Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [116]
"The question, comrades, is whether the Poles would resist with armed force. That would not be militarily threatening, but it would be a major political embarrassment, both here and abroad. That is, they could not stop the Red Army on the battlefield, but should they make the attempt, the political repercussions would be serious. That is why I supported our move last year to bring political pressure on Warsaw—which was successfully accomplished, you will recall." At the age of seventy-four, Dmitriy Fedorovich had learned caution, at least on the level of international politics. The unspoken concern was the effect such resistance would have on the United States of America, which liked to stick its nose where it didn't belong.
"Well, this might well incite additional political unrest in Poland, or so my analysts tell me," Andropov told his colleagues, and the room got a little chilly.
"How serious is this, Yuriy Vladimirovich? How serious might it become?" It was Brezhnev speaking for the first time from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
"Poland continues to be unstable, due to counterrevolutionary elements within their society. Their labor sector, in particular, is restless. We have our sources within this 'Solidarity' cabal, and they tell us that the pot continues to boil. The problem with the Pope is that if he does what he threatens and comes to Poland, the Polish people will have a rallying point, and if a sufficient number of them become involved, the country might well try to change its form of government," the Chairman of the KGB said delicately.
"That is not acceptable," Leonid Ilyich observed in a quiet voice. At this table, a loud voice was just a man venting his stress. A quiet one was far more dangerous. "If Poland falls, then Germany falls…" and then the entire Warsaw Pact, which would leave the Soviet Union without its buffer zone to the West. NATO was strong, and would become more so, as the new American defense buildup began to take effect. They'd already been briefed on that troublesome subject. Already, the first new tanks were being given to line units, preparatory to shipping them to West Germany. And so were the new airplanes. Most frightening of all was the vastly increased training regimen for the American soldiers. It was as though they were actually preparing for a strike east.
The fall of Poland and Germany would mean that a trip to Soviet territory would be shortened by more than a thousand kilometers, and there was not a man at this table who did not remember the last time the Germans had entered the Soviet Union. Despite all the protestations that NATO was a defensive alliance whose entire purpose was to keep the Red Army from driving down the Champs Elysees, to Moscow NATO and all the other American alliances looked like an enormous noose designed to fit around their collective necks. They'd all considered that before at great length. And they really didn't need political instability to add to their problems. Communists—though not quite so fervent as Suslov and his ideological heir, Alexandrov—feared above all the possible turning away of their people from the True Faith, which was the source of their own very comfortable personal power. They'd all come to power at second hand to a popular peasant revolt which had overthrown the Romanov dynasty—or so they all told themselves, despite what history really said—and they had no illusions about what a revolt would do to them. Brezhnev shifted in his chair. "So, this Polish priest is a threat."
"Yes, comrades, he is," Andropov said. "His letter is a genuine and sincere thrust at the political stability of Poland, and thus of the entire Warsaw Pact. The Catholic Church remains politically powerful throughout Europe, including our fraternal socialist allies. If he were to resign the papacy and travel back to his homeland, that in itself would be a huge political statement.
"Josef Vissarionovich