“Then you’ve ruled out the idea of Striker going in as tourists?” Hood asked.
“Pretty much,” said Herbert. “The Russians are still watching tour groups and photographing suspicious individuals in hotels, on buses, and at the museum and other sites. Even if our people never go back, we don’t want their photos on file.”
Rodgers looked at his watch. “Paul, I’m going to go sit in on the TAS session. I’ve told Squires he can expect a game plan before he lands at around four P.M., our time.”
Hood nodded. “Thanks for everything, Mike.”
“Sure,” Rodgers said. As he rose, he looked at an antique globe paperweight on the desk. “They never change,” he said.
“Who?” asked Hood.
“Tyrants,” said Rodgers. “Russia may have been a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma to Winston Churchill, but what I see here is a story as old as history-a band of power-hungry individuals who think they know better than the electorate what’s best for them.”
Hood said, “That’s why we’re here. To tell them they can’t do this without a fight.”
Rodgers looked down at Hood. “Mr. Director”-he smiled-“I like your style. Me and General Gordon.”
Rodgers left with Bob Herbert, leaving Hood perplexed and feeling as though he’d bonded with his General-though if his life depended on it, he couldn’t figure out how or why.
TWENTY-FOUR
Tuesday, 5:51 A.M., Sakhalin Island
Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk is a rugged, six-hundred-mile-long stretch of fishing villages on the coasts and majestic pine forests and coal mines in the interior, of rutted roads and a few new highways, of ruins of Romanov prison camps and of ancient graves where the most common surname is Nepomnyashchy “Unremembered.” Situated one time zone west of the International Date Line, it is closer to the Golden Gate Bridge than it is to the Kremlin. When it is noon in Moscow, it is already 8:00 P.M. on Sakhalin. The island has long been a retreat for leaders, many of whom have had dachas, comfortable cottages in the hills, and for eremites who lose themselves in Sakhalin’s untouched wilderness to seek God and peace.
The Russians have long maintained a military presence in Korsakov, on the island’s southeastern tip near the Kuril Islands, which stretch from the northern tip of Hokkaido to the southern tip of Kamchatka. The islands were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, though Japan still claims the seven-hundred-mile-long string of islands and the nations have argued over them ever since.
The Russian base in Korsakov is spartan, consisting of an airstrip, a small harbor, and four barracks. Five hundred naval troops and two regiments of spetsnaz frogmen and naval soldiers are stationed here, daily air and sea patrols keeping an eye and electronic ear on the activities of Japanese salmon boats.
Twenty-three-year-old Junior Lieutenant Nikita Orlov sat at his desk in the command post, high on a peak overlooking the sea and the base. His black hair was closecropped, save for the longish waves that hung down over his forehead, and his full, ruddy lips were set in a square jaw. His brown eyes were alert and gleaming as he reviewed local intelligence and faxed news reports from the previous night-and stole frequent glances out the open window.
The young officer loved getting up before dawn, teaming what had happened while he slept, and then watching the sun peek over the horizon and bum across the sea toward the base. He loved the waking of the world, even though each day no longer held the promise it did when he was a boy and then a cadet: that the Soviet Union would stand as the most enduring empire in the history of the world.
As keen as his disappointment was, Nikita loved his country as passionately as ever, and he loved Sakhalin. He had been sent here straight out of the spetsnaz academy, in large part to get him out of Moscow after the incident with the Greek Orthodox church-but also, he had always felt, to keep him from sullying his father’s good name. Sergei Orlov was a hero, valuable as a flight instructor to impressionable young pilots, useful as propaganda at international symposia and conventions. Nikita Orlov was a radical, a reactionary who yearned for the days before Afghanistan destroyed the morale of the world’s greatest military, before Chernobyl damaged the nation’s pride, before glasnost and perestroika caused the economy and then the union to come apart.
But that was the past. And here, at least, there was still a sense of purpose, still an enemy. Captain Leshev -perhaps suffering from a touch of cabin fever after three years in command of the spetsnaz troops on Sakhalin-spent a great deal of time organizing shooting competitions, which were his passion. That left Orlov in charge of most military matters, and he felt that someday Russia would once again face Japan militarily, that they would try to establish a presence on the island and he might have the honor of leading the shock troops against them.
He also felt, in his heart, that Russia was not yet finished with the United States. The Soviets had beaten Japan in a war, and ownership of the islands was the prize. But there was a sense that Russia had lost a war with the United States, and the Russian spirit-certainly Orlov’s spirit-bridled at that. Spetsnaz training had strengthened his belief that enemies must be destroyed, not accommodated, and that he and his soldiers should be unencumbered by any ethical, diplomatic, or moral considerations. He was convinced that Zhanin’s efforts to turn Russia into a nation of consumers would fail just as Gorbachev’s had, and that would lead to a final reckoning with the bankers and their puppets in Washington, London, and Berlin.
Fresh tobacco had arrived the day before, and Orlov rolled a cigarette as the rim of the sun rose above the dark sea. He felt so much a part of this s land, of each sunrise, that it seemed possible to touch the tobacco to the sun itself to light it. Instead, he used the lighter his father had given him when he entered the academy, the orange glow of the flame illuminating the inscription on the side: To Nikki, with love and pride-your father. Nikita drew on the cigarette and slipped the lighter back into the vest pocket of his crisply pressed shirt.
With love and pride. What would the inscription have read after he received his commission? he wondered. With shame and embarrassment? Or when Nikita requested this outpost upon graduation, away from his father and nearer a very real enemy of Moscow. With disappointment and confusion?
The telephone rang, a relay from the communications shed at the foot of the hill. Orlov’s aide had not yet arrived, so he picked up the trim, black receiver himself.
“Sakhalin post one, Orlov speaking.”
“Good morning,” said the caller.
Nikita was silent for several seconds. “Father?”
“Yes, Nikki,” said the General. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, though surprised,” Nikita said, his expression suddenly alarmed. “Is it Mother-?’
“She’s well,” said the General. “We’re both well.”
“I’m glad,” Nikita said flatly. “To hear from you after all these months-well, you can understand my concern.”
There was another short silence. Nikita’s eyes were no longer joyous as he watched the sun rise. They grew hard and bitter as he pulled a long drag from his cigarette, thought back to his increasingly tense conversations with his father, then further back to his arrest four years before. He remembered how ashamed and angry the General had been about what he had done to that church, how the famous cosmonaut who couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized was embarrassed to go out. How finally, on the night Colonel Rossky-not his influential father-had smoothed the matter over with the academy and gotten Nikita reinstated with just a week of double turns on the extra-duty post, his father had come to the academy barracks and lectured him about the infamy of hate and how great nations and great citizens have been destroyed by it. The other cadets had been silent, and when the great man left, someone came up with the Nikita and Sergei game, which the soldiersintraining played for days: “Sergei” had to guess where in Moscow his son was painting hate slogans, while “Nikita” gave him hot-cold clues.
Nikita could still hear their voices, their laughter.
“The U.S. Embassy?”
“Cold- ”
“The Japan Air Lines terminal at Sheremet’yevo Airport?”
“Very cold
“The men’s dressing room at the Kirov?”
“Warmer!”
“Nikki,” said the elder Orlov, “I’ve wanted to call, but I only seem to make you angry. I’d hoped that time would rid you of some of your bitterness-”
“Has it rid you of your arrogance,” Nikita asked, “this celestial idiocy that what we ants do down here on the hill is petty or dirty or wrong?”
“Going into space didn’t teach me that a nation can be destroyed from within as well as from without,” Orlov said. “Ambitious men taught me that.”