Beware the Jabberwock (Post Cold War Thrillers)

by Chester D. Campbell

  Beware the Jabberwock

  Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy, Book 1

  Chester D. Campbell

  Published by Night Shadows Press

  Copyright 2012 by Chester D. Campbell

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright owner and Night Shadows Press, LLC.

  Also by Chester D. Campbell

  Greg McKenzie Mysteries:

  A Sporting Murder (5)

  The Marathon Murders (4)

  Deadly Illusions (3)

  Designed to Kill (2)

  Secret of the Scroll (1)

  Sid Chance Mysteries:

  The Good, The Bad and The Murderous (2)

  The Surest Poison (1)

  VIENNA - LATE OCTOBER 1991

  Chapter 1

  Few lights glowed in the long dining room, giving it a subdued look similar to that on the face of the sullen restaurateur who stood beside the elegant table. Dark shadows reflected in the large, gilt-framed mirrors that lined one wall. Shattering the austere silence, a chilling rain raked the peaked roof with a blustery tirade. All in all, it struck Otto Bergen as anything but a promising afternoon.

  Two imposing young men with chiseled looks watched him through dispassionate eyes, like medical students in a surgical theatre. Otto fussed about the table with nervous movements, unhappy at the tension and at being unable to do what he did best, prepare exotic dishes. In his starched white chef's hat, the plump little man resembled an Austrian version of the Pillsbury Doughboy. He brought in a large bowl of fluffy white whipped cream and a tall container of hot coffee, which he placed on a grid above a stubby candle. Its flame swayed with the sensuous rhythm of a belly dancer.

  Though Bergen Haus closed on Sundays, it was not unusual to find Otto playing host on the Sabbath to arms traders seeking a comfortable but secluded spot for their negotiations. They always took advantage of the fashionable restaurant's famed cuisine. For the Israelis, the continental fare was kosher. For the Russians, vodka flowed freely. And for the Arabs, kharouf, a whole sheep on a bed of rice, provided the striking centerpiece.

  Today's fare hardly resembled such sumptuous dining. Otto had no idea who these people were, only that Herr Mauser, the more slender of the two "businessmen," the one who had made the reservation, left strict instructions that today's guests wanted only coffee. Furthermore, they demanded that no one, not a soul, neither man, woman nor child, should be around when the meeting began.

  "After you put the coffee out, I want you to get the hell into your office and stay there," he had ordered in a voice that threatened unspeakable consequences if disobeyed. "When we're finished, I'll knock on your door and give you the fee in cash. Understood?"

  Otto had nodded with uncommon vigor, eager to get this ordeal behind him. From the unfamiliar accent of Mauser's German, he had taken the man for a resident of the former communist half of Germany. It was an area he had avoided with a passion. Much to his relief, the size of the fee more than compensated for the verbal abuse.

  Mauser, a man in his early thirties with sandy hair cut military style and a disposition as changeable as a chameleon’s hue, watched the squat Austrian scurry off like a frightened rat heading for his lair. Although certain he had put enough fear in the man to quell any latent curiosity, he would keep an eye on the approach to the dining room just in case. He turned to his companion and spoke in English. His name, in fact, was Brown, not Mauser. He hailed from the cornfields of the Midwest, not the coalfields of East Germany. His language tutor had been a native of Leipzig.

  “It looks like we've both got the same thing in mind,” he said. “Shall I go first?"

  "As you wish," said the stocky man with a nod. His heavy coat, fashioned for the bitter winters of Moscow, made him resemble a not-so-cuddly bear. "I shall wait in the hallway."

  Though his English grammar was almost flawless, his heavy accent might have been encountered in a Russian neighborhood of Brooklyn.

  The American opened what appeared to be an expensive leather attaché case. In reality, it was a marvel of electronic gadgetry. He flipped the power switch and observed the dials and winking lights. As a student of the political mind rather than the intricacies of modern technology, he had only a vague notion of how the miniaturized components worked. He understood that it would detect a nearby recording machine even if the recorder were turned off, and it could pinpoint the tiniest "bugs" in existence. What he knew for certain was the organizers of this clandestine encounter intended its security to be absolute. When he was satisfied the dials showed no electronic intruders in the vicinity, he walked back into the corridor.

  "All yours," he said with a nod.

  The stocky Russian repeated the procedure with his own detection device, then agreed the room was clean. Together they returned to their cars, parked in the afternoon gloom beneath a canopy at the rear of the restaurant, safely out of the menacing downpour. They advised the two principals that their meeting place was ready.

  A tall figure with an athletic build reached the table first. His dark hair showed not so much as a fleck of gray, though he was pushing sixty. The bland face might easily be lost in a crowd, except for the eyes, deep-set and furtive, with heavy brows. Those eyes had seen their share of the seamy machinations that took place in the invisible backwaters of international diplomacy. He stood to one side of the table and watched with suspicion as the other man entered. Though not uncommon for a veteran of the intelligence wars, his skepticism felt right on target today, considering the circumstances. He could virtually recite the other's dossier from memory, a fact that made this junket one of the most intriguing episodes of his shadowy career.

