The answer was clear: build his own pipeline. Neither the Russian Federation nor the newly independent Republic of Kazakhstan had money for this, so Kazakov took it upon himself to beg, borrow, and enlist the help of dozens of financiers around the world. He raised more than two and a half billion dollars and started the largest oil and gas pipeline project in the world, a nine-hundred-and-thirty-mile behemoth line from Tengiz, Kazakhstan, to Novorossiysk, Russia, on the Black Sea. Capable of transporting almost a million and a half barrels of oil a day, with expansion possibilities to almost two million barrels per day, the pipeline had opened up previously abandoned terminals and pipelines on the Black Sea in Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Although Kazakov had to pay huge sums in fees, taxes, leases, and bribes to the Russian and Kazakh governments, he still became one of the wealthiest individuals in Europe.
He used his newfound wealth and started investing in supertankers and refineries, shifting from the oil-producing and — pumping business to the shipment and refining business. The refineries in Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Turkey were happy to have him oversee operations, and they made Kazakov even wealthier. He modernized a half-dozen facilities in those three countries, making them far more efficient and cleaner than any yet developed in Eastern Europe.
But his core problem still remained: his main customer was still Russia or Russian client-states of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and their oil refining industry was one of the worst in the world, hopelessly outdated and inefficient. Kazakov could pump it profitably, but he lost money every time he sold product to the CIS, because they could not afford to pay very much for it and payments sometimes took a long time. The real money lay in shipping oil to Western European refineries, and that meant shipping oil through the Bosporus Straits into the Mediterranean. The problem was, the number of tankers transiting the Straits was already huge — an average of ten supertankers a day, added to all the other traffic in the Straits, meant wasted time and money, not to mention the tariffs Turkey extracted for each barrel of oil passing through its country. Despite his enormous wealth, Kazakov was a runt among giants when it came to competing with multinational Western oil producers.
Naturally, as Pavel Gregorievich Kazakov’s wealth and prestige grew, so did the rumors. Most claimed he was a Russian Mafia boss, with an organization more influential and powerful than the Russian government; others said he was a drug dealer, tapping into Kazakhstan’s other major export — heroin — and using his contacts in both the East and West to transport thousands of pounds of heroin per month throughout Europe; others said he was a spy for the Americans, or the Chinese, or the Japanese, or whoever happened to be the scapegoat of the month.
The bottom line for Colonel-General Zhurbenko was this: no one, not even he, with all his access to military and civilian intelligence resources, knew for sure. That made Pavel Kazakov a very, very dangerous man, and an even more dangerous adversary. Zhurbenko had too many children, grandchildren, dachas, mistresses, and foreign bank accounts to risk stirring up the mud trying to find out — he was sure Kazakov could take all of them for himself if he chose.
Which is why when Kazakov asked that question about his mother, Zhurbenko replied nervously, “Of course not, Pavel,” taking a deep sip of whiskey to calm his nerves. When he looked over at Kazakov again, he saw the young entrepreneur’s eyes shaded in the interior lights of the back of the limo, hooded — like a snake’s, he thought. “You know as well as 1, Paveclass="underline" the Army hasn’t been the same since our humiliation in Afghanistan. We could not even bring a bunch of ragtag goat herders to heel there. Afterward, we couldn’t defeat one rebel army in our own backyard, even if they were just some unemployed factory workers with a few black market guns. Vilnius, Tbilisi, Baku, Dushanbe, Tiraspol, Kiev, Lvov, Grozny twice — the once feared Red Army has become little more than a bump in the road for any two-bit revolutionary.”
“You let those Albanian peasants chop up my father like a suckling pig!” Kazakov said hotly. “What are you going to do about it? Nothing! What did I read in Interfax this morning? The Russian government is considering removing its peacekeeping forces from Kosovo? Seventeen soldiers are slaughtered by KLA marauders, and now the government wants to turn tail and run? I thought surely we would send a battalion of shock troops or a helicopter assault brigade into Albania and mow down every last one of the rebel bases!”
“We have only four thousand troops in Kosovo now, Pavel,” Zhurbenko argued. “We barely have enough operating funds to keep them minimally operational—”
“‘Minimally operational’? For God’s sake, General, our troops are having to forage for food! If I were in charge, I’d take one evening, send in an entire brigade to the last man, and blow every known or suspected KLA base to hell, capture their supplies, interrogate the prisoners, bum their homes, and to hell with world opinion! At the very least, it would give our soldiers something to do. At best, it would allow them to avenge the deaths of their brothers in arms.”
“I agree fully with your passion and your anger, young Pavel, but how little you know of politics or how to prosecute a war,” Zhurbenko said, trying to keep the tone of his voice lighthearted. Kazakov took an angry gulp of whiskey. Zhurbenko certainly did not want to get on this man’s evil side, he thought as he tried to appear as understanding and sympathetic as he could. “It takes time, planning, and most important, money, to execute an operation such as that.”
“My father invaded Pristina with less than twelve hours’ notice, with troops that were barely qualified to do the job.”
“Yes, he did,” Zhurbenko had to admit, although it was not the city of Pristina, just the little regional airport. “Your father was a true leader of men, a risk taker, a born warrior in the tradition of the Slavic kings.” That seemed to placate Kazakov.
But in the intervening silence, Zhurbenko turned over the question in his mind. Go into Kosovo with a brigade? It would take months, perhaps half a year, to mobilize twenty thousand troops to do anything, and the entire world would know about it long before the first regiment was loaded up. No. It was silly. Kosovo was a lose-lose situation. The murder of Colonel Kazakov and sixteen other soldiers in Kosovo only reinforced what Zhurbenko already knew — Russia needed to get out of Kosovo. Kazakov was certainly a brilliant businessman and engineer, but he knew nothing of the simplest mechanisms of modern warfare.
But perhaps a smaller force, one or two light armored battalions, even a Spetsnaz airborne regiment. Pavel Kazakov’s father had parachuted in an infantry company right onto Pristina Airport, right under NATO’s nose, and caught the world off guard. It hadn’t been a shock force, just a regular infantry unit — Zhurbenko was sure all its members hadn’t even been jump-qualified at the time. A well-trained Spetsnaz unit of similar size, perhaps reinforced by air, would be ten times more effective. Why couldn’t they do it again? NATO’s presence in Kosovo was only a bit smaller than it was in 1999, but now they were deeply entrenched in their own little sectors, in secure little compounds, not daring to roam around too much. The Kosovo Liberation Army had free rein. But they weren’t regulars — they were guerrilla fighters. Dangerous, even deadly in the right situation, but no match for a Russian special forces team on a search-and-destroy mission.