"They are," said the General.
The gangster's cold eyes shifted to Dogin. "Does he speak for you, Minister?"
The Interior Minister stirred a lump of sugar into his tea. In the five years since his release, Shovich had gone from being a convicted robber to the leader of a global crime network that was comprised of an army of 100,000 men in Russia, Europe, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere— most of whom had been admitted to the ancient order of the thieves' world after proving their loyalty by murdering a friend or relative.
Am I mad to be joining forces with this man? Dogin asked himself. Shovich would be loyal only as long as they gave him twenty percent of the total assets of the former Soviet republics, which included the largest petroleum reserves on earth, double the timber found in the Amazon, nearly a quarter of the planet's unmined diamonds and gold, and some of the world's largest deposits of uranium, plutonium, lead, iron, coal, copper, nickel, silver, and platinum. The man wasn't a patriot. He wanted to exploit the natural resources of a rebuilt Soviet Union and use their legitimacy to launder drug money.
It made Dogin sick to contemplate, but Kosigan maintained that as long as he and his colleagues controlled the world's largest standing army, and Dogin ran the secret new surveillance operation in St. Petersburg, they would have nothing to fear from Shovich. He could be forced out at some later date, exiled to one of his residences in New York, London, Mexico City, Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires. Or he could be shot from the sky if he refused to go.
Dogin wasn't so sure of that, but there didn't seem to be any other option. He needed a lot of money to buy politicians and military officials, to wage an aggressive war without Kremlin assent. Unlike Afghanistan, this would be a war the Russians could win. But money was the key. How Marx would have bristled.
"I speak for myself," Dogin said to Shovich. "Your terms are acceptable to me. On the day Zhanin's govement is ousted and I am named President, the man you select will become the new Minister of the Interior."
Shovich smiled a cold, chilling smile. "What if I select myself'?"
Dogin felt a flash of horror, though he was too seasoned a politician to show it. "As I said, the choice is yours."
The tension of mutual distrust was thick when Kosigan broke it with a blustery, "What about the Ukraine? What about Vesnik?"
Dogin looked away from Shovich. "The President of Ukraine is with us."
"Why?" asked Shovich. "The Ukrainians have the independence they sought for decades."
"Vesnik has more social and ethnic problems than he or his military will be able to manage," Dogin said. "He wants to tamp them down before they get out of hand. We will help him do that. He also longs for the glory days, as Kosigan and I do." Dogin regarded the cold monster beside him. "My allies in Poland are planning to stage an event there on Tuesday, 12:30 A.M. local time."
"What kind of event?" Shovich asked.
"My spetsnaz assistant in St. Petersburg has already sent a secret team to the border town of Przemysl, Poland," Dogin said. "They'll arrange for an explosion at the Polish Communist Party office there. The Communists won't tolerate the attack, and my people there will make sure the protest turns violent. Polish troops will be sent in, and the struggle will spread toward the Ukrainian border six miles away. At night, in the confusion, Vesnik's troops will fire on the Polish forces."
"When that happens," Kosigan jumped in, "Vesnik will contact me to request military support. Zhanin will already have learned that he is outside the real circle of power. Now he will scramble to find out which generals are on his side, just like Yeltsin when his officers elected to pound Chechnya. He will have very few allies, and the politicians we're buying won't support him either. Poles of Ukrainian and Belorussian descent will also be persecuted. When the Ukrainians and I counterattack, White Russia will join us, bringing the front to within one hundred miles of Warsaw. Russians will be caught up in nationalistic frenzy while Zhanin's foreign bankers and businessmen desert him. He'll be finished."
"A key to our success," said Dogin, "is keeping the United States and Europe from becoming involved militarily." He looked at Shovich. "We will work on that diplomatically, claiming that this was not imperialism but an attack on the Federation. But if that doesn't work, the General has talked to you about threatening key officials—"
"I did," Kosigan said, "but Dmitri told me he has a better idea. Why don't you tell him, Dmitri?"
Dogin regarded Shovich as the mobster adjusted himself in his chair. Dogin sensed that Shovich did it just to make him wait. He settled back, crossed his leg, brushed mud from the side of his black boot.
"My people in America tell me that the FBI has gotten very good at 'counterpunching,' " Shovich said. "If we run gambling or drug operations, they merely try to contain us. But if we hit their people, they strike back hard. It keeps the streets from becoming a war zone. Since most of the mobsters are in this for the money, not for politics, they refuse to attack government targets. "
"Then what do you propose?" Dogin asked.
"An object lesson against a civilian target," Shovich said.
"To what end?" Dogin asked.
Kosigan answered, "To get America's undivided attention. When we have it, we tell them that if they leave us alone in Eastern Europe, there will be no further acts of terrorism. And we'll even turn over the terrorist, so that President Lawrence can look swift and decisive."
"Of course," Shovich said, "you will have to reimburse my colleagues in America for the loss of a man. But that will come out of your little treasure trove."
"Of course," Kosigan agreed. He reached for the bottle of vodka and regarded Dogin. "As we've said all along, Minister, all we need do is hold the U.S. off until the nightly news shows videos of soldiers who have been maimed or killed. The people of the United States will not tolerate American casualties. With the election just months away, President Lawrence will not intervene.
Dogin looked at Shovich. "What kind of civilian target will you strike?"
"I wouldn't know," he said with disinterest. "My people live there. Some of them are mercenaries and some of them are patriots. But whoever is picked will know how to strike at the American soul. I've left it entirely in their hands." He smiled humorlessly. "By this time tomorrow, we'll have seen it on the news."
"Tomorrow!" Kosigan said. "We are men of action!" He poured vodka in his and Shovich's cups. "Our friend Nikolai does not drink, so we'll allow him to toast us with tea." He raised his cup. "To our alliance."
As the men touched the rims of their cups together, Dogin felt a burning in his belly. This was a coup, a second Revolution. It was empire building, and people were going to die. But while he accepted that, he found it difficult to accept Shovich's casualness. The mobster had moved from the concept of kidnaping to killing as though there was no difference.
Dogin sipped his tea and reminded himself that this unholy marriage was necessary. Every leader made compromises to move forward. Peter the Great changed Russian art and industry with ideas he brought from Europe. German cooperation enabled Lenin to overthrow the Czar and withdraw from World War I. Stalin consolidated his power by murdering Trotsky as well as hundreds of thousands of others. Yeltsin forged alliances with the black marketeers to keep his economy from collapsing entirely.
Now he was collaborating with a gangster. At least Shovich was a Russian. Better that than going to the United States with hat in hand, begging for money and moral support as Gorbachev and now Zhanin had done.
As the others emptied their cups, Dogin avoided Shovich's eyes. He tried not to think of the means, only the ends. Instead, he envisioned a map on the wall of his office. A map of a grand new Soviet Union.