Shadow War (18 page)

“I have to admit, I'm disappointed,” Hargrove said, raising his glass for another drink. It was a joke, but Alie knew there was some truth in there, too.

Half a world away, and seven time zones behind, Brad Winters walked into the scallop-pink lobby of 1050 Connecticut Avenue, with its oversized plastic plants, and took the escalator to the second floor. He was wearing his civilian “dress blues”—a boxy suit with an American flag lapel pin, the exact same kind that had become a conservative cause célèbre during the 2012 presidential debates. He knew empty gestures were never as empty as they seemed.

He entered Morton's steakhouse, adjusting quickly from the overly bright atrium with the four-story American flag to the darkness of the steakhouse interior. There was a Morton's in every city in America. There were five in Washington, DC, alone. This was the only one that mattered.

“Your locker, Mr. Winters?” the hostess asked.

The restaurant had a long narrow vestibule, with wine bottles forming one wall and polished wooden lockers forming the other. Each locker was a square foot and featured a small silver nameplate. The hostess unlocked the one with “B. W.” etched on the plate and stepped back. There was no one else in the vestibule, and if anyone had glanced around the corner, they would have seen that there was nobody in the dining room. There never was.

Winters removed a small box. “Thank you, Sheila,” he said.

Sheila smiled. That was her job: to recognize and smile. “Your guest is here, on the balcony.”

She walked through the crowded bar and toward a small glass door. Winters followed her onto the patio, a thin strip of concrete covered by a black awning. The patio was only one floor above Connecticut Avenue, so it was loud. The view was upscale chain stores and nondescript offices. For a high-end steak restaurant, the tables and chairs were cheap. Nobody came here for the ambiance, but everybody came. Even at 4:30 on a Wednesday, the tables were full of men in suits, puffing away on cigars. They came because it was a tradition. And because it was off K Street, and three blocks from the White House. And because, in a city that had banned almost all forms of smoking, this patio was one of the few refuges where you could indulge.

The general, Winters noticed, was already well into his indulgences, a half-smoked stogie protruding from his lips—a Cuban, for Christ's sake—and an empty glass of what used to be Scotch in front of him.

“General Raimy,” Winters said, extending his hand. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

“It's my pleasure,” the general said, without standing. Normally he wore his uniform with all his pins and medals, including his four stars. Today it was a suit. His security detail sat three tables away, drinking soda water.

“Well, I know you're a man who loves his country.”

“And his steak.” The general smiled. It was true. The man liked his perks.

“Macallan 18, neat. Another round,” Winters said, as the hostess slid the menu in front of him. “So how is the Pentagon?”

“Large,” the general said.

“I spent half the week in the Capitol building,” Winters said. “I could say the same thing.” He opened the small box from his locker. “But it would be a lie. That place gets smaller every year.”

He removed the cushion from the box and chose a cigar. Nic
araguan tobacco with a Connecticut wrapper. He was a patriot, and Cubans were overrated anyway.

“What were you doing on the Hill?”

“Meeting friends, specifically the Friends of Ukraine. You saw their press statements, I presume?”

The general laughed. “I should have known you were involved.”

“That doesn't mean they lack conviction, General. This is Russia, after all. There are plenty of important people on our side.”
Important,
of course, was a relative term. He was only talking about congressmen.

He worked the cigar, rolling the end in his fingers, loosening the tobacco. Then he worked his fingers down the shaft, squeezing delicately. Then he turned it around and sliced off the tip with the cutter.

The Scotch arrived, and he held up a finger. Wait. He dipped the end of the cigar in the whiskey and held it there for twenty seconds. “Bring me another, please,” he said, handing the glass back to the waiter.

“You're a decadent bastard,” the general said admiringly, puffing dramatically on his Cuban. Below him, cars honked. The light at L Street had turned red, and someone had refused to run it.

