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monstrous plan. None of this makes complete sense. I admit, however, that there has to be a major player whose identity is illusive for now.”
    Agent Warden countered, “With all due respect, Special Agent Sondregger, over here on F Street, we think that the Russians are aware of something of which we have only had glimpses. They have hacked our military, federal government, and financial industry computer systems for years. That is a given and is the equivalent of the planting of listening device in the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow—which came to be known as the ‘bug house’ in later years—by the Soviets insisting that only good Russians be hired to design and construct the embassy in 1988. If they know—that is, if they have the deepest of insider information—from the U.S. government that a near financial collapse is in the offing—they may be willing to embark on an extreme tactic of adventurism. In fact, they may be willing to partner up with one of the most powerful and effective of the russkaya mafiya outfits.”
    “Like the Solntsevskaya Bratva,” SAC Sondregger said, beginning to accept the hypothesis that Agent Warden was weaving. “Our cyber watch people have identified Leonid Aleksandrovich Zaslavsky as the vory v zakone [syndicate boss and chief of the thieves-in-law] of Russia’s largest criminal group. They have somewhere north of 5,000 members, and they have a global reach. Interpol described the Solntsevo district mafiya as one of the best structured criminal organizations in Europe and that it operates as a quasi-military operation. The FBI indicated that Russian-speaking criminal syndicates control a third of the estimated $12 billion global cybercrime market. They have the best hackers in the world on their payroll. They would seem to be fully capable of pulling this off. All they would need to proceed is the tacit approval of President Afonasii Glebovich Tikhondnko.”
    “It boggles the mind,” Andrew Grantland said, speaking for all of them. “We need to get this to the DFBI, the DOJ [Department of Justice], and the president.”

Chapter Five
    White House Conference Center [an annex building of the White House], 726 Jackson Place in Washington, D.C., November 13, 2019, 0800 hrs
PDB [President’s Daily Briefing]
-Present: POTUS; VPOTUS; Attorney General; Speaker of the House; Senate Majority Leader; Secretaries of State and Treasury; DFBI; DCIA; Chairman CEA [Council of Economic Advisors]; Chairman, Federal Reserve Board; Chairperson, Council of Economic Advisers for the Congressional Joint Economic Committee; Director Homeland Security Computer Emergency Response Team—Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team [ICS-CERT]; Director National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force; Director National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance; Director Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group; Director Coordinated Cyber Action Teams; Director CIA CTC [Counter Terror Center] Cyber-Terror Division; DUSCYBERCOM; DSEC Enforcement Division. Re: Response to attack on U.S. financial system
    P resident Willets had already heard most of what the assembled experts in counter cyber-terrorism were going to say because DFBI Grant Wallace had kept him abreast of developments throughout the day yesterday. The president nodded to Director Wallace to start the emergency meeting.
    “Thank you, Mr. President. You are all, no doubt, aware that our financial systems are under attack. The exchanges are slated to open in two hours, and one example of the status of the systems should suffice: The Dow Industrial was at an all-time high three days ago—19,231. The Dow will open at 4,182 this morning. Our country as lost nearly $800 billion to this point in time, and the market remains in free fall.”
    There was a small shared gasp in the room.
    “Obviously, this cannot go on. There is no doubt that it is a deliberate and well-coordinated assault on the United States and could not have come