Forsyth gripped his arm. “Whichever of these esteemed candidates is MAGNIT—my money’s on that bottom-feeder Farbissen—one thing’s for sure: they will not fail to report this operation to Yasenevo, to save their own ass.”
“What about the Polish woman, Agnes?” said Westfall. “The Russians will really work her over.”
Forsyth shook his head. “You noticed Benford didn’t mention her during his briefings? The Russians won’t be expecting another ringer. Nash and Agnes will be arriving with a gaggle of new art students from Warsaw, part of the restoration crew rotation. The Russians will sniff at the students and Agnes, but with Nate in the bag they’ll have only one concern: who among the two hundred guests is the US-run mole. The cryptonym the interrogators use will tell us who MAGNIT is. HAMMER, CHALICE, or FLOWER.”
“And how do we find out which?” said Westfall. “How do we know this’ll work? Benford’s previous bait stories never got a rise out of the Russians.”
Forsyth shrugged. “Not every trap catches a bear,” he said. “The mole doesn’t report it, no one in Moscow believes it, they decide to wait before acting. Could be anything.”
“And getting the name back?”
“DIVA puts a note in the USV,” said Forsyth. Shit house of cards, thought Westfall. Selling Nate out for a name.
“Nate’s back by Christmas?” said Westfall, doubtful.
“Safe and sound,” said Forsyth. “And DIVA will start reporting the inside scoop on the SVR and the Kremlin right from her director’s desk.”
“Unless a wheel comes off,” said Westfall. Forsyth noticed the young analyst was using more operational slang. And he was also correct: unless a wheel comes off.
* * *
* * *
In Moscow, Gorelikov was busy trying to improve MAGNIT’s chances: He had set in motion two minutely subtle activniye meropriyatiya, active measures, using two agents from the stable of innumerable assets used by the Kremlin for Putin’s political-influence campaigns around the world. These were favored tactics during the Cold War to spread the communist cant. Now they were designed to sow discord among those who sought to weaken Putin’s kleptocracy. Active measures were most effective when the disinformation was woven into a macramé of truth, which effectively obfuscated the deception. The toolbox was diverse: influence elections, disparage opposition leaders, disrupt inimical allegiances, support friendly despots, circulate disinformation, leak forgeries, and, in extreme cases, use people like Iosip Blokhin to eliminate the most tenacious enemies of the State. The attempted assassination of a Polish-born Pope in 1981 who was encouraging the Solidarity movement in the Gdansk shipyards was an extreme example of an active measure.
A tame journalist named Günter Kallenberger—on Gorelikov’s payroll for decades—from the German investigative magazine Der Spiegel asked for an interview with Senator Feigenbaum’s staff chief, Rob Farbissen. Aware of Kremlin assessment data on the fatuous staffer, Kallenberger asked Farbissen if the senator became DCIA, wouldn’t Farbissen surely become executive director, or perhaps deputy director for administration? If that was the case, what changes or reforms within CIA could allied intelligence agencies expect in the coming years? It was a classic journalist’s open-ended question, in Russian a lovushka, a deadfall, a snare, designed to give Farbissen enough rope to hang himself (and his patron). The voluble Farbissen did not disappoint. He railed to Kallenberger that CIA had evolved from a postwar collection of has-been Nazi hunters to a futile and undisciplined anachronistic agency prone to intelligence failures, and unable to collect on relevant intelligence gaps. Instead, CIA spent its time and resources trying to suborn Russian code clerks in South America in what he called sex traps. The firestorm that erupted in Congress and Europe, and in the indignant editorials in RIA Novosti and TASS went on for a week, at the end of which Senator Feigenbaum withdrew her name from consideration for DCIA. Farbissen left the senator’s staff and became a lobbyist on the hill for the ACA, the American Coal Association.
Concurrent with Farbissen’s scandalous interview, an article in the Business Standard financial newspaper in New Delhi reported a new mineral-supply contract signed with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko and IPL, Indian Potash Limited. The article described the chaotic practices of Belarus’s state-owned fertilizer group Belaruskali, which in 2013 caused global prices to collapse, as they had in 2008 and 2009. A sidebar—drafted by Gorelikov and obligingly run by a Business Standard editor on Kremlin retainer—mentioned that American businessman and former US ambassador to Spain, the Honorable Thomas Vano, had been a member of an international commodities consortium that had benefitted from insider tips from the Belarus government to invest in and then short volatile mineral futures. The sidebar piece finished by estimating that the insider trading had netted Ambassador Vano’s group $1.5 billion in 2013 alone, profits realized while he was a US government employee, a serious ethics violation. The facts were fudged: no insider tips were given (who in Minsk would confirm that?) and the figure of $1.5 billion was a fabrication, but uncheckable, giving the further impression of currency sheltering and tax evasion. Though Vano blithely did not withdraw his name as a candidate for DCIA, the ambassador’s nomination was quickly characterized as “implausible” by the Wall Street Journal, and vozmutitelnyy, scandalous, by Channel One Russia in Moscow.
In two deft moves, Gorelikov had eliminated the other candidates as realistic contenders. He knew that this theoretically helped the mole hunters at Langley—they’d now be free to concentrate on vetting Admiral Rowland—but he was not worried. The admiral had no detectable flaws in her cover, and the final decision to confirm was imminent. For all CIA knew, one of the failed candidates could be the mole; the Kremlin would swallow its disappointment, and would direct their asset to an equally sensitive position elsewhere in Washington.
In Headquarters, Benford likewise recognized that the obvious hatchet jobs on Feigenbaum and Vano put the spotlight on Admiral Rowland, but that was exactly the problem. In the world of counterintelligence, especially with the Russians, nothing was ever as it seemed. Feigenbaum’s and Vano’s apparent disqualification might actually be an insidious red herring to divert attention—like fake defector Yurchenko sent to protect Ames. The goal would be that while Benford wasted time looking under Rowland’s bed, the real mole would be free to burrow somewhere else: the NSC; the Pentagon; the West Wing. One hope remained. The Center didn’t know about Benford’s final trap.
* * *
* * *
Admiral Rowland did not have an adventure vacation scheduled for at least six months. Next spring, it was going to be Argentina: she planned to hike in Patagonia, because she had discreetly done research on a nonattributable Homeland Security library computer downtown—it was already brimming with downloaded porn—and had read about Crocodilo Club in Barrio Norte in Buenos Aires that catered to girls. She wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but it sounded interesting. She’d meet Anton in BA and have fun.