Commander-In-Chief Read online

  “So . . . who did it?”

  CIA director Jay Canfield said, “Wouldn’t rule out the Russians themselves.”

  Ryan said, “Are you suggesting this was a false-flag attack? That Russia attacked their own train?”

  “I know it’s too early to make any informed guesses, but we’ve seen it in the past, haven’t we?”

  It had been determined by the CIA that Russia had staged an attack in eastern Ukraine that killed pro-secessionist protesters, Russia’s supporters in the troubled region. The Kremlin used the event to justify an invasion, and their tanks rolled over the border shortly thereafter to signal the beginning of the Ukrainian war.

  Ryan said, “Yes, we’ve certainly seen it before. What was the train carrying?”

  Mary Pat looked down at her notes. “Our Lithuanian partners say it was a scheduled Russian troop and matériel transport. The Lithuanians had beefed up their security at the station like they always do when these trains come through, but they weren’t watching this overpass, because it was a half-mile away or so.”

  “Casualties?”

  Canfield said, “This is subject to change, because you can be sure there is a lot of stuff on that train that can still explode and cause damage, but right now we are told twenty-two Russian soldiers were killed in the attack, and another sixty-one injured. The train and its cargo are a near complete loss, and five Lithuanian firefighters were killed fighting the blaze. Again, follow-on detonations are going to be a problem.”

  “Christ,” muttered Ryan. “Reaction from Moscow?”

  “They’ve already gone up to their highest state of military readiness. Here we are, two hours after the attack, and they have made statements on social media blaming NATO, the CIA, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine.”

  “The usual suspects.”

  Secretary of State Adler said, “You can’t say they aren’t consistent.”

  Ryan drummed his fingers on the table. “If the Russians did it, we’d have to proceed on the assumption that this is an opening move to grab a corridor to give them direct access to their military installations along the Baltic Sea. I’ve worried for a long time that Kaliningrad could well be the next Crimea.”

  Adler added to his President’s comments. “Actually, sir, Kaliningrad is more Crimea than Crimea. Where Crimea was a Ukrainian province with a Russian majority and a Russian Navy base, Kaliningrad actually is Russian territory, with a Navy base and two air bases, not to mention missile batteries all up and down the coast and multiple Army bases. It’s a legit strategic interest like Crimea and, in this case, Russia has a rightful claim to it.”

  Ryan said, “But they don’t have a claim to southern Lithuania, and that’s what they’ll have to take to get to it.”

  Adler agreed with this point with a nod, but said, “The question isn’t legitimacy, the question is: Does Valeri Volodin think NATO will actually fight him over a swath of Lithuania?”

  Mary Pat said, “Volodin is looking for some sort of diplomatic or military victory. He needs a win badly. Fossil fuel prices are way down, and this has been a disaster in the Russian economy, because over half their exports are oil or gas. The sanctions we pushed through a few months back are already squeezing the nation even more.

  “When we armed the Ukrainians we made his easy rout of that nation turn into something more costly than he was prepared to pay for. He lost in Estonia, even though he framed it to his people as a win with a negotiated withdrawal.”

  Canfield added, “In the past thirteen months his domestic approval rating has gone from eighty-one percent to fifty-nine percent. That’s not a nosedive, but it’s bad. Considering the fact he virtually outlaws negative media coverage of him and his policies, a twenty-two-point drop is remarkable.”

  Ryan said, “A year ago the booming economy made him invincible. The economy is not booming anymore, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So he’s totally changed hats. Now he frames himself as a nationalist, he whips up national symbols, portrays himself as the savior of the Slavic people, who are being oppressed by the West. Blames us, NATO, whoever, for all Russia’s problems.”

  Scott Adler said, “The one thing that will bring his poll numbers back up, barring a major jump in energy prices, is a real military triumph. But he’s not winning anywhere. Ukraine is a stalemate.”

