“You really think so?” said the PM. “The Royal Navy all over again, bombing and blasting the islands all over again. British troops, fighting and dying in the frozen hills of that awful, weird little place?”
“Yes, Comrade. I think they might,” said the President. “But this time they would most certainly lose. And there would be absolutely nothing they could do about it. Everyone involved in our military knows it. Great Britain’s Labour governments have weakened their war-fighting capability to a truly stupendous degree.
“They do not have the troops, they have savagely cut out some of their best regiments, merging them, closing them. They have cut back their Navy, selling many ships and scrapping others. They’ve reduced their air combat force to virtually nothing. The Brits would be a pushover.
“And, since they don’t have Margaret Thatcher anymore, the Argentines would crush them. Especially with a little help from us. If I was their Defense Minister I would not even think about trying to recapture the Falkland Islands, should Argentina decide to claim them.”
The Russian press release was issued by the Russian Air Force in Moscow at midnight, too late for the television news channels, and very late for the morning newspapers, which are inclined to print earlier on Friday nights because of various weekend supplements and magazines.
The release, scarcely changed from the precise wording written by hand by the Russian President that morning, reached the international wire agencies shortly before one a.m. on Saturday.
It was still Friday afternoon in Washington, around five p.m., and there was plenty of time to develop the story. However, East Coast newsrooms had much more on their minds than an obscure military air crash in northern Siberia, where a few oil execs may have perished.
And it was greeted, generally, with a thunderclap of disinterest. The Washington Post and the New York Times carried a single column, a two-inch-long mention of the accident in their foreign news roundup, well inside the paper. No one thought it worth a follow-up. The CNN twenty-four-hour news channel never mentioned it; neither did the main newspapers in Philadelphia or Boston.
On the other hand, over on the eighth floor of the National Security Agency, Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe took one glance at the release from Moscow and damn near rammed the ceiling with the top of his head as he blew directly upward out of his office chair.
“H-o-o-o-o-l-e-e shit!” he breathed. And the words on the sheet of copy paper jumped straight out at him… Siberia…oil…death…air crash…no trace…no details…Whoa!
Having almost walked into the wall with excitement, he reeled around and hit the buttons to the former assassin in the CIA, Lenny Suchov.
“I know, I know, Jimmy, I just got it. How about that? Something’s going on right here. I am certain of that.”
“Hey, that’s a pretty sharp deduction—for a bloody spook,” said Jimmy, once more sounding like Crocodile Dundee.
“Oh, you mean I was clever enough to work out there may be a connection between the death in the White House and those deaths in the Siberian tundra?”
“I should bloody say so, old mate. The Ruskies obviously wiped out a top Siberian oil exec in the State Dining Room right here in Washington. And now they might have done a whole bloody planeload of ’em somewhere northeast of the Urals.”
“My thoughts completely,” said Lenny. “Crudely but effectively stated. However, it’s still very much a Russian affair—nothing to do with us. But I think it’s our duty—mine at least—to take a look at something as sinister as this. We ought to know what’s happening.”
“I agree, Lenny. But I’m not sure where to start. I suppose I could get U.S. Air Force Intelligence to find out precisely which aircraft from which base somehow took off and never returned. I could have someone get inside the rescue operation and find out how many Russian aircraft are on the case…”
“Jimmy, I think that might prove a waste of time.”
“What does that mean?”
“Because, if there is something sinister, there will be no aircraft and no air crash.”
“Gimme that one more time?”
“Jimmy, let us assume our general deductions are on the right lines. Someone near or at the top of the Russian food chain wanted those Siberian execs eliminated. Firstly, they would have found a far more efficient, quiet way of achieving that objective.
“Secondly, they would not have bothered to sabotage a damned expensive military aircraft, and effectively murder two or three Russian Air Force officers, in a totally unnecessary way. It’s not the way they operate. It’s completely out of character.
“No, young Jimmy. This aircraft crap is a cover-up. And quite a noisy one. They’ll be aware that within a few days there’ll be people all over the place trying to solve what the stupid newspapers will call the mystery of the missing Russian jet …and they’ll have to offer a measure of cooperation.
“But, Jimmy, they won’t care who wants to investigate. Because no one will ever find anything. There’s nothing to find. I’m sorry to disillusion you…but the Air Force jet is a decoy. Doesn’t exist. But neither, I am afraid, not now, do all those oil chiefs.”
“Jesus. This is like listening to Sherlock Holmes. You’re more bloody devious than the Russians…”
“That, Lt. Commander Ramshawe, is what I believe your government pays me to be.”
Jimmy chuckled. “Well…former genius of the Black Sea wrestlers…what the hell do we do now?”
“You sit tight. I’m going to get some field agents on the case, simply to find out who died in Siberia. I’m looking for names. The whole list of who’s suddenly gone missing. Then we can sit down and try to join up the pieces. Jimmy, this may have much more to do with your area of operations than you know. But for the moment, sit tight.”
