The Kremlin Conspiracy by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Luganov turned back to his defense minister. “Are your forces ready to move?”

  “At your command, sir,” Petrovsky replied.

  Oleg again looked up from his notes. He watched as his future father-in-law signaled his consent, then signed the orders as acting president. The second Russian invasion of Chechnya was about to begin.

  At five minutes before noon, Zakharov summoned Oleg.

  Together the two men entered Luganov’s office. It had been hastily transformed into a television studio. Bright, hot lights. Two broadcast-quality video cameras. A teleprompter. A boom microphone. And thick black cables, taped down to the carpet, threading everywhere like a pit of snakes. The chief of staff whispered to Oleg to again take notes of everything he saw and heard. This was his sole responsibility for the time being. He was the official notetaker and secretary of the prime minister’s private meetings and public appearances. He was supposed to record the name of everyone in a meeting and everything that was said, make careful note of any action items that were decided upon, and then type up all the notes and provide copies to the PM, chief of staff, and a short list of other senior staff within twenty-four hours for their review. Oleg had no idea how long the assignment would last or when his legal training might be tapped. For now, this suited him well.

  Oleg wasn’t supposed to speak during the proceedings, nor did he want to. He was sworn to secrecy about every meeting, but that was fine, as he had no desire to divulge anything sensitive, even to his fiancée. For her part, Marina was just thrilled Oleg had the job. She had no interest in prying into her father’s business. What’s more, Oleg told himself, the job was not difficult, yet it put him in direct proximity with Luganov and all of his top advisors. It would allow him to learn about the man, his leadership style, and the nation he served. It was, in short, the opportunity of a lifetime.

  The side door leading to the conference room opened. Oleg could see Luganov conferring with Petrovsky and Nimkov. Then Luganov nodded curtly and entered with his chief bodyguard, a man named Pavel, who shut the door behind them. Luganov took a seat behind his executive desk. He made a final review of the papers before him, marking them at times with a fountain pen he drew from his suit pocket. Oleg wondered what it must feel like to have the weight of the nation on one’s shoulders. The official occupant of the office—the man who had served as the president of Russia for eight challenge-filled, exhausting years—was not well. Certainly the responsibilities had taken a heavy toll on the man physically and mentally. So had excessive drinking. If everything went as planned, the man would be out of office by the end of the year. In Oleg’s judgment, he had already stayed too long.

  Zakharov called for silence, and the last-minute whispering of the crew ceased immediately. The director gave a countdown, and suddenly the red light atop the central camera lit up. Luganov looked up from the pages and directly into the camera. It was the first time Oleg could recall Luganov ever addressing the nation.

  “Citizens of Russia—our dear leader, as you know, is ill and incapacitated. He is receiving excellent medical care, and I ask you to pray for his quick recovery and for comfort for his family. But I must come to you today in my role both as prime minister and as acting president to inform you that our nation is under attack. Let me assure you, the terrorist forces responsible for these heinous crimes against the Russian people will pay a great price. Under the authority vested in me by the constitution, and the responsibility I have before God and the nation, I have ordered our air and ground forces into battle to defend our honor. Our forces will hunt down the enemy. We will chase them to the ends of the earth. We will eradicate them completely. Our forces will show no mercy, nor will I. On this, you have my word.”

  The carpet bombing of Grozny began minutes later.

  RYAZAN, RUSSIA—22 SEPTEMBER 1999

  Sergeant Major Ilya Daskin drew his pistol and crouched in the shadows.

  The fifty-nine-year-old police officer motioned for his partner, a young trainee named Dima, to draw his weapon as well and cover him as he entered the apartment building on Novoselov Street. Dima did as he was told, but even in the darkness, Daskin could see the kid’s hands were shaking.

  Besides his service in the military, Daskin had been on the force all of his adult life. He’d been born and raised in this city, Ryazan, as had his parents and both sets of grandparents before him. In May of the coming year he was due to retire. Dima, on the other hand, was all of twenty-four. He had been on the force for less than two months, which was probably why he’d been sent from the academy to Ryazan in the first place.

