minutes.”
“Where are we—”
“Just bring it.”
Springing from his chair, he dashed past his secretary with a speed she’d never before witnessed. He eschewed the elevator and ran down the stairs to the ground floor, reining himself in to a brisk but officious walk as he exited the building. Decorum.
It was a crisp, sunny day, a tinge of burning wood in the air, distinctly fall-like, though the autumnal equinox was three weeks hence. He crossed Andropov Plaza and made his way toward a modern single-story building constructed a year earlier. The building housed the SVR’s administration and banking section.
He slowed to a suitable pace as he nodded to the two armed security guards situated on either side of the door. He continued past a reception area and down a long corridor. He stopped at a steel door, again guarded by two armed sentries.
“Open,” he said.
A guard pressed a buzzer. A voice asked who was there. He answered, “Director Borodin.” A loud, pleasing click as the lock disengaged. Borodin opened the door and entered the SVR’s private bank.
“Good morning, sir,” said the bank manager, a portly, pink-cheeked man with ginger hair, rushing to greet him. “This is a surprise.”
Borodin had never set foot in the building. It was not the director’s job to gather cash for an operation. In this instance, however, he could trust no one but himself. He dismissed the manager with a sideways glance and walked directly to the teller’s window. On a withdrawal slip, he filled in the boxes with a ten and six zeroes. There was a space at the bottom for two signatures, one for the case officer and one for the director. He scrawled his signature on both lines and handed it to the teller.
“Ten million euros?”
“That’s correct.”
“Needed?”
“Immediately.”
“Any particular denominations?”
“An even split of hundreds, two hundreds, and five hundreds. Vacuum sealed and placed in the smallest bag possible. I believe it should fit into a standard-sized suitcase.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Mr. Voroshin,” said Borodin. “Not a word.”
Voroshin flushed a violent shade of crimson and shook his head.
“You have fifteen minutes.”
Voroshin spun on his heel and double-timed it down the hall, punching a code into a security system before disappearing into the vault room where the SVR kept a permanently stocked selection of the world’s major currencies totaling over one hundred million dollars. The money was Borodin’s and Borodin’s alone to allocate, though it was by no means a private slush fund. He must account for every euro, yen, or pound at quarterly reviews led by the president’s much too diligent anticorruption squad.
Borodin paced the room, hands clasped behind his back.
The moment of truth, indeed.
So far all actions taken over the past years to further his private investigation could be ascribed to his official responsibilities. The meticulous, time-consuming assembly of dossiers listing suspicious activities, the interviews with retired agents, the prolonged interest in the pirated legal emails. All were natural activities to be performed by the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
This was different.
To take government money of your own volition with the intent to bring down the president constituted an act of high treason, nothing less, and if discovered would be punishable by death, the sentence carried out immediately, a bullet to the back of the head delivered most probably by the president himself.
A sobering thought. Yet such was Borodin’s confidence that he did not for a moment waver in the certainty of his actions.
He checked his watch, preparing to upbraid Voroshin for his lassitude, when the bank teller appeared, lugging a suitcase at his side.
“Ten million euros,” said Voroshin.
Borodin took the suitcase from his hand and left without thanking him.
Kurtz, his deputy, had pulled the car to the rear entrance as commanded. He stood by the open trunk. “Sir,” he said, “there is something you should see.”
“What is it this time? We need to get the money to the airport and transported to France. I don’t have time for anything else.”
“Major Asanova.”
“What about her?”
Kurtz handed Borodin his smartphone. A report from a French news channel was queued up. Borodin shot Kurtz a damning glance, then pressed PLAY. With horror, he listened to a reporter from France 2 describe the mysterious death of a female Russian passenger aboard a TGV from Paris to Marseille following a physical altercation with another passenger. A witness appeared on screen telling of the fight that took place in the dining car between a beautiful blond woman and an unidentified man, acting out how the woman had plunged a pen into her neck and then died gruesomely. The reporter ended by adding that the unidentified passenger with whom the Russian woman had quarreled had disappeared and could not be found.
Borodin returned the phone to his assistant. The unidentified man was an American, of course. Most probably, the one named Riske with an e. Oh, how they must want the letter back to engage in such theatrics aboard a train.
Instead of anger, he felt a sudden lightness of being, the fleeting beatific joy that came from knowing that one was right. The letter was genuine. Absolutely, incontrovertibly genuine.
“Well?” asked Kurtz.
“Take me to the airport.”
“But, sir—”
“I’m going to get that damned thing myself.”
“Out of the question. It was already too much of a risk going to Cyprus.”
“Nonsense.”
Kurtz stepped closer. “People are asking questions.”
Borodin turned on Kurtz. “And I am going to bring them back answers.”
“Not alone. Major Asanova was a formidable asset. Whoever did this—”
“I’ll need a team of five. We have twenty men from Directorate S within three hours of Marseille. Find me the best. And make sure one of them is a decent shot. If Mr. Coluzzi thinks he can toy with me, he is sorely mistaken.”