Gromley handed her a cell phone and a piece of paper with additional instructions on it before leaving. As he got up, he said, “Do this assignment well, and you will go far in the SVR. Screw it up, and you’ll be dead before you know what happened.”
As Sasha watched Gromley walk out of the bar, she was glad she had asked him come to her stomping grounds. This was only the second time she had met Gromley. Few people met him more than once. There were the figure heads in the SVR, who everyone knew, and then there was Petr Gromley, the spy who ran the spies. Very few people could even identify Petr Gromley, but he was probably the most powerful man in the Russian Federation. In many circles, he was only known as “The Shadow,” the unseen powerful force that pulled the puppet strings behind the curtain.
Petr walked down the alley way, ducking into another bar to check that he had not been followed. He exited the rear of the bar, and then slipped into another restaurant, repeating the process before he eventually arrived at the subway station. He boarded two different subways and passed through three different stations before he arrived back at his office, confident he had not been followed. He then resumed his work, transferring generals from one unit to another and dispatching orders for certain military units to be rotated to the capital while others were sent to the front. It was all a well-orchestrated charade to ensure that units loyal to him and his benefactors were in place when Fradkov had his heart attack.
Gromley had helped place Fradkov in power, along with his generals and cronies. Now he was removing them from command because of their incompetence. He had advised against attacking the Americans and Europeans, arguing that they should wait at least a year to let the IR and Chinese weaken America first. Fradkov and his generals would not listen. Now Fradkov wanted to join Premier Jinping’s Pan Asian Alliance. Giving up Russian sovereignty in a vain attempt to save his war was one step too far for the oligarchy who really ran the Russian government to endure. Fradkov needed to be removed and replaced before the war was truly lost. There was still time to make an honorable peace, but not if they waited much longer. The sudden loss of their Artic bases in Murmansk was the final straw.
The New Colonizer of Africa
Wang Ma was the Chinese Ambassador to the African Confederation; over time, he had become perhaps the most important man on the continent. For nearly four decades, China had been investing heavily into Africa and, in particular, South and East Africa. They had invested in developing industrial ports, heavy rail networks, international airports and other major infrastructure projects. During the 2020s, while the rest of the world was suffering a global depression and food shortages, the Chinese government had been working with their African partners to develop industrial-sized farms and an intricate water system that turned large swaths of previously unusable land into fertile farmlands for commercial farmers.
The Chinese began to cultivate leaders and political parties over the course of several decades, ensuring there were always political leaders and parties that were sympathetic and friendly to Chinese policies and initiatives. The Chinese also encouraged their own citizens to emigrate to the African nations and removed any limits on the number of children a Chinese family could have if they relocated to an African country. After several decades, this had led to a massive Chinese diaspora in multiple African nations; they began to exert immense political and economic sway over these countries.
When World War III broke out, many of these African nations chose to remain neutral. However, once it appeared that America was going to lose, many of these nations chose to join China in declaring war against America. Led by handpicked leaders in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and Zimbabwe, the African Confederation had been born in March of 2041. With assistance from the PLA, the “African Confed” (as it was being called) began a conquest of their neighbors, with the intent of uniting Africa under one banner, one policy.
While Europe and America were fighting for their very survival against the Islamic Republic, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China, the African Confed had been conquering one African nation after another. By the end of 2041, the nations of Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo had fallen. Angola had willingly joined the Confederation and provided the Chinese Navy with South Atlantic naval ports.
By the summer of 2042, when the war in Europe had started to turn against the Russians and the Chinese had lost control of the Pacific, the African Confederation had conquered all of Central Africa and half of Nigeria. The brunt of the fighting taking place on the continent now centered around parts of Cameroon and Nigeria as the Americans and the South American Multination Force began to provide military assistance to the fledgling governments, trying to do their best to fight against this new force.
Ambassador Wang Ma’s purpose in Africa was simple — assist the African Confed in winning their war and in developing a sustainable long-term government and economy that could continue to support and sustain Chinese global dominance. Though Wang had been born in mainland China, he had spent most of his life in Africa. His father was a prominent businessman and had earned billions in mining and railroads; he had helped stitch Africa together through hundreds of thousands of miles of train tracks and brought enormous economic prosperity to the continent by linking their vital mineral resources with the very hungry Chinese manufacturers who would purchase those goods. The railroads he had helped to build also linked the countries together, growing the economies and bringing the people of the continent together. His legacy had helped to cement China as the nation who had brought Africa into the 21st century and beyond.
His son, Wang Ma, not only inherited his father’s wealth, political connections and business, he was later appointed the Ambassador to South Africa and then the African Confederation. He was well liked and trusted by nearly every leader and businessman on the continent, and was considered to be an African, even if he was Chinese.
America, on the other hand, had paid little attention to Africa during the past thirty years, focusing instead on internal domestic problems and their continued antagonistic relationships with the Middle East, Russia and China. This had enabled the Chinese to cultivate a multi-decade long relationship with the current and future leaders of the continent.
Ma’s directive from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ruling committee was simple — guide the African Confederation in their conquest, but prepare them to support China in the war against the Americans if needed. Shortly after the loss of the PLAN fleet near Southern California and Hawaii, it became apparent that Africa would need to play a larger role in the Chinese plans for global dominance. America was slowly taking back control of the Pacific; that much was apparent. What the PRC needed to do, was solidify their hold in Africa and southeast Asia and ensure that no matter what happened, they would be too big for the Americans to conquer.
Wang Ma had worked with the President of the African Confederation to sign a military pact with China, and began construction of a military industrial complex that could support and sustain a modern military. The military forces the Confederation had were merely adequate for the regional conquest they had been undertaking. They were used to fighting other poorly trained and equipped armies. The Allies, however, were anything but poorly trained and equipped.