control in one tiny region, but were actually reestablishing the USSR as a
world power once again.
That was what it amounted to, at least. Since the middle of the Eighties
Soviet power and Russian pride had taken a beating. Faced with a sagging
economy, a hostile West, and a rising tide of discontent, the Motherland had
barely survived intact. And at what cost? Retreat from Eastern Europe, and
from the vital buffer zone that alone could prevent a repetition of Germany’s
occupation of Russian soil. Compromise with liberal elements demanding reform
in everything from freedom of emigration to private ownership of land and
industry to the very organization and function of the government itself. Even
the evidence of where it would all lead–the ethnic violence, the riots and
strikes, the independence movements in states traditionally part of
Russia–had not swayed the reformers from their headlong rush to virtual
anarchy. It had taken the failure of Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their “new
Union” to show the essential weakness of the reform movements, and just as the
weak-willed Socialist Kerensky had been swept aside by Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, so the democrats had been forced to return power to the hands of
the only people who could maintain order, the hard-liners of the Soviet
military.
Now the damage could all be undone. The death of the President had been
regrettable, of course, but a necessary first step in the cleansing process.
The war with Norway would end in quick victory, a needed symbol of renewed
Soviet pride. The Americans had gone through the same sort of process with
their short, sharp victory over Iraq, at a time when the USSR needed Western
economic aid more than the continued existence of a long-time ally. Turnabout
was only fair play, Khenkin thought smugly.
He wondered if General Vorobyev had considered that particular bit of
symbolism while framing the campaign for Norway’s occupation. Symbols could
mean a lot. The carrier, for instance. Starting out as the Riga, his name
had been changed to the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Gorshkov, in honor of
the Admiral of the Fleet who had inspired the carrier program in the first
place after the troubles in the Baltics and elsewhere had made the name of one
of the rebellious cities an inappropriate one for a Soviet warship to bear.
Now he was the Soyuz, the Union, a symbol of the rebirth of a strong central
government that would carry the USSR into the new century.
“Admiral,” an aide said with a crisp salute as he entered Flag Plot. “We
have an updated report on the American aircraft carrier battle group.”
“Ah, excellent. Excellent, Orlov. Proceed.” Khenkin leaned forward in
his seat, fixing his eyes on the young officer. This was a report he had
waited a long time for.
“Around midnight last night Greenwich time the battle group altered
course,” Orlov began. “They are now moving northeast at a speed in excess of
thirty knots. Our satellite data is not as complete as we would wish due to
increasing cloud cover in the area, but the best estimate is that they are
ignoring the warnings regarding the Norwegian Sea.” Orlov was sweating,
plainly worried at how the admiral would react to the report.
“Is that all? Then you are dismissed, Orlov.” Sagging back in his seat,
Khenkin closed his eyes. No one had been sure how the Americans would react,
but they gave every indication of being too wrapped up in domestic affairs to
care what went on in Scandinavia. The planning had relied on the new American
isolationism, the call that the United States could not continue as “the
world’s policeman.” In the face of American responses from Iraq to North
Korea to the Indian subcontinent, caution had suggested that the plan was
foolhardy at best, yet the election of a U.S. President who openly favored
massive and unilateral military cutbacks, as well as reductions in all areas
of foreign aid, had been encouraging. And his timid reactions, first to the
reoccupation of the Baltics, and later to the border dispute between Norway
and the Union, had been enough to convince even the doomsayers among the
Soviets. Now the Americans were finally beginning to act.