The Colonel in the camouflage fatigues stood up.
“Sir, we have no disputes with you on this point. Your opinion on this point matches our opinion. Our official evaluation says that the East German military will not engage the Red Army in battle.”
The General nodded his head in satisfaction before continuing.
“Now, gentlemen, I really don’t understand you guys in intelligence. If you agree with me, then it must be clear to you that to suppress civil disobedience, no one needs thousands of tanks, as it makes better sense to base your forces on armored personnel carriers, not tanks. Therefore, only a fool can’t see that all these tanks are intended to engage us, or deter us, over here. Don’t give me your answer now, but give it to me tomorrow, with an authorized assessment from Intelligence. Not what you personally think, but how the Intelligence Division in its entirety explains this absurdity. In my opinion, tomorrow morning you will also come to agree with my evaluation and understanding. The enemy will use East Germany only as a transit point or a staging point to continue rolling on towards us.
“It doesn’t take a great expert to see the reason for this maneuver by the enemy. Their sister countries’ regimes are already shaky. They are anxious that the dissent will spill over and spread into the Soviet Union itself. What have others done anywhere in the world, dozens of times, in similar situations? They start a war with their neighbors to rally their people behind their army and regime. This is not a new phenomenon. Has the enemy not heard of it before? I tell you again, those SOBs want a war, and that’s what they’re going to get!”
“For our meeting tomorrow, I want each of you to bring up-to-date reports of the numbers of viable materials and personnel in all your units. Also, bring inventory stock reports of ordnance and fuel. Hand this report to my deputy and we’ll check what we need to request from our hosts here and from Washington. Now let’s get to work because there’s a lot to be done. We’ll meet here tomorrow at the same time.”
All the officers rose to their feet when General Thomas Bell left the room at his swift Marine pace, adjusting his camouflage baseball cap on his head.
Chapter 11
The four members of Marshal Budarenko’s special team stood on the gray, dilapidated pier 4 of the Murmansk naval port, wearing thick storm coats and fur caps adorned with the red star and gold laurel leaves of the Soviet Navy. Colonel Yevgeni, Brigadier General Dimitri, General Vitaly Okhramenko and the KGB operator whom the others had dubbed the Sixth Man, watched the small tugboat towing the much bigger trawler out of the port. In the bitterly cold winter air, one could cut the tension with a knife, and each of them kept to himself.
The trawler, with their mate Colonel Nazarbayev aboard, sailed away into the horizon.
Colonel Yevgeni broke the silence.
“Let’s go. The plane is waiting for us. There is nothing for us to do here anymore. We can also pray in Moscow.”
Yevgeni caught Dimitri’s hand and drew him away from the group.
“Did you deliver the envelope to Captain Yashin, the submarine captain?”
“Yes. I did.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Exactly what we agreed upon. That only when the trawler arrives at the location point and stops, is he permitted to open the envelope.”
The two continued to walk side by side, each deep in thought. Then Yevgeni spoke in a soft voice.
“Tell me, Dimitri. Is the Kazakh married? Does he have children?”
“No. He’s not married and he has no children”, Dimitri answered, then added, “Well, with children, sometimes it’s difficult to know, but at least as far as he knows, he has no children.”
Dimitri paused for a moment, before asking: “Say, Yevgeni, doesn’t it seem more logical to you that we run this operation from here, from Murmansk?”
“You may be right on a logical level, with this operation being mainly Naval, but my friend, you are forgetting two things. One is that we hardly have anything to manage anymore; at most we can monitor the events that we have cooked up. Two, the Minister probably prefers our necks close to him, closer to the noose, and he has his own reasons.”
“Well, it seems that you are right again. We return to Moscow. And, as usual, thank you for the encouragement.”
They quickened their pace and rejoined their three colleagues.
A day and a night had passed, and the trawler was still cutting its way through the North Sea, its bow pointing northwest. Up to a few hours before, the boat crew could discern, on the port side, from a great distance in the cold clear air, the northern snow-covered cliffs of Norway. From time to time, they detected small icebergs in the water, but it did not cause much concern, as this sophisticated vessel could detect any iceberg in its way and had some capacity to function as an icebreaker.
Colonel Nazarbayev sat in the cabin of the ship’s captain, Commander Vitaly. The captain, true to his Soviet military discipline, did not try to extract from Colonel Nazarbayev any details, not even hints, of their shared mission. Not once did Nazarbayev wonder about the captain’s apparent indifference. If I were the captain, the Colonel thought, and someone had placed a self-propelled gun on my boat’s deck, I couldn’t contain my curiosity. Indeed, Commander Vitaly is a strange bird, or perhaps he has his own secrets in this operation, unbeknownst to me.
Commander Vitaly noticed that his colleague was deep in thought and decided to start a conversation.
“You are a field rat, after all. How do you feel on my boat?”
“Yes, it’s true that in the past few years I have been what you call a field rat, and generally speaking, I much prefer to be on solid ground, but here’s something that may surprise you. I was born in a city called Atyrau in Kazakhstan, which is a port city on the coast of the Caspian Sea. My uncle, my mother’s brother, earned his living for many years fishing sturgeon, from whose eggs black caviar is produced. That is the best and most expensive of all fish roe. When I was a boy, I would go out to sea with him on weekends and holidays, so I do have quite a few sea hours under my belt.”
“Black caviar, you say? Then he made a very good living, your uncle.” “Yes, I might say that he supported us financially.”
The two continued their small talk, just to pass the time and to ease their boredom on the long journey to their destination.
“Luckily, the weather is with us”, said Vitaly. “I think we may even arrive at our destination half an hour early. How are your four gunners doing down there? Have they thrown up their meal yet?”
“I’m glad you reminded me, Commander. I’ll go pay them a visit now.
Thank you for the tea, Captain.”
The four men in the crew of the self-propelled gun were sitting nearby and chatting, and when they noticed Colonel Nazarbayev approaching, they stood up quickly. They wore green coveralls and blue puffy seamen’s coats which made them look like inflatable dolls. The gun was completely covered with a blue tarp.
“How are you, gunners?”
“We are fine, Colonel, except for Gregory. He has already thrown up several times”, replied the crew leader.
The colonel looked at Gregory’s young face. He was still pale.
“Remind me, soldier. What is your role in the crew?” “I’m the driver, Sir.”
“Good then, I have an easy task for you, and after you do it, you can go to one of the ship’s crew and ask for pills against seasickness.”