  The new arrival strode quickly to the table, smiling as though at some private joke. He was a bit shorter and heavier but moved with the precision of a military background. Somewhat older, also, he had frosty white hair.

  "So, at last I have the privilege of meeting the famous Foxhunter." He spoke in a casual voice, his English broadened with an accent cultivated during preparation for his undergraduate years at Cambridge. He had attended the prestigious English university just after the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians liked to call World War II, through a carefully borrowed identity.

  The Russian flashed a disarming smile. "Shall I call you by your codename?"

  "Whatever you wish, General." The American had a dry, businesslike voice, as chill and crisp as an October morning in the heart of Vermont maple country. That was where he had grown up. Though he hadn't lived there in years, he had lost none of his laconic New England temperament.

  "Have a seat," said the General. "It appears we have Kaffee mit Schlag. I rather fancy these Austrian sweets. Sacher torte is another weakness. You might know I can't find this sort of thing at home."

  They both sat. The General poured. He was a much more outgoing type than his taciturn companion. However, both men fidgeted like schoolboys on their first date, one suspicious of the other's motives, the other uncertain how his proposition might be taken. There had been no formal greeting, no handshake. It was obviously a marriage of convenience.

  There were protocols available and channels to follow when men like these found it necessary to come face-to-face. It was much simpler now, in contrast to Cold War times when tedious bargaining and elaborate arrangements had preceded suc
h affairs as prisoner exchanges. But in this instance, all normal procedures had been flung to the winds. They were invisible men at a nonexistent encounter. Only a handful of associates—those directly involved in making the surreptitious contacts and setting up the rendezvous—had even the barest inkling that anything was taking place.

  For the record, both participants were in their respective hotels, resting up from lengthy and tiring flights. The hotel operators had strict instructions not to disturb them until they called for their messages.

  The American had spent too many years attaching the prefix "enemy" to any discussion of the General and his cohorts. In the flesh, the old Russian sounded more like a British diplomat than one of the sputtering Soviet Union's top secret policeman, but the Foxhunter had difficulty thinking of him in any other terms.

  "Your invitation made it obvious you weren't coming to talk about a defection," he said with only slightly veiled animosity. "So just what did you come to talk about?"

  The General glanced around the room. The two aides were seated some distance away at separate tables, watchfully nursing their own cups of Otto Bergen's prized brew. The Russian’s dossier had indicated he preferred to begin negotiations with small talk, a little waltzing to put the opponent at ease. But the Foxhunter had a no-nonsense, all-business reputation. He was known as the epitome of conservatism in an agency hardly noted as a hotbed of liberals, and he soon realized the crafty Russian had changed his approach to fit.

  "I represent a select group of people, including some very highly placed officials," the General said. "We are deeply concerned about conditions in our country. I hardly need to recite all of the turmoil in the republics, the ethnic conflicts, the distressing problems of food distribution and pricing."

  The Foxhunter found this frank admission of Soviet failures anything but a surprise. With glasnost, the decline showed like bandages peeled back to reveal the torn flesh of self-inflicted wounds. "Not to mention your whole economy resembles a basket case," he said with a bit too much gusto.

  The General raised an eyebrow but kept his voice level. "Admittedly, it is in rather worse shape than yours. Although, I must say, your adventure in the Persian Gulf seems to have taken its toll. With that unruly deficit and large trade imbalance, it must keep a lot of people in Washington up late at night."

  The Foxhunter shrugged. He couldn’t deny that. The Iraqi war had only made a bad situation worse. "True. We're hearing a lot of depression talk. Meanwhile, the idiots in Congress blunder along, refusing to make the hard choices. All they can think of is cut the Pentagon budget. The President hasn't helped. It's his responsibility to straighten the knuckleheads out."

  "Unfortunately, your predicament and ours may soon become much more critical," said the General in an ominous tone. "The way we see it, the Soviet Union is dangerously close to a catastrophic explosion. And should that occur, we do not believe it can be contained within our borders. That could present very grave dangers for your country, as well as the rest of the world."

  Chapter 2

  A frown darkened the Foxhunter's angular face. What the hell was he talking about? "An explosion?"

  "An eruption of despair. People without jobs. Millions of people, no longer holding out any hope for the future. People without food. People in near panic to get away."

  The Foxhunter's frown deepened. He had read an analysis a few days before describing the dislocations resulting from Soviet moves toward a market-driven economy. Outmoded and inefficient plants were being shut down. Factories that turned out goods consumers hadn't the slightest desire to buy were being boarded up. Food shortages threatened to create riot conditions. It was a grim picture.

  The General carefully moved his coffee cup and rearranged the silverware as though lining up his troops for a frontal assault. Then he fired a penetrating gaze across the table. "You know the havoc thousands of disillusioned Mexicans can create, sneaking across your southern border. I am sure you remember what happened to West Germany, how they were nearly overwhelmed by a hundred thousand hopeless souls sweeping in from the East."