“Sit tight? I’m not sitting bloody tight. I’m phoning the Big Man, right after I contact Admiral Morris.”
He said good-bye to the spymaster from Langley and punched in an e-mail message for Admiral Morris, his boss, to contact him from the West Coast, where he was attending a conference with the FBI in San Diego. He informed the Admiral that something had come up re the White House murder, and he was proposing to have a chat with Arnold Morgan.
Jimmy then called Admiral Morgan and quickly realized he had done so at a bad time.
“Christ, Ramshawe. It’s nearly four bells, I never take phone calls on the last dog-watch. I’m trying to get ready for the evening.”
“Sorry, sir. But something’s come up you’ll want to know about…”
“How the hell do you know what I want to know about…?”
“Well, sir, I think…”
“Think, think, think. The whole damned world’s thinking, mostly crap. I’m not interested in what you think. Call me with facts, fine. Not goddamned thoughts, hear me?”
“These are bloody facts, Admiral, otherwise I wouldn’t have called…”
“That’s entirely different,” the Admiral harrumphed. “But I’m still busy. Can these facts wait, or is the entire goddamned planet on the brink of war?”
“Not exactly, sir. I guess they can wait.”
“How long can they wait?”
“Not long, sir. This is important.”
“All right, all right. Now listen. In precisely two hours I have to meet Mrs. Kathy Morgan in Le Bec Fin, one wildly expensive restaurant in the heart of Georgetown on one of the most expensive street
s in the free world…I suppose you wanna come?”
“Jeez, Admiral. That would be great.” But he added after a sudden flashback on the Admiral’s excellent taste in French wine, “So long as I don’t have to pay.”
And then, realizing this might be the precise moment to push his luck to the absolute brink, he asked, “Can Jane come?” He knew of course that Kathy adored his fiancée, the Australian Ambassador’s daughter Jane Peacock, but was nonetheless aware that Arnold’s answer might not be precisely orthodox. Arnold’s answers usually weren’t.
“Can Jane come?” he rasped. “Oh, sure, why not check whether there’s any other members of her family at a loose end tonight…few cousins, aunts, maybe a coupla neighbors?
“How about your mom and dad, could they make it down from New York in time? Got any visiting uncles from the goddamned outback, might fancy a bowl of kangaroo soup at a high-class establishment at about twenty-five bucks a spoonful—bring the whole goddamned lot if you like. I’ll remortgage the house.”
Jimmy by this time was falling about laughing. “Actually, I meant just Jane, sir,” he eventually said.
“’Course she can come,” grunted the Admiral. “Eight bells, Le Bec Fin. And don’t be late. My best to your dad.” Bang. Down phone.
Jimmy called Jane at the embassy and told her he’d pick her up at 7:45. Then he spoke to Admiral Morris, who was very thoughtful about the Russian press release and what Lenny Suchov had said. “Good plan to run it past Arnie…I’m sorry I can’t join you.”
Jimmy resisted the temptation to inform his boss that the merest suggestion of another guest at the table might have sent Arnold into a paroxysm of mock indignation. Instead he just said, “I’ll give him your best, sir. And it sure will be interesting to hear what he thinks about the old Ruskies.”
“Jimmy,” concluded Admiral Morris, “we know what he thinks about the Ruskies. But this press release from their Air Force will get his attention.”
“It better,” replied his assistant. “Otherwise I might find myself with the biggest dinner check I ever saw.”
EIGHT BELLS
LE BEC FIN
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, DC
It was raining steadily when Jimmy Ramshawe’s black Jaguar came whipping through the puddles and pulled up right outside the entrance to the restaurant. A doorman immediately stepped out with an umbrella and motioned for Jane to jump out.
Then, somewhat surprisingly, he motioned for Jimmy also to disembark. “Admiral’s orders, sir, we’re to park the car for you…you are Lt. Commander Ramshawe, aren’t you?”
“That’s me, old mate.”
“Yes, I thought I was correct.”
“What did the Admiral actually say?”
“He said when some kind of a black English racing car comes speeding up the goddamned road, let the beautiful blonde in the passenger seat out first, then bring the Australian driver in, and park the car.”
“Sounds just like him.”
“Yessir. Remie will take care of you right inside the door.”
The maitre d’ steered them to the back of the restaurant where Admiral Morgan and Kathy were quietly sipping glasses of superb 2001 Meursault, which had set the Admiral back almost $100.00. The bottle of white burgundy was in an ice bucket set in a raised stand on the floor at the end of the table.
“Hi, kids,” said Arnold, standing to greet first Jane, then Jimmy, while Kathy climbed to her feet and hugged Jane.
The waiter had already placed two extra wineglasses on the table, and the Admiral dipped into the bucket and pulled out the bottle, splashing it out generously. Never occurred to him either of his guests could possibly want anything else. And he was dead right about that.
“That, Admiral, is outstanding,” said Jimmy.
