The Pangolin Conspiracy: Part 1 Staging Armageddon, Part 2 Uncovering Evil

By M.J. Griffith

In the fall of 2018, a pangolin coronavirus is discovered in China by an aspiring graduate student, JADE HUANG. A unique gene that is found in the virus by her parents, DRS. MING AND KANESHA HUANG, enables the virus to infect humans as well. DR. FEN YUNG, the "Bat Lady" at the Virology Institute in Wuhan, informs Alex of the discovery in her monthly report.
Alex suggests that Roger should use the pangolin virus gene. A year later, deadly infections emerge in a Wuhan wet market. According to plan, the Russians had released the virus in the market to make it appear that the infections were caused by infected animals or by a lab leak from the Institute.
The pangolin virus gene is discovered in the pandemic virus and Beijing mandates the extermination of pangolins in southeastern China. Jade is infuriated. She is certain that the virus was created in a lab. With the help of her parents, hundreds of patient samples are analyzed. The results indicate that U.S. athletes attending the Military World Games in Wuhan were exposed to the virus during a wet market tour that was arranged by Elizabeth Slater.
Jade drafts a manuscript that summarizes the evidence she has collected along with a conspiracy theory she pieced together from anonymous text messages she received from Deep Throat who, unbeknownst to her, is a Chinese intelligence agent.
Rublyov's belt-and-suspenders approach to covert activities will be their undoing. After approving Volkov's plan, Rublyov put a backup plan in motion. He recruited ARINA ZEVONARENKA, a Russian law student and militant climate activist. He told Arina to convince her close friend, MARIE DUBOIS, to steal the virus she was creating under Schwartz's direction.
Marie is an exchange student from Lyon. She is the daughter of Dr. Francois Dubois, a former Schwartz postdoc and colleague of Dr. Yung. To avoid being caught, Marie had to steal a variant of the virus. Upon her return to Lyon, she gave the stolen virus to Arina. Arina reminds Francois of a past wrongdoing. She coerces him to take the stolen virus to a Russian operative in Wuhan. Within two weeks, deadly infections were reported.
Ironically, six months later, Dr. Yung asked Francois to help review Jade's manuscript. By then, he had figured out that the two wildly successful mRNA vaccines had been developed from Marie's original virus. He suspected that Sputnik-57, the Russian vaccine, had been developed from the variant she had stolen. Fearing that something bad might happen to him, Francois sends the vaccines to an independent laboratory for analysis. When the testing is complete, the results are sent directly to Fen and Jade. Uri sensed that Francois, Marie and Arina knew too much and ordered their murders.
A congressional committee investigates the origin of the pandemic and interrogates Alex, Roger, and Elizabeth. They claim that what they had done was above board and consistent with the mission of Alex's PPA.
Two weeks before the 2020 election, Jade presents the vaccine test results to the congressional committee. The evidence is clear that the Russians had caused the outbreak. In the meantime, the FBI had obtained a burner phone belonging to Tanner Baldwin. Unsurprisingly, Tanner had blundered, and Elizabeth's kickback scheme is exposed.
The committee mistakenly concludes that Elizabeth had used Nedvedev's obsession to subvert Decker's reelection to manipulate the Russians into causing the pandemic. They believe that her single-minded goal from the start was to illegally profit from the sale of the vaccines.
The committee's findings rock the country. Tanner's role in the kickback scheme and a recovered message on his burner phone that indirectly implicated his father created a firestorm among the voters. On election day, Decker wins in a landslide.
As Decker's critics quietly retreat, Nedvedev's troops are withdrawn from Ukraine in the dead of night and adversaries around the world cower in the face

