The Red Collusion Read online

  “Do I remember? Of course I remember. It was my idea and it was I who brought it up.”

  “I’m not really sure, because it is still a very raw idea”, said Yevgeni. “But I decided to revisit the submarine scenario. My intention is to isolate…”

  He was interrupted as the door was flung wide open and there stood Gregory, described not long before by Minister of Defense as the “father and mother of the think tank”. He motioned quickly to the six

  Red Army officers in the room to rise to their feet and stand at attention. In what had by now become a familiar ritual, within seconds, the Minister of Defense, hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal Budarenko, marched swiftly inside. This time the marshal seated himself at the table on the raised platform, and instructed the team to take their seats. He gazed at Dimitri.

  “Brigadier General Dimitri, when did you return and with what?”

  Dimitri stood up at attention.

  “Mr. Minister, I returned an hour ago.”

  “Did you accomplish your mission?” asked the minister.

  “It was efficient, but not entirely effective”, replied the brigadier. The Minister of Defense raised his bushy eyebrows, perplexed. “Your choice of definition is very… interesting. Explain!”

  The brigadier took a deep breath.

  “Sir, it was efficient in everything to do with the execution of the mission. The right subject was located, captured, interviewed, and all was done within a few hours. However, the outcome was not good, as during the interrogation it became apparent to me that in the Pershing battery, firing the missile is enabled quite simply and easily, but the missile would have no target. Here, just like in the submarines, the battery must receive a certain code from the high command of the American forces in Germany in advance. Only when the state of alert is raised to one degree below total war, only then do the batteries receive the codes, which are stored in the battery’s safe box. Even then, it would become a problem to execute a firing, as in a state of such high alert, it would be all but impossible to penetrate with a clandestine operation, occupy the battery and execute a missile launch. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that it is impractical.”

  Dimitri finished speaking and waited for the minister’s permission to return to his seat, but permission was not granted and he remained standing while the Minister, ominously, did not speak. The silence in the room contrasted with his normal thundering, boisterous, commanding manner. All that time, the Minister was tapping on the table with his right hand. He was restless.

  “Sit down now, Brigadier”, the minister finally snapped. “According to the last report I received from Gregory, up to this minute, your total collective outcome is zero. Z-E-R-O.”

  The minister roared the last word, hitting the table with great force with his fist. Marshal Budarenko had a mercurial temper at the best of times – his propensity to anger was notorious throughout the Soviet Union, and the fear of his wrath made his subordinates, and even his few superiors, do their best to please or placate him. For the think tank members, at least for five of the six, who were sitting opposite him, it was their first experience of it firsthand. Marshal Budarenko’s wrath made them fear for their lives.

  Then the minister pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket, buried his flat nose in it, and emitted a thunderous blow. The team members, who were all senior Red Army and Navy officers, felt like schoolchildren, following every motion with anxiety, as if trying to decipher in the notes that he was producing, while blowing his nose, something of the fate awaiting them. Then the Marshal put the handkerchief back in his pocket and gazed at the team again.

  “Six zeros. You are simply six zeros”, the minister concluded his evaluation.

  He turned his gaze to Gregory, who sat closest to him.

  “Maybe it’s not their fault. You know what teachers write in the evaluation sheet of an intellectually limited pupil at the end of the school year? They write, ‘He did the best he could’. Maybe this is all that these people can actually do. They are not at fault for being dim, but the one who selected them is, and that is you – Gregory!”

  Gregory stood up when the Marshal addressed him and he remained standing, motionless, knowing the Minister would eventually come to his senses. I must keep quiet and absorb the Minister’s abuse with submission, he said to himself. Every word I try to say will only worsen my situation.

  “If this is the situation, then I will change my plans”, thundered the Minister. “Instead of replacing any one of you with another member from the reserve team, I will put the entire reserve team into action, all six of them, and you, all of you, I will just…”

  The minister raised his right hand opposite the faces of the team members, rubbing his rough, stubby fingers as if grinding a clod of dirt into powder and blowing it to the wind.

  “… and you I will scatter away.”

  To Colonel Yevgeni and to his teammates, the Minister’s dramatic display of crushing a grain of dirt and blowing it to the wind seemed more like the scattering of their ashes after their untimely death. But then Yevgeni stood up from his seat opposite the Minister, who seemed momentarily shocked, just like every team member in the room. The Minister looked at the thin, bespectacled Colonel, who had not been granted permission to do whatever he was intending to do.

  “Colonel Yevgeni, what’s come over you? Do you want to perform a trick on me now, trying to save your head?”

  “No, Mr. Minister”, said Yevgeni in a hushed tone. “I have an idea which has been keeping me preoccupied since yesterday. I didn’t want to tell this to anybody, not even to Gregory, before I could check if this idea can be done, if it is feasible and executable, and what its probability of success is, not just in execution, but also in producing the desired outcome. In fact, I will present two different plans. One is easy and quick to execute but has one critical point that requires investigation. The second plan is complex and may be cumbersome and will require preliminary testing; however…”

  The Minister interrupted Yevgeni angrily.

