Putin's Gambit Page 2

  He looked down at his belly and knew that he’d let his fitness slide since his discharge. But it wasn’t exactly like he was doing push-ups every day in the service, either. He’d been a captain in charge of logistics and finances, with his only real combat experience coming when he forced his way onto a Black Hawk for patrol in the Korengal Valley during the war in Afghanistan and a couple of attacks on the base. He counted the nine shots he got off in a brief firefight as combat experience, but he’d trade it now to lose thirty pounds.

  Walsh just smiled and nodded at Cheryl. Slender and standing almost six feet tall in her heels, she rarely missed anything that went on in the office.

  He’d thought about his overall physical shape more in the last three weeks since he’d attended the funeral of his friend and fellow marine Ron Jackson. The major had died in a terror attack in Berlin, of all places. But there had been more attacks on U.S. interests by jihadists, mainly from the Islamic State—or, as the marines called the movement, Daesh, which could be confused with an Arabic word for stepping on something and was considered by some as a slight. New York had seen two attacks: a bomb in the subway that killed a Dutch tourist and shut down the green line for two days, and a modified anthrax attack in the air-conditioning system of a sporting goods store. There were still three people in the hospital over that.

  Walsh had seen his other two close friends in Arlington at the funeral. Bill Shepherd was tall and lanky and still in the Corps. Mike Rosenberg was working at the CIA but looked like he’d pass any fitness test for any branch of the service. It made Walsh resent his nickname, “Tubby,” for the first time since he’d earned it.

  The fact that he had rented a tiny SoHo apartment and didn’t have far to walk most nights proved he made too little money and spent too little energy. It was a tiny hovel that he sublet from sublettors who had it under rent control. He didn’t even have his name on any official documents for the apartment and got all his mail at the office.

  He missed his old team from the 2nd Marines. They were like brothers, and he had lost one to a conflict most Americans only knew from the nightly news. His new employment had teams as well, but they were nothing like a Marine unit. Thomas Brothers team members were a different breed. He was considered fit and tough on these teams. It was embarrassing. A twenty-three-year-old Princeton grad had yelled at him the other day.

  Each of the six members of this team was involved in staggering transactions every day, but it never got to Cheryl. She stuck to a schedule of getting up at 5:00 A.M. and checking the exchanges, going to the gym, then staying in the office until after sunset every day except Friday. Then she did the unthinkable and sometimes left the office by six o’clock, whether it was summer or winter, sunny or gray.

  All this occurred under the benevolent and watchful eye of Ted Marshall, the supervisor for his section and ultimate leader of three full teams. That made him similar to a major in the marines, but Ted worked hard to be liked. He was the guy who asked about your family. Cheryl was the one who told you that you didn’t have time to see them.

  At his desk, Walsh inserted his plastic-encased USB security plug into a secure terminal on the side of the lightning-fast computer. The plug was slightly larger than a USB thumb drive and had three lights on the side that flashed when it completed different tasks. It was safer than just a password and allowed the company to see exactly who was involved in the transaction. He still needed to enter an eight-digit password, and if he lost the security plug, virtually no one would have any idea what the damn thing was; besides, it could only work on a Thomas Brothers network. He always needed it on overseas transfers but not on routine work within their own trading house. Sometimes he’d have to use the plug three times in a week, or he could go three weeks without using it. Such was the life of a scrub at Thomas Brothers Financial. Lots of paperwork and trading within the company for clients he never got to meet.

