Cauldron

In the western half of the country, high taxes and the loss of overseas markets were slowly strangling key old industries and vital new ones. Protected by strict labor laws, few existing jobs were being lost, but no new ones were being created. As a result, more and more young people were trapped in boredom and state-supported idleness — either on the dole or as “professional” students endlessly pursuing meaningless degrees. They were growing increasingly radical and restless.

The eastern states were in even worse shape. Despite the huge sums invested after reunification, the easterners, the “ossies,” were still poor relations — plagued by continuing high unemployment and by the environmental disasters left by forty-five years of communist misrule. Old tensions were rising as growing numbers of those who’d escaped one form of totalitarianism clamored for another. Though still only a small percentage of the population, neo-Nazi groups were turning bolder and ever more violent. Swastika flags were often openly displayed in smaller villages and in the east’s run-down inner cities.

Attacked from both the right and the left, Germany’s coalition government stood on increasingly shaky ground. The Chancellor and his cabinet were too busy trying to survive almost weekly crises to spend the time, effort, and political capital needed to drop their nation’s protective tariffs and trade barriers.

With all that in mind, Huntington didn’t see any realistic prospect of successful negotiations with either nation. Too many of Europe’s most powerful politicians had too much prestige wrapped up in half-baked economic nationalism and in appeals to growing anti-American sentiment. His dour analysis left the President visibly shaken. Nobody wanted to go down in history as the chief executive who’d held the reins while America and its old allies bickered and squabbled their way into a global depression.

The two men were still talking when the President’s secretary brought coffee in for them an hour later, and neither noticed when she took the empty pot away an hour after that. They were too busy trying to find some way out before the civilized world plunged itself into irreversible economic catastrophe.

SEPTEMBER 16 — MINISTRY OF DEFENSE, RUSSIAN REPUBLIC, MOSCOW

Pavel Sorokin stared in consternation at the brown-haired man sitting comfortably across from him.

“Fifty thousand rubles? Per truckload? Have you gone mad?”

The man he knew as Nikolai Ushenko shrugged. “You want the food. I have the food. The price is what we call a marketing decision, Pavel Ilych.”

“Bugger the market!” Sorokin spat out the distasteful word. Despite nearly six years of stunning economic reforms, he still had trouble dealing with the new capitalist reality. “Look, be reasonable, will you? I’ve got a strict budget limit here. Meeting your price would run me out of money long before year’s end.”

Ushenko shrugged again in studied disinterest. “So get your precious marshals to up your budget. The charge is fifty thousand per — not a kopek less. If you don’t want my wheat and beef, I can assure you the boys over at your Foreign Ministry will. They’ve already offered me forty thousand — sight unseen.”

“Those bastards? You know they don’t have that kind of money. Not unless they’ve got a printing press in their basement.” Sorokin ground his teeth in frustration. The way the Ukrainian slurred crisp-edged Russian words into a soft mush was almost as irritating as his tough bargaining stance.

Pavel Sorokin had taken the job as general supply manager for the Ministry of Defense because of the endless opportunities it seemed to offer for a little lucrative graft and corruption. After all, everyone knew how slipshod the military was about minding its money. Unfortunately all that had changed when the old Soviet Union shattered into the Commonwealth and its confusing array of semi-independent republics. The soldiers whose careers had survived the transition were notoriously tightfisted with their limited resources. Now the kind of “private appropriation of state property” that used to be winked at if you were a party member in good standing could land you in prison — all after a fair trial, of course. And the government-owned foodstuffs he sold for private gain had to be carefully hidden in a paperwork maze of “transportation spoilage” reports and falsified inventories. It was all a lot more work than he’d ever bargained for.

He spread his hands. “Come on, Nikolai. This is your old friend Pavel you’re talking to. The diplomats talk a good game, but they’re fickle. They’ll take your goods one week and dump you the next for some other supplier. But you and me, we’ve been doing business for what, almost six months? We can trust each other, true? I’m a guaranteed customer, also true? And that ought to be worth something… say, a five-thousand discount from the forty you’ve been offered.”

Ushenko’s brown eyes brightened as he laughed. “Nice try. But no deal. I couldn’t possibly take anything under forty-five. Not and make a profit.”

Sorokin winced. He needed this shipment badly. Marshals and generals and colonels wouldn’t react well to missing their midday meals because the ministry canteen didn’t have any food to fix. And new jobs for overweight and out-of-date ex-bureaucrats were few and far between.

He tugged at the knot of his gray wool necktie, loosening it. “What you’re asking for is impossible. I just don’t have the money to pay more than forty thousand. Not and keep my job.”

“Too bad, Pavel. It’s been nice chatting with you.” The other man stood up, reaching for his fur-lined jacket. An ice-cold wind already howled down Moscow’s wide avenues, an alarming portent of the winter to come.

“Wait. Wait. Don’t be hasty.” Sorokin half rose, inwardly furious at himself for buckling to this Ukrainian bandit. “There are others in this building who owe me some favors I could call in. So maybe we can make another kind of deal. Cash plus a swap.”

For a long minute, Ushenko stood motionless — as if still undecided about whether to stay or go. Then, with a sigh, he sat down. “What kind of swap? I’m not about to go into the gun-running business, so don’t bother offering me a used tank or two.”

“No, nothing like that.” Sorokin smiled weakly at what he hoped was the other man’s joke. “I’m talking about information.”

“What kind of information?”

Sorokin spread his hands. “How about the relocation timetables and sites for three motor rifle divisions?”

Ushenko snorted. “And what good are those to me? What am I supposed to do, sell them to the Americans? Or the Germans? I’m no traitor.”

“No, no. Of course not.” Sorokin lowered his voice. “But you could find other buyers — some of those entrepreneur friends of yours, for example. Moving that many soldiers means big transportation and big construction contracts. Surely a little advance word of that in the right ears could be worth quite a lot.”

The Ukrainian’s own ears seemed to perk up at that. “Go on.”

And so Sorokin did. In the end it took nearly an hour of heated argument and furious bargaining, but he got his truckloads of food. And all for only forty thousand rubles apiece. Plus a few photocopied folders of Ministry of Defense documents.

Alex Banich strode briskly out of the mammoth ministry building and climbed straight into a blue Mercedes waiting for him at the curb. A parking permit prominently displayed on its dashboard identified it as belonging to the New Kiev Trading Company. His driver, a fair-haired young man named Mike Hennessy, tipped his cigarette out the car window and pulled out onto the New Arbat Road, narrowly dodging an oncoming truck. Both men ignored the blaring horns behind them. Russian drivers were used to living dangerously and driving badly. Defensive driving would have been out of character.

“So how’d it go, boss?”

Banich grinned. “Not bad. We’ll clear a cool ten thousand per load, plus…” He pulled the papers he’d been given out of his jacket. “Sorokin gave me a little present that’ll keep some of Langley’s gophers happy and busy for a few more weeks,”

The information on Russian troop movements would help keep Washington’s picture of the still-strong Russian Army up to date. Best of all, the documents represented a chink in Pavel Sorokin’s armor. His decision to trade one package of relatively low-grade state secrets now would make it that much easier to persuade him to sell more important data later on.

Hennessy matched his smile. “So this guy still thinks you’re plain old Nikolai Ushenko, purveyor of fine foodstuffs?”

“Not a chance.” Banich stuffed the papers back inside his jacket. “He’s convinced I’m Nikolai Ushenko, a spy on the side. But since he thinks I’m only working for a bunch of get-rich-quick Ukrainian businessmen, trading me a few secrets doesn’t bother him much.”

Hennessy nodded. Most Russians still thought of their Commonwealth partners like Ukraine as partly owned