  “Then don’t present me with the complex and cumbersome plan. You disqualify it just by saying it’s complex,.”

  Dimitri watched Yevgeni. He could only be impressed by the conduct and bearing of a man whose appearance completely belied his character. Yevgeni was not just very clever; he had courage.

  “Mr. Minister, the second plan is indeed complex and will require time for testing, but in my opinion, this plan can be the ultimate operation. It will take me about twenty minutes to explain both plans without going into detail. If the Honorable Minister is in a hurry, I can present the data to Gregory first and he will…”

  The Minister looked at his watch in disdain and looked at Yevgeni again.

  “Now Colonel, don’t try to run my schedule. You have fifteen minutes precisely. Carry on.”

  Yevgeni breathed a little easier and immediately proceeded to present his plans.

  “In the first plan, we would send a bomber from our Air Force to fly at low altitude, under our radar cover and that of the Americans. The bomber will enter Alaska, turn back and pull up to a high altitude and execute the precise attack flight path that we know, the same one that the American B-52 bombers have been practicing for years. Then, we fly out of Alaska in our direction, as if to Siberia, and practice firing nuclear missiles at the east of our country. This work can be done with one Tupolev 22 bomber, which will fire a nuclear missile into a relatively barren area in eastern Siberia. We can create effects or elements around this that will lend reliability to this action, to look as if it were an American attack, a belligerent act using nuclear weapons on our territory. We can, for example, alert our anti-aircraft missile batteries of an American bomber that is about to enter our airspace that is equipped with all our radar and friend or foe codes. This way we ensure that our anti-aircraft missile batteries shoot down the Tupolev 22 when it returns from Alaska
and is detected entering our airspace.

  “We can continue to reinforce our cover story to seem totally reliable.”

  “Go on, Colonel”, Marshal Budarenko was beginning to show curiosity, though still glancing at his watch.

  “We can, for example, send our friends in Vietnam a transport plane that will bring real fragments of an American B-52 bomber from there. They have plenty of those. We then plant them in the field and on treetops, and the media would have a feast.

  “This plan is very easy to execute; however, it has one big flaw. Half the world, including everybody in the Soviet Union and in the Kremlin, would actually believe that it was an American attack; on the other hand, the other half of the world, especially the Americans, will know for certain that it is a conspiracy. If we add to that the vast armored forces that we will concentrate in the west of the country, I have no doubt that the Americans will understand that this is a deception and they will call a red alert. This way they will face us ahead of time, ready for action, even before we start our ground operations in Western Europe.”

  Colonel Yevgeni paused, took a sip of water, and looked intently at the Minister of Defense, trying to decipher the level of interest or any sign of curiosity for the plan that he had just laid out.

  “Okay, I understand”, the minister said matter-of-factly and scratched his head. “And what is the second plan, that you think can be perfect? ”

  Yevgeni quickly drank some more water before he continued.

  “In the second plan, I am actually going back to the American nuclear submarines. The goal is to employ sophisticated means of deception to cause an American submarine to launch a real nuclear missile into our territory. If this really happens, and the Americans will be certain that it is indeed their submarine which attacked us, then our ground invasion of Western Europe will be totally justified. We need to find one such submarine that is navigating underwater in the North Sea, not very far from Soviet territory, and they do conduct quite a few of these navigation exercises. The purpose is to create an effect near the submarine that simulates a nuclear blast. The precise location of the blast must be such that it will provide the submarine with data of a big nuclear explosion that has taken place far from them. The course to the epicenter of the blast will lead to the United States of America. This means that for the submarine, all data would indicate a nuclear attack on American soil.”

  Yevgeni then reached for the glass of water and drank the rest of it in one big gulp. He cleared his throat and spoke again.

  “Now I am getting to the two main points. From my experience in the field, I know that a nuclear explosion causes an immediate communication block that lasts for quite a long time. We will create this communication block, or simulate it by means of electronic warfare. Maybe even combine this with aerial scattering of metal chaff, similar to that which is used for jamming radars. The captain of the submarine that we target will also know that a nuclear explosion causes a communication block. The result will be that he would be unable to contact his headquarters in the US, another indication that his homeland has indeed been attacked by nuclear weapons. All that this submarine captain can do is what he was trained to do in his many years of training, and that is to launch a Trident missile or a batch of missiles at us. This is more or less the plan, Mr. Minister.”

  Marshal Budarenko lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

  “Colonel Yevgeni, come here and stand by me.”

  Yevgeni seemed deeply ill at ease, but he hurried to stand beside the minister. His posture was the antithesis of a military man and he tried, without success, to stop his hands from shaking. The minister noticed it.

  “It looks to me, Colonel, that you must be threatened into creativity”, said the minister to Yevgeni, who heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Mr. Minister”, said the colonel meekly, “can I also light a cigarette?”

  All the officers in the room froze. Yevgeni’s request was contrary to Russian military culture, violating every convention, and it meant only one thing: untold insubordination. Gregory, the think tank supervisor and ethics authority, looked livid. The other officers looked on in disbelief as the Minister passed his own pack of Marlboro Reds to Yevgeni.