  Ryan added, “Ukraine is a stalemate because Volodin keeps it there. He could push harder toward Kiev if he wanted to, and he might do that still. But we have to keep our attention on the new flashpoint. These two different attacks in Lithuania could be used as a catalyst, whether or not Volodin was directly involved in them.”

  Adler said, “We essentially blackmailed Volodin last year. Told him we’d reveal what we knew about his ties to organized crime and how that brought him to power in Russia. He backed off in the Ukraine, turned his tanks around, and locked his territorial gains at the Crimea and Donetsk.”

  Ryan said, “Our blackmail didn’t solve our problem with Volodin, but it did help things. When he stopped his push to the Dnieper River it gave the Ukrainians time to regroup and improve their defenses. We armed them with the best defensive missiles and armor we had, and we increased our military advisers.”

  National Security Adviser Joleen Robillio said, “Mr. President, we did the right thing in Ukraine, and we handed Volodin a stalemate, which, considering how fast his troops were moving, is just as bad as a defeat to him. But I worry that if we back this man into a corner, at some point he will realize the only way out for him is to employ nuclear weapons.”

  Ryan replied, “You’re right, and he knows that we are factoring that into the equation. He expects us to harass him at every turn, but ultimately he does not expect us to call his bluff. If this Lithuania attack was his doing, perhaps he is considering a new front. Ukraine didn’t work, so he’s probing another location.”

  Scott Adler said, “You’re speaking of this as if it is already a war.”

  Ryan thought that over for a moment. Then he turned to his secretary of defense. “Bob, what are our options as far as responding to the attack in Lithuania?”

  SecDef was ready for this question. “We’ll have to go through NATO to move any of our NATO forces, of course. There is the NATO Response Force based in six Central European nations—Lithuania included, of course—but we’re talking six thousand troops in total. Not more than four hundred in Vilnius. There is a bigger contingent in eastern Poland, but still, not anything close to being enough to thwart a Russian invasion. We’d need a major mobilization.”

  “How fast can the NRF deploy in an emergency?”

  “The NRF can deploy within a week. Of course, NATO now has another unit that can deploy even faster, within forty-eight hours. That’s the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, and they are good troops, even though there aren’t enough of them to stop the Russians.”

  Mary Pat said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Russia isn’t coming over the border in the next week in any numbers, Mr. President. They don’t have forces in predeployment positions.”

  Ryan was not terribly comforted. “But these timelines don’t take into account the decision-making time of the Europeans. None of our partners has the political will to snap their fingers and send troops off to meet the Russians without needing a lot of hand-holding. We’ve got the NATO summit coming up soon in Copenhagen. Why don’t we use this as an opportunity to appeal to the other heads of state to develop some ways to streamline the process of moving forces into defensive positions? With the LNG facility explosion and now the attack in Vilnius, hopefully enough of the member states will recognize how quickly this could develop into war.”

  Robillio said, “I really hope you are met with a receptive audience, but you know how these summits go. A lot of talk, not a lot of action.”

  Ryan nodded, turned back to his SecDef. “What if NATO sticks its head in the sand? What abou
t U.S. assets not tied to NATO?”

  Burgess said, “We have a battalion of Marines, twelve hundred men, assigned to the Black Sea Rotational Force. They are set up as a rapid response, and they aren’t tied to NATO forces.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They are in Romania, but they are twenty-four hours away from wherever we need them in theater. This is just the sort of thing they train for.”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Twelve hundred Marines train to fight off a Russian invasion?”

  “Absolutely. They know they are a stopgap. Something to put into place, coordinating with other U.S. forces if possible, certainly along with local friendlies.”

  “Okay. Any other options?”

  Burgess gave a little shrug. “One destroyer is in the Baltic on a presence mission. But no carriers, and no real combat capability in comparison to a Russian invasion force. We do have a Marine Expeditionary Unit along with several ships practicing with the Brits on the west coast of the UK.”

