“Come on, Greg. Don’t beat that old horse anymore.”
Christ, is he blind? “Coseros is a government official in Panama, and his ass has been saved from indictment because of these leaks, and he has been tunneling money to your CFS guys down in Miami. Their bank account is busting, Anthony!”
“Funneling? That is not what the Bureau found in its three separate investigations before this one.” The Agency, as it sometimes did, was assisting the FBI in an investigation that required some of its special abilities. “I believe the term they settled on was ‘contributions.’ As for your narco-corruption theory, you know damn well that money Coseros has given them doesn’t even begin to amount to what is in their accounts. The CFS has other supporters, Greg. Big ones.” Merriweather seemed suddenly disinterested in any further correction of his deputy’s off-the-mark position. “Besides all that, the Justice Department has found no compelling evidence to support an indictment of Coseros,” he pointed out correctly, ignoring the other connection his deputy was implying.
“Because every time we get close, someone tips him!” Drummond sat back, letting the frustration subside a bit. “And he is supporting the people you want to put into power in Cuba.”
“I do?” The DCI chuckled. “So you consider yourself not a part of this?”
Bad choice of words, Greg. He’d learned that his boss was a master at catching misspeaks and using them to the fullest advantage. “Look, I want Castro out as bad as anyone. He’s one of the last of a dead breed. But we can’t overlook the connection between the Peruvian cartels and Coseros, and between Coseros and the Cuban Freedom Society.”
The DCI’s face went instantly red at the direct link the DDI was suggesting. “You are not to repeat that assertion outside of this room. Never! I will not tolerate even the hint of such linkage without irrefutable evidence to warrant it. Is that clear?”
“Have I yet?” Drummond responded with a challenge.
Merriweather ignored the question. “I will not jeopardize SNAPSHOT simply because you have doubts about the integrity of your directorate, and because you place fiction above fact in forming your opinions.”
“Anthony, I—”
“You will keep your unsubstantiated ideas to yourself until the time that you have something concrete to back them up. Is that very clear? A yes or no, please.”
What the hell was concrete? Drummond wondered. His job was supposed to involve speculation, and now his boss was telling him to reign in his brain? “Very clear.”
Merriweather was still flushed. He was not a man to calm from provocation or questioning easily. “Good.” He checked the time on the small desk clock left by his predecessor. “We have to be at the White House in a few hours. Be ready.”
And with that it was over. The DDI walked into the hallway, closing the door himself. It was still too early for the majority of Langley’s workers to have arrived, so he felt comfortable just standing in the hall. A better man had occupied the office he’d just left, until a microscopic, indiscriminate bug had taken its toll. Herb Landau just wouldn’t have run things this way, Drummond knew. He was sure of it, as sure as he was that the director’s cause célèbre was inherently flawed. Yet he could do nothing. The President had given it the nod, without even letting his closest advisers in on SNAPSHOT. That was an entirely different problem, but one the DDI saw as potentially more dangerous than having an autocrat at the helm of the Agency. His eyes searched the ceiling for a solution that was not there. He was certain where the problem was, however, and equally confident in his belief that things were going to get worse before they got better.
He would have been surprised, however, at just how much of an understatement his last thought had been.
The dacha of Gennadiy Konovalenko, president of the Russian Federation, was a hundred miles from the Russian capital, nestled along a river among a stand of firs that kept the expansive deck at the rear in a perpetual shade. The sunlight that did penetrate the canopy from the yellow globe low in the southern sky lit the rippling water below with sparkles and flashes, and cast a harsh, pale coloring upon the birds that flitted through the beams. The scene was in stark contrast to the dirty, dull pallor that was pervasive in the great cities of Mother Russia. All the brightly colored spires and fine statuary could not reverse a course of decay initiated almost eighty years earlier. It would take much longer to right the wrongs done the Russian people. Much longer to make the nation a reflection of its inherent beauty.
“We should have such a place in Red Square, eh?” the president suggested from his reclining wooden chair on the deck. It was reminiscent of the Adirondack style favored by the leisure-loving Americans and had actually been built with those in mind after the president’s return from a particularly enjoyable trip to the United States.
“Then what reason would we have to journey here?” Foreign Minister Igor Yakovlev responded with his own musing. He walked along the deck, sliding a gloved hand on the rough railing as he moved. The chill of the autumn afternoon caused a cloud of whitish mist to spurt from his mouth with each word and each breath. “And where would we hold court?”
The president laughed, his paunch shaking beneath the fur coat that took the bite out of the air but left his reddening nose unprotected. A man of only middle age, he was perhaps the most crucial leader his country — in whatever incarnation or by whatever name — had ever had. And “holding court,” as his trusted adviser called it, was but one tool he had developed to placate his critics. Bring them out here, to the dacha his father, a onetime member of the old Soviet Politburo, had built using prison labor imported from the east. Get them away from that dreadful place called Moscow, where power was the goal of all the players. Even he fell into that trap when the days in the Kremlin stretched to weeks, and weeks to months. But always there was his dacha, as modest as it was by Western standards. His escape. His domain.
A servant stepped onto the deck from the main building and announced the arrival of those who had come to do battle with the president. Court was in session.
“Igor Yureivich,” Interior Minister Georgiy Bogdanov said, greeting the man who should have been his equal in government, but the president’s favor had placed the foreign minister in an elevated state of importance. He turned to the leader of his nation, who was rising from his seat. “Gennadiy Timofeyevich, your dacha looks lovely as always.”
The president welcomed Bogdanov with the accepted firm kiss on each cheek. “Georgiy Ivanovich, you are welcome here always.” A polite smile masked the hollowness of the offer. “And you bring the good general with you.”
General Aleksandr Shergin, commander of Voyska PVO, the Russian air-defense forces that had changed little from the days of allegiance to the Soviet Union, nodded crisply to the man he grudgingly accepted as his commander in chief. “President Konovalenko.”
The president expected no more informal a greeting than that from a military man, and would offer none in return to General Aleksandr Dmitreivich Shergin. “Come, sit.”
Yakovlev took the seat beside the president, across the small drinks table from the men who were their adversaries. A platter of omul, a smoked fish imported from the eastern expanses of the country, appeared from the hands of a servant, as did a bottle of vodka and four glasses. The small talk that followed lasted several minutes, until its purpose as a prelude to more serious discussions had been exhausted.