by Ian Slater
Two months before the attack on Lake Pend Oreille, three Russian generals who were out of work, out of hope, and out of money — due to the Soviet Union’s post-1989 collapse — were invited by two highly placed Ministry of Defense officials from Moscow to a secret meeting. The two officials, rebel officers of the old KGB’s Thirteenth Directorate, had chosen Orsk, the Russian city 950 miles southeast of Moscow and fifteen miles from the Russian-Kazakhstan border, for the meet.
Each of these generals, Mikhail Abramov from the Siberian Sixth Armored Corps, Viktor Beria from Infantry, and Sergei Cherkashin from Air Defense, arrived separately at fifteen-minute intervals to be interviewed by the two officials in a smoke-filled booth in Orsk’s Hotel Metropole. The two officials, in their mid-fifties, were dressed in ill-fitting suits, as if they hoped to blend in with the thousands of other government officials all over Russia, but both the fatter, red-faced man and his shorter, rotund colleague nevertheless had the air of bristling confidence that so often accompanies the sudden acquisition of money or power. Shiska—“Big”—and Maly—“Little,” as the three generals would subsequently refer to them, ushered Abramov, Beria, and Cherkashin into the opulent, red-velvet-curtained bar on the mezzanine. Big and Little began the meeting by empathizing with each of the generals in turn. They knew what it must be like, they commiserated with the three career officers, to have been rendered ustarelye—obsolete — by Yeltsin’s “democratic reforms,” to be “downsized,” as the Americans euphemistically called it. And then to have whatever savings you’d been able to accumulate wiped out, your pension worthless now because the government had failed to rein in inflation and criminal speculators from Moscow to Vladivostok.
“Like so many of your generation,” began Big, a cigarette dangling from between his thick lips, “you three generals served your country in the Cold War against the Americans, worked hard all your lives, and—” He paused, extending his arms, palms upward. “—what do you get?” No one answered as he sucked hard on the cigarette, its grayish blue smoke leaking from nose and mouth. “Nothing,” he told them, jabbing the cigarette in the air. “You are humiliated. That’s what you get.”
“In Moscow,” added Little, looking at each general in turn, “old soldiers are now packing grocery bags to make ends meet.”
“At least,” said Abramov, the lean, sharp-featured tank commander, “they have jobs. We haven’t been paid for two months.”
“And,” put in army General Viktor Beria, the short, stocky infantry commander, “at least they have some food to put in the bags. The battalion I now command, instead of the regiment it once was, is owed five months’ pay. Five months! It’s a wonder there isn’t mutiny.”
The two officials glanced at each other. “Tell them,” Big invited his colleague who, leaning forward on the cracked Formica table, lowered his voice. “Then you haven’t heard, Comrades, elements of the Northern Fleet have already done so.”
“That damned Gorbachev,” said Air Defense’s Cherkashin, the oldest of the three, his dull gray hair, as he leaned forward, in striking contrast to the brightness of his bemedaled chest. “Gorbachev started it all. We were once a proud nation until he and his Glasnost fairies ruined everything. They took down the anti-Fascist barricade in Berlin, and now look at what we are. My air defense unit has been scattered to hell and gone. I had six hundred men. Now, since Putin, I’m down to a third of that, and everyone wants to leave for a job with the Arabs.”
Neither official interrupted; they couldn’t have hoped for a better response as a precursor to their coming offer. Years before, any officer of infantry, air defense, or tank corps, no matter how senior he was, would have immediately been arrested and sent to one of the Siberian gulags for the kind of criticism of the political leadership Cherkashin was making. But now such talk was common amongst officers and other ranks who had seen their careers and livelihoods ruined by what they called the razval—the breakup — of the once great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Now Russia was surrounded by independent countries, breakaway republics, from the Baltic in the northwest to former Soviet satellite states such as Poland to the south, and flanked by a clutch of Muslim-dominated central Asian republics where the usual resentments between the center and periphery of any country manifested themselves in Siberia’s growing challenge to the kind of authority from Moscow that had once decreed that all trains to and from Vladivostok, eleven time zones away, must run on Moscow time.
“Have you been to Leningrad?” Little asked disgustedly.
