Divide and conquer - Tom Clancy [78]
"Are you all right, sir?" Fenwick asked.
"Yes," Lawrence replied.
"Go on." Fenwick smiled and nodded and continued. The president sat up taller. He had to focus on the issue at hand. When he got through this crisis, he would schedule a short vacation. Very soon. And he would invite his childhood friend and golfing buddy. Dr. Edmond Leidesdorf, and his wife. Leidesdorf was a psychiatrist attached to Walter Reed.
The president had not wanted to see him officially with this problem because the press would find out about it. Once that happened, his political career would be over. But they had played golf and gone sailing before. They could talk on a golf course or boat without raising suspicion.
"The latest intelligence puts the Russian terrorist Sergei Cherkassov at the scene of the explosion," Fenwick continued.
"He had escaped from prison three days before the attack on the rig. His body was found at sea. There were burn marks consistent with flash explosives. There was also very little bloating. Cherkassov had not been in the water for very long."
"Do the Azerbaijanis have that information?" the president asked.
"We suspect they do," Fenwick replied.
"The Iranian naval patrol that found Cherkassov radioed shore on an open channel. Those channels are routinely monitored by the Azerbaijanis."
"Maybe Teheran wanted the rest of the world to have the information," the president suggested.
"It might turn them against Russia."
"That's possible," Fenwick agreed.
"It's also possible that Cherkassov was working for Azerbaijan."
"He was being held in an Azerbaijani prison," the vice president said.
"They might have allowed him to escape so that he could be blamed for the attack."
"How likely is that?" the president asked.
"We're checking with sources at the prison now," Fenwick said.
"But it's looking very likely."
"Which means that instead of the attack turning Iran against Russia, Azerbaijan may have succeeded in uniting both nations against them," the vice president said. Fenwick leaned forward.
"Mr. President, there's one thing more. We suspect that creating a union between Russia and Iran may actually have been the ultimate goal of the Azerbaijani government."
"Why in hell would they do that?" the president asked.
"Because they are practically at war with Iran in the Nagorno-Karabakh region," Fenwick said.
"And both Russia and Iran have been pressing claims on some of their oil fields in the Caspian."
"Azerbaijan wouldn't stand a chance against either nation individually," the president pointed out.
"Why unite them?" Even as he said it, the president knew why. To win allies.
"How much of our oil do we get from that region?" the president asked.
"We're up to seventeen percent this year with a projection of twenty percent next year," Gable informed him.
"We're getting much better prices from Baku than we are from the Middle East. That was guaranteed by the trade agreement we signed with Baku in March 1993. And they've been very good about upholding their end of the agreement."
"Shit," the president said.
"What about the other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States?" he asked.
"Where will they stand if two of their members go to war?"
"I took the liberty of having my staff put in calls to all of our ambassadors before I came over here," the vice president said.
"We're in the process of ascertaining exactly where everyone stands. But a preliminary guess is that it will pretty much be split. Five or six of the poorer, smaller republics will side with Azerbaijan in the hopes of forming a new union with a share of the oil money. The other half will go with Russia for pretty much the same reason."
"So we risk a wider war as well," the president said.
"But this is more than just the possibility of us losing oil and watching a war erupt," Fenwick pointed out.
"It's Iran and the Russian black market getting their hands on petrodollars that scares me." The president shook his head.
"I'm going to have to bring the joint chiefs in on this." The vice president nodded.
"We're going to have to move