Kurzin switched into rapid-fire Russian, bombarding Jeffrey with it, catching him off guard.
Jeffrey tried to keep up, stammering.
Kurzin cursed in Russian, then turned, enraged, to Nyurba.
“ ’Vy skazaki chto on byl gotovy!” You said he was ready!
“Grazhdanin, ya dumal chto on byl gotovy.” Sir, I thought he was ready.
Kurzin reverted to English. “Forget it. This is hopeless. You’ll need to go back to Challenger until the next rendezvous, and work with Commodore Fuller much more.”
“Yes, sir,” Nyurba said.
“What’s the problem here?” Jeffrey asked, trying to reassert his authority.
“Commodore, don’t pull rank on me,” Kurzin said in a sharp, nasty way. His eyes showed cold fury. “Have you any idea what you’ll be up against?” He didn’t let Jeffrey answer. “For purposes of this mission, Commander Nyurba and I are your training officers. Your rank means nothing. Nothing. Your readiness is all that matters. All. Your Russian stinks, you’ll have to do a lot better than that. And I saw you blink, you were flustered. Unacceptable!”
“But—”
“Do not talk back to me. If you let on just once during this mission about what you really think inside, how you really feel, you’ve screwed the pooch big-time. My men will have risked their lives, given their lives, for nothing.”
“Now wait a minute, Colonel.”
“No, you wait a minute.” Kurzin moved in close and loomed over Jeffrey. “What did I just tell you?” he said in a loud, angry voice.
“That I’m in training.”
“Christ Almighty, don’t you realize the Russians will be recording every word you say? Running it through stress analyzers? They’ll have hidden video cameras everywhere. Every facial inflection, the way you inhale, the way you fidget, they’ll be watched again and again by a team of the FSB’s best experts!”
“Why can’t I just bring a translator?”
“Because the whole act hinges on your personal command presence, your prestige, your image as Axis nemesis, your tactical nuclear warrior’s worldwide fame. An aide, an assistant, a translator, in this context they’d dilute your impact. You must go alone. The President made that decision.”
“Won’t the Russians have translators?”
“Of course, you fool! Do you think that for one moment you can trust them? Who will they be loyal to?”
“The Russians.”
“Whom you’re supposed to confront as an enemy, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Whom you’re supposed to think have just tried to nuke the United States, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Role-play it out. You’re nowhere there yet. Thank God you’ve got ten days more to work on your part.”
“All right,” Jeffrey conceded. “Lay it on as thick as you need to.”
“Don’t worry, I will, and I don’t need your permission.”
Jeffrey was starting to think that he was in boot camp, lower than dirt — in some bizarre through-the-looking-glass netherworld of lies embedded in other lies. That’s an accurate summary.
The rows of AN-94s all around him gave the compartment, and the discussion, a surreal quality. Added to the browbeating by this Kurzin-cum-Brezhnev persona confronting him, Jeffrey started to feel disoriented.
Kurzin came so close that Jeffrey smelled the onions lingering on his breath. “Be glad, be very glad, that it’ll probably be the Russians who feel defensive, conciliatory. Your job is to convey wrath and resolve, not merely your own but your nation’s, and your nation’s commander in chief’s. A commander in chief who by then will have full power to push the button. Use that.”
“Uh, right.”
“And leave your moral qualms out of it altogether. Deception and bluff in a war situation aren’t lies, they’re necessary tools, and part of your duty!” Kurzin jabbed Jeffrey in the chest with his index finger, so forcefully it hurt. “Have you ever not done your duty?”
“No.”
“Then don’t start botching.”
Jeffrey decided it was time for a counterattack — he had to get in the spirit of things as much as Kurzin was. “Let me know when you’re finished, Colonel. Or should I say, Podpolkovnik.” Lieutenant Colonel in Russian. “Your histrionics grow tiresome to me.” Jeffrey faked a yawn as best he could.
Kurzin didn’t react in the least. “Good, I’m getting through to you.”
“Speaking of moral qualms, I have some questions about how this whole thing is supposed to work.”
“Upstairs. Now. It’s undignified to stand in a closet.”
Jeffrey didn’t point out that this cozy chat in the closet was Kurzin’s idea to begin with.
Kurzin stroked one of the AN-94s lovingly, as if he looked forward to using it soon against live, human targets. He undogged the door and stalked out.
Jeffrey turned to Nyurba. “Is he always like that?”
“You haven’t seen him in combat.”
Chapter 12
The assembled strike group’s first mission briefing began. After a while Kurzin announced a pause for questions. Everyone deferred to Jeffrey.
“I’ll ask what I think are my easier questions first and save the toughest one of all for last.”
“Please proceed,” Kurzin told him with supreme confidence.
“The easiest one, I believe I’ve answered for myself, but I want to make sure.”
“Yes?”
“Why aren’t you aiming the ICBMs at Germany?”
“A natural query. What do you think is the reason?”
“Given Berlin’s mentality these days, it’d immediately provoke a nuclear exchange between them and Russia. Which could spread. Armageddon could break out.”
“It could. An undesirable outcome.”
Kurzin’s talent for deadpan understatements is remarkable. “Aiming the missiles away from Germany,” Jeffrey said, “toward the U.S. instead, in a much more sophisticated gambit, is as effective for us in the end but safer… at least in theory.”
“Correct. We hurt Berlin by indirection, deal them what we hope is a staggering geopolitical blow, by the total ruination of their friendly terms with Russia. But we must not tempt them to escalate, to retaliate against the Kremlin, or against Washington, in an irrational fit of rage when they already have tactical nuclear weapons in play. Rather, in actual real life, Washington as the imaginary supposed target understands why the missiles took off, and knows from the start that they were programmed to explode outside the atmosphere. These factors lead to moderation in U.S. behavior, and this visible moderation from the very first moments will be greatly calming to Moscow. Berlin, though angered by a purely statecraft defeat, will see the same moderation and calm and thus be dissuaded from acting so rashly as to launch an atomic first strike against anyone’s homeland — which if they did would mean their own instant and utter destruction at Russian or American hands. There’s vastly more to it that we’ll walk through step by step. Next question?”
“You’re supposed to be German commandos of Russian ancestry, disguised as Russian Federation extremists—”
“Ethnic Russian Kampfschwimmer as loyal to their adoptive country as we are to America!” Kampfschwimmer were German Navy combat swimmers, the equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs.