The Red Collusion Read online

  President Butler glanced quickly at the people around the conference table.

  “Where is the CIA director? Why isn’t he here?”

  “Mister President, he’ll be right here. He said that an important dispatch had just come in and he’ll be here soon to brief you”, the White House Chief of Staff replied quickly.

  “Secretary Manning, please start.”

  “Mister President, it’s strange, but we haven’t heard back from them about your speech. This isn’t like them at all. We even expected them to respond with disdain, but strangely enough, we’ve received no response at all. It appears that they are simply determined to move their tanks as rapidly as possible. What is stranger yet, Mister President, is that it appears that your directive ordering the conditional use of nuclear tactical weapons hasn’t been intercepted by them at all. That is highly improbable.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly what happened. It’s hard to believe that anyone would remain indifferent to such an order that is signed by me.”

  “Mister President, the directive was distributed on dozens of networks. It would be impossible for them not to intercept and decipher it. It seems more likely that someone there decided that it was false. Maybe because it went through so many networks, their assessment is that this is a bogus threat. Mister President, even the method of their invasion and advance in East Germany indicates that the insurgency there was just an excuse, a cover story for their attack on us. Their forces haven’t entered any city; they are simply racing to the West German border.”

  “Go on, Secretary.”

  “They are advancing in three columns. We identified their northern column as the primary force, and we assess that it’s heading for Hamburg. This is one of the largest and most important Western European cities, but what seems to be of special interest to them there is the port. If they occupy the port of Hamburg, they will gain incredible abilities for pushing supplies and materiel to their forces.”

  The President listened, deep in thought. He smoothed his hair with his palm and watched the others.

  “They will also export from Hamburg port – not just import”, the President said.

  Secretary Manning seemed to miss the point that the President was trying to make.

  “Excuse me, Mister President, what do you mean?”

  “They will do exactly what they did in World War Two. They’ll take apart the entire West German heavy industry, load it onto trains and ships and transfer the plants and production lines to Russia. Okay, this isn’t the time to discuss what they will do after conquering West Germany, when we don’t even know what to do now. Secretary Manning, I understand that they are advancing much more rapidly than we estimated a few hours ago. What are your people saying now? How many hours do we have until they cross the border into West Germany?”

  “Between sixteen and eighteen hours, Mister President.”

  “Great!” the President said sarcastically. “Maybe by then we’ll have held seven or eight meetings like these, with no direction and purpose.”

  Nobody spoke, as the President’s desperation reflected what all the others were feeling.

  The door opened and CIA Director George Brown hurried in. The President looked at him, hoping that he was bringing some new information that could lift the heavy atmosphere in the room.

  “Well”, the President said in a tone lacking optimism. “Maybe, by chance, you have better news, or even a reason to give us hope?”

  “Mister President, I have very substantial news that will clarify the picture, although I’m not sure it will change the situation.”

  “Go on, go on”, the President said impatiently.

  “Mister President, do you remember that there was a report of a single survivor from the Russian trawler, whom the British captured and transferred to us for interrogation?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “It turns out that the fisherman that we caught is nothing less than a nuclear fisherman. He’s a Red Army Colonel, born in Kazakhstan, and his name is Nazarbayev.”

  President Butler was jotting down the Soviet Colonel’s name on a sheet of paper. The CIA director watched him, waiting to continue.

  “Go on, go on”, the President said.

  “This Colonel is an explosives expert. He’s a tough guy and he didn’t cooperate until he was told, and believed, that a Soviet submarine had sunk his ship and his comrades, and only after we promised him political asylum. It turns out that aboard the trawler, they had a 152- millimeter self-propelled gun, and this gun fired a nuclear shell with a magnitude of one hundred kilotons.”

  “What?” the President interrupted. “What did they hope to gain by that?”

  “Their operatives here in Washington got their hands on the training program of our assault nuclear submarines. At the time that they fired the shell, our submarine USS 726, the Ohio, should have been right there, underwater. Their idea was to set off the explosion after the Ohio had passed them and was further away, to make the commander of the Ohio believe that a much larger blast had occurred much farther away, meaning here on United States soil. The trawler was also equipped with electronic gear to block all communications from the submarine. They hoped that the Ohio commander would assume that a nuclear attack had been carried out on American soil and that that was why he couldn’t establish communication with home.

  “In their estimation, the submarine commander would have given the order to launch two or three nuclear missiles at predetermined targets in the Soviet Union, in accordance with the submarine’s emergency procedure.

  “What happened in fact was that a short time before the submarine was due to reach that area, it received an order to abandon the navigation exercise because of the DEFCON 2 alert, so it headed south. The enemy on the trawler was not aware of this, of course, and they fired the shell when the Ohio was already outside their range.”

  “And why would they do that?” the President asked.

  “All this lunacy was created by their Minister of Defense, one Marshal Budarenko. Two weeks ago, he appointed a top secret special team, which included six senior experts in different subjects, and the Colonel that we caught was one of them. The Minister of Defense met this team almost daily at some top-secret military intelligence base outside Moscow.”

