by John Gardner
Here lies the body of a gallant British officer, thought to be Captain James Bond. Royal Navy. Died for his own cause January 9th, 1991.
Even Yuskovich attended the interment. He also allowed Natkowitz and Boris Stepakov to be present. A squad of four Spetsnaz fired a volley of shots over the grave, while another played the Last Post on an old bugle.
The surprise came from Stepakov who, when the last notes died away, stepped forward and spoke lines memorised from his beloved Shelley:
‘It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.’
Natkowitz could have sworn there were tears running down the clownish face as the KGB general walked from the graveside.
All the actors and technicians who had been gathered together by Yuskovich’s fake Chushi Pravosudia were flown out in big Mi-12 Homer helicopters the next afternoon. They used three of the huge machines to shuttle the prisoners out to the nearest railhead. The monitors in Scandinavia reported that members of the arrested Chushi Pravosudia were being removed for trial.
On that same afternoon, Marshal Yuskovich watched the grainy black and white video, now fully assembled by Clive. When it was over, he instructed Clive and his assistants to work until late in the night, making three hundred copies of the video. One officer and two men were left to watch over them.
The officer was given a list of all television companies. The tapes were to be taken out by him and his two soldiers, and he was to be certain they were dispatched immediately by the quickest method to the companies on the list.
‘And what of the director, Clive, and his men?’ the officer asked.
‘You are to dispatch them also.’ Yuskovich drew his forefinger across his throat, then went in search of Major Verber and the rest of his personal force.
They reported that the two French agents, Boris Stepakov and the remaining Briton already waited aboard the last helicopter.
‘Nina Bibikova?’ he asked.
‘She’s there with five of the men. We’ve sedated the prisoners. They’ll cause us no problems. A little something in their coffee.’
‘You have heard from Baku?’
‘It’s quiet, sir,’ Major Verber reported. ‘Cold, but everything is in place. We can be there by morning. The Scamps have been taken on board and we’re ready to sail. There’s even an icebreaker, just in case.’
‘The Scamps and the Scapegoats?’ Yuskovich snapped.
‘All six of them. Everything, comrade General. The crews as well.’
‘They are old weapons.’ The marshal sounded as though he spoke fondly of children. ‘Old, but still very effective. I have husbanded those Scamps and Scapegoats against just such a day as this.’
The Scamp is a Russian mobile launching system, now phased out. Its missile was the Scapegoat with a range of two thousand, five hundred miles. The Scapegoat nuclear warhead yields between one and two megatons. Six of these missiles, therefore, would be equal to almost three times the explosive power of all bombs dropped in World War II.
‘Well, if all goes to plan, we’ll have them in Iraq within three days. Right under the noses of the Americans, British, French: the entire lot.’ Yuskovich nodded brusquely and led the way out to the waiting helicopter.
18
SCAMPS AND SCAPEGOATS
The great port and city of Baku had been troubled by riots and demonstrations for over a year, like every other town and city in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. All over the country, in the diverse regions which make up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, there had been an uneasiness which sparked unrest, disaffection, and the kind of ugly scenes which even five years ago would have been put down unmercifully.
In Azerbaijan the national feeling had run high. Mobs took to the streets in Baku and a dozen other centres. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to rule their own republic, frame their own laws, distribute their own food and raise their own armies. It was quite unworkable and this was the nightmare foreseen by the senior officers of the Soviet Army, Navy, and Air Force when the theories of restructuring had been set in motion. The nightmare came closer as each day passed.
In Baku the unrest whispered and bubbled through the old town, the port and the modern city. Perhaps because of it, nobody paid much attention to the three large fishing boats anchored offshore, alongside a naval T-43 Class ocean minesweeper, which bore on its side the white numbering 252. Certainly the citizens of Baku had no reason to fear a minesweeper, even though it sported a 45-mm gun both fore and aft.
Many naval craft were to be seen out on the Caspian Sea, but that was normal off Baku. There was a base, said to be used by the Soviet Naval Infantry, further up the coast, near Derbent, and those who plotted revolt and reform had taken it into account. At the moment, however, it looked as though the minesweeper was simply watching over its flock of three fishing boats. This was natural enough. Everyone liked the caviar from the sturgeon which provided almost six per cent of the annual fish harvest, which also included salmon, mullet, carp and a dozen other types of fish culled from the world’s largest inland body of water. Fish, oil and the forests had made the Caspian Sea one of the richest natural plundering areas within the borders of the USSR. Though it was slowly being eroded, shrinking, over-fished and polluted, the Caspian remained a major resource in the Soviet’s beleaguered economy.
Marshal Yevgeny Andreavich Yuskovich thought with pleasure about the fishing boats and the minesweeper lying off Baku. He had dozed on the helicopter which took them to the nearest air support base. There they transferred to the aircraft which originally had been the personal transport of Boris Stepakov, the Antonov An-72 turbo jet with STOL capability.
Once they were airborne, Yuskovich immersed his mind in the dazzling accomplishments which had led him to his present situation. It was only a matter of time before he would reach the goal he had cherished for long years, to be master of the potentially greatest country in the world. He had always coveted power; now the power would be absolute.
