by Joe Buff
Chapter 31
In his guest quarters at a hotel-like building on the base, Jeffrey made a quick meal of bottled water and field rations he’d brought in his travel bag, then climbed into bed. The window shade failed to keep out that peculiar Arctic twilight. His mattress was much too soft, and lumpy. He tossed and turned.
He was startled at 11 A.M. by pounding on the door. After Krushkin’s final comment, he expected FSB agents had come to arrest him, or Spetsnaz were ready to lead him to a firing squad.
It was Elmar Meredov. The man was visibly excited, but in a good way. “Get dressed. Skip a shower. They’ve found things!”
Jeffrey hurriedly put on his uniform, and followed Meredov outside. Irina Malenkova and several Army Spetsnaz bodyguards met them, and they drove in a van to the headquarters building. Jeffrey and Meredov rushed up into the conference room. The translator was already there. Governor Krushkin made a grand entrance like minor royalty, as perfectly groomed as ever, and even wearing a different suit and tie; he’d spent the intervening time on his luxurious private jet, staying in touch with Khabarovsk and Akademgorodok and the Kremlin, and catnapping.
Krushkin glanced at the whiteboard with Meredov’s previous jottings. “The list of culprits has narrowed drastically.”
“What’s been happening?” Jeffrey asked, trying to hide the sickening feeling of failure in his stomach.
“I didn’t mention this earlier,” Meredov said, “but I ordered an auxiliary cruiser-icebreaker to retrace the route the intruding submarine took back north while moored to the floe. My deputy, flown out from Pevek, is aboard her, to make sure the job was done right, and to report. They searched the bottom using their active towed array as a side-scan sonar. They found an abandoned German minisub, flooded as if scuttled there, with its top hatch left open.”
“You salvaged it?”
“Not yet. We sent down divers. It’s in shallow water.”
“And?…”
“Completely empty. Including the fuel tanks. We conclude it was abandoned after helping shuttle the big commando team.”
“So the Germans did it after all?”
“All the forensic matches point to that,” Krushkin said. “Bloodwork, metallurgy, never mind the details, but the Khabarovsk lab was definite and your attaché was convinced.”
“Fast work,” Jeffrey said.
“Your president put a lot of pressure on ours. He told him repeatedly about Challenger’s nuclear cruise missile strike scheduled for midnight. Our president passed the pressure down, and it produced results.”
“Is Akademgorodok satisfied that our missile shield is real?”
“The way they put it was that they’d like a year to study the issue properly. But based on design specs provided by Washington, and given the obvious difficulties involved in subjecting your shield to an actual test, our experts deemed it ‘not impossible in concept.’ ”
“What happens now?”
“Things are in flux. Your president told ours to sever all ties with Germany, both diplomatic and economic, today, long before midnight, as a form of reparations for what almost occurred with the missiles from Srednekolymsk. Or else. It certainly seemed that we had many good reasons to do so, only one of them being the threatened devastation from Challenger.”
“And?”
“The German ambassador managed to make his way to the Kremlin early this morning. As you can imagine, there was quite a scene. He has now been declared persona non grata. He and his entire staff are being deported, on a sealed train routed through Belarus into occupied Poland.”
“I’m glad the mystery of who attacked the silos was resolved, Governor.”
“Not half as glad as we are. Your commander in chief was satisfied, and sent the order to Challenger to cancel her cruise missile attack. You should be back aboard her in plenty of time to doubly verify unambiguous receipt.”
“That’s a relief,” Jeffrey said, faking it, knowing an actual attack was never planned — unless Moscow heated things up by launching more ICBMs.
“A tremendous relief for all of us. We were damaged enough by the high-altitude nuclear explosions. The last thing we needed is the thought of dealing with worse. So the pressure is off us and on Germany. But there are still big complications.”
“Such as?”
“Proper retaliation against Berlin.”
“But you said you severed relations.”
“Yes, as a form of reparation to America, by us. There remains the vexed matter of reparation, or retaliation, for us. Billions of roubles of damage from the electromagnetic pulses, and hundreds of lives lost in the missile complex and in the area affected by the EMPs. Controversy on this issue rages.”
“So what do you intend?”
“The president wants to speak to you.” Krushkin turned on the speakerphone, pressed some buttons, and the big computer screen on the wall lit up. Now it was a videophone, and Jeffrey was stunned. He thought the governor meant the President of the United States, but he was talking to the President of Russia.
“Captain Fuller, thank you for your assistance in this hard situation we faced together.” The president was of average height, barrel-chested and sixtyish, with rough, peasantlike mannerisms; he’d always reminded Jeffrey of Nikita Khrushchev with hair.
Faced together? Before, he refused to even speak to me. Wait. Had he been listening in all along? “It was an honor to be of service, Mr. President.” When in Russia…
“I want everyone else to leave the conference room and close the door behind them. Including the translator.”
