The Outer Circle (The Counterpoint Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

Beijing, China

Jia Kecheng had been to the new Russian Embassy only once since it opened in 2021. It was much larger and better located than the old one on
Dongzhimen Beizhongjie, symbolizing a close relationship between the two counties.

Despite some vague rumors about disagreements, the ambassador’s birthday party was lavish and well-attended.
Jia knew that the invitation list would be long; as a lowly colonel in the General Staff he was not high enough to get invitations to any but the largest gatherings. As Jia and his wife mingled, politely chatting with other lowly folks from various countries, his eyes kept scanning the room.

Finally, he saw the man he wanted. Jia politely but somewhat abruptly excused himself, leaving his wife to fume in the company of some insignificant Iranian diplomat.

“Vasya!” he gently tapped a man’s shoulder. Vasily Pomolsky, a Russian second military attaché, turned around and looked with a momentary misapprehension. Then recognition sparked in Pomolsky’s eyes and his expression changed to a friendly one:
“Jia! It has been a long time.”

Six years ago, Pomolsky and Jia helped oversee of one of many in a series of Chinese and Russian joint military exercises. Being forced to spend eleven days together by the Amur River in the middle of nowhere, they struck a casual friendship of two men that liked each other but didn’t have a whole lot in common.

“Yes, Vasya, I don’t get many invitations to your embassy.”

“I’d be happy to correct that.”

“Thank you,” smiled Jia, fully aware that Pomolsky wouldn’t be able to get him more invites unless Jia got to the covered rank of General. “How about we walk in the garden for a few minutes and reminisce about the old times on the Amur River?”

Pomolsky opened his mouth to beg off, but Jia gently tugged on Pomolsky’s sleeve and pointed his eyes in the direction of the garden, indicating that the conversation would in fact be about something else.

“Yes, of course,” Pomolsky smiled back with his mouth but not his eyes. “Those were fun times.”

Once in the garden, Pomolsky led them to a fountain in the corner where the sound of water would mask the exchange, all the while laughing and chatting idly. The two men lit up their cigarettes.

“Is this about the East and South China Seas operation that the General Staff is planning?” asked Pomolsky.

Jia thought that his friend might have been bypassed for promotion three years ago because he was not patient enough to let the information come to him.

“Yes, we are planning it. You know?”

“Of course. I’ve been told that the timeline is late January, right after the new U.S. administration takes office.”

“What do your people think about it?”

“It’s good to have plans and the timing is interesting. But frankly, nobody takes it seriously. You plan Taiwan’s invasion every year,” Pomolsky shrugged. “But with the U.S. 7
th
Fleet there, everyone thinks these are just more planning exercises. Next year there will be another exercise. We do the same thing over and over. Keeps us employed.”

Kecheng exhaled smoke and lowered his voice to a whisper:

“This might be different. The planning is done under the assumption that Russia will join and that the Pacific Fleet will be a part of the attack force.”

“What?” Pomolsky accidentally raised his voice. “We’ve never taken the mutual defense pact that far!”

Jia raised his palm to silence Pomolsky. “General Wu Cao specifically told our small team of planners to assume this. When one of my colleagues questioned how realistic this is, the General told him ‘You’ll see before the end of the month.'”

“That is very strange,” Pomolsky shook his head. “But perhaps it’s just a premise for the planning exercise, nothing more.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Jia. “We’ve also been told in our exercise to not worry about the Americans cutting us off from Middle East oil supplies because Russia will divert all its energy deliveries from Europe to us.”

A couple of other guests approached the fountain.

“Remember when that Russian captain got so drunk that he jumped into Amur River in full clothing and had to be rescued?” laughed Jia.

“Ha, yeah, I do. He lost his boots!” Pomolsky clapped, trying to appear in the midst of fun memories.

Moscow, Russia

It was a long drive to the Yasenevo district.

“Why did the SVR choose to locate themselves in the middle of nowhere?” grumbled Vasily.

Ivan Mershov laughed at his driver:

“Vasya, not everyone likes to be in the center of the city. For intelligence operations, being on the outskirts can be a good thing.”

Having the SBOR uniform helped. Upon arrival, both Mershovs were promptly processed and escorted to Fyodor Bakunin’s office. The secretary brought tea and they exchanged family news until Bakunin put down his tea glass:

“All right, Vanya, we’ve known each other for over forty years. You would not ask for an emergency meeting unless something major was happening.”

“Perhaps something is happening, Fedya, perhaps not. I am sorry to drag you into this. I have to find out more about Nikolai Nemzhov and I just don’t know who to trust.”