  Located 200 kilometers from Moscow, the city was not of insignificant size. More than half a million people resided there. But it was far off the beaten path. Nothing interesting ever happened in Ryazan, certainly nothing dangerous. Crime was low. Drug trafficking was minimal. Tourism was almost nonexistent. It was, apparently, the perfect city to send a rookie to train, at least according to those far up the food chain. Daskin couldn’t have disagreed more. In his view, new cops should be sent to the toughest beats in the most crime-ridden cities. That’s how they would learn the ropes, not out here in the sticks.

  He wiped his brow with his sleeve and moved through the vestibule of the apartment building, sweeping his weapon from side to side. The entrance was poorly lit, but Daskin was confident no one was there. He did, however, notice that the service door to the basement stairwell was ajar. He gripped the pistol tighter and inched toward the door.

  The building seemed unnaturally quiet for an autumn evening. Where were all the children? Why weren’t they out playing in the courtyard? Where were all the young couples? Usually, in a neighborhood like this, they’d be strolling in the moonlight, as would the retirees walking their dogs and packs of teenagers heading to the mall. Ever since the bombings across the country, the streets had been quieter, to be sure. Many were too scared to sleep at night, terrified their building might be next to be blown to smithereens. But they were simultaneously scared to be out, fearing the terrorists were hatching new plots, especially now that the massive and unrelenting bombing of Chechen strongholds was under way.

  Daskin eased the basement door open with his foot. Holding his weapon in his right hand, he quietly drew his flashlight with his left hand and clicked it on. Then he pivoted into the stairwell, pointing both the flashlight and the barrel of his sidearm downward. He saw nothing, heard no one.

  This call, like so many others in recent weeks, was almost certainly another false alarm. The public was on edge. People were overreacting, it seemed, to every strange sight, every unfamiliar person, as if Chechens were lurking in every shadow. The public wanted every noise to be checked out by the police, and Daskin knew he and his colleagues had no choice but to respond. People needed not simply to be protected. They needed to be reassured. Even in Ryazan.

  Daskin flicked the light switch on the wall to his right and waited a few beats, listening for voices, for breathing, for movement of any kind. Hearing none, he clicked off the flashlight and slipped it back into the loop on his belt. Then, returning his left hand to the pistol, he slowly moved down the stairs, careful to set his feet at the far edge of each step to minimize the chance of the wood creaking from his weight. That was just the force of habit, of course. Anyone who might be hiding down there now knew full well he was coming.

  As he descended the stairs, Daskin could feel his heart pounding and sweat collecting on his face and neck and dripping down his back. He wondered if Dima was okay and began to second-guess himself. Had he been right to leave the young man watching the door rather than ordering him to come to the basement as well? Probably. If there was something to this call—which he highly doubted, but if there was, in fact, a shoot-out, which he doubted even more—Dima would be no help in such close quarters. Far better that he hear the gunshots and radio for backup than that he be caught in the cross fire.

  It had been less than six minutes since Daskin and his partner had received the r
adio call to “check out suspicious activity at 14 Novoselov Street.” The dispatcher had just received a panicked call from a man calling himself Alexei, who said he lived in the building. Alexei told the dispatcher he had seen two suspicious men entering the basement. He added that a third person—possibly a woman—was waiting across the street in an idling white car. Like Daskin, the dispatcher hadn’t been particularly worried—until the man mentioned, almost in passing, that the car was a white Lada, a four-door model. It was those details that had quickened the dispatcher’s pulse and now Daskin’s. After all, such information had not been released to the public. But every police department in the country was looking for just such a car after a witness had reported a similar vehicle at the site of the Guryanova Street bombing two weeks earlier.