None of the three generals bothered to remind him that the politically correct name for the great naval base and artistic center was St. Petersburg — as it had been called before the Revolution. “We’re going backward instead of forward,” he continued.
“Yes,” concurred the infantry’s Beria, whose beady eyes seemed almost to close as he paused, pouring himself a shot of vodka, his hairy hands and wrestler’s build giving him a primitive appearance. He tapped the label of the new Kalashnikov vodka. “You think,” he asked grumpily, “Kalashnikov gets royalties for this?” He peered through the cigarette haze at Air Chief Cherkashin and the tank corps’ renowned Abramov.
Abramov shrugged.
“Kalashnikov,” continued Beria. “He never took a kopeck for the weapon that bears his name. He could have been a billionaire if he’d been a capitalist.” Beria now looked hard at the two officials. “You ask if we know what it’s like in politically correct St. Petersburg. I know, and I ask, what was our Revolution for? Our warships are wasting away. Submarines, battle cruisers, scores of destroyers, all are turning to rust.” Beria downed another vodka. “And in Moscow, gangsters are in control. It’s like the Americans’ Chicago in the thirties, yes?”
Cherkashin, together with the two officials, nodded his agreement. Abramov, the tank commander who, at fifty-five, was the youngest of the three generals, was looking restive, however, an exasperated expression on his face. Big turned to him. “And you, General Abramov. You agree?”
“With what?” asked the steel blue — eyed Abramov, his lean face tight with impatience. “I assume you didn’t invite us here to complain about the situation, Comrade. We all know how bad the situation is, how we’ve been stabbed in the back by Communist billionaires and other democratic politicians in their lakeside dachas. The point is, what can we do about it? How can you help us?”
The corpulent official took another unfiltered Sobranie cigarette from its tin and lit it with a gold Dunhill lighter, a decidedly upmarket item in striking contrast to his shabbily tailored suit. The biting aroma of Turkish tobacco rose voluminously around the booth’s thick velvet curtains. “We are not here just to help ourselves, we five here. You misunderstand. We’ve come here in order to help the entire officer corps; to form a successful economic nucleus to which other disaffected officers might be drawn.”
“Quite so,” said the smaller official, whose previously impassive face began to crease, his eyes weeping involuntarily under the assault of smoke from the Sobranie.
“Well,” mused the infantry’s Viktor Beria. “This ‘economic nucleus,’ whatever it is, will need money. Lots of it. Trucks full of it, if you hope to put things right.”
Air Defense’s Cherkashin nodded, and Abramov, thoughtfully looking down and flicking away a trace of Sobranie ash that had fallen from the official’s cigarette onto the peak of his tank corpsman’s cap, said, “No damn rubles. They’re worthless.”
The big official gave them an enigmatic smile. “You might have to sup with the devil.”
“We will have to sup with the devil,” Little corrected him. “Stalin had to sup with Roosevelt and Churchill to save Mother Russia. Some things have to be done. In ’42 Churchill had to kill the French at Oran rather than let their Mediterranean ships fall into Hitler’s hands and—”
“Never mind the French,” cut in the steely Abramov. “Who’s our devil this time?”
“Not Muslims, I hope?” proffered Cherkashin. “Those bastards in Chechnya? Killi
ng our people in the Moscow theater in ’02 and all those children in Beslan just two years later.”
“We don’t know,” said the official disingenuously, “whether the Muslims were connected to that.”
Cherkashin was outraged. He stood up. “Muslim fanatics murdered my nephew. I won’t have anything to do with them.”
“The Nazis killed twenty million of us, General!” shot back the Sobranie smoker. “We did business with them when it suited us. We got half of Poland; they got the other half. Sit down!” It was said with such unexpected authority that it transformed the atmosphere in the room, Abramov believing that these two officials from Orsk were in fact military men themselves. “We’ll be selling equipment capability,” the smoker continued, taking another long drag on his cigarette, which was now pointing at the air defense chief. “General Cherkashin, I believe you were a chief negotiator with the Iraqis during the Cold War. How many thousand air defense units did you sell them? And you, Abramov, how many of our T-80 tanks did you sell to the Iraqis?”