“Nemzhov?” recoiled Bakunin. “That snake? I thought we got rid of him.”

“I thought so too.”

“This requires more than tea,” Bakunin got up, went to his desk and opened the lower drawer: “Vodka or scotch?”

“Vodka.”

“You’d better start from the beginning,” said Bakunin after pouring generous portions.

Mershov hesitated.
You have to trust someone, might as well be a childhood friend.
Then he told the story that Vitaly brought in from St. Petersburg, then his own computer research and the apparent connections between Zaychikov, Bezdorukov, Nemzhov and possibly Kolotov.

After finishing, he gulped the rest of the vodka and said:

“Fedya, please tell me I’m paranoid.”

“I don’t know, Vanya. Zaychikov and Bezdorukov transferring in the last few months to end up so close to the Defense Minister Nedinsky’s assassination? We’ve been in this business long enough to distrust coincidences.”

Bakunin stood up and nervously paced the floor:

“Look, let me tell you about Nemzhov. He was a master bureaucrat. Very smart, very ruthless. The SVR is a separate organization that reports directly to the President, but the GRU is much bigger, so he always treated us like crap. Before coming to the GRU, he spent over twenty years at the FSB. He was in St. Petersburg when Mosin was still there, he was connected – on the outskirts, but still connected – to the original
St. Petersburg mafia
, to the
siloviki
that ended up running this country. I think he was angry that they didn’t take him to Moscow in the late 90s, but as a good bureaucrat he bid his time, built his connections. And he always stayed close to the money, the big money. The money that disappeared when the Soviet Union fell. I know, I head the Directorate of Economic Intelligence here. I could tell that he knew where the skeletons had been buried, where the money were hidden. And he made sure others knew that he knew. That’s what helped him to move to Moscow. That’s what got him to the top of the GRU. And then he sold Mosin on the plan to bring down the American dollar. He worked on that for twenty years, waiting until the time was right, building alliances with the Chinese, the Iranians, the Brazilians. Patiently waited for a long time until he was ready to strike.”

“And then two amateurs brought him down?” half-asked, half-stated Mershov.

“Exactly! Although in a strange way, I am not surprised. Sociopaths like Nemzhov, they think they can figure out and control everyone. And in most cases, that’s true. To bring down people like that sometimes takes an inexperienced and unpredictable amateur doing what’s unexpected.”

Bakunin pivoted and planted his palms on the table across from Mershov.

“Once his role – and his outsized greed – had been exposed, he had no choice but to go on the run. He knew he would be sacrificed. I can only imagine how angry he is, burning with desire for revenge. Vanya, two rumors have quietly circulated since his disappearance. One is that Nemzhov managed to get out most of his money, which were likely quite substantial.”

“And the second rumor?”

“That he got out his secret dossiers. Vanya, you are not a political animal, you are basically a soldier. So you may not know that everyone who is anyone in Moscow was scared of Nemzhov. It was believed – a belief that he strongly encouraged – that he had records on anyone worth keeping records on, both here and abroad. Between his years in the FSB and the GRU, he built up his connections and his files. He was glad to bestow favors on people; his price was always information. Any incriminating information would do. Illegal financial dealing, inappropriate sexual dalliances, briberies, anything that can be used to blackmail – he collected it. And with computers, tracking, video cameras everywhere, drones overhead – the data was pouring in, one just had to search for it. He didn’t even have to use it. He would just imply that he had “something” and people would fold. Because everyone is guilty of something and when the privacy is gone, when the government can potentially record everything you do or say, you can’t hide.”

“But if we know what’s in his secret files, we know whom he can blackmail?”

“That’s the problem! His files are gone. From what I’ve heard, he got rid of paper records years ago – so nobody can have them. He controlled access to electronic records and doled it out selectively to his lieutenants. He must have had his right-hand computer guy – who disappeared with him, probably eliminated – program a complete erasure sequence, because all the files have disappeared. It was a work of art, to erase everything, backups and all, so they can’t be restored.”

“But you think he has a copy?”

“Yes. Obviously, I don’t know; I’m not high enough. I only heard panicked rumors. But it’s logical to assume that he has the files. Which gives him the power to bend others to his will.”

“Fedya, what do you think we should do now?”

Bakunin sighed,

“What you have is very circumstantial, we can’t prove anything. I don’t know where to take it. I mean, if you go and cast suspicion on some high level people and this turns out to be nothing...”

