Make Russia Great Again: A Novel Page 3

  Mr. Trump grunted dismissively, which I took to mean “no.” He seemed extremely agitated, fiddling with the bejeweled-dagger letter opener the Saudi leader had given him, tapping it on his desk like a drumstick as he waited for Mr. Putin to come on the line.

  He said to me with a worried look, “What if he thinks we had something to do with it?”

  “Why would he think that, sir?” I said. “He knows you have the warmest feelings for him.”

  “He’s Russian. They’re all paranoid, Russians. And what if we did have something to do with it?”

  “Surely not, sir. You’d have to authorize something like that.”

  “They hate me, the intelligence people. You know why? Because I called bullshit on them when they claimed Putin put me in office. You don’t think the deep state would pull some stunt like this? To make Putin think I was behind it? Vladimir? Is that you? Jesus fucking Christ, what’s going on over there? Are you okay, my friend? Is this some kind of coup? What can we do to help? Name it, you got it. Anything. I asked our intelligence numbnuts what was going on, but… what? Numbnuts…”

  There was a pause. Perhaps the translator was struggling with “numbnuts.” “Idiots, all of them. The same people who say you elected me president. By the way, if you did, thank you. Very nice of you. Now they’re telling me they don’t know diddly-squat.” (Another pause indicated this was presenting challenges to the translator.) “They’ve got a big surprise coming. Uh-huh. I’m gonna cut their fucking budgets by half. They’re gonna be out on the street, rattling cups. So what the hell? What happened? How did this asshole Zipkin hijack your election?”IV

  The call went on for some time. I wasn’t listening in on an extension, so it wasn’t until later, when I got the transcript of their “private” conversation, that I gathered Mr. Putin was keeping an open mind as to who might have stolen his election. As a former KGB officer, Mr. Putin was, you might say, a professional paranoid. He thanked Mr. Trump for the call and seemed faintly amused by Mr. Trump’s repeated suggestion to “Lock him up!”

  Judd was beside himself when he learned of the call. He demanded to know why I hadn’t summoned him “in real time.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him, “Because, Judd, the president doesn’t like you.”

  It was no secret that Mr. Trump’s relations with his National Security Council directors had been less than smooth. Judd was his ninth in three and a half years, and Mr. Trump was far from pleased with him. Judd was an academic, and perhaps as a consequence, a bit of what Mr. Trump called a “yapper.”

  An NSC director with a PhD isn’t necessarily a handicap. Henry Kissinger was an academic, and that turned out well, except maybe for the Vietnam part. But Mr. Trump wasn’t Richard Nixon. Which is to say, the kind of president who’s read a great deal about national security and discussed it with intellectuals, grilling them for hours, exploring every aspect of this or that policy. That sort of thing Mr. Trump called “yada yada.”

  If Judd wanted us to go to war, or lob a few Tomahawk missiles at someone, he’d come to the meeting with a forty-five-minute PowerPoint, explaining why he wanted the war, or the Tomahawks. Mr. Trump simply had no patience for that. He liked his briefings short, crisp, and to the point, and above all, without briefing books or even short memos. Mr. Trump’s eyes had some sort of membrane that caused them to glaze over. He attributed this to his “lightning-fast brain,” not to attention deficit disorder. The one exception was if someone was praising him. He had inexhaustible patience when it came to encomia, such as when Kanye West would drop by and deliver a soliloquy comparing Mr. Trump to Napoleon, or God.

  I liked Judd, and he liked me, if for no other reason than that I protected him. I thought the optics of replacing him with a tenth NSC director would be unfavorable.V

  But three times now Mr. Trump had told me, “Get rid of that bug-eyed prick.” I pretended not to have heard him, and as often was the case, Mr. Trump forgot about it, his lightning mind having moved on. He juggled so many balls, Mr. Trump, that he sometimes lost track of just how many were in the air. I don’t mean this as a criticism.

  “Herb,” Judd said nervously, “this could be a minefield.”

  I briefed him on the president’s call with Mr. Putin, telling him that the president expressed hearty support for Mr. Putin.

