Reading …
For my wife Galia, my sons Alexander and Jonathan,
and our family in England and Ukraine.
Washington, DC
The co-conspirators stood on their balcony at The Hay-Adams. The White House was less than four hundred metres away. The balcony afforded them a grandstand view. Within minutes Maksim Oleniuk and Chen Yan, the founders of Blackline PMC, were going to launch the largest attack on the United States of America since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, perhaps the biggest attack ever on the country. Maksim Oleniuk certainly hoped so. He looked down and smiled at the Chinese oligarch who had funded his dream of striking the US. It had been her finances – billions amassed from minerals and electronics, in partnership with his access and expertise as a former Russian Military Intelligence Officer, which had created this paradigm-shifting moment. Oleniuk found his partner highly attractive but understood she was the very last person in the world he should approach. He sipped his chilled champagne and wondered if she could read his mind.
‘What are you thinking of?’ Yan asked, surprising him, making his face colour in the gloom. Her American accent was flawless, perfected whilst she gained an MBA at the New York Institute of Technology. It put Oleniuk’s Russo-British accent to shame.
‘I am just thinking that never have parents given birth to such a powerful child.’
She inclined her head, a stoic expression on her face. ‘Our child will live and die in the same instant, yet leave an eternal legacy.’
‘Legacy,’ Oleniuk repeated. It was something he had strived to create and the perfect word for the occasion.
They stood like expectant parents, the former GRU officer rocking from foot to foot and the Chinese billionaire stock-still, but both were nervous, excited and scared of what was to come.
The timing of the detonation had been mandated to utilise empty airspace, or airspace as empty as it ever could be over the continental United States. The location was hugely symbolic; the US seat of power deliberately selected, politically central rather than geographically so. Oleniuk’s scientists had stated the risk of damage to the retina was small yet did exist if they were to stare directly at the epicentre of the detonation with the naked eye. For this reason, Oleniuk and Yan wore wrap-around sunglasses with specifically engineered lenses shielding their eyes. They gazed out over the balcony at the empty air a mile above the floodlit White House.
At exactly five a.m. there was a flash so quick that if the pair had not known exactly where to look it would have been missed, then a silent, purple detonation flowered. It bloomed like a monstrous, inverted Fourth of July firework. Its petals spread earthwards and then faded to be replaced by a mauve glow, creating a spectral false dawn.
Oleniuk felt the tingling sensation he had been warned to expect wash over him, as each individual hair on his body stood up on end. At that very moment, as if choreographed, every single light around the pair vanished. The White House lights disappeared, the floodlights on the lawn were no more and the stately residence of the President of the United States of America was plunged into darkness.
The glow started to fade; the night sky now taking on the appearance of the bruised eye of a heavyweight boxer, before it gradually became black once more. The co-conspirators removed their protective eyewear. They had delivered a form of vengeance like no other the modern world had ever seen and, ignoring ancient, fanciful tales of vengeful gods, the single most powerful.
Oleniuk put his arm around Yan. ‘We have done it.’
She did not reply; however, she did give him a sideways glance. Oleniuk quickly moved his arm. ‘I am sorry. I was overcome with emotion in the moment. I do apologise.’
‘It is understandable, given the circumstances.’
They continued to gaze at the capital city of the United States – dark, silent but not dead. The majority of the population were safely asleep and those who weren’t would interpret the loss of power as a citywide outage, a total blackout.
Two days earlier
Camden, Maine, United States
The assassin was Russian, one of their best. He had to be to make the shot. His hide was in an elevated position on a hill, half a click away from the target. It was the closest he was prepared to go, given the timescale and his schedule. Three targets to hit in three consecutive days. A reckless order in the Russian Army and certainly an unheard-of contract on the private circuit. But he was the best, and he had accepted. And he was now on target number two.
The ever-changing eddies and the elevation made the shot challenging. It was a job for a two-man team, a shooter and a spotter, but the assassin had always preferred to work alone. The assassin was not acquainted with failure; this was something that simply did not enter his thought process. Preparing to fail started with a failure to prepare, and Ruslan Akulov never failed to prepare.
His target was on time. He tracked him in his crosshairs. The man exited the rear of the house through a pair of double-height patio doors, sipping his Pinot Gris, blissfully unaware of the Russian’s presence. Retired senator Clifford Piper lived in a sprawling mansion overlooking the town of Camden, Maine. The deck, where he stood now and would soon fall upon, commanded panoramic views of the harbour, West Penobscot Bay, and the evergreen islands.
Akulov had seen mansions before, castle-like homes constructed for the rich and corrupt, which dotted the outskirts of Moscow like mushrooms, while the rest of the population lived in shacks or high-rise concrete boxes. Never before, however, had he encountered one in a setting as spectacular as this. He agreed the panorama was impressive, but the man was not. He knew all about Piper. He hated him. As a senator Piper had preached his own brand of American imperialism, damning all those who dared speak out against Uncle Sam. He was a hawk, voraciously attacking Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, and China. He threw his words like missiles from the safety of Washington, a coward who would not dare repeat his slurs in the face of the enemy.
But, had he been punished for the innumerable deaths his rhetoric had caused or the hatred his words had incited? No. The senator had been allowed to retire to his mansion, and his three-million-dollar view. Not bad for a dacha, or as the Americans called them “vacation properties”. The Russian let a sneer form on his face. The property would be vacated soon enough. He had watched his target, and knew his routine well. Piper took a glass of wine at eleven o’clock each morning on his deck in order to appreciate his view. Akulov had also enjoyed the vista. The ocean – like him – was a contradiction. By turns calm and violent. Not that he was naturally a violent soul, but he employed violence in the defence of his country.
The target was a widower, his wife having perished along with twenty-eight other Americans a year before, in a terrorist attack in Jakarta. But for the Jakarta team this had been a failure. Bitter fate had intervened in his employer’s plans, made the senator succumb to food poisoning and unable to leave his hotel suite to join the bus tour. The bus his wife was on, the bus that had been boarded by gunmen who slaughtered every passenger. Grief-stricken, the senator had resigned and retired. The Jakarta team’s failure ensured that Piper was added to the hit list given to Akulov, and Akulov did not fail.
The maid appeared. She stood by her master’s side. She held his hand. Through open curtains, the Russian had observed the old man consoling himself by screwing her. It had not been at all arousing