The Minister of Industry, Ostap Tarasovich Onyshenko, coughed. “That assumes, of course, that we neutralise both the European nuclear deterrent and the prospect of American intervention,” he said. “Can you guarantee that we can accomplish both?”
Nekrasov smiled thinly. “All warfare is based on risk,” he said. “We can knock out most of the nuclear deterrent in the first round. Olga?”
Olga Dmitriyevna Sedykh, the Foreign Minister, spoke from her part of the table. “The Americans are fully committed in the Middle East and Korea, where the North Koreans are preparing to launch an attack against the south. We have said nothing about this, of course; Kang is unlikely to need encouragement from us to attack either the Americans or his southern brothers. The rift between Europe and America is a deep and apparently permanent one; the Americans no longer have an obligation to come to Europe’s rescue. We expect that they will protest and secure Iceland, somewhere where we are not even preparing to threaten; even if they intend to interfere, they will have very limited forces at hand to interfere.”
She paused. “The main danger is the American ABM units in Poland,” she concluded. “They have to be neutralised… carefully. We cannot afford to give the President a bloody flag to wave.”
“I have a specialised unit prepared for that mission,” Shalenko assured her. “If nothing else, avenging the insult offered to us in Iran will seem like an excuse for the American public, as unreasonable as the Americans are on such matters.”
“In any case, they would hesitate, I think, before becoming embroiled with us,” Nekrasov said. “They will be confused, at first, as to what is actually going on. Maksim; what about our security?”
Maksim Nikolayevich Zaripov, FSB Director of External Intelligence, smiled. “There have been no signs that anyone within the American or European intelligence services suspects the existence of Operation Stalin,” he said. “We have very good penetration of the establishment in Brussels and Poland and while the Poles are worried about the presence of so many Russian soldiers in Belarus, to say nothing of the influx of refugees, they do not have any actual proof that we mean them ill. The greatest proof, I think, is the ROE that Brussels gave to the three EUROFOR deployments; Poland, Ukraine and Bosnia. All of the units have no authority to so much as blow their noses without permission from Brussels.”
“Requested in triplicate, of course,” Admiral Petr Yegorovich Volkov said. “Fifty-page forms, no mistakes, in three different languages.”
There were some chuckles. “I believe that our security remains intact,” Zaripov said. “Our deployment of submarines and weapons to the Algerians and Serbs has excited some comment, but nothing major; the main complaint is that we have been muscling out their weapon manufactures when it comes to sales to the Far East. For some reason, not many people trust European weapons.”
Shalenko smiled. The French had supplied weapons to Iran, weapons that they could turn off at will… and they had been caught at it. The Americans had forced the French to hand over the shutdown codes; the final radio broadcasts from Tehran had warned the entire world of the danger. The integrated European defence industry had taken a major drop in sales.
Nekrasov tapped the table. “Margarita?”
Shalenko found his eyes turning to Margarita Sergeyevna Pushkina, the FSB Director of External Operations, with interest. She was pretty, but dangerous; she was known as the ‘Black Widow’ behind her back. There were rumours that Nekrasov and Margarita were lovers, but informed opinion tended to disregard the possibility; the idea of the Black Widow having anything to do with anything as soft as love…
“We have established penetration of all of the countries within Europe, some of them through the use of long-term FSB sleeper agents, others with the assistance of the Algerians,” Margarita said. Her voice was soft and very musical, but there was a hard edge that undercut her dark-haired appearance and soft skin. “This has the added advantage that if the Europeans stumble onto some parts of our network, the Algerians and radical Islam will get the blame. The Algerian plan for a major uprising can, with our help, succeed to a certain extent.”
She smiled. There was no humour in the smile. “The Islamic Government of Algeria has been plotting its war for a long time,” she said. “Their problem was that they would get their arse kicked if they tried it alone; with our help, they have a fair chance at pulling it off long enough for us to make our gains permanent. Afterwards… well, it’s not as if we owe them anything. They have been smuggling in weapons and preparing terror cells for years; we took advantage of the opportunity to move some of our own people into the region.”
She paused. “I should stress that this part of the plan could fail,” she admitted. “I have every confidence that our own people will carry out their missions or die trying, but I don’t trust the fanatics the Algerians have been sending in, or the Palestinians who took up residence in France. Some of them probably suspect that we intend to stab them in the back as soon as we secure all of the vital targets, others will intend personal revenge, rather than anything that might help us. As long as they keep the French and Spanish busy…”
It went on and on; Shalenko found his head getting heavy as every last part of the plan was reviewed, examined, hacked apart and rebuilt and finally approved. The planners had built friction into the plan; Shalenko was too old a dog to expect that everything would go perfectly, even if the first steps of the plan were played to perfection. Over a million soldiers, sailors and airmen, some of them Kontraktniki officers, had been prepared for their mission; thousands of tanks, aircraft, missiles and warships had been produced for the greatest military attack that the world had ever seen. Nothing would ever be the same again…
“I think that we have taken care of every detail that we can control,” Nekrasov said finally, after the details of the diplomatic offensive had been examined. “Are there any final issues we must cover?”
There was a pause. Stalin would never have said anything like that, or at least he would never have meant it.
“There is a point,” Shalenko said. “We must avoid causing atrocities, at least until we are firmly in control, that involve the general population. If they believe that they have a future under our rule, sir, they will be less inclined to fight to the death.”
Nekrasov looked briefly at him, and then at FSB General Vasiliy Alekseyevich Rybak. Rybak was known, not without reason, as the ‘Butcher of Chechnya;’ he had brought peace to the region, the peace of the grave. He had also been mocked mercilessly because of his name. The International Criminal Court had tried to indict him; the Russian Government had told them to go to hell.
“We will have to establish control as quickly as possible,” Rybak protested. He met Nekrasov’s eyes. “We cannot tolerate defiance, but we can try to ensure that there are no… incidents.”
“Good,” Nekrasov said firmly. “Revenge can wait until we have won the war; we cannot take the risk of doing the Europeans a small injury, after all.” He looked once around the room. “In a month, Operation Stalin will begin… and the global balance of power will shift towards us. Good luck to us all.”
Chapter Three: They Also Serve…
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.