'That's me, old mate.'
'Yes, I thought I was correct.'
'What did the Admiral actually say?'
'He said when some kind of a black English racing car comes speeding up the goddamned road, let the beautiful blonde in the passenger seat out first, then bring the Australian driver in, and park the car.'
'Sounds just like him.'
'Yessir. Remie will take care of you right inside the door.'
The maitre d' steered them to the back of the restaurant where Admiral Morgan and Kathy were quietly sipping glasses of superb 2001 Meursault, which had set the Admiral back almost $100.00. The bottle of white burgundy was in an ice bucket set in a raised stand on the floor at the end of the table.
'Hi, kids,' said Arnold, standing to greet first Jane, then Jimmy, while Kathy climbed to her feet and hugged Jane.
The waiter had already placed two extra wineglasses on the table, and the Admiral dipped into the bucket and pulled out the bottle, splashing it out generously. Never occurred to him either of his guests could possibly want anything else. And he was dead right about that.
'That, Admiral, is outstanding,' said Jimmy.
'And your new information better be of the same quality.' Arnold grinned. 'Delicate, yet with a powerful core, with deep promise of greater things to come…'
'Would you ever listen to his rubbish?' said Kathy, her inbred Irish intonations bubbling to the fore. 'He's got more blarney than my grandma, and she lived there, a mile from the castle!'
'Now, Kathryn,' said the Admiral, 'I want you and Jane to have a nice little chat while I listen to the considered intelligence of young James. That's why he's here.'
The Lt. Commander said nothing. He just produced the sheet of paper with the press release from Moscow and handed it to Arnold Morgan.
The Admiral read carefully, his eyebrows slowly raising. 'Holy Mary, Mother of God,' he breathed. 'Those bastards have knocked down a planeload of Siberian oil chiefs — two weeks after murdering another in the White House.'
'Not quite,' said Jimmy. 'No plane.'
'Huh?' said the Admiral, looking, for once, baffled.
And Jimmy recounted the thoughts of the retired assassin, Lenny Suchov.
Without hesitation, Arnold Morgan said, 'He's absolutely correct. They'd never destroy a perfectly sound military aircraft when they could achieve the same ends with a handful of carbine bullets. Plus, the nonexistent air crash makes a perfect cover story — which no one will ever crack. Because it never happened.'
'Right up there in the tundra,' said Jimmy. 'Inside the Arctic Circle, northern Siberia, where the ground is always frozen, and where a blizzard could cover all traces of any air crash in a couple of hours. It would never be seen again.'
'Do we expect the CIA to come up with an accurate list of the big-deal oil execs who have apparently perished?'
'That's in motion. Lenny Suchov's on the case. He thinks there's one or two very important Siberian politicians involved. And he's absolutely sure the Russian government had 'em all shot.'
'The question is, why?' said Arnold. 'What has the Siberian oil industry done to deserve all this?'
'Who knows? But Lenny thinks it's a problem that occasionally comes to the surface. A kind of undercurrent in Siberia that the local population does not get a fair share of the wealth that lies under their land. That's mostly oil and gas. But also gold, and the largest diamond fields on Earth.'
'He thinks these guys may have been planning to break free of Moscow, at last?' asked Arnold. 'He thinks the Russians just put down a goddamned revolution?'
'He thinks something was brewing up there. And he feels the full list of who was apparently killed in the air crash will provide some important clues.'
Arnold was pensive. He took another luxurious pull at his Meursault de luxe, as he called it, and said, quietly, at least quietly for him, 'Listen, you guys…that's all three of you. I'm going to tell you something about the Russians. You all remember the Cold War, which you doubtless assumed was all about the rampant spread of communism and missiles.
'Well, ultimately it wasn't. The great fear in Russia, always has been, was the starvation of its people. Could the gigantic collective farms ever produce enough grain and vegetables to feed the population?
'Mostly the answer to that was no. Year after year there were dreadful failures of the crop, and year after year they just somehow muddled along, suffering the most awful privations, sometimes buying from the West.
'But the great fear of the free world, during the 1960s through the 1980s, was that a First Secretary of the Communist Party might suddenly believe a vast number of his people might starve to death.
'
'And, kids, there's only one way for any national leader to get food. He either needs to buy it, or steal it from someone else.
'And that, ladies and gentlemen,' concluded Arnold, with a flourish, 'was the fear: that Russia would marshal its massive Red Army, and march into western Europe in search of food.
'We thought they might rampage through Poland and a defenseless Germany, and then the Low Countries, ransacking farmlands and shipping grain home to the Soviet Union. The only way to have stopped them was probably a nuclear showstopper on Moscow — and we all know where that might have led.'
'Sir, are you suggesting what I think you are?' said Jimmy.
'I'm suggesting that yesterday's Russian grain crisis is today's Russian oil crisis. If somehow they lost the Siberian product, I do not know what would happen. But I know this. The Kremlin has been nurturing for several years a user-friendly, modern face.
'And for them to take action this savage, this darned drastic…well, they sure as hell know something about Siberia that we don't. And whatever that may be, it sure scares the bejesus out of them.'
'Wow,' said Jimmy, unhelpfully. 'You think they might rampage through someone else's oil fields with that Army of theirs?'
'No, I don't. But I think these events must lead us to think that Russia is very worried about her oil industry in Siberia. And I think that may lead the Kremlin to start searching far afield for new supplies, something that Russia has not needed to do in the past.
'Siberia, and to an extent Kazakhstan, have always provided enough. But if Siberia demanded independence, I think we'd find Russia in a global expansionist mood.'
'Christ, I'd sure hate to wake up and find out they'd conquered Saudi Arabia or somewhere,' added Jimmy.
'I don't think we'll find that, kiddo. But we got to watch them, and watch their movements internationally. We got enough trouble with China trying to buy up the entire world's oil supply, without the goddamned Ruskies joining in.'
'Well, sir, Lenny's going for the passenger list from the nonexistent aircraft in the tundra. It'll sure be interesting to find out precisely who the Kremlin admits is no longer alive.'
Arnold smiled and passed around the menus. 'Order anything,' he commanded. 'I've ordered us another bottle of this Meursault because I know Kathy will probably have fish. For us, my boy, I've ordered an excellent bottle of 1998 Pomerol — remember, all of you, that was the year the frost and rain hit the left bank of the Gironde and the great chateaux had a very difficult time.
'But on the right bank, the sun shone sweetly and the harvest was bountiful, and the wine all through St. Emilion and Pomerol was rich and plentiful…'
'Jesus,' said Kathy, 'would you listen to him? He thinks he's at the Last Supper.'
'I hope to hell he's not,' said Jimmy. 'This is just great — and all because the ole Kremlin staged one of its periodic mass murders.'
'Every cloud,' replied Arnold, philosophically, 'somehow has a silver lining. Even that big bastard darkening the east side of Red Square.'
