Ghost Force

Turning to Energy Minister Kuts, the President said, 'Oleg, read to them those stats you gave me yesterday, will you? I think everyone will be interested, and I would like my memory to be refreshed.'

'Certainly,' replied Kuts, shuffling his files. 'I should perhaps begin by stating there are more than fifty-six million cars, vans, and sport utility vehicles rolling down China's highways at this very moment. That accounts for probably sixteen percent of the world's energy consumption — that's second only to the U.S., which gobbles up twenty-four percent.

'By 2020 it is estimated that China will be very close to that twenty-four percent — probably using eleven million barrels a day, plus three point six trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And that's likely to put their backs to the wall.

'Hardly a day passes without some kind of power outage in China, especially in the winter, when their aging pipelines occasionally fail. Their electricity grid grows more decrepit every year. Output is rapidly declining in the big northeastern fields around Daqing, and their reserves in far western China mostly lie beneath the high, dry deserts.

'That means their best shot at claiming those reserves, deep beneath the surface, is going to be very, very expensive.

'That's why, even as we speak, China is out there scouring the globe for new opportunities in oil exploration. They will naturally try to crowd their way into neighboring Siberia with promises of a huge market for local oil. In the meantime, they will be pushing forward, financing and trading, to open up oil exploration fields in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and the Sudan.

'Gentlemen, China calls it supply security, and the name of that game is diversification. They're in it up to their elbows, we're lagging far behind. We're too dependent on Siberia. We must raise our sights. And I think you will find our most esteemed leader has some very advanced views on that.

'Yesterday I briefed him as well as I could on the global situation. Who has new oil? Where are the big new fields? Is anyone vulnerable to persuasion? If not, how can we persuade them? During the next few minutes, gentlemen, you will hear why our President may one day be talked of in the same breath as Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin. The great visionaries of our time.'

The President smiled. 'Thank you for those generous words, Oleg. I'm grateful for them, and I'm grateful to be here among old and good friends who share my concern for the future.

'And I would like, if I may, firstly to outline the very obvious difficulties that lie in much of the world's oil exploration countries. Take the Middle East…well, we may make some headway, but mostly in Iran. The rest of the Gulf, the principal Arab producers, are always in the hands of the Americans.

'The Saudis, the Emirates, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are all encompassed by the USA — particularly after the Presidency of George W. Bush. None of them move without an okay from the White House.

'Indonesia was up for grabs. But the Americans are strong there and the Chinese are getting close. The Brits are running out of North Sea oil altogether. Europe is devoid of all resources except coal. The USA will never relinquish any of the oil from the Alaskan fields, and Mexico and Venezuela prefer to deal with Washington. Thanks again to President Bush.'

The Russian President rearranged his papers. 'Which brings us to two of the biggest strikes of this century so far — the one in South Georgia, which lies deep in the middle of the South Atlantic, about four meters from the Antarctic Circle, and those two huge new oil fields on the Falkland Islands.'

'The Falkland Islands!' exclaimed Oleg Nalyotov. 'That's more hopeless than all the other places put together. It's a British Colony that twenty-eight years ago was the scene of one of the most vicious little three- month wars in modern history.

'I'm sure you all remember. The Argentinian military seized it, claimed it, and occupied it. And before you could say Nyet, the Royal Navy assembled a battle fleet and charged down the Atlantic and did what they said they'd do.

'Literally, the Brits blew 'em off that island with guided missiles and bombs. They landed a force of ten thousand and fought for the place as if they were defending the coast of Sussex. Some terrible Admiral they had put the big Argentine cruiser, the General Belgrano, on the bottom of the Atlantic, drowned more than three hundred sailors.

'My general advice would be don't fool with the Brits. They get very touchy. And I happen to know it's Exxon and British Petroleum who are going to develop those oil fields. That's a U.S.-UK alliance. We should be wary of those, especially when there's a lot of money involved.'

The President looked up and nodded. 'My dear Oleg,' he said patiently, 'you do not think for one moment I intend to become involved in a fight with either of them, do you? Frankly I'd rather fight the Siberians, or the Chinese for that matter.

'But there is one rather hotheaded little nation that might very easily be happy to do our dirty work for us. I believe it's called Argentina, and they are not afraid of anyone when it comes to those islands. The Malvinas, they believe, belong to them. The very word Malvinas drives them mad in Buenos Aires.

'Grown men, military officers, beat their breasts and start raving about how proud they would be if their own sons fought and died for the islands. One of the Argentine admirals in the last conflict stated he would die a happy man if the blood of his son, killed in combat, was to seep into the soil of the Malvinas. There is no reason in that country, just passion…Viva las Malvinas! All that nonsense.

'Their claim is essentially ludicrous, utterly dismissed by London. But with a little clandestine help from us, they might just go at it again. You know, capture the islands, which are scarcely defended, seize the oil, expel the oilmen from Exxon and Shell. And allow us the rights — in return for a generous royalty.

'We then put in two big Russian oil companies, build them a tanker complex, and sit back and take our cut, in the form of taxes on the oil exported to the Gulf Coast of the United States. Works for everyone, correct?'

'Sir, it is my duty to warn you that the Americans would be absolutely furious and might use military force against the islands.'

'Thank you, Prime Minister Kravchenko. But I don't think you are right. The Americans might be furious, but in the end they would do a deal. The Brits, however, would not. They'd attack the islands, just as they did in 1982.'

'You really think so?' said the PM. 'The Royal Navy all over again, bombing and blasting the islands all over again. British troops, fighting and dying in the frozen hills of that awful, weird little place?'

'Yes, Comrade. I think they might,' said the President. 'But this time they would most certainly lose. And there would be absolutely nothing they could do about it. Everyone involved in our military knows it. Great Britain's Labour governments have weakened their war-fighting capability to a truly stupendous degree.

'They do not have the troops, they have savagely cut out some of their best regiments, merging them, closing them. They have cut back their Navy, selling many ships and scrapping others. They've reduced their air combat force to virtually nothing. The Brits would be a pushover.

'And, since they don't have Margaret Thatcher anymore, the Argentines would crush them. Especially with a little help from us. If I was their Defense Minister I would not even think about trying to recapture the Falkland Islands, should Argentina decide to claim them.'

The Russian press release was issued by the Russian Air Force in Moscow at midnight, too late for the television news channels, and very late for the morning newspapers, which are inclined to print earlier on Friday nights because of various weekend supplements and magazines.

The release, scarcely changed from the precise wording written by hand by the Russian President that morning, reached the international wire agencies shortly before one a.m. on Saturday.

It was still Friday afternoon in Washington, around five p.m., and there was plenty of time to develop the story. However, East Coast newsrooms had much more on their minds than an obscure military air crash in northern Siberia, where a few oil execs may have perished.

And it was greeted, generally, with a thunderclap of disinterest. The Washington Post and the New York Times carried a single column, a two-inch-long mention of the accident in their foreign news roundup, well inside the paper. No one thought it worth a follow-up. The CNN twenty-four-hour news channel never mentioned it; neither did the main newspapers in Philadelphia or Boston.

On the other hand, over on the eighth floor of the National Security Agency, Lt. Commander Jimmy