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350960006

M.J. Griffith

I was born in Kalamazoo, MI in 1948. My father was a Marine who served in the South Pacific during WWII and trained recruits at Camp Pendleton during the Korean War. My mother was an elementary school teacher for over 35 years. I married Carol Roberts, the daughter of a Benton Harbor, MI mail carrier, in 1969. We have four daughters. I served at the First U.S. Army Medical Laboratory at Fort Meade during the Viet Nam War. I entered a graduate program in virology in 1973 and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry (UTHSC, San Antonio) in 1977. I accepted a Pathology postdoctoral position at UNC, Chapel Hill in 1977 and joined the faculty in 1980. In 1985 I was hired by Baxter to develop biopharmaceuticals and was promoted to VP Scientific Affairs in 1990, interacting directly with FDA. I began an entrepreneurial career in 2000 and found success in 2005 as CEO of Inspiration Biopharmaceuticals. I began story writing after I retired in 2020 and decided to take a shot at a novel in 2021.

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Contents

Part 1: Staging Armageddon

What Is It?

America Only

Have Gun Will Travel

Soviet Union Redux

I Need a Plan

Slater is the Key

The Lesser of Evils

Darcy

Stuck in the Middle with You

The Pitch

Aleksander Bondarenko

Can it be Done?

What’s In It for Me?

Gain-of-Function

Pangolin Virus

The Kickback Scheme

Vaccine Feasibility

Wuhan Wet Market

Military World Games

What Went Wrong?

Panic Mode

Furin Cleavage Site

It Wasn’t Me

Who Done It?

Francois Dubois

Climate Change Activists

The Recruit

The Backup Plan

Bioweapon Development

Marie’s Virus

The Modified Virus

Lab Leak

Follow the Science

Smoking Gun

Cover Story

Success

Operation Stargate

Finger Pointing

Not a Bioweapon

Leverage

Coercion

The Assignment

The Manuscript

Flip the Script

Revisions

Confrontation

Created and Destroyed

Sputnik-57 Conundrum

Surprise

Confessions

We Did It

Flaw in the Model

Exposure

Victory Lap

Congressional Hearing

Above the Law

What Documentation?

Loose Ends

Staging Armageddon

What If

Part 2: Uncovering Evil

Evil Brewing

Mikhail Volkov

A Star is Born

Forensic Sciences

Mystical Powers

Feasibility Study

Yuning Weng to the Rescue

Quarantined

Zoonotic Spillover in the Delta

Pangolin Virus

Next Steps

Is It Safe?

Extinction Level Event

Someone Made It

Bits and Pieces

Deep Throat

Bioweapon

Eastern Europe

Common Denominator

Focusing

Connections

Lynch Pin

Krasnyy Star Pipeline

Infecting America

Checking In

Study Design

Long Shot

Only Mild Symptoms

Variants

Outbreak in October

Rumors

Now We Know

The Package

Lyon

Dr. Francois Dubois

The Call

Just a Small Difference

First Draft

Hidden Agenda

Implications

What To Do

Elizabeth Did It

Facts and Inconsistencies

Setting the Trap

Second Draft

Turmoil

Car Accident

Pieces of the Puzzle

Arina Zevonarenka

Another Car Accident

Who is Next?

Eliminating Risks

Brits to The Rescue

Voice from the Grave

The Weak Link

The Burner Phone

Second Committee Hearing

Roger Takes the Stand

Revelations

Vaccines

First to Market

The Queen

Mysterious Messages

Twist of Fate

The Letter

Two Attacks

Collusion

The Means

The Opportunity

The Motive

Aftermath

©2024 M.J. Griffith. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 979-8-35095-999-4 (paperback)

ISBN: 979-8-35096-000-6 (ebook)

Part 1

Staging Armageddon

What Is It?