  “He more or less told Putin he should line Zitkin and his fellow Commies up against the Kremlin wall and shoot them,” I said. “Putin is fully aware of Mr. Trump’s support.”

  Judd sighed in that way PhDs do, to convey that only they, with their advanced degrees, can fully comprehend the “parameters,” as they call them.

  “I’m saying it could be a problem, Herb,” Judd insisted mysteriously. He wore thick glasses, presumably from the strain of all that PhD-related reading. They magnified his eyes, like the ones of the locomotive cartoon character Thomas the Tank Engine in the children’s TV program. It could be distracting at times, and it annoyed Mr. Trump, who preferred the optics (as it were) of being surrounded by people who, as he put it, “look good.”

  “What kind of problem, Judd?” I said a bit impatiently. I wasn’t in the mood for Twenty Questions.

  “A cyberwar-type problem, Herb,” he replied, lowering his voice even though there was no one else in the room. “I had a call from Flipper Murphy at CyberCom. I’m on my way to Meade.VI I’ll give you a fill when I get back. But”—another sigh—“this could be a bit of a clusterfuck.”

  Not to split hairs, but I wondered how can one have a bit of a clusterfuck? “Clusterfuck” seems to me a comprehensive term, denoting total disaster. A bit of a total disaster?

  But Judd had gotten my attention. It was difficult to concentrate on Air Force One seating assignments for the upcoming big Trump rally in Testicle, Ohio.

  I. The origins of the Electoral College are obscure, but some scholars hold that it was intended to annoy the more populous states.

  II. The director of national intelligence is ostensibly the head of America’s collective seventeen intelligence agencies.

  III. For some reason, I have always been attracted to women who wear their hair in tight buns.

  IV. The president never could get Zitkin’s name right, possibly owing to his having known a New York socialite in the 1980s named (Jerome) Zipkin.

  V. “Optics” is Washington parlance for “appearances.” I don’t know how optometry crept into the lingo, but whatever.

  VI. Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters of the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command, headed by Adm. Phillip “Flipper” Murphy.

  4

  “So that’s the sitrep,” Judd said as he finished briefing me. Sitrep is a contraction of “situation report.”

  It’s my experience that people who have never worn a uniform are the ones who most love military parlance. As sitreps went, this was a lulu; or as they say in the military, a clusterfuck.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” I said. “Flipper—Admiral Murphy—did he say that this computer program—”

  “Platform.”

  “Whatever. That one of his computers hacked the Russian election—on its own? Without authorization?”

  Judd sighed at my obtuseness.

  “Herb, we’re talking about an autonomous retaliatory protocol. The whole point of a platform like Placid Reflux is that it self-activates. That’s what AI is all about—outsourcing.”

  “But can’t that lead to blowing up the world?”

  “Herb,” he said as though he were explaining all this to an imbecile, “Placid Reflux doesn’t launch nuclear weapons. Its mission parameters are limited. It will only retaliate symmetrically against foreign interference in a US election.”

  “Judd,” I said, “I have no idea what you are talking about. But never mind explaining. Why did it see fit to activate on its own?”

  “Well…” Judd now seemed to be choosing his words carefully. He and I disagreed about the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. “It ap
pears to have determined that the Russians did, in fact, interfere in the 2016 election.”

  “Who asked it to determine anything?”

  “Look, Herb, you are aware that all seventeen of our intelligence agencies agree that the Russians interfered. Point is, this computer also agrees. So when the president didn’t retaliate after the 2016 election, Placid Reflux concluded that he’d been neutralized.”

  “Neutralized?”

  “Killed. Incapacitated. In war theory, they call it ‘decapitation.’ Unable to retaliate.”

  “Well, Judd, the president is not decapitated. And I still don’t understand how something like this could have happened. Are you telling me that no one at US Cyber Command noticed that one of its computers had gone rogue and attacked a foreign power?”

  “No, they noticed.”

  “Then why didn’t they hit the off button?”

  “Autonomous protocol platforms don’t have off buttons, Herb. It’s a safeguard against infiltration. So the enemy can’t shut them down.”