  Today he was just checking an account, not making any trades or transactions. He glanced at his watch and realized it was approaching six o’clock, or after midnight in Sarajevo, where he was checking on $4 million in Canadian currency that was in escrow. Some poor schlub like him was working overnight to prepare the final transaction in Europe. He felt for the guy. He needed this to be done quickly because his girlfriend, Alena, expected to meet him before six thirty. There were a lot of things Walsh was willing to do, but disappointing his girlfriend of two years was not one of them. He had known her two years, anyway, and felt confident he could call her his girlfriend of eleven months. If he could only work up the nerve, he’d present her with the engagement ring he’d bought nearly three weeks earlier and had stashed in the top drawer of his desk. He’d used the last of his savings from the marines and now worried about paying his day-to-day bills. For now he was content to make Alena happy by being on time and buying her a nice sushi dinner. He was still a little sheepish from his experience in Germany when he was the paymaster at Camp Panzer Kaserne. His mixup with a local girl who stole his company credit cards and charged a fortune could’ve gotten him a few years in Leavenworth. She claimed Walsh was part of the scheme. Thank God for good JAG lawyers and a judge who recognized the truth. It was just a petty crime, but it had scarred him, or at least greatly embarrassed him.

  As soon as he had checked the escrow, he scurried to his own cubicle and made sure nothing had come up in the last twenty minutes while he was away from his desk. This was the tricky part: sliding out of the office without anyone noticing. It was never good to be the first one done for the day. No one ever noticed if you arrived at seven o’clock every morning, but everyone picked up on someone creeping out of the office first. This was high finance. Medical emergencies were put on hold to transfer money. Children’s activities were the stuff of legend, and anniversaries past the third year were virtually unheard of.

  He checked his watch—6:17. He felt a brief surge of panic and pictured Alena being hit on by some lawyer, or worse, some photographer who wanted her to be a model in his creepy midtown studio. He shuddered at the thought. The Columbia international affairs grad student from Greece was too sweet to recognize a come-on like that. Life in Larissa or Athens was a little simpler than in New York.

  Just as he glanced in the tiny mirror on his desk to flatten out the cowlick in his short brown hair and make sure he didn’t have any food crusted around his mouth, Ted Marshall stopped at his desk and said, “You’re moving a lot of transactions lately, Derek. Glad we took advantage of that program to grab guys like you coming out of the service. I always pictured marines climbing up hills and shooting little Asian dudes. It never occurred to me the Corps needed financial managers, too. Keep up the good work.”

  Walsh just gave him a quick nod and mumbled, “Thanks, Ted.” It’d taken him a while to get away from adding a “sir” or “ma’am” to virtually every remark. He’d called Ted “Mr. Marshall” for the first week he was here until the portly manager told him to knock it off. He tried to keep his manners intact no matter how difficult it was in this odd social maze of money wonks, computer nerds, and financial sharks. Each of them needed the others to survive, but no one wanted to mix with the others.

  He screwed up the courage to casually stand and slowly walk toward the men’s room. No one seemed to notice as they each focused on their own work and the room buzzed with a certain energy he’d never felt anywhere else. Once he was past the men’s room, it was an easy few steps to the stairwell. He went down two floors by foot, then imagined the bloom of perspiration building under his arms and slipped off at the twenty-ninth floor just in time to catch an express elevator to the lobby. God was with him.

  He couldn’t help but look at his watch as the elevator door opened in the lobby and saw that he somehow had to make it seven blocks in about four minutes to be on time. He carried a simple zippered notebook instead of a briefcase, and his security plug was secure at the bottom of his inside coat pocket. The marines had taught him the importance of habit and keeping your u
niform, no matter what it happened to be, clean and neat at all times.

  He slipped out the glass door to cut across the courtyard and onto Nassau Street. He still wasn’t certain which would be faster, a cab or an all-out sprint. At the bottom of the stairs two figures stepped in front of him and blocked his way. Walsh mumbled, “Excuse me,” and started to spin to his left, but one of the men held out his arm to stop him.

  All it took was one good breath to know exactly who these two were. They were part of the new Stand Up to Wall Street movement. Some of his coworkers called them the “aggravate movement,” since they were a little more on the aggressive side than the Occupy people from a few years earlier.

  One of the men, in his midtwenties and a little shorter than Walsh’s six feet one, said, “What’s the hurry, big guy? You need to rush home to your Park Avenue penthouse?”