What is it? Shu asked her younger brother as they quietly peered through the dense Pearl River Delta foliage of Guangdong Province.  Ling was two years younger than his 8-year-old sister, but wildly precocious.  Shu and Ling rarely ventured beyond their home in the outskirts of Shenzhen, but the sweltering July humidity had taken the day off and the weather today was perfect for a brief excursion.  Ling was not sure what he was looking at.  It appeared to be a rough, scaly object about twice the size of Shu’s soccer ball, but whatever it was it was alive.  Suddenly a young man sprang from the brush as the animal struggled to right itself to make its escape.  Ling immediately recognized that the animal was an elderly pangolin that had taken a defensive position after being driven by the man from the safety of its home in the nearby trees.  There was something wrong with the animal though; had it been wounded while being chased from the trees or had it been drugged by the man to slow its escape?  Regardless, the pursuit quickly ended as the young man bagged the pangolin and disappeared into the jungle.  Shu and Ling were stunned and ran away as fast as they could not knowing that what they had just witnessed was the first event in the outbreak of a pandemic that would kill millions of innocent people in every corner of the world.

America Only

To many people, President Bernard Decker and his ‘America Only’ policies he had campaigned on in 2016 had gone too far.  He had alienated most of the country’s global allies with his edicts that they were failing to do their part to keep the world and, more importantly to him, the U.S. safe.  He had withdrawn billions of dollars of European defense funding and maligned the U.N. for their feeble efforts to maintain world peace.  He despised China, offending the Chinese American population in the process, and he had no time to devote to considering the ramifications of global warming on the U.S. or on anyone else in the world.  On his watch, Black Lives Matter supporters became infuriated with police brutality and sections of cities around the country had become war zones as protestors came together to demand that social changes be made, going so far as to defund the local police.  And, as an affront to almost anyone who had emigrated to the U.S., Decker was building a wall on the southern border so that only people he was okay with would be let into the country. 

In principal, however, most of Decker’s policies reflected what many Americans had wanted to see when his administration took over after the 2016 election; more domestic jobs to replace the cheap labor that U.S. companies were sourcing from China, tougher alliances with Western Europe to stifle Russian energy dependence, stronger ‘law and order’ policies to clamp down on crime in the U.S. and tighter border control that would eliminate drug and human trafficking and terrorist infiltration.  On the other hand, there was no question that his global warming position took a back seat to his goal to achieve American energy self-sufficiency as he had aggressively caused fossil fuel production in the country to ramp up, a policy that was worrisome to many on both sides of the political aisle.  Although he was loathe to admit it, Decker had won the presidential election because many people could no longer stand the arrogance of his opponent, Secretary of State Elizabeth Slater, who had recklessly insulted anyone who supported him. When election day had rolled around, it was clear that many had voted against her and the result was that Decker became the 45th President, and she didn’t.

After two years of White House turmoil, the mood of many Americans was beginning to move against Decker, but the one thing that he had accomplished that no one in the U.S. wanted to see derailed was his booming domestic economy with historically low unemployment that was benefiting everyone.  It was evident to his political detractors that the country’s robust GDP was the strongest plank in his reelection platform and to Slater’s dismay, virtually guaranteed that he would be reelected in 2020.

Have Gun Will Travel

Elizabeth Montgomery Slater had been raised in the deep South on the plantation estate that had been in her family for nearly 200 years. She was intimately aware of her cultural heritage and the privilege associated with being white and the pain and suffering that was and continued to be endured by those who were not. Still, she had been quite comfortable attending a private school where many of the Southern elite sent their children to be educated and had subsequently leveraged her parent’s political network to facilitate her acceptance into Yale’s Class of 1973, the first class to include women at the university. Dr. Elga Wasserman, who had been appointed the Yale University Special Assistant to the President on the Education of Women in 1968 was charged with the responsibility to make the university a good place for women and had taken Elizabeth under her wing. Under Wasserman’s tutelage, Elizabeth learned quickly how to maneuver in a society ruled by white men, and they would work closely together in the years that followed to bring race and gender inequities to light.