  Ryan said, “That’s a long way from the Baltic.”

  Burgess held his hands up. “That’s true, but it’s two thousand Marines. A couple thousand well-equipped, well-positioned, and well-supported Marines could, in theory, seriously degrade a Russian invasion, if we gave them enough air, but we’d lose a hell of a lot of them in the process.” Burgess’s shoulders sagged. “The good old days of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Army and hundreds of tanks ready and waiting in Europe are behind us.”

  Nobody in the room thought those days were particularly good, but his point was understood by all.

  Ryan addressed Mary Pat Foley now. “It goes without saying, but we need to be watching military movements in Belarus. Russia will have to go through Minsk to get to Lithuania, unless of course they attack from the Kaliningrad side.”

  Mary Pat said, “We’ll add to our eyeballs in Belarus and along the Lithuanian border.”

  One of Jay Canfield’s aides entered the room and leaned over the CIA director, conferring with him for a moment. Canfield looked up at the President.

  “What is it, Jay?”

  “Good news. The fire on the train is out and Lithuanian Land Force personnel have been through the wreckage. The ordnance on the train was all conventional artillery shells, small-arms ammunition, that sort of thing.”

  Ryan knew what Canfield was saying. There were no ballistic missiles on board the train. According to rumor and intelligence reports, the Russian Federation had moved dozens, even hundreds, of Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad province in the past year. These missiles had the capability to be armed with nuclear warheads. The fact no Iskander-Ms were present during the train attack was a relief to everyone.

  Burgess said, “Interesting there were no missiles on that train.”

  “Interesting why?” Ryan asked.

  “That train just had vanilla troops, and vanilla ordnance. No Spetsnaz, no sophisticated weaponry.”

  Ryan had been at this for a long time, so he understood what Burgess was getting at. “From that you infer it was targeted by Russia, because an attack on it wouldn’t destroy anything too valuable?”

  “If there had been Iskanders on that train I would have had a hard time believing Russia would be involved in any attack. With the attack comes an inspection of the wreckage, after all, and that would mean that ordnance is going to get examined, possibly seized. The fact there was nothing controversial on board does make me a bit more suspicious of who the actual culprit was.”

  Ryan said, “We can speculate all we want, but we do so at our peril. We need hard and fast answers. Volodin is playing a game, ladies and gentlemen. He knows the rules. He has the plan. He is not as masterful as many people make him out to be, and I no longer believe he has the power to do whatever he wants, but make no mistake about this: Volodin is at the controls.”

  “The controls of what?” Adler asked.

  Ryan stood and motioned for all those heading to the state dinner to follow him. As he walked through the door and began tying his bow tie, he looked back to Scott Adler. “I don’t know, Scott. I hope we figure that out before it becomes apparent to everyone on earth.”

  11

  Six months earlier

  The café on Krivokolenny Lane was legendary, but to only a select few here in Moscow. To most it was just one of thousands of simple eateries in the city. It certainly wasn’t much to look at: just three rooms that didn’t get sufficient light from the street, walls with worn wood paneling, and simple wooden tables upon which dim votive candles burned in cheap glass holders. The building that housed it was old, dating back to before the Second World War.

  The restaurant had changed hands many times over the years, but now it was called Café F, and it was a high-dollar gastro-pub, attracting hipsters and tourists. Most of the hipsters didn’t know it, because even Russian hipsters didn’t think about such things, but Café F was only two blocks from Lubyanka Square—the headquarters of FSB, Russian State Security, and before that the HQ of the KGB. The café had been the location of a popular watering hole for KGB, FSB, and military intelligence types. To a man, the personalities who now ran Russian State Security and controlled the nation had once sat at the bar in the front room by the door, downed shots of vodka, and complained about their bosses and the direction their nation was heading.

  The venerable dive two blocks from the back door of the FSB building had turned into a posh local eatery and was even shilled to tourists on TripAdvisor.com. To the old guard still around it was a goddamned shame that somehow the edgy insider joint from the old days had morphed from a smoke-filled spy haunt into a swanky date-night destination.