  The room fell into absolute silence. Butler shook his head in disbelief.

  “That man is a mental case. He is a lunatic and a loose cannon. Is he really willing to sacrifice millions of his people just for an excuse to invade Western Europe and save the Communist regime in the Soviet Union? I simply find it very hard to believe. This is beyond imagination. This is pure madness by a totally deranged individual”, the President said.

  The President watched Secretary of Defense Manning, who seemed utterly shocked.

  “Of course”, the President continued,”Party General Secretary Yermolov must not have the slightest idea of what this lunatic Minister is conspiring behind his back. Does he?”

  “Of course not, Mister President”, the CIA director replied. “The General Secretary is even certain that we tried to destroy the city of Murmansk. There’s something else, Mister President. The source that we activated, with your approval, confirms unequivocally that General Secretary Yermolov has not an inkling of this whole affair.”

  President Butler breathed a huge sigh of relief, which sounded like a whistle.

  “I made a big mistake, a rookie’s mistake. I went ahead with my speech and played into the hands of this madman. Had I denied any connection with the blast and said that it was a Russian conspiracy, maybe the Party General Secretary would have started suspecting his Minister of Defense. I certainly made a major blunder with my address to the nation.”

  The Secretary of State turned to the President, requesting to speak.

  “Mister President, when you made that speech, you didn’t know if the Party G
eneral Secretary had any idea of what had really happened in the North Sea. Now the question is different. We know exactly who did what and why. How can it help us stop the tanks that are almost on our doorstep? Mister President, what if we display this Russian Colonel on television, so that the Russians can also see him and listen to what he has to say?”

  President Butler took a moment to think before replying to his Secretary of State. The Situation Room was silent as every move and motion of the President was followed tensely by all the participants. They all waited eagerly for his decision. The President leaned forward, set his elbows on the table, and turned to the CIA director.

  “How long will it take you to bring us one of your men who speaks Russian?”

  “Right now, actually. I have a team working right outside this room and there is a fellow there who speaks fluent Russian. He was born here to a family who emigrated from the Soviet Union.”

  The President took up the phone receiver and handed it to the CIA director.

  “Tell them to get this guy here at once. By the way, Secretary Perry, your TV idea isn’t bad, but I want to take it even further.”

  Two minutes later, a tall Russian-looking young man stood at the door. He had a round face and fair skin and his hair was cut short. He seemed extremely nervous to be standing face-to-face with the President of the United States.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Vitaly Khripkin, Mister President.” “Come here, Vitaly. Sit next to me.”

  The young CIA agent almost stumbled as we walked toward the President and took a seat beside him. The President put a fatherly arm on Vitaly’s shoulder as he spoke to CIA director.

  “Say, are you sure he’s one of us? He looks like a classic KGB agent.”

  Khripkin moved uneasily in his chair, the President’s arm still on his shoulder.

  “I’m only kidding, son. Now listen up. I am about to make a phone call to the Soviet leader Yermolov. He doesn’t speak English, and someone will have to translate what I’m saying. There’s quite a bit of mayhem in the Kremlin right now. I don’t know if whoever is translating for him has his own agenda, if he is loyal to Yermolov or maybe to his Minister of Defense. He may falsify my words. I would like you, Vitaly, to listen to the conversation on the extension and signal to me if everything is translated as should be. Do you understand me, son?

  “Yes, Mister President, of course.”

  The President lifted the receiver of the telephone next to him.

  “This is the President speaking. Please connect me to Moscow. I would like to speak to the General Secretary of the Party. This is extremely urgent.”

  The President, whose mood had started to improve in the past few minutes, now revealed his sense of humor, which was very much a defining trait in normal times. Holding the receiver to his ear, he spoke to his team around the table.

  “You see, there are also advantages in the Soviet Union. I told the operator to get me the General Secretary of the Party in Moscow, and she did not have to ask me of which party.”

  Several nervous laughs sounded around the room. The President raised his hand and there was silence.

  “Mister President Butler. This is Svetlana, personal secretary to Party General Secretary Sir Vladimir Petrovich Yermolov. The Party General Secretary will enter the room very soon, and I will act as your simultaneous translator from English to Russian and from Russian to English. So there is no need, Mister President, to take pauses as you speak.”

  “Very well, Ma’am. Thank you.”

  The President continued to hold the line for his Soviet counterpart. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and whispered to the CIA director.

  “Listen, she works in a strategic place and also has wonderful English. Why don’t you guys recruit her? Do I need to give you ideas?”

  The American spy chief smiled reservedly.

  “Only a few hours ago I did offer you, Mister President, a job at our agency as your post-Presidential career.”

  Svetlana came back on the line, and the President motioned Vitaly to pick up the extension.

  “Here you are, Sir, President Butler.”