Elizabeth thrived as a worthy adversary in the male dominated Yale culture and championed many efforts that emphasized the role of women in all facets of American culture. She had strongly advocated for the passage of Title IX in 1972 to ensure that male and female students and faculty would be treated fairly and equally as prescribed in the 14th amendment to the Constitution. After graduating with a degree in political science, Elizabeth enrolled at Yale Law School where she met Chester Slater, her future husband. The two of them successfully climbed the political ladder where Chester would serve two terms as President of the United States, and Elizabeth would become the first woman to serve as Secretary of State. Though her personal presidential election bid failed in 2016, she could at least take solace in the fact that she was the first woman to be nominated for President of the United States by a major political party. Through donations to their foundation as well as direct payments for speaking events and book deals, Chester and Elizabeth had amassed a fortune during their careers. In both political and business arenas, their influence was known to be far-reaching, and they became well-paid assets to anyone who could pay the price for their help, something that Russian Federation President Vladislav Nedvedev would soon be taking advantage of.

Soviet Union Redux

Although Decker’s reelection would be more salt in Elizabeth Slater’s political wounds, the insult to her ego was nothing compared to what Vladislav Nedvedev saw as being a further delay in achieving his geopolitical ambition to reunite the former Soviet Union States with the Federation.

Nedvedev had never accepted the breakup of the Soviet Union and had made it his life mission to reunite the 15 post-Soviet states with Mother Russia no matter the cost. Whereas Belarus and Kazakhstan had established relations with Russia that favored Nedvedev’s long term objectives and Uzbekistan was leaning in the same direction, Ukraine was problematic. Nedvedev had once proclaimed that to him ‘Russian and Ukrainian peoples are practically one people’ yet it was clear that many of the people in Ukraine favored a democratic society and the government in Kyiv had fervently sought membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to deter Russia from an invasion. He simply could not grasp how people whose heritage and native language was Russian would reject him, but he was clear in his mind and made it known to the world that approval of Ukraine membership into NATO was a ‘red line’ that would have dire consequences for the West if it was crossed.

Even though Nedvedev was aware that Decker would not hesitate to confront him with or without NATO, he continued to support the Russian separatist forces who were fighting for their independence in Eastern Ukraine. The separatists were, in essence, Russian formations under the command of the 8th Combined Arms Army based in Rostov Oblast in the Southern Federal District of Russia. The Army had been assembled in 2017 with the intention to gradually build Russia’s military presence near the eastern border of Ukraine in preparation for a full-scale invasion when a less ‘trigger happy’ president was once again in the oval office.

In the meantime, Nedvedev had made it his top priority to complete construction of the Krasnyy Star Pipeline that had begun in 2011 when the passive foreign policy in Washington was to ‘avoid seeing something that would require doing something’. When completed, the pipeline would deliver 3.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas to Greifswald Germany from Russia’s Shtokman Field a thousand miles to the north of Vyborg in Russia’s Barents Sea.  Almost 50% of Germany’s consumption of natural gas was already purchased from Russia so there was little doubt that Moscow would soon possess sufficient economic power over Western Europe for Nedvedev to get whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, without firing a shot or launching a missile.  Completion of the pipeline would also mean that the fees that Moscow had been paying to transport natural gas to Western Europe through Ukraine since the end of the Cold War could finally be cutoff, weakening their fragile economy and facilitating annexation with little military resistance from the corrupt pro-Western government in Kyiv.

Unfortunately, immediately after Decker had been sworn into office, executive orders were signed that threatened to impose crippling sanctions on any company that would offer aid to Russia in the completion of the pipeline. Decker was adamant that completion of the pipeline would result in a security risk to the West, reflecting exactly why Nedvedev wanted the pipeline completed. While the U.S. had received a multitude of contentious reassurances from Germany and the EU leadership that they would never let this happen, the reality was that no one there wanted to freeze in their homes next winter which would give Nedvedev the latitude he would need to tighten his grip on Western Europe and fulfill his master plan. With the threat of sanctions halting completion of the pipeline and the threat of a nuclear showdown if he escalated his military incursion into Eastern Ukraine, Nedvedev’s version of manifest destiny was not going to happen while Decker was running the show in Washington.

