Man From Barbarossa

name was mentioned. In any case, he did not really feel it was such a crazy idea. The Kremlin had been embarrassed by smaller things than a Russian war criminal.

He liked to think it was not just his desire to save his own skin that prompted him to recruit Nina Bibikova there and then. Later, he revealed much more to her, but her reaction was immediate. Yes, she would act as Yuskovich’s agent within Stepakov’s Banda. Yes, she would do whatever he asked. Later, when she was told the scope of the military coup to put Yuskovich in total power, she had leaped up and down with joy. On that night he remembered vividly how she had come to him without pretence. Her love-making had proved ferocious, and she had done all the things his wife had strictly barred from their bedroom. Some day, Nina could well become the Russian equivalent of what the Americans called the First Lady. Already he had plans to put his wife aside. It was easy for a man with power.

One thing finally led to another. They had removed the original handful of Chushi Pravosudia, and in their place set up a whole network of notional agents, shadows, an entire cult of Chushi Pravosudia which did not even exist.

They had run the foolish Professor Vladimir Lyko within Stepakov’s Banda. Eventually, when Lyko had served his purpose, his handler, a skilled Spetsnaz officer, was ordered to kill him, and before this they had snatched their old GRU sleeper, Penderek, from New Jersey.

Parallel to the Scales of Justice operation, they were also now committed to events outside the Soviet Union which appeared to be reshaping the world. America, with a strong backing from other countries and a United Nations’ sanction, was preparing to lock horns with Iraq over the Kuwait question. It was time for the future leader of the Soviet Union to play his trump card.

Throughout the years he had been in command of Rocket Forces, Yuskovich had been a hoarder. While the SALT talks made slow progress, he had often disobeyed orders. In secret bunkers he retained weapons, even mass-destruction weapons. While certain missiles were phased out, Yuskovich made certain some of those he considered to be still viable were hidden and maintained by trusted people who knew how to keep their mouths closed.

The final plan was simple, yet so ingenious that the future leader of all the Soviet Republics was dizzy at his own brilliance. The whole thing fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle which some divine being had placed in front of him to show that he was the chosen one.

The pinpricks of Chushi Pravosudia’s absurd daring, and their demands, simply goaded everybody into the killing field. By setting up the taped trial, he had been able to bring essential elements to work. Nina’s suggestions to Stepakov had brought about the snatching of his dark-horse cousin, Vorontsov. It had also put two French agents into his hands. The whole conception of his terrorists, his Chushi Pravosudia, had called for people from London to do the taping. Suggestion, via Nina, had prompted Stepakov to call upon the British Secret Intelligence Service to provide the camera crew and, even here, fate had taken a hand and brought him the godsent opportunity to add Nina to the British team.

Then there was the question of actors to play the roles of witnesses. Naturally, it was almost too easy for Nina to ensure that her mother and father came without a second thought to the Red Army Senior Officers’ Centre where, with a little pushing here and there, they were allowed to find the secret tunnel all the General Staff had known about for years.

As it turned out, that had been a waste of time. The idea had been to make certain Nina’s parents, and the two British agents, were corralled in the tunnel when Yuskovich’s loyal Spetsnaz troops arrived to swell the garrison and make sure nobody was left to tell the tale of how the trial had been faked. There was no reason to doubt the impact of the tape when it was aired. The Kremlin would be placed in a position of extreme embarrassment and the Russian people would, possibly for the first time, become truly aware of the natural leadership of this ascetic looking, single-minded officer, Yevgeny Yuskovich.

Yet the final, and wonderful, card was yet to be played. In the past weeks, six of his hoarded missiles, the big Scapegoats with their mobile Scamp launching systems, had been brought out of the bunkers where they had been stored but always ready.

