EndWar

TWO

“Obviously you don’t remember my father,” said General Sergei Izotov as he rose from his office chair. “He was a division commander and hero of the Motherland in World War II. To imply that there is a lack of intelligence in my family is going much too far.”

Izotov felt certain that there was only one man in all of Russia who would take such a tone with President Vsevolod Vsevolodovich Kapalkin. He was not that man, but the chance that he might not survive such a conversation was not the point.

He would not allow Kapalkin to insult him or his family, no matter the cost. And he could not believe the insult had come from a man whose own father was a low-level functionary in the KGB, a man whose own fortune was amassed through smuggling personal computers, blue jeans, and other luxury items while attending university. How dare Kapalkin take such a tone with him!

Perhaps he would not survive the conversation!

Izotov glared at the president, who stared back at him from the computer screen. Kapalkin’s pronounced jaw, penetrating eyes, and impeccably combed hair stripped a decade off his fifty-four years, as did his daily exercise regime of swimming, which kept his waist narrow, his shoulders broad.

The president began to shake his head. “I’ll say it again. I’m shocked that your Spetsnaz and security units allowed such a breach. And now they have Doletskaya.”

“We were addressing the breach, but they had help from the inside.”

“Which is even more disturbing. And now you tell me the colonel’s chip has been deactivated by the Americans? We can’t kill him? If Doletskaya talks—”

“I think he will hold out for as long as possible. But it won’t matter either way. There’s nothing those cowboys can do to stop us. The wheels are already in motion. And I will plug this leak.”

“General, I want to believe you’re right. But then again, I believed your security was the best in the world.”

Izotov snorted. “I’m right. Believe it.”

President Kapalkin considered that. A smile nicked the corners of his lips as he glanced away at another screen. “The Americans are beginning to pull out of Moscow. It seems Major Noskov is having more success than you are at the moment.”

Izotov discerned a dismissal in the president’s tone. “At the moment the major is doing quite well for himself and his unit, but we, too, will succeed. Spasibo, Vsevolod Vsevolodovich. Thank you.”

The president nodded, and Izotov broke the link. Then he whirled around and smote a fist on the table, highly unlike him.

He wanted to call someone, vent his anger, but he had no real friends, just a shifting coterie of allies. Even his spartanly furnished office seemed to taunt him, to remind him that despite all the blood, sweat, and tears, there were still men like Kapalkin who would dismiss his sacrifices as cavalierly as they would a waiter.

What had he become?

The rumors had spread among his subordinates that he only slept one or two hours per day, that he was perhaps part machine, constructed by the government itself. Sometimes he felt that way.

And oh, he had served that government well, in the first and second Chechen wars, twice a hero back then. He had commanded the 6th Spetsnaz Brigade from 1998 to 2006, and was head of the Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska (VDV), the Russian Airborne Troops, from 2007 to 2012. In 2012, he had assumed his post at the GRU and for the past eight years had expanded the directorate’s power and purpose.

But had he focused too much on the work?

His subordinates even questioned his wife’s death, wondered if he was somehow involved.

He would speak of it to no one, purge all thoughts of it from his mind.

He returned to his seat, leaned forward toward the computer screen, and reminded himself of the dream he shared with his subordinates, the dream he shared with the president:

There could be only one superpower. And he would do everything he could to ensure that.

Why? To restore the Motherland to greatness. To achieve a level of personal power nearly unimaginable.

And to be like his hero, Stalin, who never wore a personal sidearm yet boldly thrust out his chest against the Nazis. Stalin would know how to bring the European Federation and the American Joint Strike Force to their knees.

At sixty-one, there weren’t many things left in this world that truly moved General Sergei Izotov.

War was one of them.

And while agonizing at times, it was still terribly fun.