Nedvedev knew that something had to be done to undermine Decker’s reelection and as much as he despised Elizabeth Slater, the idea of clandestinely supporting her in the upcoming election had crossed his mind. Paradoxically, he had openly supported Decker’s 2016 presidential election bid while his top Foreign Intelligence, SVR officer, Uri Rublyov, worked his covert magic to conduct damaging cyber-attacks that had undermined Slater’s campaign. It had made sense at the time since it had appeared that Decker intended to take immediate steps to distance the U.S. from NATO and would look to purge the deep-seated corruption within the pro-Western Ukrainian government that Nedvedev intended to oust as well. But with the pipeline sanctions now in place, Slater’s don’t get involved foreign policy record made her the lesser of evils and Nedvedev turned again to Rublyov to come up with a plan that would get her or someone like her elected that would not interfere with his Eastern European plans.

I Need a Plan

Uri Rublyov had known Nedvedev for over 30 years having served with him in Dresden, East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Although both had remained active in the Russian secret service, Uri had preferred to stay involved in undercover operations working with Nedvedev who had ascended to the position of Director of the Federal Security Service in 1998 and then to President of the Russian Federation in 2000, a position he had retained in one form or another since then.

Uri was now Nedvedev’s most trusted and reliable confidants having orchestrated covert activities that had severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement during the Second Chechen War and winning Vladislav’s praise for his initiatives that had aided the military incursion into Ukraine that culminated in the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Although coming up with plans to subvert presidential elections in the States was not new to Uri, Elizabeth Slater had burned a lot of bridges since her failed 2016 bid and helping her to get elected now would be challenging. Regardless, Uri’s first step was to come up with a plan to sabotage Decker’s campaign. For better or worse, Mikhail Volkov, one of his most ambitious operatives in Kyiv, had mentioned an idea to him that seemed too complex to bother with, but it was now something Uri realized he had to consider.

Mikhail Volkov had been assigned by Uri to the post of the Assistant to the Russian Ambassador in Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea and had taken the initiative to sketch out a plan to sabotage Decker’s reelection. He had worked undercover from his office in Kyiv and over the past four years he had cemented good relationships with local Ukrainian politicians and dignitaries. Eager for advancement he had outlined his thoughts to Uri to make a good impression, but he had no expectation until now that he would be taken seriously.

Thanks for coming to Moscow so quickly, Mikhail. Uri started. As I mentioned to you, I need to come up with a plan to undermine President Decker’s reelection and I want to hear more about the scheme you have in mind.

I know that there are a number of connections that will have to be made to pull the plan together, Director Rublyov, but from what I have learned, I believe that there is a way to do it. Mikhail offered.

Your youthful optimism is reminiscent of my early days in the KGB, Mikhail, but I never had the General Secretary of the Soviet Union asking me for my thoughts on a scheme to disrupt U.S. politics. Uri said with a laugh. It would have been a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity primarily because failures in those days often resulted in a one-way trip to Siberia. Suffice to say, President Nedvedev wants your plan to succeed so for both our sakes, I hope a trip to Siberia isn’t in our future.

Understood, Director. If you think what I have in mind is too far-fetched, please don’t take it any further.

Uri nodded to acknowledge his agreement but knew that he was also desperate, and any plan might be a good plan under the circumstances and worth the risks.

So, fill me in on the details and then I’ll decide if I can present it to Nedvedev.

Okay. Mikhail began. Over the years, I have established a friendship with Andiry Bondarenko, the son of the Ukrainian Minister of Energy. From time to time, we have done ‘under-the-table’ favors for one another so I decided I could pick his brain on the idea I had without too much risk. Andiry is of Russian heritage, so I mentioned that Moscow was intent on reuniting the former Soviet States with the Federation, but that the policies that were coming out of Washington were making any progress difficult. As it turned out, it was obvious to me that with tensions increasing between Ukraine and Russia, Andiry wanted to stay on my good side and was quick to offer his help.

