CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Once a Chekist always a Chekist;

Chekists cannot be former or corrupt.

- General Vladimir Smirnov, FSB

D-69, near Lubyanka Square, Moscow

Russia, at least, had gasoline freely available. The thick and fearsome traffic outside the old headquarters of the Cheka and its progeny said as much. The noise, of horns, of badly tuned engines, and of cursing drivers and pedestrians, was equally fearsome.

"I like it," said Yuri Vasilyevich Chebrikov, to Ralph Boxer, in a little café down a side street off the square, not too very far for an old man to walk from his daily travails. As tired as he looked, indeed the skin around his neck and eyes, and along both sides of Chebrikov's face sagged, he still managed to make his daily walk, rain, shine, or-commonly enough-deep slush.

Both Ralph and Victor visibly relaxed, now that Victor's father-in-law, who was also a deputy director for Russia's Federal Security Service, had given at least this much of a verbal blessing to the project. Victor had given the old man the bare bones of the thing before Boxer arrived.

"There are, however," Yuri continued, "a few conditions to my acquiescence." He turned his eyes, which were much warmer than his profession would suggest, to his son-in-law. "How long have you known the plan?" Yuri asked.

"In this detail, Yuri Vasilyevich, about thirty-six hours," Victor answered. Boxer didn't, of course, volunteer that he had not given over the entire plan.

"You understand," Ralph explained, "that we wanted to bring this to the highest authorities, which Victor, sadly, was not."

"What would you have done had I said ‘no'?" Yuri asked.

"Gone ahead anyway," Ralph answered. "It's too far along to stop now."

"And if the United States had said you could not?"

"Gone ahead anyway," Boxer answered confidently, though he was not really as certain that Stauer would have balked his own country.

"Have you asked them?"

"No, nor will we."

Chebrikov smiled. "Then let me suggest to you that if they had said ‘no' you would not have gone against them."

"Possibly," Boxer admitted. Changing the subject, he asked, "You said you had conditions?"

"Yes. Two big ones and several smaller ones. The big ones first?"

"Please," Ralph agreed.

Yuri patted Victor's shoulder affectionately. "My son-in-law is to go with you, to have full access to your facilities and everything you do, and free ability to report back to me." Yuri waited to see if the American balked on that issue. If he had objections, they hadn't reached his face yet. Yuri continued, "Secondly, I want your people to add a mission." He turned back to Victor and asked, "Is Konstantin's team still mission capable?"

Victor had a sudden image of mopeds racing through the jammed streets of Yangon. "Yes."

"Very good." He turned back to Boxer. "There is an Arab, a Yemeni, from Sana'a, who was instrumental in the hijacking of one of our ships. He is to be punished, seriously and severely punished. We want you to attach Konstantin and his people to your organization, and get them in a position to destroy this man, this Yusuf ibn Muhammad al Hassan. Information on his location and target status will be forthcoming, assuming you agree."

There Boxer balked. "We can't. We're shoestring as it is. We've no way to get Konstantin to him, and no way to extract him and his men afterwards. And, in any case, why us? You represent the Russian Empire, reborn. Surely, you can get this one Arab."

It was Yuri Vasilyevich's turn to sigh. "We can't get him because he is . . . Ralph, do you mind if I call you Ralph?"

"Not at all, sir." And why not the honorific? The old bastard's been in the intelligence business since I was child.

"Civilization is dying, Ralph. All over the world. Everyone in a position to know knows that much."

Boxer rocked his head back and forth. Yes, he knew civilization was, broadly speaking, on the ropes. He wasn't convinced it was hopeless, yet, but, yes, on the ropes.

