The Russian Affair
Page 38
McNamara shook O’Connor’s hand. ‘Well done, buddy,’ was all he said. For O’Connor, coming from McNamara, that spoke volumes.
‘We’ve never been in the same zip code long enough to share more than a drink,’ O’Connor said, as they left the White House in a chauffeured limousine together. ‘Are you going to let me take you to dinner?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
‘I’ve taken the liberty of booking a courtyard table at the Iron Gate.’ One of Washington’s romantic restaurants, it was located in the heart of Dupont Circle.
‘And for a nightcap?’
O’Connor’s grin was wicked. ‘My place or yours?’
Several real-time warnings lie embedded beneath the boat chases in the myriad canals of St Petersburg; double agent Rabinovich’s escape from Moscow and subsequent penetration of the Mossad; Agent Curtis O’Connor’s daring assault deep into the Hindu Kush to recover radioactive strontium-90 left over by the Russians during their war in Afghanistan; and O’Connor’s subsequent and equally daring assault on an ancient castle in the soaring Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. When I started to write this prescient novel, I could not have imagined that the world would look quite as starkly similar to the world of fiction I have brought to life in The Russian Affair.
The characters in this novel are entirely fictional, but the scenario of a new nuclear arms race is chillingly real. In October 2017, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was ready to develop new nuclear weapons if other countries, particularly the United States, did the same. In February 2018, President Donald Trump announced a new policy to modernise the US nuclear arsenal, and to develop new types of nuclear warheads, including the smaller ‘battlefield nukes’. In a speech to his nation on 1 March 2018, President Putin declared that Russia has developed new nuclear weapons that will overcome any US missile defenses.
In 1947, the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board established the ‘doomsday clock’ as a pointer to the likelihood of a global catastrophe of humankind’s own making and the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight. Nuclear weapons are a major factor in their deliberations. Since then, scientists have moved the clock forward (and backward) many times, but as I write, it’s been moved to two minutes to midnight, the closest it’s ever been. The United States and Russia have entered a new arms race in earnest, and another potentially devastating Cold War has commenced with the added danger of an ‘accidental’ nuclear war.
Such a scenario is not fiction. As readers will have noted, on 25 January 1995, the Norwegians warned the Kremlin and other nations that they were launching a Brandt rocket to study the Aurora Borealis but that warning didn’t reach all of the Russian units. Out at an early warning Arctic radar station at Olenegorsk, the signature of the four-stage Norwegian research rocket, at a height of over 900 miles, looked exactly the same as a four-stage US Navy Trident nuclear missile. Yeltsin was given the nuclear suitcase. A sober Yeltsin decided to wait. Had he not been sober, the results for humankind could have been catastrophic. And again, on 9 November 1979, a technician mistakenly loaded a nuclear training scenario into the operational computers of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. At 3 a.m. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was notified that Russia had launched 250 intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States and that was quickly upgraded to 2200 missiles. Brzezinski was about to wake President Carter to tell him he had just minutes to respond when he received another call to advise that satellites were not detecting the Russian launches. There have been several other close calls with a nuclear catastrophe.
When I was planning for terrorist contingencies at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, there was a remote possibility that one or more of the missing Russian nuclear suitcase bombs might still be in circulation, and I made allowance for just such an eventuality. Today, the threat from terrorists possessing a dirty or even a nuclear device has not receded. As my fictional President of Russia Dmitry Petrov puts it: ‘The greatest danger of a nuclear holocaust is not one emanating from the superpowers. It comes from some mindless Jihadist getting his hands on a nuclear warhead.’
Smaller, ever more powerful nuclear weapons are now being developed, and The Russian Affair contains a warning as to what might happen, particularly if the launch of those weapons is at the whim of an unstable President of the United States. President Bedford Travers is one such fictional president. The process of removing a duly elected president includes, as it should, thorough and thoughtful debate. Bar going to war, it is arguably the most serious decision elected representatives can make, but for the purposes of this novel, it has been truncated – it would undoubtedly be more complex and protracted. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution is not the stuff of fiction – it is there for a very serious reason. In February 1987, for example, the dysfunction in the Reagan White House was brought to the attention of incoming Chief of Staff, James Baker. In the wake of the Iran–Contra scandal, Baker’s aides found the White House to be in complete chaos. Reagan was said to be inattentive, seemingly lazy and inept and disinterested in reading any briefs. He spent much of his time in the residence watching movies and television, but when Baker and his aides took over, Reagan was judged to be re-energised and Section 4 of the 25th Amendment was shelved. It remains there, should the need arise and should there be the political will to invoke it.
