There was a lengthy pause from Bonn. Filippov was going to ask Schramm if he was still on the line when the German foreign minister finally asked, “So the attack against Albania was not a retaliatory strike, but only the beginning of a campaign to secure land and rights to build this pipeline to Europe?”
“I cannot comment further on this morning’s events,” Filippov repeated. He certainly could not — he had no idea what had happened except that a NATO radar plane was a burning hunk of metal in Macedonia. But his word rang true, loud and clear. A secret attack on Albania to secure pipeline rights? Kazakov was just crazy enough to do something like that … “As for the rights to build a pipeline — we do not want bloodshed. We hope to convince the respective governments in southern Europe to participate in this lucrative and important expansion.”
“I see,” Schramm said woodenly. Any person could hear the words between the words, the thinly veiled threat. “We will talk more of this, Minister Filippov.”
Filippov hung up the phone, feeling as drained and shaky as if he had just run a two-kilometer sprint. “What … in … hell is going on?” he shouted to his aide. “What in hell just happened?”
“It sounded to me,” his aide replied with a smile, “that you have just negotiated an alliance with Germany to divide the Balkans between you, sir.”
“But what about Albania?” Filippov asked. “What happened in Albania?”
The aide shrugged and replied, “Does it matter now, sir?”
THREE
Zhukovsky Might Research Center,
Bykovo (Moscow), Russia
“Everyone freeze! This is a raid! No one move!”
The uniformed Spetsnaz shock troops burst into the Metyor Aerospace building without warning, automatic weapons drawn, thirty minutes past midnight. They quickly fanned oat through the first floor of the building. They were followed by plainclothes Glavnoe Razvedivatel’noe Upravlenie (GRU), General Staff Intelligence Directorate, agents, with bulletproof vests under their long coats, carrying small automatic pistols.
Pyotr Fursenko and Pavel Kazakov were sitting in Fursenko’s office when the agents burst in without any further warning, guns leveled. Kazakov was casually sipping a glass of fine French sherry and enjoying a Cuban cigar; Fursenko was nervously guzzling coffee and chain-smoking bitter Egyptian cigarettes. “How much longer were you going to make us wait?” Kazakov asked, with a smile. They did not answer, but roughly hauled both of them to their feet, out of the office, and out to the main hangar floor.
There, surrounded by plainclothed agents and uniformed Spetsnaz special forces commandos, was Sergey Yejsk, President Sen’kov’s national security advisor, and Colonel-General Valeriy Zhurbenko, chief of the general staff. Fursenko looked at both men in wide-eyed shock. Pavel Kazakov merely smiled and looked directly at Yejsk and Zhurbenko, in turn.
Yejsk nodded to the officer in charge of his detail, and he had his men roughly search both civilians. Fursenko looked horrified, his body jerking away at every soldier’s touch; Kazakov merely allowed the search without resisting, smiling confidently at Yejsk. The soldiers put the two men’s hands up to the backs of their heads, then slapped the hands with the barrels of their rifles to warn them to keep them there. When the soldiers were finished, Yejsk stepped over first to Kazakov, who looked directly back at him, and then over to Fursenko, who looked very much like a doe caught in headlights.
Yejsk stepped closer to Fursenko until he was almost nose to nose with him and asked, “Do you know who I am?” The scientist nodded. “Do you know who these men are?” This time a shake of his head. “They are the men that will tear this building apart piece by piece, take you to prison, and throw you naked into a cold four-by-four-foot cell if I do not like the answers you give to my questions. Do you understand?”
Fursenko nodded so hard, every soldier in the hangar could see it. Kazakov merely smiled. “That’s an easy one,” he said. “Are you done? Can we go now?” His guard whacked him on the side of his head with the barrel of his rifle.
“I will give you an easy one, Doctor — where is the bomber?”
“Which bomber?” Now it was Fursenko’s turn to get a shot to the head.
A soldier ran up to Zhurbenko and whispered in his ear. “What is the combination to that door lock, Doctor?” Zhurbenko asked. Fursenko gave it to him instantly, and moments later they had the secure hangar door open and the lights on. Inside they found nothing but an aircraft skeleton, roughly resembling the Metyor-179 bomber, with several large pieces of composite material, wiring, and engine parts scattered around the polished floor. “What is that?” Yejsk shouted.
“Our latest project, the Metyor-179. It didn’t work,” Fursenko replied uneasily.
“The real Metyor-179. Where is it?”
“It’s right there, sir,” Fursenko replied. “That’s all there’s left of it.”
“Ni kruti mn’e yaytsa! Don’t twist my balls!” Yejsk stepped up close to Fursenko and slapped him backhandedly across the face. “One more time, Doctor — where is the Metyor-179?”
“Stop hitting the poor doctor on the head, Yejsk,” Kazakov said. “You don’t want to ruin that fine brain of his.”
“Zakroy yibala! Shut your fucking mouth!” Yejsk shouted. “I should do the world a favor and put a bullet in your brain right now!”
“That’s not why you came here, Yejsk, or we’d be dead already,” Kazakov said. “But of course, then you would be, as well.” His eyes fell, and he motioned down, inviting Yejsk to look. Yejsk and Zhurbenko glanced down at their crotches and saw tiny red dots of light dancing on their clothing right near their genitals. They looked at all the soldiers in the hangar and saw red laser dots on their heads, their shoulders, and their crotches — every man had at least three dots on him, all centered on areas not protected by bulletproof vests.
“You dare threaten me?” Yejsk cried out, beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. “I will tear down everything you own and dump it into the Black Sea, and then I will have your broken corpses tossed on top of it all.”
“Well, well, General Yejsk, you are beginning to sound just like a gangster,” Kazakov said. His eyes narrowed, and the casual, relaxed, amused smile disappeared. “We stop the bullshit now, Yejsk. You came here on the orders of the president to find out what we’re doing and to get in on the action.” Yejsk glared at Kazakov, but Kazakov knew that he had guessed correctly. “Now, I suggest we send all of these security men home for the evening, and let’s talk business.”
“You had better cooperate with us, or you’ll wish you were back humping goats in Kazakhstan,” Yejsk said angrily. With a wave of his hand, Yejsk dismissed the Spetsnaz troops, leaving only two personal bodyguards. He could see none of Kazakov’s men in the rafters anymore — but they hadn’t seen them up there the first time, either. The rumors were obviously true — Kazakov had an army of former Spetsnaz commandos, well-trained and now well-paid and loyal, working for him.
“Where is the bomber, Pavel?” Zhurbenko asked. “We know it departed here two hours before the attack against Kukes, Albania, and now it’s missing.”
Kazakov lit up a cigar, then offered one to Zhurbenko and Yejsk — Zhurbenko accepted. “It’s safe, being hidden in several different secret locations in three or four different countries.”