“We need the Azerbaijani oil. If we let that go, our economic situation worsens. If we let the Balts go, the momentum will strip away half of our country.”
“Half our population, true, but scarcely twenty percent of our land. And most of our problems,” Kadishev said again.
“And what of the people who leave? We throw them into chaos and civil war. How many will die, how many deaths on our conscience, eh?” the President demanded.
“Which is a normal consequence of decolonization. We cannot prevent it. By attempting to, we merely keep the civil war within our own borders. That forces us to place too much power into the hands of the security forces, and that is too dangerous. I don't trust the Army any more than you do.”
“The Army will not launch a coup. There are no Bonapartists in the Red Army.”
“You have greater confidence in their fealty than I do. I think they see a unique historical opportunity. The Party has held the military down since the Tukhachevskiy business. Soldiers have long memories, and they may be thinking that this is their chance.”
“Those people are all dead! And their children with them,” Narmonov countered angrily. It had been over fifty years, after all. Those few with direct memory of the purges were in wheelchairs or living on pensions.
“But not their grandchildren, and there is institutional memory to consider as well.” Kadishev leaned back and considered a new thought that had sprung almost fully formed into his head. Might that be possible…?
“They have concerns, yes, and those concerns are little different from my own. We differ on how to deal with the problem, not on the issue of control. While I am not sure of their judgment, I am sure of their loyalty.”
“Perhaps you are correct, but I am not so sanguine.”
“With your help, we can present a united front to the forces of early dissolution. That will discourage them. That will allow us to get through a few years of normalization, and then we can consider an orderly departure for the republics with a genuine commonwealth — association, whatever you wish to call it — to keep us associated economically while being separate politically.”
The man is desperate, Kadishev saw. He really is collapsing under the strain. The man who moves about the political arena like a Central Army hockey forward is showing signs of fatigue… will he survive without my help?
Probably, Kadishev judged. Probably. That was too bad, the younger man thought. Kadishev was the de facto leader of the forces on the “left,” the forces that wanted to break up the entire country and the government that went with it, yanking the remaining nation — based on the Russian Federation — into the 21st century by its throat. If Narmonov fell… if he found himself unable to continue, then who…
Why, me, of course.
Would the Americans support him?
How could they fail to support Agent SPINNAKER of their own Central Intelligence Agency?
Kadishev had been working for the Americans since his recruitment by Mary Patricia Foley some six years before. He didn't think of it as treason. He was working for the betterment of his country, and saw himself as succeeding. He'd fed the Americans information on the internal workings of the Soviet government, some of it highly valuable, some material they could as easily have gotten from their own reporters. He knew that they regarded him as their most valuable source of political intelligence in the Soviet Union, especially now that he controlled fully forty percent of the votes in the country's bumptious new parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies. Thirty-nine percent, he told himself. One must be honest. Perhaps another eight percent could be his if he made the proper move. There were many shades of political loyalty among the twenty-five hundred members. Genuine democrats, Russian nationalists of both democratic and socialist stripe, radicals of both left and right. There was also a cautious middle of politicians, some genuinely concerned about what course their country might take, others merely seeking to conserve their personal political status. How many could he appeal to? How many could he win over?
Not quite enough…
But there was one more card he could play, wasn't there?
Da. If he had the audacity to play it.
“Andrey Il'ych,” he said in a conciliatory voice, “you ask me to depart from an important principle so that I can help you reach a goal we share — but to do so by a route that I distrust. This is a very difficult matter. I am not even sure that I can deliver the support you require. My comrades might well turn their backs on me.” It only agitated the man further.
“Rubbish! I know how well they trust you and your judgment.”
They are not the only ones who trust me… Kadishev told himself.
As with most investigations, this one was done mainly with paper. Ernest Wellington was a young attorney, and an ambitious one. As a law-school graduate and a member of the bar, he could have applied to the FBI and learned the business of investigation properly, but he considered himself a lawyer rather than a cop, besides which he enjoyed politics, and the FBI prided itself on avoiding political wrangling wherever possible. Wellington had no such inhibitions. He enjoyed politics, considered it the life's blood of government service, and knew it to be the path to speedy advancement both within and without the government. The contacts he was making now would make his value to any of a hundred “connected” law firms jump five-fold, plus making him a known name within the Department of Justice. Soon he would be in the running for a “special-assistant” job. After that — in five years or so — he'd have a crack at a section chief's office… maybe even U.S. Attorney in a major city, or head of a special DoJ strike force. That opened the door to political life, where Ernest Wellington could be a real player in the Great Game of Washington. All in all, it was heady wine indeed for an ambitious man of twenty-seven years, an honors graduate from Harvard Law who'd ostentatiously turned down lucrative offers from prestigious firms, preferring instead to devote his early professional years to public service.
Wellington had a pile of papers on his desk. His office was in what was almost an attic in the Justice Department's building on the Mall, and the view from the single window was of the parking lot that rested in the center of the Depression-era structure. It was small, and the air conditioning was faulty, but it was private. It is little appreciated that lawyers avoid time in court as assiduously as the boastful avoid genuine tests of ability. Had he taken the jobs offered by the New York corporate firms — the best such offer was for over $100,000 per year — his real function would have been that of proofreader, really a glorified secretary, examining contracts for typos and possible loopholes. Early life in the Justice Department was little different. Whereas in a real prosecutorial office he might have been tossed alive into a courtroom environment to sink or swim, here at headquarters he examined records, looking for inconsistencies, nuances, possible technical violations of the law, as though he were an editor for a particularly good mystery writer. Wellington started making his notes.
John Patrick Ryan. Deputy to the Director of Central Intelligence, nominated by the President — politics at work — and confirmed less than two years previously. Prior to that acting Deputy Director (Intelligence), following the death of Vice Admiral James Greer. Prior to that, Special Assistant to DDI Greer, and sometime special representative of the Directorate of Intelligence over in England. Ryan had been an instructor in history at the Naval Academy, a graduate student at Georgetown University, and a broker at the Baltimore office of Merrill Lynch. Also, briefly, a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Clearly a man who enjoyed career changes, Wellington thought, noting all the important dates.
Personal wealth. The requisite financial statement was in the file, near the top. Ryan was worth quite a bit. Where had it come from? That analysis took several hours. In his days as a broker, J. P. Ryan had been a real cowboy. He'd bet over a hundred thousand dollars on the Chicago and North Western Railroad at the time of the employee takeover, and reaped… over six million from it. That was his one really big score — sixty-to-one opportunities were not all that common, were they? — but some of the others were also noteworthy. On hitting a personal net worth of eight million, he'd called it quits and gone to Georgetown for his doctorate in history. Continued to play the market on an amateur basis — that wasn't quite right, was it? — until joining government service. His portfolio was now managed by a multiplicity of investment counselors… their accounting methods were unusually conservative. Ryan's net worth looked to be twenty million, maybe a little more. The accounts were managed on a blind basis. All Ryan saw was quarterly earnings statements. There were ways around that, of course, but it was all strictly legal. Proving impropriety was virtually impossible unless they put a wiretap on the line of his brokers, and that was not something easily accomplished.
He had been investigated by the SEC, but that had actually been a spin-off of the SEC's look at the firm he'd bought into. The summary sheet noted in clipped bureaucratese that no technical violation had been made, but