I guess I am not too surprised. Uri commented. There are many people in Ukraine who would prefer to be a part of Mother Russia again. Did he help you to come up with the plan?

No, but he would be playing a critical role in making connections for us if you decide to go forward.

How so?

To begin with, he had once told me that his uncle, Dr. Aleksander Bondarenko, is the head of an organization in Atlanta that has access to many of the top infectious disease scientists around the world. Andiry is very close to his uncle and from the things that he has mentioned to me, I believe that he can entice his uncle to help us.

You are not thinking about sending an anthrax letter to Decker, are you? That would be a non-starter if you are. Uri warned facetiously.

No, not at all. Considerably more subtle. Mikhail said with a smile. As I understand it, Dr. Bondarenko has access to the resources who could be called upon to develop a flu-like virus that we could use to transiently debilitate the general population in the U.S.

And undercut the booming economy that Decker has created prior to the 2020 election. Uri anxiously interrupted.

Exactly. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that if we can sabotage Decker’s economic success, which I understand is a major plank in his reelection platform today, many of the independent and moderate voters are likely to abandon him, giving someone other than Decker a good shot at being elected in his place.

I think you have got it right, Mikhail. Very creative thinking, but how do you get Dr. Bondarenko to create the virus?

Slater is the Key

The moment of truth had arrived. If Uri didn’t like what Mikhail was about to tell him, his plan would never make it to President Nedvedev’s desk and his chance for glory would be lost.

With help from Decker’s vanquished adversary, Elizabeth Slater.

Uri couldn’t help himself from laughing at that thought, but he knew that Vladislav would be open to considering it. He decided to keep that to himself and give Mikhail the chance to make the case for involving her in the plan.

I can see that Slater would be happy to take down Decker, but you know that Vladislav probably despises her as much as Decker does if you are thinking that she would be the one to replace him in the oval office. Uri said to guide Mikhail’s response.

Mikhail knew this could be an issue, but this was a case where the end would justify the means. At least that was what he hoped.

You know Slater’s political history better than I do, but I think she would not interfere with President Nedvedev’s plans if she knew he would help her get elected.

That is probably true, but it could still be a tough sell to Vladislav unless her role in your plan is essential. Uri baited Mikhail further.

Understood. Her role would be simple, really. She still has connections to her cronies in Washington who could arrange hefty funding for Bondarenko’s organization. Bondarenko has used federal funding to support scientists around the world which has made him rich and a powerful force in the field that he has come to embrace. Cutting to the chase, Andiry has said that he believes he can be bought and coupling that with his sympathy for Ukraine’s self-determination and his personal hatred of Decker, there should be enough incentive for him to help us.

It appears to be a viable approach, Mikhail, but how would you be able to get access to Elizabeth Slater? She is somewhat higher up the social and political ladders than you are. Uri noted with a wry smile.

That she is Director, but this is another role that Andiry needs to play. If you give me the go ahead for now, I will discreetly approach him with the plan and see how he reacts. He has a relationship with Elizabeth’s daughter, Darcy Slater, who he says he can get to pitch the plan to her mother. I can begin to probe this further with Andiry and get a better feeling for how difficult the connections will be to make. What do you think?

Uri was delighted on the one hand but concerned on the other. As creative as it was, the plan Mikhail had in mind required that several people who would be playing critical roles who were not undercover operatives accustomed to what amounted to an international conspiracy. From Uri’s perspective, although Andiry was well-entrenched in the ongoing corruption in Ukraine, he was not an SVR-trained agent who could be relied on to keep his mouth shut. Although both Elizabeth Slater and Andiry’s uncle were seasoned politicians who had been involved in a variety of nefarious activities over the years and were less likely to crack under pressure, Darcy was young and relatively naïve and would know critical details of the plan that could be easily pried out of her. Uri weighed the risks against the urgency to come up with a plan and decided to give Mikhail the green light to put the first phase of the conspiracy in motion. In the meantime, he would follow up with Vladislav and hope he would not be put on the next train to Siberia.

