Sleepers All Around

By Jeffrey Dorfman

The FBI, assisted by members of other federal agencies, is in a desperate search for a team of Russian sleeper agents who have lain dormant since the Cold War. But when they are activated by some person or nation unknown, the nation reels. Julie Delaney Long (JD) is the only wheelchair-using FBI special agent, and the FBI, the President, and the country must rely on her.

Acts of terrorism pock the nation as JD leads her team in the pursuit of these nefarious sleeper agents. While initial evidence points toward the Russian president, it is up to JD to determine the true power behind the attacks and solve the case before more damage is done to the country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098362218

Book preview

1

Dmitry Pyotrovich Shepishev was ready to retire. He had completed a fine career in his country’s intelligence services, first the KGB and then its successor the SVR. Yet, of everything he had done, of all the professional successes he had enjoyed, the operation that he spent the most time reflecting on was Operation Snowball. Dmitry had managed to slip thirty-five sleeper agents into the United States without a single one being caught. For twenty years, not a single sleeper agent had been activated. That was about to change.

Shepishev’s career had been a good one, several of his Western European agents had delivered valuable business secrets over the past several decades, enabling Russian oligarchs to make fortunes and the Russian president to take a hefty share of those fortunes for himself. The President, as befitting a former member of the KGB and SVR, had been good to the SVR. Its budget and manpower had expanded and its power, at least internally, had been mostly restored. In exchange for that beneficence, the SVR’s skills were frequently employed not on matters of national security but on matters of economic enrichment for the country’s rulers and oligarchs. Under this president, the line between the private sector and the government was a very blurry line indeed. However, Dmitry Pyotrovich had never been particularly good at personal enrichment.

While Dmitry was not destitute, he didn’t have the financial resources he would like to truly enjoy his retirement. He was due a generous state pension, but the generosity was measured by the typically parsimonious standards of the Russian government. He had managed to salt away about ten million rubles, but sadly that amounted to only about $150,000. This was simply not enough money to enjoy his golden years. He had never married, choosing to dedicate his life to his country. Now he wanted some reward, some recompense for that dedication and singlemindedness.

Luckily, Dmitry had a plan for fully funding his retirement. He suspected that most, if not all, of his sleeper agents were still in place, still monitoring their designated newspapers for secret, coded messages. They were a valuable resource, waiting to be deployed, and Dmitry had decided it was long past time for them to be put to productive uses.

For thirty years, not a single sleeper agent had been activated. That was about to change.

***

During his years of loyal service to Mother Russia, Shepishev had on occasion cooperated with the Soviet Union’s fraternal intelligence organizations. Mostly, this involved liaising with the secret police of the Soviet Union’s puppet republics surrounding their country, and that liaising mostly meant giving orders. However, a few times he had worked hand-in-hand with his Chinese counterparts, both on the national security and the commercial espionage side. His plan depended on one of his two most trusted contacts still having entrée to the highest level of government in China.

Dmitry was old, but he had not let the world pass him by. Even though for the past decade, he had been in charge of dozens of agents to do his bidding, he had made sure that he stayed up to date on technology. He knew how to use burner phones and anonymous email accounts accessed only through virtual private networks or anonymized secure browsers with messages sent only through an anonymous email service using a dummy account.

Dmitry had several burner phones, purchased by agents under him three years earlier in Finland. He had long ago taken the occasional opportunity to store things like that for future contingencies. Using a device purchased long ago made tracing the purchase orders of magnitude more difficult. He also had an untraceable laptop, seized from a foreign tourist who the SVR caught in a compromising situation several years earlier. The useful business intelligence had long since been removed and used to Russia’s advantage, while the laptop was reformatted by the SVR’s technical wizards with a few added security features. To use the laptop, Shepishev drove to an internet café, then used the TOR browser to access the internet. TOR would bounce his network traffic all over the internet making it impossible to trace back to him, although even if it was traced back it would only be to an internet café, not any real estate address that was linked to him. Finally, he used an email account he had set up just for this operation on ProtonMail, an anonymous emailer that was specially designed to be compatible with TOR. The combination made him invisible and untraceable.

