Joel Rosenberg - The Kremlin Conspiracy

The Russian people were terrified no longer. The terrorists were dying in massive numbers. Not a single new attack had occurred on Russian soil. Luganov was being praised by presidents and prime ministers all over the world for being tough on terror. Oleg Kraskin was ecstatic. He found himself an increasingly trusted member of the inner circle. What’s more, he would soon be married and become a member of President Luganov’s family.

While driving home from the Kremlin several nights after the election, eager to meet Marina and take her to dinner and the ballet to celebrate, Oleg heard an odd and disturbing story on the radio. The body of Vasily Malenchenko had been found in a Dumpster on the outskirts of Moscow. The reporter had been shot in the back of the head, execution-style.

Four days later, Oleg read a small item buried deep inside Novaya Gazeta . The body of the Ryazan chief of police had also been found, in a parking garage in downtown Moscow. No one knew why the officer was in Moscow, the story noted. He had not been scheduled to visit the capital. He was actually scheduled for a minor surgical operation in Ryazan the following morning. There were no suspects at this time, nor was there any known motive. But one thing was clear: the chief had not been mugged or set upon by a gang of youthful hooligans. He had been hog-tied. His throat had been slit. His tongue had been cut out, and his body was riddled with twenty-three bullets. Someone was sending a message. But who? And why?

THE FRONT RANGE, COLORADO—19 MAY 2001

Marcus Ryker tore north on Interstate 25 like a man possessed. Someone was going to die tonight, but it was not going to be him.

Weaving in and out of traffic—racing up the shoulders on either side of the highway when he had no other choice—the twenty-one-year-old rising college senior blew past the posted speed limit of sixty-five miles an hour. He was soon doing eighty, eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five. Yet he kept pushing the accelerator closer and closer to the floor and would not let up.

Colorado Springs rapidly dissolved in the rearview mirror. The exit for Monument, population two thousand, was coming up fast, and the rusted maroon ’78 Mustang he’d bought from his uncle was shaking violently.

So was his girlfriend.

Elena Marie Garcia had known Marcus since the sixth grade. They’d started dating in the tenth. No one knew his love of speed and risk-taking better than she. But this was insane.

“Marcus, for heaven’s sakes, slow down—you’re gonna get someone killed!” Elena screamed as he veered around a sluggish oil tanker, a Greyhound bus, and two minivans clogging his way.

She pleaded with him to calm down and tell her what had just happened, what in the world that phone call could possibly have been about. But she wasn’t getting through, and for a moment she wondered if he could even hear her at all.

Elena had never resisted—never even flinched at, much less criticized—any of his crazy adventures. Maybe she’d raised an eyebrow once or twice, but she was almost as much an adrenaline junkie as he was— almost , though not quite. Coming from a staid and quiet home where nothing exciting or unexpected ever seemed to happen, she felt energized by Marcus’s passion for life and absolutely loved trying to keep up with him.

He had, in fact, once confided to her that this was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her in the first place. It wasn’t just her warm brown eyes, her long jet-black hair, or her soft mocha skin. It was her zest for life. Together they’d hiked more fourteeners than she could remember, both in the blazing heat of summer and in the brutal Colorado winters. They’d skied some of the steepest mountains and the biggest moguls. They’d gone white-water rafting through some of the most intense rapids in any river in any state within two hundred miles of Monument. They’d taken flying lessons, and Marcus had earned his private pilot’s license. They’d even taken skydiving lessons the summer after their junior year in high school—without their parents knowing—and laughed until they cried when they finally hit the ground alive and intact.

But as Marcus screeched around corners and blew through red lights and stop signs, Elena burst into tears. She was grasping the door handle for dear life, but she had stopped trying to make sense of what had come over this man she loved.

The evening had started off magically enough. Marcus had arrived at her house at precisely 5:00 to pick her up for a big fund-raising banquet put on by the Air Force Academy to raise money for children of parents killed in action. It was being held at the Broadmoor, the swankiest hotel in the Springs, and they’d been given two free tickets. It was a great treat for the two college students, home and working hard for the summer. Marcus had looked handsome, decked out in a snazzy black rented tux. Given that they’d skipped their high-school prom to go white-water rafting with friends, it was the first time she remembered him wearing anything but jeans, a T-shirt, and Timberland boots. His wavy blond hair was freshly trimmed. His rugged, chiseled face—the heritage of his Dutch roots—was freshly shaved. His blue eyes danced with anticipation of the evening ahead, and he had brought her a bouquet of dazzling red and blue and purple wildflowers that he had picked in the foothills.

She’d loved that he had noticed and complimented not only her dress and shoes but new pearl earrings and necklace, which she’d saved for and bought herself. She’d loved watching him banter with her bow tie–wearing, corporate lawyer father and her every-hair-in-place, every-syllable-just-so, church organist mother. She’d loved how he’d listened to her giggling younger sisters like he had all the time in the world for them.

They’d arrived at the Broadmoor, taken in the glamorous surroundings, and enjoyed the hors d’oeuvres being passed around by stewards. It was all going so well. And then Marcus had taken an unexpected call on his cell phone, and the trajectory of the night took a sudden and devastating turn.

Now the man she planned to marry once they both graduated from the University of Northern Colorado the following year turned the wheel hard to the right and went barreling around one more corner, tires squealing. Then they were on Marcus’s street. They tore into his cul-de-sac, and when he slammed on the brakes and came screeching to a stop on the freshly mowed lawn of his childhood home, Elena silently thanked God for the seat belt she was wearing, fully convinced that otherwise she would have been thrown through the windshield.

Marcus immediately shut down the engine and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Go next door— now ,” he told her. “Call 911. Then call your father, and don’t leave the Matthews’ house till this thing is over. Do you hear me?” With that, he threw open the door and bolted across the lawn.

“Till what’s over?” she yelled after him. “What’s wrong?”

Marcus didn’t answer. Yet he didn’t seem angry—not at her, at least. His voice had seemed surprisingly calm given the way he’d been driving. But there was a sense of authority and urgency Elena had never seen or heard in him before.

As he disappeared from view around the far side of the house, Elena just sat there for a moment, in shock. But then she heard the sounds coming from inside the house, and it began to dawn on her what was unfolding. She heard something glass smash against a wall. She heard pots and pans striking walls and countertops. The man who was now Marcus’s stepfather was throwing things. She heard him shouting obscenities so loudly that fathers and mothers up and down the street were emerging from their doors to see what in the world was going on. Children were standing frozen in their yards, staring at the Ryker house, unable to continue playing.