The Lesser of Evils

Uri sensed that money alone would not be enough to entice Slater to join the conspiracy team and her acrimonious history with Nedvedev made it unlikely that she would be inclined to lift a finger to help him. However, her gut-wrenching animosity toward Barney Decker, the deplorable candidate that she had lost the presidential election to, would be her ultimate weakness that could play perfectly into Mikhail’s plans, but getting Vladislav to agree to it would be another matter.

I do not like Slater one bit, Uri, but if she can help get Decker out of the way and commit to not interfering with my plans for Western Europe, she would be the lesser of evils and I would be willing to use our covert resources to support her campaign.  So, what does your guy have in mind?  Vladislav asked.

I think the plan is worth considering although I admit it is complex.  Uri offered. The operative who came up with the scheme is Mikhail Volkov.  I have had Volkov working undercover as the assistant to our ambassador in Kyiv since we annexed Crimea in 2014.  He has developed a friendship over the years with Andiry Bondarenko, the son of the Ukrainian Minister of Energy, who he had met early on at diplomatic events.  Bondarenko’s uncle, Dr. Aleksander Bondarenko, is the head of the Pandemic Prevention Alliance in Atlanta and has access to a network of infectious disease scientists around the world.  Volkov believes that he can get Bondarenko to entice his uncle to use his PPA network to develop a moderately debilitating, but non-lethal virus to rapidly infect the U.S. population and transiently shutdown business operations across the country.  Without a strong GDP to point to, Decker’s reelection campaign would be seriously undermined, and give Slater a good shot at replacing him.

Sounds messy, Uri.  What makes Volkov think he can get Bondarenko to help?

Bondarenko is known to have peddled his position of influence with his father to make several corrupt business arrangements with various foreign entities.   Volkov is certain that he will help us with his uncle if we throw enough money at him, but if he is reluctant, we can threaten to expose his nefarious activities.  We know, for example, that he has illegally helped Gazprom get favorable fees for transporting our natural gas through Ukrainian pipelines to Europe.  The pro-Western government in Kyiv would likely hang him if they found out he had helped cut a deal with a Russian state-owned corporation, so I think we have the leverage that we need to coerce him to help if it comes to that.

Okay, that seems solid enough.  How does Volkov think that Bondarenko can convince his uncle to create the virus?  That sounds like bioweapon development so what would make it worthwhile to his uncle to take the risk of violating international laws?

You are right about the appearance of bioweapon development, but you know that we have suspected that the U.S. has had an ongoing effort despite the U.N. mandated prohibitions.  That said, the scientific community knows that the gain-of-function research that is being conducted in virology labs around the world could be directly applied to bioweapon development at any time and gain-of-function research is, in fact, the kind of research that Dr. Bondarenko’s foundation has publicly supported.   If we can get him onboard, the virus creation that Mikhail envisions being done by one of his scientists will look like business as usual, not bioweapon development.  Providing Bondarenko’s foundation with hefty federal funding is the key to drawing him in and that is something Volkov thinks we can get Slater’s help in exchange for our support for her presidential campaign.

Vladislav smiled.  The beauty of Volkov’s plan was that it would appear to the world that Bondarenko and Slater had arranged it for their financial and/or political gain and Moscow could easily deny involvement.      

Make it so, Uri, was all he had to say.   

Uri was pleased that Nedvedev had given Volkov’s plan a green light to proceed, but also relieved that he hadn’t asked for more of the details.  Getting to Slater was going to be tricky and relied again on Andiry Bondarenko, this time by using his romantic relationship with Slater’s daughter.  Involving her would be dicey, but the stakes for Moscow were high and worth the risk.

Darcy

Darcy Slater was the daughter of former U.S. President Willy Slater and Elizabeth (Montgomery) Slater. Darcy was an aspiring, confident young woman who had chosen to follow in her mother’s footsteps by attending Yale with plans of seeking a law degree and pursuing a career in politics.   She had graduated with a degree in political sciences in the spring of 2013, during her mother’s second term as Secretary of State and had spent as much time as she could during the ensuing three years working as an intern in her office and accompanying her on her diplomatic travels whenever possible. 