  ‘Thank you, Sir, but I have my own cigarettes”, Yevgeni mumbled. “I only wanted to know if I, too, can smoke here in the room.”

  “Take one, take, Colonel!” the Minister commanded. “It seems that at least today, you’ve earned one good American cigarette. For tomorrow, we shall wait and see.”

  Yevgeni immediately felt the metaphorical lead weights lifting from his shoulders. His hand shook when he held the Marlboro box and pulled out a single cigarette, which he kept unlit between his fingers. The Minister watched his every move, passing his fingers through his hair in a familiar gesture.

  “The first plan can be executed quickly, even within hours”, said the Minister, “and this is probably its biggest advantage. On the other hand, you also noted its limits. For now, it seems that we will proceed with the second plan, but before we do this, I want you to list all, but all, its weaknesses. I’m waiting.”

  Yevgeni recomposed himself quickly. He was no longer shaking and his voice was steady.

  “Mr. Minister, I truly do not believe that there is any problem in execution. I am certain it will work, but the problem is with the schedule. We would require assistance in the matter from our Electronic Warfare corps. We would have to conduct several explosions at sea and document the effects. We also have to practice it on one of our nuclear submarines, so it is difficult for me to tell you just how many days it will take, but I give you my word, the word of an officer in the Red Army, that we shall do it in the best and quickest way possible.”

  The Minister of Defense was enjoying every drag of his cigarette as he listened intently to every word.

  “So you give me the word of an officer”, he said, “and that is good. And I tell you that from this moment, you, Colonel, are selected to lead this plan, even though your team includes officers who are more senior than you. Is that clear to you, General Vitaly Okhramenko?”

  The General leapt onto his feet from among the team members sitting before the Minister.

  “Yes, Mr. Minister!”

  The officers in the team had not yet gotten to know one another very well, and they had not been properly introduced, mostly because, so far, the main work had been done by Colonel Yevgeni and Brigadier General Dimitri; so it came as a great surprise to them that the short, fat older fellow was a Red Army General.

  “I have a surprise for you, Colonel Yevgeni”, the Minister said, leaning back.

  “We have invested a lot of brainpower in selecting the team members and their specialties. If you have not discovered yet, General Okhramenko is one of the leading experts in electronic warfare in the Red Army, and probably in the world. If you guide him correctly with data, he will solve all your problems in this area.”

  Yevgeni, still standing beside the general, mumbled some words of gratitude.

  “Wait, I’m not finished yet”, the marshal said. “Colonel Nazarbayev!”

  Again, the five team members shifted their gaze to Colonel Nazarbayev, who snapped to attention and called out: “Yes, Mr. Minister”.

  Colonel Nazarbayev had the build of a wrestler. His round head and narrow eyes, as well as his name, revealed his Kazakh origins.

  “Colonel Yevgeni”, the minister roared. “What is going on with you? Are you a pack of lone wolves? Do you think only you and Dimitri have a role here and all the others are just observers? It is time you got to learn about one another. Colonel Nazarbayev is a well-known expert in ordnance, warheads, and explosives. I think you have someone here that you can run with. This time tomorrow, we shall meet here again. I will bring some experts with me and we shall analyze all the aspects of this operation together; all the advantages and disadvantages of your plan
, Yevgeni.”

  It was the first time that the Minister called someone by his first name without preceding it with his military rank.

  The Minister rose, followed by everyone else. He hurried to the door, closely followed by Gregory.

  Dimitri, who only a few hours before had returned from Germany and felt tired, approached Yevgeni and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Did you see that motion that the Minister made with his fingers of how he would scatter us?”

  “Did I see? Of course I did. How could I not see?”

  Dimitri smiled at Yevgeni and again tapped him on the shoulder.

  “As partners in the same fate, I want to thank you for saving our skins for at least a few more hours. In my opinion, you are a genius. You are a true genius. By the way, how long have you been a smoker?”

  “Since yesterday”, Yevgeni replied with a half-smile. “From the moment you took off for Germany and left me here alone. At least now I can say that the Minister and I smoke together.”

  Chapter 5

  Colonel Yevgeni’s five colleagues seated themselves at their desks. Yevgeni motioned to Brigadier General Dimitri with his hand to take the seat to his right, and when he did, turned to him and whispered in his ear.

  “I need you close to me. You have a primary role in our plan. You are a Navy man and only you understand what happens above and below the water. My own knowledge of water begins and ends at the level of a daily shower.”

  Dimitri smiled and replied in a whisper.

  “I will make you a certified seaman, don’t you worry. Now that we know each other a little better, maybe you can tell me what the expertise of the sixth man is? Regarding Sergei, the Minister’s assistant, I assume that he is here in the capacity of the minister’s eyes and ears or what may be called a nark, but the sixth man is really a mystery. He makes comments every once in a while, but my impression is that he has nothing concrete to offer and that he has no specific expertise. What is your impression of him?”