“If this is the situation, then I will change my plans”, thundered the Minister. “Instead of replacing any one of you with another member from the reserve team, I will put the entire reserve team into action, all six of them, and you, all of you, I will just…”
The minister raised his right hand opposite the faces of the team members, rubbing his rough, stubby fingers as if grinding a clod of dirt into powder and blowing it to the wind.
“… and you I will scatter away.”
To Colonel Yevgeni and to his teammates, the Minister’s dramatic display of crushing a grain of dirt and blowing it to the wind seemed more like the scattering of their ashes after their untimely death. But then Yevgeni stood up from his seat opposite the Minister, who seemed momentarily shocked, just like every team member in the room. The Minister looked at the thin, bespectacled Colonel, who had not been granted permission to do whatever he was intending to do.
“Colonel Yevgeni, what’s come over you? Do you want to perform a trick on me now, trying to save your head?”
“No, Mr. Minister”, said Yevgeni in a hushed tone. “I have an idea which has been keeping me preoccupied since yesterday. I didn’t want to tell this to anybody, not even to Gregory, before I could check if this idea can be done, if it is feasible and executable, and what its probability of success is, not just in execution, but also in producing the desired outcome. In fact, I will present two different plans. One is easy and quick to execute but has one critical point that requires investigation. The second plan is complex and may be cumbersome and will require preliminary testing; however…”
The Minister interrupted Yevgeni angrily.
“Then don’t present me with the complex and cumbersome plan. You disqualify it just by saying it’s complex,”
Dimitri watched Yevgeni. He could only be impressed by the conduct and bearing of a man whose appearance completely belied his character. Yevgeni was not just very clever; he had courage.
“Mr. Minister, the second plan is indeed complex and will require time for testing, but in my opinion, this plan can be the ultimate operation. It will take me about twenty minutes to explain both plans without going into detail. If the Honorable Minister is in a hurry, I can present the data to Gregory first and he will…”
The Minister looked at his watch in disdain and looked at Yevgeni again.
“Now Colonel, don’t try to run my schedule. You have fifteen minutes precisely. Carry on.”
Yevgeni breathed a little easier and immediately proceeded to present his plans.
“In the first plan, we would send a bomber from our Air Force to fly at low altitude, under our radar cover and that of the Americans. The bomber will enter Alaska, turn back and pull up to a high altitude and execute the precise attack flight path that we know, the same one that the American B-52 bombers have been practicing for years. Then, we fly out of Alaska in our direction, as if to Siberia, and practice firing nuclear missiles at the east of our country. This work can be done with one Tupolev 22 bomber, which will fire a nuclear missile into a relatively barren area in eastern Siberia. We can create effects or elements around this that will lend reliability to this action, to look as if it were an American attack, a belligerent act using nuclear weapons on our territory. We can, for example, alert our anti-aircraft missile batteries of an American bomber that is about to enter our airspace that is equipped with all our radar and friend or foe codes. This way we ensure that our anti-aircraft missile batteries shoot down the Tupolev 22 when it returns from Alaska and is detected entering our airspace.
“We can continue to reinforce our cover story to seem totally reliable.”
“Go on, Colonel”, Marshal Budarenko was beginning to show curiosity, though still glancing at his watch.
“We can, for example, send our friends in Vietnam a transport plane that will bring real fragments of an American B-52 bomber from there. They have plenty of those. We then plant them in the field and on treetops, and the media would have a feast.
“This plan is very easy to execute; however, it has one big flaw. Half the world, including everybody in the Soviet Union and in the Kremlin, would actually believe that it was an American attack; on the other hand, the other half of the world, especially the Americans, will know for certain that it is a conspiracy. If we add to that the vast armored forces that we will concentrate in the west of the country, I have no doubt that the Americans will understand that this is a deception and they will call a red alert. This way they will face us ahead of time, ready for action, even before we start our ground operations in Western Europe.”
Colonel Yevgeni paused, took a sip of water, and looked intently at the Minister of Defense, trying to decipher the level of interest or any sign of curiosity for the plan that he had just laid out.
“Okay, I understand”, the minister said matter-of-factly and scratched his head. “And what is the second plan, that you think can be perfect? ”
Yevgeni quickly drank some more water before he continued.
“In the second plan, I am actually going back to the American nuclear submarines. The goal is to employ sophisticated means of deception to cause an American submarine to launch a real nuclear missile into our territory. If this really happens, and the Americans will be certain that it is indeed their submarine which attacked us, then our ground invasion of Western Europe will be totally justified. We need to find one such submarine that is navigating underwater in the North Sea, not very far from Soviet territory, and they do conduct quite a few of these navigation exercises. The purpose is to create an effect near the submarine that simulates a nuclear blast. The precise location of the blast must be such that it will provide the submarine with data of a big nuclear explosion that has taken place far from them. The course to the epicenter of the blast will lead to the United States of America. This means that for the submarine, all data would indicate a nuclear attack on American soil.”
Yevgeni then reached for the glass of water and drank the rest of it in one big gulp. He cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Now I am getting to the two main points. From my experience in the field, I know that a nuclear explosion causes an immediate communication block that lasts for quite a long time. We will create this communication block, or simulate it by means of electronic warfare. Maybe even combine this with aerial scattering of metal chaff, similar to that which is used for jamming radars. The captain of the submarine that we target will also know that a nuclear explosion causes a communication block. The result will be that he would be unable to contact his headquarters in the US, another indication that his homeland has indeed been attacked by nuclear weapons. All that this submarine captain can do is what he was trained to do in his many years of training, and that is to launch a Trident missile or a batch of missiles at us. This is more or less the plan, Mr. Minister.”
Marshal Budarenko lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
“Colonel Yevgeni, come here and stand by me.”
Yevgeni seemed deeply ill at ease, but he hurried to stand beside the minister. His posture was the antithesis of a military man and he tried, without success, to stop his hands from shaking. The minister noticed it.
“It looks to me, Colonel, that you must be threatened into creativity”, said the minister to Yevgeni, who heaved a sigh of relief.
“Mr. Minister”, said the colonel meekly, “can I also light a cigarette?”
All the officers in the room froze. Yevgeni’s request was contrary to Russian military culture, violating every convention, and it meant only one thing: untold insubordination. Gregory, the think tank supervisor and ethics authority, looked livid. The other officers looked on in disbelief as the Minister passed his own pack of Marlboro Reds to Yevgeni.