Minotaur

43

While Chapel worked at getting a tourniquet on Favorov’s leg, the Russian explained everything. “It started in the seventies,” he said. He had one hand pressed over his eyes as he lay back on the deck, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Chapel while he confessed. Chapel just worried about getting the bandage tight. It wasn’t easy with one hand.

“It was a very different time, for both our countries. In Russia, we were still struggling with the notion we would never have a land war with you. We had destroyed our economy building up stockpiles of weapons, training and feeding a massive army, because we had always believed our destiny lay in World War III. But advances in nuclear weapons technology had demonstrated that such a thing would be… a joke. A superfluity. Any war between our nations would mean the destruction of both, so fast all those soldiers—and all those AK-47 rifles—would be unnecessary. Yet still the factories churned away, pouring out guns day after day.

“In America, under capitalism, the answer would have been clear. Stop making rifles. Fire the workers and close down the factories. But we had one hundred percent employment, in the Worker’s Paradise. The factories stayed open. Crate after crate after shipload of rifles, and no one to shoot. I do not know who had the brilliant idea, as this was well before my time. But it must have been a KGB man. It was crazy, like all their ideas.

“In your country, your people were tearing each other apart. Radical groups were fighting police over whether or not your Vietnam war was a good idea. Race war seemed a distinct possibility. Maybe even another civil war, eh? Hippies versus the National Guard. Ha! Funny now but at the time it seemed we need only stand back and let you defeat yourself. We would not need to launch our missiles, after all. But soon we saw it wasn’t enough. In skirmish after skirmish, the radical groups were always crushed, because they lacked firepower. The one thing we had.

“So we started sending our surplus rifles abroad. Many to Africa, of course, and to Asia, as many as they could take. But some, just a trickle of the supply, to politicals in your country. It had to be done very quietly. It would take spies to make it happen.

“I was not the first man with the job. I was given this task only at the very end, after it was clear we would lose in Afghanistan. I was sent here with my million dollars’ worth of intelligence and put in place, given the list of contacts, supplied with the weapons.”

“Wait,” Chapel said. “You mean the Russians had you defect intentionally? What about the intel you supplied the CIA? Was that all bogus?”

“Oh, no,” Favorov said, with a weak chuckle. “It was all good, all real. It let your CIA round up a hundred spies working inside your borders. But they were all people the KGB found surplus to requirements anyway. They no longer needed all that manpower, not when internal concerns dominated. The Union was about to fall, and the KGB knew that. Keeping foreign agents on the payroll was a burden. This is how the KGB thought, you see. You cannot fire workers. But you can turn them over to your enemy, so they become your enemy’s problem.”

Chapel shook his head in disbelief.

“I was your golden boy, for a while,” Favorov went on. “Your CIA thought the world of me. It was so easy to sneak the guns in, right under their noses. It was a joyous time, to be frank. There was a new problem, though.”

“I imagine that around that time,” Chapel mused, “you probably had trouble finding enough radicals to take your weapons. The political mood of the country shifted and—”

Favorov laughed. “Oh, you are part right, and part so wrong. The black power groups, the Latin separatists, the revolutionaries faded away, yes. But there are always angry men. If the leftists did not want the guns, your radical right would take them. Instead of minority groups, suddenly I was working with white supremacists.” Favorov shrugged. “I did not care either way. No, the problem was not finding people who wanted what I had. It was convincing them that I was their friend. The white power groups, they hated communists as much as your presidents. More, even. They did not trust me, and they certainly did not trust my suppliers.

“This was the reason I was sent to take over the program. Why a man of my skills was necessary. I had to convince them the guns had no strings attached. And this was my great insight, my great innovation. The thing that saved the program.

“I started charging.

“Before, always, the guns were given as gifts. Much needed supplies for the coming revolution! The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stands behind your valiant struggle! Arise, comrades! This line, of course, was bullshit. And it did not fool the neo-nazis in your country. So instead I went to them. I said, listen, you fascists, you hate us. But we have the guns you need. And I will give them to you for one half the cost anyone else can.” Favorov laughed. “That they understood! Greed!”

Chapel felt a shiver run down his spine. “So you got rich off the guns you were supposed to give away for free.”

“Sometimes it worked too well. I could not explain that income on my taxes. Not unless I made myself into a multimillionaire. Not unless I could claim my profits came from careful investments. This sacrifice I made. I became ludicrously rich, to support the cause. Of course, by then, the cause had changed. The Union was gone, and a free Russia arose, which made less difference than you might think. Yeltsin came and went and the KGB saw no real difference—they ignored that drunk, and they kept to business as usual. Putin was another matter. He tried to shut us down. He said the Russian Federation would not undermine America like this.”

“But you kept selling guns,” Chapel said, slightly confused.

“You must understand, Putin is a very powerful man. The most powerful single man in Russia. Alone. But against an organized front, he is just another man. He cannot stop the crime syndicates. The gangsters.”

“The Russian mafia,” Chapel said.

“They saw how much money I was making. So they kept the program running. It was too lucrative to stop—even if the governments of two superpowers wanted to crush us! The guns kept coming, stolen from supplies that had never been properly inventoried. Shipped through criminal contacts in Cuba, where before we worked directly with Castro. The people involved all changed, from politicians to gangsters, but the game did not change at all.”

“I need you to be very clear on this. The Russian government does not, currently, condone your operation? It tried to actively stop you?”

“They even sent a little man, Galtachenko, to tell me as much. To insist that I stop. But in Russia, you do not insist things from a rich man. You ask politely, and accept the fact he will continue to do as he likes.”

Favorov smiled up at the stars. It was a grim smile, the smile of a man whose life is over, even though what he’d just said had earned him a second chance.

“You have your answer, my friend. It was not an act of war. Simply an act of avarice. The Russian government has no desire to harm your country. But as long as there was money to be made, the guns continued to flow.”

“So that’s it,” Chapel said. “That’s it. I can take that to my boss. I can tell him we don’t need to declare war on Russia. Thank God.”