It was a relief to hear from Terry that Graham was on the way, bringing forty years of experience in dealing with Russia and its leadership.
Thirty minutes later, Graham O’Connor came bursting into the Oval Office, looking as if he’d just come in from riding when he was summoned. He wore a chambray shirt, jeans and boots, and his white hair was windblown, his complexion ruddy, as always, from spending most of his time outside.
“I hear you’ve got yourself an international conflagration, my friend.” He walked toward the Resolute Desk to shake hands with Nick before dropping into a chair.
“That I do.” Nick caught him up on what they knew so far and what was apt to come up in the call with Petrov.
“Two immediate thoughts. One, what the hell was Henderson thinking, and two, you need to have Petrov recall his ambassador. He’s clearly lost control of his personnel if they’re using bombs to accomplish their goals.”
“That’s on the agenda. We believe it’s possible that Henderson was sharing classified information with Ivanov.”
“Holy Moses.”
“I’m incredulous over the whole thing and thoroughly investigating the intelligence breakdown. Teresa says it was missed because of the encrypted messages and calls they used to stay in touch. She says it’s a matter of not knowing where to look until we did. Do you buy that?”
“I’ve heard of instances like that before. Something like this wouldn’t pop because when she was friends with him back in the day, social media didn’t exist, and if they were using encrypted channels to stay in touch, that wouldn’t show up in routine vetting. However, that said, the onus was on her to disclose the relationship, which she didn’t do. I agree with charging her to send the message that such things won’t be tolerated. Hopefully, DOJ will come to the same conclusion.”
“Thank you for the perspective. You’ve given me the language I need to address what will be treated as a huge intelligence failure by Congress and the media.”
The BlackBerry buzzed with a text from Sam. Call me. 911.
“Excuse me for one second.”
“Do your thing,” Graham said, clearly delighted to be there.
Sam picked right up when he called her. “Hey, I wanted you to know that Henderson told me she was sleeping with Ivanov.”
“She came right out and told you that?”
“Not exactly, but I wore her down.”
“I’ll bet you enjoyed that.”
“Are you accusing me of being petty?”
“Nah, never,” he said, smiling.
“She did mention how I never liked her, and I set her straight and said I never trusted her, which turned out to be for good reason. The FBI arrived to bring her in for more questioning as I was leaving. What’s up with that?”
“We’ve learned her ties to Ivanov run deep, and even though we support his cause behind the scenes, her actions undercut official U.S. policy and have caused a mess that I have to clean up. Everything between them was encrypted, which is why it wasn’t picked up during the vetting. As far as I can tell, this was a sophisticated operation. Ivanov and the other leaders of the resistance must’ve been over the moon when she became VP.”
“She swore she had nothing to do with the movement and had been out of touch with him until she became VP.”
“From what I can tell, that’s a lie, but I’ll leave it to the FBI and the intelligence team to sort out. I’m speaking to Petrov shortly. I asked Graham to come in for assistance.”
“That’s a good call. Speaking of people you can trust.”
“Exactly.”
A thought occurred to Nick that had him wondering why he hadn’t considered it in the first place…
“What’s your next move in the investigation?” he asked Sam.
“Going to speak to Gretchen’s most recent ex-husband.”
“How’s he involved?”
“I’m not sure yet if he is, but since she was sleeping with Ivanov, I asked myself who might be upset about that and landed on him.”
