Mirror Image

CHAPTER NINE

The Kamov Ka-26 radial-engined helicopter landed on the floodlit patch of earth, its twin rotors kicking up dirt and swirling it into inverted sea horse patterns. While soldiers ran over and began unloading crates of communications equipment from the bay aft of the pilot's cabin, Interior Minister Dogin stepped out. Holding his fedora with one hand and the front of his greatcoat with another, he ducked low and walked briskly from the landing area.

Dogin had always loved temporary bases like this one— empty fields transformed overnight into pulsing centers of power, bootprints on the windswept soil, the dusty air ripe with the smell of diesel fuel.

The base was set up for mountain warfare, using a configuration designed in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan. To his right, one hundred yards away, was row after row of large tents, each housing a dozen soldiers. There were twenty tents in a row, and they reached far beyond the glare of the floodlights, nearly to the distant foothills. Beyond them, at the north and south corners of the camp, were firing pits for riflemen and dugouts with overhead covers. In the event of a war, these positions would be used to protect the base from guerrilla attacks. To the left, where there were no hills, were rows of tanks, armored vehicles, and helicopters, the mess area and canvas shower stalls, garbage pit, medical tents, and supply depots. Even at night, there was life here— mechanized, electric, and invigorating.

Off in the distance, straight ahead, Dogin saw the immaculate, vintage PS-89 twin-engine monoplane that belonged to Dmitri Shovich. Two men stood guard, each carrying Avtomat assault rifles; the pilot sat in his seat, ready to depart at a moment's notice.

Looking at the plane, the Interior Minister felt a chill. What had only been talk until now was about to become a reality. The men and matériel here, and the equipment en route, would take them only so far. To get the money he needed to help undo the disastrous results of the election, he was about to make a pact with the devil. He only hoped that Kosigan was right, that the escape clause would work when the time came.

Beyond the supply depot were three more tents: the weather station, with its sensors outside, on tripods, hooked to computers inside; the communications center, with one satellite dish pointing northwest, another southeast; and the command tent.

General Mikhail Kosigan was standing outside the last of these, his legs spread wide, hands locked behind his back, head held stiffly erect. An orderly stood behind him, to his right, also holding onto his hat.

Though the hem of the General's jacket, his pant legs, and the flaps of the tent kicked wildly in the wash, Kosigan didn't seem to notice. From the iron-black eyes to the deeply cleft chin to the ruddy scar that ran diagonally between them, the six-foot-four-inch General was the quintessence of his strong, confident Cossack stock.

"Welcome, Nikolai!" the General said. "It's good to see you!" Kosigan wasn't speaking loudly, but his voice carried over the din of the helicopter.

Dogin shook Kosigan's hand. "It's good to see you too, Mikhail."

"Oh? Then why do you look so grim?"

"I'm not grim," Dogin said defensively. "I'm preoccupied."

"Ah, the great mind always working. Like Trotsky in exile."

Dogin shot him a look. "I can't say I like the metaphor. I would never have opposed Stalin, and I hope that being hacked to death is not in my future."

Dogin's eyes held Kosigan's. The General was a man of charm and incredible poise. He was twice world champion and an Olympic competitor in pistol shooting, the result of a youth spent in the paramilitary DOSAAF— the Voluntary Society for Cooperation with Army, Air Force, and Fleet, which trains young people in sports that have a military application. From there, his rise in the military was rapid and brilliant— though never quite fast enough to satisfy his towering ego. Dogin was sure that he could trust the General now. Kosigan needed the Minister to help him leapfrog over his superiors in the coming order. But what about later? Later was always a problem with people like Kosigan.

Kosigan smiled. "Don't worry. There are no assassins here. Only allies. Allies who are getting tired of maneuvers, who are eager to do something… but" — the smile broadened— "allies who are as ready as ever to serve the Minister."

"And his General," Dogin said.

"But of course." Kosigan smiled as he turned and extended a hand toward his tent.

Entering, Dogin saw the third member of the strange triumvirate: Dmitri Shovich. The mobster was seated in one of three folding chairs set around a small, green metal table.

Shovich rose as Dogin entered. "My good friend," Shovich said softly.