He sat well forward on the aircraft. On the other side of the aisle, General Berzin closed his eyes and did not look his way. The marshal had made it clear he wanted to be left alone. Behind him were his personal guards – six Spetsnaz men with three officers, the redoubtable Major Verber, who would be promoted to general once the coup was complete, Verber’s cousin, a major of the rocketry forces and the lieutenant he had plucked from the night, the Spetsnaz man, Batovrin, who sported the old-style waxed moustache and had about him the look of a thoroughly efficient soldier. Yuskovich prided himself on his eye for the right people. In Batovrin, he was sure the choice was wise.
He thought the young Nina Bibikova had looked mournful as she boarded the aircraft, but that was only to be expected. It had taken guts to accomplish what she had done. Heady days lay before them and Yuskovich was sure he would find a large number of tasks to keep Bibikova busy. She would soon forget.
He smiled to himself. Nina had looked downcast, though not as disconsolate as the prisoners. They certainly had reason. Poor old Bory Stepakov must know by now that his life was not worth a kopek, while the two French agents, Rampart and Adoré, had to be confused and alarmed at the events which were now quite out of their control. A pity about the woman, Adoré, he considered. She looked very beautiful and it was always sad to do away with something that could provide such pleasure. Maybe, he thought, then quickly changed his mind. What had Tolstoy said? ‘What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.’
Then there was the Britisher who had turned out to be from the Mossad. Well, he would do. In fact, it would be a double irony. They would place him near the Scamps with their huge Scapegoat missiles and when the photograph was released after the devastation, he would be identified as a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service. The Mossad would remain silent, but Yuskovich would wager his entire future on denials from London. W
hat a pity about the man Bond. If he had lived, his photograph would be there as well. They might have accomplished a double hit.
Yevgeny Andreavich Yuskovich positively basked in the glow of his own performance. Yes, there had been some luck, the right people at the right time, then the world-shattering events which had only contributed to the overall plan first conceived towards the end of 1989.
From the earliest days of the President’s new order, there had been concern and anxiety among the senior members of the Soviet military establishment. Certainly the twin policies of openness and restructuring had an appeal. Indeed, some kind of reorganisation was necessary if only to court the West, both to defuse their anxieties and force them into humanitarian cooperation – in other words, to persuade them to contribute to the Soviet economy. But few, even the President himself, had expected the appalling backlash late in 1989 which, at a stroke, removed the buffer states of the Eastern Bloc, the backlash which tore down the Wall and removed the cushions of land which had been so carefully built up since the end of the Great Patriotic War.
All this had led to the chaos which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics now faced. In October 1989 a caucus of senior Soviet officers had already chosen their new leader. They had put their personal reputations at risk and sealed with their signatures the secret document naming Yevgeny Yuskovich as the man in whom they trusted. They also swore allegiance to the general whom they privately referred to as marshal. He would have their complete support. Once they had begun the new long march back to the old order, they were committed. Having chosen Yuskovich, they considered it was his duty to set the fuses, bait the traps, overcome political chicanery and return them to the true way, the way of Lenin and the Communist Party. How, then, would he lead the Soviet military on to what they considered the paths of righteousness?
Yuskovich remembered the very moment when he had located the starting point of the journey. How strange it was that a group of idiot idealists had made a choice so close to his own past. The two pieces of information had come to him on the same day and through one person, though he did not comprehend it at the time.
He glanced back to see Nina Bibikova was sleeping. She had been the cornerstone. In September 1989, the telephone had rung in his office, and there was the commander of the GRU’s Fifth Directorate telling him that he had a woman member of KGB who wanted to talk with him.
They had met – the GRU Commandant, Yuskovich and Nina Bibikova – in a specially prepared safe house almost within shouting distance of the Kremlin, and it was there that Bibikova unleashed her torrent of information. She was daughter to Misha Bibikov and his English wife, the strangely named Emerald, and she could not disguise her disgust. Her parents were known to have been one of the greatest assets of KGB’s First Chief Directorate, two of the most highly placed moles, as Francis Bacon dubbed them back in the seventeenth century, ever run out of Moscow Centre. They had died tragically in a car wreck only nine months before his first meeting with their daughter.
He recalled that almost his first words to the girl had been a speech of condolence, and he would never forget her outburst, nor his own sense of shock, when she revealed to him what she had already told the GRU. Her parents were doubles. They always had been and they were not dead. Indeed she had only recently discovered their true cause and their extraordinary resurrection.
All her life, Nina had believed her parents to have been heroes of the Supreme Soviet. She had even tried to emulate them by following in their footsteps. She had mourned them, like any other good daughter. Then, with unexpected suddenness, they had reappeared in her life. First, a note asking for a clandestine meeting at a charming villa on the Black Sea. She had been taking her vacation at Sochi with her friend, one of the few other women members of KGB.
