Washington, D.C.
1920 Local Time
Fulcrum was DNI territory, and Mary Pat took her cue.
“This came up only recently, and I know that not everyone has been read in. A few weeks ago, the CIA received an unsolicited contact from a walk-in. The approach was old-school—a beggar walked up to a gate guard at our embassy in Algiers and handed over a manila envelope. The guard asked where it came from, but the guy just walked off. The embassy went through the usual protocols, and the envelope ended up in the hands of the station chief. It turned out to be full financial profiles on a couple of high-level Russians. The station immediately forwarded the package to Langley, and our people spent a week going over it. The information turned out to be solid gold. More to the point, it authenticated the sender’s identity.”
Mary Pat diverted to a table and extracted a photo from a portfolio. She showed it to Adler. “Recognize him?”
The SecState shook his head.
“His name is Gunther Klaus.”
With that, Adler made the connection. “The GRU’s moneyman.”
The photograph began circulating around the room as Mary Pat continued. “The one and only. He’s a Swiss national, been on our radar for years. He got his start working for a couple of the big investment banks in Zurich. Then, eight years ago, he was fired for money laundering.”
“He got fired for money laundering?” Adler remarked. “Isn’t that what Swiss bankers do?”
“They stretch the bounds, yes. But they also try to operate with a veneer of respectability. The amount of money involved in this particular transaction was obscene and the clients were proven crooks. It broke into the news just as the Bahnhofstrasse was going through one of its periodic cleansings.” She was referencing the street in Zurich where the biggest Swiss banks were headquartered. “Klaus had been having other troubles. He was drinking more than he should have, and there were rumors he’d left his marital hill and gone off-piste. As far as the money laundering goes, he was never prosecuted, but there was a messy divorce, and he had checked into rehab. The big banks wanted nothing to do with him, and he was an easy scapegoat.
“This all forced Klaus to come up with a new life plan. He had skills and contacts that could be leveraged, so he took a turn to the dark side. Over the course of the last seven years, he’s become Russia’s go-to financier. It started with a few oligarchs, and then he branched into more official channels. For roughly four years now, Klaus has been the unofficial wealth manager of the GRU’s foreign operations. He knows where the bad money comes from and where good money goes to disappear. For years he was indispensable. But apparently the sands have shifted.”
Ryan said, “You think the regime has decided to dump Klaus?”
“Not yet. If that was the case, he would simply have been disappeared. The CIA made direct contact with Klaus in Tangier. He has a home there—it used to be his winter getaway, but he’s pretty much full-time now. According to his case officer, Klaus is spooked. He wants to break away with a clean identity and keep some personal funds he’s squirreled away. As an added incentive for our support, he provided more information, a five-year look-back on the finances of a company called Orient Trading. We’ve been trying to unravel this entity for years, but it was as opaque as any our analysts have ever seen. It operates out of sub-Saharan Africa, funneling money to warlords and rebel groups. Klaus gave us a financial forensic road map. Account numbers, routing details, law firms, shell companies. We’ve spent years trying to shut this one down with nothing to show for it. Then Klaus handed it to us on a crypto platter.
“He claimed to have records on over a hundred money trails—past, present, and future. If he can deliver, and we have no reason to believe otherwise, we could disable the Kremlin’s shadow banking operations for years.”
“Okay,” Adler said. “This is all interesting, but how does it relate to this crash?”
The President said, “News of Fulcrum only hit my desk a few days ago. Klaus was in Tangier, and when we realized Secretary Moore was about to pass through, it seemed like a straightforward method to extract him. We made arrangements for Klaus to be on board SAM Flight 719.”
“Which means,” surmised Mary Pat, “we have to consider the possibility that Fulcrum being on board was not coincidental to this crash.”
“You think the Russians shot this jet down to eliminate Klaus?” asked Adler. “Like a surface-to-air missile or something?”
Mary Pat replied, “We don’t know what happened, but we can’t ignore the fact that an agent with potentially devastating information on the GRU’s European operations was on board.”
“Where do we take it from here?” asked Adler.
Mary Pat said, “I think our NTSB man nailed it. This is probably just a tragic accident, but until that’s proven, we have to consider terrorism as a possible cause. I’ll send a message to every agency in the region and have NRO review our SIGINT. If this was an intentional act, wewillfind evidence of it.”
The principals were all given marching orders, and soon the room cleared. The President and Mary Pat remained behind.
Ryan looked at the desk and noticed the President’s Daily Brief squared in one corner. The package was assembled by Mary Pat’s office, ODNI. In essence, it condensed all the world’s overnight crises into one neat package. He had read a copy of the report at home this morning and remembered thinking it seemed thicker than usual. Over the years, Ryan had come to the unscientific conclusion that the more briefing items a PDB contained, the less trying his day would be. He likened it to a boatload of hopeful fishermen casting lines into a sea full of minnows. Conversely, when one crisis predominated, it tended to be a rod bender that pulled the boat along.
He had a strong suspicion that tomorrow’s brief would be very thin indeed.
Ignoring the file, he said, “Anything else I should know about?”
“I think that’s enough for one evening. But relating to this crash, there is one precaution I could set in motion.”
“A precaution?”
When she didn’t reply, it was a silence that spoke volumes.
“Mary Pat, I value that you keep me out of the loop. But in this case, I’d like to be clear. Are we talking about John Clark?”