With these precautions in place, Dmitry emailed the Chinese spy he thought most likely to be in a position to make a deal, Yu Liu. The last he had heard Yu was running a string of agents in the United States and Canada, collecting both military and government secrets. He provided only enough information to identify himself to Yu, based on shared experiences and tidbits only the two of them would recognize. Then he gave a brief and vague description of what he had for sale and asked if China would be interested in purchasing his sleeper network. If the deal were to move forward, he would provide the phone contact information, but not yet. Dmitry gave Yu forty-eight hours to respond.

Shepishev stayed off the internet for the entire forty-eight hours, flying to Saint Petersburg under the cover of visiting some former colleagues that morning and using an internet café there to access his email account this time. His relief would have been visible to anyone paying attention to him when he saw that he had a reply. No reply would have left him wondering if Yu had retired or, worse, informed Moscow of what he was up to. Opening the email, his emotions went from relief to elation, with his happiness increasing the farther down the email he read. Liu was not only interested in purchasing his network but wasn’t even haggling over the price. The Chinese Ministry for State Security was obviously flush with cash. Shepishev then smiled to himself with the thought that the Chinese were buying a network of sleeper agents in America using American dollars earned selling the Americans cheap imported goods, sometimes the result of corporate espionage, perhaps even operations he had helped take part in.

The important details were simple because true professionals knew simple was how you stayed secure. Liu provided a new, anonymous email account for all future correspondence. As soon as he received account information, Liu would wire $5 million to whatever account Shepishev instructed. Dmitry would then email Yu with the names and contact protocols for twenty-five of the thirty-five sleeper agents. Yu would then have three weeks to test if the contact procedures worked and the agents responded. If all went satisfactorily, Liu would transfer an additional $5 million to the same account. Once the rest of the money was received, Dmitry would email the information on the remaining ten sleepers. To ensure security, all the money would rapidly be transferred out of the first account into a different one that the Chinese would not know about and both old spies would eliminate the email accounts used for all their correspondence related to this deal. With all the precautions they were taking, there should be no trail left behind; even the American’s vaunted National Security Agency, the NSA, wouldn’t be able to track them down.

Dmitry decided that both some celebration and caution was in order. Instead of boarding his return flight to Moscow, he decided to head to Zurich. Swiss banks would be crucial to ensuring his retirement fund was fully secure and making the arrangements in person would actually leave less of a trail. Within 90 minutes of reading the email, Dmitry was on a plane headed to Zurich.

Upon arrival, he moved through the terminal with a hat and glasses, avoiding giving any security camera a clear view of his face almost instinctively. At this point in his life, it was as natural to him as breathing. He had booked a suite at the Dolder Grand using a burner phone and an alias that he had used during visits to Switzerland for decades, at the same time arranging for the hotel to send a car to pick him up at the airport. As soon as he cleared passport control, he carried his small, leather carry on bag to the limousine and settled in for the brief ride to the hotel. At the Dolder Grand, the assistant manager moved Herr Pyotr Lenilin through check in expeditiously and with typical Swiss efficiency, then rang for the bellboy to show him to his usual suite.

Dmitry spent about half an hour resting and freshening up, about five minutes finalizing his plans, and then left his room to head to a small, private bank that had always served him well and had no official or unofficial connections to the SVR or the Russian government. The Zurichsee Private Bank was named in honor of the lake that extended southeastward from the city and whose shores could be spied from many places in Zurich, not including the Zurichsee Private Bank. Upon presenting himself at the front door and being closely scrutinized by a security camera, he was admitted to the bank lobby. In the lobby, he asked to meet with Herr Baumman to open a new account. In keeping with the private and secretive nature of the bank, no identification was requested.

Herr Baumman met Dmitry at the door of his office, shaking his hand very formally, in keeping with the standard practice in Zurich. He already knew him as Pyotr Lenilin and, using the German he knew Mr. Lenilin spoke well, expressed how pleased he was to see him again.