She went to the villa and the trauma almost destroyed her. There they were, Misha and Emerald, as large as life. They felt, she was told, that she should now know the truth, and they foolishly told her the whole story – the tale of how they had duped the Soviet Union for decades and that, at the end, they simply wanted to drop out of sight. Their deaths were staged and being the experienced people they were the Bibikovas had provided themselves with new identities. Now, in the early years of their old age, they were indulging themselves in their other great passion, the theatre. These two old spies were with a small theatre company based in Leningrad. With this troupe they travelled Russia performing the great classics. Never had they intended Nina to know the truth, but the company was playing in the Black Sea resort – The Cherry Orchard, as it happened – and they had seen her in a café.
The girl, Yuskovich considered, was amazing. She had kept her true emotions in check, had shown only joy in being reunited with her father and mother, had even told them that she despised the old regime and was hoping for better days under the emerging restructuring of Mother Russia. She had then kept the knowledge to herself, not sharing it with anyone until she went to the GRU.
Why the GRU? he had asked her, and she had replied in a sensible manner. She was with the most secret internal department of the KGB, so secret that her director only answered to the General Secretary and the KGB Chairman. She spoke, of course, of Stepakov’s Banda – the counterterrorist department. Her ties to the KGB were tight. She did not desire to damage her own career by turning in her parents. ‘You know how KGB can work,’ she said. ‘Sometimes the paranoia reaches back generations. I could lose my job. My life even.’
The next piece of information had come almost accidentally. He asked if she was satisfied with the kind of work she was doing? It was interesting, but, she told him, at the moment it was also stupid. Idiot’s work. Then Nina Bibikova laid out their present target. She had called them a bunch of madmen. ‘Personally, I’m convinced there are only a half-dozen of them. They have some wild plan to embarrass the Kremlin establishment.’ These people called themselves the Scales of Justice – Chushi Pravosudia or Moshch Pravosudia – and the wild plan had been to focus public attention on the Kremlin’s reluctance to show any real sympathy for Russian Jews. She said their argument was that the Kremlin was allowing many Jewish people out, but that was not enough. Never had the Soviet Union held a war crimes trial which accused a single Russian of anti-Semitic behaviour. She had laughed. ‘They even seem to have a candidate. A Ukrainian called Josif Vorontsov who, they say, became a member of the Nazi SS and was partly responsible for Babi Yar and other horrors. It’s absurd to try and embarrass the Kremlin with something like that.’
But Yuskovich was alerted. His stomach had turned over, he nearest he ever came to fear, when Vorontsov’s name was mentioned. In any case, he did not really feel it was such a crazy idea. The Kremlin had been embarrassed by smaller things than a Russian war criminal.
He liked to think it was not just his desire to save his own skin that prompted him to recruit Nina Bibikova there and then. Later, he revealed much more to her, but her reaction was immediate. Yes, she would act as Yuskovich’s agent within Stepakov’s Banda. Yes, she would do whatever he asked. Later, when she was told the scope of the military coup to put Yuskovich in total power, she had leaped up and down with joy. On that night he remembered vividly how she had come to him without pretence. Her love-making had proved ferocious, and she had done all the things his wife had strictly barred from their bedroom. Some day, Nina could well become the Russian equivalent of what the Americans called the First Lady. Already he had plans to put his wife aside. It was easy for a man with power.
One thing finally led to another. They had removed the original handful of Chushi Pravosudia, and in their place set up a whole network of notional agents, shadows, an entire cult of Chushi Pravosudia which did not even exist.
They had run the foolish Professor Vladimir Lyko within Stepakov’s Banda. Eventually, when Lyko had served his purpose, his handler, a skilled Spetsnaz officer, was ordered to kill him, and before this they had snatched their old GRU sleeper, Penderek, from New Jersey.
Parallel to the
Scales of Justice operation, they were also now committed to events outside the Soviet Union which appeared to be reshaping the world. America, with a strong backing from other countries and a United Nations’ sanction, was preparing to lock horns with Iraq over the Kuwait question. It was time for the future leader of the Soviet Union to play his trump card.
Throughout the years he had been in command of Rocket Forces, Yuskovich had been a hoarder. While the SALT talks made slow progress, he had often disobeyed orders. In secret bunkers he retained weapons, even mass-destruction weapons. While certain missiles were phased out, Yuskovich made certain some of those he considered to be still viable were hidden and maintained by trusted people who knew how to keep their mouths closed.
The final plan was simple, yet so ingenious that the future leader of all the Soviet Republics was dizzy at his own brilliance. The whole thing fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle which some divine being had placed in front of him to show that he was the chosen one.
The pinpricks of Chushi Pravosudia’s absurd daring, and their demands, simply goaded everybody into the killing field. By setting up the taped trial, he had been able to bring essential elements to work. Nina’s suggestions to Stepakov had brought about the snatching of his dark-horse cousin, Vorontsov. It had also put two French agents into his hands. The whole conception of his terrorists, his Chushi Pravosudia, had called for people from London to do the taping. Suggestion, via Nina, had prompted Stepakov to call upon the British Secret Intelligence Service to provide the camera crew and, even here, fate had taken a hand and brought him the godsent opportunity to add Nina to the British team.
Then there was the question of actors to play the roles of witnesses. Naturally, it was almost too easy for Nina to ensure that her mother and father came without a second thought to the Red Army Senior Officers’ Centre where, with a little pushing here and there, they were allowed to find the secret tunnel all the General Staff had known about for years.