“You are what you smoke,” Winters said as he toasted the end of the cigar with the torch lighter, turning it slowly, so that it darkened and dried evenly all the way around. He blew on the end, causing it to glow a hot red. Finally, he sucked in smoke and blew it out, satisfied.

“Let's order,” the general commanded.

They ordered porterhouses, with a precracked lobster to share, and a bottle of 2009 Bordeaux, but not before another two rounds of Scotch while they finished their cigars. Win
ters asked the general about this family. He had been working with the general for a decade, and he still didn't know his wife's name. But he knew the general had a daughter up for promotion as a below-the-zone major, and his fatherly pride would keep the conversation going until the lobster arrived.

Eventually, the talk turned to business: Putin's next move, the future of NATO, al Qaeda, Pakistan, and how Apollo Outcomes could solve such problems. The usual. The general had been stationed in Germany for much of the 1980s, and was the commanding officer of the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade at Darmstadt when the Wall came down. That fortuitous posting had gotten him promoted to the Eastern European section of the Pentagon, just as its importance was being torpedoed by the Butcher of Baghdad. He'd been hiring Apollo ever since. Winters had all but promised him a seat on the board of directors, whenever the general decided he'd be of more use in the civilian world. It was a typical unspoken quid pro quo. Every four-star either had one or was angling. Air Force generals go to Lockheed; Navy admirals to Raytheon; Army generals to the mercenary companies. Federal law said they had to wait two years after retirement, but everyone was willing to wait, usually at some think tank.

“How deep are you in Ukraine?” the general asked finally, pushing away the last few bites of his steak. If you finished a meal, you hadn't ordered enough. Winters had barely touched his porterhouse.

“Training and equipping the Ukrainian army, as well as militias on the ground in the eastern oblasts and some intel collection,” Winters said casually, as if this wasn't what he'd come here to discuss.

“Contract?”

“CIA.” He actually had four contracts, all with different agencies, but honesty was no asset here.

“For counterinsurgency?”

“For peacekeeping operations. But the Russians have three times as many.”

“Can we beat them?”

“Yes, if it was only pro-Russian militias. But it's not.”

The general had read the top secret reports, and Winters, of course, had seen them, too. The resistance was homegrown, but the Russians had supplemented it with several brigades of professional soldiers. It was indisputable. They were even showing state funerals for fallen troops on Russian television, under the flimsy excuse that the soldiers had died in training exercises, just like in the old days of Afghanistan. The West wasn't in denial; Putin was openly daring them to act. The West was afraid. That was why patriots like the general were so important.

“Fucking Obama,” the general said.

“Fucking Germans.”

“Merkel has more dick than Obama and the French put together,” the general snapped. Merkel was beloved for her economic austerity, but she had grown up behind the Berlin Wall, and she had a blind spot for Eastern totalitarianism.

“Too bad she's swinging it the wrong way,” Winters replied smoothly, knowing the general would agree.

The general took a sip of his fourth Macallan. “What do you need?”

Winters shrugged. “Depends on where you want to draw the line.”

The general took another sip. “We're willing to give them the two eastern provinces . . .” He wouldn't on principle use the Soviet term
oblast.

Winters leaned in. “I didn't ask where our government's line was, General. I asked where
your
line was.” He could tell the alcohol was working, although not enough that the general would, on reflection, find anything amiss.

“My line is where the damn line was three months ago,” Raimy said.

Winters leaned back and sipped his drink, changing conversational gears. The ice had been broken. It was time for a deep dive.

“We can drive them back from Mariupol, General. That's Putin's immediate objective, to secure a land bridge from Russia to Crimea. We can drive them all the way back to the border, if that's what you want. But it's a commitment. The Ukrainian army isn't ready. Yanukovych spent seven years hollowing it out.”

“Sabotage.”

“Of course. But the core is solid. Good fighters. Disciplined. And most important, they believe in the cause.”