  The other man, a few years older, got right in his face and said, “How do you sleep at night doing the things you do?”

  Walsh ignored them and tried to step past. One of the men grabbed him by the arm, and Walsh realized this was about to turn ugly.

  *

  Major Anton Severov used his Zeiss-Jena knock-off Russian binoculars to scan the low rise of the hills surrounding the town of Kingisepp, about eight miles from the border of Estonia and the city of Narva. His units were slowly maneuvering into place, with the main objective of not being noticed. For the past year they had been conducting war games in the area in and around Estonia, Latvia, and Belarus. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the Kremlin had planned, but so far no one seemed to really care. Severov had been a tanker his entire career, but he fought against the stereotype of the slow-witted brute. Sure, the MiG pilots and the intelligence people had time to dress in the most stylish of uniforms and were the envy of every man at a party, but in every war the Soviet Union and then Russia had been involved in, it was tankers who really led the way. His command vehicle was a T-90 tank with a 125 mm smoothbore main gun. Aside from a brief skirmish in Georgia, he hadn’t had the chance to see what the tank could do. Afghanistan was long over by the time he joined the service. Now it was the Americans’ problem.

  There was renewed optimism as Vladimir Putin had proven to the world Russia was not a dying superpower. Ukraine had found that out the hard way. Now they were poised to make a bold move into Estonia. A NATO partner. That might not have been the exact orders, but Severov was no idiot. He spoke English almost as well as Russian and subscribed online to The New York Times. He’d visited the U.S. three separate times, all of them on official passports back when relations between the two countries were much warmer. He knew their soldiers were tough and well trained, but he also knew there weren’t enough of them in Eastern Europe. There had barely been enough in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, but now, being preoccupied in the Middle East trying to act as a policeman, the U.S. had virtually forgotten about commitments to the countries of Europe.

  The plans for a rapid deployment force had foundered, and the best the U.S. could do was base a dozen F-16s in Estonia, as a warning not to cross the border, and park a few outdated tanks on bases scattered across the country. Severov doubted that would be enough to influence Russian policy. The Russian hierarchy had calculated that no one would go to war over Estonia. Just like Crimea. There would be an outcry and a few useless sanctions, but the U.S. president did not have the spine to stand up to Vladimir Putin and everyone knew it. Especially Putin.

  A smile spread across Severov’s face as he saw that all the tanks had settled in under trees and spread camouflage netting so that satellites would have a difficult time picking up the movement. He wasn’t even worried about flights overhead. No one from NATO had bothered to fly a jet through Estonia or Latvia in the past three weeks. They were still bitching about Ukraine.

  He knew the orders would come soon. He’d been told to settle down and keep his men fed, rested, and engaged. If that wasn’t a precursor to war, nothing was.

  *

  Walsh felt the man’s hand on his bicep and resisted the urge to turn toward him; instead he locked his arm to his body and turned away quickly, tossing the man into his partner. Now they turned on him with fire in their eyes. These didn’t seem like the peaceful Stand Up to Wall Street people he’d gotten used to seeing urinating in the flowerpots and dozing under the trees and in the green spaces. He didn’t want to crouch and give away his intentions, as he kept his eyes on both men, who were now separating slowly, making it difficult for him to face both of them at once.

  He felt a third hand on his right shoulder. This one was gentle and barely startled him. Then the soft voice acted like a tranquilizer as he heard his girlfriend, Alena, say, “Let these men go. They’re just confused.”

  That seemed to catch the younger man’s attention. He looked at her and said, “Why are we confused?”

  “Because you don’t even know what you’re protesting. Everyone is against unlawful financial transactions, but none of you are qualified to know who’s an honest banker and who is not. None of you even have jobs.” Her light accent added flair to the comment.

  The other man leveled his gaze at her and said, “How do you know we don’t have jobs?”