Thank you, Herr Baumman, said Dmitry in his role as Pyotr Lenilin. It is a pleasure to renew our business relationship. Today, I require a new account, designated account holder Zurichsee 27 Incorporated, with the only signatory being myself. I will give you the password as soon as you are ready.

Herr Baumman was using an elegant fountain pen to take notes on a pad of paper in a luxurious leather folio. He nodded that he was ready for the password and Shepishev responded with a string of twelve numbers that would serve to identify him if he was not there in person. He then gave the rest of his instructions. The account will receive a deposit of five million U.S. dollars in the next few days. Please arrange to immediately move the money to another Zurich bank of your choosing, then withdraw the entire five million from that bank in cash, either euros or Swiss francs. Finally redeposit the cash here in your bank in my existing personal account. Naturally, you will subtract your bank’s fee for these services. In a few weeks, we will need to repeat the procedure for another $5 million deposit, preferably using a different bank.

I can take care of that for you, assured Herr Baumman. The fee shall only be one percent each time." Herr Baumman then spent a minute typing at his computer, entering all the information and instructions. Then, looking carefully at the computer screen, he took an unmarked piece of stationery off his desk and wrote several numbers on it with his fountain pen, representing the banks routing number for the transfer and an account reference to be included in the wire transfer so that the bank would know in which account to deposit the money. In keeping with the private nature of the bank, the account reference Dmitry would share with Yu Liu was not actually his account number, but rather a one-time code internal to the bank. To increase security even more, the computer in which Herr Baumman kept his records was not connected to the internet in any way. Without the link between the account reference and the account number that only existed on this air gapped computer, even the best hacker in the world could not tell where the money was really going. Briefly, Herr Baumman explained these procedures to his suddenly valuable client.

"Excellent, Herr Baumman. Your usual efficiency is why it is always a pleasure to do business with you. As soon as I return to my hotel, I will send the account information to my counterparty so the deposit could come very shortly. And with that and one more very formal handshake, Dmitry took his leave from the bank.

Back at the Donder Grand Hotel, Dmitry called a local real estate firm that specialized in helping visiting corporate executives for some of the large multinational corporations with offices in Zurich and arranged a one-month rental of a corporate executive apartment under the same corporate front of Zurichsee 27. He would be able to move into the fully furnished, two-bedroom unit with a view of the Zurichsee in four days. It would be a better place to wait out this operation, with fewer eyes than in the Donder Grand.

Next Dmitry went to a different internet café to send the first batch of names and his new account information to Yu Liu. There was nothing more to do except wait and plan how to spend his soon-to-be newfound wealth. Dmitry’s retirement plan was fully in motion.

2

As the Baltimore Raven’s offense drove toward what would be a game-winning touchdown, the crowd roared and the energy in the stadium was electric, even reaching the typically more sedate occupants of the luxury skyboxes from which the ultra-wealthy looked down on the game and the ordinary fans filling the regular seats in the stadium. Among the wealthiest of those wealthy skybox residents was Yuri Ledenov, a member of the Russian oligarch class.

Ledenov had made his fortune through guts, timing, and being in the right place at the right time. Ledenov had been a manager in the finance and accounting department of a Soviet copper mining company. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he was an early Russian commodity trading, putting his skills and experience to use well enough to accumulate a personal fortune of $50 million. He used that as the equity to swing a heavily-debt financed deal to acquire his old state-owned copper mining company when the government was looking to privatize state assets to fund other, more immediate needs. In the decades since, that $50 million fortune had grown to a true oligarch’s fortune, estimated by Forbes at $5.6 billion in the most recent edition of their annual billionaire list.

As part of what he felt was a responsibility to acquire all the expected accoutrements of a Russian oligarch, Yuri had tried to buy an English soccer team, but had not yet been successful in acquiring that ultimate status symbol. In the meantime, he had managed to buy a small stake in an NFL football team, specifically, five percent of the Cleveland Browns, the visiting team currently trying to defend a four-point lead over the home team Baltimore Ravens and prevent them from scoring a winning touchdown.

