'I guess it is,' said Jimmy. 'And I'm going to record all of this in my files. But I'm not quite sure why.'
'If Russia suddenly attacks its Siberian colonies and causes a World War, you'll be glad I call you, hah? Glad to know Lenny was still steering you straight!'
'I'm always glad of that, old mate,' replied Jimmy. 'Dad's coming down to Washington for a couple of weeks soon…will you have dinner with us?'
'That would be very nice…good-bye now…how you say? Old mate.'
The city of Yekaterinburg lies 1,130 miles east of Moscow. It is a city of a million souls, a light, airy, modern place with wide avenues, parks, and gardens, many of its historic public buildings constructed in the same fawn- and-white stucco as those in faraway St. Petersburg.
Some of the more elegant architecture of the old city, dating back to the 1720s, has been preserved; not, however, the Ipatiev house, which stood on a piece of land opposite the cream-and-turquoise tower of the Old Ascension Church. The house is long gone, bulldozed on the orders of Leonid Brezhnev. Today there is just a stark white memorial cross among a copse of trees.
It marks the spot where, on July 17, 1918, Czar Nicholas II, his wife, son, and daughters were slaughtered in the basement of the merchant Ipatiev's residence, gunned down, bayoneted, and bludgeoned by the secret police squad that guarded them on behalf of the Bolsheviks.
The name Yekaterinburg will always stand as a symbol of those brutal, violent murders, and, as if to make sure no one ever forgets, there stands a statue, right in the middle of Central Avenue, the former Lenin Street, of Yakov Sverdlov, organizer of the killings.
Not a hundred feet from the statue, in another basement, the lower floor of an office building owned by SIBNEFT, there was taking place one of the most secret meetings ever conducted in Yekaterinburg, certainly since the days leading up to the death of Czar Nicholas and his family.
At the head of a long polished oak table sat Roman Rekuts, the towering figure who now virtually ruled western Siberia. At the far end sat Sergei Pobozhiy, the Chairman of SIBNEFT, flanked by his two coconspirators, the billionaire Jaan Valuev from OJSC Surgutneftegas, and the powerful LUKOIL Financial Vice President, Boris Nuriyev.
The First Minister of the Central Siberian Federal District was there, in company with the new Chief Executive of the Russian Far East, who brought his Energy Minister, Mikhail Pavlov.
Roman Rekuts had brought his new deputy with him, and Sergei Pobozhiy was accompanied by his West Siberian Chief of Operations, the grizzled, beefy ex-drillmaster on the exploration rigs, Anton Katsuba.
Every one of the nine men in the room was Siberian-born. And not one of them failed to be attracted by the prospect of a clean break with Moscow. Of forming a new Republic of Siberia, a free and independent state with its own flag and currency. Even Yekaterinburg had its own flag, a white, green, and black tricolor, and there was talk of a Urals franc.
But the meeting was collectively certain of one sacrosanct rule — they must keep their close ties to Moscow in the oil business, retaining, however, the freedom to trade with their anxious, more affluent industrial neighbors to the south and east, in the People's Republic of China.
There had been instant camaraderie in the boardroom since the meeting began, as men with similar stated aims pointed out the advantages of freedom to both the corporations and to the people of Siberia. They had begun at 3:00 p.m. and intended to proceed until dinner, which would be taken at the big table, before proceeding with the final draft of their communique to Moscow.
The meeting ended early, however, shortly after 4:30, when the double doors to the boardroom were booted open and an armed Soviet-style guard in military uniform bearing no insignia aimed his Kalashnikov straight at the defenseless head of Roman Rekuts and opened fire, pumping three bullets in a dead straight line across his forehead.
In a split second four more guards were in the room. They cut down Sergei Pobozhiy with a hail of bullets to the neck and chest, and blew away Jaan Valuev, who was hit by eight AK-47 bullets to the throat and neck.
Boris Nuriyev stood up and held his hands out in front of him, in the fleeting mini-seconds before he was gunned down with a burst to the chest that caused him to fall forward, bleeding onto the rough draft of their demands to Moscow.
Anton Katsuba, seated in the center of the table opposite the guards, crashed his way under the table and seemed to vanish from everyone's mind, but the big man made a stupendous comeback, rising out from under the seats like a rogue elephant and clamping a mighty fist on the windpipe of one of the attackers.
By now he was the only one of the nine left alive, and he grabbed the guard's rifle and opened fire. No one was ready for this, and he actually killed two and wounded three before he was himself cut down in a hail of bullets from the other six.
The room was a total bloodbath, the carpet awash, the walls splattered. Blood flowed over the table. It was a grotesque insurrection, a near copybook repeat of the events of July 17, 1918, in a subterranean room not so far away from the old Ipatiev basement.
The one difference was that these modern soldiers of the Republic of Russia would have no need for the bayonets that were used to finish the Czar and his family. There was no need to plunge the steel into the bodies of the oilmen and the Siberian politicians as the guards had done to finish Nicholas, and the Empress Alexandra, the little boy Alexi, and the Grand Duchesses Marie and Olga, and Tatiana and Anastasia.
The ripping slugs of the clasp-loaded modern AK-47s were a lot more efficient than the old service revolvers of the early twentieth century. Not one of the original nine men who had assembled in this room was breathing.
And outside the room, there was pandemonium. The Russian Army, which had screamed into Central Avenue from the headquarters just outside the downtown area, had sealed off the entire throughway. Outside the building there were three large Army trucks plus one military ambulance.
Stretcher parties were running in through the main doors. Everyone working in the building remained at their desks. Armed guards were posted on every door. Huge green screens were erected to shield the main entrance from the public, and they continued to the rear of the trucks. Soldiers with body bags were sprinting down the stairs to the basement. A team of soldiers with ladders, paintbrushes and rollers, cans of paint, and ammonia were descending the steps in single file.
Everything from the room was being removed, eleven dead bodies, three wounded guards, the big table, carpets, chairs, papers. Everything. Behind the screen outside the door the Army trucks were being loaded, engines revving.
The first of them, the one containing all of the bodies, was under way less than twenty minutes after the opening burst of fire had cut down Roman Rekuts. It swung out of Central Avenue heading north, directly toward the arctic tundra northeast of the Ural Mountains on the estuary of the Ob River.
The truck containing the bloodstained carpets and furniture was next, roaring up the snowy street and again heading north. The ambulance was next, then the final truck, containing the screens and a dozen infantrymen in the back to assist with the burning and general destruction of the evidence when finally they reached their destination in the frozen north in the small hours of the morning.
This was the Russian military at their most thorough. No one would ever know the fate of the nine men who had sought freedom for their homeland of Siberia to trade their oil without the heavy yoke of the Russian government around their necks.
Perhaps even more sinister, no one would ever know how Moscow found out the meeting was taking place. But, as they say in the Siberian oil industry, even the icicles have ears and the wooden walls have eyes.
There were just three visitors this morning: the Commander in Chief of the Russian Army, East of the Urals. The head of the FSB, who was rapidly developing a reputation comparable to his many predecessors. And the Russian Energy Minister, Oleg Kuts.
'Anyone heard anything?' asked the President.
'Not a word, sir. It seems no one knew who was in the meeting, no one knew what had happened, no one