Soon Jeffrey was alone on the videophone with the President of Russia, who spoke good English. Out of respect, he remained standing. The president sat in a plush leather swivel chair, behind a huge desk that didn’t have a single thing on it. The wall behind him was paneled in dark wood. His body language was tight, stiff, and his mouth and his eyes weren’t smiling. Jeffrey’s mood of inner celebration vanished; unease returned.
“Your commander in chief thinks very highly of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“He offered me a substantial aid package, of which one detail might interest you.”
“Sir?”
“We agreed to sell the Eight-six-eight-U and all additional ones in the class that we can build to the United States.”
“I’m delighted to hear that, sir. They’re very fine ships.” And best kept out of German or Chinese hands.
“I face a very grave policy decision, Captain, and I seek your advice. You have experience at fighting tactical nuclear battles, and winning them. Russia does not. We only have paper studies and training simulations. This gives you considerable prestige and credibility, to me and even to my hardliners.”
“Er, I understand, sir.”
“Unfortunately, the crisis at hand is far from over. My more hawkish advisors urge me to respond promptly and viciously to Germany’s blunt refusal to pay immediate cash compensation for the damage and deaths they inflicted in their conspiracy to provoke us both into going to war. Emotionally, I’m inclined to agree with the hawks. I crave harsh revenge myself.”
“The German economy is stretched thin, sir,” Jeffrey said.
“We know. Had we not accepted their perverse bonds, in the belief that they would pay off, they might never have been able to launch their coup in Berlin and their war with the Allies.”
“We see the consequences of that decision today, Mr. President. Very serious consequences.”
“I offered your commander in chief a formal apology. He accepted it graciously.”
“What were you referring to about your advisors, sir, and wanting my advice?”
The president glanced at his watch. “I’m due back in a cabinet meeting soon…. They want me to retaliate in kind against Germany. That would mean inflicting a high-altitude nuclear explosion’s EMP.”
“Only in theory would that be proper retaliation in kind, sir, and it might not be your optimal response.�
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“I know. For one thing, it’s precluded by your missile shield. A low-altitude burst would produce such a pulse, but only locally, and mostly as a by-product of direct damage on the ground from heat and blast, and radiation and fallout.”
“Precisely, sir.”
“I asked your president if he would launch an ICBM and produce the EMP over Berlin for me, but he politely declined.”
“Er, I’m not surprised.” Is he being tongue in cheek?
“I want your honest counsel, man to man. You came to Siberia and helped us by your mix of threats and cajoling, kept us from making some potentially catastrophic errors of judgment and misinterpretation of facts. For this I am grateful to you.”
“I was only doing my job, sir.”
“I need your opinion, one I think that right now you’re uniquely suited to provide. You know the horrors of nuclear war firsthand. You know what it means to fire atomic weapons in anger, and to have them fired at you. You’ve seen their effect on people, on those who die and the scars left on those who survive.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think is the appropriate level of response to retaliate against Germany’s attack, especially given their first use of hijacked thermonuclear weapons? A heinous crime.”
Jeffrey hesitated. “That’s a very difficult question, sir. I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer it, or whether given my position vis-à-vis yours, it’s even legal for me to discuss it.”
Someone interrupted from off camera. The president irritably snapped at the functionary to go away, then glanced at his watch again. He turned back toward the camera, meeting Jeffrey’s eyes. “The cabinet grows impatient…. Your president said to give me your recommendations.”
For the first time Jeffrey noticed the conference room’s camera, in a pinhole in the center of the screen.
He pondered. “It’s best to take the widest possible view, sir, both geopolitically and in the context of future history.”
“Yes?”
“What would other countries make of whatever plan you follow? How would that affect your world position, soon and later, in key ways such as diplomatic prestige, economic strength, national security, and current sympathy to you as the victim of Axis terrorism?… What would your own people think of you, today and in the years to come? That question has to be raised especially in the context of oblasts that are nominally autonomous republics on your periphery. Some may be motivated to break away if you take actions that they find too morally repugnant.”
Jeffrey knew that secession, for real, by these border republics was a constant Kremlin headache — or nightmare.
“Wise insights, Captain. The problem is that factions among my supposed advisors, overambitious generals and minority-party opposition leaders as well, in the inevitable way of Moscow, are attempting to seize this issue to justify an opportunistic coup. To oust me as soft unless I retaliate fast and violently.”
That sounds like they aren’t being backed by the Germans, who have to be hopping mad since they know America framed them.
But Germany would have clandestine tentacles reaching for the helm in Moscow. They were the aggrieved party now, and would also be craving revenge in a most ruthless way. Keeping Russia from glassing Germany wasn’t enough, as vital as that had become. Jeffrey had to help the now-friendly Russian president stay in power in this maelstrom, or Russia could backslide to the Axis.
“You must be bold and decisive, sir. Join the Allies?”
“Your president asked me that already. It would amount to declaring war on Germany and the Boers. We aren’t ready to fight such a war. Soon, maybe, with proper aid and planning, but not today or next month. You referenced this yourself, quite eloquently, during your conversation with Rear Admiral Meredov.”
“You’ve listened to the tape from Vladivostok?”
“Very carefully.”