As befit his oligarch status, Ledenov watched the game from the visiting owner’s box along with a twenty-something supermodel girlfriend and a four-man contingent of bodyguards. His attention for the game was more perfunctory than focused. He didn’t really care if his team won or lost; it wasn’t even really an investment. It was just another bauble to possess, like his yacht, his New York City penthouse, his London mansion, or his dacha west of Moscow. Still, he tried to put in an appearance at three or four games a year and he was actually starting to like his team thanks to the Brown’s young stars, Baker Mayfield, and Nick Chubb.

Just when it looked certain that the Ravens were going to score and win the game, Yuri’s Browns got a key interception and then ate up most of the remaining game time with three plays of Mayfield handing off to Chubb, with the third carry earning a first down. With that, the Browns ran out the clock with two simple kneel downs. Ledenov, his supermodel-of-the-month, and his security team were soon in his armored Cadillac Escalade heading down the Parkway to Washington, D.C.

As was true of all Russian oligarchs allowed to live both in and outside Russia, Yuri Ledenov maintained a close relationship with the president of Russia. Mostly, that close relationship meant that Ledenov had to give the president ten percent of his company’s profits every year. Sometimes, it meant he was an official envoy of his government, with diplomatic status; this trip was one of those times. He had been tasked to meet with a contact in the aerospace industry in hopes of convincing him that a large contract with Aeroflot was possible if the right grease was applied in the form of $50 million in one of the president’s Swiss bank account. He was on his way to the Russian Embassy in Washington to prepare for that meeting.

After arriving at the embassy, Ledenov and his girlfriend were shown to the room designated for them during their stay, equivalent to an opulent hotel suite. His bodyguards, unneeded inside the Embassy, retired to some rooms for embassy guards so they could get some sleep. Ledenov showered, shaved, changed into a fresh custom-made suit from a Saville Row tailor in London, gave his girlfriend a perfunctory kiss, and left for his meeting. She was used to his business taking precedence, and to be fair, it was unclear to both of them if she loved him or simply the billionaire lifestyle being with him afforded her.

Per his instructions from the president, Yuri borrowed an unofficial embassy car (meaning no diplomatic plates) and drove himself to the meeting at a nondescript townhouse about a mile and a half southeast of the Capitol. He arrived ten minutes before his eight o’clock meeting, entered the townhouse using a key given to him at the embassy, and waited for the aerospace executive to arrive. When he did, the meeting only took five minutes, with Yuri delivering the message efficiently and effectively. The aerospace executive understood how business in Russia worked; he didn’t need convincing, only the account number to play by the rules of this particular game. Ledenov waited an additional three minutes after the executive left and then exited the townhouse himself.

3

Before Yuri Ledenov reached the bottom of the townhouse steps, he was stopped short by the simple act of a stranger standing on the sidewalk pointing a gun right at him. The stranger politely asked Yuri to re-enter the townhouse, which he did. Once inside the townhouse, the stranger closed and locked the door behind himself, motioned with his gun for Ledenov to sit down in one of the simple wood chairs at the dining room table just off the townhouse’s foyer. The stranger sat down across the table, place his gun on the table in front of himself, and introduced himself.

"Good evening, Mr. Ledenov. I apologize for meeting you in such an impolite manner, but just like you, I am simply following orders tonight. My name is Richard LaPlace. I am an American citizen, raised by two loving parents in the small town of Manhattan, Kansas, but I am also a Russian citizen, born in Russia, and planted in the United States by the KGB as a sleeper agent. For a quarter century I have gone about my life as an ordinary American, with my only activity as a foreign agent being to check for a special coded message once a week in the Kansas City Star newspaper.