  “Dobriy vecher, Mr. General Secretary Yermolov”, President Butler greeted his Soviet counterpart with a “good evening” in Russian. “I would have liked to speak to you under much happier circumstances, but it seems that there is someone on your side who prefers that we speak with our rifles.”

  President Butler heard Svetlana translating his words and took a look at Vitaly at his side, who nodded to him in confirmation that his words were being correctly translated. Now the Party General Secretary’s voice was heard in the background, with Svetlana translating his words.

  “The Party Secretary asks if this is the best opening you could find for your mutual conversation?”

  “I am sorry then, Mister Secretary. I know you are an honorable man, and if you’ll please just listen to me for three minutes, I’m sure that we will succeed together in preventing a third World War.”

  “The Party Secretary is listening to you, Mister President.”

  “Mister Secretary, we did not launch any missile in the North Sea and we have nothing to do with the nuclear blast. Your trawler was sunk by your own submarine. What your people do not know yet is that one person aboard the trawler survived, and his name is Colonel Nazarbayev. He told us about a secret team that was put together by your Minister of Defense, Marshal Budarenko. I can give you all the details of the Intelligence base in Moscow, where this Colonel and five other senior officers worked in isolation and in secrecy for the Minister of Defense. I can tell you how many times your Minister of Defense has visited this team in the past ten days. This Colonel Nazarbayev is the person who fired a nuclear artillery shell from a gun which they loaded onto the trawler at the Naval Base in Murmansk. Their mission was to create the explosion close to one of our nuclear submarines in order to simulate a much larger nuclear attack on the United States. All this just so the submarine commander would reach the mistaken conclusion that our mainland had been attacked, causing our submarine to launch a nuclear missile in response at the Soviet Union.

  “Mister Secretary Yermolov. Can you see that your Minister is ready to sacrifice millions of your civilians just so he can have his excuse to flood Western Europe with thirty thousand of your tanks? Mister Secretary, allow me to voice my opinion of this man. I think he is insane and very dangerous. If you don’t stop him, we will be in a state of total war by morning. Does Mister Secretary know that I’ve issued an order to destroy your tanks with tactical nuclear weapons if they cross the Elbe River? Is Mister Secretary aware of this, or maybe this too was concealed from you by your Minister of…?”

  The President paused at a gesture from Vitaly, who put his hand over his receiver and whispered to the President:

  “Something is not right with her.”

  “What do you mean?” the President asked.

  “Sir, she is translating everything verbatim, but something in her voice has changed. I think she’s choking, or maybe she’s crying. It’s not clear.” Svetlana’s voice was heard again.

  “Please hold, Mister President.”

  Vitaly made a huge effort to get something of the conversation on the other end, which sounded too weak and far away to make out. He raised the volume on his phone and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the conversation as much as possible. The President followed him with great interest, as did everyone else in the room.

  “Mister President, this is unbelievable. She is crying and the Party Secretary is telling her that he’s sorry that she had to hear all this from the President of the United States and not from him. I couldn’t hear everything, but I heard the Secretary say something like it’s your uncle, if am not mistaken.” Svetlana’s voice was heard again.

  “Mister President Butler. The party Secretary Mister Vladi
mir Petrovich Yermolov thanks you for calling him. He says that he is willing to stop all our forces where they are at 10 o’clock Greenwich Mean Time tonight. At the same time exactly, you shall cancel the supreme alert to all your forces, on land, sea and air.”

  The President extended his hand forward and made the thumbs up signal to his Secretary of Defense, who responded with a nod of his head.

  “I know the General Secretary is a man of honor”, President Butler said to Svetlana, “and I accept his proposal. I give you my word, and so it will be. I will be delighted to speak to him again tomorrow. Thank you, Ma’am, and good night.”

  “Good night, Mister President.”

  The President got to his feet, thanked Vitaly and shook his hand, and addressed his Minister of Defense.

  “Secretary Manning, you heard the agreement we have reached with the Leader of the Soviet Union, right? At 22:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time you de-escalate our forces to DEFCON 3. Activate all our Intelligence sources to ensure that all Soviet forces in East Germany will indeed be ordered to stop where they are and that they obey this order.”

  The head of the KGB hurried into the office of the Party General Secretary. Displaying his pride in their friendship, the General Secretary rose up, walked around his large desk and took a seat next to the head of the KGB.

  “Thank you for arriving so quickly.”

  “Mister Secretary, you did ask me to remain close by today, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Unfortunately, Sir, I have news that you may not like, and it all has to do with Marshal Budarenko’s activity.”

  The Party Secretary nodded. He looked resigned.

  “Nothing you say can surprise me anymore. I’ve just finished speaking with United States President. They caught one survivor from the trawler, and the survivor is Colonel Nazarbayev. The Colonel understood that he had been betrayed and he told them everything – everything. He told them of his meetings with the Minister, the plan, the nuclear shell that he himself fired from the trawler. He told them everything.