Sergei Cherkashin made to say something but sat down instead.
“We’d be selling them tanks?” asked Abramov.
“No,” interjected the other, smaller, official. “Other equipment capability.” He was agitated. “Do you know,” he asked intently, looking first at Abramov and Beria, then at Cherkashin, “what our entire military budget was the year after the anti-Fascist wall came down in Berlin in ’89?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Four billion U.S. dollars. You know what the U.S.A.’s was?”
“I’ll tell them,” said his colleague, who now leaned forward to make the point. “The United States’ defense budget was not four billion, comrades, but two hundred and sixty billion. Sixty-five times that of the Soviet Union!” His tone and that of his colleague made it obvious to the three generals that they were dealing with more than two senior bureaucrats.
Air Defense’s Cherkashin sighed impatiently. “So now we know how much richer the U.S. is than we are, but why, may I ask, did you choose the three of us — a general from Air Defense, Viktor here from Infantry, and our tank commander, Abramov? Perhaps we are so good-looking?”
Big allowed himself a grin, revealing through the fog-like smoke three gold crowns on on his lower teeth and an extraordinarily expensive crown and bridge in his upper jaw before he resumed his serious tone. “Three reasons, Comrades,” he told them, whom he and Little referred to only as A, B, and C. “First,” explained Big, “because your exceptional organizational skills have come to our notice. Whether you liked it or not, you were part of Putin’s transition team before you were reassigned to your separate commands.”
“Exiled,” put in Beria bitterly, “a thousand miles from Moscow.”
“Secondly,” said Big, taking no notice of Beria’s comment, “you’ve all seen combat. In Afghanistan and elsewhere.”
“So we three have organizational skills and combat experience,” said General Abramov. “What is the third reason?”
“You’re very poor,” said Big. He looked at each one of them in turn, before exhaling fully, his smoke engulfing them. “None of you can sleep because you don’t know how you’re going to look after your family in this new capitalist paradise of ours.” He paused. “You’re worried sick, gentlemen.” He fixed his gaze on Abramov. “Even you, Mikhail.” He inhaled again slowly, deeply, giving them time to realize just how much he might know about them beyond their outward show of braggadocio. As the brownish blue smoke poured forth, he continued, “I know what it’s like. Believe me. We now have in Russia the very, very rich and the dirt poor. The rich have reserves to see them through the chaos that’s followed Yeltsin, Putin, and their successors. The poor—” He shrugged. “Well, most of them have never known anything else, only now it’s worse. But you three—” He was using his cigarette as a pointer again, jabbing it at them. “—Your whole officer class has been raised to enjoy the fruits of your hard work for the party. And now it’s all crumbled.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “I’ve seen your medical files. Not your official military medical records, your local—private—physician’s. Zopiclone?” He left the name of the sleeping pill hanging in the air before adding, “Prozac and Volga!” Volga was the cheapest brand of vodka, and Big gave a sardonic grin, reciting the commercial jingle, “Like the mighty river Volga, it will wash your troubles away!” He leaned forward, the smile gone, shoulders hunched with intensity. “For you, we’re offering a way to win back Russia for the party and to earn yourselves some hard cash for your families. It is what the Americans call ‘a win-win situation.’ Da?” He leaned back and opened his tin of Sobranies, plucking out another cigarette.
“How much money?” asked Air Defense General Cherkashin, his medals clinking as he leaned forward, placing both hands on the table.
“A hundred thousand a month,” said Big. “For each of you.”
“Rubles?” asked Beria.
“American dollars.”
The normally cool, hard-eyed Abramov tried to appear nonchalant, but his face was flushed with excitement and he had to make a conscious effort to sit back and look relaxed, as if he could take it or leave it.
Beria and Cherkashin were stunned.
“Ah, where do we move this equipment, this capability?” asked Cherkashin.
