Vostov thought for a minute, taking a pull of his vodka. “Patch, that’s the most profound thing anyone has said to me in ten years. That gives me great comfort at a difficult time. I thank you for telling me that. And please thank your son as well. And ask him to thank his friend, this commando Fishman.”
Pacino smiled. “I’ll see to it, Dimmi. Sir, I know you’re extremely busy and, as for me, I have to get back to Washington. But before I go, there’s a second thing I’ve been asked to tell you. And something to give you.”
Vostov looked at him attentively. “Yes, Patch, please go on.”
Pacino pulled off his gold Annapolis class ring and handed it to Vostov, who took it, withdrew reading glasses from his inner jacket pocket and examined the ring under the light of a side lamp. “Your Naval Academy class ring?”
“It’s a copy of my ring, sir. It’s actually a computer flash drive. It has information on it that President Carlucci is convinced is important and that you need to know. Most urgently, sir. It will synch up to any computer you tie it to. I know we both had problems with our computer networks being infected by combatant viruses, so you may want to connect it to a disposable air-gapped computer, one that isn’t tied into the internet or to your network. But I guarantee you, it isn’t a virus, just information.”
Vostov turned the ring in his hand, then looked up at Pacino.
“What is it? What’s the information about?”
Pacino shook his head. “President Carlucci wanted this to be for your eyes only. He did authorize me to tell you to avoid making any speeches in public until you can digest the information in that drive.” Pacino gave Vostov a significant look.
Vostov stared at Pacino. “Information about another assassination attempt?”
“I think that’s a reasonable guess, sir. It has a password.”
“What’s the password?”
“The last name of the admiral who was embarked aboard your first Omega submarine that was lost under the polar icecap. I believe your Navy called it the Project 949 Granit submarine.” Pacino wondered if Vostov knew that Pacino had been the captain of the submarine that sank it.
Vostov seemed startled and at a loss for words for a moment. “The Kaliningrad.” He paused, thinking. “I’m not much good at computers, Patch,” he said. “I’ll have to find someone who can help me open the files.”
“Just please make sure whoever you enlist to help you is someone you have absolute trust in, Mr. President,” Pacino said, standing. Vostov stood as well and walked with Pacino to the door to his office, turning and shaking Pacino’s hand.
“Thank you for this,” Vostov said. “And please relay my thanks to President Carlucci. Oh, and thanks again for that story. I shall think about what you said for a long time.”
“Goodbye, Mr. President, and thank you for seeing me.”
“Anytime, Mr. Vice President. Please stay in touch. And come back soon.”
Pacino nodded solemnly as Vostov opened the door. Pacino was immediately surrounded by the Secret Service men and Vostov’s SBP security guards. Within twenty minutes, the vice president was strapped into a leather seat in the presidential office of Air Force Two as the 747 climbed out of Moscow and headed westward back to Washington.
Major Grigory Arkov, a GRU sniper assigned to President Vostov’s SBP security detail, tried to fall asleep next to the redheaded call girl he’d invited to sleep over. But as it had been for the last two weeks, the insomnia held him in its grip, leaving him staring at the ceiling, thinking and remembering.
Arkov was — or more accurately, had been — a loyal and committed GRU officer with excellent prospects for advancement. He’d been assigned for the last year to the platoon of snipers who took the high ground around any speech to be given by the president, their mission to shoot any threat to the president. During that year, the platoon had only experienced one incident requiring deadly force: a man from a crowd who had broken through the throng of Vostov supporters during a presidential speech in St. Petersburg. As the man was raising his gun to shoot Vostov, two sniper bullets hit the would-be assassin and killed him instantly. One bullet had been from Arkov’s rifle, the second from one of the other platoon members. They’d never been told whose bullet had been the kill shot, since one had gone wide and hit the gunman’s shoulder, but the other round pierced the man’s heart. Arkov maintained that it was his bullet that had been the heart shot, but it was an ongoing good-natured argument.
After the killing of the gunman threatening Vostov, Arkov had been told he would be promoted to lieutenant colonel early as a reward for his skillful protection of the president.
But then two weeks ago, Arkov’s younger brother Anatoliy, a GRU cadet, had been killed in a training accident. Anatoliy had gone down in a fiery helicopter crash and the human remains were burned beyond recognition and comingled. There was a memorial service, but no caskets, since there were no bodies. A large urn that contained the combined ashes of the cadets and helicopter pilots was all that remained, and it was consigned to a grave honoring the men who had died.
But that had turned out to be a lie, as the FSB officer, Roza Elizaveta, had told him in the bar where she’d found him drinking to try to bury his grief. She’d told him the hard truth that there had been no helicopter crash, but that Anatoliy had been a crisis actor in the GUM department store terrorist incident, playing the role of a terrorist, and had been deliberately killed by the SBP. Of course, Arkov hadn’t believed her. But she’d convinced him to take her to his apartment, where she showed him the helmet-cam footage from all the SBP troops who’d invaded the boutique and shot the terrorists. From multiple cameras and multiple angles, he saw the hood removed from the corpse of his brother Anatoliy. The SBP invading men had used lethal force, despite the “terrorists” acting under orders of the GRU, and Cadet Anatoliy Arkov had been gunned down, taking two bullets, one to his chest and one to his head. Elizaveta told him that the SBP troops had orders to shoot to kill, and that it had been no mistake, but part of their operation order, so that none of the actors playing terrorists could ever tell the real story. That Vostov had used the cadets to cover up a staged and fake terrorist plot as a way to liquidate his own wife.