Hawke smiled, trying hard to remember his father as he had lived and not how he had died, murdered at the hands of drug-smuggling pirates aboard his boat in the Caribbean.
The Russian spy seemed to pick up on the younger man’s feelings and said brightly, “Well, Alex, Sir David thinks I might be of some help to you when you arrive in Moscow.”
“Any assistance will be most appreciated,” Hawke said.
“Yes, Alex,” C said. “I thought we’d just give Stefan the floor this morning, let him give us a bit of an update, and then I’m sure he’d be happy to take any questions. Does that suit everyone? And let’s keep it informal, shall we? If you have a question, pipe up.”
They all nodded, and Halter picked up a slender remote from the table. Suddenly, a slide appeared on a heretofore invisible wall-sized screen at the far end of the room. An old photograph of Vladimir Putin filled the wall.
“Dear Volodya,” Halter began. “Now wasting away at a hideous island prison off St. Petersburg called Energetika. A very bad business, indeed. A sad end, I must say, for a man who did do an enormous service for his country, despite his many flaws.”
“What service?” Brock said, somewhat aggressively. Putin, in his book anyway, was an ex-KGB tough busy building a police state when he’d been disappeared. Shutting down the free press, arresting dissidents like Kasparov, and throwing them into Lubyanka with no access to attorneys. Among other things.
“You have to look at it from the Russian perspective. Is he pro-democracy? Not exactly. But-the country was in free fall. A kleptocracy, run by criminals throughout the nineties, thieves who shipped countless billions offshore, bankrupting the country. Humiliated by the loss of the Cold War and what was seen as American arrogance. Putin restored order, gave the people back their pride, put the oligarchs in prison or at least out of the way. That’s a service.”
“If I may add to that,” Sir David said, “it was Putin who put the final nails into the Communist Party’s coffin as well.”
“Still, democracy never had a chance,” Pippa said, looking at Stefan for confirmation.
“Yes, actually, it did, Pippa. But there was no infrastructure to support it, and so, sadly, it led to chaos. And at any rate, as I say, Putin was never a Western-style democrat at heart. He was a professional KGB officer. You must remember the KGB, wherein he grew up, isn’t remotely interested in ideology. It’s interested in power. And law and order. And that, frankly, is what the Russians craved after all those years of drunken disorder inside the Kremlin and blood in the streets. They were shamed and humiliated. That’s why the country has now reunited so strongly against the West.”
Another slide appeared. The current president, Vladimir Rostov.
“Our fearless leader,” Halter said. “He’s basically pursuing Putin’s goals but with a much more aggressive anti-Western posture. I assume you’re all familiar with the term irredentism?”
Hawke, Trulove, and Brock came up with blank stares.
“Irredentism,” Pippa Guinness said in a sing-song schoolgirl manner Hawke found especially irritating, “the annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity and/or prior historical possession, actual or alleged.”
“I was going to say that,” Harry Brock said, and Hawke smiled at him across the table.
“Can you use irredentism in a sentence, Harry?” Hawke asked.
“No. And you can’t make me.”
Both men laughed out loud, earning a stern look from C, who continued.
“Miss Guinness is quite correct. I believe Rostov is a determined imperialist who won’t stop until the old borders of the former Soviet empire are restored. Eastern Europe, the Baltics, et cetera. He, too, grew up as a KGB man in the Cold War. All he understands is conflict, the clash of two systems. He doesn’t give a bloody fuck about personal ethics, it’s all about the conflict. You’re either with us or against us.”
“Precisely right,” Professor Halter said, nodding vigorously.
“Revanchist Russia wants a fight, any fight,” Sir David Trulove said. “Witness their recent bullying of independent Ukraine and Georgia, two former vassal states, both desperately hopeful of joining NATO. Rostov also wants to take on the West now, because he sees it as weakened. Win, lose, or draw, Russia is back on stage as a world power. And, because of their vast energy holdings, and the price of oil, they’ve got enormous cash reserves. They can also shut off the flow of energy to Europe at the slightest provocation. They won’t be bullied, I daresay.”
“Quite true, Sir David. Now, these men,” Stefan said, flipping through slides of various Kremlin personalities, “are called the siloviki. The president’s hand-picked innermost circle. There used to be twelve, but two were recently eliminated for crossing the line. All are former military and KGB cronies of Rostov’s. They are like a brotherhood. A secret fraternity. They look the same, talk the same, think the same. And they now have unassailable control over the levers of power. They control the Duma, the parliament, all the governors and mayors throughout Russia, the legal system, the tax system, and, of course, the military and the KGB.”
“A one-party system?” Hawke asked.
“Exactly. Two-party politics is finished in Russia. The Kremlin now has unchecked power. They’ve got all the instruments at their disposal, and it is a very, very dangerous situation. Washington-Moscow nuclear tensions are at the highest levels seen since the end of the Cold War.”
“What’s Moscow’s current attitude toward the U.S.?” Brock asked, “I mean specifically.”
“Are you familiar with the Russian word nashe, Mr. Brock?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Roughly translated, it means ‘ours.’ As in ‘ours’ versus ‘yours,’ meaning American. Nashe is a buzzword in Moscow these days. Anything nashe, anything Russian, is good, anything American is bad. Music, politics, culture, what have you. It’s all about Russian pride reasserting itself.”
“So, negative feelings toward America.”
“Extremely negative. Within both the government and the general population. Everyone in Russia feels betrayed by America. The media is full of anti-American propaganda, of course. Day and night, because all media is state-run now.”
“What are they saying?” Hawke asked.
“That the Americans are stupid, greedy, and the cause of more instability around the world than any other nation. That they rubbed Russia’s nose in it at the end of the Cold War, but now Russia is strong and rich once more. And now the revanchists shall have their revenge.”
“Revenge?” Hawke asked. “Revenge for what?”
“For kicking their bloody arses in the Cold War, Alex. And then having the cheek never to let them forget who’s boss,” Stefan said.
“And do we have any idea how they intend to exact that revenge?” Hawke asked.
“No. Exactly what they intend, we’ve no idea. We’re hoping that Red Banner will help us find out.”
“The Pentagon doesn’t see them starting a shooting war,” Brock said. “They’re in no position to do that now. Someday soon, perhaps, but not now.”
“What about the so-called Third Man?” Hawke asked.
“Now you’re getting to it, Alex,” Stefan Halter said. “You’re referring to the three chaps Yeltsin met with at that Belarussian hunting resort. The vodka-fueled meeting where they unilaterally decided to abolish the Soviet Union. There was Kravchuk from the Ukraine and Shushkevich from Belarus. And a third man, as you say, who has never been identified.”
“But who has long been rumored as the power behind the throne,” C said. “A virtual Tsar who rules but is never seen or heard. A man who destroyed the old Soviet Union so that he might one day reign over the New Russia.”