As I’ve written in my notes on previous novels, some will undoubtedly criticise me for giving terrorists ideas but, my military background notwithstanding, if those critics think terrorists need me to help them along, then we are in trouble. To assign terrorists a lower level of intelligence than the rest of us would be a grave mistake. In my previous life, I was privy to a deal of top-secret material, but I never publish anything unless it has first appeared in open source material, much of it now on the internet – to which terrorists obviously have access. And that goes for information on Israel’s nuclear research at Dimona. It is way past time Israel shelved the charade of ambiguity over nuclear weapons, and officially joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty along with the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. I am a very strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist peacefully with defensible borders – and I particularly admire the courageous young men and women in her armed forces with whom I have had the privilege to spend a little time – but there has to be an even hand. On the one hand the Arab states have thrown away multiple opportunities for peace, prompting the veteran Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban, to remark after the Geneva Peace Conference in 1973: ‘The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ Or even more presciently, ‘History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.’ But on the other hand, the expansion of settlements and the refusal to acknowledge East Jerusalem as the capital for a new state for the Palestinians are major roadblocks to peace.
On a more positive note – humankind is capable of totally destroying the planet, or harnessing extraordinarily complex science for the greater good – experiments in fusion energy, seeking to replicate the reaction that powers our sun, are gathering pace – hopefully toward the result Bartók achieves in The Russian Affair. When isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) fuse, the two nuclei come together to form helium and a high-energy neutron that can then be used to heat water to power an electricity generating turbine. Such reactions generate millions of times more energy than, for example, the burning of coal. More energy is released than is required for the reaction and if successful, it will be a limitless fuel source with almost no carbon emissions and it will seriously reduce the planet’s dependence on fossil fuels. In southern France, the US$25 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is being run by the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. In the UK, the Joint European Torus or JET tokamak reactor is being used to investigate the potential of fusion power; in Germany, researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Particle Physics have heated hydrogen to over 170 million degrees using the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator and magnetic fields to suspend hydrogen gas while hitting it with powerful microwaves creating super-hot plasma – a key step toward successfully generating nuclear fusion. In 2015, world military spending totaled more than US$1 600 000 000 000 or 1.6 trillion dollars, over a third of which was spent by the United States. Now if humankind could sit down and find ways to reduce that along with reducing rather than expanding nuclear weapons arsenals, and direct it toward mastering nuclear fusion and other projects . . .
Bringing a novel to the shelves and to cyberspace requires a small army of dedicated professionals. I am particularly grateful to my new publisher, Kimberley Atkins, and the rest of the hard-working team at Penguin Random House, especially Johannes Jakob, Virginia Grant and Sarah Fletcher. Adam Laszczuk has once again excelled in the production of the cover. Clare Forster, my long-term agent at Curtis Brown has provided sage advice and support. My thanks to Caroline Ladewig who has provided her usual insightful feedback. Russel Hutchings, author of the Special Operations Mantra-6 novels, has served his country for many years in Australia’s special forces and has provided valuable advice on the arcane art of high altitude, high opening clandestine insertions. Paul Tyler, a keen aviator, gave me sage advice on piloting a Cessna. Nina-Gai Till, the author of the enthralling From the Valley to the Sea, provided some much needed revision of my rudimentary French. To others, who not surprisingly in a novel of this nature, would rather not be acknowledged by name – you know who you are – thank you. To Antoinette and friends – I remain in your debt. And to Robyn, whose ability to organise impossible research schedules remains a mystery to me; and whose sense of humour is invaluable.
About the Author
Adrian d’Hagé was educated at North Sydney Boys High School and the Royal Military College, Duntroon (Applied Science). Graduating into the Intelligence Corps, he served as a platoon commander in Vietnam where, after a prolonged engagement with a North Vietnamese Army heavy machine gun company, he was awarded the Military Cross. His military service included command of an infantry battalion, Director of Joint Operations and head of Defence Public Relations. In 1993, Adrian was made a Member of the Order of Australia. In his last appointment as a Brigadier, he headed defence planning for counter-terrorism security for the Sydney Olympics, including security against chemical, biological and nuclear threats.
Dr d’Hagé holds an honours degree in theology, entering as a committed Christian. His studies raised more questions than answers, and he graduated ‘with no fixed religion’. In 2009, he completed a Bachelor of Applied Science degree (Dean’s Award) in oenology or wine chemistry at Charles Sturt University. At the same time, he undertook a PhD at the Australian National University, and he holds a doctorate in International Relations on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East. A keen jogger and sailor, he took up skiing late in life, and he has successfully sat the Austrian Government exams for ski instructor ‘Schilehrer Anwärter’. He lives in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
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MICHAEL JOSEPH
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First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2018
Text copyright © Adrian d’Hagé, 2018
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ISBN: 978-1-743-48421-0