“There is something else,” said Vitaly, who’s been quiet so far. He pulled a small flash drive from his pocket. “I have received a message from an old friend, Oleg. The last I know, he was in America. Oleg sent me records of suspicious transactions originating in our SOFI financial system and transferring large amounts of money into accounts of certain individuals in the U.S. He was asking to trace these transactions within the SOFI.”

“The SVR has access to the SOFI transaction records, but I personally don’t. What does this have to do with Nemzhov or Nedinsky’s assassination?”

“I don’t know,” Vitaly shook his head. “Only that all these things are happening at the same time.”

Bakunin stared out the window.

“More coincidences. Nedinsky’s assassination, when surrounded by people with Nemzhov's connections, might be a sign that Nemzhov is putting his people – I mean, those that he can control – into positions of power. I wonder if he has something on Shelkov, the new Defense Minister. And if your boss, the Minister of Internal Affairs, is connected to Nemzhov, then he has two people controlling the military and the police under his command. This is too damn scary. We have to go to my boss, Mikhail Praschenko. I’m supposed to meet him for a briefing this afternoon.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I do. Nemzhov is his old nemesis. Praschenko can also have the SOFI records checked, to see if there is some connection.”

You have to trust someone
, thought Mershov. “And if your boss thinks this looks suspicious, what then?”

“He reports directly to the President. He can get us in to see Mosin if needed.”

“Going to the President?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Mershov did not.

Richmond, USA

Nancy Westlake, the head of internal security at FreedomShield, rubbed her tired eyes. When she retired from the NSA a few years back, she was determined to not get sucked into another high-pressure job ever again. Erik King convinced her to come back. Nancy was not doing this for the money, although they paid her well. Erik made her into a believer: they were going to restore the country’s greatness, avenge the setbacks of the recent past, and push their enemies, especially the Chinese, back where they belonged. They were the new crusaders, defending liberty and democracy. The country needed sheep dogs to protect it from the wolves. That’s what they were at FreedomShield: sheep dogs, vicious but righteous. That’s why she continued to work seventy hour weeks instead of enjoying retirement.

She exhaled heavily and reached for the top of the “Priority 3” pile. Nancy was old-fashioned and liked things printed out for reading, to the great consternation of her assistant Richard, the tree-hugger. The pile had grown large, accumulated over a few weeks. She felt guilty just looking at it, but with all that’d been going on she had to trust the judgment of those filing the reports that these particular alerts were not urgent.

Nancy would quickly scan each alert’s description and move the one page printout either to her left – for Richard to mark as ‘reviewed, no follow-up required’ – or to her right for further investigation. After a couple of hours, the pile was almost gone, almost entirely transferred to her left with only a couple of pages on her right.

She quickly scanned the piece of paper in her hand – some FBI agent in New Mexico researching financial transactions, why would this even raise an alarm? – and was about to move it to the left when her eyes zeroed in on “John Dimon” and “FreedomShield” on the bottom. Nancy read the one-pager again, this time more carefully. An FBI agent in a small resident agency of Farmington, New Mexico, by the name of Jim Brobak, performed a series of searches of financial transactions through the SOFI gateways. She was not an expert, but she knew enough that while such transactions are perfectly legal, they can carry a stigma of trying to avoid the oversight of the U.S. authorities. Not the kind of publicity that John Dimon or FreedomShield would want, especially during this sensitive election time.

Nancy logged into the FBI database cluster using one of the “super user” accounts that FreedomShield had access to and said “Jim Brobak, FBI file.” Brobak’s recent picture appeared on the projection screen: a serious man in his mid-forties, creased forehead, short salt-and-pepper hair, tired brown eyes. Stellar service record: two tours of duty in Iraq, joined the FBI soon after, and rose through the ranks to become the assistant special agent in charge of the Dallas office. Suddenly, in the fall of 2022 there was a transfer to the Farmington office and an effective demotion. Why?

Nancy’s access allowed her global searches of all the data, including top secret material. She found a secret memo from August of 2022 about Brobak related to the Schulmann affair: Brobak was suspected of helping the two fugitives, David Ferguson and Margarita Sappin, escape from the FBI. The memo concluded that while it seemed doubtful that Brobak worked with Ferguson and Sappin, his loyalty had to be viewed as questionable and he was not to be trusted with sensitive assignments.

The man that two years ago helped people that threatened the national security was now conducting searches for a possibly damaging information on Dimon and FreedomShield. Nancy punched the intercom button:

“Richard, can you get me Erik King? Tell him it’s urgent.”