  “Safeguard? Brilliant. Can’t they turn off the electricity?”

  “The batteries would only kick in. And they’re good for years. Look, Flipper’s aware that it puts the president in an awkward position.” Judd arched an eyebrow. “Given his extraordinary warmth toward Putin.”

  Judd himself felt no warmth toward the Russian leader. Whenever Mr. Putin allegedly had someone murdered or took over another portion of Ukraine, Judd was always the first to say I told you so. I finally had to tell him not to do this in front of Mr. Trump. It annoyed him.

  “Awkward?” I said. “Not nearly as awkward as the position Admiral Flipper is going to find himself in at his court-martial!”

  Judd took off his owl glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Herb, we need to have a come-to-Jesus.”

  “I’m Jewish. I don’t do come-to-Jesus, as you put it. With all due respect to the Christian faith. Jesus Christ, Judd, can you imagine how this is going to sit with the president?”

  “Herb. Walk with me.”

  “Where, backward?”

  “I’m saying let’s just look at it.”

  “You know the president’s feelings about the deep state. This is only going to confirm his worst suspicions.”

  “I appreciate that, Herb. I read you five by five.I I’m suggesting that we put on our big-girl panties and deal with the situation.”

  I listened as Judd made his case, mercifully without PowerPoint:

  First, he said, aside from himself and me, only a handful of personnel at US Cyber Command knew that this accursed Placid Reflux had activated. Second, it was designed to be virtually untraceable, so the Russians would be highly unlikely to determine its origin. Third, if President Trump learned about it, he would “go bananas” and shut down not only US Cyber Command, but probably all US intelligence agencies, which he already despised for asserting that Mr. Putin had gotten him elected president. This, Judd emphasized, would be catastrophic to national security. And last, if Putin learned about it, which he surely would if the president did, he would retaliate by—Judd chose his words carefully here—“going public with whatever he might have on Mr. Trump. And that,” Judd said gravely, “would be game over.” He concluded, “Knowing of your devotion to Mr. Trump, Herb, I’m sure that you’d find that a bad outcome.”

  There was the sitrep, in all its beauty. I felt physically ill.

  “Herb?”

  “What?”

  “You okay? You look a little green around the gills.”

  “No, Judd, I am not ‘okay.’ You’ve just informed me that the United States has grossly—grotesquely—interfered in a foreign election. And not just any foreign election. We have essentially undertaken a coup d’état against the president of Russia.”

  He grinned. “Pretty slick, huh? Who knew we had this kind of capability.”

  “Capability? Capability?”

  “Calm down, Herb.”

  I stammered. “And why did this, this, this machine elect a Communist? Was that one of its parameters?”

  “Placid’s algorithm would have incorporated historical precedent.” (Judd was apparently now on a first-name basis with the beast.) “Being aware that the US defeated Russian Communism before, it would likely predicate another future victory. Eventually.”

  “What, after another seventy-four-year golden age of Gulag, Berlin Wall, and Iron Curtain? Who programmed this Pandora’s box? Mr. Trump will doubtless want to give him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

  “Herb,” Judd said, “you’re overworking the problem. Look, here’s how this thing’s going to play out. Vladimir Putin will win the runoff election by the biggest landslide in Russian history. In any history. And Anatoli Zitkin, poor son of a bitch, will curse the day he won the first round. I wouldn’t predict longevity for Comrade Zitkin. The GRU is probably whipping up a fresh batch of Novichok to smear on his doorknobs.” (GRU is the rather grim-sounding acronym for Russian military intelligence. More on Novichok in due course.)

  I hadn’t felt such weight on my shoulders since Mr. and Mrs. Trump’s wedding reception at Farrago-sur-Mer.

  “So,” I sighed, “you’re proposing that we don’t tell the president?”

  “If he doesn’t know about it, he doesn’t have to deny knowing about it.”

  This sounded eerily Rumsfeldian.

  “It’s called ‘plausible deniability,’ Herb. Most presidents would kill to have it.”

  “But isn’t it our duty to tell him?”

