Countdown to Midnight

Thirty

Pavel Voronin waited patiently while his servants handed around glasses of Champagne to his guests — Russia’s president, Piotr Zhdanov, and a small group of his closest military and intelligence advisers. They were seated around a table that had been moved into the palatial living room for this special event. A large-screen digital display stood at one end of the table. It was currently blank.

When the servants quietly withdrew, closing the doors behind them, he moved to the head of the table and raised his own glass. “Gentlemen,” he said smoothly. “Before we begin, a toast. To our president, a man of courage and vision!”

Voronin noticed one or two of them discreetly rolling their eyes at this bit of gross flattery, but they raised their glasses all the same. Obsequiousness was a survival trait in the highest circles of Russia’s current government. “The president,” deep voices rumbled in response.

Most of them downed the fine sparkling wine, a Perrier-Jouët worth thousands of American dollars per bottle, as though it were the cheapest vodka — the sort bought purely for its high alcohol content. For all their rank and position, he thought coolly, the majority of Zhdanov’s inner circle were still nothing but jumped-up peasants. Where it counted, they were all alike: Kokorin, the elderly minister of defense; Golitsyn and Rogozin, respectively the commanders of the navy and air force; Yumashev, who headed the FSB, Russia’s internal security agency; and Veslovsky and Ivashin, the chiefs of the SVR and GRU. They had education, and even technical competence in their own narrow fields, but they had no real grasp of culture. He’d seen their faces when they first saw the extravagant blend of expensive designer furniture and priceless modernist art that filled this room. Looks of baffled incomprehension had been mixed with scorn at what they apparently considered a display of decadence. But underlying it all had been their clear envy of the tremendous wealth he flaunted.

Voronin knew too that these men, almost all of them nearly twice his age, also despised and feared him because of his obvious and growing influence over Zhdanov. His Raven Syndicate was a source of power completely outside their control — one they saw draining the armed forces, the SVR, and the GRU of their best officers. So far, they had failed to stop his rapid rise, watching from the sidelines with barely veiled hostility while he took his place at the president’s right hand. Inwardly, he shrugged. Perhaps he should feel sorry for them. They were caught on the wrong side of the one of the oldest equations in human history: Ambition coupled with ruthlessness produced wealth. Wealth, in turn, produced power, and this power, wielded relentlessly, yielded even more wealth. It was a synergistic relationship that few Russians understood. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the nation’s new oligarchs, including his dead mentor, Dmitri Grishin, had shown themselves unable to grasp the fundamental truth that money, in and of itself, was useless unless it was coupled with political and military authority. That left them vulnerable to a hard-edged autocrat like Piotr Zhdanov, who’d begun carving out his own path to the presidency while he was still a young officer in the old KGB.

Voronin had no intention of falling into that same trap. His control over the Raven Syndicate made him the master of highly trained soldiers, spies, and assassins beholden to him — and to no one else. At the same time, his new status as Zhdanov’s most trusted counselor gave him nearly unfettered access to the levers of Russia’s state power, its fleets, air units, tank armies, and missiles. The day would come when this indirect exercise of power no longer satisfied him, but it would do for the moment.

Now it was time to show these old men the first steps on the road to their nation’s renewed greatness. Voronin put his own champagne down largely untasted. He turned to Zhdanov. “Mr. President? With your permission, I’ll proceed.”

Zhdanov nodded briefly. His eyes were hooded. He’d agreed with the younger man’s reasons for keeping MIDNIGHT a closely held secret — even from his other most trusted advisers. Now that the moment had come to brief them on the operation, he was plainly somewhat anxious about how they would react. None of them would be happy to learn just how far they’d all been kept out of the loop.

Voronin ignored the older man’s show of nerves. He judged it to be wholly unnecessary. In their hearts, the others Zhdanov had gathered around him were no more than domesticated dogs, not untamed wolves. While they might growl and snap in protest, in the end he knew they would bend to their master’s voice and will.

Instead, he ran his own gaze around the table. “The presentation you’re about to see has been classified at the very highest level, by the direct order of the president himself. Outside this room, there will be no further discussion of the operation code-named MIDNIGHT, except with his written authorization.”

Startled, the senior ministers and military commanders turned as one toward Zhdanov. He nodded slowly, confirming what they’d just been told. They sat back, looking troubled.

Voronin concealed a pleased smile. Now these men knew better who was calling the tune here. And who held the whip. He raised a hand to signal one of his aides. Immediately, the lights dimmed and the large display brightened. “The world is about to change,” he told them with grave satisfaction. “And many of the obstacles to Russia’s rightful place as the globe’s dominant power will be swept away forever.”

Video footage of the Zuljanah rocket launch appeared on screen. Steadily, the missile arced high over the Caspian Sea, roaring aloft on a pillar of flickering fire. “What you’re witnessing is the final test of a key element in our plan, the space vehicle that will deliver the MIDNIGHT weapon to its intended target.”