“And your new information better be of the same quality.” Arnold grinned. “Delicate, yet with a powerful core, with deep promise of greater things to come…”
“Would you ever listen to his rubbish?” said Kathy, her inbred Irish intonations bubbling to the fore. “He’s got more blarney than my grandma, and she lived there, a mile from the castle!”
“Now, Kathryn,” said the Admiral, “I want you and Jane to have a nice little chat while I listen to the considered intelligence of young James. That’s why he’s here.”
The Lt. Commander said nothing. He just produced the sheet of paper with the press release from Moscow and handed it to Arnold Morgan.
The Admiral read carefully, his eyebrows slowly raising. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he breathed. “Those bastards have knocked down a planeload of Siberian oil chiefs—two weeks after murdering another in the White House.”
“Not quite,” said Jimmy. “No plane.”
“Huh?” said the Admiral, looking, for once, baffled.
And Jimmy recounted the thoughts of the retired assassin, Lenny Suchov.
Without hesitation, Arnold Morgan said, “He’s absolutely correct. They’d never destroy a perfectly sound military aircraft when they could achieve the same ends with a handful of carbine bullets. Plus, the nonexistent air crash makes a perfect cover story—which no one will ever crack. Because it never happened.”
“Right up there in the tundra,” said Jimmy. “Inside the Arctic Circle, northern Siberia, where the ground is always frozen, and where a blizzard could cover all traces of any air crash in a couple of hours. It would never be seen again.”
“Do we expect the CIA to come up with an accurate list of the big-deal oil execs who have apparently perished?”
“That’s in motion. Lenny Suchov’s on the case. He thinks there’s one or two very important Siberian politicians involved. And he’s absolutely sure the Russian government had ’em all shot.”
“The question is, why?” said Arnold. “What has the Siberian oil industry done to deserve all this?”
“Who knows? But Lenny thinks it’s a problem that occasionally comes to the surface. A kind of undercurrent in Siberia that the local population does not get a fair share of the wealth that lies under their land. That’s mostly oil and gas. But also gold, and the largest diamond fields on Earth.”
“He thinks these guys may have been planning to break free of Moscow, at last?” asked Arnold. “He thinks the Russians just put down a goddamned revolution?”
“He thinks something was brewing up there. And he feels the full list of who was apparently killed in the air crash will provide some important clues.”
Arnold was pensive. He took another luxurious pull at his Meursault de luxe, as he called it, and said, quietly, at least quietly for him, “Listen, you guys…that’s all three of you. I’m going to tell you something about the Russians. You all remember the Cold War, which you doubtless assumed was all about the rampant spread of communism and missiles.
“Well, ultimately it wasn’t. The great fear in Russia, always has been, was the starvation of its people. Could the gigantic collective farms ever produce enough grain and vegetables to feed the population?
“Mostly the answer to that was no. Year after year there were dreadful failures of the crop, and year after year they just somehow muddled along, suffering the most awful privations, sometimes buying from the West.
“But the great fear of the free world, during the 1960s through the 1980s, was that a First Secretary of the Communist Party might suddenly believe a vast number of his people might starve to death.
“ That was the great fear of the West. That a Russian leader may be faced with telling h
is people there was nothing to eat. At that point, to avoid the total collapse of Soviet Communism, that leader must find food.
“And, kids, there’s only one way for any national leader to get food. He either needs to buy it, or steal it from someone else.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen,” concluded Arnold, with a flourish, “was the fear: that Russia would marshal its massive Red Army, and march into western Europe in search of food.
“We thought they might rampage through Poland and a defenseless Germany, and then the Low Countries, ransacking farmlands and shipping grain home to the Soviet Union. The only way to have stopped them was probably a nuclear showstopper on Moscow—and we all know where that might have led.”
“Sir, are you suggesting what I think you are?” said Jimmy.
“I’m suggesting that yesterday’s Russian grain crisis is today’s Russian oil crisis. If somehow they lost the Siberian product, I do not know what would happen. But I know this. The Kremlin has been nurturing for several years a user-friendly, modern face.
“And for them to take action this savage, this darned drastic…well, they sure as hell know something about Siberia that we don’t. And whatever that may be, it sure scares the bejesus out of them.”
“Wow,” said Jimmy, unhelpfully. “You think they might rampage through someone else’s oil fields with that Army of theirs?”
“No, I don’t. But I think these events must lead us to think that Russia is very worried about her oil industry in Siberia. And I think that may lead the Kremlin to start searching far afield for new supplies, something that Russia has not needed to do in the past.
“Siberia, and to an extent Kazakhstan, have always provided enough. But if Siberia demanded independence, I think we’d find Russia in a global expansionist mood.”
“Christ, I’d sure hate to wake up and find out they’d conquered Saudi Arabia or somewhere,” added Jimmy.
“I don’t think we’ll find that, kiddo. But we got to watch them, and watch their movements internationally. We got enough trouble with China trying to buy up the entire world’s oil supply, without the goddamned Ruskies joining in.”
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