  But not tonight. Tonight the new-money clientele of Café F had been shuffled away at six p.m., a sign had been put up out front explaining that a private party was being thrown, and soon after that cars and trucks full of armed men began pulling up out front. These were security officers and advance-detail men, most of them driven over from Lubyanka, but by nine p.m. bodyguards had arrived from the Kremlin, just a kilometer to the southwest.

  By ten p.m. there were three dozen armed men blocking Krivokolenny Lane and manning the rooftops and filling the sidewalk out in front of the closed restaurant. The building had been swept with dogs and bomb-detection equipment, and it had been swept again for listening devices and pinhole cameras, and only when the advance men and the security shift leaders pronounced the location clear did the arrival of the principals begin.

  Most came in armored SUVs and armored limos, but Pyotr Shelmenko was head of the GRU, Russian military intelligence, and he landed in a helicopter in Revolution Square, which was three blocks to the northwest. From here he walked with an entourage of twelve armed men. When he got to the restaurant he left most of his security unit out on Krivokolenny, and he went through the door of Café F with just a pair of close protection officers. Inside, Shelmenko grabbed a vodka at the bar and greeted several men around him with bear hugs.

  These were the top men of the siloviki, the former intelligence and military officers who were now the billionaires in charge of the Russian government, both behind the scenes and in the public eye.

  The nation’s foreign minister, Levshin, was there, as was Pyshkin, minister of the interior. Both men had served in the KGB in the 1980s. Arkady Diburov, the head of Gazprom, the state-owned natural gas concern, showed up in the middle of a phalanx of silver Cadillac SUVs, and he didn’t make it through the alcove in front of the restaurant before finding himself in deep conversation with Mikhail Grankin, the director of the Kremlin’s Security Council, who happened to be entering at the same time.

  Security men were not allowed inside the bar itself; it was a long-standing rule of the get-together that had the effect of making the street outside look like the front lines of a war zone throughout the evening. Dozens of men with rifles stood outside cars and scanned
the area. Inside, chiefs of staff and aides-de-camp filled the front room and bar area of the café, while the back room was completely reserved for the siloviki. Diburov and Grankin followed the other principals inside, and soon sixteen men were in the back, drinking vodka and sitting at simple tables, chatting quietly.

  The oldest was the eighty-one-year-old interior minister, and the youngest was Grankin at only forty-five.

  This was the twenty-third consecutive year of this event, although there had been quite a few additions to and subtractions from the guest list along the way. The first meeting, in ’94, was well before the siloviki wrestled power away from the more democratic government types and installed the first in a series of presidents in the Kremlin. Back in the beginning of the annual meetings they all just came to lament their fall from grace, or to use the get-together to help one another bolster their new fledgling companies, concerns, and holdings, in order to use their networks in the military and intelligence communities to navigate the difficult days of Russia’s return to a market economy via brash and brazen criminality.

  But by 1999 every single one of the attendees was a millionaire, some many times over, and they had taken control of the Kremlin, and since that year the annual meeting on Krivokolenny Lane had taken on even more importance as vital matters of state were discussed and decided on. Most of the last seventeen years had been good times for these men, and often this event at the café two blocks from the Lubyanka was a raucous affair, with much back slapping, tears of laughter, jokes about one another’s mistresses, and invitations to parties, palaces, and private islands tossed around between them.

  But not this night. Tonight the men were somber, quiet. Worried.

  Angry.

  The Russia of just a few months ago seemed like a distant memory now. Oil prices and gas prices had nose-dived, and the American government had placed economic sanctions on nine of the sixteen men in the room, blocking their movements out of Russia and freezing foreign assets that could be identified. These men weren’t broken, but they were damaged, to be sure, and every one of the others wondered if he might be the next man in the crosshairs of the West.