Yvgeny Rogozin, the lieutenant general in charge of Russia’s air force, frowned. “That’s not one of our ICBMs.”

“Correct, General,” Voronin said. “The rocket is an Iranian design.”

“The Iranians?” Gennady Kokorian, the defense minister, snapped querulously. “What the devil does Iran have to do with this MIDNIGHT plan of yours?”

“Everything,” Voronin said simply. Then he smiled coldly. “And nothing.”

Over the next several minutes, he walked his audience through the several stages involved in this high-stakes operation. The more he talked, the longer their faces grew. As he’d suspected from the beginning, they were conditioned by age and inbred caution to focus only on the risks involved — so much so that they could not recognize the enormous rewards to be reaped. These men are fossils, he thought contemptuously. Much the same, of course, could be said of Zhdanov himself, though at least the aging president still had just enough guts and greed to be useful to him.

When he finished, there was a long moment of horrified silence.

At last, Kokorin shook his bald head. “This plan of yours is insane,” he said bluntly. “You would stake everything on a single weapon? A weapon that is no longer even fully in our control?” He grimaced. “Failure would be utterly catastrophic, both for Russia, and for all of us in this room.”

“All the more reason to make sure we succeed,” Voronin retorted. He shrugged. “Besides, alea iacta est.” Seeing their looks of incomprehension at the classic Latin comment from Caesar, spoken as he the crossed to Rubicon to make his bid for power, he smiled thinly. “In other words, the die is cast. The Gulf Venture has already sailed and our Iranian allies will not willingly abort the operation now.”

They stared at him in shock. Until that instant, none of them had realized MIDNIGHT was already in motion. Voronin resisted the temptation to laugh. Had these tired and timid old men seriously believed they would be consulted first? That they were anything more than the tools Zhdanov would use if it was necessary and discard or ignore if it was not?

“There are risks,” he agreed. “But the potential rewards far outweigh them. At the moment, Russia’s status as a world power is mostly an illusion — one which rests on a foundation of sand. The longer we sit idle, the more the power conveyed by our military might, especially by our strategic nuclear forces, will be undermined by an aging, shrinking population and shaky economy. If nothing changes, we will only grow weaker as our competitors grow stronger. We must either act decisively now against our chief rival, the United States, or abandon any pretense of being a great nation.” He turned his attention to Zhdanov. “And I do not believe our people would react well to learning that all their sacrifices of the past decades were in vain.”

The president nodded dourly. He was only too aware that his countrymen would turn against even the strongest leader if they believed he had failed them. Fed a steady diet of propaganda claiming that Russia could still enforce its will on the rest of the world whenever it chose, they would not accept anything less. In essence, his continued hold on power rested on his ability to make reality conform to those lies before the Russian people figured out how badly they’d been duped.

“In any case, MIDNIGHT has been structured deliberately to minimize any significant danger to us,” Voronin continued slyly. “Any significant evidence that survives will pin the attack on another of America’s long-standing enemies, Iran’s radical Islamic regime — and not on us.”

Slowly, the men around the table relaxed and muttered their agreement. The younger man’s arguments were persuasive, especially since it was clear that his scheme had Zhdanov’s total support. Only Kokorin seemed unimpressed. His thin-lipped mouth curled in distaste. “You’ve certainly spun an elegant web of lies and deceit,” the elderly defense minister acknowledged. “So much so that I only wonder what else it conceals.” His eyes hardened. “Is your interest in this plan purely patriotic, some burning, selfless desire to see Mother Russia made great again? Or do you hope to achieve more personal gains in all the chaos you’re about to unleash?”

Zhdanov leaned forward with a scowl. “Enough, Gennadiy!” he snapped. “Remember, I’ve personally approved this operation. What I care about is what matters. And what matters to me are competence and boldness, not high-minded slogans that do nothing to advance Russia’s strategic interests. So far, MIDNIGHT has been executed flawlessly. That is what counts!”

Voronin bowed his head modestly, acknowledging this praise. Privately, he knew the reason for the president’s vehemence was that Kokorin’s tart comment had struck close to the bone. Zhdanov, like him, was fully aware that the world’s financial markets were about to be turned upside down — and that investments made with that in mind would yield extraordinary gains. Some, he mused, might find it grotesque to expect to profit financially from the probable deaths of a hundred million people. But while Russia’s leader undoubtedly intended mainly to pad his own considerable personal wealth, the ill-gotten fruits of years of near-absolute power, he personally had far bigger plans.

The financial rewards he expected to reap were important, but not in themselves. With three billion dollars at his disposal, Voronin had made himself the second most powerful man in Russia. How much more could he achieve with ten or twenty times that amount? His pale eyes narrowed in speculation. It would be quite amusing, he decided, to find out.