  The sergeant major continued sweeping his weapon from side to side, moving slowly, steadily, cautiously past the rows of cardboard boxes and piles of old furniture that cluttered his path. The place smelled of mold and cat urine. But Daskin kept pressing forward, and when he came around the next corner, his heart nearly stopped. For there, set under the massive furnace, was the first bomb he’d seen since his days as a sapper in the army.

  Daskin told himself to take a deep breath and make sure he truly understood the situation before radioing for help. He continued to search the basement, but finally, convinced that no one else was there but him, he holstered his pistol, pulled out his flashlight, and got down on his hands and knees to examine the device more carefully. He could see several dozen sticks of what looked like TNT, duct-taped together. Each was connected to the others by a series of black, red, and green wires. What he did not see was a remote detonation trigger, and this gave him a small measure of comfort. Had there been one, and if the terrorists were watching the building and had seen him go inside, they could have detonated the bomb immediately. But this did not appear to be the case. What Daskin did see, however, that he could not explain, were wires running from the sticks of TNT to what looked very much like three sacks of sugar. He had no idea what might be in the sacks, so he maneuvered around to the other side of the furnace and dropped to his stomach, trying to get as close to the odd contraption as he could. Only then did he find the detonator, connected to a timing device, switched on, blinking furiously, and set for 5:30 a.m.

  Horrified, Daskin slowly backed away from the bomb. Getting to his feet and trying to steady his breathing, he called his partner and instructed him to start waking up everyone in the building and ordering them to evacuate immediately. Then he radioed headquarters to tell them what he’d found. Within minutes, sirens and flashing lights filled the night. Dozens of squad cars converged on Novoselov Street from all directions, followed by fire trucks and ambulances. Quickly thereafter, reporters and TV news crews arrived.

  As the police cleared the building and set up a perimeter to keep bystanders out of danger, the bomb squad arrived. Two specialists suited up and headed into the basement while a half-dozen more officers took bomb-sniffing dogs into the nearby buildings, just in case. The tension throughout the neighborhood was unbearable. The police were not giving out any information, but rumors were spreading like wildfire. As midnight approached, most of the people of Ryazan knew their quiet corner of Russia had been targeted for disaster. Eventually, two perspiration-soaked specialists reemerged from the building. They removed their bombproof suits and toweled off. Then they huddled with their police chief, the fire chief, and Daskin.

  “It’s done,” said the lead bomb squad officer. “All clear.”

  “Why did it take so long?” the police chief asked.

  “This one wasn’t like anything we’ve seen before,” the officer replied.

  “Why not?”

  “Several reasons—one was the detonator.”

  “What about it?”

  “It wasn’t your garden-variety type—this thing was heavy-duty, combat quality, the kind of detonator we used to use in the Spetsnaz.”

  Daskin gave the officer an appraising look. If he had served as an explosives expert in Russian Special Forces, he clearly knew what he was talking about.

  “How would terrorists get their hands on something like that?” the chief inquired.

  “I have no idea, but there was something else very odd—three sacks.”

  “Right, what were those?” Daskin asked.

  “Well, they sure weren’t filled with sugar, I can promise you that.”

  “Then what?”

  “We were stumped, so I told Misha here to bring me a portable gas analyzer.”

  “And?”

  “Hexogen. Military grade. This thing would have leveled this building and maybe several more. Hundreds would have died. A real bloodbath. We’re very lucky the sergeant major here found it in time.”

  The men stood silently, contemplating the gravity of the disaster they had just averted.

  Then Daskin turned to his boss. “Sir, with your permission, I think we should alert the FSB.”

  Had the police chief simply followed Ilya Daskin’s advice, he might have lived.

  Instead, the chief called Vasily Malenchenko, the reporter for Novaya Gazeta who was breaking one story after another about the bombings, for an exclusive over-the-phone interview. The chief told Malenchenko that he and his men had just foiled a major terrorist plot. In exacting detail, he explained how his men had discovered and defused an enormous bomb. He praised his officers, his bomb squad unit, and his detectives while also detailing just how much devastation would have been wrought given that the material was not the kind “normal” terrorists could get their hands on. No, he explained, meticulously describing the bomb itself, the detonator, the timer, the sticks of TNT, and the three mysterious sacks, this weapon was extra dangerous because it contained explosives produced specifically and exclusively for the Russian army.