“Where Moscow can’t see it,” replied the Sobranie smoker. “As far from here in Orsk and from Moscow as possible, in fact. East. You’ll be told in due time, if you accept our offer. But once you’re given the location, the three of you hold your lives in your hands. We want you to—” Reaching into his pocket, he fished out the gold Dunhill lighter. “We want you to think it over. But quickly. There are plenty of other candidates, disaffected officers like yourselves, but my colleague and I—” He looked at Little. “—have to get back to Moscow. He glanced at his Rolex, asking his smaller partner, “The last plane out of Orsk is at 2100, correct?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you fifteen minutes,” Big told the three generals, who were now convinced by the official’s use of “2100” that he was a military man. “We’ll be down in the foyer,” Big added, getting up and gathering his jacket and the tin of Sobranies. “It’s either yes or no.”
The three generals went out into Orsk’s polluted air to talk it over. The road’s badly cracked surface was an apt symbol, Mikhail Abramov thought, of the state of Russia. It was the beginning of the end.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Big had told Abramov, the commander of the grossly understaffed Siberian Sixth Armored Division. It was a phrase that had been quoted many times by the officer corps in the turmoil since the collapse. He himself had had to cannibalize half his tanks just to keep the other half going.
“So?” said Viktor Beria, looking at the leaner Abramov and the taller, gray-haired Cherkashin, the air defense general. “Are you two in? I know I’m sick of constantly scrabbling around to make ends meet.”
Abramov had been conjuring up the glory days of the Siberian Sixth; at least the days had been glorious until the humiliating defeat that he, as a young lieutenant, and other tank platoon commanders had suffered in a trap wherein American M1A1 Abrams tanks had duped the famed Sixth Armored Corps during a winter battle between it and the U.S.-led U.N. peacekeeping force in Siberia.
“A hundred thousand dollars a month!” said Beria with a whistle.
“But what is this equipment, this capability, he talks about?” said Abramov.
“I don’t care!” said Beria. “I’m broke.”
“I want to know,” said Abramov, as the three of them made their way back into the hotel, “whether this capability is real or not. I at least want to ask him if it’s in place, ready to go, or are we expected to start from scratch? I need to know that much if I’m to decide.”
Abramov posed the questions quietly but without preamble as they met the two officials in the foyer. “What capability are we talking about? At least give us a rough idea.”
The two official
s looked at each other and decided that a little more bait was necessary to hook the generals.
“A capability,” Big answered him, “that is staggering, General, and which will be ready for full production in two months if our acquisition of the data is successful. But beyond that I will discuss it in detail only if you wish to join our team.”
“Whose team is that?”
Little, who had spoken nary a word since the three generals had returned from outside, suddenly leaned forward, his suit’s crease crumpling as he did so. “The old team,” he told Abramov, as if the tank general was a student who’d forgotten his most important lesson, a lesson which governed all others, “the team which the stupid Americans think is washed up but is just waiting, as their George Washington did, to cross the Delaware, to regain what has been stolen, stolen from our party’s grip because some generals didn’t have the balls to overturn all these ridiculous democratic reforms. Are you with us or not? Do you want to slave away for kopecks in this so-called new democratic Russia or be able to hold your head up again, armed with some real weapons for a change, with something our clients can hit the Americans with, so fast, so utterly, that they’ll be pissing themselves in the streets. And which, if successful, if organized correctly, will act as a nucleus to attract more of our comrades to reinvigorate the party. Now, are you with us or not?
Abramov thought for a second. His final humiliation had been having to tell his daughter that she’d have to stop taking her beloved studies in ballet because of the money. He’d stopped her dream. “Da!” he told Little. “I’m with you.”
And so were Beria and Cherkashin, the air force general asking gleefully, “Now we’re in. Tell us, how do we get the Americans pissing their pants?”
Looking at the three generals in turn, Big asked, “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Flow-In-Flight’ data?”
None of them had.
CHAPTER FIVE
His recurring dream evicted from consciousness upon his arrival at Fairchild. Aussie, with Freeman and the other six members of the team, was now aboard an oily-smelling Chinook helo heading for the lower, southernmost, end of northwest Idaho’s ninety-thousand-acre Lake Pend Oreille. To Choir Williams’s extreme discomfort, the team encountered a gut-rolling turbulence as a low-pressure weather system rushing in from the Pacific coast hit a Canadian Express, a stream of freezing air pouring down from the Arctic through British Columbia, a little more than sixty miles to the north of the lake.