"States," Yuri continued, "once powerful states, are falling to gangs. Borders cannot be controlled. ‘Idealists' fight amongst themselves for control of the drug trade. Piracy is as rife as the reduced sea traffic nowadays can support. Economies are collapsing; even your own Dow Jones Industrial Average is below three thousand, less than a quarter of what it once was. Unemployment, underemployment, and misemployment approaches twenty-five to thirty-five percent in the nations that are doing well. Fifty percent in some others. Your own president is a would-be Stalin in Birkenstocks, a doctrinaire-what's that wonderful Yankee term?-ah, yes, a doctrinaire watermelon determined to see you into the industrial stone age.

"National consensus, which some deride as consensus to wage war together, but is also consensus to live together, at least locally, in peace and mutual aid, is dying everywhere. And adolescent-or, at least, sophomoric-Kantian pipe dreams will not take its place. Civilization is dying, Ralph," the old Chekist repeated. ""Or, at least, it's very, very ill."

"One of the things that happen when that happens is that people start looking out for themselves and their own. We can't take on the Yemeni because he is backed by Saudis and because we are fractured and that wog banker has his support, all bought and paid for, right here." Yuri's old, gnarled finger pointed towards the square. "Right over there in the Lubyanka."

The old man's hand shook. Whether it was with the palsy of age or simple human rage, Boxer couldn't tell. Yuri half-whispered, "And no one knows who they can trust anymore."

His voice rose again to a normal volume, "That's why I want the Arab punished, and severely, not only to teach a lesson to those who would grab our ships but to cut off from financing the people right here inside Russia who are simply members of foreign criminal gangs."

"We still don't have a way to get Konstantin from where we must be to strike to where he must be to strike," Ralph objected.

"Oh, yes, you do," Yuri said. He turned his attention back to his son-in-law and asked, "Victor, do you still have the capability to move, say, two MI-28 helicopters?"

"They'll fit in the largest shipping containers?" Victor asked.

"Barely, but yes, if you take off everything extraneous, the nose, the tail rotor, the main rotor and its mast, the landing wheels, and the side weapons pylons." Yuri didn't bother to explain how he had that information at his fingertips. In his line of endeavor, such things were a given.

"Then, depending on from and to where, Yuri Vasilyevich, yes."

He asked of Boxer, "Can you fit another two helicopters on your ad hoc assault transport? Can you house and feed four aircrew and nine or ten ground crew, plus Konstantin and his people?"

Boxer hesitated, fractionally, pulled up the image of the ship in his mind, along with the three helicopters it carried. "I . . . think so. They'd have to speak English, to fit."

Yuri smiled. "You're an American. If you think you can; you can. And, yes, they'll speak English. I am going to get Victor two brand new MI-28 helicopters, plus ordnance for them. He is going to get them to your ship. They can carry three passengers each and can take Konstantin's team to where it can do the most good.

"Oh, and as a special favor, and since we have owned a goodly chunk of your State Department since at least the 1930's, I am going to tell one of our people there to ignore anything having to do with you and your operation, and to make sure no one else pays it the slightest attention, either. And you can keep the helicopters when they're done; they'll be far too ‘hot' to bring back here. Besides, I owe you for springing my son-in-law from the jail. Consider them to be my thank you note."

"We . . . appreciate this, sir," Boxer answered, even while thinking, I'd like to have the names of your people at State. Not that you would give them up. Hmmm . . . did Stauer know this would happen? If so, how? Note to self: Long chat with Wes, soonest.

"By the way, sir," Boxer asked, "what was on the ship this Yemeni arranged to be grabbed?"

"Tanks," Yuri replied, his face darkening.

"I will," he added, "be sending Major Konstantin a target folder. May I trust your discretion and good judgment in not looking at it?"

D-68, Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil

To the west, farther from the river bank, in one of the tents that had been set aside as a sort of senior leaders' mess and club, some of the commanders, senior noncoms, and staff were singing one of those vile German war songs they seemed so fond of.

At least, Phillie Potter thought as she left her girls' tent to make her way through the nearly pitch black, at least they're not in an Irish mood tonight. God, those songs are so depressing. I wonder why the hell they seem to cheer the boys up. There are a lot of things about soldiers I will never understand.