  Now Walsh ended the conversation and stepped toward the man, saying, “Because you guys hang out here all day.” He let the frustration bleed into his voice. Even if it was a reasonable cause, who could take it seriously? These guys weren’t even homeless. They just chose to not work and live off their parents.

  Walsh allowed Alena to turn him as she said, “I knew you’d be running late, so I thought I’d surprise you. But I desperately have to use your restroom, and they won’t let me in the building without you.” She carried an overcoat draped over the wide portfolio she always had nearby.

  He couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder at the two men one last time as he heard a rally at the far end of the plaza begin. Walsh used the security keypad to get back into the building. He made sure no one but Alena was watching when he punched in his password of 73673734—which spelled Semper Fi on a phone—and walked Alena to the ladies’ room. Alena charmed the guard at the security desk into letting her leave her portfolio and coat behind the desk until they were done with dinner. The flustered guard only asked if she would be back by ten, when his shift ended. She threw him a glittering smile and flipped her blond hair as she nodded yes. They were both happy with the transaction.

  Alena turned to Walsh as they neared the restroom and surprised him with a full hug and kiss on the lips. Then she whispered in his ear, “You’re so cute.”

  A smile spread across his face as he decided she was the prettiest girl who had ever whispered in his ear.

  *

  Joseph Katazin, born Joseph Ladov, had spent most of his adult life in the United States, the majority of that in Brooklyn or Queens. His father had been a mathematician at the Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University, and his mother a music teacher from Kiev. All Joseph had ever wanted to do was be a soldier. Just like little boys all over the world. It had been difficult to go against his father’s wishes, but he was accepted into the M. V. Frunze Military Academy and, at the tender age of twenty-one, virtually tumbled out of school and into combat in Afghanistan. That was a treacherous stretch of three years, fighting insurgents who were heavily backed by the United States. That fact didn’t hit home until the Hind helicopter he was riding in was struck by an American-made Stinger and went down in the Eshpi Valley in the Southern Hindu Kush. He’d survived on his wits and an AK-47 with four magazines of ammo. The crash had injured his back and given him a gash from his hairline to his chin on the left side of his face, which now, at fifty-one, had faded to a thin white line that crossed his lips and gave them a slight indentation. He noticed it every time he smiled, and that made him remember why he hated the United States so much.

  The time was drawing near for him to feel some level of satisfaction. After the service, when he returned home from Afghanistan, his father let him i
n on a family secret: His mathematics degree had helped him work with the KGB on cracking codes. As a result of his work, he knew several high-ranking KGB officials who took the young Joseph under their wing. They appreciated his service, and a scar on his face tended to remind people that the KGB wasn’t a group of accountants or technical people trying to eavesdrop on telephone conversations. Occasionally they did serious work and needed serious people.

  Ladov’s ability to speak English at his mother’s insistence, starting at a very early age, as well as his ability to play the piano, also due to his mother’s iron will, made the Russian spy agency realize he could be used for a number of things other than terrorizing prisoners to get information. Eventually he traveled to the United States using the name Joseph Katazin and never used the name Ladov again. For more than a year he attempted gainful employment as a pianist, but even the KGB gave up on that and instead helped him establish the European Trading Company, a somewhat successful import and export business.

  Eventually Katazin married a plump but pretty girl who had just graduated from Stony Brook, a Long Island branch of the State University of New York system. As an elementary school teacher, she was an excellent cover. Over the years, however, Katazin had to admit he had developed feelings for her, and now, sixteen years later, with a twelve-year-old daughter, he was quite comfortable in his life and essentially happy.

  His wife, of course, had no idea about his background or main occupation. He told her a dog had bitten him when he was a child and left a scar on his face. The bullet hole in his leg was explained as a hunting accident and the reason he shied away from guns now. She was occasionally loving and attentive and more frequently a suspicious shrew. That was partially his fault—he enjoyed the occasional tryst and had been careless in some of his liaisons. His wife had accepted the fact that her husband worked extraordinary hours; after all, he had provided her with a very comfortable house in an upscale area of Brooklyn.