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They were taken first to the visitors’ center at the Kutafiya Tower.
There they were met by a junior protocol officer who escorted them to the appointments desk, where they received visitor IDs and passed through metal detectors. Their possessions went through X-ray machines and WMD sniffers. Only then were they guided through Troitskaya Tower, past the Arsenal and the State Kremlin Palace, and into the pale-yellow building known as the Senate.
Next they were handed off to a more senior protocol officer who was waiting for them. She did not smile. She did not shake their hands. She simply greeted the senator with emotionless indifference, effectively ignored his colleagues, and took them up an elevator to the third floor. They had to stop at another security checkpoint, where they once again submitted to the protocol.
“In such times, one can never be too careful,” said one of the security agents, discerning the annoyance in Dayton’s eyes.
It struck Marcus as an undiplomatic thing to say to a visiting U.S. senator, but he nevertheless respected the security protocols the Russians had in place, especially given the apartment bombings in Moscow years before, other more recent terrorist attacks in Moscow and various capitals throughout Europe, and of course the attack on the White House that he had personally experienced.
When they were cleared, the Americans were led to an anteroom flanked by armed security men in dark suits with ugly ties. One of the men directed them to a waiting area with nicely upholstered couches and chairs and a mahogany coffee table, where they were served tea and some light snacks.
Marcus took in and memorized every detail—how many men were in the lobby and down the hall, how many CCTV cameras there were and where they were positioned, the sound that the doors made when they electronically locked and unlocked, the number of nonsecurity staff in the vicinity, and so forth. He had been all over the world with the president and the VP. In the process, he had become acquainted with security personnel and procedures in palaces and government office buildings of every conceivable kind. But he had never been here, to the epicenter of the Russian government, and he found himself immensely curious.
The senior protocol officer informed them that the four thirty meeting had been delayed until five. Then five thirty. Then six. As it turned out, it was not until nearly seven o’clock that they were finally ushered into the president’s office. Senator Dayton was furious, and Marcus braced himself for the tirade that was coming. But Aleksandr Ivanovich Luganov caught them all off guard by greeting them warmly and apologizing profusely for keeping them waiting. He explained that the crash of a Russian airliner near the border of Mongolia had kept him occupied for hours. He spoke only in Russian, while a fortyish woman standing at his side served as his interpreter.
Rather than sit behind his desk, Luganov met them in the center of the spacious, dark-paneled corner office. He was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, a light-blue shirt, and a crimson silk tie, and he smiled broadly as he shook the senator’s hand while official Kremlin photographers and videographers captured the moment. Standing just a few feet away at all times was Special Agent Pavel Kovalev, who Marcus knew was the chief of the president’s security detail.
Luganov gave them a brief tour of the artifacts and framed power photographs that hung on several walls. There was Luganov standing with various American presidents. There he was at several G8 summits, back before the invasion of Ukraine, when Russia was still a member. There was Luganov with the premier of China, the dictator of North Korea, the supreme leader of Iran, and even the prime minister of Israel. On his shelves he had two crisscrossing scimitars, gifts from the king of Saudi Arabia. He had some ancient pottery from Egypt and an exquisitely painted ceramic bowl from India.
As the charm offensive continued, Marcus studied the man he had last seen at the German Chancellery in Berlin. Back then, Luganov’s hair had been sandy blond and thinning with just a touch of gray about the temples. Now the gray was gone, and his hair was a dark brown. Marcus almost smiled at the notion that Luganov was coloring it, but he forced himself to remain impassive and inscrutable. Still, the hair aside, Luganov looked decidedly older and weathered to Marcus, with crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and more wrinkles in his face and neck. The Russian had been only sixty-one when Marcus had seen him last and had seemed full of vim and vigor. Now he was approaching seventy, and Marcus couldn’t help but notice that though he was still quite trim and broad-shouldered, he seemed somewhat stiff and was maneuvering about the room with a slight limp in his left leg.
When the tour was finished and they were about to take their seats, Luganov pressed a button to the right side of his desk. A door opened, and an aide walked in. Marcus recognized him instantly but maintained a poker face and said not a word.
“Senator Dayton, I’d like you to meet my son-in-law and most trusted counselor, Oleg Stefanovich Kraskin.”
The two men shook hands; then Oleg greeted Pete and Annie in turn. When Oleg got to Marcus, he hesitated, if only for a moment. He said nothing, but Marcus registered the look of recognition in the man’s eyes. They shook hands firmly, but that was it. Neither man acknowledged that they had met before.
Luganov sat down behind his desk and motioned for everyone to be seated. The interpreter retreated to a small wooden chair beside the desk. Oleg sat on the other side of the desk, his notebook and pen at the ready. The senator sat in an ornate cushioned chair directly across from the president, with Annie to his right and Pete to her right. Marcus took the last open chair, to Dayton’s left, and the meeting got down to business.
It most certainly did not go as any of them expected.
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Dayton wasted no time lighting into the president.
Diplomatically yet with fierce conviction, the senator charged Luganov with breaching the terms set forth in the Budapest Memorandum by violating the territorial integrity of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Then he expressed outrage at what he called Russia’s “war crimes” in Georgia and Syria before launching into a brief but aggressive closing argument.
“I urge you, Mr. President, not to take any action the people of Russia would regret in regard to the Baltics or any other member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I am well aware that you have recently massed tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of battle tanks, and scores of bombers and fighters on the borders of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in addition to the hundred thousand troops you’ve put into Belarus and on the borders of Ukraine,” Dayton said. “You say it’s a series of military exercises, but that’s what you said before you invaded Georgia in 2008 and before you invaded Ukraine in 2014. I have just spent several days in Kiev and the Baltics. I have met with their political leaders and their generals. I have reviewed their forces and seen their consummate professionalism and powerful commitment to freedom and their own sovereignty. Furthermore, I would remind you that the Baltic States are proud and loyal members of NATO, and they have the full backing of the rest of the alliance. And this is why I have come: to urge you not to gamble in this neighborhood. Stop attempting to intimidate the alliance. Give no more thought to acquiring territory that is not legally, morally, or in any way rightfully yours. Do not miscalculate here, Mr. President. The stakes are much too high.”