  Malenchenko immediately jumped in a taxi and raced to the news studios of NTV, one of Russia’s biggest television networks. Soon he was being interviewed on a live broadcast seen in all eleven of Russia’s time zones. He didn’t cite his sources, but he did relay everything he’d learned, including the part about the three sacks of explosives that “were produced specifically and exclusively for the Russian army” and effectively “impossible for Chechen terrorists to get.”

  Malenchenko’s interview dominated the news cycle all day as the recording was rebroadcast over and over again. The impact on the nation was immediate and catastrophic. All the fears the average Russian felt about a Chechen attack killing them and their children in their sleep were ratcheted up a thousandfold by the notion that the terrorists had access to the most advanced nonnuclear explosives in the Russian military’s arsenal.

  Oleg was up much of the night, chain-smoking, glued to the nonstop coverage, asking himself what everyone in Russia was asking: How in the world could Chechen terrorists have acquired military-grade bomb-making ingredients—not once but at least twice? Who inside the Russian army had given it to them? It couldn’t have been enlisted men. It had to be officers. High-ranking officers. But why would high-ranking Russian army officers agree to help kill women and children in such a barbaric manner? How many such traitors were there? How had they not been noticed? Where would they strike next? How soon could they be caught? And in the meantime, who in the military and in law enforcement could really be trusted?

  These questions and hundreds of others quickly dominated the discussion in the media. Everyone had a theory, and each was more bizarre and scarier than the last.

  At just after 4:30 in the morning, Oleg’s secure phone rang. It was Zakharov’s executive assistant. The chief of staff was ordering every member of the staff to get into the office immediately.

  When Oleg arrived, the place was in crisis mode. The prime minister was coming by helicopter and would arrive at the Kremlin within the hour. Meanwhile, Zakharov was working the phones to manage the story, if not contain it. He had set himself up in the conference room. Generals, FSB officials, political aides, and pu
blic affairs officers were streaming in and out to provide updates and receive new directives, some of which were coming straight from the top. Initially, Oleg’s responsibility was to keep a written record of every fact, every instruction, every response and counterresponse. But soon the chief of staff directed Oleg to answer incoming calls from Duma members and mayors and political bosses. People were calling from all over the country, demanding answers, and it was up to Oleg to supply them.

  Zakharov gave him the script.

  First, Vasily Malenchenko was completely mistaken, Oleg was instructed to say. There had never been a real terror threat in Ryazan. What the local police had stumbled over was a training exercise, organized by the FSB to simulate a possible bomb threat. The whole thing was a giant misunderstanding. The bomb looked real, but it was merely a prop. No one had ever been in real danger.

  Second, the three sacks of sugar did not contain military-grade explosives. They didn’t contain explosives at all, and certainly not hexogen. The sacks actually did contain sugar. Again, the whole scene was set up to look like a terror plot to test the instincts and reactions of local authorities and interagency cooperation with security officials in Moscow. But signals got crossed and a series of miscommunications had occurred.

  Third, Malenchenko was a terrible journalist, a disgrace to the country, and should be fired immediately. If he was a loyal Russian and a good reporter, he would have done his job thoroughly and learned that this was simply a test. He could have cleared up the whole confusion rather quickly with just a few phone calls. Instead, Malenchenko had injected fear into a nation already rattled by the last several weeks of actual terror attacks by Chechen Islamists. He had gotten the story completely wrong, but now the citizens of Russia should carry on with daily life with the confidence that the military would crush the terrorists. The FSB was doing a first-rate job protecting the country. Furthermore, the simulation had, in fact, been highly successful. No one was killed. No one was injured. The cops on the beat in Ryazan performed well. So did the bomb squad and all the first responders. They all deserved medals. Malenchenko deserved Siberia.