Dogin couldn't bring himself to call the fiend "friend." "Dmitri," he nodded, bowing slightly as he looked into the slight man's hazel eyes. They were cold, those eyes, and seemed more so because of the close-cropped, peroxide-white hair and eyebrows. Shovich's long face was impassive and his skin unnaturally smooth. Dogin had read that Shovich had endured a therapeutic process of chemical peeling to remove the hard, cracked skin he'd suffered during nine years in a Siberian prison.

Shovich sat back down, his eyes never leaving the newcomer. "You're not happy, Minister."

"You see, Nikolai?" General Kosigan said. "Everyone notices it." He turned a chair around, straddled it, and pointed at Dogin, his index finger extended, thumb upraised as though his hand were a gun. "If you'd been less serious than you are, perhaps we wouldn't be here now. The new Russia likes leaders who can laugh and drink with them, not someone who seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders."

Dogin unbuttoned his coat and sat in the last chair. There was a tray with cups, a teapot, and a bottle of vodka. He poured himself tea. "The new Russia has followed a piper who will lead them laughing and drinking to destruction."

"It sounds like fun," Kosigan admitted. "But Russians have never known what's best for them— and, fortunately, we are here to show them, What a noble bunch we are."

Shovich folded his hands on the table. "General, I'm not noble, nor am I interested in saving Russia. Russia sent me to hell for nine years before Gorbachev's general amnesty freed me. I am only interested in the terms we discussed previously. Are they still acceptable to you both?"

"They are," said the General.

The gangster's cold eyes shifted to Dogin. "Does he speak for you, Minister?"

The Interior Minister stirred a lump of sugar into his tea. In the five years since his release, Shovich had gone from being a convicted robber to the leader of a global crime network that was comprised of an army of 100,000 men in Russia, Europe, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere— most of whom had been admitted to the ancient order of the thieves' world after proving their loyalty by murdering a friend or relative.

Am I mad to be joining forces with this man? Dogin asked himself. Shovich would be loyal only as long as they gave him twenty percent of the total assets of the former Soviet republics, which included the largest petroleum reserves on earth, double the timber found in the Amazon, nearly a quarter of the planet's unmined diamonds and gold, and some of the world's largest deposits of uranium, plutonium, lead, iron, coal, copper, nickel, silver, and platinum. The man wasn't a patriot. He wanted to exploit the natural resources of a rebuilt Soviet Union and use their legitimacy to launder drug money.

It made Dogin sick to contemplate, but Kosigan maintained that as long as he and his colleagues controlled the world's largest standing army, and Dogin ran the secret new surveillance operation in St. Petersburg, they would have nothing to fear from Shovich. He could be forced out at some later date, exiled to one of his residences in New York, London, Mexico City, Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires. Or he could be shot from the sky if he refused to go.

Dogin wasn't so sure of that, but there didn't seem to be any other option. He needed a lot of money to buy politicians and military officials, to wage an aggressive war without Kremlin assent. Unlike Afghanistan, this would be a war the Russians could win. But money was the key. How Marx would have bristled.

"I speak for myself," Dogin said to Shovich. "Your terms are acceptable to me. On the day Zhanin's govement is ousted and I am named President, the man you select will become the new Minister of the Interior."

Shovich smiled a cold, chilling smile. "What if I select myself'?"

Dogin felt a flash of horror, though he was too seasoned a politician to show it. "As I said, the choice is yours."

The tension of mutual distrust was thick when Kosigan broke it with a blustery, "What about the Ukraine? What about Vesnik?"

Dogin looked away from Shovich. "The President of Ukraine is with us."

"Why?" asked Shovich. "The Ukrainians have the independence they sought for decades."

"Vesnik has more social and ethnic problems than he or his military will be able to manage," Dogin said. "He wants to tamp them down before they get out of hand. We will help him do that. He also longs for the glory days, as Kosigan and I do." Dogin regarded the cold monster beside him. "My allies in Poland are planning to stage an event there on Tuesday, 12:30 A.M. local time."

"What kind of event?" Shovich asked.