  "Surely you don't think...?" His voice trailed off, leaving the unthinkable unsaid. Those high-priced analysts in the Intelligence Directorate, people with fancy degrees and a ceaseless input of technical and human intelligence, hadn't mentioned such a possibility as this.

  "Think it could not happen to us? My dear fellow," said the General with the indulgence of a priest for a non-believer, "it is happening right now. Just a week ago, we received word of a large group of unemployed workers leaving Kiev, heading west. Our agents infiltrated their ranks and reported treasonous grumblings, open talk of abandoning the motherland. From Volgograd, others were reported moving south toward the Black Sea. It is undoubtedly just the beginning. In the old days, we could have put a stop to such foolhardiness. Not after perestroika and the failed coup. Can you imagine the effect of millions of Russians pouring in panic across the borders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia?"

  Try as he might, the Foxhunter could not hide the dismay that showed in his eyes. At first it had seemed almost beyond imagination. But now he could see the possibility, perhaps even the inevitability, given the current trend of unrest all across the vast territory of the Soviet "Dis-Union."

  The General's features relaxed into a hint of a smile as he asked, "Can you guess where the majority of them will demand to be resettled?"

  The American pushed a large hand through his dark hair. His heavy brows knitted almost into a straight line. His voice was that of a prisoner being led to the gallows. "The U.S. of A."

  "Exactly. You have had your problems with Chicanos calling for Spanish as an official language. Are you prepared to add Russian to your curriculum? Are you ready for the Russification of America?"

  The Foxhunter could picture the problem. With billions going into the savings and loan bailout, failing banks folding like muddle-headed poker players, the deficit further bloated by the legacy of the Persian Gulf War, and the economy barely limping along, a huge influx of immigrants from any quarter would be disastrous.

  "There must be a way to stop it," he said.

  "Not without fundamental changes. Your President was the one who pressured us into opening the gates to unlimited emigration. Our people are free to leave."

  A muscle in the American's jaw twitched. "Right, and the bastard would probably welcome them with open arms." His voice turned more toward a growl. "He'd have the Treasury bankrupt in less than six months."

  "I am glad you understand. You have nearly as great a stake as we in the resolution of this dilemma. The problem, of course, lies in the new leadership." The way he said it, "new" could have been a four-letter word. "They forced out people who knew how to maintain stability and order. And they opened the door to every rabble-rousing trouble-maker across the land. People are being pulled in a hundred different directions. There's no longer any reliable central authority. It is pure chaos."

  The General’s feelings were clear. Under the infamous banner of perestroika, the Soviet and Russian Republic presidents and their cohorts had disfigured the face of communism, dismantled the achievements of the revolution. Over seventy years of struggle to build a bastion of socialist power was being discarded like a broken toy in the rush to embrace a bastard form of capitalism.

  "You aren't alone," said the Foxhunter, now openly sympathetic with his longtime adversary. Without a formidable foe to contend with, he and his colleagues would face a bleak future. "The bleeding-heart liberals of America are going to ruin us in the same damned way. And they seem to be gaining the upper hand."

  "It appears to me that we share a common problem," the General said, his voice that of a businessman on the brink of a deal. "Would not both our interests be much better served if our governments were in more friendly hands?"

  "You're damned right about that."

  His own inner circle, led by a few titans of American industry who formed his power base, was irate over the way the current
administration had refused to stop the drain of America's energy and might. The unprecedented military build-up in the Middle East, which had successfully thwarted a power-hungry Iraqi dictator, had ended predictably in new moves to balance the budget at the expense of the Defense Department and the CIA.

  What both men were thinking, but neither dared put into words, was that the thawing of the Cold War had placed the arch-conservatives of both East and West in jeopardy. They saw misguided men seizing the opportunity to demand less money for military and intelligence-gathering capabilities, more for the frivolities of social programs and questionable methods of restructuring the economies. So-called "reformers" moved openly to eliminate a tradition of leadership that had been responsible for raising the superpowers to their lofty pinnacles. The ebb tide of change was sweeping the old guard toward a watery grave. Their response was to demand that the General and the Foxhunter produce lifeboats. To such men, power was everything. It meant authority, control, influence. It was a way of life, and to lose it was a tragedy to be avoided at any cost.

  "The question is," the Russian said, emphasizing each word, "what can be done about it?"

  The Foxhunter gave a shrug of resignation. "Very little, from my standpoint. Unfortunately, we won't have the opportunity to get rid of this President for a good while to come. I don't know that you're much better off. Your leader seems to live a charmed life. He avoided a pretty highly-placed coup."

  "Yes," said the General with a bitter smile, "but now he plays second fiddle to the head of the Russian Republic."

  "So, what's the answer? Impeachment is out of the question for us. Short of a resignation, of which there is zero possibility, we're stuck with him, unless he should obligingly die in office."

  The General's eyes widened. He rubbed his chin, as if deep in thought. Then he spoke. "You bring up an interesting possibility. A death in office, eh?"