The fool had preferred him and all the while he worked against him. Of course, this is precisely what Lebed's own sponsor, Semyan Chapayev, had done with Stepashin, Lebed's chief rival, promoting the poputchik to fill the spot for which he was actually grooming the ferret. If nothing else, Chapayev had been a master second only to Stalin in the fine art of using poputchiks to do his dirty work.
After disposing of Lebed, Starchinov had hunted down Chapayev and had him executed. In Red Square, the people had cheered. Lebed had been his first poputchik. There had been several others since then. Tomorrow, there would be yet more. Such was the equation of power that it demanded poputchiks at every stage.
Boris Starchinov turned from the window, the ghost ship having disappeared into the gloaming. The eternal Moskva was again silent, the night still, and broken only by the chirping of crickets in the grass and trees. The Soviet Premier and General Secretary of the Party turned to his assembled advisors.
"I have considered the words of the US president," he told them. "We have larger goals, and this incident must not be allowed to interfere."
"But the chernozhopyi rebellion. It must be crushed. And quickly. We are running out of time. This has turned into a real bl'adki." Some raised their eyebrows at the speaker's boldness in his choice of metaphors.
"Yes, it surely has become a circle jerk, Misha, I know this. And besides we seem always to be running out of time," Starchinov replied with sangfroid. Yet his lens-like eyes stared out, assessing the faces of his advisors, one by one, taking their measure in his gaze as it slowly passed across their faces.
Starchinov stood and snapped his fingers, a signal for his personal valet to hand him a vodka martini, his favorite drink. He sipped the alcohol and set the glass down on the desk.
Again his gaze crossed the faces of his advisors.
"Tovarischi — Comrades," he began. "Here is what I propose."
He began to tell them his plan, leaving out the fact that he had decided upon whom his next poputchik would be. When he would finish, the advisors would be asked their opinions.
No matter what their true thoughts, each would strive to outdo the other in voicing their wholehearted approval.
Twenty-five miles north of Tel Aviv, an unmarked limo with bulletproof glass, armored transmission gearbox, and tires capable of rolling at high speed even if struck by grenade shrapnel, nimbly ascended a steep, winding road. Its destination was a series of low-rise whitewashed buildings strung along the crest of a low bluff.
The complex, which included an Olympic-sized swimming pool, could easily be confused with any number of resort hotels throughout Israel. The concealed snipers who monitored the limo's ascent up the serpentine drive suggested strongly that it was anything but that. In fact, the complex was the main — though not the sole — headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
The vehicle was expected. The concealed surveillance/sniper teams were officially told only that it contained a VIP. However, the teams were familiar with the prime minister's personal car by this time and knew that Gershon Simchoni was paying a visit to the head of Mossad, former General Yehuda Peretz.
No one besides Simchoni, Peretz and a handful of close advisers knew the reason for the meeting, but those in the know had not slept well because of the knowledge they possessed.
Once again, Israel's existence was threatened by the Arabs surrounding it. Israel would have to launch defensive plan Ken Tsa'rot — "Nest of Hornets." The operation might well prove to be the most desperate one in that nation's history.
Ken Tsa'rot would have to work the first time. There would be no second chance. But then, Peretz mused, since when had it ever been otherwise for the holy land?
Book II
You Ran, Not Us
Chapter Seven
Insertion into the Reshteh-ye Kuhha-ye Alborz — the Elburz mountain range — had been a predictable bitch. A-Comm (A-Command) of Detachment Omega was on a tight timetable, and this added to the logistical problems faced by the Eagle Patchers. Precision timing was vital to the successful outcome of Omega's mission. So was secrecy.
The Eagle Patchers' presence in the Elburz would not evade the attention of Iranian Pasdaran or special forces — Iran's Spetsnaz-trained Takavar — for long, but the longer the presence of American "advisors" to rebel forces remained covert, the better the chances for success.
Breaux and a company-strength element of Omega personnel had been in-country for approximately a month, training guerilla cadre in low-intensity warfare techniques. The guerilla groups were based in hidden encampments amid the many miles of barren, windswept hills making up the cross-border area between Turkey, Iran and Iraq north of the twenty-fifth parallel.
Ethnic Kurds and Georgians from the bombed cities in the Caucasus made up the majority of these rebel fighting cells. The two main groups did not mix very much, except at the leadership levels, and occupied separate enclaves throughout the hill country. The groups had little in common politically or culturally, and although Islam was a shared religion for many of them, it was by no means the only religion they practiced.
Ethnicity and place of origin mattered much more to how the groups got along, and here the differences were often much greater than the similarities. The Georgians considered the Kurds "Turks," the Kurds considered the Georgians "Slavs." There was no doubt that had it not been for the common enemies confronting the both of them in the Moscow-Baghdad axis, they would be at each others' throats.
And what were American commando advisors to them? Breaux had entertained no illusions about that from the first, nor, for that matter, about the true nature of his mission. Detachment Omega had been reluctantly accepted because an American presence meant a source of arms, money, food and medicine.
The rebels cared not a whit for any training or expertise that might be part of the package. By now they had been waging their guerilla wars with their respective opponents for a very long time. Outsiders were not welcome. Nor were could they ever be trusted. They might be used for a time, and then thrown to the mountain wolves. But never accepted, never brought into the community of mostazafin — the disinherited.
Breaux understood that attitude, and never tried to get chummy with the indigenous forces he and his men were training in these cold, arid mountains. That was always a mistake, as it had been in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan and Sumatra for US spooks, military advisors and other even more questionable personnel carrying out stranger missions. It would have been even more of a mistake here because nobody was conning anybody anymore.
The political games had been played out in the Third World during the twentieth century and they no longer worked. Those who "went native" would be sucked dry and thrown away. Kurtzes would never be a match for the Heart of Darkness. Indigenous guerilla forces viewed the US as a fair-weather friend who would desert them as soon as the going got too tough. Nothing could shake that conviction because it had been proven correct far too many times.
It was now almost midway into the 21st century's third decade and alliances between the US and guerilla forces were based on mutual need and greed — never trust. America wanted something from them, they wanted something from America. A deal would be done, and that was all there was to it. Anything else was merely a public relations sham to preserve a semblance of something deeper, but nobody believed it otherwise.