From behind an elegant wooden desk where dignitaries were received and treaties were signed, his mentor, the President of the Russian Federation, got to his feet to greet him. Huge crow’s claws spread from Lagutov’s sharp blue eyes. His lined face was framed with a head of thick gray hair. He was not a tall man, nor physically strong. But he was confident and casual. His dark suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. He wore a light-blue shirt with no tie, a relaxed leader in a lavish setting.
‘Ah! Admiral!’ Lagutov’s voice bounced around the vast room. ‘Thank you for coming so far. Your idea, this idea you sent me, will it work?’
‘Yes, sir. It will.’ Vitruk spoke softly. The glow of lamps on the huge chandelier of gilded bronze offset the night darkness that was visible through the skylight. Lagutov indicated that Vitruk should take a seat to the side of the desk.
‘I like it. I respect your impatience,’ he said, as they both sat down. ‘But tell me, Alex: After Larisa, have you found anybody. Do you have family?’
‘Russia is my family, sir,’ he said. ‘That has not changed since the day we met.’ But the question took Vitruk by surprise. It was more than twenty years since, tanked up with vodka, he had driven a snowmobile into a tree. He was thrown clear onto soft snow. His eight-year-old daughter, Larisa, was crushed and killed. Katerina, his wife, never uttered another word to him. Vitruk cast himself into Russia’s wars, aimlessly at first, until Lagutov had offered him a lifeline.
‘All those years ago,’ said Lagutov, ‘when I saw you, restless and angry, at that dreadful military college, I knew you were special. Fearless. Intelligent. Nothing to lose. Russia’s greatness has been forged on such qualities and war has tutored you well. I ask you now about Larisa because such a mission needs motivation that cannot be personal, and I know how badly you took the loss.’
‘My motivation is only for the Motherland, sir.’ Coiled inside, Vitruk spoke with assured calm.
‘Then convince me, Alex. I need to see in your eyes planning, not revenge, pragmatism, not hatred.’
‘We have an opportunity that will not arise for eight, possibly twelve or sixteen years. The antagonism between the American President and his successor has created a leadership vacuum of historical proportions.’
‘An opportunity for what exactly? We need America. Even if we could weaken it, what would that achieve? And this island? What is to be gained from taking it?’
‘It will force the Americans to reassess Russia. Under the Tsars we were savagely misruled. Under communism, America contained us. After communism, it exploited us and turned us into a Mafia state. Under Putin, it made us its enemy again. Russia has never been free to grow and live in the world with dignity.’
‘And how will raising our flag on an unknown American island change this?’
‘The Stars and Stripes has flown illegally in so many countries, sir. It is a symbol of oppression and war. Should a hostile foreign flag now fly over America territory, the world will applaud us. It will show American weakness and Russian courage. For too long, we have used the buffer of Europe as an excuse not to confront. This time we will break that hallowed border between America and Russia and begin to write a new world order.’
Lagutov was quiet for a long moment. Aware that many in Moscow wished him ill, Vitruk wondered if he had said too much. His enemies saw him as a Siberian peasant boy who had risen way above his station. But Stalin had done just that, and if he, the Georgian son of a cobbler and a housemaid, could make it to the top, so could Alexander Vitruk, the son of a loyal communist engineer whose roads and bridges had forged Russia’s Far East. That was until his father became too drunk to build them and found solace in the beds of Eskimo women, just as his grandfather had before him. Through the contours of his low forehead and slight cheekbones Vitruk thought he might even be carrying native Eskimo blood.
He was living by a promise made to his late mother when he was ten years old and his father’s vodka-poisoned body was dumped on the snow-covered doorstep of their miserable apartment block in the Chukotka capital of Anadyr. Eskimos had found him as a frozen corpse in the forest. They wrapped his body in a bearskin to allow dignity, and delivered it by dog sled.
The Eskimos rang the apartment-block bell and rolled the corpse out of the bearskin, which they took back. His mother saw the body from the window and screamed. She tore a blanket from her bed, grabbed his hand, and they ran down to the street. She covered the body and held her son tight. ‘Don’t die like this, Alex. Please. Don’t be like he was. Ever. Promise me.’ They shivered together in the cold, warming each other.
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘Be a big man, when you grow up, the biggest in the world.’
‘I will. I promise.’
Vitruk had shed no tears, nor did his mother. His father left her with three children and a paltry pension. But Viktor had honored his pledge. He had smashed through ceilings and was now a few steps away from being anointed President of the Russian Federation. He didn’t intend to lose the moment. Fogged in fast cars, yachts, and champagne, the Moscow fools had no concept that the future lay in the Far East, the Pacific and Asia. But Lagutov did and that was why Vitruk was with him now.
‘How will it work, Alex, with this island?’ said Lagutov.
‘The island is vulnerable, sir. For the Americans to have allowed it to remain so was strategic madness. They could have requisitioned it, resettled the native villagers, and set up defenses like we did with Ratmonova. They have been arrogant. Some eighty Eskimos live there. The weather often cuts them off from the mainland. We monitor their radios and cellphones. The health of the islanders is not good. They have problems with narcotics, domestic abuse—’
‘Which we have, too.’
‘My plan is that the next time they make an emergency call for help and their helicopters cannot get to them we go, because we can get there in a matter of minutes.’
Lagutov eyed Vitruk with the skepticism of an academic. ‘I don’t understand. You go on a medical mission and raise our national flag?’
‘Yes. We treat the patient either there or at a field hospital on Ratmonova. We also take the opportunity to offer the islanders health checks. We know from our own Eskimos that their health is not good — bad diet, diabetes, heart and dental disease, that sort of thing. We accuse the Americans of neglecting their own citizens and we take control of the island on humanitarian grounds.’
‘Which they will reject.’
‘President Holland does not come to office for more than two months. After that he will take more months to settle. America will be at its weakest. Holland will have to decide how to handle it. He will bluster. But will he risk war over this unknown island?’
‘And Russia? What do I say when the American President calls me?’
‘You have the finest analytical mind of anyone I know, sir, and you will judge. I will open the door for Russia and you can support me or you can abandon me as a rogue officer. I will follow your command.’
Lagutov took off his spectacles and gave Vitruk a genial look. ‘I am merely a technocrat, an economics professor keeping the seat warm for my protégé. You are my muscle, Alex. You are what our country needs. If you fail, of course, Russia will destroy you, but I will do all within my declining power to help you succeed.’