“A nuclear first strike against Germany would have dire consequences, sir, ones all Russians would come to regret.”
“Tell me what they are. Be my devil’s advocate. I need strong arguments I can use against the overly hawkish faction when I go back into the cabinet room, to prove that moderation isn’t weakness. I stress, your personal word carries weight.”
“You’d breach the threshold or firewall which has confined tactical nuclear combat to sea for most of the war. That’s bad.”
“Very bad indeed, but perhaps inevitable…. What else?”
This was the hardest oral exam he’d ever had to take, and Jeffrey dared not get a failing grade. He began to sweat, but knew he couldn’t remove his uniform jacket in front of the Russian president. “Germany did not make a nuclear strike on you. They commandeered your missiles and attempted to frame you with a first strike against the U.S. The damage around Moscow was caused by our missile shield. America bears responsibility, in a sense, and our president has offered you aid as amends.”
“But if the shield had not existed, or had failed, you would have suffered a strike from Russian strategic rockets, and would have retaliated in kind, and my country would have suffered far more serious damage than we did.”
“That’s probably true, sir. But it didn’t actually happen.”
“Too vague and hypothetical. Give me something better.”
“Germany would retaliate, as I cautioned Admiral Meredov, and might substantially escalate, using cruise missiles that could penetrate your best antiaircraft defenses and destroy many cities and industries. Tens of millions of Russians would die.”
“Thirty million died in our last war with Germany. Not counting Stalin’s massacres.”
“Isn’t once enough? Do you want that level of death and destruction all over again, except happening in a day rather than over several years? Would you ever be able to recover, and rebuild, from such instant widespread devastation?”
“I see your point, but that still won’t be convincing to the powerful extremists I have to contain.”
Jeffrey tried to picture them, scheming, plotting in the cabinet room. He’d never felt such time pressure in his life. “Can’t you launch a purge and just get rid of them?”
“When I’m ready. Things are too unstable now.”
“Germany didn’t try to frame you, or the Kremlin per se, sir. From the context as I understand it, the launches were definitely unauthorized and no one now questions that. This gives you the potent argument that the Germans tried to frame outcasts, rebels, rogues. So nobody can claim their scheme struck at the heart of your influence and authority.”
“That’s too abstract, and too arguable. You’re a smart and clever man, Captain Fuller, but remember I have to deal with callous infighting bureaucrats, unsavory yes men, people who shift allegiance without the slightest compunction or warning.”
“The strongest argument I can think of is to not nuke German soil so as to not cause massive slaughter among the Allied civilians they’re holding as human shields in all their high-value target areas. That would gravely anger the Allied powers, and put Russia in a difficult position for her ongoing relations with neutrals, too.”
“But you’re asking me to give in to the German human-shield strategy, which is itself a war crime.”
“Killing the hostages is not the best way to solve a hostage crisis, sir. Recent Russian history ought to show you that botched rescues where hundreds of innocents died did lasting damage to your country’s reputation and credibility. You can’t regain the superpower status you covet while showing such abject disregard for human lives. And remember, these hostages would not be your own citizens. They’d be Americans, British, and so on. You’d also kill many German civilians who are every bit as much victims of Axis repression as the people in the countries the Axis occupies. It would be calculated mass murder.”
“And I suppose there’d be the problem of fallout knowing no borders or boundaries. We certainly took a battering in public relations after the Chernobyl plume hit half of Europe.”
“Historians say that�
��s one factor that brought down the Soviet Union…. Furthermore, if you made such an attack, other countries including mine would start to think the supposed German launches had been done by the Kremlin after all, as a manufactured excuse for a preemptive strike on Germany whom you wanted a justification to invade…. Restraint is much better statesmanship than retaliation, sir.”
“Good. This is the ammunition I needed. The specter of causing countless innocent deaths in Russia and other countries, making us become a weak pariah instead of a respected superpower, an abhorrent aggressor instead of a victim aggrieved. The resultant danger of a complete implosion of the Russian Federation, into dozens of fragments, with civil wars, or worse.”
“A grim picture. But an accurate one, Mr. President.”
“All right. I had these thoughts myself, but your independent confirmation is invaluable. I know what not to do. It’s my job to convince my opponents and the fence-sitters.”
Someone knocked hard on the thick conference room door, then came in. It was Meredov, breathless with excitement all over again. “Mr. President, I must interrupt. We’ve identified their egress route! The German raiders!”
“Explain,” the president insisted. The translator returned to the room in Meredov’s wake, since he only spoke Russian.
“We found a hovercraft drifting, abandoned, out of fuel, its crew shot in the head. Bloodstains indicate there had been many people aboard, some of them wounded. We were able to reproduce the hovercraft’s route with an analysis of hydrophone recordings. The Germans escaped from Srednekolymsk down the Kolyma at high speed, and transferred to a submarine northwest of Pevek. The submarine appears to have then headed under the pack ice. Acoustic data suggest the vessel is an Amethyste Two.”
“What are your intentions?” Jeffrey asked, stonefaced, knowing who was really on that supposed German Amethyste.