This was the kind of talk generals liked. The kind that implied there was something right in the West and wrong in the East. It wasn't that American flag officers didn't respect the Russians. They did. The Russians were fierce adversaries. If you had said, “The just will prevail,” the generals would have scoffed. History had proven that wrong a thousand times. And yet they always believed that, through some inherent defect in their belief system, the Russians were doomed.

“The problem is timing. The volunteers can't fight a trained army, and the Ukrainian army won't be ready for an offensive until June. The Russians are there now, looting the place. We can push them back in July, maybe, but by then, it might be too late. The eastern oblasts are historically Russian. Given a reason, or inevitability, they will revert to their old ways. And once the people are loyal, or at least not resisting . . .”

He shrugged. It was so obvious, even a general could see it. The Russians would use the popular sentiment as an excuse. They would bite off another part of the continent, and they would never let it go.

“What are you suggesting?”

“We cede Mariupol, but fight them like hell for the rest of the East. That gives Putin the land bridge that he wants and keeps the rest under the control of the West.”

Including the shale gas fields. After all, a smart deal meant everyone got what they wanted, and Winters wanted the shale.

The general shook his head. “That means giving up territory.”

“For now. But I've talked with Naveen at the NSC. The diplomats are working behind the scenes. Sanctions are coming, full sanctions, including freezing the SWIFT accounts for the Kremlin elite. They're going to work.”

“As long as the Russians aren't in Kiev.”

“If Putin had any balls, he'd be there already.”

The general nodded. Winters was right. They were lucky Putin had lost his nerve. If Russia had steamrolled Ukraine, the Europeans would have folded like 1938.

“I'm not selling you on a war, General. Or a two-month solution. We all know how those promises turn out. I'm talking long-term containment.”

“What do you need?”

“One hundred million for the eastern oblasts. To hold the line. Not at the border, but a reasonable compromise.”

It was a concession. A new Cold War, with the line drawn west a few hundred kilometers. The general hated it. He even felt sorry for the bastards behind the line. But without a real commitment from above, it was the best he could do.

“Fifty million,” he said, even though Winters's one hundred million was only a rounding error for the Pentagon's budget. Apollo Outcomes had an annual IDIQ umbrella contract for a billion. They didn't necessarily get a billion, but they were cleared for that much each fiscal year without having to get specific authorization, and it was only May. The general doubted they were at more than two hundred million this quarter.

“For one year, with two optional years,” Winters said. “Scalable to, say, two hundred and fifty million.”

“Two hundred.”

“I have to stick to my number, General,” Winters said. He knew the first number wasn't nearly as important as the second. Once Apollo men were on the ground, he could always find a way to expand or lengthen the contract to the maximum level. “I can't leave men behind. I have to be able to get them out.”

The general understood. He was an army man; he believed in loyalty above all. “How long to be up and running?”

“Ten days?”

The general looked shocked. Winters laughed. “Do you think I've been sitting around waiting for your candy ass to come around?” he said with a smile, knowing the general would appreciate his aggressive braggadocio. “All I need is your word on the contract.”

“It will have to be Title 10,” the General said.

Title 10 contracts had a few more rules than CIA Title 50 work, which didn't appear on public records, even the ones Apollo filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Title 50 profits could be declared without any more explanation than “top clearance government work.” It was Winters's preferred contract, by far. But his company already had four in Ukraine alone; he supposed he shouldn't be greedy.

Besides, Title 10 offered what everyone wanted: cover. Apollo received official government sanction for almost any and all actions in the area; the Pentagon brass received “plausible deniability.” If caught, the generals would deny specific knowledge and blame a “rogue” company for breaking the law.

“I'll have our lawyer contact you in the morning,” Winters said.

“Quietly,” the general said. “I don't want this getting to the State Department.”

Of course, Winters thought. That was always understood. “Just give us the tools, General, and we'll get the job done.”

The general raised his glass. So did Winters. Once Churchill was quoted, a deal was struck. Everyone in the military-industrial complex knew that.