The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

17

President Andrei Kozlov paced his huge office in the Kremlin, head lowered, his thoughts private. Kozlov's appearance was of a man once exposed to all weathers and with a physique trained to optimum fitness. But in his late fifties, his age and cragginess were showing. He was at least six feet three and broad-shouldered, with thick, grey, messy hair, and sideburns shaved neatly to the base of each ear. He had a pale, chubby face, blotched with moles, a face more friendly and happy than you would expect from the leader of a troubled and wounded nation. It was a disarming image, which Kozlov rarely failed to use to his advantage.

Kozlov finished his conversation with Jim West and handed the encrypted portable telephone to his private secretary, Alexander Yushchuk. Yushchuk had been with Kozlov for more than a quarter of a century, and the President trusted him more than his wife, more than his four children and a lot more than any of the duplicitous colleagues who sat in his cabinet.

They had met in 1982 during the Afghan campaign. Kozlov, then a political adviser in Kandahar, had run under mortar and machine-gun fire to drag Alexander Yushchuk, a conscripted driver, out of an overturned and burning jeep. While Yushchuk had survived bruised but unhurt, Kozlov took shrapnel in the ankle, leaving him with a slight limp.

Kozlov was a high achiever. Yushchuk, tall, gangly and bespectacled, was an enquiring observer and a pacifist. He was intrigued that anyone would risk his own life to save the life of a man he didn't know. He attached himself to Kozlov out of curiosity. Having never known status, the lowest ebb of Kozlov's career had been normal for Yushchuk. He believed in Kozlov's policies, although he did not always agree with the detail. For Yushchuk, Kozlov was the only Russian who understood the stakes of what was happening to their nation.

Kozlov had recently swept to power after years in the political wilderness. A military historian with a degree in international relations from Moscow University and a master's in business administration from INSEAD in France, Kozlov had argued forcefully against the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Nothing was absolute, he had said. Nothing was clear enough to necessitate such a risk. There was no panacea, no perfect formula of government, and the sudden dismantling of the status quo was highly dangerous. Kozlov was ignored and Russia went on to witness the conflict and poverty that followed.

He had spoken out against creating a free-market democracy without the rule of law, but was derided while organized crime took over the country. He exiled himself to Vladivostok, as far eastward as he could go. On the long train journey there, over thousands of miles, Kozlov had seen the achivements of the Soviet system and how it had supplied housing, drainage, roads, electricity, healthcare and telephone lines to tens of millions. In India, Africa and Latin America, similar communities lived in dismal conditions, despite following the advice of Western democracies. From Vladivostok, he wrote against the triumphalism of the market economy, and watched helplessly as billions of dollars in foreign loans wrested economic control from Russians and gave it to foreigners.

He opposed Russia's acceptance as a partner in NATO, but was ignored, and he watched as allies such as Yugoslavia and Iraq switched their allegiance from Moscow to Washington.

Kozlov had sunk deeper and deeper into poverty. His wife, Sonia, wavered but remained with him. His two sons ignored him. One of his daughters, Mariya, disowned him and emigrated to Paris. But Ekatarina, his youngest, and a talented cellist, knew nothing of politics, but everything of family love. She remained loyal, albeit ignorant as to the issues which Kozlov was fighting.

'What do you think?' said Kozlov, as he came to the end of the room and face to face with an oil on canvas by Isaac Levitan. Kozlov had pleaded with the Tretyakov Gallery to lend it to him in exchange for an old master from the Kremlin. Levitan called his work Eternal Peace. It showed a solitary church set against an expanse of lake and sky, and was meant to reflect the loneliness of the human soul in the vastness of the universe. There was a tragedy about it, as there was for much of that period of painting, where man was constantly shown as being in disharmony with his own environment. Kozlov turned and paced back along the length of the room.

'Tell me again what he said,' answered Yushchuk, leaning against the wall. 'Tell me how he said it, and I'll tell you what I think.'

'He wanted to know three things. One — did I believe there had been a military takeover in North Korea? I said I did, and I believed Park Ho was the man responsible. Two — could I guarantee him that North Korea would not fire another missile?'

Yushchuk, with his detailed knowledge of Kozlov's character, detected a deliberate pause. He stepped in. 'You told him no one was able to tell North Korea what to do, especially if the government had been overthrown and a rogue general was in power.'

'To which he asked a follow-up question — was Russia an ally of North Korea? And I said that it was an alliance that had long decayed. If he was looking for big-power allies, he should talk to Jamie Song in Beijing. Failing that, get the United Nations' list of the poorest and most unstable nations and work up from the bottom.'

Yushchuk laughed, pushed himself off the wall against which he had been leaning and lit a cigarette. 'Was it a good conversation? It sounds as if you were winding him up.'

Kozlov folded his large hands together, stretched them back and cracked the knuckles. 'He was wound up anyway. He had just got off the phone to that old snake, Toru Sato.'

'His third question?' asked Yushchuk, dropping his spent match into an ashtray on the table beside him.

'Did Russia regard North Korea as a vital and strategic buffer state?'

'Not if it's going to fire missiles all over the place. It switches from being a buffer to a liability,' said Yushchuk.

Kozlov nodded. Reaching his desk, he stopped pacing and ran his fingers along the crevice between the leather and teak. 'To which he added another supplementary—'

'Trying to slip it in unnoticed?'

'Yes. But I fear, like myself, the American president does not possess such subtlety of character.' Kozlov walked around the desk, sat in the chair behind it, pushing himself into it as if stretching his back. 'What would be Russia's reaction to a US strike on North Korea? To which I asked whether it would be to reprimand it or to collapse it. He wanted an answer to both options. To which I said a reprimand could be carried out without comment providing it was against a military installation with no civilian casualties. An onslaught to collapse the regime would destabilize the Korean peninsula and therefore the whole of the western Pacific rim. It would cause untold civilian casualties and a refugee crisis within Russia and China. Therefore, I would oppose it.'

Yushchuk drew on his cigarette. 'You are right.'

'He believes I have influence,' said Kozlov, tilting the chair forward and running his hands over the surface of the desk. 'He wants me to use it to stop Park Ho from doing anything that would provoke an attack.'

'He is clever.'

Kozlov shook his head. 'No. He is not clever. He is forcing me to take sides when I don't want to. He is assuming I will take his side. But this is not the nineties. Russia is not Japan. Nor is it Europe. We are no longer supplicants to defeat.'