She'd learned to stop for a minute or five, light depending, to let her eyes get accustomed to the darkness before she tried walking. She still did, even though she'd grown used to the path to Stauer's tent by walking it every night.

Finally, just able to make out enough of the tent and vehicle silhouettes to orient by, she started to step off. She'd also learned, the hard way, to give the tents a wide berth as their guy lines were always anchored some distance past the tent wall. Fortunately, the corduroy street Nagy and his engineers had put in helped to keep her on the right path, and without any unexpected holes to break an ankle in. She came to an ATV she recognized not by any distinguishing feature of its own but by where and how it was parked. Even if that hadn't been there, she could hear from a different tent than the one she sought the sergeant major, plus George and Webster, talking in normal voices. She turned there, off of the corduroy and onto some familiar sandbags, then slipped through the double canvas barrier, through the netting, and into the light.

"Wes," Phillie said, head facing toward the tent's dirt floor, "we need to have a long chat."

"Shoot," he replied, looking up from some paperwork he'd been about.

"It's . . . it's . . . I don't know where to begin."

He thought she looked seriously nervous, very unPhillielike, as a matter of fact. "Sit," he said, pointing toward the cot. "Think. Relax. Talk when you're ready."

"I thought I was ready. But . . . " Phillie sighed. "Nothing to it but to do it, which is to say, not to do it."

Now Stauer was very confused. "To do what?"

"It. You know, the wild thing? Make the beast with two backs? Make love? Fuck. I mean we can't. Not anymore. Ummm . . . fuck, that is."

He smiled; this was very unPhillielike. "Okay. Just out of curiosity, why?"

"It's the girls," Phillie almost moaned. "Those Romanian ex-slave girls. I laid down the law to them: ‘You will not get laid. Period.' How can I do it when I told them they can't?"

Stauer smiled at the irony. "You seemed pretty put out yourself when I first told you no."

Her head rocked. "Yeah. I know. But that wasn't so much the sex; I was mostly hurt because I thought you didn't love me anymore. And . . . "

Yes?"

"Well. I've been learning a lot here, even if I don't understand it all. And . . . one of those things I've learned is that I have to command myself before I've got the right to command anyone else."

Stauer's smile changed from ironic to something approaching idyllic. "Did I ever tell you what a great girl you are, Phillie?" he asked.

She sniffed slightly. This whole conversation was hard. "Not in those words exactly. Well, not outside of bed, anyway."

"Well you are. And for a lot more reasons than what you can do in bed." The smile disappeared, to be replaced by a very, very serious expression, like someone in deep concentration or-as she would insist later-someone attempting to shit a brick. "Moreover, since I'm not getting any younger, what say that when this is over we get mar-"

He couldn't finish the sentence because Phillie was on her feet, racing the short distance across the tent, throwing herself onto him and, in the process, knocking them both to the mud. After that she was too busy covering his face with kisses for him to get a word in edgewise, except when she said, "Yes!"

"-ried?" he finally managed.

"Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!" She pulled back from showering him with kisses long enough to ask, "Umm . . . you want a quickie before I become a nun? A blow job, anyway?"

He laughed and reached up to stroke her hair, saying, "Oh, hon, you have no idea how much. But . . . courage of your convictions, Phillie. It can wait."

She laid her head down on his chest and whispered, "Thank you, Wes. That was the right answer."

In the next tent over, Sergeant Major Joshua stuck out one hand, palm up, saying, "Pay up, gentlemen." With fairly bad grace, Webster and George pulled out their wallets, peeling off, each, fifty United States dollars.

"How the fuck do you do that, Joshua?" Webster asked.

"Got to know people in our business, First Sergeant. Got to pay attention. Got to have had Sergeant Coffee come tell you a story about a young woman being assimilated into the military, what she said to some young girls, and what such a woman is likely to do."

"Bastard," said George, sotto voce, as he counted out two twenties and a ten. "How about a bet on something else?"