The message was in English. The cursor was blinking. Someone was waiting.
Bennett started with the obvious. “are we still on for dinner tonight at six?”
“We were scheduled for eight o’clock, were we not, Jonathan?” came the reply.
It was formal, carefully typed — one of Golitsyn’s trademarks — and whoever it was, he or she had gotten the time right.
“oh, right, eight — at marko’s?” Bennett replied, still probing, now sending blind copies of each transmission to McCoy.
“Jonathan, please, you detest Marko’s. It’s time to check out the Red Garden.”
Bennett pulled back from the screen.
It was true he hated the food at Marko’s, though it was one of Moscow’s elite restaurants, akin to The Palm in Washington. But the Red Garden? Golitsyn and Bennett had never been there. No one Bennett knew had ever been there. The Red Garden was a nightclub owned by Sergei Ilyushkin, a rendezvous for anti-American and anti-Semitic writers and activists and allegedly a house of ill repute. Golitsyn had spent his whole life fighting the very Fascists and corruption the Red Garden had come to represent. There was no way this was the Russian foreign minister, unless…
“i wouldn’t be caught dead at the red garden,” Bennett typed back. “neither would the aleksandr golitsyn i know.”
Bennett waited. But there was no reply.
Was it a setup? Had something happened to Golitsyn? Was it Golitsyn?
A separate IM popped up from McCoy. “you think it’s really him?” she asked.
“i don’t know…. who else could have known about the specifics of our meeting tonight?… but something doesn’t add up.”
“why wouldn’t he just call you by phone?”
“good question… maybe…”
But just then another IM from Golitsyn came in. “Your Naina — may she rest in peace — brought you up well, Jonathan. FCFF.”
Bennett was stunned.
Only one other person in the world besides Erin and his parents knew the name Naina Petrovsky, or that she had passed away exactly six years ago to the day. Only Aleksandr Vasiliy Golitsyn.
Almost two years earlier, Bennett had told Golitsyn the story of the woman who had practically raised him like her own son. He had told his Kremlin colleague about Naina’s passion for freedom and her lifelong fear of both the Communists and the Fascists. He remembered the conversation as if it had occurred just the night before.
They had been dining at Marko’s. McCoy had worn a stunning black designer gown and diamond earrings Bennett had bought her at Tiffany’s for her birthday. Golitsyn spent the evening warning them about the growing support for Ilyushkin and the LDPR. Bennett, meanwhile, had gotten violently ill on a bad piece of fish. It was the last time they’d ever stepped foot into Marko’s, and that day Bennett had vowed never to do so again. Only Golitsyn could have known all that.
And then there was the instant message’s closing—FCFF.
In the years before her death, whenever Naina had sent Bennett letters from Moscow, she had always signed them with the only English letters she knew, FCFF. It was her own little code with a young man she considered her son.
Fight the Communists; Fight the Fascists.
Bennett suddenly remembered how much Golitsyn had liked that anecdote. Ultimately, that is what had saved Russia in the early nineties, Golitsyn had said — a million little acts of dissent and defiance, including those of an elderly babushka few others in the world had ever heard of, much less known.
“so, my friend, it is you,” Bennett wrote back. “you had me worried.”
“My apologies, Jonathan, I did not mean to worry you, but I am not in a place where I can talk right now.”
Bennett was struck by the anxious tone in Golitsyn’s message.
“what’s wrong, aleks?”
“I have only a few minutes. I have just come from a meeting with the head of the FSB. He believes Yuri Gogolov and Mohammed Jibril are back in Moscow and that Al-Nakbah may be behind the attack on Washington. He also believes that Gogolov, Jibril, and their forces may be planning another attack, either on the U.S. directly or on an American target overseas.”
Color drained from Bennett’s face. The heretofore cryptic reference to the Red Garden suddenly made sense.
Yuri Gogolov — strategist for the LDPR. Mohammed Jibril — operational leader of Al-Nakbah. Both worked with and for Sergei Ilyushkin, the face of the Russian ultranationalist movement. Together they were planning another attack against the United States.
The instant message continued: “Our top security officials now suspect that Gogolov and Jibril are working with someone within the Russian government, possibly here in the Kremlin itself.”
A mole? A traitor inside the Kremlin? The thought horrified Bennett, but it made sense. Without inside help, it would have been almost impossible for Al-Nakbah forces to penetrate flight 6617. The pieces were starting to fall into place.
“I am afraid that I cannot meet for dinner tonight,” Aleksandr Golitsyn continued. “But you must know three things. First, I am working to set up a meeting with you and President Vadim, probably tomorrow. Second, a manhunt for Gogolov and Jibril and their thugs is being planned at this very hour. Third, I will brief President Vadim’s chief of staff and get back to you as soon as I have something solid.
“In the meantime, I implore you — stay at the embassy. Do not go out. If Gogolov and Jibril are in the city, you and Erin are not safe.”
14
Bennett checked his watch.
Neither he nor McCoy, or any of the president’s top advisors, had gotten much sleep in the past twenty-four hours, nor were they likely to anytime soon, and tensions were running high. Bennett and McCoy joined the president, huddled with his National Security Council in the White House Situation Room, via secure videoconference. It was the third emergency meeting in the last twelve hours, and National Security Advisor Marsha Kirkpatrick now briefed the president.
“Mr. President, based on the intel from Foreign Minister Golitsyn — sketchy though it was — we have beefed up forces on our borders. We’ve mobilized additional forces to safeguard airports, trains, ports, and power plants. We’re coordinating leads with the FBI and the CIA counterterrorism center. And I just completed a conference call with over two hundred state and local law enforcement officials to brief them on the Al-Nakbah threat. At this point, I think the question is…”
A military aide knocked on the door of the Bubble.
McCoy slipped out of her seat to answer it. A moment later, she came back with a sealed envelope, which she handed to Bennett. He scanned the message inside and handed it back to her. This was the breakthrough they’d been working for since the crisis began.
Bennett cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, Mr. President.”
“What have you got, Jon?”
“We just heard from Foreign Minister Golitsyn again.”
A hush came over the NSC.
“And?” said MacPherson.
“Nothing more on the threat, sir, but President Vadim is ready to talk. He’s invited Erin and me to the Kremlin.”