  “I’d say that depends on your definition of ‘duty.’ ”

  “Judd,” I said, “we’re not talking about playing hide the cigar with the intern.”

  “I understand. But isn’t our highest duty to protect the president?”

  This was hard to disagree with.

  “You do understand,” he said, “that if the president learns about it, it won’t remain secret.”

  I had to agree with this assessment.

  “He’ll tell Putin. And Putin will retaliate. How? Again, I’m not saying Putin has something on the president. However…”

  He let that sink in and said, “The question you have to ask yourself is: Do I tell the president, knowing that it would lead to yet another impeachment? And this time, conviction by the Senate. Even Squiggly Biskitt would have a hard time defending him.”

  Judd seemed pleased with himself for having thought it all through so neatly. I suppose that’s what PhDs do.

  “Your call, Chief,” he said. “Way above my pay grade.”

  Chief? He’d never called me Chief before. And that way above my pay grade mumbo jumbo was slicing the salami a bit thin. Looking back, it’s clear that Judd was in effect handing me ownership of this odious enchilada.

  As the reader is probably aware, Judd’s blithe prediction as to how it would play out would prove as accurate as the prediction by the nincompoop “experts” who gave Mr. Trump a 3 percent chance of beating Hillary Clinton in 2016.

  I. Presumably another military term for “I understand.” Honestly…

  5

  Naturally, the media feasted on the Zitkin victory. Commentators who’d previously denounced Mr. Trump’s “bromance” with Putin were now in a bind, scratching their heads and wondering if he’d come to his senses and ordered the US to retaliate and interfere in his election.

  Chip Holleran of Eightball—who’d spent the last three and a half years comparing Mr. Trump to Caligula, Nero, Genghis Khan, Tsar Nicholas II, Antichrist, and Porky Pig—opened his show with “Is the Trump-Putin wedding off?”

  The stunning Zitkin victory was even giving pause to the more staid element of the Never Trump punditariat. George Will, dean of the paleoconservatives,I wrote with characteristic hauteur, “One can continue to find Donald Trump repugnant at every level while nonetheless wondering if all along he has been in a subtle pas de deux with Putin.”

  Needless to say, all this made Mr. Trump exceedingly nervous that th
e Kremlin might conclude he had ordered the cyberattack. I reassured him that Mr. Putin had better things to do than watch Chip Holleran or read George Will, but the poor man’s stomach was in knots. He issued a tweetnado, expressing solidarity with Mr. Putin and denouncing Comrade Zitkin in the harshest terms, including “Grand Larceny” and attempting to “Make Russia Red Again.”

  One particularly barbed tweet declared that locking up Mr. Zitkin was inadequate punishment for what he had done. Mr. Trump proposed he should be “wrapped in chains and lowered into a Pit full of Starving Dogs. DASVIDANYA!!!” Whether Mr. Putin was persuaded of Mr. Trump’s innocence by these somewhat overheated protestations was unclear.

  Our stalwart communications director, Greta Fibberson, swatted away media questions about US involvement in the hack, calling the reporters who posed them “human filth” and “execrable swine.”

  But with all due respect to Greta’s high standards of professionalism, it was Katie Borgia-O’Reilly who “fixed bayonet” and charged out of the trench at the enemy. Love her or hate her, you had to admit that Katie took the art of going low to new heights. Really, she was dazzling.

  Katie was sexy in a—I don’t want to say “creepy”—certain kind of way, as if you might discover after sleeping with her that she was in fact an android or an Albanian assassin sent to murder your grandmother for no clear reason. She had no specific function at the White House other than to seek out the nearest camera or microphone and declaim defiantly in support of whatever the president had said or done.

  Katie had been with Mr. Trump from the start of the 2016 campaign. She’d earned her chops defending Mr. Trump’s attack on Sen. John McCain as a bogus war hero and doing pushback on the uproar over the Hollywood Access tape.II

  Now, almost four years later, her ardor for Mr. Trump was undiminished, as was her disdain for factual niceties. There was a magnificence—an indomitability, if you will—in the gleeful way in which she went mano a mano with the “enemies of the people.”