"For that entire quarter century, it has been a fruitless exercise. No messages, just boredom and trying to maintain my spirits and continue to train in skills I hoped one day would be useful: shooting, bomb making, untraceable communication methods, and the like. Then, when I had given up all hope, when I checked for messages more out of habit or inertia than duty and responsibility, there it was one day two weeks ago—the message I had long waited for. The message instructed me to make contact so I could receive instructions on the task I was to carry out for Mother Russia. I remembered the protocol and quickly made contact.

The instructions I received once direct contact was established were straightforward enough: to meet you here tonight and have you sign a document for our President. So, I traveled to Washington, D.C. a week ago and began surveillance on this townhouse while learning the neighborhood and blending in. I collected the document from a drop box here in Washington two days ago. And here I am, finally completing a mission I have waited my whole life for and yet feeling like a clerk, not a spy. But orders are orders and I suppose there is some greater purpose to this assignment even if it is not obvious to me. With this, his story was complete, and he presented Ledenov with the document which he removed from an inner pocket of his overcoat.

Ledenov quickly scanned the simple three-page contract. Why would I sign this? he asked. This hands over my entire mining company, sixty percent of my fortune, to the president. I already pay him a ten percent royalty on everything the company earns and now he wants the whole thing. Again, why should I sign?

Simple, because the President of Russia requests it. And, of course, there is this 9mm Glock on the table. I have been instructed that if you sign, I am to return the document to the same drop box. The President will keep the document secret; for the rest of the world you will still own and control your company. You are rich enough that your lifestyle will be unaffected. The President has only requested the document to use as additional leverage to keep you in line, to ensure your obedience. So, I am sure you understand that you will sign because you have little choice in the matter and because signing costs you nothing while refusing to sign will cost you everything.

Ledenov was not naïve. He knew exactly the road he had traveled to achieve his oligarch status and had long understood the devil’s bargain he had struck with the insatiably greedy president in order to keep that status. LaPlace’s explanation was all too easy to understand; he would sign because he had no choice. So, he took out his custom engraved, solid-platinum fountain pen and quickly scrawled his name on the signature line of the document’s final page. With his task completed, he placed the pen back in his shirt pocket, rose from the table and turned to go.

One step before he reached the door, LaPlace shot Ledenov in the back once, knocking him forward into the door. He bounced off the door and ended up on the floor. The sleeper then calmly stood up, walked to the fallen oligarch, and shot him once more in the head to finish the job. He then returned to the table, collected the document, carefully placed it in his coat pocket, and put on a pair of gloves that were in a different pocket of his coat. With the gloves on, he removed a microfiber cloth from yet another pocket, quickly and efficiently wiped down every surface he might have touched in the townhouse, and quietly left the townhouse through the front door. He was quite pleased with himself for staying calm, staying task-oriented, and not throwing up when faced with his first dead body, especially since he was personally responsible for the dead body.

Having already established that there were no police or private surveillance cameras within two blocks of the townhouse (likely why the Russians choose the site as a clandestine meeting place), he walked to the nearest subway station by a route so that when the cameras near the station picked him up he would not appear to have come from the direction of the crime scene. LaPlace then disappeared by the simple trick of losing the coat and adding a hat when he was in a gap in camera coverage. Within two hours he was on a plane back to Kansas, having sealed the contract into a FedEx envelope he had brought with him and dropped the document into a company drop box at the airport, addressed as instructed by his handler. Sitting on the plane, he replayed the entire episode inside his head over and over. He was convinced he had left no trail or clue for anyone to follow. He smiled when he got to the part where he relaxed Ledenov with the idea that he was a simple clerk. Actually, he felt quite proud of the blow he thought himself to have struck on behalf of Mother Russia and against the greedy oligarchs robbing the people.

4

The townhouse containing the body of a dead Russian oligarch was owned by a shell corporation controlled by a different oligarch who allowed the Russian president to use it whenever he needed it. When such meetings took place, a security team always checked for bugs and surveillance devices before the meeting and a cleaning team was sent in afterward to clean up. After all, sometimes the meetings left quite a mess.

In this case, the cleaning crew of three