“I know the General Secretary is a man of honor”, President Butler said to Svetlana, “and I accept his proposal. I give you my word, and so it will be. I will be delighted to speak to him again tomorrow. Thank you, Ma’am, and good night.”
“Good night, Mister President.”
The President got to his feet, thanked Vitaly and shook his hand, and addressed his Minister of Defense.
“Secretary Manning, you heard the agreement we have reached with the Leader of the Soviet Union, right? At 22:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time you de-escalate our forces to DEFCON 3. Activate all our Intelligence sources to ensure that all Soviet forces in East Germany will indeed be ordered to stop where they are and that they obey this order.”
The head of the KGB hurried into the office of the Party General Secretary. Displaying his pride in their friendship, the General Secretary rose up, walked around his large desk and took a seat next to the head of the KGB.
“Thank you for arriving so quickly.”
“Mister Secretary, you did ask me to remain close by today, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Unfortunately, Sir, I have news that you may not like, and it all has to do with Marshal Budarenko’s activity.”
The Party Secretary nodded. He looked resigned.
“Nothing you say can surprise me anymore. I’ve just finished speaking with United States President. They caught one survivor from the trawler, and the survivor is Colonel Nazarbayev. The Colonel understood that he had been betrayed and he told them everything — everything. He told them of his meetings with the Minister, the plan, the nuclear shell that he himself fired from the trawler. He told them everything.
“You understand that this deranged Marshal Budarenko wanted the Americans to fire nuclear missiles at us from their submarine just so he could have a reason to conquer half the world with his tanks? Do you understand in what hands our national security rests? Now listen to my orders. I command you to arrest the Minister of Defense immediately, and all his team of aides and advisers — the whole gang. Arrest the Commander of the Navy, the Commander of the Naval Base in Murmansk and the Commander of the Air Force. I want all of them in jail tonight. Each and every single one of them! Also, arrest the traitors from his secret team.”
The General Secretary’s voice grew louder and louder, and his face reddened as he spoke.
“First of all, I want them all in jail, and then they can try to prove their innocence. If you know of any other rogue criminals, arrest them too. You don’t need my preapproval. Do what needs to be done and do it quickly.”
The General Secretary leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette, something he didn’t do very often.
“I really don’t know who I can consult with from among the Politburo members. Who can I trust and who should I mistrust? This is absurd. What the hell am I going to do with the military? At exactly 10 o’clock Greenwich Mean Time I’m stopping all the forces in their tracks. But what should I do with them? If I bring them back home, they might rise against me because I threw their greatly beloved and admired Marshal into jail. On the other hand, if they stay so close to the German border, the Americans will think that I’m toying with them, and every little skirmish there on the border might develop into total war.”
The head of the KGB, who had so far listened intently to the General Secretary, sat up in his chair.
“Mister Secretary, perhaps you should fly to the front and meet with the commanders there, and brief them about the Minister of Defense’s conspiracy. I will come with you.”
“I think you’re right. I’ll fly there tomorrow morning, but you — I need you here. You will have your hands full. You’ll have to guard the Motherland until I return.”
The head of the KGB solemnly placed his hand on his chest and looked directly into the eyes of the General Secretary.
“Go in peace and return in peace, Mister Secretary. I am responsible for everything here running as it should.”
The Party General Secretary remained in his large office by himself. He lit another cigarette and savored every puff. Tomorrow I will stand before all the commanders of the Soviet Armed Forces; the commanders of the armies, divisions and maybe even brigades, he thought to himself. I’ll either be buried over there, or I will return as the supreme, undisputed leader of this great nation of the Soviet States.
The great hangar in a German Democratic Republic Air Force base was packed with the top echelons of the Red Army. The hundreds of officers sat on their chairs in suspense. Just a few hours ago, they had received the order to stop where they were, and now they had been summoned for an unscheduled meeting with their supreme leader, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, the most powerful man in the Soviet Union.
The feeling among many of the participants was that the Secretary had come to give them his personal blessing directly before they climbed into their tanks and crossed the border into West Germany.
They all rose to attention as the General Secretary entered the hall and stepped up the stage and then, without preamble, he began recounting the story of their former Minister of Defense, Marshal Budarenko, to his stunned audience; of his conspiracy and betrayal against himself, against the Armed Forces and against the Soviet nation. The General Secretary gave the officers details of the former minister’s actions, and also informed them of the arrests that had been made the previous night and those that were still being made as he spoke.
A hum of whispers was heard from the crowd of officers. The Secretary silenced them with a motion of his hand.
“I have come here to you to hear your decision. Do you wish to fight a World War, or do you wish to go back home to the Motherland and to your families? It is from you that a new leadership will rise for our great Red Army. It is from you that a reliable and loyal leadership will rise for the Motherland and for Socialism.”
The Secretary ended his speech and watched the officers in the hall, who had fallen into complete silence. The officers sneaked looks around them, and closely examined the reactions of their more senior officers, who were seated in the first rows.
Then all of a sudden, an Army commander, a Major General, rose to his feet in the first row. The officers looked at him in anticipation.
“Long live Comrade General Secretary Vladimir Petrovich Yermolov, Leader of the Soviet Union!” the Army commander called out in a thundering voice.
Within seconds, the whole hangar was shaking with cries of: “Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!”
The General Secretary remained standing on the stage, finally allowing himself a broad smile, for the first time in many days.
It was late at night when Svetlana, the General Secretary’s private secretary, retired to her home after a day’s work. She wanted to relax and catch up on her sleep, which had been so lacking in the past few days.
Someone knocked on her door. Svetlana looked through the peephole and there stood a young man in uniform. He held a bouquet of flowers.
Svetlana felt as if she were about to faint. Her hand shook as she opened the door, gave the messenger a 10-ruble note, took the bouquet quickly, and locked the door behind her. She stood there for a long moment, leaning against the door, while her hands, still holding the bouquet of flowers, shook violently. She was obviously shocked.
The bouquet was quite an unusual one, containing a mix of flowers of different types and colors. She walked to the dining room table and placed the flowers there, then sat down in a chair.
Her hands still shaking, she began taking the bouquet apart and separating the flowers, one by one, by colors and types. The table was now completely covered with flowers of different groups. She counted the flowers one by one according to their types and quickly jotted down letters and numbers on a sheet of paper.