“The first use of nuclear weapons,” the former KGB man said sombrely once the door to Julian Christopher’s office had firmly clicked shut at his back, “would never have been sanctioned by the surviving Soviet High Command.”
Julian Christopher’s eyes narrowed a little; Dan French almost choked on his ire.
“What do you mean? The surviving Soviet High Command?”
The former KGB Colonel did not bat an eyelid. When he had been a young man he had once been so terrified in the presence of Iosif Vissarionovich that he had shit himself. In comparison to his one-time master there was very little either of the — admittedly very powerful — men in the cool, still, room beneath the bastion walls of the great Citadel of Mdina would do to frighten Arkady Rykov. A man who had survived nearly ten years in the inner circle of monsters like Stalin and Beria lost the capacity to be intimidated by any normal man.
The Russian had refused the offered chair.
He would have been a fool to tell his handlers and his new clients everything; and anyway, they would not have believed him until now so what would have been the point recklessly burning through all his credit with his former enemies all at once?
He clasped his hands behind his back.
He had no choice but to speak a little of the truth; if he did otherwise their distaste for him personally and for everything he represented professionally, would inevitably begin to erode his remaining credibility. Thereafter, his situation would become increasingly untenable and his mission would inevitably end in failure.
“You must understand that I have no specific intelligence in this matter. What I say now is speculation based on my knowledge of the plans that existed in the Soviet Union before the war. You must understand also that many different plans were developed because the Soviet High Command knew that it could not win a war against the West.”
Julian Christopher shrugged, held his peace.
The Russian picked his words with meticulous care.
“The USSR is a very large country with many, many secret places that neither you nor the Americans know about. Mother Russia is a very large country with very big bomb shelters buried very deeply in its holy soil. There was no general alert or alarm before your missiles and your bombs began to fall but do you truly believe that the members of the High Command were all standing on the balcony of the Kremlin waiting for the first ground burst in Red Square?”
Julian Christopher’s gaze narrowed further.
Arkady Rykov was a lean, dapper man in his forties of no more than average height. He had let his hair grow in recent weeks to cover the livid scars on his skull. Beneath his tailored grey suit his torso was a mass of scar tissue; x-rays showed old and recent fractures of ribs, his left forearm, several cracked vertebrae, crushed fingers and a dozen small pieces of shrapnel deeply imbedded in his back. He was handsome in a swarthy way with dark eyes that could be anything to anybody, depending upon the circumstance.
“Many members of the High Command, the Politburo, or whatever you wish to call it, would probably have survived the war, Admiral Christopher,” the Russian continued. “The Soviet Union in the west ceased to exist,” he shrugged, “probably. But what of the rest of the Mother Country? Strategic Air Command and your V-Bomber Force suffered over fifty percent losses on the night of the war. You can have no idea how many of those lost aircraft were shot down before they reached their targets. Nor, I suspect, have you or the Americans had the stomach for systematically overflying all your war objectives, let alone the huge tracts of Mother Russian that you never even targeted in the first place. After the Great Patriotic War the United States Air Force crawled through the ruins of all the cities and factories you had bombed in Germany and produced comprehensive reports of what they found. I am unaware of any similar post-war exercise having been conducted in the last year, Admiral.”
Julian Christopher ignored the Russian’s implicit insinuation the he really ought not to have to be telling his British masters any of this because they ought to have worked it out for themselves. He said nothing.
“History does not repeat itself,” Arkady Rykov said flatly, “but it teaches us hard lessons. When the Roman Empire in the West was over-run by barbarians; it moved to the East and survived for another thousand years.”
“Very pithy,” Dan French sniped.
“But undeniably apposite, Air Vice-Marshal.”
Julian Christopher leaned back in his chair.
“So what is Krasnaya Zarya Colonel Rykov?”
The former KGB man looked at him with grudging respect.
“A wild beast that the High Command was too wise to attempt to cage, Admiral. A wild beast that it unleashed upon its enemies. A wild beast it was happy to see slavering at the throats of the monsters responsible for destroying the western half of their empire. I have no love for my former masters, you understand, but I can see no circumstances in which they would have knowingly allowed Krasnaya Zarya maniacs to seize control of any part of their surviving nuclear weapons stockpile.”
Dan French jumped up from his chair and crossed his arms across his chest.
“You’re telling us that last week’s unprovoked thermonuclear first strike was some kind of miscalculation?”
“In the eyes of the High Command more of an unfortunate accident.”
“What about the weapon that was used to destroy HMS Amphion?”
“Another accident.”
“An accident?”
Arkady Rykov met the airman’s angry glare levelly.
“I have no crystal ball, gentlemen. I am a spy and an assassin who has a somewhat more than passing acquaintance with many of the likely players in our drama. I claim to have insights into the way they think but I know very little of what must have actually happened in the remotest corners of the Mother Country since the war. I can guess, I can speculate, but I know nothing for a fact. You, on the other hand, are military men with long and varied experiences of war. Within hours of the first strike — which appears to have been launched by at best people who did not know what they were doing, or at worst, by imbeciles — fighting ceases in Yugoslavia, Greece and Cyprus and the Red Dawn naval units encountered in the Eastern Mediterranean withdraw to the north. Add this to a simultaneous immediate cessation of enemy air activity and what does this tell you?”
“The recall order went out but not all Red Dawn units got the message?” Julian Christopher offered. “That might be consistent with the reports of fighting in Romania and Bulgaria, and in the Tran-Caucasus region.”
Dan French exhaled a long breath.
“You’re telling us that the Red Dawn zealots on the ship that HMS Amphion surfaced to challenge hadn’t got the message?”
Arkady Rykov had already told his interlocutors that he did not have a crystal ball; it would have been rude and ill-advised to have reminded them of the fact.
Chapter 12
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher had been happy to offer Lieutenant Alan Hannay, HMS Talavera’s Supply Officer, a ride to the Citadel. A week ago Alan Hannay had still been his father’s flag lieutenant and he had transferred to the destroyer in such a hurry that he had left all his personal kit in his old quarters at Mediterranean Fleet Headquarters. The younger man had also intimated he would like to pay his respects ‘to Miss Calleja’, if ‘that’s all right with you, sir’, while he was in Mdina.