Darcy was not an overtly bad person by any means and most people found her to be engaging and respectfully adept in appreciating the challenges and opportunities faced by those she met.  Still, just like her mother, somewhere in the back of her mind an inventory was constantly being updated of the buttons to push and levers to pull that would someday help her get ahead.  There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Darcy was, as they say, her mother’s daughter.   

As it had happened, shortly after the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea in the summer of 2014, Darcy met Andiry Bondarenko.  Maybe Andiry was distracted by Darcy’s striking appearance when he first saw her with her mother at the Government Building reception in Kyiv, but he found himself talking to her about anything in hopes that it would keep her attention.  One would have thought he would have been more focused on the threat of war with Russia in eastern Ukraine and the stability of the newly formed, pro-Western government in Kyiv, but he was not a politician and was more interested in partying with the rich and famous and making a fast buck whenever he could. 

Darcy had a keen sense of when men and women overextended themselves to make an impression and in doing so would leave themselves vulnerable.  She had watched her mom manipulate her father and tolerate his indiscretions, but above all she knew that her parents had a bonded, albeit platonic partnership that had made them filthy rich and powerful over the years.  It was doubtful to Darcy that Andiry would rise through the Ukrainian political ranks to be of future use to her, but he was attractive enough for one-night stands to keep him on her list of resources if the need for his help should arise.  They would meet off and on over the next couple of years and were often seen together at social events although their relationship never extended beyond the overnight flings that they would spend together.

It had been two years since Elizabeth had suffered her humiliating presidential election defeat to Decker when Andiry sent Darcy a cryptic text message suggesting that he might have a mutually beneficial ‘opportunity’ to share with her. She asked him what was up, but he told her it would be better to discuss it in person the next time she was in Europe.

Darcy was scheduled to be in Simferopol, the Russian Federation’s designated capital of Crimea, with her mother in two weeks, an unofficial attempt Elizabeth would be making to smooth over the diplomatic ties between Ukraine and the U.S. that were being damaged by Decker and to reaffirm to her Russian counterparts that while the U.S. did not recognize Moscow’s claim to the region, no one wanted to see another Cuban missile crisis. Given how contentious her mother’s meetings were likely to be, Darcy was more than happy to duck out and meet Andiry for a casual dinner that evening.

Stuck in the Middle with You

As was customary when traveling with her mother, the State Department had provided Darcy with the publicly available background information on the complicated relationships between Crimea and Ukraine. She knew that after Crimea had been forcefully annexed by the Russian Federation, the United Nations had refused to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia and the pro-Western government in Kyiv was actively pursuing NATO membership to prevent Moscow from extending their invasion into the heartland of Ukraine. As she headed out to meet Andiry, thoughts raced through her head about what he had on his mind. As they settled in for a quiet dinner, Andiry gave Darcy a quick overview of what was in play.

Do you remember my friend, Mikhail Volkov? I introduced him to you a year or so ago at one of those diplomatic functions that we both hate. He has been serving as the assistant to the Russian ambassador in Kyiv since 2014 when things got crazy in Crimea.

I vaguely recall that you introduced him to me, but to be honest I was in a bad mood that night because my mother had made me attend the dinner. He seemed like a decent person from what I remember.

Andiry laughed.

Yes, I believe he is for the most part, but he is not the diplomat that he pretends to be.

I don’t understand. You are not going to tell me he is a Russian spy, are you? Darcy asked apprehensively.

Andiry laughed, hoping to put Darcy at ease.

Well, sort of. I believe he may be an undercover agent working for the SVR, but I consider him to be more of an intermediary than a spy.

Okay. Darcy said hesitantly. "I guess I am not too surprised. He did seem cold and not like other emissaries I have met in the past, but I am not sure that you should tell me