"My spetsnaz assistant in St. Petersburg has already sent a secret team to the border town of Przemysl, Poland," Dogin said. "They'll arrange for an explosion at the Polish Communist Party office there. The Communists won't tolerate the attack, and my people there will make sure the protest turns violent. Polish troops will be sent in, and the struggle will spread toward the Ukrainian border six miles away. At night, in the confusion, Vesnik's troops will fire on the Polish forces."

"When that happens," Kosigan jumped in, "Vesnik will contact me to request military support. Zhanin will already have learned that he is outside the real circle of power. Now he will scramble to find out which generals are on his side, just like Yeltsin when his officers elected to pound Chechnya. He will have very few allies, and the politicians we're buying won't support him either. Poles of Ukrainian and Belorussian descent will also be persecuted. When the Ukrainians and I counterattack, White Russia will join us, bringing the front to within one hundred miles of Warsaw. Russians will be caught up in nationalistic frenzy while Zhanin's foreign bankers and businessmen desert him. He'll be finished."

"A key to our success," said Dogin, "is keeping the United States and Europe from becoming involved militarily." He looked at Shovich. "We will work on that diplomatically, claiming that this was not imperialism but an attack on the Federation. But if that doesn't work, the General has talked to you about threatening key officials—"

"I did," Kosigan said, "but Dmitri told me he has a better idea. Why don't you tell him, Dmitri?"

Dogin regarded Shovich as the mobster adjusted himself in his chair. Dogin sensed that Shovich did it just to make him wait. He settled back, crossed his leg, brushed mud from the side of his black boot.

"My people in America tell me that the FBI has gotten very good at 'counterpunching,' " Shovich said. "If we run gambling or drug operations, they merely try to contain us. But if we hit their people, they strike back hard. It keeps the streets from becoming a war zone. Since most of the mobsters are in this for the money, not for politics, they refuse to attack government targets. "

"Then what do you propose?" Dogin asked.

"An object lesson against a civilian target," Shovich said.

"To what end?" Dogin asked.

Kosigan answered, "To get America's undivided attention. When we have it, we tell them that if they leave us alone in Eastern Europe, there will be no further acts of terrorism. And we'll even turn over the terrorist, so that President Lawrence can look swift and decisive."

"Of course," Shovich said, "you will have to reimburse my colleagues in America for the loss of a man. But that will come out of your little treasure trove."

"Of course," Kosigan agreed. He reached for the bottle of vodka and regarded Dogin. "As we've said all along, Minister, all we need do is hold the U.S. off until the nightly news shows videos of soldiers who have been maimed or killed. The people of the United States will not tolerate American casualties. With the election just months away, President Lawrence will not intervene.

Dogin looked at Shovich. "What kind of civilian target will you strike?"

"I wouldn't know," he said with disinterest. "My people live there. Some of them are mercenaries and some of them are patriots. But whoever is picked will know how to strike at the American soul. I've left it entirely in their hands." He smiled humorlessly. "By this time tomorrow, we'll have seen it on the news."

"Tomorrow!" Kosigan said. "We are men of action!" He poured vodka in his and Shovich's cups. "Our friend Nikolai does not drink, so we'll allow him to toast us with tea." He raised his cup. "To our alliance."

As the men touched the rims of their cups together, Dogin felt a burning in his belly. This was a coup, a second Revolution. It was empire building, and people were going to die. But while he accepted that, he found it difficult to accept Shovich's casualness. The mobster had moved from the concept of kidnaping to killing as though there was no difference.

Dogin sipped his tea and reminded himself that this unholy marriage was necessary. Every leader made compromises to move forward. Peter the Great changed Russian art and industry with ideas he brought from Europe. German cooperation enabled Lenin to overthrow the Czar and withdraw from World War I. Stalin consolidated his power by murdering Trotsky as well as hundreds of thousands of others. Yeltsin forged alliances with the black marketeers to keep his economy from collapsing entirely.

Now he was collaborating with a gangster. At least Shovich was a Russian. Better that than going to the United States with hat in hand, begging for money and moral support as Gorbachev and now Zhanin had done.

As the others emptied their cups, Dogin avoided Shovich's eyes. He tried not to think of the means, only the ends. Instead, he envisioned a map on the wall of his office. A map of a grand new Soviet Union.