Peter Kirsanow: Second Strike

Egorshin’s family had been among the Soviet and Russian elite for decades. His grandfather had been a confidant of Kosygin and his father an associate of both Brezhnev and Andropov. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Egorshin family had prospered in business through its connections with powerful former KGB officials. Piotr, considered the most talented of the four Egorshin siblings, studied at both Harvard, where he acquired an air of privilege, and Oxford, where he cultivated a patina of unflappability.

So Colonel Piotr Egorshin had every reason to be calm, even arrogant. But as his car navigated through the surprisingly warm Moscow night, the closer it drew to the Kremlin, the faster his fingers drummed.

And that was because of one man: Aleksandr Stetchkin, head of the Twelfth Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. Stetchkin was perhaps Russian president Yuri Mikhailov’s closest associate. Stetchkin, like Mikhailov, was former KGB. And Stetchkin was second only to Mikhailov as the most feared man in all of Russia.

The basis for the fear was not hypothetical. Beyond the rumors that inevitably surrounded high-level Russian officials, there were sufficient documented cases of Stetchkin’s ruthlessness that it would be unreasonable not to have a degree of trepidation meeting with him.

It didn’t help matters that the meeting was called for four A.M. Nothing mundane happens at such an absurd hour, thought Egorshin.

Two other facts conspired against Egorshin’s remaining calm: This was his first meeting with Stetchkin since the latter had become Egorshin’s direct supervisor, if not officially, then functionally.

Ivan Uganov, Egorshin’s former boss, had been removed from his position for indeterminate reasons, although reports circulated that Uganov’s offense was to have questioned Stetchkin’s intelligence. The hyperactive rumor mill of the Russian intelligence community suggested that he now resided somewhere deep in the bowels of Penal Colony Number Six of the Federal Penitentiary Service—the infamous Black Dolphin Prison. Consequently, the second-most feared man in Russia now would be scrutinizing Egorshin’s every move.

But a far more important reason was that Russian history—world history—was scheduled to change in less than ninety hours. And Colonel Piotr Egorshin, whose vehicle had just arrived at one of the most imposing edifices in the world, was at the fulcrum of that change.

NORTHERN GEORGIA,

AUGUST 14, 8:55 P.M. EDT

Georgia state trooper Jim Benton sat in his cruiser along I-85 as early evening began to fade to night.

For Benton, dusk was approaching literally and figuratively. The twenty-eight-year veteran of Georgia State Patrol was approaching retirement, and although he hadn’t set a fixed date, he suspected he probably wouldn’t finish out the year. He’d had a fine career. Commendations and awards aplenty. But the cumulative breaks, strains, and bruises were catching up to him. In fact, his current detail was his third light-duty assignment in as many years, the latest a consequence of injuries received in a tussle with a trucker he’d pulled over for a moving violation who happened to have a load of methamphetamines in his trailer.

Benton was one of the sharper knives in the drawer of Georgia law enforcement. Not only was he experienced, but he had the innate intelligence and eye for detail of a physician, the occupation chosen by his two older brothers and sister. Benton had also seemed destined for a career in medicine, but physiology intervened; not the class, but his own. He was six foot four, 260 pounds of muscle softened only a bit by age—dimensions that had steered him toward a stellar college football career as a defensive end for the Georgia Bulldogs, as well as a preference for a physical, action-oriented profession. So, after college and a brief stint as a Cobb County deputy, he became a Georgia state trooper, resisting numerous attempts by superiors to steer him into supervisory roles that could desperately use his talents, preferring to remain where the action was.

Thus, the most overqualified traffic cop in the state of Georgia was sitting in an idling cruiser on the right berm of the highway shielded from the view of drivers by the pillars of an overpass, scanning traffic for speeders, DUI, and other suspicious activity.

To this point it had been an unremarkable evening. But as the first stars began to appear in the darkening eastern sky, a southbound gray 2015 Ford Transit van caught Benton’s eye. Not because it was speeding, driving erratically, or had an expired tag, but because it was a Ford Transit. Benton could recall seeing few, if any, of that make and model along the highway. So as the vehicle approached from the rear at a steady sixty miles an hour, his gaze rested a second longer than usual on the front-seat occupants.

And that was all it took. It was only a glimpse, partially obscured by the head of the person in the passenger seat. But enough for the shrewd, experienced eye of the veteran trooper to send a signal to his brain. Not of alarm or concern, but of curiosity. That signal pulled up an image from a page with a series of photographs—head shots of certain suspects drawn from the sprawling terrorist screening database on the basis of sightings or reports suggesting such subjects might be in the northern Georgia area.

Benton hesitated a moment before shifting his vehicle into gear, restrained if only for a second by the hours upon hours of training and admonitions against profiling and cautions about implicit bias. Many officers, some of them good friends, had gotten into trouble for acting on hunches that politicians, lawyers, and activists maintained were fueled by racial stereotyping—enough that almost every law enforcement person he knew paused before acting on the instincts developed by years of experience as a good cop.

But while some community activist might have counseled Benton to take that moment’s pause to reconsider his implicit bias, chastise himself, and stand down, Benton used it to call for backup, giving a reason, location, license number, and description of the Ford Transit before placing his car in gear and accelerating into the right lane approximately a quarter mile behind the van.

Abu al-Basri. That was the name Benton had given dispatch. And although he remembered the name, he couldn’t remember the man’s alleged infractions—just that he was on the terrorist watch list and had been engaged in some type of violence. Benton knew under such circumstances his call for backup, even unsupported by outstanding warrants, would trigger a quick response. If he was wrong, his retirement might be moved up involuntarily.

Within a few seconds, Benton had overtaken the van, pulling even with the driver’s-side window in the left lane. Glancing over at the driver, Benton felt a pang of uneasiness. The driver resembled al-Basri, but there were no definite telltale markings. A plaintiff’s lawyer would claim that the only reason the driver had been pulled over and humiliated was because Benton had engaged in racial profiling.

But Benton’s unease lessened a bit when, looking behind the driver, he detected what appeared to be several men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. The instincts that had served him well for three decades told him something was amiss. Benton radioed his findings, and dispatch reported that the van had been rented from Avis by a Seamus McCourt of Augusta. Ignoring the many hours of sensitivity training he’d received over the last decade, Benton noted that the driver looked nothing like a Seamus McCourt.

Benton saw that the driver continued looking straight ahead, not casting even a glance at the state trooper. In his rearview mirror, Benton caught two cruisers, light bars flashing, vectoring onto the highway from an on-ramp. Benton lit his light bar also, capturing the attention of the driver, whom he motioned to pull over.