The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [317]
"And what is their state of readiness?" Tong Jie asked.
"Generally, quite poor. They have one full-strength division, one at two-thirds, and the rest are hardly better than cadre-strength. Their new Far East commander, a General-Colonel Bondarenko, despairs of making things better, our sources tell us."
"Wait," Fang objected. "Are we discussing the possibility of war with Russia here?"
"Yes," Zhang Han San replied. "We have done this before."
"That is true, but on the first such occasion, we would have had Japan as an ally, and America neutralized. On the second, we assumed that Russia would have been broken up beforehand along religious lines. Who are our allies in this case? How has Russia been crippled?"
"We've been a little unlucky," Tan answered. "The chief minister—well, the chief adviser to their President Grushavoy is still alive."
"What do you mean?" Fang asked.
"I mean that our attempt to kill him misfired." Tan explained on for two minutes. The reaction around the table was one of mild shock.
"Tan had my approval," Xu told them calmly.
Fang looked over at Zhang Han San. That's where the idea must have originated. His old friend might have hated capitalists, but that didn't stop him from acting like the worst pirate when it suited his goals. And he had Xu's ear, and Tan as his strong right arm. Fang thought he knew all of these men, but now he saw that his assumption had been in error. In each was something hidden, and sinister. They were far more ruthless than he, Fang saw.
"That is an act of war," Fang objected.
"Our operational security was excellent. Our Russian agent, one Klementi Suvorov, is a former KGB officer we recruited ages ago when he was stationed here in Beijing. He's performed various functions for us for a long time and he has superb contacts within both their intelligence and military communities—that is, those segments of it that are now in the new Russian underworld. In fact he's a common criminal—a lot of the old KGB people have turned into that—but it works for us. He likes money, and for enough of it, he will do anything. Unfortunately in this case, a pure happenstance prevented the elimination of this Golovko person," Tan concluded.
"And now?" Fang asked. Then he cautioned himself. He was asking too many questions, taking too much of a personal position here. Even in this room, even with these old comrades, it didn't pay to stand out too far.
"And now, that is for the Politburo to decide," Tan replied blandly. It had to be affected, but was well acted in any case.
Fang nodded and leaned back, keeping his peace for the moment.
"Luo?" Xu asked. "Is this feasible?"
The Marshal had to guard his words as well, not to appear too confident. You could get in trouble around this table by promising more than you could deliver, though Luo was in the unique position—somewhat shared by Interior Minister Tong—of having guns behind him and his position.
"Comrades, we have long examined the strategic issue here. When Russia was the Soviet Union, this operation was not possible. Their military was much larger and better supported, and they had numerous intercontinental and theater ballistic missiles tipped with thermonuclear warheads. Now they have none, thanks to their bilateral agreement with America. Today, the Russian military is a shadow of what it was only ten or twelve years ago. Fully half of their draftees do not even report when called for service—if that happened here, we all know what would happen to the miscreants, do we not? They squandered much of their remaining combat power with their Chechen religious minority—and so, you might say that Russia is already splitting up along religious lines. In practical terms, the task is straightforward, if not entirely easy. The real difficulty facing us is distance