At the Soviet Naval Infantry base near Derbent, skilled mechanics and builders had erected huge containers made from light alloys and lined with thick rubber hulls which incorporated flotation tanks. When the tanks were filled with water, the loaded containers would lie just below sea level. In expertly camouflaged hangars, they had designed and constructed these underwater monsters – three of them – each large enough to hold two Scapegoat missiles complete with their Scamp launching systems which had been fitted with tracks to make them usable in desert conditions.

Only last night, Major Verber had confirmed that the Scamps and Scapegoats were in place. This meant that these weapons of mass nuclear destruction had been taken, with great stealth, to Derbent where they had been loaded into the huge oblong containers. By now, those containers would be in the water, submerged, with their flotation tanks filled, while, on the top of each, the hull and upper structure of a large fishing boat had been affixed with explosive bolts. From sea level, and from the air, it would seem as though three fishing boats rode at anchor, guarded by the minesweeper that would be Yuskovich’s command post. The Scamp and Scapegoat crews were housed in the useless hulls of the fishing boats, and in a couple of days, it would be accomplished.

Yuskovich would be there simply as an observer. His presence was, strictly speaking, not required. But he was a leader, and to his mind, it was essential for him to be there.

As they approached Baku, he thought of the last phase. Certainly the American satellites might well pick up the oddity of the fishing boats, but that did not worry him. It would take them a long time to work out their sinister meaning. He had carefully laid the ground. The Iranians, so recently released from terrible combat against their neighbours, the Iraqis, were naturally in a difficult position. The bulk of the huge coalition force now spread across the deserts of Saudi Arabia was the Iranians’ natural enemy. Until any fighting broke out, they were willing, for a consideration, to turn their eyes into the sun and go blind.

In the meantime, Yuskovich had sold the Iraqi leadership three of the old, but very serviceable, huge Mi-10 helicopter cranes – great stilted, ugly looking beasts which could lift vast weights and carry them for many miles and up to 10,000 feet above the ground.

The accommodation reached with Iran meant that the minesweeper could safely tow the three ‘fishing boats’ close inshore at the small coastal settlement of Bandar Anzali, where they would be blown from the top of the containers by the explosive bolts. The flotation chambers would be emptied and the containers nudged ashore. The Scamps, with their deadly Scapegoat cargoes, could then be hauled up by the Iraqi Mi-10s, taken high over the mountains and deposited in strategic readiness. Each of the flying cranes would make two trips, and it had been calculated that, should all go to plan, the off-loading might be completed in six hours or so.

Before these hideous weapons finally left on their journey, the final piece of the puzzle would be recorded for history. The French and British agents would be photographed assisting and supervising the hand-over of the missiles. They would smile and look pleased with themselves. Yuskovich had constructed the final trap, the last box within the nest of boxes. In the end, if it became necessary, they could prove that the treacherous French and British had been the real suppliers of nuclear weapons to the Iraqi leaders in Baghdad.

The whole thing should not take more than two days, three if there were handling problems. The containers would be towed out to sea again and sunk and the Iraqis would have the weapon for which they had spent so much time scheming and intriguing.

When the United Nations’ deadline came on January 15th, if the Americans and their coalition forces did as they were expected, and attacked Iraq, the response would come in seconds. Six Scapegoat nuclear missiles would airburst over Saudi and the massed forces of the coalition would cease to exist. In a moment, in the wink of an eye, the entire enemy army would be turned into so much glass.

‘What then can be done about immediate United States ICBM retaliation, the so-called second strike?’ General Berzin had asked outside the Red Army Senior Officers’ Centre when they had been searching for the agent Bond. Yuskovich had an answer for him, an answer which meant the crippling of the United States for decades to come. They would be decimated, unable to function for a very long time, and during that time Marshal Yevgeny Yuskovich would lead a new and recharged Union of Soviet Socialist Republics into the land promised years ago, early in the century, by Lenin himself.

The minesweeper with its painted white number 252 on the bows began to move. Beneath the Caspian Sea, the hawsers took up the strain and began to pull the three fishing boats in its wake. It looked like a mother leading her brood out to fresh waters, and in a sense that was exactly what it was.